Marriage, Postmarital, Prayer, Premarital

Disagreements in the Marriage Relationship

If you are married any length of time, you quickly discovered that this person who you thought was just like you was in reality quite different from you.  In fact, you may have wondered where this new person came from and where your former husband or wife went.  Counselors will tell us that most couples know how to fight, but what they do not know how to do is resolve their conflicts.  We’re good at stating our cause, defending our side and being right.  But, if the goal is being right, then one of you has to admit being wrong.  We all know how hard that confession becomes.

One day I was complaining to God about how often I have to apologize to my wife.  So, I asked Him why is that so frequently the case.  His answer?  Because I was the one who was so often wrong – ouch.  James 4 asks an interesting question, “Where do fights and quarrels come from among you?”  Great question wouldn’t you say?  What’s the answer?  “Don’t they come from your desires that battle within you?  You want something but you don’t get it.”  Think of your last fight or disagreement.  You wanted one thing and your spouse wanted another.  Maybe both of you wanted something good, but it turned into a “who is right” rather than doing what James further encourages us to do.

“You quarrel and you fight.  You do not have, because you do not ask God.”  Rather than fighting, God wants us to ask Him – pray together.  After all, what’s more powerful than disagreement?  Agreement.

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Encouragement, Marriage, Postmarital

Genesis One and Two Marriages

We were born in a Genesis three world, the world of fallen natures.  It is all we know.  You and I have never experienced what God originally intended for us as individuals, as married couples and as families.  What God designed was without sin and without curse.  We do not know a curse-free world.  Our marriages have never experienced such freedom as walking with God hand in hand in the garden He planted.

But what we do have is the curse breaker, Jesus.  Galatians 3: 13 says, “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us, it is written: ‘Cursed is everyone who is hung on a tree.’”  In Jeff VanVonderen’s book, Families Where Grace is in Place, he makes the statement, “In a curse-full marriage, one partner makes demands on the other as if he/she were the source rather than a resource.”  He then states the ingredients to a curse-filled relationship as controlling, unforgiving, reactive, shaming and ego-driven.  If Jesus took these curse-filled areas to the cross, then we do not need to walk in them.  Marriage issues are individual issues.  As you and I are individually healed by the Curse Breaker, we will notice a healed marriage to follow.

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Encouragement, Marriage, Postmarital, Premarital

Marriage is a Team Effort

God loves teams.  The very first team was the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.   Adam and Eve were created to be a team of two and then as children were born, a family team.  God encouraged teams for Moses of tens, hundreds and thousands.  Jesus had a team of twelve and an even closer team of three.  Many of us love team sports and have even played them.  Teams work together for a common goal through common values and a common plan.  Teams practice every day at becoming better in their sport or their sales goals.

When a team begins to fight with or pick on one another, they defeat themselves.   Something I call the Terrell Owens syndrome is when a team member sees himself as more valuable than his teammates.  These types of thoughts eventually lead him to feeling superior through thinking the team needs him but he doesn’t need the team.  Team members watch each other’s backs. (Think Michael Orr when he was learning the game of football portrayed in the movie Blind Side.)   Teams have their differences, but they realize they cannot hold on to them or it will affect the outcome of the game.

How are you working on team in your marriage?  If your marriage was a professional doubles tennis team, what would need to change in order for you to be in sync on the court?  Or, if you were a professional dance team, how would you anticipate your partner’s next move so that you can move with him?

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Encouragement, Marriage, Postmarital, Prayer, Premarital, Small Groups

The Most Intimate Thing a Couple Can Do

Is sexual intimacy the most intimate aspect of marriage?  Is sex the most intimate act between two human beings?  If the answer is “yes,” then social scientists are correct when they conclude that at our very core, we are primarily sexual beings.  But, Scripture tells us we are spirit, soul and body (I Thessalonians 5:23).  If we were just soul and body, I might be inclined to agree with social scientists.  God, however, in creating us in His image added the eternal part of us, the spirit.  Therefore, I would conclude that we are primarily spirit, having a soul (will, mind and emotions), all housed on this earth in our temporary vessel, the body.  If we are primarily spirit, then our first function, our most important function is to worship God.

What does all this have to do with sexual intimacy and marriage?  It is to conclude that sex is NOT the most intimate aspect of marriage.  What is then?  Seeking the face of God together.  Prayer between husband and wife, spirit to spirit, to Holy Spirit is the most intimate thing we can be involved in within the marriage covenant.  No wonder so many Christian couples do not pray together. For far too many, it’s way too intimate to fully disclose your heart, speak your deepest desires and blurt out your darkest brokenness.  The enemy knows that if we take a step of faith and enter into this closet of prayer intimacy with our life mate, nothing will stop us.  When two or three agree…  Agreement together in the Spirit is a place of unity, a place of oneness and that place, dear ones, is far more powerful than disagreement.

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Encouragement, Marriage, Prayer, Premarital

Married and Friends: The Trust Factor IV

It was Jesus who told us to trust in God and in Him (John 14: 1).  Is it easy to trust God?  Humanly speaking, the first thing we often consider when trusting is if we have experienced failure in some way.  If we find no failure or fault in a relationship, then we trust.  The end result of this type of thinking is that trust can (and will) be broken rather quickly and easily; it only takes one incident of mistrust.  Trust within a marriage relationship is tested quite often.  If there is not a bank load of trust in the relationship, we will come to expect failure which, of course, will reinforce why we should not fully trust another, even God.

Close friends communicate deeply.  Close Christian friends communicate with God: we call it prayer.  Marriages that truly desire to build trust cannot do so through correct behavior, actions or reactions only.  We all fail sometime.  Marriages that meet within the intimacy of prayer, will find a trust that is deeper, less fault-finding and far more grace-filled than those marriages that do not engage in prayer.  Married partners too often move toward a trusted same-sex friend to pray with, thwarting the very design of God for intimacy within the gift of marriage oneness.  Want to build your trust bank?  Start praying together regularly.  (Perhaps you could leave a “reply” with this entry about how you have found prayer building trust in your marriage relationship in order to help others.)

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Encouragement, Marriage, Postmarital

Married and Friends: The Trust Factor III

The month of February has a wonderful tradition in the middle of it, Valentine’s Day. With that in mind, I thought I would set aside this month for marriage topics, or perhaps more than this month – who knows.

John Gottman of the University of Washington has said, “Happy marriages are based on a deep friendship.”  Good friends are not easy to come by;  really great and close friends are even more difficult to find or maintain.  While there are volumes of books written on romance and sexual issues, finances and budgets, there seems to be too few mentioning friendship and how to maintain it while married.  Is friendship really that far down on the necessities of marriage priorities scale?  I don’t think so.

 In 1977 when Mary and I were married for only two years, we loaded up our moving truck to travel from southern Virginia to northern Pennsylvania.  We were going to begin a faith-based ministry to teenagers.  It was during those eight years of service that we became best friends.  Everyday life depended on the two of us walking together in unity, in faith and prayerful agreement.  We could not afford to fight each other as the spiritual atmosphere we lived in on a daily basis was enough to fight through.  We found emotional closeness, we found spiritual oneness and we found advocacy within the arms of one another.  Being friends caused our home to be more welcoming and friendly.  What else did we discover in those years to build a friendship relationship?

Time off and being away together

Laughing together

Talking, sharing, relating, praying (simply being nice to one another)

Protecting one another

Becoming consistently loyal to one another (one heart)

Refusing to put ourselves or our spouse down (we are one)

Believing the best in one another (good will)

Defending one another

Building Christ in one another (Colossians 1:28)

Praising in public; confronting in private

Smiling at one another for no particular reason

Kissing and saying “I love you” in different ways daily

Holding hands, always holding hands

 

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Leadership, Marriage, Postmarital, Premarital

Married and Friends: The Trust Factor II

The month of February has a wonderful tradition in the middle of it, Valentine’s Day. With that in mind, I thought I would set aside this month for marriage topics, or perhaps more than this month – who knows.

We have often heard that trust is built on a very thin thread.  Because relationships are the most important thing in life, trust becomes a key ingredient.  Without trust, a relationship can only go so far.  The relationship will have a very clear line of demarcation that says, “This is as far as we go until there is a deeper level of trust.”  Whether it is a work relationship, a marriage relationship or a local church relationship, building trust takes time.  When trust is broken, especially by those who we love, the hurt is deeper and taken more personally.  The fact remains, the less I have invested in a relationship, the less the hurt.

“But I thought I could trust you…” are words none of us ever desire to hear.  It means someone feels that we have failed them.  The trust factor, when connected to love in a relationship that we have spent hours or perhaps years investing in, is a huge ingredient in the future of the relationship.  In other words, sow seeds of trusting and being trustworthy today and you’ll reap the harvest of a deeper relationship tomorrow.  Said another way, if mistrust is felt or expressed today, perhaps we need to take a closer look at yesterday.

For example, if every time you go shopping you spend more money than what you and your spouse agreed upon, trust erodes with each incident.  As we recognize our weaknesses through the mistakes we make and take responsibility for them with accountability, the trust level can be rebuilt.  Like a broken bone in our body, it takes a significant time to heal.  But once it does, medical science tells us that the bone will not break there again as it welds itself back into place.

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Encouragement, Marriage, Postmarital

Married and Friends: The Trust Factor

The month of February has a wonderful tradition in the middle of it, Valentine’s Day.  With that in mind, I thought I would set aside this month for marriage topics, or perhaps more than this month – who knows. 

Mary, my dear wife of almost 37 years, (As a customs agent once told us when we were attempting to return to the USA, “Wow, you guys are REALLY married.”) and I had been driving through the night after I worked a long evening shift.  We traveled most of the way on four-lane divided highways and then found a brand new “expressway” en route to the eastern shore, our destination.  Assuming all expressways are four lanes of divided traffic, I headed east casually attempting to pass the car in front of me when suddenly realizing we had headlights aiming straight for us.  Wondering out loud what this idiot driver was doing, I quickly merged back into the right hand lane.

Now I couldn’t just run anyone off the road, in my late night stupor, I ran a Maryland state patrolmen off the road (literally).  With lights flashing we pulled over only to have a two foot long and very bright flashlight pointed in my wife’s direction.  I will never forget the troopers first words, “Ma’am, do you trust driving with this… (uncomfortable pause here)…man?”

What would my new bride of one year say in answer to this question?  He might as well have been asking, “Ma’am, do you trust anything this moron does or says?”  We were newlyweds, still adjusting, still learning the idiosyncrasies of each other and establishing our trust levels.  The question this intimidating officer of the law imposed was deeper than my driving skills.  What would she say?  How would she respond as I sat in my car shaking with fear?  Mary looked at me, then looked at him and said, “Yes sir, I do.”  “Get out of the car!” were his first words to me.

After walking the white line, touching my finger to my nose with my eyes closed hearing this man’s angry words over and over, sitting in the back seat of his well equipped cruiser and a hefty ticket forthcoming, I was a happy, happy man.  My wife, my best friend said she trusted me even after almost killing her in a head on collision.

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Encouragement, Leadership, Small Groups, Training

God Has a Recession Proof Kingdom

Gravity is for real, no question, no argument.  I am always happy when my plane lands after a flight at 37,000 feet.  There is another fact that is just as real found in Galatians chapter six that says what we sow we reap.  It is as true as gravity.  In fact, that same scripture says that if we don’t believe this truth we “mock God.”  I’m pretty sure we do not want to be found doing that.  Recession makes one take a really close look at income and outgoing.  It calls for certain decisions of cut back for sure.  But does that mean we cut back in our tithe or our giving/sowing?  Only if we desire to stop reaping.  There is not a farmer on this earth that does not expect a crop from seed sown.  Should we expect any less as believers?

In my lifetime, I have discovered a direct connection between giving and sowing and my ability to trust God.  The more I trust Him, the more freedom I experience in giving.  And, the closer I come to the Source through trust, the greater the potential.  If you can be trusted with little, Luke 16: 10-12 says, then you can also be trusted with much more.  Be faithful with what God has given you to give away and watch as He then trusts you with more.  The problem comes in when we pull back, take our eyes off of His unseen world and prepare for the worst.  If we focus on fear and what we believe God hasn’t done, then we will live in discontent and thanklessness.  But, if we focus on what God has done and is doing, we will walk in contentment and thankfulness.  (Not sure who I first heard that from, but it is truth.)

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Encouragement, Leadership, Marriage

God Devises Ways to Reach the Estranged

It is fascinating how that God loves the estranged, the banished, the marginalized and the poor.  His heart is after the one who is not after His.  So many times we hear a story of how God directly intervened in a life that was desperate and without hope.  Personally, I love those stories because they build faith for the many persons we know who are in need of that personal encounter.

There is this fantastic scripture found in II Samuel 14:14 that says, “But God does not take away life; instead, he devises ways so that a banished person may not remain estranged from him.”  Don’t you just love that?  Can’t you see your Father in heaven “devising ways?”  Perhaps you’re a part of one of those “ways” in someone’s life today.  God just might be speaking to you or opening an encounter for you so that an estranged one is touched by Him.  This past weekend we met a couple who are praying for an estranged loved one to make his way back to the Savior.  Maybe you’re the one to encounter him?

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