In our encounters with my readers, the Spartan Queen and I were surprised to see the enthusiasm for a little marriage study we put together a few years ago called “Battle Buddies.”
With the new publisher for my novels now settled, we decided to renew the study for another wave of readers who connect with Lion of War-type aggressive material, and who want to grow a culture of families who want to make war on dark fortresses and not be whiny victims.
Christian culture in America is saturated with marriage resources, so this isn’t an attempt to replace them. Rather, it addresses what we believe is a blindspot: material men can be enthusiastic about leading their wives through. It is intended to be a simple resource for couples who want to build a great family and chase a Kingdom destiny of triumph and hardship together.
The material is meant to be engaged together as a couple, but the primary target is husbands. It contains straight-talk and direct, practical ideas. We have found that a lot of marriage material is feminine in nature; wives feel like they are dragging their husbands into church or to the next marriage conference even though the guy shows no interest.
Whether you are newlywed, have been married 50 years, or are single and preparing, this is for you.
Here is a preview from the Introduction.
When you join the Army you are assigned a “battle buddy.”
This is another recruit you have never met, have nothing in common with, and under any other circumstances, you wouldn’t give them the time of day.
But after signing the dotted line and showing up at basic training, you have no choice other than making them the closest relationship in your life.
My assigned battle buddy was named Kern.
(That was his last name. His first name was Bobby, but you never call any of your platoon buddies by their actual first name. That meant you didn’t have respect for them. Nicknames or last names only among troops.)
He was a Hispanic guy from the inner city. I am not a Hispanic guy from the inner city, so we truly started from scratch together.
And yet, over the next 17 weeks, from the time we started basic training until graduation day from the Army’s military police academy at Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri, Kern was the closest relationship in my life. We had to become experts in every single thing about each other.
We were tested on what part of our body we washed first in a shower, our girlfriend’s names, the color of our car back home, our favorite dish from grandma, everything.
Each morning we woke up and sweat together, ran together, studied together, showered together (awkward at first), failed together, and triumphed together.
We laughed, we fought, we kept going. They were drilling into our heads the desperate importance of being able to trust the man fighting next to you.
On that wonderful graduation day, we embraced like...well, like we were married. Platonically, of course.
The battle buddy concept never goes away throughout your career. The relationships formed later in your military career transcend the bonds you made with your initial training companions, but I have always found the most insight on this subject to be gleaned from those early days at basic training, when neither of you is a soldier and you are trying to figure it out together under very difficult circumstances.
No matter what phase of life you are in, at the beginning or nearing the end, your wife is your battle buddy.
The word "marriage" occurs 27 times in 26 verses in the Bible.
There are 31,102 verses in the Bible.
From this data we can infer two things:
1) Marriage exists and is important.
2) It's nowhere near as complicated as the 21st century makes it out to be.
There are hundreds of variations on “How to have a better marriage” published by Christianity, Inc. Our intent is not to be cynical about it, but we have made these resources our source while ignoring the Source.
Here's a straightforward verse about marriage:
"Let marriage be held in honor by all, and let the marriage bed not be defiled, for God will judge the sexually immoral and adulterous."
-Hebrews 13:4
There you have it. Pretty simple.
Give Satan credit. He knew exactly how to make marriages hard in prosperous Western nations, and he did this by making Christians obsessed with having a better marriage instead of being obsessed with God Himself.
In war, this is the equivalent of looking down at your rifle and admiring it during a gunfight while the enemy rushes through the breach in your perimeter.
It is entirely possible to have a thriving, Kingdom-centered, Christ-exalting marriage and never go to a marriage retreat, read a marriage book, or have an accountability group. Few of those resources existed for most of human history, and civilizations were still built and God’s Kingdom still advanced. There are some nice tools in those toolkits, but they can also distract you from reading God's Word itself for guidance.
It’s easy to forget in these settles times that, for thousands of years, there were plenty of successful arranged marriages. It still goes on today. In the Bible, we even see God allowing soldiers to take war brides as a protection for vulnerable women in barbaric times (Deuteronomy 21:11). The point? Any scenario can be redeemed and used for God’s glory.
Obviously, we won’t push for a return to war bride days, but it does prove the concept that a successful marriage doesn’t have to be pretty by Bible Belt standards. You can each bring a lot of baggage to the relationship and still see God move powerfully and miraculously to forge you together as battle buddies.
As of this writing in 2024, my wife and I have been married 21 years. We got hitched when we were 21 years old. We’ve spent half of our lives together and still have much more to learn. We have four teenagers living with us in a fifth wheel camper while we travel and pursue the family calling, and everyone has somehow stayed sane.
We have been on death’s door, and we have known immense joy.
We have fought bitterly and loved passionately. We are both act sinfully at times.
After many trials, and many more to come, we still love each other deeply and consider ourselves battle buddies—partners in war.
Always remember:
The purpose of having a strong marriage is to build a family unit ready to follow Christ into the hell of battle—not to feel personally fulfilled.
Much of this material comes from decades of working in men’s ministry, counseling soldiers and their wives through difficult war deployments and separations, and other life experiences the Lord laid in front of us. Our path is not the only path, but we have learned some hard lessons, and we’re grateful for the chance to share them.
All you need to do is enter your email address at the link below and you’ll be on the roster for updates. Starting tomorrow (Friday, October 11th), we will begin sending a weekly newsletter to review together, along with daily Marriage War Prayers devotionals.
