10 Rules to Keep your Marriage Happy!

Love your partner as yourself is the golden rule of a marriage. How to do that? See 10 practical ways in the article below.

There are many rules and regulations in this world in every area of expertise. We need them to properly relate to each other in traffic, in school, at work and basically anywhere. Can you imagine the traffic without rules? Can you imagine airplanes flying without any flight order? Most of us will admit that it would mean chaos and a sure way to death due to the imminent collisions.

Right but how about marriage? Who is to establish the best rules for it?
Well, who made the rules for the traffic? The inventors of cars! The same way, the Inventor of marriage, namely God, gave the rules for a happy marriage. Yes, He made the man and woman different to complement each other and not to compete against each other. But
often times, in our competitive society, we tend to forget that marriage doesn’t work best if we apply competition.

Jesus, the Son of God said that the greatest commandment of them all is to love your neighbor as you love yourself. When applying this commandment to marriage, it means to love your husband/wife as you love yourself. That implies putting his/her wishes above yours, giving in to make the other happy. Hmm…this sounds a bit hard, doesn’t it?
Someone once said that if you marry because you want your partner to make you happy, you married for the wrong reason; the right reason should be to marry so that you could make your partner happy. You love him/her, you want to see him happy right?

TOO TRUE!

Sunday 7 September, 08

‘HOLD ON TO INSTRUCTION…GUARD IT WELL, FOR IT IS YOUR LIFE.’ PROVERBS 4:13 NIV

It’s not enough to get prepared, you must stay prepared. We’re being told that knowledge is doubling every five years. So if you don’t keep growing, you’ll end up with coping skills that no longer match the challenge you face in the world you live in. It’s estimated that many doctors are so busy taking care of patients, they are years behind the latest developments in their field. If you or a loved one gets ill, that could become a real concern for you. Preparation doesn’t begin with what you do; it begins with what you believe. If you believe that success tomorrow depends on what you do today, you’ll treat today differently. A wise sailor studies the weather before he goes to sea because he knows that avoiding a storm is easier than getting out of one. Howard Coonley of the American National Standards Institute stated, ‘The leader of the future will be rated by his ability to anticipate problems, rather than to meet them as they come.’ Preparation is not merely an event, it’s a perspective. Abraham Lincoln said, ‘If I had eight hours to chop down a tree, I’d spend six sharpening my axe.’ As a young man Lincoln had split rails with an axe, so he knew the value of staying sharp. Wisdom always prompted him to prepare; whether he was getting ready to cut wood, study law on his own to pass the bar or lead the nation. This is why your Bible says, ‘Hold on to instruction, do not let it go. Guard it well, for it is your life.’

DO IT WHEN YOUR LIFE IS DOWN!

Monday 1 September, 08 ‘ELIJAH WAS…JUST LIKE US.’ JAMES 5:17 NIV There are times in life when we all feel down. But God’s Word shows us the way to get back up. Look at Elijah, who ‘was just like us.’ How come he got so far down? 1) It happened on the heels of a great victory. He didn’t start out in the doldrums, and he didn’t fall into sin. No, he’d just called down fire from heaven and slain 450 false prophets (1 Kings 18:22-39). But that’s hard work! So he went from exhilaration to exhaustion. Weary, defences down and vulnerability up, he fell into a natural depression because fatigue strips us of our courage. 2) Fear caused him to lose perspective. The man of God who’d just faced down an evil multitude, ended up running from one woman, Jezebel (1 Kings 19). Fear made him forget God’s power; it skewed his perspective and left him feeling suicidal. Exhaustion coupled with fear is a dangerous combination. It invites hopeless, wrong thinking, and creates the illusion that your options are gone. 3) He became isolated. Elijah left his servant at Beersheba and journeyed into the wilderness alone (1 Kings 19:3-4). When you most need support, anxiety, a sense of inadequacy and fear of failure, will push you into isolation. At that point you’re in the worst possible company; your own. Elijah thought, ‘I am the only one left, and now they are trying to kill me’ (vs10, 14 NIV). Translated: ‘It’s bad and I can’t see it getting better!’ When you’re down, it isn’t the time to isolate. That’s when you need to reach for God and the people who love you, who can help you back up.

DEAL WITH IT!

Sunday 31 August, 08
“BUT THE THING THAT DAVID HAD DONE DISPLEASED THE LORD.” 2 SAMUEL 11:27 NKJV

When David committed adultery with Bathsheba and she became pregnant, he tried to cover his tracks by having her husband Uriah killed and then marrying her before the baby was born. It looked like David was home free, except for one important detail. ‘The thing that David had done displeased the Lord.’ And you can’t silence the voice of an angry God! Now, while David was ‘a man after [God’s] own heart’ (1 Samuel 13:14 NLT), the Bible says, ‘Be sure your sin will find you out’ (Numbers 32:23). God told David, ‘I made you king…freed you from the fist of Saul…gave you…Israel and Judah. And…I’d have gladly thrown in much more. So why have you treated the word of God with…contempt?’ (2 Samuel 12:7-9 TM). Then He passed sentence: ‘Because you despised me…I am going to bring calamity upon you…before all Israel’ (2 Samuel 12:10-12 NIV). And from then on tragedy and turmoil plagued David’s family. ‘The way of transgressors is hard’ (Proverbs 13:15) on many levels, not least of which is that God takes away our peace in order to take away our sin. It took an unplanned pregnancy, the murder of an innocent man, the death of a child, the persuasion of a prophet and the conviction of the Holy Spirit before David’s heart finally softened and he admitted, ‘I have sinned against the Lord’ (2 Samuel 12:13 NKJV). And when he did, God treated David’s sin the same way He treats ours: ‘If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive…and…cleanse us from all unrighteousness’ (1 John 1:9). Is there a ‘sin’ in your life you need to deal with today? Deal with it!

DO IT WHILE YOU STILL CAN!

Saturday 30 August, 08 ‘YOU WILL BE MISSED, BECAUSE YOUR SEAT WILL BE EMPTY.’ 1 SAMUEL 20:18 NIV

When you lose a loved one, you realise that relationships are much more important than possessions, but we forget that in our scramble to the top of the heap. Being told you’ve only a short time to live puts you into shock, then re-orders your priorities. It makes you want to fill each precious moment with the words you’ve left unsaid and the things you’ve neglected to do. Don’t allow self-centredness, masquerading as ambition (or religious zeal!), to keep you from showing love to those who need it. Make that call. Send that email. Buy those flowers. Say, ‘I love you.’ In other words, ‘be there.’ Most of the time people don’t need our wise analysis or brilliant answers, they just need our love and support and they’ll find their own answers. If you are a leader, you’re particularly at risk. Don’t sacrifice your family on the altar of your career or you’ll end up with regrets you can’t resolve. The son of a well-known missionary stood at his dad’s grave without shedding a tear. He told someone, ‘You never miss what you never had. My dad loved people on the other side of the world, but I’m not sure he loved me.’ Wake up! The clock’s ticking and the days are flying by. Yes, you must fulfil your God-given assignment in life but not at the cost of the people who matter. Take a moment and think about these words: ‘And Jonathan had David reaffirm his…love for him…Then Jonathan said to David…You will be missed, because your seat will be empty.’

WHAT'S CHOKING YOU?

Friday 29 August, 08 ‘DESIRES FOR…THINGS…CHOKE THE WORD.’ MARK 4:19 NIV In the parable of the sower Jesus said, ‘Still others, like seed sown among thorns, hear the word; but the worries of this life, the deceitfulness of wealth and the desires for other things come in and choke the word, making it unfruitful’ (Mark 4:18-19 NIV). Notice, the problem is not the sower or the seed, it’s the soil. Jesus said they ‘hear the word,’ so we’re talking about church folks with a pre-existing mindset that chokes every Scripture they hear, read or try to apply. Jesus describes these thorns as: ‘The worries of this life, the deceitfulness of wealth and the desires for other things.’ Do you remember the time when you thought the house you now live in, the career you now enjoy and the investments you now have, would make all your worries go away? But no, the more you have, the more you have to lose, to protect, to maintain, and to worry about. That’s ‘the deceitfulness of wealth.’ If your significance as a person or your sense of security is tied to anything other than your relationship with God, worry will choke the life right out of you. True happiness lies in trusting God for what you need, knowing if it’s right He’ll provide it, and if not He’ll give you something better. Chuck Swindoll writes, ‘We live among thorns because we’ve a quiet, respectable, secret love for them. I know. I’ve got the ugly scars to prove it. Each one a mute reminder of years trapped in the thicket; periodically I still have to yank a few.’ How about you; do you have some thorns you need to pull?

FORGIVENESS...SHOW TRUE LOVE.

Thursday 28 August, 08 ‘FORGIVE AS QUICKLY AND COMPLETELY AS THE MASTER FORGAVE YOU.’ COLOSSIANS 3:13 TM Jimmy drank too much at the party and embarrassed his wife Lisa. Next morning he felt bad and asked her to forgive him. She said she would, yet she kept bringing it up. One day in discouragement he said, ‘I thought you were going to forgive and forget.’ She said, ‘I have, I just don’t want you to forget that I have forgiven and forgotten.’ Do you forgive like that? Keeping score only works in competitive sports; it’s disastrous in relationships. There’s so much good in the worst of us and so much bad in the best of us, that we’ll spend much of our lives learning to forgive and forget. And forgetting is harder when the offence is great. Small offences can be forgiven quickly; big ones require a healing process. But until you make the decision to forgive, the process can’t even begin. How can you ‘Forgive as quickly and completely as the Master forgave you’? Paul answers, ‘Clothe yourselves with tender-hearted mercy, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience. Make allowance for each other’s faults, and forgive anyone who offends you. Remember, the Lord forgave you, so you must forgive others’ (Colossians 3:12-13 NLT). To practice this kind of forgiveness you must focus on a person’s worth, not their weaknesses. You must turn your heart away from what was, to what can be. You say, ‘Why should I forgive and forget?’ a) because God’s Word tells you to b) because you yourself will continue to need forgiveness c) because you weren’t built to carry the stress that goes with resentment.