To God, marriage is sacred — there’s no doubt about it — not from God’s vantage point! “A giant thread runs throughout scripture comparing God’s relationship to His people with the human institution of marriage” (Gary Thomas).

The problem is that most Christians either don’t see that thread and/or they don’t realize its importance. Because we enter into a covenant relationship with God and our spouse when we marry, we should consider marriage to be sacred and take it as seriously as God does! That’s what being in a covenant relationship is all about — what hurts my covenant partner should hurt me and what gives my covenant partner reason to rejoice, gives me reason to rejoice. It’s a mutual bonding and binding relationship.

All of this is coming to mind as Steve and I prepare to attend a wedding of a friend in a few hours. It is our prayer that they realize what a sacred, binding, and vital relationship they are entering into. So, as we pray for them, we’re going to do things a little different in this Marriage Message.

We’re going to point out a book that we wish everyone could read. It’s called Sacred Marriage by Gary Thomas, published by Zondervan www.zondervan.com. We give you the publisher’s web site address in case you can’t get it in your location. We know that many of you are located in various countries throughout the world. But possibly by going to their web site you can see if they have a distribution center that is located near you.

For this Marriage Message, we’re going to give you quotes that could minister to your hearts. We hope you’ll prayerfully read them and ask the Lord to talk to your hearts in a personal way:

• “To spiritually benefit from marriage, we have to be honest. We have to look at our disappointments, own up to our ugly attitudes, and confront our selfishness. We also have to rid ourselves of the notion that the difficulties of marriage can be overcome if we simply pray harder or learn a few simple principles. Most of us have discovered that these ‘simple steps’ work only on a superficial level. Why is this? Because there’s a deeper question that needs to be addressed beyond how we can ‘improve’ our marriages: What if God didn’t design marriage to be ‘easier’? What if God had an end in mind that went beyond our happiness, our comfort, and our desire to be infatuated and happy as if the world were a perfect place? What if God designed marriage to make us holy more than to make us happy?” (pg. 13)

• “I found there was a tremendous amount of immaturity within me that my marriage directly confronted. The key was that I had to change my view of marriage. If the purpose of marriage was simply to enjoy an infatuation and make me ‘happy,’ then I’d have to get a ‘new’ marriage every two or three years. But if I really wanted to see God transform me from the inside out, I’d need to concentrate on changing myself rather than on changing my spouse. In fact, you might even say, the more difficult my spouse proved to be, the more opportunity I’d have to grow. Just as physical exercise needs to be somewhat strenuous, so ‘relational exercise’ may need to be a bit vigorous to truly stress-test the heart.” (pg. 23)

• “I believe that much of the dissatisfaction we experience in marriage comes from expecting too much from it. I have a rather outdated computer—a 486—so I know there are some things I simply can’t do with it; there’s just not enough memory or processing power to run certain programs or combine certain tasks. It’s not that I have a bad computer; it’s just that I can’t reasonably expect more from it than it has power to give. In the same way, some of us ask too much of marriage. We want to get the largest portion of our life’s fulfillment from our relationship with our spouse. That’s asking too much. Yes, without a doubt there should be moments of happiness, meaning, and a general sense of fulfillment. But my wife can’t be God, and I was created with a spirit that craves God. Anything less than God, and I’ll feel an ache.” (pg. 25)

• “If there is one thing engaged couples need to hear, it’s that a good marriage is not something you find, it’s something you work for. It takes struggle. You must crucify your selfishness. It helps when we view our struggles in light of what they provide for us spiritually rather than in light of what they take from us emotionally. Working through disagreements is taxing. There are a million things I’d rather do than put in the time and effort to leap over a relational hurdle. If I’m in my marriage for emotional stability, I probably won’t last long. But if I think it can reap spiritual benefits, I’ll have reason to not just be married, but act married.” (pg. 133)

• “What marriage has done for me is hold up a mirror to my sin. It forces me to face myself honestly and consider my character flaws, selfishness, and anti-Christian attitudes, encouraging me to be sanctified and cleansed and to grow in godliness. Kathleen and Thomas Hart write, ‘Sometimes what is hard to take in the first years of marriage is not what we find out about our partner, but what we find out about ourselves. As one young woman who had been married about a year said, ‘I always thought of myself as a patient and forgiving person. Then I began to wonder if that was just because I had never before gotten close to anyone. In marriage, when John and I began…dealing with difference, I saw how small and unforgiving I could be. I discovered a hardness in me I had never experienced before.’” (Pg. 93)

• “One of the best wedding gifts God gave you was a full-length mirror called your spouse. Had there been a card attached, it would have said, ‘Here’s to helping you discover what you’re really like! (Gary and Betsy Ricucci, pg. 89)

• “Infatuation can be an intoxicating drug that temporarily covers up any number of inner weaknesses. But marriage is a spotlight showing us that our search for another human being to ‘complete’ us is misguided. When disillusionment breaks through, we have one of two choices: Dump our spouse and become infatuated with someone new, or seek to understand the message behind the disillusionment—that we should seek our significance, meaning, and purpose in our Creator rather than in another human being.” (pg. 83)

• “If you treat a man as he is, he will stay as he is. But if you treat him as if he were what he ought to be and could be, he will become the bigger and better man.” (Johann Wolfgang van Goethe)

• “Marriage can never remove the trials—in fact it almost always creates new ones. But even difficult marriages to difficult men can give women the strength to become the people God created them to be. (So it is for men married to difficult women as well.)” (pg. 147)

• “Knowing why we are married and should stay married is crucial. This will lead us into a discussion argued by Pastor C. J. Mahaney in an audiotape series on marriage titled According to Plan. The key question is this: Will we approach marriage from a God-centered view or a man-centered view? In a man-centered view, we will maintain our marriage as long as our earthly comforts, desires, and expectations are met. In a God-centered view, we preserve our marriage because it brings glory to God and points a sinful world to a reconciling Creator.” (pg. 32)

We pray God ministers to your marriage in a very real way!

God Bless,
Cindy and Steve Wright

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