My wife and I have been sitting here today enjoying one another and she told me about a song she heard today. The song is entitled One Day At A Time by Brian Courtney Wilson (get this song ASAP if you don’t have it). She played the song and began to inspire thought about marriage.
When we a male and female get married they exchange vows with one another. They promise to be loving and faithful to one another despite good times or bad, richer or poorer, sickness or health until death separates the two. But this is the secondary vow.
The primary vow is to God. What do I mean? The primary vow in marriage is to God to be faithful to Him and then to be faithful to your spouse as well. It is God who calls a man and woman to be together in marriage to carry out a particular purpose for His glory on the Earth.
So if the marriage vow is to God as well as our spouse, divorce should never been a option - unless the act of adultery or some type of abuse is present in the relationship. If we get divorce or even separated we are inferring one of more things:
1. That God made a mistake. If it is God who calls us to marry our spouse to accomplish something for His glory then we should be faithful to that task. If we abort the marriage then we are basically saying that God made a mostake in brining the two of us together.
2. We didn’t hear correctly. Because God can’t make a mistake, we must have heard something wrong. Maybe we heard wrong at the beginning and we should have never committed to marriage. Maybe we heard wrong recently - are we really supposed to separate.
3. Let’s get an abortion! Because a man and woman are called by God to enter into marriage for His glory, when we consider divorce, we are considering aborting the plan of God for our lives.
4. We don’t care who gets hurt. There are so many people and relationships attached to our marriages. Some of these connections we know about but there are countless others who we don;t. Many are looking on our marriages and drawing the strength to continue on with theirs.
If your marriage is coming to a point where it seems to be coming apart at the threads please try this:
1. Pray and ask God to assist you and show you the right thing to do.
2. Limit the outside voices. Many times family and close friends who “mean the best for us” will attempt to guide us and give advice, but many times the are in a place where it might not be wise to take advice from them.
3. Start writing. Take a sheet of paper, fold it in half. In the left column right down all the good things that you like and admire about your spouse since you’ve been married. On the right side list the things you don’t like about your spouse. Be honest with both sides of the paper. More than likely you will see - if you are honest - that the left column will be much longer than the right.
4. Write some more. Take another sheet of paper, fold it half as well. Ask yourself the following question - and be very honest - what are some of the critiques I have heard from friends, family and co-workers? Write these critiques in the left column of the page. Review the list, crossing out everything that is totally not true. you can’t cross off ore then half the list - because whether you want to admit it or not, a lot of the critiques are true. In the right column list some things you can do to improve on the critiques.
In conclusion, marriage like anything in life will not be perfect, Marriage will face challenges, but the vow made to God and to your spouse is stronger then those challenges. Trust God to work things out, don’t make any rash decisions that will be damaging long term and I pray that all the voices pushing for seperation and divorce would cease in the name of the Lord Jesus.
It is our responsibility to be an example of God’s love through our marriages.
Remember the Vow………………