Looking at Marriage
Relationships that Work, part 2
Wildwind Community Church
David K. Flowers
May 27, 2007
Recording artist Roberta Flack once said, Getting married is easy. Staying married is more difficult. Staying happily married for a lifetime should rank among the fine arts. Sydney Harris said knowing when to say nothing is 50% of tact, and 90% of marriage. From anonymous sources we get these two bits of wisdom. First, keep your eyes wide open before marriage, and half shut afterwards. Second, love is one long, sweet dream; and marriage is the alarm clock. I agree and disagree with this.
As I said last week, marriage is definitely about waking up and getting real. I don’t do any weddings without nearly two months of fairly intense pre-marital counseling. And I always believe the greatest service I’m going to provide for the people I’m counseling is to wake them out of their dreams about being married. Joshua Liebman said that “And they lived happily ever after is one of the most tragic sentences in literature. It is tragic because it tells a falsehood about life and has led countless generations of people to expect something from human existence that is not possible on this fragile, failing, imperfect earth.”
I could not agree more. Some would say, “It’s just a line in a fairy tale – don’t take it so seriously.” Women, that idea that you would find a dashing man to sweep you away one day, who would meet all your needs – where did you get that idea, if not from fairy tales and popular culture? Guys, this idea that you’d meet the perfect hotty who would live to clean your house and pick up after you and always be there for you sexually at the drop of a hat – where’d you get that? From fairy tales and popular culture. Most couples come into my office convinced that they will never have the problems they have seen in other marriages. Folks, if you hear nothing else this morning, please hear this: There are two things you can count on when you work with marriages. First is practically every couple will say, “We’ll never have serious problems in our marriage.” Second is practically every couple will have serious problems in their marriage. It’s true that marriage is an alarm clock – that it wakes us out of a dream and slaps us into the real world. What is not true is the part that love is one long, sweet dream. The long dream was never love in the first place, but rather lust, infatuation, or something else. Marriage is the place where love is really built – where love either takes off or crashes – and that depends on nothing more and nothing less than the decisions of two people who choose to marry.
We’re in part 2 today of our series Relationships that Work. We talked about dating last week, and this week I want to move on to look at marriage with you. There are three directions I believe we need to look in order to build strong marriages. We must look up, we must look inside, and we must look around. First we must look up to God, so let’s do that right now by reading our scripture text for today:
Matthew 19:3-6 (NIV)
3 Some Pharisees came to him to test him. They asked, "Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any and every reason?"
4 "Haven’t you read," he replied, "that at the beginning the Creator ’made them male and female,’
5 and said, ’For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh’?
6 So they are no longer two, but one. Therefore what God has joined together, let man not separate."
I chose this text today not because of what it says about divorce, but because of what it says about marriage. We’ll look specifically at divorce on August 12, but today we’re focusing on marriage.
Folks, as we live our married lives together, and as we discuss marriage this morning, we must look up. We must begin with God, for this is where everything begins. Our text says at the beginning the Creator made them male and female, and for this reason the two will become one flesh. What would be another way of saying that? Husbands and wives, you are married today, you are together today, because marriage was God’s plan from the beginning. God created you to fit together, not just physically, but emotionally and spiritually.
I’ve noticed in many sermons that I have the need to start in this place. After all, you can tune into any TV show, read almost any book or magazine article about marriage, and expect to see marriage approached like it’s fundamentally about you – about your contentment, satisfaction, growth, well-being, and happiness. Please hear me here. It doesn’t matter that this is the prevalent view of marriage in the secular world. That does not make it true, and it certainly is not something that those who are living a life that is supposed to be built on God should be taken in by.
We are to honor God first. In a passage specifically addressing sex in Christian marriages, we see:
1 Corinthians 7:5 (NIV)
5 Do not deprive each other except by mutual consent and for a time, so that you may devote yourselves to prayer. Then come together again so that Satan will not tempt you because of your lack of self-control.
What is the one legitimate reason for abstaining from sex within marriage? To devote yourselves to prayer for specific, and agreed-upon, periods of time. Just like the Bible teaches food fasting to dedicate yourself to prayer sometimes, it also encourages sex fasting for the same reason. In this passage we see the priority that a couple would pursue God together – look to him as the source of life.
When couples come to my office seeking to have me do their wedding, I always begin by asking them, “Is it your desire to serve God individually and as a couple, and to raise children who grow up to honor God and serve him with their lives?” If the couple answers “No,” or “Not really,” then I do not undertake to do their wedding. After all, how do Christian wedding ceremonies begin?
“Dearly beloved, we are gathered here together today in the sight of God and in the presence of these witnesses…” And how do weddings end?
“Therefore by the authority vested in me as a minister of Jesus Christ I pronounce that they are husband and wife together in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. What man has joined together let no one separate.”
Christian weddings are performed with the assumption that God is both a witness to and a participator in not only the wedding but also the marriage that is built after that. Scriptures are read, often religious songs are sung – the whole service is a spiritual service. I will not agree to do a wedding in the sight of God if there is no intention to build a marriage in the sight of God. Couples, you must live your married life together before God. You must understand that your lives are not your own, but that you belong to each other, and that each of you individually, and your relationship as a whole, belongs to God. It is not yours to toy with as you please. Again our secular culture gives you the impression that it is your life, your body, your marriage, your happiness – but we must understand that a Christian worldview says, in the words of 1 Cor 6., that you are not your own – you were bought by God at a price – therefore you must what? Honor God with your body! At the very foundation of marriage must be an acknowledgement of God’s authority over your lives both individually and together. Neither of you has the right to stand in the way of the marriage working out. You must do what it takes to stay together: seek counseling, reconciliation, attend church together; raise your children under God – you must do whatever it takes because you belong to God. Another great way to live your married lives together before God is to learn to pray together. Many Christian couples do not feel comfortable praying together. I can admit this is an area where I have struggled in my own marriage.
Christy will frequently ask me to pray for her and with her, and this is hard for me. Know why? Because praying is the most intimate thing you can do with someone – perhaps in some ways more intimate than having sex. That’s the reason why unmarried people of the opposite sex should be very careful in praying with one another, and why married couples need to make prayer a priority. This can take a lot of effort, but is very rewarding and I want to encourage the married couples at Wildwind to make it happen – working through this together will build your marriage. I will commit to this right now in front of all of you, and I ask you to join me. Today, before the day is through, will you get alone with your spouse and pray for and with each other?
A final good way to live your married lives together before God is to learn to forgive one another. Robert Quillen said a happy marriage is the union of two good forgivers. William Cowper gave good advice to all married couples when he wrote:
The kindest and happiest pair
Will find occasion to forbear;
And something, every day they live,
To pity, and perhaps forgive.
Christ spoke so often of forgiveness, and yet so many of us who claim to be his followers are seeking to forgive everyone except the one closest to us. Consider making your spouse the first person on whom you practice carrying out all of the commands of Christ.
And so we must begin and sustain marriage by looking up – living our married lives together before God. Second, we must look in. This just means seeing yourself as the only one who can change your marriage. I spoke on this at length when I did our series on marriage a year ago, but it’s the kind of thing that needs to be said over and over. We have an unparalleled capacity to see the faults of others, and be blind to our own.
Matthew 7:3-5 (NIV)
3 "Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye?
4 How can you say to your brother, ’Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a plank in your own eye?
5 You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.
This to me really means two things in real life. First of all, if you are in a marriage where you believe counseling is needed, are you getting counseling? Don’t simply approach your spouse and ask him/her to get counseling with you. That’s good, but take the initiative to go see someone and start addressing your own issues. That’s better.
Second, this is the reason why if your spouse says there’s a problem in your marriage, there’s a problem. If your spouse has a problem with you, then you have a problem. It IS easier for your spouse to see what you cannot see. My friends, this is as close as I’ll ever get to begging you to take action on something. Please, please, please get the help you need. Please look in and see yourself as the main obstacle to a happy marriage. I’m not saying your partner doesn’t have stuff they need to face – they definitely do – but there’s nothing you can do about that. Trust me, I know all the excuses – I’ve heard them all, and if there are any I haven’t heard, I’ve made those. “Well he’s the one who can’t communicate. He’s the one who gets angry. She’s the one who never lets anything go. She’s the one who makes a big deal out of everything. She’s the one who’s suffocating me. He’s the one who wouldn’t know romance if it bit him in the butt. She’s the one who can’t get over her childhood. He’s the one who won’t grow up. She’s the one who spends all the money. He’s the one who’s so uptight about every penny. She’s the one who thinks she’s perfect. He’s the one who’s critical and demanding and arrogant. She’s the one who’s selfish. He’s the one who’s stubborn.” And of course then there’s the mack daddy of all excuses – I’m not going to go tell a pastor or counselor about my problems – this is no one’s business but our own. We can handle our own stuff.
Really? If by handle it people mean living unhappy lives in exhausting marriages where the self-esteem of both partners takes a daily beating, I guess couples can handle it on their own, because that’s the state unhappy couples live in. Simply because each refuses to look at their own role in problems, and each insists on beating their partner half to death with blame. My friends, I don’t want to appear to be chastising you, but I want to speak the truth to you. There are two reasons this kind of thing should not be acceptable to anyone who claims to be a Christ-follower. First, coming to faith in Christ requires us to acknowledge our own sinfulness and fallenness. Do we really think that fallenness doesn’t extend into every relationship in our lives, especially those like marriage that are such a critical part of our lives? Second, Christ expressed so clearly that we are to love one another. If I am to love you, how much more am I to love my spouse? What are the limits on what love will do? Husbands, will you truly not commit to getting counseling because of your own pride? Wives, will you really continue to be so critical? Wives, will you really continue blaming him for all the problems between you? Husbands, will you really keep minimizing her concerns? My friends, when does it end? When does the pride and criticism get dropped and someone say, “Okay, it’s me. I know I’m not fully responsible, but I’ll do whatever it takes to deal with the log in my eye. I’ll look at my problems – I’ll consider that maybe I’m lacking in love, maybe I’m unforgiving, or impatient, or critical – I’ll let someone show me where my responsibility lies. I’m willing to go beyond saying I’m not perfect (anyone can say that) and put my money where my mouth is by finding out where I’m not perfect and working to change it. People of Wildwind I love you. You have come into this place Christy and I have worked to build, you have linked arms with us, and are working faithfully beside us day by day. So when I speak words like these to you, I do it not critically but because of the love I have for you. I desire to see your marriages strong and healthy and I admit that I don’t always know how to break through the defenses some of you are carrying that are so strong. Please forgive me if I push too hard, but I have to put my head on my pillow at night and know I’m doing everything I possibly can to keep our marriages and families strong. I can’t settle for anything less.
So we must look up to God. We must look into ourselves. Third, we must look around. That means we must see the Christian community as the primary context for our marriages. Now this is going to really blow some of you away. We’re so used to American culture that says, “My marriage is nobody’s business but mine – it’s about the two of us and our happiness – it’s not about anybody else.” That is not only incorrect, it is unbiblical, and selfish, and foolish. Ever had a couple in your life that you and your spouse were close to, that ended up breaking up? Whose side did you end up choosing? You know what I mean – you say you’re friends with both of them, but ultimately kind of feel like you have to choose a side because one gets upset if you’re too kind to the other. So it wasn’t just a marriage that broke up. It was a family, and by that I don’t even mean with the children. I mean the little doing-life-together family the four of you had created. They were your closest friends – the ones who weathered the storms with you. And when their marriage ended, whatever the four of you had together died too, and you would never get it back again. I’ll bet it took all the pain away for you to keep repeating that it was only about them and their lives and their decisions, right? Of course not! Because it never was!
My friends, God saved you out of the Kingdom of the Cosmos (the world system that does not acknowledge God) we talked about a few weeks ago. And what did he save you into? He saved you into the Ekklesia – anybody remember what that means? I taught you that a while back. Ekklesia is the Greek word translated “church” in the New Testament, and it means “the called-out ones.” You have been called out of the Kingdom of the Cosmos and called into the church – into fellowship in an eternal community God is building on this earth.
Colossians 1:13 (NIV)
13 For he has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the Son he loves,
If you are a Christ-follower, you are a called-out one. You have been called out of the culture you live in and called into a new culture with different values, different expectations, different standards, and different understandings of what life is. You are called out of individualism, called out of “it’s okay as long as nobody gets hurt,” out of “nobody’s business but mine,” called out of “this marriage stands or falls on us alone,” and called into something entirely different and, in my opinion, far better. You are called into community, called into a place where your life matters not just because God created you, but because God created you for this community. You are called into a place where the success or failure of your marriage, of your life, matters far more than you can imagine. The stakes are higher, your responsibility is greater, and the reward is therefore better than you could ever get from living life in The Kingdom of the Cosmos (the dominion of darkness) on your own. I believe that in order to have a healthy marriage, you must see the church as a primary context for working out that relationship. In other words, what is my marriage able to teach me about God? How can we as a couple contribute to the Ekklesia? How can we help other marriages be strong, and support other couples in our small group and church?
Realize that your relationship is about way more than just the two of you. I have spoken before of the time a wave of adultery and divorces swept through my previous church and couples we loved were dropping like flies left and right – it seemed for a while like it was in the water. And we went out with Bill and Michelle Webster, and said, “Okay, you guys can never divorce.” And we committed the same to them. Our kids are growing up together.
They are encouragers to us. They are our partners in living life in a hard world and we love them and we could never pretend if they were to separate that it was just about them. It’s about a lot more than that. They know it. So do we. Imagine if Christy and I split up. Would that affect some of you? Of course. Our marriage isn’t just about us. That’s what happens when you love someone, when you live in community with them. What they do affects you, it matters. When couples in the church divorce, the church is rocked, friendships end, and many people suffer great pain.
1 Corinthians 12:25-27 (MSG)
25 The way God designed our bodies is a model for understanding our lives together as a church: every part dependent on every other part, the parts we mention and the parts we don’t,
26 the parts we see and the parts we don’t. If one part hurts, every other part is involved in the hurt, and in the healing. If one part flourishes, every other part enters into the exuberance.
27 You are Christ’s body—that’s who you are! You must never forget this. Only as you accept your part of that body does your "part" mean anything.
So if we are to have marriages that honor God, we must look up to God and acknowledge him as the real leader of our marriages. We must look into ourselves when there is a problem in the marriage and take responsibility for getting help. And we must look around, seeing the Christian community as the context for building a strong and healthy marriage.
Peanuts has always been my favorite comic strip. There’s a scene where Charlie Brown says to his friend, "My Grampa and Gramma have been married for fifty years!" The friend replies, "They’re lucky, aren’t they?" Charlie Brown answers. "Gramma says it isn’t luck--it’s skill!"
So it is, and each of us needs to nurture and develop that skill. I hope I have given you three places to look today that will encourage you. Let’s pray.
Heavenly Father, our lives and marriages belong to you. May we always look to you as our sustainer, look to ourselves to take responsibility, and look to the church community to guide and encourage us. Amen.
