Making Marriage Work (40 page)

I believe that God’s purpose of marriage is enjoyment. God wants you to enjoy each other the way He wants you to enjoy Him.

I believe that God’s purpose of marriage is enjoyment. God wants you to enjoy each other the way He wants you to enjoy Him.

Satan works so hard to destroy marriages by bringing strife into the relationship. He must know something that we don’t know. The devil is threatened by the power of a loving marriage relationship where two people are in unity and in harmony with each other. He knows love never fails, so his only hope is to destroy the love between two people.

What do we really think that means when it says, “one can put a thousand to flight, but two, ten thousand”? How many enemies do you think you’ve got out there trying to destroy you? You have strength when you are in agreement. Agreement is the key to answered prayers. Strength comes from agreement. The Bible says a house divided cannot stand. When we live in strife, we destroy our strength.

The Bible says if men mistreat their wives, God is not going to answer their prayers. So many people are not getting their prayers answered, and I believe disagreement in their home is one of the main reasons why.

THE BALANCE OF LOVE

We have so much balance now. Dave used to tell me that I was always running out ahead of God. And I said, “Yeah, and you’re ten miles behind Him.” But I am no longer running ahead of God, and Dave is no longer behind. God gave Dave a vision once of a wild team of white horses pulling a chariot with a driver who was trying to hold them back. The horses were in a frenzy and the guy in the chariot had the brake on so it was digging a rut in the road.

The Lord told Dave, “That’s you and Joyce. She’s the wild horses and you’re the guy in the chariot trying to hold her back. You’re trying to slow things down. And she’s trying to run ahead.”

And so God has brought us together and changed Dave’s heart. We cannot change our husband’s heart but God can. In Ezra 7:27 (
NIV
) we see how God changed the heart of the king to come in line with God’s plan.
Praise be to the L
ORD
, the God of our fathers, who has put it into the king’s heart to bring honor to the house of the L
ORD
in Jerusalem in this way
. The Lord told Dave, “I need you to work together so you can flow together.”

I have come to trust Dave. I know he loves me and he is not out to get me. He still can get cranky once in a while or make a decision that I don’t think is fair to me about money or something, but he will usually always rectify it if I don’t get angry and try to make a big deal out of it. I know I can trust God to either rectify the situation or give me the grace to let it drop.

After you are married to somebody for a long time, you learn how to work with them. If Dave feels strongly about something, and I see that our debate is starting to get heated, I just back off. Then if it’s something that is really important to me, I might try again a week later.

A lot of times he will feel differently about it, but if he still feels the same way then, I just realize I’ve got to let it go. If I ever come to Dave and say to him, “This is what God said to me,” he will always let me do what I want. But I never abuse that. I mean I never tell him that unless I really, really feel like God did tell me something.

I appreciate the freedom that Dave lets me have with God. I suppose it is because Dave knows he can trust God, too. Dave never tries to tell me what to do in the pulpit. He lets me run the meetings and never gets involved in that aspect of what I’m trying to do. He never tries to tell me how to hear from God. Now if I was doing something wrong, he would tell me, but there has only been a couple of times he has corrected me about anything. One time he said, “I don’t think you should say that, that way.”

We have a wonderful relationship now. But we know each other so well and we respect each other. I respect Dave’s authority and he respects the gift that God has put in me. He doesn’t intrude on what God has put in me and recognizes the authority God has anointed me to have on the platform.

When asked about how it feels to see me in the focal point of the ministry, he says that God has put me in that position, and he is at peace with the work of God in our lives. Of course if he wasn’t in agreement, this ministry would not flow in the anointing that is on it.

BUT WHAT ABOUT THE KIDS?

In the beginning of the book, we looked at the fact that God wants order and balance and love to flow between a husband and wife so that there will be godly offspring released into the earth. I am convinced that much of the rebellion that we see in teenagers today is caused because of strife between the parents.

The best parenting advice we can give to couples is to love each other and be openly affectionate in front of your children. If you fight all the time, it will affect your children. In the earlier years when Dave and I would get in a fight, they would get upset and go to their rooms and cry. There is no greater pain for a child to experience than the threat of their parents not loving each other. But it doesn’t work to pretend to love each other just for the sake of the children.

The person we are married to is the most important person in our life, besides the Lord Jesus Christ. Your spouse is more important to you than your children. Your children will grow up and get married and leave for their own life, and they leave the nest quickly. We had four children with us, and in a matter of twelve months’ time, two of them married, and another one became engaged.

If you pour all your life into your children, someday you may regret that you did. Your children should not come before your spouse. Take good care of your children, but don’t place them above God or your marriage. Be generous with your children while they are with you. Teach them the principles of giving by letting them see your offerings and assistance to people in the body of Christ, but be sure to let those principles operate toward them, too. God convicted me years ago to give to my children.

I know a man right now who refuses to be a Christian because his father gave all their money to the church and let his own children go barefoot, even in the winter. They bore the discomfort and embarrassment of going to school with no shoes on, and it created a bitterness in his heart that he has never gotten over.

If you tithe and give offerings according to the leading of the Lord, I believe you will always have enough to meet your family’s needs and more besides. But the Bible does teach in Proverbs to use wise thoughtfulness. Sometimes we can get a personal satisfaction out of giving to others and get so caught up in it that we forget our own family. In Isaiah 58 the Bible says not to forget the needs of your own flesh and blood.

When I first started learning the principles of giving, I was giving offerings, taking clothes out of my closet and things off my walls and giving them to people. I wanted to be involved in giving! One day, the Lord quickened my heart saying, “Your own kids are running around with holes in their shoes, and you’re busy giving everything you have to somebody else.” Sometimes we get so religious with a godly principle that we miss the heart of how it is supposed to work for the people we live with.

We give to strangers and bless people through the church, and it makes us feel good. If we do it to be well liked by the people who see us give, then we are being religious instead of godly. We need to give to our own spouses and children just because we love them, not for any other approval.

I always encourage men to be involved with the discipline of the children. The dad should establish the consequence of disobedience. No woman will ever discipline a child like a man could, and no child will ever fear a mother properly — and I’m talking about a right kind of fear — like they will for the father.

Mothers may have to help get the dads involved, since they are with the children more than he is. My son tried to talk me into stuff and argued and made deals with me to convince me. If that didn’t work, he would cry and play on my emotions. But not so with Dave. If Dave told him something, that was it because a man is anointed with authority in the home. He is supposed to walk in it with love, and the wife is supposed to submit to it with her support of it. When the children see their agreement, their security is established and they learn to submit, too.

When the children see their parents’ agreement, their security is established and they learn to submit.

Unconditional love needs to be balanced with encouragement for a child to do his best. The home should not be a place of pressure where your children feel the need to perform just to make you feel good. Encourage your children to do their best in school, but don’t ever compare them with another sibling or child you know.

It is pitiful what some people go through by the time they are grown. The most important thing we can teach our children is how to have healthy, loving relationships. They need to learn to get along with their siblings and treat people with the same respect they see their mom and dad treating each other.

If the relationships in your home need repair, God is in the healing business. There is a move of the Holy Spirit right now to bring healing to past hurts and direction for a fruitful future.

Build esteem in your children by loving each other first. To do this, you need to have time alone, away from them. Spend time together as a couple; go on dates. Maybe that sounds silly to you because you are married, but you need to be dating!

I can remember when Dave and I were first married, and we didn’t have much money. We might have $40 left over for a month, and that was if we didn’t have a flat tire, or some other surprise expense. Every once in a while, somebody would give Dave tickets to a show or a ball game or something so we could go out together. All day long I would get ready to go out with Dave. The process of the bubble bath, the perfume, the makeup, combing the hair, all built great anticipation for our time together.

A GOOD MARRIAGE HAPPENS ON PURPOSE

Good marriages are not an accident. If you want to have a great relationship with anyone, you have to deliberately work at it. It doesn’t matter if you are building a friendship with a neighbor, a relative, your child, your spouse, or God, you have to keep communication flowing to and from the one you love. This involvement causes love to keep growing between you. It is …
by understanding it
(a life, a home, a family)
is established [on a sound and good foundation]
(Proverbs 24:3).

Good marriages are not an accident. If you want to have a great relationship with anyone, you have to deliberately work at it.

Find out what your spouse would enjoy doing on a night out. Get a baby-sitter if you still have small children at home and spend the night out. The kids will do fine. They would rule you if you let them! But they are going to grow up and go their way and live happily ever after, while you two are going to be with each other for life! Do something now about making sure you have something you want to live for later on!

Go to dinner and perhaps occasionally stay in a nice hotel, even if it is close to home. Don’t let your life get boring! There are so many people who just are bored with their lives. Do something about boredom! Be creative! Pray and ask God for ideas. Everybody craves change, even when they are afraid of it.

Protect these outings between the two of you. Be sure they happen frequently enough to keep your outlook stirred with new scenery. Go out every one or two weeks and discover what it is like just to be alone in each other’s company. Hold hands, rub shoulders, hug and show respect to each other. Demonstrate to the world what God’s love looks like between two people.

THE WORD OF OUR TESTIMONY

Revelation 12:11 (
NIV
), speaking of believers in defense against the accuser, says,
They overcame him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony; they did not love their lives so much as to shrink from death.

To love someone is to die to self, but dying to self is the only way to gain the life God has planned for us. Dave and I share a testimony of God’s power to overcome the devil’s war against us. We have endless memories that we can talk about even when we are too old to enjoy traveling to new places. We understand that our days are short, packed with activity and events, but our retreat home to each other remains a highlight for each new day.

The Word of God changes people; it certainly changed me. Radical changes, for all areas of life, are in store for those who will put their hope in God. I honestly don’t know how people are living without Jesus; I can hardly comprehend getting through one day without the Lord lighting our path to the greatest of all eternal things — love.

In closing, I think the letter to you from Peter, as paraphrased in
The Living Bible
, best summarizes this testimony of hope that we have in God:

God paid a ransom to save you from the impossible road to heaven which your fathers tried to take, and the ransom he paid was not mere gold or silver, as you very well know. But he paid for you with the precious lifeblood of Christ, the sinless, spotless Lamb of God. God chose him for this purpose long before the world began, but only recently was he brought into public view, in these last days, as a blessing to you.

Because of this, your trust can be in God who raised Christ from the dead and gave him great glory. Now your faith and hope can rest in him alone. Now you can have real love for everyone because your souls have been cleansed from selfishness and hatred when you trusted Christ to save you; so see to it that you really do love each other warmly, with all your hearts.

For you have a new life. It was not passed on to you from your parents, for the life they gave you will fade away. This new one will last forever, for it comes from Christ, God’s ever-living Message to men.

Yes, our natural lives will fade as grass does when it becomes all brown and dry. All our greatness is like a flower that droops and falls, but the Word of the Lord will last forever. And his message is the Good News that was preached to you.