Get ready to start a journey…a journey through the pages of the Bible and the pages of your life.
Taking a test drive before you buy a car. Good move. Trying on a pair of pants to make sure they fit. Yep. Checking out a home before taking on the mortgage, who wouldn’t do that? Even when you order online, you try things out and try things on. So why not live together before marriage?
When you read devotionals pertaining to marriage, some of you may feel like I am rubbing salt in your wounds. That’s certainly not my intent, and for those who have been divorced, I know the pain is deep. And I know many of you tried so hard to keep your marriage together. You can’t undo the past. You desire to make your life count for God. Thank God he offers forgiveness and restoration to us all.
Do you like stylish clothes? I do too. However, I don’t often think about clothes as being violent, even the styles I don’t like! However, there is something that covers our clothes with violence. Let’s consider these verses from the last book in the Old Testament.
You have heard the vows before. Maybe you used these or similar vows on your wedding day. To have and to hold from this day forward. For better or for worse. For richer or for poorer. In sickness and in health. As long as we both shall live. These vows, or ones like them, are spoken at virtually every one of the 5,918 weddings that take place each day in the United States. Unfortunately, too many of those who say, “I do,” end up saying, “I don’t.”
Have you ever caught a fox? Neither have I. But I am assuming that chasing and catching a fox would be quite a feat. Solomon uses this picture of catching foxes to remind us of little things that can do considerable damage.
Marriages don’t explode. There is seldom one event that causes a husband and wife to call it quits. Rather the demise of a marriage is more like a slow leak. If the leak is not tended to, over time, the air escapes, and the relationship goes flat.