Love That Serves and Forgives (Marriage as a Mission) Pt 2 - 333

Resentment doesn’t usually walk into a marriage with a warning label. It slips in through unanswered questions, unspoken disappointments, and the little moments where we sit on the same couch but feel a world apart. We get real about how bitterness forms, why it “keeps receipts,” and how it can turn a simple disagreement into a fight that carries five years of history.

We also share parts of our own story and the pressure points that often hit blended families and second marriages: higher expectations, complicated dynamics, and the assumption that “we won’t repeat the past.” If you’ve felt the weight of unmet expectations, broken trust, or the ache of a dream that didn’t happen, you’ll hear language for what’s going on beneath the surface and practical ways to bring it into the light. We ground the conversation in Scripture, including Ephesians 4 and Proverbs 19, and we talk about forgiveness as releasing, not pretending.

Then we take it one step deeper: self-forgiveness. Even when a spouse and God forgive, shame can linger and quietly pull you away from the relationship. We discuss what it looks like to stop living in that internal punishment loop and how surrender changes the way you show up at home. Finally, we move into the idea of marriage as a school of grace, where the daily decisions matter more than the big speeches, and where grace turns ordinary friction into growth.

If you need a next step, we leave you with a simple challenge: have the conversation you’ve been avoiding; start small; stay kind; and listen to understand. Subscribe, share this with another couple, and leave a review so more marriages can find hope and tools that actually work.

Want to purchase the book and study guide for this series? Check the link here:

Currently available on Amazon at the links below:
Paperback, Hardcover, and Kindle: http://bit.ly/4nMs7kP
6-Session Study Guide: http://bit.ly/4nac67e (Amazon Exclusive)

You can also get this anywhere you get your books online and at www.marriagelifeandmore.com.

Transcript

Quiet Distance And Real Hope

Daniel Moore 0:07

This week we're stepping into something that hits a little closer to home than we'd sometimes like to admit. The quiet tension that can creep into a relationship over time and the everyday moments that either pull you closer together or slowly push you apart. You know, those situations where everything seems fine on the surface, but underneath there's a buildup you can't quite ignore. Like when you're both sitting in the same room, not arguing, but definitely not connecting either. Yeah, those moments. But here's the thing, we're not just talking about challenges today, we're talking about transformation. Because even in the middle of miscommunication, frustration, and those how did we get here seasons, God is doing something deeper. This episode is all about recognizing what's really going on beneath the surface and learning how to respond in a way that leads to restoration instead of distance. And don't worry, we'll keep it real this week, maybe laugh a little and walk through how to move forward with hope, wisdom, and a whole lot of grace. Welcome to Marriage Life and More. This is a podcast about marriage, Bible, and book studies, and we interview people that have inspiring stories. I'm Daniel Moore, your host, and over here next to me is my beautiful co-host, my wife Michelle.

Michelle Moore 1:23

Hey, hey!

Daniel Moore 1:24

Thank you guys for joining us this week. If not here with our show, check out our website at marriagelifeandmore.com for the links to our platforms, our YouTube and Rumble, and we're also on the Christian podcasting app Edifi. We're also on your Alexa and Google Smart Devices. You can also visit us on social on Facebook, Instagram, and X at CTGapOnline . If you're a fan of our show, please subscribe. Feel free to leave a comment on our platforms, give us a thumbs up or five-star review on Apple Podcast, and we'd be thankful to you for doing that. Well, last week we started off a two-part episode, which was episode six of our Marriage as a Mission series, and it was on how to forgive and how to show grace to our spouses. And we made it through part one of that. Again, if you'd like to buy a copy of this book, you can go to our website, marriagelifeandwar.com, and see a link there to purchase it, or it's available at Amazon or any place online that you buy your books. There is a six session study guide that goes along with this as well. And that one is only available on Amazon. So we're about halfway through this study at this point. So you can still jump in and you know join us on the rest of these with the book if you'd like to get it. And or you can go back and binge listen to all the ones before if you've not listened to them yet. We've had some really good episodes as we've been going through this series here of Marriage as a Mission. So without further ado, let's go ahead and jump into part two of this episode this

How Bitterness Slowly Takes Root

Daniel Moore 2:53

week. And we're going to wrap up this episode on love that serves and forgives.

Michelle Moore 3:13

Bitterness in marriage rarely shows up all at once. At first, it seems manageable. Something you can brush off and move past. But when the hurt isn't talked through or healed with honesty and forgiveness, it doesn't disappear. It settles. And over time, it quietly reshapes how you see your spouse and your relationship. What was once a small offense becomes a lens. Suddenly, everything gets filtered through that unresolved hurt. The tone sounds harsher, the intention feels worse. And before long, you're not just responding to what your spouse did, you're reacting to everything you've been carrying.

Daniel Moore 4:07

So as we get started this week, bitterness. We've had bitterness in our relationship. And I know especially at that time in our marriage when it looked like we were heading towards divorce, you got very bitter at one point in time. And just from your aspect of it, what what are some of the key things that you think actually led up to that bitterness? Whether if it was attitudes that you had, things that I did, uh how the marriage relationship was going in your opinion at that time, what was some of the key things that you can think of that brought you to that point where the bitterness was so harsh, especially towards me and our relationship?

Michelle Moore 4:54

Well, a lot of it was one of it, one of the things was that I put expectations on you and they didn't fall through. And again, now I've realized they're unmet expectations because I didn't tell you those, but I expected our marriage to be totally different because it was our second marriage. And when you found that, the bitterness started. But the biggest thing I think for me was when it it became the baby issue, and that carried on for years, and it got to the point where I hated you. The bitterness led to hate because of what was done. And um anything you said to me, it didn't matter. I had an attitude toward it because whatever you said was gonna be a lie or you didn't care. Even though you did care, I was taking it like you could care less because you hurt me.

The Baby Issue And Broken Trust

Daniel Moore 5:56

And just to give a little quick blurb about what the baby issue was, if you haven't listened to our episode, which was 199 that has our testimony, uh, we went into our marriage expecting to possibly have a child between each other because as you mentioned, we were blended and we both had kids of our own, but we didn't have one together. Well, if the circumstances and things that I felt um didn't stack up to the way I thought it should be, I ended up uh sourcing Michelle and deciding to allow me to get fixed so that we couldn't have any kids. I lied to her, manipulated um everything that I needed to do to get that to happen. And so in essence, I took that dream away that you had for us to have children together. So I think as you the listener, if you have not heard that part of our story, you can probably understand now, especially why a lot of that bitterness did come up on your side of it. And you you just need to go back and listen to our testimony. Um, again, that's episode 199 to get the full extent of what all has happened in our relationship. But you also brought something up too with the blended thing. We've already been married before, and I think a lot of times marriages that are blended, that like on second marriages, I think the ongoing thought process sometimes is, well, I did learn a lot of lessons from my first one, so I I don't think I'm gonna repeat these.

Michelle Moore 7:21

Yep.

Daniel Moore 7:21

I think we'll go into this new relationship and it's gonna be so much better because we've learned all this stuff that we do and don't do and whatever. But isn't it crazy how you get into the second one and all of a sudden other stuff or even same some of the same stuff just comes right back around?

Michelle Moore 7:38

It is, it truly is.

Daniel Moore 7:39

And I think it was kind of harder to an explanation.

Michelle Moore 7:42

Honestly, because I think our expectations were higher and we were best friends, so neither one of us expected to go down the path that we did.

Daniel Moore 7:51

Right.

Second Marriages And Blended Family Pressure

Daniel Moore 7:52

So that's just a warning to anybody that's in a uh a season right now of being singled, you've been married, you're divorced, you're looking to be getting married again. Don't take that with a grain of salt that you think that, okay, I've learned everything from the first one, so now the second one's gonna be totally awesome. And especially if you have kids, that's a whole different level when there's kids involved because it's very it's a lot harder to blend kids into a relationship than you would think. Um, it seems like it should be easy. You know, they're just the kids, we're gonna tell them the way it's gonna be, they're just gonna do it, they're gonna accept their new parent, we're just gonna move on, everything's gonna be great. That does not really happen that easy. It's it's a lot more difficult than it sounds. That is so. And so we highly recommend getting premarital counseling, uh, even as a blended uh situation. We recommend, and hopefully, that counselor will be able to go through a little of blended stuff with you and find ministries online that actually minister to blended scenarios. Try to have other couples around you that are blended that seem to be making it work, because you're gonna have to have some kind of a support system behind you when you come into that next marriage to help that to sustain, because we know from statistics, blended marriages jumps you to 75% chance of getting divorced a second time. The odds are stacked against you. And so if you're not proactive and looking into all of these different scenarios and different things that can happen within a blended situation when there's exes involved and all this other stuff going on, uh you're gonna be in for a rude awakening if you think this is gonna be all roses because it's not easy. And what happens at that point is we we can get that bitterness and it can start you know growing inside of us and starts festering. And if we're not careful, we start feeding that and it just becomes a monster inside of us. We're not careful, but an unhealed hurt doesn't stay in the past, it actually rewrites your present. And that's where resentment begins to take root. Resentment is dangerous because it doesn't always shout, it actually whispers. It sounds like they always do this, or they never notice me. It starts keeping score, it builds a quiet case against your spouse, stacking moment on top of moment until your heart feels justified in pulling back. And when resentment grows, it doesn't just affect what you say, it affects how you say it, and sometimes what you don't say at all. The warmth in your tone fades, attention becomes rare, the home starts to feel a little colder and a little heavier. In reality, this is how couples can go from laughing together to sitting on the same couch in total silence, both scrolling their phones and both thinking, what happened to us? Resentment's a bad thing in a relationship because for one thing, as spouses, we can't really have a good healthy marriage if one of us is resenting something that the other one's doing.

Michelle Moore 10:52

Right.

Daniel Moore 10:53

And unfortunately, as much as we don't want to admit it, if we have unhealed hurt within us, we really can't just package that in a box and seal the lid and keep it back here somewhere in the corner and expect it not to affect anything in our relationship. That that unhealed hurt doesn't stay in that box taped up in the corner. It actually rewrites what's going on right now. But it does. And it's crazy how that happens because so many of us feel like we have control. Yeah. And we think we can control stuff in different scenarios in our life, but we really don't have as much control as we think we do sometimes. Because no matter how hard we try to overcome some of these things that we have tucked away in these boxes, that stuff leaks out.

Michelle Moore 11:40

And that is spoken true because we've both experienced it.

Daniel Moore 11:44

Yep. We're a living example of trying to tape those boxes up and stack them in the corner. And honestly, it it blew up to a really bad thing between you and I.

Michelle Moore 11:55

Yeah. So we it's funny because you do, you think that you can handle it. Right. And you know, it Yeah.

Daniel Moore 12:02

So we have to resolve that hurt. Yes. We have to take care of that, and a lot of time it takes both of you to take care of it. You can't just do it one-sided because two people caused that to begin with. So those same two people have to come together and resolve that, or it's just going to keep rewriting your present. And usually that's not a good thing.

Michelle Moore 12:20

And I think resentment comes from the unexpected um expectations.

Daniel Moore 12:25

Yes.

Michelle Moore 12:25

You know, if you really think about it, you know, your expectation of someone and they're not meeting it, though that resentment starts building. Yeah. Um, whether you acknowledge it or not. I mean, there's been times that, you know, even you know, in the past couple of years, there's been some like just small resentments, like, okay, you know, I wish he was this way, or I wish he would have done it this way. And I know that it's resentment because it's like, or for example, I resent him for telling me, no, I can't do this. You know, it's easy as simple, simple as that. Like you, you know, if we're in a conversation and, you know, we've talked about something and you you express it, and whether we agree to disagree, there's a agree-disagree, not to let resentment build or unforgiveness, because it's easy to do that. And you don't necessarily know that you're doing it, but there's times I've caught myself like, why am I even thinking about that? It's because unresentment's in there and I didn't even recognize it. And then I'm like, okay, Lord, that needs to be gone. Yeah. You know, and so I that's the reason I think maybe unresentment kind of probably is a little bit higher in the females, more than the males, because males are just like, okay, whatever, go on. But I think sometimes as females, we literally can look at something and be like, okay, I'm good with it. But what you don't realize, and if we're especially good at tucking things, that unresentment can be behind a wall or sit there until they do something, and then it's like it pops back up in your mind.

Daniel Moore 13:58

Yeah.

Michelle Moore 13:58

And it's like, okay. I didn't let that go.

Daniel Moore 14:02

Yeah. And it kind of fits with the next point here. Why don't you go ahead and share that with us?

Michelle Moore 14:08

Resentment keeps receipts. Grace chooses to release them. Yeah, that would be. Bitterness tends to follow a cycle. One spouse feels hurt but stays quiet. The silence turns into distance. The other spouse

Resentment Keeps Receipts

Michelle Moore 14:22

senses that distance and feels rejected. So they get defensive or shut down too. Now both people are hurting, but neither one is addressing the real issue. And before long, you're not building connection anymore, you're building walls. Arguments become surface level, but underneath them is a pile of unresolved pain. Apologies become rare, assumptions take over, and the longer it goes on, the harder it becomes to remember the connection you once had. Then comes the moment we've all seen, or maybe lived. A simple disagreement suddenly turns into everything. You're not arguing about what happened five minutes ago. You're bringing up things from five months ago, or even five years ago. That's exactly why Ephesians 431 tells us to get rid of bitterness, rage, and anger, because if left unchecked, those things will slowly rot the foundation of a loving marriage. And that's exactly right. Because, you know, and that's what I just said. I think what I said previously to this, which I didn't know that's what we were reading, it goes perfectly with it. Because if it's left unchecked, and literally for us women or men, some men can build walls just as easily. Yeah. But I think a lot of times it's us women that just like tuck it and move on. But we need to address it.

Daniel Moore 15:45

Yeah. And a good point there that's made is a lot of times we get in our arguments, we think it's about the argument in this moment. We think it's about what just happened. And some of that's probably true because we were in an argument and we did we disagreed on something. But when we get into that argument and all of a sudden there's no neither one's giving, and the argument's getting worse and worse as time goes along. Well, now we all of a sudden start feeling like we need to bring in what happened five weeks ago.

Michelle Moore 16:16

And see that should never happen.

Daniel Moore 16:17

It shouldn't happen.

Michelle Moore 16:18

But because I think couples don't recognize, again, they don't recognize what has been tucked in and not talked about and forgiven. Yeah. And you know it's that bitterness, and and and I think I probably I'm way out there, I don't know. But I think a lot of times if it keeps getting brought up and brought up and brought up, and if you keep going back to that, that is bitterness. Whether you want to acknowledge that, that's also unforgiveness. Yeah. If you can't get past it, God is not you, you are not allowing God to work in your life. Yeah. And you're if you're not doing that, how can you be a loving spouse when something's going on?

Daniel Moore 17:03

Yeah. And it does roll back into last week's episode about forgiveness. Yes. If you say you forgave somebody on something, then that thing that happened five weeks ago should not be coming up in today's argument.

Michelle Moore 17:14

Don't make it just words. Right. Let it be from the heart, but remember your heart reflects God.

Daniel Moore 17:20

Yep. Because when old wounds lead today's conversations, healing is taking a back seat whenever that happens. And so you may be asking, well, how do we break that cycle? Well, it starts with humility and honesty, not waiting until everything boils over, but being willing to say, hey, that hurt me, in a way that invites connection instead of conflict. It means choosing to forgive, not because the offense didn't matter, but because holding on to it will cost you more in the long run. Forgiveness isn't pretending.

Michelle Moore 17:51

Yes.

Daniel Moore 17:51

It's not excusing, it's releasing. That's good. Ephesians 4.32 reminds us to forgive as Christ forgave us, and that's the standard. And let's be honest, that's a very high standard. But it's also freeing because it shifts our focus from what's been done to us to what's been done for us. So good. Completely changes the narrative on us. Yes. And, you know, whenever we allow this unforgiveness to keep going, the bitterness and the unforgiveness is really tied together. They're like brothers and sisters. Because if you don't take care of the situation and ask forgiveness and accept the forgiveness, and both of you are on the same page saying, This is behind us now, we're going to move forward to a new day. We're not going to go back there anymore, get back involved in that conversation. If you don't do that, then this is where bitterness will start later.

Michelle Moore 18:47

Yeah.

Daniel Moore 18:48

Because I guarantee you, if you don't forgive somebody for what they've done, or you just halfway do it, but you still hang on to little tidbits of it, you're actually breeding. That's a huge breeding spot for bitterness. And it's going to start accumulating eventually. And that's that's the uh that's what happens, that's what unforgiveness births really

Why Self Forgiveness Matters Too

Daniel Moore 19:08

is.

Michelle Moore 19:08

And I want to say this too. There is a part of unforgiveness for yourself. Because when I had the affair on Daniel, even though he forgave me, I did not forgive myself. I asked forgiveness from the Lord, and the Lord gave forgave me, but I still did not forgive myself. Yeah. It took me years to understand that and to allow myself to be forgiven. And you also have to be careful with that because through those years of not forgiving myself, I felt like I was not worthy. There was multiple things that I allowed to come in my life because I didn't allow the forgiveness for myself. Yeah. And I know you've seen that. Yeah. Because you'd already forgiven me, but it was something that I could not, I I it was just something like, how could I have done that? And it was Satan too.

Daniel Moore 20:06

I mean Well, it kind of worried me to a point because I felt like if you don't feel like you can forgive your own self and move past it, there was a part of me that was kind of worried that you were still going to pull yourself away from me.

Michelle Moore 20:17

Yeah.

Daniel Moore 20:18

Because if that's not resolved, I I then feel like, well, how do I help fix her? You know, I don't like you being in this. I tell you, it's done, it's over, it's behind us, you know. Don't worry about it. I don't hold that against you anymore. And so I'm good on my side of it. But then when I sit there and watch you struggle, then I become the fixer because I want you to be happy. I want you to love our relationship. I want you to feel like you're worthy enough to have both of us be married to each other and have this life together. Well, that to me is not happening if you're sitting here worried about what you've done and you haven't forgiven yourself for it.

Michelle Moore 20:58

And then But again, that comes back to my relationship with the Lord.

Daniel Moore 21:02

Right. Satan's in their working.

Michelle Moore 21:04

I did not I allowed the Lord to forgive me, but I didn't allow him to rule my life. Yeah. It wasn't until the part that I allowed him to rule my life and become my, you know, I call him father. He's my father. And you you know how I am. He is my father. Yeah. And if I didn't allow him to be my the ruler of my life, I don't, I wouldn't be where I'm at today. Yeah. And I think I kept trying to heal myself, thinking all those things. And it that's the reason why I think you have to be careful with unforgiveness within yourself. Yeah. If you've done something and your spouse has forgiven you, and you gotta remember if the father has forgiven you, don't walk in that unforgiveness.

Daniel Moore 21:49

Yeah.

Michelle Moore 21:49

Because it not only affects you, but it affects your spouse as well.

Daniel Moore 21:53

And I met a couple not too long ago where she talked herself out of their marriage, and he was okay with the situation. This was more of a sickness type of thing instead of really a conflictive type of thing or whatever. But this is proof to show that it can happen in multiple different scenarios within your marriage. But the spouse, you know, he was fine with everything. He was he was willing to do what it took to keep things together, to make things work. That's why he got married. That was part of his vow. But yet she held that inside of her that, well, this has happened now. This completely changes the scenario. This is not what he signed up for. I'm just being a burden. And she, in essence, talked herself out of the marriage, moved out, and as far as I know, are still separated at this point. And this is what happens if you're not careful and don't. You made a very valid point with that. Uh, you know, we have to get to the point where we understand that even within our own selves that we are forgiven.

Michelle Moore 22:49

Right.

Daniel Moore 22:50

And that, and honestly, if you get true forgiveness, they always say that the person that finally says, Hey, I forgive you, they're usually the ones that's most freed in that moment because that weight lifts off of them. If it's done in a correct manner, that weight should lift. And you've done your part, you truly gave the forgiveness, you feel that in your heart, that's truly the way you believe. Now it's up to that person that's receiving the forgiveness to accept, okay, am I going to forgive them or not?

Michelle Moore 23:18

And you know, I thought I thought I did, but you know, it wasn't until about that couple years, what, three, four years ago, when we started the podcast, because that was a big part of it. Um, when I went to an event and some words were spoken over me, and I knew then it was like, okay, this is shed, you know, like it has been shut it off of me. I have no more chains. Yeah. And so I knew then I'm like, okay, I had to forgive myself and move on.

Everyday Offenses And Letting Go

Daniel Moore 24:02

And it kind of moves into this next point where it says you don't forgive because they got it right. You forgive because Christ made you right. That's so good. So that really covers what you just said. You know, sometimes the things we need to forgive are big and painful, but other times it's just the everyday stuff. Yeah. You know, just the little things that happen all the time. You know, like the dishes that never make to the dishwasher, I'll be there in five minutes, that actually means 15. Or the classic miscommunication where one of you says I'm fine and the other somehow believes it, because we know reading through that, a lot of times we're not really fine. You know, so learning to navigate those moments with grace matters more than we realize. A good old uh proverb here in chapter 19, verse 11, it says, It's to our glory to overlook an offense. And again, that's not weakness, that's wisdom, is what you call that. It's knowing what's worth addressing and what's worth letting go.

Michelle Moore 24:55

That's so important.

Daniel Moore 24:56

It is.

Michelle Moore 24:58

I'm telling you guys, it's so important. And when I say there are things that are not like if there's just let it go. When I was talking earlier, when we were talking about is it worth the battle? That right there. It's worth it up. It's knowing the worth addressing and what's worth letting go. I'm telling you guys, Proverbs is probably one of my favorite chapters of the Bible. Yeah. And he'll tell you that. I love Proverbs. And I just it has helped me become a better person and a better wife.

Daniel Moore 25:26

Yeah. Go ahead and share that next one with us.

Michelle Moore 25:29

Yeah, not every frustration needs a confrontation. Some just need a little grace. Now, if bitterness has already taken root, let's be honest, it's not going to disappear overnight. Healing takes time, it takes intentional effort, it often takes prayer, patience, and sometimes even wise counsel. But here's the hope. It can be broken.

A Couple Rebuilds With Humility

Michelle Moore 25:54

Take a couple like James and Natalie. They started out strong, faith, family, connection, but over time, life got heavy. Stress, responsibilities, unmet expectations, and slowly communication broke down. She felt unappreciated. He felt criticized. Neither one felt understood. Instead of addressing the hurt, they stored it. What began a small frustrations turned into deep bitterness. He withdrew. She felt alone. Arguments increased, but they were only scratching the surface of years of unspoken pain. At one point, even prayer together stopped, and both of them started to believe the lie. Maybe we'd just fallen out of love. But God wasn't done. In a moment of desperation, Natalie turned to God and began asking for help, not just to fix her husband, but to soften her own heart. At the same time, James had his own wake-up call at a men's retreat. God began kneeling with his pride, his distance, and his need to re-engage. It didn't start with a grand get gesture. It started with one honest, humble conversation. They admitted the hurt, they owned their part, and they chose to try again with Christ at the center. They started praying together again, they sought counseling, they practiced something simple but powerful, quick forgiveness and open communication. And little by little the walls came down. Love didn't magically fix everything overnight, but day by day, grace rebuilt what bitterness had torn down.

Daniel Moore 27:40

Yeah, and that's a good example of how this can go as a cycle because it it walks you through how it all started. Again, it was tucking things back and not talking, not communicating through those, letting them build up. But it also shows that, and and this has also been, I think, exemplified in you and I, in our uh miracle that's happened in our life, is the fact that God had a plan later on down the road. And so when it finally came to the point where God felt, you know, it's like, okay, they're ready now to reconcile this, we need to, you know, start moving these miraculous moments into into play here. And, you know, both of them finally opened their heart to allow God to come in and do a work. And I think I think that's a good example for how we need to handle some of this stuff. If you're in a a cycle right now where all this bitterness and stuff is taking place and there's no forgiveness, there's no grace, you know, just it's really looking bleak, and it looks like that's that something's not going to take place. The key here, again, is we need to go to God with this.

Michelle Moore 28:50

Yeah.

Daniel Moore 28:50

We need to take it to the throne, put it at his feet, stay in prayer, stay on your knees. You know, in this uh scenario here, these two actually got to a point where they quit praying together even. And, you know, that's a very, very, very bad place to be when that happens. But if you truly stay um with a pliable heart and you truly keep your heart open and soften towards God and allow him to do the work that he wants to do, you know, he can bring uh he can bring such a beautiful thing back from those ashes.

Michelle Moore 29:22

Yeah.

Daniel Moore 29:23

And that's exactly what, you know, he did for us. And so, you know, every frustration is it says not every one of those needs a confrontation, they just need some grace.

Michelle Moore 29:34

Yeah.

Daniel Moore 29:34

You know, this word keeps coming up in this episode because I don't think there's enough grace shown a lot of times in our marriages and our relationships between each other. If there was, we wouldn't have such such a huge issue.

Michelle Moore 29:46

Right. You're exactly right.

Daniel Moore 29:47

What's going on in our relationship? We'll get into grace here in just a little bit. Healing doesn't happen in a moment, it happens in the daily choice to stay soft, stay humble, and stay surrendered. So the takeaway from this is don't underestimate what God can restore when two people humble themselves before Him. A bitter marriage isn't a hopeless one unless both people stop fighting for it. If resentment has started creeping in, don't ignore it. You need to bring it to the light and talk about it, pray about it, ask God to help you see your spouse through his eyes again.

Michelle Moore 30:18

Yeah.

Daniel Moore 30:18

You know, choose forgiveness and not because it's easy, but because it's necessary. Choose communication and not silence, and choose grace and not scorekeeping. Because at the end of the day, bitterness builds walls, grace builds bridges. We made that statement earlier. And with God at the center, even the most broken places in a marriage can become the starting point of something stronger than ever before. And so that's just some good wisdom there to make sure that we stay where we need to be. There are certain things that we need to apply and put into our relationships on a daily basis, just to make sure that we stay open, pliable, and soft before God. And then that will trickle down into the relationship so that we can be soft and pliable and open with our spouse and make sure we take care of some of these situations.

Marriage As A School Of Grace

Daniel Moore 31:11

So on the the last half of this episode this week, we're going to move into marriage as a school of grace. So why don't you go ahead and start us off on that one?

Michelle Moore 31:21

Yeah. Marriage is more than a partnership. It's one of God's most hands-on classrooms for learning grace. And if we're being honest, it's probably the most intensive classroom you'll ever enroll in. Because living life closely with another imperfect human being has a way of exposing everything. Your patience, your expectations, your communication habits, and yes, even your ability to share your side of the bed. I mean, how is it one person can somehow take up 80% of the mattress and still say, I'm not even moving? I think this was a sidestep at me.

Daniel Moore 31:58

Think so?

Michelle Moore 32:00

I'm thinking so.

Daniel Moore 32:01

Well, I think we'll just move on.

Michelle Moore 32:02

Okay. But right there, in the middle of everyday frustrations, the shared responsibilities, and the moments where you really have to choose love, God is at work. He's using marriage to shape us into people who love more like him. Not with a love that's earned or convenient, but with a grace that is unearned, undeserved, and at times uncomfortable. Marriage doesn't just reveal how much you love, it reveals how much you still need grace. In Titus 2.11, Paul reminds us that grace of God has appeared to bring salvation to all people. But grace doesn't stop at saving us, it trains us, it teaches us, and honestly, marriage might be one of the primary ways God puts the training into action. Think of it like this marriage is kind of a grace boot camp. It's where you learn to respond with kindness when your feelings are hurt, patience when you're exhausted, and forgiveness when you'd honestly rather give the silent treatment for a few hours or days. It's where love stops being a feeling and starts becoming a daily decision.

Daniel Moore 33:17

Yeah, and I think marriage, as any of us that are married already, we can resonate with this to the core. And we've mentioned this before that we are always harshest on the people that are closest to us.

Michelle Moore 33:30

Absolutely.

Daniel Moore 33:31

And it makes it real, and I think that's one reason for the scriptures that we've spoken of before where Jesus said that we need to love our neighbors ourselves, because if we've mentioned several times on this podcast, our spouse is our closest neighbor.

Michelle Moore 33:44

Yeah.

Daniel Moore 33:44

You know, they're the ones that live with us through thick and thin, day in, day out under the same roof. And we know how easy it is to get irritated at that person we're around all the time. It's super simple to let stuff start building up and stuff start happening. And so I love this concept here of marriage being a school of grace because if we're going to learn grace anywhere, definitely that's going to be in our marriages.

Michelle Moore 34:08

Well, the grace boot camp starts from the day you get married until the day you die.

Daniel Moore 34:13

That's right. And you can take that as you will. You can make it a good thing or you can make it a bad thing.

Michelle Moore 34:19

That's right.

Daniel Moore 34:20

I think some couples just aren't as good as learning the grace card as some other couples are. And, you know, maybe sometimes people forget what grace means, you know. I don't know. It's just there's times that I see stuff going on in relationships and marriages where even you and I have seen it. Or we've walked through it. And we've walked through it too. But we can watch couples now and see the way that they react and do things. And one of the comments that we'll always talk about is, man, you got they got a little bit of grace in that. You know, it's like they're just being a little bit too hard. You know, there's you got to think of some of this stuff through. And, you know, it's that's a hard thing to learn, really, because our instinct as a human being is to be selfish. You know, we want what we want. Yeah, we want our outcome to take place. We want ourselves to be happy in the end of all of this. And unfortunately, sometimes for us to have that take place, it means that somebody loses. And some of us will take it to the point and we don't care to the fact that somebody else does lose for us to get what we want. And that's not a good place to be because that's not Christ. That's not uh that's that boot camp of grace as we were talking about here. That's not how that's supposed to work. God wants that grace to be uh an attribute within side of us or a fruit that we have that creates a stable foundation in our marriage to where things that happen are in a positive manner and we grow from that. And you know, grace could be like the fertilizer of love, that you know, relationship that we have helps it to get stronger. So love and marriage isn't proven by how you feel, because we all know love's not a feeling. That's right. It's proven by how you show up. Yes. And that's exactly what Ephesians 4, verses 2 and 3 calls us into. It says, be completely humble and gentle, be patient, bearing with one another in love. So that phrase there in that scripture, bearing with one another, isn't just poetic language, it's practical. It means choosing grace when your spouse is having a rough day or a rough week. Some days bearing with one another looks like laughing instead of snapping. Some days it looks like taking a breath before responding. And some days it looks like forgiving that same small habit again. Yes, even the toothbrush in the sink. And you know, we know all them different habits that takes place. Well, grace in marriage isn't just shown in big dramatic moments, it's built in the small ordinary ones. And I think that's so important to realize that that grace isn't something that just all of a sudden just happens in one big swoosh and it's over with. Um this is one of those things like love. Love is an ongoing thing that we show every day, every moment. You know, the moment that we stop showing love to somebody, love stops. So we can't stop. If we truly love somebody, then we will actually show them that we love them on a continual moment-by-moment basis. Right. It's a it's an active thing that we do. Grace is the same way. Um, this is something that we have to keep constant, you know, extending over and over and over as we go throughout our daily lives. And you you'd probably be surprised, I think, if we sit if we sat back and went back through our last 24-hour period and realized just how many times we might have extended grace in some small way to our spouse without even realizing it. You know, um, I think that's something probably is as prominent in a relationship as love is, because if we don't have grace, it's gonna be hard to have love for our for our partner. So the next one.

Grace In Small Daily Decisions

Michelle Moore 37:58

Strong marriages aren't built on big moments of love, they're built on daily decisions of grace. Now, here's the good news God doesn't ask us to live this without showing us how. He's already given us the perfect example in Christ. In Ephesians 5.25, it says, Husbands are called to love their wives just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her. That's not casual love, that's sacrificial love. Jesus didn't wait for the church to get everything right before loving her. Not easy, but powerful. Christ didn't love us at our best, he loved us into our best. When you choose to show your spouse grace, when you offer kindness they didn't earn, patience they didn't expect, or forgiveness they didn't think they'd receive, you're doing more than just keeping the peace. You're putting the character of God on display. You're showing what it looks like to live in a relationship where mercy matters more than merit, where unity matters more than pride, and where love isn't conditional. Marriage becomes a living picture of God's covenant with us. And yes, you're going to mess it up sometimes. There will be days where grace feels distance and irritation feels very present, days where you miscommunicate, overreact, or just run out emotional energy. Like when one of you says, I'm not upset, and the other person actually believes it. But here's the beauty of it God isn't grading your marriage based on perfection, He's forming you through the process. That's so good.

Daniel Moore 40:09

Yeah, I like that a lot. And I think we have to remember another statement that was made up there. If we don't show grace in our marriage, then our marriage does become conditional.

Michelle Moore 40:19

Yeah.

Daniel Moore 40:19

We have to remember that. We may think, you know, as we've been going through this uh episode this week and last week's, how they they tie together. Uh we've, you know, with forgiveness and those kinds of things, we've been stating that you can't live in a conditional marriage where I get this, if you get this, and all this other stuff that goes on. You might be thinking, well, we don't do none of that. So I don't think our relationship is conditional. But it may come down to be areas where you're not extending grace like you should. And if that's taking place, then that really makes it conditional because you are setting a precedent there that, you know, I can give you grace in these areas, but I'm not going to in these areas. So when that happens, that's in essence making your marriage conditional at that point. And so we have to make sure that none of that is going on. And of course, the core of that is because Christ, He doesn't wait for us to be a perfect Christian person before he comes into our life and becomes a part of it.

Michelle Moore 41:19

Thank goodness.

Daniel Moore 41:20

He's there from the very beginning.

Michelle Moore 41:21

Thank goodness.

Daniel Moore 41:22

Yes. We'd all be out of luck if that was the case. Because you know, a lot of us are a mess whenever he comes in and starts trying to make sense of all this stuff that we've you know allowed to take place in our lives and all the things that's happened. And, you know, I'm so thankful that he is like he is just in our scenario.

Michelle Moore 41:40

Yeah.

Daniel Moore 41:41

Because there was a time in our life that if if God was that way, he would have never came in and helped us any at all. Right. Because we were in a very bad position. And so uh we just have to remember that you know, Christ loved us in the worst all the way up into the best. We've got to be the same way with our spouse. And we're not ever going to be able to resolve anything or show grace or show that unforgiveness if it doesn't start in the mess. Right. And so that's something to keep in mind. You know, God isn't looking for perfect spouses, he's shaping surrendered ones.

Michelle Moore 42:14

That's good.

Daniel Moore 42:15

So when you burn the toast, forget what you said you'd do or snap over something small. Don't just see those moments as failures, see them as opportunities. Opportunities to pause, to reset, and to respond differently the next time. Opportunities to practice grace. Because at the end of the day, marriage isn't just about living together. It's about growing together, growing in patience, growing in humility, and growing in love. And sometimes growing in the ability to laugh when you find a sock in the refrigerator and realize, yep, this is my person.

Michelle Moore 42:48

That is not me. I don't know why you had it in there. So don't think it's me.

Daniel Moore 42:53

Yeah. Lose options of uh examples after a while. So gotta pull some crazy ones in. But no, I think that's just something to realize here as we get ready to close this week's episode is you know, why are we looking for a perfect spouse if God isn't? You know, I think that's the first thing that it brings to mind for me. Uh, because if you and I are surrendered in our relationship, then that's a fertile ground for you and me to grow.

Michelle Moore 43:19

Right.

Daniel Moore 43:20

You know, if we're if if you're not gonna surrender to me, or if I'm not gonna surrender to you, it's gonna be real hard for us to function and have a good marriage.

Michelle Moore 43:28

Right.

Daniel Moore 43:28

Because one of us is gonna be willing to grow and move forward and to become a bigger, better person and a better spouse, and the other one's gonna be stagnant. Right. They're gonna be stuck in a rut, they're not gonna move out of it. And so both spouses have to be surrendered uh to themselves and to God in order for that marriage to grow. And those are the kinds of spouses God's looking for because he knows they have a soft heart and that he can actually come in and do a work in them and create something beautiful. So, is there anything this week that you'd like to add to this one? Or no.

Michelle Moore 44:00

It's really good. I don't know why I say that every time. They're always good. But it was really good.

Daniel Moore 44:05

Well, I think this episode hits home for a lot of couples because, you know, when we start talking about forgiveness and grace and patience and a lot of the virtues that we usually will extend to other people outside of our circle, but we have a problem with not bringing it into our circle. Yeah. Uh, we have to realize that our spouses deserve that as much as or more than the people outside of our circle because they are the ones that we truly have expressed our love and desire to live with forever. And so we need to make sure that we take care and nurture that relationship to the best of our abilities. And I think sometimes we have a tendency to uh to take that for granted and put it on the back burner and we take care of our outside people instead of what's in the middle. Yeah. I agree with that. So as we close this week, grace is what turns everyday frustrations into opportunities for deeper love. So lean into the process. Let God use even the smallest moments to refine you because there's no better place to learn grace than right here in the middle of real life with the person that you promised to walk with through it all. Even when they steal your blanket.

Michelle Moore 45:13

He did mean that on me. Oh, see these episodes. I'm seeing stuff come out that I didn't know. So these were hidden.

Weekly Challenge And Closing Prayer

Daniel Moore 45:24

So as we land the plane on today's conversation, don't forget to go to our website at marriagelifeandmore.com. And there you can find out anything about our podcast, our ministry, uh, the resources we have available, all that stuff is there. And of course, we always say please subscribe and share. That helps our podcast to grow. And we know that you, as the listener, probably know many couples out there that would benefit from some of this type of material. And as we always state, if you share these episodes and someone else's marriage is touched and transformed, you become a part of the ministry that we have here and you become a part of that restoration story. And what a better, uh, better thing to have on your resume, I guess you could say, is that you've helped another marriage uh work through issues and become a better marriage. Well, this week, the takeaway is we really want to press into that what you allow to linger will eventually shape what you experience. The small unspoken things don't just fade away, they either get healed or they quietly grow. But the beautiful part is this, you're not stuck. No matter how long something has been sitting under the surface, it can be brought into the light, worked through, and redeemed. When you choose honesty over avoidance, humility over pride, and grace over keeping score, you start changing the direction of your relationship one decision at a time. What stays hidden grows stronger, but what's brought into the light can finally be healed. So as you move into your week this week, here's a simple challenge. Don't wait for the perfect moment to have the conversation that needs to happen. Start small. Be honest, be kind, and be willing to listen, not just to respond, but to understand. And if things get a little awkward, that's okay. Growth usually is. Now, some of our most important conversations start with, so this might come out wrong, but we've all had those conversations. So thanks for spending this time with us this week. And of course, if this episode spoke to you, share it with another couple who might need it, and make sure you're subscribed so you don't miss what's coming next. We're praying for you, we're rooting for your relationship, and we believe God is working in ways that you may not even see yet. Well, that's all for this week, and we pray that your marriage is stronger and your walk with God is closer after this episode. This episode is recorded in the upper room at our Connecting the Gap Studios. This is an extension of the Connecting the Gap Ministries. We pray that you have a blessed week.