Series: Improving Companionship In Your Marriage #1
INTRODUCTION
Let’s look at Genesis 2. After God had created Adam, he saw a problem:
18 And the Lord God said, It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him an help meet for him. (Genesis 2:18)
A lot of Christians think of “help meet” as one word—as a title or a job description. But that’s not what it means—it’s two words. “Meet” is an old word that means “suitable” or “fit.” The Hebrew phrase literally means, “a helper like his opposite.”
In other words, Eve was to be a companion to Adam that filled in the gaps in his abilities and character. She was his opposite. They were to fit together like puzzle pieces—and not just in the physical sense, but also in a emotional sense, and in terms of roles and responsibilities.
From this verse, we can see a fundamental purpose of marriage: to provide companionship. There are other purposes of marriage, raising children, for instance. But companionship is a fundamental purpose of marriage that should be true in every marriage.
It’s improving that purpose in our marriage that will be our goal in this series of lessons. It is a very limited series in that sense. We won’t be talking much about children and parenting, for example—only focusing on improving the aspect of companionship in our marriages.
Let me say a word to those of you who are not currently married—why should this interest you? Two reasons: First, you might be married or married again one day.
Second, the principles that we uncover will be useful in any relationship that you have, not just the marriage relationship. Please don’t shut down because you are unmarried—there will be something for you.
In this lesson, we want to talk about meeting our spouse’s needs. I’ve titled it “Dying to Meet Your Spouse’s Needs.” What do I mean by “dying”? Well, I’m not going to tell you yet! I want you to think about what that might mean and entail.