Why Do You Want to Be Married?

by Alexandra Copeland

A close friend of mine, Noemi, wants to be married very much. She’s been close a few times, but none of her relationships have turned out as she has hoped. Noemi is a very accomplished person, and she’s always been focused on her career. She envisions sharing the finer things in life with her future husband—traveling, a beautiful home, and nice cars. Jesus Christ tells us in John 10:10 that he came to this earth to make a more than abundant life available to us. From this, we know that God wants us to have the best, but God’s best isn’t defined by worldly things. We sometimes get that part twisted. Noemi has her ideas about what constitutes having the best, and if a man isn’t able to meet those standards, she’s made it very clear that she won’t even give him the time of day. 

The world can be a very mean place, but God didn’t create it to be that way. He’s given every person that has ever lived, and that will ever live, this thing called free-will agency. Each of us has a will, and we make our own decisions about what-when-and-how to do the things we want to do. God doesn’t interfere with our decisions. He will never overstep our free-will choice. He will allow us to make a choice even though it is a wrong one. We saw this with Adam and Eve. They made a catastrophic choice, and God didn’t stop them from making it. 

Proverbs 21:2(NLT) tells us, “People may be right in their own eyes, but the Lord examines their heart.” A successful person may feel very strongly about only marrying a person who is bringing their ‘A’ game as well. In their minds, this is the right way to approach marital partnership, but only God is righteous. He examines our hearts to see if our motive is to please Him or to please ourselves. Psalm 145:17(NLT) says, “The Lord is righteous in everything he does; he is filled with kindness.” Psalm 7:11 tells us that He’s a righteous judge, and nobody gets away with anything. Heavenly Father has established what is right and His standard is unmovable, irrefutable, undeniable, and infallible.

We can build walls around ourselves by the beliefs we hold so firmly, and sometimes those beliefs have no connection to God’s standard of righteousness. When this happens, our motivation is no longer His love, but that of self-interest. 1John 4:16 tells us that God is love, and all who live in love live in God, and He lives in them. The institution of marriage was created by God to expand His love, not limit it. Marriage is His institution. Humans didn’t come up with it. God did, and it is intended to be one of the most beautiful ways to walk in fellowship with Heavenly Father, because it continually allows us to see a reflection of His love through the person that is closest to us. 

Jesus Christ tells us in Matthew 6:8 that God knows what we need before we ask Him. He knows everything there is to know about us. To come to Him in prayer without an appreciation and acknowledgment of this truth is dishonoring who He is. Galatians 5:25 tells us that if we live in the Spirit, we must also walk in the Spirit. We must let God’s love lead us, so that we have the partner God has ordained to walk with us through life. This person is a gift, and we are obligated by our faith in the Lord Jesus Christ to trust God to help us love them beyond our human limitations. We must love them through Him. This is the purpose of marriage, and when we ask ourselves why we want to be married, the answer must be, unequivocally, to please God.■

Scripture quotations marked (NLT) are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Wheaton, Illinois 60189. All rights reserved. 

“Why Do You Want to Be Married?”, by Alexandra Copeland. Copyright© 2020. All rights reserved. All praise and honor to God through Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior.