Month: September 2020

‘For I know the plans I have for you,” says the Lord . “They are plans for good and not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope. ‘ Jeremiah 29:11(NLT)

‘Then make me truly happy by agreeing wholeheartedly with each other, loving one another, and working together with one mind and purpose. Don’t be selfish; don’t try to impress others. Be humble, thinking of others as better than yourselves. Don’t look out only for your own interests, but take an interest in others, too.’ Philippians 2:2-4(NLT)

‘And whatever you do or say, do it as a representative of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks through him to God the Father.’ Colossians 3:17(NLT)

Expectations. We all have them. And because we have them, we all typically experience disappointment. Because what we expect doesn’t always line up with reality. 

What has it been for you? Did you have lofty dreams of how your marriage would be? We fall into this expectation trap in our relationships all the time. We expect someone to do something for us at a specific time or in a specific setting. Sometimes we expect them to do it because they said they would. Other times we place expectations on them because they play a certain role in our lives and, well, they should just know. The problem is, we didn’t tell them.

I have found four transformative ways to help us go from disappointment to encouragement in our marriages when it comes to expectations:

Let your spouse off the hook. You have placed expectations on your spouse that he or she will never be able to meet. You are expecting them to meet your every need and desire. This is completely unrealistic. Flip the scenario. Would you like for your spouse to expect perfection from you? I didn’t think so.

When you do have realistic expectations, tell your spouse. Don’t expect him or her to read your mind. Just talk to your spouse about what you expect and what you need. And allow him or her to tell you how realistic or unrealistic that is. 

Surrender your expectations for your life, your marriage, your family and your future to God. We expect and desire good things in our lives. There is nothing wrong with that. But we hold on to those ideals, often with white knuckles, and we don’t want to let them go. Though all along, God is saying, “Trust me with your dreams. I have something so much better than what you are holding on to.” God has our best interests in mind. Doesn’t it make sense to turn over our dreams to him?

Become a student of your spouse. Study them. Get to know them better than you think you do. Learn how they think. And learn what their needs are and how they feel loved.

Expectations in and of themselves are not bad. But we do have to manage them, be realistic about them and surrender them to God. 

Food for thought: Think about a time recently when your spouse disappointed you. What happened? Was your expectation realistic? 

from Rebuilding A Marriage Better Than New by Cindy Beall

‘Trust in the Lord with all your heart; do not depend on your own understanding. Seek his will in all you do, and he will show you which path to take.’ Proverbs 3:5-6(NLT)

‘O my people, trust in him at all times. Pour out your heart to him, for God is our refuge. Interlude’ Psalms 62:8(NLT)

‘“But blessed are those who trust in the Lord and have made the Lord their hope and confidence. They are like trees planted along a riverbank, with roots that reach deep into the water. Such trees are not bothered by the heat or worried by long months of drought. Their leaves stay green, and they never stop producing fruit. “The human heart is the most deceitful of all things, and desperately wicked. Who really knows how bad it is?’ Jeremiah 17:7-9(NLT)

I love that God gives us earthly relationships to bring us joy, comfort and companionship. I could not be more thankful for this. Yet sometimes relationships don’t go as planned. Trust is often broken, and when we lose trust in someone, it rocks us. We literally feel like we’ve lost our footing and have no idea where the next step is. Especially when it’s someone close to us.

We will all break someone’s trust at some point. Whether it is a “little white lie,” or a betrayal like infidelity, trust can be restored. Here are three helpful ways to help in restoring trust:

Embrace mutual brokenness. The defensiveness that comes from pointing the finger has more to do with the person pointing than with the person being pointed at. It illustrates the pointer’s unwillingness to address his or her own issues. When we embrace mutual brokenness, we embrace this truth: we all need God’s grace. Acceptance of our mutual brokenness means we are profoundly aware of our own depravity.

Remain patient in healing. Healing does not happen overnight, so the path to rebuilding trust requires a willingness to wait and endure the discomfort of moving forward without guarantees. My husband says that if someone, who has broken the trust of their spouse through betrayal, isn’t willing to spend the rest of their days earning trust back without defensiveness, then they lack perspective of what they deserve in light of the opportunity they have been given. 

Walk in the Holy Spirit. Walking in the Holy Spirit, instead of our own power, is the only way lasting healing will emerge. We walk in the Holy Spirit by strengthening it. How do we do this? We feed it. When we feed the spirit, the flesh will starve. If we nurture our spirit within, we will have an awareness of God’s leading. Before we make choices in life, we must ask, “Is this going to propel me closer to God or further away from Him?”

While God wants us to be trustworthy people and have people in our lives whom we can trust, only God can be absolutely trusted. He will never fail us, leave us or forsake us. He comforts completely and guides perfectly. Trust Him.

Food for thought: Is it difficult or easy for you to trust God? Why? Do you find it easier to place your trust in a person? Why?

from Rebuilding A Marriage Better Than New by Cindy Beall

‘There are six things the Lord hates— no, seven things he detests: haughty eyes, a lying tongue, hands that kill the innocent, a heart that plots evil, feet that race to do wrong, a false witness who pours out lies, a person who sows discord in a family.’ Proverbs 6:16-19(NLT)

‘Dear children, let’s not merely say that we love each other; let us show the truth by our actions. ‘ 1 John 3:18(NLT)

‘He has removed our sins as far from us as the east is from the west.’ Psalms 103:12(NLT)

Marriages need honesty. Gut-level, all-out-on-the-table honesty. Outwardly, we have this black and white hatred for deception, but if we do an autopsy on ourselves, an entire layer of acceptable deception is revealed at the same time. Typically, most people have an entire list of lies that they don’t consider wrong and then a separate list of deceptions that are absolutely wrong. We tell half-truths and exaggerate until our story makes us look the hero. But the truth is, there is no difference in any of these. A lie is a lie. No matter how white or little it is.
 
God is pretty clear in Scripture concerning how He feels about lying. In the passage in Proverbs it says there are seven things that are detestable to Him. Out of those seven things that God detests, two of them have to do with lying. That’s 29 percent! We better pay close attention to what we say and make sure it is honest.
 
God’s love for us never fails. We are His people. He wants more for us than humans can even imagine. But that doesn’t mean that we can just cheapen grace by lying, fully knowing that God will forgive us. He most certainly will forgive us. But we must still choose to be a people of truth. If we are not careful, one simple lie can turn into another. And another. And another. Before we are even aware of the web we’ve spun, we are living a deceitful life and can’t tell what is actual and what is fabricated.
 
When you choose to turn over a new leaf by living a life of honesty, God will send His gentle conviction to fall on you. Guilt is not of God. It’s directly from Satan, and it virtually paralyzes you. Conviction, on the other hand, is from the Holy Spirit, and it motivates you to make a change.
 
God’s ways are perfect. Just as He is truth and speaks truth, He wants you to be a person of truth as well. And He will stop at nothing to help you succeed in building a strong character so that your marriage can withstand the struggles that come your way. Don’t give up.
 
Food for thought: Think about a lie you have told. Why did you tell it? Play the scene out in your mind had you chosen to speak the truth in love.

from Rebuilding A Marriage Better Than New by Cindy Beall

‘And the one sitting on the throne said, “Look, I am making everything new!” And then he said to me, “Write this down, for what I tell you is trustworthy and true.” ‘ Revelation 21:5(NLT)

‘I pray that God, the source of hope, will fill you completely with joy and peace because you trust in him. Then you will overflow with confident hope through the power of the Holy Spirit.’ Romans 15:13(NLT)

‘Why am I discouraged? Why is my heart so sad? I will put my hope in God! I will praise him again— my Savior and my God!’ Psalms 43:5(NLT)

If God showed us a timeline of all the occurrences that would happen in our lives, we would most assuredly start hyperventilating and bargaining with Him to reroute the path ahead of us. In no way, shape or form would we ever think we could survive such difficult circumstances. Death of a loved one, infidelity by a spouse, the loss of every material possession we own. It’s more than our finite minds can even begin to fathom. And because of that, He doesn’t show us. Instead, He gives us the grace we need to get through things as they come. 

Ever been here? To the place of life-altering change within a matter of hours or minutes? You’re going about your day, doing your daily routine, clearly expecting to find what you normally find on that day, and then BAM! Nothing is the same and everything is different.

Whether your marriage has endured betrayal that left you wishing for death or you’ve just managed to become roommates in a stale, marital environment, I pray you find hope for the next six days of this plan. But you have to make the effort. You can’t want your way into a healthy action. 

You have to commit to doing it. You have to step through the pain and difficulty, through the sacrifice and discomfort that will be present on this journey. My pastor, Craig Groeschel, says, “It’s often the things that no one sees that result in the things that everyone wants.” It is a daily choice to do the things that need to be done to have what we want to have.

Hope seems to be in short supply these days. Maybe that’s because we are looking to the wrong sources to find it. It is not found in a possession or a human being. It is found in the One True God. The Creator of the Universe. Our Abba. Let’s seek Him like never before in our happy days and in our brutally difficult days. For He is always near and will never, ever, ever forsake us.

Food for thought: Where is your marriage today? Would you rank it high, low or somewhere in the middle? Discuss this with your spouse and name one thing that you will commit to doing to begin to see change.

from Rebuilding A Marriage Better Than New by Cindy Beall