Destructive Husbands and Wives | @Jimmy Evans

coming up on marriage today with Jimmy & Karen if I told her that there was something wrong with breakfast all she heard was she was a horrible person I wasn't saying she was a horrible person I'm just saying you burned the biscuits that's all I'm saying Karen take them out quicker next time oh well you hate me and I'm you know God can't love me and I'm ugly and fat well okay that's not what I'm saying so but I was also very defensive and so listen when you won't let your spouse complain the problems don't go away they accumulate [Music] when our behavior is destructive the only answer is to correct it and get it right now there's four I believe there are four basic reasons why people become destructive okay just just basically in the number one is ignorance we just don't know any better Hosea four says my people are destroyed for lack of knowledge Karen and I got married at 19 years old I met the pastor who married us today he married us and I had not a clue about marriage someone mentioned to me in in the seminar here during one of the breaks they said this should be required in every high school is to teach this information don't you agree with that I'm my gosh you know we teach math and science and all those things which are important but we need to teach people how to succeed in relationships but the truth is most of us most people didn't come out of a happy home in fact many people came out of a broken home where there was a single parent there and so they didn't see a marriage or they saw a failed marriage well how do you succeed when you're when you're trying to draw from ignorance that's what Karen and I both did I just I was completely ignorant in fact I had a lot of misinformation and deception the number one thing now that's gonna lead you to success as a teachable spirit and so ignorant is I believe the number one reason that so many people are failing today in marriage and are destructive I've never met a couple who wanted to fail in marriage that I've never met anybody who just wanted to divorce is we get married because we want to be happy but the Bible says my people are destroyed for lack of knowledge this area of marriage is something of course we're passionate about teaching people but just simple things that you can teach people can very profoundly affect their life so here's here's a commitment I'm asking you to make okay just just think about this you're gonna read at least one book on marriage together every year on finances on communication on sex on intimacy on dealing with your emotions that you'll never stop learning I do not consider myself a marriage expert I consider myself a marriage student as I have not arrived and I'm still learning about marriage and we go through seasons of life and so maybe I did you know get to a place in another sea of our lives where you know I knew how to deal with that but now there's other things going on we're in a different season with aging parents and grandchildren and things like that and so we're gonna be continuing education students in the area of marriage I'm not gonna be ignorant in other words I'm gonna be teachable and continue to learn number two thing that causes people to be destructive is past hurts here's here's how to deal with your hurts of your past you have to be honest you just have to be honest and say I'm hurt it's hard sometimes for men sometimes it's hard for women women are better at it than men I think because but what I thought is if I ever if I ever if I ever show her weakness the world is gonna crumble when I showed her weakness was when the world came together my fear kept my hurt in the darkness and it kept my life distorted and dysfunctional but when I finally began to admit to Karen I'm Karen I'm hurting and I'm ashamed of this I'm a shame this is what when I finally started talking to Karen that's what she wanted to hear she knew I was messed up my gosh you know and she had heard some of the things that that happened to me when I was growing up and that's why she kept saying Jim how did you feel about that I would just say to Phil what I don't care about what you're talking about I remember you know I was telling about my dad not coming to my games and this is this is a silly thing you know it's not the worst thing I'm some of you have had much worse things happen than that but I remember just looking on the sidelines for my dad like kids would do it wasn't there you just deal with that you know you just you just go on but it but it made me feel rejected and frustrated and hurt and never dealt with it it just I just stuff it on the inside I had to get to a place where my fears the devil is the devil of Darkness anything in darkness is under his domain you can't kick the devil off his own property but you can shine the light and he has to leave when your shame and pain is in the darkness it is a breeding ground for the devil and he'll use it against you and he'll use it as a headquarters to devastate your relationships but when you turn the light of God on it and just simply say this is what happened you don't say it to everybody but you say it in the right places so you have to admit your pain the second thing you have to take responsibility for you for your actions with Karen I I blamed it on Karen I blamed it on everybody else but I had to take responsibility for what I had done another thing is forgiveness you have to forgive everybody you forgiveness is the biggest issue of emotional healing you say how do I forgive jesus said bless those who curse you pray for those who spitefully use you I'm not a person who hates but there's been a couple of people I hated truly hated my happy thought was their obituary I wanted bad things for them had a little dungeon in my heart that I crawled down into and tortured him and came back out and and the Lord told me one day about them I want you to bless them and I said to the Lord Lord if I bless them and you actually listened and you bless them then I've got problems with you and the Lord and let me say this it was changing my personality toward Karen so I wasn't mad at Karen I was mad at them but I was taking it out on Karen and that's what I'm saying regardless who you're mad at it's gonna come out on your spouse for anybody else okay so in obedience to God I didn't mean it I didn't mean it in obedience to God I began to bless this one individual specifically I did it every day Lord told me to do it every day and after about 10 days I woke up one morning and I was blessing them and praying for them and in an instant of time my heart turned from bitterness to great compassion for that person you can't hate a person you're praying for you can't hate a person that you bless can't do it you can't do it long-term and a lot of people say well I've forgiven my father for what he did to me but my feelings just don't change I forgiving my stepfather I've forgiven my mother my stepmother I've forgiven my ex-husband ex-wife I've forgiven but my feelings never change bless those who curse you another thing that causes people to be destructive is bad friends and negative influences 1st Corinthians 15:33 says do not be deceived evil company corrupts good habits your friends predict your future adultery divorce addictions running groups is that you'll find that that when divorce happens when adultery happens when things like that happened you find that there's a support system for it when Karen and I became Christians when we got married I didn't like Christians I didn't I didn't want to go into church Karen wanted us to go to church I didn't want to go to church because I just didn't like Christians and I didn't want to be around them but we started going to church I told Karen I said ok we'll go to church and we met some great friends in church but I still smoked I still smoked and I and I just I felt so self-conscious because I felt like I was the least spiritual person in our church and we we went to church this is one of these issues you know what is life we go to church one time and Karen signs us up for a discipleship class and she says we want us to go to this discipleship class and I said Karen you know as a small group I could hide in a big group but in small groups I knew the people would find out how messed up I wasn't you know and I and want that and so we go to this this discipleship group we walk in and the leader of the group there's 13 people in the group the leader of the group says well we need a worship leader does anybody play the guitar and Karen says he plays the guitar he'll lead worship I think you want to hear the Rolling Stones is that what you people worship - because I worship I've never played it in my life I was struggling with stopping smoking at that point in time I was about 25 years old and I was trying to stop smoking and I just felt very very self-conscious in that group let me say this the church is not a place where people don't have issues Church is a place where we're all dealing with her issues and we've decided to let Jesus deal with our issues and that's the commonality of church and everyone needs to be a part you're gonna be like your friends I want a group of friends that encouraged me to do the right thing I don't want a group of friends around me that when I'm struggling in my marriage want me to go to happy hour strip bars with them and encourage me to divorce I want friends that when I'm going through marriage problems will tell me I'm the problem and encouraged me to go to church with them and work on my shift my friends if I started complaining about Karen's my friend would beat me up they like Karen better than me anyway but when you have bad friends the negative influences they're gonna influence your marriage in a bad way bad company corrupts good morals so there's one other thing that causes destructive behavior and that's defensiveness John Gottman University of Washington they have four predictors of divorce they can predict divorce with a 93 percent accuracy and one of the predictors of divorces defensiveness not allowing your spouse the right to complain being defensive when someone's trying to tell you something about yourself and defensiveness means I will not allow my spouse the ability to process problems I would not let when Karen out first got married I didn't want her and by the way she wouldn't let me complain either because she has such low self-esteem that if I told her that there was something wrong with breakfast all she heard was she was a horrible person is I wasn't saying she was a horrible person I'm just saying you burned the biscuits that's all I'm saying Karen take them out quicker next time oh well you hate me and I'm you know God can't love me and I'm a in fact well okay that's not what I'm saying okay so but I was also very defensive and so listen when you won't let your spouse complain the problems don't go away they accumulate okay defensiveness also means I will not validate your concerns invalidation sometimes if I don't agree at least I can validate and say I understand that you're upset and I understand that that's that's bothering you what I'm doing and just the validation but defensiveness means I won't even validate it it means I won't even entertain the possibility that could be problems I have that I'm the problem in fact what divisiveness says is you're the problem but the reason I'm not letting you complain is because you're actually the problem but the offensiveness also means I'm emotionally weak if a person who's emotionally healthy can listen to anything doesn't mean I agree it doesn't mean I'm gonna lay down and play dead but it just means say what you have to say and I'll process it and I'll let you process it every functional family talks functional families talk dysfunctional families don't talk in dysfunctional families or silence and secrets and we just don't talk don't process things but in functional families say what you want to say defensiveness destroys intimacy and feelings of goodwill it inhibits honesty and the ability to share openly and it locks problems into our relationship okay so I mean let me finish this message by talking about the four main destructive behaviors in marriage okay number one is criticism criticism proverbs 18 death and life are in the power of the tongue and those who love it will eat its fruit and by the way the next verse says he who finds a good wife or he who finds a wife finds a good thing and obtains favor from the Lord there's a lot of reasons that we can become critical but they're all devastating and there are certain rules that we can use in our marriage and first of all it's the ten to one rule and that is for every time I say anything negative I'm gonna say ten things positive and if I haven't said ten things positive I haven't heard I haven't earned the right to complain okay and I'm not talking about being critical I'm just saying even complaining you need to praise a lot more than you criticize and if you don't it's going to devastate the marriage the second thing is this and this is a huge issue and that is I take responsibility to build your self-esteem I take responsibility to build my wife's self-esteem and Karin takes responsibility to build mine and by that I mean this not only am I'm not gonna be your critic I'm gonna be your biggest fan it doesn't mean that I won't tell you if something's wrong but there's a difference between criticizing and complaining criticizing means I'm pointing the finger at you and this is all about you complaining means just means I'm telling you how I feel you can tell your spouse how you feel without being critical it I say to Karen you know Karen I don't know what you meant by that but let me tell you how it made me feel I'm not attacking her I'm just saying I don't know what you meant by that I'm not saying you're a bad person are you intended to hurt me but when you said that the other day this is the way it made me feel when I when I complain in that way because it's about me it's not about you when I say it that way she can hear it everything's fine and we go on when I don't say it that way when I say it with a more critical accusatory tone she immediately becomes on the defensive and so I take responsibility to build your self-esteem and if I'm going to complain to you it means I've already earned the right to do that because I'm a lot more positive than I would ever be negative in our relationship so that's the destructive behavior the second is control and dominance that means there's a disproportionate control of the relationship marriage is equal all of your decisions you make together that's just an ethic in marriage no one controls the money no one controls the children no one controls the home no one controls the schedule every decision we make we make together in everything that I do today Karen is my equal and I will not act without her period I will not I will not leave her behind and she will not leave me behind everything we do we do together everything we do we're in agreement on before we do it and that is where intimacy and goodwill comes from because we share our relationship and share our marriage go where there's dominance there's gonna be destructiveness number three destructive behaviors checking out and that's just emotional abandonment in Hebrews 13 God says I will never leave your forsake you and leave means physically leave but forsake means turn your hard way you can turn your heart away from a person you're sitting right next to because of hurt because of disappointment because of busyness or stress or temptation you can literally emotionally check out of your marriage and all adultery is preceded by emotional abandonment all adultery is is long before I had the adultery I turned my heart away from you and the commitment here is simply its destructive you know that person's checked out you can tell by the look on their face they're just you're just checked out I don't know where you are but you're not here you were somebody else doing something else and God says not only while I never physically leave you I'll never turn my heart away I will never emotionally in all of eternity our God will never emotionally abandon us but let me tell you he's had some good reasons - did you know that we've broken his heart a thousand times but God God made a decision and let me say God says that right up front God says right up front in our relationship I will never do anything you want to do I will never check out on you through disappointment through pain through hurt through unmet needs for whatever I'm gonna fight for this relationship and I'm not gonna turn my heart away that I checked out on Karen I was not home in fact there were times this is I'm ashamed say this there were times I'd be sitting at her dinner table so checked out and I would wake up and my family would be standard shouldn't they go on dad dad and I was just at work I was a million miles away dealing with other problems that I was checked out and it affected our children this is when they were young and I was young in ministry and it affected our kids and thank God that you know God healed me and I changed and came back but when you check out on a relationship it causes damage and the first is cruelty and abuse we all suffer because of each other in marriage and suffering is one thing but the other sport becomes abusive physically mentally emotionally verbally and for whatever reason a person becomes abusive and I just want to say this very clearly don't stay in an abusive relationship abuse means damage it means that the grace is not there and either mentally or verbally or physically you're you're being abused in a certain manner that is is damaging you and you need to tell your spouse I won't I won't put up with this is you have to change your behavior or I'm gonna leave I'm not saying you divorce but I'm saying you find a safe place to be for you and maybe your children are not being damaged and you're not under that influence and from that safe place maybe your spouse has to leave but from that safe place you appeal to your spouse to say I love you but you have to go get help you're gonna have to learn to deal with your issues in a constructive manner and if you get help and when you get help we'll start talking about restoring our relationship because I love you and I'm committed to our relationship but I'm not gonna be your whipping post I'm not gonna let you use me to ventilate your anger in a wrong way for whatever reason that you you have that anger and make them get help and accountability I'll hope you enjoyed that teaching you know this is just a part of the ten part seminar that I do called marriage on the rock it was the first seminar that I ever did first book I ever wrote was marriage on the rock it still is to this day the most important marriage teaching that I do and we want to put this into 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$110 or more you'll receive the book and DVD series plus the passion reigniting happy happy love book if discover God's design for your dream marriage whether you've been married for years or just preparing for the journey experience marriage on the rock today [Music] well this is an important program because we're talking caring about destructive husbands and wives you know there is suffering in marriage and we all suffer in marriage because of each other I mean we're all imperfect and then there's abuse but destructive behavior just simply means the you know the marriage is obviously being affected in a very negative way there may or may not be abuse but with destructive behavior it just means it's just gonna do more damage the longer it goes on now we had a destructive relationship I was a destructive spouse very verbally abusive very dominant so it's not for Hispanic Karen there's two sides of this issue there's the side that of the person who's destructive that I talked about then there's the side of the person who's on the other end of it and and you're you're in a marriage and I know many of you are in a marriage where there's a person who is destructive now you responded righteously and it changed me I mean it was huge but the person that's destructive many times doesn't change so what did you do well I love the story because you know it's hopeful for anyone you know whether you're the destructive person or like I was and that is you know when you realize you can't change a person when you've realized okay we've been doing this thing over and over and over again nothing's changed maybe we should try something different and so that's what kind of clicked with me I remember thinking I can see right now because of your strength of your personality and the way you're able to use words so well and now would be good okay and so because of my past having so much self hate you know I had I had so much internal issues anyway and so I I remember waking up one day and thinking I'm sick of this I can't stand this anymore I don't want this anymore I don't want to live like this and you know what can I do and I know it was the grace of God and it was he just and encouraged me you know to start finding out who I am in God you know start reading the Bible like you know and see what God says and because we were Christians you know we knew that we should you know there's a certain way a Christians should be and we weren't being that way and so as I started a reading you know it just began to change me supernaturally I mean I love it say that the Word of God is alive it's active it's able to go into places that we don't even know about and you know we used to when we we were going through what we went through I called it sin you know later on they start calling it dysfunctional or your codependent well we didn't have those words we only had the you know you're sinning and you're in sending basically is you're not treating another person right or you're not treating yourself right you know and so you know I started focusing on that you know Lord I don't want to be that way I don't want to be full of self-hatred I want to be positive in our marriage I want to be kind I want to be patient and loving and as the Lord started healing those things of me that were wrong and a lot of it was thinking you know the strongholds that were in my mind of certain thinking patterns that were so wrong and and so the Lord started you know showing me things and helping me and he was very patient with me because it took a long time and then as I started getting myself healed I realized my my part was to treat you right no matter how you acted no you no matter how what you said to me my choices of how I treated you or just as important is the the destruction that you were doing well you know Karen you you made a righteous response to my destructive behavior and it's the only thing that changed me if you would have kept fighting with me I would have kept fighting with ya but you did the right thing first and it really disarmed the destructive behavior and that's that's what this teaching is about so wherever you are man or woman you know whatever side of this that you're on understand that that this destructive behavior you know turn it to God and in trust God don't don't keep doing it the way you've been doing it but just like Karen said turn it to God and believe God that he can do a miracle for your marriage we hope that this is helpful to you we want you to become a partner with us if you're not already a partner with marriage today here's how you can do it life is a journey once full of hope make this world a better place to leave a legacy the ones we love but somewhere along that journey we've lost our way forgotten what's important when marriage is no longer respected couples begin to separate and their children begin to separate marriage is the future we must build match and what we love to do here at marriage stays give people hope but this marriage works marriage works wonderful God would we never create anything without God's plan for marriage is perfect you have a 100% chance of success in marriage marriage today is here to help every couple thrive even if you failed even if you came out of a broken home even if you've never seen a good marriage every first infant succeed in marriage and that gives hope we love helping people in marriage but we have to have support to do that and our television program and our live events in everything that we do we know that we're touching millions of lives every year and millions of families would you stand with us as we build marriages in America and around the world families that we help and the children that we keep together with their parents are because of you please consider giving your most generous gift to help us here at marriage today lift the standard around the wall for marriage and family [Music] thank you for watching marriage today with Jimmy & Karen 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Channel: XO Marriage

Views: 163,818

Rating: 4.8900762 out of 5

Keywords: marriage, marriage counseling, marriage help, marriage advice, relationships, relationship help, counseling, Christian counseling, divorce, husband, wife, issues, fixing your marriage, love, marriagetoday, Jimmy Evans, wedding, wedding planning

Id: ukBh2o4PneM

Length: 26min 55sec (1615 seconds)

Published: Tue Aug 21 2018