In good communication, there's a balance in speaking the truth in love. Truth without love becomes harsh, and love without truth becomes passive and ineffective.

We're not talking about going back and digging up some old thing that's been dead for 25 years and bringing it out to examine it, unless it's a hindrance in the relationship. When you come to the Lord and ask forgiveness, your past is under the blood of Jesus Christ, and in Him there's not condemnation or guilt.

We have had to be very specific about this in marriage counseling, because we've had people who wanted to go back, dig up and review. Play by play, something that happened years earlier. That is the devil's tool to us against the relationship.

Before marriage, you should be totally honest with each other in finances, in children from a previous marriage, or in anything that will be pertinent to the relationship if it's found out later.

Then after you're married, or when you come to Jesus, your past is under the blood of Jesus.

Don't go back and talk about the girlfriend you had when you were sixteen, the boyfriend at seventeen, or all those past mistakes of your mate. It's like digging up an old dead animal. It's going to smell worse every time you dig it up. Don't do it. It's under the blood of Jesus. Live from this day forward:

Forgetting those which are behind and reaching forward to those things which are ahead.
(Phil 3:13)

If your mate tells you something from the past, then listen, pray, forgive, release, and let go! But be led by the Spirit of God in sharing things that are already under the blood of Jesus.

Source: Building Stronger Marriages by Billy Joe Daugherty
Excerpt permission granted by Harrison House Publishers