Making Marriage Work by Joyce Meyer

supposed to make him happy, but I certainly wasn’t considering that it should have been me.
    A woman’s response to proper loving care and nurturing should be, then, to submit and adapt to her husband as the church would to the Lord. This is the other major point of Ephesians — a woman is to respect and reverence her husband. This does not mean that she behaves as a vegetable never having an opinion, or being afraid to voice it if she does. Marriage is a partnership, but ultimately someone has to make a final decision when two people don’t agree. On relatively unimportant things Dave and I sort of take turns. On major ones the final call is his.
    When a man loves his wife as Christ loved the church, and the wife submits to her husband and respects him, both doing their part, a glorious relationship will result.
    The man is to love his wife as Christ loved the church, and the woman is to submit to her husband and respect him. If both parties will do their part, a glorious relationship will result. Sometimes one of the spouses is not willing to do their part. Then a standoff begins. The argument begins, “Well, I won’t if you don’t,” and, “I’m not going to if you don’t,” so we have a big mess.
    Somebody needs to start somewhere, and though I hope that both partners are going to be willing to start and do exactly what God says, I want to encourage you to go ahead and be first. But even if it seems that one of you is more willing than the other one, continue doing what is right as a service to the Lord. Love has to start somewhere. If what you are doing now is not working, then you have nothing to lose. Everything will stay the same until someone makes a change. If you want to see what God can do then, wives, be submissive and adapt yourselves to your own husbands as a service to the Lord.
    There is probably no one better qualified than I am to try to teach women how to submit and adapt because I was the least likely person to ever want to adapt to anything or anyone. I wanted everything and everybody to adapt to me. And when I first began to read in the Bible that a wife was to adapt to her own husband, it gave me the creeps! Just the thought of adapting made me uncomfortable.
    It is amazing how miserable we can make ourselves because we will not adapt to some simple little thing that somebody’s asking us to do. But because of pride and rebellion, we are determined to stand our ground and have life our way. Before long we are miserable and so is everyone who knows us. I mentioned that for three years I fought with Dave over his golf. We fought, and fought, and fought, and fought. I was determined that he was not going to play. And he was determined that he was. But as I began to let the Lord work with me, Dave and I reached the place of peace and agreement, which release joy.
    You have made known to me the ways of life; You will enrapture Me [diffusing my soul with joy] with and in Your presence.
    Acts 2:28
    The great standoff between two people is inevitable unless the Lord intervenes and fills their hearts with love. Dave and I fought and fought, but we also prayed and prayed. Keep reading to see who won this battle.

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    MAYBE SOME OF IT WAS MY FAULT
    Now to Him Who is able to keep you without stumbling or slipping or falling, and to present [you] unblemished (blameless and faultless) before the presence of His glory in triumphant joy and exultation [with unspeakable, ecstatic delight].
    Jude 24
    When two people spend quality time together, they begin to see life the same way. But when two people stand back to back, facing opposite directions, they have little chance of sharing a common viewpoint. When those same two people are determined, but she is determined that he’s not going somewhere, and he is determined that he is, they have a problem. I will share more about healthy confrontations later in this book, but first I want to point out the difference that spending time with each other can make in a