Month: October 2024

We were meant to be in relationships with others. the Bible tells us that we were made in the image of God. Think about that for a moment God the father, God the son and God the Holy Spirit. So that means we were made in the image of a perfect relationship. We are relational to the core of our being. Jesus said it very well when he was asked what the greatest commandment was, he said to love the Lord your God with all your heart with all your soul with all your strength and then he said the second is like this, you’re to love one another.   The need to love and to be loved is a foundation of all relationships. The female will never understand her life as a woman until she understands this: you are passionately loved by God, but you also need to know that you are passionately hated by the enemy. Let’s talk about this hatred by the enemy. Ephesians 6:12 says we are not fighting against people made of flesh and blood but against the evil rulers and authorities of the unseen world against those mighty powers of darkness who rule this world and against wicked spirits in the heavenly realms. The assault on females has a long history and it cannot be understood apart from the spiritual forces of evil that were warned about in the scriptures. This is not to say that women aren’t also assaulted by men and other women, but we need to understand why there’s such a special hatred by the enemy. Let’s go back to the Garden of Eden. Who did Satan go after? Why does he single out for his move against the human race a female? He could have chosen Adam, but he didn’t. Satan went after Eve. He set his sights on her. Have you ever wondered why? Might have been like any predator. He chose what he believed would be the weaker of the two, but I don’t think that’s true. He’s ruthless but we believe there is more. Why does Satan make Eve the focus of his assault on humanity? Well let’s go back and look a little bit in the scriptures. After God created Adam in his image, He knew creation was not complete. So, he created Eve. Eve became the completion of creation. She wasn’t just an afterthought, but she was the crown of creation, and she too was created in the image of God. What part of God? The relational part of God.  The Father, Son and Holy Spirit that perfect relation. That’s how Eve was created and a woman’s deep desire and capacity for intimate relationships is a reflection of God. As we go back and look at Scripture, we see that Satan’s first name was Lucifer. He was the most beautiful angel that had ever been created. Many believe he was a captain of the Angel armies of God, perfect and beautiful. That’s the enemy. He was gorgeous, he was breathtaking and because of this it destroyed him. Pride entered his heart. As an angel he came to believe he’d been cheated somehow, and he wanted the worship that was being given to God. He wanted it all for himself. So, he didn’t merely play a role in a story, he wanted the story to be all about him so let’s see what he did. Satan fell because of this beauty.  Now he assaults beauty. He destroys it and our natural world wherever he can. I mean think of things in society like strip mines, oil spills, all kinds of destruction that mankind has done to this earth. Satan loves it when beauties destroyed. Which is why he hates Eve and why is that? Well, she’s beautiful and more beautiful than anything else in all creation.  She was created in God’s image, the relationship image of God. So, Satan hates her with a jealousy that we can only imagine. And there is more. The evil one also hates Eve because she gives life. Women give birth not men. Women nourish life. Satan was a murderer from the beginning. According to John 8:44, scripture says he brings death, his is a kingdom of death. Rituals, sacrifices, genocide, Holocaust, and abortion are all his ideas. Thus, Eve is his greatest human threat for she brings life. If you’re really tired with living with all the struggles that you have with your identity and with the enemy, there’s an answer for you.  I have good news for you. There’s one greater than your enemy and that’s God. Your true identity is based on God’s plan for your life which is based on unconditional love and acceptance by God. And I know there’s an awful lot of misconception of who God is and I know that’s why so many people want to stay away from Him. And sadly, I also know that the church is as much a part of that as the world is. But let’s look at some of the positive things about who God is and what he has to offer. God really does want you to know who you are. He wants you to understand why you’re here and what His plans are for you today and in the future. As a woman, you’re the bearer of the image of God, the crown of creation. You are chosen before time and are wholly and dearly loved. What does God want from you? He wants a personal, intimate relationship with you. That intimate relationship is one where you talk heart to heart to Him. It involves your emotional, physical closeness to Him and it’s where you can be known by Him and have a peace knowing that everything you say to Him is in complete confidence. That’s the kind of relationship that’s based on honesty, trust, respect, appreciation and self-disclosure. That’s what God wants with you, and you can have that with God. He wants the same thing that you want. He wants to be loved. He wants to be known by you. He wants intimacy with you. And to have that intimacy with God you have to offer it to him. Who are you? Be a child of God. First John chapter four verse fifteen says if anyone acknowledges that Jesus is the son of God, God lives in them and they in God. Jesus left Heaven and came to Earth. He lived a very tough and lonely life at times. He was crucified on a cross and He rose from the dead He did all of that for you. And He loves you so much and want you to accept His love. First John verse 9 says, “if we confess our sins, He is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness”. That’s the life that God promises for you and me when we accept Him. Let’s find out what it means to be a child of God and how that defines who we are as we look at more scripture First John chapter three verse one says, ‘See how great a love the father has bestowed on us that we would be called children of God and such we are’. So, what defines who we are? Our new life in Christ. Our identity doesn’t come from our physical life, which is temporal, but it comes from our spiritual life which is eternal. That’s what Jesus came to give us. Understanding our identity in Christ is essential for living the Christian life. We cannot consistently behave in ways that are inconsistent with what we believe about ourselves. So, we must believe who we are as children of God, and we can look at scriptures that define that. John chapter one verse 11 says I am God’s child. John chapter 15 verse 15 says, I am Christ friend. First Corinthians chapter 12 verse 27 says, I’m a member of Christ’s body. Ephesians chapter one verse 1 says, I am holy I am a saint, and a saint here is defined as someone who has accepted Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior, not someone who is sinless but someone who desires to sin less. Ephesians 1:5 says I’ve been adopted as God’s child. First Corinthians chapter 3:16 and First Corinthians chapter 6 verse19 says, I am a temple of God his spirit and his life dwells in me. Colossians 3:12 says, I am chosen of God holy and dearly loved. First Peter 5:8 says, I’m an enemy of the devil. First Peter 5:8 says, I’m born of God and the evil one the devil cannot touch me. Because you have accepted Christ in your life, every one of these characteristics are completely true of you. Choose to believe this and live a life of knowing who you are. So many people suffer day to day because they do not know who they are. But you can know. You can believe it and you can live it. Ladies, an excellent book that will help you really understand what a woman is created for, is, ‘Captivating’ by John and Stasi Eldredge. By J Douglas

I’m going to show you how to build an intimate relationship with each other that will actually continue to increase year after year.  For the guys reading this, I’m not talking just about intimate sexual relationships, although that will be discussed in future podcast. I’m talking about a relationship where you really get to know one another and to be known and accepted for who you are. The kind of relationship that involves honesty, trust, respect and open communication. Love is a foundation of all relationships. We were meant to be in relationships with others. The Bible tells us that we were made in the image of God. Now think about that for just a moment, God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit. We were made in their image. That means we were made in the image of a perfect relationship. We are relational to the core of our being. Jesus said that very well when he was asked what the greatest commandment is. He said to love the Lord Your God with all your heart with all your soul and with all your strength and then he said the second is like this you are to love one another. The need to love and to be loved is a foundation of all relationships. Let’s talk about your love bank. In your love bank, you have an account for everybody that you come into contact with. And in this love bank, it’s just like, I guess, most people’s bank accounts.  You have deposits and you have withdrawals. And of course, each deposit, each withdrawal is usually different. Sometimes higher, sometimes lower but we still make deposits and withdrawals. So, let’s see how this works. You have a friend in your life and the two of you seem to enjoy the same activities. You’d like to cheer for the same football team or basketball team or softball team. You just really enjoy one another and as you spend time together the account is getting deposits put into it.  Before long that account could be pretty full without you even realizing it and you also realize, with somebody with that kind of an account, you would do about anything for them. Now let’s look at the other extreme.   You meet a new person and you’re not real sure about them, so you decide to give them a chance but the more you spend time with each other the more you realize that there’s just no deposits being made at all. Why continue the account. Then there’s those accounts that have been pretty full at one time, but it seems withdrawals have been slowly taking place over time.   One of times this happens is in a marriage.  Everything goes great for the first few years and then something takes place in the marriage. Let’s say a child comes into the marriage which both people were looking forward to. But suddenly the child is creating more demands on each other’s time. The child needs the parents care and sometimes one parent expects the other one to do more of the care giving than expected and what’s happening over time is small withdrawals taking place toward that other person and so again that’s just one of the other accounts we’re talking about. Now let’s just look at a scenario let’s talk about John and Mary. When John and Mary met, they got along pretty well pretty quickly and as they continued to date and spend time with each other, the more and more deposits were being put in to their love bank.   They made plans to get married and they had what would be considered probably the perfect wedding. Now, let me add something here that I honestly believe most people are unaware of. I’ve discovered it as I’ve worked with thousands of couples. I find it amazing when you’re dating, you’re going by programming that’s in your mind as to what you’re supposed to do when you’re dating now who knows where the programming comes from and who knows whether it’s right or wrong. It’s just what we have, it’s what we do, and it seems to work. The other person seems to enjoy the way we believe dating should go and then we get married. Now the thing about the marriage programming, it could be so much different than the dating programming. I’ve had so many women come in and say I don’t understand. When we were dating, he loved spending time with me. He would buy me flowers or bring me gifts. It was just so amazing, our times together but now that we’re married, he forgets my birthday, he forgets our anniversary, there’s no gifts, there’s no going out to eat. He seems to forget all those things and that’s just not the guy I married. What happened? Well, what happened is, he started acting on all of his marriage programming and all of the dating programming disappeared. So where did the marriage programming come from? From parents, watching grandma or grandpa, watching television, watching his peers and this could also apply to women in their marriage programming. How did they expect the husband to treat them now that he was a husband? Was that based on the way dad treated mom or maybe she wanted the opposite of the way mom was treated by dad. So, there’s so many things here too that need to be looked at but we’ll get to those later. Now let’s get back to the scenario. A perfect marriage ceremony does not make a perfect marriage.  I’ve literally had couples come back to me a week after the marriage and say they didn’t want to be married.  At the reception, the new father-in-law got drunk and made a fool of himself and my husband did not stand up to him and defend me. Please remember that when you marry an individual, you often marry a family. Did John and Mary talk about future plans?  Did they talk about children and how the responsibilities would be shared? Would the mother breast feed or would dad also be getting the bottle ready and feed the child? Did they talk about each other’s needs and how they needed them met? Did they ever think about how much they enjoyed being together when dating, which may not have been much time?  Did they realize that when they were married, they would be together when they were feeling good and when they were feeling bad?  What if the wife wants to go back to work a year after birth of the child or if she wants to finish college and work on a master’s degree?  What if she decides she wants to be a full-time mother? What if the husband believes he has to be a workaholic and supporting his family is his top priority, leaving little time for his wife and family? What does that say to a wife and her need for affection and communication? What does a husband do when his wife is so busy working out of the home, then coming home and having to care for a child, keep the house clean and often be the one who has to cook, and she has no energy to meet his sexual needs? Where are the deposits that use to come freely with no thought?  How has it seemed that a few withdrawals have now added up to be major?  Is the account almost empty?  And what happens when there is nothing left, and the account is closed?  What happens when either one realizes that there is someone else in their life that has made more deposits in the love bank? Should you be concerned that your spouse may be tempted to have an affair if their needs are not being met?   The answer is yes.  So, let’s look at each other’s needs and how they need to be met so you can have an intimate relationship.  If you commit yourself to meeting each other’s most important needs, you will have a greater relationship than you ever knew was possible.  I know it’s true because I have seen it in couples, I have worked with, who came to me and said they had given up. After they learned their spouses needs and how to meet them, they found a happiness and joy they never thought could be true. By J Douglas (C)

What does I do really mean I was invited to attend a wedding a couple of months ago and it was one of the most beautiful weddings I’ve ever seen. The venue was beautiful both inside and out. It was by a lake. There were four photographers walking around taking pictures of the wedding party before the wedding, during the wedding and after the wedding. I can’t even imagine what it would be like going through all those pictures. But as beautiful as it was and as much money as was spent, because I heard the family spent $100,000 for this, I was just wondering as I sat there, did this couple get good pre marriage counseling? Do they really understand, when they said I do, what they were saying? Well, that’s what we’re going to talk about here for the next few minutes. For guys … I do expect to be able to spend as much time with the guys as I always did before we got married. I do expect you, after you get home from work, to keep a clean house just like my mom did. I do expect you to have meals ready for me when I get home even though you work full time, and I do expect you to give me sex whenever I want it and as often as I want it. For the women, some of the I do’s maybe are, I do expect you to spend more time with me now that we’re married. I do expect you to take an equal share of responsibilities doing house chores. I do expect you to be a spiritual leader. I do expect you to understand me at all times and I do get to spend time at the club with the girls. I do want to spend all major holidays with my parents, and I do want you to watch hallmark movies with me. Now that may be a little bit too much to ask but these are just some of the I do’s that I have heard from couples as I’ve worked with thousands of couples in counseling so let’s look at a little bit more at that. The most important I do is this; I do give you exclusive rights to meet my most intimate needs. Let me read this again and I want you to pay close attention. I do give you exclusive rights to meet my most important needs. Too often when people get married it’s like, I expect you to meet my most important needs so look at the contrast between those two thoughts and talk about them for just a minute. When couples come in for pre marriage counseling I often ask what are your plans for the next few years and at what point do you plan to get a divorce.  No one is thinking of divorce during pre-marriage counseling.  So, I ask the guy to look at his fiancé and tell her why you’ll be a good husband.  Why should she marry you? Then I ask the lady to do the same. While most marriages in the beginning do not believe that they’ll ever end in divorce, either one can have an affair in the relationship and often that affair will lead to a divorce. Statistics show that it’s pretty common. That’s among everybody whether with religious convictions or not. An affair seems to be the best answer sometimes when needs are not being met.  Sexual unmet needs can turn into frustration and the guy thinks she just doesn’t like sex, so he begins to look for another way to have his needs met or live with sexual frustration. A wife expects her husband to meet her needs for intimate conversation undivided attention that she craves and if not met it leads to frustration and maybe she looks for someone else to meet that important emotional need. Marital breakups happened frequently when their needs go unmet. How are you to meet someone else’s needs? This is one of the questions I want you to talk about when I finish. So often you come into marriage, and you expect your spouse to meet your needs instead of really focusing on how you can best meet theirs. So how do you learn to meet their needs? The most important way for a husband and wife to continue to stay happy in their marriage is learning to meet the needs that are most important to each other. In another podcast, I will be discussing some of your most important needs. We’ll look at the five most important needs for men and women that’s mentioned in the book His Needs, Her Needs by Willard F Harley. What you need to understand is that those mentioned in the book may not apply to you, but you really need to talk about what your needs are and even more important, after you find out what they are, the other person needs to know how to meet them. That’s what we’re going to talk about in following podcast.  So come back, looking for more. By J Douglas (C)

J Douglas speaking below

Well, now that you’ve written down what your five greatest needs are and your spouse wrote down what they think yours are, before we go any further to look at those, we need to talk about the love bank. Again, under the same authors of the book, I’ve already mentioned the love bank is what each one of us has. Each one of us has a love bank account for everybody we come into contact with.

We either put deposits in the account or we’re taking out of the account. So you need to realize, and I’m not gonna pick on husbands, but especially husbands, but wives also, everything you do, everything you say to your spouse is either adding to the love bank or subtracting from the love bank. And like any bank, you know, after you had so many withdrawals, the account’s empty and they close the account.

And that’s what happens to so many people. They’ve got so many problems in their relationship and they don’t know answers for it, and finally the accounts are closed and they just don’t wanna deal with the other person. So we’re gonna talk about the importance of the love bank.

So just think about something you may say, and we’re gonna be talking about this later in communication, but something you may say that may be a withdrawal from your love bank. Write that down, okay? And then I’m gonna want you to share that with your spouse here in just a little bit. And spouses, when you see what they wrote down, ask them to explain to you why that is a withdrawal.

Because usually to us, we see our needs and we’re assuming everybody else is gonna be like ours, and that’s just not the case. I mean, God created us so different, which is a blessing, it’d be sad if we were all alike. It means, you know, if three of us were like me, two of you aren’t needed, and I’d hope it’d be you two that were taken out, not me.

So in understanding the different needs, I want you two to talk about this. After you’ve written that down, and then also write on that same list so you can do this, what would be a deposit? What could your spouse do or say that would be a deposit into your love bank account? Write that down, and then we’ll talk about it.

J Douglas Below

Okay, today we’re gonna be talking about your needs and what your greatest needs are. There’s a book called His Needs, Her Needs by Willard Harley, and I’m gonna ask you about some of these needs and say where you’d put them. Okay, first place, let’s just write down, guys, I’m gonna give you a blank sheet of paper.

I want you to write down what you think your wife’s five greatest needs are. Ladies, I want you to write down what you think your guy’s five greatest needs are. I’m gonna give you a minute to do that, well, probably a couple of minutes, and then when you get finished with that, we’ll go on from there.

Okay, first place, now that you’ve written those down, if you have room, turn the paper over, and if not, I’ll give you another sheet of paper, because now on that piece of paper, ladies, that you wrote down what you thought his five greatest needs are, I want you to take time to write down what your five greatest needs are. And sometimes ladies have trouble finding five needs to be able to write down, but I want you to try to write down what you believe are your five greatest needs. So guys, on your sheet of paper, turn it over, write down what your five greatest needs are.

And when you get finished with that, then I’m gonna tell you what to do with it. Okay, now that you’ve finished your list, I want you to exchange papers with each other. And while you’re getting ready to look at what your spouse thinks your greatest needs, let me just say this.

Guys, I don’t want you to feel stupid and dumb, because you probably don’t have a clue what your wife’s greatest needs are, because most guys don’t have a clue until they actually come in and learn what those are. And ladies, don’t be upset if they’re not close to what they are, because again, it’s just a guy thing. No one’s ever trained guys how to understand women, and that’s what we’re gonna take time to do, is help you both understand each other and what your needs are.