MARRIAGE INFLUENCES CHILDREN

by Dr. Billy Skinner

Gateway Baptist Church

Atoka, TN

Sunday, August 13, 2007

1 Corinthians 13:4-8

Children learn what they live and they live what they learn.

Four- year- old Suzie had just been told the story of “Snow White” for the first time in her life.  She could hardly wait to get home from nursery school to tell her mommy.  With wide-eyed excitement, she retold the story to her mother that afternoon.  After relating how Prince Charming had arrived on his beautiful white horse and kissed snow white back to life, Suzie asked loudly: “And do you know what happened then?” “Yes,” said mommy, “they lived happily ever after.”

“No” replied Suzie with a frown, “they got married.”

In her childlike innocence, Suzie touched on the poignant truth that getting married and living happily ever after are not necessarily synonymous.

In a study that included 600 couples, they were asked, “If you could wave a magic wand which would divorce you and your spouse immediately, without inconvenience, without suffering to anyone in the family, without social stigma or expense, would you wave the wand and get a divorce?” almost 76% said they would.

That was not God’s intent for marriage.  It seems to me some marriage remodeling is necessary because of our children.  According to Chuck Swindoll in his book, Strike the Original Match- “Remodeling a marriage is like remodeling a house – 1. It takes longer than you planned. 2. It costs more than you figured. 3. It is messier than you anticipated.  4. It requires greater determination than you expected.”  The reward – once it is remodeled according to God’s design, you will want to live in it the rest of your life.

We are going to make two assumptions: 1. There are no perfect marriages and 2. A marriage must grow.  Then look at three rebuilding principles:

I. Cooperation II. Communication   III. Consecration

I can assure you if you children learn those three principles they will be equipped to handle life and be prepared for marriage.

I. There Are No Perfect Marriages

There are no perfect because there are no perfect people.  So don’t put that added burden of guilt on yourself.  But hopefully, your marriage is better than the one in which the dying wife tells her husband he should remarry.  And that they should live in this same house; use the same furniture, etc.  The grief stricken husband tearfully vows to do so.  Dying wife continues: “I’ve got three new dresses in my closet that I’ve never worn.  I want your second wife to have those, too.”  Her husband blurted out – “No, no! They’re size 16 and she’s a 9.” You know the wife got well and lived to bury him.

After Ann Landers had spent 29 years as a counselor to the nation, receiving over 8 million letters, writing over 10,500 columns on marriage, sex, divorce, religion, etc.  Read by 70 million folks daily in over 1000 newspapers, one of those columns announced after 36 years of marriage, she and her husband were getting divorced.  She answered the unspoken question in the column: “how did it happen that something so good for so long didn’t last forever?” said she, “the lady with all the answers does not know the answer to this one.”  She received 30,000 sympathy letters; her daughter is in her third marriage.  No perfect people, no perfect marriages.  The key to a successful marriage is not what you get out of it, but what you put into it.  There are no perfect marriages.

II. A Marriage Must Grow

Marriage is a living, changing, developing realty.  Marriage must grow because all of us are growing, changing people.  A Hollywood celebrity who recently ended her 12- year marriage explained her reasoning to a magazine: “we got married when I was 23 and that’s just too young.  I’m not that woman anymore.”  Nobody is the same person 12 years late! That’s why marriages must grow, too.  What is right and good today in your marriage may not be suitable tomorrow.  A green apple has a maturity suitable for a green apple, but not for an apple pie.

We’re told that most folks married for 20 years or more have altered over 50% of their values, personality characteristics, and vocational plans.  There seems to be several stages of marriage: newly wed, parental, middle age and retirement.  There are no perfect marriages.  Marriages must change.

I. Cooperation

Somehow and quite wrongly we equate love as only an emotion. There is emotion involved but 1 Corinthians 13: 4-8 focuses on behavior. Cooperation is something you do, it is behavior. Love behaves. That is the key. People enjoy the feeling, but when the feeling wears off and we don’t behave then that is not love. 1 Corinthians 13:4-8

Cooperation is the ability and willingness to adjust to, and with, our mate.  It has to do with the common commitment in marriage to stick with each other.  In Mark 10:6-9, Jesus comments on this togetherness, this oneness in marriage.  Now, it is interesting that the KJV uses the old English word “cleave.”  That word can mean to split, especially if you’re cleaving firewood.  But, it can also mean to be glued together, as the scripture uses it here.  As author, Stuart Briscoe says, “the marriage ceremony could well have a moment when the groom turns to the bride and says, “I am going to stick to you through thick and thin!”  And the bride could reply, “Right, and you’re stuck with me.” 

God creates of two people a new, single creation in marriage.  And at appropriate times, the two become one spiritually, emotionally, physically, and vocationally.  In the fashion of the violin and the bow, both are required to make sweet music.  It speaks of cooperation.  It’s odd how some folks don’t realize the need for cooperation in marriage.  A Pastor tells of a young engaged couple that came to his home for an appointment late one night, very angry.  They had been fussing over the honeymoon.  The wedding was on the opening day of deer season and the groom wanted his bride to go deer hunting with him on their honeymoon.  To go sit in the snow in northern Wisconsin, freezing and shooting deer as part of a honeymoon!  He justified it by saying he went to the symphony with her!  The pastor thought it over, and wondered if maybe she could take a tape player and a tape of Beethoven and play it while sitting in the deer stand and when they went to the symphony, if maybe he could take along his deer rifle and bag a couple of fiddle players.  By this time, the couple was smiling, they could talk about the fact some compromises are ridiculous; sometimes there must be a willingness to embrace not just the spouse, but also his or her desires.  As the Pastor said to the husband in this case, “If hunting is more important to you than marriage and your wife, why do you need a wife?”  Stick with deer – or ducks – or fish.”  The simple fact of the matter is this:  “If you are going to enter a new relationship, it ought to be because you have chosen the new relationship over the old one.”

Cooperation means leaving the old family having maturity to establish a new home.  I always say at the wedding, God in which the parents are guests home is establishing a new.  One of the big problems I see in troubled marriages today is the lack of the two becoming one in terms of bank accounts, career dreams, and religious intent, discipline.

II. Communication

1 Corinthians 13 says, “Love is patient, doesn’t brag and is not arrogant.”

Your children will learn communication from you.

Communication is the willingness to talk with our spouse, in both word and body to work out hurts and celebrate the joys of life.  And let’s face it; sometimes men are mighty deaf, and it has nothing to do with ears! It’s like the man who was on a plane going to Europe.  Sitting beside from an elderly lady, he constantly chewed his gum and studied the people around him.  The older lady leaned forward.  “It’s nice of you to try to make conversation”, she said, “but I need to tell you, I am almost deaf.”  Communication is more than moving the mouth.

Communication is needed for a health marriage.  People come to me and say, my marriage just fell apart! No marriages never just fell apart.  That’s like the man who watched his hair falling out day after day on the pillow, in the shower, in the comb and then, when the last, single hair didn’t rise with him but remained on the pillow; he looked into the mirror and screamed, “Great Scott, I’m bald!”  Marriages fall apart over a period of time, and lack of communication is often part of the problem.

Now, all marriages have fusses and spats, three ladies were talking; said the first; we’ve never had a harsh word in our marriage.  Said the second: I wish I could say that.  Replied the third lady: You can! She did. 

Men and women are different and there will be disagreements in a healthy marriage.  W.C. Fields was asked if he believes in clubs for women.  “Yes, if all other means of persuasion fail!”  A Pastor asked one woman who came in for counseling in her marriage how she handled her obvious hostility toward her husband:  she said, “After he leaves for work I swish his toothbrush around in the toilet.”  John Milton once replied to a man who said Milton’s wife was a rose:  “She may be; I certainly feel the thorns!”  John Wesley endured a wife who regularly sat right in front of him at church and made faces at him as he preached.

We need to communicate our frustration, anger and desires to our mates.  But don’t bring up every problem you have in every discussion.  A man told a friend that his wife got historical every time they had a disagreement.  “You mean “hysterical”, don’t you?  “No, historical; she brings up everything I ever said or did wrong.”

Communication problems range from the difficulty to saying I’m sorry, money, discipline and sex. 

III. Consecration

Verse 6 says, “Does not rejoice in unrighteousness but rejoices in the truth.” Verse 7 says, “Endures all things.”

God must be included in our marriage.  There is a deep Christian aspect to marriage, which is often forgotten.  If our marriage is a special creation of God, then we have a responsibility to tend, nurture and strengthen it and not destroy it.

Jesus, in Mark 10, goes directly to Genesis for the foundation of marriage.  In Genesis 1 and 2, after each segment of creation, God says, “It is good.”  In Genesis 2:18, it is as if a second look were taken, and something is seen that is not good – man alone, Verse 19 is fascinating as it speaks of the search for a helpmate for Adam.  None is found (vs. 20) because God’s intention for Adam includes a helpmate with spiritual capacity to share the deeper things of God.  Vs. 21-24 shows the beautiful unity of marriage.  Then, in Genesis 5:1-2 we see what we call the marriage ceremony itself and the blessing of marriage by God.

Marriage was instituted, sealed, blessed, made right by God; therefore, we should have a relationship with God.  Our married lives are like the spokes in a bicycle wheel; the closer they are to the hub, God, the closer they are to each other.

What so many men need is not a new wife, but a new life.  So many wives need not a new husband, but a new life in Christ.  Some of you are about to get married…some of you have a healthy marriage…. some of you are on the verge of divorce…would you turn to the hub, the source, the creator of marriage, God Himself and let Him remodel your life and marriage?

It may take longer than you planned.

It costs more than you figured.

It is messier than you anticipated.

It requires greater determination than you expected.

I am absolutely convinced of one thing. If you have a shaky marriage, don’t rush out to a seminar, don’t buy a bunch of books, or watch videos until you have sat down and carefully worked through 1 Corinthians 13: 4-8.