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“Marriage First” Makes Your Life Unstable

At the end of my life, I want to hear the words, “Well done, good and faithful servant.” 

That’s the goal that keeps me grounded—and I know many of you share that desire. But here’s a hard truth I’ve learned through years of walking with couples: when our marriage or family becomes our first priority instead of God, everything starts to crumble.

Why “Family First” Doesn’t Work

I once had a conversation with someone I deeply love who said, “You think God has to be first—but I think family should be first.” His heart was sincere, but the fruit of that mindset showed otherwise. 

When family is first, everything depends on emotions—how your spouse treats you, how the kids behave, whether things feel peaceful at home.

That’s not stability. That’s shifting sand.

We see the effects of this all around us.
Divorce rates hover around 50%.
Even pastors and counselors admit they rarely had a healthy marriage modeled for them. 

Most people are doing their best, but without a biblical foundation, their “best” can’t hold up when life gets hard.

The Biblical Order That Brings Stability

Scripture gives us the right order: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind, and all your strength. And love your neighbor as yourself.” — Mark 12:30–31

That means I love my first neighbor—my spouse—because I love God.

Why do I forgive in marriage? Because God is first.
Why do I love my husband well? Because God is first.
Why do I serve my family with joy? Because God is first.

When we build our lives on that rock, we become steady—even when the storms hit. 

Illness, loss, special needs, mental health struggles—these things shake every marriage. But when God comes first, everything else finds its right place.

Feelings Aren’t God—God’s Word Is

We live in a “follow your feelings” culture. If you don’t feel in love anymore, the world says, find someone new. But feelings aren’t truth. God’s Word is.

You’re serving the King of Kings, and your marriage is part of that assignment. Like the Roman soldiers in Gladiator fought for the glory of Rome; as believers, we live for the glory of God. That means our choices in marriage—our words, our intimacy, our tone—should all be for His glory.

Believers are called to die to ourselves. That includes our moods and even our sexual desires. 

Scripture is clear: “Do not deprive each other except by mutual consent and for a time… then come together again so that Satan will not tempt you.” — 1 Corinthians 7:5

That’s not about coercion or obligation—it’s about love expressed God’s way. 

When I choose intimacy with my husband, it’s not because I feel like it every time. It’s because I love God. And when I embrace His design with joy, the byproduct is a beautiful, connected marriage.

Marriage as a Path to Holiness

Author Gary Thomas famously asked, “What if marriage is meant to make us holy, not happy?” The amazing thing is—when we pursue holiness, happiness often follows.

That’s why we teach the Delight Your Marriage Framework:

• Husbands need to feel respected, admired, wholehearted intimacy.
• Wives need to feel safe, known, wholeheartedly cherished.

We love our spouse in the way they receive love, not the way we prefer to give it. Because real love is about understanding and serving the other.

(You can download the full framework at DelightYourMarriage.com/framework.)

The Power of God’s Word to Transform

David Wood—a former atheist and sociopath whose life was radically changed by Scripture. Even after becoming a Christian, he noticed that when he stopped reading the Bible for a few days, dark thoughts would return. That’s how powerful God’s Word is—it changes us from the inside out.

If you’re struggling to love your spouse, to forgive, to stay faithful, start here: get your nose in the Word.

Not scrolling.
Not skimming.
Reading.
Slowly.
With a heart open to hear God.

Even one verse a day in a physical Bible can soften your heart. Make it a habit. Let the Word wash over you.

Final Thoughts

If you have put your marriage above Jesus, it’s not too late to turn it around.

He is a safe person to put your trust in.
You can trust His Word and His design.

It is on purpose, for a purpose… and it is Good.

 

Blessings,

 

The Delight Your Marriage Team

 

PS – If you are interested in taking the next step, putting God first, above your marriage, we would love to talk with you. Schedule a free Clarity Call and chat with one of Clarity Advisors.

 

PPS – Want to see this work in your churches? Our In-Person Training is launching nationwide in January and we would love for your church to be a part of it. Click here to learn more.

 

PPPS – Here is what a recent graduate had to say:

“The DYM program has helped me grow as a husband and learn how to better serve my wife and our relationship has been growing in all areas as a result.  She just told me this week that she used to feel tension when I came home from work and that tension is gone. Big change which has led to growth for us both. Belah’s insights and coaching have been amazing and I’ve discovered God’s purpose for us and our marriage at a new level!  Thanks DYM!”

 

Transcript:

Belah Rose (00:00.93)
Hi there, this is Belah Rose at Delight Your Marriage and grateful that you are joining. marriage trainer, coach, and honored to do this work because at the end of my life, I want to hear well done, good and faithful servant. That’s my goal. I believe that’s your goal. That’s why you’re tuning in. You want to hear how you can align and realign your heart and your life with God’s way. So that’s what I want to talk about in today’s conversation is actually the instability

of life and our choices and our heart and our moods and our behaviors and all sorts of other things when our marriage is first. Now, that may seem strange for me to say given that I’m all about marriage and I talk about it that way, but let me go into what I mean on the other side of this transition music.

Belah Rose (01:05.666)
I was speaking to somebody that I deeply love some months back and he said that that’s something that’s different between you and me is you think that God has to be first in your life but I think family should be first in your life. And the interesting thing about this person’s life trajectory is that family

did not work out well in his life. And so it seems very strange to say if your first priority was family, why didn’t it work? What was the fruit of that?

And because we look at our world today and see so many devastating results of even a marriage that says, I’m promising to love you with everything, I’m committing to love you totally, why do we still have such high divorce rates? It’s consistent. It’s somewhere around 50 % and then even more if it’s a second marriage and even more if

It’s based on an affair and even more if there’s a traumatic death of a family member or more if there’s a child with special needs or more if there’s a mental illness. There’s so much reason for divorce in our world today. So if family needs to be first and that seems like a societal norm, really, why isn’t it working out that well? Why?

most people, like I was speaking with some pastors and counselors just two weeks ago, and I asked the room who in here had a good marriage as a role model when you were growing up, a marriage that you could say, yeah, I want my marriage to turn out like that. In the whole room, one person raised their hand, one. These are counselors and pastors. Nobody.

Belah Rose (03:17.303)
has these role models, and I’m exaggerating because there was one person. The vast minority of us have had role models of a marriage that we would want. What kind of marriage would we want? Playful, passionate, fun, loving, relaxed, peaceful, joyful. That’s the kind of marriage we all crave, isn’t it? Where you can be yourself. You can be who you are.

But if family is first, why doesn’t it work? Why isn’t it working out? Because here’s the problem with family first. The problem is that means you decide your actions based on how things are going, not based on an objective way to treat your spouse.

You base your actions based on your feelings. If my spouse is treating me well, I’m gonna treat them well.

It’s not stable. You may think that it’s stable because, family is first. No, you don’t even know how to love your spouse well unless we have this scripture in front of us. Why do we forgive in marriage? Because God is first. Why do I love my husband well? Because God is first. Why do I love my kids well? Because God is first. I want to do this His way. And that is

the biblical standard. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength. And the second is like it, to love your neighbor as yourself. So I love my first neighbor, well, because I love God. That’s my motivation.

Belah Rose (05:16.447)
The crazy thing is, if I do it correctly, the byproduct is an awesome marriage. Because my stability comes from the Word of God doing it His way, then the byproduct is an amazing connection, an amazing marriage. So I don’t know your motivation to even listen to this conversation, but I want you to recognize that the Word of God must be

The rock. That is what keeps us steady even when there are shifting sands, even when there are storms, even when there are things that are terrible in life. Maybe we lose a child. Maybe there are significant illnesses that come upon us. There’s mental illnesses that harm so much of the relationship.

But when we say God’s way first, then everything is in right perspective. Now a phrase we use a lot at Delight Your Marriage is our spouse is our first human assignment. So because we’re servants of the Most High, we take our assignment seriously. So it’s interesting, my boys and I are watching Gladiator, you know, because mom thought that was a great idea to see all that blood and guts and gore.

I saw it 20 plus years ago and so I didn’t remember that there was that much gore. But what’s amazing about it is it really defines the Roman mindset.

And the Roman mindset was do all of this for Rome. Rome was essentially their motivation, their God, right? All for the glory of Rome. And so they’re going to follow their commanders and they’re going to do what the Caesar says because it’s for the glory of Rome. And so, and they love the Caesar. It’s really a good movie. It just has a lot of gore. And I thought that was really powerful because

Belah Rose (07:38.93)
We don’t live in a society that way. We live in a society where at this moment it’s all about your feelings. Follow your feelings. If you feel this way, do that thing. So if you no longer feel in love with your spouse, find someone you feel in love with.

But here’s the truth about women. In the beginning of a relationship, there’s always lovey-dovey feelings. But generally, what happens, generally, with or without kids, in the first two years of relationship for women, sexual desire drops significantly. The vast majority of the cases, not all.

And so if a woman goes to another relationship and is now all of a sudden sexually awakened, it very well may have nothing to do with the fact that all of a sudden she’s not coerced anymore, but it has everything to do with the fact that she as a woman is designed and built to be sexually desirous for a while and then it to taper off. And then it becomes some level of a discipline, of a habit.

And I hold the scripture above my head and I follow 1 Corinthians 7 where it says, not deprive each other except by mutual consent, maybe for a season, but come back together so the enemy doesn’t tempt you. I didn’t write this book and so I follow it because if I’m gonna believe that Jesus atoned for my sin and I get to go to heaven and be with him forever, that’s in this Bible.

And so I can’t take some sections of the Bible and flip a few pages and say, no, no, no, I don’t like those, so I’m definitely not gonna do those. I’m not gonna follow that. And when we talk about depriving, what does that even mean? I have a higher drive husband, I’m lower drive. Most of the time, that is the case. The wife is the lower drive. It’s not the case always, so if you’re in that category, don’t feel like your marriage is broken or not gonna get better, but.

Belah Rose
Most of the time it’s in that category. And since that’s generally the focus of my podcast, that’s what I’m going to focus on.

I pursue intimacy with my husband because I love God, because I love God, and I do it his way. But the beautiful thing about his way is when I embrace it as good, and this is the life I get to live, instead of, I have to do what God tells me to do. I mean, that’s the worst attitude ever, right? If you’re raising children that have that kind of attitude with whatever it is you ask them to do, it’s a terrible.

Perspective, it’s a terrible attitude. You want them to take whatever it is you say and run with it and be excited. my gosh, what a great idea. Let’s go have a lot of fun doing what mom and dad told me to do. I mean, you can mop with a joyful heart. remember, I remember I was given a punishment when I was a kid to mop like, I don’t know, the whole downstairs or something. We didn’t have carpet. And I was, by the end of that mopping session, I was singing and happy and.

I saw my mom afterwards and I was like, love mopping anytime you give me a chore it should be mopping. And she was like, well, that’s great, honey. But it was a punishment. but that goes to show you even in the worst situations, not that mopping is the worst, but even in punishments, we can have a joyful heart. Sex is not a punishment. Sex is to be embraced. Sex is a

beautiful thing that we can see as a gift. If we see it that way, if we choose to pursue it that way. I mean that’s the work we do in our programs is to invite women to heal so that they are not, that they’re no longer bound by the perspectives that the world has. That if you feel like making love, make love. And instead the question should be, how do I get myself to feel like making love? Our feelings don’t

Belah Rose
need to guide us. This book needs to guide us. We choose wisdom as followers of Jesus. We die to ourselves. That’s what marriage is about. As Gary Thomas says, what if marriage is to make us holy rather than happy? But the crazy thing about it is when you pursue holiness, when you pursue the good of your spouse, when you pursue to love them the way they receive love, it’s so

that the byproduct so many times is an awesome marriage. Now husbands and wives receive love differently. We talk a lot about the Delight Your Marriage framework here because to be delighted in your marriage, husbands need different things than wives. They’re different. If my husband loves chocolate ice cream and I love vanilla, it doesn’t speak love to him if I give him my favorite.

which is vanilla. It speaks love to him if I decide, he loves chocolate, I’m gonna give him chocolate ice cream. That’s what makes him feel loved. In the same way he knows I love vanilla, he’s gonna give me vanilla ice cream. So it’s the same thing in the Delight Your Marriage framework. A husband needs to be respected, admired, wholehearted, intimacy, and a wife needs safe, known, wholeheartedly cherished. Now all of these elements,

husband or wife, it is about loving them. It is about your heart. If you want more information about this framework, go to delightyourmarriage.com slash framework and you can download the whole PDF that gives a lot more clarity on each of these sides.

But at the end of it all, our motivation is to please the Lord. Our motivation is to serve God with a joyful heart. And if we get our marriage right, it translates into all these other relationships. If we know how to love our spouse well, and we know how to hold our tongue when we want to criticize our husband, but because that wouldn’t be respectful, we choose not to.

Belah Rose
and we choose to look at the good that God has made in him. Yeah, his strengths are different than our strengths. His weaknesses are different than our weaknesses. If we see that as, thank God I don’t have a husband that’s exactly like me. Otherwise, we would be a mess together.

Belah Rose
But thank God I have a husband that’s different than me. And he sees things I don’t see. And so we complement each other. We’re different than each other and we complement each other like puzzle pieces fitting together.

I see my husband this way because I love God.

I pursue to love my husband well because I love God.

That’s where the motivation has to start. If I’m missing it, if I’m not loving my spouse well, if they don’t feel loved, I want to pursue this God’s way. And I know you do too. If you’re new to faith, I wanna encourage you. The Bible’s where it’s at. That’s our steady, our safety.

We can do it God’s way when we pursue this word. And I would encourage you, just get a Bible, a physical Bible. A small one is what I would encourage. And yes, I think it should be cute, something that you particularly like, all right? And keep it in your glove box, keep it with you, keep it in your purse, keep it in a bag that you carry. And just read at least one verse a day. Because you’re not gonna fall in love with this Bible.

Belah Rose
unless you read it consistently. And I believe in a physical Bible. I don’t believe you can fall in love with this word unless it’s in a physical Bible. And the reason for that is that screens are full of distraction and the written word, you have your phone far away from you and…

Once you read one verse, you might read the next. You might read the next, you might read the next, you might want context. Great! But otherwise, just let one verse wash over you.

Years ago, I got to see David Wood, who’s an apologist and he’s a very funny guy. He’s also a sociopath. And he, I remember him saying at this live event, it was a small group of folks, but he said, I, well his story, I’ll tell you his story just for a second. He was an atheist and he thought he had evolved past feelings.

And he wanted to prove this, not because he hated his dad, but because he wanted to prove that he was evolved past it. He tried to kill his dad with a hammer and he actually thought he did. I mean, how grotesque and imagine how gory that would have been. He went to prison for a long time and there was a Christian there that essentially kept fighting with him and not fighting with him, arguing. Like David would…

bring up something and the Christian just kept winning the issues, the arguments. And the Christian was in there because he became a Christian and turned himself in. So he wasn’t in there because any other reason that God convicted him and he decided to turn himself in for his felonies. So David’s in there, he’s in for many reasons. He’s in solitary confinement and he starts reading the Bible.

Belah Rose
and ultimately he converts to Christianity because this word is so powerful. All right, he gets out of prison, he starts doing all sorts of study and becomes, he gets different, I don’t know, he has multiple PhDs and Masters. He’s phenomenal, he’s phenomenal. If you want to check him out, David Wood, the apologist. And I’ve actually interviewed his wife Marie Wood on the podcast, so you can just search Marie and

it’ll come up. She’s amazing as well. Just amazing.

This is what I heard him say at the event. He said, what I notice is when I’m out of the word for a couple of days, the violent thoughts start to come back. I mean, he’s a bona fide sociopath, and yet he has five children.

and he serves his wife well. He’s a sociopath. There’s no feeling, there’s no reason he would do it aside from this word. Learn from that. This word can change you on the inside. If you are struggling with a certain sin, start getting your nose in this word every day. If you’re struggling to love your wife from your heart, get your nose in this word. And don’t read it with like a, I’m collecting,

information or memorizing things for the sake, but have a dialogue with God as you read it. Lord, help me to be a man of faith. Help me to be a man of self-control. Lord, help me to control my thoughts. me to be gentle in the way I think about my spouse. So as you read it, pray with God. Lord, I agree that your word is true. Help me to live it out in my private life, in my private heart.

Belah Rose
Lord, when I think about people, help me to have their perspective, not to judge others.

to really think of others as better than myself. Lord, help me to actually live that and desire that. So I’m gonna wrap up this conversation with the mindset that you are going to come before the Lord and say, I’m sorry that I have put my marriage before you, God. Let’s pray. Lord Jesus, I pray for this one that maybe, maybe has made their marriage an idol.

that they believe they can’t be effective for you unless their marriage is perfect. And instead of putting you first and loving their spouse as a service to you from a pure heart, from a non-manipulative mindset, but instead, I love this woman because I love you, God. Or I love this man because I love you, God. Help this one God to get it right.

to get their priorities first with you and then with their spouse because they love you. They want to do it right. In Jesus’ name, amen. Hey listen, we’d love to walk you through to healing, to get there, to understand how to live this out. DelightYourMarriage.com slash CC is a clarity call. We’d love to be there with you, walking you through that healing and getting you to the other side.

God bless you, hope you have a wonderful day today.