Marriage-God’s First Guidelines

I have already spent a lot of time on reflecting how America now views marriage and have given many statistics and definitions to show that an honest assessment on this subject shows we struggle terribly with this foundational issue and have abandoned the  truths’ from the best book about relationships by God. The statistics regarding the failures in marriage in America today are the best and the only honest way to step back and see what our generation has let happen under our watch and what we can do to together to bring back the essentials of love and respect for both men and woman.

When asked his secret of love, being married fifty-four years to the same person, he said, “Ruth and I are happily incompatible.”      Billy Graham

Comedians all the time make us laugh on how different men and woman are and we all know it to be true. But why? Didn’t God know that if he made man and women more like each other….we would be so much happier. Right!?

This is just what I am saying in this article, God does tell us in very specific terms what each of us including our genres were made for. There are specific roles for Men and Woman as God created us to be different and we inherently have characteristics and personality traits that suite us for these different roles.

Truth is: nothing has upset the balance of stability in love, stability in marriage, stability in Christ’s Church and stability in America more than our complete miss-understanding of the God-given roles men and woman are built and designed for!!

And even more sensational is God created the institution of Marriage to honor, protect and nurture this fragile relationship which needs both parties to deeply understand God’ word to succeed.

Marriage is so important and foundational that God established it in just the second Chapter of the 1,189 total chapters in the Bible! Without you and I having a thorough understanding of all the inherently important reasons God created marriage, we will never ever get into the proper roles and enjoy what this great institution has in store for all of us. Fact is no earthly civilization will survive without strong and committed marriages.

Barna writes: Surveys show that 80% of all Americans believe that for the USA to remain strong and secure, its families must be strong and secure as well.

But the reality is again from Barna is: Marriage no longer signifies the commencement of adult life; it is now a middle step in that journey, after one has completed their education, experimented with multiple lovers, relocated to a desirable place, become established in a career, and perhaps even had a child or two.

First let us look at the bare (pun indented) facts about men and woman physically. Do any of you see a difference………enough said?

Now how many realize that men and woman think and react differently under the same circumstance………enough said?

Ok so it does not take a Master’s degree to see that men and woman are not the same…..right?

The Bible is not only the true owner’s manual to understanding how we operate (men and woman-stay with me now), but also how to trouble shoot our marital problems!

This article will help us see how we should live our lives today and every day for the benefit of us all as God’s words are not meant to hold back the joys of this world, but to help us experience “God’s peace which surpasses all human understanding” and to know what real and true love between a man and a woman can be. The Bible is first and foremost a book about relationships. First with God, then to each other!

But in order for God’s words to make a difference in our lives, we need to shed all the untruths this world and sadly America Culture has taught us and we must be open minded to extreme revelations our Heavenly Father has for us to learn about Love and contentment in our lives!

Now let us get this right out in the open. The definition of marriage as the example I gave you in Chapter one was never ever meant for anybody other than one man and one woman. Human biology alone proves this to be true.

Have you ever wondered what the Bible has to say about marriage? A quick search reveals more than 500 Old and New Testament references to the words “marriage,” “married,” “husband,” and “wife.” Also interesting is the word divorce is seen over 30 times. God knew we would still be struggling with this issue thousands of years later!

Stanton, who is the author of Why Marriage Matters: Reasons to Believe in Marriage in Postmodern Society, reports, “Religious commitment, rather than mere religious affiliation, contributes to greater levels of marital success.”

Marriage is Gods greatest gift where Love should flourish as the couple honor and respect God and respect their partners. Bible study and prayer enable the best of a marriage to develop!

From Barna’s book “Futurecast”: In America today, 80% would like one marital partner for life and 75% want a personal relationship with God and fame is only at 7%.

This data proves that most of us understand God’s truths even though most would deny where it actually comes from. Now I will confess that certain parts of this article took a lot more time for me to write then other parts. These next two paragraphs I had struggled with and struggled with as I was trying to come up with relatively simple summary regarding the specifics pertaining to the roles of men and woman from God’s Holy Scripture which would help me to explain this very complex subject with both love, respect and accuracy to God’s truths in the scriptures.

Then I read this summary and out of all the hundreds of hours of research over the past five years, this one seems right to me:

Summary of Godly Roles for Men and Women From CARM: (Christian Apologetics and Research Ministry (carm.org)

In the New Testament, the roles of husband and wife are symbolic of Christ and His church.  Christian men are to lovingly lay down their lives for their wives (Ephesians 5:25).  They still maintain leadership, but this must be servant leadership.  Husbands are not to demand obedience, but by their humility, guide.  They are to honor their wives (1 Peter 3:7).  It is clear that biblically, women are not seen as second class citizens, but equal with their husbands and as “heirs with [men] in the grace of life” (1 Peter 3:7).  The biblical roles for men continue through the Old Testament and into the New Testament: man is meant to lead and lovingly serve his wife.

The bible exalts womanhood in the home, and places great value on it (Titus 2, Proverbs 31).  Woman’s role from creation has not changed.  In Titus 2, Paul commends women to love their husbands and children (Titus 2:4).  The older women were to teach the younger women in the church how to better take care of their families, including taking care of the home (v.5).  Women are to follow their husband’s leadership with respect, choosing to submit to that leadership (Titus 2:51 Pet. 3:1-4).  1 Peter states that when wives submit to their husband’s leadership, they are doing it as service to God (1 Pet. 3:1-4).  A woman can be a great blessing and help to her husband, just as Eve was to Adam at the beginning of creation.  Scripture does not forbid a woman working outside of the home.  Some women did appear to have businesses (Proverbs 31), but a woman’s first priority is to her husband, family, and home life.

Remember not lesser roles, but different and specific! Only when roles are maintained does order exist in the marriage and they only exist when both partners are committed to keep learning and reading Gods good book!!!

Simply put: Christ is the head of man as man is the head of woman. Men, you and I will have to answer directly to Jesus if we choose to continue to ignore his guidelines!

Now I know in most of your minds you are adding all the stereo types our society has drilled into your mind since the day you were born. You can only move forward if you can truly and humbly take a deep breath and unlearn all the things you have learned regarding roles of men and woman. Believe me when I say this simply is the most difficult balance to understand!

You have to trust God above all things in order for your mind to be restructured into the truth that will only help you in your relationships.

Continual daily reading and meditation on The Bible will teach you in a very simple yet detailed manner. Forget about the internet for a moment and the quick fixes and answers we have become accustomed to in our frantically fast paced world. Let your loving Heavenly Father teach you his precise guidelines which are only found uncorrupted in your own Holy Bible!

Start reading the 66 Books  (or as some call them “love letters”) contained in The Holy Bible, meditate on them day and night and read and reread the entire Bible from front to back every year. This is how the light of God’s spirit can clearly enter into your soul!

It was not until I stopped reading and studying the Bible piece meal (reading really what I only liked and understood) and went full boar into the amazing truths and revelations God gives us to teach, admonish and apply in our everyday lives.

Then you will learn and be able to teach others about one of the most beautiful stories showing God’s true agape love for you and me. Man was created first by God and then he created woman. But he created woman so different from all the other creations. She was formed second after God created man, but so unlike all the previous wonderful creations who like Adam were created from the dust of the earth, woman was not created from the dust of the earth, but was formed from man’s flesh and this is why Adam said:

            “This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called “woman for she was taken out of man. ”

This part of the creation story is so beautiful and we must all meditate on the wonders of God’s love and understanding. Then it even gets better as God instructs all of us that:For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh”.

This is why men and woman must honor their physical body and save sexual intimacy for just the right person…and as God tells us in very specific commands to save sexual intimacy only in Holy Matrimony. Remember God did create marriage as a Holy Union. For them the final complete commitment in front of God and man happens when the couple makes their wedding vows. Then consummation of their love within the protection and comfort of marriage is complete! Then God joins the man and woman back to one flesh!!

My goodness, it does not get any better then this!!!!!

Again, woman was made from the body of the man (one flesh) and God re-unites the man and woman in matrimony to again become one flesh!! No wonder when men and woman understand these awesome plans of God would they never, ever consider breaking that bond! This is why the Bible says when a man and a woman get married So they are no longer two, but one. Therefore what God has joined together, let not man put asunder.”

God does not accept sexual intimacy outside marriage-only after marriage, otherwise you are committing adultery-This intimacy was only meant between a married man and a woman.

Please before you all go running for the hills, please refer to the best summaries of the specifics of man and woman at the end of this Chapter. I know there is hope as God always stresses that anything is possible with God.

Also vitally important is divorce is not acceptable under Gods guidelines, but later Moses let divorce occur in cases of infidelity as man’s hearts became hardened.

I hope your minds and hearts have taken in these words of ultimate love and understanding so we can live our lives to the highest level of peace and contentment God wants us to enjoy!

Men, we must wake up and we must love and respect our wives and children enough to take the bull by the horns and wrestle these worldly dangers all round us to the ground. Only then will our wives slowly give that right back to us. They have had to step in and take on way more of the responsibilities of running our families then they ever could or should have.

Even the feminist movement in America would like you to think women do not even need a man around. Having a nuclear family and focusing on raising a family is no longer looked upon as the great blessing and protective environment it should be. Even our government which I believe had good intentions came out with many programs over the past 50 years to help single mom’s, but I argue now we see it has done so much harm to our families as the women saw it was possible with the government financial help programs to go it all alone. These government programs over time further took the purpose of men in the role of the family to almost insignificance.

And this change in gender roles goes back a ways. When I watch episodes of I Love Lucy which was on TV in the 1950’s, you cannot help but notice then the changes in traditional Christian roles for men and women had already changed.

God gives us very clear distinct roles for men and woman and we all must learn and implement them in a humble, respectful but decisive manner. There is no time to waste!!

The saddest consequence in America of adults divorcing and separating from each other is the devastating effect it has on their children. The statistics regarding children being raised in a single parent household are incredibly sad. I do need to list a few here:

  • 63% of youth suicides are from fatherless homes (US Dept. Of Health/Census) – 5 times the average.
  • 90% of all homeless and runaway children are from fatherless homes – 32 times the average.
  • 85% of all children who show behavior disorders come from fatherless homes – 20 times the average. (Center for Disease Control)
  • 80% of rapists with anger problems come from fatherless homes –14 times the average. (Justice & Behavior, Vol 14, p. 403-26)
  • 71% of all high school dropouts come from fatherless homes – 9 times the average. (National Principals Association Report)

Women were never meant to go it alone and the pressure upon them is certainly understandable and heart breaking! They have done an incredible job of sacrificing their needs for their children and I honor all of them. Women make up over 86% of the single parents in America and this alone shows their amazing strength and ability to keep their families together!

But as always the cold statistics above prove the fact that God’s plan for families is worth fighting for with all our strength and for everyone involved. And we all need improvement and this plan will not work if Dad’s, Mom’s, Grandparents, Uncle and Aunts, etc refuse to learn the ways of our Father, Son and Spirit and help support the marriages in their own families.

No wonder why in most cases today, men are shown as buffoons on our tv sitcoms and commercials and woman are shown as the resourceful and intelligent…..50 years of men walking away from what they started and woman saying “good riddance” have had a devastating effect on the realities we need each other.

We need to get back our focus! First in love, then in marriage, then in child bearing.

I need to at this point repeat a line I wrote earlier: Remember not lesser roles, but different and specific! Only when roles are maintained does order exist in the marriage and they only exist when both partners are committed to keep learning and reading Gods good book!!!

This understanding benefits all who learn it…why do we struggle so much….it does not have to be this way….help us oh God and open our ears and hearts to your saving word!!

A house divided cannot not stand and until men take their God-given responsibility to honor, love and cherish their wives until death do them part and for woman to yield the authority God gave to their God-fearing husbands, this terrible cycle of divorce and remarriage will never stop destroying our families and ultimately our nations foundations.

What counts in making a happy marriage is not so much how compatible you are, but how you deal with incompatibility. Leo Tolstoy

Now I did this a little different than the other articles by putting most of the Bible verses pertaining to this subject (and there are lots more) at the end here and they are much more important to read over and over then my simple words. Just pray earnestly that God will open your eyes and ears to the truths written for the benefit of us all!

Bible verses for reference;

Genesis 2:18
18 Yahweh God said, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper suitable for him.”

Genesis 2:24
24 Therefore a man will leave his father and his mother, and will join with his wife, and they will be one flesh.

Malachi 2:16
“I hate divorce,” says the LORD God of Israel, “and I hate a man’s covering himself with violence as well as with his garment,” says the LORD Almighty. So guard yourself in your spirit, and do not break faith.

Matthew 19:7-9
7″Why then,” they asked, “did Moses command that a man give his wife a certificate of divorce and send her away?”

 8Jesus replied, “Moses permitted you to divorce your wives because your hearts were hard. But it was not this way from the beginning. 9I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for marital unfaithfulness, and marries another woman commits adultery.”

Luke 16:18
“Anyone who divorces his wife and marries another woman commits adultery, and the man who marries a divorced woman commits adultery.

Ephesians 5:21-33
21 subjecting yourselves one to another in the fear of Christ.

22 Wives, be subject to your own husbands, as to the Lord.

23 For the husband is the head of the wife, and Christ also is the head of the assembly, being himself the savior of the body.

24 But as the assembly is subject to Christ, so let the wives also be to their own husbands in everything.

25 Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the assembly, and gave himself up for it;

26 that he might sanctify it, having cleansed it by the washing of water with the word,

27 that he might present the assembly to himself gloriously, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing; but that it should be holy and without blemish.

28 Even so husbands also ought to love their own wives as their own bodies. He who loves his own wife loves himself.

29 For no man ever hated his own flesh; but nourishes and cherishes it, even as the Lord also does the assembly;

30 because we are members of his body, of his flesh and bones.

31 “For this cause a man will leave his father and mother, and will be joined to his wife. The two will become one flesh.”

32 This mystery is great, but I speak concerning Christ and of the assembly.

33 Nevertheless each of you must also love his own wife even as himself; and let the wife see that she respects her husband.

I Peter 3:1-11
1 In the same way, wives, be in subjection to your own husbands; so that, even if any don’t obey the Word, they may be won by the behavior of their wives without a word;

2 seeing your pure behavior in fear.

3 Let your beauty be not just the outward adorning of braiding the hair, and of wearing jewels of gold, or of putting on fine clothing;

4 but in the hidden person of the heart, in the incorruptible adornment of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is in the sight of God very precious.

5 For this is how the holy women before, who hoped in God also adorned themselves, being in subjection to their own husbands:

6 as Sarah obeyed Abraham, calling him lord, whose children you now are, if you do well, and are not put in fear by any terror.

7 You husbands, in the same way, live with your wives according to knowledge, giving honor to the woman, as to the weaker vessel, as being also joint heirs of the grace of life; that your prayers may not be hindered.

8 Finally, be all like-minded, compassionate, loving as brothers, tenderhearted, courteous,

9 not rendering evil for evil, or insult for insult; but instead blessing; knowing that to this were you called, that you may inherit a blessing.

10 For, “He who would love life, and see good days, let him keep his tongue from evil, and his lips from speaking deceit.

11 Let him turn away from evil, and do good. Let him seek peace, and pursue it.

(Hebrews 13:4) Let marriage be held in honor among all, and let the bed be undefiled: but God will judge the sexually immoral and adulterers.

I would like to finish on the subject of being single as I have spent the whole article on marriage. But I do understand that there are many men and woman who may remain single for their whole lives and that is perfectly fine as long as they honor God through their lives. Sexual purity also applies to men and woman who do not marry. God explains that it is OK not to marry, but only if your sexual desires do not cause you to sin. Otherwise you need to marry!

Woow, that is so different than what we see all around us today. Do you see it yet that we have drifted so far away from the loving guidelines and principles of God’s Holy Word and this is the main purpose of this website and articles.

Please Lord have mercy on us and forgive us all the terrible ways we have taken life into our own hands and ignored the time proven teachings your Holy Bible offers to each of us. It is never too late to start to honor you in the only way that matters. By the way we live our lives in testimony to your great and awesome power and love that you have for us your children.

You have given us freely the gift of Salvation and eternal life through the sacrifice of blood by your son Jesus Christ and we thank you and praise you.

May we restore the greatest blueprint designed by you to nurture and protect our souls through the institution of Holy Matrimony!