Marriage

Discernment Is Better Than Judgment

February 21, 2021 by Matt Pavlik Leave a Comment

When you use discernment instead of judgment, you give others and yourself a second chance.

Judgment can be condemning and therefore it can limit the opportunity to develop healthy relationships. Passing judgment has an uncomfortable finality to it–it’s a dead-end. Discernment is forgiving and graceful and, therefore, more like a two-way street. Using discernment allows you to filter out what is harmful, but stay in touch with what is good in others.

In Matthew 7, Jesus first speaks against judgment and then recommends using discernment:

“Do not judge, or you too will be judged. For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.“Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.

“Do not give dogs what is sacred; do not throw your pearls to pigs. If you do, they may trample them under their feet, and turn and tear you to pieces.
Matthew 7:1-6 NIV

What do you consider to be some of the most difficult things to do? Would any of these make your list?

Public speaking
Saying “I’m sorry.” or “I was wrong.”
Skydiving
Running a marathon
Being rejected
Confronting a bully

Discernment Increases Your Self-Awareness

Looking in a mirror (both literally and figuratively) can be challenging. Most people try to avoid seeing themselves as they really are. No one likes bad news. Who wants to look in a mirror and notice a long list of defects? So, I say looking for the log in your eye is the hardest thing you’ll ever do.

Fortunately, it’s also the most rewarding. What would you rather do:

Get up, go to church, come home.
Get up, go to church, come home, look in the mirror, and make any adjustments.
Get up, look in the mirror, make any adjustments, go to church, come home.

I think you’ll agree that #1 requires the least amount of effort (unless you plan to sleep in and skip church altogether). #2 and #3 are about the same amount of effort, but #3 is likely to produce the best results (if you don’t want to be laughed at because your hair is a mess).

Exploring what’s going on inside of you is called introspection. Too much of it and you can become caught in “analysis paralysis.” But with too little, you can be like a bull in a china shop.

Discernment Improves Your Relationships

If you can learn how you work, you’ll have a much better chance to know how to help someone else. Introspection is hard work, but it can prevent you from judging others.

So much conflict could be avoided if people could be humble enough to engage in frequent introspection. Luke has a good example of this:

“Two men went up into the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee, standing by himself, prayed thus: ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week; I give tithes of all that I get.’ But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even lift up his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast, saying, ‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner!’
Luke 18:10-13 ESV

The first guy is focused only on his strengths and the other guy’s weaknesses. The second guy is focused on himself–he is trusting God will make him righteous. When you are feeling vulnerable or weak, which person would you rather have as a friend?

Overcommunicate To Save Your Marriage

December 6, 2020 by Matt Pavlik 2 Comments

What do you picture when you hear the word overcommunicate? When I suggest that couples overcommunicate, of course, I don’t mean nagging, sarcasm, or yelling. I find it necessary because honest, raw, yet kind, communication is needed but rare.

Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will grow to become in every respect the mature body of him who is the head, that is, Christ.
Ephesians 4:15 NIV

Overcommunicating solves several, but not all, relationship problems:

No one can read your mind.
Avoiding conflict creates more problems than it solves.
Lack of intimacy leads to relationship boredom.

Honest communication turns up the heat in your relationship. Granted, this method doesn’t work for couples that are highly conflicted. These couples make their situation steadily worse over time; they create more harm than help. Need To Breathe has a line in one of their songs, “I’ve seen a fire put out by too much gasoline.” That isn’t what we’re aiming for here.

The threat of conflict shuts down some relationships while it speeds up others. If your relationship tends to run too hot as in you frequently hurt each other with your words, then you have a different problem. Today I’m talking to the couples that are letting their fire burn out.

Overcommunicate To Create Negative Intimacy

There is such a thing as negative intimacy. Most of the time it’s better than no intimacy at all. Negative intimacy comes from conflict. Most conflict is good in the long run. It’s difficult to have conflict without hurting each other a little–thus is born what I call negative intimacy.

Sparks might fly when you overcommunicate, but clashing in the short term can be positive. You can feel more connected. You can experience another person’s intensity. You can know they care enough to invest energy into the relationship. Even though it doesn’t come without risks, if it moves your relationship forward into deeper positive intimacy, it’s probably worth it, and it might be unavoidable.

Overcommunicate To Create Positive Intimacy

A healthy relationship stays up to date. How well do you know how your spouse is doing on a daily basis? You can’t be super-close all the time, but growing isolation is definitely a threat to a relationship.

You can’t expect to solve serious concerns with a few words. Complicated issues require multiple communication sessions. Words are linked to the ideas and feelings within your personal understanding of the world. It can take substantial effort to push the ideas out of your head into words that your spouse can understand. It is effort-heavy because your partner likely has a different internal understanding of the words you choose.

When you overcommunicate, you give each other multiple opportunities to understand each other. You can refine what you are saying by trying different phrases. You can change your tone and the expression on your face. You can find the courage to be more honest than you’ve ever been. As a creative being, you can use words like an artist uses paint.

Changing a habit requires repetition. Changing your spouse’s understanding of who you are from negative to positive likely will require multiple attempts at communicating.

The best way to avoid conflict is to learn how to be a better spouse. Unfortunately, the best way to do this is usually to work through real conflict. But after a while, you can become skilled at conflict resolution. Then, you can move much more quickly to an optimal solution. You will know what kind of compromise is going to create a win-win.

Need To Breathe has another line from a different song, “I want to hold you close, but never hold you back–be (like) the banks for your river.” This is an excellent picture of intimacy.

Headship And Submission Are The Big Guns

September 20, 2020 by Matt Pavlik Leave a Comment

If you’ve ever been in an argument, you know it can escalate quickly. Before long you both can resort to bringing out the big guns–meant to finally win the battle. If you find yourself using the biblical roles of headship and submission to make your point, realize that you could be using the nuclear option.

Demanding that your spouse submit or sacrifice for you isn’t a healthy way to resolve conflict.

Some conversations attempting to resolve conflict are messy arguments and some are civil discussions. Sometimes an honest discussion can be heated, and that’s okay, provided you know how to repair any collateral damage.

All healthy discussions need to be based in reality. There is no perfect wife and there is no perfect husband. The Bible sets the bar high for how to treat your spouse, but God doesn’t intend for anyone to “weaponize” the scriptures.

God commands the husband to lay down his life and the wife to submit, both in service to the common good. The command comes from God. It doesn’t work when it comes from your spouse.

Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything. Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless.
Ephesians 5:22-27 NIV

Healthy Headship and Submission Preserve Unity

Headship and submission allow a marriage to work. They are needed to find the way out of a stalemate (no pun intended). They are really meant to be a last resort to preserve the unity in your marriage.

You can resolve a large majority of conflict by using good communication skills. If you have good communication, you shouldn’t have to mention the words headship or submission. If you can’t resolve most of your issues with a win-win result, you have a different problem. Playing the “you’re supposed to submit” or “you’re supposed to sacrifice” card won’t help you find a win-win.

Healthy Headship and Submission Avoid Sin

If your issue isn’t life or death, then likely you don’t have to make an immediate decision one way or the other. Instead, move forward when you both have peace. God cares more about how you get along than whether you decide to buy a new car or not.

For a wife, there’s a difference between submitting to your husband’s healthy ideas and his sin. For example, God doesn’t require a wife to submit to a husband who wants to rob a bank. The same applies to a husband and his sacrifice. God didn’t want Adam to follow Eve into her sin.

You sacrifice or submit when your spouse has reached their limits. When your spouse’s maturity level blocks the conflict resolution, you yield out of compassion for them. You bear the consequences of their sin, forgiving them.

This requires healthy discernment. Both husband and wife should be committed to growth, but God allows you to yield to your spouse when their distress is too high.

Healthy Headship and Submission Encourage Equality

It would be wrong to give in to your spouse all the time just because of God’s command to you. Promoting ongoing selfishness in each other is its own sin. You will reach peak marital satisfaction when you are both happy most of the time. It’s okay to get your way some of the time. But you might also need to hear that it’s okay to not get your way some of the time.

However you resolve your conflict, it’s important that you return as quickly as possible to the sense that you are equals. Headship (love) and submission (respect) give you the opportunity to meet some of your spouse’s deepest emotional needs.

Image by Michael Drummond from Pixabay

For A Better Relationship, Breathe

July 26, 2020 by Matt Pavlik 2 Comments

If you’ve been a Christian for a while and you no longer feel as close to God as you used to feel, someone has probably told you:

God doesn’t move, so if you are more distant from God, guess who moved?
In your walk with God, you’re either moving toward Him or away from Him.

Have you ever experienced something that stopped changing, but is still considered to be alive? To be alive is to change. When you stop changing, you’re dead.

Since God is everywhere, you can’t actually move away from Him. However, you can close your heart to Him. You can block Him out, tune Him out, or ignore Him. But He’s still there.

Moving away can be positive or negative depending on the context. Moving away is negative when you become closed to the relationship. But moving away can also be understood as becoming more self-defined. You test to see where the boundaries are between you and God. How much of life is your responsibility and how much is God’s? You stop forcing yourself from obligation and return to God knowing you have a clear choice and a willing heart.

Could what I’ve written also apply to horizontal relationships (with people other than God)?

We all need to breathe the air around us to stay alive. In with the good and out with the bad. Similarly, relationships need to breathe. Breathe-in equals spending time together. Breathe-out equals focusing away from the relationship and on other people, jobs, or hobbies. Marriage especially needs to breathe because one other person can’t meet all your needs.

For a better relationship (with God and others) learn how to breathe:

Spend time away from a relationship to strengthen both yourself and the relationship. Bring something new from your time away to re-energize your relationship.
If you find yourself feeling distant or closed to those you are expecting to be close to, be intentional about moving toward them.

If you’ve been in a heated argument, you feel the tension, and you’ve already tried some distance, what might be next is the hard work of moving towards again. Renegotiate how the relationship will be different and hopefully even better now.

Talk with your significant other about how much time you expect to spend together and how much time apart. Find the balancing point where you feel strong individually and as a couple.

And, in your relationship with God, balance the time being with God, sitting at His feet, and the time you are doing something for yourself, others, or even God.

Image by Free-Photos from Pixabay

Healthy Oneness

March 22, 2020 by Matt Pavlik 1 Comment

Confusion about oneness creates a substantial burden for relationships. If you believe oneness means you must eliminate your individual identity, your relationship will struggle to thrive. Instead of having opinions you’ll only have compliance. Instead of strengthening your relationship, you’ll create weaknesses.

God says husband and wife become one flesh. One flesh has at least two meanings. On a literal, physical level, one flesh refers to the joining of two bodies in sexual union. On a figurative, spiritual level, one flesh refers to becoming a unified family.

This explains why a man leaves his father and mother and is joined to his wife, and the two are united into one.
Genesis 2:24 NLT

Both levels imply coming together in a unified partnership that isn’t meant to be separated (until death). Both are illustrations of the deeper, permanent reality of Christ and the Church.

Note that two being a unified one is different than two changing into one. A unified one allows closeness while retaining individual definition. A married man and woman don’t lose their God-given identities; they gain experience in physical and spiritual oneness that can’t be experienced any other way.

I like to put it this way. A husband and wife are on the same team and should act as one to accomplish their goals. What is a win for one is a win for the other. A loss for one is a loss for the other.

This allows for individual choices. God will judge a man on how good a husband he is. God will judge a woman on how good a wife she is. But God doesn’t make one responsible for the other’s poor choices. God doesn’t directly judge you for how good your marriage is–only indirectly through your performance because it is within your control.

In a tennis match, if one player is significantly more skilled than the other, the game won’t look very good, but each individual can still be judged on their skill and character while playing.

This isn’t a free pass to act only in your best interest. You should act both in your best interest and also in the best interest of your partner. God expects you to give up your demand to have life go the way you want it. God opposes the proud. Insisting on your way at all costs is usually selfish.

Two strong individuals make a strong marriage. One dominant and one weak person will create a marriage that is less strong than the couple’s average strength. In contrast, the synergy from two strong individuals who have learned how to cooperate will exceed the output of two strong individuals working apart.

Learning how to cooperate as a team takes time and effort. Marital oneness includes a physical and spiritual closeness, so it is more than what being on a sports team feels like. At the same time, it has to be less than what being in heaven will be like.

What has your experience with oneness been like? Are you expecting too much or too little from your relationship?

For more on oneness, take a look at How Two Identities Become One. The image associated with it provides a clear picture of what two as one should look like.

Image #286346030 licensed from Adobe Stock

Why There Are So Many Perspectives

October 28, 2018 by Matt Pavlik 2 Comments

If ten people see a car accident, all ten of them will have a different eye-witness report.

If five people interpret a Bible verse, all five of them will have a different opinion of its meaning.

A husband and a wife will have very different ways to recall the same event.

Why are there so many different perspectives?

Most of the time people interpret life based on their investment. By investment, I mean their convictions—their worldview. A person who has been bitten by a dog will make an investment to avoid dogs. Or maybe they will focus on finding a cure for angry dogs. A parent whose child experiences a serious injury because of a malfunctioning car seat will all of a sudden become interested in how car seats need improving. Or perhaps in an extreme case, they will refuse to let their child ride in a car.

One way to find out what someone really believes is to witness them in a heated argument. The more agitated a person becomes, the more likely they will bypass their filter and speak their raw truth. Their words may or may not be accurate, but how the person feels will come across much clearer.

If (or maybe I should say when) you’re struggling to communicate with another person, the first step should be to gain understanding. Why do they not want a dog? Why do they insist on paying extra for premium safety features? When you understand a person’s investment, you’re well on your way to negotiating a solution to your heated argument.