Marriage 3.5 – How to Go All The Way
On our 35th wedding anniversary (June 18, 2018), my husband set me up – BIG TIME. He scheduled a night for us to share the podium at our church and bring a message about marriage… together.
I think it’s important for people to know that it’s time to step up your game. In the past few years, we’ve noticed the devil amping up his attacks. One area he’s attacking is marriage. Ours has not been immune to those attacks.
The Bible says (in fact, it was Jesus who said it) that the thief (the devil) “comes only to, steal and kill and destroy” (John 10:10 ESV). Don’t you know, he wants to steal, kill and destroy your marriage, your relationship with your spouse, and the joy you both once felt when you got married.
When you got married, you each repeated vows. Those vows are a promise, a covenant. To be honest, those vows were meant to be kept and never broken. Just as God makes covenants with us, He never breaks them. We should never break our marriage covenant.
When we got married, we promised to love, honor, cherish, and obey. Yeah, I know most people want to eliminate that one word; obey. But through the years, that one tiny, four-letter-word has been taken out of context so badly that it’s true meaning has been forgotten. In doing so, the sanctity of marriage has been nearly forgotten.
So, what does it really mean to obey? Before we get into that, let me just throw a couple of things out there. We also don’t like the word submit. Let me tell you, I have been in Bible study classes before where the women want nothing more than to bash their husbands. The Bible study forgotten. They justify their banter by saying they’re “helping one another” by “venting.” My answer is, “No, you’re not.” There is nothing godly in that. This is a group of women the enemy has tricked into believing their husbands are the problem, when in fact the wives have been tricked, just like Eve in the Garden of Eden. They all thought they were doing the right thing. Yet they had been sorely deceived.
The wives don’t want to obey, submit or have respect for their husbands. Therefore, the husbands begin to resent their wives. This is what we’re seeing more and more of in marriages. And this breaks our hearts, for the people.
To obey, or submit, simply means to respect. It’s explained in Scripture. In Ephesians 5 it states, “vs.22 – For wives, this means submit to your husbands as to the Lord. In the same way, husbands ought to love their wives as they love their own bodies. vs. 28 – For a man who loves his wife actually shows love for himself. vs. 33 – So again I say, each man must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband.”
The point is this; if the husband loves the LORD more than anything, and the wife loves the LORD more than anything, they will both love EACH OTHER as they should. It doesn’t mean you won’t have arguments or issues. It just means you’ll be better equipped to handle them if you’ve put the LORD FIRST in your lives.
This is what we’re talking about in Marriage 3.5. We want to see marriages and relationships between husbands and wives healed. We want couples to want to stay together. We want people to want to take their marriages all the way. All throughout the Bible there are nuggets of information about marriage and the role of the husband and the wife. We can also learn from other husbands and wives throughout the Bible.
What is going all the way? It’s more than just the marriage. It’s more than sex (although that’s nice). It’s more than sticking it out through better or worse, or in sickness and in health.
We’ll talk about that more in upcoming posts. Stick with us here. It’s going to get really good. Promise!
