How can conflict between spouses be resolved?

Carlton McLeod explains in this video that he has had several opportunities to talk with and provide counsel to young couples. Initially, he would always start his conversations with the issues that they're struggling with. Now, he has learned to tell the couples to evaluate their relationship before the Lord before discussing specific issues. This helps to have both husband and wife in the right state of mind. Are both spouses praying for each other?

Sometimes, there is a key sin underlying many of these issues. Once we get the couple in a right place before God, then we can simply point them to what God says in His Word.

Matthew 6:33 (NKJV) - "But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you."

I have the privilege to talk with struggling couples. In my younger pastoral days, I would always start with what are they struggling with. I would always start with the issues. You know, we don't make enough money or we don't do a budget together or so forth and these are these are important things to be sure. But as I've gotten a little older and a little grayer I've learned to maybe go to the heart before I go to the issues and challenge both husband and wife to evaluate their relationship before the Lord and how surrendered and how submitted and how humbled they are before Him.

And that tends to get us on a playing field together, because normally at the root of most of these issues, there's something, there's a hurt that's come up, or there's a pride issue. And so if we're dead enough, right, if we're humble enough, if we're broken enough before the Lord and grateful that He saved us from sin, then we can kind of rebuild whatever situation it is from there. And so I would ask a husband or a wife who's struggling a little bit with unity, to evaluate where they are with the Lord before they do anything else. How does your walk with Him, are you passionately worshipping Him, are you passionately studying His word, are you praying for your husband, Are you praying for your wife? Do you see your role in marriage as it's laid out in scripture, the husband, that Christ's character in the narrative, to love his wife as Christ loves the church, the wife, the church character in the narrative, to demonstrate to the whole world this passionate submission to Christ by the way she treats her husband.

And do you see the beauty and the benefit of those things before the Lord? And once we get it straight before the Lord, then it's just a matter of pointing the husband and the wife to what God says.