Extreme Home Makeover: Couples Edition 2 Series

EXTREME HOME MAKEOVER: COUPLES EDITION

Scott Bayles, pastor

Blooming Grove Christian Church: 6/3/2012

Before becoming the host of Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, Ty Pennington was just a humble carpenter on another makeover show called Trading Spaces, which ran from 2000-2008 and was generally credited with sparking the nationwide interest in home decorating and improvement television shows.

The basic premise is that in each episode, two couples, usually next-door neighbors, trade places and redecorated one room in the other couple’s home with the help of one carpenter and designer. The catch is—you don’t have any say in how your home gets redecorated; rather, you have to trust that your neighbors know your likes and dislikes well enough remodel a room that will meet your expectations.

Marriage can be a lot like that.

When two people get married, they not only trade spaces, they share spaces. And each one trusts the other to meet their expectations—to meet their physical and emotional needs, to be their companion and best friend, to put the toilet seat down, to remember anniversaries and birthdays, to help out around the house, to provide finical and domestic support. Unfortunately, our expectations aren’t always met.

Someone once said, “Women get married expecting to change their husband. Men get married expecting their wives never to change. Both of them are usually wrong.”

Listen, the key to Trading Spaces is understanding the wants and needs of the other person. If I were to redecorate a room in your house, for instance, and I painted a giant mural of the Justice League and filled the room with Superman memorabilia, it doesn’t matter how much love and care I put into it, you’re not going to hate it any less. And if you filled a room in my house with deer mounts and camouflage, I wouldn’t be very happy. It works the same way in marriage.

Fortunately, God wants to help us with that. The Bible says, “Unless the Lord builds a house, the work of the builders is wasted” (Psalm 127:1 NLT).

Last week we talked about the four cornerstones that establish a framework for remodeling your marriage—the purpose of marriage, the priority of marriage, the permanence of marriage, and the passion of marriage. Building within that framework, Ephesians 5:21-33 gives us the tools we need to understand our spouse’s most important needs and expectations. Since I’m a husband, I want to talk primarily to other husbands so let’s start by looking at what the Bible says to husbands:

“Husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the church and gave himself for it… He died so that he could give the church to himself like a bride in all her beauty. He died so that the church could be pure and without fault, with no evil or sin or any other wrong thing in it. In the same way, husbands should love their wives as they love their own bodies. The man who loves his wife loves himself.” (Ephesians 5:25-28 NCV).

This passage reveals the first thing a wife cannot do without—romance.

• ROMANCE

She needs affection. When I say romance, I don’t just mean candle-lit dinners and moon-lit walks on the beach (though that’s not a bad idea). Rather, I’m talking about genuine love and affection. To most women, loving affection is the essential cement of her relationship with a man. It symbolizes security, protection, comfort, acceptance, and affirmation. Without it, a woman probably feels alienated from her husband. But with it, she becomes tightly bonded to him and responds to him with similar shows of love and romance.

I want you to pay close attention though, because the Scripture here highlights three characteristics of a husband’s love for his wife.

First, a husband’s love should be sacrificial. Look at verse 25 again: “Husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the church and gave himself for it” (Ephesians 5:25 NCV). Jesus loved you and me so much that he literally gave his life for us. He chose to die on the cross to win our hearts. So, husbands, what have you sacrificed for your wife? Not many of us will ever be expected to die for our spouse, but all of us are called to sacrifice for our wives—to demonstrate our love sacrificially.

This will look different in every marriage. Maybe it means cancelling a fishing/hunting trip in order to take your wife away for the weekend. It may mean using the money you’ve saved to buy a new truck or new boat, and instead buying that new living room set your wife’s been wanting or remodeling the kitchen. Maybe it means taking the baby to the nursery during church so that she can actually be feed spiritually. It might mean giving up a hobby that you enjoy in order to spend more time with your family, or working overtime in order to provide for her and kids.