Renewing Minds, Renewing Marriages: The Impact of Thoughts

Hello and welcome to the Hope Relentless Marriage Podcast. My name is Sarah-Gayle and Chad, my amazingly good-looking incredible husband, is online as well. We are honored that you are listening, and I just want to remind you that you are a world changer because resourcing your marriage makes a difference. Marriages impact families, families impact communities, and communities impact the world.

Last week we talked about building emotional intimacy. Today, I'm excited. We are going to talk about our thoughts. Our thoughts are pivotal in our individual lives and also in shaping the marriage that we want to create.

There's this quote by Gandhi that says, "Your beliefs become your thoughts, your thoughts become your words, your words become your actions, your actions become your habits, your habits become your values, and your values become your destiny."

Wow, that's incredible. So it starts with beliefs and ends up being our destiny. I truly believe that progression is accurate, and we see it through and through that as we think, so are we. In Proverbs 23:7, it says, "As a man or woman thinks, so is he or she." This rings true in my own life, and I can see it in the lives of others as well.

I want to ask you two questions actually.
The first question is, what are you consistently thinking about concerning your spouse?

Second question, what are you consistently thinking about when it comes to yourself?

These questions are significant because when it comes to our spouse, if most of our thoughts are negative, then it would make sense that how we are experiencing them is also negative. And likewise, with ourselves a lot of us are thinking very negatively of ourselves, and this feeds into our marriage.

And so I wanna share, what do we do when our thoughts are negative? What do we do when we've had a pattern and a habit? I think part of it is recognizing we've had a pattern and a habit, and it's gonna take some time and some intentionality for things to change. Even big picture, when working with couples, I'm always blown away at how fast some couples can completely change the environment of their home.

This idea of taking every thought captive is important. This increased awareness where we can take inventory. What is it that I'm thinking about myself, and what is it that I'm thinking about my spouse? Those exact two questions that you asked. Those questions can be something that we just move past as insignificant, or we can really reflect, take out a piece of paper, take out our phone, and over the next week, really start to take an inventory. What are my thoughts? What am I thinking about myself, and what am I thinking about my spouse?

So once we can identify what our current thoughts are, it positions us to think through, well, what is the opposite? What are the opposite promises or encouragement or direction that God has for us?

Yeah, it's hard to do. It's not easy, but it's worth it. It is definitely worth it. And it's just being kind to ourselves because in our humanity, it's difficult to be inundated with a direction we don't wanna go in and then expect ourselves to go in a different one. And so we have to be intentional and make the choice and focus on what we wanna focus in that will lead us to the life that we wanna live.