A Well-Rounded Love Affair

Introduction

When couples pledge their lives to one another, they never know the outcome of their marriage. Will their personalities blend? Will their love grow? Will they spiritually grow together or apart? Will their marriage last? Realizing that, saying “I do” before God does not solidify your marriage to last forever. Marriage requires you to work together daily, praying and keeping God in the forefront. Some may say that, as long as you have two of the three, you can have a successful marriage. A combination of the three may make a marriage, but for your marriage to be what God expects it to be will require you to incorporate all three. From the foundation of creation, God developed and provided a plan for married couples to follow. If man and woman would acquiesce to God’s plan instead of the world’s plan, we would find ourselves in more loving relationships that are able to persevere through the storms of life that come against every marital relationship.
As you read this book, it is our hope that we will be able to demonstrate how working together, praying together, praying for each other, and keeping God in the forefront of your marriage is fundamental to a loving and happy relationship. When my husband and I got married thirty-three years ago, we didn’t have a clue as to what it took to make a good marriage. Sad to say, neither one of us came from a household that exhibited a good marital example to pattern after. All we knew was that we loved each other and we thought that was enough. Subsequently, through trial and error, we found out differently that love was far from enough to sustain a marriage. When differences arose, prayer was the farthest thing from our minds. Actually, arguing our point and standing on what we thought was right was prominent in resolving our different issues. We went back and forth from arguing, ignoring, not speaking, pleading, debating, threatening, avoiding one another, and sleeping on the sofa. I am sure you will agree that, all of that gets old.
In those days, we couldn’t see the importance of praying for one another. We didn’t understand that it was more important to have a conversation with God than to win an argument. We did not understand that bonding our souls and lives was going to take work. Although we both believed in God, and worked actively in the church, we had not come to really grasp what it meant to place God at the forefront of our relationship. Our disagreements did not wear the likeness of Christ. It was quite the opposite. When I was younger, my mother always used the term “hardheaded” when we did things repeatedly. She said a hardheaded person took longer to learn a lesson. My husband and I were both hardheaded; since it took us a while to realize that in order for our marriage to be successful we could not just give “lip service” to God being “the head of our lives.” We initially thought that meant we only needed to start to pray more for changes to occur. But did this solve the problem? Not quite. It helped, but we were still missing important parts to sustain a “godly” marriage.
Many times, things that we experienced would cause us to recognize that something additional was needed. I distinctly recall the incident that made us make the decision to let God be the forefront of our marriage. We came to the realization that we were not growing spiritually at our present church nor did it offer anything for our children. We prayed, talked, prayed some more, and talked some more. We finally decided to move to another church, and all havoc broke out at our former church. It was unbelievable, how people we had known for years turned totally against us in what they considered to be “godly.” It was the treatment of those saints that made us realize that not only must God be at the forefront of our marriage, but also God truly had to be prominent, eminent, and all-consuming in our lives. This is what God meant in Matthew 6:33(KJV) when He instructs us “to seek Him first His righteousness and His kingdom and these things would be added.” Just like most Christian couples, we wanted God in our lives but we had not come to the understanding how to allow God to be the head of our lives. In other words, how were we to take our hands off of things that we took to Him in prayer? Many times we found that easier said than being able to be done. However, we realized we were in dire need of God placing a protective hedge around us and that was not going to happen without some drastic changes in us.
During this turbulent period in our marriage, God drew us closer to one another. The things that once preyed upon our marriage and brought disturbance were no longer taking precedence. God utilized our circumstances and our challenges to take us to a new level, a new appreciation for our marriage. What the Devil meant for bad, God turned it around for our good. But as the saying goes, a new level brings about new devils. The Enemy’s objective is to steal, kill and destroy. At this point in our marriage, it was imperative that we bond to stand boldly against the wiles of the Devil. The Devil was not happy that God was taking us to a new level in Him through our marriage. You can also believe we had new encounters with the Devil around every corner. But, we were reassured through Luke 10:19 that we had authority and power over the Enemy through prayer.
We made up in our minds and hearts that we would let nothing kill what God had ordained. Therefore, in those areas of our lives where we were lacking, such as communication, attitudes, forgiveness, and deliberate treatment of one another, we were able to recognize more readily the maneuvers by the Enemy. We began to understand how we cannot allow misperception into our marriage, it is not of God. God is not the author of confusion. As I look back over our marriage, I can still see the points where we could have gone our separate ways, but God said no. I can honestly say, without a doubt, God is still performing miracles today. The fact that my husband and I have made it thus far through the twists and turns of marriage is miraculous.