Not all marital advice is helpful for your marriage — even the advice WE give may not apply directly to your particular circumstances. Yep, you read it right! We acknowledge that we (and other marriage educators and counselors) can sometimes give flawed advice. That’s because as humans we are all flawed.

God, Himself, is the only counselor you can trust to give you guidance which is completely dependable. God knows you and made you “fearfully and wonderfully” (as Psalms 139 tells us). The psalmist said,

“O Lord, you have searched me and you know me. You know when I sit and when I rise; you perceive my thoughts from afar. You discern my going out and my lying down; you are familiar with all my ways. Before a word is on my tongue you know it completely, O Lord.”

From those verses, we can rest assured that God, who made us, knows best how to advise and guide us to Truth and understanding of one another. His guidance will help us to build a marriage that is the best it can be in consideration of our uniqueness, individual and corporate giftedness, personality tendencies, and where we’re located in the world.

Because you and your spouse are so uniquely and wonderfully made, and because your relationship is so different from those around you (because you’re combining each of your personality styles and approaches to life together) it becomes all the more important that you look for what works FOR YOUR MARRIAGE, in light of God’s truth.

Advice from any other source needs to be prayerfully and carefully considered from every angle possible. It’s the principle of gleaning as the Bible talks about.

Back in biblical days the harvesters used to gather the best and leave the scraps for others who were less fortunate to glean through and gather up leftovers. But in the case of gathering counsel, you’d want to pick the best — what best applies to your marriage—and leave the rest behind.

Now, this doesn’t apply to the counsel you receive from the scriptures, because God’s word is unchanging and filled with truth. As it says in 2 Timothy 3:16-17: “All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.”

So, we are NOT to change God’s principles because of our “uniqueness”. We’re to adjust ourselves to His ways of doing things knowing that the principles for loving each other in the truest sense are the principles for living as the Bible outlines. Some of them being:

•  Making sure we’re faithful in every way to God and to each other,

•  Speaking the truth in love, in a respectful, honoring way “as unto the Lord”,

•  Being mutually submissive with Christ as our example,

•  As far as it is within us to live in peace with all men (which especially includes our spouse)

•  Allowing the fruit of the Spirit to flow through us, which is: “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control”,

•  Living in such a way that our walk matches our talk so that each word that comes out of our mouths are not like a type of “clanging cymbal”,

•  Making sure we are not “rude, self-seeking, easily angered, and keep no records of wrongs.”

With the solid foundation of God’s principles as our foundation God then helps us to make our marriage work in a totally unique way-yet without compromise.

So, how do we stay true to God’s principles and yet not have a “cookie cutter” type of marriage where our uniqueness as individuals and as a marital team is recognized? We pray and ask God for wisdom and insight and then keep our eyes open for what He shows us, discarding what won’t apply. We don’t grab onto that which won’t benefit our relationship.

There are many scriptures in the Bible that tell us that God is our Wonderful Counselor, but there are also many other scriptures that tell us to also seek the advice of Godly advisers. One of them can be found in Proverbs 20:18 where it says, “Make plans by seeking advice; if you wage war, obtain guidance.” While we’re not advising that we wage war with each other—we ARE hoping we’ll wage war against that which divides us from conducting our lives as a marital team.

Unlike God, human advisers aren’t all-knowing and so even if they THINK they know what’s best for us or they THINK their advice is suited to be the type that is “one-size-fits-all”, we can’t just automatically grab onto it. We need to ask God for a spirit of discernment in our thinking.

But before we apply the principle of gleaning what’s best for our marriage we might want to pray something like this from Psalm 139: “Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.” Ask God to show you anything within yourself that is wrong and needs confessing and also any contrary spirit within that might tempt you to filter advice in a self-serving way.

We need to make sure our hearts are pure, unbiased, and our eyes are focused, looking for truth. And then we need to keep our eyes open to what God brings our way—that which is consistent with God’s Word—that which will fit in with what will work for our marriages. God didn’t create us as “cookie cutter” type of people so the advice we would need from human advisers should also consider our “uniqueness” as a couple.

We hope, like us, you’ll seek advice from those who can help you with whatever problem you’re experiencing but we also hope that you’ll prayerfully sift through it and use what applies for your lives together and discard the rest. Draw close to God and listen to Him with both ears attentive to what He teaches and apply the principle of gleaning when it comes to marriage advice from others who counsel you.

We pray this is helpful. Also, we want you to know that we have a more expanded version of this Marriage Message on our web site in an article titled, “Applying the Gleaning Principle to Human Advisers.”

If you don’t have access to the internet and you want to look at the posted expanded version of this message on our web site we hope you can find someone who does have access who will be kind enough to go to our web site and paste and copy it into a letter and send it to you.

God Bless,
Cindy and Steve Wright

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