May06

Heaven Ministries
May 2006
Volume 4 Issue 30

Marriage Alive Newsletter
Broken Promises, lies, and Infidelity

ARTICLES

Love and Respect Your Spouse and Receive the Perks!

Supporting Your Work At Home Wife
By Allen Hart

The new trend in our society is working from home. Many women are leaving the corporate world to come home and care for their families, but they still desire to contribute financially. It can be challenging to work from home, especially for women who have children to care for as well.

Is your wife is one of the growing number of work at home moms? Here are ten key tips on supporting her:

1. Encouragement is key
Sometimes all that your wife needs in order to be successful with whatever she is working on is a little encouragement. Often times she won’t have anyone else around to give her the encouragement that she needs and you may be the only person that can give her the encouragement she needs.

2. Help with whatever she is doing
Depending on the business there may be extra work that could be done by you. For example, with my wife’s website, Christian Work at Home Moms (www.cwahm.com), she will often need someone to write a script, setup an email account, or proofread a document. Some of the tasks aren’t going to be the most glamorous but 5 minutes could save your partner hours of time and added stress.

3. Be positive
It's easy to be a positive influence on your wife and her business. Listen to her when she talks about her business. Don't put down her ideas for business growth - help her think of new ideas to help her business grow. Remember that just because she is working from home, that does not make her business any less important or legitimate. If you are a positive influence on your wife and take an interest in her business, there's no telling how big the business might grow! As wives, we need our husband's support and encouragement!

4. Watch the kids
Your wife is at home with the kids all day every day. Sometimes she is going to need a chance to work with no distractions. If the kids are constantly asking questions and bugging your wife she can’t get anything done. Don’t wait to be asked. Be proactive and offer to watch the kids.

5. Listen
Your wife might not have a large support system or other co-workers to bounce ideas off of. She is going to need someone to talk to and more importantly listen to the ideas she has. I think this goes hand in hand with encouragement. You will need to listen and encourage, sometimes that is all she needs.

6. Let her run the show
This is her job her business she gets to call the shots. I know that the way my wife and I handle the business decisions is that she runs all of her ideas by me and we mutually make the decisions. A lot of the decisions can be costly and take a lot of time. Those decisions should be made together but ultimately it isn’t your decision.

7. Be a part of the business
Many wives want their husbands to take part in their home business even if it's just helping to stuff envelopes. Taking the time to do even small things like this will encourage your wife and show her that you support her. If there isn't a way to be directly involved with your wife's business, pick one day a week and do the dishes or another chore that will free up some time for your wife to work at her business.

8. Don't let her give up.
Most work at home moms will tell you that it takes 3-4 years to build a successful business. It doesn't happen overnight. When your wife feels discouraged, listen to her and ask if she would like your input on the situation. She will need your encouragement to stick with it. We wives do not like to fail our husbands and we sometimes feel like failures when our businesses are not doing well. Remind your wife of the time that it takes to grow a business and that EVERY business has times during the year when sales are slow.

9. Surprise her
This may not sound like a business tip, but a great way to help your wife stay motivated is to bring her little “surprises” – flowers, her favorite candy, a business supply that she can’t bring her self to spend the money on. All of these are great ways to remind her of your support.

10. Pray
Most importantly, this business is going to need prayer. Never underestimate the power of prayer to help you get going and keep the whole project rolling. If you aren’t talking to God on a regular basis it will be very hard to stay on track.

By following these ten simple tips, you can help strengthen your wife’s home-based business. She will appreciate your efforts and your marriage will benefit as well. Supporting your work at home wife is one of the best ways to show you care.

About the Author
Allen Hart is the founder of CWAHD.com, Christian Work at Home Dads. CWAHD.com was designed to assist dads in their quest for a work at home job or business. For more information and additional articles, visit www.cwahd.com or contact Allen at info@cwahd.com.

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Love and Respect Your Spouse and Receive the Perks!
By Marie Jon'

Forty years of feminist philosophy has brought severe reproof for just about everything the male does. If we listen to the feminists, man is evil, stupid, and unjustly tyrannical. The feminist movement, which began in the early 60’s, has played a decisive role in denigrating the family. However, the main cause of family problems today is our self-centeredness.

Mothers and fathers need to be shining examples. They must instruct and train their children on how to love their spouses and children, to be self-controlled and pure, to be busy at home, and to be kind and helpful. The word of God is a great resource for learning these important values and skills.

God gives women affectionate power. Men are born out of a women's womb. They spend their lives yearning for a woman’s acceptance and approval. Man is putty in the hands of the woman he loves. Give him direct communication, respect, appreciation, good food, and good loving’ and he will do just about anything you wish, foolish or not.

God made women verbal creatures, which can frustrate men with an overwhelming amount of talk. Instead of expecting her husband to be "a girlfriend," the wise wife should choose the proper topic and timing of discussions.

Men make terrible mind readers, so be direct. Subtle hints don’t work. This doesn’t mean that man is insensitive, uncaring, or oblivious.

Tell your man whether you want advice, or if you’re just letting off steam. God made man to want to be "our rescuer," so understand that you can frustrate him if he can't fix what’s bothering you, especially if all you want is someone to listen.

Take whatever he says at face value. Women tend to overanalyze men. They are not that complicated.

Men need respect and love. God gave us the blueprint for a happy marriage. He commands husbands and wives in the Book of Ephesians: "However, each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband."

Women need love just as they needs air to breathe. This same verse commands a wife to respect her husband. Why? He needs respect as he needs air to breathe. Treat each other with the dignity they deserve, for we are made in the image of God.

Respect means not giving way to a display of one's anger, especially before the children. No emotional outburst is worth damaging a husband’s reputation before your little ones.

Men long for their wives attention, affection, and affirmation. Respect involves paying attention to what they do. Respect means allowing the other person to be different than you.

Both men and women want to be acknowledged and appreciated for the things they do. Showing respect is to keep the home you made together clean and well kept. It’s a reflection of your love. Try to keep up with each other's wisdom. Grow in the word of God together, as well as intellectually.

Women often make their husbands feel like children by constantly reminding them to get things done. Men want to be admired. They want to be acknowledged for being the breadwinner. One of their greatest pleasures is when they can feel like a hero for taking care of their families.

Men and women have a different language of love. Every man and woman wants to be appreciated for who they are and what they do. Keep an" Appreciation Journal" to help remind yourself of the things your mate does that you appreciate. Tell your spouse every day that you love and appreciate him/her.

Thank each other for being faithful. Thank God for the love you share with each other. Give thanks for your children. Love your spouse with kindness and respect, and receive all the fantastic perks

When love, respect and appreciation are openly expressed, a happy home is it's own rewards. The American family needs to return to godly principals.

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Broken Promises, lies, and Infidelity
by Angie Lewis

Are you a person of your word? What about your spouse? Does your spouse trust you? Being trustworthy is an awesome character trait and is essential for a healthy marriage. But there are many things that we say and do that will break the bonds of trust with our spouse.

1. Broken Promises:

Keeping promises to our spouse is a very important part of marriage. It builds trust and shows we are committed in what we say and do? God tells us to make our yes's a yes and our no's a no. What does that mean?

And do not swear by your head, for you cannot make even one hair white or black. Simply let your Yes be Yes and your No be No, anything beyond this comes from the evil one. Matthew 5:37

We shouldn't end our statements with, "I swear to God" because this is swearing falsely in God's name. We shouldn't end our statements with, "I promise". God wants us to be "true" to what we say! This means we are to do what we say and say what we do. This is being true to our word.

An example of swearing falsely is if your spouse says to you, "I swear to God, I will take you out to dinner on Friday". But when Friday rolls around your spouse is working late and can't go. What happened? Your spouse used God's name to promise a dinner date but ended up breaking that promise. They broke their promise to you, and more importantly to God. They're not being sincere with their words, are they?

Why do we make promises that we know we may not be able to keep? We truly believe that we can back up our promises with action. We want people to believe in us so bad that we say, "I promise", or "I swear to God" because we want to please our loved ones. But more often than not, busy schedules and priorities get confused and promises get broken.

If you're not really sure that that you can keep a promise to your spouse then don't make the promise! If you are the type of person who often makes promises, do what you say and be a person your spouse can trust and believe in.

2. Lying:

Lying is like a broken promise but much worse. Unlike a promise, which you hope you can keep, a lie is an untruth that deceives people into believing truth, which in fact is not true. When you lie to your spouse, they feel deceived and unloved by you. Why would you lie to your spouse? Can you not be trusted?

There have been numerous studies made about liars and lying. These studies all say that everyone lies. What do you think when you read that everyone on this earth lies? Doesn't that make you believe then it's okay to lie since everyone is a liar? This is pure media persuasion because not everyone lies.

Above all, my brothers, do not swear – not by heaven and not by earth or by anything else. Let your Yes be yes and your No, no or you will be condemned. James 5:12

Why do we lie to our spouse when we know it is dishonest? Because we are hiding something we are ashamed of. Because we do not really have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ and our conscience doesn't bother us when we lie and deceive others. Maybe we don't want our spouse to hate us, be mad at us, or leave us. We aren't bold enough to tell our spouse the truth about who we really are.

Did you know that nine times out of ten, your spouse can tell a lie from a truth? This breeds more mistrust and pretty soon there is nothing left of the marriage because of this. One of the major components of a happy marriage is trust and faith among couples.

Are you a liar? You don't have to be a liar. Be an honest person of character and then you won’t have to lie. When you can avoid lying, fibbing and making half-truths you become known as trustworthy, which marriage and all other relationships thrive on.

3. Lack of Commitment:

If a person is not committed in what they do they will eventually be dishonest in its interactions. This is also true with marriage. If couples aren't committed to each other, what do you think is going to happen? You guessed it. All sorts of deceitful deeds will be acted upon; making couples feel jealous, doubt, mistrust, and suspicion.

Unfortunately this kind of marriage won't last long. Unfaithfulness and deceitful practices run rampant in marriages today because couples aren't devoted to the marriage. It is a great virtue of character to be committed to what you do in life. Your commitment to marriage is your promise to your spouse that you will be the honest and upright person you say you are.

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Joanne's Devotional

DON’T BE AFRAID

“The Lord hath appeared of old unto me, saying, Yea, I have loved thee with an everlasting love: therefore with lovingkindness have I drawn thee.”

Jeremiah 31: 3

King James Version

When I was a teenager going to church, I never heard a sermon about Jesus Loving us. All I ever heard preached was if you aren’t saved you are going to hell. So all my life I was frightened of Jesus. I have loved him for twenty six years, but I was afraid of Him. A couple of months ago, God used my prayer partner to release me from the fear of Him. She made the statement “When we sin, Jesus treats us like a naughty child”.

We do not have to be afraid of Jesus. He Loves us with an everlasting Love and has drawn us to Him with lovingkindness. It is very important that we tell people that if they haven’t made a heart commitment to Jesus, they are on their way to hell for all Eternity. However, we need to first tell them how much Jesus Loves them and then prove to them by our actions that He Loves them.

I was frightened all my life about people not approving of me. I was afraid to get my hair cut because many people have told me that I look good with longer hair. Yesterday, I got my hair cut short because it is cooler. I like how I look with long hair, but I wasn’t afraid of displeasing someone because I got it cut.

The only person that we have to please and give an account to is Jesus. If we make Him happy, then He will cause even our enemies to be peace with us. He will protect us from the cruel words of criticism and judgment. Is Jesus happy with you today, or is He looking at you with sadness in His Heart?

Joanne Lowe

May 5, 2006

joyful77@heavenwardbound.com