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Soulful Connections
How close are you and your spouse spiritually? MP reports how couples are living out their faith.
by Kate V. Bryant
 1 of 5
My husband and I feel the spiritual aspect of our marriage is pretty healthy. We make it a point to pray together every day, read the Bible together every evening after dinner, and attend a couples' Bible study together every Wednesday night. On Sunday, we usually go out for lunch after church for the sole purpose of discussing our pastor's message and applying it to our lives.
Okay, I repent. Everything except the first sentence of that opening paragraph is a lie!
It's more like this:
My husband and I feel the spiritual aspect of our marriage is pretty healthy. We're comfortable praying for and with each other when we feel the need, we often find ourselves discussing spiritual matters, we serve together as elders at our church and provide pre-marital counseling for couples.
It wasn't always like this—we've sort of grown into it as we've matured. Or maybe we've matured as we've grown into it.
Marriage Partnership recently surveyed nearly 2,600 married people to find out what spiritual activities they and their spouses engage in (and here's the catch) intentionally and together. We're not talking about routinely zipping off grace before a meal! We mean deliberately praying, attending church, doing devotions, reading the Bible, attending a Bible study, discussing spiritual matters, serving, giving … together.
Averaging 14 years of marriage with a median age of 40, the couples we surveyed are, for the most part, active together spiritually in some way. Two thirds (66 percent) have children living at home, the largest concentration of which are in the early elementary years of kindergarten through fifth grade (45 percent). Nearly all respondents (99 percent) said they are Christians, and 90 percent say their spouse is also a Christian. More than 8 out of 10 (86 percent) of these couples indicate they regularly engage in at least one spiritual activity together.
Almost half (48 percent) say they are very satisfied with their marriage in general, however only one fifth (20 percent) say they are very satisfied with their marriage on a spiritual level.
But consider this: 9 out of 10 (90 percent) of those who are very satisfied with their marriage spiritually are also very satisfied with their marriage in general. This doesn't surprise Gary Thomas, mp regular contributor and author of numerous Christian marriage books, including Sacred Marriage. "Consider the spiritual reality of marriage," Thomas observes. "One person who 'stumbles in many ways' (James 3:2) married to another person who stumbles in many ways. Apart from God's grace and presence, that's a prescription for disaster! If spouses don't maintain God's view of their spouse, they'll soon lose respect and appreciation for each other. If a couple doesn't maintain spiritual intimacy, their conversation will become judgmental and accusatory, instead of encouraging and nurturing."
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