The God Centered Spouse
Week 1 Sacred Marriage Jan 5 2012
Please read your devotion and post your comments.
Amplified Bible (AMP) 2 Corinthians 7
1THEREFORE, SINCE these [great] promises are ours, beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from everything that contaminates and defiles body and spirit, and bring [our] consecration to completeness in the [reverential] fear of God.
BCM “Basic Control Model” How often do we focus on the symptons in marriage:
** We need to improve our communication
** We need to get better at handling conflict
** We need to show more appreciation for each other
** We need to work harder at keeping the romance alove in out relationship
Or should we look at the Problem?
In the Devotion for this week the idea is to replace the BCM -the basic control module. The soultion
for the BCM for marriage is our “Spiritual Motivation”The focus question is “Are you a God-centered spouse?
devotions2012 
I hope you all can find the book “devotions for a Sacred Marriage” that is mixed in with the Christmas stuff. I look forward to doing this with all of you. You see me as dad not the sinful selfish I want the bigger piece of pie person.
I am counting on you to help me and pray I can help you.
I enjoyed this devotion to help me focus on how I am to respond not how I want somebody else to respond.
Dad
Since every circumstance of our lives comes through God providential hands, He has a good purpose to bring out of it. He doesn’t create the bad but uses it to mold us. Thats how we can “count it all joy in trials”. The had part for me is to see past my emotion of the moment. I come to my senses, but often not until I have set in motion some things that have their own consequences. The gap in time has gotten shorter with age. I desire to see the Lord in the intial pain so I can respond as He would.
I haven’t read the chapter in the book yet (I think it is packed in a box being shipped now) but I do like the post above on God- centered spouse. I think that is the key and only hope we have is that I am doing this for Jesus first not my spouse first. My spouse did not design marriage or set the requirements, God did. Today Gab and I re celebrating 10 years! Wooo hoo! Good thing she is doing it for God not for me. 🙂
Many times we find ourselves consumed with our lives that we are quick to react in a situation. To which we become spouse centered. It is important to focus on not the trivial things that do not matter and keep our focus on having a God centered marriage. If we continue to react on every little thing that we are faced with our time in our marriage with be stressed and unjoyful. I today’s society I think that strength in a marriage is a great tool show people Gods love. We love the idea of God centered marriage. For us we need to focus on this in the crazy times of our day when we are quick to react negatively.
It is so funny that this is the devotional you chose. When our care group was picking a topic this year, 2 of the members picked this. Matt & I wanted to do love & respect or the crown financial stuff. We were were super annoyed with the curriculum choice. We completed it and learned a lot. Funny thing–apparently God thinks that we still need some practice in this area! We’re going to study it until we get it! We just told a couple that got married yesterday that we never knew what big jerks we were until we got married. Marriage really does expose those sinful corners of our lives that we try to ignore. One of my students today wrote on a paper, “God wants us to be happy.” It is an idea that pervades our culture. Matt and I have had crazy hands-on practice with this. In those times it was really hard to not react but to instead pray about what God wanted us to learn & how He wanted us to respond.
It is so funny that this is the devotional you chose. When our care group was picking a topic this year, 2 of the members picked this. Matt & I wanted to do love & respect or the crown financial stuff. We were super annoyed with the curriculum choice. We completed it and learned a lot. Funny thing–apparently God thinks that we still need some practice in this area! We’re going to study it until we get it! We just told a couple that got married yesterday that we never knew what big jerks we were until we got married. Marriage really does expose those sinful corners of our lives that we try to ignore. One of my students today wrote on a paper, “God wants us to be happy.” It is an idea that pervades our culture. Matt and I have had crazy hands-on practice with this. In those times it was really hard to not react but to instead pray about what God wanted us to learn & how He wanted us to respond.
I concur (Matt)