Spiritual faithfulness is a crucial form of faithfulness in a Christian marriage. Spiritual faithfulness means putting God first in absolute loyalty. This means that you as an individual will develop and maintain the spiritual muscle of faithfulness through prayer, study, fellowship, and service. We express faithfulness to God individually by aspiring to know, love, and serve Him only in greater and greater measure throughout our lifetime.

As individuals, we are faithful to God. This is the first and probably most critical aspect of faithfulness. If we don’t maintain an individual relationship with our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, we weaken the very foundation of our marriage.

Spiritual faithfulness also means that we agree to grow together toward Christ. We are committed to the principle of seeking God together.

I want to take a moment and expose you to a great idea that has been very helpful to couples who attend our Intimacy conferences, which we conduct around the country. Most of you have accepted God as Father. Jesus’ teachings about God often use the analogy of God as a father. I don’t think anyone who is a Christian would argue that God is our Father.

Yet I want to take this a step further. God is not just your Father; He is also your Father-in-law, because He is also the Father of your spouse. Hence, He is your all-knowing, omnipresent Father-in-law. He sees how you treat your spouse and how you talk about your spouse to yourself and others.

For most couples who marry, I am sure that both individuals maintain a relationship with their natural in-laws. For some this may include a few holidays a year, occasional phone calls, visits, or vacations together.

Could you imagine, under normal circumstances, marrying your spouse and never seeing your in-laws again? That would seem odd, at best, and very rude, at worst. Yet that is exactly what some Christians do with God. It’s as if they say, “Thanks for the spouse.” Yet they never bring their spouses back to their Father-in-law God. They don’t pray together, and they rarely discuss God’s will or His Word. Oh, they don’t mind going to church, but privately they never go visit the Father-in-law, who not only gave them their Christian spouse but also specially made that special person just for him or her.

Part of spiritual faithfulness is being faithful to spending spiritual time together. This includes praying together, having times of worship together, getting in the Word, having spiritual conversations, and seeking God’s will for each other and for family. The love agreement of faithfulness is definitely one that includes spiritual faithfulness.

It’s possible that you may have an unsaved or difficult spouse. For you, maintain your own spiritual faithfulness.