This Week's Light Service Sermon

Light Service Sermons for the Month
Family—Making it Work
How to Get Along with Your Spouse
DATE: September 20, 1998 TEXT: Genesis 1:27, 2:2-22, 4:1

September 2, 1967 was the longest day of my life and also the most significant day of my life. I woke up that morning nervously anticipating my marriage to Linda, and when I say nervously anticipating my marriage I'm greatly underestimating the overwhelming sense of excitement and absolute fear I felt all day long. Because the wedding wasn't until 4:30 in the afternoon, I had the entire day to sit around and think about it. And that simply made me more nervous. It wasn't that I didn't want to marry Linda, but I knew this was it. This was a decision that would last me a lifetime. And it's the best decision I ever made. Our marriage has been everything God said it would and should be.
I know that that has not been the case for everyone here today. Some of you who are or have been married have found marriage to be anything but a good decision. The marriage has been filled with disappointment, pain, maybe betrayal, and a broken heart.
Perhaps your marriage resembles the definition of marriage a Catholic priest heard in a class he was teaching. While working with a group of boys, he asked one of them for a definition of matrimony. The young boy said, "Matrimony is a place of punishment where some souls suffer for a time before they can go to heaven."
God never intended for marriage to be filled with pain and brokenness. His dream is that we experience a lifetime of intimacy, joy, and love with our spouse; that we not only get along with each other, but that we grow together to a point where we can't even begin to imagine life without the other.
Today, as we continue our series, "How to Get along with Your Family," we're going to focus on the secrets to building a life-long, joy-filled marriage; the kind of marriage God dreams for us to experience. But before we talk about it, let's pray together.
Lord God, in the beginning you declared that it was not good for one to be alone, and so gave husbands and wives to one another. We thank you for the love that brings together two people, and ask you to bless them for their pledge of faithfulness to one another and to you. Under the uniting brightness of your benediction, let that love increase! AMEN
In our Bible reading for today, the writer shares with us several insights that can help us build a great marriage. And today, I'd like to look with you at some of those insights and specifically talk about four keys that can help you get along with your spouse; four keys that can help you experience a strong, healthy marriage.
1) The first key to getting along with your spouse is to be faithful.
One of my favorite marriage stories that I've shared before is about the 24-year-old single man who was sitting at a wedding next to his mom. He watched as the bride and groom each took a candle and together light a center candle to symbolize their unity. And he observed how they blew out their individual candles.
He turned to his mom and said, "I've never seen that done before."
So mom asked, "Do you know what it means?"
And he responded by saying, "No more old flames?"
In our Bible reading Paul writes, "For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two will become one flesh."
The phrase "to be joined" literally means to be knit or welded together. In other words, when two people enter into a marriage, God welds them together with the intent that they stay together for a lifetime. And that means that they have made the decision not to allow anything or anyone to get in the way of their relationship together.
To be faithful means that our spouse will always come first, ahead of our parents, our children, even our job. To be faithful means that we will keep our hearts, eyes, and mind from wandering.
But faithfulness is more than just a decision. It's an action. Faithful couples do things together. They keep the communication lines open. They play together. They romance each other. They surprise each other. Faithfulness simply means that we spend time together keeping the relationship strong. Knowing that you can trust your spouse to be faithful builds a healthy, enjoyable marriage.
2) The second key to getting along with your spouse is to be passionate.
Our Bible reading says, "Wives, be subject to your husbands as your are to the Lord. And husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her…"
Often when we think of passion, we thing of Hollywood's portrayal of it. We think of violins playing every time we look at each other. We think of hours and hours of non-stop lovemaking. We think of two people who never seem to have jobs or other responsibilities and who are therefore able to spend 24 hours a day together. But that's not passion. That's fiction. Nobody can possibly maintain that kind of emotion.
When it comes to passion, many of us may find our relationship more like that of Lucy and Shroeder. As Lucy leans on Schroeder's piano she says, "Guess what…If you don't tell me that you love me, you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to hold my breath until I pass out."
Shroeder looks up and says, "Breath-holding in children is an interesting phenomenon…It could indicate a metabolic disorder…A forty-milligram dose of Vitamin B6 twice a day might be helpful....You need Vitamin B6…you might consider eating more bananas, avocados, and beef liver."
As he goes back to his piano playing, Lucy sighs and says, "I ask for LOVE and all I get is beef liver."
Passion, according to the Bible, is more than simply an overwhelming emotion. For according to the Bible, true passion consists of a strong emotion rooted in a deep commitment. Passion in marriage means that we are totally committed to doing whatever it takes to make the marriage work. It means that we will make our spouse the priority, that we will invest all we are and have into the marriage just as Jesus invested himself in us through his death and resurrection. Passion is the spice that keeps the marriage alive for passion is where our emotion and commitment meet.
President Teddy Roosevelt met and fell in love with a woman by the name of Alice Hathaway. After meeting her he wrote in his diary: "A year ago last Thanksgiving I made a vow that win her I would if it were possible. And now that I have done so, the aim of my whole life shall be to make her happy and to shield her and guard her from every trail. And oh, how I will cherish my sweet queen! How she, so pure and sweet and beautiful, can think of marrying me, I cannot understand but I praise and thank God it is so."
Passion is simply the giving of our heart to another for a lifetime. And that passion, that commitment, keeps the marriage strong.
3) The third key to getting along with your spouse is to be nurturing.
Again our Bible reading says, "Just as the church is subject to Christ, so also wives out to be, in everything, to their husbands...Husbands should love their wives as they do their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. For no one ever hates his own body, but he nourishes and tenderly cares for it, just as Christ does for the church…"
There's a true story about a man who had it all. He had plenty of money, a great position in his company, and a good family. But for some reason he began to doubt himself and soon fell into a deep depression. As a result he began to depend on his wife for everything and she began to resent it. She started to see him as weak. And her resentment turned into nagging, griping, and complaining which only made the situation worse.
A marriage counselor encouraged her to change her focus—to focus not on his failures but on the few successes he had left. She began to build him up. She treated him with love and respect. And within a short period of time he turned around—all because his spouse continued to believe in him and nurture him when he couldn't believe in himself.
To be nurturing means that we seek the happiness of our spouse. It means that we learn to anticipate his or her needs and respond accordingly. To be nurturing means that we help our spouse become all God created her or him to be; that we continually seek to build him or her up.
4) Finally, the fourth key to getting along with your spouse is to be faith-rooted.
The Bible says, "Be subject to one another out of reverence for Christ."
Last summer, I read an article called, "Believe Well, Live Well." It summarized the results of a study done on the effects of religion and faith in our lives. Here is some of what it said about the impact faith can have in our marriage. "The secret is out—religion is good for your health and your marriage…People who attend church even once a month increase their chances of staying married. Religion provides couples with a shared sense of values, ideology and purpose in life. Christianity provides support for married couples to be committed, to show respect, to be emotionally supportive, to communicate effectively, and creates a stable power structure for the home. This intimacy solidifies a marriage romantically and sexually…"
The report goes on to say that the most religious women were the most sexually satisfied which, as the article says, tends to go against the conventional wisdom which portrays Christian women as prudes.
And then the article concludes with this statement—sex begins in church.
It should come as no surprise that faith makes for a great marriage, for faith puts us in touch with the creator of marriage. As we commit ourselves and our marriages to Jesus he helps us build the best relationship possible. Through his faithfulness toward us, his passion for us, and his nurturing of us, he can help us experience the kind of marriage god intends for us to experience.
So I encourage you, if you're married, to enjoy the gift of marriage by building your marriage on Jesus Christ. As you experience his faithfulness, passion and nurture, he will set you free to be faithful, passionate and nurturing.
AMEN