Selected Scriptures

February 25, 2018

Sean Higgins

Marriage: A Mess Worth Making – Part 2

Session Four

Or, Resolving Conflict for the Sake of a Blessed Marriage

In a great book called Fighting for Your Marriage, the authors write, “The two of you didn’t marry each other with the goal of having a great conflict management partner” (226). Ha! That is presumably true, though possibly something that some of you should have considered a little more than you did before you said “I do.” For whatever Disney has done to pamper our romantic imaginations, marriage in this post-Genesis 3 world is full of conflict.

My session is about conflict resolution and I am perhaps the world’s leading expert about half of that. I am at least the leading expert out of all those who are teaching this session. I know conflict. I create conflict. I am conflict waiting for you as soon as you open the door. My middle name is conflict. There have been occasions when church ladies have talked with Mo and expressed their thoughts about how wonderful it must be for her to be married to me. They assume that we must have just the most delightful time together, sharing the deepest biblical conversations, enjoying wonderful if not idyllic matrimony. To someone just far enough away I often appear so easy going, so sympathetic, so ready to lead. They are so wrong. Mo has always done a supernatural job of respecting me and not letting on how much she’s had to put up with.

As I was saying, I know all about conflict, and, by God’s grace, I am excited about the vision of conflict resolution that He has allowed me to see. Sometimes I see relational and familial and spousal peace and harmony as through a telescope, very alluring and yet not within reach. Other times, also by God’s grace, He has humbled me and broken me and caused me to want something better than I could have imagined. Mo is a great gift to me, both when she challenges me and when she forgives me. I am thankful to the Lord for His gift to me of her.

So in our almost twenty years of marriage, and twenty-one years of knowing each other, we have made (and still do make) quite a number of messes, and yet we are making less big messes and cleaning up the messes we do make better and more quickly than ever.

Sorting out marital messes is something that a lot of husbands and wives stink at. This is something that a lot of Christian married couples sin at. I’m not driven by statistics, but divorce is as prevalent and, what’s worse, more acceptable, as it’s ever been in history. The unwillingness of spouses to sort out their conflict has made some of the most miserable people and contributed to our immoral society. The failure to resolve conflict in a godly way has no doubt been the strongest ingredient in the collapse of the family. Our kids see us and they think, Why would I want that?

Dating is not just driven by out of control hormones but by needing to test drive different relationships to see how much garbage this person really gives. Adultolescence is not just a result of parents who are unwilling to train their kids in fruitful responsibility-taking, it is a result of young people watching us (appear to) hate our responsibilities so obviously that they “wisely” avoid responsibilities. The logic is sound even though the premise is faulty. Spouses who don’t know how to get along become parents who don’t know how to get along who raise raise children who don’t know how to get along.

Our marriages are a mess. Our families are a mess. Our churches are a mess. Our society is a mess. All for want of husbands taking responsibility to resolve conflict for Christ’s sake.

This is not solvable by bullet points or pithy quotes or marriage “hacks” or tips. Sheesh do I despise the idea of tips. A tip is a “word to the wise,” not something that makes you wise. A tip is a recommendation for those who are already tryi[...]