Good morning everyone. Welcome to another blog post on RandyCarney.com. These videos are often called “Walking with Randy” and I talk about writing, speaking, coaching, marketing, and marriage.
Vlog
Today, I’m going to add this to the feature page that talks about a life in the day. Sometimes you hear about a day in the life.
Why Japan?
Many of you know that we have been trying to make arrangements to get to Japan to see our son, Rusty, daughter-in-law, Brenda, and grandchildren, Grace, Catherine, and Kelton. They are missionaries over there.
Missionaries to Japan
We try to get over to see them in the middle of each of their four-year term. We tried to go in September of 2021. We ordered tickets and scheduled our flight. Then we had to keep extending the date until they ran out in February of this year.
Fortunately, the third-party company that got us the tickets went to bat for us and they got us a refund on everything except for some of the fees.
We heard just within the last two weeks, that Japan was opening up for tourists so we are going over there on a tourist visa that lasts for 90 days. That’s how we’ve done in the past, even though we will be doing ministry while we’re there.
One of the ministries that we do is babysitting and providing r&r for the missionaries.
We also join them in some of their ministry activities. Most times that we’ve been over there in the past, I had the opportunity to speak several times and I suspect I will get to do that again.
So Rhonda and I are excited about being able to go. This is what’s going on in our lives and it’s a “life in a day” post for the blog.
One of the examples in that book has to do with how men and women think differently. Sometimes the wife will wonder “What he’s thinking?” and may ask him. He may say, “I’m hungry.”
Then she may go through the process of thinking, “What does he mean? ‘I’m hungry.'”
Here’s what it usually means: He’s hungry.
Sometimes, though, the wife may say something, and, depending on her inflection and some of her reflections on the ideas of what’s being asked for.
It’s not that she’s being untruthful, but the husband may have to look for a deeper meaning to her words.
That’s just an example.
You might find those books helpful if you’re interested. Also, if you have some young couples that are getting married, these books can make good wedding gifts.
I’m glad you have joined me today. I look forward to talking with you again. And until the next time, I do post on writing. I would like for you to remember YOU CANWRITE A BOOK!
I’m talking today about coming out of the darkness. The passage of scripture I’m using today is talking about one of the six miracles that John use to prove that Jesus Christ is the Son of God.
Vlog
The man asked to be tied to the helm.
Before I get into the Scripture, I want to tell you about a man who was strapped to the wheel of the ship. The wheel guided the ship and he was at the helm. He was strapped there because a great storm had come up. It had just blown a man overboard.
He asked to be taken to the helm and tied to the wheel, where he hoped he would be able to at least try to keep the ship from capsizing.
As we look at this passage of Scripture together, you will see that this is about a man who was born blind and was healed by Jesus.
I’m talking about coming out of the darkness. All the man in this story had ever known was darkness. So John chapter nine tells the story of this man who was born blind.
I’m going to talk about the doubt. Then the investigation, the fearful confirmation, the troubling testimony, and a great follow-up event to this man being healed.
Today’s Scripture
John 9 (MEV)
As Jesus passed by, He saw a man blind from birth. 2 His disciples asked Him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” 3 Jesus answered, “Neither this man nor his parents sinned. But it happened so that the works of God might be displayed in him. 4 I must do the works of Him who sent Me while it is day. Night is coming when no one can work. 5 While I am in the world, I am the light of the world.” 6 When He had said this, He spat on the ground and made clay with the saliva. He anointed the eyes of the blind man with the clay, 7 and said to him, “Go, wash in the pool of Siloam” (which means “Sent”). So he went away and washed, and returned seeing. 8 The neighbors and those who had previously seen that he was blind said, “Is this not he who sat and begged?” 9 Some said, “This is he.” Others said, “He is like him.” But he said, “I am he.” 10 So they said to him, “How were your eyes opened?” 11 He answered, “A Man called Jesus made clay, anointed my eyes, and said to me, ‘Go to the pool of Siloam and wash.’ So I went away and washed, and I received my sight.” 12 They said to him, “Where is He?” He said, “I do not know.” 13 They brought the man who had been blind to the Pharisees. 14 Now it was a Sabbath day when Jesus made the clay and opened his eyes. 15 Therefore the Pharisees also asked him how he received his sight. He said to them, “He put clay on my eyes, and I washed, and I see.”16 Some of the Pharisees said, “This Man is not from God, because He does not keep the Sabbath day.”Others said, “How can a man who is a sinner do such signs?” So there was division among them. 17 Then they said to the blind man again, “What do you say about Him, since He opened your eyes?”He said, “He is a prophet.” 18 But the Jews did not believe concerning him, that he had been blind and received his sight, until they called the parents of the one who had received his sight. 19 They asked them, “Is this your son, whom you say was born blind? How then does he now see?” 20 His parents answered them, “We know that this is our son and that he was born blind. 21 But how he now sees, we do not know, or who opened his eyes, we do not know. He is of age. Ask him. He will speak for himself.” 22 His parents said this, because they feared the Jews. For the Jews had already agreed that if anyone confessed that He was the Christ, he would be put out of the synagogue. 23 Therefore his parents said, “He is of age. Ask him.” 24 So again they called the man who was blind and said to him, “Give glory to God. We know that this Man is a sinner.” 25 He said, “I do not know if He is a sinner. I know one thing: I was blind, but now I see.” 26 Then they said to him again, “What did He do to you? How did He open your eyes?” 27 He answered them, “I told you already, and you did not listen. Why do you want to hear it again? Do you also want to become His disciples?” 28 Then they insulted him and said, “You are His disciple, but we are Moses’ disciples. 29 We know that God has spoken to Moses. As for this fellow, we do not know where He is from.” 30 The man answered, “Well, here is an amazing thing! You do not know where He is from, and yet He opened my eyes. 31 We know that God does not listen to sinners. But if anyone is a worshipper of God and does His will, He hears him. 32 Since the world began, it has never been heard that anyone opened the eyes of someone born blind. 33 If this Man were not from God, He could do nothing.” 34 They answered him, “You were completely born in sin. Are you teaching us?” And they threw him out. 35 Jesus heard that they had thrown him out, and when He found him, He said, “Do you believe in the Son of God?” 36 He answered, “Who is He, Lord, that I may believe in Him?” 37 Jesus said to him, “You have seen Him, and it is He who speaks with you.” 38 Then he said, “Lord, I believe.” And he worshipped Him. 39 Jesus said, “I came into this world for judgment, that those who do not see may see, and that those who see may become blind.” 40 Some Pharisees who were with Him heard these words, and said to Him, “Are we also blind?” 41 Jesus said, “If you were blind, you would have no sin. But now you say, ‘We see.’ Therefore your sin remains.
The Event
First of all, let’s look at the event, found in verses 1-12,
There are two things related to the fact of Jesus being the Son of God.
One of the last things He says is “I am the light of the world.” But the other world talks about doing the work to stay. If you have someone that you want to introduce to Jesus Christ, don’t put it off until it’s too late
Jesus spat on the ground and made clay with saliva. He anointed the eyes of the blind man with the clay and said to him, “Go wash in the pool of Siloam.”
Jesus healed a man who had spent his life in physical darkness.
Now in earlier miracles, He just spoke the Word and the person was healed. In this case, He made clay with dirt and saliva, put it on the man’s eyes, and told him to go wash in the pool.
Maybe He just wanted to see if the man would be obedient. I really don’t know why He didn’t just speak the word in this case, but He didn’t. He told him to go to the pool.
So the man went and washed and returned.
There was the miracle.
The neighbors and those who had previously seen that he was blind discovered that he could now see. They said, “This is not he who said.” While some others said, “This is he.” and still others said, “He is like him, but it is not him.”
Finally, the man spoke up and said, “I am he.” They asked, “How were your eyes open?” He answered, “The man called Jesus made clay, anointed my eyes, and said to me, ‘Go to the pool of Siloam and wash.’ So I went away and washed and I received my sight.” Then he said to him, “Where is He?”
You’ll see that we’re going to move into an investigation.
The Investigation
Sometimes investigations are for the real purpose of trying to find the truth. Sometimes they’re fishing around to see if something can be found to bring an accusation of wrongdoing. An investigation into the healing of this blind man was about to begin.
In verses 13-18, we see the Pharisees begin to investigate Jesus.
The man who had been healed was taken to the Pharisees.
You see, it was the Sabbath day when Jesus made the clay and opened his eyes. Therefore, the Pharisees also asked how he received his sight. He said to them, “He put clay on my eyes, and I was blind and now I see.” Some of the Pharisees said, “This man is not from God. because He does not keep the Sabbath day.”
The Pharisees felt compelled to investigate.
They didn’t realize that they were talking to the man who created the Sabbath day. Jesus said He created the Sabbath for man, not man for the Sabbath. (Mark 2:27)
Jesus gave us some instructions about the Sabbath day. He said you are to do good on the Sabbath. (Matthew 12:12) It was good to heal a man who had been blind from birth…it was good to do that.
But the Pharisees came and were being very legalistic about the Sabbath day, They were actually just using that as an excuse to accuse Jesus, so they said this Man was not from God, because He did not keep the Sabbath.
As I said, Jesus is the Lord of the Sabbath.
Jesus asked them, “How can a man who is a sinner do such signs?” See, they were looking at Jesus as being just a man.
A division arose among them and then they asked the (formerly) blind man again, “What do you say about Him since He opened your eyes? He said, “He is a prophet.”
Well, the Jews did not believe that he had been blind and received his sight so they needed to confirm that this indeed was a man who was blind from birth and they were going to get the confirmation even though it was a fearful confirmation.
Fearful Confirmation
This part of the event is found in verses 19-23.
The Pharisees spoke with the man’s parents to confirm that it was indeed their son. They asked them, “Is this your son, whom you say was born blind? How then does he now see?” The parents answered, ” We know this is our son. But how he now sees, we do not know. Who opened his eyes we do not know. He is of age. Ask him. He will speak for himself.”
The man’s parents were nervous.
His parents answered this way because they feared the Jews, for the Jews had said that if anyone would say that Jesus was the Christ, that person would be put out of the synagogue.
There was confirmation from the parents, who knew better than anyone else, that this indeed was their son. They also knew that he was blind from birth. They knew that he was not a con man going around begging, but they knew about him being blind. Now he could see.
What a wonderful miracle they had experienced! But because of the Pharisees, they feared that if they said too much about who Jesus was, they would be put out of the synagogue.
We need to be bold in our witness for Jesus and in standing up for Him.
So we’ve had the events, the investigation, the fearful confirmation here.
Troubling Testimony
Now we’ve come to a troubling testimony in verses 24-34.
You saw that his parents said, “He is of age, ask him.”
So they called the man who had been blind and said to him, “Give glory to God. We know that this man Jesus is a sinner.” He said, “I do not know if he is a sinner. I just know one thing. I was blind, but now I see.”
There can be a lot of things that people can bring up and try to trip you up about your faith in Jesus Christ, but there is one thing you know: Jesus Christ came to you and restored you.
Maybe you were spiritually blind and in darkness, but you came out of your blindness. You came out of your darkness into His marvelous light.
The Pharisees continued to question the man. They asked again, “What did He do to you? How did He open your eyes? He answered them, “I told you already and you did not listen. Why do you want to hear it again?” (I don’t know if he knew that he was playing with them a little bit here but it’s kind of like he was) “Do you also want to become his disciples?” Well, that infuriated them, so then they turned on him, insulted him, and said, “You are his disciple. We are Moses’s. We know that God has spoken to Moses. As for this fellow, we do not know where He is from.
The Pharisees had some questions for the healed man.
Some of them knew that he was from Nazareth. Some of his disciples had said “Can any good thing come from Nazareth?” (John 1:44-46)
The man answered, “Well, here is an amazing thing. You do not know where He is from, and yet He opened my eyes. We know that God does not listen to sinners but if anyone is a worshipper of God, and does His will, He hears him.”
This man turned their words back on. He said, “You’re saying that this man is a sinner, but we know that from your teaching that God does not listen to sinners. But He listened to this Man’s prayer because my eyes are now open. He hears Him. Since the world began it has never been heard that anyone opened the eyes of someone blind. If this man were not from God, He could do nothing.”
They answered him, “You were completely born in sin. Are you teaching us?” and they threw him out.
That troubling testimony was the man who said “I know one thing I couldn’t see and now I can.”
Salvation and Spiritual Healing
Next, I’ll discuss a true conversion, which is found in verses 35-41
You see, the man received his sight, which is good. That was a glorious day for him – he was no longer in physical darkness. But he needed something else: He needed his sins to be forgiven. He needed to be brought out of that spiritual darkness that we are all in until we receive Jesus.
He needed deliverance from spiritual darkness.
Jesus heard that they had thrown him out. When He found him, He asked, “Do you believe in the Son of God?” He responded, “Who is the Lord that I believe in Him?” Jesus said, “You have seen Him.” (So it had to be recent because he hadn’t able to see, physically, for very long.) “You have seen Him and it is He who speaks with you.”
You may see a TV documentary about Christianity and some so-called expert religious will make the statement that Jesus never claimed to be God, or that Jesus never claimed to be the Son of God, or never claimed to be the Messiah.
You can just bring them right to the ninth chapter of John, and tell them that they don’t know what they’re talking about. Remember, if they don’t know what they’re talking about in that regard, then you don’t need to pay attention to the other stuff they’re saying, like trying to downplay the miracles of Jesus or His divinity.
Jesus made the claim here though, that “I. It is He who speaks with you.” In other words, He’s saying, “I am the Son of God.”
God or Man?
God or just a man?
Either He made a false claim or a true claim. If He made a true claim, and it was really true, then that’s fine. But if He made a false claim, there are some problems here with people who want to say, “Well, Jesus was not God, but He was a good teacher or a good moral man.”
Let me tell you some problems with that. If Jesus said, “I am the Son of God.” and it was a false statement, you have two possibilities. Either He knew He was making a false statement, or He didn’t know He was making a false statement.
If he claimed to be God and was not, He didn’t know He was not.
Then there is a problem with saying that He was a great teacher. If He didn’t even know who He is. then He didn’t know that.
The other one is that if He truly thought he was God but He was not, people would say that He was crazy.
If He made a false statement, He would have known that it was false, so He would be a liar. A liar would not be a great teacher or a great example of morality.
You can’t have it both ways, saying that Jesus is a good teacher or a good man, but He was not God.
CS Lewis put forth this argument: He said He was either Lord, liar or lunatic. It had to be one of those since He claimed to be God.
If it was true that He was God, He was the Lord.
If He claimed to be God, and it was false, but He didn’t know it was false, then He was a lunatic.
If He claimed to be God, and He knew that His claim was false, then He was a liar.
He was indeed the Lord God.
Out of Darkness
So the man who had been healed had the opportunity to hear. He had come out of physical darkness into the light, and now he had the opportunity to step out of spiritual darkness and to the light of salvation-the light of Jesus Christ.
The man said, “Lord, I believe.” and worshipped Jesus.
Jesus offers freedom from spiritual darkness.
Jesus said, “I came into this world for judgment, that those who do not see may see.”
So those who are walking in spiritual darkness, when they hear the words of God from the Bible, or hear the teachings of Jesus, have the opportunity to see and to have those spiritual highs.
But He also said that those who see may become blind. There are none so blind as those who will not see. The prophet Jeremiah made a statement similar to that. (Jeremiah 5:21) .
But here were the Pharisees. They were choosing to be blind. They were going to become blind because they would not see the truth.
Jesus knew, though, that they were claiming that they could see. He told them that if they were doing this in ignorance, then that would be one thing.
Some of the Pharisees who were with Him heard these words and said, “Are we also blind?” and of course they were, because they were not accepting Jesus.
But He used their words when they claimed that they had great spiritual insight. He said, “If you were blind, you would have no sin.” ( In other words, it would not be a conscious sin. on your part) “But you say you see, therefore, your sin remains.”
So you’ve seen the event, the investigation, the fearful confirmation, the troubling testimony, and the true conversion of the man who was born blind.
Let’s go back to the sailor who was strapped to the wheel that was trying to steer the ship. He was born in the 1700s. Both his mother and father were present in the home, although his father had to be gone quite often because his father was a seafaring man.
Now his mother was a Puritan. She was a Christian. She had songs that were children’s songs. She talked to her son. He was young, and she also had him memorize some Bible verses, but the father had to be gone for a month, two months, and, on one occasion, three years. The young boy did not see his father often but his parents were married, not separated. When the father wasn’t traveling for work, they were both present in the home.
Once, when the father was away during one of his voyages, the boy’s mother got tuberculosis, and the mother who loved this boy so much died.
After that, the boy started getting resentful. Then his father got remarried. So then he has a stepmother. History doesn’t tell us if the stepmother was evil or kind.
She just was not the one that he loved, the one that had raised him.
Then he was sent off to boarding schools, so his resentment continued to grow. He became rebellious and caused problems wherever he was.
By the time he was 11 years old, his father decided to pull him out of boarding school and take him to sea with him.
So this 11-year-old boy started on the sea voyage as well. He spent time around men who were not a good influence and their language was terrible. He picked that up quickly and could cuss with the best of them.
Through all of that, he started drifting away from his mother’s earlier teachings. In addition, he was resentful that his mother had been taken away from him.
Well, this went on for years, until the father retired. THe son had learned the art of sailing, and he was conscripted to be a sailor in the Royal Navy. He didn’t like it. He disliked it so much that he wanted to desert but when he tried, he couldn’t get away with it.
He spent a lot
Then he got the thought to ask for a transfer to another ship. Now there was a problem with this other ship: It was involved in what we today would call human trafficking. They were going to other countries, buying people, and bringing them back and selling them. We call that slavery. So, he was put on a slave ship.
Well when he got on the slave ship, again, he was rebellious against the captain. He started writing and found that he could write poetry. Well, he wrote derogatory poems about the captain. The problem was that some of the crew picked those up too, and started reciting them.
The captain wasn’t happy with that, so took him and gave him to a slave trader He was put in with the rest of the people that he had trafficked to his country. While he wasn’t a slave himself, he stayed in the situation for two years, until his father heard what was going on and sent a friend to try to rescue him.
I don’t know if the friend was able to negotiate his release, or how he got him released, but he was indeed released.
He then became the captain of a couple of those slave ships but was a crew member at another time. and that’s where we were when I started this post.
He had time to think during the storm.
He was a crew member, the storm was going the sails had been ripped to shreds, and they were having to manually pump the water out of the ship. They were all exhausted. He saw people swept overboard, and so we asked to be tied to the wheel that would steer the ship.
They complied with his request. The storm went on terribly, and he was there for eleven hours. During that time, he got to contemplate his life. He thought about what his mother had taught him. Some of those scripture verses that he had memorized as a child may have come back to him. Even though he was one of the most profane crew members, in recent weeks, he had read some Christian literature.
He realized that they were not going to survive the storm unless it were for God’s mercy. Somebody cried out for mercy to the Lord. Later on, he pointed to this as his time of conversion.
Some of the cargo in the ship shifted and blocked the hole so the water could not come in with such force, and the pumps began to work better.
Finally, the storm subsided and they were saved.
His spiritual growth was not instantaneous, though. Even though he called upon the Lord, he was still involved in human trafficking.
He was the captain of a couple of more ships that were involved in this, but he became more and more convicted about this not being the proper way to treat other human beings. In fact, even though he was taking people to be delivered, he instructed his crew members to treat them more kindly than he had ever instructed anyone before.
Then he had a stroke and could not return to the sea.
The man’s name was John. John married his childhood sweetheart whose name was Mary, but ent by the nickname Polly.
The two became more and more convinced that the slave trade was wrong. He was no longer captaining those ships, and didn’t know what he could do about it.
He had started studying Latin and Hebrew and Greek. He then felt that maybe he should be a minister, but since he didn’t have a college education, he couldn’t be appointed to one through the official channels.
But remember, his mother was outside of the official channels anyway. She was not part of the Church of England.
John Newton
John talked to someone who appointed him to be in charge of a local congregation. In other words, he became a preacher. He met some of the great preachers of that day. John Wesley, George Whitfield, and some of the other great preachers of that day.
Then he met a man who was a high official and the government named William Wilberforce. John Newton told William, “You know, I was not involved in the proper thing. In fact, what I did was terrible. It is legal here in England, but it ought to be outlawed.”
Year after year, Mr. Wilberforce tried to get laws passed that would make slavery illegal. Finally, before John died at 82 years of age, England outlawed slavery.
Let’s back up a little bit though, to 1772. While John Newton was going about this, he met a song leader. He realized that those poems that he could write earlier, he could write for the Lord now, and started writing poems that became songs.
He became friends with a man named William Cowper (pronounced “Cooper”) You may know him. He is the one who wrote the song “There Is a Fountain Filled With Blood”
He and Mr. Newton started writing poems that became songs, and they had a songbook compiled that had hundreds of their works in it..
I was blind but now I see.
In 1772, in preparation for their midweek prayer service, John Newton wrote a poem: “Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound That saved a wretch like me. I once was lost, But now I’m found Was blind but now I see.”
John Newton had personally come out of that spiritual darkness into the glorious life of Jesus Christ.
If you are walking in darkness and have never come to Jesus, you can escape the darkness today. You just need to call upon Him. The Bible tells us that if you believe in your heart that God raised Jesus from the dead, you shall be saved. (Romans 10:9) The Scriptures further solidify it by saying that if you call upon the name of the Lord, you shall be saved. (Romans 10:13)
I urge you to find a place to get alone with God and call upon the Lord and ask Him to save you and to bring you out of that spiritual darkness and to His glorious light.
For more sermon blogs and other faith-based items, please click here.
To watch sermon videos, visit my Rumble or YouTube channels.
I have a question for you: What are your short-term goals when it comes to meeting your spouse’s needs?
Vlog
Recap
The last few blog posts have been working on steps toward meeting each other’s needs in marriage. This is a further breakdown of step four.
The first thing you did is come up with a list of needs. You ranked each of those needs in order of importance to you, and so did your spouse. You then traded those lists with each other.
Next, you used the information in the list and those to help you understand your spouse better.
Now you’re actually into the nitty gritty of working toward projects or actions that will help you accomplish the goal of making your spouse feel better about marriage.
The reason why they will feel better about it is that their needs will be met.
I’m talking about making adjustments to your time focus.
Time is the stuff that life is made of. If you can not put in the time, you can not put in life.
In the first part of making adjustments to time focus, I said that you need to reorder things now that you’ve found out what is important to your spouse. Depending on how much of a revelation that was for you, you may find that you need to reorder your priorities.
The last post talked about looking at your long-term goals. The long-term goals came from the lifetime goals broken down into yearly goals, and the yearly goals were broken down into quarterly goals.
Go From Quarterly to Weekly to Daily Goals
Now you want to work with your short-term goals.
To come up with those short-term goals, take the quarterly goals and break them down to weekly ones. They should be the same for the week, just different projects you do on a daily basis.
The end result should be daily goals.
So you go from quarterly to weekly to daily.
Cut Items Where Necessary
Once you have done that, you’ll more than likely have to cut something out of your already busy schedule.
Now, if you have the freedom in your schedule where you can add things, for example, if you’re retired, then you have more time flexibility. If you work for yourself and you’ve done all the hard work, and you’re past the stage where you’re working 80 hours a week on a business, you may have a more flexible schedule.
Sometimes some trimming is needed.
Otherwise, you may have to find something to cut out. It may be that it will be something you enjoy doing. But you are putting a higher priority on your marriage and your spouse and helping to meet your spouse’s needs.
Once you’ve looked at your schedule and found where you need to cut some things out, it’s time to add in some projects.
Schedule Ideas and Actions
At least a few times a week, ideally, you would be working on projects that will improve your spouse’s feelings about your marriage.
You could just go down his or her list and find something that has become apparent that you have not done as well as perhaps you thought you had. Maybe you hadn’t really realized how important that item was to your spouse.
So between your clients and your schedule, include time for daily projects to work on all of those things that your spouse may have a need for.
Recreation is a case where one or the other of you have engaged in that you might start looking for ways to add recreational activities and to your weekly schedule.
Maybe watch a romantic movie together.
If you are a husband and your wife has a need for affection and romance, you might want to bite the bullet and perhaps watch a romantic movie together. That is something I do for my wife. She enjoys watching those movies, so I will watch them with her. Although, I really do like them, too. (Just don’t let the rest of the men hear me say that.) But it’s mostly about spending time together.
You could find something different that you can do in the area of showing affection. If you do not kiss your wife very often, you might make a list saying, “I learned to kiss my wife at three different times during the day.”
Those are just some examples of schedules of ideas. One man figured out that a very good thing he could do for his wife was to leave work at 5:30. He found out that they probably weren’t going to get all the work done anyway, so it was silly staying 2 hours later trying to get it done. It was better for him to go home and spend time with his wife. The work would still be there in the morning.
Those are some examples of how you can try to come up with daily goals or projects that would help you to meet your husband or wife’s most important needs.
I hope this has been helpful to you.
If you would like more tips on marriage, or to see the preceding posts in this series, just click here to be taken to all my blog posts about marriage.
There are more books planned, as well. The next book to come out will be about valuing your spouse and the one following that will deal with physical and spiritual intimacy. Watch for those coming soon.
Thanks for reading. I’m Randy Carney, wishing you the best in your marriage.
In the last several blog posts, I’ve been talking about improving your marriage. I’m continuing on that topic today.
Vlog
I have been talking about the general topic of the importance of meeting each other’s needs in marriage.
Recap
I started off with the first step of making a list of needs. That started off with a premade list. I suggested that as you looked over it and saw something that you felt was left out, put it on your list. If each of you added something, you would have wound up with 12 items on your list. If only one of you added something, there would have been 11 items on your list. If both of you were satisfied with the pre-made list, you would have 10 items on your list.
Then each of you went through and ranked each item on the list in order of importance with one being the most important.
After that, you traded your lists and discussed the ranking you gave each item.
That was the first step.
Reviewing the first steps
The second step was how what you learned from the process of making and trading the lists helped you to have a greater understanding of each other as husbands and wives. Just knowing that you have a greater understanding of each other’s needs could benefit your marriage quite a bit.
In this step, you’re moving on to actually doing something with this list.
Last time, I talked about reordering your priorities. There, you saw that you had made a commitment to work on those projects in ways that would benefit your marriage.
Here, I’m talking about looking at the top one, two, or three needs that your spouse has. You want to work on making sure those three needs are fulfilled.
So the first part of this was reordering or ordering your priorities.
Now the second part of this is making adjustments to your time and focusing on long-term goals.
Focus on Your Lifetime Goals
What you want to do is to figure out the lifetime vision for your marriage as husband and wife and how focusing on each other’s needs can benefit your marriage.
Focus on lifetime goals first.
This is sort of similar to an exercise that time management experts have come up with in the areas of business. But this will also work in your personal life. In fact, one of these exercises helps you to learn how to get control of your time and your life.
So basically, they talk about if you were to live for a longer period of time, say five or 10 years what would you most want to accomplish before you were to pass away? Write down some ideas.
Then you would do a shorter period of time; maybe 1-3 years. What would you want to accomplish in that time period?
What if you were told you only had six months to live? What would you want to accomplish?
Okay, so now you should have come up with a list of several ideas. Next, you’re supposed to pick out the top three and then narrow it down to one major one.
When you have looked at the list of needs that your spouse has identified, what are your lifetime goals when it comes to helping your spouse feel fulfilled in your marriage together?
You want to come up with long-term lifetime goals.
Break Those Down to Yearly Goals
The next step is to break it down to a yearly goal.
What would you hope to accomplish this year in improving your ability, actions, and time spent on helping your husband or wife feel fulfilled by meeting their basic needs?
Come up with a plan for two or three goals for the year that will entail meeting your spouse’s needs.
Break Yearly Goals Into Quarterly Goals
Then break it down further into quarterly goals.
So what you’ll have is lifetime, yearly, and quarterly goals. These are long-term goals for this aspect of improving your marriage.
On the quarterly, you may have identified the top three yearly goals and you may just want to focus on one of those during the quarter.
Break the goals down into quarterly tasks.
As you think about that yearly goal, it’s a good idea to have maybe four steps to make that goal come about. Then you would want to focus on one of those steps each quarter.
But let’s say you only have two steps. In that case, you would have two quarters focusing primarily on one of those.
I know this is a little bit vague, but the idea is that you have a lifetime goal and a yearly goal, and you want to break it down to a quarterly goal.
I suggest that you have one to three goals to focus on for your marriage for this quarter.
Basically, what you’re trying to accomplish is making adjustments in your marriage to improve your focus on meeting your spouse’s needs.
If you just get the list, and you just get the understanding but don’t pursue improvement, then you don’t have the greatest benefit that you could have if each of you were to focus on meeting your spouse’s needs in a greater way.
In order to do that, you have to deal with time.
Benjamin Franklin said that time is what life is made of. Someone else said what you cannot put into time you cannot put into your life. If your life is already full, and your time is already claimed, which probably is in a lot of areas, in order to improve your marriage, you can not change.
Make time for changes.
You’re going to have to put in some time, so you’re going to have to adjust your time to focus on your goals for your marriage. That may mean that you would have to cut something out.
Again it is a matter of priorities.
What is most important to you? How important is your marriage? In order to work on improving your marriage, you’re going to have to cut something out. You have to figure out where and when you are going to do certain projects or actions.
I hope this has been helpful to you as you are focusing on your marriage. If you already have a great marriage, may it be an even greater delight for you. If you’ve had some challenges in your marriage. I pray that this aspect of your marriage will revolutionize your life.
If you’re interested in the rest of this series (so far) or other posts about marriage click here. The link will take you to my blog where you will find the other posts.
Hello, everyone. Welcome. Again today I’m talking about marriage. In particular, today’s post is about reordering your priorities.
I have been talking about the general topic of the importance of meeting each other’s needs in marriage.
Now we’ve come to the fourth step of that process, so I’m talking about satisfying adjustments by reordering your priorities.
Vlog
What does that mean?
Well, you’ve come to the point where you realize that you needed to make some changes and hopefully you and your spouse have taken those steps as described in previous posts.
So now I’m going to tell you how to get more satisfaction and feel like you’re making progress in your marriage. The way to do that is by making adjustments to balance your time and focus and reordering your priorities.
You Discovered the Need for Change
In order to do that, we need to reorder our priorities. You discovered the need for change when you went through the process of listing and ranking your 10 or 11 (depending on if you added a category to the premade list) by ranking your list of felt needs according to the order of importance to you and then your spouse did the same. You most likely discovered something when you discussed those lists.
What comes next?
That’s when you discovered the need for change. You reviewed your lists. You discussed your lists.
Those interactions helped you to understand where your spouse was coming from. It gave you recognition of the need for change if you had not previously been doing as good a job as you needed to in meeting your spouse’s needs.
You Have to Commit to Change
But more than just recognizing the need for change, you also have to commit to change.
Don’t forget.
There’s a scripture verse that talks about a man who looked in the mirror and then walked away, forgetting what he looked like. (James 1:23) When he was looking in the mirror, he saw what he looked like, but after he walked away, he forgot. But the mirror actually accurately reflected what he looked like.
A more general application of that is not focusing upon physical appearance, but focusing on recognizing what manner of person you are when it comes to meeting each other’s needs in marriage.
You have discovered where you may have fallen short in certain areas and now you’re going to commit to making a change in those areas.
So you have to commit to change. Otherwise, things will just go on like they have always gone on. Your commitment will make a difference in that area.
Clarify By Writing Your Priorities and Plans
Then you can clarify things in your mind by writing down your priorities and plans. Statistics from business coaches tell us that people in business are so much more likely to accomplish their goals when they write them down.
Reordering your priorities is important
Also when you go through the process of writing down your list of priorities, your mind is at work. Since you will be inserting a new priority, you’re going to have to figure out where it goes now.
Many Christians have their general priorities set up this way and I think it is in the correct order: Our first priority is our relationship with God. close behind that is our relationship with our spouse. Thirdly would be the relationship with our children and then finally, it would come into our own lives and our business dealings and our entrepreneurial pursuits.
Reordering when Necessary
You may have already had that order of priorities. More than likely, however, if you are working on daily goals, you’ll see the need for reordering your list of priorities. Your family may even be excluded from your current list. So here’s your opportunity to change by making an adjustment to focus on doing a better job of meeting the needs of your husband or wife. That will involve reordering your priorities.
I hope this has been helpful to you. If you’d like more tips like this just click here. It will take you to the main page containing all the marriage blogs, including the ones in this series.
I hope that the Lord blesses you as you decide to work on reordering your priorities. Until next time, I’m Randy Carney wishing you the best in your marriage.
The benefits of pulling this off, that is pulling off the idea of taking turns and focusing on each other’s needs and your marriage.
Welcome, everyone. Randy Carney here, talking about marriage again.
I have been talking about the third step toward achieving the goal of meeting each other’s needs better than we have in the past.
Recap
In the first step, you and your spouse made a list of your felt needs and ranked them in the order of importance to you. Then you traded lists.
In the second step, you learned how to use that information to be able to communicate better with each other.
Now in this third step, I am telling you about taking turns focusing on each other’s needs.
Of course, you can read each other’s lists as a daily thing.
In talking about why taking turns is helpful, I talk about doing this on a daily basis. and then the benefit of pulling this off.
You Both Will Be Happier
The first of the benefits is you will both be happier.
Benefits of doing the list include increased happiness.
The reason why you will be happier is that if your spouse does uncover a need that had not been met well in the past, there’s a renewed focus on that. Then you will be happier because your needs will be met.
You both will be happier because you know you are both doing something to contribute toward strengthening your marriage. You will have the effort of both husband and wife. As you are doing this, there will be no more drifting. There will be more purpose to your actions. Developing a plan for improvement in the area of your marriage is taking shape.
Beyond that, you will have these many little successes along the way, and that brings encouragement and motivation.
You Will Feel Your Marriage Becoming Stronger
Another one of the benefits is that you will feel your marriage becoming stronger.
Now I know that feeling is subjective, and there are things that are concrete that you can reach out and touch and see. But when you are both involved in certain projects, and you can see these projects taking shape, that’s the objective part.
But then you have the subjective feeling of knowing that you are making some change for the better within your marriage.
This will strengthen your marriage.
I talked about the physical area, and how exercise builds strength. You want to build your marital muscle, so you have the process of doing these projects or focusing on your spouse in the area of meeting his or her needs by doing these projects. Those are daily strengthening exercises.
You’ll feel your marriage becoming stronger just because you know that you are both working toward improving your marriage.
You also will be experiencing change for the better or change at least an attempt.
Love Dare
Love Dare
You may have seen a movie that talked about taking a “love dare.” It was 40 days of projects that one partner in the marriage was involved. As these 40 days went along, he found that he was stretching himself. His wife saw that he was changing. Of course, there’s a happy ending.
This Can Have Benefits In Your Business
Another benefit of pulling this off is that it can also help you in your business. If either of you works you know what stress there can be in the area of your business.
If there’s additional stress outside of the business, like stress in the home, that just makes work so much worse.
This project can have benefits outside of your marriage.
But if you have less stress at home that brings less stress in your life.
Many business owners have become aware of the need for work-life balance. You could say work-family balance or work-marriage balance. If you can improve the marital aspect of your life, then there is less stress. Also, it gives you a new layer of support. Some people can face almost anything if they have family support.
Sometimes people go through failed businesses but when they have family support, they make it through in life. That’s a blessing for them to be able to do that.
As you strengthen your marriage and family, the less stress you have and the more emotional support you will have.
Clay Clark is a well-known business coach, and he talks about your six goals each beginning with “F.” He talks about having daily goals in the areas of faith, family, friendships, fitness, finances, and fun. As you see, the aspect of the family is so important for those that are involved in any type of business.
You don’t have to be an entrepreneur for this to work, either. If you’re an employee, you know what stresses there are too. But if you have the support of your husband or wife, it makes life so much better, and it makes it better for you when you go to work.
So these are some of the benefits of pulling this off. You will both be happier. You will feel your marriage becoming stronger. This will have value outside of the marriage.
Iope this has been helpful to you. If you would like more tips like these just click here to be taken to several more posts about marriage, including this whole series up to now.
Hello, everyone. Today I’m talking about marriage again.
In the last few posts, I’ve been talking about taking steps toward meeting the needs of your spouse.
This is step three, which has to do with taking turns focusing on each other’s needs.
Vlog
In the last post, I talked about taking turns, and why taking turns makes sense. Today I’m talking about the value of daily projects.
Actions or Plans
These daily projects can be actions, or they can be plans. So that’s good. It gives you some choices. You want to be working on your marriage daily. If nothing else, you can just make it a point to daily read over your spouse’s list that he or she gave you.
But this is about the value of daily projects. These projects can be actions or they can be plans.
Making travel plans could be one of your daily projects
In thinking about actions, then obviously, these are short-term things that you’ll be dealing with. However, it may be that some of your projects may involve some more long-range activity.
For example, you may decide to take your husband or wife on a trip and it will not be today. Obviously, then, it’s going to be at some time in the future. It’s going to take some planning to do that. So those could be some plans that can be part of your daily project. That would definitely go toward focusing on meeting each other’s needs.
A Payoff to Your Daily Projects
Secondly, you’ll realize that there will be a payoff for working on things you are less interested in as you come up with some of these daily plans.
In the past, you may have not done some of these things, because they weren’t as interesting to you. They did not meet your needs, but they do meet the needs of your husband or wife.
You want to come up with some daily projects that will help you to be focusing on your spouse’s needs.
In the past, you did not do some of these things. Because if you had, then your husband or wife would have had their needs in that area met and it wouldn’t have been a surprise to you.
Daily projects have a great payoff.
Usually, when we rate and compare these lists, we find things that are some things that we can work on that would be beneficial to our spouse.
Having a daily project is no different in that regard. In the past, you may not have met those needs as well. But now, even the attempt will be something that your husband or wife will probably be grateful for.
Some of the payoffs may be that you find something new for you to be interested in.
George and Jenny are great examples. George decided that he was going to watch some romantic movies with Jenny. He wasn’t really interested in that prospect at the beginning of it, but after a while, he found out he really did like some of those movies too, even if he did not want to admit it.
So you may also find some new interests when you do this.
If you learned that it was very important to your spouse to have recreational companionship, and you had not engaged in certain types of recreation in the past, you may even find a recreational activity that you have not done in the past that you enjoy now.
You’ll Have an Action Plan
Another value of doing daily projects is that it gives you an action plan.
Someone once said, “No one plans to fail, there are only those that fail to plan.” Those quotes are usually put forth in a business context or in some other kind of working context, but they can certainly apply to our marriages too.
We can be planning on things that will help us to focus on meeting our spouse’s needs. It may have been that previously we have had no plan. Now, you have a basis for making a plan.
Now you have an action plan!
It may be that you will even write down some of these plans because some of your long-term goals will not be done today. Maybe you will write them down on the calendar or write them down as ideas for future projects for yourself.
Then there will be a basis for having a plan and that is very motivating, very helpful. Whereas in the past, you might have been floundering around a little bit, not in every case, but in certain areas of your marriage.
You can see the value of these daily projects. They can be actions or they can be plans, and there will be payoffs for working on these things. It also helps to know that you know how to come up with a plan, which you may not have done much in the past.
Today’s Wrapup
I hope this has been helpful to you. For the rest of the posts in this series, as well as other marriage tips, be sure to check out my blog by clicking here.
Why taking turns focusing on each other’s needs makes sense.
Hello everyone. Today I’m talking about marriage again. Particularly, I’m talking about seven steps that will help you meet each other’s needs in your marriage.
Vlog
The first step involved making a list and ranking the list of each other’s felt needs.
The second step was using that information to gain a better understanding of each other.
This third step involves you deciding to take turns focusing on meeting each other’s needs and why it makes sense to do that.
You Will Both Be Invested
Well, first of all, you both will be invested in the project. You’ll be sharing the load so it won’t just be one of you.
Perhaps in the past one of you has invested more in your marriage than the other person. But now at this point, you have a joint project. Although you’re not doing the same thing because your needs are different.
Taking turns meeting each other’s needs means it won’t be one-sided
Well, they’re probably different. If your number one need is the same thing and you both are focused upon that for each other, then that’s a great thing. But more than likely you had some revelations, maybe even some surprises when when you went through your list-building process.
This is going to be a joint project and you will both be invested in it. It won’t be just one of you working hard at meeting the other person’s needs. It will be fair.
Maybe in the past to have felt like some things were not there, but this is an immediate chance for you to begin a new to start meeting each other’s needs.
You’ll Be Making Up for Past Missed Opportunities
Secondly, you will begin making up for past missed opportunities. Maybe in the past, you have neglected your spouse’s needs, or maybe your spouse has neglected your needs.
This is a new day!
Opportunities for redemption.
Taking turns focusing on each other’s needs gives you a chance to make up for the past and stop pretending.
Maybe in the past, it was not intentional that you weren’t meeting one or the other’s needs and it was just that you really didn’t know and you had not communicated.
But now that you know, you have new opportunities to make up for past missed opportunities. It is intentional and it’s time for a new day in your marriage.
You Will Start Seeing Results Quickly
Once you start doing this, you will see results very quickly because you’re armed with new information.
You’re both invested in the project.
You both know what the other ones trying to accomplish.
You can communicate with each other.
If they do a good job, you can thank them so much for it.
If your mate wants to know what he or she could do to help you, then you also have an opportunity to communicate with each other.
You will start seeing results very quickly because you both are involved in this new project and the importance of that will motivate you.
This will help you to be ready because you see immediate changes.
You’ll see fast results!
You might be thinking, “Oh, this will be a long drawn-out process. It will take forever for us to get back on track and our marriage.”
There might be some areas where you still need to get on track and other areas where this will move faster because you are both invested. You will start seeing some change and some improvement very quickly, and when you see that quick change and improvement, it will motivate you to try some of the other things.
Some of the other things may not be as easy as some of the others. Some things may take longer. Some of the things might be that one or the other of you has broken trust in your marriage and might take longer for that trust to rebuild.
On the other hand, if you’re both taking this very seriously, and you start feeling some of the needs that formerly were not met being met within your life, you will enjoy that change. You will be motivated, helpful, and ready to start the next phase and some of the next steps toward meeting each other’s needs.
Today’s Wrap-Up
I hope this has been helpful to you. If you would like more tips like these just click here to be taken to other posts about marriage.
I also have two books on marriage currently available on Amazon. They’re the first two in a series called “The Loving Way to A Successful Marriage” with LOVING being an acronym.
The first one is “21 Ways the Principle of Leaving Will Benefit Your Marriage.” The L in loving stands for leaving. Now it’s not talking about leaving in the sense of divorce, although that could be the last resort that might have to happen in certain instances, this is talking about leaving your past and your baggage behind. In this case, leaving some of the new habits that you developed after you got married and perhaps need to change.
First two LOVING books.
The second book is “From Mountains to Molehills: Overcoming and Celebrating Your Differences in Marriage.” So, the “O” in LOVING would be overcoming.
There are two more books that are in the development stage. One is called “Valuing Your Spouse-The Most Important Attitude You Can Have in Your Marriage”, which will take care of the “V”.
The next one I am working on is “Intimacy”, which will be the”I” in LOVING. I will have a book on that coming out.
Then these blog posts are the basis for the next book in the series, which will be about meeting needs.
But the first two books are out and available on Amazon right now, and I would encourage you to go check them out.
Have a wonderful day. Until next time, this is Randy Carney reminding you that you can have a happy and successful marriage!
When your needs are met, and when your spouse’s needs are met, what a wonderful thing it is in your marriage. Even though you’ll have ups and downs, you’ll have a thrilling and very fulfilling marriage when both of your needs are met.
Now, this doesn’t happen by accident You have to be proactive and cause these things to come about.
Taking Steps
As I said, I’m talking about some steps toward meeting each other’s needs. In previous posts, I talked about making a list and then ranking that list in the order of importance.
Two posts back (link above) talked about using that list to the best advantage in your marriage. Use it to enhance your marriage and to make it sparkle.
The post just before this one (link above) talked about recognizing the value of your spouse’s opinion.
You may find that you have a certain need way up on your list and he or she may have it way down towards the bottom on his or her list. That doesn’t mean that one is better than the other. Not at all.
When you recognize and value each other’s opinions, it gives you an opportunity to have some discussions that you may not have had previously.
Once you’ve recognized the value of each other’s opinions, work toward meeting your spouse’s greatest needs. If there have been areas and things that you have neglected, you have a new emphasis on what you want to try to do in your marriage in order to meet your spouse’s needs.
Likewise, your spouse will do the same for you.
Keeping Things Fresh
There is another way to use those lists, and that is to review them from time to time.
One way to remind yourself to review your spouse’s list is to put it in your Bible, a book that you’re reading, or somewhere else where you will see that often. Then and you will review your spouse’s interpretation of what are his or her most important needs in his or her life.
A fresh new use for the list.
You’ll be reviewing it when you do that, but you should also review this by going through the process again at different stages in your marriage.
So you reviewed these needs again, but you also go through the process of the ranking again.
The reason for doing that is that life just changes.
Life Stages Related to Children
Let’s think about some life stages that are related to children.
If you’re in the before-children stage, that is a good time to make your list and do the rankings and trade the list. The goal is to work toward meeting each other’s needs.
It may be that you and your spouse do not have children. Well, most people your age probably will have children during that life stage. This is a good time for you to, again, redo your list to see if anything has changed. it may not change as much for those without children, as it would for those who have children.
Life stages related to children are good times to make sure your list is fresh.
Then there comes what might be called the empty nest stage of life. That’s another change. It is a time when life has changed so much that your ranking of how you feel about those felt needs may have changed.
Your spouse needs to know that. If you have a new number one need, your spouse needs to know that. Your spouse needs to know you’ve changed your mind about what’s important.
Another life stage will be what we might call retirement or I refer to it as the later ministry stage within our life. The circumstances have changed.
Those are four different times that would be a good time to review your lists about felt needs.
If you haven’t done your list yet, go back to the previous blog posts. I talked about making a list, ranking it, sharing it with your spouse, and how to use the information you learn.
Life Stages Related to Finances, Careers, or Jobs
There are other life changes that are not related to children, but related to finances, careers, or jobs.
It may be that one time when you filled out your list, your finances were very low, so financial security may have been very high on one or the other of your lists. However, if you are comfortable now, that may not be quite as high on the list.
You may have gotten to the point where you have financial peace. Maybe one or both of us have lost jobs. Those events would probably make a difference in that area of your ranking. I would urge you to go through those lists again at that time.
You’ll want to review your list after changes in finances or jobs.
You might have a career change, or a different job within yourcareer category. When you start a different job and have different time demands, it will be very important for you to consider how you’re going to work through these time demands and how your spouse feels about it.
If it’s going to demand more of your time, how are you going to work that out where you continue to have good quality time with your husband or wife? Perhaps you will end up having a whole lot more time than you did before. In either case, your needs have likely changed.
These are good times to go through the list again.
Life Changes Related to Maturity or Renewed Focus on Spiritual Growth
Then there are life stages that are related to your own personal maturity; Your own growth or renewed focus on spiritual growth within your life.
When it comes to maturity when you’re very young, your needs or perception of needs may be quite different than it is after the two of you have gone through some storms.
Maturity and spiritual growth can cause your needs to change.
Those storms may not have been caused by either of you, just by life events. But having made it through those storms together, you have grown within your lives and your priorities may end up being different than what they were when you filled out that list in the earlier stage in your life.
You have also may have had a time when you decided the two of you were really going to focus on your marriage. You had a renewed focus your marriage has just become better because of your renewed focus in that area.
After having refocused for a while, it would be a good time to go through the exercise again. Rank those needs in order of importance to you and then you and your husband or wife will trade those lists again. it will give you a means for further discussion, and a basis for how you’re going to focus your life in the next few years because you really want to please your husband or wife.
So you have maturity or you had renewed focus in your marriage.
You may have new spiritual growth. If you did not know the Lord when you first filled out the lists, and then later if you came to Christ, your priorities will probably have changed.
If you’ve had a new stage of spiritual growth and your life and both of you have a new commitment in that area, or if it’s changed for one or the other of you, it would be a good time to go through the process again. Then look at your current status of how you feel about what is important to you in your life.
Try those lists, discuss them if you need to, but then focus on focus on doing what is best for your spouse. Review the list periodically as needed throughout your life.
Well, I hope this has been helpful to you. For more tips on marriage, and to see the other posts in this particular series, click here.
Now, I’m moving on to the second step, where I talk about using the information gained in step one.
Vlog
Review of Step One
In the first step, you had a list of needs that was developed by marriage counselors and marriage researchers.
Next, you customized those lists by adding your own ideas if you thought there had been some that had been left out.
Then you took those lists and we ranked them in the order of importance to each of you.
After that, you traded the list with your spouse. Doing that gave you some revelations and ideas of things that you may have not considered before.
I want to encourage you to think about meeting each other’s needs.
Beginning Step Two
Getting started on step two
Now in the second step, I’m talking about using that list to gain a better understanding of one another in dealing with our husbands or wives.
Here I’m going to talk about respecting the value of each other’s opinions.
When it comes to these lists, you may be surprised to find that your number one need is way down on the list of your wife or your husband.
Out of the 1000s of couples that were surveyed this list of 10 or so needs was identified. There were many others that were also important, and that’s why you customized your own lists.
One person’s opinion is not better than the other’s, it’s just different. It’s great if you have been honest about how you feel about these needs in your particular situations.
Respecting the value of each other’s opinions: the wife was just beaming. She said, “My husband really gets me and he listens to me. Sometimes he acts on what he has to say.”
This is important for both parties because it motivates you to do things that can be beneficial to your marriage.
What happens when you respect the value of each other’s opinions?
It Builds You Up
First of all, it builds you up and makes you feel good. When you feel good, you are likely then to want to continue on with a certain project or a certain thing that you are doing. So it makes you feel good, especially when your spouse meets your needs. It also makes you feel good that your spouse, who was previously unaware of how important some things are to you now realizes it.
In this process of identifying how important these things are, they begin to meet your needs.
it also makes you feel good when you start attempting to do a better job of meeting your mate’s needs. At least you know that you’re trying and can show them that that is what you are doing.
So it shows that you’re trying and it makes us feel good.
It Gives You a Basis for Discussion
In addition, it gives you a basis for a discussion. You might not be questioning that is really how your husband or your wife feels. But after comparing lists, you might ask for clarification.
Valuing opinions can bring about fruitful discussions.
“What is it about this that really triggers you? Really motivates you? How is it that this thing really motivates your need?”
Ladies, be prepared.
Your husband may not be able to articulate some feelings very well. But they might, you never know.
But it does give you a basis for discussion. After a while, you will begin to consider “Well, what is it about this that makes me feel so good, and what is it about that motivates me?”
You get the basis for discussion.
It Gives You Joint Projects
The second thing is it gives you joint projects.
When you are working on things together, it gives you the opportunity to be together.
Some couples may say, “Well, that’s not too good. We just get in an argument when we try to do things together.”
But if you respect each other in how you approach things, how you ask questions and aren’t critical, you can avoid arguing.
I know of a family that bought some chickens. They decided to build a chicken house and the chicken run that would go with it. They didn’t know much about it and started watching videos trying to figure out how to do this project.
Respectful communication can avoid arguments
Fortunately, they had a friend who was pretty good at building who came over to help them get started. This friend really did a lot of things. He sped up the process quite a bit, but they had done most of the project themselves.
While doing the planning, they would come up with different ideas. The testimony has actually been good for them to be doing this together.
The wife said, “Well, I learned to be careful how I would ask a question if I thought maybe something could be done differently.”
He really listened and they considered the ideas and then came up with the idea.
Working on these lists of meeting each other’s needs is giving you a joint project. It is something that you are doing together.
Value one another’s opinions and watch what happens
It Forms the Basis for Change
It shows that you are willing to change and that goes a long way in a marriage. When you’re talking about being willing to change, it’s also about respecting the value of each other’s opinions, especially in the areas of health needs.
There’s a difference between when you want to do something and when you are forced to. If you feel like you are being forced to do something then you are not as likely to be motivated to do that particular thing.
But if it’s something that you really want to do, then you go into it without hesitation and it forms the basis for change. It helps you respect each other’s opinions and to listen, to really listen to each other’s ideas, and consider those ideas.
Beyond that, it gives you the joy of knowing that you are serving each other. It makes you feel good to know that you are serving someone else. It makes you feel good when someone’s serving you and meeting your needs.
I don’t mean that in a selfish way. I just mean that we are fulfilled and of course that makes us feel good.
Respect the value of each other’s opinion.
I hope this has been helpful to you. Be sure to look for the next blog in this series
Books on marriage
If you would like some more marriage tips like these click here..
