The Devil Wants Your Marriage - Part 1

As we travel around to different churches preaching and teaching on marriage, or hosting Coffee Talk for Couples, we are aghast to see how many of God’s chosen are choosing to break covenant in the area of marriage. And for the lamest of reasons:
      - I’m just not happy anymore.
      - Certainly God has better for me.
      - He is not the man I married.
      - She doesn’t respect and submit to me.
      - Our home life cannot be good for the kids.
      - We are no longer equally yoked.

Please understand that this is not an indictment on those who have already been through the painful process of divorce. Rather this is an alarm of awareness to those who are presently married and have voluntarily made a covenant before God and people to remain so “until death do us part.” Your family is counting on you to make it. Your church expects you to make it. Society needs you to make it. We all are depending on you to make it!

Marriage is the life source of a society. It is God’s first institution. In the garden God looked upon his creation and recognized it was not good for man to be alone. So he created a companion that was supposed to be rightly suited to help us go farther and higher and be more fulfilled than if we were on our own. Through marriage we are instructed to be fruitful and multiply, replenishing the earth and taking dominion over all living things. This was God’s order.

So how does that seem to be working?

All around us marriages are falling apart. The divorce rate is now more than fifty percent amongst first time marriages, and progressively higher for those in second or third marriages. Experts tell us there is no statistical distinction to stay married for people who go to church compared with those who don’t. Husbands and wives hurt and devastate one another. They demean and abuse and tear down. Many allege they would be better off without their spouse – and it would certainly appear to be so. With divorce so prevalent, this new generation is choosing to cohabit rather than marry; and for those who do marry, they postpone that decision to much later in life.

What in the world is going on? Did God mess up? Did he botch this plan? Was he caught by surprise that things simply didn’t work out the way he had diagramed it on his celestial whiteboard?

When we marry, we sign on for “better or worse”; then as life happens we inevitably go through a season of “worse” and often seem to discard everything we formerly knew to be true. We forfeit our vows to remain faithful and trustworthy through thick or thin. We fail to acknowledge that our mate has been “fearfully and wonderfully made” by God. That God considered our spouse worth his sacrificial investment. Knowing what he knew about our spouse, he still sent his only Son for their redemption modeling unconditional, undeserving love. God certainly must consider them valuable.

God put his love on the line for us by offering his Son in sacrificial death while we were of no use whatever to him. (Romans 5:8 MSG)

But what if God were to discard us the way we casually discard one another? What if God said, “I’m tired of being the only one trying in this relationship. It’s not worth it any more. It’s taking too long for him or her to improve. There are better people to invest my time, energy and forgiveness in.” Would any of us stand a chance?

If God foreknew us in our imperfect, degenerate state, yet chose to love us through our seasons of “worse”, then why would we place ourselves above God and think we shouldn’t have to do the same? The Bible reminds us that our spouse is not our enemy.

For we are not fighting against flesh-and-blood enemies, but against evil rulers and authorities of the unseen world, against mighty powers in this dark world, and against evil spirits in the heavenly places. (Ephesians 6:12 NLT)

Ask the Lord to renew your thinking. Pray to see your spouse the way God views them. Look and listen beyond the surface to spiritually discern what is actually going on in your marriage. Only the Spirit of the living God can heal and reactivate those things that you already know in your heart to be true. Judgment starts in the house of the Lord. It’s time to take responsibility for your marriage.