What?! Marriage is Not The Goal?!
What if I told you that Marriage is not a goal? There is something that will need our total focus and energy before we consider ourselves ready for marriage.
Welcome to engagement season!
Holidays are the typical times for an influx of engagements to happen and at the same time it may tend to cause anxiety, woe, and longing for the single woman that have the desire to be married. There is nothing wrong with the desire to marry but it becomes a problem when it is a goal for self enrichment and wholeness.
Marriage is quite the opposite. I heard someone preach ( I forgot who said it...forgive me..lol) that marriage is a covenant of forgiveness. Whew! So imagine if you have a hard time forgiving others? What makes us think that we can forgive our spouses?
Now, this isn't the first time that I have written a blog about marriage. Please take the time to read my older blogs, "I's Married Now!" and "I's Married Now! part 2". Its safe to say that I am pretty much speaking on the same principle that I spoke about in those other blogs but God has given me a slightly different approach from a different and more healed perspective.
I know some will look at the title and say, "If marriage is not the goal, that what is it?"
When you look at the definition of goal, the dictionary states that it is the end toward which effort is directed. Synonyms of the word are aim, ambition, aspiration.
The issue that I have when using the word goal when it comes desiring and wanting marriage is that it can become a competition, cause one to be too ambitious, and will often cause distractions and may cause us to get unfocused on the most important goal of all ( i will get to that a little later).
Now I have seen a lot of prophecies regarding this season of marriages, specifically, Kingdom marriages which are basically God ordained marriages for the works of Christ.
The common theme that I found in all of them were that it was all dependent on one thing.
Will you be found ready?
Often what comes in our mind when we think of being found ready is pretty carnal.
Do we have money in the bank? Do we have a great job? Do we own a home? Is our credit A-1? Don't get me wrong these things are great and important, but I can't help but think the meaning of that is to say, are you found in God? Are you in His presence? Are you found sitting at His feet waiting for the next instructions or there because you care for Him so much?
Nothing should be considered more important than solely loving on God.
You may ask yourself while reading this, "Well I love God, can't I want marriage and love a man or woman also?" Absolutely! But the problem comes in the prioritization of it all. Sometimes we fall into the traps of loving on God until a human comes along or feel our reward for loving on God so long is the human.
Marriage is not a reward package for loving on God. As a matter of fact! The apostle Paul in the Bible knows the feeling of being in total devotion to God that He advocates what a lot of us think is a curse. In 1 Corinthians 7, The apostle Paul gives instructions on marriage and all of the work that it entails. He even goes on to state that if you absolutely cannot control your bodies, go ahead and get married! For it is better to marry than to burn. We have to read this slowly because better is not best! The best thing is to be in total uninterrupted devotion with God.
If that is unbearable to hear or sound a little deep, you may be idolizing marriage. If the worst thing for you to hear is that you wont get married and it feels like a stab to the heart, you have fell into idolization of marriage. God states that there shall be no other God's before Him. We have to be careful in not making a God out of marriage. We forgot the true living God to erect another one that can't hold a candle to what God can be for us.
So as the author of this blog does this suggest that I don't desire marriage? Absolutely not! But the love I will have for my husband will never undercut the love I have for God. If I had to choose which one I wanted, I would choose my Father over and over again.
