If a marriage is having issues, something big needs to change.  Trying continually and not achieving any results can be exhausting.  Here we’ll teach you how to take care of the big issue so that the little issues won’t keep popping up.

    Kim and I had been married for about ten years and I was on my way home from a marriage counseling session one evening.  I always appreciated the twenty-minute drive home – it gave me time to think and deprogram from the events of the day. That night, I was thinking about how I had just spent the evening with another couple instead of my own family.  I found myself wondering why it was necessary to do marriage counseling. In other words, why do people need marriage counseling?  

    One of the things I came up with is that some people like to work on the symptoms of their problems, not the problems themselves.  Their comfort with the familiar is hard to move beyond. They often know deep down that there is a change that would improve their marriage, but they are either indifferent to it, don’t want to implement it, or don’t know how to.  Some people want to change almost enough to do something about it… but not quite. It is not unusual that they convince themselves that the issue is not with them, but with their spouse, and if their spouse would just (fill in the blank) everything would be better.  What they should keep in mind is that we all have things to work on.  Believe me, I have enough issues of my own to worry about instead of focusing on issues Kim may have!

    I don’t want to just work on surface issues.  I want to go to the root of the issue, and I’ll tear up everything to get to it.  I believe God went about solving our sin issue this way – He didn’t whitewash our sin just enough that we could get by with it.  Instead, He sent His son to die a horrific death that would wipe out the sins of those who would believe. You might say He went to the root of the problem and overcame sin.  

     Jesus didn’t die to make bad people good, but to make dead people live.  In doing so, He restores a relationship broken by sin and brings us back to God – back to life.  My sins are forgiven yesterday, today, and tomorrow. The sacrifice of Jesus is that big! Because I love God and appreciate my salvation, I don’t enjoy sinning (although my sin nature is still there).  The Holy Spirit shows me my sin and I ask Him for help to overcome and quit it. If I still enjoyed sin after this kind of commitment, it would be like a bank robber who said, “I’m doing good now. I used to rob five banks a month.  Now I only rob one bank a month.” God went directly to my sin and ripped it out by the roots.

   Okay, back to my ride home.  I was thinking about how people like to work on the symptoms of their marriage problems, and I began to ponder what the root of all marriage issues actually was.  I ran a lot of scenarios through my mind…

• I would never have to do another marriage counseling session if it weren’t for what?
• What would we have to eliminate from marriages to eliminate divorces?
• What causes disagreements in a marriage?
• What causes people to not see the other’s point of view?
• What takes a devotion strong enough to make people want to get married and turns it into an absence of devotion?
• What takes the passion of two people who get married and turns it into a passion to hurt the other person, both during the marriage and after the marriage ends?
• What would make this misdirected passion so awful that it would spill over to injure, and negatively shape the future of their children?

    It came to me that the “what” I was looking for was sin, but I wanted to dig deeper.  The “what” I was looking for, the root of all marriage problems is selfishness.  

    I went home and talked with Kim about this.   We talked about how God would have us handle selfishness in our marriage.  We talked and we decided that with God’s help, we would commit to crucifying selfishness in our marriage. Over the next few years, we concentrated on making this foreign concept a reality.  We soon discovered that the benefits of this mindset made us only want to embrace it more.   

For Mitch, it means pulling opinions out of Kim, who is normally pretty quiet.  It would be easy to do what I want, but being unselfish meant that I forfeited that for wanting what she wants.  I began to find that I really enjoyed hearing Kim’s opinion and doing what she wanted to do. Today, I am overjoyed when Kim smiles. This morning I took the puppy out to potty and then took Annie to bed with Kim, who was just waking up. Annie’s enthusiasm at seeing Kim made Kim laugh and smile.  That kind of thing fuels me and makes me feel like a good husband.

Kim here.  For me, this means that when I feel myself getting upset I stop to examine the situation and try to figure out why I am feeling this way instead of just reacting, and probably ending up regretting. 🙁

• Am I actually upset about something else that is going on in my life?
• Am I being overly sensitive?  This was definitely true when we were first married.
• Did I misunderstand the situation?  Clarify what was said or happened.

Many conflicts can be avoided by doing this!!

Also, when we were first married, both of us thought that we had to be right and win the argument.  That doesn’t work so well. Our relationship improved when both of us realized that there is more than one “right” way of doing things and for most things, it really doesn’t matter how it gets done, as long as it gets done.  Pulling together as a team and having unity is much more important than being “right”. When you stop and think about it, you’re actually going to be happier if you’re in harmony with your spouse and your relationship is going well than if you were “right.”

Mitch here – The benefits of these changes were that Kim felt honored that I would work to pull her opinion out and she also began to feel more freedom to talk to me in the future.   I felt more like the man God was calling me to be, which really helped my self-esteem. Also, when a man wants to make love, it is important that his wife respects him. Just listening and valuing what she has to say raises her respect for me a lot.

Kim here – Shifting your thinking to the “team” mentality pays big dividends!  When your spouse sees you putting your marriage ahead of your own will they will be encouraged to do the same. I love how Mitch and I both put “us” ahead of our own selves.

Now, I know that I will never be sinless.  I will still mess up from time to time because of my sinful nature.  But Jesus tells us in Matthew 5:48: Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.  I believe this is one of those verses that we just read and think it’s not attainable, so we overlook it.  Or maybe we believe that it’s a hyperbole… a poetic exaggeration. Salvation is by God’s grace. But after salvation, we are to strive to be like Christ.  How does this look in a marriage? Just as Christ died for the church, we are to die to our spouse.

Paul tells us to work out our salvation.  Of course, we know salvation is not attainable through our works, but only by God’s grace.  Working out our salvation means we need to let our appreciation for our salvation change us over a lifetime.  It means that we remove our old self and put on God’s self. We know that we are positionally perfect in God’s eyes because of the boundless sacrifice of Christ.  It is not in His plan for us to be indifferent to His purpose after salvation. I believe it is God’s plan for us to be so amazed by our salvation that it propels us forward in our faith.  

In Philippians 3:13-14 Paul tells us,  Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.  I still remember one of my professors teaching us that the scripture implies that we lean into our Christian walk as a sprinter crossing the finish line.  

Crucifying selfishness means putting off myself and my ways and putting on God and His ways.

I had a vivid experience with Kim years ago that reinforced my belief in crucifying selfishness.  She read the book A Wife After God’s Own Heart by Elizabeth George and as she went through it, she became more and more Christ-like in her thoughts and actions.  As I saw God working in her life, I fell in love with her deeper than ever! It helped me realize that Kim striving to be a Godly wife made me want her and want to please her.  To me, the result of crucifying selfishness looks like this. I don’t know that I could in my flesh ever totally please Kim, but if I strive to be the man God wants me to be I have found that Kim is enthralled with me.  

If each of you crucifies selfishness in yourself and your marriage, honestly rooting out the causes of your problems and striving to be more like Christ, you’ll find many of your problems disappearing.

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