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Urging Christians to rebuild strong marriages, explore biblical foundations, and re-engage culture with a hopeful, faith-centred vision for family life.

Today, I am starting a series, highlighting some key aspects from each chapter of my new book, While We Were Sleeping: A Wake-up Call For All Christians (2025). Each chapter opens with a riveting testimony from a seasoned practitioner.

My marriage chapter starts with Lyle Shelton, the National Director of the recently rebirthed Family First political party. His previous work included serving the Australian Christian Lobby for 10 years, five as managing director. For more than 20 years, he has been a keen participant in Australia’s culture wars.

I think that, despite the loss of this debate (the plebiscite on same-sex marriage) in 2017, Christians should never give up. We should redouble our efforts to strengthen our own marriages; it starts with us and our church communities.

Then we have to find a way to speak to our culture, to the wider society, to people who aren’t Christians, about the public good of marriage, why it’s good for all people as individuals, their children and society at large.

We need people to get married! I would encourage young people to not worry about whether they can afford a house, or whether they have the right furniture, just get married and enjoy being poor together. Have fun! You will be more prosperous in the long term, don’t let economics stop you getting married.

Marry young and stay faithful to the one person. Marriage is not try-before-you-buy, it’s not till we fall out of love, it’s in sickness and in health. (extracts from Lyle Shelton’s testimony)

Marriage Is Central to Cultural Renewal

I have placed marriage as front and centre of the book, because so many of our battles in the world stem from the breakdown of marriage. The same-sex marriage debate was merely a battle in the war that started in the 1960s with the Sexual Revolution.

Today, how often do we reflect on the remarkable differences and complementarities between our sexes? Philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau did in 1762:

The male is male only at certain moments; the female is female her whole life… everything constantly recalls her sex to her, and to fulfil its functions, an appropriate physical constitution is necessary to her… she needs a soft sedentary life to suckle her babies. How much care and tenderness does she need to hold her family together! … The rigid strictness of the duties owed by the sexes is not and cannot be the same.

Under the flag of equality, what have we done to ourselves, to our society, to our children and to our grandchildren? Most of us would wince at Rousseau’s language today, but take a second look: he was right, wasn’t he?

The equality agenda has had us believe there are 72 genders, with all the chaos that worldview has generated. Thankfully, we are at last beginning to recognise there are but two genders after all. Let’s catch the wave and steer our course back towards the centrality of marriage for success, which relies on the existence of the two genders. Marriage is beautiful; God designed it and planned it for our good, and for the good of our planet. (Genesis 1:28)

The late Doctor Voddie Baucham, Dean of Theology, African Christian University, Lusaka, Zambia, in conversation with Ben Shapiro, argued that today’s toxic feminism has much to answer for in the destruction of marriage in our society.

On top of this, we have the powerful narrative that men are viewed with suspicion and, by default, must be unsafe, and consequently, patriarchy is inherently oppressive. The passionate feminist sees patriarchy as the root of all evil.

God created us male and female; we can’t understand maleness apart from femaleness — we are not the same. We must understand what it means to be a man and what it means to be his ‘counterpart’, a woman. God designed men to be priests, prophets, providers, and protectors for women.

As Lyle said, ‘We should redouble our efforts to strengthen our own marriages; it starts with us, and our church communities.’ How many pastors have shipwrecked their ministry on account of the breakdown of their marriage? Let’s pray for our leaders. Let’s pray for our own marriages that they can be a beacon of light, a testimony of success to those who see chaos all around them.

Biblical Wisdom on Love, Sex, and Commitment

The Bible is always the best place to start, and for this I am indebted to Gary Hamrick, Senior Pastor, Cornerstone Chapel, Leesburg, Virginia, USA, for his review of 1 Corinthians 7:1-9.

In this passage, Paul is addressing two errant philosophies that had crept into the church: Gnosticism (only the spirit matters, you can do anything you like with your body, it doesn’t matter) and Asceticism (the belief that all pleasures are wrong, you should deny yourself physical pleasures, and that includes sex within marriage).

Now concerning the things of which you wrote to me: It is good for a man not to touch a woman. (v 1)

Here, Paul is not saying it is best to be single, but he is saying it’s fine to be single if that’s your calling. But if you are single, here are the guard rails. Literally, Paul is saying, it is good for the man not to ‘kindle a fire in a woman.’ In other words, this is the answer to the question, ‘How far can you go?’ The answer is not beyond the point of arousal. Therefore, if you can’t exercise self-control, it’s better that you marry. This is a great Scriptural antidote to the try-before-you-buy thinking.

Nevertheless, because of sexual immorality, let each man have his own wife, and let each woman have her own husband. Let the husband render to his wife the affection due her, and likewise also the wife to her husband. (v 2-3)

Paul is here firmly advocating for marriage. After all, God ordained marriage from the very beginning with Adam and Eve. Back in Genesis, the pattern was established, ‘be fruitful and multiply’ (Genesis 1:28). Also:

Therefore, a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. (Genesis 2:24)

God celebrates sex in a marriage, each giving authority of their body to the other. When we get married, we give up exclusive rights to ourselves and our bodies. But we should never demand what we want. It means we must understand what the other needs.

The wife does not have authority over her own body but yields it to her husband. In the same way, the husband does not have authority over his own body but yields it to his wife. Do not deprive each other except perhaps by mutual consent and for a time, so that you may devote yourselves to prayer. Then come together again so that Satan will not tempt you because of your lack of self-control. (v 4-5)

Finally, Paul seems to contradict himself with his wish that everyone should be single like him:

I wish that all of you were as I am. But each of you has your own gift from God; one has this gift, another has that. (v 7)

Yes, it could be taken at face value that Paul was wishing everyone to be single, but the context of this chapter and the whole narrative of Scripture makes clear that can’t be true. Hamrick’s take is that Paul knows about the demands of family life, so it’s easier for the spread of the Gospel if people are single and unencumbered. But if that is the case, then it’s a specific gift from God for that purpose; while others are gifted to be husbands, wives, fathers, and mothers.

Let’s pray for our marriages, the marriages of our children and marriages everywhere:

Father, thank You for my spouse. You designed them for me and me for them. You have brought us together in a sacred union, creating one flesh out of two. Our relationship is intended to be a picture of the relationship between Jesus and the Church.

Please bless my spouse and me with the gift of intimacy. Help us to grow close so that we may share our hearts. Help us know each other emotionally, physically, spiritually, and mentally. Help us bear each other’s burdens and love each other fully.

I know that there is perfect intimacy between the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Please bless us with that gift as well.

In Jesus’ name, amen. (Love Worth Finding with Adrian Rogers)

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