Marriage

Q: I’m not attracted to my spouse anymore.  How do I fall back in love with him or her?

A:  Chemistry is a chemical reaction in your brain that makes you fall in love.  It’s that feeling that you have where you can’t get enough of the person you love.  Compatibility is a whole different thing!  You need compatibility to go the distance in marriage.  And chemistry is automatic but compatibility takes work.  

We often counsel couples who are on the verge of divorce and want to end their marriage.  One of the things we’ll say is, “Let’s go back to the beginning – the memory where you knew they were the one.”  You knew something.  You felt something.  You were convinced that he or she was the one.  We urge couples to put their compatibility struggles out of their minds and remember the chemistry.  If you can’t see a future right now, go back to the beginning.  What made you fall in love?   

Check out this video for three ways to fix marriage and restore your chemistry and compatibility:

Q:  I’ve been married to my spouse for a while but I still think about a prior boyfriend/girlfriend.  How do I get free from these thoughts?  

If you are married but still thinking about another person you had a relationship with, you have an ungodly soul tie.  A soul tie is when your mind (intellect), will, and emotions become knit together with another person.  God has created soul ties for good, so that husbands and wives, family members, and close friends can form secure connections with one another.  

But whatever God creates, Satan counterfeits.  Soul ties can take something God created that is necessary and pervert it into something designed to keep you in bondage.  If you keep accepting a counterfeit, there’s no room for God to replace it with the real thing.  

God wants you relationship with your spouse to be the strongest earthly connection you have – He wants covenant relationships for you.  The scissors for cutting your soul ties are in your hands.  The scissors are the signs that the relationship is unhealthy and ungodly.   

In this video I give you a few steps for cutting ungodly soul ties: 

Q:  I’m still waiting for an apology from my spouse for something they did that really hurt me.  I know I’m not supposed to hold a grudge, but what do I do?

A:  You don’t have to wait for an apology in order to forgive your spouse.  But it’s your choice.  

Ephesians 4:32 says, “Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you.”   Kindness and compassion can dismantle and disarm in a way you never have before.   Forgiveness doesn’t have to wait until an apology is offered.  Christians can forgive when nobody says they are sorry.  That’s so liberating because that means you can be free even if the offending party never offers an apology!  But you choose!  

For more on forgiveness and how to rescue your relationships, check out this video: 

Q:  Things have gotten pretty dull in our marriage, intimacy-wise.  Can I bring pornography into my marriage?

A: Often times one of the spouses says, “Let’s spice things up, let’s take things to another level,” and introduces pornography into the marriage. I have done so many counseling sessions where couples have sat across from me in the privacy of my office and said pornography has decimated and absolutely destroyed their marriage.

Hebrews 13:4 says, “Let marriage be held in honor among all, and let the marriage bed be undefiled, for God will judge the sexually immoral and adulterous.”

When you are in the loving covenant of marriage, the Bible says that the marriage bed should be undefiled, which means sex between a husband and a wife is never a cause for shame.  It should be honored, cherished, and enjoyed as the gift that it is from God.  However, wherever there is God’s designed pleasure, there is a carnal or demonic perversion of that pleasure. 

So let’s talk about pornography within marriage.  Under no circumstance can you ever bring pornography into your marriage, let alone your entire life.  There is never an appropriate context or place for pornography. Why? Because pornography is the digital version of the physical act. 

Pornography is digital fornication if you’re single, and it’s digital adultery if you’re married.   Why?  Because by Jesus’ standard, he said if you’ve even thought it and conceived it in your heart, it’s the same as doing it.  People will say watching pornography is healthy and normal , that everybody does it.  They will even go to the extent of saying that pornography helps with your libido. But I will tell you that it destroys your ability for intimacy.  Sex is more than the mechanics, it’s more than the motion. The greatest sex organ that you have is not between your legs, it’s between your ears – it’s your brain! Once your brain is affected and infected by pornography, you will experience sexual problems.  

Colossians 3:5

Put to death therefore what is earthly in you: sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry.

Pornography is lust, it is definitely not love and it is definitely not covenantal marriage.  Marriage cannot and will not ever satisfy lust because lust cannot be satisfied.  Now hear this – sexual desire is not always lust. As a matter of fact, you were designed to partly be a sexual creation.  God gave you the gift of your sexuality.  So having sexual desires in and of themselves is not wrong. As a matter of fact, those desires point to your design. God designed you to have both pleasure and procreation within marriage, but when you take those desires and you begin to fulfill them through lust, lust will never be fulfilled. You cannot satisfy lust with marriage, pornography, or masturbation.  Lust cannot be satisfied, it only increases.  

For more information on this, check out this video:  

Q: Is it ok for my spouse and me to introduce sex toys into our times of intimacy?

A:  Honestly, I can’t tell you what the Bible says about sex toys, because the Bible was written before electricity. But, the Bible can give us principles and insight into what God views as acceptable in marriage. 

The greatest sex organ that you have is not between your legs, it’s between your ears – your brain.  If you use sex toys in your marriage and there becomes a reliance on the sex toy more than there is on your partner, then you have to ask yourself a question:  “Are we growing in intimacy together or are we bringing in a dependency?” 

There are some people that cannot be sexually satisfied by their partner because they have spent years and years and years being sexually satisfied by a machine or through a screen. They have wired their brain and have practiced and rehearsed sexual satisfaction with something else other than their spouse, so when it comes time to have intimacy with their spouse, they cannot find sexual satisfaction with their mate.  

You really have to ask yourself, “Am I growing in intimacy with my spouse?”  Or are you bringing a level of independence into your marriage and missing out on the fulness of growing in intimacy with your spouse?

To hear more about this topic, check out this blog.