I am an avid fan of Romantic Comedies, not just any romantic comedy but the whole cheesy ones, where love is spewing everywhere. I have experienced and witnessed all of the ugly of marriage when it is not joined together under godly principles. I was in three of them. My current marriage was ugly for 23 years. My husband and I had been saved for many years. But we did not allow God’s saving work in our spirits to transform how we behaved in our marriage. We were heavily involved in serving and put on a very nice Sunday morning church face, but at home it was anything but a representation of Christ and the church. For those of us who follow Christ, we have very clear mandates for marriage. We are without excuse and our marriages should not end up like the majority of marriages in the world. This only shows that couples who profess to be Christians, are not applying the teachings of Christ in every area of their lives.

Ephesians 5:25-33 is one of the clearest messages to us as to what our marriages should look like. In my book “We’re Getting Married Forever”, I used these Scriptures as a foundational base of God’s design for marriage. The main focus of these verses is the man’s role in the marriage. Men must lead and know their role in a Christian marriage so I will begin there. They instruct Christian men in this way. “Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself up for her, so that He might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, that He might present to Himself the church in all her glory, having no spot or wrinkle or any such thing; but that she would be holy and blameless. So husbands ought also to love their own wives as their own bodies. He who loves his own wife loves himself; for no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ also does the church, because we are members of His body. For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and shall be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh. This mystery is great; but I am speaking with reference to Christ and the church. Nevertheless, each individual among you also is to love his own wife even as himself, and the wife must see to it that she respects her husband.”

Christian men should take each one of these Scriptures and create a checklist of evaluating their readiness to be a husband, and Christian women should do the same to ensure before any plans for marriage are made that they are entering into a relationship with a man who embraces and obeys the role that God calls him to. For women who follow Christ, we are also given instructions on how we are to relate to our husbands in 1 Peter 3:1-6, “In the same way, you wives, be submissive to your own husbands so that even if any of them are disobedient to the word, they may be won without a word by the behavior of their wives, as they observe your chaste and respectful behavior. Your adornment must not be merely external—braiding the hair, and wearing gold jewelry, or putting on dresses; but let it be the hidden person of the heart, with the imperishable quality of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is precious in the sight of God. For in this way in former times the holy women also, who hoped in God, used to adorn themselves, being submissive to their own husbands; just as Sarah obeyed Abraham, calling him lord, and you have become her children if you do what is right without being frightened by any fear.” Christian women should also take each one of these Scriptures as a checklist for their readiness to be a wife, and Christian men should use these Scriptures as a blueprint for choosing a godly wife.

Nevertheless, these Scriptures are meaningless to a person who has not been born-again. Born-again in a Biblical sense, not in the order of the American or Western church born-again. To be born again is to first acknowledge that you are a sinner and you can not save yourself. It astounds me when someone responds to the gospel message of salvation, with their pompous attitude of, “I’m a good person”. When someone says that, they are saying that they have become their god and have created their conditions of going to heaven. I talk more about this in my upcoming book, “God Is Always Good”. I have an excerpt of this book in another post by that name. Heaven is not for “good” people, Heaven is for born-again people, whose sins Christ has forgiven and covered by His blood. Who determines what good is anyway? Man surely does not. Only God is good and only He knows who is good. Those who have submitted themselves under Christ’s Lordship are those whose names will be written in the Lamb’s Book of Life. Once a person is born-again, that individual must then allow Holy Spirit to transform their character to resemble the holiness of God. Galatians 22-23 teaches us what this should look like, and 1 Corinthians 13, teaches us what the foundation of our new life should look like. These are the first steps in preparing our hearts for a “God-designed” marriage.

When my husband and I were going through the difficult season of our marriage, I would ask him regularly, why are we married if we could not even have a decent conversation without it turning into a hate-filled drama. I always encourage newlyweds to think about why they chose to marry each other. Marriage is made for people who love each other. And we can even begin to know how to love another person if we have not learned to love God. Once we have a loving relationship with God, His love will cause us to love unconditionally, with grace, mercy, forgiveness kindness, joy, peace, faithfulness, gentleness, goodness, and self-control. We should be married because we want to bestow on another person, the love God has bestowed upon us. After reading this I hope you will consider the question, “Why have you chosen to be married?” Really.