Marriage Made in Paradise

there is to it?’” and she started crying. She said, “Please sir, tell me there’s something more!”
I said, “Yes, it’s called intimacy. It’s what the Bible calls ‘the two shall become one.’”
— Josh McDowell, Moody Founder’s Week 1986

The Promise of Marriage
The basic underlying obligation in marriage is to meet the other’s need for companionship. When a couple takes marriage vows, whether they realize it or not (and often they do not), they are vowing to provide companionship for one another for the rest of their lives; that is what their vows amount to.
∙ Notice, they do not vow to receive companionship, but to provide it for one another. Marriage itself is an act of love in which one person vows to meet another’s need for life, no strings attached.
That means that when a husband or a wife complains, “I am not getting what I want out of marriage,” his or her statement is nonsensical. And you must reply, “You did not enter marriage in order to get something for yourself. You vowed to give something to your partner. Marriage is not a bargain in which each partner says, ‘I will give so much in return for so much.’ Each vows to give all that is necessary to meet his or her spouse’s need for companionship, whether or not he or she receives anything in return. Therefore, the only question for you is, ‘Are you fulfilling your vows?’ “Many marry for what they can get out of the marriage; but that is lust, not love, and is biblically untenable. We ought ask “How can I please God and my mate?” not “how can I please myself?” To please God by rightly pleasing one’s spouse is the basic obligation of marriage.

The Permanent Relationship, Genesis 2:24,
A. Marriage involves Leaving.
“Leaving” is a strong word that means “abandon.” However the word must be balanced with Deuteronomy 4:9 and 1 Timothy 5:8. Our children were given to us for a period of time. The parent child relationship is a temporary relationship. While the husband wife relationship is permanent.

B. Marriage also involves cleaving.
The Primary relationship is between parents
C. Marriage also involves Weaving
Leadership magazine carried a short item sent in by Cathern Paxton that illustrates the importance of letting God be uppermost in the marital relationship. She wrote, “A braid appears to contain only two strands of hair. But it is impossible to create a braid with only two strands. If the two could be put together at all, they would quickly unravel. Herein lies the mystery: What looks like two strands requires a third. The third strand, though not immediately evident, keeps the strand tightly woven.” Then Paxton concluded, “In a Christian marriage, God’s presence, like the third strand in a braid, holds husband and wife together.”

In Marriage & Divorce magazine, the March 1980 issue, these statistics were given:
Right now in the United States 1 out of 3 marriages ends in divorce.
However, in a marriage where both people were married in a church, the divorce rate is 1 out of 50.
In a marriage where the couple is married in a church, they attend church every Sunday, and they pray and read the Bible together, the divorce rate is 1 out of 1,105.
That’s the difference that Jesus Christ makes in a marriage.

The Perfect Couple
A woman went to the police station with her next-door neighbor to report that her husband was missing.