Made for commitment

I was not a believer when my relationship with my husband began 20 years ago. Within seven days I felt sure I was in love with him, and within six months we moved in together. It was five more years before we officially got a piece of paper to be married in the eyes of the law. 

I did not understand marriage then, in a biblical sense. Honestly, I wasn’t too bothered about that piece of paper. What was important to me was that we had loved each other from the beginning, and the commitment happened naturally out of that. 

Now my husband is a believer too, I sometimes wonder whether God orchestrated things behind the scenes so we would meet. When I wrote: “Please send me a man” in my journal, was it God who answered the prayer, rather than the ‘universe’ that I believed in then? 

Deceived by the heart 

Despite the fact that my relationship had a very non-Christian beginning, it did work out. But I wouldn’t be telling the whole story if I didn’t tell you how, before I was married, I had so many crushes and casual encounters and relationships with all the wrong people. More than once I was convinced someone was ‘the one’ but was mistaken. As it says in Jeremiah 17:9: “The heart is deceitful above all things”, and I was constantly deceiving myself about the men I met. Then there were those who I knew I didn’t want relationships with, where it was just for the night, or a week or a few months. And moments when I was just too drunk to control what I was doing at all. At the time I thought it was about fun and freedom. I didn’t realise I was a complete slave to sin. 

We are like swans, designed to stay together for life

For a ‘fun’ birthday present before my husband and I got married I took us to get our astrological charts done to look at compatibility. I knew we were compatible, so it wasn’t that I was worried, but I wanted to explore the deeper reasons why. The astrologer mentioned that ‘‘relationships aren’t always forever, and more about what we can learn from them”. 

This is an idea that is quite common in the new age, that our souls have lessons to learn and when they do so they move on – to be alone, or with another. It never sat right with me. The enemy is working hard, introducing ideas into the culture, to keep us from committing to one for life. These include the destructive proliferation of porn, to concepts such as casual ‘hook-ups’ and polyamory, and new age teachings. 

Designed for relationship

Yet what strikes me is that, despite all this, even millions of non-believers remain happily married for life. We are like swans, designed to stay together for life. We are made in the image of a God that commits, and oftentimes, we do stay together, even when our initial commitment does not take place in relationship with God. 

God created marriage long before paperwork and ceremonies. In the time of Adam and Eve marriage seemed so simple. Adam needed a companion and so God made a wife for him.  

Yet after the Fall, human relationships and marriage became more complicated. When Jesus met the woman at the well, he told her: “The fact is, you have had five husbands, and the man you now have is not your husband” (John 4:18). Romans 13 tells us that we must follow the laws of the land, and a marriage now consists of a contract. 

What strikes me about a contract is that it doesn’t protect us from heartbreak and divorce, or the pain of being deceived by our own desires. Covenant on the other hand, is different. To marry under God’s eyes is about so much more than that piece of paper, or even the feelings of love we have in the moment. It’s a promise that is meant to be as trustworthy as God when he says: “Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you” (Hebrews 13:5). We are not designed to go through multiple sexual relationships and deal with abandonment over and over again. 

A covenant protects us from suffering because when two people are really listening to God, they are much more likely to marry the right person, and understand that the difficulties they go through are part of the process so they commit to getting through them with the guidance of the Holy Spirit.