GUARD YOUR MARRIAGE FROM DISMEMBERING

Continuing today from my post on Friday, EVERY LITTLE DETAIL, we continue to talk about marriage. The Message translation of Malachi 2:15 says: “’I hate divorce,’ says the GOD of Israel. GOD-of-the-Angel-Armies says, ‘I hate the VIOLENT DISMEMBERING of the ‘one flesh’ of marriage.’ So watch yourselves. Don’t let your guard down. Don’t cheat.”

Let’s get it straight. God loves divorced people, but He hates the spirit of divorce. Why? Because it tears apart what God has made one. God loves making two things into one. How did each one of us begin? The sperm from our father fused with the egg of our mother and immediately we were conceived. A new person. No longer two but one. The devil hates new life. The destroyer who comes to steal, kill, and destroy seeks to eliminate this new life. Precious new babies, conceived through God’s wondrous working are dismembered limb by limb in the womb.

The devil also hates God’s plan for marriage where God brings two people together and makes them one. In Matthew 19:4-6 (NET) which is repeated from Genesis 2:24, Jesus said: “Have you not read that from the beginning the Creator made them male and female, and said, ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and will be united with his wife, and the two will become one Flesh’? So they are NO LONGER TWO, BUT ONE FLESH.”

God’s plan for our marriage is oneness. This is the very first principle that is mentioned about marriage. He wants us to come together as one flesh, but He also wants us to be one soul, one spirit, and with one vision and purpose. Once again, the devil hates God’s plan of oneness. He wants to dismember marriages. Mutilate them. In the same way he is behind the dismembering of precious babies in the womb, he determines the same for marriages. He wants to dismember them little by little and piece by piece.

No marriage suddenly falls apart. It happens gradually. It happens little by little. That’s why we must guard our marriage in every part—physically, spiritually, emotionally, and our thought life. This is perhaps the biggest area of all. Every thing begins with our thoughts. The enemy of our souls will try to bring negative thoughts to us about our husbands. Guard your thought life. Cast out every negative, self-pitying, destroying thought in the name of Jesus.

1 Peter 5:8, 9: “Be sober, be vigilant, because your adversary the devil, as a roaring line, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour: whom RESIST steadfast in the faith.” Don’t become a victim. RESIST.

We must not only watch our thoughts, but our spirits. It is imperative in a marriage to keep a soft and tender heart toward the Lord and toward our husbands. Life is not perfect. Our husbands are not perfect. There will be times when they say and do things that hurt or even wound us. Or maybe they are totally annoying. This is where we must reach beyond our feelings. Instead of allowing our hearts to become hard, we soften our hearts to forgive, to forbear, and to love.

We stand strong and will not allow the devil to have the victory. We will not allow him to dismember our oneness. Not even one little bit.

When God talks about a man cleaving to his wife in Genesis 2;24 it is the Hebrew word “dabaq” and literally means “to cling, to be glued to, stick fast.” When God made you and your husband one, He glued you together. Satan will try to unglue you and slowly dismember you. Do not let him.

In the strength of the Lord you can stand against his temptations!

Love from Nancy Campbell