Think of your marriage as a beautiful and dazzling flower garden. In an acre of astounding floral beauty, you and your husband have planted azaleas, roses, chrysanthemums, daisies, carnations, violets, geraniums, and several more varieties of your favorite flowers. Since this flower garden is very valuable to both of you, you nurture your flowers with the greatest of love, and you both toil with the duties and responsibilities given to you from when you first started the garden. You both work so very hard to make sure each flower is tended with the utmost care. This flowerbed is the most picturesque site to behold. Your friends and family all wish they had your flower garden. People from all over town peak into your backyard to enjoy the beauty and aroma of your garden. One day while you are out shopping, a jealous stranger trespasses onto your property and digs up several plots of roses and azaleas, roots and all, and plants them in his own backyard. This wicked act completely devastates the both of you and each blames the other for the attack to the flower garden. You began to scream and call each other names. You tell your husband to replant more flowers since it was his fault. He tells you to do the replanting because it is your fault. Weeks go by and neither you nor your husband have talked to each other since the flower garden attack. One day, you cannot stand the dreadful silence around the house any longer, and you tell your husband that it really wasn't his fault. You kiss and make up, and decide to replant the flowers together. So the next day, you and your husband replant more flower seeds in the barren spots where the flowers were taken. Everyday the two of you work with the soil so the flowers will come up just as beautiful as before. You water and feed the sprouts and even talk to them because you love them so much. But now you're both worried that more flowers will be taken or destroyed. The problem is you just don't feel like taking the time to protect your flowerbed its just too much trouble out of your daily schedule to do anything about it, besides you really don't think it will happen again. Days pass, and you forget the tragic episode. Again, everyday without fail you and your husband give your flowers the tender loving care they so much need. You water, feed, and even talk to your breathtaking vegetation. You highly prize each and every flower and it shows in the intricate beauty and delicate care of each different variety. After planting, caring, and tending your garden for several years, the same stranger becomes even more envious and trespasses again, this time bringing his three dogs with him. The dogs run wildly through your backyard and right into your flower garden, trampling all the dazzling plants to the ground. Both of you are overcome with sadness and despair; your flower garden was your life! You built it up to be the most stunning specimen of a flower garden of its kind. You thought you had it well protected, after all, it was in your own backyard. Your flower garden is what brought you peace and tranquility. You planted it with superior seeds, and cared for it every single day with great tenderness and love, and now it is destroyed! All destroyed! Your life is destroyed! What did this husband and wife forget to do for their flower garden? What was the most important thing they could have done to protect their garden? What about a fence? They didn't have a fence around it. What would you do? Would you replant the beautiful flower garden that you built up and nurtured? What would be a wise thing to do for your flower garden? Build a tall fence around it so the enemies cannot trample in and take what they want? It is the same way with marriage. What would you do? Would you let satan enter in and destroy the love and trust that you and your spouse worked so hard at building up through the years? Would you let strangers trespass and take what doesn't belong to them? What is the most important thing you can do for your marriage? Protect it! Build your marriage upon the rock so the enemies cannot come in and destroy it? "Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat up against that house; yet it did not fall, because it had its foundation on the rock." Matthew 7:24-25 |
