The Cause of A Successful Marriage
Annie, OIC
What is a successful marriage? I think I finally know the real key to that question. A successful marriage is a marriage between a man and a woman who are committed to each other and committed to God. God is love. Without God there is no life. As in marriage if there is no life, it withers and dies. Therefore, the cause of a successful marriage is tied completely into the love of God.
It is only through loving God through the love of his son Jesus Christ that we can ever attain a successful marriage. Can we have a marriage? Sure we can have anything we want. On our own and in our own efforts we can have a marriage. A marriage without God is a dead hopeless marriage. A couple can decide to stay in a lifeless marriage going through the same struggles day after day but, without God there is no life in that marriage and the couple will feel as if they are suffocating. However, if you love life and want your marriage to flourish and thrive and overflow on to others it must be based on the love of Christ. A successful marriage is a husband who loves his wife as Christ loved the church. It is also a wife who loves and adores her husband. On our own strength we can never enter into this kind of relationship.
Intimacy. Real intimacy comes from "knowing" God. Knowing God means to have a close intimate relationship with him through the love and fellowship with Christ. The bible says that a 3 fold cord is not easily broken. A 3 fold cord is a husband a wife and Jesus. A marriage like this will thrive and live and flourish for years without the fear of suffocation.
To try to have a marriage without the love of God who himself is all love is useless and will never last. A couple may try to keep figuring it out by themselves everyday but, it will not last forever. Many times I have seen a married couple end in divorce after 10 or 12 years. In this case it has been because either the husband or wife was a believer and they wanted their marriage to work. It takes both the husband and wife to want to make it work.
Three is unity. Unity brings intimacy. Intimacy brings a love no mortal man or woman can attain on their own. I myself tried for many years to make my husband do what I wanted him to do. It never worked for me. My husband is a very hard man to please, he is determined to always have his way. I instead turned my marriage over to God who has worked all things out through prayer and unity between God and fellow friends and believers.
I have always wanted a happy healthy marriage. A successful marriage through God and his spirit makes all things involved in a marriage just flow naturally, the way he created a marriage to flow. God did not create marriage to be hard and hurtful. Many people today are damaged and hurting physically and emotionally from a hurtful ungodly marriage therefore, they believe marriage is bad. A marriage is not bad in and of itself. Marriage is what God created in the garden of eden. He made Adam and Eve perfect in everyway. Adam and Eve had the flow and unity of the perfect marriage until sin came in. Today, God still desires for all of us to live in perfect peace and harmony in our homes.
God is all love therefore he wants us to love. We can not show love to the world around us if we can not show our husband or wife love. Everything else flows from that. If only the husband is showing love that will not work with long. Eventually he will leave or find another mate. If only a wife is showing love that will not work either. Eventually. If a husband is not loving a wife as God commands, the wife will leave and may find another mate as well. A marriage without love and sacrificial giving love of God will feel worthless and lonely. A wife whose husband refuses to give her the love of Christ will not be driven to do anything the husband requires of her. He may want her to cook or clean but, if she is not receiving love it is useless to expect to get anything done from her. A wife who is receiving the love of Christ from her husband, however; will do everything she can to protect his name. She will do all he requires and much more because she will be overflowing with the life her husband is depositing within her. Love is crucial to the survival of a marriage because without love it is impossible to please God.
Jesus died to give us life more abundantly so that we could give it to someone else. If you have not given your marriage to Christ please do so today. He will give you everything your marriage needs. It is only through his love, the purest love of the Father, that we can ever hope to have anything successful. Especially something as important as marriage. This is because marriage is the picture of Gods love for us. Having a successful marriage is only attainable through the love of God. A successful loving whole marriage is what God desires for us to have.
My prayer
Lord, I come to you to worship you for you are great and greatly to be praised. I open my heart to you,teach me from your word. In Jesus' name. amen.
