Are You Living Up To Your Vows?

A wedding can be a fun occasion. Each married person attending may feel different about the state of their marriage, but weddings remind us all of “the beginning.” We remember what it was like to experience those sparks. To stare into each other’s eyes. To genuinely believe everything will be okay because we have each other. In all honesty, we remember how overly positive we were about two sinful people coming together to live happily ever after.

Marriage is good, of course. In fact, it is very good. Not necessarily because of the expected bliss that it did, or did not, provide. Marriage is good because God created it. While it’s goodness is obvious in a variety of ways, there is one specific way marriage benefits us all — Marriage urges us to be faithful to our promises.

What Promise Did You Make? 

Unless your wedding was dramatically untraditional, I imagine you said some vows. You may have expanded on the typical vows, but at minimum, you declared you would love your husband and be faithful to him. Many of us even implied we’d treat our husbands well (respecting him, supporting him, maybe even submitting to him). Even if those words didn’t make it into the ceremony, I bet you would have been willing to make those promises. So the question for the day is, how is all that going now?

Hopefully, you are choosing to be faithful to him in the “big ways” — but are you as faithful as you ought to be in your heart, your affections, and the effort you put in to being his wife? Are you putting his desires or needs on the back burner? Do you love him the way you’d want a wife to love your son? (or are you a good example to your daughter?) Would your newly married self be disappointed at your current listless approach to wifehood?

I know we have reasons for not being everything we thought we’d be as wives (and I’m sure our husbands could say the same). But I imagine you, like me, didn’t put an asterisk next to your vows. We planned and purposed to be the best wife we could be, and no change of circumstance should impede our efforts. No doubt, some circumstances are probably harder (or much harder) than were anticipated, but we should still give marriage all we got!We need to stop living like we put an asterisk next to our wedding vows. Share on X

Renew Your Faithfulness 

If you can, find those old vows and do a self-evaluation. Resist listening to the excuses that pop into your mind. Admit where you have fallen short. Ask God to help you be who you knew you wanted to be those many years ago. More importantly, ask God to help you be the wife that he wants you to be – a faithful, loving, good wife (and all that means for your marriage in particular).

Even if marriage was nothing like you thought it would be, marriage is good. For if nothing else, it is causing you to grow in your ability to be steadfast, to be faithful, and to be godly. Let’s keep going sisters. Fight to be the wife God wants you to be, “For as long as you both shall live.”