Practical Advice on Making a Marriage Stick, Part 1

Today from Chuck Swindoll practical help for your marriage or learning together to cultivate complete honesty in our relationship. The believer is told to lay aside the old self. Now, in the same word used is told to lay aside falsehood, but is not automatic. It's a command it's a directive laying aside falsehood, speak truth. Most of us have attended weddings where we focused on the young riding standing at the altar privately wondered will this beautiful couple have the tenacity encouraged to push through the hard times will they be able to stick it out today on Insight for living Chuck Swindoll will agree that marriage is hard but he'll do far more than simply validate our struggles is going to offer biblical wisdom on how to survive and even thrive when things get rough. Chuck titled today's message practical advice on making a marriage stick passage of Scripture that says let the word of Christ dwell in you richly with all wisdom, teaching and admonishing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with grace in your hearts to the Lord in your worship folder you will find an outline for today's message and it is based on Ephesians chapter 4 the last eight verses if you will allow me I'd like to read for you. Ephesians 425 through 31.

We continue our series on the home and family. The 21st century. Today will be thinking about practical advice on making a marriage stick principles are in Ephesians 4 2532. It is therefore lay aside laying aside falsehood, speak truth, each one of you with his neighbor, for we are members of one another. The angry, and yet do not sin. Do not let the sun go down on your anger and do not give the devil an opportunity.

He who steals must steal no longer, but rather you must labor performing with his own hands, what is good so that he will have something to share with the one who has need. Let me know. Unwholesome word proceed from your mouth, but only such a word as is good for edification.

According to the need of the moment so that it would give grace to those who hear. Do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice.

Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving each other, just as God in Christ also has forgiven you. We do hail the power of Jesus name. And if angels prostrate fall surely the least we can do is bow as we stand in allegiance to our Savior and your son, our father, we exulted in his presence in this room we exalt his name together. Our words of praise know no bounds, as we attempt to shape words to fit the virtues of his life. Thank you for his precious countenance that covers us for his power that protects us for his leadership that guides us for his grace and forgiveness for the loveliness of his appeal that draws us and warms us and breaks our hearts. Thank you father for overseeing our lives with such vigilance for caring about each detail each heart break each grief, each pain.

Pain. Each fear that haunts us, we care so much, our father about this matter of marriage.

Help us as we work toward that goal of living our lives like Christ in the presence of those who know what is best for give us father for the wasted hours spent wrangling and arguing over nonessentials. Thank you for bringing back bringing us back to things that matter today. May your word be lifted from print on the page and may in turn from mere terms truth to live by. Thank you for the privilege of our occupation for the pleasure of earning a living by your calling and grace. This is not our treasure.

We share with you this is your treasure you so rightly deserve. We give, not because you have a need, but because we have a need to know how to be more generous and grateful. So, out of the abundance our father we pour forth our hearts of praise as we again hail the power of Jesus name in his great name we give and in that great name we pray all this people said they met, what you never know what to expect when you speak on the home and family and you begin with the subject of marriage. People in the congregation are always creative and they bring a pastor different things to look at consider like the sign.

The lady brought me this week that reads the most difficult years of marriage are those following the wedding right there be a little reminder for you do that like the fellow's brother who put it this way. I'm married looking for the ideal. I got the ordeal now want a new deal married for 17 years and decided it was time for divorce.

So the judge asked her after all these years. Why, she answered, look, enough is enough. Some guys don't even get it ahead of time I read this past week about a man who could not win the heart of this woman that he had fallen in love with, so he decided he would win her through the mail.

So he began writing her a love letter every day even sent her cards on the weekend. She still didn't respond, so he increased his output to three letters every 24 hours, along with the cards on the weekend. Ultimately, he wrote more than 700 letters and more than 100 cards and she married the postman.

Some people have fun joking about marriage, but interestingly, Winston Churchill never did his love for Clementine was to not only well known that it was talked about across the British Isles. All through the second world war and even years beyond. After more than 55 years of marriage is reporter interviewed Mr. Churchill and ask him telling question if you could live your life again.

What would you want to be with a twinkle in his he answered quickly. Mrs. Churchill's next husband is amazing that some married couples experience such dismal dark years together so fulfilling. So heartbreaking and argumentative and angry, you and others who live just a few doors away, or around the corner or in another town or attend the same church would be able to say our marriage is solid and satisfying and it's sure it just gets better as the years go by. Why, why is it some stick and some don't. I mean we all have the fact that the difficult years of marriage. Follow the wedding and I've never seen never seen a marriage anywhere near ideal.

I never seen a marriage that didn't go through times of the enormous hardship and refueling struggles grievous pain. In fact, it seems, though it sounds strange that the best marriages seem to be the product of that kind of challenge hardship to three couples all too briefly last time, Adam and Eve and we saw that in 900 and more years of his life. There is never a recorded word that he and Eve split up.

Even though the life changes they went through were harsh the fall into sin, being driven from the perfect environment of the garden homeless and helpless to change their course of action. They have children and one boy kills his brother of all things the troubleshooter seem to stack up and multiply.

We learned from Adam and Eve that a marriage can survive the harshest of consequences when we skipped over a few hundred years and we interviewed a prophet named Hosea and a very unusual woman named Gomer, a prostitute whom God told him to marry. He did after three children. She went back to the streets in God told him again to go by her back and marry her so the nation Israel would know of God's love for the people who returned the spiritual harlotry as they embraced items instead of the one true God.

The marriage was to be a model of God's love for his own people who prostituted their faith we learn from Hosea and Gomer that a marriage can overcome the most extreme of challenges just like the one you perhaps are going through right now, the harshest of of consequences. The most extreme of challenges and then we looked at the mother of Jesus, Mary and her husband Joseph. What was strange set of circumstances.

He marries this this virgin who is telling him that she has conceived a child who is from God. In fact the Messiah Joseph believing God and trusting her gives himself to a marriage and all the stuff that must've accompanied the small town of Nazareth as their marriage blossomed and she gave birth to this virgin born child teaching us that a marriage can endure the strangest of circumstances. I don't know what the consequences are the challenges or the circumstances are in your marriage but I can tell you this, and the basis of these examples in the Scriptures, but surely it is worse than that isn't surely the consequences and challenges and circumstances aren't that bad or debt extreme so it's with that in mind and that sort of forming the foundational these next few moments we have together that I like that to be a backdrop of very realistic backdrop to these practical pieces of advice we pull out of Ephesians 425 232 when he pushed the pause button here and take off my preacher hat and put on my husband hat. Since I don't know another marriage better than I know my own. Your permission and the forgiveness I'm going to do a whole lot of personal unveiling of our life, our marriage, which has endured now more than our 50th. The GM June 2005.

My desire and making us the example is a is not to make my wife squirm said she has no clue what I'm going to say early. She didn't before she attended the last service I want to clarify some things said that it is important for me to say. Worst of all, please do not think about my using us as an example that we have it all together. We do not we have gone through many, if not the same conflicts that you have gone through the pressures, struggles, the heart aches disappointments.

The message the mistakes the failures the faults that you also have gone through is nothing in us that makes us anything special.

It wasn't because we came from parents who had their lives altogether. We came from loyal parents, faithful parents, but we did not come from perfect home. In fact, one of the earliest conversations we head as the Lord showed us. It wouldn't be long before our family would be started and it was going to be a responsibility to rear them God's way. We both decided we would not raise our children exactly as we were raised we need to make some course corrections we made them what we need to make some decisions that will alter the direction from which we had come, though again loved our parents greatly on not using us an example because I've entered the gospel ministry there was little in the ministry to strengthen the home. Aside from having to hear yourself preach regularly. There is really very little in the church to make the home stronger.

For the past so it's not about ministry that causes me to say this is not because we were given wise counsel. We had to faithful pastors, but not one word of counsel during our 18 month engagement.

Not a word to the day they married us and it isn't because we are, laid-back and easy-going.

It isn't because we both have such soft and weak, will that we just sort of relaxed, pliable. I'm using as an example because I don't know of another couple I can be this candid about and and I do so understanding that were still in the process. This is not about what we have learned it is about what we are learning in our years together. So why is it were still together. What are some of those tips that might be able to be applied in your marriage and in your your home will find all five right here, tucked away in the last few verses of Ephesians 4 there are no imperatives until you get to verse 25 and then from 25 to the end of the chapter. There are 11 of them and imperative is a command it's telling us to do something based on several of these commands. I like to draw five principles that are all practical advice for keeping a marriage together, making it stick first one is in verse 25. Therefore, as he sums it up. Laying aside falsehood, speak truth, each one of you if you will allow me with his married partner for we are members of one another.

Eugene Peterson paraphrases the first part of verse 25.

No more lies. No more pretense tell the truth. Cynthia and I are learning together to begin with, to cultivate complete honesty in our relationship. We are learning to cultivate complete honesty know I get that help you observe, just as in verse 22. The believer is told to lay aside the old self. Now, in the same word used is told to lay aside falsehood. Set it aside, but is not automatic. It's a command it's a directive laying aside falsehood, speak truth. The Greek sentence reads putting off the lie speak truth. The lie is in Greek tops you dose PS PUD OS we get obviously our word pseudo-from it in Greek to pronounce the P in English at silent pseudo-sounds to us like the word phony the person is a pseudo-intellectual not really an intellectual trying to make you think their intellectual pseudo-is the term used and it's rendered here lying or falsehood.

John Calvin call lying a monstrosity. Another man writes a lie is a stab into the very vitals of the body shaft from the kingdom of darkness.

And yet we lie lying wears many faces from mild to extreme forms of deception diplomatic hedging stretching the facts, not telling the whole story staying silent when we should speak flattering telling another what he or she wants to hear rather than what he or she needs to hear very common in marriages trying to look better with the other than we really are hiding our fears are real feelings not telling the truth about our motives or if were on the phone about our whereabouts. We hedge or we do until we stop the line likely John RW Scott renders this fellowship is built on trust and trust is built on true change the word fellowship to marriage. It fits marriage is built on trust and trust is built on true. Now I've observed that most of us cultivate the habit of lying while were dating, we don't just suddenly start being liars. Once we say I do.

For example, you probably told your wife to be that you loved opera so you would to these miserable performances time after time and just sat there grinning like a possum eaten briar thinking you know this is just wonderful. This is just great. You trying to impress her that you really love what she's thinking will I finally found a man that loves opera, then your marriage, you're not going to an opera you know you're not going to go. Why did you say you would go before because you lied to. She does it with fishing season to get up at 3 o'clock in the morning and fix those miserable tuna fish sandwiches and get in that boat and go out on Natalie freezing her buns off getting ready to get a little tiny fish saying romantic you're married, she's not going fishing. Why did she tell you she liked because she wanted you to like her rather than you know what opera states, you know what I am not interested at all in fishing and that you can do that but I'm not going to do it. That's how you keep from line. So what are you doing that instead you talk truth to your partner.

Sounds easy doesn't it. Some of you have covered up for so long.

You have a hard time finding the true even though it's the truth that sets you free, though. Marriage is more in bondage than a marriage that is wrapped in lines. I wonder how many of you if you were given just a simple 4 x 6 card could fill out exactly true regarding major details of may think you know you don't know unless partner has made the determination stop lying until the true stuff to do.

Flattery overstatements exaggeration. These are substitutes for telling the truth and honesty is one of the major virtues in a marriage that endures. You're listening to Insight for living were midway through a message from Chuck Swindoll titled practical advice on making a marriage stick and there's much more teaching ahead so please keep listening then to learn more about this ministry. Be sure to visit us online at insight world.or then let me remind you we been featuring an engaging daily devotional from Chuck. It's called wisdom for the way in this inspirational book. Chuck provides 365 daily reflections and we believe this wisdom from the Bible will help you discover, balance, how to cultivate your most cherished relationships and how to resist the temptations that can destroy a marriage and family ask for a copy of wisdom for the way the deluxe leather soft edition is available for purchase.

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Chuck Swindoll explains how to make a marriage stick Friday Insight for living. The preceding message practical advice on making a marriage state was copyrighted in 2004 and 2006, and the sound recording was copyrighted in 2006 by Charles R.

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