Greg Laurie - Friday, June 15, 2018

Happily Even After

Great peace have those who love Your law, and nothing causes them to stumble.

—Psalm 119:165

It’s amazing to me how people will obsess about a wedding but forget about the marriage. The most important thing is not the wedding; it’s the marriage.

If you see a strong and thriving marriage, it didn’t happen by accident or by default. If a marriage is strong and thriving, it’s because two people are doing their part. The man has his part, and the woman has her part.

Is it possible to have a marriage where we live happily ever after? I think we ought to lose the fairy tale and rephrase that. You can live happily even after . . . if you build your marriage on the right foundation.

God has a plan for marriage, and if we will do it His way, He can bless it. Ephesians 5:31–33 takes us back to the very beginning:

“For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh. This is a great mystery, but I speak concerning Christ and the church. Nevertheless let each one of you in particular so love his own wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband” (NKJV).
God has given us an instruction manual for life, which includes His directions for marriage, family, and raising children—and also being single. That instruction manual is called the Bible, and we need to pay attention to what it says.

As we disregard God’s rules, God’s laws, we will pay a price for it. It has been said that a family can survive without a nation, but the nation cannot survive without the family. God has given us His template for marriage and the family, and the further we get away from it, the worse things become.