4 Principles for Changing your Spouse

Introduction

I am going to pass out a sheet of paper to every married person here tonight and I want you to begin working on it for a couple minutes. This sheet I have titled the “Help Me Change My Spouse” Inventory sheet and as the message progresses I think it will become clear what its purpose is tonight. I thought about having you fill out this sheet right here in the service, but I don’t want you to miss out on anything I am about to say. So I handed these sheets out to your after the morning service. If you have your sheet and you filled it out please hold it up in the air.

Tonight’s topic is How to Change Your Spouse. I think many marriages are frustrated because their spouse has some problems that just get on your nerves and you wish they would just change. Maybe your husband yells at you whenever the house is a mess. Or your wife constantly ignores the dishes for a week and it whigs you out so much. Little things seem to eat away at the marriage and maybe you aren’t miserable in your marriage, but you are struggling to feel happy in your marriage. You are probably thinking, “If I could just change my spouse, our marriage would be so much better.”

This past week for VBS we talked about the idea of Experiencing Change. In life if you are not changing physically, something is wrong with your development. In Spiritual matters the same thing applies. If you are not changing, you are not growing in your walk with the Lord. This principle also applies to Marriage.

The honest truth is that statistically, 60% of the issues that bug a spouse will never change. You can beat your head against a rock and it will have more effect. One example that I often see in marriages is the issue of showing up on time. Being habitually late is a stronghold in people’s lives, it is an ingrained pattern of sin in their lives created by years of practice. It may never go away. Before you get into marriage you need to find out as many of these issues as you can during premarital counseling and decide if these things are something you can live with. You will never know all the issues until after you get marriage which is why it is so important in marriage to learn to accommodate and accept that your spouse is not perfect.

But does that mean you do nothing? This message will probably be geared more towards the wife because often the wife is the one pushing to make the relationship better while the husband is oblivious or occupied by sports. But that is not always the case. The principles of this message can also be applied to any relationship where the other person’s faults bug us.

Text: Matt 7:1-5

(let’s read this text substituting the word partner for brother)

Principle of Fairness vs 2

These messages dealing with marriage have increasingly become practical application of general truths in the bible. With that in mind, I am structuring the message tonight around Four Principles for Changing your Spouse. The first principle is the principle of fairness. The entire chapter deals with the issue of judging. The word judge literally means to form a critical opinion (whether positive or negative) by examination or scrutiny. It is simply the word used for discerning. If you do a study on judging in the bible, you will find that Jesus is not telling us no to judge. People make the mistake of stopping at verse one. In other passages, Jesus tells us to judge. The issue is how do you discern or judge.

Vs 2 tells us that we should be reasonable and fair in the way we judge because to the level we judge others, we will be judged. When it comes to marriage it is easy to become so focused on our spouses fault’s that we do not see any of our own. One of the reason’s I gave you that inventory sheet is to illustrate this truth. How easy was it for you to come up with answers for your spouse’s faults column? Now think, how hard was it to come up with more than one or two items on your own fault list. When it comes to pointing fingers, we can easily see the problems in others, but are blind to our own faults.

1. The first question you need to ask yourself is “Am I being fair in my judgment of my husband?” Maybe you are and there are some real issues that need to be dealt with. This is principle number one because we need to lay a foundation. If you eat ice cream every night before bed, it wouldn’t be quite fair to tell your husband he can’t, would it?

2. The second question I want you to ask yourself is “Am I giving grace?” Sometimes people are just going to have a bad day. Sometimes there is a ton of baggage that they have to work through. We all have struggles. Am I willing to love, forgive and overlook things. Grace is favor that we don’t deserve. Your husband may not deserve your grace. Maybe he is a slob and doesn’t care, but in light of all you have been forgiven, can you not forgive him.

3. The third question I want your to ask here is “Am I being reasonable?” Sometimes what you see as a problem might actually just be another way of doing things. A lot of people cast judgment because they do not understand why someone would do what they would do. You may not have all the facts. How many times have we gotten angry at our spouse for being late only to find out that the car broke down or the baby had a blowout or they got stuck in traffic?

Principle of Observation vs 3-4

The second principle is the principle of observation. What is it that you are focused on? If all you ever do is think about, stew over, and talk about what your spouse has done wrong, it will make you feel miserable. We call this constantly going over something in your head meditation. Are you meditating on your spouses faults? Verse three asks us why beholdest though the mote that is in thy brother’s eye? Why are you looking at his faults and not your own?

A. We can lose sight of our own problems

Imagine if you will for a minute that you live in a house that is in a flood zone and one day after there has been weeks of rain, you look out your window to see that the water is almost to your neighbors house. You call to make sure they are aware of the problem. They don’t seem to be concerned. What you don’t know is that they have built up a barricade to keep the water our and the weather is calling for sun the rest of the day. You can’t believe they won’t listen to you. After all you were just trying to help. You get steamed and storm off. As you walk down the stairs you get halfway down and you feel wet. The entire time you were focused on your neighbors house, you missed the fact that your own house was flooded.

If we are focused on our spouse’s problems, we can become blind to our own. Our own house can be flooded but we don’t see it because we are looking at the wrong things.

B. We can lose sight on what truly matters Col 3:2 “Set your affection on things above, not on things on the earth.” If my eyes are on my spouses problems, they are not on God. If my eyes are on all the problems I face here on earth, I am not heavenly minded. This really comes down to a trust issue. Can I trust God with the fault’s of my spouse or do I have to be the one to fix the problems? I have enough on my plate dealing with my own fault’s to be concerned with fixing my spouse on my own.

Where is your focus?

Principle of Dealing with Self vs 5

The primary emphasis of Jesus’ teaching here is that before you can help anyone else you need to deal with yourself. Notice Jesus says, First. The very first thing you need to do when dealing with your spouses problems is fix your own problems. Relationships involve two people: you and your spouse. You may not be able to do anything about your spouse, but the one person you can change is yourself. I have used this phrase as a challenge to everyone in the church quite often Be the change you want to see in other people. The best way to influence someone is to be what you want them to be before them.

I listened to an interview with Dr. Gary Thomas recently on this issue and he told the story of a wife who was so frustrated with her marriage because her husband was always gone during fishing and hunting season. He was emotionally and physically absent and then when those seasons were over, he was consumed with his work. She made the choice to ask what he called the magic question which he doesn’t necessarily advise everyone to do but it worked in her case:

What do you want me to do for you that I am not doing? His first response was to tell her to make sure the dishes got cleaned. Obviously this aggravated her but she did it. She asked him again and he pointed out a problem that she had with one her daughters. Because she listened to his advice, she was able to repair that relationship with her daughter. Over time, he began to notice the change in her and he opened up to talk about issues and now they have the best marriage they have ever had in 44 years.

Let me give you two pieces on encouragement in this matter:

A marriage is based on two people; so when one of them starts taking steps to make their part of the marriage better, the marriage is always better. Your marriage will be better even if your spouse never admits he was wrong and takes steps to fix it because you have a clean conscience and you are now free to have a positive influence on that relationship.

The second word of encouragement I can give you is that you might just influence them to change. Remember 1 Peter 3: :1-2 “Likewise, ye wives, be in subjection to your own husbands; that, if any obey not the word, they also may without the word be won by the conversation of the wives; While they behold your chaste conversation coupled with fear.” Nagging rarely accomplishes its goal, but seeing the change in you might just get your attention. It can open up opportunities to have those conversations that you need to have. It can inspire them to want to be different.

How do we deal with our own problems?

confess them to God 1 John 1:9 “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”

Accept God’s forgiveness

Have a clear conscience- Acts 24:16 “And herein do I exercise myself, to have always a conscience void of offence toward God, and toward men.” If you have sinned against your spouse, you can empty your conscience by going to him and confessing. He may not respond the way that he needs to, but then you have a second opportunity to live with a clean conscience. If you explode with tears, angry words or flying saucers you need to go back to step one.

Principle of Influence vs 5

Now does that mean you sit back and don’t try to fix the problem’s your spouse brings to the marriage? No otherwise I would never have preached an entire message on communication in marriage. Jesus didn’t stop with telling you to fix yourself. He said First cast out the beam out of your own eye but then you will be able to see clearly to help your brother. You can’t change your spouse; only god can do that, but you can influence them.

First think about why you want to change your spouse: If your motive for changing your spouse is to get them to love you the way you want to be loved, this is the height of Narcissism. It is all about you, but if your desire is to influence your spouse to become more like Christ, this is a godly pursuit. Seeing change in your spouse and helping them grow in the Lord is an admirable goal as long as you are growing along with him and it is done in the right way.

Secondly, think about how you are going to accomplish this.

1. Communication is key, but communication needs to be done in the right way and at the right time. I mentioned in the last message that the right time is never, never. Let me explain that some more. Sometimes there are issues which you can choose to overlook and forbear. 1 Peter 4:8 “And above all things have fervent charity among yourselves: for charity shall cover the multitude of sins.” but if an issue arises that continually bugs you, depresses you, hurts you and you cannot get past it; you must communicate it. If you don’t, there will be serious problems in your marriage. It will lead to bitterness, anger, and possibly divorce over time. Refresh on the 9 principles of communication message I preached last Sunday.

2. Be an example and trust God with the results. Remember 1 Peter 3:1-2 says that without the word, he may be won. There can come a moment when you can’t say any more without him flying off the handle. Just stop and just live in the way you know go and leave the results to God.

3. Pray for your spouse- This one I could go to any number of verses to show that we are to pray for our spouses because we are told to pray. I am not even going to flip there because it is so obvious. Prayer is a natural extension of your trust for God. It is amazing how many times we have a problem with our spouse but we never think to pray about it. 1 Peter 5:7 “Casting all your care upon him; for he careth for you.” That burden is too hard for you to bear. Cast it on God and let Him carry it for you.

4. Let him bear the consequences for his own actions- Husbands sometimes go through what is called functional fixedness. They are not motivated by your pain, but only by their own pain. This means they have to go through the school of hard knocks to learn anything. If you constantly take control or bail them out, they will never learn.

a. If your husband comes at your angry and combative in his tone, politely say I can’t talk to you while you are like this. I’ll be in the room when you have calmed down enough to have a conversation. This shows that it is inappropriate to come steamrolling over you. It doesn’t shut down communication or resolution, it just delays it until he corrects his tone.

b. If he can’t seem to keep from over spending, let him reap the consequences. Find a way to agree that if we can’t pay the bills, then there will be no ESPN for the month. Now make sure this is a calm, agreed up decision by both of you. You don’t need to be his mother. Gal 6:5 “For every man shall bear his own burden.”

Conclusion

Creating the right environment for conversation: The reason wives feel like they can’t have an influence in their husband’s life or vice versa is because there is a breakdown in communication.

Your wife will never feel like they can talk to you if they do not feel safe to communicate. Her feeling of security falls on you to create. If every conversation ends in an argument, they will not feel safe to talk to you. If you dismiss or attack how they feel, they will not feel safe to talk to you. If you use what they say as a weapon against them, they will not feel safe to talk to you. They won’t feel like they have a safe place when they feel like you prioritize other things over them.

No-win scenarios- If every conversation ends in well you did this and you did that and everything gets turned back on them, they will feel like there is no point to communicating.

Defusing defensiveness- Communication is a two way street. You have to not be just concerned with what you say but also how you say it. Men especially feel attacked when things are brought up. Defusing that defensive barrier can be hard. You have to communicate in such a way that he doesn’t feel attacked. Consider:

Couching statement’s in word’s like “when you do this, it makes me feel like this.” If he attacks you feelings, then he is not ready to talk.

Confession- Admitting your part in the breakdown of communication and the issue however small it might be. Admitting that you struggle disarms him and takes him off of the defensive.

Ask Questions less than making accusations.

Work on making the solution a collaborative effort.

Now here’s what I want you to do with your sheet. Pray about the items on this list. Decide what’s important to talk about and approach that conversation in the right way. But then throw the sheet away and ask God to give you a forgiving heart.