Making Marriage Work (37 page)

In practice this means that when you are both out with other people that you haven’t seen for a while, don’t spend the whole night talking to everyone else without paying any attention to your spouse, even if you simply go over and squeeze his hand every once in a while. It means that when he comes home and sits in front of the television, you should go and sit with him, if even for a few minutes, and embrace him to let him know that you notice him and prefer him over the duties of family life.

The number one roadblock to a triumphant marriage that is gaining ground as years progress is a lack of real commitment. Be committed to your partner. Discover each other’s needs, and find out how to meet those needs.

I believe that there are things in people’s hearts that need to be expressed and if we want to gain ground, we must learn to listen without taking personal offense. I still ask Dave to tell me if there is anything that I am doing that he doesn’t want me to do. I still have to practice accepting his honesty without offense.

One time he told me, “I really don’t like it when I apologize to you and then you give me a speech about what I should have done and how it made you feel. When I initiate an apology to you, all I want you to say is, ‘Thank you; I appreciate it; you’re forgiven.’”

When he shared that with me, I felt the pain of that in my soul because not one of us wants to be told that we’re doing anything wrong. But bottom line, I was hurting him. When he had already realized he should be sorry, he apologized. And instead of forgiving him, I lectured him all over on how horrible he was to hurt me in the first place. We have to get beyond those fleshly feelings. We need a heart commitment to the task of pleasing our mate.

You care about your marriage or you wouldn’t have read this far. I pray and agree that you will let God direct change in the way you treat each other. Even good marriages can be enhanced with respect and honor towards each other’s feelings. Commitment means you will say what you are going to do, then you will do what you said. A promise was made to your spouse when you said the marriage vows. It is easy to repeat those words without paying any attention to what was said. At our wedding, I promised to love, honor, and obey Dave, and I didn’t even understand the meaning of those words.

Commitment means you will say what you are going to do, then you will do what you said. A promise was made to your spouse in your marriage vows.

What did you promise at your wedding? I believe that you said something like, “I promise to love you forever, when things are good and when things are bad.” I don’t believe anyone has ever said on that day, “I will love you until things don’t seem to be working out, then I’m heading out of here.” No, I believe that you probably said, “Till death do us part.” Marriage is total commitment.

19

THE PRICE OF PEACE

But the wisdom that comes from heaven is first of all pure; then peace-loving, considerate, submissive, full of mercy and good fruit, impartial and sincere. Peacemakers who sow in peace raise a harvest of righteousness.

James 3:17,18
NIV

I used to be very unstable emotionally. I would wake up one morning and be all excited because of something I was going to do that day. The next morning I would wake up in the depths of depression because I had nothing to look forward to. My emotions would go up and down from day to day, hour to hour, or even minute to minute depending on my changing mood.

My husband might come home one day, and I would run to him, throw my arms around him, and kiss and hug him. The next day he might walk in, and I would be ready to throw something at him. Most of the time my reaction had nothing to do with anything he had done or failed to do. It was all determined by my own emotional state.

Even if you have never been as abused or as mentally and emotionally unstable as I was, all of us have need of continual restoration in order to maintain proper balance and stability in our lives. Whatever your past experiences or present circumstances are, submit your mind, will, and emotions to the Lord. I have written about it to a great extent in my book titled,
Managing Your Emotions
. But I want to remind you that peace is the fruit of a righteous relationship with God. When we have peace with God, we will have peace with each other.

The price we must pay to have peace is so small, and yet its benefits are eternally immense. We simply receive peace from Jesus, through the power of the Holy Spirit, and agree to forgive people for their offenses against us. John 20:21-23 (
NIV
) confirms,

The price we must pay to have peace is so small, and yet its benefits are eternally immense.

Again Jesus said, “Peace be with you! As the Father has sent me, I am sending you.”

And with that he breathed on them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit.

“If you forgive anyone his sins, they are forgiven; if you do not forgive them, they are not forgiven.”

Jesus gives us the power to have peace by breathing His own Life, the Holy Spirit, into us. But if we don’t forgive others, the grief of the sin against us will remain with us forever. Our price is small, but the price Jesus paid for us to have the gift of the Holy Spirit is incomprehensible.

JESUS LAID DOWN HIS LIFE FOR US

When Judas betrayed Jesus, He had insight to know what Judas was doing but He just stood there and let him continue with his greeting, his embrace, and his kiss. Then in Matthew 26:50,
Jesus said to him, Friend
. … (You ought to circle the word friend in your Bible.) Knowing that Judas was betraying Him, He still called him,
Friend, for what are you here? Then they came up and laid hands on Jesus and arrested Him.

Peter, ready to defend Jesus drew his sword, struck the servant of the high priest, and cut off his ear. Whack! Old lion-like Peter was full of fleshly zeal. He whipped out that sword and chopped off his ear. You know what Peter was thinking? Bless God, we don’t have to put up with this! Whack! You’re messing with God’s anointed!

But Jesus said,
“No more of this!” And he touched the man’s ear and healed him
(Luke 22:51
NIV
). Then Jesus told Peter to put his sword back into its place for all who draw the sword will die by the sword. (Matthew 26:52.) I have more understanding on this today than I’ve ever had before. Peter’s use of the sword represented an abrasive way of life. More than just being a sword that he pulled out of his sheath, it represented a manner of behavior.

Peter was always talking when he didn’t need to be talking, doing things when he didn’t need to be doing them. Peter needed to learn how to wait on God, and he needed to learn humility and meekness. God wanted to use Peter in a mighty way, but if Peter wanted to preach the Good News of the Gospel, he couldn’t do it by taking his sword out and chopping off ears when he felt angry.

Our abrasive words can cut off hearing, just as Peter’s sword cut off the servant’s ear. We just can’t come against people whenever we feel like justice is needed. We must be submissive to God, and if He says, “Say nothing,” we are to stand there and just let them think they are right even though we know they’re not. We have to say, “Yes, Lord,” and accept that He doesn’t even owe us an explanation.

Jesus asks us to trust Him because He loves us. There was no greater way for Him to prove His love than the fact He laid down His life to pay the price for the sin that separated us from the blessings of God. Jesus was willing to be our scapegoat; He was the One Who bore the blame for all of us. None of us would have our names written in the Lamb’s Book of Life if Jesus hadn’t been submissive or if He had opened His mouth when He shouldn’t have.

How many times do we prevent somebody’s salvation because we can’t control what we say? How many times do we prevent somebody’s spiritual growth or how many times do we prevent the blessings of God from coming on our own life because we don’t have that control of the words that come out of our mouth?

When Jesus took our sins, He carried them off into a land of forgetfulness so we could enjoy the freedom of a relationship with God and release the fruit of His Spirit that dwells in us. People who don’t know God misunderstand meekness as weakness. But when God said the meek will inherit the earth, he was talking about the patient, long-suffering believers. It takes great strength to patiently endure injury without resentment.

Meekness is not weakness — it is strength under control.

I so badly wanted to learn the meaning of meekness that I read its definition in my
Vine’s Dictionary
so often that the page finally fell out of the book. For a long time I carried the folded-up page in my wallet, and I reread it whenever I thought to do so. One definition says that meekness is not weakness — it is strength under control. First of all it says that meekness “is an inwrought grace of the soul.”
¹
Now “inwrought” means it has to be worked in us.
²
In other words, it doesn’t just suddenly happen; it has to be worked in you. “It is that temper of spirit in which we accept His dealings with us as good.”
³

God revealed to me that I do not have the authority to retaliate to anyone unless He authorizes me to do so. Instead, we are to trust God to take care of the situation. God will retaliate for us. He promises, “I will pay them back. I will balance out the scales of justice.” So often we miss miracles in our lives that we could get because we get involved with solving an issue when we should wait and trust God.

Jesus was meek. In the Garden of Gethsemane, He had the strength and the power to call twelve legions of angels, but He didn’t confront anyone because the Father didn’t give Him permission to do so. Sometimes, God asks us to simply be a scapegoat for someone else, instead of confronting them with justice.

WHO’S BEEN TAKING YOUR BLAME LATELY?

A few years ago, Dave was behaving in a way that I knew was wrong, and I could not get him to admit that he was wrong. To make it worse, he was blaming his actions on me. Now isn’t it hard when somebody else is doing something wrong who won’t admit it, and they even lay the guilt of it on you? I was upset about it for several days, during which time I entertained some heavy groaning about the situation.

“God,” I complained, “This is not right; it’s just not fair.” That’s when God led me to the teaching in Leviticus 16 about the scapegoat. He showed me how Aaron put his hands on the goat and confessed all the sins and iniquities of Israel before sacrificing it on God’s altar. The innocent “scapegoat” was a picture of what Jesus did for us as the Lamb of God.

I was complaining about Dave during the season of time that I was also studying this illustration, when God spoke to me in answer to my complaints. He said, “Joyce, for years Dave was your scapegoat.” When Dave and I first married, my problems were impenetrable, but Dave was called and anointed by God to marry me. God knew the call on my life was going to take someone who was strong in the Lord and who was able to stand with me and be my scapegoat to show me the
agape
love of God. I did not know what love was — I had only seen selfish, self-seeking greed — until Dave loved me with the unconditional, accepting love of God.

I had always talked myself through conflicts, trying to manipulate others the way others had tried to control me. I would get mad and stay mad for long periods of time. I had a bad temper and I would sink into deep self-pity. Dave would try to have fun and I would get mad, but he never came against me. He was a lover of peace, and he just put up with my moods and never confronted me. Many times I blamed him, and he trusted God to reveal truth to me.

Sometimes I didn’t respect him for it and thought, Why don’t you just tell me to shut up? But God was using him to demonstrate His own patience and agape love. Then after several years of letting me rant and rave, as I mentioned previously, all of a sudden, Dave started confronting me. I violently disliked his new challenge. I had gotten by with my way for a long, long time, and now God had put somebody in my path to confront me. Even though the spiritual part of me wanted it, my flesh was having a fit.

All of a sudden, Dave started taking over various responsibilities that I had willingly controlled. I ran my present ministry all by myself for a long, long time before Dave quit his job and came on board. He took over the finances, and I didn’t know how much money we had half the time, and I never saw my paychecks because he took them straight to the bank. He made decisions about where I would speak and where I wouldn’t speak and what engagements I would take and which ones I wouldn’t take and so on and so forth.

I felt I had been emptied of all control, and he started to confront me by saying, “I’m not putting up with that anymore.” I would think, Why not? You have as long as we’ve been married! I did get to choose where I wanted to go to eat, but all of a sudden, he started saying, “No, I don’t want to go there. I want to go here.” I would just get in another fit over not getting to go where I wanted to eat.

I was a terrible mess, far from understanding what meekness or humility was, but greatly needing those qualities in my life in order to follow through with the next level of ministry that God was calling us to step into. One day Dave told me, “Joyce, I don’t have any choice. God is telling me that I have to confront you.”

He even bought a book by David W. Augsburger called
Caring Enough to Confront
⁴
and read it. I was nervous when he bought it, but it was even worse knowing that he was reading it! Just as I feared, he began to use his newly learned confrontational skills on me.

We had been having a good conversation one night, when he began, “Joyce, I believe that the Lord has shown me that because of the wounded position you were in when I married you, if I had confronted you sooner, you would have left me.”

It’s true, I probably would have, not because I didn’t love him, not because I would have wanted to leave him, but because of the way I was mistreated as a child; I wouldn’t have known any other way to react except to run. I had so much rebellion in my flesh that I had to be left alone for God to work with me for a long period of time.