Happily Ever After: Devotions From Time of GraceSample

When You’re Engaged: Marriages Belong to God There is nothing particularly sacred or holy about business contracts. When they are no longer benefiting you, you can terminate them as you please. Don’t like that lease? Don’t renew it. People who look at marriage like a lease can’t possibly build one to last. When you are always looking at an open door behind you, you lack motivation to work through the challenges that come upon sinful people in a sinful world, and you will then miss out on the satisfaction and bonding that come from mutually conquered problems. People who look at marriage the way they look at their business contracts imagine that they are the owners. God begs to differ. As the inventor of marriage and as the inventor of humanity itself, he dares to claim our marriages as his own. Seriously! Jesus said, “What God has joined together, let man not separate” (Matthew 19:6). God would like you to see your marriage as a beautiful, valuable possession that belongs to him, like a priceless porcelain vase, but that he willing lets you hold and enjoy. If you drop it, you are not only losing out yourself, but you are smashing something that God thinks is his.