A pastor's pre-marital advice: when you lose, you win. The speaker explains this means choosing compromise and selflessness over being right, in marriage and in the church. Believers who prioritize winning arguments fuel division; Christ-centered compromise builds unity instead.
A couple of months before I married Jessica, my pastor gave me some unusual advice that I still use. He said, when you lose, you win. Now, as someone who likes to win, I was at first bothered by this advice, but after learning what he meant when he said, when you lose, you win, I came to appreciate the advice. He wasn't talking about literal loss, as in a competition. He was talking about compromise and selflessness. And the advice can apply to more than just marriage. Sadly, today, the body of Christ is very divided because many believers have put the needs to be right, the need to win arguments, the need to be vindicated over Jesus's desire that we would be united. I'm not talking about ungodly compromise. I'm talking about embracing one another in the spirit of unity despite some of the ways we disagree. We may not win the argument, but we can win unity. Sometimes when we lose, we win.
