CHAPTER 1

GOD’S DESIGN FOR MARRIAGE

Dr. Greg Smalley and Erin Smalley

GOD IS THE CREATOR OF MARRIAGE —it was His idea from the very beginning. Listen to how Eugene Peterson, author of The Message, paraphrases this truth:

GOD, not you, made marriage. His Spirit inhabits even the smallest details of marriage. And what does he want from marriage? Children of God, that’s what. So guard the spirit of marriage within you. Don’t cheat on your spouse.

“I hate divorce,” says the GOD of Israel. GOD-of-the-Angel-Armies says, “I hate the violent dismembering of the ‘one flesh’ of marriage.” So watch yourselves. Don’t let your guard down.

MALACHI 2:15–16, MSG

God is so passionate about marriage that He gave it a very important place throughout the Bible. The Scriptures begin with a marriage: “It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him” (Genesis 2:18). Then right in the middle of the Bible is a remarkable and very provocative book: the Song of Songs. It’s a love story —passionate, provocatively physical, something that makes good Christians blush —between two lovers, a husband and wife. Finally God’s Word ends with a very different but even more important wedding: the marriage of Christ to His imperfect but redeemed bride, the church, “the wife of the Lamb” (Revelation 21:9).

Scripture also records Jesus performing His first miracle at a wedding (John 2:1–11). And the metaphor of a bride and groom is used to describe the relationship between God and Israel —“I will make you my wife forever.” (Hosea 2:19, NLT) —as well as Christ and the church. The apostle Paul wrote about this in Ephesians 5:31–32:

A man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh. This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church.

When God said, “I hate divorce,” in Malachi 2:16, we wonder if His words were less about His feelings toward divorce than they were about His love for marriage. Authors John and Stasi Eldredge, in their book Love and War, explain God’s passion for marriage:

When through the prophet Malachi the Lord God of Israel says, “I hate divorce,” we hear it with a shudder. But it ought to be with a surge of hope —the passion conveyed in those three words reveals how deeply he loves marriage, how strong his vested interests are in its success.[5]

So if God is that passionate about marriage and has given it such a prominent place throughout the Scriptures, it’s vital that we begin this Ready to Wed journey with a clear understanding of the true purpose of marriage.

At this point, some of you might be thinking, Who cares? What difference does it make if I understand the true purpose of marriage or not? We’re already engaged, and we’re about to be married. We need to acquire new tools and learn new skills!

Certainly tools and skills are important, and we’re going to give you plenty as you read through the pages of this book. However, if you don’t first understand how something is supposed to work, you might misuse it and end up frustrated, or worse.

I (Greg) learned this lesson the hard way on our honeymoon. On the night before Erin and I married, my mother surprised me with a special gift. She had carefully wrapped a small box and told me that it was something for our honeymoon night. Actually, her exact words were, “I got you something.” This was the extent of her explanation.

After Erin and I checked into our hotel room that first night, she disappeared into the bathroom. As I nervously waited for my bride, I found the present that my mom had given me. I’d totally forgotten that I’d put it in my suitcase. As I unwrapped the box, I found a tiny pair of black underwear. And when I say “tiny,” I mean extremely little —like a thong but much, much smaller. You get the picture.

I held this tiny black thong to the light, and I could literally see right through it. However, it looked so massively uncomfortable, and I wasn’t even sure that I could wear the stupid thing. As I tried it on, I thought to myself, Will seeing me in this minuscule patch of cloth really be something that my wife will find thrilling? I can’t possibly believe that she would think this is sexy.

Luckily I decided to go with my gut on this one, and I hid it away in my suitcase. Actually, to be honest, it was the fear of my wife seeing my gut squeezed around that microscopic thong that made me chicken out!

The next night, however, I showed Erin the underwear and asked her why my mother would have bought me something like that to wear.

“Would this have been sexy?” I innocently asked my wife.

I’ll never forget Erin’s reaction. She instantly started laughing at me.

I thought, If this is all it takes to get her laughing, praise God I didn’t wear the thong!

I’m certain Erin must have realized that I was confused, so my wife, in her most tender and compassionate voice, said, “I think your mom gave you the lingerie to give to me.”

All I could say was, “What? Oh! I’m an idiot.”

As we said before, if you don’t know how something works or what it’s for, you’ll end up either making a fool of yourself or misusing it and potentially causing frustration and heartache. We want to help you clearly understand how marriage is supposed to work, and we want to show you God’s true purpose for marriage so you can avoid making some devastating mistakes.

Have you thought about why you’re getting married? We’re sure that your first response will probably be, “We’re in love.” That’s usually what couples say when we ask that question. But let’s dig a little deeper. Many couples enter marriage with a host of romanticized ideas about love and marriage. With great excitement they anticipate a spouse who will be all they ever dreamed of in a mate.

Here are some of the reasons for getting married that we’ve heard from engaged couples over the years as we’ve guided them through premarital counseling:

But we have to tell you, if any of these reasons describe the purpose of your upcoming marriage, then you could be in trouble. Big trouble! If seeking happiness or finding a soul mate is your objective, then you’re setting yourself up for many years of hurt and frustration. Why? The real question is, What happens when you are not happy? What will an absence of happiness mean for your relationship? We can predict the questions couples begin to ask themselves, because we’ve heard them time and again:

Shortly after the wedding, most of us begin to see faults in our spouses and “chinks in the armor” that we overlooked before the ceremony. Or we simply become disappointed.

Our future spouses will let us down. We suddenly realize that our new spouses need some serious work. In fact, it appears that they are far from being able to fully meet our needs. We begin to see that —horrors —instead of being sold out to our ideas of marriage, our spouses entered into the union with their own goals, along with their own lists of needs and expectations.

You know what happens then, don’t you? Our goal of happiness or finding our soul mate shifts from marrying the right person to changing our spouses into the people we want them to be. We buy into the myth that if our spouses could change one or two key things, our marriages would be great. This is where the real trouble starts for many couples and leads them down a very dark path toward unhappiness, frustration, and disconnection. We love how author Reb Bradley, in Help for the Struggling Marriage, describes this truth:

Considering that 20th century America places such emphasis on building marriages [with] the right romantic “chemistry,” it should be no surprise that many [couples] are easily disappointed in their marriages. What we have come to believe to be right romantic “chemistry” is actually nothing more than “self-centered” love. Most people are romantically drawn to those who gratify them, so [they] marry with expectations of being fulfilled by their mate. That type of love is not true selfless love, but is self-centered, basing its attraction on personal gratification. It says, “I love you for what you do for me. I am drawn to you for how you make me feel. I know I am in love with you, because I need you so much.” Needing someone is not evidence of a selfless, giving love for them —contrarily, it is evidence that you want them for the emotional fulfillment you will receive from them. It is a reasonable estimate to suggest that 98% of all Christian marriages today are based on this dangerous form of self-serving love. Is it a surprise that so many are unhappy in marriage?[6]

Isn’t it interesting, however, that God never mentions any of these goals in the Bible? Nowhere does He talk about happiness, the search for a soul mate, chemistry, kids, security, comfort, companionship, sex, or even love as the “true” purpose for marriage.

God created marriage with something far more wonderful in mind than simply a place where we can get our needs met and find happiness. God uses marriage to accomplish a very important goal: to help us become like Christ. The apostle Paul clearly understood this: “Those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the likeness of his Son” (Romans 8:29). If you miss out on this understanding, your marriage is destined for pain and frustration. But if you “get it” —especially now as you prepare to walk down the aisle —then you’ll be far ahead of the rest of the pack.

Listen to how Tim and Kathy Keller explain the true purpose of marriage in their book The Meaning of Marriage:

When looking for a marriage partner, each must be able to look inside the other and see what God is doing, and be excited about being part of the process of liberating the emerging “new you.” . . . This is by no means a naïve, romanticized approach —rather it is brutally realistic. In this view of marriage, each person says to the other, “I see all your flaws, imperfections, weaknesses, dependencies. But underneath them all I see growing the person God wants you to be.” . . . The goal is to see something absolutely ravishing that God is making of the beloved. You see even now flashes of glory. You want to help your spouse become the person God wants him or her to be. . . . What keeps the marriage going is your commitment to your spouse’s holiness.[7]

How Do You Know?

As you prepare to get married, rather than asking yourself, “How will my needs be met?” ask, “How will my life show evidence of Christ’s character?” Marriage is not the answer. It never was designed to meet our needs. Christ is the answer. In God’s infinite wisdom, He knows that our greatest relational needs will be met as we become more like His Son. As with everything else He created, God wants to use marriage to direct us toward Himself. God uses the challenges and the joys of marriage to help shape and mold us into the image of Jesus —and that’s been His goal from the very beginning:

Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.”

So God created man in his own image,

in the image of God he created him;

male and female he created them.

GENESIS 1:26–27

This seems so simple: A great marriage is the outcome of becoming Christlike. So the real question is, How do we know if we are becoming like Jesus? The good news is that Christ Himself gives us the answer in John 13:34–35:

A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.

As you both become Christlike, the evidence is your ability to love each other as Christ loves you. That’s what this book is really about: helping you love your future spouse as Christ loves you. This is exactly what the apostle Paul wrote: “Each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband” (Ephesians 5:33).

We hope this makes sense. God’s paramount goal for your upcoming marriage is not your mutual happiness. It really isn’t! That will surely come, if you cooperate with God’s real purpose for your marriage. But in fact He wants so much more than mere happiness for you. He wants joy, significance, spiritual power, and a compelling attractiveness that turns people’s heads. In other words, He wants to use your marriage to help you and others become more like His Son.

If Erin and I had known, going into marriage, that it wasn’t intended to be the answer to all of our problems and the antidote to all of our fears and weaknesses and deficits, we both would have saved ourselves a lot of pain and matured a lot faster than we did. It helps enormously just to know that God designed marriage —with its joys and its trials, its ups and its downs, its good times and its bad times —to help us to grow to be more like Christ. If you realize ahead of time that the process won’t always be pain-free and easy (and that it’s not supposed to be), then when the rough times come, they won’t feel quite so threatening. Especially since God will use your marriage struggles and challenges to benefit you spiritually and to grow your Christian character.

Knowing the true purpose of marriage also helps to vastly increase your chances of creating a satisfying and fulfilling relationship as a couple. And it has the power to change even “bad” things, the things that otherwise could threaten your marriage, into things that will actually make it stronger, better, and more solid. We want to end this section with a great summary of Gary Thomas’s book Sacred Marriage: What If God Designed Marriage to Make Us Holy More Than to Make Us Happy?:

Marriage is even more than a sacred covenant. If our hearts are attuned to what God is teaching us, our marriage relationship can help us learn sacrificial love, forgiveness, servanthood, and perseverance. Marriage is a sacred tool that helps us grow spiritually in ways nothing else can. . . .

If I focus on changing myself rather than trying to change my spouse, I find I must depend on God and in that process I will find deep fulfillment. . . .

We must be clear about why we married and why we should stay faithful in that marriage. A worldly point of view promotes staying married only if our desires and “needs” are being fulfilled. But from God’s perspective, we are to maintain our marriage because doing so brings glory to God and points others to Him. What a drastic difference![8]

Now that we’ve laid the proper foundation and you understand God’s true design for marriage, let’s talk about the tools and skills you’re going to learn as you read this book.

Twelve Ways to Grow a Strong Marriage

The good news is, you are just beginning to grow the “seeds” of your marriage, and you get to decide what you want your “bouquet” to grow into. What should you focus on to set your marriage up for success? After many years of working with couples, studying the Scriptures, and investigating the scientific research, we have isolated twelve essential behaviors needed to help you grow your relationship into a thriving marriage. These twelve behaviors are divided into two main parts in this book.

The first part is about learning how to proactively invest in your fiancé(e) and marriage. French author André Maurois wrote, “A successful marriage is an edifice that must be rebuilt every day.” He was right on the mark. Marriage is a lifelong process that we must commit ourselves to again and again. Every day we have to decide to love our spouses and invest in our marriages. In part 1 are six key chapters on the following topics to help you proactively invest in your marriage:

1. Leaving and cleaving. A thriving couple puts into practice Genesis 2:24: “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife.” They leave their dependency on Mom and Dad, the single lifestyle, and personal issues and learn how to cleave and unite with their new spouse.

2. Making a lifelong commitment. A thriving couple understands that divorce is not an option and that marriage is a lifelong adventure. They have the same attitude toward each other as God has toward us: “I have loved you with an everlasting love” (Jeremiah 31:3).

3. Honoring each other. A thriving couple intentionally honors each other. They seek to “be devoted to one another in . . . love [and] honor one another above [themselves]” (Romans 12:10). They recognize that the key to keeping their hearts open to each other is to view one another as a priceless treasure, “for where your treasure is, there your heart will be also” (Matthew 6:21).

4. Sharing spiritual intimacy. A thriving couple has a deep, shared faith. They consciously regard Christ as the bedrock of their relationship. Their relationship is “built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone” (Ephesians 2:20), and together they daily pursue an intimate relationship with Christ.

5. Engaging in mutually satisfying physical intimacy. A thriving couple regularly celebrates their marriage with passionate sexual intimacy, joining together to “become one flesh” (Genesis 2:24). They regard sex not as a chore or an obligation but as a delightful dance in which each spouse puts the other’s needs and interests ahead of his or her own.

6. Fostering positive communication. A thriving couple knows that communication is the lifeblood of a vibrant relationship. They spend time every day in conversation to know each other and to be known by their partner, recognizing that one day they “shall know fully, even as [they are] fully known” (1 Corinthians 13:12).

The second part of the book focuses on healthy ways to manage conflict. When two fallen, inherently selfish people marry, they are bound to experience moments of disagreement, hurt, frustration, and irritation. It’s inevitable! Instead of trying to eliminate conflict or avoid arguments, the key is to face our disagreements and learn how to use conflict as a doorway into the deepest levels of intimacy and connection. The chapters in part 2 are designed with exactly that goal in mind.

7. Valuing differences. A thriving couple realizes that God created men and women differently —and that’s a very good thing! Genesis tells us that “God saw all that he had made, and it was very good” (1:31). A thriving couple understands that their differences (gender, personality, family of origin, etc.) can cause conflict, but they’re never the problem; instead, it’s attempting to manage these differences that creates many of the challenges they face in their marriage.

8. Creating realistic expectations. A thriving couple realizes that they have many expectations —things they want, hope, wish, and expect will happen in their marriage. However, unclear or unrealistic expectations cause many challenges within a marriage. Therefore, a thriving couple spends regular time talking through what they expect and finding win-win solutions for unrealistic expectations. The apostle Paul knew the secret to a win-win approach to expectations: “Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others” (Philippians 2:4).

9. Practicing healthy conflict management. A thriving couple recognizes that conflict is inevitable. They know that the secret of their success lies in the way they manage conflict, and they embrace the concept that God uses this bumping and jarring to cause them to grow —“As iron sharpens iron, so one [person] sharpens another” (Proverbs 27:17). Instead of avoiding conflict, they believe that healthy conflict is the doorway to intimacy and deeper connection.

10. Sharing responsibility as a team. A thriving couple finds ways to resolve the issue of male and female roles between themselves. They hammer out a plan that preserves fairness and equity in the way they divide household tasks and responsibilities. They try to outserve each other every day, and they strive to be unified, to “bear one another’s burdens” (Galatians 6:2, ESV), and to function as a team. Their goal is to “have unity of mind, sympathy, brotherly love, a tender heart, and a humble mind” (1 Peter 3:8).

11. Pursuing financial peace and harmony. A thriving couple understands that the number one conflict in marriage is money, and that “the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil” (1 Timothy 6:10). They take time to understand their different money personalities and how to make financial decisions as a team.

12. Coping with stress and crises. A thriving couple expects that they will face challenges and painful trials in the course of their marriage. The Scriptures make this fact clear: “Dear friends, don’t be surprised at the fiery trials you are going through, as if something strange were happening to you” (1 Peter 4:12, NLT). They learn how to manage the stress and challenges that are inevitable, especially during their first year of marriage.

During your engagement, and in the first months of your marriage, you are “seeding” behaviors, patterns, and habits into your relationship. We believe that these twelve healthy behaviors are the best way to equip and prepare yourselves for a thriving marriage.

We’re thrilled that you’ve invited Focus on the Family and some of the nation’s best relationship experts on your marriage journey with you. We’re excited to continue supporting you and encouraging you through all the seasons of life to come in your marriage and family.

DR. GREG SMALLEY is the vice president of marriage and family formation at Focus on the Family. Greg earned his doctorate at the Rosemead School of Psychology at Biola University and a counseling degree from Denver Seminary. He is the author of thirteen books, including The DNA of Relationships, The Wholehearted Marriage, Fight Your Way to a Better Marriage, and The Date Night Challenge.

ERIN SMALLEY is a program manager at Focus on the Family. She is a registered nurse (labor and delivery) and earned her master’s degree in clinical psychology from Evangel University. Erin is the coauthor of several books, including Before You Plan Your Wedding, Plan Your Marriage, Grown-Up Girlfriends, and The Wholehearted Wife. Greg and Erin have led marriage seminars around the world and trained pastors, professionals, and lay leaders on how to effectively work with married and engaged couples. They’ve been married for more than twenty-three years and are the proud parents of three daughters and one son.

Ready to Talk

Here are some questions the two of you can discuss. Share as honestly as you can; it’s good practice for when you’re married!

  1. When you hear that God’s purpose for marriage is to help you become more like Christ, how do you feel? Why?
    • Fortunate
    • Contemplative
    • Doubtful
    • Worried
    • Eager to get started
    • Excited

    How do you hope to feel about it by the time you finish this book?

  2. This chapter lists a lot of reasons why couples want to get married. Which of the following are closest to yours?

    Having read the chapter, did you change any of your reasons for desiring to get married? Why or why not?

  3. Pick one of the twelve traits of a thriving marriage listed in this chapter. Have you seen this trait in anyone else’s marriage? If so, what did it look like? What do you think it might look like in yours? What would you like to learn about it between now and your wedding day?

Ready to Try

Choose a project that takes extra patience such as:

Follow up by discussing the experience. Were there some tense moments, frustrations, and disagreements? When did you have to watch your words? How can experiences like these sand off rough edges and help you develop Christ-like traits? How can you get the most out of these times after marriage?