Winning Him Without Words: 10 Keys to Thriving in Your Spiritually Mismatched Marriage (13 page)

The area of words is where we need Christ the most. We need to practice, practice and practice managing the words we speak. Shouldn’t the words we speak to our husbands be like the words we would speak to Christ, as we are His Bride? We need to voice words of encouragement. Words of support. Words of faithfulness, loyalty, friendship and honor.

A friend of mine who is living in her third decade of a spiritually mismatched marriage shared a simple sentence with me that caused me to change my words, and I will never forget it:

The words of his queen make him a king. It’s the building-up words spoken by a wife that make her husband a better man. I don’t ever want my hubby to be built up by other women in the world—I want it to be from me.

Such wise advice.

Let’s determine to let our words bring healing and let James 1:19 become our theme: “Be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry.” Then watch your husband respond.

My husband and I still argue from time to time. After all, we are human and our self-centered natures rise up and get in the way. However, today my husband and I will often agree to disagree. I am okay with this, because I turn it over to Jesus, and I know His truth will prevail. I just keep praying that one day my man will see from heaven’s view.

Speaking words of grace to our man is God’s will for us as wives. Likewise, the words we speak to ourselves are monumentally important.

I was standing in the shower one morning and out of nowhere, I began verbally beating myself up with condemning self-talk. While shampooing my hair, thoughts of my distant past came rushing forward. The ugliness and pain I had caused others in the dark years of my prodigal detour hit me like a ton of bricks: “How could
you do
such a thing? You deserve to die for the pain
you caused
your family.
You
are a really bad person.”

I could feel my spirit immediately sink into a familiar ditch. I slunk from the shower, dressed and stood at the mirror to
brush my hair. As I worked at the snarls, it was as if the Holy Spirit arrived to smack me upside the head and say, “Don’t you remember you were forgiven of these crimes long ago?”

I knew in that instant the enemy was up to his age-old tricks, speaking accusations meant to defeat my day and drag me away from the truth I have in Christ. What does God’s Word say about our sins? They are as far away “as the east is from the west” (Ps. 103:12). That applies to me and to you. Period. The end.

When I hear the word “you” followed by an old and forgiven accusation, that’s precisely when I take my thoughts captive to Christ and firmly reject the lies of the enemy. I am a new creation. I speak aloud the truth of this Scripture:

Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come! (2 Cor. 5:17).

As women, we can beat ourselves up with ugly self-talk. The harshest of words we often save to use upon ourselves. I am convinced that our negative self-talk is born out of our limited understanding and experience of God’s perfect love. Perhaps when we were children our parents withheld love, or love was only given when we met certain conditions or expectations. Maybe someone we expected to always love us never did or rejected us. Perhaps right now we’re not sure our husband loves us, or we have never felt as loved by our spouse as we expected to when we married. Possibly the very person who promised to love and protect us has betrayed us. Our experiences of love from human beings, who are imperfect and broken, taint the honest and pure love of Jesus Christ.

We cannot equate God’s love for us by how we have been loved by others. God loves us with a vast, unending, protective affection. Read the following Scriptures out loud and ask the Lord to make them real, relevant and powerful in your heart:

The L
ORD
himself goes before you and will be with you; he will never leave you nor forsake you. Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged (Deut. 31:8).

The king is enthralled by your beauty; honor him, for he is your lord (Ps. 45:11).

You have ravished my heart and given me courage, my sister, my [promised] bride; you have ravished my heart and given me courage with one look from your eyes, with one jewel of your necklace (Song of Sol. 4:9,
AMP
).

I [the Lord] have loved you with an everlasting love; I have drawn you with loving-kindness (Jer. 31:3).

And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God (Eph. 3:17-19).

Jesus loves us to distraction. He will relentlessly pursue a love relationship with us forever. When we accept and live in the truth of the boundless love of Jesus, we become free to love others with authenticity.

Out of our hearts our words flow.

You have the opportunity to bring about a practical change in your marriage relationship by choosing to change the words you use. Your spoken words can greatly impact your marriage,
your children and the world around you. Take a minute to pray and ask the Lord about the words you speak. Would God approve of all of your words? Ask the Lord to help you make a real and lasting change in this area of your life.

1. What are several flash points that bring conflict in your marriage?

2. What would be a different approach to resolve conflict that would work for you in the future? Write out the words you will choose to use in the future to resolve conflict.

3. What was one time when you found yourself defending Christ to your unsaved husband? What was the result? Was this a stand-up or a shut-up moment? What would you do differently now?

4. What phrases can you choose to say to bless your spouse and children? Make a list of these words, and then make it a point this week to say them to your family.

5. What specifically can you do to be the peacemaker in your home?

6. Our God loves us so much that He will never leave us unchanged. What does this statement mean to you?

Select three of the Scripture verses from this chapter about the words we speak. Write them down on a small index card and carry them in your purse. Read them repeatedly. Once you
memorize them, you will be astounded at how they will come to you in a time of conflict. You will discover how your responses change in the months ahead.

Father, today I surrender my husband wholly to You. I am relinquishing my desire to save my husband, and I ask You to take Your rightful place in seeking and saving him for eternity. Lord, show me the areas of conflict I need to stand upon as well as issues I can surrender and trust You to handle. You tell us in Your Word that if we need wisdom, we should ask You for it and You will be generous in giving it to us [see Jas. 1:5]. Lord, place in my mind Your wisdom that I may be the peacemaker and the one to help resolve conflict with my spouse. Jesus, our words have the power of life and death, of cutting and healing. From this day forward, place a new awareness in my heart to be mindful of the words I speak to others. Place Your words in my conscious and unconscious mind so that only words that are good and pleasing come from my lips. Lord, “may the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be pleasing in Your sight” [Ps. 19:14]. In the powerful name of Jesus, amen
.

Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort
.

2 CORINTHIANS 1:3

A few years ago, my husband gave me a gift. Over the years, I have received many types of gifts from my man; however, this gift is the best one of all. He gave me a garden.

A garden is an unlikely present for a man to give a woman and even more peculiar when you consider that 10 years ago, if you had known me, you would have laughed yourself silly to think that Lynn Donovan would do anything domestic, let alone cultivate soil, risking dirt accumulating under her nails. It’s true.

However, God in His amazing wisdom knew my soul craved more than working behind a desk, so He turned my world upside down, revealing something better. Isn’t that just like Him? I left the corporate world of banking, and we moved out of state to a greener climate, leaving the desert behind. We settled into our new home and acclimated to our new surroundings. I discovered I enjoyed domestic life.

Several years passed before we decided to tear out our small backyard patch of grass and put in an area for a flower
garden and boxes for vegetables. We hired Joe the Contractor, and within a couple of weeks he had recreated the yard to include roses, fruit trees, a birdbath, flowers and a perfect place to grow veggies. Every morning, weather permitting, I step out into the garden, sit down near the fire pit and sip hot coffee. There I talk with Jesus. I read my Bible, smell the flowers, and see the face of God in the beauty that surrounds me.

During the summer months, I walk through the garden, inspecting the rows of pepper plants and giant zucchini leaves, looking for any hints of new growth. I scour the tomato bushes on a seek-and-destroy mission, closely searching for those dreaded tomato hornworms. They give me the heebie-jeebies. Why God created them, I will never understand.

I pull the weeds and in July, I cook and preserve salsa like there is no tomorrow. Finally, in the fall, I pick the orange pumpkins to use in my fall decorating. The changes in my garden throughout the growing season are a delight to behold and a joy to my heart.

My garden is also a marker of sorts, a statement about the current season of my life. This season arrived after working through the planting process, pruning and weeding, and spreading the necessary but stinky fertilizer so that growth and, finally, veggies (or, better said, maturity) could occur. My garden is a reflection of my marriage journey.

Dineen and I often talk about the various seasons we have navigated through in marriage. It’s interesting that each of us living in a spiritually mismatched marriage shares a commonality as we travel toward heaven. These seasons of the unequally yoked have unique characteristics and nuances.

Our early season begins long before our wedding day. As little girls, we play out our future in our imagination. We romanticize ourselves as the beauty, Cinderella, living happily ever after; and we know, without a doubt, that our Prince
Charming is out there, waiting to sweep us off our feet.

We marry and, indeed, life in the early years feels like Happily Ever After. In our haste to be pleasing to our groom, we are selfless and find it easy to let go of our personal preferences. As the months pass, however, we leave the loftiness of the honeymoon, reality settles in, our feelings are hurt, and our needs go unnoticed.

Surely if we just tell our prince what we need, he will be more than happy to oblige and fulfill our every longing.

“Sweetheart, let’s go to church this Sunday. I sure have missed it.”

“Church? You’re kidding, right? You haven’t gone to church since I met you.”

This example may not be exactly how you first ventured into the spiritually mismatched camp, but it was likely something similar.

The early season of mismatchdom is filled with confusion and hurt compounded by a spiritual disconnect. We are either returning to our faith or have just become believers in Christ. Our spiritual muscle is tiny, and we flounder in this pool, some of us for a very long time. The pressure on our marriage escalates as children begin to arrive, and we struggle to manage the demands on our time and energy.

Slowly we move into the next season of our life. We grow in our faith, and the disconnect with our spouse intensifies. The more we learn about Jesus, the more we want to share Him with our husband. This season is a time of loneliness, more confusion, and struggling to understand the truth about our marriage. Grappling with the implications of this period is intense. We react and apply pressure on our spouse, fearing what may result if we arrive at an impasse.

We compound our fears with worry, as this is also the season in which our children are forming their faith. We spend
hours agonizing over their spiritual upbringing. Add to this already tense situation the increasing pressure of managing a career, soccer games, ballet and every other activity imaginable. This season of marriage is where some of us can barely keep our heads above water. The enemy waits for this time in a marriage relationship so that he can work every opportunity to destroy what God will bless. This is the season where we discover the power of Christ in our midst. We wouldn’t survive this season without Jesus.

Pushing past the loneliness, we discover our Prince, Jesus Christ, was always with us every step of the way. We grow in maturity through transformation cultivated through God’s pruning and reshaping of us. The fruit from the years of reading God’s Word and praying is beginning to reveal its power in our life, our kids and even our spouse. This season is worth the wait, worth the struggle, worth the day-by-day effort. That’s a promise. But getting to the Promised Land means we must travel the road of forgiveness.

And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, with whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. Get rid of all bitterness, rage and anger, brawling and slander, along with every form of malice. Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you
.

EPHESIANS 4:30-32

In the early years of my marriage, my husband held an atheistic worldview. He was convinced the Bible was a flawed book and irrelevant to our civilized culture today. I can’t begin to count the number of verbal engagements in our home over this particular subject. Our disagreement over my beliefs regarding God’s Word
would flare up and sharp words would be exchanged. For me, these arguments brought with them a lot of pain.

The hurt I felt during this season of my life was real and could level me for several days. I literally felt pain in my chest, wounded by words spoken against Jesus, words spoken by my husband, my best friend on earth.