Simply stated, God wants you to love your wife, and He wants your wife to love you. He wants you to leave your mother and father, to cleave unto your wife, to nourish, to cherish, to admire, and to respect her as the Word of God says.
Three Things You Must Know About Marriage
- God wants you to have a happy marriage.
God wants you to be happy in your marriage. He wants the two of you, husband and wife, to be one. The Bible says that you are one flesh. He wants you to be in agreement, at peace with one another. God wants you to have a strong, consistent, stable, and beautiful marriage.
You may feel that your marital situation is far from God's plan for the ideal marriage. Probably most couples fall short of having the marriage relationship they'd like to have.
But I believe you can get there. It is not impossible to have what God wants you to have. The Bible says in Ephesians 1:3 that God wants to bless us with all blessings. And a marriage is to be blessed.
So the first thing I want you to know and fully understand is that God wants to bless you in your marriage relationship. He wants you to have a beautiful, happy marriage.
- God has a plan for your marriage.
The second thing you must understand is that God has a plan for your marriage. He has a specific purpose for your marriage—a reason for you and your wife to be together. The two of you together have a specific place and ministry in the Body of Christ.
You must realize that God has a plan for your marriage and your ministry together. I don't necessarily mean that you're called to a full-time ministry, but God does have a ministry for you. He's called every believer to be a minister for Him.
Remember, God established the home before He ever established the Church. And until our homes come together, until our marriages come together, the Church is always going to be hurting.
The Bible says "Two are better than one...for if they fall, one will lift up his companion" (see Eccl. 4:9-10). God wants you and your wife to take your place in the Body of Christ and fulfill the plans He has for you.
- Satan is the enemy of your marriage.
The third thing I want to establish with you is that you have an enemy. Satan is your enemy! And he doesn't want your marriage to be happy. He doesn't want God's perfect will to be fulfilled in your life.
He'll do everything in his power to thwart the plan of God in your life. It's important to learn to recognize his schemes, his plans, and his lies in order to prevent him from destroying your marriage.
I have learned in working with people and their marriages over the past few years that the devil doesn't have any new plans and schemes. He uses the same old lines over and over.
Men come to me and say, "My wife said this, that, and the other." Or they'll say, "You know, I have this thought, and this temptation." I can almost tell them what they're going to say before they say it because I hear the same thing over and over again.
How foolish the devil is! He has no new tricks. He deceives the Body of Christ with his same old lies again and again. We must learn to detect the voice of the evil one when he whispers these lies in our ears. If we don't, we'll let him deceive us and destroy our marriages.
The Bible says in John 8:44 that the devil is a liar and the father of all lies. The devil lied to Adam and Eve in the very beginning and he's lied to God's people ever since.
Unfortunately, too often when couples hear these lies, they believe them. They accept Satan's deception as reality. I want you to learn to recognize truth and realize when the enemy is whispering in your ear.
Then, if you ever get in a place where you're struggling and you hear one of these lies, you'll be able to recognize the devil's work right away. You'll be able to drive the enemy away from your marriage.
by Lisa Comes
Excerpt permission granted by Lakewood Church
Lisa Osteen Comes is an Associate Pastor at Lakewood Church in Houston, Texas under the leadership of her brother, Pastor Joel Osteen. In her role, she brings over 25 years of preaching and ministry experience to the congregation and is involved in many aspects of the church's leadership.
