The Ultimate Love Story: Reflecting His Glory through Healthy Marriages
Have you ever noticed how many times the theme of marriage or weddings are mentioned throughout scripture? This is for a very profound reason—Paul calls it a profound mystery. Marriage is a beautiful picture of what our relationship with Jesus is supposed to look like. Jesus longs to have an intimate relationship with each one of us.
So why is marriage under such heavy attack? The answer is simple. Satan HATES anything that brings glory to God. He hates it when people thrive in their walk with God and in healthy relationships with each other! When marriages thrive, families flourish! When families flourish, communities can be influenced with the power of love of God, and lasting change can come.
When your marriage is healthy and thriving, it displays God’s glory. Earthly marriage is supposed to be a reflection of the kind of intimate relationship He wants to have with each one of us!
People think getting married will magically fix their problems, but that is a fantasy. It takes hard work to make a good marriage. There are a few ingredients that you need to make your marriage relationship thrive.
Count the Cost
Sacrifice is needed in order to become one. It will cost you your wants and desires and your way of doing things. Jesus looked through the annals of time when He was hanging on the cross and said, “They’re worth it.” He is the example we are to fashion our lives after. A truth rarely spoken is that marriage will cost you something—in reality, it will cost you everything.
“Marriage is a living, breathing picture of Christ and His Church! It’s the ultimate love story.” - Jim Boyd
Ephesians 5 explains this perfectly. Jesus laid down his life for all of us—for the Church, His Bride—and we are called to do the same for our wives. We, in turn, are called to submit to Jesus, just as wives are to submit to their husbands. This is called mutual submission. Feminism would like to make men out to be the bad guys, that marriage somehow puts women into a hostage situation, when in a godly marriage, that could not be further from the truth. It is true that wives are called to submit to their husbands, but husbands are called to lay down their lives.
When we all choose to humble ourselves and submit to one another in love, we display God’s glory!
The greatest marriages aren’t the ones that say they never have conflict (cause that’s just not true.) It’s the ones that know which battles to fight, and which hills are not worth dying on.
Make Sure You’re Pulling Together
To have a godly marriage, you must make sure that you are going after God with all your hearts. Both partners in a marriage need to be pulling together toward one common goal—to fall more in love with Jesus and display His character in everything they do.
Paul describes this with an illustration that may seem odd to us today, but in the agricultural era, it was a powerful example. He called this being “equally yoked”.
A yoke was a wooden contraption that was used to harness oxen to a cart. If two males were yoked together, they would try to outdo each other with competition. The stronger ox would drag the weaker one along and injure or kill it. Or two female oxen were yoked together, a huge fight would usually ensue. (You’ve probably heard of how much more biscuits girl fights are than guys throwing fists.)
But, if a male and a female were yoked together, the male would pull the cart in a way to protect the female, and the female would pull in a way to come alongside the male and do her best to help and aid him. The amazing thing is that an equally-yoked pair of oxen—those who are pulling together—were able to pull much more weight and endure for longer periods of time than an ox could ever do on its own, or a pair of unmatched oxen.
When we choose to live with empathy and understanding for each other, we display the glory of God through our healthy, humble lifestyle!
Sharpen and Serve One Another
The best knives go through quite a process to be sharp and effective. Steel is heated to remove impurities that could weaken it over time, and then it is hammered in order to shape it. In order to sharpen a knife, it is scraped against a stone or strop until it attains the best edge possible.
In a marriage, we often go through times of intense testing and trials. Those pesky things that didn’t seem like a big deal when we were single come to the surface, much how gold is purified, and have to be skimmed and wiped away. God is not putting us through the sharpening process to be mean to us. It is actually His divine mercy and kindness that He gave your spouse to you, to help you get all the impurities out of your life—so we can work together and support and serve each other as we strive to look more like Him!
When we serve one another, we display His character and glory!
Marriage is hard work. It takes laying down your wants and desires. It takes you humbling yourself and being willing to look more like Jesus in everything you do. If you put the hard work in, you’ll be amazed at the blessing that will come out of your marriage!