“A Covenant Is Not A Contract”

A covenant is intended by God to be a lifelong fruitful relationship between a man and a woman. Marriage is a vow to God, to each other, our families and our community to remain steadfast in unconditional love, reconciliation and sexual purity, while purposefully growing in our covenant marriage relationship.

Contracts are based on protection and mistrust. They allow the parties involved to look for loop holes and exit clauses, and are centered on your rights and protection. In fact, the Bible doesn’t say anything about “contracts” anywhere in scripture! Our feelings are forever fluctuating. Therefore, to build a covenant marriage on feelings is to build it on shifting sand, which cannot support the foundation of marriage. It is a selfless love, freely given and freely received.

God has a plan for our marriages. He desires to see our love grow and bear fruit. The goal of marriage is not merely to enjoy one another’s company or to simply endure until the end however; the goal of marriage is ultimately to glorify God in our relationship and to demonstrate Christ to others.

Relationships die when the two people in it stop talking and cease to have real honest conversations like the ones you had at the beginning of your relationship. Those real, open and honest conversations tend to fade over time. What we need to understand is that a fading in communication is often a natural progression in many relationships where there is a lack of consistent communication. The key is to not let that fading turn into never having those real conversations, which are necessary in the growth and progression of our marriages.

The good news is that these signs don’t necessarily mean your relationship is over. There is always hope with Christ and unless there is some abusiveness on the lines of physical or domestic violence to which you or your spouse is exposed, then all other issues can be worked through together. Many marriages have the potential of being saved if both parties are committed to working on the relationship, as well as working on the change within themselves.

In a marriage because you are two individual people coming together to become one, you’ll have different levels of skills when communicating. These skills can be learned, and you can have better communication. Remember: God established covenant and He will not let you fail. Your covenant doesn’t have to be broken and your marriage can last forever. You can do all things through Christ that strengthens you (Philippians 4:13).

In order for marriages to grow and achieve oneness and success, you must set aside time daily and weekly to communicate; a lack of communication can potentially be a covenant breaker within the marriage. You can improve your marriage right now, by putting into practice better communication skills while working towards lifelong fulfillment of the “Covenant Promise” as God intended for your marriage.