Building a healthy, God-glorifying marriage can be compared to building a house, it takes planning, effort, lots of long days of communication about miscommunications, and hammering away at sin as it’s revealed. After years of hard work you hopefully end up with a comfortable place in which to live and love that becomes more valuable as the years pass.

We would like to explore this analogy further.

Did you realize your marriage has rooms, much like a house? The first thing others see is the front door of the marriage house.

It speaks volumes to those who are passing by whether or not your marriage is welcoming. The front door should be an invitation to come inside for more, not a false front that hides the reality in which you live.

The first room inside the home is usually the living/family room – the place where life happens.

Image Credit: The Sims Social

It is your comfortable place where you spend lots of time together relaxing and doing the things you love to do. This could be compared to the area of your relationship that comes easy to you, your comfortable place. It’s the part of your marriage you really didn’t have to work on to get where you are today.

For us, our living room is our friendship.

From the moment we met our compatibility in this area was strong and always has been. We realize this isn’t the case for every marriage. Many couples may have to work at being good friends, but may excel in serving the church together, or in studying God’s Word together, etc. Your living room is the one place where friends come to spend time with you and learn from you and your example.

Next, we want to talk about the kitchen of the marriage house.

This is the place where your relationship is fed. You can feed it junk with lots of processed food, or a healthy balance of quality food. It is important to consider with what food you’re feeding your marriage.

A healthy marriage diet consists of:

• good books
• consistent Bible reading
• regular times of prayer together
• quality fellowship with other Christian marriages
• well-read on a variety of topics from which you can learn and grow
• commitment to the local church.

The Marriage House has two more rooms we’ll explore tomorrow, but in the meantime ask yourself the following questions:

How inviting is the front door of your marriage? Does it welcome others in for more? What is your living room? How has God used you in this area of strength in your relationship? Finally, with what types of food are you feeding your marriage? How has this helped strengthen your marriage?