{"id":395,"date":"2017-10-23T15:12:07","date_gmt":"2017-10-23T15:12:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/nextsteps\/?p=395"},"modified":"2017-10-23T15:13:15","modified_gmt":"2017-10-23T15:13:15","slug":"stop-believing-myth-marriage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/nextsteps\/2017\/10\/stop-believing-myth-marriage.html","title":{"rendered":"Please Stop Believing This Myth About Marriage"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"unsplash.com\"
unsplash.com<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Have you ever ordered something from a restaurant and they messed up the order? How did you react when you didn’t get what you expected? Did you roll over and take it or did you send it back?\u00a0Are there restaurants you won’t go back to because they didn’t live up to your expectations? When our expectations aren’t met, there are real consequences.<\/p>\n

So what do you expect out of marriage? How you answer that will go a long way to defining your success in marriage. Too often we fall victim to a cultural expectation of marriage that far exceeds anything God ever created it to be. We look to marriage to be the end all of happiness and purpose in life. We expect our spouse to be \u2018the One,\u2019 to be completely perfect, put together, to completely submit their needs and wants to ours, to assist us in the achievement of our goals, all the while filling us with the love, purpose, and fulfillment we have yet to be able to find. We expect our spouses to give us what only Christ himself can give us.<\/span><\/p>\n

The myth about marriage is that it’s all about happiness. And if you’re not happy, if your expectations aren’t being met, if your marriage isn’t what you signed up for, then there will be an incredible temptation to hit the return button and try again with someone else.<\/p>\n

But when you read Paul’s teaching on marriage in Ephesians 5:21-27<\/a>, you’ll discover that Paul talks a lot more about holiness than he does about happiness. That’s because when God designed marriage, he\u00a0designed\u00a0it to be a lot more about holiness than happiness. If you pursue the myth that marriage is designed to make you happy, you’ll be sorely disappointed, because only Jesus can give you the deep-seated joy that you crave. And your spouse isn’t Jesus.<\/p>\n

When you pursue marriage as a way to become holy, to learn how to submit, to sacrifice, to respect, to depend on God, you’ll gain not only a successful marriage, but along the way you’ll discover the joy and fulfillment you’ve been searching for all along.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Have you ever ordered something from a restaurant and they messed up the order? How did you react when you didn’t get what you expected? Did you roll over and take it or did you send it back?\u00a0Are there restaurants you won’t go back to because they didn’t live up to your expectations? When our…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":607,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[219,220,99],"class_list":["post-395","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-next-steps","tag-happiness","tag-holiness","tag-marriage"],"yoast_head":"\nPlease Stop Believing This Myth About Marriage - Next Steps<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"If you pursue the myth that marriage is designed to make you happy, you'll be sorely disappointed, because your spouse can't give you what only Jesus can.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"noindex, nofollow\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Please Stop Believing This Myth About Marriage - Next Steps\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"If you pursue the myth that marriage is designed to make you happy, you'll be sorely disappointed, because your spouse can't give you what only Jesus can.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/nextsteps\/2017\/10\/stop-believing-myth-marriage.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Next Steps\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:author\" content=\"facebook.com\/drjoshdaffern\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2017-10-23T15:12:07+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2017-10-23T15:13:15+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"http:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/nextsteps\/files\/2017\/10\/anne-edgar-119384-300x200.jpg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Josh Daffern\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@joshdaffern\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Please Stop Believing This Myth About Marriage - Next Steps","description":"If you pursue the myth that marriage is designed to make you happy, you'll be sorely disappointed, because your spouse can't give you what only Jesus can.","robots":{"index":"noindex","follow":"nofollow"},"og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Please Stop Believing This Myth About Marriage - Next Steps","og_description":"If you pursue the myth that marriage is designed to make you happy, you'll be sorely disappointed, because your spouse can't give you what only Jesus can.","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/nextsteps\/2017\/10\/stop-believing-myth-marriage.html","og_site_name":"Next Steps","article_author":"facebook.com\/drjoshdaffern","article_published_time":"2017-10-23T15:12:07+00:00","article_modified_time":"2017-10-23T15:13:15+00:00","og_image":[{"url":"http:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/nextsteps\/files\/2017\/10\/anne-edgar-119384-300x200.jpg"}],"author":"Josh Daffern","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","twitter_creator":"@joshdaffern","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/nextsteps\/2017\/10\/stop-believing-myth-marriage.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/nextsteps\/2017\/10\/stop-believing-myth-marriage.html","name":"Please Stop Believing This Myth About Marriage - Next Steps","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/nextsteps\/#website"},"primaryImageOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/nextsteps\/2017\/10\/stop-believing-myth-marriage.html#primaryimage"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/nextsteps\/2017\/10\/stop-believing-myth-marriage.html#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"http:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/nextsteps\/files\/2017\/10\/anne-edgar-119384-300x200.jpg","datePublished":"2017-10-23T15:12:07+00:00","dateModified":"2017-10-23T15:13:15+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/nextsteps\/#\/schema\/person\/8ac2e15479ad6a320d2082837203cb7c"},"description":"If you pursue the myth that marriage is designed to make you happy, you'll be sorely disappointed, because your spouse can't give you what only Jesus can.","breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/nextsteps\/2017\/10\/stop-believing-myth-marriage.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/nextsteps\/2017\/10\/stop-believing-myth-marriage.html"]}]},{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/nextsteps\/2017\/10\/stop-believing-myth-marriage.html#primaryimage","url":"http:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/nextsteps\/files\/2017\/10\/anne-edgar-119384-300x200.jpg","contentUrl":"http:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/nextsteps\/files\/2017\/10\/anne-edgar-119384-300x200.jpg"},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/nextsteps\/2017\/10\/stop-believing-myth-marriage.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/nextsteps"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Please Stop Believing This Myth About Marriage"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/nextsteps\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/nextsteps\/","name":"Next Steps","description":"Beliefnet Voices - Josh Daffern","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/nextsteps\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/nextsteps\/#\/schema\/person\/8ac2e15479ad6a320d2082837203cb7c","name":"Josh Daffern","description":"Born and raised in California, Josh graduated college from California Baptist University and spent two years as a missionary in Africa before coming back to America and finding the love of his life (Robin). Josh graduated from New Orleans Seminary with a Masters of Divinity and a Doctor of Ministry. Josh has been involved in full-time ministry for over twenty years. He enjoys hiking, beach volleyball, reading, playing anything competitive, and rough-housing with his kids. Josh, his gorgeous wife Robin, his outrageously handsome boys Zeke, Shepherd and Lincoln and his princess Elle, live in northern Virginia. Josh also blogs on Patheos as New Wineskins: an Apologist for the Modern Church and you can find links to all his content on joshdaffern.com. Enjoy the blog!","sameAs":["http:\/\/joshdaffern.com","facebook.com\/drjoshdaffern","https:\/\/x.com\/joshdaffern"],"url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/nextsteps\/author\/jdaffern"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/nextsteps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/395","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/nextsteps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/nextsteps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/nextsteps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/607"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/nextsteps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=395"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/nextsteps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/395\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":397,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/nextsteps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/395\/revisions\/397"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/nextsteps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=395"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/nextsteps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=395"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/nextsteps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=395"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}