Feel Again: Getting Un-Stuck In Your Marriage

Sometimes we can feel stuck in our marriages. We want to feel again and restore the intimacy we used to have with our spouse, but we just feel stuck.

Why Do We Feel Stuck?

Jesus said, “Moses provided for divorce as a concession to your hard heartedness, but it is not part of God’s original plan. I’m holding you to the original plan, and holding you liable for adultery if you divorce your faithful wife and then marry someone else. I make an exception in cases where the spouse has committed adultery.” Jesus’ disciples objected, “If those are the terms of marriage, we’re stuck. Why get married?”

Matthew 19:9-12 (MSG)

When you have two people with their own opinions and their own sin, you are going to get hurt feelings and arguments. That’s marriage! It’s hard sometimes, and it always takes work.

Hardness of heart is how we can choose to respond when we no longer want to keep working on our marriage. It’s our responsibility to make our marriages great.

The two reasons we get stuck are:

1. When we don’t like God’s plan for our marriages
2. When life gets hard and we become unbelieving

So how do we begin to feel again?

• Believe again
• Change again
• Love again

But Jesus said, “Not everyone is mature enough to live a married life. It requires a certain aptitude and grace. Marriage isn’t for everyone. Some, from birth seemingly, never give marriage a thought. Others never get asked—or accepted. And some decide not to get married for kingdom reasons. But if you’re capable of growing into the largeness of marriage, do it.”

Matthew 19:9-12 (MSG)

The Bible talks a lot about maturity. Marriage takes maturity, and maturity requires aptitude and grace. Aptitude is having the capacity to learn. Grace is being kind, considerate, or thoughtful.

Marriage comes with bumps along the road. Sometimes the bumps feel like knock-out blows. What challenges have you faced in your marriage? How do you need to grow in your maturity to handle those challenges more spiritually?

The problem is that we usually try to focus on everything else besides our marriage. Do you ever avoid talking with your spouse and end up fighting more? How can you and your spouse start working together instead of growing apart?

Believe Again

We get stuck when the only way we know how to get through something is to harden your heart.

Believe Again In the Bible

I run in the path of your commands, for you have set my heart free.

Psalm 119: 32 (NIV)

Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light for my path.

Psalm 119: 32 (NIV)

Study the Bible to believe what marriage is supposed to be like.

The Bible Leads You to the Heart

Sorrow is better than laughter, because a sad face is good for the heart. The heart of the wise is in the house of mourning, but the heart of fools is in the house of pleasure.

Ecclesiastes 7:3-4 (NIV)

Although the Lord gives you the bread of adversity and the water of affliction, your teachers will be hidden no more; with your own eyes you will see them. Whether you turn to the right or to the left, your ears will hear a voice behind you, saying, “This is the way; walk in it.”

Isaiah 30:20-21 (NIV)

There’s a price for intimacy. Growth is painful, change is painful, but nothing is more painful than being stuck somewhere you don’t belong.

Honesty – The willingness to tell yourself the truth (Proverbs 11:5 NLT)

Vulnerability – The willingness to tell others the truth (Mat 26:36-39)

Humility – The willingness ask for help  (2 Corinthians 1:1-9)

Change Again

And here’s a second offense: You fill the place of worship with your whining and sniveling because you don’t get what you want from God. Do you know why? Simple. Because God was there as a witness when you spoke your marriage vows to your young bride, and now you’ve broken those vows…

Malachi 2:13-14 (MSG)

My wife and I made a vow to each other before God… to no longer be two, but one… to no longer live for ourselves, but each other… to enjoy and keep ourselves for each other.

We chose to change for each other because we understood that it was now about “we”, not “me”. Marriage is a partnership.

Have you stopped being willing to change for your spouse?

…broken the faith-bond with your vowed companion, your covenant wife. God, not you, made marriage. His Spirit inhabits even the smallest details of marriage. And what does he want from marriage? Children of God, that’s what. So guard the spirit of marriage within you. Don’t cheat on your spouse.

Malachi 2:13-14 (MSG)

The truth is that God made marriage, not us. We need to kill the formulaic approach to marriage where we think that if we do a certain amount of outward things for or with our spouse, we will be close. No, it takes loving God and loving our spouse to be close. If you hate your wife, don’t read or pray, lie, hide sin, and don’t change, then you are killing your marriage.

We need to put God back in our marriages.

Love Again

Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins.

1 Peter 4:8 (NIV)

It doesn’t matter how much you’ve messed up in marriage, if you’re willing to love again. Love is the solvent that gets us unstuck.

1. Honest Bible Study (Psalm 36:9 AMP)
2. Honest Prayers (Psalm 17:1 NLT)
3. Honest Decisions (1 John 5:3 NIV)
4. Honest Relationships (2 Corinthians 6:11 NLT)