Covenant Covering

When God approached Abraham in Genesis 15:1 with covenant language He said, "I am your shield...." Covering is perhaps one of the major reasons for covenant for it is the protection offered. It is difficult for us to understand perfectly what covenant meant to past times because we do not "practice" covenant. You understand best what you live. For 2000 years God did not attempt to approach man with a covenant for it took generations of covenant practice to absorb it as a way of life. "A way of Life" is exactly what God wants to teach us through the covenant He has made.

Let us start with the first covenant, the marriage covenant. To show Adam what he had in the protection God gave him in covenant, God gave Adam a helpmeet to be covered. His covenant response to God was to be a covering for his helpmeet. When he failed to give this covenant response to God, sin entered the world.

In the marriage covenant, protection is very important. The man is protected for he is to the wife what Jesus is to the church. His covering is spiritual. In I Corinthians 11 we see that the man prays uncovered. He does not need a covering other than the Lord, just as Adam was covered by the Lord and his response was to the Lord. The man's response is to the Lord. If he fails in his protective, covering role, he sins against God.

The woman represents the church in her role as wife. She responds to her husband as the church is to respond to the Lord, the head of the church. She submits to her husband as to the Lord. Why? It goes back to the first deception. It is easier for a woman to be deceived and she needs a covering to protect her. It is actually a blessing to be a woman and walk under a covering that protects and shelters her. She can receive from God for in Christ there is neither male nor female. But she is protected from Satan's deceptive darts when she is respectfully seeing her husband in the role God has put him. Outside the covenant concept, men become critical of their wives and lose that protective love that they receive from God when they walk in their role by faith. Women become critical of their husbands when they see them as men. They lose not only their submission to their husbands, they become deceived and lose the respect they should have for the Head of the Church. They become controlling not only in small things but a spirit of controlling takes over and they cannot lose that control. Instead of the prayer that Jesus showed us was the only way to follow Him and that He prayed in Gethsemane, "Not my will but Thine," the wife becomes insistent that things be done her way. The farther the church goes from seeking the will of the Head, Jesus Christ, the more marriages see this problem. The two seem to go hand in hand. My husband has often said as marriages go so goes the church. It can be reversed also, in that as the church fails to uphold the will of God as the ruling authority, marriages get in trouble.

There is also the problem of divorce. The pain of divorce is not only in the natural but in the spiritual. The wife has suddenly been cut off from her covering.
If the wife is a Christian and the husband not, she has had to have faith for her husband to be her covering even if he does not understand. But in divorce that is not possible. She has to come prayerfully to the Lord and ask that He become her covering as He would if she were a widow. When she prayerfully repents of anything in which she may have contributed to the divorce, the Blood of Jesus covers all unrighteousness. There is a special tearing that must by healed for what was once one is now torn into two parts. Feelings and hurts must be repented of to be healed. Only Jesus can bring into your life the Peace you need. But you do not ask for His work in your life and ever be denied. He hears the cry and He answers. The covenant response necessary in this broken covenant is forgiveness and a trust in God to bring the healing. Jesus is the covering of His Church and when we humbly follow Him, we are His Church, no matter what natural label of denomination we might have. If you are no longer under the covering of marriage, you are, as a member of His Church, under the covering of Jesus, our Head.

This is not meant to be a complete answer to this problem for each divorce has many individual aspects, but it should arouse questions to be brought to the Lord. If you have questions of what I have said or if you do not understand some of the references I made, please ask. Or if you just want me to pray for your situation, I will certainly do so. I take this subject of covering very seriously and have a great appreciation for the blessings a covering provides.