What’s one of the best ways you can grow spiritually with your spouse?
Don’t try to go it alone.
According to Dr. Greg Smalley, it’s important to find other Christians to walk alongside you and your spouse.
“It’s important to inject Christian friendships into your marriage. You can’t do marriage alone. It takes a village to raise a marriage, to keep a marriage healthy and vibrant.”
All couples need people they can have fun with.
“It means that we need to have people in our lives who are committed to wholesome play. We need to play, we need to have friends who we can laugh and enjoy our time with.”
It’s also important to have solid believers by your side for those times when life isn’t as fun.
“We also need these friends in our life to build us up through encouragement. There’s only twice in the Bible where we’re told to do something everyday. One we’re told to take apart cross daily and the other one is we’re told to encourage one another daily. It’s a tough world. We have struggles in our marriage with our kids, with life, at work, we need these men and women, these fellow believers who are saying that they are here to encourage you. We need community worship. We need to be growing spiritually.”
While your marriage can survive without these friendship relationships, Greg says life is better with them. He also says that God wants us to have this kind of community.
“Don’t allow your marriage to not have these kinds of people. We need daily disciplines, but we need a community around us and we should target that every week.”
“We should be doing something once a week, whether it’s corporate worship, whether that’s a small group having a Bible study, or even a prayer meeting. It’s an endless smorgasbord of opportunities within a local church. As an introvert, that kind of scares me to think about it on a weekly basis, but I’m telling you I really see the impact of what those groups, those men and women have in our everyday lives.”
Dr. Greg Smalley serves as executive director of Marriage and Family Formation at Focus on the Family. In this role, he develops and oversees initiatives that prepare individuals for marriage, strengthen and nurture existing marriages and help couples in marital crises. He also serves as a media spokesperson on these matters.
Key Scripture: Joshua 24:15
Featured Songs: Eye of the Storm – Ryan Stevenson; Feel It – Toby Mac; Giants Fall – Francesca Battestelli
Don't go it alone
