Commitment

Excerpt from LifeToday Houses But Not Homes

Because so many of our friends and viewers of LIFE Today have asked to hear more from Betty, let me assure you in the book Living in Love, you will hear from this truly beautiful, very meek, yielded-to-God wife, mother and best friend a man could ever have. Let me share a few thoughts from Betty in the very first part of the book under the sub-heading, “Commitment pushes us beyond fear and frustration”:

• True commitment also involves stretching. As imperfect people, we get the wrong idea about commitment, and in order to protect ourselves, we commit only so far. Instead of giving everything we have, we hold back, afraid to give ourselves fully because we run the risk of getting hurt. Instead of completely engaging with our mate, we back off and hope to avoid what I call “ugly stuff”...
• The truth is this: you cannot have a harmonious, God-honoring relationship without making a firm, daily decision to honor each other and to stay attuned to each other’s thoughts and feelings, no matter what. Otherwise, you won’t be living, you’ll simply be existing. And you won’t even be existing together but rather operating in separate worlds. You may share the same physical space, the same room, but you’ll be in different emotional and mental places.
• You can come to a place in your relationship where you are strangers, wondering how you ever got along in the first place and unable to recognize or remember the love you once had for each other. It could be compared to the distance you may sense between yourself and God when you don’t communicate with Him. Of course, God never leaves us or forsakes us, and that’s the level of commitment a husband and wife need to have with each other.
• Sadly, over the years James and I have observed many couples living as though they have no common focus or interests. In a way it’s as if they are held captive within prison walls they have allowed to be built in their relationship. This is not what God intends! If you are living in this bleak world, you must – with God’s help – break free.
• When you try to operate in a separate, commitment-free zone, you only do damage to your relationship--possibly far more damage than you realize. A lack of dedication to each other is insidious in the way it begins to harden your heart and your attitudes. If you allow a lack of commitment to creep into your life, you’ll find yourself becoming more and more calloused to your spouse’s feelings and needs as well as to your own...
• People come to marriage with a commitment to the person they think they see in their spouse. And everyone comes into marriage with a commitment to her or his own self-interests and dreams. James and I want you to understand that the path to your own self-interest lies squarely through the territory of your spouse’s best interests and the best interests of your relationship.