Looking for Meaning

I think most of us spend a good portion of our lives looking for meaning.

Especially when you have some insecurities, you can spend a lot of time trying to find somewhere you belong. You want to be part of something. You want somebody to notice you. You want something that makes you feel like your life matters.

The trouble is, if you go looking for meaning in the wrong places, you can wind up a long way from where you intended to go.

It's sort of like taking a shortcut through the mountains. Around here, when somebody tells you, "I know a shortcut," you better make sure you've got a full tank of gas, four-wheel drive, and enough deer jerky to survive until Tuesday.

Some shortcuts aren't shortcuts at all.

And some of the things we chase because we think they'll give us purpose can lead us down some mighty dark roads.

That's where I found myself.

One day I was in New Orleans watching a football game, battling addictions, battling my own mind, and living a life centered mostly around myself. Then the next morning, God seemed to peel back the fog for just a moment and let me see who I was in His eyes.

And I didn't like what I saw.

More importantly, I began to understand something about how God saw my sin.

The Bible says, "For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God" (Romans 3:23).

For years I had been trying to find meaning while going in the opposite direction from the One who gave my life meaning in the first place.

But God wasn't finished with me.

I began going back to church. I started reading the Bible. God began working on my heart, and eventually He did something in me that I could never have done for myself.

He saved me.

He forgave the careless, selfish choices I had made. Christ took the punishment my sin deserved and gave me something I could never earn.

"But God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us" (Romans 5:8).

But getting saved and learning to live saved are two different things.

I had spent a lot of years living for myself, and suddenly the Lord was teaching me that following Jesus meant putting somebody besides myself first.

That was about as comfortable as hitting your finger with a hammer.

God was teaching me that the Christian life wasn't about finding out how everybody else could make me happy. It was about learning to love God and learning to love other people.

And somewhere along the way, I decided I'd like to have somebody to do life with.

Now, I remembered this girl I had seen at a Chamber of Commerce dinner. I thought she was about as pretty as socks on a rooster.

So for once in my life, instead of just charging ahead like a bull through a screen door, I prayed about it.

I felt like maybe I ought to talk to her.

Apparently she had not received the same revelation.

The first time I really encountered her was at a revival. I managed to step directly on her toe with my cowboy boot.

She left rather quickly.

Not exactly the Song of Solomon.

Then I saw her again at a community church singing. I sat down behind her. She turned around, saw me, and a few moments later got up and left.

At that point I started praying something like, "Lord, are You sure about this? Because I'm beginning to think this woman is fixing to take stalking charges out on me."

But I decided to try one more time.

This was back when people had landline telephones and there was a great big book delivered to your house that contained everybody's phone number. Looking back, I'm not sure who decided that was a good idea.

But I found her number in the phone book.

And I called her.

We talked for two hours that night.

And that conversation began, next to my relationship with Jesus Christ, the greatest relationship of my life.

There are enough God stories between that phone call and today that I could sit on the tailgate and write about them for days.

But after 25 years of marriage, I think I understand something now that I didn't understand then.

I thought I was looking for someone to share my life with.

God was teaching me how to give my life away.

Scripture says, "He who finds a wife finds a good thing and obtains favor from the LORD" (Proverbs 18:22).

And I certainly found a good thing.

But God's design for marriage goes much deeper than finding somebody who makes us happy.

From the beginning, marriage was God's idea.

"Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh" (Genesis 2:24).

And when the New Testament explains marriage, it gives husbands an awfully high standard:

"Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her" (Ephesians 5:25).

Notice what it doesn't say.

Love your wife as long as she's making you happy. Love her as long as you agree. Love her as long as marriage is convenient.

It says love her as Christ loved the church.

And how did Christ love the church?

He gave Himself for her.

That's the part of marriage that doesn't fit very well with the world's definition of love. The world often says love is finding somebody who fulfills me. Jesus teaches us that love is being willing to lay ourselves down for somebody else.

Real love asks, "What can I give?" before it asks, "What am I getting?"

That's what God had to teach a fellow who had spent much of his life thinking about himself.

And trust me, He's still teaching me.

I sometimes hear people talk about finding the right wife or the right husband. Certainly, you ought to be careful about whom you marry. But I believe one of the best things a person can do while praying for the right spouse is ask God to make them the right kind of spouse.

Before asking God to send you a godly woman, ask Him to make you a godly man.

Before asking for somebody who will love you sacrificially, ask whether you're prepared to love them sacrificially.

Before asking God to straighten somebody else out, you might want to make sure your own fence posts aren't leaning.

Looking back over 25 years, I can see that God wasn't merely giving me someone to make my life more enjoyable.

He was giving me someone beside whom I could learn what love really means.

Marriage has taught me that love isn't primarily butterflies in your stomach. Sometimes that's just indigestion.

Love isn't always candlelight dinners, romantic vacations, or staring lovingly into each other's eyes.

Sometimes love is staying.

Sometimes love is forgiving.

Sometimes love is saying, "I was wrong."

Sometimes love is putting down what I want because the person sitting across from me matters more.

Sometimes love is walking through sickness, disappointment, bills, family struggles, changing seasons, and ordinary Tuesdays together.

And somewhere in all of that, God does something beautiful.

A Christian marriage begins to tell a story.

Paul says that marriage points beyond itself to Christ and His church (Ephesians 5:31–32).

That's what makes marriage sacred.

Our marriages aren't ultimately supposed to advertise how wonderful we are.

They're supposed to point people toward how wonderful Christ is.

When a husband loves his wife when it's costly, we get a little glimpse of Christ's sacrificial love.

When a wife and husband forgive one another, we get a little glimpse of grace.

When two imperfect people keep choosing faithfulness through the years, we get a little glimpse of God's covenant faithfulness.

And when a marriage survives two sinners living under the same roof for 25 years, somebody besides the two sinners ought to get the glory.

God does.

Twenty-five years ago, I thought I was looking for a pretty girl I'd seen at a Chamber dinner.

Turns out God was doing something much bigger.

He was taking a selfish man who had spent years looking for meaning in all the wrong places and teaching him that some of life's greatest meaning is found when you quit living only for yourself.

I'm thankful for the woman God gave me.

I'm thankful she eventually quit getting up and leaving every time she saw me.

I'm thankful the stalking charges never materialized.

And I'm thankful that after 25 years, God is still teaching us what marriage was meant to be.

Not two perfect people.

Not a perfect life.

But two imperfect people held together by a perfect God, learning day by day to love each other in a way that points beyond themselves.

And after 25 years, if there's anything good worth bragging about in our story, the glory doesn't belong to the fellow in the cowboy boots or the pretty girl who kept trying to get away from him.

It belongs to the God who brought us together, kept us together, and has used marriage to teach us both what love really means.