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Let me open us with a word of prayer
this morning.
Holy, Mighty God, we thank you for
this opportunity and we echo the words of our last song and we ask your
Spirit to come, to be among us now, to speak to our hearts that we might
know what You have for us this day. We thank you that you are here
Jesus, by the power of your Spirit, amen.
It seems as though all pastors have
some stories of things that have happened during their ceremonies that
they perform whether it’s in a service, a wedding or a funeral, we all
have stories. One of my favorite stories is from a pastor by the Bill
Hybel, he’s the pastor of Willow Creek Community Church in Chicago.
Bill loves to sail to the point that he takes a month off to study and
he goes to the west coast of Lake Michigan. He loves to sail big boats
on Lake Michigan, you know the kind that actually need a crew to sail.
He goes there and he studies but then he also signs on to sail on one of
these boats in a lot of the races they have in the summer. And if you
know anything about Bill he has a fairly large evangelical zeal. What
Bill will do is he will go and pick out a boat that he knows is a pretty
wild boat just to perhaps be the only Christian on that boat. In our
story Bill does exactly that. He signs on and he is serving as a crew
member on one of these boats, sailing on Lake Michigan having a great
time and doing his work. In the process of that he meets a guy by the
name of Gary. He befriends Gary and over the next of years he
eventually leads Gary to Christ. So Gary is now a follower of Christ.
If you know anything about the guys
that sail these big boats on Lake Michigan they are a hearty sort. They
are ready for a good time at the drop of a hat. And they will normally
scout out what are the good times to be had and they will gravitate to
them. Gary was no different. But Gary is now a follower of Christ and
Bill helps him grow in his faith, continue to grow even as Gary is
spending time with all of his hard living friends. In the course of
their relationship, Gary finds a woman that he falls in love with. He
comes to Bill and asks if Bill if he will marry them. Bill knowing Gary
and his friends says to Gary, “You know a wedding is a very solemn
ceremony. It needs to be filled with dignity and honor and I’m a little
concerned.” Gary says, “Bill, I agree with you completely and I want to
commit to you that we want to make this service and ceremony something
really special.” Bill very hesitantly agrees to do the wedding. When
they get to the service the service is all that Gary and Bill had hoped
it would be. They gave honor to God, the bride and the groom made
honest commitments to each other. The only problem was that neither
Gary nor his bride talked to Gary’s friends. You see they were planning
something a little special. Just as Bill pronounces them man and wife,
one of Gary’s friends has a big boom box in the back of the church. At
the point of making the pronouncement he hits this boom box at full
volume with a little James Brown, “I feel good. I knew that I would now.
So good. So good, ‘cause I got you.” At this point the church is in
chaos. People are standing up, they’re dancing in the isles, they’re
high fiving each other, it’s just gone out of control and gone south.
Bill is just standing there going, “Okay, lets join in.” So they
celebrated the wedding and what God was doing in Gary’s and his life
with his new bride.
We all start in our marriages singing
that James Brown song don’t we? We all start out by singing, “I feel
good ‘cause I got you.” That’s where we start and yet as we get into
our marriage, what happens? How do we keep singing the “I go you”
song? That’s what we want to talk about today. We want to talk about
six ways to have a long lasting marriage or if you will six keys to a
long, lasting marriage.
Our first key to a long lasting
marriage is to accept each other. What we are going to do is
with each one of these we will look at couple of pieces of scripture to
reinforce this. For accept we’re going to start with
Romans 15:7 Accept each other just as
Christ has accepted you.
I have a question for you this
morning. Are there any of you that are polar opposites of your mate?
I’m guessing there is because studies show that about seventy percent of
people who are married have married their opposite. And those
differences are what have attracted you to that person. But later they
can become an irritation when you live with that person 24/7. I have
heard many times wives say to me when their husband has retired and has
been home for a couple of months they will invariably say, “Man, he is
driving me crazy, I wish he would go back to work, just get him out of
the house.” You think about all the differences that there are in our
lives and how they affect our relationship, maybe one of us really wants
to sleep in the other one likes to get up early. Or the other the
difference is in terms of attitudes toward money or how we make
decisions, perhaps the things we like to do or even the things we like
to eat. The truth is that all of us are different, aren’t we?
Different isn’t wrong, its just…different. So the key for a marriage is
to accept our mate’s differences. That acceptance is an essential
ingredient, almost like a building block for any solid marriage because
all of us are different. We all need that kind of acceptance. And
without that kind of acceptance we will just kind of nag on each other
until it becomes unbearable.
The next key for a long, lasting
marriage is attention. Just as we need acceptance we also need
attention. Our scripture here is from:
1 Peter 1:22 Love one
another deeply from the heart.
I like that word “deeply”. Do you
remember the old Rolaids commercial ‘How do you spell relief’? I want
to change that a little bit. How do you spell love? You spell it
attention. This idea of loving one another occurs over 16 times in the
scriptures. If we love someone we will pay attention to them. This is
our new dog (picture on screen) her name is Bearcat. When you ignore
her, she will let you know it. It usually means she will be pawing at
our arm or she will take one of her many toys and bring it over and drop
it in your lap slimy and all. For Bearcat it is all about her, “pet me,
play with me, scratch my tummy, acknowledge me.” While us humans
perhaps are a little more subtle in our displays we all need the same
thing. We all want to be wanted. Do you remember how much time you
gave your spouse when you were dating? Compare that to now. Is it
painful?
I was standing in line recently at
the car rental counter at an airport. I couldn’t help but notice the
couple in front of me, they couldn’t keep their hands off of each
other. Obviously they were either newly in love or newly married. As I
was standing there I felt as though I was intruding in on their private
space if you know what I mean. They were giving each other their
undivided attention as if no one else in the world mattered. And while
you have to judge the public part of that the important thing is that we
all need that kind of attention and we should do no less for our mates.
We need to give them attention.
There was a national poll that was
taken that said, “How well do you know your mate?” Women you already
know the answer to this, I’m sure. Women knew more about their husbands
than husbands knew about their wives. So guys, paying attention pays
off. Pay attention to your wives.
Our next key for a long, lasting
marriage is the word submit. This comes from:
Ephesians 5:21 Submit to
one another out of reverence for Christ.
You knew we were going to get to this
one at some point in our marriage series, didn’t you? For too many of
us in this world today, submission is a dirty word. We have this
attitude and it’s portrayed before us as, “We don’t bow to anybody. I
won’t bow to anyone. Don’t diss me. Don’t disrespect me.” That’s the
message that our culture portrays on us. But submit doesn’t mean that.
Submit really means to adjust to. We need to adjust to each other.
Just because scripture also says that the husband is the head of the
marriage, it doesn’t mean then that he gets to say or to do whatever he
wants and the wife must accept it. In this passage of scripture is
framed in the context of love and it says in love the husband should
submit, or adjust, to his wife just as the wife should adjust, or submit
to her husband because she knows that he has their best interest at
heart because of the love that is shared. So we need to adjust to each
we need to compromise at times.
A survey that is old by today’s
standards in 1979 in Better Homes and Gardens magazine. It said,
“Why do marriages fail?” The number one reason was immaturity. The
number two reason was selfishness. In our culture today that is called
incompatibility. We’re just incompatible, we can’t be together any
more. Incompatibility really means that we are both too stubborn and
too unwilling to change and we don’t want to work at it. Yet the words
of scripture speak to us, “Let us therefore make every effort to do what
leads to peace and mutual edification.” We are to submit to each other.
Our next key for a long, lasting
marriage is forgiveness. We need forgiveness and the more the
better. One guy said, “We have a beef stew marriage. I beef and my wife
stews.” The old adage is true. We hurt the ones that we love the most.
When we do that, noticed I said when we do that not if, when we do that
we have two options. One, we can rehearse it or two, we can release
it. When we rehearse it we go over it and over it and over it in our
minds and it gets bigger and bigger and bigger and more explosive. Or,
we can release it, we can forgive. One of the ways to get to that
forgiving piece is to remember how God has forgiven you.
Colossians 3:13 Bear with each other
and forgive whatever grievances you may have against one another.
Forgive as the Lord forgave you.
The key here is to remember that you
have been forgiven. Remember what God’s attitude has been towards you
and towards me. Think about what God has had to put up with with you
and me. As we put it in those kinds of terms it helps us to be more
forgiving. Forgiving with the people around us and forgiving, for sure,
with our spouses. We need forgiveness.
Just as we must submit and we must
forgive another key we should also affirm one another. Our
scripture here is:
1 Thessalonians 5:11
Therefore encourage one another and build up each other.
The power of affirmation is huge.
The power of affirmation is something when unleashed in a marriage can
be a huge boost to a marriage if you are in the doldrums right now. We
live in a world where it is all about putting others so we can build
ourselves up so that we can feel better about ourselves. But
affirmation just turns that upside down and counteracts that by raising
the value of others, in our case for today, our spouse. An Affirmation
does three things: it raises our spouse’s value, it raises our value
and it raises the value of the relationship. An affirmation is more
than just simple acceptance. Affirmation has the ability to spark a
marriage. It has the ability to bring romance back into the
relationship. For when you begin complimenting your spouse your love
for your spouse begins to increase and it can kind of act as an
aphrodisiac. That is why I encourage every couple to take time every day
to do something to affirm your spouse. It can be little, it can be big,
do something, it will pay huge, huge dividends. One of the things my
wife and I have the habit of doing is writing notes to each other. I
want to read you a note that she wrote me a few years ago and yes she
gave me permission to read this. It starts out, “Sweet Boo, (lots of
laughing) you are so amazing. Who knew you would be up at the crack,
cleaned up a puppy, did laundry, missed your breakfast, went to a
personnel meeting and led devotions without a hitch. You are a sight to
behold. I love you.” you see when we affirm our mate it not only
builds up our relationship but it also makes a huge statement to the
world cause the world will pick up on that.
Our next key for a long, lasting
marriage is touch. Physical expressions of love are vital to a
marriage. Our scripture here is from:
Romans 16:16 Greet each
other with a holy kiss.
Now that’s not used in the context of
marriage so we need to be clear about that. But it does speak to the
importance of affection in all relationships. Now having said that we
also in our world today we need to add the caveat that the kind of
affection that we use needs to be appropriate for the kind of
relationship that it is. But having said that touch is still critical
for all relationships as appropriate. Paul does talk about sex in a
marriage in:
1 Corinthians 7:3 a husband and wife
should give their bodies to each other do not deprive each other of
sexual relations.
Isn’t it funny when we read something
in scripture it’s always many times affirmed in our world. There are
studies that have shown that those couples who are regularly intimate
with each other have more satisfying and long lasting marriages.
Long lasting marriages are built on
these six keys. We probably could add more but these are six to build
off of for your marriage. What I want to do I want to simply ask you
how are these six keys working in your relationship right now? I want
to invite these as food for thought and I would say maybe a conversation
with your spouse. I believe if you do that it will bear fruit for your
marriage. One final thought I want to leave you with. As you think
about these keys do you notice that they’re all actions? They’re all
something we have to do. Strong marriages don’t just appear. They are
the result of hard work, of patience and a lot of love.
Small boy noticed next to his dad’s
bed a jar. Every night his dad would come home from working in the
textile mill he would take the coins out of his pocket and he would put
them in the jar. The little boy loved to hear the sound of the money
going into the jar. The boy watched day after day as the jar continued
to fill. The little boy knew that at the point when that jar was full
it was going to be a special day. He knew he and his dad were going to
go to the bank to turn in the money. When the jar was full they would
hop into the old pick up truck and they would be heading into town.
Invariably, the dad would turn to the son and he would say, “Son, this
is what is going to keep you out of working in the mill like me. I want
a better life for you than I got.” They would go to the bank and the
dad would push the coins across the counter to a teller and he would
say, “This is my son’s college fund.” After they made a trip to the
bank the little boy knew the day was not over. He knew they were going
for ice cream. They would go for ice cream and they would share a
cone. He also knew that there was typically some change left over and
they would go back into that jar and that process would start all over
again.
The years passed and the boy did in
fact go to college. He moved, took a job in another town. One day when
he was home visiting his parents he walked into his parents bedroom and
he noticed that the jar was gone. It had been removed because its
purpose had been served. He knew also that his dad was a man of few
words and yet there was much that this pickle jar taught him.
When he got married he told his wife
about the pickle jar and how much his dad loved him. As is the case
with many new marriages, its not long before they have a child. As it
came around to Christmas time the new family went to visit Granma and
Granpa. As the baby was being passed back and forth between Granpa and
Granma the baby began to fuss a little bit and the mom came and said,
“Maybe she needs to be changed” and took her into the bedroom to change
her. When she returned there was a strange mist in her eyes. She took
the child and handed her back to Granpa then she took her husband by the
hand and took him into the bedroom. As they walked into the bedroom she
simply said, “Look.” There on the floor next to the dresser was that
jar with the bottom covered with coins once again. As the dad was now
choking back his emotions he noticed that his dad had entered the room
behind him. He turned and there was not need to exchange words as their
eyes met, that was all that needed to be said.
Love takes many forms but love is
displayed through our actions and that can be a powerful force. Not
only in marriages but in all relationships, so let love reign. Let love
reign.
Would you pray with me please?
Mighty and holy God we
thank you that you have given us a gift of unbelievable worth in love.
Let us cherish it. Let us grow it. Let us spread it around for that is
what you did in your Son and we are grateful for that. Thank you Lord
God. In Your name, amen.
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