Tag Archives: dating

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Lessons After Preaching Through the Song of Songs

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Photo by Kevin Gonzalez on Unsplash

If you get a group of Christians together and ask them what the Bible teaches about sex or what they think about sex, you will probably get predictable answers. Some won’t know what the Bible teaches. Others will talk about the restrictions the Bible has about sex. 

Many Christians speak about sex in very hushed tones, guarded or even embarrassed about it if they speak about it at all. Many churches act like it is a topic they won’t talk about unless it is homosexuality. 

Before preaching on the Song of Songs at my church, when I told people we were preaching through it, I got looks of surprise. Several had no idea what was in it. Often, Christians want to make it a metaphor for Christ and the church, and while that is part of what the Song of Songs teaches us, it teaches us so much more. 

And I think it is one of the most relevant books in the Bible because so many people in the church and outside of the church are confused when it comes to sexuality and what the Bible actually teaches. 

What should Christians think about sex?

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I looked at a popular pastor’s website out of curiosity. This pastor preaches through books of the Bible. In his ministry career, he has preached through every book except one.

The Song of Songs.

Why?

The Song of Songs is just as inspired as the book of Romans!

The Song of Songs is just as inspired as the book of Romans.

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By and large, Christians don’t know how to enjoy sex in the way God created it.

We know how to corrupt it, we know how the culture thinks about it, and so we either run the other direction (don’t enjoy it, don’t explore with your spouse, never talk about it with your kids) or we simply give in to the culture and live like them (adultery, sleeping around, porn, selfishness, sex as a weapon.)

Neither one of those is a good option or even a biblical one.

The Song of Songs shows us what marriage is supposed to be like. Spouses who adore each other, pursue each other, serve each other, seek to please and pleasure each other, all for the good of their marriage. Spouses who complement each other and know what the other likes and dislikes and then use that information to make the other happy.

Our culture, from broken homes, divorce, adultery, and porn, has no idea what sex is supposed to be like. Sex is seen as a weapon to get your way, so women wield it with power in their relationships. Many wives operate from the perspective of: I’ll give you my body, but only as I manipulate you to do what I want.

One of the other struggles our culture has is that our sexual identity has become the trump card and the most important thing about who we are. That is not what the Bible teaches, and when we make that the trump card, we limit ourselves to simply who we are sexually and what we do sexually. We then have a broken image of ourselves and see our value only through the lens of sex. This isn’t surprising when we think about how prevalent porn is.

Your sexual identity is not the most important thing about you.

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The Bible, particularly the Song of Songs, shows us that sex within marriage is not only to be celebrated, enjoyed, and gratifying, but it is also an act of worship to God.

The reason Christians often take the stance they do on sex within marriage (seeing it as dirty, a chore, or prudish about it) is that it is the easy stance to take. To have a healthy view of sexuality will often mean dealing with past addictions, past hurts, past abuse, and body image issues, and all of those are in places we push down, pretend are not there, and try to move forward from without dealing with them.

Sex, intimacy, and affection are the barometer of your marriage.

Sex, intimacy, and affection are the barometer of your marriage.

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If you want to know the health of your marriage, where you are in dealing with past hurts, and how you and your spouse are pursuing each other, simply look at your view of sexuality and intimacy: how intimate you are (sharing your hurts, dreams, joys, and secrets; how open you are), and your affection. I would add how often you are connecting sexually, but that is very nuanced as it relates to the season of life, parenting, and health issues. But if you find yourself pulling away from your spouse for any reason, those are things to pay attention to. 

If you pay attention to those things, you will probably know everything you need to know about the health of your marriage.

Why you should preach through the Song of Songs.

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After spending the last 9 weeks walking through the Song of Songs, I can tell you it is a worthwhile series to do at your church. 

The number of conversations I have had with people young and old, dating, married, single, divorced, and widowed, has been incredible. As you look at what you think of sex, dating, intimacy, and relationships, you uncover a lot that you grew up believing, things your family of origin shaped, and some things you need the cross to reshape and redeem. 

It is a risky series to do. 

I often talk to pastors afraid to step into it because they don’t want to alienate someone in their church. This is a real thing, and it takes a lot of effort to speak to everyone when you are talking about relationships. 

But I also think the reason many pastors don’t preach through this book is that they haven’t navigated the things that will come up in the series in their own marriages. Preaching through the Song of Songs places a massive mirror on the pastor’s life and marriage, which is good and scary at the same time.

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In Honor of Valentine’s Day

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Photo by Deepak Gupta on Unsplash

Today is Valentine’s Day. For Katie and me, Valentine’s Day is like any other day. We don’t go out to eat today because it is crazy expensive. However, we also strive to have a weekly date night and check-in time with each other.

Today is a day when we focus on love, and some of us long for love that has been lost or has yet to be found. Our church is in the middle of a series on that very topic!

Over the years, Katie and I have taught in various settings about marriage and relationships. We have also written countless posts about them and read many books and articles on marriage to improve our relationship.

10 articles to help strengthen your marriage.

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So, I thought I’d share our top 10 posts we’ve ever written on marriage:

  1. 11 Ways to Know You’ve Settled for a Mediocre Marriage
  2. Lies We Believe About Marriage
  3. 18 Things Every Husband Should Know About His Wife
  4. 10 Questions You Should Ask Your Spouse Regularly (this is one of my favorite ones)
  5. The One Thing Destroying Your Marriage That You Don’t Realize
  6. 10 Ways to Know if You’re Putting Your Kids Before Your Spouse
  7. 7 Reasons You Aren’t Communicating with Your Spouse
  8. How to Make Date Night @ Home Great!
  9. 6 Ways to Make Your Marriage Refreshing
  10. The 3 Things at the Root of Most Marital Problems
10 marriage posts for Valentine’s Day.

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6 Ways to Make Your Marriage Refreshing

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All married couples long for their marriage to be refreshing. To be a place of safety, comfort, love, and peace. Yet, many couples do things that break this environment or, at the least, keep this from being what their marriage is all about.

They might not do it intentionally. Sometimes, we sabotage things that feel too good to be true.

There is a beautiful picture of what a marriage should be like in Song of Solomon 1:14. The woman compares their relationship to En Gedi. En Gedi is an oasis in the desert near the Dead Sea. Out of nowhere, this oasis springs up with lush trees, plants, water, and even a waterfall.

Yet, this is not what most relationships and marriages are like. Most marriages are filled with stress, pain, nagging, hurtful words, anger, outbursts, and even abuse.

It doesn’t have to be this way, and couples don’t get married to live in the desert; they get married hoping for the oasis. But how do you make the trip?

6 Ways to Make your Marriage Refreshing.

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Here are six simple ways to get there:

1. Stop nagging. Many couples nag at each other, put each other down, get on each other’s cases, and are mean to each other. This creates an environment no one wants to be in, a family working against itself. This isn’t rocket science, yet many couples nag and make fun of each other to accomplish something. When a couple does this, they will say that they are trying to get something done (a project, their spouse to change, wake their spouse up), but what is happening is pushing them away. Every time nagging occurs in a relationship, it comes from a place of brokenness. Sometimes, nagging comes from a place of disappointment, either in yourself, your spouse, or even where you thought your life and marriage would be at this point. Sometimes, you must grieve that things aren’t going as expected and learn to move forward, but that’s another post.

Nagging in relationships comes from a place of brokenness.

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2. Start talking. One of the best ways to make your marriage refreshing is talking. Opening up to your hopes, dreams, and disappointments, and sharing your past, your hurts, and your joys. Many couples who are in marriages that are not refreshing find themselves keeping things bottled up or opening up more to someone they aren’t married to than they do to their spouse. Your spouse should know more about you than anyone else. Always.

3. Start serving. If you look at couples in refreshing marriages, an oasis in the desert, you will see two people striving to outserve the other. One simple question to ask your spouse is, “What can I do to make your life easier or less stressful? How can I help you?” I asked Katie about this years ago, and her answer surprised me. She said, “Make sure the kitchen is clean before bed.” That wasn’t what I expected, but if that didn’t happen, we all got up the next day and felt behind or maybe had to finish cleaning something up that could’ve been done the night before. Here are a few other questions to ask your spouse regularly to work as one.

Happy marriage secret: Outserve your spouse.

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4. Start pursuing. What made you want to get married was pursuit. You did things together, couldn’t wait to see each other, and planned date nights and trips. You pursued your future spouse, which is one reason they became your current spouse. Along the way, the pursuit ended. Pursuing your spouse is one of the fastest ways to create a refreshing marriage. Plan date nights (they don’t have to be expensive), do things the other one likes (even if you hate it), participate in hobbies together (even if you don’t like the hobby), and lastly, pursue each other sexually. Husband and wife should initiate affection and sex regularly. As I discussed earlier in this series, long kisses are essential to any marriage.

1 thing every married couple needs to stop and 5 things you need to start.

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5. Start believing. Couples who have a refreshing marriage believe in each other. They believe in the best, hope for the best, believe in their spouse’s dreams, and encourage them to pursue them. A refreshing marriage is one where you never have to say, “Don’t you want to have? Don’t you want me to pursue my dreams?” A marriage stuck in the desert has those conversations. Remember, #3? This comes from a place of serving, and when you’re serving, you are willing to put your dreams on hold, if necessary, instead of fighting for them.

6. Start setting up. A refreshing marriage is one where spouses try to help the other succeed. They ask, “How can I set my spouse up for success? How can I make them look good to others? How can I help them reach their goals?” A desert couple says, “What about me and my dreams? Who’s setting me up?” A desert couple doesn’t fight for oneness but for themselves.

An unhappy couple doesn’t fight for oneness but for themselves.

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The reality is that even though every couple wants a marriage in the oasis, we will often choose the desert. It is what we know; it is easier, less work, and honestly, the desert allows us to be selfish.

Don’t buy it, though. No one lives very long in the desert.

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Links for Leaders 11/3/17

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It’s the weekend…finally. The perfect time to grab a cup of coffee and catch up on some reading. Below, you’ll find some articles I came across this week that I found helpful as a leader and parent and hope you do as well.

Before diving into those, in case you missed them this week. Here are the top 3 posts from my blog this week that I hope you find helpful:

Now, onto the articles I came across that I hope will help you:

Trevin Wax shares The Boy Scouts and the Disappearance of Paths as they’ve recently announced they will now allow girls to join the boy scouts. As my kids have gotten older, we’ve talked more and more about paths, passages, etc., which I think are crucial for kids and something that is lost in our culture.

Hiring is difficult for most pastors and leaders. Marty Duren has 15 questions to ask a potential hire at your church. Many of these are normal ones most churches ask, but there were a few that were new to me.

I’ve mentioned before that Katie and I have been spending a lot of time talking about technology and the role it plays in our family and with our kids. I’ve really appreciate the insights from Jon Acuff on this and he shares The first social media challenge your kids will face, that is incredibly insightful.

I’m reading Sam Storms new book Practicing the Power: Welcoming the Gifts of the Holy Spirit in Your Life, which has been incredibly helpful. He wrote a post this week about the relationship between Jesus and the Holy Spirit that is great and I think a very overlooked part of Christianity. 

I have a daughter and so dating is something I’ve been thinking about and how I prepare her for it. Most of what Christians, especially dad’s have to say on the topic is ridiculous and fear based. With good reason, but that’s why I appreciated this article from Jen Wilkin on On Daughters and Dating: How to Intimidate Suitors. I love how she champions raising a strong woman. We need more of that, not less.

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In Honor of Valentine’s Day

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love, valentine's day

In honor of Valentine’s Day, I thought I’d share the top 10 marriage and relationship posts that Katie and I have written over the years. Thanks for learning and growing with us over the years. Bookmark this page to use as a resource you can come back to. Katie and I hope this helps take your marriage to the next level.

  1. Lies Couples Believe About Marriage
  2. 11 Ways to Know You’ve Settled for a Mediocre Marriage
  3. 10 Questions You Should Ask Your Spouse Regularly
  4. 18 Things Every Husband Should Know about His Wife
  5. The One Thing Destroying Your Marriage That You Don’t Realize
  6. 10 Ways to Know if You’re Putting Your Kids Before Your Spouse
  7. When You Manipulate Your Husband, You Lose Him
  8. 7 Reasons You Aren’t Communicating with your Spouse
  9. Surviving a Hard Season in Your Marriage
  10. When You Aren’t in the Mood for Sex

Happy Valentine’s Day!

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How do I Get my Husband to Lead at Home?

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husband

One of the questions Katie and I get a lot is, “How do I get my husband to lead at home?”

How do I get my husband to lead at home?

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One of the biggest reasons men don’t lead at home is twofold: 1) They don’t think they can do it, and 2) Their wife is leading (because he isn’t and stuff has to get done), and she is very good at it.

2 reasons men don’t lead in their home.

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One thing men don’t do often is duplicate efforts. If you as a wife are leading at home, taking up the mantle of the spiritual life of your family, keeping the family on track in scheduling to make sure you aren’t overwhelmed, he won’t do it.

While Scripture calls men to lead in their homes, most women do it, and honestly most women are better suited to do it. But as I have seen over and over, and Scripture is on point with this, when we get off track from God’s way, even with gifting in the mix, it is disastrous.

So if you are doing anything you want your husband to do, stop doing it.

I remember Katie pulling me aside one time and saying, “I really want you to do _____ in our family, and right now I’m doing it. I’m going to stop doing it in hopes that you will pick it up.” I didn’t start overnight, but I was able to see the importance in something.

I think for a man to lead, he needs to drive the bus of what comes into his home in terms of TV and entertainment, protecting his family on the internet and what is taught spiritually. This does not mean he does it all. In fact, Katie does more of this than I do because she spends more time with the kids, but she looks for me to lead the charge on this.

Protect your family’s schedule. This means you need to make sure date nights and daddy dates are happening, you aren’t involved in too many things and you make sure priorities happen. (Which means if you make baseball practice and scouts more of a priority than church and community for 10 years, don’t be surprised when your kids go to college and leave church. It is not the church’s fault; the onus is on you as a man.)

Women, if your husband isn’t doing this, don’t berate him, don’t send him a link to this (unless you’ve talked about it), don’t hand him a book or tell him there are husbands doing this, so he needs to step up.

Ask God, pray for him, ask God to make him into the man God wants him to be, not the man you want him to be. And stop doing the things God has called him to do, even if that means something might not get done for a time.

Let me end with this. Men often struggle to do something they think they might not be good at, even the real risk-taking adventurous guys. They will take risks at work, but they are often scared to death about failing in front of their wife or kids. This is often the biggest barrier to a man taking the lead at home. This gives the wife a great opportunity to cheer him on and help him succeed.

A barrier to men leading at home is their fear of failure.

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Too many people do not set their spouse up to succeed. If you want your husband to take the lead at home, instead of nagging him one more time, how could you help him succeed? How could you cheer him on? What is one thing you could do to partner with him in this?

3 ways to get your husband to lead at home.

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11 Ways to Know You’ve Settled for a Mediocre Marriage

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Mediocre marriage

It is so sad when I meet a couple that is unhappy. Whether it is stress, finances, kids, in-laws or sin, too many couples simply settle for a mediocre marriage. They carry around this look that says, “I’m not happy, but this is as good as it will get.”

I’m sorry, but if I’m going to be in a relationship for the rest of my life, I want it to be better than a sigh followed by, “this is as good as it will get.”

11 ways to fix a mediocre marriage.

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So, how do you know if you are in a mediocre marriage?

Here are 11 ways to know if you have a mediocre marriage or are on your way to one:

  1. Your marriage and life revolve around your kids. I’ve written before about how to know if your kids are more important than your marriage, but if you can answer any of these, you are in trouble.
  2. It’s been over a year since you read a book on marriage. The best way to grow in your marriage is to get around a couple who has a better marriage or read a book on it. You should read at least one book on marriage a year. It’s a great way to create conversation and push issues to the surface in your marriage.
  3. Roles in marriage feel like a trap instead of freedom. Headship and submission are tricky things and controversial. They are meant to bring us freedom, not to be a trap. When they feel like a trap, there is sin under it. Whether in how it is playing out or how our heart feels about it.
  4. You can’t remember the last date night you had. I can’t tell you how important date night is. It doesn’t have to be grand or expensive, but as a couple, you need to have at least one time a week where it is just the two of you (no phone, no tv, no computer, no kids) to talk about build into your relationship.
  5. You have sex less than 2 times a week. I realize this isn’t a hard and fast rule. Pregnancy, health, age, travel, deployment, etc. all can get in the way of this. That being said, sex is a great barometer of your marriage. In every situation when I talk to a couple struggling in their marriage, sex is the first thing to go. It reveals past hurts, addictions, abuses, etc. Every study also says the same thing, a healthy marriage has a healthy sex life.
  6. You nit pick at your spouse. I talked in more detail about this here, but disrespecting your spouse, making fun of them, being sarcastic is one of the fastest ways to move from a good marriage to mediocre to miserable or divorced.
  7. You consistently talk about how much you love your spouse on Facebook. I’m sure you’ll disagree, but every time I read something incredibly awesome on Facebook, my first thought is, “That’s probably the exact opposite of the truth.” I can’t tell you how many times I have counseled a couple who seemed on the verge of divorce and the next day posted on Facebook, “I love my wife.” Or, “My husband is incredible.” The charade of Facebook reveals a lot.
  8. When you are alone with your spouse, you have nothing to talk about. Whenever Katie and I go out to eat and see a couple just sitting there, our hearts break. That’s so sad. It means a couple has stopped growing. Yes silence is great sometimes and needed, but when it is a consistent pattern, that’s a mediocre marriage. You know if this is you.
  9. There are things in your past your spouse does not know. Your spouse should know everything about you. That doesn’t mean you need to tell your spouse how many sexual partners you’ve had or how much porn you saw as a teenager. That isn’t helpful. They should know about addictions, hurts, abuse against you. No one on the planet should know more about you than your spouse.
  10. You fantasize about being married to someone else. Our imaginations are powerful, our memories are powerful. Often, we will think back to high school or college and wonder where someone is or what life would have been like if we married someone else. When that happens, we disengage from our marriage.
  11. A friend knows more about your marriage than your spouse does. Are you honest with your spouse? Do you talk about what bothers you or do you sweep it under the rug? Do you know how to fight well in your marriage? Do you talk more to a friend more than you do to your spouse about your marriage or kids? If so, well you get it by now.
How to know you’ve settled for a mediocre marriage.

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When Choosing a Spouse, the Past is the Best Predictor of the Future

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choosing a spouse

This story appeared in Henry Cloud’s book Necessary Endings. Cloud told the story of a father who knew his daughter’s boyfriend was about to ask for her hand in marriage and he asked Henry Cloud how he should handle it, what he should ask the man asking for his daughter’s hand in marriage.

Here’s the story

My friend told me that his daughter’s boyfriend had called and asked him to go to dinner, and he expected the proverbial “asking for her hand” conversation. He wanted some advice on how to handle that question, and I could understand his trepidation. Few thoughts are scarier to a father than wondering, Will this guy love her, treat her well, and take good care of her? As a father of two girls, as I look into the future, I could already feel what that must have felt like for my friend. We talked about how to handle it, and then I said, “After all of that, tell him that you would like to see his credit report and his last two years’ tax returns.” “What? You have got to be joking!” he exclaimed. “Not at all. I am dead serious,” I said. “Why? I can’t ask him how much money he makes. That’s so intrusive and the wrong message. Marriage is not about how much money he makes.” “Exactly, and money has nothing to do with my suggestion. I don’t care about the numbers at all, how much he makes. Tell him to blot them out if he wants. I only care about two things. First, the credit report will give you a peek into how he has fulfilled other promises he has made to people who have entrusted things to him. If he can’t be trusted to fulfill the promises he makes with something such as money, which is not nearly as valuable as your daughter, how are you going to trust him with real treasure? I would see a big yellow flag if he has a history of bailing out on commitments he has made to lenders or others.” While my friend was still trying to absorb the idea of asking for a credit report, I homed in on the tax return. “I don’t care what the numbers are. I just want to know if he has done them. Does he take responsibility for his life and get things like taxes done? If he hasn’t, then that is a sign of what your daughter is signing up for in the future: chaos and uncertainty that come from his character. That would be another big warning. No matter what his financial situation is, I would want to know that he obeys the law, has his affairs in order, gets his taxes done, and sends them in. “So, the message here has nothing to do with money. It has to do with looking at his past behavior in some areas that count: promises, commitments, and responsibility, and then seeing what the track record has been. That is important because the best predictor of the future is the past. What he has done in the past will be what he does in the future, unless there has been some big change. You can bet on it,” I told him.

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Sex Doesn’t Equal Intimacy

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Whenever I talk with couples that are dating or engaged, at some point sex and intimacy will come up. When Katie and I do premarital counseling, there are 5 things a couple must agree to for me to do their wedding. One of them is that they won’t have sex from that point forward until their wedding night. Regardless of their background, regardless if they live together, regardless of where they are on their journey with Jesus.

Depending on the situation, this brings with it an interesting follow-up conversation. Many couples don’t care, they’ve already chosen to wait and have stayed with that commitment. Some are excited because while they’ve wanted to wait, the lack of accountability has made it difficult and they’ve fallen back into patterns they wanted to move away from. Others are frustrated because they don’t see a problem with sex outside of marriage.

I remember once talking with a couple who lived together. They weren’t followers of Jesus and he asked me if this was simply a way for me to put my morals onto other people. It was a fair question. Pastors are often guilty of thinking of ways simply to make people behave more godly without changing their hearts.

I told him that was not the point of this. Here’s why we ask couples to do this and what I told him:

  1. The bible does tell us to save sex for marriage (Acts 15:20; 1 Corinthians 5:1; 6:13, 18; 10:8; 2 Corinthians 12:21;Galatians 5:19; Ephesians 5:3; Colossians 3:5; 1 Thessalonians 4:3; Jude 7). The Bible promotes complete abstinence before marriage. Sex between a husband and his wife is the only form of sexual relations of which God approves (Hebrews 13:4).
  2. Sex doesn’t equal intimacy. Many in our culture think they are being intimate simply by having sex. For men, when we think of intimacy, sex is what we think of. Intimacy is much bigger than that. It involves sex, but involves be open and honest with another person, trusting them completely, not hiding from them. Willing to share our lives, our dreams, our hopes, our failures, our hurts, and pain with that person. Far too many couples think we had sex, so we must be in love. As soon as sex enters a relationship, it changes drastically. By abstaining from sex before marriage, they are able to broaden intimacy in their relationship in other ways, ways that are non-sexual.
  3. There are seasons in marriage where sex is not an option. Whether that is traveling for a job, health, children, pregnancy, time or energy. Abstaining from sex before marriage helps a couple to prepare for these moments and for the couple to learn they can trust the other. Is a man or woman able to control themselves when they aren’t having as much sex or intimacy as they’d like.
  4. It builds trust. On some level, usually for women, having sex outside of marriage is a trust issue. For men, sex is mostly physical, but for women it is mostly emotional. It involves trusting the other person. Making a commitment to abstain from sex and keeping that commitment goes a long way of building trust for a couple.

There are other reasons, but these are the top ones. After doing weddings for 7 years for numerous couples who have made this commitment and kept it, I’ve yet to have a couple tell me it was a waste of time or be angry that they made it. In fact, I’ve had almost every couple tell me this was one of the most beneficial things for them in their premarital counseling.

Image by Cuentosdeunaimbecila (via Flickr)

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What I’ve Learned from Being Married for 10 Years

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marriage

Katie and I celebrated 10 years of marriage this past weekend. Last night we went out to celebrate together and we’re talking through the last 10 years, what we’ve learned, where we’ve come from. I thought I’d share some of the things we’ve learned in no particular order:

  1. Deal with your baggage quickly. You will bring baggage into your marriage. Past relationships, your parents marriage, hurt, abuse. Deal with it as quickly as possible. Don’t push it under a rug or pretend it isn’t there, it is.
  2. Set goals. When we got married, we made 5 year goals. At year 5, we worked on 10. Now, we are working through goals for 15 and til the day we die. Things like: what do we want our kids to know (discipleship plan), financial goals, places we’d like to travel, health we’d like to have. If you don’t have goals, you don’t get anywhere in your marriage, at least, not anywhere worth going. It also clarifies what is important in your marriage. Because some of our goals cost money, that dictates things in our marriage.
  3. Fight for oneness. When you argue, and you will. Couples who say they don’t are lying. So, when you fight, fight for oneness. Don’t fight to win, because then you lose.
  4. Set each other up to win. Too many couples seem set on making their spouse lose. In their career, at home, in their marriage. Instead, set them up to win. Encourage them, cheer them on louder than anyone else.
  5. Define your roles. The bible is clear about what roles we are to live in as men and women in marriage (Ephesians 5, Titus 2, 1 Peter 3). Read those passages, discuss them, decide how you will live them out in your marriage.
  6. Decide you will die before leaving. I think too many couples fail because divorce is always an option, it’s always there. I had a mentor tell me, “Stay married even if it kills you.” To survive in marriage, you will need that kind of certainty.
  7. Know how your spouse hears I love you. Your spouse has different emotional needs than you do, a different love language. Learn it, speak it, meet it. If you don’t, someone else will.
  8. Stay pure. Porn, romance novels, fantasy worlds. These will kill your marriage. I’ve sat across from too many couples who thought these things weren’t a big deal, they will destroy your marriage.
  9. Find your identity in Christ, not your spouse. Your spouse did not die on the cross and rise from the dead for you, Jesus did. Your spouse cannot be Jesus for you. Find your identity in Christ, nothing else will fulfill it. Grow closer to Christ and this makes all the difference in your marriage.
  10. Your kids come second. Don’t be the couple that says after 25 years of marriage, “we spent our whole marriage pouring into our kids, then they moved out and we don’t know each other, so we’re getting a divorce.” Your kids matter, spend time with them, but your spouse comes first. What this looks like changes with the seasons of your family, but they come first.
  11. Read about marriage. Everytime I preach on marriage someone will tell me, “I’d have a better marriage if I knew what you knew.” The way to grow in your marriage is to be around couples who have healthy marriages, ask them questions, but to read about marriage. Read at least 1 book a year on marriage. Think about it, you spend all this time being married, shouldn’t you know how to do it and grow in it?
  12. Dates and getaways. Have a weekly date night and get away at least once a year without kids. This shouldn’t be up for discussion. This one thing has done more good in our marriage than almost anything else, except for #9.