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. 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 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? 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 need 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? You become shut
down. Do you get offended? 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.
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
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. 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 that 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. 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 do I want to present marriage as
some kind of a prison sentence or some kind of a carrying across. 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
going to be so awesome. God looks at this thing. He's like man I'm going to get me some disciples.
I'm going to 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. And God in Malachi, prophet Malachia 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. 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. It'd be 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. And one thing marriage is gonna teach us is 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. 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.