Being married does not stop you from dating each other!
Dating your spouse will help to enrich your marriage and make it stronger.
The ‘crude marriage rate’ [the number of marriages per 1000 of the estimated population] for 2019 was at its’ lowest ever point at 4.5. The number of marriages occurring in 2019 being 113,815. Provisional data for 2020 show the effect of the situation we live in with only 37,813 marriages occurring between January and June and were registered by the end of August – the 6 month’s average for the last 5 years being 55,492. Over the decades the percentage of marriages performed by a “Minister of Religion” has fallen to just 19.7%
Evidently the reason given by some for being married by a “Civil Celebrant” is the freedom to personalise the ceremony, write one’s own vows and ditching traditions that they find meaningless or sexist.
Whilst there is little difference between de facto and marriage there has been the great rise of de facto relationships/co-habitation before marriage from around 16% in 1970 and 56% in 1992 to 81.3% in 2019 [latest available from ABS]
This landscape creates massive challenges for those of us who champion the value of marriage, God’s design of marriage that is. It would seem unlikely that a return in popularity of getting married will come
The Importance of Marriage – primarily from the perspective of Scripture.
God’s Creation
“So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.” (Genesis 1:27 NKJV)
Right from the start God made men and women equal, in “the image of God” but with complementary differences as men and women.
On the creation of man God placed him in the garden and gave him His vision for life in the world that He, God had created. God then saw that something was incomplete and said “Then the LORD God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper who is just right for him.” (Genesis 2:18 NLT). God had seen that it was not good for the first man, and for most of us, to be left by himself.
God then created/crafted woman out of the rib of that first man ( Genesis 2:21-22). Then, God presented and entrusted this remarkable gift to the man.
What we know as marriage had been instituted by God. A man and a woman becoming
“Marriage is not a human invention; it is a divine revelation. Its design never was our own made-up arrangement of infinite malleability. It was given to us, at the beginning of all things, as a brightly shining fixity of eternal significance. We might not always live up to its true grandeur. None of us does so perfectly. But we have no right to redefine it, and we have every reason to revere it.”
“I yearn for a recovery of joyful confidence in marriage as God originally gave it to us. This requires a humble, thoughtful return to biblical teachings. We will never see human sexuality restored without a rediscovery of Scripture as the consensus of our culture.” [Ray Ortlund, Marriage and the Mystery of the Gospel]
The church, for centuries, has proclaimed the words in Mark 10:6-8 at weddings, for they speak of the gift of marriage, recognized by many of the population and acknowledged by Christian men and women: A man and a woman united, a union, confirmed by Jesus in Matthew 19:4-6. Man has manipulated and even denied this truth.
This has caused the institution of marriage and the family as designed by God, which is a sizeable
