What Is Marriage, It’s Work
11/19/95 Eccl. 3:1-12 Ephesians 4:20-5:2 Topical
One day on the job, the supervisor called John, Dave, and Sam into his office. John had been on the job for 11 years, Dave for 4 and Sam for one year. All three men liked their job and were doing okay at work. The supervisor told them, "fellows, they are having a training seminar on how to work more efficiently at the plant and it might be nice if you guys would agree to go to it. It’s not a requirement so you’re not going to be paid for it. But it could make your experience here more rewarding for you."
John the 11 year vet went home and told his wife, the boss said there’s going to be a training seminar that might help us with our work. I’ve been at that job for 11 years. What in the world could anybody teach me about improving my skills? I’m not going to anything that I don’t get paid extra for. He probably just felt he had to invite me, but his real intent was probably to get to the newer guys.
Sam the one year vet went home and told his wife, The boss said there’s going to be a training seminar that might help us with our work. I’ve been there for a year now, and I don’t see much more that needs to be done. The boss told me that I’ve been doing okay. I guess he feels the other guys need the training, and he invited me just to not make them look bad.
Dave the four year vet went home and told his wife, the boss said there’s going to be a training seminar that might help us with our work. He said that I’ve been doing good job at work. Maybe he invited me because He sees some potential in me that I haven’t realized yet. Perhaps there’s something to the job that I haven’t seen. What do you think honey, should I take the extra time and go even though I won’t get paid for it. Of course you should go. This may open some bigger doors for you in the future. Who knows how we might blessed down the road.
Dave went and learned some things about some technology that was coming down the pike, about how things were handled at other plants to make them more efficient, about what things they were doing at their own plant that were counter productive. Three years later, Dave was chosen to replace his supervisor after he retired.
It doesn’t take a genius to know that Dave made the right choice when given the opportunity to improve himself. There’s no greater fool than the one who thinks that He or she has learned all that there is to learn. Some guy declared at the end of the 1800’s that everything that could be invented had been invented. How wrong he was.
Marriage is the one thing that we have never seen a perfect one exist, but we are quite sure we know the perfect way to handle it. Some of us are like John, "I’ve been married for 20 years, what can anybody tell me. Is it possible you can do the same things wrong for 20 years, or that something new has come up in 20 years.
Some of us are like Sam the one year vet, I’ve seen the mistakes those older couples made, but that’s not going to happen in my marriage. Very few of us are like Dave when it comes to marriage, able to admit, that there are some things I don’t know, some things I need to keep learning, and some things I can benefit from by studying others successes and failures. Perhaps there is something better for me that I have yet to experience.
Most men are terrified of going to a marriage seminar. They automatically assume that it means they are admitting something is wrong with them or their marriage. The problem is they are right. Something is wrong with every man and something is wrong with every marriage. Something is wrong with every woman too. Sticking one’s head in the sand does not correct it or make one any more of a man. It takes courage to humble one’s self and seek the best not just for yourself, but for your mate.
Marriage is not what we expect it to be. People have lied to you when they said, as long as you really love each other, it will work. That’s a bunch of non-sense. Being romantically in love will not produce a good marriage. Look at the artists who sing all those romantic love songs, and try to see if you can keep up with the number of divorces they have had. The one manual that tries to give us a realistic view of marriage, is the one we don’t want to apply to the marriage. It’s called the Bible.
Listen to this verse about marriage, and don’t let anybody try to fool you into believing something different. I Corinthians 7:28 says, "But those who marry will face many troubles in this life." Now the verse didn’t say that there wouldn’t be joy and happiness in marriage, but it specifically tells us that marriage is going to have many troubles. The reason for the troubles is that all of us are imperfect human beings. But we lie and tell the other person, I’m going to be the perfect mate for you" and they lie to us and say " that’s wonderful and I will be the perfect mate for you. "
The success of a marriage has little to do with how much you love another person feeling wise. People get divorced everyday who still have feelings for each other. The success of a marriage depends on the amount of work that you are willing to put into the marriage.
Marriage may be fun, it may be good, it may be what you want, but more than anything else a good marriage is work. You have to work at a marriage to make it a good marriage. Just wishing for one or praying for one is not going to cause it to happen. Both people must work at it.
I’m going to take each letter in the word work and show you how it applies to marriage. The first letter is the letter W and W stands for work itself. Now God told us in the beginning that marriage was going to be work when He said in Genesis 2:24 For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh.
God tells in the beginning, to be married you’ve got to do three things and all of them involve work. The first thing you must do is leave where you’ve been. If you have ever left one apartment to move into another, you know that there is a lot of work involved. Things have to be packed, moved, carried upstairs, unpacked, cleaned, put out and boxes moved away. It’s a headache, but you do it because you know in the long run, things are going to look nice and you will get the place looking like you want it.
So in marriage God says you’ve got to leave your family and go live somewhere else. That means saying good-bye to people you love. It means not longer expecting to get financial support from them, no longer being able to automatically take their sides in disputes, no longer being able to share holidays and traditions like you use to, no longer being able to rush in and be there for them like you use to, and no longer letting them be the first human beings in your life.
This doesn’t happen automatically. You’ve got to work to leave them behind, especially when some of them are holding on to you refusing to let you go or you’re still trying to hold on to them. Some couples never leave their families, and end up divorced because every major decision had to be approved by one of their mom or dad.
God says you’ve got to be united to each other. Contrary to what you might think, you and your spouse are not as much alike as you thought you were when you first got married. We go out and marry and marry opposites because they compliment us, but we have to go home and live with each other weaknesses. Those of us who don’t talk much, marry someone who talks a lot to help cover our weakness in public. Once you marry, you find out that every time you’re ready to go home, this person wants to talk to fifty people.
Those of us who are always late marry someone who is always on time, because we think, now we will never be late again. Instead we find this person who is constantly bugging us to death about hurry up, come on now, we’re going to be late again. It takes work to be united together. Getting married is like putting a cat and dog in the same cage. You realize that very quickly you’ve got to come to an agreement on certain rules if its going to be a happy experience. Those rules change with time if you’re working at your marriage.
God says and become one flesh. Now that verse includes sex, but it includes a lot more than sex. Some of us think that becoming one means that the other person is to become just like me. So we set out to make this other person just like us. It’s like putting a fox and a chicken in the same cage. They will become one, but after a very short period of time, you will see mostly the fox, with perhaps a feather or two around his lips.
It takes work to keep from trying to make this other person do things just like you want them done. Marriage is not making the other person in your image. It is giving birth to a new relationship that’s different from what either person has know in the past.
Both people have much to bring and to offer to the relationship, and both have things they have to let go of if oneness is going to be achieved. It may mean changing your former family traditions and creating some of your own. It means that you can be different but still be one. Each weakness can be turned into a strength if you’re willing to work at.
The second letter in the word work is O for opportunity. Marriage is an opportunity for another way of life. It is not the way of life, or the best way of life, its simply another way of life that God gives us the opportunity to choose or not to choose as believers. Jesus says, "you shall no the truth, and the truth shall set you free." We have made marriage appear to be an opportunity that it is not. Therefore we need to get rid of the myths of marriage so that can make an intelligent decision as to whether or not we want to choose it.
Here are some of the myths of marriage. 1. " And they lived happily ever after". The only couples that have lived happily ever after in marriage were those who as soon as they kissed each other after they were pronounced husband and wife, they both instantly had heart attacks and died before reaching the floor.
If you don’t have conflict in your marriage, it’s because one of you is a fox and has eaten the chicken so there’s no need to get the chicken’s input. There is no marriage in which one person always sees the best way for handling every situation. There is no good marriage in which both people will agree on every situation.
Myth 2 is that each person is expecting the same thing from the other person. One person is looking for someone to clean, to take care of him/or her, sex at the drop of a hat, and someone not to be bother him or her when he or she doesn’t want to be bothered.
The other person is looking for someone who wants to share household responsibilities, do little romantic things on a daily basis, share their innermost thoughts and feelings with, and always be together. Needless to say, both are intent on changing the other person.
The reality is, we cannot change another person. We can only change and adjust our own reactions and actions. No where in the Bible does it says for us to make others anything. The Bible tells us what we are to do about ourselves. That’s why it is critical that we have high standards for out mates, and let them know what our standards are before letting our feelings run ahead of our brains or of our commitment to God.
Myth number 3 is that everything bad in my life will disappear. The reality is, marriage will bring in some more bad things. Each person brings problems into the relationship without warning the other person about it in advance. Some of the things we are not even aware of ourselves, so how could we tell the othere person. Marriage is not a miracle cure for problems.
Marriage does not eliminate loneliness, it does not cure you or your spouses bad points, it cannot make you more responsible or mature. You must work to get rid of these things by making conscious decisions to allow the power of Jesus Christ to change you. Marriage is not going to make you a whole person. Only Jesus Christ can do that.
Myth number 4 is that "everything good in your relationship is going to get better". The truth this that some things are going to change and become more difficult. Marriage involves adjusting to inconveniences. The reality is that your mate is not the perfect mate you thought he she was, and you are not the perfect mate that he/she thought you were. What do you do with this knowledge. Well according to the Bible, you accept one another and God in Christ has accepted you, and work for the best
Myth number 5 is that there is a perfect mate waiting for you and all you have to do is find that person to be happy in life. The Bible says that all have sinned and come short of the glory of God, and that the human heart is of all things most deceitful. If you marry a sinner, don’t be shocked if every now and then the person acts like one by being stubborn, selfish, demanding, and very difficult to get along with.
Why would you want to go an mess up a perfect person by marrying the person? Honey you’re perfect, I love you too much to mess you up by marrying me who is imperfect. The Bible doesn’t put the emphasis on finding the right person, but rather on being the right kind of a person. God has already told you who you can marry. The word says marry anybody you want to marry so long as he or she is living for Jesus Christ.
The third letter in the word work is R for rebuilding. Marriage is about letting go of something that you once were and rebuilding something altogether different, but you have to do it in conjunction with the other person. In the Old Testament, when the people wanted to build a tower to heaven instead of spreading over the earth as God told them, God put a stop to their building.
He did it by confusing their language. So that when one asked for a brick, somebody brought, wood. Their language caused them to stop building the tower, and they went and separated as God had told them.
Marriage is work at rebuilding the marriage again and again. It is amazing how our language is confused in marriage. Satan probably has a hand in it somewhere. We say one thing and the other person heard something else. We say, "will you please take out the trash."
The other person heard, "all you do is sit around and watch TV. I’m sick and tired of having to do everything around this house by myself. You about as lazy as they come." So instead of saying yes or no, the other person says, "Why don’t you get off my case. You’re always bugging me. I work eight hours a day just like you do. You not the only one doing something to keep this place clean. I told you yesterday, I’d take the trash out. I was going to do it when this program went off. I’m getting sick and tired of you harping on my case all the time."
Communication is not me telling you, here’s how its going to be. We’re going to do it like this. Communication is not one person yelling one thing and another person yelling something about. To continue to build and rebuild a marriage real communication has to take place. Communication takes place, when I say what I intended to say, and you heard what I intended for you to hear.
Now women, have a good way of saying something that is not what they intended to say, but honestly believe that men should be able to look beyond what they said and understand what they intended to say. A woman will say, Honey I picked up your shoes and put them in the closet. The husband says thank you sweetheart and thinks nothing else of it. He notices his wife is a little distant, and says is something bothering you. She says no. He says are you sure.
She says well there is one thing. I just feel like I’m taken for granted around here. I have to pick up after the kids, and after you and its just getting too much. Why don’t you all care about my feelings and the extra work you make for me. Now that’s what she was trying to tell him when she told him that she picked up his shoes and put them in the closet, only he thought she was just letting him know where the shoes were if he needed them.
This is why the Scriptures tell us to be bear with one another. We often assume the other person knows something that the other person doesn’t. It takes work to rebuild our marriages time and time again. Yet there is a great joy when we find that we are building in the correct manner.
The last letter in the word work is K, which stands for keep. Keep doing what is right, even when the other person is doing wrong. No marriage ever got better because one partner stooped to return a wrong for a wrong. The word of God tells us to overcome evil with good. It takes work to keep doing what is right when those romantic feelings for the other person is gone. It takes work to keep doing right when the other person has misunderstood your actions or your motives.
The most needed ingredient for a good marriage is forgiveness. Keep forgiving the other person, just as God in Christ has forgiven you. When two people get married, there are actually six people getting married. There is the person the bride thinks she is, the bride the groom thinks she is, the bride as she really is, the person the groom thinks he is, the groom the bride thinks he is, and the groom as he really is. When you are dealing with that many people in an intimate way everyday, there is bound to be the need for a lot of forgiveness. Keep on giving it because it is the only way for your love to continue to blossom and glow.
When you hurt or offend your partner, don’t say, "well you’re just too sensitive and nobody else would have been offended by it." Keep being able to say, "I’m sorry that I hurt you, that was not my intention. Will you forgive me." Keep accepting that your spouse is not the perfect person that you thought you were getting, and is not changing in the way you had hoped that he or she would. Even more important, keep realizing that you are not all that your partner thought you would be and that he or she has also been disappointed.
Keep remembering that your true hope is to lie in God, not in the other person. Trying to come up with all the forgiveness necessary in a good marriage will not be found in your strength alone. There are times when only God can provide us with what we need.
In our moments of tension and friction with each other, the grace that God has to put us back in harmony is always within reach if both parties will keep swallowing their pride and put what’s best for the marriage ahead of trying to prove that he or she is right.
What is marriage. Marriage is work if you want to have a good one, it can be a nightmare if you don’t put the work into it. The good thing about Jesus Christ is that if you invite Him into your marriage, and live in it according to His plan, He can put the broken pieces back together again wherever we are.
Even good marriages can have broken pieces, that need to be touched by the power of God. When the couple allows God to touch broken pieces, bad marriages become good marriages, and good marriages become great marriages. Any couple here today has the opportunity to make their marriage as good as they want it to be. Jesus has voted in your favor, what’s your decision.
