What are those special ingredients you would blend together to create a lasting love with your spouse? Those special characteristics that can extend the length of a marriage past where most marriages end? Would you blend meaningful communication and honor? How about mixing continued courtship, sensitivity to our spouse’s needs, selflessness and resolving conflict and anger? Now that I type these down and look at them, we really need to love our spouse by working in all of these areas. Marriage is a continual learning experience where there are no experts.

    Have you spent any time this year in seminars, reading marriage improvement books, or taken any classes to improve your marriage? As author Gary Smalley says, “Even plumbers have to be trained for a license, but two people can go get a marriage license on a whim.” We desperately need to educate ourselves more on marriage and then act on our new found skills. Our spouse will love us for it and we will find more happiness in our marriage. But more education on the subject may not bring us long-lasting love; there is something still missing.

    If you had to narrow it down to one ingredient which one would you choose? I’ll give you a hint—Psalms 127:1. “Unless the Lord builds the house, its builders labor in vain.”

    If you are starting a new house, or even renovating an existing one, you better start with the blueprints. Dennis and Barbara Rainey emphasize this point in their book Moments Together for Couples:

“Many marriages today certainly need renovation. And to do it right, we need to go back to the original blueprints—the divine blueprints... I often meet Christian couples who have problems because they make a common mistake: as sincere Christians they believe they are automatically living their lives according to the correct plan. The trouble with that naïve reasoning is that many different blueprints compete for their commitment.”

    What blueprints are you working from? I believe that the Raineys are correct when they say that staying true to God’s blueprint for marriage is the ingredient for lasting love.

    One of the best analogies of why we need God in our marriages is in the book God’s Little Devotional Book for Couples:

“A child once asked his father to draw a picture of a stepladder for him. The father did as he was asked. Then his son said, ‘No, Dad, you left out something.’ The father looked again at the double upside-down V he had drawn on the page and the lines he had drawn as the ladder’s steps. ‘What did I leave out?’ he asked. The little boy replied, ‘The part where you put the paint can.’

“The little boy may have been more interested in paint cans than a properly engineered ladder. But what the father later realized was that the ‘cross-piece’ that extends to provide a resting place for paint cans is the one part of a stepladder that is truly indispensable! Without it, the inverted V shape of a ladder would collapse to the ground. It is the crosspiece that allows a stepladder to support weight in order to be useful.

“If a couple is only joined by a recited vow, their marriage may quickly collapse. If Christ, however, forms the crosspiece that holds their lives into a sturdy triangular shape, they can withstand much pressure.”

    God gives stability, and so much more, to those who are both committed. Another good analogy is from The Christ Centered Marriage, by Neil T. Anderson and Charles Mylander. “The glue that holds the two together is the relationship that each spouse has with God. The strongest architectural design is an equilateral triangle (i.e., all three sides are equal). Should either side of the triangle be broken or weakened, it dramatically affects the strength of the marriage.” Notice the husband and wife get closer together as they move closer to God. The closer a man and his wife get to God, the clearer they see how important it is for them to stay close to each other. Ecclesiastes 4:12 says, “Though one may be overpowered, two can defend themselves. A cord of three strands is not quickly broken.”

Unless the Lord builds the house, its builders labor in vain.

    In God’s Little Devotional Book for Couples it states, “We are unique as individuals. But each marriage is also unique. It is as ‘individual’ and one-of-a-kind as the two people involved. Just as God created us as completely original individuals, so we need to invite Him to create our marriages as completely original relationships. This can only happen when each person in the relationship yields his or her individuality to God’s higher purpose.”

    A Christian marriage is a spiritual union with God. It is intended to be a visible expression of the relationship that Christ has with the Church, his Bride. Think of that depth of commitment! Sacrificial love so deep that he would give up his life to save and beautify her. Our relationship with God, through the Bible and prayer, can teach us a lot about honor, patience, forgiveness, working through trials together, sacrificial love and so much more. Let’s follow his blue print for marriage and ask him to create a strong and unique marriage with our spouse!

    My wife was making salad dressing by mixing and blending ingredients the other day. Then we realized she didn’t have any buttermilk for the recipe. Luckily there was a way to create a substitute for buttermilk by mixing in some other ingredients. But marriage is not salad dressing! We can mix in a lot of really good ingredients, but it's never going to quite have the lasting love God has intended for us unless he provides the blueprint and the power to love in our marriages.

Resources: So how do we develop a closer relationship with God in our marriage? The very best place is start studying the Bible and praying together daily. Devotional books for couples are also great resources. Check those already mentioned: Moments Together for Couples by Dennis and Barbara Rainey is from Regal Books (also on the internet in a very useable format at http://www.familylife-ccc.org/moments/moments.cgi); God’s Little Devotional Book for Couples by Honor Books, Inc; and The Christ Centered Marriage by Neil T. Anderson and Charles Mylander. If only we all would stand strong together and not let other priorities crowd out our important “together time” studying God’s blueprint for our marriage. Think how strong our families and churches country would become if were all to dedicate ourselves to this starting today!