Lessons About Marriage

Welcome to family life today. Thanks for joining us.

Your hosts are Dave and Ann Wilson on Bob Lapine. You can find us online@familylifetoday.com. I've got a verse of the year. You can reverse the dues you could lock them on during the year, but this is mind it's Ecclesiastes 3 I didn't learn this. The Bible study. I learned this in the 60s listening to the radio. Is this your first this year. This is my verse for this year.

Yes, I learned of listening to the birds evidence to everything there is a season of, to just go through everything this year. You kinda have to recognize guns in control of things.

There's a season for everything and some seasons are hard seasons.

Some seasons or seasons of joy some seasons are melancholy. This is a season of transition for us at family life and this week were marking the transition because this will be the last week that I'll be doing this. Starting next week were handling things over to you guys are faithless right now you are going to do great. I can imagine with the listener's face is as it is news to them is that it is news and I know you know any transition.

It's kind like oh it's not gonna be the same. It's gonna be great. It's going to list if you know this listeners when Dennis transitioned to see how quietly our blisters came and they said oh I don't know and then a couple months later, it's like we love Dave and them what they said I hopes and the same things that happen here but you people will go thou it's not the same but three months from now will be gone. It's actually in some ways it's a lot better about that. And this is a favorite brand there. Well, where were marking this week. We thought, what should we do in this final week and I'd I just thought I've been here 20 years doing family life today and over 20 years. I think I've got the equivalent of a Masters and maybe I'm in the World Series to your doctor when it comes to marriage and family, and it's just been the daily discipline of sitting down with some of the smartest people on the planet about what the Bible has to say about marriage and family. I've learned so much. I came up with the 28 things and I could come up with 200 maybe things just right but 28 things I learned in 28 years and so this week will walk through my top 28 okay to be easy today will focus on 28 things about marriage them up tomorrow will look at parenting them in order to look at the differences between men and women will look at things that all of us to learn from Dennis Rainey on that I got a bunch of miscellaneous stuff will throw it on the last day. Just don't mind if I cry half the time. Okay the marriage stuff really talk about really is connected to our experience teaching at the weekend. Remember marriage getaways that we've done together you've done for more than 30 years I've done for the 28 years that I've been here. I remembered the experience of being in the middle of teaching one of the sessions at the weekend to remember. And while I'm teaching it.

I'm going to like it. What this did you and I have my outline and follow the on I'm teaching this.

I know it, but all of a sudden it dawns on me all this is bigger than just the points I'm making here had that same thing happen. We think this is really good, and so on. The first night of the week and remember we have kind of the principle that sets up the whole weekend. It's one of those profound things that you go that's really true, and understanding that helps me understand everything that's going on in my marriage. The principle is that the natural drift in every marriage relationship is a drift toward isolation.

We don't drift toward one another. We drift away from one another and to pursue oneness takes intentionality in pursuit. And you gotta go for it if you don't go for it. You'll drift apart. So here's how Dennis explained it on a family life today radio program back. I don't know this was 20+ years ago talking about this drift in a relationship with some of this, God created marriage for noble purpose for husband and wife who are very different to become one, and that all your marriage are going to battle isolation versus oneness and the question is where you going to end up you can end up isolated from one another.

Are you going to battle through using God's plan. God's blueprints and submit to Jesus Christ and end up as a couple one with one another well and when we speak to couples on the subject. We really start off by talking about the factors in the culture that cause us not to grow closer together but try to push us apart.

We really swimming upstream when we try to pursue oneness analog couples sit there and they go that's me, that's me, that's us that explains a lot.

And you know what Bob today, as never before. Couples need someone from the outside to just explain to them what happens in a marriage relationship where two people who started out with such high expectations high hope and great love for one another came within a matter of hours, days, weeks, months or years be at war with one another and be isolated from one another in marriage, and instead of experiencing intimacy be alone in a marriage relationship. I mean, isn't that just an aha where you go, that's true. No marriage is static, not standing still.

You're either drifting away or you're moving toward one another in oneness and if you if you neglect your marriage will go toward isolation. If you work together you can get the one skin. It is pretty much the opposite of what a couple thinks before marriage. They think over just going to drift together right, you know, the longer we together the more love. That's the natural drift is good to be toward each other and then you get married you realize it really is the opposite. You are going to drift away.

The current is going in opposite directions, and you've got us and it is a ton of work.

I remember one time in Detroit fan. Remember this, but it was a lion's home game weekend and I we convince the couple maybe three or four lines couples to go to the family life. We can remember in Detroit on Friday night, but they couldn't go Saturday right so all they heard was that talk.

This really looked at us afterwards like will that was discouraging to come back and find out God's plan, but they only heard you know the first Dr. Elizabeth threats the oneness and yeah I'm a dentist a great job. So true.

I'm telling you, if you go to the marriage conference though, and that's the only thing you get back to put alarm in your mind and your heart like oh because I always thought the same thing where drifting together.

I love just pulls us together and will continue to the beach boys told us that Brian Wilson said it's only gonna make it that much better when we say good night and stay together as he was, if if dating is good marriage is just going to be great right and then we get married and go. Why is this not working out and I'm Friday night at the weekend. Remember to hear the natural drift is toward isolation. You go oh, this is not just us. Everybody experiences this were not alone in this.

The fact that were in isolation is because we haven't been way tension. Yeah, I remember one couple we were interviewing on family life today who talked about Friday night and they said you know you bring up this chart in your show on this is how you lead toward isolation and the husband was like that's us and the life was like that's us and she was thinking.

So we should get the divorce know because that yeah that that and he said will not wait if they know what's wrong. Maybe they know how to fix it in the course of the weekend. They have learned how to fix it and were able to put their marriage back together.

So I just think that's genius everybody listening your marriage is not staying static. If you're not working on it. Your drifting toward isolation. You have to work at it. You have to know how to work out it to pursue the kind of oneness that God intends for marriage and if you sit there thinking okay now what do I do go to the we can remember how to family life.com right now and there's all kinds of resources that I hope you combat that natural drift. Download the app listen to this program every day.

I do the things that are going to prompt you to move toward one another in marriage right. Here's the second thing about marriage that got implanted on my brain. Early on, and it's probably the most often quoted line from the weekend. Remember, if you go up to a couple is going to we can remember, and you say what you remember. Was there a big take away.

I mean at least 50% of the time, I would say so to what they will say is I learned my spouse is not my enemy. I have couples say it out loud as I hear it is your spouse not your and everybody sit with me. My spouse is not my enemy that I say look at each other and say you are not my enemy and some of them feel like there why exactly have you looked at there and some of them will not do it right there looking at their spouse and they want to tell us if they could you get us wrong – he is my enemy.

She's the one in my marriage.

Here's Dennis Rainey again explaining this principle that your spouse is not your enemy, well if if you see your marriage from a spiritual perspective you're going to understand that your marriage is under attack. There is a spiritual battle that is swirling around every marriage that is listening today to this broadcast. Satan is seeking to divide and destroy Christian marriages and that's why it's so important for every Christian marriage to realize your marriage today is under attack. Do not be deceived. Ultimately, life is a battle of who you and I are going to submit to. If you're going to make it in this battle that's taking place. You as a husband you as a wife must declare who your Lord who your master is who will be the builder of your home and were told in Scripture, every home has a builder and the builder that I want for my home that Barbara and I have decided is we are going to submit to Jesus Christ as the author.

The designer and the spiritual creator of the marriage relationship because he knows how to make it work well.

A lot of couples recognize there's a battle going on in their marriage and they experienced it this morning cry last night as they clashed as a couple. You're saying that that battle has a source outside of their marriage. I'm saying that there is a destroyer that is seeking to deceive us to to cause us to think that the battle is inside our home that the real enemy is your spouse and if I read Ephesians chapter 6 correctly.

It tells me that our battle is not against flesh and blood. Your enemy is never your spouse, your enemy is never your mate, you are not at war against your husband. Your real battle is against the Prince of darkness and what he is trying to get Christians to do today is to deceive them into thinking that the real battle is internally within their marriage, instead of realizing that the real battle is the devil, and that the only way were going to defeat him is to know the Scripture and cling to God and be dependent upon the truth that is found in God's word. I mean, again, that's such a foundational principle when a couple can look at each other and say you're not my enemy. We have an enemy or somebody was trying to destroy our marriage rather than focusing on one another is the source of the issue.

Let's recognize where the issue is.

Let's turn together and let's do battle against Satan who wants to destroy us. That's a turning point in so many marriage holidays. I remember the first year we went to the conference, which was two weeks before we got married.

Dave and I ended up really struggling at first year in our marriage. We stuck out to me and we were in this big fight and I remember walking out of the room saying I actually never differently that it was the same thing that here's a member I got up and left the bedroom and was storming down the hall and she was in the bedroom and you yelled out into the hallway. So we weren't even in the same room and she yelled the words that we heard at the we can remember enough.

I am here, not my enemy.

What are we fighting each other for list turn and fight the enemy at all. I member at that moment thinking.

I can't believe she's right again.

As I've ever look at each other's like she's always right back at this point. From that we can remember which was a couple months before that and think that it were newlyweds and we have a foundation that was very important understand that moment and Mary and I've been married 41 years and there are still days where we have to look at each other and say okay you're not the only plan on a enemy and we just acknowledge that and it helps us recalibrate and go what were feeling right now it's real, but let's recognize what's also real and that is the gods on our side on this so that we can turn to him and let's fight the real enemy of all of this recognition is really important. There's 1/3 point.

That's probably I'm I'm kind of the these are the weekend remembers greatest hits I am doing and so there's 1/3 point that comes during the course of the weekend where we help couples understand that there is a decision every person has to make, and you, you make it when you get married but you have to remake it over and over again. It's the decision that you can do more than simply accept your spouse, you're going to receive your spouse as the gift God has given you, and again Dennis explained this in a series we did on family life today very early after the program got started. So here's Dennis again when you made a covenant to your spouse. It wasn't just to stay married. It was a covenant to care for and to nourish them and meet their needs and to receive them except them, embrace them as God's personal provision for your needs and what we gotta do today is not reject our spouse. We have to receive and we had receive them in their their personality, their habits, the mistakes they make. Even their selfishness and how they hurt us. We somehow in the middle of the a real relationship with a real person must embrace that person because that is God's assignment for us. That's a tough assignment for a lot of folks who have a lot of baggage that they brought with them in the marriage relationship or a lot of issues that have developed since they got married where they been wounded yeah and what makes even more difficult is some Christians end up feeling like they married the wrong person, and this will really undermine your commitment and I believe the devil really uses seeds of doubt in Christians lives early in their marriage to perhaps convince them that they made a mistake.

I ran across a little piece written by zig Ziglar and you don't think of him as being a marriage counselor, but this is worth repeating here on the broadcast. He said this I have no way of knowing whether or not you married the wrong person but I do know that many people have a lot of wrong ideas about marriage and what it takes to make that marriage happy and successful.

If you treat the wrong person. Like the right person. You could well end up having married the right person.

After all, you know I like that but he goes on to say this. On the other hand, if you married the right person and treat that person wrong. You certainly will have ended up marrying the wrong person. I also know that it is far more important to be the right kind of person, then it is to marry the right person. The bottom line is we need to accept and receive our spouse if were married today to them. We need to accept them as God's personal provision for us because you know what you don't have an option at this point against such a great principle that we will just change perspective inside God's given me a gift that feels some days like I got a gag gift some days like this is no gift. This is a millstone. But no, God knows what he's doing is giving you exactly what you need and when you can accept this as the good gift from his hand when we talk about this at the marriage conference. We talk about God presenting Eve to Adam. Yeah, and Adam didn't know anything about her. All he knew was a good God has given me a gift. And so what I know anything about her. I can trust that God knows what I need and he's given me what I need well hidden in it. You know a big point at the weekend is he done just accept her right. This is now bone of my ball. He's excited he receives there because of who is bringing her to him. It's somebody he knows well God and I can trust him.

I don't know if you're interested by but at this point in the we can remember. I usually grab my guitar this and do a little song that sorta captures that moment if you want to hear. Yeah, absolutely. We got a guitar studio just in case you know I Sarah envision what it must've been like in the garden, and I think you know Adam I wrote this song.

At that moment held some never needed any now, namely, seeing no one take a moment naming you. You you will jump you will want you to little comic relief using the middle of them have the Genesis in mind when he wrote away from the fun of that is that is a sense what was going on.

I mean, is Adam standing there. He realizes he's alone God provides and we have a beautiful picture of what marriage can be. I can choose to reject this gift from my father or I can receive her receive him as an amazing gift that I know we all have moments like this is not what I thought but at the end of day. There is a beautiful gift in your wife and your and your husband that we often miss. I'm realizing that these are foundational truths for Dave and me, because we have built our marriage on these truths, and their biblical taste and I'm telling you these three things we talked about your marriage drifts toward isolation. Your spouse is not your enemy, receive your spouse is God's gift for you when you can build a marriage on that kind of a foundation. I it's amazing what God can do what when we talk about receiving your spouse, the very next thing we talk about is the fact that there are obstacles to receiving your spouse like everybody has weaknesses and those weaknesses in your spouse are an obstacle you don't want to receive somebody who's got weaknesses and I remember teaching through this 11 Saturday morning at the weekend to remember what I'm looking through this list of possible obstacles. Things like your spouse is critical and has critical spirit or your spouse is lazy or your spouse is disorganized and it dawned on me that each one of those weaknesses.

There is a corresponding strength behind that weakness. So I'm thinking okay sometimes Marianne can have a critical spirit, but I thought that's because she has high standards and those high standards are a good thing. It's just when you overuse that that becomes a critical spirit. Sometimes I can be lazy. Well, I can be a laid-back person. The laid-back can be a good thing. Lazy is not so when you see whatever you would identify as your spouse's weakness, you'd say this person is just nags all the time. Well, a person who nags all the time really cares about things going right. It's okay if we would all do they think where my husband's weaknesses are my wife.

Then we went print out what's the opposite looks the corresponding strength I remember our professor in seminary asked me, tell me what Dave's greatest weaknesses. I'm surprised that he asked me think I cannot, and how laid-back he and I think it's not just laid-back. I used to think it was laid-back but now I'm realizing he doesn't have any functioning And go and I would go on and on course. He never told me that every day. So 10 years later that same craft and visited us, and now he asked me, tell me what Dave's greatest strength.

This can because maybe because of these principles that I had learned. I said I love how laid-back he is an inherent 90 oh you remember what he said. He said no he think you drove you crazy and I said I'm realizing now that that is my greatest gifts because I am so intense I need that in my life and I think we can have a conversation with one another in marriage and so you know, one of the things I love about you is that you really care about things being done right in our family that sometimes it does drive me crazy turns in the neck and yeah but I really do appreciate. I'm grateful for what's behind that night and is there a way we can celebrate what's good and kinda work on when that gets over you, then maybe even an assignment. As you listen, today is make a list of the great qualities in your spouse. I bet you it's been a while since you've identified those because it's so easy to see the negative thing but there's a positive side of that right in and tell her tell him you know you appreciate that about them.

Here's a lesson about marriageable talk about today and this came out during an interview that we had with our friend Dan Allender, who had written a book called intimate allies and Dan was helping me understand why leaving father and mother and forming a new union why that's so important and you know I think in literal terms, so leaving me and so I don't live with them anymore.

But then was explaining your parents and their influence and their approval and all of that still kind of comes with you in the marriage and when it does when you don't leave father and mother and format new union you're sowing seeds of discord in a marriage or stand talk about this with our three parts in that passage in Genesis 2 says that we are to leave our fathers and mothers we are to leave to our wives that we are to become one flesh.

There's a sequence that's required for every man, and for everyone. They must leave their family of origin and not just geographically work to move together uniquely and not under the sway and power of our families of origin. That's a psychological concept that was a biblically implanted concept in order to create a new unit not what happens. For example, with a husband who does not leave his father and lives for his father's approval. In one sense his wife knows he is not trustworthy and in that sense wife is often a few anger at her husband for not being willing to separate from the family of origin so leaving his core.

There has to be a leaving that good really good cages his voice to sound and you can see, as you work with couples.

Yeah how a failure to leave. How emotional dependence on moms approval dad's approval. This is how I was raised like I have to do it this way, those are seeds that disrupt infects somewhere in this conversation.

I think Dan said he could trace 90% of a couples problems in marriage back to a failure to leave when he's working with couples and he starts digging into where what's going on. They didn't leave mom and dad. They didn't leave and form a a whole new union.

You know what I'm amazed that is that Bob Lapine can remember who said what is broadcast for years against things marked me.

Yeah, that's the point is were going through this time. I'm looking back at the things over the last 28 years as I've done this that have shaped my life shaped my marriage help me understand. For me, for my family for Maryam and me help us understand how you form a marriage that's going to go the distance in the neat thing is, there's thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands that will say I remember Bob Lapine's and families today and then marked me that's a beautiful thing about it.

Even Marianne are living out those principles that by their forefront in your mind, spirit living in every day and it's because I got catechized. I got trained here on family life today and and we thought our listers might like to have these kind of core principles in a consumable format. We put together a flash drive that includes all that will be talking about this week. The 28 lessons I've learned in 28 years of being on family life today and we've actually taken the original programs from which each of these principles came so when you get the flash drive.

You not only get our conversations but you could go back and listen to the programs from years ago where I first heard some of these core principles were making that flash drive available to family life today listers who can help support the ministry of family life going forward.

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So we need to hear from you this week. Be as generous as you can possibly be, so that we can take full advantage of this matching gift when you do, in addition to sending you the flash drive that I just talked about will send you a couple books by Aaron and Jamie IV. Both books have the same title in the same chapters but one is for husbands. The other is for wives. The book is called complement and that's about how we blend together in marriage and then those of you who would like to align with us as monthly legacy partners this month were hoping that many of you would step in and say family life today means a lot to me. I want to make sure that this program does continue, we can be monthly donors to the ministry of family life. When you make that first monthly gift were to send you certificate so you and your spouse can attend an upcoming weekend to remember marriage get away as new legacy partners and that's transferable. If you will pass it on to somebody else you can do that as well. We really appreciate all of you who support the ministry legacy partners. We particularly appreciate your faithfulness.

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Again, the website family life today.com or if it's easier, just call one 800 FL today. It's all set up our number again 1-800-358-6329 that's one 800 F as in family L as in life, and then the word today that tomorrow morning to talk about parenting because I learned a lot as we were raising our kids. There were a lot of times when I would sit down and have a conversation with the guest and go home and talk to Maryam and say guess what I learned today. Here's what we need to start doing so tomorrow lessons on parenting from the last 20 years. Hope you can tune in for that I want to thank our engineer today. Keith Lynch got some extra help today from Bruce Goss and our entire broadcast production team on behalf of our hosts Dave and Ann Wilson and Bob Payne.

We will see you back tomorrow for another edition of family life today.

Family life today is a production of family life of Little Rock, Arkansas. Accrue ministry help for today hope for tomorrow