The Highs and lows of Married life Throughout this year, Cord of 3 is focusing the theme of our articles on a “Battle Plan for the Family.” So far, we have looked at the concepts of Spiritual Warfare and Personal Attacks. Over the next three months, we will be focusing on the Attacks that are occurring directly against the family. For April of 2022 in particular, we are going to zero in on the marriage unit with a look at how being content versus being discontent is a battle for every couple. God’s design for the marriage is a beautiful design. In Genesis 2, God gave us a reason to consider marriage when he spoke the words, “it is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him an help meet for him” (Genesis 2:18). Here, He is not making a statement about something that he did wrong when he created Adam alone in the garden. He is giving us a reason to pause and consider what His created purposes might be reflecting. The marriage unit reflects the beauty, communion, and relationship that exists within the God-head. And as a result, God established the institution of the marriage, a one-flesh union between the man and his wife and they were both “naked and unashamed” (Genesis 2:25). Now, as a one flesh couple, it is good. It is good for a man to find a wife. It is good for a marriage to be strong emotionally and spiritually. It is good for a man and a woman to be open, transparent, and vulnerable with each other as they walk through the ups and downs in this life together. It is good for the man and his wife to bear children, raise them up to be followers of Jesus and it is through the one flesh marriage, that children first learn about God.
There are many days over the course of a marriage, seasons and occasions when Satan will attack the marriage unit attempting to divide the man and his wife from each other and ultimately from God. We must always remember that Satan’s goal is to destroy and that he will use whatever means he can to destroy not just the marriage, but the whole family. He attempts to devour the marriage through financial troubles, communication difficulties, parenting disagreements, or even through personality conflicts. But there is one attack that is utterly brutal and yet most often, the couple doesn’t even know he is attacking. This attack is called discontentment, a lack of satisfaction with one’s life as it is, a sense of grievance or annoyance. There are reasons why a couple might come to a point of discontentment with the marriage or with each other. It is easy, when you are doing daily life together, to begin to take each other for granted, to feel like things have slipped into a rut, or the busyness of life makes it hard to recharge the emotional batteries of the marriage. It is common for a couple to find themselves at the proverbial “7 year itch” and find themselves there about every 7 years. This discontentment is dangerous to the couple because it makes the grass look greener on the other side of the fence. Thoughts can get turned to “what ifs” or possibilities of things being different if the person were different. As these thoughts and feelings begin to etch their way into the marriage, Satan has surely been doing his work. How do we wage war against this |
Archives
August 2023
|