Transcript:
Many Christians believe in spiritual warfare. After all, it’s a principle that’s written in the Bible. But have you ever considered spiritual warfare? It’s not something that just happens to you in one-off events, but it is an ongoing normative thing for the Christian.
And the number one attacker, the number one thing that Satan loves to do when it comes to our marriages is to attack us, to attack our vulnerabilities, our weaknesses, to make us feel hopeless and despondent, to give us this sense of insecurity and doubt, which drives anxiety and worry and fear.
So many today don’t bother to recognize or to understand spiritual warfare. And I want to share some brief thoughts with you today about spiritual war as it pertains to your marriage and why your marriage is continually experiencing these things.
First and foremost, in Ephesians 5, the Apostle Paul lays out for us the roles of what a husband and a wife are. And we get so caught up in the ideas of submission and sacrifice, which, by the way, are all true. I’m not trying to diminish these things.
I want you to see the bigger picture because in Ephesians 5:32, the Apostle Paul says that he speaks of marriage as a mystery.
And what is the mystery?
The mystery is Christ and the church.
See, your marriage is a little “c” church.
And until we begin to recognize that, that your marriage is sanctified, your marriage is codified by God, it is justified by God as a little church, it begins to change the way we look at marriage, the way we interact with one another, the seriousness of it. Because the truth is that marriage is not and should not be disposable. It’s not something that you say, I’m not happy, and so I’m just done with it all.
Right?
If we did this in our relationship with God, what would that say about our relationship with God?
It would say that our relationship is not just disposable, but it’s not valuable.
That the idea that God loves me and cares for me and pursues me is vanity and has no value. This is what it means if we come into our marriages or if we exist in our marriages as if they’re not important.
I’ve heard people say that God said, I don’t have to remain married to you or gave me permission to divorce you.
That’s a lie from the pit of hell.
And the reason that it’s a lie from the pit of hell is because of this reason I’m about to share.
Your marriage is a small church. Your family is a small church sanctified by God. I’m going to continue to repeat this because I want you to understand this.
God does not, and I’m going to, please hear me really clearly here, God does not ever, under any circumstance, condone sin and behavior that violates his nature. If he gave you one another and made you one, he made you not just one together in terms of husband and wife, but one together in Him. And in doing so, as the wife submits to the husband as the church does to Christ, and as the husband sacrifices himself and loves his wife as himself, that he would die for her as Christ did the church, we begin to see something that is miraculous.
So before you go thinking that there’s no hope in your marriage, before you go thinking that it’s too far gone, before you go believing the lie that God said you could do something that you know he didn’t tell you he could do, I pray that you would challenge your heart to think as Christ thinks, to be as Christ would be, to walk in the fruits of the Spirit.
I hear so many people, you remember that saying back in the 80s and 90s, the WWJD, What Would Jesus Do?
What Jesus would do is live the fruits of the Spirit, in obedience to his Father. The fruits of the Spirit are Jesus.
It is who he is. Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, faithfulness, goodness, self-control, these kinds of things, these are Jesus.
Put him on.
When you honor God, you honor your spouse. When you honor your spouse, you honor the church broadly. And when you honor the church broadly, you experience joy and hope and faith and meaning and purpose.
This is what God intends for your marriage.
Father Don Purdum
Pastor, Holy Trinity Church
