by Wyatt Fisher
There are many reasons Christians should practice regular devotions of Bible study and prayer. First, it’s an essential way to commune with God to cultivate a deeper relationship and knowledge of Him. Second, it’s time to confess your sins and receive strength and hope for any adversity you may be facing. Third, it could transform your marriage because it often cultivates the top two qualities needed for successful relationships, compassion and humility.
The human heart tends to drift towards discontent in many areas of life, including how we feel about our job, our income, our home, and even our spouse. As I’m sure you’ve noticed, it’s often easier to find fault with your partner than it is to praise him or her. When discontent becomes a pattern, it turns into criticism and resentment, which breaks down tender areas of intimacy needed for marriage. However, when we spend time in devotions, this tendency to judge and blame our partner is often replaced with compassion. Compassion is having mercy towards our partner’s shortcomings and a forgiving spirit towards their imperfections. Compassion and resentment cannot coexist. Therefore, as compassion increases towards our partner, resentment naturally melts away. When we spend time meditating on God’s love and mercy towards us, our hearts are transformed to extend the same grace towards our partner. Moreover, when we spend time in Bible study and prayer, God often reveals the underlying causes for our partner’s weaknesses, which increases our empathy towards them. For example, a friend of mine was feeling hurt by how much time his wife was spending with her friends. When he would discuss it with her, she often became defensive and thought he was just trying to control her, which hurt him even worse. This hurt in his heart eventually turned to anger and bitterness. Finally, during his devotions God brought to his mind earlier discussions with his wife about how lonely she had always been growing up and how much she craved community and now she was finally experiencing it. This insight brought a tremendous amount of compassion in his heart towards her behaviors. Instead of viewing her as being insensitive and neglectful towards him and the marriage, he was able to see her as a little girl finally satiating a deep desire for community she never had growing up. This insight allowed him to approach her much more lovingly about the topic, which encouraged her to take ownership for her part and compromise.
The other trait commonly nurtured during devotions that will bless your marriage is humility. Similar to what was discussed above, our natural bent is to ruminate on our partner’s imperfections, which promotes a spirit of pride. As Jesus points out, “Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye” (Mathew 7:3, NIV)? The more we hyper-focus on our partner’s shortcomings, the more critical and disrespectful our words and behaviors become. However, when we spend time in Bible study and prayer, God quickly illuminates our own weaknesses and ways we are not honoring Him. This conviction crushes our pride and increases our mercy towards our partner’s weaknesses since we are now in touch with our own. Then, with a humble spirit we are able to approach our partner with awareness that we both have faults, which leads to more effective conflict resolution and change.
So, if you’re considering the reasons to have regular devotions in your life, remember one of the top ones is it will transform your marriage by cultivating compassion and humility in your heart.
Wyatt Fisher, Psy.D. is a Christian psychologist and faculty member at Liberty University. He’s passionate about helping Christians connect and develop God-honoring relationships. His blog can be found here https://www.christiancrush.com/relationship/
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