When we worry we are saying, 'I know the way my life is supposed to go, and God's not getting it right'.

Prayer is awe, intimacy, struggle-yet, the way to reality.

Marriage is so much like salvation and our relationship with Christ that you can’t understand marriage w/o looking at the gospel.

Unless we believe the gospel, we will be driven in all we do-whether obeying or disobeying-by pride ('self-love') or fear ('of damnation'). Apart from 'grateful remembering' of the gospel, all good works are done then for sinful motives. Mere moral effort may restrain the heart, but does not truly change the heart. Moral effort merely 'jury rigs' the evil of the heart to produce moral behavior out of self-interest. It is only a matter of time before such a thin tissue collapses.

Without immersion in God's words, our prayers may not be merely limited and shallow but also untethered from reality.

Careful obedience to God’s law may serve as a strategy for rebelling against God

In short, the enlightenment privatized marriage, taking it out of the public sphere, and redefined its purpose as individual gratification, not any 'broader good' such as reflecting God's nature, producing character, or raising children. Slowly but surely, this newer understanding of the meaning of marriage has displaced the older ones in Western culture.