Quotes About Marriage

The best way for me to live this out is to keep asking myself, 'What is my love for my wife costing me?' If the answer is 'nothing,' then I'm not loving my wife as Christ loved the church.

The first purpose in marriage — beyond happiness, sexual expression, the bearing of children, companionship, mutual care and provision, or anything else — is to please God.

When you entered this relationship of marriage, you committed to keep moving toward your spouse. Any step back, any pause, any retreat, is an act of fraud. Learn to move toward the person God has given to you for the purpose of teaching you how to love.

It is a sophisticated spiritual challenge to not compare your spouse's weakness with another spouse's strength.

getting married won't make you happy or an adult; getting married simply makes you … married.

None of us can live up to the law; all of us will break it. Marriage teaches us — indeed, it practically forces us — to learn to live by extending grace and forgiveness to people who have sinned against us. If I can learn to forgive and accept my imperfect spouse, I'll be well equipped to offer forgiveness outside my marriage. Forgiveness, I'm convinced, is so unnatural an act that it takes practice to perfect it.

the picture of marriage as God intended it to be — two equals, albeit different, completely and wholly serving the other person as though they are greater than themselves, thus creating not a male-female power struggle over who is more worthy, but a harmony that reflects the character of God in the Trinity and the ministry of reconciliation in the world.

In a mixed egalitarian/complimentarian marriage, both the husband and wife will likely treat each other according to their perceived sense of marital duties, but those duties won't be received as such. They'll be resented....people who disagree on this issue can still worship the same God, but it will be difficult for them to raise the same kids or operate the same household.

Marriage creates a situation in which our desire to be served and coddled can be replaced with a nobler desire to serve others — even to sacrifice for others.

I believe God designed marriage, in part, to "pinch our feet." Both men and women need to have their pride assaulted. All of us, men and women alike, if we are to become like Christ, must, by definition, learn to become servants. And marriage gives us the opportunity to do just that.

The assumption is that loving their husbands is an unnatural skill that wives must learn — better yet, we could describe it as a supernatural skill.

So many marriages are filled with resentment, but voluntary acts of service can be the quickest way to replace resentment with love. When we act in service with godly motives, resentment suffocates and dies. It is only when we see that our pride and selfishness are the greatest barriers to our joy (rather than our spouse's sins or shortcomings) that our marriages will fully express the character of Christ.

The marriage relationship allows us to experientially identify with God and his relationship with Israel.

Even so, whenever the biblical model is superseded and a woman or man becomes a mom or dad first instead of a wife or husband first, the marriage suffers—very often irretrievably.

When you sexually reconnect, you feel the effects of this neurochemical cement. Learning to disregard this cement (which you must eventually do to break things off) will undercut the positive effects it has in marriage. You must train yourself to ignore what God created you to pay attention to.

Lord, how can I love my spouse today like she [or he] has never been or ever will be loved?

But ask God to help you. Partner with him to build up and encourage the person with whom you've chosen to spend the rest of your life. Ask. "How can I love my spouse today like he [or she] has never been or ever will be loved?" When we focus on what we can do, it's amazing how little time we have left to become consumed by our disappointments.

The same conclusion could be made about marriage. Every marriage has sorrows. Every marriage has trials. There isn't a shared bedroom in this country where tension doesn't occasionally or perhaps frequently lift its snarling head. Many a pillow has been a solemn receptacle for soul-felt tears, cried late at night or even all throughout the day. We don't get to choose which sorrows or trials we are called to bear, only that we must endure them.

think we need the same attitude with our marriage. All of us experience certain things about our spouses that may be difficult for us to accept.

I ache for the day when people make such wise marital choices that they can pray through where to live to make the most significant impact for Christ instead of praying that they could merely be able to exist in the same house without yelling and fighting.

BECOMING ONE — IN THE DEEPEST, MOST INTIMATE SENSE — TAKES TIME. IT TAKES AT LEAST THE SPAN OF A DECADE FOR THE SENSE OF INTIMACY TO REALLY DISPLAY ITSELF IN THE MARRIAGE RELATIONSHIP.

Would that it were the reverse, with girlfriends seriously discussing with their friends their boyfriends' weakness so that they could make a wise decision, and wives seriously defending their husbands' honor so that they could make a lasting marriage. Unfortunately, ignoring your boyfriends' weakness and gossiping about your husband's failures are two sure paths to divorce.

If we take our faith seriously and make our way through a difficult marriage in pursuit of witnessing God's reconciling love for a sinful world, then a difficult marriage becomes part of our exercise to prepare us for heaven.

Christian marriage is marked by discipline and self-denial . . . Christianity does not therefore depreciate marriage; it sanctifies it."5