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.
Guys, that’s romance! When you sacrifice for your wife, it tells her that she’s important to you. It says that her wants and needs mean more to you than your own wants and needs. It shows her that you love her.
Furthermore, a husband’s love should be sanctifying. The second half of this verse says, “He gave up his life for her to make her holy and clean, washed by the cleansing of God’s word” (Ephesians 5:25-26 NLT). Jesus died so that you and I could have a meaningful relationship with God—so that we could become holy and spiritual. Husbands, your wife needs you to do the same for your family. She needs you to be the spiritual leader of your home.
Far too many men in the church have abandoned their role as spiritual leader. They sit at home while mom gets the kids up on Sunday morning and goes to church. Or maybe they attend church but they never really take their relationship with God seriously, leaving their wife with the tremendous burden of carrying her own cross as well as the husband’s and the kid’s.
Guys, if you would start taking your faith seriously, start growing in Christ and leading your family in the same direction—it can totally change the climate of your marriage. It can save a troubled marriage or take a good marriage and make it great. If you’re not sure where to start, pick up a good couples devotional book—I recommend NightLight by James and Shirley Dobson—and ask your wife if she’d like to start reading it together. Show her that you care about her relationship with God and that you want to two of you to grow closer to Christ and to each other.
Finally, a husband’s love should be sensitive. The next verse in Ephesians says, “Husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. After all, no one ever hated their own body, but they feed and care for their body, just as Christ does the church” (Ephesians 5:28-29 NIV).
In other words, you need to meet your wife’s emotional needs with the same care and attention that you meet your own physical needs. If you body is hungry, you eat. If your body is tired, you sleep. You need to pay as much attention to your wife’s needs as you do your body’s needs.
If your wife has ever said to you, “You use to be so romantic,” that’s a clear indicator that you’re not being sensitive to your wife’s needs.
Guys, let me make just a few suggestions on how to be a little more sensitive and romantic. I’m sure your wife will give you some more suggestions on the way home, but here it goes.
1. Hug your wife every day. Most women love to hug. They hug each other, they hug children, they hug pets, relatives—even stuffed animals. This has to be a non-sexual hug, though. Groping doesn’t count.
2. Surprise her with a little card or a note expressing love and appreciation.
3. Tell her that you love her before leaving for work.
4. Kiss her goodbye before walking out the door
5. Call her during the day to see how she’s doing
6. Bring her a bouquet of flowers once in a while as a surprise
7. Give her gifts for special occasions (Tuesday is a special occasion)
8. After work call before you leave for home
9. When arriving home give her a hug and a kiss
10. Ask her about her day (and actually listen)
11. Help with dinner and/or dishes
12. Go for a walk together, hold hands, and share a conversation
13. Hug and Kiss every night before you go to sleep
But again, the key is understanding what makes your wife feel loved. Every person is different. We all share and sense love in different ways. In his book, The Five Love Languages, Gary Chapman identifies five different ways that people express and experience love: (1) words of affirmation, (2) quality time, (3) gifts, (4) acts of service, (5) physical touching. Learning which of these five “love languages” is most meaningful to your wife can save you a lot of heartaches and headaches!
Now, in addition to women’s most important emotional need, Ephesians also underscores the first thing a man cannot do without, which is respect.
• RESPECT
A husband needs admiration. Paul closes this section with these words: “So again I say, each man must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband” (Ephesians 5:33 NLT). A few years ago, Dr. Emerson Eggerichs and his wife Sarah co-wrote a book titled Love & Respect, which was based on this verse. In preparation for the book, they asked 7,000 people this question: When you are in a conflict with your spouse or significant other do you feel unloved or disrespected? 72% of the women said, "unloved." 83% of the men said "disrespected."
Research reveals that during marital conflict a wife most often reacts when feeling unloved and a husband reacts when feeling disrespected. It’s no wonder then that the Bible says, “Husbands, love your wives and wives, respect your husbands.”
Men are most powerfully motivated by respect. You’ve heard it said that behind every great man is a great woman. I’d modify that slightly: behind every great man is an admiring woman.
There’s an old story about George Bush Senior was President and had gone on the road campaigning for his second term in office. While on the road they needed some gas and the driver pulled into a gas station along the road.
As the attendant started fueling the car Mrs. Barbara Bush got out of the vehicle, walked around, hugged and cheerfully spoke with the attendant. After they finished talking, she got back into the car and sat next to her husband.
President Bush asked her, “Who was that?”
She responded, “A high school boyfriend.”
To which he replied, “You mean to tell me, your old boyfriend works at a gas station? Yet, here you are married to the President of the United States? If you had married him, you’d be the wife of a gas station attendant.”
She responded: “Oh honey, if I had married him, he would be the President of the United States.”
The story might be fictional, but the premise is true. When a woman praises, admires and builds up her husband, it makes him feel like he can do anything and it empowers him to be successful as husband, father, or whatever else he does. On the other hand, when a wife tears down or disrespects her husband, it crushes his ego he typically responds in an unloving way. Romance and respect are both essential in marriage.
One last tool that we find here in Ephesians is reverence.
• REVERENCE
Paul starts this section of scripture with these words: “Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ” (Ephesians 5:21 NLT). In other words, even if your husband or wife doesn’t necessarily deserve your love and respect, if you want to honor Christ you need to submit to your spouse.
You see, marriage is for losers. We don’t like to lose. We live in a culture in which losing is the enemy (unless you’re a Cubs fan). But in marriage, losing can be the healthiest thing for your relationship.
Dr. Kelly Flanagan says, “When it comes to winning and losing, I think there are three kinds of marriages. In the first kind of marriage, both spouses are competing to win, and it’s a duel to the death. Husbands and wives are armed with a vast arsenal, ranging from fists, to words, to silence… The second kind of marriage is ripe with winning and losing, but the roles are set, and the loser is always the same spouse. These are the truly abusive marriages, the ones in which one spouse dominates, the other submits, and in the process, both husband and wife are stripped of their dignity… But there is a third kind of marriage. In these marriages, losing becomes a way of life, a competition to see who can listen to, care for, serve, forgive, and accept the other the most.”
That’s what it means to submit to one another. Out of reverence for Jesus, we compete to become the biggest loser. As someone once said, “You can be right, or you can be married; but you can’t be both.”
Conclusion:
So here are the three tools the Bible gives us for Trading Spaces with our spouse and remodeling our marriages. Romance—a husband’s most important tool in meeting his wife’s needs. Respect—a wife’s most powerful tool in making her husband feel fulfilled. And reverence—a couple’s motivation for willingly submitting to one another and putting the other person first.
Invitation:
I pray that this brief overview of God’s divine design for marriage has been helpful to you. I also pray that you will get in the car or go out to eat and really talk about this stuff with your husband or wife today. I also want to encourage you to be here next week for Extreme Home Makeover: Kids Edition. Bring the kids with you, they’ll stay up here and be a part of our worship time, even teach us some new songs. Jeff will be filling in for me as our family heads to Metropolis.
As the worship comes forward, if there is any way that we can pray for your marriage or if you’re in a troubled marriage and you need someone to talk to, please come forward, talk to me after church or call me at home.
