The VowsToKeep Marriage Podcast

Becoming Your Spouse's Biggest Supporter :: [Ep. 271]

• David & Tracy Sellars • Episode 271

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Becoming Your Spouse's Biggest Supporter :: [Ep. 271]

This week we explore how marriages deteriorate when the "we" transitions into "me, my, and I" as couples pursue individual interests rather than championing each other.

We will talk about the following:

• Couples often forget God's main purpose for marriage and prepare themselves for marital defeat
• We often champion our children's interests without hesitation but fail to do the same for our spouse
• Practical ways to champion your spouse include being shoulder-to-shoulder in their interests
• Giving your spouse margin to pursue their goals shows you value what matters to them
• The consequences that arise when spouses don't champion each other
• The gap in marriage grows wider when couples don't support each other's God-given missions
• Our selfish agendas often prevent us from championing our spouse's interests

We hope you will be encouraged and helped in being your spouse's champion!


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Speaker 1:

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:

Hey, we're David and Tracy Sellers.

Speaker 3:

And, like you, we've made vows to keep. Today's show is going to be kind of a fun one, for me at least, because it's a topic that is something that's very near and dear to my heart as I've gone through the progression we're going to be talking about today being someone who's an observer in a relationship to someone who's actually a champion for that relationship. Now, tracy, I want to tell the listeners about one of my many vices in life, which is YouTube car videos. I could seemingly watch an endless supply of videos on YouTube about building hot rods and yeah, I'm a car guy, if you don't know that but there's several YouTube channels that right now are just explosive in growth and there's a common thread that I keep seeing in them.

Speaker 3:

Anytime a guy has his girl working side by side with him and they actually work well together, the comment section on those videos is just explosive. You see this mixture of guys saying man, my wife is so busy being a mom She'd never want to be a wife with me in this, or I wish she would care like that. They just totally fall all over a relationship that actually works. Now you see some that are more resentful. They're like. You know what. This is my hobby and I am just grateful that I can have a little time away from this cranky woman that I'm married to.

Speaker 2:

Yikes, yeah, but there's probably like a wife equivalent of that, like what are you doing out in the garage? And what happened to our soulmate companionship that we used to have? Here's an example of the other side of that when David and I are in public and other women see his arm around me, they might wish that's them. At the end of the day, we all want to feel pursued and many of us don't, and what ends up happening is we don't reciprocate to the other person. We just end up pursuing what is meaningful to us, what makes us happy, and I think this quote unquote we or us of marriage slowly transitions into me or my or I, and even sometimes the they and the them, like the kids and the boss and the friends. David and I at times have forgotten that we, and when we find ourselves in that spot, it's because we've lost sight of one of God's main purposes for marriage, and David's actually going to talk about that for just a minute.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, in Genesis, chapter two, we see that God gives Eve to Adam. It was a solution to a problem that God himself identified. He says in Genesis two it's not good for man to be alone. I mean, no truer words have been said, but he's got an answer. He says I'm going to make a helper that is suitable for him, and this is one of the best verses in the Bible.

Speaker 3:

I thank God for that every day, for that helper, because up until this point in creation, god had stated over and, over and over again it's good, it's good, it's good.

Speaker 3:

And for the first time God says whoa, that's actually not good. I think I need to do a little bit of something special, something extra here, to allow this man to have someone who's going to serve alongside him and help steward this creation that I've just given them Well at Vows to Keep. We sit with couples who come to us all the time and it's like they're in this state of forgetfulness a state that we actually can see in Adam and Eve at a certain point where they're lost in sin, in selfishness. They are totally confused about how could I ever get back to the we that we're talking about? The problem is that the me and the my has gotten so big I can't actually see anything else. They've forgotten maybe they never actually understood at all that God intended a purpose for their marriage, and that is something that, when they're not focused on that purpose, it prepares them for marital defeat at the hands of the enemy.

Speaker 2:

And that enemy we can see back in Genesis, chapter three. He's already starting to work. He's working to convince us even now, like he convinced Eve. Hey, you're better off alone, you're better off just chasing after, trying to capture, through any means, what feels good to you, what is going to make you feel good and whole and wise, to get us to that place of isolation where we believe that lie. We're each in our own camps. The enemy is this type of tug and war argument between us. Now, maybe you and your spouse don't argue, maybe it's just a silent argument, or maybe it's an all out screaming match. I don't know what your home looks like, but there is a tug of war where we as couples, and then as individuals, we're going to try to say, hey, this is how we're going to spend our time and our money and our talents. And, like David just did to me, he yanks one way and I yank the other, and we end up in the mud in the middle. We want so badly, I think, sometimes for our spouse just to get us.

Speaker 2:

Like I just want you to understand me and get on board with my plans, and I get tired of waiting for you to come alongside me.

Speaker 3:

I get tired of waiting for you to come alongside me. I get tired of waiting for you to be my cheerleader and my advocate. This back and forth can go on for a lifetime. We've met couples that have been married for 30, 40, 50 years and the deep hurt, the deep bitterness and resentment, the unforgiveness I mean it is everywhere in their relationship. Why is that? Well, here's the punchline when our spouse doesn't show interest in what we're doing, we translate that into the fact that they're not interested in me.

Speaker 2:

Now it's going to sound like just for a minute I'm veering off our topic here, but trust me, bear with me, I'm going to come right back to it. This all is going to make sense in a second. So Vows to Keep is a not-for-profit marriage ministry. I don't know if you knew that or not, but that means that we fundraise in order to minister to couples. We do that through radio, through events all throughout the year and through couple-to-couple counseling, and we've learned in this fundraising process that there's a progression that people make, and David kind of alluded to it a little bit earlier. But people can go from being an observer and this would be someone who just knows about us and is like, yeah, you go, you Someone who's a participant, and that would be someone who is a radio listener, someone who comes to one of our events.

Speaker 3:

That'd be you.

Speaker 2:

Absolutely. And then there's the champions, and those are the people who say I'm going to give to you every single month because I'm on mission with you. I don't just approve of your mission with a thumbs up. I I'm on mission with you. I don't just approve of your mission with a thumbs up, I want to be working alongside you. They're the ones that send people to us for counseling. They're the ones that come to the events and they volunteer at the events.

Speaker 3:

So it's an evolution that we actually are optimistic, that all of you as radio listeners, that's a transition that we hope you are making and we want to be on mission together with you to really build this body of Christ, especially the marriage part, the family part of it. And when all of us work together and do our part, we can accomplish what Ephesians 4 talks about. And that's what we mean by champion. It's someone who is yoked up with you plowing the same ground as God's called you to work. So let's shift gears and go back to your marriage, thinking about that progression from being an observer to a participant, to someone who's a champion and really an owner of a cause.

Speaker 3:

Maybe your spouse hasn't gotten to that level with you, maybe they're still kind of watching to see what you do and really observing. Or maybe they know your patterns, they know what's coming next and, frankly, they're kind of tired of it. They're almost to the point where they've given up trying to change you even. Or maybe you haven't gotten to that level for them. You feel like, okay, I've tried to participate in what they're doing and, honestly, it really didn't pay off. In fact, maybe I even got burned. Or you saw your spouse give some fickle attempt at participating in something that meant a lot to you, but they didn't stick it out for the long run, so why should I do that for them?

Speaker 2:

So in today's broadcast of Vows to Keep Radio, we're going to talk about what it means to be your spouse's champion, why you're called to do it, what keeps us on the sidelines in that observer camp for long periods of time.

Speaker 2:

And we're going to answer some of the questions you might already be thinking about in the back of your head, like what if what they're after is sinful? What do I do with that? I don't want to champion that, or maybe it's not sinful, but it's selfish and I don't want to feed into that. So what's my position? We're going to get to all that, so we're really glad you're here today. So the first thing we're going to jump into today is what it means to champion your spouse. I want to put this in the light of kids for just a minute, david, because we are very committed to our kids' interests. We rearrange our entire lives sometimes to make their success possible. We want to give our kids the best shot at a happy life, and that causes us to do something kind of interesting, to shift our priorities and expend energy really at great expense, and we do it all again in a heartbeat, that's for sure.

Speaker 3:

That's culturally the norm.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, we never consider letting someone else take over the role of getting them to all their practices and being the assistant coach and getting all the special treats for the special day. In short, we go all out, no matter the expense, to our pockets, our time, our energy. We actually counted our duty and our pleasure to be our kids' greatest champion. So what makes the difference in how we react to what our kids want versus what our spouse wants? I think two things in particular. We see our kids' future and we see our kids' hearts. We're soft to those things and so we react. Now the vice versa of that is we've stopped seeing our spouse's future. We've stopped believing that they could grow and change and make a difference in someone else's life. We've stopped seeing their heart. We're blinded to what their true heart needs are. Or if we do see them, we don't want to get into the middle of the mess.

Speaker 3:

So, tracy, how is it that we can be really practical and actually have our spouse feel pursued?

Speaker 2:

Well, let's talk about a couple of ways, and I think I'm going to go back to your YouTube car analogy for just a minute here, because that is a wife going shoulder to shoulder with her husband. When we pull back the lens and we look at how our spouse spends their day, knowing what David likes, I could put down what's interesting to me and instead put on a pair of dirty overalls and just go out in the what if what they're doing is helping others in some way, something as simple as actually making dinner for your family or doing laundry?

Speaker 3:

Those are things where you can show them the value of that extra effort. Thank them, tell them that what they're doing is making a difference and it matters. When your spouse is up to something that you can see, maybe through your eyes, doesn't have value. So often what we tend to do is just react with like why are you doing this Seriously, like again Tonight?

Speaker 3:

But what if we could look at it differently? What if we could see the value in what they're doing and encourage them? Something like identifying where perseverance is really required, where faithfulness is essential, or having a lot of patience? Those are all things where you can encourage someone in what they're doing. Even if the cause isn't one you personally resonate with, you can still get engaged. You can still be an encourager to them.

Speaker 2:

So one way in our house that David really practically pursues me is by giving me margin to pursue a goal that I have set or something that God's laid on my heart, and we're gonna be doing an entire broadcast coming up in this powerful pursuit series on this. But I want to touch on it really briefly here. I bet that your spouse is having a hard time finding time to reach their goals. So give them that time. Be their champion in that by taking over another responsibility that they have and making it possible for them to pursue what matters to them. So why do we need to be our spouse's champion? I think to answer that we got to go back to the Garden of Eden, back where Satan first started to kind of worm his way in and create this isolation game that us, as the human race, is still playing today.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, in God's perfect design. We can look back in Genesis 2, and he sends Eve to be all of these things that we've just talked about to Adam. Adam's going to need her to fulfill his God-given role in life.

Speaker 2:

And if you look back at Genesis 2.18, it says it's not good for man to be alone. I'm going to make a helper suitable for him. I want to look at that word helper for just a second. In the Hebrew, the original language is the word ezer. Now don't quote me if I'm pronouncing that correctly or not, but it's actually used only in the Old Testament and it's usually used to describe God which I think is really interesting as a helper, as a protector, a rescuer and a savior, and thank the Lord that God gives us the human equivalent of his love for us right here in this marriage relationship. But if you look at this word easer used for God, he's a helper who sees our future. He sees our heart, just like you see your kids' future and your kids' heart. He sees our greatest need and he's taken up our cause.

Speaker 2:

If you look at this progression from observer to participant to champion and you look how God, where he's at in that, in your life, he's not a bystander, he's not a part-time participant only engaging with you when it's convenient for him. He is your absolute champion, who sees past your selfish desires and sees to your greatest need.

Speaker 3:

You are so perfectly positioned inside of marriage. You're handpicked and lovingly placed in your spouse's life to champion them. Think about that. It's so easy to lose sight of this, to forget the we and to start to focus on the me, and when our heart gets bitter toward our spouse for not really having them, see us and what matters to us. That's the reason why it's so critical that we stay in lockstep with our champion, jesus Christ, because without Jesus, oh, you can get sideways on this so easily.

Speaker 3:

Hebrews 12 says this let us run with perseverance the race that's marked out for us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of our faith, for the joy set before him. He endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. Consider him who endured such opposition from sinners. So that you will not grow weary and lose heart, we need to keep a close eye on our heart and our motivation, and that's because there's consequences for not being our spouse's champion, and I can think of four that just jump right out to me.

Speaker 3:

The first is that your spouse may find someone else to go shoulder to shoulder with. Maybe that's already happening in your marriage. The second is this gap between us inside of our marriage grows wider, grows bigger. The third is that they might actually be your spouse, might actually be hindered in fulfilling their God-given mission in life without you being a part of it. And the fourth is the witness about who God is the story that our marriage is designed to tell. The light that our marriage is supposed to bring into the world. Well, it's dimmed.

Speaker 2:

So what keeps us from being our spouse's champion? What keeps us just taking the easy way out being that observer? Well, generally it's because what our spouse is into is just not our preference. And you know what? I've also got my own agenda, so I'm going to give a quick example of a couple that we have in our life.

Speaker 2:

The husband comes home from work and one of his favorite things to do is sit down and catch up on current events. That is very important to him and he's so into it that a lot of times he brings his phone to the dinner table and he's still kind of checking out the social media, watching the news. This is what their daily practice is. And the wife is getting frustrated because she's at the table saying hey, connect with me, go eye to eye with me, I really want you to invest in the kids. And she's saying why aren't you interested in what I'm interested in? Why aren't you asking about my day, about my feisty conversation with my mom that we had? I really need to talk through this. Or here's what happened with the kids. And he's saying that's just mundane to me, like I don't want to go through that again. I don't want to talk about that financial situation again. I want you to be interested in me. So here they are. They're in this tug of war that you and I have been talking about this entire time. They're both saying look at me, look at me. Neither is giving to the other person.

Speaker 2:

Here's a possible scenario for their life, and I'm not God, I don't know everything, but here's something that I would do so she could sit down with him and watch the news with him and maybe even discuss it afterwards. And I love how God's word can come into the middle of this David because she could actually be the reminder to him that God is in control, that we don't know what's going to happen. And if we get too wrapped up in some of the news type stuff, we can start to get discouraged and we start to forget that God is sovereign. And here's something he could do. He could acknowledge that she put in a long day with those kiddos. He could thank her for being financially responsible when she tells him about a good deal that she found online, rather than just kind of rolling his eyes. He could encourage her to be a witness to her mom when they talk on the phone next time. There are ways that that tug of war can just come to a complete halt when they start making their spouse's agenda their agenda.

Speaker 3:

What we're trying to say is that this isn't about making your marriage about the topics of the news and the kids and so on. What we're trying to say is you need to build your marriage foundation on pursuing God together, but in the process of doing that, you're going to be also pursuing your spouse. God is madly in love with your spouse and he might have you take interest in what interests them to show them his love. So let's take a few minutes, tracy, and talk about those burning questions that are in the back of our minds when we think about what it means to pursue our spouse.

Speaker 2:

One of them is what if my spouse's cause? What if their goal is an ungodly one? Aren't I justified in being resistive to that?

Speaker 3:

And this is such a good question. I actually would say we absolutely have a biblical responsibility to admonish our spouse in areas where what they're pursuing is wrong, it's sinful, and God will use your actions even more than your voice. So be very thoughtful about how you approach this. Don't try to take on the role of the Holy Spirit, but be willing to live in a way that really shows and represents Christ to them. This means that you need to know biblically exactly what you're standing on. Use God's word as the standard. What forms your opinion, and don't make it be about your opinion purely, because all it takes is one time where your spouse realizes you know what your objection is really, just because your personal preference and my personal preference don't align. This isn't a scriptural issue and guess what? You've blown your credibility for how you might confront them in other times. You want to make sure that pleasing you is never going to define what's right and wrong, but instead that God's word, that scripture, defines what's right and wrong.

Speaker 2:

So let's look at a second question that you may be thinking right now. So maybe their pursuit isn't sinful, but it's kind of selfish and it's taken away from our time together. You want me to feed into that? Won't that just make things worse?

Speaker 3:

The way that we judge others, the Bible says, is actually the same way in which we will be judged, and that is a hard, hard thing to think about in the context of what we're talking about.

Speaker 3:

If we're honest, we all struggle with being selfish, and probably the agenda that you are wanting your spouse to drop is so that they'll pick up your agenda. And that's a tough thing when we're being honest with ourselves, because it's so easy to justify that what I want is more good, more right. There's all these ways that we can find our cause more worthy. At the end of the day, a lot of times it's actually not about that at all. Over the long haul, you're not going to go wrong in being someone who puts other people's agenda, especially your spouse's agenda, ahead of your own.

Speaker 3:

Of course, keeping in mind God's agenda is actually first. What that means is, I'm telling you you have to be third, because God has designed your marriage in such a way that he rewards the person who is last with the benefits of those who come first. And it may not come right away. I mean, it might be the next day, it might be several months before your spouse really realizes what you're doing and how you're serving them. It might be years, it might be the day you set your foot in heaven before you see the fruit of that investment. I think it's easy for someone who is not a believer to become pretty self-absorbed and actually say, oh good, now that you're in the mode of serving me, you know.

Speaker 2:

Here's my list.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, exactly. But when you put this in the context of what we're called to do in God's word, I mean, there's some people I know that are going to be listening to this and they're thinking, okay, my spouse isn't a believer, and of course what they want is selfish. Well, guess what your mission is? To win them over, and the way that you do that is with the love of Christ. You do that consistently over time, and they will soon realize that, in fact, they are not your mission, but rather your pursuit of God is something which causes you to pursue them. Let me say it this way it's less about your spouse's cause, it's more about being eager to make you more about them.

Speaker 2:

So, as a way to wrap this up today on Vows to Keep Radio, if we are to pursue our spouse by pursuing their interests, by pursuing their pursuits, let's start by looking at our agenda, because we realize that that gets in the way. So let's get all those obstacles out of the way right now. A way you can do this, practically speaking, is after we're done here, take a few minutes out of your day.

Speaker 3:

Homework.

Speaker 2:

Answer Absolutely.

Speaker 2:

We're biblical counselors. There's some homework thrown in here. Take a few minutes to answer these questions. I actually want you to write them down. What are the causes that I care about? And those are probably going to come pretty easily to your mind. Write them down. What are my plans? What are my goals? List them. After you've written them out, here's what I want you to do. I want you to categorize them in three ways, and we've got these on our website, so if you don't have time to write them down right now, you can go to vows2keepcom and find them in this broadcast.

Speaker 2:

Number one is this a godly pursuit? Is this, for God's kingdom, something that, as a marriage, we should both be committed to, something that I am really just eye to eye with God on? I am all in on his kingdom in this thing? Is that what this pursuit is? Or is this a non-sinful pursuit, something that might be a hobby or just an interest of mine? The things that sum up those personal preferences. They cannot be defended as top priorities, but they help us to know what we are all about. I think writing stuff like this down helps you to know what I'm putting in top priority, and maybe some of those need to flip now. And then number three does this fall into the potentially sinful category? Or maybe this is a pursuit that is going to trigger a sin down the road? And if I nip it in the bud now, with God's help it's not going to turn into a sin?

Speaker 3:

So then, after you've had a chance to consider your own agenda, now we're going to ask you to do the same thing for your spouse, again considering what's meaningful to them. And, if you don't know, this is a great conversation to have, and the best part is when you share with them what your goal is in asking this question, you are going to really start a pretty cool effect in your marriage this week. Ask yourself, how can you be an encourager, how can you provide margin and resources, how can you get right in the middle of what they're up to and how can you go shoulder to shoulder with each other?

Speaker 2:

Answering that and taking action on those things is going to take you from being an observer into the spot of participant all the way. So your spouse feels that you are their champion, they will feel pursued and your me and your my and your I is going to go quickly back to God's original intent of we.

Speaker 1:

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. Like what you heard today on Vows to Keep Radio, listen to more life-changing broadcasts at VowsToKeepcom. This program is sponsored by Vows to Keep of Zanesfield, ohio.

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David Sellars

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Tracy Sellars

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