Beyond The Myths Of Marriage Series

Beyond the Myths of Marriage

Series: Making Relationships Work: Love, Sex & Marriage

September 17, 2017 – Brad Bailey

Focus: Marriage is less about personal fulfillment and more about personal growth… a truth which frees the unmarried and married alike from false pursuits and expectations.

Introduction

What do you think is an essential important factor in marital satisfaction and success? No doubt… there are many that are important… communication, resolving conflict, decision making and finances, a positive mutual sexual relationship…. All of those are significant issues.. But the most important factor in determining satisfaction in a marriage may be one that is often missed. It is expectations.

We experience contentment in relationship to our expectations.

What you expect of something… is the often unconscious factor that most effects our satisfaction.

Satisfaction is derived from expectations… and expectations are derived from the purpose we deem something to hold.

How content are you with the chair you are sitting on… or the pen in hand?

The answer is directly related to it’s purpose…what you think it should do.

Expectations are the unseen link between what we experience and how satisfied we are. And it is every bit as true in marriage.

Here is what becomes so notable regarding marriage. The vast majority of people can describe the purpose of their job, their home, their car, and of most everything they are connected with… but struggle to have a clear sense of the purpose of marriage.

And in truth…many of us carry some false expectations that can lead to trouble.

There is a cartoon that reads..

“When I got married I was looking for an ideal.

Therefore it became an ordeal.

Now I want a new deal.”

The ideal creates the ordeal… that then wants a new deal.

So today…we are continuing our Fall focus on Making Relationships Work: Love, Sex, and Marriage. Last week…we began with God’s declaration that it is not good for man to be alone….and I today God wants to speak to us about the creation of marriage…and it’s purpose. I want us to engage getting beyond the myths of marriage.

As I said last week, some aspects of this series may speak uniquely into the life of marriage…and those married … but there is significance for every one of us.

For every life that is married… your heart towards your partner is being defined by the expectations you have held…and I believe many of our hearts can be served by how God may reorient our expectations.

For every life that anticipates a future of being married…but may recognize that the idea of marriage comes with a mixture of both ideals and fears … God may offer a healthier idea about marriage is about.

When we hear that 50% of marriages end in divorce… it may sound logical to become cynical about marriage. But here’s the more sobering truth we may need to realize.

Marriage is not failing us … we are failing at marriage.

(And I am not speaking about those who have become divorced…but the very nature of our struggle for any of us to love well.)

For every life that has considered that a marriage relationship may not be a part of your earthly life…and wonders what all does that mean … God knows that it may serve your heart to understand what marriage is and isn’t designed to be.

For those old enough to have watched the movie Jerry Maguire…you may still hear Tom Cruise declaring to Renee Zellweger…”You complete me.” We may need to let heaven speak more deeply than Hollywood.

So let’s hear again the how Scriptures declare God’s formation of marriage in the poetic summary in the early chapters of the Book of Genesis. Our tendency as modern western lives is to let reality be as big as we can see…and understand. But here God declares a larger reality.

The Divine Formation of Marriage

Genesis 1:1, 1:26-28, 1:31a

“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth....Then God said, "Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.

So God created man in his own image,

in the image of God he created him;

male and female he created them.

God blessed them and said to them, "Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves on the ground....God saw all that he had made, and it was very good. “

Then we get a second description of this formation of male and female…