I had a really good father in life. My dad, Brian Maze, taught me to work hard as he grew up around the steel industry of Pittsburgh. He taught me to hate debt. He was a savor and modeled great wisdom for me in personal finance. He taught me to love my country as he was a Vietnam Vet around 1965. He volunteered to be a Sea Bee in the United States Navy. I remember asking my dad if had been shot in the war. He confirmed that he had been shot while serving in Laos.
I learned not to “backtalk” my parents from him and the importance of obtaining in education. He modeled for him what how to sacrifice for your family as I remember him selling a prized hunting rifle so he could give me a Commodore 64 for a Christmas gift. I have a great deal of love and admiration for my father to this day.
But the day that stands out to me right now as a I span my father’s life is the day when two men came to our homes in Western Kentucky. My agnostic/atheist father sat down with these two deacons from our church. My father had consistently rejected Christ since his days in Vietnam. The two men presented the gospel to my father and then they asked, "Is there any reason why you should not receive Jesus Christ right now?" My dad then said, “I think it is about time I did so.” At this time, my father went to his knees in our living room to receive Christ as his Lord and Savior. He was baptized several weeks later. Seventeen years later I preached my dad's funeral with a tremendous comfort that he was spending eternity with Christ
I share my father’s story in hope of empowering you to be a great father and a tremendous husband. Our goal is to see sturdy, durable marriages that spread joy for generations.
1. The Wounds of a Self-Centered Relationship
Marriage is hard. Marriage is hard for the same reason it attracts us so… No two people are the same. While are differences give marriage a richness and variety it also gives rise to conflict. Had God designed marriage with a free-agent clause in it… Had He designed it to be a series of one-year contracts renewable by mutual agreement where both husband and wife, then you could hit the escape clause. That’s just the kind of thing Paul Rampell, an attorney in Palm Beach is proposing. Rampell wants the institution of marriage to adapt to increasing difficulties of staying married for a lifetime. His reasoning goes like this… we don’t buy homes for a lifetime, why should we sign a contract for marriage for lifetime? This Palm Beach attorney proposes marriage leases. A marriage lease would allow two people to commit themselves to marriage for a period of years – five years or ten years – and the lease could be renewed for as many times as the couple wants. But the lease could end the marriage if it goes bad and avoid a messy divorce. But marriage was designed to a last for lifetime.
To run to the mailbox is easy; to run a marathon is another thing altogether. They don’t give out medal and stickers for running to the refrigerator. Marriage for the long run is hard. Marriage where both people stay in the same bedroom, loving one another, serving one another, and seeking each other’s happiness is thought to be impossible. Many young adults approach marriage with such pessimism that they delay marriage, reject the idea of marriage, or feel divorce is inevitable. Because of our experiences with marriage, both our own and our parents, we feel we are consigned a series of marriages over our lifetimes. Where each marriage lasts only a short while and we move on to the next one.
Where do you get the power for lifetime love? I think of Kim, a nurse who was often high and the mother of two kids. I met with her on numerous occasions. Her drug addiction caused her to compromise on vital issues. She gave free narcotics to her friends from the hospital pharmacy. She snuck these drugs out of her workplace when people weren’t looking. She even compromised her marital fidelity with these friends despite her loving firefighter husband. She had been sexually abused earlier in life and her life was radically altered by this evil act. What appeared to be a normal marriage on the outside, was anything but normal in the routines of the week. She later spent time in a drug rehab center and her husband forgave her and they tried to make the marriage work for a short time.
Many more mainstream relationships struggle with the ups and downs of married life. Often we struggle with unfairly blaming our partners. Where do you get the fuel for lifetime love? My wife has been married to at least five different men since we were wed – and each one of the five has been me.
William Doherty gives us powerful visual for marriage… Doherty’s office is located not far from the farthest point north on the Mississippi River, in St. Paul, Minnesota. He says, “Everything on the water that is not powered by wind, gasoline, or human muscle” heads south. Then he adds these words: “…No matter how much you love each other, no matter how full of hope and promise and good intentions, if you stay on the Mississippi without a good deal of paddling—occasional paddling is not enough—you end up in New Orleans.”
I am not saying that the feelings of intoxicating love will always be there for marathon marriages. George Bernard Shaw spoke about the absurdity of these feelings:
“When two people are under the influence of the most violent, most insane, most delusive, and most transient of passions, they are required to swear that they will remain in that excited, abnormal, and exhausting condition continuously until death do them part.”
Our relationships, and specifically our marriages, often run on fumes. Where to I find the fuel to loving and kind to my mate? And while none of us can love our partners perfectly, 24/7/365, believers know where the gas station is.
While the story of Adam and Eve is the paradigm for marriage… Today we come to the classic on the whole Bible on marriage. This is the meatiest passage in the Bible for how God understands marriage. Let’s look carefully at the fuel source for marathon marriages…
Today’s Scripture
“Look carefully then how you walk, not as unwise but as wise, 16 making the best use of the time, because the days are evil. 17 Therefore do not be foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is. 18 And do not get drunk with wine, for that is debauchery, but be filled with the Spirit, 19 addressing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody to the Lord with your heart, 20 giving thanks always and for everything to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, 21 submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ.
22 Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord. 23 For the husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior. 24 Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands.
25 Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, 26 that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, 27 so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish. 28 In the same way husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. 29 For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church, 30 because we are members of his body. 31 “Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.” 32 This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church. 33 However, let each one of you love his wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband” (Ephesians 5:15-33).
1. The Wounds of a Self-Centered Relationship
2. A Chain of Reasoning
The Bible wasn’t written to be read like you might read a fortune cookie. The Bible often makes long-sustained, arguments. It requires us to read and reread its words carefully and discern the force of its logic. Watch Paul’s words carefully before us. In the middle of verse fifteen you see the word “walk” followed by the word “therefore” at the beginning of verse seventeen. This is not a random thing in this letter but instead, it is a pattern Paul uses these two words (“walk” and “therefore”) five times. So these words are a pattern and not random.
Here is a chain of reasoning. How you “walk” will make an impact in three areas according to the page in front of me:
1) marriage (Ephesians 5:22-23);
2) children and parents (Ephesians 6:1-4);
3) and slaves and masters (Ephesians 6:5-9).
While I would enjoy seeing the implications of the Spirit’s actions in the parent/child relationship and even in the context of slaves/masters, I am especially eager for you to see this chain of reasoning for marriages. Let me connect the dots… To see the chain of reasoning, you need to know all of verses eighteen through twenty-one is on sentence in the original language of the New Testament (Greek). Let’s read it again:
“…but be filled with the Spirit,
19 addressing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody to the Lord with your heart,
20 giving thanks always and for everything to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ,
21 submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ.” (Ephesians 2:18b-21)
When the Holy Spirit controls you and fills you, there are three marks or traits to look for:
1) you will sing;
2) you will give thanks;
3) you will submit to others.
Again, the Bible tells us these are three marks when the Holy Spirit fills you. Again, the Spirit fuels you for marriage and parenting. To be generous means you actually have money in the bank. When your husband fails you time and time again, you have to find savings account to draw from. To be generous with our love for a lifetime means we have love in the bank. The Spirit deposits love into our relational bank accounts.
Two Facts about the Holy Spirit
2.1 Two Fights
You live in a warzone between your sinful nature (also known as “the flesh”) and the Spirit: “For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other, to keep you from doing the things you want to do” (Galatians 5:17).
Keep in mind that before your conversion you were fighting against God – this is what I’m calling your first fight. After your conversion God is fighting against the evil in you – this is what I’m calling your second fight. All human beings were built to worship Him and center their lives on Him
2.2. The Holy Spirit is the Secret Weapon in Marriage
“Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him” (Romans 8:9b).
So only followers of Christ have access to this gas station… I say all this because of this one point: the Holy Spirit is the power behind distinctive, Christian marathon marriages: “May you be strengthened with all power, according to his glorious might, for all endurance and patience with joy…” (Colossians 1:11).
The Holy Spirit is the fuel for love to go the distance in marathon marriages. The Bible claims that the Holy Spirit can provide sufficient fuel to empower you to sing, to give thanks, and to submit to serve as a slave before your master, through the tedious ups and downs of between a parent and a child, and in marathon marriages. The Holy Spirit is the fuel to lifetime of love to go the distance of a marathon marriage.
God’s Word says the heart must be changed if the heart is to be saved. Think of yourself as this bent rod. The Spirit of God is like a little flame torch that goes right at that bent section of your spirit so slowly that it softens. Slowly, it softens, and slowly, the bar of your nature can be put back straight. In fact, one of the ways to think about Christianity is a kind of cosmic orthodontics. Ortho, meaning straight, right? Straighten things out.
2.3 He Leads, She Submits
That’s where the bent came from, and that’s what we mean by that. So, Ephesians 5 is a crucial text for marriage. It’s in this passage, that we see some of crucial contours of the Christian vision of marriage. But it’s not without controversy. Before us are words such as “submit” and “head of the wife.” Words that have a nuclear reaction when read in the face of many within our culture. At the mere mention of “head of the wife”, people hyperventilate. We bristle when the word “submit” is used. The Bible’s instructions for happiness in marriage are as distinctive in our culture as they are controversial. But notice carefully the Bible’s chain of reasoning… Long before we hear these nuclear reactive words, we see these words in verse eighteen:
“And do not get drunk with wine, for that is debauchery, but be filled with the Spirit…” (Ephesians 5:18).
The picture of the Christian vision of marriage comes into focus when we realize that all that Paul says about marriage assumes we are being filled by the Holy Spirit.
Again, “And do not get drunk with wine, for that is debauchery, but be filled with the Spirit…” (Ephesians 5:18).
Surely, when Paul wrote these words he was thinking of the experience recorded in Acts 2. Had I got up this morning and drank six Budweisers, I would be acting very differently. Drinking too much means you lose control of yourself. You’re not yourself; you’re not acting like yourself. A drunken person is out of control. If you are pulled over by a policeman under the suspicion of driving while intoxicated, he will make you will a straight line. When you are drunk, you simply no longer control your actions. Just as drinking gives control of your body over to alcohol, so a Christian is controlled by the Holy Spirit. Only being inebriated with the Holy Spirit doesn’t make you loose control and slur your speech… Being controlled by the Spirit is not dramatic or decisive one-time experience but it’s a daily, on going habit.
Self-centeredness is the quickest and surest way to poison your marriage. The opposite of self-centeredness is love. “But the fruit of the Spirit is love…” The Spirit pulverizes self-centeredness; the Spirit produces love. And the Holy Spirit especially specializes in pulverizing self-centered in marathon marriages.
If you are unhappily married, kill the thought that there is somebody better out there for you. Kill the thought that there is some who is waiting to bring you unending happiness. The Holy Spirit is the fuel to lifetime of love to go the distance of a marathon marriage. When a husband and a wife each say, “I’m going to attack my self-centeredness as the main problem in our marriage,” you have the prospects of a truly great marriage. Marriages that go the distance need a fuel. Marriages that go the distance need a high-octane fuel that only the Holy Spirit can bring.
3. Marriage is a Window
“Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her…” (Ephesians 5:25).
God has ordered the universe with marriage as an overarching narrative. He has designed marriages everywhere as a window and not a mirror. Marriage isn’t a mirror where you only see two people together on a date. Marriage is a window designed to ultimately display the marriage of Christ to His church not simply a man and a woman. A husband (and a wife) can look through the window of marriage to the relationship of Christ and the church. We can view Christ’s love for the church as the standard for how we are to love one another. And seeing Christ love the church, we do not witness self-centeredness.
“Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant 5 or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; 6 it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth.7 Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things” (1 Corinthians 13:4-6).
You can place Christ’s name everywhere you read the word love in 1 Corinthians 13:4-6. Christ is the model, the example for marriage and the Holy Spirit is the fuel to empower you.
A good marriage… extends grace to you when you are grumpy; remembers your birthdays, your favorite foods, and your favorite music; celebrates your wins; speaks the truth when no one else will; serves one another with joy without complaining; becomes excited about what I am excited about; and affirms my best qualities when I am insecure. Do you want all that in a marriage and more? Then become this for your spouse.
