Do you have a vision for your marriage? Where do you see yourself and your spouse in a year, five years or even 10 years from now? Do you see your marriage thriving and standing through the tests of time? Do you see yourself growing more loving and more in love with your spouse as the years pass?

It amazes me how some couples can plan their vacation time and honeymoons, even painful dental procedures, weeks, months and years in advance but fail to have the foresight and insight necessary for a lasting relationship.

Proverbs 29:18 says that "where there is no vision, the people perish." Could that be why so many of our marriages are failing? We lack effectiveness in our families, communities and churches because we embarked on our marriage journeys with no real plan for what we want our marriage to accomplish.

The word "vision" is a noun, meaning that it is a tangible thing. It is defined as "the act or power of sensing with the eyes," or the "act or power of anticipating that which will or may come." Having a vision for your marriage is something you have to do on purpose. Good businesses may start out with an idea, but the best one's have a mission or vision statement.

Vision statements are called the future picture of a company and serves as the inspiration and framework of the company's strategic planning.

I think every marriage could follow that model and be blessed. But first we've got to talk about a couple of things that are detrimental to the vision of a good relationship. They are impaired vision and blindness.

I think when we first get married we all have impaired vision. We know we are going to be together forever and because are so "in love" that we can't imagine ourselves EVER having a bad day in our marriage. Impaired vision doesn't allow for us to anticipate us growing a part at times, getting sick, looking less attractive or becoming less spiritual. All of those things can happen in any relationship over time. But when we have a vision for our relationship, we anticipate those things and we can plan and pray for God to give us grace to go through.

Blindness on the other hand is having no clue and no understanding of what marriage really is about. You choose to go into a relationship without proper preparation and planning and the relationship derails because you hit obstacles you didn't see because you didn't look.

A few years back, we were walking about blindly in our relationship, hitting all kinds of obstacles because we weren't looking and we had failed to plan. We sat down and over a month's time drafted a mission and vision statement. We found purpose again and pressed on with new direction. What a difference it has made!

The mission statement had one sentence and it still drives us today: To make Jesus Christ the focus of all that we do, whether parenting, ministering or working. Our vision statement promised to never rewrite our mission but to always re-evaluate where we were in our relationship as we changed and grew.

It's Marriage Mondays ...