Sunday, September 14, 2008

What is Marriage?

WHAT IS MARRIAGE? GOD’S ORIGINAL BLUEPRINT


These blogs are intended to be a work out for your relationships. We will begin by looking at God’s original blueprint for marriage. We need to put behind us all preconceived ideas as we look at God’s Word to see what God intended when He instituted the mystery and ministry of marriage! Let’s open our hearts and minds to see, realize, and live out the blessings God intended to give us through marriage.

God desires us to understand marriage from His point of view. Looking at our Guidebook for life, the Bible, we see that most of the references to marriage, the bride, and the bridegroom, pertain to the union of Christ and His Church. Christ is the Bridegroom and His Church is the Bride!

What is marriage? It is given to us to be a reflection of the TRUE marriage relationship of Christ and His Bride, the Church!

Jesus spoke to us in parables because He told His disciples it is given unto us to know mysteries of the kingdom of heaven. To those of the world it is not given. (Matt 13.11) Scripture shows us that marriage is a “parable” of what our relationship to Christ is supposed to be! In Ephesians chapter 5 we see a description of the relationship between husbands and wives, then it is stated this is a great mystery: but I speak concerning Christ and the Church… (Eph 5.32)

Through marriage we are to understand the mystery of Christ in us, the hope of glory, that lifts us up to heavenly places. Marriage helps us know the wisdom of God so we can be presented perfect in Christ! (1 Cor 4.1, Col 1.27-28, Eph 3.9-11)

It is clear in Scripture that our marriages were given to us as a gift from God so that we could see and understand even more deeply the relationship between Christ and His Church, which our marriage relationships are made to reflect. Our marriages should be a reflection, an image, of Christ’s relationship to His Church, and our relationship to Him!

Why isn’t our marriage a reflection of the beautiful relationship Christ has with His Church? Because if our relationship with Jesus is not what it should be, we don’t have the true standard God gave us to line up our marriage with!

So we need to realize that the only way to get marriage in the proper perspective is to get our eyes back on our relationship with Jesus. The best way to understand what God intends for our earthly union with our mate is to get our eyes on what He intends for our relationship to be with His Son Jesus.

We are going to look at God’s original blueprint for our marriage as we look at the parallels of Christ’s original blueprint for His union with His Church! We will line up our relationship with the Lord, and in so doing we will make our marriages be the amazing reflection of that relationship that it was meant to be.

All we need is to realize the fullness of one relationship to see the potential for fullness in the other. For example, if we need total commitment to God to the point of forsaking all others, we can easily see that the same commitment is needed for our mate: commitment to the forsaking of all others! We can see that we have to work at our marriage constantly to keep it growing and going forward, and how much more we need to work on our relationship with Jesus so that it goes from glory to glory!

Remember, our marriage is just a shadow of the glory of the marriage between Christ and the Church. A reflection is nothing compared with the reality. Consider the moon that reflects the glory of the sun. Although the moon is magnificent, its real beauty lies in the fact that it is reflecting the glory of the sun, an element so much larger that we overwhelmed with its power and glory. In the same way, nothing can be as beautiful as our union with our Lord. But how exciting that He gave us something to reflect even part of the glory of His relationship to His Church!

Let us now look at marriage the way God intended us to: as a mirror to see and realize His love for us, as a shadow of His union with us. To know on earth what it takes to be one spirit with another, commit to a relationship, to prepare and work at a oneness that is accountable to another, that will stand through tests and trials and yet continue to grow into the perfect fullness of what a relationship should be. Let us look at the freedom of losing our life in another to find what life is (Luke 9.24), of decreasing in a relationship for One to increase (John 3.30). Let us look at marriage as a constant reminder of our relationship to the Lord, as we look to Him to give us the power to fulfill His plan for our marriage and reflect His glory through it!

Six parallels:

1. Preparation
2. Total commitment
3. One spirit
4. Stands through tests and trials
5. Grows into perfect fullness
6. Singleness of focus

There are so many parallels to learn about marriage when we look at it from the perspective of it being a reflection of the relationship Christ wants us to have with Him! We are only going to address six parallels, but the Holy Spirit will show you more as you meditate on the Word of God. The Holy Spirit will give you the analogy He wants you to apply to your marriage relationship: both as Christ’s Bride and as a mate to your spouse!

As we look at the exciting possibilities for our marriage, don’t get discouraged; rather be encouraged. We are going forward and working out to bring our marriages up to where God intended them to be. In this lesson we will look at what kind of relationship is possible to have with our spouse; and the rest of the lessons we will look at and apply God’s Word to different areas to bring our marriages to where they should be.


WORKOUT FOR THE DAY

*Where is my relationship with the Lord lacking where I can clearly see negative results?
(ideas: have I neglected spending time in His Word; talking to Him; hearing from
Him; putting Him first; considering His desires; giving Him top priority; am I
distracted with less important things or things that aren’t eternal – or even with
things He has blessed me with?...)

*Where is my relationship with my spouse/significant other lacking where I can clearly see negative results?
(ideas: same as above!)

*From the LORD’S perspective, what do I sacrificially do to invest in our relationship?

*From my SPOUSE’S/SIGNIFICANT OTHER’S perspective, what do I sacrificially do to invest in our relationship?

*What can I do to improve both relationships (with the Lord and then with my spouse/significant other)?

*What are some other ways that my relationship with the Lord as His Bride parallel my marriage or relationship with a significant other?

1 comment:

Gabe ♥ Hannah said...

i'm really glad that you are doing this... email this blogspot to the married couples and engaged ones... you are so great mommy to always be making a positive difference!