Prioritize Your Marriage. Series

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Joke: Attending a wedding for the first time, a little girl whispered to her mother, “Why is the bride wearing white?” Her mother said, “Because white is the color of happiness, and today is the happiest day of her life!” The little girl thought about this for a minute, then asked, “Why is the groom wearing black?”

Introduction: We have been studying on the subject of priority of a believer and we began by looking at the top three priorities of a believer. First spiritual life. Last week we spoke about the priority of family and we covered the roles of parents and children. Today I would speak on couples.

1. Consider your relationship as primary.

Since this is a primary relationship, you need to spend the maximum time for this relationship.

Joke: A husband and wife were at a party chatting with some friends when the subject of marriage counseling came up. “Oh, we never need that. My wife and I have a great relationship,” the husband explained. “We work in a university. She lectures on communications in college and I lecture in theatre arts.” He continued, “She communicates well, and I act like I’m listening.”

Nowadays, almost all couples are very busy with work, responsibilities and raising kids. Couples either get so involved in their job, responsibilities at home, kids’ lives (Their tuitions, hobbies, sports, dance, and music lessons) or they become interested in their own activities or hobbies that they don’t spend time with each other. They forget to nurture their relationship with each other. As the years go by they get farther and farther apart, until they can’t even remember what it feels like to be in love with each other, to hold each other’s hands.

Illustration: Married couples spend an average of 27.5 minutes per week talking to each other, according to Ray Bridwhistell, speech communication expert. However, they spend 46 hours per week watching TV.

Do you know why so many parents struggle with empty nest syndrome? The kids move out of the house, and they get depressed because their lives revolved solely around their kids, they look at each other and wonder who are you, and now what are we going to do? The problem is many are married but their primary relationship is not either one of them. Do you know that some the couples live like roommates in the same house?

Joke: A husband read an article to his wife about how women use 30,000 words a day to a man’s 15,000. The wife replied, “That’s because we have to repeat everything to men.” The husband turned to his wife and said, “What?”

It is possible to climb the pinnacle of success in our career only to realize that we are leaning on the wrong wall. The wrong wall is our ignoring our relationship with our spouse. You do everything else but fall out on the relationship with your spouse. Marriage is the most important relationship which we tend to overlook. God sees marriage as a first and most foundational relationship, second only to our relationship with God. Marriage is more important than our relationship with our parents, children, or siblings.

Genesis 2:24 That is why a man leaves his father and mother and is united to his wife, and they become one flesh.

Matthew 19:5-6 5For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh. So they are no longer two, but one flesh. 6Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.

There is a leaving and a cleaving. Leaving the parents, friends and to cleaving to the spouse. You are one flesh. To become “one flesh,” then, is to become “one person.” Male and female marriage partners not only make an exact “fit” physically, but their maleness and femaleness “fill out” or “complete” one another in every respect. The two constitute a “whole.” In a proper marriage, men have the opportunity to see and understand the issues of the world through their wives’ feminine eyes, and women through their husband’s masculine eyes. My wife has brought lace curtains into my life; I have brought muddy boots into hers. For that to happen, you must set aside all differences and live as one.

Illustration: Elsa no longer remembers what the argument was about, but it began before breakfast one morning and continued as Steve started off to work. “How can you just go off like that?” cried Elsa. “We haven’t settled a thing!” Then Steve did what few men as ambitious and driven as Steve is could do: he turned around and went to the phone and canceled all his appointments for that day, “saying to me, in effect, that our relationship meant more than business meetings, saying that I’d married a man who would sacrifice work for love.”