Christian couples wonder how to have a lasting Christ centered marriage. Read or listen to this chapter from Your Marriage God’s Way to learn how to have a marriage centered on God.



Table of ContentsYour Marriage Reflects your Relationship with ChristJesus Deserves Your ObedienceTrust the Holy Spirit to Help You have a Christ-Centered MarriageA Holy-Spirit Filled MarriageWe Cannot Just Sit BackWhat Might It Look Like for the Holy Spirit to Help Us?The Encouraging Balance When Striving to Have a Christ Centered Marriage





A few years ago, Katie and I faced the biggest crisis of our marriage. I started pastoring Woodland Christian Church when it was small, but within three years the congregation tripled in size. I admit that before I became a pastor, I was unaware of how much work is involved in shepherding a church of even a few hundred people. I had been an Army officer, a supervisor at a distribution center for a major retail chain, and an elementary school teacher. But none of those occupations approached the amount of mental and emotional energy and sheer hard work pastoring entails!



Almost all my waking hours were packed with studying, teaching, counseling, making phone calls, sending emails, attending meetings, addressing administrative responsibilities, and tending to benevolence issues. When I was at home, where I should have been an engaged father and husband, I did not have much left for my family mentally, emotionally, or physically.



Although I was failing as a husband and father, I was able to convince myself I was still pleasing the Lord. I compartmentalized my life by saying, “I am a Christian first. I am a spouse second. I am a parent third. I am an employee fourth.” Instead, I should have said, “I am a Christian spouse. I am a Christian parent. I am a Christian employee.” The danger of seeing ourselves as Christian servants first and spouses second is we can find ourselves believing the lie I bought into at the time: “If I can be a good pastor, I can please God even though I am not the best husband.”



The truth is that I was a poor husband, and I should have recognized that meant I was not pleasing the Lord.



Your Marriage Reflects your Relationship with Christ



The reason we cannot please the Lord while failing as a husband or wife is that our Christianity is directly related to the way we treat our spouses. Our marriages are outpourings of our relationships with Christ:




In Matthew 7:16, Jesus asked, “Do men gather grapes from thornbushes or figs from thistles?”



In James 3:11-12, the apostle James asked, “Does a spring send forth fresh water and bitter from the same opening? Can a fig tree, my brethren, bear olives, or a grapevine bear figs?”




The point of these verses is that we reveal our Christianity by the way we live. As Jesus clarified: “You will know them by their fruits” (Matthew 7:16). And right living—or right fruit—can only be produced through a strong relationship with Christ.



Because our relationships with our spouses are our most important earthly relationship, what we are as spouses reflects what we are as Christians. Later, we will discuss this in greater depth as we look at the Christ centered marriage passage in Ephesians 5:21-33, but for now, let’s look at the two key commands in Scripture that give us God’s own standard for marriage:




Ephesians 5:25—“Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself for her.”



Ephesians 5:22—“Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord.”




Because these commands are from the Lord, our obedience to them affects the kind of relationship we have with Christ. Think of it this way: There is no such thing as a spiritually mature man who does not love his wife. Nor a spiritually mature woman who does not submit to her husband:




A husband cannot love Christ without loving his wife.



A wife cannot submit to Christ without submitting to her husband.