Are you looking for ways to enrich your marriage and bring yourself closer to your spouse? Here are 8 short devotionals for married couples to help bring you closer.
“‘Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, “Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh”? So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate” (Matthew 19:4-6).
These words show us that marriage is the act of bringing two individuals together, uniting them, and making them one flesh. It is totally a “God thing,” nothing we could ever do on our own.
When we choose to live our married life according to the design God has for us, it can be amazing. However, when we choose to try to remain separate and insist on being connected with others in the same way we were before marriage, it’s a lot like running a three-legged race connected to two different people. It’s not going to be pretty!
The image of being joined brings with it a sense of husband and wife bonded primarily to one another. It’s not necessarily a call to preclude relationships with friends or family, though it may be. Above all, it is the call for us to consider life and choices with the one to whom God has joined us.
From being made one in Christ and seeking his design for our life, we can discern prayerfully which relationships bring life to our marriage and which ones seek to separate us from one another or from God. Furthermore, it is not discernment reserved exclusively for the beginning of marriage. A relationship that was life-giving early in our marriage may change and need to be relinquished, or a relationship we pulled away from in order to establish who we were as a couple may become a place to which we can return.
Father, this union is of Your making and reflects Your heart. Give us wisdom and delight as we let Your love join us together. Let us not consider what we are leaving but rather what we are stepping into with one another and with You.
“And the effect of righteousness will be peace, and the result of righteousness, quietness, and trust forever. My people will abide in a peaceful habitation, in secure dwellings, and in quiet resting places” (Isaiah 32:17-18).
Intimacy in a marriage is created in more ways and to a greater depth than we often imagine. Spiritual intimacy between a husband and wife provides a safe covering, but also more than a covering. Coming together as a couple before God brings us to a place of access to the power and passion we need to live in this world — not just survive, but thrive.
Consider Isaiah’s words as he describes how the righteous will live: in peaceful habitation, in secure dwellings, and in quiet resting places. What a counter cultural image! Each of these is a heart posture before it becomes a reality. And when, as husband and wife, we stand together in that heart posture, God crafts this reality in our lives. It doesn’t mean there aren’t storms or struggles, but this is how we’re able to live well and carry hope in the midst of whatever life holds.
As might be expected, because of the power it can hold, spiritual intimacy is fiercely opposed. Many couples get lost in feeling uncomfortable praying aloud together, or they slip into comparing (She’s more spiritual than I am. I can’t pray as well as he can.) often giving up and yielding to what feels comfortable but results in spiritual impotence.
Corporate prayer, engaging with Scripture together, worshiping together — all are primary resources for building spiritual foundations as a couple. It’s not about finding a formula, but being willing to answer the call to enter in and remain intentional in the building of our spiritual life together.
Father, Jesus tells us in John 10:10 that “the thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy,” but that You have come that we may have life and have it to the full. Please don’t let our pride or insecurities stop us from coming together before You with worshipful and attentive hearts. We want Your life, in fullness not in fractions.
“Now the birth of Jesus Christ took place in this way. When his mother Mary had been betrothed to Joseph, before they came together she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit. And her husband Joseph, being a just man and unwilling to put her to shame, resolved to divorce her quietly” (Matthew 1:18-19).
Mary and Joseph most likely began their engagement with normal dreams and expectations for their life together. All of us in our time of engagement spend time dreaming of our future; there is no reason to believe that Mary and Joseph were any different.
Two angel visits later, the future of this young couple became anything but the life they could have imagined. How many of us have been awakened out of our dreams only to find that what we thought was certain was nowhere to be found?
We so long to find or to create certainty in our lives. There is but one certainty in life, and that is the presence of our loving God, sealed with his words in Joshua 1:5: “I will not leave you or forsake you.”
When we feel as though we’re drowning in the turmoil and upheaval of our lives, God encourages us and puts us with others who know the journey. Consider what he did for Mary and Joseph to help them to navigate the journey. He put them in a community of men and women with hearts for God. He gathered Mary in the midst of others who loved Jesus and were drawn to Him and the Father through Him. On the cross Jesus gave John and Mary to one another as mother and son, and Mary lived in John’s house.
Like Mary and Joseph, your marriage needs community. No matter the size or duration of the challenges before us, God is faithful to his promise, and He simply never leaves us.
Such a promise, loving Father, a promise that we need in the uncertainty of our lives. Help us to yield our hearts to Your hope, and find our courage lodged in Your love.
“My beloved is mine, and I am his; he grazes among the lilies” (Song of Solomon 2:16).
These are words of belonging, words that for an engaged couple can generate tender imagining and anticipation of what life together will be. Lived out by a married couple, these words can hold together in intimacy what much of the world seems to determined to break apart. Intimacy in marriage, sexual and otherwise, was created by God and is to be fought for, delighted in and fiercely guarded.
To yield to one another sexually in marriage is to step into God-created intimacy that takes us out of ourselves and into places where the walls can crumble and we can be tenderly vulnerable and real. There is peace and expansiveness of heart that come with this intimacy, one that offers such glorious contrast to the confusion and momentum of the world.
We must be willing to fight for intimacy in our marriages and to fiercely guard it. How can we fight for it? By being attentive to each other’s hearts, by yielding to God in a way that allows us to more easily yield to one another. We guard it by being intentional, considering what pulls us from intimacy and stepping away from those places, considering what brings us life and stepping deliberately into those places.
“My beloved is mine, and I am his.” We long to belong. Marriage, as a coming together before God, offers a sense of belonging that mirrors our belonging to the Father. While the vulnerability that intimacy brings is sometimes hard or scary to step into, it is such a wonderfully holy place that God gives us, a place of delighting in each another that echoes of the Father’s delight in us.
Father, forgive me the places where, although I long to belong, I rebel under Your covering. Forgive me the places where I choose not to yield. Let me delight so much in You that I can delight in the one you have given me in marriage, that together we might be Yours.
“I know how to be brought low, and I know how to abound. In any and every circumstance, I have learned the secret of facing plenty and hunger, abundance and need. I can do all things through him who strengthens me” (Philippians 4:12-13).
As with everything in our lives, our ability to live in the fullness that God has for us has all to do with our focus. The world tells us that we must concentrate on things, money, success, and on protecting all that we are able to attain — no matter the cost. The world tells us the insidious lie that who we are and what we have is never enough.
In Deuteronomy 6:5 we discover where God tells us to put our focus: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.” In its counter-cultural way, this command seems to totally ignore our earthly needs. The tug to manage our lives, our time and our money is strong. After all, if we don’t, who will?!
We are called to be good stewards of all that we are given. That stewardship is lived out in recognizing God as the source of all good gifts, taking those gifts—whether meager or much—giving thanks, and then offering those gifts in response to His prompting in our hearts.
When a couple can come to a place of letting the Lord manage their lives rather than letting their lives manage them, there comes a deep and accurate sense of having enough. In need or in plenty, rushed or relaxed, hungry or well fed, through Him and in Him we find that “godliness with contentment is great gain” (1 Timothy 6:6).
Father, the world is so loud as it clamors for our hearts. It is the noise of confusion that lures us out of living in You as we frantically attempt to manage each moment. Give us the grace to focus on Your Glory and to know how to be content, no matter what.
“We love because He first loved us” (1 John 4:19).
To misjudge the source of something can be embarrassing — as in incorrectly guessing the sender of an anonymous love letter. It can also be painful — as in having the wrong tooth filled. Finally, it can even be dangerous — as in repairing a gas leak by soldering the pipe just shy of where the actual crack is.
To assume that our ability to love another person has its source in our own hearts carries with it the potential to be embarrassing, painful or dangerous. “We love because He first loved us.” While early in marriage the depth of our love may seem to thrive in the abundant delight and overflow of our own hearts, a day may come when finding a drop of love or respect in our heart for our spouse will feel impossible. Where does that leave us?
It leaves us with the call to look at Jesus — God made flesh and came among us. He is the One from whom love begins. He is the One from whom we are given both access to love and patterns with which to offer love.
Consider Jesus washing his disciples’ feet. Consider Him willingly and sinlessly going to the cross for our sins. This is what draws us out of ourselves and into the heart of Love, this place where his mercy meets our unworthiness and still, He loves us.
Standing in that place of watching Jesus, the call becomes both clear and accessible. It is then that we are to be willing to lay down our own rights and pour out that same love to the one with whom God has joined us together in covenant.
Father, You love us abundantly and You love us well. Draw us into a posture of attentiveness, that we might see You loving us and learn to, long to, love and respect one another with that same purity, passion, and delight. Lord, that we not seek to draw love from our limited wells but rather from the unlimited depths of You.
“But now thus says the Lord, he who created you, O Jacob, he who formed you, O Israel: ‘Fear not, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine. When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you; when you walk through fire you shall not be burned, and the flame shall not consume you'” (Isaiah 43:1-2).
The reality of the presence of adversity in life is a given. Some Christian teaching mistakenly proclaims that this life of faith somehow entitles us to a smooth and painless ride through life, and that if we’re not traveling first class it’s only because we don’t have enough faith.
Consider Isaiah’s words: “When you pass through the waters … and through the rivers … when you walk through fire.” In addition remember what is written in Psalm 23: “Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death.” None of that sounds like adversity has been avoided. However, in each of these places we are promised by the Lord, “I will be with you.”
The question that begs to be asked at this point is: Which is a greater reality, the intensity of a trial or the presence of the Lord with us in that trial? This question sometimes cannot be answered until we have stood in the midst of the rising waters and experienced Him with us. It is then that the knowing moves from head to heart and the impact of the adversity lessens in the magnitude of God’s presence.
Father please help us to craft our marriage in the reality of Your words in Ecclesiastes 4: “Though a man might prevail against one who is alone, two will withstand him — a threefold cord is not quickly broken.” Let us let You be our third strand, Lord; weave us in Your strength that we might be held in Your hope, no matter the storm.
‘Yet even now,’ declares the Lord, ‘return to me with all your heart, with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning; and rend your hearts and not your garments.’ Return to the Lord your God, for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love; and he relents over disaster” (Joel 2:12-13).
Whether the elements that batter your heart come from someone else suddenly ripping apart your roof of protection or from your own tearing off of those tiles, there is a helplessness that comes from exposure. That same helplessness often renders us unable to see how to even navigate the storm, let alone cause it to subside.
It is rare that a marriage hits a crisis point as the result of one move of one person. The dance of a marriage is not a dance of one. Intentional or unintentional, malicious or thoughtless, planned or impulsive, both partners are continually making moves and taking steps that either add to the beauty of the dance or choreograph chaos.
When we are at the point of crisis—analysis of moves, assigning blame or demanding change are generally without effect. When the roof has been removed, there is one place to go for covering, to the Lord.
While returning to the Lord rather than facing into the circumstances may feel counterintuitive, it is the covering of His grace, compassion, patience and love that steadies us and gives us wisdom and hope.
In Joel we see the call to come to Him “with all your heart, with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning.” If the storm within us, the brokenness and repentance, is not commensurate to the storm without, we are unlikely to know or to seek the shelter we need.
Father, sometimes I want to fight, sometimes I want to fix everything, sometimes I just want to run away. Give me the wisdom and the strength to run to You, You who stand in the midst of the storm with me. Give me a heart that is willing to repent and be instructed, and give me the grace to trust Your heart.
For devotions to help make your faith—and your marriage—stronger each week of the year, see Jim and Jean Daly’s book The Best Year of Your Marriage: 52 devotions to bring you closer.
The post 8 Devotionals For Married Couples To Bring You Closer appeared first on Focus on the Family.
Continue reading...
Married Couple Devotional 1: External Relationships
Bible Verse:
“‘Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, “Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh”? So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate” (Matthew 19:4-6).
Devotion:
These words show us that marriage is the act of bringing two individuals together, uniting them, and making them one flesh. It is totally a “God thing,” nothing we could ever do on our own.
When we choose to live our married life according to the design God has for us, it can be amazing. However, when we choose to try to remain separate and insist on being connected with others in the same way we were before marriage, it’s a lot like running a three-legged race connected to two different people. It’s not going to be pretty!
The image of being joined brings with it a sense of husband and wife bonded primarily to one another. It’s not necessarily a call to preclude relationships with friends or family, though it may be. Above all, it is the call for us to consider life and choices with the one to whom God has joined us.
From being made one in Christ and seeking his design for our life, we can discern prayerfully which relationships bring life to our marriage and which ones seek to separate us from one another or from God. Furthermore, it is not discernment reserved exclusively for the beginning of marriage. A relationship that was life-giving early in our marriage may change and need to be relinquished, or a relationship we pulled away from in order to establish who we were as a couple may become a place to which we can return.
Prayer:
Father, this union is of Your making and reflects Your heart. Give us wisdom and delight as we let Your love join us together. Let us not consider what we are leaving but rather what we are stepping into with one another and with You.
Married Couple Devotional 2: Spiritual Foundations
Bible Verse:
“And the effect of righteousness will be peace, and the result of righteousness, quietness, and trust forever. My people will abide in a peaceful habitation, in secure dwellings, and in quiet resting places” (Isaiah 32:17-18).
Devotion:
Intimacy in a marriage is created in more ways and to a greater depth than we often imagine. Spiritual intimacy between a husband and wife provides a safe covering, but also more than a covering. Coming together as a couple before God brings us to a place of access to the power and passion we need to live in this world — not just survive, but thrive.
Consider Isaiah’s words as he describes how the righteous will live: in peaceful habitation, in secure dwellings, and in quiet resting places. What a counter cultural image! Each of these is a heart posture before it becomes a reality. And when, as husband and wife, we stand together in that heart posture, God crafts this reality in our lives. It doesn’t mean there aren’t storms or struggles, but this is how we’re able to live well and carry hope in the midst of whatever life holds.
As might be expected, because of the power it can hold, spiritual intimacy is fiercely opposed. Many couples get lost in feeling uncomfortable praying aloud together, or they slip into comparing (She’s more spiritual than I am. I can’t pray as well as he can.) often giving up and yielding to what feels comfortable but results in spiritual impotence.
Corporate prayer, engaging with Scripture together, worshiping together — all are primary resources for building spiritual foundations as a couple. It’s not about finding a formula, but being willing to answer the call to enter in and remain intentional in the building of our spiritual life together.
Prayer:
Father, Jesus tells us in John 10:10 that “the thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy,” but that You have come that we may have life and have it to the full. Please don’t let our pride or insecurities stop us from coming together before You with worshipful and attentive hearts. We want Your life, in fullness not in fractions.
Married Couple Devotional 3: Unexpected Challenges
Bible Verse:
“Now the birth of Jesus Christ took place in this way. When his mother Mary had been betrothed to Joseph, before they came together she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit. And her husband Joseph, being a just man and unwilling to put her to shame, resolved to divorce her quietly” (Matthew 1:18-19).
Devotion:
Mary and Joseph most likely began their engagement with normal dreams and expectations for their life together. All of us in our time of engagement spend time dreaming of our future; there is no reason to believe that Mary and Joseph were any different.
Two angel visits later, the future of this young couple became anything but the life they could have imagined. How many of us have been awakened out of our dreams only to find that what we thought was certain was nowhere to be found?
We so long to find or to create certainty in our lives. There is but one certainty in life, and that is the presence of our loving God, sealed with his words in Joshua 1:5: “I will not leave you or forsake you.”
When we feel as though we’re drowning in the turmoil and upheaval of our lives, God encourages us and puts us with others who know the journey. Consider what he did for Mary and Joseph to help them to navigate the journey. He put them in a community of men and women with hearts for God. He gathered Mary in the midst of others who loved Jesus and were drawn to Him and the Father through Him. On the cross Jesus gave John and Mary to one another as mother and son, and Mary lived in John’s house.
Like Mary and Joseph, your marriage needs community. No matter the size or duration of the challenges before us, God is faithful to his promise, and He simply never leaves us.
Prayer:
Such a promise, loving Father, a promise that we need in the uncertainty of our lives. Help us to yield our hearts to Your hope, and find our courage lodged in Your love.
Married Couple Devotional 4: Sex and Intimacy
Bible Verse:
“My beloved is mine, and I am his; he grazes among the lilies” (Song of Solomon 2:16).
Devotion:
These are words of belonging, words that for an engaged couple can generate tender imagining and anticipation of what life together will be. Lived out by a married couple, these words can hold together in intimacy what much of the world seems to determined to break apart. Intimacy in marriage, sexual and otherwise, was created by God and is to be fought for, delighted in and fiercely guarded.
To yield to one another sexually in marriage is to step into God-created intimacy that takes us out of ourselves and into places where the walls can crumble and we can be tenderly vulnerable and real. There is peace and expansiveness of heart that come with this intimacy, one that offers such glorious contrast to the confusion and momentum of the world.
We must be willing to fight for intimacy in our marriages and to fiercely guard it. How can we fight for it? By being attentive to each other’s hearts, by yielding to God in a way that allows us to more easily yield to one another. We guard it by being intentional, considering what pulls us from intimacy and stepping away from those places, considering what brings us life and stepping deliberately into those places.
“My beloved is mine, and I am his.” We long to belong. Marriage, as a coming together before God, offers a sense of belonging that mirrors our belonging to the Father. While the vulnerability that intimacy brings is sometimes hard or scary to step into, it is such a wonderfully holy place that God gives us, a place of delighting in each another that echoes of the Father’s delight in us.
Prayer:
Father, forgive me the places where, although I long to belong, I rebel under Your covering. Forgive me the places where I choose not to yield. Let me delight so much in You that I can delight in the one you have given me in marriage, that together we might be Yours.
Married Couple Devotional 5: TIme and Money
Bible Verse:
“I know how to be brought low, and I know how to abound. In any and every circumstance, I have learned the secret of facing plenty and hunger, abundance and need. I can do all things through him who strengthens me” (Philippians 4:12-13).
Devotion:
As with everything in our lives, our ability to live in the fullness that God has for us has all to do with our focus. The world tells us that we must concentrate on things, money, success, and on protecting all that we are able to attain — no matter the cost. The world tells us the insidious lie that who we are and what we have is never enough.
In Deuteronomy 6:5 we discover where God tells us to put our focus: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.” In its counter-cultural way, this command seems to totally ignore our earthly needs. The tug to manage our lives, our time and our money is strong. After all, if we don’t, who will?!
We are called to be good stewards of all that we are given. That stewardship is lived out in recognizing God as the source of all good gifts, taking those gifts—whether meager or much—giving thanks, and then offering those gifts in response to His prompting in our hearts.
When a couple can come to a place of letting the Lord manage their lives rather than letting their lives manage them, there comes a deep and accurate sense of having enough. In need or in plenty, rushed or relaxed, hungry or well fed, through Him and in Him we find that “godliness with contentment is great gain” (1 Timothy 6:6).
Prayer:
Father, the world is so loud as it clamors for our hearts. It is the noise of confusion that lures us out of living in You as we frantically attempt to manage each moment. Give us the grace to focus on Your Glory and to know how to be content, no matter what.
Married Couple Devotional 6: Love and Respect
Bible Verse:
“We love because He first loved us” (1 John 4:19).
Devotion:
To misjudge the source of something can be embarrassing — as in incorrectly guessing the sender of an anonymous love letter. It can also be painful — as in having the wrong tooth filled. Finally, it can even be dangerous — as in repairing a gas leak by soldering the pipe just shy of where the actual crack is.
To assume that our ability to love another person has its source in our own hearts carries with it the potential to be embarrassing, painful or dangerous. “We love because He first loved us.” While early in marriage the depth of our love may seem to thrive in the abundant delight and overflow of our own hearts, a day may come when finding a drop of love or respect in our heart for our spouse will feel impossible. Where does that leave us?
It leaves us with the call to look at Jesus — God made flesh and came among us. He is the One from whom love begins. He is the One from whom we are given both access to love and patterns with which to offer love.
Consider Jesus washing his disciples’ feet. Consider Him willingly and sinlessly going to the cross for our sins. This is what draws us out of ourselves and into the heart of Love, this place where his mercy meets our unworthiness and still, He loves us.
Standing in that place of watching Jesus, the call becomes both clear and accessible. It is then that we are to be willing to lay down our own rights and pour out that same love to the one with whom God has joined us together in covenant.
Prayer:
Father, You love us abundantly and You love us well. Draw us into a posture of attentiveness, that we might see You loving us and learn to, long to, love and respect one another with that same purity, passion, and delight. Lord, that we not seek to draw love from our limited wells but rather from the unlimited depths of You.
Married Couple Devotional 7: Facing Adversity
Bible Verse:
“But now thus says the Lord, he who created you, O Jacob, he who formed you, O Israel: ‘Fear not, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine. When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you; when you walk through fire you shall not be burned, and the flame shall not consume you'” (Isaiah 43:1-2).
Devotion:
The reality of the presence of adversity in life is a given. Some Christian teaching mistakenly proclaims that this life of faith somehow entitles us to a smooth and painless ride through life, and that if we’re not traveling first class it’s only because we don’t have enough faith.
Consider Isaiah’s words: “When you pass through the waters … and through the rivers … when you walk through fire.” In addition remember what is written in Psalm 23: “Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death.” None of that sounds like adversity has been avoided. However, in each of these places we are promised by the Lord, “I will be with you.”
The question that begs to be asked at this point is: Which is a greater reality, the intensity of a trial or the presence of the Lord with us in that trial? This question sometimes cannot be answered until we have stood in the midst of the rising waters and experienced Him with us. It is then that the knowing moves from head to heart and the impact of the adversity lessens in the magnitude of God’s presence.
Prayer:
Father please help us to craft our marriage in the reality of Your words in Ecclesiastes 4: “Though a man might prevail against one who is alone, two will withstand him — a threefold cord is not quickly broken.” Let us let You be our third strand, Lord; weave us in Your strength that we might be held in Your hope, no matter the storm.
Married Couple Devotional 8: Marriage In Crisis
Bible Verse:
‘Yet even now,’ declares the Lord, ‘return to me with all your heart, with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning; and rend your hearts and not your garments.’ Return to the Lord your God, for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love; and he relents over disaster” (Joel 2:12-13).
Devotion:
Whether the elements that batter your heart come from someone else suddenly ripping apart your roof of protection or from your own tearing off of those tiles, there is a helplessness that comes from exposure. That same helplessness often renders us unable to see how to even navigate the storm, let alone cause it to subside.
It is rare that a marriage hits a crisis point as the result of one move of one person. The dance of a marriage is not a dance of one. Intentional or unintentional, malicious or thoughtless, planned or impulsive, both partners are continually making moves and taking steps that either add to the beauty of the dance or choreograph chaos.
When we are at the point of crisis—analysis of moves, assigning blame or demanding change are generally without effect. When the roof has been removed, there is one place to go for covering, to the Lord.
While returning to the Lord rather than facing into the circumstances may feel counterintuitive, it is the covering of His grace, compassion, patience and love that steadies us and gives us wisdom and hope.
In Joel we see the call to come to Him “with all your heart, with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning.” If the storm within us, the brokenness and repentance, is not commensurate to the storm without, we are unlikely to know or to seek the shelter we need.
Prayer:
Father, sometimes I want to fight, sometimes I want to fix everything, sometimes I just want to run away. Give me the wisdom and the strength to run to You, You who stand in the midst of the storm with me. Give me a heart that is willing to repent and be instructed, and give me the grace to trust Your heart.
For devotions to help make your faith—and your marriage—stronger each week of the year, see Jim and Jean Daly’s book The Best Year of Your Marriage: 52 devotions to bring you closer.
The post 8 Devotionals For Married Couples To Bring You Closer appeared first on Focus on the Family.
Continue reading...