VISIONARY MARRIAGE
August 4th, 2009 adminRob Reinow is the Family Ministries Pastor at Wheaton Bible Church. Monday night at the opening session for this year’s AMFM conference in Phoenix, he talked about visionary marriage. He began with the premise that when we marry we marry for a number of reasons and we love our spouse as they are at that time. Problems start when we realize our spouse has changed. This is not rocket science – we all change. I was different at 25 than at 20. You are different now than you were 5 years ago or that you will be in 5 years. We all married a moving target.
God’s plan is for marriage to work – and it is work. Yet, I have always believed our marriages can be the most fulfilling relationship next to our relationship with Christ in this life. So how do we make our marriages work?
Rob used Ephesians 5 to flesh out the role of the husband. In short it is to “love our wives” (I Corinthians 13 fleshes this out for us), “to serve our wives” (Christ gives us the example of true love), and to “lead our wives” (this is servant leadership).
For the wives, their role is as “helper” (Genesis 2:18 – do not forget that Scripture refers to God as a helper), to “submit” (Ephesians 5:22) and to “respect” (Ephesians 5:33).
In my experience, when I fulfill my role it makes it easy for Nancy to fulfill her role. Both have a responsibility. Both are accountable to God. Yet, a husband fulfilling his role sets the stage for a great marriage.
