I can tell you right now. If you’re a person who becomes offended when someone challenges your desperation surrounding marriage? You’re going to be offended a little by this post. Sorry. I believe marriage is a beautiful, sacred thing that we have sullied by being selfish and lazy and dishonest with God and ourselves. Until we tear down the altars we build around us, we remain defeated by our own cycles.

I believe that God’s plan for marriage is a vital mechanism that God chose for the building of the Kingdom: that 2 unique people, in their existence inside God, choose to amplify that intimacy and relationship with God with each other. This glorifies God in a way that other relationships cannot, and why marriage is called a mystery by Paul (Ephesians 5:32).

I also believe that marriage is an idol for too many women, and very much worth destroying under the yoke of the anointing of God in this hour. We listen to dozens of gurus, each with some “same ish, different day” philosophy or 12 step program about how to change ourselves to become the ultimate “pick me”—what our bodies should look and feel like, how the sex should be, what to cook, how to approach his parents, how to makes ourselves small and meaningless to be chosen by someone who will become bored with the one dimensional character we’ve created to manipulate our way into marriage. Let’s not consider the fact that nobody is prepared for it (Cuz it isn’t what these Instagram couples got it looking like); that most people aren’t even prepared to be themselves BY themselves, let alone be themselves around another human being. 🙄

I SAID WHAT I SAID: Folks are engaging in masking to such a degree that they literally don’t know who they’re in a relationship with or who they brought to the relationship m. And it’s both sides (even though it’s mainly marketed to women).

Healing comes from knowing and understanding that being a singular person is okay. That the person we are in the flesh is flawed and in need of grace. We must know, accept, and willingly embrace the Holy Ghost process of purging to become mature in Christ (notice I ain’t say perfect cuz that’s also where we keep messing this thang up). Our mindset has to be there and active before we get somebody else caught up in our brokenness—the mindset to want to grow. And the other person also has to have the mindset to want to grow. Not in self—in Christ.

This is the covenant of marriage, the learning of sharing the overflow of an overrunning cup, the continual purging that takes place when 2 fleshes become one; and the ability to ebb and flow in the growth cycles of our mate until death parts us or Our King splits the sky and we are caught up together in that great getting up morning.

And that don’t come from none of this alternative methodology or even religiosity that folks engage in. That comes with personal encounter with Christ. No amount of sage, yoga, vegan diets, retreats to Sedona, altars built to ancestors, tarot cards, or astrology will ever replace the life altering, wonder working power of Jesus Christ to change us completely. When we encounter Christ—not just learn about Him intellectually or engage in church acrobatics or some random acts of spiritualism thrown in to fill in the wholes of ignorance that we wouldn’t even have if we would read His word and stay in THE PRESENCE—then we will draw from the well of His grace the person who matches that vibe.

Otherwise? We are drawing whatever we giving out. Broken, unhealed people who match or complement our broken, unhealed selves.