“I love those who love me,
And those who seek me diligently will find me.” (Proverbs 8:17)
The degree to which you know and love God determines without exception the degree to which you will have success in knowing and loving your spouse.
Why is that? One of the reasons for this is that knowing and loving God results in becoming like Him. God is good, faithful, loving, and kind: those who love Him, admire Him, are in awe of Him, and lap up the wisdom found in Him will automatically grow to be more and more good, faithful, loving, and kind themselves. The same is true in regard to any characteristic or attribute of God: you “become” what you love. I don’t mean you become God, of course, but that you become “god-ly,” that is, like God. And there is no truly happy home unless it is first a godly home.
Another reason knowing and loving God is the root of all good marriages is that knowing and loving God means having God on your side. If you are building anything, but especially in building a marriage, you need to have God on your side because just about everything and everybody else, it seems, is pulling down as fast as you put up. Every marriage has its enemies: among them are the devil himself and the whole world of folks all around you who often act like the devil, not to mention your own tendency to do the stupid thing and sin a good bit of the time. God loves and cares for those who love Him, and the more you are “in good” with God, the more you are going to call on Him in time of need, fight with the weapons He supplies you, and follow His directions in the midst of the battle. Like Nehemiah and the warrior-builders at the Jerusalem wall (Nehemiah 4:17), we need a trowel in one hand and a sword in the other—and a prayer continually on our lips because “unless the LORD builds the house, they labor in vain who build it” (Psalm 127:1).
Yet another reason knowing and loving God has to come first in any marriage is the fact that God is your Creator. If anybody knows what makes for a good, successful marriage, it is the God who set it all up in the first place. God really does know best, and He is not sitting up there in heaven trying to keep His wisdom-for-living a secret from you or anybody else. The invitation is open to anyone who is willing to learn this stuff, but if you are not sitting at His feet, using His textbook, memorizing His diagrams and formulas, and if you are not taking what you are learning and applying it in the great lab-room of life, you are just flat-out going to fail, no question.
The question is, Do you really want to get to know God and learn to love Him? Do you really want to know Him and know what He thinks is important—about Himself, about the world, about yourself, about your spouse, about marriage? If you do, I have good news: God promises that those who come looking for Him (earnestly and sincerely) will, without fail, find Him.
“Lord God, we pray again You would make us like You, for You are the perfect Spouse and You do all things right in Your own marriage to us. Teach us according to Your Word and by Your Holy Spirit how we are to conduct ourselves in our marriages. You alone have created us, and You alone have created the institution of marriage; so You alone can really teach us and guide us in our own marriages. We pray, dear God, we would know You and love You above all others and that You would grant us the grace to really know and love our own spouses. Through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.”
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