8. Older married couples have invested themselves in a lifelong relationship, and they are reaping the benefits in content- ment, companionship, and good health. Their love is bringing forth a harvest of benefits with each new year.

9. A loving marital relationship may reduce exposure to stress and provide a source of support during difficult times. 10. Cohabitating couples were more than twice as likely to suffer from any mental illness as a loving, married couple. 11. No part of the unmarried popula- tion—separated, divorced, widowed, or never-married—describes itself as being so happy and contented with life as the married.

by Daniel J. Vassell Sr.

of MARRIAGE

If your marriage is in trouble, your love is wounded, and there is no intimacy, seek God’s help. He has the solution for your problems, but you must be willing to sub- mit completely to His will and words. Glenn Stanton, in his book Why Mar- riage Matters, gives a list of some of the blessings found in marriage when husband and wife embrace the purity and holiness of marriage. He highlights:

1. Most happy, healthy, safe, sexually fulfilled, and productive people are found among the married.

2. Men and women who are married do markedly better in all measures of spe- cific and general well-being, compared to any of their unmarried counterparts. 3. Married couples are healthier psy-

chologically. They live longer, enjoy a more fulfilled life, and take better care of themselves and each other.

4. Marriage provides genuine emotion- al and physical protection from myriad pressures and afflictions of day-to-day life. 5. Some 70 percent of divorced and separated people are alcoholics against 15 percent of married couples. 6. The highest suicide rates occur among the divorced, the widowed, and the never-married, while it is the lowest among the married. Divorced individuals are three times more likely to commit sui- cide than those who are married. 7. Married people suffer less from ill- ness and disease and typically enjoy a lon- ger life than those who are not married.

12. Loving, married couples are bet- ter workers, less likely to miss work, more productive on the job, more likely to stay employed for longer periods of time, and are more likely to get along with those with whom they work than unmarried coworkers.

13. The safest and healthiest child is one who grows up in a loving family. Heterosexual couples who submit to the sanctity of marriage are the key to the survival of life on earth. So, as married people, we need to do all we can to build healthy and loving marriages to prolong the quality of life and treasure the sanctity of the marital union.

You and I cannot have the power in us to change our marriages for the better. For those of us who are in the ministry, we owe it to our members and parishion- ers, as well as being obligated by God’s Word, to preach and teach on the sanctity of marriage as much as we preach on the other issues in the Bible.

Daniel J. Vassell Sr. is

administrative bishop of the Church of God in Eastern Canada. This article is excerpted and adapted from his book The

Love Factor in Marriage.

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