What are some tips for maintaining a strong marriage?

Early on in our marriage, a ” good-hearted ” couple that gave us probably the worst marriage advice we could have received. We were struggling with communicating and discerning where God was calling us as a couple, as we had several opportunities coming our way that would take us in very different directions. Their advice was to “find our individual truth” by looking into ourselves and then finding a happy in-between spot we could agree on. Wow.

Looking at our world it’s not hard to see why so many marriages end in divorce – but the gospel offers us a different way to look at things.

The gospel says something completely different about marriage. We are commanded not to live for ourselves alone but to actually die to ourselves in order to put our spouses’ needs before our own.

When we surrender to Jesus, we can love God with all we are. Our hearts are filled with the ability to love selflessly, serve endlessly, and give without needing recognition.

So many of us probably had 1 Corinthians 13 read at our wedding. It is the most well-known love passage of the Bible. Verses 4-7 say:

“Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.”

Have you ever read this passage and thought – How in the world am I going to be able to do this? We think, “I want to receive a love like this, but am I going to be able to be loving to my spouse in this way?

One way to reflect on this passage is to insert your spouse’s name into these verses and ask yourself: Is this true of me right now? Here’s an example:

Holly is patient. Is this true of me right now?
Holly is kind. Is this true of me right now?
Holly does not envy or boast. Is this true of me right now?
Holly is not arrogant or rude. Is this true of me right now?

We are not able to practice this in our own strength. We do not have enough discipline, charisma, or selflessness to do so. We definitely need a supernatural empowerment by the Holy Spirit.

This type of love, a 1 Corinthians 13 type of love, is only available through His Spirit. And you can’t have the strength to love in this way without God at the center of your life and marriage. God permeates everything in our lives that we are so that we have the ability to love our spouse selflessly.

Tim and Kathy Keller so effectively put it: “Whether we are husband or wife, we are not to live for ourselves but for the other. And that is the hardest yet single most important function of being a husband or a wife in marriage.”

Together for marriage,

Mike and Holly