Peace at Home #05: Judgement of Grace

Imagine for a minute that I (Hannah) just got home from Target. I went in to grab maybe two or three things, but you know that Target has this way of telling us what to buy, not the other way around. I hand Jonathan the receipt. It’s almost $300.

😱

Now, Jonathan has a choice here. He can think to himself, "Man, that's a lot of money. Doesn't she know that none of this is in the budget? Now we have to wait to buy all the other things I thought we needed. And it’s only like 4 bags of stuff. That’s not much. Why did she waste all of this money?"

OR, he can think to himself, "Wow, she must have been shopping around and found several great deals all in one day. That’s awesome! I trust that she got exactly what we needed. She’s in our home with the kids more than I am, so I’m sure she has a more realistic idea of what we really need."

Which reaction does more good for our relationship? The first reaction will leave Jonathan angry, resentful, and waiting for a chance at payback. It breeds distrust and contempt. The second reaction may make him feel blessed to have a wife who’s wise with money and takes care of his home and his children. He trusts her as the proverb says, “Her husband puts his confidence in her, and lacks no good thing.” It multiplies his love and delight.

Leviticus 19:15 says, "In righteousness shall you judge your neighbor." The rabbis gleaned from this verse that we are to judge in a person’s favor. I could have had many different reasons for spending $300 at Target, but it is Jonathan's responsibility before God to judge in my favor. And you can see that the choice Jonathan makes in that moment, staring at the receipt in his hand, will send our relationship down two very different paths, a blessing or a curse.

How do you begin to judge in a person’s favor? It takes a paradigm shift, and the best place to start is literally at the beginning - Creation. Genesis 1 is a beautiful poem, and if you take a moment to study it as a poem, then there are some very amazing things that are trying to be communicated.

At the end of of every day, what does God see about what he has created? "That it was good." (Vs. 4, vs. 10, vs. 12, vs. 18, vs.25). Then, after having finished creating, he saw that “It was very good." (Vs. 31)

Before the poor choices that humanity made in the subsequent chapters (which surely came as no surprise to the Almighty), at the beginning, at our very core, God saw us and said we are "very good." As I grew up in church, all I heard was how horrible I am; how filthy all my good deeds were; and that no matter what I did, I would never measure up, or have any value to God, apart from Jesus. But that's not what He told His children.

Yes, there's sin that people choose to give in to, and sometimes we buy stupid stuff at Target because it was on an end cap of the aisle and it was the one thing I didn’t know I needed TODAY. But how you view others, and how you view your future spouse, will have a ripple effect through your relationships and through your life. You're either going to assume the worst in the other person’s motives, filtering all their actions through this dark lens that poisons your heart; or you can see the other person as God has said they are: Very good.

So when it comes to your husband or wife, assume that they are very good. I can tell you from experience that it's hard to do at first, like any good habit. But just like working out, this muscle of gracious judgement will get stronger the more you do it. And I promise you, your marriage will be healthier and more at peace than you ever imagined.