A couple’s marriage was crumbling. Her husband’s heart had morphed into stone. He dearly loved her for years, but struggled to demonstrate it in a way she could recognize. As her insecurity grew, he assumed he could never please her. He stopped trying and eventually left. In doing an autopsy of their 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 what we need to look for. It says,”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 the evil or searching for the good in our spouse? 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, though, that while we’re hurting, we tend to believe the worst of our spouse and 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. We also need to ask the Lord to bring our feelings in line with what we know to be true about our spouse. And once we see over and over again that the good explanation usually is the real one, we will become fully convinced that this person is the right one for us.
