Ministry and Marriage

I've heard a lot of people making comments aboiut how we should all delay marraige because marriage "gets in the way of ministry". I've always found those comments to be annoying and inaccurate. If your marriage is getting in the way of your ministry, then something is wrong (and in almost certainly isn't your marriage!)

But I was thinking a bit more about this recently, because it's an opinion that is effecting me at the moment. (Boy I like has expressed it - not to me, to a mutual friend.) And while the friend corrected him with many of the more common points (marriage is biblical, marriage won't necessarily get in the way of ministry, marriage can help ministry, etc) I've been thinking a bit about it.

You see, HE'S RIGHT.

Get married anyway. :P

Seriously though; marriage is a picture of the relationship between Christ and His church. And there are LOTS of times where Jesus could achieve far more WITHOUT the church. But He uses the church anyway, because she's His bride, and He loves her.

There will be times when even the most organised, well-balanced, Godly men need to choose between ministry and marriage. Circumstances are beyond their control. And Biblically speaking, they need to choose their marriage. And sometime, that means that their "ministry" will suffer.

But not their service to God.

Because to the world they will be representing the Lord Jesus, and His perfect, self-sacrificial love for His bride.