4 Reasons God Is Not Fixing Your Marriage

“Why won’t God fix my marriage?” is the question one woman recently wrote in to ask. She writes:

Dear Mark, I have been listening to your videos and I have a question for you. I have been married for over 20 years. I am a Christian and I have asked God to restore my marriage. I don’t want a divorce. Why would God not hear those prayers?

Thanks,
Mary

Giving Christian marriage advice is always challenging in a setting like this because I rarely have all the facts.

Why God has not fixed Mary’s marriage is beyond my knowledge. And if someone else asked this question, the answer for them would probably be different than it would be for Mary.

So, rather than offer specific theories about a particular marriage, I will try to present some general biblical principles that everyone can apply when asking, “Why won’t God fix my marriage?”

1. God Won’t Fix a Marriage Without the Participation of Those in the Marriage

The first biblical principle that comes to mind when I try to figure out why God won’t fix someone’s marriage is that God never overrides the choices humans make. He uses humans to accomplish his sovereign will, but he also allows them to make good and bad choices that lead to good and bad outcomes (Galatians 6:7-9).

This conversation can quickly turn into a theological dissertation on the relationship between God’s sovereignty and man’s free will. I don’t want to get into the minutiae of all that at this point. Rather than explain the inner workings of this theology, I just want to talk about how humans are supposed to respond to God’s sovereignty.

Mary asked, “I am a Christian, and I have asked God to restore my marriage.  I don’t want a divorce. Why would God not hear those prayers?” Yes, God is sovereign, which means he can do anything he wants. But within the pages of Scripture, we learn that God wants humans to actively participate in producing the outcomes they experience in life. So God will not just “fix” a marriage without the husband and wife actually doing certain things and following God’s counsel.

James 1:25, “But the one who looks into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and perseveres, being no hearer who forgets but a doer who acts, he will be blessed in his doing.”

Prayer is absolutely right. Asking God to fix you marriage is biblical. But the way God will fix a marriage will not “just” be through prayer; rather, God will fix a marriage through prayer that empowers the husband, the wife, or both to change the behavior that is negatively impacting the marriage.

An answered prayer for a fixed marriage will not be a mysterious miracle where things are just better but you don’t know why. God will fix the marriage through teaching those in the marriage to correct the specific problems that are occurring.

2. When Asking “Why Won’t God Fix My Marriage?” Remember that People Problems Require the People to Change

Again, I don’t know the details of this specific marriage. I just know that relationship outcomes result from relationship interactions. If there is a problem between two people, the problem lies between those two people, not with God (Proverbs 19:3).

Marriages are unhealthy or healthy based upon how two people respond and treat each other. How they speak to one another, how much they serve one another, how often they sacrifice their own desires for the other person, how much time they spend with one another, how much they understand the other person’s love language, and so on – these are the type of factors that go into a “good” marriage or a “bad” marriage.

3. When Asking “Why Won’t God Fix My Marriage?”, Remember that Your Marriage Problems Are Not God Punishing You

In light of what I said in point 2, I am not saying that if there are marriage problems, it automatically means God is punishing you both for sin.

First off, God does not punish Christians (Romans 3:21-23, Psalm 103:10-12). God only disciplines those he loves (Hebrews 12:6). Punishment is used to make you pay for what you did. Discipline is used to help correct negative behavior. He may allow problems in marriage to help one or both of you change an unhealthy trait. But he’s not vindictively punishing you for past sins.

Secondly, I’m not saying the husband and wife always intentionally treat each other badly. There could be sin in the relationship, either in both or in one person, that is causing them to treat the other person poorly.

However, sometimes people are interacting with one another in offensive, annoying, or confusing ways that they can’t recognize themselves. Their actions and words just rub the other person the wrong way, but neither of them can explain why. Miscommunication and misunderstanding are not always moral failures. In cases like this, a good counselor is crucial so he or she can point out what the couple may be missing and can’t see about themselves.

God will not fix a marriage by overriding two people’s responses and mismatched personality traits. Rather, if they both are humble enough and seek God, he will more than likely show them why they are offending each other. If they then change their behavior towards one another, the outcomes will change.

We live in a cause-and-effect world. There is always a cause for the issues. Relationship problems may seem mysterious, but there are always reasons behind them. Rather than pray that God would just magically fix it all while the two stay exactly the same, the husband and wife should pray that God would help them change in the areas they both need to change so the marriage can be truly fixed from within (Psalm 139:23-24).

4. God Won’t Fix Your Marriage If One of You Is Unwilling or Has a Major Hidden Sin

The above advice is complicated by the fact that a marriage always involves two complex human beings. While it’s usually true that both the husband and wife are contributing to the problems within the marriage (even though most times the husband and wife assume it is the other person’s fault), sometimes the problem really does rest on one individual in the relationship.

If you want to change your behavior and you will do anything you can to fix your marriage, but your spouse does not, then your marriage will not be truly fixed (Romans 12:18). In other words, God may not be fixing your marriage because your spouse is refusing to obey him.

This is why relationships are so risky. The health of the relationship is 50% outside of your control. You can’t make your spouse act a certain way, and God will not force that person to act a certain way. To have true love (which must be based on choice), God knows sin must also be a choice humans are allowed to make.

I believe a marriage can improve based upon one person improving even if the other person stays the same. But if one person is being selfish, manipulative, or simply just cannot accept that their behavior and interactions towards their spouse are sinful, then the marriage will not be as healthy as it could be.

Lastly, sometimes marriage problems are because of one person’s hidden sin. If the person is a closet alcoholic, addicted to porn, or is having a secret affair, the other spouse will be unable to explain why the marriage is so bad. They will probably feel like a failure, like they are doing something wrong, but they will be confused about what the problem actually is.

Once that secret sin comes to light, however, the problems in the marriage will make a lot more sense then (Galatians 6:7-9).

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