THE REAL PURPOSE OF MARRIAGE: It's About Them Because It's About Him!

Admit it. You’ve known it all along. You just thought it would be easier to play ignorant rather than face the truth. You got married thinking that it was going to be all about ‘YOU’. Your spouse would love you, cherish you, and take care of all your needs. Before you got married, she did everything you wanted to do without complaint. In fact, it seemed as if it really didn’t matter what the two of you did together, you could do no wrong. That made ‘you’ feel good! ‘She’ made you feel good. You were the center of her world! The same is true for her. Before your marriage, he was the big love of your life. You could talk to him for hours and hours about everything and about nothing. Although you could be a very independent sort of woman, he always paid for everything. He bought things that you needed without you ever saying you needed them! Somehow, although you didn’t need him to do that, it was sweet! He was considerate almost to a fault. You enjoyed that! He was spontaneous, adventurous and caring. He made you feel good whenever you were together. Then came reality.

They don’t spend time with you anymore. They spend too much time with their friends or with the kids. They spend too much time at work, at school, at the mall or even at church. (Believe it or not, too much time at the building called ‘church’ can be a real problem too!) They spend too much time on their car, or on the computer. They don’t take care of me anymore. They don’t take me out anymore! They don’t cook or clean up. They don’t fix things anymore! The list of things that you ‘don’t get’ anymore can be quite exhaustive! All of a sudden, it’s not about you anymore. If you’re going to survive as a couple at all, it’s got to be about them now, not me! It’s all about your spouse! It’s at this moment that a small amount of what I call LLA (Low Level Anger) begins to build. “This is not at all what I signed up for!” SURPRISE!! Well, here’s another surprise just in case it slipped past you too! It’s really not about either of you! It’s really all about Him! It’s all about Jesus Christ!

Paul, in Ephesians 5:22-33, describes the relationship between a husband and wife as a type of the “mysterious’ relationship between Jesus and the Church. To understand these scriptures is to understand the real purpose of marriage. The ultimate purpose of marriage is to bring Glory to God! Everything we do within our marriage must be governed by this fact. Just as a fine piece of artwork brings prestige, fame and honor to the painter or sculptor who created it, a great marriage, including the family members that spring forth from it, brings Glory and Honor to the One who created marriage. But how does one ‘have’ a great marriage. It is hard to believe that one would consider their marriage ‘great’ if they are doing all the ‘giving’.

The Word of God doesn’t pull any punches when it comes to our marital responsibilities. Even scriptures that don’t refer directly to your spouse, refer to them indirectly because if you should ‘Love thy neighbor as thyself’, who could be a closer neighbor than your husband or wife? You get the point! In almost every phrase it directs us to love the other person, despite what they may be doing wrong. Forgive them, pray for them, take care of them, live chaste in front of them despite them, love them as yourself, honor them as joint heirs, submit to each other, and the list goes on and on. God wants us to honor our promises to our spouse in spite of how well they are fulfilling their part. But God understands us thoroughly. He knows that our selfish natures coupled with our ability to ‘make our own decisions’ causes selflessness to be a constant ‘work in progress’ for us. However, the point we so often miss is that when we do what He requires of us in our marriage, God is honored and thus, honors our requests and needs especially when our spouse doesn’t reciprocate our efforts.

So often, we pray for God to change our spouse when we ourselves have not submitted to Gods Ways. But God has promised us that ‘If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land. Now My eyes will be open and My ears attentive to the prayer offered in this place’ [2Chron 7:14-15]. In other words, God promises that He will pay close attention to hear our prayers of unmet needs and heal our lands (marriages, families, households) when we humble ourselves, repent from our selfish ways, and seek His Will and Way.

It is God (His Word, His Spirit, and His Love) who can change the hearts and minds of our spouses, not us! When God’s love travels through us to our spouse, great things can happen in our marriage. But it must first start with us! Ask yourself a very honest but very hard question. What things are “you” willing to do, endure, and change about yourself so that God will be glorified in your marriage? The question is independent of what you think you’ve already done to sustain it. Do you think God is pleased with your answer? If your present marriage is already having a problem in this area, especially if you’ve been married before, it may be long over due for you to re-evaluate your whole way of approaching, thinking and operating within the realm of marriage. Is the way you treat your spouse bringing Glory to Christ? Is the Salvation that Christ has brought into your life worth a change in your thinking and behavior towards your spouse? As God has put it in His Word, ‘Come now, and let us reason together, saith the LORD: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow.’[Isaiah 1:18]. In my words…Can we talk? Until next time, Much Love & Be Blessed.
---Rev.