God’s Plan For Marriage

Greetings;

Today I am in Portugal. We have had a great start here over the weekend with ministry in several churches. This week I am video recording two more training courses with Portuguese translation. I am looking forward to seeing God show up again for the Portuguese people.

I have been writing about God’s foundation for family in the earth. The foundation of the family is a man and a woman. This is more specifically, a joining of the masculine and the feminine attributes of God as they are seen in the testimony of mankind. The fruit of this relationship is life in a multigenerational testimony. The marriage of a man and a woman is the foundation of family and it is a testimony to what God sees as Christ and the church. The church includes the characteristics of a husband and a wife. It is a partnership of life that expands in greater life beyond themselves. We don’t expect the world to understand this. We are not condemning the world for not understanding this. We want to inspire the world to find the true secrets of life that are found in God and in His design for mankind in the earth. In the communities we create, we welcome people of all understanding and from all manner of cultures in the earth. This should be true for whatever container we use to express some form of God’s heavenly community.  This could be a home meeting, a Sunday meeting, a gathering in a café, or a place in the park. To reach people we need a container that they can relate to and desire to come to. We expect people to come as they are, but we also expect to inspire them to become as they were never able to be before. As the church we have done a bad job of this, since we often build our marriages in the same self-seeking, self-gratifying ways that the world does in their confused state of understanding in their search for life.

We don’t expect people of the world to understand what we believe. We want to inspire them by what we believe so their broken lives can be healed, so their families can be restored. So that new things can be created. When they encounter the life-transforming love of God, they too can become an example to others. They and us can perhaps raise children and families that have a different mentality and can change the world. We need to know that in our relationships, our marriages, are based upon a covenant of God’s design. God made a man and a woman to give life to one another knowing their relationship will produce life – spirit, soul, and body. Even if we could not physically have children, something of our lives will have a value for the future generations. So, the wife submits to the husband because the husband is giving life to be received by the wife. She is giving her life to him to receive the life he is giving, and he is receiving the life she is giving so he can give even more life to her. The husband is speaking life-giving words. Words like, I believe in you. You are an awesome part of us. You can do it. He sanctifies her and washes her with life-giving words, impartations of life that he can give to her. He is giving life. She is receiving that life. I believe in you. I am in this with you. We are us. I am going to allow the gifting that I am to contribute to us. I value who you are. Together we are more than we could be in ourselves. Our different ways of thinking make our thinking together greater than is possible by ourselves.

The wife is not there to help the husband do his thing. The church is not joined to Jesus to help Jesus do His own thing. The church is joined to Jesus to fulfill the Father’s will in the earth. Jesus knows this. He is not interested in His will being done. He is interested in the Father’s will being done. He doesn’t give identity to the wife. He expects her to get her identity from the same source as He does as a man. God is the Father of both the man and woman. As husband and wife, they each get their identity from God.

The husband is bringing his wife alongside of him as someone who makes decisions on their behalf in the earth. These are decisions in the family, decisions in the home, and decisions in life that represent them as one flesh for the purpose of their destiny in Christ in all things. They represent a corporate testimony. Not a testimony of me, but one of us. This is the mystery of a marriage – a man and woman, a husband and wife. The husband is activating, facilitating, and releasing life to his wife. The wife is being activated, facilitate, and released to produce the fruit of life in their dwelling as one-flesh together. When they have babies, natural or spiritual, those babies are going to grow to become healthy men and women who become families with the substance of giving and not getting.

This is the picture perfect sinerio. I don’t know of anyone who has arrived in this yet. This does not exist yet in its perfect and fullest form. My wife and I are growing in this. We have been together 42 years and my wife is more herself today than when we got married. She doesn’t look like me, she looks like herself. But really, she looks like us. I look like us. In marriage a man and woman come together, and they become one flesh. They were complete and whole as single individuals. Nothing is lacking in a single man or a single woman. Nothing is lacking in their identity. Everything they need is in God. But then they come together in relationship, what was this one and that one now become one made of two. In my example, Bonnie Shupert and Ted Hanson were individuals that were healthy and whole, but then they got a revelation. We are supposed to be together. Until death to part. Something new was created. Bonnie Shupert became Bonnie Hanson but really, she became Bonnie and Ted Hanson. Ted Hanson became Ted and Bonnie Hanson. From the moment of that covenant there is no longer an individual Ted Hanson. If you see Ted Hanson, you see Ted and Bonnie Hanson. If you see Bonnie, you see Bonnie and Ted Hanson. No matter where we are on planet earth, we are one. Not just physically. It is spirit, soul, and body. This is a marriage. It is God’s design for marriage. Each man and woman fulfill the attributes of God. They should give, give, give, and not get, get, get. This is true for both the man and the woman. In giving life to one another, life is birthed; and it creates the nucleolus of a family that gives life to the world. It is the fruit of giving, not the benefits of getting. This same testimony should be in the many membered communities of the body of Christ. We are bone of His bones and flesh of His flesh to be the testimony of the fullness of Him who fills all in all. It is a mystery; thus, it is God’s way and not merely the way of men.

Blessings,

Ted J. Hanson

Many of you have sowed seed to help us in our role of bringing New Covenant life and grace to the nations. Thank you very much. I will be headed to Angola, Africa in April. I May I will be in Portugal, Spain, Bulgaria, and England. Please donate to House of Bread Ministry and help us reach the nations and generations with the word and impartation of New Covenant Life and Grace. Donations are payable to House of Bread Ministry. You can donate at the link on this page or mail your contribution to:

House of Bread Ministry, 3210 Meridian St., Bellingham, WA 98225

Thank You So Much – Ted J. Hanson