3 Hard Biblical Truths that Produce a Happy Marriage

In my previous article called This Truth Will Bring Peace to Your Marriage, we discussed that for a husband and wife to be able to enjoy each other, they must first be able to say to God, “You are my Lord. I have no good without you,” (Psalm 16:2). Only when our God-needs are met are we then free to have our people-needs met.

While that is the foundational truth to all good marriage advice, I want to expand on that truth and explain some different ways that idea must be expressed so you can enjoy a happy marriage with your spouse.

Therefore, here are 3 hard biblical truths that will save your marriage.

1. To Have a Happy Marriage, You Must Always Start with You

When we know that putting our own relationship with God first is the most powerful thing we can do to bring peace into our marriages, this means we must maintain an ongoing heart posture to look first at ourselves before blaming our spouses for a problem (Matthew 7:3-5).

While our spouses certainly are contributing to the issues, as none of us is perfect, Scripture is clear that the person with the most power to ruin our lives is always ourselves. Other people’s sins will hurt us. But our own sins have the most power to destroy us (Romans 14:12).

Also, we must always start with ourselves because God has given us the most authority over ourselves. I’m more responsible for me than I am for anyone else in the world. While my wife and kids certainly are my responsibility, they also have their own wills that I cannot control. And I have my own will that they cannot control. Therefore, God will always hold us responsible for our own choices (Romans 14:4), and that’s why we must always spend the majority of our time examining ourselves more than we examine others (Matthew 7:1-6).

Lastly, the best way to not be the real problem is to first assume you are the problem. When a couple both says to themselves, “I’m a part of the problem,” that’s when they are going to overcome their problems together.

So you have to start with yourself because you can’t control your spouse. It takes two willing people to solve problems, so you have to at least start by being willing to change yourself. It might feel better to believe you are not the problem and that it’s all your spouse’s fault, but the Scriptures are not there to make you feel better about yourself. Rather, God’s truth tells you what actually works, including when it comes to experiencing a healthy marriage.

And even if your spouse really is most of the problem and you are just adding a few issues, nothing compared to them, they still need you to be humble enough to work on your own issues. The best way to help someone repent is to show them how in the ways that you can. Even if they really are doing worse things than you, the best chance you have of them softening towards you is for them to see you willing to change, too.

2. To Have a Happy Marriage, You Must Choose to Be Side-By-Side More than Face-to-Face

It’s not a particularly profound statement to say that love is a core ingredient to a healthy marriage. But what is love, really? I’ve found C.S. Lewis’ book, The Four Loves, to be really helpful when asking that question.

In that book, Lewis describes the difference between the general Christian love we should all have for each other and the romantic love that should be shared only between one man and one woman. He then states, “Lovers are always talking to one another about their love; Friends hardly ever about their Friendship. Lovers are normally face to face, absorbed in each other; Friends, side by side, absorbed in some common interest.”

I highlight this point here because to have a happy marriage, you need more than romantic love for each other. You certainly need that romantic love. But that form of love is like a fire that is burning bright and hot. It takes a lot of fuel to maintain that level of heat and light from a fire. On a day-to-day basis, it’s too heavy a burden to bear. Life is not meant to be lived on the fringes of emotions. While intense romantic love is a beautiful experience that a husband and wife should enjoy regularly, it can never be the enduring, bedrock form of love that binds them together day in and day out.

While a husband and wife are lovers, they are much more than that, too. They are friends, companions, and coheirs in God’s kingdom (1 Peter 3:7). Thus, to have a healthy and happy marriage, a husband and wife should be living most of their life side-by-side, not face-to-face.

They certainly should often turn to each other, face-to-face, as lovers do. But if they think their entire relationship should be made up of this form of love, they will end up smothering each other. They will burn all the fuel and end up feeling empty. They will feel an unrelenting pressure to fill each other. And in the process, this pressure will push them apart rather than draw them together.

But when you can be on mission together, absorbed in common interests for the glory of God, this adds logs to the marriage fire. And it allows for those moments of romantic intensity to build. They are moments, though. The love that binds is rooted in covenant, committed love, expressed in ongoing service to the Lord.

A couple that serves together stays together.

3. To Have a Happy Marriage, You Must View Your Relationship as Your Spiritual Thermometer, Not Your Spiritual Thermostat

We must never allow the health of marriages to dictate the health of our relationship with God. We can’t be satisfied in the Lord only when things are good in the marriage and mad at God when things are not good in the marriage.

Rather, our love for our spouse must be the overflow of the love we receive from God and the love we have for God (1 John 4:19-21). Like a thermometer that reads the temperature, the love we show our spouses will reveal how truly filled we are with the Spirit. But when you allow your spouse to act as your spiritual thermostat, controlling the level of love you feel, it always leads to a cold home.

It’s exhausting to need your spouse to fill you. Everything changes when you stop asking your spouse to make you happy. Start being happy in the Lord alongside your spouse. A happy Christian marriage is one in which two Spirit-filled Christians enjoy life together.

Another important topic to cover if you want a happy marriage is the roles within marriage. So here’s an article called 4 Biblical Differences Between the Roles of a Husband and Wife.

And here’s that related article I mentioned in the intro called This Truth Will Bring Peace to Your Marriage.