Communication

Successful marriages, like any good relationship, depend on effective communication. Learning the art of communication, developing and practicing it, is the best way to keep alive the freshness, the excitement and the delight in your marriage relationship and in your family. It is easy to identify a couple who are in love. They gaze into each other’s eyes and express their feelings in a hundred smiles, glances, looks, touches and whispers. They are locked in their own world – held together by a strong empathy. They identify with each other’s joy and pain, they understand things from the other’s perspective, and they walk in each other’s shoes.

There are always a number of reasons why a marriage fails. People may blame a shortage of money, sexual incompatibility, pressure from the extended family or differences in temperament. Whatever the issues, it is often the lack of open and honest communication which finally leads to alienation, separation and divorce. Couples who cannot talk about the little things soon find that they have become big things and a barrier has been built between them.

God created us to interact openly with the other people in our lives. He wants us to enjoy close relationships without the fear of being misunderstood or rejected. We are free to feel really alive when we can share our ideas, thoughts and emotions with someone else. We all want to be understood and accepted, encouraged and loved, helped and advised. When we feel like failures, we want to believe that someone out there still loves us enough to help us to change.

Sharing relieves tension. Other people help us to clarify thoughts, improve ideas and make plans. Open communication can lift us out of loneliness, relieves feelings of isolation and can make our worries seem far less important. It is so good when you can feel really comfortable with someone, when you can express yourself knowing that they won’t judge you, cut you down to size, preach or hit back. You can rely on them to put their arm round you and tell you that you are special – just the way you are.

When it comes to how we communicate, we have all formed habits, some good, some bad. We have learned from our parents and families and have absorbed patterns of behavior from the people and influences around us. With our words we either build people up or tear them down. Words are a matter of life and death and we can choose how we use them. After the wedding, many couples stop trying to understand each other and they gradually allow a gap of miscommunication to form between them. They drift apart and settle for less than the best that God intended. 

We can all learn new skills in the art of communication.

Source: Enjoy Your Marriage by David and Janet Cunningham

God's Plan for Marriage

The first thing God said was ‘not good’ in the creation story was the fact that man was alone (Genesis 2:18). True to his character, God took action to put this right, “I will make a helper.” As the animals parade before Adam in pairs, he is reminded of his own loneliness. He is different from the rest of creation. His companion will be distinct from the animals and so cannot be just a ‘beast of burden’ to do his work, or a biological factory to produce his offspring. No, she will be like him.

“This now is bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called ‘woman’; for she was taken out of man.” (Verse 23)

It is not mere chance that the poem expresses the truths of Genesis chapter 1 and 2.
He recognizes both her sameness ‘part of my own flesh and bone!’ and her differences, “her name is woman because she was taken out of a man.” (Living Bible)

“For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife and they will become one flesh.” (Genesis 2:24)

This fundamental statement about marriage is repeated by Jesus in Mathew 19:5 and Mark 10:7, and by Paul in Ephesians 5:31. Four times! It must be important. There are three essential elements here:

1. Leaving
2. Being United
3. Becoming One

This is simple. Anyone can understand it. Yet in these stages of relationship, and the order in which they come, there are truths that touch every part of marriage and involve issues that are difficult to work through. Many couples struggle with one or the other aspect. Get them all right and you can anticipate a wonderful union.

Marriage means togetherness.
God’s creation plan sets the pattern for marriage – one man and one woman in exclusive commitment. God is calling both the man and the woman to make a definite break with their own families to set up a separate home and family unit.

Parents represent the longest strongest relationship and in this verse, they stand for all the extended family. ‘Leave’ does not mean abandon. Paul teaches that believers should provide for the needs of the immediate family (1Timothy 5:8).

Marriage is based on a covenant. God’s love for his people was sealed by a covenant promise. God calls us into relationship with him and he intends that every aspect of our lives, including marriage, should be lived in the light of and under the authority of, this divine covenant. In marriage, both parties make vows in the presence of witnesses and symbols of those promises are exchanged. The covenant relationship of marriage is a portrayal of Christ’s commitment to his church.

“Wives submit to your husbands as the Lord… Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church…..”

“ ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife and the two will become one flesh.’ This is a profound mystery – but I am talking about Christ and the church.” (Ephesians 5:22-32)

Agape love is the basis of God’s covenant and the marriage covenant. Both parties bind themselves to each other with a love which is exclusive, faithful and self-giving. In loving us like this, God made himself vulnerable and opened himself up to the pain of rejection. In spite of our failure to return his love, he continues to love us perfectly, providing for our needs, guarding us through danger and difficulty, showering us with tenderness and care. God is the model husband! He promises to live that kind of love in us and through us so that the world might see that we belong to him.

“God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given to us.” (Romans 5:5)

Within this unity, while both husband and wife will submit to each other out of reverence for Christ, the husband is called to the kind of leadership which initiates caring, love and companionship for his wife, as Christ did for the Church. The wife is called to the kind of response which respects her husband and affirms his role, thus returning his companionship and love.

Sexual intercourse between husband and wife was designed by God to be the expression of the uniqueness of the marriage relationship as well as its seal and symbol. Also, the procreation of children, and sexual fulfillment in marriage were designed as blessings from God. Hence the place of sexual intercourse is specifically and exclusively within the marriage covenant.

Marriage is a permanent relationship. From the time of the covenant, both parties belong to each other and they both bear equal responsibility for maintaining the relationship. In true covenant love, there is faithfulness, fidelity, trust and total commitment to the good of the other. God’s divine covenant with us transcends mortality; it is eternal. In human marriage, the covenant is binding until the man and woman are separated by death.

“Love always protects, always trusts, always perseveres. Love never fails.”
 (1Corinthians 13:7, 8)

We can all learn more on Biblical principles of marriage.

Source: Enjoy Your Marriage by David and Janet Cunningham
Published by: Scripture Union of Kenya.

Priciples of Marriage

Most readers are married or have been married. I mention this fact for two reasons. First, this article is about the subject of marriage. We’ll have a frank and honest discussion about marriage from a Biblical standpoint. Secondly, this article deals with reasons our marriages work and sometimes do not work. You might want to forgive me now for what I am about to write. It may address issues in your own marriage relationship. My hope is that this article
will stimulate discussion with your spouse and be an encouragement to you.

Think back for a moment and consider the training and teaching you received in preparation for marriage. If you were like most, you will agree that there was no formal training. That is, you didn’t go to college or a technical school to be trained and certified as a husband or wife. There is no diploma or certification that qualified us to be married. However, of all the choices we make in our life time, the selection of our spouse and decisions we make on
how to be a husband or wife, are the most profound and have the most farreaching implications.

Children (other people) will come from those decisions and the process continues from generation to generation. In fact, we exist today because of decisions made by our parents. This brings me to my initial point about the subject of marriage. Our parents have had a profound impact on us with regard to marriage. It was our parents that served as our primary teachers in preparing us for marriage. Just like any training course, the quality of
that training has a direct impact on the success or failure of the endeavor. But our parents are not the only resource to prepare us for marriage. The Bible has a lot to say about marriage. In fact, the very institution of marriage originates from the Bible. Our parents and basic Biblical instruction about marriage are our primary sources of reference for marriage. But have you considered the teaching we have concerning marriage given in the Bible?
Let me explain a bit more. Since our parents are our primary examples, have you considered what our parents in the Bible teach us about marriage? Which parents am I referring to? Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebekah, and Jacob and his wives, Leah and Rachel, have a lot to teach us about marriage! <Read more>

Christian Dating

What kind of person should you date? It’s in the Bible, II Timothy 2:22, TLB. “Run from anything that gives you the evil thoughts that young men often have, but stay close to anything that makes you want to do right. Have faith and love, and enjoy the companionship of those who love the Lord and have pure hearts.”

It is unwise to date someone who doesn’t love God. It’s in the Bible, II Corinthians 6:14-15, TLB. “Don’t be teamed with those who do not love the Lord, for what do the people of God have in common with the people of sin? How can light live with darkness? And what harmony can there be between Christ and the devil? How can a Christian be a partner with one who doesn’t believe?” Amos 3:3, NKJV says, “Can two walk together, unless they are agreed?”
Don’t date someone who claims to be a Christian but doesn’t live it. It’s in the Bible, I Corinthians 5:11, TLB. “What I meant was that you are not to keep company with anyone who claims to be a brother Christian but indulges in sexual sins, or is greedy, or is a swindler, or worships idols, or is a drunkard, or abusive. Don’t even eat lunch with such a person.”
Avoid dating people who have a bad temper. It’s in the Bible, Proverbs 22:24, TLB. “Keep away from angry, short-tempered men, lest you learn to be like them and endanger your soul.” Don’t date a lazy Christian. It’s in the Bible, II Thessalonians 3:6, TLB. “Now here is a command, dear brothers, given in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ by his authority: Stay away from any Christian who spends his days in laziness and does not follow the ideal of hard work we set up for you.”
Inner beauty counts the most. It’s in the Bible, I Peter 3:4, TLB. “Be beautiful inside, in your hearts, with the lasting charm of a gentle and quiet spirit that is so precious to God.”
Date someone with a good attitude. It’s in the Bible, Romans 15:5-6, TLB. “May God who gives patience, steadiness, and encouragement help you to live in complete harmony with each other—each with the attitude of Christ toward the other.”

Date someone who encourages you and is supportive. It’s in the Bible,Philippians 2:1-2, TLB. “Is there any such thing as Christians cheering each other up? Do you love me enough to want to help me? Does it mean anything to you that we are brothers in the Lord, sharing the same Spirit? Are your hearts tender and sympathetic at all? Then make me
truly happy by loving each other, working together with one heart and mind and purpose. In a dating relationship don’t be exclusive—care about others too. It’s in the Bible, Philippians 2:4, TLB. “Don’t just think about your own affairs, but be interested in others, too, and in what they are doing.”
Let the relationship progress step by step. It’s in the Bible, II Peter 1:6-7, TLB. “Next, learn to put aside your own desires so that you will become patient and godly, gladly letting God have his way with you. This will make possible the next step, which is for you to enjoy other people and to like them, and finally you will grow to love them deeply.”
What to avoid on dates. It’s in the Bible, Romans 13:13, TLB. “Be decent and true in everything you do so that all can approve your behavior. Don’t spend your time in wild parties and getting drunk or in adultery and lust, or fighting, or jealousy.” <Read more>

Healing a man's father wounds

It is a peculiarly twentieth-century story, and is almost too awful to tell,” writes Frederick Buechner, “about a boy of twelve or thirteen who, in a fit of crazy anger and depression, got hold of a gun somewhere and fired it at his father, who died not right away but soon afterward. “When the authorities asked the boy why he had done it, he said that it was
because he could not stand his father, because his father demanded too much of him, because he hated his father. And then later on, after he had been placed in a house of detention, a guard was walking down the corridor late one night when he heard sounds from the boy’s room, and he stopped to listen. The words he heard the boy sobbing out in the dark were, ‘I want my father, I want my father.’”

“How incredibly sad,” we say, but how many of us have killed or turned away from the only source that can meet the deepest longing of our heart? “Not me,” I say, but every time I look for love in any wrong place, I do that.

For example, I looked for love in the things I did, like making beautiful things including a dream home. Then I majored in words and wrote books and poems. I learned to move a crowd to tears, make them laugh hilariously and inspire them to reach for noble goals. I got lots of approval but none of these things ever made me feel loved. No Mother or any other Woman can ever make a boy or a man love himself as a man.
Perhaps most delusive of all is how I looked to the opposite sex to try to make me feel loved and to affirm my masculinity. It started with my mother because, being my primary caretaker, she was all I had to look to when I was a child. Next I fell madly in love with my second grade school teacher, looking for love from her. That didn’t work either.

Unfortunately, no mother or any other woman can ever make a boy or a man love himself as a man. An attractive woman might make him feel terrific for a time but she still can’t make him feel loved or that he is a man no matter how attractive she might be. A man may even be intoxicated with passion when he meets a beautiful woman and may want to marry her. If he does, he may be in for a rude awakening. Not because of her but because of him.
When his passion subsides he’ll be faced with the pain and reality of his own loneliness and emptiness.
And then to avoid facing his pain, he’ll look to another performance, climb another mountain, or seek another beautiful woman. . .and another. . .to prove to himself that he is a man. Or he’ll deaden the pain through alcohol, drugs or addictive behaviors and eventually ruin his health, get cancer, die of a heart attack, never get close to the ones he loves, or ruin those relationships. That is, he’ll keep acting out until he faces why he looks in the wrong places for the love he never received as a child.
Ask a hundred men how many felt close to and affirmed by their father and you will see about three or four hands raised. Herein lies the secret of so much of our relational and emotional distress and the answer to our recovery. The father wound that injured our masculine soul is because we never felt loved by our fathers. And that wound desperately needs to be healed. Only a father (or a surrogate or substitute father) can affirm a man’s
masculinity and make him feel that he’s a man. Neither fame nor fortune nor all the women in the world can ever do this for him. Only a father’s love can.
But what if our father was absent, as was mine? He was physically present but not emotionally. He was uninvolved in my life, which I perceived as rejection, and then I in turn rejected him. I “killed” my father too. Not literally, of course, but as far as I was concerned he was dead to me. In doing this I shot myself in the heart. And everywhere I’ve went for years I searched for the love I never found from my father.<read more>

Marrying the wrong Mate

Ten ways to Marry the Wrong Person By Rabbi Dov Heller, M.A. With the divorce rate over 50%, too many are apparently making a serious mistake in deciding who to spend the rest of their life with. To avoid becoming a “statistic,” try to internalize 10 insights.

1. You pick the wrong person because you expect him/her to change after you’re married.
The classic mistake. Never marry potential. The golden rule is, if you can’t be happy with the person the way he or she is now, don’t get married. As a colleague of mine so wisely put it, “You actually can expect people to change after their married...for the worst!” So when it comes to the other person’s spirituality, character, personal hygiene, communication
skills, and personal habits, make sure you can live with these as they are now.

2. You pick the wrong person because you focus more on chemistry than on character. Chemistry ignites the fire, but good character keeps it burning. Beware of the “I’m in love” syndrome. “I’m in love often means, “I’m in lust.” Attraction is there, but have you carefully checked out this person’s character? Here are four characteristics to definitely check for:

HUMILITY:
Does this person believe that “doing the right thing” is more important than personal comfort?

KINDNESS:
Does this person enjoy giving pleasure to other people? How does s/he treat people s/he doesn’t have to be nice to? Does s/he do volunteer work? Give to charity?

RESPONSIBILITY:
Can I depend on this person to do what s/he says s/he’s going to do?

HAPPINESS:
Does this person like himself? Does s/he enjoy life? Is s/he emotionally stable? Ask yourself: Do I want to be more like this person? Do I want to have a child with this person? Would I like my child to turn out like him or her?

3. You pick the wrong person because the man doesn’t understand what a women needs most. Men and women have unique emotional needs, and more often than not, it is the man who just doesn’t get it. Jewish tradition places the onus on the man to understand the emotional needs of the woman and to satisfy them. The unique need of a woman is to be loved.-to feel that she is the most important person in her husband’s life. The husband needs to give her consistent, quality attention.
This is most apparent is Judaism’s approach to sexual intimacy. The Torah obligates the husband to meet the sexual needs of his wife. Sexual intimacy is always on the woman’s terms. Men are goal oriented especially when it comes to this area.
As a wise woman once pointed out, “Men have two speeds: on and off.” Women are experience oriented.When a man is able to switch gears and become more experience-oriented, he will discover what makes his wife very happy. When the man forgets about his own needs and focuses on giving his wife pleasure, amazing things will happen.<Read more>