“Men and women are very different, but it helps to understand that God made us different on purpose. Don’t confuse weaknesses with differences. We are to help build up frailties but we are not called to change our differences. It certainly is not God’s plan for us to try to make our partners be like us. But we are in each other’s lives to help build each other up to become all that God had in mind for us to be” (Joyce Meyer).

I (Cindy) just finished reading the book, Help me—I’m Married by Joyce Meyer (published by Harrison House). It was a really good book that I highly recommend reading. We’d like to share a portion of this book with you that’s a testimony of God-given victory in marriage as Joyce and her husband Dave experienced, plus additional insights that can be helpful to all of us. It reads:

God’s ways are not our ways and we don’t always understand His plans. Almost every couple starts out thinking they must change each other to become compatible, when acceptance is the key to harmony in marriage. If the Lord received us with unconditional love, how much more should we embrace each other with the same patience? But instead we easily fall back into our prideful thinking that we alone are right and everyone should do as we do.

There were many things that I thought Dave should and shouldn’t do. I wanted him to be more outgoing, but he wasn’t outgoing. I wanted him to be a social butterfly. He wasn’t a social butterfly. I wanted Dave to preach. He’s not called to preach, at least not right now.

I didn’t want him to watch as much football as he watched. I didn’t want him to like sports. I didn’t want him to play golf. I wanted him to sit down every night and just look at me and talk and talk and talk. There were many things that I wanted him to want.

Dave liked his job and was a great provider. He went to work every day, always came home with the money, and took real good care of us, but he had no great ambitions to advance on his job. They offered him promotions, but he knew that it would require him being out of town a lot and he didn’t want that. He just wanted to be happy and have us all live a happy life.

Many times I tried to push him to be something more saying he ought to have more goals. Then when we started actively serving God together, I began to appreciate his differences and how much his approach to life had done to bring God’s healing for my past hurts. If Dave had not been born again and Spirit-filled, I don’t believe he could ever have stood me.

As I said before, by the time Dave found me, I had so many wounds and hurts from both my childhood and earlier marriage that I was in a really serious condition. As I already stated, my previous husband had relationships with other women and did things that finally sent him to prison.

It’s often difficult for people to go forward in new relationships when they’re loaded up with deep wounds and hurts from past situations and abuses. Whether they suffered emotional abuse, physical abuse, or verbal abuse, they need healing to overcome their trained suspicions and defenses.

If a person was repeatedly talked down to as a child by his parents or teachers, that person is going to have problems with insecurity. He will need more tender loving care than somebody who was lovingly reinforced as a child.

We need to know about each other and care about what kind of background our spouses came from. Understanding the past may help you to understand some of the things that are happening now. Many people admit to some thing in their past that they know is still crippling them emotionally. They need godly understanding to be able to go on past these things before they can properly relate to people.

Jesus is in the healing business — we don’t have to live all our lives in bondage to our past. I used to think, I would never change. I believed that once those kinds of things happened to you, you could never get over it. But if you’re willing to let God work with you, He will help you.

If your partner needs healing, it will come even more quickly if you will help. If you’ll try to put yourself in their place, you’ll see ways to help. Just take an hour and sit down sometime, and in your wildest imagination consider what it would be like to go through what your spouse has tried to share with you that they went through. Romans 15:5-6 gives instruction on how we can help:

“Now may the God Who gives the power of patient endurance (steadfastness) and Who supplies encouragement, grant you to live in such mutual harmony and such full sympathy with one another, in accord with Christ Jesus, that together you may [unanimously] with united hearts and one voice, praise and glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ (the Messiah).”

God will give us the power of patient endurance and supply us with encouragement so that we can live in harmony and in sympathy with one another.”

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It’s our prayer that you’ll ask God to help you to work with each other’s differences to harmonize your talents in partnership with each other. It’s also our prayer that you’ll bear with and help each other to work through anything that may handicap either one of you emotionally from being all you can be in partnership with Jesus Christ.I can’t even start to tell you how much Steve has helped me work through some very difficult emotional issues I unconsciously and unknowingly carried into our marital relationship. It’s taken an extraordinary amount of patience and prayerful discernment on his part as he loved me enough to help me, with God’s leading, work through these painful problems. 

Because of this our marriage is whole and healthy and all the stronger than it ever could have been had we not worked through this together with God’s help. We pray you’ll also help each other in this selfless way.

In closing we’d like to leave you with these words of David Ferguson who also wrote an excellent book on this subject entitled, Never Alone:

“God is seeking a colleague—a dedicated partner and coworker—in the ministry of loving your spouse, and you are the colleague he wants. And when God receives in you the colleague He seeks, you in turn receive the marvelous benefit of being partnered with Him in your marriage. The God who knows your spouse completely is present to share His knowledge of him or her with you.”

Our love to you in Christ,
Steve and Cindy Wright