Consider this: Perhaps you can’t relate to feeling like a stranger in your country, but you might relate to feeling like a stranger in your home. Many people feel mismatched in marriage. Your anxieties may arise from unresolved conflicts, which cause you to withdraw physically or emotionally from your spouse. They may come from your worries about an unknown financial future. Or, they can be caused by guilt over the rebellion of a child into whom you have poured your life and love. In such circumstances, God may not remove the difficulty, even though you plead for him to stop your pain. Nevertheless, His presence and power are there to sustain you and direct you through His Word.

We all wish that God would swoop down and drop wisdom into our lives, but wisdom is not dispensed like a prescription drug. When troubles come, threatening to alienate us from our spouse, wisdom tells us to seek God’s answer—to find strength in God’s Word. Christ is the Living Word and the Source of our lives. Our hearts will feel at home when we abide in Him. God has a blueprint for marriage that can transform your relationship with your spouse. Couples who devote themselves to studying the Bible together discover strength and wisdom that takes marriage to a new level.

Discuss: With love and respect, talk about your differing perspectives instead of trying to force agreement to your way of thinking. Could this change improve your marriage?

Pause here and remember that gaining wisdom for daily living is really about seeing life from God’s perspective. Rather than withdrawing from your spouse, recognize that you need his or her love and support every day, and even more in difficult times. Wisdom is the by-product of knowledge plus right decisions, godly reactions, and the application of spiritual principles to daily circumstances. With God’s wisdom, we come to recognize that He can use our pain to equip us for life as He designed it to be. Invite God to be at home in your marriage, revealing even your weaknesses, so that you may see His infinite strength.

When anger enters the mind, wisdom departs.
THOMAS À KEMPIS (C. 1380–1471)

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