Our speaker for tonight is doctor Gordon Bowles. He is the director of Day Mark Pastoral Counseling. He has been there now for about 14 years. Many of you already know him. He he's a fantastic counselor and speaker.
Jeffrey Heine:And when we were thinking through our theological coffee houses for the summer, he was one of the first ones we wanted to contact to make sure that he could come. And, so let me pray, and then let him talk. And, we'll get started. Father God, we thank you for this evening. We pray that, you would be present tonight, that you would open up our ears and our hearts to hear clearly from you.
Jeffrey Heine:Be with Gordon. Use him as your instrument. So we ask that your spirit would come and teach us in this moment. We pray this in the name of Jesus. Amen.
Speaker 2:Alright. Our topic for tonight is, gender and the gospel. And, kind of the subtitle is Understanding How Justice and Mercy Meet Together in Relationships of the Opposite Sex. Hopefully, the rest of my our time won't be as wordy as that. But what I what what I really want you to hear is justice and mercy is close to God's heart, and it can really be exemplified in relationships with the opposite sex.
Speaker 2:I want you to understand what we're gonna talk about in the light of the gospel narrative, which is creation, fall, redemption, glorification. That's kind of the outline of the gospel narrative. And we're actually in the period of redemption or restoration. It's a period of recovery. At creation, there wasn't tension or exploitation between the sexes.
Speaker 2:Adam and Eve walked in the cool of the day with God, and there was beauty and harmony. After sin and the fall of man, that's what entered into the tension, or the disarray, or the violence, or all the things that happens between the sexes. And we're in a period of recovery or restoration, where we're trying to cooperate with the Lord and bring forth good. Move back towards kind of the ideal image or what was designed in the garden. And the gospel really is good news.
Speaker 2:It's this. That even though we live in a fallen world, we really can move towards rest and togetherness in relationships with the opposite sex. And justice and mercy really are our impetus, our tools, our strategies. I don't know what word you would wanna use, but justice and mercy are the things that really can bring us together and help us to disarm the tension or the disarray that happens in relationships. I think you already know this.
Speaker 2:But justice and mercy is close to God's heart. And it's a fruit of the Gospel like Matthew 2323 says this. What sorrow awaits you, teachers of religious law, and you Pharisees, hypocrites? For you're careful to tithe even the tiniest income from your herb gardens. But you ignore the more important aspects of the law, justice, mercy, and faith.
Speaker 2:And what the Lord's really saying there is, my law should form you in a way that you demonstrate through faith, justice, and mercy. You're probably also familiar with the passage in Micah where he says, he has shown you a mortal what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God. And before I talk about gender, I wanna get a basic understanding of justice and mercy.
Speaker 2:What is justice? And I'm gonna define justice this way. It's caring enough about others that you're moved to use your gifts to set the tables right from God's perspective. Alright. You care enough about others to use your gifts, your advantages, the resources you have on behalf of another person to set the tables right.
Speaker 2:Let me give you an example. Adoption is doing justice. A family has the resources, the means, the love, the availability to sacrifice and give away what they have and welcome someone in to their family. It says, God sets the lonely in families. That is setting the table right from God's perspective.
Speaker 2:A child who's been abandoned, this couple welcomes them. They do justice. Another example of justice might simply be tutoring students in a low income place. The schools doesn't have some of the resources other schools have. You set aside your time.
Speaker 2:You set aside your, or you use your energy. You have gifts, advantages, things to give, and you incarnate, you bend down and teach and give to those students what other students have. You set the table right from God's perspective. That's justice. All right?
Speaker 2:Now, mercy is simply compassion or forgiveness towards someone that you could really hold to the law, that you could, have vengeance against or hold something against, but you drop that, and you really, mercy is is a step, I would say, beyond forgiveness, where you involve yourself in warmth or in care with someone who's offended you. Someone who has used their gifts unjustly to hurt you, and in mercy, you kind of offer them kindness. It could simp A simple example of mercy might simply be having, asking a friend to dinner who's offended you. You know there's distance, and you offer mercy by saying I wanna welcome you back into fellowship. And it's an act of mercy or kindness.
Speaker 2:I would say any child that has a good relationship with a parent, and I mean a genuine, affectionate relationship with a parent, is demonstrating mercy. The Scriptures say clearly that an earthly father disciplines his children the best he knows how, but God does it perfectly. Or it says, if you ask your earthly father for bread, will he give you a stone? If such sinful wicked people do such kind things, how much more your father in heaven? I have 3 daughters, almost 17, 15, and 12 and a half, and I have hurt them at times because I wanted to.
Speaker 2:And you may be better than me, but I have failed my children. And for them to have affection towards me is mercy. They involve themselves with me. They give me warmth even though I have failed them way more than I wanted to. Any child that has a genuine affection for a parent, because the parent is called to care, exemplifies mercy.
Speaker 2:Alright. So that's justice and mercy, and that's the opposite of words like exploitation, disenfranchisement, marginalizing, resentment, bitterness, vengeance. They all can be words that we can follow. And when we follow those words, we're not doing justice, and we're not loving mercy. I would say again, the fruits of the Gospel are clearly justice and mercy.
Speaker 2:Let's just look at Jesus for a second. How did he do justice? It says in, Philippians 2 or 3:5, you must have the same attitude that Christ Jesus had. Though he was God, he did not think of equality with God as something to cling to. Instead, he gave up his divine privileges, and he took the humble position of a slave.
Speaker 2:He gave up his advantages and incarnated. He set the tables right from his father's perspective by offering himself on the cross. He also demonstrated mercy. It says, while we were yet still sinners, he forgave us. He moved towards us, died for us, reconciled us, intercedes for us.
Speaker 2:He demonstrates mercy towards us on a regular basis. And the sacrifice of the cross is what freed him to do that. So justice and mercy are things that are close to God's heart, and I think they are demonstrations or fruits of the gospel working in us. And what I wanna do is look at what does this mean in relationship? And especially relationship of the opposite sex.
Speaker 2:And I'm gonna talk from this point on mostly about marriage, but I want you to think wherever there is a difference in gifts or advantages or power, We could talk a teacher to a student, a parent to a child, a boss to a worker, a politician to, someone they're serving, wherever there's a difference in power, justice and mercy are always the thing that will, set things right. The one in power, doing justice. The one in mercy, or the one not having power, offering mercy. And that's what disarms what I would say is the evil tension that exists in, relationships where there's a disadvantage or not the same gifts or power. So I specifically wanna look at it in the context of marriage.
Speaker 2:And the first thing we have to do is look at what are the gifts that a husband has? I believe a husband is to do justice, but if he's to do justice, what are his resources? What are his gifts that he has? The first gift I would call the outside gift or a physical gift. Says this.
Speaker 2:In the same way, your husbands must give honor to your wives. Treat her with understanding as you live together. She may be weaker than you are, but she is your equal partner in God's gift of new life. If you don't treat her as you should, your prayers will not be heard. Now, that passage, any conservative commentator's gonna tell you weaker in that passage simply means physically weaker.
Speaker 2:Now, most women in this room know why that's a gift or an advantage or a resource that a man has, oftentimes men are indifferent to that. So men, I would say to you, if I met you in a dark alley and you were the same size and height as me, and I threw up my arms in frustration and anger like I was mad, you probably wouldn't feel that intimidated. You're probably thinking, he's the same size as me. I could take him if he comes after me. However, if I have a gun in my hand, and I throw at my arms in frustration, what do you feel?
Speaker 2:A little more nervous. Is that right? Because there's a differential in power. In the in a male female relationship, a man is physically stronger and I believe it creates in a woman, what I would say is an existential angst or a fear. A man and woman in a marriage relationship could have the same maturity, the same character, and a woman will feel some anxiety just because the man is physically stronger.
Speaker 2:That is a gift. And that is a gift that men exploit. The worst example of that, the worst injustice would be rape, Where a man doesn't use his gifts to care for, protect, love a woman, he uses it to exploit a woman and to take for himself what he wants. That's injustice. But the first gift is what I'm calling the outside gift or the physical gift.
Speaker 2:The second gift a husband has, the second resource is the inside gift. It says this in in the creation mandate. It says, be rule and subdue, and be fruitful and multiply. After Adam and Eve were created, God said rule and subdue, be fruitful and multiply. And really, what he was saying was rule and subdue.
Speaker 2:Go make a difference in the world. Create cities, towns, find a cure to cancer. Make a difference in your world. That's rule and subdue. Be fruitful and multiply is have children and create families and cities and clans.
Speaker 2:Develop a rich relational world. We are both meaning seeking creatures. We wanna rule and subdue, make a difference. And we're social creatures. We wanna be fruitful and multiply.
Speaker 2:We wanna be connected. Now, men and women share desires in both spheres. I wanna make a difference, and I wanna be connected. My wife wants to make a difference, and she wants to be connected. But we really have to look at the way men and women were cursed to see what direction does a man lean in, and what direction does a woman lean in.
Speaker 2:For those of you who have children, you'll know that if you discipline a child in an area where they don't want anything, if you're not frustrating something they want, the discipline's not effective. I am not disciplining my teenagers with webkins. Webkins are long gone. What am I disciplining my teenagers with? Facebook?
Speaker 2:Cell phones? The things they want. All right? And so discipline is only effective if it frustrates something you want. And the way God disciplined men and women illuminates what a man wants and what a woman wants.
Speaker 2:To the husband, God said, because you listened to your wife and ate the fruit I told you not to eat, I placed a curse on the ground. All your life you will struggle to scratch a living from it. It will grow thorns and thistles for you, though you will eat of its grains. All your life, you will sweat to produce food until your dying day. Let me summarize that.
Speaker 2:Man, you wanna make a difference. And what the Lord said is, because you didn't trust me in the beginning, remember Adam and Eve were our representatives, we would have done the exact same thing. Adam didn't trust the Lord, and the Lord said, Adam, you're gonna wanna make a difference. And now, I have to frustrate that. Every weed you pull, there'll be 2 more.
Speaker 2:There's gonna be a daily futility. Man, there's not a day you wake up where you think, today is gonna be a futility free day. There will be no problems. There will be no stresses. I have perfect confidence that I'm gonna move from one success to another.
Speaker 2:Any man who feels that is in significant denial, that he's gonna move from one success to another. So futility is a man's curse, which is this, I have to work and look at the Lord. I have to work and look at the Lord. If I deal with futility this way to work really hard, I become a driven, busy, proud, angry man. If futility says I can't get it right, I'm gonna withdraw, I think you become weak and probably passively angry.
Speaker 2:The only way to become a free man is to work and rely and trust on the Lord at the same time. Sometimes, you have to pull back and stop working and consider what you're doing because of futility, and if you push through, you'll make it worse. So you have to work and look at the Lord or work and trust. Futility is a curse, and the Lord said this, men, you're gonna wanna make a difference, but if you don't learn to acknowledge me, to become conscious of me in everyday life, you will become an angry man or a passive man or both or worse. Only as you embrace futility, and let it change you into a man who walks with me more richly, only then will you be a free man.
Speaker 2:That's the man's curse. The woman's curse is this, you will be our children with intense pain and suffering, And though your desire will be for your husband, he will be your master. Now notice, the woman was cursed in the area of relationships. And I believe this is representative because a woman who is not married or hasn't had children still experiences the curse in this fallen world. I think what the writer of Genesis did was he took the 2 most intimate relationships to exemplify the tension that women would feel in relationships.
Speaker 2:So, essentially, the Lord said, women, you're gonna wanna be fruitful and multiply. You're gonna wanna have a rich relational world. And what I'm gonna do is frustrate that. So you have to look, relate, and look at me. Relate, and look at me.
Speaker 2:Only as you become a woman who is both owned by the hope of the gospel and can feel the pain in relationship and keep moving do you become a woman that has a rich relational world. If you try to, control relationships because you hate the pain, then you become a word I won't use. Alright? And nobody wants to be around you. Alright?
Speaker 2:If you withdraw, then you create a world of loneliness where you're not connected. But only as on some level, day in and day out, you grow in-depth, with the Lord where he begins to own you more and more, do you then walk through the pain and still love? So you have to relate and look at the Lord, or relate and look at the Lord. So the woman's domain of desire is in relationship. The man's domain of desire is in making a difference.
Speaker 2:The way God disciplined men and women demonstrates what they want. So, how is this an inside gift for the man? I'll say this. The wife's curse is specifically worked out in the marital relationship in a way that the husband's is not, and she experiences more threat, disappointment, and loss in marriage because she longs for more to happen there. When you really want something and you don't get it, you're more disappointed if you don't want it.
Speaker 2:Is that right? So if a woman's domain of desire is relationship, and there's pain in marriage, who is that pain affecting more, the husband or the wife? The wife. So that's an inside gift to the husband. I'll say it this way, the marriage is not as burdensome to the husband as it is to the wife.
Speaker 2:It doesn't involve as much threat or as much pain. That's one part of the inside gift. The other part of the inside gift is this, a man can meet his desire to rule and subdue in the marriage or outside the marriage, or both. A man can learn to treat his wife with understanding in a way that she softens and trusts him, and then that's a reflection back on his care. He's kind of ruled and subdued or brought beauty, shape, and order to his marital relationship by loving his wife.
Speaker 2:He can have impact that way. A man can also have impact as an engineer, or an accountant, or an architect. And can I tell you which futility threatens a man less, work futility or relational futility? Which one do you think? Work futility threatens a man less.
Speaker 2:Men tend to run away from relational futility because it's more futile. It's more painful. A man would rather have a failed project than deal with pain in relationship. So that's the second part of the inside gift. A man doesn't need the marriage in the same way, but he can also get his needs met outside the marriage differently than the woman.
Speaker 2:And this is what Peter's addressing in 1st Peter 3. We're gonna talk a little bit about it. But when he says to a woman, don't focus on outward adornment, he's not saying don't take care of yourself. He's saying your tendency because you feel more vulnerable in the marriage. Right?
Speaker 2:When you're vulnerable, when you're in a vulnerable place, let's say you drive into a dangerous area, what do you do? You lock your doors. You do something to give yourself a sense of power. Women are more vulnerable in their relationships, so their tendency is to do something to give themselves an advantage or a sense of power. So what Peter is again, he's not saying don't take care of yourself.
Speaker 2:He's saying, don't make your hope to attract your husband what you do. In fact, he says, the quietness in your heart will speak louder to your husband than any words. He says, resting more in my ability to speak and care for your husband is your hope, not your ability to keep him attracted to you. So the, curse illuminates the inside difference. There's an outside difference, physical strength.
Speaker 2:There's, an inside difference, which is the marriage is less burdensome to the husband. So one last part of this differential, and this is where living in a fallen world comes into play. I think there would be tension in male and female relationship without the presence of evil, but with the presence of evil, it gets that much worse. Listen to the curse to the serpent. It says this, because you have done this, this is God cursing Satan, because you have done this, you will be punished.
Speaker 2:From now on, you and the woman will be enemies. And your offspring and her offspring will be enemies. He will crush your head, and you will strike his heel. The lord says there'll be enmity between you and the woman and between her seed and your seed. He's saying, Satan, there's gonna be a different amount of hatred towards the woman than towards the man.
Speaker 2:Now you look around the globe in cultures where the Gospels not had some sway. It has had some sway in the Western world. It's losing that. But in the Western world, women are a little bit more protected. Many of you women would not wanna be a woman in a culture where the gospel doesn't have freedom.
Speaker 2:Do you know why? Because evil has a field day there. Evil attacks the vulnerable. Why is it that the widow and the orphan are protected when the gospel's being preached? Because they're vulnerable.
Speaker 2:And those who are doing justice, they see the vulnerable, and they use their advantages, their gifts, their resources to care for and protect the vulnerable that's doing justice, that's preaching the gospel. Alright? So let's bring it specifically into the male female relationship. I would want you to see that the commands in the New Testament again were in the period of redemption or restoration. And I would say the New Testament, in many ways, is what calls us towards redemption.
Speaker 2:The commands, the truths, the themes in the New Testament, as we cooperate with them, that's what calls us towards redemption. And so I want you to look at the words to a husband as the Lord calling him. This is what he's to do to facilitate redemption. And this is what it says to the husband. In the same way, you husbands must give honor to your wives.
Speaker 2:Treat your wife with understanding as you live together. She may be weaker than you are, but she is your equal partner in God's gift of new life. Treat her as you should, so your prayers will not be hindered. Keep treating your wife with understanding as you live together. You know what the Lord's saying there?
Speaker 2:Men, men, you have resources to involve yourself with your wife. Use those resources. The marriage, although it's hard for you, is not as hard for you as it is for the woman because of the resources, the inside difference and the outside difference. So you are to use those resources to treat your wife with understanding. You are to sacrificially involve yourself with her.
Speaker 2:That is simply doing justice. The, second major command to the husband is in Ephesians. And and I'm gonna read it from the message. It says this, husbands, go all out in your love for your wives, exactly as Christ did for the church. A loved mark by giving, not getting.
Speaker 2:Christ's love makes the church whole. His words evoke her beauty. Everything he does and says is designed to bring out the best out of her. Dressing her in dazzling white silk, radiant with holiness. You know the passage from Ephesians in, like in the New Living Translation or the ESV.
Speaker 2:It's love husbands love your wife the way Christ loved the church. How did Christ loved the church? What we read in Ephesians. He put aside his advantages, and he incarnated. He sacrificed and died for the church.
Speaker 2:And so, men, you are called to do justice. Let me give you a simple picture of doing justice. I think it was probably my first major move in my own marriage towards doing justice. We had been married about 5 years, and it was a 3 day weekend. And at 47, I can kind of enjoy weekends and vacations now.
Speaker 2:But at 28 and whenever we were there, 33, 34, I was driven uptight and controlling enough that 3 day weekends were really hard for me because I had no schedule. I'm not accomplishing anything, I'm supposed to have fun, and there's a lot of freedom where you have to make choices. All of those things felt like burdens to me. I liked work and responsibility and structure. And at the end of that 3 day weekend, what was pretty clear to me was that I had perpetrated a lot of injustice.
Speaker 2:Because I'm physically stronger, like you other men or husbands, when I'm upset it impacts my wife in a way it took me years to recognize. Because I thought I wasn't that mad, but I didn't realize every day I was carrying a gun on my holster that I didn't see. And that was bullying and intimidating my wife and making it hard for her to relate to me. So this weekend, I realized that I had perpetrated a lot of injustice. And I looked at my wife and I said, honey, it's pretty clear to me I've been a jerk all weekend, and I need you to tell me from your perspective what it's been like to live with me this weekend.
Speaker 2:And then I threw away my power and I said this, whatever you say, I'm not gonna answer you back. I will just listen and walk away. Because I wanted that woman to feel invited to speak with strength to me. I didn't want her to hold back. I was throwing away essentially my advantages and doing justice.
Speaker 2:And my wife said, you know how you go to the carnival every summer and you wanna win a stuffed animal and you shoot the water in the clown's mouth, and you throw the softballs at the milk bottles, and you don't win a stuffed animal? And you said, you know, that summer, you finally win the stuffed animal, and you're hugging that stuffed animal? She said, That's what it would feel like to me if I could laugh in our house. And those words pierced me for two reasons. Because as she spoke them in that moment, I think the the justice and her strength, the Holy Spirit illuminated to me, and I saw something about myself that I had never seen.
Speaker 2:Because up until that point, I thought I was just a nice guy. I mean, I was beginning to get a clue. Marriage is what reveals that, that you're not really great people. And I was getting that picture. But those words really unveiled it for me, and I wept.
Speaker 2:But I wept for another reason. Because my wife would have said when we got married, her favorite song was Girls Just Wanna Have Fun. And can I tell you what she dreamed of getting married? She dreamed of dancing. We've taken dance lessons, and that didn't go well.
Speaker 2:Okay? I couldn't dance or sing or do any of that kind of thing on my best day. Alright? She also dreamed of just laughing, practical jokes, fun. I am the least, lightest person she probably could have picked to be married to.
Speaker 2:Alright? And that woman, in that moment, did something she never dreamed of. She stood up to a man physically stronger than her, more verbal than her, and nailed them to a wall in a really beautiful way. And I wept for both reasons, because what she said was true, and me doing justice invited my woman, my wife, to live with strength. Alright?
Speaker 2:So that's a picture of doing justice. So what is a wife to do? What does mercy look like in a wife? I first have to give you the obstacles I think a man faces in caring for his wife, and then that will understand, you'll understand better what mercy means for the wife. Alright?
Speaker 2:There's 4 obstacles a man faces. 1 is what I'm calling relationship carelessness. All right? I've got, I told you, I've got 3 daughters. Can I tell you what my daughters are talking about when they come home from school?
Speaker 2:They, I haven't heard them utter a word about the Mavs win in the NBA title. All right? I, I think they heard me talking about how I wanted Miami to lose, but that's about all they heard about it. Do you know what they're talking about when they come home? Who heard who?
Speaker 2:Who liked them? Who sat with them at lunch? Who's their best friend? Who's dating who? They're talking about relationships.
Speaker 2:Do you know what we're talking about in our house often? Relationships between each other. My daughters are getting experience at relationships that the guys their age are not getting. And if a woman's domain of desire is to be fruitful and multiply, what do women pay attention to? Relationships.
Speaker 2:What do guys pay attention to? Ruling and subduing, not relationships. So when a guy gets married, he's called to love his wife. I just ran into the commands. He's called to care, to relate, and this woman has more experience than him at what he's called to do.
Speaker 2:And it took me and I'm a counselor, and I'm verbal, and I think about these things. I'm still awakening to ways I misjudged Dawn about relational things, that she saw clearly from the beginning of our marriage, because I didn't have her eyes to see relationally. So one of the obstacles a man faces is what I'm calling relationship carelessness. Another obstacle we already talked about is futility. Okay, guys.
Speaker 2:The best you're gonna do in loving your wife is like a major league hitter. When I do men's seminars, I call it major league manhood because I want men to feel good about batting 300. You get it out 7 out of 10 times. But because you face futility, that's the best you're gonna do. I want you to feel good about batting 300, and I want you to swing with passion.
Speaker 2:But I don't care how much you pray, and read your scriptures, and do all you can do, you're still gonna fail your wife. Because God wants you to trust him more than your ability to love your wife. I said, when I got married, that I was gonna conquer marriage like everything else I had in my life. I had some success in school and other things. And I can tell you that marriage beat the crap out of me because of its futility.
Speaker 2:So men, on your best day, you're gonna bat 300. So you face relationship carelessness, futility, selfishness. You know that you're totally depraved. That your desire, fleshly desire is to care for yourself, not your wife. So to actually care for her, you actually have to resist evil and submit to God and fight to actually care for her.
Speaker 2:The last thing, obstacle you face, is what I'm calling spiritual interference. That passage from first Peter 3, at the end it said, if you don't treat the wife the way you should, your prayers will not be heard. Remember how I talked about evil goes after that which is vulnerable. Alright? Evil to get at your marriage, men, evil goes after the woman.
Speaker 2:You go through something. I don't know your I'll just give you an example. I know the the night my wife went to back to school for my oldest daughter, 6th grade, first time she walked into the middle school. And can I tell you what my wife felt? Everything my daughter was gonna feel for 3 years.
Speaker 2:And as my daughter went through that school for 3 years, my wife felt what she was going through more than she felt it. And evil inflamed it inside of her. It made it bigger inside my wife and worse inside of my wife, and we often got into division because of that. But that first night, back to school night, she came home, and part of me wanted to run-in the other room because I didn't wanna deal with all the angst on her. And instead, what I said, and this is doing justice, I put my arms around her and I said, honey, let me take all those arrows out of your heart.
Speaker 2:But oftentimes, men, you're afraid of moving towards your wife because evil's lying and deceiving and shaming and condemning her about you and your marriage, and you're kind of like, she's just uptight, and if she had faith like faith like me or was more relaxed, this would all be going better. That's called injustice. You're letting her sink under evil's attack. That's why it says, if if you don't treat you the way you should, your prayers will not be heard. Here's what that means.
Speaker 2:Guys, if you don't learn to do justice, if you don't learn to use your advantages to care for your wife, evil is gonna have a field day in her heart, and she's gonna sink down. So that spiritual interference in many ways, man, and I'll give you an example, hopefully, in a couple minutes of what it looks like to welcome the evil that attacks your wife and to walk away with it. But you're fighting, in some ways you know something's going on over there with her that's not going on over here, and that's spiritual interference. So that's another obstacle. So the 4 obstacles I named were relationship carelessness, futility, selfishness, and spiritual interference.
Speaker 2:And I think that's an important backdrop to what it means for a wife to live with mercy. The simple command to a wife is the wife must respect her husband. Okay? Now, it actually says, wives, in the same way, respect your husband. And do you know what that's in the same way as?
Speaker 2:Citizens to civil authority, slaves to masters, Jesus to the Father on the cross. Now, let's just think about that for a second. Citizens to civil authority. I wanna see hands here who think Washington, D. C.
Speaker 2:Has your best interests at heart. They're fighting for you right there in Washington DC. It's not about power and securing money for themselves and getting reelected. Right? They care about you.
Speaker 2:Right? Okay. And, you know, we have a pretty good form of government compared to the rest of the world. So citizens to civil authority? Slaves to masters?
Speaker 2:How well do you think masters treated slaves? Jesus to his father on the cross. My God, my God, why have thou forsaken me? Wives, in the same way, respect your husbands. Let me say one side note.
Speaker 2:If you think respect, husbands or wives, is any easy thing, you're crazy. Because on my best day, and I'm a man who's cared about loving my wife every day I've been married to her, and I have hurt her way more than I ever wanted to. And for my wife to have mercy towards me is a huge thing. So respect, here's what I'm going to say it really means in context. Respecting your husband doesn't mean to have high esteem for him.
Speaker 2:It doesn't mean you do whatever he says. It means that you appreciate that he doesn't give up. That all he has to battle through, those things I just talked to, if he's still trying and he's still co coming, even though he's batting 300, respect is I appreciate that. I call it an awe inspired appreciation. It's really like the fear of the Lord.
Speaker 2:The fear of the Lord isn't, I'm afraid of God, He's gonna get me. The fear of the Lord is, you are so you are such a mixture of justice and mercy and grace and truth and love, and you give that all on my behalf? Like, why wouldn't I throw my lot with yours? Okay? So appreciation is a is a turning over.
Speaker 2:Husband, if you keep coming, if you keep trying, then I want to appreciate what you're doing. So mercy is, I could easily My wife could hold so much against me. And I believe it's really difficult for her, and something has to be happening. As much as something has to be happening to me to fight through selfishness and do justice to my wife, something has to be happening in her for her to touch me with warmth and kindness, given how much I fail her. So respect really is just appreciation.
Speaker 2:In submission, what I want to say, it it says it actually says, accept the authority of her husband in 1st Peter, or to submit to her husband as she does the lord. The word accept and submit used there really means to arrange yourself under. Accepting and submitting means a wife continually moves back into a relationship with her husband, supporting his efforts, while learning to trust in the direction they are heading. Submission doesn't mean I'll do everything you say. It's more like, I'm on your team and I'm for what you're trying to accomplish.
Speaker 2:Men, when you do justice, you're trying to bring you 2 together. Wives, when you love your husband despite his failures, you're offering mercy. You're saying, I'm not holding your failures against you. My sins are not held against me. They've been nailed to the cross.
Speaker 2:I cannot withhold forgiveness from you, and I can involve myself in warmth with you. So, to summarize, justice and mercy. Justice, a husband says this, I will fight my tendency to be indifferent or to not involve myself with my wife, And I will willingly sir surrender my gifts and involve myself with you so that it's easier for you to remember that God has not forgotten you. Alright? That was a lot of words.
Speaker 2:I'll say it shorter. Husbands, when you're doing justice, when you keep trying through the difficulty to love your wife, you only have to be an occasional reminder to her that God has not forgotten her. If you're fighting, if you're laboring, if you're giving yourself to the Lord in a way that occasionally you move towards her with kindness, you know what she hears? God has not forgotten me. You are the most intimate reminder of the gospel to her, and when you can fight through the way evil wants you to push you towards indifference and do justice for your wife, something inside of her comes alive in all the other ways the lord is speaking to her come to life, because she hears God has not forgotten her.
Speaker 2:That's doing justice. Alright. Mercy for a wife is, I will fight resentment and lay down my wounds and surround you in warmth to remind you that Christ lives in you. I will fight resentment and lay down my wounds and surround you in warmth to remind you that Christ lives in you. Because men really have the impossible task of caring for their wives and loving for their wives, when you continue to fail at something and you never get appreciably good at it, you know what's easy to do?
Speaker 2:It's to beat yourself up, to have self contempt, and to think that there's nothing good resides in you. Women, when you lay down your wounds and you surround your husband with warmth, what you're nurturing is Christ in your husband. And you're saying there is something good in there that's worth it for me to fight for. I want to touch, I wanna nourish the deepest part inside of you. And the deepest part, I personally believe, in any man is Christ in him.
Speaker 2:And the path Christ knows is suffering and sacrifice. And mercy from a woman calls forth a desire to continue to live with justice or to lay aside my advantages and care. All right? Let me try to give you just a practical example of each, of doing justice. All right?
Speaker 2:Here's our doing justice and loving mercy. Here's a practical example of doing justice. Your wife is upset, and she's in turmoil. And part of that turmoil is because evil shames, condemns, inflames her flesh partly to get at you, and you kind of recognize that. And you wanna do justice, you wanna stand up to evil, the oppressor, and love your wife.
Speaker 2:So you know what you simply do? You listen to what's going on with her. Sometimes, oftentimes, that's disappointment with you, some of which is legitimate, some of which is not legitimate because evil's been deceiving her. But if you just listen to it and you walk away with her disappointment, you feel a little bit worse. And now, evil is working on you, and you actually have to wrestle and pray.
Speaker 2:But you've done justice. You've used your gifts to care, to listen, to take something from your wife and walk away with it. And now your wife feels better. You know why? Because she felt heard.
Speaker 2:Oftentimes, what happens is And the wife's disappointment oftentimes feels a lot more volatile to the husband than it does to the wife. She doesn't realize that, and that's why the husband's like, things aren't that bad. And so, he starts defending himself and, you know, correcting his record. And so now, that disappointment is growing. It's getting worse.
Speaker 2:But husband, when you listen to it And you don't have to agree with all of it. If you actually learn to listen, your wife's gonna give you a lot of advice about things you're doing wrong, if you fight through that defensiveness. But also, if you listen, you've taken her burden and you've walked away with it. You've done justice. And she feels a little bit lighter.
Speaker 2:And you know what? She's still struggling with stuff, so she's also learning that you're not a knight in shining armor. You're not gonna solve everything. That's good for both of you. The lord takes no pleasure in the strength of a man.
Speaker 2:Alright? So that's a simple practical example of doing justice. Let's think of an example of doing mercy. I'll say it this way. Well, let me say 2 things.
Speaker 2:Well, let me say this first one. Wise, when you look at your husband through the lens of the gospel. Alright, I talked about the things he fights through. When you are fighting some of your resentment, you begin to see that really he is caring. He's trying.
Speaker 2:That there's good in him, but it's not merely as much as you think should be there. All right? And here's a passage I'd want you to think about. Says this, this is Paul uses this phrase according to the flesh as he encourages the Corinthian believers to see the life of Christ in each other. And this is that 2 Corinthians 516 from the message.
Speaker 2:It says this. Now, we look inside, and what we see is that anyone united with this Messiah gets a fresh new start, is created new. The old life is gone. The new life Bergens. Look at it.
Speaker 2:Wives, your calling and mercy is to see the love in your husband that's growing inside of you, inside of him, for you and for the Lord. Oftentimes, especially as you get longer in marriage, won't look like much. Mercy is to affirm that. I'll give you a picture of mercy. I told you that I've grown into weekends and vacations.
Speaker 2:Alright? This was 5 or 6 years ago, and it was on the way home from vacation. And my wife simply said, you were a lot more relaxed this vacation. That was Mercy. She didn't say, You were so relaxed that I can't bear to wait any longer to spend the rest of my life with you.
Speaker 2:All right? But she simply spoke to where I was at in kindness and said, I enjoyed more of this week because you were at rest. That was mercy. That was seeing what was I'm sure I got upset because I was on vacation and it wasn't orderly. And and she looked past some of that and just gave me mercy.
Speaker 2:I'll give you another simple example. This was a day, it was a morning, I don't know how many years ago. And I was talking about my day and what was ahead, and my wife simply said this, you have a lot of battles to fight. And I thought, we're not gonna get into the who had a harder day, who has a harder day argument today. Because normally, when I talk about what was ahead of me, it was kind of like, oh, you think that's bad?
Speaker 2:Look what I've got going on. And it was a simple act of kindness or mercy to say, you really have a lot of battles to fight. Do you think I fought better that day or worse? She surrounded me in warmth and nourished Christ in me, and I lived with more hope and more strength that day because of her mercy. Alright.
Speaker 2:What I simply wanted to do was put justice and mercy in the context of marriage. Because I really think they are the 2 fruits that demonstrate the gospel. And they are the things that do away with evil. Think about what's evil in terms of relationship, the deeds of the flesh. Quarreling, fighting, envy, jealousy, selfish ambition.
Speaker 2:How many of you get pulled into those things in your marriage? All right. What's the fruit of the spirit? Peace, patience, gentleness, self control. I believe men, if you're trying to use your gifts to understand, to love, to sacrifice for your wife, then you're doing justice in a way that you're pushing away, Selfish ambition, division, quarreling.
Speaker 2:Wives, when you're fighting resentment, when you're letting go of wounds and you're surrounding your husband with warmth, when you're offering kindness, then you're pushing away division and quarrelsome and selfish ambition. And what you're bringing to life is peace, peace, patience, gentleness, love, self control. Guys, about, I don't know, 7 years ago, 8 years ago, I don't know when it was, I began to notice that my wife and I didn't keep when we were in moments of tension, and they weren't every day, but we're in moments of tension where we're fighting or arguing. And I realized that we were getting to places where we weren't saying anything. We weren't going to bed mad.
Speaker 2:We weren't waking up the next day and picking it up. We were letting it go. And in my flesh, I thought we're giving up. We don't care about one another anymore. And do you know what we were doing?
Speaker 2:It was so new, it was so fresh that I didn't recognize it. We were demonstrating self control and peace and patience. And as we began to let things go and not ride the flesh to continue going after one another, peace, patience, love, self control began to be something that owned the space between us more. And it surprised me because as we were walking to it, I thought we were giving up because self control was so new to us. It's not something we had practiced a lot of.
Speaker 2:I think if you wanna disarm the way evil divides you, then husbands, do justice. Wives, love mercy. And I think together, you're disarming the division between the 2 of you. And that's it for now.
Jeffrey Heine:Alright. We're gonna take a 10 minute break.
Speaker 2:So question and answers. I I want you to feel free to ask whatever you wanna ask, and I will try to dialogue with you about it. So the floor is open. The question is if you're really aiming to do justice and mercy, and maybe 1 or both feel like, I'm doing too much mercy, or I'm doing too much justice. Is that the question?
Speaker 2:How do you deal with that?
Connor Coskery:I'm doing this so that
Jeffrey Heine:they'll show me
Speaker 2:mercy or Yeah. Yeah. Well, and again, he he said, how do you know, like, what if they're thinking, you just saying I'm doing this, so you'll show me mercy? What I want to say, first of all, is all of us who are married are doing that. So let's not be surprised.
Speaker 2:Okay? You guys probably are doing that. I'm certainly doing that. Everyone else is certainly doing that. So let's be honest about the fact that most of us in the course of our marriage feel like a victim.
Speaker 2:If we're the husband, we feel like we're not getting mercy. If we're the wife, we feel like we're not getting justice. Alright? I wrote 2 newsletters 4 or 5 years ago. The title of them were, was every husband feels like a jerk and every wife agrees.
Speaker 2:Okay. Because a husband's trying to do justice. He feels like the wife isn't receiving. In fact, he feels like she doesn't like him at all, and now he's feeling worse, feeling like a jerk. Okay?
Speaker 2:And then the second one was, every wife feels alone and every husband leaves her there, meaning he's not doing justice. Now, the reason I wrote those newsletters is because that's what I saw again and again and again in my office. So, first of all, it's a good question because we're going to run into that, And I would suggest a couple things. First of all, I would suggest you wait about 8, 9, 10, 12, 14 years when you tire out of demanding things from each other. Because it takes about that long.
Speaker 2:I'm not trying to But, I really started being kind to my wife, because nothing else worked. Alright? Like, I'll I'll give you one example. I I I told you enough about how I like neat things, like things neat. I went to United States Merchant Marine Academy.
Speaker 2:None of you have heard of that. Alright? It's like Annapolis and West Point. And I went there because I said, I love discipline. I just want more of it.
Speaker 2:Right? And so when we got married and my wife, through the week, put her clothes from the week in the corner of the floor, every one of those clothes piece of clothes screamed at me, she didn't care about me. That wasn't true, But it is what I felt like. Alright? And so I thought if I pick stuff up all around the house, she'll see what it's like to live in a neat house and wanna do it.
Speaker 2:And you know what she thought? Cool, it's a neat house. That's great. Okay. And then I was like I'll leave my stuff, and she'll get overwhelmed and wanna picked up and pick up.
Speaker 2:And she was like, what? This ain't any different than what I've been living in. Ain't no big deal. Then I began to pray this prayer, honestly, and this was 4 or 5 years into the marriage. Lord, if my wife is never neat the way I want, and that has that has been a prophecy that's been fulfilled.
Speaker 2:Okay? Help me to love her anyway. And over 21 years, I love her better. I really do. And I'm kind because it says this, out of reverence for Christ, you submit to one another in marriage.
Speaker 2:And this is where I think the gospel makes all the difference in the world. Every time I wanted to run and say, you're not showing mercy to me, I ran into somebody who said, your sins against me are way worse than your wife's sins against you. Go back and demonstrate my love. And the author, finisher, the life in my marriage is the fact that Christ kept bringing us back. So my simple answer is everybody's gonna run into that because our tendency is to judge the splinter in our brother's eye, not the log in our own eye.
Speaker 2:Alright? Now, realize every command in the Scripture is something we're not gonna do well. The scripture did not say does not say, drink beer and eat pizza. We would do that. We didn't need to be reminded of that.
Speaker 2:What we needed to be reminded of was to judge the log in your own eye before the splinter in your brother's eye. So, what you have to begin to do is welcome exposure, and see that you probably misjudge your spouse. And oftentimes, your spouse is the best person to help you see what you're doing wrong. But when they begin to help you see that, you're like, yo, look at what you're doing. Alright?
Speaker 2:So you've gotta learn to welcome that. So I I would just say, I mean, and these are large categories. I would say you have to keep enduring, and let the difficulty of marriage wear you down, where you really begin to believe that kindness is what matters, and and you've run into Jesus enough, and he's grown up and nothing new that you demonstrate more kindness on a regular basis. And then, that begins to take over the marriage little by little. And then, the other thing along the way there is you're judging the log in your own eye.
Speaker 2:And it says this, if you judge the log in your eye, guess what it says? You will see more clearly to judge the splinter in your brother's eye. And what will happen is you will actually begin to see I was misjudging my spouse. They were actually showing mercy when I didn't see it, or they were giving justice when I couldn't see it, And then that will change some over time. So they they would be 2 large ways, I would say, to deal with that.
Speaker 2:Anybody else? Any? Yeah. Alright. First question.
Speaker 2:How, what have I seen in the change of gender roles over the last 20 years? And then, he might remind me of the second question. I think I've already forgotten it. What was it? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:Okay. Let's do the first, and you can remind me of the second. First of all, I don't, unfortunately, pay a lot of attention to cultural stuff. And so, I mean, I've read some things about that, and so I'm gonna speak, but I would take it with a grain of salt. Alright?
Speaker 2:Yeah. I have seen yeah. I see a different I guess, like, to me, the big probably the big differences are, you know, women in general being outside the home more and men being more involved in the home. And, actually, in in my estimation, and and this may sound like heresy to y'all, I don't believe the stay at home mom is a creation of the Bible. I think it's a creation of the Industrial Revolution.
Speaker 2:Prior to the Industrial now, stay at home mom is a mom in 4 square walls, and the husband gone 80 hours a week. Alright? That grew out of the Industrial Revolution. Before that, the majority of the family all worked and worked together. Alright?
Speaker 2:And the Proverbs 31 woman bought and sold the field without her husband even knowing it. She was engaged in commerce. And I think in some ways because of the Internet, we may move back towards all of the family working in a way that's a little bit healthier. I personally and other people, Christians, would not say this. I'm personally grateful for the women's liberation movement, because I feel like I'm more sensitive to my wife and I'm more involved with my kids.
Speaker 2:And this is here in the South. Alright. This was back when we had young kids. I go out to lunch after church. My 3 buddies, we take our 12 kids, and we go out to lunch, and we tell our wives to go wherever you want to go, and get some rest because we had small kids.
Speaker 2:Why were there? Literally, 3 different times someone came up to me and said, you are so brave. And I thought, I'm brave for watching my children? Like, really? All right?
Speaker 2:So all I can really say is, no matter what way culture is moving, I think the gospel gives us eyes to use that for good and take advantage of that. So, I'm not a big person where I'm gonna talk about how bad the culture is and where it's gone wrong, or I watch that most. And for me, some of the things I'm more grateful for, that I I think I'm a better man and husband because of it. I think God's used it for good. And I think my wife and I work pretty well together as a team, except for our selfishness and all that stuff that gets in the way from time to time.
Speaker 2:So that's not a great answer to your question. There's somebody who really watches that kind of stuff that could answer that a little better. And then what was the second question? Oh, yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Certainly, there's times for a wife to demonstrate justice and a husband to demonstrate mercy. I'm saying there If if you really look at the commands to husband and wife, keep treating your wife with understanding, love your wife the way Christ loved this Church. The man really is being called more to do because I think his fleshly tendency is towards passivity. So I think his general thrust is towards justice, where the wife respect, more is appreciation, and coop and I take submission, more is cooperation. And to me, that's a more mercy oriented direction.
Speaker 2:So I think in general, there are directions that the husband and wife move. But I can give you an example of a wife doing justice, because because women are more, again, relationally passionate and pay more attention to relationship, they also tend to be more verbal in general, and they also tend to remember relational things more. So, most women have an arsenal that they can tear their husbands apart with. Verbally. Alright?
Speaker 2:And women do that. That's injustice. Alright? So women, and that's why when when wise, when you see rest and trust speaks louder than words, and I'm not saying don't speak. My wife has helped me see myself so much better than I ever could by being strong with me and and and loving me in truth, that I'm glad that she has spoken.
Speaker 2:I don't think it means don't speak, but I think don't use your tendency, your advantage, your gift to kind of rule over your husband. Women can really get into standing in judgment over their husband and using words to heed guilt, and a lot of times that gets husbands going, but that's not really life giving. So an example of, I think, justice on a woman's part is don't use your words. Use your words in justice. Use them to expose, but do that in in mercy, and use it to build up or to lift up like justice would.
Speaker 2:I think mercy as a husband, oftentimes, the way he's doing justice in some ways is merciful because a man, when he And men tend to They're not as comfortable with difficult verbal interactions. Like, women are more comfortable with difficult verbal interactions. So, men often get wounded, and that's what carries into the indifference. And so, in many ways, doing justice, moving towards their wife, there really is mercy in that. There's like, I'm not gonna hold that against you.
Speaker 2:And if anybody in here has had any tension in the marriage, I think as a man, you recognize your tendency to, I'm staying in this room, and I'm not going near her because I'm hurt, and that's a hornet's nest, and I'm not gonna deal with that. If I kind of let it go, maybe it will go away, or something like that. So I would off I would really say there's mercy in a husband's justice because he has to really let go of his wounds to move towards his wife and involve himself with her. So, anybody else? Come by.
Speaker 2:Lauren said, how much credit do you give to the enemy in a marriage for, I guess, what's going wrong or how much of it is the flesh? And then what was the second part of that? How do you fight against it? How do you fight against it? Alright.
Speaker 2:Let me say this, and remind me if I if I get off track, but I personally believe there's 2 things evil hates with a passion. 1 is the church, and the other is marriage and family. And on the day you said, I do, I believe evil said, you do? You're going to love that person like Christ loved the church? You're going to appreciate or respect like Jesus did his father on the cross.
Speaker 2:You're going to demonstrate faithful, unconditional love, and really, the vileness with which evil spoke over you, I couldn't say publicly. But I believe he said, hell no, not on my watch. I will do whatever I can to divide you 2. On my wedding day, My wife and I, we met in the mission field. I lived in New Jersey.
Speaker 2:After we get off the mission field, she lived in Alabama. We dated apart. We got married in Mobile. The next day we were heading to Tennessee for our honeymoon and then to New Jersey where we were gonna live. So my wife had her things packed in her car to take with us up to our honeymoon.
Speaker 2:And for what I will say a chaotic, and I would even say even evil inspired reason, my wife got word to unpack the car. And it made no sense that she was given that directive. So she unpacked the car. And I got that news 5 minutes before she walked down the aisle. And I was mad because that meant we were gonna have to go back to her parents' house and repack our car on her honeymoon night.
Speaker 2:And we had a late wedding and a late reception. And we talked for months about her walking down the aisle and me being struck by that, and and I can cry and be soft, and we thought maybe that would happen. You know, I was mad. And we did an Episcopal wedding, so we had communion. And we took communion, and we went over to the communion bench.
Speaker 2:In the first act, after saying my vows and taking communion, what I did was I picked a fight with my wife. And I began to ask her why she unpacked the car, and I wasn't asking nicely. And my wife said to me, I don't think this is the time. And in my infinite wisdom, I said, I think you're right. And then, in our reception, I walked around angrily trying to get everyone's gifts because I was upset that the gifts were not given before the wedding.
Speaker 2:Alright. Can I tell you from our get go that evil was trying to divide us, and I was not at all prepared for the amount of spiritual warfare that I was going to encounter in marriage because what people taught me was Western romance? And it says this, the way we defeat the evil one is we submit therefore to God, resist the enemy, and he will flee. Okay? That's why I try to teach the callings of a husband is generous involvement, to involve himself with his wife.
Speaker 2:That's the way he defeats evil. The wife, alright, is mercy. But we have to aim for those things. We're never gonna do those things perfectly. That's submitting to God.
Speaker 2:And then resisting evil, resisting indifference, resisting tearing your husband apart. I want to tell you, the good the good that my wife and I have suffered to grow after 21 years, evil wants even that. And there's still temptation that comes our way. I'll give you one other well, I'm just trying to give you a picture that I think way more than you good, bible believing Christians believe, evil is causing havoc in your marriage, and you're blaming each other or yourself, and you're making it worse. Alright?
Speaker 2:There are plenty of times. It it This is Galatians 6. If anyone among you is caught in any trespass, you who are spiritual, restore such a one in gentleness. Caught in any trespass, you have been overtaken by sin. It says, you know this passage, the things I want to do, I don't do.
Speaker 2:The things I do, do, I shouldn't do. But it's not really me. It's what? It's sin in me. And I believe the world and the flesh and the devil act together to bully you away from love.
Speaker 2:I'll give you an example in my own life. I've told you about my craving for neatness. I'll just say there was some chaos and some anger in the house I grew up in. And the way I made sense of that was to be highly disciplined and highly ordered to say yes, sir, no, sir, and to really achieve. In New Jersey, you go k through 8 and then 9 through 12.
Speaker 2:And in 8th grade, I was captain of football team leading rusher, leading scorer, captain of basketball team, undefeated in track, 2nd in my class, captain of the safety patrol, president of the student council. Okay? And I wanna tell you what, I was angrily building a monument to myself, and I was making my life work because I was so pissed off that God had not taken care of me and where he put me in life. And so, when I got into my marriage and there was chaos and it felt a little bit like my family, I felt this dread and fear, which was evil, shaming, and condemning and pushing me back into order, Gordon, push, work, discipline. That's what's made everything work up until this point.
Speaker 2:Do it and push your wife. And you know what I did? I wore her out. And all of that was evil inspired. And it took me many years to realize what I was doing.
Speaker 2:So I would say so much of what happens in your marriage is evil inspired, and it's not something you're even choosing as much as you think. What you're not doing is resisting. You're not using your faith to stand up to the postures evil is trying to bully you into. Does that make sense how I said that? And you're not doing spiritual warfare.
Speaker 2:You're not submitting to God and resisting because it should just be a western romance, and when it's not, you start blaming yourself and the other person next to you. I don't know if that's answered your question, but Yeah. Okay. Yeah. That's a great question.
Speaker 2:And I'm gonna quote Dan Allender. He will say, men feel like they're not enough and women feel like they're too much. That that's the lie he men, I'm not doing enough. I've gotta try harder. I gotta do more.
Speaker 2:I gotta fix this. This is on my shoulders. That's why I'm always teaching there's not a knight in shining armor. It just doesn't exist. To a wife, you feel too much, you want too much, you care too much, you too much, you're too much.
Speaker 2:And so they're the lies. And actually, that's why the first postures I try to teach men and women in marriage, the first posture I try to teach to a man is accept that you're not enough. It's the truth. The way you disarm evil is take the little bit of lie that that he's casting into a bigger story. What he's saying is you're not enough in a way that your marriage is gonna fail and you're never gonna have happiness.
Speaker 2:The truth is, you're not enough. The Lord takes no pleasure in the strength of a man. So if you can begin to give your wife permission to be disappointed with you, and you think, that's what she feels half the time. Why would I wanna give her permission to do that? Because that's how you begin disarming it.
Speaker 2:Alright? And that's how she begins to see that maybe something else is working there. So the very first posture I try to help a man take is what I call a defiant humility. This marriage is not on your shoulders, and the more you radically trust Jesus to do things that you can't do, the more you will defeat evil. And that's what I mean, when you just listen to your wife and you don't make it all better, but you just take some of it and you leave, and you feel horrible, because she doesn't feel a 100% better, what you're doing is saying, Jesus, ministered to her.
Speaker 2:Hold her. Care for her. And wives, I know you'll be afraid that I'm giving your husband reasons to cop out, but he's not gonna be your savior. And that's something you have to come to terms with to some degree. But a defiant humility is a man just simply accepting I'm not enough.
Speaker 2:Alright? The posture I call women to is what I would call just strength, and there's a couple different parts of that strength. The first strength is really to expose. Alright? Because women, you will see more of the relational infractions a man does.
Speaker 2:You will actually what you really want, women is a western romance, a man who just pursues you and loves you because you're just the coolest, most beautiful, awesome person in the world. Right? He's She should just be all over you. And you know what? After you say, I do, and the spiritual warfare begins, your husband starts moving away from you.
Speaker 2:Because you create fear in him, because he doesn't know what to do with that heart of yours that gets stirred up by flesh and evil and sin. And so now, instead of attracting him to you, in some ways, you push him away a little bit. I'll give you two different examples. The first was after 2 years of marriage, I had 2 friends who were, single. And I was doing my master's degree, and they were going away skiing for the weekend, and they had invited me.
Speaker 2:And I started talking to my wife about how these 2 guys were going away skiing, who were my best friends. And I talked about where they were going, and when they were going. I didn't say, I was invited. I didn't say, I want to go. I didn't say, I would like to go.
Speaker 2:I didn't say, I'm gonna go. I just kept talking about how they were going, thinking she'll get the idea and she'll say go away skiing. Well, in beautiful holy strength, my wife didn't say anything. So now it's Tuesday, and they're going away Friday, and I begin to talk again about how they're going away skiing. And with holy strength, my wife says, if you want to go away skiing for the weekend, go, but be man enough to let me be disappointed.
Speaker 2:Oh, how beautiful was that statement. I went away skiing. And it was about one of the worst weekends of my life up until that point. Because I actually never knew that I disappointed people. I was that proud that I thought I was coming through for everybody.
Speaker 2:And it was my first step into seeing how my fear of man and how I was so busy and worked so hard to please everyone. But that was exposure, alright, that she provided. She had enough strength to help me see, and see, what women want is the man to come and choose and want, and she's afraid to just comfortably see there's ways you're gonna need Jesus before you're really free to pursue me. I wanna help you find him. That's the strength to expose, and that's the opposite of feeling like too much crumbling inside yourself.
Speaker 2:Another example of that would be when Actually, I met my wife doing this missions thing. In 2 weeks we were in this class, and I got to know her. And, after 2 weeks, and to me, and I think to, you know, it's plain. My wife to me is very physically beautiful, and I thought, she's probably put up with so much crap from men in her life that I'm just gonna be straightforward, and I'm gonna tell her I like her, and I'm not gonna chase her around, and tell her I wanna spend time with her. So that's what I do.
Speaker 2:And then I avoid her for 3 days. And mind you, we're in the same class, and we're hanging out with the same friends. I don't even real I'm so afraid. I'm so relationally Alright, guys. Before you get married, guys, you're a relational freak in general.
Speaker 2:Marriage helps change that. All right? So I didn't know what a freak I was, and I freaked out that I said I liked her. I hadn't dated 7 years prior to that, and I told myself that was because I was serious about God. It was really because I was afraid of women, but anyway.
Speaker 2:I, tell her I really like her, and I avoid her for 3 days. And then, we run into each other on the stairwell, and I'm coming down, and she's coming up, and she says, you're doing a really good job of avoiding me. And I was like, I am. I really am. And from that point on, I stopped avoiding her.
Speaker 2:But that's strength to expose, and and women are not taught that in our Christian culture. Alright. So that's strength to expose, and then, what's this? Do you remember the second? The last one is the strength to invite.
Speaker 2:I can't remember. I'm so sorry. The strength to invite is this. Women, you will face some sadness. You're in a fallen world.
Speaker 2:You want a perfect relationship. Your husband's never gonna be that. And sometimes, it's right to keep inviting him into a relationship with you. Oftentimes, you want him to be involved and pursue, and I've talked about doing justice, But there's ways you can invite him to do that. I'll just again, I'll tell you a story, give you an example.
Speaker 2:My this was during a difficult period in our marriage where we had young kids, and I'm working on my doctorate, and I've got 2 jobs, and I'm sure I'm no fun to live with. And I told you about my wife, how she just dreamed of having a husband who was fun. And one night, she planned a fun date. We went to a restaurant that was lighter and more fun, and then we went to the Dawson Recreation Center, and we played ping pong, and just We tried to have fun, and those of you who've had 3 young kids under the age of 5 know it's hard to have fun, you know. But you know what my wife said to me that night?
Speaker 2:She said, I ain't giving up. I'm not giving up, and I'm not gonna stop asking you to enjoy me and to celebrate life with me. In a woman in a marriage where there's gonna be disappointment, it takes tons of strength to keep inviting your husband towards more and not feel like you're being too much. And that's different than demanding and all the other things we did. So hopefully, I would say the two lies are, husband, you're not enough, and the way you begin There's other ways, but the way you begin to disarm that is accept you're not enough, And give your wife freedom to be disappointed with you.
Speaker 2:Help her to talk to you about her disappointment. Affirm her disappointment. If you really wanna help it go away, do that. You think, just keep pointing it out. But as she begins to trust you, then you probably will gain some ground to speak to some of the things she doesn't see.
Speaker 2:And then, to a wife who feels like she's too much, the first step is just some strength. All right. You get afraid of too much, and then you hold it in, and you don't say anything, and it comes out really nasty. Learn through God's wisdom on how to expose your husband, help him see where he needs more of the gospel, and then keep inviting him to enjoy life with you or to celebrate life with you. Alright.
Speaker 2:Other questions? So the question is how can, as a as a body, how can we encourage one another and really encourage one another towards good? And it felt like the backdrop of that would be we're gonna have to be more honest about our struggles to do that. I think, first of all, some couples are gonna have to take the chance to talk about their marriage with other couples. I mean, that's a start.
Speaker 2:And, honestly, if you just listen and affirm what the people are saying, like here's the funny thing about counseling, and I'm not saying there's not an art and a skill. There's some things to counseling. But really, in our culture, we're horrible listeners. And if you could just listen to each other talk about your problem, don't give them answers, just reflect back what they're saying, Actually, the safety of having 2 other people in the room will help that couple hear things and say things they don't normally hear and say. It's a picture, I think, honestly, what counseling often is, if the Holy Spirit is a wonderful counselor and there you may feel like there's some presumption because I'm a a counselor, but I think it's a physical picture of the Holy Spirit helping guide a couple into truth.
Speaker 2:It's it's safety, and it helps a couple hear and think and say what's true. So the the first thing, I mean, you're gonna have to continue to teach from the pulpit about our own brokenness and how we need community. But people are gonna have to begin to push through and say, I'm struggling, and they don't need 7 marriage books and, you know, 3 conference invitations the next day. You just need to say, wow, you're struggling. That's a lot like us.
Speaker 2:We're struggling too. And so I don't you know, the thing is you this is spiritual warfare. Like, you're gonna have to fight to have honesty in a way that owns your church. Bob Flayhart's a good friend of mine, the pastor of Oak Mountain, and years ago years ago, when he was really separating himself from some of the PCA and saying, we're a Grace Church, we're a Grace Church. I said, no, Bob.
Speaker 2:Uh-uh. You're a Grace and Truth Church. You love grace because it gives you the freedom to admit how bad you are, and you don't have to pretend about it. And so that's something in your culture. You're just gonna have to keep helping people talk about their difficulties and their sins, and I would really encourage you just to listen.
Speaker 2:And you don't so much we really know oftentimes what we need to do. Kindness is what turns us towards repentance, towards, yeah, towards repentance. If we had people who just if we could share our struggles and have peace people who listen, I promise you, you don't go home with everything solved, but you go home with a little more passion to do what's right, and that matters. So that would I mean, it's it's gonna be a battle, but it is so worth fighting for. And and just let me say both the husband and wife.
Speaker 2:Husband, your wife needs 2 people that she talks to who know you, and they know that you're not as crazy as she will talk at times, but she can talk to them openly and passionately about how crazy you seem to her, especially when she's in difficulty. But you trust those 2 people to love her and love you in the process. Men, you need men who you talk to, and you talk about the difficulty of marriage, the difficulty of picking up again and pursuing again, and how you're often afraid of your wife. You need encouragement doing that, but if there's not the honesty of, this is what I struggle with, there's not gonna be any encouragement that helps you to have kindness towards your spouse. But the weight of your marriage cannot be carried by husband and wife alone.
Speaker 2:I mean, I could tell you a million stories of friends who continue to speak into my life and help me love my wife. Anybody else? Brought up sex? Alright. I'll say this.
Speaker 2:Human beings are the only species who have sex face to face. Did you know that? Only species. And what it does is it gives you a picture of the intimacy, the vulnerability that's required to have meaningful sex. I think the best sex we can have early in marriage is like this.
Speaker 2:This is the type of sex we want. And this is my personal opinion. I think sex is a god in our culture, and I think all the sex tools and all the sex talk and all the sex we have are like people dancing around a molten calf trying to bring life out of it. What we don't value in our culture is 2 people struggling together for a lifetime, who are softened in a way that they touch one another with more kindness. I will tell you honestly, I wanted I thought sex should be heaven, and I wanted sex to solve all the angst I had in my life, and that was idolatry.
Speaker 2:And I hurt my wife in that process because I fed into a lot of the lives that are out there. But we are now 21 years older than when we got married. Our bodies don't represent physical beauty the way they once did. My wife's had a mastectomy. And there are moments we still struggle sexually like everybody does.
Speaker 2:There is sexual tension in every marriage, but there have been moments in the last years of our marriage where there's been a different tenderness, and in sex, we have experienced one another and God more intimately and profoundly and more kindly. And the frustration and the tension, the bullying on my part, the fear on my wife's part, that's not as much a part of our sexual relationship anymore. It really is more restful and beautiful, even though it's still not always enjoyable and that there's tension. I think to some degree, the way the Lord uses sex in a marriage is it keeps your hunger alive. Because we think, in our culture, we have separated sex from the relationship.
Speaker 2:We've made sex genital sex, foreplay that leads to orgasm and rest. All right? I believe sex is both relational and physical. I'll give you an example of the story I tell. Again, hard period in our life, 3 young kids, 2 jobs, working on my doctorate, not being a great guy.
Speaker 2:I come up, right up my driveway. The front of the driveway's cut. The back of the driveway's, I mean, the lawn's cut. I'm sorry. The lawn's cut front and back, steep front driveway.
Speaker 2:As I drove up that driveway, it felt like my wife was touching me because it was such a tangible gift of kindness. It felt a little bit like foreplay. You know how I talked about how the way I tried to bully my wife and get her to be need and all that kind of stuff. And now that I can be more kind to her, our relationship is more sensual on an everyday time. Now, we still have periods where we're mean and But in general, there's a little bit more of that, and so our sex is a little bit more restful and beautiful because we've suffered and struggled together, and then God gives us a moment of beauty as a gift to remind us that we really love one another and him.
Speaker 2:And to me, that's sex. I don't know that other people look at it that way, but that's how I would articulate it. So I think, again, we want something beautiful in this world that happens outside the context of the gospel. Remember what I said? Creation, fall, redemption, glorification.
Speaker 2:We want something that happens outside redemption, that it's simply just beautiful with no futility, no relational pain, no frustration. The only beauty we can experience through this world is by suffering well as God enables us through grace and he builds something more beautiful. That our sexual relationship is in that narrative. It is not outside that narrative. So that would be my thought on sex.
Speaker 2:And there's there's just times I'll say this and we can finish. I wanna say it both ways. I think there's times not to have sex, and then there's times to have sex. Sometimes sex can be a reminder that you really love one another. You can be in difficulty.
Speaker 2:I'm the As a counselor, I wanted everything to be right when we were gonna have sex. And there was times when we should have had sex, and it would have helped us soften towards one another. Now, there's times when you're in a place when you should say no. I think you can make both mistakes, And then you just need wisdom on how to navigate through that. Anyway, for what it's worth.
Speaker 2:I'll stop.