Couple's Communication Done Right

Welcome to the Inspirational Media Podcast — timeless voices for today’s world. We bring you powerful Bible-based messages from over 300 speakers in our library — speaking hope, truth, and encouragement into everyday life.

In this episode, we talk about John and Paula Sandford’s insights on Male-Female Communication. John and Paula Sandford are experienced ministers who draw on their decades of marriage (forty-five years!) and deep counselling work, focusing on how Christians can apply forgiveness and humility to their most intimate relationships.

In this teaching, they outline how men and women were created to complement one another, noting that their different ways of thinking—rooted partly in distinct left and right brain functions—can cause serious friction if not understood. The Sandfords explain practical problems, such as why men often have a "fix it mentality" while women seek empathy, and how unresolved emotional wounds from childhood can exacerbate these natural differences. Ultimately, they provide spiritual solutions, urging listeners to put Jesus at the centre and handle jarring misreadings by praying instantly and letting the Lord bring their reaction to the cross.

Let’s dive in and hear about some "Faith that’s fresh - Wisdom that lasts”.

Want to begin with a prophetic word to say that in this time God wants to move upon his church, to purify it. And for that, would you turn to Malachi three? Malachi three, last book in the Old Testament? Behold, I'm going to send my messenger, and he will clear the way before me. And the Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to his temple. Now you recognize this is a prophecy of the coming of John the Baptist before the Lord comes the first time. But it is also a prophecy of the coming of Elijah before the Lord comes the second time. So it's appropriate to both times. And the Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to his temple. And the messenger of the covenant in whom you delight. Behold, he is coming, says the Lord of hosts. But who can endure the day of his coming, and who can stand when he appears? For he is like a refiner's fire, And like fuller soap, the Holy Spirit has been falling in the latter rain upon the church ever since nineteen oh six. And, uh, Joel two is being fulfilled in which the Holy Spirit will come on all flesh, and your young men shall dream dreams, and your old men or young men shall see visions, your old men shall dream dreams. And the Holy Spirit has been increasing in coming more and more like after the Second World War, he began to befall upon the old line churches, and then in the sixties on the Anglican churches, in the seventies on the Catholic churches and the Holy Spirit's just been pouring out, gathering more and more into the Lord. But now is that time when he says, when he's saying, alright, now you've come to the Lord, let's shape up, let's get cleaned up. He's preparing us for the end time battles and he will sit. To sit means to rule. He will sit as a smelter and purifier of silver, and he will purify the sons of Levi and refine them like gold and silver, so that they may present to the Lord offerings in righteousness. And then the offering of Judah and Jerusalem will be pleasing to the Lord, as in the days of old and as in former years. Now, would you turn to Malachi for just the first verses, for behold, the day is coming, burning like a furnace. That day is right now, and the fire of the Lord is coming on his church. Remember John the Baptist said that he is who comes after me is mightier than I, the thatch of whose sandals I'm not worthy to unloose. And he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire. For behold, the day is coming, burning like a furnace, and all the arrogant and every evil doer will be chaff. And the day that is coming will set them ablaze, says the Lord of hosts, so that it will leave them neither root nor branch. But for you who fear my name, the sun of righteousness will rise with healing in its wings. And you will go forth and skip about like calves from the stall, and you will tread down the wicked, for they shall be ashes under the soles of your feet. On the day which I am preparing, says the Lord of hosts. What if. Have you noticed? It's exactly the same sun arising, which on the one hand burns up all the wicked, and on the other has healing in its wings very same sign. See, God is going to burn up everything that is not of his nature. He is going to burn out of us whatever is of dross and of false character. And so every root and branch in us who are also the wicked, is going to be burnt out of us. The total difference, then, is trust. Those who have learned to trust the son who is rising upon them will find it healing as he purges us and purifies us and burns out of us whatever is not of him. But those who don't trust him will hang on to the very things he's burning up, and they're going to get burned up in the process. They're going to be hurt and they're going to be wounded. So the total difference is trust. And that's the call I make to you. Are you able to trust the hand of the Lord with you? Are you able to let him deal with what's inside your heart? And are you able to let him do that through your friends? But more importantly, are you able to let him do that through your enemies? Are you able to let him touch you with truth through somebody you wouldn't like to hear from? Now, what we're going to talk about tonight is in this subject we have been given of breaking barriers and of communications between husbands and wives. You know, we just don't communicate too well. So that's what we're going to talk about that Paul is coming now. We were created male and female, everybody, both male and female. And the man manifests mainly in the male pool was being and seeks the woman to fulfill that part of him he can't fulfill. Woman manifests mainly in the female polar being, seeks the man to fulfill that part of her that she can't. The Lord had a perfect plan in the beginning. His plan hasn't changed. Man's sinning set us back two centuries, but the Lord is restoring us to his perfect plan. And just very briefly, in the beginning, God said, it's not good that man should be alone. I'll create. I'll make for him a helpmeet and that means someone who will meet him. A power equal to man. Uh, not the same as man, but a power equal to man. A woman was not a postscript in any way. She was not incidental. God didn't create man and then say, whoops, I forgot something and then bring woman along. It was his perfect plan from the very beginning, and it was his pre-planned intent that men and women would complement one another, that they would bless one another, nurture one another up, build one another in love. And their duality and their unity was God's best hope and device for their maturation, for their growing up so that he could have fellowship with them. And the man said, this is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh, and she shall be called woman, because she was taken out of men. And for this cause a man shall leave his father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife, and they shall become one flesh created man and woman to be distinctly individual, free to make their own choices. But he created them to be vitally One with each other. He created them male and female, says Genesis five two and he blessed them. And he called them man in the day that they were created. Each person was created in the image of God with both male and female attributes, as John has said. And man was designed to experience and act primarily out of the masculine side of his being, uh, and yearn for the woman to meet him. And in that one flesh that God created them to live in, uh, she would express that part of him that he can't. And woman experiences and acts from her uniquely feminine base. Even though she has masculine qualities and she yearns for the man to express what she can't fully express. So there's the complimenting and the blessing. The one freshness in which they upbuild one another. So, as Paula said, we were created to complement one another and complement one another, and we were created to support and nurture one another. But the problem is, as God said in Hosea, my people are destroyed for lack of knowledge. And men and women have not understood their differences, have not understood how to turn their differences into blessing. And most importantly, they haven't understood the differences in the way they think. Now we're going to give you some research that was done by Doctor Donald Joy. It was reported in focus magazine by Gary Schmidt, focus on the family doctor, James Dobson's magazine, and the article was written by Gary Smalley and John Trent. And in that they discussed the two hemispheres of the brain. By now you know that we have two hemispheres in our brain. We have a left side and a right side, and the left side is the side where logic, structure, principle, idea, creativity and thrust comes from. On the right side of the brain is the side of intuition, of feeling, of nurture, of affection, of artistic nature and of content. And striking thing is that sometime between the sixteenth and twentieth or eighteenth and twenty six weeks in the womb, a boy sends a message to his mother's body, and she responds by sending a bath of testosterone and other things into the womb. And that collects only on the right brain, not on the left, but it collects on the right side of the brain of the boy. It shrinks the brain and discolors it on that side. And there is a corpus callosum, which is the connecting fibers between the two brains, which enables the two brains to communicate with each other. And that bath destroys most of the connections between the two brains. And this means that. And it doesn't happen to women. It doesn't happen to girls, just happens to boys. And this means that men come out of the womb. Well, some people have jokingly said that men are literally actually brain damaged. Women have always agreed with that. But it isn't exactly brain damage. There's a purpose to it, he says. So God allows a condition with the man that he doesn't have with a woman for his purposes, and setting them apart to think differently, to complement one another. Now what happens, therefore, is that the boy comes out of the womb more one sided in his thinking. Then the girl does, and the girl comes out able to use both sides of the brain and both sides of the brain to communicate. It isn't really that we are brain damaged, but you can make a lot of jokes about it. Yeah, the messages get from one side of the girl's brain to the other side more quickly than they do little boys. Well, let me just explain some other things about this and may help you to understand some things. Um, did you know that most of the great artists were left handed? Because there's a crossover from the right brain to the left hand. And da Vinci, Michelangelo were both left handed. Um, there is in our country a man named Mel Tillis, who is a country singer. Mel Tillis stutters terribly when he talks, but when he sings, there's no stuttering at all. And the reason is that the speaking comes out of the left brain, and that's where the damage is to him. And so he stutters. But singing comes out of the right brain. And so there's no stuttering at all. We have a friend, Mel Hannah, who is with Ywam at Kailua Kona, the University of the Nations, and he's the head of the counseling department there. And when he talks, he can just hardly get his sentences out stuttering. But then when he prays, there's no stuttering at all because prayer comes out of the right brain, the affectional intuitional side. And the stuttering is comes because of the injury on the left brain. And we've noticed also that he has a very good relationship with his wife. And when he's just talking very quietly and sweetly with her, I guess because of the the love that's flowing up inside of him, the words just flow out to her. Whereas he could, in the next moment turn to someone that he doesn't know. Isn't that amazing? Now, what this research has Search has shown is that our behavior is affected by it. Have you noticed little boys are far more rambunctious and much more difficult to control than little girls are. Why? Because the boy's brain is damaged. Because the right side of the brain, which is the side of conscience, doesn't work too good. And then if it did work, it the the conduits to send the message over to the left brain where decisions are made, they're too damaged. So he doesn't get the work of conscience. Little girls aren't that way. So they got a full conscience. So they're pretty nice. Sometimes the little boys are already doing what he wants to do before his conscience catch up. Catches up with him to stop him. Now, by the time a boy matures, he's largely overcome that condition. And he's able then to perform, although his right brain still may be a little behind the times. Now, this affects behavior in many ways. Let me just show you one. Because a man lives mainly in his left brain. It's time to plan a vacation and take a vacation trip. And so the man plans it out. I'm going to drive five hundred miles, and I'm going to get to a certain motel by a certain time. So here he is, behind the wheel, and he's just driving. He's going to get there. And then his wife says, let's stop. Let's just stop and look and see what's here. We don't have to push on. We don't have to get there today. I know we gotta get there. I'm going to get there. We got destiny in mind. We got plan here. We got logic, we got structure. We're going to go. We're going to get there. But I just want to stop and smell the flowers, John. But we gotta get there. And sometimes when we've been on long trips and he's just going to get there, the only way I could get him to stop was to say, John, I have to go to the potty now. No, she has to go to the potty about every fifty miles. But sometimes women will get so many messages so quickly from that emotional right brain. Uh, then just sometimes over floods her. It'll just overwhelm her. There's too much coming all at once. She'll be trying to watch the children, and she's answering the phone, and she. She's trying to do some task in the kitchen, and the doorbell rings and there are interruptions. Somebody stops by and they want to talk to her. And then she has all kinds of concerns down in her heart and all of those things. The messages are coming and they just come. Zing zing zing zing. And pretty soon she just gets overflooded by them. And then when her husband comes in, she's so glad to see him and she just wants to talk to him. She just wants to pour it all out. All the frustration, all the overload she just wants to talk to him about. And if he'll listen to her, then she can sort it out all by herself. But John often doesn't hear that. I just want him to listen. Men have this fix it mentality. And so when she starts telling me about all the problems in the day, I go into my counseling gear. And now, Paula. Have you tried this? What have you thought about this? That's the last thing she wanted. She didn't want that at all. That isn't even why she was telling me that stuff. I don't want to be fixed. I don't want to be advised. I don't want to be counseled. I didn't I don't really want to dump all those problems on him. I just want him to hear what I'm feeling and to empathize with me, and just to put his arms around me and give me a hug. So I feel loved, I feel met, I feel supported by him. He's there with me. I suppose that I see that she's very tired. And so I say, honey, don't prepare supper tonight. Uh, we'll get a babysitter and, uh, And which go out to eat and go to a show. And I would probably be likely to say, well, we can't really afford that now, John. And if I say, okay, we'll stay home. I'm in trouble. Because that is not what I was saying. What I was saying was, I do want to be considerate of our budget, and I don't want to pile that kind of stress on you that you have to take me out. But if you really love me, you'll press past my concern there and you'll say, no, you're worth it, honey, I really want to take you out. Shorter translation. Now that you mention it, I better be worth more to you than money. So then I used to come home and I'd say. Now what does this lovely creature want? Lord, have you noticed, men, that your wives. You're not supposed to listen to what they say. You're supposed to listen to what they say. Because they don't say what they mean. And then I used to say to Paula, well, now, if that's what you meant, why didn't you just say what you meant? And then I tried to explain to him that if I had to explain to him exactly what I meant, then there would be no way at all that he could give me the gift of his understanding or his consideration. Be voluntary as a gift. It really blesses me when he reads with my heart. So you're supposed to come home, not hear what she says while hearing what she says, and read her spirit? How many men know what I'm talking about? Confusing world, isn't it? So then Paula would get so concerned and upset. The the right brain is overflooded the left brain. And this, by the way, is why he makes us different. Because men can rule things out, put things in place. We'll deal with this now. We'll deal with that later. We'll just rule this other thing out. And so she can find rest if he just stands. So. But then early on in our marriage, I made some mistakes. I don't make any more. And. And so the fix it mentality would take over and I'd say well now, Paula, why don't you just plan your day and make a list? Step one, step two, step three. Cross them over you. Get them done. I tried to tell him that the kids and all these other people that were demanding my time and attention wouldn't be aware of the list. They wouldn't go along with it. And then God had the grace to send Paula away on a retreat for about a week, and at the end of first day, plan A had long gone out the window. By the end of day two, so had B, C, and D, and by the end of day three it's oh God, send her home. Because women have a different c, uh, the man can be sitting in front of the TV and he's all he can rule everything out. Just see nothing but that TV. The woman's in the kitchen and her brain isn't damaged. So she can do all kinds of things at once. So she's talking on the phone. She's planning next week's menu, she's preparing tonight's supper, and she's hearing the kids. And now the kids are just about to burn the house down in the other room. The man doesn't even hear it. And then the woman thinks, well, doesn't care. He doesn't care. And she can't understand. Why doesn't he hear? I can hear it. Why can't he hear it? We're made differently, people. We think differently. We're telling you this for under so that you understand. The women need to understand. It isn't that the man doesn't care, just that he can focus and tune everything out and not even hear the kids. How many of you men can do that? How many of you do that? You don't even hear them, do you? Then she can't understand why you don't hear them. See? And behind this we're teaching you Ephesians five twenty one be subject to one another out of reverence for Christ. And so we're teaching you that behind if you're going to make these differences not tear you apart, first you got to understand them, but then you got to take things to the Lord. So the wife has instantly to take it to the Lord and say, Lord, I just forgive him. He didn't mean not to see the kids. I just forgive him. Now the woman tends to have one world, even if she's at work or other places. She has one world. Her world is a world of relationship. Her right brain is centered on relating. Have you, um, have you men noticed that two women can get together and for a half hour, they can tell each other things they already know. And then you wonder, what are they doing that for? That's boring. Why do they talk about something else? But women are building relationship. They'll use any kind of a conversation to build relationship with them, and they're reading each other and they're nurturing each other behind those words. And the man's, what in the world are they doing that's boring? See? So she has one world that's relationship. But the man has two worlds. His work at at work, his world at work, and the world at home. And they run on a different basis at work. A man has to be logical and concise. A man has to see what needs to be said and say just that. If a man says the obvious, he's disrespected. If he repeats himself, he's disrespected. He's supposed to just discern what's needed to get the job done function. And he uses language to function, get things done, object plan, left brain. Now he comes home and his wife has been preparing a nice meal and she's put her good dress on. She put her face on and she combed her hair. And he comes in the door and he may notice that she looks nice. But he told her yesterday she looked nice. And you don't say that to hear it. You don't say the obvious. Meanwhile, she's getting angry because he isn't saying anything. Now he sits down to eat the meal. And it is a wonderful meal. And, uh. But he said last week that he enjoyed the meal. He don't say the obvious. Obvious? You see, I'm eating it. She ought to know that I like it. And I just ask for a second helping. That ought to tell her. So he doesn't say this is a wonderful meal. But women do a different thing with language than men do. See, women don't care that that's obvious when you say it's a wonderful meal. Oh. She just. Yeah. Relationship. I'm being chosen. See, a woman wants to hear I love you, I really love you. He said that when they got married. I mean, he comes home every night, doesn't he? She ought to know I love her so he doesn't say, because that's the obvious. You don't say the obvious. See? So. So she tends to be dying emotionally because she doesn't hear these affirmations. This means that I'm talking now to the men. When we come home. We have to shift gears. We've got to get out of that logical, structured world that we've been in at work, and we got to enter the wife's world and meet her on her ground. And so we've got to make ourselves say something that's obvious, a compliment, an affirmation. And here's something that we really have to overcome. I grew up in Oklahoma ranch culture. And in Oklahoma ranch culture. A man is worth something. If he were, and he ought not to need a compliment. Any man that needs a compliment is just weak, week I got to be able to just work, no matter whether you get a compliment or not. And so then we even are told, well, don't compliment any of them. Get the big head. You know, you get all swelled up with pride. You don't compliment anybody. You work anyway. Well, that whole cultural thing just equips you to live with the wife. You're afraid that you're flattering her, and she wants to say, well, flattery will get you everywhere. Help yourself. They. She needs to hear those compliments. John is one who can get lost in any kind of a ball game. I don't care what kind of a ball it is, just so long it has a ball in it. He'll just be transfixed at the television. And so I have to to struggle with that, because he can lose touch with what's going on around him. In a sense, that linear way of of thinking that he has as, as a, a man is a blessing. When we were at seminary and John was going to school all day long, and he was driving a cab in a taxi cab in Chicago all night long. He needed to study part of the time. He needed to sleep whenever he could. And so he would drive his taxi out to the airport, and he would park in a long line of taxi cabs, and he would tell the fellow right behind him that when it was time for the line to move up, just to nudge him and he'd move. And so then John would get lost in his studies, or maybe he'd take a quick little nap. That was a real blessing. But at home, that ability to just concentrate on one thing and lose track of all that was around him wasn't a blessing at all. I left him to watch Lauren. That's our oldest son when Lauren was just a toddler. I was just going to run down a block away to the little grocery store and back. And John says, well, certainly I'll watch him. But John was trying to get some studying done, and we had a little apartment, and, uh, John just got totally engrossed in his study. And when I came back from the grocery store, Lauren was still safe. He was toddling around, just having a grand and glorious time. John was still lost in those books, but there was a very large can of talcum powder that had been spilled all over that apartment. John just went around. He hadn't seen it. He couldn't smell it. He had no idea that it was there. And I confronted him about that. And all he could do was just. Oh. So I tended to think, well, he really doesn't have that much sense of responsibility about this child. And we have another one on the way. At the time. And what am I going to do? I'm going to have to do this all by myself because my husband is going to be lost in what he thinks is most important, and I had to work all of that out. So I was hurt and upset and and I'd accused him sometimes, and every time I would accuse him or speak harshly to him about would hook right in to trigger into what he had lodged in his heart against his mother for her being nickel, because he hadn't known to how to give that to the Lord at that time. And so then he would respond, like, here is the specter of mother, you know, gotta shut mother out of my life because that hurts. So we're going to do now is just give you a few more examples of what happens in this communication thing, and then talk about the wounds we have as children that make it even worse. Uh, Paula used to say to me something like, uh, she come up with some conclusion about some person and I'd say, where did you get that? What's your first principle here? And I'd say, well, I just know it I, I just sense it. It just seems obvious to me, but no no no no. The man you see gets it. He figures things out logically. You add this fact, this fact, this fact, this fact, and you come up with a conclusion. So I would say to Paula, now what's your first principle? Where do you start from? What's your first idea here? What good is it going to do to you or me for me to know where I started from? I know something and it's important and it's going to affect what we're doing now. John, trust me, you understand what's going on. How many have done this? One. And the husband says to the wife, what's your first principle here? What's your first? What'd you start from? Or he'll say to her, don't you think you're being a little hasty? Don't you think you're judging this person? Paula used to come up to me and she'd say, do you know, in the pastorate, you know, do you know that woman, that she isn't relating to you the way you think she's relating to you? And I'd say, well, aren't you being a little judgmental? And I'd say, no. I can just feel it in her. I can see it in her eyes. Just watch out for that woman, John. Now, there are a lot of husbands have thought that their wives were jealous when their wives would try to tell them that some woman was not relating purely and cleanly to them, when actually God gave her the kind of sense that can not just nurture her husband's heart, but she can protect his heart as well, because she really has a good sense about those things. We've had to counsel a lot of businessmen and a lot of pastors whose wives gave them warning, but they couldn't receive it. You know, they thought the wife was being judgmental. And then sure enough, that man or that woman the wife warned about brought him down. Every once in a while, I'll ask John to help me with something. I don't know very much about mechanical things. And so maybe something is broken, and I'll call John and I'll say, John, will you help me with this? Oh, yeah. That's easy. That's simple. Now, sometimes I think he's saying you're just really pretty dense. You know, this is simple. It's obvious. It's easy. And if you weren't so stupid about it, you would have seen that you could have done it yourself. But that isn't what he's saying. You realize, husbands, how quickly you can step in a hole innocently. So one thing we need to learn is to say when we feel like we're offended because he's telling us that we should have known something, then we need to reflect it back to him with a question. Um, what am I hearing you say? You know, what? Would you say that again? What are you really trying to say to me? I don't think I'm getting. Or you can say, you know, that the way you put that you didn't mean to, but it made me feel put down, made me feel stupid. Talk to each other. See? Clear the air. Don't just assume you know what that other guy meant? We had to do this kind of thing at Elijah house, because for a while, it seemed like messages were getting between the different members of our staff, and people wouldn't stop to get things cleared. They would just feel hurt, and then they'd go off and they'd nurse their hurts. And we had a retreat. We talked about ways of communicating and learning to hear one another, and they all made a kind of a covenant to stop, especially when they felt really hurt by somebody. Their toes had really been stepped on. They should stop and say, I'm not sure I understood really what you meant. Could we talk about that? And they they were pretty good at following their commitments and they would stop to talk about things. And after a while they began to hear each other clearly more accurately. Offense. Not very often. You understand what we're saying to you as husbands and wives? Friends and friends don't jump to conclusions that you think you know what the other one was saying by what he was saying. I'm just open up and ask each other questions. Now sometimes I come home late. I've forgotten what time it is or I'm busy. I come in the door and Paula says, why were you so late? Well, men think women mean what they say. So then I get into my left brain and I start giving her all the reasons I was late. I had to go here. I had to go there. And I was detained by this person and that person. That isn't what Paula was asking. And it isn't what she wanted. The women don't say what they mean. You got to figure that out. What I was really saying to him was you were late. I didn't know exactly where you were. I was concerned about you. I didn't know if you'd been hurt in traffic or. Or whether you were detained by somebody who really did talk of. The children were just about ready for dinner. They were kind of hungry, and I really didn't know what to do about dinner. Whether we should wait a little bit for you or or or what? Wouldn't it have been nice if she said that? But that's the way we talk, isn't it? Why? Here's another one for you. How many of you men and women have experienced that? If you like to play cards, there's a man, the husband and wife team, and another husband and wife team. And so Ken and Donna come over to play cards with us. Women are related. So while we're playing cards, Paula and Donna are just sitting there talking about all kinds of things, having a wonderful time. And Ken and I are getting more and more bothered. And we want to say, Will you shut up and just deal the cards? Just play cards. And then we really get upset if they win because they weren't even paying any attention. And that happens. That happens. How many of you men and women have had that experience? Because men got that left brain going, got to get this thing going. It used to be a pain to take John shopping with me, because the moment we entered the store, he'd be saying, are you ready to go? Ready to go. Got everything? Let's go, let's go. Used to be my definition of hell. My definition of hell for a while was to have to go shopping with Paula. And then I, I learned, uh, I may have read it in Gary Smalley's book. I don't remember exactly where I got it, but I learned that, you know, man is a kind of a hunter to go and find what he's looking for. And so every time we go in this huge supermarket, I will send him after one thing, and then I have time to browse around and see what else I want. Just really enjoy the shopping. When he comes back with that one thing, I'll send him for something else. I'm just happy as I can be. Being a hunter. See if the man in all kinds of stores shopping. And actually, it's had a long term effect on him, though, because now, at least when we're traveling, he really rather enjoys going shopping. If it doesn't last too long, see if the man can find it the first time. First grab. That's a successful shopping. But if a woman found it the first time that had ruined the whole day. Yeah, they gotta look at everything. Suppose. Suppose John should come home and find the house in in a mess. The kids have their toys all over the floor, and, um, I haven't finished the dishes, and. And I'm busy with some kind of a project, and I. I'm hurrying, and I'm just really frazzled. And so I say, what's the problem here? Let's fix it. He'll say, why is the house in such an uproar? But he's speaking out of that left brain. He he sees there's a problem here. But when he responds in that way, in that tired, rushed quality where I'm already feeling overburdened and and hurried. Then I may hear his words very emotionally, and I may think that he's saying, you aren't doing a very good job. You're incompetent or or you're disorganized. You're a lousy housekeeper. And he didn't mean to say those things to me at all. He was just saying, what can we do to fix it? How can we change this? He was asking a practical question, and he may not even be aware that he's saying anything that would threaten me. But it does threaten me. You understand? Women are thinking and feeling relationally, and men are thinking practically, and so we just kind of miss each other. And if there's something emotional in John, what he would really be saying to me would be, uh, I'm tired. I've worked all day, and it's just kind of hard for me to cope with disorder with the unsettledness. Now, if I can hear him saying that, then I don't have to feel threatened. I don't have to respond out of my hurt. And then sometimes it works the other way. I come home and Paula says, hey, look, the neighbor is building a beautiful new deck on the back of their house. Now, I've learned that women don't mean what they say, and there's something saying something else, and they're saying so I think she's saying, why aren't you building me one? So what do I have to do? We're all in all these jarring misreadings of each other. What we're saying is put Jesus at the center and take it to the Lord instantly. One of the most blessed things the Lord said to us in the beginning of our marriage, we've been married. Forty five years gets better every year. But the thing he said was the moment something happens, I want you to take it to me in prayer instantly. I want you to pray all day. And so Paul says something like that, and I feel a dagger behind it, I'll say, and the Lord had to put two other things in that. He said, I want you to be honest, and I want the cross to be in those flesh prayers. So he didn't want me to say, Lord, I thank you for that wonderful gift you gave me. But would you just fix her? He wants me to say, Lord, I'm upset with her. I'd like to belt her. That's honest. But Lord, bring my reaction to the cross. Give me a new heart that can understand her and lay down my life for her. And then I can come back and say, uh, honey, were you suggesting I should build one? And then I'd say, no, I just wanted you to look at the pretty deck, that's all. And I say, you're sure? There's another kind of a dynamic that happens. Suppose that John has responded to me because he's missed what I really meant, and this has been going on about a number of subjects. It wasn't just a one time thing, but it just seems like he's he's not hearing me, and there's a crossness in his tone, and he may be tired, but there's a crossness in his tone. And so I'm hurt. And without even thinking about it, I just respond immediately and I say, John, you always answer me this way. You never hear me. Now, I didn't mean literally you always or you never. I was just trying to find words that carried the emotional freight of what I was feeling. But I'm in that logical left brain. And so I say now, Paulette, I don't always do that. Now, you remember last week. And it isn't that I never do this now. Two months ago, I did that for you. And I missed her totally because she wasn't really saying you never knew. Always. Women are just trying to find a word that's powerful enough to get. You will have emotional reactions to things. I mean, a man has the capacity to feel wounded by things that are said or or done to him, but he tends to just withdraw when he's feeling threatened or hurt, and he'll he'll think about it. And he may think about it for days. He's trying to get it all sorted out logically. And so while he's doing that, I feel shut out. Uh, and I, I'm angry more than angry. I, I think he he just doesn't care what what I was feeling just isn't that important to him. And he thinks that I'm being unreasonable and irrational, and I should be able to handle my emotions about it when all I wanted him to do was hug me. Our third. Yeah, our third son lost his wife, and so he was raising his voice alone for about four years. And then the Lord had the grace and the love to to bring a wonderful woman to him. She was more than we'd been able to even pray for. It's a very loving, nurturing kind of person. But she's also, um, what we call very upfront. She just tells things like they are, and, uh, she doesn't try to disguise anything. She just how she feels. And being a woman, she instantly knows what she feels so she can instantly tell John what she's feeling. And so she would seem to erupt with some kind of an emotional response. And John didn't know Johnny. I'll say Johnny to so you don't get it mixed up with Johnny. Okay. Johnny would withdraw. Much like his dad did, because he was going to ponder what it was that she said. And then after he had it all thought out, then he would come back and be willing to talk with her about it. But she came to me and she says, you know, we haven't been married very long. We're really still on the the honeymoon. And I'm beginning to wonder, you know, what I got into? And she described what was happening to them. It happened several different times. She he just doesn't seem to understand what I'm saying. He just withdraws. He shuts me out. He doesn't care. He doesn't care. Does he really love me? He says I'm really calling that into question. And I prayed with her about it and assured her that yes, I was sure he really did love her. But then they. She called me again one day and she said, uh, you know, you guys were too close, and the people at Elijah's house were too close for us to talk. We really needed somebody who didn't know us at all and and could be very objective about it. And she says, we went over to the friends church and we talked to the pastor, and she said, he explained to me what was happening, that I could just spill it out. And John was just thinking about it. But here I was. I was really caring for him and loving him, and he was doing this, pondering about it because he did love me, she says. Now that we know what's going on, we don't have to be upset about it. We can just kind of laugh together about it. And I can say, Johnny, can you just give that to me? Whatever you're thinking about, can you just give it to me unpolished? It'll be okay if you do that. And so very quickly they got things turned around. And it was such a relief to our son Johnny, that he had just resisted going to the counselor in the first place. But he says it was such a relief. He could hardly wait till he got back, you know, to talk more about this thing. And so now they're just they're getting along so beautifully. I've never seen a couple bond so quickly. I've never seen boys bond so quickly to his stepmother. They're just in love with each other, but they understand the dynamic that's going on. And they don't go off and pout in a corner or or blow up about something because they think they know what they heard. So the first purpose in this teaching tonight is just to equip you. Knowledge is a protection, and wisdom is a protection to the man that has it. Ecclesiastes say so if you understand this, it can save a lot of hassles in your home. You can cut each other some slack and understand that you come from a different base and respect that base, then you can do fine. Now I want to take it one step deeper, and that is that when there are deep wounds inside, that exacerbates the already natural differences, then you really got problems. Now, what happened in my case is my mother made me work hard and she'd say to me, she'd call me Jackie. She'd say, Jackie, if you just get this job done, well, then you can go play. So I'd quit. Work hard fast. Got it done. Go to play. I wasn't playing five minutes. Here she'd come. Well, Jackie, now, if you just do this job, then you can play. Get that job done. Get out to work. Here she comes again. Jackie, we do this job well. You should see the way my brother and I play cards fast, because mom's going to come put us to work again. Got to get her play in. So then what happens is I've been working hard all day. I'm exhausted. I'm tired. I come in the door and Paula wants to tell me about all the problems the kids have been in during the day. Now, what's that trigger into? I didn't get my rest time. I didn't get my play time. Here comes mama again. Or I ask him to do something that has to be done fairly quickly. I say I'll do it in a little while because I'm not going to. I'm not going to have my playtime interrupted again by mama. See? So then I have to learn this is not mother, and I have to forgive my mother, and I have to bring all that stuff to death on the cross so that she can say something to me without it triggering into all that deep wounding. My father's work caused him to travel a lot, and so that meant that often he wasn't available when I really needed him. And it wasn't because he didn't love me. He just he was out working for us, but he he wasn't there. And so when John would come in and for some reason he would just withdraw into himself, then that would trigger into that feeling of my dad's gone again. Everything was wonderful when my dad was there, but then he'd have to leave. And every time he left, I'd be lonely. And I'd feel abandoned in some way because he wasn't there to defend me. So John's withdrawals into whatever he was doing into a book or into the TV or whatever, when I was really needing to talk to him, just triggered all that. It just brought it all up again, until I forgave my father and my heart was healed in relation to his absence. And then I didn't react to John like that anymore. Then you remember a little while ago she said, I would withdraw and think a thing through. Well, I was parentally inverted as a kid. Now, what that meant was my dad was a good man till I was about ten years old. And then he lost it to alcohol. And then I became the strong one for my mother. I became the father to my younger sister. I became the father to my younger brother. And that meant whenever there was tension in the home, I just automatically turn off my feelings and handle it logically and be the peacemaker and settle things in the home. Now I built that turn off mechanism. So now when there's tension between us that just clicks right in, I turn off emotionally and I start thinking it out logically. And then that means that Paula is sitting over there feeling aced out. And she used to say that same to me thing to me. Why don't you give me something raw? Once I don't get anything but the end product, I feel aced out. So I had to bring my practiced habit of thinking it through first to death on the cross. Now, we men have been trained in the culture to be Alan Ladd, Gary Cooper, Robert Mitchum, and John Wayne all rolled in one. You know, we're going to go through the fires of hell and show nothing on our face, and we got it together. And now we come home and we've got tension inside of us. And the minute we come in the door, the wife's an actual burden bearer. So she feels our tension. And so she says, what's the matter, honey? I say, nothing, I'm all right. But I feel something. And so I try to get him to talk about what's been going on during the day. But I've got it so repressed, I don't even know what I feel. I want you to know, we men have been equipped by the culture, and we've turned off our feelings to. We don't even know what they are. And you need to listen to your wife. Now listen to Proverbs thirty one eleven. The heart of her husband doth safely trust in her. The heart of her husband doth safely trust in her, and he shall have no lack of gain. So we gotta learn to listen to our wives. When they tell us what we're feeling. At least give it some consideration. Because she'll know better what we feel than what we know. You know, I'd be. I'd be angry. But I had that practiced habit of turning off my feelings and handling emotionally. And she'd say, and handling logically. And she say, do you know you're angry? I'm not. I got it together. But she was right, and I was angry. There are a lot of women who feel so shut out because their husband talk about what they're feeling, that they begin to think, well, maybe these are my feelings, maybe something wrong with me. And so they'll just push them down inside. And then after a while, they have such an accumulation of things they've pushed down inside that have never been talked about, that they come down with some kind of illness. And when a when a man is feeling a lot of things but pushed them all down and now the wife feels them all and he won't admit he's got any problems, now she has his problems roiling around inside of her with no name on them. And she may be crying and he thinks she's immature and he gets she gets sick a lot and he thinks he's married this weak woman. Then if he dies six months later, she's got perfect health because she doesn't have to bear his problems anymore with no name on them. And in this part of the lesson, what we're saying to you men is tell your wives everything that is worrying. Tell them what bothered you at the office. If the boss is insulted you or snipped at you, tell her about it. If some other employee is acing you out or worrying, you tell her about it. Because when you tell her, then she knows what she's feeling. Because she's feeling your burdens. Now she can handle it. If you're a pastor or a counselor and you can't break confidence, you can't give her the details of what's bearing you down. At least you can say to her, I really had a rough day. I've got a lot of pressure on me, a lot of burdens I picked up from people. And, uh, it's just pretty heavy on me now. And then she could give him a big hug. She can pray for him. She can say, Lord, lift the weight of these burdens off of my husband and refresh him. And the main thing is, she knows that those emotions roiling around in her are not her own. They're his. And now she can handle them. So if you want to protect your wife, tell her what's bothering you. Tell her about your day. See what? What happens is he comes home and she says she feels the problem. She says, honey, how'd your day go? He says, fine. And she says, tell me what happened, John. Well, it was just like. It was just like any other day. I'm fine. Can't you tell me just one thing that happened? I can't think of anything. So there's. There's the door of his heart just slammed in her, in her face. And she doesn't know what to do. And nine chances out of ten. Then she'll push him to try to tell her. And then he just feels pressed. He feels threatened. He just to get out of his face. And then she's hurt out of his face. When I was a little girl, my mother was a Of really wonderfully kind woman, and she she knew how to lay down her life for her family. But sometimes she would, uh, give me something, uh, to do. She, uh, would give me a task, maybe to take out the garbage or or she'd ask me to do the dishes or something, and I fully intended to do what she asked me to do, but I wanted to finish what I was doing first. And so I would delay about. I'd say, okay, but then I would delay about fulfilling the task, and then my mother would come along and she would do it because when she told me she wanted it done, she wanted it done right away. And as an adult, I know she probably had a pretty good reason. But as a child I thought, well, it doesn't make any sense when I get it done, just so long as I get it done. And so as a little child, I'd, I'd be angry about that. And, and I would think to myself, I am never going to treat my child like that again because I would be made to feel ashamed that I hadn't done it. When she went in and did it with all the other things she had to do. And when we judge someone like that, then what happens is Romans two one you have no excuse when you judge another, for you yourself are doing the very same thing. And so even though I said I would never treat a child of mine like that, I found myself doing all kinds of things. If my children didn't act quickly enough on something that I assigned to them, then I would think, well, I guess I'll just have to do it myself. And I would go ahead and do it myself, and then they would be wounded, or especially with John if he came home and I said, um, you know, the garbage man is going to come by and we better get that trash out before he comes or it's going to be a problem. If he didn't do it immediately, then I would do it myself. and then he would feel insulted because he would have done it. He just wasn't going to jump and run with it. How many have this kind of an experience? Sometimes. Yeah. Okay. Now, how are we going? We're coming to the end of the talk. How are we going to turn all of these differences to blessing? Simply by the grace of Jesus, you've got to walk close enough to Jesus every moment of the day. You gotta walk close enough to him. And those flesh prayers I was talking about so that you can pray right on the spot. And here's another thing that is confusing to Christians. Christians think anger is sin. And so they. I'm not angry. Meanwhile, the steam is coming off the ears. I'm not angry. But listen to the scripture. Scripture says Jesus never sinned, and Scripture says he looked around at them with anger, grieved at their hardness of heart. So don't push your anger down and say, I'm not angry. Admit them. Let them live. I don't say let them loose on other people. Let them live enough to know them and embrace them. And then say, Lord, I give it to you. Be angry, but sin not. Scripture says, let not the sun go down on your anger, so let your feelings live. If you're feeling slighted by your wife, if you're feeling insulted, if you're feeling like she doesn't understand you, like she's being critical or she's being harsh. Admit it. Admit what you feel. That's normal. As natural. Lord, I'm feeling insult. I'm feeling hurt. I'm feeling angry. Lord, I bring that to death on the cross. You come give me a loving answer. For your wife. For my wife. You come and let forgiveness flow through and enable me to lay down my life for her. Enable me to sense what she needs and respond for herself. And by the Lord's grace, we can exercise a discipline of not allowing ourselves to wallow in feelings. To rehearse the hurts, to make up speeches. The Lord will call us to account. He'll make us aware. And at the moment we have that impulse to make up some angry speech. Then we say, Lord, this is the way I feel, but I don't want to put that on the person I love. I don't want to put that on anybody. You come and take that and you give me the answer that he needs. In Ephesians five, there's a very singular kind of command that's given. It says to men, husbands, love your wives. Doesn't say to women, love your husbands. They would anyway. It tells men love your wives, meaning lay down your life. Go over into her world, sense what she needs, cherish her. Meet her with compliments and affirmation. Be there for her. But then it says to the women, respect your husband. And it has to tell women to respect their husbands because women tend not to respect their husbands. Women tend to think he's insensitive, he's dull, he's dumb, and I have a right to feel the way I do because of the way he treats me. And that is not respect. Respecting him means that as a woman, I'm going to bring myself to death on the cross. I'm going to try to understand and appreciate his way of thinking, not think of his differences as being something that shouldn't be. But to begin to remind myself he is different because God created him to be different. And he can be a balance, for he can help me sort things out as well as hug me. If I give him a chance to do that. And I understand, and I receive what he's saying to me when he tries to sort things out, if I receive that as his intent to love me in his way, and I don't judge his way of loving. And if you do this enough, then what happens is, as you live together with the woman, cherishing the way she thinks. Pretty soon your own right brain begins to work and you begin to sense and feel things you didn't sense and feel before. And as the woman respects her husband and respects his logic and his ability to rule things in and out, pretty soon her left brain begins to be able to manage her right brain a little better. And we begin to really share in the one flesh relationship. If I don't choose to respect my husband, then I block him from fulfilling what God has called him to do as priest of the family. As my cover. As my protection. Lord, open our eyes, open our ears, open our heart, and let our old ways of seeing and hearing and feeling and thinking be brought to death on the cross. Lord, we pray that you enable us to identify with the other person, whether it's a husband or a wife or or whether it's a friend or or one of our children. Give us the ability to identify with the other and understand from their perspective, feel from their point of feeling and experiencing Lord, so that we don't push our way on them. We don't insist on our own way. Lord, you have wanted that we would become whole in you, that we would mature into the fullness of Christ. And so, Lord, you put us together as husband and wife and men and women, all kinds of relationships, so that we could drink from each other and we could come into balance and hold the Lord. We see that we in many cases have just reacted. We didn't understand what the other one's saying or not saying. we didn't understand the other ones way of thinking and we just reacted. And so, Lord, we need to be forgiven and we need to forgive. Lord, I ask that right now. You walk among us all forgiveness and enable us who have been as I've talked tonight. Lord, I have sensed so many husbands and wives here with pockets of loneliness between them, with ancient misunderstandings that have never been talked out. Uh, they've just been making do and going on, but they haven't. Like they're living as strangers in the same house in some instances, because they've never really talked these things out. And so, Lord, I pray that you just walk down through the years with each husband and wife here and begin to touch those lonely, hurting, silent places and the not so silent places, and touch them with healing power and begin to enable them to comprehend each other, understand each other, and forgive each other. I pray, Lord, that you melt the walls between the sexes tonight. Break down those dividing walls, Lord, and enable us to enjoy our differences so that they they don't become the trouble. They become the very spice of life. They become the fun of life. Lord, change us so that we can have fun in our relationships and giggle about our differences. Oh, cast away the fear. The fear of not being loved. The fear of not being understood. The fear of being rejected. Let perfect love cast away fear and give us such a security inside that we're able to let the other one be his klutzy self. Let the other one be who he is or she is, and understand and appreciate. And Lord, if we need to confront one another about a thing, then we pray that we might do it with your grace and your love, with your respect for them, so that they really feel loved and helped and not just put down smash. Dishonored. Oh, thank you Jesus. Amen. Amen. Now, we'd like for you to take a break, just for a little while. Come back about twenty after the question and answer time we find is usually far even more valuable than the teaching time. And so we'll have a little time of questions. I want to ask a question. If you are married to a person that's not saved, and more in particular, if they are Muslim, how do you deal with that? Married to a what? To a person that's not saved. The person who is not saved if they're Muslim? Yes. When the Muslim. Yeah. Uh. First Corinthians. Yeah. First Corinthians seven fourteen says the unbelieving partner is consecrated through the believing partner elsewhere, your children unclean. But as it is, they are holy. So if you are the one who believes, but the partner is a muslim, then all of the power and grace of the Holy Spirit that is coming into you is flowing into him, and it's in him, though he doesn't yet know where it came from and doesn't honor Jesus. There it is. So, uh, we've had women who, uh, were counseling for us, and the husband was just nowhere with the Lord. And they believed that the power coming into them was going into the husband. It wasn't that if he'd just become a believer, then he could be the head spiritually. They really believed he was already the head. And so one woman in particular, without breaking any confidence, would ask her husband questions about counseling. You never heard such marvelous wisdom that came out of that man because you see the Holy Spirit. What? She activated his position. He, um. The sacrament is valid despite the condition of the priest. Your minister may be a rascal. Thank God he isn't. And she isn't. But if one of them were and baptized you, the baptism would still be valid because God honors the position. So when you honor the position of the husband or the wife, then glorious things can come through. But on the other hand, Scripture says, be not unequally yoked with an unbeliever. So it's, uh, if you were a Christian, you wouldn't be wise to marry a muslim. Now, maybe you became a Christian long after you married that person. Well, then you just have to keep praying for the person. And Paula can say how you pray for him. I would like to say something else. Sure. What? The wife. Who? The Christian wife. Who is married to a muslim would probably have to contend with and struggle with would be her own sense of her own identity, because the Muslim man Has many, many years of culture behind him. He thinks differently about a woman, and it may not be that he just chooses to do that. It's just been built into him. It's been modeled to him. It's been taught to him. So you need to be very secure in your relationship to the Lord Jesus and in your own identity, your own sense of worth as a woman, and recognize that his attitude toward you doesn't necessarily mean if he seems to be oppressive or domineering, or he tends seems to tend to to put you down in some way, that it doesn't mean necessarily that he doesn't love you. It's just the way he's been taught to relate to you. But you better keep your relationship with the Lord Jesus very much alive, so that you don't feel oppressed and made to feel like less. Then how do you pray for him? Ephesians three sixteen I pray for you that you may be strengthened with might in the inner man. We need strength in our spirit to stand so pray strength into His spirit. And then Ephesians one eighteen I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened to know the hope of your calling in Christ Jesus. So you pray for his eyes to get open. Um, when our Muslim you're in a spiritual battle and the powers of darkness, as in Second Corinthians four four have put a blinder on him, the God of this world has blinded their eyes to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel in the face of Christ. So you've got to pray that that thing be lifted off of him so he can see and pray. Blessing for him. Just blessing. We've seen a lot of people turned around who seem dead set on sinning against us. I mean, I'm not talking about Christian and Muslim now. I'm talking about just, you know, people, people who seem to be just choosing to do something harmful. And we've seen people bless them and bless them and bless them. And pretty soon the Lord had been given enough invitation to come in that that began to turn around, at least in behavior, if not in belief. Another question at um, university. Uh, it's been quite popular, this idea of, um, brain differences between male and female. They, uh, call it brain sex. And, uh, they're discussing the possibility of a female brain inside a male body and a male brain inside a female body. And often that gets used as a justification for homosexuality and things like that. Uh, what's your response to that? Yeah. Um, let me explain something to you first. The researchers are making a speculation. So far, they can't confirm it. It's just their speculation that sometimes when the boy in the womb sends the message to his mother's body, she is herself so disturbed at the time that she can't properly send a secretion into the womb. Therefore, his brain is not affected. Therefore, he thinks like a woman, and so that can happen inside the womb before he ever comes out of the womb. And then you remember I said that we are both male and female? Well, what can happen? We don't have time to explain everything to you here about prenatal wounding, but we want you to know that in our personal spirit, in the womb, we know far more with a mind of our spirit than anybody is aware of. You remember that John the Baptist, six months along in Elizabeth's womb, leaped for joy when Jesus came in the room. So in, in, in his mother Mary, Mary's womb. And so in the womb. When the parents want us to be the opposite sex, we know that. And so here's a man, a boy being formed in the womb, but his parents desperately want a girl and that can cross his poles, as it were. And now he's manifesting mainly in the female pole of his being. And then all of his life he has these tendencies towards homosexuality. When he finally gives in to it, it seems so right to him. He says, God created me this way. I found out who I am. That's all delusion. God doesn't create anybody to be homosexual. He doesn't want anybody, anybody to be homosexual. All that has happened is that he's finally given in to the sickness that started in the womb. And so what we have done is to find out all that, pray for it all to be healed, for the Lord to walk into the depths of the heart. And then we'll say to the person, Lord, will you speak to the depths of this man and say to him, I don't make any mistakes. I didn't send you to be a woman. I sent you to be a man, I loose you, you're in binding and loosing, which is Matthew eighteen eighteen and Sixteen nineteen. Whatever you loose on earth is loose in heaven. So I loose you from that lie that you should be a girl. And I set you free to be a man. And then we say, Lord, reach in and take those twisted poles and just set them in order. You know, we have seen people come to us. I'm thinking of one man in particular. He'd had fifty homosexual encounters the very month that he came and did start in the womb. I prayed for all these things to be healed, and I prayed, seeing the Lord set those poles in order. That man went out, and he never again had a desire for a man. He had a desire for a woman. Later on he married. He has two children. Ten years later he wrote and said, I am still straight. I've never, ever felt confusion again. Uh, we've had many, many, many hundreds of testimonies like that. So one of the lies about homosexuality is that you were created that way. Second lie is nothing to do about it. That's the way you're made. You're just stuck with it. and we have seen hundreds of homosexuals healed. But it can start clear back in the womb. But then it may continue with father rejection, father absence, father abuse, mother smothering all kinds of things that happen after birth. There are other contributing factors. Most often it is, as she said, the brutal father with a sensitive boy, and then he can't accept the father model for structure. He can't accept authority in that vein. And so he'll reject that and flee to the female side of his being. And then he's hunting for a man. This is really, uh, if you want to get a good book on this, get Leon Payne's book, The Broken Image, or, uh, masculinity Crisis in Masculinity. Those two books, she deals with this, and she says what homosexuals are really? And she's ministered to thousands of homosexuals. What homosexuals are really trying to do in relating to another man is to find the masculinity they lost. another question. It's more or less a follow on from the last one, but it's something happening in embryo like knowing something, won't you, in your mother's womb and you know that affects your life. Like the thing I'm talking about, for instance, is that, um, when I was when my mother was carrying me, she was very hurt and physically hurt and sore. And so she told me his hand on her and pushed the baby away. But to me, that's my yes. And that's, you know, in all kinds of things in my life. Yes. With that kind of experience, everybody could hear her. When you have that kind of experience in the womb, the baby knows it and the baby can feel rejected by the father. What this can do is set you up with bitteroot judgment and expectancy to be rejected, and then that can broadcast to men. And then you either you don't marry or if you do marry, you keep feeling like your husband pushing you away and you broadcast messages push me away. You're going to do it. That's what men do. So you have to get to the root by inviting the Lord to come. And then you forgive your father for doing that to you. And then we just say, Lord, take out of her the lie that she's rejectable. Take out of her the lie that she's not acceptable. And speak into her. That she's God's gift to earth. And that God breathed his breath of life into her. That's. That's why she had life in the beginning. And God's breathing was holy and clean and good. And she's chosen, and she's precious and she's beautiful in his sight. She's God's child. And there's no way that she can love you. Lose his love. She does everything right. She won't be loved anymore. She does everything wrong. She won't be loved any less. God just simply loves her because she belongs to him. That needs to be prayed into a number of times until the inner being says, that's right. That's who I am. I'm welcome, I belong. I have a right to be. I'm beautiful, I'm glorious. And her husband could tell her that, too. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Congratulations. If a mother is violated in her teens or, you know, young by a male and then marries and conceives a scene for the stand, then to me would have rejection towards males. Therefore, would that rejection travel through the males or being females? She said if you could understand her. If a mother is violated and conceives in the act of that violation when she's in her teens. Oh, okay. Yeah. If violated, but doesn't conceive, then marries and then conceives, would what's in her go into the child? Okay, we're not talking conditioning as though this happens. This must be the result in our personal spirit. All of us have freedom to choose how we'll react. So it could be that in her is a wounding from that being violated. And so when she's making love with her husband, that wounding is still being overcome, still being wrestled with. And she's conceived and continues to make love to her husband. And her feelings can go into the child. And the child may or may not react. Uh, if the child does react, the symptoms can be there's an unexplainable feeling of uncleanness in the sex act. Uh, there's an unexplainable feeling of fear in the sex act. There's an unexplainable feeling of being used and rejected in the sex act. And, uh, all of that can fill the feel the child. Uh, if you excuse me a minute for speaking frankly. Um, one woman came to me with a great fear of the male organ. And, uh, so we talked about all the experiences and everything else. She hadn't been molested. She hadn't ever been raped. But it turned out that her father was now a Christian and was gentle and loving with his wife. But when she was conceived, he knew nothing about love play, and he just in effect raped his wife every night. And so, while she was in the womb, he was in fact raping his wife. So here was that male organ penetrating towards her domicile with great force. And so the baby came out of the womb with that fear of the male organ. So what we had to do was to invite Jesus into the depths of that woman's heart and into the womb experience and enable her to forgive her father, and then let perfect love cast away fear and then say, Lord, bring that reactive mechanism to death on the cross. Give her a new heart, so that when her husband approaches her it's blessing rather than fear. And she was healed. It sounded like yes, or just that it's the responsibility of the male to make changes. Yeah. Yes. You might want to know, why do we say the male should make the changes? Yeah, yeah. That's right. Yeah. Yeah. Because of Ephesians five twenty seven following or twenty one following. It's about the twenty second or third, twenty third verse. For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is head of the church. How is Christ head of the church? By laying down his life. So first the buck stops here. I am responsible for her, stops here. And I must lay down my life for her. Because Jesus laid down his life for the church, and I'm head of her as Christ is head of the church. So now I must lay down my life for her. That means, in practical terms, that I can't get away with demanding that she come over into my logical world. I have to lay down my life, go meet her in her world for her sake. And this is why the Scripture is saying to give honor to the woman and goes on to say, in order that your prayers may not be hindered. See, uh, I'm I'm to enter her world for her sake. If I do that, what then happens is that she then reaches into my heart. A man protects woman by his logic and his structure. But woman was taken from the rib area. She protects the heart. So it's Paula's job to protect my feelings and to fill me with the human zest for living. So if I protect her, then she. And lay down my life to meet her in her and her world. Then she's able to come over into my heart, refresh me and fill me with the joy of life.

Thanks for listening to the Inspirational Media podcast, Timeless Voices for Today's World. To explore more messages and resources, visit us at inspirational.org.nz.

See you next time.