The first lesson we learned in marriage unity occurred on San Francisco’s Pier 39 on our honeymoon. Tim dropped me off at the pier to pick up an item we had forgotten earlier, and he circled the busy streets of San Francisco waiting to pick me up. Walking alone on the pier, I could sense Holy Spirit alerting me to my surroundings. I became keenly aware of a man looking at me with intense hate, followed shortly by another person with the same spirit. A string of similar occurrences unfolded, each heightening my senses that something was not right. All I knew was that I should not have even alone. Later, as I was waiting for Tim to pick me up on an empty side street, a tremendous warning enveloped me as I heard Holy Spirit speak clearly: “You and Tim should not be apart.” It was loud and clear, and I knew something was happening that I could not yet put my finger upon. When I got into the car, I began to tell Tim what happened, but he was already aware because Holy Spirit had given him the exact same message. We did not understand it fully at the time, but it was the beginning of Him bringing us into a level of unity that neither of us had ever even seen modeled in any marriage we had witnessed.

For clarity purposes

I will interject that I am not saying that married couples cannot be apart. In fact, as I write this, I am enjoying some blissful alone time in a coffee shop. Breathing room is very healthy for marriages. But our training for our particular calling has involved a level of togetherness that most couples may find foreign. Just as an Olympic swimmer has to enter the pool more often and with more focus than a casual swimmer, Tim and I realized that as the Lord was readying us to become the tip of the spear for breakthrough in marriages, we were being called to a lifestyle of togetherness that is greater than most. And in that intensity of togetherness, the Lord was giving us insight into the KEY of unity.

God created sex. And it goes beyond being just a bonding agent and is actually a weapon that married couples can use together against the enemy who comes to steal, kill, and destroy. The husband/wife relationship is the most powerful union on earth, and the triple-braided cord of God/husband/wife is unbreakable. And THAT scares the enemy. He will do all he can to break down the unity of husband and wife. Hence, his strategy to divide and conquer. He aims to take out the glue of sex by introducing porn, affairs, complacency, distraction, fatigue, anything he can to sever that most powerful of unions.

To be united in mind, husbands and wives must first each have renewed minds in Christ. (Romans 12:2). Tim has been key in this aspect of our marriage. He spent ten years prior to our marriage learning to walk in purity as a man. His mind was aligned with the mind of Jesus, which set the stage for us both to feel the safety necessary to share our thoughts, dreams, fears, and struggles. Marriages would be wise to pattern unity after Paul’s instructions to believers in general: “…being like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and of one mind.” (Philippians 2:2)

The aspect of unity in marriage begins with unity with the Lord. As we both pursue Him fervently each day, we find that our conversations and our understanding are rooted at a level that we did not know was possible. We flow together in the spirit and the natural world at the same time, creating a protective barrier around our marriage as we sense the manifestation of that triple-braided cord of God, husband, and wife.