Christian Advice For Marriage

By Angie Lewis

Marriage and business have many similarities. Both take team effort and cooperation, and they both take mutual submission from the people within them. Just as employees manage a business according to the owner’s standards, in a good marriage, husband and wife manage a marriage according to the owner’s standards. Who is the owner of marriage? God is the Master Designer of marriage. Your marriage belongs to God and that means your marriage is set apart for God’s purpose.

The Lord God said, ‘It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make
a helper suitable for him’.
Genesis 2:18

So the Lord God caused the man to fall into a deep sleep, and while he was sleeping, he took one of the man’s ribs and closed up the place with flesh. Then the Lord God made a woman from the rib he had taken out of man, and he brought her to the man. The man said, ‘This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh, she shall be called woman, for she was taken out of man’.
Genesis 2:21-23

In marriage, according to God’s standards, He gives husband and wife their position and then helps them to carry out their duties and responsibilities with due diligence. He gives them all the practical advice and principles they will ever need to keep their marriage strong and happy. Since God is the Creator of marriage, without Him there would be no real purpose for marriage.

Business is the same way. Employees have their set purpose they must carry out every single day according to the standards of the owner. The owner gives them their duties and responsibilities they must carry out with due diligence for the business to be managed properly.

Unless the Lord builds the house, its builders labor in vain. Unless the Lord watches over the city, the watchers stand guard in vain.
Psalm 127:1

What do you see when you walk into your place of work every day? You most likely see the same people doing the same thing. Miss Jane is on the computer, as always logging in the inventory. Mr. Joe is usually talking on the telephone with potential clients, and Mr. Boss is behind a closed door with his nose stuck in stacks of paperwork. And you, the cashier are totaling customer’s merchandise and answering questions about the products.

You do your job well; you keep to yourself; carefully carrying out your assigned tasks the owner has given you. You wouldn’t even think of barging in on Mr. Boss to tell him how to run his business. And Mr. boss does not stand behind you telling you how to greet the customers. It’s not your responsibility to tell Mr. Boss how to run his business. And a good boss will not frustrate his employees while they are hard at work. The point is, no one gets in anyone’s way.

Even though marriage only has two employees they each have their given roles and responsibilities that they must attend to. If a wife or husband does not attend to their own duties and responsibilities the marriage will not have very happy people in it. God, being the boss of marriage has already given a wife her position in marriage and likewise, the husband his position in marriage. That means, the husband has his job and the wife has hers. When a wife becomes bossy, demanding and controlling, it creates chaos within the design that God meant for marriage.

Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, which he is the Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything.
Ephesians 5:22

The Boss gave husbands this position in marriage for a very good reason – it is the depiction of the relationship between Christ and His church. Christ is the head of the church. The church (the body of believers) is not the head of Christ?

Actually both husband and wife are called to submit to one another. For the wife, that means willingly following her husband’s leadership in Christ. For the husband, it means putting aside his own interests in order to care for and love his wife. In marriage husband and wife should be concerned about the needs of each other – in essence that means to “serve” one another.

Husband’s, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing of water through the word, and present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle, or any other blemish, but holy and blameless. In the same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself.
Ephesians 5:25-26

What would happen if Miss Jane got tired of her duties and did whatever she wanted – came into work whenever she felt like it and then gossiped with her friends on the phone all day, never doing any of her computer tasks? There would most likely be chaos in the workplace. When the employees don’t care about their jobs they do inferior work and the business can fail, or the very least, lose money.

The same goes for marriage, what happens if husband or wife becomes discouraged or tempted and selfishly starts doing their own thing? The point is God is the owner of marriage. God is the creator of marriage, and therefore He controls marriage. God’s standards have already been sanctioned and set apart for couples in marriage and when couples don’t go by the standards that God has already given the marriage it will fail, or at the very least be unhappy.

Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on a rock. The rain cam down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against the house; yet it did not fall, because it had its foundations on the rock.
Matthew 7:24-25