Keys to a Whole Marriage, Part 1

In Seattle, where a kennel license is required if you house four or more pets, a woman with two dogs and a cat called the pet-license office for information. She explained that she was considering marriage to a man with two cats and a dog. “We both love our animals dearly and don’t want to give any up,” the woman said. “But if we get married, could we somehow continue to have the dogs and cats—under separate ownerships, as it were—so we wouldn’t have to take out a pet-kennel license?”

The official explained that since the three dogs and three cats would be housed on the same premises, a kennel license would be required. There was a moment’s silence at the other end of the line. Then the woman said, “I think you have just stopped a wonderful marriage,” and hung up abruptly.

—Seattle Times

It is sad to acknowledge to me that stories such as this are even true.

But they are.

Because marriage is not held in high honor any longer, any and every reason is given for avoiding or escaping them.

Many believe that happy and whole marriages not even possible.

We know the are.

But what is the secret? What keys unlocked full and happy marriages?

Over the next two messages, I want to give four keys to a whole marriage. I am sure, they are not by any stretch, the only four. But I believe that if we can embrace and cling these four keys, we will see marriages become stronger than ever as we grow in them.

Outline

Big Idea: Give has given us everything we need to unlock whole marriages.

Four Keys to a Whole Marriage

Live by Love, not Romance - Mark 12:30-31; 1 Corinthians 13

Live by Covenant Mentality - Mal 2:14; Prov 2:17

Live a Spirit Filled, instead of Self Filled, Life

Live by Grace

Sermon Body

Four Keys to a Whole Marriage

Live by Love, not Romance - Mark 12:30-31; 1 Corinthians 13

Romance Defined

If we are to understand the difference love and romance, we need to begin with a definition.

Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, Tenth Edition Romance

1ro•mance \rō-ˈman(t)s, rə-; ˈrō-ˌ\ noun

[Middle English romauns, from Old French romans French, something written in French, from Latin romanice in the Roman manner, from romanicus Roman, from Romanus]

(14th century)

1 a (1) : a medieval tale based on legend, chivalric love and adventure, or the supernatural

(2) : a prose narrative treating imaginary characters involved in events remote in time or place and usually heroic, adventurous, or mysterious

(3) : a love story

b : a class of such literature

2 : something (as an extravagant story or account) that lacks basis in fact

3 : an emotional attraction or aura belonging to an especially heroic era, adventure, or activity

4 : LOVE AFFAIR

5 capitalized : the Romance languages

In short, romance is an emotional attraction (infatuation, lust, etc), response that is often idealized but very different than that of reality.

There was a day we referred to certain prose as romance/romantic and it had nothing do with sex or sexual content. It involved love stories, for sure, but was not necessarily overtly sexual. But it was an imaginary, idealized, fantasized idea of love and romance that was./is very often separated from reality.

Take the Romantic Period or Era for instance (From Wikipedia)

Romanticism (also known as the Romantic era) was an artistic, literary, musical, and intellectual movement that originated in Europe towards the end of the 18th century, and in most areas was at its peak in the approximate period from 1800 to 1850.

Romanticism was characterized by its emphasis on emotion and individualism

The movement emphasized intense emotion as an authentic source of aesthetic experience, placing new emphasis on such emotions as fear, horror and terror, and awe — especially that experienced in confronting the new aesthetic categories of the sublime and beauty of nature.

The nature of Romanticism may be approached from the primary importance of the free expression of the feelings of the artist. The importance the Romantics placed on emotion is summed up in the remark of the German painter Caspar David Friedrich, "the artist's feeling is his law".[14] For William Wordsworth, poetry should begin as "the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings", which the poet then "recollect[s] in tranquility", evoking a new but corresponding emotion the poet can then mold into art.

This period of time in history set a precedent and defined a way of life for our culture that persists today.

This is much of how we live today. Media, internet, television, etc have so romanticized life that we come to think that it is normal, the way life is and when we pursue our fantasized version of things, we often find a very different reality.

We have been trained and conditioned to see the world through romanticized eyes instead of through reality. We see the ideal, the make believe, the desired and wanted more than the way things are. And when reality does not match our ideal, our imagined (That which we have come to believe should be the way things are supposed to be), we get disillusioned and walk away in search of that romanticized view of life.

The problem of Romanticizing

“…the idea that a marriage can survive on romance alone, or that romantic feelings are more important than any other consideration when choosing a spouse, has wrecked many a marital ship” Gary Thomas

Why? Why can it not survive on romantic feelings alone? Because feelings change day by day; sometimes moment by moment.

“With only a romantic view of marriage to fall back on, Porter warns, a young woman may lose her ‘peace of mind. She is afraid her marriage is going to fail because....at times she feels a painful hostility toward her husband and cannot admit its reality because such an admission would damage in her own eyes her view of what love should be.’ Romantic love has no elasticity to it. It can never be stretched; it simply shatters. (my emphasis) Mature love, the kind demanded of a good marriage, must stretch, as the sinful human condition is such that all of us bear conflicting emotions. ‘Her hatred is real as her love is real,’ Porter explains of the young wife. This is the reality of human heart, the inevitability of two sinful people pledging to live together, with all their faults, for the rest of their lives.” Gary Thomas

Listen, rejecting a romanticized view of marriage, love, and relationships is counter cultural. It immediately sends us into a position of conflict with the world’s ideology. HOWEVER, it is a necessary stance because a romanticized view of love and marriage, of relationship can’t and won’t stand up in the long haul.

When we romanticize, we imagine a fake scenario does not exist or one that cannot be sustained. It is based on the unknown, the new, the forbidden. But when those comes become known, old, and when they are claimed....we soon find out that they are not as glorious as our imagination had made them out to be. OR if they are, they cannot be sustained in the long term. The infatuation, the lust, the passion fades into the dark cold reality that our imagination, our romanticized view is not one shaped by reality but by desire and want.

This fantasied and romanticized view of love may satisfy for a moment, but it will not last....it cannot last.

And this is being understood more and more in our society today.

Tim Keller notes..

One of the most widely held beliefs in our culture today is that romantic love is all important in order to have a full life but that it almost never lasts. A second, related belief is that marriage should be based on romantic love. Taken together, these convictions lead to the conclusion that marriage and romance are essentially incompatible, that it is cruel to commit people to lifelong connection after the inevitable fading of romantic joy.”

This is one of the largest, if not THE largest, reason that a high view of marriage is in such large decline. Because the romanticized view of love has taken over the true definition of love and replaced it. Because the world at large sees love through the lens of the romanticized ideal, and since romance never lasts indefinitely (Gary Thomas points out that neuroscience tells us that infatuation only lasts 12-18 months) , the world has become disillusioned with marriage as an institution.

Romantic love fails because it is based on emotion, infatuation, lust…which fade and change.

We need a different approach. We need a different foundation.

Good thing the bible gives us one.

We need LOVE, not romance.

The Greatest Commandment is Love - Mark 12:30-31

Back up for a minute to verse 29 - Mark 12:29

The foundation and impetus for love is rooted in the truth that there is ONE GOD.

“Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one.”

1 Corinthians 8:4-6

That is what this phrase means. There is but ONE God, our God. And BECAUSE He alone is God, he is to be the object, foundation, and source of our love.

We know this. This is a familiar verse, one I reference OFTEN because of its central nature.

This love is to be the foundation of marriage. Not romance.

But what is love?

Love Defined

Granted love is a vast and intricate word to define. But, I believe we can narrow it down to a simple summary that does cover it in all of its various aspects.

Understand this, we are providing a biblical definition, not one that the world supposed.

The world has reduced it to nothing more than an emotion. You and I know better. We know it is more than that; more than a feeling.

C. S. Lewis said, “Love is unselfishly choosing for another’s highest good.”

Love has the bests interests of the other person in mind at all times, in all actions, in all ways.

When John says that “God is love,” he means that in everything God does, he has our highest and best good in mind. Every command, every instruction, every action is focused on what is best for us.

It is unconditional, unwavering, unfailing, irrevocable, unchanging in its nature.

This is the love God has for us.

This is the love we are to have for others....spouses or anyone else for that matter.

1 Corinthians 13:4-7 gives a beautiful description of what love is, of what love does. We will see pretty quickly how it contrasts to romance.

Is patient

Is kind

Does not envy

Doest not boast

Is not arrogant

Is not rude

Does not insist on its own way

Is not irritable

Is not resentful

Does not rejoice in wrong doing

Rejoices with the truth

Love bears all things

Love believes all things

Love hopes all things

Love endures all things

What is true of this list of 15 attributes of love?

They are choices.

Where are the feelings?

Not here.

This is not to say that feelings of love do not come or are not present, but feelings of love are not primary.

But what happens when that feeling is not there? It does not mean that love cannot be there.

Love is first a CHOICE to “…unselfishly choose the highest good of another.”

It is a conscious and deliberate act of the will.

Now, each of these is a study and focus all it’s own…but take some time and meditate through each of these descriptors and you will gain a very different sense of love than what the world has reduced and altered it to.

This is not the romanticized, emotionally charged style of love we see in the world today is it?

The romantic era taught us to place all the emphasis on emotion. And we have become masters of it.

This kind of love requires CHOICE. It requires SELFLESSNESS. It requires COMMITMENT. It requires getting down and dirty with “unselfishly choosing for another’s highest good.”

It will often require acting without feelings of love. It is a mistake to think that you must feel loving to act loving.

It will require humility and sacrifice.

This is the kind of love that God chooses to love us with.

This is the kind of love that we are to love one another with.

This is the kind of love that comes as the fruit of loving God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength.

In these descriptors, where is the romanticized view of love? Where is the emotional driven ideal applauded by the world? Where is the romantic notion honed to perfection during the romantic period of feelings being law; of our allowing our feelings to dictate and rule the day?

IT IS NOT THERE.

This is real life. This is what it looks like to “unselfishly choose for another’s highest good” in the day to day dealings with sinful and broken people.

Love, not romance must be the foundation of a healthy and whole marriage.

What’s more....this kind of love is not possible apart from keeping our loves properly ordered and prioritized.

Love for our spouse is not even our highest objective. It is secondary.

Mark 12:30 points out to us that THE Key of a whole Marriage - Loving God FIRST and MORE than anything else, including your spouse.

Our marriage problems are not really marriage problems. They are heart problems. They are God problems. Our lack of intimacy with God creates a void that we try to fill with frail substitutes, like wealth, pleasure, fame, respect, people—or marriage. Laurie Krieg (An Impossible Marriage)

As Laurie and Matt speak back and forth in their book, they address how this love plays out and looks in broken relationships. Due to hear SSA and trauma of childhood abuse, her reactions to him were harsh. Their physical intimacy did not exist. And they struggled hard to see a way forward in their marriage. In this process, God revealed something to Matt about the true nature of love.

“Every night, when Laurie turns away from me,” I shared with the guys, “my mind shifts from sadness, to anger, to looking at God. ‘God! Please help Laurie. Please heal this physical aspect in our marriage.’” Both Ryan and Caleb nodded. “But my prayers reflect what I worship: I want sex with my wife more than I want God in my life.” It felt holy to pray for what we did not have. But even though I talked to God first about what I did not have, my conversation with him revealed that God was not first in my life. God, give me . . . God, I want . . . God, fix her so that . . . I did not love God with all of my heart, soul, and mind (Matthew 22:36-39). It wasn’t even that I loved myself more than I loved God because a defining quality of love, according to Scripture, is that “it is not self-seeking” (1 Corinthians 13:5 NIV). I was self-seeking. I was me-centered, not God-centered.

That which is a beautiful and healthy desire in any relationship was distorted and twisted to be THE romanticized view of love and passion. Certainly physical intimacy is the climax and pinnacle of love and romance right? According to the world, yes. According to God, no. It is not even in the greatest chapter of scripture written about love.

Physical intimacy is an awesome gift given to a couple to serve one another with! But it is not the pinnacle of love.

The pinnacle of love is seen in a cross, on two pieces of wood slapped together with the sole purpose of killing men in the most horrific way possible.

LOVE FOR GOD is and imitating God’s love for us towards our spouse is.

Gary Thomas

“…marriage is one of many life situations that helps me draw my sense of meaning, purpose, and fulfillment from God. Lisa can’t make me happy, not in an ultimate sense. Certainly we have some great times together, and she is a wonderful wife, exceeding my dreams - but these great times are sprinkled with (and sometimes seem to get buried in) the demands, challenges, and expectations of paying the bills on time, disciplining children, earning a living, and keeping a house clean.”

“…what both of us crave more than anything else is to be intimately close to the God who made us. If that relationship is right, we won’t make such severe demands on our marriage, asking each other to compensate for spiritual emptiness. If what we desire most doesn’t satisfy us, we will never be satisfied, even when our ‘desires’ have been met! That’s why finding our fulfillment in God is the cornerstone of a satisfied life. We can harm our marriages by asking too much of them.”

When we love GOD FIRST and FOREMOST, then we will be free and able to love our spouses (and others) as God intends for us to.

We do not need to FEEL loving to love.

Tim Keller

“Our culture says that feelings of love are the basis for actions of love. And of course that can be true. But it is truer to say that actions of love can lead consistently to feelings of love. Love between two people must not, in the end, be identified simply with emotion or merely with dutiful action. Married love is a symbiotic, complex mixture of both. Having said this, it is important to observe that of the two - emotion and action - it is the latter that we have the most control over. It is the action of love that we can promise to maintain every day.”

We have no control over our emotions. So if we are basing love on that aspect alone, the world is right, love, commitment, and longevity can’t and won’t happen.

BUT we do have control over our choices. And since BIBLICAL LOVE is a choice, love can endure and last even in the most difficult situations and devoid of feelings/emotions of love.

Listen, I hope that it does not seem too obvious, or too much of a waste of time to spend an entire morning discussing the difference between romance and love and considering what love is. Probably little to nothing of what has been shared today is new to us. AND YET, I think if we are honest, too much of the ROMANTIC view of love, with its emphasis on feelings, has infiltrated our thinking at times and if we were to honestly evaluate it, we would find that we too do fall victim to it from time to time at least.

Before we conclude today, there is a second key to a whole marriage I want to mention.

Live by Covenant Mentality - Malachi 2:14-16; Proverbs 2:16-17

Marriage is a covenant.

Listen to the words of Malachi 2:14-16

Also Proverbs 2:16-17

Marriage is a covenant. One that is not to be abandoned.

In, A High View of Marriage, we spoke of the consumeristic approach to marriage. That as long as the marriage continues to serve me and supply what I am looking for, then I will remain. If not, then no more.

Tim Keller elaborates

“Today we stay connected to people only as long as they are meeting our particular needs at an acceptable cost to us. When we cease to make a profit—that is, when the relationship appears to require more love and affirmation from us than we are getting back—then we ‘cut our losses’ and drop the relationship. This has also been called ‘commodification,’ a process by which social relationships are reduced to economic exchange relationships, and so the very idea of ‘covenant’ is disappearing in our culture.”

Let me return to that idea for a moment and place a word on it I did not before.

Covenant.

A key to living with a whole marriage is to remembering that marriage is a covenant, not a contract.

Contracts involve two parties agreeing to something. If one side violates their side, the other is released from their agreement.

A Covenant is a one way binding promise that has not exception or release clause.

God takes our words very seriously and holds our to our vows and promises.

Ecc 5:4-7

This is not encouraging or supporting non-commitment either, just a statement of how serious God takes our vows and promises.

Of marriage it is said....

Matthew 19:4-6

When a couple makes a vow, a commitment, a covenant before one another, in public on their wedding day, THEY HAVE BECOME ONE and are not to be separated.

God takes those vows seriously and sees them as a covenant, not a contract. It is a promise, not a business transaction.

This also makes the point that these covenantal vows have a three way aspect to them. It is not just between man and woman.

Keller notes....

“Why do we say that marriage is the most deeply covenantal relationship? It is because marriage has both strong horizontal and vertical aspects to it…to break faith with your spouse is to break faith with God at the same time.”

The covenant you make, since marriage is part of God’s created order, is a covenant before God…and thus unchanging and unbreakable.

Hey, here is a key Point to NOTE.

“Wedding vows are not a declaration of present love but a mutually binding promise of future love.” Tim Keller

I think many view them in exactly the opposite way…as a declaration of present love…but that is not what they are. They are a promise of a future and abiding love.

Because love is a covenant. Wedding vows are the presentation of that covenant.

Conclusion

“In any relationship, there will be frightening spells in which your feelings of love seem to dry up. And when that happens you must remember that the essence of a marriage is that it is a covenant, a commitment, a promise of future love. So what do you do? You do the acts of love, despite your lack of feeling. You may not feel tender, sympathetic, and eager to please, but in your actions you must be tender, understanding, forgiving, and helpful. And, if you do that, as time goes on you will not only get through the dry spells, but they will become less frequent and deep, and you will become more constant in your feelings.” Keller

Two keys to a whole marriage are living by love not romance and live by covenant mentality.

Crucial to a whole marriage is an abiding commitment to live by these two keys.

Next time, two more keys that will help establish and maintain healthy and whole marriages.

Application and Discussion Question

In what specific ways do you see the romanticized view for love in our society today? In the church?

Media. Movies, TV Shows, Novels, Etc.

Social Media

Listening to people talk about their perspective of what relationships look like or should look like

The high emphasis on emotion and feeling

The avoidance of discipline and rebuke, or even the avoidance of letting people fail.

Why does romantic love have not elasticity to it? Why does it simply shatter?

Because we are driven by emotions, when the feeling is gone, if we think that the feeling is love, we will be infinitely confused when we no longer FEEL in love.

What is the fallout of accepting the idea that “marriage and romance are essentially incompatible?”

Decline in marriage; less and less getting married. Divorce rates going up

Ridicule, scorn, and rejection of marriage

We do not get help when trouble comes, we just abandon it.

Reread Mark 12:29-31. Why are the two greatest commandments preceded by the truth that God is one? How does this truth strengthen the two greatest priorities we possess?

God is the foundation for all love. He is the example, the source, the motivation for it.

When we know this, we will turn to him for wisdom, instruction regarding love.

CS Lewis stated that “Love is unselfishly choosing for another’s highest good.” What passages of scripture would cite to support this definition?

Philippians 2

Reread 1 Corinthians 13:4-7. Pick one attribute as a group and spend time fleshing it out. What does it mean, what does it look like? On a day to day basis, how does it affect our living?

In what way(s) are all marriage problems will God problems?

When we are not loving God correctly, we will not love others correctly. When we love God correctly, we will be obedient to all his commands and instructions which will fix our problems.

Why is it an important truth to be reminded of that wedding vows are not a statement of current romantic love but a promise of future love?

Because it holds to the fact that love is a choice that we are making for all time.

Related Media

Related Sermons