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  • On Being a Heroic Man

    On Being a Heroic Man

    There is something deep inside a man’s heart that longs to be heroic. I don’t know what little girls dream of, but I do know that little boys dream of carrying those girls out of a burning schoolhouse so they can be admired as strong and brave. Teenaged boys dream of fighting in a war…

  • A Prayer for a Christian Husband and Wife

    A Prayer for a Christian Husband and Wife To Pray Together

    It is one of the most important habits that any married couple can form. Unfortunately, it is also one of the most rare. For a husband and wife to live well together before the Lord, they must pray together. For a couple to honor God in their marriage, they must be as intimate spiritually as…

  • One Unexpected Key To a Joyful Marriage

    One Unexpected Key To a Joyful Marriage

    You probably keep score. I’m sure you don’t mean to. You may not even be conscious of it. But there’s a pretty good chance that you do it. You keep score in your marriage. You keep score when you tally up the things you do for your spouse and when you tally up the things…

  • How To Cheapen a Marriage

    Have you ever seen someone get married and you are absolutely certain that it’s not out of love for the other person? Maybe the woman wants access to her husband’s wealth or lifestyle and marriage is the way she can get it. Or maybe the man wants access to his wife’s fame or reputation and…

  • If Satan Took Up Marriage Counseling

    If Satan Took Up Marriage Counseling

    Every now and again I just can’t help myself—I respond to a clickbait headline and find myself reading an advice column. The question this time was from a woman who had become disillusioned with her husband and enamored with someone else. And as I read the columnist’s response I thought, “I’m pretty sure that’s exactly…

  • Love Your Wife

    When You Don’t Like Your Wife, Love Your Wife

    There may not be times in your marriage when you stop loving your wife, but there may be times in your marriage when you stop liking her—or when you stop acting like it, anyway. There may be times when you are easily irritated with her or times when you just can’t get along. There may…

  • If We Could Both Go Together

    If We Could Both Go Together

    I am slowly (but steadily!) making my way through the collected sermons of De Witt Talmage. Though he is little-known and little-remembered today, he was considered one of the great preachers of his time. In one of his sermons I found this sweet tribute to his parents and the joy of a long marriage.

  • Living Selflessly with Your Wife

    Living Selflessly with Your Wife

    Before I set fingers to keyboard, I asked my wife if I should write this article—one requested by Ligonier’s Tabletalk magazine. Before I so much as typed a single word, I asked her if I was at all qualified. She pondered this for a few moments and said, “Yes, I think you are.” I was…

  • Build a Stronger Marriage

    Build a Stronger Marriage

    It is no small feat to build a strong marriage. It is no easy thing to maintain a strong marriage through years of trials and temptations, through decades of sinning and being sinned against. It is not something any of us can take for granted and it is for this reason that there are so…

  • Grace for Sinners to Love Like Saints

    Grace for Sinners to Love Like Saints

    I am often asked how I read so many books. My pat answer is something like this: “The more you read, the easier it gets. When you’ve read 8 books on marriage, the 9th goes really quickly.” The point is that there is a kind of sameness to Christian publishing where books tend to focus…

  • A Message For Young Men

    A Message for Young Men

    Somewhere out there in the great, wide world, someone is praying for you. He probably doesn’t know you and you probably don’t know him. You may not meet one another for many more years. But he’s praying for you nonetheless and has been for a very long time. He is the father of a daughter.…

  • The Great Challenge of Every Marriage

    The Great Challenge of Every Marriage

    We’ve all heard that marriage was designed to make us holy more than to make us happy. And though it’s a bit of a trite phrase that threatens to force a false dichotomy between holiness and happiness, there is a measure of truth to it. At its best, marriage does, indeed, help us grow in…

  • A Few Practical Pointers on Marriage

    What If Marriage Isn’t Making Me As Holy As I Had Hoped?

    He told me he knew that marriage was designed not to make him happy, but to make him holy. He had accepted the wisdom in the phrase, and there is certainly an element of truth behind it: Marriage really can serve as a significant means of sanctification in the life of the believer and it…

  • A Few Practical Pointers on Marriage

    A Few Practical Pointers on Marriage

    If you could speak to 70 nearly-married or newly-married couples and give them some practical pointers on marriage, what would you say? That was the question I faced as I prepared for a recent event across town. My first assignment was to speak on the Christian family and then to describe some of the challenges…

  • Postpartum

    A Husband’s Perspective on a Postpartum Body

    It was with sorrow but not surprise that I read a recent article at Risen Motherhood. In The Gospel Frees Us From Shame: Embracing Sexual Intimacy with a Postpartum Body, Lauren Washer writes about an experience that’s common among women who have given birth to one or more children. “I never thought my feelings toward…

  • Leave and Cleave Like a Strawberry

    Leave and Cleave Like a Strawberry

    Living in a multicultural city and serving in a multicultural church has given me a wide view of some of the ways different generations of a family can relate to one another. As a young generation begins to pair up and to marry, forming new families, they need to learn to relate to the generation…

  • Counsel for Couples

    Counsel for Couples

    Over the past few years, we have been blessed with an incredible volume of resources related to biblical counseling. From primers for amateur counselors to in-depth examinations of specific issues, we are now well-served with resources meant to address a host of common issues. New to the field is Jonathan Holmes’s Counsel for Couples: A…

  • Shepherding At Home

    Shepherding At Home

    In this video, which was filmed at a nearby conference, I was asked about some of the concerns related to pastors and their families. I tried to briefly to remind church leaders of the temptations that draw us away from this primary calling. Transcript Pastors always need to remember that you’re qualified to ministry through…

  • Rejoice in the Wife of Your Youth

    Rejoice in the Wife of Your Youth (and Not-So-Youth)

    This summer Aileen and I celebrated our twentieth anniversary and I can say with honesty that few things in life have thrilled or honored me more than the fact that she chose to spend her life with me, of all people. All those years ago she agreed to link her life to mine and we’ve…

  • Married Pregnant

    Does Premarital Pregnancy Nullify ‘Unequally Yoked’?

    I enjoy John Piper’s “Ask Pastor John” feature and often benefit from hearing (or reading) his answers to the more than 1200 questions he has taken on so far. It reflects a lifetime of studying Scripture and applying its principles. He recently answered a question on whether premarital pregnancy nullifies the principle of “unequally yoked”…