Fame can come in a moment, but true greatness comes with longevity….it comes over a long period of time.

Men, beginning with Adam, were created for Greatness!  Men were created for the glory of God!

The institution of marriage (holy matrimony) of one man to one woman was created by God to be lived out by and between His two greatest and best creations, Adam and Eve.  Since the beginning of time, this godly institution provided by God to His very “best” has always been available because God knew the neediness of man and woman.  The facts are just that, the facts…they never change.  Man and woman are needy beings.  They need personal relationship.  They need each other.  They need to be loved and to love.  They need to be fruitful.  They need to nurture and care for others.  They need to provide and to protect one another.  Marriage is the solution to man’s and woman’s neediness.  God designed it to be that way, whether we approve it or agree with it!  It is for these reasons that I can say without reservation that marriage can be the closest thing to heaven or hell that we will ever have in our life here on earth.

The truth is that God made men and women totally unique.  They were made to be different from all other creatures He created.  They were also created to be totally different from each other even though they were both human beings.  They were, and are, created to fulfill vastly different purposes and roles in life.  I know without question that if most men and women today simply understood what I have just explained, there would  be a greatly reduced divorce rate in our society.  

Here is the crux of the matter as relates to the heterosexual married couples of America.  These very differences between men and women,… these very differences that were designed and given to the different genders,… are what actually cause most of the difficulties experienced by the man and woman while they are attempting to maintain and preserve their marriage relationship.

God’s designed and assigned differences between man and woman were meant to bring balance and blessing to human lives, not to disrupt, disturb, demean or destroy them. 

Remember, God created man out of the dust of the earth in His own image and for His glory.  God created the woman out of a rib from the man in His own image for the glory of the man!

When tracing the story of creation in the first three chapters of the Book of Genesis, it shows Adam to be “alone.”  Being “alone” can be a blessing, but being “lonely” never is.

Please, stop what you are doing right now and think through very carefully what I am about to tell you.  Remember these words, particularly if you are contemplating the dissolution of your marriage:       

  Aloneness will quickly degenerate into loneliness and become a 
  cursing rather than a blessing.

The Holy Bible tells us that Real True Love is eternal.  It tells us that Real True Love never dies.   Now those two true statements have to raise a question in the real believer’s mind as to what real true love really is,…particularly if one has ever heard their mate say those terrible words,…. “I just don’t love you anymore.”  In reality if ever faced with hearing those words, one would have to honestly ask himself or herself, if that really means that you never really did love me in the beginning of our relationship,…even when we were first married.

Words are extremely important and can convey, with tremendous power, the emotions by and between two individuals.  Words need to be first well understood as to their actual defined meaning, and then used accordingly.  They should never be used inappropriately or flippantly.  They can be used to build up, empower, and strengthen things or people.  They can be used to tear down, deflate, weaken or even destroy another person.  The Bible is correct when it tells us in the Book of Proverbs that the power of life and death is in the tongue.

Now back to the word love…the most important word in the Bible…   In the Garden of Eden, Adam had fellowship with God, but he had no peer because God is without peer.  Adam loved God, but he was still without an object of his love on earth that was his peer.

For love to be love, there must be an object of love.

For this very reason God, in His Infinite Wisdom, caused Adam to fall into a deep sleep, and from the right side of his rib cage took one  of Adam’s rib bones and formed the woman, a perfect counterpart for Adam.  Adam, who was responsible to name all of God’s created things, called the woman,… Eve.

It is for this reason that today in our society that the position of honor is always to the right.  A proud father will always escort his blushing bride-to-be daughter down the isle to the alter on his Right Arm.  In every military passenger carrying vehicle, the position of honor, i.e. the highest ranking person inside the vehicle will always sit in the right rear seat.  Whenever a man is escorting a woman, she is always to be to his right side.  The only exception to this general rule would be if a man was escorting a woman on or near a roadway.  In that case, the woman is to always be to the inside position of the man,… away from the road and its traffic.  

God did not create Eve from the dust of the earth as He did Adam because He has already put His characteristics into human form in Adam.  To have made a new creation from anything other than what was already in Adam would have been to make something inferior to Adam.  Ladies, please reread that last sentence!

The rib God used to make woman was symbolic of certain characteristics which God took from Adam to make the woman.  Those qualities that God placed into Eve are what we would consider in today’s world to be “the woman’s nature.”

In the nature of God are all the characteristics that are the components of mankind.  In God are the all-embracing, perfectly balanced characteristics of the disciplinarian and the nurturer: toughness and tenderness,… masculinity and femininity.

Marriage, the unifying of husband and wife into “one flesh,” represents the bringing together again of these godly characteristics that were initially invested in man alone, and then separated into male and female.

There is always a purpose for that which God does or allows to happen. From man came the woman through creation.  By woman has come the man in the procreation natural birth process ever since.  God’s unique balance of life is always in place and evident. 

Another truth about life is that both men and women have part of God’s image within them, and both individually glorify God.  But, although they each share a common image, they each have a separate human nature.

Let us examine a couple of these different natures in the hopes that people will begin to see and hopefully understand the God-given opposites that God designed into men and women:

    Man was created from the dust of the earth, and woman from the rib of the man.  That is why it seems natural for a man to be dirty, but
never is for a woman.

   A man may smoke a cigar, use profanity, tell his dirty stories, and people accept that as a “man’s kind” of way, but it certainly not so for a   woman. 

Whenever the two sides to a relationship fully understand and respect their differences, the harmony of the relationship thrives.

A man was created for the glory of God and the woman for the glory of the man.  But how can a woman be the glory of a man unless that man is becoming the glory of God by being conformed to the image of Christ?

Sadly, most men today do not desire “accountability.”  What they really want is total “authority.”  Such misdirected personal desires cause them to immediately become a mediocre man.  Mediocrity is the poison of excellence.  Mediocrity begets no glory.  Mediocre men offer God reactions, all the while God wants results from their lives. Here is the essence of what I am telling you.  Excellence in Spirit begins with having an Excellent Spirit.  The more Christlike the man, the greater will be the glory.

There are a lot of enemies, dangers, and traps to living a Christlike life in today’s world.  The term “transposition error” as I see it, is the common error in all humanity. “Transposition” will wreak havoc in our own lives.  When typing a important letter, a transposition error of the letter “i” changes the entire meaning of a word… “unite” becomes “untie.” In the technical fields of data processing, if a person transposes analog over to  digital, nothing will work correctly.  In the very same catastrophic way you cannot attribute to a work of the flesh that which can be done in a person’s life only by the Spirit of God.

God’s glory in the Old Testament dwelled in the Holy of Holies, in an earthly hand made tabernacle constructed by the Israelites.  Today–since the advent of Christ–the glory of God resides in tabernacles, not made with hands, but in the hearts of men.  Only God Almighty can look into a man’s heart and see what is actually there.

“Microwave Christians” want instant salvation, sanctification and glorification.  They don’t want to take the time, exercise the patience, determine the will, or pay the price,… to go through the fire of God’s perfecting power that they might be filled with His glory. 

Pottery is made strong in a fiery kiln, steel is tempered in a red-hot forge, and men are made when the fire of God burns the dross out of their lives and leaves them filled with the glory of God.

God allows everything that happens to us to occur for the Divine purpose of revealing more of Himself to us.

Man was created for the glory of God.
The woman was created for the glory of the man.

A woman glories in her relationship to a man who manifests the nature and image of Christlikeness.

That is the man God wants you to be!

When the man gets right with God,…the family and then the world always falls correctly into place.

Have a Great Forever!…….