Where is God in the Marriage Equation?

Where is God in the Marriage Equation?

Where did the marriage story begin?  Marriage was always in the heart of God. First, He created Adam. He breathed His life into him and he became a living soul. He enjoyed fellowship with him. Genesis “the Lord God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life and the man became a living being”. 

That is how the human race began. God then placed Adam in the garden, giving him the rules of engagement within the garden. He was to work it and keep it. He could freely eat of all the trees of the garden but one, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. 

It was after all the instructions that God noted in Genesis 2: 18 that, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him” 

It is not clear how long Adam had been by himself before God made this declaration. We know that Adam did not complain. He was content just being in the garden with God coming to fellowship with him. So, it was not about Adam being lonely. However, God did not think his being alone was appropriate. So, he began the process of finding the helper fit for Adam. 

God put Adam through the rigorous process of identifying and naming all the animals he had created. It is also not clear how long this took. God and Adam were not in a hurry. One can imagine how long it would have taken Adam to carefully look through all the animals and name them one after the other. It was a careful painstaking search for a helper fit for Adam. 

Finally, in Genesis 2:  21-22, “So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and while he slept took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh. And the rib that the Lord God had taken from the man, he made into a woman and brought her to the man”. 

At this time, Adam’s effort did not help the process. He named the animals but no helper fit for him was found. It was in his resting state, that God was able to bring forth the woman that would become his wife. 

Adam immediately identifies that this being is special. In Genesis 2: 23, he completely accepts this gift from God saying, “This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh, she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of man”. She was beautiful for him. He liked what he saw. He accepted it. Note that God had to knock him out before bringing the Woman to him. It was at the point of total God-induced rest that the woman was revealed to him. 

In Genesis 2: 24-25, the marriage takes place. “Therefore, a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed”. 

The conclusion is that from this point onwards, there would come a time when a man would need to leave his parents to hold fast unto a woman, whom he now refers to as wife. After the process, one would be revealed to him, who he would completely identify with and marry to be his wife. 

The relationship is supposed to be a mutually beneficial one where they provide companionship to each other as they fulfil the mandate in Genesis 2: 15 “then the Lord took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to tend and keep it.”

In summary, we can conclude that God created marriage. It was entirely His idea. The intent was that the man and woman would be companions and work together to fulfil the mandate to dominate and subdue the earth. While doing that they were also expected to multiply their kind. The intention of marriage was, 

Companionship

Fulfilment of God-given mandate

Multiplication of their kind. 

So every marriage should be flavored with these intentions. 

This is how God intended it to be. That is how marriage began. It was not a contraption of man to perpetuate the human race. Neither was it carelessly suggested for the human race to decide how it would be done. It was clear how God wanted it done. 

People need to understand this and embrace it with a little more sobriety. The attitude these days just seems to be so careless. It should not surprise the world that the failure rate is so high. 

   Psalm 11:3 says “if the foundations are destroyed, what can the righteous do?” In other words, if we don’t follow the pattern set by God, we will not get the desired results. The good thing is that He is not sitting in heaven and expecting us to work our families by ourselves. He wants to be a part of the entire process, from choosing your spouse to working the marriage daily. He can guide us, nudge us, preserve us, and give us the much-desired pleasure our marriages should give us. Marriage is a lot of work but with God, its burden and yoke are light. Let us embrace Him and allow Him into our homes. Let Him be the One who holds it al together.