Transcript
You know, I think that there literally are thousands and thousands of Christian couples who get married with unrealistic expectations and by that, I mean not just that they don't know one another, which is often true; but they don't know themselves.
What We Bring to a 24/7 Lifelong Relationship
They don't know what they bring to this intensive 24/7 lifelong relationship. They don't understand that all of the awkwardness, the nastiness of marriage, all those places that I think, "Because I love you, I'm never going to experience. We have a love so deep we won't experience those things," all those uncomfortable moments, those sad, hurtful moments are really the fruit of a deeper war. That war isn't fought between me and my husband or me and my wife. That war is fought on the turf of my heart. It's fought for control of my soul and it's understanding that war that is so vital to living in marriage.
Let me just give you an example. A desire for even a good thing becomes a bad thing if it becomes a ruling thing in my heart because nothing is meant to rule me other than King Christ. So it's not wrong to want to be right, but if being right rules your heart, you'll destroy your marriage.
It's not wrong to want a little bit of control. We all want a little bit of control in our lives, but to live for control will crush the other person. It's not wrong to want a romance, but if my relationship to you is I just want you to be the character that I have written into my romantic novel, I'll never be satisfied by you.
When Beautiful Things Rule the Heart
It's not wrong to want beautiful possessions around me. God's given me an eye for beauty, but if beautiful material things is what rules my heart, the acquiring, maintaining, and protecting beautiful things will get in the way of my investment in marriage. And so, this topic really gets at the struggle of marriage or we could say it one other way.
If my heart isn't resting in the awesome reality of Jesus, the Messiah, I will tend to ask my spouse to be my own personal messiah to make me feel good about me, to give me rest and security. No human being can pull that off. I mean, that's asking my mate to be the fourth member of the Trinity. There [are] only three seats, in case you're wondering, and they're gloriously occupied.
So that internal struggle is always there. One of the ways I talk about this is marriage is always a war between the kingdom of self and the kingdom of God. I'm always acting in my marriage by awe of something and imagine how helpful it would be to have that conversation before a couple got married, not to think that because of the depth of our love for one another, we're going to escape the insanity of sin. I mean, how naive is that? But there's a lot of couples who end up, whether they realize not, buying into that and entering the relationship with unrealistic expectations.
