– Tips That Hold The Power To Transform Your Marriage

By: Pastor Kevin Berry

It always amazes me when I talk to couples that are preparing for their wedding. There is such a long, and at times, overwhelming list of things to do. There are flowers that must be picked out and ordered, invitations, dresses, tuxedos, a venue to secure, a meal to be catered, and the honeymoon to plan. Yikes. The crazy thing is that most people spend an enormous amount of time to plan the wedding, but they never plan for the actual marriage.

If you are thinking about getting married, if you’ve been married 40 years, or if your marriage feels more like a nightmare than a fantasy, you can experience the marriage of your dreams.

NUMBER ONE: DETERMINE TO BE A GOOD FINDER

Here’s the thing—you tend to bring about what you think about. If you think about the negative things in your spouse, you’ll tend to bring out the worst in them.

There is a reason the Bible says that love keeps NO record of wrong. Love doesn’t stare at wrong, it doesn’t focus on wrong, it doesn’t hold onto wrong. Marriages that go wrong start in the mind with what you think about your spouse. Marriages that are great also start in the mind… they start with what you think about your spouse.

You can train yourself to focus on the positive. Remember the spies that Moses sent out to look at the promise land? Ten focused on the negative, “There are giants there, we look like grasshoppers, the cities are huge and walled in.” So they said, “there is no way this thing is going to work!” While two other spies focused on the positive, “God is with us, nothing is impossible, the fruit of the land is great.” So they said, “let’s go take the land!”

They all saw the same thing, the difference is what they focused on. There is both positive and negative characteristics in your spouse—the difference maker is what you choose to focus on!

You can begin to experience the marriage of your dreams by creating a good finder list for your spouse. List all the good you see in your spouse. Read it every day and then begin to praise the good you see. It’s not enough that you have it listed on a piece of paper, it’s not enough that you notice the positive.

Thank God for the good you see, and be sure to thank your spouse for the good you see, too! This constant flow of encouragement will be a breath of fresh air and a first step to living the marriage of your dreams.

NUMBER TWO: GET RID OF ALL CRITICAL AND NEGATIVE SPEAKING

I’ve said for years, you deserve what you tolerate. If you tolerate a critical attitude in yourself, if you tolerate negative words coming out of your mouth, then you deserve the results you will receive. You have to begin to see your critical attitude and words for what they are: toxic and deadly to your marriage.

I recently had to go through airport customs and I was reminded about a lady who came back from Mexico. She knew she was not supposed to bring back plants or food, but she had snuck a houseplant home and put it in her living room. She noticed after some time that the stem of the plant was swelling up and getting bigger with every day. It now had a huge bulge in it that began to pulsate.

One day when she came home from work, she was greeted to a house full of baby tarantulas that had hatched from an egg that was inside the stem of the houseplant which looked so harmless.

The negative thinking and speaking, that critical attitude, if allowed to stay in your home, will one day birth something ugly and dangerous in your marriage. Hey, when you see a critical attitude in your life, when you hear negativity coming out of your mouth… treat it like it really is—something toxic and deadly that has to go!

Realize that 85% of all communication is nonverbal. Louder than your words are your facial expression, the tone of your voice, and the look in your eyes. Wow! 85% of what your spouse hears you say has nothing to do with the words that come out of your mouth, and everything to do with the way you say those words.

NUMBER THREE: LEARN TO THANK GOD FOR YOUR DIFFERENCES

Thank God we are not all the same. I don’t think my home, let alone the world, could deal with more than one Kevin Berry. Renee and I are very different, and I’m so grateful for that. As they say, guys are blue and girls are pink. We think differently, we process things differently, we see the same thing our spouse sees—but we see it differently. You can either let that frustrate you, or you can accept and thank God for making your spouse the way they are.

If you have been married for more than a week, you have discovered one thing for sure: you cannot change your spouse… you can only change you. Instead of focusing on the differences you see in your spouse that you want to change, do yourself a favor and look in the mirror. If you are going to change anything, let it start with changing yourself. Then, you can begin to step into the marriage of your dreams.