Your heart

I have talked about many marriage issues (and have many more to talk about) but before I go on to anything else I feel the need to discuss the issue of your heart. Now i'm not going to pretend to know every persons marital situation, you could be in a great marriage, you could be struggling in a very difficult marriage or you may just be somewhere in between. But I believe the issue of your heart is something every person needs to deal with regardless of where you're at in your marriage.

As i've shared before, there was a time in my marriage when I wanted out. I was done trying, I was done with Colby, I was just done. I didn't care that I had promised forever to him, I was through. I felt that our bad marriage was his fault and anything I had done wrong was a result of the things he had done wrong. I had reasons, excuses and justifications for every bad choice I made. Want to know what the real problem was? My heart.

Did you catch the blame game going on there? It wasn't me, it was him. I wasn't wrong, he was. Let me tell you something, you will never get anywhere by blaming someone else for the situation you are in! Yes there were things my husband had done wrong, there were actions and behaviors that were wrong but I had control over myself, my heart and how I responded to him.

I once heard the actor Kirk Cameron say "The heart of the problem in my marriage is the problem of my heart". That may be a little hard to take for some people, after all, there's nothing easier than pointing the blame on other people! But forget about your spouse for a moment and focus on yourself. Where are you at? What is in your heart? What is your heart towards your spouse? your children? your family? I believe that you can get all the tips, tricks and techniques to make a marriage work but if you don't get to the core heart issues, it's all worthless.

One of my favorite verses is Proverbs 4:23. It says, "Guard your heart above all else, for it determines the course of your life". See, your heart determines your actions. Before I ever started making wrong choices in my marriage it started in my heart. In my heart I focused on all the things wrong with my husband and it didn't take long at all for those thoughts in my heart to come out in my actions.

You have to be real about where your heart is at if you ever hope to change it. We all know that God sees our hearts but sometimes it's easy to push that thought aside and forget about it. But look at Jeremiah 17:9-10...
"The heart is hopelessly dark and deceitful,
a puzzle that no one can figure out.
But I, God, search the heart
and examine the mind.
I get to the heart of the human.
I get to the root of things.
I treat them as they really are,
not as they pretend to be."

God sees it. You can hide it from everyone else but God still sees it. Your spouse may have no clue but God sees it.

I'm going to talk more about this in my next post and give some suggestions on how to work on any heart issues you may have. But until then, spend some time in prayer. Ask God to show you what you need to change in your heart. We've already established that He sees it all and knows exactly where you are. Who better to go to with the struggles you may be having?!