Speak the Future, Not the Past in Your Marriage
The Bible is consistent in that there is much power in the way we talk to each other.
Marriage is absolutely a wild journey of faith. Faith is the ability to pull God’s promised future into our present reality. When I speak to my spouse, I need to speak only what pulls God’s promises for her into the conversation. Don’t be fooled – the enemy wishes to steal, kill, and destroy, and he will use the way you speak to bring his desired future into your marriage.
We have learned to avoid, what we have been taught to call, “shotgun phrases” (I can’t even remember from where). Shotgun phrases are saying things that kill the conversation. You want to learn to get a good volley going, where your spouse feels comfortable responding.
We try to avoid language such as, “You always... You never... Why can’t you... When will you learn...” in a fight. Again, it’s about declaring over them God’s future.
When you say a phrase like, “You never hear me when I’m talking,” you speak that into their future. The very phrase implies they can’t change.
When you use a phrase like, “You always push me to my limit,” you allow the enemy’s narrative to have a voice in the kind of future you are fighting for.
We try using phrases like, “Sometimes you... I feel like you... Am I right to think...”
This leaves space for an alternate future to present itself; God’s future. Notice that you are still fighting, and you are still dealing with the hurt, but you’re allowing space for God to change the outcome.
Have you ever moved to a new city, started a new job, or started attending a new church, and felt like you could reinvent yourself? When people get around a new group, they realize they have an opportunity to express outwardly the change they feel has happened within. People who have been in your life for a while have a tendency to tie you to who you were, and they’re so close they can’t even see the change that might have occurred on the inside – especially when they get hurt. You learn from past wounds the most vividly.
We can have a tendency to lose sight that our spouse is actually changing, and we can chain them to the past versions of themselves.
Paul cries out in Romans, “Oh wretched man that I am! Who can save me from this body of death?” In the first century, there was a death penalty where they would literally chain the offender to a decaying dead body so that, as it decayed, they would decay right along with it!
We can tend to do this with our spouses. We chain them to the old versions of themselves for so long that we can actually decay the change that took place while we weren’t watching! I hate when I hear someone say, “People don’t change.” That is literally the whole message of the gospel! We are being changed from glory to glory from the inside out. Give space for your partner to change.
Join us for our Marriage Conference this February.
