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Nowadays, marriage advice is everywhere. I was going through a few articles and I bumped into one that was entitled "50 Of The Best Marriage Tips Of All Time." That's fifty. Five. Zero. There seems to be no shortage of advice that couples can get. There's always another best practice to finance, intimacy, parenting, schedules, work and so on. But no matter how much advice we get, it will not necessarily give us a better marriage.
Just to clarify, I have nothing against marriage advice. It's wonderful icing on the cake, and can be especially helpful to those just starting out in marriage.
But that's all that it is – icing. A marriage cannot stand with just icing. We need a good base to hold that icing together, and there is no better base and no better foundation than Jesus Christ.
1 Corinthians 3:11 tells us, "For no one can lay a foundation other than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ."
That's true for all areas of life, from finances to ministry to work and, yes, even to marriage. When we make Jesus the foundation of our marriages, we have the most important thing we need to have an amazing relationship with our spouse that blesses us both as well as those around us.
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There is a limit to how much improvement can be gained through marriage advice or 'tried and tested' best practices if that foundation of Jesus Christ is missing.
The reason for this is that advice changes the outside, the behaviour. Good advice can indeed make us better spouses. But Christ, however, is in the process and business of making us new from the heart, from the inside out, not just better.
Unless God is making our heart new, our marriage will not reach its full potential because good advice without the Good News of Jesus cannot fundamentally change our hearts. Only the Good News of the finished work we now have in Christ can do this.
My wife Ces and I have been married for a while now and I can honestly say, we are not looking for more marriage advice. We've heard it all. Keep accountable, make a budget, don't miss date nights, celebrate anniversaries, don't do this and don't do that. And I'm not saying we do everything perfectly, but the simple fact is that following all the marriage advice in the world according to our own strength and our own capacity has its limits.
What has been more crucial for our flourishing as a married couple has depended far more on how much of Jesus we have allowed into our marriage and we have been not just satisfied through Him, but empowered to live a good life together in more areas than just the marriage relationship.
Advice is great and it might make you a better person, husband, wife or Christian, but only to some extent. Great marriages are built from the heart, and the only way we can change our hearts is to experience more and more of Christ on a regular basis. More than '50 tips' or more marriage advice, there comes a point when what married Christian couples really need is to hear more of the Gospel, more of Jesus and what we as individuals mean to Him, plain and simple.
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