Fight For Your Family: Fight For Your Marriage

Nehemiah 4:14 (NIV) Remember the Lord, who is great and awesome, and fight for your families, your sons and your daughters, your wives and your homes.’

Identifying Your Triggers

James 4:1 (NIV) What causes fights and quarrels among you?

Don’t they come from your desires that battle within you?

1. Feeling or .

Proverbs 18:2 (NIV) Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions.

2. Feeling not .

Colossians 3:12 (NIV) Clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience.

3. Feeling or .

Ephesians 5:33 (NIV) Each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband.

4. Feeling or .

Proverbs 15:1 (NIV) A gentle answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger.

5. Feeling or .

1 Corinthians 13:7 (NIV) Love always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

Understanding Your Defense Mechanisms

6. – avoiding the real issue.

Proverbs 28:13 (NIV) Whoever conceals their sins does not prosper, but the one who confesses and renounces them finds mercy.

7. – minimizing your spouse’s feelings.

Romans 12:15 (NIV) Rejoice with those who rejoice; mourn with those who mourn.

8. – blaming your spouse for your own feelings.

Matthew 7:3 (NIV) 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?

9. – shutting down instead of engaging.

Proverbs 18:1 (NIV) Whoever isolates himself seeks his own desire; he breaks out against all sound judgment.

10. – avoiding responsibility.

Genesis 3:12 (NIV) The woman you put here with me—she gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate it.

What Does it Look Like to

Fight FOR Your Marriage

• Win the , not the .

James 1:19-20 (NIV) Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry, because human anger does not produce the righteousness that God desires.

• Protect the , even in .

Ephesians 4:26-27 (NIV) In your anger do not sin: Do not let the sun go down while you are still angry, and do not give the devil a foothold.

• Speak to their , not just their .

Proverbs 16:24 (NIV) Gracious words are a honeycomb, sweet to the soul and healing to the bones.

• Own your impact, not just your intentions.

Matthew 5:23-24 (NIV) Therefore, if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother or sister has something against you, leave your gift there in front of the altar. First go and be reconciled to them; then come and offer your gift.

• Invest or naturally.

Galatians 6:9 (NIV) Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up.