4 Biblical Keys For Healthy Marriage
Telephone was a fun game to play when I was younger.
We’d line up a group of people, and the first person would come up with a sentence. They would whisper that sentence to the next person, who would whisper it to the next, and so on. By the time the sentence had moved through the chain to the last person, it was oftentimes distorted, incorrect, and very humorous. Somewhere along the line, the truth had been lost. The communication had failed. A whole new narrative was birthed.
This is an overly simplistic analogy for the complexities of human interaction, but it’s also very relatable. How often has what you said been misinterpreted or misconstrued by others—even by the people who know you best? I have failed many times in this area, and the outcome has never been good.
Communication is a confounding mystery and, oftentimes, a main reason why couples fight or become frustrated with one another. God never intended it to be this way. He wants communication to be simple. He wants us to have clarity. He wants truth to prevail, not imaginary narratives to rule the day.
In 2 Corinthians 11:3, Paul writes, “But I fear, lest by any means, as the serpent beguiled Eve through his subtilty, so your minds should be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ” (KJV). Because of Satan and the weakness of our flesh, we will always struggle with communication. But we can minimize the threat this poses to our marriages if we work on establishing an anchor line of communicating as God intended. Satan wants to corrupt simple things, making mountains out of molehills in our marriage relation.
Even though we may find it hard to communicate effectively, God has provided four basic communication elements that are intrinsic to all of us. They are:
Talking (Ephesians 4:29–32)
Listening (James 1:19)
Asking questions and providing feedback (Genesis 3:9, 11, 13)
Being honest (Ephesians 4:15; Colossians 3:9)
Let’s dive a little deeper into these four elements so that we can secure this second anchor line for a stronger, healthier marriage.
Talking
Talking, in its best form, is a verbal sharing of one’s thoughts or heart in a way that is easily understood by others.
Sometimes in marriage—and sometimes in life—you may be sharing your heart only to find the listener didn’t understand a thing you said. This can happen quite often between men and women. In the world’s eyes, communication between a man and a woman should be the same, right? Wrong. No matter what the world says, men and women aren’t the same. God created and wired us differently. This doesn’t make one better than the other. Just different. And if we don’t understand the differences, we experience disconnect in our communication.
Men and women bond and communicate differently. Women bond through love, nurturing, and caring. Men bond through respect. If we don’t know how to talk to each other according to those qualities, then everything about communication breaks down. If the man talks without love or caring, he isn’t effective. And if the woman talks without respect, she isn’t effective.
In Ephesians 5:33, the Lord’s command to husbands and wives is to create healthy and mutual honor for their marriage: “So again I say, each man must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband” (NLT). Notice that the verse starts out with “again I say.” Paul has been emphasizing these two issues throughout the chapter and still feels the need to repeat them. Repeating things over and over contributes to effective communication.
On top of this, women talk for different reasons than men. For the most part, women talk through problems. It’s how they process; it’s part of how God made them. Men, on the other hand, talk to solve a problem. I know this to be true about me! If I enter a conversation, I’m bringing a solution.
Early in our marriage, this caused issues. Sue wanted to talk just to talk—really? I constantly interrupted her to fix what I perceived as a problem. She didn’t want me to solve anything, but to listen. When I used to come home, Sue would say, “Can we talk?” I responded with, “About what? Is there a problem?” She just wanted to talk. Over time I have improved at listening without trying to solve her problems. Men are often to-the-point, whereas women tend to like to explore options and thoughts or feelings.
Adding to this problem are the methods by which we choose to communicate in these modern times. Instead of going to a person directly, we try to solve or discuss things through social media. We shoot off a text or write an email. We hide behind modern technology and then wonder why our messages fall on deaf ears. We are so afraid to speak directly, so afraid of confrontation or disagreements. We have lost the art of lovingly looking someone in the eye and committing to share our heart and work things out.
And when we do this, when we talk directly, we must uplift and encourage. We must be kind and calm. We must be loving and respectful, even if the discussion makes us want to be anything but.
Ephesians 4:29 offers a standard for good communication. The charge is to “let no corrupt word proceed out of your mouth, but what is good for necessary edification, that it may impart grace to the hearers.” God wants us to communicate with our spouse in a way that edifies and displays grace. That’s hard to do—especially if it involves having difficult or crucial conversations. But difficult conversations are a part of life. They need to happen, and as we understand more about the anchor line of communication, we begin to understand how to extend grace to one another when we talk.
I’m amazed at how often hurtful words can sneak in between a husband and wife. Ephesians 4:30–32 encourages us to be in communion with the Holy Spirit and to seek right communication with others and our spouse. We must put away “all bitterness, wrath, anger, clamor, and evil speaking,” and “ be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God in Christ forgave you.” These gentle instructions show us, God’s people, how we should relate to our spouse.
You need to be tenderhearted. You need to be kind even if you are discussing something hard that may come across harsh. You need to find the grace of God and the kindness in communication. It’s okay to vent, but there should be no room for shouting or acting out in anger. Even if something is true regarding your spouse, it must be spoken in love for the relationship to grow (yes, I said grow) in the right direction (Ephesians 4:15).
It’s pretty obvious to look out for harsh words and to extend grace as you’re talking through problems. But there are two facets of communication that don’t get enough attention—and they can wreak havoc on a marriage.
Verbal Counterpunching
I’ve noticed something I call “verbal counterpunching” show up in most marriages. This happens when each person jumps into the conversation and offers their opinion in the form of an attack, without truly seeking to work things out. It’s like hitting a punching bag. They jump in, throw a punch, and jump away.
Instead of talking and listening and trying to fix an issue, one person is talking while the other is sitting there, looking at their spouse, thinking: Hurry up already. Run out of breath. Get to your point because I have something to say!” And sure enough, the minute the other person stops talking, BAM! The spouse who was supposed to be listening jumps in with an attack. It’s a verbal counterpunch. It’s the difference between talking to or talking at someone.
This goes back and forth while the conversation goes nowhere. People are talking but not communicating.
Remember, the number one key in communication is talking. We should never get to a place where we think we are talking while all we are doing is fighting or arguing. If we’re fighting, we’re actually grieving the Holy Spirit—the very person we need to be active and help us out of whatever disagreement we may be in.
Nonverbal Communication
Nonverbal communication is another thing that can wreak havoc, but not in the way that you’re thinking. We have been trained to think that nonverbal cues are absolute. We may assume that is angry or closed off, or that someone who looks up and to the right is lying. We may think that someone who is silent is upset.
But these are not true for everyone all the time. When we give off these cues in our relationships, we can communicate a wrong message about how we’re really thinking and feeling. We need to be mindful of our body language when we’re talking to others, and we also need to extend grace when our spouse or someone we’re conversing with sends us one of these signals.
Not everyone with their arms crossed is mad, though that could be saying something less than positive. Not everyone who looks up and to the right when talking is lying. Not everyone who goes silent is upset. They may be struggling with processing what they are hearing. While we need to be sensitive to nonverbal conversations and signs, we should never be judgmental or accusatory.
My oldest daughter taught me the power of nonverbal communication. She was around six or seven years old and I was bringing her home from school. She asked me if I was mad at her. I assured her that I wasn’t but asked why she thought that. She told me that I looked mad and was quiet. Honestly, I was deep in thought and apparently had a mad look on my face. I didn’t know what I looked like when deep in thought, having never looked at myself in the mirror while meditating. I tried to reassure her that I was not mad at her but just thinking. She was not convinced and kept accusing me of being mad to the point it almost became an option. She finally agreed reluctantly, and I tried to smile while still deep in thought. Obviously, this was an area of nonverbal communication that I needed to work on!
Whatever situation you walk into, you must exercise emotional intelligence and maturity when talking and sharing. Open yourself up to the Spirit for His guidance. Over time, Sue and I have learned each other’s nonverbal communications. Study your spouse in love to learn how to hear what is being said through nonverbal communications. With me, if I get too quiet too long, something is bothering me. With Sue, if she has gone into silence then she is processing something and needs the space.
Listening
Not only do we need to learn how to talk, but we also need to learn how to be quiet and to listen. James wrote, “My dear brothers and sisters, take note of this: Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry” (James 1:19 NIV).
Listening is a lost art. It’s part of the reason why verbal counterpunching is so prevalent in many relationships. We need to learn to truly listen and hear the other person out. We need to take a risk and overcome the fear of being wrong or having to change our mind. The goal of listening is to understand each other, not declare who is right or wrong. We should desire to come to a place of unity and love, not division, hurt, or pain. We want a win-win solution, not a lose-win proposition. Remember, you’re not trying to win an argument but rather to reconcile a breach in the relationship and to clear up any confusion or misunderstanding.
There are two components that go into truly listening to someone and hearing them out.
Choice
If your brain didn’t have the ability to wipe out stimuli, you would lose your mind. If you heard everything at the same time—all the chatter and noise and chaos going on around you—you would go crazy. Every day, we choose what we listen to, and we ignore the rest. That is why choosing to listen to the good things is important.
You will not hear someone until you choose to hear them, and this is why we see good marriages collapsing. We see couples who love God and claim to love each other part ways because they quit listening and they quit choosing to hear one another. All of this can contribute to a marriage faltering that had once been strong and healthy.
Until you choose to hear what your spouse is saying, you won’t hear it. More importantly, you must choose to listen to God, or you won’t hear Him. Mark 4:9 says, “He who has ears to hear, let him hear!” The word let is the key to this verse and key to a life and marriage of prosperity.
Bringing awareness to the things you listen to is crucial to developing healthy communication. You must choose to listen to the Holy Spirit. You must choose to listen to your spouse. And from there, you can work on understanding them.
Understanding
When Jesus said, “Whoever has ears to hear, let them hear” (Mark 4:9 NIV), He wasn’t just talking about hearing what comes from the Holy Spirit. He was talking about understanding those words and striving to find the intention behind them.
The Spirit is there to guide you as you listen to your spouse. He is there to help you unpack what they’re saying (and not saying). He is there to provide revelation from God and insight into the heart of man—the heart of your husband or wife.
This step of understanding is so very important to having the correct response to your spouse. The Spirit will guide you through understanding. But you must listen to your spouse and to God.
When You Can’t Hear
Anger, hurt, fear, frustration—these feelings can prevent us from listening and hearing. When we’re in this state of mind, we choose not to understand our spouse, our children, or our coworkers, and that’s why so many of our relationships don’t last. It’s why our children are estranged from us, and it’s why we have trouble getting along with people at work or at church. This is why choosing to hear and to understand are so very important. Even when we disagree with someone, we can hear them out. We can listen to their side, we can understand where they’re coming from, and we can choose how to proceed, even if in the end we still disagree.
As Mark 4:24–25 says, “Pay close attention to what you hear. The closer you listen, the more understanding you will be given” (NLT). We must pay close attention to what we hear from our spouse. The closer we listen, the more we will understand. There’s a warning here, though—if we choose not to hear and listen, then we will lose what little understanding we have. The second half of Mark 4:25 says, “But for those who are not listening, even what little understanding they have will be taken away from them” (NLT). When we quit listening to God and each other, we go backward in our relationships. We can actually lose the little understanding we do have.
Mark 4:3–8 is a profound parable Jesus taught:
Listen! A farmer went out to plant some seed. As he scattered it across his field, some of the seed fell on a footpath, and the birds came and ate it. Other seed fell on shallow soil with underlying rock. The seed sprouted quickly because the soil was shallow. But the plant soon wilted under the hot sun, and since it didn’t have deep roots, it died. Other seed fell among thorns that grew up and choked out the tender plants so they produced no grain. Still other seeds fell on fertile soil, and they sprouted, grew, and produced a crop that was thirty, sixty, and even a hundred times as much as had been planted! (NLT)
Mark 4:13–20 encompasses the significance and explanation of the parable. Verse 13 declares, “If you can’t understand the meaning of this parable, how will you understand all the other parables?” (NLT). Notice how understanding is progressive. When you have this understanding, you can now get more. He goes on to explain the parable as follows: “The farmer plants seed by taking God’s word to others. The seed that fell on the footpath represents those who hear the message, only to have Satan come at once and take it away” (Mark 4:14 NLT).
Mark doesn’t explain how Satan steals the Word, but Matthew does in his commentary on the same parable: “The seed that fell on the footpath represents those who hear the message about the Kingdom and don’t understand it. Then the evil one comes and snatches away the seed that was planted in their hearts” (Matthew 13:19 NLT).
God’s Word is seed that is sown into our hearts and can change our lives, but if not understood, Satan steals it. Our hearts are the ground in which the seed is sown, but the seed will not profit us if we do not understand; we remain fruitless.
How is it that the devil can steal the very thing God intended for us? Just as the apostle Paul talks about how lost people are blind to salvation, the devil seeks to destroy the relationship Christians have with Jesus and their spouses (2 Corinthians 4:4). The devil will use anything he can to make us become unfruitful in our relationships—even if it means distorting the truth. God is speaking into our lives and desires to bring us into greater understanding.
The devil wants you to misunderstand God and His Truth, and he wants you to misunderstand your spouse, too. He knows that the more you understand what God is saying to you, the more change you will see in your life. And the more change you see, the more difficult it will be for the devil to get a foothold. The more we listen to and understand our spouse, the more powerful a force of prayer we will have against Satan and his strategies—and the more fruitful we will become in our marriage relationship.
Asking Questions and Providing Feedback
Effective talking and listening doesn’t happen overnight. It’s a process, and there aren’t any shortcuts. I’ve seen couples decide to practice their communication only to come out of things more confused than ever. They misinterpreted, misunderstood, and mistook what the other was saying. This is why feedback is such an important part of the process. It offers loving accountability to ensure that what you’re saying and what is being heard are one and the same. Many times, what is said is not always what is heard. How does the speaker know what is heard without feedback?
I discovered years ago that God communicates effectively by asking questions. For example, in Genesis 3:9, after Adam had sinned, God asked, “Where are you?” God knew where Adam was, but Adam did not know. The line of questioning helped Adam process where he was and how to get out of the mess he created. Adam said he was afraid and hid himself because he was naked. God asked in Genesis 3:11, “Who told you that were naked? Have you eaten from the tree of which I commanded you that you should not eat?” God went on to ask Eve a question as well (Genesis 3:13).
Jeremiah is another example of this effective tool of communication. Jeremiah 1:11–12 says, “Moreover the word of the Lord came to me, saying, ‘Jeremiah, what do you see?’ And I said, ‘I see a branch of an almond tree.’ Then the Lord said to me ‘You have seen well, for I am ready to perform My word.’” If we asked more questions and received feedback, maybe we could discern whether what we said was heard (understood) and received well. There are three important questions to ask your spouse during communication, especially crucial conversations:
What was said?
What was heard?
What was meant?
This process of each person verifying what the other person has said will enhance your marriage relationship by securing the anchor line of communication. However, these questions aren’t only for the marriage relationship. I have discovered that healthy feedback must be created between people in any kind of relationship, whether with your boss, your children, or your family and friends. Most importantly, though, healthy feedback should be created between a husband and wife. Our communication with God is no different. What did God say? What did you hear? What did God mean? These questions must be asked to properly apply God’s Word. It is also the same for the marriage relationship. Feedback was a new concept for me in my marriage. I had never seen it modeled in any of the couples I knew growing up, so it seemed foreign and awkward. When I married Sue, I had no desire to give or ask for feedback in our communication. It just didn’t seem like something that was necessary. I thought our communication was fine. I thought I was getting my point across and that I was understanding hers. After a few misunderstandings (which were usually my fault), I realized how extremely helpful feedback is to me.
However, getting feedback from Sue wasn’t easy at first. I remember feeling uncomfortable and a bit awkward, but I realized that my words weren’t as clear as I thought they were and that I needed to improve on what I was saying and how I said it (my tone). With Sue and I working together on communication in our marriage, we noticed improvements in every area of our lives.
Now, feedback is something that I welcome in all of my relationships. I don’t feel uncomfortable or awkward, but rather I look forward to giving and receiving feedback. It roots out miscommunication and makes way for an open and honest relationship. I want to be understood and I want to understand what is said to me. Communicating about what was said, heard, and meant has made life good. Feedback is what has made the difference.
Honesty
It’s one thing to master talking, listening, and giving feedback. It’s another to be honest with your spouse.
Many times, we think that our lies don’t matter. They seem harmless enough—we aren’t trying to hurt anyone— and so we let it slide. But in any relationship, you can’t live with deceitful lies and expect to maintain a strong, healthy marriage with the anchor line of communication.
Early in my marriage, I found myself lying by default. It didn’t seem like a big deal at the time because I wasn’t trying to deceive Sue. I wasn’t being malicious or cunning. I was protecting her and myself (or so I thought). I loved God and Sue with all my heart, but I was lying to keep the peace, to avoid drama, and to preserve the relationship and not ruffle feathers. I feared being rejected, misunderstood, or falsely judged if I told the truth, so I lied by default. I know as a reader you must be judging me right now, and I get it (sow mercy, my friends).
You’ve never been dishonest when asked, “Does this dress make me look fat?” or “How’s the meal?” when you know how long your wife took to prepare the meal? Maybe you’ve never caved when asked, “Would you like to go shopping?”
You probably responded, “Yeah, that was at the top of the list today, just above hunting or fishing.” And women, what about when you’ve been asked, “How much did that dress and new pair of shoes cost?” or “Did we really need those new curtains?” I know you’ve never been tempted to lie when asked, “Do you still have a headache?”
Even in ministry, you can be tempted to lie when asked, “Do you remember me?” or “Did you pray for me this week, Pastor?” You just don’t want the drama or hurt feelings by telling the truth. You hate to say, “No, I haven’t prayed for you, I’ve been shopping with my wife instead of hunting or fishing”—let it go!—“or praying.”
The Lord showed me what I was doing. Through His grace and mercy, He helped me with my problem, and I determined never to lie by default again. I chose truth and honesty, and it’s been a game-changer in my life. I sleep at night. I don’t have any of the nagging feelings you get when you’ve told a lie. I feel free, without baggage.
We may think that by lying, we’re protecting the person we love. We don’t want their feelings to get hurt or for them to know the reality of what’s going on in life. And yet by choosing to lie, we make it worse.
When you figure out how to speak the truth in love, you will grow “in every way more and more like Christ” (Ephesians 4:15 NLT). Truth and truth spoken in love is essential to build and grow a healthy relationship. You and your spouse must learn to be honest in every situation, circumstance, and conversation, even when it’s difficult or unpleasant. I’m not suggesting we be mean and hurtful cloaked and masked “in the name of truth.” Too many people today love to speak truth but are mean and hurtful about it. We need to speak the truth in love with as much grace and mercy as possible.
You must be committed to honesty, or you’re never going to make it. It’s as simple as that. There are three key solutions for developing honesty in your marriage relationship and beyond.
First, reward honesty. When the truth is unpleasant, our tendency is to punish the person who spoke it. However, by doing this, we tell our spouse that we don’t want them to be honest. We don’t want the truth. Having a loving and grateful response—even when the truth hurts—will encourage a habit of honesty. Never reward lying by punishing the truth.
Second, value the truth in what’s being said. As you communicate more with one another, you will learn to see and value its worth. You will find freedom in being honest with one another. Truth brings freedom and lies enslave (John 8:31-32).
Third, seek God together. He is the great Healer. He will bring emotional health as you develop honesty and strengthen the lines of communication within your marriage.
If Sue asks me, “Does this dress make me look fat?” I can respond in honesty, “Do I look stupid?” Let it go!
Communication is hard. Choosing to listen closely, hear clearly, and understand well takes dedicated work. There will be setbacks, but know that if you mess up, you have the option of asking for forgiveness and pushing the restart button to begin the next day with new understanding. Together, with your spouse, you can build healthy communication as you seek to keep God at the center of your marriage.
