I thought this was an excellent post about something I have been pondering lately about how our marriages on earth are meant to show a little bit of what is meant by Christ’s marriage to his Bride the Church.
http://www.epm.org/blog/2010/Nov/17/christ-centered-marriage-christ-centered-parenting
Lots of times I am not very articulate in a tense situation so maybe if I practice here I will be ready at the appropriate time. Sometimes when I have had a struggling couple come to me who are still in deep pain and pointing fingers at each other I have wondered about saying something like this:
I am sorry for your pain. I have been there myself. Jesus did heal our marriage. I do think you need to slow down and consider several possible options and then make a wise choice about how to proceed.
a. You have mastered living in a painful marriage. You can keep on doing what you have been doing and continue to survive in that miserable marriage.
b. You can both agree to voluntarily give up on your marriage and just sign a dissolution and be done. Of course in doing so you are giving up on all those dreams you have had as a couple, you are going back on your promise of “till death do us part” that you said before God, friends, family and your spouse, and you are leaving a legacy of divorce for your family and culture. You are also saying that God either cannot or will not do a miracle in your marriage and you are not willing to wait until He does.
c. You can just move into an ungodly lifestyle – have an affair, live it up, put it to your spouse. If God’s command of “Thou shall not commit adultery” doesn’t stop you – read some current magazines, newspapers, or social media for the amount of pain caused by those who have walked this road and maybe you will be inspired to restrain yourself.
d. Go get an attorney and make a preemptive filing against your spouse. Be the first to hit and hit hard. If you are both Christians, just sort of ignore the Apostle Paul’s admonition not to sue other believers. The courts are open and there are many attack-dog attorneys ready to demolish your spouse, your kids, and your checkbook – so that is an option.
e. Somebody – either one or the other of you – can drive a proverbial stake in the ground and say, “By God’s grace I am going to do everything possible to fulfill my vows, and I am going to do everything in my power with God’s help to “Let no man put asunder what God has joined together.” I am going to pray and fast, get help for whatever issues of mine that have contributed to our problems, love my spouse like never before and learn new ways to love them and communicate with them. I am not going to give up.
I challenge you as Joshua challenged Israel to make a declaration: “As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.”
Often in marriage one or both partners may do something that they think they have thought through such as have an affair, file for divorce, ask their spouse to leave, or leave themselves, and then later realize that there were many consequences they hadn’t thought about nor prepared for.
A good visual illustration of unintended consequences is from this video from our hometown of a smokestack demolition that went awry. A couple of things to notice: the media thought they were far enough back to be safe, but they missed one crucial danger, and the child was the first to instinctively run when things went wrong. Many times we miss all the ramifications of our actions and often times children are sensitive to things going wrong in adult relationships.
This is a new resource from the Huffington Post blog considering different aspects of divorce. Conservative pro marriage commentators such as Elizabeth Marquardt and Judith Wallerstein along with other commentators who take a more liberal approach to divorce are featured. I find it helpful to understand what others are thinking even if I disagree with them.
I found this to be a very inspirational song about life long marriage.
I found this to be a touching story about a couple’s journey with the husband’s amnesia.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/3313452/The-man-who-keeps-falling-in-love-with-his-wife.html
I farm and it’s harvest time so I haven’t had much time or energy to post. This year we’ve had an unusually early harvest. We hope to be in full swing harvesting corn by my birthday in mid October, but this year, because of our summer weather and early planting, we have been going strong since mid September.
What’s the relevance to marriage? If you are in a distressed relationship and you see a time when things start going better with your partner, seize the opportunity to make a difference, even if it is sooner or in a different context than you expect.
If things are not turning around as soon as you had hoped, continue to prepare yourself so when the opportunity does arise to make great strides in your marriage you will be prepared.
Well Tiger and Elin got divorced this week. I am sad for all of the parties involved. Sad for Tiger that he has had such a huge problem with women, sad for Elin’s pain, sad that the kids are going to grow up in a divided home.
I do wonder what the truth is of the relationship that Tiger and Elin had behind the scenes. Did he start out faithful in his marriage for awhile? She says that she had no clue of his womanizing. How in the world did he pull that off? Our military can’t even keep Top Secret documents from being posted on the web, a handful of loyalists around Richard Nixon couldn’t keep a bungled burglary under wraps, and yet Tiger pulled off multiple affairs without his wife’s knowledge or suspicion. Regardless of the truth of all the details, it is still sad that the end result is a lot of pain on the part of everyone involved.
One thing I ponder is how do we get the overwhelming majority of the marriages in our churches to last and to thrive? It is hard to make headway in our culture against a redefinition of marriage when the divorce rates in our churches are almost as bad as in the general population. The world has a legitimate concern that we need to get our own house in order in this area.
I wonder what marriages were truly like a hundred years ago when the divorce rate was so much lower. Were the majority of those marriages happy and mutually satisfying? Was there a lot of adultery going on in those marriages but nobody talked about it? I don’t know the answers; I just wonder.
Thinking a little bit closer to home, I wonder how to get some couples that we are helping unstuck in their relationships. What do I say, what do I do, to get them out of their endless loop of hurt and pain? I know it is possible because with Christ’s help we pulled out of that cycle and many other couples have. Hopefully I have been sowing good seed that will bear fruit someday.
And then real close to home, what do I do to make my marriage all that God wants it to be, so we can be even more of a beacon of light to other couples around us and we can take back our culture one marriage at a time?
Tim and Linda Buttrey have walked the hard road of affair recovery. They now have a ministry born out of their pain and healing (www.restorationresources.us). Their weekend seminar, “True Intimacy”, shares their story and gives hope to other struggling couples. You can also see the conference on DVD by going to their resources page. In-person counseling is also available. They live near Dayton, Ohio.
Jeff and Cheryl Scruggs (www.hopeformarriages.com) have an awesome testimony of healing from adultery. You can watch it here. http://iamsecond.com/#/seconds/The_Scruggs/
In brief, they were very much in love and got married. They had it all as far as material possessions. She had an affair, they got divorced, then she became a Christian three months after the divorce, but it took seven years for Jeff to work through his anger about her affair and for them to remarry.
Jeff and Cheryl have received training in Biblical counseling and now help other couples. They have written their story in the book “I Do Again” and their testimony is on their website in various formats. I have met this couple in person and their love for God and each other just radiates from them.
stubborn-pursuits.com 