Have you ever seen that couple who has been married 30, 40, 50 years or more? I’m happy to say that my parents fell into this category. While it wasn’t always an easy journey, they discovered some things along the way to be successful. Inevitably, someone always asks these seasoned married couples, “What is your secret to success in marriage?” While I haven’t complied a list of responses from these marriage veterans, I have compiled a list of seven simple tips of what research and what the bible has to say about having a healthy marriage. We have also placed these great tips in our book called, 7 Tips for a Healthy Marriage. I selected some passages from the book and placed them below. Although they may seem simple, they may not always be so easy to implement.
1. Find Your Purpose
Have you ever asked yourself, “What is the purpose of my marriage?” How about, “What is the purpose of our lives?” Maybe you have never specifically asked yourself these questions. Maybe you have, but it’s been so long since you asked yourself that question you have forgotten the answer. I believe the scripture below offers more than a clue to the purpose of our lives, and more specifically, marriage.
Mark 12:28-33 (NIV), “One of the teachers of the law came and heard them debating. Noticing that Jesus had given them a good answer, he asked him, “Of all the commandments, which is the most important?” “The most important one,” answered Jesus, “is this: ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these.” “Well said, teacher,” the man replied. “You are right in saying that God is one and there is no other but him. To love him with all your heart, with all your understanding and with all your strength, and to love your neighbor as yourself is more important than all burnt offerings and sacrifices.”
It also says in 1 Corinthians 10:31 (NIV), “…whatever you do, do all to the glory of God…” As these scriptures indicate, the first part of our primary purpose in life is to love God, be in relationship with Him; and whatever it is that we do in life, do it for the purpose of glorifying Him. The other part of that primary purpose is to love others. Those two things are more important than all those other offerings and sacrifices that we make in our lives.
Now once you wrap your mind around this basic concept of general purpose as mentioned above, you can begin to discover and develop the specific purpose as it relates to your unique marriage. Life is all about relationship, and we need to be about our Father’s business of building healthy relationships. Maybe the purpose of your marriage is to be a light in a dark world of divorce and dysfunction. Whatever your calling is, do it with purpose so you’ll always know why.
2. Date Your Spouse
When you first met, this is one of the activities that created the atmosphere for both of you to fall in love with one another. Why is it that once we say, “I do”, this behavior tends to diminish when it was once such a high priority in our lives? Maybe it is because of all the business of life and we just don’t make time for this important activity anymore? Studies suggest that married couples who invest in their relationship by having at least one date night per week experience: a significant increase in happiness, relationship satisfaction, communication, and sexual satisfaction by about 350% or 3.5 times higher than couples who aren’t regularly dating. Who doesn’t want that!? By doing this one activity regularly, it WILL impact the quality of your marriage.
The study mentioned above was done by Dr. Greg Smalley of Focus on the Family. They concluded this from scientific research done by: the Survey of Marital Generosity (SMG), a national study of more than 1,600 married couples aged eighteen to fifty-five that was conducted in 2010 and 2011 by the National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia. You can read all about this and more from a sample portion of their book, “Take The Date Night Challenge“. Ecclesiastes 9:9 (NIV), “Enjoy life with your wife, whom you love, all the days of this meaningless life that God has given you under the sun—all your meaningless days. For this is your lot in life and in your toilsome labor under the sun.”
3. Invest in Your Marriage
If you want to know what is important to you, just look in your checkbook. I’m not saying money is the most important thing in marriage, nor am I saying that anyone even uses a checkbook anymore. What I am saying is that we intentionally spend money on things that are important to us ~ Matthew 6:21 (NIV) says, “For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” If our marriages are important to us, we need to be investing in them. We invest in so many other things in life, what are we investing in to ensure the success of our marriage?
How should we invest in our marriage? See tip #2, that will get you started. Take a class together. Attend a marriage conference where you can focus on each other. Go on a mini-vacay together. Just be intentional and do something significant. This doesn’t always mean you have to spend gobs of cash, but it does mean you must spend time together.
4. Pray Daily
This particular activity could very well be the best predictor of success in your marriage. The August 2010 article, “The Couple that Prays Together’: Race, Ethnicity, Couples’ Religious Involvement, and Relationship Quality among Working-age Adults” in the “Journal of Marriage and Family” (Volume 72, Issue 4, Pages 963-975) concluded that couples praying together on a daily basis were less likely to get a divorce than those couples who were not praying on a daily basis. In fact, the divorce rate was 1 in 1156 (not even 1%) for those couples involved in church/ministry and couples that prayed together on a daily basis. Everyone is told that the typical divorce rate for first marriages is much higher (somewhere between 30%-50% and even higher for subsequent marriages) so the statistics of a prayerful couple are very encouraging and quite amazing.
There are numerous verses in the bible where we are instructed to be more like Christ, and He also demonstrated numerous examples of how to live a godly life. Many times Christ prayed with his disciples and friends. If He did that for them, how much more important could it be that we pray with the ones closest to us like our spouse? Not only is prayer expected to be done by the believer, but when we do this with our spouse it only increases intimacy in relationship and oneness in marriage. Ecclesiastes 4 (NIV) says, “Though one may be overpowered, two can defend themselves. A cord of three strands is not quickly broken.”
5. Increase Emotional Intelligence
Have you ever known someone, a friend or relative maybe, that lives their life purely by how they feel? They make important decisions in the heat of the moment and wonder why things never work out for them. This is also the kind of person who always blurts out the first thought that pops into their head, and then later realizes how inappropriate that was. This person is not very self-aware, and that is generally not a good thing.
If you want to increase your emotional intelligence, then the first step is gaining self awareness through assessment. When we become believers we begin a journey of discovering who we are in Christ. Instead of blindly serving self, we discover that it is greater to serve others than ourselves. We begin to unlock what our strengths and limitations are, and use them to help build strong relationships. This also begins a process of cultivating a pure heart and mind which is essential in becoming more like Christ.
Romans 12:2 (NIV), “Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.”
While we can’t control what thoughts and emotions we have, we can control how we choose to deal with them. We are bombarded daily with our thoughts which inevitably trigger feelings. The challenge is not to try to suppress this, but choosing how to deal with them. The key to unlocking the door to joy in all situations can be found in a few scriptures. 2 Corinthians 10:5 (NIV) says, “We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.” Our mind is the gateway to the heart. We need to be skilled at comparing our thoughts and emotions against scripture and deciding whether or not we allow them to take root in our heart.
If our thoughts and emotions don’t line up with what God says, we are to turn them over so that Christ can handle them, everything else we can allow to enter our heart. How do we decide this? Philippians 4:8 (NIV) says, “Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things.” This is the standard by which we are to measure whether or not those thoughts and feelings belong in our heart. In Luke 6:45 it presents the concept of how out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks, and our actions are also sure to follow.
As you continue your journey of gaining emotional intelligence you will begin to gain certain skills such as empathy. If you are going to achieve healthy relationships you must actively pursue skills such as these. Everyone wants to be heard and your spouse wants to be known by you. If you aren’t being empathetic, chances are your spouse is not being heard and that is not good. Just some slight modifications in your communication could make a world of difference in your marriage. Be sure to focus on what they are saying with eye contact and NOT iContact, put away those electronics if you know what I mean. Acknowledge them in a way that shows them you are listening to their ideas and not just repeating words back to them indicating that you are a human tape recorder. Let’s follow Christ’s example in Hebrews 4:15 (NIV), “For we do not have a high priest who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet he did not sin.”
6. Serve With Love & Respect
We are all selfish beings from birth…wait, that sure sounds weird, we were just babies. That’s right, but everything was taken care of for us. People fed us, cleaned us, clothed us. We didn’t pay any bills, we did whatever we wanted and everyone thought it was so cute. We didn’t have to do anything we didn’t want to do, but slowly and progressively ever since that day everyone began to stop doing everything for us. When you grow up, you learn the blessing and value of serving others even though our flesh desires that people serve us.
If we look at the heavenly model of how our earthly marriages should be, we would realize that in marriage we were meant to serve our spouse. John 13:5 (NIV) says, “After that, he poured water into a basin and began to wash his disciples’ feet, drying them with the towel that was wrapped around him.” Jesus the King of the universe humbled Himself to serve His bride even when she didn’t deserve it. What a perfect model of servant leadership that we must all strive to achieve in marriage. So, how should we serve one another? Good question, let’s look at what the bible says about the roles of a husband and wife.
Ephesians 5:25 (NIV), “Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her…”
Ephesians 5:33 (NIV), “However, each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband.”
If you notice in the passages above there are two very distinct and different instructions to the married couple. It says that husbands are to love their wives, and the wives are to respect their husbands. Why doesn’t it just say for both of them to love and respect each other? The bible talks about loving and treating everyone with respect, why is this different for husband and wife? Well, it’s not different for them. They should both love and respect one another, but this passage isn’t saying not to do both. It is just placing an emphasis on the main idea that what we are lacking in certain areas, and it instructs us on how we can better meet the needs of our spouse. I believe it was written this way because God already made men with the unique ability to know how to respect, and God also already made women with the unique ability to know how to love.
I believe that in God’s infinite wisdom in creating us, this was done in such a way that left us with our respective lack of some innate abilities. In other words, He knew we would have to work on these skills for the rest of our lives. If we were completely self-sufficient, what would we need Him for, or anyone else for that matter. God knew that we would have to go outside of our own selfishness in order to be fulfilled in life. Men and women are uniquely suited to be able to meet the needs of one another, but in order to have a sense of fulfillment we must be able to server one another in ways that are meaningful to our spouse. Those ways are not going to be the same, and therefore the bible has instructed us in God’s Word as to the best way to accomplish this task.
7. Forgive Quickly
Ephesians 4:26 (NIV) says, “In your anger do not sin: Do not let the sun go down while you are still angry…” Some of us struggle with forgiveness while few do not. Whether forgiveness comes easier to you or not, the key idea here is forgiving quickly. It is extremely easy to nurse our hurts and our wounds indefinitely that are inflicted by other people. This is very destructive behavior and we must learn to forgive quickly or the enemy of our soul will use this to their advantage.
In some circles of thought and brain science they mention a concept of a 5 second decision and 90 second rule. The basic premise is that our brains are built in such a way that the flesh desires to protect itself. When there is a threat, hurt, or even just an uncomfortable situation that we want to avoid, the brain begins to spring into action to protect itself and the body. Sometimes this could be an emotional hurt. When these moments happen, we have a short window of opportunity of resolving the issue quickly. Otherwise we could be on a roller-coaster of ups and downs until our brain calms down. If we decide quickly to forgive in a moment of hurt, then we can beat the brain from reacting chemically in such a way that anesthetizes choices that would otherwise seem unwise. Many people might call these moments an outburst, or emotionally overreacting. If we beat our brain to the punch (so to speak), seek the truth before emotionally responding, and then choosing to act wisely, then we are all better off in the end.
Colossians 3:13 (NIV) says, “Bear with each other and forgive one another if any of you has a grievance against someone. Forgive as the Lord forgave you.” When Christ forgives our sins, He doesn’t wait around and complain about how we hurt Him. He forgives us the instant we repent and ask Him for His forgiveness. Now, that is a standard to live up to.
Scriptures for Meditation
Mark 12:28-33 (NIV), “One of the teachers of the law came and heard them debating. Noticing that Jesus had given them a good answer, he asked him, “Of all the commandments, which is the most important?” “The most important one,” answered Jesus, “is this: ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these.” “Well said, teacher,” the man replied. “You are right in saying that God is one and there is no other but him. To love him with all your heart, with all your understanding and with all your strength, and to love your neighbor as yourself is more important than all burnt offerings and sacrifices.”
1 Corinthians 10:31 (NIV), “…whatever you do, do all to the glory of God…”
Ecclesiastes 9:9 (NIV), “Enjoy life with your wife, whom you love, all the days of this meaningless life that God has given you under the sun—all your meaningless days. For this is your lot in life and in your toilsome labor under the sun.”
Matthew 6:21 (NIV), “For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”
Ecclesiastes 4 (NIV), “Though one may be overpowered, two can defend themselves. A cord of three strands is not quickly broken.”
Romans 12:2 (NIV), “Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.
2 Corinthians 10:5 (NIV), “We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.”
Philippians 4:8 (NIV), “Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things.”
Hebrews 4:15 (NIV), “For we do not have a high priest who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet he did not sin.”
John 13:5 (NIV), “After that, he poured water into a basin and began to wash his disciples’ feet, drying them with the towel that was wrapped around him.”
Ephesians 5:25 (NIV), “Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her…”
Ephesians 5:33 (NIV), “However, each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband.”
Ephesians 4:26 (NIV), “In your anger do not sin: Do not let the sun go down while you are still angry…”
Colossians 3:13 (NIV), “Bear with each other and forgive one another if any of you has a grievance against someone. Forgive as the Lord forgave you.”
#marriage #marriageawakening