Dating your spouse

During Marriage Week there is a great opportunity to strengthen or rebuild a strong marriage culture within the church and beyond in the community. We can add “fuel” to rekindle a vibrant marriage culture in a society that no longer understands what marriage is, much less what it is for.

During Marriage Week honour, celebrate and teach God’s design and purpose for marriage. This year the theme is “The Joy of Marriage” which could be a theme to preach on or use in group settings if you are led that way.

Some have a mixed understanding of the meaning of “joy” often equating it to happiness.

What’s the Difference? The words “joy” and “happiness” are often interchanged when describing emotions, but they are very different.  Websters Dictionary (1828) starts their definition of happiness:

“The agreeable sensations which spring from the enjoyment of good; that state of a being in which his desires are gratified, by the enjoyment of pleasure without pain; felicity; but happiness usually expresses less than felicity, and felicity less than bliss. happiness is comparative…..”.

Whereas they describe Joy as: “The passion or emotion excited by the acquisition or expectation of good; that excitement of

Kind words are like honey—
sweet to the soul and healthy for the body.
Proverbs 16:24 [NLT]

Some years ago, my wife and I were asked by a student at a Bible School in Latvia to pray for her friend whose husband, whilst going to church himself, had banned her from going and was also continually denigrating her, he also encouraged their young daughter to denigrate her as well. We were also told that when people from the church asked the husband about his wife, he told them various stories, but no one really tried to check with her. Just the other day we heard a father telling his young son that he did not like him and then a wife telling her husband that she always seemed to be doing wrong these days according to him.

Scripture tells us much about the power of words and the power of the tongue “Death and life are in the power of the tongue, And those who love it will eat its fruit.” Proverbs 18:21 [NKJV] and then in James 3:8-10 [NLT] “but no one can tame the tongue. It is restless and evil, full of deadly poison.

“God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. And God blessed them and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply.””(Gen. 1:27–28)

In God’s creation, maleness and femaleness are a central part, together with their being complimentary and both being made in God’s image. God’s word shows that, sexual union only occurs within marriage and giving the potential for new life, new fruit.

The sexual acts of men and women can influence the image of God they bear. Our acts either honour or dishonour the image of God which is only borne by humans. This is also true of our sexual desires – in Matthew 5.28  Jesus teaches that “Everyone who looks at a woman lust- fully has already committed adultery with her in his heart.”

Also, our sexual acts have spiritual and moral dimensions; they are not just physical or biological. Old Testament scriptures often illustrate our relationship with God through marital fidelity, nuptial joy, fertility, harlotry, and sexual defilement.

Through the ages, the Christian Church taught an ethic of sexual self-discipline, recognizing that sex involves our