Marraige Advice

A group of guys at church have been working at being more intentional with our marriages. One of the lessons we have learned early on is that the point of being intentional in our marriages isn't to change our spouses hearts – it’s to change our hearts.

God wants to get you to a place where He can use you. So let me ask you a few questions about your relationship with God before we get into your relationship with your spouse.

• What kind of encouragement do you have from being united with Christ?
• In what ways do you experience comfort from his love?
• What does it mean to you to have fellowship with the Spirit?
• Do you ever feel compassion? How?
  

Our marriages depend on our relationship to God. If we truly believe that our relationship to God is a good thing in our lives, then we will strive to:

• be like-minded
• have the same love
• be one in spirit and purpose
• do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit
• in humility consider others better than yourselves
• look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others
  

Think about Christ Jesus himself. He was God, but He didn’t use that to His advantage! He made himself worth nothing – He even acted as a servant. He was a mere man and obeyed Father God even to the point of death. And what did the Father God do to Christ Jesus?

He exalted Him above all else! And one day every single person on this planet will bow their knees and confess that Jesus Christ is Lord!

So imagine what Father God will do for your marriage when you stop trying to change your spouse, but instead – by faith – start to love your spouse. What would God do with someone who did nothing out of selfish ambition or vein conceit? How would God use the man or women who decided to consider others better than themselves?

Stop trying to change your spouse… change yourself. Stop talking bad about your spouse, build him or her up. Love God… and watch Him work!

“If you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, if any comfort from his love, if any fellowship with the Spirit, if any tenderness and compassion, then make my joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and purpose. Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves. Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others.

Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus: Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death— even death on a cross!

Therefore God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”
Phil 2:1-11