INTRODUCTION
• SLIDE #1
• I have done a lot of weddings over the time I have been in Ministry. Wedding are a joy in part because there is so much joy surrounding the glorious event.
• You can feel the love all around. As you watch the couple as they gaze unto one another’s eyes, you can feel the passion and excitement.
• When I meet with couples before the wedding ceremony takes place, I have yet have a couple tell me that they hoped their marriage went down in flames, that they could not wait to despise one another, to cheat on one another, or to try to inflict as much pain on one another as possible!
• I think we would all agree that most if not all couples WANT to have their love and marriage last a lifetime, the question is how does that desire to have a lasting relationship translate into the realities of life?
• We have been looking over the past couple of weeks at how to Fireproof our relationships, today we are going to narrow the focus to fireproofing the most important relationship in your life after your relationship with Jesus; your marriage.
• In the movie, Fireproof, Caleb and Catherine are starting down the road to divorce. Caleb explains to his friend, Michael that the marriage is probably through. To which Michael responds, “I’ve seen you run into a burning building to save people you don’t even know, but you’re going to let your own marriage burn to the ground.”
• VIDEO CLIP. CLICK LIKE A NEW SONG
• CLICK TO NEW POWERPOINT SLIDES #1
• Today we are going to look at a passage where Jesus answered a direct question concerning the issue of the permanency of marriage.
• Let’s turn in our bibles to Matthew 19:3-6
• SLIDE #2
• Matthew 19:3-6 ( ESV ) 3And Pharisees came up to him and tested him by asking, “Is it lawful to divorce one’s wife for any cause?” 4He answered, “Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female, 5and said,£‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh’? 6So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.”
• From the answer Jesus gives to the Pharisee, we can surmise that Jesus taught that:
• SLIDE #3
SERMON
I. Marriage is meant to be for a lifetime.
• One of the keys that will help to fireproof your marriage is realizing that marriage is meant to be permanent.
• I believe this will help us to not take the issue of marriage lightly.
• Jesus quotes Genesis 2:24 in verse 5.
• The concept of “Cleave to” or “to hold fast” carries the idea of firm, permanent attachment, as in gluing. In marriage a man and woman are so closely joined that they become “one flesh,” which involves spiritual as well as physical oneness.
• God shows us that we are to make a new life together and during the course of that effort, we become one inseparable flesh. God intended marriage to be a beautiful thing that makes each person’s life better.
• As God designed it, marriage is to be the welding of two people together into one unit, the blending of two minds, two wills, two sets of emotions, two spirits. It is a bond the Lord intends to be indissoluble as long as both partners are alive.
• Just like in the video clip where the salt and pepper shaker were super glued together, when a couple comes together as husband and wife, they are bound together as one, and separating them back into two will do great damage to each of them.
• During the wedding we have a point in the ceremony where the vows are exchanged.
• It’s at that moment I’m most tempted to say, “Wait, wait! Let me tell you what’s most likely to happen from here! Because reality is, while you married for better and worse, richer and poorer, in sickness and in health, there’s going to actually be a lot of worse, poorer, and sickness than you hope for. Yes, you’ll have better and richer and health, but not all the time.”
• Now let consider the fact that ALL MARRIAGES GO THROUGH SEASONS. Nobody gets a cakewalk. That’s just not how life works. Like the rotation of the earth, they move through stages that are predictable.
• Experts have identified four of them.
• Let’s examine the seasons of marriage.
• SLIDE #4
II. The seasons of marriage.
• It is important that we understand that there are seasons of marriage. Understanding this can help us to not fall apart when we hit one of the seasons that is rainy and drab!
• Let’s examine the first season. This is the fun one!
• SLIDE #5
A. Romance.
• Two young people meet and fall in love. Unlike the rest of the world, they have a picture-perfect relationship.
• While in this first season, they know that they have something special between them. Theirs is a rare love, not like the common stuff their parents’ experienced. More like Anthony and Cleopatra or Romeo and Juliet. Or Jerry and Erin
• She calls it, “A match made in heaven.”
• He says “We love each other.”
• It’s magic every time they’re together, and misery every moment they’re apart. There’s such a strong chemistry that passes between them that you’d almost be tempted to call it a chemical addiction. And some people do.
• During romance, all is right with the world. Women lose weight and men lose money. She’d rather spend time thinking about him than eating; he’d rather spend money on her than pay the rent.
• Romance is the season that songs are written about. EXCEPT COUNTRY SONG.
• For those of you interested in facts, psychologists tell us that romantic feelings of infatuation wear off, on average, about 2 ½ years into any relationship.
• For most Americans, this romantic stage lasts right up to somewhere between the “I now pronounce you man and wife,” and the first time he leaves the toilet seat up or the first time she says, “I was too tired to cook anything so I bought you a TV dinner.”
• At this point, one or both parties look in the mirror and quietly say, “I guess the honeymoon is over.”
• What are you left with? The second season of marriage.
• SLIDE #6
B. Reality.
• Reality is what sets in when romance wears off.
• Suddenly, one or both parties realizes that the object of their pursuit, the person of their dreams, the individual they feared they could never attain… is now someone they can never get rid of.
• They begin to think, “Now that I have this relationship, what do I do with it?” It’s like the dog that’s been chasing cars for years and one day he catches one. “Now what do I do?” he says.
• “Love itself is what is left over when being in love has burned away.”
• Being in love is what romance is all about.
• Once the euphoria of being in love wears off that leaves two who were once in love to discover how to choose to love for a lifetime.
• Choosing to love is what reality is all about.
• In the reality stage, he sees her without make-up on. She hears his bodily noises.
• There’s a clash of family values, as the two become one flesh.
• Many if not all couples have issues as they learn to adapt to one another, to work out a mutually satisfying routine of work, sleep, social activities, and physical intimacy issues, among other things.
• That’s what the first round of reality looks like.
• Reality clarifies what romance conceals, and all the while that each member of the couple is seeing more clearly the other person in the relationship, there’s a realization about their own feelings creeping slowly up their neck.
• Two weeks after that realization reaches the brain, each party puts a name to it:
• SLIDE #7
C. Resentment.
• This is the really rough season of marriage.
• She says, “Something happened to me when I wasn’t looking. Who switched husbands on me? I thought I was marrying the man of my dreams, but somehow I wound up with Osama bin Laden’s nephew.
• He says, “I thought I was marrying Julia Roberts, now I wish she really was the runaway bride.”
• During the resentment phase, the one who was once the object of our affection now becomes the target of our frustration.
• Now it’s easy to blame the spouse for all the evils in the world, even if they are only remotely connected to the problem.
• If there are financial stresses, it’s her fault because she spends too much. Or his fault, because he makes too little. If there is friction, he started it, or she was too sensitive.
• If there’s blame to be cast, well, go look in the mirror pal, because it’s certainly not my fault. Or, as Caleb said in the movie, “I am not a perfect person, but better than most. And if my marriage is failing, it is not all my fault.”
• It’s during this resentment phase when character is tested and the need for love comes into play, really for the first time. It’s because of this kind of feeling that the Apostle Paul wrote in Colossians 3:12-14
• Slide #8
• Colossians 3:12-14 ( ESV ) 12Put on then, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, 13bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. 14And above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony.
• If that kind of love gets practiced, the kind of love we learned about last weekend, God’s kind of love, that focuses on you and your needs, not me and mine, then the relationship can enter the fourth season of marriage.
• SLIDE #9
D. Rebuilding
• If that kind of love doesn’t get practiced, then the marriage never makes it through all the seasons. It either gets stuck in a perpetual wintertime of resentment, or it dies and is buried in a ceremony we call, “Divorce.”
• This is the glasses-off truth about marriage. All marriages have romance and reality and resentment on their calendars. Some get to experience the springtime of rebuilding.
• This is the time in which you are able to reconcile things, you have learned to LOVE as Christ loved and this is where your relationship builds depth!
• To play the marriage game during the season of rebuilding, both members of the marriage must practice three great skills:
• SLIDE #10
III. Three skills to help marriages last for a life-time.
• One of the critical skills in rebuilding a marriage, is:
• SLIDE #11
A. Remembering that we’re different, and adapting accordingly.
• We spent a lot of time on this two weeks ago. If you missed it, I encourage you to listen online.
• Men and women have many differences. According to author Jim Smith there are four areas men and women struggle communicating with one another.
• DIFFERENCES IN COMMUNICATION:
• MEN TEND TO BE IN TOUCH WITH THEIR THOUGHTS FIRST AND THEN THEIR FEELINGS; WOMEN TEND TO BE IN TOUCH WITH THEIR FEELINGS FIRST AND THEN THEIR THOUGHTS.
• MEN AND WOMEN HAVE VERY DIFFERENT IDEAS ON HOW EVENINGS SHOULD BE SPENT.
• MEN AND WOMEN APPRECIATE SEX FROM DIFFERENT PERSPECTIVES
• Men tend to be physically oriented, while women tend to be relationally oriented. So after a fight, he thinks that having sex could be a great way to make up, while she wants to make up before they have sex.
• These differences are heightened in the reality and rebuilding stages. So, if you’re going to successfully rebuild your marriage, you’re going to have to remember that you and your spouse are different and compensate accordingly.
• SLIDE #12
B. Asking and granting forgiveness.
• Note that this action isn’t really a skill. It doesn’t take any skill to say the words, “I’m sorry, or please forgive me.” What it takes is character. It takes being humble enough to admit you’re not perfect.
• SLIDE #13
• Ephesians 4:32 ( ESV ) 32Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you.
• A third skill, and maybe the most important one for lifetime love, is:
• SLIDE #14
C. Deciding to love and keep on loving.
• One of the biggest misunderstandings about marriage in our day is that people think marriage is based on love, and that love is a feeling. Love isn’t a feeling, it’s an action. It’s a way of acting, a thing you do.
• The Bible’s most famous passage on love, 1 Corinthians 13, says that love is patient, kind, not envious, not boastful, not proud, not rude, not self-seeking, not easily-angered.
• It says that it doesn’t keep score, doesn’t secretly like it when someone has something bad happen to truth, protects, trusts, hopes, and hangs in there. That’s God’s description of love. What part of that is based on emotions?
• None of it. It’s all based on decision. To love is a decision. To hang in, even when happily ever after isn’t happening, that’s love.
• All marriages go through seasons. For most people, rebuilding is a normal state.
• After the first round of Romance and Reality and Resentment, most marriages come back to rebuilding in one area or another of their relationship, because there is always something we’d like to change about another person and always something that needs improving about ourselves.
• If we work the rebuilding stage sincerely, we will come back around to romance.
• It will be a romance with real depth!
• This leads us to love dare #3
• SLIDE #15
IV. Love Dare Challenge #3.
• SLIDE #16
• Couples- Renew your vows to each other.
• SLIDE #17
• Singles- Pick out a skill from the three skills to work on.
CONCLUSION
• If we’ll master the skills of communication, forgiveness, and deciding to work through our differences.
• And if we do…? At the end of it all, we will say, “We lived mostly happily ever after.” And others will say, “Those two had a really good marriage.”
