LOVE AND MATRIMONY: Love, Romance and Marriage

While God calls some women to singleness, He calls others to married life. Marriage is a wonderful gift from God to be cultivated, cared for, and celebrated. It is a sacred union, which the Bible even uses as an analogy for God's relationship to His people, and Christ's love for His church.

Every woman wants her marriage to last. But in our society when divorces happen every day, sometimes it is easy to look around and despair. Yet the Bible tells us that great and lasting marriages can happen. They take some work, but they are possible! Here are some thoughts on what is required in having a marriage that will bring joy for a lifetime.

The first key to a successful marriage is a love relationship with the Lord Jesus. It is with His love that we truly love another human being. Marriage is a unique relationship in which we can express the deepest and highest of love possible between two human beings, but it begins with loving God and letting His love flow through us. A commitment to Christ is essential to staying committed to marriage and to the wonderful man you married.

Love requires a balance in desiring the happiness and goodness of another. When we love our husbands, we want to make them happy as well as allow God to use us to make them into better men. Some women find it easy to make their husbands happy. They do whatever their husbands want regardless of whether God would have them to so. Other women focus too much on trying to change their husbands to become better men. Love involves a balance between these two ends. Our desire to please our husbands expresses itself in listening to topics that interest them and doing things that they enjoy (even if it means football games once in awhile). Our desire to see godly character developed in them involves our prayers, our own godly lifestyle, and being sensitive to speak as the Holy Spirit directs us.

As Christian wives, we know that the Bible teaches us to be submitted to our husbands. Christian submission isn't supposed to be a form of modern-day slavery or being a living doormat for abuse. Rather, Biblical submission is developing a gentle and quiet spirit that seeks to honor God and our husbands through gracious living and loving, and yes, that will sometimes mean obedience, forgiveness, and sacrifice on our parts.

Finally, love is unconditional and constant. As Elisabeth Elliot wrote, "Love is dynamic, not static." This means that we love our husbands through life's unexpected changes and in spite of the changes that may never come. That is why marriage begins with promises. Elisabeth Elliot, in her book Let Me Be a Woman wrote, "Your provider may someday lose his job. Your strength may show unexpected weakness. Your knight in shining armor may experience a public defeat. Your teacher may make a mistake that you tried to warn him about. Your lover may become a helpless patient, sick, sore, and sad, needing your presence and care every minute of the day and night. ‘This isn't the man I married,' you will say, and it will be true. But you married him for better or for worse, in sickness and in health, and those tremendous promises took into account the possibility of radical change. That's why promises were necessary." But do not despair at the overwhelming seriousness of those promises. Indeed, they were very serious. But the grace of God that allowed you to make such promises in the first place is also enough to keep you true to them. Ultimately, we see that love begins and ends with God.

Related Pages
Famous Quotes on Love
Writing Love Letters
Ideas for Romance
Romantic Images from Art

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