A Valentine for Your Marriage by Derek Prince

Like me, you may suspect that many so-called holidays are primarily designed largely to keep the greeting card companies in business. But I have learned over the years that they can serve as good reminders of certain spiritual principles.

For example, when Valentine’s Day comes around about this time each year, I take it as an opportunity to examine how loving I am toward others. It’s also an excellent time for husbands and wives to examine their marriage relationships and for families to strengthen their bonds of commitment.

I am aware that not every person who reads this letter is married. However, marriage is under attack right now. And every believer who has a special married couple in his or her life has a stake in seeing the God-given institution strengthened and restored.

A New Endangered Species

The headline in the recent issue of the New York Times told the sad tale:
“To Be Married Means to be Outnumbered”
For some time now, experts have been saying the traditional married-couple household is about to become a minority in this nation. Why?

Well, when you combine outrageously high divorce rates (even among believers) with the fact that most younger people today are understandably terrified of marriage—you get a culture in which the traditional family becomes the exception rather than the rule.

And according to the Times, we recently crossed that historic milestone. Here’s an excerpt:
Married couples, whose numbers have been declining for decades as a proportion of American households, have finally slipped into a minority, according to an analysis of new census fig­ures. . . . A growing number of adults are spending more of their lives single or living unmarried with partners, and the potential social and economic implications are profound.

“Profound”? Try disastrous.

Why are young people so reluctant to get married? These thoughts from Derek Prince offer us an answer:

I think many younger Christians today, partly because they’ve seen so little to impress them in the lives of older Christians who are married, have completely failed to see the tremendous sanctity and importance of marriage. I really don’t blame you. It’s a tragic fact that we’ve got, I suppose, millions of young people growing up today who have never seen a happy marriage.

However, let me say this to you: if you’ll turn your eyes away from human beings and look to the Bible, it will give you a picture of marriage.

God didn’t establish the lifetime husband-wife bond on a whim. He designed it to be the very best place to live, love, thrive, advance His kingdom and, of course, raise children. And as Derek so powerfully taught, he built it on covenant.

The Power of Covenant

You may have heard the term covenant used many times in reference to marriage. But have you ever known why God views marriage in a covenantal way? Derek Prince had a unique insight on this question:

There is one basic reason why marriages fail. And it is because people do not realize that marriage is a covenant relationship. And if they do, they don’t understand what’s involved in a covenant relationship.

How would a man and a woman view their marriage relationship as Christians who have a covenant relationship with Jesus Christ? Well, they enter into that relationship through a sacrifice. What sacrifice? The death of Jesus. Each one of them passes through that sacrifice. Then they turn around and they look at the sacrifice and they say, “That’s where I died. Now I’m not living for myself. I’m living for my mate. The life I laid down is now being lived out in my mate. And my success will be the success of my mate.”

Somebody asked a well-known evangelist once if a certain man was a good Christian. And he said, “I can’t tell you. I haven’t met his wife.” That’s a very good answer. If a couple are Christians, the success of the one will be seen in the other. You see, it’s a life laid down. I think the Bible teaches that.

Clearly, understanding covenant is a key to happy marriages and strong families.