Marriage - 40 day countdown

Question: “How long has covenant marriage been in existence?”
Response: “Since God established marriage.”

The challenge we have as Christians is to present to the world a view of marriage that dispels any shadow of doubt that marriage as God designed it is the best arena of human relationships through which you can experience love to its fullest degree. The world views marriage as a legal contract between two or more individuals. Contracts are based on rights and responsibilities and are motivated by self-interests rather than on unconditional love. A legal contract is necessary to begin and likewise end a relationship. But a covenant is more than a contract. It is more than a legal document declaring a state of interdependence.
For the past 30 years, our nation has been wandering in the wilderness of “no-fault divorce” brought about by an acceptance of the view that marriage is simply a contract. During this time of aimless wandering, the church has found herself taking on the beliefs and practices of our culture rather than impacting our culture with the life-changing Word of God regarding marriage.
The concept of marriage as a “contract” cannot be documented in God’s Word. In fact the word “contract” cannot be found in commonly used versions of the Bible. The word “covenant” on the other hand, can be found approximately 300 times in Scripture. The Hebrew root word for covenant is “to cut,” which relates more to the rituals involving the sacrifice of animals that “sealed” the covenant. The value of a “covenant marriage relationship” as opposed to a “contractual marriage agreement” lies in a person’s understanding and acceptance of God’s intent for marriage and the importance of His presence in the marriage.
God intends for marriage to be a lifelong covenant relationship between one man and one woman under His Lordship. When a couple shares their wedding vows, they are vowing to God, each other, their families, and their community to remain steadfast in unconditional love, reconciliation, and sexual purity, while purposefully growing in their covenant marriage relationship.

40 days from right now I will make a covenant with Andrew Gregory Nuetzel as we are surrounded by our family and a ton of friends to share in the first moment and day of our marriage!!! Wow! Andy and I both realize that we are making a covenant with God, each other and ourselves to commit ourselves to this marriage until death do us part. We both have talked about how this is awesome and great and also kind of intimidating and pretty huge. Please pray for us and our relationship. As we are learning in our pre-marriage counseling, pretty soon we're going to be very up close and personal with each other going from our stage of idealization of each other to realization of each other...to me Andy looks pretty good close up and if I could have gotten blogger to let me post a picture this is where one would go of Andy. Hopefully I'll figure out what's going on and post a picture of my handsome soon to be husband soon!