5 Beautiful Gifts God Wants You to Enjoy in Your Marriage

The beginning of marriage goes back almost to the beginning of the Bible. In Genesis 2:18-24 we read about God recognizing that Adam needs a companion suitable for him. The animals wouldn’t do, so God created the woman, Eve. Adam’s pronouncement on seeing Eve is a beautiful representation of the joy, companionship, and connection that God intended for marriage.

“This at last is bone of my bones
and flesh of my flesh;
she shall be called Woman,
because she was taken out of Man,” Adam declares (Genesis 2:23, ESV).

Marriage itself is a gift from the God who gives all good gifts to his children (James 1:17). Just as God gave Adam a companion, it is within his will that many of us have partners with whom to go through life.

You will know, though, if you are married (or perhaps even if you are not) that marriage is not always as joy-filled and easy as Adam’s first pronouncement upon seeing Eve might seem to indicate.

The more you live with someone and get to know them, the more they tend to not live up to your expectations and the more we are faced with our own flaws.

My husband and I have been married nearly five years, which I know is likely a much shorter time than many of you dear readers, but in those five years we have already seen so many ups and downs, arguments and reconciliation, wins and losses, good times and bad. 

We don’t know how long Adam and Eve were married before the Fall and before sin entered the world with the accompanying trials for Adam and Eve and all the men and women who would come after them (work would be hard and stressful, childbirth would be difficult and painful), but we do know that they had to work through these trials together. And although they were faced with the massive fallout from their disobedience to God, God still blessed their marriage. This is evident when we see that God still cared for them (he made clothes for them, and he blessed them with children). But on an even broader scale, God promised a way back in Genesis 3 that someone would be born from Adam and Eve’s union who would destroy sin and the devil (Genesis 3:14-15). In the very midst of God’s rebuke to Adam and Eve after they sinned and disobeyed him, he includes words of hope.

In a myriad of (likely much smaller but still significant) ways, God also encourages us in our relationship with him as part of his bride, the Church, and in our earthly marriages. Although tainted by the Fall like all things, marriage is still a blessing from the Lord, and through it, God intends for us to enjoy his good gifts.

Let’s look at five of those gifts.

Photo Credit: © Getty Images/akobchukolena