There is no one person as intimately involved in your life as your marriage partner. So, your partner will make you more conscious of your inner life than anyone else. How are you contributing to happiness in your marriage?

Attitude

With your partner in mind, consider these verses:

• But now you also, put them all aside: anger, wrath, malice, slander, and abusive speech from your mouth. Do not lie to one another, since you laid aside the old self with its evil practices, and have put on the new self who is being renewed to a true knowledge according to the image of the One who created him(Col. 3:8-10).
• On the other hand, with your partner in mind, consider these verses: Put on a heart of compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience; bearing with one another, and forgiving each other, whoever has a complaint against any one; just as the Lord forgave you, so also should you (Col. 3:12-13).
• …be subjected one another in the fear of Christ (Eph. 5:21).

The will to cooperate is an important key to building self-respect. Cooperation implies that both husband and wife make the decision to dedicate time and effort in developing a mutually agreeable way of life.

Submission

No matter how committed you are to cooperate, it is inevitable that sooner or later you will become dead-locked over some decision. There is a way to settle a dead-lock if you are committed to resolve the divisions between you.

Someone must have the last word. The Bible says:

Wives, be subject to your own husbands, as to the Lord (Eph. 5:22).

In the decision-making process, the wife should participate vigorously and forthrightly in the search for a mutually agreeable solution. The husband should think twice, or more, before going against his wife’s judgment. If the wife still disagrees with her husband’s tie-breaking decision, she should say so. The husband has two options when there is a deadlock: 1) Make the decision himself, or 2) Ask his wife to make it. Once done, both husband and wife submit to the decision and do all in their power to make it work.

Commitment

Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself up for her (Eph. 5:25).

As I travel around the country, I am appalled at the number of individuals who are walking away from their marriages and calling it quits.

If a man approaches his responsibility to marriage as Christ did toward the church, then the man will be committed until death. He will submit to the responsibility for maintaining a wholesome relationship with his wife. There may be a period of time–perhaps years–when he has no choice but to stand by a totally rebellious, obnoxious, rejecting, or immoral woman, whose behavior is not worthy of his loyalty. His self-respect will remain intact if he retains the will to make it work, even though all his efforts are rejected.

Conversely, the behavior of many husbands can be totally obnoxious, mean, self-centered, even immoral. They may make no effort to be responsible husbands. They may totally reject any responsibility for the marriage. Yet, the will to stay committed will sustain a woman’s self-respect.

…you wives, be submissive to your own husbands so that even if any of them are disobedient to the word, they may be won without a word by the behavior of their wives, as they observe your chaste and respectful behavior (1 Peter 3:1-2).

Sexual Responsibility

Sexual response dies when there are deadlocks and ill-will between the partners. Accordingly, when you do not respond to one another, look elsewhere for the reason.

There is a specific directive in the Bible to guide you in managing your physical relations:

The wife does not have authority over her own body, but the husband does; and likewise the husband does not have authority over his own body, but the wife does. Stop depriving one another, except by agreement for a time that you may devote yourself to prayer, and come together again lest Satan tempt you because of your lack of self-control (1 Cor. 7:4-5).

Clearly, your partner’s wish is your commandment. Obviously, the spirit here is one of mutual concern for one another.

Marriage, like no other human relationship, will keep you up to date on the condition of your inner life. It is a personal decision, unrelated to marriage, whether or not you repent of a negative inner life, and allow God to flood your soul with His Spirit.

You build your own self-respect or self-love as you remain loyal, cooperative, submissive, and committed unto death to do all in your power to make the marriage work.

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This is an excerpt of Chapter 10 from Dr. Brandt’s book I Want Happiness Now!

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Can you imagine that kind of a conversation? That’s ridiculous. Nobody gets married without the highest of hopes that this is going to be one of the finest, friendliest, most congenial, most satisfying relationships that anybody ever had. And that is a possibility. It is possible to live that kind of life. However, we need to stop and consider what goes into a relationship that will guarantee happiness and contentment and satisfaction.

Ephesians 5:18-25 talks about the ingredients and personality factors that you need to bring to the marriage, “Be filled with the Spirit.” Being filled with the Spirit means depending on God to make you the person you need to be in the relationship. It means you are allowing God to fill you with the fruit of the Spirit “love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness and especially temperance” (Galatians 5:22-23 KJV).

Sometimes a man will read Ephesians 5:22, “Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands,” and he figures he is the boss and his wife has no say. However, if he reads further, the next verse says, “The husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church, and he is the savior of the body.”

Fulfilling the role of “head” is a big undertaking and can only be accomplished if a man chooses to allow God to fill him with his Spirit. Then, he can be the head of the wife in such a way that involves walking in the Spirit.

It is equally important for the wife to be filled with God’s Spirit, and submit to it, so that she can be subject to her husband as Ephesians 5:22 says. Then, the relationship works in God’s way, because you are both “submitting yourselves one to another in the fear of God”(Ephesians 5:21).

You may be thinking, “With all this submission, where does my personal freedom come in, and what about my independence? Maybe if my partner would change, then I would be able to submit to the Lord.” However, the same principle applies to marriage as to any other relationship. Whenever two or more people get together, both of you give up your rights. You’ve got to cooperate. That’s the nature of marriage. It’s a man and a woman who must find a mutually agreeable and a mutually binding way of life.

You see, the preparation for marriage is spiritual, and a man and a woman must find a mutually agreeable and a mutually binding way of life. 1 Corinthians 1:10 spells it out in Biblical terms, “I beseech you, brethren, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that ye all speak the same thing, and that there be no divisions among you; but that ye be perfectly joined together in the same mind and in the same judgment.”

Take a step . . .

Take some time to consider your current relationship. Are you submitting to the Spirit of God? Are you bringing to the relationship an attitude of cooperation? Ask God to change your focus and to enable you to surrender to Him. Ask Him to make your relationship all that it should be!

>> Click here to TELL US how this has helped you.

This summary is from Dr. Brandt’s message Building a Partnership.

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