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We are finishing up our series on marriage this
week. I want to start with a story of something I experienced
yesterday. Yesterday I had the wonderful opportunity to officiate at a
wedding. I have done a few weddings but this one was a little different
because both the bride and the groom were students that I have seen grow
up together since junior high. I have watched them as they went through
their awkward junior high years and began to go their own separate ways
in high school to the point where they went through college and came to
the point where they realized their love for each other and were able to
commit themselves to each other before God. It was a wonderful
experience to participate and be a part of that celebration. As we were
spending time together doing our pre-martial counseling we were talking
about all that it would entail their new life together as man and wife.
We talked about the strengths they had in their relationship as well as
those weaknesses that they were going to have to continue to work on
throughout the course of their marriage as well. In the midst of all
that I couldn’t help but think about all that might get thrown at them
from life as they spend their new life together.
Those of us who are married know how
much newlyweds have to learn. More often than not there are times when
we have to swim through some fairly deep water together. For this
couple all they had to do was look at their parents to realize that. on
one side of the family the family had just lost the mom to cancer less
than a year ago and all that went on with that. on the other side the
father has gone through numerous job transitions not all of them self
imposed. This newlywed couple as they came together, like all married
couples, are going to have to survive some outside forces if their
marriage is going to last a lifetime.
That’s what we want to look at today.
We want to look at what are those outside forces that seek to shipwreck
marriages today. That’s one of the reasons why I picked the scripture I
did today. It is a familiar story. It is the story of the wise and
foolish builders. Hear the word of God as I read it for us. Matthew
7:24-27
Everyone then who hears these words
of mine and acts on them will be like a wise man and build his house on
rock. The rains fell, the floods came and the winds blew and beat on
the house but it did not fall because it had been founded on rock and
everyone who hears these words of mine and does not act on them will be
like a foolish man who built his house on sand. The rain fell, the
floods came and the winds blew and beat against that house and it fell
and great was its fall.
Will you pray with me please?
Mighty and Holy God, we thank you for
your Word. For the way it speaks to our hearts. Now Lord we ask that
by your Spirit you would quicken our hearts to hear what you have for us
this day. We ask it in your name, amen.
Our scripture at first glance we may
think it really doesn’t apply to marriage but I want you to follow along
with me and see how it fits. It is a story of two builders, one who is
wise and one who is foolish, one who built a house on a rock and one who
built a house on sand. Both houses faced the same violent storms but
there were two different results. One stood and the other collapsed. I
want to say to you the same thing can happen in marriages. Two marriages
can go through the same situations, the same circumstances and yet it
will yield two results. Our text says that the difference between the
houses, and I would add the marriages, that stand the storms of life is
the foundation. In our text did you notice that there were three forces
that were raging against the houses in our text? There were rains, now
it’s not just a spring shower, we’re talking about monsoons. They
talked about floods and wind. Again, we’re not talking about a gentle
breeze we’re talking about gale force winds here. So there’s rain, and
there’s flood and there’s wind seeking to break up the house. And there
are external forces that are seeking to break up marriages as well.
That is what we want to look at today. What are those outside forces?
And how do we respond to them?
The first force I want to look at
that is seeking to wreak havoc on marriages is our culture. In many
ways our culture are just like the monsoon rains from our text. Soaking
rain gets into everything. That kind of rain loosens trees. It seeps
into basements. It washes away soil. Our culture acts in exactly the
same way. Our culture permeates everything. It permeates our homes.
It works its way into schools, into our businesses and yes, even our
marriages. There are forces that are working against us, working
against marriages and even against Christian marriages. These forces
have an eroding effect on our marriages. I don’t think that it is too
off the wall to say that it is harder to be married today than at any
other time in history because of these forces. All you need to do is
look at things like the divorce rate which is conservatively at forty to
fifty percent of all marriages will end in divorce. Experts tell us
that those who are of faith, a Christian faith, are at the same divorce
level as those who are not. We are on par with the rest of society.
Well if that is what we are up against then what are some of those
forces that are raining down on us? What are those eroding forces?
There are three of them that we are
going to touch on. There could probably be a lot more but I’m going to
hit on three. They are alternative lifestyles, sexual immorality and
the economy.
Congress in many of the states is
wrestling with how to define what a marriage is. Why are they doing
that? I think it is because we are no longer clear about what it is,
what marriage is and what it is not. The homosexual community has a
pushing for an understanding of marriage. The Christian right is
pushing for an understanding of marriage. Then we have the media trying
to mix it all up and reinforces the ambiguity and confusion that is out
there. How many TV shows have you seen lately that show a happily
married couple? Not too many. The result of all of that is a lot of
confusion about marriage. Have you heard the term “hooking up”?
“Hooking up” is a term that is used by many young people today. It is
euphemism for sexual activity. And “hooking up” is done very casually
with very little or no commitment at all. It’s just something to do
because it is fun. When you think about that and you begin to apply
that towards high school students. If you have a high school student I
hope you know the statistics that by the time they graduate sixty
percent of them will be sexually active. And of that sixty percent over
forty will have had multiple partners.
The majority of people who get
together today as couples live together before they get married if they
even get married at all. When you talk to them about that they usually
say, “Well, we’re trying out the relationship. We want to see how it’s
going to work together.” What they are really saying is that, “We want
to play marriage with no commitment and if it doesn’t work or I don’t
like this person or they do something I don’t like then I can leave
without any commitment.”
Those marriages that do stay
together, one third of them will experience infidelity at some point in
their relationship. The media reinforces all that with great shows like
Temptation Island
where they take married couples and tempt each other to cheat on one
another. Or my favorite Who
Wants to Marry a Millionaire?
which simply reduces marriage to a
game.
Then add to that our desire to
provide a good lifestyle for our spouse and our families tends to erode
our marriages more than build them up many times. Have you seen the
bumper sticker I owe, I owe it’s
off to work I go? That is
the lifestyle for many of us. We’re working so hard to make ends meet
that we end up being a detriment to our marriages and our families.
We’re trying to provide but in doing that we actually may be hurting our
marriages in some cases. This is all part of the culture we live in.
it is a value system that works against marriage in too many cases. So
how do we respond to the culture as it is beating against our marriages?
One of the ways we can do that is to
know our value system and to live it out. Romans 12 says, “Do not be
conformed to this world but be transformed.” I think that if we are
honest with one another, all of us try to live out our value system and
we try to do that for the most part. But I think that’s the problem,
it’s for the most part. Because there are times when we either get lazy
or we just forget and we get sucked into the message that the culture is
sending us about, “You’ve got to have this.” Or, the next greatest
thing is a little bit bigger, a little bit better and you’ve got to have
it. Or, the grass on the other side of the hill is a little greener.
You’ve just got to go there. We have to be aware of the messages that
our culture is sending us. There are times when we have to hold those
messages at bay and say “No, I’m not letting them in.” That might mean
for some us taking a hiatus from some of our television shows that we
like. It might mean doing a review of our checkbook and where we are
spending our money. Our culture can have a devastating effect on our
marriages.
There is another force that is
working against marriages and it is the crises we live through. These
are the things in our married life that can turn the world upside down
in a moment. When we wonder what is going to happen next. It is those
things that wash over you like a flood from our text. When they do it
can be devastating. What we are talking about, those kind of crises in
our marriage, can be things like an accident or a bankruptcy, a
prolonged illness or cancer diagnosis, the loss of a job or maybe even
the loss of a loved one, a family member. When marriage gets hit by
this kind of flood, many of us think, “Man, I can’t handle it. I can’t
do this anymore, it’s getting too hard. I got to get out. I got to do
something. I can’t just stay here.” We begin to think, “Maybe
splitting up is better, splitting up and starting over may be the way to
go because I can’t face the pain I am experiencing, or the grief that is
washing over me, or the anger that I have at someone. Or the bills that
are on the kitchen table.” How do we handle our lives when it’s turned
on its head, when things didn’t perhaps turn out like we had hoped
for? Our response to those kinds of crises in our lives is to commit.
Commit for better or for worse. Years ago
Psychology Today
asked “Why do marriages last?” The answer they found that marriages
that survived crises had a high level of commitment. One woman who had
been married for twenty-five years said, “You know you can’t run home
the first sign of trouble.” A man who had been married for thirty-years
said, “Commitment means a willingness to be unhappy for a while.”
Successful marriages have this attitude that “we are in this together,
that we are a team, that we are allies and that we will work this out.”
They understand that when two become one in a marriage, when one hurts
the other hurts as well. In the midst of that commitment we also need
to remember God’s commitment to us. Think about what God has done for
us. God has sent his only begotten loved son to us, Jesus, so that we
might have life. What kind of commitment did that cost God? God is
intimately concerned for you and for me and for our marriages. He knows
our names, the hairs on our head are numbered and He is present with us
every moment of our lives even in those places where we maybe wish he
wasn’t there, He is still there with us or we don’t acknowledge His
presence. How do we get through the floods that can hit our marriages?
One day a time, one step at a time. We can either walk away from these
crises or we can walk through them like Isaiah says. When we walk
through them, to walk through them requires commitment. That commitment
will bring a stable marriage as a result of walking through those times
together.
We have looked at our culture. We
have looked at the crises we have to live through. The last force that
beats on our marriages is the changes in our lives. We’ve talked about
rains. We’ve talked about floods. Now we are talking about the winds
of change. The wind is always changing. The truth is, so is our
marriages. Your marriage is a very dynamic relationship, it is not
static. You are either improving in your marriage or you are getting
worse. You are either growing together or you are growing apart. The
key to a successful marriage is growing together in the midst of
change. Each of you is changing. Each one of us is changing. These
changes have the potential to blow apart our relationship if we don’t
prepare for them. What we’re talking about here when we’re talking
about changes are those kinds of predictable changes that happen through
the seasons of a person’s life. We’re talking about the birth of a
child. We’re talking about sending that first child off to college,
becoming an empty nester, retirement, a midlife crisis, menopause for
women, we are finding now a menopause like activity that men go through
as well, and to say nothing of the physical changes. When I got married
I was a hundred eighty pound bag of bones – I’ve changed! We all are
changing.
How are we going to handle those
changes in our marriage? We have a couple of options. We can deny that
these changes are ever going to come. We can fight against them. We
can become bitter or resentful about them. Or, we can grow from them.
We can see the changes that come into our lives as opportunities to make
the most of them. When the world gives you lemons you make ----
lemonade. Your spouse is going to change. You are going to change.
Look at those changes as an opportunity to go to new places in
understanding in your relationship with your spouse and your marriage.
It allows you to look at your marriage perhaps in new ways. God wants
to use your marriage for His glory. That hit me again as I was
reviewing my notes for this morning. Have you thought about that? God
wants to use your marriage for His glory. That is pretty awesome. He
wants to use your marriage His glory but also for your growth. Growing
through these changes in your marriage will bring maturity, will bring
stability. So keep growing. Keep growing intellectually, emotionally,
physically, spiritually and even sexually.
As you look at the forces that are
working against marriage for your marriage which one of these areas is
most poised to strike at your marriage? Is it the con of the world’s
value system? Is it a crisis that is perhaps threatening to drown you?
Or is it changes that have affected your relationship that need to be
worked through? How you respond to those forces will make all the
difference in the world. Live out your value system. Commit for better
or for worse. And grow from the changes that we all experience.
Today we started by looking at the
foundations of houses, one on rock and one on sand. The house on the
rock can stand against the storms of weather. A marriage on the rock
can withstand the storms of culture, of crises, and of change and that
rock is Jesus Christ. The foundation for a stable marriage is a
person. It is not something you have to do. It is not something you
have to acquire. It is not something you have to become. It is Jesus
Christ. As one of your pastors, to all of you who are married, whether
you have been married for five years, or fifteen years, or fifty or more
I want to challenge you to make the rest of your marriage the best of
your marriage. My challenge is to build you marriage on the foundation
of Jesus Christ. Without Him all other ground is sinking sand. All
other ground is sinking sand.
Will you pray with me please?
Mighty and Holy God, we thank you for
the gift of marriage and Lord we ask that you would strengthen us for
the challenges that come upon every one of our marriages. Strengthen us
Lord God. Empower us to be your people, to bring glory to you through
our marriages. That is our hearts’ desire that is what we seek, your
glory and our growth. Let it be so by the power of your Holy Spirit,
amen.
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