first change me!

Relationships will change when we change.

Here’s few QUICK tips for creating the change you want and need.

     1. Change your perspective.

God completes a marriage -we do not complete each other.

God uses both partners to help each other, encourage each other, to love each other…but only when God is included in the marriage is it actually complete. Making demands on your spouse to assure your happiness in life is unrealistic and unhealthy. 

When God is a part of the marriage He fills the voids no one else on earth is humanly possible to fulfill.

Change your responses.

“The crazy circle cycle!”

You treat me like this so I’m going to treat you like that!

There is no room for retaliation in marriage! Getting even is kindergarten stuff!

Treat your spouse how you want to be treated! With what measure you mete it shall be measured unto you! (Matt 7:2)

Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ loved the Church” (Eph. 5:25).

A love so deep you would lay down your life for her.

1 Corinthians 11:3 But I want you to understand that the head of every man is Christ, the head of a wife is her husband, and the head of Christ is God.

Ephesians 5:22-24 Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands.

The world gives us a different blueprint for success. The secular model of a successful man is a rich, powerful womanizer.

The secular model of a successful woman is a beautifully decorated, thin, sexy dressed woman who has the perfect enviable balance of home and work.

Ephesians 5:33 “Nevertheless let each one of you in particular so love his own wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband”

Respect him Verbally, Intellectually, and Physically.

Anything that you CAN admire, admire it: physical traits, mental skills, financial strengths, spiritual growth, or healthy relationships with others (children, parents, or friends).  

WE CANNOT LET OUR FEELINGS DETERMINE OUR ACTIONS!!!

There will be days it will be hard to love but you do it anyway!

Change your shoes!

Show some empathy. Neither of your jobs are easy.

Both have stresses and challenges!

Try mentally walking in each others shoes for a week…or even a day! I guarantee you will think and feel differently!

Change your heart!

Learn to serve…

Then out-serve each other! Find all the little ways you can make your spouses life easier and do as many as you can as often as you can! 

And one last quick tip every marriage benefits from…

Phil 2:14 Do everything without complaining or arguing!