God’s Design

When God created man in the Garden of Eden, he was the last of God’s creative works. Man was created in the image and likeness of God. Man had named the animals and was enjoying the beautiful creation, but God saw that something was missing. The man lacked a companion, so God created woman. “So the Lord God caused the man to sleep very deeply, and while he was asleep, God removed one of the man’s ribs. Then God closed up the man’s skin at the place where he took the rib. The Lord God used the rib from the man to make a woman, and then he brought the woman to the man.”(Genesis 2:21-22 NCV) God doesn’t make mistakes. He designed human beings for companionship and love relationship. Love between man and woman should be reciprocal. Solomon writes a lot about this love relationship in Song of Solomon. Check this out…

 11 Come, my lover,

       let’s go out into the country

       and spend the night in the fields.

 12 Let’s go early to the vineyards

       and see if the buds are on the vines.

    Let’s see if the blossoms have already opened

       and if the pomegranates have bloomed.

    There I will give you my love.

 13 The mandrake flowers give their sweet smell,

       and all the best fruits are at our gates.

    I have saved them for you, my lover,

       the old delights and the new. (Song of Solomon 7:11-13 NCV) 

I find it interesting that Solomon writes so eloquently about the love between a man and a woman, knowing that this is God’s design for relationship, yet he himself had three hundred wives and seven hundred concubines!  I guess a case where “you should do as I say, not as I do”.

I believe that the relationship between a husband and wife is to be a sacred relationship where everything is shared and open to one another, but secret from the rest of the world.  I think one of the biggest mistakes of our culture is to take the love secrets out of the bedroom and broadcast them to the world. This is most private and intimate, by God’s design and it’s to be a delight of the marriage relationship.  God help us to survive, our sex-crazed culture and see past the physical realm into the spiritual realm where God’s design couldn’t be clearer.

Pressing On!

Dwayne