Superglue for your Marriage
One of the parts of my calling I enjoy most are the sessions with young couples who are preparing for marriage. Their love is contagious. They speak in glowing terms about each other, as though they have found the perfect person. Very few think that their marriage could ever end in divorce.
“How could I ever come to hate her silly little giggle that is so endearing?”
“Picking up after him won’t be a problem, because I just love him so much!”
One of the saddest parts of my calling is trying to help couples save their marriage! Usually by the time they come to see me, they have crossed the line from irritation into real anger.
“She’s so needy, I can’t stand it!”
“He is completely selfish, expecting me to be his slave.”
So what happened between the tender touches, gentle words, and the dreams and fulfillment of the first days of marriage - and the anger, disillusionment, and bitterness that followed?
Infatuation faded and with the intimacy of marriage came conflict -
over kids, money, sex, parents, recreational time, job commitments, personality. If you’re honest and married in this room today, you could add a category, I am sure.
There are no marriages where conflict is non-existent! That’s a myth for the movies. Where there are real people, there is real potential for conflict!
So, we wonder - can married people stay close, remain in love, enjoy their marriage
OR are all people who choose marriage destined for an exercise in endurance?
There is a SuperGlue that will keep a man and a woman together through the inevitable difficulties and conflicts.
What is it? I’ll get to that, but first let’s observe what it’s not.
1. SEX won’t keep a couple together!
The erotic part of married life is an important part and a Christian couple needs to understand that. Paul told the couples of the early church - "The husband should not deprive his wife of sexual intimacy, which is her right as a married woman, nor should the wife deprive her husband. The wife gives authority over her body to her husband, and the husband also gives authority over his body to his wife." (1 Corinthians 7:3-4, NLT) Let’s be realistic about this, however. If you expect your spouse to live up to the fantasy sexuality portrayed in the entertainment of America, you’re setting yourself up for disappointment. The sexuality that appears in our pop culture is a far cry from the real world where people have bad breath, are tired from working all day, where kids sleep just across the hall, where aging bodies no longer respond as they once did.
And - let me say this as an aside - if you’re a consumer of pornography - STOP! It’s addictive and destructive to your marriage, to say nothing of being offensive to your God because of the way people are turned into objects to be used solely for selfish pleasure. If you’re into it too deeply to stop, then get help because it will have a destructive influence on your marriage and your walk with Christ!
Too often, people (especially younger men) think that if the sex is great, then the marriage will last forever. That’s simply wrong. God created the intimacy of sex. It is a powerful connection and should be respected and kept alive in marriages that are healthy, but it is not the super-glue of marriage.
2. FRIENDSHIP won’t keep a couple together!
When Bev and I were married just a couple of years, we attended a marriage workshop where the presenter told us that the best thing we could do for our marriage would be understand the impossibility of being ‘everything and everyone’ to each other. The teacher told us we should encourage our spouse to have friends other than ourselves.
I got mad! “How dare he suggest that my wife needed other friends when she had charming, wonderful me?” But the years have proven the wisdom of that teacher. Bev and I are best friends, but she is not my only friend, nor am I hers. We each have friendships that exists apart from the others friends, not secret friends and not with members of the opposite sex, but friends that fulfil some of our emotional needs.
I have several Pastors who are my confidants and prayer partners.
Bev works with people who share her passion for children and education.
The fact is that having other friends, makes each of us a better friend to the other.
Couples who believe that their marriage will thrive if they create a world where they exist only for each other, are setting themselves up for problems. There are parts of a woman’s world that I will never understand which my wife needs to talk over with other women. There are stresses that I deal with as a man and pastor that she couldn’t grasp if I tried to explain it all day!
One of the toughest transitions in married life is into retirement. Why? That is the time when a couple starts to see each other all the time, everyday. They thought that it would be bliss and, often, it turns into a nightmare! She doesn’t want him telling her how to what she’s done without him for 40 years! He doesn’t really want her with him at the golf course every time he goes out. They need interests that keep them interesting and fresh to each other.
Be friends, very close friends, but don’t think that friendship alone will be the super-glue of your marriage.
3. CHILDREN won’t keep a couple together!
If you’re parenting children right now, I want to encourage you as a couple to guard your primary relationship. Don’t let your kids become the only point of connection. Someday they’ll fall in love, move away, and you will be left staring at each other. If you have not tended your marriage, you’ll be strangers wondering what to say!
Child do bond a couple powerfully, and the arrival a baby is probably the event that changes a marriage most, but kids are not the super-glue of marriage.
So what is that which bonds a husband and wife like super-glue?
We discover it in John’s letter to the church this morning.
I John 2: 16-17; 3:16-18, 4:7-12
In your Pew Bible this text can be found on page 1901.
READ
The super-glue that keeps a couple together through the demands of establishing a home, creating careers, having children, sickness, financial stresses, and aging is nothing other than the love of Christ Jesus!
John’s exposition of God’s love is rich with implications for love in marriage. I can say without qualifications, and without doubt, IF a husband and wife share this kind of love, theirs is a divorce-proof marriage! They have found the super-glue that will hold them together through everything that hell and this world can throw their way!
So what is this love like?
A. This love is patterned after the love Christ showed for us - sacrificial, other-centered.
Our love needs to be a 100% commitment, “Come hell or high water, I am here for you,” so help me, God! It is not a love that asks, ‘what’s in it for me?’ There are those who mistakenly conclude that marriage is a 50/50 deal. They enter into it expecting to give, but with an expectation of getting that is equally strong. Such thinking is far wide of the Bible’s teaching that marriage is a covenant without condition.
“This is how we’ve come to understand and experience love: Christ sacrificed his life for us. This is why we ought to live sacrificially for our fellow believers, and not just be out for ourselves." (1 John 3:16, The Message)
Jesus’ love for us was so strong, He died for us. Marriage gives us the opportunity to die to self. Man, let me challenge you with this thought - if you’re romantically inclined to think, “I’d be willing to take a bullet for my wife,” how about letting that willingness to die show by giving up some cherished privilege, by putting her needs before your own?
B. This love is marked by acceptance, like God’s acceptance of us.
God did not send a message that said, “Get yourself cleaned up and put together. I’ll come by, and if I like what I see, I’ll decide to love you.” Instead, while we were sinners, while we doing what we pleased, while we were offending and ignoring Him, He sent His Son to find us and to make a way of restoration possible. He accepted us!
Our marriages need acceptance! I counsel with both women and men who refuse to accept their mate. And I understand the way they are thinking because for the first decade of my life, Bev was a project. I worked mightily to make her into who I wanted her to be. My lack of acceptance for her then is a source of great sorrow, and were it not for her generous forgiveness, could still be a source of friction today. Our marriage began to really flourish when I loved her for the wonderful woman she is and stopped trying to make her into somebody I thought she needed to be.
This doesn’t mean we should not try to meet our spouse’s expectations where and when we can. It doesn’t mean that we are wrong if we ask for change, but we cannot make it into a demand that says, “change or else!”
God accepted us as we were and loved us to wholeness and holiness! And we are called to love our spouse in that way. It will be like super-glue, for there are very, very few places in this world where we can find true acceptance and when we do, it feels like Heaven!
C. This love is about action; just like God’s love for you and me.
"Dear children, let us stop just saying we love each other; let us really show it by our actions." (1 John 3:18, NLT) A couple of weeks ago, I talked about the five love languages. Remember them? Dr. Gary Chapman, a counselor, author, and pastor - teaches that we all have a preferred way in which we feel loved and valued by others.
∙ Some of us desire WORDS of AFFIRMATION.
∙ Some of us want QUALITY TIME.
∙ Some of us want GIFTS.
∙ Some of us really are into ACTS OF SERVICE.
∙ Some of us feel loved through PHYSICAL TOUCH.
Learn to speak your spouse’s love language! Take action. Make no assumptions that he or she ‘just knows how I feel!’ I’m sure you’ve heard about the man who never said, “I love you” to his wife. He reason was “I told her I loved her 40 years ago at the altar and that I’d let her know if I changed my mind.” If he actually exists, he’s a fool!
Love needs to be renewed by our acts - including tender words, support, gifts, and affection.
Learn to express love in service in the ordinary moments of life and that love will then be strengthened, if and when the Lord allows you to run into circumstances that demand much.
A friend of mine was charging through life, taking his wife and marriage for granted, by his own confession. Then she fell gravely ill and within months was completely dependent on him for her care. For four years until her death, he maintained his demanding work as a corporate attorney while caring for her. That’s love in action. I’m sure he grew exhausted. I’m sure, being human, there were times when he was short-tempered; but his was love in action of an amazing quality! I can only pray that should the Lord decide to let me walk that road with my beloved I would be so loving, in more than just words.
So learn to change a diaper, to shop for groceries, to clean a toilet - and let your actions declare your love. Learn to enjoy football with him, to enter his world when he opens the door, - and let your actions declare your love.
CONCLUSION –
Where does love like that come from?
"My beloved friends, let us continue to love each other since love comes from God. Everyone who loves is born of God and experiences a relationship with God." (1 John 4:7, The Message)
Love like this is result of God’s love for us! "We love each other as a result of his loving us first." (1 John 4:19, NLT) Loved people make better lovers! So, let God love you. Find every text in the Bible about the love of God and print them on paper where you can read His declaration. When you see beauty in the Creation, thank God for loving you. When you worship, focus on receiving God’s love for you.
The single most transforming experience in the entire world is knowing the love of God. That is why the Devil is so into religion that builds barriers between God and those He loves. The devil wants you to try to be good enough to make God love you! He knows you will fail and feel miserable and shameful and guilty. The devil wants you to think that God is a horrible deity just waiting to knock you down, the first moment you slip up. He wants you to be so worried about every detail of your life that it never occurs to you to look up and ask God for help. But, the Bible is quite clear in the story of God’s love. No, His is not a superficial love of hearts and flowers. It is an involved love that seeks your best. It is a patient love that Jesus said was illustrated by the open arms of a father waiting, day after day, for his wayward son to come home.
When you accept that love, it changes your heart. You begin to become tender, gentle, open, capable of absorbing the sins of others without retaliation, capable of an amazing quality of love.
NOW - imagine a marriage where both husband and wife are soaking in God’s love and then expressing the love they’re receiving back into their home! That’s super-glue!.
Let me repeat what I said a few moments ago ....
I can say without qualifications, and without doubt, IF a husband and wife share this kind of love, theirs is a divorce-proof marriage! They have found the super-glue that will hold them together through everything that hell and this world can throw their way!
"Dear friends, let us continue to love one another, for love comes from God. Anyone who loves is born of God and knows God..... since God loved us that much, we surely ought to love each other." (1 John 4:7, 11, NLT)
Amen
Jerry D. Scott, copyright, 2006
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