Is marriage really that necessary for all of us to reach our own fullness of joy??? Short answer: Yes!

In order for someone to understand why marriage is so necessary to our fullness of joy, one has to think about why it was a part of God’s plan for us to come to this earth to gain a mortal body in the first place. Our whole goal here on this earth is to one day return back to the presence of Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ with our families. We have learned that part of our “fullness of joy” will be that opportunity that we will have to live with our families forever and to continue adding on to our families. In order for us to have joy in our future posterity, we will first need to find someone that we love, and then we will need to be sealed to our spouse in one of God’s holy temples for time and all eternity.

Joy doesn’t only need to be found with one’s posterity. Anyone can start their journey of achieving their fullness of joy with their spouse. The time that a married couple has before they start having children can be gone all too fast. That’s why it is so important for newly weds (and any married couple for that matter) to spend time getting to know each other and making sacred memories together. Might I suggest that you newly weds schedule a time to have a date night every week so that you two can get to know each other more, and try things that you have never done before. If you don’t know what to do, then Google it! The ideas are out there…

It was Mignon McLaughlin who once said “A successful marriage requires falling in love many times, always with the same person.” A successful marriage also consists of both partners learning how to forgive, be patient, serve each other, have a positive attitude, and trying to be a better person constantly. Once these things are implemented within a marriage, your love for each other will grow ferociously and you will start achieving that fullness of joy that you desire!

LOVE YOUR SPOUSE!!! Guys and gals, listen up closely because I’m about to smack you all in the face with some sweet knowledge! Okay, so this week has been suuuuuuuper busy for me. To paint you a picture of what my week has looked like so far, every morning I have gotten up to go to work for eight hours, then I come home and do homework for another six hours straight. I won’t go into every single detail of what I do every day, but my life gets busy! Anyways…. A few days ago, I came home EXHAUSTED! I was stressed because I had a lot of assignments due that night, and that afternoon was the only time that I had all week to get things done. Needless to say, I was pooped before I even started the tasks that I had to do. I had no time to eat, look at my phone, breath, etc… Life was completely hopeless for me………. So I thought…….. Right then, my eyes were introduced to the most beautiful thing that they have ever seen. My wife came through that door with a burrito from Costa Vida that was meant JUST FOR ME! Hallelujah brothers and sisters! There was a gleam of light for that dark and dreary day after all! My wife knew that I was too stressed to make dinner that night, so she went and bought me a delicious burrito so that I wouldn’t have to worry about eating that night. My wife was my guardian angel that night, and she was my inspiration to get everything done that I needed to do.

This was just a fun little story for me to brag about my wife, but this is the point that I want to make today. It’s all about the little things that we do everyday to show our spouse how much we love them and that we are committed to them. When you get married, you promise that you will always choose to love your spouse no matter what conditions life might send your way. Of course it takes a lot of effort to show your spouse that you will love them until the end, but if you look at marriage with a mindset of doing little things for your spouse everyday, then your marriage will be more enjoyable and both partners will have a joyful countenance even when life gets exhausting for them. Elder Lynn G. Robbins said, “True love is not something you fall in, but grow in. It is not happenstance as much as something you control, choose and act upon.”

As we go though our busy lives, let’s take time out of our day to show our spouse how much we love them and admire them. As we do this, we will find that marriage is truly ordained of God and that it was given to us so that we could experience our own “fullness of joy.”

This week’s topic is very sacred. Today I would like to talk about marital sexuality and intimacy. Intimacy is such a sacred and beautiful thing in a marriage. It is a way for couples to show how much they love each other and to also show their commitment to each other for eternity. Heavenly Father has instructed us all to “multiply and replenish the earth” but only when we are legally and lawfully married to our spouse. Intimacy is a way for couples to meet their needs, and if done correctly, it will show the other person how much they care about them.

It’s no secret that while in the dating phase (especially while in the engaged phase), it can be pretty hard to resist the sexual urges that one has. Those of us who are of the LDS faith believe that God has commanded us that we should wait to have intercourse with our significant other until after we are legally married. It is totally natural to feel those sexual urges before marriage, because that is how our bodies are designed. The important thing to remember is that because God loves all of His children, he wants all of them to grow up in a stable home where both parents love each other and are committed to each other.

For those who are newly married (or if you have been married for awhile), you should always remember that the perfect sexual experience won’t just happen out of thin-air. The perfect sexual experience with your spouse should start long before you have intercourse with each other. This perfect experience should all start with the way that you treat each other every day. Both partners should be doing special things for each other all the time as to create that bond of love. Do you wake up in the morning and bring your wife breakfast in bed? While your husband is at work, will you write him a note to tell him how special he is to you? When you both are together, are you focused on each other, or are you focused on your phone? I believe that all successful marriages should always consist of making time for each other so that both partners can feel that special bond forming between them. Your perfect sexual experience will only get better as you decide to focus on each other while you both focus the importance of God’s plan that he has for you.

Have you ever been in a situation where the butterflies in your stomach must have drank a 5-hour energy that morning, because either something really bad or really good is happening? Well that’s how I felt on the day that I got married to my wife, Raechel. That morning of our marriage, I felt so nervous and excited that I thought that I was going to puke due to all of my emotions. In the past, I have heard so many stories about someone’s wedding day being a disaster, so I was honestly a little scared as to what would happen throughout the day. Needless to say, everything turned out great. The only thing that I didn’t care about so much was how long pictures took after our ceremony. Ughhhhhhhhh! Note to all men who are about to get married: Don’t complain about how long the pictures are going to take. Just suck it up and do it for your wife! Tell your mom or whoever to bring you a snack so that you don’t get hangry….anywaysssss…. My wedding day was awesome! It was the start of the best time of my life.

As early as the dating stage and being engaged, my wife and I decided that we needed to build upon a good foundation if we wanted to have a happy marriage. We knew that we wanted to say prayers together, read our scriptures together, go on at least one date every week, etc. We tried to get into the habit of doing everything that we wanted to do early on so that we wouldn’t have problems starting up during marriage. For the first couple months of marriage, we were really great at doing all of the things that we wanted to do, but as her masters program started, and as I started working full time, we slowed down a little bit, because we were both exhausted when we got home at night. We did the best that we could, but there was no doubt that we weren’t doing as well as we wanted to.

We decided that we needed to set goals and make a plan to carry out our goals so that we could accomplish them. We came up with a plan to read our scriptures together before we turned on the TV or before we left somewhere for a date. This helped us accomplish our goals, and it also strengthened our marriage because we both were active in working on the things that were holding us back from being a good spouse to one another. We knew that as we focused on the things that matter most in this life, then we would have the happy marriage that we have always dreamed about. It was L. Whitney Clayton that said, “Faith is the foundation of every virtue that strengthens marriage. Strengthening faith strengthens marriage.”