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June 6 - June 6, 2025
The very condition of having friends is that we should want something else besides friends.
If you marry mainly a sexual partner, or mainly a financial partner, you are going nowhere together, really. And those who are going nowhere can have no fellow travelers.
most people, when they are looking for a spouse, are looking for a finished statue when they should be looking for a wonderful block of marble. Not so you can create the kind of person you want, but rather because you see what kind of person Jesus is making.
only if I love Jesus more than my wife will I be able to serve her needs ahead of my own.
We think of a prospective spouse as primarily a lover (or a provider), and if he or she can be a friend on top of that, well isn’t that nice! We should be going at it the other way around.
the problem stemmed not from bad things but from very good things that had become too important.
real happiness is on the far side of holiness, not the near side. Holiness gives us new desires and brings old desires into line with one another. So if we want to be happy in marriage, we will accept that marriage is designed to make us holy.
What if you expected marriage to be about helping each other grow out of your sins and flaws into the new self God is creating?
You may be thrifty but at the same time miserly with money, too unwilling to spend it on your own needs appropriately, and ungenerous to others.
When you get married, your spouse is a big truck driving right through your heart. Marriage brings out the worst in you. It doesn’t create your weaknesses (though you may blame your spouse for your blow-ups)—it reveals them. This is not a bad thing, though. How can you change into your “glory-self” if you assume that you’re already pretty close to perfect as it is?
the only flaws that can enslave you are the ones that you are blind to.
There would never be a convenient time to cut back. I was addicted to the level of productivity I had achieved. I had to do something.
Statements of affirmation make a far lighter and less lasting impression upon the human heart than criticisms and condemnations.
Learn the primary languages of your spouse and send love over those channels, not over the channels you prefer for yourself. We tend to give love through the channels in which we like to receive it.
eventually love is a deliberate choice.
One of the greatest expressions of love is the willingness to change, to make a commitment to change attitudes and behaviors in yourself that trouble or hurt your spouse. There must be an ability to take correction and to be accountable for real concrete changes.
I cannot understand myself if I try to ignore the way God has designed me or if I despise the gifts he may have given to help me fulfill my calling.
’ezer is almost always used in the Bible to describe God himself.
To “help” someone, then, is to make up what is lacking in him with your strength.
The woman remains dependent and desirous of her husband, but it turns into an idolatrous desire, and his protection and love become a selfish lust and exploitation.
The Son submits to the Father’s headship with free, voluntary, and joyful eagerness, not out of coercion or inferiority.
Both women and men get to “play the Jesus role” in marriage—Jesus in his sacrificial authority, Jesus in his sacrificial submission.
It is natural to define one’s identity against others who are different.
And since the default mode of the human heart is self-justification, where we cannot understand the other sex we assume inferiority.
In Christ we have a profound security. We know who we are in him, and that frees us from the natural human impulse to despise anyone who is significantly different from us. This enables us to embrace rather than exclude those who differ from us, and that especially goes for our spouse, with all his or her mysterious and often infuriating differences.
one can always begin to serve without waiting for permission.
this will be an invisible change of attitude before it is ever visible in action.
if you aren’t getting any satisfaction from obeying God, you surely will get none from avoiding his pattern.
“As soon as you’re satisfied with God alone, he’ll bring someone special into your life”—as though God’s blessings are ever earned by our contentment.
“You’re too picky”—as though God is frustrated by our fickle whims and needs broader parameters in which to work.
“I am not single because I am too spiritually unstable to possibly deserve a husband, nor because I am too spiritually mature to possibly need one. I am single because God is so abundantly good to me, because this is his best for me.”
Without the gospel, people often turn temperamental, cultural, and gender differences into moral virtues.
Adults in Western society are deeply shaped by individualism, a fear and even hatred of limiting options for the sake of others. Many people are living single lives today not in the conscious, lonely misery of wanting marriage too much but rather in the largely unconscious, lonely misery of wanting marriage too little, out of fear of it.
While traditional societies tend to make an idol out of marriage (because they make an idol out of the family and tribe), contemporary societies tend to make an idol of independence (because they make an idol out of individual choice and happi-ness).
One major fruit of the contemporary culture’s fear of marriage is that singles become perfectionistic and virtually impossible to satisfy as they look at prospective spouses.
In the Christian single’s mind, most candidates are immediately eliminated from consideration on the basis of looks, polish, and financial or social status. This is simply another way in which Christian singles are being shaped by the culture’s idolatry of sexual beauty and money. They are looking for someone already “beautiful” in the most superficial way.
As dating spread throughout society, it not only individualized the whole process, removing the couple from family context, but it also changed the focus of romance from friendship and character assessment to spending money, being seen, and having fun.
There are many bad reasons for a person to lack interest in marriage, including a selfish spirit, an inability to maintain friendships, and a disdain for the opposite sex.
If you only obey God’s word when it seems reasonable or profitable to you—well, that isn’t really obedience at all. Obedience means you cede someone an authority over you that is there even when you don’t agree with him.
the greatest sexual pleasure should be the pleasure of seeing your spouse getting pleasure.
He doesn’t love the guest because he is lovely but to make him lovely.
The fact is that many wives are more decisive than their husbands. So why are women called to this position? As I said, the answer to that question is another question: “Why did Christ become the one to give up the authority to the Father?” We don’t know, but it is a mark of his greatness, not his indecisiveness! Women are called to follow him here. But remember, taking authority properly is just as hard as granting it.
