Ok, I have a confession to make: I’m far from a perfect husband.
I screw up as a husband over and over and over again. It’s a wonder that Amy is
still married to me!
Most relationships start in what I’m call the “puppy love
phase” where neither of you can do anything wrong. Everything the other person
does is so cute and exciting. When she doesn’t eat all her food, he thinks it’s
so cute. And when he farts, she laughs along with him. But you know this phase
doesn’t last forever. After being married for a few years, he begins to despise
the fact that she doesn’t eat all her food and she thinks his farts are
absolutely disgusting.
What changed? The blinders came off and you realized that he
or she wasn’t as perfect as you thought. Actually, what you realized is that
the person you wake up next to every morning is flawed in more ways than you
ever thought were possible. And if you were to ask your spouse, he or she would
probably say the same thing about you.
We Can’t Change Our Spouse
What do we do when we realize that our spouse isn’t quite as
perfect as we once thought? I’ve observed that many people treat their spouses
like projects with the objective to make them into the people they want them to
be. Husbands try to change their wives so that they’ll arrive on time. Wives
try to change their husbands so that they’ll watch more chick-flicks with them.
Husbands try to change their wives to that they’ll play more sports with them. Wives
try to change their husbands so that they’ll do more cleaning around the house.
And the list could go on and on.
If you’ve been married for at least a couple years, then you’ve
certainly realized that no matter how hard you try, you can’t change your
spouse. That’s not to say we can’t help our spouses modify their outward
behaviors a little bit, but there’s nothing we can do to change the thing that
drive those behaviors: their hearts. Although some of these differences can be
explained by the way men and women are wired, I won’t be addressing that aspect
in this article. I’ll be spending the remainder of this article addressing how
to change our spouse’s heart.
Who Are We Trying to Make Our Spouse Become?
As I’ve talked about previously, it seems that every person
has the same objective in life: eternal happiness. But we all employ different
means to get there. All of us to one degree or another spend energy trying to
change ourselves in pursuit of this happiness. Sometimes this takes the form of
going to bed earlier, working out more, and eating healthier foods. We believe
that if we change ourselves into some idealistic picture of a person we have in
our heads, then we’ll be happier.
But it doesn’t stop there; we also carry around an
idealistic picture of our spouse. And we work overtime trying to make our
spouse into this person. What does this picture look like to you? Does this
person look like someone whose primary objective is to give you everything you
want? Does this person resemble you? Or does this person look like the Jesus of
the Bible?
God’s Will Is to Make Us Like Jesus
Did you know that God’s will for every single one of his
disciples is to make them look like Jesus? I’m not talking about his outward
appearance here, but his inward appearance; I’m talking about the condition of
our hearts. Jesus’s will for every single one of his disciples is to transform
their hearts to make them look like his.[1]
Why would anyone want to look like Jesus? Because he was a
good moralistic person who found happiness in his religious moralism? Not at
all. Actually, Jesus wasn’t even on the same spectrum as religious moralists. Personally,
I want to look like Jesus because he’s the incarnation of God in human form.
There’s not a single person on this entire planet who I want to be like more
than Jesus.
Since Amy is also a disciple of Jesus, God’s goal for her is
to make her heart like his heart. When I came to this realization, I began
throwing out all the idealistic pictures I had in my head of who I wanted Amy
to be and began replacing them with pictures of who God wants her to be. For
the most part, I’ve stopped trying to change her into the person I want her to
be and instead, have turned to God in prayer for her.
What Are Some Ideas for How You Can Pray for Your Spouse?
I don’t know if it’s ever been this way for you, but when I got
serious about praying for people a few years ago, I prayed for any and every one
I could think of except Amy. I don’t know why I didn’t pray for her. Maybe I
was still trusting in myself to change her instead of trusting in God to change
her. But I realize now that I can’t trust in myself to change her heart. Heck,
I can’t even make her get places on time, let alone cause her to emulate Jesus.
Personally, there are two types of praying I do for Amy on a
near-daily basis. The first way I pray for her is by praying for God to make
her like him. I pray for her heart to be like his heart; I pray for her desires
to be the same as his desires. The hardest part of praying for her in this way
is realizing that some of these changes aren’t going to be of great benefit for me.
What I don’t do is take all my little pet-peeves about her to God and pray for
God to change those things.
What I’ve noticed is that whether or not we realize it, God
works in the situations in our lives to transform our hearts. So when I pray
for Amy, I pray for God to work in the specific situations she’s facing–whether
she’s struggling through something challenging at work, whether she’s suffering
from a massive headache, or whether something else is going on in her life–to
transform her heart.
The second way I pray for her is asking God to show me where
he’s working in her heart and asking for an opportunity to participate with him
in that work. Participating with God may sound like a lot of fun, and sometimes
it is, but it can also be very challenging. It’s fun when I get to see her
spiritual eyes opened to understanding more of his truth and realize that God
worked through something I said to open her eyes. But it’s no fun when I’m
called to say or do something which I know is going to be painful for her. This
is where I have to exhibit large amounts of trust in God that he knows what he’s
doing much more than I do.
Do you regularly pray for your spouse? If so, how do you
pray? Hopefully sharing the ways I pray will help get your creative juices
flowing so that you can come up with some ways you can pray for your spouse.
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Don’t forget to check back next week for my number one
strategy for a successful marriage!
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