Anonymous Asks (361)

“Does marriage hinder your relationship with God?”

Hmm, I suspect somebody has been reading 1 Corinthians 7. “Those who marry will have worldly troubles.” “The married man is anxious about worldly things, how to please his wife, and his interests are divided.” “The married woman is anxious about worldly things, how to please her husband.” “I want you to be free from anxieties.”

If the apostle Paul is correct — and several decades of observation strongly suggest to me that he is — then, yes, it’s certainly possible that any given marriage can become an impediment to one’s service for the Lord, peppering life with distractions and putting you in the position of trying to serve two masters, which we know is impossible. I don’t believe it has to, but it can.

Service and Relationship

Before I go too far, we should probably distinguish between “service” and “relationship”. No marriage, however awful and distracting, can ruin a husband or wife’s relationship with the Lord, which the grace of God establishes once for all through faith in Christ, fellowship continuing on that basis. Hindering that fellowship is not something anyone can do to us, even someone with whom we share a bed and who knows us intimately; it’s something we choose to allow. C.S. Lewis observed that even the most miserable marriages may teach us dependence on the Lord, intensity in prayer and faithfulness under trial if we allow them to. Paradoxically, a marriage under immense stress can actually improve your fellowship with God provided you refuse to give in to anger, self-righteousness, resentment or bitterness.

However, a bad marriage can scupper Christian service. Testimony, definitely. It can change the way your local church uses you and the frequency with which you are able to use your spiritual gift or gifts for the benefit of others. A bad marriage can become a “time sink” that sucks away the most potentially fruitful years of your life.

Harmonious and Happy

My own parents were married the best part of sixty years, and it was one of the happiest and most harmonious partnerships I’ve ever seen. I’m not suggesting for a moment there were never any problems, disagreements, shortages, challenges or deeply sad moments. There were plenty, as there are in every life. I’m not suggesting my father ever fully understood the inner workings of my mother’s mind, or vice versa. That’s probably beyond any man or woman. I’m not suggesting neither party ever looked at what was going on in our household and thought, “How on earth did I end up here?” Nevertheless, on the whole, the positives of their married life vastly outweighed the negatives. My mother’s faithful, peaceful service in the home enabled my father to serve the Lord in ways he never could have served alone, and to leave behind generations of “godly offspring”, something the Lord is still seeking today.

I’ve also known homes where, in my judgment anyway, the parties would have been better off never to marry. So there is that.

Maturity and Commitment

Much depends on the maturity of both partners. My father served the Lord for years as a solo act, and assumed he would never marry. His own parents lived separate lives under the same roof, and left him with the impression that he would be more effective serving the Lord on his own than encumbered by a lifelong union of cordial opposites, or something even worse. He was probably correct. I’m not aware of all the details by which the Lord changed his mind, showing him that not all married couples were like his parents, but by his mid-thirties, that’s what happened. The woman he chose had been going through her own maturation process with a series of relationships that never resulted in marriage, to the point where she gave up and told the Lord she would be happy to be single forever if that was his choice for her. So both of them went into the marriage as spiritual adults determined to let the Lord rule in their new household.

I’m not saying marriage shouldn’t generally happen younger than the thirties, but for these two it couldn’t. They both had issues to work through. Sometimes that’s the way it goes.

Who Am I Doing This For Anyway?

Marriages are lower stress when both husband and wife see meeting their partner’s needs as an inalienable component of their own service to Christ. Christian marriages are high stress when one or both see their partner’s needs and desires as being in competition with their obligations to the Lord. Marriages in which the wife views hospitality, housekeeping and child-rearing as chores to be gotten through as quickly as possible so that she can “get on” with serving the Lord in some other way outside the home are bound to end up causing the sort of anxiety Paul refers to in Corinthians. They set her actual God-given role against her misconceived notion of it. Her husband’s relationship with the Lord need not be impeded, but his service definitely will be, as he runs around in circles trying to do the jobs at home that his wife deems beneath her or, more likely, annoys her by leaving them undone.

Likewise, the scripture teaches that a man needs to invest in knowing his wife, discerning her strengths and weaknesses, and ensuring she has the resources she needs to fill the role God has given her. Dad showed great respect for Mom the entire time they were married, starting every day by bringing her tea in bed. That tea went a long way! He also came to her defense instantly whenever Mom stretched herself too thin, as happened occasionally. Needy women would call her and make their problems hers, or her increasingly independent and snippy teenage sons might be less than perfectly respectful. Dad would step right in and make his presence felt, lifting the load when it got too great.

A man who “manages” his wife solely in order to get back as quickly as possible to serving the Lord as he sees fit has lost the plot. Both her needs and his become part of the service package the moment they marry.

Service, His and Hers

Despite her relative maturity and wisdom, even my mom had a tendency to make meaningless distinctions between her husband’s service for Christ and her own. They were, after all, one flesh. But though she did not realize it or think about it, her efficiency and independence in running the household without unnecessary drama freed him up to do all kinds of things he could never otherwise have done. If she had played the diva, swooning in exhaustion, sulking or calling him for help with every little decision and manufactured crisis, whole areas of ministry would have been off limits to him. Instead, she gave him plenty of space and quiet to study the scriptures, meditate and pray, knowing those things were important to his ability to serve effectively. She oversaw the household when he was away at conferences, and the house ran as efficiently as it did when he was home.

Still, she saw his service as significant and her own as minor, when she was the hard-working partner who made “his service” possible. What he achieved in his lifetime was not his but theirs, as I suspect the judgment seat of Christ will make evident.

A Cause Worth Rallying Behind

My mother embraced her biblical role as an “appropriate help” to Dad. Not every Christian woman does, or even sees the need. Likewise, not every Christian husband understands his obligation to give his wife a cause worth rallying behind. But that’s what spiritual leadership is. A man committed to nothing more taxing than showing up at church a few times a week and sitting through meetings can hardly blame his wife when she starts looking for something more meaningful to do with her time.

But these are issues related to effectiveness in serving the Lord, not our relationship with him. If your domestic situation is your excuse for allowing that to deteriorate, it’s on you.