Partly or Wholly Holy
Life After the Wedding, part 3
Wildwind Community Church
February 5, 2006
David Flowers
We’re still in our series on marriage, called “Life After the Wedding.” We kicked it off two weeks ago with a message called The Dance, where we talked about how God wants marriages to be healthy, but noted that despite that fact, there are a lot of unhealthy marriages. In that message we discovered that the key to moving toward a good marriage is a change of heart – that it’s the key that unlocks the door of marital and personal health for us. Last week we talked about The God-Centered Spouse. In that message I shared with you that although a good marriage takes two, all you can do is focus on you, and I encouraged you with that passage from 2 Cor. 7:1. Read it with me.
2 Corinthians 7:1 (NIV)
… let us purify ourselves from everything that contaminates body and spirit, perfecting holiness out of reverence for God.
Today I want to go deeper into this idea of reverence for God as it relates to marriage relationships. Last week’s big thought was, “What if the things in your marriage that bother you the most reveal the areas where you need the most work.” Heavy stuff – have you thought about that at all? Do you see how it’s true in your own life?
Today I want to start with a thought that will build on that last one, and I hope it will wake you up at night this week, that will occur to you throughout your day, that will dawn on you in the middle of your next big fight with your spouse, that it will be matter enough to be unsettling to you. Today’s message will be based on this thought:
What if God’s purpose for you in marriage is not primarily to make you happy, but to make you holy?
Ever thought of that before? What if God’s purpose in marriage for you is not primarily to make you happy, but to make you holy? Last week we talked about the God-centered spouse. The God-centered spouse begins with this conviction, with this understanding, with this assurance, that God’s purpose for us in marriage is not primarily to make us happy, but to make us holy.
Then again, that’s not really a leap at all, is it? Rick Warren likes to say that God is not nearly as interested in our comfort as He is in our character. I don’t have much trouble believing that, do you? Do you think God would rather have you be comfortable and selfish, or uncomfortable and selfless? I mean, if God had to choose, which would it be? What would you desire for your own children? Do you primarily desire that they be happy all the time, or that they grow into strong human beings who are godly, moral, and ethical? That’s a no-brainer, isn’t it? And isn’t it true that we can’t always have both? Sometimes we come to moments where we have to choose between happiness and holiness. Your children can’t always have both. Sometimes they will have moments in their lives where you as a parent will choose to develop their character instead of maintain their comfort. Sometimes it just can’t be both ways. God is more interested in our character than in our comfort, in our holiness than our happiness. This isn’t to say that God doesn’t care about our comfort or happiness, only that He has higher priorities than that; and this is where it gets tough for us if we are not a God-centered spouse, because to be centered on ourselves, to be not centered on God, usually means that our own comfort and happiness are the highest priorities in our lives. Ever met a self-centered person who did not have their own comfort and happiness at the top of their priority list?
So the God-centered spouse assumes what I am telling you – that God is more interested in making us holy than in making us happy. Some of us, frankly, would rather be happy. The extent to which we’d rather be happy than holy shows us how unholy we still are. Holiness, you see, brings a happiness and freedom of its own that we can’t imagine in our current state. To be holy is to want what God wants, to take joy in what brings God joy, to not be tied to our own whims and moods, and to be truly free. The world offers us happiness – God offers us joy as we pursue holiness. Happiness – circumstantial, temporary, shallow. Joy – not dependent on circumstances but on attitude, eternal, very deep.
I don’t think God’s desire to make you holy through your marriage is that much of a surprise. God wants to use all the circumstances of your life to make you holy. Your health, or lack thereof. Your money or lack thereof. Your job or lack thereof. Your friends or lack thereof. Your mental capacities and your hopes and dreams, your strengths and weaknesses, your highs and your lows. In all of these things God desires to see you do what? Become more like Jesus. That is simply to say, God desires to see you become holy, and wants to use any and every circumstance of your life to create His character in you.
Romans 8:29 (MSG)
29 God knew what he was doing from the very beginning. He decided from the outset to shape the lives of those who love him along the same lines as the life of his Son. The Son stands first in the line of humanity he restored. We see the original and intended shape of our lives there in him.
Dream with me for a moment. What if you took this to heart today? What if you understood more clearly than ever that God’s desire for you in your marriage is to make you holy? How would that change your expectations of your spouse? How would that change the negative attitudes some are carrying around? How would that change the relationship? How would that change the tone in your home? How would that change your first thought when your spouse irks you? How would that change your self-talk, in other words, the script you allow to keep running through your head about your spouse? As I said last week, if a spouse is God-centered, if a spouse understands that his/her marriage is the main place where holiness will be built in his/her life, then every irritating thing becomes not something to be changed in the other person, but a cue as to what needs to change in you.
This is a supremely irritating idea. The fact is that sometimes our spouses are jerks. Sometimes they DO do irritating things and say hurtful things. I am not saying that marriage requires that we deny this. I’m saying that to perfect holiness in our marriages out of reverence for God means accepting these irritating and hurtful things, and allowing the disappointment and hurt to build character in us. The reason this needs to be done is because we are not naturally holy people. We do not respond to our circumstances in holy ways. We do not naturally turn the other cheek. We do not naturally pray for our enemies. We do not naturally love those who hate us. Holiness is a foreign language to us – one which must be practiced and learned.
Whether we are married or single, God wants us to become holy through the circumstances of our lives. That’s why, like I said last week, marriage may be the best place on earth to develop holiness, because marriage will offer so many opportunities for unholy words, actions, and attitudes! But as the verse says, we do not perfect holiness in our lives to improve our marriage. Or to become better than other people. Or even just because we want to be better for its own sake. We perfect holiness in our lives out of reverence for God, because that is what God wants and would have us do. See how this completely takes the focus off our spouse?
Whether you are married or single, the fundamental character-building aspect of your life will be learning to respond to circumstances beyond your control. The promotion you almost got at work but then lost. The garage door pinching and locking both of your cars in the garage on a day you’re already running late for work. The financial decision that goes bad and throws you into financial chaos. The nagging spouse. The oversensitive spouse. The controlling spouse. The angry spouse. The jealous spouse. The withdrawn spouse. Etc., etc., etc.
Do you see what I’m getting at? The point isn’t what your spouse does that annoys you, the point is that in whatever circumstance you are in, God desires to see you learn holiness. The question is not whether your spouse is this or that, the question is are you willing to develop the capacity to love him/her anyway. If you cannot – if you do not – develop holiness in your life in the way you respond to your spouse – if you do not develop holiness in your life in regard to your most intimate human relationship that touches the deepest part of who you are, you are not really developing holiness at all.
Let me illustrate how this works. If you have a bad temper and you learn to control your temper around everyone in your life except your spouse, you are not developing holiness, you are developing self-control. Now self-control is a good thing, but the Bible calls it one of the “fruits of the Spirit,” which means that it’s one of the things we expect to see coming about in our lives as we pursue what? Holiness! Holiness will touch all of who are you or else it’s not holiness. How do I know this? Because holiness is whole. Think of how strange it is to talk about partial holiness. “Tell me, are you wholly holy, or only partly wholly?”
I have said it before, if you think you’re becoming a more loving person but are not becoming more loving toward your spouse, you are maybe developing some aspect of love, but you are not growing in holiness. Holiness will take every part of you into account, will produce its effect in every area of your life. Holiness is a central, defining quality of a person. Yet it is a journey. Read this with me.
2 Corinthians 7:1 (NIV)
… let us purify ourselves from everything that contaminates body and spirit, perfecting holiness out of reverence for God.
Just the idea that we are to be perfecting holiness implies a process, doesn’t it? If you’re perfecting something, then it’s not as good as it can be yet. But that doesn’t change the fact of what holiness is. Holiness is whole – it affects all of you. You cannot be said to be a holy person if you are holy in one aspect of your life and unholy in others. As you perfect holiness in your life, it will pervade every area. We deceive ourselves if we think we can grow in Christ, become more mature spiritually, while leaving out this crucial aspect of our marriage relationship. Yet some think that. Some people think, “I could really be all God wants me to be if I could just drop this loser I’m attached to.” Some people use excuses like, “I was young when I got married, I need to be single again and start over and be available for whatever God wants to use me for.”
And this is exactly what I’m talking about, because what I want you to understand this morning is that what God wants to do in your life is to perfect holiness in you. It’s more important to God to perfect holiness in you than to make you a Christian music star. It’s more important to God to perfect holiness in you than to make you a famous preacher or evangelist. It’s more important to God to perfect holiness in you than to make you a teacher or doctor or lawyer or philanthropist. And do you know what? It’s more important to God to perfect holiness in you than it is for you to be coming and sitting next to your husband or wife in church every Sunday. Some of you struggle because your spouse does not share your faith, and this is a very deep, very real struggle. But my friends it is not God’s plan that we ditch out on a spouse to be more available to serve God. One of the first and most important spiritual lessons we need to learn is that right now, this moment – is where we need to be holy. Right now is where we need to be available to God. Not after the kids grow up, not after we kick our bad habits, not after we’ve sown our wild oats, not after we make the money we want to make, and not after we find the perfect (or even sufficient) marriage or a spouse we get along with better. We either pursue holiness or we don’t. In a way it’s wonderfully simple.
But it’s the hardest way to learn to think. Madison Avenue has done a great job of convincing us that our problem lies in what is around us (our current shampoo, or air conditioning unit, or computer, or toothpaste, or toilet paper), and what we need to do is make a few changes to what is around us so that we can be happy. What God wants us to know is that our most serious problem does not lie in what is around us, but what is inside us. This desire we constantly have for more, for new, for bigger, better, faster, different – is itself a reflection of our unwillingness to be satisfied with what we have. No matter how many times we pursue that next big thing, and finally acquire it, and find it leaves us empty after a few weeks, we continue to believe that the thing we most deeply need is not “in here” (heart), but out there (in the world). So we go out looking for something else.
The Apostle Paul understood this thousands of years ago, and wrote to some of the people that he had pastored to encourage them not to think this way. Look what he told them:
1 Corinthians 7:20-24 (NLT)
20 You should continue on as you were when God called you.
21 Are you a slave? Don’t let that worry you—but if you get a chance to be free, take it.
22 And remember, if you were a slave when the Lord called you, the Lord has now set you free from the awful power of sin. And if you were free when the Lord called you, you are now a slave of Christ.
23 God purchased you at a high price. Don’t be enslaved by the world.
24 So, dear brothers and sisters, whatever situation you were in when you became a believer, stay there in your new relationship with God.
Paul wrote these words because people always think that changing their circumstances will fix what’s wrong in their lives. What Paul is saying here is that God wants to work in your life NOW – CURRENTLY – IN YOUR PRESENT SITUATION. We tell ourselves, “Life would be so much better if my spouse met my needs more often,” or “I could do so much for God if my spouse would let me do this or that,” or “I would be a less angry person if she stopped doing such and such.” What we see in Paul’s words is that none of this is true. The truth is that life will get better, both inside our marriage and all around us, as we learn that we don’t need all our needs met. Life will be better not as our spouse lets us do this and that, but as we commit to learning to love proactively. Besides, if our spouse stopped pushing our buttons, we wouldn’t really be less angry anyway – we’d just have fewer opportunities to work on controlling that temper. But the temper would still be there.
The grass is always greener. That’s false, right? To get married is to stop believing that there’s somebody else out there better for you, I mean that’s supposed to be a sign of maturity isn’t it, when we let go of that belief? To stay married is to resist the temptation to start believing it again. To get married is to believe you found Mr. Right, or Mrs. Right. To stay married is to keep believing it. And that takes faith. Because there will be days – maybe many days – when Mr. Right will not seem so right. Mrs. Right will seem very wrong. To get married is to see someone’s good qualities and not much of the bad. To stay married is to continue to find those good qualities even though the bad ones have become so obvious. To get married is to say, “I love you” and believe it. To stay married is to keep believing it when your spouse says, “I love you” – to not fall victim to the easy assumption that you are being manipulated, to not allow blinders to go over your eyes that keep you from seeing the good things in your spouse that are seen so easily by others. This is a big one, folks. When things get bad in a marriage, we often think, “Other people like him so much. That’s just because they don’t know him like I do. If they knew what I know they’d be as disgusted as I am.” Or we think, “What exactly do people see in my partner anyway?” Here’s a hint. What did you see in your partner before you were married? That’s probably what others see now. Were you lied to back then? Are others being lied to now? I doubt it.
To sum up today’s message in one sentence: I believe whatever marriage you are in is God’s will for you now. It is God’s will that in this situation, you perfect holiness in your life out of reverence for God. Don’t give in to that little voice inside that is always restless, always telling you to move on, find something new and better. The big disappointment in this life lies in discovering that new things are never better anymore once they are no longer so new. But that disappointment is a big part of finding the freedom God offers us, because once we set aside the illusion that my problem lies outside of myself (with my spouse, my financial situation, my job, whatever), I am free to focus on the real problem which is what Jesus referred to as the vomit in my own heart. Let’s look at that again:
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."
This is what’s inside of us, so this is what comes out.
Matthew 12:34-35 (NASB)
34 “…For the mouth speaks out of that which fills the heart.
35 The good man brings out of his good treasure what is good; and the evil man brings out of his evil treasure what is evil.”
So Jesus says here, in two places, that we have a heart problem. If we have vomit in our hearts, it will come out of our mouths. The deepest truth of who we are will be reflected in our words and actions.
It is this vomit that messes up my relationships and the way I view everything in my world. This vomit Jesus talked about is the limburger cheese on the upper lip of every person on earth. That thing that causes us to wake up in the morning and think, “Dang, this room stinks.” Then we step out into the living room and thing, “Geez, it stinks in here too.” So we step outside into the open air and say, “Gosh dang – the whole world stinks!!” We really think the stink is beyond us – but we carry it to wherever we go.
My friends, here is what I’m saying. If your marriage stinks, you need to stop sniffing out your partner. I know that’s hard to hear, but it’s true – it’s the hard reality, bottom-line truth of what Jesus taught. You need to realize that:
1) God wants all marriages to be healthy
2) A healthy marriage takes two, but all you can do is focus on you
3) Your current marriage relationship is the place where God wants to perfect holiness in you.
There’s no magic relationship beyond this one. There’s no greener grass on the other side of the fence. There’s no utopia. God has work to do in your life and in mine, and we will either let him do it, or make excuses why now isn’t the right time. God says in 2 Corinthians:
2 Corinthians 6:2 (MSG)
2 …now is the right time to listen, the day to be helped.
I believe God’s main intention for marriage, like every other circumstance in this life, is not to make you happy but to make you holy. Now is the right time. Now is the day to be helped. Today is the day you can stop looking for a place that doesn’t stink and start to take a washcloth to that limburger cheese.
Will you make the determination today that if the problem is inside of you (vomit-heart, like Jesus said), that you’ll stop pointing to problems outside? There are real problems all over this world, but the only ones you can fix are the ones that are in you. Will you stop looking for the cure outside yourself, stop identifying your partner as the cause of your marriage problem? We need God to help us see our own sin, our own shortcomings. We need God to help us care more about perfecting holiness in our own lives than in changing our spouse. And we need God to help us understand and learn to live in the reality that He is more interested in making us holy through marriage than in making us happy, which means that we must learn to see our present situation as the soil where we either will or will not allow God to plant the seeds of holiness. Read this with me.
2 Corinthians 7:1 (NIV)
… let us purify ourselves from everything that contaminates body and spirit, perfecting holiness out of reverence for God.
Will you pray with me?
