One couple’s marriage is ending today. The other couple’s marriage is thriving today.
How can that be? What makes the difference? Both dealt with the same circumstances, the same “problem”…yet why the polar opposite outcomes? It is not adultery that tears apart marriages…it’s hardness of heart.
Hardness of heart is the root of all failed marriages.
Hardness of heart is…
-lacking genuine sorrow over sin.
-continuing to go back again and again into temptation, lies and deceit.
-choosing to think of yourself as most important.
-choosing what’s best for you and not the other.
-the small lies and huge lies that you convince yourself are not a big deal.
-being unteachable.
-tearing down with words.
-comparing and contrasting your wrongs against the other and making the judgement that “theirs is worse.”
-responding with defensiveness.
-the need to always be in control.
-waiting for the other to say sorry first.
-demanding the other change first.
-thinking more of what you deserve instead of what you can give.
-focusing more on being right than on becoming righteous.
-what you can get out of someone instead of how you can invest in them.
-the refusal to forgive.
-the refusal to humble yourself to ask for forgiveness.
-saying you forgive, but never letting go.
-asking for forgiveness and then going back to do the same thing again.
-magnifying the weaknesses and minimizing the strengths of the other, while magnifying the strengths and minimizing the weaknesses of yourself.
-justifying wrongful actions because they “started it first.”
-spending more time trying to find an official clinical diagnosis to explain away their issues than looking in the mirror to address your own.
-preserving your own well-being at the expense of the other.
-reading this list and thinking someone else should be reading this…
