Making Marriage Work (12 page)

Unfortunately many people treat marriage partners the way they do friends that they no longer want to tolerate. They simply walk away from the relationship because they have never learned a functional solution to bad behavior problems.

To bring triumph to our relationships, we must learn what the other person is thinking then find out how to show them truth that will renew their soul and help them reach their potential in God. My husband, Dave, has done that for me. I think that our life is a great example of how someone with the love of God can help another person be all that he or she can be. A loving spouse can bring their mate through to a complete place of healing and victory.

When Dave and I got married, I looked O
K
on the outside. I was a younger version of what I am now, I had a good job and was put in charge everywhere I worked. Being the boss is just my personality, the way God put me together for leadership. The deep problems in my soul were not obvious by just looking at me. When people are courting, they don’t let those problems surface.

Dave and I had been married three weeks when he looked at me and asked, “What is wrong with you?”

With the abuse I had suffered in my childhood, and then the mistakes of my first marriage, I might have looked good on the outside, but my soul was a wreck. I didn’t trust or like anybody, including myself. I had all kinds of fears. But you would never have thought that was the case because I was almost obnoxiously bold.

Most people who have been deeply hurt are unbalanced in their personalities. They’re either obnoxiously aggressive, or they’re obnoxiously shy and withdrawn. God wants us to have balanced personalities.

I doubt if we can comprehend how many dysfunctional, insecure people we deal with every day in society. The most dangerous thing about our dysfunctional society is that hurting people hurt other people. People don’t go around hurting each other just for the fun of hurting each other. Many problems start in dysfunctional people during the years they are forming an opinion about their own self-worth.

When people with problems haven’t learned how to see beyond their problems, they become dysfunctional — incapable of having healthy relationships. Those same people want normalcy as much as anyone else, but their thinking and emotional skills are not developed beyond their point of pain or the critical outlook of life that they were taught in those formative years. If there are no good role models in their life, they cannot “see” how to change.

Don’t give up on your mate. You can be the role model for your spouse as you submit yourself to Jesus and respond to tensions and trials the way He would respond. I am a living testimony of what God can do through a patient and loving spouse. There are millions of people who have extremely serious problems in their marriages. If you are one of them, ask God for wisdom. He will give you the grace and power to sow seeds of peace in your loved one. Don’t give up on your spouse unless you absolutely know that you have a word from God to get out of the relationship. Don’t act on emotions; be led by God’s Spirit.

Instead of acting on your emotions, be led by God’s Spirit.

HOW TO HELP AN INSECURE PERSON

If you are living with a hurting, wounded person, I encourage you to pray and ask God for specific direction in how to help your mate through his or her insecurity to the place of confidence in your and God’s love. It is possible that you are the only person in the world through whom God can truly demonstrate His unconditional love for your spouse.

Ask God to lead you to more information on how to help your mate. Get more teaching; write to my ministry for some of my tapes and learn how you can be used by God to bring healing and restoration to that other person. There is something on the inside of them that is worth going after. There is a treasure inside of that person, and it should not be thrown into a field where it might remain lost.

When Dave and I were first married, my personality was like an old ugly rock with a rough, tough exterior. I acted like I didn’t need anybody — nobody was going to push me around or tell me what to do. If they didn’t like me, they could just get out of my face. I had taken care of myself long enough. I believed I could continue to do so if that’s what I had to do. But that wasn’t what was in my heart; that was just the shield of defense that I put up for others to see.

Who would want a cold, rough stone in the house? Yet, many people are married to someone who looks and acts like an impermeable stone. And it is difficult to deal with that hardness day after day. But there is a treasure on the inside of them just like the geodes found in nature. Their exterior looks course and even brutal, but their cavities are lined with crystals and minerals that explode into beautiful colors and designs.

I believe that God gives us these rocks in nature to teach us to look beyond the surface of a thing, or a person, to see what treasure He has hidden in their design. When looking at the outside of one of these special rocks, who would ever have thought to look inside of it? That is exactly why we must stop judging people by the way they look, act, or even by what they say. We need to go a little bit deeper than how they look. Ask God to reveal the truth about them and ask to see the goodness in their heart that is worth pursuing.

Men are told in Ephesians 5 to love their wives by nurturing, nourishing, and cherishing them. This kind of love is just like Christ’s love for the church that cleanses and makes us glorious and holy The picture of this love shows that a man’s love for his wife can bring her back to a place of full health.

Women are told in verse 33 to respect, reverence, and notice their husband. She is to show him regard, honor him, prefer him, venerate, and esteem him. She is to defer to him, praise him, and love and admire him exceedingly (
AMP
.) Imagine what that kind of attention could do to a man with low self-esteem who had been treated ungraciously as a child. A love with that kind of strength could make him whole again.

HOW HEALTHY IS YOUR MATE?

Some people are married to a spouse who looks like an unhealthy plant. Some new growth at the top looks all right, but there is a lot of dead looking stuff on the lower branches. With some trees you think, I don’t know if this will make it or not. Maybe we’ll just get rid of this one and go get us another one.

I don’t happen to have a green thumb, and if I get a plant that starts dying, I take it to one of the women in the office and ask her, “See if you can bring this thing back to life.” One of the ladies there can take the plant home and in a few weeks she brings it back with it looking absolutely great. After she has nurtured it back to health, we all want it in our office again. It doesn’t even look like it was ever sick after she has cared for it.

I was like a sick plant when Dave found me, but he nourished me and has been the kind of husband that the Bible tells men to be. Our relationship was God-ordained; God had a call on our lives, and He had a plan for how to get us to that calling. In looking back we can see how God had prepared Dave for our marriage since he was eighteen years old, filling him with the Holy Ghost while he was just seeking God on his own. He had a strong walk with God during those first three years of being Spirit-filled and many supernatural things happened to him.

Though he felt like that intimate relationship with God ended for a brief time while he was in the service, we both believe it was a special time of preparation in his life specifically to be able to handle me when I came along. Just as he had learned to base his relationship with God on the promise of commitment rather than feelings, he later had to demonstrate the same lesson to me. Dave taught me that faithfulness has nothing to do with feelings.

I am not trying to depict Dave as a perfect man, just as I have not been a perfect woman, but he’s been patient with me and he stuck with me through the hard times. I believe that he’s now reaping the benefits.

GOD’S GRACE DOES THE WORK

God does the work through us to help others. When you sow righteous seeds, you will reap rewards. Dave was used by God to sow seeds of love and acceptance in me. We don’t give the credit to man, but we must understand that God works through people to reach people. He wants to use you to nurture people and help bring them back like a healthy tree planted near running water.

Part of our heritage in God is to be secure. Isaiah 54:17 tells us,
But no weapon that is formed against you shall prosper, and every tongue that shall rise up against you in judgment you shall show to be in the wrong. This [peace, righteousness, security, triumph over opposition] is the heritage of the servants of the Lord [those in whom the ideal Servant of the Lord is reproduced]
. …

Don’t settle for anything less than your God-given, blood-bought right to be secure. Don’t expect anything less for your spouse. Isaiah 61:1 says,

Don’t settle for anything less than your God-given, blood-bought right to be secure. Don’t expect anything less for your spouse.

The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because the Lord has anointed and qualified me to preach the Gospel of good tidings to the meek, the poor, and afflicted; He has sent me to bind up and heal the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the [physical and the spiritual] captives and the opening of the prison and of the eyes to those who are bound.

As a believer, you are anointed to bind up and heal the broken-hearted. Verses 2,3 continue:

To proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord [the year of His favor] and the day of vengeance of our God, to comfort all who mourn,

To grant [consolation and joy] to those who mount in Zion — to give them an ornament (a garland or diadem) of beauty instead of ashes, the oil of joy instead of mourning, the garment [expressive] of praise instead of a heavy, burdened and failing spirit — that they may be called oaks of righteousness [lofty, strong, and magnificent, distinguished for uprightness, justice, and right standing with God], the planting of the Lord, that He may be glorified.

Isaiah spoke of an anointing that will come on a person to take somebody who is a broken-down mess, whose life is nothing but ashes and work with them and nurture them and nourish them until they come to the point where they are trees of righteousness, the planting of the Lord, so their lives are now giving glory to God.

I’m glad that my husband didn’t give up on me. How easy it would have been for him in those first few years to just walk out, saying, “Who needs the hassle? I don’t need this grief and insult.” But instead of walking out on me, he would go somewhere and pray to get more of the grace of God. Then he would return and live sacrificially and wait for God to change me in honor of Dave’s prayerful obedience.

REJOICE OVER SMALL CHANGES

When Elijah prophesied that God was sending rain, he became extremely excited when the report came that one little cloud was in the sky the size of a man’s hand. He took that speck of a cloud in the whole expanse of the sky as evidence that God was going to do what He said He was going to do.

You may not have a full manifestation of victory in your life yet, but if you can see even just a little bit of evidence that God is working in your life, if all you can find is just one little cloud in the sky the size of your hand, then rejoice. If you have any spark of hope in you, any evidence at all that God is working in your life, in your marriage, in you, in your mate, in your financial structure, or in your children, then I beseech you in the name of Jesus, don’t run away from the difficult times!

Stay steadfast and pay the price of endurance because those ashes are going to be turned into beauty. You and your loved ones will be that tree of righteousness, the planting of the Lord, and your lives will give glory to God.

God will anoint you to help other people. Jesus died on the cross so that you could have the anointing of His Holy Spirit through grace. That means you don’t even have to deserve the anointing. God just loves you and the people He wants to reach through you so much that He will give you supernatural wisdom and ability to do the right thing that will bring them back to health. The only price you must pay is your willingness to die to your flesh, die to your own selfish focus, and look to see what God wants to do in the lives of others.

Dave had to be patient with me until I got enough of the Word in me, enough of God’s grace on me, and enough of the Holy Ghost to be willing to die to the selfish ambitions of Joyce Meyer. God’s truth and grace brought me to the place that made me willing to die to that old way of responding to situations and to begin to do things in a brand new way.

RESTORATION IS NEAR

Isaiah 61, verse 4 says, (referring to those who we’ve been talking about in the first three verses, whose lives have been healed with the anointing):

And they shall rebuild the ancient ruins; they shall raise up the former desolations and renew the ruined cities, the devastations of many generations.

When entering a marriage relationship, many individuals bring the devastations of previous generations with them. It is not just a little personality problem or an incompatibility problem; we war not against flesh and blood, for there are generational curses that come into the relationship that have been passed to them from generation, to generation, to generation. Psalm 23:3 (
NKJV
) says,
He restores my soul
. … Verses 1,2 state:
The L
ORD
is my shepherd; I shall not want. … He leads me beside the still waters. He restores my soul.

My soul needed to be restored after Dave and I were married. I needed to learn how to think differently I needed to learn self-control over those negative emotions that had been passed to me from previous generations.

I needed a work to be done in my will. I was stubborn and rebellious, and God had to work with me until I could trust being submissive first to Him and then to my husband. It is easier to trust God than it is people, but God wants us to trust Him concerning our relationships with other people. That is why we are to love our spouses as unto the Lord.