Marriage Reboot: Finding Freedom from Self-Deception :: [Ep. 266]

In this week's episode, we reveal a powerful three-step process for rebooting your marriage when it's bogged down. Our hope is to teach you how to better help your marriage thrive.

We will cover the following points:
• The importance of honesty and honestly reassessing our hearts
• Recognizing pride and its effects
• Remembering who God is and who we are in Him 
• What creates and makes a divided heart 
• What walking in freedom looks like and requires

If your marriage needs a reboot, we hope you will join us and find hope and encouragement today!

Chapters

• 0:00 Introducing Vows to Keep Radio
• 1:25 Reassessing Your Spiritual Hard Drive
• 3:30 Three Steps to Reboot Your Marriage
• 6:25 Remembering God's Truth and Character
• 11:22 The Danger of a Divided Heart
• 16:00 Remaining in God's Word Daily
• 20:30 Walking in Freedom, Not Self-Deception
• 24:10 Closing Prayer: Unite My Heart

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:06

Welcome to Vows to Keep Radio with David and Tracy Sellers. The mission of Vows to Keep is to help couples develop a biblically healthy marriage through the application of God's Word and a deeper relationship with Him. They desire to help you and your spouse grow closer to each other and closer to the heart of God's design for your marriage. Now here's David and Tracy with today's broadcast.

Speaker 2: 0:34

Hey, so glad you're with us today. On Vows to Keep Radio we are David and Tracy Sellers. We have made Vows to Keep. We are in part two of a two-part broadcast called Reboot. Is that what you need right now in your marriage A refresh, a restart, a reboot. God has given each of us our own personal hard drive. It's our heart and the deepest part of who we are and who he's made us to be.

Speaker 2: 1:01

Our system, so to speak, can get overloaded with sin that's undealt with, sin that maybe we either can't identify because we haven't taken the time or energy to, we haven't really gotten real before God, or sin that we know is there but we're letting it take us down anyway. We're making excuses. We say you know what? I've been dealing with this sin a long time. I kind of like this sin. I don't really want it to go away. I'm not ready to hit the restart button.

Speaker 2: 1:26

Last week on Vows to Keep Radio, we looked at King David. We looked at Psalm 119. He's the author of that Psalm and how he came before God and he had some very real sin that he was dealing with in his life. But he also knew he served a very real God that he was willing to get real with. I asked you last week to get out your highlighters and I'm going to ask you to do the same thing this week. Last week we took one color of highlighter and we highlighted what David is asking of God in Psalm 119. Now, I know it's not reasonable for you to do that all right now, but throughout the rest of the week I would like you to take time to go ahead and go through the 176 verses of Psalm 119 and to highlight everything that you see David is asking of God. He says things like turn to me, god, have mercy on me, accept my praise, lord, teach me, help me, make me wise. Lord, would you sustain me, lord, would you uphold me? These are real requests that David is making of God and he's saying I'm going to step into your light here, god. I don't want to be a self-deceiver. I don't want to live in self-deception anymore in my sin. I'm putting my requests out there to you, god, with a deep expectancy that, lord, you're going to answer me, that you're going to help me be a doer of the word and not a hearer. Only, lord, that you're going to help me be the man that you have created me to be, david was willing to get real with God, to reboot his heart and his life. Are you and I ready to do that?

Speaker 2: 2:58

Today, on Vows to Keep Radio, we're going to go through a really simple three-step process that you can do anytime you feel like your own personal spiritual life needs to be rebooted or when your marriage needs a reboot. Number one we covered last week and that is the reassessment of our hearts. Lord, would you examine where we're at? Would you assess our hearts? Lord, we are willing to be open and authentic before you. Number two that we're going to jump into in just a minute here is Lord, we are going to remember who you are and who we are in you, and that's going to reboot our hearts. And lastly, today on Vows to Keep Radio, we're going to talk about remaining in God's word, staying attached to the vine reassess, remember and remain. So if you have your Bible with you, you have some things that are underlying that David is asking of God. Now we're going to do some more underlining in just a minute here about the next thing that David is praying in his prayer in Psalm 119. He is remembering and reviewing God's word and character. He knows that when we remember, we are taking that next step to rebooting Over.

Speaker 2: 4:06

In Romans, chapter 7, verse 24 and 25, paul says oh, what a miserable person I am. Have you ever felt that way when you've sinned the same sin a hundred times, the one you've been trying to deal with for years? He says who will free me from this life that is dominated by sin and death? And here's the answer, thank God, the answer is in Jesus Christ, our Lord. See, you and I can't have an honest evaluation of our sin unless we have an honest evaluation of the cross. A re-evaluation of our hearts leads us to remember, leads us to gaze at the cross and think about who God is, what he did for us and now our new life in him. And remembering changes our desire. We no longer want to live in self-deception. My desire changed on how to parent my kids when I remembered how my father, god, has parented me. My desire on how to speak to David changes when I remember that when I mess up, jesus Christ treats me with grace and mercy and patience. We realign ourselves with the truth when we remember, and this remembering makes us desire to strive and to seek after God and godliness.

Speaker 2: 5:21

So if you have another color highlighter or pen. Now you're going to be highlighted in Psalm 119, maybe just a couple sections of those eight verses things that David is pursuing, things that he is desiring. He says I have chosen the way of faithfulness. I will not neglect your word, lord. I will obey your decrees. I have hidden your word in my heart that I might not sin against you. I give you, lord, an account of my ways. Lord, I don't turn away from you. Lord, I remember you. I give you, lord, an account of my ways. Lord, I don't turn away from you, lord, I remember you. Lord, I promise to obey you. It is such an amazing exercise to go through this entire psalm and to highlight everything that David is striving after. Look for I statements. I find delight. I trust I long. I have put my hope in.

Speaker 2: 6:10

Last week we looked at Romans, chapter 7, where Paul says I know that nothing good lives in me, in my sinful nature, because I want to do what's right but I can't. And I want to do what's good but I don't. I don't want to do what is wrong, but I do it anyway. This is our ongoing battle with sin. What our renewed nature desires, our fleshly nature opposes. That is the Christian heart battle that we all deal with every day, vacillating between wanting to do the right thing and wanting our own way. Here we see again clearly that Christian heart battle, because I don't think David's being a hypocrite here. We know that David does not always hold true to what he's saying. He says I don't depart from your word. I have not strayed from your word. I shall always have regard for your word, lord. These are not things that he's arrived in. Rather, these are his heart's desire.

Speaker 2: 7:01

These aren't statements of pride. In fact, I think they're just the opposite, because pride is what happens when we don't remember, in pride, we reign sovereign over our lives, thinking that we're in control, or at least we think we reign sovereign over our lives, we become glory grabbers. When we don't remember that God alone deserves the glory, we, in pride, write our own rules. We say, hey, we're in charge here and my way goes. In our pride, we become idol worshipers. We start to put food as our top priority in our day. We start to think that God maybe didn't quite create marriage the way that I think he should have, and my husband's not a very good leader, so I think I should probably be the leader. That's what our pride tells us to do. Our pride causes us to be truth suppressors rather than truth seekers, because in our pride, we stop remembering. Humility is what happens when we do remember.

Speaker 2: 7:58

King David had idols that he worshiped as well, things that he put above God, but he also knew the process to correctly position himself under God's headship. King David remembered his humanness. He remembered his God, which caused him to remember his purpose. Just like you and I, king David had a job to do. He had a purpose on earth. He's on the front lines of the battlefield of his own life and God's purposes for his life.

Speaker 2: 8:26

Yet he vacillates, just like you and I. Vacillate between wanting to do the right thing and not being able to do it, vacillating between sitting on the sidelines and charging full speed ahead on the path that God has set for us. You, my friend, are a soldier in God's great army, but a forgetful soldier, or one that has no purpose or goal, is not going to be on the front lines. He's going to hide out in the foxhole when we don't remember who God is or who we are in him. We're going to be the person sitting on the sidelines, vacillating between wanting to do the right thing but choosing our own way. Instead, our forgetfulness bogs down the hard drive of our hearts.

Speaker 2: 9:09

Are you ready to get up off the bench of your own life? Are you ready to get out on the front lines of your own marriage, knowing what it is that God is asking you to know and believe and then having a persistent pursuit of your creator? Seeking, pursuing, striving is the next step in reaching up to God to reboot. But we have to know that what we're pursuing, what we're desiring, is actually good and true and right, and not just something we've come up with on our own or something the world has told us is good to seek and pursue and to strive for. That's why the third step to reboot is to remain. John, chapter 15,. This is the passage in God's word where Jesus says I am the vine, you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you are going to bear much fruit. And apart from me, let me tell you, you can do nothing.

Speaker 2: 10:07

The last several years at my house in the backyard, we've had a raised bed garden and I mostly grow things like tomatoes and peppers and carrots. The tomato plants get pretty heavy as they get tall. So we have a little support system for them that we systematically tie the tomato plant to so that one branch just doesn't go hanging off all on its own. Because you know what happens when a tomato plant has a branch that is about halfway hanging on and halfway hanging off, it really can't be saved from there. It's still attached but you know, over a couple of days time it's not going to get the nutrients that it needs, it's going to go brown and it's going to have to be cut off. That's how it is with us in Jesus Christ. He says remain in me. That's how you're going to bear much fruit in your life. That's how you're going to be able to make good decisions. That's how you're going to desire the right thing. There's no halfway here. We can't be half connected to God and half on our own.

Speaker 1: 11:07

If you have a marriage question, please email questions at vowstokeepcom. Vows to Keep will respond to you via email and perhaps use it on the air. Now let's rejoin Vows to Keep Radio with David and Tracy Sellers.

Speaker 2: 11:23

So often we have one foot in our ways, one foot in God's ways. I know what God's word says about my marriage, but I think I know best. Let me tell you from experience if you try that method, there will be no good fruit in your marriage relationship. I can wake up in the morning determined to let my words be gracious and full of the fruit of the spirit towards my spouse, and it's not nine o'clock in the morning before my foot is well inserted into my mouth. We can be laughing together as husband and wife one minute, and I can be chewing him out the next minute over something that's so silly that doesn't even matter in the grand scheme of things. My vacillating heart that was all in with God's word just a minute ago is now hey, my way, or the highway, our straddle, the fence technique can be so tiring, can't it? In fact, sometimes I'm grateful that those monkeys that are on my back, the sin that doesn't get dealt with, actually gets heavy enough that I finally cry out for help. Is that where you are at right now in your marriage? Are things so heavy that you're ready to try something other than your own vacillating heart to show you the way? A couple of years ago I ran across this verse from Psalm 86, also written by David, verse 11. It's meant so much to me because it describes my heart to a T. David says in Psalm 86, 11, teach me your way, lord, that I may rely on your faithfulness. And here's the part that gets me Give me an undivided heart that I may fear your name. Another version says Lord, unite my heart to fear your name.

Speaker 2: 13:10

When I was a young adult I had a black Ford Ranger and that thing was my baby. I paid for it. I was the one that bought the insurance and the gas. I gave rides to all my friends. That thing went with me for years and I took pretty good care of it. I was always washing it and making sure that the body was in really good shape. One day I was working out at a campground and I worked in South Dakota, and South Dakota is just famous for hailstorms. In fact, my dad makes his living repairing hail damage on houses. So my friends and I were working and we see this hailstorm coming. We know it's going to hit us in about 10 minutes. So someone runs in and says, hey, if you want to save your car, go ahead and pull it into the barn over here, and you can better believe that I ran and got my keys and my little black Ford Ranger was in that barn in just a minute. I was so pleased because the hail that day was about a quarter size or more. I know that my truck would have gotten damaged About an hour later. Everything looked clear. So it was time to take our cars out of the barn, and as I was pulling the truck out, my back bumper caught the side of the barn door and it ripped clean off.

Speaker 2: 14:25

Sometimes you and I can have the best of intentions when it comes to our sin, but our divided heart one foot in God's ways, one foot in our ways ends up taking us down in the end anyway. Isn't it exhausting to one minute believe that God isn't trustworthy in His ways for my marriage and the next minute to think that he is? Doesn't it bog you down to believe that God isn't in control in my marriage, so I better be in control? Doesn't it take you down over time to make decisions that say you know what I know better than God or I have to earn my salvation or I really haven't been forgiven that much, so I've got to carry the weight of these sins. Isn't it exhausting to believe the lies of the devil that say you know what? God really doesn't love me because my marriage isn't going so well right now. God doesn't care about me personally? I know that because look what's happening with my husband. God doesn't care about me personally. I know that because look what's happening with my husband. The lies from the enemy can bog us down quicker than anything else. Lies that say God is far away from you. If he was really a caring, loving God, then your husband wouldn't treat you that way so often.

Speaker 2: 15:40

I do straddle the fence of truth in my life. I've got one foot in the weeds of my lies on one side and I've got one foot in the garden of God's truth on the other side. And that's when I start to wither like that tomato plant. That's when I start to get bogged down, not even maybe even recognize why I'm feeling like I do not even recognizing that I'm on that fence. I think that David recognized his weaknesses. He wasn't perfect, but he saw his need to continually check. Am I basing what I'm doing, am I basing what I'm believing in God's truth or am I writing my own rules?

Speaker 2: 16:17

The reason why I think David recognized his own weaknesses is because if you look at Psalm 119 that we're going through and we're highlighting here all these different passages, you see that God's word is actually mentioned in nearly every verse. There's 176 verses in here and nearly every one David is saying Lord, I can't reboot unless I've got your word as my guide. Lord, even if I reach up to you today, I want to fail tomorrow and your word is what's going to get me back on track. He's saying Lord, I need your word to reassess where I am, because if I don't, I'm going to give myself license to follow my own ways. Lord, I need your word as a reminder of who you are and who I am in you because I'm so forgetful are and who I am in you because I'm so forgetful. Lord, I need to remain in your word, to filter out the voices, so all I hear is your voice.

Speaker 2: 17:10

So if you've been highlighting along with us last week and this week on Vows to Keep Radio, or if you plan on doing that in your quiet time, in your own personal devotion time coming up this week, then grab your next color of highlighter and you are going to be underlining or highlighting phrases where, you see, god's word is mentioned. Just a little hint for you here David uses nine different words for describing God's word. He says things like precepts and laws and commands and testimonies and ordinances and ways and statutes. I'm going to underline things in my Bible like blessed are those who are blameless, who walk according to your word, who keep your statutes. I might underline something like Lord, help me live according to your word. Do not let me stray from your commands. I rejoice in your statutes. Wonderful things are in your law, according to your word. Lord, cause me to understand the way of your precepts. Teach me your law. I've set my heart on your law. Are you getting what you're going to be underlining here? As you're thinking about the things that you're underlining here in Psalm 119, the first one is David's ask to God Lord, this is what I need your help with. Secondly, lord, this is what I'm striving toward. I'm not there yet, but this is where I want to be. And then here we are in our last one God's word. As you think about those things and as you work on highlighting Psalm 119 in those three different colors, I want you to think about what are one or two ways for you to remain in God's word on a daily basis, what's a way that you can apply it, how you can bear fruit in your own life, what's the best way for you to incorporate God's word into your day? I encourage you to share that with your spouse and even to ask them how they're doing remaining in God's word and even to ask them how they're doing remaining in God's word.

Speaker 2: 19:08

We try so many ways to reboot our lives to function better. Maybe we try a job change, some change with our body, we try a vacation, we try isolation. Most of us try mind-numbing activities that provide only temporary relief. You know what I'm talking about Something on your phone, something on the computer, a hobby that takes your mind off of what's really going on In our marriages. We try to reboot, sometimes by divorce, separation, maybe just living parallel lives so we don't have to deal with the stuff that's taking us down, Trying to take back control in our marriage of what feels out of control. These are all temporary solutions to a God-sized issue.

Speaker 2: 19:47

If the sin that's in our daily life isn't dealt with on a daily basis, if we don't let God reassess, if we don't remember, if we don't remain in God's word, then you know what we remain slaves to that sin. I don't want to remain in my sin. I want to remain in the Lord. God's word is the only way to walk about in freedom. That's what Psalm 119, verse 45, says. In the New Living Translation it says this I will walk in freedom, for I have devoted myself to your commandments. If you feel like your marriage needs a reboot, you feel like you are a slave to the sin or your spouse is a slave to sin, you can walk about in freedom in your marriage as you seek after God and his ways.

Speaker 2: 20:31

I'm at the point in my heart and I'm at the point in my marriage that I don't want to straddle the fence anymore. It's exhausting and I need a reboot. I'm at the point in my marriage I don't just want to read God's word or hear it preached. I want more. I want what David says in Psalm 119, verse 11, to hide God's word in my heart that I might not sin against God. And verse 13 of Psalm 119, with my lips I recount all the laws that come from your mouth.

Speaker 2: 21:00

David is saying here the meaning of God's word is affecting my heart. I don't just want to say it. I don't just want to hear it preached in church. I don't want to be a Pharisee. There's action behind it. I want to be a doer of the word and not a hearer. Only, lord, we desire to measure ourselves against your word.

Speaker 2: 21:18

But let me tell you, this is real life. This isn't a cakewalk. We're in a heart battle here, the flesh against the spirit. We're on the front lines of our own lives. Paul talks about that battle in Romans, chapter 7, verse 22 and 23. I love God's law with all my heart, he says, but there's another power within me that's at war with my mind. This power makes me a slave to the sin that is still within me. And then we can pray God's favorite prayer Lord, help, I need you. I can't do anything without you. Come to me, give me everything I need for life and for godliness. We can either be fully prepared on those front lines or fully exposed to the enemy's attacks. Which are you? Are you ready to take some time with God, to stand before him, slate wiped, fully clean, nothing to hide, no fear, no hesitation? Fully aware of your struggle, but also fully aware of your imminent victory in Christ Jesus, you're willing to reach up to God, to be rebooted, to be strong, devoted and ready, ready to reassess, ready to remember, ready to remain in God's word.

Speaker 2: 22:27

We're going to close today on Vows to Keep Radio, looking at the last verse of Psalm 119. It's verse 176. David says I have wandered away like a lost sheep. He is saying Lord, I am assessing my heart right now and this is the reality of where I am, and I'm willing for you to take a look at me, examine me, see that I have wandered away from you. And then, lord, here's what I need from you. The next part of the verse says Lord, come and find me, seek your servant. Don't let me wander from your paths, lord servant, don't let me wander from your paths, lord. And then here's David's recommitment to remain in God's word. He says I have not forgotten your commands. I know that they are what is going to give me life.

Speaker 2: 23:13

If I remain in you, lord, I remain in your word, I will bear fruit in my marriage. Are you willing to say to God come and find me, seek me out, lord, search my heart and see if there is any wicked way in me. Take a look at my marriage, lord. I want it to be fully exposed before you. I don't want to be in self-deception. I want to reach up to you today, god. I want you to reassess our relationship, lord, I want to remember who you are and who I am in you. Unite my heart to fear your name. God. Teach me your way, lord, according to Psalm 86, 11, so that I can rely on your faithfulness for my marriage. Lord, here's my prayer today Give me an undivided heart so that I can be rebooted in you.

Speaker 1: 24:06

Like what you heard today on Vows to Keep Radio. Listen to more life-changing broadcasts at VowsToKeepcom. Vows to Keep is supported by a team which includes biblical coaches, writers and pastoral advisors. If you have a desire to serve marriages in your community, we would love to hear from you. Vows to Keep is a not-for-profit marriage ministry designed to bring God's encouraging truth to the marriages of our area. As a not-for-profit organization, our commitment to Christlike marriages includes providing much-needed services, regardless of a couple's financial ability to offset the cost of Vows to Keep operations. If you are unable to donate your time or abilities, but would like to help support Vows to Keep financially, visit VowsToKeepcom and click on the Donate link. This program is sponsored by Vows to Keep of Zanesfield, ohio.