YOU ASKED FOR IT: KEYS TO A HAPPY, HEALTHY MARRIAGE

Charles Billingsley 

The first key to a happy, healthy marriage is to 

1. Honor your marriage

Hebrews 13:4 Let marriage be held in honor among all, and let the marriage bed be undefiled, for God will judge the sexually immoral and adulterous.

Marriage is a covenant, it is not a contract.

Malachi 2:13 And this second thing you do. You cover the Lord’s altar with tears, with weeping and groaning because he no longer regards the offering or accepts it with favor from your hand. 14 But you say, “Why does he not?” Because the Lord was witness between you and the wife of your youth, to whom you have been faithless, though she is your companion and your wife by covenant. 15 Did he not make them one, with a portion of the Spirit in their union? And what was the one God seeking? Godly offspring. So guard yourselves in your spirit, and let none of you be faithless to the wife of your youth.

Romans 12:9 Let love be genuine. Abhor what is evil; hold fast to what is good. 10 Love one another with brotherly affection. Outdo one another in showing honor.

1. Honor Your marriage

2. Prioritize your marriage 

Dr. Henry Cloud, in His book “Integrity” – mentions the idea of our lives being like a boat going through the water. Every boat going through water leaves a wake. There are two sides to that wake. one Side represents our tasks and one side represents our relationships.

If we want to have happy, healthy marriages , we must prioritize them. By that, I mean, that your marriage must be focused on your relationship to each other and centered on God.

Have you ever looked through the scope of a rifle?

You are focusing on the target, but it is the scope that helps you center on that target. If a happy marriage is your target, then Jesus has to be the scope – or the lens through which you are centering that focus.

Genesis 2:24 -Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.

The priority of marriage – we leave, we cleave, we weave

We leave our parents, we cleave to each other, we spend a lifetime weaving a beautiful tapestry of life together. well, Hopefully it’s beautiful. 

So what am I suppose to prioritize? Here’s a few thoughts:

A. Prioritize time together: 

Detach daily
Withdraw weekly
Abandon annually

B. Prioritize your intimacy

C. Prioritize your communication:

My wife’s love languages are acts of service and quality time. I stink at both of those.
My love languages are words of affirmation and gifts. we are so totally different.

One example: take out the trash!

Luve talk:
Listen – really listen.
Understand – put yourself in their shoes
Validate – give Creedence and respect to their point
Empathize – use your emotional intelligence to identify with them

“Your way is not the only way
A different way is not the wrong way
Don’t let getting your way get in the way”
– Ted Cunningham

D. Prioritize your spiritual growth.

Matthew 6:33 But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.

Ephesians 4 I therefore, a prisoner for the Lord, urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called, 2 with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, 3 eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.

Step ladder illustration – Jesus must be the center

1. Honor your marriage
2. Prioritize your marriage

3. Enjoy your marriage

Ecclesiastes 9:9 Enjoy life with the wife whom you love, all the days of your vain[a] life that he has given you under the sun, because that is your portion in life and in your toil at which you toil under the sun.

Ephesians 4:26b – “do not let the sun go down on your anger,”

“Unresolved anger is like drinking poison while expecting the other person to get sick.” – Ted Cunningham

Christ is the central key to your healthy marriage. Root yourself together in Him…abide in Him; and your marriage will last and grow and thrive for a lifetime….til death do you part.

John 15:4 Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me. 5 I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing.

This applies to our individual lives, and it applies to our marriage, as well.

The same Jesus who breathed life into you as an individual is the same Jesus who can breathe life back into your marriage. Will you ask Him to do it? Will you allow Him to do it? He will willing! He wants to. The choice is up to both of you.