Implementing Vision In Your Marriage
Do you sometimes feel like your marriage is on autopilot–like it’s going forward but not with purpose? Understanding and implementing vision in your marriage gives you a sense of purpose and helps you get off of autopilot. Here are 5 key verses and 4 tips to understand and implement a vision in your marriage.
Why is there a failure to implement?
Have you ever had a great idea, planned it out, weighed the benefits and costs, just to let the idea “sit on the back burner”. It’s like planning this great dinner, buying the ingredients, and the morning of, just letting the recipes sit in your box and the ingredients sit in the cabinet.
Guys: It’s like if you are a football coach, studying the opponent’s defense and you have found a weakness to exploit. What good would it do to have the perfect play if you choose not to implement it? You might want to stick with what has been tried and true instead of implementing this new idea, but the ball has to get into the end zone.
So, what happened? Why is there a failure to implement? Sometimes it is fear, a lack of time, lack of motivation, or a lack of discipline. But underlining any of it is a lack of belief.
I was recently talking to my health coach about taking the steps to implement the goals that we had set for a healthier lifestyle. Through talking with her, I realized that the #1 reason I failed to implement aspects of the plan is that I didn’t see results quickly enough. She said, “You don’t trust the process.” I didn’t. I didn’t believe that it would work in the long run because I was expecting long term results in the short term. See the problem?
So often this happens in our marriage too. We have aspects that we want to work on. You know…things that can be better. We have ideas that would be game-changers, and we fail to implement them. Or we implement with instant-result expectations—and then fail to implement any farther. We don’t want that. We want to be successful in our marriage—to be happy and joyful in the difficult times.
The secret ingredient is a vision
Yes, Vision. Not just an idea, but an idea with goals and rewards, hope for the future.
Proverbs 29:18 Where there is no vision, the people perish: but he that keepeth the law, happy is he.
The word for vision is “chazown”, meaning a dream. It is derived from the root “chazah” meaning mentally to perceive or contemplate with pleasure. Specifically, to have a vision of (a pleasurable outcome).
What is the vision (pleasurable outcome) of your marriage?
So when you are envisioning your marriage, consider Biblical principles of relationships. Wait, what? Who said we’re supposed to envision our marriage? Most of us do this by default, kind-of subconsciously. However, without a clear vision, we often miss opportunities to enhance our marriage relationship, expend energy seeking the wrong things because we think that is what will make us happy, and waste resources on goals that miss the target.
Determine the vision for your marriage
How do you know what God’s vision is for your marriage? Study scripture to understand what a good relationship looks like. Here are a few suggestions:
- Eph 5:33 Love and Respect
- Eph 4:2-3 Have humility, gentleness, and patience to have unity
- I Cor 13:5 Don’t keep a record of wrongs
- Rom. 13:8 Continuously pay the debt to love each other
- I Peter 3:7 Husbands honor your wives as an equal partner
Don’t fail to implement
- Write out the vision in the present tense as if it is happening currently.
- Communicate the vision regularly (maybe even daily) and give grace to one another as the details start to take shape.
- Renew the vision every day by using the scripture that you have chosen for your foundation and pray the scriptures for you and your spouse.
- Pray together
Don’t fail to implement God’s vision for your marriage.
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