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| WRITTEN BY KEN |
Recently we had the privilege of working with a
wonderful Christian couple who are on a journey to cure a difficult and painful
marriage. It makes little difference of the facts behind the last eight years of
troubles, but health issues, painful childhood interferences, weak relationship
skills and pride all mixed together to create an on again off again separation and a family in turmoil. Satan and his lies were fast at work to destroy what
both spouses seemed to want from marriage and family, only to watch their
efforts go up into the flames of despair and hopelessness.
A blog post cannot contain the many hours of
emails, phone calls and personal time together. Jesus in all His wisdom and
hope appears to be breaking through their darkness and leading them both
together into the glorious light reserved for all of God’s children. If you are
in a difficult marriage, consider sharing this post with your spouse and
considering if the things we learned together are not things that can greatly
change you and your marriage from the inside out. These things are vital for those who want God's blessings.
We Must Live All Things
Christian in Our Home and Marriage
One of the first things I coach husbands in
difficult marriages is that we cannot expect the Lord to do His mighty work if
we don’t set the standard of “all things Christian in our home and marriage.”
On the surface this sounds so simple, but in practice it is too easy to allow our
spouse to trigger our hot buttons and pull us into the mud of sin and despair
with them. Imagine if instead of repaying sin with sin, we were to instead stay
above the fray and keep our courage to walk by the Spirit, even in these most
hurtful times, instead of walking in the flesh. The flesh hurts and bruises so
easily, but we have a promise from God that we “are not in the flesh, but in the
Spirit” if we are in Christ Jesus. When just one spouse will start doing things
in a godly way, then the Lord can help the other spouse unquench the Spirit
that lives inside of them.
It Has to Begin with Our
New Lives in Christ
No lasting change can come from fleshly battles,
or the changing of the mind, if the heart is not in it. At the heart of the
gospel is the good news that we are now dead to sin and alive in Christ Jesus.
If we do not know who we are in Christ, or we do not understand that we can say
“NO” to sin each time we are confronted with making a sinful response, we will
fall back into our old fleshly ways and not allow the Spirit to work in us
and through us. We must study who we are in Christ and the place to begin is
Romans 6, 8, and Colossians. Once you get it from your head into your heart that
you are indeed freed from sin and now walk in newness of life, it is then past sins and present sinful habits begin to disappear.
Growth Only Comes from
Personal Responsibility
Your past may hold many reasons why we behave as
we do, but if we are ever going to grow up personally, or grow up into Christ
spiritually, we must accept personal responsibility for all our actions. Our
past, and our childhood issues can explain some of our fleshly thoughts and
misbehavior, but they do not excuse them. Ownership of one’s life means
accepting responsibility = the ability to choose my response,
no matter what the circumstances. This God ordained free will is given only to
humans as animals have no choice. We can choose to react with common human
decency, or even love, when feeling hurt, unloved or unlovable.
Happiness is a Choice
One of the biggest breakthroughs in our time
together was discovering that happiness is a choice. If you have not
learned this begin by Googling Dennis Prager and studying the matter. Also
start listening to Dennis Prager’s Happiness Radio Hour on Friday mornings.
When person after person living through the most devastating past and present,
often filled with tragedy and health issues, can choose happiness over
circumstances, one quickly learns that not only can I choose to be happy, but I
also have a responsibility to do so. Happiness can come through right
thinking, or it can come from behaving happy and then in turn watch
the feelings follow. Both thinking right and doing right will produce happy
chemicals in the brain. And even if they do not, we can responsibly choose to
look outward and serve joyfully, even when we do not feel like it. Happiness is a moral issue because we drag down the life of others if we do not choose to be happy ourselves.
Feelings are Too Often Big
Fat Liars
Far too many people live their lives according
to their feelings and sensibilities and not by their values. Sorry ladies, but half the time your feelings are lying to you. God says that we
are to take every thought captive to Christ Jesus, and I am sure He is
including feelings. Some feelings come from emotions, others from thoughts and
still others are simply fleshly desires. It is hard to even differentiate at
times between what is of the Spirit and what is indigestion. Even when feelings
are legitimate, one must decide if they should be held onto or discarded for some
higher value. If I value relationships, I will quickly suppress my anger, my
frustrations, even my unhappiness so that I may live out my values.
It is When I live Out My
Values That I Become Happy
If you are one of the billions who are trying to
live by feelings and emotions, you will never be happy. Happiness comes for
Believers and non-believers when they look outside of themselves and decide that
love, joy peace, patience, gentleness, goodness, meekness, temperance, faith are all wrapped up in serving others. Those who turn inward and lose hope
often find that their lives are not doing anything worthwhile. It is no wonder
that Jesus has set us free because He has given us a whole set of new values
that come as a result of the fruit of the Spirit.
When I Betray My Values I Go Into My Box
The biggest relationship problem we face in
marriage is that we far too often betray our own values and when we do, we quickly
jump into a box of self-justification. For people of self-betrayal, there is
always an excuse for why I behaved badly, or why I am in a bad mood, and it is
because you, or someone or something else is to blame. When I am in my box I
can’t see you anymore as a real person, because I am hurt or upset and it’s now
all about me! One of the most important lessons we learned together is to understand
how to recognize when we are in the box and why we need to get out of the box
quickly. If I stay in my box, I can never have a true, caring relationship so I
must learn to exit quickly. I also must not allow the things that trigger me to
send me into the box in the first place. Living a life of regularly betraying
ones values creates miserable people. To overcome self-betrayal one must go
back to the beginning and establish and live out God’s values of love, joy,
peace, patience, self-control, and treating others the way you would want
to be treated. No matter what, I must choose to own my life and chosen values.
Your Rabbits No Longer Need
to Define You
Too many of us have carried our past ruts and
habits into our marriage and they are destroying our happiness and any chance
at harmony and oneness with our spouse. These “rabbits,” as Lori calls them,
are a vestige of the old sinful flesh that linger when we do not fully believe
that we are freed from the past and all our past sins, failures and hurts.
Until we have given our lives over to walk in the Spirit, and put aside fleshly
dead deeds, we have no choice but to battle against sin with every weapon we
have. We must apply self-discipline, and the tools of human behavior and
psychology to lessen their effects, but the real hope of ridding ourselves of
our bad rabbits is to give them all to Jesus. Let Him place them on the cross
and allow Him to discipline us when we need training in godliness so that we
may learn to walk in newness of life. Out with the old and in with the new,
brand new, and now on to all things Christian.
Discipline is Necessary to
Break Bad Habits
Most people need a patch to break the bad habit
of smoking, and others can throw their last carton away and never pick one of
those nasty things up again. Many do not realize how much better their lives
would be if they simply surrendered their “rabbits” to the Lord and allowed
them all to be placed on the cross in 30 A.D. where they belong. Look at the
seriousness of God on the issue of sin. Jesus said cut of off your hand or
pluck out your eye; Paul said he beats his body and bruises it, lest he be
disqualified by sin; and Hebrews says, “You have not yet resisted to the point of
shedding blood in your striving against sin” {Hebrews 12:4}. God has a prescription for
Believers who keep sinful habits lingering; “For the Lord disciplines
the one he loves, and
chastises every son whom he receives” {Hebrews 12:6}. God wants us to strive against sin and establish
strong accountability for it. Your spouse knows you best, and loves you most,
so if you do not have enough self-discipline to keep your sinful habits away,
then decide on what disciplines are necessary to keep get your marriage where
the Lord wants it to go, and let them hold you strictly accountable for keeping your new commitments.
The
Bottom Line
All Christian
marriages can be healed if both spouses desire to begin to live out “all things
Christian” in our homes and families. It may not happen overnight, but then
again, let’s not underestimate the power of the Spirit in the life of Believers
to show us how to walk fully and completely into all of God’s promises; even
those promises that seem too hard to believe, like taking a messed up life and
transforming it instantly into a child of God and godly spouse. This is our
hope for all Christian marriages as we are hearing the miracles wrought in the
lives of those who are willing to do things God’s ways so that they may reap
His blessings. Life is too short to not always keep in mind that we will all stand at the foot the Creator's throne and give an account for how we lived our lives. Think on the apostle's words and hide them in your heart so that you might learn that this life is not the end, but the brief testing ground of our faith. May we be faithful to all He has called us to, let our service to Him begin by doing our part in our marriage, towards the one we said we would love the most in this whole world.
Discipline yourself for the purpose of godliness; for bodily discipline is only of little profit, but godliness is profitable for all things, since it holds promise for the present life and also for the life to come… For it is for this we labor and strive, because we have fixed our hope on the living God, who is the Savior of all men, especially of believers.
I Timothy 4:8-10
Discipline yourself for the purpose of godliness; for bodily discipline is only of little profit, but godliness is profitable for all things, since it holds promise for the present life and also for the life to come… For it is for this we labor and strive, because we have fixed our hope on the living God, who is the Savior of all men, especially of believers.
I Timothy 4:8-10
