Unfortunately, many “Christians” grew up in homes or with society’s message excusing lust and pornography as a normal thing, educational, just a phase, or a needed release. In Satan’s plan, the corruption about love separates us from our flesh and blood spouse in front of us. The fantasies keep us from taking responsibility and fixing the individual issues that hooked us into lust fantasies from the start.
If you grew up hearing and believing that you will “never amount to anything” or other negative lies, and you adopted these beliefs, you may struggle with low self-worth. You may doubt that you could ever be good enough or that you deserve to be respected or loved. These struggles torture you and keep you in pain and blind to seeking the truth of God.
The devil deceives you into believing that the negative lies people have said about you are your worth. If you equate their lies to be your worth, the enemy keeps your mind and emotions in pain. In your pain, you focus on fixing or changing yourself to prove you are valuable.
God designed us with a spiritual desire to belong to Him from birth, but we don’t know it. In our unawareness, we try to feel like we belong by pleasing other people. We may try to join groups, cults, or organizations to feel connected. However, nothing on this broken earth can fill our spiritual need to belong to our Father and Creator, God.
Unfortunately, receiving salvation doesn’t instantly download us with the knowledge and understanding of who we are in Christ and that we are adopted into God’s family. (Eph. 1:5) Most of us don’t have an instant feeling of belonging, which is confusing. However, our feelings and unawareness of God’s truth don’t change the fact that we belong to God.
One fact of our human condition is our longing and need to have loving contact with other people. When we don’t experience healthy love in our childhood, our drive to feel loved makes us self-focused. Our self-focus affects how we see ourselves, others, and our relationship with Jesus.
Feeling love-starved for most of my life influenced what I believed about love. The pain in my past taught me that any attention, good or bad, was to be considered “love.” With this understanding and definition of love, I excused any unhealthy and abusive words and actions as long as there was “love.”
Although fairytale fantasies are fiction, we often face some of the same elements in our life. We face difficult people and circumstances, we struggle with fear and self-worth, and we want our happily-ever-after on this broken earth. In our real life, every choice has an effect and consequence. We can’t wish our challenges away or pretend they don’t exist like in a fantasy.
We are one-half of our marriage. If we only commit halfway to our marriage, how can we expect a deep, rich, healthy, happy marriage? Likewise, if we are using an imperfect love design with unhealthy aspects, how can we expect our marriage to be healthy?
The only person you can change is yourself with the help of Christ. Our marriage is like a series of dance steps. When one partner changes a step, the other one will notice even if they don’t say anything at first. When you choose to love your spouse in Christ’s design, the new step is done in his love. Your spouse will choose to react or to respond.
Here’s the big secret you have been waiting to find, and it comes from two verses Jesus tells us.
A performance-based identity warps the value we place on ourselves and others. When we’re wrapped up in how our performance makes us look or what we gain, we are living in the self-focused sin of pride. We can start to believe that who we are is based on how good or how bad we are doing something, which is not true in our Christ identity.
The best place to start asking questions is with yourself. You must know what you believe, why you believe it, and what God’s truth says about your faith and love. When you know your truth, you can have a conversation with your spouse without feeling like you need to defend yourself or change their mind.
Remember, questions in Christ’s love allows your spouse to answer from their perspective, understanding, opinions, and beliefs. It’s your time to listen and see where they come from and what is in their heart. It’s not your job to change their mind or try to fix them. When they ask what you think, share your truths, and create a safe place, you can discuss how you see things differently and why.
The top type of abuse that is rarely acknowledged or addressed in marriages is verbal abuse. Verbal abuse speaks in disrespectful, degrading, dishonoring manners to manipulate, control, and overpower their spouse psychologically. No one is immune to this learned form of toxic, abusive communication, not even “Christians.”
Many Cristian marriages struggle with fighting, sarcasm, and painful words. They want their marriage to be happy. However, they’re not taught to recognize the verbal cycle of abuse or stop it with Jesus. Let’s look at the husband’s words and the wife’s words to see how the cycle of destruction and abuse happens.