This morning’s message is perhaps much more of men and prayer, but I hope that it will have impact on all of us. I want you to take some time today and consider why scripture describes our relationship with the Lord in the context of a marriage. Both men and women need to develop a longing for relationship with Jesus, a passion for prayer as the method of communication that draws us near to Him. However, it is far more likely for women to step out and be identified as prayer warriors and intercessors than it is for men. I want to issue a personal challenge to the men of the church this morning. Over the next three months I want to see more men become involved in regular prayer and intercession than we have ever had before.
To better understand the need for deeper communication and lasting relationship with the Father, Paul writes concerning the functions of a husband and wife within the context of marriage. He actually says to you that when he speaks regarding the husband and wife in Ephesians 5, he is speaking concerning Christ and the church:
Ephesians 5:22-33 (The Message)
22-24Wives, understand and support your husbands in ways that show your support for Christ. The husband provides leadership to his wife the way Christ does to his church, not by domineering but by cherishing. So just as the church submits to Christ as he exercises such leadership, wives should likewise submit to their husbands.
25-28Husbands, go all out in your love for your wives, exactly as Christ did for the church—a love marked by giving, not getting. Christ’s love makes the church whole. His words evoke her beauty. Everything he does and says is designed to bring the best out of her, dressing her in dazzling white silk, radiant with holiness. And that is how husbands ought to love their wives. They’re really doing themselves a favor—since they’re already "one" in marriage.
29-33No one abuses his own body, does he? No, he feeds and pampers it. That’s how Christ treats us, the church, since we are part of his body. And this is why a man leaves father and mother and cherishes his wife. No longer two, they become "one flesh." This is a huge mystery, and I don’t pretend to understand it all. What is clearest to me is the way Christ treats the church. And this provides a good picture of how each husband is to treat his wife, loving himself in loving her, and how each wife is to honor her husband.
This is of course an amazing passage, but if it is a mystery, how are we supposed to understand what it means. Well, thankfully we have a helper who is knows the deep and mysterious things of God and who desires to share them with us. In this case, I believe that the Holy Spirit wants us to understand the significance of men’s becoming engaged in a deeper level of intercourse with God through prayer.
I want you to image something with me for a few minutes. Men, in particular I want you to think very seriously and picture the images we are going to be discussing for the next few moments.
Imagine as a man that you have just laid eyes on your true love for the first time in your life. You are dumbstruck by her beauty and you know instantly that this is the women of your dreams, the one destined to be your bride. Immediately, or as may be the case for some of the more timid of those among us – over the course of the next few weeks – you approach her and begin the process of wooing her and building a relationship with her. As days pass into weeks you spend every possible moment together and you do everything within your power and ability to prove to her that you love her. Finally after weeks or months of relationship building the time has come to ask for her hand in marriage and the two of you are soon united as one by the bonds of holy matrimony.
I think that some of what Paul was speaking to in Ephesians 5 can be seen in the foregoing illustration. This is the wooing and winning that takes place when we first accept Christ as our savior. Think back on that season in your life and consider what it was like. There was an intense season of wooing and drawing together – a recognition of your need for a lasting, eternal relationship – that continued and intensified until at last it was sealed by repentance and salvation.
Now begin to imagine again what it was like following the wedding. The honeymoon period had begun and though there are bumps in the road, little things that you just didn’t expect, your infatuation with one another is sufficient to keep your relationship strong and it grows a bit more each day. For most of you, you took time away from work and the other things of life to spend a week or two alone, just getting to know one another. This is where the first glimpse of intimacy should have begun, as it is here for the first time that the two of you would have made love together as husband and wife. There is a longing for one another that cannot be quenched and you are inexplicably drawn to one another at every opportunity.
Once again, I believe that Paul understood the principles of marriage when he chose his Ephesians 5 illustration. This is the season of bliss, a time in the life of the believer when nothing can dissuade you from your love for your savior. Your world is focused around this growing new relationship and perhaps there is no other time when such passion ignites the fires of your heart. There were deep, heartfelt emotions that drove you to spend time with the Lord and grow in that loving relationship with Him and that season of your life will never be forgotten, can never be erased for it is etched on the panes of your mind for eternity.
Yet, over time the dust and the dirt of life seem to pile up and without the proper maintenance the images of passion for Christ get stored away in the dusty attic of life and the lessons that should have been eternal begin to be forgotten. Think back with me one more time and this time particularly for you as men I want you to consider what might have followed that season of honeymooning.
Men, this is the part I want you to pay particular attention to. I want you to consider where your relationship with your wife has gone since the end of the honeymoon period. Perhaps we will be a bit extreme in our imagination here, but I truly want you to consider what we are about to picture. Consider for the next few moments how the business of life began to creep in and have an impact on your marriage. After all, it was probably around the same time that you were married that you were right in the heart of building a career or climbing the corporate ladder. Work began to demand more and more of your time. It became obvious that you needed to be engaged in social activities, if for no other reason than to build business contacts. Kiwaanas and Rotary or golf and tennis began to consume more of your spare time. Eight hour work days turned to ten hours or perhaps even twelve. The weariness of the day began to creep in and by the time you opened the door at home you were already anxious for the day to be over.
Now consider how you could have (for some of you it may have been the way you actually did) react to these stresses and strains of life. Think for a moment about some possible scenarios.
1. Your wife calls while you are at work, but you are in the middle of an important meeting, so you don’t take the call. She calls again, but your boss is in the office so you tell her you’ll call back. You never do. Over time, either you simply stop bothering to take her calls whether you are busy or not or she simply stops calling while you are at work.
2. Perhaps you could take some time today for lunch with your wife and you settle in your heart that you are going to call and set it up. When you get to work you find that you have a new deadline for that important project you have been working on and somehow lunch gets put on the back burner for next week, but next week never arrives.
3. The day has been challenging and you have spent the bulk of it with clients or in meetings. All of your words have been exhausted and you just don’t have any strength left for conversation and it’s not even 5:00 p.m. By the time you get home you have nothing left to say. You simply grab a bite to eat and settle down in front of the television to veg out for a while.
4. Maybe instead it was that you had to work late and its nearly 10:00 p.m before you get in for the night. Finding dinner on the table you sheepishly say you had a candy bar and a coke at work and your not hungry, you just want some rest and you are asleep by the time your head hits the pillow.
For some of you the place that we are going as we imagine these scenarios may already be obvious, but for those of you who need a bit more imagery, lets continue down this path for a bit longer. Now consider that this becomes a patter in your life and pretty soon you can’t remember the last time you spoke to your wife for more than a quick update on how the day went. Or maybe the last conversation was to tell her what you needed her to do for you today so that you could get that deal closed at the office. On the other hand, it could be that you called at the last minute and simply said you had a client coming over to the house and she needs to have things clean and presentable. Before you know it, you may still be talking, but there is really no communication and if it keeps up this way there will soon be no relationship.
Now, imagine this beginning to become routine. Day after day the pattern becomes the same. There is no joy in simply talking together. You really don’t have time to listen to what she has to say or what her needs are. Yet, you are a man and there is something more that you want. So, in the midst of this scenario, I want you to imagine crawling into bed one evening and telling your wife how much you want to have an intimate evening together. Your need for intimacy is intense and all the feelings that accompany such a need are bombarding you. Just to put it a bit more clearly you are simply ready for some passion and excitement in your life. What kind of response do you suppose you are going to get from your spouse?
Now, let’s consider Paul’s mystery from Ephesians 5 for a moment. Maybe you are wondering why my example led up to the point that it did and what this has to do with the mystery of Christ and the church, but stop and think for a moment. Paul says that the husband and wife become “one flesh”. He tells us that this intercourse (this intimate connection between persons, this exchange of thoughts and feelings) is a natural by-product of the marriage relationship. I want to suggest to you that the passion and the power that we long to see in our relationship with Christ is very much akin to this example from marriage. We are commanded to spread the gospel and to be instruments in establishing growth in the kingdom of heaven, but it cannot happen without that intimate relationship between a husband and a wife, that is, between you and Christ. Yet, we, particularly as men, expect to treat Jesus like the man in our example is treating his wife and still get what we want out of the relationship.
Men, if you don’t already realize that this doesn’t work in the course of your natural marriage to your wife, then I want you to know that you need to sign up for marriage counseling immediately. And no, I am not joking. We need passion for relationship and communication in our marriage if we ever expect to have the intimacy of making love to our spouse and without that sexual union in a physical relationship, we will miss out on a powerful experience that should be a natural part of our marriage, not to mention we will never produce offspring of our own and cause our family to grow.
Men, you say you want to see the great things of God. Men are the first to proclaim that we need revival, that we need to see the power of God manifest in the earth, but often we are the last ones to take the initiative in pursuing the passion of prayer (that is, routine communication) with the Father that is necessary for there to be an intimate union between us that will lead to the powerful experiences we cry out for.
Men, let me close by asking you some questions:
1. How is your marriage? You need to know it is likely a reflection of your relationship with the Father.
2. How much time do you and your wife spend talking? It is probably a reflection of how much time you spend in prayer.
3. Now remember, how you have answered these first two questions is probably a reflection on how intimate you and your spouse are and how likely you are to experience the marital intimacy that you desire. Thus, how you have answered them is probably a reflection of who intimate your relationship with the heavenly Father is and how likely it is that you will see the power and glory of God that you say you long for.
