Pride is one of those tricky words.  There can be both a good side to pride and a desrtuctive side.  To be proud of someone else’s achievemnets or accomplishments can be a good thing.  There are many times I have been proud of my children.  In their growing up years, I took pride in their accomplishments and in their choices.  When I saw them work hard for something or to achieve a goal that stretched them, I was proud of them.  When they took seriously their faith and made hard decisions as a teenager that was
consistent with that faith, I was proud of them.  Yet, on the other hand, pride can have a devestating affect on relationships.

One definition of pride is the quality of having an excessively high opinion of oneself or one’s importance.  I see it all the time in marriage relationships.  One person thinks they are better than the other, or that what they bring to the relationship  is more important than what their spouse brings, or because they bring in more of the family income than their spouse that they should have more say in how money is spent.  Pride can manifest itself in a myriad of ways in a marriage.  Most of them are destructive.

Let’s break this down a little bit.  A husband works hard and makes quite a bit of money.  He has risen up the ranks and has also received many accolades  from his peers.  People are always praising him.  He begins to feel pretty important and enjoys the attention.  At home he begins to expect the same reception. Pride takes over.  He is important and he thinks that his wife should treat him like other people do but she does not want a man to worship.  She wants a husband.  She wants a man of God that will be a servant leader.

What about the wife that is super mom.  She runs the house, takes care of the kids, and is active socially.  Everyone thinks she is great.  She loves the kind words and praise others pour on her.  She is special and her husband needs to put her on a pedestal just like everyone else.  Pride.  He is grateful for all she does but he wants his wife.  He wants the relationship they had before house, kids, and society.  He wants the wife back that wanted a marriage with God at the center – not her at the center.

I am vulnerable to the evils of pride and you probably are too but I believe the real issue with pride is that I put myself where God is supposed to be.  That will not work.  It does not work in life in general and it definitely will not work in a marriage.  Marriage is designed to be a symbiotic relationship – two people working side by side with each indispensable to the life and well being of the other.  That is God’s design.  That is God’s plan.  Pride?  It just does not fit into an Awesome Marriage.

Dr. Kim

SLOTH

This is not a word that we hear very often.  Honestly, I had to look it up in the dictionary to make sure I knew what it meant.  Here is what I found.  Sloth is a reluctance to work or make an effort; it is laziness.  This is the one of the seven deadly sins that I was not sure about when I decided to do this series.  The others seemed to fit into a marriage picture pretty easily.  But sloth?  Then I read the defination and realized that sloth is the root cause of many of the issues couples face in marriage.

One of the most frustrating things that I face when I do marriage counseling is working with a couple and only one is working.  One wants the marriage to work.  One does everything I ask of them.  One is passionate to build a healthy marriage.  The other one? Sloth.  They want their spouse to do all the work and make all the changes.  They are along for the ride and it is all about them.  They say things like. “if she were a better housekeeper”; “if he made more money”; “if we had more sex.”  The list could go on but the bottom line is that they are not going to work on the marriage till their spouse straightens up and does what they want them to do.  Honestly, that just won’t work.

If you really want an Awesome Marriage, it will take work and it will take both of you working.  There is no room for laziness.  It is two people each giving 110%.  All too often I see couples that do no more than exist together.  They are living under the same roof but that is about it.  No effort to improve the marriage.  No desire to change.  Just passing time together while life passes them by.  That is an extremely sad picture.  It is a slothful marriage.

Has sloth crept into your marriage?  If if had, my counsel to you is attack it now.  Attack it with everything you have.  Fight for an Awesome Marriage and begin today.

Dr. Kim

GREED

Greed is all around us.  It is constantly in the headlines.  We have seen ponzi schemes at a level we never imagined possible, The dictionary describes greed as, “intense and selfish desire for something, esp. wealth, power, or food.” We see warnings against greed scattered through the Bible.  Some are general and some are aimed at specific people.  The bottom line is that greed destroys.  It destroys those who are the victims of it and it eventually destroys the greedy person themself.

How does greed manifest itself in a marriage?  I recently watched interviews with the family of Bernie Madoff.  Madoff was sentenced to 150 years in prison after a massive ponzi scheme that cost investors billions of dollars.  What captivated me was the devestation done to his family.  He had a wife and sons that trusted him.  Not only did they trust him, they put him on a pedistal and never questioned him.  Madoff’s greed destroyed all of that.

We can be guilty of the same thing, although on a different scale and a different stage.  Often I have seen good men who truly loved their families get sidetracked by greed.  The desire for power and wealth became their priority in life.  Soon a marriage that had all kinds of promise is given a back seat to greed and it is not long before it crumbles.  I counseled a young teenage girl whose dad had gotten caught up in greed.  He became rich.  He could and did buy her anything she wanted.  As we talked about her life she told me she would give anything if her family could go back to the simple life they had before greed took over.  She lost her dad and wanted him back. As I talked to the girls mother, I heard the exact same story.  Unfortunately he had created a treadmill that he could not or would not get off of.

Greed is a heart issue.  It happens when we crowd God out and put ourselves in His place.  What we want takes the place of what God wants.  I guess if we really look deeply at it there are two issues.  One is selfishness and the other is trust.  Selfishness is always putting yourself first – in front of God, spouse, kids.  Trust.  It is believing that God’s plan for your life is the best and not getting in His way.

I would encourage you to let God take a long, penetrating, look at your heart.  Let Him in and let Him remove any hint of greed that is there.  You will be better off.  You wife and kids will be better off.  It is a BOLD step but it will return incredible results.

WRATH

The dictionary defines “wrath’ as extreme anger or rage or fury.  Wrath has always reminded me of an active volcano.  The anger boils inside and builds and intensifies until it spews out all over everyone in its path.  There is destruction.  Big time destruction.  Destruction that sometimes never can be repaired.  That is wrath and when it happens in a marriage the result may be the end of the marriage.

Let’s back up a little.  Let’s look at anger.  Most of us would say that sometimes we get angry.  We also know that anger in itself is not a sin.  The Bilble tells us “in your anger do not sin.”  I think that means if I am angry at Nancy that I need to be careful how I hangle my anger.  If I yell at her or do something physical to her, I have sinned.  If I ask her to sit down and talk through my anger with me, I have not sinned.  See the difference?

But wrath is anger on steroids – unbridled,  out of control, sinful.  Wrath becomes punishing and really knows no boundaries.  Have you ever been there?  Do you know how you got there?  My guess is that it bulit up over time – like the exploding volcano.  A volcano can be inactine for a long time – a very long time.  Yet, when it is inactive, all the ingredients for an explosion lie beneath that calm surface.  As it heats up things begin to boil and finally explode.  Honestly, that could be any of us.  If we let things build, if we do not forgive, if we do not let go, we too can be active volcanos.

Are you harboring anger in your heart?  If so, today is the day to deal with it before it gets out of control.  The answer for anger is simple on one hand and extremely difficult on the other.  The answer is forgiveness.  In my experience it is the only answer.  Some of you are saying, “Are you kidding? You do not know what they did.”  You are right I don’t but I do know what unforgiveness can do to you.  The anger can build and turn to rage and your wrath spews everywhere.

Try this.  Take it before God in prayer.  He knows everything anyway.  Ask Him to guide you through the process of forgiveness.  Forgiving might happen today or it may happen over time but it will happen and you might just have prevented an eruption that destroyed your marriage.  Will you get on your knees and begin now?

What are the seven deadly sins and what do they have to do with marriage? Great question.  In fact, I asked myself the same thingand decided to do a little research.  First, there is not a list of them in the Bible but they are each talked about separately many times.Second, they are really the attitudes that underlie sins.  They lie deep within our hearts and can wreck havoc on our lives and our relationships.

Did you ever do or say something and then wonder where those actions or words  came from?  Maybe you got angry about something that you had no idea would upset you.  Maybe you became jealous when a friend got something you always wanted.   Maybe you thought you had overcome a porn addiction and then got blindsided with it again.  There are times that things seem to be going so well in my life.  Everything is on track.  Then out of nowhere comes an attitude and actions that shock me and everyone around me.  Does that ever happen to you?

Over the next few blogs I want to look at these seven deadly sins with you and see how they can affect our most precious earthly relationship – our marriage.   Here they are: Wrath, Greed, Sloth, Pride, Lust, Envy, and Gluttony.  Right off the top you may see one or more that can be or have been a problem for you.  Maybe you have overcome or maybe you still struggle.  Maybe there is one that you never realized has been hidden deep within your heart. We will look at how they can manifest themselves in our marriages and how we can overcome them.  You see, as Christians, we are overcomers because we follow the greatest Overcomer of all time.  Get ready for God to do some awesome things in your life.  Are you ready?

Dr. Kim