Isaac & Rebekah

A Godly Marriage.

I feel kind of cliche writing about this, but I guess it's also important that God is teaching me things about it. Theknot.com says Greg and I have 347 days until we get married; this seems like an eternity and in instant at the same time. Tonight one verse in Genesis jumped out at me. It reveals an intimate portrait of a husband and a wife living under God's plan and provision.

Genesis 25:21 "Isaac prayed to the Lord on behalf of his wife, because she was barren. The Lord answered his prayer and his wife Rebekah became pregnant."

Isaac knew that he was the blessed child that God had promised his parents for so many years. He knew that God had promised to fulfill his covenant to His people through his lineage, but yet his wife was barren.

Beth Moore wrote an interesting commentary about this passage, "God wasn't about to let such an important promise seem naturally fulfilled. Had Isaac and Rebekah conceived the first year, they would have been tremendously less attentive to spiritual purpose and divine participation."

For some reason, God chose women to bare children instead of men, and too often as our modern society shows, men can become detached from the whole process after their initial participation. God did not want Isaac to feel detached from the importance of the children with whom He was about to bless him & Rebekah. Rebekah could not fulfill God's plan on her own, she needed Isaac to pray over her so they could fulfill God's plan together.

Still, I can't help but notice it was 20 years between their marriage and the ultimate birth of Esau & Jacob. Did it take Isaac 20 years to think God might want him to pray over Rebekah, or did he do it all along, and God just waited to fulfill the promise? Either way, it does show the growth of a Godly man desiring to lead his marriage in a Godly way.

We women in modern America are too often able to "do it on our own." Whatever it is, whether in jobs or raising children or whatever. There has been a trend in Hollywood for late30s and early40s actresses to adopt or have a baby without a man around. But this goes against what God wants for his people. There is a generation of complacent men in America because women have not allowed them to learn to lead.

I am thrilled that I have a man who desires to lead our relationship, and I pray I am never a hindrance in what God is building in him. I love the idea of God blessing him so dramatically that his prayers over me are more powerful than any I could pray on my own.

I guess God does like us to be in community.