Category Archives: Marriage

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LYH58: Ruth’s Prayer: The Secret to a Long-lasting Marriage [PODCAST]

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Ruth's Prayer

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You can find the full blog post on this topic at haroldarnold.com/ruthsprayer

Ruth’s Prayer

Evangelist Billy Graham has led more than 2.5 million people to Christ worldwide. It is estimated that this dairy farmer from Charlotte, North Carolina, has had a lifetime audience, including those reached through television and radio broadcasting, exceeding two billion people. This audience has included every sitting American president since Harry Truman and the leaders of innumerable countries. Graham writes in his autobiography that from a young age he understood his purpose – to preach the gospel.

Billy Graham has deservedly received many accolades for his faith journey and evangelism.  But, I believe that his great achievements were buttressed and maybe even empowered by someone who hasn’t received the same attention—his wife Ruth Bell Graham.

Billy and Ruth met when they were students together at Wheaton College. When considering matrimony, Billy Graham records Ruth’s prayer in his autobiography (Graham, 2007). It reads as follows, “Ruth went back to her room (she later told me), got on her knees, and told the Lord that if she could spend the rest of her life serving Him with me, she would consider it the greatest privilege imaginable”.

  • Step 1:  Seek God’s direction
  • Step 2: Choose who to serve
  • Step 3: Commit for life
  • Step 4: Acknowledge the privilege

This extraordinary prayer is for any couple that seeks to pursue their ultimate life’s purpose as a partnership. Make the decision today to pray that the Lord give you the rest of your life to spend in service to Him with your spouse. Then let your attitude and your action demonstrate that it is the greatest privilege imaginable. I promise that this will unleash the unimaginable in your life.

Let me know if you and your spouse can commit to that prayer.

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LYH57: Three Keys to a More Intimate Marriage [PODCAST]

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Marital Intimacy 2.0

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You can find the full blog post on this topic at haroldarnold.com/mi20

Marital Intimacy Ground Zero

Most chronic intimacy-related challenges fall into one or more of five categories:

  • Biological issues that make it difficult to perform optimally
  • Libido differences
  • Inattentiveness to spousal intimacy needs/satisfaction
  • Spousal neglect
  • Infidelity-induced emotional distance

Marital Intimacy 1.0

  • Contentment with the status quo rather than expectation that better marital intimacy is possible
  • Difficulty talking about sexual satisfaction and desires
  • “Faking it”
  • Visualization of others during intercourse with your spouse
  • Reliance on pornography and erotica to achieve sexual satisfaction
  • Emotionless sex (dubbed “sextimacy”)

Marital Intimacy 2.0

Three Steps to Marital Intimacy 2.0:

  1. Incorporate worship time as a couple as part of your “foreplay”
  2. Pray during the sexual encounter
  3. Express Thankfulness
Get your free copy of the “10 Proven Steps to Extraordinary Influence” at haroldarnold.com

Check out the blog post HERE to read more about this.

Please do me a huge favor and click HERE to go to iTunes and leave me a rating and review. It will only take 2 minutes of your time. And, it means so much to me. And, just for you, I’ll give you a shout out on the next show.

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Marital Intimacy 2.0: Finding God Between the Sheets

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Over the past several years, I have spoken and taught thousands of couples about the importance of growing their marriage into the purpose for which it was designed. I have challenged them to embrace their differences as integral to their destiny. I have encouraged couples to resist the marital drift that will rob them of their vitality as a couple. And, I have done my best to push couples to believe that godly obedience would yield benefits in all facets of their marriage—including their intimacy. But, this past weekend I got a new revelation on marital intimacy. I call it Marital Intimacy 2.0. And, I think it may change everything inside and outside my bedroom.

 

So, let me first make it clear that I have a great marriage. And, I tremendously enjoy my intimate times with my wife. She has been a amazing partner over our nearly twenty-seven years of marriage. We make ourselves available for each other. We seek to please each other’s intimacy needs—though honestly I feel she sometimes does that better than I do. But, that’s another story. The key point here is that I feel very blessed with what happens in our bedroom.

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LYH56: How to Be a H.E.R.O. Husband [PODCAST]

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You can find the full blog post on this topic at haroldarnold.com/herohusband

I have been married for almost twenty-seven years. But, my wife recently shook my paradigm with a single sentence when she heard me talking about how important it is for me to spend time with my daughter. She looked me squarely in the eyes and said, “Remember, that I am also a daughter.”
She’s right, of course.  I’ve come up with four behaviors on how to become more consistently attentive to being my wife’s hero. Using H.E.R.O. as an acrostic, here’s my plan to keep my cape on.
  1. H — Help Out – Do the little things to lend a hand
  2. E — Empathize – Put yourself in her shoes and just listen
  3. R — Romanticize – Do the nice little surprises that wooed her in the first place
  4. O — Oblige – Just let her do what she wants sometimes without making her beg
Some wives had HERO fathers with capes that we have to model (or exceed). Other wives crave that HERO that they never saw growing up. Regardless, we husbands have to remember that our wives are just grown up daughters.
They want us to be their HERO. We protect them from the bad forces of the world. We help them feel secure in a threatening world. We are the object of their dreams.
Get your free copy of the “10 Proven Steps to Extraordinary Influence” at haroldarnold.com

Check out the blog post HERE to read more about this.

Please do me a huge favor and click HERE to go to iTunes and leave me a rating and review. It will only take 2 minutes of your time. And, it means so much to me. And, just for you, I’ll give you a shout out on the next show.

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Four Ways A Husband Becomes a HERO

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I have been married for almost twenty-seven years. You’d think by now that I’d have this marriage thing down pretty well, especially since I spend so much time writing and talking to others about building a strong marriage. In fairness my wife tells me that I have improved over the years. I’m grateful for that. But, she recently shook my paradigm with a single sentence. She looked me squarely in the eyes and said, “Remember, that I am also a daughter.”

I have one daughter. Her name is Kyrsten. As she goes through her teen years at a pace that just feels too fast, I already lament the day that she will soon bid us farewell. Where has the time gone? I place tremendous value on the importance of fathers spending quality time with our daughters. Fathers may be the single most influential person in the daughter’s self-perception.

In her important book, Strong Fathers, Strong Daughters: 10 secrets every father should know (affiliate link), Dr. Meg Meekers says “Whatever outward impression she gives, her life is centered on discovering what you like in her, and what you want from her. She knows you are smarter than she is. She gives you authority because she needs you to love and adore her. She can’t feel good about herself until she knows that you feel good about her. So you need to use your authority carefully and wisely. Your daughter doesn’t want to see you as an equal. She wants you to be her hero, someone who is wiser and steadier and stronger than she is.” A daughter wants her dad to be her hero.