How Are Your Marital Decisions Affecting Your Lineage?

We all know that the choices we make today will affect our tomorrow. A little bit of overtime today can give us the money we need for those new shoes at the mall tomorrow. Or eating the extra slice of pound cake before bed might give us a tummy ache in the early morning.

Good or bad, we make our choices and own up to their consequences. What we don’t think about, however, nearly as much as we should is how the choices we make today not only affect our tomorrow, but possibly many others’ tomorrows as well.

When a husband and wife choose to take the hard path and intentionally commit to better love and respect each other per Ephesians 5:33, despite this not being part of their natural makeup, this God-honoring decision greatly affects not only the two of them but also their friends and family observing how they will respond in tumultuous times.

Even more importantly, their decision to stay together and strengthen their marriage affects their children immensely, their grandchildren, their great-grandchildren, and so on and so on.

Until the end of man’s days on earth, multiple generations are affected when two people decide to work through their marriage struggles (that the Bible promises we will have in 1 Corinthians 7:28!) and set the example for all to see of unconditionally loving and respecting each other.

When I received the following e-mail from a husband who had recently participated in a small group study on Love and Respect, I was reminded of just how much this “small” decision of learning to love, respect, and remain committed truly has a much broader effect beyond the two directly involved:

God used you, your book, and your teachings to save me and my family from an unimaginable future (and countless others that were in that class with us). For that, we will always be grateful and thankful. God has blessed you guys with an innate ability to explain the intricacies of the most complicated relationship on earth in terms that anyone can, and must, understand to be able to have a healthy and flourishing marriage.

Thank you for that and always know that you have, and will continue, to touch millions of people and change their entire lineage by doing what you do. Without your teachings, we would have never been able to survive our darkest times. And because of your teachings, we have been able to turn that test into a testimony and we have had the privilege of changing hundreds of lives (all thanks to you). Those hundreds of people are going to do the same thing and it is just going to continue to explode.

And that is the impact of only one couple (very grateful couple), in one city, in one state in one country, that you have helped.

Imagine the true impact you have had when you add up everyone who has read your books in all of the different languages, in all of the different cities, and in all of the different countries! It is staggering what you have done and we are so grateful that you have done it.

Did you catch that line “change their entire lineage”? Wow!

That may seem at first to be an exaggeration, but it truly is not. Just one marriage, in one city, in one state, in one country was able to change their entire lineage by choosing to take the difficult road of love and respect over all the easy paths the world tells us we should opt for instead. Imagine the amazing results when two, three, or one thousand couples, in every country of the world, make that same decision!

Indeed, the decisions we make today regarding our marriage affect our entire lineage. What legacy will you leave for them all?

-Dr. E