In this Timeless Truths segment, Jeff and Rose Colón explain that broken marriages will only experience true restoration when both the husband and the wife learn to walk in true repentance and humility toward each other.

Host: Jeff and Rose Colón have joined us in the studio today for a discussion focused on couples. Jeff and Rose, good to see you as always. As we look at some of the issues that couples are dealing with, what is one of the enemy’s tools that he uses in bringing disunity to a marriage?

Jeff: Well, what I've seen with a lot of marriages is that pride, selfishness and just an unwillingness to humble themselves and be broken before God is usually at the center.

Host: What are some of the ways that you see that issue being manifested in a relationship?

Jeff: One of the biggest ways is just finger pointing because when someone's not broken, they tend to see the faults of others more glaringly. I remember a couple we worked with a few years ago, they were married for over 40 years and when we got involved with them the husband was seeing everything his wife was doing wrong and she was seeing everything he was doing wrong. It was just a constant bickering and eventually it ended in them divorcing. And it really is sad because that marriage did not have to end. It was really a tragic end to a 40-year Christian marriage simply because neither one would look at their own heart and see where they were missing the mark.

Host: Okay Jeff, well as we look then at the husband and the wife, let’s first look at what needs to happen with the husband in a situation like this?

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Jeff: As husband’s, we have to be willing to look at our own heart. David prayed in Psalm 139, “God search me. Try me. See if there is any wicked way in me.” We have to start dealing with what Jesus called the plank in our own eye and quit focusing on the speck in our spouses’ eye. That's not going to happen unless we humble ourselves and really begin to pray, “God search me.” Because only the Lord knows how to expose those things. So begin to pray, “God expose my heart. Use circumstances. Bring to the surface things that I need to see in my life that I'm not doing right.”
       Secondly, a good thing to do is start measuring your life to the Word of God. Sometimes we have our own standard, and if we look at our life by our own standard, we might be doing pretty good. But a husband needs to start examining his role as it's laid out in the Word of God and ask himself some concrete questions. “Am I laying my life down for my wife? Am I respecting her as the weaker vessel? Am I honoring my wife? Am I putting her needs truly before my own?”
       Lastly, I would just pray for a fresh sight of Calvary because really, if you've lost sight of Calvary and what Jesus did for you there, it's very easy to see the faults of others. But when you really see what Jesus did for you on the Cross, you're not going to be so quick to see the faults of others.

Host: That is the place to be if you're looking for humility in your life. There was something you just said that I picked up on and I just want to confirm that it's true. You said that the husband has a greater responsibility here in humbling himself first when there's disunity in the relationship.

Jeff: Absolutely. And sadly, in most situations it's usually the wife that has to initiate dealing with an issue when really that's the husband's responsibility. And what I have seen is that I've needed to encourage men to take their rightful spiritual place in the home and be the one to initiate. They should be the first ones to be vulnerable, to open their hearts to their spouse and create an atmosphere where they can focus on the problem that needs solving and not the faults of one another.

Host: Amen. Rose, what's the wife dealing with here?

Rose: The wife needs to let the Lord expose her heart as well. A lot of times she feels like her husband is the problem. But she doesn't realize her own heart is just as wicked and dark as her husband's. It's hard for wives to embrace that truth, but when you look at Scripture, you see that we as wives fall short of the glory of God as well. And as a result, there are attitudes of our hearts that we need to repent of to our husbands. We need to be willing to go to him as well and confess where we’ve been wrong and humble ourselves. There have been times when my husband and I have done this. We're together, we've acknowledged what's in our heart or what we've been carrying around and then we just repent together before the Lord. Those times have been so precious because it's where the Lord's been able to break us and really show us our great need for Him.

Host: Now, Jeff said that it is the responsibility of the husband to take that leadership role. How does the wife respond in a situation like this when the husband is not willing to take the lead?

Rose: Well, she needs to go to the Lord and pray. She needs to commit her husband to the Lord in prayer and trust the Lord to move upon his heart and to bring about the changes that need to come or the conviction that needs to come. I've seen that in my own marriage there have been times where I couldn’t say anything or it wasn't the right timing to, so I had to go to the Lord with it and just pray. I had to commit it to Him. And usually something would come up as a result to answer that prayer or in my husband’s prayer time, he would come and share with me what the Lord was showing him about himself, and at that point in a spirit of humility then I was able to share some things that I was concerned about and let him know that we needed to work on them together.

Jeff: I want to add to that, when Rose prays and is an example to me and lives out her role before God, what I have found is that God then is able to deal with me. But if she was nagging me and telling me that I need to do this or I need to do that, I know that as a man it would just push me away further. And really what I have seen over the years is that her example of being a submissive, godly wife has made me want to step up to that role and be what I need to be for her.