I once had a career in customer service training. One very important lesson I learned in going through that profession was the power of choice of the human mind. Here's how that works.
Imagine you're out for pizza and you go to your favourite pizza place hoping to get a pepperoni pizza. But then you get to the store and the waiter tells you that they're out of pepperoni. You ask what other options you have and the waiter just tells you, "Sorry, you're going to have to order something else."
How will such a scenario make you feel? Probably sad, maybe even angry.
When we feel like we don't have a choice, we feel powerless, and that often leads to frustration, aggression, and even hopelessness. But when we are empowered with choices, we feel we are more capable of doing what is best.
This part of human psychology goes beyond whether you're going to get pepperoni on your pizza or not. It can trickle down into your marriage. Sometimes your marriage can feel like a delimiting force, and we end up feeling devoid of choice. We have no choice but to stick to the same person, the same routine, the same problems or the same life. We feel like because of our marriage we have no choice, and that leaves us powerless and feeling that our only option is to settle for a mediocre marriage or, worse, give up on it.
But this mindset of course is a scheme of the enemy—one meant to do only one thing, and that's to steal, kill, and destroy. In God there is always a choice. The most empowering thing in your marriage is knowing that you have the choice to love your spouse every day.
We've all heard the saying, "Love is a decision, not a feeling." Because love is a decision, we have one choice to make in our marriage—the choice to love, serve, and walk with our spouse on a daily basis.
One powerful example of a person who chose love was no other that God Himself. In John 15:16, Jesus said to the disciples, "You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide, so that whatever you ask the Father in my name, he may give it to you."
I believe Jesus did not mean that this would only apply to His disciples. He means that for all of us today. Even in our sin, distress, selfishness and imperfection, Jesus chose to love us and to sacrifice for us.
Because Jesus made that choice to love us unconditionally, we now can choose to share the same love to others today—most especially our spouse.
John 13:34 says, "A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another."
It's not true that our only options are to settle or to give up. We have the choice to love our spouse because God has freely loved us.
