I hate to brag (no, I don’t!), but this year marks my 55th wedding anniversary. It’s only by the grace of God that we’ve managed it. I often kid and say, “Yes, it’s a miracle that I’ve been able to put up with Kathy for all these years!” Everyone who knows us scoffs at that, especially my sons. They know the truth is that Kathy is the one who did the “putting-up-with.” Yet we both know that it’s a common effort. Everyone has warts! Everyone has their rough edges, and we each must learn how to bend and how to flex according to the needs and desires of the other. David Jeremiah said it well. He writes, “Marriage doesn’t get better by itself. Many people think that the joy of dating and the joy of the honeymoon will just continue unabated for years to come. That is totally unrealistic. There is what I call a gravitational pull on couples, which is constantly pulling them down from the heights of the honeymoon.” In other words, marriage takes work—lots of hard work. It doesn’t just happen as if by magic. That’s why the passages of Scripture dealing with marriage are not suggestions or blessings. In Ephesians 5:22-25, Paul tells us, “Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord…. Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her.” They are commands: “Wives, submit to your husbands.” “Husbands, love your wives.” They are not optional. Rather, they are points of obedience which must be committed to if marriage is to work.” I know this is not popular teaching today. I don’t care.
Successful marriages are most often the result of hard work, commitment, and obedience to God’s instructions in the Bible. It’s a personal matter of learning how to live a sacrificial life like Christ. Jeremiah goes on to say, “If we don’t resist the gravitational pull, and by the power of the Holy Spirit do that which is supernatural, we will not do that which will keep marriages together. The ‘work’ comes in the agonizing process Paul calls ‘renewing the mind’ (Romans 12:2). When we decide to yield to God instead of our natural desires. That is not easy, as Paul described in Romans 7. Without that hard work, the gravitational pull of the carnal, sinful nature will pull each partner in marriage into the downward spiral of yielding to carnal and fleshly desires. In order to stop that pull and get out of that spiral, you must obey God. When someone says to me, ‘I just don’t love her anymore,’ what I hear is, ‘I’ve decided not to obey God anymore.’ They have confused love, which is an act of the will, with the emotional and romantic feelings that follow our obedience to God. Feelings are great, but you cannot build a marriage on them. Left to itself, a marriage will deteriorate as surely as the rusting hulk of an abandoned automobile which the owner stopped taking care of.”
I’d like to add that a good marriage also needs prayer. One of the most powerful ingredients for healing marriages is prayer. As old-fashioned as this sounds, I still believe that a family who prays together stays together. When Kathy and I were going through our rough times around our 10th anniversary, is when we started to pray together. I helped cement our commitment to obedience to God. Without our common faith in Jesus, there was little hope for our marriage to continue. I used to make it a point at weddings that a good marriage takes “three,” the man, the woman, and the Lord.