What is the single basic concept that will help every marriage?
Matthew 6:33 Seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness..." (Look it up)
We can try every method, every tool and every therapist or shrink but until Jesus in the highest prority of your life and in the center of your decsion making there is no real help or hope for your marriage.
To seek requires that His word, The Bible, be a part of your everyday life and that the principles therein become the basis of all your decisions..
Seeking requires that you listen to Him and respond with a heart of complete obedience. Proverbs 3:5,6
Seeking means that you die to being selfish and that His love flow through you and out to others. This especially means loving your spouse.
Do you want to know the secret? Repent once for salvation trusting Christ alone for forgiveness and a saving relationship. Repent many times for sanctification a process of staying on track with God and growing spiritually.
Seek first...FIRST, the Kingdom of God!

You have probably heard that song made famous by Tammy Wynette in May of 1968. I am sure that song and many other songs help pave the way to making divorce more acceptable in our culture.

I will close with the lyrics of that tragic country song so you can see just how terrible divorce is on children, the song paints a vivid picture as you read the lyrics.

People want God to bless their marriage but they start godless relationships. People ignore God's standards of purity, fidelity and try to build marriages and families on their own principles and ideas as if God has not already spoken on the matter. 

Even worse today people think they can have children, then divorce and the children will not be affected by the ripping apart of their home life. People make excuses and believe their own propaganda that children are better off in a single parent, weekend swap  than living with two unhappy adults.  The truth is that neither situation is right and it is incumbent on the adults to seek to make their marriage God honoring and then these other things would flow properly. God said it better in Matthew 6:33

Your ideas, or the crazy philosophy you have been soaking up from Oprah just need this one verse applied: Proverbs 3:5,6. Your understanding and Oprah's understanding are not better, are not wiser and are certainly not more relevant than God's.

If you are heading down the road to divorce, hit the brakes and call on the name of the Lord. You will just take your hurt and your problems right into the next relationship, again and again. Stop ruining your life with your own ideas. Look up those verses and ...

Be Biblical,
ATG

I leave you with the lyrics of a tragic country song:
Our little boy is four years old and quite a little man
So we spell out the words we don't want him to understand
Like T-O-Y or maybe S-U-R-P-R-I-S-E
But the words we're hiding from him now
Tears the heart right out of me.
Our D-I-V-O-R-C-E becomes final today
Me and little J-O-E will be goin' away
I love you both and it will be pure H-E double L for me
Oh, I wish that we could stop this D-I-V-O-R-C-E.
Watch him smile, he thinks it Christmas
Or his fifth birthday
And he thinks C-U-S-T-O-D-Y spells fun or play
I spell out all the hurtin' words
And turn my head when I speak
'Cause I can't spell away this hurt
That's drippin' down my cheek.
Our D-I-V-O-R-C-E becomes final today
Me and little J-O-E will be goin' away
I love you both and it will be pure H-E double L for me
Oh, I wish that we could stop this D-I-V-O-R-C-E.

Maybe you are feeling not so "in love" anymore, a very common occurrence but a bigger problem than you realize and here is why:
There is no Maddam Rue down at 34th and Vine, selling little bottles of Love Potion #9, that is not how it started and that won't be how its fixed. Forget what you have learned from a culture corrupted by sin and return to the word of God.

For the true believer, the born again, follower of Jesus Christ there is a much bigger problem if you are not "in love" with your spouse. If you are not in love with your spouse , chances are, you are not in love with your Savior. Whaaat?

Think about that for a minute. When you love Christ, you will be a person of forgiveness. In fact, when you love Jesus you will not only forgive people who wrong you, but you will also be compelled to love your enemies. Hopefully you have not made your spouse your enemy. It happens, spouses become enemies but that happens because the souses stop loving God, first.

Your first love should be Christ and with the love of Christ living in and through you, it becomes so much easier to love others especially the one you committed your life to in marriage.

Before you run down to 34th and Vine, have a little talk with Jesus first, I think you will find the problem with you loving your spouse probably began when you started drifting from a love for Christ.

A lot more to marriage than this, but this is a major start.

Be Biblical,
ATG
​

Until today I thought we understood that married couples have access to the smart phones of one another. I was shocked to learn that even among Christian couples that some spouses think they have a right to privacy regarding their communication devices. There is a word for that: DECEPTION!

Primarily, I mean the spouse is deceived into thinking he, or she, has some right to privacy and can lock their spouse out of their electronic life.

Secondarily, any spouse doing so is practicing a form of deception. Husbands and wives, Christian or not, please do not be deceived into making poor choices and do not practice deception with your spouse. (Also, children do not have a right to electronic privacy either.)

Please understand that when you said: "I do"; you forfeited the right to be your own person. The two of you became one person and you cannot be in the business of keeping secrets from yourself. There is not a single person walking on the planet today that you should be closer to, than your spouse. No one should know you better than your spouse.  When you said: "I do" to Jesus Christ, for salvation, you agreed to die to yourself; or have you forgotten? That means all forms of selfishness.

Revelation is key to relationships. God revealed Himself to us through Jesus Christ and through the Bible. We must also reveal ourselves to one another in order to have a real relationship with another person. The person you reveal the most to should be your spouse. If that is not the case for you today, fix it, while you can. You can make a change today and start improving your marriage.

If your spouse does not have access your smart phone, ipad, computer and other devices, that needs to change today. Don't give me some lame excuse, practice full disclosure. If there is something there you will be ashamed of, then you have a problem. 

1John 1:9 reads: "If we confess our sin, He is faithful to forgive our sin and forgive us from all unrighteousness". In short, repent, ask God for His forgiveness,  take action to rid yourself of the sinful problem and seek forgiveness from your spouse. Repentance always involves a plan of action to be different, not just asking for forgiveness.

Disagree? say it to me: andyg@crosschurch.com  Not a Christian and have questions? email me: andyg@crosschurch.com

Just trying to help you,

Be Biblical!
​ATG