The Key To Freedom

Our Sunday School has been working through the book Families Where Grace Is In Place by Jeff VanVonderen. Its great. And tough. Steps-on-your-toes kind of tough. Good stuff. And this past Sunday (it was my turn to teach) we were talking about misplaced expectations and the damaging effects this has on our loved ones. At the end of the lesson I quoted some passages from a great book: Devotions For A Sacred Marriage by Gary Thomas. Several have asked for copies of what I read so I thought I would post it here.

Taken from Devotions For A Sacred Marriage by Gary Thomas, pages 31-33.

"Personal worship is an absolute necessity for a strong marriage. It comes down to this: If I stop receiving from God, I start demanding from others. Instead of appreciating and loving and serving others, I become disappointed in them. Instead of cherishing my wife, I become aware of her shortcomings. I take out my frustrations with a less-than-perfect life and somehow blame her for my lack of fulfillment.
But when my heart gets filled by God's love and acceptance, I'm set free to love instead of worrying about being loved. I'm motivated to serve instead of becoming obsessed about whether I'm being served. I'm moved to cherish instead of feeling unappreciated.
Whenever I place my happiness in the hands of another human being, I'm virtually guaranteeing some degree of disappointment. That's why worship sets me free. It meets my most basic need-to rest in the fact that I am known and loved, that I have a purpose and that my eternal destiny and delight are secure - so that lesser needs serve the role of an occasional dessert rather than my main meal.
It's simply not fair to ask your spouse to fulfill you. No one can. If you expect your spouse to be God for you, your spouse will fail every day and on every account. Only one can love you like God...and that is God himself.
Maybe it's just me, but I've seen a constant formula at work in my life: the less I receive from God, the more I demand from my wife. The more I receive from God, the more I am set free to give to my wife. The best thing you can do for your marriage is to fill your soul with God. Start defining disappointment with your spouse as spiritual hunger, a cosmic call to worship."

He speaks of this in context of a marriage, but I see it resounding in every single relationship we encounter. The key to our relational freedom is in putting all our expectations on God, the only one who can handle them, the only one who never finds our needs too much.