In mine and Denise’s marriage, the word “divorce” has never been spoken. It is not allowed — not even as a joke. Around the time when we got married, we started a ministry at the Baptist church where I was the pastor called “Starting Over.” This was a seminar for newly divorced people, which may sound strange given that Denise and I were newly married, but it taught us many things.

When we started this ministry, we thought that we might get a few people to show up to our seminar, but certainly not any major response. Oh, friend, we had no idea the kind of flood we were opening the door to! It was a cyclical seminar that we repeated again and again, and every single time, it was just packed with people who were able to get their lives saved and restored after the tragedy of divorce. In the first year alone, we had 1,100 new divorcees come through the “Starting Over” ministry!

Working with 1,100 divorcees in that first year of our marriage really taught us how tragic divorce is for the individual, for the couple, and for the children, and that’s why we have absolutely refused to even joke about it in our marriage. When people in marriage jokingly say, “I’m going to divorce you,” it is simply not funny. In fact, it can actually be very hurtful to your spouse and relationship, so you need to eliminate that word from your vocabulary. If you have already been through divorce, then you know how destructive it is, but Jesus is anointed to heal the brokenhearted, and He wants to heal you too. If you haven’t experienced divorce or if you’ve found a new relationship that you are trying to hold onto, then I want to encourage you to avoid the pain of divorce all together, and one of the best ways to do that is to lean into the purpose of your marriage.

In that first year of the “Starting Over” ministry and of my marriage, I began to really study what caused all these marriages we were seeing to fail, and one thing I noticed was that many of them did not have a purpose. You see, everything needs a purpose. As Proverbs 29:18 says, “Where there is no vision, the people perish: but he that keepeth the law, happy is he.” Likewise when a marriage has no vision, it begins to flounder until it eventually perishes.

Though this is not true for all cases of divorce, there are many cases where the marriage struggles because it is missing a goal bigger than the individuals in it. The spouses may truly love each other, but eventually they become frustrated and dissatisfied. They begin to think, “There has to be more than this.” Without a focus, people simply begin to drift and think about other things, and that will corrode the marriage relationship over time.

However, when you have a vision, when you know why you are here, when you know why your marriage has been formed by the Lord, it puts everything on a different level. When you have a shared mission, it holds you and your spouse together even when boredom or hardship might try to drive you apart. It gives you a goal for your marriage that is bigger than either one of you, and when you begin to have kids, it gives a binding purpose to the entire family.

This idea of a binding purpose is not just a man-made concept, either. Ecclesiastes 3:1 tells us, “To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven:”

Everything, including your marriage, has a reason for existing. The following verses of this passage just emphasize the fact that we need to be living with intention:

A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted; A time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up; A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance; A time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing; A time to get, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away; A time to rend, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak; A time to love, and a time to hate; a time of war, and a time of peace.

—Ecclesiastes 3:2-8

If there is a season for everything, then we need to be living lives with awareness about what kind of season we are in. If this is true in our individual lives, why shouldn’t we believe it for our marriages? Just as God creates every person with an individual assignment, when He calls two people together, He is creating that union for a divine mission.

Marriage is an amazing thing, friend. When God pulls two people together, there is a divine chemistry that takes place. As the Bible says, “Two are better than one; because they have a good reward for their labour” (Ecclesiastes 4:9). This verse literally says you get better results by being together in your work. This doesn’t just apply to your day-to-day activities — it applies to your purpose as a married couple. You have to recognize that God has given you and your spouse a calling, because when the two of you are working together on it, you will have an amazing result or reward.

I know I saw this in my own life. When I look at my forty-four years of marriage with Denise, I see that they are years of fruitfulness because our two gifts were brought together by God. We had to learn how to make those gifts come together at first, because we are gifted very differently, but God showed us how to do it, and He is still showing us how so that we continue to become more fruitful as a team. Our marriage, like any other, has needed patience, but I can say that God has been faithful to reveal what we need to do to make things work, and there has never been a reason to discuss divorce — not even as a joke.

I also want you to understand that just because all marriages depend on the same God does not mean they will all look the same. God has a unique assignment for every person, and in the same way, He has one for every marriage.

For example, ministry can be the purpose for a marriage. That is how it is for me and Denise. When we were married, we knew we were both called to the ministry as individuals, but now we were entering into it together. This was not a situation where I had my own ministry and Denise had hers, because God had called us together. Together our mission has been to reach the world, to take the teaching of the Bible to the ends of the earth, and to build up the body of Christ. We have worked on the front lines together. We have preached and pushed back darkness together. We have done what other people said was impossible, and we did it with each other and with the Lord, because He is in the middle of our marriage.

Our calling has been very clearly defined as one of direct ministry, but that may not be the case for you. Denise and I have a couple of dear friends whose shared mission is business. It may sound strange, but they are just anointed to make money and be blessed so that they can fund the Gospel all around the world. That is their purpose, and they have embraced it and have a good reward for their labor.

Maybe your calling appears more mundane. Maybe it is to be a parent and raise godly children who have an impact on the world. There are all kinds of callings, and they all look different, but they all somehow serve God and His kingdom. You may not yet know what your vision is as an individual or as a married couple, but one thing you can be sure of is that God did not just call you and your spouse to sit in your house, eat food, go to bed, wake up, go to work, come home, and do it all again. That is what an animal does. Whether you are single or married, you are born to be more than an animal. Your life and your union are meant to be bigger than that.

Before I end this teaching, I want to leave you with Philippians 3:13-14, because I think that Paul gives us a wonderful example of this principle of purpose:

Brethren, I count not myself to have apprehended: but this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before, I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.

Just like Paul, we are called to reach ahead, to press toward the calling that God has for every one of us. This is true in your personal life, it is true in your professional choices, and it is certainly true in the godly union of your marriage. Denise and I can look at each other and say, “We are not done yet,” because we know the vision that God has called us to, and when we compare that goal to what we’ve already accomplished, we know that we still have work to do. When you find that mission to take on with your spouse, you won’t have to worry about falling apart, because you will always be held together by the shared purpose given to you by God.