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At other times he wanted to give in to the temptation to avoid listening to her complaints about him. He hated conflict. But he learned that God wanted him to listen and not react defensively. He would submit to God and remain in the conflict long enough to work it out.
They loved God enough to do what he asked of them, and they grew to love each other as a result.
The love that builds a marriage is the kind of love God has for us. It is called “agape.” Agape is love that seeks the welfare of the other. It is love that has nothing to do with how someone is gratifying us at the moment. It has to do with what is good for the other.
To love someone “as yourself is to put yourself in the other person’s shoes and see what it feels like to be her.
An intervention is for the addict, even if the entire family benefits.
And to love her as yourself means that you want it for your spouse as desperately as you would want it for yourself.
“I will never leave you nor forsake you,” he says (Joshua 1:5; see Hebrews 13:5). The Greek word that the Bible uses for “forsake” is a word that means “to desert or to leave.” To commit to someone means that you will be there and that you will stay, even when things get difficult.
Commitment drives the need for growth as well as the security. If you’re going to be with someone for the long term, it’s best to work things out; otherwise, you’re certain to be miserable! Commitment often drives one toward resolution.
Without action, James says, faith is dead (James 2:17).
As Jesus says of our relationship to God, “do the things you did at first” (Revelation 2:5). I know a husband who writes his wife a note every day, communicating something about her that he values and loves.
Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails (1 Corinthians 13:4-8a).
“I just don’t know him. I think I do, and then I find out I don’t know him at all.” Deception damages a relationship. The act of lying is much more damaging than the things that are being lied about, because lying undermines the knowing of one another and the connection itself. The point at which deception enters is the point at which relatedness ends.
As Paul tells us in the Bible, “Therefore each of you must put off falsehood and speak truthfully to his neighbor, for we are all members of one body” (Ephesians 4:25).
Couples often live out years of falsehood trying to protect and save a relationship, all the while destroying any chance of real relationship.
For spouses to tell the whole truth, they must deal with their fears first.
What you can do in your marriage is make a total commitment between the two of you to: Have enough grace to tell the truth. Promise that you will never punish your spouse for being honest. This doesn’t mean that there will be no consequences, but punishment, shame, and condemnation should not be part of those consequences. Give each other free rein to question and check out things with each other. Don’t be offended by the other spouse’s need to understand some facts that do not add up. Don’t retort defensively, “What? Don’t you trust me?” Police each other when you see your spouse not being
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All of these words hint at what faithfulness is. A faithful spouse is one who can be trusted, depended upon, and believed in, and one in whom you can rest.
But faithfulness means to be trusted in all areas, not just the sexual, trusted in matters of the heart as well as those of the body. Being faithful to your spouse means that you can be depended upon to do what you have promised, to follow through on what your spouse has entrusted to you.
One of the words the Bible uses for trust (the Hebrew word batach) means to be so confident that you can be “care-less.” In other words, you don’t have to worry. You are so “taken care of that you don’t have to take care yourself.
What we are talking about here is when you use other things in life, whether or not they be relationships, to avoid your spouse. The crush at work keeps some part of you split from your spouse. A hobby takes more time and energy than your marriage. Or an addiction becomes more important than the person to whom you are committed. “Objects” of unfaithfulness are numerous. Some are people, some are not. But the bottom line is that they come between you and your spouse. Some part of you avoids the relationship.
An act of unfaithfulness is something that one person does, not two. As the Bible says of God, “If we are faithless, he will remain faithful, for he cannot disown himself” (2 Timothy 2:13).
If an affair seems as if it is worth it, run like the wind and find a trusted friend to talk you back into your senses. If you are close to having an affair, you are close to destroying a lot of people, and you need to be rescued. See Proverbs 2:16-19; 5:3-20; 6:23-35.)
As God says, “Remain faithful until the end.”
The person you love the most and have committed your life to is an imperfect being. This person is guaranteed to hurt you and fail you in many ways, some serious and some not.
As the Bible says, “There is not a righteous man on earth who does what is right and never sins” (Ecclesiastes 7:20). And “everyone who sins breaks the law; in fact, sin is lawlessness” (1 John 3:4).
The Bible says, “Love covers over a multitude of sins” (1 Peter 4:8).
I like how the Bible describes God’s compassion: “to bend or stoop in kindness to an inferior” (Strong’s Hebrew and Greek Dictionary).
As Paul puts it, “Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. Bear with each other and forgive whatever grievances you may have against one another. Forgive as the Lord forgave you. And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity” (Colossians 3:12-14).
“Clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience.” What if you “wore” these qualities every time your spouse failed or was hurting?
As Jesus said, failure is not the cause of divorce, but hardness of heart is (see Matthew 19:8).
The Bible tells us that we comfort others out of the empathy we have received for our own struggles (2 Corinthians 1:4).
Don’t get angry with your spouse for her weakness! This is the worst thing you can ever do. It is using your strength in that area to destroy. If you have done that, if you have judged your spouse’s weakness or inability, put down this book and go apologize, if not for her sake, then for your own (see James 2:13).
Sometimes people build up protectiveness from childhood that says, in effect, “I will never let anyone hurt me again.” Then they take that strategy into marriage.
David got really depressed. This is when his truly hard work began. I had taken away his goal and motivation for change. He wanted to change just to get his wife back. In reality, this is not a bad motivation, but it is never enough, nor should it be primary. The primary reason for growth must be that one is “hungering for righteousness”—not for someone else, but for oneself. Ultimately, this is the only way that anyone is going to have life, when he hungers for it and pursues it with everything he has.
He was getting holy for holiness’ sake,
In marriage, holiness is anything but boring. It is the kind of purity and trustworthiness from which the deepest kinds of passion flow. So, take off your choir robe, and get holy.
As Jesus taught, God himself has forged your marriage: “Therefore what God has joined together, let man not separate” (Mark 10:9).
A marriage is only as strong as what it costs to protect it.
“a gossip separates close friends” (Proverbs 16:28).
God tells us to speak the truth in love (Ephesians 4:15).
Marriage was not designed to be the source of all life for us. This would be idolatry.
“He is before all things, and in him all things hold together” (Colossians 1:17).
I read many years ago that Billy Graham’s wife, Ruth, was asked, “How is your marriage so successful?” She replied, “Because he plays golf, and I play bridge.” Ruth Bell Graham understood the value of outside sources of life for a marriage to flourish.
“For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother” (Matthew 12:50).
Often the intruder isn’t the issue. The intruder is the result, or symptom, of another issue in marriage.
We don’t really “know” our spouse until we know his faults, weaknesses, sins, and imperfections.
A related issue in allowing intruders into a marriage occurs when one or both partners are unaware of the fragility of marriage.
We do not believe in an “out of the blue” marriage problem.
As she put it, “Wade belonged to everyone. So by default, he didn’t belong to me.” In not saying no to others, Wade was passively saying no to Cindy.
He was a man divided (James 1:8) and never at rest.
