Karen Vincent

Amos 3:3 asks a question that applies very clearly to married couples: "Can two walk together unless they are agreed?"

The answer, of course, is no. Marriage is an intimate journey. It's the most lasting relationship on earth. If you try to make this journey without agreement, you'll find it extremely difficult.

But the good news is that you can have peace in your marriage. The number-one foundation of unity in a marriage is prior agreement-agreeing before you do something by talking it over.

The big problem in many marriages is that the husband and wife have never had detailed discussions about anything before they get married. This leads to a tremendous amount of problems later in the marriage. Because there's no prior agreement, the man and woman are unable to discuss things. They can't work things out. The problems just continue to grow and grow.

The first marriage counseling I did was pre-marital counseling for young couples. I worked at a church and couple after couple was sent to me so I could get help prepare them for marriage. What I found was that these couples had not discussed a lot of significant issues with each other.

They were afraid having a detailed discussion would lead to a fight they wouldn't know how to resolve. So they just didn't talk. In fact, in the process of discussing these issues, around one out of five of these couples discovered they were not compatible at all, and ended up not getting married.

I had the couples, as individuals, fill out a couple of question-and-answer forms. One was called Role Concepts Analysis. The other was called Marriage Expectation Inventory. These included questions like How many children are you going to have? Is the wife going to work? Who will manage the money? Who will do the housework? Who will you spend the holidays with? How will you deal with in-law problems?

Tough questions. There are couples who have been married for years who still haven't dealt with these questions, and it causes a tremendous amount of tension. By bringing them up in pre-marital counseling, though, we could discuss them. It led to a lot of conflict. But it was good conflict, because it meant they were talking to each other.

It sounds counter-intuitive, but peace can come out of that conflict. Because when you discuss these things you can eventually come to an agreement. And out of prior agreement comes peace.

Proverbs 29:18 says, "Where there is no vision, people are unrestrained." This use of vision means being able to look toward the future. Unrestrained means people are going to separate where they do not see things the same way.

We need a vision and agreement for every area of our marriage. Coming to this point of agreement will be difficult. There will be fights. But my question is this: Would you rather hash it out right now, with some temporary discomfort? Or would you rather suffer through another fifty years of always disagreeing and never having peace?

Two people cannot walk together unless they first agree. Don't bury your conflicts. Discuss them, compromise, and come to an agreement. Only then will you know peace and unity in your marriage