One of the major causes of marital breakups in the Christian community is the lack of protective hedges that spouses should plant around their marriages, their heads, their hearts, their eyes, and their hands [and we’d like to add—also their mouths].” Please read that quote again letting it talk to your heart because it’s an important one.

It comes from a book called Loving Your Marriage Enough to Protect It by Jerry Jenkins. It’s a great book, with some very solid ideas to help us protect our marriages from that which can tear our relationships apart. We’d like to share some of those ideas hoping that you’ll consider implementing them in your own marriage as we have in ours.

One of the things Jerry said is: “If you take care of how things look, you take care of how they are.” We’ve found this to be so true. We don’t want to give the enemy of our faith any type of foothold (or “toehold”) in any way, where he can use it to try to pry open a door that can cause division between us. So we continually give each other the “gift of love” by loving and honoring each other enough to protect our marriage.

Neither of us thinks we’d ever do anything that would dishonor the other in such a way that we’d give into betraying each other, but stranger things have happened to better people than us. So as a gift to each other, and to the Lord that we want to honor in every area of our lives, we put preventative hedges within our everyday lives which will help us to protect our marriage both in how things “look” and “how they are.”

As Jerry Jenkins says,

“If hedges are constructed early enough, preferably well in advance of even meeting someone else, they can be painless and can nip marriage-threatening relationships before they get started. That’s the reason we so desperately need practical suggestions on ways to build impenetrable hedges around our marriages. The time to build hedges is before the enemy attacks.”

It says in the Bible: “Be self-controlled and alert. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour” (1 Peter 5:8-9). We’re also told: “whoever shuns evil becomes a prey” (Isaiah 59:15). What we can determine from this is that the enemy of our faith is looking for vulnerability— an area in our lives that’s unprotected, where our guard is down so we can be taken down. We can’t emphasize the importance of this enough to guard your heart and love your marriage enough to protect it.

Jerry talks about a friend of his who has planted two hedges for his business life. He says:

First, he stays away from pornography, which is becoming more difficult all the time. Rather than pretend to be disgusted and turned off by it, he admits it can be seductive. It can be tantalizing.

Although looking at pornography may result in his feeling disgusted with himself and wondering how he could ever be attracted with himself and wondering how he could ever be attracted to such a cheapening of God’s gift of sexuality, he’s more successful in fending it off by acknowledging in advance that it’s something he wants to avoid.

So, if it’s pumped into his hotel room via television, he tells the front desk to lock it out. Sometimes the clerk will act surprised and wonder aloud if he has children with him in spite of his reservation as a single. My friend doesn’t let this daunt him. He clarifies he’s alone and insists on the lock-out service. As part of this hedge he often travels with his business partner, and they keep each other honest.

What if my friend told himself that since he had gone many years without succumbing to the temptation of pornography, he could surely travel on his own and not have to embarrass himself by asking a desk clerk half his age to lock out the adult movies? A sexy show on regular television might whet his appetite for something racier, something he might not even consider if he didn’t know it was available.

But with the seemingly innocuous touch of a button, with the first 5 minutes not even billed to his room, he might convince himself he’s mature enough to satisfy his curiosity.

The key is preventative maintenance. Once that first step has been taken down the road of self-deceit and rationalization, there’s no turning back. Each excuse sounds more plausible, and, before he knows it, the typical male has satisfied every curiosity, every urge. Regardless of the remorse, the self-loathing, and the pledges for the future, the pattern will repeat itself for as long as he refuses to flee. There’s no other defense.

My friend’s second hedge comes in the form of pictures he carries in his wallet of his wife and his two daughters. These pictures serve the usual function of reminding him of his loved ones and allowing him to brag about his beautiful family. But they also serve as a safety net, which he’s used various times when he’s found himself in conversation with a woman on an airplane.

We wanted to share that portion of Jerry’s book because it brought out some very good points that can give clarity to what we’re trying to say. The enemy of our faith is especially tricky in trying to get us to think, “It couldn’t happen to me. Why should I have to worry about preventative maintenance when it’s not a problem with me? Adultery might happen to someone else, but it won’t happen to me because I love my spouse, family, and God too much to allow it to happen.”

But why should we even put ourselves in places where a future temptation could ever have an opportunity to play with our minds and weaken our sense of reasoning? It’s safe to say that very few people who have ever fallen into this temptation ever planned for it to happen. And very few people who have fallen into this temptation thought they were capable of falling in love with someone else other than their spouse. But it HAS happened — to millions of others who never thought it would.

It happened because their guard was down and they didn’t have enough preventative measures in place to prevent it from happening and stop it from spiraling out of control.

A hedge that I (Cindy) have in place is that whenever I’m in a situation where I’m talking with a man who isn’t my husband (or a relative), I find a way of bringing my husband Steve into the conversation in a positive light. I want it established right from the start that I AM married and I’m lovingly committed to him. By time the conversation is ended there’s no doubt that it’s been established that I’m not available. It’s not that I think all these men are “after” me, but it’s just a way of honoring my husband and putting up a preventative hedge right from the start.

I’m also careful about my eye contact with other men, and how I conduct myself so that there isn’t even a hint of any behavior that could be misunderstood. I also won’t allow myself to be alone in a room with another man, or eat alone with, or talk about anything with a man that could even slightly make my husband uncomfortable. It’s just safer that way and it’s honoring my husband’s feelings and it guards my heart.

There have been business situations that have come up that have put us in uncomfortable situations, but Steve and I have talked (and continue to talk) about preventative measures to safeguard ourselves in those situations so we’re both confident that we’re guarding our hearts and our relationship to the best of our ability with the Lord’s help.

For me (Steve) building hedges to protect my marriage includes making sure I’m never alone in an office with a woman with the door closed or traveling alone (even on short car trips) with another woman. When I do travel without Cindy, I take 3X5 cards with Psalm 101:3 written on them “I will set before my eyes no vile thing” and place one on the TV and other prominent places around the hotel room. This reminds me that I’ve planted a hedge to protect my mind from any image that could cause me to stumble or fall.

I also put 2 pictures of Cindy on my nightstand. This serves two purposes: (1) It reminds me of the beautiful gift God gave me in my wife, and (2) It reminds me that I don’t want to do anything that would cause a breech in our relationship.

And the best hedge of protection a man can plant in his life is to have another man who’ll hold him accountable. I was blessed several years ago to find an older, godly man, who was willing to meet with me once a month and ask me 5 questions. I gave him the questions that I knew I needed to be held accountable in areas of my life:

1) Are you spending regular time alone with God in prayer and study of His word?

2) Are you spending quality time with Cindy?

3) Are you walking according to God’s revealed will for your life?

4) Has your thought life been pure?

5) Have you lied about any of the above answers?

He also had my permission to call me at “unexpected” times to ask me the same questions.

In his chapter called, “The Power of Deception”, Jerry Jenkins says, “Knowing our own weaknesses is one way to begin tilling the soil for the seeds of the hedges that will protect us.” Men, it’s so important to identify our area(s) of weakness now before we’re attacked. A good military commander always identifies the areas of potential weakness in their defense perimeters. That’s where weapons and resources are concentrated so that when the attack comes, the enemy will be turned back.

Give your wife “A Gift of Love” this week. Identify your weak areas and plant hedges, and fortify your defensive perimeters to protect yourself and your marriage.

Another area of concern that all of us needs to be careful of is in having opposite-sex friendships. It’s not that it isn’t possible to have healthy opposite-sex friendships; however, we need to make sure we safeguard ourselves appropriately because of the complications that could arise.

One resource we’ve been given permission to offer you is a questionnaire called “20 Questions for Guiding Opposite Sex Friendships in Marriage” by Dr. Todd Linaman (which we have posted on our web site in the “Communication” section. It’s a resource from Family Life Communications that’s intended to help couples determine if there’s a potential threat to your marriage in this area plus it offers helpful guidelines to consider safeguarding your marriage in light of this situation.

Also, if you’d like to get a copy of Jerry Jenkins’, Loving Your Marriage Enough to Protect It, it’s published by Moody Press. We’d highly recommend both of these resources because both of them give some very sound information on how to honor your marriage, and safeguard your hearts from possible future temptations. It’s better to prevent something from happening rather than be sorry later.

We pray all of this has been helpful for you. Please know our love and prayers are with you as together we strive to make our marriages convey the love of Christ in every way.

Steve and Cindy Wright

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