The Habits of Emotionally Healthy Couples

coming up on marriage today with Jimmy & Karen see good marriages are not marriages without anger everybody gets angry good marriages are marriages where you can process it quickly you can get bad emotions out of your marriage quickly you know when you when you're constantly thinking negative or hearing negative and it's getting inside of you you know it's just like anything else you feel about they fill it up and finally it has to come out you know you can't keep it bottled up forever [Music] [Applause] this is called the habits of emotionally healthy marriage because habits disciplines and traditions are everything in marriage your habits will predict your future what you do on a regular basis is the most important thing in your marriage it's not what you do every now and then it's what you do regularly that's going to predict your future and so the word habit the definition of the word habit is an acquired behavior pattern regularly followed until it has become almost involuntary and when it says acquired there it means at some point you begin at some point you may not have had this habit forever and by the way research proves that it takes about 60 days about two months from the time you begin to do something new until the wiring in your brain changes until it becomes a habit and acquired behavior and so almost involuntary so when Karen and I get up in the mornings today 43 years later after we get married we're you know we're world married people were kind of on just autopilot you know and we there's just things that we do and and thankfully there are good things that keep our marriage strong that we're strong personally but when we first got married we had horrible habits that we got into that almost ended our marriage so I want to talk to you about good habits in marriage let me say this no marriage that is good is good because of chemistry or because you married your soul mate or because of good luck that doesn't exist all marriage requires work you have to work at marriage for it to work in Genesis 2:24 God gave us the four foundational laws of marriage the first law is God says for this cause a man will leave his father and his mother it's the law priority marriage only works in first place if your work that comes before your marriage your marriage will not work if your children come before your marriage your marriage will not work if anything except for Jesus comes before your marriage your marriage won't work because the number-one law not principle not truth the number-one law of marriage is it only works in first place the second law of marriage is says the man will cleave he'll leave his father and mother and cleave into his wife the word cleaved there is not a familiar word to us in English language and so it's very difficult for us to comprehend it but in the Hebrew language it's the word debauch it says a man will cleave into his wife the word cleave means to pursue with all your energy it means you work at it from the in by the way the reason that we know that God didn't say that just a had him and Eve is they didn't have a mother says for this cause a man will leave his mother and his father God was speaking this to all people who had ever be married and he was saying marriage is only gonna work now if this first in your life and if you're willing to work at it because marriage is work you're gonna have to pursue your spouse with energy and so this requires working so I want to talk about the four habits of emotionally healthy couples now for some of you that are watching this listening to this right now you're you're saying after I get through at this message you'll say yeah we do one of those or we do two of those that's right the ones that you're not doing you're gonna have to work at implementing this into your marriage it's not going to happen automatically but once you've worked at it for a month or two it'll just become the default setting and now you'll replace bad habits with good habits for some of you you don't do any of this stuff but again you can change a bad marriage simply by changing the habit patterns in your marriage and the wonderful thing is it then take a long time in a matter of days or weeks you can have a new marriage simply by changing the patterns the disciplines and traditions in your marriage so that you have and maintain a healthy marriage for the rest of your lives so let me talk about the four habits of emotionally healthy couples number one is praying together and trusting God now this is one that came very difficult for us as a couple you know we prayed a little bit individually but we really didn't know how to pray that well anyway but it was several years into our marriage before we prayed our first prayer together back I think it was about four years into our marriage before we prayed our first prayer together it changed everything and today we don't worry we do not one of the ethics in our home is we do not let anxiety into home about anything when we when there is the first hint of worry anxiety we hold hands and we pray Karen and I used to walk in the mornings together for many years we don't do that as much anymore but we have still have times that we pray together we like to sit on the back porch at night and talk and for there's anything in our family going on that's the time that we you know pray together and in the car or just around the house or whatever but find a time for it and you know you don't have to be legalistic but you should be praying together as a couple two or three times a week especially if there's something going on that causes anxiety or stress it really really dramatically helps number one praying together and trusting God it should be a habit in your marriage number two resolving negative feelings daily Ephesians 4 it says be angry the Apostle Paul is telling us how to deal with anger be angry don't sin don't let the Sun go down on your wrath nor give place to the devil so I talked about that last time be angry it's okay to be angry there's nothing wrong thing for God gets angry so yesterday's anger is a problem today's anger is not a problem don't sin don't be unchristian don't be mean spirited a lot of times Christian people especially in marriage do really immature non-christian things justifying it don't do that go ahead and have have anger in your marriage that's a healthy thing when it's present don't sin don't let the Sun go down on your anger this is a habit don't ever let the Sun go down you're angry you make a habit in your marriage we're not gonna go to bed angry let me let me say about this and that is the later it gets the more humble you'll become if you make if you make a just a discipline that says we're not going to go to bed angry you know I care not both go to bed early and so later it gets the more humble I become about 10 o'clock 11 o'clock at night it's all my fault 6 or 7 at night I still have a lot of fight in me but later it comes up so I just say I'm sorry let's go to bed so we're not gonna go to bed angry you'll give the devil a foothold if you go to bed on anger Diablos the slanderer will interpret your spouse's behavior and after three years of marriage every belief I had about Karen Evans came from the devil I was completely convinced that Karen was all of the problem she was the wrong person for me and that I had made a mistake that's what happens when you go to bed on anger I was under the influence of down blows so let me say two things if you're going to have anger in your marriage and be able to process it see good marriages are not marriages without anger everybody gets angry good marriages are marriages where you can process it quickly you can get bad emotions out of your marriage quickly okay so how do you do that number one you give your spouse the right to complain in a good department store that you go to they have a good customer relations counter and it they don't chain you when you bring something back because they're trying to please you they're trying to be a good store that's a good spouse a good husband a good wife says to their spouse I want to do the best I can I know I'm not being a good husband so you tell me I am I know I'm not being a good wife to eat up man I'm trying to please you I'm not trying to please me so I'm not gonna be defensive and so if there's ever anything that I'm doing that's bothering you I won't I won't shame you I won't yell at you and I won't make you pay a price now I may not agree with you we may have to talk through it but I want you to know that I have a customer relations counter because I really want to be the best spouse I can be and if you have something to say won't you say it let me say this down all the marriage counseling I've done over the years you find a really bad marriage they can't talk and if someone complains they go ballistic you have to be able to get things out if you're gonna have a functional healthy marriage the second thing is this so I have a customer relations counter where I want you to complain but there's a big difference between complaining and criticizing complaining and criticizing or opposite listen you can't criticize in marriage criticizing is pointing your finger and making accusations and you come at your spouse your spouse says well I want you to complain if you need to complain say you did this and you did this and you can't do that immediately people get on the defensive when you begin to come at him and criticize complaining is not about you complaining is about me so I say Karen said something that hurt my feelings and I come to Karen I say Karen I need to say something to you and I love you and you know we're on the same team we're gonna get through this but you said something to me that bothered me I have no idea what you meant you probably didn't anything right but can I tell you how it made me feel that's what complaining is I'm not I'm just telling you how I feel so I'm not making any accusations at you I'm not attacking you I'm not impugning your character I'm simply saying I may feel this way because I'm immature I may feel this way because I misunderstood I may feel this way because I'm just sensitive because of something that happened before but I just want to be honest so I can get this out in the open and we get this get this done okay criticizing Karen says something to me that hurts my feelings here's we're criticizing us you know Karen you said that it hurt my feelings I know exactly what you meant back because you're evil like your mother and you were trying to pay me back I know exactly what you did so the judge and jury have met you're guilty but if you'll confess we'll go light on you they everybody hates that everybody hates that so in a good marriage we can process anger because we're not gonna go to bed on it give the devil an opportunity but we have an open customer relations counter or you can come and complain and we're going to deal honestly and righteously with each other anger comes and goes in the love States number 3 habit of emotionally healthy couples is having fun together and being best friends it's how you fell in love you know you fall in love having fun together you fall out of love because you stop having fun together and by the way this is one of the most important needs of men when the top four needs of men period being friends with their wives is a major major need of men we want to be buddies with our eyes we don't want the mother bear wives we had a mother we don't want another one we want a wife and we want our wife to be our buddy there's a preacher in Houston tells the story of a couple whose marriage had become very bad and they were really dealing with a lot of problems and so the husband was going hunting and the wife did not hunt but this is a very smart wife and the wife said to her husband can I go hunting with you and and they've been having a lot of trouble in their marriage he said you don't huh she said I know but I want to go hunting with you he's a little worried she wanted to get him in the woods where the firearm and as you can imagine that that was a little troublesome but it healed their marriage she came out of her world into his world they had fun listen to me you're never better than when you're having fun you show me a husband and a wife having fun together you're at your very best that we fall in love because you take sex and fun away from marriage you have a business relationship a marriage is a rotten business relationship we need be having fun with each other in marriage it just simply means one is a date night got it the other have a date night every week it's a good discipline it's a good habit of good marriages a date night means our kids are not gonna run our lives we love our kids we're gonna get our kids taken care of but we're not gonna let work in kids and everything suck out the romance and fun from our marriage we're gonna find something fun to do we're gonna go to a lot of trouble we're gonna go do it regularly so that we do not lose the skills pursuing each other in romance in our relationship and if we have lost them they'll come back the other thing is just having time alone together Carrie and I when our kids were younger we were broke we didn't have any money I mean we were broke and but we made a discipline of going somewhere every six or seven or eight weeks together for a night or two we would get my family or somebody to take care of our kids and we went to Pampa we went to Lubbock we went to Oklahoma City we would drive we would scrape together as much money we had to buy a motel cheap motel room for a night or two and we would take our food with us because we couldn't afford to eat out and we were just going many times into a motel room shut the door and stay there for two days and we came out and I'm telling you we were refueled for another six to eight weeks we have care now I have fun together and so having fun together and protecting that is important number four this is the last one number four habit is building close relationships individually and as a couple with other believers your this is first first Corinthians 15:33 do not be to see evil company corrupts good habits your friends are your future remember here says evil company corrupts good habits if you raise children with good morals and put around bad kids those bad kids will corrupt your kids if you have good beliefs and you put yourself your close friends or unbelievers people who don't value God they don't value their marriage you're gonna end up like your friends and it says if you don't believe that you're to see and so Hebrews 10 says let us consider one another in order to stir up love and good works not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together as is the manner of some but exhorting one another and so much more as you see the Day approaching in the word day there is capital D it means the coming of Jesus it means is the coming of Jesus draws near the world is going to be so evil we need to get together with other believers more than ever before and I'm saying to you this is the most evil time in the history of the world if there's ever been a time when we need to pursue and build relationships with other believers it is right now on Friday afternoon two days ago Karen and I had lunch with Tom and Jen Lane Tom Tom was a pastor here for many years we came on staff together Tom walked up to me one day in church and said would you and Karen go out to eat pizza with Jan and me we didn't know we didn't know what they don't anybody the church I mean they were the first couple of we knew and we went to eat pizza with them after church and we got to know them let me say this now I was struggling there were things in my life as a Christian that I was struggling with at that time I was 25 years old and we came to Trinity I felt like the most unspiritual person in this church and Tom Tom and Jan's relationship was just absolutely critical in that time in our lives of helping us to mature as believers and I thank God that we met them and became close to them rather than someone with a compromised faith and a compromised marriage and I'm saying to you your friends are your future and you can love everybody the weather their wherever they are and their walk with Christ but your closest relationships need to be with strong believers and the very best place to meet strong believers is in churches and lifegroup and like that but when you look at couples who are chronically healthy there are people of Prayer and people of faith they don't let anxiety build up in their relationship they have the ability to resolve negative feelings and get the anger out of the way so they can keep the love they're their friends they enjoy being with each other and they value their relationship and prioritize their time together and don't let anything get in the way of it and they have other believers around them who are a support group to them and help them do the right thing what you saw there on today's program that teaching I hope you enjoyed it I hope that you got some help from that but this comes from the emotionally healthy marriage series it's a five-part seminar series that I do to help couples to have an emotionally healthy marriage Karen and I got married and we were devastated honestly just emotionally what are both unhealthy and it affects your marriage in a dramatic way and your marriage really is never going to be better than your level of emotional health so this entire series helps you to heal it helps you to grow it helps you to understand some things about the way God made you so that you can deal with issues and go on and grow as individual but every time you grow is an individual you're growing as a spouse and you're growing in your ability to be married in a healthy way and so maybe you've been through a marriage maybe you're going through a rough patch in your marriage right now these resources can change your life and change your marriage and change your family for generations right now for your gift of any amount we want to get you the emotionally healthy marriage CD series the audio series the entire five-part series if you give right now $55 or more we want to send you the CD series with my 21 day inner healing journey app this is so powerful thousands of people have done it and it goes even on a deeper level to help you to heal and I would encourage you to do it as a couple I think it would be a fantastic thing to go through as a couple but you can also go through it individually and for your gift of $110 or more right now we were we want to ask you to be as generous as you can to help us here at marriage today to save marriages to keep little kids parents together and to keep families together but if you give a hundred and ten dollars or more right now we will send you the emotionally healthy marriage DVD series the entire five-part series along with the 21 day inner healing journey app tremendous amount of ministry tremendous amount of information there and we want to put these into your hands and here's more details about how you can get these regardless of how unhealthy or broken your marriage may seem today you can have an emotionally healthy marriage support marriage today with your best online gift of any amount and we'll send you Jimmy's five-part teaching emotionally healthy marriage in this powerful series Jimmy shares practical easy-to-follow disciplines to renew your marriage receive the five part CD series and the 21 day inner healing journey app for your gift of $55 or more the 21 day inner healing journey will guide you step-by-step through 21 daily plans including personal application exercises daily videos and much more for your gift of $110 or more you'll receive the 5 part DVD series along with the 21 day inner healing journey app in a matter of days or weeks you can have a new marriage simply by changing the patterns the disciplines and traditions in your marriage so that you have and maintain a healthy marriage for the rest of your life experienced emotionally healthy marriage today well this program today we're talking about the habits of emotionally healthy couples know this this entire series that we're offering today on the program is called emotionally healthy marriage you can have an emotionally healthy marriage but we talked about five major areas in marriage in the overall series but we're talking specifically today Karen about the habits of emotionally healthy couples and so one of the habits there's four that we talked about but we kind of want to talk them specifically about one and that is resolving negative emotions daily okay this this is anchored okay well early in our marriage you had anger issues okay you you kind of came into the marriage with angry she's now had a many a violent problems in the marriage I was dominant and also but but talk about anger for just a minute and how things changed in our marriage and how you learned to deal with anger and the way you deal with it today well I think growing up I was never given a voice you know so when issues would come up in our life you know of course I wasn't raised a Christian you know it I was stuff it you know what I wouldn't I didn't know how to deal with the hurt I didn't know how to deal with you know the way I was spoken to or things that were said about me and then I began those self talks of self hate and all the negative thinking and so you know when you when you're constantly thinking negative or hearing negative and it's getting inside of you you know it's just like anything else you fill it up and fill it up and finally it has to come out you know you can't keep it bottled up forever and so like in our marriage you know I would feel you know like you weren't misunderstanding me or you weren't for contributing enough in the marriage and I would get I would just sit there and cease and get so frustrated you know what if he's like oh and then you would just be like what are your problem I mean like have you slamming the cupboards and and you know I didn't really do a lot of screaming I did a little more well you know I did I didn't were the cupboards and driving off fast and and you know because I couldn't he have to have an outlet I mean it's just like anything else you gotta have an outlet and so but I didn't realize you know how destructive that was if you know not just for our marriage but for myself I mean you know you can't keep that kind of stuff inside of you and it not affect you or your spouse and and so I think being honest you know getting honest with you know that and and when I'd read the Word of God and said don't you know send an anger and I was thinking okay did I sin because I don't know if I send you know you play these gymnastics with your head on what's right and wrong and then you know it finally I just it's just like I said before I got so sick of the way I was you know I wanted to change you know and I'd read the scriptures where it says put on love instead of the anger you know walk in love be patient and kind and I could just remember you know that part of the anger is impatience you know you just get so impatient because everybody's not doing it your way or and I still do with that you know that I still deal with it's not anywhere near what it was before but yeah it have to tell you the story so the other morning I was I was having my quiet time and I said Lord am I okay am i doing everything okay and goes well actually you're not okay in the car and I mean I knew it was God it was just like God was saying Karen if you could really it's not really fun being in the car with you just like thank you wash and I got so convicted of how I am cuz I really AM bad in the car I mean I'm just renting and Ravin to everybody on the highway it's like who gave you your life and it's just like the first time I could really feel like okay God thank you for performing that out because hearing him say it hearing God say it it's like okay we were gonna work on this a little more well I think that and we're almost at times the reason I'm kind of interrupting here but you have changed dramatically in our marriage let me had I had all kinds of issues so wasn't your fault at all but the only thing I would say from my perspective Karen is you said growing up I didn't have a voice and I believe that emotionally healthy couples you feel you like you have a voice you give each other a voice and rather than rejecting each other and telling about each other to shut up or ignoring each other it's like if there's something happening I want to know yeah and you feel like you have a forum for sharing I think that's the difference our marriage today it's rather than having to bottle everything up and so you're I mean you're very honest but we allow honesty in our relationship without paying a price and because of that we're able to process saying we still have anger I mean we still have issues like everybody else but we can process it and I'm really glad the Lord told you about that about your driving he's told me my driving sexcellent I love that okay thank you for joining us today we're so glad that you joined us also thank you for being our partners if you're not a partner we want you to join us and be a monthly partner that our partners are precious they're so important to the ministry and here's how you can become a partner right now god bless you going through divorce is a lot to ask of children and often results in years of emotional pain it's a violent ripping a part of their parents in a sense of abandonment what sometimes we see as a quick way out can mean complete loss for a child you have a 100% chance of success in marriage you were made for marriage marriage today exists to protect children from the pain of divorce antis your couples away from marital failure by telling them the truth when you stand with marriage today your individual effort multiplies with other like-minded partners and together we can rebuild a legacy of strong families around the world choose your level of partnership today and receive immediate access to the video streaming library become a rock solid partner today [Music] thank you for watching marriage today with Jimmy & Karen subscribe to marriage today's YouTube channel for more marriage building videos and updates [Music]

Channel: XO Marriage

Views: 151,844

Rating: 4.8904748 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: UG63XFADTW4

Length: 26min 17sec (1577 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 26 2018