Discover how a deep and deliberate focus on God can impact your marriage in Words of Wisdom 93: On the foundation of intimacy, Recovery, part 10. This thought-provoking episode demolishes conventional notions about maintaining happiness in a marriage and shines a light on an unexpected approach you might never have considered. Embrace the unexpected axis around which the healthiest marriages rotate. We're discussing worship, faith, and the transformative journey of recovery.
Key Points:
- The focus on keeping oneself happy in a marriage can lead to resentment, avoidance, and despair since partners cannot provide profound happiness.
- Making the partner happy as the foremost focus can be short-sighted and lead to a subservient position in the relationship.
- When each person focuses on loving and serving God, it allows for healthier intimacy.
- Prioritizing knowing and following God, along with seeking to serve him and do his will, is the proper use of will and encourages worship.
- Worship re-orients and recovers one's most authentic self. It empowers surrender, strengthens confession, and encourages transformation for respect and humility.
- Recovery is ultimately a deep connection with God, self, and others.
- Marriage is about two broken people finding healing, not completing each other. The friction exposes areas where God still needs to work in individuals.
• Marriage & Family Therapist, licensed in Nevada, Arizona, and Colorado. Currently I'm seeing all clients via video Telehealth sessions.
•Founder and CEO of Great Oaks Collective, and it's flagship program Overcome, a 10-Week virtual Intensive Outpatient Program for Christian couples experiencing sexual betrayal and addiction. Learn more at www.greatoakscollective.com. Because sometimes traditional counseling is not enough.
• Founder of Wisecraft, giving tools and ideas to help you grow in wisdom. Learn more at www.wisecraft.org. Or go here to sign up to receive my weekly newsletter, Words of Wisdom.
• To learn about what I'm currently focused on in my life, go to my Now page.
Transcripts
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Words of wisdom.
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93 on the foundation of intimacy recovery, part 10.
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Last week we talked about the systemic dysfunction in a relationship
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caused by secret betrayal.
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When you lie, you destroy the chance for flourishing in a relationship.
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So other than telling the truth, how do you grow intimacy in your marriage?
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Let's look today at the most fundamental focus, the healthiest
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marriages I've ever seen have.
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What might be a surprising focus, the primary focus in a healthy marriage.
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Is not asking How can I make myself happy?
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This is ultimately selfish and short-lived.
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When one's feelings towards their partner change the marriage crumbles.
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It's also a setup for resentment.
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There's no way extraordinary as your partner is that they
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can make you happy, not in the profound sense of experiencing joy.
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To the degree that you expect your partner to make you happy is the potential
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amount that you will be disappointed.
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This can lead to resentment, avoidance, and despair.
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The primary focus in a healthy marriage is not asking.
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How can I make my partner happy?
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While, very good.
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If this is your most important focus, it is ultimately shortsighted.
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It doesn't appear like it on the surface, but it can put your partner
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on the throne and put you into a one down position in the relationship
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When one's focus is too subservient, there's no room for a healthy self.
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The primary focus in a healthy marriage is asking, how can I love
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and serve God with every breath?
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When the focus of each person in a relationship is first and
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foremost, God, there is room for the healthiest of intimacy.
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Align your priorities, clarify your values, and order your love correctly, and
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you'll be free to relate to your spouse
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gloriously.
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Put your highest priority on knowing and following God today.
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Above all, seek to serve him and do his will every moment with courage and joy.
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This is the proper use of your will.
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This is a life oriented to loving God no matter the cost.
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This is a life of worship.
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It turns out that seeking God first changes everything.
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Worship, reorients, and recovers your most authentic self.
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Worship empowers you to surrender your will to God.
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Worship strengthens you to confess when you go astray.
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Worship transforms you to be gentle and treat your partner with respect.
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Worship is a feast nourishing you to live boldly and with humble joy.
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First ground yourself in loving God, then you can love yourself and your spouse.
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Recovery fundamentally is a deep and abiding connection to God, to self,
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and to others Seeking First God and His kingdom means that you orient your
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entire life, all your choices in joyful surrender to whatever God has for you.
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Seeking each moment to live out a loving and vibrant dance.
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Prayerfully attending to the Divine Source, the Living Christ.
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Questions.
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How can you worship God today?
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What is your tendency to prioritize yourself or your partner instead of God?
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In what ways are you not keeping God as your highest priority?
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Quotes, there will always, always be a place for you at my table.
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Return to me.
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Wondering where I might begin?
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Hear a voice upon the wind.
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She's singing faint, but singing True.
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Son, there ain't nothing you can do.
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But listen close and follow me.
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I'll take you where you're meant to be.
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Just don't lose faith.
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So I put my hand upon the plow, wiped the sweat up from my brow plant,
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the good seed along the way, as I look forward to the day when at last
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I'll see my father run to me saying, you know, my child, come on home.
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Home to me and I will hold you in my arms and joyful be there will always,
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always be a place for you at my table.
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Return to me, Josh Gills and his beautiful song at the table.
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There's no such thing as the one.
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You don't have a missing half and you're not incomplete.
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In reality, marriage is two broken people coming together to find healing in Jesus.
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And one broken person, plus another broken person, does not equal bliss.
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The math adds up in the opposite direction, twice as much brokenness.
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And guess what?
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That's a good thing because the friction in a marriage exposes all the places
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where God is still at work in us.
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That's a gift.
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Not only that, but in the wake of the fall, that's one
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of the reasons for marriage.
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Recreation.
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The point of marriage isn't to fix our missing half.
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It's to help each other become all that God intended.
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Our future real selves in marriage, two people partner to that end.
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John Mark Comer in his book Loveology.
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End note, prioritizing.
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Worshiping God isn't all that it takes to have a flourishing marriage,
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but it is the best foundation.
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Live wisely.
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Josh.
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