A Little Marriage Advice to A Friend

While speaking with a young woman recently who was describing the delightful details of her developing, serious dating relationship, she asked me, “What counsel would you have for me as we navigate the future, trying to discern what God would have for us? Do you have any advice on marriage, on what makes a relationship strong, true & God-honoring?”
I paused to consider the magnitude of her question.

How I wished I had the perfect, 3 principled formula to share.
Or at least 2 insightful bits of wisdom to spur her on to lifelong victory and contentment, allowing her to dodge relational pitfalls or soar on the wings of romantic delight.

Instead, after almost 25 years of marriage (this June is our quarter-century anniversary mark!), I had only one bit of proven true, tested-in-the-field ‘advice’ to offer.

Run hard after God.
(In the sense of pursuing Him with all one’s heart, soul, mind & strength, that is.)
Run hard after God.

For I’ve learned for myself after all these years (and there are many others further on in the journey…I’ll let you give your advice on your blog…and I’d love to hear it!!), there is an amazing, yet beautiful paradox:

The more you run exclusively after an earthly goal, the more its attainment will elude (or dissatisfy) you.
It is only when you run hard after Christ, pursuing ultimate satisfaction in His glory, that God blesses & flourishes these secondary desires.

(“But that’s not my goal…or …I’m already doing that”, one might argue. “I want to know how to be a good wife, or mother, or employee, or SS teacher, or witness to my unsaved husband, etc…”)

Listen further.
This goal of running after God does not result in an abstract, impractical ignoring of my secondary pursuit (goal), but instead reaps the specific outcomes of God-given wisdom, priorities, how-to’s and even insight and eternal perceptiveness for the accomplishment of that goal.
The result: a stronger, bolder, more lasting and effective attainment of it.
(Isn’t God amazing in His goodness?!!)

So, to my young woman friend, I said just that.
Pursue a vibrant, humble, aggressive love relationship with God, and this will best insure your love relationship with another will be strong.

Because God, his truth, His Spirit and His ongoing sanctification of you will continue to point to how you can better love another.

The growth in Jon’s & my relationship ---to whatever degree of its goodness & God’s glory---has largely been seen in how God has changed me to be more like Him.

So, want to be better wife, better mother, better whatever?

Run hard after God; listen at His feet, love Him to the denial of all other gods that beckon, and respond in obedience to His working.

I offer the following quote as a fitting example of this paradox.

“I have a theory: Behind virtually every case of marital dissatisfaction lies unrepented sin. Couples don’t fall out of love so much as they fall out of repentence. Sin, wrong attitudes, and personal failures that are not dealt with slowly erode the relationship, assaulting and eventually erasing the once lofty promises made in the throes of an earlier (and less polluted) passion. ~Sacred Marriage, Gary Thomas, p 96-97