The Journey Of A Christian Marriage

Marriage for the awesome institution that it is; is an environment where everything that we are in relation to our fellow human beings is exposed and gains expression.

I have found in my limited experience throughout the thirteen years I have been married to my gorgeous wife, that this learning curve has certainly been the steepest, likewise the most fulfilling, and I say that truthfully. Nothing is more satisfying when after experiencing the roller coasters that marital life present us, coming to the other side understanding one another deeper and the relationships intimacy increased a notch or two.

But what a roller coaster some of these things have been. I thank God for the many good authors and teachers, who have taken the time over the years to study and serve Christian marriages so they can grow.

My wife and I met in sixth form, I was 17 and she was 15, I don’t know how she got into sixth form at that age but she also held down three pub jobs at the time which she alternated and got paid significantly for.

The actual details of my wife and I’s initial romance, which I dare add is a wonderful love at first site story I’ll save for another article or perhaps a romance novel, but suffice to say we began deeply in love and then we got married, at this point I was 19 and she had just had her 18th birthday.

It didn’t take us long to come to the place of feeling completely incompatible, and I really couldn’t figure it out, we were suddenly so different, or so it appeared. God by his grace orchestrated a timely marriage seminar which helped answer the lion’s share of those initial questions. We also read a book by Tim La Haye called spirit controlled temperament. The problem was temperament, she was a sanguine/choleric, and I was 100% Melancholic. So where she was driven and fiery and impulsive, I was excessively laid back, and needed to analyze everything, and after every creative endeavour I needed to rest substantially to recuperate my mental/ emotional equilibrium, she thought I was lazy, I thought she was brash and un-thoughtful. Learning that we were two distinctly different temperaments, wired differently in every way enabled us to love and accept each others differences and begin to work towards seeing how these differences could compliment each other.

These I dare say were still early days, and I strongly encourage anyone who’s simply read one book on marriage or been to a seminar one time not to stop there, if were to grow in our marriages we need to consistently invest in this foundational relationship.
I think the next major book that greatly impacted my wife and I’s marriage was Love and Respect by Emerson Eggerichs. This book we literally read together and it hit a lot of sore points that had accumulated over the years. My wife thank fully is a strong woman, I too am a strong /quiet type, but my strength was perhaps not so obvious to the uninitiated onlooker. This book exposed a powerful truth to us that men spell love r.e.s.p.e.c.t. while women spell love simply love. And invariably this can create communication issues. God helped us;

It wasn’t until I came across a book I strongly recommend called the Transformation of the inner man by John and Paula Sanford that God was able to truly bring deliverance in my life. The book doesn’t skirt around the issues but goes to the jugular, it deals comprehensively with root causes and symptoms and provides potent answers, which when applied bring significant changes.

We also read together a book called 5 Love languages by Gary Chapman now this easy to read book is really important in its message and certainly for us the message communicated some most helpful revelations. See my wife and I were again missing each other by miles because her love language was acts of service where mine was physical touch, so where she was serving me and our family, I simply felt inadequate and felt my physical advances were snuffed, and I wasn’t communicating love in her language because I wasn’t consistently serving her in practical ways, but as soon as we understood the message of this book, we were able to meet each others need considerably better and expend our energy in meaningful ways to each other and God really helped us.

So I wrote this mainly to recommend the books I have found most helpful and along the side you’ll see a bunch of others I strongly recommend. Get into this stuff, invest in this key relationship enjoy it, and believe God for his grace and help, He’s more into the success of your marriage than you are, and if the teaching or spiritual leadership you’ve surrounded yourself with is detrimental to this core relationship, I counsel, ask yourself some real questions and read, pray and listen for the Holy Spirits guidance.