Read Online Beyond Ordinary: When a Good Marriage Just Isn't Good Enough by Justin Davis, Trisha Davis - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Justin Davis, Trisha Davis
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marriage; now we think of those days as a fairy tale.
ACHIEVING ONENESS
Oneness in marriage is possible. It isn’t easy, but it is possible. And it only comes as each spouse individually pursues God.
When you decide to stop trying to change your spouse and pursue God instead, and when your spouse decides to not measure the health of your marriage through milestones and achievements but rather pursues God, the distance in your marriage decreases. Pursuing God looks different for everyone, because all of us are in different places in our relationships with God, but there are two things that will be true for each of us who longs to pursue God. First, we will choose to think about God. This involves personal prayer, reading God’s Word, and becoming aware of God’s promptings and presence. Second, pursuing God involves a willingness to surrender our rights and our desires to God for his desires and his plan. It is an invitation to allow him to change us.
Individually, as you move closer to God, then you naturally move closer to each other. It’s a pursuit in which the ordinary dies and the extraordinary begins to live.
If we would spend the same amount of time and energy asking God to change ourselves as we do asking him to change our spouses, our marriages would be anything but ordinary. It is so easy for us to apply truth to our spouses before we apply it to ourselves. It is easy for us to see the faults in them and to stay blind to the faults that live in us. Oneness in our marriages is restored as we ask—and allo w —God to change us. Even if your spouse doesn’t change, your marriage will be better because you will be changed.
A question we are often asked is, What if my spouse isn’t pursuing God at the same pace as I am? What we have come to realize is that all of our journeys will look different. Your pursuit of God doesn’t have to be at the same pace, just with the same commitment. Each of us will go through peaks and valleys in our relationship with God. It is our commitment to that journey that allows us to experience oneness the way God intended.
A BATTLE PLAN
One of the things we have learned is that there is a huge difference between good intentions and being intentional. We said in the last chapter that most marriages don’t intend to drift into ordinary. Ordinary is the by-product of the equation time + unintentionality = ordinary.
In order to move beyond ordinary, we have to be intentional. We have an enemy who is intentionally coming against our marriage relationships. We won’t drift into extraordinary; we will have to fight for it.
Intentionality + time = extraordinary. Here are two crucial ways you can fight the battle for an extraordinary marriage.
Pray for Your Spouse
As a pastor, I (Justin) get paid to pray. Trisha and I have always believed in the power of prayer. We knew the importance of prayer. We prayed all the time. We would pray for small-group leaders. We would pray for people having marital problems. We would pray for people who came up after the Sunday service and wanted to rededicate their lives to Christ. We just never prayed for each other.
Looking back, I know how ridiculous this seems. How could we not pray for each other? I would pray for Trisha occasionally. It would go something like this: “Dear God, please prompt Trisha to not gripe at me when I get home tonight. In Jesus’name, amen.” I didn’t consistently pray for Trisha and her needs, desires, and feelings. I never took time to lift her up to God as I should have.
If you want to change the climate of your marriage immediately, start praying for your spouse. Then you will realize that you are engaging the spiritual battle in your marriage rather than becoming a victim of it.
Pray with Your Spouse
I read a statistic not long ago that shocked me: less than 8 percent of Christian couples say that they pray together on a regular basis. 2 While that is shocking, it isn’t surprising. For some
ACHIEVING ONENESS
Oneness in marriage is possible. It isn’t easy, but it is possible. And it only comes as each spouse individually pursues God.
When you decide to stop trying to change your spouse and pursue God instead, and when your spouse decides to not measure the health of your marriage through milestones and achievements but rather pursues God, the distance in your marriage decreases. Pursuing God looks different for everyone, because all of us are in different places in our relationships with God, but there are two things that will be true for each of us who longs to pursue God. First, we will choose to think about God. This involves personal prayer, reading God’s Word, and becoming aware of God’s promptings and presence. Second, pursuing God involves a willingness to surrender our rights and our desires to God for his desires and his plan. It is an invitation to allow him to change us.
Individually, as you move closer to God, then you naturally move closer to each other. It’s a pursuit in which the ordinary dies and the extraordinary begins to live.
If we would spend the same amount of time and energy asking God to change ourselves as we do asking him to change our spouses, our marriages would be anything but ordinary. It is so easy for us to apply truth to our spouses before we apply it to ourselves. It is easy for us to see the faults in them and to stay blind to the faults that live in us. Oneness in our marriages is restored as we ask—and allo w —God to change us. Even if your spouse doesn’t change, your marriage will be better because you will be changed.
A question we are often asked is, What if my spouse isn’t pursuing God at the same pace as I am? What we have come to realize is that all of our journeys will look different. Your pursuit of God doesn’t have to be at the same pace, just with the same commitment. Each of us will go through peaks and valleys in our relationship with God. It is our commitment to that journey that allows us to experience oneness the way God intended.
A BATTLE PLAN
One of the things we have learned is that there is a huge difference between good intentions and being intentional. We said in the last chapter that most marriages don’t intend to drift into ordinary. Ordinary is the by-product of the equation time + unintentionality = ordinary.
In order to move beyond ordinary, we have to be intentional. We have an enemy who is intentionally coming against our marriage relationships. We won’t drift into extraordinary; we will have to fight for it.
Intentionality + time = extraordinary. Here are two crucial ways you can fight the battle for an extraordinary marriage.
Pray for Your Spouse
As a pastor, I (Justin) get paid to pray. Trisha and I have always believed in the power of prayer. We knew the importance of prayer. We prayed all the time. We would pray for small-group leaders. We would pray for people having marital problems. We would pray for people who came up after the Sunday service and wanted to rededicate their lives to Christ. We just never prayed for each other.
Looking back, I know how ridiculous this seems. How could we not pray for each other? I would pray for Trisha occasionally. It would go something like this: “Dear God, please prompt Trisha to not gripe at me when I get home tonight. In Jesus’name, amen.” I didn’t consistently pray for Trisha and her needs, desires, and feelings. I never took time to lift her up to God as I should have.
If you want to change the climate of your marriage immediately, start praying for your spouse. Then you will realize that you are engaging the spiritual battle in your marriage rather than becoming a victim of it.
Pray with Your Spouse
I read a statistic not long ago that shocked me: less than 8 percent of Christian couples say that they pray together on a regular basis. 2 While that is shocking, it isn’t surprising. For some
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