An ancient fable has it that Truth and Falsehood both went for a swim in the Sea of Humanity, leaving their clothes ashore. Falsehood came out of the water first and put on Truth’s clothes. Truth, refusing to don the clothes of Falsehood, went naked.

Stating the not so obvious within the obvious

   The moral in the above fable is this: Whatever it is, do not mess with what belongs to someone else without their consent. Marriage between a man and a woman is the structural deciding factor in all societies. All situations, without exception, can be properly decided by honoring who is married to who by upholding the integrity of created purposes of general and personal responsibility in their decisions. We are usually blind to it by our diversions; what we steal mostly from each other is our attentions to attend to our intentions.

   Adding a mission to living, or the admission of faith-ful commitment to marry, is taking on for oneself a deliberate responsibility to another. The joy of freedom to decide one’s way before God and man demands a natural respect in ways where neighbors and the wider community can be safely assured of protective stability. Also, the ongoing proclamation of married liberty to keep privacy private in a household provides admiration in commerce to stabilize financial hopes in building a strong economy. A man and a woman each need to positively know what it is they are working for.

   On the other hand, the married bond is not a ‘ball and chain’ of submission, a giving of the will unto another for their use without recourse, that requires a man or woman to hold to resentful bondage against personal priorities hidden from the other. When others or events tempt people to go that direction realignment is necessary to bring them on track together. As the patterns of married unity are designed to reflect the patterns of faith in Christ unto God, a woman is not in submission unto a man just as the collective church of humanity is not in submission unto Christ.

   The church, or marriage household, is an intentional admission of delightful acceptance of God’s Truth of Being, in appreciation for His gift of living awareness through shared personal appreciation. The admission of married intent is in honor to the strengths of purposeful viability through faith. Because of that, whether others do our thinking for us, or we do the thinking for ourselves, is the deceiving internal ever-present question. It ignores everyone’s personal responsibility to respect why we have the choices we have to decide the pathway(s) we enter into and travel.

   Any actions, or inactions, we may take are affected by our attentions in trust combined with desire. Everyone is interconnected-ly involved in ways where what happens is derived from who is sharing their beliefs, concepts, and risk of faith with whom. When we put mood ahead of loyalty there is no structure for loyalty to adhere. Conversely, when we put loyalty ahead of mood, mood spontaneously has a foundation of freedom in the course of stability loyalty provides. Role playing others ways in attempts to relieve insecurities increases impulsive internal prompts to see what others possess; as reason to take for our own use what belongs properly to them.

   We worry about what others may think of us and therefore forget who we are unto God in the things we allow. Living a marriage is a much more fulfilling undertaking than the give-and-take of simply being married by contract. In order to get a hold of why we choose to do what we do it is necessary to see that our motives must be less scattered and more focused toward those to whom we are responsible. And, those to whom we are responsible are also those who are responsible to us. In this, anyone who believes Jesus Christ is not interested in working His salvation through marriage and subsequently the family, in that order of authority under His Authority, is fooling themselves.

   Freedom of self determined rights to experience against free rights of determined personal responsibility is why many people are reluctant about marriage commitment. Any person’s will of determination, his or her motivations of inspirational strength of character is at once separate and independent from anyone and everyone else, and dependent in and upon anyone and everyone else. This is because anybody’s gift of personal will is dependent upon respect for others’ gift to decide their own direction of faithing their expectations unto God’s reality.

   Marriage is the balance of maturity that brings the senses of order to hapless alliances and is the unity which forms the necessary organizing disposition for any society to establish sensible constraints against uncertainty. Without godly leading, of which marriage is created, there are hazy allegiances to worldly wisdom founded in opinion and varying instinctual interests. What one or another holds as true for their personal ways to interact with their surroundings, his or her personally convoluted positions of contradiction and defenses of personal rights to choose, most often is based in general social rights without specific reasons that represent responsible attention to the well being of self and others.

   Because of self-centeredness, without attention to who each of is in our naturally born duties of responsibility to created humankind, it is near impossible for any two intimately concerned individuals to sort out each their own messes of misunderstanding to find what is termed “common ground”. True togetherness of ‘us’ can only coexist in who a man and woman are in God’s attentions where faithful trust is realizing that two agreed as one is a greater “entity” than each is alone. Holding onto what is ‘me’ by trying to mold another into compatibility denies that other their ‘me’ they are also trying to hold onto in the same way.

   Hiding one’s most cared about motivations, to keep them from being manipulated, manipulates another to defend his or her own motivations by hiding from alteration the desires others have to form attentions their way. In all intimate unions there is always one of the two who is more focused in their ‘me’ concept of existence than the other. Trying to figure out which it is, though, causes each to increase their attentions into realizing a more complete ‘me’ and there is a battle to identify what a relationship means by who it is that holds control over which persona rules decisions.

   “We just can’t seem to get along!” is not about whether either, or both, involved gets their way concerning what is more right and beneficial than the other - who is accused as selfish if he or she appears not to comply with the will of the accuser. Most often the one accused as accusing is not the accuser. When one takes responsibility to openly be honest to uncover the bowels of misunderstanding to find workable solutions, as each day brings situations that create circumstances that need tending to, he or she is necessarily in the position of confrontation with regard to any issue.

   This is why a man is responsible to God through his promises to his wife in marriage and a woman is responsible for her husband in the same way – with respect to who each is in the order of God’s will. When the wedding vows are kept forefront in a couple’s attentions, through faith in Who Christ is unto them, the higher purposes of togetherness intervene to lift any conflict of interest into His graces of covering. “What do you have against me that you don’t have against yourself?” properly becomes an affectionate, “What you have against yourself I also am suffering, for Christ’s sake!”

   Accepting one’s personal responsibilities, (spiritually intercessory acknowledgement of who each is for the other in Christ) for their partner is the priority to each their own personal expectations. Personalizing and internalizing another’s expressed desires to risk trust enough to give up self-protective attitudes, backfires when fear of discovery threatens to expose a secret agenda. Secret agendas usually are not about hoarding internal righteousness to protect one’s sensibilities from corruption.

   The blindness the word procrastination represents is not addressing duties put off till another time as much as it signifies applying attentions to activities, or inactivates, aside from responding to the duties of will based in commitment. When honor is ignored in lieu of resentful determination to force appreciation because of real or imaginarily perceived disregarded concerns for one’s place of prominence in the heart of romantic acceptance from another, there arise negative motivations to retaliate.

   Furthermore, secret agendas that feign a front of ultra sensitivity (to convincingly mimic actual natural ultra sensitivity to things right and true) are methods to use others to cause those to believe their decisions came from their own ideas and/or are spontaneous ‘just-happened-that-way’ occurrences. Many times a man or woman left holding the bag of derision as an unbending culprit against better living is the one who is most concerned with unraveling standoffish spiteful belligerence.

   So, there is thought to be a battle between the sexes where men use women while they run them down for joining them in their carousing (wandering attentions) and women do the same in retort. As one leans necessarily on the other to help establish what they are together they usually enter into disputes about what works and does not work to attain or retain personal securities, well being, and the joys of accomplishment that many times is very different from the joys of discovery.

   This erroneously directly leads to “conflicts of opinion” that deny the common ground already established between a man and woman who love each other to do as they can to be who they are together. Marriage vows give to both the man and the woman the cohesive foundation of equal footing to rely in God through their promises connected to His that opens avenues of solution for better living that not being married cannot provide. Conceptual reasons (reasons that work to reinforce self-focused impressions) are based in emotionally protective desires for personal gain.

   The decisive use of purposeful manipulative functions are imaginary, as opposed to the matter-of-fact reasons that are based in the created purposes a man or woman knows any natural functions hold, for what is that has been and is that will be. Decisions from perception about what was are different from matter-of-fact decisions about what was because of what should be or should have been. Leading to new decisions about what to believe to think to do is not an extension of the decisions about what was, unless conceptual reasons lead or overshadow one’s created matter-of-fact reasons.

   Matter-of-fact reasons (faith is based in Christ’s finished past while hope is based in His finished future) for making decisions about conceptual reasons to decide a course of action, help guide the purpose(s) a course of action takes. The other way round loses the stable foundation that supports the strengths of validation a course of action requires to thrive and continue. It causes striving against negative nuances present in the separating distance from the inherent purposes of the matter-of-fact reasons conceptual considerations have to give appreciation for why an action may be viable.

   As purposes lose their proper purpose to other purposes the false guide negative nuances take through concept over reality causes considerations for matter-of-fact purposes to become overblown and override right reasons by conceptualizing the matter-of-fact reasons into abstract perception. This overload of natural sensibilities naturally causes pushing aside reality in matter-of-fact reasoning. Then, an attempt is made to make the new ‘me’ of abstract manipulation a ‘me’ of factual persuasion over matter-of-fact realities where fantasy reasoning distorts proper reasoning.

  As applied to marriage, if one is not married and actively with one who he or she is intimately familiar, the choices are to either get married, or disband and ‘start over with someone else’ through repentance unto God in Christ for mishandling His most important of unions; or if one is married and astray from their spouse, God’s expectation is for both to repent together unto Him in Christ to reunite in spirit and in truth through the faith promise exercised during the wedding vows. A man’s position of accountability in intercession is in fact what makes men, and not women, the party who is most often the 'problem' in relationship.

   The ‘blame game’ finds no positive chain of healthy sequence when the Created order of respect is forgotten (or unknown). No matter how beguiling and insistent a woman may be, if a man is weak enough to fall for a woman’s charms to dishonor, disrespect, and causes a woman to betray her God designed values to honor marriage in her heart by holding his own decency in check, a woman cannot be blamed for responding to a man’s naturally God given authority to exercise his will to take as he wishes what he wishes to take. When a man is confused about what being a man is, and a woman is confused about what being a woman is, it still is the responsibility of a man to avoid the pitfalls pre or un married sexual union causes.

   The ‘surf to find a suitable partner’ manner people use to experience self invigorating pleasures, without commitment, in order to hopefully work into having a lasting commitment (or not) play into fault finding by rating whether someone one is giving themselves to is worthy of the gift. This causes a wandering eye of comparison where no one can ever measure up to the standards of perfection necessary to have the best of the best a man or woman may feel is their right. This feeling of the right to have the best is both due to knowing that God wants the best for us and our very existence says to us that we deserve to live as best we can.

   But, we are not living as best we can when we are using others to uphold our own personally derived standards of behavior we are reluctant to uncover for fear our cared for partner will realize the scam we are perpetrating against their own desires “to have and to hold till death us do part”. When positive situations and pleasant circumstances become the measured hurdle to jump in order to be accepted as one who is marriageable, or one who is acceptable to remain married, there exists an onerous judging of the one one most loves in ways where he or she cannot be accepted unless they perform to certain criteria.

   While divorce is not the unforgivable sin, and remarriage to another is blessed by God as representation of His grace and mercy to defend His own Word, the new marriage is, through His forgiveness, mercy, and grace in Christ considered His witness of His way of righteousness through faith unto salvation. There are most always loving committed reasons a man and woman originally get married and tolerance to respect the open honesty needed to reunify a faltering marriage is found in faithfully appreciating, for God’s sake, all a husband or wife was, is, and is to be.

   But, after one is married to a second person it is most against God’s desire for him or her to reunite with the first. Reunification with an original partner after one has vowed the vows of matrimony with a second – considering that proper repentance finds its strength in the ceremony, places a man or woman in the responsible position with God to faithfully honor the new marriage. Any past patterns of manipulation by deception that bring the betrayals of trust a woman is apt to indulge when teasing men into having a good time become part of the new husband’s responsibility to take before the throne of God for both their reconciliation and his own consolation.

   To think to imagine that the past makes the present not the past, so any engrained unsolved sinful matters are forgotten simply because there is a new person instead of the past person, is a false faith in situational ethics where an ‘out-of-sight-out-of-mind’ philosophy steeps hatred for the “way things were that need not be mentioned” into avoidance to discuss and be open with all a  man or woman is with each other in their marriage where no hidden regrets and emotional piles of frustrations and hardship seethe below the surface.

   The “just forget about it” attitude that undermines naturally created responsible growth is why many people hope to hide their self defeating ways by transferring their attentions to someone who does not know their patterns of using a loved one to please themselves. If for some reason there arises a third marriage; God is still God and Christ His Word is still His Word, and repentance is still repentance… But, there comes a time where working of repentance to get one’s freedom of self-willed expression is understood as “playing the system” and God is Himself bound to His own Word to not bless such activities when hurting distressed and committed spouses (and others) are most likely left in the wake of this false using of His grace.

   The reason a situation like this might occur is a person is so disgusted with themselves for being so disgusted with others who led them to be disgusted with themselves that they search the horizons to find “that one” who will relieve their disgust. Problem is, they usually load their new prospect with the disgust they wish to rid themselves of; and then, they usually leave in a disgusted huff over having found another who became their disgust for them to relieve their miseries. And most men are glad to do it by blaming the woman they used as another “one of them”. Then, what choices does a man or woman assume they have afterward but to repeat the same?

   This vicious loop continues to continue because the process makes the process when things are not properly cleared, and kept cleared, with God’s wisdom of endurance for one’s loved ones instead of division against the wrongs they may or may not be responsible for doing. Either way, the wrongs one does that a person is intimately involved with are the same as the wrongs of the one who believes they have been wronged – because they, by God’s decree, are involved as one. It is a reversing into the negative of the natural intercessory responsibility a man has for his wife.

   Aside from social stability found in honoring a family name, a woman’s maternal yearnings is why, throughout the centuries and in many cultures still today, only a man was or is allowed to acquire a divorce. Desires to be loved and fulfilled are not a wrong or bad thing and the desperation (desperation can manifest itself in many calloused forms where adversarial forces take advantage of one’s good intentions) that leads one or another to go against their position of trust with their mate carries an empathy with a married partner because each is of the other as the other is of the each. Shame and guilt increase the ‘strength of the barrier’ of separation dark pressures use to solidify presumptions about delayed reconciliation.

   Most people get too angry enough about personal troubles, and transfer the loads of inconsistency onto their spouse in opposition, rather than realizing their thankfulness that their spouse is glad to be the one to be responsible as one with them. Lovingly shared explanations about indiscretions with one’s spouse, because a man’s body belongs to his wife as a woman’s body belongs to her husband, can never be perverted into disgust with voyeuristic vicarious fantasy (as the secrecy of infidelity with an intruding personality causes a false release of those very spiritual traumas through mockery of one’s spouse) when healing through faith in Christ’s active guidance is kept forefront.

   Because nobody is perfect except in Christ, the knowledge of the good that offsets the knowledge of the evil of situations looks to find a physical focus to dump the overwhelming disgust one has for things not right onto the man or woman one is married to - to attempt to overcome the evil. The very things people often fight over are what, through faith active witness, they enjoy about each other in the purposes they originally were married, again unto God Who still stands in His purposes they are married. And, most people are not unfamiliar with the fact that the devil does what he can to get people to dishonor their promises to move onto another, who they can dishonor their promises with… and so on.

“Dear God our Father in heaven, have mercy on me my (husband/wife) in all (he/she) is concerning every aspect of (his/her) being, no matter what; for the sake of our together name unto You for your Name’s sake. Have mercy on (him/her) concerning myself for the sake of Your glory.

Lead and guide us, heal us, and touch our hearts, minds, and efforts to be the witness we married to be unto each other and thereby unto others.

Cleanse us and shield us from the dark misunderstandings that corrupt Your Word of Truth and bring us into the shared togetherness married privacy enjoys according to our matrimonial vows.

Protect our faith in our expectations for each other based in Your promises to defend our togetherness against anyone who may be jealous, ill-mannered, or determined to cause difficulties that seem to be insurmountable.

Thank You for Your loving-kindness and longsuffering in our behalf, I pray through faith in the authority of Jesus Christ our Savior, Amen.”

  For those living then and now Christ’s admonition is: “Take heed to yourselves, lest at any time your hearts be overcharged with surfeiting, and drunkenness, and the cares of this life, and so that day come upon you unawares.” “Watch ye therefore, and pray always, that ye may be accounted worthy to escape all those things that shall come to pass, and to stand before the Son of Man. Luke 21:34, 36

Purposes