Journey to Surrender

Part 1 of “What I Believe About Marriage”

My series on what I believe about marriage starts with the simple truth that marriage belongs to God.

I believe marriage was on God’s heart long before time began, that he instituted it in the Garden of Eden, and that he sent his Son, Jesus, as our heavenly Bridegroom, in order to win us for himself an eternal bride.

Almost everything else I believe about marriage springs in one way or another from this basic, foundational truth: God wants to marry you.

Now lest you get offended by such a notion, let me explain that by saying God wants to marry you, I mean he desires to dwell in deepest and purest intimacy with you for all time, starting right now. That’s his eternal purpose behind creating marriage in the first place.

Does that mess with your head? It does mine.

It took me a while for this to become clear to me, but as I started looking into what the Bible says about marriage, the truth emerged rather undeniably. The Bible begins and ends with a marriage, and all throughout the picture of marriage emerges as a clear metaphor for the relationship God desires with you and me.

Think about it. God could have used whatever model he wanted for the procreation of mankind and the population of our planet. Just look around in nature and you’ll see all kinds of different methods he invented. But he specifically chose to create man and woman and join them together in the covenant of marriage. Don’t you suppose there was a reason for that? I am convinced of it.

The marriage covenant between a man and a woman are a model of the new covenant God offers you through his Son. It represents the promise of an unyielding commitment, the offer of sacrificial and unconditional love, and the opportunity for true intimacy. In the end it comes down to this:

Let us rejoice and be glad and give the glory to Him, for the marriage of the Lamb has come and His bride has made herself ready.

Revelation 19:7

Now when I say that marriage belongs to God, I’m not talking about the pomp and ceremony, the rings, or the signed piece of paper. Don’t cheapen marriage down to the convenient, disposable and re-definable social construct we’ve made into. I’m talking about the covenant of marriage as God always meant it to be.

That’s what I’m seeking to discover and discuss with this blog – marriage as God intends it to be. After all, he designed it in the first place!

So as a launching point for this series on what I believe about marriage, let me leave you with what I wrote in response to a challenge to describe my blog in exactly ten words.

Marriage was God’s idea. Do it how he designed it.

Do you agree with my premise that marriage was ordained by God with an eternal purpose foremost in his mind? You and Him together for eternity?