We love to give marriage tips. That’s one of the reasons we post a marriage tip and tweet another most every day on the Marriage Missions Facebook and Twitter pages. We call them Marriage Vitamins because a tip a day (if applied) can help to keep the marriage healthy and strong. In addition, the web site is filled with them. If you need a tip on how to grow your marriage, we’re all about giving them to you. We enjoy doing that and believe it is a mission God has given us.
As a matter of fact, we’ve written a marriage guide titled, 7 ESSENTIAL TIPS TO GROW YOUR MARRIAGE. It’s a Marriage Missions resource that we know God told us to write and make available.
Marriage Tip Resources
And while we’re mentioning resources, we want you to be aware of another one that we already have available on our web site. If a porn addiction is an issue in your marriage and you want to find a way out, we have recently partnered with a new web seminar. It’s something that can help you achieve freedom. I (Steve) read that 88% of porn users said they needed help but would only be willing to get it if it was offered on line. So, we were excited to find PORNBATTLE – Online Porn Addiction Seminar. With my history of being a porn addict I wanted to see for myself how effective this seminar could be. So, I took it. I was amazed at how thorough Dr. Wyatt Fisher and his wife, Alia, were at addressing the problem. AND they’re providing the help needed to break free from porn’s insidious grasp.
The seminar is broken up into two sections, less than an hour each. It’s designed for both the husband and wife to take together. But it can be done separately. Wyatt talks to the men. Alia to the women who are affected by their husband’s addiction. And they present this not as two mental health professionals, but as a couple who lived though and found healing from Wyatt’s porn addiction.
This is the very first partnership Marriage Missions has undertaken and supported. We wouldn’t have done so if we didn’t believe it had the potential to accomplish great things in the marriages. To check it out for yourself just click on the PORNBATTLE icon on the sidebar of our web site. We pray it helps.
Marriage Tips to Grow Your Marriage:
So, the following are the marriage tips we want to give you in this Marriage Insight. Pray, read, glean, adapt if necessary, and APPLY what you can use. It won’t do anyone any good if you don’t apply what you learn. It will be like scattering seeds upon cement. Nothing will happen. Nothing positive will grow from them. Please prayerfully consider and take note:
Tip #1:
“If you’ve been ignoring a taking-my-spouse-for-granted weed, pull it up now and fill the gaping hole with flowers of appreciation or thoughtful words of gratitude. If you’re stuck for words, close your eyes and imagine what you would have said in your courting days. Digging deep into that well will bring up sweet water.” (Alistair Begg)
Showing appreciation and looking for ways you can show thoughtfulness and affirmation in words and deeds go a long way in growing your marriage.
Below is another great marriage tip. Several years ago, a Christian couple won the “Happy Marriage” contest. What they wrote was published in the June 1996 Good Housekeeping Magazine. Their secret?
Tip #2:
“We gave when we wanted to receive; we served when we wanted to feast. And we shared when we wanted to keep. We listened when we wanted to talk, and we submitted when we wanted to reign. Each of us forgave when we wanted to remember, and we stayed when we wanted to leave.”
If you unpack that statement, there is A LOT in it that can help your marriage to grow, if applied. We thought of several ourselves:
- We stopped fighting when we wanted to continue.
- And we removed the “D” (divorce) word from our thinking/vocabulary, even when we wanted to do the opposite.
- We stopped yelling, and instead spoke respectfully to each other, despite the temptation to do otherwise.
- When we couldn’t resolve a conflict before going to sleep, we pledged to work it out the next day.
- We hold hands and sit close to each other, even when we see that so many married couples do not.
- We infuse laughter into our marriage, even (and especially) when we are stressed. (Laughter IS “good medicine” for us and our marriage relationships.)
Perhaps you can think of some, as well. Sometimes it helps to see some of the ways you’ve grown. It inspires you to grow further. You can make it into a 22-Minute Date Time topic. Or you could make it a 30-minute Coffee Chat Time. You can talk about this tip (and others).
Lastly, here’s one more marriage tip we often refer to in our marriage. I don’t know who said it, but it’s so very true.
Tip #3:
“If we strive to seek the Light, rather than trying to be right, a lot of our marital problems will resolve themselves.”
Of course, the “Light” referred to in this tip is Jesus. So, if we put our energy into seeking Jesus, and HIS ways, rather than ours, contentiousness vanishes away. There will be no more Right Fighting going on to sabotage your peace talks.
When referring to “seeking the Light” there’s something that David Clark writes in his book, A Marriage After God’s Own Heart that is inspiring. In this book, he writes of a couple he counseled, “whose marriage was over. At least, they thought it was over. Years of neglect and unresolved conflict” had done its damage. They talked with him at great length. And from the outside, it all looked hopeless. But Dr Clark “asked them to spend the next week THINKING, PRAYING, AND SOUL-SEARCHING about their marriage.” He then scheduled another appointment with them.
When they walked in the next week, their countenance was completely different. “They were holding hands, smiling, and laughing —just as couples do when they’re in love.”
Then they told Dr Clark their “incredible story.”
“They said that they had gone home after the previous week’s session ready to end their marriage. After three days of silence, the husband suddenly asked his wife to pray with him. He told her that he was desperate and the only option left was to turn to God.
“And so they prayed, and prayed, and prayed. For three solid hours, they cried out to God on their knees in their bedroom. They confessed their sins in the relationship and repented of many things they had done to hurt each other. They admitted their resentments and gave them all to God. Through tears they asked for forgiveness—from God and from each other.”
Dr Clark further wrote:
“They told me that something amazing happened after those three hours of prayer. Forgiveness and healing happened. They felt cleansed, and felt hopeful. They felt love for each other for the first time in years. With God’s help, they knew they could start over. To be sure, this couple still had hard work to do in therapy. We spent several months clearing away old debris and building a new marriage. But their prayer marathon was the beginning of their journey.”
It was a journey that took on new life when this couple agreed to “seek the Light.” They took that on as their “only option.” We remember something that Jay Kessler said, “The absence of alternatives clears the mind marvelously.”
When you decide that seeking the Light of the Lord, and abandon any other alternative, you will abandon any other agendas that does not reveal the Love of Christ. THEN miracles can happen. But if you cling onto any other agenda, you will get what human beings can come up with, which stops short of amazing.
We pray these marriage tips (and the add-on comments) are helpful to you. May they ones that will bring marital growth!
Cindy and Steve Wright
Filed under: Grow Your Marriage