Married for Life

"In time the Rockies may tumble, Gibraltar may crumble, They're only made of clay, But our love is here to stay."

When Ira Gershwin penned those words in 1938, the world was a much simpler place. There had not been the devastation of nuclear warfare. For most of the world, there had been no television. There had been no sexual revolution, nor modern women's liberation movement. And divorce was almost unheard of, particularly in "respectable society."

In fact, as late as 1950, the U.S. divorce rate was approximately one divorced person for every 36 married people. Today, there is one divorcee for every five married people (Source: U.S. Census Bureau). Today, words like Ira Gershwin's are denigrated as sentimental and hopelessly out of touch.

God sees things differently. God designed humans to live, one man with one woman (Gen. 2:24; 1 Cor. 7:2), for life (Matt. 19:3- 9). We have written many times before in these pages of God's hatred for divorce and the need to make marriages which will last. In this special issue, we want to offer help in doing just that. Americans have virtually exhausted the topic of "family values" in recent years with precious little practical advice on how to achieve those values. In this issue, we have endeavored to offer not just practical advice, but Biblical advice to almost every situation. We have intended these articles to help people in their marriages (or in preparing to be married) to continue to fight hard against Satan's terrible weapon of divorce. Of paramount concern in our planning of this issue was the matching of topic to writer; we wanted every writer to be in the situation covered by their articles. Thus, we have a relative newlywed writing about newlyweds, and a father whose children are on their own writing about marriage and the empty nest. We believe this makes each writer uniquely qualified to handle the subject matter. Though only God and their own families can judge, all of our writers also appear to have happy, fulfilled marriages, precisely what we are aiming at for our readers. Most importantly though, we have asked all our writers, while dealing from their own perspectives, to anchor their articles in solid Bible teaching, for it is God's word which will truly help us build happy marriages.

We believe that strong marriages make for strong families, and strong families make for strong churches. Such marriages, families and churches must be rooted in the study of God's word, so that their faith will carry them through the difficult times. It is our hope that this issue will be a help in building new families, strengthening young families, renewing resolve in older families and helping all of us to focus on the kind of marriage which God has designed for us. We hope, sentimentally or not, that when the Rockies, Gibraltar or other great monuments fall around us, you will be able to say about your marriage, "Our love is here to stay."