Your Marriage Needs The Power Of Reconciliation

Marriage After God Podcast – 
one of the most powerful ways to do that is through reconciliation. we don’t give up. we work toward reconciliation. when there’s a problem, we show that power of Christ through working towards reconciliation. the reason and the way we show that power of Christ in us is because in our flesh, we all know this, we can’t do it.

Welcome back to another episode of the Marriage After God podcast. We’re your host, I’m Jennifer. I’m Aaron. And today’s episode is about reconciliation, the power of reconciliation in marriage. And so we’re really excited to jump into this topic. But first, we want to encourage you, if you haven’t already, to subscribe to the podcast. This helps make sure that you do not miss an episode. And especially in the middle of this series that we’ve been doing, this series is built off of our devotionals, husband after God and wife after God.

and we’re just in the beginning phases of it. So we’ve still got a ways to get through and we don’t want you to miss anything. And so hit that subscribe button. Before we get started, I also want to invite you, if you haven’t got these devotionals yet, so you can join in, go to shop.marriageaftergod.com, pick up your copies of husband after God and wife after God, and you can join in this study with us. We have quite a few more weeks to go.

I would like to add, you don’t have to have the devotionals to go through the study, but it does make it way more personal. There’s a room in there to answer some of the journal questions and just make it more personal. You can underline things and highlight things as needed. Also taking the devotionals on your next date night and just talking about it. If you’ve been tuning into the podcast, you can even bring up things that we’ve mentioned to go along with it. And so I think it’ll just enhance the whole experience if you guys did have a copy with you. Okay. So we’re getting into chapter six.

week six of our 30-week study ⁓ through the husband after God, wife after God devotionals. And this week’s episode, this chapter is on reconciliation. The reason we’re going to stress the importance of reconciliation so much is because of how powerful it is. This is probably one of the most important spiritual concepts that God has given us, this idea of reconciliation. It’s what God has done through his son Jesus for us. And so I just wanted to real quick define

reconciliation because we all have – we probably have an understanding of some on some level of it. But I have three definitions that the dictionary gives for the word reconciliation and I want to go through each definition real quick. And then I also want to point out how God and His incredible foresight and His ⁓ power and His love essentially fulfilled each one of these definitions in His work that He did through Jesus Christ for us. And so the first definition

of reconciliation is relational. And this is probably the one that makes the most sense to us because we’re like, we’re reconciled to God. This is the it’s the restoration of a friendly ⁓ relationship between a wife and husband when you’re reconciled. two friends. Or two friends. So this reconciliation is relational. ⁓ Romans 5.10 says this, for if while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of His Son, much more now that we are reconciled.

shall we be saved by his life?” This verse very directly shows, relationally, we before Christ were enemies of God. There’s no farther distance you can be relationally than being an enemy. So if in your marriage you feel like an enemy, you’re not connected, you’re not reconciled. And think about that in light of eternity. We don’t want to be up there forever as enemies. Well, we wouldn’t be able to, but to be enemies of God in eternity, we don’t want to be stuck in that We’d be separated forever from

So in Christ, he reconciled us to the Father. We were enemies and now we are friends. That relational reconciliation happened in Christ Jesus. The second definition of reconciliation is reconciling two opposing beliefs. This one was interesting to me. Taking two belief systems, two ideas, two things that on the surface seem to contradict each other and bringing them together to make them compatible. So this is interesting because before Christ,

We had our minds and our beliefs were opposing to him. And then in Christ, we are brought under that and our beliefs are they’re connected to what God believes. So – read that verse. 1 Corinthians 15, 47-49 says, first man was from the earth, a man of dust. The second man is from heaven. As was the man of dust, so also are those who are of the dust, and as is the man of heaven, so also are those who are of heaven.

Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we shall also bear the image of the man of heaven.” So what’s really cool about this verse is so we’re talking about like reconciling of two different like opposing beliefs or ideas or systems. ⁓ In our flesh, we are men of the dust, women of the dust, like we’re created from the dust of the That’s what Genesis says how God created us was from the dust of the earth. And Jesus himself is a man from heaven. And we’re shown in this verse the two opposing ⁓

types of people. There’s God and there’s man. There’s creation and then creator. How do you reconcile creation and creator, God and man? He did it in himself, in Jesus, who was both God and man equally. He came and in his death and resurrection, life, death and resurrection, reconciled men of the dust to a heavenly God in himself. I just thought that was really cool. Taking these two different

totally different ⁓ things and making them one. The third definition is a financial one. This is probably a lot of people would consider reconciliation this way, especially if you know anything about checkbooks, which is almost a thing in the past. I’m not super great with numbers, but when we were working ⁓ for an organization, I volunteered and they really needed help in the finance department.

first to my hand type thing and I get in there and it’s QuickBooks and reconciling the receipts and you’re going through all these things and making sure at the end that zero, you know, and I’m We had this money here and then it went here and you know, let’s reconcile both sides of the sheet, the balance sheet, the inputs and the outputs. And so this financial ⁓ definition, it’s the action of making financial accounts consistent, harmonizing them. Like we said, the ins and outs. So financially, how does this play out?

Well, we understand the idea of debt. Colossians 2, 13 through 14 says, you who were dead in your trespasses and in circumcision of your flesh, God made a life together with him, having forgiven all our trespasses by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross. So even in the financial mentality, the definition of this word reconciliation, we owed God something. We owed him

life. Like the wages of sin, it says, is death. So there’s a cost to sin. There’s a debt being held over us because of sin. And it stood against us, the Bible tells us. And Jesus came and canceled that debt by paying it on the cross. Yeah, and I think that word cancel is so important because it’s not like what I was just talking about when you’re reconciling. You find a receipt and you’re like, that matches it. Now it’s zero. There is nothing we could have done to

Reconcile this there is nothing on our part that we could do to make it right to make it what it needed to be only Christ could have done that so I just wanted to start off with showing the the amazing beauty of the Reconciliation of God and Jesus Christ That he fulfills every aspect of the word in Jesus and so we’re gonna start off with We’re gonna go through this this whole episode talking about this idea of reconciliation and the power that has in our marriages. ⁓

But we have to start with the example of Christ, the example that the Bible gives us in talking about the gospel. If we’re going to talk about the good news of the gospel, we have to start with the purpose. Yeah, the problem of sin. yeah. Yeah. But the purpose is to fix this problem. So why don’t you start with explaining what’s the problem of sin and why do we need reconciliation? So I’ll just start with this verse, Romans 5, 18 through 19. Therefore, as one trespass led to condemnation for all men,

So one act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all men. For as by the one man’s disobedience and many were made sinners, so by the one man’s obedience, the many were made righteous.” So right here, it’s just talking, it’s reminding us like we are all sinners. We all have that debt on our record. And ⁓ that first man it’s talking about where sin entered the world was through Adam and on down the line. we are. And the problem is, is not that we are guilty because of Adam’s sin.

What we’re guilty of is – so because of the sin that entered – it says it entered through Adam. Adam disobeyed God. Severed intimacy. Severed intimacy, broke relationship. And – Affected humanity from there on. Affected humanity. have – so in two ways. We not only have a sin nature that needs to be changed by God, but we also choose to sin. So the sin that we choose to do, that’s what we’re guilty of, but we also have a sin nature. So we have these two things.

in us, working against us in our relationship with God. And this is the problem. This is what Jesus came to do. We are sinners that need a Savior. We need to be saved from our sins, saved from our nature, and have a new nature. It’s the idea being born again so that we can be reconciled to the Father. I would like to make mention of marriage because this is what we’re here for as a marriage podcast. in relating to sin,

I remember not thinking that I was perfect. I understood the gospel and what Jesus did for me. But I thought that I was doing pretty well until we got married. And for some reason, marriage has this special way of drawing things out of us that we did not know were there. ⁓ I feel like things like pride and selfishness are amplified when you are living with someone and forced to not be prideful, forced to be selfless. Yeah. And you’re called to live in unity with this person who maybe at, you know, in a moment you’re

You rubbing each other up the wrong way or there’s friction or there’s an argument on the table that you’re, you’re trying to work through and wow. Did marriage open my eyes to the real me, like to, what was inside of me already. ⁓ and we did get married young. So I know that there’s a process of like growing up and understanding who you are and your sin nature and what you’re dealing with. But I’m sure some people even think like, wow, I was great until I got married and man.

Like this person is that they’re making me do these things. I’m sure I’ve had thoughts like that. we have. So the joke is that’s how I felt. So like early on, I was like, I feel like everything was great. And now you’re getting in my way. know, but in reality, that is I would be perfectly fine if you just didn’t get in my way. But that’s the that’s the point. One of the points of marriage is what one of the things we’ve been getting through in this whole, you know, series.

is that God uses our marriages. It’s an opportunity for refinement and for God to show us who we are, but ultimately who we are in him. Yeah. Yeah. So we don’t want to stop at the problem, the sin problem that entered through Adam and has affected all mankind except for Jesus, which is amazing. It says that he even though he became sin, he knew no sin. He was perfect. Yeah, he did not sin. And we needed that. The solution.

This is where the gospel comes in. It says you cannot save yourself. You have you are an enemy of God. You are a sinner. That is too outstanding. Yeah. Your debt is too high. No way you can pay that. You can’t pay it. The solution. God reconciles us through Christ. So there’s the relational. There’s the the substance issue. Remember, we have a sin nature. Like we’re talking about these definitions. There’s this financial. There’s this like obligation that it needs to be paid.

And he figures – he didn’t figure out a way – he has a plan of salvation and reconciliation for all of these things in us, not just a little bit of being saved, but fully saved in Christ Jesus. This is the crux, the cross of the gospel. It’s that the point and the purpose of God sending His perfect Son to die, a horrible death in our place, is to reconcile the sinner to the Maker, to make the dust heavenly, to make the sinner righteous.

to cancel the debt and make us debt-free and actually receive the riches in Christ. to say to restore intimacy. talked about Adam, know, that sin that came in was it severed intimacy with God and each in our own relationship with God have an opportunity to be restored in that way and to experience intimacy with God, which is really cool. So we have this is where the gospel comes in that the God man, Jesus Christ comes down to earth as a baby, lives a sinless life.

dies the sinner’s death, says that he became sin who knew no sin. Like he literally became the thing that we needed to do and died on a cross. And he became the atonement. Like the atonement is the payment. That’s exactly what that means. That’s what atonement means is to make payment for, to cover. And so the atonement, the reparation that was paid for us, the debt we owed, the

creature that we once were and what we needed to become, he made that possible in his own body on the cross. And his reconciliation – or his resurrection, I should say, is what allows us to have a new life. So in Christ Jesus, when he says it is finished, it was finished. The work of the cross was complete. What was necessary for any man, any woman to be saved and reconciled to the Father was complete in Jesus Christ.

His life, his death, his resurrection. He paid it in full. The debt was canceled. We are forgiven on the cross. And the next part of that is reconciliation. Yeah. Let’s talk about what it does. Yeah. So I just, want to make a distinguishing. Okay. We’ve talked about this a lot. It’s important to make, to make this note. There’s forgiveness and then there’s reconciliation. You cannot have reconciliation without forgiveness.

But you can have forgiveness without reconciliation and what that and you everyone has experienced this in your marriage. I can forgive my wife of some she something she’s done to me even if she hasn’t apologized even if she hasn’t repented and vice versa. Just because you choose to forgive doesn’t mean that there is automatic reconciliation. Yeah. Because both parties need to be restored for that. What’s required for reconciliation is to so one is required for forgiveness. have the man Jesus Christ. He forgave all men sin of all time.

for all time on the cross. But that does not mean that all men are reconciled to the Father. They have to believe that Jesus is who he is and did what he did. They’ve got to believe in what Jesus Christ did and receive that forgiveness. And through that, we are reconciled to the Father and made new, given the Holy Spirit, been born again. And so just like in marriage, one can forgive the other. But that doesn’t mean anything changed. Doesn’t mean there’s been any repentance. But the forgiveness can happen within the person towards the other.

Reconciliation happens when the other person recognizes what they’ve done, like when we recognize we’re sinners that need a savior, and goes to the one we’ve wronged and repents. That is how reconciliation begins, is that process. so reconciliation, the impact of it, it redeems the relationship. It restores harmony and peace and agreement between two parties. This is what

Jesus has done is made a way for reconciliation to the Father that he restores us in every way to God. Just like Adam hiding in the bush right after this. He’s like, God goes, where are you? This is what sin does is it separates us. But in Jesus Christ, he draws us close. He draws us in near. Yeah. And you guys listening, like if you believe in Jesus and you’ve experienced that reconciliation, then you know what we’re talking about, restoring peace and agreement. you’ve felt close to God. You feel

like you are able to sit there and read his word and pray and even request things of him, like there is a personal relationship that you feel close to. And it also drives the believer to continual repentance because we also continue to sin. And then we feel guilty and ⁓ we feel the conviction of the Holy Spirit, which then in the purpose of the conviction of the Holy Spirit to the believer is to not push us away or condemn us.

It’s to draw us close to Christ again, God again. It’s to, hey, that’s not what God wants. Repent of that. Come back to us. That’s what the ministry of the Holy Spirit does in the life of the believer when we sin, is to convict us and draw us into relationship with God. believers can go through hard things and still experience peace and hope and security because we have this reconciliation with him in our relationship. So true. ⁓ Okay, so

I feel like you explained all that. The next, this next part, what we were just talking about. So there’s the work of Christ on the cross and what he did, complete and full, forgiveness paid for all sin, for all men, for all time, making a way for us to be reconciled to the father. But the reconciliation piece comes when we hear the gospel, believe in Jesus and receive it. Okay. It’s not that we’re doing any work. We haven’t earned it. We’re believing in what he can.

He did on the cross. We trust in the complete work of Christ. We put our faith in Jesus. This is how we are reconciled to the Father. So the Bible tells us this idea of a ministry of reconciliation, that there’s a ministry that we as believers have in this world that Paul had, that he gave to the Church, that he told the Church that he had. And so this ministry is now to go and proclaim what Christ did so that that

what he provided on the cross, what he made a way for, people know about and can hear and receive and believe in. And so, why don’t you read 2 Corinthians 5, 17-20. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away, behold, the new has come. All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation. That is, in Christ God.

was reconciled the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation. Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God.” So it says it right here. It says that in Christ, God was reconciling the world to himself. So in Christ is the reconciliation to the Father. It says not counting their trespasses against them. So already in Christ, our trespasses are not counted against us.

doesn’t mean we’re reconciled. That’s why he says, therefore, we are ambassadors of Christ, God making his appeal through us. Christ and us going to the world saying, be reconciled to God. Well, how? Believe in his son Jesus who paid for your sins, who is going to change you and give you his Holy Spirit. This is what we do. We implore on the behalf of Christ for people to be reconciled to God. And so it’s not possible to be reconciled to God without what Christ did on the cross.

without His forgiveness of our sins, without His atonement for the debt we owe. We need it. Christ makes us new and gives us a ministry of reconciliation, making us ambassadors. What does an ambassador do? It represents it. With a message. Stands before others, yeah, with a message. So the ambassador doesn’t go with their own message. I’m not going to someone and saying, hey, here’s what I have to say. I’m an ambassador of a kingdom and my king is Christ and I go with his message.

to the world. And I say, look what Jesus did for you. Be reconciled to God in Him. Believe in Him. And this is how it translates to marriage. The ministry of reconciliation, go to the world and do this, yes, but not forsaking your first ministry, which is your home, your marriage, your family, right? We’re not leaving them outside of the picture and then going to the world to be a light and to do this and be an ambassador. We’re actually called to do this first and foremost to our families.

And to practice it, to show it, to be that ambassador in our homes. So much peace and harmony and building up that unity in marriage comes from being ambassadors of reconciliation to your spouse and showing them the gospel. And you have to believe it first in order to share it. So I think that this ⁓ just shows a really beautiful picture in marriage, that reflection of reconciliation and restoring intimacy and harmony.

That’s really powerful. I want to give a quote. This is from our book, The Marriage After God book. It says, marriage is an earthly symbol of the heavenly truth. This is why we bring up all of the things we do, that our marriages are meant to be an earthly symbol. Now they don’t always. I’m just going to be honest. Our marriage does not always represent the gospel. It does not always look like it’s supposed to look. And I’m sure you, the listener, your marriage does not always look that way. It’s not about perfection. It’s about recognition.

What is this thing we’re doing and why are we doing it and what can we do? How are we to do it? And so we want our marriages to represent a heavenly truth. I want people to see the gospel in our marriage. I want them to see me loving my wife unconditionally and with favor and with power. And I want them to see my wife submitting and loving and serving me and that we do that with our kids and we show them who Jesus is.

Those are the things that we get to show the world and how they can see that light in us. And one of the most powerful ways to do that is through reconciliation. Is that we don’t give up. Is that we work toward reconciliation. That when there’s a problem, we show that power of Christ through working towards reconciliation. Yeah, and the reason and the way we show that power of Christ in us is because in our flesh, we all know this, we can’t do it.

In my flesh, I want to fight and argue. In my flesh, I want to say, no, I don’t forgive you or no, I can’t apologize or whatever. Yeah, because of justification and just the way that our flesh works like that. ⁓ But again, just internally and in our own selves, we recognize the power of reconciliation with Christ and his power in us because we have to believe that truth. Like I said earlier, we have to believe that truth in order for us to be able to express it in our marriage. And so I know, Aaron, when I come to you and I am wrestling,

but I choose to lay aside the flesh to apologize or to repent or to receive forgiveness. Those are all things that Christ has already done for me and in our relationship that I can then, I feel empowered to do because the Holy Spirit. Well, and that’s the next part of this is why do we reconcile marriages? We reconcile with our spouse. We work toward unity with our spouse. We offer forgiveness and repentance.

Because we were shown it in Christ. We understand the power of forgiveness and being reconciled to God. It feels good. all of us, when we think about the gospel, it’s called good news for a reason. We’re like, man, thank God he forgives me. Thank God he’s reconciled me in Jesus that he looks at Jesus and not my doing. Like so much Because I’m not good enough to get anywhere with God. Yeah. When we recognize that there’s like instant peace and

What’s the word? Just like a weight is lifted and… Well, shame dissipates. Grief gets lighter. The weight of our sin gets lifted. These things are what Christ does when we’re reconciled to God, the forgiveness that we receive. As Paul says, there is no more condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. Like no one loves feeling condemned. No one likes the weight on their shoulders. You know, we read the pilgrim’s progress to the kids and we’ve done it several times now.

And the pilgrim has a he’s got a big heavy burden on his back and he’s just struggling and all he wants is it off of his back so he can walk lighter and freer. And that’s what the forgiveness of Christ and the reconciliation to God does. It removes that burden off our shoulders. It doesn’t mean we’re perfect. It doesn’t mean that we don’t ever sin ever again. But that practice and covenant of marriage between two fleshly beings, there’s going to be discord. There’s going to be sin. There’s going to be issues and frustrations.

But the reconciliation that we learned from God and how He does it has given us a working model to get through the hard things. And I love the way that ⁓ when you experience reconciliation in your relationship with God or in marriage, just how it affirms true love. Like to be fully known and to be still fully loved is really powerful. And it affirms you in feeling loved and being able to love.

So the ways we do this ⁓ is through several different things, but we need to remember that each of us need the grace of God. knowing that, knowing that, my wife needs the grace of God. I need the grace of God. It gives us a foundation of not being able to withhold forgiveness and not running from reconciliation.

It reminds us to remain humble because we need it. I need it every single day. I need the of Christ every single day. I need my flesh to be crucified. need the circumcision of Christ, what the Bible calls it, every day. And so does my wife. I just want to share a story. Jesus gives this parable. And then we’ll get on to how do we reconcile. But he gives this parable that gives us a very stark picture of

forgiveness and reconciliation and the dangers of not doing it. So in Matthew 18, Jesus teaches us a very important lesson by telling us about a king and a servant who owed the king a ton of money, like so much money he could not ever pay back in a lifetime. It’s too much. And this servant comes to the king and the king says, pay me what you owe me. And he gets down and he starts weeping. He’s like, I can’t pay you this. It’s impossible. I’ll try my best, but

There’s just nothing I can do about it. can’t pay you. Will you please forgive me?” And when he says forgive, he means like, will you wipe this out? Will you cancel the debt I owe you because I cannot pay it. Sounds familiar. And it says the king has mercy on him. He says, okay, you know what? You’re not going to pay this. It’s canceled because guess what? That’s what a king can do. A king can cancel that debt. The king can also uphold it and say, no, you’re going to owe me until you pay me back. But he cancels it.

If we just stopped right there, you’d be like, man, that is awesome. That’s what Christ did for me. He canceled my debt. I’m good. But it doesn’t stop there. Jesus then says, then that servant goes out and immediately grabs someone who owed him money. And he grabs him and he takes him by his collar and he says, give me what you owe me. And he says, I can’t pay it. I can’t It was way less, way less. And he says, give it to me now. And he’s like, I’m going to throw you in prison until you can pay me. And he said, I can’t pay me. Please forgive me.

very thing that this man was just doing to the king. But he doesn’t do it. And you know what? A servant was watching and goes back to the king and says, hey, that guy, you just forgave all that debt, which I would imagine the servant would have been just blown away. Like, I can’t believe you just forgave that guy. And then watches him do this, goes to the king and says, hey, he just essentially strangled this other guy for like nothing, for a little bit of money that he owed him. So the king calls the guy in and he said, you wicked servant. He said, I forgave you this great debt.

And the least you could have done was forgive him his debt. He says, but because you did that, now you’re going to owe me what you owe me and I’m going to put you in prison so you can pay it back, which means I was never going to pay it back. Gone forever, done. This example Christ gives us is the example of the gospel. If we have been forgiven so much, which we have, that is the truth. We’ve been forgiven so much that we can actually be reconciled with God that we’ve received so much even. Not just a debt cancel, but we’ve been given the righteousness of Christ.

How dare us withhold forgiveness from anyone?

Just I want that to sit with us. That’s like we’re the man who’s forgiven an unfathomable amount of money and goes out and asks for the 10 bucks someone owes us and beats that person until they give it to us. Like how dare us withhold forgiveness from our spouse when they’ve hurt us. What we’re doing is we’re spitting on the forgiveness of Christ. Just like that wicked servant and the king says, no, that’s not going to be how it is.

I just wanted to give that as a context of like, this is where our forgiveness and reconciliation begins. We are that servant who had been forgiven a debt that is unpayable and we should only have rejoiced and we should walk out and someone who owes us and we’ve been wronged by it, we should be like, know what? I forgive you because I was forgiven more than I ever could possibly deserve and yet you owe me this little. So I’m going to wipe that out because

No matter if sin against me will ever be more than the sin against my Savior, from myself. And so I just want us to dwell on that as believers and give us the context in which we forgive people, is because we’re forgiven so mightily. As you were talking, I was thinking about how the king draws them back in and says, because you did this, you’re going to prison. And how they say that someone who

Yeah, chooses not to forgive someone. It’s like putting yourself in prison and emotionally, mentally and relationally. That is what we do. Well, I’ve also heard it. It’s like drinking poison and wishing and hoping the other person dies from it. Yeah, but you’re the one that’s been holding on to this unforgiveness. Forgiveness is a gift that we get to walk and it’s a hard thing. I mean, what Christ did on the cross, dying the death for all man’s sin, I couldn’t even…

I can’t even imagine dying for my own sin, like let alone all the world. So, okay, so how do we reconcile? This is the practical, this is what we do. Let me read that. ⁓ Sorry, Acts 8-22 says, repent therefore of this wickedness of yours and pray to the Lord that if possible the intent of your heart may be forgiven you. Yeah, this is, I believe it was Paul and he’s talking to some magician who believed in Jesus and

Saw them doing works of miracles through the Holy Spirit. And he’s like, can I give you money? Give me this Holy Spirit. he looks at me like, He’s like, how dare you? But the point is he sinned. And how do you be reconciled? We repent. I’ve wronged you. I’ve done this thing. It severed relationship. Intimacy has been broken. Trust has been broken. We’re hurt. We’re not close. I repent. Hey, I did this thing. I should not have done that. ⁓ I don’t want to do that anymore.

I want God to work in me. Please forgive me. And based off our experience in marriage, the quicker you can come to that recognition and willingness to repent is for the better. Because when we wait it out, when we sit in it, when we stew, when we hide it, when we hide it, when we suffer, both the husband and the wife suffer. Well, spiritually, even if no one knows, if you’re the only one, if you’re hiding it, there’s a spiritual separate. Yeah. And it gets felt and it gets

you experience it. And so I agree with that. The quicker you can do it, the better. Yeah. And we wanted to challenge you guys and encourage you guys listening to make it a point to do it the fastest, like do it the quickest. Whoever’s the first to apologize. No, really, like make it a practice in your marriage to when you feel the conviction of the Holy Spirit, when you know there’s discord or, you know, something’s off, go to each other, talk about it, have the courage to ⁓ believe the best about each other.

acknowledge your own forgiveness, what Christ has forgiven in you and be willing to forgive each other and reconcile because marriage needs it. Like your marriage needs it. You’re probably listening right now thinking, my goodness, like this is exactly what I needed here today because there’s this thing and you need to go talk about it. And we can always again look at the example of Christ. Christ didn’t wait for us to repent. He didn’t wait for us to change. He didn’t wait until us to stop being sinners before he went.

and forgave us on the surrendered himself first. He went first in humility. And we can follow in that. marriage, we have a remarkable opportunity to initiate reconciliation. Like you were just saying, like, I could be the initiator. You can be the initiator. Colossians 3.13 says, bearing with one another and if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other as the Lord has forgiven you, so also you must forgive.

This is what God wants. He’s not as interested in our like, know, look how much I gave. Look at all these good things I did. He wants our hearts yielded to him and he wants us walking in obedience and he also wants us walking in unity with each other, not just in marriage but within the church. He cares so much about our unity in the church. And this is crazy. This seems to be the hardest thing for us as Christians.

is to walk in unity with other believers. Both chapters in the husband after God and the wife after God talk about this power of reconciliation. And this is a quote. says, pride will tempt you to withhold. Your intellect will try to justify what is fair and your heart will attempt to manipulate your motives. However, if you fight your flesh, just as Jesus did for the sake of reconciliation, your marriage will thrive with true intimacy. And this goes back to ⁓ that in the beginning, like with sin.

that severing of intimacy between man and God, and then between each other in marriage, it happens. When we sin, it severs intimacy and we feel it, you guys. We feel the disconnect. Like you said, it’s a spiritual thing, this relationship that we have. And when there’s ⁓ hidden sin, when there’s things that have taken place that are no good, we need to be willing and have the courage to get over the pride, get over the selfishness of our flesh and…

walk in humility and we need to be able to say, I’m sorry. We need to be able to recognize and repent and say, I’m not doing that anymore for the sake of reconciliation, for the sake of intimacy, for the sake of unity. And healing. Repentance as we’ve talked about in other areas is one of the ways God heals us. Our repentance, true repentance of hating the sin, hating the flesh, wanting to put it to death.

And so in your marriage as a husband and wife, you have a constant opportunity to exercise fulfilling our calls as ambassadors of Christ by extending grace, mercy, forgiveness, reconciliation towards your spouse. This shows the love of God in your marriage. So what happens when reconciliation takes time? you’re not necessarily… It should be immediate. Every single time, doesn’t matter what I do.

We’re going to be perfectly… Well, we just challenge them to do it fast because we know what it feels like to suffer under that weight. But what if there has been recognition of, this thing took place, it’s wrong, it’s in, but it’s not easy to just forgive and move on. How do you roll through… There are quite a few times that these things could be really big. Adultery is one. That’s a big deal. And reconciliation in those situations, the couples that pursue those, it’s not an overnight thing.

It takes time. But the point is, as ambassadors of Christ, if the heart is for reconciliation, then that’s the direction they’re moving. Like one of the things that I think takes time for reconciliation to reach that, you know, maximum point in marriage where you feel like you are together again is trust. When trust is built ⁓ over time, that’s what makes you feel secure. And that requires time.

And so that can’t start being built though until you have that conversation and there’s that forgiveness and that restoration verbally. Then you can move on to the actions. Well, and I also want to add ⁓ in any situation, part of the responsibility for the reconciliation is going to be on the part of the person who did the wrong. Yeah. And then there’s a part on the other spouse who has been wronged. So like building trust.

actions towards that, you know, no longer doing the thing that caused the pain, the suffering. Those are things. But there’s a part of reconciliation that requires God. There’s a part of true reconciliation that requires a work from the Holy Spirit inside of us. It’s not just a – once you’ve checked all the boxes and done all the right things, then I’m going to we’ll be fully reconciled. There’s a requirement from us to go to the Father and say, I need help in this, to love my spouse.

the way you love them. To forgive my spouse the way you forgive them, to reconcile and have unity with my spouse even though these things took place, that takes trust in God. That takes relying on him and his work inside yourself. So I don’t want to leave it at a reconciliation. Just, once the things happen, do all these right things and check all the right boxes and you guys will just be automatically put back together. I believe that there needs to be

On top of the work to move towards reconciliation because it takes that. It’s easy. The forgiveness is the first step. The heart and the mind and the actions need to follow. And a big part of that is a constant going to the Father and having Him change in us. Otherwise, the reconciliation is only going to be as fragile as the actions taken. Yeah. And here’s a really cool picture. You talked about imagery earlier and I just think like…

When sin shatters a marriage relationship, yet the husband and wife can forgive each other and move forward in true love, like that in itself is them being ambassador to the world and a reflection of his light, his love story, his power in them. Because people know like you can’t do that on your own strength. And so the question is, how did you guys get past that really hard thing when they’re sharing their testimony or when, you know, they’re sharing their story?

It’s because the love of God. It’s because the love of Christ and what he has done for us. Therefore, your picture becomes imagery of the gospel itself, which is really cool. Well, we get to see all the time when you see someone that you’re like, that person could never be saved. There’s just no way they’re so far gone. And then they come to Christ and you’re like, ⁓ gosh. Like, how could God forgive that person? That that is the gospel. You’re like, dang, that’s it’s so powerful when you see someone come to Christ that in your estimation is so far, so impossible.

And that’s how powerful it is. And when you see that in marriage, it’s just as powerful. Okay, so we wanted to share this one more verse. It’s Matthew 5 24. Leave your gift therefore before the altar and go. First be reconciled to your brother and then come and offer your gift. So do you want to share a little bit about how our independent relationship with God, individual relationship with God is impacted by our reconciliation?

This is something I think we do. This is a sin nature problem. We often think with God, I messed up. I did this thing. I have this way of being. I’m just going to like, I’m going to try and offer more gifts to God. I’m going to spend more time with him. I’m going to pray more. I’m going to give more money to the church. I’m going to, you you name it. And God’s like, that’s great. I need you to go repent to the person you wronged. Anything but that, God.

I want to I’m going to do this over here. I’m going to get you. God’s like, no, I want your relationship with that person fixed to the best of your ability. He knows what’s needed. He cares about it. He cares that our relationship he says he’s like, you have a gift to give that he’s like, leave it. I want you to go and reconcile first with the person that you were an empty with within the body of Christ. That could be your wife. And so we see this a lot in marriages. You probably have it in your own like maybe you have.

a really terrible attitude and you’re harsh as a husband. And then you feel guilty about it. But instead of repenting and changing, you go and serve more at church. You give more. You try and do something other than repent of your harshness to your spouse, the one that you’re harsh with. And then work on that. And then grow in that. And this happens with wives that have an un-submissive heart. ⁓

critical, you name it, bitterness towards their husband. But instead of repenting of that and reconciling to their husband, they serve more. They give more to their women’s group. go to their Bible study. They try and invest more in their relation with God and God is like, I love you. Do what I say. Go and make it right with your spouse. We know it’s hard, guys. We know we’ve been there. It’s so hard.

be that vulnerable and admit when you’re wrong or that you’ve messed up or that you’ve sinned. It hurts. And I think that recognition is what we’re afraid of because we don’t want to acknowledge that we’ve hurt the person that we love most. Or we don’t want to acknowledge that we are at fault. We kind of want to avoid the painful change that is required inside of our heart, the circumcision, that cutting away of that dead flesh. But it is necessary.

Especially if you couldn’t answer the question, do you want a thriving marriage? Do you want a powerful marriage? Do you want a strong marriage? If that’s all yes, you’ve to be willing to walk through the hard things and do the right thing. We close all of our episodes with a Our book is not the Bible. A quote from our book, The Marriage After God, it says, protect the unity of your marriage by walking in obedience to the scriptures.

being willing to reconcile with your spouse at any sign of discourse. Just going back to what we just talking about, like God cares mostly about how we relate to other believers than the good works that we do. But he desires good works from us, but the relationship stuff is like, it’s not negotiable. Like he requires it. So at the end of ⁓ each chapter in the devotionals, we also ask some discussion questions, journal questions.

And so we thought it’d be fun to answer some of those today. Aaron, how would you define reconciliation, which you already use the three that you shared from the dictionary, but how would you just simplify that? think in the way of usually thought about reconciliation is just being made right. Like I was once wrong, you know, and out of order, not in right relationship. And now I made it right. And I, I believe that’s like probably like the simplest way to say it is like we once were enemies. Now we’re not we once were in debt.

So, we’re made right with God through our faith in Jesus Christ, which is awesome because it’s what Jesus did that God is proud of, which God receives and accepts his offering. And so by saying, Jesus, I’m going to trust in your offering, just like the people of Israel did when the priests would give an offering. They had to trust that the offering that the priest gave was enough. So, we have to do the same thing.

being made right. Okay, what usually keeps you from mending your relationships with you with me after an argument or offense? Well, if it’s not believing that I was absolutely right and waiting for you to admit that you’re wrong, then it’s just that I absolutely hate like conflict or confronting the hard stuff. It just makes me feel so uncomfortable, squirmish and embarrassed and all of those feelings. So

I think those things initially keep me from it but ⁓ I think the fear of losing you, losing our marriage, losing that unity keeps me even more from not coming to you, like if that makes sense. So I’m eager to reconcile with you. These days, I’d say in the beginning of our marriage, it took a lot longer. Yeah, we’ve gotten better at it for sure over the years. Practice. And we’ll continue to work on it and get better at it. How can you participate in the ministry of reconciliation?

And your marriage even better. Yeah, I think, you know, we I think we really hit this the whole episode, but essentially being the first like coming to you and repenting when I’ve sinned. Yeah, not waiting. Maybe if I like feel like something’s off, come in using here. Are you OK? Are we OK? How are you doing? Is there something you need to share with me? I do have a tendency to wait for you to acknowledge first, I think. Yeah. So just just doing it, going at it, making sure that we’re

unified and not allowing distance for too long. So cool. Well, there’s also a call to action in the devotionals. And so this week we wanted to encourage you guys to initiate reconciliation by first forgiving your spouse. If there is something there that you’re wrestling with, if there’s unforgiveness, we just want to encourage you to initiate the same way Christ did. Remember this doesn’t require the other person to do anything. You can forgive right now in this very moment before you ever have a conversation with them.

It’s powerful. other part is to initiate by confessing a sin or repenting and apologizing for something that has taken place. So look to both sides of the coin because we’re not perfect. All right. Let’s close out with prayer. God, we just come before you right now and we just thank you so much for the ministry of reconciliation that you initiated, that you pursued us and loved us even while we were still enemies. Your true love has

transformed us and made a way for us to become a new creation in you. And I pray for that belief, Lord. I pray that anyone listening right now would believe in the power of the gospel, that they would believe who Jesus was and what He did to reconcile us to you. And I thank you for that opportunity that we have to spend eternity with you. And I pray for marriages right now, Lord, that you would bring a husband and wife to that place of humility where they can walk with you.

in ⁓ intimacy and purity and true love and also with each other. I pray that husbands and wives would be able to experience the power of unity in their marriage because they go through ⁓ and walk through this ministry of reconciliation of recognizing their sin, repenting of their sin, taking the time to really apologize and forgive and to build

intimacy and reconciliation through their words and through their actions. I pray for those listening right now that are struggling with trust and I ask Lord that you would help them to build that back up. God, we thank you so much for the ministry of reconciliation within our marriage, within our family, within the body of Christ. And we just ask that you would help us to take on that responsibility of being an ambassador in Christ to share your love and your peace and what you’ve done for us with the world. In Jesus’ name, amen. ⁓

Thank you so much for joining us on this episode of the Marriage After God podcast. Again, just want to remind you, go to shop.marriageaftergod.com, pick up your copies of Husband After God and The Wife After God, 30-Day Devotionals, and just join along. We have a bunch of episodes ahead, so look forward to having you next time.