Articles
Choose Abundant Living (3)
Choose Abundant Living – 3
Mike Willis
Choose Marriage
The Genesis account of God creating the heavens and earth also depicts the ideal relationship between man and woman—both male and female were created in the image of God (Gen. 1:24) and given dominion over God’s creation (Gen. 1:26, 28). They were equal before God though assigned different roles in marriage.
The creation narrative also shows man’s loneliness and emptiness prior to the creation of woman. “Then the Lord God said, ‘It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him.’” After woman was created, she was presented to Adam and Moses writes, “Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh” (Gen. 2:24).
There is no more pleasant image than that of a happily married couple, loving each other and the children produced from their sexual union. The parents who love each other also love their children and the rearing of those children binds the heart of mother and father together as one.
You can choose to have this kind of family relationship, the one that God designed for man, or you can choose to bear your sons and daughters outside the bonds of wedlock, fight with your former lover over custody of the children and child support, and tear the children away from one or the other of their two parents. Even secular psychologists write about the ill effects that divorce has on one’s offspring. When God commanded, “You shall not commit adultery” (Exod. 20:14), He was setting before the descendants of Abraham (Israel) the way of life and abundant living. The author of Hebrews emphasized the blessing of marriage saying, “Let marriage be held in honor among all, and let the marriage bed be undefiled, for God will judge the sexually immoral and adulterous” (Heb. 13:4).
Americans can easily witness the rotten fruit of broken families—the divorced mothers of children of divorced parents struggling to avoid the effects of poverty. Children of divorced families frequently do more poorly in school than those of an intact family. Being raised in poverty may cause them to lose hope for anything better in their future, and decide to turn drugs, prostitution, and violent crime as a means to escape poverty, or to using illegal drugs in quest of happiness. As we see the outcome for so many families, one is reminded that this is not the life God wants for humanity.
The life and abundant living God offered is found in the way of obedience to the word of God, inside the bonds of marriage, not in irresponsible and sinful sexuality.
