How To Effectively Communicate in a Christian Marriage

When did you first realize you would have to work on Communication in a Christian Marriage?  Do you remember that moment?  The moment you understood that to effectively communicate in this Marriage it would take time, practice, a different strategy and maybe a lot of help from God above.  It took years to understand what to change to fix our broken communication.  By the time a mentor stepped into my life to teach these secrets to me we were headed down a path for divorce.

Our ineffective communication had me in emotional overload:

• The Communication struggles in our Marriage left me feeling hopeless.
  Just avoiding the hard parts didn’t work!
  The struggle made me feel like a doormat and that I’de lost my voice.

There is hope to change the communication pattern in your marriage.  What I learned was:

• We can communicate respectfully, clearly, lovingly and retain our voice!
  We can grow/ignite true intimacy through effective communication!

Full disclosure: This is not going to be a one and done article that fixes everything.  No, try as I have I just couldn’t condense it all to that.  This is going to be a Marriage Challenge spanning 2 weeks.

Why you should Join the Marriage Challenge to learn how to Effectively Communicate in a Christian Marriage:

In this Marriage Challenge, I am going to share the secrets I’ve learned – with very practical steps to use them immediately in your own marriage.

There will be homework.  Are you up for some homework?  I promise to keep it simple and practical.

You need to commit to completing each day’s work for this Marriage Challenge to work. No worries if you get a little behind – you can save it and come back to complete it when you have time but, be sure to complete one day before going on to the next.

There will be a week of preparation.  Why?  90% of communication takes place in our hearts and minds before we ever open our mouths and we have to get that all in order.

So, are you in?  Some parts of the challenge will be right here on HopeJoyInChrist but a lot of it will come through your email.  Be sure you sign up, add HopeJoyInChrist to your contacts (so the emails don’t end up in Spam or Promotions) and mark your Calendar for 1/12!

Before we begin we need to understand why it is so difficult to effectively communicate.

Why is it so difficult to effectively communicate with my husband?

Honestly, if he were writing this he could ask the same question.  Well, he would say it differently but that’s a story for a different day.

Our differences began with creation.  Right?  God made us different.  Do you remember the story:

Genesis 2: 7-8 ; Genesis 2:20-25

Then the Lord God formed man of dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being.  The Lord God planted a garden toward the east, in Eden; and there He placed the man whom He had formed.

…but for Adam there was not found a helper suitable for him.  So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and he slept; then He took one of his ribs and closed up the flesh at that place.  The Lord God fashioned into a woman the rib which He had taken from the man, and brought her to the man.  The man said,

We are different.

Different in the way we were created, the way we think about things, the way we do things, the way we say things.

Different.

Sin made it more difficult to Effectively Communicate in a Christian Marriage

Enter Genesis 3 and the temptation to sin. Now, we could spend years discussing Adam’s lack of leadership skills, Eve’s selfish motivation and the blame game that is played out when God confronts this first Christian Couple.  What good would that do?  We know they messed up; we live with the consequences of their mistake.

The piece I want to focus on as we prepare our hearts for this Marriage Challenge is:

Genesis 3:16 To the woman He said, “I will greatly multiply Your pain in childbirth, In pain you will bring forth children; Yet your desire will be for your husband, And he will rule over you.”

The communication in their Marriage just went from bad to worse.  They did not know how to talk things through and work things out, get on the same page and stand in unity.  Now they will be locked into a battle of the sexes that has trickled down through the millennia to affect our Marriages today. We both want to be in control!

That is why we need to do some work to prepare our selves – hearts and minds – to effectively communicate in a Christian Marriage!

The Prep work will focus on 5 Communication Secrets for Joy in a Christian Marriage:

1. To improve communication in a Christian Marriage I must Pray: Know Me, Search Me, Try me Lord – Show me my part in our Communication Struggle.
2. When I Accept my husband – strengths, faults, and weird man things – I show love and kindness in my words and communication improves.
3. I have to Understand that my words begin in my thoughts and I have control over them.  This one perspective shift will permanently change the course of conversation in my Marriage.
4. Learning how to Change my thoughts will Improve Communication
   • We can Take every Thought Captive and have control over what we say:  Submit them to a Philippians 4:8 Test.
5. I’m not a doormat when I don’t talk about every problem.  I choose to talk less and pray more.
   • Prayer is the best weapon we have to fight the real problems in our Marriage.  We can give the real problems in my marriage to God to change and leave them there.

in HIM,

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