One resource I wish had been available to me when Jimmy and I first started working on our marriage is a book entitled, Who Switched off My Brain? Controlling Toxic Thoughts and Emotions by Dr. Caroline Leaf. It reveals from both a scriptural and a scientific perspective just how powerful our thoughts actually are.
Toxic thinking was a major problem for me, as it is for many people, and overcoming it is vital. Dr. Leaf’s book can help. She explains how the effects of sin are passed down neurologically through our generations and shows how anyone can change who they are by changing what they think. Personally, I believe everyone who wants a good marriage could benefit from what she has to say.
One form of toxic thinking I’ve found to be very common in women with unhappy marriages is unforgiveness. They often let that hurts inflicted on them by their husbands fester and turn into offense. Eventually the offense hardens into bitterness.
Sometimes, even when I show them in the Bible that they need to let the offense go and forgive, they refuse to do it. That always scares me because I know they don’t grasp the danger they are putting themselves in. The Word of God says anyone who doesn’t forgive will be turned over to tormentors. The torment of bitterness is like cancer of the soul. It’s deadly.
Another mindset I’ve found that can be deadly in a marriage is a judgmental attitude. I see that all the time. Women who don’t like the way their husbands are behaving have the tendency to turn their displeasure into a judgment. Annoyed by their husbands’ reluctance to help around the house, they might judge him to be lazy. Upset because the husband wants to stay home from church, they might judge him to be unspiritual.
Women who do that don’t understand that they are falling prey to a very crafty scheme of the devil. They are actually prophesying those spirits into their home.
Truth be told, the devil uses all kinds of different schemes to undermine Christian marriages. He tells people, for instance, that just because they’re Christians everything in their marriage will be perfect. It won’t! All believers, and therefore all Christian marriages, are works in progress. So we have to be patient with each other.
A second line the devil peddles, especially to naïve young women, is that they’re automatically going to have a happy marriage just because they grew up in church and found their husbands there. Sad to say, it doesn’t work that way. Just because a man is in church doesn’t mean he’s right with God, or even that he’s right for you.
What’s more, God doesn’t have grandchildren. Being raised in a Christian home and going to church all your life doesn’t guarantee instant matrimonial harmony. Everyone has to have their own relationship with Jesus – and it’s from that relationship that a good marriage will grow.
Jimmy and Karen Evans join James and Betty this Thursday on LIFE TODAY. This is an excerpt from From Pain to Paradise: The Story of How God Transformed My Life and Marriage from Brokenness to Blessing by Karen Evans. Copyright ©2016 by MarriageTodayTM. www.marriagetoday.com. Used by permission.
