Laugh Your Way to a Better Marriage

A great video series to help you in your marriage is by Mark Gungor entitled "Laugh Your Way to a Better Marriage.". A comment that Mark Gungor made in the series really struck me when he said that there is a 80% failure rate in marriage counseling.

That got me thinking, because I know of a number of couples who have gone to counseling and it hasn't helped, but also couples who have gone and it has helped. I did a bit of research on google this morning and it seems that there are others who think along the same lines.

Mark went on to say that the reason why there is such a high failure rate is that the whole premise of marriage counseling is wrong. That they focus on what is wrong with you, why is that wrong, don't you think that it is wrong what you did? Instead the focus should be on what is right about the person.

My eldest sister watched this particular session with me and we had quite a lively discussion about it. You see Mark Gungor went on to say that when we change our focus from what is wrong about a person to what is right about a person that they have a 88% success rate.

I know I'm very good about focusing on what is wrong about a person or a situation, instead of focusing on what is right. Philippians 4:8 says: Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable-if anything is excellent or praiseworthy-think about such things.

In a marriage relationship, work setting, committee etc whatever situation we are in, people are different and rightly so, because if everyone was the same or had the same skill sets we wouldn't accomplish anything! God has uniquely designed us to be who we are.

My sister was very adamant to me hat she believes that any two people can live together and make a marriage work as long as you focus on their strengths and not their weaknesses, how to build them up and not tear them down.

The other focus of the session last night was hitting the "reset" button, or the power of forgiveness. Saying that forgiveness is an act. Not an emotion. Not an erasure of your memory. saying forgiveness means you are saying: "I forgive you. I will never use it against you in the future. I will never speak of it again to you or to anyone else."

We have a prime example in what God has done for us, when we turn from him and repent he takes away our sin. As Mark says, it's not that God has dementia, it's that he wipes it away totally, as far as the east is from the west and puts it into the sea of forgetfulness, and as the children's song goes that I love "no fishing" we are not to go back in and fish that sin right back out again as it has been dealt with. We need to be Christ to each other, showing that forgiveness is so key. If you are the only Christ that a person will know, what example are you showing?

Mark talked about the power of their flag page, knowing and understanding who you are as a person, your strengths, what makes you tick. He shared how freeing that was for him, that once he found out, he realized that he was in the wrong work position, he shared that with his Senior Pastor who was also his boss who helped him to transition into what he is doing now, something that is touching millions of peoples lives. How many of us are doing things that we are good at, but it's not the best for us, what if we took the step to change and entered fully into what God has destined us to do, how freeing for us, how life changing for the world.

We are all gifted by God with a set of gifts and abilities, let's focus on developing the positive and dispense with the negative and see what can happen with it.

I want to encourage you go to www.flagpagetest.com, complete the test, it will cost you US$10, a very small investment for such long-term benefits. Get your partner to complete it too.

To give you an overview of what is on the DVD, there are four different sessions as follows: