Things heard about the differences between men and women:
Any married man should forget his mistakes-there’s no use in two people remembering the same thing. Men wake up as good-looking as they went to bed. Women somehow deteriorate during the night. A woman marries a man expecting he will change, but he doesn’t. A man marries a woman expecting that she won’t change and she does. A woman has the last word in any argument. Anything a man says after that is the beginning of a new argument. There are only two times when a man doesn’t understand a woman: before marriage and after marriage.
AHH, marriage! A thing made in heaven. It can either be like heavenly music or thunder and lightning. Things can be ok, not ok, or really, really good or really, really bad. Believe it or not, God has made a way for marriage to be good. It is a very important institution to God. Marriage is the only agreement on earth that He says represents His relationship with his people.
And yet, people regularly destroy their marriages because they do not start out with God’s plan. By kind of making it up as you go along, you fail to get the detailed plan of where all the landmines are in marriage. The example and motive in having a good marriage is Jesus Christ and His Church.
Ephesians 5:25-29 (KJV) Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it; …So ought men to love their wives as their own bodies. He that loves his wife loves himself. For no man ever yet hated his own flesh; but nourishes and cherishes it, even as the Lord the church:
The marriage is the only institution on earth that is to display the picture of Christ and His church. Not a business or extended family. Jesus is the Groom and the Church is the Bride.. the bride follows Christ because no one else has laid down His life for her. This is so convicting…. Husbands, our wives should follow us because they are overwhelmed with our care for them….
Here is a statement by Napoleon, the great conqueror: “Alexander, Caesar, Charlemagne and I have founded empires. But on what did we rest the creation of our genius? Upon force. Jesus Christ founded His empire upon love; and at this hour millions of men would die for Him.”
Love and honor hold marriage together. We know if guilt is the only thing that holds a marriage together, you are in trouble….. Marriage has got to be built on God’s plan and not according to our present culture’s standards, not according to the sitcoms or soap operas, but according to His Word.
Ephesians 5:21-28 (NIV)
Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ. Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord. [I CAN HEAR SOME WIVES STEAMING UP RIGHT NOW!!!] For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything. Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word,
and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless. In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. [GOD KEEPS PUTTING THE MAJOR RESPONSIBILITY ON THE MAN!!]
If there is love and honor in a couple, it makes it hard to run away from the marriage. I know the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence. But the water bill is probably a lot higher too.
Start by committing to God’s plan and watch Him work in your marriage.