Freedom is said to be the foundational ideal of our culture and nation, and we treat marriage like a self-sacrifice of freedom, a trade, in order to gain marital bliss.  But in Matthew 19, when the Pharisees ask Jesus about personal freedoms related to marriage and divorce, he essentially answers, if you're thinking rightly about marriage and freedom, you would never have asked the question.

Our culture looks at marriage as a contract between two people--one in which you get to define the terms on each other, renegotiate, and, if you're displeased, break.  But marriage is meant to be a covenant between two people and God, in which the Lord defines the terms and, himself, upholds the relationship.

Our culture teaches a doctrine of soul mates, perfect matches, and happily ever after--and because that's no one's real experience, we're left feeling inadequate, unfulfilled, even betrayed in our marriages and single lives. But a spouse was never what you needed to be fulfilled in life, and no person is able to carry the weight of that expectation. You need Jesus if you're ever going to find the fulfillment of your most honest desires.

So often we despise the gifts God gives us of singleness or in marriage because we think they're gifts given to us for our improvement and enjoyment. But what if your marriage, or your singleness, is a gift given through you to the people around you, like most other spiritual gifts are?

Our culture tends to conceive of marriage either as a means of self-improvement, as a means of fulfilling deep desires, or as a restrictive familial and sexual contract. What does Christian marriage really look like? Spirit, please convict us if we've built our marriages on something other than you.