A healthy, God-honoring marriage begins with finding your identity in Christ, not in your spouse, and choosing a partner with a shared mission, character, and calling.
If you're considering marriage, here are six things to note before you make the decision to link arms with another person in covenant.
1. Find yourself in the love of God.
When you're looking for someone to marry, it's vital that you don't look for someone to complete you but rather complement you.
We aren't meant to look for our worth or value in another human.
Read Genesis 1:26-31, 2:2-7,15-25.
According to these verses, it is not good for man to be alone. At the same time, it's important to note that God gives us our value, worth, and identity. These are all things we are not meant to find in our partner.
We were made in the image of God, bought with the blood of Christ, and deemed chosen, loved, forgiven, filled, and called.
The ultimate love of self is to find oneself in the love of God.
2. Marry someone with a shared mission.
You need someone with a passion for Jesus, not just someone who was raised Christian.
Read 2 Corinthians 6:14.
If you’re a “Jesus person” (washed in the blood, drenched in the Spirit, rooted in the Word, eager to worship, engaged to share and serve) and they are not—it's not ideal.
You need not only a shared mission but also a shared understanding of what marriage is supposed to be like.
The husband is intended to be the spiritual leader of the family. If he’s not ready to spiritually lead a family and he isn't spiritually leading himself, it's a no-go.
You need someone with the same purpose who is going at the same pace; find a mission that is bigger than yourselves, your kids, and your stuff.
The greatest gift you can give your kids is a healthy marriage and a purpose that is bigger than them.
Fruit of a shared mission:
Fosters collaboration.
Fights against drift.
Accelerates momentum.
Exponentially increases impact.
Prompts higher and more meaningful conversation.
Helps to resist making idols of things, places, stuff, kids, and feelings.
If you're reading this and you're already married, you may be thinking: "What if it's too late?"
If that's you, the call isn't to become bitter but to reorient and prioritize common goals and passions, overwhelm your partner with supernatural grace, talk about it with kindness, and be strategic rather than nuclear.
Read 1 Peter 3:1-7.
3. Don’t make it your goal to change your spouse.
Many people enter marriage thinking, "I’ll change him. He just needs time. I’ll win him over!"
In marriage, two different people come together to become one.
The only way to move forward is to encourage change, accept unique differences.
Two different people, when moving together with a common mission, have multiplied strength.
4. Understand the highest need/desire of your spouse.
Men want to be respected (honored).
Women want to be loved (to feel valued).
Read Ephesians 5:21-33.
Emerson Eggerichs, the best-selling author of Love and Respect, asserts: “Women need love. Men need respect. It’s as simple and as complicated as that.”
The foundation for his platinum-level, former book-of-the-year is a theorized gender difference he identified by posing this question:
If you were forced to choose one of the following, which would you prefer to endure: to be left alone and unloved in the world, or to feel inadequate and disrespected by everyone?
In his original sample of 400 males, 74% said that if they were forced to choose, they would prefer feeling alone and unloved rather than feeling disrespected and inadequate. He collected data on a female sample and found that a comparable majority would rather feel disrespected and inadequate than alone and unloved.
Based on this data, Eggerichs concluded that a wife “needs love just as she needs air to breathe,” and a husband "needs respect just as he needs air to breathe."
Men don't want to be second-guessed all the time and criticized for every little thing.
Read Proverbs 21:19.
But if you're a man and you want to be respected, be respectable.
Women want to be respected, too. So if you're a husband, listen. Value your wife's discernment and opinions, take her advice, and honor her gifts and abilities.
5. Be kind.
You can be right, strong, truthful, confrontational, and kind at the same time.
Read Ephesians 4:32.
6. Marry the greatest person on earth.
A complementary relationship for God's glory increases intimacy with God, stewards creation, models Christ's relationship with His Church, and has Kingdom impact for God’s glory.
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"If you want to have a marriage for the glory of God, you gotta marry someone who has passion for Jesus."
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Louie Giglio
What does it mean to “find yourself in the love of God” before pursuing marriage?
How can we tell the difference between someone complementing us and thinking someone will complete us?
Why is it critical to share a mission with the person you marry?
In what ways can a shared spiritual purpose strengthen a marriage?
How should a believer respond if they feel unequally yoked after already being married?
Why is trying to change your spouse a dangerous mindset?
How does understanding a spouse’s core emotional needs (respect vs. love) change the way we approach conflict or communication?
What does kindness look like in the context of truth-telling and confrontation in marriage?
How can a couple steward their relationship for Kingdom impact rather than just personal satisfaction?
What does it practically look like to marry “the greatest person on earth” from a biblical perspective?
Scripture References
26.Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals,1:26 Probable reading of the original Hebrew text (see Syriac); Masoretic Text the earth and over all the creatures that move along the ground.”27.So God created mankind in his own image,in the image of God he created them;male and female he created them.28.God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground.”29.Then God said, “I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They will be yours for food. 30.And to all the beasts of the earth and all the birds in the sky and all the creatures that move along the ground—everything that has the breath of life in it—I give every green plant for food.” And it was so.31.God saw all that he had made, and it was very good. And there was evening, and there was morning—the sixth day.
2.By the seventh day God had finished the work he had been doing; so on the seventh day he rested from all his work. 3.Then God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it he rested from all the work of creating that he had done.4.This is the account of the heavens and the earth when they were created, when the Lord God made the earth and the heavens.5.Now no shrub had yet appeared on the earth2:5 Or land; also in verse 6 and no plant had yet sprung up, for the Lord God had not sent rain on the earth and there was no one to work the ground, 6.but streams2:6 Or mist came up from the earth and watered the whole surface of the ground. 7.Then the Lord God formed a man2:7 The Hebrew for man (adam) sounds like and may be related to the Hebrew for ground (adamah); it is also the name Adam (see verse 20). from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.
15.The Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it. 16.And the Lord God commanded the man, “You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; 17.but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will certainly die.”18.The Lord God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him.”19.Now the Lord God had formed out of the ground all the wild animals and all the birds in the sky. He brought them to the man to see what he would name them; and whatever the man called each living creature, that was its name. 20.So the man gave names to all the livestock, the birds in the sky and all the wild animals.But for Adam2:20 Or the man no suitable helper was found. 21.So the Lord God caused the man to fall into a deep sleep; and while he was sleeping, he took one of the man’s ribs2:21 Or took part of the man’s side and then closed up the place with flesh. 22.Then the Lord God made a woman from the rib2:22 Or part he had taken out of the man, and he brought her to the man.23.The man said,“This is now bone of my bonesand flesh of my flesh;she shall be called ‘woman,’for she was taken out of man.”24.That is why a man leaves his father and mother and is united to his wife, and they become one flesh.25.Adam and his wife were both naked, and they felt no shame.
14.Do not be yoked together with unbelievers. For what do righteousness and wickedness have in common? Or what fellowship can light have with darkness?
1.Wives, in the same way submit yourselves to your own husbands so that, if any of them do not believe the word, they may be won over without words by the behavior of their wives, 2.when they see the purity and reverence of your lives. 3.Your beauty should not come from outward adornment, such as elaborate hairstyles and the wearing of gold jewelry or fine clothes. 4.Rather, it should be that of your inner self, the unfading beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is of great worth in God’s sight. 5.For this is the way the holy women of the past who put their hope in God used to adorn themselves. They submitted themselves to their own husbands, 6.like Sarah, who obeyed Abraham and called him her lord. You are her daughters if you do what is right and do not give way to fear.7.Husbands, in the same way be considerate as you live with your wives, and treat them with respect as the weaker partner and as heirs with you of the gracious gift of life, so that nothing will hinder your prayers.
21.Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.22.Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord. 23.For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior. 24.Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything.25.Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her 26.to make her holy, cleansing5:26 Or having cleansed her by the washing with water through the word, 27.and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless. 28.In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. 29.After all, no one ever hated their own body, but they feed and care for their body, just as Christ does the church— 30.for we are members of his body. 31.“For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.”5:31 Gen. 2:2432.This is a profound mystery—but I am talking about Christ and the church. 33.However, each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband.
19.Better to live in a desertthan with a quarrelsome and nagging wife.
32.Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you.
