There was an odd sitcom that I wasn't allowed to watch as a child. The theme song started off like this, "Love and marriage, love and marriage, they go together like a horse and carriage..." A celebration of these two things perhaps? Not really. The opening sequence ended with the words of the title of the show slamming with a metallic jail bar like finality on the screen. The premise of the series was to poke fun of how horrible marriage and how painful and inconvenient having a family was. Marriage + children = prison. I wasn't allowed to watch it because of the mostly raunchy content. Where most sitcoms portrayed a positive family dynamic, this one was the absolute opposite. When did love and marriage become something to make fun of? Isn't it everyone's dream to grow up, fall in love, get married and have a perfect family?
More often today, marriage is held in contempt by this woke generation. It's something to be made fun of, or something that has become obsolete. Why get married when you can do everything a married couple can do without the legal commitment? Let's get real. Society tells us that shacking up is okay and marriage isn't necessary. Apparently, marriage is an institution that was invented by a lonely person. Just today I heard a young woman say, "marriage is for the weak." She’s single. I know many of the married PG's among us could answer her with "exactly which part of marriage is for the weak?" Marriage is HARD! It's easy to give up on a marriage when things start to go downhill. What's much more difficult is the effort to stay together and maintain the covenant that God intended for you. Biblical marriages are covenants, covenants that have been made in the presence of God. Marriage is a big deal – to God.
In the creation story, God declares that everything He created was good. The first thing that God said WASN'T good? "It is not good for man to be alone." Genesis 2:18. So, He created Eve for Adam. Marriage was intended to give us companionship, there is power in two. Marriage was intended to help us bear fruit, where there is unity, there is conception. Marriage was intended to be a covenant, a Godly promise, not a contract. In a contract, your rights matter, you are protected. In a covenant, the other person's rights matter, sometimes even more than your own do. A covenant is a mutual agreement that is beneficial to both parties involved.
Not every marriage is perfect – I'll wait while all the wives shout a resounding "Amen!" Marriage isn't perfect, we can't expect it to be because we are not perfect people. We look for acceptance, identity, security, and priority in a marriage. Spoiler alert, we are going to end up being disappointed. Did you know that the number one cause of divorce is disappointment? When our marriages don't live up to our expectations and don't fulfill the needs we require, disappointment descends like a hot, smothering blanket. Pastor Sharo did my wedding fourteen years ago and she told my husband and I something that I'll never forget. She told us to love Jesus more than we loved each other. I was a brand-new Christian when I got married, and I thought what she was telling us was crazy! Now, I understand. You see, you can't always trust a human heart, after all the heart is deceitful and desperately wicked. What I CAN trust is that if my husband loves Jesus more than me, that he would never do anything to dishonor the Godly covenant he made with me. So, although our day-to-day interactions with our husbands might not live up to our exemplary standards, we trust in the perfect God.
So, today, Preacher Girls, whether you are married or hoping to be, know that love and marriage were created by God for our good. It isn’t something to be sneered at or be flippant about. Rather it is a precious gift from our Father. Today my prayer is that you’ll be blessed in your marriages. And that God will lead those of you who desire to be married into covenant relationships.