Lesson 79

How Can We Grow Spiritually As We Mend Our Marriage?

In order to encourage spiritual intimacy in our marriages, we must be receptive to discussions of spiritual matters. This means that we need to live in a Christ-like way in developing peace and harmony in our homes, share our own spiritual weaknesses, avoid having a judgmental attitude, and prioritize the scheduling of worship and service together. We should love Jesus more than we love anyone or anything else.

When the two of you love Jesus together, you will develop spiritual intimacy. It can become the closest intimacy you have in marriage along with eternal benefits. Danielle and her husband usually agreed on theological issues, but she now recognizes that they lacked spiritual intimacy. “He came to Christ before I met him. In fact, it was he who led me to the Lord. Consequently, for a long time I thought that he was a spiritual giant compared to me. I didn’t realize that his life of secret sin was actually stunting his spiritual growth and that much of what others and I saw in him was pretense. However, over time as I grew spiritually, I began to worry about the long-term effect of his life of sin and even began to wonder about his eternal destiny. When he finally surrendered every corner of his life to God and found freedom from his habitual sin, we began to grow closer spiritually. Introducing a daily devotional and prayer time together was an important step toward greater spiritual intimacy. I think we are still a work in progress, but we’re finally moving in the right direction in harmony with one another!”