Keys to Keeping "Abounding Joy" in Your Marriage

(Comments made at Josh and Kim’s Rehearsal Dinner)
(View Pictures Here!)

Josh, one of our seven boys, was married on March 31, 2001! It was a beautiful wedding! (You can see a few pictures here.) At their rehearsal dinner, Steve took a few minutes to offer a few suggestions for keeping "abounding joy" in their marriage as the years go by. These notes are a rough approximation of what was said at that time.

"It is customary for the one responsible for the rehearsal dinner to offer a few words of encouragement and a toast to the bride and groom. Instead, with your forbearance, I would like to offer a few words of encouragement and a prayer.

"Vickie and I have a web site called aboundingjoy.com. It isn’t specifically about marriage, but the title certainly relates. Almost every marriage that ever happens starts out with an incredible amount of sheer ‘abounding joy.’ But, after only a few months or years, most marriages have lost it somewhere. The joy has been drained out and replaced with misery.

"We are focusing all our attention right now on a wedding. We want it to be beautiful and meaningful and memorable. We want God to bless it. We want it to happen without a hitch. (Although I can tell you now there will be hitches! There always are! And that’s o.k. They make the wedding even more memorable!)

"But sometimes we run the risk of concentrating so heavily on having a successful wedding ceremony, that we neglect to concentrate on having a successful marriage that keeps the abounding joy flowing on down through the years.

"So I would like to offer a few suggestions that may make it more likely that the abounding joy will stay in your marriage.

"Of course, if you listen very long, you will hear all kinds of ‘counsel’ for married couples. I am reminded of the old man who had been happily married to the same wife for 75 years. Someone asked him what was the secret to his successful marriage. He said, ‘Well, when my wife and I got married, 75 years ago, we made a decision and a commitment. We decided that from then on, I would make all the big decisions--the major decisions--in our marriage, and that she would make all the little decisions, the minor decisions. And we stuck to it!…The amazing and wonderful thing is, that after all these years, every single one of the decisions we have had to make has been minor! We haven’t had to make a single decision that would be considered major!’

The first thing I would offer is this. In Philippians 2:3 the Bible says, "Let each esteem the other better than themselves." Selfishness kills the abounding joy of marriage. The fact is that it takes two people plus the Lord to make a successful marriage. The sad thing is that it only takes one person to destroy it. If you are going to keep the joy, Josh, you must always put Kim’s needs and desires above your own. You must esteem her better than yourself. And Kim, you must always put Josh’s needs and desires above your own. You must esteem him better than yourself.

"I also believe that if you were to examine closely the marriages where the abounding joy has remained in the marriage, you would hear the husband and the wife say, each about 50% of the time, these powerful words: ‘I was wrong. I had a bad attitude. I should not have said that. Would you please forgive me?’

"For some reason some people have a very tough time saying those words. In a successful marriage they come quickly when needed. I guess some people really don’t think they are ever in the wrong. Some people have developed a horrible habit of always blaming someone else when things go wrong.

"If you find only one person in a marriage always doing all the apologizing, you have a marriage where the joy has been drained out. And if you find neither person ever admitting wrong, you have a total disaster on your hands.

"Here’s another. Make it your goal to always keep growing spiritually and growing in your emotional maturity. None of us have arrived. We all have a lot of growing to do. Don’t ever forget to keep growing.

"And along with that, be careful NOT to make it your responsibility to make sure your spouse keeps growing. Sure, God will use each of you to help the other one keep growing. But when a husband tries too hard to get his wife to grow (or vice versa), it can cause more problems than it solves. Focus on your own growth. Pray for your spouse’s growth, and leave it to the Lord to bring it to pass.

"Here’s another. Make it your goal to never, ever, ever, ever, ever ridicule or criticize or make fun of your partner. Especially in front of other people! We all know husbands and wives who make fun of their spouses and get others to laugh at them. And usually they say, ‘Oh, he knows I’m just kidding!’ or ‘She knows I love her.’ And, yes, they do know that. But those kinds of remarks still sting. And they tend to take joy out of your marriage. If you are always thinking of cute things to say that ridicule your spouse, bite your tongue! If you must say funny things that disparage someone, make sure it ridicules yourself, not your spouse!

"Along that line, work hard to just not allow yourself to even focus at all on the faults and weaknesses of each other. Sure you both have faults and weaknesses. We all have plenty of them. But when you start focusing on the faults of your spouse, the joy drains out. Keep reminding yourself of all the positive things that attracted you to each other in the first place.

"I heard a wise man once say that we should try to see our spouse through the eyes of another man (or woman). There will be people out there who will notice the positive things about your spouse. Make sure that no one notices those positive things more often or more fully than you do! It’s pretty easy to do that now. But as time goes on, for some people it gets tougher to focus on the positive instead of the negative. Work at it!

"Finally, on a very practical note, make it your business to faithfully, at least once a week, spend lots of time alone with each other. No TV. No movie. No other people around. Just the two of you. One on one. With plenty of time to just talk about what’s going on in your lives. Marriages that keep the abounding joy flowing make time for that. In the early days of a marriage, it’s usually easy. Later on it becomes amazingly difficult. It requires setting a time on the calendar and letting nothing interfere with it.

"But to sum it all up, ‘Let each esteem the other better than themselves.’ If you follow that principle, and learn how to apply it to your marriage, you will find the abounding joy just seems to keep going and going and going!"

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