Clean water, feeding the hungry, putting shoes on children’s feet, holding Vacation Bible School and backyard Bible clubs, sports camps, medical missions, and holding orphans are all amazing ways to be the hands and feet of Jesus. Can you add to the list?
Isn’t being the hands and feet of Jesus one of the reasons why we are motivated to do those things listed above?
What about marriage as a platform to do mission work? Shouldn’t we add that to the list? What if, along with all the ways we seek to meet the physical needs of people, we consider the impact it would have if there were a mom and a dad who reflected the Trinitarian God we serve? Would that have a significant bearing on the outcome of a child’s life and future?
Why does missions through marriage matter?
Missions through marriage matters because it is one way we can break the cycles caused by the breakdown of the family unit.
The statistics are staggering. Do a simple web search of the impact of marriage on society. There won’t be one study that doesn’t drastically reveal that where there are healthy married couples raising children, all aspects of society are overwhelmingly positive as a result. The highest quality of a parent/child relationship means higher levels of marital happiness when the child grows and marries. Children have higher GPAs, married couples work, earn and save at much higher rates while contributing to charity and volunteerism. Public healthcare is reduced, the propensity to commit crimes is reduced. And marriage is associated with lower rates of domestic violence and abuse, just to name a few.
We are not saying that the other platforms to help people and point them to Jesus aren’t important. But why not consider the role that healthy marriages can have in any village, community, or town.
Why does Satan not want this?
It shouldn’t come as any surprise to a Christ follower that the enemy would want to wreak havoc on the most important human relationship God created – marriage. His objective is to steal, kill, and ultimately destroy. And if our view of marriage is skewed, it has a ripple effect on the relationships that naturally expand out from marriage. A model of a fractured marriage in the life of a child can potentially have devastating consequences on future relationships, and perpetuate the dysfunction.
Missions through marriage is an intentional way of engaging people around us in relationship and modeling what God first created and established in the first two chapters of Genesis. It is there we see God’s original intent for man and woman to be one with one another and in a perfect relationship with God himself. We read that it is through that union that Adam and Eve would mirror God, and be fruitful, multiply, and replenish the earth. This command to be fruitful is seen throughout scripture, and very specifically in the carrying out of the Great Commission work of discipleship.
How important is it really?
We can’t ignore, eclipse, or minimize in any way the importance of man and woman as one pursuing obedience to the command to be fruitful, multiply, and replenish the earth in both the literal (childbirth) and figurative (discipleship) way.
We just can’t emphasize enough how powerful it is to accomplish missions through marriage! So, let’s add it to the list of the many ways we obey the great commission. Let’s include it in the conversation when considering all the ways we can help those around us.
“How then will they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? How are they to hear without someone preaching? And how are they to preach unless they are sent? As it is written, “How beautiful are the feet of those who preach the good news!”
Romans 10:14-15
We know the greatest need people have is spiritual. Our sin separates us from the God who created us. God in His great love made a way for mankind to be redeemed back to a right relationship with Him. We need models of that love in tangible ways. Your marriage can be that example.
So, join us in missions through marriage!
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