Succeeding in Marriage

What is a successful marriage? Ask ten people and you will get ten answers — happiness, compatibility, longevity, peace. But God had a definition in mind before the first wedding ever took place, and it is bigger than all of those.

And Adam said: "This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man." Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.

Genesis 2:23-24 (NKJV)

There it is: one flesh. And Jesus prayed this same oneness over His people, using the oneness of the Father and the Son as the model.

And the glory which You gave Me I have given them, that they may be one just as We are one: I in them, and You in Me; that they may be made perfect in one, and that the world may know that You have sent Me.

John 17:22-23 (NKJV)

A successful marriage is one in which the husband and the wife are growing in oneness — until they become one.

We need to change the fairy-tale ending. Not "and they lived happily together ever after," but "and they grew together ever after — and so were happy."

What does that growth look like? It means the man has grown and absorbed the good qualities of the woman God gave him, and the woman has grown and absorbed the good qualities of the man God gave her — so that the two became one. It means when you meet the man, you have met his wife. When you meet the wife, you have met the husband.

It means a new being has emerged — a new man, not just male and not just female, but male and female together, as Genesis 1:27-28 describes. That is the humanity God gave dominion and authority. That is the humanity God wants to use to fill this earth with the glory of the Lord.

Why oneness is worth fighting for

Why should you want this? Because one is not enough to accomplish anything of significance.

Scripture keeps sounding this theme. "One of you routs a thousand, because the Lord your God fights for you" (Joshua 23:10). "How could one man chase a thousand, or two put ten thousand to flight?" (Deuteronomy 32:30). One chases a thousand; two chase ten thousand. Oneness does not add your strength — it multiplies it.

Two people are better off than one, for they can help each other succeed. If one person falls, the other can reach out and help. But someone who falls alone is in real trouble… A person standing alone can be attacked and defeated, but two can stand back-to-back and conquer.

Ecclesiastes 4:9-12 (NLT)

Even God's assessment at Babel testifies to this power: "Indeed the people are one… now nothing that they propose to do will be withheld from them" (Genesis 11:6). If unity makes even rebellious people unstoppable, imagine what it does for a husband and wife joined to God's purpose. Whatever you have accomplished by yourself, God has arranged for you to accomplish so much more if you achieve oneness with the person He brings into your life.

Even the research agrees. A University of Michigan study found that men and women in successful, happy marriages lived at least four to eight years longer than those in unhappy ones. Studies cited in The Man's Guide to Woman show that men in happy, healthy relationships earn more money, live longer, suffer less chronic illness, and keep their minds sharper in later years.

Tim and Kathy Keller, in The Meaning of Marriage, point to a 1992 study of retirement data: people who were continuously married had 75 percent more wealth at retirement than those who never married or who divorced and did not remarry. Married men have been shown to earn 10 to 40 percent more than single men with similar education and job histories. Why? Partly greater physical and mental health. Partly the profound "shock absorber" marriage provides through disappointments and illness. But also what scholars call marital social norms: spouses hold one another to greater levels of personal responsibility and self-discipline than friends or other family members can. Nothing can mature character like marriage.

Start with the person in the mirror

So how can you partner with God and your spouse to be successful? It begins before the wedding — and it begins with you.

When God said, "It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper who is just right for him" (Genesis 2:18), He established something we often miss: God has made you a helper for someone — male or female — that you are just right for. You must be suitable for the person you want to marry. Do not marry someone whose life you are not able to add to, someone you cannot help become the best version of themselves.

So to have a successful marriage, start with an inventory of yourself — your strengths and your weaknesses. Success in marriage is not about you marrying the right person as much as it is about you being the right person for whom you marry. Many of us have problems in marriage not because we married the wrong person, but because we are not yet the right person for the one we married.

If you are already married, the question is not "Did I marry right?" The question is "How can I be the right person for this person?" — and then ask God to help you.

Pursue oneness through mutual submission

Second, relentlessly and resolutely pursue oneness. And the pathway to oneness is mutual submission.

Submitting yourselves one to another in the fear of God.

Ephesians 5:21 (KJV)

Do not center on yourself — be centered and focused on the other. And let's not get it confused: mutual submission is not a loss of self; it is the pathway to oneness. How are the Father and the Son one? The Father submits to the Son. The Son submits to the Father.

Here is what that looks like in practice. How can you marry a man whom God — whether by nature or nurture — has gifted in raising children, or in cooking, and rather than submit to what Christ has produced in him, you fight over a title or position as conditioned by society? Or you are a man married to a woman God blessed with a sound mind and analytical skill to manage budgets and money — and you buy the lie that a man does not tell his wife everything, or that the man alone handles the money. Some are given a wife with a Midas touch in business — and they stifle her because someone said "it is the man who provides for a family."

This is what it means to submit: you submit your ideas, your thoughts, your resources, your ways, your skills, your abilities — to this person God sent you to marry for a purpose.

Philippians 2:1-5 shows us the mind that was in Christ — a mind focused on others, not on Himself. And it names our real enemy: the main barrier to the development of a servant heart in marriage is the radical self-centeredness of the sinful human heart. Self-centeredness is a havoc-wreaking problem in many marriages and the ever-present enemy of every marriage. It is the cancer at the center of a marriage when it begins, and it has to be dealt with.

You cannot do this without the Holy Spirit

Third — and this is what makes the first two possible — be filled with the Spirit.

And be not drunk with wine, wherein is excess; but be filled with the Spirit; speaking to yourselves in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord.

Ephesians 5:18-19 (KJV)

It takes being continuously filled with the Spirit of God — your being flooded with the goodness and love of God, filling you with melody and joy — for you to be able to focus on the purpose of God and to keep serving and submitting to the one God sent you to.

Because self-centeredness, by its very character, makes you blind to your own faults while being hypersensitive, offended, and angered by the faults of the other. The result is always a downward spiral into self-pity, anger, and despair, as the relationship gets eaten away to nothing.

This is why one key to staying filled with the Spirit for your marriage is thankfulness — "giving thanks always for all things unto God" (Ephesians 5:20). Romans 1:21 traces humanity's darkness to this very failure: they knew God, but they were not thankful. Thankfulness is how you partner with the Holy Spirit to have God overcome in your life.

But who will look out for me?

Now the honest question. If God is saying the key to a successful marriage is abandoning your own self-interest in order to pursue the interest of your spouse — who is going to be looking out for me in this marriage?

First, you can see this only works if both of you have exactly this mindset. If you are planning to get married, make sure this is the mindset you have — and then find ways to confirm it is also the mindset of the other person. If you are already married, you now work together to get to this mindset.

But at a deeper level, the way for both of you to hold this mindset is to recognize that it is the Holy Spirit of God who is your source — He is the one looking out for you. He is the gas station where you go and refuel on the marriage journey. You can afford to pour yourself out for your spouse because God Himself keeps filling you.

If two spouses each say, "I'm going to treat my self-centeredness as the main problem in the marriage," you have the prospect of a truly great marriage.

So begin today. Take the inventory. Choose the other. Ask the Holy Spirit to fill you — and thank God, out loud, for the person He gave you. Oneness is not a fairy tale; it is a promise you grow into.