by 
What are you doing today to strengthen your marriage? Marriage is not something that you can take for granted. Even though we believe that wedding vows are important and should be the glue that binds people together, just like any other thing that is in this world, marriages change as time passes.
The Time Warp Wife gives us 3 Things You Can Do, Right Now, To Strengthen Your Marriage. All three of these are spot on; however, I think that the best thing that you can do to strengthen your marriage has to be about your inner heart attitude towards your spouse. Obviously God has to have highest priority in your life, but next to that, does your spouse have a high priority?
This doesn’t mean that every second of every day has to be spent with them, or that you cannot do something you wish to do, but this does mean that you think about how your actions, words, and behavior affect them. This means that you treasure this person that walks with you through this life because they are your partner.
Which means that this will be a difficult thing, because most things that we should do are difficult! Why is that, that the things that we know we should do, the people that it should be easiest to love– those are the relationships that we tend to take for granted.
Trouble with the Obvious
I think this is the reason that the Bible spends so much time talking about the obvious when it comes to the marriage relationship. When it talks about husbands and wives loving and respecting each other, you would think that they wouldn’t have to say this! I mean, especially today when many choose their partner based on “love”.
If you think back to when you were dating, your spouse could do no wrong, or it was easy to forgive them if they did. You wanted to spend every waking minute with them. You could only imagine what it would be like waking up next to them.
Many couples now find themselves many years down the road not knowing who their partner is, rehearsing their spouses wrongdoings, and spending time finding fault.
Love Is Not Romance
This is why the love in the Bible between spouses isn’t the love of infatuation or attraction. It’s not sexual or even friends. It’s the self sacrificing love where we put someone over ourselves. It’s part and parcel of a life that seeks to amplify the good in the other and to help each other be more than they could ever be apart. It is a love that weathers the storms one’s life brings, and why wedding vows have awful things in them– I mean, who goes into married life saying “I hope we have sickness and that we live in a cardboard box under a bridge, because that’s what I want to do!”
When we enter that covenant, we’re more than likely blinded by infatuation and attraction and willingly choosing to sign up because that’s what we’re supposed to do, but the vows are serious, and you will have trials in your marriage. You will have disagreements and fights. You will find that things will be difficult and it is in those times that you must cling to God and your spouse– you must love the other unconditionally– because Satan wants to pull you apart and make you ineffective.
So that is why, in good times and bad, we must choose to strengthen our marriage. To bolster our spouse and to show them that we will be with them no matter what. That they’re higher priority than anything else around, and that they matter to you.
This will look different to every marriage and to every person– I can’t claim to say “do this one thing and you’ll have it made” because it’s not like that. Get to know your spouse and you will know how best to strengthen that great thing you have been blessed with. And never give up.
