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marriage

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Posted by: angelofthelord

A HAPPY, CHRIST-CENTERED, BLESSED MARRIAGE STARTS BEFORE YOUR WEDDING
DAY! You don't need to buy the latest relationship book, you don't need to
watch the false-hope merchants like Oprah, Dr. Phil, and the rest of the
"entertainers" who only use this issue to garner ratings, you don't need to
spend hundreds of dollars on the latest "conference," you simply need to
follow God's Word! Get this Devotional to your children and to every young
person you know who is not married. Get this Devotional to every family
member, friend, and person you know who is not married. These words can
save someone the heartache and pain and consequences of a bad marriage they
will have to deal with for the rest of their life!


Building a spiritual foundation to your relationship.

A happy, Christ-centered, blessed marriage starts before your wedding day.
Sadly, almost 100% of the books and tapes and other resources on marriage
are geared to people AFTER they get married, not before. You will never
hear this message by the false-hope merchants like Oprah, Dr. Phil, and the
rest since these "entertainers" get their ratings by showing you the sad,
train-wrecked lives of people. Saddest of all, you will probably never hear
this message coming from a pulpit on Sunday, regardless of the name of the
church, to a congregation that desperately needs to hear this important and
life-changing word. Even those churches and pastors that do offer
pre-marital counseling, normally just gloss over what I am going to share
with you today instead of forcing the man and woman to deal with the hard
questions and issues they will face in marriage.

MY FRIEND, MARRIAGE IS A LIFETIME COMMITMENT TO YOUR SPOUSE AND TO GOD.
OTHER THAN YOUR SALVATION, IT IS THE MOST IMPORTANT DECISION THAT YOU WILL
MAKE IN THIS LIFETIME. LISTEN TO ME CAREFULLY. THE TIME TO BUILD A STRONG,
SUCCESSFUL, CHRIST-CENTERED MARRIAGE IS NOT AFTER YOU SAY "I DO," IT IS
BEFORE!!!

The key to a Godly marriage is to build a spiritual foundation to your
relationship before you even consider marriage. It is during this time of
"dating" or "courting," that the hard work of laying the foundation for a
successful marriage is done. In my vast experience in dealing with
literally hundreds of thousands of marriages, the biggest mistake I see is
men and women who did NOTHING to build a real spiritual foundation to their
relationship prior to getting married. Even Christians fall for the lies of
this world in regard to what happens prior to getting married. This is the
exact reason why such a high percentage of people look at marriage as
nothing more than a legal date.

When you first meet someone that you are attracted to, there is that
"magical time" when your emotions are controlling you. This is the most
critical time in a relationship. However, instead of using this time
productively, it usually ends up being a period where very little real work
towards the relationship takes place, and in too many people's lives,
actually becomes a destructive time. This is the critical time when the
foundation of a relationship is being laid. The foundation ends up being
built on pure "feelings," shared interests, having someone so you are not
alone, and so many other things, including the number one foundation most
relationships are built on, SEX. Just like the Bible teaches we have to
build our home on a rock and not sand, the foundation of most relationships,
even amongst Christians, is built on sand instead of the ROCK, Jesus Christ!

So how do you build a spiritual foundation to your relationship? You do it
by praying together. You do it by reading God's Word together. You do it
by going to church and worshipping together. You do it by finding ways to
serve the Lord together. You do it by sitting down and discussing spiritual
things and how they apply to your day to day lives. You do ALL of these
things over a period of TIME! How long? Every relationship is different
but I counsel couples on taking a minimum of a year to work DAILY on
building a spiritual foundation to their relationship.

I am always amazed at the number of people I deal with who have slept
together, engaged in every kind of sex act imaginable, but have NEVER, EVER,
prayed together. They have no problem engaging in the most intimate acts a
man and woman can engage in physically, yet have never even once spent even
a minute praying together. The sad reality is, this includes many people
who are MARRIED!

Let me help you understand what all of this accomplishes. First, we all
know that God's Word warns us about being unequally yoked with a
non-believer in 2 Corinthians 6:14. Someone who is not saved is not going
to want to pray with you, or read God's Word with you, or go to church with
you, or find ways to serve the Lord with you. You are going to know
IMMEDIATELY if this is a person you should even be trying to get involved
with. Please, listen to God on this issue. If you could read the emails of
horror I get daily from men and women who ignored this warning in God's Word
you would never even consider getting involved with someone who is not
saved. God said this to save you from incredible heartache and pain.
Listen to Him!

One of the biggest problems I hear each day is men and women who tell me
that the one they married said they were a Christian, they went to church
with them a few times, but 5 minutes after they left the altar they found
out they were into porn, they drank too much, were on drugs, were having
affairs, would beat them, and all other kinds of sinful behavior. Listen,
95% of these types of situations are avoidable by building a spiritual
foundation to your relationship, over time, prior to getting married. It is
virtually impossible for you to pray with a person day after day, read God's
Word with a person day after day, go to church with a person and worship
together week after week, find ways to serve the Lord together, talk about
spiritual things and how they apply to your life, do all of this over a year
or more and wake up the day after you get married with a person who is into
any of this type of sinful behavior.

One of the things that happens over this year plus that you are building a
spiritual foundation to your relationship is that God begins to speak to
your heart about the person you are with. Over that year plus, God will
clearly confirm to you both, over and over in many ways that this truly is
the person HE wants you to spend the rest of your life with. If a person is
involved in any type of sinful behavior, it is virtually impossible to mask
it or hide it over a long period of time, especially when you are spending
that time in prayer, God's Word, and in church. If they have these issues
in their life, God will show you, IF YOU WILL KEEP YOUR EYES OPEN! What
happens is people close their eyes and refuse to see the warning signs God
gives you!

Please know that I am fully aware that each person has the free will to make
their own choices. There is nothing you can do to insure at some point, 1
year, 2 years, 10 years, or even 30 years later, that your spouse will not
choose to fall into sin of some kind, sin that could greatly damage and even
destroy your marriage. However, this is also why you must pray for your
spouse each day, continue to build that spiritual foundation you both
started prior to marriage throughout the rest of your lives together. It
does not insure your spouse will never fall into sin, but it makes it so
much more difficult when they are walking with the Lord each day, just like
it becomes difficult for you to fall into any sort of continual sin in your
life when you are faithfully serving and following the Lord each day.

Another thing that you need to be doing during this time you are building a
spiritual foundation to your relationship is to begin to talk about and work
out all of the real life, day to day issues you will be facing once you are
married. How will the finances be handled? What are your goals and desires
for work and your careers? What about children? During this year plus that
you are building your spiritual foundation, you also need to be talking
through and coming into agreement on the day to day issues of your life
together. You have to COMMUNICATE! A huge problem in many marriages is
that two people who have committed their lives to each other have never had
a real open and honest conversation!

One other important issue that must be addressed are people who have been
married before. Divorce is no different that having a 2 foot gash in your
stomach. It is a WOUND and wounds need time to heal! You do not heal the
wound of divorce by immediately getting married again. Also, no matter how
bad the previous spouse may have been, there are always TWO PEOPLE involved
in every divorce. People who get divorced will jump right back into a new
marriage and NEVER even begin to deal with whatever issues they had in their
life that contributed to the divorce. If you are divorced, before you even
consider a new relationship, take the time to heal as well as to reflect on
the mistakes you made. If you are getting into a relationship with a person
who is divorced, understand that you need to take even more time building
that spiritual foundation plus working through the issues you will be facing
after you are married, since there is the additional baggage a divorced
person brings into a relationship and marriage.

The fact is, the biggest mistake I
see daily in troubled and failed marriages happened BEFORE the marriage even
took place. People meet, start a relationship, and the foundation of that
relationship ends up being everything BUT Jesus! I am amazed how people
will make a lifetime commitment to someone they really don't even know, and
then are totally shocked when they come to find out this person is NOT the
same person they had that 2 hour date with a few times!

Over your lifetime, you will have a close intimate relationship with only a
handful of people. Out of the billions of people on this planet, you will
only have that close, intimate, life-changing relationship with a handful of
people. These relationships will greatly determine the course of your life.
The choices you make in these relationships will follow you for the rest of
your life. You are being an absolute fool, if you do not take the time and
effort and direction God will give you on who those people are supposed to
be. THE COURSE OF YOUR VERY LIFE IS AT STAKE!

For those who are already married, it is
never too late to start building a firm, spiritual foundation to your
relationship. I pray that you will start to do that today. For those who
are not married, please understand that the person you marry is the most
important choice you will make other than to accept Christ as your Savior.
Please read and pray over these words today. They are coming right from God
to you. He loves you so much and only wants the best for your life.
Marriage is God's holy institution. Do all that you can to insure a happy,
Christ-centered, blessed marriage BEFORE you get married by building a
spiritual foundation to your relationship.





Posted by: Sulten

This is such a good and always a timely message I think as we have so many here who come to this website requesting prayer for their marriages. Thanks angeloftheLord for this.


Posted by: firekracker

amen and amen. Unfortunatly, we get involved with people who we know are not right for us just expecting it to be temporary and casual because of attraction or situation, etc. We get lonely and bored and accept Mr./Mrs. Right Now while waiting on Mr./Mrs. Right.


Posted by: Christian Commando

From when I worked with youth groups, I taught Scriptural lessons in how to develope relationships that were pleasing to god, from casual, to good friends, to boyfriend- girlfriend, to engagements and marriage.

One of the biggest problems were with helping them understand our lives and bodies are a gift of God and we should treat others as well as ourselves as such, so that God will be pleased with us and our relationships, and it will Glorify God, in His creation of us in his Image, plus honoring Him thru His Word for guidance.

God Bless!!


Posted by: Sulten

I am putting this up on the board again because it's so timely and significant to our ultimate happiness or misery we'll encounter in our lives. Thought it was well worth reading again.