One: A Marriage Devotional by Jimmy EvansSample

Making Dreams Come True The hopes of the godly result in happiness, but the expectations of the wicked come to nothing. (Proverbs 10:28 NLT) Research has shown that many of the more serious fights in marriage occur on a dream level. What this means is that in your heart you entertain certain deeply embedded desires and dreams. Many of them go back for many years, even into your childhood. Also, many of them are so deeply entrenched in your psyche that you don’t think of them on a conscious level. For example, it is common for a woman to have the dream of living in a house with a white picket fence. Women also commonly dream of having a loving husband who is a present partner with them in raising a family. It is common for men to dream of having a wife who adores them and thinks they hung the moon. Men often dream of having a wife who takes care of the house well and prepares good meals for them. With your dreams deeply lodged within your heart, you embark upon marriage. Your hopes run high when you are dating and even during the honeymoon phase of marriage. The problems surface when you begin to violate each other’s dreams. For example, when a man begins to work late or stay out with his friends too often, he is violating his wife in obvious ways. However, what isn’t so obvious is the fact that his insensitive behavior is actually ruining her chances of living out her dream. On the other side, when he comes home and finds her angry and accusatory, his dream is also broken. It only makes matters worse if other areas of her behavior don’t line up with what he has hoped for. It is important for you to realize that everyone has dreams. It helps when you are able to bring those desires out in the open and talk about them together as a couple. What helps even more is a commitment to be each other’s “dream makers” and not “dream breakers.” I encourage you to really think about this. Do you know what each other’s dreams are? Have you made an effort to show you really care? Have you ever committed to make the other person’s dreams come true? When you begin to make the necessary changes to stop violating each other’s dreams, you’ve taken the first steps to making your marriage a dream come true. Talk It Out | Spend a few minutes separately thinking about your deepest dreams and desires for your marriage. Then come together and share those with each other. Talk about ways you can become each other’s “dream makers.” Walk It Out | This week, make your date night “his” night. Wives, take this chance to make your husband’s dreams come true by focusing your attention and adoration on him.