A Successful Marriage Requires Four Things

Jimmy Lau

A successful marriage requires these four things.
 
1. Forgive. The person you marry is imperfect. You are imperfect too. So, don’t expect perfection from your spouse. He/she will make mistake and do things that irritate you. Therefore, if both of you choose to magnify imperfections, and to become irritated at trifles matters, then your marriage is destined for failure. FORGIVE! “But if ye do not forgive, neither will your Father which is in heaven forgive your trespasses” (Mark 11:26).
 
2. Forget. A successful marriage consists of two forgetful persons who cannot recall the misdeeds done in the past. People who hold on to a grudge for life are not people who can forgive. My wife and I had arguments. The good thing is that we cannot remember those arguments. Love “doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not its own, is not provoked, taketh not account of evil” (1 Corinthians 13:5). 
 
3. Forbear. Strong’s Greek Definition defines “forbear” as “to hold oneself up against, that is, (figuratively) put up with: - bear with endure, forbear, suffer” (e-sword).
 
Therefore, to forbear is restrain oneself from reacting adversely to a situation. It is to exercise self-control, to endure, to suffer the wrong, and to bear with a hurt. A successful marriage has two persons bearing each other up rather than putting each other down. Marriage breakdown because two persons are tearing each other apart when they should be forbearing each other in love: “With all lowliness and meekness, with longsuffering, forbearing one another in love” (Ephesians 4:2).
 
4. Funny. It is not true that courtship is fun and marriage boring. Marriage is boring because two persons stop having fun together. Isaac and Rebekah were having a fun time. God wants us to cheer our spouses (Proverbs 5:18). Solomon says: “Live joyfully with the wife whom thou lovest all the days of the life of thy vanity, which he hath given thee under the sun” (Ecclesiastes 9:9).