Celebrating Oneness With Your Spouse
We’ve identified 11 actions you must decide to take in order to enjoy such celebration in your marriage. To help you remember these choices, we’ve made an acrostic of the first letter of each one – spelling C-E-L-E-B-R-A-T-I-N-G.
Clear Your Conscience
Obviously, you need to start by clearing your conscience before God, praying with the psalmist, "Search me, O God, and know my heart… see if there is any offensive way in me” (Ps. 139:23-24). Then you need to clear your conscience before others. This may mean humbly seeking someone’s forgiveness. And the "someone” on the top of your list should be your mate.
We have learned as a couple that to keep our consciences clear before each other, we need to pray together regularly. When we are sharing together honestly with God, we are - at the same time - sharing honestly with each other. The two go hand in hand. In our marriage, this is the way we have learned to keep short accounts with one another and with God.
If you keep your conscience clear before God and your mate and if you pray for and with each other, your marriage will be blessed with health. For when we share our failures with each other, we unmask them and defeat their power over us.
Encourage Spiritual Growth
The key word here is encourage. Another word for encourage is "spur” as in Hebrews 10:24: "And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds.” News flash: nagging, criticizing, hinting, pushing, advising, preaching and even heavy sighing are not what we’re talking about!
You might say the best way to spur your mate to grow is to duck. That’s right – duck! Get out of the way! All your efforts to make your mate grow can actually be a barrier between that person and God. You have to get out of the way so God can get a good shot at ‘em. So sometimes the best way to encourage is to shut your mouth, smile sweetly and pray like crazy.
Another way we’ve found to encourage spiritual growth in our relationship is to read God’s Word together regularly, taking God’s command seriously to “let the word of Christ dwell in you richly as you teach and admonish one another with all wisdom” (Col. 3:16).
Lower Your Defenses
Harv is rushing around, trying to leave for the office. His wife, Louse, remarks, “Your tie is crooked.” Harv responds sarcastically, “Do you have any more encouraging words for me today?” Louise shrugs, “I was only trying to help.” “Well, thanks! I don’t know how I ever made it before I married you,” Harv bellows as he storms out the door.
Does anything like this ever happen at your house? This is defensiveness – self-protection.
Self-protection obviously is centered around self. It will brutalize your marriage relationship unless you take action. You must choose a better way – God’s way. “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” (Phil. 2:4-5).
Here are some practical steps you can take to lower your defenses:
- Analyze your defensiveness. Ask yourself questions like, “What was I feeling when I
responded defensively? What did my reaction communicate?” “ Do particular words or scenarios trigger my reactions?” - Talk about your defensiveness. Choose a time when you and your mate can talk without
distractions. Really listen to each other. - Review and rehearse your defensiveness. Avoid statements that sound judgmental. As you
review what happened, stay away from “You should…” “You never …” Instead, use “I think …” “I feel …”
God made you a team. He wants to use you as a team. Priscilla and Aquila are a great example of a couple in Scripture who served God as a team. They were tentmakers in Corinth when Paul first met them. He was a guest in their home for a year and a half, then he took Priscilla and Aquila with him when he continued his missionary journey to Ephesus.
After the three of them arrived in Ephesus, Paul left them there to carry on the church-planting work. Can you imagine how they must have felt? They had been left alone in a foreign land, far from home, just the two of them. Priscilla and Aquila were ready for God to use them anytime, anywhere. They worked together in ministry, bringing people to the Lord and opening their home whenever needed.
This was indeed a couple God could count on. Can He count on you?
Bust Up Bitterness with Forgiveness
God says bitterness is like a root that takes hold and grows in our lives (Heb. 12:15). When weeds are ignored, they take over the whole garden. That’s what bitterness does – it takes over our minds and hearts.
Ephesians 4:31 - 5:2 makes it clear we have several choices to make in the process of busting up bitterness. We must choose to get rid of the bitterness and anger within us. Since God is the One we are to imitate in the way we forgive, we need to understand how He forgives us. God does not withhold forgiveness. On the contrary, He forgives completely, with no remembrance of our sin. He says He hurls all our iniquities into the depths of the sea (Mic. 7:19). He never brings them back up to hold over our heads.
Recreate Together
You’ve gotta earn a living. You’ve gotta take the kids to soccer. You’ve gotta mow the lawn. Life is so full of “you’ve gottas,” that you can push having fun together to the very end of your to-do lists, like it’s not as important as the serious stuff. Wrong! Sometimes it’s the most important thing you can do.
You need regular reminders that it’s fun to be with that person you married. Take time to stroll along a beach together at sunset, hike a trail, go out for a milk shake, feed the ducks at the pond, or simply take a walk around the block. Of course, you can find more elaborate, expensive things to do, but don’t let finances stand in your way of having fun. It doesn’t take money to enjoy spending time together.
Adore God with Praise and Worship
Why wait until Sunday to worship God with others, when there are two of you who can worship and praise Him daily?
You can respond in worship to the Lord as a couple in many ways. We hope you are worshiping Him together in your church. You can experience a real unity of spirit as you praise God together with His people. But you can also worship Him anywhere, anytime, together as a couple. Sing hymns and praise songs together in the car, around the house, before a meal, working together in the yard, playing with your children. Make praise a part of your couple and family prayers. Read God’s praises in His Word together. Let praise and worship saturate your lives as a couple and as a family. Make it a habit. Make it one of the most natural things you do.
Talk Transparently
To talk with each other transparently means to communicate with complete emotional openness and truthfulness in your relationship. Transparency means being honest in sharing your hopes, fears, dreams, fulfillments, disappointments and joys. It is more than talking about a fleeting feeling; it is total personal involvement with one another. God made you for transparency, not with everybody, but with Himself and with one other person—your mate.
Again, we urge you to pray together, for as you pray honestly about your hopes and dreams and aspirations, as well as your failures and doubts and sin, you will become more and more open with the Lord and with each other. You will become less and less afraid to show the real you. You will come to experience the transparency God intended for you.
Intimately Relate
The word intimacy comes from the Latin word intimus, which means “innermost or deepest.” Therefore, when we speak of sexual intimacy, we’re talking about two whole persons sharing themselves completely with one another in an honored relationship (see Gen. 2:24).
God created you to enjoy sexual intimacy with your spouse. Proverbs 5:18 says to rejoice in the wife of your youth. Find out for yourself what He says about sex throughout Scripture, especially Proverbs and Song of Solomon. A few books that may help you put sex into proper perspective are Intended for Pleasure by Ed and Gaye Wheat (Fleming H. Revell), The Gift of Sex by Cliff and Joyce Penner (Word), and A Celebration of Sex by Douglas Rosenau (Thomas Nelson).
Negotiate Decisions as a Team
Couples sometimes behave as if they are roommates or business partners. We could never get away with making solitary decisions in a business partnership. What makes us think it is good, sound policy for our marriage partnership?
Whether deciding what car to buy, where to go on vacation, or what restaurant to eat in, don’t settle it in your own mind before talking it over with your partner. Discuss and agree on decisions that affect you both before informing others, and reach a satisfactory solution both of you can own.
When you negotiate decisions as a team, you nip a lot of potential resentment in the bud, and you open new ways of celebrating your partnership. You are a team. Jesus said so Himself. Rejoice in your teamship!
Give Honor To Your Mate
Husbands, be sensitive to your wife’s needs. Ask what she needs; then listen carefully. Pay attention to her when she talks with you. Accept her feelings. You may not understand them, but you must respect them as real and viable.
Wives, magnify your husband’s strengths, not his weaknesses. Do not review past failures, and love your husband for who and what he is right now. Celebrate your relationship by giving honor to one another and by giving honor to your marriage. God wants you to see your mate through the eyes of Jesus, with all the potential He sees.
-Pastors.com-
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