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Q&A: Paul Tripp Answers Your Questions about Marriage

May 24, 2021 by: Crossway

This article is part of the The Crossway Podcast series.

A Sacred and Holy Covenant

A few weeks ago, we asked readers to submit their marriage questions for Paul Tripp. Many of you sent questions from around the world, questions about healthy communication, asking forgiveness, offering correction, and reigniting a sense of romance.

Marriage

Marriage

Paul David Tripp

A marriage needs something sturdier than romance. Popular author and pastor Paul David Tripp encourages readers to make 6 gospel-centered commitments with the aim of making Jesus Christ the foundation of their marriages.

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Topics Addressed in This Interview:

01:25 - Five Biblical Principles

Matt Tully
Paul, thank you so much for joining me for this special episode of The Crossway Podcast.

Paul David Tripp
Matt, I love talking to you, and I think what we’re about to talk about is terrifically important.

Matt Tully
Today we’re going to share some really honest—and at times pretty raw—questions that listeners sent in from around the world related to marriage. But before we jump into the questions, can you start by sharing what it’s been like for you to talk with hundreds, if not thousands, of couples over the years about their marriages? More particularly, do you think being so close to so many other couples’ joys and pains in marriage has impacted you in significant ways?

Paul David Tripp
It surely has. I think the first thing that it’s done is it has exposed my sin, weakness, and failure in my own marriage. I feel so thankful that God has called me to do what I’m doing because in that call he has rescued me from me. I still live as a man in need of grace, with a marriage in need of grace, and we know that it will be that way until we are on the other side. So, I’m very thankful for that. But there’s another thing. As I’ve talked to hundreds of couples and thought about marriage pretty deeply over the last decade, there have been some things that have risen to the surface that I think are just biblical givens that if you don’t have these in place, first of all, you won’t understand your marriage, but you may not even understand the help that people give you for your marriage. If I could just take a moment to talk about those. The first is that, clearly, other than our relationship with God, the Bible presents marriage as the most sacred of human relationships. There are two things that are rather shocking that the Bible talks about. First of all, the Bible uses the word covenant when it comes to marriage. There’s no other relationship that’s called a covenant other than our relationship with God. That immediately puts marriage in this sacred, holy place. And then you get to the New Testament—this is even more mind-blowing—marriage is positioned as a physical image for us to see everyday of Christ’s relationship to the church. Wow, wow, wow! In covenant and church you have marriage elevated to something important. If you’re not seeing your marriage in that sacred way, you’re already missing what marriage is about. The second thing is it’s very clear in Scripture that the ultimate purpose of marriage is not temporal human happiness but holiness. It’s the only way that marriage makes sense. Why would God put the world’s most important human relationship in the middle of the world’s most important incomplete process—marriage in the middle of sanctification? Why not get us sanctified first, and then marriage would be easier? It’s because marriage is a tool of that growth. God’s got the order right. This 24-7 relationship God uses to do things in us that are way, way more important than our happiness. Getting that is very important. Third, there’s a context of marriage. If you don’t understand this context, you will be so frustrated. Here’s marriage: it’s a flawed person living with a flawed person in a fallen world—are you encouraged yet?—but with a faithful God. There’s no such thing as an idyllic marriage. There’s no such thing as a perfect marriage—never, ever, ever. But there are two imperfect people in marriage who believe in the presence and grace of God who can experience wonderful things together, even in their imperfection. Fourth: I’m afraid that most people don’t understand that they have a law-based, not a grace-based, marriage. A law-based marriage is this: I have a set of rules. If you keep those rules, I will be nice to you. If you break those rules, I will punish you in some way. Some of those will be God’s laws, some of those will be your personal laws. But if all we needed in our marriage was a good set of rules and a good set of enforcements, Jesus would have never had to come and the cross wouldn’t be necessary. It just doesn’t work. In fact, I think one of the most discouraging things is this failure-punishment, failure-punishment, failure-punishment, failure-punishment, failure-punishment, failure-punishment, failure-punishment cycle that marriages have. Listen, if I’m sitting next to somebody who’s more my judge than my lover, I quit talking to them. I don’t want to be intimate with them. It just crushes marriage. Versus a grace-based marriage, grace doesn’t mean we’re permissive. Grace doesn’t mean we allow bad things to happen. Grace is a way of dealing with wrong. If all those wrongs were right, then grace wouldn’t be necessary. Grace never calls wrong right. In a grace-based marriage, I look at those wrongs and rather than punishing you, I ask, Why has God revealed this? What is he seeking to do? How can I be part of what God is seeking to do in this moment? Final thing: the four most important marriage words that have ever been written are the first four words of the Bible: "In the beginning God" (Gen. 1:1). Marriage is God’s creation, it’s God’s process, it’s God’s work. It’s meant to be lived in a Godward way. Romans 11:36: "For from him and to him and through him are all things." If you don’t have that Godward direction in marriage—if it’s me-ward (me-ward husband and me-ward wife)—what do you think is going to happen? Kingdoms at war. It doesn’t work. Those things have just risen to the surface as I’ve lived with this marriage thing. It has just stunned me how incredibly helpful the Bible is in the way that it positions and defines marriage for us.

Matt Tully
That’s such a helpful foundational reminder for us. I’m sure there are many of us who some, or all, of those things sound familiar. We would say, I know that’s true; and yet, so often it is hard to conduct ourselves in our marriages in a way that shows we really do believe those five things.

Paul David Tripp
Can I tell people what they can do? Take these five things, put them on a little 3 x 5 card, and glue them to your mirror. Put them in the Bible that you have your devotions with. Expose yourself to them day after day after day, because we forget. We fall into marriage amnesia, and we forget who we are, we forget what this is about. Do something that makes that almost a daily reminder for you.

09:46 - How Do We Get the Romance Back?

Matt Tully
That’s so good. I’m sure these five things are going to have some bearing on some of your answers to the questions that we have today, but let’s just jump right into these. Our first question is from a listener in Johannesburg, South Africa, and this person writes, "My spouse and I have been married for seventeen years and friends for twenty-five years. It feels like the romance has gone from our relationship and we’ve settled comfortably into fulfilling roles and responsibilities to one another and the family. I love my husband, though it feels like a duty and not the heady feeling of young love. I miss the romance, the swooning, anticipating the gestures, and feeling loved and cherished. What can I do to get that back?" I’m sure that this is a question that would resonate with many people who have been married for a longer time like this person. Paul, what would you say to this listener?

Paul David Tripp
I think it’s an important question, but before I answer, I want to say something about all the questions. If I would be able to sit with this couple and get to know them and get to know the dynamics of the relationship, I would be able to answer this in a much more specific way. I understand in the format we’re in right now I’m really limited by my lack of knowing these people. So, I’m going to give answers to all of these questions in a more general sense, because it’s just impossible to counsel somebody that you don’t know. So, people just have to be patient with that, and I think I’ll give helpful answers. I think that often what we call "romance" is just the newness of the relationship. It’s exciting. We’re now experiencing things we’ve never experienced before. It’s like the way a child’s face lights up the first time they have a spoon of ice cream. Well, I like ice cream, but my face doesn’t light up every time I have it anymore. There’s this newness that we’re experiencing, and your relationship does mature. You enter into a cycle that I think is possibly a much more mature form of relationship. You move beyond needing a lot of the things that you needed in the beginning when things are new. I think of just the huge privilege of being able to sit in a room with somebody as wonderful as my wife and watch something on television. What a privilege that is. Marriage will never remain the same. I want to say another thing. Romance is not the foundation of a good marriage. Romance is the result of a good marriage. A couple always needs to ask the question, What are we doing that harms, that gets in the way of, that damages our tenderness toward one another, our intimacy with one another, our desire to be with one another? Are there things we’re doing that have gotten in the way of that and it makes it not as attractive for us to experience those things together?

Matt Tully
I think one of the things that this listener might be getting at in their question is all of the romantic, sweet gestures like cards or flowers or maybe making breakfast in bed that can often come with those early years in marriage, or even before marriage. What role should that stuff play in an ongoing way in someone’s marriage? What would you say to somebody who misses that stuff and feels like that was meaningful, and yet their spouse has just sort of stopped doing any of that?

Paul David Tripp
I want to repeat what I said. I think there are two parts to this. First, what are we doing that damages that tender, intimate, loving companionship that I think many people hunger for in marriage? Again, if I’m criticizing you all the time or I throw the past in your face—there are a lot of things that make me begin to have more of a protective stance in marriage than an open, vulnerable stance in marriage. That’s the first thing. The second thing is what are the things I can do to ignite that tender, loving, joyful companionship? You don’t have to wait for the other person to do that. Drop a note. If your husband is going out to work, drop a note in his lunch, or his briefcase, and tell him how much you love him, how much you are privileged to have these years with him. Do those little things. As a husband to a wife, don’t take for granted all the menial tasks around the house to make the marriage work. Thank her for those things. I believe in flowers and cards and chocolate, not in a legalistic way, but because I want to communicate, You’re special. I’m privileged to be part of this thing. Be active doing that, but you got to do both sides. You have to ask the questions, What am I doing to damage that tender, loving, sweet companionship? What are the things I can do to ignite it and encourage it?

Matt Tully
It seems like so often the emphasis is on if there was a fight or if there is some tension, I’m just going to get some flowers and try to make it up. But we spend less time thinking about how we deal with those things that are preventing that tenderness in the first place.

Paul David Tripp
One of the things that happens is in the early part of a courtship or marriage you are investing a lot in communicating to this person, You're special to me. That’s because you don’t have the relationship yet. Once you’re in that relationship, it’s easy to take that for granted. You need to continue to find ways of saying, You’re special to me. Little things. Instead of buying a commercial Valentine’s card, make one. You say you’re not an artist. Who cares? Write a little four-line poem—it doesn’t have to rhyme—on that card. That communicates so much: I’m thinking specifically about how special you are to me. Those little things just make a huge difference. There’s one other thing I want to say. Luella and I were really concerned about our marriage sustaining a busy ministry life and four children. So we determined early in our marriage that we were going to be out of the house with one another one time a week. In the beginning we had no money, and so we would sit on a park bench together. As our kids got older and somebody could babysit, then we could spend an evening together. But we were out of the house one time a week. That was an investment in nothing but, I love you. I want to be with you. I want to invest in our marriage. I would encourage couples to make those kinds of commitments because they can really fuel that intimacy that we’re all hungering for.

18:27 - If You Have a Troubled Past, Is a Healthy Marriage Possible?

Matt Tully
Another question from a listener in Cleveland, Ohio: "How would you counsel a young, newly married couple with troubled upbringings (that could be abuse or drugs or divorce)? How would that couple learn how to have a healthy, lasting, God-honoring marriage?"

Paul David Tripp
It’s very clear that all of us are hugely impacted by our history—our family of origin. It’s also very clear that you don’t take that off like a set of clothes when you enter marriage. You drag that into marriage. If you use the word "husband" to me, my biggest image is my dad, or if you use the word "father." We have experience that helps define those terms for us. So there’s no way, if you are from that kind of background, that you’re going to work through that alone. We’re just not able to be objective enough.Those things become such natural ways of thinking that we don’t even know they’re there. Marriage will dredge those up because another person living close to me will see that they’re there in ways that I don’t. So, here’s what you have to do: get help. I believe that marriage is never meant to be lived in isolation. Your marriage is never intended by God to be an island. That’s why God has designed the body of Christ because there are gifts and abilities and experiences and wisdom that you need that you and your wife will not provide for one another. Get help. Have somebody walk with you through the things that you need to face in order to get to a better place in your marriage. I’ll give you my experience as a marriage counselor. Sometimes that stuff was so naughty that I would have to say to a husband or wife, You just need to trust me. I need to spend six weeks with your husband because there is naughty stuff that I need to deal with him that was from his abusive background in order to get him to the place where now we can do couple’s counseling, because it was that bad. So, you just have to get help, and there’s help available. Go to your pastor. Be candid about that. You don’t need one-time help. You need somebody who is mature enough and wise enough to walk through with you until you’ve diminished the impact of those experiences and you’re able to pursue a more godly and loving relationship.

Matt Tully
Do you think the opposite impact can be true as well? We were just discussing the negative impact of some of these really dysfunctional or ungodly patterns of behavior that we maybe have seen in our past, but can the opposite be true where, as we are cultivating healthy, God-glorifying marriages and relationship that, for example, our children or friends and those around us can be positively impacted in the future by that?

Paul David Tripp
Absolutely. I think that one of the beautiful pieces of fruit of a marriage of unity and understanding and love is that it launches our children toward healthier relationships. That should motivate us, that we can keep our children from having that dysfunction going into a marriage because they’ve been given good models.

23:01 - How Do I Offer Correction to My Spouse?

Matt Tully
Our next two questions are one from Nairobi, Kenya and one from Jacksonville, Florida that are similar. "How do I offer correction to my spouse without making things worse? For example, causing discouragement or coming off as judgmental." This other person asks more specifically, "How can a wife present requests to her husband without becoming a dripping faucet?" I think that’s a reference to Proverbs 27:15.

Paul David Tripp
The way you started your question was humorous to me because you said they were very similar after mentioning the two cities—I don’t think Jacksonville and Nairobi are very similar at all, but the questions are! Every marriage needs correction. Everybody in marriage needs correction. There has never been a husband and never been a wife free of the need for correction. It should not be unusual that we have to have corrective conversations. I’m going to have corrective conversations with my wife until we’re on the other side because we’re not grace graduates. We’re still in need to face things that we do—attitudes, actions, thoughts, desires that are not what God calls us to. And so you’ve got to have a mechanism—a means—of doing that. Here’s what’s important: there are two character qualities that have to be in place. First, the humility of approachability. Husbands and wives need to agree to be approachable. You can’t have taboo topics. You can’t say, Get out of my face, because then you have no wherewithal to deal with the imperfection that is your marriage. We’re all sinners. We’re all in need of help. You’ve got to determine to be approachable. If I was that wife or husband I would sit down and say, Look, I think one of our problems in our marriage is we’re just not approachable. We just get defensive and we can’t talk about things we need to talk about. Defensiveness in the face of the need for correction never goes anywhere good. The second character quality is the courage of loving honesty. Now, there are two things that I’ve attached to honesty here. First, the courage of loving honesty. It’s hard to step into awkward, tense moments. But if I love you, I’m willing to do that. I hear people say all the time, I didn’t talk to him because I love him too much. I always am thinking, You didn’t talk to him because you love yourself too much, and you didn’t want to put yourself through the tension of those moments. It’s easier just to avoid them. It takes courage. But it’s loving honesty—truth spoken in love. Here’s why: it’s love that keeps that truth pure. Truth not spoken in love gets bent and twisted by other agendas and by other emotions. I have to get myself to the place where I’m able to correct lovingly. If something happens and you’re immediately angry, don’t fire out the next thing that you think is corrective, because it will be spoken in anger. Anger raises that person’s defenses and we can’t talk. Think about this: if I get up into your face and I start yelling at you using inflammatory language, so close that you can feel my breath, what are you thinking right then? Are you thinking, My, this is helpful. I wish Paul would do this again. This is such a wonderful moment. No. You’re just thinking, I want this to stop, and I want to get out of here. That is never productive. That’s why you have to get a hold of your emotions, let your thoughts become clarified. What is the thing that I need to talk about? And then you have to determine to talk about that in a loving way. I’m bad at this because I’m a quick thinker and I’m not patient enough. Truth spoken in love is always a source of conviction to me, but it’s stunning wisdom in those words. I think there are many truth speakers in marriage, but because they’re not loving, it’s not causing the marriage to grow. It’s producing defensiveness and distance—more relational alienation than relational healing.

Matt Tully
Going back to that first point you made about just being humble enough to be approachable, I think sometimes we assume that being approachable and having humility would mean immediately accepting the critique that the other person is sharing with us. Is that always the case, or is there room for saying, I don’t think I agree with what you’re saying, but I’m still being approachable—what does that look like?

Paul David Tripp
Let me give you an example that’s not a marriage example, but it fits here and shows what that humility looks like. When I was a young pastor, I got a twelve-page letter from a lady in our congregation who was dissatisfied with my ministry. Twelve pages. It was twelve pages of being criticized. I was so hurt. I called my brother, Ted, who preceded me in ministry, and I wanted him to dress my wounds. He said, Do you believe in the sovereignty of God? The minute he asked the question I knew he had me. I said, Yes, I do. He said, The reason God wanted you to be exposed to this—obviously, she’s angry; obviously, she hasn’t communicated lovingly to you—but I want to challenge you to do something: read this letter over and over again and ask God to show you the things that really are on target. Well, I did that. That’s what humility does. Over the period of a couple of weeks, I saw three or four things that I really needed to face that really, really were true about me. Now, I’m thankful for that conversation with my brother, and thankful I didn’t just throw that letter away, because God had something for me in that. Listen, even if the messenger isn’t everything we would want it to be, God is in this process. God is exposing things in our marriage. What is God working on, and how can I be a part of it?

31:02 - What If My Spouse Won’t Forgive Me?

Matt Tully
That segues into this next question from San Antonio, Texas that maybe even complicates the situation a little bit: "How should a person respond to a spouse who can’t seem to forgive and repeatedly brings up past hurts?" Maybe you did do something that was wrong and you have faced up to it and repented of it to God and to this person—your spouse—and yet, it feels like your spouse continues to bring that up to you over and over again. How should someone respond to that?

Paul David Tripp
The first thing I would say is you can’t allow yourself to be unforgiving about somebody’s unforgiveness. That never works.

Matt Tully
That’s a hard one though.

Paul David Tripp
If you’re response is, Don’t you dare ever bring up anything in the past for me. I’ve had enough of this!, you’re probably not going to be able to get at that dynamic. But if I would approach you and say, I love you. I am so committed to this marriage. I’m willing to love you in moments of weakness and failure. I know that it’s a struggle for you to let go of things, but I would love to be able to work with you to get beyond that so that we’re able to live in the present and not live in the past. One of the verses that I think could be a model for a couple in this situation that was helpful for Luella and me is "Don’t let the sun go down on your anger" (Eph. 4:26). What God understands is we need to have short accounts, because the longer I carry a thing the more drama it tends to take on, the bigger it seems to get. It’s just such a wonderful thing to, before you close out the day, to say, Please forgive me for this, and, Yes, I forgive you. You go to bed now with a fresh start. What I love, love, love, love, love, love—I can’t say love enough—about the gospel is it’s a message of fresh starts and new beginnings. Think of the story of Jonah. This guy ran away from God. God rescues him and calls him back. One of my favorite passages in all of the Bible is the first verse of chapter three of Jonah: "The word of the Lord came to Jonah a second time." God didn’t give up on him. We’ve got to work on settling things so we can start fresh. You can’t approach an unforgiving person self-righteously—it never works. You can’t be unforgiving to unforgiveness, because you won’t solve the problem. You have to come in a forgiving spirit and say, God’s with us; we can do better. We can start fresh everyday!

Matt Tully
What would you say to the person who says, I want to forgive my spouse and I want to let go of that past hurt that I feel, but I just don’t know how to do that. We have talked about it before, and yet every time that we have another argument that is similar to the one before, or the pattern of arguments that we’ve had, it feels like my mind just goes there and all of those emotions swell up again and I can’t help but think back to those things?

Paul David Tripp
There’s two things to say about this. The first thing is there are two stages of forgiveness. The first is judicial forgiveness. That’s between me and God. I give the offense to God—that’s Romans 12:19: "Vengeance is mine; I will repay." And then Paul says something that I think is almost humorous: "Leave room for God’s wrath" (Rom. 12:19). It’s God saying, Step aside. Don’t get in my way. Let me do my job. Vengeance is mine; I will repay. Leave room for me to do my work. So I give the offense to God; I trust that he will do the work necessary. That transaction in my heart then allows me to grant to you relational forgiveness because I’m trusting that God will take care of it. Relational forgiveness means I will not hold this against you. I will not repeatedly confess your sins in my mind, and I will not bring it up to you again. That relational thing is a process. As you’re saying those things, what will happen? You will remember it again, but you choose not to verbalize it. The more you’re willing to do that, the fewer times you allow your mind to go there and allow your mouth to go there, you are robbing that memory of it’s power and eventually it won’t have the power that it once had. You believe God hates evil and will deal with it properly. Only he is able to be a judge, and he can do that with mercy and grace. He has the power to transform the other person. I can leave this with him. I want to give room for him to work. I don’t hold it against you. I don’t repeat it in my mind, and I don’t speak it to you. I’ll get better at doing that, but I want to make those choices actively.

37:24 - Do I Fight for My Marriage?

Matt Tully
Another question from a listener in Texas who is actually separated right now. This person writes, "My husband and I have been separated for two years, and he wants a divorce. He told me that he is going to start looking for a new relationship and suggested that I do the same, even though we’re not divorced yet. As a Christian wife, how should I respond? Should I still fight for our marriage even though he doesn’t want to fight for it?"

Paul David Tripp
I don’t know what "fighting for your marriage" means. If fighting for your marriage means I’m going to continue to communicate my commitment to this life-long relationship if my husband would return and work on that with me. That you should do. If fighting for your marriage means I’m going to try to control the thoughts and decisions of another human being, you should never do that. You don’t have that power. Here’s the scary truth that we all have to face: we have the power to change no one. We can be a part of a process of change, we can do things that move toward change, but change is always an act of God’s grace. I don’t have the power to change the other person. I have the power to be a tool in God’s hands who can change the other person, so if that’s what fighting for your marriage is, you want to be that tool. I think for a married man to say, I’m going to begin to pursue a replacement for you is a deal-breaker. That is as stark of an act of unfaithfulness as physical adultery is. I’m putting you on the shelf, and I’m shopping is about as disgusting a way of thinking about marriage as I can think of. Maybe you can hear my anger here; I think it’s righteous. That’s a horrible thing. What kind of view is that of another human being? You’re just a replaceable part. You’re like a bicycle that I don’t like anymore, so I’m going to get myself a new one. That should never, ever be done with a human being. That’s robbing this relationship of its holiness and its sacredness. In those kind of situations, the Bible says you’re not bound. That’s an irretrievable breaking of a relationship, unless that man has a radical change in his heart. There’s no saving that as long as that’s what he desires because his whole concept of himself and who his wife is wrong. It’s a view of marriage that says, I’m in the center of my marriage. My happiness is all that’s important to me, and everything else is interchangeable. It’s a despicable view. Think about this in parenting. Imagine me saying to one of my children, I just don’t like you anymore, so I’m going to send you off someplace and I’m going to get a new child to replace you.

41:12 - How Do I Cultivate a Vibrant Spiritual Fellowship with My Spouse in the Storms of Life?

Matt Tully
Alright, here’s the last question from Simi Valley, California: "How do you cultivate a vibrant spiritual fellowship with your spouse in the storms of life with kids, work, church, and busy schedules?" I would note that this feels like this question, in some ways, gets to the heart of what can help to prevent so many of the things that we’ve heard today and talked about—starting from the very beginning with a strong, gospel-centered, spiritual foundation for our marriages. What does it look like to be intentional with that in the midst of our busy lives?

Paul David Tripp
I would say the first thing is do everything you can as a couple to pursue the things of God. Lap up everything your church has to offer you. Read good, Christian books. If devotions are hard for you, read good devotionals. Start your day with prayer. Any big thing that you’re going to do as a couple, pray about it. Do everything you can to build your individual spiritual maturity. Be committed to that. Follow people on Twitter that are rich in grace and wise and will encourage you every day. I tweet the gospel every morning because I need that, but also because I know that helps people. Start the day thinking about the gospel. The second thing I want to say is—let me go back before I say the second thing. I’m talking about that because people don’t think that listening to a good series of sermons helps your marriage, but it will. Being involved in a small group will help your marriage. A women’s fellowship that has good teaching will help your marriage. A men’s group where men can be honest with one another and get good teaching will help your marriage. Reading a book that doesn’t seem to be anything about marriage will help your marriage because you’re thinking about life God’s way. Do all those things you can do. Use all the resources that are available to you to grow and mature as individuals. Now, in terms of your spiritual communion as a couple, there’s no particular pattern that you have to follow. God gives you liberty. Luella and I—this is the shock of the century—don’t have devotions together because we learned we have very different approaches to that. We are both very, very committed to our individual times of worship. We often will share what we’ve done. It happens quite regularly where Luella will bring down Morning and Evening to me and say, You’ve got to read this today! This is so great! That gives us that moment of contact. But don’t force something on a person. When I was young in marriage, I would get out Geerhardus Vos, a Dutch theologian, and read pages to my wife. It was groaningly unhelpful. So, give room for that, but look for every opportunity to share with one another what you are learning and what God is teaching. It’s just so easy to do now. Maybe you’re just reading something off your iPad and it just hits you as being so helpful—text it quickly to your wife or to your husband. Say, I just texted you something. You’ve got to read this! I think doing that throughout the day can actually be more spiritually unifying than just having devotions and then never talk about the things of the Lord for the other twenty-three hours. Maybe you’re looking out the window and snow is lightly falling. It’s just beautiful and you’re thinking how amazing God is as Creator. Why wouldn’t you say, Honey, I was standing at the window and I was watching the snow and I was just thinking how marvelous God’s creation is. Do you understand what I’m saying? Rather than spirituality with us being a moment of the day, it’s an ongoing conversation. It’s a lifestyle of relating to one another that always has God in focus. If Luella and I are going to go visit our children, we pray first. If we’re about to get on a plane, we pray before we go out the door with our suitcases. It’s just this Godward way of living. We’re always saying to one another, Should we pray first? We’re regularly sharing things we think are helpful and biblically insightful with one another. It’s more of an ongoing conversation than a once a day devotion. I want to say this: if it doesn’t work for you to have devotions together, you are not on Team B in God’s eyes. One of the things that is very important in a marriage is dealing with our differences with appreciation and grace. Those differences are there and they do impact the way you worship, the way you learn, and sometimes it’s just better to do that separately and give yourself to that ongoing conversation about the things of God.

Matt Tully
Paul, thank you so much for taking some time to talk with us today to answer these listener questions about marriage. I wonder if we could close our time today with you praying for our listeners, praying for the couples who are listening right now—those who submitted questions and even those who have just tuned in to hear your answers—and ask God to bless them in their marriages.

47:46 - A Closing Prayer

Paul David Tripp
It would be such an honor to do that, so let’s pray. Lord, it’s hard for me to communicate the honor that I feel in this moment of kneeling before your throne, knowing that I’m welcome there and bringing behind me all these precious couples for whom you have shed your blood, and being able to approach you on their behalf. Won’t you make your grace known to them? Won’t you encourage them with your presence and your power? Won’t you motivate them with your promises? Won’t you guide them by your wisdom? Lord, won’t you work to break down self-righteousness, to break down defensiveness, to break down that ability that we have to minimize our need for change and growth and our desperate need for your grace? Won’t you allow couples to have conversations that have been hard to have in new and fresh ways? Won’t you work so that couples can say, We’ve grown and we’ve changed, and we can grow more. May forgiveness replace judgement. May mercy replace accusation. May unity and love replace distance and alienation. We know for that to happen we need your grace, and so we appeal to you. Would you not do for these couples, and for Luella and me, what we could not do for ourselves? We love you, but the greatest, fullest, deepest joy of our lives is that we’ve been loved by you. You are a rock and a fortress. You are a sun and a shield. You are life and health and truth and peace. We love you, but we are so thankful that we have been loved by you. Thank you for hearing. In Jesus’s name, amen.

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