4 Habits Of A Joy-Filled Marriage - A 6-Day Devotional Sample

THE JOY GAP

You may have heard that love is a choice. Strictly speaking, this is not true. Love is attachment. It is a bond you share through good times and bad. You can choose to do loving things. You can choose to do kind things. You cannot choose to feel love. However, the more joy you build into your marriage, the more that feeling of being “in love” will stay strong and grow.

Falling in love is all about joy. When you fall in love with someone, you experience a “joy explosion” in your brain that floods your body with hormones (like dopamine and oxytocin) that make it hard not to smile. Couples who stay in love throughout their married lives are couples who excel at the art of keeping their joy levels high. The opposite is also true. Low joy couples are in trouble. Falling “out of love” is all about the absence of joy.

A joy gap is the length of time between moments of shared joy. But when too much time passes between moments of shared joy, a joy gap is created that makes you feel distant and alone in your marriage. The wider the joy gap becomes, the more likely it is for your problems (and everyone has them) to overwhelm you. Couples who let the joy gap get too wide struggle tremendously and start to feel hopeless about their marriage. Not only does the gap rob you of intimacy, but the gap begins filling with resentment, and bad habits can begin to form that keep you apart instead of bringing you together. You start to feel like you are “falling out of love.” People rarely just wake up one morning to the thought, “I’m not in love anymore.” It happens gradually as the gap between moments of shared joy grows wider and wider with too much pain, too much resentment, and too many bad habits in between.

In the Hebrew Scriptures, the authors use the word hesed to describe God’s love for his people. It’s translated as “steadfast love” in the ESV, “lovingkindness” in the NIV and KJV, and “tender mercies” by the NKJV. It reflects God’s covenantal love, His trustworthy (Ps. 52:8), never-failing (Ps. 77:8), always abounding (Ps 86:5) love for His people. It’s this enduring love that marriages should reflect and aspire to. As Paul writes in Ephesians 5:25, “Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her.” Our goal with this YouVersion plan is to increase your joy, strengthen your attachment to your spouse, and help you reflect the hesed of God to a watching world. 

-The following is an exercise that will help strengthen your attachment with your spouse.

Resting and Kissing: 15 MIN

Shortening the window of time between moments of shared joy requires us to notice that joy and rest are needed, and then practice strategic rhythms to increase the joy.

1. Make yourselves comfortable and spend some time resting as you cuddle.

NOTE: Keep this nonverbal to enhance the bonding experience. You can set a timer if you like. 3 MIN

2. Holding hands and looking at each other, take turns telling your spouse the qualities you first observed in him or her that made you fall in love. Include examples where you saw these qualities in action. 5 MIN

3. Next, position yourselves knee to knee and hold hands. Practice eye smiles for a joy and rest sequence. Eye smiles are a connect and rest sequence. You begin by looking into each other’s eyes to build some joy then you look away as soon as you feel like you or your spouse needs a breather – or when you feel the joy is no longer growing. After looking away to rest, engage once again with more joy then continue the rhythm. Be sure you look away at the right times when either of you feel the joy is no longer growing.

NOTE: You can play music if you like. 3 MIN

4. Kiss each other like you mean it, then discuss what you notice from this joy and rest sequence. 2 MIN

5. Close with quiet cuddling and resting together. 2 MIN