Mentoring Minutes

Biblical Tips for Navigating Marriage

We’ve laid out what God’s Word says regarding building our relationships as His disciples under His Lordship.  We’ve applied them specifically to marriage with the commands and keys that enable us to build marriages that are blessed and bless our families and His Church. 

There are volumes, and even libraries of books, that address most of the “how to’s” in marriage.  The purpose of this post in particular is to help us make sure that our hearts and minds are aligned with Christ’s.  While there are practical steps in these posts and certainly many in others, if our hearts are not set on Him we will eventually just exchange one selfish desire for another and the enemy will wreak havoc in our life, marriage, and all relationships. 

I know you desire to honor God or you wouldn’t be reading or tuning in. 

With this understanding let’s take a look at a foundational Scriptural principle that will reveal and/or help us deal with some of the underlying and prevalent issues and problems that arise in marriage.  Using the foundations, commands, and keys previously discussed we can apply His Word and begin to see how He changes our hearts and guides us through them. 

Tip #1 – What Does Authority in Marriage Look Like?

Having already discussed this in previous posts, I want to review with you and give you a couple of acronyms to help you remember what authority in Christ’s Kingdom, and therefore in our lives and marriage as His followers, is to look like.  This will help you remember and understand what it means to, according to God’s Word and Christ’s teaching and example, to wear the P.A.N.T.S in your marriage. 

Everybody knows what it means when we ask “Who wears the pants in that marriage?” or state, “We all know who wears the pants in that marriage!”  Either the husband is domineering and demanding, or the wife is manipulative and coercive…to whatever degree these have become evident in the answer in that particular marriage.  Neither is in line with God’s Word and Christ’s model of true authority and loving influence.

So let’s look at the two pair of P.A.N.T.S you need to succeed in marriage…and they’re really the same pair…

P.A.N.T.S.
Who wears them in your Marriage?

Proper Authority Needed To Succeed
and
Proper Attitude Needed To Serve

Remember you’re not wearing the first pair in any relationship or setting, according to Christ’s teaching (Matthew 20: 20-23) and example (John 13:1-5) if you’re not willing to wear the second.  Christ clearly taught that authority was not lording it over or controlling others.  Rather it was being willing to serve others.  If you desire to be first, according to His Truth, you must choose to be last.  If you want to be the greatest you must choose to serve.  This is not only the essence of authority but it is true humility and love as well. You and your marriage, spouse, family and relationships will be blessed if, as His disciple, you follow His example. 

I close by reminding you of the intricate connection between discipleship and relationship.  Our relationship with Christ is of utmost importance and that priority guides us into and helps us build agape marriages, families and relationships in Him that honor God and guides us to love and lead (serve) as Christ did. 

Contact L&L to let us know what you’re thinking and how we can help.

Give online as The Lord leads – https://give.cornerstone.cc/loveandlordship.

You can find videos, articles and podcasts at www.loveandlorship.com. 

Make it a great day and God bless in Christ!

Love and Lordship…Food for Thought – Agape or Godly, loving marriages (or families and relationships) don’t just happen.  They must be worked at and developed with a humble heart that places others above self and desires to serve.

Love and Lordship…Action Item(s) – 1) In your study and quiet time with The Lord ask Him to reveal how you perceive and live out authority, especially in your home; 2) As He reveals these things to you (and he will likely use your spouse and family to do so) ask Him to show you how you can begin to respond differently; 3) Ask Him to help you change your attitude and actions of lording it over others and what you need to do to make those changes; 4) Follow through with thoughts and actions that will bring these changes…check occasionally with your spouse and children, as applicable, to gauge how you’re doing.

King Arthur is credited with saying, “In serving each other we become free.” This is not only one of the core principles of Camelot; it is the truth for every disciple of Christ and in every marriage, family, and relationship as we build the currency of His Kingdom.

As I’ve mentioned throughout these posts and messages, serving and loving others is an overflow of our relationship with Christ and all in line with His Covenant Order.  We are blessed as we live this out in the priorities as they are reflected in all our relationships and decisions about life and family.  It begins in our discipleship relationship with Christ.  From there it is to be evident in our marriages and families to build stronger churches in fellowship with one another in Him.  Then we are able to show a lost and dying world what His love is really all about.

I learned this early in our marriage and the simple lesson has impacted many others.  Ami came from a divorced family and, as is very common, there are deeper issues of trust and distrust.  We discussed this often and prayed and worked diligently to both be aware of the issues and circumstances that would trigger thoughts of distrust as well as those that would build trust. 

About three years into our marriage, she called one evening as I was in my office late.  I could hear the pain in her voice.  You see my job was athletic director and head basketball coach with a small private Christian school that owned none of the fields, gyms, or facilities that we used to practice and compete.  At any moment we could lose use of a facility and the schedule would need to be reworked. That meant making calls to the schools we were competing against, referees, and parents.

Most of the time I was given enough lead time to make the changes, but I would fairly often need to work late to have the schedule set for the next day. 

That brings us back to Ami’s call.  She explained what we’d talked about many times before, that whenever I didn’t show up at or near the appointed time, distrust would rear its ugly head.  This happened too many times as I got caught up in getting things in order and failed to give her a call and let her know. 

She said, “If you would just give me a call and let me know what’s going on and reassure me that all is well, it would help me a lot.” 

Now, as I’ve shared this with many men and couples, the typical response in our pride as a man is, “She’s just checking up on me and I don’t need another Momma!  She just needs to trust me.”  I have to admit that knowing I was doing nothing wrong or worthy of distrust, I entertained the same thoughts and response.

However, before I said anything to her, I said a quick prayer and in that moment The Holy Spirit simply prompted me to think, “Pride (Proverbs 16:18-19) or humility (Proverbs 15:33; 18:12; Matthew 23:12; Philippians 2:3; James 4:6, 10)?  Your choice.”  (Also see Proverbs 11:2; 29:23)

I asked Ami what she needed and she said, “If you’d just call once or twice a day, especially if something happens and you know your schedule is going to change, that would help me so much.”

Simple, right?  I either bow my back and tell her to get over it and trust me, or I do something to help her build more trust in me.  The Holy Spirit’s prompting came to me again and it really was simple.  Pride puts the burden on her and would continue to lead to distrust.  Humility put the burden on me to do all I could to show her that she could trust me.

I began the next day and have not missed a day of calling or texting her in the 25-plus years since.  Distrust faded and trust became her default as God directed me to think of her above myself and I obeyed instead of giving into my pride.  With that trust came an ever-growing peace in our marriage and family.  Totally worth it!

Seems like a ‘no-brainer’ to me, but as the Holy Spirit said to me, “it’s your choice.”

Give online as The Lord leads – https://give.cornerstone.cc/loveandlordship.

You can find videos, articles and podcasts at www.loveandlorship.com. 

Make it a great day and God bless in Christ!

Love and Lordship…Food for Thought – The greatest way to overcome pride is to recognize the reason for our selfish thoughts and instead think of and respond to others before self.  How are my actions helping me and hurting others or how are they helping others?  The answer and corresponding actions to this question reveals that we are either prideful or humble.

Love and Lordship…Action Item(s) – 1) When someone asks something of you or you recognize their need, ask yourself if your response is in your best interest or theirs? 2) Look for situations where you have been intentionally or unintentionally prideful and ask The Lord to help you change in this/these area(s); 3) Ask God to forgive you for your pride and selfishness and be more aware of and willing to respond to others in humility; 4) Ask and look for ways to humbly and intentionally respond and do what’s in the best interest for others.

As you look back over previous posts, videos and podcasts, there is something that I have held off until this point.  I did so deliberately to emphasize the importance of building relationships in line with God’s Word.

As discussed in the previous section, God has given us this very clear blueprint on how we are to build relationships with and in Him.  There is a priority order made possible only because He first loved us (1 John 4:19).

Before we move ahead any further please understand that if you don’t get anything else from this book…don’t miss this.  It will literally change your life and every relationship for the better if you will follow through with this understanding in line with His Word. 

In giving the greatest commands (Matthew 22:37-39; Mark 12:29-31) Jesus was not giving them in priority simply because God is most important.  That is true, but there is something else in the original language that makes all the difference in us understanding who we are and how we can most fully and freely live out our lives and relationships. 

We cannot live out these commands in relationships in any other order.  No matter how desperately we try we cannot love others until we have learned to love ourselves.  And we cannot love ourselves and others until we first love God with all we are and allow Him to show us who we are recreated to be in Christ.  Remember this is a lifelong process of maturing as Christ’s disciple.

With this new or renewed understanding, here are the three commands and keys to building agape Kingdom relationships, especially marriage, according to His Word.  In building agape Kingdom marriages we then form loving families and can then build the loving relationships that make up Christ’s Church. (Note how these principles all flow from our discipleship relationship with Him).

1. Worship God alone and love Him with all you are! (Deuteronomy 6:4-6; Mark 12:29-30) If we do not spend time to get to know, worship and love Him, we will struggle in every other relationship, including marriage. 

Key – Submission is the key found in what we are called to do in honoring one another in relationships and particularly in marriage.  Ephesians 5:21-28: “Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ. Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything.  Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her.”  

We must learn to first love God and, out of honor for Christ, we are called to submit to one another.  Wives are commanded to submit to their husbands.  This is not a command to the husband to make his wife submit.  This is a command to the wife to willingly choose to submit to her husband because she has already submitted to Christ and learned to love God with all she is. 

Husbands are called to submit in love and servant-leadership, literally to submit or surrender his life for his wife just as Christ did for His Bride, The Church.  Again, wives, this is not a command to you to make your husband love you.  It is a command to husbands to be obedient to Christ in daily choosing to love our wife because we have first submitted to Christ and learned to love God with all we are.  This is more than just being willing to give our life for them it is that we should be living our life for them as we have done first for Christ.

Our first love has to be our love for God.  It is from His love for us, and our growing in our love for Him, that we can love all others, including ourselves, which leads to our second command and key to more fully understand this teaching.  

2. Love Who You Are in Christ! (Matthew 22:39: Mark 12:31) What is true in every other relationship is even more impactful in marriage.  As we mature in our love for God, loving Him with our whole life, He is able to reveal more and more to us who we are created, and recreated in Christ, to be.  Only then can we learn to truly love who we are.  Remember this is the essence of our second key:

Key – Humility.  Philippians 2:3-8 “Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves,not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others.  In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus: Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage;rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himselfby becoming obedient to death—even death on a cross! (Bold mind and added)

First of all, as we allow God to reveal who we are in Christ then we begin to form Christ’s Mind in us.  The whole description of Christ shows a character of humility; and remember that humility is knowing and being confident and content of who we are in Christ so we can place others above ourselves.

Imagine what our marriages and all relationships would look like as we practice humility in Christ!

This applies to all of us, but husbands I don’t want to leave you hanging any longer.  Now that we’ve read through what Christ did for His Bride we can understand and apply Paul’s teaching from Ephesians more fully when it comes to “laying down our life for our wife” as mentioned in the first key. 

Taking a bullet is easy, okay maybe not easy, especially if we know The Lord because we know we’re going to end up with Him.  However, Christ did more than just give up His physical life.  The passage above describes in detail that the first thingJesus gave up was His lifestyle—all the glorious life He had with The Father in heaven. 

Think about it.  When Paul writes that we are to lay down our lives just as Christ did for His Bride, he fully understood that for marriages to be blessed and to reflect all that God intended, we husbands would need to lay down our lifestyles and place the needs and desires of our wife above our own.  This has to hold true because had Jesus not surrendered His lifestyle in heaven first, then He could not have become fully God and fully man and His death on The Cross (what we always equate with “giving up our life for our wife”) would have meant nothing. 

In order for Jesus’ life and death on earth to accomplish anything He first had to give up His lifestyle in heaven.

I know it’s not easy, but it’s good because it is what He has called us to and He did nothing less than model it for us! 

Now we are beginning to grasp what love truly is and how we can love our wife, family, and all others, which is our third command and key.  

3. Love Others As You Love Yourself!  (Matthew 22:39; Mark 12:31) Are you beginning to see God’s design for loving relationships?  As shared earlier, we cannot fully love others unless we have first begun to grow in our love for God and for ourselves. This should be paramount in how we make disciples.  Teach and train first to love God, and love who they are in Christ so we can then love others and show them His love.  As we submit to Christ and others, humble ourselves, and place others before self, we are developing the same attitude and heart as Christ, allowing us to love others with the third key:

Key – Servant’s Heart – we see this when Jesus washes His disciples’ feet and then instructs them to do the same for others in John 13:12-17. “When he had finished washing their feet, he put on his robe and returned to his place. “Do you understand what I have done for you?” he asked them. “You call me ‘Teacher’ and ‘Lord,’ and rightly so, for that is what I am. Now that I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also should wash one another’s feet. I have set you an example that you should do as I have done for you. Very truly I tell you, no servant is greater than his master, nor is a messenger greater than the one who sent him. Now that you know these things, you will be blessed if you do them.

Remember from our earlier teaching on this text in John 13 that this is the culmination where love (v.1), humility (v.3), serving (vv.4-5), authority (v.13) and now discipleship (vv. 14-17) come together.  This is what Kingdom relationships are to look like…and the highest of those is Marriage.

Christ’s idea is that we serve Him by being the servants of other men…He says that in His Kingdom he that is greatest shall be the servant of all. The real test of the saint is not preaching the gospel, but washing disciples’ feet, that is, doing the things that do not count in the actual estimate of men but count everything in the estimate of God.  (Oswald Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest)

Imagine once again what our marriages, families and churches would look like if we made disciples that loved God with all we are and above everything else, loved who we are in Christ, so we could love one another as Christ loved us.  Our marriage and family should be integral as His Church, not just going to Church!

This is Christ in us and through us, as we love others in His Covenant Order: Marriage–>Spouse–>Children and Family–>His Church–>The World

May He find us faithful as His disciples to love as He loved us and as He instructed us to love Him and others–this is how the world can see Who He is through us and come to know Him.  May it begin in your marriage (and in mine) and may our families and churches be blessed as we live and love in His Truth!

Contact L&L to let us know what you’re thinking and how we can help.

Give online as The Lord leads – https://give.cornerstone.cc/loveandlordship.

You can find videos, articles and podcasts at www.loveandlorship.com. 

Make it a great day and God bless in Christ!

Love and Lordship…Food for Thought – We can’t love apart from God.  Our best efforts are rooted in self, flesh and emotions (because that’s all we know apart for God’s Spirit received in Christ) and those are always selfish.  Only as we learn to recognize and know The Source of Love can we truly love.

Love and Lordship…Action Item(s) – 1) Take time each day as you search God’s Word and pray to ask Him to show you His love; 2) Find ways each day to show God your love for Him; 3) Find practical ways each day to know and love who you are in Christ; 4) Be intentional with tangible ways of loving others as God has loved you.