A Marriage of Your Dreams

By Bill & Pam Farrel

We all enter marriage with dreams…some practical, some impossible, some blissful. What is God’s dream for our marriages? “So that with one heart and mouth you may glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.” Roman 15:6

Each couple has much in common with other couples, but no husband and wife on earth are exactly like another. The ways a couple interacts with one another, makes decisions, plans their lives, communicates their values, and enjoys their time together are unique and ought to be treasured. Each couple is a vital part of God’s worldwide, history-wide plan. Each couple holds the key to unlocking their dreams and every time they enjoy their love, they reveal a little bit more of who God is, because “God is love” (1 John 4:16).

So many couples think they are just ordinary. They act as if God created some husbands and wives just to be filler on earth while He works only with the special people who are visible and prominent. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Our own lives tell the story.

Tom and Barbara Buck appear to be a rather ordinary family. Tom had an ordinary career and with Barbara raised an ordinary family. They lived in ordinary houses and took ordinary vacations. But to Bill and I they were not ordinary. When we wrote, The First Five Years, a book for newlyweds, we realized that Tom & Barbara had the most positive impact on us. We lived with them for one summer before we went to seminary to save money for our grad school. As newlyweds we gained an education that was much more vital that summer. Barbara modeled for Bill what a godly wife looked like – see Bill grew up with a mom who was paralyzed by fear and she didn’t have a personal walk with God. I learned what a godly husband looked like by watching the kind way Tom served Barbara. I gained hope that it was possible to live in a home of peace in contrast to the raging drinking father I grew up with. In years since, we’ve seen them model “healthy” for many others.

Each couple has a supernatural influence if they are willing to accept their God-given purpose. Ephesians 2:10 says: “For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.”

God works in couples in very specific ways. Some produce generations of pastors. Other couples are highly effective in business from one generation to another. Some couples quietly help others succeed in rather unspectacular ways. There are couples who are inventors, builders, actors, artists, and so on. The fact is that our God-given purpose has been developing for generations and it is now ready to be expressed through our relationships. God has been building His dream for generations and now, as husband and wife, we are intricately woven into His dream for the world!

What is our purpose as a couple? Let us suggest that you work through the following questions as a starting point for discovering the unique purpose God has for your marriage.

*What do we do well as a couple?

*What does God bless in a special way in our relationship? Why did Jesus bring us together?

*What does He want to accomplish through our lives together?

Let’s all create a dream love by living out our higher purpose as a couple. Let’s live and give away our love and discover our love multiplies toward each other in the process.

Bill & Pam Farrel write from El Cajon, California.