On Marriage

I have spent a lot of time lately thinking about marriage and how to have a "godly marriage."

I believe, with all of my heart, that most of the problems in our country, schools, churches and even Christian families can be traced back to the lack of "godly marriages."

I don't have room here to explain everything that I mean by that, but I would like to offer a word of advise.

We can call ourselves "Christian families" but, for most of us, that just means that we are involved in church and we try to work toward a healthy relationship with God as individuals. But being a Christian individually and being married to a Christian individual does not necessarily mean that you will have a "godly marriage."

Here is the way I think this works for us:

-Dad does his own thing (bible reading, prayer, etc.) and keeps it mostly to himself...
-Mom does the same thing...and keeps it mostly to herself
-The kids may or may not see this going on, but they know that they are expected to go to church, so that is where they are
encouraged to pursue their own personal relationship with God.

But what if we quit doing all of this individually and started doing it together?

Jess and I don't have kids (yet) but we struggled for the longest time with living completely separate spiritual lives. Praying together was awkward. Bible reading together seemed forced. It just didn't feel natural. So we just didn't do it.

But then we started realizing that we weren't connecting spiritually. We weren't pursuing God together. We were on two separate journeys, headed down two separate paths (even though they were heading in the same direction). And our marriage was starting to suffer for it. So we decided to bite the bullett...and just start doing it!

We WILL pray together and read a devotion together every night EVEN IF IT IS AWKWARD FOR AWHILE!!!

We have been doing this for some time now and it is no longer awkward or forced. It is just what we do every night. And it has made a world of difference in our marriage and spiritual lives.

I want to challenge you couples out there who are not doing something similar to MAKE IT HAPPEN! You don't have to follow our method, but you need to be doing something.

You may be shocked at how many of the problems you have having in your marriage and family could be solved with 15 minutes together with the Lord every night. (Not to mention the impact it would have on your kids) It's done wonders for our marriage and I think it would for yours, too.