Estimated reading time: 8 minutes
Like cupcakes that are missing sugar, there are too many Christian marriages that are missing a key ingredient. This missing ingredient in too many marriages doesn’t mean they’re not marriages, just as a cupcake missing sugar doesn’t mean it’s not a cupcake. But neither “tastes” good.
When we realize that what is at stake is not a bad batch of baked goods but potentially a poor reflection of the gospel through our marriage relationship, we will do all we can to put the ingredient of joy back into our marriages. Many Christian marriages would be sweet again if husbands and wives realized that we can only reflect the gospel in marriage well if we pursue joy.
My Wake-Up Call
My wife is usually pretty positive with me, but one evening she looked at me and said, “Did you know you’re pretty grumpy most of the time right now?” That knocked me a little off-kilter. She knew that things had been stressful at work recently. She had been supportive and prayerful with me. But after I stopped defending myself in my mind and started to think about what she had the courage to point out, I asked her more about it and realized that she was right. I was getting so consumed with trying to stay on top of my job responsibilities while dealing with multiple fronts during a difficult season that it negatively affected my parenting—and our marriage.
I had to ask for forgiveness and start to make changes. Nothing was immediate, but choice by choice, joy began to seep back into our marriage and family. As I evaluated what happened, I realized that recently, I had not loved my wife as Jesus loves the church. Ephesians 5:25 is loud and clear on a husband’s calling: “Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her…” Titus 2:4 tells older women in the church to “train the young women to love their husbands…” Reflecting the love of Jesus in marriage is important to God.
Loving Joyfully and Consistently
One specific way that Christ loved the church, a way that God calls us to echo his love in our marriages, is that Jesus loved the church joyfully. He loves to love us. Do we love to love our spouses?
Jesus doesn’t just put up with the church. He receives joy by giving us joy (Hebrews 12:2). Jesus doesn’t grudgingly but persistently love the church. He joyfully and persistently loves us! Jesus’s love doesn’t change based on how we are doing in our relationship with him on any given day.
I have consistently observed that when a husband or wife is loved this deeply by his or her spouse, knowing that their spouse loves to love them, there is a security in marriage that develops and strengthens over the years. When we love our husbands and wives so joyfully that it’s obvious to them and others, a sweetness develops. When a husband and wife exude this sweetness to their family, church, and others through the genuine joy of their marriage, their marriage “smells” like the gospel. A joyful marriage covenant points to the New Covenant of the gospel.
Here are five ways to cultivate more consistent joy in your marriage as you strive to reflect Christ’s joy in your love for your spouse.
1. Spend Intentional Time Together
Jesus delights to be with his bride. Yet, I am shocked at how quickly I can coast in marriage. The demands of work, bills, raising children, home repair, and just making it through each day can mean that I look up and we haven’t had enough intentional time together. We have found that a weekly date night is unrealistic in this season of five kids, including toddlers and teenagers. But we can still purposefully set aside one night or more a week to cuddle on the couch together while we watch a movie or talk. And we can still intentionally carve out times when we go out together without kids, both for a few hours and occasionally for a few days. Are you as intentional to spend time with your spouse as you are to take care of other life responsibilities?
2. Pursue Joy in Your Marriage With Christ and Share It
Joy ultimately comes from Jesus (Luke 2:10, Matthew 28:8, 1 Peter 1:8, 1 John 1:3-4). When you both invest personally in your relationship with Jesus, true joy will seep into your marriage. I have found that when we talk about what God is teaching us, whether spontaneously or as an intentional question, it encourages each other’s walks with the Lord and begins to spill over into our marriage relationship. You could start this by asking a simple, purposeful question each Sunday on the drive home from church about the sermon or how your spouse was blessed today. If your husband or wife doesn’t attend church with you, pray for and look for opportunities to mention something you are learning in the Word. Joy starts with our relationship with Jesus and then affects our marriage as we purposefully pursue joy in Christ together.
3. Act Like Jesus is King
One major joy-killer in marriage is stress. Every marriage deals with stress, both within the marriage relationship itself and also due to outside factors. If you looked at the stress in your marriage right now, it probably started with issues outside of your marriage (work, a financial crisis, in-law problems, etc.) and then developed into stress in your marriage, depending on how you both dealt with it!
One of the greatest pieces of advice I have ever heard from another pastor is to talk about things like work issues as appropriate or needed with your spouse for just a little bit when you get home. Then pray together about it before moving on with the evening if there’s a pressing issue, but act like Jesus is king. It is easy to bring things up again and go around and around. That is OK if you are working through the problem together or if it is more of a life-altering problem, but at some point, you need to have discussions unrelated to stressful issues. Give your problems to Jesus together, and let them go for the evening (Matthew 6:34).
4. Serve Together in Some Way
God designed marriage not just for the mutual benefit of you and your spouse but also to serve others. This reflects the serving love of Jesus (Mark 10:45). Serving God together in some way brings joy because, as Jesus explained, “It is more blessed to give than to receive.” (Acts 20:35). Of course, it can be good to serve in different areas of the church or family life depending on your season of life and giftedness. But I have found that doing some ministry purposefully together has brought joy to my marriage and fresh joy to other couples. For us, it has looked as varied as visitation, foster care, planning an outreach together, or being on the worship team together.
Serving together reminds both of you that God brought you together to glorify him. If your spouse is an unbeliever, you might not be able to serve together through a traditional ministry, but you can explain to your spouse how serving at church brings you joy. As you seek God in prayer, there will still be ways to serve others together, like doing something special for your family, a neighbor, or the needy in your community.
5. Find an Activity or Hobby That Connects You
You can feel personal joy in Jesus yet be grumpy and impatient toward your spouse, especially if your marriage has no relational grease. Shared purpose and activities are like the grease that keeps things moving without friction. God designed you to be one with your husband or wife (Genesis 2:24), and oneness includes enjoying life with each other (Ecclesiastes 9:9).
My wife and I have found that we need to remember that we are not only spiritual beings, but embodied spiritual beings. Doing a regular activity together connects us relationally and makes it easier to relate spiritually. Making time to run and walk together has given us a shared interest and time to catch up. We have not always run together, but it has sparked joy in our relationship. If you don’t have an activity or hobby you regularly participate in that connects you, talk about it with your spouse and try something new.
Modeling Our Joyful Covenant Love
Recent studies have shown that fewer and fewer young people think of marriage as being in their future. This generation needs the hope of joy in marriage. Surely, if Christian marriages were more often joyful, we would share gospel hope in our words and through our lives as others see our joyful covenant love. God designed marriage to “taste” sweet as we reflect the joyful love of Jesus!
My grandparents were married for 64 years before my grandpa died. They went through some major trials together in over six decades of marriage, including major medical issues, accidents, serving in ministry in a hard place, and the difficulties that come with aging. Yet through it all, their default was to find joy in Jesus and in each other. I will never forget having them in our apartment on their 60th anniversary. Only being a decade or so into marriage, I asked them what their marriage advice would be. Their wisdom still rings in my ears, “You have to be able to laugh together.”
Does your spouse not only know that you love them but also know that you love to love them as your Savior does? Brothers and sisters, a marriage that “smells” like the gospel will have one often-overlooked ingredient: joy.
