Gospel Centered Marriage

What is the least obvious and most important part of a fish tank? The water. Water is essential for the life of the fish and plants. Water upholds and sways the decorations. Water is what reflects the light in “aquatic” ways and captures our attention. Yet no one ever looks at a fish tank and says, “Wow! You’ve got great water.” If the tank is algae-ridden, then people may say, “Yuck! You need to clean your water.”

Water in a fish tank shares a roll similar to day-to-day communication in a marriage. It is essential for the vitality of the marriage, surrounds all the special and significant moments, and it captures all the “relational” qualities of a marriage that we were made to enjoy. But day-to-day is too often ignored or neglected unless it reaches a point that it is noticeably unhealthy.

In this chapter we will talk about two aspects of cultivating healthy day-to-day communication: (1) cleaning the tank – removing the contaminants of good communication, and (2) filling the tank – providing a lifetime-supply-answer to the question, “So what are we supposed to talk about?”

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We often miss the power of common things. Being at a little league game doesn’t seem like a big deal until you hear an adult lament, “My father never came to any of my games.” We often only fully appreciate the significance of small things our spouse does after they pass away and “life feels so empty now.” When we look back at the people who most shaped our lives, it usually because of their presence and care in ordinary moments rather than great actions or profound words.

Listening is another common thing which often has a power that few people realize. Consider the power of listening represented in this quote by C.S. Lewis on humility.

Because all we get to do as infants and children (or so it seemed at the time) is “listen to big people,” we tend to view speaking as the mature, powerful, and significant part of communication. We think listening is for the weak or immature person who lacks influence of the ability to contribute. If we applied this same logic to nutrition we would thing that eating fruits and vegetables was a sign of weakness.

An overlooked implication of devaluing listening is how we think about prayer. With a low view of listening, we “grade” God based on how He responds to our request, while missing the great honor that the Creator would be omni-available to our moment-by-moment thoughts and concerns. Yes, God answers prayer, but let’s not skip over the reality that we are never alone and we are always understood. Similarly, let’s respond to what our spouse says (in word and action), but let’s never minimize the power of listening to remind our spouse we are with them “in good times and in bad” striving to understand/share their joys and sorrows.

In this chapter we will seek to elevate our value of listening and increase our capacity to unleash its power to enrich our marriages. We will do this in three sections: (1) How Not to Listen, (2) Types of Listening, and (3) How to Listen.

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Many couples who sincerely try to improve their communication fail to get the results proportionate to their effort. The result is that they feel defeated or get angry. From this they either begin to blame “incompatibility” or their spouse. Periodically they feel convicted and commit to “try harder” at what didn’t work before.

The purpose of this chapter is to help you discover common misconceptions or oversights about communication that prevent sincere effort from producing marital unity. These are diagnostic assessments meant to prevent your current efforts (evidenced by going through this seminar) from being rendered ineffective by the same false assumptions or oversights that undermined previous efforts.

Each point is followed by “Couple Discussion Questions.” It is not expected that the two of you are going to have 60 conversations (20 points multiplied by 3 questions per point), but that you can have one or two conversations about each area that significantly impacts your marriage. The ability to have these conversations without defensiveness or attacking each other is a mark of the humility essential for effective implementation of anything else you’ll learn.

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In this podcast we will look at the five key characteristics of a Christian wife. These are the gender-specific responsibilities for women that God adds to the gender-neutral responsibilities of marriage.

1. Well-Suited Helper
2. Submissive to Her Husband
3. Woman of Competence
4. Enthusiastic Lover
5. Overseer of Her Home 

Both a husband and wife should be able to say, “What I do at home is the most important and satisfying part of my life.” Until we do, the sacrifices of being a Christ-like servant-leader and Christ-like submissive-helper will seem like a “raw deal.” Both husband and wife need to hear a warning against the empty promises of personal significance.

We will only find what God wants to give us in marriage when we want what God designed marriage to be – a place of mutual joy through mutual sacrifice as we live for something bigger than “me” and to celebrate something bigger then “we.” When we finally embrace this as the only way to find the joy we seek we will realize that Luke 9:23-24 really is the foundation of everything we ever wanted, “If anyone would come after [Jesus], let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it.”

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A true man is one who loves and leads his family well. Any married man who fails in loving or leading his family is less than masculine; regardless of strength, influence, income, intelligence, sexual prowess, or appearance. These attributes have become a counterfeit economy for masculinity, replacing the biblical ideal.

In this podcast, we will look at the five key characteristics of a Christian husband. These are the gender-specific responsibilities for men that God adds to the gender-neutral responsibilities. These are God’s assigned focal points for men to express the fruit of the Spirit and the one another commands in their marriage.

1. Servant Leader
2. Shepherd of the Family
3. Man of Understanding
4. Provider for the Family
5. Protector of the Family

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In these final three podcast from the GCM: Foundations semianr, we will be looking to answer the following questions: (a) What does the Bible actually teach and what do Christians only culturally assume about gender roles? (b) What are the pre-requisites to the healthy and satisfying implementation of roles within marriage? (c) What kind of process can a couple walk through in order to effectively discover what roles will look like in their unique marriage?

There is an overlooked assumption in these questions – none of us know what we’re doing when we get started. Even if you grew up in a healthy family, there is no guarantee that what worked for your parents will work for you. Even within the guidance of biblical parameters, there is much that must be tailored to your unique personalities, skills, and schedules.

Another complicating variable is that gender mattered very little before marriage. Once you past the “cooties” stage of life, the only functional gender differences were which public restrooms you were allowed to use. Yet once we’re married, then God’s design for making us male and female takes on a significance that was largely irrelevant.

Is it any wonder that gender roles are a frequent point of conflict and confusion? We haven’t even discussed the abuse of gender roles as complicating variables. Fortunately, you are not fighting a culture battle in your home. As you think about marriage roles, you are merely discerning how to honor God’s design and enjoy one another in your family.

There is a second assumption we will bring to this chapter – the majority of married life does not require a constant focus on the biblical gender functions of headship and submission. The members of the Trinity (Father, Son, and Spirit) do not have to constantly emphasize headship and submission, but they are present. A healthy marriage is the same.

In this podcast, we will define those aspects of a husband’s and wife’s job description are not gender-specific:

1. personal maturity as expressed by the fruit of the Spirit,
2. ability to be a healthy friend as defined by the one another commands of the New Testament, and
3. functional living marked by managing key life resources well. 

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What makes marriage hard? Ouch! That was a hard chapter. What makes marriage work? Wow! It is so easy to neglect those things. What is powerful enough to overcome the obstacles to a long and mutually satisfying marriage? Covenant! Only when we see what God made marriage to be will we treat marriage as God intended for it to be treated and experience in marriage what God intended to give.

When something becomes common, its meaning and significance are forgotten. This is true of marriage and the wedding ceremony. Weddings have been in so many movies we begin to think they are good cinema instead of sacred covenant or that they belong to Hollywood instead of the Holy God. We begin to compare the pageantry and the bride’s dress more than we reflect on the eternal message being enacted before our eyes.

If we miss the gospel-rich meaning of our wedding as a covenant ceremony, then living a gospel-centered marriage can easily feel like a bait-and-switch. We must remember marriage is always a covenant. This is true regardless of our awareness or intentionality during our ceremony or appointment with the justice of the peace. 

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What?!? What does it take to make marriage work? How does our marriage enrichment not degenerate into a series of random acts of kindness driven or distracted by the tyranny of the urgent? How do we ensure that our individual acts of marital enrichment are working together to build a momentum and gather energy from one another?

These are important questions to ask, even if you are not currently discouraged or overwhelmed by the number of seemingly unrelated things that need to be done to improve your marriage. Marital enrichment that feels random is hard to maintain, easily forgotten, and tend to get bumped down the priority chain. This is why we must not allow marital enrichment to remain random.

The purpose of this presentation is to provide the “big picture” that gives meaning to all the “little pieces” of marital enrichment. This chapter does not give all the “little pieces,” that is the purpose of the rest of this series. But you should get the framework to make enrichment seem purposeful.

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Why?!? Why do so many marriages that begin with sincere love and the best intentions end in divorce? Why do so many marriages that start with great promise and greater dreams end up just staying together “for the kids” and “living as roommates”? These are disturbingly relevant questions regardless of where we are in our marital journey (i.e., dating, engaged, newlywed, or celebrating an anniversary).

Whatever the answer is, Christians are not immune to “it.” The divorce rate among Christian couples is equivalent to the rest of the culture. If the statistics are true, then much of what we, as Christians, are doing to correct the problem is ineffective, misguided, or possibly even feeding the problem.

This first unit may feel a little scary. But it is necessary to define accurately what we are seeking to correct. While it is easy to be falsely positive at the beginning of a journey, the result would be an embittered, disenfranchised marriage; however, if we identify accurately the obstacles ahead, we will be encouraged and unified as we navigate those challenges.

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