Every husband/father deserves a proper homecoming each day for taking their God-given responsibilities seriously and to heart the best they know how.

When Adam and Eve disobeyed their Father’s instruction it upset the peace at home in the Garden. These two children of God were afraid of their Father’s return. But after they had both blamed others for their act of disobedience their Father punished their disobedience (Genesis 3:14-19) but then provided a covering for their shame which they both felt for the first time. Now with their Father’s covering they were not afraid of His return.

Father God does not want His children to be afraid to see Him.

For a man, coming home is to feel the same as going home felt to Jesus after He finished His work on earth. I’m not comparing what Jesus did on the cross to a man’s daily work, for there is a huge difference there; incomparable. Jesus was looking forward to two things: resting from his work and being with the ones that He loves. Whether your husband is gone all day, or all week, or has been away the whole year on military duty, or on some mission field to further Christ’s gospel – he deserves a proper homecoming.

Unlike women, God gave men the title “head of the house” and so husbands and fathers deserve to be treated with a proper home-coming no matter what your opinion of them is. (I’m not including those husbands and fathers who are verbally or physically abusive to their wives and children.) Families today, for the most part, have left the right order of marriage and family. Our heavenly Father will judge this in the end and re-establish His order of creation.

Mothers should train their children to serve in the home. If done with love and reward it will fulfill a child and bring joy to the mother and honor to the father. But, in most homes children are masters instead of servants. Training your children to serve you can bring out the best in them.  Children, like any servant, will perform joyfully when you show them respect and acknowledge their worth and show them that you trust them. Your children will grow up and thank you for how serving you helped them to see the honor and benefit in serving God and others.

My husband, the father of our four children, took his position as head of the family and provider of us all – very seriously. When my husband lost his business of 18 years we all wanted to help bring in some finances so he would not feel so much pressure. I started cleaning houses. Our children each found a way to make money too. God blessed us all.

The Lord made us all successful in our own little way. The children learned through this hard time about the pressure their dad had in financially taking care of a family. When they had to supply their own spending money they soon learned how to make better choices because now it was ‘their’ money they were spending. The girls weren’t ashamed anymore to go thrift-store shopping with me. That first Christmas was thrift store gifts, and we sure had fun finding gifts for each other. You can always find a way to make a loss a meaningful opportunity for the family, or to make a hard time adventurous and fun. It’s about perspective and faith in God because “with God all things are possible.”

This loss of our business was a time that really strengthened our family of six because as we prayed together we each saw the Lord open doors for us. As we worked together we saw the Lord leading my husband through open doors that he would not have gone through had he not lost the business. Coming home from a hard work day was so important to him.

Like I said before, it’s about God’s men – gals. We need to make our homes and children ready to welcome home the head of the family each day. Where else will your husband and the father of your children get loving support and rest from the daily pressures of the world?

I just heard a report about men today in America; that most of them born and raised in America do not want to work, and are not working. They are either living at home with their parents, living off our welfare system of government entitlements, or living off their wife’s income. Shameful! Shameful for men like this who can and should be working, and for their parents enabling them, and for a government enabling lazy and irresponsible men.

As I look back at the different things that came against us, our family, I can see how it made us a close family. I see our adult children, married with their own children – faced with difficult situations in life, and how they are overcoming with their faith in the Lord and love for one another. I see that our four sons (2 of our own and 2 son-in-laws) take their responsibility as husband and father seriously and enjoy coming home to their wives and children each day. Thank You Father God!

A marriage built on a fifty/fifty partnership is doomed from the start. It misleads two selfish half-hearted people to end their marriage when one is not meeting the expectations of the other. A fifty-fifty marriage won’t last long. Your trusting in God is how you are able to give your 100% to your marriage.

Marriage vows have changed because people are not willing to change. Anyone can change for the better; it’s a choice. And what we are weak to do, God will help us do if we humbly go to Him. We need to bring God back into our marriages because God designed marriage for family and the good of all societies.

By the time you marry someone – your love for one another should be somewhat mature because of what should take place in your relationship before you marry. Maturing your love for one another is not about experiencing sexual gratification. You do not need to know a thing in that department before you marry. Sexual pleasure will be heightened if you honor your marriage bed by waiting to have your sexual desires satisfied on your wedding night and thereafter when you both learn more about each other in that way.

Maturing your love is not only about the things you learn to do together. It’s mostly about humility and trust, learning about each other’s strengths and weaknesses, and understanding what it means to commit to one another for the long hard haul.

We have all tried to act better than we really are when we were trying to win the heart of someone. Marriage is not about winning someone; it’s about “two becoming one.” The wedding itself is the legal sanction of a relationship having been tested and approved for marriage and is why the opinion and counsel of levelheaded parents should be honored and welcomed. You need to know whether or not your parents and closest friends approve of the person you’d like to spend the rest of your life with. They see things you might be blinded to.

Believe it or not, it matters greatly that your parents and closest friend like the person you love. With so many other things that will come to break up the two of you – you will need your parents and close friends to encourage you and give you good advice.

Marriage is a very serious commitment, especially to the children who depend on their parents and are greatly affected by the relationship their mother and father have together. Before you marry you should be in agreement as to what you both think about having children and how to raise them. Children absolutely NEED that unity and consistency. I don’t care what you’ve heard; children do not bounce back from a divorce. The children in a divorce are far more hurt and damaged than the two getting a divorce. It shows up later if not immediately. Marriage is not just about you! Marriage is not just about you and your husband! Marriage is about FAMILY!

A solid marriage is formed when both the wife and the husband gives one-hundred percent to the relationship. That kind of marriage will have a harder time ending. We are asking for a ruined marriage from the start – if we refuse to die to ourselves for the sake of our marriage and children. Don’t be an idiot and expect your spouse to do all the changing. Focus on your own attitude and behavior. Make sure you are giving it all you have and then give the rest to the Lord who has the power to work all things out for the good.

“In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express. And he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints in accordance with God’s will. And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.” Romans 8:26-29

Don’t wait to be loved unconditionally before you love unconditionally. When you love – you become loved. God loved us first unconditionally, and that is why we are able to love each other unconditionally. God’s love never fails.

All marriages get shaky. In these shaky times things are revealed in us that need to be revealed so we can change for the better. People who go from one marriage to another have never learned how they need to change, or if they have learned how they need to change they haven’t been willing to do anything about it and so they take their old miserable self into their next marriage for the same thing to happen all over again. What damage this causes!

I am grateful to say that after our years of marriage since 1975, I am not the same person I was and neither is my husband. We have become “one” in all things! And our four children have been guided and blessed by this in their own marriages.

God expects the husband to cover his wife with his protection, provision and praise of her. Besides praying, the wife covers her husband in a different way – like a well-fitted suit that he feels proud to wear. She can be like a cheap inappropriate suit or an expensive custom-fit suit that makes him stand out and be heard. The wife who has a problem with her husband getting all the attention or privileges is like a cheap wrinkled suit on her husband. People will notice it for sure!

A wife has many qualities but if she will not allow herself to be ‘fitted for her husband’ her husband will not benefit like he should and this will affect her, as well as their children.

Women have it backwards when they think they have the right to groom their husband in any way: physically, emotionally, motherly or spiritually. Shamefully, men have let women make them into lesser men and women have let men make them into lesser women. We make fun of “old fashioned” marriages where women take care of their husband and children and stay busy at home, but it was also when men took their responsibility serious as a husband and father. They looked forward to coming home to a loving wife, home-cooked meals, a clean and orderly home, and to children who looked up to their fathers.

The older women are to “train the younger women to love their husbands and children, to be self-controlled and pure, to be busy at home, to be kind, and to be subject to their husbands, so that no one will malign the word of God?” (Titus 2:4-5)

The woman of virtue shares her bed and body with only her husband and so she covers both.

“Marriage should be honored by all, and the marriage bed kept pure, for God will judge the adulterer and all the sexually immoral.” Hebrews 13:4

Sexual intercourse is reserved for the wedding night because it spiritually and physically binds you to your husband/wife.  Leviticus 19:4-26 is how you keep your marriage bed pure, for God has written down for all human beings what is sexually immoral and destructive to marriage and family:

“You must NEVER have sexual relations with a close relative. Do not violate your father by having sexual relations with your mother. She is your mother. Do not have sexual relations with any of your father’s wives, for this would violate your father. Do not have sexual relations with your sister or half-sister, whether she is your father’s daughter or your mother’s daughter, whether she was born into your household or someone else’s. Do not have sexual relations with our granddaughter, whether she is your son’s daughter or your daughter’s daughter, for this would violate yourself. Do not have sexual relations with your step-sister, the daughter of any of your father’s wives, for she is your sister. Do not have sexual relations with your father’s sisters, for she is your father’s close relative. Do not have sexual relations with your mother’s sister, for she is your mother’s close relative. Do not violate your uncle, your father’s brother, by having sexual relations with his wife, for she is your aunt. Do not have sexual relations with your daughter-in-law; she is your son’s wife. Do not have sexual relations with your brother’s wife, for this would violate your brother. Do not have sexual relations with both a woman and her daughter. And do not take her granddaughter, whether her son’s daughter or her daughter’s daughter, and have sexual relations with her. They are close relatives, and this would be a wicked act. While your wife is living, do not marry her sister and have sexual relations with her, for they would be rivals. Do not have sexual relations with a woman during her menstrual impurity. Do not defile yourself by having sexual intercourse with your neighbor’s wife. Do not permit any of your children to be offered as a sacrifice to Molech (abortion, satanic worship, prostitution, child pornography, incest, etc.), for you must not bring shame on the Name of your God. I am the Lord. Do not practice homosexuality, having sex with another man as with a woman, or a woman having sex with a woman. It is a detestable sin. A man or woman must not defile themselves by having sex with an animal. This is a perverse act.”

“Do not defile yourselves in any of these ways, for the people around you have defiled themselves in all these ways, and you must not do what they do. Because the land has become defiled by sexual immorality, I am punishing the people who live there. I will cause the land to vomit them out. You must obey all my laws and decrees, and this applies to everyone, to all people of the earth.”

Marriage is to be honored and protected “by all.” That means that marriage by GOD’s design is to be honored and protected by the government too, and is why we need to be paying attention to who is running for election. When sexual immorality is allowed to freely thrive in any land – the Word of God says that the land itself becomes defiled. When the land becomes defiled the earth fights back against these sexual perversions: the earth “vomits out its wicked inhabitants.” People die, and they die by all kinds of disasters and diseases.

God designed marriage specifically for one man and one woman who both promise to remain faithful and committed to one another until death parts them. If your wife or husband is unfaithful (attracted to and sexually active with someone else) then He allows you to divorce but with this God also says that you are not allowed to remarry anyone else or you become an adulterer as well. Why does God see it that way? He sees it that way because of His ability to heal and restore, and because of our vows so that we learn how to be faithful to what we say we will do. Adultery in any case is a sin, and God forgives sin. But sin has consequences in our lives; serious consequences that serve as God’s painful discipline that teach and train us.

Today we see a different type of wedding vow that leaves room to cancel their marriage contract for any reason. “I promise to be faithful to you until I find someone I like better.” “I promise to be faithful to you until you hurt me.” “I promise to be faithful to you until you can’t or won’t serve me any longer.” “I promise to be faithful to you until you stop making me laugh.” “I promise to be faithful to you until you stop doing what I want you to do.” “I promise to be faithful to you until you are disabled and completely dependent on me.” You don’t hear any of these statements in their vows, but God does.

God knows what is in our hearts better than we do. God sees our future and what every married couple has coming that could divide them. I look at my marriage when we made our vows to each other May of 1975 and all the issues that could’ve divided us over these years had we each NOT stayed close to the Lord. Our four adult children with their spouses are learning the same too, and oh how happy we are as GRANDPARENTS that they are!

Being faithful to our spouse, even in our thoughts, is not easy to do on our own, but….

“I can do all things through Christ who gives me strength!” (Philippians 4:13) Jesus Christ didn’t give up on us as He died to Himself, literally on the Cross. Therefore, I can die to myself with His strength in me. I can arrest my wicked thoughts and make my thoughts agree with the mind of Christ because His Spirit lives in me.

When a couple stays married “for the children,” this is not wrong but right. When we put our thoughts on what is best for someone else, we can change for the good. Divorce is rooted in self-centeredness, in almost all cases. Adultery is rooted in self-gratification. All sexual sins are rooted in self-gratification and defiles the body.

Even a bad marriage can turn good when ‘self’ gets out of the way. The reason a marriage starts to go bad in the first place is because ‘self’ wants its own way. It can change course by thinking God’s way, acting in right ways, and forgiving your spouse and forgiving yourself too.

Our vows are witnessed by our heavenly Father because marriage is His design and establishment. He watches over it. He holds us to our vows. This holy accountability to God is why we have so much guilt, and should have guilt, when we try to break our marriage covenant, and why we have unnecessary trouble and battles when we divorce and remarry.

God, your Father and Judge, will not ask you why you got a divorce. He will ask you why you let your marriage fail and your children suffer and go astray.

A long time ago my daughter told me that she was invited to a “divorce party.” Why should anyone want to celebrate a broken marriage and honor a divorce by giving gifts? Why would anyone want to make merry over children grieving over their mommy and daddy dividing? How selfish and insensitive! She did not go of course, but was just as shocked as I to hear of such a shameful thing happening.

There are boundaries we must see in our marriage that will keep us from seeing our husband (or wife) as someone who is there to accommodate our every need and desire: false expectations. Boundaries work to bring us before the Lord to receive that which only He can provide and protect for us.

The marriage bed is protected by both husband and wife remaining respectful of one another’s feelings and convictions. The body, which God designed, is not to be treated in a degrading or hurtful way; whether you are mistreating your own body or your spouse’s body.

In marriage God says that our body is not our own. “The wife does not have authority over her own body but yields it to her husband. And in the same way the husband yields to his wife.” (1 Corinthians 7:4) Both respect each other’s body, because “in Christ” my body is a member of Christ Himself. My body is His Temple. (1 Corinthians 6:15-20) Nothing wicked is allowed in His Temple, or in the Body of Christ (His Church).

When God said that “the two will become one flesh” (6:16) it doesn’t just mean that they can produce a child together. In every aspect of human life they are to become one, inseparable and faithful to each other, just like when we become united to the Lord by His Spirit; we become one with Him in purpose. Nothing can separate us from His love!

If you entered a sexual relationship before marriage you need to confess and repent before the Lord. You need to confess to your fiancé that you had previous sexual relationships before you marry. This needs to be forgiven and under the blood of Christ from the start of your marriage.

The Holy Spirit teaches that the only time we are allowed to deprive one another sexually is when we need to be alone with God in prayer and even then we need to be sensitive enough to our spouse to have their understanding and support. God might call the two of you to a time of prayer and fasting [sexually] in order to gain more understanding of something lacking in your relationship that sex can not fix. (1 Corinthians 7:3-6)

“Do not deprive each other except by mutual consent and for a time, so that you may devote yourselves to prayer.” 1 Corinthians 7:5

So often men think that as long as their wife has sex with them – all is well in the relationship. It is not wrong for a wife to hold back sexually when her husband is disrespecting her. God tells the man that he should love his wife as he loves his own body (Ephesians 5:28), treating her with consideration as a delicate vessel, with honor because you both are fellow heirs of the gracious gift of life. (1 Peter 3:7) If a man does not treat his wife this way his prayers will be hindered. God will not listen to the man who dishonors his wife, nor will He listen to the wife who dishonors her husband.

Sickness and disease can also deprive sexual activity in a marriage, but it’s not your right to get your urges met by another person, or by masturbation, because both are about self-gratification, and self-gratification is wicked. Self-discipline and self-denial is what we need to work on with God’s help. God will help you with your sex drive if you go to Him and wait on His strength and wisdom. We have not – because we ask not.

If we selfishly deprive each other – we are inviting the enemy in to tempt and destroy. The Lord pardons every wicked thing we do when we confess it to Him as sin. Confession does not finish the work of repentance; obedience does.

We keep our marriage bed pure by staying away from people who talk about their sex life and the private parts of the body as if it was healthy or practical to do so. Be wise and discerning of movies, books, songs and websites too. Keep your mind and marriage holy because God is Holy and you are His Family.

If you have a weakness or addiction in the area of sexual immorality then confide in your spouse after you talk to the Lord about it. Get it out in the light so the devil can’t use it against you to keep you enslaved. Trust God with your confession. Pray with your spouse about it. Hold each other accountable, but do it in love and not with a critical or self-righteous attitude. Remember, we all have our weaknesses and the sin that so easily besets us.

Why is it so fundamentally vital for men and women to be inexperienced sexually before they marry? Two reasons why. One: Sexual intercourse connects you spirit to spirit. It’s not simply an act of the flesh. No divorce contract can void what is of the spirit. Two: Having no other to compare to keeps your sexual thoughts pure towards one another. Comparing sexual experiences (whether your own or what you watch in the movies or on computer) breeds disapproval and disrespect. It can easily destroy your marriage.

In a Song of Solomon’s (1:6) the new bride talks about how handsome and charming her lover (husband) is. She also sings: “And our bed is verdant.” This young bride expresses her delight in that she and her husband have both kept their marriage bed innocent and inexperienced by waiting till they were married to enjoy each other sexually.