John 10:10, NLT

“The thief’s purpose is to steal and kill and destroy. My purpose is to give them a rich and satisfying life.”

One of the wonderful blessings that my wife and I have is to be able to worship together. This is something that the Lord accomplished in our lives and marriage through the work of the Holy Spirit. When we were first married, I didn’t play any instrument and, other than enjoying listening to music, had no real understanding of it. When I was young my dad had bought me a guitar and I tried to learn but became discouraged and said I wouldn’t try again. My wife had blessed with a beautiful voice, but after going through over a decade of alcoholism before she knew Jesus, that voice was destroyed. There was no way that we could have imagined that we would one day have a music ministry together.

Around two years after we were married, we were in our normal Sunday service and as we were worshipping, I felt the Holy Spirit tell me to pay special attention to the worship leader who was playing the guitar. As I watched I believed the Lord was telling me He wanted me to learn to play. Little did I know that this would be a hidden passion that God had placed in me. Within one year of that time, I had learned to play. I asked my wife to try to sing as I played but because of the damage to her voice, no matter how much she tried, she could barely make a sound. The Lord had told her years before that if she continued to desire to worship Him, He would restore her voice. It was on Christmas Eve at church as we were we worshipping that she suddenly felt a change in her voice, and it fully returned to the way it was before the damage had occurred. She had been healed!

Today, we enjoy every opportunity to worship together, and it has become one of the fundamental ways that we serve the Lord together. Both my wife and I had been given gifts of music and the enemy knew that one day, part of God’s plan for us was to worship and glorify the Lord together. The enemy had a plan to steal that plan, kill it, and destroy it. The enemy wants to kill, steal, and destroy everything that God has planned for your marriage. He wants to bring your marriage to a place in which it is devoid of everything that God intended it to be. Because of this, we need to guard our marriage from the schemes and attacks of the enemy, and if we start to pay attention, we will find that they come often, and they come hard.

How do we go about protecting our marriage? What can we do to defend against the attacks that the enemy brings upon our marriage? First, I want to remind you that a Biblical marriage is not only between the husband and wife, but a covenant between three people. A husband and wife enter in to a covenant with God Himself. He is a part of the covenant and as such, we must remember to make Him the center and foundation of our marriage. When the enemy attacks your marriage, He is not just attacking you and your spouse, He is attacking a covenant that the Lord is a part of. We must remember not to fight our own, but instead to upon the Lord and His strength. Secondly, we have two practices that must never be abandoned in our marriages: Reading the word of God together and praying together. When a husband and a wife read God’s word together and actively pray together it will shed light on any darkness that the enemy seeks to bring into that marriage. The Holy Spirit will be faithful to renew day by day the Love that He has placed between the husband and wife.

There is a saying in the world of sports that goes like this, “the best offense is a good defense.” We need to take a stand and defend our marriage. We need to stand in the gap and fight for the plan that God has for our marriage and resist the enemy. God has made a good thing when He made marriage and it is worth fighting for.