How God Meets Our Deepest Needs II, Seasons of a Satisfying Marriage

And a season for every activity under heaven. And so there are seasons for marriage just like there are every other thing in life. And perhaps the greatest cause of marriage meltdown is the failure to see the seasons change. Unpreparedness leads people into disastrous consequences. Here's a statistic you may not want to hear, but I want you to know it. Only about 25% of those who enter into marriage counseling succeed in the process. You heard that right. 75% who enter into the marriage counseling process don't make it. And that's not because... Honey, I told you I didn't want to go to get that counseling. That's not why. It's because usually couples wait too long. And by the time they get there, their relationship is irreparably damaged. But you see, the point is we need to see what's coming and anticipate and get ready for it so that we can respond with grace and with faith and save this wonderful gift that God has intended for us of marriage. It's imperative that we make an investment in our marriage. I just want to say, you know, my heart was so enlarged in the last couple of days as we went through this conference. Caroline and I have been married, it'll be 30 years this summer. And we looked at each other at the end of the six hours of input that we had during that conference and said, you know what? We both learned some things about what's not exactly right with our relationship after 30 years. And I want to say to some of you who, you know, maybe think, well, I've heard it all. You haven't heard it all. God's not stopped talking yet. And the Word just keeps getting enlarged. And so I want to encourage you. Maybe even today something will come alive from God's Word that will help you in your situation. I want you to know there's hope for you today, too. You're going to hear a testimony today about a relationship that looked like it was over. And God moved in and restored it. So let's look at these four seasons. And you see, it takes effort. Look at the next verse. Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit. What is another word for effort? Work. It takes work. Just write work underneath it. Every good marriage takes work, all right? First season. By the way, I've selected four. I was going to pick six. I think there's really six technically, but six seasons didn't sound right. What was I going to call them, you know? So we're going to go with four seasons. The first is the season of expectation. You know, the initial phases of a romantic relationship are among the most irrational of all periods of life. Would you agree with that? Would you? I mean, we tend to do some things. The intensity level is so high. The anticipation of being together is so amazing. The thrill of discovery, of knowing and being known, of all the anticipated uncharted waters of this romantic encounter and relationship. People just are blinded to the flaws of one another. And they affirm almost everything. I remember counseling not long ago. One of my couples I was counseling. And the young guy said, you know, my sweetheart doesn't know the first thing about cooking. She can't really even boil an egg. But it doesn't matter. I looked right up and said, you know what? It will. It's going to matter. And, you know, we go on down. It's an amazing thing to me. Some couples just see their spouse. We do these little tests back and forth. And the spouse always, or actually the spouse-to-be, sees the other one in these strange kind of glasses that sort of erase all the flaws. I had one young woman said, when I asked her, what scripture would you like me to read at your wedding? She said, oh, I picked out this perfect one for my husband-to-be. I'd like you to read this one. It was in the Song of Songs, the Song of Solomon, chapter 5. Here she said, this is what I think of him. My lover is radiant and ruddy, outstanding among ten thousand. His head is pure as gold. His hair is wavy and black as a raven. His eyes are like doves by water streams, washed in milk, mounted like jewels. His cheeks are like beds of spice, yielding perfume. His lips are like lilies, dripping with myrrh. Do you really want me to read this? His arms are like rods of gold, set with crystallite. His body is like polished ivory, decorated with sapphires. And his legs are pillars of marble, set on bases of pure gold. I had to read that. I mean, that's what she wanted. So, OK. I mean, she checked back with me about, you know, ten years to see how that's going. When you start out, look at this center quote from 1 Corinthians 13. Love is patient. Read it with me. Love is kind. It does not envy. It does not boast. It is not proud. It is not rude. It is not self-seeking. It is not easily angered. And it keeps no record of wrongs. And how many of you know, if we could just live that paragraph, life at home would be radically different than it is for most of us. When we start out, that's kind of the way it usually is. And these expectations that we have in the early days of a relationship, of marriage, I mean, some of them are unspoken, but they're every bit as anticipated as if they were spoken. Things like, he thinks, well, she'll always be just ready for me when I come home at night. She thinks, my mother will always be welcome here. He thinks, she'll always be the most beautiful woman I've ever seen. He thinks, she'll always talk to me with respect that I deserve. One guy said to me, you know, the first year my wife brought my slippers and the dog came barking. Now the dog brings my slippers. I mean, they're irrational expectations. Things like, you know, he'll always let me get both legs in the car before he pulls out. I mean, stuff like that. But the season of expectations are rich. I mean, they are to be fully enjoyed. And I want to say, if you're in that season, love it. Enjoy it. I mean, drink it in. Both spouses follow what's called the rule of the giver. They do whatever they can to make the other person happy and avoid anything that makes the other person unhappy. And it'd be wonderful if you could stay there. But even though that season, our emotional needs are met, and things just seem so great, and life is good, and all is well, you come to a point, inevitably, that we call the season of realization. The season of realization. And we moved there from the lovey couple to the lovey walruses. Just to show you how things do change a little bit. See, both partners look for ways to care for each other. But then something happens, something, you know, it could be a particular crisis or an event, or sometimes you just wake up one day and realize that marriage is like this giant banyan tree that is plopped down right in the center of the living room of your life. There it is. And everything about your life now has to go around that banyan tree. You want to go to the refrigerator at night? You got to go. I mean, that person's there. You want to go down to sit in the living room? That's where the tree is. Everything about your life involves that banyan tree. There it is, and you can't get around it. Things that you used to do or not do yourself now require consideration of another. I didn't mind my socks and other pieces of clothing articles to lie on the floor for a day or two. They were just kind of ripening for the wash. It's not acceptable anymore. I always took a 15-minute shower. Well, now I'm holding up things. Or things like, you know, my cat used to always sleep with me. Forget that, you know. Those kind of things. You know, it's a strange thing about love, isn't it? Like, we chase it all of our lives. And then suddenly we catch it. And it plops right down in the middle of our lives and says, now I'm here to stay. And what we thought was so elusive isn't so elusive at all. It's actually just the opposite. What we thought was unapproachable becomes something you can't get rid of. And strangely, what was the most amazing, intriguing, glamorous, and exciting thing seems to be the most ordinary thing in all the world. It's like the question about the dog chasing the car. What happens when he catches it, you know? You discover some things about your spouse. Like it says in there in your outline, all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. Even that spouse that you thought was perfect, they have imperfections in their lives. And then your response to their imperfections kind of mystifies you. Look at the next verse. You start doing things you couldn't have dreamt of doing before. You say, for I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For what I do is not the good I want to do. No, the evil I do not want to do. This I keep on doing. How many of you, that describes something that happened in your marriage this week. I didn't want to say that to her, but it just came out. Or I didn't want him to know that, and I just couldn't help myself. And you see, that's what happens in this season of realization. What you normally come to realize is that this marriage is going to take an awful lot of work. It's going to require a whole lot more than you bargained for if it's going to work. And as author Mike Mason says in his book, The Mystery of Marriage, Love is like death. What it wants is all of us. Think about that. And it's true. If marriage is to work, it takes, not 50-50, but it takes 100%. Now, the interesting thing is, most couples think they know that going in. In fact, they're so convinced they know it that they say, I'd like to demonstrate to the whole world how we want to be one. Would you give me a hand with this please, Steve? How many of you have been to a wedding where they've done a thing called the unity candle? And you've seen that, and the pastor stands up and says, Well, go ahead Steve, just light both of these. Because they represent the two individuals getting married. And the pastor talks about their light has been shining, the light of creation, the light of redemption. And then the couples, at the right time, this is all kind of choreographed before, and they take the candle and they say, and then at this moment, and then the two of them light the one candle. And they then turn and extinguish this one. So what they don't realize, what they're doing there is, that's all the stuff that used to matter to them. You know, it's, I can't go to bed when I want to. I can't eat when I want to. No more sports center. And on and on and on, I mean, I can go right down the list. And you know, then, here's what they do. I mean, they get, thanks Steve. They get there and they just, you know, very wonderfully take the two of them and they light the one. And this is just so wonderful now. But they don't remember. Every time the other one says, hey, did you take out the trash yet? No, it's your turn. And on and on and on it goes. We don't realize what it means that we say, you know, I'm going to die to myself to make this work. And though I'm making some light of this, there's some incredible moments of truth in every relationship. When love is here to stay, one person said it this way, love is spiritual warfare to the ego. You might want to write that down. Love is spiritual warfare to the ego. There's going to be a clash between what you want and what that other person needs or wants. And something's going to give. And sometimes this season of realization can be somewhat humorous and other times it can be a downright crisis. It can be a crisis of a job change, of a physical encounter with someone. It can be a mood. It can be a personal illness. You know, someone that was just perfect and beautiful in every way to you becomes afflicted with a disease and now you've got to care for someone that's not perfect anymore and those kinds of things. So what do you do? Well, you enter into number three, the season of creation. Friends, this is the core of today's message. If you don't get anything else, get this today. You see, it's at this point of realization, when you realize that maybe I'm not with exactly the situation or the person or the perfect deal that I thought I was in, but at that moment you come to realize that you have an opportunity as a couple to do something that's never been done before. You have an opportunity, as demonstrated by this candle, for two who are unique and separate and different to become one, to create something that wasn't before. And what happens is when your two spirits unite in agreement, that's why the Bible says the two will become one flesh. It's a lot more than the physical act. It's talking about the unity of the being. A new being is formed. A new creation has been made. There's a new power in the world released when a couple comes into agreement. And that power can overcome any obstacle, any adversity, any difficulty. You see, and that's what God wants to do in those moments. Once you realize that you can't escape the crushing weight of the love that's bearing down on your ego, you've got to choose to embrace the change, open to grace, and say, God, then you have to create something new in me. And that's why we have this image up here, I don't know if you can make it out, of the potter beside the wheel. You see, it's as if God takes two lumps of clay and throws them down on the wheel, and then begins to spin it rapidly and put some moisture on it, and then to use pressure and perfect touch, and he creates out of these two lumps of clay, these two very different things, something new, and something beautiful, and something lasting. Of course there's going to be failures. How many of you have ever thrown a pot before? Anyone ever thrown pottery? Huh? No, I don't mean at somebody, I'm not talking about that. I mean, normally when you do that, it takes more than one try, doesn't it? I mean, oftentimes you have to... And to be honest with you, the statistics that I read today about the failure of marriage don't surprise me, and that there's so many marriages that don't make it. What surprises me really are that so many do make it. With all that's involved, it should be a message that there's something powerful and available that causes what could never have been the case, two radically different people yielding themselves, surrendering themselves, that something new could come along, something better than before. You see, just think about it. In society, everything we can think of is used to keep people out of our lives, right? Fences, walls, alarm systems, attack dogs, unlisted phone numbers, privacy glass, everything said, keep away, keep away, keep away. And all of a sudden we get married, and we not only have a person near us under the same roof, they sleep under the same covers. They get as close to us as they possibly can, and they're in every nook and cranny of our life. Every day, stresses come into your marriage. Groceries, bills, schedules, kids, physical stuff, all of it plops right down in the center and says, now you try to deal with this in your marriage. You try to handle this test in your marriage. You try to deal with this change in your marriage. And we're only able to deal with it if we lay hold of grace. That's why Ecclesiastes 4 says, a three-fold cord is not quickly broken. You might want to write that down, Ecclesiastes 4.13. A three-fold cord. What are the three strands of the cord? It's your spouse, and you, and the Lord. That's right. And those three, when those three knit together, something powerful happens. There's a strength and a grace. Dreams are opened up, and hearts are enlarged, and adventure is restored. Matthew 18, 19 says that there's power in agreement. And I will tell you, I have a strong conviction that the most powerful prayers in the world are the prayers of a husband and wife in agreement. Why? Because they are the most in unity of any beings on the planet. A couple in agreement, spiritually, that's a prayer dynamo happening right there. God blesses this union. New life comes along. And if there's one lesson of society, to me, it is that marriage requires grace to succeed. Marriage requires something beyond ourselves. But that grace only operates if a couple, listen, if a couple opens up to it. And there's a very rather obscure verse that I want you to look at, but it's a powerful passage. It's in all the synoptic Gospels. That's Matthew, Mark, and Luke. The word synoptic means to see the same. Synoptic, they see the same. Matthew, Mark, and Luke saw things the same. John saw them differently. And they all tell, Matthew, Mark, and Luke, all tell the story of Jesus going to Jerusalem. But look at the verse. In Luke 9, 51, it says, As the time approached for him to be taken up to heaven, Jesus resolutely set out for Jerusalem. The word resolutely there, you may have heard it said this way. Jesus set his face like a flint. That's the King James Version. In other words, he set his jaw because he knew that what he was going to do was going to require everything of him. And friends, now listen to me. If marriage is going to work, you've got to set your face resolutely to the cross of Christ to make it work. You've got to fix your eyes on him because otherwise it will not work. You won't have the strength. You won't be able to sustain it. When you look at the crossroads, and they're going to come not just once, not just occasionally, but over and over again where you're going to have to make a decision. Will I deny it? Fake it? Ignore it? Or delay it? Or face? That I've got to deal with a change and a season of creation. And if you do, two wonderful things begin to happen. Love begins to grow. That's the next part in your outline. Love begins to grow. And we heard so much about this in our conference, I'm not going to repeat much of it, just to say this. Love begins to grow. When you make the choice for grace to invade, love begins to grow. That's why the Bible says husbands, love your wives, like Christ loved the church. How did Christ love the church? He gave himself, sacrificially, openly, gracefully, he gave himself. And it says, wives, respect your husbands. What does that mean? Well, the word to respect is from the Greek word which means to revere. So the church reveres Christ, so wives, respect, or revere your husbands. And love blossoms and appreciation grows and openness and oneness are energized. Friends, in some respects, this whole journey of marriage really is just a picture of our relationship to Christ. It's a testing place for love to grow. And as your love grows for your wife and her love grows for her husband, you find that Christ begins to settle in on the marriage and deepen it. And that leads to intimacy. And I want you to notice something. Look at this. Love always precedes intimacy. Say that with me. Love always precedes intimacy. Why? Because intimacy, you see, listen, is the deepest opening of a human being to another. Intimacy is not just like sharing a secret. Intimacy is the peering into the soul of another human being. Intimacy is saying, I know that person's heartbeat. Listen, after nearly 30 years of marriage, to one woman 30 years in a row, after 35 years of walking with the Lord Jesus, I can tell you this. I believe all of life is about developing an intimate relationship. And I really have to say this, and I mean this honestly, I think I might know less about it now than I did 30 years ago. It's that much of a mystery. That's what the Lord wants. He wants intimacy. He wants you to know Him. He wants you to be able to know His heart, to look into His eyes, and to see grace and truth and life. And all of heaven is going to be an unfolding of that intimacy. You know, people make a big deal about being married in heaven. There's a scripture that says we're not going to be married in heaven. At least in that physical sense of the person that we spent this life with. And some say, oh, praise God. You know? And others say, oh, how could I be in heaven without you being, you know, with me all the time? But you know why I think it says that? I think because heaven will be a place where every relationship has that intimacy to it that God intended for the marriage relationship to happen here. The marriage relationship is simply a foreshadowing of what God's preparing. That's why He calls us His bride. That's one of the names He gives the church. It's the bride. But it comes at a price. And it doesn't come easily. I want you to hear a story of someone a couple who were at the very edge of their hope. I mean, it was just about over for them. And some of you are going to hear your story and their story. And I want you to hear the hope that comes out of them as they share. Because life was falling apart and grace stepped in. Let's welcome Pat and Amy Cain as they come to share their testimony. I really appreciate them taking the time to put this together. Welcome, Pat. Thank you, Amy. Thanks for staying. You're not as nervous this time, are you? No, I'm not. Great. Okay, good. Okay. About five years ago, Pastor Scott asked me to give a testimony about hope. I said no, because I wanted to wait until Pat had accepted Christ. Then we would give our testimony. Well, here we are. Pat and I were married in 1979. We married very young. And like most young lovers, we never acquired the communication skills and other skills needed to make a marriage work. A year later, we were parents of our first son, Patrick. Parenting threw us into responsibilities we had never known before. I became the devoted mother, spending all of my time on my son. Pat became the responsible father and provided for his family's needs, which grew three years later when our youngest son, Andrew, was born. We devoted our lives to our children. We did everything good parents do except one thing. We didn't make any time for our marriage. We put our marriage on the back burner and we focused just on the boys. It was easier that way. We didn't hurt each other. In the fall of 1998, after 19 years of marriage, Pat and I had reached an all-time low. Our sons were 18 and 15 now and growing up. We were making arrangements to send Patrick away to Gannon University in Erie the next year. And our youngest son had gotten his first job and felt very independent. I was beginning to feel the pain of my sons leaving the nest because my life had revolved around them. There were several days after school where no one was home but me and I began to feel very lonely and felt as though no one needed me anymore. I thought my responsibilities as a mom were coming to an end. I looked very hard at my marriage and didn't like what I saw and didn't want to stay in that unhappy situation. We had grown so far apart that no matter what either one of us did, we couldn't make each other happy. We had hurt each other so much that the walls were too high to overcome. I had known for years that our marriage was falling apart. We had stayed together for the boys. But I didn't lose hope in the fact that God could make things better. So I focused in on prayer, praying for God to perform a miracle in Pat because I was the devoted, perfect Christian wife. I prayed for years that God would restore our marriage, but he never did. So in time, I began losing hope. In the summer of 98, I started to pray that God would either heal this marriage or let it fall apart. Just do something. I had tried to make everything better, but nothing I did helped. Finally, in that dreadful fall of 98, I lost all hope in God and decided that I would ask Pat to leave. In October, I wanted him to leave, but it was Patrick's birthday, so we couldn't ruin that. So we just cried about how unhappy we were. I would come home from school and just collapse into tears and sleep, hardly ever cooking or attending to our son's needs. Pat would come home, totally bewildered with the situation, and take on the domestic needs of our family. The women at my Bible study knew something was terribly wrong with me. Finally, I told them what was happening. I emptied my heart to my leader, Willie Flinchbaugh. She prayed for me and gave me great counsel. She told me not to do anything without talking to her first, so I didn't. Every Thursday night, I would get to Bible study early and talk to her. She became my support. I couldn't pray anymore or even make a responsible choice. Everything I did was pure emotion. She and the rest of my group held me up when I felt there was no one else. By November, we decided Pat would move out after the holidays. We couldn't ruin the holidays for our sons. Pat really didn't want to move out, and I really didn't want him to either. We just wanted to be happy and grow old together and become grandparents together someday. But our pain together was so deep, and we didn't know how to fix it. I didn't know it then, but we were broken and on our faces before God. I had no strength to fix my marriage anymore, nor did Pat know what to do. We were at our lowest point, and guess what? Our great and gracious God met us both right there at our weakest point. In December, at my last Bible study class before Christmas break, Willie and the other women prayed that Pat and I would have the best Christmas ever. You guessed it. That prayer was answered, and we had the best Christmas ever. That answer to those women's prayer was the glimmer of hope that I needed. I started to believe God could help us. Willie talked to Pastor John for us. She encouraged us to call him and get connected for some counseling, so we called. In January, we met with Pastor John and received godly counseling and moved into the Marriage Menders program. By February, we were falling in love again. We attended Dr. Kevin Lehman's seminar, and we went to the dinner dance. I know there were other people at the dinner dance, but we were too involved with one another. We were madly in love again and recommitted our vows to each other that night. We feel so blessed that God took two broken people, and with his grace, didn't just restore our marriage, he created a marriage. He gave us a relationship that we never had before, and through the Marriage Mender classes, we've learned how to take care of each other's needs. We've learned to talk to each other and discuss our problems rather than sweep them under the rug. We are learning how to honor and respect each other the way God wants us to. We've learned that men and women are so drastically different, it's unbelievable. Plus, we are asking God to heal us of the hurts and pains that have been with us since we were little children. And best of all, we're learning how to pray together as a couple. But you know what the greatest thing is? It's the fact that God loved us enough to pour his grace upon us. God took his servants, Willie, and my Bible study group, Pastor John, and the people at Marriage Menders, and put them in our path to help guide us in building a healthy marriage we didn't deserve. God is so good. He isn't done with us yet either. He has given us the opportunity to become facilitators and marriage menders. Now we are on the other side of the fence being used by God to help guide couples build a healthy marriage, and we get to watch God work in them. Isn't God good? Thank you. Thanks so much for sharing. I'm sure he's a lot of people. Thank you. What would some of our walls say at home? They'd speak to us, wouldn't they? Intimacy is what God wants. And it's interesting to me, particularly women, listen. No man will ever be able to give you all the intimacy that you need. And men know women can do that for you either. God created us. It's interesting. There is a hunger in all of us that can only be met by God. Only God can meet it. But the question is before us today, will we press on? You say, well, what if I fail? What if things are really a wreck? Maybe I've messed up. Maybe I know I'm the one that's made a mess of our marriage and made a mess of our relationship. Or maybe it's just so disjointed. Maybe you feel like Pat and Amy, like, man, she used the word hopeless. Well, friends, there's a fourth season, and I'll just touch on it. It's the season of redemption because there is the possibility because of Christ that things can be made new again. And you don't go all the way back to the season of the beginning, but the season of creation. You see, the Bible says if you bear with each other and forgive whatever grievances you may have against one another, if you forgive others as the Lord has forgiven you, then you can have a brand new start. And this season of redemption is a season that's a gift to every couple that opens to it. And it begins when you, A, confess your faults. A, confess your faults. Confessing your faults can be the most difficult thing that you can do. I want to tell you today that some of you could go home today and revolutionize your relationship by simply saying, you know, honey, I'm sorry for the way I've been so focused on myself in the last few months. And after they think, you can revive them and then pick them up off the floor and then tell them, and I want to go on and I want to build this relationship the way God would have it, you would be astonished at the power that's there. Things would break loose in your life. Look at the next verse. Why do you look at the speck in another's eye and pay no attention to the log in your own eye? Jesus is using hyperbole. He's saying, it's so easy for us to find the faults. It's so easy for us to pick out the flaws of the other person when in our own being there's this huge need to confess, to make clear our responsibility. And then, letter B, reconciliation, which is the reestablishing of the relationship. Not the resolution of difference. Listen, there will always be differences. Carol will always like cats and I never will. But we can love each other. There will always be differences. There can be reconciliation. The ministry of reconciliation enables you to disagree without being disagreeable. And it reestablishes love and intimacy. And so you can begin to restore the joy of being married and let it emerge back to the pinnacle of life's pleasures and not the pit of life's despairs. Statistics say that only 5% of couples report to being extremely happy in their marriage. And I want to see that statistic change in this place. I want to believe God to bless our marriages. I believe God's chosen one for you that's the right one to celebrate that gift. What does it mean in Scripture when He invites me into His banqueting table and His banner over me is love? The banqueting table of marriage is the banqueting table of God's delights of friendship and companionship, of thoughts shared and hands held, of mutual appreciation, of words of affection, of moments of discovery and expressions of thoughtfulness, of passion and romance and love and intimacy. And that's what God wants for us. He wants us to celebrate. He wants us to enjoy. Look at the last verse on your outline. Enjoy life with your mate. Everyone say that. Enjoy life with your mate whom you love. And so I just want to end this way. I've asked the worship team to come and they're going to celebrate a song. It's sort of a pop song. It's a Christian artist group that created the song but it's a song about just expressing love in a simple way. Let's stand together and let's get ready to kiss somebody, all right? Let's stand together.