Full Transcript
Being married to someone who doesn’t share your faith in God can be a real challenge. You might wonder, how do I build intimacy with my spouse when we can’t connect on something that’s so important to me?
Well, I think first of all, you, you’ve gotta recognize that you have spiritual needs. You need spiritual community, and that’s not coming through in your relationship with your spouse. And so you’re gonna need to seek that through a church body, through, uh, family and friends that do support you in your faith in God. So don’t neglect that, um, because I think if you don’t have that, you’re gonna feel that absence with your spouse even more powerfully.
And then I think it’s important for you to look for areas where you can’t even have deep spiritual conversation about the meaning of life and what gives you satisfaction. And that might be actually a chance for you to just naturally share the work that God is doing in your life and to hear what’s happening in your spouse’s heart. But being married means that you share a lot of the journey of life where you can build emotional intimacy. You’re sharing the journey likely of parenting, and of how you steward your money well, and you’re sharing the journey of making decisions about work and about where you live. And all those things are opportunities to hear each other, to build love for each other. And I think for a lot of people who are married to somebody who’s not a believer, the sexual relationship, that intimacy actually can become even more powerful because it is in some ways like a spiritual way that you connect with your bodies. And so that might be a powerful way that you build into.
And finally, hey, I would encourage you, don’t think that you can’t minister together. You know, when we think about ministering together, we think about having a Bible study or serving in a church nursery. But you know, ministry is blessing other people. And so you and your unbelieving spouse can have ministry like working in a homeless shelter or showing hospitality to neighbors and just blessing people. And that’s a form of intimacy. It’s actually even a form of spiritual intimacy.
Even if you and your spouse don’t agree on a belief in God, don’t stop praying. Boy, I’ve heard so many testimonies of somebody who’s prayed for a husband or wife for years, and that prayer, that faithfulness, that loving your spouse well, goes a long way in showing the power of God. And so don’t give up on that long road of faithfulness and prayer.
