Journey to Surrender

What do you believe about your marriage? 

Just as faith launches your spiritual journey with the Lord, we come to the marriage altar full of faith too. We believe that our covenant will last a lifetime. We believe our spouse is "the one" for us. We believe that God will bless our sacred union. We believe for a good future together.

Then life happens. And faith wanes.

Do you still believe in your marriage? Maybe it would be better if I asked it this way: "What do you believe about your marriage - right now?"

It's not a rhetorical question.  What you believe about your marriage is just as important as what you believe about your spouse, the topic we covered last time in Part 1 of this series.

What you believe about your marriage will largely determine the path of your future relationship with your spouse.

3 Important Beliefs

There are dozens of suggestion I could make on what you should believe about your marriage, but to keep it simple, I'm only going to offer three here:

1) God is For Your Marriage - Most Christians would agree that God is for marriage. After all, He's the one who created it in the first place. But did you know that God is for YOUR marriage in particular. He cares about the health, passion, intimacy level and longevity of your marriage, and He is wanting to actively partner with you to help you have the marriage you dream of.  Pray for your marriage and your spouse. Ask God to lead you by the Holy Spirit in the way you speak, act and think concerning your marriage. He is anxious to help. Your marriage matters to God. Believe it.

Related Posts:

• Marriage Full of Grace - You were made for glory!
• Faith vs. Facts - What do you do with the gap?

2) Intimacy is the Goal - Have you ever asked yourself what the purpose and goal of your marriage is? My opinion is that intimacy is the ultimate goal of any marriage. I'm talking about intimacy in all its forms: spiritual, sexual, emotional, financial, recreational, intellectual... Intimacy in the whole of your beings. Intimacy that comes from being fully know and fully loved. When you got married, you and your spouse became one, so why not live like it is really true. Forget scorekeeping, stop struggling for power and to "win," put away selfishness and anger. These all tear at the fabric of your oneness.

Related Posts

• What if Intimacy Matters Most?
• What if You and Your Spouse Really Are One?

3) The Best is Yet to Come - Society and the media will tell you that marriages ultimately decline. It's a lie. If you walk in the truth of beliefs 1 and 2 above, then it is entirely possible to continually grow closer regardless of how long you've been married. Don't believe the myth that marriages eventually end up in roommate status no matter what you do. Work to keep your sex life vibrant, to continue to date your spouse, to give yourself fully to your spouse and marriage, to invest in romance and other emotional dimensions of your relationship. You can and should keep your marriage on the Path of Intimacy.

Related Posts:

• Staying On the Path of Intimacy 
• There's Always More 

Yes, what you believe about your marriage really matters. Your beliefs drive your thoughts, actions and words. Give some thought to the things your are believing about your marriage these days and ask yourself if these beliefs will take you where you want to go.

What key  marriage beliefs would you add to my three? Leave a comment!


PS  Take a minute to give this fabulous song a listen, God Believes in You by Pierce Pettis.
Remember as you listen, that God believes in your marriage too!

My last two posts (Marriage: Made for Glory and The Glory in Your Spouse) explained how the glory of God is available to infuse you, your marriage and your spouse with divine blessing and power.

If you came away from those posts thinking, “That sounds just too good to be true,” then you need to understand a little more about grace.

God’s grace is the mechanism by which the glory of God is made available to us. By definition, grace comes to us as a free and undeserved gift from God (free to us because of the costly sacrifice of Jesus!).

It can be difficult to get a grasp on this extravagant grace. We want to think that we have something to do with it. We want our own efforts to count for something. But the truth is that our own human striving means nothing when it comes to filling your life and your marriage with the glory of God.


Filling your marriage with more of God (his power, his peace, his love, etc.) is a fairly simple two-part process.

First, we get to know who God is – his nature, his attributes, his emotions, and his acts. We can look to Jesus to see the Father (2 Cor 4:6-7). We can study the Word. We can talk with Him in prayer. We can ask for revelation by the Holy Spirit Ephesians 1:17-23, Ephesians 3:16-21). We can worship.

As I said before, I think getting to know God is the most important priority in our lifelong spiritual journey. And this knowing is more than just head knowledge. It is a deeply intimate and experiential understanding that goes deeply into our soul.

Then, because we have been given a new nature and are now one with Christ, we can believe that all these things that are found in God are also available to us. We can appropriate God’s glorious power to fill our marriages.

Remember, this glory comes by grace, not by human effort. Our effort is not in doing good or by trying to earn God’s favor with our behavior. Our effort is in getting to know him and in believing what he says about us and about our marriage is absolutely true.


Now, don’t misunderstand what I’m saying. I’m not saying that you don’t do good things for your marriage or your spouse. Of course you do. If you read hear at all, you’ll see I strongly believe in doing things to strengthen and grow your marriage. What I’m talking about is the heart behind the doing.

Many who struggle with grace fear that an overemphasis of grace will encourage people to selfishly do whatever they want. To me, that is grace without glory. That’s why I prefaced this grace post with two about glory.

When you truly experience the glory of God, when you see his infinite and sacrificial love, his blessings and promises, his extravagant goodness toward you, it is life changing. It is radically transformational.

This transformation, this renewing of our minds through the knowledge of God, is our motivation for doing rightly in our marriages. It’s not to earn bonus points with your spouse or God. It’s not giving in order to get something in return. It’s not even doing things because you know they are the “right” things to do.

You do things that bless your spouse and marriage because of grace you have been given. You love your husband or wife because you are filled with God’s nature, and he IS love. You lay your life down for your wife because Jesus laid his life down for you. You honor your husband because in God’s eyes he is worthy of honor.

All of this comes to us by God's grace. Freely. Extravagantly.

It is the free gift of God that gives us whatever we need in order to love, bless and honor our spouse in the way God calls us to do it. It is by God’s grace that his glory can shine forth in your marriage.


Do you believe it?

Last time I focused on the amazing truth that your marriage was made to carry the glory of God. As a believer, you and your marriage have free access to the infinite resources of our infinite God!

Today I want to examine another aspect of glory: seeing the glory in your spouse.


We are all a work in progress. Those of us on a spiritual journey are seeking to become who God has designed us to be, to reach our full potential, by gaining a deeper understanding of who we are in Christ. This is a journey not of human striving but a work of grace done by the Holy Spirit. Our part is but to learn to look on the face of Jesus and allow Him to transform us into a reflection of His glory (2 Cor 3:18, 1 Cor. 4:6-7). You were made for glory.

As hard as it can sometimes be to see our own life in the context of this journey into glory, it can be even harder to see your spouse in the same way. But I’m convinced that this is how God sees us.


It’s really easy to look at your spouse and see what’s “missing.”

It’s a lot harder to look at your spouse and see what’s there but has not yet been revealed in fullness. That’s what learning to see with the eyes of heaven is all about. That’s how God sees us, and that’s how we should see each other.

There are several key things we can do to shift our perspective to be more in line with heaven’s.

First, as I explained in my previous post, we have to get to know the glory of God, his nature, his attributes and his promises. Next, believe that as a Christ-follower your spouse is a glory-carrier. They have been given a new nature in Christ and are on a journey toward walking in that new nature. Thirdly, ask God to reveal to you the “real nature” of your spouse – who God created them to be. Also, pray for your spouse, that they will be able to walk in the fullness of their God-given destiny.

Finally, rather than taking the easy way out of criticizing your spouse for what you see as their shortcomings and misdeeds, speak to them of their potential. Tell them of the glorious nature and promises of Christ that we all have access to. Learn to speak to that which you want to see rise up in him or her.


Let’s say your wife is deeply discouraged over some parenting issues and is acting out of her frustration. Rather than criticizing her for being emotional, remind her of her spiritual authority as a parent. Go together to God in prayer and ask for the wisdom that God promises he will provide if we ask.

Maybe your husband is full of anxiety about your financial future, maybe even with good cause due to your circumstances. Don’t join him in worry, criticize him as a lousy provider, or accuse him for his fearfulness. Instead, remind him of God’s unrelenting faithfulness and speak to him of the perfect love of God that casts out fear.

I’m not saying this kind of thinking is necessarily easy. It goes against our unredeemed human nature to see with spiritual eyes. The good news is that Jesus died to give us a new nature and gave us the Holy Spirit to renew our minds.

Speak into your spouse’s life in a way that encourages them toward glory rather than accuses them with shame. Shame is ultimately a terrible motivator. But glory truly has transformational power.

Our church recently hosted a conference called “Glory and Grace.” The entire three day event was focused on exploring and extolling these two extremely important attributes of God’s nature.

I am struck by how significantly both glory and grace also affect marriages. In this post and my next one I will talk about glory. I’ll follow that up with a post about grace.

It may seem awkward to talk about glory as it relates to marriage. But once you understand what glory is, it may not be quite so much so.

You see, God’s glory is simply his very nature. It’s his essence, the “ness” of God: His awesomeness, His loveliness, His powerfulness, His brilliance, His unfailing love and grace.


As Christ followers, we are in essence carriers of His glory. It amazes me that God chose to put this kind of treasure into the likes of you and me, but that’s how it is.

For it is the God who commanded light to shine out of darkness, who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellence of the power may be of God and not of us.

1 Cor 4:6-7

We are made for glory. We are made to reflect the Lord’s glory in ever-increasing measure (2 Cor 3:18). This is our inheritance in Jesus.

I led worship at our church last Sunday and closed with the song “We are an Ark.” It proclaims the truth that we are made to be glory-carriers.

If you have a few minutes close your eyes and give a listen. Let the truth of this reality sink deeply into your soul.


Direct YouTube Link

I love how the song ends by switching from "I am and ark" to "We are an ark." This is both a personal and corporate truth. The "we" truth also applies your marriage.


By extension, your marriage is also made for glory.

Two believers joined together in the covenant of marriage cannot help but be a mutual “ark” for the glory of God.

God made marriage to be a reflection of his selfless and eternal love for us. The marriage covenant is a direct parallel of the new covenant. God sent his Son, Jesus, to the earth as our Bridegroom, to win us as His bride forever. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again now.

People should get saved in response to looking at the beauty (glory) of the marriages in the church.

I believe that’s possible. I believe that’s how it was made to be. Marriages, full to overflowing with God’s glory!


So what’s the deal? Why aren’t people seeing the glory of God and getting saved by observing the marriages in the church?

I think it‘s at least partly because many marriages, and the people in them, aren’t walking in the glory for which they were intended. I say that not as condemnation or judgment, but to encourage you with the truth that glory is your right and the right of your marriage. Access to the glory was purchased for us by Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross! It’s bought and paid for!

And for those whose marriages are walking in a measure of glory, let me assure you there is always more – much more.

I think a lot of what holds us back from experiencing glory in marriage has to do with shame. Shame is the opposite of glory. Glory brings light and freedom and peace. Shame brings darkness and bondage and strife. I think a lot of marriages are trapped in shame, and the enemy keeps us there by fooling us into thinking that’s all there is. But that’s a lie! (I have a series on shame that digs more deeply into the shame issue than I can in this context.)

Shame is not our inheritance in Jesus, glory is.


How do we get out of the trap of shame? The short answer is found in the scripture I quoted above. The knowledge of the glory of God is found in the face of Jesus. To live in the glory, we have to first know the glory. We have an open invitation to passionately and boldly pursue the intimate, experiential knowledge of God’s nature and glory.

The highest goal in our spiritual walk should be to know Him more.

Ask God to show you His glory. If you don’t know where to start, use the prayers of the Apostle Paul found in Ephesians 1:15-23, that the eyes of your heart be opened to who God is, with wisdom and revelation. Or use Ephesians 3:16-21, and ask for a deeper understanding of the immeasurable love of Christ. Worship is also a fantastic way to become more deeply infused with the glory of God.  

As we begin to see and know the glory of God, the next step is to embrace it in your life and your marriage. Here a just a few examples of where you can apply the glory of God to your marriage:

• Believe that the power that raised Christ from the dead also fills your marriage. God has the power to do exceedingly abundantly above all we ask or think. That’s a lot of power!
• Believe that the peace of Christ that calmed the stormy seas can calm the storms in your marriage.
• Believe that the same love of Christ that fills us with the fullness of God is available for your marriage.
• Believe that in Christ, we have freedom from shame and from the lies of the enemy that want to keep us trapped there.

The applications of the glory of God are truly limitless!!  Because God is limitless. There is so much hope and power in this truth. 

What aspects of the glory of God would you like to see applied to your own marriage? Pursue it! Get to know it! Believe it! Go for it! It’s yours!