by Angie Lewis

Created on: May 10, 2010   Last Updated: May 11, 2010

Marriage is only difficult because we aren't going into marriage spiritually and emotionally prepared. You know you are ready for marriage when “God is number one” in your personal life, and you want to honor and please God with your marriage. It takes having a relationship with God through Jesus Christ for us to understand how to manage our marriage by God’s design rather than our own.

You’re Ready For Marriage When God is Number One in your Life

If God is not at the top of your priority list than what or who is? Where does your spouse fit in on your priority list? Without faith and trust in God to direct our marriage, we are only what we can be, selfish! We need God—He is our source for true happiness and marital bliss.

We can listen to the marriage gurus tell us what our marriage needs and do those things, but if God is not directing our attitude and actions than it will be ineffective.

So many times, Christians don’t realize how they become sidetracked and do things according to “what they want” or “what they think is right”, which almost always leads to failure. Remember we are only the creation, God is the Creator, that means we need to get down off the pedestal and humble our lives to God.

You’re Ready for Marriage When You Are Committed to One Flesh of Marriage

What does “one flesh” of marriage mean to you? The one flesh of marriage to God means the joining together of two hearts, minds and spirits in the one flesh of marriage. This means that everything a spouse does no matter how big or small, or good or bad, affects the other.

In healthy marriage there is no room for independence from one another or individualistic thinking because these attitudes affect the marriage tremendously.

Understand you are an individual that can have opinions and thoughts on things outside of the marriage, but all aspects that are within the marriage couples need to work together as a team. They need to encourage and build each other up, be in agreement on values and beliefs, and carry each other’s burdens.

When you separate yourself from the one flesh of marriage you are rebelling against God’s plan for marriage, which is the spiritual and emotional oneness of marriage.

This is why emotional and physical infidelity has become such commonplace. Couples are separating themselves from the “one flesh” of marriage. They aren’t really committed to each other or to the design God planned out for them in their marriage. And that is the problem.

In society today, people behave selfishly with each other and then in desperation they wonder how they can “win their spouse back”.  They wonder why their spouse doesn’t want to have sex anymore and need to find out ways to intimately attract their own spouse again! They wonder why their spouse does not love them anymore.

It’s because they are veering away from the path that God designed for marriage. Most couples are NOT emotionally or spiritually ready to get married; that's why marriage is so hard!

You’re Ready for Marriage When You Know What the Purpose for Marriage Is

Marriage God’s way is daily forgiveness, daily serving one another and daily acts of kindness (principled love) for each other. This is how we honor and please God. God created marriage for his purpose. It is a living symbol of Jesus Christ and the church.

The relationship between Christ and the church represents how God intends for marriage to be between a man and a woman—loving, caring and self-sacrificing. Ephesians 5:21-33

Marriage is really not that difficult when couples manage it God’s way!

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