Transcript
Well, there's a third thing that I'd like to say to you about the reality of marriage, that marriages always have problems because we bring those problems into our marriage. Let me say it this way. Your biggest problem in your marriage is not that you're married to a less than perfect person. God knew that that was going to happen. My biggest difficulty in marriage, I dragged into my marriage. I brought it with me. I had it before I got married. The Bible calls it sin.
You Cannot Build a Good Marriage on Denial
Now, here's what this means is. You will never, ever establish a good marriage - one that is full of wonderful unity and wonderful love, wonderful understanding, esteem and respect, mutual cooperation - you'll never have that kind of marriage, the kind of marriage that all of us want to have if you deny what's inside of you and what's inside of your spouse. That denial never works.
And my experience in counseling is I'm often counseling couples and when I hear their story, I think, "Oh, I wish they would have come to me six months ago or three years ago or a decade ago." There's something inside of us that makes us want to deny that we have difficulties because we bought into that we love one another so much that we won't have the problems that other marriages have.
Listen, no amount of mutual love enables you to escape the presence of remaining sin. Let me say that again. No degree of mutual love enables you to escape the presence of remaining sin. Love will help you to deal with that sin, but it won't remove it; and so, denial is not a good plan.
You need to commit yourself as a couple to live in your marriage with open eyes and humble hearts, ready to own your difficulties, ready to face them, ready together to seek God's Help. Honest admission of need is one of the foundation stones of a healthy marriage. Denial doesn't work.
