The VowsToKeep Marriage Podcast

Undoing the Pain of Sinful History in Marriage :: [Ep. 291]

• David & Tracy Sellars • Episode 291

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Speaker 1:

Welcome to Vows to Keep Radio with David and Tracy Sellers. Our mission is to help couples develop biblically healthy marriages through the application of God's Word and a deeper relationship with Him. We 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:

Our history together is what binds us, but in marriage it can be the very thing that rips us in half. When I lack the history with you. When you're nice at first, you know I've got a blind trust for you, but after years of being together that history becomes overwhelming evidence against that trust. Is it possible that we can undo our history? Can we wipe the slate clean? Can you become one with someone that you have so much history with? In other words, can two become one, drift fragment back into two, only to honor God and actually become one again into two, only to honor God and actually become one again? Join me today on Vows to Keep Radio as we think about undoing the pain of sinful history with our spouse. We're going to unpack where the divide comes from, why we have to work to remove it and what to do differently so that we can have healthy hearts and a sweet oneness in our marriage.

Speaker 3:

You haven't traveled too far down this road to turn around. It is possible how? Find out in today's episode of Vows to Keep Radio, the show where you get sound biblical counsel you can apply immediately to your marriage. We're your hosts, David and Tracy. Sellers of Vows to Keep, David and I are biblical marriage counselors, authors, teachers, podcast hosts, radio hosts and conference speakers. If you want to get back to being on fire for your spouse and for God, you are definitely in the right place.

Speaker 2:

Coming undone is something that marriages seem to be doing all around us. I don't know a single adult who hasn't witnessed it. When I left home as an 18-year-old boy, the tension in my parents' marriage was getting hard to deny. Now I had seen many successful years, but as I was leaving home, I feared for what was to come. They would have disagreements that ended not with resolution but with an escalating byplay of fiery words. They didn't swear at each other, but these exchanges ended badly when, inevitably, one person walked away with that same righteous honorary retreat, as if it was more noble for them to stop than to actually consider the biblical response to the anger that was brewing inside them. So the discussion was over, but the problem was not. It was silently added to the rest of the problems that had been left in the same situation. The minor misunderstandings became frustrations, which led to pain and personal suffering, and then hardness and then silence. About all these topics. There became a point where being one seemed impossible.

Speaker 2:

Slowly, the ties of love were being undone. The passion for each other was being overcome by a desire to be free. About midway through this progression, couples see themselves as having things like quote-unquote, communication problems or intimacy problems, and I'm here to tell you that, for most of them, communication and intimacy are the least of the worries. Coming undone is, if it's not you, who do you know that's on that slippery slope of a marriage being undone. They may not see the writing on the wall, but you do. You know this isn't going to end well. What if we could undo the hurt, undo the divide? What if we could right the wrongs and get back to being one?

Speaker 2:

Most relationships start out well. It wasn't strained like this, always. In fact, in the case of my parents, fundamentally the problem wasn't that they didn't love each other or Jesus. They both did. The problem was a lack of biblical obedience, starting with the smallest, littlest things in their marriage. Sin undealt with whether it's your own sin or your spouse's becomes a rock in your shoe that, sooner or later, is going to cause you to limp. It's going to cause you to misstep. Romans 6.23 says the wages of sin is death. It's a spiritual death that we're talking about, a death that separates. Sin separates and it puts an end to all that is good in our marriage. But God, in his grace, has a solution and that's what we're going to talk about today. Whether you're in the position of needing forgiveness or you're in that tight spot where you need to forgive, maybe even repeatedly. What we have in store for you today is an action plan for undoing the pain of the past.

Speaker 2:

He just throws his clothes on the floor and expects some clothes fairy to pick up after him. If I work my butt off, and this many years into our marriage, I never have any money for the things I want to do.

Speaker 3:

The garbage doesn't haul itself and he thinks by making a tower out of the garbage he's freeing himself from hauling it.

Speaker 2:

She knows my needs. She wouldn't take 15 minutes to give to me unless all the stars aligned and the house was in perfect condition. I feel worthless in my spouse's eyes, and that's offensive. These kind of thoughts build in our lives. So what comes next in our heads is justification. This isn't what I signed up for. I give, I get nothing in return. I'm going to take it a little more easy and see if my spouse realizes just how much I do for them. Maybe that'll make him care.

Speaker 3:

I don't have a choice. He's pushed me over the edge.

Speaker 2:

Justification to make your actions dependent upon your spouse rather than God. Undoing to become one means realizing this marriage is a covenant, it's not a contract. Maybe I'm not intended to be a spectator to the change in my spouse, but actually myself being forced to change my view to the degree that I'm actually useful, being a tool in God's hands for change in my spouse's life.

Speaker 3:

We're going to dig into this topic by taking a flyover. Look at the book of Micah. Micah is in the Old Testament. Let me tell you a little bit about it. Micah lived in a small town in the southern kingdom of Judah about the same time as Isaiah. Israel had been violating their covenant with their God and Israel was split into two parts. Micah warned the people that God wasn't going to let that happen. God would allow Assyria to take out the northern kingdom and even destroy Jerusalem. Micah also warned them that Babylon would bring an even greater destruction. A lot of this book is Micah's accusations and warning of God's judgment, but Micah also had a message of hope that God would bring restoration. On the other side of his judgment, micah gets into a fight with Israel's leaders. He says that they become wealthy through theft and greed and Israel's leaders have run the land through bribery.

Speaker 2:

And this is actually not too different from the kinds of issues we see as counselors in marriage. One takes from the other and then it's a let's make a deal bribery between a husband and a wife. In Micah. They warn of how Jerusalem is going to fall and the temple will be reduced to ruins. Not good things here. These are very stiff warnings, but they're not the final word that we read in this book. What I mean is that God brings a promise of hope.

Speaker 2:

In chapter four it describes the image of a ruined Jerusalem temple. Micah says this is not going to be permanent. Now we learn after the Assyrian attack, israel is going to be conquered and exiled to Babylon, but from there God's going to restore his people and bring them back to their land. In the new Jerusalem, a new king from the line of David will come. Jesus is what's actually being revealed here in Micah through a prophecy spoken 700 years before Jesus would even come. Now Micah is basically delivering this message If you make bad decisions, you don't need the devil to ruin your life. Micah's message came in three ways, and each one begins with a challenge to hear God. All three times he moves from consequences of being disobedient to a hope in God's restoring power.

Speaker 2:

Micah 6.8 summarizes what it means for Israel to follow their God. He says what does the Lord require of you? To act justly, to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God. This is exactly what Israel has not been doing, and so they're going to come to ruin. It doesn't have to be this way. We can undo the past with confession, repentance and, finally, forgiveness.

Speaker 2:

The observations that Micah makes you might be making in your home. You're married to a sinner. So are they. Whether you fight over money or sex or raising your kids, your marriage history can be undone, bringing two back to one. When sin runs rampant and hateful, hurtful words fly across the room between a husband and a wife, when isolation is the norm, most couples are looking for a way to undo their marriage rather than a way to redo their marriage. Can I call you to a different challenge? Now I get it. Your heart is hurt and it's easier to shut off the feelings, to shut out the godly advice. It's easier to harden your heart. Many would say why would I want to reconcile to my spouse who has done hurtful things to me?

Speaker 3:

But maybe you're the one who does want things to be redone with your spouse the kind of unity you used to have. But try as you might, none of your attempts at biting your tongue or voicing your feelings holds any hope. Let's get this truth out in the open today. Reconciliation begins at the heart level. There will be no peace with your spouse without addressing first what's in your own heart. And you might be thinking hey, I've been trying. It's my spouse's heart that needs to change for this to work.

Speaker 2:

And I want your spouse's heart to change. I don't want to defend them, I don't even know them, but if you're married, god wants you to stay married to that person. You can't change their heart, I know that's true, but God can. So in the meantime, model the love of Christ to them and pray for God to change your heart. That's where undoing the hurt begins with you now, not when both of you are on the same point. Maybe your wife is further behind you in that thought process of undoing your history and becoming one again. Don't wait for her to have a heart change before you do the right thing.

Speaker 1:

If you have a marriage question, please email questions at vows2keepcom. 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:

Now you asked the question, I want to answer it. Why would you want to reconcile to a spouse who's done hateful and hurtful things to you? Well, God puts the answer in 2 Corinthians and it's here, plain and simple. 2 Corinthians 5.15 says For the love of Christ, controls and compels us. You know, Micah was actually trying to relay the costs and benefits of being controlled by God. If you read the whole chapter of 2 Corinthians 5, we see the gospel of Jesus for our own hearts, but we also see the saving gospel of Jesus for our marriages.

Speaker 3:

I want you to think back to when you first became a Christian. When I first accepted Christ as my Savior, I was just a little girl. I understood that I was a sinner and I fessed up to the fact that you know what. I can't do anything about my sin, and someone took the time to tell me how to become a Christian. I took a little step that became a giant leap from eternal death into eternal life, simply because I heard truth, I confessed and I believed. It wasn't until a year or two into our marriage before I had been discipled to the point that I realized that the good news of my sins being forgiven wasn't just a one-time event to look back on Daily.

Speaker 3:

I'm a sinner, so that means daily I need my Savior. Jesus doesn't come for us because we're clean, pure people. He comes for me in the moment that I'm at my worst. It's his daily grace that changes me. Now I can offer grace to my husband, to others, as I understand that I live and enjoy that same grace, that relationship with God, every single moment of every single day.

Speaker 2:

It's with this mindset and an eye on God's power for our own salvation that we realize that our marriages can be reconciled. Let me read from 2 Corinthians 5. It says for the love of christ controls and compels us. Since we believe that christ died for all, we also believe that we have all died to our old life. He died for everyone so that those who receive his new life will no longer live for themselves. Instead, they will live for christ, who died and was raised for them.

Speaker 2:

So we've stopped evaluating others, our spouses included, from a human point of view. At one time we thought of Christ merely from a human point of view. How differently we know him now. Verse 17 says this means that anyone who belongs to Christ has become a new person, that old life is gone, a new life has begun, and all of this is a gift from God, who brought us back to himself through Christ. And God has given us this task of reconciling people to him, and he gave us this wonderful message of reconciliation Because we're Christ's ambassadors. God is making his appeal through us. We speak for Christ when we plead. Come back to God, be reconciled to God, for God made Christ, who never sinned, to be the offering for our sin, so that we could be made right with God through Christ.

Speaker 3:

This might hurt to hear, but it's only in our sinful pride that we reject this message. Pride says we would be happier apart from our spouse. We foolishly look at our spouse from our own point of view. We plainly see their mistakes towards us. But God asks us to exemplify Jesus to our spouse, to love them like he loved us.

Speaker 2:

To accept a check of our pride. We were once far away, our sin had separated us from God, but God patiently waited for us to turn back to him and to accept this free gift of salvation. You don't have to make your spouse pay for all the wrong they've done to you. Jesus paid that price. He took the punishment for our sins upon himself, all of our sins, all of the sins of your spouse. He took the punishment for our sins upon himself. If we confess our sins, god is faithful and just to forgive your spouse. Has that same offer being held out to them that you did A Savior who lived a perfect life so that he could die a criminal's death in our place.

Speaker 2:

This is the light we need to shine in our spouse's life and especially where we see sin affecting our marriage. And if they don't know Jesus as Savior, pray that God will open the eyes of their heart to see If they are a believer but they're blinded by their sin. Pray that they would no longer be deceived by the enemy. Pray that their eyes, their hearts would be enlightened to the gospel once again, that they would have the courage and the humility to turn from their sin. But can I ask you to not pray that selfishly for you, because the pain that their sin creates in your life.

Speaker 2:

Replace your calls for freedom from all the junk in their life with a heart that says use me, god, let me be used in their life. Change my actions, my thoughts, my words into what would honor you, god. Undoing the past of your marriage is actually a high calling. It is an honor. There's never a situation so horrible that blocks us from being made right again. There's no person with a sin so grievous that God would turn his back on that man or that woman. Every person, every marriage can be redone.

Speaker 3:

So if undoing the past is possible for every heart, every marriage, how do we get there? Here's what you need to walk away with today. Write this down Undoing the past is first confession, then repentance and finally forgiveness. As we talk through each of these today, I don't want you to view each step with your spouse in mind For a moment. I want you to set aside their mess and to look at what you're called to do according to God's word, despite what your spouse chooses to do.

Speaker 2:

The first step, as Tracy said, is confession. James 5.17 says Confess your sins to one another and you will be healed when you're ready to seek reconciliation and you're completely looking at only your sins and not theirs. Your confession to your spouse will specifically admit sins and offenses that you have created and specifically identify the thoughts and the actions that led up to it, as well as acknowledge the hurt that you have caused. When your spouse sees that you recognize your sin, you recognize the impact. It softens their heart, but you might not see the fruit right away. At first. They might point out how long it took you to get to this point and, if that happens, hear them out. Then continue to share with them that your heart's desire is to be made right with them and with God. Pray right then and there, with your spouse as your witness. Repent before God, asking for both him and your spouse to forgive. This is powerful.

Speaker 2:

The second step is repentance. Promising to get better is not repentance. Many people make a lifelong habit of doing this. Repentance instead. It's a change of mind. It's an intellectual experience. It's also a change of feeling. It's an emotional experience. It's a change of purpose, a change of will. It's a change of conduct. Repentance is a divine gift. This is what Romans 12.2 means when it says Don't copy the behavior and the customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think. Repentance is recognizing that you're a sinner and your sin is a rebellion against God and what his word is asking you to do. Repentance is an unyielding turning to God and total obedience. I think it's tempting to see sin as small, especially when we want to compare it to our spouse's sin. It's easy to believe that. You know what. I don't really need to repent of my small, little sin until she repents of her much larger sin. But God's word tells us guess what we've all sinned and that every sin is worthy of spiritual death.

Speaker 3:

We're really bad at giving away something we don't have. Remember the verse we read earlier from 2 Corinthians 5.19? It says God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people's sins against them. God enabled us to be one with him through Jesus. Jesus was the bridge between you and God, and he's the bridge between you and God, and he's the bridge between you and your spouse. In Hosea 3.1, we see this word picture that says the Lord said to me go, show your love to your wife again, though she is loved by another man and is an adulteress. Love her as the Lord loves the Israelites. This is a picture of Christ being faithful to us in spite of our sins. It can be difficult in our humanness to even consider forgiving our spouse, but God's word calls us to nothing less than just that forgiveness. Forgiveness towards others comes when we remember how loving and gracious, and slow to anger and abounding in forgiveness, our God has been to us, and letting our renewed awareness of God's love for us compel us to forgive our spouse.

Speaker 2:

It's in forgiveness that oneness will take shape. Forgiveness is something that might need to be sought again and again, just like in our relationships with God. The reconciliation model we have been given with Christ gives us hope that you can have complete oneness in your marriage. So go to your spouse, confess, repent before God and ask for forgiveness, and then watch and see what the outcome is. You're going to see your marriage start to be undone and then redone. And if your spouse comes to you and asks for forgiveness, be ready and willing to extend what was extended to you. Restoration comes from the hand of the father, who binds up the broken and builds what was torn down. I love that passage out of Isaiah 61. Redoing your marriage will be a season of rebuilding trust. Respect resulted from applying god's truth. Change is not instantaneous, so be patient. It's not enough to just know the truth of scripture. They've got to be put into action. James 2, 26 says it very bluntly faith without deeds is dead. When the vertical relationship is in the place that it should be, your horizontal relationship with each other will reap the benefits your spouse may never reciprocate. In the meantime, you be the one to undo the past and redo for the future. You pray for them. Make it your goal to model your Savior's love daily to your spouse. As we close today, god has given you a ministry of reconciliation.

Speaker 2:

The book of Micah ends with this powerful note of hope. Israel is being described as an individual who's sitting alone in shame and defeat, and it's a clear image of Israel's destruction and exile that Micah had warned them about. And this individual is watching for God's mercy. He's begging God to listen and forgive. But why? Why should God forgive this faithless and rebellious people? The response in the text comes in the form of two reasons. The first is God's character, who is a God like you, who forgives sin and pardons rebellion. God's mercy is more powerful than his anger or his judgment. And the second reason is because of God's promises. It says you will stay true to Jacob and show the covenant love to Abraham you swore so long ago. Like God's covenant, our covenant in marriage is to be maintained. God's heartbeat is to bring you into the right relationship with him so that you can share what he's given you within your marriage and to the whole world.

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 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. And click on the donate link. No-transcript.

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David Sellars

Host
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Tracy Sellars

Host