9 Bible verses about marriage restoration
A collection to read, save, and share · 9 verses
Restoration is one of the few things scripture lets God brag about.
Locust years given back, deserts with rivers in them, broken things bound up — the restoration passages are extravagant on purpose, because the people reading them had stopped hoping.
If that is where your marriage is, these nine are in working order. God’s part first, then the daily repairs that are yours, then the future tense.
What God restores
“I will restore to you the years that the swarming locust has eaten.”
Not just repair — restored years. The verse takes seriously that damage has a duration, and promises the duration back.
“Don’t remember the former things, and don’t consider the things of old. Behold, I will do a new thing. It springs out now. Don’t you know it? I will even make a way in the wilderness, and rivers in the desert.”
Permission to stop re-litigating the past, and a claim that the new thing has already started — “it springs out now” — usually before either spouse can see it.
“He heals the broken in heart, and binds up their wounds.”
Binding a wound is slow, manual work. A useful picture: restoration as treatment over time, not a single miracle moment.
The daily repair
“Put on therefore, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, a heart of compassion, kindness, lowliness, humility, and perseverance; bearing with one another, and forgiving each other.”
Put on — like clothes, chosen each morning whether or not you feel like wearing them. This is what the middle of a restoration actually looks like.
“And above all things be earnest in your love among yourselves, for love covers a multitude of sins.”
Earnest is effortful. Restoration-season love is not a feeling that returns but a labor that precedes the feeling’s return.
“‘Be angry, and don’t sin.’ Don’t let the sun go down on your wrath.”
In a healing marriage, the backlog is the danger. This verse keeps the new ledger short while the old one is being settled.
Hope for what comes next
“With men it is impossible, but not with God, for all things are possible with God.”
Said about salvation, and true of marriages everyone else has quietly written off. “Impossible” is a human measurement.
“Being confident of this very thing, that he who began a good work in you will complete it.”
The work in each of you predates the crisis and is not canceled by it. Completion is God’s stated intent.
“Let’s not be weary in doing good, for we will reap in due season if we don’t give up.”
Restoration has a due season. Most couples who make it describe the turn arriving after the point where they nearly stopped.
Carry one with you today
Hold Joel 2:25 today. Name the locust years out loud in prayer — the actual number — and ask for them back. Specific hope is sturdier than general hope.