Introduction: Perspective is a powerful word in marriage. That’s what that drama is all about – they couldn’t get perspective because they were too consumed with themselves – they were too concerned about their issues or their side of the story to even have a clue about what was going on in the other person’s world. That happens a lot in marriage. Selfishness rules in most marriages – that’s why there are so many marital problems. How do we fix this? How do we turn the tide?
A friend of mine who pastors a church in Florida, recently found himself in the midst of a media firestorm! I read about it on the Drudge Report, but it was on CNN, Fox News, CBS evening news, it was even on the news in France! It wasn’t because he had done something wrong – it was because of a challenge he had issued to his church; a 30 Day Sex Challenge. And the challenge was for married couples in the church to have sexual relations with their spouse every day for thirty days in a row.
Now besides the obvious that this idea was conceived in the mind of a guy – and it’s not like I think it’s a bad idea – there were guys dragging their wives to church all over Florida for that series – the idea was that a couple having sex together every day won’t be mad at each other. They will likely talk more and have more time together and so forth.
But as much as I like the idea of the 30 Day Sex Challenge, there are a lot of problems that won’t go away simply by having sex every day. Sometimes the no sex is a symptom of a greater problem. So, that’s what I want to talk about today. Where do you turn when your marriage is in trouble?
Let me stress the obvious again – marriage problems are not a part of God’s divine plan for marriage. God’s plan for marriage is revealed in the book of Genesis. “Then the Lord God made a woman from the rib, and he brought her to the man. “At last!” the man exclaimed. “This one is bone from my bone, and flesh from my flesh! She will be called ‘woman,’ because she was taken from ‘man.’” This explains why a man leaves his father and mother and is joined to his wife, and the two are united into one. Now the man and his wife were both naked, but they felt no shame.” Gen. 2:22-25
Then sin entered and there have been problems ever since. One thing I can guarantee is that there are NO perfect marriages represented in this room today. None! But, I also want to say that no matter how bad you might think your marriage is – if you will turn to God and FOLLOW His prescription for building a godly marriage – your marriage is not beyond hope. I don’t care if you have suffered abuse, infidelity or have woken up one day realizing that you feel nothing for your spouse – your marriage is not beyond hope – you can survive!
I want to introduce to you (someone gave testimony)
So, where do you turn when your marriage is in trouble? You turn to God, but here are a couple of things that you need to do:
1. Monitor the Emotional Bank Account.
I’ve gone over this before in other messages, but the concepts I’m going to give you today can save your marriage – ignoring them can wreck it! I won’t apologize for repeating myself on Sundays – because even though I teach these principles and share them in counseling and read about them – I never seem to practice them consistently myself – so it’s good to go back to the well and revisit these truths. Here’s a little review:
• Every one you know has an account with you and every time you interact with someone they will do one of two things.
• They make withdrawals:
- They criticize you, or nag you, or annoy you and the result is you don’t want to be around them anymore. That’s what happens with withdrawals.
• They make deposits.
When you are around this kind of person you start feeling good and those good feelings naturally make you want to be around that person more. This is the person that you gravitate towards. We call them friends.
When a person makes enough deposits you have Romantic Love. Romantic Love is a powerful attraction. If you maintain romantic love, your marriage becomes indestructible.
Do you doubt the strength of Romantic love? I have seen politicians, and known people in ministry and in the business world who when they feel romantic love towards someone other than their spouse they are willing to wreck their families, their homes, their reputations, and sometimes even their careers all for the sake of romantic love. It’s a powerful thing.
Romantic love is maintained by monitoring the 10 emotional needs which are:
1. Affection – Showing love through words, cards, gifts, hugs etc.
2. Sexual Fulfillment - This is the physical act of sex in the marriage
3. Conversation – Talking about events of the day, feelings, plans.
4. Recreational Companionship – doing things together.
5. Honesty and Openness – Revealing positive and negative feelings, daily events, plans for the future
6. Admiration – expressing value and appreciation clearly and often. 7. Financial Support – Ability to provide for the physical needs
8. Domestic Support – making the home a place of refuge.
9. Family Commitment – Taking sufficient time to be with kids and build into their lives.
10. Attractiveness of Spouse – Keeping yourself fit physically and trying to be pleasing to the eye for your spouse Too many people land a spouse and then just let themselves go – that’s not right, and it goes both ways – this isn’t just a guy thing!
2. Start Intentionally Making Large Deposits in Your Spouses Account!
Every word of that is significant! There is a book in the Resource Center called His needs/Her Needs that you can buy and in the back of the book there is an index that helps you to know what the top 5 emotional needs of your spouse are. If you look over that list of 10 and you are confused – you NEED that book and you NEED to do the assessment and then you NEED to become an EXPERT at meeting your spouse’s top 5 emotional needs!
If you want to restore your marriage, you must restore Romantic Love, and the only way you can do that is by intentionally making large deposits in your spouse’s emotional bank account. The higher the need of your spouse that you meet, the larger the deposit will be.
You might say, but I don’t feel like meeting their needs! They’ve hurt me, I’m mad at them! I’m not even sure I like them anymore! That might be true – but read Ephesians 5 with me. I’m not sure you loved your spouse so much that you’ve outdone Christ.
But, even if you do Ephesians 5 and meet their needs you still have to deal with the hurts that have accumulated which brings us to step #3 which is:
3. Clean-up the past.
How? 3 words. The first word is:
a. Confess. It is impossible to have intimacy in your relationship without this first word. Let’s face it – if someone has offended you or you have offended someone, there is a wall, a tension that immediately exists in that relationship. Ignoring it won’t make it go away, time doesn’t make it go away – in fact, nothing can make it go away except confession.
Several weeks ago now, Bonnie and I got into a little tiff, it wasn’t a real big deal, in fact I don’t even remember what it was about now. I had told Bonnie of something that was bothering me and I put it out there and told her how it was bothering me and hurt me etc. Her response was to simply do nothing. She hardly acknowledged that I had said anything about it and so I did the mature, responsible, pastoral thing to do…I kind of gave her the polite but unmistakable cold shoulder. I didn’t ignore her completely, I just was polite and stand offish. This went on for at least two days when Bonnie finally said, “Are you still upset about that?” I said, “I’m upset that you haven’t even acknowledged the fact that I told you about what made me upset!” She then confessed, she apologized – and instantly our relationship with each other was restored. Instantaneously the tension in our relationship disappeared.
That’s just how it works in relationships. If you want to save your marriage you have to learn to be a good confessor. The same is true spiritually by the way. 1 John 1:9 says, “If we confess our sins to him, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all wickedness.” Notice the order of things – first we confess and then comes cleansing. If you want to be right with God, you must practice this daily discipline of confessing the faults of the day to God. When you do – your relationship with him is restored.
The problem is, most of us aren’t good at confessing. We’re pretty good at excusing, or explaining or redirecting, but not at confessing. I guess that’s human nature, because the first time we see pathetic confessions is in the Bible. Genesis 3:11-13 shows us mankind’s first attempt at confession.
Adam and Eve had just eaten the fruit and God shows up and says, “Have you eaten from the tree whose fruit I commanded you not to eat?”
Here comes the confession in verse 12, “The man replied, “It was the woman you gave me who gave me the fruit, and I ate it.” Then the Lord God asked the woman, “What have you done?” So, as not to be outdone her confession was: “The serpent deceived me,” she replied. “That’s why I ate it.”
Pretty lame. A real confession acknowledges the wrong behavior, it admits that hurt was caused by it and it is followed by an “I’m sorry” and is finished off with a period. So, let’s practice that right now – mass confession time – repeat after me – “I was wrong. I’m sorry.” The second word you need:
b. Forgive What’s the difference between confession and forgiveness? Confession and forgiveness are the two sides of relational wholeness. A person can confess a wrong and not be forgiven – a person can also forgive someone without the other person confessing - but you can’t have relational reconciliation without both.
You might say – I can’t forgive this other person – you don’t know what they’ve done to me. My answer to that is – you’re right. You can’t. Forgiveness isn’t a feeling that we muster up inside of us. This is really important and I need you to pay close attention here: forgiveness is only possible when we have a relationship with God through Christ. Our source for forgiveness – the strength we need to forgive is founded in God and Him alone.
Look with me at Psalm 25:11 “For the honor of your name, O LORD, forgive my many, many sins.” Then look at Acts 10:43, it says “He is the one all the prophets testified about, saying that everyone who believes in him will have their sins forgiven through his name.”
What is the common denominator in those two verses? It is that forgiveness is wrapped up in who God is. “In his name” indicates that forgiveness is part of the character of God – it is who He is. If you want to clear the junk of the past from your relationships then you need to be connected to Him – because He is the source of forgiveness. Does that make sense? So, get this – if God is not at the center of your marriage relationship then you will have a very difficult time – because a harmonious marriage is dependent upon constant forgiveness and the source of forgiveness is God. So, if you aren’t centered on Him you will eventually reach the point where you run out of forgiveness.
The Bible very clearly ties the forgiveness that we have received from God as the motivation that we need in order to forgive others in our relationships. Look with me at what Paul said to the church at Colossi:
“Since God chose you to be the holy people he loves, you must clothe yourselves with tenderhearted mercy, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience. Make allowance for each other’s faults, and forgive anyone who offends you.
First Paul lays out who we are supposed to be: holy, full of mercy, kindness etc. But then, right on the heels of that he says, “make allowances for each other. Why? Because we don’t always live up to the ideal. We don’t always measure up to our calling. This is true in our relationship with Christ as well as with each other. We have this calling but then we have reality. Because of that, we need to make allowances for one another. Then Paul reminds us why we are to forgive each other:
Remember, the Lord forgave you, so you must forgive others. Above all, clothe yourselves with love, which binds us all together in perfect harmony. And let the peace that comes from Christ rule in your hearts. For as members of one body you are called to live in peace. And always be thankful.” Col 3:12-15
Let me mention that he is actually addressing a church here. The goal of a local church family is to do these things. We are to love each other, put up with each other, forgive each other – that is our calling as a church. (By the way, new members class next Sunday!) But by application it is also your calling in your marriage.
What has your spouse done to offend you or hurt you? It doesn’t compare with what you have done against God. You have sinned against him, you are responsible for his dying on the cross of Calvary! Paul is reminding us to remember our faults when we deal with each other.
So, what do we do with all of these hurts inflicted against us? Are we simply to pretend that they didn’t happen? When I do marriage counseling I often recommend this exercise on forgiveness. Here’s how it goes: you write down everything on a piece of paper that you have done to harm your spouse. Everything! Don’t make excuses for them – write them down and acknowledge how this has hurt your spouse. Once it is all on the table, here is what you do. You pull out your Bible – you read Colossians 2:13-15 together which says,
“You were dead because of your sins and because your sinful nature was not yet cut away. Then God made you alive with Christ, for he forgave all our sins. He canceled the record of the charges against us and took it away by nailing it to the cross.” Col 2:13-15
What do you do with the piece of paper? You nail it to the cross. Notice, he not only forgave our sins – he cancelled the record of our sins! This is powerful stuff! He got rid of the record of our sins. That’s what we are to do with each other’s sins – destroy them – cancel them – get rid of them!
Does that sound risky? How do you know that you won’t get burned again? That brings us to the third word of cleaning up the past:
c. Repent. Now this is a word that the modern church kind of shies away from – but here at Believers we don’t shy away from Bible words and Bible teachings. We’ve been characterized as a seeker sensitive church – but I’m not crazy about that term. We are a church that is aware than on any given Sunday there are those in our midst who are not yet followers of Jesus. So, when we use Bible terms or delve into topics that might not be familiar to those who aren’t yet followers of Jesus – we simply define those terms and try to make it understandable.
Repent is a word that is widely misunderstood, largely because of Bible thumpers screaming this at passerby’s on street corners. Let’s turn to the Bible to see how it presents this concept of repentance. We see it in the beginning of the Gospels when John the Baptist was preaching his message. Look at Matthew 3:2:
“Repent of your sins and turn to God, for the Kingdom of Heaven is near.” You can see the meaning right in that verse – repentance means to turn from one way and turn to the other. Turn from sin – turn to God. Turn from selfishness – to unselfishness. Turn from anger to gentleness. It is a turn – a 180 degree change in mind, attitude and action from sin towards God.
Just a couple of verses later we see the concept built upon:
“Prove by the way you live that you have repented of your sins and turned to God.” Matthew 3:8
Repentance is more than saying you’re sorry, it’s putting a plan in place that says I won’t repeat this same behavior. It’s proving by the way that you live that you have changed – it’s a plan for change.
Without repentance – everything else breaks down. You can make large deposits, you can do confession and forgiveness but without repentance the whole process is undermined. Which brings me to the last step:
4. Stop making withdrawals!
Do you remember the story of the woman caught in adultery? Jesus extended a ton of grace and mercy to her. Remember that? The religious people were ready to kill her and condemn her and talk about her and beat her up – sounds like many in the church today who catch others in sin. Let’s get ‘em! But Jesus didn’t do that. He said, he who is without sin cast the first stone! But, we often forget the last thing that Jesus said to this woman: “Go and sin no more.” (John 8:11)
As a follower of Jesus you won’t be perfect – but don’t forget this message from Christ – Go and sin no more! You can’t follow him while actively participating in sin. In marriage it means, you must STOP destructive behavior. Stop making withdrawals! You not only want to be the greatest source of deposits for your spouse but you want to avoid being the source of withdrawals.
Dr. Harley has written a book entitled love Busters – he identifies some of the greatest sources of withdrawals in a marriage relationship. If you know that you are struggling with withdrawals – then I encourage you to get the book and start applying some of the principles.
God has a dream for your marriage: that it will serve as a model to those around you of what Christ’s love is for the church. How is yours measuring up? Will you take steps to improve? The ball is in your court!
Prayer.
Confess, you’ll receive forgiveness, then repent!
