Wedding vs Marriage
It’s wedding season! (and I don’t have one booking, lol). Weddings are absolutely beautiful, it’s always a pleasure attending one. But there’s something that gets to me with today’s society’s fascination (if not obsession) with weddings (personally I blame wedding programs like OPW). I feel like we put more emphasis on the event and not the institution. I say this because there’s not much effort made to get people ready for marriage compared to the tools available to get you ready for your wedding day; I bet you wedding planners are busier than premarital counsellors.
Why this concern? Because marriage is such a complex thing. So complex it has people studying it, thick books written about it, seminars held about it. Jimmy Evan’s entire ministry focuses on marriage alone. My past two assignments have been centred on marriage and family counselling. I’ve gone through books and books all trying to figure out how to solve problems that arise in marriage relationships. There are over twenty diverse therapy models under this type of counselling alone. As part of the assignment, I had to come up with my own model of therapy. I thought it was a simple task; that was before I read through the other models with their vast explanations, diagrams, and case studies. I realized I had my head in too deep and gave the assignment a rest until the very last minute.
I have a tendency of giving things a rest (not quitting) when I feel overwhelmed. That’s kinda what has been happening with my blog. I just didn’t know where to begin…those other scholarss who wrote those books and came up with those models were so smart, I felt they were way out of my league. That’s until I was doing laundry and the Spirit reminded me of something my excessively wise pastor always says: The Word of God needs to be the final authority in a marriage if any problem will be solved. With that I was reminded that I needed not a doctorate to be smart enough for the task, I had the wisdom of God, the very same God who instituted marriage. Remembering this, that God is the beginning of marriage, that it’s defined by Him alone, that it’s for His glory, made me realize that this is where we need to come back to if we are to have marriages as beautiful as our weddings.
Scripture is littered with guidelines concerning marriage and family life and these guidelines are linked to how God defines marriage. And with God, marriage stands for something greater than just the two people involved in it. You’ll notice as you study passages like Ephesians 5 that some of the guidelines seem outdated in this society we’re living in. The idea of the wife being submissive in marriage is one that is rejected and fought against. That is because they have a wrong understanding of what submission is. I’ll take a page from T.D Jakes ‘Celebrating Marriage’ book to highlight the issue of the wife’s submission in marriage.
“Many women believe that to submit to their husbands is to lie down, roll over, and play dead. By submitting to her husband’s decision, she has acknowledged, accepted, and approved his domination of her and sealed her inferiority to him. She has allowed her identity to be dwarfed or destroyed by his ego and selfishness. This is the lie the devil would like all wives to swallow because it naturally incites resentment and rebellion. But understood correctly, submission is a freedom word, a deliverance word, a word of position and function that brings a woman to higher and higher levels of intimacy with the Lord and greater power and influence in her marriage. Submission is about compliance, cooperation, and exceeding influence. And when the kingdom principle of submission is followed, harmony and unity in spirit can be reached even when there is disagreement.”
I’m picking on submission because it’s a hard principle compared to the principle of love which we all accept and agree with. My point is, if we’re going to get it right, we’re gonna have to do it God’s way because He owns this thing.
So as wedding season gets in full swing, and as our social media accounts will be flooded with pictures of happy brides and proud grooms, let’s remember to keep the main thing the main thing. As much as we refer people to dress makers and caters as they prepare for their big day, let’s refer them to marriage counsellors and pastors to prepare them for their life time.
PS: I got a good mark for that assignment
Why this concern? Because marriage is such a complex thing. So complex it has people studying it, thick books written about it, seminars held about it. Jimmy Evan’s entire ministry focuses on marriage alone. My past two assignments have been centred on marriage and family counselling. I’ve gone through books and books all trying to figure out how to solve problems that arise in marriage relationships. There are over twenty diverse therapy models under this type of counselling alone. As part of the assignment, I had to come up with my own model of therapy. I thought it was a simple task; that was before I read through the other models with their vast explanations, diagrams, and case studies. I realized I had my head in too deep and gave the assignment a rest until the very last minute.
I have a tendency of giving things a rest (not quitting) when I feel overwhelmed. That’s kinda what has been happening with my blog. I just didn’t know where to begin…those other scholarss who wrote those books and came up with those models were so smart, I felt they were way out of my league. That’s until I was doing laundry and the Spirit reminded me of something my excessively wise pastor always says: The Word of God needs to be the final authority in a marriage if any problem will be solved. With that I was reminded that I needed not a doctorate to be smart enough for the task, I had the wisdom of God, the very same God who instituted marriage. Remembering this, that God is the beginning of marriage, that it’s defined by Him alone, that it’s for His glory, made me realize that this is where we need to come back to if we are to have marriages as beautiful as our weddings.
Scripture is littered with guidelines concerning marriage and family life and these guidelines are linked to how God defines marriage. And with God, marriage stands for something greater than just the two people involved in it. You’ll notice as you study passages like Ephesians 5 that some of the guidelines seem outdated in this society we’re living in. The idea of the wife being submissive in marriage is one that is rejected and fought against. That is because they have a wrong understanding of what submission is. I’ll take a page from T.D Jakes ‘Celebrating Marriage’ book to highlight the issue of the wife’s submission in marriage.
“Many women believe that to submit to their husbands is to lie down, roll over, and play dead. By submitting to her husband’s decision, she has acknowledged, accepted, and approved his domination of her and sealed her inferiority to him. She has allowed her identity to be dwarfed or destroyed by his ego and selfishness. This is the lie the devil would like all wives to swallow because it naturally incites resentment and rebellion. But understood correctly, submission is a freedom word, a deliverance word, a word of position and function that brings a woman to higher and higher levels of intimacy with the Lord and greater power and influence in her marriage. Submission is about compliance, cooperation, and exceeding influence. And when the kingdom principle of submission is followed, harmony and unity in spirit can be reached even when there is disagreement.”
I’m picking on submission because it’s a hard principle compared to the principle of love which we all accept and agree with. My point is, if we’re going to get it right, we’re gonna have to do it God’s way because He owns this thing.
So as wedding season gets in full swing, and as our social media accounts will be flooded with pictures of happy brides and proud grooms, let’s remember to keep the main thing the main thing. As much as we refer people to dress makers and caters as they prepare for their big day, let’s refer them to marriage counsellors and pastors to prepare them for their life time.
PS: I got a good mark for that assignment
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