We believe that churches should be pro-active in helping marriages reveal and reflect the love of Christ. There’s a world out there that needs to know God’s love. One way you can do this is to include a marriage tip each week in your church bulletin.
To help you do this, you will find the following Marriage Tips to be helpful. You can also cut and paste what you can use in bulletins, handouts during marriage events, and such.
You can find additional tips (which we’ve used on the Marriage Missions Facebook and Twitter Pages) in the Social Media Topic of this web site.
At the end of each Marriage Tip, we ask that you include the following statement:
(For more marriage info, go to www.marriagemissions.com.)
— OR —
(To read more marriage tips and helpful articles, you can visit www.marriagemissions.com.)
MARRIAGE TIP:
Kindness and decency SHOULD begin at home. Why should we be kinder to strangers than we are to those we claim to love? “Like letting someone with only one item go ahead of you in the supermarket line, bring home to your spouse the decency and kindness you would show to someone you just met” (Michele Weiner-Davis, marriage therapist).
TIP:
When you live with someone day in and day out, it’s easy to “nit-pick” at each other’s faults. BE DIFFERENT! Celebrate the small, positive things in the relationship. Notice and comment on what’s going well. It’s not just that positive reinforcement is the best, most efficient way of changing someone else’s behavior, when partners feel valued, they are less inclined to jump to negative conclusions when something goes wrong, and more likely to give each other the benefit of the doubt. (Diane Cole)
TIP:
“Two are better than one, because they have good return for their work: if one falls down, his friend can help him up. But pity the man who falls and has no one to help him up! Also, if two lie down together, they will keep warm. But how can one keep warm alone? Though one may be overpowered, two can defend themselves. A cord of three strands is not quickly broken.” (Ecclesiastes 4:9-12)
TIP:
When all is said and done, a truly Christian home is by far the most powerful and persuasive evangelistic agency on earth. Without ever passing out a tract, preaching a sermon, or even saying a word, a Spirit-filled Christian home declares to all who come within reach that God will do for others what He’s done for them, if they’ll only give Him a chance” (John Lavendar).
MARRIAGE TIP:
It’s tragic that we put so much time, effort and money into training for our careers, and yet we put so little time, effort and money into training and helping us learn how to live in loving covenant with our spouse. We didn’t marry or enter into a covenant with our jobs or our bosses. At the most we entered into a contract with them. Marriage is a covenant contract bound together by a promise, that is joined together with God. We need to get our priorities straight (Cindy Wright).
MARRIAGE TIP:
Some couples get stuck for so long they forget what a good marriage is like. They begin to settle for a mediocre marriage, or even for a miserable one. They need somebody to refresh their minds and teach them how to get back to a healthy, positive loving way of relating (“Marriage” –Bill Hybels).
MARRIAGE TIP:
Three stages of love and marriage:
You don’t know em. But you love em.
You know em. And don’t love em.
You know em. And you love em. (Unknown)
MARRIAGE TIP:
The best thing a father can do for his children is to love their mother. Happy marriages build happy families” (Pat Williams).
MARRIAGE TIP:
Don’t worry that children never listen to you; worry that they’re always watching you (Robert Fulghum).
MARRIAGE TIP:
What counts in making a happy marriage is not so much how compatible you are, but how you deal with incompatibility (Leo Tolstoy).
MARRIAGE TIP:
Any fool can have a trophy wife. It takes a real man to have a trophy marriage (Diane Sollee, smartmarriages.com).
MARRIAGE TIP:
One advantage of marriage, it seems to me, is that when you fall out of love with each other, it keeps you together until maybe you fall in again (Judith Viorst).
MARRIAGE TIP:
Commitment has kind eyes (J. Ruth Gendler).
MARRIAGE TIP:
If the grass looks greener on the other side of the fence, it’s because they take better care of it (Unknown).
MARRIAGE TIP:
It isn’t your love that sustains the marriage, but from now on, the marriage that sustains your love. (Dietrich Bonheoffer).
MARRIAGE TIP:
I’m convinced that if we as a society work diligently in every other area of life and neglect the family, it would be analogous to straightening deck chairs on the Titanic (Stephen Covey).
MARRIAGE TIP:
Marriage is our last, best chance to grow up. (Joseph Barth)
TIP:
The first duty of love is to listen (Paul Tillich).
MARRIAGE TIP:
Chains do not hold a marriage together. It is threads, hundreds of tiny threads, which sew people together through the years (Simone Signoret).
MARRIAGE TIP:
Love is no assignment for cowards (Ovid).
MARRIAGE TIP:
Motto for the bride and groom: We are a work in progress with a lifetime contract (Phyllis Koss).
MARRIAGE TIP:
People think they have to find their soul-mate to have a good marriage. You’re not going to “find” your soul-mate. Anyone you meet already has soul-mates—their mother, their father, and their lifelong friends. You get married, and after 20 years of loving, bearing and raising kids, and meeting challenges—then you’ll have “created” your soul-mate (Diane Sollee).
MARRIAGE TIP: Life has taught us that love does not consist in gazing at each other but in looking outward together in the same direction (Antoine De Saint-Exupery).
MARRIAGE TIP:
The development of a really good marriage is not a natural process. It’s an achievement (David and Vera Mace). The challenge is to help couples turn “I Do” into “We Can” (Scott Stanley).
MARRIAGE TIP:
Love doesn’t commit suicide. We have to kill it. It often simply dies of our neglect (Diane Sollee).
MARRIAGE TIP:
Why would a couple that lives and sleeps together every night need dates and rituals? It’s precisely because they live and sleep together (Bill Doherty).
MARRIAGE TIP:
If a married couple with children has 15 minutes of uninterrupted, non-logistical, non-problem-solving talk every day, I’d put them in the top 5% of all married couples. It’s an extraordinary achievement (Bill Doherty).
MARRIAGE TIP:
Real giving is when we give to our spouses what’s important to them, whether we understand it, like it, agree with it, or not (Michele Weiner-Davis).
MARRIAGE TIP:
Marriage isn’t a roller coaster ride. Thrill rides are brief and traumatic (alas, so are all too many marriages). The better metaphor is the adventure or the heroic quest: long, difficult, sometimes tedious, interspersed with epic battles, but crowned with the glories of deep companionship, sweet victories, and the sublime satisfactions that would otherwise be missed (Rob Vaughn).
MARRIAGE TIP:
They do not love who do not show their love. (William Shakespeare) Then there was the guy who loved his wife so much, he almost told her (Unknown).
MARRIAGE TIP:
All those “and they lived happily ever after” fairy tale endings need to be changed to “and they began the very hard work of making their marriages happy” (Linda Miles).
MARRIAGE TIP:
Stephen Covey was asked after a speech about how to forgive someone who has committed adultery. He said the question made him think of the old prayer, “Oh Lord, let me forgive those who sin differently than I do.”
MARRIAGE TIP:
In marriage, work to be the presidents of each other’s fan clubs (Tony Heath).
MARRIAGE TIP:
Marriage is the foundation of the family and the family is the foundation of society: if we strengthen marriage, we strengthen the family, we strengthen the children and we strengthen the community. If your goal is to help improve the world, marriage is as good a place as any to start (Diane Sollee).
MARRIAGE TIP:
Coming together is the beginning. Keeping together is progress. Working together is success (Henry Ford).
MARRIAGE TIP:
Our greatest weakness lies in giving up. The most certain way to succeed is always to try just one more time (Thomas Edison).
MARRIAGE TIP:
People are often enamored with my Super Bowl ring. But it’s my wedding ring that I’m most proud of. Having a good marriage takes even more work than winning a Super Bowl (Trent Dilfer, Seattle Seahawks quarterback).
MARRIAGE TIP:
The greatest weakness of most humans is their hesitancy to tell others how much they love them while they’re still alive (Orlando Battista).
MARRIAGE TIP:
Keep in mind as you weather those marital storms, that we’re warned in 1 Corinthians 7:27-28, that “those who marry will face many troubles in this life.”
MARRIAGE TIP:
One couple walking alongside another couple to help in their marriage can make a great difference. It can cause a positive ripple effect in families for generations to come. And as each one, reaches one, a wonderful, positive ripple effect can change this world for the better.
MARRIAGE TIP:
Adam and Eve had an ideal marriage. He didn’t have to hear about all the men she could have married, and she didn’t have to hear about the way his mother cooked.
MARRIAGE TIP:
“Reckless words pierce like a sword, but the tongue of the wise brings healing.” (Prov. 12:18) “A fool gives full vent to his anger, but a wise man keeps himself under control” (Proverbs 28:11).
MARRIAGE TIP:
Just because two people get married, it doesn’t mean they have to cleave to each other to the point that one of them is erased.
MARRIAGE TIP:
Our marriages are messages seen by others, which may speak more to their hearts than anything they may ever hear or read.
MARRIAGE TIP:
Submission means to be voluntarily unselfish. “Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.” (Ephesians 6:21)
MARRIAGE TIP:
As both of you in a marriage strive to “seek the light” rather than striving to be right, you’ll find that a lot of your marital problems will resolve themselves.
MARRIAGE TIP:
The principles for living in the Bible are the principles for loving in our marriages (Cindy Wright).
MARRIAGE TIP:
May there be such oneness between you in your marriage, that when one of you weeps, the other will taste the salt. (Martin Buxbaum).
MARRIAGE TIP:
Let me ask you: “Are you prayerfully and carefully treating your spouse with the love, honor and respect that God would have you? Are you showing the love of Christ to your spouse?” If not, you may want to pray Psalm 51 with a sincere heart and ask the Lord to show you how to love, honor, and cherish your spouse. This is especially relevant because you promised to do these things in your wedding vows.
MARRIAGE TIP:
The two most important minutes in your marriage can be when you “reconnect” when you get home after being gone all day apart from one another.
MARRIAGE TIP:
It’s possible to be married to someone for 35 years and still not know them. This happens in marriages when the spouses don’t take the time to explore the deepest recesses of their spouse’s heart. (Dr. David Jeremiah).
MARRIAGE TIP:
Marriage teaches you loyalty, forbearance, self-restraint, and meekness. It also teaches you a great deal many other things you wouldn’t need if you had stayed single. (Jimmy Townsend)
MARRIAGE TIP:
Work to break the cycle of unhealthy marriages in your family line. Just because you come from a dysfunctional family background, and just because you’ve had a dysfunctional marriage in the past, it doesn’t mean the pattern has to keep going on. Become God’s student and ask Him to show you how not to live as life’s victim.
MARRIAGE TIP:
The shortest distance between a problem and a solution is the distance between your knees and the floor. The one who kneels to the Lord can stand up to anything (Unknown).
MARRIAGE TIP:
A husband and wife are like the gas peddle and a brake in an automobile. We need both in a car to make it work (Dr. James Dobson).
MARRIAGE TIP:
God wants to work miracles in and through us in our marriages. But His work will be interrupted as long as we drag along trash from our past, and unrealistic expectations, and “selfism”. We need to work on the areas of our lives that will help us to throw away the junk so the light of Christ can shine in and through our married lives (Cindy Wright).
MARRIAGE TIP:
Here’s an important question: Are you a good steward of that which God has entrusted to you? Marriage is a stewardship responsibility that God has given you once you say “I do.”
MARRIAGE TIP:
Watch what God does, and then you do it, like children who learn proper behavior from their parents. Mostly what God does is love you. Keep company with him and learn a life of love. Observe how Christ loved us. His love was not cautious but extravagant. He didn’t love in order to get something from us but to give everything of himself to us. Love like that (Ephesians 5:1-2, The Message).
MARRIAGE TIP:
The husband may be “in the limelight” as far as being the visible head of the home, but any well-run circus, even marriage, needs both a ringmaster and a performance director. As Dave (a former ring-master) said, they both have equal power, and either one can blow the whistle that calls in help when there’s a problem (Sandra Aldrich).
MARRIAGE TIP:
Marriage is a covenant relationship that God wants to use for His glory. He wants to give the world a glimpse of what He is like. (Al Janssen)
MARRIAGE TIP:
Warning: Another human being can’t meet all your needs. The only person who can meet all of our needs is the Lord, and He had to die first! (Sandra Aldrich)
TIP:
Warning: Your spouse can love you and still not have a clue about what you need. Often as I talk with young wives, they lament, “But if he loved me, he’d know what I need.” No. He can love you desperately and thoroughly and still not know what’s bugging you. So it’s up to you to tell him (Sandra Aldrich).
TIP:
When you marry, you become a missionary to a very tiny tribe of one. You share yourself, you pour out your soul, you bless someone with a deeper and richer understanding of God, but you don’t necessarily have to live with gigantic insects or catch malaria (Dave Meurer).
MARRIAGE TIP:
A stiff apology is a second insult (G. K. Chesterton).
For more marriage tips, you can go to the “Social Media” topic on this web site. There you will find many pages of Facebook and Twitter Quotes we make available.
Cindy Wright of Marriage Missions International wrote this article.
Filed under: Marriage Counseling & Mentoring