The second great event of life is my relationship with my spouse ….. The marriage bond is strongest when we share love, developmental identity growth, relational maturity, and a purpose with ministry. These are the things of life that do not fade …… This is also the period of my life that is generally the longest and goes through the most seasons. Marriage is a good thing and is God’s design for our operational functions, efficiency, and relational maturity process. Gen.2:18-25 Pr.18:22
The closest and most intimate relationship I have on this earth is with my spouse. This relationship compares to my relationship with my eternal Brother, Jesus. I don’t enter into my relationship with Jesus as a fully mature and perfectly functioning adult. I am actually told to enter as a little child and then I will mature and develop from there. This is the same with my spouse. We enter the marriage relationship as it is born, and we mature and learn together from that point on. We never fully arrive as far as operational perfection is concerned. The primary focus is that we share all of the phases and seasons of life together. We continually mature, unconditionally love, encourage each other, raise a family, and develop our entire life time. A single person will not attain the same level of relational maturity as a life long married relationally mature parent and elder.
Our marriage bond as a couple is a love bond and not a fear bond. We learn more and grow stronger bonds during the times of struggle and growth. These hard times are purposely there to help me mature. The more relationally mature I am, the more peaceful life is. The struggles are not as hard because I have greater capacity to handle them and I am able to see purpose in them.
We have purpose in life together that involves providing a safe place for personal growth, encouragement for each other, financial goals, educational goals, raising a healthy mature family, unconditional love for each other, and compatible hearts for ministry to those around us. Other than Jesus, no one else has the capacity to be as close, encourage me, and know me better, having mind-sight and God-sight into me than my spouse.
Just as with my relational connection with Jesus, it is not wise to end my relational connection to my spouse. With any irritations with Jesus or my spouse, I need to be able to return to my place of enjoying being with them again. Jesus may not answer a prayer the way I wish, so I am irritated at Him. My spouse my not be mature and is malfunctioning in some hurtful area to me. Whatever the case, as a wise and maturing person I need to be able to grow my capacity to hang in there and see what God sees and is doing in either case. What God has in mind will always be for good, even though it may be painful for me at the time. God uses these situations for my maturity and growth as well as for the maturing of my spouse. This may take some considerable time. My children are watching my example to see how to live during all these times and seasons of life.
Note; This topic of marriage is further developed in other writings on marriage on this site.