I believe that Friendship is the foundation of any healthy marriage. Before anything romantic occurs, friendship needs to be present. The art and blessing of Friendship will create lasting moments in your marriage when you and your spouse are trying to maintain determination to fight for your marriage. Even in the best of times, be sure to keep your marriage covered in prayer, as challenges and troubling times are inevitable. God must be the center of your relationship, and even in that, you have a responsibility to maintain what God has given to you.

I pray these nuggets will bless your marriage:

1. Be faithful. During hard times, a friendship can either be lost altogether or become stronger. There may be times during the darkest days of your marriage when you and your spouse may question whether you made the right decision. There may be moments when you may want to walk away, but you MUST remain faithful. Marriage has many stages of development, be sure to maintain a desire and willingness to grow with your spouse; maintaining faithfulness to the commitment you made to your spouse, and most importantly to the vow you made before God.

2. Believe in each other. One of the reasons God created marriage is to bring husbands and wives to their full potential. You’ll never be close friends with someone who doesn’t believe in you. As spouses, we have to build an environment where our husband or wife can thrive. God created your spouse for something special, and your job is to help cultivate whatever that is. There will be days when the two of you will not agree, but being respectful and learning to agree to disagree will teach the both of you how to respect each other’s opinions. Everyone’s perception is their own truth. You cannot push what you do not respect. Learn to embrace the beauty of your differences. Your spouse needs you to believe in his or her dreams, goals, and aspirations, even in times of perceived failure. Wives, listen. Husbands, hold your wife and ensure her that everything will be fine.

3. Encourage honesty and intimacy. Honesty is crucial in every relationship. Does your spouse know your heart? Does he or she know what you’re thinking, what you love, what you believe? If not, it’s time to let your spouse into your world. Isolating yourself from your spouse makes intimacy impossible. Intimacy offers the opportunity for your spouse to get to know you. Intimacy transcends any physical contact. It enables a couple to send a message to each other in a room of 500 people while being 100 feet apart.

4. Be a safe place. Who do you call when something great happens? Who do you go to first when something terrible happens? You go to the person you trust the most. As a married couple, you need to be each other’s refuge-the place each of you go to celebrate good news or find strength to face bad news. No one else should be the first responder to your spouse other than you.

5. Be fun and creative. The strongest marriages are the ones where a husband and wife still have fun together. If this ever stops, if you no longer enjoy each other’s company, then hard times are going to be very overwhelming. If one of you enjoys golf, then play golf together. If it’s fishing or hunting, then do that together. If one spouse likes shopping, go shopping together. Whatever it is, do it together! Come out of your comfort zone once or twice and go into your spouse’s world and have fun. Do something that the both of you have never done before and take that adventure together, make your marriage an adventure, always put a new twist in your marriage.

6. Bear each other’s burdens. If you’ve ever tried to carry three pieces of luggage by yourself, while you are taking a trip, you know how important it is to have someone to help you with lifting the load. Galatians 6:2 says “Bear one another’s burdens and so fulfill the law of Christ.” That is what friends do. Offer to help. Be a support. Never sit back while your spouse deals with hardship. What one bears, you both bear.

I am praying for the success of your marriage.

Pastor Clinton House