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THE ABC’S OF A HAPPY
MARRIAGE
Written and edited By
Glenn Pease
INTRODUCTION
God is triune as
Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and all that he has created takes after his
nature, which is omniscient, omnipresent, and omnipotent. For example,
Time is past, present
and future.
Matter is animal,
mineral and vegetable.
Space is above, level
and below, or heaven, earth and hell.
Highest virtues are
faith, hope and love.
A complete family is
father, mother and child.
Three is the number of
completeness, and so I have divided this book into three sections with each
section divided into three chapters. It does not, in fact, cover all that can
be covered for happiness in a marriage, but it does cover the most basic
factors. Any couple who will live in applying the truths involved in this
triune plan for a happy marriage, will be happy.
CONTENTS
A.
1. ACCEPTANCE OF GOD’S PLAN
p1-42
2. ACCEPTANCE OF YOUR SELF
p42-64
3. ACCEPTANCE OF YOUR MATE
p64-84
B.
C.
"According to
annual surveys conducted across the United States, "Most people say that having
a good marriage is one of the most important goals in life, and no other
variable is more predictive of the health, happiness, and general well-being of
adults than whether or not they are in satisfactory marriages" (Glenn,
1996, p. 15). Currently, approximately 45 percent of all first-time marriages
end in divorce, yet about 60 percent of those who divorce remarry. These
statistics confirm that people have a tremendous need to love and to be loved.
Every human being was formed by the Creator with a deep need and longing to be
in relationship—first with God and then with another human being. We can
clearly see in the Bible that love and relationships are central to God's plan
for humankind. God wants to restore oneness between us and Him, and the relationship
which most closely reflects our relationship with Him is the marital
relationship."
ADAM AND EVE
God was the first Adam
splitter. The result was Eve exploded on the scene and woman has ever since
been having explosive effects on man. Marriage is the result of the worlds
first surgery. God was the first surgeon and Adam the first patient, and Eve
the first thing to ever be removed by surgery. The whole thing was quite an
operation. The doctor actually provided his patient with a nurse out of his own
body, for he created Eve to be his helper. So the Garden of Eden was the first
surgical ward where all human relationships began. The point of all surgery is
to put something in or take something out that makes for better health, and Eve
was just the medicine Adam needed. The first purpose of marriage is
completeness. Adam needed Eve to be complete and whole. Marriage is not the
only way today to solve the need for companionship and completeness, for today
we have the choice of friends and family, and even fellow workers, that can
meet our needs for relating. But marriage is still the primary means by which
we meet this need, for it is the relationship with the deepest intimacy.
If we accept God’s
purpose for providing a mate for Adam, then we are committing ourselves to be
the intimate companion of the one we marry. We are to become one in flesh and
spirit, and we are to leave our family and those we have been dependant upon up
until this point in our lives and be fully committed to our mate as the primary
person in our lives.
Genesis 2:24 says
right after Eve was presented to Adam, "For this reason a man will leave
his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one
flesh." We see two principles of marriage in this text-the principle of
separation and the principle of sex. In other words, the plan of God for
marriage was that it was to be the primary relationship of life. The man was to
leave his dependance upon his parents, and become dependant instead upon his
mate as his primary source of help in life. They are to be united in every way
and especially a sexual way, and become one flesh. Leaving the dependence upon
the parents means that the wife becomes the priority and the primary person
that the man has to please. If there is a conflict and a man has to choose
between pleasing his parents or his wife, he is obligated to choose to please
his wife, and if the parents do not understand, they need to be shown that it
is God’s will. This, of course, is based on the assumption that the wife does
not demand something that is itself out of the will of God.
ONENESS IS GOD’S PLAN
FOR MARRIAGE
Marriage was God’s
plan from the beginning, and in Gen. 2:24 we read again, "For this reason
a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will
become one flesh." The KJV had it, "Therefore shall a man leave his
father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one
flesh." I like this, for it makes a perfect two point outline of leaving
and cleaving, and these are the two key points in God’s plan for marriage. We
know this is important to God for He has it repeated in His Word more than any
other statement concerning marriage. We find it here in Genesis and in 4 places
in the New Testament.
Matt. 19:5-6,
"For 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. Therefore what God has joined together, let man not separate."
Mark 10:7-9, "For
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.
Therefore what God has joined together, let man not separate."
I Cor. 6:16, "Do
you not know that he who unites himself with a prostitute is one with her in
body? For it is said, "The two will become one flesh."
Eph. 5:31, "For
this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife,
and the two will become one flesh."
Oneness is important
to God. It is a part of his very nature. Jesus said it several times in John
that "I and the Father are one." (John 10:30). The unity of the
trinity is basic Christian theology, for there is only one God in three
Persons. Oneness characterizes God, and he wants this to be true of all who
unite in marriage. He expects that they will be one, and this means there is to
be no conflict trying to decide which one is the one. Both are one, and this
unity is the key to being in God’s will and enjoying the best that marriage can
be. Most all of the problems of marriage arise out of the loss of oneness. It
has a parallel in our nation. We are one nation under God. We are many in one,
and when the 13 colonies became one nation it was the beginning of the most
powerful nation on earth. It is our unity that makes us strong. The Civil War
was fought to preserve that unity, for if we had divided and lost that oneness
we would never become what we have become. There is power in unity, and God
expects married couples to have this unity and oneness in order to experience
victory over all of the forces that seek to divide them.
Oneness is often lost
because mates, and especially the husband, refuse to obey the plan of God and
leave their dependance upon their parents and give their mate priority.
Florence and Fred
Littouer have done extensive study of this issue and in their book After Every
Wedding Comes A Marriage they give many examples of how not leaving leads to
the destruction of their marriage. Let me share a few so you get the point, that
if you are not ready to cut the apron strings, you are not ready for marriage.
You are not ready to accept the plan of God for a healthy and happy
relationship with a marriage partner.
"Martin said,
"Mama never approved of my wife. She told me right from the start, ‘that
girl is not good enough for you-she’s trash.’ I bucked her for a few years and
then she began to point out flaws in Mitzi and I listened. Nothing Mitzi did
was as good as mother did it. One day mother said, ‘Why don’t you move back home
and let me give you the treatment you deserve?’ I left Mitzi for mama and I’m
so ashamed!"
From Helen: "He
can’t even take an hour off to take me to the doctor, and he’s missed all the
children’s graduations, but if his mother calls he drops everything and
runs."
JoAnne sobs, "I
just found out that his will is made out to his mother. He says she’ll dole it
out as I need it and manage my life much better than I could. I can’t believe
it!"
Christine, "I
don’t even know if we have any insurance. When I ask him, he says not to
worry-his father knows where the papers are. What kind of marriage is
that?"
Bob, "Her family
has loads of money and she doesn’t dare cross them up or she’ll lose her
inheritance. We have to take our vacations with them and live next door. They
really control our lives."
Satan’s most powerful
weapons are used to divide people from God and from one another. Love is the
great power of uniting God and man, and man with man, and mates with one
another. Love makes oneness real. But there are many emotions and attitudes
that fight against love and divide us from God and one another. Paul says in I
Cor. 13 that love is patient and kind, but we all know how easy it is to become
impatient and unkind even with people we love, and so the battle is always on
to maintain the oneness of love. He says that love does not envy or boast, and
it is not proud or rude or self seeking, and it is not easily angered. But all
of these things are a daily risk for every couple in marriage, and so you can
see that the battle for oneness is not one that is ever finished. That is why
you have heard it many times that it takes work to make a marriage work. It is
work because it takes endless effort to overcome all of these things that pull
us apart and destroy our oneness. It is easy to say love is the answer, but it
is much harder to conquer all of these enemies of love that seek to divide us
constantly. Just being in love will not guarantee that you will always be
loving, and not be under the influence and even control of one of these love
dividers. Your goal of a happy marriage depends on your fighting together to
ever maintain this oneness that brought you together to get married in the
first place.
Rabbi Noah Weinberg
writing from the Jewish perspective says, "In the Torah, the expression
used to describe intimacy is "yadah," which means "to
know." ("And Adam knew his wife Eve, and she became pregnant and had
a child." - Genesis 4:1) Yadah denotes that intimacy is not just a physical
act, but is a full emotional union between two people. Judaism defines marriage
as "finding your other half." Through marriage, two people become
bound together into a single entity, bringing completeness to each other. The
longing for intimacy is really an expression of the longing to be joined
together with our "other half." Through the relationship, we express
this oneness." He goes on to say, "When a man and woman make a
marital commitment, they form a deep spiritual bond. They give to each other,
and are committed for a lifetime. Intimacy binds husband and wife together,
because it teaches us to focus beyond ourselves. Outside of marriage, intimacy
is ultimately frustrating because oneness can never be fully achieved. This is
obvious in regard to a short-term encounter. But even in a long-term setting:
Without the commitment of marriage, you always keep open the option of leaving
the relationship. As a result, the degree of connectedness reaches a barrier.
Eventually, frustration sets in, and the relationship erodes at its foundation."
Because Judaism is
based on God’s revelation in the Old Testament it has many of the same
convictions about marriage as Christianity. They have an even deeper
understanding of the romantic love involved in the Song of Songs than do many
Christians. Rabbi Weinberg writes, "Judaism says that intimacy is one of
the holiest acts we can perform. In fact, the Hebrew word for the marriage
ceremony, "kiddushin," comes from the word "kadosh," holy.
Judaism says that the greatest physical pleasure is that which is done for a
spiritual reason. That's why on Shabbat, the holiest day of the week, when you
are able to get closest to attaining your longing, the Sages specifically
enjoin couples to be together. It is important to see how this longing for
closeness is driving you. It is very deep. It will give your marriage meaning.
"Song of
Songs," written by King Solomon, is a love song between a man and a woman.
Yet the Talmud calls it the "Holy of Holies" -- the most sacred
biblical text. Why? Because intimacy is really an expression of our deep desire
for the ultimate unity: to connect with God. The verse, "I am to my
beloved, and my beloved is to me" (Song of Songs 6:3), refers symbolically
to the longing for oneness with God. Bring spiritual awareness into your marriage.
The secret to a really a powerful marriage is to walk with God in the middle.
Being kind to your spouse is a way of being like God, who created us to give us
pleasure. Tapping into this mind set will give your marriage more meaning and
ultimately, more pleasure." Most Christian commentators on the Song today
would say amen to these words. I have conducted a year long marriage enrichment
seminar just on this marvelous book alone, for it is truly the greatest
marriage manual for a happy marriage that exists on this planet. It is God’s
marriage manual, and you can find no greater author than Him. It is poetry
exalting oneness with our Lord and our lover. Some poet wrote,
Love
is the offering of Oneness,
the maintenance of Oneness,
and the work of creating Oneness.
True love is an epic romance
with Oneness, with love and with life itself.
Someone gave this
analogy to show how it is wise to think of ourselves as one, for it is to love
yourself to love your wife as yourself: "Let us say husband and wife are
as one body with the husband representing the right side and the wife the left.
When you look at marriage in this way, it is foolish to think or speak badly of
the other side. To make the other side as happy as possible by exerting
yourself through your utmost sincerity is the only way to make yourself happy.
If you criticize or mistreat your other side, you are lowering the value of the
unit of which you yourself represent a half." The goals of many seminars
is to help couples achieve oneness on all levels, and this is the online of one
such seminar."
One
In Spirit (Attitude Adjustment)
One
In Mind (Psychological Adjustment)
One
In Soul (Spiritual Adjustment)
One
In Body (Sexual Adjustment)
One
In Essence (Maturing Oneness)
One
Forever (Enduring Oneness)
In the effort to
become one, however, it is important to remember this does not destroy our
individuality. We never lose ourselves in this oneness, just as the Father, Son
and Holy Spirit remain individuals with their own personalities even while they
are completely one. The churchis also one body, but it is made up of a
diversity of members who have a variety of functions, but they are all
interdependent. Oneness does not destroy their individuality. It is like a
basketball team with each member of the team contributing to get the ball in
the hoop to win. Married couples are a team working together for common goals
with a oneness in their loyalty to what they understand to be the will of God. They
are characterized by the term teamwork.
Jeanette and Robert
Lauer studied 300 couples who had been married 15 years or longer, and they
discovered that these happily married couples used the word we often in
describing their married life.
"We agree on aims and goals."
"We laugh together."
"We agree on a philosophy of
life."
"We share outside hobbies and interests."
"We agree about our sex life."
"We have a stimulating exchange of ideas."
"We agree on how and how often to
show affection."
"We try to share everything."
A number of studies conclude that happy
marriages-
"..have a sense of belonging with
each other -- a sense of `we." They strive to share as much of life
together as possible, for they are more than mates. They are lovers,
companions, partners and best friends, and this makes for we-ness and oneness
in most all areas of life. To do this they need to obey the leaving and
cleaving command of God in Genesis. They have to be united against all other
voices that pull them in different directions. They need to cleave to each
other and not let anything or anyone come between them. Because they leave and
cleave they are able to weave a we-ness and oneness in their relationship that
is not easily torn.
Many of the marriage conferences and
books on marriage stress the importance of growing in oneness, for the Bible
makes it clear that this is the plan of
God, and we cannot have God’s best without it. They also make it clear that
coming to a oneness with God is a key factor in developing a oneness with your
mate. Some amazing things have happened to many very bad marriages when they
get their focus on oneness. Joe Beam has written much on this theme because he
has seen the power of it to restore broken relationships. He shares this story
as an example:
"A couple of years ago, I briskly
entered an auditorium filled to standing-room-only by thousands of people
impatiently waiting for the speaker to arrive. That’s why I moved briskly: I
was the tardy speaker. A hurting couple had commandeered me in the parking lot
and wouldn’t release me until I heard their hurt and told them where to find
the cure. Now, making my way down the overcrowded side aisle, mumbling
apologies to the people I was stepping on and tripping over, I found myself
suddenly brought up short by a giant of a man standing determinedly in my way.
"You Joe Beam?" he arched his
eyebrow and bored his eyes into me as he asked, making me a little unsure of
whether I wanted to identify myself.
"Ahhh, yeah, ummm, I’m Joe
Beam."
"My name’s Brad, and this is
Thelma," he said as he magically produced a bashfully smiling, petite lady
from behind him. "We were married for twelve years before we split up.
When I left, I couldn’t remember ever loving her and just wanted to be free of
her, her family, and anything else that had to
do with her. You felt the same way about
me, didn’t you, honey?" She smiled broadly in reply.
"Well, anyway, our preacher wouldn’t
give up on us. Kept telling us that God could fix this if we’d let Him, but
that just sounded like preacher talk to me, you know? Finally, just to get him
off my back, I agreed to go through your His Needs, Her Needs course at church.
Thelma had already said she’d go."
At that point, he got misty-eyed and
hugged her tight against him. "Man, did I ever see the power of God! He
worked on me for those eight weeks, bringing me closer to Him. And when that
happened, something changed in the way I thought about Thelma. I don’t even
know that I can explain it except to say that I don’t think I would ever have
come to love her if I hadn’t first learned something about loving God.
"Thelma and I struggled through the
tough parts of that course as we did all the things you told us to do on the
tapes and in the handbook. We worked hard, not because we wanted to, but
because we got to liking the folks in our group and didn’t want to let ‘em
down, and because I was beginning to grow in God like never before. I don’t
know that I can tell you the exact moment it happened, but one day I realized
that I loved this woman. And I found out that she never stopped loving me.
"I just want to make sure you tell
these people that God can do anything with a marriage, no matter how bad it is.
If He can turn me around and give me love and a great marriage with my wife, He
can do it for anybody. If you just do what God tells you to do, you get what
God promises. You tell ‘em that for Brad and Thelma."
I did tell them, and now I’m telling you:
God can do anything in your marriage — no matter what it’s like right now. If
you love each other now, He can show you how to love with deeper levels of
intimacy. If you don’t love each other, He can create love in your relationship
in ways that defy comprehension. Just as He created our world from absolutely
nothing, He can create deep, abiding, intimate love in your heart even if none
lives there now.
He is Creator.
He can do it.
Trust Him.
But remember, if you want deeper, more
fulfilling intimacy with your mate, you must first develop deeper, more
fulfilling intimacy with God.
Dennis Rainey, author of many books on
marriage says, "No matter how far a couple has traveled down the road to
isolation, they can still start on a road that leads to ‘Oneness
Marriage.’" He goes on to say,
|
"A Oneness
Marriage is a husband and wife who are crafting intimacy, trust, and
understanding with one another. It's a couple who is chiseling out a common
direction, common purpose, and common plan for their lives. A Oneness
Marriage demands a lifetime process of relying on God and forging an enduring
relationship according to His design. It's more than a mere mingling of two
humans-it's a tender merger of body, soul, and spirit." |
To achieve this goal it is important again
to stress the need to leave the past dependency on parents. The Radio Bible
Class booklet, When the Flame Flickers says, "The Hebrew term translated
"leave" is a strong one that is often translated "forsake"
elsewhere. While the rest of Scripture makes it clear that this doesn’t mean
that a couple is to cut off all contact and communication with one’s family. It
does indicate, however, that a clear separation from parental priorities,
traditions, and influence is necessary if a couple is to bond together in their
own home. The man is directed to initiate the separation. He must abandon the
nurturing parent-child relationship to prepare for the nurturing husband-wife
relationship. By detaching from his parents, he frees himself to form a new
alliance with his bride. This willful shift in core loyalties is necessary for
the bride as well. There must never be a loyalty to anyone else, whether parent
or child, friend or family, that is greater than the loyalty to one’s spouse.
"The failure to shift loyalty from parents to spouse is a central issue in
almost all marital conflict."ref.htmlEvery couple must
hammer out their own values, traditions, and priorities that will define their home
without allowing parental intrusion or interference. Once separation from
parents is initiated, a couple can begin building a new bond together."
The idea of one flesh obviously means
sexual intercourse, and this is a special oneness that is essential to a happy
marriage, but often people forget that the physical will be far more enjoyable
with one with whom there is spiritual, and emotional oneness. Sexual oneness is
a true celebration when it is done with one you are one with in many others
realms of life. Paul says you can become one with a prostitute also, but this
is not true oneness, for you do not share a total life together. Sexual oneness
is only at its best when it is a part of a greater whole in oneness.
"Oneness is the joyful sense of connection that a husband and wife
experience as a result of their exclusive and unparalleled devotion to each
other."
ENEMIES OF ONENESS
If we truly accept God’s plan to be one,
we will strive to avoid all that divides us and pulls us apart. We will, when
we fail to support this oneness, quickly confess our folly and be reconciled.
In other words we will be ever watchful against all things which pull at this
oneness and put pressure on it. Modern studies have shown us the primary foes
against the oneness of marriage, and we need to be ever aware ,if one of these
enemies of our happiness is raising its ugly head, to slay the dragon before
its fire erupts and destroys any part of our oneness. Scott Stanley has written
the book A Lasting Promise: A Christian Guide to Fighting for Your Marriage.
These issues are dealt with at length in this book, but we will give the gist
of the four key causes why Christian marriage fail. These four things have been
extensively researched by the study of actual couples. These are the key
enemies of oneness, and we need to be aware of them and ready to eliminate them
when they appear in our marriage.
1. Escalation
1 Peter 3:9 says, "Do not repay evil
with evil or insult with insult." But this is exactly what happens with
escalation. Each negative comment increases the level of anger and frustration,
and soon a small disagreement blows up into a major fight. Escalation is the
inability to call it quits and end a conflict. It happens with people and
nations. War can be heck on any level, but when escalation takes over and each
side demands revenge for the last attack on them, then war is hell. That is
what a couple bring into their relationship when they do not know how to
forgive an evil or insult. If you have to get even, then you are driving a
wedge between you and your mate. You are creating a crack in your oneness, and
with enough of these escalations you can break it in pieces. People think they
can shout and say mean things to their mate and then kiss and make up, but they
forget Proverbs 12:18 which says, "Reckless words pierce like a
sword." You can make up, but you leave scars by your bitter words. You
need to deal with anger in more rational way, or you will do damage that will
eventually erode your oneness. Your tongue will be a key tool to build love and
oneness, or it will be a weapon by which you tear it down. "If anyone
considers himself religious and yet does not keep a tight rein on his tongue,
he deceives himself and his religion is worthless" (James 1:26).
2. Invalidation
"Invalidation is a pattern in which
one partner subtly or directly puts down the thoughts, feelings, or character
of the other." Those mates who have a tendency to attack each others
character are primary candidates for divorce. Nobody can stand it very long to
go on loving someone who thinks they are of little worth. Attack and put down a
mate’s self esteem and you are on your way to divorce court. When you declare
your mate’s feelings and ideas as stupid and worthless, you spit in your own
face, for you hurt the oneness that can give you joy and pleasure. When you say
any aspect of your mates being is invalid you are in a non-love mode, and it
will destroy rather than build.
"The antidote to invalidation is
validation. Couples must work at validating and accepting the feelings of their
spouse. That does not mean you have to agree with your spouse on the issue at
hand, but it does mean that you listen to and respect the other person's
perspective. Providing care, concern, and comfort will build intimacy.
Invalidating fears and feelings will build barriers in a marriage. Discipline
yourself to encourage your spouse without invalidating his or her
feelings."
Sue Bohlin give us some other examples:
Rolling the eyes at something a spouse
says
Ignoring the spouse when they're talking
A dismissing or contemptuous tone of
voice in saying things like "I don't think so" or "You're
wrong" or "Like you would know anything about that!" (Note:
those very words can be used in affectionate banter when said with a smile and
in the context of a spouse's strengths.)
Any form of sarcasm
Making plans without consulting the
spouse (which would affect the spouse)
Ridiculing a spouse's dreams and hopes,
even in jest
Continually rejecting a spouse's romantic
or sexual overtures
Choosing to spend time chatting with
internet friends (especially of the opposite sex) over being with one's spouse
Not acknowledging the heart issues behind
the words that a spouse shares
Not looking at a spouse when they're
talking
Being critical of or ridiculing a spouse
in public, even in jest
In a dispute or disagreement that
involves the children, ganging up with them against the spouse
Saying things like "Oh, your mother
is just being wierd (stupid, illogical, emotional, etc.) again" or
"Don't listen to your father, he doesn't know what he's talking
about" to one's kids
3. Negative interpretations
"Negative interpretations occur when
one partner consistently believes that the motives of the other are more
negative than is really the case."ref.html "Such behavior
can be a very destructive pattern in a relationship, and quickly erode intimacy
and oneness in a marriage. A wife may believe that her husband does not like her
parents. As a result, she may attack him anytime he is not overly enthusiastic
about visiting them. He may be concerned with the financial cost of going home
for Christmas or about whether he has enough vacation time. She, in turn,
considers his behavior as disliking her parents.
When a relationship becomes more
distressed, the negative interpretations mount and help create an environment
of hopelessness. The attacked partner gives up trying to make himself or
herself clear and becomes demoralized.
Another kind of negative interpretation
is mind reading. "Mind reading occurs when you assume you know what your
partner is thinking or why he or she did something." Nearly everyone is
guilty of mind reading at some time or other. And when you mind read positively,
it does not tend to do much harm. But when you mind read on the negative side,
it can spell trouble for a marriage.
Paul warned against attempting to judge
the thoughts and motives of others (1 Cor. 4:5). And Jesus asked, "Why do
you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother's eye and pay no attention to
the plank in your own eye?" (Luke 6:41).
Negative interpretations are hard to
detect and counteract. Research shows that in distressed marriages there is a
tendency for partners to discount the positive things they see, attributing
them to causes such as chance rather than to positive characteristics of the
partner. That is why negative interpretations do not change easily.
The key to battling negative
interpretations is to reconsider what you think about your partner's motives.
Perhaps your partner is more positive than you think. This is not some
unrealistic "positive thinking" program, but a realistic assessment
of negative assumptions you may be bringing to the marriage.
4. Withdrawal and Avoidance
"Escalation, invalidation, and
negative interpretations are three of the four negative risk factors identified
by researchers at the University of Denver. The last of these has two
descriptors: withdrawal and avoidance. These are two different manifestations
of the problem wherein a partner is unwilling to get in or stay in a discussion
that is too threatening.
"Withdrawal can be as obvious as
getting up and leaving the room or as subtle as 'turning off' or 'shutting
down' during an argument. The withdrawer often tends to get quiet during an
argument, look away, or agree quickly to a partner's suggestion just to end the
conversation, with no real intention of following through."ref.html
"Avoidance reflects the same
reluctance to get into certain discussions, with more emphasis on the attempt
to not let the conversation happen in the first place. A person prone to
avoidance would prefer that the topic not come up and, if it does, may manifest
the signs of withdrawal just described."ref.html
In a typical marriage, one partner is the
pursuer and the other is the withdrawer. Studies show that it is usually the
man who wants to avoid these discussions and is more likely in the withdrawing
role. However, sometimes the roles reverse. But, for the sake of this
discussion, we will assume that the husband is the one who withdraws.
Why does he withdraw? Because he does not
feel emotionally safe to stay in the argument. Sometimes he may even be afraid
that if he stays in the discussion or argument that he might turn violent, so
he retreats.
When the husband withdraws, the wife
feels shut out and believes that he does not care about the marriage. In other
words, lack of talking equals lack of caring. But that is often a negative
interpretation about the withdrawer.
He, on the other hand, may believe that
his wife gets upset too much of the time, nagging and picking fights. This is
also a negative interpretation because most pursuers really want to stay
connected and resolve the issue he does not want to talk about.
Couples who want to have a good marriage
must learn to stay engaged. Paul said, writing to the church in Ephesus,
"Therefore each of you must put off falsehood and speak truthfully to his
neighbor, for we are all members of one body. In your anger do not sin: Do not
let the sun go down while you are still angry, and do not give the devil a
foothold" (Eph. 4:25-27).
Although the immediate context in this
passage is anger, the broader principle is the importance of not allowing
avoidance to become a corrosive pattern in your marriage. Couples should build
oneness and intimacy by speaking openly and honestly about important issues in
their marriage.
Conclusion:
Each of these four risk factors
(escalation, invalidation, negative interpretations, and withdrawal and
avoidance) can build barriers in a marriage leading ultimately to loneliness and
isolation. The research shows that couples that want a good marriage need to
eliminate these risk factors from their marriage, or else the negative factors
will overwhelm the positive aspects of the marriage. It is never too late to
put your marriage back on track.
For further study on this topic, I would
once again recommend that you purchase the book A Lasting Promise: A Christian
Guide to Fighting for Your Marriage. This book is widely available and is a
good source for help in establishing and maintaining the oneness that God
desires for every marriage.
© 1998 Probe Ministries International
THE GOAL OF ONENESS IS INTIMACY
The Bible makes it clear that God is an
intimate personality. He is three Persons in one Godhead, and all three are as
one in thought and action. There is never conflict or disagreement, but perfect
harmony. The Bible also makes it clear that this is the goal God has for His
people, that they be one, and not divided. The Gospel broke down all walls that
separate the peoples of the world, and it made possible the uniting of Jews and
Gentiles in the body of Christ, which is the church. Paul in Rom. 12 stresses
how this body with all of its parts with different functions is to be one in
perfect harmony. All the New Testament letters stress over and over that we are
to love one another, to care for one another, to serve one another, to be kind
to one another, to bear one another's burdens, to fellowship with one another,
to forgive one another, and on and on with continuous stress on unity and
intimacy as the ultimate ideal.
This ideal of intimacy in God, and in the
church is carried over to be the ideal as well in the marriage bond. In other
words, the Bible makes it clear that intimacy is the ideal goal toward which
every relationship must move if it is to be the best that it can be. From the
beginning the twofold steps of marriage are leave, and cleave. A couple leave
their dependence upon their parents, and they cleave in dependence upon one
another. They leave the old relationship of intimacy and cleave to a new one,
which they are to make the most intimate relationship they have in life. All of
this means that the primary goal of marriage is to develop intimacy. Intimacy
is what makes marriage all it was meant to be.
Dr. Ruben writes, "...the single
most important characteristic of a deep relationship is a shared personal
history. The partners history together, whatever its length, is of prime
importance to them. Shared history has little value to people who are involved
only superficially.....Reverence for these parts of their life's experience
that they shared--problems, frustrations, tragedies, accomplishments, change,
growth, hurts, joys, exchanges with other people--is crucial in deep
relationships."
Dr. John Trimble in Hard To Achieve
wrote, "My hypothesis is that not many people experience intimacy although
most people profess that they would like to. Not every person is even capable
of achieving intimacy as discussed in Chapter 3. Apparently, from observing the
behavior of people, most couples are not willing to set aside the necessary
time and to invest sufficient energy to improve their capacity for intimacy or
to work on intimacy with their partner. As a result, few couple achieve much
intimacy often. That has to be my conclusion. I find no writers who disagree
with what I am saying here, although they do not state the case as pointedly as
I do."
Sharing in depth seems especially
difficult for some people who have been brought up in families where they keep
everything to themselves. Some men seem to feel that the telling of personal
thoughts and feelings is a sign of weakness or a threat to their manhood. Even
to say, "I love you" is to confess the need of another person, which
some, in their fear of becoming dependent, find difficult to do. The fear of
intimacy is often based on poor self-esteem. A person feels that to know them
intimately is to cease to like them, for they feel ashamed of who they are deep
inside. They feel unlovely, and so they do not want to share that, and bring
out all of the negatives they feel inside them. What they do not realize is
that these negatives inside influence their external behavior in negative ways.
If they would share and get these feelings out in the open, they could get them
modified and even eliminated. God knows the worst about us, and yet He still
loves us. If we let our mate know us more deeply we will learn that they too
love us in spite of our defects, and will, like God, help us to overcome the
defects.
You cannot anchor a ship with a string,
for it demands a rope and a rope is a strong thick cord made by twisting
smaller cords together. A rope does not just happen, it has to be made. So the
rope that holds a couple together has to be made by weaving together many
smaller experiences of intimacy. Couples need to review their life every so
often. They need to think back on the events that brought them together, and
which led to their enjoyment of one another to the point that they wanted to
marry each other. They need to focus on the fun times they had together on
vacations, and on times with their children that were precious. Look at reruns
of your old video you took when the children were young. Weave your own rope
with the many little things that made your relationship one of pleasure and
joy.
Falling in love is exciting, but staying
in love is even more exciting. Falling in love is like the 4th of July, but
staying in love is like patriotism. It is not just an event, but a value that
covers all events. We can have a terrible 4th of July, and yet still love our
country. You can have a flop of a Valentine's Day, and have all work out for
the worst, but a day, or an event, does not define romance and love. It is the
over all long range process that matters. Falling in love is not something you
plan ahead of time, but staying in love is a choice and a challenge that you
commit yourself to by investing time, money, and labor. This is what intimacy
is all about.
When you marry, you choose to value
intimacy over variety. You choose to specialize, and instead of knowing a lot
of the opposite sex in general, you strive to know a lot about one of the
opposite sex in particular. The single person is a general practitioner, but
the married person is a specialist in love. J. Allen Petersen wrote,
"There is no love in marriage; love is in people, and people put it into
marriage. There is no romance in marriage; people have to infuse it into their
marriages." The point is, couples need to work at intimacy. It does not
just happen. Intimacy means being fully at home with someone. It is where I am
free to be completely myself without fear of rejection. It is fear of rejection
that causes us to hide from another. When I am loved without fear I do not fear
to love others. It frees me from the need of paying attention to myself and
worrying about whether I am lovable.
The number one problem brought into this
world by the fall is "The intimacy crisis." Man has an inability to
be close to God, his mate, others, and even himself. The ultimate failure of
intimacy is hell, which is total aloneness, with no relationships whatever. The
ultimate goal of salvation is eternal oneness with God and all others. The
great universal battle of light and darkness, good and evil, love and hate is
the battle for intimacy. In short, the goal of life is to develop greater
intimacy. "The chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy Him
forever." That is the ultimate intimacy.
Ed Wheat in Secret Choices writes,
"Medical doctors have found that an intimate relationship between a
husband and wife can determine how well that couple masters the crisis of life.
A high degree of intimacy can also provide shelter and relief from the ordinary
tensions of life. Life becomes richer and more colorful when shared with an
intimate partner; it offers love and laughter, pleasure and stability. In fact,
we believe the secret of staying in love for any married couple can be summed
up in this one potent word: Intimacy."
Steven A, Hammon wrote, "God created
us, I believe, with a deep, instinctive need for intimacy...........Reports
from concentration and prisoner-of-war camps indicate that people who had had
meaningful relationships with even one other person stood a far better chance
of survival than those who shut others out."
Dr. C. Edward Crowther writes,
"About ten years ago I conducted a study of people who were dying in
hospices and orthodox hospitals in the U.S. and England........I talked at
length to each of the almost two hundred people in my statistical population
sample. They were open and kind with me, and I was very grateful for their
time. When I asked each person individually what mattered most in life, around
ninety percent answered intimate relationships." He goes on, "In my
practice of psychotherapy, I see many, many people every year. Most have
symptoms of anxiety or depression, or they are beset with behavioral disorders
such as over indulgence in drugs, alcohol, food, or work. Increasingly I'm
finding the absence of intimacy is the common denominator in the analysis and
treatment of people with these and many other symptoms."
Zig Zigler tells of the Indian who
discovered oil in Oklahoma, and went from poverty to great riches. Everyday he
went to town in his new Cadillac. He was the safest driver in that whole area,
because he had his Cadillac pulled by two horses. He hated machines, and so he
never learned to start it. He used it like a carriage. This seems very weird to
us, but there are parallels in our lives. Many never learn to use their VCR or
their computer. We are often content with the external value of machines, but
never care to get into the inner workings of them. This is true of marriage
also. We pay a lot of attention to the externals of the wedding and the home,
but very little to the intimacy of the mates.
Intimacy can be difficult to capture. It
is like the formations in the clouds. You see the dog, but by the time you get
someone's attention to look, it has faded. They are constantly shifting and
hard to capture. So it is with intimacy. Now you have it, and now you don't.
Intimacy is based on self-disclosure. That is why it is often easier to talk to
a stranger than to your mate. After a few years in marriage, mates often feel
there is nothing left to share. To counteract this, mates must be sharing new
feelings, new convictions, and up to the minute perspectives on many aspects of
life.
Howard and Charlotte Clinebell in their
book, The Intimate Marriage say, "Intimacy is not so much a matter of what
or how much is shared as it is the degree of mutual need-satisfaction within
the relationship." Mates need to feed each others body, mind, and spirit.
The food that nourishes all three is the honest sharing of your own inner
being. Wives tend to need this more than husbands. Men like intimacy but women
love it and this is a major difference in the sexes. Women are more personal
and that is why they do not enjoy sports as much. They see it as hard to
develop a close relationship in the ring or on the football field. Men tend to
think of intimacy as sex, but wives tend to think of it as all the talking and
affection that prepares them to enjoy sex. The wise couple seeks to meet each
other's need for intimacy, and because this can mean two different things, each
has to try and think like the other, and not just focus on what intimacy is to
them. Switching roles can help make you more conscious of the other's
perspective, and it can add some spice to your love life.
It is possible to develop the paralysis
of analysis, and study problems until you are sick of the whole thing and give
up in total frustration. You might love the game of ping pong, but be driven
batty by a lecture on the aerodynamics of the balls and the components that go
into making the table. You may love watching television, but be bored out of
your mind by a technical study of how it works. The point is, you can get sick
and tired of studying all the authorities telling you how to make your marriage
better.
Their lists of things to do for this
problem and that one can get to be overwhelming, and you get frustrated and
give up, for it seems so hopeless. The poem of Walt Whitman about listening to
the astronomers is appropriate here. He says he listened to all their proofs
and figures, and looked at all their charts and diagrams until he became sick
and tired of them. He got up and wandered out into the night-air and looked up
in silence at the stars. The bottom line is, there are positive and beautiful
experiences in life that we need to just go to directly and enjoy. We do not
need to understand all the technical facts about the experience or why, when,
where, or how. We just need the experience. So in marriage, you do not need to
know everything about love to experience it. Sometimes you just need to go
ahead and enjoy the experience of love with each other and not try to figure
out how to capture it in an intellectual formula. We need to just use common
sense and do what is obvious. The poet said,
Amid the cares of married life,
In spite of toil and business
strife,
If you value your sweet wife,
Tell her so!
Prove to her you don't forget
The bond to which your seal is
set;
She's of life's sweet the sweetest
yet--
Tell her so!
Don't act as if she'd passed her
prime,
As though to please her was a
crime--
If e'er you loved her, now's the
time:
Tell her so!
Never let her heart grow cold--
Richer beauties will unfold;
She is worth her weight in gold:
Tell her so!
--Author unknown
In our culture the focus is on success as
the source of happiness, but in ancient Israel the focus was on relationship
for happiness. In Deut. 24:5 we read, "If a man has recently 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 the wife he has
married." He was to have one solid year free of all responsibility but
that of making his wife happy. This pattern once established would be a part of
their lives forever. The point is, God's will is that the focus of marriage be,
not the nation, not the community, not the economy, but each other. Get that
right and then incorporate the other aspects of life. We go the other way, and
try and get all else right, and then focus on the relationship. It is because
we tend to put everything ahead of romance and intimacy that we have such a
high divorce rate.
Both mates contribute to the loss of
romance and intimacy. But the husband, as leader of the house, bears the
responsibility to restore the romantic relationship. He is to begin to treat
his wife with the attention she needs to get motivated to please him. He is to
love his wife as Christ loved the church and gave Himself for her. Jesus was
the initiator, not the church. We love Him because He first loved us. Husbands
leading the way is the biggest need in our culture.
J.A. Fritz goes so far as to say,
"You can search the Bible from Genesis to Revelation and you will find no
statement where God has commanded or demanded that a woman love her husband
with an agape love. It's always turned around-"Husbands, love your
wives." A woman is like a pump that must be primed. If the water of love
is put into her she will automatically respond with love, she does not have to
be commanded to do so. This is innate in the feminine structure."
In general, romance is more important to
women than men. Studies show that the absence of romance is high on the list as
a source of depression in women. Men rate it near last place. Why should this
be? Men derive self-esteem from being respected in their place of work. Their
success in the world makes them feel good about themselves. Women, however,
feel worthy when they are loved. The female has a far deeper need for feeling
loved, and needs the reassurance of romance. Her self-esteem depends upon it
more than does a mans. He finds it hard to grasp why it is such a big deal to
her.
One man said, "I just don't
understand my wife. She has everything she could possibly want. She has a dish
washer and a new dryer, and we live in a nice neighborhood. I don't drink or
beat the kids or kick the dog. I've been faithful since the day we've been
married. But she's miserable and I can't figure out why!" When the
counselor heard this he wrote, "His love-starved wife would have traded
the dishwasher, the dryer and the dog for a single expression of genuine
tenderness from her unromantic husband. Appliances do not build self-esteem;
being somebody's sweetheart most certainly does." Millions of wives way
amen to that. Husbands, listen and learn.
Finally, studies show that being at ease
and not up tight is the key to romance. When people are filled with anxiety it
kills the spirit of love. The experts say relax and enjoy, for if you don't
relax, and instead are full of doubts and fears, you will guarantee yourself a
negative experience. We are not just talking about sex here, but about a total
relationship. The mate that feels confident and good about themselves will make
their partner feel the same, and this is romantic. The key to intimacy is to
just be a caring person toward your mate. It is not some elaborate scheme to
win their affection. This can be fun on occasion, but true intimacy is found in
the everyday caring about the other, and doing the little things that help them
feel better about themselves and their life. It is giving the little pleasures
that are another piece of the twine that makes the rope that holds them
together bigger and stronger. Intimacy is God's goal in all relationships, and
this needs to be something we specialize in as we relate to our mate daily.
INTIMACY THOUGHTS AND QUOTES
Bruce Larson says sex is not the means to
union, but a way of expressing it. Those who expect to find oneness in sex will
be disappointed. Sex is an expression of a oneness already felt. Love, then, is
the key to sex and not vice versa.
Way back in 1970 Alvin Toffler in his
book Future Shock said we are forming a moduler society where people are like
components we plug in or take out to meet our needs. We do not get personally
involved in many peoples lives that serve us. I do not care who waits on me at
the grocery store. If they replace these people I may not ever notice. I have
almost no degree of intimacy with these people even though they meet a need I
have. They are interchangeable and disposable like parts of a machine. This
happens even in marriage where mates just use each other to meet needs but do
not develop intimacy. We fear intimacy for if we open up that can be
information that can be used to hurt us.
Mariyn Monroe playing Roslyn in the
Misfits says of her cold husband she is going to divorce, "He wasn't
there. I mean, you could touch him but he wasn't there." Closeness in
itself does not produce intimacy. A pile of football players is close but there
is no intimacy. There is a craving for intimacy, but there is also a cost, and
because of that cost there is a great deal of escape from intimacy. Promiscuous
sex is an escape from intimacy, but appears to be an addition to intimacy. But
what people are trying to do is to get intimacy without paying the price. They
want a quick fix and sex seems like the way to get it. But it is an unwillingness
to pay the cost of developing a close relationship with another person. Sex
without love is bargain basement intimacy. Simon and Garfunkel sang to the
youth of the 60's, "If I never loved, I never would have cried... I touch
no one and no one touches me..I am a rock, I am an island...And a rock feels no
pain, and an island never cries." The message is don't fall in love and
get involved with people in depth, for it is costly and it can hurt. The way to
be free is to escape intimacy.
Webster has these definitions:
1. Marked by very close association,
contact or familiarity.
2. Marked by a warm friendship developing
through long association.
3. Of a very personal or private nature.
Intimacy is very subjective and for some
it means sharing your ideas of what kind of car you like, and for others it is
sharing how you feel about nudity in the kitchen. If you need to talk about the
price of corn in Kansas, then one who has that same interest will provide you
with intimacy. Intimacy happens to us when we feel a sense of affirmation in a
relationship. When others share their weaknesses with us we feel a sense of
intimacy, but when they hide behind a shield of superiority intimacy is
impossible.
Daniel Wilknis said, "The anxiety of
nonbelonging is perhaps the deepest of all known anxieties." Anyone who
makes us feel we belong produces intimacy.
Intimacy is when people love each other
in spite of all their defects and imperfections. Infatuation is when you only
love the ideal. In courtship we present a highly edited version of ourselves.
We cover the blemishes and hide the defects, but all is revealed in marriage,
and this is when real intimacy begins.
Lowell & Carol Erdahl in Be Good To
Each Other wrote, "A wife once told of her problem in marriage. She first bragged
about her husband. He was an excellent provider and was faithful and kind. He
was good with the children and she had no doubt of his love. "There is
just one little thing, "she said, "he doesn't talk to me."
Subsequent conversation is revealed that wasn't literally true. He did talk
about some things. He said, "Please pass the potatoes,"and "What
movie would you like to see tonight?" He talked about painting the house
and going to the ball game but he did not share what was in his deepest heart.
He didn't confide his personal thoughts or feelings. As the months and years
passed, she began to feel as if she were living with a stranger.
Yet whatever our patterns of past
isolation may be, something in us yearns for a relationship in which we can be
open and honest with each other. While inhibitions keep us from sharing freely,
yearnings for intimacy invite us t risk saying something that will help break
the defensive wall that keeps us a lonely stranger separated from the one we
love.
There are ways in which these defenses
can be broken. The woman who complained that "he doesn't talk to me"
told her husband of her anguish and was surprised that he was open to visiting
with a third person, in whose presence they were able to make a new beginning
in their relationship. She learned that there were some ways in which she
contributed to her husband's silence and others by which she made it easier for
him to be more open. We sometimes encourage and enable the very behavior and
attitudes in each other which we most dislike. We may, for example, complain of
the slient partner and yet so ridicule his or her feeble attempts at sharing
that he or she is put down into retreating to a safer solitude. Or, while
complaining of too much nagging and bickering, we do all sorts of things that
continue to provoke it.
Dr. C. Edward Crowtuer wrote, "The
more intimate I get with you, the more vulnerable I become. The more you get to
know me, the more I am likely to lose you because to know me is not to love me.
If you know me less well, you might love
me more.
If you know me too intimately, you will
realize how inadequate I am, how fearful I am, how lonely I am, how worthless I
am, how unlovable I am, how lonely I am, and what a loser I feel that I really am.
I am not worthy to be loved by anybody, especially someone as marvelous as you.
CONCLUSION
If you expect to have a happy marriage
then you begin by accepting the plan of God for marriage. You accept his will
that the two become one. You accept that oneness is a goal that you strive for
constantly, and do all that you can to avoid a division in your relationship.
You work at maintaining an intimacy that keeps you close to one another at all
times. Acceptance of this plan of God is the foundation of your life together.
Conflict is a part of life and a part of
marriage, and if we have a low sense of self love and self esteem we will be
devastated by conflict. We need to be strong in our positive self image to
avoid being crushed by those who love us, for they can often say things that
hurt. But they need not be as painful if we have a healthy self acceptance. We
see it demonstrated in the book of Job with a heated conflict he is having with
his friends. They are aggravating and provoking him, and he is coming back with
answers that reveal, that as miserable as he is, he has not lost his sense of
self-esteem. He hates what has happened to him, and he loathes his sickness,
and his sores, yet he has such a high view of himself that he refuses to submit
to the pressure of his friends.
You might say this is a sign of his pride
and stubbornness to keep up this role of self-assertion. This could be a sign
that Job was a sinful man after all, but not so! The fact is, it is his high sense
of self-esteem, and his determined self-assertion that made him the man God had
such confidence in. A man with weak self-esteem would never have been allowed
by God to go through such a test. One of the values of this book is that it
makes us aware of the importance of self-esteem. None can live as God intended
without self-esteem.
Job is dogmatic in his self-defense. He
will never, as long as he lives, and has a breathe, deny his integrity. There
is no compromise here. Job knows he is not a wicked sinner being punished. It
is injustice, and he will never give in to this injustice, and bow before it.
You can call Job one of the most stubborn men who ever lived, or you can call
him one who knew the great value of self-esteem. What we see here in chapter 27
runs all through the book.
10:7 Job says to God you know I am not
guilty.
12:3 Job says to his friends I am not
inferior to you.
12:4 Job says I am righteous and
blameless.
13:18 Job says I know I will be
vindicated.
16:27 Job says my prayer is pure.
Many would look at all of these
self-evaluations, and conclude with Job's friends, he is proud, conceited, and
just to stubborn and self-centered to admit when he is wrong. Job's attitude
toward himself forces us to wrestle with one of life's major issues, the issue
of self-esteem. This is a complex issue because the whole world is in on it.
The public is exposed to many books on self-assertion and self-esteem. The cult
of self worship is one of the largest, and is a natural fruit of the growth of
humanism in our culture.
This can lead to the Christian becoming
confused, for it often seems like the world is saying the same thing as the
church, and yet there are radical differences. The church has been telling
youth for decades to develop self-esteem. They are taught slogans in Youth For
Christ and Young Life that say they are made by God as one of a kind, and of
infinite value, and God never makes junk. Dr. James Dobson is telling Christian
parents that developing a high sense of self-esteem is the key to their healthy
future, and Christian maturity. But along with this stream of influence there
is another stream of tradition that is quite pessimistic about the self.
Christians through the ages have felt
that it is a logical step from the Biblical commands to deny yourself, take no
thought for yourself, and die to self, to conclude that we should be hating
ourselves. This leads to all kinds of neurotic Christians who encourage others
to wipe their feet on them, because they act like a dirty rug. That is an appropriate
level for one who feels unworthy to rise above the worm. There favorite song
is, "Would he devote that sacred head for such a worm as I." There
favorite text are the words of John the Baptist, "I am not worthy to stoop
and untie His sandals." Or Paul's words, "I am the least of the
apostles, not worthy to be called an apostle. And, "I am the chief of
sinners." Like a magnet they attract all of the negatives of Scripture
that make them have a low level of self-esteem.
They never seem to notice the balance of
Scripture, and listen to Jesus when he said that John was the greatest born of
woman under the Old Testament system. They do not quote Paul's other words when
he says he is not inferior to any of the apostles, and I can do all things
through Christ who strengthens me. They do not revel in Paul's self-assertion,
when he stood up to his powerful foes and said you can't do this to a Roman
citizen. I demand my rights. And Paul got them because he had a high sense of
self-esteem, and was worthy of all the rights of a citizen of Rome.
The Christian who thrives on low
self-esteem tends to look at Jesus only as the Lamb who opened not His mouth,
as he was led to the slaughter. They do not like to focus on His defiance of
the injustice of the Jewish authorities, and of his self-assertion that led him
to break their laws to meet human need. It is obvious there is a need for
balance in this whole area of self-esteem. We are dealing with a paradox, and
must see that self-esteem is both good and bad, for it can be a vice as well as
a virtue. The difference is in how you see the self which you esteem.
If, like the humanist, you worship the
creature rather than the Creator, and make the self the highest end, then
self-esteem becomes a curse. It makes people think they can run roughshod over
everybody else, for all that matters is that they get their own way. Paul warns
about the danger of thinking more highly of yourself than you ought. But with
self in the proper place as a child and servant of God, self-esteem becomes one
of the greatest values of life. As a sinner you know you are unworthy of God's
grace, but you are so grateful for His love and forgiveness, that you are proud
to be a part of His family. Your sin and weakness keeps you humble, but God's
grace and love keeps you proud, and so there is balance. Your self-esteem is
not an exaltation of your fallen nature, but of your redeemed nature, and,
therefore, it is a part of your praise to God.
When you love God with your whole being,
you are not loving God with junk, but with the finest redeemed jewels that
exist. When you present your body a living sacrifice to God, you are not
offering Him trash, but one of the finest treasures you possess. When you
understand that the self in Christian self-esteem is the Christ-centered,
Christ loving, Christ obeying self, then you avoid all of the nonsense of the
two extremes of humanistic pride and Christian asceticism. In other words, it
is just as sinful and foolish to try and put down the redeemed self as it is to
exalt the unredeemed self. Christians who glory in inferiority pervert the
Christian faith.
It is true that riches do not save, but
neither does poverty. It is true that fame does not save, but neither does
obscurity. We are not saved by health, but neither are we saved by sickness.
Power does not save, nor does weakness. Beauty will not get you into heaven,
but neither will homeliness. The point is, it is folly to think that the
opposite of what does not please God, must please God. Sophistication will not
sanctify you before God, but does it follow that being unkempt will? Just
because your knowledge will not impress God, does not mean that your ignorance
will impress Him. Christians who are deceived by shallow thinking try to fight
the sin of pride by loathing the self, and thereby please God. But nobody but
the devil and his demons are pleased with a rejection of one of God's greatest
creations, made in His own image. Therefore, we all need to learn from Job how
to have a sense of self-esteem when everybody who should love you, does not.
Let's look at how Job's friends were
constantly attacking his self-esteem.
1. They called him names. Two of them
called him an old windbag.
2. They constantly imply he is a rotten
sinner.
3. They throw the blame for all his
suffering right in his face.
4. Zopher goes so far as to say in 11:6
that Job deserves worse than what he is getting.
5. The imply that he is a stupid idiot
who has learned nothing from history, and is quite inferior to them, because
they have, and are thus wiser.
Most men would be pushed so low by these
attacks they would have to reach up to touch bottom. Not Job! He knew the
principle that none can make you inferior without your consent, and he never
gave it. It was still a sin for his friends to try and rob him of his
self-esteem, but he would not allow them to succeed. One of the great sins of
man is his inability to love his neighbor as himself. It is the second greatest
command of God, and the second hardest thing for man to do. The fall made men want
to put others down that they might be raised up. This was the sin of Satan. He
wanted to put God down that he might be exalted. All sin is a desire to exalt
the self at the expense of others. It is the exact opposite of the attitude of
John the Baptist who said, "He must increase, but I must decrease."
Selfishness is based on a feeling of low
self-worth. People feel they are not worthy of love and respect just for who
they are. They feel they have to get worth by making someone else less than
they are. The selfish person is not that way because they have too high a view
of themselves, but almost always it is because they have too low a view of
their self-worth. True self-love and self-esteem say, "I have value in
myself, and do not need to be compared to someone else for self-worth." A
person who loves themselves will not need to put others down, but will respect
others, even if they are different, for he will recognize their worth, even as
they recognize their own worth.
A song goes like this: "I'm proud to
be me, but I also see, you're just as proud to be you." The person with
self-esteem can enjoy the worth of others, for he is not fighting them for the
sake of gaining his own self-worth. The self-centered person is competing with
others for worth. He is not happy with himself because it is a bore to be
always fighting for recognition and worth. It gets tiresome to be always
thinking of yourself. The poet put it-
Oh, let me think of bug or beef;
Of Bismark or the Caspian Sea,
Of anything to get relief
From that confounded nuisance, me!
Oh, let me think of Joan of Arc;
Of Truffles, queens and kitchen maids,
Of George the Fifth and Central Park,
Of cheese and Labor Day parades.
Grant me O Lord, no neater rhyme.
For use nor usufruct of pelf,
But just a thought from time to time
Of something other than myself!
The person with self-esteem does not need
to always be thinking of himself, for he know he is of worth whether anyone is
thinking of him or not. It is only those who have low self-esteem who must be
ever in the limelight, and who need constant reassurance of their worth. The
friends of Job are always bragging about their wisdom, knowledge, and
righteousness, as they put Job down. They sound like they have it all together,
and have a high view of themselves, but it is not so. It is low self-esteem
that puts others down. It is low self-esteem that cannot bear to be wrong.
These friends of Job are just like the Christians who cannot face the
humiliation of being wrong, and so rather than admit error, they leave a church
and go elsewhere, or they leave a marriage and go elsewhere.
It is the person with a high and healthy
self-esteem who does not fear that his mistake will crush him. He knows he is
fallible, and he knows he can be forgiven, so he says I over- reacted, or I
misjudged, or I sinned, please forgive me. He is forgiven, and gets back on the
right track. Those with low self-esteem are always on the defensive, protecting
their ego, and they find pleasure in attacking the life and ideas of other
people, just like Job's friends.
If you tend to specialize in being down
on yourself, you lack self-esteem, and you are your own worse enemy. A girl was
asked, "Why don't you ever get into the discussion?" She said,
"I think its better if I am the only one who knows how dumb I am."
This reveals a severe case of low self-esteem. Self-esteem is based on the
awareness that life is a partnership. God made us, but we play a major role in
what we become. God made Eden, but He put a man there to keep it up. Adam
helped to keep Eden the beautiful garden that it was. God gives man a major
role to play in producing fruit in His own garden. Without God I could do
nothing. I cannot make a seed, and I cannot make a seed grow to produce plants.
Only God can do that. But when God does His part, I can be a partner and do
things that make a difference. I can weed and cultivate. I can fertilize and
water, and the result is I can feel proud of the end product, because I help
God produce delicious fruit.
That is what self-esteem is all about. It
is an awareness that I can do nothing without Christ, but with Him I can do
much that will be a blessing to myself and others. A little girl was asked,
"Who made you?" "God made part of me," she responded.
"Part of you- what do you mean?" She said, "He made me real
little and I just growed the rest myself." God, of course, is also in on
the growing process, but He allows us a major role, just as He does in our
garden. We have, not only a right, but an obligation to be proud of what we
have done together-God and I.
The Weaver in England prayed a proper
prayer when he prayed, "O God, help me always to keep a good opinion of
myself." Job did not always have a good opinion of his friends, and for
good reason. He did not always have a good opinion of God either, and this was
because of his ignorance of what was going on. His negative views of God were
partially justifiable, but the thing we see all through the book is this: Job
never lost his good opinion of himself. He knew he was a sinner, but he knew
also that he loved God and man, and did all he could to show that love. He did
not deserve to suffer as he did. His high self-esteem kept him afloat in the
flood he endured.
This study of the self esteem of Job is
of value for all relationships, and especially marriage. Self-acceptance
becomes the basis for acceptance of others. If you reject your own worth you
will reject those who threaten what little you have. First accept your own
limitations. You are not all you could be. If someone says you are not 6ft.
5in. you are not offended for you can accept the fact you are not that tall.
But there are hundreds of other things you are not and you need to be equally
accepting of their reality.
Some wise author wrote, "Surrender to
reality, and the surest way to drown if you are in trouble is to thrash about
desperately trying not to drown. You maximize your chances of survival by not
fighting but by relaxing and surrendering to the water, letting it float you on
the top. You surrender to let a weak form of a disease be injected into you,
and by this vaccination you defeat the disease. Wining is not always gained by
fighting, but often by surrender. You surrender to the reality that it is okay
to be you with all your defects. This surrender will protect you from the
hero-zero split. If I am not the best, the greatest, the number one, then I am
nothing-a total failure. Self love means the ability to accept yourself as
imperfect yet valuable."
"We do have help from psychologist
Albert Ellis and his colleagues "rational-emotive therapists" who
teach us so clearly and simply that if someone else calls us inadequate, our
hurt and anger are based on our own confirming thought; within ourselves, we
are saying, "Yes, I am inadequate." One must learn how to say inside,
"I don't need to think of myself as inadequate or unlovable just because
the other regards me so." This seemingly simple tour de force is
enormously important!"
In other words, if your self-esteem is so
low that you let the criticism of others, and their put downs of you, lead you
to lose your joy in who you are, you are at the mercy of everyone’s negative
spirit. This is especially so of your mate. Mates have a tendency to let their
negative feelings be expressed in the home and with their partner because they
cannot express them toward their boss or others who are the cause of the
negative feelings. If you do not recognize this and you take everything
personal that comes out negative, you will suffer a lot of unnecessary pain, and
even get depressed when there is no valid reason for it. A low self-esteem will
lead you to feel unloved when there is no intention of your mate to convey such
a thing at all. Your self-love must be strong enough to realize that you are
worthy of your mates love even when criticism may be valid.
A strong self-love will be able to
recognize that a negative mood and negative words from a mate are often the
releasing of negative emotions that are generated by their frustrations with
others and situations. Self-love will enable you to let them release those
emotions without reacting back with your own negative emotions. You perform a
service for your mate in letting them ventilate and get restored to peace. Your
acceptance of them and loving concern, even though they may be acting very
unloving, will enable them to regain balance in their emotions. This will lead
them to appreciate you and love you all the more, and you will avoid the fight
that a negative response would lead to. You need a strong self-love to take a
negative mood from your mate and not react negatively by taking it personal.
Many feel that self-love is not a virtue but a sort of pride that is to be
rejected. This is not so, for the second great commandment is to love your
neighbor as yourself, and you cannot love your neighbor if you do not love
yourself.
Laura Huxley in You Are Not The Target
writes much about the need to be aware that many a negative bullet coming out
of your mate is for the sake of release of frustration, and is not necessarily
aimed at you. If you can realize this you have the opportunity to be an aid in
their regaining balance by not responding with bullets of your own, which at
that point will make them the target. She writes,"At one time or another
the more fortunate among us make three startling discoveries. Discovery number
one: Each one of us has, in varying degree, the power to make others to feel
better or worse. Discovery number two: Making others feel better is much more
fun than making them feel worse. Discovery number three: Making others feel
better generally makes us feel better." You can do this by not taking
things personal that are really expressions of frustrations at others or
circumstances. It takes a strong sense of your own self worth to do this.
This means there really is no conflict
between self-love and other love, for loving others is a form of self-love in
that we love ourselves better and feel better about ourselves when we love
others and make them feel better about themselves. Yet, the world is filled
with love starved people, and she writes, "Disguised in a thousand forms,
hidden under an infinite variety of masks, love starvation is even more rampant
than food starvation. It invades all classes of peoples. It occurs in all
climates, on every social and economic level. It seems to occur in all forms of
life. Love starvation wears the stony face of the disciplinarian or speaks in
the hysterical voice of the zealot. It puts on the unctuous manner of the
hypocrite or the ruthlessness of the ambitious power-seeker. Love starvation
may camouflage itself in physical and mental ills, in delinquency, sometimes in
death. In a family, love starvation begets love starvation in one generation
after another until a rebel in that family breaks the malevolent chain. If you
find yourself in such a family, BE THAT REBEL!"
The worldly perspective says you are not
of much value if you are not rich and successful, and on top of that, handsome
or beautiful. We all tend to believe this to some degree and so struggle with
self-esteem. Christians are no different, but they can be if they realize who
they are in Christ. They are in a class of people of the highest class, for
they are redeemed children of God, purchased with the highest price ever paid
to redeem anything or anyone. They are joint heirs with Christ of riches beyond
the wildest imagination, and they possess eternal life. To look down on
yourself as a child of God is to reject the truth that Jesus came into the
world to give you life abundant, making you a being whom the angels of heaven
envy. You have every reason to feel self worth, and you need to heed the words
of the poet who wrote,
(The only person on earth you need to be
accepted by is yourself.)
When you get what you want in the struggle for the self,
And the world makes you king and queen for the day,
Just go to a mirror and look at yourself,
And see what that person has to say!
For it isn't your father, mother, friend or host,
Whose judgement upon you must pass;
The person whose verdict counts the most,
Is the one staring from the glass.
Some may think you are a wonderful chum,
And call you as radiant as the sun;
But if the person in the mirror says you're dumb,
And you can't look him in the eye - you're done.
He is the one to please, never mind the rest,
For he will be with you until the end,
And you will have passed your most difficult test
If the person in the mirror becomes your friend.
You may fool the whole world along the years,
And get pats on your back as the ages you pass,
But your final reward will be sorrow and tears,If you've cheated the person in
the glass.
Author unknown
A good self image enables us to be more
than one character. Someone wrote, "The healthy, happy human being wears
many masks." We change how we see ourselves depending on the people we are
in relation to and our motives. This is not inconsistent or deceptive or two
faced, but is the reality of being multifaceted creatures. Walt Whitman wrote,
"Do I contradict myself? Very well then, I contradict myself. I am large.
I contain multitudes."
So if I am with intellectuals I will talk
and think like one as best I can. If I am with funny people I will be a
comedian. I will be many people for many occasions. If I do not change to fit
the situation I will be locked into a very limited self-image that will stifle
my relationships. Marriage can become boring because people limit their
self-image and lock themself into a static place with no change to be different
and express themselves in new and exciting ways.
Variety is the spice of life, and
marriage needs spice, and so it is important for mates to change their mask
often enough to keep interest going. Do not just stay in one image all the
time, for it gets boring. Accept the reality that you are capable of being more
than just a single image. You are made in the image of God, and are capable of
being at least a trinity of personalities. Hugh Prather spoke wisdom when he
said, "Some people are going to like me and some people aren't, so I might
as well be me. Then at least I will know that the people who like me, like
me." True, but do not limit your me to just what you like, for you also
have the capacity to be a you that a variety of people will like. Paul said he
became all things to all men that he might win the more. In other words he
became the kind of person who could adapt to the environment to appeal to those
he was in contact with at the moment. A wise mate will adapt and show a self
that is of interest to the partner even if it is not the primary self with
which they feel comfortable. Put on the mask and be what your mate needs at the
moment.
Acceptance does not mean that you like
everything about yourself or your mate. Few, if any, mates like everything
about themselves or each other. But it means that you accept the less than
ideal and focus your attention on those things that you do like and work at
making them dominant so that you have much to like and enjoy.
So many come into a marriage with the
idea that their mate will overcome their lack of self love, but this is a mistake.
It is the responsibility of each mate to develop their self love. They help
each other by their loving words of praise and encouragement, but even these
will not be enough if you have not developed a personal sense of self-esteem.
Someone has written this advice on
improving your self love. "I have made the analogy that, if you keep
giving to others without giving to yourself, it is like pouring water from a
vessel. If you pour and pour without ever refilling it, eventually, it will run
dry. So, if we are like that vessel, how do we refill, recharge, re-energize,
and replenish ourselves, so that we will have energy and love to give to others
and to the world? The answer is: by loving and giving to ourselves,
first."
There are many ways to do this, and one
of the key ways is to keep yourself in good health. You are always more loving
to others when you feel good. Sick people are not fun. So do all the things
necessary to stay well, for when you take care of your health you are a more loving
person. Everybody you know benefits by you feeling good. You are a better mate,
parent, and friend when you are in good health. Do not give all of your energy
to others and exhaust yourself all the time so you do not have the energy for
your own enjoyment. Even Jesus got away from the crowd to enjoy a quiet time
with his disciples, or a fun time at a wedding or banquet. All of life does not
need to be in self-sacrifice. Some of it needs to be in self-satisfaction. If
you do not get it, you will just become a pain to others in the end. It is
healthy and happy people who are a blessing to others, and so it is not selfish
to spend time doing just what you like and enjoy.
I like the way someone put it, "So, go ahead. Love yourself. Be good to
yourself. Treat yourself well. Replenish yourself. You will discover that, the
more you love yourself, the more you will be able to give love to others - and
the more others will want to be around you and give back to you. This is a
win-win situation. Loving yourself will ultimately benefit the lives of others
you encounter, as well as your own life."
Leslie Karen Lobell, M.A. has written an
article called Self-Love: Is It Selfish? She deals with an issues most people
struggle with as she writes:
"The song "Greatest Love of
All," written by Michael Masser and Linda Creed (performed by Whitney
Houston) contains the following lyrics: "I found the greatest love of
all/Inside of me/ ... Learning to love yourself/It is the greatest love of
all." There are many types of love that we have for the people in our
lives: love for a romantic partner or spouse, for our family, for our children,
for our friends, for humanity, in general, and for ourselves. Which of these is
most important? Which should be our first priority? Is self-love the
"Greatest Love of All"? Or is it selfish and self-indulgent?"
As Christians we could never say that
self-love is the greatest love of all, but she goes on to say pretty much the
same thing we have been saying, and it is valid for the believer to practice
loving themselves. If God loves us so much he was willing to give his son to
die for us, then we have an obligation to love ourselves. That makes loving God
the greatest love of all, but self-love is also vital. She writes, "In my
counseling practice, I encounter a lot of people who believe that to love
yourself, or to give to yourself, is a "bad" thing. They see this as
"selfish" or "self-centered." When people have a low sense
of self-love they become so many things God does not want people to become. Low
self-esteem leads to all sorts of abnormal behavior that is destructive. She
writes again, "Learning to love yourself may be the greatest love you ever
experience and achieve. Self-love is not "selfish" or bad. When you
love yourself, you will feel good about yourself, and you will feel better
about the world. This will make it easier for you to give love to others.
Especially if you are a parent or any type of caregiver, you must not forget to
take time out to care for yourself. When you take time to re-energize, you will
have more energy both for yourself and to share with the people you love and
those in your care. The person who feels self-love is generally happier and
much more pleasant to be around than the person who lacks self-love and self-esteem.
Embodying self-love is the greatest example we can set for our children, for
our loved ones, for our friends, and for all those we encounter in our
lives."
Larry James has written some interesting
advice on self-love. He writes-
ref.html"What are the
benefits of working on YOU? The reward for working on you is - you feel good
about who you are! You really love you! Not the self-centered love that
distracts you from being loving to others, but a genuine love of self; the kind
of love you can share with others.
Loving you for who you are causes you to
begin to feel like a whole person. At that time you may be ready for another
relationship. Unless you wait for this magic moment, you may always continue to
be disappointed with the relationships that show up in your life. Remember,
like attracts like. Opposites do not attract. That is a myth!
If you cannot handle the most important
relationship in your life - the one you have with yourself - then you will
never be able to truly relate to the ambience of the coming together of two
people. We spent so much of our time being concerned about the relationship we
are in with someone else, that we forget about ourselves. This could be called
"losing yourself in the relationship."
So. . . we must never stray from the path
of self-discovery! We must always know where we stand with ourselves. The only
way you can do this is to be attentive to, and intentional about having the
best relationship with yourself that is humanly possible. This means you must
always work on YOU first. When you are ready. . . a relationship with someone
else will be there; you will find each other."
QUOTES ON SELF
I read an article that said the way to
achieve inner peace is to finish things I had started. Today I finished two
bags of potato chips, a chocolate pie, bottle of wine and a small box of
chocolate candy. I feel better already.
The relationships we have with the world
are largely determined by the relationships we have with ourselves.... Greg
Anderson
The bad man is continually at war with,
and in opposition to, himself. -- Aristotle
Finding oneself was a misnomer; a self is
not found but made. --Jacques Barzun, _From Dawn to Decadence_
Self esteem is the reputation we acquire
with ourselves. -- Nathaniel Branden
An individual's self-concept is the core
of his personality. It affects every aspect of human behavior: the ability to
learn, the capacity to grow and change . . . . A strong, positive self-image is
the best possible preparation for success in life. - Joyce Brothers(1928-____)
Most people with low self-esteem have
earned it. -George Carlin
There are three things extremely hard:
steel, a diamond, and to know one's self
Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790)
Be yourself, who else is better
qualified? -- Frank J. Giblin
You've no idea what a poor opinion I have
of myself -- and how little I deserve it.-- William Gilbert (1836-1911)
For a man to achieve all that is demanded
of him he must regard himself as greater than he is. - Johann Wolfgang von
Goethe (1749-1832)
Self-respect is the fruit of discipline;
the sense of dignity grows with the ability to say no to oneself.- Abraham J.
Heschel
The capacity for getting along with our
neighbor depends to a large extent on the capacity for getting along with
ourselves. The self-respecting individual will try to be as tolerant of his
neighbor's shortcomings as he is of his own. -- Eric Hoffer
That kind of life is most happy which affords
us most opportunities of gaining our own self-esteem... Samuel Johnson
The only conquests that are permanent and
leave no regrets are our conquests over ourselves.--- Napoleon
It may be called the Master Passion, the
hunger for self-approval.-- Mark Twain
When people do not respect us we are
sharply offended; yet in his private heart no man much respects himself. --
Mark Twain
There is much truth in this last quote,
and it is because we all know how far short we fall from the ideal. But,
nevertheless, we are accepted by God in Christ as children of God, and we must
accept ourselves as of great worth to be the best we can be as believers and as
mates.
Acceptance is the key to a mature
marriage. As soon as a couple ceases to try to change their mate, and accept
them as they are, they begin to enjoy their marriage. Someone wrote,
If I quit hoping he'll show up with
flowers, and
He quits hoping I'll squeeze him an
orange, and
I quit shaving my legs with his razor,
and
He quits wiping his feet with my face
towel, and
We avoid discussions like,
Is he really smarter than I am, or simply
more glib,
Maybe we'll make it......
If I quit looking to prove that he's hostile,
and
He quits looking for dust on the tables,
and
I quit inviting Louise with the giggle,
and
He quits inviting Jerome with the
complex, and
We avoid discussions like,
Suppose I died, which one of our friends
would he marry,
Maybe we'll make it......
If I quit clearing the plates while he's
eating, and
He quits clearing his throat while I'm
speaking, and
I quit implying I could have done better,
and
He quits implying he wishes I had, and
We avoid discussions like,
Does his mother really love him, or is
she simply one of
those over-possessive, devouring women
who can't let go,
Maybe we'll make it.
Emerson wrote, "Never try to make
another individual into a copy of yourself, for God knows, and you should too,
that one person like you is all the world can stand." The inability of
mates to accept each other for what they are is a primary cause for why people
who love each other to stop doing so. They fell in love with a certain person,
and were fascinated by their differences. But as they live together they want
them to stop being so different and begin to conform to what they expect them
to be. In other words, we all like to play dolls with real people, especially
our mates, and we like to dress them the way we want. We want them to be
somebody else than the one we married. That which made them unique and
interesting to us is no longer cute, and so we want to make alterations. We
want to shape and mold them into someone better, for we can now see how flawed
they are.
It is not that this is not a noble goal,
for all of us can use some getting better. It is just that we do not want our
mate to be the one making the alterations. We see their flaws also, and we are
not convinced their image of what we ought to be is better than what we are
now. We also feel that if we were as good as they wanted us to be, we would
probably not have anything to do with them. And so what mates really need is to
be loved for who they are, as they are. That is why you married them, for you
loved them as they are. When you seem to no longer love them as they are, but
want to change them, it seems like the opposite of love, and is a form of
rejection.
Nobody likes rejection, and especially
from a mate, and so the striving to change a partner is seen as negative and
not loving at all. So how do you ever get any improvement if you never strive
for change? The answer is acceptance. Acceptance provides an atmosphere for
change. We see it in God’s relationship to man. In grace God offers man eternal
life when they put their trust in Jesus as their Savior. God accepts the worst
of sinners who will come to Him. He takes them into His family, and they are to
be welcomed into the church. This loving acceptance makes them feel secure and
a part of the family. As they live in that environment they see they are
immature and far from what a believer ought to be, and so they begin to grow.
They seek to cut out of their lives those things that are clearly not God’s
will. They seek to add to their lives that which makes them more like Christ.
Much change takes place, and great improvement, but it all begins with
acceptance as they are.
This is the process that has happened to
millions, and is going on all over the world today. How many do you think would
come into the kingdom of God if the plan was to nag the sinner to change and be
different? What if every church had a sign out front with all that was expected
before you could enter and be accepted? What if it had, not only the ten
commandments, but you must stop cussing; stop all bad habits; start reading
your Bible, start speaking kindly to those who hate you; start giving regular
to the church, and on and on it could go listing all the things that need to
change to be a mature Christian? You know there would be few to none who would
enter such a church. This is rejection. The Gospel is acceptance, and it says
whosoever will may come.
Now apply this same principle to
marriage. The mate who accepts the one they married as they are is being loving
with the same kind of love God has. It is agape love, and it loves people where
they are, and does not demand anything else to be accepted. When mates do this
for one another it provides an atmosphere where change is desired, for you want
to grow more worthy of such love. That is how the sinner feels. He wants to
change and be more pleasing to God, just because of being accepted when he was
so unworthy. A mate who is accepted for who they are will want to become more
pleasing to the one who has so accepted them, that is, if they keep doing so,
and do not revert to the method of seeking change by shame and rejection. As
soon as rejection enters the relationship you become enemies, and no longer
partners seeking to please each other.
Someone said, "God loves us and
accepts us just as we are, but he loves us too much to leave us that way."
Here is the paradox of acceptance with a desire to change. That is the paradox
every marriage must struggle with also. Without acceptance their can be no
happiness, but without change their can be no growth. So acceptance does not
mean no desire for change. It just means that growth must come by freedom of
choice, and not by pressure and coercion. God does not force us to change, but
leaves us free to do so, and encourages us to do so. Mates need to let each
other be free to change, but not be forever harping on it. It is human nature
to resist change that is imposed on us, and that is why mates seldom succeed in
changing each other. Change has to come as a free will choice.
The most common way to deal with
differences is to try and change your mate so they are like you. The list of
people who have succeeded with this approach can be filed under your finger
nail without pain. It just doesn't work. It does lead to changes, however, but
they are for the worse. Anne Kristin Carroll in Together Forever, says that in
her counseling eighty percent of the affairs that destroy marriages happen
because of a non-accepting spirit. The most common response of men who have
affairs is this: "Anne, it wasn't so much that I didn't love my wife, but
there was never any peace at home. She was always pushing, always trying to
change me, put me into a mold. I didn't intend to get involved in an affair, it
just happened. You see, the woman I'm involved with makes no demands, she takes
me like I am, and although I know it's wrong, I feel free for the first time in
years, I feel accepted...." Most wives say the same in an affair.
So the bottom line is that acceptance is
crucial for any long lasting relationship. The reason that the same people who
get a divorce after a few years can have friends for decades, is because they
have learned to accept their friends, even though there may be all kinds of
things about them and their behavior that they do not like. But they could not accept
their mate’s unlikable behavior. The price for non-acceptance is non-acceptance
in return. You reject me, and I will reject you. Couples who do this are
playing the game called who is winning this marriage. The problem with this
game is that nobody wins, but both lose the game and they lose each other.
Michael Emmons said in Accepting Each
Other, "In their pursuit of fast change, many partners resort to force. In
an attempt to get the other person to "shape up," they employ
condemnation and even physical force. But the fact is that individuals who use
coercive actions to try to get their partners to change are fighting a losing
battle. The result is invariably that the other partner rebels, directly or
indirectly, in effect responding in just the opposite way to what the first
partner had hoped. Harshness will inadvertently create a result you are not
seeking. Aggression beget aggression--or withdrawal."
The Gospel in business and real estate is
location, location, location. The Gospel in marriage is acceptance, acceptance,
acceptance. Marabel Morgan wrote, "The second, you suspect your husband
won't ever break out of his rut, face that fact and accept it." Newspaper
columnist Sydney J. Harris said, "The most difficult and most essential
task in marriage is learning which defects must be ignored and accepted in the
other partner. Most unhappy marriages are created by trying to change what
cannot be changed."
Since it is true that all have sinned and
fall short of the glory of God, it is inevitable that two people who marry will
discover the defects in one another. In fact, they will be aware of defects
that nobody else in the world will know about. This led one wit to define
marriage as, "That device of society designed to make trouble between two people
who would otherwise get along very well." The trouble comes with the
desire to change those defects into perfection. Screaming and arguing have been
popular methods to achieve this noble goal, but the success rate is less than
impressive. The list of people who successfully scold their mate into
perfection is about as long as the list of practical uses of a man’s nipples.
If you accept your mate, you do not
expect them to always conform to your way of thinking. You accept their
differences and give them the freedom to express those differences. If two
people only agree because one feels bound to do so, that is a form of bondage,
and will lead to resentment. Love is to liberate and not imprison another
person. Do not be like the wife who said, "I want him to have his
opinions-I just don't want to hear them." This is rejection and not
acceptance. The golden rule of marriage is "Do unto one another as you
would a month before you married." That is when you were so accepting of
each other.
Acceptance, says Andre Bustanoby, does
not mean you never question the other persons behavior, opinions, or ideas.
Acceptance means you do not question the other person's worth as a person and
as a partner. Bustanoby was a dogmatic person who judged people all the time as
being wrong because they were not like him. He could not accept people until he
came across I Pet. 2:17 where it says we are to honor all men. The Greek word
is timao, which means "To recognize the worth of." He learned that
Christians are not expected to approve or like everything about everybody, but
they are expected to recognize the worth of everybody, and honor them for that
worth. All are made in the image of God and are potential children of God, made
worthy of receiving eternal life as a free gift because of the sacrifice of
Christ upon the cross.
When Jesus ate with Publicans and
sinners, the Pharisees blasted him for accepting such people. They refused to
do so, and felt superior to Jesus. Jesus did not accept their sin, but he
accepted them as people of worth, and many were saved because of His
acceptance. Acceptance is just another word for love, and it has the power to
change people. People tend to change in response to those that give them
feelings of self-worth.
Becoming a mate is a great deal like becoming
a missionary. You head for a new land with people far different from you, but
you are excited for you want to teach them and help them experience the full
blessing of knowing God through the Savior Jesus Christ. But after you live
with them for awhile you find they are in many ways depraved. They do not see
evil as you do. They have customs and habits that are repulsive. Now you are at
a cross-roads. You either come to a point where you cannot stand how different
they are and head back home to familiar territory, and many do this, or you
accept these people with all that you do not like about them, because you love
them as they are. Your acceptance of them will be the only way you will ever be
able to influence them to be more than they are. Do you see the parallel of
marriage and missions? Without acceptance you lose before you even begin.
Marriages go through the same stages. We
have to come to the point where we realize we are not perfect and we need to
accept each other with all of our defects. If you expect your marriage to be
perfect you have taken the first step toward despair and divorce. People only
feel free to change in an atmosphere where they are accepted as they are. One
has to feel security to change and be different. Under threat and rejection we
tend to harden in our present state. Acceptance leads us to desire to climb to
a higher level.
Someone said, "At best a
relationship should feel like home. It should be a place where you feel let in
without fanfare or having to be something you are not. A relationship should
always be your place. It is where you are accepted when you are not your best,
when you have anxious days, when you feel you sound crazy, when you fail as
well as when you succeed. Being accepted doesn't mean that your shortcomings
are condoned. It means, rather, that you are not being rejected because parts
of you are un-acceptable. And just as you want to be accepted, so you must
accept your partner. Acceptance is not a compromise. What you accept, you must
accept completely. You cannot permit what you do not accept to diminish your
love. It is this gift of acceptance that allows us to love each other perfectly
in spite of our imperfections."
This is basic to any happy relationship.
If you do not accept a person for who they are, but only for what you hope they
will be, you do not really love them, but you love your image of what they
could be. They are not now acceptable to you, and so they are not loved for who
they are, but only for their potential, which you hope to make actual. You love
what you think you can make of them, and so you are really just in love with
your own sense of creativity. Acceptance means you love a person for who and
what they are in the present. Do not let this be your idea of marriage,
"Marriage gives a husband a chance to find out what kind of a man his wife
would have preferred." Instead, let your attitude be that of the one who
said,
Some pray to marry the man they love,
My prayer will somewhat vary;
I humbly pray to heaven above
That I love the man I marry. Rose Stokes
The most loving attitude you can have
toward a mate is that of acceptance. This is loving your mate as Christ loves
His bride. He does not like her defects and conduct that is not fitting for her
as His bride, but He accepts her, and will never leave nor forsake her. His
goal is to make her the happiest bride possible for time and eternity. When two
people have this as their goal, they will have a marriage that will be secure,
and, though not always smooth, will be always moving forward to better things
ahead.
Acceptance of your limitations is a key
to mental health. People crack up because they can not live up to unrealistic
expectations. Marriages break up for the same reason. People expect the ideal,
and in a fallen world this is putting too much pressure on marriage. Every
marriage counselor who has written a book will tell you it is unrealistic to
expect to avoid conflict and problems. It is wiser to expect them as normal. So
your mate is neurotic and immature-what's new? This is only a problem if you
take everything seriously. If you accept these defects and do not tell yourself
this is horrible, you can take your focus off of these negatives, and focus on
the positives for which you married them. This acceptance can motivate them to
change the negatives to be more acceptable.
You accept yourself, even though you know
your weaknesses and inadequacies. You forgive yourself and seek only to please
yourself. You love yourself, because you give yourself full acceptance. You are
to love your mate as you love yourself, and this means full acceptance of them
as they are. Mates doing this for each other helps them to a higher level of
self-acceptance, which means more freedom to grow and become the more we are
all capable of becoming.
Acceptance begins in courtship, and it is
very important that a couple be very honest with each other in this period of
their lives, for you need to know each other as you really are if acceptance is
to be a foundation for your marriage. You need to give each other a valid
picture and not a distorted one or you make acceptance so much more difficult,
for you then make it such a great challenge within marriage. You should know
what you have to learn to accept before you have to accept it. Acceptance is
not real unless it is based on openness and honesty. Some seek to be accepted
by means of deceit and what they have is not real acceptance at all. They go to
church with a woman before marriage, but have no intention of doing so after
they are married. She never smokes in courtship, but after marriage it comes
out that she is a chain smoker. She talks of economy before the wedding, but
after she reveals she has extravagant tastes. He pretends to have only a
moderate interest in hunting before, but after he reveals he is an absolute
fanatic. This sort of dishonesty is unethical and puts a heavy burden on your
mate to accept you. You should be honest before marriage so there is acceptance
of who you really are and not acceptance of an illusion.
Acceptance is a life time responsibility
and not just for the early years of marriage. At any time of life the lack of
acceptance will bring an end to a happy marriage. Mates need to be admired by
their partner. This is especially so with men. If a wife spends a lot of time
trying to change him he will feel rejected and lose his affection for her.
Acceptance leads to affection. Lack of acceptance leads of loss of affection.
One of histories great marriages was destroyed in this way. Tolstoi was one of
the greatest novelists of all time. His War and Peace and Anna Karenina are
considered literary masterpieces. He was a man of great wealth and fame and had
a blissfully happy marriage. But then he read the teachings of Jesus and felt
the need to not be so materialistic. He gave up his wealth and even the
publishing rights to his books. His wife could not accept this change of
life-style. She spent years trying to change him. She screamed and threw fits
of hysteria and even threatened to kill herself if he did not change. He came
to the point that he could no longer stand the sight of her. He wrote beautiful
love passages about her earlier in their marriage, but his dying request was
that she not be permitted to come into his presence. This is the level of
tragedy that can happen when a mate is not accepted for who they are or who
they have become.
A sales manger said to a salesman,
"It is not what the customer comes in for that counts, it what he goes out
with." People come into marriage with a lot of expectations and maybe you
can't meet them. But you have other values and qualities that are good. You
need to sell yourself to your mate, and you can do this if you are sold on the
product. One of the keys to acceptance is to reject unrealistic expectations.
Females are often shocked at the sexual energy of their husbands because they
have a false and unrealistic understanding of sex. Christian girls especially
think that Christian boys will not be extremely sexy. John W. Drakeford says
there are many unrealistic expectations that people have coming into marriage.
He gives some examples:
+"I always thought wives got up
early to prepare breakfast for their husbands."
+"I always thought my husband would
never look at another woman."
+"I always thought our marriage
would be like a perpetual honeymoon."
A little ditty goes, "All things I
thought I knew but now confess--the more I know I know, I know I know the
less." We must always remain open to new information about our mate. But
meanwhile we must accept them on the level that we do know them. The only
alternative to acceptance is rejection, and rejection is the greatest enemy of
love. Acceptance is the expression of love, and rejection is the exclusion of
love. Rejection is the greatest enemy of a happy marriage. Consider what had
been written on the subject.
Jack R. Taylor writes, "In years of
counseling, I have noted that in virtually every case where a couple has
reached a time when coping seems impossible without help, one of the top
contenders of enemy number one is rejection. It can be passed from generation
to generation without deliberate planning, and it can grow in the passing.
Rejection is the number-one culprit in divorces and is at the root of all the
world's evils. It was rejection in the heart of Lucifer (Satan) which compelled
him to seek to lift himself above the stars of God. It was his rejection of
divine authority which caused God to reject him and eject him from heaven's
hosts. Filled with bitterness and rejection he roams the earth, seeking to
inject the poisonous venom of rejection in every human vein. Rejection, perhaps
more than hate, is the opposite of love.
In virtually every marriage ceremony are
contained the words. "Do you take this woman?" This implies the
matter of receiving of the mate with no condition attached. I have yet to
counsel a couple whose marriage was in trouble in which rejection was not
involved. Every marriage is characterized either by rejection or reception.
Where the former reigns, there is divisions, chaos, tension, and bondage. Where
the latter rules, there is freedom, joy, fulfilment, and liberation. It is so
in a home, in a business, as well as in the church."
The highest level of happiness will be in
those marriages where there is a mutual acceptance of who each other really is,
so that each can be who they really are and not be playing games where they
suppress and hide who they really are. Peter Hector sums it up,
"If you’re in this kind of relationship,
you can drop your mask and don’t have to play games. You can relax because you
have accepted who you are and you know that your partner loves you the way you
are. Imagine, your mate knows all of you, your strengths, your weaknesses, your
fears and shortcomings, how you look when you are at your worst, and how you
behave when you are in your worst mood. Your partner knows you and says,
"I see you; I know everything about you, I love you just the way you
are." Yes, this is what true intimacy and romantic love is all
about."
ACCEPTANCE BY GOD IS THE GOSPEL
Luke 18:9-14 Morris L. Venden writes,
"Justification is mankind being put right with God because of what Jesus
has done- Rom. 3:24." "And the publican was accepted. He went down to
his house justified. Acceptance is the key word in the entire beautiful theme
of justification. Jesus always accepted those who came to Him. We are accepted
just as we are-in fact that is the only way we can come. We cannot change
ourselves in order to come. This is true everyday, not only at the beginning of
the Christian life. Jesus always accepts us just as we are. He said it in John
6:37: "Him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out." He said it
in John 12:47: "I came not to judge the world, but to save the
world." He said in John 8:11 to the woman they dragged into his presence:
"Neither do I condemn thee." Even the Jewish leaders recognized this
truth, although they didn’t appreciate it, when they said, "This man
receiveth sinners." Luke 15:2. Jesus said it in John 5:24: "Verily,
verily, I say unto you, he that hearth my word, and believeth on him who sent
me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation; but is passed
from death unto life."
ACCEPT THE FACT THAT THERE WILL ALWAYS BE
DIFFERENCES
"Once the realization is accepted
that even between the closest human beings infinite distances continue to
exist, a wonderful living side by side can grow up, if they succeed in loving
the distance between them which makes it possible for each to see the other
whole against a wide sky." ~ Rainer Maria Rilke
KAY COLES JAMES, who is a part of the
Bush administration, has written What I Wish I’d Known Before I Got Married.
Here is one of the things she wished:
"I wish I had known very early in my
marriage that there are some things about Charles that are never going to
change. Of course, marriage is about compromising and coming together, and each
of you will indeed change to accommodate the other. But there will be many
things about your man that will never change.
And I do not care how big or how small it
might be, it will be something that really annoys you! For example, Charles is
never, ever going to turn that showerhead off so that when is step into the
shower, the water doesn’t come right down on my head. If you really want to get
a black woman angry, mess with her hair! I have tried reasoning, threatening,
begging, crying-you name it. He is never going to change!"
She goes on to tell of her praying for
him to change and reading many books and listening to tapes, but she realizes
it never going to happen. She was annoyed even at God for not answering her
prayers, but she came to the conclusion that God was using her husband for His
purposes. Instead of going through all that for years, start your marriage
right off with an acceptance of the fact that some things about your mate will
never change. They are a part of who they are, and of how God made them. It is
part of the package and you have to take the bad with the good. You do it all
the time when you buy music. Some of the song on the C D are of little value,
and may even be worthless to you, but you buy it for the songs that you just
love. You take the bad with the good and just accept the reality that you are
not going to get a dozen great hits on every C D that you buy. And so it is
with the mate you love.
People fall into different categories as
personality types, and it is important that we understand this and recognize
that this means that mates will always be different, not just because they are
male and female, but because of their different personality types. Florence and
Fred Littouer have done extensive study of these types and in their book After
Every Wedding Comes A Marriage they have the following quotes that deal with
acceptance.
"As we study Scripture we see the
personality traits of the men whom God used-Melancholy Moses, Phlegmatic
Abraham, Choleric Paul, and Sanguine Peter. Each was different, but each was
mightily used of God. And so it is today: God uses men and women of all these
personalities to accomplish His word according to His plan.
Once we examine ourselves and stop trying
to shape up others, we open our hearts to change. When we realize that others
can be different and yet not be wrong, our relationships improve. God created
all of us to be unique."
"Many of you men allow more time for
choosing a new car than you spent in selecting your wife. At the dealership you
make sure the seats are properly contoured, the steering works the way you want
it to, and the wheels are just the right kind. But when you choose a bride you
soon see that her seat is overstuffed, she refuses to be steered in any
direction, and her wheels seem to be going around in circles.
If your life long dream is to own a long
black Cadillac, you don’t run out and buy a chubby little red Volkswagen and
then take it home and bang it, stretch it, repaint it, and try to make it into
a long, sleek, black Cadillac. Yet that is what many of you did in choosing a
wife. You wanted a long black Cadillac, but instead you married a chubby little
red Volkswagen, and you spent the last 20 years trying to beat it, pull it, and
remake it into a black Cadillac."
Unfortunately, we just can’t remake each
other; we must accept each other as we are and not try to construct a new image
of what the perfect mate should be."
"Accepting each other as we are is
the hardest principle to learn in marriage. We can always see how better our
partner would be if only he or she would follow our well-meaning and
constructive suggestions. Yet each of us chafes under constant criticism, and
we either march defiantly off in the opposite direction or else build a wall
around our selves and refuse to budge."
CONCLUSION
You are accepted by God in Christ even
though you do not deserve to be a child of God and have the gift of eternal
life. It is by God’s grace that you are saved and not by any merit in you. This
is the kind of grace that we need to have in relationship to our mate. They are
not perfect in any way, and they do not deserve a love that is unconditional
and sacrificial, but that is what God expects you to give, for you are making a
commitment to accept them just as you have been accepted.
It is a major mistake to think that each
stage of a developing relationship eliminates the stage before it. Someone said
the three stages of the male-female relationship is friendship, courtship and
battleship. This is often the case, but the fact is, friendship is never to be
left behind as a couple moves to the deeper level of being lovers and mates.
Friendship is not just a foundation for those in an immature relationship.
Friendship is a vital part of the highest relationship we can have-the
relationship with God and our Lord Jesus Christ. Jesus is known as the greatest
Friend, for he was even the friend of the worst sinners of his time. He said to
his disciples, "You are my friends if you do whatever I command you."
(John 15:14). Friendship is never to fade out of the picture of any lasting
relationship, and especially the relationship of mates. They are to be
perpetual friends if they expect to have a truly happy marriage.
This means that a couple needs to develop
a friendship base before they begin to build a lovers base. Those who enter
quickly into a sexual relationship often build their marriage on the foundation
of pleasure alone. This can be a strong foundation for awhile, but it tends to
weaken as time goes on. A couple needs a longer lasting foundation that does
not weaken and that foundation is friendship.
"Friendship," says John
Gottman, "is at the core of a strong marriage." Friendship between
couples means they "know each other intimately" and "are well
versed in each other's likes, dislikes, personality quirks, hopes and
dreams," Gottman says in his book The Seven Principles for Making Marriage
Work (published by Crown). "Based on twenty-five years of research, The
Seven Principles also says couples in good marriages "have an abiding
regard for each other," express this esteem in many ways large and small,
respect each other, and enjoy one another's company. Gottman has also found
that the quality of a married couple's friendship is the most important
predictor of satisfaction with sex, romance, and passion."
Megan Northrup continues her reporting
about the findings of Gottman: "Gottman believes the principles that make
a marriage work are "surprisingly simple." Happily married couples
aren't smarter or more beautiful than others, and they don't live in castles in
the clouds where there's no conflict or negative feelings. They've simply
learned to let their positive feelings about each other override their negative
ones. They understand, honor, and respect each other. They know each other
deeply and enjoy being together. They do little things every day to stay
connected and to show each other they care. In short, they are friends. As
simple as it sounds, happy marriages are based on a foundation of
friendship." Gilbran wrote a poem supporting this for one kind of people,
but the facts show that it is true for all kinds of people and not just the
intellectuals. He wrote,
"Among intellect people
The surest basis for marriage
Is friendship,
The sharing of real interests,
The ability to fight out
Ideas together
And understand each other's
Thoughts
And dreams.
Eros love is sexual love, and this, as we
point out later is a vital part of our marriage relationship, but it is not the
whole of our relationship if we have an ideal marriage. We need more than the
passions of sex, for they are a small part of the daily relationship. We need
something that is with us all the time, and that something is friendship. It is
sharing all of life and not just the sexual side of it. Friends want to enjoy
many things together and not limit themselves to one area. You do have friends
who just have one thing in common with you, but they cannot be your best
friend. Your best friend is one with whom you share many interests and with
whom you want to do many things. This should be your mate. If your marriage is
built on just your common interest in sex, you are just a friend and lover, but
you are not a best friend, and the goal of marriage is to make sure that your
mate is your best friend. They should be the one with whom you have the most
interests and the most activities that give you pleasure. A friend is one who
can know the worst about you and still accept you and love you. Roy Croft has
put it in words often quoted in weddings. He wrote,
"I love you, not for what you are,
but what I am, when I am with you. I love you not only for what you have made
of yourself, but what you are making of me. I love you for the part of me that
you bring out.
I love you for putting your hand into my
heaped up heart and passing over all the frivolous and weak things that you
cannot help seeing there, and drawing out into the light all the beautiful and
radiant things that no one else has looked quite far enough to find.
I love you for ignoring the possibilities
of the fool in me, and for laying hold of the possibilities of good in me. I
love you for closing your eyes to the discords in me, and adding to the music
in me by listening to me...You have done it without a touch, without a sign.
You have done it by being yourself.
I love you for helping me to make of the
timber of my life, not a tavern, but a temple, and out of the works of my every
day, not a reproach, but a song. You have done it by being yourself. Perhaps
that is what being a friend means, after all."
Let me remind you again that the Bible
supports the putting friendship love on the highest level. The Greek word in
the New Testament for friendship love is Phileo, and it is the word used for
the love God has for in Son in John 5:20. It is the word used for God’s love of
his people in John 16:27. It is used of the love Jesus had for his disciples in
John 13:23, and it is used of the love of the disciples for Jesus in John
21:17. It is also used of the love of a wife for her husband in Titus 2:3-4. Do
not underestimate the power of friendship love, for it is love on the highest
level. Eros is sexual love and it is focused on a single aspect of life, but
Phileo is multi-faceted, and leads to the enjoyment together of a broad range
of experiences. This kind of togetherness is a form of intimacy that does
enhance the sex life, but it is an end in itself. It is foreplay at its best,
but it is just the enjoyment of each other’s company with no other motive than
that of friendship.
Becoming lovers is the frosting on the
cake, but it can be a very sweet cake even if there is no frosting. Phileo
tends to be very strong in courtship. Two work at being boy and girl friend,
and look for every way possible to have fun and enjoyable experiences. After
marriage they often focus on eros, or sexual pleasure, and let phileo lie
dormant. If we will take it out of the closet, dust it off, and put it back into
operation, we will enrich our marriage tremendously. Friends have fun together.
It may be by talking, by playing sports, or games, or by doing things together
and going places together. Be a friend to your mate and you will add joy to
your marriage.
What is the key that unlocks that closet
to set phileo free? SHARING! You do what started romance in the first place.
You share your life and your interest, and you spend time together in talk and
play. The essence of romance is in the two T's, talk and time. People fall in
love by means of these two T's. You talk and you spend time together. Put any
person in your life where you spend a lot of time with them, and do a lot of
talking with them, and they will become a friend. That is how friends are
made-talk and time, or communication and companionship. Remove these two
ingredients and friendship fades.
Steve and Annie Chapman in Married Lovers
Married Friends wrote, "People get married because they love each other.
But I believe they stay married because they like each other. And because I
believe this, I'm a great crusader for falling in like, and staying in like
with your spouse.
My penchant to promote "like"
in marriage may never result in songs that make the Top 20, simply because it's
so difficult to rhyme. Look at love. You can pair it up with sticky sentiments
like "my turtle dove" and "the stars above." Unfortunately,
"like" rhymes only with expressions like "take a hike."
Hardly the sentiments passionate ballads are made of.
But liking has a wonderful things going
for it: Partners who like each other have a relationship founded on
respect---respect for their mate and for themselves as well. When respect, and
the "liking" it fosters, flourishes in a marriage, you can bet the
relationship rests on very solid ground."
May you be able to say long after your
wedding what Lois Wyse said in Love Poems for the Very Married:
Someone asked me to name the time
Our friendship stopped and love began.
Oh, my darling, that's the secret
Our friendship never stopped.
Love is a friendship that has caught
fire.
It is quiet understanding, mutual confidence, sharing and forgiving.
It is loyalty through good and bad.
It settles for less than perfection,
and makes allowances for human weakness.
Love is content with the present.
It hopes for the future and it doesn't brood over the past.
It's the day-in and day-out chronicle of irritations, problems,
compromises, small disappointments, big victories,
and working toward common goals.If you have love in your life,
it can make up for a great many things you lack.
If you don't have it, no matter what else there is,
it is not enough, so search for it, ask God for it, and share it!
One of the best testimonies I have read
about the value of friendship in marriage is by Jay Cookingham. He wrote,
"I am committed to be your friend encouraging, supporting, and staying
close for the rest of our lives together."
The dictionary defines friend as like this: Friend (friend) noun.
1. A person whom one knows, likes and trusts.
2. A person with whom one is allied in a struggle or cause; comrade.
3. One who supports, sympathizes with, or patronizes a group.
4. An acquaintance.
Hopefully Webster won’t mind but I would like to add one more to the list,
ready for this?
5. A fuel source.
Say what? You see, to me friendship is the fuel for the fire of one’s love, the
combustible agent that gives spark to ignite one’s passion for covenant
relationship. The best friend status I enjoy with my wife has been with us
through some difficult times with many victorious results. It is has kept us
close, enabled us to want to continue on, and given grace to help one
understand the other.
Six years ago we went through probably the darkest time our marriage ever has
faced. In April and September of 1996 my wife miscarried and we lost two
babies. It was like someone took a sledgehammer to our hearts…everyday…for
months. The emotional storm that followed ripped away perspective for a while
but one of the strengths that helped us through it all was our friendship. When
my bride encountered a cold snap of disappointment, I would throw a log of
encouragement on the fire and stoke up her faith. When I was racked with
feelings of loss my wife would place on a log of comfort and embers of relief
would flame up. Our friendship, strengthen by the Father’s hand, helped us to
grieve and to heal. That is why I am committed to guard that friendship, to
make sure that my wife understands and knows that she is my best friend.
Friendship fuel keeps us going.
Along with the great love I feel towards my wife, I also like her, I like the
person she is. When I convey this to her, along with my commitment of love, I
am making a bonfire of trust piled high. This "bestfriendness", this
fuel source, will help us finish our race together as man and wife and ignite
the seeds of friendship in our children’s lives. This is one fire you can stand
close to for a long time to come."
"Friendship that flows from the heart cannot be frozen by adversity, as
the water that flows from the spring cannot congeal in winter." James
Fenimore Cooper
"What greater thing is there for two human souls than to feel that they
are joined together to strengthen each other in all labour, to minister to each
other in all sorrow, to share with each other in all gladness, to be one with
each other in the silent unspoken memories?"
George Eliot
I will close this section by sharing
William Batson’s Six Habits of Best Friends. It will be obvious how valuable
these six habits will be to any marriage.
1. Friends stay in touch with each other.
Friendship implies a continuing relationship in which both parties involved
make consistent efforts to maintain. To neglect these special efforts is to
risk allowing the relationship to wither and possibly disappear entirely. We verbally
communicate with each other in a way that says, "I am interested in you as
a person." We ask about the day's events; inquire about what has been
read; anything that transcends talk about career and parental roles. We let
each other know where we are as a courtesy.
2. Friends share themselves and their
experiences. Without this level of sharing you may have an acquaintance, but
you do not have a friend. Sharing thoughts, feelings, and experiences creates an
openness that deepens the bond. Andre Maurois defined a happy marriage as
"a long conversation that always seems too short." Spouses who have
grown apart share only negative emotions and cynical or critical thoughts which
focus only on problems and frustrations.
3. Friends are supportive during troubles
times. Friends must always be there for one another, not only during the good
times, but also during times of emotional turmoil or personal crisis. To have
such a friend in times of need is a wonderful source of strength. What helps me
get through my troubled times is when Cindy gives me a hug and tells me she is
confident that God will help us get through this.
4. Friends consistently affirm one
another. Good friends communicate a very simple message: "I like you, and
being with you makes me feel good." The base of such a relationship is a
deep acceptance of one another along with encouragement as life circumstances
evolve. Love and acceptance should never be conditional. Such a conditional
acceptance drives a wedge in the relationship that tends to deepen with the
years. We seek to communicate regularly in words and deeds, in small acts of
kindness and loving words, the value we find in each other. On one of our
wedding anniversaries, Cindy gave me a card with the following statement:
"It's one thing to be in love. It's another to be good friends. And it's a
wonderful thing to be madly in love with my best friend!" That's
affirming!
5. Deep trust always exists between
friends. As friendship deepens, a corresponding openness about experiences and
feelings develops. The price of friendship is personal vulnerability - letting
your spouse know about personal doubts & sensitivities. Such information
must always be respected and the vulnerability must never be violated. To
deepen our trust we seek to never use a personal sensitivity to hurt each other
when we are angry. We do not gossip about each other. It's a betrayal of
marital trust.
6. Friends let go and have fun together. Good
friendships do not focus exclusively on problems or emotionally intimate
discussion. Time is spent just having fun together. Good friends can let go to
enjoy good times spent together knowing that they are deeply accepted and that
they will be there for one another when tough times come. As married life
becomes busier, humor often fades, and no time remains for fun. Stressed and
tired, couples feel overwhelmed with responsibilities. They forget how to relax
and enjoy lighthearted times together. Fun is a powerful tool in relieving
stress.
A special friendship is what a marriage
relationship is all about. At its root, marriage is not sex, romance, emotional
highs, or pleasure. All these are part of the total relationship, but the core
of marriage is a partnership built on emotional closeness, acceptance of one
another, and fulfilling companionship. You can strengthen your marriage
friendship. It will take commitment, work, and time. Why just be married when
you can be married to your best friend?
(William Batson is Director of Vision New
England's Family Builders Ministries.)
The primary reason that courtship, rather
than marriage, is often a happier time for couples is because it is a time when
couples have most fun. Fun is the name of the game, and they are constantly
going on dates, for their whole relationship is a date. It is fun, and produces
a sense of joy as a couple enjoy each others presence in having the best time
of their lives. Marriage changes things because now you have responsibilities
for establishing a home and a career and a family. This leads to limits on the
time and money for fun. The result is that boredom can enter your lives, and
boredom is one of your greatest foes. If you do not conquer this enemy of your
marriage, you will be in trouble. This demands that you be a constantly
creative couple that seeks ways to counteract this threat of boredom.
Sex is fun, but it cannot meet the full
need you have for enjoying each others company. You need a variety of enjoyable
things in your life to shut out boredom. Even the perfect setting of Eden was
boring without companionship, and God said it was not good for man to be alone.
Marriage is to provide escape from the boredom that comes with having
everything without someone to share it with. This means that the popular
defense of a neglecting man who says he provides for his wife and family by
working hard and long hours is missing the point. Adam had everything a perfect
world could offer. It was God’s best even, but without companionship and
someone to enjoy it with him he was not happy. All mates need more than having
everything they need. They need a companion with whom they can have fun.
Someone wrote, "Like a plant needs
water or a car needs an oil change, your marriage needs constant
attention." This means that you need to keep the fun of dating in your
marriage. You need time alone with each other to talk, and laugh, and learn
more about each other, just as you did in courtship. Fun was fundamental as a
foundation for developing your love for one another, and this foundation needs
to be maintained to keep your marriage from crumbling. A wife would not dream
of buying a plant and neglecting to water it, and a husband would not dream of
neglecting to change the oil in his car. Your mate is just like the plant and
the car, for they need attention and care in order to maintain their value.
Neglect of giving pleasure to your mate will erode the love they have and their
values as a mate. It is so easy to drift into a pattern of life where this
neglect becomes a habit. It is so subtle that we do not realize it, but one day
we wake up and realize we are bored with each other, and there is no one to
blame but ourselves. Avoid boredom like the plague by making sure that fun is a
regular part of your relationship.
Someone said, "The sea of matrimony
is filled with people over bored." Judge John A. Sarbaro says that in his
opinion boredom is one of the commonest of all causes for broken homes. You can
only do anything you do for the first time once. This means the thrill and
romance of first time experiences begin to fade rapidly and soon you are faced
with the issue of monotony. Novelty and originality go fast. This is the
obstacle that love between the sexes needs to overcome to have a long lasting
relationship. The monotony of monogamy is overcome by trying new things to keep
romance alive. Variety is the spice of life. Studies show that almost every
foolish and dangerous thing that people do can be directly related to their
being bored with life. This includes ending a marriage.
It is not being petty or self-centered
for your mate to want to have fun with you. I want to share a study I did years
ago that makes it clear that God loves to have fun and he loves his people to
have fun. I called it FUN IS FUNDAMENTAL based on ZECH. 8:1-19
Geography students after traveling around
the world by books were asked to list what they considered the seven wonders of
the world. It was a hard decision but such things as Egypts Great Pyramids, The
Taj Mahal, The Grand Canyon, and The Great Wall of China, were getting a lot of
votes.
The teacher noticed that one of her
students, a quiet girl, had not entered into the discussion. " Are you
having trouble," she asked, and the girl said, "I couldn't make up my
mind because there are so many." "Well tell us what you have,"
the teacher urged. She stood to her feet and read from her paper-"I think
the seven wonders of the world are to touch and to taste, to see and to hear,
and then to run and to laugh and to love."
This little girl was tuned into a
different channel and she was sharing wonders that are indeed greater marvels
than any of the so-called 7 wonders of the world. None of them would be
anything without those gifts of God that enable us to wonder at them and enjoy
them. She was listing wonders not limited to one place in the geography of the
world, but to those wonders that God has given to those made in His image all
over the world.
Her seven wonders are more wonderful
because they are not just in one place, but in every place. I don't know what
her teachers response was to her answer, but our text tells us that God's
response is a hearty, heavenly amen!
This chapter of Zechariah is God's
description of the ideal life for His people. It is a picture of just how good
it can be when he blesses His people. We want to focus on just a few of the
details.
Notice in verse 5, God says His ideal of
the perfect city is one where the city streets will be filled with boys and
girls playing there. Then in verse 19 He says the fasts will be changed to
festivals and become glad and joyful occasions.
There is something about this chapter
that gives you the sneaking suspicion that God loves fun, and He loves His
people to have fun. This may seem a little too light hearted, but I intend to
show that fun is fundamental to God's nature, and His plan for man.
This subject is so vast in Scripture that
my hardest task was to figure out how to limit it. The entire message could be
devoted to just quoting Bible verses on gladness, delight, joy, and feasting. I
was so overwhelmed with the number of texts dealing with the feelings of having
fun that I couldn't get a handle on it until I discovered the word play, which
is a synonym for fun. It is the Hebrew word for the children playing in the
streets, and it is the ideal word for study because it is used only a few times
in the Bible in referring to the feeling of playfulness. Let me share with you
the context of these few verses on play.
God seems to be in a playful mood as He
responds to Job, and asks Him all kinds of questions about His creation. In Job
40:20 God is speaking of one of His largest creatures, either the Hippopotamus
or Elephant, and He says, "The hills bring him their produce, and all the
wild animals play nearby." A few verses later God is really getting into
the fun of making Job see his physical insignificance compared to His great
creature called the leviathan, and in 41:5 He asked Job, "Can you make a
pet of him like a bird or put him on a leash for your girls?" This same
Hebrew word for play is used there for "make a pet of him." Jehovah
is joking with Job just as we do when we see a creature like Godzilla, or some
other monster, and say, " wouldn't he make a great pet?"
What we have here is God's acknowledgment
that the playfulness we see in the animal kingdom is not an accident, nor is it
a part of the fall. The playfulness of creatures that makes us enjoy the zoo,
and nature films, and pets, is built into the animal kingdom by God. It is part
of His plan that man should enjoy the playfulness of animals and have them as
pets, and enter into the fun of play with them. We don't have time to persue
this-we are just taking a peak. But this peak tells us why we enjoy our pets.
It is because God made them to be playful.
In Psalm 104:26 the psalmist is
describing God's vast creation, and then He comes to the sea, teaming with
creatures, and He says, "There the ships go to and fro, and the leviathan,
which you formed to frolic there." Frolic is the same Hebrew word for
play. We went to Sea World in Florida and saw how man can build great buildings
and bodies of water for the sea creatures to frolic in and give people
enjoyable entertainment. The Bible says the oceans are God's playground for
these same creatures. The only reason they can be trained to play games and do
tricks for our entertainment is because God made them with this capacity to
have fun and to play.
The Jewish rabinical tradition says that
God made leviathan as a play thing. God delights in His creatures, and some of
them may have no other purpose than to delight the creator. God has fun with
His creation, and the reason we are to respect and to conserve it is because it
is God's toybox with delights to give pleasure to God and man.
Even if we did not have verses to say so,
it would be a logical supposition that if God enjoys the playfulness of the
animal kingdom, He must also enjoy the playfulness of man. But we do have text
that illustrate this reality. In Isa. 11 we get another of God's descriptions
of an ideal earthly environment. Note how the child will be able to play with
the animal kingdom, and not just our present day domestic pets, but the animals
that now are dangerous. Verses 6-9 say, "The wolf will live with the lamb,
the leopard will lie down with the goat, the calf and the lion and the yearling
together; and a little child will lead them. The cow will feed with the bear,
their young will lie down together, and the lion will eat straw like the ox.
The infant will play near the hole of the cobra, and the young child put his
hand into the viper's nest. They will neither harm nor destroy on all my holy
mountain, for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters
cover the sea."
In other words, where God is fully known
there is play without pain. It is all joy and pleasure, and all that God has
made works together in harmony, and evil is absent completely. All of the
childhood fantasies of playing with the animal kingdom, and leading them like a
Tarzan will be fulfilled. These fantasies that led Walt Disney to produce his
movies are not a part of the fall, but are a part of that playful image of God
in which man was originally made. God anticipates this future ideal with the
same pleasure you anticipate an adventure of fun with your children. You want
your children to have fun, and God wants the same for His children.
Playfulness is a part of Godliness, but
we seldom see the Biblical picture of it. Because we lack this Biblical foundation
we sometimes feel guilty when we engage in play. This is not all bad, for we
need to keep in mind we are dealing with a paradox. There is another side to
play that is dangerous and destructive. Like any other value, when it becomes
an idol, it becomes a curse. We need to keep a balance so that we do not lose
Gods best because we abuse playfulness. But on the other hand some Christians
go the other way and quote Paul, "Set your affections on things above and
not on the things of the earth", and use this as a basis for rejecting the
enjoyment of earthly play. In reality, when we set our affection on things
above, we see clearly the nature of God which enables us to wisely choose what
is consistent with that nature.
When you set your affections on things
above,
You will come to know
That he who is light and life and love
Also has affections for things below.
God delights in the same things we do-the
playfulness of animals, the fun of children, and the festivities of adults.
Celebrating is one of the ways that men praise God. In II Sam 6:5 the Hebrew
word for play is again used. "David and the whole house of Israel were
celebrating with all their might before the Lord, with songs and with harps,
lyres, tamborines, sistrums, and cymbals." The ark of God had been
returned and they were celebrating. When the prodigal son returned there was
also a celebration with song, dance, and feasting. Even the angels of heaven
get into the mood and rejoice when the sinner repents.
The point is, there is fun in victory.
There is the feeling we ought to celebrate and sing, and have pleasure when God
blesses, and God delights in our feeling this way. Fun is a part of the total
worship experience, and because this is so, we need not fear that heaven will
ever be boring, for with eternal worship there will also be eternal fun.
Prov. 8:30-31 is the last text on
positive play that we want to look at. It is again in the context of God's
creating the wonders of the world. Wisdom is present and wisdom says in the
Hexapla translation of the O.T. "Then I was at His side as a small child;
then I was all delight, daily playing before Him the whole time, playing on His
earth, taking my delight in the children of men." The picture is one we
too seldom consider. God had fun creating the world. The Son and the angels and
wisdom all enjoyed it as well. It was like a great celebration-a day of play as
all heaven entered into the delight of watching God set up the largest
playground ever. It is the picture of children watching with delight as the
circus is set up, and all the preparations are made for a great time of fun.
God did not lose his delight in play
because of the fall. His goal is to overcome the effects of the fall and get
back to a world of fun without sin. On the day of Pentecost Peter preached his
great message that won 3,000 to Christ and he quoted David as referring to
Christ and His resurrection. He says in verses 26-28, "Therefore my heart
is glad and my tongue rejoices; my body will also live in hope, because you will
not abandon me to the grave, nor will you let your Holy One see decay. You have
made known to me the paths of life; you will fill me with joy with your
presence." The word for joy here is used only two times in all the N.T. It
is the word from which we get our English word euphoria. It covers all the
emotions we refer to by gladness, cheerfulness, happiness, delight and joy.
This text tells us that God's plan was
for Jesus to experience these emotions forever in His presence. Jesus knew how
to enjoy life and to enjoy children playing. He could have pleasure at the
parties he attended, and He could add to the delight of others as He did at the
wedding of Cana. The only other place that same Greek work is used is in Acts
14. Paul and Barnabas healed a crippled man at Lystra. The people there thought
for sure they were gods who had come down, and the priests of the temple of
Zeus came to offer sacrifices to them.
Paul was shocked, and pleaded with them
to see that they were only human too. Then he shared the good news of the
living God who loved them and who had been blessing them in so many ways. In
verse 17 he says God has not left himself without a witness-"He has shown
kindness by giving rain from heaven and crops in their seasons; He provides you
with plenty of food and fills your hearts with joy." Joy is the same word
used for the joy of Jesus. Keep in mind, these are pagan people, and Paul is
saying their joy, or euphoria, has been the gift of God.
This text makes it clear that God made
man the same way He made the creatures of the field and the sea. He made them
with the capacity for fun and play so they could enjoy the good things of life.
It is a universal feeling-this feeling of well-being called euphoria. It is
God's gift to all men, and this needs to be recognized, for Paul used it as a
tool of evangelism. We do too, but we do not recognize the Biblical basis of
what we are doing. All evangelism efforts use fun as fundamental.
I do not know of a camp ministry that
would survive a season if it was not for fun. Take away swimming, boating, ball
games, ping pong, bikes, and other sports; take away all the fun and see how
people will stay away in droves. You couldn't pay kids to come to a camp where
fun is not fundamental. Every youth group and organization in the world knows
this. If there is no plan for fun you can forget planning anything else.
It is not just kids who need it, but
adults do as well. The reason we enjoy musical groups is because it is fun. It
is fun to be uplifted. It is fun to be aided in praising God. Music is a
recognized form of play. The same word we have been studying for play in the
Bible is most often used for playing instruments. Music is played and enjoying
it is playing. That is why every great evangelist has music. It is fun to hear
good music, and so the fun of music is a key element in attracting people to
Christ.
If Christianity is not fun it is not
pleasing to God nor man. We too often think fun and play is a secular side of
life. It is good for a break until we get back to the important and serious
stuff of life. This concept is too bad for it leads Christians to not take fun
seriously. They do not see it as a vital part of their spirituality, and a key
value for which they can praise God. We need to see that fun is fundamental in
all the relationships of life; with animals, friends, family groups of all
kinds, and even God.
Why did Jesus say we must become as
little children to enter the kingdom of heaven? We usually hear it is because
the child is so innocent, and so full of simple faith. This is no doubt part of
it, but what about a child's playfulness? That is what childhood is, the time
of life when they learn to play. Did Jesus ever play? Francis Thompson asks,
Hadst thou ever any toys
Like us little girls and boys?
And didst thou play in heaven with all
The angels that were not too tall,
With stars for marbles. Did the things
Play can you see me? Though their wings?
We could quote hours of poetry dealing
with the childhood of Jesus, but all we know for sure is that He was a growing
boy who had fun. It is inconceivable that Jesus did not play and have fun as a
child on earth. When He was left behind in the temple, Mary and Joseph assumed
He was with some of their relatives, giving us the clear hint that Jesus must
have often been off playing with other children. We are told today that how a
child learns to play is vital to developing their identity. If they do not
learn to enjoy play they will become too serious as adults. Some do skip
childhood and never learn to play. This leads to an adult who does not know how
to enjoy life.
On the other hand if they do nothing but
play, and are never taught that life is more than a game, they tend to become
irresponsible playboys or playgirls. All work and no play makes Jack a dull
boy, but all play and no work makes him a jerk. Any psychiatrist will tell you
that one of their most common clients is the person who has nothing to do but
play. They lack the pleasure of work and achieving goals and they eventually
become depressed for the lack of meaning in life. Play must always be balanced
with a purpose pleasing to God or it becomes a burden rather than a blessing.
In the childhood of man when God put Adam
and Eve in the garden of Eden, there was balance. They had the delight of enjoying
all the pleasures of play and eating, but God also gave them the work of
keeping the garden. Extremes of being workaholics or playboys are both contrary
to God's will. Work and play in balance is the key to a happy life. Dwight D.
Eisenhower said to students at Columbia University, where he became president
in 1948, "Have fun. I mean it. The day that goes by without your having
had some fun-the day you don't enjoy life-is not only unnecessary but
unchristian!"
In the light of our study, we can say his
statement was Biblically accurate for the Bible clearly teaches that we can
never be all that God made us to be without fun, for fun is fundamental. But
keep in mind that it is fun to be a child of God. It is fun to be saved and to
be forgiven. It is fun to be sanctified and growing in the knowledge of God. It
is fun to be in Christian service. There is joy in serving Jesus. Fun is a
broad concept that takes in many aspects of life that are pleasing to God. God
is a fun-loving God and we need to take fun seriously and make it a vital part
of our Christian life, and be praising God for it continually, for fun is
fundamental.
The above message makes it clear that fun
is to be a part of all loving relationships, and this means that the marriage
relationship should produce it even more than all others. Adam no doubt had fun
with the animals, but he never really knew what fun was until God gave him Eve.
We don’t know what Adam’s first words were when he saw this beautiful gift from
God, but we would not be too far off if we suggested, "Let the fun
begin." She added excitement to his life that nothing else could. It is
one of the purposes of marriage that two people will add to the lives of each
other a unique level of enjoyment. Pet rocks are experts at handling boredom,
but mates are not good at it, and so they need entertainment to be happy. Sex
was a major form of entertainment in the ancient world, and in spite of all the
modern movies, television, video games, etc., it is still high on the list of
fun things to do. This was God’s plan, and Prov. 5:18-19 makes it clear.
"May your fountain be blessed, and may you rejoice in the wife of your
youth. A loving doe, a graceful deer-may her breasts satisfy your always, may
you ever be captivated by her love. But we can’t be having sex all the time-(
says the wife), and so there is a need for mates to be ever looking for new
ways to enjoy things together. You try new things and seek variety so that life
does not get into a rut. You never stop courting, for that is where your fun
began, and it should not end in marriage.
Most of us feel uncomfortable when we see
love crazed teens kissing and hugging in public places. It is not something we
would do now, even though we probably did when we were love crazed teens, for now
is seems out of place. You just don’t display affections like that in public.
But it has been pointed out that this is part of the reason we become boring as
mature mates. We lose something in becoming mature. Dr. Bruce Leckart in Up
From Boredom Down From Fear, lists the characteristics of boredom. This is a
fairly lengthy quote, but it carries such an impact on the point that I felt
the need to share it.
1. Afraid of taking chances or making a
mistake. We get more conservative as we mature and this is good but the
negative side effect is we fear adventure and risk and so we choose safe ruts
and lose romance.
2. Overly concerned with pleasing others,
Sounds like a Chr. virtue but when it makes you a bore to your mate it is a
vice.
3. Conforming. You do what you are
supposed to do and that means you don't have too much fun. Fun is for kids not
mature people.
4. Sensitive to Criticism-- The bore is
so afraid to be criticized that they do nothing that is exciting for all
excitement is open to criticism.
Boredom is the enemy of romance. It is in
fact the enemy of life. Bertrand Russell the philosopher said "Boredom is
a vital problem for the moralist, since at least half of the sins of mankind
are caused by the fear of it. King David's famous affair with Bathsheba
happened when David was bored. II Sam. 11 tells us David no longer went out to
war as he had all his life but stayed in Jerusalem. No longer was he the
admired warrior. The text tells us he was restless and got out of bed and was
walking on the palace roof when he spotted Bathsheba bathing. David had 8 wives
at this time and so there was no lack of sex in his life. But there was a lack
of excitement. He was bored and boredom is very fertile soil for the seed of
sin to grow in. It is probably safe to say the majority of affairs happen
because of boredom. People are looking for a kick-excitement to take them out
of the rut they feel they are in.
Dr. Paul Tournier says boredom is one of
the greatest enemies of marriage and as a Christian psychiatrist he knows. Men
he says are more conscious of the sins that boredom leads to. They feel their
lust for other women more. Whereas a wife may begin to interfere with her sons
or daughter's marriage and not see it as sin but as love. Women are more subtle
in the ways they let boredom lead them.
Boredom is the cause of much human folly.
Elizabeth Elliot wrote, "In the book A Sort of Life, Graham Greene tells
how he has struggled, ever since he was very young, to fend off boredom. He
once had a dentist extract ("but with ether") a perfectly good tooth
for no better reason than that he was bored and this seemed like an interesting
diversion. He tried several times to commit suicide and six times played
Russian roulette, using a revolver with six chambers--a dangerous game, but
not, heaven help us, boring."
Marriage was God’s solution to the
problem of boredom for Adam, and it is meant to be the number one eliminator of
boredom in the lives of mates. Back in 1902 Nixon Waterman wrote
Life's jolly jag of joy
When a man's in love.
He's as happy and as coy
As a turtle-dove.
All the world is fair and nice
And as sweet as Paradise;
Everything's worth twice the price
When a man's in love.
Life's a big bouquet of bliss
When a man's in love.
Earth is yearning just to kiss
With the stars above.
Then her smile is all there is
In the world, excepting his;
Say! It's something great, gee whiz!
When a man's in love.
Life's a mellow mess of mirth
When a man's in love.
Heaven comes to dwell with earth,
Walking hand and glove.
Then all creatures, low and high,
Putting other duties by,
Just lay off to watch the guy
When a man's in love.
Teens do rare risky things in love to
escape boredom. Romantic love makes you willing to take risks for the one you love.
We are to love our wives as Christ loved the church. He took the biggest risk
and died for her. I almost died for Lavonne. I had a date with her and even
though a terrible winter storm came on I headed out of town to her place 20
miles away. It was the worst 20 miles of my life. I was in a skimpy school
jacket. Cars were in the ditch and I helped push then out. When I got back on
the road I Felt I was driving in corn fields. I Got there so late that she and
her whole family were in bed. I parked in the driveway and decided I would
spend the night in the car. Iprobably would have frozen to death had not her
father got out of bed and come out and invited me in. Her parents no doubt
thought their daughter is dating a guy where the elevator doesn't go to the
top. It was a crazy thing to do, but it was motivated by love. It was so much
fun to be with her that I would do anything not to miss a date with her. It is
keeping that fun loving spirit alive that keeps our marriage one that can be
called a happy marriage. Fun is one aspect of intimacy, for you always feel
more intimate with the people you have fun with. When you stop having fun with
someone they become less and less a friend.
The vow goes something like this,
"to have and to hold from this day forward, for better or for worse, for
richer or for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, I
promise to be faithful to you forsaking all others until death do us
part."
This has to do with keeping yourself unto
her or him alone, and so being faithful in the area of sexual intimacy. We will
look at this in detail, but we need to see that being faithful includes not
giving up on our marriage, but persisting to keep doing what is necessary to
keep the fires burning. If we never give up there is always a chance to revive
the coals that seem to be cold and no longer producing any heat. Faithfulness
is what prevents people throwing in the towel and walking away from their
marriage. The pilot light will go out once in awhile on your furnace, but you
do not go on living in a cold house. You get busy and get it relit and working
again. You need to be faithful in always striving to relight the fires of
romance in your marriage. It is when you let your relationship get cold that there
is a temptation to find other relationships more warm and inviting. Affairs
happen, not just with people who are more beautiful and handsome, or
intelligent, but with people who show some warmth. A husband or wife who is
being treated coldly, and who is not being sexually satisfied, is open game for
being enticed by another. It happens to the best and so it is folly to put on
the back burner that which needs to be kept boiling in your marriage.
God knew it could happen to his people
and that is why he gave the 7th commandment about not committing
adultery. Let me share a message I gave on that commandment.
PRESERVATION OF MARRIAGE COMMANDED Based
on Ex.20:14
Actor Eli Wallach figured that his son
who was approaching his teens was sharp enough to grasp some basic facts of
life. So he called him in, and gave him the time-honored story about the birds
and the bees. When he was all finished the boy said,
"You know in a rudimentary fashion,
the process you've described isn't too dissimilar to human reproduction."
Parents are often naive about the sex
knowledge of their children. They pretend that in a nation where teenage girls
get pregnant by the millions, and where sex promotion oozes out of every pore
of society, and where its rays flood every realm of life with its omnipresent
radiation, that they still walk in the dark concerning the mechanics of sex. It
is time that we wake up to the fact that we have been living in the midst of a
sex revolution. Pitiram Sorokin, the great Harvard sociologist, says of this
revolution: "It is changes the lives of men and women more radically than
any other revolution of our time."
This revolution is just as serious as
political and economic revolution, but it goes almost unnoticed because it is
so private. Sorokin writes, "Devoid of noisy public explosion, its stormy
scenes are confined to the privacy of the bedroom and involves only
individuals. Unmarked by dramatic events on a large scale, it is free from
civil war, class struggle, and blood shed. It has no revolutionary army to
fight its enemies. It does not try to overthrow governments. It has no great
leader; no hero plans it, and no politician directs it. Without plan or
organization it is carried on by millions of individuals, each acting on his
own."
Time does not permit the examination of
all the evidence of the decay of the American culture. But let me give you one
example. During the early period of Greek and Roman culture the figures of
their deities and heroes, and especially of women, were completely draped from
head to foot. In the decadent stages of their culture these same figures
appeared nude, designed to stimulate the sex drive. The same pattern was
followed in music, the stage, and literature, until sex dominated the culture,
and brought them to ruin. It is the same old story over and over. Sex is a
beautiful servant, but a beastly master. Yet in spite of all the history of
man's folly and its consequences in relation to sex, the American people are
traveling that same road. It is true, "All men ever learn from history is
that men never learn from history."
The seventh commandment is not just
relevant; it is essential for the very survival for our culture. As important
as it is, however, the church has not given it an adequate place in its
teaching. D. L. Moody said, "I would to God I could pass over this
commandment, but I feel the time has come to cry aloud and spare not."
Most preachers feel like Moody, but the difference is most do pass over it. I
read 36 different preachers, scholars, and professors, on this commandment. All
but a handful beat around the bush and just preached a gentle sermon on
marriage and family life. To deal with it realistically you must be frank
almost to the point of embarrassment.
There are those who feel you should not
preach on the seventh commandment at all for fear of giving people ideas. These
objectors know the power of sex, and know that a sermon on adultery could tempt
the listeners to the very act that is condemned. I have read sermons describing
David's affair with Bathsheba, and wondered if the authors purpose was to stir
up jealously in the reader that he was not David, rather than pity for David
that he was a victim of uncontrolled sex.
The objectors have a point, but it is
dulled by the fact that the Bible itself is not shy on the subject of sex. It
is so frank and specific in parts that it stimulates the same emotions as a sex
novel or seductive film. There is no point in trying to pretend sex is an
incidental and insignificant part of life. It is a major and powerful force in
the life of every healthy human being. It is the area of the greatest
temptation to sin. R. H. Charles writes, "Other sins, such as theft,
arson, perjury, murder, make no appeal to the normal healthy mind. You may read
countless tales of such crimes in the daily press and not be tempted in the
lease to become a theft, or incendiary, a perjurer, or a murderer, because in
healthy minds the desire to leading to such crimes are absent, and the tales of
such crimes create only abhorrence. But it is otherwise in regard to the sins
of the flesh. Every healthy human being is influenced, and rightly influenced,
by the attraction of sex."
This being the case, as we all recognize,
we must follow the advice of McAfee who said, "One must plead for a pure
heart even when there is danger that the very plea will stir up impure
depths." Our primary concern is not to give a lecture on sex education,
but to stress the Biblical attitude toward sex. The attitude we have and convey
to others, especially to our children, is more important than biological
information. Even the Kinsey report concluded that imparting all the facts
about sex to people does not in itself determine how they will act in the use
of sex. It says that attitude alone determines patterns of behavior. The
parents, by their attitudes, are the real determiners of the sex behavior of
their youth.
You may never sit down and explain sex to
your child, but you are teaching attitudes all the time, and this is what is
the determining factor. In his book, How To Tell Your Child About Sex, Clyde M.
Naramore, the well known Christians psychologist writes, "Parents often
say to me Dr. Naramore do you know of a good book about sex education? Our boy
(or girl) is nearly 13 and we want to tell him the facts of life. Questions
like this would be humorous if they weren't so unfortunate. Evidently these
parents do not realize that they have been giving their children sex education
for years. The very fact that they have not talked with them tells these
children that sex is something to avoid discussing. And of course, 13 years of
age is much too late to begin. By then, some of the most important and most
impressive years of life have already passed."
The implications of the seventh commandments
would get us into all the realms of sex behavior, but for now we can only look
at the primary purpose of the commandment. The positive principle underlying
this negative forbidding of sex relations with any other person than your mate
is, the preservation of marriage. Next to a man's life his most precious
possession is his wife. To take either his life or his wife was punishable by
death in the Old Testament. Israel could not survive, nor can any nation, where
there is a lost of respect for life and marriage. Obedience to this commandment
involves a development of the highest respect for marriage, and a deep sense of
loyalty to one's mate. The marriage vows of forsaking all others, and keeping
yourself unto him or her alone are not just thrown in to lengthen the service,
they are the most solemn vows two people can make to each other.
Adultery is so evil, because it is a
breaking of a major promise of life. When you get married you promise not to
have sex with anyone else. You do not promise that you will never notice
another man or woman. You do not promise you will not lust after another
person. You do not even promise that you will not feel romantically attracted
to another person. All of these things may happen in the course of life. If they
did not, there would be no need for the promise. The promise that you make in
marriage is that you will keep yourself just for each other so long as you both
shall live. It is a commitment to devote all of your sexual energy to the
loving of your mate. That is a marital right every partner has a right to
expect. However sexual hunger is provoked, a mate is to release that energy
only with their partner. That is God's plan and it is a beautiful plan.
Why then do so many chose to release
their sex energy outside of marriage. Dr. Leon Saul in his book, Fidelity and
infidelity, after a great deal of research, came to this conclusion:
"....I do not think that a man or woman carries on an outside affair that
pains his spouse and children, damages them, in some part destroys them, unless
there is a powerful undercurrent of hostility against them, however conscious
or unconscious this may be." In other words, the same emotion that makes
the sixth commandment necessary is what makes the seventh necessary-hostility. It
will make you kill your neighbor, or kill your marriage. Hostility toward your
mate is what allows people to permit lust to get out of control. If you are not
hostile toward your mate you will keep lust under control. People full of anger
wish to hurt someone, and they will be strongly tempted to hurt their mate by
infidelity.
On the practical level this means that
mates have an obligation to go all through life enriching their relationship.
They need to learn how to communicate so that hostility is dealt with, and
never permitted to go unresolved. Many studies reveal that middle age people
become unfaithful because they feel a need to demonstrate that they are still
attractive to the opposite sex. This hunger to be attractive would not get so
out of hand if mates would build each other's self-esteem, and continue to be
sexually romantic. A dull, boring, routine sex life is a sin, and a violation
of the seventh commandment, because it produces the factors that lead to its
violation. Love is the fulfilling of the law, and loving mates will so satisfy
each other that there will be no reason to be tempted by adultery. What can
Satan do if everything he has to offer you in sin, you already have within your
marriage?
Paul gives Christians the key to reducing
the risk of immoral sex in I Cor. 7. Paul's advice is for every mate to make
sure that the sex drive of their partner is satisfied on a regular basis. This
may vary greatly, but whenever the desire is present, it should be satisfied.
This may call for learning a great deal about sex technique. Most all of the
cases I know where a Christian mate becomes unfaithful, the basic cause is
right here. They were not sexually satisfied, and it could have all been
prevented by better understanding of the need and way to satisfy it. Adultery
appeals to a hunger, and there is little danger if that hunger is already met
in marriage. Paul is saying that if you have rocks in your bed, you have rocks
in your head, for you are giving Satan a foot in the door to destroy your marriage.
Mates
must give a lifetime of thought and
action to keep the romance of sex a vital part of their relationship.
Marriage is similar to conversion in
that, in conversion we make a commitment of our lives to one Lord, and in
marriage we commit our lives to one mate. Sex and salvation are linked all
through the Bible. God had His bride of Israel, and Christ has His bride, the
church. Any disloyalty and idolatry in these relationships is called adultery.
The marriage bond of two people is the very first human relationship. Adam was
created first, and so the God man relationship was the first relationship with
man. Then Eve was created, and the first fully human relationship was that of
man and wife. Next to life itself, therefore, marriage is the most sacred
possession we have.
God's first gift to Adam was life, and
His second gift was a wife. It is not, cleanliness is next to godliness, but
marriage is next to godliness. To treat it lightly, or to shatter it through an
act of adultery is to be guilty of the worst of sins against God, man, and
society. Adultery is wrong not because sex is wrong, but because sex outside of
marriage shows a disrespect for the highest human bond. It murderers this
highest relationship, and the murder of a marriage is just as serious as the
murder of a person. This does not mean that adultery is the unforgivable sin,
for Jesus had compassion on the woman caught in the very act. He forgave her
while condemning the men who wanted to see her punished. He knew the hearts of
men, and knew that everyone of them had lust in their hearts. Jesus said that
those without sin should cast the first stone, and they all left, for everyone
of them was guilty.
We cannot have a stern inflexible
attitude toward those guilty of this sin. Christians who are suffering because
of a blunder in this area of life need to recognize that marriage is the basic
value to be preserved, and if it can be, both partners are obligated to work
for a healing of the shattered bond for all they are worth. I have talked with
a number of people guilty of this sin, and not a one understands why they were
so foolish. Everyone of them regrets it, and would give anything not to have
fallen. Christ forgives, the mate forgives, but the hardest part of all is to
forgive yourself. The scar remains, and can become a cause for conflict at any
time. Nevertheless, the Christian attitude is to be one of striving for the
preservation of marriage. There will be a Sahara desert period to go through,
but the struggle will pay off, and with the attitude of high respect for
marriage, the two can arrive again at the oasis of happiness. If the grace of
Christ can heal the broken relationship of God and man, it can heal the next
highest relationship also, that between husband and wife. One of the most
important things you can do for the glory of God, for the strengthening of the
church and nation, is to obey this seventh commandment for the preservation of
marriage.
God is faithful to us and does not give
up on us even when we fail him. He kept forgiving the people of Israel over and
over again even though they were so unfaithful to him. In Deut. 7:9 we read,
"Know therefore that the Lord you God is God; he is the faithful G od,
keeping his covenant of love to a thousand generations of those who love him
and keep his commands."And in the New Testament his faithfulness has not
changed. I John 1:9 says, "If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just
and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness." It
is that faithfulness of God that we are to have in our marriage. We are not to
give up and forsake one we have promised to love for all our days, and we are
not to give the love we promised to keep for them alone to another.
Charles Sell tells this story A man hated
his wife so much he desperately wanted out of the marriage. He described the
situation to the divorce lawyer. "Do you hate her that much?", the
lawyer questioned. "Yes," the man confirmed his contempt. "Would
she like a divorce?" asked the lawyer. "Yes, that would be no
problem; she wants out, too," the wife hater said.
"Divorcing her now is not a very
wise thing to do," the lawyer advised, conning his client. He then went on
to explain his plan. If the man hated her so much, divorcing her would only
make her happy. That was hardly a good way to get even. Going back home, he
should do everything he could to make his wife love him. Be a perfect husband.
"Then, after she is passionately in love with you, file for divorce."
Venomous hatred seething in his innards, the husband was ecstatic over this
plan. He left the office with a cool determination to put it into effect
immediately. This behavior made the wife so loving in return that they fell in
love all over again and never gave divorce a thought. The point is, if we are
faithful in being the kind of loving mate we promised to be, we will never
dream of divorce, or any other kind of division in our relationship.
When we are faithful in meeting the
sexual and emotional needs of each other we can have assurance that our mate
will not consider having them met outside the marriage. This does not mean
there will be no temptation, but the temptation will be easily resisted because
they will know there is not need to go elsewhere, for all that can be desire
will be met by their mate.
William Hyat points out that the one
flesh idea includes more that just being one in sex. He writes, "This
term, "one flesh," describes the biblical view of marriage. When we
hear the words "one flesh," we may think of sexual intercourse. But
that physical act does not make two people truly one in the biblical sense. Sex
is meant to express a oneness that is already there as the result of a marital
commitment. An emotional and spiritual oneness needs to be present. Mary Farrar
says it well in her book, Choices: "We can measure our oneness by the
loving commitment we have for each other--emotionally, intellectually,
spiritually, and physically. Loving commitment is the glue that cements us into
'one flesh.'" This is why sex outside of marriage or in violation of the
marriage vow cannot truly be a "one flesh" relationship.
So "one flesh" refers to a
physical oneness. But it implies much more. It implies an emotional and
spiritual oneness--a oneness of life purpose. One man and one woman as
"one flesh," therefore, is the biblical view of marriage from the
beginning, long before the giving of the Ten Commandments."
The stress he is making is one that needs
to be recognized, for it is possible to never have sex outside of the marriage
bond and yet still not be a faithful mate. Faithfulness must characterize the
whole relationship for a truly happy marriage. Dennis Marquardt has some words
of wisdom on this issue. He writes,
"One of the most important qualities
in all healthy relationships is "faithfulness." In a culture that
emphasizes success it is difficult for the importance of this quality to be
fully appreciated. And yet, when we look at the life and teaching of Jesus we
don't hear ANYTHING about success, Jesus didn't say, "Well done, you
successful servant" He said, "Well done,
you FAITHFUL servant."
Even parables that mention elements of
success the emphasis is on faithfulness and not success - such as the parable
of the talents and their investment by all but one wicked servant who never invested
the one talent he was given. The focus of the parable was not the doubling of
the investments by the others, but their faithfulness to invest.
Yet, as Christians we live in a culture
that values things like success and reputations … and faithfulness is hardly
ever the focus!" He then shares these two illustrations:
"Mother Teresa of Calcutta once was
asked, "How do you measure the success of your work?" She looked
puzzled for a moment and then replied, "I don't remember that the Lord
ever spoke of success. He spoke only of faithfulness in love. This is the only
success that really counts."
"We were at war with Vietnam. And
there I was, at the U.S. Army Ranger School at Fort Benning, Georgia. It was
brutal. I can still hear the raspy voice of the sergeant: "We are here to
save your lives. We're going to see to it that you overcome all your natural
fears. We're going to show you just how much incredible stress the human mind
and body can endure. And when we're finished with you, you will be the U.S. Army's
best!" Then, before he dismissed the formation, he announced our first
assignment. We'd steeled ourselves for something really tough--like running 10
miles in full battle gear or rappelling down a sheer cliff. Instead, he told us
to--find a buddy. "Find yourself a Ranger buddy," he growled.
"You will stick together. You will never leave each other. You will
encourage each other, and, as necessary, you will carry each other." The
marine motto is semper Fi, which is Latin for "Always Faithful."
In war or peace you want a partner who
will be, above all things, faithful. He or she will be someone you can trust to
be always looking out for your best interest. That is what love is. It is a
choice to be always concerned for the best for the one that is loved. That is
God’s concern for his children, and it is to be our concern for our mate at all
times. Two people faithful to this attitude are bound to experience a great
deal of happiness in their relationship.
"Never close your lips to those to
whom you have opened your heart." ~ Charles Dickens
God made it clear that the best state for
a man is not to be alone, but to have a mate and partner for companionship.
Adam has it all in terms of beauty, a job, and perfect environment, but he was
not complete without a woman. He had fellowship with God even, but nothing
could take the place of a woman. She was the crown of creation for man. Sex is
a human need that is not met by the things of the spirit. F. W. Robertson said,
"There are two rocks in this world of ours on which the soul must either
anchor or be wrecked-the one is God, and the other is the opposite sex."
God and man agree that it is better to have a fallen world with women than a
perfect world without them. The first bachelor was not content with perfection.
His first problem was solved with a wife. His second problem was his wife. Here
was the first wedding and no wedding dress, but all were naked at this wedding
and no shame. They had no knowledge of how sex could be used in immoral ways
and so there was no shame for all was pure in the sight of God and man.
Everyone needs help and that was why God
made Adam a helper to complete life. Mates are to help make life easier for
each other. Adam had a language and was to name all of the animals, but he had
no one to talk to. Woman was made for man to have someone to communicate with.
Having no one to talk to was an imperfection in the garden of Eden. We all need
to communicate and marriage is to provide this. But unfortunately males and
females have a difficult time continuing to communicate after they have been
together for some time. They develop patterns that causes them to lose what
they had when they first met and dated. Someone put it in these words which describes
the majority of couples. " I believe a secret to the cure for divorce may
be found in the idea of "talking with one another." Can you remember
back to the time when you were dating? You couldn't wait to call your
girlfriend or boyfriend, and when you saw them you wanted to stay, and stay,
and then when you finally had to leave, you got back home and called them up
and talked some more. When you got married, it seemed this method of behavior
reached a climax, and communication began to end. We must open the lines of
communication in our marriages. We must not take our spouse for granted, but
take time to talk, and turn off the TV. An author stated, "Communication
is to marriage as blood is to the body."
A major problem in marriage comes when
mates do not communicate how they really feel. A man develops a fear that he
might lose his job because of cutbacks and he does not share with his wife that
he has this fear. He does not want to bother her and make her upset. He shows
that he has a problem, however, by siting and staring as he broods about the
possible negative future. He may be less attentive and less motivated for
intimacy. His emotional energy is being spent in worry instead. The result is
that his wife is upset because he is not acting normal and she worries about
why, and imagines things even worse than his losing his job as the cause of his
change of behavior. The very thing he is trying to avoid is made worse by his
lack of communication. He could share with his wife why he is worried and have
relief, and she would have relief as well by knowing his problem, and together
they could cope much better with their fears. This same problem arises for many
different reasons. The wife can have a fear that her husbands association with
another woman at work could lead to an affair. Instead of hiding this fear and
letting it grow out of proportion to reality she needs to share her concern and
get reassurance that her fears are groundless. The point is, all of our
emotions that can lead to us having fears and worries that hinder our normal
happiness need to be communicated so that they can be dealt with. Hiding any
concern only lets it be in control, when sharing it can put you in control of
the situation. Someone said it this way, "Communication means to overcome
the desire to conceal feelings and thoughts and rise to the level of honestly
about money, fears, wishes, motivations, sex feelings and responses, mistakes
made, resentments and misunderstandings."
Why don’t mates share all of their
feelings? It is because of the fear of rejection. They fear their mate will say
they are foolish and stupid for feeling that way. They fear they will be
thought weak to have such feelings. Again, we are back to the vital importance
of acceptance in marriage. We can only be honest with all of our feelings when
we feel fully accepted. Mates need to understand that all feelings are
legitimate. You cannot have wrong feelings. They may be unfounded and
unnecessary, and they should be eliminated, but they are real at the time and
need to be accepted as who you are at that moment. When all feelings are
accepted, then one has the security to try and sort out whether they are valid.
Communication can only be completely honest when there is complete acceptance
of each other. This will lead to freedom to be who you are with each other so
that you can deal with reality and not be trying to cope with the hidden and
unknown. It is not always pleasant to know how your mate really feels about
things, but it is more healthy for your long term happiness.
A couple needs to learn to accept the
fact that they will not always like the way the other feels, and this may even
make them angry. It is okey to let your mate know you are angry, for
suppressing it can only lead to resentment. Get it out as to how you really
feel, even if you know your mate will hate that you feel that way. This is a
part of intimacy, for you cannot be intimate if you do not know how a person
really feels. When anger is out in the open it can be dealt with honestly. It is
not a lack of love to be angry at one you love. We can even be angry at God
because we do not understand Him and his mysterious ways. But Paul says,
"Be angry and sin not." It is valid to be angry, but anger must
always be under the control of love so that love masters the anger and lets it
lead to communication that relieves it. Anger can be a method of getting the
attention of a mate who will not recognize that they are behaving in a way that
is hurting you. They need to hear your hurt in order to stop, and they often
will apologize when they realize it, and so anger can lead to reconciliation.
It is just a forceful type of communication that gets attention fast, and can
resolve a problem fast. A person who loves us will not want to continue to hurt
us when they understand what they are doing, and so anger can lead to healing
of a relationship. Peter Hector writes, "So in a loving relationship,
allow your partner the freedom to express anger. Don’t argue or fight back, but
listen attentively while he/she vents angry feelings. If you constantly ignore,
make light of, or fail to acknowledge your partner’s anger, he/she may turn off
and withdraw to himself/herself. This can begin a downward turn in your
relationship."
The point is, anger and all other emotions,
be they negative or positive, need to be communicated so that your mate has a
realistic opportunity to respond in word and action to who you really are. When
you hide the real you and how you really feel they cannot deal with reality,
for they do not know what reality is. There has to be self-exposure for honest
communication. This includes positive feelings as well, for how can a mate meet
a need you have if they do not know what it is. If there is something that
gives you pleasure and satisfaction you need to share it, for few mates have
mental telepathy that is able to read your mind. Many mates feel that their
partner should know what they like and what they want, but this is unrealistic
expectation. It is like expecting to go to the grocery store and find a cart
filled with all of the things that you want for the week. That is folly and
impossible, for nobody knows just what you want to eat. People’s taste change
and their moods change, and so even someone who knows you well and knows your
usual eating habits cannot predict what you will want for this week, or this
day, or for the next meal. Only you know, and you have to communicate it. You
have no right to expect your mate to know anything you want until you make it
clear, and this means telling them enough times until they can repeat it back
to you. Saying something once, or even just twice, is not communicating. You
have not communicated until your mate can state back to you what you are
conveying. It is folly to expect them to know without repeating yourself
several times. Unrealistic expectations are a major cause for heartache in
marriage.
Larry James writes, "Openness means being willing to
communicate my deepest feelings. There can be no intimacy without conversation.
The only way my love partner and I can truly communicate is to tell the truth.
Truthful communication moves love partners and creates a condition of unity,
love and satisfaction. For intimacy to grow in a healthy love relationship
there can be no withholding; feelings - both positive and negative - must be
shared equally between love partners. The act of withholding the truth is
always potentially a lie." One experienced counselor was asked: What is
the most essential characteristic of a happy marriage? He replied, "After
love, the ability to confide fully, freely, and frankly in each other. Look at
the following example of the lack of honest communication, and make sure such
folly does not enter your head.
Martial therapist Carlfred Broderick
often tells his clients of an incident that occurred in the early days of his
own marriage. Having come down with the flu, Broderick took to his bed and
waited to be cared for by his bride. Specifically, he waited for her to bring
him large glasses of orange juice--something that his mother had always done
whenever he had been sick as a child. Now, though Broderick's wife paid
attention to his needs in every other way, no juice was forthcoming. Eventually
the therapist said, with what he thought was great tact, "Honey, I didn't
realize there wasn't any orange juice in the house." Taking the hint, his
wife brought him one small glass of juice. When hours passed without a refill,
Broderick asked for more. And another small glassful appeared.
The same sequence of events continued for
two more days until finally the therapist's wife said with some annoyance,
"What is this with you and orange juice? Even when I get some for you it
doesn't seem to satisfy you!" Having grown up believing that, no matter
what ails a person, one gets better in direct proportion to the amount of
orange juice one is given, Borderick could not understand his wife's seeming
lack of concern for his recovery. "I was so hurt," he recalls,
"that if I hadn't felt so weak I would have left the house."
"Married couples play this game all
the time and it leads marriage to become a contact sport with a lot of
injuries." We assume too much in marriage. We assume that our mate thinks
like us. We know if we were them we would, as a woman, cook just the right food
and be more into sex. We know we would, as a man, be more affectionate and
thoughtful. We all know what we want and expect our mate to know too, but this
is not the way it works. Some suggest that role reversal can be the best way to
communicate. You each pretend to be the other and share how you feel.
A common problem is what happens when
couples go to be with one of their families. Men tend to ignore their wives and
this can be a difficult and awkward time for the wife. Les and Leslie Parrott
had this problem, and she tells of how she solved it. "In the past
whenever we'd go to Les's house, he'd shift into pre-marriage mode and forget I
was his wife. Rarely checking in with me, he'd visit his buddies or take off
with his dad—leaving me to fend for myself. He didn't mean to do it, but it
felt as if I was invisible, a mere tag-along. And it was terribly lonely.
Finally, in private I asked Les if he realized what he was doing and, like your
husband, he didn't. He was having a good time and assumed I was too. I was
careful not to blame him or lash out because I felt wounded. But I did tell him
how I was feeling and he began to see the situation from my perspective. This
would have never happened if I'd accused him of deliberately ignoring me
(that's guaranteed to put him on the defensive and solve nothing). But focusing
on what was going on inside me when he took off without my input or didn't
include me in discussions helped him realize what he was doing. And I realized
I couldn't take his behavior personally, as I was tempted to do."
She could have suppressed her frustration
and become resentful, as many women do, but she brought it out into the open
where it could be dealt with. There are many things that mates do that hurt the
relationship, but they are not being mean and indifferent. They honestly just
do not know that they are hurting their mate. Without open communication these
things can never be resolved. Mates can only see your perspective when you show
them what it is. If you don’t show them, they can go on making you angry in complete
innocence. Your lack of communication is more serious problem than their
ignorance, for if they knew they would no longer be ignorant, and have the
option of doing the loving thing to meet your need.
Dr. David Mace in Close Companions
writes, "It is quite possible for two people to live together under the
same roof, as husband and wife, for many years; to sit together at meals three
times a day, to sleep in the same bed every night....and do this for a
lifetime, and not really know each other as persons." The only way we can
know anyone intimately is by communication and self-disclosure. Mates must
learn to expose not just their bodies for physical intimacy, but their inner
being for the other types of intimacy.
We need to keep in mind that it is not
just the things that bother us that we need to share, for we sometimes also
keep to ourselves some things we like, and by doing so lose what can be of
value. Here is an example of not communicating a positive.
"After fifteen years of marriage,
Vic and I had our pizza order down to a drill: half pepperoni with onions, half
sausage with onions and bell pepper.
But for those years, I longed for the
taste of anchovies—I grew up in an anchovy family. But from everyone else, I
heard stories about how anchovies made people gag. So for 15 years I had
deprived myself of anchovies for the good of my marriage.
One night, as my husband and I stood in
line at the pizzeria, I looked past the order-taker and into the kitchen. The
taste of anchovies began to beckon. Anchovy, anchovy, they called, as I
conjured up the salty, meaty taste.
Maybe just this once, if the pizza man
promised not to drip juice on the other half and if he made a big mark to show
the pepperoni-anchovy boundary, I could get anchovies on my half. So I asked.
Vic's jaw dropped. "You like
anchovies?" He almost shouted. "You mean all these years, I've been
going without anchovies because I thought you didn't like them?"
That pizza was the best we had ever
eaten—slathered with spiky, spiny, salty anchovies."
by
Jane Tod Jimenez
Ed Wheat is a major Christian authority
on marriage, and I want to share some of his wisdom here. He wrote, "An
unknown sage once said, "Sometimes we wake up to the startling discovery that
many of our most important relationships are suffering from verbal
malnutrition." In no relationship are those words more true than in
marriage. With good communication, a marriage grows---stronger, richer, more
meaningful. When a couple as little or no communication, the marriage dies,
much like a plant that gets no water.
He goes on, "Communication is one of
the extraordinary delights of marriage, when it's working. Nothing, not even
sexual fulfillment, will bring as much enriching intimacy into your
relationship. But it's more than a luxurious pleasure. Call it the lifeline of
a love-filled marriage--the means by which indispensable supplies are
transported from husband to wife, and from wife to husband.
WHAT A GOOD LIFELINE SUPPLIES.
If you have good communication in your
marriage, the lifeline will provide these supplies:
The knowledge and understanding of one
another which you need for intimate closeness.
The interchange of information and ideas
you need to work together as a husband-wife team.
The capability to work out your
differences and resolve your conflicts.
The continuing "in touch"
contact you must have to grow together in the
same direction, and to be there to
support each other during the changes and difficult times of life.
Obviously, couples trying to operate
without these supplies will encounter major problems. In the troubled marriages
we counsel, communication lines are almost always clogged or severed. In fact,
researchers believe that ninety percent of all marriage counseling involves the
attempt to restore communication, or to teach the couple to communicate
effectively for the very first time."
Willard Harley is another outstanding
authority on marriage. His book His Needs Her Needs is one of the best I have
ever read. He wrote out of his own personal experience, "I can personally
testify to how easily a couple can change and grow apart if they don't maintain
good conversation. When we married, I had just graduated from college, and
Joyce had just finished her second year. After just two months of married life
Joyce decided not to finish college and took a full-time job as a secretary. We
had our first child when I completed two years of graduate school, and Joyce
became a full-time homemaker. At the end of three more years of graduate
school, I had a Ph. D. and we had two children.
Joyce began to develop her interest and
ability in music while my career led me into psychology. She became a gospel
recording artist and sought-after speaker and vocalist. I taught psychology, conducted
research, and developed a counseling practice.
Soon I saw that we had little to talk
about anymore. When I tried to tell her about my work, she tuned in for all of
ten seconds and then was gone. I listened for about the same amount of time.
When a husband and wife take part in
conversation that really communicates this information about their needs, they
will learn to become more compatible. They need to share their feelings and
reactions. To start such a conversation, ask what your spouse thinks and feels.
One evening you might use questions such as these: "What has made you feel
good today? What has made you feel bad? Then let your spouse know what made you
feel good today and what made you feel bad.
When you share this kind of information,
you will better understand what's going on in your spouse's world and his or
her reactions to situations that influence you both. If something I do affects
my wife negatively, I need to know it so I can eliminate that behavior and do
something pleasing for her instead. Conversely, if I'm doing something right, I
need to know that, too, so I can continue or even increase that action. Couples
can't work too hard or too long at this process, because even doing something
with the best intentions can backfire, if you don't keep in touch this
way."
WHY IS COMMUNICATION SUCH A PROBLEM?
It is a problem because we do not realize
that we need words just as we need food to be healthy and happy. Someone put
it, " Words are mind and soul food and they either nourish because they
are healthy words, or they make you ill because they are toxic words. You can
starve mentally and emotionally if you do not get an adequate intake of verbal
food. No communication for the mind is like no calories for the body. We get
word hunger and crave meaningful conversation. This is especially true of a
mother who spends all day with young children who have a limited vocabulary. It
is verbal milk and cookies all day and she needs some adult
communication." People are shocked that after years of marriage they have
problems and they do not even recognize they have neglected their marriage and
do not even communicate. John W. Drakeford writes, "Years of experience in
a counseling center led me to conclude any type of family difficulty could be solved
if the subjects learned to communicate with each other."
"What is a friend? A former stranger
that you learned to communicate with. What is a lost friend? One you ceased to
communicate with."
Jack Taylor in What Every Husband Should
Know writes, "Nothing in our lives has yielded more dividends than the
time we have deliberately set aside to communicate. The most valuable lesson I
have discovered in many years is that a wife considers any communication better
than no communication at all. Now that I think of it, I believe that Barbara
and I learned this together. It mystified me that Barbara would seem to push
for communication, even if she had to make me angry to do it. Then, when I
would respond in anger at first, the whole spirit of our conversation would
change. She seemed to delight in it. She would rather have me talking to her
angrily than not talking to her at all!
Listen to one passive husband's plea.
"Something must be done about women. My wife is always pushing my buttons,
just to get a response. I don't think she cares about what kind of response she
gets, just as long as I react. She pushed so hard the other day that I finally
yelled at her and told her to lay off. She grinned as though I had given her a
bouquet of flowers. She said, "Usually I get no feeling out of you. I'd
rather you yelled at me than to have you just sit there."
Communication lies at the heart of a
woman's needs. Through it most of her needs are met. She needs to be loved and
have continued evidences that validate her feelings. The woman who does not
communicate will suffer death in a part of her being where life's deepest
responses are born.
These words can be posted on the door of
any house whether it is the house of government or the house of business--but
more especially over your dwelling and mine---COMMUNICATE OR
DISINTEGRATE!"
Men and women are constructed so
different, and it is hard for each to understand the others construction. They
expect each other to be normal human beings, but never taking into consideration
that what is normal for them is not normal for the opposite sex.
Rhonda Rhea writes, " I don't know
about that whole Mars/Venus thing, but I think I can safely say men and women
certainly operate on different hardware. We're wired differently. To me, it
seems as if men are computers and women are, well, cell phones. The computer's
communication is most often a one-way communiqué. Cell phones, on the other
hand, require two-party participation. They're all about communication."
Then she quotes Dr. James Dobson’s book Love For A Lifetime, in which he says,
"Research makes it clear that little girls are blessed with greater
linguistic ability than little boys, and it remains a lifelong talent. Simply
stated, she talks more than he." Dobson suggests that God may have given
Mrs. Cell Phone 50,000 words per day while Mr. Computer may average 25,000. By
the time he's walking up the driveway to his relaxing safe place, he's most
likely used 98 percent of his daily word store—he's practically in "sleep
mode" already—that mode that's used after the screen saver's been on for a
while. She, on the other hand, is ready to give him most of her 50,000—and she
wants a similar number from him. But all she gets is a busy signal."
If a wife understands this, she will be
patient with him and allow him some time to relax when he gets home and not
have to deal with anything more for awhile. The timing of communication is as
important as the content, for at the wrong time it just does not compute. Mates
have to be selective as to timing and not pour out problems and needs for
decision making at a time when this is adding a load just when the last straw
may be all it takes to break the camels back and start a fight. Mates need
preparation for communication. After some rest and a good meal a man is more
likely to be able to deal with some issues that have been on the wife’s mind
for hours. It works the other way around too, for in the evening the wife may
be exhausted after a hard day, and she needs rest and recuperation before she
is ready for dealing with issues that are on the husband’s mind. Each needs to
be sensitive to the state of mind of the other for communication to be helpful.
Rhe writes again, "Let your computer
be a computer. Lynn spent the first three years of her marriage trying to
remake her husband, Doug. Doug resented her motherly corrections and they
argued at almost every encounter. When they decided to talk to a counselor,
Lynn was sure he could whip Doug into shape. Was she surprised when the
counselor hinted that she was a big part of the problem! The counselor
encouraged her to let her husband be himself. She had essentially been trying
to make a computer into a cell phone." Again, we come back to the basic
truth that we need to accept our mate, even though we wish God would have made
them as intelligent and loving as we are. We need to remember that when
choosing a mate they come with that sign you see on some cars in the lot,
"As Is."
Rhe advises women to maintain close
relationships with other women, for they will be glad to let her unload a good
share of their 50,000 words. This relieves them and their husband, for the
husband can never be a good listener when there is an overload to his system.
Women help each other out a lot in this area, and so wives need to have female
friends with whom they can share a woman’s perspective. Some portion of this
will inevitably be complaining to each other of how un-understanding their
husbands are, but it should be kept to a minimum, for talking negatively about
men only reinforces the natural resentment toward the stupidity of the male
sex. You have enough of this already, so you do not need to refuel the tank.
The ideal is to heed the advice of Paul in Col. 4:6: "Let your
conversation be always full of grace."
THE IMPORTANCE OF LISTENING
The following paragraphs are my testimony
about my not listening and some words of wisdom about its importance, which I
have shared in marriage enrichment seminars.
Many years ago she was worried the house
was on fire. I sat by the fireplace reading the paper wondering why her head
was filled with such nonsense. "Of course you smell smoke." I said,
"The fireplace has been burning all day." She quieted down for
awhile, but soon she was back on her theme and said again, "I smell smoke."
I ignored her as long as I could. But when I saw smoke coming up through the
carpet, I thought maybe she has a point. I called the fire department, and a
truck was there in minutes. Sure enough, the rafters were on fire under the
fireplace, and our whole house would have burned had we left as we had planned.
A few weeks ago I was in charge of
cooking a turkey on the grill. A rerun of a great tennis game was on TV, and I
was glued to it. Lavonne began her worry wart fear that I was neglecting the turkey.
What a joke I thought. I have never burned anything on a grill, and the match
wood soon be over. "Just a minute" I kept saying for about ten
minutes. Finally it was over, and with no sense of urgency I walked out on the
deck and opened the grill. I was in instant panic. The bottom of the turkey was
on fire. The flames was fierce as the grease was feeding them. I couldn't
believe it. I shut the lid and closed the vent, but still it burned. I turned
off the electricity and pulled the plug, but it had no effect on the fire.
Lavonne finally threw some baking powder on it and put it out. The entire
bottom of the turkey was burned black but fortunately the rest was okay, and we
fed ten people and had left overs. Another few minutes, however, and it would have
been a total loss.
The point of all this is, by not
listening to my wife's fears I almost lost a house and all our belongings, and
a turkey a half hour before company arrived. Lavonne could probably call to
mind a few other times in which I did not listen. In fact, I think the words
"You never listen to me" are recorded several places in my brain. How
many husbands have heard such words from the mouth of their mate? What about
wives who have heard it from husbands? Even bad things can be funny things to remember
long after they are past. Share with your mate the dumb things you have done
because you didn't listen.
Dwight Harvey Small has some very
important words to digest on this problem. He writes, "Disturbed
communication indicates a pathological condition. A husband and wife
relationship cannot survive without a minimum degree of communicative success.
Not to communicate is to become alienated, to be unable to participate in
another's life. Alienated people cannot listen to one another. The alienated cannot
communicate; the non-communicating are alienated; it is a vicious circle. Given
time, the accumulated frustration and resentment that accompanies poor
communication will cause two married persons to quit listening to each other
altogether. Dialogue then ceases to exist, which is tantamount to emotional
divorce. To shut off one's life and become inwardly inaccessible, to deprive a
husband or wife of the means of communication, is to say, "I no longer
care to participate in your life." And whenever one partner stops
listening to the other, what is it but infidelity of a real sort?
Reconciliation at that point demands a new and honest beginning in
communication. Both partners must learn to listen all over again-or perhaps
learn to listen for the very first time. The promising thing is that they can
learn!" They can if they want to, but often people do not want to listen,
or they just accept non-listening as a part of life.
Ric Masten wrote
i have just
wondered back
into our conversation
and find
that you
are still
rattling on
about something
or other
i think i must
have been gone
twenty minutes
and you
never missed me
now
this might say
something
about my acting ability
or it might say
something about
your sensitivity
one thing
troubles me tho
when it
is my turn
to rattle on
for twenty minutes
which i
have been known to do
have you
been missing too?
Let's recognize that even God has this
problem with His people. They often will not listen to His word and have to
suffer the consequences. Getting people to listen is a major problem of the
entire universe, and God is working on it all the time. Many of the Proverbs
deal with this issue. Here are just a couple of them:
Prov. 8:32-34 Now then, my sons, listen
to me; blessed are those who keep my ways. Listen to my instruction and be
wise; do not ignore it. Blessed is the man who listens to me...
Prov. 13:1 A wise son heeds his father's
instruction, but a mocker does not listen to rebuke.
Prov. 15:31 He who listens to a
life-giving rebuke will be at home among the wise.
Prov. 18:13 He who answers before
listening-that is his folly and his shame.
There are many others, but these make it
clear that good listening is a part of wisdom, and poor listening is a part of
folly. Men are more likely to be the one who does not listen in a marriage. I
am a one track-minded person, and if TV is on you only have a 50-50 chance of
communicating with me. If it's the news, your chances are greatly diminished.
If it's football, forget it. Men can hear the sound of their mate talking, but
not the message, unless the message is something they really don't want to
hear.
For example, a wife was talking to her
husband as he read the paper. She knew he was not listening, so she said,
"I want you to know I've invited the president for dinner tomorrow."
He said, "Yes dear." She said, "I think our daughter might be
pregnant." He again responded, "Yes dear." She said, "I
have a date with your boss tonight." He said, "Fine dear." She said,
"Give me 60 dollars for a new dress." He responded, "What! Are
you kidding-you don't need a new dress!" Selective listening is not all
bad, for there is a lot of sound we don't need to interpret, but any sound from
one we love should be processed.
Talking is not communication without
listening. God has spoken to man, but they do not hear, and it is the same as
if He had not spoken. That is why one of the most common sayings of Jesus was,
"He who has ears to hear let him hear." A message has no value or
power unless it is listened to with understanding. Not everyone can be a
speaker, but everyone can be a listener, and by good listening make a major
difference in life. Someone said, "God gave us two ears and one mouth
which hints we are to listen twice as much as we talk."
H. Norman Wright wrote, "One of the
difficulties in listening is that one partner tries to second guess the other.
It is easy to think that you know what your partner is going to say, so you cut
your partner off and finish the sentence or interrupt his idea with something
that he or she doesn't mean at all. All to often a husband or wife blurts out
an opinion that is miles from the wavelength that the other partner is on. This
is what the writer of Proverbs had in mind when he said: What a shame--yes, how
stupid--to decide before knowing the facts! (Pro. 18:13.)
A good listener will ask "Is this
what you mean?" And then say what you think. They will either say that's
it or you are on the wrong track. For example, a woman was asked, "Where
did you get that huge diamond?" She responded, "From my late husband.
He asked me to promise him I would use some of our money to buy a nice stone
when he was gone." She was not hearing what he said, but what she wanted
to hear. Communication did not take place because of poor listening. David W.
Augsburger defines communication as "the meeting of meaning." He
writes, "When your meaning meets my meaning across the bridge of words,
tones, deeds, acts, when understanding occurs, then we have communicated.
Communication, then, is the visual or vocal transmission of meanings from one
to another.
Gary Smalley in Advice to Wives has some
very practical words for wives on how to deal with the listening problem. He
writes, "By now I hope I've made one point clear: most men do not
understand women. Since you know your needs better than anyone else, you can be
your husband's most effective teacher: He needs it: learn from you why it's
important to listen to you and how to listen.
First, explain why it's important to you
that he spend time listening with his undivided attention. (The woman called
"virtuous (also, "excellent") in Proverbs 31:10 was so called
because she had convictions and influence. Convictions bring influence. When
you're sold on something, like the importance of a better relationship. It will
show through your facial expressions.) Let him know that when he doesn't listen
to you attentively, it makes you feel unimportant and unappreciated. Explain
that this, in turn, decreases your desire to meet his needs. Make it clear,
however, that the opposite is also true. When he constantly listens to you with
attentiveness, you feel more important and have a much stronger desire to meet
his needs with greater creativity. You may have to tell him these things
repeatedly before they sink in. But each time the opportunity arises, you have
another chance to stimulate his curiosity.
In addition to explaining why you need
his undivided attention, you must show him how to give it. Discuss the
nonverbal means of communication with him. As he learns to understand your
feelings by looking at your eyes and facial expressions, your communications
and your relationship will deepen. Gently remind him that his partial listening
doesn't do any good, that you don't want to compete with work, sports, and TV.
Be careful not to let your times of
communication deteriorate into arguments. Use your sensitivity to learn how to
side-step issues, words, or mannerisms that ignite an argument. Some women
concede that the only way they get their husband's undivided attention is to
start an argument. Unfortunately, that's not the type of undivided attention
which builds a healthy relationship. Let your communication be as encouraging
and delightful as possible.
THE IMPORTANCE OF POSITIVE COMMUNICATION
The one area that mates need to
specialize in is the area of expressing appreciation. We tend to take all acts
of kindness and helpfulness for granted. Our mates do many things to benefit
the both of us and the rest of the family. They need to know they are
appreciated, for this makes all the effort worth it. A difficult job done
without appreciation expressed is a burden, but when appreciation is expressed
it become a blessing. We feel good about our service to our mate and family
when we sense they feel good about it. But it is truly a thankless task if
noone cares enough to thank us. We do not need to be thanked for everything we
do, but we need to know we are appreciated, and so we need periodic expressions
of that appreciation. This is an important part of our communication
responsibility. A thankful mate will find that they receive more expressions of
appreciation in return, and so everyone benefits by communicating gratitude.
When you criticize us we get worse.
When you complement us, we get better.
When you try to change us, we won’t
budge.
When you accept us as we are, we try to
improve.
When you don’t help us, we’re mad because
you’re sitting
When you’re willing to assist, we insist
that you sit down.
When you pick on the children, we think
you hate us.
When you are positive and encouraging, we
know you love us.
When you are too busy to listen, we nag
and ramble.
When you set aside time to converse, we
condense our comments.
Communication is a basic need to give a
sense of security in marriage. Mates need to know they can count on each other
to always be there, and this is what we communicate by our daily praise and
thanksgiving for them. Dr. Morris Mandel, author of 13 books writes, "To
love means to communicate to the other that you are for him, that you will
never let him down when he needs you, that you will always be standing by with
encouragement.
If I thought that a word of mine,
Perhaps unkind and untrue,
Would leave its trace on a loved one's
face,
I'd never speak it, would you?"
God has told us something about the
importance of words in the book of Proverbs. For example:
Prov. 18:21, "The tongue has the
power of life and death, and those who love it will eat its fruit." In
other words, you will reap as you sow. If you use words to praise and built up,
you will receive the fruits of this in getting praise in return, but if you
tear down with words you will be torn down as well.
Prov. 25:11, "A word aptly spoken is
like apples of gold in settings of silver." If you want to add beauty to your
home that is like hanging beautiful pictures on your walls, add words of praise
that built up the self-esteem of your mate. This verbal art will beautify your
marriage in ways that can never be done with expensive pictures.
Somewhere I read the statement that love
isn’t love until it’s given away. This makes sense, for hidden and unrevealed
love is of little value. If God so loved the world, but never showed it and
never gave his only begotten Son for our salvation, how would we know that God
is love?
God speaks and reveals his being and his
will because he loves us. Love has to communicate in order to be the positive
value that it is.
Love desires to find out about other
human beings. It is interested in the events of the day, the thoughts, desires,
fears, even the angers or fantasies of others. If love is genuine, it cares;
and caring nearly always involves listening. Louis Evely has stated this well
in That Man Is You:
Love must express and communicate
itself.....
That's its nature......
When two people begin to love one
another,
they start telling everything that's
happened to
them,
every detail of their daily life;
they reveal themselves to each other,
unbosom themselves and exchange
confidences......
God hasn't ceased being Revelation.....
any more than He's ceased being Love.
He enjoys expressing Himself.
Since He's Love, He must give Himself,
share his secrets.....
communicate with us....
and reveal himself to anyone who wants to
listen.
THE IMPORTANCE OF BODY LANGUAGE
Howard and Charlotte Clinebell in The
Intimate Marriage write, "There are many ways to say I love you: A fond
glance, a tender or playful touch in an appropriate spot, a thoughtful gift,
choosing to sit close in a crowded room, and listening with genuine interest, a
kiss on the back of the neck, a note, perhaps a private joke left where it will
be found, a word of sympathy or support, a sly wink, preparing a favorite dish,
a bowl of flowers carefully arranged, a phone call in the middle of the day,
and even, perhaps, remembering to take out the trash are but a few. A part of
the joy of marriage is this opportunity to develop and almost endless variety
of transmission lines for the meanings that are important to each other."
Dr. John Gottman, author of The Seven
Principles of Making Marriage Work tells of how he studied couples who turned
their marriages around, and he found that one of the keys was their body
language. They would cuddle in the morning before they left for work, and these
few minutes, even without saying a word, made them feel close to each other all
day. They start the day feeling loved and it stays with them. Words can be said
too, but it is the feeling that you want to capture, for it will stay with you.
A Chinese proverb says, "Married couples who love each other, tell each
other a thousand things without talking." There are hugs, pats, caresses
and kisses that can give our mate a feeling of being loved all day, but these
should be in addition to words of love and not as substitutes only. Wives,
especially need to hear and feel love from their husband, but unfortunately men
often think their body language of seeking sex is enough, because that is
enough to satisfy them. Do not say with Franklin Pierce Adams who wrote in
1960,
If, my dear, you seek to slumber,
Count of stars an endless number;
If you still continue wakeful,
Count the drops that make a lake full;
Then, if vigilance yet above you
Hovers, count the times I love you;
And if slumber still repel you
Count the times I do not tell you.
Holding hands is a form of non-verbal
communication or body language. It bothered me for a long time to hold hands in
public, but Lavonne liked it and so I have had to overcome my
self-consciousness and do it, and now I enjoy it as much as her. We hold hands
everywhere, but I was not into it when I was younger and would drop her hand in
public and this was a form of rejection. We need to talk about what feels good
to our mate and examine why we have strange feelings about it. Other man have
shared that they do not like to hold hands in public and I have concluded that
it is a macho thing. Men do not like to be connected with anything that is a
sign of weakness and holding hands is apparently one of these things. Another
one I still struggle with is holding my wife’s purse while she goes in to try
on a dress. I feel strange guarding a purse, and so there are things that are
hard for men to do because it reflects on their macho image. Mates need to talk
about these things and find ways to do what is pleasing to both. What kind of
body language actions does your mate appreciate, is to be the question you are
asking and then seeking to implement. I have learned that I can just sit the
purse on the floor and guard it. I don’t have to hold it as if it was mine.
A wise husband will look beyond words for
body language, for wives often say what you really need to hear without using
words. Someone gave this example: "You can say to your wife, "Is it
okay to postpone our dinner date? I want to help Harry get his car
fixed for the race on Saturday." The
wife may say, "I don't care--go ahead."
Those words convey one message, but the
tears in her eyes are saying,"You
louse. You care more about Harry and that
stupid race than you do about me."
What she said was not what she felt. That
is why communication is such a
tricky and complex aspect of human
relationships." You need to get the whole picture and not just the
condensed version that comes through the mouth. Good communication calls for
seeing the body language as well as hearing the verbal language.
Because couples come out of different
backgrounds and with different patterns of behavior picked up in their families
and culture, they need to share these things so they understand why they are
different. When we do not know why our mate is different we struggle in ways
that are not necessary. For example, " Body language varies according to
custom and culture. In North America and Central and Western Europe the right
distance to stand in a face to face encounter is arm's length. In Latin America
and Mediterranean countries, the distance is much closer. So when people from
these two places meet both try to take a position that feels right. The Latin
moves up and the Northern moves back, for it is to close. The Latin feels to far
away and moves up. Both are trying to feel comfortable but neither can, for
their comfort is found in different distances. You cannot please both, and so
there is a need for compromise."
This type of thing happens in marriage
all the time, and if it is not discussed it can lead to all kinds of negative
feelings. A couple on their honeymoon had a fight because the wife began to
talk to another couple in the hotel where they ate. He did not enter in to the
conversation and got very moody. They were on two different wave links. She
felt excited about relating to others as a married woman for the first time. He
felt a honey-moon was a time to ignore the rest of the world and be exclusive.
These opposite points of view led them to spoil their honeymoon. Mates need to
be constantly explaining how they feel and why they do certain things so
differently from each other, for only when they understand the motivation can
they be accepting of what then makes sense.
Gerald Dabe gives these examples of how
to send and receive messages:
METHODS OF SENDING METHODS OF RECEIVING
1. Words 1. Hear
2. Expressions 2. See
3. Deeds 3. Feel
4. Actions
5. Gestures
6. Touch
7. Silence
It is important to find out which of
these is most important to your mate. You might be saying I love you in the way
you send a message, but if that is not what is received then you have not
communicated your love. One woman said to the counselor, "Teach him how to
use words to tell me he loves me. He is great at fixing anything that breaks in
the house. He says that's the way he expresses his love to me, but somehow
repairing the leaking faucet just isn't the same as speaking words." Here
is a wife who is not satisfied with his body language, and so he needs to stop
being satisfied with this as a method of communicating his love, for she needs
her way of hearing it and this means he needs to say it in words and not deeds
only.
BAD COMMUNICATION ATTITUDES
In the book AFTER EVERY WEDDING COMES A MARRIAGE
ByFlorence and Fred Littauer there is this list:
"Ask yourself these questions:
1. Do I interrupt and finish sentences
for others?
2. Do I drop into depression as a
defense?
3. Do I get angry if people don’t see
things my way?
4. Do I pretend to agree just to shut
them up, and resent it inside?
5. Do I make a joke out of serious
subjects in order to avoid facing them?
6. Do I make fun of others and ridicule
them in front of people?
7. Do I jump to my own offense before
anyone can plead a case?
8. Do I clam up and refuse to talk when
the subject gets too close?
If you have answered yes to even a few of
these, you have trouble communicating. You may be verbal and vivacious, but if
you use any of these blocks you are walling yourself away from a true exchange
of ideas with those close to you. Sit down and discuss this problem with your
mate. See which one of you uses which kind of block."
GOOD COMMUNICATION ATTITUDES
Here are some tips to help you and your
spouse communicate.
C--Commit yourself to listening to your
spouse every day.
O--Observe each other's unspoken needs.
M--Make regular appointments to spend
time together and talk.
M--Mend you arguments before you go to
bed.
U--Utilize the opportunities to let your
actions speak louder than words.
N--Notice the positive things your spouse
does, and say thanks.
I--Initiate conversation by asking
feeling-oriented questions.
C--Care about your spouse's opinions,
even if they differ from yours.
A--Admit to your spouse when you're
wrong.
T--Touch each other when you listen or
talk.
E--Expect the best of your spouse.
---Byron Emmort
COMMUNICATION COVENANT
Norman Wright, author of many books and
articles on marriage has put together what he called the marriage covenant. It
can help any couple develop a plan that will aid greatly in their
communication.
1. "We will express our irritations
with each other in a loving, specific and positive manner rather than holding
them in or being negative in general.
I will: acknowledge that I have a problem
rather than stating that you are "doing such and such": not
procrastinate by waiting for the "right" time to express irritations:
ask myself why I feel irritation over this problem.
2. We will not exaggerate or attack each
other during a disagreement.
I will: stick with the specific issue;
take several seconds to formulate my words so I can be accurate; consider the
consequences of what I am about to say: not use words like "always,"
"all the time," everyone." etc.
3. We will attempt to control the
emotional level and intensity of arguments and will take one-to ten-minute
timeouts when we feel our anger getting out of control. During the timeouts we
will in writing define the problem being discussed, the areas of agreement and
disagreement and three alternate solutions. Then we will share what we have
written.
I will: decide before I say something
whether I would want this statement said of me in the same tone of voice.
4. We will not let the sun go down on our
anger or run away from each other during an argument.
I will: remind myself that controlling my
emotions will lead to a more speedy resolution of the problem.
5. We will both try hard not to interrupt
the other when he/she is talking.
I will: consider information that will be
lost by interrupting the other person; put into practice Proverbs 18:13 and
James 1:19.
6. We will carefully listen to one
another when we are talking, rather than using that time to think up our
defenses.
I will: ask the other person to stop and
repeat what was said if I find myself formulating my response while he/she is
speaking; repeat back what I heard said if I have difficulty listening.
7. We will not bring up the other
person's failures in the course of an argument.
I will: remind myself that a failure has
been discussed and forgiven and thus should not be brought up again; remember
that bringing up failures cripples a person from growing adn developing.
8. When something is important enough for
one person to talk about, it is equally important for the other person.
I will: eliminate outside interferences
such as the radio, television, books, etc. during a discussion; admit to the
other person when I am having difficulty wanting to discuss a matter with
him/her.
God said in Gen. 1:28, "Be fruitful
and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it." Sex was God’s plan
to populate the whole planet he had created, and so procreation is a part of
God’s will for married couples. Having children naturally follows marriage, and
the majority of couple do have children. This has led many to conclude that sex
is for procreation and that is all, and sex for any other reason is out of
God’s will. Many of the early church fathers felt this way, and some modern
Christians still do, but it will not be supported by Scripture or by life.
Romantic and sexual love is a major part of the joy of marriage and it is
celebrated in the Song of Song. If this book of the Bible is studied in depth
it becomes the greatest support for passionate sex on this planet. Hundreds of
studies show that the average couple enjoy sex two or three times a week for
many years and even after retirement and into old age. Lovemaking is obviously
designed for two people to give each other pleasure and enjoyment for a
lifetime.
Sex is not to be thought of as a duty,
but as a delight. It is not an obligation, but an opportunity to celebrate your
love. Sex is a banquet of pleasure, and it was not the devil who made our
bodies to experience such sensations. It was God’s plan, and when we enjoy
truly good sex we cannot help but praise God for such a marvelous idea.
Everything of value is also a danger, for it can be perverted, and sex is
certainly no exception. But you do not give up enjoying what is good just
because it can be made bad. Who gives up drinking wholesome milk just because
milk can go sour and be putrid? Sex is probably the most misused and abused of
all God’s gifts to mankind, but God forbid that we cease to enjoy the gift in
the way he meant it to be used and enjoyed. Some do not understand the
importance of making sex a celebration, and the result is they deprive their
relationship in marriage of one of the strongest glues that holds it together.
Many just tolerate it rather than celebrate it, and this is a major mistake.
History abounds with Christian heresy
about sex. One of the fathers of the church was Clement of Alexandria who
commanded his people to have sex only at night and to make it passionless. He
said, "He who too ardently loves his own wife is an adulterer." Talk
about a wet blanket on the flame of romance. A number of such quotes could be
given by those old saints who lived in a monastery or in seclusion. They could
not enjoy sex and so they did not want others to do so. St. Augustine had a
powerful impact on Christian sexual history because of his very immoral
behavior when he was young. He felt that sexual pleasure was out of place in
the Christian life. The modern Catholic church now teaches that he was wrong to
so think, for pleasure is something that God has built into our physiological
makeup. It is the way God made us and wants us to be. Pleasure is a good thing.
Martin Luther came to the conclusion that sex was good, and he helped a group
of nuns to escape the convent and find husbands. He married one of them himself
and wrote, "My wife is more precious to me that the Kingdom of France and
all the treasures of Venice." The Reformation was not only a reform of
theology, but of sexuality.
But history repeats itself and in the
1800's there is a return to the suppression of sexual pleasure. Wives were
taught to be passive in lovemaking and not seek their own pleasure. Feeling
desire was forbidden. Ladies undergarments were to be so folded that the crotch
was never to be seen. Even the legs on tables were covered, and books by a
female author were never to be placed alongside books by a male author. They
just rained all over God’s parade of sexual enjoyment. What a shock it would
have been for them to read a report like the following that is a common sort of
thing in our day. It is an announcement that sex will help your cold.
"According to Bottom Line Personal, adrenaline released during sex narrows
dilated blood vessels—the same effect produced by taking a decongestant. We're
all fairly well acquainted with some of the great feelings that follow sex.
Well, here are two more: you'll temporarily feel less congested and you'll have
a sense that your cold is getting better. So turn off the TV, get out of that
ratty old bathrobe and slip into
something—ahem—more comfortable."
This roller coaster that keeps diving
down and then rising to the heights has been going on all through history as
man fumbles around trying to figure out how to get a grasp of this loose
football called sexuality. First the pessimists have it and then the optimists
and it just keeps on being fumbled. Christians tend to just follow which
contemporary team has the ball in their culture. They waver between
condemnation and celebration of sex. This makes some sense in that it is a
complex multi-faceted issue with both good and bad a reality. But when it comes
to sex within marriage it is folly that believers go anywhere else but to the
Word of God. This is our basis for celebrating sex in marriage.
One of the key areas of life where you
need positive communication is in this area of sex. Mates need to know they are
pleasing one another, and the only way they can know is by clear communication.
Peter Hector writes, "In a group session, a woman explained her husband’s
lack of excitement during sex. "Yes, he goes through the motions, but I
never see any sign of excitement on his face. He says he is satisfied, but I
don’t see any evidence that this is so. It frustrates me and makes me feel
inadequate; I think I am not turning him on." This is a source of torment
for people in relationships with partners who have learned to suppress their
excitement." Do not let your mate get the feeling that you do not find
them sexually exciting. Let them know just what you need to get excited, and
then show them that you are. Celebrate your sex with them. Someone said,
"Sex is the most fun you can have without laughing", but this is not
so, for you can laugh and share the hilarity of the pleasure of sex with one
another. Do not suppress the full enjoyment of each other, but blurt it out
with laughter and a shout. Make it known that you celebrate your love in sexual
embrace. You do not want to be discovered being silly and childish in public,
but in the privacy of your own bedroom you should feel free to be so, for play
is a basic part of sexuality. If its no fun, you are not doing it right.
We live in a day when there are more
resources to help couples celebrate their sexuality than ever in history. All
of the advice and guidance you will ever need can be found in Christian sex
manuals. They include "
The Act of Marriage" by Tim and
Beverly LaHaye, "Sacred
Sex" by Tim Alan Gardner, "Intimate
Issues" by Linda Dillow and Lorraine
Pintus, "The
Sexual Man" and "Secrets
of Eve" by Archibald D. Hart, "The
Gift of Sex" by Joyce and
Clifford L. Penner, and "Intended
for Pleasure" by Ed Wheat.
There are dozens of excellent books on sex by Christian authors that are
designed to help Christians celebrate sex in their marriage. Much of what they
write is no different than what you can read in secular sex guides, but they
add the Biblical and spiritual that you will never find in the secular world’s
literature. For example, here is a bit of foreplay advice from Tim Alan Gardner
in his book Sacred Sex:
"Men, if you want to do something
that your wife will find sexy and sensual, try this simple act of foreplay:
Pray with her. I don’t mean saying grace before dinner, nor do I mean asking
God to bless Grandma and Grandpa and your dog Skippy. I mean really pray with
her.…. Thank God for her beauty, her charm, her friendship, and faithfulness.
And praise God for giving you the privilege of sharing in His beautiful gift of
sexual intimacy with her."
Paul probably did not think of prayer as
foreplay, but he did write about sex in I Cor. 7:5 and say, "Do not
deprive each other except by mutual consent and for a time, so that you may
devote yourselves to prayer. Then come together again so that Satan will not tempt
you because of your lack of self-control." He does not say that the prayer
you have before you come together again can be a sexual aid, but this does make
sense, for anything that adds to a sense of intimacy adds to the pleasure of
sex. Spiritual and sexual intimacy are related. Frequency of sex varies with
couples, situation, health, and many variables, but Paul makes it clear that
sex is both a spiritual and physical obligation, and each mate is responsible
for the meeting of the sexual needs of the other.
Here are a couple of authors who write
about this relationship of the sexual and the sacred. Wade
Clark Roof writes, "I began thinking about
these questions long ago. Reading Freud in college piqued my interest, but it
was during an interview I was conducting about 10 years ago that it really hit
me: sex and the sacred could be closely bound together. The interview was with
a 34-year-old woman, a moderate-minded Methodist in North Carolina, who in outward
appearance gave no hint of having anything to say about sex--much less about
sex and the sacred. She seemed traditional in every way, and I expected a
routine interview about her religious life. The dialogue began as follows:
Q: Where do you experience the divine,
the sacred, God--whatever name you prefer?
A: My goodness. That’s a big question.
I figured I should ask her about her
experiences at church. After all, she was a Methodist and living in the South,
two attributes that would lead any sociologist of religion to predict
institutional-based responses: God is encountered at church. Where else?
But when I asked her about this, what I
got was a rather weak "Yes, I do sometimes experience God at church."
Her answer did not resonate with the passion I expected. I also asked about the
women’s group, the Wednesday-night prayer service, and saying grace with her
family at meals, to which she gave similar, but not very excited, answers. She
was by no means anti-institutional in her views on religion, but it was clear,
too, that the sacred for her was not contained within church walls.
In desperation, I said to her, "You
tell me, is there any place you really experience God?"
"Yes," she replied in a
matter-of-fact manner, "when I have an orgasm making love to my husband.
I’m married to a wonderful man, and that’s when I feel closest to God."
"I was caught off-guard by her
answer, and consequently I failed to ask the follow-up questions I wish now I
had. As so often happens in religious research, an interviewer can be blinded
by his or her unfounded assumptions about people. In this case, I let my
expectations about the piety of Southern women get in the way of asking her the
more telling questions about her real-life religious experiences. Being a Southerner
myself, I should have known better; there is an earthy, indeed even steamy,
side of religious passion for Southerners that is never far removed from its
public appearance."
"Not long after that interview, I
came across Father Andrew M. Greeley’s research on God-images and marital
happiness, in which he speculates that divine intimacy and human intimacy might
actually go together. Marital satisfaction is influenced by sexual
satisfaction, and sexual satisfaction is influenced by warm religious imagery,
and especially so for Catholics, Greeley had argued. The Roman Catholic Church
did not buy his argument, but this Methodist woman in North Carolina gave
personal testimony to its truthfulness.
To experience the love of God is to
experience a sacred union that is at once both mysterious and intimate, and to
know such intimacy, even in its limited, imperfect human form, is to know
something of the divine possibility.
Greeley’s research goes even further. He
reports from his surveys that people who are sexually fulfilled in their
marriages tend to have warm images of God (as mother, as lover, as spouse, as
friend), as opposed to more judgmental and harsh images. The influences are
reciprocal, he argues, with human intimacy a model for divine intimacy, and beliefs
about the latter encouraging a sacramental conception of human love. The two
types of stories--about God and about human relationships--come together."
Dwight Harvey Small in his book Your
Marriage Is God’s Affair writes, "We reach the apex of God’s sexual
purpose for man when we understand the sexual act in marriage as celebration.
Man is the only creature who celebrates. It is the highest expression of which
he is capable, and to it he brings all his faculties-mind, emotions, and body.
God summons man to celebrate life in its fullest. Such celebration is possible
when there is a sense of wholeness about a person’s life, wholeness in his
relationship to God and to others with whom he shares a common life. Especially
is this true in his relationship with a life partner." "When
sexuality is properly incorporated into the whole of life and made expressive
of its true ends, it is a dimension of our celebration of life in God."
Douglas E. Rosenau writes about the need
to be playful in sex. He affirms also that all we have said before on a happy
marriage applies to a great sex life. He write, "Fantastic lovemaking is
based on being a fantastic person. Christlike traits and attitudes are what
count. True sexiness and a tremendous sex life depend not only on a great
marriage but also on being a mature, sexy person."
"So you want to be the world’s greatest lover? Build into your mind and
heart the following character traits possessed by all great lovers. These
guidelines, gleaned from the Bible, will lead to great sex. Their effective use
will show you how to truly arouse your mate’s desire. Success is practically
guaranteed, but it will take some real prioritizing and practice to incorporate
them into your life.
"Playfulness is perhaps best described
by the words excitement, curiosity, laughter, eagerness and spontaneity.
Playfulness is the ability to be unpretentious and unashamed as you demand
things with enthusiasm and childlikeness. In your child ego state, your needs
are important and fun and you expect pleasure.
"You cannot work at creating better
lovemaking—you and your mate have to play at it. This character trait can be
practiced in other areas of your life and the lessons brought back into your
sex life. Get silly; anticipate an event for a week or more; risk a new
behavior; laugh until you have tears in your eyes or roll on the floor; tickle
and chase each other around the whole house; get wide-eyed with awe and wonder
about something. You are becoming a great lover.
"The Bible says you are to love your
neighbor or your mate just as you love yourself. Fun sex depends on a husband
and wife who have learned to love themselves. This means you take care of your
health and exercise your body to keep it in shape. You also need to work through
to accepting and enjoying the body God gave you. Self-acceptance, self-esteem,
and a good body image are healthy parts of sexiness and Christian self-love.
Think of how difficult it is to sexually focus on your mate when you are
embarrassed, inhibited, or self-conscious.
"Another important part of love is
respecting and unconditionally accepting your mate. If you want to find and
focus on flaws, you will put a damper on your partner’s sexiness and the whole
lovemaking process. You reap the benefit (or destructiveness if you stay
obsessive) of nurturing and helping your lover revel in sexual appeal. Every
time you affirm some particular aspect of masculinity or femininity that you
admire and enjoy, you lovingly increase your mate’s sex appeal. Unconditional
love and acceptance and affirmation set the temperature for some fantastic
sex."
If sex is just a duty and an obligation
it is not what God intended. It has to be fun and a celebration of God’s grace
and goodness in giving us this gift of pleasure. Something is not right if you
cannot thank and praise God for your sexuality. I know there are many
Christians who still feel guilty because of their abuse of sex before they
became Christians, and I know many have been taught to think of sex in a
shameful way, but there is no excuse for letting these past experiences
hindering your present celebration of sex. You have been forgiven of all past
folly, and you have the Word of God to cleanse your mind of all false teaching
of the past. It is a form of rebellion against God to let the past hold you
captive and not surrender to the liberty that is yours in Christ. If you cannot
celebrate sex in your marriage, get to a counselor as soon as possible.
Stephen Teel has written, "Man is
the only created being on earth who celebrates. Genuine celebration occurs when
we sense our own wholeness, our wholeness in our relationships both to God and
to our fellow man. We are called by God to celebrate life in its fullest - and
especially in our marriages."
Dwight Small's book, Christian Celebrate
Your Sexuality writes, "The human body and sexuality were designed by God
and are therefore good. Still some Christians have a vague feeling that He
doesn't approve of it. Such only robs one of intended joy. It would follow that
"to honor and glorify God in one's body", would include among other
things, one's sexuality. Sex as celebration in marriage is honoring God's good
gifts and His gracious purposes for us.
John Buckeridge, the editor of
Christianity Renewal writes, "....you can read an extract from a chapter
of Philip Yancey’s excellent new book, which highlights the harmful and
sometimes perverted stance the church has preached and taught on sex for most
of the past 2,000 years. As a consequence non-Christians continue to regard the
Christian God as an anti-sex spoilsport. Which as Yancey points out, is
bizarre, since sex is God’s invention. The fact that God chose not to make
sexual intercourse a clinical, boring, matter of fact act, as exciting as
clipping a toe nail… but instead created a spectacular, fun, scarily intimate
and an oh-so-holy gift of loving - should be something the church celebrates
and shouts from the rooftops."
Studies show that those who pay attention
to the many modern writers giving Christian advice on sex have a better sex
life than those who do not. Mark Oppenheimer, for example, quotes a survey that
showed Conservative Protestant women achieved sexual satisfaction on a higher
level than Mainline Protestants and Catholics, and far higher than those with no
religious affiliation. This makes sense, for most of the literature on sex has
been written by Conservative authors, and women are reading these authors. This
also means that we know that when Christian people read about sex, and the
importance of celebrating it, the greater will be their satisfaction. We need
knowledge to do anything right, and this goes for sex as well. The fact is,
Christians should be the best lovers in the world, for they should be able to
celebrate it more freely than anyone, for they can thank God for the gift and
be free to give and receive pleasure without inhibitions and shame. They alone
can celebrate with full liberty in Christ. If you do not have this liberty you
are depriving yourself of what God wants you to have.
Harold & Bette Gillogly write words
of wisdom on the internet, and I have found nothing better than their insights,
and so I share them with you. They say, "Throughout Scripture, there is a
distinct current of celebration, especially as God reveals His intention in
creating marriage. When God fashioned Eve and brought her to Adam, they
celebrated (Gen. 2:22-25). When Ruth and Boaz were united, there was jubilation
(Ruth 4:14). Solomon and Shulamith rejoiced their way through Song of Songs,
from the first word in chapter one to the last word in chapter eight. Proverbs
is full of exhortations to married couples to enjoy their relationship.
Proverbs 5:18 is certainly direct: "May your fountain be blessed, and may
you rejoice in the wife of your youth." "Rejoice" means to reel
as though intoxicated. No doubt about it! God’s talking about celebration!
"To rejoice in your coupleness – to
celebrate your oneness – these are words of action that demand choices. If the
Holy Spirit lives inside you, you have the power to turn your marriage into
jubilation. We’re not saying that every minute of the day is going to be fun
and games, but that even when reality hits you hard or tries to numb you with
monotony, you can still rejoice in each other’s love.
"Pleasure is an interesting word. Somehow it almost does not seem to fit
within Christian values. It feels self-centered and sinful. The truth of the
matter is that God gave us our sensuality to enjoy….I’ve known Christians to
worry about the word erotic….One-flesh lovers are erotic in the best and
strongest sense of the word."
--From A Celebration of Sex for Newlyweds, by Dr. Douglas E. Rosenau
Celebrating is seeing anew what you saw
in your mate that led you to love them and want them forever to be with you. We
celebrate the Lord’s Supper in order to look again at the cross and all the
Jesus endured for our salvation. We need continuous reminding in order to have
our gratitude renewed. So it is in marriage. We need to look at what we have
and consider what life would be without it. Shmuley Boteach has an interesting
couple of illustrations of how the reality of the possibility of losing
something or someone can make us come to treasure them anew. This is from a
very secular perspective, but we can learn from the secular world. She writes-
"My friend Carol works in advertising. Last year she was experiencing the blahs in her job; she told me that she was so bored that she could hardly get up in the morning. She thought she needed to quit and start something new. However, be