EP4. MAKING YOUR MARRIAGE GREAT: Part 2- 10 keys to transform your marriage......Better You, Better Marriage

Hey, we are Greg and Linda Smith, your host from Raleigh, North Carolina.

It's great that you're taking time to invest into your marriage by listening to our weekly podcast.

Making marriage great is our goal.

This will be accomplished by teaching you how to be married and love it.

Regardless of your present marriage situation, we're.

Going to be covering everything that has to do with marriage, including hot topics like sex, love, communication, and much more.

Our teachings are based on christian principles, plus over 47 years of marriage and ministry experience.

It's an honor and a privilege to have you join us.

Welcome to the marriage and love it podcast, and we're glad you're going to be with us for this episode, which we're continuing the making Marriage great series.

And this is going to be part two, and it's going to be dealing with better you, better marriage, because as you improve yourself and make yourself a better person and a better spouse, your marriage is going to be better.

And in case you missed any of the first three parts of our making marriage great series, part one was dealing with putting your marriage in God's hands.

So we just recommend you go back and listen to that.

Now, one of the reasons why we're doing these podcasts, as a little side note here, is to provide preventive maintenance or marriage tune up.

Because if you have a good marriage and your marriage is doing pretty good, or really whatever condition you're in, it's good goal to keep your marriage strong.

Because if you're not giving attention to your marriage, just like if you've got a garden and you don't give attention to that garden almost on a daily basis, what happens to the plants or the vegetables or the fruit?

If it gets a wilt, it wilts dried up.

Because the marriage busters that we've talked about are going to come in, they are waiting to come in and distract you in your marriage.

So you're going to become a better person, and then your spouse is going to be better off because you're becoming a better person.

So your spouse is going to be able to reap the benefits for your marriage because of what's happening in your life.

And then what's going to happen is your marriage is going to get better.

So maybe don't do it just for you or what you feel like doing or for your spouse, but you've got to look at your marriage as being its own personality.

You know, I don't feel like listening to marriage audio today, or I don't feel like doing this or doing that.

But you know what my marriage needs that.

Our marriage needs me to do preventive maintenance.

Our marriage needs to have a tune up, whether I feel like it or not.

And a good example is this is Linda and I used to walk.

Well, we haven't walked too much, like, because of some physical situations, but we would walk every day, and it allowed us time to talk, dream, have discussions, and all sorts of things.

And it was a major blessing in our marriage to be able to do that.

Like, we'd reconnect.

We'd have prayer time.

Reconnect, yeah, and all that.

Well, this is years ago when we were in Texas.

Every so often we would go to a hotel just out in the middle of nowhere.

My dad would get these free rooms, so he'd let us take them.

So we did.

So we'd go someplace and had a nice pool, and we'd get our floats and just sit by the pool for a couple of days and chill.

You know, we'd maybe go out to eat, float, lay in the sun, just chill.

Well, one time we went.

Went and did that, and we got into the pool, and I was floating around, Linda sitting in the chair, sunbathing, and it's like we just didn't feel settled.

It was.

Something was missing, and we hadn't had our walk that day.

So we got out of the pool.

I got out of the pool, went back to the hotel room, got our walking clothes on, and we went and took a walk.

What happened is we developed a habit, and we needed that time to connect because it wasn't happening in the pool.

So we went out and walked around the block and had a good walk.

And as, when we came back, it was like, ah, what happened?

We needed that time of connection, and it wasn't just floating in the pool to get at that particular time.

So do things because it makes your marriage better.

It strengthens your marriage, whether you want to do it or not.

All right, so let's move on.

And our goal with the better marriage, better you is.

Is to focus on us, you as an individual, not your spouse.

This one is not going to be about your spouse today.

This is about, you.

See what happens when we get married, especially when people are dating and they see something in their.

Their potential spouse that they don't really care for.

What do you think?

Oh, I'll be able to change that.

How many y'all know that doesn't usually.

Go over too well, right?

Yeah.

So they change.

They try to change their ways, their actions, their personality, their views, their attitudes.

In other words, they try to make them perfect.

Yep.

And that's basically gonna be impossible.

So the only thing that we can control is ourselves.

So we're going to talk about making a better you, working on and improving yourself and improving your love walk.

What happens when you do all those things?

When you make yourself better, you attract your spouse and not repel them.

A question to ask yourself, that's a good question is, would you want to be married to you?

Think about that.

Would you want to be married to you?

So we're going to get into now the ten commitment keys to a better you and a better marriage and the type of attitudes to have.

Matthew seven three five says, and why do you look at the speck in your brother's eye?

But I would put in there like my spouse's eye, but do not notice the log that is in your eye.

Well, I had to let go and let God, and I had to start looking at myself instead of just pinpointing and picking on the speck that was in Greg's eye.

Another scripture is psalms 139, verse 23 through 24.

And it says, search me, o God, and know my heart.

Try me and know my anxious thoughts and see if there be any hurtful way in me and lead me in thy everlasting way.

This is something we should do consistently.

You gotta be brave to say that.

You gotta be ready for it.

Looking at myself and saying on a regular basis, Lord, please search my heart.

Let me know if there's anything in me that is causing hurt to my spouse and lead me in the way that it should be.

Now.

Ezekiel 36 through 26 36, verse 26 says, moreover, I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you.

Will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh, give you a heart.

Removing that stone and my hard heart and changing it to a heart of flesh.

So that's what had to happen for me because my heart had gotten hard towards Greg and I had to ask the Lord to make my heart more tender toward Greg.

I had to be willing to change.

I had to, you know, let the Lord remove that stony heart and replace it with a tender heart.

And then, you know, let God take care of me, you know, but I had to bring all that before the Lord and ask him.

I had to present it to him first.

I had to recognize that I had a stony heart and what, you know, and then ask the Lord to help me to have a more tender heart towards Greg.

What we want to do now is share ten keys that benefit us throughout our marriage.

And I think will benefit you as you begin to listen to this podcast and read other books and such, so that when you're listening and doing hearing things, you can apply things to your life to make you a better person.

I'm going to start off with a hotel story about when me and Linda went to a hotel one time, and some of the things that happened are going to apply to the ten steps we're going to do.

But this was years ago.

We were in Dallas and been married for ten, maybe about 15 years.

And we had these coupon books back then where you could go get a night hotel for like $40.

Now, that hotel in the night today is probably about $500 a night.

So we got this coupon book, we drove all the way over to Dallas.

The kids were with my parents or somebody had them, and it was going to be a one night time.

And course my mind is thinking romance to the max and Linda's may or may not have been at that point.

But we got over there, we pulled in, checked in.

This is that type of hotel they call you sir and ma'am.

And I told them, I'll take my own bags up because I probably didn't have the money to tip them real big.

But we got up to the room, they had the nice robes.

I mean, you're talking about thick, cushy robes.

Luxury.

Luxury to the max.

And then I had a coupon for the restaurant.

So we went down and gonna eat.

And I was thinking, yeah, we're gonna eat and come back up to the room and we'll leave the rest to your imagination there.

But we sat down, looked at the menu, and I'm all excited.

And I look over at Linda and she goes, Greg, we need to talk.

And right then, the air was coming out of the dream balloon.

And at that moment, I could say, no, let's look at the menu.

Let's just move on.

Or I could say the next words, what about?

And then she says, well, we just need to talk about the kids, our ministry, us, life.

Nothing bad, just life, really, just about everything.

But that moment, at that moment in time, I had the decision to make.

Was I going to put on love or was I going to put on myself?

I could have said, dear, you don't understand.

We came over here to have a nice romantic weekend.

We got the kids farmed out.

We didn't come over here and spend $40 for a hotel room to talk.

We could have done that at home if I would have done that.

Let's go back to Ezekiel 36 26.

It would have put a little thing in there to harden her heart, because why?

She had a need.

And I would have made the choice to say, no, let's don't talk.

We can talk about that later.

Let's just get in and having a nice weekend.

Why do you think the odds were if I hadn't have said, let's talk back, any of that would have happened?

Zero.

Zero.

Yes.

So at that point, I had to say, what about the kids?

Oh, what about our finances?

Or what about our ministry?

So we ended up having a good, long discussion.

And some of the things that happened during that discussion tie into the ten keys we're going to talk about, because you can have a discussion that's profitable and accomplishes something, or you can have a discussion that causes strife, puts walls up and causes hearts to get hard.

So we chose.

I chose to have a nice discussion.

It hurt.

Was it pleasant?

No.

But we learned, we grow, and it was part of a healthy everybody think in your mind, healthy relationships.

To have that time.

Now, to me, it wasn't the most convenient, but you got to realize sometimes you got to get out of your house or your home or your environment to even get in an atmosphere where you can really talk.

So there's another lesson right there.

So let's get into this.

We're going to talk about ten keys to make you a better spouse.

And the first one is, it says, I will be open.

Now, what does that mean?

It says, as you, as an individual, for me, as a husband, I want to be.

I want to be open to listen to what Linda has to say.

I want to be open minded about her concerns, about her ideas, things that she's saying to me, what she needs or wants.

Needs and desires.

I've got to be at least open to hear.

That night in the hotel, I made the decision to be open to what she wanted to talk about, knowing it's probably not going to be a pleasant experience in the short term, but reap benefits down the road to be open.

Linda, what's next?

I'm going to be teachable.

Okay, that's good.

Yep.

It's.

Will you say that again?

I am going to be teach.

Okay.

That is recorded.

Yes.

And, you know, so many people, they'll hear something about marriage, a seminar or, you know, a conference or whatever, and they'll say, oh, I don't need that.

They think they've arrived.

They say, I've heard this before.

Well, you know, oh, I'm good.

I'm good.

Like, we were teaching a class and there were several sessions in that class that we were having at our church, and a couple had come in, and when they went to the first class, they said, oh, you know what?

We don't need this.

We've.

We've heard all this before.

Well, here's a question.

Were they doing it?

Were they applying it?

Did they need a tune up?

Did they need to have some marriage maintenance done?

You know, those are all the things that we should be asking ourself.

Yeah.

And there's another on top of that, when there was another couple from another class we'd done before, this is probably about halfway through it, and they go, wow.

You know, we.

We've heard a lot of this before, but you know what?

We forgot to be doing it.

Right.

This is a reminder, a refreshing that we need to be doing as we know to do it.

But this is helping us focus on applying these principles in our life now, all the different marriage teachings and stuff.

And also, we also had another couple that was saying that they put themselves on purpose in a position to go to a conference once a year because they realized that no matter what, they needed that marriage tune up.

And their marriage was good.

It was great.

But they wanted to keep it that way.

They wanted to actually take it from good to great to exceptional, to be excelling even more.

So they set that up on purpose to get to a conference.

And then when you hear what's being said, you put that yourself in that position.

You gotta be teachable to hear what is being taught.

And even if it's not pleasant, to say, okay, yes, that's.

That's tough.

Yeah, it's like a nudge.

Take the medicine.

You know, like, yeah, here we go.

So I'll be honest.

Tell me about that one, Greg.

This is another key.

Oh, you got to be honest.

Like, when I.

When.

When I say to be open, you got to be honest.

When you share, you got to be honest.

First of all, you need to be honest with yourself, because with that one scripture, Linda said, search me, oh, God, and see if there's any open, harmful way in me.

Well, you got to be honest and say, God reveal things to me that's not good.

Is there areas that I heard taught that I need to work on?

Am I really as great as I think I am?

Am I really meeting my spouse's needs the way she would like for me to meet them?

Be honest with God.

God knows what's going on.

Yeah, he already knows everything.

I need help for us to admit it.

A lot of times, I'll pray in the morning when I'm having my prayer time, I say, God, remind me, help me, and see the ways that I can take care of Linda's needs today.

What is it that she need?

And just say, God, I need your help on that.

But be honest with God.

Say, I need help.

Here's my weaknesses.

God, I know a lot of times my problem is I tone.

Linda says when I talk, I got.

A tone, a toner.

Toner.

I don't think I do, but she says, I do.

So I always say, holy spirit, God, help me catch if I'm not responding to her.

I may be saying the right thing, but the way I'm saying it is wrong.

So I go to God and say, God, help me with this.

Allow your holy spirit, or allow the Holy Spirit to come in and help me with that.

And, like, for me, it would be body language, like rolling my eyes or, you know, maybe I put a little tone in there, you know, or sarcastic attitude or, you know, like, are you kidding me?

Kind of thing.

So those are the things I have to be honest with myself.

Yeah, with yourself.

And talk to God about it and.

Ask God to help me.

And then share your true feelings with your spouse.

I can remember times when I had feelings going, I'm not a feelings person.

I'm kind of numb in that area a lot of times.

But there's been times when I have had to sit down and Linda say, this is what I'm feeling.

I've got some fear in this area.

I'm concerned about this.

I remember one time we were going through a major situation, and I just had to sit down with Lynn and say, you know what?

I'm really hurting right now.

I've got some fear.

I'm not sure what's going on.

And that allows her to pray with me and agree.

And it makes them glad to hear.

Cause people are wanting to help.

Your spouse is wanting to help you.

They just don't know how.

But if you're not honest, people like, when you go to the doctor and he goes, does this hurt?

And it hurts like heck.

And you tell him, oh, no, I'm fine.

He can't help you.

Unless you tell him, your spouse can't.

Help you, God can't help you.

So that leads us right into the next key.

You got more.

Okay.

Head on.

So.

But you gotta release the things that you've built up over time.

Even if you've been holding on to something, you've got to release that.

The movie Rocky, I remember that movie years ago, decades ago, Rocky was getting ready to have the big fight, and he went into Adrian, and Rocky was a tough guy, you know, but he went into Adrian, his girlfriend, at that time.

He says, hold me.

I am scared.

And so be honest.

It can hurt, but you've got to be honest with yourself, with God and your spouse.

And that leads us right into the next.

One of the next steps is to not condemn or criticize.

So, like, when Greg would share his feelings with me, I had to be sensitive to that, to where I would not shame him or say, oh, that is so silly, and, you know, or not to blame them.

Well, it's your fault.

You put yourself in that position.

We should not be doing that with our spouse.

We should not belittle them, especially doing it in front of other people.

If they bring something up that their feelings are and we're in public or other people, even our kids, we should not be doing that.

And it should be a private thing.

And all of this should bring, you know, that our husbands or our wife, if they're sharing their true feelings with us, then that should help us to know how to pray for them, to know how to, you know, it opens the door for them to be more honest in the future and not to hide things over, you know, from things of the past and all that.

And so it makes us to.

So, you know, what happens when we criticize or condemn our spouse is it makes them close.

That closes them off.

It shuts them down.

Totally closes them up and says, ah, in their head, they're going to be saying, I'm not ever going to share with them again.

I don't want to get, you know, shamed or I don't want to be called stupid or silly for having those feelings, because you know what?

Feelings are just feelings.

They're neither here.

They're.

They're just feelings regardless of how they're born.

You know, that's.

That's just a feeling.

And another thing.

Did you have something you wanted to share?

I just don't talk about.

I can remember in the past, I probably said it, and I know people say it when.

When your spouse shares something and you just think that's stupid, and it's just their feeling, you know, that, like Linda said, they're feeling.

It's not right or wrong, but you what we have to realize there is a reason why they're feeling that way.

True.

And so we got to find out what's causing that feeling, because it could be a misunderstanding.

You maybe, just maybe, you did something that caused them to feel that way.

But it may just be as little as a misunderstanding.

But as soon as I were to tell Linda, well, that's stupid.

Well, what do they do that shut down, closes off?

And what happens over a period of time, if you're not following a lot of these different things, like, I'll be honest, I'll be open, I won't condemn and criticize.

And all the ones we're talking about, what happens?

That heart starts getting hard just a little bit.

Just like when your heart goes bad and your real heart, it happens slowly.

And we.

If we don't take care of that heart, what happens?

It'd be sooner or later it flows.

Could lead to a heart attack.

And so it's the enemies, those little marriage busters that come in, they're suddenly causing your spouse's or your heart to start getting hard and hard.

And sooner or later, all of a sudden, that heart can just snap.

And then you.

You got a lot of stuff to deal with at that point.

So not condemning and criticize.

Go ahead.

Another one is to forgive.

We got to forgive and let it go.

Let God do the work, let go of the past.

Realize that.

First of all, you got to realize and recognize that you've held some things in and you haven't forgiven.

So unforgiveness, it can really destroy a relationship.

It can affect you physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually.

It can affect so many areas of our relationships.

We got to forgive ourself to begin with.

We got to forgive our spouse.

Maybe it's our parents.

Maybe we got to even forgive God.

That could be an area that we've done.

Like, for example, when we were pregnant with our second child, we got pregnant, and Greg had told his mom and dad we did not plan it, when in reality, we had planned it.

And that hurt me so bad.

I'm like, what?

What are you even saying to your mom and dad?

We did plan this second pregnancy, and so I had to forgive Greg for, you know, telling his parents basically a lie.

That was.

That was a biggie.

That's one of those things you could say, you shouldn't oughta done that.

The reason why I did it, and it's another little teaching point here, is at that point in my life, I was still caught up in people pleasing and my parents approval, and I knew my dad would probably come in and go, why did you do that for?

You can't afford to have a kidde that you should have known better than that and any other reason, and I wasn't up for that.

And I I wasn't thinking, they're probably going to be happy to be grandparents.

For the second time.

Right.

But I allowed the.

The.

My assumed response or my people pleasing or approval that I was wanting to override the approval and the pleasing of my wife, Linda.

And that was an issue we had.

One of the issues we had to deal with through the years, which that's taken care of, but that's what happened there.

But that is another thing where Linda had to forgive.

So I put Linda in a position where she had to forgive me.

Yeah.

So then also, areas that we need to forgive could be with our children, you know, or our pets.

You know, we know.

Like, we had a couple at our class, they didn't have kids, but they had a eight cats, and they.

All the cats wanted to get in the bed with both of them.

And the husband was like, no, I'm not so big on all the cats being in bed with me, but the wife wanted them all there.

And so the husband could have said, you're putting those cats over me and the desires that I have.

And, you know, she didn't want to let go of that.

And so he said, I had to come to a place where I would forgive her.

That was a testimony when we had done the teaching on forgiveness.

He's like, you know what?

I realized I was not forgiving my wife because she wanted to have those cats in the bed with us.

And he said, when I did that, all of a sudden she was like, you know what?

They don't all need to be in the bed with us.

And it just brought them to a new place in their relationship with each other.

And another area is with children.

When a.

A couple has children, all of a sudden, it seems mom is all about the kids.

She forgets that she's even married, and she's all about the kids and taking care of them.

And one little cry from the other room, or she lets them in the bed with them.

And the husband is like, all you do is give all the attention to the kids.

Do I exist anymore?

You know?

And he feels like he got totally put aside, you know, that's another area.

And I'm speaking from, you know, also an area that children or pets that we see a lot of couples that we counsel or we talk to or we hear testimonies later that they had to overcome these areas.

Go ahead.

Go ahead.

Well, it's just, you gotta ask God to help you a lot of times when he brings to your attention that this is an area of unforgiveness.

That you failed onto.

You gotta ask God to help you, you know?

And then it's a decision to forgive, and it takes time.

This is.

It's a process.

A lot of times, maybe you've released forgiveness, but it might take time to be healed of the hearts of that taken, because it took time when Greg had.

I had to forgive Greg for bringing up about our second pregnancy.

Not that it was a mistake.

I mean, I was so hurt, but I released forgiveness, and that was a decision.

And then it took time to really realize, I've got to let the healing take place.

It's a process.

Yeah.

And, you know, unforgiveness can destroy a relationship.

Yes.

And it can affect you spiritually, mentally, emotionally, and physically.

I mean, people actually get diseases because they hold forgiveness in true.

And think about how many times you watch a movie or you hear other people that they're not seeing their wife or their, their brothers or sisters or family members or friends because they got this grudge that's so deep they shut them out of their life when they could be enjoying life with somebody over.

Something, probably just a misunderstanding.

It must.

Or an assumption on their part.

It was a total misunderstanding that caused that grudge.

I remember one time I had a situation that happened to with me, and I'm.

I think different people handle unforgiveness differently.

Some people are personalities, or some people can forgive easily, and some people, you just get around them and you can see they have a hard time forgiving and forgetting.

I mean, even if they get a bad meal at a restaurant, I'm never going back to that restaurant again.

That is so bad.

That waiter was so bad.

And, you know, they just have a hard time letting go.

I'm kind of easy on unforgiving this the way I'm built.

But there was one time.

You release forgiveness easily.

Yes, that's the way to put it.

But there's been two different times, I know, in my life where something happened and I was really struggling to forgive, and I knew that wasn't good, but I got so hurt or offended by what happening happened, but I had to come to the point, I've got the forgiven.

I would ask God, Lord help me to do that.

And that's what I just challenge you to do in your life.

If you've got a spouse, one of your spouse has got some.

Maybe one little thing you're holding on to that could be keeping you from being the best spouse you can be, and you're robbing your spouse from that.

Just like Linda and I.

A lot of times.

Well, not a lot of times.

But we'll have little skirmishes, a little disagreements, and it's like we get over it.

I mean, we don't even have to go say, I forgive you.

We just move on and we know what's going on.

But you know what?

It's better to kiss and hug and make up than it is to hold a grudge all day.

People will do where they won't even talk for two or three days, even weeks.

I've hold, I've heard, and I'm like, wow, look at all the good time that you missed because you're holding that grudge.

Yeah, it's like, it's like, let's move on.

Let's forgive.

That's where it comes back.

Be honest with God, be open with God and say, God help me.

Forgive my spouse or my kids, or maybe it's my boss or my mother, somebody.

But we've got to forgive.

Well, that's about as far as we're going to be able to get today in today's podcast.

Do you have anything else on forgiveness?

Nope.

I think that covers a big part of it.

So you can look at my hotel story, which will continue next time, about how applying these principles, even in that conversation we had at a restaurant, at the restaurant, allowed us to move through that night and have victory in that area.

And we'll pick up with number six the next time, next week, I guess, when we get back into this and.

Check out the show notes, because we'll have the scriptures that I referred to in our show notes for you.

So with that, we are going to have homework time.

All right, I'm going to share.

Just remind you that every homework period is to do the ten second kiss.

If you haven't been doing that, we just challenge you to do that every day.

That's continual homework to help you stay focused on your spouse and their lips.

So what you do is just, if you haven't heard this, just grab some type of timer, maybe on your watch or a little kitchen timer you have, and say, set it for 10 seconds and grab your, your sweetie over and just give them a good old wet one on their lips, give them a good squeeze and get a good kiss, whatever type of kiss you want, and do it for 10 seconds.

If you go over, you get some extra credit and who knows what can happen.

But do that every day.

Another thing is 10 seconds.

Yeah.

And then review your past, the our past podcast.

Gonna just do a checkup from the neck up and see how are you doing with some of the points that were taught on that, but also go.

Over the first five points on be a better you better self and to see where you stand on those.

And we'll talk to you next week.

God bless.

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