Written by: Pastor Deon Malan of Coffee & Confetti
Any married person would be able to tell you that keeping a marriage afloat is hard work, it takes dedication, loyalty, love, and trust. Tending to marriage is like tending to a vineyard, you need to prune and you need to protect it against every interference that wants to cause damage to your marriage.
Catch all the foxes, those little foxes, before they ruin the vineyard of love, for the grapevines are blossoming! – Song of Solomon 2:15
We need to have the discernment to recognize the interference that comes in and causes division in our marriages. It is beneficial to mark those who cause division and not give them any authority to meddle in the marriage.
So what do these little foxes look like?
1. Gossip: When you start to allow gossip about your spouse or your marriage, you are playing into the camp of the enemy and allowing destruction to come. The sad thing though is when you gossip about your spouse, you are in fact also gossiping about yourself as God has connected the two of you to become one.
2. Listening to negative voices: The moment you allow negativity, it starts to wire your brain to become negative, interestingly enough, people are only negative about your marriage when they cannot handle your level of happiness. When someone is negative about your marriage, it is a sure sign that they envy what you have.
3. Taking advice from people with a poor track record: YOU CAN NOT ACCEPT MARRIAGE ADVICE FROM PEOPLE THAT ARE MULTIPLE DIVORCEES OR THAT CAN NOT HOLD A RELATIONSHIP!! There is a reason why their relationships fail and most of the time it is due to ingrained hurt and discontentment in themselves.
4. The best friend deception: Those who seek to destroy your marriage and happiness will normally present as your best friend and tell you they have your back. Once your marriage is destroyed they are nowhere to be found and the reason is due to the reprobate minds that tell them if they cannot be happy, you cannot be happy.
5. The single view: You might think single life is the best, however, God never intended for us to be single, He created someone to compliment us where we are weak they are strong and vice versa.
6. The happiness delusion: God never gave any of us the authority to have an effect on another person’s happiness if that was able, we would have too much control over people and that was never God’s intention, His pattern is for us to find happiness in ourselves and joy by His Spirit.
The moment that we eradicate these foxes, we will have marriages and relationships that flourish, where God takes center stage