Using our Words to Fix our marriages
I read this quote, and it made me think about my marriage, and how, over 18 years, we have allowed little compromises in our faith, to work on eroding the love between us. Yes, there are very real issues that need to be addressed, but for those of us who know and understand how our faith and authority are supposed to work in every arena of life, we need to be using our faith by our words, on purpose, in our marriage.
Here’s the quote:
In order to uncover the processes that destroy unions, marital researchers study couples over the course of years, and even decades, and retrace the star-crossed steps of those who have split up back to their wedding day. What they are discovering is unsettling. None of the factors one would guess might predict a couple’s durability actually does: not how in love a newlywed couple say they are; how much affection they exchange; how much they fight or what they fight about. In fact, couples who will endure and those who won’t look remarkably similar in the early days.
Yet when psychologists Cliff Notarius of Catholic University and Howard Markman of the University of Denver studied newlyweds over the first decade of marriage, they found a very subtle but telling difference at the beginning of the relationships. Among couples who would ultimately stay together, 5 out of every 100 comments made about each other were putdowns. Among couples who would later split, 10 of every 100 comments were insults. That gap magnified over the following decade, until couples heading downhill were flinging five times as many cruel and invalidating comments at each other as happy couples. “Hostile putdowns act as cancerous cells that, if unchecked, erode the relationship over time,” says Notarius, who with Markman co-authored the new book We Can Work It Out. “In the end, relentless unremitting negativity takes control and the couple can’t get through a week without major blowups.”
U.S. News & World Report, February 21, 1994, p. 67
Since ‘love covers a multitude of sins’, there comes a place where we need to deliberately activate the love of God in our homes, so that our faith, the muscle of God can work. Gal 5:6 ‘faith which worketh by love.’
What if we deliberately decided to love our spouses, as an act of worship towards God, no matter how much they fail us, disappoint us, and let us down, then, on purpose, choose to believe the opposite of what we are currently experiencing in our marriage, but claiming the promises of God for our marriage.
Faith calls those things that be not, as though they are.
This, I believe, is where we truly overcome evil with good.
So, let’s pray:
‘Father, I need Your love flowing through me to truly love my spouse today, yet you have promised that it shall be shed abroad in my heart, by the Holy Spirit. Holy Spirit love my spouse through me today, to bless, empower, encourage, and equip them to become more like Jesus, in strength, honor, holiness, passion, and fire today.’
By faith I declare: I have a terrific marriage, for I serve Jesus, and my marriage is supposed to look like His love for His Bride, the church.
I declare: I believe that Jesus is working to will and to do of His good pleasure in my spouse, transforming them into the person of excellence and honor He has created them to be.
I declare that He who began a good work in my spouse, is faithful to complete it, in Christ Jesus.
I declare that I forgive all past failures of my spouse, and I refuse to stonewall, despise, or manipulate them in any way, but will love, honor and respect them for Jesus sake.
I declare that God is free to work on me, to make me more like Jesus, removing my negativity, bitterness, hopelessness, despair, and all sickness of heart, where I have given up on my marriage in any way. I receive Jesus as my healer.
While there is more that I could write today, this should be a good start….
