What Is the Purpose for Marriage?

Marriage, Part 6

 

When I was in 3^rd or 4^th grade love began to creep in along the edges of my life.

Scene #1: I am playing basketball in my driveway with my friends while 3-4 girls try to sneak up on us. We are not unaware of their covert actions, so we purposely let the basketball roll down the hill toward them so we can chase them.

Scene #2: I am now in sixth grade enjoying my first “date”—taking a girl to the county fair. Unfortunately, I run out of money. But fortunately, my date has money to loan. Hallelujah! I win a large stuffed bear. But what do I do with the bear that was won with my date’s money? The only logical choice—I take it home and give it to my 3 year old brother!

Scene #3: I am now a freshman in college and serenading the girl who will eventually become my wife. I do this because she says it is the only way she will go out with me on both weekend nights.

What is this love that I was chasing? The Apostle Paul explains that love is more action than feeling: “Husbands, love your wives just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, to make her holy." Paul taught that the essence of marriage is a sacrificial commitment to the good of the other. And what can be better than helping your mate become holy?

Time is an essential ingredient in this pursuit of holiness. Though some time can be spent on light activities—attending a movie or a child’s sporting event--don't neglect the more substantial tasks:

·        Spend some of your coming vacation reading aloud a Christian biography.

·         Attend your church’s family camp. (Don’t let your summer be hijacked by your kids’ athletic coaches!)  

·         Join a couples’ Sunday School class or a home Bible study.

·         Work together as volunteers in a local charity.

·         Develop a prayer list for the issues that your spouse faces.

A deeper oneness develops when two people journey together toward the goal of spiritual maturity, supporting each other through “the dangers and challenges along the way.”  My goal as a husband should be “to sanctify her”, to help her become “holy and blameless”, to work toward the removal of “all spiritual stains, flaws, sins, and blemishes.” (Tim Keller)

Leaving Your Parents

Marriage, Part 5: 

The first time I became ill after Cathy and I were married, can you guess who I wanted to comfort me? Yup. I wanted Mom! She was the one who had nursed me, and nursed me well, for 20 years. When I was home sick, she would bake chocolate chip cookies and change my sheets frequently and say all the appropriate words: “Oh, I’m sure you feel awful, honey.” On the other hand, Cathy had not had any practice in taking care of a sick person. After a day or two of being sick, her attitude was something like: “Don’t you feel better yet?” Today we are thankful that we lived nearly 1000 miles from our parents so that we were forced to learn how to care for each other “in sickness and in health.”

 

Our experience was not unusual. One of the first challenges for newly-weds is to “leave” their birth families: For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and cleave to his wife, and they will become one flesh. Gen.2:24,25.  

Even when the newlyweds have a healthy perspective on their biological family, some parents still try to hang onto their former roles. One mother who had habitually critiqued her daughter's choices, didn't change after the wedding -- “You’re not going to buy a dog, are you?! That would be foolish since you both work fulltime.” After observing a pattern of inappropriate advice, this young woman’s wise husband gently talked with his mother-in-law about new boundaries between Mom and her daughter.

Does this mean that parents can’t help their children financially? can’t offer advice? can’t live nearby? Not at all. But parents must give the couple enough space so that they can become their own family, making their own choices, making their own mistakes. 

President Thomas Jefferson lost his wife when his daughters were young and never remarried. He apparently transferred the emotional bond with his wife to his married daughters. On one occasion a lonely Jefferson wrote to Martha: “I am chilled by my solitude. It makes me wish the more that you and your sister were here to enjoy it. I value the enjoyments of life only in proportion as you participate in them with me.” His possessive love was apparently reciprocated. After Martha had been married for nearly a decade she wrote to her father that no “new ties can weaken the first and best of nature.” No wonder Martha’s husband had severe mental problems! He was in competition with his father-in-law for the love of his wife.

Marriage, Part 4

"Marriage Is (Almost) Impossible"

Marriage is difficult. And it becomes almost impossible if we expect it to be easy. A friend of mine was in a conversation about marriage with a man in a deeply troubled marriage. This Christian man asked my friend, “I thought God wouldn’t give me more than I can handle?” My friend wisely replied, “I hate to disagree, but I think that is exactly what God does. He gives us more than we can handle so that we will learn how to depend on Him rather than ourselves.”

The best thing you can do for your marriage is to learn how to get your life, your strength, your perspective from God. In Tim Keller’s words, we have to “know where the filling station is, and even more important, that it exists. Marriage is part of God’s design to lead us where we are out of our depths, where we know that unless God works, we will drown.”

Our task is NOT to burden our mates with the job of fixing us. I am convinced that our marriage didn’t drown because Cathy and I didn’t expect too much from each other. We knew that God was the only one capable of fixing what was/is broken in each of us. When we let God fill us up, “we have enough love “in the bank” to be generous to each other when we aren’t getting much kindness at the moment.”  

Did you marry a wounded person? someone who was abused by a parent? someone bullied and rejected by his classmates? Be careful about the type and amount of support that you give them. Henry Cloud claims that often these damaged people need LESS encouragement: Telling your troubled spouse “to try harder is one of the worst things you could possibly do. The best thing you can do is to discourage him from believing he can do it on his own.” We want troubled people to give up on themselves so they can depend on God instead.

 

Marriage, Part 3 

Wedding Vows 

"Wedding vows are not a declaration of present love but a mutually binding promise of future love." Tim Keller

"We-just-don't-love-each-other-anymore" is a common excuse for ending a marriage. But is a lack of love the primary  reason for marital breakups? I think not. When God introduced the idea of marriage in Genesis, the word “love” was as scarce as clothes were: “A man will leave his father and his mother, and they will become one flesh.”

Commitment is widely proclaimed in most wedding vows—brides and grooms promise to love each other for a lifetime. Walter Wangerin explains the purpose and power of these vows: “A promise made, a promise witnessed, a promise heard, remembered, and trusted -- this is the groundwork of marriage." These promises are a “special harbor in high seas.”

Even a statistical analysis of marriage supports hanging onto your mate. Over 60% of married people say they are “happy” with their marriage. And 5 years later, nearly 90% of those who aren’t happy today, will be happy if they hold on to their marriage. Most troubled marriages get better with age.

 Some couples will boast: “We don’t need a piece of paper to hold us together.” Sorry—statistics show otherwise. Cohabitation is even more unstable than marriage. Three-fourths of unmarried couples who produce a child will break up before the child’s sixteenth birthday. And it is on to the next partner. Those who reject marriage “never do find any real stability. Instead of growing into maturity with one partner, they go over and over the same basic ground in each new liaison.” Keller

Conventional wisdom might lead a couple to a trial arrangement: "Let’s see if we are compatible before we marry.” But all a trial period does is make it easier to end the relationship. When “they don’t merge their entire lives—socially, economically, legally,” they seldom endure the inevitable hardships of their relationship. Walter Wangerin concludes: [If they choose to live together] before a public wedding, “it’s like starting a job without a contract; there are no secure assurances, and one might be fired on a whim, at a change in the economy, for spite, or for expedience.”

Sittser: Marriage is not an experiment. It is a commitment.

Marriage, Part 2

Friends for Life: Our Need for Companionship

At the end of each day of creation, God wrote an epitaph: “And God saw that it was good.” But even before Adam and Eve’s sinned, God declared that something in Eden was not good: “It is not good for man to be alone.” Though this first couple enjoyed intimate fellowship with their Creator and lived in an unspoiled world, they were still incomplete. God created us to be social beings who need others. Marriage may be our best opportunity to enjoy this companionship.

When Cathy and I were dating we were together constantly -- meeting between classes, sharing meals, attending sporting events, taking long walks, joining a campus Bible study, participating in retreats.

But much of modern life pulls couples apart. A husband works at an insurance agency while his wife teaches in a grade school. He hunts and fishes with his buddies while she participates in a book club with her girlfriends. He serves on the finance committee at church while she teaches a Sunday School class. With such disjointed lives many couples drift apart.

Knowing that relationship building takes time, God gave the following instructions to new husbands: “If a man has married, he must not be sent to war or have any other duty laid on him. For one year he is to be free to stay at home and bring happiness to his wife.” (Deut.24:5) Wow! A yearlong honeymoon! If marriages are going to be strong, then husbands and wives must lavish time on each other in significant ways. Cathy and I have continued to cultivate our bond by sharing housework and yard work, reading books to each other, mentoring other couples, watching a favorite television program, exercising together, entertaining in our home, nurturing grandchildren.

Such extravagance may feel like a “waste” of time. Why would God ask us to pour ourselves out for our mates when there is so much aching human need? Because marriage is the school where we learn how to love another person: “If we cannot love our own favorite person through all of their ups and downs and trials and changes, then how will we ever love the poor and the unlovely and the forgotten of the world?” (Mike Mason)

My marriage “is the place where love must first be practiced before it can truly be practiced anywhere else.”

Marriage: The Basics, Part 1

Introduction

A House Beautiful magazine article offered advice to the wives whose husbands were returning from World War II: “You, to whom the veteran is returning, are entrusted with the biggest morale job in history. Your part in the remaking of this man is to fit his home to him, understanding why he would want it this way, forgetting your own preferences. After all, it is the boss who has come home.” This quaint description of married life from the 1940’s reminds us of one of the greatest truths about the Bible—the Bible never goes out-of-date. It speaks powerfully and purposefully to every culture, to every century, to every marriage. This staying power is one of the reasons why I believe the Bible contains the words of the Living God. What other source can do this?

This post is the beginning of a series I will do on marriage. Though the coming posts will venture into other territory, I will stay on this theme of marriage because marriage plays such a vital role in what God wants to accomplish in people’s lives.

God didn’t waste any time revealing the nature of Christian marriage. In the first three chapters of Genesis, God revealed many of the basic truths that I will return to again and again throughout this series. Marriage is God’s idea. And if “God invented marriage, then those who enter it should make every effort to understand and submit to his purposes for it.” (Tim Keller)

If there is no Creator then it makes sense to fiddle with the definition of marriage. But if marriage and its structure has been given to us by God, then we tread on rough ground if we try to remake it.

Gardening the Soul, Part 6

Are We Truly Hearing God's Voice?

Isaiah has directed the thirsty to "come”, “listen", and now, to "forsake.” 

Let the wicked forsake his way,
  and the evil man his thoughts.
For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
  neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord.
As the heavens are higher than the earth, 
  so are my ways higher than your ways
  and my thoughts than your thoughts. Is.55:9,10

Pruning our corrupt thoughts and ways as we embrace God's infinitely higher thoughts and ways is the final step—and the step that shows that we are drinking from God’s word.

There is a close connection between hearing and doing in the Bible—the New Testament word for "hear" is often translated "obey.” But many of us are content to adopt God’s thoughts with incorporating them into our ways. When workers at a U.S. corporation were surveyed, they reported that their lives were "too crowded, their time with their children too limited." Furthermore they wanted "extra time at home."  Attempting to help employees balance work and home, this family-friendly company offered part-time, "flexplace" (working at home), and "flextime" (choosing when they would start their day) work. And new mothers were allowed to work part-time but retain full-time benefits. What was the result? Flextime was the only policy that workers used significantly. It's one thing to say you want more family time; it is quite another to act on that idea.

What thoughts is God asking you to translate into “ways”?

Ø  Has God revealed a selfish attitude toward your leisure? Then begin practicing his higher ways by inviting a lonely neighbor for dinner or by mentoring a fatherless child.

Ø  Has God reminded you that a friend is in pain? Then call her today to offer some comfort.

Ø  Has God reminded you that your ways have not included any regular fellowship with him? Then change the pattern of your days to include him.

Ø  Has God reminded you that you and your wife need regular time without the kids? Then hire a weekly babysitter for you and your wife’s date night.

Your auditory canals are clogged if God’s thoughts are not also transforming your ways. 

As I reflect on my own watering habits, I am humbled by how frequently I fail to water my own life adequately. I expend great effort hauling buckets of water to thirsty people, but don't see my own arid places. Today as I labored over these words, asking God to help me deliver these critical truths, I stopped dipping my bucket long enough to let the waters become still. As I gazed into those calmed waters I saw my own reflection – I have been complaining too much about my ailing body. Listening to God is an art that requires practice -- and we stumble frequently as we tune our ears to God's frequency.