Tomorrow, I will be celebrating 30 years of keeping a promise. I made a promise 30 years ago to take a person, Debbie to be my wife. I promised that I would love and cherish her as my wife for a duration of time - till death do us part. I made a contract (a covenant) in front of God and witnesses. The contract had a symbol in the form of a ring. I still wear that ring and it reminds me of the contract I entered into. And in the beauty of old technology, here is that promise I made.
Marriage is very hard. Deb and I love mentoring young couples that look starry-eyed at each other not knowing what the future holds. We say that the first 10 years of our marriage were pretty brutal. We say that we both made a promise and God honored that promise. The promise is what mattered - the feelings come along. I "feel" more strongly about Debbie than I ever have but those feelings are secondary and come from the promise.
We live in a world where promises have little resolve. We hear of marriages where the couples "grow apart". We look for compatibility using online dating sites. We "try it out" by living together. Trying it out sounds logical, but without the covenant promise it carries no weight. I am utterly convinced and so is Deb that God saved our marriage by a) us honoring the promise we made, and b) us committing our marriage to prayer. I heard a statistic just this week that marriages have a divorce rate of 1 in 1500 where the couples pray together. The general odds are 50/50. It does not surprise me - marriage truly is supernatural! God weaves together two broken, selfish, sinful people together as a couple. The marriage union is a symbol of Christ's love for His people the church. It is the closest thing we get on this earth to the supernatural union of Christ with us. Christ's love for us was evident for us on the cross and ratified with these words "I will never leave you nor forsake you" (Hebrews 13:5). When I make a marriage promise, I am using these same words.
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