Making Marriage Work (13 page)

First we are to build a strong, dependent relationship with God and then the relationship we have with Him will affect our relationships with people in a positive and godly way When we learn to be intimate with God, He will teach us how to have loving relationships with each other. Many people try to build relationships with people without having relationship with God. Therefore, they have no standard of what love is or should be.

When we learn to be intimate with God, He will teach us how to have loving relationships with each other.

The marriage relationship on earth is supposed to be an example of what our spiritual relationship is with the Lord Jesus Christ. I had prayed that God would send me somebody who would take me to church. I wanted to serve God, but I had so many problems in my soul that I couldn’t seem to go to church on my own. I needed somebody to disciple me. I got a good foundation about salvation through the Protestant church we attended, but when I was baptized in the Holy Spirit, God began a restoration in my soul. I can truly stand before masses of people and testify, “He has restored my soul.”

Don’t abandon the promise before you see its fulfillment. When the changes start to hurt, don’t run away from them because if you do, you will be running all your life. Remember, things might get worse before they get better as God works things out in your spouse. Pray all the more through these times of purifying. You are about to see gold emerge from the fire.

THE TWO SHALL BECOME ONE

God works in both partners in a marriage. I said earlier that I am not trying to portray Dave as a perfect man — he is not perfect. He certainly has faults like the rest of us. While God was working on me, He was also working on Dave. My faults were just louder than Dave’s. Some people have quiet faults. For example someone might be the type who refuses to confront issues. They seem quiet, shy, withdrawn, and actually never bother anyone, but they can contribute to the breakdown of a marriage just the same as a rude, loudmouthed manipulator.

Perhaps you are like I was — your faults are loud, and it almost seems unfair that your faults are noticed all the time, while your spouse’s don’t seem to exist. Be encouraged: God is dealing with the quiet spouse about their faults, Also, the quiet spouse may not talk about the process as much, but God deals with all of us about our faults sooner or later.

There was a time when Dave was extremely passive, which means he did not take responsibility for some things that he needed to. He always went to work and did a good job there, but he was very nonaggressive as far as getting other things done in life. He played golf, watched sports, and was easy to get along with, but in those days it might have taken me three or four weeks to get him to hang a picture for me.

Dave has changed, and he is not that way any longer. We both had faults; they were just opposite in their nature. I talked too much: he did not talk enough to suit me. I was too aggressive; he was too passive. I had a false sense of responsibility and often made myself responsible for things that were not my problem, while Dave, at times, didn’t even realize that something was his responsibility and did nothing. We are actually very different in personality and our approach to things, but God has changed us both, and the two have become one.

Be encouraged that you are not the only one who needs to change, but God will deal with you about you, not about your spouse. Do your part, and God will always do His part. Don’t worry, as I did, about whether or not your spouse is listening to God. We all have choices to make, and we will all reap the fruit of them. Concentrate on making right choices yourself, and leave other people in God’s hands.

PART 2

MAKING CHOICES

8

IS THAT YOUR DRIPPING TOWEL?

… Love (God’s love in us) does not insist on its own rights or its own way, for it is not self-seeking; it is not touchy or fretful or resentful; it takes no account of the evil done to it [it pays no attention to a suffered wrong].

1 Corinthians 13:5

Love always makes the choice to stand firm and keep on loving. I have seen men and women make the decision to run when change starts to hurt. They run from God; they run from the person on whom they’re blaming their misery; they run from themselves when there is an issue they need to work out. When they run, they take the problem with them and leave their help behind. As long as I was blaming Dave for my own unhappiness and was blaming my past, I made zero progress.

Change began in me when I made a choice to stop running away from pain. I realized that I was insecure because I was abused, but I also realized I didn’t have to stay that way because Jesus loved me and had the power to change me. Truth set me free to make new choices.

The truth of God’s love for me gave me the security to take responsibility for my actions. I was finally able to admit when I acted wrong and that I was sinning, then repent. All those changes took time in me, and they will take time in the person for whom you are praying. God showed me the changes I needed to make, and He will show your spouse where to start as a result of your prayers, not conversation, nagging, or temper tantrums.

HURTING PEOPLE HURT PEOPLE

I had low self-esteem; I did not like myself. I hated my personality, and I hated my voice (which I think is extremely funny because God is now blasting it all over the world). Somewhere along the line through the abuse that I had endured, I internalized the shame. I was no longer ashamed of what was happening to me; I became ashamed of me. I was hurting and, consequently, was hurting other people.

I believe about 85 percent of the problems that people have are related to how they feel about themselves. Your nurturing and encouragement can help them change the way they see themselves. If you keep loving them, they will begin to examine themselves to see why you find them lovable. Unconditional love is the best therapy for someone who can’t find any self-worth.

Unconditional love is the best therapy for someone who can’t find any self-worth.

When people discover that God loves them no matter what, and that you love them no matter how awful they are, a redemption process begins in their soul that only God’s agape love can initiate. He loves people through you. You can help others love themselves if you make a choice to demonstrate God’s love to them.

When they begin to see how much God loves them, they begin to like themselves again. When they begin to understand that they are the righteousness of God because of what Jesus has done for them, they begin to see the difference between who they are and what they have done. Once they begin to separate the two pictures and see how precious they are in God’s eyes apart from what they do or have done, the revelation of love for who they are comes to them, and radical changes begin to manifest in what they do.

But as long as they think they are to do something right to be something right, then they’re caught in that helpless place in which religion puts people — works, works, works. They can never work enough to deserve God’s love, but that’s why it is so important that someone illustrates to them that God’s love is a free gift. They prove this by showing that their own love is unconditional.

If you don’t know how to treat your spouse, maybe it’s because you feel rotten about yourself. Maybe you need to really take a good look at how you feel about yourself. Both men and women have been abused and need a revelation of God’s unconditional love for them.

A man once told me, “Your tapes have changed my life. I just got hold of ‘Beauty For Ashes’ a few weeks ago, and I can’t believe the healing that God is doing in my life.” He said, “I was abused, and this truth is changing my life.” The Word of God is medicine for our souls.

PERFECT LOVE CASTS OUT FEAR

If you don’t like yourself, you are never going to like anybody else, and you won’t be able to help your spouse like himself or herself. You will spend all your time trying to prove your own value, and people who are self-seeking cannot be servants as Jesus was. Healing can’t come to your marriage until one of you finds the Healer.

Healing comes by accepting yourself, knowing that where you are today is not where you will end up, knowing that God is perfecting you, too. If you would learn to accept the unconditional love of God, acknowledging that God doesn’t love you because of what you do, you would be so full of joy that it would be easy to give unconditional love away to your spouse.

Do you understand that God can love you just because He wants to? He doesn’t have to have a reason. We don’t earn or deserve the love of God. God doesn’t want us to impress people; He wants us to love them. In the first meeting I ever taught, I wanted to be the “woman of the hour with the message of power” so I said, “God, what do You want me to teach? What do You want me to share?”

He said, “I want you to tell my people that I love them.”

I said, “Oh, God, I’m not going to go with some little John 3:16 message. Everybody knows that You love them.”

He said, “No they don’t. Very few of My people know that I love them. If they understood My love for them, they would act much differently than the way they do.”

The first evidence of His love is that it casts out fear. When we understand how perfectly God loves us, that knowledge casts the fear, which is insecurity, out of our lives. I could never be the wife that God wanted me to be to my husband until I received the love of God. I did not love myself; I had to let God love me. It’s humbling to let God love you when you know you don’t deserve it.

FREELY YOU HAVE RECEIVED. FREELY GIVE

One morning, as I sat in my pajamas praying for my ministry to grow, the Lord said to me, “Joyce, I really can’t do anything else in your ministry until you do what I have told you to do concerning your husband. You are not showing him proper respect. You argue with him over minor details, things you should just let go and drop. You have a willful, stubborn, rebellious attitude. I have dealt with you about it over and over again, but you just refuse to listen.”

Many of us have a problem with a willful, stubborn attitude. We think we are being obedient to the Word of God, so we wonder why we are not living in the covenant blessings promised us in it. While it is true that God’s love is unconditional. His covenant blessings are contingent on being “doers of the Word.” It is not enough just to read the Word, or even to learn it and confess it. It is in the doing that the blessings are released.

It is in the doing of God’s Word that the blessings are released.

I was having problems being submissive because I had such a strong will and was still caught in my defensive attitude from being abused as a child. But I was missing out on the blessings God was eager for me to enjoy.

After praying, I got up and went to take a shower in the new bathroom Dave had just installed off our master bedroom. Since he had not yet put up a towel rack, I laid my towel on the toilet seat and started to step into the shower.

Dave saw what I was doing and asked me, “Why did you put your towel there?”

Right away I could feel my emotions getting stirred up.

“What’s wrong with putting it there?” I asked in a sarcastic tone.

As an engineer, Dave answered with typical mathematical logic. “Well, since we don’t have a floor mat yet, if you put your towel in front of the shower door, when you get out you won’t drip water on the carpet while reaching for it.”

“Well, what difference would it make if I did get a little water on the carpet?” I asked in a huff.

Sensing the mood I was in, Dave just gave up, shrugged his shoulders and went on his way.

As it turned out, I did what Dave had suggested, but I did it by angrily slamming the towel onto the floor. I did the right thing, but I did it in the wrong attitude.

God wants us to get to the point of doing the right thing with the right attitude.

As I stepped into the shower after throwing my towel on the floor, I was filled with rage.

“For crying out loud,” I ranted to myself. “I can’t even take a shower in peace! Why can’t I do anything without somebody trying to tell me what to do?”

In my frustration I just went on and on.

Although I was a Christian and had been in ministry preaching to others for some time, I myself lacked control over my own mind, will, and emotions. It was three full days before my soul calmed down enough for me to get victory over that bath towel!

I guess for those three days I was a noisy gong and a clanging cymbal. I certainly wasn’t inspired by
spiritual devotion such as is inspired by God’s love for and in us
, mentioned in 1 Corinthians 13:1. I gave up my birthright for a bath towel! But I know I was not alone in this struggle to be spiritually mature.

Love is maturity to the full degree. It is a sacrificial gift to someone else. If love doesn’t require some sort of sacrifice on our part, we probably aren’t loving the other person at all. If there is no sacrifice in our actions, we are most likely reacting to something nice they did for us, or simply pretending to be kind to gain some control over them. Love is almost always undeserved by the person who receives it.

Jesus said,
For if you love those who love you, what reward can you have? …
(Matthew 5:46). He said that we should love our enemies. How much more should we love our family? He pointed out that the Father blesses both wicked and good with sunshine and rain, and as His children we should be reflecting that same grace on both the deserving and the undeserving. In Matthew 5:48 He
reached the proper height of virtue and calls us to maturity saying, You, therefore, must be perfect [growing into complete maturity of godliness in mind and character, having … integrity], as your heavenly Father is perfect
.

If you and your mate are struggling in your marriage, I suggest that you read the first eight verses of I Corinthians 13 out loud together every morning. I believe if you will do it on a regular basis that you will begin to see changes in your relationship as you become grounded in God’s perspective of how we are supposed to treat each other.