The Dance
Prt. 1 of series Life After the Wedding
Wildwind Community Church
David Flowers
January 22, 2006
Video – What makes a good marriage?
Almost everybody knows what makes a good marriage. Isn’t it amazing that there are so many divorces and bad marriages? Think about those two facts. Almost everybody knows what makes a good marriage. Ask anyone on the street and they’ll tell you. Communication, commitment, humor, picking your battles, trust, respect – people know what it takes to keep a marriage strong.
So why do so many relationships dissolve?
Because it’s one thing to KNOW what it takes, but it’s another thing to HAVE what it takes. It’s one thing to know what it takes, but it’s quite another thing to have what it takes. It’s as easy to list the qualities that make up a good marriage as it is to list the qualities that make up an Olympic athlete. Let’s do that for a minute. What are the qualities that make an Olympic athlete? (Have congregation call out some things)
Thank you, well done. By the way, any Olympic athletes in the room? Any former Olympic athletes in the room? That’s what I thought. It’s one thing to know what it takes. It’s another thing completely to have what it takes. So when it comes to marriage, do you have what it takes? If not, are you willing to get it?
I want to lay out for you where I want to go in the coming weeks – the topics we are going to be touching on. I want you to go away from this whole series remembering some basic things that have potential to make your marriage, and thus your life, a whole lot better.
First, God wants marriages to be healthy.
Second, a good marriage takes two, but all you can do is focus on you.
Third, your marriage is God’s will for you now.
Fourth, marriages falter and fail for a pretty narrow number of reasons, and those reasons are both predictable and preventable.
Fifth, adultery is the natural path many marriages will go down if you do not take specific steps to prevent it.
Sixth, there are definite, proven steps you can take to fix a broken marriage or improve on some of your weak spots.
That’s six topics. Sounds like six sermons, doesn’t it? The truth is that I have no idea how many sermons this will be. All I know is that those are the six things I want to make sure you understand thoroughly. Because my hope in the coming weeks is not that you will just know what a good marriage looks like. Most of us already know that.
My hope, my prayer, in the coming weeks is that we will accomplish three things:
1. First, I want you help you ask the right questions. If you’re asking the wrong questions in your marriage, then it doesn’t matter what the answers are, does it?
2. Second, I want to help you realize and embrace the right answers. If you’re going to move forward, it’s important that you not think that good marriages are good by accident, or that bad marriages are bad because of fate.
3. Third, I want to see you serving the right god together. Bob Dylan said you’ve got to serve somebody. I think every individual, as well as every marriage and every family, will serve somebody, will have a god of some kind. It may be power or money or environmentalism or Allah, or Jesus Christ, or even just the god of family itself, but every marriage will serve somebody or something. I want to see you serving the God who I believe intended marriage for the companionship and well-being of the creatures he loves.
You know I believe God wants all marriages to be healthy ones. Probably not exactly the most daring thing you’ve ever heard in a sermon, huh? Yet I think we need to spend some time on it. Because if we think about it for a minute, we end up in that same strange place we’re in when we list the qualities of a good marriage. If everybody knows what makes a good marriage, how come there aren’t more good marriages? If God wants every marriage to be healthy, how come more marriages aren’t healthy? How do we explain the contradiction? I think we explain it by going back to our Olympic athlete example. We know what it takes, but many of us do not have what it takes. We know it takes commitment, but many struggle to make commitments. We know it takes sacrifice, but many struggle with selfishness. We know it takes patience, but many struggle with a short fuse. We know it takes the long haul, but many of us are addicted to the short-term and the big rush. We know God wants marriages to be strong, but again we are confronted with the difference between what God wants and what we are capable of delivering. So we find that the answer to both questions is the same. Why can I know what makes a good marriage and still not have a good marriage? Because deep down inside, something is wrong with me. What I know in my head is not translating into what I feel in my heart and/or what I practice with my actions. Marriage reveals what is lacking in us, doesn’t it? We stand at the altar on our wedding day and make all these lofty promises, and we really mean what we say. And before the honeymoon is over, hubby snaps at wifey because she’s too tired to do whatever he wants to do. Wifey mocks hubby in a snide remark about how he wasn’t exactly her knight in shining armor at the restaurant yesterday. It’s not that we didn’t intend to keep our commitments, and it’s not that the commitments should never have been made. The problem is that we lack the character to be what we aspire to be.
Yet we know God desires that marriages be strong. How do we know this? We know it in two ways. First is through the Bible’s account of God’s design for marriage.
Genesis 2:18-25 (NIV)
18 The LORD God said, "It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him."
22 Then the LORD God made a woman from the rib he had taken out of the man, and he brought her to the man.
23 The man said, "This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called ’woman,’ for she was taken out of man."
24 For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh.
25 The man and his wife were both naked, and they felt no shame.
We see here that God declares, “I will make a helper suitable for the man.” Suitable. Appropriate. Well-fitting. Just what he needs. Men, do you feel that way about your wife? Is your wife suitable? Is she just what you need? Is she the appropriate person for you to be joined to? God declared this suitability as his intention when he created woman. He created woman for the specific purpose of being the ideal companion for man.
I wasn’t there when all this went down and I don’t know exactly what it refers to, but here’s what I believe deeply – that God desires for marriages to be strong and healthy because his intention from the beginning was that a man and woman should be suitable for one another and help each other get through life. The two shall become “one flesh.”
Guys, are you “one flesh” with your wife? Is she such a part of you that you don’t even know how to think of yourself without her? Is she your closest companion, your best friend, your encourager, the first one you want to tell when you fail, and the one you need to hear say, “I’m proud of you” when you succeed?
Here’s where we get to knowing the right answers, like I talked about. Please do not hear this and begin saying, “But my wife and I don’t have that kind of relationship. Dave, I’m glad you and Christy are best buds or whatever, but it has never been like that for us.” My friends, that is exactly the problem. Believe it or not, there is a right answer to this. The right answer is that couples who stay together for a lifetime, who have a vital relationship, are friends with one another. They are connected, not just by proximity but by a bond of affection. This is so well-understood in the marriage research world that couples are grouped into different types and one type is called “devitalized.” They are not necessarily “conflicted” and constantly at each other’s throats, but they are devitalized – the romance is gone – the fire is out – they are not friends and companions. They are roommates. Ladies, is your husband your companion, or your roommate?
The other way we know that God desires that marriages be strong is by the fact that in the Bible when God is describing his relationship to his people, he doesn’t use a dog metaphor, even though dog is man’s best friend. He uses a marriage metaphor. He calls his people his “bride,” and in some places even refers to himself as the “husband” of his people. God uses this most intimate of human relationships to describe his relationship to us precisely because God sees the marriage relationship as the closest two people can get on this earth.
I have heard a lot of guys tell me, “My wife and I just aren’t like that. We don’t really share with each other. We don’t have that kind of relationship.” Most men I know who say this (and I have heard some women say it too) are emotionally distant in all their relationships, and very hard for anyone to reach, including their spouse. Just because that’s the way it is doesn’t mean there isn’t more out there, more ground to cover. It can always be better. Marriage can be a proving ground – a place where you can develop in yourself capacities that you may not even think you have. It’s the perfect place to find out who you really are, and to aspire to be more, and to get the encouragement you need to become tomorrow’s person today.
Disconnection shows in many ways in couples. I’ve counseled couples who have told me their sex life is alright, but they can’t talk to each other about sex. I think a requirement of being allowed to have sex is that you learn how to talk about it. We shouldn’t be allowed to do things that we cannot bring ourselves to talk about. There’s a disconnect there that is a real concern. I have heard many Christian couples say that cannot talk about God or pray together. These are two spiritually mature people who both want God’s best for their lives, but they cannot discuss it. Something is wrong. There’s a disconnect. They share, but they don’t share.
If you’re in a relationship like this this morning, I’m not being critical, I’m just saying why settle for that? Do you think that’s the best life has to offer, the best marriage has for you? Do you not think there are new worlds to conqueror by taking those hills one at a time?
God not only intended man and woman to be together, but he intended them to be one flesh, and this goes way, way, way beyond sex. In fact I’m convinced that unless one flesh happens between a man and woman spiritually and emotionally, they will never come close to one flesh physically. As one deepens, so will the other.
Look at what happened between Adam and Eve as a result of sin.
Genesis 3:16 (NIV)
16 To the woman he said, "I will greatly increase your pains in childbearing; with pain you will give birth to children. Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you."
Before this, we can assume Adam and Eve had equal desire for each other. Before this they communicated as friends. No threats, no force, no manipulation. But then sin entered the world and all of creation fell under a curse and a wound was dealt to Adam and Eve that every couple today is still struggling to recover from. She wants to love him and be close to him and make him happy, but he is distant and inaccessible, and he hurts her with his coldness, and makes her feel second to everything else in his life. “Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you.”
I’m convinced nearly every relationship will have a Genesis 3:16 phase early on. I think almost every relationship will have a period of time where she just wants to be with him and spend time with him, but for him work comes first. Her desire is for him, but he rules over her emotions with his distance and his inaccessibility, and hides behind what he likes to call “logic,” but it’s just a smokescreen for his own fear of intimacy. Or he retreats into silence. The more distant he is, the more desperate she becomes and the more desperate she becomes the more control he has over her. Something has to stop the cycle. What has the power to do that?
Get ready, because I think we’re going to keep coming back to this again and again. The answer is a change of heart. A change of heart.
With this answer we enter the wide-open spaces where God lives. Is God the author of the silence we live in, guys? Is that how God would have us be? Is God the inventor of the alienation in your lives, women? Of course not! Something has to change, not in the other person, not in our circumstances, but in our hearts. We need a change of heart. We need to become less fearful and more joyful, less critical and more appreciative, less angry and more gentle, less stingy and more generous. In other words, there is a door for you to have a better marriage. Walk through that door and a new world begins to open up for you – the sun rises in a place that has been covered in shadows for way too long. It can be springtime in Narnia, folks! And that door you must walk through is labeled, “A Change of Heart.”
God desires strong marriages; but we are not naturally capable of the kind of intimacy that long-lasting marriage requires, because we have heart problems. Women, this isn’t just a guy thing. You’re no more naturally capable of deep intimacy than men. Men retreat into silence or anger when things get too intimate, and become unreachable. Women tend to sink into depression and bitterness when they begin to suspect Prince Charming won’t be able to meet their every need, and become critical. Because women tend to be better at relationships than men, men are on ever more shaky ground as the relationship deepens and they tend to fear that they will be exposed as the relational lightweights most of them are. Because of the fear they hesitate to speak, hesitate to get too close and make a mistake. And when wifey feels hubby getting too distant, it’s usually not long until the criticisms start to fly, which of course confirms to him that he really is the amateur he thought he was, and that he really won’t be able to make her happy. What a mess.
God desires strong marriages, but look at the web we are stuck in, because of our heart problems. Fear and suspicion and anger and silence and bitterness – all of these qualities that spring up from within our broken, fallen, terminally insecure hearts.
Mark 7:20-23 (MSG)
20 He went on: "It’s what comes out of a person that pollutes:
21 obscenities, lusts, thefts, murders, adulteries,
22 greed, depravity, deceptive dealings, carousing, mean looks, slander, arrogance, foolishness—
23 all these are vomit from the heart. There is the source of your pollution."
That is powerful stuff, my friends. We struggle to connect in relationships because we are heart sick. All this stuff is down inside of us and it comes up like vomit from the heart, it clings to our relationships and our pictures of ourselves, and it stinks. True intimacy means that eventually someone is going to get puked on. I know that sounds terrible, but the reality is that when our hearts are sick, whoever is closest will get the vomit.
No wonder it’s so hard to connect in marriage. Can we just have a little honest talk about barf here this morning? I don’t know about you but I’m paranoid about throwing up. Throwing up is one of the world’s sickest and therefore most private acts, if you ask me. It’s nasty and smelly and you make embarrassing noises that are out of your control, and after you do it there’s this awful taste in your mouth, and it’s just disgusting – there’s no other word for it.
And yet here Jesus compares all this nastiness in the human heart to vomit. Of course he’s perfectly right, isn’t he? It IS vomit, and when we spew it all over our beloved, they tend to not respond very well. Any failure you and I have to connect to our spouse comes from this vomit in our hearts. Developing intimacy over a lifetime is about:
a. Accepting that there is yuck in your own heart.
b. Accepting that there is yuck in the heart of your beloved.
c. Learning when you need to avoid the yuck in your spouse and when you need to affirm your spouse in spite of their yuck.
d. Learning to allow your spouse to see your yuck.
I’m not sure but this might be the grossest message I’ve ever preached. [I think it’s even grosser than “Life Under the Poop Pile.”] But we can’t talk about why we struggle in relationships without coming up with what Jesus said – because we have vomit in our hearts, and that’s what gets shot all over the closest people to us and it’s offensive to them and embarrassing to us, and all of our lives we’re learning how to accept this broken, flawed piece of ourselves and this broken, flawed piece of our beloved.
Somehow we supposed to make our way through this mess and reach out and make a genuine connection with not two, not three, not ten other people, but just one. Just one. And many couples feel crushed under the weight of all their baggage and fear they will never be able to make that connection. God wants marriages to be healthy, but most of them aren’t. Why? Because we’re heartsick. We need a change of heart. Because we live in a world that has fallen under the curse, where we do not see ourselves and each other properly anymore, where each of us has an ideal self we’re proud of, and a real self underneath that we hope to God no one ever sees.
But in a close marriage relationship, someone sees – someone besides God. Someone who has their own ideal self they are proud of, and their own real self underneath that they’re embarrassed by and struggling with and hoping to God no one ever sees. So you do the dance. Move close, move away. Screw up and say you’re sorry one time, screw up the next time and pretend it didn’t happen because you’re just too dang embarrassed to go back and apologize all over again. It’s like always having sex with the lights off – in other words, you’re involved in this incredibly intimate relationship, but you avoid looking at the face of your beloved or having them see your face because the face is where shame and pain and embarrassment and guilt and fear show themselves. Sex can be sex, but do we really have to look in each other’s eyes? Can’t we just be roommates in this house and focus on the business and avoid ever really revealing who we are to each other? Can’t we just dismiss all our weaknesses with flippant platitudes like, “Connecting isn’t my style,” or “I’m not an intimate kind of person”?
If only we knew what a tragic thing we are really saying about ourselves when we make that statement. If only we understood that those words should be the battle cry for the fight of our lives – because intimacy is what’s at stake, and intimacy is the only thing that drives out isolation. In homes all over this church, all over this community, couples are living with each other in the same house, sharing life’s journey with each other, but never looking one another in the eye – never connecting – too afraid their partner will see fear on their face – too afraid to see disapproval in the face of their partner.
That’s the dance. Marriage is wonderful, but it’s the hardest and scariest and most embarrassing dance you will ever do. Because the person whose approval you need the most will be the person you fail in front of over and over and over and over. And they’ll have their own stuff they’re dealing with, and they won’t always be able to reassure you and tell you it’s okay when you fail because sometimes your failures will wound them deeply, and the truth is that it won’t be okay for a very long time. And you’re feeling truly awful and seeking reassurance you’re not going to get this time and you’re too hurt to think about the other person’s pain. And so sometimes you’ll both retreat into your own emotional bedrooms and just wait it out. Eventually you’ll start saying hello again, and before long it’s back to casual conversation, then back to life as normal which you know you’ve arrived, guys, when the sex comes back. So you do the dance again until the next dark time comes.
God desires strong marriages. You know it and I know it. And we know what makes marriages strong, but many of us lack the capacity to have strong marriages. Why? Because we are heartsick. We want to blame the other person, blame our financial circumstances, blame our crappy job – but deep down one of the truest things that can be said about us is that we are sick at heart. We have stuff in there – vomit Jesus said – that comes out of us and gets all over other people, and if we have barfhearts, no one will get more barf than our spouse.
So I ask you today, are you prepared for a change of heart? Are you prepared to look at yourself? Are you ready to give up on the idea that if your spouse would change, things would be better for both of you? Or are you sitting there right now, really hoping your spouse is answering yes to all of these questions, and thanking God that there’s finally some chance that he/she might hear something in the next few weeks and get their act together?
If that’s the case, I have a hard truth to tell you as I close. That is the problem. Maybe you can’t see it, maybe you violently disagree and think that I just haven’t seen how awful your spouse really is and that if I just knew the details I’d be firmly on your side. If you think that, I want to tell you that this kind of thinking is precisely the problem. This is why you are distant from your spouse. This is why despite whatever honest attempts you have made, you have failed. Because your spouse knows you, and they see in you that even when you seem like you want to make things better, it is really just a way of getting him/her to take all the responsibility for everything. Until you have a change of heart – until you see the truth – that you are the problem (and in a troubled relationship that probably goes for both of you!), you will remain stuck where you are now. I promise you that the future has nothing but more of the same waiting for you until you open your eyes – until you see the vomit in your own heart – and decide that you have had enough.
Next week I want to talk to you about how a good marriage takes two, but all you can do is focus on you. My hope and prayer is that you will think about what I have said today, and that by next week, you’ll be ready to listen with an open heart. Because the first step to having a change of heart is when you open it to the quiet voice of God. God wants marriages to be healthy. My question for you is this: Do you want for yourself what God wants for you?
