A coupe of weeks ago, a number of people from our church attended the Stand For Marriage Rally in Augusta, Maine. It was really a great rally, and it pumped up the audience to stand for marriage and become politically active. But the main speaker, Tony Perkins from the Family Research council in Washington, D.C., quite frankly got a little personal. He gave an excellent presentation. But going beyond the need to speak up for traditional marriage, he pointed out the need for us Christians to actually live out what we claim to believe. That's a common scriptural principle. First Thessalonians 2:12 is just one place Scripture commands us to, "walk worthy of God." And he pointed out a scandalous statistic - that the divorce rate for evangelical Christians is almost identical for that of the general population. That should be a surprising statistic, but it is shocking in its implication.
The truth is, many in the church don't have a lot to be proud of when it comes to making our marriages work. And if we can't do it within the church, what do we have to offer the world? But if the marriages of Christians are in as bad a shape as the marriages of the world, one of the problems must be the pulpits of America. Either the preachers aren't preaching what the Bible has to say about marriage, or the people aren't listening and obeying. God has a lot to say about how marriage is to be conducted.
I, for one, have been convicted of my need to preach again on marriage. I have preached on the topic many times in the past, but not in my current church. I don't know whether the people in my church have rock solid marriages, or if they are hanging on to their relationships by the skin of their teeth. But I do know that the Bible has the answers for them. If both the husband and the wife would faithfully follow the principles laid down in Scripture, their marriages would be strengthened and preserved. Their marriage would be indestructable. Their marriage can become one the world can emulate with confidence. It can be one of those that will last a lifetime. The Word of God is that powerful if it is believed and obeyed.
Because I believe the Bible is the answer for troubled marriages, I am going to preach a series of messages from the book of Ephesians from chapters five and six to my congregation. This portion of Scripture provides the most complete and definitive passages on the relationship between a husband and a wife in all of Scripture. Since I will be preaching on marriage over the next few weeks, I thought it would also make a good topic for here. If you follow these posts, I trust you will benefit by the study. May God bless and strengthen your marriage.
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