A couple’s marriage was crumbling; her husband’s heart had morphed to stone. He had dearly loved her for years, but struggled to demonstrate it in the way she recognized. As her insecurity grew, he assumed he could never please her. He stopped trying … and eventually left.
In doing an autopsy of her marriage, this wife realized that starting in the infancy of her marriage she got into the habit of believing the worst of her husband, rather than the best. She believed that he was deliberately trying to hurt her … because he didn’t care.
This couple’s story becomes a powerful teacher for you and me. How often do we question the motives of our spouses? How many times do we believe the “evil” and not the “good”?
Proverbs 11:27 tells us that we get what we look for: “If you search for good, you will find favor; but if you search for evil, it will find you!” So as followers of Christ, we need to ask ourselves: Are we searching for evil or searching for good?
Shaunti Feldhahn, a marriage researcher, has discovered that the first ingredient in every strong marriage is each spouse’s refusal to believe the worst of his or her mate. Her research indicates that most of us do not want to intentionally hurt each other. So we need to work hard to look for the good and not the evil in the words and actions of our spouses’.
We have to admit, that while we are hurting, we tend to believe the worst of our spouse not the best. The desire to seek a more gracious justification of an offense will not come easy at first. We need to pray, and ask God to help us remember the good things we see in our spouse and in our relationship … and for the power to forgive this offense and move on …
Ask the Lord to bring your feelings in line with what you know to be true about your spouse. And once you see, over and over again, that the “good” explanation is usually the real one, you become fully convinced that this person is “for” you and not against you!
