My son begged me to play a video game with him. I’m not even certain the name of it, but we could call it “Everybody Shoot Everybody,” and you’d probably get a mental picture of what it was like. You pick a weapon, point and shoot at the bad guys. I figured, “How hard could it be?”
Umm. Hard.
I picked the biggest gun and tried to figure out how to make the guy walk. I pushed a variety of buttons until my man started to move forward. Only in pushing all those buttons, I accidently pushed the “put your gun away in your oversized pocketbook” button. Okay, so maybe they didn’t have purses. Backpacks perhaps?
Before a full sixty seconds had passed on the game, I found myself blinking. No, not my eyeballs. My man on the television screen.
“What just happened?” I asked my son.
“Mama,” he couldn’t hold in his laughter. “You just got killed. Now you are regenerating.”
Sixty seconds. I was dead in sixty seconds.
When I wasn’t looking, the enemy snuck up and shot me dead.
It sure seems marriages have been playing the same game. Everywhere I look, the enemy has taken out another marriage – another covenant before God has been broken. He’s sneaky, the devil, and will come after your marriage, too. I don’t mean to freak you out, but he probably already has you in his sights.
And the crazy thing is, so often, we reach into our hand bag or backpack, whichever you prefer, and hand him the ammunition. I know you think I’m being a little overdramatic right now. But hear me out.
Let’s play out a scenario that happens in households all across the nation. The husband does or says something to upset his wife. It could be anything from leaving the toilet seat up to not finishing the home project he started weeks ago to focusing more on his job than his wife. The wife, frustrated, calls her best friend to vent. After getting off the phone, she doesn’t feel better. She actually feels worse.
So, she gets on Facebook. As she scrolls through her feed, she notices all the vacation pictures, anniversary pictures and date night pictures from all her friends. Seeing how wonderfully perfect those husbands are make her even angrier at her own spouse.
She gets off Facebook and calls her mom. Again, she recounts all her husband’s annoying habits, looking for justification in her anger. Her mama, of course, gives it to her. It is her mama after all. She temporarily feels better, until she hangs up.
By the time her husband walks in the door, she is brewing for a fight.
Is there anyone who can relate?
So, how does that kill my marriage, you ask? Thanks for asking. Let me explain. You see, no one is perfect. NOT you! And NOT your spouse. Two imperfect people can not have a perfect marriage. It is impossible. There are going to be times where your spouse gets on your ever-lovin’ last nerve.
Consider the irritated thought about your spouse a small spark. Every time you recount that irritated thought to a friend or family member, or even just to yourself in your mind, you are adding fuel to the fire. That one small irritation grows. With each time you tell it, your feelings of anger grow. By the time you are finished “venting,” you’ve created a fire bomb.
Satan is using that, friends, to destroy our marriages. When your significant other does something to frustrate you, satan is the one who whispers in your ear saying, “Did he do that again? Why do you put up with that? You should go call a friend to talk about it.”
But you see, every time you re-tell the wrong that’s been done to you, it only upsets you more. So how should you handle it?
1. Take captive your thoughts
“We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.” 2 Corinthians 10:5 NIV
Lock the bad thought away and replace it with truth. You might say to yourself, “Yes, my husband works a lot, but I know he does it to help provide for the family. He works out of his love for me.”
2. Find an iron-sharpening friend
“As iron sharpens iron, so one person sharpens another.” Proverbs 27:17 NIV
While you don’t need to run to tell every friend what your husband did to upset you, you may need to go to a godly friend to get biblical advice. For the most part, when we share our story, we are looking for someone to tell us we are right and the other person is wrong. Iron sharpens iron by rubbing off the burrs. Find a friend that isn’t afraid to rub off your burrs with the Truth. But even then, be careful what you share.
3. Take it to God
“Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you.” 1 Peter 5:7 NIV
God knows every single thing about your spouse and every single detail about what has gone on between you. If you need to vent, vent to God. He will always listen and you will walk away from time with Him feeling better.
What do your friends know about your spouse? Are you continually bad mouthing them to anyone who will listen? If so, you are slowly killing your marriage. You are handing satan ammunition, and trust me, he will use it to destroy your relationship.
I have friends who are currently struggling in their marriages or are in the process of divorce. I am not pointing the finger and saying that they are the cause of the demise of their relationship. But sometimes all of us, me included, can fall into the trap of focusing on the negatives. I don’t want to lose my husband. I don’t think you do either. Let’s not give satan a foothold in the covenants we made before God.
Marriages are falling right and left. Don’t let yours be one of them because you failed to do something as simple as keeping your mouth shut (says the lady with the biggest mouth of all). My quick minute playing “Everybody Shoot Everybody” taught me a life lesson for my marriage. Always be looking over your shoulder and walk with a big gun – God’s Word.
“Love is patient and kind. Love is not jealous or boastful or proud or rude. It does not demand its own way. It is not irritable, and it keeps no record of being wronged.
It does not rejoice about injustice but rejoices whenever the truth wins out. Love never gives up, never loses faith, is always hopeful, and endures through every circumstance.”
1 Corinthians 13:4-7
