Happy Mother's Day to all of you moms and moms-to

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Happy Mother’s Day to all of you moms and moms-to-be. We are so appreciative of you and everything you do for us. I also realize – I’ve kind of learned this over the years through experience – I realize that this day isn’t always easy for everyone. You’re here and this is sort of a difficult day for a variety of reasons. So I just want you to know that I’ve prayed for you and will be praying for you throughout the day. I’m still so glad that you’re here. Because today is Mother’s Day, we know that Father’s Day is right around the corner. I’ll tell you what traditionally sort of happens in church (I’ve kind of noticed this over my ministry). On Mother’s Day we have a tendency to pamper Mom and on Father’s Day we beat up Dad. Right? I’ve been guilty of that. I’ll come out and I’ll preach a sermon on Mother’s Day where I’m like lifting Mom up – Mom, you’re the best and we want to cheer you on. And then on Father’s Day, it’s like a cage match. So what happens is that on Mother’s Day we say, “Mom, what do you want to do?” “Well, I’d like to get up early and go to church and then stand in line for three hours at Olive Garden. That’s what I’d like to do.” (You’ll be there this afternoon, right?) And then it’s like, “Dad, what do you want to do on Father’s Day?” “I want to sleep in and then go play golf. That’s what I want to do. Because he’s just going to beat me up if I go.” So hopefully this year on Father’s Day we can change that trend just a little bit by having Michael Franzese here, as Dave said. I’ve heard Michael speak a variety of times and it’s always very moving. I believe there are a number of books that have been written about his experience and I think there’s even a movie that’s in the works on his life. So you’re really going to want to come on that day and hear from him. Be thinking about the men in your life you’d like to invite. Because I really think that he’s going to be able to speak to the hearts of our men. We’re in week number five of this series we’ve been in now for several weeks called Marriage Unscripted. I’ve learned a number of things through our time together through this content. One of those is that many of our young people had no idea what a typewriter looked like until the graphic on this series. So we’re glad we could give you the history lesson on that. Actually, believe it or not, that’s what I learned to type on. We’ve been walking through this … the idea is that we all end up, for those of us who have gotten married, wildly optimistic about marriage, we enter into marriage thinking we know everything about it and we realize that we really just don’t know anything at all. We don’t even know what we don’t know. I know that I didn’t and I still don’t know a lot. As we sort through the marriage relationship and this script is a sort of values. It is a set of expectations that we all enter into that relationship with and we’ve got to realize that something informs our view of marriage. And it may be the media, it may be our friends, it may be our own experiences, but it needs to be the Word of God – that God’s Word actually carries with it a great deal of wisdom to navigate some of those pitfalls in the marriage relationship. Honestly there are some things that make it onto our marriage script that should have never been there. And there are some things that maybe should be on there that didn’t make their way on it and yet what I want you to know is that through the lens of God’s redemption and grace, that it’s never too late. And you can begin to rewrite that script, now under the guidance, direction, and leading of the Holy Spirit. So just a very quick recap of where we’ve been: on week number one, we talked about the tension of marriage being these unexpected changes in our spouse and the way that we respond will determine

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the strength or the weakness of the relationship; on week number two we talked about the secret, Paul calls it the mystery of the marriage relationship in Ephesians 5, that it really points to the relationship that Jesus would like to have with the church; then on week number three, we talked about the essence of the church being this promise, this covenant, that when the storms of life hit our marriage relationship (and they inevitably will), will we cling to a promise that never changes, or will we cling to these feelings that always change; last week we talked about the power for marriage, and the power for marriage is when you’ve got two imperfect people who say I’m going to serve you out of my reverence for Jesus Christ – I’m not going to serve you because you’re always worthy of being served, I’m not going to serve you because you’re always loveable, I’m not going to serve you because you’re always respectable, but I’m going to serve you because of my standing in Jesus Christ, that’s my motivation. When I reach the end of my self, I’m going to tap into His power and His strength. So instead of looking at your marriage like a tank, think of it like a rechargeable battery – every now and then it just needs to be slapped into the charger and you do that by serving one another out of your reverence for Jesus. I’m going to serve you because Jesus served me. Now today, to kind of wrap everything up, we’re going to look at the mission of marriage. In other words, what’s the end game? What’s the whole purpose behind all of this? Why do we get married? What’s the outcome? What should we be looking for? We talked about this a little earlier in the series – that the best day of marriage isn’t necessarily the first day, but it’s the last day. What’s your marriage going to look like on the last day of that momentary physical marriage here on this planet? So our text today is once again Ephesians, chapter 5, so if you’ve got a Bible, go ahead and turn there. Ephesians 5, verses 28-33. Now in Ephesians 5, Paul goes into this lengthy discussion about the relationship between husbands and wives and we can’t possible fully understand everything that he’s saying here without understanding some of the context of the letter. (We’ve said that almost every week of this series.) If you’ve been here then you know that Ephesians is six chapters long. The first three chapters, Paul goes out of his way to exhaustively communicate our position in Jesus Christ. Our salvation comes, not just through God’s grace, but also His justice. In the person of Jesus, we can have a new standing before Jesus and we’re redeemed and we experience grace. Because of that, it always has practical applications. If the gospel never makes its way into your everyday life, what good is it? The gospel should influence and impact all of our daily relationships. That’s what Paul does. First three chapters is our position in Christ. The last three chapters is our practice in marriage and the primary purpose of marriage is that God desires to prepare us for an eternity with Him and so He links us up with this other person that we can do life with that knows us better than anyone else. Knows our shortcomings and our weaknesses and our faults and even us at our best moments and our worst moments and chooses to use the grace of God to see us through those lenses. And what happens is, God uses marriage to sanctify us. That’s half the reason why it’s so hard – is that friction and tension always produce some sort of result. It always shapes something. And God wants to use marriage in that way to shape us. That’s really the primary purpose. It’s not for my momentary personal happiness – truly ultimately for the glory of God. Now I realize that the subject of marriage and the definition of marriage is a hot topic in our Western culture today. And if you’ve been paying attention to the news, we even saw this last week with our President announcing his endorsement of same-sex marriage. I realize that to take an opposing view on that – that marriage should be for one man and one woman – sounds intolerant to many people. And I can even understand at first pass how you might feel that way, especially if you’re not looking at it through a Biblical worldview. I like, though, how Tim Keller phrases this up at the beginning of his book, The Meaning of Marriage. He says, “A Christian understanding of marriage is based on a straightforward reading of the Biblical texts. This means we are defining marriage as a lifelong, monogamous Intellectual materials are the property of Traders Point Christian Church. All rights reserved.

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relationship between a man and a woman. According to the Bible, God devised marriage to reflect His saving love for us in Christ, to refine our character, to create stable human community for the birth and nurture of children, and to accomplish all this by bringing the complementary sexes into an enduring whole-life union. Therefore, this Christian vision for marriage is not something that can be realized by two people of the same sex.” And so I understand that it isn’t about having a lesser view of a group of people who would like to be married, but it’s having a higher view of what God planned and intended for the marriage relationship. Every time Satan wants to attack, confuse, and distort, he always goes after marriage first. There’s a reason why Satan waited to tempt us until after Adam and Eve were already married. If we’re going to have an enduring and endearing marriage relationship, we’ve got to understand the mission of it; we’ve got to understand the purpose of it – this is what Paul launches into here in verses 28-33. Read with me this text. He says, “In the same way husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church, because we are members of His body. ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.’ This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church. However, let each one of you love his wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband.” Now what Paul is describing and what he’s suggesting here is not fatalism. Oftentimes we can read passages like this and we can say, “I guess what Paul means is that if I’m going to have a happy marriage, I’ve just got to roll over and become the doormat for my spouse; that I’ve just got to concede and let them have their own way. Who’s the alpha in the relationship and then just get kind of get out of the way and let them do their thing.” Is what Paul describing here “Happy wife; happy life”? Is that what he’s saying here? No, that’s not what Paul is communicating here in this passage. Understand that Paul is communicating that the mission of marriage is deep friendship. This affinity towards one another. Now notice in the passage how Paul launches out into this. He says, “Husbands I want you to love your wives …” Interesting analogy here – “… as you love your own body.” Many of the ladies in the room are like oh, man, I’m in trouble; he’s gonna let himself go. What does this mean? Does this mean that guys look in the mirror: Oh man, you’re looking good! I’m going to love myself; give myself a hug! Is that what he’s talking about? No, Paul is saying that, on a daily basis, you and I pay attention to, we invest in, we maintain our physical body and to not do so, we’d be facing some pretty serious consequences, right? So we get up in the morning and we bathe (hopefully) and we groom and we nourish this body and we exercise this body and we take vitamins. And to ignore it, we’d be faced with some pretty serious consequences. That’s what Paul means. He says love your wife as you love your own body, which means constant investment. Constant maintenance. To neglect, to ignore that relationship, that friendship, it’s eventually going to break down, just like your physical body would. Paul goes on here to kind of describe this by saying what that means is that the two of you, you leave your parents and you cleave to one another. Now, what is the most important relationship in your life for the very first part of your life? It’s the relationship with your parents. You depend upon them for everything, they provide for you, you go to them with questions, if you’ve got an issue, you go to Mom and Dad. And Paul says what happens here in a marriage is that you leave your mom and dad, you don’t forsake them, you don’t dislike them, it just means you break apart from that relationship and then you cleave to, you cling to this person who becomes your spouse. And one of the things that I’ve noticed, especially in the early days of a marriage relationship, this idea of leaving and cleaving is largely lost on a lot of young couples and, really, their issues can be traced back to the fact that they didn’t make a clean break with Mom and Dad. And so the very first couple of years of marriage they get into an argument, instead of talking it out, she calls Mom. (This kind of hits a little close to home, doesn’t it?) Instead of Intellectual materials are the property of Traders Point Christian Church. All rights reserved.

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going and saying, “You know what, Honey? I messed up there” he goes to the pub with Dad and they vent and rail on their spouse instead of facing it and enforcing that relationship. You know, Lindsay and I have been married for thirteen years and she would confidently tell you that we’ve been happily married for eleven of those. In the first couple of years of marriage it was tough. For starters, we were really young, just immature, didn’t know what we didn’t know. And then six months into our marriage relationship, we moved three hundred miles away from family and friends. I was the lead pastor of a church at 23 years old (God bless those people!) – all this pressure, all this responsibility, didn’t know what I was doing, constantly like a bull in a china closet knocking stuff around. I’m trying to pour into her what she needs and she’s homesick. One of the things, though, that emerged out of those two difficult years that she would even tell you today is that even though those were tough, it was also a blessing to our relationship because it forced us to face each other instead of run from each other. It forced us to turn to each other and talk to each other instead of calling Mom and Dad. And so Paul says you become one flesh and your spouse becomes your friend that is primary. And he uses really strong imagery here to paint this picture. He says you become one flesh. Now that certainly can be symbolic of the physical intimacy in a marriage relationship, but to reduce it to that would be a big mistake because it goes beyond that. It’s not just a sexual connection; it’s a deep connection where literally the two of you become one. Now, as we do a history lesson and look back over different societies and cultures, we see these different pendulum swings. There are some societies and cultures that totally undervalued romance and physical attraction and said that has very little to do with it – if you’re going to get married, it needs to be logical. It needs to make good economic and social sense and you’re too dumb to figure it out. So, Mom and Dad are going to choose for you. They call these arranged marriages. Young people, how would you like Mom and Dad to pick your spouse? You’re like “No. Way. I’d rather run to the ends of the earth than to have that happen.” But, really, the whole idea was: you’re too dumb to figure it out, we’re going to pick for you. Now, there is a little bit of wisdom to that. Now that I am a father, I’d kind of like to bring it back, okay? In fact, I’ve already tried to approach some of you that I really respect who have kids about my kids’ age – let’s draw up the paperwork, all right? Let’s do it now. Bring it back. But, I understand there are some deficiencies in that too. Because you can have a young couple that’s like, okay I don’t really know you and we don’t have a lot of chemistry and I get a little bit of a gag reflex when I look at you, but Mom and Dad think this is logical. But what’s happened is that the pendulum has swung way over to the opposite extreme in our Western societies today where we really under value some of that logic and it’s basically like well this should be your individual call. Do you get the butterflies? Are you attracted to them? Do they make you happy? And we really don’t put in the hard work of saying: does this make good logical sense? There are personalities that clash, you know. And so you look at that and you try to figure that out and say this would actually probably not be a wise move for us to do this. We have to be careful of these pendulum swings and it would be important for us in our marriages to say, “Is this built on a friendship? Is this built on affinity that can then blossom into these other things?” Because romance and physical attraction and intimacy, those are wonderful things, but those are gifts to the relationship – they are lousy at sustaining the relationship and building the relationship on. There’s a sociologist who is a well-known and respected researcher by the name of John Gottman. It’s interesting, he said recently that 70% of wives in a poll that they did said that the determining factor in whether or not they felt satisfied with sex, romance, and passion in their marriage is the quality of the couple’s friendship. Now interestingly enough, you would think that for men it would be different, but he says for 70% of the men, the determining factor was the quality of the couple’s … friendship. So, men and women are from the same planet after all. We really do want some of the same things. This really shouldn’t be surprising because the statistics on marriage really are pretty scary. You look at the stats Intellectual materials are the property of Traders Point Christian Church. All rights reserved.

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and the average says about close to half of marriages are going to end in divorce. Many of you maybe grew up in a home where Mom and Dad split up and you saw a very ugly separation. Many of you experienced that. Yet, also statistically it will say that over 90% of the people that are sitting in this room right now will get married at least once during their lifetime. You would think that the stats on that would be a lot lower because we see that so many marriages just don’t make it and yet we’re willing to roll the dice, to go all in, to pursue that. Why do you think that is? Because we crave that deep connection with another human being. We really do want to see it work. We really do want to build a life with someone else. That feeling, that impulse – that’s been hard-wired into you by a God who is relational as well. John Gottman goes on in that same study to say, “Happy marriages are based on a deep friendship. By this I mean a mutual respect for and enjoyment of each other’s company. These couples tend to know each other intimately – they are well versed in each other’s likes, dislikes, personality quirks, hopes, and dreams. They have an abiding regard for each and express this fondness not just in the big ways but in little ways day in and day out. Friendship fuels the flames of romance because it offers the best protection against feeling adversarial toward your spouse.” Now the reason why we crave this is because we’ve been made in the image of a God who is relational Himself. God made us relational because He is relational. Did you know that in the Bible, God not only desires not only to be your Savior and your Lord and your God, but He also desires to be your Friend? Did you know that? In James chapter four it says that friendship with the world is (in the Bible it uses this word) enmity (which you could also use the word hostility or hate) with God. So in other words it says that friendship with the world means hate with God. Some of us don’t like that. We’re like: does it have to be either/or? Well it doesn’t mean that we don’t have compassion for the world, it doesn’t mean that we don’t care for the world, it just means there’s only so much of me to go around. There’s only so much that I can invest. I’m either going to invest my friendship with the world, or I’m going to invest that friendship with God. God desires your friendship. Just think about the friends in your life – you don’t spend much time with them, you don’t invest in them, does the friendship grow closer together or further apart? Same deal with God. This relational nature of God – it’s called the Trinity. God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit – all equal in their value, but differing in their roles. This community of friends, called the Trinity, created. And in Genesis, chapter one, God loved what He created. In fact, seven times in Genesis 1, God says, “This is good.” He says it seven times. And then in chapter two, God says something’s not good. And it wasn’t taxes, it wasn’t flat tires, and it wasn’t the New England Patriots. He says what’s not good here is that Adam doesn’t have a friend. I find that, as I was studying that this last week, utterly fascinating. You want to know why? Because God said that before sin entered into the world. Before the fall, when everything is perfect, God says there is one thing that is not good. And what is that one thing that is not good? Adam doesn’t have a friend. Genesis 1:26, we find that God says, “Let us make man in our own image.” Who’s He talking to? He’s talking to the Trinity. “Let us make man in our own image.” So they do that and then they get done, and they say this is very, very good and then God says man we’re missing something here – Adam just went to the party stag. So we need to create a helper companion for him. And that’s literally what the word in the text means. It says when God created Eve, she was a helper-companion – which is not meant to be demeaning of a woman. If anything, it just reveals the short-comings of a man. That Adam, he’s created in the image of God, but there were some deficiencies. There were some things that he needed that he didn’t come equipped with. Eve literally fills him out. She’s like him, but she’s different enough from him to complete him. So Adam, the first time he sets eyes on Eve, I would have loved to have been there. I’m sure his eyes just get big and round, you know, and he sees Eve – the very first words out of Adam’s mouth when he sees Eve was poetry. Adam was a player at heart. He just sees Eve and he’s like “At last!” In other words: I’ve been Intellectual materials are the property of Traders Point Christian Church. All rights reserved.

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waiting. I’ve just named all the animals and they’re great, but they don’t hold nothing to you. You’re amazing! He says, “This is bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh.” And God didn’t just give Adam a lover. He gave Adam a friend. We see this even affirmed in the relationship between the lovers in Song of Solomon. The female speaker in that book in chapter five, verse sixteen – beautiful phrase – she says, “This is my lover. This is my friend.” And in our culture, to our detriment, we have undervalued the friendship that should exist in our romantic encounters and ultimately in our marriages. We’ve pitted the two terms against each other, unfortunately. It usually started back – think back to your dating days, when you were dating somebody and things began to get a little bit more serious and then one of you backed out. And you got broken up with. Remember that conversation? You pull the car up to the driveway, or they call you, or they write you a letter, and they say look you’re great and all, but I’m just not seeing and I just like you as a … friend. And it’s like a dagger to the heart, right? It’s like I don’t want to be your friend. Well great, I guess I’m not good enough for you. I’m not good enough looking, I’m not funny enough to be your romantic interest, so I get the consolation prize. I get to be your friend. Goody, goody, gumdrops. And so we get this sort-of resentment in our hearts over this term “friend” and, without even knowing it, we say well this person is either my romantic love interest or my friend, but not both. Many times we say, I’m going to go after somebody I’m attracted to, go after somebody I feel compatible with, somebody who makes me feel really happy in the moment – and if we get a friendship on top of it then, bonus! That’s nice. And it should be the other way around. You should focus on friendship first and then let it develop into other things. Because romance is going to flicker off and on, bodies are going to change, you’re going to look different at 45 than you do at 22. I’m sorry to say that, but it’s true. The thing that’s going to sustain it will be that deep friendship. In the remainder of our time, let me just point out a few different elements of marital friendship. Here’s the first one: Marital friendship is transparent. So a friend is somebody who’s got your back, not because you’re withholding something from them, but precisely because you haven’t. You’ve just laid out all your cards on the table: this is me, warts and all; here are my strengths and weaknesses. And they get a good long look at that and they say okay, I’ve got your back anyway. I’m going to stand by you. That kind of vulnerability, when it’s wedded with humility always breeds loyalty. That’s a gift from God. In James 4:6, it says God opposes the proud. It isn’t just “dislike” the proud; it says He “opposes” the proud. It’s the idea that God gives a stiff arm to the proud. But He gives grace to the humble. Part of God’s grace to the humble is giving us friends, giving us a spouse who knows the good, the bad, and the ugly and says “I’ve got your back.” A good friend is somebody who says I accept you just as you are, but I refuse to leave you that way. I’m going to encourage you to grow. Proverbs 27 says “Wounds from a friend can be trusted.” The sweetness of a friend comes from his earnest counsel. In other words, a friend sits down and says I’ve got these deep concerns. And you take that in the best possible way because you know they’ve got your back. This is why broken trust in a marriage relationship is so damaging. It’s got to be transparent; it’s got to be safe. That leads us to the next element and that is marital friendship should be an investment. Friendships are a specific kind of relationship. You realize this, don’t you? That you can have lots of acquaintances, you can have lots of connections, you can know a lot of people, you can only have very few deep and meaningful friendships. Not because you don’t want lots of friends, but because you don’t have enough in you to invest in those kinds of friendships. You can’t pour into everybody that you cross paths with. But you’re going to pour into somebody. So the issue is: somebody in your life is going to get cheated out of your time, energy, and attention. Make sure you cheat the right people. That’s really what that means. It’s this idea – think about your relationship with your spouse like a bank account. Are there enough deposits on file before you start taking out withdrawals? Oftentimes couples will come in and they’ll say we don’t know what happened; we just kind of fell apart; I don’t think that we’re in love with Intellectual materials are the property of Traders Point Christian Church. All rights reserved.

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each other anymore. Really what happened is they didn’t fall out of love, they fell out of friendship – a long time ago. Then they begin to distance themselves. The next thing is that marital friendship is acceptance. Proverbs 18:24 says a man of many companions may come to ruin. In other words, somebody who knows a lot of people, somebody who’s got tons and tons of Facebook friends, they may have a bunch of people around them, they may come to ruin – but there’s a friend who sticks closer than a brother. We all need somebody who sticks by us no matter what. The word intimacy could mean into-me-see. You see into me and you see everything about me and you see all my warts and yet you accept me. This creates this environment in which we can thrive. Several years ago I really wanted to impress Lindsay, so I went out and I bought a weight bench. I thought that would impress her. (I’ve since learned that … it does not.) So I bought the weight bench and I put it in our garage because at the time we didn’t have enough space in the house for it. I knew that she was going to be coming outside to do some cleaning up and organizing in the garage. So, I decided to go out and start lifting weights to where she would come out. (Now I’ve learned that if I really wanted to appeal to her, I would help her organize the garage.) So I’m on the weight bench and I’m cranking out, and I put on an extra plate to impress her – which means I put on a plate – and I’m lifting up the bar and I’m going six … seven … eight … aarrrgh! And the bar is on my chest and I can’t budge it and I know she’s coming out any minute and I’m trying to figure out what to do. This is the only thing I could think to do: I begin to roll the bar down my chest, thinking that I could get it down to my legs and sit up and move the bar off. I didn’t think that through very well. So I get it down to about the bottom of my stomach and that’s when she comes out and looks at me and she’s like, “What are you doing?” It’s like: “Some sort of sophisticated ab exercise. I’m good.” So I ended up rolling it up, and I’m screaming as I do it. She’s there by my side: What do you want me to do? I dumped the plates. It was very, very embarrassing. We’ve laughed about it since. What I appreciated about her at the time is she didn’t laugh in the moment. She expressed genuine care and concern. Granted we weren’t done having kids yet – that’s probably what she was concerned about, primarily. It’s that kind of love and acceptance, really, in a marriage relationship. Your friend loves you even when you do dumb stuff – which I do a lot of. Here’s the next thing: marital friendship is sympathetic. Proverbs 17:17 says, “A friend loves at all times.” There’s an old proverb that says friendship doubles the joy and it cuts the grief in half. Isn’t it true? When you’re with someone else, it just doubles the joy of the experience and it cuts the grief in half and God desires to give you a friend to do life with. To raise your family with. To grow old with. I love the mental image of one day, after decades of marriage, and the kids are all grown and gone and we’ve got grandkids and great-grandkids, being able to sit in a café with Lindsay and just look at her and through wrinkles and gray hair say, “We made it! We made it. You were my friend through life.” The root word of that word sympathy is sympathos, which basically just means common passion. Yes, opposites do attract, but don’t overplay that. There needs to be some common ground that you continue to come back to. The next thing is that marital friendship should be productive. One of the very first things that God says to Adam and Eve is I want you to be fruitful and then multiply that fruitfulness. Certainly that was a reference to child rearing, but it’s more than that. He says I want you to yield fruit in your life – Galatians talks about that as the fruits of the Spirit. And then He says I want you to reproduce that fruit. There should be fruit coming out of your marriage relationship. There should be this life-giving power; people should see the evidence of God there. Ultimately our marriage is for the glory of God. Oftentimes we’ve phrased it this way – maybe you’ve heard this if you’ve been in church for any length of time – that Intellectual materials are the property of Traders Point Christian Church. All rights reserved.

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marriage isn’t for our happiness, it’s for our holiness. While I technically believe that to be true, I really don’t like the way that’s phrased. You want to know why? Because it pits happiness against holiness. I’ve either got to be happy, or I’ve got to be holy, but I can’t be both. So I’m going to be unholy and happy; or I’m going to be miserable and holy. Right? No wonder people don’t want to come to church. What we see here is that holiness produces the best kind of happiness. Now we may have to go through some turbulence to get there, but it’s the equivalent of easy food like cotton candy happiness in the moment that just evaporates or a nice filet in which you get nourished from that. God says if you pursue holiness, I’ll give you everlasting happiness – the deep kind of happiness. The progression of a lot of marriages is that the young couple begins, they start off face to face. If you go to a wedding, the bride and the groom usually face one another. We’re looking at each other and we care for one another and we communicate often and then what happens with career and family and stress and responsibility, we go shoulder to shoulder. We stop looking at each other in the face and we become glorified business partners, right? We’re running kids around and we’re paying bills and we still love each other, but we’re two ships passing in the night. We go shoulder to shoulder and then if we’re not careful it can easily slip to go back to back. We’re agitated, we’re irritated, we’re at each other’s throats. We don’t even like each other anymore. What we’ve got to do is we’ve got to reverse that. If you’re back to back, work to go shoulder to shoulder; if you’re shoulder to shoulder, go face to face in that relationship and really work hard at saying we’ve got to look each other in the eye. When I come home, first thing I need to take ten minutes and check in, see how you’re doing. One of the best things that you can do for your kids is not to make them an idol. One of the best things you can do for your kids is let them know they’re number three. It’s God, it’s your spouse, and then it’s them. Now don’t do it in a mean way, you know. “You guys are number three – get out of my face!” Don’t do that. Just lovingly say God’s number one, your mommy (or your daddy) is number two, and then you are lovingly number three. We’ll do anything for you; we’ll die for you. I’m telling you that kind of security will do so much in your children’s’ lives. When kids are constantly hijacking Mom and Dad’s attention, then it erodes the friendship. When that breaks apart, it’s never good for them. Show your kids that you love each other by expressing appropriate affection in front of them. I love kissing my wife in front of my kids because they all turn red. It’s awesome! They’re like, “Aw, Dad! Gross! Come on, we’re eating!” I’d suggest – you’re in the kitchen, your spouse walks by, pat them on the behind. Especially if you have teenagers. And let them see you do it. They’ll love it. I’m telling you. Teenagers love to see that stuff. Here’s the last thing: Marital friendship is enjoyable. It should be enjoyable. Culture will tell you that marriage eventually degenerates into boredom. That’s not true. It should be enjoyable, you should have fun. Take the commitment very seriously, but learn to laugh. Pick those moments. Not long ago, Lindsay and I, we put the kids to bed and we went down into the basement to do some organizing after the kids were already asleep. We were tired and it was the end of a long day and we didn’t really feel like doing it. We have a ping pong table down in our basement and I don’t know how it got started, whose idea it was, but we ended up playing ping pong. So we’re hitting the ball back and forth and Lindsay, she’s not super-competitive, she doesn’t really care, she just kind of lobbed the ball up in the air. I thought about it. And I thought to slam her. So the ball came up and I went BOOM! and hit it across the table and, no gracious way to say this, it hit her in the chest and she looked at me and her jaw dropped like no you didn’t! So my sweet wife, and if any of you know her, she’s so sweet and she’s so composed, she walks over, she gets the ball, she walks over to the table and just goes BOOM! and beams it right at me, it goes over my shoulder. I’m like it’s on like Donkey Kong now! So we get the balls and we’re diving behind furniture and it’s this all-out war and we’re a couple of giddy teenagers on an awkward first date. It was awesome. I ended up getting her over in the corner and tickling her and … got really good after that, but we won’t go there, all right? We won’t go there. The point is, learn to laugh with each other. Don’t take each other so seriously. Be friends, primarily. Intellectual materials are the property of Traders Point Christian Church. All rights reserved.

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See, we’ve said throughout this whole series, really key verse in this passage: Paul says, “Husbands love your wives as Christ loved the church.” What if we changed it to this: Husbands be a friend to your wife as Christ is a friend to the church. It sort of changes it, doesn’t it? Makes it a little bit more accessible. Because we immediately think, well I’ve got to be head over heels in love with her. I’ve got to feel this romance towards him. You don’t understand - she’s hurt me; he’s betrayed me; they’ve changed; they won’t change. It’s … just … too … hard. What about this? What if you just went home and focused on being a friend? Just be a friend. What about romance? What about intimacy? Well, that will take care of itself if you build it on the foundation of friendship. Because life is going to throw all kinds of unexpected things past you and that friendship will be the thing that will sustain it. I came across this video this last week of a couple who has learned this in a very powerful way and I want you to take a look at the screens. Isn’t that powerful? I think that really sums it up really well. Marriage is based on this connection that we have with another human being and that God provides us the resources to make it work. Today, we’re going to respond to the message this morning by taking communion and so, if you have a relationship with Christ, even if you’re here visiting today, we’d invite you to participate in this meal by taking the bread and the juice that represents the body and blood of Christ. If you need somebody to pray with, somebody to talk to, if you need marriage counseling, or if you’re struggling or hurting, please let us know that. We’d love to come alongside of you today as we conclude our time here together. Let me pray for us. Father, we come to You now, so grateful for the sufficiency of your Word. Thank you for the wisdom that’s found there. Forgive us, for we often overlook it. I pray that as we’ve tried to make an honest effort over these five weeks to take a look at Your perspective on marriage, I know that there are so many things that haven’t been said yet; so many things that we could dive into the depths of Your wisdom on. Lord, I pray that what we have covered You’d take and multiply and use it to prepare those of us who are maybe going to enter into a marriage, to strengthen those of us who are in one, and to heal those who maybe were in a marriage who are no longer. God I pray that we would have an accurate understanding of Your redemption and Your grace and Your purpose through this. We love You and we’re grateful. We just ask that You’d help us to cling to You and to cling to one another. We ask this in Jesus’ name, Amen.

Intellectual materials are the property of Traders Point Christian Church. All rights reserved.

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