Marriage

"When husband and wife take their marriage vows, they are given spiritual responsibility to one another, as well as physical, mental and emotional responsibilities. With all of the challenges and pressures on marriage today, husband and wife should both guard against 'sinning against the Lord' (not to mention each other) by failing to pray for one another. As Paul Tournier points out: 'It is only when a husband and wife pray together before God that they find the secret of true harmony, that the difference in their temperaments, their ideas, and their tastes enriches their home instead of endangering it. There will be no further question of one imposing his will on the other, or of the other giving in for the sake of peace. Instead, they will together seek God's will, which alone will ensure that each will be fully able to develop his personality... When each of the marriage partners seeks quietly before God to see his own faults, recognizes his sin, and asks the forgiveness of the other, marital problems are no more. Each learns to speak the other's language, and to meet him half way, so to speak. Each holds back those harsh little words which one is apt to utter when one is right, but which are said in order to injure. Most of all, a couple rediscovers complete mutual confidence, because, in meditating in prayer together they learn to become absolutely honest with each other... This is the price to be paid if partners very different from each other are to combine their gifts instead of setting them against each other...'"