Work and Dream Together & Learn to Forgive

Work and Dream Together

In your walks and talks and laughter and tears, go back together, and relive the thoughts of a young boy who sat on a hillside, looking at the sky and dreaming of the future. Discuss and analyze those dreams lovingly and understandingly with one another. Then work and pray together to make them come true.

In like manner, relive the hopes and aspirations of a young girl who often walked alone at sunset across her father’s fields—dreaming of a husband and home of her own someday, of children, security, warmth, laughter and joy. Be sure you work together to make her dreams come true.

Learn to respond to one another—openly and lovingly. Have no improper secrets. Bear no grudges. This is your only life, your only mate, your only love. Learn to think and feel in unison, solving all your problems together as a team. The mutual encouragement and stimulation you will feel, along with the added warmth and love you will experience, will add an extra dimension of understanding and purpose and joy to your life that cannot be obtained in any other way. Truly, “it is not good that man should be alone” (Genesis 2:18).

Learn To Forgive

Another absolute imperative in a truly happy marriage is the willingness to forgive. When two people share their entire lives, when they are together much of each day and night, there is bound to be friction occasionally. For we are, after all, only human. And by far the best way to solve this real problem is God’s way.

To sulk, to brood, to conjure up evil thoughts about your mate or attribute to your mate wrong motives is totally senseless. It only breeds more trouble, more discontent and possibly even divorce. Certainly, as we have said, you need to talk about your hurts and misunderstandings. Try to really listen to your mate’s point of view—not just sit there and think about what you are going to say next! Do not just think about how you are going to get back at them or “get even.”

Get even with whom? If you fully grasp and accept the fact that you and your mate are “one flesh” and bound together by God for life, then you would be trying to “get even” with yourself! You would simply be hurting yourself. You would, in effect, be “counter-attacking” yourself.

So if after a family argument or hearty discussion with your mate about some hurt—real or imagined—you still feel upset or angry with your mate, what should you do? Again, you simply need to do what God says you always need to do in such situations—forgive the other person!

But it was really their fault!” we find ourselves saying. “And besides, they haven’t even apologized to me, so how can I forgive them?” Through heartfelt prayer and God’s guidance, you can learn to forgive all kinds of people for all kinds of real or imagined “wrongs” they have inflicted on you; that other driver “cutting you off” at the freeway exit, the kid next door playing his rock music way too loud into the night or the neighbor lady gossiping about you.

Speaking of actions far, far worse than any of these, the One who is our ultimate Example, Jesus Christ, said: “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they do” (Luke 23:34).

All of us must come to realize that most people do not “mean” to hurt us. They do not “mean” to do evil. They are simply human. They blurt out hurtful words or take harmful actions without thinking through what they are really doing. And so often it “hurts.”

But the One who gave His life for us commands: “For if you forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses” (Matthew 6:14–15). If, then, we are to forgive every person in this way, how much more should we forgive our precious mate who has now become our own flesh and bone?

What if your husband keeps on tracking in dirt from the yard or grease from the garage? What if your wife keeps on burning the toast once or twice a week?

Learn to approach your mate constructively and talk it over, of course. But if some of these human foibles persist, even for years, then just keep right on forgiving. After all, would you rather scrape your burnt toast once in a while or would you rather live alone, do your own cooking and have no one to talk to or cuddle with on cold wintry nights? Never forget what Jesus commanded: “Then Peter came to Him and said, ‘Lord, how often shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? Up to seven times?’ Jesus said to him, ‘I do not say to you up to seven times, but up to seventy times seven’” (Matthew 18:21–22).

God's Plan for Happy Marriage
By Roderick C. Meredith