What if I told you that one of the goals of marriage was to enjoy your spouse? Most of us would think, “Duh, Josh, that makes sense.” We want to be happy and enjoy our relationships.

I’ve read that statistically less than 20% of married couples actually say they are happy and enjoy their marriage. Sadly, of the people I’ve met and watched, that number doesn’t seem that crazy.

You and I know that stat is true. We’ve been married, we watched our parents marriage, we see our friends go in and out of relationships.

What if I told you the choices you make when dating, in engagement and through marriage will determine whether or not you enjoy your spouse? We know this. And yet most people, most couples, make decisions that lead them to a place of misery in marriage, or simply giving up on their marriage but staying together for the kids.

Anyone can stay together. Anyone can stay for the kids and be miserable, but it takes different choices to find enjoyment.

Proverbs 5 says this:

Drink water from your own cistern, flowing water from your own well.
Should your springs be scattered abroad, streams of water in the streets?
Let them be for yourself alone, and not for strangers with you.
Let your fountain be blessed, and rejoice in the wife of your youth, a lovely deer, a graceful doe.
Let her breasts fill you at all times with delight; be intoxicated always in her love. -Proverbs 5:15 – 19

So what do couples do to enjoy their marriage that you can do? Here are four things:

4 ways to enjoy your marriage.
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1. Decide you’ll enjoy your marriage. This might seem obvious, but couples who enjoy their marriage decide to enjoy their marriage. They decide to last. It isn’t just that they make a commitment to each other, but they really live with the reality that divorce is not an option.

Couples who enjoy their marriage decide to enjoy their marriage.
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When you decide to enjoy your marriage, you decide that no other relationship is an option. This leads into many other decisions. If divorce or not being happy is an option, that will also determine the actions you will take. If happiness in your marriage is a priority, that impacts your choices. If your needs and selfishness are your priority, that will impact your choices.

If you decide to enjoy your marriage, you will think of your spouse above yourself and look for ways to bless and encourage them. You won’t point out all their wrongs or imperfections. You know they aren’t perfect and neither are you.

This also means you will work hard at your marriage. You’ll read books on marriage, listen to podcasts and find a mentor who has a marriage you want to learn from. Katie and I are constantly talking to couples who are older and enjoy their marriages. What do they know? How do they make it to year 40, year 50, of marriage and still enjoy being together?

How do they make it to year 40, year 50, of marriage and still enjoy being together?
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The reality is, your marriage will go through highs and lows. It will have incredible moments of joy and unbelievably dark lows. Every couple who enjoys their marriage has learned how to navigate these moments as a couple, and that’s crucial. You learn how to walk together no matter what life holds or throws at you.

This also means you find things to do together that you enjoy. You don’t have to enjoy everything your spouse does, but you enjoy being with them, and, as we’ll see in a minute, you enjoy making them happy.

Verse 15 tells us in order to enjoy your marriage, you must focus on it, take care of it and pour time and energy into it. A great marriage won’t just happen. If you meet a couple with a great marriage, you will see a couple that has worked on their marriage. They have protected their marriage and they have put effort into their marriage.

2. Fight for purity in your marriage (before and after you get married). This one is important. Purity is one of the things that protects your marriage from adultery, yet it also helps move you to enjoyment.

When you are looking at porn, fantasizing about someone you aren’t married to, reading romance novels, getting emotionally attached to a co-worker or a neighbor, you aren’t protecting your marriage. When this happens, you start to think, “This person gets me. This person listens. This person meets a need my spouse doesn’t meet.” In that moment you have not only moved into dangerous territory, but now you don’t enjoy your marriage.

Let’s be honest, porn, whether you are a man or a woman, is easier. It takes less effort, there’s no possibility of rejection or hurt, it takes no work, and it is enjoyable for that moment. But you miss connection and intimacy; it leaves you longing for more because it doesn’t live up to its promises.

Verse 17 says, “Let your bodies be for yourself alone (this is referring to your marriage), not for strangers with you.”

How a 30 day sex challenge can take your marriage to a new level.
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In years past at Revolution, we’ve challenged married couples in our church to do a 30 day sex challenge. To pray together each day, read your Bible together each day and do something sexual together each day. Every time someone will ask me what it means to do something sexual with your spouse each day. My answer? Look at your spouse and say, “What does it mean for us to do something sexual together, with no one else (digital or not) each day for the next 30 days?” Then do that. Here’s what you’ll find: your affection goes up and your pursuit of each other goes up. If you know you’re connecting sexually today, that changes what you do that day. You might not eat that spicy food, you brush your teeth again or get a shower. That expectation goes a long way in a relationship.

3. Rejoice in your spouse. Verse 18 says, “Let your fountain be blessed and rejoice in the wife of your youth.”

Rejoice carries the idea of fun and enjoyment.

It is to feel joy, enjoyment and happiness from your spouse but also to bring joy, enjoyment and happiness to your spouse.

First, do you strive to bring joy, enjoyment and happiness to your spouse? Do you know what brings them joy and happiness?

Second, are you a cheerleader for your spouse, or do you fight against them? Bringing them joy means cheering them on, being excited about what excites them. If something goes well for them, you are excited for them. You don’t get jealous of them or irritated when things go well for them. You rejoice when they rejoice and you weep when they weep.

On the flip side of rejoicing is walking through pain with them. Katie always tells me, “Josh, you hold a crying girl.” This is great advice for dads of daughters and for husbands.

How to rejoice in your spouse.
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4. Strive to be great servant lovers. Verse 19 says, “Let her breasts fill you at all times with delight; be intoxicated by her love.” We’ll talk more about this in two weeks, but let me say this now.

Couples who enjoy their marriage are great servant lovers. They are drunk with love. Yes, old age and gravity affect us all, and you don’t look like you used to, but that doesn’t mean your sexual relationship can’t be great.

Couples who enjoy their marriage are great servant lovers.
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If you meet a couple who has been married for more than a decade and are happy, here’s what I bet you’ll find: a couple who are great servant lovers. They have worked hard on their sexual relationship with their spouse. They know what turns their spouse on and what they don’t like. They are affectionate, they gross their kids out with all the kissing and dancing they do in the kitchen.

Let me give you a few ideas on this:

• Find out what your spouse finds attractive and try to do that. It might be to throw that shirt out. If you stay at home with kids, your husband might say, “Could you shower by the end of the day?” Whatever it is, talk it out instead of being frustrated by it.
• Clean out your underwear drawer every year. That alone will go a long way.
• Pursue each other and have a weekly date night (even if it is at home). I don’t care what you call it, but have a night each week that is set aside to build into your relationship. And empty nesters, unless you are intentional, don’t tell me every night is date night. Simply being in the same house doesn’t count.
• In the bedroom, find out what they like and don’t like. I know guys, you are awesome in the bedroom, in your mind. My guess is, if you asked your wife what turns her on, she will surprise you because it isn’t what you think.

The reality is, to enjoy your marriage it will take work. It will take making decisions other couples don’t make. Why? Not every couple enjoys their marriage, so to enjoy yours, you must make different choices. You must walk a different path.

4 ways to enjoy your marriage.
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The post How to Enjoy Your Marriage appeared first on JoshuaReich.org.

Here are 10 posts I came across this week that challenged my thinking or helped me as a leader, pastor, husband and father. I hope they help you too:

1. Pastors Are Not Quitting In Droves by Mark Dance
2. How to Staff Churches under 600 by Brian Jones
3. How to Email by James Hamblin
4. 12 More Ideas for Pastor Appreciation Month by Chuck Lawless
5. Three Common Storytelling Mistakes by Nick Morgan
6. Be the Person You Want Your Kids to Be :: 5 Choices We’re Glad We Made by Autumn Ward
7. The Burn-Out Myth by Ned Gable
8. Pastors, Stop Texting Your Church Members by Steve Bezner
9. Autopsy Of A Burned Out Pastor: 13 Lessons by Thom Rainer
10. Four Myths Christians Believe About Politics by J.D. Greear

The post Be the Person You Want Your Kids to Be & 9 Other Posts You Should Read this Weekend appeared first on JoshuaReich.org.

No one wants to learn by mistakes, but we cannot learn enough from success to go beyond the state of the art. -Henry Petroski

Mistakes and missteps in life are painful but incredibly helpful if we don’t waste them.

When you make a decision in your church, business or life and it doesn’t pan out as you expected, what do you do with that? You can either let it go and move on pretending it never happened. You can mope about life being hard and waste the experience. Or you can dissect the decision and learn from it.

Only one of those choices will actually move you forward; the other two will keep you stuck or move you backwards.

Do you feel like you make mistakes and never learn from them?
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In The Prepared Mind of a Leader: Eight Skills Leaders Use to Innovate, Make Decisions, and Solve Problems, the authors give four questions to ask as you reflect on an action or decision in your life:

1. What did I/we expect to accomplish?
2. What, in fact, did I/we accomplish?
3. Why are the answers to questions 1 and 2 different? (Notice that the question is not, “Who’s to blame?”)
4. What actions do we have to take to make sure this does not happen again? In other words, what did we learn?

4 questions to grow when you make a bad choice.
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One of the ways you know you need Breathing Room is when what normally comes easy for you “all of a sudden” becomes an arduous, monumental task.

The reason I say “all of a sudden” is not because it happens suddenly, but because it feels like it happens suddenly.

This sneaks up on people, and one day, one night they realize how exhausted and tired they are. They lie in bed not wanting to move; they sit at their desk unmotivated to do anything. They look at their to-do list, and it feels like an insurmountable task.

One thing I’ve noticed in my life that is a clue that I’m living at an unsustainable pace is that I have a hard time making a decision. It could be as simple as what to make for lunch or where to go out to eat, where you find yourself paralyzed, standing in the kitchen unable to make a choice.

The other “all of a sudden” moment comes when the things you are good at – your job, building something, preaching, writing, running a meeting, creating a budget, balancing a checkbook, planning an event – feel like they take all day and suck all the energy out of you.

We wonder why.

This used to be so fun, so life giving.

I want to encourage you to pause here for a moment.

Do any of these things ring true for you right now?

Here’s my question: What is your plan to make sure that the place you are in right now doesn’t become a lifestyle?

How will you keep your busy month from becoming a lifestyle?
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Often when we are tired, rundown, frazzled, whatever word you want to give it, we say, “It’s just a busy week, month, or season.” How do you know that week won’t become a lifestyle?

Yet what seemed like a busy fall becomes a hectic winter that rolls right into a frenzied spring and on and on and on.

Why?

We never stop to ask the crucial questions.

Here are a few:

1. What is difficult for me right now? What is stressful?
2. Are those things normally stressful?
3. If not, what is happening in my life right now to create that stress?
4. Can you name the last time things slowed down for you?
5. Do you find yourself hoping that something in your life gets cancelled?

5 questions to know you are too busy.
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That last one is one I’ve started to look out for in my life. Here’s what I mean: Have you ever had a dinner planned or a meeting scheduled, and you are hoping against hope that it will get cancelled? You think, “If they got sick and had to cancel I wouldn’t be mad about that.”

If so, that’s a sign that you are living past what is sustainable.

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A few years ago I wrote a book called Breathing Room: Stressing Less & Living More and I’ve been asked by some people how to know if they should read the book. How do you know if you are too busy or getting tired in life? My response often is, “Well, if you are asking if you are too busy, you are probably too busy.”

But just in case, here are a few ways to know you’re too busy and need some Breathing Room:

9 ways to know you’re too busy & need some Breathing Room.
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1. What is normally easy is now hard. This is one of the first things that happens. For me it centers on preaching, sermon prep, reading leadership books. Whenever I find myself not feeling motivated in one or all of these areas, I know I am past the point of running too fast in life. To combat this, I take periodic breaks from preaching (I try to not preach more than 10 weeks in a row), and I work in books that have nothing to do with sermon prep or church ministry to give my brain a break.

You may need Breathing Room if what is normally easy all of a sudden becomes hard.
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2. Sleep is hard to come by. For many Americans, sleep is hard as it is. We go to bed too late, we don’t take enough naps, we spend too much time on technology and get worked up. I try to get to bed by 10:30. I try to not look at social media or texts after 8pm so that my brain is able to take a break. If you have to take sleeping pills, watch TV to fall asleep or find yourself going to bed at midnight or staring at the clock at midnight, you need to work on your sleep.

You may need Breathing Room if it is hard to fall asleep.
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This is counterintuitive to us because we think if we’re tired we should be able to fall asleep quickly, but that is often not the case. We have pushed ourselves so hard, our brains are not used to shutting off. We have pushed ourselves past 10pm on a regular basis, getting our “second wind,” that our body is accustomed to it. Getting back to a normal sleep pattern will take some time.

3. It is hard to get going in the morning. Some people are morning people and can’t wait to get going; others are not. I’m not a morning person. But when I find myself having a hard time getting going in the morning, needing multiple cups of coffee to stay awake or to focus, that’s a warning sign. Think about this morning: how hard was it to get out of bed? The harder it was, the closer you are to burning out.

You may need Breathing Room if it is hard to get going in the morning.
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4. You get angry fast. When you are tired, you tend to get angry fast. Your fuse is shorter with those closest to you: family, friends, and coworkers. Your reaction to situations does not match the situation. You get angry at small things or cry without knowing why.

5. You struggle to make simple decisions and find yourself paralyzed at making a choice. It is amazing how when we are tired and too busy, normal everyday decisions can become agonizing mountains that appear like we can’t get over them. Decisions become tiring and life altering. The mood swings we have when we make a decision we regret become huge mood swings. An example for me is I’ll struggle to know what to watch on TV, what I want to eat. As silly as that may sound, it is a sign I have not taken care of myself.

Are everyday decisions hard for you to make? You may need some Breathing Room.
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6. Motivation is hard to come by. It is true that you are more motivated and alert at certain parts of the day. For me it is first thing in the morning, which is why I reserve that for sermon prep and not meetings. It is when I am most creative, and I need to give that mental time to the most important part of my job: preaching. When I find that motivation not there, I know I have a problem.

7. You have impulses to eat and drink, and you struggle to control them. You may also use things to calm down. This might be food, sex, porn, exercise, drugs, smoking, alcohol. While these things calm you down, and all of these are not necessarily sins, when used to calm us down or help us relax or sleep or “take the edge off,” we have a problem. If you think, “I just need ____ to calm down or feel better,” you have a problem.

8. You think short-term instead of long-term. You can’t get past today or what is right in front of you, and you feel completely overwhelmed by it. All of the decisions you make are simply focused on right now, and you talk about “getting through the day” or “if we can just make it to bedtime” or “if only we can make it til the weekend.” What happens is this becomes our new normal, and everyday is about making it to the weekend or the next break where we simply collapse from exhaustion.

Do you live for the weekend or bedtime? You may need some Breathing Room.
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9. You don’t laugh as much or have fun. This is connected to what we’ve already said, but if you can’t remember the last time you laughed and had fun, that’s a problem. When you are tired, the last thing you have energy for is fun or community. You are more irritable and have less courage. People are draining, and the only thing you want to do is be a bump on the log and watch TV. If you are an introvert, having fun with people, especially when you are tired, feels so taxing.

*This is an excerpt from my book, Breathing Room: Stressing Less & Living More. Click on the link to purchase it.

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As part of our  Breathing Room series at Revolution I shared 6 simple ways to create margin in your life so that you are able to enjoy what really matters. If you missed them, here they are:

1. Get a good night sleep. 
2. Take a break every 90 minutes.
3. Control electronics instead of letting electronics control you.
4. Pay people to do what you hate.
5. Life the life you want, not the life others want you to live.
6. Use your schedule for your advantage.

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