Surviving Marriage

Surviving Marriage

(ALL illustrations come from Sermon Central and scripture is NIV unless oherwise noted)

It seems with the completion of Revival and the series of sermons I preached on Building a Better Body, that we should stay on the roll. However, this is Valentine’s weekend and after next week I will be on vacation for the first weekend in March, Bob will be preaching in my absence. When I start back March 8th, we will start another series entitled “When We Move Out, God Moves In” all about giving God room to work in our lives and our church.

This is a romantic weekend, designed to bring us to a place of cherishing our marriages. And I can honestly say that Americans truly believe in marriage. According to statistics 96% of Americans will marry at some point in their lives. Sadly, well over half of those people will divorce, but 80% of divorced Americans will re-marry. This indicates that we truly believe in marriage, and we should for it has been ordained by our Creator. Matt 19:4-6 "Haven’t you read," he replied, "that at the beginning the Creator ’made them male and female,’ 5 and said, ’For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh’? 6 So they are no longer two, but one. Therefore what God has joined together, let man not separate."

But after the years go by, the spark that was there in the beginning sometimes has ALL but disappeared. The fact is that marriage is a lot of work and many people enter into it thinking that it will be easy, BUT time shows us otherwise.

A woman took her husband to the doctor’s office. After his checkup, the doctor said, "Your husband is suffering from a very serious infection." The husband, who was hard of hearing said, "What did he say?" His wife said, "He says your sick". The doctor went on. "But there is hope. You just need to reduce his stress. Each morning, give him a healthy breakfast. Be pleasant, nice, and kind. For lunch and dinner make him his favorite meal. Don’t discuss your problems with him, it will only make his stress worse. Don’t yell at him or argue with him. And most importantly...just cater to your husband’s every whim. If you can do this for your husband for the next 6 months to a year, I think your husband will have a complete recovery." The husband said, "What did he say?" His wife said, "He says, You’re going to die".

Now, I want to make it perfectly clear that I am NO expert on marriage, if not for the grace of God, and the tolerance of my wife of 15 years, who knows where I would be today. I say that as someone forgiven by the Grace of our amazing God for divorce in my fleshy life, and now happily married as a Christian. I speak today using the Word of God to speak on the subject of marriage, I speak as one of authority ONLY because God has not only ordained this institution in His Word, but He gives us instruction as well. If you have your Bible turn with me to Ecclesiastes 4:9-12 Two are better than one, because they have a good return for their work: 10 If one falls down, his friend can help him up. But pity the man who falls and has no one to help him up! 11 Also, if two lie down together, they will keep warm. But how can one keep warm alone? 12 Though one may be overpowered, two can defend themselves. A cord of three strands is not quickly broken.

I would like to make a few suggestions about marriage this morning. Some for the ladies and some for the men. I am not going to stand up here and preach about how the wife should be submissive to the husband, although the scripture is clear on this point. The scripture is also very clear that a submissive wife needs to have a husband that would lay down his life for her as Christ gave his life for the church. NO, this sermon is much lighter than that, it is simply using some of God’s Word to show us that there are things we can do to make things better in our marriage.

Now I am going to rotate between suggestions to the woman and suggestions to the men, we will start with the ladies.

LADIES: There is NO such thing as a PERFECT marriage! The Bible tells us that ALL have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. US men, are not perfect, we will not do as you Ladies hope we will, and I say this because many of the women I have counseled tell me of how they dreamed of being married to their Prince Charming. Then they find out that they are not so CHARMING after all.