Once upon a time, there was a young woman who was dressed in ragged clothes and was forced to serve those more fortunate than her in order to survive. Regardless of how hard the people around her pushed her to toil and slave, she worked diligently while showing concern and kindness to those even less fortunate than her. You could see from her demur that even though she had been poor all of her life, she trusted God would meet her needs. Many fairy tales have taken this same young woman and painted her not only loving on the inside, but so beautiful on the outside that a prince would overlook her rags and see the real her. A frustrated princely youth that up until she came into his life had never found anyone worthy of his affection. We know from movies and cartoons how this story ends. She marries the prince and they live happily ever after. However, no matter how hard you try to mold it or force it into following this story line, life can seldom live up to the movies. Love is not so easily packaged and sold. Over 50 percent of all marriages end in divorce. Living together without a legal marriage is now becoming more and more popular. Families throughout the world are collapsing because love in people's hearts have grown cold. Love that was suppose to flourish and last a grow. What has happened to the fairy tale life that puts two people together for a lifetime? Why is the dream of a strong relationship impossible to achieve in our present day world? Genesis 2: 18, "The Lord God said, 'It is not good for the man to live alone. I will make a suitable companion to help him.'" In the beginning God created man and woman to help each other. An unbreakable force bound by a marriage that united them through love and intricately weaved them so closely together that their souls became one. Together they would populate the world. Together they would live in the Garden of Eden as a family, enjoying each other and having a loving relationship with God. God's desire was for marriage to be a strong force that enabled two people to stand up to opposition by presenting a united front. Two people who would build their lives together with God as the center of their marriage. In order for God to teach the man and woman He had to test their loyalty to Him. In the center of the garden stood two trees. The fruit of one tree unlocked the secrets of good and evil and the other tree was the tree of eternal life. God forbid them from ever eating from either tree. The most beautiful creature in all the world was the snake. Satan entered the snake and easily persuaded Eve to eat from the forbidden tree of good and evil. From that moment on everything changed. A world game erupted between good versus evil and man became the player. No longer was the world perfect, now it was filled with temptations to sin. Every man and woman were given the opportunity to make choices for good or evil. Freewill gave everyone the ability to decide whether or not they would follow God or their own evil hearts. A Spiritual game took shape enabling an unseen world to influence the minds of men in the great tug-of-war of life. Satan was punished for inciting the man and woman to turn against God and was thrown down to earth. Satan became the god of the earth and his spirit demons infected the minds of men with thoughts of jealousy, pride, selfishness, impatience, and every form of evil. Jesus tells of Satan's control over the world. John 14: 30a, "I cannot talk with you much longer, because the ruler of this world is coming." God fought back and sent guarding angels to protect His precious world game players by inspiring them with the voice of the Holy Spirit. He sent prophets to teach people how to fight against Satan and sin. He gave us the Laws of Moses and finally He gave us the greatest sacrifice when Jesus died for all mankind's sin. When the battle begins in the minds of men our biggest opponent becomes the people who are closest to us. This is the reason why our marriages are under attack by Satan all of the time. For example, Satan takes couples who are suffering from the loss of a child or going through an illness and makes them play the blame game. He uses arguments over petty things like picking up clothes, doing the dishes, watching to much sports or spending to much time on your pleasures apart from your family. Matthew 10:36 "A man's worse enemies will be the members of his own family." Jesus even goes as far as to say that the world game between good and evil is so great that sometimes the cost means you must give up your entire family in order to win your own game. This happens when the trouble of staying together brings so much evil into your life that you must divorce. You must divorce in order to retain your faith in God. Luke 14:26, "Whoever comes to me cannot be my disciple unless he loves me more than he loves his father and his mother, his wife and his children, his brothers and his sisters, and himself as well." Marriages cannot last unless couples put God first. If you are with someone who does not believe in God it will be impossible to be together. Strong marriages are build by God and love. Satan uses stress that comes in the form of unhappiness at work. He uses finances when they are so tight that a family can't pay their bills. He uses a woman's menstrual cycle when her hormones are out of control. He uses a man's mid-life crisis to get him to run from his family and have an affair. Marriages end when both refuse to work together to mend the problems with God's help. Luke 12: 52&53, "From now on a family of five will be divided, three against two and two against three. Fathers will be against their sons, and sons against their fathers; mothers will be against their daughters, and daughters against their mothers; mothers-in-law will be against their daughters-in-law, and daughters-in-law against their mothers-in-law." God uses the Bible to teach us how the family was formed and how family values can protect us from Satan's destructive powers. He tells us how to love and respect our partners. Ephesians 5: 25, "Husbands, love your wives just as Christ loved the church and gave his life for it." Verse 33, "But it also applies to you; every husband must love his wife as himself, and every wife must respect her husband." The game of life resulted from Adam and Eve's unwillingness to be content in perfection. They wanted to understand the things of God and the only way this could be done was through the temptation to do evil. Understanding this great complex world game helps us to build strong relationships only with God's help. God is love! God is able to protect us from evil. God is teaching us through the tests we face in the world so we can gain revelations on how to love unconditionally. Satan fights against everything that keeps us from understanding what we are doing wrong. He makes us only think of ourselves. He uses worldly values that tells us to take care of ourselves. He conquers us by giving us so many evil thoughts about our spouses that we stop loving. Matthew 24:12, "Such will be the spread of evil that many people's love will grow cold." God teaches us how to form solid relationships when we allow Him to work in our lives. His guidance helps us not to think of just ourselves. He helps us to put the needs of our partners first. When God is the head, He builds unbreakable marriages. Ephesians 5: 21-24, "Submit yourselves to one another because of your reverence for Christ. Wives, submit yourselves to your husbands as to the Lord. For a husband has authority over his wife just as Christ has authority over the church; and Christ is himself the Savior of the church, his body. And so wives must submit themselves completely to their husbands just as the church submits itself to Christ." These verses have value to those who fight to keep their relationships strong. But we must also understand that when you are in a life game our relationships are what teach us the difference between good and bad. Sometimes we enter into relationships that are built on lust and not love. Sometimes we are deceived by a person who says they love us, but it is only for the purpose of getting what they want. Sometimes God uses wrong relationships to teach us what we really want in the right person we will marry in the future. Understanding the difference between building a secure and mutually satisfying relationship is realizing our need for God. God builds strong relationships. God protects us from the evil voice of Satan, who wants to destroy love. God is the only way for marriage to survive in a world game. 1 John 4:7&8, "Dear friends, let us love one another because love comes from God. Whoever loves is a child of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love." The princess looked into the loving eyes of her prince. She melted into his arms of love. Love that was built by God and held together by God. Marriage that is made strong by conquering the difficulties in the world with God's help so they could live, "Happily Ever After".
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