Unbox the Marriage

Unbox the Marriage

by James D. Jones Jr.

Copyright © 2018, James D. Jones Jr.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without the express, written consent of the author for any purpose, other than the inclusion of brief quotations in review.

Unless otherwise noted all scriptural references are

from the New King James Version of the bible.

Smashwords Edition

License Notes:

This e-book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This e-book may not be resold in any form or transferred, even if no compensation is given. If you would like to share this e-book, please purchase additional copies for other recipients. If you are reading this e-book and it was not purchased by you or for your use only, then please return to smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the rights and hard work of the author.

Chapter One

This Thing Called Marriage

Who is this book for? Everyone. For the couple embarking on the journey of journeys called marriage, this is a map of the ground ahead and some simple rules for navigating what could be treacherous waters if they sail obliviously into them. For the couple whose marriage is already underway and seemingly working well, this is an opportunity to understand why what they are doing is working and maybe discover new areas of exploration and adventure to add that extra spark to their life. For the two who seem to be having difficulty bringing their separate lives into the transition that allows them to become one in marriage, it is a life line thrown to them by those who have sailed the rough waters and discovered the way to make the dream come true. Whether just starting out, seeking a tune up or needing extensive repairs, everyone benefits from going back to the roots of what makes something work.

Marriage is the union, or coming together, of two people for the purpose of sharing their individual strengths and creating one stronger, inseparable couple. Marriage is a design of God and thus, in many ways, inconceivable to the human mind. It is more than just two people sharing a life together. Roommates can do that. Two guys can do that. Or two women for that matter. But when a man and a women come together to share their lives on a level that allows them to intermingle their lives so completely as to obliterate the individuals they once were and become identifiable as them, something must take place on a level of consciousness and in a spiritual fashion outside of the realm of ordinary life. It is not an ordinary thing for a man or a woman to give up who they are to become one. It is an extraordinary thing. Two people becoming one.

Marriage is a complicated endeavor even for the best of us. Two people, coming together to share one life, carrying all the elements of their separate lives and wanting to build something that is both simple and yet diverse enough to make both happy. Something that is so inconceivably complicated that it has to be accepted instead of being understood many times. To the human mind it is an impossible process. How can two separate individuals learn to become one living and thriving couple? How can they move from positions of autonomy into mutually beneficial oneness? Our minds have trouble grasping these marriage descriptions. Is it any wonder, when we try to make it a reality in our lives, that we have trouble pulling it off?

Why?

Shouldn't it be easy? Others do it and have done it for years. Why can't we just say we are going to do it and then make it happen? No one said you can not do it. This book is not about some process or steps a couple can take to make a happy marriage a reality in their lives. Instead it is a true resource in a world of many false resources to help couples achieve whatever they have planned to achieve.

When I got married I believed that love was all I needed. The rest would work itself out. Like so many things in our lives I believed that if I wanted it bad enough I could work at it and keep trying things until I got it right. And, if we are very focused, that does work. Like climbing a high sand dune, if you keep trying you may slip backwards a few times but you can eventually get to the top. The problem is that we all have enough stress in our lives already and moving through a stressful transition such as becoming one in marriage does not have to be a back breaker or as in many cases, a deal breaker. There are little things we can do that make the job of growing closer and learning about each other easier. Or we can fight to carve out new ground and suffer the effects of our efforts.

We do not have to reinvent the wheel. God has already built it. He has already given it to us in a package that makes it easy to incorporate into our lives. Marriage is not new. It belongs to God. Marriage without God is an infringement of the designer's authority over His design. We would never tell the inventor of something he or she is not allowed to profit from their invention because that thought would be inherently wrong to us. It would also inhibit us from asking the inventor about how they envisioned the invention working. In many ways we have done this with marriage. God invented marriage. He designed it for a particular reason. When we ignore the designer we also ignore the reason.

In Genesis 2:18, God announces His intention. And the Lord God said, It is not good that man should be alone; I will make him a helper comparable to him. It is God's desire that a man should not be alone. Why? Because a man is not complete without his wife. Adam saw the other animals and saw that they all had mates. Males and females of each species came together to reproduce and live in the harmonies of their kind. Adam thought it was strange that there was no mate for him. God saw this. And God did something wonderful about it.

It is important to note that God created all other creatures of the dust of the earth to be whatever species they were. But man he created in His own image, meaning with God's own heart for living. God is spirit, so we are not created in His spirit image. We have physical bodies. But God has a heart and we have been given His heart to live life to its fullest.

But woman was not created of the dust of the earth. She was taken from the rib, the protective covering of the physical heart of the man. You can not take something out of something without lessening the original. God had made Adam perfect, complete. In order to give Adam a mate, God had to take some of what made Adam complete from him and fashion it into the new thing that would now make Adam complete. A woman.

In verse 23 of Genesis , chapter 2, Adam says This is now bone of my bones And flesh of my flesh; She shall be called Woman, Because she was taken out of Man.

Adam recognized what God had done. The woman was taken out of Adam. She was not another creation, but somehow a part of him was taken out and she was that part that used to make him complete.

When God caused a deep sleep to fall over him and he removed the rib of which Eve was formed, Adam became less than perfect. At that moment in history man became incomplete without woman. And life has been a process of two becoming one ever since.

Adam was a totally complete person when God formed him of the dust of the earth. He was perfect, nothing lacking. God did recognize that man needed a companion, though. Someone to share life with. Being complete is good, but sharing that completion with someone else is essential. Someone who understands always enhances any experience.

Only God can exist in perfect completion. Man can not deal with the loneliness. The physical part of man cries out for a physical relationship to mirror the spiritual one we have with God. Because we were designed to love God we share that ability to love with others. Without others around, our physical man struggles to hold on to the spiritual part and the emotional part withers.

Unlike the Godhead, Father, Son and Holy Ghost, man does not exist as multiple beings in one. Only God can do that. But in the marriage relationship God lets us peek into the mystery of the Godhead. A man and a woman existing as one. A small part of the power of the Godhead unleashed in the marriage picture.

This is the most fantastic concept in all of life. One man, Adam, being complete and then being made incomplete and then being made complete again. How? Marriage.

If Adam had remained single he would have remained incomplete. Eve would have remained an incomplete part of the image of God that was once complete in Adam. But together they become the complete image of God once more.

Of this process God says in Genesis 1:27 He, created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.

In God's image. In completion. But not in ability to be multiple persons in one. Then He created the one in two when He pulled Eve from Adam. He did not recreate them. He merely finished the creation. A multiple being in one. Male and female.

Two males can not complete the package. Two females can not create the package. They can love as deeply as any other but despite every effort, they will never perfectly complete each other. When a man and a woman come together to create the marriage union, then, and only then, is the image of God reflected. God created man complete in His own image. Then He broke that image up into two parts, male and female.

Marriage is the union of one man and one woman in a bond as old as creation itself. In that bond is the image of God. What the perfect marriage is trying to become is the image of God. No wonder so many people have a hard time organizing the perfect marriage. If they don't want to look like God, to be fashioned in His image, they are fighting the very purpose of the invention. And the inventor.

The problem of marriage is easy to identify. The image of what we are trying to become (two people as one) has to match the Creator's image. Too many people either have no image of what they are trying to become or they have a faulty image. If we can not see the target, how are we going to hit it?

Get the image right in the beginning or change the image to match the original purpose and the marriage becomes what it was intended to be. The completion of two people in the image of God.

What can be said to those who refuse to acknowledge God as the Creator and the inventor of marriage? Good luck. (and I don't believe in luck) I am not trying to be hard here or unsympathetic. The fact is simple. Try to put a swing set together in any manner other than what the designer intended and it will not look the same and probably won't function as well or as safely. And there are always parts left over that get tossed out. Parts the designer had a plan and a use for.

We do not need to become fanatics on a crusade to save the world in order to acknowledge God as the Creator of everything. What we need is to be logical. This world screams of intelligent design. God is the designer. The only reason to fight the assertion that God is the designer is that we want to have another reason to do whatever we want with our lives. Because, if God is real, and He really designed marriage, then all that other stuff He says about morals and ethics suddenly applies, too.

Marriage without God is like a man buying a chain saw to cut down trees and then using the heavy, cumbersome chain saw without ever starting it up. It's designed to make the job easier, even pleasurable, but if we don't use it according to the designed purpose, (starting it up) then we sweat and toil to make our version somehow useful.

Instead of a picture of a noisy saw gliding easily through the trunk of a tree we get the fatalistic, frustrating picture of a man pushing and pulling a heavy piece of equipment back and forth (almost funny) until either the tree falls or he does. For some, this is an apt description of their marriage to date. For others, we know people whose marriages resemble this picture. A tree can be cut down with a chain saw that has not been started up. That is true. It can be done. But how satisfying is that experience? How jealous are we of those who start their chainsaws up and cut down entire forests, build a home and life, while we toil over one tree? (How many of us come to believe it must be the tree's fault, so we keep changing trees in hopes that somehow our way will work?)

God must be acknowledged in marriage or the picture we have of what we are creating and growing towards is wrong. Man was created in God's image. God created that image in two parts, man and woman. It is not complete until a man and a woman make it complete.

A good place to begin is with a personal look at the picture we have of marriage. Whether we are planning to get married in the near future or already married, we need to begin with wherever we are. What does marriage look like to us?

Sound simple? The question is. The answer is anything but.

In marriage there are six people involved right off the bat. That is before we involve in-laws and friends and other assorted relatives.

There is the guy he thinks he is. The guy she thinks he is. And the guy he really is.

There is the girl she thinks she is. The girl he thinks she is. And the girl she really is.

Those six people all have a different picture of marriage. Their pictures of that marriage must be forced into a common picture or nothing but bedlam will ensue. Yes, forced. Each part of us develops according to our experiences in life and how we react to those experiences. Life does not just happen to us. We are a part of it no matter how much we believe we were not in control of some parts. A person can hit me, but they can not make me hit them back or respond in any other way than what I choose. Forcing is another way of saying make a choice.

Why is choosing to force ourselves to come to terms with our separate views of marriage important? What are the dangers?

Every time an issue arises, he can choose to approach it from three different angles and so can she. This is the comfortable stance of most people who try to maintain a semblance of personal dignity in today's world. They hold onto these different platforms of their life from which to respond so that however they choose to respond has some historical base from which to operate in their lives. They hold onto a part of who they are as a defense against who the marriage is forcing them to become. Kind of holding a way out for every action they take. (Shamelessly noncommittal)

If there is only one mutually agreed upon picture of marriage allowed, though, then only one avenue will allow them to mutually seek the completion of that picture. We're not talking about some picture given to them by the church, their parents or some other authority. We're talking about a picture they create together for themselves, their life.

A mutually shared picture is important because the real issue is not the argument that may come from it but the separate feelings that may arise because of it. If he is allowed to go down one road while she goes down another every time they have an issue, then they are not really traveling on the same journey. They are roommates maybe, but not married. They may have a piece of paper, but they do not have the image of marriage. The image is a oneness that makes them complete in the image of God.

As long as they continue to operate on separate paths they will continue to be only half the image of God at best. Even if they are both devout Christians going to church every time the doors are open, they will still be lacking the very thing that makes them the complete image of God, a marriage reflecting the multidimensional personhood of God.

Marriage is not an institution or situation. Marriage is the ability to become one couple in the image of God. It is the term that names the process and the disposition of two people who have chosen – chosen – the be one person in the image of God. Anything – Anything – that hinders us from maintaining our relationship as two in one is a hindrance to the marriage.

Christians are well aware that their enemy, the devil, or Satan or the evil one is going about as a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour. He has come to kill, steal and destroy. Sermons are preached about recognizing this fact throughout the year. Testimonies are given weekly about overcoming the designs the enemy has on our lives. Somehow, though, Christians fail to apply the enemy's attack designs to their own marriage defenses.

A husband and wife may recognize that the enemy is attacking them (as individuals) but they too often fail to see the attack as an attack against the oneness they share. This failure causes them to respond as individuals instead of as the image of God. There is a definite disparity in the amount of spiritual power they can access because of this oversight.

The enemy sees married people as one. He attacks them as a single entity. They need to experience it as a single entity attack and respond as a single entity. Attack his wife and you have attacked him. Compliment her and you have complimented him. Love him and you love her.

The enemy of God is also the enemy of marriage. Like his desire to tear down any ministry that is spreading the gospel of Christ, the enemy desires to tear down the marriage so that God's plan for sharing His completeness and multidimensional image is thwarted.

Why? Because the marriage union between a man and a woman completes the image of God on earth. The enemy does not want God's image to prosper on earth. The enemy hates everything about God. So, consequently, the image of God, and those who would try to complete it, are hated also. The devil hates marriage and, by extension, those who would embrace it.

Few people ever realize there is an active force working against their marriage. Because they try to do it all themselves (they see themselves as individuals still) they also take the blame for when it does not work. Or they blame the other one as an individual who caused the failure. They say, it wasn't meant to be or we gave it a shot or any of a hundred other sayings designed to alleviate some of the pain.

What would have changed about their approach if they had realized that a person they knew was actually doing things to make their marriage fail? Would they not have been motivated to try harder and to keep the intruder out of it? Of course they would.

A woman who realizes she has a competitor for her husband's attention makes adjustments to block the competitor and to increase her hold on her husband's attention. A man who realizes another man is moving in on his territory takes action and makes moves to stop the advances of the other man while increasing his own ability to capture and hold his wife's attention.

That is precisely what many marriages need today. A healthy dose of trying harder and getting the intruder out of it. Not fighting and screaming. Not drama. But real life action designed to save what we have built. Our marriage picture.

The intruder is an unseen enemy that whispers in our ear about the shortcomings of our intended partner in this venture of marriage. The intruder places stumbling blocks in the road trying to get us to quit.

What if we had a clear picture of that marriage and our partner's part in it? Then no whisper in the world could shake us and tear us apart. No stumbling block ever designed could make us give up. We would have a better destination in mind.

The only place where the whisper can get to us is in the areas where we are unsure of ours or our partner's commitment. The only way stumbling blocks can make us sit down and quit is if we do not believe the end result justifies the effort needed to get there. A marriage based on our separate ideas of happiness is not as binding as a oneness based on the image of God.

Couples need to try harder to make sure their picture of the marriage is as solid and complete as possible. Couples need to keep the places where the whisperers can get in closed.

Why? We argue about the things we hear whispered in our ear by the enemy. Even people who do not go to church hear the whispers from the enemy. Then they argue about what they hear. They use words like, I think and I feel but what they really are displaying during the argument is what they have heard whispered in their heads. And those arguments cause separation. That separation keeps two people from achieving the image of God. The enemy wins the battle.

The enemy does not care as much about churches as we give him credit for. He is worried about ministries that change the community. He is worried about married couples taking on the image of God. Any married couple.

Why? Because the church is the bride of Christ. If the marriage of a man and woman shows off the image of God (and the power) then the church that understands its place in the marriage with God will show off much more of the corporate power of the image of God. Entire communities could be taken back from the hand of a lying enemy if the church ever gets the idea of the full image of God contained in the marriage picture.

The enemy's job is simple. Stop the marriage. Change it so it doesn't represent God. Take God out of it. Anything, as long as the image of God (and the power He gives to His image) is not released.

In church or out of church. When the image of God is displayed the enemy must flee. He is resisted. He is not given a foothold, not given a place to set up shop. The darkness is replaced by the light.

The devil or Satan or the enemy can not abide being pushed aside. He wants to exalt his throne above God's throne. And he does this by tearing down what God has designed.

The marriage relationship is a battlefield. Where it is a comfort and a completion by God's design, it is also an affront to the enemy. A bold statement that he is being shut out. A declaration of war against the goals of the enemy. A challenge to become the image of God on earth.

In John 15:18 Jesus says, If the world hates you, you know that it hated Me before it hated you. This is a realization of the marriage theme. When a Christian comes to God and repents of their sins and accepts Jesus into their heart, meaning they turn from their sinful paths and seek the path that brings them into the image of God, then they become what the bible calls the bride of Christ. The church – the people, not the buildings – is the bride of Christ.

They enter into the same battle that the Lord faces. If the enemy is against God then he is also against those who would side with God. And taking on the image of God, as in the marriage relationship, is siding with God.

Marriage must be defined. A clear picture of marriage must be achieved. The marriage itself must be protected from the enemy who would seek to destroy it. God must be allowed into the marriage in order to get the picture right. Everyone must realize that the enemy is actively seeking to tear marriages apart.

Sound ominous? Sound challenging? Is it necessary? Is it real? Can we do this?

Philippians 4:13 says, I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. It is real or we would not need to know we can do it. It is ominous because we were created in the image of God. That is who we are. The enemy is trying to deny who we are for his own purposes. The challenge is to make the choice. The choice is to whether or not we are going to make marriage a priority.

We have this promise of assurance as we enter the field of battle. Greater is he who is in you than he who is in the world. The enemy knows this. He can not defeat us by a frontal attack. He must trick us into giving up. We must quit on the very thing that makes us greater than he is. We must give up the image of God and take up the image of something else for our lives. We must give up God's design for marriage and allow some other design to take its place.

Maybe you are a strong Christian. Maybe you are a new Christian. Maybe you are not a believer in God at all. The truth is that the reality is still the same. Marriage makes you a target for the enemy. You have something at stake. Your relationship with your spouse or intended spouse. The enemy wants to make that relationship so miserable that you both go your separate ways.

Divorce is the enemy's goal. Separation. No marriage. No image of