True Identity Ministries Blog

The other night my husband and I were taking a walk around the neighborhood and talking/ dreaming about where we want to go to celebrate our 15th and 20th wedding anniversary. The crazy thing is I feel like it was just yesterday that we were talking about it while celebrating our 1st anniversary. We are now 1 year away from our 15th…how time flies! This was another reminder to me how important it is to be investing into my marriage.

It can be so easy to let things in our marriage fall to the wayside when we are juggling jobs, mortgages, raising kids, ministry and all of the other hundreds of things we do. We get drawn into the mundane of life, often neglecting the very one we love and cherish the most. We get accustomed to having each other around, and sometimes we make little or no serious effort to cement the relationship we worked so hard to bring about, and we start to take a lot of things for granted.

Can you relate? Are you taking time to invest into the marriage that God has given you? Let’s take a look at some practical ideas for investing into our marriages:

When I’ve talked about this with many marriages, one of the most common things that couples shared that attracted them to their spouse, was sense of humor. Simply having fun together. I think it is easy to lose the art of having some serious fun together. With the pressures of jobs and parenting, etc…we don’t take the time to just have fun. It is so important to go away, if it’s for a few hours, or a weekend get a way and laugh and have fun! Do some things like go- carting, mountain climbing, catch a ball game together, putt- putt golfing, anything that will just bring some laughs.


I recently spoke with a woman who has been married for 43 years, and they have a very Godly and admirable marriage. I was asking her some questions and one of the things that she mentioned sounds so simple, yet it is so important. She said, “Everyone has good qualities. We really need to make a point to focus on those things. It’s too easy to take your spouse for granted and start focusing on the negative stuff.” So, I encourage you to begin today to make a list of all of the things you love and appreciate about your husband…and then take it one step further…tell him some of those things!

Staying connected to our spouses takes hard work! I like the way the English standard version translates Matthew 19:5-6, “Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh…so they are not longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together let no man separate.”

We must hold on tightly to our marriages or we will inevitably begin to separate. Picture your husband and yourself on a merry-go-round that feels like it is spinning out of control. (This isn’t hard to imagine, is it? Most of us feel this way often, don’t we?) In order to stay together without falling off, you must do two things: hold on tightly to one another as one and stay close to the center. Let’s look at the parallel! If we relax even for a minute, we will find ourselves separating from one another and in danger of becoming another divorce statistic. Our marriages don’t stand a chance in this fast-paced world unless we purposely hold fast to one another and make Jesus the center of our marriages!

We must center everything we do around God’s will for our families. If we are doing so much, that we are not even taking the time to pray together and communicate, our marriages will ultimately suffer. Make some effort today to begin afresh in this area if you have found yourselves struggling in this area.

One last way to invest in your marriage, is to humble yourself. What? You may be wondering what in the world humility has to do with investing...but it has a lot to do with it! Take a look at these verses from God’s word:

Ephesians 4:2 Paul instructs us, “Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love.”

1 Peter 3:3-6, explains that for a woman to be truly beautiful she must have the ‘unfading beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit.” This does not mean she is to be quiet all the time but rather exude a spirit of loveliness that her husband wants to be around.

Humility is simply dying to yourself and putting others first even when we don’t feel like it. And spiritually, it is radical obedience to God. We must ask God how we can prioritize Him and our husbands before our own selfish desires. When we do this, we will inevitably be more fruitful in our marriages!

God, thank you for the blessing of a husband and the many wonderful things about him. We ask you today to come alongside us and give us creative ideas on how we can invest in the marriages you have given us. It’s so easy to get side tracked and we need your help!

Love,
Stephanie