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PART ONE: Going Vertical
Six Words That Changed Everything: “I’ve Lost My Feelings for You”
These words were a critical pivot point for Dave and Ann Wilson’s marriage. Though they remain married today, they are quick to point out they don’t have everything about marriage figured out.
Dave and Ann Wilson want share a secret with you that will completely revolutionize both your personal life and your marriage in a way no amount of human wit or wisdom can even begin to offer. As our culture tears marriages and families apart, it is apparent that we are not equipped with the tools or knowledge for making our marriages healthy and lasting. Most of us end up just getting by, settling for so much less than the life we dreamed of…that God dreams of for us.
The secret to a great marriage is to go vertical, inviting God into your worst conflicts and unsolvable dilemmas.
The only way the “horizontal” human relationship between a husband and wife works is if both of their “vertical” relationship with God is right. Both the “horizontal” and “vertical” relationships are important to God, but the order matters…really matters. The “vertical” always comes first.
Dave shared when he heard those six words from Ann, “I’ve lost my feelings for you,” he dropped to his knees and prayed, “God, I repent. I am lukewarm and am not fully surrendered to you. I want to be the husband, the father, and the man you’ve called me to be. I will never be that man without you and your power. I resurrender my life and my marriage to you.”
As Dave prayed, Ann heard God gently whispering to her soul, “Ann Wilson, you have been trying to get your happiness from your husband, and I never made him for that. I never equipped him to fill all your needs. I am the only One who can meet all your needs.”
So, Ann joined Dave in prayer, “Jesus, I too want to surrender all of my life to you. I’ve realized tonight that I’ve been trying to find my life in Dave. I’ve been trying to get from him what only you—and you alone—can provide. I’ve believed that if Dave would just be a better husband, then I could truly be happy. This is a lie. You are my true source of joy. I choose you again tonight as my life. Take my life and our marriage and do great things in and through us.”
It’s a crazy story, but it revealed to them the secret to a healthy, godly marriage. The simple secret begins with realizing that a purely horizontal marriage just doesn’t work. There is no life—no power—in ourselves alone.
C. S. Lewis wrote, “If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.”
You simply can’t complete your spouse…and they can’t complete you.
Happiness cannot be found in one another. True life and joy are found in one place—Jesus. And while Dave and Ann both already knew this in theory, when they truly slipped his grace onto their marriage like a pair of warm gloves, the coldness of the horizontal dissipated forever. Why? Because when Jesus Christ is your source of life, then you can each become givers in your marriage, not just leeches who try to constantly take from each other what neither of you is equipped to give.
Falling to Our Knees Together
Dave and Ann Wilson explain, “Whenever we reached a turning point in our relationship, we would always fall to our knees together and rely on Someone other than ourselves to sustain and empower our marriage. Vertical marriage isn’t a one-time deal; it is a daily surrender.”
It is evident from the Scriptures that God is asking us the same question. Are you willing to lose everything you have and think you want so that God can give you—and your spouse—everything he wants and knows you need? Can you trust that his dreams for your marriage are higher than your own, even if they lead you through difficult moments? The evangelist Luke says it so clearly: “For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will save it” (9:24).
You don’t have to feel ready or able; you just have to be willing. That’s all. God doesn’t need you to be brave, only willing. He doesn’t need you to be qualified; he’ll qualify you through his process and plan. Just listen and be willing, knowing that losing yourself is something you can say yes to, because you trust that the life he has for you is infinitely greater than the life you have planned for yourself.
Vertical marriage is a place where you lose yourself—not necessarily in the dreams and ambitions of your spouse, but rather in the dreams and direction of a trustworthy Father.
The Vertical Starts Here
The right place to begin is to start with Jesus. Believe rightly and fully that God’s grace in Christ is being extended to you, regardless of how distant, unworthy, or dirty you feel.
First you need to abandon yourself to God’s love for you. Trust in God first, and you will be inviting all that only God can do in your life and marriage.
Dave explains, “I would have told you that my priorities were perfectly aligned in the classic, proper order: God, family, and then my job. It made for a great sermon, but that’s all it had become to me. In reality, my life was aligned in exactly the opposite order: job, family, and then God. Just trying harder to be like Jesus doesn’t work. I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve sat in church and been inspired by some new truth, deciding right then and there to become a new man—a better husband, father, and leader. I would then run out and try harder to reach that goal, but it never worked.”
Training smarter does—beginning with a right understanding of God’s grace and work in our lives. How do we “work out” spiritually? It’s simple. Spiritual training involves the classic disciplines of the Christian life: prayer, Bible study, meditation, fasting, worship, acts of service, tithing, and so on. Each of these practices exercises the muscles of our faith, making us stronger, pushing us to be more flexible, and giving us greater endurance.
The path to godliness includes a will to train daily, especially when we don’t feel like it. Greatness doesn’t just come to us; it is grabbed daily by those who truly want it with everything they have.
If we want to walk with Jesus and fall more in love with our spouses, we need to train daily, weekly, and annually. Consider this concept that Dave developed:
- Divert Daily (DD): At least once every day, “divert” from your regular routine and carve out some alone time with Jesus.
- Withdraw Weekly (WW): If we want to grow spiritually, God has commanded that we pause at least once a week to unplug from everything and simply rest in our vertical relationship with him, trusting that he has everything in this world under control. This practice is called Sabbath, and believe it or not, it is so important to God that it even made his all-time top ten list! When we violate the Sabbath principle, our vertical relationship with God suffers—and so do our physical and emotional health.
- Abandon Annually (AA): The final piece of training for a deeper vertical relationship with God is to get away at least once a year for a spiritual retreat. Have you noticed that every time you get away from the craziness of your life and schedule to simply focus solely on your walk with God, good things happen. Dave says, “I come back home a better man, husband, father, and leader.”
PART TWO: Conflict and Communication
How Do You Handle Conflict?
No one is ever prepared for the conflict that inevitably occurs in any close relationship, much less in the closest of all relationships. John Gottman, a leading marriage authority, has discovered that one of the leading predictors of whether a marriage goes the distance is how the married couple handles conflict.
There are four basic patterns of conflict resolution in which we all fall:
- Win. A winner is usually good at conflict. Winners actually like conflict and are skilled at winning the argument.
- Yield. A yielder will “give in” to bring harmony to the relationship.
- Withdraw. A withdrawer hates conflict. Withdrawers will do whatever it takes to stay away from conflict.
- Resolve. A resolver will do whatever it takes to arrive at resolution. Resolvers can’t stand to live life without their conflicts being resolved.
It may not happen to every couple quickly, but at some point in marriage, the blinders are removed from your eyes and you begin to realize that this person you have married is not just slightly flawed, but is actually full of flaws.
In his book The Meaning of Marriage, Timothy Keller says it well: “I’m tired of listening to sentimental talks on marriage. At weddings, in church, and in Sunday school, much of what I’ve heard on the subject has as much depth as a Hallmark card. While marriage is many things, it is anything but sentimental. Marriage is glorious but hard. It’s a burning joy and strength, and yet it is also blood, sweat, and tears, humbling defeats and exhausting victories. No marriage I know more than a few weeks old could be described as a fairy tale come true.”
Dave and Ann Wilson learned the hard way that how they handle conflict will determine the health and future of their marriage. The real truth about marriage is this: marriage is indeed glorious, and it is indeed difficult.
The truth is that conflict is normal—and when we start learning how to resolve conflict together, we actually grow closer to one another and more intimate in our marriage. God can actually use our conflicts to make us one. When you talk with couples who have been married for forty years, fifty years, or even more, you begin to note common themes. They will tell you they experience difficulties like any other couple, but they work through them. They don’t quit. They keep on working toward peace with one another.
Welcome to the Jungle
One of the best principles for attaining resolution is found in Matthew 7:3–5: “Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.” Translation? In any conflict, you’ve got to stop and seek understanding about what you did to spark the problem.
When we apply this passage to the conflicts we experience with others, its meaning becomes nothing less than profound.
Rather than blaming your spouse, humble yourself and consider your spouse’s needs to be more important than your own. Being willing to lean into the vertical truth of Philippians 2:3 will be a game-changer for the selfishness problem.
The truth is that by purely “horizontal” standards of just being human, everyone marries the wrong person. We mean that if you expect a human to fulfill a Spirit-sized hole in your life, then no matter how generous, understanding, sexually charged, or even spiritual the other person may be, they cannot meet those expectations. Ever. But the wrong person can become the right person when they are not expected to do for you what only God can do.
God’s plan for our marriage is for oneness, and this oneness will produce glory back to him. But Satan also has a plan for our marriages, and it’s summed up in one word: divorce. It is so easy to focus on our spouse and what they are not doing in the marriage to satisfy us. At our core, we are selfish and believe that we deserve to have our needs met at all times by our spouse. But guess what? Your spouse is thinking the same thing about you! And here’s another news flash: both of you will be let down in some way by each other. No one can meet all of our needs.
The Shapes of Wrath
An argument, like smoke billowing out of a car, is often a symptom of a deeper issue—not always, but often. And especially if there is serious “heat” in an argument regarding a particular topic or discussion point, wisdom says that you should pull the argument over and check under the hood to determine what the real problem is.
Psychologists call it a “second emotion.” This means that anger is not usually the first emotion we feel in a stressful situation. The first emotion may be hurt, frustration, fear, or something else—but we instead jump to anger because we’re too uncomfortable with the initial emotion.
The ABCs of Handling Anger
A: Acknowledge and Admit Your Anger
Paul tells the Ephesians, “‘In your anger do not sin’: Do not let the sun go down while you are still angry” (4:26). This verse implies that anger is a natural, God-given emotion.
Unfortunately, many Christians find it very difficult to admit when they are angry. They think anger is always a sin. Anger is not a sin, but if we don’t acknowledge it early, it can certainly lead to sin.
B: Backtrack to the First Emotion
So go back to the root cause of your anger and find the emotion you skipped over in favor of anger instead. Was it fear? Sadness? Hurt?
C: Confess Your Anger Appropriately
Confessing appropriately means coming clean about your emotions and mistakes with honesty, gentleness, and self-control. Gaining control of our anger is critically important. If we don’t get back to the source, we will continue to carry that fire into our marriage, most definitely hurting the ones whom we love the most. They deserve better than this from us.
Just Zip It
When we zip our lips long enough to truly listen to what our spouse is saying, we can actually begin to hear what is being said behind the words.
If you’ve ever heard two people arguing, you know how revolutionary these words are. When we are engaged in a conflict, we usually exhibit the exact opposite qualities—we become slow to listen, quick to speak, and quick to become angry. Though it’s been pointed out before, we have two ears and one mouth. Remembering this ratio can revolutionize moments of conflict—if we will listen twice as much as we speak.
There’s another way to paraphrase the message of James 1:19. Are you ready? Here it is: Shut up…and listen!
Are you caught in what Emerson Eggerichs calls the “Crazy Cycle”? As he writes in his book Love and Respect, a woman’s number one need is to feel cherished and loved, and a man’s number one need is to feel respected. If a wife doesn’t feel loved by her husband, she reacts by not showing respect for him. Then he responds to that lack of respect by not loving her.
How do we speak the truth in love? Here are a few scriptural suggestions.
- Focus on encouraging your spouse rather than attacking. The apostle Paul reminds us to “encourage one another and build one another up” (1 Thessalonians 5:11).
- Give your spouse grace. The apostle Paul also writes, “Let your speech always be gracious” (Colossians 4:6). Be merciful and compassionate, even when your spouse is in the wrong.
- Apply the “love chapter” to your speech. The famous letter of the apostle Paul to the Corinthians describes what love really looks like: “Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends” (1 Corinthians 13:4–8).
Writer Shaunti Feldhahn discovered in her research that “one reason the highly happy couples are so happy is that they value kindness rather than telling it like it is. Instead of letting their conversations be seasoned with brutal honesty, these couples choose to follow the apostle Paul’s advice to the church in the ancient city of Colossae—to ‘let your conversation be always full of grace.’”
Remember that your relationship is more important than winning the argument.
Nowhere does this principle ring truer than in the relational realities of marriage. God uses your spouse to sharpen you—to help you grow and mature.
Tear Down That Wall
The Wilsons have learned the hard way that during a conflict, they must both pursue resolution. Instead of throwing verbal bricks at each other or using bricks of resentment to build a wall, they explain that each needs to pick up the brick of conflict and resolve it. But make no mistake, the priority is not just toward “resolution,” but rather toward the “proactive pursuit” of resolution at all costs. When resolution is no longer pursued by both parties, relationships are left to die.
There are many varied and unique ways that the Scriptures lead us to be proactive when it comes to resolving conflict. We’re told to “strive for peace with everyone” (Hebrews 12:14), to “be quick to listen” (James 1:19), and to always be “speaking the truth in love” (Ephesians 4:15). Strive. Be quick. Speak. These are imperatives that lead us to action, not passive concepts to be admired from afar.
Ignoring conflict is akin to turning up your car radio so you won’t hear that annoying grinding noise coming from your engine. Give it a few miles, and the noise will be the least of your problems. Here is an immutable truth concerning relationships: When it comes to conflict, nothing is worse than doing nothing.
The principle here is that we should not let our conflicts linger for days and weeks. We should resolve them quickly.
Sometimes it actually helps to take a break before talking again, just to take some time to process what’s going on. Sleep on it—sometimes your whole perspective will change. A little space and rest can help you realize what led to the conflict in the first place, as well as your role in it. You may realize that what seemed to be a major problem yesterday looks much smaller by the light of the morning sun.
But remember that if you do take a break, you need to be sure to set a time to talk about it the next day. Don’t let it ride, and don’t let it slide.
Remember, “A soft answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger” (Proverbs 15:1). It may feel impossible to control your emotions in an argument, but that doesn’t make it true. It is possible, and the quicker we believe rightly that it is, as God’s Word has shown us, the quicker we make room for growth in this area.
Words are the bricks of your marriage—for better or for worse. You can throw that brick through a window and possibly put someone in the hospital, or you can wisely use it to build a safe haven where joy and safety surround your marriage on all sides. With your words, you have the power to tear your spouse apart or to give him life, encouragement, and grace.
Another way to help yourself speak gently when you’re in the middle of a big conflict is to choose to believe the best about each other rather than assume the worst.
The apostle Paul leads us to do just that: “Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things” (Philippians 4:8).
If you have been hurt, you must also do the forgiving—“just as in Christ God forgave you.” This is a command, not a suggestion. If you’ve been forgiven by Christ, you are commanded to forgive others.
Surrender to God
If you apply everything mentioned so far but fail to grasp this point, you’ll lose it all anyway. This is the linchpin: only by going vertical and surrendering your life daily to Christ will you find the ability to resolve conflict with your spouse.
Surrender is honesty with God that leads to the abandonment of one’s own plans and rights because of the belief that what God has for us can be trusted to be so much better than what we have for ourselves—even if we have to lose (or surrender) to experience it.
God can give us the power to do what feels impossible. In fact, surrender is really all about power.
A Man Will Go Where He Is Cheered
Positive words of affirmation need to flow in abundance so that when negative words are needed to be shared, they can actually be heard—and swallowed—a little easier. Women have so much power! Their words have the power to bring life and death.
Ann explains, “I want to be a woman that my family can’t wait to come home to. Outside our homes, our husbands, children, and friends are being bombarded with negativity. We can be the ones to bolster their sails and bring them joy.” As Dave says, “A man will always go where he’s cheered!”
Wives, when you speak words of life and respect to us as men, it changes us for the better. A wife’s words have power over her husband. Negative attitudes and words of “boo” do not motivate men, even if we deserve them. Men are motivated and empowered to change by cheering and by respect of their personal value as a man in this marriage apart from their duties.
Respecting someone doesn’t mean you are ignoring their obvious faults or dismissing their need to improve; it means you are acknowledging their value and potential, even when they’re struggling to reflect or live up to them.
What Every Wife Longs For
Every Christian man wants his priorities to be God first, family second, and job third.
You can tell a man’s priorities by looking in two places—his wallet and his calendar. Where we spend our money and what we do with our time always trump the words we say.
As husbands, God has called each of us to “love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her” (Ephesians 5:25).
When Paul commands us to love our wives, we really don’t know what that means. Try replacing that word with another word that we men do understand: cherish (which is the actual word used in some English translations of Ephesians 5:29). If a cheer makes a man feel respected, then cherish makes a woman feel loved.
PART THREE: Intimacy
Sex Builds a Special Bond
God designed sex. Besides procreation, the other two purposes for sex are oneness (or intimacy) and pleasure. Let’s first address the purpose of oneness. When a person has sex, whether in marriage or even in a one-night stand, a soul connection occurs. God designed sex to be the most intimate, beautiful act in which human beings could ever engage. There is such a depth of intimacy that it is beyond physical. Sex is soul intimacy.
Sex is not just a physical act, but rather something that affects our very souls, which is why it can also be extremely hurtful. God created our psyches to bond with the psyches of those with whom we are intimate.
A married couple is literally bonded together as one both physically and chemically by God as they have sex. It bonds us in the way God intended. This is why before you’re married, the enemy will do everything in his power to get you to have sex, but after you’re married, he will do everything in his power to keep you from having sex.
Thinking Differently About Sex
In their early years of marriage, the Wilsons thought, “Wow, this is easy! Why are all these couples whining about their sex lives?”
But then reality set in: how the presence of little underdeveloped humans in your house—and often in your bed—disrupts not only your romance but also every other detail of your lives, from sleeping to eating to going to the bathroom by yourself. Ah, the wonderful miracle of the very best days—and the hardest days—of your life.
Dave continually felt neglected sexually, and Ann continually felt neglected relationally. Ann came to realize that she wanted sex when she felt good about their relationship—when she felt like Dave and her were on the same page and connecting emotionally. Dave, on the other hand, didn’t need any of that to have sex.
Ann recognized that once they made love, Dave seemed to suddenly open up, become more affectionate, and be just all around happier and more helpful. It seemed like they were totally missing each other—and each expected the other person to make the first move to correct the problem.
Howard Hendricks and his wife, Jeanie, were guest speakers for one of the Wilsons marriage conferences. He was an author, a speaker, and a professor at Dallas Seminary. He pointed out, “‘You kids don’t know anything about sex until you’ve been married fifteen years. Before that, you think it’s all about technique or position or how good you are as a lover. After you’ve been married awhile, you start to realize that God didn’t create sex to be about the physical. Sex is about the spiritual—a union of the soul. When you discover that, you’ll discover great sex!’”
The goal of sex was not orgasm; the goal of great sex is intimacy and oneness.
Ann advises, “Men, let me encourage you to ask your wife at least once a week, ‘What’s the heaviest bag you’re carrying right now?’ It will mean so much to your wife that you care about her life and are willing to engage and help her. In fact, perhaps the next question should be, ‘Is there a bag I can carry for you that would really help you out?’”
When it comes to sex, men are like microwaves and women like Crock-Pots. At times, you need to intentionally turn on the Crock-Pot before you go to bed.
Ann continues, “Guys, your wife longs to be cherished. She desires you to touch her with a tender affection that communicates nothing more than, I love you and adore the fact that you are my wife. If every touch is sexual, then she begins to feel like ‘a piece of meat.’”.
Dave’s Lust Problem
God made us to be sexual individuals, but he did not make us to be unable to control our desires. He has provided for us the Scriptures, his Spirit, and his people to equip us not to be controlled by these desires, but rather to help these desires find their appropriate, fulfilling, and, yes, incredibly fun place within a healthy, passionate marriage.
Job said, “I made a covenant with my eyes not to look lustfully at a young woman” (Job 31:1).
Dave recognized that he had a habit of lingering looks at other women—what he called his “neck problem.” As he put it, “I had a heart that lusted after other women. Yes, this heart loved Jesus and desired to please him—my faults had not negated his grace for me. But I needed that grace now more than ever, not just to forgive me, but also to equip me with the supernatural ability to do more than just avert my eyes, but also to avert my heart. Good practices are helpful, but they are powerless to transform a heart.”
The practice that helped him the most in conquering his habit was Scripture meditation and memorization.
Romans 12:1–2 was a helpful passage, where Paul instructs us as believers to no longer copy the patterns of this world. Most men in our world today do not think twice about looking and lusting after women…all women. This is the pattern of our world: to objectify women as sexual objects rather than see them as people created by God with infinite value apart from their bodies or their ability to satisfy someone’s sexual fantasies.
Steps for Dealing with Sexual Temptation
- Tell Your Spouse: You will not win this battle alone, and as difficult as it feels to do so, bringing it into the light is always better.
- Get Help from Other People: The first step is to tell your spouse, but the second crucial step is to tell someone else besides your spouse. Men need to tell another man, and probably more than one. There is safety in the strength and wisdom of groups.
- Set Up Protection: Porn is addictive, and if you allow yourself any access to it, you are going down—no matter who you are or how strong you think you are. So then, you must take the step to block all avenues of access to your sin.
- Even When You’re Not Falling, Keep Falling On Your Knees: Seek God for strength each and every day, even when you are not compromised. You cannot win this battle in your own strength—just ask anyone who’s tried. Your walk with Jesus is the vertical foundation for victory in this and all areas of temptation.
PART FOUR: Living Vertical
All In
Marriage is creatively designed to be an “all in” endeavor. Anything less than this waters down the divine invitation to share together in both adventure and adversity in ways “half in” can never sustain. Many couples miss this key fact in the beginning of their journeys together, which often leaves them feeling either disillusioned or abandoned in the middle of their life together.
Give It All You’ve Got
Years ago, Dave and Ann adopted this life verse as a couple: “Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men, knowing that from the Lord you will receive the inheritance as your reward. You are serving the Lord Christ” (Colossians 3:23–24).
Marriage is hard. Really hard. It’s easy for us to begin with an “all in” attitude, but then when life turns tough (and it always will), we pull back, often expecting our spouse to step it up. And yes, there are times when one of us is weak and the other must stand strong and hold things together—that’s just a part of the partnership of marriage.
And there it is—the subject of the story changed (as it should) from “Dave and Ann” to “Dave, Ann, and Christ.” When Christ is in the story and you respond to his vertical-first invitation, even painful moments (like having casts put on both your wrists) will be peppered with a sense of joy that is counterintuitive to your circumstances. This is the vertical variable. This is the safety net for both of you.
Victory Through Surrender
Out of all the tips and insights shared, the Wilsons hope you come to realize that God is not optional, supplemental, or even a helpful puzzle piece to a better marriage. No, God is the very table on which the puzzle rests. He is not a supplement; he is the strength itself.
When Jesus said, “Apart from me you can do nothing” (John 15:5), we often apply his words only to our ability to pray consistently or minister in our churches effectively. Why do we do this? He couldn’t have been clearer. “Apart from me you can do nothing.”
Let’s say it like this: apart from God’s daily intervention you can do nothing to help your marriage. Every marriage goes through predictable and recurring phases. If we’re not careful, these phases can lead to disillusionment and a brick wall of negativity. The Wilsons use the letters from the word REDO to describe the phases.
R: The Romantic Phase
During the dating days, there’s just this sizzle. This spark. This magic. We bring that magic into our marriage and call it the honeymoon. This phase is so fun. There’s this energy and passion…and the whole world feels different.
E: The Excited Phase
You could call this the excited or the expectant phase. Either word will work. Excitement and expectations arise from the romantic phase. You think it will always be this way—that the sizzle and the magic you have for the other person will always be there.
D: The Disappointed Phase
You never know when a couple will hit the disappointed phase, but it eventually happens to all of us. The feelings wane—and the conclusion is that the marriage is in crisis. Something must be wrong if feelings have changed. People miss the fact that feelings always change and that this doesn’t have to be a moment to panic.
O: The “O” Phase
First of all, it can stand for over. It’s called divorce. It’s called breaking up. When a marriage breaks up, it’s painful and horrible. Not only are you and your spouse affected, but your kids are affected—and your legacies are affected. Divorce is like a death, even in those cases where you must do it to protect yourself.
But there is another option…Overcome. Overcome is a biblical term from the book of Revelation (see, for example, 2:7, 11, 17, 26). God calls us overcomers as followers of Christ because we have been redeemed and equipped to overcome the evil one.
When you understand that you can overcome through Christ, something beautiful happens: you go back to R and begin afresh. You get a REDO. It’s like a cycle. Romance comes flooding back into your relationship.
When we’re wounded, we isolate ourselves emotionally. We want to stay there, but if we do, we create the potential of missing his divine redo. Victory and survival come through surrender.
After more than thirty years of marriage, the Wilsons realized that they desperately need Jesus to be their foundation. He can’t just be someone they say is their foundation; he must really be the foundation.
They put it this way, “Here is what we’ve learned: when we are not filled by Jesus, we try to get from each other what only God can give us. We make our spouse our god, and all spouses make lousy gods. When our spouse disappoints us, we conclude that we have married the wrong person, and the endless search continues. In his book Sacred Marriage, Gary Thomas speculates that maybe marriage was never intended by God to make us happy, but rather to make us holy, to be more like Jesus.”
The best thing you can do for your marriage is to surrender—and keep surrendering—to Jesus.
The Pyle Vertical Marriage (Brady’s Perspective)
First, I am very thankful that we have not experienced the same level of pain the Wilsons encountered. Neither of us have ever said the six painful words they described, “I’ve lost my feelings for you.”
Perhaps that’s because we both come from several generations on both sides of our families of long (50+ years) marriages. As a result, we recognize that marriage is both a choice and a commitment…it’s not a feeling.
Perhaps more importantly is something we both recall from our days in church Youth Group, growing up—the relationship triangle:
I can only echo the truth of the triangle. When both of us are walking closely with Jesus, our marriage thrives. When either of us is out of step with Him, we seem to have more conflict with one another.
There is a lot of truth in what the Wilsons called The Vertical Marriage.
If you’re married, may you understand and apply that truth…and have a long-lasting marriage!