God’s purpose in marriage is not to make us happy but to make us holy. Or so we have all been told. The truth is more complicated, of course, and I’m quite certain God means for marriage to cover both. The old Anglican liturgy says marriage “was ordained for the mutual society, help, and comfort,…
Marriage brings us many joys. But since it exists in this world and not some other, it also brings its share of sorrows. It is like everything else in that way—there are times we marvel at its beauties and times we lament its difficulties. A divine gift that was meant to be only good is…
Surely few things in this world are more mysterious than sex. Surely few things give such clear evidence that there must be more to them than the sum of their parts. On the one level, sex is a simple biological function that exists to populate the earth with human beings. On the other level, it…
There is something deep inside a man’s heart that longs to be heroic. I don’t know what little girls dream of, but I do know that little boys dream of carrying those girls out of a burning schoolhouse so they can be admired as strong and brave. Teenaged boys dream of fighting in a war…
It is one of the most important habits that any married couple can form. Unfortunately, it is also one of the most rare. For a husband and wife to live well together before the Lord, they must pray together. For a couple to honor God in their marriage, they must be as intimate spiritually as…
You probably keep score. I’m sure you don’t mean to. You may not even be conscious of it. But there’s a pretty good chance that you do it. You keep score in your marriage. You keep score when you tally up the things you do for your spouse and when you tally up the things…
Have you ever seen someone get married and you are absolutely certain that it’s not out of love for the other person? Maybe the woman wants access to her husband’s wealth or lifestyle and marriage is the way she can get it. Or maybe the man wants access to his wife’s fame or reputation and…
Every now and again I just can’t help myself—I respond to a clickbait headline and find myself reading an advice column. The question this time was from a woman who had become disillusioned with her husband and enamored with someone else. And as I read the columnist’s response I thought, “I’m pretty sure that’s exactly…
There may not be times in your marriage when you stop loving your wife, but there may be times in your marriage when you stop liking her—or when you stop acting like it, anyway. There may be times when you are easily irritated with her or times when you just can’t get along. There may…
I am slowly (but steadily!) making my way through the collected sermons of De Witt Talmage. Though he is little-known and little-remembered today, he was considered one of the great preachers of his time. In one of his sermons I found this sweet tribute to his parents and the joy of a long marriage.
Before I set fingers to keyboard, I asked my wife if I should write this article—one requested by Ligonier’s Tabletalk magazine. Before I so much as typed a single word, I asked her if I was at all qualified. She pondered this for a few moments and said, “Yes, I think you are.” I was…
It is no small feat to build a strong marriage. It is no easy thing to maintain a strong marriage through years of trials and temptations, through decades of sinning and being sinned against. It is not something any of us can take for granted and it is for this reason that there are so…
I am often asked how I read so many books. My pat answer is something like this: “The more you read, the easier it gets. When you’ve read 8 books on marriage, the 9th goes really quickly.” The point is that there is a kind of sameness to Christian publishing where books tend to focus…
Somewhere out there in the great, wide world, someone is praying for you. He probably doesn’t know you and you probably don’t know him. You may not meet one another for many more years. But he’s praying for you nonetheless and has been for a very long time. He is the father of a daughter.…
We’ve all heard that marriage was designed to make us holy more than to make us happy. And though it’s a bit of a trite phrase that threatens to force a false dichotomy between holiness and happiness, there is a measure of truth to it. At its best, marriage does, indeed, help us grow in…
He told me he knew that marriage was designed not to make him happy, but to make him holy. He had accepted the wisdom in the phrase, and there is certainly an element of truth behind it: Marriage really can serve as a significant means of sanctification in the life of the believer and it…
If you could speak to 70 nearly-married or newly-married couples and give them some practical pointers on marriage, what would you say? That was the question I faced as I prepared for a recent event across town. My first assignment was to speak on the Christian family and then to describe some of the challenges…
It was with sorrow but not surprise that I read a recent article at Risen Motherhood. In The Gospel Frees Us From Shame: Embracing Sexual Intimacy with a Postpartum Body, Lauren Washer writes about an experience that’s common among women who have given birth to one or more children. “I never thought my feelings toward…
Living in a multicultural city and serving in a multicultural church has given me a wide view of some of the ways different generations of a family can relate to one another. As a young generation begins to pair up and to marry, forming new families, they need to learn to relate to the generation…
Over the past few years, we have been blessed with an incredible volume of resources related to biblical counseling. From primers for amateur counselors to in-depth examinations of specific issues, we are now well-served with resources meant to address a host of common issues. New to the field is Jonathan Holmes’s Counsel for Couples: A…