CHRISTIAN NEWLYWED ADVICE FOR STRUGGLING NEWLYWEDS Christian marriage advice christian relationships

hey everyone welcome back to my channel fun care christian so in today’s video i am going to be talking to newlyweds specifically newlyweds who are struggling in their new marriage and who are facing challenges but to be honest this video isn’t only going to be useful to newlyweds if you’ve been married for a while you will also find it useful and you will also find it very useful if you are soon to be married or if you are not yet married okay so i got married at the age of 35 and i’ve been married for 13 years now and i’m really thankful to god because we are happily married but there were definitely challenges along the way and there were times when i wondered are we the only ones going through this is this normal did we make a mistake and thankfully god was able to bring us through and to really use those challenging times to bring my husband and i closer together in our marriage and to help us build a stronger marriage so i know that if you’re facing struggles in your marriage now as a newly wed or even as someone that’s been married for a few years it can seem really difficult to believe that things will actually get better really difficult to believe that god can actually turn it around in the book of romans in the new testament in the bible it tells us that god is the god that can give life to the things that have been dead and he is a god that can call things that never were as though they were so be encouraged because this tells us that god can give life to the parts of your marriage that you feel are dead the parts of your marriage that you feel will never change and he can produce in your marriage the things that right now you may believe that your marriage will never be able to be or be able to do i want to talk about maybe some of the misconceptions that newlyweds may have about marriage and what you can do about it so that you have the marriage that god created for you to have so the first thing that newlyweds really need to understand is the big change that occurred when they got married so we all know that when we get married it involves a big change for a lot of people it means you know moving home it can even mean moving to a new city even a new country it means new family members and new friends but there is an even bigger change that takes place and sometimes we don’t realize it and this change happens in a moment so on your wedding day two people go into church to be married to each other when they come out they are two people but now they’re one flesh so genesis tells us that the husband shall be joined to his wife and the two will become one flesh so the question is what does one flesh really mean for married couples so a few years ago i read a really interesting article on some conjoined twins and the interviewer was asking them questions about how they navigated everyday life how they did everyday things as conjoined twins and one of the questions that the interviewer asked was you know what is it that you particularly don’t like about being a conjoined twin and one of the twins said well my sister likes spicy food and i don’t like spicy food but when she eats spicy food i can kind of feel the spice in my stomach because i think they shed certain organs like their digestive organs and she said i feel as if i have eaten spicy food even though i haven’t eaten spicy food and she also said that when my sister gets a cold and she gets all the symptoms of a cold that i will also experience slight symptoms i won’t get a full cold but i’ll feel a slight tickle in my throat i may feel slightly achy initially and then it passes while my sister continues to have this full cold and in some ways being one flesh in marriage is almost like that what affects your spouse will also affect you what hurts your spouse will also hurt you because you are now one flesh and the big challenge can come for married couples because even though as married people we are one flesh they are still two people each with their own mind and their own ways in the early stages of our marriage if my husband had something that was bothering him or some challenge that he was facing and he would come and talk to me about it i would always listen and give him advice and sort of encourage him but i always felt that it was sort of his problem but what i started realizing as our marriage progressed is that those things that affected him also affected me and so with time i realized that being one flesh in marriage meant that my definition of self had changed self was no longer just me on my own self was now my husband and i and the things that mattered to him also mattered to me and so i started changing how i saw the problems he faced they now became our problems and that really helped us when we would talk together we would look for a joint solution to a problem that affected us and it also helped with our prayer life because your prayers are so much more fervent so much more intense so much more passionate when you are praying for something that will affect you and that is why it’s so important for newlyweds to understand that when they get married they become one flesh and that means what is important to your spouse also has to be important to you so my advice to newlyweds is that learning to live as a married couple learning to live as one flesh takes time it’s a process so don’t give up if you find that it can be challenging at the beginning now one flesh does not mean one mind you don’t always have to agree on everything but it is about having a common goal or a common purpose and it’s the realization that in marriage it’s about two people one flesh two minds but one purpose so the second thing that newlyweds and married couples need to realize is that an individual relationship with god is not enough in marriage a lot of needy words and a lot of christians in general believe that their personal relationship with god will determine the success or the happiness of their marriage so it can be a shock when two mature christians get married to each other and they experience challenges in their new marriage and the truth is that while our individual relationships with god in the marriage are important in a marriage with two christians it is the joint relationship or the marriage relationship with god that is so so key so important building a marriage relationship with god can take time i can laugh about it now but when my husband and i first got married we faced so many hurdles both my husband and i had a personal relationship with god but we also had different approaches to doing things so one of us liked to pray standing up and the other one of us liked to pray sitting down one of us liked to start prayers with praise and worship and the other just wanted to get into the prayer and go before the throne of grace one of us would speak in tongues throughout the prayer and the other would have specific times when they would speak in tongues to god and it was really difficult for us to come together to have a joint relationship with god and there were times when we would argue before the prayers times when we would argue even during the prayers and times when we would argue after the prayers and we would feel so discouraged but god would always kind of bring us back together again and over time we started to get stronger and stronger in our joint relationship with god and now we love to pray with each other we love praying with each other and there are times when one of us is praying and the other one is praying in tongues quietly at the same time times when one of us is singing and the other is still praying at the same time times when we both stand to pray and times when one of us will stand and one of us will sit and it’s like a sort of there’s a rhythm and a holy spirit rhythm to it but the amazing thing about the joint prayer and the joint relationship with god is there is so much power that is generated when a married couple prays in unity together to god without that marriage relationship with god it can create disunity in the marriage and a lack of purpose and that can be quite dangerous so to marry couples again i say don’t give up to be honest i would say it was in the last three years of our marriage that my husband and i have really gotten into just having that marriage relationship with god and really enjoying our time of prayer together and the benefits so the third thing is that newlyweds and married people need to accept that there are some things that your marriage or your spouse cannot do for you many people believe that marriage will change them marriage will change their lives marriage will make them a better person will give them more confidence to do the things that they weren’t able to do when they were single that marriage will make them happier and a lot of people also believe that their spouse their husband or their wife will validate them that their love will fix them or correct them and make up for all the sort of the pain and the hurts that they’ve experienced in the past the truth is that while marriage can do a lot for us god never created marriage to complete us or to fix us or correct us only god can complete us and jesus already fixed us and validated us when he died for us on the cross when he went to hell when he defeated death when he rose again and ascended into heaven when people get married thinking that marriage can do for them what only god can do for them they may ultimately become disillusioned because they’re not getting what they think they should get from their marriages they can feel resentful or unfulfilled maybe feeling that their marriage is not what they thought it would be their spouse is not as loving as they should be and the solution for this is for newlyweds to realize that god is the source of everything that they desire in the psalms we are told that in god’s presence is fullness of joy and at his right hand our pleasures forevermore the bible tells us that we love because he first loved us so when as nudie words you discover the love that god has for you you are able to then really start loving each other and you know that the source of your desires that completeness that acceptance can only come from god and not from your spouse and not from marriage so the next thing that newlyweds have to do is to have a real knowledge of how god wants marriage to be how god created marriage to be versus how they feel that their marriage should be without realizing it a lot of married people have their own ideas of what makes a happy marriage these ideas are based on biblical knowledge but also on observation of other people’s marriages and also their own sort of feelings which change from time to time and this is not really a solid foundation to build a marriage on so newlyweds and married people really need to have a deep knowledge of how god created a marriage to be this is the only way that you can build your marriage on the right foundation and when you build your marriage on the right foundation you reap the immense and amazing benefit of having a marriage the way god created it to be and you can do this by doing bible study together as a couple or even doing like a marriage course um i think a month or two after my husband and i got married we did a marriage course called the alpha marriage course and it was done by the same people that do the alpha course for new christians or people that are interested in the christian faith and this particular course was specifically targeted towards newlyweds and we both found it really useful it opened up a lot of conversations for us and it helped us to learn things and put things in place into our marriage that have really benefited our marriage all these years later and the fifth thing that i encourage all newlyweds to do is to deal with the past together so it would be much easier if we all married people that didn’t have a past didn’t have past loves past hurts past relationships but the reality is that a lot of people are going to come into marriage having had past relationships and past experiences and those experiences may be good experiences or bad experiences and sometimes our past experiences can affect us in our marriage in ways that we would not even expect sometimes the changes and the challenges and the adjustments in the early days of marriage can get people to start thinking about past relationships it can bring up old hurts that they’ve experienced in the past into the marriage they can start comparing the marriage and their spouse to past relationships that didn’t work out i’m wondering if things would be different if they were married to someone else and this can create a lot of strain on the marriage and lead to other issues if it’s not addressed so this is definitely a sensitive issue but i really do advise that newlyweds talk about the past not just for talking sick but to bring it out in the open bring it before god and then put it behind you your marriage is a new beginning for you and your spouse and in philippians the apostle paul says he’s not perfect but there’s one thing that he does do he forgets the past and he looks forward to what’s ahead of him and in marriage we’ve got to do that now this process of dealing with the past may involve forgiveness forgiveness of your spouse forgiveness of yourself it may also involve a third party a trusted and mature christian friend and advisor and it probably won’t be a one-time conversation it will be a conversation that you have to have a little bit at a time don’t push it don’t try to talk about everything in one sitting if you feel like things are getting a bit tense if you feel like you’re getting overwhelmed then stop and leave it for another time my husband and i had conversations about our past and even though it was tricky it was slightly difficult it has been a real blessing it made it a lot easier for us to be honest with each other and to be accountable with each other so the next thing that newlyweds need to do is realize the power of the little things so most married couples know about the importance of forgiveness and communication and submission in marriage but there are also little things that make such a huge difference in our marriages things like saying good morning to each other in the morning even if you’re not a morning person touching each other or smiling each other when you walk past each other taking the time to say thank you and show appreciation and having little sort of pet names for each other and developing little rituals and traditions things like ice cream tuesday or bathtub mondays and don’t think that all these things have to come naturally talk about it and decide what you think you would like to do as a couple together and if you see another couple that have their own little things that they do that you like then you do it as well so to the newlyweds don’t go by how you feel go by what the word of god says don’t go by the fact that you feel like there’s so much wrong in your marriage and you’re not sure if it’s going to get better go by the fact that nothing is too hard for god that with god all things are possible that god loves you i pray that this video was encouraging to you if you enjoyed it then please subscribe to my channel and please remember to press the notification button so that you know every time i upload a new video please also leave a comment i love receiving your comments and i answer every comment so please leave comments ask questions let me know what you thought if you’d like to see more of me and more content from me then you can also follow me on instagram on funkerchristian.life okay as always thank you for watching god bless take care and speak soon bye