Category Archives: Marriage

In the news, Issues of the Day, Marriage

Has God Changed the Verdict for the Case of Marriage?

images-4Marriage doomsayers have been touting the end of marriage, as we know it, in multiple forms of messages for decades. Shouted from places of academia and even some pulpits is the specious notion that one half of all marriages end in divorce, that marriage is meaningless and old-fashion or the notion of cohabitation – no legal piece of paper is necessary. In spite of this relentless push, the great news is that marriage remains strong as an institution, is not crumbling off the face of the earth and the One who actually created and designed marriage has not redefined marriage or decreased the importance of marriage and the family as the basis of our society.

Believe it or not, the design of marriage did not take place in the halls of congress, a courtroom, a temple or through some enlightened monk centuries past. Here is where it all began: “The Lord God said, ‘It is not good for the man to be alone.   I will make a helper suitable for him.’ So the Lord caused the man to fall into a deep sleep; and while he was sleeping, he took one of the man’s ribs and closed up the place with flesh. Then the Lord God made a woman from the rib he had taken out of the man, and he brought her to the man. For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh.” (Genesis 2: 18, 21, 22, 24)images

Did Jesus affirm this covenant act created by God in His “God became flesh” days on the earth? He did. “‘Haven’t you read,’ he [Jesus] replied, ‘that at the beginning the Creator made them male and female’ and said, ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh?’” I am so grateful for God’s design called marriage and how the Son of God spoke to and affirmed that design long after creation. May we continue to boldly do the same by strengthening our unions and serving those who are struggling in theirs.

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Marriage, Postmarital

10 Words of Wisdom Young Married Couples Desire to Pass on to You

images-17My wife and I enjoy an annual retreat weekend with several young couples. One of the questions we ask is, “What wisdom would you desire to pass on to other young married couples?” Earlier this year, I recorded what they had to say in reply to that question and thought their responses were worth passing on. In their words:

1. Apologize quickly and do not withhold forgiveness.

2. Do not avoid conflict or confrontation, as doing so will develop bad habits.

3. Have less “outside” responsibilities and nights away from one another.

4. Assume the best about your spouse rather than assuming ulterior motives.

5. Involvement in a local church does not necessarily guarantee spiritual closeness. In other words, doing church things does not replace your spiritual lives as individuals and as a couple.

6. You married a human with a fallen sin nature. No one is perfect, especially you.

7. Pray with and for one another more. Praying your heart out to God on the behalf of one another keeps you from being so self-centered.images-22

8. When you are angry, watch your tongue.

9. Establish good relationships with parents on both sides. To make an effort shows respect for your spouse.

10. Sex does not make up for (fill in the blank). The issue will still be there after intimacy. Deal with it.

There you have it, current wisdom from 2015. Take it and pass it on.

 

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Marriage, Postmarital

6 Ways You Might be Intimate with Another’s Spouse

images-11Where does inappropriate intimacy begin with someone who is not your spouse? What are your intentions concerning persons that you may find attractive, inviting or feel an emotional connection with? There are any number of opportunities out there to be unfaithful to your Lord, your spouse and yourself through wrongly intentioned relational connections. Here are six areas to be aware of:

1.Phone calls and text messages. How much time do you spend on the phone with this opposite sex (friend) and how intimate is your conversation? Is your spouse aware of these conversations? Are you open with your spouse about these calls/texts and the content of them if they are necessary? Have you ever crossed a line or desired to cross a line in any of these conversations?

2. One-on-one, private and face-to-face conversations. Do you attempt to manipulate your schedule to connect with someone of the opposite sex that you desire to be around or find yourself attracted to? Do one-on-one conversations excite you, increase your heart rate or increase your thoughts about this person?images-14

3. Spiritually intimate connections. Are you looking for ways in which you can connect spiritually with this person? Do you find yourself desiring to pray with them more  than your spouse? If you have occasion to pray with this person, how intimate are those times of prayer. In other words, are you praying about things that you should not even be discussing with one another?

4. Fantasizing about this person. Are you thinking about this person to the point of fantasizing about time with them or an ongoing relationship with them? Do you have dreams about this person? Are you allowing your mind to take you to inappropriate places with this person?

5. Do you dress in the morning considering the possibility of a connection with this person? If you are dressing with this person in mind, once again, you have crossed a line and your motives are suspect. You are actually fantasizing about how you can be an attractant to wrong desires.images-12

6. Social media “stalking.”  Are you closely following the social media presence of someone, watching for pictures or information that you can use for conversation?  Accessing someone’s social media sites in order to discover more information for your own arsenal of personal details is stalking.

Why do you want to attract this person to yourself? What is the need in your life that is crying out for help through broken and inappropriate connections? What is missing in your relationship with Jesus that keeps you longing after an inappropriate connection? What is missing in your marriage that pushes you toward openness with someone other than your spouse? Please consider the following Scriptures: Proverbs 4: 20-27; 5: 15 – 23; and 6: 20 – 29.

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Marriage, Postmarital, Premarital, Singles

A Five-Step Action Plan for When You Disagree

images-4Any and every two persons can disagree at times – it’s natural. It would be unnatural to not have disagreements. When we deeply love someone or care about someone, our disagreements can be even more intense due to the fact that we have so much invested in the relationship. We each have our perspective, our filters and our view through the lens of our histories, experiences, life training, families of origin, and fears. Disagreement in a relationship is not the problem, however; staying in the mode of disagreement or fighting is a problem. We must stop long enough to discern what it is we need and then find the solution(s) to reach agreement toward those needs. I want to share with you a process that can help to find agreement so that most disagreements can be resolved.

images-2Having been involved in marriage and family counseling for many years, I discovered that I could sit with couples week after week listening to the laundry list of issues/problems. That process is rarely helpful or productive. But when I was able to help one partner listen to the other partner, share feelings, share needs and then look for solutions, we often made headway. If you can set aside the intensity of the disagreement and then focus on the following five questions, you just might discover an answer to your disagreement.

1. What are you feeling? Describe your feelings on the matter, not your thoughts.

2. What do you need? You describe your desired need or desired outcome.

3. What do you understand? Here is where you share with your mate what you are hearing from them about their feelings and their needs.

4. What have you tried? This step helps you to figure out what did not or does not work.

5. What are the solutions? Move all of the above toward a solution, a plan to resolve the difference. Look for a healthy solution and action plan.

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Marriage, Postmarital

Sacrificial Love in Marriage

images-21I was in graduate school full-time and I worked 40 plus hours a week in the field of social work. We had just given birth to our third child. I was missing in action from home. When I wasn’t in class or at my job I found myself in a library studying and writing papers. This life process went on for two and one half years. For two and one half years I watched my wife run the household, give birth to our third child, balance the budget while living on a “poverty” level income and edit, as well as, type (manually) all of my weekly papers. It was servanthood at its best, a genuine sacrificial love. I never once heard her complain about her life at the time. She believed in the goal and she sacrificed to help get me there. When graduation day finally arrived I confessed to her that the degree earned was as much hers as it was mine, we earned it. images-22

Sacrificial love is unselfish love. Unselfish love is mature love. To have a partner in the marriage sacrifice almost three years of “normal” family life for the goal of their mate…well, that is borderline supernatural. Love will do that you know. Love will give everything and at the same time sacrifice personal pleasure. Love will be patient and kind. Love will not be jealous of a life mate’s goals, nor will it be proud or rude when a life mate fails in their goal. Love will not demand its own way and through the process will not be irritable, give up or lose faith. Sacrificial love is always hopeful and never looks back in regret. Thank you, Mary, for your sacrificial love and exhibiting to me First Corinthians chapter thirteen. I am a blessed man!blind healed 012

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Marriage, Postmarital, Premarital

What Does it Take to Reach Forty Years and Beyond III

I lied.  Not exactly, but here are five more ways we realized that we missed in the first ten. Adding one more blog on the same subject is risky, but it all keeps adding up. It seems marriage is threatened in so many ways today, that to read anything which offers help and hope is encouraging. So, we submit to you our final five marriage priorities that Mary and I realize were so important to us plus a bonus.1C6A0375

 

  1. What we experience today is a direct result of how well we walked out our marriage in earlier years. We are now in our 60’s and realize that how we prioritized our relationship in our 20’s, our 30’s and our 40’s directly reflects upon where we are today. What seeds we sowed then are being reaped in our relationship today. Sow good seeds.
  2. Procrastination will kill a relationship. Taking care of issues as soon as is possible is best. Don’t wait until they become worse or compound through procrastination. At the same time, I had to honor Mary as she processed the issues before she could confront them. Meanwhile, I needed to deal with myself.
  3. Make your marriage a higher priority than the issue. Issues will come and go in a marriage, sometimes daily. Make sure you keep your relationship ahead of the problems. In other words, do not make the problems more important than the fact that you are married for a lifetime. Even in disagreement, Mary and I would strive for alignment.
  4. Never stop investing in your marriage. We went to seminars, read books, listened to teaching series and sought out help from those we respected to speak into our marriage. We were open with others about our mistakes.
  5. There are seasons that are dull, boring and gasping for air. Persevere through those; accept them as a bit normal, but work toward providing freshness in as many ways as you can. Admitting that we are in one of those seasons is the best place to start.

Bonus: Find a challenging mission outside yourselves and your family. We lead a small group, do premarital counseling, share in seminars together, have served on mission teams and did outreach to the homeless in Philadelphia. Marriages need a mission focus outside themselves; it keeps our passion and our compassion alive.

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Encouragement, Marriage, Postmarital, Premarital

What Does it Take to Reach Forty Years of Marriage and Beyond? II

In the last blog entry, we shared the first five of ten priorities in our marriage developed over the last forty years. Here are the remaining five for your consideration.

1. Love trumps all. We discovered that when there is any level of fear in the marriage relationship love has decreased in some way. Where there is love, fear will not be present.  We learned to keep loving even when we were scared of something negative going on in our relationship. Love grows security while fear breeds insecurity.

2. We chose each other. We didn’t wake up one day and find ourselves married. We made a choice to get married; we were not forced into the decision. We spoke vows of promise by our own free will. Through the worst of times, no matter how angry or disappointed we may become with our mate, we must remember that this is the person I chose to become one with and becoming one is a life long journey.

3. We will not be victims and blame each other. We must take responsibility for our own actions toward change. Victims look for someone to blame rather than take the more difficult road of life change. I cannot change my spouse; I can only change me. We chose to never be victims by blaming the other for our personal issues.

4. Sex is loving; lust is taking. We call it “love making,” not “love taking.” Lust is insatiable while love satisfies. Being sexual as a married couple not only provided intimacy, it also provided physical, emotional and spiritual bonding for us. Sex within the boundaries of marriage is a bonding agent as we serve our mate in meeting their sexual desires.

5. It’s all His. We are stewards of everything we own including our savings account, our 401k’s, our car and our home. Being a steward means we hold it lightly, it’s not ours. All we have belongs to God; therefore, we can also give freely. We are givers because we have received so much. We are blessed because we have never been able to out give our God. We have continually maintained a budget and moved in agreement to eliminate debt from our union.1C6A0369

Bonus: Tell her/him that you love them in every email, every text message, every phone conversation, every morning and every night. Keep buying greeting cards, sending love notes and finding small gifts to share. Keep holding hands, hugging and kissing. Forgive quickly.

Steve and Mary

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Encouragement, Marriage, Postmarital, Premarital

What Does it Take to Reach Forty Years of Marriage and Beyond?

Now that you know Mary and I have celebrated 40 years of marriage, we have asked ourselves how we got this far. Of course, it goes without saying it is totally the grace of God. That realized, let us give you ten priorities (five per week) that to us were/are non – negotiable after saying “I do.”

1. We determined to never and I do mean never mention the ‘D’ word. Divorce was determined to not be an option for us. We decided that there wasn’t anything that we could not work through with some help from others.

2. Our first love and our first priority was to love God with all of our heart and soul and then love one another. He would give us the ability to love our life mate in a way that our flesh and soul was not capable of doing.

3. Our marriage would come before our children, our ministry, our jobs and other life commitments. We would continue to date, take weekends away and not allow the oneness of marriage to be stolen from us.

4. We would have fun and keep laughing with one another. Humor is a medicine to relationship. When we stop having fun we can begin to take our career, our finances, our goals and ourselves too seriously.1C6A0380

5. We would keep prayer and communication as a priority. Nothing is more intimate than praying together. When you pray, you reveal your heart and when you reveal your heart, you are communicating your deepest feelings to God and one another.

Bonus:  Having less materially and being content is true wealth in life, love and relationship!

Next week we’ll give you five more priorities plus a bonus one.

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Marriage, Postmarital

Getting Married and Hot Times

It just had to be the hottest day of the spring of 1975. Sweating in my long sleeve shirt, rented navy blue suit jacket and bow tie in the non air-conditioned church building was an obvious concern.  I was 20 years young and she just turned 21. My father was against this union while her father gave us his blessing and approval to marry. Of course, he wanted hIMG_1105is daughter to finish nursing college, as did I for different (financial:) reasons. The wedding ceremony started, my bride, so lovely in her high neck gown, came down the aisle toward me. And then it seemed the ceremony might not end anytime soon as the preacher decided to take advantage of the many relatives and attendees who perhaps looked like they needed a Savior. Finally we spoke our vows and had ceremonially become one.

I truly do not remember much else from that day. The fresh fruit salad, potato salad and lunchmeat were pretty good, as the older church ladies who tend to do such things prepared it. The basement where the reception was held was a bit cooler. We had already lost a number of our guests from the heat of the unrelenting sermon spoken by the gray-haired pastor and the temperature in the sanctuary. The two combined were just too much for some, like one of my work mates who was on a lot of illegal drugs at that time. But what I do remember on that May 24th of 40 years ago was that I knew that I knew I was to marry my soul mate, Mary Elizabeth Mohr. I had not one single doubt that this decision was led by God and that I was obeying God by saying “I do” that day. As we soon celebrate our 40th anniversary, I still do, Mary.

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Encouragement, Marriage

Marry a Prostitute?

You fall in love with a prostitute. Well, not exactly. You just happen to bump into her on the street, no, not that way either. Actually, you have been actively rebuking the voice that keeps telling you to take the woman not of your dreams and marry her. She is a prostitute, an “adulterous” wife who will have “children of unfaithfulness.” Ridiculous? I think so, but God didn’t when He told Hosea to marry this woman of the night, Gomer, and have children with her. Gomer even continued to remain unfaithful while in the marriage. Perhaps she was a temple prostitute for a foreign god, but now she finds herself on the auction block. Most likely she is sick and no longer beautiful or desirable, a throw away. Her life is wasting away and it is a more than obvious, and legal, time for a divorce.

images-16Unbelievably Gomer’s husband hears of her plight, gathers some money and some extra grain for good measure and heads down to one of the worst places in his city, where slaves are auctioned like farm animals. This faithful husband buys back his unfaithful, adulterous and most likely diseased wife for 15 pieces of silver. At this point we could stop and say what an amazing love story, the stuff Hollywood movies are made of (remember the movie Pretty Women?). But it’s not a Hollywood movie, it actually happened and is recorded in the book of Hosea in the Old Testament.

This story, this amazing picture is about how much God loves us even when we are “adulterous” and unfaithful to Him. In His mercy He implores us to come to Him for healing as He binds up our wounds and restores us (Hosea 6: 1,2). Even though prostitution (unfaithfulness) and arrogance is in our heart, He loves us and longs to walk with us. He sent His Son to purchase us back from slavery and to forgive us of our sins as we turn away from those sins.  Have you sinned against your heavenly Father or your spouse? Know that forgiveness awaits you.

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