Spiritual Help For Your Marriage Series

In the Bible, there are three human institutions that stand apart from all others — the family, the church, and the government. There’s nothing in the Bible about how a hospital or a school should be run, even though they are crucial to a flourishing society. There’s nothing there about business corporations or even museums. In fact, there are all sorts of great institutions and human enterprises that the Bible doesn’t address or regulate. But marriage is different. The Bible speaks specifically to the purpose of marriage and how a marriage can flourish. The Bible begins with the wedding of Adam and Eve, and the Bible ends in the book of Revelation with a wedding of Christ and the church. Marriage is God’s idea.

Today’s Scripture

“and submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ. 22 Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord, 23 because the husband is the head of the wife as also Christ is the head of the church—he himself being the savior of the body. 24 But as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything” (Ephesians 5:21-24).

We love the idea of marriage in America. Every year, around two million people make the decision to spend the rest of their lives together by getting married. Think of this: seventeen tons of gold are made into wedding rings each year in the United States. Again, we love the idea of marriage in America. But oftentimes, the reality doesn’t match the dream. Men who kiss their wives in the morning are said to live five years longer than those who don’t. Many of us have longed for Camelot but arrived only at Calamity.

Years ago, country music artists Conway Twitty and Loretta Lynn sang about marital conflict: “You’re the Reason Our Kids are Ugly.” There’s Mel Tillis’ “How Come Your Dog Don’t Bite Nobody But Me.” Deana Carter’s “Did I Shave My Legs for This?” And Miranda Lambert’s revenge song for a cheating husband, she laments there are no lash extensions and wax treatments in prison.

Let’s talk about the national trends of marriage for just a moment. Marriage is disappearing in our society, probably due to increased cynicism over lifelong married love. Did you know: 44% of children are raised by a single parent within 1 mile of our church.

The number of American adults over the age of 25 who have never been married is at an all-time high. In 1960, only 1 in 10 adults over the age of 25 was never married. While in 2012, the number of adults who’ve never married is now 1 in 5. And we are waiting longer to get married. In 1960, the average age for marriage was 20 for women and 23 for men. In 2012, the average age for marriage was 27 for women and 29 for men. 40% of new mothers are unmarried. Note this: half of all these unmarried couples are split up by the time their child is just five years old. These three trends sit right alongside our culture’s view that cohabitation is the training wheels for marriage. And around one of out of two couples live together without bothering to marry. “Everyone I know who’s gotten married quickly—and failed to live together [first]—has gotten divorced,” said one man told the people at Gallup survey. Despite the popularity of this thinking: “a substantial body of evidence indicates that those who live together before marriage are more likely to break up after marriage.”

Cohabitation is an understandable response from those who experienced their own parents’ painful divorces, but the facts indicate that the cure may be worse than the alleged disease. But get this: people who cohabit before marriage end up getting divorced at higher rates than those who do not cohabit before the wedding.

While scores of people do divorce, by far the greatest percentage of divorces happen to those who marry before the age of eighteen, who have dropped out of high school, and who have had a baby together before marrying. Do you want a successful long marriage? The secular research is in. If you are a reasonably well-educated person with a decent income, come from an intact family and are religious, and marry after 25 without having a baby first, your chances of divorce are low indeed.”

As we turn to the pages of Scripture, God gives us supernatural instruction for the challenge of marriage. Your vows take only about one minute to recite but a lifetime to live out.

1. The Holy Spirit and My Marriage

“and submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ” (Ephesians 5:21).

“But as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything” (Ephesians 5:24).

The Bible gives direction for distinct roles for a husband and a wife. The Bible calls on the husband to take the lead and the wife to follow his leadership. It tells the husbands to submit in verse 21 along with the wives, but then it tells the wives to submit in verse 22 all by themselves. The Bible says we are to submit to one another.