Help me I want to change my spouse. Now a lot of people go through marriage,
challenges and sometimes they feel like God has called them to change their spouse
and in this video I want to share with you how to change your spouse. Before we go into that content
I want to invite you to this youtube channel and don't forget to subscribe, like this video,
as well as click on the bell so you can be reminded each time we go live. I post every
week and we go stream live every single Thursday at seven o'clock pacific time. Now how do I change
my spouse? I have a really bad news for you. God did not call you to change your spouse. God did
call you to change your attitude. God did call you to change your behavior and God did call you
to love your spouse, to honor your spouse but not to change them. The part about changing somebody
is really God's job. It's really the work of the Holy Spirit to transform the hearts of people and
it's our responsibility to obey the Holy Spirit and obey the Holy scriptures and as we obey God,
God does the miracle of changing us and then He begins to transform the person's heart and
thus relationship is changed. I've seen so many people who hit rough, you know, bumps in their
relationship and they change their spouse. In a sense they go and get a new spouse. You know
it's kind of like if your light bulb goes out in the house, you know you don't change the house,
you replace the light bulb and so I want you to know that God doesn't want you to go change your
spouse when things are hard. God wants for you to change, your attitude to change, for your speech
to change, for maybe not to be so complaining or not to be so angry or not to be so selfish and as
you change you will begin to notice that the other person starts changing as well. But on a practical
level how can I see change in my spouse? What do I do on my end to see change? Now this is not
necessarily going to work for every single case, again there is no formula for that. We are told
to love. You know husbands love your wives and the wives respect your husbands it says in Ephesians
and there's really powerful, powerful dynamic that takes place when you obey what God tells you
to do. God begins to do miracles. But there are cases and I meet those cases being pastor, where
people have done everything from their end and the other person does not respond and so in that
case you know they seek counsel. I encourage them to seek counselling, to seek advice from somebody
who is mature and what to do next. But for the general case of every person that's married to the
normal person, I want to give you just five practical things that you can do today to see
change in your spouse. First and foremost, take care of your reactions to your spouse's actions.
What we tend to do is we want to jump in and right away tell our spouse how they should act but many
of us we react to the actions of our spouse. That needs to be changed. In fact sometimes God allows
our spouse to act in a particular way because we have this habit of reacting that God wants to deal
with and because we're blaming our spouse all the time we're never dealing with the real issue that
we have in there. Now I understand we excuse our reaction, we say," well if this person will
stop behaving like this, I will stop reacting like that." But my friend the reason why you
are reacting like that is because you are like that as a person and God wants to change that,
and to change that he has to allow the other person to provoke those reactions so that you
can see them in the face, right in front of you and begin to repent and begin to own up and bring
them to Jesus and ask the Holy Spirit for help. I love what Jesus says in Matthew 7:3 He says, "Why
do you look at the speck in your brother's eye, but do not consider the plank in your own eye?
How can you say to your brother...I'm gonna use spouse...let me remove the speck from your eye;
and look, at the plank in your own eye. Hypocrite! First." So God's giving us the order. He says,"
First remove the plank from your own eye and then you will see clearly how to remove the speck from
your brother's eye or your spouse's eye." So what God is saying first take responsibility for your
reaction, take responsibility for your attitude, take responsibility for the words that are coming
out, how you're impatient, how you get easily angered, how you become extremely irritated,
how you speak, how you drive, what you do. Do you become vengeful? Do you become resentful? Do you
become shut down? Do you get offended? Like these actions, these reactions, these attitudes, they
need to be dealt with. Your spouse cannot change their actions if you don't take responsibility
for your reactions. And you know when you feel like that, at that moment you feel like, man I
just want to like react and say something dumb, do something stupid, do something that I would
regret. Can I give you just something practical, like at that moment those negative toxic feelings
that you feel, just take a second and release them to the Holy Spirit then say," Holy Spirit
help me." The Holy Spirit is your comforter and your helper. He's gonna help you yes you
release to the Holy Spirit then just say," Holy Spirit how should I respond in this situation?"
Because see if you keep reacting to their mistakes. If you keep reacting to their faults,
you're gonna destroy your marriage but if you're gonna respond to the Holy Spirit in that situation
you might as well see change in your spouse and see a miracle in your own character as well as in
your relationship. So instead of reacting release to the Holy Spirit and then respond to the Holy
Spirit in that exact situation. Your spouse will be shocked. They will be surprised because the old
you gets mad, the old you is impatient, the old you is vengeful, the old you is like, can start
doing all of these things and then the new you is patient, kind, long suffering, considerate, kind
and gentle and you will see it's going to create a domino effect. It will change them as well,
it will bring transformation in their life. Number two is develop self-control instead of seeking to
control the other person. Self-control is the fruit of the Holy Spirit. Spouse control is the
fruit of witchcraft. Always know that. When you seek to control another person that's witchcraft.
That's what divination is about. That's what the enemy's kingdom is about. The Kingdom of our Lord
Jesus Christ is the Kingdom of the Holy Spirit and the fruit of that is self-control. And so again
going with what I mentioned in the beginning, controlling your reactions is: whatever the
other person does God didn't call you to change them. Nowhere in the Bible that God assigned
to you to be the Holy Spirit to them. Holy Spirit wants to help you to develop self-control in your
heart and in your life, not spouse control. Avoid controlling your spouse, avoid trying to squeeze
the life out of them. You know you can't grow a flower by pulling the flower from the flower bed.
You have to water the flower. If you want to see your spouse grow. If you want to see your spouse
change, allow your spouse to grow. Are you growing your spouse with your words or are you destroying
your spouse with your words? The Bible says that Jesus, He washes us with His Word. Jesus doesn't
curse us. He doesn't beat us with His words. He washes us, cleanses us and purifies us. Are you
doing it with your spouse? Are you doing that to your husband? Are you doing that to your wife?
Or you're constantly cursing them. You never do this, you always do this, you know you're such
a bad husband, you know and all of that, you're destroying your marriage with your own mouth and
why? Because we don't let the Holy Spirit produce self-control. Instead we want to exercise spouse
control which is a sign of witchcraft and not realizing we're letting the enemy run our marriage
through witchcraft. Intimidation, domination and manipulation are all signs of witchcraft.
Self-control, long-suffering, patience are the signs of the Spirit filled life. Number three is
the way of Jesus is the way of the cross. It will require a little bit of suffering. Now marriage
is not suffering. Under no circumstances I want to present marriage as some kind of a prison sentence
or some kind of a carrying a cross. But marriage is gonna make you holy before it's gonna make you
happy. God is gonna use marriage to achieve His goal. You know what His goal is? Discipleship.
You know what His goal is? Sanctification. We're looking at marriage for our happiness. We're in
there we're like man, I'm gonna get happy. I'm gonna get a lot of sex. I'm gonna get a lot
of love. I'm gonna have somebody love me, protect me. Man this is gonna be so awesome. God looks at
this thing. He's like man, I'm gonna get me some disciples. I'm gonna get me some
mature brothers and sisters. And the moment the opportunity comes in for that we quit. The moment,
you know, time comes to denying ourselves, instead of claiming: I'm entitled to this,
you know you owe me this, you know why, you're not giving me this, you know she's not giving me sex,
he's not giving me money, you know where are my hugs, where are my flowers, you know. where is
my honor? We begin to go into entitlement instead of going into discipleship. See your marriage as a
laboratory for discipleship. God is after you to make a disciple out of you. I know you're in there
to get a little bit of joy and happiness but learn this thing about marriage. Marriage will make
you holy before it will make you happy. And if you're not happy right now God is working on your
holiness. God wants for you to follow Jesus Christ in your marriage and Jesus says," Whoever desires
to follow me must deny himself." So marriage is not just about you, it's about Christ developing
His character and producing within you a disciple of His. Number four. Commit to becoming more
obedient to the Lord than you are committed to your spouse. One of the ways that people learn to
love, when the other person feels like they're not deserving of love right now. Learn to respect your
husband when you feel like your husband is not worthy of the respect, is that you begin to honor
God and obey Jesus in that particular situation. So you don't love them because they're lovable.
You love them because you're loving. And why are you loving? Because you're obedient to Jesus. You
know many people go into marriage with great love and great infatuation, great feelings, just cloud
nine. Amazing. But then after a while you know chores come in, job, bills and all of these things
come in and a lot of that sizzling love just kind of evaporates and boredom settles in and then you
know, people become a little bit tense with each other. Arguments and chronic arguments begin to
come in and then the fights and then children and then you know sickness comes in and other things
and that could really cave in and you can really give yourself a pass for selfishness. Like hey
I'm just going to go do my own thing and I'm going to abandon this relationship. And God in Malachi,
prophet Malichi he really was against people who were dealing with their spouses treacherously you
know, who were not taking care of them. And for us to change that attitude, we have to have this
perspective where we love God more than we love our spouse. And one of the things that my wife
prayed for before she was married to me is she was asking God for the husband that will love God
more than he will love her and I always remind my wife of that. I said listen I love God more than I
love you and it's because I love God more than I love you, I love you more today than I loved you
yesterday. It's because of that I will love you till I die. I will love you until both of us die,
I will continue to love you. And so because my commitment to Jesus is greater than my
commitment to you, and actually the only reason why our commitment is strong toward each other is
because our commitment is strong toward the Lord. If you're noticing the commitment to your spouse.
If you're noticing your affection toward your spouse is is kind of weakening. I want to ask you
a question. Is, you know that your discipleship, your relationship to the Lord is dependent on your
obedience. Are you doing it because of you feel like it or you're doing it because the scripture
tells you to do it? Now I'm not saying that our whole marriage has to be something where we do it
because the Bible tells us. But there are seasons we're going to have to do it out of obligation,
out of obedience to the Lord and then we will have the precious opportunity of those feelings
coming back and our relationships becoming stronger because it's built on relationship,
it's built on commitment, it's built on maturity and it's built on love. Not as a feeling but as a
value that we place on another person. And lastly number five. Trust God for your needs as you obey
God to meet the needs of your spouse. Maybe you hit that rough patch where it's been months when
you felt like you know, your needs have not been met. Maybe you feel just like unloved in that
relationship or maybe you feel like certain needs that you have are not being met and it could be a
very painful place to be in. And it's important not to see marriage as a place where it's about
you but to see marriage as, it's about the other person. It's really why we went into marriage;
to make it about the other person. It's not about us. So what do you do if you're making it about
the other person but it feels like you're being ignored, it feels like but what about you? You
take your needs and you turn them to the Lord. Now I'm not saying that God's gonna physically come
and hug you, put flowers or you know if you're a male God's gonna you know physically satisfy your
sexual needs. But what I'm saying is that He will give you the strength to look to Him as a source
of your fulfillment. I know people who, you know a wife fell ill and a guy took care of his wife
for over a decade. They were never able to have a physical relationship and yet he took care of
her with love, affection, joy and his needs were ignored, if I could say, for a decade. How could
you do that? You can only do that if you really know what love is. You really can know how to do
that if you can trust God with your needs instead of glorifying your needs to the point where
you're not seeing the needs of other person and you're no longer trusting God. You're only just
trying to meet your own needs. It's not about you. If one thing marriage is gonna teach us its this,
it's about God, it's about the other person. And then, only then, it's about us. We're the third.
You know it's like joy. What does joy stands for? Jesus first. Other second and you last. The
moment you make yourself first, the moment you make yourself the center of that relationship,
the moment you make your needs, your wants, the most important thing about relationship, you
really miss what love is. Love is about sacrifice, it's about giving, it's about giving value, it's
about the other person. When you begin to exhibit that love, your relationship will be revived and
God can do miracles and even if your own needs don't get always fully met you'll be such a
great testimony an example of the love of God in that relationship. I hope this was a blessing. I
just pray God's blessing for you. If you're going through a very challenging time could you drop me
in the comment below on something that you learned from this video or maybe something that you
learned through loving someone in a very difficult time or maybe if you went through a difficult time
in your marriage how did you make it? How did you survive? What is your secret? What is your
recipe for young people like me and others who are watching this video and commenting below. Don't
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