Gretchen’s quotes from Michael Phillips – Part Two

From Shadows Over Stonewycke by Michael Phillips and Judith Pella:

“This love is ordained of God. It is to be. It may be a love that will know sorrow, that is true. But while we are upon this earth, it is our response to the sorrows the Lord sends that carve out the cavity within our natures to hold the joy He pours into them. The greater the sorrows, the greater the possible joys, and the greater our potential service to Him. Love your young man, and marry him, and serve the Lord with him. And when sorrows come, as they surely will, let them deepen your love and enlarge your capacity to receive God’s life.”

“You are responsible only for yourself, your own reactions, your own responses. You cannot expect Logan to do his part. Your eyes must be focused only on your self-sacrifice to him, not his to you. Nor can you gauge what you give by what you expect to receive in return, nor by what you think you deserve.

“Marriage is not a fifty-fifty proposition as so many modern thinkers would have us believe. Each partner must give everything, expecting nothing in return, to make a marriage work. The standard has got to be one hundred percent-zero percent–from each person’s vantage point. The moment you say, ‘I’ll only go ninety-nine percent of the way and I’ll expect the other to do his fair one percent share,’ the false and selfish expectations begin to creep in, and the whole marriage begins to be undermined.

“That one percent you place on the other is the open door to every problem in every marriage. You’ve got to sacrifice, lay down, give, and love the full one hundred percent. God established marriage, and in His economy, that’s the only way it can work. Whenever man tries to make it work using a different formula, it can only end in self-centeredness, disappointment, and misery.”

“I hope that someday soon your leave behind this foolishness about being ‘in love.’ No marriage can survive unless it gets past that and to the love of sacrifice.”