The first fight Bill and I had was our first attempt to study the Bible together

Spiritual Tools

By Pam Farrel

The first fight Bill and I had was our first attempt to study the Bible together. How very strange is that? It is a picture of just how serious Satan is at wreaking havoc on the institute of marriage. Maybe you have had a fight on the way to church or over the topic of even going to church.

Consider these statistics:

The divorce rate for first time marriages is about the 50% rate
Couples who pray together daily divorce at less than 1% rate!
Couples who pray together rate their sex life with the highest possible rating.
Couples who attend a weekly church worship service also give their sex life the highest sexual satisfaction rating.
Couples who have a friendship circle that believe in long term monogamous marriage tend to have long term happy marriages—these kind of friendship circles also might be found in the local church.[i]

Do you see the pattern? The more spiritual our marriages are, the more likely they will be successful and sexually satisfying. The more passion we have toward God the more we’ll have available for your marriage.

See why Satan wants to keep us from praying, from reading the Bible, from getting to church? He knows it will make a difference in our relationship!

So, if spirituality is the most powerful tool in building a long term happy and sexually satisfying relationship, then how do we as couples go about building our spiritual life?

In our newest book, 10 Best Decisions Every Couple Can Make, we give a few tools to give our love and life an Extreme Home Makeover:

DECIDE TO

That’s plain and simple. We must decide a spiritual life is just as important as being at the kid’s soccer games. It is as valuable as that weekly golf tee time or tennis match. Time praying with our spouse each day is as vital as our daily shower or daily stop at Starbucks. Our mentors in ministry, Jim and Sally Conway in their book, Traits of a Lasting Marriage discovered the secret to a long-term happy marriage. I suggest that we all get our pens out to write down this earth-shattering discovery. Here it is: Couples who have long term happy marriages DECIDED to have long term happy marriages. Duh! Seems simple in concept, but extremely hard to apply in daily life. Let’s all decide that today will be the day to start building spirituality into our marriages. Let’s check to see if you have all the tools in your tool belt.

One thing that drives my husband, Bill, crazy is when our boys get into his tool chest or tool belt and “borrow” his tools. When he goes to use them, they are not there and what was a five minute job becomes an all morning hunt for which son used the tool last and where that tool might now be located. The key tools for building our spiritual lives are found in this simple acrostic:

Talk to God

Obey the truth

Overcome evil

Look in the Bible

Share with others

Let’s get out our spiritual tool chests, use them and soon we will see the pay offs in all areas of our love lives!

Pam & Bill Farrel write from El Cajon, California. www.farelcommunications.com