A Marriage Of Relationships

With the understanding that we were created for and blessed with relationships we find the ultimate  re;ationship....marriage.  Obviously, marriage is one of the most notable, and challenging, relationships there is.  All the relationships of our lives will have a direct effect on our marital relationships.  The challenge in a text such as this is in how we can possibly siphon through the myriad of relationships that can influence our marriages.  Not all of us have living parents with whom our relationship influences our marriage.  Not all of us have kids, or demanding bosses, and so on, and so on.  So what I have tried to do is identify the four key relationships that all marriages that seek to be Godly marriages have in common.  Within each of these relationships we find the greater circle of the marital relationship. As I have worked to understand marriage I have come to realize that for our marriages to truly be “holy matrimony” there are basically three persons that will play a role in our marriage.  They are not only the husband and wife, but also the person of God.  The image just below gives a good illustration of the model from which we will be building. In the greater circle of the marriage relationship we find the overlapping relationships of God, husband, and wife. 

 

Throughout this blog we will take time to look in greater depth at all four of these key relationships.  I would remind you that each of these is vital if our home is truly going to be one in which there is Holy Matrimony.  The designed logo for this blog has three circles overlapping each other within the larger circle that represents marriage.  Whithin this representation of the overlapping circles we find four distinct regions.  One is the region where nothing overlaps, that area in which each of the marriage partners stand alone.  We will be referring to that region as the relationship that you have with yourself, or the internal relationship.  There is also a point in which the circles representing the husband and wife overlap one another, that is of course your horizontal relationship with your spouse.  A third distinctive region is the point where either the husband or the wife overlaps God’s circle in what is a vertical, or personal, relationship with Him.  The final overlapping region is the one where all three combine in the middle of the circle – that is the triune, or three-become-one, relationship that is vital to any couple seeking to have a fruitful Christian home.