Lessons through Marriage

This program contains portions from the following episodes:

"Is Your Marriage Displaying the Gospel?"

"How Two Imperfect People Resolve Conflict"

"Happily Joyful After: Life-Giving Truth for Marriage"

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Dannah Gresh: Forget love languages! Do you and your spouse have different conflict styles? Hmmm? Karen Loritts remembers a time she and her husband Crawford were lying in bed, having “a discussion.” 

Karen Loritts: There was one issue that he just wanted to solve that night. I figured, Why are we talking about this now? Like, it will go away. But he was the person that said, “Let’s just get things done and talk about this issue because the issue will not resolve itself." I was saying, “Well, it will be okay.” I would stuff it.

Dannah: Today we’ll talk about conflict in marriage, and we’ll try to find some healthy ways for husbands and wives to respond to each other.

Welcome to Revive Our Hearts Weekend! I’m Dannah Gresh. I’m so thankful you’re listening today.

Last week on this program we talked about some of the things single people can learn in the midst of their solo years. (You can go back and find that at ReviveOurHearts.com/weekend.) Today we’re flipping the tables to talk about married couples. Are there lessons we can learn in marriage?

You’d better believe there are!! I mean just think about the crazy expectations many of us have when we first get married.

You know, since Crawford and Karen Loritts started out so real, well, an unmet expectation I had with Bob was when we would fight at night. I’m going to sound so immature here—that's my disclosure. I would calmly say, “I think I’ll just sleep in the other bedroom to get a little space for us to both calm down.” And then I would. Only I wasn’t. What I was really doing was waiting for him to come to me . . . on his figurative white horse . . . to rescue my heart!

Inevitably, I’d give up and go back to our bedroom where I’d always find him sleeping soundly. I finally told him. “Bob, You’re supposed to come for me!”

He said, “Baby, I’ll come any time you ask. But if you tell me you need space, that’s what you're going to get. I’m take your word for it.” Anyone identify?

We laugh about things like that, but for you it might be a nervous laughter, because we all know how serious disagreements can get. But they can also be constructive. Today we’ll explore a lesson from Crawford and Karen Loritts about how to see the gift of conflict. And I’ll share a whopping learning curve my husband Bob and I experienced when we walked through his battle with pornography and lust. 

But we’re going to start off with Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth and her husband, Robert. They’ll introduce us to a lesson every marriage needs to learn to make our different conflict styles survivable . . . and even useful. I’m talking about learning humility!

They were speaking at a marriage conference not too long ago. They applied some familiar passages of Scripture to marriage. Let me read to you from Romans 12:3–5:

For by the grace given to me I say to everyone among you not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned. For as in one body we have many members, and the members do not all have the same function, so we, though many, are one body in Christ, and individually members one of another.

Here’s Robert and Nancy Wolgemuth, speaking to a room full of married couples.

Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth: I love this, about not thinking of ourselves more highly than we ought to think.

Robert Wolgemuth: That never happens in marriage, does it?

Nancy: The importance of having a humble assessment of ourselves and not competing with each other. But isn’t it true that when we’re having a disagreement of perspective . . . It’s going to go on to say that, actually. That disagreement of perspective is a good thing; that we need that. We need to be different, we need to have those differences.

But in those differences, aren’t we prone to have an exalted view of ourselves? And the other one, we’re having a lower view of them. But Paul’s heading us off at the pass by saying, “For starters, don’t think of yourself more highly than you ought to think.” (see Rom. 12:3).

In fact, Paul says in Philippians to esteem all others as better than yourself. (see Phil. 2:3). And just to go into our day, or that discussion, with the grid that, “It’s not exalting myself, but it’s exalting Christ, and lifting up my mate and their perspective and opinions and desires as carrying weight.” And we’ll come to that more in the passage.

Robert: Humility is really hard to work on, isn’t it? That’s a gift. The Holy Spirit gives us the ability to not think about ourselves. When I married Nancy, she was fifty-seven years old and never married. Is anybody in this room fifty-seven years old? Look at that! Exactly fifty-seven! Now, imagine just getting married today and bringing all of that into a marriage.

I was sixty-seven. I’m sixty-seven years old. I’ve been married [to his first wife; he was a widower] for almost forty-five years. I don’t really think I need much help with this. And I sure don’t need help from people telling me what to do or what not to do about this woman!

But I said to the Lord . . . And boy, I’m a sinful man. This is not showing off. I said, “Please give me a spirit of humility.” Nancy, because she was never married, she had no children, but, believe me!, the ministry of Revive Our Hearts owned her like she was family. She has very close women friends, and they wanted to know who this guy was and what his intentions were!

So I prayed that the Lord would give me humility to just take it, to listen, to be empathetic. Why? What would I say a thousand times? Because Nancy is worth it! That was the higher goal. And the Lord was really good to give me His Spirit of humility and to listen to the people—their cautions, their anger at this person stepping into their lives.

They had her all to themselves. (Does that makes sense?) But no more! (laughter) So there it is! Like Nancy said, we could park on this for the rest of the morning—to not think of ourselves more highly than we ought in our marriages. Amen? Amen.

Nancy: Next, one body, many members . . . is that where we’re going, Honey?

Robert: Yes.

Nancy: And the members don’t have the same function. We’re one body in Christ, individually members of one another. We know how that relates to our relationship with Christ. But in marriage, the fact that we are one—there’s a unity there, but there’s also diversity. We are different. We bring different gifts and strengths—and needs—to our marriage.

Robert: Right.

Nancy: Our oneness with Him is where it starts. We’re members; we’re one with Christ; that makes us one with each other. I don’t think it’s possible that a marriage could really be one—to the extent it should be—if we don’t have our oneness with Christ first. But then, being one with each other, we realize that we are different members.

We value and celebrate (in fact he’s going to go on to talk about that in the next paragraph: the gifts differing according to the grace given us) those differences. Celebrate those gifts. I mean, we have many, many similarities, but we also approach a lot of things differently—just male/female, different strengths, different gifts, different life experiences.

I found myself even as we’re going into this session . . . we prepare very differently. We present differently. And I’m thinking, How do we do this as one in Christ? Well, the way we do it is, I celebrate how God has wired Robert. It’s not a matter of, “My way is better; his is not as good.” It’s more, “Thank You for the ways You’ve gifted him. I need those in my life.”

I need his ability to be more spontaneous. And maybe he needs some things in my being not as spontaneous.

Robert: Maybe . . . just maybe! (laughter)

Nancy: But we celebrate those differences, and that’s humility living out in marriage.

Robert: It’s so interesting, the one body concept. You think of Genesis 2: a man leaves his father and mother and clings to his wife and they become one flesh. This text is used a lot relating to the Church as the Bride of Christ. But, guess what? You and your mate are also the Bride of Christ!

When we started putting our wedding together—and it was actually a blast, especially for me, because Nancy did most of the work! The big idea of us being the Bride of Christ, that was a really big deal! So this chapter also relates to you and me as husband and wife, being one.

Song: Twila Paris

Make us one,
Make us one,
Make us one, undivided body.
Make us one,
Make us one,
For the sake of Your name,
Make us one.¹

Dannah: Ah, a little vintage music there for you! A sweet throwback to the early 2000s with Twila Paris, singing a prayer, asking God to “make us one.” (I’ll refrain from telling you that I was a Twila Paris fan when she was the up and coming artist in Chrisitian music. It would age me!) Well, right before that song, we heard from Robert and Nancy Wolgemuth, applying that same concept—oneness—to the marriage relationship. As they pointed out, we’ll never have unity until we first have humility.

Humility in relationships is something we’re camping out on this month here at Revive Our Hearts. Why? Well, it is at the core of the biblical concept of brokenness. It’s the opposite of pride. Nancy writes about it in a new booklet we’re making available this month. It’s called Beauty in the Broken: How Humility Changes Everything. In it you’ll learn to see both God and yourself more clearly and to embrace humility, the virtue that revolutionizes every relationship for good. 

This month we’ll send you a copy of Nancy’s new booklet, Beauty in the Broken, as a thank you for your donation of any size to support Revive Our Hearts. There’s more information at ReviveOurHearts.com. Click where it says “Donate.” Or you can always call us at 1-800-569-5959. 

Let’s do a little audio picture exercise. Would you say your marriage sounds more like this . . .?

[Peaceful, gurgling stream with birds singing]

Dannah: Or this?

[War, guns, bombs, explosions]

Dannah: If we’re honest, conflict in marriage is more frequent than we’d like it to be. And the peaceful, beautiful moments are probably fewer and farther between than we’d like, as well. 

Nancy sat down with Crawford and Karen Loritts to talk about how we can handle conflict in marriage. They revealed a lesson they learned about the connection between conflict and . . . intimacy! Yes, you heard that correctly! Just wait. 

Now, Crawford pastored a church in the Atlanta area for many years, and they’ve been married for quite a few years themselves. So they know a thing or two about resolving conflict. Let’s listen to a portion of that conversation now. 

Nancy: So get us started on how to think about conflict.

Crawford Loritts: Well, I want to say a couple anchor statements about conflict because I think when you hear the word “conflict” everybody gets defensive. We have it, but we sort of pull back from it. The truth of the matter is that there is no such thing as intimacy without conflict.

Nancy: Wow.

Crawford: Conflict, you stop and think about it . . . What makes a friendship a deep rewarding friendship?

Nancy: It’s when you’ve gone through the war together.

Crawford: Yes that’s exactly right. When you’ve offended one another, you’ve gotten close to one another, and you’ve worked through some things, and you resolve them. It’s sweet. Now, we still have disagreements, we still have arguments and stuff like that, but the reason why we don’t disagree as much today is because we’ve been through those things before, and we’ve resolved them or put them in perspective and now we’re closer. 

I know it’s hard to embrace this. I’m thinking of young couples that sit around my table in my office just before they’re getting married. When I ask them, “How do you deal with conflict?” Their eyes glaze over because they’re in that phase that . . .

Nancy: Conflict? What are you talking about? We love each other! (laughter)

Crawford: It’s all going to work out. But there can’t be intimacy without that. So the issue in conflict is . . . Our dear friend Dennis Rainey has said for years that the issue in conflict is not whether it’s right or wrong, it’s a given.

Nancy: You’re going to have it.

Crawford: You’re going to have it. So you have to quickly get to the place of, what are you going to do when you do have it? How do you handle it? It’s in the handling of conflict that makes it constructive or destructive.

Karen: Let me roll back, because I can remember in our earlier days of marriage, Crawford and I come from two completely different backgrounds. His family is a little family of five or six when you count his uncle. They just hashed everything out. They were very verbal with each other, loving with each other. They had all different kinds of opinions, but around the dinner table they just talked a lot and had conversations on things. When I was with them getting to know this, I thought that they were arguing and not liking each other. Because in my little, small family with my mom and my two brothers, we just didn’t confront each other. Everything was, “You just do you, I’ll just do me.” So when Crawford and I got together, he is what I call a blower. Not that he blows up but that he likes to get things out in the open.

Crawford: I don’t erupt.

Karen: No, you don’t erupt, but you’re going to say it.

Nancy: You’re going to be more direct.

Karen: And I was a stuffer. I remember the first time we had what we called “a marital adjustment time.” It wasn’t an argument; we called it a marital adjustment time. (laughter)

Crawford: Well, it was an argument.

Karen: It was a mess!

Nancy: We’ll talk about that another time

Karen: A marital adjustment time. We were lying in bed, and there was one issue that he just wanted to solve that night. I figured, Why are we talking about this now? Like, it will go away. But he was the person that said, “Let’s just get things done and talk about this issue because the issue will not resolve itself. I was saying, “Well, it will be okay.” I would stuff. We come from two different streams.

Crawford: She’s making me sound more noble that I really was. Actually, I’m impatient.

Karen: Yes, well, yes.

Crawford: And so let’s . . .

Nancy: . . . fix it now.

Crawford: Yes, fix it now. Which was probably not very mature.

Karen: And I thought it would just go away.

Crawford: Yes, which was also not very mature.

Karen: No, it was not mature at all. We’ve had to learn over the years how blowers need to calm down and everything’s not needed to solve right then and there. And stuffers like me need to come out and trust the conversation enough and deal with one issue at a time. And not let it get in the place that it’s erupting.

Crawford: Yes, and I would add to that sweetheart, that blowers need to understand that with a lot of words, you can hurt somebody.

Nancy: Yes.

Crawford: You can exacerbate the problem by talking too much and pushing too hard and going too fast, and that’s not good. That doesn’t end well. The flip side of that though is that stuffers need to understand that problems do not solve themselves because you’re silent.

Karen: Yes.

Crawford: Sometimes a little conflict averse make people nervous. Let’s face it, everyone should be a little bit conflict averse. I’m a little bit nervous about somebody who wants to fight all the time. But we need to understand that not only do problems not solve themselves, but not dealing with them exacerbates the issue. You can become more passive aggressive. But everybody deals with conflict. There’s no such thing as not dealing with conflict.

Nancy: Right.

Crawford: You’re going to deal with it.

Nancy: One way or another.

Crawford: One way or another, right. Absolutely.

Karen: We came up with this plan for us to set aside a specific time in our calendar to talk about a specific issue and then talk it through. This helped me to talk those things through instead of stacking issues on top of each other. We would deal with one issue at a time. So having those times of discussion helped me to learn how to talk through those issues instead of stuffing it down. 

And you slowed down being a blower and listened to me. So having those things on our schedule, times to talk those through.

Crawford: And constant communication.

Karen: Yes that was good.

Crawford: Setting some time aside each day, time each week, and that kind of thing.

Karen: Whether it was about kids of finances or . . . Finances always got me a little bit nervous.

Crawford: Yes, yes. In the early days, we didn’t have much to talk about.

Nancy: Because you didn’t have much money!

Karen: So true. (laughter)

Dannah: Well, Crawford and Karen Loritts have been reminding us that conflict in marriage is not only normal, it can be something God uses as a tool to grow you closer to your spouse. That is, God can use it to teach us to be more intimate. 

That’s one of those things that can be easy to say and hard to actually live out, especially if your spouse has hurt you deeply. Ah, and my husband Bob and I have done our fair share of that, sadly. 

Recently, we shared vulnerably at True Woman '22 about times we had each hurt the other deeply and had to confess sin as part of moving through our conflict. For me, we go way back to five years into our marriage. At age twenty-five, I confessed a secret I’d kept from him for far too long. I’m talking about my sexual sin from my teen years. I finally realized it was a wall between us. When I finally confessed it, I experienced God’s sweet forgiveness through my husband. I'm so grateful for the humility he showed that day.

And then there came a time when Bob had something to confess. You never forget the day that rips the happy right out of your heart. One day, Bob and I sat in some red leather chairs as he confessed to me his struggle with lust and pornography. What conflict and pain followed that confession. But through godly counsel and the power of the Holy Spirit, I forgave my husband and learned for fight for him rather than with him. 

One of the lessons God taught us was how to rebuild trust when there’s been deep pain. Here’s what I shared with the women in that breakout session at True Woman '22.

Dannah (from conference): For me, one of the things that was important was understanding how to rebuild trust in our marriage. In the book I write about seven truths that I needed to process through and work through and cling to and hold on to so that we could really experience marriage the way that God wanted us to experience.

One of those is about the topic of trust, because trust had been broken. I want to share with you four things I learned on the hot pavement of life. These are hard fought for, ladies—blood, sweat, and tears in these four things I want to teach you about trust. I hope they will bless you in your marriage.

The first one is this: the Bible warns us not to put our trust in mere humans. The Word of God indicates that we can't put our trust in humans. Probably the hardest verse when it comes to this is found in Isaiah 49:15. It says:

"Shall the mother forget the baby at her breast? [God says] Though she will forget, I will not for you."

That verse is hard for me to wrap my mind around. How does a mother forget a baby at the breast? This isn't back in the day where they had formula. How could a mom forget that baby? That that baby couldn't trust in that mother? The Bible associates great danger with trusting in mere humans. We put ourselves in positions to be, according to Scripture, "cursed, dismayed, and put to shame" if we put our trust in other men and women. (That's from Jeremiah 17:5–6 and Isaiah 20:5)

Isaiah 31 says that sorrow awaits the one who trusts in other people (see v. 1). Isaiah 2:22 says, "Don't put your trust in mere humans, they are as frail as breath. What good is are they?" (NLT).

We are not supposed to put our trust in other people. You might be saying, "What? I'm supposed to trust my husband. Doesn't marriage . . . ?" We'll get there.

This was an important foundational thing for me as we were rebuilding trust. The other thing that was very important is we are commanded to put our trust in the Lord.

When Bob confessed his sin to me as we sat in those red chairs, I really felt the need to saturate myself in the Scripture. So I got this little spiral bound index card set. Every day as I found a verse that I needed, and as my heart was trembling, I would write a Scripture in it. That would be the verse. My brain was a little bit, "Ugh." I don't know if you've ever been there where when you are like, "I don't know what to do with this. My brain isn't processing it right. I don't know how to handle it." I couldn't sit down and read the Bible at length. I couldn't study the Word. But I could handle one verse.

The first verse I wrote in here was Proverbs 3:5–6. "Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding, but in all your ways acknowledge him and he will make your paths straight" (NIV) We can trust the Lord, and we are commanded to trust the Lord. We are told over and over and over again that that's where our trust should be.

Number three: trust in marriage must ultimately be rooted in trust in God. I'm not saying that trusting your husband doesn't matter. Because there actually is a Bible verse in Proverbs 31:11 that states that "a man's heart safely trusts in his wife." So the Bible does talk about trust in the confines of marriage in this context. But even if you do build a relationship on trust, let me ask you something: can you forever trust your husband?

I have a friend who just put her husband in a home because his brain is failing him. He has Alzheimer's. Can she trust him?

Let me go back to the definition: trust is the assured reliance on the character, ability, strength, or truth of someone or something. You know what? One day, my abilities, my strength, my brain, my body may fail Bob. His brain, his body may fail me. So even if we do have trust in marriage, there will be a time when we have to be a caretaker, one for the other. We don't know which one it will be.

But if you root your trust in God, then those caretaking moments are joy. So my trust in Bob has to be rooted in my trust in God.

Finally this, trust in marriage is risky. 

When Bob and I entered into a marriage covenant, we were making ourselves vulnerable to one another. We were saying, "We want to be a picture of the covenant of Jesus Christ." The covenant of Jesus Christ is a messy thing. The first covenant we see ratified in Scripture between Abram and God, they sliced those animals in half and God walked through the bloody pieces and said, "May I be as these bloody pieces if this covenant is broken." That's what we are saying when we get married.

Listen, the reason that the bride's family is on one side and the groom's family is on the other side, the tradition was built out of a risk. It's a called a "between"—walking between the animals. The bride and groom are walking between the two sides of the family symbolizing a covenant.

Listen, we are putting ourselves in a place of risk and hurt if the covenant is broken. There are grave consequences. That doesn’t mean that the marriage can’t be healed. That doesn’t mean we can’t experience redemption, but it’s risky. It's risky, but it is worth it.

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Dannah: And in that session at True Woman '22, I went on to talk about how trusting a spouse who has hurt us is actually a gift we need to choose to give.

We don’t have time for the whole message here, but you can listen as Bob and I share our story, crying a bit, and rejoicing at all God has done in spite of Satan’s attempts to destroy us through lust and pornography. Just go to ReviveOurHearts.com/weekend, and click on today’s episode. It’s called “Learning through Marriage.” There you’ll find a link to the message of us sharing.

This topic of rebuilding trust is also a chapter in my new book titled Happily Even After: Let God Redeem Your Marriage. It will be released this coming week. You can get a copy wherever books are sold if you need the courage to fight for your husband if he’s struggling with lust or pornography. Again, go to ReviveOurHearts.com/weekend, and click on “Learning through Marriage” for more information about my new book, Happily Even After.

Well, speaking of learning lessons. When Bob and I needed God to redeem our marriage, we learned not only how much we really loved each other, but how much God loves each of us. Friend, do you know how much God loves you? I hope so. You know, there’s a verse in the Song of Solomon that conveys God’s heart for His people. It says in chapter 4, verse 7, “You are all fair, my love, and there is no spot in you.” That’s hard to believe when we mess up and have a strong awareness of how hard we are to love at times. Ever been there? Next week, I want you to hear a beautiful in-depth discussion of this verse. I think you’ll be amazed at how much God loves you.

Thanks for listening today. I’m Dannah Gresh. We’ll see you next time, for Revive Our Hearts Weekend.

Revive Our Hearts Weekend is calling you to freedom, fullness and fruitfulness in Christ.

¹"Make Us One," Twila Paris, House of Worship ℗ 2003 Sparrow Records.

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