We’ve been talking about what it means to fight for, not in, the most important relationships of your life.

All of us can make things better in our present relationships. Just understand it is going to take some work. You will have to fight for it.

Applying biblical principles to the most important relationships in your life will result in stronger, happier, healthier marriages and relationships overall.

Everybody wins in a relationship that is characterized by mutual self-sacrificial love. I believe this is how God wants our relationships to function.

For instance, God created marriage for a purpose. He has the trademark on it. All rights are reserved by God. He holds the patent and the copyright on marriage.

We don’t get to write the rules on marriage. Marriage belongs to God, and he created it for a purpose. That purpose was not just for the advancement of civilization. It was not just for procreation and populating the earth. Those are great byproducts, but they are not the purpose of marriage.

God created marriage to put the world on notice and say that this is what a relationship between me and my people should look like. God wants us to lay down our wants, needs and desires out of love for others in the same way Jesus laid down his wants, his needs and his desires for us. He did it because he loves us.

When Jesus stretched out his arms and died on the cross, he was showing the world just how important we are to him. We are his people. We are his priority.

When it comes to marriage, God wants your spouse to be your person because God wants us to be his people. He wants a group of people who are wholly devoted to him, sold out to him.

His desire is that we are so focused on him that above all else, even when there are a thousand other things competing for our devotion our attention and our affection, we can say no to them because we have said yes to him.

In response to the great love that God has shown us, we can take that step and start following Jesus as we wholeheartedly surrender our lives and our relationships to him.

If you haven’t made a public profession of faith in Jesus Christ, now would be a good time to do that. Just say yes to God’s love and receive that gift of salvation that he offers each of us through the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus.