What is God's Dream for Marriages?

Here are some notes from the opening to one of Chip Ingram's sermon series on marriage title Experiencing God's Dream For Your Marriage. To sum it up, Chip said:

• Most couples do not know the difference between love and infatuation
• Most couples have baggage they don't know how to deal with from past family or other relationships and do not know how to deal with it
• Most couples do not have good communication skills
• Most couples have unrealistic expectations
• Most couples entered marriage with financial problems and no clear plan on managing their finances together
• Most couples do not have
• Most couples come from homes where they did not see deep love and commitment modeled by their parents
• Most couples did not have a clear picture of what a healthy relationship looks like but assumed that if they just loved each other, everything would just all work itself out

Pastor Chip makes the point that You wouldn't just start building a house without a blueprint, and neither should you start a relationship without a blueprint. God has a blueprint for marriage that draws us closer to Him and to each other. God wants to use marriage as one of the most powerful spiritual models of following Christ. Some people ho go in blindly do figure it out better  than others, but how foolish it is to go into anything unprepared, let alone a demanding and lifelong commitment  such as marriage.