This past weekend I was talking with a friend of mine about some of the struggles that Kelly and I had in our marriage, particularly in our first few years. We were in and out of marriage counseling several times between years 2 and 5 as our marriage brought out some of the deep-seated issues that we had brought with us into marriage.
One of the things that made our struggles particularly splash-worthy was that we were pretty arrogant during out engagement period. We pretty much thought we had it all together. We called ourselves "A.P. Engaged"...old-school high school speak for Advanced Placement Engaged. Pride doth indeed goeth before downfall.
I was sharing about how having the right answers made our struggles that much more surprising and in some ways more difficult. We knew what needed to happen or what we thought we needed to say to one another when conflict arose. But actually having a real relationship and working that stuff out was much harder than we thought it would be. The right answers didn't really serve us all that much.
But as we talked further about this, I opined that having right answers is better than having wrong answers. Even if you can't get there, at least you sort of know where you want or need to go. There is clearly a place for learning right answers. It's just important that we understand that knowing what is true or right or good and living that out are not the same things.
I think that this is what the Scripture writer James is talking about when he writes, "Do not merely listen to the Word and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says!"
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