The "secret" to the best marriage you can have is to simply be filled with the Spirit of Christ, the Holy Spirit, all day, every day. But this requires constant, conscious, explicit submission to Him throughout each day and standing by faith on the truths of God's word (Ja. 4:6-10; 1 Pe. 5:6; Ro. 6:13-22; Ro. 12:1; 2 Co. 5:9; He. 11:6; Ro. 6:11), chief of which is the believer's union with Christ in his death, burial and resurrection and the resulting freedom from the source of all their sin, which is the Old Self (Ro. 6:6-7).
My "job" as a godly husband is to be a conduit through which Christ expresses himself and my wife's "job" as a godly wife is to do likewise. When we are both manifesting Christ to one another (Ro. 8:29; 2 Co. 3:18; 2 Co. 4:7-11; Ga. 5:22-23), his love, grace, humility, peaceableness and joy flowing from us to one another, our marriage can't help but be the amazing thing God intended it to be.
When this isn't the case, when we aren't under the Spirit's control, living by faith in the "crucified life" (Ga. 2:20; 5;24; 6:14; 2 Co;. 2:10-15; 3:3-5; Ro. 6:1-6), all sorts of strategies, tactics, methods, steps and psychological approaches must be adopted instead in an effort to produce from these things what can only, ultimately be produced by the Spirit's life and work in us (Phil. 1:6; 2:13; 4:13). On the surface, these things may appear to do the job, but where God works, in the realm of our desires, in the fundamental condition of our heart impulses, we are unchanged and so are always just the right trigger away from a blowout with our spouse. And God is neither glorified (1 Co. 10:31) nor experienced (Jn. 14:21; 1 Co. 1:9; 2 Co. 13:14; Rev. 3:20; Ps. 36:7-9) through the employment of essentially psychological strategies, steps and tactics that any non-believing couple could use to the same positive effect in their marriage.
Fundamentally, what God intends for our lives is that we know Him, believe Him, trust Him, submit to Him, love Him, enjoy Him and glorify Him (and in this order). Even - and perhaps particularly - our marriages are training grounds within which God achieves these things in our lives (and the lives of our spouses). If we have some other basic agenda, some self-centered one, that we are pursuing in our marriage, we can be sure both that God is not in what we are doing and actually is opposing us. (Ja. 4:6-7; 1 Pe. 5:5-6).
