I really enjoy listening to Pastor Creflo Dollar and I usually do so once a week. Lately, he’s been talking about the strongest covenant known to man as being a blood covenant. This makes a lot of sense to me and, of course, the bible is filled with this type of covenant with the most important to us being that Christ shed His blood for us that we might have fellowship directly with God the Father. Not only that, the bible is divided into two covenants: the Old Covenant and the New Covenant.
Covenant in Hebrew means a cut-where-blood-flows. The purpose of covenant was to create a binding agreement, more powerful than a contract or agreement. This was to be forever - the life span of the participants, it was to be holy, sacred, to violate the covenant would mean death. The blood covenant was the ultimate insurance of loyalty and fidelity. Marriage is the closest agreement to the blood covenant in modern society and, sadly, marriage is today closer to a contract than a covenant.
Being involved in marriage ministry, I began to wonder about how a blood covenant would apply since we westerners don’t cut each other when we’re taking our vows. Simply put, it would be virginity. When a bride and groom consummate their marriage on their wedding night, as virgins, there would be a showing of blood; from her and onto him. Here’s the sad part…I had to think about this for a moment. Why? Because I wasn’t a virgin on my wedding night nor was my first husband, in fact, he wasn’t even the first man I’d ever been with sexually. And, having been previously married, there would be no physical way for there to be a showing of blood on my second wedding night and Michael and I had already been intimate with one another prior to that night. How sad it is that most of us, even Christian men and women, no longer hold fast to the sacredness of this most intimate of covenants. If we haven’t had at least one sexual partner before we get married then most of us have at least sampled the fruit with our affianced partner.
Now that Michael and I are finding our way through our marriage as God meant it to be for us, I sometimes find myself wishing that our marriage covenant had been one begun with the blood of virginity, if not literally, then lived out and treated as such.
Great post guys. We have felt the same way over the years. What we struggle with now is how to impart what we have so painfully learned on our children. We want to raise them in the way should go any hope that they have the covenant bond that we cheated ourselves out of but it is so hard to instill that in this day and age. The rate of teen sexual activity in the church are awful. Looks like we have a lot of work to do!
ReplyDeleteA much needed message to be sharing.
ReplyDeleteThere is a lot to learn in studying covenants and especially the marriage covenant. People don't seem to realize God gave it to us as a blessing. And how much better our lives would be if we lived by it.
God bless you and your ministry!
Brenda
this is indeed a good read -- I ask for prayer please-- if you will pray for my husband and I that GOD will not forsake the works of His hands, that GOD's marriage covenant between us will not dissolved but resolved in Yeshua/Jesus name Amen
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