As parents, society has just notched up your job of communicating God’s truth to your children. Think about it, you are on a site called “Believe,” and that is exactly the issue. How are you going to communicate to your children what you believe about marriage — or better yet, what God says about it? Do you know what you believe?

I try to keep these posts very practical, so let’s tackle one area here and others in the future. Let’s talk about faithfulness, both the proclamation of it and its demonstration.

I want you to look around with the eyes of your children. Eyes that may look irrationally, but still based on what they know or have experienced. When they look at your home, or the homes of their friends, or the people at your church – what picture of marriage do they form? Are they fearful because people they know or care about have had their marriage breakup? Is this the picture of marriage God had in mind?

One of the great opportunities in this day is for those in the church to proclaim God’s design and demonstrate marital faithfulness. Frankly, we may have talked about it, but we have not done a good job of living it. Both are needed.

Faithfulness will influence those around you because it will be unique in our culture where marriage is coming apart. It will impact your children because they will be secure and perhaps someday realize the gift they were given by that faithfulness.

Today, you have the added challenge to portray God’s picture of what marriage means, since it is portrayed as many different things as times change. Consider it an opportunity to live out God’s design in front of your children. You can show how a mother and father can complement each other, relish their responsibilities, forgive each other and demonstrate Christ in your home.

Here is your opportunity to portray Christ and His Church (Eph. 5:22-33) through your marriage. God chose marriage to be the picture of His relationship with the Church. When I think of that picture, I think about the faithfulness of Christ even when I am unfaithful. I think of the sacrificial love He shows and the delight He takes in His Bride. I picture Him giving up so much of Himself to demonstrate love towards me and obedience to God. My job is to “imitate” that picture (Eph. 5:1-2) and I need to frequently review the progress of my imitation. Often, it is not very good.

This is the practical, living-out what marriage means before your children stuff. Culture will fight against you and try to deliver its own message. You can be a part of God’s plan to deliver His message and marital picture to your children … because you get to live it out in front of them.

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