The idolatry of marriage: a recipe for disaster

 People are suffering, loneliness is rampant in the land. Many people in the world look to marriage as a savior, an institution that will rescue them from their loneliness. They think finally i will have someone I can call mine, someone who will love me with all their hearts until death do us apart 🤗. But the increasing divorce rates tell a different story. A story of marriage being difficult, a story of many married people being miserable , lonely , bitter and see divorce as a viable option to escape the misery they find themselves in. A story of many preferring to live together instead of getting married. 

Marriage has become a scary thing in the land. Marriage for many has become synonymous with losing half your wealth and your children. But why has marriage become so destructive to many ? Why has something as beautiful as marriage become such a terror to many 🤔? It is because marriage has become an idol to many. Marriage has become a god to many in the church and in the world. Satan is a brilliant strategist and he lay his plans way before you find yourself caught in his snare and Satan has been laying his plans to destroy marriage from the beginning ,but has intensified his work in the last few decades. Today we will just look at a few areas of his assault on marriage .

Seduce the woman, destroy the man. Satan's modus operandi is the same as from the beginning. His goal is to seduce, deceive the woman and destroy the man. Let's see how this impact marriage. God commmanded that a man should love his wife and the wife should submit to her husband. Satan understanding that there is a desire created in the woman to receive love from a man goes about doung his work to pervert the woman's understanding of what marriage is about. Satan uses the love songs 🎵, the romantic movies of the world to make women believe that they are the center of a relationship, that the man should revolve his life around her. The man is here for her happiness. 

And what does the woman has to offer in return according to the deception of love songs and movies 🤔? Her beauty, her looks and that's pretty much it. So, what we end up having are women putting so much effort in looking good physically but neglecting their inner beauty of meekness, lowliness. Women dressing sexy, but character looking ugly. As a result many women become selfish in relationship. They want a man to love them, devote his life to their constant need, while they offer only their good looks in return. Disaster for a marriage. For sooner or later many men get tired of it and misery spreads

 Destroy the man. Satan destroy the man by making him focus solely on the woman's outward beauty. Many men see the women as an object of desire ,but not someone to love to cherish. Satan encourage men to have sex before marriage knowing that will corrupt their understanding of the humanity of a woman and make it difficult for the man to see the woman as a whole. So in marriage, many men find it difficult to love their wives because they see her as a sex object who is here to satisfy their sexual urges. The woman soon become bitter at the lack of love from her husband and soon she may start become vulnerable to another man's deceptive words of care and love. As a results affairs become a serious reality 

To believe that a man or a woman will satisfy your deepest longings and finally bring peace and love to your life is to set yourself up for disaster. Many young people are being deceived into thinking that marriage is the solution to their loneliness, marriage will make them whole and this is happening both in the world and in the church. To think a woman or man can satisfy your needs is to set yourself up to bring misery to the life of that person. To think you need a man or a woman to be satisfied is to make that man or woman your god and your disappointment will be bitter. Every false god eventually disappoints the worshippers. 

Marriage is not about your needs being met but to teach you how to be like God and meet the needs of another. Marriage is design to teach a man how to love like Jesus and to teach a woman how to submit like Jesus. Marriage is not women centered. A man must never make his wife the center of his life. Every man in the Bible who made their wives the center of his life was ruined. Adam, Samson, King Ahab, king Solomon etc.. made women the center of their lives and misery was the result. A man is to make God and God only the center of his life, only then will he able to truly love his wife .

When a man makes God the center of his life, he will receive strength to love his wife despite all her flaws and weaknesses. When a woman make God the center of her life, she will reveive the strength to submit to her husband despite his flaws and weaknesses and true love will flourish in the home. When you make your spouse the center of your life you will suffer greatly and you will try to control your spouse so they can do what you want. Trying to control your spouse will destroy his /her personality, make him feel unloved and bring misery to your relationship.  When God is the center of your life you will not seek to control other people so they can make you feel loved and appreciated. 

Marriage can be very difficult because marriage is the union of two selfish, self centered people coming together looking for the other to fulfill their emptiness, their needs. Marriage becomes loving, bearable when while we are single we look for God to be the One who fulfills our emptiness, our needs. Then we will come to a marriage seeking to give love to the other and not just coming to take. It is better to give than to receive and the only way we can give love to our spouses is if God is the center of our lives. Both in the church and in the world there is this attempt to believe that marriage will bring happiness to our lonely lives, this is idolatry

Men, do not look to your wife to be your source of satisfaction, she is too weak for that, look to God for your source of satisfaction and through God become a blessing to your wife, love her, cherish her for the glory of God.  Women, do not look to your husband to be your source of satisfaction, he is too beaten down for that, look to God for your soyrve of satisfaction and through His strength become a blessing to your husband by submitting to him, being tender to him and  a sweet flagrance to his life. Let us put away our idolatry of marriage, marriage was not meant to satisfy our selfish desires but to teach us how to be like Jesus, how to love and submit like Him. Worship God, cast off all forms of idolatry including the idolatry of marriage.