3. Little Foxes

Little Foxes

Song of Solomon 2:15

POINT: The Biblical goal of all conflict is always restoration

So, over the last couple of weeks we’ve been neck deep in a series we’re calling Happily Ever After

… and what’s funny is I’ve never gotten more dirty looks while preaching than I have during

this series…

… And what’s even more funny is that some of the same people who were

complimenting the message after week #1 were the ones plotting my death after

week #2…

And it’s not because they really don’t like me… IT’S BECAUSE MARRIAGE IS REALLY HARD…

… And to have the kind of marriage that is FULFILLING and LIFE GIVING… the kind of

marriage that could be defined as Happily Ever After it DEMANDS that 2 very selfish people

work really hard EVERY DAY to not be selfish…

… And when we’re told we still have work to do… we tend to not be a huge fan of the

person who is talking…

Agape had a saying on their sign a few weeks back that I loved… It said, “The further a society drifts from the truth the more it will hate those who speak it.”

… NOW THAT’S TWEETABLE…

… So, don’t worry all of you death glarers… I’m not taking it personal…

But the deal is we love marriage… and we believe it’s worth fighting to have a great marriage… so our goal over the last couple of weeks has just been to pull back the curtain and expose some of the behaviors and mindsets that tend to be the destroyers of a great marriage…

… Mindsets and behaviors that take people from being crazy in love to wanting to call it quits.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Now I don’t know how much time you’ve spent in the book Song of Solomon… (you know… the official PG-13 book of the Bible)

… But in chapter 2 we read a conversation that Solomon and his Shulamite wife are having with one another…

… And they are going back and forth using all kinds of metaphors for THEIR LOVE and THEIR

MARRIAGE and EVEN THEIR DESIRE FOR ONE ANOTHER… and in verse 15 she says this to him

Song of Solomon 2:15 The Message

… you must protect me from the foxes, foxes on the prowl, Foxes who would like nothing better than to get into our flowering garden.

Now if you spent some time studying this conversation what you would discover is that inside of all the metaphors and symbolism… what Solomon’s wife is really asking of him is THE SAME THING WE’RE ASKING OF EACH OF YOU…

… She is asking that he would be careful to protect their marriage against “things” that would

subtly, sneakily creep in and destroy it…

… That he would be mindful to put safeguards up in their marriage… in order that it would

stay STRONG, HEALTHY and FULFILLING…

… And AGAIN, that is the goal of this series…

… The reality is our enemy has only 1 mission… 1 objective that he has placed all of his energy into…

and that is to DESTROY…

… and whether you want to believe it or not… he has drawn a target around my marriage and

your marriage and his goal is that ASAP we would join with the host of people who are

deciding that their marriage is no longer worth fighting for…

… And you don’t have to look far to recognize that he is succeeding… the most recent

statistic I could find was that every 13 seconds someone in America files for divorce

… And his strategy isn’t always obvious… in fact maybe more often than not… what he does is he

subtly introduces little foxes that come in and eat away at our marriages…

… And these little foxes come in so many shapes and sizes… Some are blatantly evil and sinful, but so many times these foxes are just the stuff of life… they’re OUR JOBS, our RESPONSIBILITIES, our OBLIGATIONS, the HOUSE PAYMENTS and CAR REPAIRS, they are FRIENDS and HOBBIES and even PARENTING…

And the warning Song of Solomon gives us and hopefully the warning this series is giving us is that we have to be purposeful to do whatever it takes to guard our marriage from these foxes.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Now today we’re going to spend our time together talking about those incredibly RARE times when CONFLICT finds its way into our marriage…

… By a show of hands… how many of you have a had a conflict in your marriage?

… Of the honest people in here with their hands up how many would admit that most of the

time your biggest fights are about the dumbest things…

… I mean THEY WEREN’T DUMB IN THE MOMENT, but sitting here today you can

admit… “In hindsight it probably wasn’t as big a deal as we made it out to be…”

And Maybe it’s because conflict is so full of passion and emotion… but it just doesn’t seem to take much for our COMPETITIVE JUICES to get flowing and then it’s on like Donkey Kong…

… and whether it’s something of significance or something that’s just silly there are few things

in marriage that can steal the euphoria of love and marital bliss faster than conflict…

But before we swing the pendulum too far the other way and try to label conflict and tension as a sign of an unhealthy marriage… I want us to go back to the scripture we talked about in week #1

Do you remember when we were talking about the ESTABLISHMENT OF THE MARRIAGE COVENANT in Genesis 2:18?… Where God said…

It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper (suitable, adapted, complementary) for him.

Again, this is a clear picture of what God had in mind for marriage… that a wife will COMPLEMENT (work alongside of… fill the empty spaces… bring completion to) her husband and a husband will do the same for his wife…

… I KNOW THIS IS REVIEW BUT stick with me for a second… BECAUSE in order for God to

create someone who will complement us… MAKE US COMPLETE… HELP US SEE WHAT WE

WOULD NOT OTHERWISE SEE… This meant He had to create that person to be completely

different than us…

… Did you catch that…?

… God never created the wife to have the same skills… the same thoughts… the

same giftings… the same role as her husband and he never created the man

to be like his wife…

… So God’s desire for us… to not be alone… to be one flesh… to be made complete through a God given helper… ALWAYS OPENS US UP TO THE TENSION of having someone in our lives who is just totally different than we are…

… Someone who sees life and life’s situations different than we do…

… Someone who thinks about life and processes life different than we do…

And as a very practical side note… I can’t help but think this is why the harder society pushes women to do everything a man can do… and the harder society pushes men to quit behaving like men and start behaving more like women… the more frustrated and confused our society becomes…

… You see we were never meant to be like one another… God created us to be very different

So, what we need to understand from the very beginning of this conversation is that the fox (or the destroyer) of our marriage isn’t that we have conflict…

… CONFLICT IS INEVITABLE… I think we could even make a Biblical case that conflict in our

marriage can even be healthy…

Les Parrott says it like this… “Conflict is the price you pay for deeper intimacy…”

… SO AGAIN, IT’S NOT THE FACT THAT YOU HAVE CONFLICT IN YOUR MARRIAGE THAT DESTROYS IT… IT’S THE MINDSET AND BEHAVIOR WE CARRY INTO THAT CONFLICT THAT HAS THE POWER TO DESTROY OUR MARRIAGES.

Think about it… Happy couples… unhappy couples… they’re all fighting about the exact same things…

… The difference of whether these fights draw a couple closer together or pushes them

further apart really has everything to do with HOW they choose to fight…

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

You see most of us… because we are ALL by nature selfish people… our default approach to arguing tends to be we DRAW SIDES and FIGHT TO WIN…

… So we say whatever we think we need to say… we do whatever we think we need to do in

order to WIN the argument…

… WHICH interprets into our spouse admitting they are wrong… confessing that we are

right and falling into line with our thinking and reasoning…

And for most of us… this is the pattern we follow every time… Whether it is an argument about PIZZA VERSUS BURGERS… PRIVATE SCHOOL VERSUS PUBLIC… HOUSE IN THE CITY OR IN THE COUNTRY… BUYING THE TOYS OR SAVING THE MONEY… coming and listening to a marriage series or taking a break from church until Pastor Jeff returns with some more palatable preaching.

… And no matter what the argument… the goal is the same… WIN…

And who doesn’t like to win… I mean let’s be real… competitive or not no one like to be on the losing side…

BUT LET ME ASK YOU THIS… if this was the healthy way to deal with conflict in your marriage… or any relationship for that matter… why does someone always leave these interactions defeated and broken and maybe even humiliated?

… I mean how many times have you been in an argument and you “lost” and you felt like… “You know my marriage is stronger and healthier now than it has ever been”?

- NEVER… because any time there is a WINNER in a fight that means there has to be a LOSER…

Now don’t worry I’m not about to propose an everybody gets a trophy approach to conflict…

But what I am going to ask is… What if we’ve been doing this whole fighting thing all wrong in our marriages?

… What if the attitudes and behaviors we’re bringing into the conflicts in our marriages aren’t making our marriage stronger, but instead they’re acting like these little foxes that are slowly eating away at the greatest gift God has given us outside of the forgiveness of our sins…

You see when He was asked about marriage in Mark 10:6-9 NLT… Jesus said this…

GOD made them male and female from the beginning of creation. ‘This explains why a man leaves his father and mother and is joined to his wife, and the two are united into one.’ Since they are no longer two but one, let no one split apart what God has joined together.”

… So what Jesus is saying here is “When a man and a woman are joined together in marriage GOD

HIMSELF DECLARES THAT THEY ARE ONE… that they are in complete alignment with one another

… This is the emotional and spiritual SHIFT that happens when we say “I Do”… The Covenant

CONFLICT, though, creates an environment inside of our marriages where we find ourselves “OUT OF ALIGNMENT” with our spouse…

… COVENANT BRINGS US INTO ALIGNMENT… CONFLICT GETS US OUT OF ALIGNMENT…

… And again it may be something small and insignificant or it may be something very

significant… but the very definition of conflict is that in that moment or on that topic we

find ourselves misaligned with our spouse…

… But, like we said before… THE conflict is not what will destroy our marriage… the potential destroyer of our marriage is the attitudes and behaviors we bring into that conflict…

You see for most of us… and it is connected to our selfishness and our fear of LOSING… we make the GOAL of conflict to WIN the argument… win the debate... to hear our spouse say… “You’re right and I’m wrong.”

But what we’re learning today is that THE BIBLICAL GOAL OF CONFLICT or our being out of alignment with our spouse has always been RESTORATION.

… Putting things back into alignment…

… Restoring our position as the two being united as one.

… Think of it as resetting a bone that has been broken…

THIS MEANS THE BIBLICAL GOAL OF CONFLICT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH WINNING AN ARGUMENT…

… In fact, it removes the competitive component completely…

… It gives no space for our ego or drawing sides…

… and instead it puts the emphasis right back where God intended the emphasis to be… a restoration of the marriage promise… where the 2 are united as one.

NOW… just to protect you from unrealistic expectations… This doesn’t always mean that you and your spouse are always going to agree on everything or see everything the same way...

… That’s not realistic at all…

… but what it does do is it keeps restoration as the goal and guarantees that you are ALWAYS placing your relationship as a higher priority than winning the argument…

… It holds you in check to attack the problem at hand rather than attack your spouse…

… It takes away the power to divide you and your spouse and instead it causes you to pull

closer together…

… It lets both you and your spouse know that even when tensions get high and conflict

arises that your marriage is secure... and that you are FIGHTING FOR ONE ANOTHER.

WHY because your goal has changed… The attitude and behavior you are bringing into the conflict has changed…

… And you’re refusing to be driven by emotional immaturity and the need to WIN a fight…

… and Instead you’re investing your energy into something far more fulfilling for both of you… … BIBLICAL COVENANT… ONENESS… and INTIMACY

Les Parrott… “Conflict is natural in intimate relationships… once this is understood, conflicts no longer represents a crisis but an opportunity for growth…”

BOW HEADS

I have to warn you… In the emotion of conflict… in that heated part of the battle it is very hard to hit the Pause button and force yourself to remember these things…

… Because our selfishness… our competitiveness demands that we WIN…

But from everything I can find in God’s Word… the only time you truly win is when you are fighting alongside of your spouse to restore your marriage back into alignment…

Ephesians 4:31- 32

Get rid of all bitterness, rage, anger, harsh words, and slander, as well as all types of evil behavior. Instead, be kind to each other, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, just as God through Christ has forgiven you.