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What Is The Goal Of A Christian Marriage?
The goal of a Christian marriage is for the husband and wife to be useful to God as individuals, as a couple and as a family.
How can a married couple do this? The first way is to always be thankful in all things for each other and for God's provisions. This includes being content with what their job can provide without going into debt.
The couple looks at everything they have, as a tool to be used to further the Kingdom of God. The couple understands that while God wants them to be happy, God doesn't want them to live for the pleasures of the world.
The couple has to be willing at any time to obey Jesus and sell everything they have and give the money to the poor and follow Him. If they would not truly be willing to do this at any time, they may have too much love of the world to be useful for God.
On the other hand God knows they need certain things in life to be able to serve him and raise a family. So if God provides the money for a home and cars, they should be thankful that God has provided these things and they should buy them as necessities in service to God. The focus therefore will not be on how elegant and numerous their possessions are but rather - what do we need to be able to serve God?
They will not live for the pride of life and the lusts of the flesh but rather to serve God. The pride of life includes fancy houses and new flashy cars and expensive vacations. The lusts of the flesh include anything that satisfies the flesh. Sexual lusts are only one of the many of lusts that occupy the time of most people. Other ways to satisfy the flesh include eating delicious food, watching TV and movies, following sports, going fishing, going on vacations, and anything else that the body and mind enjoys.
By the way, desiring sex with your spouse is not a “lust of the flesh”. The Bible teaches that marriage sexual relations is “undefiled” or pure and Paul instructs married couples to have sex regularly and Song of Solomon is a book about marriage sex and Proverbs encourages the husband to enjoy the wife of his youth. So, sexual desire for your spouse is never a “lust of the flesh” or sinful.
Marriage is a picture of the marriage of the church with Christ and just like it is never sin for the church to desire intimacy or fellowship with Christ, so also it is never sinful for the husband or wife to desire intimacy with each other.
While the Christian married couples recognize that God expects Christians to satisfy their desires of the flesh (lusts of their flesh) to some degree, they recognize that if they cannot do without those things, then they love them too much.
They see satisfying the desires (or lusts) of the flesh within God's moral laws in moderation, helps them to be better equipped to serve God. So they eat so they may serve God better.
And they may take time and money for a vacation or short missionary trip, to relax so they may serve God better.
And they may spend money to go out to eat, or they may read or listen to some www.MarriageRomance.com romantic or passionate writings, or they may focus in some other way of being romantic and passionate with each other, so that they may enjoy marriage sex, so that they may serve God with a better attitude of feeling close to each other and sexually satisfied.
And so they do everything with the ultimate goal in mind of being able to serve God better. If doing something is not serving God or will not in some way help them be happier or healthier or more emotionally equipped to serve God better, then they do not do it.
This is the way they can live their lives to glorify God.
When it comes to parenting, their goal is to raise the kids to love God and by example show them that serving God and obeying God is the way we thank God for all that God has done for us.
The married couple is so excited that Jesus died for their sins that they are actively telling others about Christ.
They want to work together as a team to change the world for Christ.
They demonstrate Christ's love through their strong loving relationship for each other and for their kids.
They find a good church home where they teach from the Bible and they are excited about studying the Bible at home alone or together, as time permits.
Parents that love God want to live a Holy life before God and their kids. They try to not be legalistic as the Bible teaches that this can cause the children to turn away from God.
The parents try to shelter their kids from the bad influences of the world, not so much by rules, but rather by practicing Godly habits, which exclude spending time watching entertainment that is not glorifying to God. This requires a genuine holy character in the parents so that they are not imposing legalistic rules on themselves for the sake of the children. If the parents do this, they will not be happy and their unhappiness will surface with fighting, arguing and secret bad habits. If they really love the Lord the righteous life style will come naturally and there won't be a need for many rules.
Their kids will be motivated by love for their parents to follow the same patterns of living they see their parents living.
This growing kids by love life style, produces kids that are on fire for the Lord and not waiting to get out of the house to do the things that a legalistic home would not permit.
Growing kids God's way should not be a focus of discipline but a focus of love and shaping the kids character by right patterns of living by the parents. But to be this way the parents naturally must have habits that are glorifying to God.
The problem in many Christian marriages is that the parents live a double standard life and so they try to control the kids with rules. The standard that the kids learn is that being a Christian means limiting your worldliness to a certain number of hours per day or a certain number of shows, etc.
In the Godly home the parents and kids are busy about God's business and about living and having fun together doing activities and serving others in the community and ministering to friends that they do not have much time for TV.
A married couple wants to ask themselves, “What can we do for God together as a team?”
While a Christian couple lives this way, they do not judge or condemn others who appear to be living solely for the pride of life and the lusts of the flesh.
The married couple studies the Bible to find the truth about controversial issues. They recognize that Jesus despised legalism because it hinders the spread of the Gospel of Jesus Christ because it weights people down with unnecessary bondage so that they end up not happy and not as able to serve God. They know from Acts that the Elders in Jerusalem did not impose many laws or rules on new Gentile Christians in order to not hinder the Gospel. And so they are be able to see the error in legalistic traditions in the church.
Because the married couple is not legalistic they are be able to witness effectively to non-Christian friends and neighbors who have rejected Christianity because they can see the hypocrisy in all the rules they feel the church demands.
The Christian married couple is transparent with each other and willing to take criticism from each other and will willing to grow together, realizing that God is counting on them to be His hands and His voice to the world.
The couple keeps a healthy respect for each other and are not be critical of each other, but rather in love they forgive and overlook imperfections in each other.
Since the couple is unselfish towards each other, the love between them grows, as they appreciate all that the other has done for them and they grow old with harmony and love that is indescribable.
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