Marriage Fundamentals: How to Unlock a Hardened Heart

When you are first married, you have soft and loving hearts toward each other. (Otherwise, why get married?) So what can happen to change that? How do soft, loving hearts become separate or distant? How do they grow cold, hard, or indifferent? Where do things start to go wrong, and how can you prevent that from happening? I believe it’s because we start to care less instead of caring more about each other. We neglect to care fully for our husband or wife. Instead, we appear to care less. Perhaps we don’t notice how distracted we have become with our busy lives until we stop making our spouse a priority. Then unity of purpose is lost, and we grow apart and not together.

The good news is God has given us keys to unlock our hard hearts and open them back up to His love flowing through them. One of those keys is praying together in unity. Another is reading or hearing the Word of God. Jesus said, “I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven” (Matthew 16:19). “Keys” here is talking about the authority Jesus gives in His name to believers who receive Him and love Him. We understand more and more about how the power to bind and loose is to be used as we pray and read His Word. In this instance we are talking about taking authority over our heart and maintaining it in a right way. It’s about forbidding ourselves from even thinking an evil thought. When we pray like that, we can stop something bad from happening that we know shouldn’t be. Or we can set ourselves free from some distraction that we have allowed to come into our life and take precedent over our relationship with our spouse. The sooner we pray about such things in unity, the quicker they can be corrected. Of course, wonderful distractions come into our lives that we must never neglect—such as children—that demand our time and focus. But we must make sure we don’t neglect our husband or wife in the process of raising them. That will never work well.

If you or your husband or wife ever find yourself with a heart growing cold toward the other, remember that it starts with a heart that has already grown cold toward God. You can keep that from happening by praying together often and specifically asking God to keep your hearts soft toward Him as well as toward each other. The Bible says, “He who trusts in his own heart is a fool, but whoever walks wisely will be delivered” (Proverbs 28:26). God never sees the hardness of our heart as being okay. And if we allow it to become that way, it’s our fault. We always have a choice. When we deliberately stay close to God in prayer, praise, and in His Word, His Holy Spirit in us keeps our heart soft toward Him and toward each other—if that is what we wholeheartedly desire.

Some of the other words the Bible uses to describe this unity are “being like-minded, having the same love, being of one accord,” not being selfish or conceited, not thinking of ourselves more highly than the other, and not only looking out for our own interests. We must be looking out for our spouse’s interests as well (see Philippians 2:1-4).

Pray that each of you will have a heart that is entirely open to God’s truth and never open to the lies and enticements of the enemy of your marriage. Ask God to take away all pride in either of you if any arises because that always leads to a hardened heart. Remember that unity is always worth the effort it takes to work toward it. The two of you praying together in one accord will cause your prayers to be more powerful in their effect than you ever thought possible.