Knowing Each Other

Drape on Renewing Your Mind is we are to experience intimacy.

We have to get to know our parks as that's marriage cannot be continued and sustained on feelings alone.

Knowledge has to happen.

I must know my wife she must get to know me. Most couples imagine a lifetime of uninterrupted joy and bliss. As it turns out, marriage is hard work. Yes there are times of great joy.

But there are also times of isolation and loneliness in anything but joy. The key is understanding how to deal with those bad things and help us do that. There's Dr. RC school like a rock in your gender. This session of our study on Christian marriage. In this segment were going to look at the question of knowing one another in marriage. I've always been impressed by the fact that when the Old Testament speaks of intimacy and of sexual intimacy.

It frequently uses the verb to know, for example, the Bible might say that Abraham knew his wife and she conceived, or Adam knew his wife and she can see and we hear that expression and I wonder, why is it is because the biblical writers are embarrassed to say the word that they go to euphemism circumlocution ways of getting around being graphic or sexually explicit that is, Abraham knew his wife and she conceived.

What does that mean that Abraham walked on the street that he met this lady on the streets of low my name's Abraham. She said my name's Sarah. They rented this all of a sudden Sarah's pregnant this all the Bible means it's using that verb to know to communicate the deepest level of human intimacy.

And that's because for intimacy to happen whether it's physical or emotional or spiritual knowledge has to take place.

You cannot really experience intimacy with a stranger before our program opened in this segment. I was talking with some of the people here who were present in the studio audience and we were singing and dancing, and playing around and I was going back in the former ages and remember the song getting to know you getting to know all about you and would also have to. I thought that sort of captures the American way in which dating is developed into a marriage relationship. There's a process by which we get to know each other and it's almost like a mating dance that takes place like back to the initial dates that maybe you had with the person that you eventually married.

We look at a college campus.

For example, we see how people prepare for dates. The guys take a shower they use their deodorant. They take a cool shirt that they can think of and they want to look nice around their counselor here.

Meanwhile, back in the women's dorm. Women still spend three hours putting their hair in curlers and using all his makeup cosmetics because everybody wants to make a good first impression on that date is on the first date. We do everything in our power to make sure that that person were trying to impress doesn't know who we are right.

Try to avoid being known in that situation we would put our best step forward, but then what happens. The girl starts to respond to the guys there to respond to the girl and the relationship begins to develop and then a new dimension takes over in the relationship. Now we begin to let little glimpses of our self out to the person were dating because we got home I say hey she really responded to me was a committee or to my cologne, was it to me or was it to this macho image that I put forth that are fuller with, will she really liked me. When she really so now will begin to play true confessions were start to say well not to tell you something that I did long ago and far away. That is, we begin to confess our sins that are safe with José about what we're doing now is so little by little, the mask comes off as we test the waters to see as they continue to know us, will they continue to like us know that's a natural thing to have happened in a dating relationship. But what creates the kind of love that builds permanent marriage is when that process of knowing one another deepens and continues and continues and continues as that is absolutely necessary for intimacy to take place.

Unfortunately, what happens is in the dating relationship we open up we begin to reveal ourselves more more and as we get secure and comfortable. We continue to do that and then marriage happens then suddenly it begins to reverse and we start hiding things from our partner and we begin to build another barrier to missing. So the principle is this, that if we are to experience intimacy. We have to get to know our partners if that's knowledge is a requirement. Marriage cannot be continued and sustained on feelings alone. Knowledge has to happen. I must know my wife she must get to know me but for us to learn anything to know anything in depth we have this study we have to study. I remember when my father died when I was 17 years old and I went to the few and the minister gave a brief little eulogy and he said nice things about my dad and then at one point in that's meditation. He said you know I could always know when Bob Strohl was coming into my office in the church because I could hear the sound of his feet as he walked down the hall because he had a distinctive footfall and I knew it was he before he even popped his head around the door know when the minister said that my mother just as all she broke up she fell apart and so when the funeral was all finished I said derisive mom.

What was it that the minister said that broke you up like she said well when he mentioned your dad's footfall said because I can always tell what he was, what is she talking to for 17 years in the house with my dad really wasn't my datalink. They didn't have some funny kind of way of walking, but there was something distinctive about his gait that was distinctive about him. That was one of those little nuances of personality that only someone close and intimate except it says something for a minister because he had over 3000 members in his congregation and the good Shepherd knows his sheep, but in order to know somebody like that. We have to work at it. It never ceases to amaze me that when I talk to men who go through crises. The two biggest crises that they tend to experience apart from death, and so on are divorce and the loss of a job for man to be fired is devastating to but it's not as devastating for most men is to have their wives leave so we are concerned and women are concerned.

To about marriage and about career, how we set about getting ready for a career. We don't think anything of going to high school for 12 years and then many of us go beyond high school for another four years or five years, spending multiple thousands of dollars to learn how to be proficient in a certain field so that we could not have a job and then casually we meet somebody. Three. Six months later, we marry them and make no concerted effort to master the material of marriage. We will study history and philosophy in psychiatry and engineering and biology and all that so we can make more money.

We will invest any time or any labor into knowing our wives were the biggest complaints I hear you've heard he never talks to and all of a sudden the marriage dissolves in the person discovers more pain there than if they would've lost their job or had to change their vocation as a German we have bought into the myth that tells us that happy marriages come from doing what comes naturally.

But somehow we will learn to know our mate through osmosis and other certain things we can learn about people just from being around the we may begin to notice their little habits of how I walk and how they dress and how they react. I can learn on awful lot about a person just by studying that person outwardly if you want to know something about me you can hire a private investigator and they can go back and look at look at my track record, they can tell you where I went to school they can say what grades I made in schools. They can go to the IRS and tie how much money I make and what I spend my money on you go to back you get all kinds of external data and information about RC Sproul, but no matter how much you study that you cannot know who I am inside because if you asked me where I live, I'm going to tell you I live in Orlando. Okay, but that's not really where I live. This from a houses away from that house a whole lot more than I there you know where I live. I live inside the same place where you live, we can get mystical or metaphysical here about where the ego is where personality is found where the substance of individuality can be detected but will cut through all that for miniature sake.

You live inside their all I can know about you is what I can observe outwardly unless or until you choose to tell me what's going on inside.

That's why were so concerned about the Bible, we can know a lot about God from looking at creation. Creation gives us clues as to the identity of God in the character of God, but we don't really know God intimately until God speaks until God chooses to reveal himself and tell us what's inside. And so if you want to know your husband and you want your husband to know you.

You half to talk and you have to talk about stuff. Besides the weather you gotta talk about what's going on down there.

We have to get to what I call the second level of communication not just commonplace reactions, but down into how we feel about this when intimacy starts to take place. One of the great benefits that my wife and I have is having to spend so much time on the road, but a lot of it is just plain traveling this country and most of the time we drive and I find driving very very boring so we play games while driving will play games like this. Okay honey José if I could be anything in the world without fear of failure. Besides being a teacher would I be sure is a golf professional golf or baseball player and I say no I would like to be a concert violinist is what is I've just revealed her something of the secret life of Walter Mitty. It isn't all that dangerous of a personal revelation. She's getting to know me and then the conversation becomes deeper mundane that we play that I commend the couples project to be careful about is what I call my mail order partner game. There were Leona Carlotta will buy new car you walk into the dealership and first thing they tell you is that they have like seven or eight different models and you have to figure that out, and then each model comes with 150 possible factory options as so that the combinations that you can order for a car just boggle the mind all the different things you tilt wheel, air conditioning, automatic Windows rear window defogger and all that is. So we play this game of special order bride for special order group will say okay honey 20 options for the ideal husband you get the order your what options are you looking for in a husband, what options are looking for in a wife.

This is important to do for people who are contemplating marriage but is also helpful for people who are already blessed. Okay, let's be honest if you could be married to the ideal person. What would you order would be handsome would be tall to be short to be thin to be fast for the rich would be for would be bright would be done would be aggressive would be passive and we put all these things together and that is okay after we've gone through all 20 of these let's get serious.

Come into the showroom for your mail order bride Greer Miller, husband and the salesman says here the 20 options, but you can only have 515 would you choose, no. I asked my wife that? What five would you choose if you have the perfect cusp. What five options would you want what you looking for what she's doing when she answers that question is expresses to me herself me. I heard a minister once say that marriage is an action where people are involved in selfless love the true marriage. Christian marriage is built on selfless love is Masonic ladies and gentlemen, that is baloney.

There is no such thing as selfless love for me to love myself has to be involved in it not obviously God does not want us to be involved in selfish lover. We just use our partner for oral gratification for our own lives, exporting them and denigrating them and destroying that but when I was looking for a wife.

I didn't set out looking for my gotta find somebody that I can give myself a white collar like the rest of my life and get nothing back.

Now I married my wife because I figured she was go make me happy because she was go meet my needs and the wonderful thing was that she felt that I was the one who could meet her needs. But I can be vicious candidate if all I care about is having her meet my needs and all she cares about is my having meet her needs. We got trouble right here in River city, but there's nothing wrong with wanting certain needs met in marriage, but my wife if she loves me.

Needs to know what my priority needs are and if I love her. I need to know what her priority needs are so weak McGinnis Christmas accounting can only pick five things one leg of a and she says if you could only get five things to me. What would they be and I tell her. She said while the other four ethics is so we go through that and I find all kinds of surprises to come here.

The five most important things that I want out of this marriage was a way to move three of those. I would've figured out I never would've guessed the other two had you not told I make assumptions about what my wife needs about what my wife once and so often those assumptions are wrong.

As she does the same thing to me. Here's the tragedy what happens where I have the top five needs in my marriage that I know what they are and I say to my life. I'm looking to do this with her because this can be really, really destructive, but I'll say my own mind privacy high. This will mostly okay number a writer. How she doing and I look at need number one and I say she is a 10 horrific number two. The second most importantly my life.

She's a 9/3 most important need in my life that I feel she's up to number 410, number 510 think there are very many marriages that would get that high of a total but even that marriage were four out of the five top felt needs are being met is a powder keg ready to explode.

Why, because if one of your top five felt needs is not being met. This, that is your point of vulnerability. What happens if a man test for out of his top five needs being met and he goes to work in every day is spending time with his secretary, who at this level is we tend to take for granted the things that are going fine and armor is where were longing and our longings are not being fulfilled in somebody else comes along and fulfills them. Our head starts playing games were willing to trade these four in for this one and it happens every day and you ask a man who was just left his wife for his secretary of state. What made you do it is the same answer she made me feel like a man again.

Cisse he said I had a burning felt need in my life that my wife was not meeting in my secretary met and I went forth, we need to know what those felt needs are and is much as it is within us. We have to endeavor to meet the needs of our partners in this work. Communication is absolutely vital. I joke about this and laugh about this, but if you want to test how well your communicating your feelings and your needs to your partner. Look at your Christmas presents. Are you happy with the present. Your wife gives you or your husband gives you for Christmas or for your birthday. I tomorrow first fears that mess and I were married. She's very practical. She's not inclined to extravagant manifestations of romance. I am the incurable romantic Christmas or birthday.

I want to get her some is as a romantic at the far coat, some jewelry, lacing like out something like that. That is romantic. She was a washing machine that's practical well I want I want something that says you're my man you're my hero know when Rocky and she buys me brand-new golf club sets will I want. I sit there and think I get new driver for a new wedge for Christmas. My wife will I get white shirts the white shirts are what I need. They're not what I want, I can buy white shirts anytime. I don't need a special occasion to justify spending money on white shirts. Their necessity so my wife gives me white shirts and what I do or say honey just what I needed.

I'll love them. Thank you so much. I do such a good job of convincing her how happy I am with a white shirt that next year I get for white church is now. I still have my golf club than my secretary wraps up a new driver and gives it to me or my birth because she picks up what I want, we tend to give the cheapest gifts we give the gifts that we want to receive rather than with the person wants to receive.

We give the gifts that we think they ought to want rather than the gifts that the really want and when that happens we are not communicating. We are missing each other.

We are not learning the deepest feelings of our partners was one less thing I will say before we go on to the next subject which the next. I will be considering sexual knowledge and relationship in marriage. But what I want to say before we do that is I am a person who spent his whole life studying one thing or another mostly theology and I have discovered that one of the greatest experiences there is in this world is to learn something new. I'm fascinated by lots I can't wait to get to heaven.

For the first 15,000 years. I could study music in the second 15,000 years.

I can study art in the next 15,000 years.

I can study well, maybe I'll get on the biology while he states 11 chemistry of aborted that all my life but I love to learn new things. The variety of the created order is just one.

It's wondrous and to learn something new is exciting, but there's no more variety nothing more provocative, nothing more fascinating than a human. So we can say the people look like each other but every single person has a unique personality and there is no such thing under God's heaven as a dull person. Once we get the leaf surface anybody in this room's life story has sufficient trauma and interest to produce a best-selling so it's fun to learn to know another person. Choose life ended in riches. Glad you joined us on this Wednesday addition of Renewing Your Mind this week were making our way through Dr. RC Sproul series. The intimate marriage and whether you been married for a few months or a few decades. Let me come in this series to you.

It's six messages onto DVDs and will send it to you today for your donation of any amount you can reach us by phone at 800-435-4343. You can also find us online@renewingyourmind.org again. Her phone number is 800-435-4343 and her web address is Renewing Your Mind.org joining me here the studios. Dr. Steven Nichols who is the author of the biography RC Sproul, a life Dr. Nichols as we hear RC provide us with a biblical perspective on marriage.

I think it's important to point out that he lived what he taught through his 57 year marriage to his beloved Vesta all absolutely Lee. You know, as I was working on the biography. I've course knew this, that the story of RC is really the story of RC and Vesta. This was truly a love story you talk about 57 years of faithful marriage but as you look at this you begin to see a few things up. First of all, there was love. They truly loved each other, they they lit up when they were in each other's presence there was a mutual respect. They truly respected each other and honored each other and you even see a mutual commitment to their calling was, it was not something that just RC did but it was RC and Vesta, and it's just a beautiful story of a faithful marriage. Thank you Dr. Nichols for sharing that with us in the thank you for this wonderful biography of Dr. Strohl but you might think that discussing sexual problems in marriage would get awkward very quickly but RC does not dodge this vital aspect of the marriage relationship and tomorrow he will help us understand the emotional issues lurking beneath the surface that lead to these difficulties, so we hope you'll join us Thursday or Renewing Your Mind