Journey to Surrender

As I mentioned in my last post, my wife and I spoke recently at the Hope at Home 2011 Conference for adoptive parents. During the conference, as I sat and listened to my pastor describe the significant power our words have to impact our children, I couldn’t help but consider the parallel truths for marriage.

So with a nod of thanks to our pastor, Greg Haswell, I’m going to shamelessly steal from what he said and apply it to marriage.

Words Have Power

Debi from The Romantic Vineyard left a comment on my previous post “When You Have Nothing Left” about the importance of speaking truth out loud in order to encourage and build up your partner.

Truth gains power when spoken out loud. I don’t really know why that is, but I have certainly found it to be true for me. Prayers spoken out loud seem to increase my faith as compared to prayers thought silently. Reading a verse of scripture out loud allows the truth of it to penetrate more deeply than simply reading. When I sing along to a favorite worship song it lends agreement to the praises being offered, which re-orients my being toward God. Don’t believe me? Try it!

The fact is that what you say out loud has power…

• To Give Life or cause death – when you speak God’s truth to your spouse, it gives them life. When you speak falsehood or half-truth you speak death.
• To Direct – what you say creates momentum in one direction or another. Consider before you speak whether what you are about to say will move your marriage forward or backward.
• To Define – the things you say to your husband or wife will impact the way they see themselves. You want to speak things that are in agreement with who God says they are, understanding that their behavior isn’t always going to line up 100% with that.
• To Create – When you speak truth into the life of your spouse, you can help to call forth the things which are not yet, but which can be. God created the universe not by thinking or imagining it, but by speaking it into being.

Giving Life with Your Words

Here are a few tips for how to be a life-giver when it comes to how you speak to your spouse:

• Be Consistent – Do your best not to give mixed messages. Remember that it takes seven positive statements to every negative one just to stay even.
• Be Constant –. Develop life-word habits. Commit to complimenting your spouse every day, but be genuine. And never get beyond confessing your love out loud to one another.
• Be Deliberate – You have to be purposeful about speaking truth and life. It’s easy to let your conversations drift only to the functional and mundane.
• Be An Eavesdropper – Pray for wisdom and revelation of what heaven is saying about your spouse, about your circumstances and about your marriage. Agree with that. Out loud.
• Be A Treasure Hunter – We generally don’t have to work very hard to find negative stuff, but that isn’t what we want to agree with. Look for the good stuff, and amplify that with your words.

What you say out loud makes a huge difference in the atmosphere of your marriage and your home.

Consider how what you’ve been saying lately has been influencing the atmosphere in your marriage, and think about what you might do to shift your words more toward truth and life.