Marriage and Boundries

Marriage and Boundaries

What are some of the first things that come to mind when you think of marriage?

Marriage is often thought of as a destination. The endgame of a healthy romantic relationship. There is a really big problem with that point of view though. I know, because for a season of my life I felt that same way. Getting married would solve all my problems. I would never feel rejected, lonely, sad ever again. No matter what happened, that one person that I was most vulnerable with would always completely agree with me. Everything would be fixed. But let me tell you, it didn’t fix anything. If anything, it magnified the problems in my life because now everything I did impacted another human being. I’m not saying this to paint a bleak picture of marriage. I’m here to tell you God has a bigger plan for your future marriage than just fixing you.

God’s plan for marriage is bigger than your happiness.

Marriage was never intended to fulfill your dreams and make your life perfect. In the beginning, God saw that the plan He had for Adam was unattainable alone. So, God created Eve as a helper. God’s plan for the first human was bigger than the first human! God doesn’t change, so if His plans were too big then, they are too big now. But were God’s plans for Eve bigger than her? Yes! Mark tells us Jesus doesn’t play favorites. And Paul says in Galatians 3:28 that we are one in Christ. That everything else,( race, gender, political party, social status), disappear and are meaningless once you are God’s child! Which means, if His plans were too big for Adam, they were too big for Eve. If getting married is the only goal, then once you get it, you’ll run out of energy to keep it. God’s plan for marriage is to accomplish through 2 people what 1 person could never do alone.

Sexuality

God created sex and created us as sexual beings. Sex is not wrong, but when experienced outside of God’s intent, it causes serious damage. Think of it like fire. Fire brings warmth, you can cook food with it, make coffee. There are a lot of great things fire can do, as long as it is contained in a fireplace. But if that fire is placed outside of it’s intended place, it can burn down your home and other people’s homes as well.

Becoming more like Jesus

And further, submit to one another out of reverence for Christ. For a husband is the head of his wife as Christ is the head of the church. He is the Savior of his body, the church. As the church submits to Christ, so you wives should submit to your husbands in everything. For husbands, this means love your wives, just as Christ loved the church. He gave up his life for her to make her holy and clean, washed by the cleansing of God’s word. He did this to present her to himself as a glorious church without a spot or wrinkle or any other blemish. Instead, she will be holy and without fault. In the same way, husbands ought to love their wives as they love their own bodies. For a man who loves his wife actually shows love for himself. No one hates his own body but feeds and cares for it, just as Christ cares for the church. And we are members of his body. As the Scriptures say, “A man leaves his father and mother and is joined to his wife, and the two are united into one.” This is a great mystery, but it is an illustration of the way Christ and the church are one. So again I say, each man must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband.'

Ephesians 5:21-33