5 Reasons to Fight for Your Marriage

Here are five reasons we should all fight for our marriage with every ounce of our strength.

God Hates Divorce

You know that God hates divorce, even though He loves divorced people. God hates divorce because it destroys the vital unit that is the family. When families crumble, society is weakened. It takes more resources for divided families in society than it does when they stay together. Of course, ongoing, unrepentant adultery justifies divorce, and if there is violence in the home, not only should the person leave that situation, they should by all means remove the children from that home, too. The violent offender needs to be turned into and prosecuted by the law, for there is never any justification for spousal or child abuse. Why fight for your marriage? Is it just to help society? No. God wants you to fight for your marriage, as it’s a God-honored institution (Heb. 13:4) and a God-ordained one (Gen. 2:21-24).

For the Children’s Sake

We know that children that come from single-parent homes or even homes where the spouse has remarried have lower test scores in school, have fewer friends, have more behavioral problems, are less likely to go onto college, and have even less of a chance of graduating from high school. The vicious cycle of poverty, divorce, and not graduating is difficult to break. However, many Christian single parents and those who have remarried have broken this cycle and have lifted their children out of this ongoing circle.

The Bride and Bridegroom Relationship

Hebrews 13:4 says, “Let marriage be held in honor among all, and let the marriage bed be undefiled, for God will judge the sexually immoral and adulterous.” God expects spouses to remain faithful to their own spouse. The intimacy and the relationship of marriage is strongly symbolic of the intimate relationship that Jesus (the Bridegroom) has with the church (the Bride). The church right now is betrothed (engaged) to Christ, and in the Jewish culture, this was seen as legally binding. On the day when the wedding feast takes place between the church and the Lamb, you can just hear the joy of this event: “Let us rejoice and exult and give him the glory, for the marriage of the Lamb has come, and his Bride has made herself ready” (Rev. 19:7). The Lamb is Jesus Christ and the “Bride” is the church. Husbands and wives are to have that same relationship in marriage (Eph. 5:25-27), and it is intended to be permanent, just as the Bride and the Bridegroom’s relationship is.

Preserving Agent of Society

The society in which families exist is never stronger than the family that it lives in. Families are the foundation of any nation because they are designed to instill into the next generation biblical morals and core family values. When children are raised in two-parent homes, they are more successful, less dependent on government or state services or subsidies, and as workers, their rate of productivity is generally higher. Also, children raised in a two-parent home have fewer divorces themselves, lower crime rates in the family, less risk for drug or alcohol abuse, and a tendency to live longer, happier lives. A nation that has strong families as the foundation is less likely to have crime, substance abuse, divorces, violence, and other negative occurrences that are detrimental to society.

Reason for Hope

I think you should fight for your marriage if your spouse is seeking and getting counseling or at least wanting to work on themselves. It takes two people working together to make a marriage work. It doesn’t just happen, and it’s not 50/50. If you are fighting for your marriage, then don’t give up hope. God wants you there for a reason. Perhaps it is to help lead an unconverted spouse to Christ. Maybe it’s to learn how to live with people’s differences. Maybe you need to learn how to love unconditionally, which is what God does (John 3:16, Rom. 5:8-10).

Conclusion

There are certainly more than five reasons to fight for your marriage but no less than these five reasons–that God hates divorce (but loves divorced people), what it does to the lives of the children, how it relates to the Bridegroom-Bride relationship, how it benefits not only the family but also society. Marriage is worth fighting for, fighting primarily from our knees.