Growing Your Marriage While a Spouse Is Away: 6 Ways to Protect Your Marriageनमुना

Watch What You Watch

I am a Hallmark movie junkie! I love, love, and love romance and I live for Hallmark Christmas season. But let me tell you something: It does not bless my marriage. Sure, they are innocent and the story line is typically the same from movie to movie. But every time I watch them, especially in his absence, I find myself nitpicking who he is and how he loves me when he is home.

Ya’ll, these G-rated movies were making me resentful. They had to go. Or at least had to be less frequent. If I'm not willing to part with my Hallmark movies, that is evidence that I “love the things of this world” more than I value guarding my eyes and my marriage.

Maybe it isn’t Hallmark for you. Maybe you find yourself watching or listening to something that is a little more scandalous than you typically would. Maybe you find yourself lingering on a photo of a man or woman in a magazine. It’s so important that what we watch and listen to is not just God honoring, but it’s honoring our marriage. The Bible is very clear in Matthew 5 that it is not worth messing around with anything dishonoring or lust-provoking.

Maybe it’s not TV or movies at all, but rather mindless scrolling on Instagram, seeing other spouses invest in their marriages the way you and your spouse just aren’t able to in this season. Seeing how Susan surprised her husband with tickets to his favorite team’s playoff game or maybe Jill’s husband surprised her with a clean house and cooked a meal for the third time this month. If what you are seeing isn’t producing joy and thankfulness for your marriage it isn’t worth looking at!

It’s important to pay attention to what you are allowing into your marriage. It could be that you’ve slipped into the trap of comparison and that’s been said to be the thief of joy.

Today’s challenge:

Do inventory of what you are allowing into your marriage. Is there anything harmful you need to gouge out or throw away?

Prayer:

Heavenly Father, our flesh can get really selfish and really prideful really quick. We pray today that we wouldn’t be self seeking and fall into traps of comparison but we would remember the value and the beauty of our marriages and that we would see your hand at work even while we are apart. Help us to be mindful of what we focus on, what we watch, and what we spend our time thinking about.