The Six Nuggets to Building a Strong Marriage

Marriage is the first relationship in the existence of mankind ever recorded in the bible. The first instance man and woman related were in a marriage relationship. In Genesis, after God created the universe and all that lives within it, He created mankind. The first relationship He instituted between man and woman was marriage. We believe marriage was created as a way to reflect the nature of God. Firstly, God created man and woman in His own image and likeliness and blessed them. Instructed them to be fruitful and have dominion over all creation. For this to reflect His image and nature, man and woman were placed in marriage. Marriage created the environment for this to be possible. A relationship between man and woman was divinely constructed so as to reflect the nature of God.

In these first scenes of life on earth, the image of God is put across in relation to a unique social or community concept of God. God exists in a community of Persons: Trinity - three in one. Mankind should exist in a similar form also as to reflect the image of God - body, soul and spirit. At this stage of creation scripture shows an important aspect of man's nature, particularly that which corresponds to the social or community aspect of God's nature: God creates mankind as male and female - not as solitary individuals, but two people who are however `one person'.

The communion or fellowship between man and woman reflects the image of God. God created that special community when He created man and woman in His own image. By creating man and woman in His own image He authored marriage - a family. The community concept of a family reflects the community of the Godhead. Therefore marriage's identity, life and power come from God.

It is the understanding of these truths that will help the marriage relationship to be strong and fulfilling irrespective of the challenges our families face today. We believe the highlights in this section are a condensation of the key practical issues that we have to deal with in life as we endeavor to build strong marriages. Today's popular culture has constructed and projected marriage in a different image from what God intended. The images marriage has been made to represent are selfishness not sharing, individualism not community, hatred not love, profit not sacrifice, and infidelity not faithfulness. These are the images which constantly bombard our lives through an ever encroaching media and traditions handed down from our cultures. There is no time in our history has media been a powerful tool to shape our world view as is in this century. It has influenced who gets elected into leadership whether in church or political government. The family and marriage have not been spared in this onslaught. This has resulted in the further reversal of values at a grand scale in our society. It has tried to empty marriage of its sacredness by redefining marriage as an unsustainable and unnecessary institution.

In the few years we have been married, by the grace of God, we have learnt few keys we feel are important in helping us redefine our marriage and family to reflect what we believe God would want us to reflect as His children. It is in the light of the challenges we faced, as narrated in our life story that we had to decide and commit ourselves to the ideals we believed in. It was not an easy journey but we managed to go through it because we acknowledged that the identity, life and power of our marriage are derived from God.