6-27-21 | Worth It! |Terrie Kennington
Honor and Marriage
“I vow to love, honor and cherish.” Sound familiar? These traditional vows are used in many weddings. The promise to love is easy to understand, but what does it look like to honor our spouse? In marriage, honor involves recognizing the worth of your relationship. The word honor means to highly value something or someone — to appreciate, cherish and recognize each other as a priceless treasure. It involves recognizing the beauty and worth of your relationship with your spouse. We then show that we honor another by our words and our actions. How do we speak about and to our spouse? My brother and sister-in-law have been a great example of this to me. I have never heard them speak badly about the other. I’m sure they are frustrated with each other at times, but they do not share that in public settings. Their kindness and consideration for each other have made their marriage stand-out. It demonstrates Romans 12:10 that says that we are to “outdo one another in showing honor.”
Hebrews 13:4 also speaks of honor and marriage. It tells us that marriage is to be honored not just by the married couple, but by ALL. We as a community are to honor marriage. Pastor Jeremy shared this statement. “We champion healthy marriages, because healthy marriages make healthy families and healthy families build strong communities.” Don’t we all want to live in communities that are healthy? One way to do that is to honor marriages in our community by helping build strong ones.
So, what does that look like? It is looking for ways to support marriages that are around us. Here are just a few suggestions of how we can help a couple grow stronger in their relationship.
- Be practical. Offer babysitting for a couple so they can spend time together. Give them a gift certificate to send them out on a date.
- Provide a safe place for couples to be honest about their relationship. My husband and I are a part of a connect group at Fellowship. This group has been that safe place for us. We know that we could share with this group and that it would not be met with judgement. Instead, this group would rally around us in support.
- Pray!!! One of the most powerful ways to be apart of strengthening marriages is to pray for them. Ask God to give you direction in who to pray for and how to pray for them. Here are four prayer points I like to use in praying for couples.
Pray for their individual relationships with God, Matthew 6:33 tells that if we are seeking first God’s kingdom and his righteousness, the rest will fall into place.
Pray that God would show them what He sees in their spouse. It’s easy to see each other’s faults, but that’s not what God’s sees. Pray for them to see the person God designed them to be – full of purpose and God-given gifts.
Pray for hearts that are willing to forgive. When my husband hears of someone’s mistakes, he always says that we are messy people. Notice that he includes himself in that statement. We all need to ask for forgiveness at times and be willing to accept it.
Pray that they would know God’s purposes for their marriage. I believe that we not only have purposes for our individual lives, but God has purposes for our marriages. Husbands and wives are not just joined together for themselves, but so that they can further the kingdom together in ways they could not by themselves.
Let’s continue to ask God to show us ways to honor marriages.