Joyce Meyer - How Your Thoughts Affect Your Marriage - Part 2
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Ginger Stache: Hi friends, and welcome to "Enjoying Everyday Life". Well, we had a lot of fun on the set of the talk it out podcast yesterday hearing about Dave and Joyce's thoughts and their thought process on marriage. And today, we will share even more powerful and practical ways to think about your marriage. It's so helpful to hear how Dave and Joyce learn to work together through prayer and applying God's word to build their solid marriage of 57 years now. We'll pick up from Joyce's story about Dave when he brought home two paintings that Joyce didn't particularly like.
Joyce Meyer: Dave did a little shopping today. And he bought two paintings, that he loved, and guess who didn't? And do they match anything in the house? Dave likes things to stand out. But the problem is, he wants everything to stand out. So, you go in a room and you think you're going crazy, because it's all standing out. Okay now, this is between sessions and I'm not liking this. And I can feel it coming. How many of you know, you can feel it coming? It starts somewhere down in here and just moves up. And here's the trick, you gotta stop it before it gets to your mouth. I didn't want the pictures. I didn't want to spend the money. But we have 'em. And I realized, I am going tonight to teach on entering the rest of God. Come on, I am going tonight to teach on entering the rest of God, and the devil is standing on his head trying to upset me. And I'm not going there, been there, done that, no thank you. So he can just put his pictures in his room, in his office, lock himself in there and just trying to figure out what to look at.
Ginger Stache: Dave was just saying that you still love those paintings, right?
Joyce Meyer: I still don't like 'em.
Erin Cluley: Do you still have 'em?
Dave Meyer: Oh yes, absolutely!
Ginger Stache: Well, another thing that came up when you guys were talking in that last clip, and it wasn't a big deal for what you guys were saying, it was just a brief mention, but one of the biggest areas that people have problems with in their marriage is, is finances. And you're like, "I didn't want to spend the money," and Dave had spent the money. So, how are some ways that people can handle that in their marriages, their relationships?
Joyce Meyer: Well, trying to talk things out is always the best way and to come to some kind of an agreement on how you're gonna handle your finances. And actually, one of the big mistakes that people make is they get married without ever having talked about any of these things. You know, you should talk about "How do you like to handle finances"? You know, "How do I like to handle finances"? You know, like, one person wants to save everything, the other person wants to spend everything. Well, that's really something you need to know before you get married. Because, you know, you marry somebody because you like the way they look or you like the way they make you feel, and then as soon as you get married, all these other things come up that you didn't know about. I mean, some people get married and don't even know if their partner wants to have kids or not. And so, there's a lot of things that people really should talk about and really get to know each other before they get married. Then you wouldn't have so many of these, "Well, I didn't think that was gonna happen". "Well, I didn't think that was gonna happen".
Ginger Stache: Yeah.
Joyce Meyer: And so, you get a lot of surprises then when you get married.
Dave Meyer: And spending money, you know, it all depends upon where you're at in your marriage. You know, if you have to be frugal in the beginning, very frugal in the beginning, and you can't spend money or shouldn't spend money, then you have to really watch it. Later on, you may be able to buy some things that you couldn't have earlier. And so, it all depends upon where you're at in your marriage financially, you know, and if you have the ability to do what you...
Joyce Meyer: Well, and I had fear about a lot of things and money was one of 'em. And so, Dave just didn't have. I mean, if we had it, he was okay spending it, but I wanted to save everything, in case. So, really what I was tryin' to do was make sure I was taking care of myself. And there's nothing wrong with saving. You should save.
Ginger Stache: And realizing that different things are of different importance to different people and we do have to talk through that stuff and figure it out together and get to the root of why it's important.
Erin Cluley: Absolutely, yeah. When mike and I first got married, he's the spender. He'll freely admit, he's the spender of the two of us. And I'm like you, like, I would prefer that we save as much as possible. So, he would bring me, when we first got married, he would print off pieces of paper of things he'd find that he wanted to buy. And he would highlight the price and write notes on the paper and he'd leave them on my chair. Like, "Look, I did my homework, can we buy this"? And I'd always say, "No, we cannot buy that". But what was so helpful for us in the beginning was having conversations of like, besides the stuff, like, "What's our goals here"? Like, "What are the things that we both want? What do we agree on together"? It was so helpful because it avoided some of that like miscommunication on things that could make us upset.
Joyce Meyer: It's so wise to wait and save because then you're not paying a bunch of interest on stuff that you don't even know that you've got anymore, or you've already used it all up.
Ginger Stache: I have a question from one of our talk it out friends in the audience. They say, "How do you let things go very fast after forgiving"? They're talking about offense. How do you not hold onto offenses? "I find it difficult to let it go after forgiving. I've prayed to be able to forgive and let things go quickly because I know that love doesn't keep a record of offense". So, we were just talking about that in what Joyce went through, that it almost makes sense because your whole life was filled with all these things. How were you able to change that, both of you, to stop keeping that record of offense and to forgive quickly?
Joyce Meyer: Well, he never had the problem. It was me with the problem, but it was the Word of God that changed me. And for me, I found out that the quicker I let something go, the easier it is. And now, I'll even say it, "Nope, I refuse to get offended. I'm not gonna go there". Because satan loves strife. He wants to bring discord and strife and disunity. And you have to realize that it is the devil that's trying to wreak havoc in your relationship. And there's nothing that does it more than strife and harboring, smiling at each other while you've got all this stuff going on inside. So, for me, if you think about something, and think about it, and think about it, and you let it take root, that's really what you're doing. The more you think about it, the deeper those roots are going. You know, sometimes, it helps if you think about, we think about what this person did wrong, but let's think about maybe something I did wrong. Maybe it wasn't this time, but it might have been the last time. And Dave is really good about forgiving and just letting stuff go. And he's a good example in that area of just not holding on to things.
Ginger Stache: Yeah. Well, what do you say we take a look at another clip? Because we have another interchange from joyce's special guest at a conference and we'll talk about what happens afterwards.
Joyce Meyer: Can I have my prop? Here's something that Dave does that drives me absolutely bonkers. Now, wait, when he eats cereal, I am, like, "You have got to stinking be kidding". I mean, the cereal is not attached to the bottom of the bowl. I don't make noise when I eat cereal. It's a peaceful thing. The other day, he's down there with two dishes to bang together. The other day, and I'm not exaggerating, he was in the kitchen, I was all the way back in our bedroom, which is a little bit of distance, and I could hear the man banging the bowl. Oghh! It annoys me! Here's another thing that he does. No! You're gonna mess up my message!
Dave Meyer: You know what? How many of you do things that you know that might irritate your wife but it gives you pleasure? The more it annoys her, the more I do it. The sad thing is, is that's true.
Joyce Meyer: He does too. He thinks it's funny, if he can get me aggravated. Now, I know what I'm in for tomorrow morning, he will bang the bottom of that bowl as loud as he possibly can. Just because it came up on this show, and now he's reminded that it annoys me.
Ginger Stache: We apologize.
Joyce Meyer: He'll do it again tomorrow.
Dave Meyer: I was washing a couple dishes the other day and when you put one dish on top of another, I don't go... Like that. I just plop it on there. And it makes noise because they're glass dishes. And she says, "Do you have to do that"? So, I just pick it up, drop, and knock it down again.
Erin Cluley: So, you do it on purpose.
Dave Meyer: Oh yeah, absolutely.
Joyce Meyer: But he does wash dishes, which is great. I just wish he'd wash them quieter.
Ginger Stache: I guess you have to take what you can get sometimes, right? Yeah.
Joyce Meyer: Well, the thing that I love the most about Dave is that he lets me be me.
Ginger Stache: Yeah.
Joyce Meyer: And me is not always great. But he...
Dave Meyer: It is now.
Joyce Meyer: Yeah. But, you know, we've all got annoying things that we do. I mean, there are things that you could get upset about, but you just, he thinks that I'm funny. You know, so, he just lets 'em go. And that's really, if you're gonna have a good marriage, you have to come to that point where you're either gonna be upset because this person is not doing things the way you want 'em to all the time, or you're gonna think, "Hey, I do things that are annoying too," and you can think yourself into a fit or you can think yourself out of one. And so, you really do need to watch your thinking in all of these situations, and you can turn it around by looking at it a different way.
Ginger Stache: That's good.
Erin Cluley: I have a question I have to ask before we leave these couch, this pink couch today. I had made a list of our top five fights we've had in the past month that we can all talk through today.
Dave Meyer: Top five...?
Erin Cluley: Fights, disagreements. What do you call them? "Words". The words that we've had. But one, recently, that we've kind of been working through is we fundamentally think differently. Like, we process differently. So, the way that I perceive a situation is so different from mike, and it's not that it's either way is wrong, it's just we see things different, and I process verbally and wanna talk about it. He's like, "This is the answer, it's black and white, why would we talk about this"? "Because I have things I need to say".
Joyce Meyer: It's "Logical," I hate that word, it's "Logical".
Erin Cluley: "It's logical, erin, why would you not see it this way"? "Because I do, and I'll probably get there, but let me talk about it to get there". So, what do you do with that? How do you communicate when you...?
Dave Meyer: I don't.
Erin Cluley: Well, that makes this very easy.
Dave Meyer: No. I don't know. I'll let you start this one.
Joyce Meyer: I mean, he'll sit and listen to me, but I know he don't care.
Dave Meyer: Well, I'm saying that, I mean, I share things with you, same thing.
Joyce Meyer: So, I've just gotten to the point, where i, at this point, you just, things that you know aren't gonna work out, you just don't do them. You know, it's like I used to, like, I told you girls earlier, I told Dave, one time, "We never talk about anything deep. I would like, I wanna go deeper". And he's like, "Look, this is as deep as I get, you can take it or leave it". And that, I mean, that's just him. I mean, you know, now my son can come over and we can sit and, you know, hypothesize on, you know, "Well, what if this, and what if that, and what if something else". And for Dave, that's all stupid. It's just like wasted breath because you don't know that's gonna happen. He'll wait and deal with it later. But I hate it when we're trying to talk about something and he says, "That's not logical". Men and their logic. It's like we...
Dave Meyer: Even thought it's true.
Joyce Meyer: We wanna...
Erin Cluley: It is, but we don't wanna hear it.
Joyce Meyer: But we wanna talk through it, we wanna feel it, we wanna discuss it. And so, I think at this point, you know, he'll go, "I understand," and I'm like, "No, you don't".
Dave Meyer: Yeah, well, here's the thing is for years she'd say, "You don't understand. You don't understand. Just tell me you understand. Just tell me you understand".
Ginger Stache: "Just say it".
Dave Meyer: So, I finally said, "I understand". She says, "No, you don't".
Dave Meyer: I can't win, so why even do it, why even try it?
Ginger Stache: And we are just so different.
Joyce Meyer: Men and women are just different, and you just have to like, and this whole logic thing, I mean, I would say the majority of men are that way. So, obviously, ladies, we have to finally admit that God must have made them that way. And so, maybe we need a little bit of the logic to kind of tone down some of our emotions and feelings.
Dave Meyer: Well, I think God did it for us to have fun, you know?
Joyce Meyer: Yeah.
Ginger Stache: Can I tell you one of the annoyances with Tim? I just think it's a really good time to share.
Erin Cluley: Yeah, let's do it.
Ginger Stache: It's not really deep or important, but you know, it's annoying.
Erin Cluley: We can talk about it.
Dave Meyer: It's annoying.
Ginger Stache: Tim falls asleep really easily, all the time, in any location, any opportunity that he has. And so, like we'll be at home, and we'll be in the middle of a conversation.
Erin Cluley: No!
Ginger Stache: And now, normally, if it's really important, he won't, but he'll just kinda go to sleep.
Joyce Meyer: While you're talking?!
Ginger Stache: Yes! And then, he'll like, answer something, all of a sudden, and say, "Yes". And I'm like, "You didn't hear a word I was saying. You were asleep". He goes, "No, I heard everything you said". Like, "You were snoring, you were asleep".
Joyce Meyer: Oh, that's a good one.
Ginger Stache: And he'll go to sleep with the remote in his hand. And so, then I have to pry the remote out of his, you know, cold stiff fingers so that I can watch something else on television. Or he'll fall asleep in a movie, wake up and say, "This movie doesn't make any sense". And I'll say, "It's 'cause you slept for the past half hour. It's not going to make sense".
Joyce Meyer: Sometimes to watch a whole movie in the evenings, I have to rewind it five times.
Dave Meyer: Oh yeah. We'll watch a movie, she'll wanna watch a movie. So, we'll sit down and watch a movie. Within about 10 minutes, she's sound asleep. She's over there sound asleep. And so, she wakes up for the very end and she says, "Tell me what happened in the middle". I said, "Nope, you're gonna have to watch it over. I'm not gonna tell you the whole movie".
Ginger Stache: That's what that rewind button is for.
Joyce Meyer: You do learn, if you stay married, you do learn that all those things that you got so upset about were really kind of silly.
Ginger Stache: That is really true.
Dave Meyer: I think God does that just so we can almost laugh at each other finally.
Joyce Meyer: The sad thing is that so many people, they have that mentality, "I'm out of here if you don't change". And, you know, people can't change people, only God can. And there's a lot of pride that thinks, "I'm right and you're wrong". We always wanna change people, but most of the time, we're the ones that need to change.
Ginger Stache: And that's the same with a spouse or our kids. I mean, the way that we think about them makes such a huge difference.
Dave Meyer: Yeah, for sure.
Joyce Meyer: Yeah, I have four grown children and they're all different. And you have to learn to, you know, what Paul said was, "He said to the Jew, 'i become a Jew,' to the Greek, 'i become a Greek,'" whatever it takes to win 'em. And I know he was talking about winning people to Christ, but I think that real love does learn how to meet people where they're at, instead of always trying to get them to come to where you're at. I heard a statement that "We need to learn how to love people the way they are, not the way we'd like them to be".
Ginger Stache: Yeah, that's very true. Here's one more question, and this is for people who are in a more difficult marriage, when a marriage becomes toxic or dangerous. When someone is consistently doing the same thing over and over that's dangerous or toxic, "How should you begin thinking differently and to make a change so that you don't do something at the expense of your own health or well-being"?
Joyce Meyer: Well, you always need to be safe. And if you're not safe, then you need to get away from this situation. God's not asking anybody, I mean, my mom stayed with my dad knowing that he was sexually abusing me and that was the worst decision that she could have ever made. And so, you have to keep yourself and your children safe. And there's...You know, God's not for divorce, but he's not for you being abused either.
Ginger Stache: Yeah. I think it's just important to bring out some of these things because everyone's situations are so different, and...
Joyce Meyer: And sometimes, you know, it doesn't have to be a divorce. Sometimes you just need to get away from each other for a while. Sometimes if the person realizes you're serious, then they will go and get the help that they need. But just putting up with something, you need to respect yourself enough and value yourself enough that you're not gonna let somebody else just totally disrespect you and abuse you.
Erin Cluley: Would you say, is it fair to say that if you're... 'cause I've not been in a situation like that, but if you're in something like that, like the most important thing, in every aspect of your life, is if you have that relationship with Christ, and you're constantly going to him, and you're seeking him for everything, he's giving you wisdom and discernment how to handle it. So, you are not tackling this problem of your marriage, you're trusting him with your life, and he's guiding you as you have to make those hard decisions. 'cause it feels really overwhelming to me to think, like, how can you change that? Or even if it's not as bad as what she's describing, you're just in a really hard marriage, that feels so overwhelming to me, to like, tackle. But what I do know I can do is seek God and study what his word says. And then he shows you the steps to take.
Joyce Meyer: Yeah, he'll show you what to do.
Dave Meyer: Prayer is one of the most important things. And a lot of times people don't pray, they try and handle it themselves. And really, it's God's, God can handle it. A lot of these things that seem overwhelmingly difficult and impossible, he can handle them in a short time if we just turn 'em over to him.
Joyce Meyer: Prayer truly is amazing, and I've realized that more the last four or five years than all the years in my life. I probably pray about more things now than ever. Just pray about it, let God handle it.
Ginger Stache: Well, so, we are going to talk about how to walk it out now. This is going to give you some scripture that you can really take and apply and utilize it exactly for what we were talking about. You can find these scriptures at joycemeyer.org/talkitout and take this a little bit deeper. So, it's not just a conversation that you listen to, but it's something that we were talking about where that Word of God begins to seep into your life and become a part of who you are. So, some questions to ask yourself is to ask God to help you see the way your thoughts are taking you, and if something surfaces that you need to confront, invite God to help you. That prayer that we were talking about makes such a difference. What are you thinking about yourself? What are you thinking about your spouse? These are really important things.
So, the verses, Colossians 3:14, "And above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony". No marriage is perfect, but God's love is, and you've got that power in you to do everything that you possibly can to be more like him, and he will help you. So, put on love above all else. And then, 1 Corinthians 13, a wonderful chapter on love. Dig into that. Read all about it. But these verses 4-8, "Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails". So, dig into those scriptures, hold on to them. And I believe that you'll begin to walk it out and see a big difference in your relationships, too. Thank you, guys, for making us laugh and encouraging us in our relationships and helping us all to think in a more godly way, I guess, more lined up with scripture about ourselves, about our relationships, about our marriages.
Joyce Meyer: Well, the Bible says we have the mind of Christ. We just need to use it.
Dave Meyer: I wanna pray for Tim to stay awake when he talks to you.
Ginger Stache: Thank you. If you would do that, we would both appreciate it greatly. Yeah. Alright, we'll see you all next time.