When the purpose of a thing is unknown, abuse, neglect and abandonment become inevitable. Many people do not understand God’s purpose for marriage. Hence, the chaos in many families, communities and the world are reflections of that gross misunderstanding.
A lot of people have come up with their own misconstrued ideas of what marriage is. Even when we decide to do ‘marriage’ our way and we run into trouble, we still fail to realize it’s time to run back to the One who invented marriage.
Just to clear any doubts, in case there are people who have misgivings, God instituted marriage in the garden of Eden. There was no marriage until Eve was created. God created Adam and Eve, male and female, and blessed them. Times may have changed, but God is still the same yesterday, today and forever. His standards remain unchanged.
“Many men want to be dads but not all of them are ready to be fathers.”
God is detailed and organized. When He created the earth, He didn’t send the rain immediately until there was someone available to tend the garden. If God had sent the rain, it would have triggered the cycle of planting and harvesting but there would have been no one to plant of harvest. God has an assignment and He sent you to earth for a specific purpose, which is to help fulfil that assignment.
So, before you decide to get married, you should discover God’s purpose for your life. Your prospective spouse should also discover theirs and you both should be conscious of the fact that God has an assignment for which He is looking for vessels to accomplish.
Without pursuing with full focus God’s purpose for our lives, our existence will have no meaning. Getting married is not the most important thing in life. Besides, you don’t want to get married to someone who will derail you from God’s purpose for you.
When we stand before God on the day of judgement, there will be no crowns for those who got married to the most beautiful or handsome spouses. Crowns would only be for those who completed the tasks God entrusted to them when He sent them to earth.
Apart from the imperative of pursuing God’s purpose, another reason for marriage is companionship. Don’t get married to someone whose company you don’t really enjoy. It will be a lifetime of depression to experience so much pain stuck with someone you ‘re neither excited about and they are no longer excited about you.
Many married couples are not best of friends and do not share any common interests. Some claim they want to get married for companionship but after the wedding, the lady is busy with her career and her kids while the guy is busy with his career and hobbies. Unknown to them, they have simply become housemates. They only realize how far they have drifted apart – and have almost become strangers – when the kids leave home.
Godly children don’t fall from the sky.
Two are better than one; if one falls, the other can pick him or her up. Two whole and healthy people are better than one. Moreover, it’s better to be single and whole than married and stuck with someone who is broken. It’s important to marry someone who is spiritually alive and emotionally stable to support you.
It will be tough to enjoy a relationship with someone who doesn’t share your values and who doesn’t support and challenge you to follow hard after God. This is what the counsel to not be unequally yoked with unbelievers means.
With over seven billion people on earth today, it’s obvious procreation is the main reason many people get married. All we remember God saying is ‘Be fruitful and multiply.’ But is God just interested in more statistics or godly seeds?
Godly children don’t fall from the sky. They are outcomes of deliberate and careful parenting by married couples who are intentional about not only providing the physical needs of the children but also solid spiritual foundations and stable emotional environments for kids to thrive.
We can’t fulfil God’s purpose for marriage if we don’t have a personal relationship with the Man who died on the cross of Calvary.
Don’t get married just because you want to have babies. There is no guarantee you will have babies, anyway. But even if you do, your kids would move on to college and get married someday. When that happens, what else would you wake up to pursue as a couple? Having kids is not a great achievement; it’s a huge responsibility. God is counting on married couples to hand over the baton of godliness to the next generation.
God expects married couples to discover and stay committed to the assignment He’s entrusted to them, to enjoy each other’s company, to grow and mature together and also be godly parents. Having been raised by godly parents, the children will in turn discover God and His purpose for their lives.
We can’t fulfil God’s purpose for marriage if we don’t have a personal relationship with the Man who died on the cross of Calvary. With no relationship with God, it would be impractical to hear God’s voice about His purpose for us or our marriage, let alone, obey it.
When our desires to get married don’t align with God’s purpose for marriage, we will either get frustrated or marriage will soon become a humdrum. God’s purpose for marriage is spelt out in Genesis 2. God gave Adam an assignment, and then He sent a helpmate to him. It wasn’t the other way around.
Similar to three-legged stool, God’s purpose for marriage has got three dimensions: purpose, partnership and procreation. When we choose one or two or even none of the three, we will be building our marriage on a faulty foundation. Hence, we can’t blame anyone when we build our lives outside of God’s plan.
A couple who gets married only to serve as partners in a ministry, will find out soon rather than later that marriage is much more than that. They may maintain a façade for their congregation that all is going well but for only so long. If they don’t truly enjoy each other’s company and have other common interests, they would soon begin to explore other avenues to meet those need.
For a couple who just got married because they enjoy each other’s company, will discover that staying married will soon become boring with no purpose to pursue. One spouse would become very demanding and ultimately unable to cope without the other person. God doesn’t want anyone taking His place in our hearts. So, couples need a higher purpose to pursue besides spending time with each other.
Similarly, a couple who gets married only to have sex will be disappointed to find out no one spends all day under the sheets. Besides, lots of sex will get you more babies than you can care for. For many people who get married for sex, the enemy sells them the lie that their spouses aren’t enough, giving them the idea, they can explore sex with other partners.
Many men want to be dads but not all of them are ready to be fathers. Many women want to be mums but oftentimes, they delegate most – if not all – of their core roles to nannies or family relatives.
This world is full of couples who get married to fulfil their selfish reasons. They are not bothered about God’s purpose for their lives; they do not care about the spiritual state of the person they want to get married to. They don’t care about raising godly children either. They just want to be pregnant and bring more kids into this world.
So, why do you want to get married? Is it to fulfil your selfish ambitions or to fulfil God’s will?
