What About Obedient Marriage?

In the stage of my life that I am in right now, I am con­fronted with the mon­u­men­tal deci­sion of what will I do? Should I stay in the gov­ern­ment? Should I leave infor­ma­tion tech­nol­ogy? Should I go to sem­i­nary? Maybe I should go on staff with The Trav­el­ing Team? But the pre­vail­ing prob­lem I’ve noticed in most of my friends are their pri­or­i­ties in decid­ing the path that they will take.

I have asked a lot of my Chris­t­ian friends about what they are going to do after grad­u­a­tion, and I have yet to have one single person start with con­cerns for their min­istry over earthly desires. I keep asking in hopes that one day I’ll get an answer along the lines of, “well, I must make a deci­sion where my min­istry can be the focal point of my life.” And this ide­ol­ogy creeps over into the thoughts on mar­riage in the Chris­t­ian com­mu­nity. The most impor­tant ques­tion in mar­riage should be: Should I marry, and if I do how can we align visions in our ministries?

I heard a man by the name of Tim Lewis, who is the pres­i­dent of William Carey Inter­na­tional Uni­ver­sity, on project for one of our Per­spec­tives classes. He spoke very briefly about his phi­los­o­phy on “strategic marriage.” That is, how can mar­riage be used as a strate­gic force to better exalt Christ and fur­ther the Gospel? In one of the most quoted chap­ters of the Bible on mar­riage, this was the very empha­sis of Paul:

But I want you to be free from con­cern. One who is unmar­ried is con­cerned about the things of the Lord, how he may please the Lord; but one who is mar­ried is con­cerned about the things of the world, how he may please his wife, and his inter­ests are divided. The woman who is unmar­ried, and the virgin, is con­cerned about the things of the Lord, that she may be holy both in body and spirit; but one who is mar­ried is con­cerned about the things of the world, how she may please her hus­band.
1 Corinthi­ans 7:32-34

Paul directly deals with the fact that mar­riage can detract us from our ulti­mate pur­pose–ful­fill­ing the call of God in our min­istries. It is when we become mar­ried that “our inter­ests become divided.” We must uti­lize mar­riage as an act of obe­di­ence to ful­fill the procla­ma­tion of Christ. In this, we can strive to avoid our inter­ests being divided from serv­ing Christ in our marriages.

In fact, way back when God cre­ated Eve for Adam: “Then the LORD God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone; I will make him a helper suit­able for him” (Gen 2:18). But Adam need a helper, but for what?

God cre­ated man in His own image, in the image of God He cre­ated him; male and female He cre­ated them. God blessed them; and God said to them, “Be fruit­ful and mul­ti­ply, and fill the earth, and subdue it; and rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”
Gen­e­sis 1:27-28

Eve was given to Adam to help ful­fill his min­istry! Adam’s min­istry was to be fruit­ful and mul­ti­ply while ruling over the ani­mals! From Sarah bear­ing Isaac to Abra­ham to David and Bathsheba to Hosea and Gomer, God prov­i­den­tially pro­vides women to men to ful­fill their min­istries. It is this under­stand­ing that we must have to better under­stand­ing the Bib­li­cal inten­tion of marriage.

Even though Christ was obvi­ously never mar­ried in an earthly sense, God has pro­vided the “Bride” or the Body of Christ to ful­fill Christ’s min­istry to the glory of God the Father: “And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, made ready as a bride adorned for her husband” (Rev 21:2).

I chal­lenge all those my age who are reflect­ing on mar­riage to not think of it as some­thing that is meant solely for each other. Mar­riage is meant for the exal­ta­tion of the glory of God. If our mar­riage does not reflect the love of Christ, and we don’t use our mar­riage as a means to the exal­ta­tion of Christ among the nations then our mar­riage is to be in vain.

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7 total comments, leave your comment.
  1. Julianne
    Oct 23rd 2005

    Very nicely said. Mar­riage should reflect the rela­tion­ship Christ has with the Church. It is to be acted out by the exam­ple Christ has given us. If it fails to do that, we must rethink how we’re doing it.

  2. Becky
    Oct 24th 2005

    Chris,
    This is my strug­gle with rela­tion­ships, at the moment. When I wrote in my blog about the rela­tion­ships in my life, I wasn’t talk­ing about it being shal­low, which is how it may have come across. I was talk­ing about whether or not a mar­riage in my case would enhance my min­istry. Whether or not God wanted me to be mar­ried to be more effec­tive. I think that the biggest thing we all need to remem­ber is patience. God will make every­thing happen when it needs to happen. Not when we want it, like spoiled chil­dren. I need to remem­ber this more than anyone else, I think. I definetly agree with you on this. A mar­riage is only ment to glo­rify God, because every­thing we do is sup­posed to glo­rify God.

    Becky

  3. Jessica
    Oct 24th 2005

    Here’s some­thing that I heard a year or so ago: Only marry some­one if you will serve God better together than apart. I think that this fits with what you’re saying. Inter­est­ing con­nec­tion with Christ and the Church being His Bride to ful­fill God’s pur­pose. I never made that con­nec­tion before.

  4. Katrina
    Oct 24th 2005

    Alright, so I can post a random comment..but not an impor­tant one..let’s try this… CoMar­riage may be meant to glo­rify God, but it is also a gift from God for us to enjoy.

    I think that if you are called to min­istry, then the person you marry is a very impor­tant decision…if you marry some­one who would rather live a “normal” life, then you are def­i­nitely going to be torn between ful­fill­ing what God has called you to do and what your spouse is want­ing. So I agree with what you said…but also, keep in mind that mar­riage is still marriage- and love and attrac­tion are involved. It’s not merely an emo­tional or a com­mit­ment thing, but also not just a for­mu­laic thing.

    Rela­tion­ships, espe­cially inti­mate ones, are infi­nitely com­pli­cated. Rela­tion­ships with spouses, like our rela­tion­ship with God, are prob­a­bly the most com­plex.

    And an inter­est­ing note on “helper”- I guess the orig­i­nal word is “ezer kenegdo” which all other times in the Bible it is used to describe God, when you need him to come through for you DES­PER­ATELY. So helper is really too mild of a term. Just an inter­est­ing side note I learned recently :)

  5. Elizabeth
    Oct 26th 2005

    Rela­tion­ships and min­istry have to go hand in hand I think. A wise man (also my boss and the father of my boyfriend) told me once that the best way to met some­one who is like minded with you in min­istry is to:

    1) Serve God

    2) See who you’re serv­ing with who is sim­i­lar in their goals
    3) Decided if serv­ing together (in a rela­tion­ship) is right for you

    He said it much more elo­quently than I ever will, but you get the idea. Yep, rela­tion­ships are a struggle…but it is an amaz­ing joy to be a helper and an amaz­ing joy to see both myself and my boyfriend have suc­cess in min­istry because our hearts beat the same way.

  6. Ashley Keen
    Oct 27th 2005

    This is a really inter­est­ing post. I sup­pose I have a unique per­spec­tive on this right now since I’m work­ing on month four of twelve of no dating. It’s kind of cool that I’m in a dif­fer­ent place in life that a lot of the other people I’m grad­u­at­ing with. They seem to feel rushed to get mar­ried. When I was dating I felt that way, too. That was actu­ally one of the rea­sons I stopped to start with. I had no other goals and I was quite self­ish. I didn’t want to wait for God’s timing, I wanted to make my own. It think that that’s what most dis­obe­di­ent mar­riages are all about. Even within equally yolked rela­tion­ships, I think we some­times push and maneu­ver our­selves into sit­u­a­tions that make us vul­ner­a­ble when we don’t wait for his timing. A pretty smart guy, when I was still fight­ing with God about whether to actu­ally swear off dating or to just try and keep a better handle on myself, pointed that out to me.

    Per­son­ally, I think that when you find the person that God has chosen for you to marry, they will have been expressly chosen to aide your min­istry. Unfor­tu­nately, people in rela­tion­ships will often feel like they’ve found the person that God has chosen long before they actu­ally have. That’s why it’s impor­tant to stay fully grounded in God’s will and remem­ber than Eve was given to Adam, they didn’t have to search around Eden look­ing for each other.

    Side­note: Kat­rina!

  7. Sidney
    Mar 7th 2008

    I don’t believe that mar­riage is intended to “help men with their ministries.” God is less con­cerned about our min­istries than we think. God intended mar­ri­gae to ful­fill his ulti­mate pur­pose, “to make us like Christ.” Two are better than one, the sup­port, work­ing of patience, matra­tion in love, ser­vice, sub­mis­sion, devel­oped in mar­riage are key! Don’t go and find a woman just so that she can work along­side you…find a woman that will love and sup­port you…and one that you can love and support…so together you both with be more Christ-​like on that glo­ri­ous day!

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