We Found a Good Relationship Coach

I married a foreigner in 2021, and it took my wife until late last year to get here. During our time apart, which was broken up by overseas trips, people asked me how we were doing, and I always said we were doing great. Married life was good. Sometimes they would tell me to wait until we had been married longer. One said we were still on our honeymoon, because we had spent so little time together. Things would get harder.

I feel I should respond now.

First of all, God has made me aware of two dangerous sins: the sin of Job, and the sin of Joseph.

Job’s sin was that he defended himself before God, as though he deserved a perfect life because he was so obedient. This is what God told him off for when he appeared to Job. He didn’t tell him he wasn’t obedient. He criticized Job’s pride because Job thought he could show God that it was wrong to let him suffer.

Everybody deserves to suffer.

Joseph’s sin was that he was proud of favor. His dad loved him more than his other sons, and he gave him a fancy coat. Joseph danced around in the coat before the others. Joseph also had dreams in which his brothers and even his parents bowed before him, and this irked everyone in the family.

Hezekiah committed the same sin. He showed foreigners all the treasure God had give him, and Isaiah came and told him his family was cursed.

We have to testify about God’s goodness, but we aren’t supposed to brag needlessly, so I suppose there has to be some kind of balance.

I don’t want to brag about my marriage in a way that causes my wife and me problems, but I do want to praise God.

The strange truth is that we get along better and better every day. We get along better now, dealing with routine life and its challenges, than we did on fancy trips to exotic lands, where we did little but stuff ourselves with food and buy things we didn’t need.

There were some moments of friction on our trips, but nearly nothing of that sort has taken place here, and we have a fantastic time together. We laugh constantly. We treat each other with honor. We are patient with each other. Each of us does more for the other than is required, and that helps prevents spats.

My wife really loves me. There are things you can’t fake. I didn’t snag a gold digger.

So why are things going so well? Plenty of other people have failed to get along with us, and neither of us can say we were never to blame.

Prayer in tongues is a necessary part of a proper Christian life. It’s not optional or dispensable.

When you pray in tongues, God aligns your heart and mind with his.

Married couples, and friends, and coworkers, and rulers of nations, need to be aligned with each other in order for peace to exist. It’s not possible to make this happen without divine help. If it were, it would have happened already, and it hasn’t.

If your heart and mind are aligned with God’s, and so are your wife’s, you will be aligned with each other. There is no way around it. You can’t be aligned with God and in conflict with each other.

God gives us grace to pray in tongues a lot. We don’t have a perfect record, but he has managed to help us pray enough to make us one with each other.

If you and your wife aren’t praying in tongues, you’re probably working hard on your own to make your marriage work. With this method, success is not always possible.

I sincerely believe the Holy Spirit makes our marriage work, and if we get away from him, we may cease to get along and even divorce. I don’t believe we deserve any credit. It would be dangerous to claim it.

Things are going well, and it’s not because we’re great people. It is pure charity. All we did was stop resisting when God told us to pray in tongues.

This is how I feel as we approach our third anniversary.