The Cross of Jesus Christ is the world's greatest offense.

His Resurrection is everyone's greatest refuge.

Beauty, truth, friendship, love, creation - these are the great values of life. We can't prove them, or explain them, yet they are the most stable things in our lives. Believing uncertainty causes problems is the problem - unless our efforts in all situations are faithfully trusted in our Heavenly Father. He accepts the unacceptable, not to allow the unacceptable, but to transform the unacceptable into the acceptable.

There is a source of our living awareness that is not abstract, mechanical, or uncaring - there is a purpose in our existence beyond our ability to fully understand. The “Grand Mystery” of all things is based in with whom we are making our decisions.

God has a plan and He does not make mistakes. However, He is not the author or generator of the difficulties and hardships we and the world suffers. Changing day by day is unavoidable. We either are falling away from, or rising into, our created place of being.

The information presented here is not a quick and easy read. Though it is written for everyone, it will seem at times very personal because the heart of understanding is meant to be sensitive to the truth. God leaves no one out (that is what confused people do) and has a place for everyone - while His desire is that everyone should be in their place. Marriage defines the focus.

Marriage of a man with a woman is a defense against, and an offense to, a world bent on autonomous self esteem. As it should be, when we are personally responsible with a love interest, we are open and vulnerable to their entire being. The varied topics here are necessary to indicate the depths of commitment intimate involvement entails.

It is recommended no portion of this site be taken out of context. Because words are symbols, the meaning of a word rests in the why of that word. The why of a word does not rest in its symbolic meaning. [Differences in language can cause motivational conflict of intentions: In English the word sin means a type of bondage to personal destructiveness; whereas in Spanish sin generally means, ‘to be free of’ or ‘without encumbrance’.]

If you do not like part or all of this shared witness, pray about it and give yourself a chance to understand.  If you realize what this message is and what it means to you, you will not get caught up on the words or cast them aside as insignificant.

There is no negative intent implied toward anyone.

2 Corinthians 1:24, Not that we have dominion over your faith, but are helpers of your joy: for by faith ye stand.

Introduction

   The standard of living that is the foundation and background behind all other forms of standards of living - the core of social and personal well being - is the union of a man and a woman in the institution of marriage. It is the central and core, number one, civil right of humankind, and the basis for all other endeavors. It is a dangerous conjecture to reason there is no God, for marriage would lose its purpose and respect in our hearts and attentions.

   Like breathing, and a beating heart, there are standards of intimacy that, without exception, apply to everyone; whether one or another, or many, disagree. Many Scriptural illustrations of God’s example to us in Christ show the spiritually unseen manifestations of His Way in marriage as the guiding character our physical materialistic meanings require. Joy in shared living is through our active responses in giving attentions to God's promises of protection in the living vows of marriage - the merging of two independent individualities into a joint decision making team of one.

   The wedding band is the outward physical symbol of this bond of commitment. Marriage is not an optional accessory to living one’s life where other endeavors with career, friends, or hobbies take lead. Marriage is living where these other activities enhance purposeful companionship. The Bible says marriage is patterned after the church unto Christ where the man holds the position of Christ to his wife who represents the church unto her husband. That is because of original sin in the Garden of Eden where Eve was tempted to listen to the Serpent instead of Adam her husband.

   All things in the world that are not in the will of God are patterns of original sin because the falling away from life is from the same source. No matter what their particular or collective circumstances, everybody belongs to God. Jesus Christ fully committed Himself to live and die, and live again, humanity. His Word represents a man’s position of authority where a woman’s word authority combines with her husband’s place in Him. Christ’s flesh represents a woman’s position of authority where a man’s body authority combines with his wife’s place in Him.

   Marriage in the United States of America is legally classified as "fundamental to our very existence and survival" because of its role in encouraging and protecting the only type of interpersonal association which results in the natural reproduction of the human race. The working out of personal and interpersonal development is accomplished, by the hand of God through faith action, within marriage day to day by husband and wife.

   Shared personal intimate living, under the spiritually unseen/physically seen dual sanctioned powers of our eternal God in agreement with temporal society, where He remains humankind’s Authority and humankind’s various families are society’s authority, finds its lasting strength through the wedding ceremony. At issue is not promiscuous or “let’s see if it works out” co-habitude sex because who we are, as a people centered in our loyalties, has generally been abandoned due to available contraceptives.

   At issue are false confidentiality standards based in expressive intrigue. At stake are our self-assured attitudes about Who Jesus Christ is (consequently who we are), in our caring for the power of our committed word, connected with His. Casual sex, recreational sex, occupational sex, entertainment sex, whim-of-the-moment hookup sex, and career planning-stage ‘stayovers’ take a subversive emotionally supportive dependent independence to financial stability and status in a society where personal achievement drives the powers of convenience behind consumerism and population control.

   Swaying the power of combined faith decisions in marriage into division for profit by cooperate advertising executives…  and people, collectively, lose their God given rights to trust in Him to know what He is doing as our source of supply, at the service to worldly economic vitality. To protect our own desires for self-aware fulfillment in our unique and particular independence, we are taught we must blame our father, our sisters, our brothers, the school, the teachers, the government, and ultimately our spouse - we can blame anyone but never blame ourselves.

   It's never our fault, just ask anyone and they can tell you which man or woman cause their problems. Trouble is, we have forgotten to trust God to know how and which un-human demonic pressures and influences are working to ruin our faithful living. In that sense it really is not our fault because we are overwhelmed by the spirit of the “master of thieves” throughout society. But, it is always our responsibility because we supernaturally want change called improvement. We are the one who has the power through faith action, together with our loved ones, to change.

   Honor does not “just happen naturally” except in our seeking for God’s wisdom through faith in Christ. Intentional respect leads to decency that leads to integrity that leads to honor; always in that order. Moving ahead into bond with a mate brings rise to paradoxical if not opposed thoughts and feelings accompanying fresh as well as accustomed positions in life. Fearful awed wonder of the new and delight at the disappearance of the old in concert with fear of losing the old and trepidation at the appearance of the new; repulsion and fanatical enthusiasm, creativity and despair are natural active elements during the changeover process.

   However, the process of conversion into married life is not meant to be a maintained way of life. Efforts to drag the old into the new as a conceptual/emotional integrated completion of wholeness will only serve to catch everyone involved into continuous confusion from being stuck in the transformation. Before marriage, attempts at finding solace is found in indirect pieces here and there, as one allows, because there is no foundation of particular lasting commitment in which to rely. This leads to an unfulfilled habitual hunger for attention.

   As a person integrates their persona, interests, and expectations with the one they marry, there comes a unifying of finding secure solace with and in their mate and a giving up of the varied opinions, viewpoints, and scattered yearning being single naturally causes. If one were to remain single in their avenue of expression in life without marriage, only one stable and centered focus is available without falling into the perplexity resulting from multi-intimate companionships: living solely unto solace in God through Christ without interpersonal intimacy with another human being; not for reasons of physical purity, but for reasons of personal responsibility to others.

   Any event of experience we are reluctant to be respectfully open and honest about with our personal partner is probably something we shouldn’t be doing. It causes distortions of proper consideration in unrestrained free association between unconnected similarities of meanings and purposes. Lost is the power of our God-instilled natural instincts true romantic traditions find in putting marriage first through open ceremony (and straightforward eloping) to shed aside family and social restraints against a man and woman choosing to permanently be responsible for one another in God’s capable, responsible, hands.

   Prenuptial agreements speak of the confusion in mixing fear with doubt. Natural fearfulness is based in intense apprehension. Future projected self-protective exercises during matrimonial preparations create an unintended suspicion where faith combines with the proper cautions. Giving our mate a chance to be for us, in personal responsibility for everything we may be involved, allows them to be who we married them to be. There can be no constructive success in the upside-down-backwards manipulative practice of refraining from togetherness in marriage to facilitate any general and/or certain demands of behavioral criteria and/or performance.

   An extravagant expensive wedding ceremony, though a delightfully positive expression of dedication, must never displace propriety’s priority about cohabitation and present affordability. Attention to honest straight-forward composure in wedding arrangements provides the dignity of witness expensive pretentious preparations for a “dream wedding” cannot approach. A wedding for a few hundred dollars, or less, is not diminished in God’s eyes. Splurging on the nearly $30,000 average wedding costs in the USA shows; on the one hand a celebrated radical trust in faith, and on the other a retreat from moderation in all things.

   Many times, depending upon what a couple has to work with, elegant simplicity and necessary thrift allows for much more appreciated memories. One of the adversary’s biggest weapons is discouragement about supposed negative circumstances accompanied by a vague overall disgust that paralyzes our activities to hold ourselves and others in account. The devil’s divide-and-conquer methods are always the same: To keep a couple from an open and honest living under the joys of grace and mercy. Indignation against frustrations gives a false reasoning about our fears and distances our active reliance in Christ’s hand, through our hands, in our affairs.

   When our attentions in the decisions we daily make affect intimately involved companionship (marriage), and other important decisions a man and woman are designed by Creation to share, we must seek special direction from God by our trust in Him through our partner. Too often, however, private individualistic prayer is used to camouflage our lack of activity on behalf of our mate because of fears of failure. Everyone gets furious with themselves from time to time when they discover they ‘had things wrong’. Thankfulness abounds when it is discovered through faith that God has things always right.

   Love is from God and of God and must always be from open and honest faith-action because God Himself is Love. He is forever. Since people are not God and cannot be God, what people usually call love in their own reactions to desires is an emotional substitute for faith; attempting to provide the necessary devotions it takes to make a permanent 'go' with a man or woman we marry. When the flesh is understood for what it is, as subject to God’s desires of Will, we have His personal life giving guidance to not reject our personal cares and concerns; but a proper order of sense about commitment.

   People cannot actually fall out of love unless it is the 'love' they fell into in the first place that is usually a well satisfied fulfillment through the use of others. When others do not comply with our own perception (deception) of right over wrong, we say our love is diminished. However, that does not mean that we do not truly love a person we understand we wanted and accepted based in our self-serving misunderstandings about what love is.

   The problems people have with accepting God's grace and mercy of the Good News Gospel of salvation, in most people's hearts and minds who have yet to know Him for Who He is, is they transfer their worldly selfish ideas about what love means onto and into their learning about God. Belief in intelligence as superior to ignorance in world knowing by Godly principles is part of the humanly distorted blocks to receiving Him - because balancing right over wrong in one’s egotistical pride is not of God but of deception from the knowledge of good and evil.

   This causes an unintended rejection of Christ as the Alive Man of Redemption He is by believing He is someone He is not. In defending God’s righteousness in order to find emotional stability to hold onto faith, we get caught up in our pride to brow-beat others into our ways instead of His ways. So, we balk and fight against anything of Truth that gets in the way of our personally and collectively honed and polished misplaced faith in humanity's religious pathways founded in instinctual attractions.

   Putting ourselves first over the errors and discrepancies of those we love by aligning our attractions to have things right, by requiring their submission to our will, has nothing to do with patient devotion to a mate in their freedoms of will unto the real God, through His provided faith in His Son, to expand our heartfelt attentions to see our courses of true love in following His leading. God will never lead us astray, and understanding matrimonial vows enough to realize permanence in Him allows us to see our own God given gifts of determination to trust in our loved ones for His sake – no matter how things may seem to be amiss or a mess.

   Astonishing is how so many men and women feel empowered to accomplish anything they wish in life through determination, education, hard work, intelligence, technological innovation, tenacity, power of positive persuasion, and socially responsible charitable volunteerism except for sensibly applying these same values to the greatest ongoing adventure people have ever universally and personally experienced: living a marriage.

Romans 10:3

Those who seek to shut out the testimony of God’s witness cannot regard it as constituting an expression of the church, “the pillar and ground of the truth.” Hence, they feel themselves justified in separating from their faith-active connections.

Everyone matters...  we get overwrought with people because of situations and circumstances and wrongly think we lose who they are to us and who we are to them. Believing in a past where struggles and pitfalls alienate others from being with us in the future is what the Deceiver wants us to see as real.

The best thing to do with and for anyone we "push into the past", because of overloaded emotional regret, is to pray for them - for they have an eternal soul as we do. "God works in mysterious ways, His wonders to perform." Judge not lest you be judged for there is never any past, nor is there ever a future in God’s eyes. He is that He is in the beginning, now, and in the end. Everybody’s wayward wrongdoing is always automatically placed entirely on Christ whether or not anyone asks Him for His mercy.

‘Now is the time to come to the aid of your ____ “means just that. Everything starts with prayer, and everything continues with prayer. We can ‘pray our way through’ any situation’s circumstantial difficulty by relying in God as the answer of answers. He gives to us our confidence to take action through the grace and mercy we share with whomever we may be ‘at odds’ against in our flesh-wise self interest.

All our efforts will seem utterly futile if we ignore the Holy Spirit’s leading by deciding one or another is beyond our attentions or concern – especially when it involves our heart in personal responsibilities to our commitments in marriage and family. We usually treat those we care for in what we think of them for our own purposes that blinds us to who they are. We want to be loved and cared for as they do. But, if anyone is thought undeserving to be cared for in our eyes, then what is our caring for?

Personal growth and success is a by-product of our response-able living in faith; it is not the goal. God does not single anyone out for their own development, but for His overall plan for us all. That overall plan means reverence for our vowed witness - faithfulness. Believing uncertainty causes problems is the problem - unless our efforts in all situations are faithfully trusted in our Heavenly Father.

God never treats us as “pawns in a chess game of life” because of His love and respect for who He desires us to be in Him. Our troubles are not reasons to disband the work. Rather, our troubles are our opportunities to pull together in allowing God to work His Word of glory through our combined efforts.

The most prevalent blunder in active traditional Christendom is that God is in cahoots with the devil to punish people into righteousness through the lessons of hardship. Conservatism loses its beneficial witness of constructive vitality to the gospel of the Law that requires paying one’s way into acceptance through faith in Him by our works.

Ephesians 2:8-10 says, For by His favor are ye saved through means of faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the free gift of God: Not from works, lest anyone should boast. His in fact we are, his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus upon a footing of good works, which God prepared beforehand that therein we might walk.

The good works spoken of by Christ are not the world’s religious righteousness in rating people by levels of sinfulness to classify one or another’s rights to social status and position or any lack thereof. Good works in Christ, according to His Gospel, are found in providing opportunity exactly where welcome is not deserved.

Forcing compliance for reward by withholding needs and successes contradicts God’s honest invitation for one to respond wholeheartedly to His call through His Word, Jesus Christ. The Holy Spirit of Living, like the manna in the wilderness, is gathered up fresh daily in the morning through prayer faithfully together with those we share our personal lives.

“Have I any pleasure to take delight in the death of the lawless, at all that the wicked should die? asks the Lord GOD: Must it not be in turning from his ways; that he should return from his ways, and live?” Ezekiel 18:23

Couples who are responsible enough to marry after a child is conceived do no harm to their status of integrity before mankind and God through faith in Christ; in any manner. Under the authority of matrimonial bond, there are no illegitimate offspring.

About divorce: A man or woman does have the shared authority in Christ to disavow a marriage. Though, never independently because of pressures and influences from someone else. Promised matrimonial agreements are God’s property through the combined will of decision a married couple has and, as scripture says, “…let no one put asunder.” It is only the married man and woman, in prayerful agreement together, that have the place to ask forgiveness from Him to allow release. The purpose? Reconciliation instead of being disbanded.

The most common strife causing demolition of faith-active continuity in any household is jealousy over misread motives. When one person is doing his or her best as he or she is able and understands, first for their mate and accordingly for others, it often appears that their intentions are self-serving. This is when the very work of loving effort being done for unity and appreciation is undermined and deconstructed in many ways… misunderstood money matters are the usual cause of spiteful retaliation.

When taking into account a moment’s subject matter (good, bad, right or wrong since all situations are subject to faith in Christ), is your approach a “Me” or a “We”; does, “Mine!” express your emotional outpouring instead of, “Ours!”? This practice, of course, only applies with and between a man and woman in marriage. Anyone else involving their interest to sway a difference into the attentions and collaborations between a husband and wife is overstepping their boundaries of respect, propriety, and cooperative seemliness.

When we trust God's Word for each other we see why we cannot trust our own words to each other.

A husband and wife do what they can and endure what they must for each other.

A good conscience can be found by honestly allowing your spouse to accept everything about you.

Having to want to do anything conjures up relenting resentment regarding a demand while wanting to have to do anything is a delightful response to an invitation.

A great marriage, like a great cake, takes time to enjoy preparing, work to overcome obstacles for it to not fall in baking, and shared delight in the consumption.

A man and/or woman wrapped up in his or her self makes small success – a married man and woman wrapped up in each other makes blessed progress.

A penny increased is one shared.

All marriages fluctuate continually amongst three emotional expressive atmospheres: Spouse protective rejecting of self, self protective rejecting of spouse, and spouse protective accepting of self, which is the same as self protective accepting of spouse.

All who are married know, in some way, God has a sanction that binds us in partnership for sincere work in the world.

Avoid using your husband or wife, or anyone else for that matter, as if they are a slot machine. Investment in steadfast loyalty pays the best interest.

Be careful who it is you make into a public joke. You are deriding your own held position as well as theirs and you may lose your privately held blessings.

When we do what is right we have no concern for what is fair because what is right is fair. Conversely, when we do what is fair to make things right we lose why what is fair is right and try to make the resulting wrong acceptable.

Beware of people who enjoy springing special surprises. Their covert annoyances required for a higher ‘end reward’ are painfully surprising. They are most probably allegiance thieves; profiteers attempting to gloss over their disgrace for delving into your affairs.

Anger is never without reason, but reason is usually ignored in anger.

The cleverer you work to be, the more meaning you apply to presumptions, the less able you are to recognize yourself and others as real people.

Selfishness takes the delightful joy of godly humour and turns it sardonic.

Both the words ‘against’ (conflict) and ‘with’ (resolution) find the same meaning in their attending attentions brought by passing time.

Complain, criticize, and condemn adverse circumstances together before God – no one is perfect.

Being fools for each other allows God to be Who He is and is better than making fools of each other and forgetting Him in the process.

Accounting for words and silence finds no insult in realizing a man’s errors belong to his wife and a woman’s errors belong to her husband; but we all belong to God.

Anyone is ready to own the goodness of their husband or wife and lovingly desires to disown the evils.

During any instant’s state of affairs, when a meaningful glance opportunity presents itself, there is always a choice to extend either expectant admiration or sneering suspicion.

There is no shame in revealing any truth privately with only your ‘other half’. Be honest with each other about your vices knowing the body in which you reside belongs to your spouse.

No one is God, but He asks us to honestly carry – endure – being one (each of the other) in marriage. In that, He promises to be one with us.

Look at who is stirring you up in anger against your wife or husband and you will see who you need to avoid. The usual controlling hidden motive is not about the obvious issue(s) at hand, it is to delay your time of living.

God is the Hub for his will and her will to be their will, becoming his wit and her wit to be their wit-(ness), and then his judgment and her judgment meld into their judgment as dispensed by the authority of Christ.

The absent are never without fault, nor the present without excuse – that is what God designed marriage to address.

A husband and wife are responsible for each other and their pre-adult children; and to everyone else for Christ’s sake. Everyone else is responsible to, and not for, a married man and woman and their family, for Christ’s sake.

Why Get Married First?