Goodbye Consumer Marriage: Are We Clients or Spouses

Imagine going to your favorite restaurant, ordering a meal, and getting something completely different, cold, and tasteless. Naturally, you would call the waiter, complain, and maybe never go back. You are a client, and clients demand good service in exchange for their money. That is exactly how modern society has taught us to live. Sadly, without realizing it, we often carry that same 'dissatisfied customer' attitude right into our marriages.

We live in a throwaway culture: if a phone gets slow, we toss it; if a subscription no longer entertains us, we cancel it. We have turned marriage into a transactional contract where we think: 'I am with you as long as you make me happy, as long as you meet my needs, or as long as you do not demand too much from me'. We become consumers of our spouse, evaluating their daily performance as if we were service critics.

But God shows us a completely opposite design in Ezekiel. He says: 'I made a covenant with you, and you became mine'. God did not look at us and think: 'Let us see what benefit I can get from this perfect humanity'. No, He saw us broken, offered us His unconditional love, and gave us a sense of belonging. A covenant does not say 'I love you if you earn it'; a covenant shouts 'I love you because I decided to lay down my life for you'.