Building Hedges in Your Marriage

As I am writing this, it is just a few days before Valentine's Day. Since it falls on a Sunday this year, we are going to have our Valentine's celebration on Saturday night. We love having a special dinner at home for our Valentine dinner! I move our table to a spot in front of our fireplace, and set it with pretty dishes and flowers and candles. We plan a special menu and enjoy cooking together - usually some kind of steak and seafood combination, with fresh veggies and a special dessert. My husband loves anything salted caramel so I found a new recipe for salted caramel mini-cheesecakes which I'm going to try. I will let you know how it turns out! With a setting and a menu like that, who needs a restaurant with the crowds, rushed service, and inflated prices? Whatever your plans for Valentine's Day are, the point is to have some plans, whether it is dinner, dessert and coffee, a picnic on the floor, or an activity you enjoy doing together. Make it a celebration of your marriage! The effort is worth it.

I overheard the following conversation in the gym last week:
Woman 1: Aren't you ------, the photographer?
Woman 2: Yes, I am!
Woman 1: I thought so! You might not remember me but you took our daughter's wedding pictures a couple years ago.
Woman 2: Of course, I remember. How is your daughter doing? I heard she had a little boy.
Woman 1: Oh yes! But she and her husband are divorced now. She's getting remarried and is expecting another baby.
Woman 2: That's wonderful! I'm so happy to hear she is doing well.

Umm, I'm sorry, but I don't think that's wonderful. Because God doesn't think so. What makes it worse is the fact that stories like this one are the norm today. People accept divorces, extramarital affairs, and split families as an inevitable way of life. As one who is married to a pastor who has done a lot of counseling over the years, I can tell you that the ones who suffer the most in these sad stories are the children. They end up confused, insecure, being shuffled from parent to parent, or in the care of their babysitters or grandparents more often than not. When they become teens they look for love and acceptance in all the wrong places, and many of them will fall into the same patterns and problems of their parents. Yet we are told over and over again, "They will be fine!"

The really sad thing is that this is happening more and more in the church. When you are in the ministry you hear a lot of stories like this - over and over again. There are many factors which contribute to the failure of Christian marriages, which I do not have the time or space to elaborate on, but one thing is certain: These marriages do not fall apart overnight.

There is a very good book by Jerry Jenkins entitled "Loving Your Marriage Enough to Protect It." It contains some very valuable insight and advice on the subject of building "hedges" to protect your marriage, and having these "hedges" in place before the enemy attacks. The book deals mainly with hedges having to do with protecting your marriage against infidelity, but there are many other Biblical principles that we can put into place as "hedges" to protect our marriage and help it to be all that God intends it to be. God intends marriage to be for life, and He has given us the wisdom and tools in order to protect our marriages. Psalm 89:40 says,"Thou has broken down all his hedges, thou has brought his strongholds to ruin." Strongholds, or those things that we think are invincible, are broken down when we fail to put hedges of protection into place to protect our marriages, and when we fail to maintain those hedges.

The stakes are high. The danger is real. No marriage is immune to the attacks of the enemy. Love your spouse and your marriage enough to plant and maintain those hedges.

Till next time,

Kathi