Christ at the Center
“A woman’s heart should be so hidden in God that a man has to seek Him just to find her.” — Maya Angelou
“Men, you’ll never be a good groom to your wife unless you’re first a good bride to Jesus.” — Tim Keller
I’ve loved these quotes for years, but I never fully understood their depth until walking through the first years of our marriage.
My husband and I have been married for over seven years now. You might think, That’s not very long. But here’s some perspective: we are remarried. We each came into this marriage with two children and a lot of baggage. Over these years, we’ve faced more trials than I could have imagined including two grueling custody battles, chronic illness, four kids each wrestling with hardship (two battling immense trauma and suicidal thoughts), and the lingering ghosts of past relationships. Honestly, the list could go on. But what matters most is this: in seven years, we’ve walked through valleys deeper than we ever expected.
When you enter marriage, especially remarriage, you see everything through an idealistic lens. You love Jesus, you love each other, and you dream of a perfect new family. It feels like a dream come true. You’ve found “the one” who completes you. And let’s be honest: you can’t imagine real difficulty. But then life happens. The honeymoon fades. For many couples, that shift comes gradually as responsibilities grow bigger jobs, children, bills. For us, the challenges began immediately.
So, back to those quotes. At first, neither of us truly understood them. We loved Jesus and sought His grace. We wanted to show that love to each other and our children. But here’s what we learned: we both had to be so desperate for God that we sought Him first—before anything or anyone else, even each other.
My favorite picture of this is a triangle: God at the top, husband and wife at the bottom corners. As each of us grows closer to Christ through faith, trust, obedience the two of us grow closer together. The Holy Spirit strengthens the bond. Because how else can we, as selfish humans, love as generously and selflessly as Jesus? Marriage is a gift from God, a reflection of His relationship with us. It teaches us to lay down ourselves and put the relationship first. When Christ is at the center, He gives us the capacity to love like Him.
I used to struggle with God’s instructions for marriage not out of resistance, but lack of understanding. Living through hardship and seeking grace only He can give has made those words come alive:
“For wives, this means submit to your husbands as to the Lord. For a husband is the head of his wife as Christ is the head of the church… As the church submits to Christ, so you wives should submit to your husbands in everything. For husbands, this means love your wives, just as Christ loved the church. He gave up his life for her to make her holy and clean, washed by the cleansing of God’s word.”
— Ephesians 5:22-26
Jesus died for us so we could be forgiven. His sacrifice gives us the gift of eternity if we believe. That is a love beyond human comprehension but not beyond our Heavenly Father. The only way to truly grasp God’s plan for marriage is to seek Him first. None of us will ever perfectly mirror Jesus on this earth, but the closest we can come is to pursue Him with all our hearts. In that pursuit, He blesses our marriages with a love only possible when He is at the center.
As C.S. Lewis wrote, “Being in love is not merely a feeling. It is a deep unity maintained by the will and deliberately strengthened by habit; reinforced by the grace which both partners ask, and receive, from God.”
Friends, I encourage you: pursue Christ with all your heart and soul. The blessing that brings to your life and your marriage is a gift beyond comprehension.
