Keeping the Wine of Your Marriage Fresh

“Shake well before using.” Why? Because when the ingredients separate and settle to the bottom, it’s a bad taste. Have you ever tasted that “gunk” that settles to the bottom of the glass of tea, hot chocolate, or coffee? It’s called “dregs”, and drinking it is not a pleasant experience! 

A hostess may ask to “freshen up your drink” to make it more enjoyable. Likewise, why do people swirl their wine in the glass and smell it? When wine is too dry, swirling causes the settled acids in the wine to mix with air for a better taste, smell, and experience.

As we apply this to Christianity/marriage and drink from the marriage cup that God has poured for us, we want it to be fresh and refreshing. Nobody wants a dry, stale, or unpalatable marriage. We don’t want to get comfortable drinking the dregs.

Isaiah 51:17 says, “Awake, awake, stand up, O Jerusalem, which has drunk at the hand of the Lord the cup of his fury; thou hast drunken the dregs of the cup of trembling, and wrung them out.” God painted a picture of someone drinking a glass of wine and then slinging the dregs out of their mouth in disgust. God wanted them to have fresh wine without dregs if they obeyed.  But they decided to just make do with the dregs. Obedience is the price of fresh wine in our marriages. Today, God is also calling us to wake up, and stand up to the challenge of a Godly marriage and see what fresh blessing are in store for us.

In Isaiah 51:21-23 God is getting on his people for being drunk, but not with wine. They were drunk on worldliness and suffering the consequences of unnecessary problems. He again reminds them that drinking the dregs was never intended for the righteous. Verse 23 reminds us: “When we drink from the bottom, people walk on top of us.” If we want the world to respect our marriages/beliefs we can’t always be struggling, complaining, and spitting out dregs.

In Psalms 75:8 (NIV) God addresses His people drinking mixed drinks, but He wasn’t talking about alcohol. He was referring to them being comfortable mixing a little bit of God with a lot of sin. If that is our drink of choice it may seem fine at first, but then here comes those dreaded dregs.

Jeremiah 48:11 is an example of how not to respond when God refreshes and blesses you. The Moabites had it too easy. Life was good and they got settled and complacent. Moab didn’t take care of their wine. They didn’t move it from “vessel to vessel” and it sat on top of the dregs. Their wine had gone bad from neglect. It didn’t smell good, didn’t taste good, and their lives had become the same way. The Moabites received in, but they never poured out.

When God blesses you as a couple you should be looking for ways to pour into other couples. Who can you counsel? Who can you mentor? God is saying, “When I pour, you pour”. But instead, we say, “Keep pouring God and I’ll pour when I get a better job.  I’ll pour as soon as I….” But after a while we start tasting the dregs. You can have everything you NEED in your marriage, but things can still go stale. When God pours into our marriages there should be a fresh taste and smell to our wine that we can share with others. We should not become comfortable with dregs.

If we don’t pour physically, we will become poor spiritually and we’ll wonder why we’re not fulfilled. All throughout the Bible God talks about a continuous flow and fountain, pouring out His Spirit, pouring out blessings to His people.  As married couples we have a wonderful opportunity to be a part of that flow; to be refreshed and share that refreshment with others.