Wednesday, February 21, 2007
I was speaking at a church in New York, and a couple who originally came from India greeted me very warmly. They seemed to be very much in love with the Lord and obviously in love with each other. When I asked them how long they'd been married, they said, "28 years." They didn't look old enough to have been married 28 years. Then came the second and by far the biggest surprise. They said, "It was an arranged marriage." Jokingly, I said, "Well, it will probably never last." But after thinking about what they had said for a moment, I told them, "Maybe that's what we're all supposed to have - an arranged marriage."
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "The Beauty of an Arranged Marriage."
The best marriages in the world are the ones that have been arranged, by God, that is. Like Isaac's marriage to a woman named Rebekah. We read about how they got together in Genesis 24:44, our word for today from the Word of God. Abraham's servant is sent to find the woman that God has for his son Isaac, and here's the key factor in the search for Isaac's wife. The verse says, "Let her be the one the Lord has chosen." If you're single, wouldn't that make a wonderful verse to put somewhere you'll see it every day, "Let her" or "Let him be the one the Lord has chosen."
That's the kind of "arranged" marriage that's worth waiting for - arranged by a Heavenly Father who knows all your needs, all your potential, all your weaknesses, all your strengths, and exactly the kind of partner you need. After all, He's got some promises to keep, remember? Like Philippians 4:19, "My God will meet all your needs according to His glorious riches in Christ Jesus." How about Psalm 23:1, "The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want."
Now you may say, "Well, God is sure taking His time." Only as much time as it takes to have you ready for your partner and your partner ready for you, or as much time as it takes to lead you to an unmarried life where He will still keep His promise to meet all your needs. What you don't want to do is run ahead into a relationship that you've arranged. Impatience is the greatest enemy of God's best. Remember, there is far more lonely loneliness than not being married, and that's being married to the wrong person.
Now you may be a married person who's thinking, "Well, I think I'm in a marriage God didn't arrange." Well, once you have made a lifetime covenant with a person and become physically one through sexual love, your marriage has become God's will for the rest of your life. He's the One who says marriage is for life and says these pointed words, "I hate divorce" (that's in Malachi 2:16). If God does arranged marriages, then Satan does arranged divorces. But your calling is to throw everything you've got into building the marriage you're in for life.
If God created you to be married, then don't settle for a relationship that you arrange. Please, let your Heavenly Father arrange it. Let it be the one the Lord has chosen. And if you're struggling in the marriage you're in, let God rearrange your relationship by loving your partner with the kind of unconditional love that He showed you at the cross. He still does marriage miracles. The best marriages in the world are "Designer marriages" conceived, controlled, and restored by the One who designed you.