Marriage is like Christ and the Church

this is the important responsibility that married people have. To demonstrate the relationship of Christ and the church.

Here is John Piper on why this reminder is important.

1. It lifts marriage out of sordid sitcom images and gives it the magnificent meaning God meant it to have.
2. It gives marriage a solid basis in grace, since Christ obtained and sustains his bride by grace alone.
3. It shows that the husband’s headship and the wife’s submission are crucial andcrucified. That is, they are woven into the very meaning of marriage as a display of Christ and the church, but they are both defined by Christ’s self-denying work on the cross so that pride and slavishness are cancelled.

Adapted from the 2007 sermon “Marriage: God’s Showcase of Covenant-Keeping Grace.”

any marriage is fixable

any marriage is fixable/salvageable with the right spirit and in the right power (II Peter 1:3).

check out this story:

Al added, “We kept drifting apart. I knew what I was doing was wrong; I was too proud to ask for help.”

After a brief pause, I quietly asked, “So are you guys going to call it quits after 35 years? Is this the best answer?” Al stared out the window, and Olivia looked at the floor. “You are both believers. Is this what God wants?”

I continued to ask pointed, painful questions over the next three hours. I knew this couple was on the brink of divorce, and I probably had only one shot at helping them.

At one point, tears rolled down Al’s rough face as he said, “I think I have gone too far. I don’t think I can pull it back together. I don’t think Olivia can forgive me. I don’t think I can forgive myself. It’s too late.”

I looked at Al and said, “Al, it’s never too late to do the right thing. You and Olivia have too much to give up. God loves you but dislikes the way you are trying to solve your marriage problems—especially when they can be corrected and prevented.”

Go read the rest. good stuff.

Driscoll coming to Austin

The Resurgence Blog is and has been in the blogroll. I encourage you to check it regularly. Lots of good articles and series by Acts 29 church planters all over the country.

Recently, Mark Driscoll announced that he and his lovely wife were coming to Hill Country Bible Church here in Austin to talk at a two day conference about dating marriage and sex.

here is the announcement:

On October 2–3, my high school sweetheart and I will be teaching in Austin, Texas, for the Song of Solomon Bible Conference at Hill Country Bible Church. Our topics will be dating, marriage, and sex, in that order.

I have had the pleasure of speaking at a few of the Song of Solomon Conferences around the country, but this will be the first one where Grace joins me. I will be preaching Friday night and Saturday morning. Everyone in attendance will be welcome to send in anonymous questions via text message, and Grace will join me on stage to help answer them. The price is super cheap, ranging from $25 for students and soldiers, to $35 for those who register by 9/21, and $45 for those who decide to join us at the last minute. Additional discounts for groups of 10 or more can be arranged by calling 800-729-0815. Complete information can be found here.

We truly are looking forward to coming out, meeting lots of folks, and seeing the Holy Spirit do a gracious work in the lives of many people. So, I’ve polished my boots and will see you in one of the world’s greatest nations, Texas.

and here is the conference page with more information and registration information.

and here is a video from Mark making the announcement

wedding yesterday

the daughter of a good friend of ours was married yesterday.

it was an outdoor wedding at Kindred Oaks in Leander/Georgetown/way north area. It was lovely and fun. the weather cooperated in a big way and it wasn’t too hot.

a wife’s submission

here is the personal story of a former feminist atheist who eventually converted to catholicism learning to embrace the leadership of her husband in the home.

There has also been a part of my conversion on this issue that cannot be explained in terms of logic and reason. It’s nothing I could prove to a skeptic, but I have seen God work in my life in a big way on the occasions when I’ve sacrifice my own preferences in order to let my husband have the tiebreaking vote. Even when I am just sure that I am right, when I am positive that the fabric of the universe will tear apart if things don’t go my way, when I step aside and turn the decision over to my husband, things have this uncanny way of working out for the best.
….

I’ve found that submitting to my husband’s authority is not about power and control, but about freeing up everyone’s mental energy to live and love and focus on what really matters. As with so many other things, these ideas about household structure that I once saw as oppressive and cold rules I now see as just part of a prescription for living a life of love.

the whole thing is very interesting and worth a thorough read.

hat tip to @kathrynlopez on twitter.

reality of marriage

Challies put up an article on Monday just after his eleventh wedding anniversary that was a very real look at marriage through the device of wanting to give his younger newly married self some counseling.

the whole thing is good, but I thought this part was especially helpful because so many people have unrealistic ideas of the marriage relationship:

Prepare to Hurt and Be Hurt!. One of the greatest ironies and the greatest tragedies of marriage is that a husband and wife have more opportunities to sin against one another than against anyone else in all the world. Over the course of eleven years of marriage, I have hurt Aileen more than anyone else and have sinned against her more than I’ve sinned again anyone else. I suppose this means that marriage also offers unparalleled opportunities to extend forgiveness and to choose to overlook sin. While Aileen and I have had our share of struggles over the years, I truly believe that we carry no bitterness toward one another. Through God’s grace we have offered and received forgiveness time and time again. And through his grace we have overlooked many an offense. Yet there have been many occasions when we have hurt one another and when we have let this wounds fester for just a little too long.

If I could go back, I would prepare myself to be hurt and, even more, would seek to emphasize kindness and forbearance and grace so that I could hurt my wife far less often.

that is why I Peter 4:8 says “Above all, keep fervent in your love for one another, because love covers a multitude of sins.”

I can tell you after 20 years of married life that in a marriage there are many many sins that will need to be covered by fervent love. It is when you let your love grow cold that bitterness grows. Once bitterness takes hold of your heart, it is very difficult to uproot, so that love can flourish again.

The writer of Hebrews warned against ever letting the root of bitterness grow and prescribed the grace of God as the preventative. “See to it that no one fails to obtain the grace of God; that no “root of bitterness” springs up and causes trouble, and by it many become defiled.”

Marriage

what is the point of marriage? If the only point of marriage is to be the highest expression of romantic love, then evangelical opposition to homosexual marriage is just mean. It would be mean to say to some people that their love is unworthy of expression in marriage while other people get the sanction of the state on their love for one another.

This is the argument that homosexual marriage activists make. Any caring person would certainly agree with that argument if the point of marriage is to express romantic love.

but that isn’t the primary point of marriage. and it never has been the primary point of marriage in any society in any time. as I pointed out a while back, a liberal democratic anthropologist made the secular case against homosexual marriage as well as anybody can. Marriage is for having and raising children.

However, once this principle is washed away, then there is no principled basis for denying marriage to anyone who wants to use it as the highest expression of their romantic love for another or others.

check out this article to see the next shoe to fall in the marriage wars.

As Newsweek magazine makes clear, some new flashpoints are getting restless.

Polyamory, reports Newsweek, is having a “coming-out-party.”  Polyamory is the current “term of art” applied to “families” or “clusters” comprised of multiple sexual partners. As Newsweek explains, this is not exactly polygamy, because marriage is not the issue. Advocates of polyamory argue that their lifestyle is not “open marriage.” Indeed, they define their movement in terms of the moral principle of “ethical nonmonogamy,” defined as “engaging in loving, intimate relationships with more than one person — based upon the knowledge and consent of everyone involved.”

in addition to polyamory/polygamy, if marriage is primarily only the highest expression of romantic love, then there is no principled barrier to a marriage between a parent and a grown child. There is no principled barrier to the marriage of grown siblings. and so on.

once anything goes, then anything will go.

You can say that this is just a slippery slope argument and you would be correct. On the other hand, this slope is slippery and there are no visible ledges or moguls where things might get hung up and/or slowed down.

do any of you see any?

rebuilding a marriage after an affair

here is another Piper answer. this one regarding what to do to rebuild a marriage after one of the couple has had an affair. Tough timely stuff.

HT vitamin z

who do you trust? part III

all right, now let’s go back where we started. In John 10:10, Jesus contrasts himself and his mission with the thief.

The thief comes to steal, kill and destroy. Jesus came to bring abundant life.

and here are we sheep in the middle. we have a choice to make.

do I send this email to someone not my spouse that will take me a step further down the road to adultery? Do I make this phone call? do I set up this lunch appointment? Do I…..? whatever it is.

What thoughts are going through my head in that moment? My spouse makes me miserable. I should be happy. This other person makes me happy. I can’t bear the thought of staying home with the spouse that makes me miserable. oh, who am I kidding we make each other miserable. Really it isn’t fair to either of us to stay locked down like this in misery. Surely God wants us to be happy. surely it is better for all of us if we just find a way out. After all, the kids shouldn’t have to watch us fight. I feel so awesome when I am around this other person. they make me feel wanted. They make me feel sexy again. and so on and so on.

Here is the thing. As human beings, we can think and reason. We have an absolutely amazing capacity to rationalize what we want to do and make it seem ok. We have an enemy who wants to destroy us who has thousands of years feeding rationalizations by humans to take them down the path to destruction. we also have the remnants of the flesh in us that want to be gratified.

The combination of these elements means that all we like sheep have gone astray. there is not a single one of us who isn’t bent.

we all need God’s power to keep us from rationalizing ourselves into indulging our flesh.

We also need to believe at a very deep level that pursuing God’s way is better for us. Because the bottom line is that we are going to do whatever we really truly want to do.

That is why I have titled this series “who do you trust?” Because that is the question.

Do we trust God who sent His only begotten Son to die a horrible death on the cross so that we could be reconciled to God with our very happiness?

Or do we trust our limited ability to decide what’s best for us as we rock along in our little bubble of RIGHT NOW.

It is kind of silly for us to think that we can do a better job of deciding what is better for us and those we love than God. God who loved us when we were unlovely. God who made the universe. God who designed us. God who cared enough about us to leave us His Word for us to get to know Him better.

But so many times every day that is what we do. We just decide that we know best. We then get off in the ditch and start begging for God to get us out or worse, we blame God for letting us get off the road in the first place.

God hates divorce. He wouldn’t accept offerings from promise breakers. Jesus said that divorce was only given because people were selfish and hard hearted.

So there it is. Do we trust God with our marriage? Or do we trust ourselves and our own rationalizations as we go down the path to blowing up our lives in the name of “happiness”?

who do you trust? part II

earlier we talked about God’s thoughts on divorce and what Jesus had to say. Jesus proves his bona fides to us in his instructions because he is the good shepherd who laid down his life for us. We thus are forced to believe that he has our best interests at heart when he tells us what he told us about divorce.

Now let’s look for a minute at what Solomon had to say with the wisdom provided to him by God. Proverbs 5 is one of the few extended arguments made by Solomon in the book of Proverbs. It is addressed to “my son” and warns against going after strange women. In these modern times we live in, the warning is also applicable to “my daughter” and should be read also as the danger inherent in going after strange men.

what specifically does Solomon have to say about the dangers of adultery?

For the lips of a a forbidden [1] woman drip honey,
and her speech [2] is b smoother than oil,
4 but in the end she is c bitter as d wormwood,
e sharp as f a two-edged sword.
5 Her feet g go down to death;
her steps follow the path to [3] Sheol;
6 she h does not ponder the path of life;
her ways wander, and she does not know it.

At the beginning her lips “drip honey” but “in the end she is as bitter as wormwood”. Ever think about the fact that after the jolt of fresh infatuation, you will be stuck all over again with a human being. This new human being will have his or her own fresh set of strengths and weaknesses. This new human being will have a whole new set of emotional baggage and hidden minefields. This new human being will get depressed and stressed just like the one you left behind.

lets go on with Solomon

Keep your way far from her,
and do not go near the door of her house,
9 lest you give your honor to others
and your years to the merciless,
10 lest strangers take their fill of your strength,
and your j labors go to the house of a foreigner,
11 and at the end of your life you k groan,
when your flesh and body are consumed,
12 and you say, l “How I hated discipline,
and my heart m despised reproof!
13 I did not listen to the voice of my teachers
or incline my ear to my instructors.
14 n I am at the brink of utter ruin
in the assembled congregation.”

By giving in to adultery, you will be giving your honor to others, you will be giving your years to the merciless and your labors in the house of a foreigner.  At the end of your life you will be consumed and groan about the fact that you neglected wise counsel and did your own thing.

Do you hear what he is saying?  By taking the deceptive path toward what you think will bring you happiness, you are actually heading in the direction that will use you up and leave you empty.  You will have forsaken the ones you love and who love you back for the emptiness of excitement with strangers.  As a promise breaker, you will no longer be trustworthy either to the ones you betrayed or to the new crowd you seek to join.  You will be surrounded by strangers and ruined in front of the assembled congregation.  Everybody will know what you are.

Now lets look with Solomon at the flip side.

Drink o water from your own cistern,
flowing water from your own well.
16 Should your p springs be scattered abroad,
streams of water q in the streets?
17 r Let them be for yourself alone,
and not for strangers with you.
18 Let your o fountain be blessed,
and s rejoice in t the wife of your youth,
19 a lovely u deer, a graceful doe.
Let her breasts v fill you at all times with delight;
be intoxicated [4] always in her love.
20 Why should you be intoxicated, my son, with w a forbidden woman
and embrace the bosom of w an adulteress? [5]
21 For x a man’s ways are y before the eyes of the Lord,
and he z ponders [6] all his paths.
22 The a iniquities of the wicked b ensnare him,
and he is held fast in the cords of his sin.
23 c He dies for lack of discipline,
and because of his great folly he is d led astray.

ahhhh. cool water from my own well. so refreshing. so wonderful. so intoxicating.  If we keep our fountain at home then it will be blessed.  God sees what we delight in.  God has made us in such a way that when we live disciplined lives obeying the teaching that He has set before us, then we are fulfilled and truly happy.  We can choose to be delighted and intoxicated by the spouse of our youth.

think about it.  who knows you better than your spouse?  Your strengths, weaknesses, lessons learned the hard way etc etc.?

You guys went through stuff together.  you signed your first mortgage together with fear and trepidation, but yet trust in God and each other that the future was bright enough to pay it.  You suffered a miscarriage together and went through the agony of lost dreams, still born in the womb.  You then joyfully welcomed that first child into the world and brought it home only to realize that the hospital forgot to provide the instruction book and you have no idea what to do with it.  You learned together how to care for that baby and the ones that followed.  You endured layoffs and unemployment together.   you celebrated that big promotion and the raise that went with it, by buying a new couch and finally getting rid of that eyesore from college days. You moved to a strange city in a strange state together. And so on and so on, through all of life’s twists and turns.

In short, you grew up together with all the joy, pain, boredom, grief, sickness, etc that life brings.  If you decide to turn your back on that, then you put the rest of your life into the hands of strangers who will never know you the way that the spouse of your youth knows you.  If you decide to take delight in the spouse of your youth, then your history remains intact and God approves of your ways.

Do you see it?

Avoid the temptress or tempter.  keep your feet on the path of truth.  God is watching.

who do you trust?

Jesus said in John 10:10 that the thief came only to steal kill and destroy. By contrast, his purpose was to bring life and that life “abundantly.”

Jesus goes on in John 10 to assure us that he is a good shepherd. The proof that he is a good shepherd with the sheep’s best interest in mind is that he lays down his own life on behalf of the sheep.

do you believe that? Do I believe that? Do I believe today that Jesus wants me to have life and to have it abundantly? Do I believe that there is a thief and liar out there who wants to steal from me, kill me and destroy everything that I love?

If I believe it, or if you believe it, then why do we ignore what Jesus told us to do and how he told us to live? Doesn’t it follow that if Jesus has our best interests at heart, (which he demonstrated by dying for us even while we were powerless and sinners with nothing to offer back) then perhaps we should listen to him and follow his instructions for life?

Specifically, let’s talk about divorce. Unfortunately, several couples (I can think of five right off the top of my head) that I know are currently in various stages of this destructive act. Who hasn’t seen Mark Sanford’s slow motion public self-immolation?

All of us are at risk of taking steps down that path. So let’s think a minute about what our good shepherd who died for us so that we could have abundant life and his Father say about divorce. Let’s think about the counsel they left for us through Solomon. Then let’s think about the lie that the thief whispers in our ear. I have talked about these before here and here and I will keep doing so, because we tend to forget.

God hates divorce. Its that simple. God hates the promise breaking violent act of divorcing the spouse of our youth and the lackadaisical attitude it demonstrates about all of our promises and specifically the way that it demonstrates our faithlessness to Him.

10 Have we not all r one Father? Has not s one God created us? Why then are wet faithless to one another, profaning the covenant of our fathers? 11 Judah has beent faithless, and abomination has been committed in Israel and in Jerusalem. For u Judah has profaned the sanctuary of the Lord, which he loves, and has married the daughter of a foreign god. 12 May the Lord cut off from the tents of Jacob any descendant [1] of the man who does this, who v brings an offering to the Lord of hosts!

13 And this second thing you do. w You cover the Lord‘s altar with tears, with weeping and groaning because he no longer regards the offering or accepts it with favor from your hand. 14 x But you say, “Why does he not?” Because the Lord y was witness between you and the wife of your youth, z to whom t you have been faithless, though she is your companion and your wife by covenant. 15 a Did he not make them one, with a portion of the Spirit in their union? [2] And what was the one God [3] seeking? [4]b Godly offspring. So guard yourselves [5] in your spirit, and let none of you bet faithless to the wife of your youth. 16 “For c the man who does not love his wife but divorces her, [6] says the Lord, the God of Israel, covers [7] his garment with violence, says the Lord of hosts. So guard yourselves in your spirit, and t do not be faithless.”

do you see the connection? Malachi says that in our marriages, God “mixes a portion” of His spirit in the union and that He was a witness (the most important witness) of the promise that we made to each other that glorious day when we swore to love one another through thick and thin, sickness and health, wealth and poverty till parted by death.

Ephesians 5 makes this allusion of Malachi’s specific to us in this age. God demonstrates His relationship with His people to the rest of the world in our marriages. Our marriages are God’s illustration to the world of Christ and the church.

He who loves his wife loves himself. 29 For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church, 30 because n we are members of his body.31 o “Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, andp the two shall become one flesh.” 32 This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church. 33 However, q let each one of you love his wife as himself, and let the wife see that she r respects her husband.

Jesus talked about divorce in several places two of which are in the Gospel of Matthew. In the sermon on the mount, he briefly touches on it. He did so more extensively in Matthew 19.

3 And Pharisees came up to him and r tested him by asking, s “Is it lawful to divorce one’s wife for any cause?” 4 He answered, t “Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female, 5 and said, u ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and v the two shall become one flesh’? 6 So they are no longer two but one flesh. w What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.” 7 They said to him, x “Why then did Moses command one to give a certificate of divorce and to send her away?” 8 He said to them,“Because of your y hardness of heart Moses allowed you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so. 9 z And I say to you: whoever divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another, commits adultery.” [1]

10 The disciples said to him, “If such is the case of a man with his wife, it is better not to marry.” 11 But he said to them, a “Not everyone can receive this saying, but onlyb those to c whom it is given. 12 For there are eunuchs who have been so from birth, and there are eunuchs who have been made eunuchs by men, and there are eunuchs who have made themselves eunuchs d for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. Let the one who is able to receive this receive it.”

emphasis added

Jesus makes plain that it is our own stubborn selfish hard hearted rebellion that causes divorce. It is not God’s plan. It is not the “abundant life” that he came to bring us. It is a sop to our hard heartedness. You have to get that. Jesus says that the only reason God allowed Moses to put divorce into the law was because humans were hard hearted and that in the beginning it was not so.

now let’s turn to Solomon.

marriage links

Jonathan Dodson has a great roundup of links to marriage resources. Go check them out.

intimacy and ownership

Challies points to a post by John Piper regarding I Corinthians 7:3-5.

here is the passage:

3 The husband should give to his wife her conjugal rights, and likewise the wife to her husband. 4 For the wife does not have authority over her own body, but the husband does. Likewise the husband does not have authority over his own body, but the wife does. 5 Do not deprive one another, except perhaps by agreement for a limited time, that you may devote yourselves to prayer; but then come together again, so that Satan may not tempt you because of your lack of self-control.

John Piper points out the difficulty with this passage.

This is paradoxical counsel to married couples, and I think Paul knows it. It does not give either spouse the right to demand certain sexual acts from the other that he or she does not want to give. It is more complex than that. Follow the thought with me.

What is paradoxical and delicate about this text is that logically it doesn’t work. What it does is call the couple to a profound effort to please the other without settling who will wind up getting the most pleasure, especially because each person will get pleasure in not asking the other to do what the other finds unpleasurable.

Here’s what I mean. If her body is his and his body is hers and each has authority over the other’s body, then he has the authority to ask her to do something he would find pleasurable, and she has the authority over his body to ask that he increase her pleasure by not asking that she do that.

Stalemate.

This is real life. I have dealt with it in my own marriage, and I have seen it in many couples. Logically, the text leads to stalemate. And I think Paul knew it. He was leading them beyond logic in this matter.

go read the rest for his explanation of the issue. Excellent stuff.

by the way, for more Piper on marriage, you can download his book This Momentary Marriage in pdf form here for free.

Paul Tripp on marriage

Paul Trip has a new conference DVD out on marriage called “What Did You Expect?”

here is a video of excerpts. It looks quite good. Justin Taylor has more links to various related materials including links to free downloads of the leader’s guide and the discussion guide.

This Momentary Marriage

I read This Momentary Marriage by John Piper earlier this year. It was an incredible book. Everybody should read it whether they are married or single.

at the link above you can download the book for free in pdf form. Here is the direct link to the download. It is easy to read and monumentally important to a correct Biblical understanding of marriage, sex, divorce, singleness and parenting.

Here, courtesy of Westminster Bookstore (they sell a hard back version), is John Piper talking about the book.

different perspectives

from Vitamin Z, here is John Piper pointing out the difference in perspectives.

discussion

I don’t how many of you have noticed the discussion that has been going on in comments to this post, but I encourage everyone to take some time and go check it out.

I have a some questions though for everybody:

Is pregnancy and childbirth the same thing as giving up a kidney for another person? Why or why not?

Is the fact that a small number of women will choose to terminate pregnancies illegally and harm themselves as a result a compelling argument for continuing to allow wholesale abortion of over a million small humans for any reason during the full nine months of pregnancy?

Is it a denial of the full personhood of a woman to “force her” to “endure” pregnancy and childbirth after she becomes pregnant by choosing to engage in voluntary sexual activity that results in a pregnancy?

Isn’t there more we can do to help women in a crisis pregnancy situation? Shouldn’t we be finding out what we can do and doing it? Check out this post by Justin Taylor and get started.

Above all, I would ask that you pray for people like jesurgislac that God will exchange their heart of stone for one of flesh. God is the one who can change our perspective and does so regularly for his glory.

Check out again this word from a fetus who became a baby.

road trip listening

I just downloaded all nine of the messages in Mark Driscoll’s Peasant Princess series. I figured we are going to be spending some time in the car over the next week or so and might as well have something useful to listen to with our teenagers.

If you don’t know what this Driscoll series is about then check out Dangitbill’s review with links to the downloads.

the Mars Hill church source page for video and audio is here. I think this is going to be a valuable teaching tool for all five of us as we travel.

Fireproof’s review by the NYT

surprisingly positive.

“Fireproof” may not be the most profound movie ever made, but it does have its commendable elements, including that rarest of creatures on the big (or small) screen: characters with a strong, conservative Christian faith who don’t sound crazy.
….
Only at the end do the filmmakers get heavy-handed. Until then, though, this is a decent attempt to combine faith and storytelling that will certainly register with its target audience.

like I did before, I would encourage every married couple or about to be married couple to see this flick.

Hat tip to Challies

fireproof

Julie and I and some friends of ours went to see this movie last night. It was really good. Not in the usual way. There wasn’t any great acting accomplishment and the script was kind of wooden. But the story was absolutely true to life. The review I link above explains the attraction of the movie this way:

What they [the movie’s makers] do want is for their earnest project to turn your marriage upside down.

You might notice that some of the lines in Fireproof feel a little wooden. And you might notice that the script indulges more dialogue (most of it spiritual) than you’re used to hearing in movies about firemen. But the honest truth is that you don’t really care by the time the credits roll, because you’re too busy feeling your own feelings and thinking your own thoughts about your own relationships. This is the kind of movie that succeeds, sometimes despite itself, because it does a superlative job of digging into serious issues that so deeply affect so many of us every day.

so many couples have so much pain in their daily lives together that can be avoided if they just surrender their selfishness at the door and follow God’s plan for marriage as I tried to outline it here.

I especially liked the way the movie made it very clear that each spouse’s obligation to obey God with regard to their mate is independent of the other mate’s actions. In other words, the husband needed to learn to love his wife regardless of whether she respected him (and she very much didn’t).

Most importantly, the film made it clear that the basis for love in a marriage and the only way that a truly loving marriage is even possible is if the spouses experience true love in Christ. The selfless sacrificial love that He exhibited and gives to us is our example as we try to love one another.

Anyway, go see the movie with your spouse. Here are some related resources for further exploration afterward.

more on marriage

This quick post is an update to the one below it to give a little more context.

The angst described in this article has been felt by every person married more than a week. That is why the article strikes such an emotional chord. The very real presence of ebbs and flows of happiness in the marriage relationship is why I wrote this email message to my Sunday school class several years ago.

As lovers of God and followers of Christ we must be vigilant (on guard) all the time against the Deceiver. He wants to destroy our families, our health and our testimony as God-lovers.

Don’t even start to entertain the idea that divorce is the way out to fulfillment and happiness. It is a lie. God makes it clear how he feels about divorce. He hates it. Jesus said that it was a provision made for the hardness of hearts. It is not ever to be plan A. It is not something to allow your mind to wander back to as a “choice.”

The deceiver wants to steal your happiness, kill your marriage, and destroy your relationships and testimony for Christ. He does not want what is best for you. He does not want you to reach your full potential.

The presence of divorce as a perpetual and repetitive contemplation by the author of the article is what is so disturbing. She is getting lied to and she is considering the lie from all the angles.

Don’t. Do. It.

one of the saddest things I have read

If you want to see “the Lie” in action then read this article. It is an offering from Oprah.com.

Here is a peek or two or four:

I contemplate divorce every day. It tugs on my sleeve each morning when my husband, Will, greets me in his chipper, smug morning-person voice, because after 16 years of waking up together, he still hasn’t quite pieced out that I’m not viable before 10 a.m.

It puts two hands on my forehead and mercilessly presses when he blurts out the exact wrong thing (“Are you excited for your surprise party next Tuesday?”); when he lies to avoid the fight (“What do you mean I left our apartment door open? I never even knew our apartment had a door!”); when he buttons his shirt and jacket into the wrong buttonholes, collars and seams unaligned like a vertical game of dominoes, with possibly a scrap of shirttail zippered into his fly.

……

As one girlfriend remarked, it’s the age of rage — a period of high irritation that lasts roughly one to two decades. As a colleague e-mailed me, it’s the simmering underbelly of resentment, the 600-pound mosquito in the room. At a juncture where we thought we should have unearthed some modicum of certainty, we are turning into the Clash. If I go will there be trouble? If I stay will it be double? Should I stay or should I go?

……

What are we doing here?

We were groomed to think bigger and better — achievement was our birthright — so it’s small surprise that our marriages are more freighted. Marriage and its cruel cohort, fidelity, are a lot to expect from anyone, much less from swift-flying us. Would we agree to wear the same eyeshadow or eat in the same restaurant every day for a lifetime? Nay, cry the villagers, the echo answers nay. We believe in our superhood. We count on it.

So, did our feminist foremothers set us up for failure? Or were they just trying to empower us so that we wouldn’t buy into the notion of having to be a better better half?

…..

Because in the end, that’s basically what it’s all about: getting your order right. Our day comes down to choices — and it’s finally dawning on the long-term wives of the world that divorce may be the last-standing woman’s right to choose.

emphasis added

what can one say? do you hear the unhappiness? Do you hear the deception being fed to the writer?

The Lie is always the same. if you do the right thing, you will be miserable. If you do the wrong thing, then you can realize your full potential.

The Deceiver’s playbook hasn’t changed since Genesis 3.
“But the serpent said to the woman, “You will not surely die. 5For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”

Don’t be deceived.
“16Don’t be deceived, my dear brothers. 17Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows.”

UPDATE: see post above this one.

HT to the Corner (KLo)

marriage

Julie and I went up to Irving, Texas yesterday (home of America’s team) for the fiftieth wedding anniversary of Lois and Ted.

Lois is Julie’s dad’s big sister. Julie’s mom and dad will have been married fifty-three years in a couple of weeks.

my parents have been married forty-six years (I think. mom, is this right?)

my grandparents have been married sixty-eight years.

Julie and I are in the middle of our twentieth year married and loving it more all the time. I just reflect on the blessing of being surrounded by all of these long marriages and realize how rare it is.

Marriage is a commitment. It is deciding to stay together period. Hebrews 12:1 in another context but applicable here as well says that since we are surrounded by so many admirable testimonies, let us run with endurance/patience the race that is set before us. Life and marriage are marathons, not sprints. Buckle down for the long haul and enjoy the sweet everyday blessings that God sends our way during the journey.

Congratulations, Ted and Lois!

happiness

I added a page that I wrote a while back about Happiness in a marriage. The tab is to the left of this.