Relationship Goals: How to Win at Dating, Marriage, and Sex

by Michael Todd

The same way that we are damaged by relationships, we hea...

“Confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The earnest prayer of a righteous person has great power and produces wonderful results” (James 5:16).

After you call it, confess it, and cancel it, you need to cast it.

“Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you” (1 Peter 5:7, NIV).

The comfort that you have from cutting a soul tie is that God cares. He really cares. He’s not standing in heaven saying, “I told you so.” He’s right there with you, cheering you on. He’s proud of you. And now you’ve given Him permission to empower you to live a better life, a life free from harmful soul ties.

“Let us come boldly to the throne of our gracious God. There we will receive his mercy, and we will find grace to help us when we need it most” (Hebrews 4:16).

But God in you can!

Remember, your number one soul tie is with God. Leverage your unity with Him, and seek His power. It’s explosive power. Death-defying power.

Just after Paul said, “The body…is not meant for sexual immorality but for the Lord, and the ...

something that might seem out of place. He said, “By his power God raised the Lord from the dead, and he will raise us a...

So, Paul was

saying, “I don’t care what your sexual problem is right now. If God has the power to raise Jesus’s body and later raise your body from the dead, then He has enough power to help you manage your body while you’re living!”

You may not be able to get your improper sexual habits under control, but God can get them under cont...

As we surrender our sexuality to God, He is not just going to leave us there and be like, “All right, figure it out for yourself from here on out.” No. He says, “I’m the God with all power. What I came to do is support, restore, and strengthen you. With Me inside you because of My Son and through My Spirit, you have all the powe...

Sex has power—but God has more power! Your unwanted soul tie is not too strong. It is no match for the power of God in your life.

Don’t get me wrong. Marriage is amazing…when you marry the right person, when you are the right person, when you’re committed to working on issues, when you learn to apologize for eating her leftover takeout, when you don’t get offended as she keeps telling you to put the toilet seat down. (Sorry, Natalie! I think I’m talking about my issues.) All I’m trying to say is, a marriage is only as good as the individuals in it.

One whole man plus one

whole woman plus God in their midst creates one healthy marriage.

If you’re married, it’s important for your marriage that you’ve been working on yourself before and during the relationship progression. Hopefully your spouse has been doing the same. But even more important is the presence of the third partner in the marriage. God’s participation in the marriage makes it possible for the husband to fulfill his pu...

“Make every effort to keep yourselves united in the Spirit, binding yourselves together with peace” (Ephesians 4:3).

relationship, enabling both partners to grow closer to one another and to Him while at the same time fulfilling our purposes as individuals. And if a relationship like that endures for a lifetime, it’s not too long.

A godly marriage is like a triangle. First, the husband and wife are connected at the bottom of the triangle. When this is done in marriage, this is a beautiful connection, an honored connection, one that is intended

to bring life to both people.

This isn’t an entangling tie that has to be painstakingly and painfully severed, like you get when two people have sex without marriage. From day one of their marriage, a wife and husband are bound together in a holy covenant, a soul tie of an awesome sort. The bond is intended to last for a lifetime, and they will hopefully be ...

triangle. God is at the top, with each of the marriage partners spiritually connected to Him (assuming they’re both believers in Jesus). This gives them another way to be connected—through God. And look at this: it’s a geometric and spiritual truth that as each partner draws closer to God, each one is also drawing closer to the other. The fact that God is in the middle of that marriage is the key to their

getting the relationship win.

Even though the partners may be at different places in their spiritual progress, it’s not a competition against one another.

It’s not “I’m closer to God than you. I pray more. I know more about the Bible. I don’t have those sins you do. So, let me show you where you’re failing.” No, God is responsible for lifting both partners up toward Him,

together, hand in hand, and He does it gradually, in His ...

Even though you’re bonded in marriage from the day you say “I do,” becoming one with your marriage partner is a lifetime process. Drawing nearer to God is a lifetime process too. These are marathons yo...

Can I give you what I call God’s plan of oneness? He wanted it to be one God, one man, one woman, one marriage, one sex partner, one flesh, one lifetime to create one picture. It’s a whole lot simpler, stabler, and more beautiful than all the crazy,

messed-up ways people do relationships in our culture. It’s all about oneness.

relationship God has with the church: “As the Scriptures say, ‘A man leaves his father and mother and is joined to his wife, and the two are united into one.’ This is a great mystery, but it is an illustration of the way Christ and the church are one” (Ephesians 5:31–32).

That’s what marriage is like. The real thing—the one-of-a-kind masterpiece—is God’s relationship with His people. But a godly marriage is a beautiful copy we can all look at and admire. And what it reveals is an image of faithful, sacrificial love.

Marriage was never supposed to be just a husband and wife. God was always supposed to be a participant in the relationship. In fact, He’s supposed to be the focus of the relationship. That’s because God is love, and love has

an action that goes with it. We all know the scripture “For God so loved” that He did what? “He gave.” John 3:16. You will never see real love...

The real mark of love is giving, and giving takes sacrifice. That’s why Ephesians 5:25 says this for husbands: “Love your wives, just as Christ loved the church. He gave up his life for her.” And wives are to submit to their husbands (verse 22). This is not aggressive, authoritarian dominance. This is having a vision and being “sub” to that

mission. That’s why I like to call this loving submission; it looks like what Ephesians 5:21 says for both the husband and the wife—to “submit to one another.”

You want a real definition of marriage? It’s gonna be a lot of dying to self. You’re gonna wake up every morning and you’re gonna die to yourself. What you want to do, your likes, your hopes for the day—you’re going to have to put some of them on hold for the sake of your spouse. But it’s all for unity, and it’s one of the most beautiful pictures, because...

God’s purpose for your marriage is that you as a couple win in relationship. But it isn’t a selfish grab kind of thing. I don’t want anybody to go into marriage thinking it’s not gonna be how Jesus said it was; namely, that

This is why I said back at the beginning of the book that love, in the fullest sense, doesn’t really come until after marriage.

Meeting somebody we like can definitely stir up strong emotions real quick. But a lot of times those emotions come because we want to be in love and to have a relationship so badly that we’ve just attached somebody to our dream. The emotions blind us so that we can’t even see the other person clearly. We don’t know who they really are, and we may not be acting like our real selves either. They may be right for us, or they may not. Feelings alone are not enough to help us discern.

And then sometimes we think we’re in love but we’re really in something else that’s called by another four-letter word starting with l: lust. You know what I’m talking about.

I’m just saying that when you’re in marriage and committed to each other for life, you will discover a fuller, more mature kind of love—one that isn’t all caught up in her looks and his sense of humor and having fun and cuddling but realizes just how much you have to give to each other.

So, I just suggest to you that romantic love really gets solidified and really becomes real after you get married. It’s created

and forged over time, through highs and lows.

shows us how: Love is patient and kind. I’ve told you how to work that remote a thousand times, but that’s all right; I’ll explain it again. Love is not jealous. I don’t mind that you make more money than I do. I’m proud of you, sw...

way better cook than you, but I can just keep that to myself and eat your tough beef. Love is not rude. Just because we’re together all the time, I won’t let that be an excuse to stop noticing you and treating you with respect. Love does not demand its own way. I’d rather go to the beach for this vacation, but...

not irritable. You left your whiskers in the sink after shaving again, even though I’ve told you that grosses me out. But I guess you just forgot, so I’ll clean up the mess myself. Love keeps no record of being wronged. You apologized; I accepted; it’s over. Love does not rejoice about injustice but...

we’re on the same side again. Love never gives up, never loses faith, is always hopeful, and endures through every circumstance. No matter what challenges come into our lives, we will face them together with faith in God, and anniversary aft...