Editor’s note: Don't Burn Your Own House Down by Lindsey Maestas is not your typical "pray harder" advice. Rooted in faith, it’s an honest, practical guide for couples striving to rekindle their marriage but struggling to connect. Drawing on a decade of research and personal experience, Maestas delivers rare transparency, biblical insights, and actionable tools to help couples navigate modern distractions and rebuild playfulness, honesty, and deep intimacy.
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Here’s a hard truth: Even if your spouse doesn’t do the little things well, change needs to start with you. You cannot always live within your marriage, expecting your spouse to be the one to take the first step and then feeling resentful that they haven’t. This can be extremely difficult to do when you’re already hard-hearted or hurting, or when you’ve already poured out so much effort, but I challenge you to try.
Take a small step toward showing love in the way they’ve told you they need. It may help to remember that you aren’t doing this only for your spouse. You’re doing this to honor God and His calling for you to live as a servant in your life and in your marriage. As it says in Mark 10:45,
For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many.
As Christians, we live to mimic the love and life of Jesus, as we see in 1 John 2:6:
Whoever claims to live in Him must live as Jesus did. — NIV
I encourage you to submit your heart to Christ, to know that His call to serve applies to your marriage, even when disconnection has taken hold.
I’m always in awe of Jesus’ selflessness when, during the Last Supper, He sat at the table with Judas, the one who would betray Him. Knowing full well what was coming, Jesus washed Judas’s feet. He shared bread with Him. Jesus extended dignity and love to a man who had already made up his mind to trade Jesus’ life for silver.
And when Jesus said,
Most assuredly, I say to you, one of you will betray Me — John 13:21,
He didn’t expose Judas by name to shame him in front of the others. He turned to him and said,
What you do, do quickly. — v. 27
Then, in what I consider to be one of the most remarkable acts of holiness, He turned His attention to the rest of the disciples and gave them the greatest commandment:
A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another; as I have loved you, that you also love one another. — v. 34
Jesus didn’t play the tit-for-tat game.
He didn’t wait to be treated well in order to act righteously. He served even when He was being sinned against. Yes, He had boundaries [discussed in the book]. But He loved without conditions. And that’s the example He has set for us. Not just for strangers, not just for friends, but for the people within the four walls of our homes.
My counselor introduced me to the principle of moral proximity, and this is where it comes into play. It’s the idea that we carry a greater emotional, physical, and social-moral responsibility toward those closest to us. In other words, the way we treat our spouses and our children holds more weight than how we treat a stranger or a coworker. But too often, it’s the people under our own roof who get the leftover version of us. We extend grace to the world and grow cold at home.
Jesus didn’t live with divided integrity. He didn’t compartmentalize His compassion. And if we’re called to love like He did, then our greatest efforts, our clearest honesty, and our deepest kindness must begin with the people who know us best.
Marriage isn’t a scoreboard. It is not “If he apologizes, then I’ll soften” or “If she respects me, then I’ll love her.” That’s pride. And pride has destroyed far more marriages than even conflict ever has. Here’s the hard truth:
- The way you love during a disconnected season speaks volumes about the maturity of your faith.
Are you choosing to reflect Christ, even when your spouse doesn’t? Are you outdoing one another in showing honor, even when it feels one-sided? Are you looking for the good, even when the hard parts are louder? Even in the seasons when we don’t “feel it,” our commitment to God, and our covenant promise, is to love one another, without conditions, through it all.
You’re not going to nail this perfectly, so go ahead and take a deep breath and release some of that pressure right away. The last thing I want to do is give my anxious friends even more to stress about! You’ll definitely have days when you just don’t want to serve your spouse or show them small acts of love because you don’t feel like they deserve it. It will happen. And as you foresee that, you can prepare to do otherwise. You can choose to remember that
faith trumps feelings.
Even when you don’t feel like doing something for your spouse, you can have faith that doing so will honor God and, likely, soften their heart.
Jesse and I try to do this well. And then we fail. Then we try again. And on some days, we succeed in making the other person feel truly valued. We choose to keep this cycle going, even when we don’t want to, to fight for the little things.
Excerpted with permission from Don't Burn Your Own House Down by Lindsey Maestas, copyright Lindsey Maestas.
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Your Turn
We all know this goes for more than the relationship in marriage. Jesus didn’t play the tit-for-tat game and it doesn’t do us any favors when we do. Faith trumps feeling, so we can outdo one another in love no matter how we feel. ~ Devotionals Daily