Responsibilities of Married Life
My Dear Brother and Sister,
You have united in a lifelong covenant. Your education in married
life has begun. The first year of married life is a year of experience,
a year in which husband and wife learn each other’s different traits
of character, as a child learns lessons in school. In this, the first year
of your married life, let there be no chapters that will mar your future
happiness.
To gain a proper understanding of the marriage relation is the work
of a lifetime. Those who marry enter a school from which they are
never in this life to be graduated.
My brother, your wife’s time and strength and happiness are now
bound up with yours. Your influence over her may be a savor of life
unto life or of death unto death. Be very careful not to spoil her life.
My sister, you are now to learn your first practical lessons in regard
to the responsibilities of married life. Be sure to learn these lessons
faithfully day by day. Do not give way to discontent or moodiness.
Do not long for a life of ease and inactivity. Guard constantly against
giving way to selfishness.
In your life union your affections are to be tributary to each other’s
happiness. Each is to minister to the happiness of the other. This is
the will of God concerning you. But while you are to blend as one,
neither of you is to lose his or her individuality in the other. God is
the owner of your individuality. Of Him you are to ask: What is right?
What is wrong? How may I best fulfill the purpose of my creation?
“Ye are not your own; for ye are bought with a price: therefore glorify
God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God’s.”
1 Corinthians
[46]
6:19, 20
. Your love for that which is human is to be secondary to your
love for God. The wealth of your affection is to flow forth to Him who
gave His life for you. Living for God, the soul sends forth to Him its
best and highest affections. Is the greatest outflow of your love toward
Him who died for you? If it is, your love for each other will be after
heaven’s order.
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