I guess I should have begun with the question of what a good marriage looks like to you?  Is a good marriage one that allows you to do things how you want them done?  Is a good marriage one that has your spouse serving you like your second-class citizen in your house?  Is a good marriage one that makes you wake up in the morning singing like a Disney movie?  Is there no such thing as a good marriage?

What I want to argue first is that we must get our idea of a good marriage from the Bible.  Not just from the Bible in an instructional sense (i.e. Paul says that husbands should love their wives therefore husbands should love their wives) but in an exemplary sense as well (i.e. Jesus’ love for his bride is how we should love our spouse).  We do not simply take the steps, but we fully take on the character.

In Ephesians 5, Paul is not using Jesus and the Church as an analogy for marriage.  Instead, he is showing that marriage between a man and a woman is the analogy for Jesus and the Church.  Having this understanding is as fundamental as putting a horse at the front of the cart.  Jesus and the Church is the reality and your marriage is the image, the reflection.

Knowing Jesus is the reality and we are the image makes the instructions much easier for me to handle.  When we make the mistake in thinking that the relationship between Jesus and the Church and the relationship between a husband and a wife are equal we try to qualify the tough sayings.  This is not good.

To begin to understand the relationship between Jesus and The Church you must be a part of that relationship.  A man will have no clue how to love his wife if he has not first been loved as the bride of his Savior.  A woman will have no understanding of respecting her husband until she has grown to respect her Savior who nourishes and cherishes her.

Again, let me reiterate what I said Sunday:  I am just a newborn when it comes to marriage (and therefore probably shouldn’t even be speaking about it), so I have barely scratched the surface of what it will look like for me to love my wife as Christ has loved his bride.  But, if I am to answer my own question (what does a good marriage look like?), I would have say it looks like my wife growing in grace and beauty because of the love and nourishment that I have given her.  It is my wife finding joy and ease in her respect for me because Jesus has enabled me to give up myself for her.

Well, with that as my goal I better stop typing and start praying…

Because of Jesus,

Michael

Michael Rauls

Part 3/3 on Marriage

What a great week for, “What I meant to say…”  No one foibles like I!   If you missed last week’s sermon, you may have heard that I represented a great sermon very poorly by reducing an idea full of beauty and passion to a bad bumper sticker saying.  I am sorry that I used such a crass reference.  Please, allow me to elaborate on what Keller meant for me to say.

In his sermon entitled “The Marriage Supper of the Lamb,” his ninth on this passage, Dr. Timothy Keller concludes by looking at two things: what we find in marriage that teaches us about Jesus and then what we find in Jesus that teaches us about marriage.  The former is repentance and forgiveness.  Genuine marriage is built on repenting and forgiving.  Every day there is a cycle of constantly recognizing hurt and moving gently to the other person.  Marriage is, by design, two different kinds of human beings learning to share each others perspectives, concerns, emotions… in truth their whole being.  You cannot separate Mary Lu’s thinking from me.  Foreign though it may be, it is mine.  And I will never be the same because of what I have learned of me in her thought, her life, and her emotion.

It is perfectly fair to say, her weaknesses were tailor made for my needs.  Our marriage is a blessing, not “in spite of” how differently we see the world.  Rather, God’s design for my blessing is through our differences, and some of those are blatantly sinful either way!  God uses evil to bring about His will.  I have the gospel, in a way that I would have never known, because of our mutual brokenness.  To be sure, that process requires the development of a real expertise in forgiving and repenting.

The practice of forgiving and repenting at the level that marriage affords requires the kind of forgiveness and repentance we find in our walk with Christ.  Marriage teaches us about our relationship with Him.  He leads us to a thirst for real, deep, and abiding forgiveness in relationship.  In that thirst, there comes a union that surpasses all other relationships.  That is how marriage trains us for our relationship to Christ.

Greater, even than that, is the intimacy required to bear fruit.  That is where I got… um became, um “poorly stated?”

In Romans chapter seven Paul offers, through the Holy Spirit, that we died to the law.  We died to the law, he says specifically, so to be freed from our obligations and to marry another.  Marriage is bound by this life.  The woman who was married is no longer bound when her husband passes, but she is free to love another.  This passage, rightly understood, is genuinely a picture of the intimacy necessary to bear fruit.  It is a passage about the deepest intimacy.  Jesus desires that you be released from your bondage to the tyrant law.  He wants his bride to freely love him.  He desires in that new marriage to bear fruit.  We are His bride and he longs to see the fruit of our relationship born from the intimacy of the union of our being, “in Christ.”

The truth is, my inability with words bespeaks my ignorance!  I need to hear for myself that Jesus is not a proposition.  He is not a philosophical syllogism.  He is not an article, nor an object to be academically debated.  He is a lover who desires to move to heal at the depths of our wounds.  Scars that were left so deeply can only find their healing in the intimacy of His deeper embrace.  The most profound marriage wouldn’t begin to scratch at the surface of that kind of intimacy.

Jesus longs to bear fruit in your life.  That kind of fruit bearing comes from an intimacy that holds no bounds of access or exposure.  People and dogs and rabbits and guppies can consummate a relationship, but only Jesus, as the glorious bridegroom, can move to you with the intimacy of affection that cleanses your deepest stain.

One friend said, “You know, I got one good thing out of your sermon…” he went on but not without noting, even in the tone of his own voice, how enthusiastic and successful he considered it to get ONE thing… like the other weeks he got, … um, maybe nothing?

Well, thank you to my friends who allow me to struggle.  I am grateful for your forgiveness and I trust that the few short paragraphs above give maybe even two things that came to me through this series.  Marriage teaches us about forgiveness and repentance and we find that in our relationship with him.  Secondly, the intimacy I find required for Christ to bear fruit in my life teaches me about that which was designed for my wife and I to share.  I am so grateful for her today.  She couldn’t be better fit for me.

I trust you have found the same.  Your spouse’s strengths, and weaknesses alike, were created in them just for you!  Will you join me in rejoicing over both and His deep love for you?

I remain,
Ted

Rev. Ted Strawbridge

Part 2/3 on Marriage

Part 1/3 on Marriage

Ephesians 5:15-21

15 Look carefully then how you walk, not as unwise but as wise, 16 making the best use of the time, because the days are evil. 17Therefore do not be foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is. 18And do not get drunk with wine, for that is debauchery, but be filled with the Spirit, 19addressing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody to the Lord with your heart, 20 giving thanks always and for everything to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, 21 submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ.

Be imitators of God…

What does it mean to be an imitator of God? In our use of language an imitator is not the real thing. But we have already heard how the person who is united to Christ is transformed. Every person who enters into a relationship is transformed. Christians, every Christian, is made new. Spiritual transformation is a renewing of your heart.

Genuine spiritual conversion means being made new in true knowledge, righteousness, and holiness, after the image of God. I am made new and that renewal is defined as to be like Him… even if I am not living that way, it is true of me, in Him.

So we enter the discussion of beauty asking, “How do you perceive yourself to be a dearly loved child?”

… living a life of love!

As we move to a consideration of the distortion of God’s intended beauty in the creation of masculinity and femininity, feast yourself in the provision of approaching physicality through the lens of living a deep and passionate life of love.

A broken human, looking to recreate my values for love in all its forms, perhaps I should sign myself as the child, little Teddy before my values of love were formed? We are really talking about being loved.

When have you felt really loved? When have you felt lovely? When have you felt lovable?

Who made you feel it?

How did it speak deeply to your soul? Does it stay with you? Can you feel it today?

With the love of one in the Kindergarten of love school,

Ted

This is my last opportunity to mention anger to you…  and some of you are so mad!

Ted

Testimony – When I began to consider my anger, I entered the conversation with a fair degree of confidence.  I don’t get angry.  My parents weren’t “inhibited” people.  But people always say they must have been when I offer, “I never heard my father raise his voice… ever.  I’ve never heard my mother yell.”  My dad quoted John Wooden like the Bible, “There is never any excuse for not being a gentleman!”

It was sort of like, “You don’t hit a girl…” and “you don’t blame your emotions on your circumstance.”  It just didn’t happen.  I knew, by example, from my childhood, that I chose my emotions and how I directed them.

Now, my kids might tell you at workdays that I’m a liar about such things, but that is OK.

They are only learning what it takes to work aggressively… It is not that my dad, nor I,  don’t feel anger.  He simply never let it define his course of action.  He chose his recompense wisely and would freely offer, “I promise, this is going to hurt you a lot more than it is going to hurt me!”

Now, what I can’t give you in writing is the tone.  It always said, “I love you so much…  I would never do this if I didn’t have to.  This pain will be only for a little while, in fact, I choose this route because it clears the way for our fellowship the quickest.  This is a little thing between us and nothing that would ever separate you from my love.  Let’s get it over with ok?  I am with you in this.”

Proverbs says, “a patient man has great understanding, but a quick-tempered man displays folly. A heart at peace gives life to the body, but envy rots the bones.” Prov. 14:29, 30.

And if it is strength you want, “…better a patient man than a warrior, a man who controls his temper than one who takes a city.” Prov. 16:32. How about Proverbs 19:19? “A man’s wisdom gives him patience; it is to his glory to overlook an offense.”

Anger is always a secondary response.  Do you have the capacity to absorb an offense?  Really?  Do you?

Because, it looks like you wish you did.  You want to be that kind of person, but you honestly don’t have the resources.  The storehouse of your emotional tank doesn’t equip you to make different choices.  John Chrysostrom said, “He that is angry without cause sins, but he that is not angry when there is cause sins, for unreasonable patience is the hotbed of many vices.”

And that quote grabs me.  “…unreasonable patience is the hotbed of many vices.”

OK, maybe I don’t get mad, but hotbed of many vices… hmmm… Could it be that part of my struggle to live a deeply obedient life is that I have not pursued the righteous cause of Christ???  I haven’t savored the beauty of His glory in anger?

It is a sin to never get angry.  Slow to anger to be yeah, sure, but let yourself get really angry!  Anger is a form of love.  When you stop up that love with pretense or gloss of emotional indifference it will fester, disintegrate, corrupt and erode.  That is when you have an explosion that makes people ask, “Why did she get so mad about that?”

The Lord is slow to anger, abounding in love.  He only responds to protect what he loves with pinpoint accuracy.  He uses not one ounce more strength necessary than to discipline or protect.  He never separates himself from those who call out to Him in their guilt or need.  He always disciplines with the greatest hope of restoration.

Maybe it is time that the healing of your anger begins with your first, real, devotional life?  Maybe, I need to start over and not merely credit my self for a lack of explosions, but seek out the hotbed of vices and from whence their headwaters really flow?  Maybe there is an honest interaction with life on life’s terms that I’m missing.

I’m intent on finding that out.

Ted

Resources

Thank you to so many of you who have been reading.  My hope is that a snippet a day may grow our conversation around a weekly topic.  It won’t always be particularly relevant to you, but I mean to invite each person with a particular need into more focused consideration.  Yesterday I included several typos.  Did you catch them?  What did you do with that?  Mary Lu will die when she sees them.  I haven’t heard from her yet (she must not be reading them!) In her family, speaking or writing incorrectly equaled non-intelligence.  My family was similar for the most part, only my mom couldn’t spell.  I used “there” instead of “their” in the Loop this week and it got by Steve!  Some people will lose the whole article because grammar goes to their core… and by the way, I love hearing it, I’m just not genetically capable of changing.  I do care and we will always try… I’m just a lot to fix for these people!

If you are concerned that no one else understands why things really are “the world” to you… If people around you don’t meet your expectations and you find that separates you from the ability to love them in their struggle (almost wrote ‘there’ just to be mean)…  Again, I love to be corrected, because it means someone gives a blank!  Cultural values are important…but when it comes to God and others, having money to pay the bills or not shouldn’t make you hate God or people.  Eating or overeating is not the measure of a human’s value.

Below you will find links to resources that I have found helpful.  Let me know if they bring comfort to your angry soul and/or forgiveness to your heart?

Three steps to growing in your ability to process anger (adapted from Dr. Tim Keller):

• Understand your anger. (Ask someone else if you are out of balance… someone honest.)

• Channel your emotional drive to the real source of the problem. (Put your heart and enthusiasm into the problem of your love choices.  Fix the real problem.)

• Forgive – forgive everybody, everything…but begin with forgiving yourself. (Only a person feeding deeply on Jesus can even begin to face this step.  Meet him alone.)

Resources: Either of the following would be an effective tool to work through with a friend.

• Tim Keller sermons on Anger and Forgiveness

• Peacemaker Ministries (hispeace.org) has a great resource about identifying the source here and other helpful articles here.

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