Do you realize that there is a spiritual battle going on to try to defeat your marriage? It’s often not very obvious, but none-the-less, it’s very real and we need to be aware of it!

I recently read something about the ancient sport of falconry (in the devotional “Our Daily Bread”) which reminded me of this. They used trained hawks and falcons while hunting wild game. However, as Martin De Haan explained:

“when the ‘educated predator’ was allowed to fly, it often rose too high for human eyes to see. So a hunter often carried a small caged bird called a shrike. By watching the antics of the little bird, the man could always tell where his hawk was, for the shrike instinctively feared the predator and cocked its head to keep it in view.”

He went on to say,

“Christians desperately need an alert perception similar to that of the shrike to detect their spiritual enemy. Our adversary, ‘walks about like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour’ (1 Peter 5:8). Our responsibility, according to the apostle Peter, is to be sober and vigilant. In other words, we’re to be always on the alert.

Then Mart posed these thoughts:

“It would be nice if God had giant sirens to warn us of an attack by the devil. But He doesn’t operate that way. Instead, we must read the Bible regularly, meditate on its truths, maintain a prayerful attitude throughout the day, and be filled with the Holy Spirit.”

I was thinking how this applied to marriage and how often, when someone writes us a letter we can see the enemy of our faith alive and working overtime to deceive those involved in the situation. How often we wanted to sound an alarm that screeched forth a warning saying, “Be on the alert and open your eyes, you’re playing into the enemy of our faith’s hands, entertaining the enemy and breaking the heart of God!”

We do our best in warning people through these Marriage Messages and through our web site but there’s so much more to do! So for the rest of this message we’d like to share something we wrote hoping it will serve as a wake-up call for those who need it:

• Promoting the message of love and marriage to be so romantic—like a fairy-tale existence, that couples don’t adequately prepare themselves for the difficult part of STAYING in love.

• Helping couples who are engaged to be married to think their love is so unique that they won’t have the same struggles others have—thus they enter marriage in such a disillusioned state that when they start to have problems they panic and make things worse!

• Promoting the message that “Love should come naturally” so those who are struggling in their marriage think there’s something wrong to have to put extra effort into making it work.

• To help couples think their “love will conquer all” (not using the wisdom God promises to give them if they ask for it).

• Promoting the idea that if you go to a marriage seminar, others will think your marriage is in trouble—thus you should be embarrassed to attend something like this.

• Promoting the idea that Christian marriages shouldn’t have problems so you won’t reach out for help until it’s almost “too late” to save the marriage.

• Helping couples to get so busy in their lives that they neglect each other and overlook making the time to nurture their relationship.

• Promoting the idea that one can neglect their spouse and the spouse will naturally “understand” that they’re still loved and cared for.

• To subliminally push the “world’s” ideas of love into the couple’s life to such an extent that they gradually start to adopt them as their compass for guiding their thoughts and actions with each other—neglecting the Bible’s way of loving and living with each other.

• To help couples forget that their spouse is NOT “the enemy”—that they need grace, forgiveness, understanding, and prayer.

• To flood the couples so effectively with focusing in on each other’s negative actions that they overshadow the positive qualities and eventually forget them.

• To help couples forget why they fell in love in the first place and neglect living out the vows they made to each other before God.

• To help them buy into the idea that one time of “indiscretion” won’t hurt!

• To help them to think that “God wouldn’t want them to be unhappy” so they feel entitled to leave their marriage because they’re unhappy (which is totally unbiblical).

• To help them think that if they’re unhappy or they don’t “feel” in love at this time, that they’ll always feel that way (which research shows to be untrue) and leave the marriage to seek happiness elsewhere.

• To promote the lie that forgiveness is for fools—not something you extend to a spouse who has hurt you—thus neglecting the Biblical message to “forgive others as God has forgiven you.”

• Clouding the importance of integrity and the importance of following through on the commitment which was originally made to each other.

• Helping couples forget that marriage is a picture of Christ’s love for the church to a world that needs to see God’s love in action drawing them to want to know their God better.

• Helping couples to think marriage all about them and their personal happiness —becoming so involved in what’s troubling them that they overlook look seeing their children watching them belittle and hurt each other—thus hurting their impressionable hearts as well.

• Helping them to overlook the fact that they’re teaching their children how to treat their spouses when they one day marry.

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Keep in mind that the enemy of our faith is wise in disguising the threatening attacks to our marriages. So we need to be all the wiser in looking for and defeating them. We pray that if you recognize any of these dangers in your own marriage you’ll get on your knees and pray that God will help you to “renew a right spirit within you.”

God wants you to be aware of the problems that can hurt your relationship. He cares very much about your marriage. (And so do we!)

Our love and prayers are with you,
Cindy and Steve Wright