I'd like to share this with each and every one of you whether married or single. Enjoy!
The
passion and intimacy you wish you and your spouse could enjoy together
isn't just a pike dream. This kind of marriage is within your reach. But
it's possible only if you both devote yourselves wholeheartedly to your relationship - fully engaging and giving 100%, without reservation.
Here's how you can put your whole heart into your marriage:
Recognize where love comes from.
Do you find yourself thinking that you're not in love with your spouse
anymore? Perhaps you feel like you just don't connect with your spouse.
Maybe you feel alone, even though the two of you are still living under
the same roof. Have you chosen to settle, compromise, or go into
survival mode in your marriage? Worse, have you given up and started
looking for love somewhere else?
It
doesn't have to be that way. No matter how discouraged you may feel,
it's possible to experience love for your spouse again. That's because
love comes from God -- who is always willing to give you a fresh supply
of it rather than keep it from you. You don't have feel pressured to try to generate love for your spouse when you don't feel it. All you need to do is go to God in prayer each day and ask Him to fill your heart with His love.
When you open your heart to God daily, you'll receive from Him all the love you need for both yourself and your spouse. The love in your heart will naturally overflow into your relationship with your spouse. So
remember that God is the source of all love, and love is always
available to you because it flows through you whenever you open your
heart to God.
Open your heart. In
your marriage, the issue isn't love; it's the state of your heart. Ask
yourself daily: "Is my heart open or closed?" If your heart is closed,
your marriage will start to shut down because you're blocking the flow
of God's love into it. But if you open your heart
to God and keep it open every day, you'll be inviting God to pour out
His love through you into your marriage.
Give your heart a voice. Become aware of the emotions you're experiencing, and learn how to manage them in healthy ways. Keep
in mind that God has designed your emotions to work together with your
thoughts so you can make the best possible decisions. Your emotions give you valuable information that you can then process through your thoughts.
Ask God to help you to accurately identify what you're feeling each day in various situations.
Rather
than judging your emotions, consider what they are trying to tell you.
When you feel frustration, joy, sadness, hurt, fear, or any other type
of emotion, what does that mean?
Once you've figured out what you're feeling and why you're feeling it, start guiding your emotions toward what you want to feel in your marriage.
· Identify
your specific desires for your marriage. Then, instead of expecting
your spouse to give you what you want (because anyone can fall short
from time to time), turn to God with your desires. Regularly
pray about what you want your marriage to be like, and trust God to
bring about the transformation for which you're hoping, as long as you
and your spouse cooperate with Him.
· Bring your negative emotions to God and ask Him to replace them with positive emotions in your life.
· Whenever
your emotions get stirred up, rather than blaming your spouse, consider
what you may be doing yourself to intensify your own feelings. Look
at your thoughts and thought patterns, interpretations, judgments,
perceptions, expectations, fears, past hurts, beliefs, family-of-origin
issues, and anything else that may be affecting your emotions. Then consider how you can best respond to your emotions.
· Avoid
unhealthy actions like ignoring, suppressing, judging, or minimizing
your feelings; viewing your feelings as facts; impulsively acting on
them; or spewing them on others.
· Figure
out some healthy responses from which you could choose to manage any
emotion that comes your way: taking deep breaths, praying, going for a
walk, go swimming, talking to a friend/family member, cleaning your
house, reading a book, etc.
Deal with a wounded heart.
Life in this fallen world wounds you and your spouse's hearts by
attacking them with false messages (such as: "You're not valuable"). The
messages on your hearts affect how you see yourselves and how you
interact with the world.
· Ask God to help you identify the false messages that have attacked your hearts and wound them.
· Does
your heart make you feel: rejected, abandoned, disconnected, a failure,
helpless, powerless, inadequate, inferior, invalidated, unloved,
undesirable, worthless, judged, ignored, unimportant, misunderstood,
disrespected, defective, or some other harmful message?
· Then replace those lies with biblical truth.
· Search
the Bible for specific verses that line up against the lies with which
you've been struggling, and memorize those verses.
· Pray
for the Holy Spirit to renew your mind so you can see yourself from
God's perspective and think right thoughts about yourself.
· Talk to some people you trust (such as friends, mentors, or a psychologist) for counsel and encouragement.
· Care
for your heart by nurturing yourself (such as by maintaining a close
prayer connection to God, nurturing healthy friendships, setting healthy
boundaries in your life, journal your feelings, eating whenever
you're hungry, and sleeping whenever you're tired).
Deal with a fearful heart.
Create an emotionally safe environment for you and your spouse to
relate to each other, so both of you feel safe to truly open up and be
known at a deep, intimate level. Each of you should be able to open and
reveal who you really are and know that your spouse will still love,
understand, accept, and value you no matter what.
Avoid behaviors that erode trust, like:
· Criticism,
angry reactions, threats, withdrawal, sarcasm, broken promises,
nagging, judgment, harsh words, defensiveness, manipulation, teasing,
deception, negative assumptions and jumping to conclusions, bringing up
the past over and over, and refusing to forgive.
· Recognize your spouse's value.
· Ask
God to help you honor your spouse -- no matter what -- because he is
God's priceless gift to you and has a position in your life that's
worthy of great respect. Treat your spouse in valuable ways, such as by:
praying for and with your spouse, listening to your spouse with your
full attention, validating your spouse's feelings, considering your
spouse's point of view, notice your spouse's good qualities, thank your
spouse for what he does for you, serve your spouse in ways that are
meaningful for him, honor your spouse's boundaries, spend lots of time
with your spouse, be honest and trustworthy with your spouse, forgive
your spouse, and reassure your spouse of your unconditional love for
him.
Deal with an exhausted heart.
If you don't intentionally plan regular time with your spouse and time
to recharge yourself, the busyness of life will take over and your
marriage will suffer.
· Slow down the pace of your lifestyle and simplify your schedule.
· Build
in plenty of time for rest, reflection, and prayer. Learn when and how
to say "no" to pursuits that don't relate directly to your core values,
so you'll be free to focus on what's most important and let the rest go.
· Get rid of stuff that clutters your house and demands your time and energy to deal with it. Refuse to allow our culture's standards to define your value by what you look like, what you do, or what you own.
· Find your true value in the fact that God has made you and redeemed you, and He loves you.
· Ask
God to help you become whole and full emotionally, spiritually,
mentally, and physically so you'll have the energy and resources
necessary to love your spouse fully and unconditionally.
Fight for your spouse's heart. Conflict is inevitable in marriage. But it doesn't have to harm your relationship; it can actually strengthen it. If
you and your spouse respond to conflict in a healthy way, conflict will
become the doorway to intimacy between you because it will deepen your
understanding of each other.
· Consider how both you and your spouse tend to react to conflict now.
· Responding
with "fight" behavior -- defensiveness, anger, going into fix-it mode,
escalation, criticism, sarcasm, blame, or belittling comments won't
promote the intimate connections you want to make. Neither
will responding with "flight" behavior: withdrawal, negative beliefs,
shut-down mode, isolation, numbing out, over-functioning, stonewalling,
or passive-aggressive behavior.
· Instead
of becoming your spouse's adversary in conflict and causing your hearts
to close to each other, open your hearts to God.
· Pray
for the ability to embrace, appreciate, and deal with you and your
spouse's differences in healthy ways. Ask God to show you what emotional
buttons your spouse is pushing through the conflict and how that makes
you feel. Also ask God to reveal how you're pushing your spouse's emotional buttons through the conflict. Then
pray for the power you need to gain control over the conflict and use
it to accomplish something constructive in your relationship.
Care for your spouse's heart. Your spouse has an amazingly valuable and incredibly vulnerable heart, just as you do.
· Keep the promise you made in your wedding vows to care for each other.
· Communicate
to understand by agreeing on when it's a good time to talk, agreeing on
the goal of each conversation (connecting emotionally, or trying to fix
something), and checking during the conversation to make sure you're
still both staying on track and understanding each other.
· Avoid
communication pitfalls, such as trying to figure out: who is right or
wrong, who is to blame or at fault, and what was said or what really
happened.
· Avoid
destructive behaviors like: criticism, contempt, defensiveness, and
stonewalling. During difficult interactions, say to your spouse: "Help
me understand" so he knows you truly care.
· Ask God to open the eyes of your heart toward your spouse and give you compassion for him.
· Respect how valuable and vulnerable your spouse's heart is by treating it gently.
· Set aside your temptation to blame your spouse and focus on simply caring for him instead.
· Express
empathy ("I feel what you're feeling, and I want to share in your joy
or pain.") and validation ("What you're feeling matters to me and you
matter to me. ") toward your spouse.
Speak to your spouse's heart. Give your spouse words of encouragement every day.
· Honor, motivate, and call out your spouse's spiritual gifts and natural talents.
· Find out what wounds and fear your spouse is struggling with, and what you can say to encourage your spouse to pursue healing.
· Consider
people's most common intimacy needs -- acceptance, affection,
appreciation, approval, attention, comfort, encouragement, respect,
security, and support and do what you can to help meet your spouse's
intimacy needs through your marriage.
· Understand
people's love languages -- words of affirmation, quality time,
receiving gifts, acts of service, and physical touch and express your
love for your spouse in ways that best speak his specific love language.
Celebrate with your spouse's heart.
Bring fun and laughter into your marriage often. Humor increases
intimacy, reduces stress, and increases positive emotions. Intentionally
turn toward your spouse each day to help prevent drifting apart. Spend as much time as you can together.
· As much as possible, do your everyday chores and errands together rather than separately.
· Pray with your spouse often. Share your dreams with each other regularly.
· Schedule dates whenever you can.
· Talk frequently about what God is doing in each of your lives.
· Learn something new together, such as through trying a new activity or taking a class.
· Serve others together by doing volunteer work side-by-side.
· Surprise
your spouse by doing something unexpected every now and then (such as
by playing a loving practical joke on him or planning a romantic getaway
trip).
Reminisce
about the positive events that have happened over the course of your
marriage, and recall what qualities about each other first attracted you
to each other. Protect your fun activities from being ruined by
conflict by agreeing to talk about issues at other times instead of
while you're trying to have fun together.
Be Blessed And Love Your Spouse With A Whole Heart!
Ephesians 5:21-25
Submitting yourselves one to another in the fear of God. Wives, submit
yourselves unto your own husbands, as unto the Lord. For the husband is
the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church: and he
is the saviour of the body. Therefore as the church is subject unto
Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in every thing.
Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and
gave himself for it;
