Love God Greatly - Made for CommunityNäide

This passage describes the purpose of creation of woman and the establishment of marriage. God, who is Love Incarnate, wanted someone with whom to give His love, so He handcrafted and breathed His life into man. Similarly, God saw that man needed someone with whom to share God’s love. Animals just wouldn’t do. So God created the female from man’s own flesh. Man is God-breathed and filled with God’s love…so when man pours God’s love into the woman who is a part of him, God’s love will never dwell alone. God, man, and woman create the perfect union united through God’s love. Together, male and female, as one flesh in marriage, illustrate the oneness and mutual love that God, man, and woman were created to experience. God created woman as the perfect complement and helper to man – to receive God’s love through him without doubt or hesitation. God’s plan of “one flesh” in marriage can only come about when both parties have control over their flesh and ego and are willing to yield to the power of the Spirit. If you are an unmarried woman, do you find yourself wondering where your suitable helper is? Are you joyfully serving God as you wait patiently for Him to send the husband He has specifically prepared for you? Will you consider singlehood a blessing from God seeing as He has you purposefully in this current state? If you are a married woman, do you understand the purpose and plan of God’s original design for marriage? Are you prayerfully lifting up your marriage and your husband in prayer to God daily? In what areas is the Lord stretching and developing you spiritually through your marriage - Are you growing in compromise and submission? Are you releasing the need and desire to be right no matter the cost? Are you letting go of the need to have your own way? Are you becoming more willing and eager to take on and share the burdens of another imperfect person? Are you growing in forgiveness? Are you able to support and serve your husband’s vision even when you can’t see it or understand it? It is easy to forget that God created woman first for relationship with Himself, then later with a suitable helper. God is our first love. He is crazy passionate overwhelmingly in love with us. He knows us perfectly and intimately, and He wants us to desire to know Him the same way. When we purpose to first know Him intimately and experience His love, compassion, and grace, then we are better able to pour out that same sacrificial selfless love into the man whom the Lord gifts us. “One flesh” is not just sharing life together in marriage. It’s not just sharing our bodies, our space, and our material possessions. It is sharing thoughts and dreams, joys and sufferings, hopes and fears, successes and failures. It is clinging to one another while keeping our hearts, minds, and souls saturated with God’s love for us individually and as a couple. For better or for worse is all part of God’s perfect plan for uniting in God’s love with one of His imperfect children. PRAYER: Father God, You are our Creator who desires intimate connection and relationship with Your daughters. Refresh, renew, and restore the passion between You and I, so that the outpouring of our divine relationship will flood all of my other earthly relationships. For those that are unmarried, remind us that faith in You involves trusting that Your timing and Your plans for us are perfect. For those that are married, I pray that Your marriages do not slip into relationships of obligation, but that be filled with passion and intimacy reflecting Your love for us. Lord, we pray against the spiritual attack against Your divine institution of marriage and pray for restoration of harmony, peace, love, and forgiveness between all men and women. In Jesus’ name. Amen.