A successful marriage

A good and healthy mantra to have in marriage is “my spouse is a great catch, and I’m not such a bad catch either!”

I was married successfully for 19 years to Kirstie Birr until my wife taken by cancer on 19th November 2020. I had the most wonderful marriage to an incredible and beautiful woman. However, I don’t think that we could have done it purely relying on ourselves. Without God, we wouldn’t have met. Without God, if we had got married, our marriage would have been ordinary at most and I would have given it 50/50 chance of it working. My selfishness would have been uncontrolled and my wife had her own sinful nature too. This would not have been a good combination. We both needed God and God needed to be at the centre of our marriage. This is what made our marriage special. By having God at the centre, it made something which could have been ordinary into something extraordinary.

Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless.

Ephesians 5:25-27

To have a successful marriage all boils down to helping your spouse make it to heaven. This means that you both put the needs of the other person high up your agenda. Both of you ask the questions, “what does my spouse need? and what can I do to help my spouse?” If helping one another get to heaven is your goal you will end up praying together regularly, sharing biblical convictions and new insights. You walk together with God and take a keen interest in how your spouse is walking with God. Kirstie really inspired me in her walk with God. She would read the bible and would change as a result. She took biblical principles very seriously. Kirstie inspired me in her level of giving. She gave a tithe on everything and would also give to other charities and individual people as they had need. If you have more than you need share it with those who don’t. Knowing that your spouse puts God first in finances is very important. Our money, wealth and finances are very close to our hearts. If you spouse has integrity with God and doesn’t compromise with things close to the heart with God, then they will be faithful, show integrity and be giving to you. This is a really important point. If someone is willing to compromises with God and their level of giving, then they will find ways to compromise with you as their spouse. Call each other higher in the area of giving.

Honour the Lord with your wealth, with the first fruits of all your crops; then your barns will be filled to overflowing, and your vats will brim over with new wine.

Proverbs 3:9-10

Helping each other get to heaven is also about helping others get to heaven too. Our marriage was about building relationships. We had a great relationship with each other, but we also built relationships with other people. Kirstie was especially good at this. She wanted as many people as possible to know what an incredible, loving and caring God she knew. It is also about building good and strong relationships with other Christians. We needed them in our lives and they needed us. We would regularly open our home for the gospel. Host bible discussions, throw parties, put on events like Burns Suppers and Macmillan Coffee Mornings. All so that through others could get to see and get to know God.

Although it a godly and right to focus on other people, the relationship in marriage (other than God) is with each other. Invest in each other. Serve each other. Sacrifice for each. Be giving to each other. Be kind and patient to one another. The initial being in love feeling doesn’t last forever. Over the years, busyness, pressures of work and children and daily routine can mean the being in love state can fade. But by investing in each other, you will be spend your marriage falling in love with each other over and over again. My marriage was characterised by me falling again and again romantically in love with Kirstie. Because she was so giving and thoughtful, it was easy for me to fall in love with Kirstie again and again.

Marriage isn’t always a bed of roses. Conflict will arise. We sin against each other. In these times, show grace rather than judgement. Bear with each. When your spouse is not where they need to be spiritually, call them higher and have the godly expectation that they will repent. Don’t be proud about it, they will one day have to do the same to you. When differences come, resolve them, get others involved in conflict resolution if you need to (this will happen). Several times in our marriage would reach on impasse on an issue. We would need to go to another couple we mutually respected, talk the issue through and listen to the advice given. It requires godly humility to do this. Christianity and salvation are about reconciliation. The cross of Christ is about reconciling man to God. But it also reconciles us to each other. This also applies in the context of marriage. The apostle Paul sums this up perfectly in 2 Corinthians 5.

All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God. God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

2 Corinthians 5:18-21

When challenges come, your spouse walks with you and supports and tries not to burden you (of course all marriages will fail from time to time in this way, but most the time, they will not). Both Kirstie and I suffered the death of our fathers in the first few years of our marriage. We had to support each other through the trails that the grief of these events brought up. Our biggest challenge was cancer. A shocking statistic is that fifty percent of couples break up after a cancer diagnosis. There are physical changes due to the cancer, surgery and treatment which challenges to mobility and intimacy of a marriage. For me, seeing my wife lose her hair was difficult. It was difficult for Kirstie too. When I first saw her with a wig on, I was out and about with the children, I didn’t immediately recognise her because of how different she looked. It was a shock. I wasn’t prepared for it. The hormone blockers and steroids also had their impact on our relationship too. We certainly lost elements of our marriage through the treatment, yet through it, in many respects our love deepened. I became so much more aware of my own selfishness and had to take it repeatedly to new levels to dig deeper to serve my wife. I became inspired by her godly attitude and the way she continued to give to others. Some of the best times in our marriage came after Kirstie had been diagnosed with cancer. My respect for her continued to grow and grow. I have never seen such strength and resilience in a woman. I was so proud of her and remain so. She became so much my heroine. A successful marriage loves unconditionally. The apostle Paul sums it up well in 1 Corinthians 13.

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonour others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
Love never fails

1 Corinthians 13:4-8a

It was a total privilege to have been married to Kirstie. I feel totally blessed that I was the one who got to marry Kirstie. Christianity is not something you bolt onto the side of marriage, it can only be a Christian marriage if Christ and the salvation on offer is at the heart of marriage. You don’t want to spend your life with someone who you won’t see in eternity, so fight for each others salvation. Then one day, one of you will hand the other over into the loving arms of Jesus.

Marriage complete. Of the two of us, I got the better catch.