5 Ways You Can Improve Your Marriage Today (from the Scriptures) by Chris White

Having a good marriage is one of the greatest blessings you can ever have in life.  But like all good things, a rewarding relationship takes quality time and effort to develop and grow.  Here are 5 things, rooted in the wisdom of the Bible, that you can do starting today that will add to the quality of your marriage and will make your spouse wonder how they got so lucky to find a person like you.  This is intended for marriages of all ages, but if you know someone who is newly married or is preparing for marriage please consider sharing this.

1.  Warm-Up the Tone of Your Communication.

^“Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice.  Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you.”

                                                                                                                                -- Ephesians 4:31-32

St. Paul’s command to the church in Ephesus was to put away the anger and negativity that so easily ruptures relationships and to adopt settled standard of kindness, compassion, and forgiveness towards one another.  To be tenderhearted means to try to understand how others might feel in a given circumstance.  When you see a story on the television about a family or town that has suffered a devastating loss or tragedy and you find your heart moved in sympathy or even service, this is an example of being tenderhearted.

When I think about how this applies to marriage, my mind goes directly towards the tone and content of our communication with one another.  Many years ago my wife and I were going through a real rough patch in our marriage.  Frustration was high (for many reasons) and love had worn thin.  A friend recommended I read Margaret Hardisty’s book  Forever My Love (and I would commend this book to you if you haven't read it).  It had much to say about couple communication but the big take-away for me was speaking to my wife in a warm and gentle way (even though my feelings towards her and hers towards me were frustrated and distant).  Eventually my feelings caught up with my words and I found that I truly did love and value my wife much more than I realized.  Let me also say, if you think this is some form of manipulative technique or pop-psychology, just try doing the opposite and see where it takes you.  If you continually speak in words of anger and sarcasm or use demeaning or derogatory terms towards anyone but especially your spouse, it will become the settled position of the heart.

As a veteran married-man, I can tell you there are many days and moments where I know I could have done better, but in general a warm and loving tone in my communication with my wife usually always begets more of the same in our relationship.  The golden rule that Jesus gave the world is to do unto others as you would have them do unto you.  This wisdom is never more apropos than in the words we speak to our help-mate on a daily basis.

2. Verbally Appreciate the Contribution of Your Spouse to Your Marriage (and family if you have one).

^“ Death and life are in the power of the tongue,
    and those who love it will eat its fruits.” -- Proverbs 18:21

What the proverb is telling us is we will reap a harvest of either death or life in our lives based on how we speak and what we speak to each other.  Certainly this touches on point #1, but I want to direct it to a particular sin many of us commit so often we aren’t even aware of it anymore.  The sin I am speaking of is being a complainer.  There is a legitimate time to complain (especially to God) if we have been overwhelmed by evil or injustice.  In fact, some of the greatest and most honest prayers of the Bible begin with the words “hear my complaint O Lord!”  But there is another kind of complaining that the Bible warns against many times as being faithless and evil in the sight of the Lord.  This is complaining that is sourced in personal ingratitude amidst many blessings or complaining calculated to dishearten and demoralize others.

This requires little illustration as most of us have at least one friend or family-member that utterly repels us with their chronic complaining.  They speak in terms of bearing a personal cross about matters like not having enough ice in their drink or how the custom leather they ordered from the factory for their luxury car was just not up to their expectations.  I’ll never forget the Christmas where I had moved heaven and earth in my schedule and family budget to make the long journey to celebrate the holiday with my aged grandmother.  After the six hour drive in traffic and bad weather with young children, she thought it was important to communicate her disappointment that I didn’t call her on the phone very often.  I’m really not complaining myself here, but it just struck me at the time as being probably the most absurd complaint I have ever received.  But like my youngest daughter (now an adult) constantly reminds me, in this life no good deed ever goes unpunished.

As this touches on your marriage, can I point out that complaining about your spouse to them or someone else is probably one of the most destructive uses of your tongue.  There is no wife or husband that couldn’t use some improvement, but most people I know are quite frankly good enough even though they are not perfect.  Maybe your husband doesn’t make enough money to buy you the house or car you want right now, but celebrate and appreciate the fact that he makes an effort every day to get up and go to work to provide for you and the children and see if he doesn’t strive harder.  Maybe your wife isn’t the so-called ‘trophy wife’ but celebrate and appreciate all she does for you and the family and watch her become a truly beautiful woman.

The words you say to and about your spouse have great power to build up or tear down.  Appreciation and celebration will always bring a net gain to your marriage, while a complaining spirit is a certain path to bankrupting your relationship of all its joy and love.

3. Pray for Blessing and Spiritual Growth for Your Spouse (and trust God for the results).

“ And I tell you, ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you.  For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened.”   –Luke 11:9-10

Jesus’ promise that asking, seeking, and knocking in prayer will receive a positive response from God is part of a larger teaching on prayer that stresses persistence and importunity (a sense of our great neediness) before God.  How often do you pray for your wife or husband?  And when you pray do you ask God to make them the person you want them to be, or the person society expects them to be, or do you ask God to make them all He intended them to be?

God hears all prayers, but as far as I can tell, in his infinite wisdom and goodness, he does not answer all of our requests.  Let’s face it, most of us very quickly lose track of the fact that our own happiness is not paramount in the mind of God.  I’m not saying God wants everyone unhappy and miserable, but he does have a greater plan in the universe that when fully realized will make everyone it touches as happy as humanly possible.

We all have a tendency to project what a perfect version of our marriage partner would look like and I can tell you if they ever became that person, you would probably not be worthy of them.  I hope you don’t think I’m prevaricating here when I say by all means pray for the things you know are an obvious struggle for your spouse.  More than one of my inner demons has been vanquished through the faithful prayers of my wife to God on my behalf.  But in a general sense, wouldn’t the greatest act of love be to pray that your beloved would simply become and be free to be all that God himself has designed them to be?  That’s the kind of spouse you really want and that’s the prayer the Lord truly delights in answering because it is an act of faith and trust in him.

4. Joyfully Do an Act of Service for your Spouse Today (with no expectation of reciprocation).

‘And Jesus called them to him and said to them, “You know that those who are considered rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones exercise authority over them. But it shall not be so among you. But whoever would be great among you must be your servant, and whoever would be first among you must be slave of all. For even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” ’  --Mk. 10:42-45


It is one of the great ironies of this world that men (and women) who would claim great power measure it in how many people serve them, while God who is truly the most powerful person in the universe considered it the mark of greatness to pour out his life in humble service to mankind.  The paradigm of Jesus is not tracking how much others are doing for you, but pouring your life out for the sake of others.


One of the chief places we are to honor God is in our marriage and therefore serving your spouse is a high calling in the eyes of the Lord.  Most successful marriages have defined duties for both husband and wife.  Some of these are divinely ordained by gender (a man will never be a mother to his children in a natural sense) or through God’s revelation (such as a woman is called to place herself under her husband’s leadership even as a man is called to love and respect his wife as Christ loves the church) or by a couple’s preferences and giftings as they grow together.  For instance, I am very good with words and very poor with numbers and though it seemed right for me as the husband to handle the family checkbook early in our marriage, after messing up our bank account and tax returns many times with my poor math skills, we quickly learned that this should be within the purview of my wife’s duties as she is by temperament and mentality more geared to the details of balancing the check book and paying our creditors than I am.


But within these duties there are always things we have to do but don’t really want to do.  This is the point where we can lighten the load of our spouse through giving them the deliberate gift of service.  One of my weekly duties is rolling out the trash cans to the street on Wednesday night.  I hate doing this because I usually work late on Wednesdays and I have to do it the dark and frequently in bad weather.  When I drive up to the house and find Christean has already done this for me, it is not only a personal gift, but she achieves “rock star” status in my mind.  I know she feels the same when she comes home from work and finds I cleaned the kitchen before I left in the morning.  Service to one another will probably never achieve the romantic status of a bouquet of roses or a candlelight dinner, but in terms of expressing heartfelt love, it is just as tangible and timed just right, may easily be its equivalent.

5. Freely Give Affectionate Touch (and of course intimate touch if mutually desired).

“ Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.  And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed. ”

                                                                                                                                       –Genesis 2:24-25

One of the most touching stories in the Bible is the creation of Adam and the subsequent creation of Eve.  In this account, men and women share the dignity of having been created in the image of God but also in the creation process we are taught the eternal lesson that we (as men and women) have a vital and heartfelt need to bond with one another in marriage.  But I want to approach this from another angle that is not usually considered but very much related to our humanity as created by God.

God has made humans as spirits enrobed in flesh.  At our essence we are not spirits with a body add-on, but a tapestry of physicality and spirituality woven and bound together.  These together make us fully a person.  In fact, the greatest mystery of the Gospel is contained in the words of the Apostle John “the Word became flesh” (Jn.1) where deity purposely took on the limitations of those made in his image that he might be our savior.  To become flesh and bone as Christ did is to affirm the goodness of God’s creation of people as we are made.  The resurrection of Christ in his body shows us that the intention of God is redeem us in the fullness of who we are which is body and soul.

It is striking that our flesh, the skin we all have, is the largest organ of our body and that it is in nearly all places a sensory organ able to regulate our temperature, to sense contact with the outside world, and able to sense and make emotional contact with people and other creatures.  Our skin working with our brain has an indelible memory of things and how they feel to the touch.  Nearly a decade ago I had contracted a virus which affected the sensory nerves in my skin.  When this happened I was forced to go through a battery of examinations with a neurologist to rule out any serious diseases.  One of tests required me to be blindfolded and hold my hands out.  Different objects were placed on the palm of my hand and without seeing them or rolling them around to sense their size, I was asked to identify what they were.  Amazingly I was able to identify nearly everything the first time.  Our skin is very perceptive of all it touches.

But there is also a communication that comes with skin to skin contact that comes in the form of a cascade of neurochemicals which do amazing things in our bodies.  Two of the most well-known are called oxytocin and dopamine.  Both are released in periods of hugging and cuddling and touching in both erotic and non-erotic forms.  The secretion of these chemicals in our blood actually bond us to one another, produce a general sense of well-being, reduce feelings of stress, and even lowers blood pressure.  There is a reason why babies feel close to their mothers when they are held, or why a heartfelt hug from a friend reassures you when you just heard some bad news, or why after making love the problems you are facing that day seem a bit smaller.

God created this world with incredible detail and precision that it would work perfectly and be a blessing to all who live here.  One of the entailments of this is the gift of touch.  As we give this gift in its many forms within marriage, we have been given the ability through God’s creative genius to build up the bond of love we share and contribute to their life through better health and well-being.  We have skin for a reason and it is very good.

I hope as you read through these ideas that you were inspired in some way to be a better husband or wife to your beloved today.  If you have any questions or additional thoughts that might improve this article for others, please use the comment box below.  Have a great day and thanks for dropping by!

Lessons from the Tabernacle of the Wilderness Pt. 7 by Chris White

“Moreover, you shall make an altar as a place for burning incense; you shall make it of acacia wood.”   Ex. 30:1

“Let our voices rise like incense, Let them be as sweet perfume. Let our praises fill the temple, Hallelujah's ringing ever new.” –song by Linda Whitmer-Bell

So universal is the perfumer’s craft that it should not surprise us to find incense offerings in a great many of the world’s religions.  In the ancient world, a world without loads of public sanitation and a definitive lack of bathing facilities, incense and perfumes were a practical, valued, and widely traded commodity.  The incense that was used in the tabernacle was a special formulation given by the Lord that was not to be copied or used outside the tent upon pain of death.  Two of the elements in this compound, frankincense and myrrh, are well-known to us because of their presence in the birth narratives of Christ.  The other two elements, Onycha and Galbanum, are well-known to the world of perfuming.  Onycha comes from the membrane of a particular sea snail that was used in making many types of perfumes in the orient.  Galbanum is the sap of a wild fennel plant which is believed to have healing properties.  Many have undertaken to find spiritual significance in each of these elements and rightly so, but I would focus the one thing they all share in common: to create them living things must be crushed, bled, and lose their life.  Does this remind you of anyone?  “But He was pierced through for our transgressions, He was crushed for our iniquities; the chastening for our well-being fell upon Him, and by His scourging we are healed (Is. 53:5).”  Also this incense is of the non-combustible type meaning it doesn’t burn of its own, but rather is placed on a fire to be consumed.  This should remind us that the power, privilege, and prerequisite of prayer is not founded in our great faith and eloquence, but rather because of our relationship to the Savior whose sacrifice reconciles us to God.  Next time: The Brazen Altar

On Keeping Calm and Carrying On by Chris White

Recently my wife and me bought some humorous drinking glasses at a souvenir stand while on vacation.  What tickled our fancy about these is that there was a black line around the middle of the glass.  Above the line it said “optimist” and below the line it said “pessimist” playing on the old proverbial question about temperament “is your glass half-empty or half-full?”  These glasses answer the question in a straightforward way: it all depends on how much is still left in your drink.  Of course, if you were having something stronger than a soda in one of those glasses, it would seem more logical that the words “optimist” and “pessimist” would be reversed to reflect one’s sensations based on their consumption.  All kidding aside, it does strike me that whatever your disposition tends to be, your feelings and attitudes tend to follow closely.  If a similar turn of events happened to both a pessimist and an optimist, they might experience the same result in the end, but their experience of those events would be radically different.  An example that underscores this was a CNN news story I watched a couple of years ago about an entire town located in Oklahoma that was leveled in a matter of minutes by a tornado.  As you listened to the survivors tell of their experiences invariably there are two reactions: “we all survived and that’s what’s important” and “after thirty years in this home, we’ve lost everything”.  Both will be sleeping in the Red Cross shelter and eating government surplus MRE’s that night, but one will fall asleep that night with gratitude while the other experiences the disturbing sleep of desolation.

A friend of mine, himself a fellow blogger and a realistic optimist, reminded me of Viktor Frankl’s famous words  “Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way (from Man’s Search for Meaning).”  As an accomplished psychotherapist and Holocaust survivor, Viktor Frankl knew what he was talking about here was true and vital.  Our approach to life, our way of viewing our present circumstances, our way of thinking about our perceived future affects our destiny and sense of well-being.  The good news about all of this is that when life circumstances are beyond our control, we can with the help of God possess a “peace that passes understanding (Phil. 4:7).”  Let me pass on three principles from Scripture that point us in this positive direction.

Consider the words of Jesus about worrying over the most basic necessities of life:

^“ Therefore do not be anxious, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’  For the Gentiles seek after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all.  But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you. Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble (Matt. 6:31-34).”
I would suggest that the first principle is having a clarity that if the God of the entire universe concerns himself with your life (which he does), worry on your part should be downgraded to prayerful patience. When Jesus tells us to not be anxious, he is not describing an attitude of careless unconcern but rather forbidding us to worry ourselves sick about such matters.  To get into that state of mind usually leads us to an unnecessary panic that is quite faithless.  God does exist.  He does care about you.  Tell him in quiet or vocalized prayer what you are needing.  Convert the energy of worry into patient and persistent prayer.
The second principle comes from St. Paul’s letter to the Philippians:
“ I rejoiced in the Lord greatly that now at length you have revived your concern for me. You were indeed concerned for me, but you had no opportunity.  Not that I am speaking of being in need, for I have learned in whatever situation I am to be content.  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 (4:10-13)”.
What Paul is describing here is a contented confidence that God will provide the strength you need for what you must do that day.  In the parlance of recovery literature, this is “one day at a time” on steroids.  I chuckle a bit at this because I have had many days that were so bad, I was more on the “one-minute at a time” plan.  But the point is made by me writing this to you right now: obviously I made it through each and every one of those past days.  I believe it was the great missionary to China Hudson Taylor who said where God guides, God provides.  If you are in a hard place today, dare to trust that God will give you all the strength you need for today as you need it.  And tomorrow? Ditto.
The third principle follows: have the perspective that God does permit problems and difficulties to come our way for specific training.  The apostle James wrote “ Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds,  for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness.  And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing (James 1:2-3).” 

When Jesus taught what we call “The Lord’s Prayer” to his disciples, part of that prayer is that God “..will not lead us into temptation, but deliver us from evil.”  What is in view here is not the temptations of the flesh per se, (although they can lead us into all sorts of trouble) but rather the “trials of various kinds” that James speaks of here.  We would be foolish to pray for trials and foolish not be pray to be delivered from them, but absolute fools to think we can live in the present world without our fair share of them.  Often what troubles folks the most is the haunting question “is this happening to me as a judgment because God is mad at me?”  If you think that way let allay your concern by stating the obvious: if God was mad at you, you would probably be dead and in hell right now.  But instead, you’re reading this article.  Thus, the alternative explanation that there are simply some things God wants to build into your life that cannot be done apart from the crucible of personal suffering.  God does not pain our lives gratuitously, but rather purposefully, and that purpose is for good, even if the intentions of those who cause your suffering are completely evil.

We are not taught to be grateful for the trials, but grateful for the certainty that they will build in us a spirit like tempered steel, strong under stress.  Having the perspective that you have more to gain from a hard thing than you’ll lose can and does make it bearable.  Knowing that it is part of God’s specific training program for your life should bring a certain peace that surpasses understanding even in the midst of scary or painful circumstances.

One of the current pop-culture icons is the British propaganda poster from World War II that says “Keep Calm and Carry On”.  Good advice even if the Nazis aren’t bombing your house today.  But the key to keeping calm is not whistling in the dark, but a grateful heart and a sure knowledge that God is in control and bigger than the insurmountable problem you face today.