Marriage Teaching of the Month

The Most Important Words
August 1999
by Rich Murphy

What do you think are the most important words in your marriage? For that matter, what do you think the most important words are in any marriage? Are they "I love you" or "Don't do that" or maybe "Let's eat our tonight." Everyone has their own ideas about what's important in their marriage.
After much careful study of hundreds of marriages, we've found the words that are truly the most important. It's not that people have told us these words are important. We've found these words to be important because of the problems people face in their marriages. These few phrases will do more to heal any marriage than any other collection of words you can use.
Are you ready? Here they are:
"I'm sorry."
"Please forgive me."
"I forgive you."
These phrases sound overly simplistic, yet it is amazing how few people are truly effective in making them work.

In our everyday lives, we all manage to hurt each other. I'm sure you've heard the saying "you only hurt the ones you love," that's because those are the only people that are close enough to you to see you with all the emotional walls let down.
The ways we hurt each other are many, yet the most common is by the words we speak. Sometimes intentionally, but often without realizing it, we say things to our spouses that demean them. This especially happens in emotionally heated moments, whether it is during an argument, or just the results of a bad day. The typical control all of us exercise over our thoughts and words is lessened at that point, and we are more likely to lash out at others.
The other common way we hurt each other is by not meeting expectations. All of us expect things of those around us. We expect them to do things for us, we expect them to act certain ways, we expect them to respond to us in certain ways. When those expectations aren't met, it tends to make a person feel unimportant, and ends up hurting them.

The Bible tells us: "...let not the sun go down upon your wrath:" (Eph 4:26). "Yeah, but I don't have wrath, I'm just hurt, or disappointed." Well, what exactly is wrath? Is it just extreme anger? Or, is it wrath when it milder?
Some translations of the bible replace the word wrath with anger. According to the dictionary, anger is a feeling of displeasure resulting from injury, mistreatment, opposition, etc. Sounds pretty close to hurt to me.
Actually, God's intent here is that we not let the sun go down on ANY negative feelings that we hold toward another person. It doesn't matter if it is a large negative feeling, or a small one, God wants us to get rid of it. So, we can replace wrath with hurt, irritation, annoyance, disappointment, displeasure, and bothered by. That makes a pretty broad range of negative feelings that we need to get rid of.
If we don't deal with these things and get rid of them, they can act as a poison in our relationships, especially our marriage relationship. There is no way to be close to someone who you are holding wrath (in any of its forms) against.

Jesus commanded us to forgive, not only seven times, which the Jews would have thought is a lot, but seventy times seven times (Matt 18:22). It doesn't matter how many times they've done the same thing, God still expects you to forgive. In fact, he makes our forgiving others a requirement for receiving forgiveness from Him.
There is nothing that can be done to you that you can't forgive, because forgiveness isn't a feeling, it is a choice. You can choose to forgive someone, even if you don't feel like it, by an act of your will. God will honor that.

The person who forgives first wins the argument. Bitterness will destroy a marriage, but forgiveness will heal it. By using those few simple phrases we can eliminate the problems that doom marriages every day. Learn to make them a daily part of your life.