A couple years ago, I realized I was afraid of getting married. There was something in me that believed when a woman got married, she would lose herself. All of her dreams, desires, and hopes, would be put on the shelf to gather dust as she served her husband, and eventually her children. Instead of living as her own person, her identity and life was in another. I believed I had to live all the life I could before it was taken away from me and I had to live behind someone else’s.
I now recognize the beauty in these things that I feared. No, I’m not going to say that they’re not true, they were just spun in a negative light- a light that was focused on me. But the very thing I was afraid of is the very thing that holds life.
What I’m talking about is the meaning behind this verse:
“present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service of worship.”
Romans 12:1
Before, when I would read this verse, I didn’t think too much on it because it didn’t make much sense to me. I always thought it meant to die to yourself and your flesh, and disciplining the body- which is true- but I would like to take it further into the beautiful truth I have discovered within this verse. The beautiful truth, is that this verse is about marriage.
All throughout the Bible, the Lord references the covenant between Him and His people as like a marriage. When one gets married, your body belongs to the other person. Nothing you have is your own, instead you have become one with the other, and everything you have is theirs. Can I tell you the beauty of what this means in the Spirit? Yes, on one end, it means you have to give everything up and you can not hold onto anything as your own anymore- or there will be separation. On the other end, it means that we have been made ONE with God, and that everything HE has is ours. “And he said to him, ‘Son, you have always been with me, and all that is mine is yours.'” Luke 15:31
Can you believe that He would hold nothing back from us? That He would give it all to have nothing in between Him and us. So yes, if I choose Him, I will indeed lose myself. And within the losing, is where I am found. In fact, all of the places I could try to place my identity in apart from Him are faulty and unreal. In dying, life is found. In sacrificing my own will and self, I am able to receive love, truth, freedom. I am able to receive Him.
Worship lies in the choice. Choosing to be faithful, to submit to Him as the head and trust Him. Choosing HIM. That is worship.
Does marriage work when one of the members is trying to cling to the things of old, to their wants and desires, or in it for their own gain? Not very well. It only works well when there is a laying down of life for the other, in love.
