Last week Kate and I spent some time in Western Australia to celebrate our 20 year wedding anniversary! It was wonderful to celebrate, to enjoy some time just the two of us, and to explore a part of Australia neither of us had ever visited before.

Marriage isn’t easy – and it doesn’t always work out how we’d hoped – but it is important. If you’re married, it’s important to you, its important to your broader family and friends and to our entire community. Marriage provides stability and a natural support network for everyone within or around its web. But marriage isn’t everything. Marriage is reflective of the relationship between Christ and his Church and it is in every case, only a pale and poor reflection of the love of Christ.

If you are married, I believe you should invest in having a healthy and strong marriage relationship. If you aren’t married, you should invest in healthy friendships and making the most of the freedoms you have in singleness. All of us need connection and friendship, not all of us need to be married. All of us should strive to be content* in the situation God has put us in and to serve and love others in the family of God and the community in which we’ve been placed.

If you’re married, one way you could invest in your marriage is by participating in an upcoming marriage enrichment course – limited to 15 couples – Monday nights starting 29th April (https://pwac.org.au/building-a-safe-and-strong-marriage/).

Yours in Christ,

Ben

*Some situations are not safe and we should escape them, don’t strive for contentment in an unsafe relationship.