Marriage - Separate Your Who from Your Do

Excerpted from
Help Me, I'm Married!
By Joyce Meyer

Besides this deep desire for peace, another major breakthrough for me was learning that I had a root of rejection which I share of in my book, The Root of Rejection. That problem kept me from communicating with Dave. I didn't know what in the world was wrong with me. We were okay as long as we both thought the same way about something, but if Dave had his own opinion on how something should be that was conflicting with my idea, I felt like he was putting me down.

He would try to tell me, Tm not trying to put you down. I have an opinion and you have an opinion. We have the right to have separate opinions." But I couldn't understand that because of the way I had been treated. If he rejected my opinion, I felt that he was rejecting me.

Although I couldn't work all that out in my head, I honestly did not know why we couldn't talk. We would try to talk about something, and I would get confused. I would get so confused that I didn't even know what we were doing anymore, and it was horrible. We went through this time, after time, after time.

During this same time I was actually teaching our home Bible study group on rejection! A couple of other things happened in our relationship during that time. God said to me, "You are reacting to him this way because he doesn't agree with you and you feel he's rejecting you. You are not separating your who from your do. Dave loves you, but he doesn't agree with you on this one point. And you have to let him have his opinion." It was a major turning point for me.

God wants spouses to work through the obstacles that separate them from each other. Unfortunately, there are few role models in our lives to demonstrate what He had intended for the union of a husband and wife to be. Rebellion, fear, insecurity, and impatience keep us from the blessing God intended for a man and woman to enjoy together.

I had to learn to submit to the authority of God trusting that He has my good in mind. I had to learn that God loves me enough to direct me to actions that will bring blessing not bondage. He told me in His Word to love my husband — "love Dave." I could only prove that God was trustworthy by doing what He said to do. Healing began as I was obedient to what God said to do.

God was asking me to let Dave have a separate opinion without it being a threat to my self-esteem. I had to learn to let God work out the differences between us while learning to respect Dave's differences and personality, which I will discuss more in a later chapter.

Peace comes from trusting God first. I had to learn to trust God when Dave and I differed in our opinions. By letting God into the

midst of my concerns, I began to have a new respect for Dave's point of view. Once the threat of rejection was removed from our

debate, my heart began to change. The reward of my obedience was a growing sense of admiration for my husband.

God Can Make All Things New

God does not have to have good material to build with; He is willing to take all the messes we offer Him and turn them into miracles. He has the ability to make all things new.

In Ezekiel 36:26 God makes a promise to those who will come to Him, A new heart will I give you and a new spirit will I put within you, and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. God can give a tender heart to someone whose old heart was bruised and beaten with the hardness of life.

This promise is made again in 2 Corinthians 5:17: Therefore if any person is [ingrafted] in Christ (the Messiah) he is a new creation (a new creature altogether); the old [previous moral and spiritual condition] has passed away. Behold, the fresh and new has come! God makes the past nonexistent as if it never happened so that we can face tomorrow without nagging memories from the past. He has bright and wonderful promises for our marriages if we will trust Him and do what He tells us to do.