Why Running a Health Check Is Critical To Your Marriage
What if one of the most important things you could do for your marriage isn't changing your spouse, but allowing God to change you?
Most couples pay attention to the visible aspects of their marriage—communication, conflict, finances, parenting, intimacy, and schedules. Yet many overlook the condition of the heart that influences all of those areas.
Just as businesses perform routine health checks to identify problems before they become costly, healthy marriages require intentional and regular examinations of the heart.
In my own marriage journey, I discovered that some of the greatest breakthroughs didn't happen when I focused on changing my spouse. They happened when I invited God to examine me.
Before entering full-time ministry, I spent years working in corporate America in various management roles, serving as a contract and billing representative.
In that environment, the golden rule of business success was simple: a company needs revenue. Revenue comes from paid invoices. Paid invoices come from healthy accounts. Healthy accounts produce accurate invoices. Accurate invoices are more likely to be paid. The secret was not simply generating more business—it was ensuring that the accounts remained healthy.
To accomplish this, we performed routine maintenance evaluations called Health Checks. We regularly reviewed accounts to verify billing accuracy, correct administrative errors, and ensure we were delivering exactly what had been promised to the customer. These health checks prevented costly mistakes and helped maintain consistent operations.
Years later, during an extended season of prayer, I was asking God how to better support hurting individuals and couples. During that time, the Lord brought those corporate health checks back to my mind.
He impressed upon me a simple but profound truth: just as organizations routinely evaluate the health of their accounts, God desires for His people to routinely evaluate the health of their hearts.
He wants us to allow Him to conduct intentional and rhythmic examinations of our relationship with Him and our relationships with others.
This is especially important in marriage.
Most couples can quickly identify what their spouse needs to change. Far fewer are willing to ask God what He wants to change in them.
Yet healthy marriages are rarely built on perfect spouses. They are built on two imperfect people who continually allow God to shape their hearts.
Why? Because everything we do and say is shaped by our relationship with Him and the condition of our heart.
True marital health begins when we stop treating our spouse as the primary problem and start allowing God to reveal what is happening within our own heart.
This does not mean we ignore genuine hurt, betrayal, or unhealthy behavior. It means we recognize that transformation begins with surrender, humility, and personal responsibility before God.
As a biblical caregiver, marriage trainer, and counselor, I believe one of the greatest gifts we can give our marriage is the willingness to invite God into the places we would rather keep hidden.
When we become aware of our own fallibility and actively invite God into the private places of our hearts, we begin a journey toward healing, harmony, and spiritual maturity.
This shifts our focus away from merely trying to fix one another and toward participating with God in a process of formation.
Paul writes: "Be on your guard; stand firm in the faith; be courageous; be strong. Do everything in love." (1 Corinthians 16:13–14) “Everything” - I looked up the word. The Greek word is panta—meaning all, every, whole, or entire. There are no exceptions - we cannot dodge this one!
The only way to live out this invitation is to remain watchful and alert.
Alert to what? To our tendency to wander. Our tendency to drift. Our tendency to slowly trust ourselves more than we trust God.
John 13:3 says: "Jesus knew that the Father had put all things under His power, and that He had come from God and was returning to God."
The same word appears there—panta. The Father had placed all things under Christ's authority.
That includes our marriage.
Our expectations.
Our disappointments.
Our wounds.
Our fears.
Our future.
Everything belongs to Him.
Why Most Marriages Drift
Most marriages do not deteriorate overnight. Drift happens slowly.
Resentment is rarely built in a day. Disconnection usually begins long before either spouse notices it. Unspoken expectations, unresolved hurts, pride, fear, defensiveness, and self-protection often take root beneath the surface long before they show up in our conversations and behaviors.
The challenge is that many couples focus on the symptoms while ignoring the condition of the heart producing them.
We work harder on communication while avoiding confession. We seek better conflict tools while neglecting humility. We ask our spouse to change while resisting God's invitation to examine us. Over time, what remains unaddressed internally begins to shape what is experienced relationally.
This is why regular heart checks matter.
The goal is not perfection. The goal is awareness.
Because awareness creates an opportunity for surrender, and surrender creates space for God to work.
A Simple Marriage Health Check
Here are five areas I encourage individuals and couples to prayerfully examine. Ask God to search your heart in these areas. Then invite your spouse or a few trusted people to speak honestly into your life.
Suffering - How do I respond when my spouse disappoints me, misunderstands me, or fails to meet my expectations?
Transparency - Am I allowing my spouse and trusted believers access to what is really happening in my heart?
Approachability - Would my spouse describe me as safe to approach with concerns, hurts, frustrations, or difficult conversations?
Presence - Am I fully present in my marriage, or have I become distracted, disconnected, or simply going through the motions?
Confession - When was the last time I specifically confessed sin instead of merely defending myself, explaining myself, or saying, "I'm sorry"?
My Own Health Check
This is not merely a counseling framework or a five-step process. It reflects a pattern God used to rescue me from my own brokenness, suffering, and fear.
Early in my marriage, it often appeared as though the greatest wrongs were being committed against me. I spent a long season feeling wounded, disappointed, and shocked by what was happening around me.
Looking back, I spent a lot of time wanting God to change my circumstances. Instead, He began by changing me.
Everything began to shift when I stopped trying to fix the situation on my own and invited God to fight with me for our future. In His kindness, the Lord did not begin by exposing my wife's shortcomings.
He exposed my own heart. He revealed my pride, my self-righteousness, my blind spots, and my desperate need for His grace. For the first time, I began to see myself primarily as a sinner in need of a Savior rather than a victim in need of vindication.
That revelation changed everything.
As I embraced my identity as a son rather than a self-appointed judge, God began healing places within me that I did not even know were wounded.
This is why spiritual health checks matter.
Our loving Father invites us to regularly bring our hearts before Him so they can be examined, corrected, and anchored in His Word and Spirit.
As He did that work in me, something remarkable happened.
Instead of remaining consumed by my own hurt, God gave me compassion for those who had hurt me. Rather than carrying my wounds as weapons, I began offering them to God in prayer.
The Lord led me into confession, repentance, humility, and ultimately a deeper understanding of His grace.
Admitting this truth ignited a profound sadness and compassion within me for people in both my past and present who had hurt me. Instead of merely hurting because of them, I began hurting for them.
That shift was significant to my freedom.
Today, I am still happily married and still doing what I love—not because I figured marriage out, but because I learned to stop defending myself and start walking with God.
Running these health checks helped me experience the still waters David describes in Psalm 23.
A Moment of Reflection
As you consider the health of your marriage, ask yourself:
Have I conducted a personal heart check recently?
Which of these five areas needs God's attention most right now?
What role have I played in the patterns I find myself frustrated by?
Am I asking God to change me as much as I am asking Him to change my spouse?
What might God be trying to reveal that I have been unwilling to examine?
A Final Encouragement
As you care for your marriage this week, I encourage you to resist the temptation to focus first on what your spouse needs to change.
Instead, begin with your own heart.
One of the greatest gifts God gives us in marriage is the opportunity to see ourselves more clearly. Marriage has a way of exposing our fears, pride, selfishness, expectations, wounds, and habits. While that can be uncomfortable, it is also one of God's most powerful tools for formation.
Strong and healthy marriages are not built by two people demanding change from one another. They are built by two people who continually surrender themselves to God and allow Him to shape their hearts.
The invitation of a health check is not condemnation—it is an invitation into greater awareness, deeper humility, and closer intimacy with God and one another.
So before you evaluate your spouse this week, pause and ask:
What might God want to reveal in me?
You may discover, as I did, that some of the greatest transformation God desires for your marriage begins with the work He wants to do within your own heart.
— Dane Hall
Power & Love Marriage
