Latest / Marriage Life and More and Bible Study / 8 Steps to Disarming Anger and Conflict (4 Laws of Love Series) - 221
Transcript
- 0:05Daniel Moore: times that I went to bed at anger in the early years of our marriage, michelle and I had our fair share of sleeping on the couch, while the other one stayed in the bed because we were mad at each other.
- 0:15Michelle Moore: I'm not gonna say that we never did that, because we did and I can remember a lot of times you would come down there and was like, are you not coming to bed?
- 0:22Michelle Moore: And it was like, no, I'm not, and it would make you mad.
- 0:24Michelle Moore: And then it made you know I was already mad and and was like, are you not coming to bed?
- 0:24Michelle Moore: And it was like, no, I'm not, and it would make you mad.
- 0:25Michelle Moore: And then it made you know I was already mad and it was like it just it really wasn't healthy at all, not at all.
- 0:34Daniel Moore: This week on Marriage Life and More.
- 0:36Daniel Moore: We continue our study on the four laws of love, as we continue the law of purity.
- 0:41Daniel Moore: We'll be back with that right after this.
- 0:43Daniel Moore: Welcome to Marriage Life and More.
- 1:23Daniel Moore: This is a podcast about marriage, Bible and book studies.
- 1:26Daniel Moore: We also interview people with inspiring stories.
- 1:28Daniel Moore: I'm Daniel Moore, your host.
- 1:30Daniel Moore: I have Michelle Moore here with me this week once again, hey guys, as we're continuing this study.
- 1:35Daniel Moore: Thank you guys for joining us this week.
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- 2:18Daniel Moore: Well, this week, as I said, we're going to be continuing our study that we've been in for a couple of months now and we are now in the law of purity, and this week we're going to be talking about disarming anger and resolving conflicts.
- 2:42Michelle Moore: The objective of marriage is to cultivate a relationship that is both intimate and harmonious.
- 2:48Michelle Moore: However, this does not imply the absence of negative feelings or occasional conflict.
- 2:55Michelle Moore: A successful marriage does not entail never experiencing anger.
- 3:00Michelle Moore: Rather, it involves effectively managing and resolving anger.
- 3:05Michelle Moore: This episode aims to provide insight into handling anger appropriately and navigating conflicts with your spouse to achieve resolution.
- 3:14Michelle Moore: Adherence to the principles of purity involves conscious and accountable conduct, including owning up to our errors.
- 3:23Michelle Moore: However, despite our best efforts, we may still inadvertently hurt and provoke each other.
- 3:29Michelle Moore: During such moments, it is essential for our relationship to provide a safe space where we can engage in open and caring communication with our spouses.
- 3:40Michelle Moore: To help do this, we're going to begin by using a text of scripture from the fourth chapter of Ephesians, where the Apostle Paul gives us four directives concerning anger and conflict resolution Be angry and do not sin.
- 3:57Michelle Moore: Do not let the sun go down on your wrath, nor give a place to the devil, and that comes from Ephesians 4, 26, 27.
- 4:07Daniel Moore: So this week's episode is going to be almost a little bit of a rehash of some of the previous episodes that we have put together already, and I think one reason that this is repeated is this is probably an issue in marriage that's very difficult to navigate, but it's also an issue in marriage that happens a lot.
- 4:28Daniel Moore: I mean, it's real easy to get mad at your spouse and it's real easy to have conflicts, and especially if you get into the blended family scenario, or even if you're not in a blended family.
- 4:41Daniel Moore: But when the kids start coming around, we always start finding out what our differences are when the kids show up, especially how we think we should handle things, and it seems like that every time something new is introduced into a marriage, it's a whole new set of rules that we have to apply for that scenario, and when you're married, you have to be on the same page with that, or you have to figure out some way to come to an agreement to be on the same page with that.
- 5:09Daniel Moore: So as we start off this week, we're going to first of all talk about disarming anger, and there are four don'ts of dealing with anger.
- 5:19Daniel Moore: The first one is to not deny your anger.
- 5:24Daniel Moore: The Apostle Paul begins in verse 26 by telling us to be angry.
- 5:28Daniel Moore: You know, in all reality there's nothing wrong with anger, because even God gets angry, if you remember the Bible, the story there where he came into the temple and all of the people were there selling the chickens and had the tables, you know, changing coin and all that kind of thing and Jesus got extremely angry over that and he flipped all of those tables over and dumped them and told them to get out of the house of God.
- 5:52Daniel Moore: That's not what the house of God was for.
- 5:55Daniel Moore: So we do know that there is a place to have, I guess, what you would call godly anger.
- 6:00Daniel Moore: I guess is the way to put that.
- 6:02Daniel Moore: But there are many families, you know, just like the one that I grew up in, that doesn't allow anger, and the reason in most cases is because they fear it.
- 6:12Daniel Moore: They don't know how to deal with it and they just deny it and hope it will go away.
- 6:17Daniel Moore: And as we look at that, would you say that when you're around someone that has a blow up, would you say that when you're around someone that has a blow up or, you know, has really angry things to say to you or confront you on, is that probably a way that you handle that is, to work around and try to ignore it and get past it without having confrontation, or do you confront that?
- 6:40Michelle Moore: Well, I don't mind confrontation.
- 6:43Michelle Moore: So I would definitely be, I would take it and just like, okay, let's talk about this, let's see what the problem is and let's talk.
- 6:52Michelle Moore: And you know, but first in my mind I'm going to be praying for the right words to say, because obviously the other person, if they're angry, probably what you're going to say they're not going to listen to, Right?
- 7:04Michelle Moore: So, but I don't mind addressing things if I need to.
- 7:09Michelle Moore: Yeah, only if God wants me to.
- 7:12Daniel Moore: Right, do it in a godly manner, absolutely yes.
- 7:17Michelle Moore: So I know when— If you did that to me, I'd punch you.
- 7:22Daniel Moore: So we need some anger resolution here.
- 7:24Michelle Moore: That's one of my favorite lines.
- 7:26Michelle Moore: I'm going to punch you and I don't punch anybody, I just I'm going to punch you.
- 7:30Daniel Moore: As I've said many times, she's very violent, but I noticed we let our kids grow up.
- 7:37Daniel Moore: I do recall a lot of times when we probably we suppress the anger more than we let them vent and probably in some cases we should have let them vent and probably in some cases we should have let them.
- 7:49Michelle Moore: Yeah, I would agree with that.
- 7:50Daniel Moore: Like a controlled venting is probably a good way to put that, because definitely when you're angry, you don't want it to be out of control anger.
- 8:00Daniel Moore: You need to have some kind of a process there that you can vent that anger, work through the anger and come to a resolution at the end and try to resolve that anger and fix the issue to the best of your ability.
- 8:12Daniel Moore: That doesn't always mean you're probably going to still in the same conversation on the same page, Right?
- 8:17Daniel Moore: I mean you may still have your differences and disagreements and all of that, but to do it in a godly way, we have to find that level, equal ground somewhere so that that anger can stop, because you can't let that continue.
- 8:31Daniel Moore: On the flip side of this, if you're the person that doesn't like confrontation and you just want to hold that inside of you which would be my personality, because I'm the type of person that I don't mind confrontation but you got to push me to my limit before.
- 8:45Daniel Moore: I'm the type of person that I don't mind confrontation, but you got to push me to my limit before I confront, and that's dangerous because when I get pushed that far, I'm so mad at that point that it is not.
- 8:56Daniel Moore: I could literally just deck somebody.
- 8:57Daniel Moore: I'm way beyond my limit of where I should be, and so I've had to kind of reprogram myself a little bit to start earlier in the issues to try to get the anger out quicker so that it can be resolved before I get to that bomb stage.
- 9:12Michelle Moore: And I think you've done really well because you recognize it.
- 9:15Daniel Moore: Yeah.
- 9:15Michelle Moore: You recognize it and so you start addressing it immediately.
- 9:18Michelle Moore: You say a little bit later, but you really do, you address it kind of right.
- 9:22Michelle Moore: Then it's like you can tell it's starting to bother you and you address it.
- 9:26Daniel Moore: And that's because I've come to realize that if I internalize my anger and I keep it inside of me, it actually causes health problems, mental problems, depression, emotional problems, problems in your relationship.
- 9:39Daniel Moore: Yeah, because when you deny anger, it doesn't go away.
- 9:41Daniel Moore: It just sits there and hovers over you like a dark cloud.
- 9:44Michelle Moore: Yeah, when you deny anger.
- 9:45Daniel Moore: it doesn't go away.
- 9:45Daniel Moore: It just sits there and hovers over you like a dark cloud, waiting to just unleash and just soak you and all that it has inside of it and it accumulates.
- 9:52Daniel Moore: And this is where dangerous anger comes from, because people with anger issues almost always have years of unprocessed conflict that they don't know how to resolve.
- 10:00Daniel Moore: They've got it all pent up inside of them and they don't know how to approach it.
- 10:04Daniel Moore: They don't know how they need to unpack all of that in a safe environment with somebody and try to get past all of it and resolve all of those issues.
- 10:13Daniel Moore: And we've even seen that even in our kids, sometimes when they were growing up, especially being in a blended family, I don't feel like a lot of times our kids felt like they had the liberty to speak out, like they probably should have had the opportunity as a child, because as a child in your home, they do have a voice and you need to allow them to have that voice.
- 10:35Daniel Moore: That's how they learn and that's how they grow.
- 10:37Daniel Moore: But more often than not, as we just stated, michelle and both of us, we would probably suppress that a lot more than we should have as our kids grew up.
- 10:46Daniel Moore: But that's a whole other episode.
- 10:48Daniel Moore: But the first step to resolving anger is that we've got to admit it and allow everyone else to admit theirs.
- 10:56Daniel Moore: It reminds me of the story of the dad that had a son that had a really bad short trigger and he would get mad at the drop of a button, and they were having problems getting the child to overcome that and resolve that issue and they were constantly having to try to correct him.
- 11:14Daniel Moore: So finally the dad came up with the idea one day that every time the son got mad, he had him go out there and get a nail, and he had him hammer that nail into the fence.
- 11:22Daniel Moore: And so from that time forward this would happen multiple times a day.
- 11:28Daniel Moore: I mean, the fence was just getting filled up with nails, but the longer that it went, they started noticing that there was less and less nails that were being hammered, until it came to the point where the boy really didn't have much, very many nails to hammer anymore.
- 11:43Daniel Moore: He was starting to understand the issue and so the dad came back to the boy finally and talked to him about that, said you know, see, you've started out really bad here, but as we've worked through this over time, you see that your nails have become less and less.
- 11:56Daniel Moore: So we're making some progress here.
- 12:00Daniel Moore: And the boy's like so that must mean that I'm good.
- 12:02Daniel Moore: Then the dad says no.
- 12:03Daniel Moore: He said now you got to go back and take all those nails back out.
- 12:06Daniel Moore: So the boy's like okay, so he goes back and he starts pulling all the nails back out.
- 12:11Daniel Moore: Well, when he got done, they were standing there looking at the fence and the dad looked at the boy and he said so what do you see?
- 12:17Daniel Moore: And he said well, he said I see a fence full of a whole bunch of holes.
- 12:21Daniel Moore: He said it doesn't look good at all because there's holes everywhere.
- 12:24Daniel Moore: And the dad told the boy.
- 12:26Daniel Moore: He said yeah, he said, and that's what anger does?
- 12:29Daniel Moore: He said whenever you lash out at people, you say hurtful, hateful things to people.
- 12:34Daniel Moore: He said that has a lasting result.
- 12:37Michelle Moore: That's so good, he said you can't pull that back.
- 12:40Daniel Moore: Once you've unleashed that, you can't take that stuff back it.
- 12:44Daniel Moore: You've left a spot there that that person then has to deal with and everywhere you go you leave a track or a trace of things you said and things that you've done, and it ends up looking like that holy fence.
- 13:01Daniel Moore: And I think that if we look at it that way, to understand that we can bottle ourselves up in a bottle and keep this anger inside of us all we want to, or we can just fly off the handle and just tear people a new one whenever they tick us off and make us mad.
- 13:18Daniel Moore: We've just got to be careful because those things can be a permanent, eternal wound to someone if we're not careful.
- 13:26Daniel Moore: And so we have to learn how to resolve those conflicts when that happens and to get that anger out when that happens.
- 13:30Daniel Moore: And to get that anger out.
- 13:31Daniel Moore: So you know, in marriage we must make anger legal in our relationships.
- 13:38Daniel Moore: So we need to say something to our spouses, like if there is anything I'm doing that is bothering you or making you angry, please tell me.
- 13:44Daniel Moore: I won't reject you or make you pay a price.
- 13:48Daniel Moore: I really do want to know and I want to do whatever I can to make it right.
- 13:51Daniel Moore: Be sincere about it.
- 13:53Daniel Moore: Yeah, to know, and I want to do whatever I can to make it right, Be sincere about it.
- 13:54Daniel Moore: You know, and that changes the whole atmosphere and the whole attitude of the whole thing.
- 13:58Daniel Moore: Because if I come to you and I say you know, I know there's an issue here and I truly I want to know what it is, because we need to fix this, and doesn't that make you feel like that?
- 14:08Daniel Moore: I actually care.
- 14:09Michelle Moore: Yeah.
- 14:10Daniel Moore: And you know that I want to fix that and I think that's how I would feel about you as well, and that creates a warm and like an open customer relations type counter that will ensure that negative issues and emotions can be resolved.
- 14:23Daniel Moore: You know we go to the store to do a return.
- 14:26Daniel Moore: We want to know that that customer service department is going to take care of our issue and they're going to fix all of that, and so that's the same with us.
- 14:34Daniel Moore: You know when we come to each other, we have to come up with the mindset that you know your customer relations and you want to make me happy.
- 14:42Daniel Moore: You know the customer is always right to an extent, yeah, and to know that by the time we're done going through the back and forth, that we'll have all that stuff fixed.
- 14:52Aria: Yeah.
- 14:53Daniel Moore: So so we do have to allow anger to be expressed in our marriages, but just because we allow anger doesn't mean that our anger is valid.
- 15:01Daniel Moore: There's many reasons for it.
- 15:02Daniel Moore: You know, I might be angry because I'm ignorant.
- 15:05Daniel Moore: It may be something that I totally misunderstood that made me angry.
- 15:08Daniel Moore: But we're not going to know if I misunderstood something unless I ask.
- 15:11Michelle Moore: That's right.
- 15:12Daniel Moore: So we're going to have to be able to have that space there.
- 15:15Daniel Moore: And sometimes we're angry because we're immature or we're stressed or we're hormonal.
- 15:20Daniel Moore: Sometimes we get angry because someone legitimately violates us.
- 15:24Daniel Moore: But when we allow anger we are not saying it's always right, but we're saying that it's real and it needs to be dealt with.
- 15:30Daniel Moore: So good.
- 15:31Daniel Moore: So we have to make sure that we acknowledge that we do have some anger there.
- 15:34Daniel Moore: Secondly, don't sin or justify bad behavior, and that pretty much speaks for itself.
- 15:38Daniel Moore: Yep, whenever we, when Paul told us that we could be angry, he also told us not to sin.
- 15:45Michelle Moore: Right.
- 15:46Daniel Moore: So there's obviously definitely a difference there between the two.
- 15:49Daniel Moore: You know, so many husbands and wives justify their bad behavior because of the bad behavior of their spouses, and I think we talked about this last week a little bit how just because one spouse does something bad to you does not open that door for you to come back and do the same.
- 16:06Daniel Moore: So the third thing is don't go to bed on your anger.
- 16:08Daniel Moore: And this one.
- 16:11Daniel Moore: You get different responses from the worldly view versus the Christian view, and I was talking to Michelle here the other day.
- 16:21Daniel Moore: I read this article that we're going to probably go through it sometime here on the podcast, but it was the 12 myths of marriage, and one of the myths that they spoke about was not to let yourself go to bed angry.
- 16:33Daniel Moore: That they spoke about was not to let yourself go to bed angry.
- 16:35Daniel Moore: Well, according to this article, they were saying that it's okay to do that occasionally, because sometimes you just have to have some time to cool off and think about things before you say stuff or whatever, and so you have to allow yourself that space to be able to do that, and I know a lot of people would probably agree with that article, but in all reality.
- 16:54Daniel Moore: That's not biblical, to just put it out there bluntly.
- 16:58Daniel Moore: The Bible tells us that we are not to let the sun go down on our anger.
- 17:03Daniel Moore: That is not how God wants us to resolve that, and he doesn't want it to go down on our wrath.
- 17:08Daniel Moore: And the reason for that is because any time that there's an issue going on between Michelle and I and the pot's been stirred, guess who's trying to jump right in the middle of that.
- 17:19Michelle Moore: Yeah, Satan.
- 17:20Daniel Moore: It's Satan.
- 17:21Daniel Moore: He's in there already with his little spoon trying to whip up the batter.
- 17:25Daniel Moore: And if we do not fix those issues and we go to sleep on that, we all know that our mind is Satan's playground.
- 17:34Daniel Moore: He loves to get inside there and just put thoughts upon us.
- 17:39Daniel Moore: And it doesn't mean that tomorrow we wake up, that we can't fix it.
- 17:43Daniel Moore: It does not mean that at all, but it's just a fact towards of having a healthy marriage and doing it the biblical way.
- 17:51Daniel Moore: God does not again, does not want us to have an anger within each other that we can't resolve when it happens.
- 17:58Daniel Moore: He wants us to take care of that.
- 18:00Daniel Moore: And so you know, there's times that I went to bed in anger.
- 18:05Daniel Moore: In the early years of our marriage, michelle and I had our fair share of sleeping on the couch, while the other one stayed in the bed because we were mad at each other.
- 18:14Michelle Moore: I'm not going to say that we never did that, because we did and I can remember a lot of times you would come down there and like, are you not coming to bed?
- 18:20Michelle Moore: And it was like no, I'm not.
- 18:22Michelle Moore: And it would make you mad.
- 18:24Michelle Moore: And then it made you know I was already mad and it was like it just I mean, it wasn't, it really wasn't healthy at all, not at all.
- 18:35Daniel Moore: And what's funny is, even though we was mad at each other, I didn't like the fact you were sleeping on the couch downstairs.
- 18:42Daniel Moore: I wanted you up there where I was at, which is kind of odd, because usually when you get mad at somebody, you want to be as far away from them as you possibly can be.
- 18:50Michelle Moore: And just to tell you guys, I never slept all night on the couch.
- 18:53Michelle Moore: I would always go upstairs.
- 18:55Daniel Moore: Yeah, and both of us did.
- 18:57Michelle Moore: Yeah.
- 18:57Daniel Moore: We both had our times.
- 18:58Daniel Moore: We'd get mad and storm off downstairs and I'm just sleeping downstairs tonight or whatever but that wasn't healthy.
- 19:06Daniel Moore: No, that was not something that we should have done and you know the deep love and passion that I had for you was destroyed, one drop of resolved anger at a time, and on multiple occasions.
- 19:21Daniel Moore: You know I went to bed angry and stood over issues that I had with you and in the end, because we both did that, it almost cost us our marriage because we didn't fix it the way that we should have Right.
- 19:28Daniel Moore: So the fourth thing is don't give the devil a place in your marriage.
- 19:31Daniel Moore: Yep, and this reminds me, I've got a book here that is in my bookshelf.
- 19:35Daniel Moore: It's called Don't Give the Enemy a Seat at your Table.
- 19:38Daniel Moore: And this was written by Louis Giglio and if you go online, he actually has a sermon that he does with this, where he sits down at a table and has food and it just blows your mind as you visually go through that sermon and watch that scripture play out in real time.
- 19:54Daniel Moore: It really helps you get an understanding of how the table that we have whether if it's our spiritual life or if it's our marriage, whatever it is all of those tables have been put out there and have been set up by God.
- 20:11Daniel Moore: He is inviting us to His table to commune with him in our relationships, in our life, in the different things that we do.
- 20:19Daniel Moore: And here on the back of his book it says you don't have to let negative thoughts control your life.
- 20:24Daniel Moore: You don't have to allow the enemy to influence your thinking.
- 20:27Daniel Moore: You have power through Jesus Christ to take control of your thoughts and emotions.
- 20:32Daniel Moore: Jesus invites you to a table that he has prepared for you, a table where the enemy is not invited.
- 20:39Daniel Moore: And I think that if we flip this around to our marriages, you know Jesus has invited us to that table, just as I have invited you to the table of our marriage and you have invited me to your table of marriage.
- 20:53Daniel Moore: And again, that marriage table between me and you has two chairs Yep, it's for me and you.
- 21:00Daniel Moore: Yeah, and never was Satan, never supposed to be invited into that.
- 21:04Daniel Moore: I guess you could say three chairs, because God's there with us as well, but there is no chair for Satan, there is no chair for him to be a part of that.
- 21:13Daniel Moore: And if you look at the Garden of Eden, whenever Eve, when she was tempted to take that fruit and to eat of that fruit the word for devil that's used there in Genesis, in the Greek language is the word diabolos, which means slanderer, and what happens is is whenever we allow Satan to come in and we have those moments of anger and we storm off in fury and sleep on the couch at night or whatever, that opens the door for the devil to slander our spouses to us.
- 21:50Daniel Moore: What are you thinking?
- 21:51Daniel Moore: The whole time that you're laying on the couch downstairs mad at me?
- 21:54Daniel Moore: What are you thinking about me?
- 21:56Michelle Moore: Well, not so great stuff.
- 21:59Michelle Moore: No, I'm thinking about all the things you did and that weren't right I never once gave myself a thought of what.
- 22:09Michelle Moore: I did.
- 22:09Michelle Moore: It's all about you and what you did and how you need to change and you need to accept responsibility, and just how angry I was with you.
- 22:17Daniel Moore: So, basically, you're slandering me as your husband and when I'm the one on the couch, I'm sitting there thinking all the ways that you're a horrible wife.
- 22:25Daniel Moore: You know why you don't understand me and all this, it's all.
- 22:29Daniel Moore: Everything's focused towards you, just like you said, I'm not even thinking about myself in that equation, and what's crazy about that is the whole time we're laying there, we're thinking that, we're thinking those thoughts, but it's really Satan in there in stealth mode.
- 22:42Daniel Moore: He's the one that keeps feeding all this stuff and we're taking it hook, line and sinker.
- 22:46Daniel Moore: You know, we're just sitting there allowing it to go on, and whenever that happens, then we can literally sit there and think ourselves into divorce right on the couch, because we're so mad, you know, and that's not a healthy place to be at all.
- 23:02Daniel Moore: And the reason that this is going on is because the devil and all his little demons that run around, they want our marriages to fall apart.
- 23:11Daniel Moore: They want our marriages to fail.
- 23:13Daniel Moore: And ever since the Garden of Eden, whenever he was able to get in to that relationship that Adam and Eve had and destroy what they had between them and God, where it just changed the whole process of the future for everybody, they've been in an all-out campaign and an all-out war ever since then to try to destroy every other marriage.
- 23:35Daniel Moore: That they can do and this is one way that they can do that is to try to get that anger in there, because if they can cause division between me and you, then they can, in essence, eventually break up the family unit.
- 23:48Daniel Moore: Yeah, so in our marriage, when we finally came to the point that we asked the Holy Spirit to come in and to change both of us and to change us and to help us understand each other better through the lens of Christ and to fix the marriage that we had, that booted Satan out.
- 24:07Daniel Moore: At that point, yeah, and we started working on making sure that we didn't let him back in Absolutely.
- 24:13Daniel Moore: In their book, the Unexpected Legacy of Divorce, authors Judith Wallerstein and Sandra Blakeslee document their sobering findings concerning children of divorce, and here's an excerpt of their book.
- 24:24Daniel Moore: It says because children of divorce don't know how to negotiate conflict, well, many reach out for the worst solutions when trouble strikes.
- 24:30Daniel Moore: For example, some will sit on their feelings, not mentioning complaints or differences, until their suppressed anger blows sky high.
- 24:37Daniel Moore: Others burst into tears and are immobilized to retreat into themselves or the next room and close the door.
- 24:44Daniel Moore: But the most common tendency is to run away at the first serious disagreement and wrestle with unconscious demons.
- 24:50Daniel Moore: This is because, from the perspective of a child of divorce, any argument can be the first step in an inevitable chain of conflict that will destroy the marriage.
- 25:01Daniel Moore: So remember that not only are we messing around with our relationship between me and you, but if there's kids involved, they've already seen one marriage dissolve because anger, because the spouses the dad and the mom got so mad at each other and couldn't fix it that they ended up getting a divorce and split that whole family up.
- 25:20Daniel Moore: And now the kids are being drug into a new whole family scenario to get to know a whole new parent.
- 25:26Daniel Moore: And kids don't completely understand everything in the marital relationship.
- 25:30Daniel Moore: So the first time they see mom and mom and stepdad or dad and stepmom fighting there, they start trying to process this.
- 25:39Daniel Moore: And now they're thinking, ok, well, this is what broke up the first marriage, a part of it is this where this one's headed.
- 25:45Daniel Moore: Am I going to be stuck now again having to move, being uprooted and whatever?
- 25:49Daniel Moore: So remember that as parents we have a lot more responsibility than just ourselves when there's kids involved as well.
- 25:57Daniel Moore: So we need to figure out how to keep Satan out the mix of all of that and remember that we're not a prisoner of our past and we don't have to repeat those mistakes that took place in our families even.
- 26:08Daniel Moore: And we can break that and we need to.
- 26:24Daniel Moore: So now we're going to talk about resolving conflict in marriage, and we all know that when we're married to someone we've already talked about how we're different.
- 26:32Daniel Moore: Women have different things that they need, guys have different things that they need, and so that's a perfect recipe to have some conflict if we're not careful.
- 26:42Daniel Moore: But the first thing that we need to do when we have conflict is to confront it in a loving and positive manner, and in Proverbs 15.1, it says a soft answer turns away wrath, but harsh words stir up anger.
- 26:53Daniel Moore: So what will happen?
- 26:56Daniel Moore: Many couples make the mistake of stuffing their anger for weeks and months at a time, and during that time, the devil is accessing their unresolved anger and injecting it with slanderous thoughts about each other.
- 27:08Daniel Moore: Finally, something comes along that will trigger an argument and the vicious words and threats begin to fly, and this is a very dangerous scenario that ends many marriages.
- 27:18Daniel Moore: So here again we see that the anger if we don't fix it, it can create these conflicts and guess who's right in the middle of that still.
- 27:28Michelle Moore: Satan.
- 27:28Daniel Moore: Satan.
- 27:29Daniel Moore: He's still in there causing that slander.
- 27:31Daniel Moore: You know, you and I just talked about a while ago about how we slander each other and I don't even feel like we have to have an extensive vocabulary.
- 27:40Daniel Moore: I think Satan gives us the words sometimes to throw at each other, just like you said I think it was last week's episode how you don't feel like you were you sometimes.
- 27:56Michelle Moore: Oh, I know.
- 27:56Daniel Moore: I wasn't Because of the things that you said, and so you feel like Satan was the instigator behind a lot of what you said, even oh yeah, did he plant those seeds?
- 28:07Daniel Moore: Oh, I think so.
- 28:09Michelle Moore: I have no doubt.
- 28:10Michelle Moore: I mean, I think the enemy knows exactly what he's doing.
- 28:16Michelle Moore: And when it comes to those when you don't really realize what you're saying and spouting, I think the enemy has a hold on that and that's exactly where he was at with me.
- 28:29Daniel Moore: And sometimes those are the harshest words that are so hard to fix, it's so hard to take those back and that can cause a lot of damage for some people that they sometimes can't get over.
- 28:40Daniel Moore: And then that's when your relationships deteriorate and fall apart.
- 28:44Daniel Moore: So just remember that soft affirming words begin successful conflict resolution.
- 28:51Daniel Moore: Harsh threatening words start fights that go absolutely nowhere.
- 28:55Daniel Moore: If your emotions are out of control, then we need to take a break.
- 28:59Daniel Moore: We need to go somewhere and calm down for a minute, and this is good parenting advice as well, Something that I didn't really follow very well when we were raising our kids.
- 29:10Daniel Moore: It's real easy, it seems like, no matter what scenario you're in, if you become extremely angry.
- 29:16Daniel Moore: If you automatically try to fix that problem when you're that mad, that a lot of times you're going to cause more problems than good.
- 29:22Daniel Moore: Yeah, you do need to get away from that.
- 29:24Daniel Moore: Sometimes you have a moment to just calm down, pray a little bit and ask God for peace in the situation, and then come back to it once you feel like you're both in a spot where you can actually talk about it.
- 29:38Michelle Moore: I like this and I'm just going to read this right quick.
- 29:40Michelle Moore: It's talking about when.
- 29:43Michelle Moore: I'll just read it.
- 29:45Michelle Moore: The opposite of what is described is a marriage where anger is legal and both spouses are free to share.
- 29:51Michelle Moore: When sharing begins, it doesn't start with screaming, threats and cursing.
- 29:56Michelle Moore: It starts with words like this Honey, I'd like to talk to you about something that is bothering me.
- 30:03Michelle Moore: I want you to know before I begin that I love you and I'm so glad we're married.
- 30:09Michelle Moore: I know we will work through this and we are on the same team, but I have something to share with you.
- 30:19Michelle Moore: When you start with that, how would that make you feel if I would have actually started with some of that?
- 30:21Michelle Moore: Instead of just coming screaming and saying some of the things?
- 30:22Michelle Moore: It actually it takes down one you know we're on the same team and we both want to work together but it kind of takes that anger away, you know of hey, let's work this out, you know.
- 30:37Daniel Moore: Yeah, it definitely redirects the thought process.
- 30:40Daniel Moore: Yes, because when we're so angry at each other, we're really looking at each other as an adversary at that point You're somebody that I'm fighting with.
- 30:51Daniel Moore: We forget that.
- 30:53Daniel Moore: Yes, at that point You're somebody that I'm fighting with.
- 30:56Daniel Moore: We forget that.
- 30:57Daniel Moore: Yes, you are my love.
- 30:57Daniel Moore: You are my soulmate.
- 30:58Daniel Moore: Now that stuff's in my mind.
- 30:58Daniel Moore: When I'm red and the veins are popping out of my head, smoke coming out of my ears, that's the last thing I'm thinking is how much I truly love you.
- 31:06Daniel Moore: I'm just furious at what you did to me, and I think that when you do start that way, that's perfect, because it automatically starts a defusing at that point and you come at that conversation a completely different way.
- 31:21Michelle Moore: And it says soft and affirming words begin a successful conflict resolution.
- 31:25Michelle Moore: And so I mean, I feel like that is very, very important that if you are having some kind of argument that, hey, let's start this out positive and let's work through this.
- 31:37Daniel Moore: Yeah.
- 31:38Daniel Moore: So it's going to end badly if you don't approach it the correct way, right, and so we need to make sure that we do that Absolutely.
- 31:45Daniel Moore: The second thing to resolving conflict is complain and don't criticize, and we've talked about this a little bit before.
- 31:50Daniel Moore: Yes, we have.
- 31:51Daniel Moore: There's a huge difference between the two that most people don't understand.
- 31:55Daniel Moore: Complaining is helpful and constructive, but criticism is negative and destructive.
- 32:00Daniel Moore: The difference between complaining and criticizing is the focus.
- 32:04Daniel Moore: Complaining focuses on me and criticizing focuses on the spouse.
- 32:10Daniel Moore: So when I am complaining, I say something like this Michelle, you said something this morning that bothered me and I would like to talk about it.
- 32:17Daniel Moore: I'm sure you didn't mean anything by it, but I would just like to tell you how I'm feeling and talk it through.
- 32:23Daniel Moore: So that's a complaint.
- 32:24Daniel Moore: It doesn't attack you or judge you.
- 32:27Daniel Moore: It just basically tells you how I'm feeling, and it's going to give us the opportunity to clear that air and try to get that stuff out of the way.
- 32:34Daniel Moore: Now, if I'm going to criticize you instead, I'm going to say Michelle, this morning you said something to me and it really hurt me, and I know why you said it.
- 32:43Daniel Moore: You said it to pay me back for what I said to you yesterday because that's just how you are.
- 32:47Daniel Moore: You are so spiteful and mean to me all the time.
- 32:51Daniel Moore: I resent how you treat me and I am not going to take it anymore.
- 32:55Daniel Moore: Well, the focus of those comments aren't on me or how I'm feeling.
- 33:00Daniel Moore: That focus there is criticizing you.
- 33:03Daniel Moore: We also have to notice that in criticism, how it doesn't want input, it wants confession and repentance.
- 33:10Daniel Moore: So when I criticize you, my next thing is I'm just waiting for you to say okay, I'm sorry, I did it wrong, I'll never do it again.
- 33:18Daniel Moore: I'm taking full responsibility.
- 33:20Daniel Moore: That's, in all essence.
- 33:21Daniel Moore: That's really what I'm asking for when I criticize you.
- 33:24Daniel Moore: But when there's just a complaint, that's there.
- 33:28Daniel Moore: That takes that out of the equation, yeah, because then it's not necessarily that I'm waiting on you to apologize to me or whatever.
- 33:40Daniel Moore: I think when we complain, it starts off the process for both of us to maybe take some of the blame and to work out the differences between the two of us and come to a peaceful resolution, at the same time showing that we still love each other enough to try to fix the problem.
- 33:51Daniel Moore: Yeah, and resolve it.
- 33:53Daniel Moore: It's good, and so that's something that I feel like you and I have made major progress in.
- 33:59Daniel Moore: So don't come at them with your guns blazing and focusing on their faults.
- 34:05Daniel Moore: You need to come to them really in an attitude of, hey, what's going on here?
- 34:10Daniel Moore: Can we fix this and make sure it's better?
- 34:13Daniel Moore: So, number three listen to your spouse and believe them.
- 34:17Daniel Moore: It's better.
- 34:20Daniel Moore: So, number three listen to your spouse and believe them.
- 34:21Daniel Moore: So, again, when you have gone to bed on anger for a long period of time, you're under the influence of toxic thoughts regarding your spouse.
- 34:25Daniel Moore: This almost always results in mistrust and deeply held beliefs about your spouse that keep you from receiving their communication at face value.
- 34:34Daniel Moore: So, basically, what this is saying here is if Michelle, if she goes to the couch a lot because she's mad at me and she chooses to, we have these arguments and fights or whatever and she chooses to go to the couch and does that repetitively over a period of time, the more that that happens, the madder you're going to get at me.
- 34:58Daniel Moore: Yeah, right, yeah, it's not going to get any better, it's just going to make that get deeper and deeper down inside of you to where you know, like you said, you came to a point where you finally hated me.
- 35:07Michelle Moore: So much bitterness.
- 35:08Daniel Moore: Because you let that go for so long.
- 35:11Daniel Moore: So then what happened when I would try to come in and say constructive things to fix stuff?
- 35:17Daniel Moore: Did you believe a word I said?
- 35:18Michelle Moore: Absolutely not.
- 35:20Daniel Moore: So why do you think that was the case?
- 35:23Michelle Moore: Because of what you said previously and it never took.
- 35:26Michelle Moore: I mean, honestly, if you were to say something to me and I was angry about it and then you're coming back to criticize me or try to change it, I'm not going to believe anything you say because of what you previously said.
- 35:40Michelle Moore: Yeah, and my heart is shut off to anything you're going to say anyways.
- 35:45Daniel Moore: Yeah, it kind of comes back to that saying that we talked about many episodes ago, that trust is lost in buckets and regained in drops Yep, regained in drops.
- 35:59Daniel Moore: And I think we have to remember that when that damage has been done and those scars are there and they're so deep, you stab that knife in so deep and cause so much issue that it's going to take some time.
- 36:07Daniel Moore: It's not going to be just an overnight flip of the switch if this has been something that's been festering for a while and so we have to understand that.
- 36:15Daniel Moore: And that's not going to say that sometimes the spouse is still just going to lie to your face.
- 36:20Daniel Moore: I know it says to listen to your spouse and believe them for what they're telling you, but I think in most cases most spouses have been around each other long enough.
- 36:29Daniel Moore: They can usually tell when one's lying to the other one and I think that there's some discernment there that can be seen.
- 36:35Daniel Moore: But if you're both actually trying to fix the issue and your spouse is truly repentant and they're truly trying to fix the issues they caused or whatever, then you have to put some trust into them and try to work through that, still probably having some guards in place.
- 36:52Daniel Moore: You don't want to open yourself up for a bad situation to take place within your own self, but you still.
- 36:59Daniel Moore: You're going to have to have some trust in each other as you're rebuilding this.
- 37:02Aria: Yeah.
- 37:03Daniel Moore: And just similar to what you and I finally did In 1 Corinthians 13, 4-7,.
- 37:27Daniel Moore: It says the spirit of our marriages should reflect the words of that passage.
- 37:31Daniel Moore: In some cases, it might be a good idea to write that scripture text down and tape it to your mirror or your refrigerator as a reminder, because true love acts with a Christlike ethic that treats others with dignity.
- 37:44Daniel Moore: So we need to make sure that you know, as we're talking these things out, you're going to have to have a little bit of a moment there where you're going to have to put some belief into what the other spouse is saying and work off of that.
- 37:56Daniel Moore: Number four is forgive and let go.
- 37:59Daniel Moore: And you know, just like Michelle and I, you and your spouses are both imperfect and will be making mistakes for the rest of your lives.
- 38:07Daniel Moore: You know you don't want to live carelessly and do bad things on purpose, but we are all humans and we all make mistakes, and Jesus is good with it.
- 38:17Daniel Moore: That's the way that we were created.
- 38:18Daniel Moore: But he wants us to get better.
- 38:20Daniel Moore: He doesn't force us to stop having problems, or else he patiently washes us in the water of his word.
- 38:27Daniel Moore: And, husbands, we're directed to emulate that sacrificial love we have to be patient with our spouse and forgive them over and over and over, just like Jesus does for us.
- 38:38Daniel Moore: There are many times in marriage when you're going to need to forgive your spouse, even when there hasn't been a big fight or confrontation.
- 38:45Daniel Moore: But especially in those times when you've had a spat, you must put it in the past and go forward.
- 38:50Daniel Moore: We all have issues.
- 38:52Daniel Moore: We all need lots of mercy.
- 38:53Daniel Moore: Our sin put Jesus on the cross and no one loves us more than Him, and I think when it comes to this issue in marriages, we really need to look at it like Jesus did there.
- 39:07Daniel Moore: We're going to have to nail all that stuff to a cross and we're going to have to put it behind us and offer that full forgiveness for the other spouse that they deserve if they're asking for that forgiveness.
- 39:21Daniel Moore: And, of course, as we talked about last week, you know both of us, we both shared, you know some pretty bad things we did to each other.
- 39:29Daniel Moore: But, yeah, we chose to forgive.
- 39:31Daniel Moore: Have I forgotten it?
- 39:33Daniel Moore: No, you haven't forgotten what happened either, and obviously we're here using it as a testimony now to what God's done in our life.
- 39:42Daniel Moore: But the fact that we can use this as a testimony, what does that speak about?
- 39:45Daniel Moore: Where we're at with those problems that we had?
- 39:49Michelle Moore: Yeah, definitely.
- 39:50Michelle Moore: I mean we're past that, that is our past and God's using it as a testimony.
- 39:56Michelle Moore: I mean it may have taken—I mean God's healed our hearts completely.
- 40:00Daniel Moore: Yeah, you know, we've got to remember that the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of truth.
- 40:04Daniel Moore: We must remember that if what we are saying to our spouses is true, the Holy Spirit will enforce it and we don't have to.
- 40:11Daniel Moore: But if what we are saying isn't true, the Holy Spirit's not going to come in there and help with that.
- 40:17Daniel Moore: We need to be open to the possibility that we could be wrong, and this is another reason that we must forgive and keep our hearts tender toward each other.
- 40:25Daniel Moore: In marriage, both are equals and can say anything to each other, as long as it is done with love and respect.
- 40:33Daniel Moore: The fact that you know, you and I we had some harsh moments between the two of us, because I wasn't patient like Jesus wanted me to be, and also because I didn't trust the Lord to change you.
- 40:45Daniel Moore: The entire spirit of our relationship changed when I began to lovingly share how I felt and trusted God in those results.
- 40:53Daniel Moore: And so, when it comes down to, I think, probably with marriage problems, probably and you might tell me if you agree with me on this or not but I feel like probably the most powerful thing that we ever did that actually caused our marriage to work was that we forgave and we forgot about things.
- 41:15Daniel Moore: Because if you can't forgive for stuff that you've done to each other, how do you move forward?
- 41:22Daniel Moore: You know, we can sit there and run all that stuff, rehash it all we want to and keep it over each other's heads and, you know, use that to beat each other up.
- 41:33Michelle Moore: Right, right.
- 41:34Michelle Moore: And I think the most important thing for me was I mean it was that, but I really I mean it was god like coming to god and accepting the fact that I had made a lot of mistakes and letting him be my first love was probably my biggest thing for me because of what I had did, was probably my biggest thing for me because of what I had did and what I had done.
- 42:02Michelle Moore: I think it had to be that because we hadn't put God in our marriage at all.
- 42:08Michelle Moore: It was an afterthought.
- 42:10Michelle Moore: So that was the first and foremost thing, because I feel like you have to have that in order to be able to forgive.
- 42:18Daniel Moore: Yes, I totally agree with that.
- 42:26Michelle Moore: So I mean it was really because I had to accept responsibility of what I had done.
- 42:31Michelle Moore: And you know and you have to understand, when you do something like that and you have an affair or something, there's a lot that comes with that and you know, god had to really work on me and I mean it's been up until last year, I think I mean on some other things that came along with that, but for our marriage it definitely to me it was God.
- 42:49Michelle Moore: And then the forgiveness, because you know I have forgave you but I had to also forgive myself.
- 42:56Michelle Moore: I mean, if I didn't forgive myself, I would have never been able to work past it.
- 43:02Daniel Moore: Yeah.
- 43:03Michelle Moore: And same as you, I mean.
- 43:05Daniel Moore: If you're constantly beating your own self up, it's still hard to work on the marriage and the relationship that you have with your spouse?
- 43:11Daniel Moore: Yeah, because you're going to constantly feel like you're not good enough.
- 43:14Daniel Moore: Right, you're going to feel like you deserve this or you deserve that.
- 43:17Daniel Moore: Yeah, going to constantly feel like you're not good enough.
- 43:19Daniel Moore: You're going to feel like you deserve this or you deserve that, yeah, and you're going to constantly go through that whole cycle over and over and over.
- 43:23Michelle Moore: And still you're not going to find that true happiness Because even if you forgave me, it wouldn't have been.
- 43:26Michelle Moore: I mean, and I think that's the reason why it was so important to bring God back in, you know to it, because I had to forgive myself.
- 43:33Daniel Moore: Yeah, that's some good stuff.
- 43:35Daniel Moore: So anybody out there, if you guys are having issues with the anger, the conflicts, you might bookmark this episode Because there's a lot of truth here, just biblically, on how you can resolve all of that and get past those anger moments.
- 43:51Daniel Moore: Because, like we said at the beginning of this episode, this is probably one of the biggest things that will tear a marriage apart Is the anger and the conflict that you're going to have and not being able to forgive and forget that.
- 44:02Michelle Moore: And I think with anger too, it comes with that pride.
- 44:05Daniel Moore: Yep.
- 44:05Michelle Moore: And so if you cannot get rid of that, that pride is going to be there and you cannot allow pride in the marriage.
- 44:11Daniel Moore: Right, yeah, pride comes before a fall, as the Bible says, and that's very true in marriage as well, because it's not just you by yourself in the relationship, it's you and a spouse, and so you have to be able to open up to that spouse, as the law of purity says here, and allow God to work through both of you.
- 44:38Daniel Moore: The law of purity is the universal law of love and marriage.
- 44:41Daniel Moore: You know we must be careful and responsible in our behavior, but even with our best efforts, there's going to be problems that we need to deal with.
- 44:47Daniel Moore: So as we close today, wherever you are in your journey, we encourage you to get current and stay current with your issues.
- 44:54Daniel Moore: Don't keep pushing that stuff off until a year later.
- 44:58Daniel Moore: You're so stinking mad you can't stand it because you've not brought nothing up in that whole year.
- 45:03Daniel Moore: Keep that stuff current as it happens.
- 45:05Daniel Moore: Take care of it Right then and there.
- 45:07Daniel Moore: Don't wait.
- 45:08Daniel Moore: It'll keep your heart and marriage pure and, best and foremost, you're going to be blessed by God.
- 45:14Daniel Moore: God's going to bless your marriage if you make sure to keep that stuff taken care of.
- 45:18Daniel Moore: Well, I think that's going to do it for this week's episode.
- 45:22Daniel Moore: Did you have anything else to add to it?
- 45:25Daniel Moore: I think we're good.
- 45:27Daniel Moore: Next week we're going to be continuing with the law of purity and we're going to be talking about everyday intimacy and we're going to be talking about the four lives of intimacy.
- 45:36Daniel Moore: It's going to be another great episode here in our series on the four laws of love.
- 45:41Daniel Moore: But if you're not subscribed you may miss it.
- 45:43Daniel Moore: So please subscribe to be sure you don't miss that episode.
- 45:46Daniel Moore: And that's going to end this week's episode.
- 45:49Daniel Moore: I'm Daniel Moore and my wife, michelle has been sitting here with me this week.
- 45:52Michelle Moore: Bye guys.
- 45:53Daniel Moore: I want to thank you guys for listening this.
- 45:54Daniel Moore: Bye guys.
- 45:55Daniel Moore: I want to thank you guys for listening.
- 45:55Daniel Moore: This show really wouldn't be possible without you.
- 45:57Daniel Moore: If you're a fan of the show, please leave a review on Apple Podcasts.
- 45:59Daniel Moore: If you'd like to help us out, just take a few seconds and give us a five-star click and please subscribe to us on your favorite platform.
- 46:06Daniel Moore: The links for those are in the show notes.
- 46:08Daniel Moore: Well, that's all for this week, and we pray that your marriage is stronger and your walk with God is closer after this episode.
- 46:15Daniel Moore: This is an extension of Connecting the Gap Ministries.
- 46:18Daniel Moore: We pray that you have a blessed week.
- 46:21Aria: You've been listening to Connecting the Gap Podcast.
- 46:23Aria: In this world, there are many disconnects that cause chaos in our lives.
- 46:26Aria: This podcast is birthed from the desire to share hope and restoration of the power of the gospel by being transparent and open in our biblical walk with God.
- 46:34Aria: Each week, we take a few moments as we navigate God's Word and peer into other people's testimonies and encourage each other to connect the gap.
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- 47:12Aria: Thank you.