325 Sermon Illustrations on Marriage

325 illustrations Page 6 of 7

Marriage in Christian preaching symbolizes the sacred union of husband and wife, reflecting God’s covenantal love and grace (Ephesians 5:25-33). Illustrations often use images of enduring bonds, heartfelt communication, and mutual care to show how love, forgiveness, and spiritual unity strengthen and preserve this lifelong commitment.

Jesus Is the Greatest Home Builder

Psalms 127

Homes in America are under an all-out attack from Satan, says Adrian Rogers, a three-time former president of the Southern Baptist Convention. “Satan is a home-wrecker. He has leveled all the artillery of hell against the home. He knows if he can hurt us at home, he knows he will hurt us all over.”

Rogers' message centered on Psalm 127: “Except the Lord build the house, they labor in vain that build it.” He explained four aspects of the passage:

-- The construction of the home.

-- The conservation of the home.

-- The contentment of the home.

-- The children of the home.

“Jesus Christ is the greatest home builder. He built the first home in the garden of Eden,” Rogers said. “He is now building us a heavenly home. He builds church homes, and He also builds family homes.

“The [family] home didn't come from the swamps of immorality. It is the plan of God to meet the deepest psychological and emotional needs we have,” Rogers said.

He told the audience at the Phoenix Civic Plaza that a strong Christian home requires commitment. God hates divorce, he said, reminding listeners that if they expect their children to have strong homes they should teach them not to become unequally yoked.

“You marry a child of the devil and you'll have the devil for a father-in-law,” Rogers said.

The longtime pastor of the Memphis-area Bellevue Baptist Church likened the relationship between a man and wife in a Christian home to the cultivation of a flower.

“A flower needs to be watered and cared for,” he said. “The honey hasn't gone out of the honeymoon in my marriage. I call Joyce on the way home from work every evening and tell her that I am calling from lovemobile No. 1. I tell her to synthesize her lips because I'm almost home.”

The purpose of a Christian marriage, he said, is for a man and woman to become one flesh, stressing the difference between the sexes.

“Women are built for having babies, not fighting battles,” he stated. “It's insane to put a woman on the front line in war.”

Rogers said the conservation of the home is under serious attack. Loud applause greeted his mention of Congress considering a measure that would identify marriage as the union of one man and one woman.

Concerning contentment in the home, Rogers said Christian mates should not try to find contentment in each other. “If you don't find contentment in Jesus, you won't find contentment,” he said.

Rogers concluded with remarks about the children of the home. He asked Christian parents if they had given their children to the Lord.

“Children are like arrows in a quiver,” he explained. “Arrows are intended to be shot at the enemy. I made a covenant with God when my four children were born that I desired that they be used as arrows against the enemy.

“I'd rather be Peter, James and John asleep in the Garden of Gethsemane than be a Christian asleep in these pregnant days of sin in which we live. May God wake us up to build Kingdom families.”

Quotes On Marriage and Divorce

“I don't believe in marriage. It's bloody impractical to love, honor and obey. If it weren't, you wouldn't have to sign a contract.”

-- Katharine Hepburn

"Keep your eyes open before marriage and half shut afterwards."

-- Benjamin Franklin

"There is only one thing harder than living alone and that is to live with another person."

-- Ingrid Trobisch, psychologist

"How boring it would have been for the Creator to put Adam to sleep and then fashion yet another man from his rib."

-- James Dobson

"Marriage is like flies buzzing around a screen door in the summer. All those on the outside want to get in and all those on the inside want to get out."

-- Justin Meek, SermonCentral.com 9/28/03

"A good marriage is the union of two forgivers."

-- Ruth Bell Graham, Wit & Wisdom 7/31/04

God's Perspective On the Family

Ephesians 5:21

Husbands are to be the leaders of their families and love their wives as Christ loves the church; wives are to submit to their husbands; and children are to obey their parents -- commands straight from the Bible. But popular culture's influence on the church has skewed those clearly defined roles, said Danny Akin of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary.

“We need to understand the Bible and the practical application of it,” Akin said. “Men abdicate their roles as leaders because it is often not politically correct to say they are to be the head of the family. As for submission, pop culture has hijacked the word and given to it the connotation of inferiority.”

Akin said he chose Ephesians 5:21-6:4 as his text because it clearly defines what a Kingdom family looks like.

He divided the passage into three parts, addressing the roles of men, women and parent-child relationships. The word “submission” has drawn considerable attention since its adoption into the Baptist Faith and Message at the 1998 Southern Baptist Convention annual meeting in Salt Lake City.

“Many people do not realize that the Ephesians passage is only correctly understood when seen as what God intended families to be from the beginning, before the fall of man,” he said. “Those types of family relationships are only possible through a redemptive relationship with Jesus Christ.

“But because we have allowed culture to impose upon us the definition that submission means servitude and inferiority, we think we have to take that passage out or water it down. What we need is a biblical balance. We need to see these Scriptures from the perspective of how God defines the roles of men and women and not from our fallen, selfish perspectives.”

Critics of the BF&M article on the family seldom mention the emphasis of the beginning paragraph that “the husband and wife are of equal worth before God, since both are created in God's image.” These critics also fail to note what the BF&M states about the role of husbands.

“A husband is to love his wife as Christ loved the church,” Akin said. “He has the God-given responsibility to provide for, to protect and to lead his family.

“If you look at Ephesians closely,” Akin said, “there are actually more verses that relate to the role of the husband and his responsibility than ... the wife. My responsibility is not to make my wife submit to me. It is to love her as Christ loved the church. He died for the church. Do I love my wife that much? That is an awesome responsibility. I'm certain that few wives would have trouble submitting to their husband's God-given leadership if they were loved like that.”

Women should take their example from Christ regarding submission, Akin said.

“The Bible says over and over again that Jesus and the Father are one,” he said. “But Jesus said the Son does nothing apart from the will of the Father. We can conclude that if all parts of the Trinity are equal, then Jesus is in every way God. However, when He came to earth He determined to do the will of His Father. He submitted to the Father. It didn't make him inferior or subservient to God.”

Akin said a man's leadership in the family should not be autocratic, but one that creates an environment in which family members grow spiritually. That environment is developed through unconditional love.

“Make it an act of your will to love your wives,” he told husbands during his opening message. “It is an imperative. God does not give you a choice. Can you say that your love for your wife is helping her to grow spiritually? She is to be loved in such a way that she knows that God is the only person in this world who loves her more.”

He said husbands could demonstrate their love by meeting the following seven basic needs of their wives:

• The need for him to be the spiritual leader.

• The need for personal appreciation (“Do you verbalize it and demonstrate

your appreciation through your actions?”).

• The need for romance and personal affection (“Guys, sex is not romance

to a woman. She wants you to connect with her heart, her emotions.”).

• The need for intimate conversation.

• The need for honesty and openness.

• The need for home support and stability.

• The need for you to commit to your family first (“Not work or

recreational sports.”).

Akin said wives could honor their husbands through their submission to his leadership and by their admiration of him as a godly man.

“Ladies I can assure you that a great woman can take a mediocre man and make him good,” he said during the second session, “and a mediocre woman can take a great man and bring him down to the level of mediocrity. That is how important your admiration of your husband is to him.”

Five needs a husband has of his wife are:

• The need for her admiration and respect.

• The need for sexual fulfillment.

• The need for home support.

• The need for an attractive wife (“Ladies, this flows from your inner

beauty.”).

• The need for you to be his best friend.

Akin said in his third message that it is much easier for spouses who love each other in this way to love their children as defined in Ephesians 6:1-4.

Twelve ways parents can demonstrate their love for their children are:

• Enter into their world.

• Love you spouse.

• Give children discipline.

• Look them in the eyes.

• Touch them physically.

• Spend time with them.

• Listen to them.

• Bless them with words rather than cursing them.

• Have fun with them.

• Nudge them out of the nest when it is time.

• Admit to them when you're wrong.

• Introduce them to Jesus Christ

“If we are going to have Kingdom focused churches, we need Kingdom- focused families,” Akin said. “Sadly right now the divorce rate within the church is nearly identical to that in the secular world. I'm convinced that we will have healthy, divorce-proof families if we'll follow God's defined roles for members of the family.”

Bus To Nowhere: Miami's 'Divorce Bus'

When the courthouse in Miami, Florida's Liberty City neighborhood was closed for renovations, Miami-Dade County Circuit Court Judge Joel Brown had an idea. The county was already using a bus to bring other government services into local neighborhoods. Why not use the bus as a rolling divorce court as well?

So now, once a month, the brightly painted bus pulls into a Liberty City parking lot, and those who want an uncontested divorce line up outside. On the bus, Judge Brown presides and grants the divorces. Time expended per divorce: two minutes. Now that's efficiency.

“I didn't expect something to be so unbelievably convenient,” said a twenty-three-year-old woman who had been married three months. A man in his sixties who had been married more than two decades agreed: “It was quicker to get divorced than to get married.”

For some, that's reason for rejoicing. The WASHINGTON POST described many of the men and women as being giddy with their new “freedom” as they stepped off the bus. One woman even invited the people she met at the bus to a big divorce party. Reporter Manuel Roig-Franzia writes, “It's safe to say that bailing on the 'until-death-do-us-part' thing has never been such a hoot.”

But, of course, the divorce bus isn't “a hoot”; it is deeply disturbing. There's something wrong with using a term like CONVENIENT (let alone A HOOT) to describe the ending of a covenant made with another person before God.

Unfortunately, the bus is an appropriate symbol of a way of thinking that's become all too common. Last year, a book called THE STARTER MARRIAGE AND THE FUTURE OF MATRIMONY examined a growing trend of young adults divorcing a few years after marriage. Author Pamela Paul found several factors that were instrumental in the failures of these marriages; for instance, many of the people involved grew up in broken homes with little or no understanding of how marriage works. But there was a deeper reason underneath it all. As Paul writes: “A fundamental shift in public opinion took place [during the 1970s], producing a new truism: 'People should not stay married if they're not happy.'“

Viewed in this light, divorce buses, starter marriages, Internet divorces (another hot trend), and no-fault divorce in general are themselves just a small part of a larger social movement: the movement toward self-gratification and self-fulfillment at any cost. According to this philosophy, finding individual happiness takes precedence over honoring the commitments one has made to God and to other people — hence the popularity of the two-minute divorce in the bus that arrives just minutes away from home. After their minutes in court, some new divorcées were already planning to look for someone new with whom to share their lives.

But their addiction to personal freedom makes it doubtful that they will ever find real marital satisfaction. They're still looking for someone to make THEM happy. They are not considering the hard work and sacrifice it will take to build the kind of marriage they say they want — which is why, sadly, their first trip to the divorce bus is unlikely to be their last.

For further reading:

Manuel Roig-Franzia, “IN MIAMI, A BUS STOP FOR BROKEN MARRIAGES,” WASHINGTON POST, 4 May 2003.

Nicholas Spangler, “RETIRED BUS SERVES AS DIVORCE COURT ON WHEELS,” MIAMI HERALD, 1 March 2003.

Jennifer Roback Morse, “THE LAISSEZ-FAIRE FAMILY,” speech delivered at BreakPoint's “Christians in the Marketplace” conference, April 4-6, 2003.

Bridget E. Maher, ed., THE FAMILY PORTRAIT: A COMPILATION OF DATA, RESEARCH, AND PUBLIC OPINION ON THE FAMILY (Family Research Council, 2002).

Gina R. Dalfonzo, “TEMPORARILY YOURS,” BOUNDLESS, April 25, 2002 (review of THE STARTER MARRIAGE AND THE FUTURE OF MATRIMONY).

See the NATIONAL MARRIAGE PROJECT's “TOP TEN MYTHS OF DIVORCE“ and “TOP TEN MYTHS OF MARRIAGE.”

Marcia Segelstein, “INTENTIONAL MARRIAGE,” BREAKPOINT ONLINE, 16 June 2003.

Rob Vaughn, “STILL IN LOVE,” BREAKPOINT ONLINE, 20 May 2003.

Roberto Rivera, “SYMBOLS,” BREAKPOINT ONLINE, 19 July 2002.

BreakPoint Commentary No. 030722, “DECEPTIVE RHETORIC: MARRIAGE AND THE LANGUAGE OF THE MARKET.”

BreakPoint Commentary No. 020411, “CLICK TO DOWNLOAD FORMS: DIVORCE BECOMES A SNAP.”

William J. Doherty, TAKE BACK YOUR MARRIAGE (Guilford, 2001).

Michael McManus, MARRIAGE SAVERS (Zondervan, 1995).

Paul C. Vitz, PSYCHOLOGY AS RELIGION (Eerdmans, 1994).

____________

What's At Stake: Marriage Protection Week

This week, October 12 through 18 [2003], has been designated Marriage Protection Week by the president. A coalition of Christians and conservatives is using this week to explain to our society how marriage is being threatened and why we must protect it.

The urgency of this issue cannot be overstated. This summer, a Canadian court ruled that Canada's ban on homosexual “marriage” was unconstitutional. Since then, the city of Toronto has issued 757 marriage licenses to same-sex couples. One-third of those couples were from the United States.

Three weeks after the Canadian court decision, in LAWRENCE V. TEXAS, the United States Supreme Court ruled Texas's law against sodomy unconstitutional. Homosexual advocates were ecstatic about the decision, claiming that it would lead to the legalization of same-sex “marriage” here in the United States.

I agree. That was a terrible court decision. And I think it will lead, eventually, to the legalization of much more: polygamy, incest, pedophilia, and even bestiality. As Justice Antonin Scalia wrote in his dissent, the decision in LAWRENCE V. TEXAS “effectively decrees the end of all morals legislation.”

Furthermore, we're fighting this battle in a culture whose understanding of marriage has been steadily eroding for years. A Gallup poll shows that 40 percent of Americans believe that same-sex “marriages” should be legalized.

How are Christians to make the case for marriage to such a society? We need to remember the biblical injunction to be as “wise as serpents and harmless as doves.” Although our worldview is grounded in biblical presuppositions, we cannot frame our arguments to a secular society in those terms. If we simply say to people, “The Bible says this is wrong,” they'll come right back with, “That's fine for you, but we don't believe the Bible. So you do what you want to do, and we'll do what we want.”

Instead, we have to show them why same-sex “marriage” is wrong for everyone. As Professor J. Budziszewski of the University of Texas puts it, it's an “oxymoron.” Therefore, it must not be legalized. We have to work from an understanding of the natural order, which is clear to anyone who actually observes human relationships and how they work. In his excellent book THE CLASH OF ORTHODOXIES, Princeton professor Robert George explains that marriage is consummated by an act that is reproductive in nature, whether or not it actually leads to the birth of a child. And it creates an organic unity that homosexual acts do not and cannot.

And that's not even considering the fact that life expectancy for homosexual males is twenty to thirty years less than that for heterosexual males, according to several studies. We should not be urging our government to sanction a practice that is so destructive to the health of the individual and society. And these are good, strong arguments based on the common good.

Make no mistake, the future of our society is at stake; this is a battle in which every Christian needs to get involved.

For further reading:

• “Marriage Protection Week, 2003,” by the President of the United States of America, a Proclamation, 3 October 2003. To learn more about Marriage Protection Week, visit the official website.

• “Chuck Colson's Response to the Texas Sodomy Law Decision,” BREAKPOINT ONLINE, 26 June 2003.

• Pamela Wong, “Christian Groups Mobilize on the 'Issue of Our Time': Protecting Marriage,” Concerned Women for America, 2 October 2003.

• “Toronto Marriage License Statistics,” EQUAL MARRIAGE FOR SAME-SEX COUPLES (a Canadian site in favor of same-sex “marriage”), 3 October 2003.

• Joel Belz, “Something to Scream About,” WORLD, 11 October 2003.

• Bridget Maher, “Why Marriage Should Be Privileged in Public Policy,” Family Research Council.

• Family Research Council has a web page devoted to Marriage Protection Week, including a copy of the Marriage Protection Pledge (Adobe Acrobat Reader required).

• Cheryl Wetzstein, “Groups pledge to protect marriage,” WASHINGTON TIMES, 3 October 2003.

• Charles A. Donovan, “The Dogcatcher's Coat,” BREAKPOINT ONLINE, 17 July 2003.

• BreakPoint Commentary No. 030616, “Power Plays: Santorum and the Sex Lobby.”

• Roberto Rivera, “No Other Kind,” BREAKPOINT ONLINE, 22 October 2002.

• Gina Dalfonzo, “Speaking Different Languages,” BREAKPOINT ONLINE, 31 July 2003.

• See the “Worldview for Parents” pages, “A New Sexual Revolution” and “The Way God Made Them?”

• Robert George, THE CLASH OF ORTHODOXIES (ISI Books, 2001).

• Tim Dailey, DARK OBSESSION: THE TRAGEDY AND THREAT OF THE HOMOSEXUAL LIFESTYLE, Family Research Council.

__________

What Does A Healthy, Successful Marriage Look Like?

Acts 18:2

What does a healthy, successful marriage look like? It's a partnership.

Marriage links you to another person, but it's up to you to decide how you'll use that link. If you choose, you can turn that link into a tug-of-war. All you need to do is face each other, dig your heels into the dirt, and pit all your strength against the other person. There isn't much forward motion, but what little motion there is will drag one of you into the mud. The sad thing is, in the end the winner stands alone.

But marriage doesn't have to be that way. You can join hands across the link of marriage and form a partnership. You can march forward together and put your united strength into the job at hand. As a team, two strong people can do a powerful lot of work - and they finish together.

God made the first man and woman to be partners in marriage. Even the method He used to create them illustrated the link of partnership. You can put this concept to work by refusing to quibble over small things and by taking your husband's side whenever possible. On potentially divisive issues like financial planning, discipline of children, and use of free time, you can make every effort to create a two-person team - and finish together, as God intended. (See also Exodus 32:11-14; Song of Solomon 8:5-7; Hosea 14:4-8; Acts 18; Hebrews 13:4.)

GOOD WORDS TO REMEMBER

And the LORD GOD said, “It is not good that man should be alone; I will make him a helper comparable to him.” - Genesis 2:18

Today's Challenge

Does your marriage resemble a tug-of war or a partnership? What changes do you need to make?

__________

Imitate God

Ephesians 5:2

Before we tackle what God says specifically to wives and husbands, let's remind ourselves that both men and women are instructed to imitate the Lord. Our heavenly Father tells us to "live a life of love, just as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God" (Ephesians 5:2). The most important aspect of reflecting the character of God is to live a life of love.

Does that seem like an awfully tall order? It should! On our own, no one among us can effectively imitate God or live up to His lofty standards of love. Nevertheless, even something as extraordinary as "imitating God" lies within our reach - so long as we have anchored our lives to the Rock and are depending every moment upon His strength, not our own.

Never forget that the calling of God is the enabling of God. Whatever the Lord calls us to do, He enables us to accomplish. He never sets us up to fail; He never gives us instructions impossible to carry out.

So how can we obey His direction to imitate the Lord? The secret is found in Ephesians 5:18, where we discover the power source that makes all our obedience and all our success in marriage possible: "Be filled with the Spirit." Only as we are continuously filled with the Holy Spirit does God give us the power to do what He has called us to do.

What does it mean, in practical terms, to depend every moment on the power of the Holy Spirit? It may be as simple as breathing a quick prayer for the strength to love your spouse when you really feel like letting him or her "have it." It may mean asking God to give you the willingness to start a task or finish a household job that you really detest. It may mean pleading with the Lord to change your heart rather than demanding that He change your mate. It may mean all sorts of things - but they all boil down to inviting God to participate actively with you in building your marriage.

Naturally, "living a life of love" is a lifelong pursuit and none of us will fully "arrive" until we see the Lord face-to-face (see 1 John 3:2). Until that day, however, the Lord instructs us to "imitate God" by walking in love, just as Christ did. A tall order? Sure. But it comes with a terrific bonus package.

Marriage Builder

Those who follow Christ have a much better chance at accomplishing the Bible's odd mathematics of marriage, of making two become one. Why? Because such people bring an expectation of gradual growth to their marriage. They expect time to act as their friend as they live together. Such a mind-set not only carries them past unexpected setbacks, but also gives them an assurance that added years of maturing can only better their current condition. - David Mains

[Original illustration here was a duplicate in HolwickID 25837-26027]

Mission Possible

When my wife and I got married, we felt we needed to serve together, but weren’t sure exactly what we could do-until one night in May two years ago when we began researching possible vacation spots. We talked about doing some volunteer work with Native Americans. And after some Internet searching, we found a “Native American Work Camp” with an e-mail contact. We checked into it and felt God telling us to go.

This year we’re planning our third trip to the Bloomfield, New Mexico, area where we work closely with the Navajo. We build fences, sheep corrals, and ball field backstops. We fix roofs, brand and inoculate cattle, learn about the Navajo culture, and share the gospel. We also learn about ourselves. These trips are such an eye opener to a world vastly different from anything most of us are accustomed to.

Last year Kim worked closely with the Navajo children using her skills as a Certified Therapeutic Recreation Specialist.

For me, I can’t think of anything more exciting than to see the joy of her beautiful smile as she works with the kids, knowing that God smiles back as he watches her work. Sharing this mission to help others brings me closer to my wife and makes me appreciate her more everyday. I’m so proud of her for the way she shows her discipleship to others through her Christian love.

Our experience has helped us grow spiritually and has brought great comfort when things get hectic after we return home. I can’t think of a better way for a couple to share their faith and love for each other than by serving God together.

Ray and Kim Gryder live in Virginia.

Time Away

When my son was three months old, I realized being a new “stay at home mommy” was a lot more draining than it looked on those television commercials. Every night at five o’clock Jacob and I would perch ourselves at the window waiting for my husband’s pickup truck to round the corner. Sadly this became our routine, but not for anticipating the stimulating discussions about our day. Now it went more like, “Hi sweetie, here’s your son; I’m going to the gym.”It didn’t take long for me to realize this wasn’t fair for my husband or our marriage. While I did need to get out of the house occasionally, I needed Michael with me. We prayed about it and decided to do something fulfilling together, not just the old dinner and a movie. Michael and I volunteered at a local church that takes hot meals to an inner city project and homeless shelter. Whether we’re dishing out pasta, playing ball with kids, or praying with a homeless man, we feel privileged and excited to serve together. We now hire a babysitter and work at the outreach every other Friday night.

I still have my struggles to overcome “the mommy overload syndrome,” but God is teaching me about reaching out beyond myself. Although we love our son, working at this ministry gives us the time away we need to reconnect with each other and to serve others.

Jill and Michael Turner live in Connecticut.

Working Together For God

Thoughts: TTV

• Take turns selecting the ministry you’ll work in together.

• Wait until you’re alone to discuss any relationship problems that may come up in the middle of a ministry situation.

• Give each ministry some time, perhaps six months, before you decide it’s not for you. If the first ministry you try doesn’t work, try another one before you call it quits.

• Expect some challenges. Serving others is difficult and involves sacrifice-but the benefits are well worth the costs.

• Stay focused on why you’re involved in the ministry and the good you’re accomplishing through it.

• Pray with and for each other and your shared ministry.

~~~~~~~~~~

When Your Spouse Says, “You’ve Got to be Kidding!” What if you’re on board to start doing ministry together, but your spouse isn’t there yet? Try these 5 tips.

1. Look behind the “no.”

Perhaps your mate feels the family calendar is overloaded. Is there something you can let go to make time for ministry?

Maybe the ministry you’re suggesting intimidates your spouse, or there are spiritual issues your spouse needs to work through before he or she is ready. Maybe you’re coming on too strong and not giving him time to really think about the decision. Look at both the spoken and unspoken cues.

2. Clearly communicate why you want to do ministry together.

Don’t assume your spouse will automatically see the benefits. If you’re excited about how it will give you more time together, encourage you to try new things as a couple, help you grow closer spiritually, or impact a specific group of people, share those thoughts with your mate.

3. Pick a ministry that fits your spouse’s personality and comfort zone.

Does your spouse love basketball? Perhaps hosting a March Madness party for your Sunday school class would be a great place to start. If your spouse is into crafts, try planning the crafts together for vacation Bible school. Discovering your spouse’s talents and suggesting a ministry that uses them will help pique interest.

4. Start with a low-level commitment.

Your spouse might not be willing to commit to teaching a year-long, third-grade Sunday school class, but he might be willing to chaperone a two-hour, third-grade skating party. Start with something small that doesn’t require a lot of time or energy.

5. Don’t give up.

Maybe it’s not the right time or your spouse just isn’t ready. Make sure you don’t nag; instead, commit yourself to pray for a change of heart. Perhaps, in the meantime, you could begin serving in a ministry alone and let your spouse see first-hand the spiritual rewards.

Do Women Really Talk More Than Men? [2 Articles]

Job 8:10

[Most internet references to the gender differences in communication claim that women speak twice or even three times as many words per day as men. This portion of an Austrian research paper claims otherwise, as does the Indian article which follows.]

DO WOMEN REALLY TALK MORE THAN MEN?

===================================

Silence and talkativeness is another interesting aspect of gender-specificity in conversational strategies due to the fact that women are often believed to talk more than men. This widespread belief, however, has been unanimously disconfirmed by anthropologists.

In an experiment where males and females were asked to describe three pictures, males were found to speak an average of 13.0 minutes per picture as opposed to females who only spoke an average of 3.2 minutes[1]. Further research shows that men talk more than women in public settings while being less involved in private talks[2].

Researchers who have investigated the issue have indicated that public settings were considered as a ground for competitiveness, hence the greater amount of talk by men in public. Women have been shown to talk more in private with female friends about topics often considered trivial and unimportant by men...”

________

1. Swacker, 1975.

2. Coates, 1993; Eakins and Eakins, 1978; Spender, 1980; Steinem, 1991.

From: http://hhobel.phl.univie.ac.at/mii/gpmc.dir9606/msg00013.html [no longer online]

===============================

http://www.freshlimesoda.com/features/gaurav_s1.htm

"And They Say..." by Gaurav Sood

Do men really struggle to get a word in edge-wise?

During my post-Graduation, I frequently travelled between Chandigarh and Patiala. As soon as I found a comfortable seat, I would doze off. The only things that occasionally disturbed were rattling windowpanes and chattering co-passengers. Though their talks were often disturbing yet, at times, interesting. The men would discuss politics, office and current events whereas women had a lot to talk about - husbands, kids neighbours, office mates, dresses, latest TV serials and almost everything under sun. I often wondered who talked more - was it the men; or the women?

“Nothing is so unnatural as a talkative man or a quiet woman” says a Scottish saying. An American proverb says, “When both husband and wife wear pants it is not difficult to tell them apart - he is the one who is listening”. “Women's tongues are like lamb's tail,” says an English saying. A Japanese saying reads, “Where there are women and geese there's noise.” Most of these sayings and proverbs try to convey that the women are always talking, noisy and irritating prattles. But do women dominate in talking? Do men really struggle to get a word in, edge-wise?

Researchers, Deborah James and Janice Drakich in their study, “Understanding gender differences in amount of talk” in their book “Gender and Conversation interaction” have reviewed 63 studies that examine the amount of talk time used by women and men. In 61 studies men talked more than women. If we apply these elements in the present day context one can conclude the same too.

These days various channels host talk shows on the idiot box. If we compare the amount of talk time indulged in by female and male guests invited the result indicate that men dominate in most of the talk shows. Generally men take more than half on each occasion.

There are numerous examples to prove the point. My father, who is a retired educationist, often recalls that from kindergarten through primary, secondary and higher level education it is boys who dominate the classroom talks.

The question arises that who talks what and why? Researchers conclude that formal public talk is aimed at enhancing one's status as this is meant to inform people and persuade them to agree to a certain viewpoint. People who confirm certain degree of public status often do public talk. A simple test is to use a stopwatch to calculate the amount of talk conducted by men and women at a political or public meeting.

Researchers conclude that men talk more than the fair sex in public, as they believe that verbally contributing would enhance their social status and they are more concerned with asserting status and power than women are.

Informal or intimate talk is purposed to establish and maintain social contacts with others, making social connections, developing and reinforcing intimate relationships.

Interestingly, various studies which researchers Deborah James and Janie Drakick reviewed concluded that there was a little difference in the amount contributed by men and women, though still men were placed higher on the graph.

The researchers found out that women are willing to talk more in social contexts especially when relaxed. Their talk functioned to develop and improve social relationships.

Another piece of evidence that supported the study was that male talk tends to be more referential or informative, while female talk is more supportive and facilitative.

The researchers finally concluded that women seemed to use talk to develop personal relationships and maintain family connections more often than to make claims to status or to directly influence others in public contexts.

Studying various research observations we find that in people's contributions to discussion section of seminars, women were more likely to task questions and make comments when the topic was one they could claim expert knowledge about.

Dale Spender in his book 'Learning To Lose' says, “The talkativeness of women has been gauged in comparison not with men but with silence, women have not been judged on the grounds of whether they talk more than men, but of whether they talk more than silent women”.

Finally, to conclude on the 'do-women-talk-more-than-men' debate, it can be said that it depends on various reasons and factors such as social context, kind of talk taking place, relative social confidence of the speaker and their familiarity with the topic.

The researchers concluded that men generally talk more in formal, public contexts where informative and persuasive talk is highly valued and where talk is generally the prerogative of those with some societal status and has the potential for increasing that status. Women, on the other hand generally contribute in private, informal interactions, where talk more often functions to maintain relationships, and in other situations where for various reasons they feel socially confident. “Silence is golden,” says the proverb and there are certainly contexts in all cultures where silence is more appropriate than talk. At times the silent participants are considered to be the powerful players. However, this is true, it must be recognized that talk is very highly valued in today's world.

It seems that as long as holding the floor is related with influence, the questions whether women talk more or men will continue to be a matter for debate.

________

Gaurav Sood, 25, lives in Chandigarh, India.

Six Secrets For Satisfying Relationships

Philippians 2:1

Sermon in Family series. Philippians 2:1-4

SIX SECRETS FOR SATISFYING RELATIONSHIPS

========================================

I. How to have a satisfying relationship.

A. Everyone wants at least one.

B. Satisfying relationships don't just happen.

C. Improve your relationships.

II. Six secrets of satisfying relationships:

A. Communication.

B. Consideration. Phil 2:4, 1 Pet 3:7

C. Compromise. Phil 2:2

D. Courtship. Prov 5:18-19, Eccl 9:9

E. Commitment. Mal 2:16

F. Christ. Phil 2:5

III. Satisfying relationships are not accidents.

A. They take hard work.

B. The greatest challenges.

C. The greatest rewards.

[Outline is probably based on a series by Rev. Rick Warren]

Making the Bed With His Wife

When looking at my wife Mary, I think of a letter Bob Dole received on the campaign trail when he was running for President. An article about Bob and Elizabeth Dole appeared in a magazine, along with a picture of Bob and Elizabeth making the bed together. Well, a male reader of the magazine wrote to Bob Dole and expressed his disappointment that Dole would allow himself to be photographed in such a “compromising” position, making the bed with his wife. Senator Dole wrote back to the man, saying, “You don't know the half of it; the only reason Elizabeth was helping at all was because the photographer was in the room.”

The Building Blocks of Marriage

Genesis 1:26

The Building Blocks of Marriage (Part 1 of 4) Our NeedWater is defined as one part oxygen and two parts hydroGen. Nothing can alter this fact. Combining different ingredients will create something different than water. The same goes for marriage. It consists of one part man and one part woman for one lifetime. Yet today we are bombarded by those who would change the building blocks of marriage into something else. Our ResponseRegardless of personal preferences, legal credentials, alternative lifestyles, etc., if you change the building blocks of marriage you create something different. God created marriage between one man and one woman (Gen. 1:26-28; 2:23-25). He explained marriage to be a life-long covenant (Mal. 2:14-16). Further, Jesus and Paul gave only two justifications for divorce: adultery (Matt. 5:31-32; 19:9) and abandonment/divorce by an unbelieving spouse (1 Cor. 7:12-16). Nowhere in Scripture does God redefine or endorse marriage as anything other than one man with one woman for one lifetime. Why can't we change the definition? Because, as we will learn in the coming weeks, if we alter the building blocks of marriage: one man with one woman for one lifetime, then the very building blocks of society, humanity, and theology are forever changed. 1. Some think the definition of marriage is flexible because a few of God's chosen leaders like David and Solomon practiced polygamy. However, God never endorsed their actions. In fact, in every occasion of polygamy, marital and family disasters followed. Instead, read Proverbs 18:22 and Ecclesiastes 9:9. What kind of commitment in marriage does Solomon endorse as the only fulfilling one?

2. If Solomon tried "everything under the sun" in a search for contentment, how can we focus on our spouse as God's provision for contentment in marriage?

What Women Want

Ephesians 5:25

Sermon in family series. Ephesians 5:25

WHAT WOMEN WANT

===============

I. What women really want.

II. Women want Appreciation.

A. In most relationships, women probably contribute the most.

B. Men should be less self-centered.

C. Men should show their wives/girlfriends respect.

III. Women want Attention.

A. Communicate better, listen more.

B. Be positive rather than negative.

C. Be responsible for family duties.

IV. Women want Affection.

A. Affection goes beyond sex.

B. Use the 5 "love languages."

C. The little things can matter the most.

V. Women want a man who is Active in Faith.

A. Most women want a spiritual man.

B. Spiritual men love their women the way Jesus loves us.

[patterned after a sermon by Rev. Rick Warren]

Rules For A Happy Marriage

Rules For A Happy Marriage:

1. Never both be angry at the same time.

2. Never yell at each other unless the house is on fire.

3. If one of you has to win an argument, let it be your mate.

4. If you must criticize, do it lovingly.

5. Never bring up mistakes of the past.

6. Neglect the whole world rather than each other.

7. Never go to sleep with an argument unsettled.

8. At least once every day say a kind or complimentary word to your

life partner.

9. When you have done something wrong, admit it and ask for forgiveness.

10. It takes two to make a quarrel, and the one in the wrong usually is

the one who does the most talking.

Spiritual Intimacy In Marriage

Ephesians 1:15

“I know I should talk with my wife about spiritual things,” a husband said to me, “but when our relationship isn't right in other areas, it feels hypocritical to start talking about God and the Bible.”

Spiritual intimacy is crucial if Christian couples are going to experience all the blessings God intends, yet too often it is the one thing Christian marriages lack. In my counseling ministry, I have encountered many couples who separately were experiencing personal spiritual growth but did not have spiritual intimacy -- the closeness that comes when marriage partners share something of their own spiritual pilgrimage with each other.

Spiritual intimacy does not come easily for everyone. Some couples may find it difficult to talk about spiritual things. A partner who feels spiritually inadequate may avoid talking about anything spiritual because he or she is worried about being embarrassed.

What we must remember is that the ground at the cross of Christ is level. Spiritual growth is not knowing more about the Bible; it is becoming more like Christ. We need not apologize for our present state of growth. We must simply be open to allowing Christ to continue to work in our lives.

Spiritual intimacy can begin when we turn to God together, asking Him to help us build total intimacy in our marriage. Here are five practical avenues that, if worked into the fabric of your marriage, will develop spiritual intimacy between you and your mate.

TALK ABOUT IT

Spiritual intimacy grows stronger when a couple talks and listens during discussions about spiritual matters.

The word is talk, not preach. Talking is sharing what God is doing in your life. Talking is a means of letting another into your heart and relationship with God. You can do that by sharing when God speaks to you through the Scripture or discussing what you found encouraging or insightful in a sermon or book.

When your spouse shares something with you, listen attentively. Be accepting, not condemning. If you feel compelled to share a different interpretation, share it as your interpretation, not the latest word from God. Preaching to your spouse does not enhance spiritual intimacy. Leave room for the Holy Spirit to work in your mate; do not try to do God's work yourself.

And don't think you can share only the areas of spiritual life in which you are becoming more like Christ. Spiritual intimacy does not demand perfection. Ask your spouse to pray for you about some of the ways God is challenging you to become more like Him.

PRAY TOGETHER

The experience of praying together unites hearts. We feel closer to each other and closer to God. Few spiritual exercises hold as great a potential for spiritual intimacy as praying together.

What's important is seeking God together, not the method of prayer. If you are uncomfortable praying aloud in the presence of another person, then hold hands, close your eyes and pray silently. God hears silent as well as audible prayers.

It also is important to pray for each other daily in your personal prayers. Be specific. Pray for the concerns your spouse has shared with you. Try praying Bible prayers for your spouse, especially those that ask God for spiritual wisdom and power, such as Ephesians 1:15–23 or Philippians 1:9–11.

STUDY THE SCRIPTURES

Spiritual intimacy can be greatly enhanced when a married couple is involved in Bible study together or shares with each other the fruit of individual Bible study. As we study the Scriptures, we discover how God views the world and our role in it.

You can begin by sharing one thing that impressed you or one question you have after you each have studied your weekly Bible lesson. Then try reading a devotional book together each day. Eventually you might even enroll together in a discipleship course or Bible study offered by your church and discuss the lessons with each other.

SERVE GOD TOGETHER

The great challenge of the Christian life is to give our lives in service to others under God's direction. Because service to God is so central in the Christian life, it also plays an important role in developing spiritual intimacy within marriage. Spiritual intimacy greatly increases when a husband and wife serve together.

Many service projects are informal. You simply observe an opportunity and agree to make the time and exert the effort to do it together. You might take a single parent's 10-year-old on an outing or help a widow by cleaning gutters, mowing a yard or painting a house. In such service, not only are you growing spiritually as individuals, you are growing a spiritual bond that will spill over and enrich the rest of your life together.

DREAM TOGETHER

Too many of us are looking back rather than ahead, grieving the past rather than dreaming about what God has planned for us in the future. Dreaming dreams keeps us from becoming bogged down with the failures of the past or the routine of the present. Spiritual intimacy intensifies when you dream with your mate.

Dreaming creates expectancy. It plants seeds of hope and stretches our vision. Make your dream lists and share them with each other. God has plans for the two of you, and you are responding to the promptings of His Spirit to accomplish those plans. Some of your dreams may never come true, but the fact that you dreamed together and talked about those dreams will increase your spiritual intimacy.

A relationship with God is central in building a lasting, satisfying marriage. The Christian life is a journey of becoming like Christ. Each of us must be responsible for our own spiritual growth, but God's plan is for a husband and wife to connect spiritually.

By talking, praying, studying, serving and dreaming together, you can build intimacy in your marriage.

Intimacy is not sameness. When Adam saw Eve, he said, “This one, at last, is bone of my bone, and flesh of my flesh; this one will be called woman, for she was taken from man” (Genesis 2:23). He saw in her his counterpart, taken out of him but separate from him.

Becoming close does not mean we lose our individuality. In fact, it is our separateness that makes intimacy possible. If we were identical, there would be nothing to discover, no joy of exploration. Two people entering into each others' lives, discovering and being discovered -- that is intimacy!

So why do so many couples have so little intimacy 10 or 15 years after their marriage commitment? Very likely, it is the same thing that happened in the Garden of Eden: Their personal sin has created within them a spirit of fear, distrust or guilt, so they protect themselves and withdraw from each other.

When a couple recognizes more distance than intimacy in their relationship, they must decide whether to continue the road of separateness or regain the ground that has been lost and conquer new ground.

We call this decision “commitment.” It's an act of the will in which two decide to walk together and then, with the help of God, take the necessary steps to grow toward intimacy -- emotional, intellectual, sexual and spiritual.

________

This article is adapted from Gary Chapman's book, “Covenant Marriage: Building Communication and Intimacy.”

'We're Done' Can Be Predicted Before 'I Do'

Luke 8:18

It seems the seeds of divorce are sown long before a couple recites their wedding vows.

New research shows certain relationship skills -- or the lack of them -- can predict whether two people are headed for marital bliss or a painful breakup.

The skills that predicted success will come as no surprise to marriage therapists or happily married couples.

“The ones who stayed happily married were likely to handle conflict constructively,” said study author Mari L. Clements, an assistant professor of clinical psychology at the Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, California. Her report appears in the August issue of the Journal of Marriage and Family.

“Even in the midst of a difficult issue in their relationship, they were likely to treat each other with respect,” Clements said. “They were likely to listen to each other.”

Those headed for divorce were more likely to make negative comments about the relationship or the partner, she found. And this pattern was evident before the marriage ever took place.

Clements and her colleagues studied 100 couples over 13 years to predict and confirm the couples' marital satisfaction or distress. The couples had volunteered to participate in the Denver Family Development Project beginning in 1980 and were each planning their first marriage.

Before their wedding, they were tested using a variety of measures, such as a marital adjustment test which evaluates such factors as happiness, disagreement and confidence, a tool that allows a partner to rate the effect of their spouse's communication, and a relationship problem inventory.

“Couples who ended up divorced viewed each others' communication more negatively,” Clements said.

“We assessed them before they got married, when they still had all the rose-colored glasses in place,” she said. “We followed them for 13 years.”

As the study continued, 58 couples were considered happily married (although some had fallen into distress and then recovered), 22 were married but not happy and 20 had divorced.

The findings are actually good news, Clements said, because the lack of skills leading up to unhappiness and divorce can be dealt with in counseling. “The way you handle conflict, the way you communicate with your partner, we can [help people] change those,” she said.

And it's not that the happily married couples are perfect, Clements said. “It wasn't that the couples who are happy never undermined or insulted their partners,” she said. “They just did it less.”

But even a few hurtful remarks can turn a small problem into a big one over the years, she said. “Say I only say one nasty thing to my partner once a day. But over 13 years, to hear it every day will have a cumulative effect.”

Marriage expert Thomas Bradbury calls the findings “noteworthy” because they show how a handful of variables assessed even before marriage can reveal important information about how a relationship will evolve.

From the study, “we see how the presence of harsh and critical comments, even very brief and well-intentioned ones, can accumulate to erode spouses' feelings of closeness and intimacy,” said Bradbury, a professor in the department of psychology at the University of California at Los Angeles and author of several books on marriage and divorce.

“I agree with Dr. Clements and her colleagues that more work is needed on this topic, but already we can see that our relationships, like most things, require maintenance and attention. John F. Kennedy said it best: The time to repair the roof is when the sun is shining. Attending to our relationships now, today, is essential if we want them to remain strong into the future.”

Seven Rules For Fighting Fair In Marriage

1 Corinthians 4:5

A pastor did an entire message on these seven “C's” called “A Marriage Survival Kit.” He called this the Battle of the Seven C's. Every one of these things are things that you have done and I have done. From now on these are out of bounds.

1. NEVER COMPARE. Don't say “Why can't you be like her husband...” or “You're just like ... “It's unfair to compare. God made every person unique.

2. NEVER CONDEMN. Don't use phrase like, “You always...” or “You never... You ought to... You should... You ought to be ashamed of yourself.” Lay on the guilt, play the conscious. That's God's job to be their conscience not yours.

3. NEVER COMMAND. Don't try to end an argument by force. “I demand that you do what I say! “If you don't do this then I will this ... “I command you to do this...” Don't try to be a parent to your spouse. Don't make demands it causes temperatures to be raised.

4. NEVER CHALLENGE. Threats. “Just try that and see what happens!” Don't threaten, challenge, cool your guns. The three most common threats in marriage are: sex, money, divorce. Rule those out as deadly weapons in your marriage. Don't threaten to withhold sex, or go blow all the money, or go see a lawyer. That is a mark of immaturity. Let's grow up and not use that.

5. NEVER CONDESCEND. Never treat that person as less than they really are, as an inferior. Don't put them down. Don't ridicule them for their feelings or their logic or whatever. Above all, don't play psychologist. “I know why you said that... You said that because...” Most of us have a difficult enough time figuring out our own motives much less figure out another person's. Don't prejudge motives. That's definitely playing God. “Judge nothing before the appointed time.” 1 Corinthians 4:5

6. NEVER CONTRADICT. Never interrupt in the middle of a sentence. When we do that we are not really listening. We are just thinking of refuting. Don't cut each other off. Treat each other with consideration. “Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry.” James 1:19

7. NEVER CONFUSE. This is when you bring up unrelated issues in the middle of the argument. Often you do this intentionally to sidetrack people. Some of you are very good at this. You learn this skill when you are a teenager. Mom and Dad ask you where you were and you look at your Mom, did you get your hair trimmed - it looks so nice. When you're in an argument that you know you're losing you bring up something unrelated and they start arguing about that. You keep switching the argument because you realize you're losing. Stick with the issue. Don't confuse people.

Let me summarize these seven things in one sentence: Attack the issue, not each other. Proverbs 11:29 (Living Bible) “The fool who provokes his family to anger and resentment will finally have nothing worthwhile left.”

How To Affair-proof Your Marriage

2 Samuel 11:1

Sermon in Family Improvement series, #5. 2 Samuel 11:1-5

HOW TO AFFAIR-PROOF YOUR MARRIAGE

=================================

I. Shalt or shalt not?

II. Why adultery is a problem.

A. It destroys trust.

B. It destroys marriages.

C. It feeds on the weakness of our flesh.

III. Causes of adultery.

A. Uncertain standards.

B. Unrestrained sexuality.

C. Unfulfilled desires.

D. Undisciplined lifestyles.

IV. How to prevent adultery.

A. Commit to God's standard of morality.

B. Care for your marriage.

C. Control your mind.

D. Constrict your media intake.

E. Cautious about temptations.

F. Clean in your relationships with the opposite sex.

G. Consider the consequences.

V. Start fresh from this day on.

Dynamic Duo, Live the Adventure of Serving Side-by-side

It was a simple blurb in our church bulletin: “Volunteers needed for youth ministry.” As a newly married 20-something, I thought working with teenagers sounded like fun. And I wanted to get involved in our church’s ministry. But the position came with a sizable time commitment, and between work and our other obligations, I didn’t want to spend that much time away from my husband, Erik. That’s when I had a great idea: we could both get involved in working with youth!

So I asked Erik the fateful question: “Honey, how do you feel about youth ministry?”

“I guess we can give it a try,” he replied tentatively, obviously having never considered it before.

With that we jumped into youth ministry with both feet. It felt wonderful to do something for God while working together as a couple. It not only strengthened our relationship with Christ, it strengthened our marriage by allowing us to focus as a team on a common goal.

But a few months into our new roles, the youth pastor left, and Erik and I found ourselves heading the weekly youth meetings! Because we were both committed to making our adventure work, we hung in there, working even closer together as a team because of the difficulty of the challenge.

• Unearthing the benefits

I wish I could say we were a resounding success at our new post. But finding ourselves suddenly in charge, with no training or experience, was more than we’d bargained for. It required more time and creativity than we’d planned or wanted to give.

Yet even in those less-than-ideal circumstances, I began to see strengths in Erik I’d never recognized-and would not have discovered had we not volunteered to work together.

It amazed me how naturally he could get down on the floor and watch a science fiction movie with the guys-not as someone “ministering” to them, but as a friend. I was proud that, even after a hard workweek, Erik would spend his Friday night watching a JV basketball game in some small town just because a student invited him. And even though Erik never asked to be put in charge and wasn’t entirely comfortable with that role, he always stepped up to lead the meetings when no one else was available-even when the kids seemed less than interested.

Erik and I also learned to appreciate sharing activities we wouldn’t normally choose, such as camping with 40 students. We found our joint ministry responsibilities drew us closer together spiritually, as we dealt with struggling teenagers and prepared for meetings. Those situations allowed us to develop our communication as we discussed and prayed for the best solutions to problems.

When the church finally hired a new youth pastor, we breathed a shared sigh of relief and took a well-needed break. But we were more committed than ever to finding ways we could serve together.

• Finding our stride

That first fateful question has been followed by many others-sometimes initiated by Erik and sometimes by me: “How do you feel about short-term mission trips … homeless shelters … foster children … construction projects … nursing homes … puppets … housing Peruvian nationals … ?”

We soon realized that we shouldn’t assume we have the same gifts or interests. This became evident to me when, without asking Erik, I volunteered us to lead a small group Bible study. I loved it and couldn’t fathom that Erik wouldn’t find teaching as exhilarating as I did. Erik good-naturedly agreed to being volunteered because it would allow us to be together. But as he struggled through teaching the lessons, I realized that wasn’t his gift or interest.

We began to discuss which volunteer opportunities excited us and which ones left us unfulfilled and disinterested. The more we learned about our individual gifts, the more we realized how different we are. We also discovered that those differences weren’t necessarily a death knell for working together in the same ministry.

It was often possible to find ministries in which we could use our gifts in a complementary way. When Erik and I directed an annual Christian conference, I used my administrative skills to plan the event and he used his gifts of service and hospitality to keep everything running smoothly.

Because we’re so different, we naturally stretch each other to explore ministries we wouldn’t have tried on our own. Erik has encouraged me to invite new couples from church over for dinner, and I’ve convinced Erik to try providing foster care.

We also balance our choice of ministries between those he’s naturally attracted to and those I am. Sometimes it’s better to give each other freedom to volunteer alone. While we don’t always have to serve together, we want the majority of our ministry to be shared.

If you have small children, finding a babysitter can make volunteering even more challenging. But volunteering can be done as a family. When one couple who worked with junior high students became parents, they took their kids along. The students loved it, and the couple was still able to serve together.

Even though we’re spending time together doing ministry, we discovered we need to be sensitive about becoming over-involved.

Through constantly discussing our options, we consider each other’s needs and commitment levels and find a balance. I give Erik the encouragement to become more involved, while he keeps me from saying yes to everything.

• Accepting the good, the bad-and the ugly

We’ve discovered not every experience is going to be heavenly. Sometimes our experiences have been quite the opposite. Erik and I had one of our worst arguments over my inability to navigate Mexican roads and his inability to drive-right in front of a van brimming with wide-eyed teenagers. It was the only time on the entire trip that we had their complete attention! We were both so upset with each other that we weren’t able to salvage the situation or talk to the kids about what happened. We just faced forward and tried to hide our hurt feelings.

It’s been important to admit that times like these will happen, that we need to give up any idealistic expectations for our ministry experience. That has kept us from throwing in the towel every time one of these “picture imperfect” moments occur. Communication has been key in these situations. We take time to regroup, identifying what went wrong and deciding how to keep it from happening again.

• The follow through

Sometimes I laugh when I reflect on our first attempts at volunteering together. We’ve grown to really know each other. Each experience has been a valuable lesson in understanding our talents and learning to appreciate each other’s strengths.

Serving together has become a habit for us: I’ve grown used to having Erik’s strengths joined with mine. The hours of serving together have really helped make us a true team in whatever we do. His strengths fill in for my weaknesses-despite the fact that I was once certain we were a total mismatch.

Just this week, Erik and I found ourselves unexpectedly serving together by helping finish a construction project for a young family in our church. I wound up spending the evening cleaning up sawdust while Erik repaired doors and put up handrails, but just being there together was rewarding. It’s a good feeling to know you’re helping someone and living out your faith in the real world. But the joy doubles when you share that experience.

~~~~~~~~~~

Teresa Turner Vining is a freelance author who lives in Kansas.

Praying the Lord's Prayer For Your Marriage

Matthew 6:9

How does the Lord Jesus want you to pray for your marriage?

I’m not asking how often He wants you to pray for your marriage. I’m not asking how long He wants you to pray for your marriage. I’m simply asking how does He want you to pray for your marriage? What type of things does He want you to be praying for your spouse? What should your focus be when you pray for your spouse?

Someone might respond, “Those are great questions, but there is no verse in the Bible where the Lord says, ‘Pray for your marriage in such and such a way’.” That is true. But there are certainly many prayers in the Bible that could serve as models of how God wants us to pray. This is especially true of the most well-known prayer in the Bible: the Lord’s Prayer (Matthew 6:9-13).

Just before Jesus begins the Lord’s Prayer, he does not say, “Pray these words: Our Father who art in heaven… “ No, Jesus says, “Pray, then, in this way: Our Father who art in heaven… “ (Matthew 6:9a). In other words, Jesus is not giving us a prayer to recite as much as He is giving us a model of what prayer should look like.

So what does Jesus want our prayers to look like? And how can we use Jesus’ model of prayer in praying for our marriage?

• Our Father, who art in heaven…

Jesus begins His model prayer with a reminder of who it is that we pray to. Before bringing any of our requests before God, we pause to remember the God to whom we are praying.

On the one hand, we remind ourselves that God is “our Father”. He is not a distant God who is far away; He is a God who is near, a God who loves us, a God to whom we can come like a little child can come to his or her father.

On the other hand, we remind ourselves that God is our Father “who is in heaven”. This speaks of God’s sovereignty and greatness, His absolute control over the world. As a result, we not only bow before Him with reverence, we also bring our requests to Him in confidence, knowing that He is powerful and mighty to help us.

Our prayers, then, begin with praise to God, our loving Father who is great and powerful and able to help us. This can be especially important to remember in the context of a marriage that is difficult or going through a rough time. God does indeed love us and is indeed able to help us.

• Hallowed be Thy name, Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven…

The focus of these three petitions is the glory of God. This is very important to recognize. Unlike many of our prayers, Jesus’ prayer does not begin with asking for daily bread; that comes later. Instead, Jesus teaches us to begin by praying for the glory of God. In fact, all three of these petitions are focusing on that very thing.

For example, the word “hallow” in this context means “to treat as holy”. When we pray, “Hallowed be Thy name”, we are praying that God would be treated as holy in this world. We are praying that people would acknowledge His holy character and respond to Him as a holy God. What we are praying is that people would give glory to God.

When we pray “Thy kingdom come,” we are praying the same. The “kingdom” of God is His rule and His reign in this world that is shown especially in the lives of those who have submitted to His lordship. When we pray that His kingdom would come we are praying that more and more people be rescued from the kingdom of darkness and submit their lives to the kingship of God Himself.

When we pray “Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven,” we are again praying that God would be glorified in the earth. We are praying that people would be obedient to the will of God so that the kingdom of heaven itself would be reflected in their lives. Once more, then, we are praying that God would be glorified.

How should this impact the way that we pray for our marriage? If God’s glory were our first concern, what kinds of things would we be praying for? Here are a few suggestions to consider:

1. We would pray for the Lord’s perspective — a kingdom perspective — in the decisions that we make as a couple. Ask the Lord to give you a kingdom perspective on life. Ask him to make the things that thrill His heart thrill yours; ask him to make the things that break His heart break yours.

2. We would pray that our spouse would love the Lord God with all their heart, soul, mind and strength. We would go so far as to pray that our spouse’s love for God would be greater than any other love that they had.

3. We would pray for our spouse’s spiritual life and their growth in Christ. If they are not a Christian, we would be bold to continue to pray that God would bring them to faith in Jesus Christ.

What all of these suggestions have in common is that they are prayers for God’s glory to be manifested in the context of our marriage. This is how prayer for marriage should begin. Is this how our prayers for our marriages begin?

We began to consider how the model of prayer that Jesus gives us in the Lord’s Prayer could guide us in praying for our marriages. We saw that Jesus has us begin by remembering who God is: our loving Father who is in heaven, mighty and sovereign and able to help us when we call to Him. We then saw that Jesus has us continue by praying that God would be glorified: that His name would be treated as holy, that His kingdom would come, that His will would be done on earth as it is in heaven.

The implication of all of this is that our prayers for our marriage should be founded on a desire that God be glorified in our marriage. God’s glory should be the foundation of our prayers. But our prayers do not stop here, for the Lord’s Prayer continues on.

• Give us this day our daily bread

After focusing on God’s glory, we are ready to ask the Lord for his material provision. Practically, this means:

1. We give thankful acknowledgment to the Lord that He is the source of our material provision;

2. We pray His help and aid in providing for our material needs;

3. We pray that as a couple we would be content with provision of daily bread and that He would protect us from the dangers of materialism.

• And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors

This part of the Lord’s Prayer is often confusing to people. Does it mean that we earn God’s forgiveness only when we forgive other people? By no means. God grants us forgiveness freely and as a demonstration of His grace. But that is just the point: we cannot ask this of God on the one hand and refuse to extend it to someone else on the other hand!

Jesus illustrates this for us with a parable in Matthew 18:21-35. We read there of a slave who owed the king millions of dollars. When the slave could not repay the king, the king was going to have him thrown in jail. The slave begged for mercy and the king graciously forgave the debt. That slave then went out and found a fellow slave who owed him only a few dollars. When the fellow slave could not repay, he pleaded for mercy. The first slave refused to forgive him of the debt, however, and had him thrown into prison. When the king learned of it, he was furious! He had forgiven the first slave a debt of millions of dollars and now that slave would not forgive someone else a debt of a few dollars! How could this be?!

Jesus’ point was very clear: you and I, like that first slave, have been forgiven an incalculable debt of sin by God. In fact, the debt of our sin against God is so great that the debt of others’ sins against us do not even begin to compare! And because the debt we have been forgiven is so large, we cannot help but forgive the lesser debts of those who sin against us. If we refuse to do this, we are like that first slave, and risk the anger of God Himself.

How does this impact the way that we pray for our marriage? Here are some suggestions:

1. We must be open and honest before the Lord about our sins, confessing them and repenting from them; this includes the sins that we have committed against our spouse;

2. We must also ask the Lord for His help in forgiving our spouse for their sins against us; this might include asking Him to take away bitterness, to give us a forgiving heart, and to help us to remember the grace that He has shown to us in forgiving our sins.

3. Some helpful resources on forgiveness are: The Art of Forgiving (Lewis Smedes); Bold Love (Dan Allender; deals with anger and forgiveness in difficult relationships); What’s So Amazing About Grace (Philip Yancey; full of good stories; touches on forgiveness very well on several occasions).

• And lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil

There is some debate among scholars about how this part of the Lord’s prayer is to be understood. One thing is agreed, though, and it is this: there is an evil one in the world who seeks our harm and we are in great need of the Lord’s protection from him. As it applies to marriage:

1. We need to pray that the Lord would protect our marriage. We could pray specifically that: He would help us to maintain our faithfulness to our spouse and purity in our lives; He would protect us from believing the lies of the enemy about marriage; He would protect us from drifting apart from each other or drifting away from the Lord.

• For Thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory forever, Amen.

There is some question whether or not this was part of the original Lord’s prayer (see the margin or footnotes in your Bible at Matthew 6:13). It does remind us, however, of the greatness of God and of His glory. In this regard it takes us back to the beginning of the Lord’s Prayer, reminding us of who God is and of the fact that His glory should be our greatest concern.

Do you want to pray well for your marriage? Let the Lord’s Prayer guide you as you lift up your spouse and your marriage before the Lord.

God's Second Purpose For Marriage

Genesis 1

Here’s a riddle for you: They can be the source of life’s greatest joys and greatest sorrows. They represent our hopes for tomorrow and often are our greatest struggle today. We pray to be blessed with them and 13 years later wonder what we were thinking! What are they? You guessed it — children.

Our Need

God has placed in the heart of most married couples a desire to have children. This is related to His second purpose for marriage:

God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it.” (Genesis 1:28a)

All married couples are called to reproduce — including those struggling with infertility or who are otherwise without children. Opportunities abound to have a significant impact in the lives of our children or others by helping them to become disciples of Christ.

Married couples are to reproduce. Specifically, we are to reproduce children in His “likeness.” In the New Testament we are commanded to, “go and make disciples of all nations” (Matthew 28:19a). Our responsibility as parents is to raise children who are Christ’s disciples.

In order to teach our children to be disciples, we must first be good role models. If we are divisive or competitive with our mate we can not reflect God’s image. Our children will respond and learn as we exchange such behavior with quiet, constructive modeling.

Our Response

Knowing the first purpose for marriage — to reflect God’s image — can protect us from hardening our hearts toward one another and help us make our marriages more pleasing to God. For further reflection Read Genesis 1:26-28 and consider these questions:

1. Is creating a spiritual disciple of Christ, your top priority for your child? If not, what changes do you need to make?

2. Does your marriage reflect God’s image and serve as a good model for your children? If not, what do you need to prayerfully consider changing

The Divorce Sounds Happier Than the Marriage

Malachi 2:16

In a continuing Hollywood tradition that probably marks a societal trend, in January 2005 Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston announced their impending divorce in glowing terms. Their statement to the press included this sentence:

“We happily remain committed and caring friends with great love

and admiration for one another.”

I count seven positive words; God needs only three words - "I hate divorce." (Malachi 2:16).

Messiah's Marriage

Psalms 45

Psalm 45 — Messiah’s Marriage — « Leader information shown in this fashion »

A. {To the Chief Musician. Set to “The Lillies.” A Contemplation of the sons of Korah. A Song of Love.) My heart is overflowing with a good theme; I recite my composition concerning the King; My tongue is the pen of a ready writer. (Psalms 45:1 NKJV)

1. The historical occasion for this Psalm has been argued for the marriage of Solomon, and even more forcefully for Joram the son of Jehoshaphat, in that the former was a king of peace rather than of war as portrayed in this Psalm; but, regardless

2. It is in particular a prophetic, Messianic Psalm

a. the Targums render the second verse as “Thy beauty, O King Messiah, is greater than that of the children of men.”

b. Hebrews 1:8–9 quotes Psalm 45:6–7, applying it to the Son who is the Christ (Messiah)

c. verses 10–15 which describes this historical king’s bride can well be viewed as prophetical of the church, a church which includes the Gentiles

3. In this prophecy are blended the first and second comings

a. What characteristic is found in verse 2 that is also shown in John 1:14, 17? « — Christ came with grace and truth »

b. What aspect of Christ’s first coming is reflected in verses 6–7 (Romans 14:17)? « — Christ established a kingdom of God on earth that is not materialistic, but righteousness and gladness (joy); spiritual in its nature »

c. What aspect of Christ’s second coming is found in

(A) verses 3–5? « — coming to judge and punish »

(B) verses 6, 17? « — reigning and receiving praise forever »

d. it is helpful to remember the hymn “Ivory Palaces” which, though not inspired, suggests of the spices given in verse 8

(A) myrrh represents (2 Corinthians 2:15-16) « — fragrance of the gospel to life to those who believe »

(B) aloes represents (Isaiah 53:3, John 19:39) « — sorrows and suffering of Christ upon the cross »

Solomon Was the Best Judge of Marriage

Proverbs 18:22

When the famous politician and orator William Jennings Bryan (1860-1925) was a young man, he went to the home of the father of his prospective wife to ask him for her hand in marriage. Bryan was determined to impress the father by quoting from the Bible, and he chose Proverbs 18:22: “He who finds a wife finds a good thing, and obtains favor from the LORD.”

Bryan was unnerved when the father replied by quoting Paul: “So then he that giveth her in marriage doeth well; but he that giveth her not in marriage doeth better.” (1 Corinthians 7:38)

Bryan, never at a loss for words, said: “Yes, but Paul had no wife and Solomon had 700. Therefore, I believe Solomon ought to be the better judge as to marriage.”

All You Need Is Love (and A Prenup): Bringing Down the Divorce Rate

The picture in the WASHINGTONIAN magazine perfectly symbolized a nation with the highest divorce rate in the world. It featured a wedding cake with a bride and groom on top. Lurking behind them were two gloomy, dark-suited figures: two little lawyers, each one holding a copy of the prenuptial agreement.

“Love is all you need — unless the marriage ends in divorce,” wrote Washingtonian editor Kim Eisler. “Then a prenuptial agreement is the best defense.” He called the prenup “a divorce insurance policy.” Well, that's probably true — but wouldn't it be better for couples to have a marriage insurance policy?

This is the goal of my friend Mike McManus, founder of Marriage Savers. McManus points out that most marriages take place in churches. This means Christians can become a force for building stronger marriages, and thus help cut the divorce rate. Many churches try to meet the challenge by requiring long and demanding periods of prenuptial counseling. The problem is that many couples will say, “No, thanks,” and hold their wedding at the church down the street where there are no requirements.

To solve this problem, McManus has instituted Community Marriage Policies — uniform policies and rules that all the local churches adopt together. Catholic and Protestant, liberal and conservative, black and white clergy all band together to radically reduce the community's divorce rate.

Typically, clergy agree to require engaged couples to undergo four months of marriage preparation including a premarital inventory to evaluate the maturity of the relationship. Community Marriage Policies are now in place in more than 186 cities, and the results have been phenomenal.

Last year the Institute for Research and Evaluation examined the impact of 114 Community Marriage Policies all of which were signed by the year 2000. The Institute compared counties that had these policies with similar counties in the same state that did not have them, taking into account the fact that divorce rates were generally declining. They found that divorce rates in cities or counties without a marriage policy fell by 9.4 percent over seven years. But divorce rates in cities or counties that did have a Community Marriage Policy fell by 17.5 percent — nearly twice the rate of communities without them. Dr. Stan Weed, president of the Institute, estimates that between 31,000 and 50,000 divorces were averted.

“Clearly,” says McManus, “we hold in our hands the answer to America's divorce rate.” And he's right.

The troubling question, however, is will the Church accept the challenge? Brad Wilcox, a sociology professor at the University of Virginia, writes that America's houses of worship are “traditionally the most important custodians of marriage in the nation.” And yet, he concludes, they “have been unable and unwilling to foster the beliefs and virtues that make for a strong marriage culture.”

What an indictment of the Church — one that we must answer. A pastor who marries any couple that comes knocking needs to recognize his complicity in America's divorce epidemic and the perceived need for all those lawyers waving prenups at the bride and groom.

I hope you'll read Mike McManus's book, MARRIAGE SAVERS and learn more about how your church can help couples build lasting marriages — and help heal America's divorce epidemic.

________

I Will Kill Myself and Beet You Up

Here is the entire text of a love letter intercepted by a second grade schoolteacher, passed on to a parent, who passed it on to me:

Dear Billy, if you dont say you love me and walk to the bus top

with me I will kill myself and beet you up. I love you and wan

to marry you soon. Suzy

The little girl was eight at the time. The parent showed me the letter at the rehearsal dinner the day before Suzy married Billy. Suzy was twenty-four. During the wedding service, I shared the letter with the guests, and in her vows, had Suzy repeat to me: “I, Suzy, promise you, Billy, never to kill myself or beat you up.”

If the marriage lasts as long as her love, and her love is as large as the laughter in the ceremony, the odds are good for a happy ever after.

________

By a minister in Bellevue, Washington, as told to R.F.

Submitted by Kimberley Broyles

The Most Romantic Story Groucho Ever Heard

On “You Bet Your Life”, Groucho Marx's popular television show, he created a kind of host never seen before,” Leo Rosten recalled.

“I was backstage one night when one of the contestants turned out to be from a country area. Let's call him Floyd.

“Groucho, 'How did you meet your wife?'

Floyd, 'Well, I drive a truck.'

Groucho, 'You ran over her?'

Floyd, 'No, she was in the barn.'

Groucho, 'You drove your truck into a barn?'

Floyd, 'No, no. Her family had been missing some chickens.'

Groucho, 'They were lonely for chickens?'

'No, they had been missing, so they turned on a light in the barnyard, and I'm driving up to get some turkeys, and her father hollers, 'The turkeys are in the barn.'

Groucho, 'You married a turkey?'

Floyd, 'No! As I go to the barn a big skunk starts for the chicken house, and a girl yells, 'Get that skunk.’ So I jumped on it and she fell on it, too - and we both smelled so bad -'

Groucho, 'That's the most romantic story I ever heard.'“

No-Fault Divorce -- the End of Marriage?

By now, any observer with a modicum of moral insight is aware that marriage is an institution in crisis. Nevertheless, one of the most significant factors contributing to this crisis is often overlooked, and that one factor has led to the breakup of more marriages than any other -- no-fault divorce.

In an insightful article published in the March 2005 edition of Crisis magazine, Stephen Baskerville argues that America's embrace of easy divorce is the most significant reason that marriage is now threatened and, by some measures, hanging by a thread.

Baskerville, a political scientist at Howard University, points to the 2004 election as evidence that many Americans understand that marriage is in peril. “America is in revolt over marriage,” Baskerville explains. “Some 17 states have now passed amendments to protect the definition of marriage, and more will follow.” Baskerville credits the same-sex marriage controversy with building considerable support for President Bush's reelection and “has also shaken the decades-long loyalty of African Americas to the Democratic Party.”

Beyond all this, Baskerville also sees signs of hope in cultural developments such as Bill Cosby's comment on family morality and his call for African American males to reassume responsibility as husbands and fathers. Similarly, the political ground is truly shaking when voters in Massachusetts -- by an 85-percent margin -- called for fathers to be given equality in custody decisions.

“Only a short time ago, few would have predicted such a public uprising in defense of marriage and the family,” Baskerville notes. At the same time, he argues that the most significant enemy of marriage is divorce. “The most direct threat to the family is divorce on demand,” Baskerville bravely argues. “Sooner or later if civilization is to endure, it must be brought under control.”

The story behind America's love affair with no-fault divorce is a sad and instructive tale. As Baskerville documents, no-fault divorce laws emerged in the United States during the 1970s and quickly spread across the nation. Even though only nine states had no-fault divorce laws in 1977, by 1995, every state had legalized no-fault divorce.

Behind all this is an ideological revolution driven by feminism and facilitated by this society's embrace of autonomous individualism. Baskerville argues that divorce “became the most devastating weapon in the arsenal of feminism, because it creates millions of gender battles on the most personal level.” As far back as 1947, the National Association of Women Lawyers [NAWL] was pushing for what we now know as no-fault divorce. More recently, NAWL claims credit for the divorce revolution, describing it as “the greatest project NAWL has ever undertaken.”

The feminists and NAWL were not working alone, of course. Baskerville explains that the American Bar Association “persuaded the National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws [NCCUSL] to produce the Uniform Marriage and Divorce Act.” Eventually, this led to a revolution in law and convulsions in society at large. This legal revolution effectively drove a stake into the heart of marriage itself, with inevitable consequences. In effect, no-fault divorce has become the catalyst for one of the most destructive cultural shifts in human history. Now, no-fault divorce is championed by many governments in the name of human rights, and America's divorce revolution is spreading around the world under the banner of “liberation.”

Baskerville gets right to the heart of the matter, labeling no-fault divorce as a “misnomer.” In reality, the “no-fault” language was taken from the world of automobile insurance. These new divorce laws did not really remove fault from the context of divorce, but they “did create unilateral and involuntary divorce, so that one spouse may end a marriage without any agreement or fault by the other.” As Baskerville explains, “Moreover, the spouse who divorces or otherwise abrogates the marriage contract incurs no liability for the cost or consequences, creating a unique and unprecedented legal anomaly.”

In many cases, the reality is even worse. In effect, no-fault divorce means that the courts now assist the violator of marriage vows. Any spouse can now demand a divorce for any reason and be assured that the courts will award the divorce -- and will often grant disproportionate favor to the party seeking the divorce.

As Judy Parejko, author of Stolen Vows, argues, no-fault divorce means that legislators created an “automatic outcome” in issues of divorce. “A defendant is automatically found 'guilty' of irreconcilable differences and is not allowed a defense,” Parejko notes.

Researcher Barbara Dafoe Whitehead, author of the influential book, The Divorce Culture, points to the therapeutic seduction of the culture as a contributing factor. “According to therapeutic precepts,” she explains, “the fault for marital breakup must be shared, even when one spouse unilaterally seeks a divorce.”

In other words, no-fault divorce laws actually assume that both parties are equally at fault, since no party could be innocent. The perverse assumption inherent in this argument is that if any individual is unhappy, someone else must necessarily be at fault. Once no-fault divorce became a reality, spouses found themselves simply informed of the fact that their marriage was effectively over. Many of these spouses were not even aware that the marriage was in trouble -- and trouble is not even necessary.

Why did all this happen? How could an institution as fundamental and basic as marriage become transformed in less than a decade's time? Baskerville insists that no-fault divorce laws were not demanded by the public. “No popular clamor to dispense with divorce restrictions preceded their passage; no public outrage at any perceived injustice provided the impetus; no public debate was ever held in the media.” As Baskerville summarizes: “In retrospect, these laws can be seen as one of the boldest social experiments in history. The result effectively abolished marriage as a legal contract. As a result, it's no longer possible to form a binding agreement to create a family.”

Marriage is now compromised to the extent that it is difficult even to engage this culture with an honest discussion about marriage and divorce.

Divorce -- once a matter of shame and tragedy -- is now celebrated as a positive good. Barbara Dafoe Whitehead has documented the rise of what she calls “expressive divorce.” Spouses simply assert a right to self-interest and self-actualization as a sufficient basis for abandoning a husband or wife, and even children. The “rights talk” lamented by Harvard law professor Mary Ann Glendon now replaces serious moral discourse, and those seeking a divorce can simply claim a supposed “right” to divorce without any basis for justification.

A basic dishonesty on the question of divorce pervades our political culture. Baskerville cites Michigan governor Jennifer Granholm as referring to divorce as a couple's “private decision.” Granholm's comments came as she vetoed a bill intended to reform divorce law in her state. The danger and dishonesty of referring to divorce as a couple's “private decision” is evident in the fact that this supposedly private decision imposes a reality, not only on the couple, but also on children and the larger society. Indeed, the “private decision” is really not made by a couple at all -- but only by any spouse demanding a divorce.

Perversely, the parent who demands the divorce “is also the one most likely to retain custody” of children, Baskerville laments. He suggests that no-fault divorce “amounts to a public seizure of the innocent spouse's children and invasion of his or her parental rights, perpetrated by our governments and using our tax dollars.”

As if all that isn't bad enough, divorce has now become an industry. Some lawyers and law firms specialize in divorce practice, and Baskerville describes the legal divorce business as “a multibillion-dollar industry” in which a vast number of persons hold a vested interest. He writes: “The political interests that abolish marriage in the first place have only grown more wealthy and powerful off the system they created,” adding: “Divorce and custody are the cash cow of the judiciary and directly employ a host of federal, state, and local officials, plus private hangers-on. More largely, the societal ills left by broken families create further employment and power for even larger armies of officials. So entrenched has divorce become within our political economy, and so diabolical is its ability to insinuate itself throughout our political culture, that even critics seem to have developed a stake in having something to bemoan. Hardly anyone has an incentive to bring it under control.”

That's where the Christian church must enter the picture and provide leadership. Where are our pastors on the question of divorce? Why are so many pulpits silent on this issue? The obvious answer is fear and intimidation. Divorce has become so common that many Christian leaders fear creating a tidal wave of offense and resentment if they deal honestly with the issue -- or address it at all. Accordingly, successive generations of Christians have now grown to adulthood believing that divorce is simply a lifestyle option. Where is the recognition that divorce is an affront to the glory of God and a sin that is expressly described in the Bible as an evil that God hates?

Without clear leadership from the pulpit, the issue of divorce has simply fallen through the cracks of church life, and many congregations effectively ignore divorce in their midst, as well as all the tragedy and brokenness that follow. In so doing, the Christian church has become complicit with the divorce culture and will bear God's judgment for its failure of nerve.

We need a recovery of courage and candor on the issue of divorce -- and in a hurry. Stephen Baskerville is right. Divorce is the greatest threat to the family in our times. We cannot expect this society to take us seriously as defenders of marriage if we are not the enemies of divorce.

________

This article was originally published on March 7, 2005.

Separation Rapids!

Matthew 19:26

John Wesley Powell is a name not well recognized today . he was the one-armed, hero-explorer of American national treasure, The Grand Canyon.

Something not well known by many people is a place on the Colorado River Powell named “Separation Rapid.” This is where three men separated from the main party and attempted to walk out of the canyon by themselves.

What precipitated this separation? A major dilemma! The Powell party had earlier lost one of their four boats and over half their food to the river. The rapids they now faced were more menacing than anything they had previously encountered. Normally they “portaged” (i.e., carried) their huge wooden boats around such difficulty, but here it was impossible. Two choices were available to the explorers:

1.) abandon the exploration and walk out, into uncharted and hostile territory;

2.) face their fears and plunge headlong into the rapids, trusting themselves to make it.

Three chose the former, while the seven remaining men chose the latter. To everyone’s surprise the rapids only had the appearance of omnipotence; within minutes they cleared “Separation Rapid,” unscathed and with all their provisions. The three separators were never heard from again.

Commentary:

Many times marriage presents seemingly impenetrable obstacles which in fact have only “the appearance of omnipotence.”

In many cases it is true that the couple cannot “portage” their marriage obstacle. However, facing their fears and forging ahead, trusting in the grace of God [Matthew 19:26; 2 Corinthians 12:9], may bring a Grand Canyon-like surprise. Taking the “separation” route in marriage is fraught with danger, many have taken it to their great detriment.

When couples come seeking my counsel I remind them a marriage is similar to a front lawn, right out there in the public’s eye: if it’s nurtured and maintained it will serve them all the days of their lives, even though some must periodically be cut nearly to the roots; if ignored, abused, or trampled on it will die.

Even Though We Wanted

Dillon and Patty Bayes from the Talladega Church of Christ in Alabama, won the Happy Marriage Contest in the June, 1996 issue of Good Housekeeping magazine. They came in first out of 12,000 entries. They said the secret of their success of their 27-year marriage is:

• We gave . . . when we wanted to receive.

• We served . . . when we wanted to feast.

• We listened . . . when we wanted to talk.

• We submitted . . . when we wanted to reign.

• We forgave . . . when we wanted to remember.

• We stayed . . . when we wanted to leave.

How To Avoid Marrying A Jerk

They are the Pentagon's new “rules of engagement” - the diamond ring kind. U.S. Army chaplains are trying to teach troops how to pick the right spouse, through a program called “How To Avoid Marrying a Jerk.”

The matchmaking advice comes as military family life is being stressed by two tough wars. Defense Department records show more than 56,000 in the Army - active, National Guard and Reserve - have divorced since the campaign in Afghanistan started in 2001.

Officials partly blame long and repeated deployments which started after the invasion of Iraq in 2003 and stretched the service thin. Troops also are coming home with life-altering injuries. Many come back better people, others worse-off - but either way, very changed from who they were when they wed.

“Being in the military certainly raises the stakes when you choose a mate,” said Lt. Col. Peter Frederich, head of family issues in the Pentagon's chaplain office.

The “no jerks” program is also called “P.I.C.K. a Partner,” for Premarital Interpersonal Choices and Knowledge.

It advises the marriage-bound to study a partner's F.A.C.E.S. - family background, attitudes, compatibility, experiences in previous relationships and skills they'd bring to the union.

It teaches the lovestruck to pace themselves with a R.A.M. chart - the Relationship Attachment Model - which basically says don't let your sexual involvement exceed your level of commitment or level of knowledge about the other person.

Maj. John Kegley, a chaplain who teaches the program in Monterey, Calif., throws in the “no jerk salute” for fun. One hand at the heart, two-fingers at the brow mean use your heart and brain when choosing.

Though the acronyms and salute make it sound like something the Pentagon would come up with, the program was created by former minister John Van Epp of Ohio, who has a doctorate in psychology and a private counseling practice. He teaches it to Army chaplains, who in turn teach it to troops.

It also is used by social service agencies, prisons, churches and other civilian groups.

Commanders once discouraged troops from starting a family while serving. Thus the old saying: “If the Army wanted you to have a wife, it would have issued you one.” Today, the military supports families more than any other employer, Frederich said.

The Bush administration proposes to spend $5.6 billion in the next budget year for quality-of-life services for troops and their families. That includes help with child care, education, spouse job hunting, legal assistance, commissaries, relocation counseling - programs on every family issue imaginable - to promote stability, and thus troop readiness.

Such support notwithstanding, “not everybody is cut out” to marry into the military, said Army spokeswoman Martha Rudd.

Some 740,000 people - or a little more than half of all troops in the active-duty armed forces - are married. Of those, some 96,000 had spouses also in uniform in the 2004 budget year, according to Pentagon figures.

The Army hopes the “no jerks” program will help couples decide if they are ready for a long-term commitment and can cope with the unique stresses of military life.

“Settings like military bases are incubators,” said Van Epp, of Medina, Ohio. “They try to hatch ... relationships extremely fast,” leading to higher divorce rates and more domestic violence.

The program teaches troops not to cave in to the pressure of a ticking clock - like rushing to marry before shipping out for a deployment, or too soon after homecoming.

The Scandal of “Unilateral Divorce” — How No-Fault Divorce Undermines Society

America's experiment with no-fault divorce -- an experiment that could well mean the virtual abolition of marriage as an institution -- has produced a massive toll of cultural destruction and personal pain. Millions of marriages have been terminated, homes have been broken, and lives have been destroyed in the wake of easy divorce.

Jennifer Roback Morse, a research fellow at the Hoover Institution of Stanford University, has been tracing the effects of no-fault divorce throughout the culture. In “Why Unilateral Divorce Has No Place in a Free Society,” she argues that the nation's high divorce rate is the direct cause or a major contributor to a vast array of social problems. Furthermore, she argues that “divorce is in the background of the same-sex marriage debate because same-sex marriage is the end of the trend that no-fault divorce began.” As she makes clear, “The legal innovation of unilateral divorce began to reduce marriage to nothing but a temporary association of individuals. If marriage is merely a free association of individuals, there is no principled reason to exclude same-sex couples, or even larger groupings of sexual partners. The permanence of marriage was one of the key features that distinguished it from an ordinary contract.”

Interestingly, Morse is out to prove that libertarians should oppose no-fault divorce. Yet, even as her argument is tilted especially toward those with a libertarian bent, her research and arguments concerning marriage should interest all Americans.

Her redefinition of no-fault divorce as “unilateral divorce” is a significant semantic game. The very fact that easy divorce, facilitated by law and virtually uncontestable in court, was labeled “no-fault” in the first place was a significant concession to the divorce culture. The revolution in America's divorce laws has produced a situation in which one spouse may demand and cause the breakup of the marriage, even if the other spouse is committed to maintaining the relationship.

Morse understands that the libertarian bent of contemporary America plays right into the hands of those who promoted no-fault divorce. “The 'leave us alone' posture has been one of the most successful rhetorical moves of the advocates of the deconstruction of marriage. I believe this is because minimum government has traditionally had deep roots in the American psyche and continues to have a deep hold on the American imagination. But the redefinition of marriage is part of the left's attempt to redefine freedom to mean a combination of having your own way and being completely unencumbered by human relationships.”

She perceptively argues that many Americans want minimal government and absolute moral freedom. As she describes this pattern, many citizens want a society that is fiscally conservative and lifestyle liberal. “It sounds good on paper,” she argues, “but in practice it simply is not possible.”

Why does marriage emerge in virtually all civilizations and cultures? This is simply a fact of history, as the various cultures of the world have found their way toward the recognition of committed heterosexual couples as the privileged unit of society. In their own way, these cultures recognize and formalize these couplings through public ceremonies and an entire network of social, legal, and relational protections.

Most significant to Morse's argument is the fact that government is not needed in order for marriage to emerge. “Marriage is an organic, pre-political institution that emerges spontaneously from society,” she argues. Furthermore, the actual operation of marriage as an institution depends only to a very small extent upon government at all. “This culture around marriage may have some legal or governmental elements,” she acknowledges. “But in most times and places, the greater part of that cultural machinery is more informal than legal and is based more on kinship than on law.”

How does this work? “We do things this way because our parents did things this way; our friends and neighbors look at us funny if we go too far outside the norm. The formal legal and political structures provide some support and enforcement for the norms, but by far, the bulk of the daily enforcement of the social expectations about marriage takes place informally.”

Essentially, the entire logic of marriage has been reversed within postmodern American culture. “The modern alternative idea about marriage is that society does not need such an institution,” Morse explains. Accordingly, “no particular arrangement should be legally or culturally privileged as the ideal context for sex or childbearing.” As she sees it, this simply and necessarily means the end of marriage. When marriage disappears, it is replaced by “a legalistic concept of a bundle of benefits granted by the state.” Of course, this is no lasting substitute.

This new legalistic concept, understood to be created by the state, is simply no substitute for the informal culture of marriage.

At this point, one of Morse's central concerns appears -- where the informal culture of marriage fails, the government must step in with litigation, laws, supervision, and bureaucratic intrusion. Inevitably, this means “a disaster for the cause of limited government.”

All this is part and parcel of the entitlement society -- a cultural assumption that all privileges should be equally accessible to all citizens (even if the government must mandate this access). As Morse conventionally argues, sexual activity is now considered such an entitlement. Marriage has simply been sidelined, “no longer the only socially acceptable outlet for sexual activity or for the rearing of children.” Instead, “It is now considered an unacceptable infringement on the modern person's liberty to insist that the necessary context of sexual activity is marriage, with rights and responsibilities, both implicit and explicit. It is equally unacceptable to argue that having children outside of marriage is irresponsible. Women are entitled to have as many children as they choose in any context they choose. In this sense, children have become a kind of consumer good.”

In the case of our modern litigious culture, all of this is reduced to matters handled by the courts. Yet, the courts are stunningly inefficient and ineffective in compelling adults to behave in ways that will lead to the protection, nurture, discipline, and care of children.

In one incredibly descriptive paragraph, Morse explains why a married couple operates very differently. “No one from the state forces them to pool their incomes, if they both work. If they have the traditional gender-based division of household labor, no one forces the husband to hand over his paycheck to his wife to run the household. No one makes the wife allow him to take the kids out for the afternoon. No one has to come and supervise their negotiations over how to discipline the children. When he's too tough, she might chew him out privately, or kick him under the table. When she lets them off the hook too easily, he might have some private signal for her to leave so that he can do what needs to be done.”

Where this informal and very natural pattern of home life is not preserved, the state must enter the picture. As always, the state enters clumsily and at great cost. Spending just a couple of hours observing a divorce court or custody hearing will be sufficient to prove the point -- government simply cannot replace what the breakup of marriage destroys.

In another important section of her essay, Morse reveals that the majority of divorces are initiated by women -- a fact not generally known throughout the culture. The current shape of laws and the ideological bias of feminism points women toward divorce. Morse argues that the sole custody laws, with a preference toward women, “is correlated with an increased probability of women initiating the divorce.” This is because the woman “can have the enjoyment of her children, and possibly some financial support from the father, while reducing the difficulty of negotiating with their father over the children's care.” As she argues bluntly, women would be far less likely to initiate divorce if they lacked confidence that they would be given the custody of the couple's children. She also argues that women often grow more frustrated with the burden of maintaining the relationship and may see a divorce as the easy way out of this emotionally-demanding challenge.

“Women need to stop seeing marriage as dispensable and men as disposable,” she asserts. Likewise, men must be led to see marriage as a life-long commitment of their highest priority.

Rebuilding a culture of marriage is no small task -- especially as the cultural elites promote any number of “alternatives” to civilization's most central institution. Nevertheless, it is a challenge we must accept, starting with our own homes, our own marriages, and our own churches. Christians understand that marriage is about far more than sociological analysis and economic considerations. Marriage is the unique arena of God's glory in which the Creator's love for His creatures is shown in the right ordering of the man and the woman and in the establishment of the marriage bond as the locus of sexual expression and the gift of children.

Jennifer Roback Morse offers important insights in this essay, including her relabeling of no-fault divorce as unilateral divorce. We are also indebted to her for her convincing argument that lifestyle liberalism is incompatible with a free and ordered society. Clearly, we have much work to do.

________

Jennifer Roback Morse's essay, “Why Unilateral Divorce Has No Place in a Free Society,” is published in THE MEANING OF MARRIAGE: FAMILY, STATE, MARKET, AND MORALS, edited by Robert P. George and Jean Bethke Elshtain (Spence Publishing Company, Dallas, 2006).

The Ability To Forgive Comes From God

Luke 6:37

Dietrich Bonhoffer was a German pastor during World War II. To a young couple who had been married a brief time he wrote this advice:

“Live together in forgiveness for without it no human

relationship, least of all a marriage, can survive. Accept each

other as you are and forgive each other every day from the bottom

of your hearts.”

This advice is made more powerful by the fact that he wrote it from a Nazi prison, where just a few years later he died. Forgiveness is not easy. It is an ability that comes from God.

[Original illustration at this number was a duplicate of HolwickID #7155]

Proverbs For Your Marriage

Proverbs 18:22

Sermon in a series on Proverbs. Proverbs 18:22

PROVERBS FOR YOUR MARRIAGE

==========================

I. Marriage in life and in Proverbs.

A. Are Americans falling out of love with marriage?

B. Ways of men and women are hard to understand. 30:18-19

C. God says marriage is a good thing.

1) It is a blessing. 18:22

2) It is based on a covenant, a solemn promise before God.

3) It has love at its center. 5:18-19

4) It is meant to be life-long. 2:17, 5:18

II. There are no guarantees of rosiness. Bad marriages exist.

A. Marked by unfaithfulness.

B. Marked by bickering.

C. Marked by regrets.

III. Good marriages are the ideal.

A. Good marriages should bring joy. 5:18

B. Good marriages involve sharing.

C. Good marriages bring out the best in us. 31:10

IV. Honor God in your marriage.

The Unequal Yoke In Marriage

Ezra 9:1

A man announced to me one day that he was going to get married, and I asked, “Well, is the young woman converted?” “No,” he said; “but she is a very sweet and lovely young woman, and I feel sure that after we are married it will come out all right; she will come to Christ.” I said, “If she does not come to Christ before you are married, while she looks up to you as a little god, she is not at all likely to be led to Christ afterwards when she finds out how intensely human you are.”

A Puritan once said, “If you are a child of God and you marry a child of the devil you can expect to have trouble with your father-in-law.”

This passage clearly refers to marriage, and I think it would be a blessed thing if every Christian minister would say, “I will never be a party to yoking up a child of God and a child of the devil.” “Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers.” Let that be the first question settled, young man, when you are looking for a wife, and, young woman, when you are allowing yourself to be looked for, let the first question in your mind be: Is this one who comes seeking my favor one who knows the Lord Jesus Christ?

I think of a lady who came to me in California and said, “Mr. Ironside, I want to tell you my story, and if you ever feel like repeating it when you are talking about separation, you may feel free to do so.” She said: “As a young Christian I was a very happy young woman; my heart was taken up with the things of Christ; He was all in all to me. Then I met one who seemed to me so true, so good, so manly, so noble, that when I asked him if he were a Christian and he said, ‘No,’ but promised that he would join any church I belonged to if I would only marry him, I was foolish enough to think I could win him after we were married. He went to church with me until two weeks after we were married and then said, ‘I am through with this religious sham; nothing more of it for me. If you must go on with it, you go your way and I will go mine.’ I have had to go my way ever since. But that was not the worst, for when the children came, I wanted to bring them up for God, but my husband, who had been reading infidel literature and was getting farther and farther away from the faith of his old mother, said, ‘No, these children will never be brought up in religious superstition,’ and I have had to see them taken off to the world when I wanted them for God. Now every one of the six of them is utterly opposed to the gospel that means so much to me.”

The unequal yoke in marriage! What a serious thing it is!

[Original illustration at this number was a duplicate of HolwickID #20921]

Helpfulness

One wintry day Nathanael Hawthorne, the American author, went home with a heavy heart, having lost his government appointment. He cast himself down, as men generally do under such circumstances, and assumed the very attitude of despondency. His wife soon discovered the cause of his distress. But instead of indulging in irrational hysterics, she kindled a bright fire, brought pen, ink, and paper, and then, lovingly laying her hand on his shoulder, exclaimed, as she gazed cheerfully in his face, "Now you can write your book." The words worked like a magic spell. He set to work, forgot his loss, wrote his book, made his reputation, and amassed a fortune.

Healthy Marriages

Healthy marriages begin with biblical, practical relationship instruction we give to our teens. It includes giving sound and convincing reasons for sexual abstinence before marriage, raising our teenagers' standards of expectations regarding the kind of marital relationship they are willing to wait for, instead of settling for second best. It involves developing their biblical self-respect and self-confidence so that it will motivate them to catch the vision to skillfully advance beyond the level of intimacy and harmony between husband and wife which they have seen modeled in their own home.

Healthy marriages require strenuous preparation during engagement. At no time in life is a person more motivated to work hard on relational skills than in those few precious months just prior to marriage. That overwhelming sense of optimism and confidence that comes from "feeling in love" provides a unique window of opportunity for a couple-to-be to honestly face issues that normally would be neatly locked deeply beneath their self-protective psychological defense mechanisms. The ancient adage, "an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure," is true; facing potential problems in marriage before they say "I do" is vastly preferable to trying to pick up the scattered pieces afterwards.

Healthy marriages need extra encouragement during the parenting years. That is when the initial glowing willingness to sacrifice anything for each other tends to fade (backslide?) into self-centeredness and conflict as life's priorities get powerfully tested by pressures growing concurrently with babies and toddlers.

Healthy marriages still need continual attention in the empty nest years. Cars need regular maintenance. Bodies need physical checkups. Teachers and doctors need continuing education. Workers need training for new skills. It should not seem strange to us, then, that marriages of all stages of life need similar maintenance for healthy relational growth.

-Dale Johnsen

A Covenant, Not A Contract

Genesis 15

Marriage is a covenant, not a contract. There is a big difference. God made a blood covenant with Abraham in Genesis 15 by cutting five animals in two and laying their carcasses on both sides of a path, with God "walking through" these body parts. This represents the absolutely binding nature of a covenant, for it says that "If I ever violate this covenant, may I be torn in two just like these animals."

Have you thought of your marriage covenant in that way?

Don't ever give up on your marriage, no matter what comes your way. When friction festers into fights, new "oil" is needed to relubricate the relationship. When romance disappears into a dull fog of mundane sameness, fresh oxygen is needed to fan the cooling embers into sparks that will rekindle the glowing flames of love. When chronic financial distress threatens the emotional equilibrium of the home; or when dysfunctions and compulsions surface like white caps in the bay to rock the family boat; or when in-law interference, tangled expectations, health crises or other predictable issues persist as huge problems that won't go away, biblical words of help and encouragement are needed to revive the marriage out of the emergency room and carry it gently into rehabilitative therapy. Whether it's the hot flare-ups of polarization or the long dry dredges of boredom and disillusionment, decide now that you will fight what infects the intimacy of your marriage relationship.

Keep your vows. Never give up. God will reward your faithfulness.

-Dale Johnsen

Becoming "One Flesh"

Genesis 2:24

Marriage is a unique human relationship. Good friend-to-friend relationships are rewarding and good parent-child relationships are important. However, according to Scripture, no other human relationship should receive the degree of attention required for a successful marriage, and no other relationship can provide the satisfaction that a good marriage does.

In Genesis 2:24 NASB, God states the unique purpose of marriage, "For this cause a man shall leave his father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife, and they shall become one flesh." Such unity will not happen all at once. And even after unity is achieved, it will have its "ebbs and flows."

Achieving unity is impossible without the power of Jesus to make each partner a child of God-a Christian. Romans 6 teaches us that unity with Christ creates a new person. This new person can then achieve unity with another human being.

As we depend on Christ's power and obey Him, the Holy Spirit provides the strength to do what our own strength could not do. Galatians 5:16 NIV says, "So I say, live by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the sinful nature." A vibrant relationship with Christ will help a couple to truly become "one flesh."

The joys of a good marriage which is based on a biblical relationship with Christ has rewards in this world and beyond!

-Jim Wilson, Jr.

Glen Rock Light

Celibate In the City: Singles and the Church

As the debate over the definition of marriage has raged on in this country for years, for many of the 96 million single Americans a different marriage question has been on their minds. Historically, the question for them is not, “what is marriage?” but “will I get married?”

But today, surprisingly, fewer of them are still asking that question. In a startling study from the Pew Research Center, among all singles, “just 16 percent say they are currently looking for a romantic partner.” Even taking the divorced, the widowed, and those currently in committed relationships into account, that percentage is surprisingly small. Among 18- to 29-year-olds, the number is not much higher, just 22 percent. Statistics like these are not welcome news for those single people looking for a husband or wife.

Connally Gilliam, one of the many thirty-somethings in America who would classify themselves as “unintentionally single,” comments on what it's like to grow up in a world so vastly different from her mother's and grandmother's — a world in which early marriage and child-rearing was the norm.

Gilliam writes: “My mother said once in a moment of candor, 'I feel as if I've enriched you for a world that no longer trades in our currency.’ A treasure chest of Confederate cash, you might say. She was, at least in part right.” Gilliam continues, “While I still know how to grow tomatoes and make vegetable soup from scratch — and do — the wildly shifting culture has a gravitational pull that I've not been able to control. The seesaw has tilted,” she writes, “and the bottom line is that, try as I might, I haven't been able to find my way back home, at least to the home of my mothers.”

Gilliam's humorous and honest book REVELATIONS OF A SINGLE WOMAN offers a voice that is sometimes lacking in the Church: a voice of compassion for the millions of men and women who are finding themselves empty-handed when they had at least expected a pair, if not a full house, by this point in their lives.

Lauren Winner, another bright young writer, tackles similar subjects in her book REAL SEX: THE NAKED TRUTH ABOUT CHASTITY. Winner writes about what singleness can teach the Church. We often hear how marriage is a picture of Christ and His Church. Winner says singleness reminds us of another picture, what she calls “a vacancy for God.” Winner writes, “Unmarried people are asked to specialize in creating an emptiness for God, an emptiness that everyone, single or married, needs to maintain ... In singleness we see not only where our true dependence lies, but also who and what our real family is. Singleness,” she says, “reminds Christians that the Church is our primary family.”

Cultural trends like urbanization, increased mobility, divorce, and the sexual revolution leave our sons and daughters navigating in unfamiliar waters. I'm grateful that there are voices like Gilliam and Winner to help bring a biblical perspective to the kinds of experiences that this generation is facing that their parents did not have to face. And these kinds of voices help prepare those of us in the Church, lay people and clergy alike, to minister effectively to those singles in our midst.

________

Training Shamu and Husbands [2 Versions]

Attention, frustrated wives: if you want your husband to start listening to you and stop leaving his socks on the floor, all you need is a little patience and a lot of mackerel. Such is the putative relationship advice of Amy Sutherland, a journalist who spent a year at an animal-trainer school and decided to apply the trainers’ techniques to her husband’s annoying habits. According to Sutherland, the key to marital bliss is to ignore negative habits and reward positive ones, the same approach animal trainers use to get killer whales to leap from their tanks and elephants to stand on their heads. So to teach her husband, Scott, to stop storming around the house when he couldn’t find his keys, she practiced what trainers call Least Reinforcing Scenario, which means she ignored his outbursts, and didn’t offer to help with the search. To prevent Scott from hovering over her while she tried to cook, she engineered “incompatible behaviors” by setting a bowl of chips and salsa at the other end of the room. Soon she had a key-finding, salsa-eating mate and, she says, a happier marriage.

Sutherland first wrote about her experiment in The New York Times in 2006, where it became the most e-mailed story of the year. She has a book, “What Shamu Taught Me About Life, Love and Marriage,” and a movie is in development. Sutherland admits that her ideas are not groundbreaking: in the 1890s Ivan Pavlov experimented with dogs to study stimulus and response. In the 1930s, B. F. Skinner used rats and pigeons to develop his theory of “operant behaviors,” the idea that behavior is affected by its consequences. That doesn’t mean the strategy is not controversial: critics bristle at the idea that humans are as easily manipulated as dogs or marine mammals, and contend that books such as Sutherland’s reinforce war-of-the-sexes stereotypes about women using their feminine wiles to manipulate simple-minded men.

The idea of women training simple men is a well-worn trope of pop culture. In the 1963 film “If a Man Answers,” Sandra Dee’s mother hands her a canine-training manual with the advice “If you want a perfect marriage, treat your husband like a dog.” More recently, the BBC reality show “Bring Your Husband to Heel” featured a professional dog trainer teaching wives how to get their husbands to sit and stay.

While Sutherland claims that animal-training techniques work on both genders, in another new book, “Seducing the Boys Club,” Nina DiSesa advocates a gender-specific approach to changing people’s behavior. DiSesa, who was the first female chairman of the ad agency McCann Erickson, argues that women should use their femininity to manipulate the men they work with and advance their careers. Instead of criticizing an employee’s ad proposal, she flatters him for his “brilliant” idea, then sweetly asks if he had any other inspirations. “Women use these tactics with men all the time,” she says. “We’re mothers, wives, girlfriends, sisters. We know how to handle men, we just don’t do it at work.”

While DiSesa’s tactics may appall feminists, the appeal of Sutherland’s approach is obvious: no tearful couples-therapy sessions, no tantrums about unmet expectations. But Sutherland says it’s not a quick fix. In fact, she was the one who wound up being retrained, as she taught herself not to take her husband’s actions personally, and not to react when he did things that annoyed her. DiSesa also says she retrained herself to stop criticizing and confronting the men she worked with, and instead use “S and M,” seduction and manipulation, to get her way.

And, she says, we shouldn’t admit to our manipulations. “If people think I’m being conniving, I am,” she says. “But if men see it coming, they’ll duck.” Sutherland’s husband eventually caught on to her experiment (it didn’t help that she wrote a book about the animal-trainer school), and even started using the techniques back on her. Now they use the word “shamu” as a verb, as in “Did you just shamu me?”

Shamuing might work to get your husband to stop leaving his socks on the bathroom floor, says psychotherapist Marlin Potash, author of “Hidden Agendas: What’s Really Going On in Your Relationships.” “In small doses, it’s really a good idea,” she says. But she’s skeptical of the idea that the technique will work with real marital problems such as lack of communication or sexual incompatibility: “I don’t really believe that changing these small behaviors is how one transforms a marriage.” Sutherland makes no claims to be a relationship expert. And she’s not opposed to therapy, although she says, judging from the enthusiastic response to her essay, “Psychologists might want to consider bringing more animals into the mix.”

Sit, Beg, Roll Over, Stay

Animal trainers use lots of tricks to train their charges. Try the techniques below at home:

Reward positive behavior: If your mate picks up just one dirty sock without being asked, give lots of praise. Or a tasty fish.

Ignore negatives: Don’t nag about the rest of the filthy laundry still piled on the floor. Trainers call this Least Reinforcing Scenario.

Don’t take it personally: Laundry is just laundry, not a symbol for how much your spouse loves you or values your marriage.

======================

"What Shamu Taught Me About a Happy Marriage," http://www.nytimes.com, 6/25/2006, by Amy Sutherland

As I wash dishes at the kitchen sink, my husband paces behind me, irritated. “Have you seen my keys?” he snarls, then huffs out a loud sigh and stomps from the room with our dog, Dixie, at his heels, anxious over her favorite human's upset.

In the past I would have been right behind Dixie. I would have turned off the faucet and joined the hunt while trying to soothe my husband with bromides like, “Don't worry, they'll turn up.” But that only made him angrier, and a simple case of missing keys soon would become a full-blown angst-ridden drama starring the two of us and our poor nervous dog.

Now, I focus on the wet dish in my hands. I don't turn around. I don't say a word. I'm using a technique I learned from a dolphin trainer.

I love my husband. He's well read, adventurous and does a hysterical rendition of a northern Vermont accent that still cracks me up after 12 years of marriage.

But he also tends to be forgetful, and is often tardy and mercurial. He hovers around me in the kitchen asking if I read this or that piece in The New Yorker when I'm trying to concentrate on the simmering pans. He leaves wadded tissues in his wake. He suffers from serious bouts of spousal deafness but never fails to hear me when I mutter to myself on the other side of the house. “What did you say?” he'll shout.

These minor annoyances are not the stuff of separation and divorce, but in sum they began to dull my love for Scott. I wanted — needed — to nudge him a little closer to perfect, to make him into a mate who might annoy me a little less, who wouldn't keep me waiting at restaurants, a mate who would be easier to love.

So, like many wives before me, I ignored a library of advice books and set about improving him. By nagging, of course, which only made his behavior worse: he'd drive faster instead of slower; shave less frequently, not more; and leave his reeking bike garb on the bedroom floor longer than ever.

We went to a counselor to smooth the edges off our marriage. She didn't understand what we were doing there and complimented us repeatedly on how well we communicated. I gave up. I guessed she was right — our union was better than most — and resigned myself to stretches of slow-boil resentment and occasional sarcasm.

Then something magical happened. For a book I was writing about a school for exotic animal trainers, I started commuting from Maine to California, where I spent my days watching students do the seemingly impossible: teaching hyenas to pirouette on command, cougars to offer their paws for a nail clipping, and baboons to skateboard. I listened, rapt, as professional trainers explained how they taught dolphins to flip and elephants to paint. Eventually it hit me that the same techniques might work on that stubborn but lovable species, the American husband.

The central lesson I learned from exotic animal trainers is that I should reward behavior I like and ignore behavior I don't. After all, you don't get a sea lion to balance a ball on the end of its nose by nagging. The same goes for the American husband.

Back in Maine, I began thanking Scott if he threw one dirty shirt into the hamper. If he threw in two, I'd kiss him. Meanwhile, I would step over any soiled clothes on the floor without one sharp word, though I did sometimes kick them under the bed. But as he basked in my appreciation, the piles became smaller.

I was using what trainers call “approximations,” rewarding the small steps toward learning a whole new behavior. You can't expect a baboon to learn to flip on command in one session, just as you can't expect an American husband to begin regularly picking up his dirty socks by praising him once for picking up a single sock. With the baboon you first reward a hop, then a bigger hop, then an even bigger hop. With Scott the husband, I began to praise every small act every time: if he drove just a mile an hour slower, tossed one pair of shorts into the hamper, or was on time for anything.

I also began to analyze my husband the way a trainer considers an exotic animal. Enlightened trainers learn all they can about a species, from anatomy to social structure, to understand how it thinks, what it likes and dislikes, what comes easily to it and what doesn't. For example, an elephant is a herd animal, so it responds to hierarchy. It cannot jump, but can stand on its head. It is a vegetarian.

The exotic animal known as Scott is a loner, but an alpha male. So hierarchy matters, but being in a group doesn't so much. He has the balance of a gymnast, but moves slowly, especially when getting dressed. Skiing comes naturally, but being on time does not. He's an omnivore, and what a trainer would call food-driven.

Once I started thinking this way, I couldn't stop. At the school in California, I'd be scribbling notes on how to walk an emu or have a wolf accept you as a pack member, but I'd be thinking, “I can't wait to try this on Scott.”

On a field trip with the students, I listened to a professional trainer describe how he had taught African crested cranes to stop landing on his head and shoulders. He did this by training the leggy birds to land on mats on the ground. This, he explained, is what is called an “incompatible behavior,” a simple but brilliant concept.

Rather than teach the cranes to stop landing on him, the trainer taught the birds something else, a behavior that would make the undesirable behavior impossible. The birds couldn't alight on the mats and his head simultaneously.

At home, I came up with incompatible behaviors for Scott to keep him from crowding me while I cooked. To lure him away from the stove, I piled up parsley for him to chop or cheese for him to grate at the other end of the kitchen island. Or I'd set out a bowl of chips and salsa across the room. Soon I'd done it: no more Scott hovering around me while I cooked.

I followed the students to SeaWorld San Diego, where a dolphin trainer introduced me to least reinforcing syndrome (L.R.S.). When a dolphin does something wrong, the trainer doesn't respond in any way. He stands still for a few beats, careful not to look at the dolphin, and then returns to work. The idea is that any response, positive or negative, fuels a behavior. If a behavior provokes no response, it typically dies away.

In the margins of my notes I wrote, “Try on Scott!”

It was only a matter of time before he was again tearing around the house searching for his keys, at which point I said nothing and kept at what I was doing. It took a lot of discipline to maintain my calm, but results were immediate and stunning. His temper fell far shy of its usual pitch and then waned like a fast-moving storm. I felt as if I should throw him a mackerel.

Now he's at it again; I hear him banging a closet door shut, rustling through papers on a chest in the front hall and thumping upstairs. At the sink, I hold steady. Then, sure enough, all goes quiet. A moment later, he walks into the kitchen, keys in hand, and says calmly, “Found them.”

Without turning, I call out, “Great, see you later.”

Off he goes with our much-calmed pup.

After two years of exotic animal training, my marriage is far smoother, my husband much easier to love. I used to take his faults personally; his dirty clothes on the floor were an affront, a symbol of how he didn't care enough about me. But thinking of my husband as an exotic species gave me the distance I needed to consider our differences more objectively.

I adopted the trainers' motto: “It's never the animal's fault.” When my training attempts failed, I didn't blame Scott. Rather, I brainstormed new strategies, thought up more incompatible behaviors and used smaller approximations. I dissected my own behavior, considered how my actions might inadvertently fuel his. I also accepted that some behaviors were too entrenched, too instinctive to train away. You can't stop a badger from digging, and you can't stop my husband from losing his wallet and keys.

Professionals talk of animals that understand training so well they eventually use it back on the trainer. My animal did the same. When the training techniques worked so beautifully, I couldn't resist telling my husband what I was up to. He wasn't offended, just amused. As I explained the techniques and terminology, he soaked it up. Far more than I realized.

Last fall, firmly in middle age, I learned that I needed braces. They were not only humiliating, but also excruciating. For weeks my gums, teeth, jaw and sinuses throbbed. I complained frequently and loudly. Scott assured me that I would become used to all the metal in my mouth. I did not.

One morning, as I launched into yet another tirade about how uncomfortable I was, Scott just looked at me blankly. He didn't say a word or acknowledge my rant in any way, not even with a nod. I quickly ran out of steam and started to walk away. Then I realized what was happening, and I turned and asked, “Are you giving me an L.R.S.?” Silence. “You are, aren't you?”

He finally smiled, but his L.R.S. has already done the trick. He'd begun to train me, the American wife.

A New War Begins

My husband and I, both active-duty Navy officers, were married by a notary public in Jacksonville, Florida, where I was stationed. Our wedding took place the day the Operation Desert Storm cease-fire was announced. We had gone to the courthouse on my lunch hour, so I was still in uniform. After the notary pronounced us husband and wife, he smiled and shook his head. "One war ends," he said, "and another begins."

________

Contributed to "Humor In Uniform" by Lt. Stephanie Gainer

Source: America In Uniform, Readers' Digest

The Invisible Pull

Are you sitting down? If so, you may be under the impression that you are also sitting still, but the fact is that you are in rapid motion. I’m referring to the earth’s rotation; in the course of a day, our planet rotates at the brisk rate of 1000 miles per hour at the equator. Then there’s the earth’s orbital rate of rotation; we have to travel roughly 67,000 miles an hour to make it all the way around the sun in a year. Are you feeling any motion sickness yet?

I could hardly be more stationary than I am right now as I sit here before my computer. But in spite of the fact that I don’t feel like I’m moving, I know that I am. I see the effects every day in the sun’s rising and setting.

Although our failure to recognize how fast we are traveling may have few ramifications for our daily lives, failure to calculate other kinds of motion has graver implications. All too often, this sort of neglect ruins marriages. When two people are in love, they may have a hard time imagining that they could ever drift apart from each other. They assume that if they don’t actively violate their covenant, their love will continue at the same tenor as when they made their vows. Yet although two people may not feel themselves moving away from each other, couples who don’t continually take active steps to renew their relationships and invest in their marriages wake up one day to find that they don’t know each other. The cares of life exert an orbital pull on a marriage that must be actively resisted; passivity equals moving away from each other swiftly and steadily.

The same sort of negative pull also affects our spiritual lives. The close walk with God that you knew in college or when you first started going to church does not guarantee that you are walking in fellowship with Him right now. Christians who put too much store in past rather than present communion with God are like spouses who see no reason to talk with each other on a daily basis because they had such deep conversations when they were dating. Your relationship with God is no different from your closest relationships with humans when it comes to the need for daily investment.

Of course, just as no husband or wife plans to let their marriage die, none of us plan to let our spiritual lives wither on the vine. But passivity will always lead to waywardness as long as we still have two natures warring with in us. In the scriptures, we see this proved true time and again by the people of Israel. Deliverance from their enemies in the past did not guarantee that they would worship God in the present. The other nations around them and their own hardness of heart exerted a constant pull away from covenant faithfulness.

If you desire walk intimately with your God, consider what you are doing on a daily basis to foster this intimacy. The prophet Hosea, himself painfully aware of the waywardness of human hearts, exhorted Israel, “Let us know; let us press on to know the Lord.” I hope that today you will be renewed in your desire to press on to know the Lord. God has promised that those who seek Him will find Him.

________

The Bridal Robe

Revelation 19:7

His wife hath made herself ready. And to her was granted that she should be arrayed in fine linen, clean and white: for the fine linen is the righteousness of saints. — Revelation 19:7, 8.

She shall be brought unto the king in raiment of needle-work. — Psalm 45:14.

She was betrothed to one of Jewish race

One whom her father trusted and admired

And though she had not seen her bridegroom’s face

She longed to serve him as her heart desired

As is the custom in the east, the bride

Received a present from her groom-to-be

The bridal robe; and she her needle plied

To make it rich with stitch and broidery

And so she worked and waited for the day

When he should come to claim the chosen bride

She worked her love into that bright array

To give him pleasure: she was satisfied.

Do I embroider well my bridal dress?

And is the robe, the Robe of Righteousness? — E. Pool

Marriage Is Not Built On Surprises

Relationship experts report that too many couples fail to ask each other critical questions before marrying. Here are a few key ones that couples should consider asking:

1) Have we discussed whether or not to have children, and if the answer is yes, who is going to be the primary care giver?

2) Do we have a clear idea of each other’s financial obligations and goals, and do our ideas about spending and saving mesh?

3) Have we discussed our expectations for how the household will be maintained, and are we in agreement on who will manage the chores?

4) Have we fully disclosed our health histories, both physical and mental?

5) Is my partner affectionate to the degree that I expect?

6) Can we comfortably and openly discuss our sexual needs, preferences and fears?

7) Will there be a television in the bedroom?

8) Do we truly listen to each other and fairly consider one another’s ideas and complaints?

9) Have we reached a clear understanding of each other’s spiritual beliefs and needs, and have we discussed when and how our children will be exposed to religious/moral education?

10) Do we like and respect each other’s friends?

11) Do we value and respect each other’s parents, and is either of us concerned about whether the parents will interfere with the relationship?

12) What does my family do that annoys you?

13) Are there some things that you and I are NOT prepared to give up in the marriage?

14) If one of us were to be offered a career opportunity in a location far from the other’s family, are we prepared to move?

15) Does each of us feel fully confident in the other’s commitment to the marriage and believe that the bond can survive whatever challenges we may face?

Elimelech and His Family In Moab

Ruth 1:2

1 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 1

The Beauty of Ruth

Elimelech and his family in Moab

– - – - – slide above, notes below – - – - -

A. Last week we looked at chapter 1, verse 1 of the book of Ruth:

1. “And it came to pass in the days when the judges were ruling, there was a famine in the land; and a man went from Bethlehem of Judah in order to sojourn in the Plains of Moab; he, and his wife and both his sons.” (RGH)

2. Deuteronomy 2:9 tells us that the Plains (or Fields) of Moab, also known as the land of Ar, had been given to the descendants of Moab, Lot’s son, by God: “Then the LORD said to me, ‘Do not harass Moab, nor provoke them to war, for I will not give you any of their land as a possession, because I have given Ar to the sons of Lot as a possession.’” (2:9 NAS)

3. So, God’s command was that His people, Israel, were not to dwell there.

2 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 2

Review of last week

A. This happened in the time of the judges

B. During this time God used oppression and hardship to judge the people of Israel when they forgot Him

C. There was a famine and a man left Bethlehem in Judah to go and live in Moab with his wife and 2 sons

– - – - – slide above, notes below – - – - -

A. We found that this happened during the period of the judges, after the land had been divided among the twelve tribes and Joshua was dead. It was during the earlier part of that 320 years, probably in the first century, possibly in the period just before Gideon became judge; probably not in the period before Ehud because at that time Moab, under King Eglon, was the oppressor of Israel.

B. During the period of the judges there are 7 cycles in which

1. the people forget God

2. God brought hardship upon them in the form of foreign oppressors and, at least in the time of Gideon, food shortages

3. the people cried out to God

4. God raised up a judge to deliver

5. there was a period of peace.

C. This man apparently had the means (we will note the indications of this in the book) to pick up and leave to go to Moab where life was easier; but Israel was not to have concourse with Moab because of Moab’s actions when Israel came from Egypt (hiring Balaam – we will return to this in a few minutes), so

1. Although this was a natural action for a father in looking after his family, it was not an act of faith:

2. It was disobedient to God (Israel was not to have possession in land of Ar, was not to consort with the Moabites)

3. It was an act of independence rather than the response of repentance which God sought

3 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 3

The story of Elimelech unfolds

A. In Ruth 1:2-5, we are given more information

1. The name of the man and his wife

2. The name of their 2 sons

3. How long they lived there (roughly)

4. The death of the man

5. The marriage of the two sons

6. The death of the sons

– - – - – slide above, notes below – - – - -

A. Here is the next part of the story, Ruth 1:2-5 (RGH): 2 The name of the man was Elimelech, and the name of his wife, Naomi, and the names of his two sons, Mahlon and Chilion; Ephrathites, from Bethlehem of Judah; and they came to the Plains of Moab, and they stayed there. 3 And Elimelech, the husband of Naomi, died; and she was left bereft, she and her two sons. 4 And they took to themselves wives, Moabitesses, the name of the first, Orpah, and the name of the second, Ruth; and they dwelt there about ten years. 5 And both of them, Mahlon and Chilion, died also; so the woman was bereft of both her boys as well as of her husband.

4 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 4

Considering Elimelech

A. Name means ‘My God is king’

B. Was Elimelech’s taking his family to Moab blatant rebellion against God?

C. How did Elimelech personally fare as result of his decision?

– - – - – slide above, notes below – - – - -

A. Name also translated, ‘His (i.e.., Elimelech’s) God is King’, ‘God is King’, and ‘God shall be King’

B. Elimelech’s action

1. Is not specifically criticized or condemned in the book of Ruth

2. Was a natural action for a father to care for his family

3. It seems even commendable given Paul’s words, “But if anyone does not provide for his own, and especially for those of his household, he has denied the faith, and is worse than an unbeliever.” (1 Timothy 5:8 NAS)

4. Differed in degree from the murmurers against Moses in the wilderness who were slain

5. But was disobedient to what God commanded to His people Israel

a. Not to take possessions in Moab

b. Not to consort with Moabites

6. So, Elimelech failed to live up to the name that he bore

C. There is no record of how much time passed, but the indication is that it was in a relatively short period that Elimelech died; so any benefit from his action was relatively short-lived.

5 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 5

Lessons from Elimelech

A. What lessons can we as Christians learn from this?

1. The commandments of God are not to be treated lightly (John 15:10, 1 Corinthians 11:1)

2. Our lives and actions affect the meaning of Christ and Christian to those around us (2 Thessalonians 1:11-12)

3. Despite means and endeavours, you cannot outrun death.

– - – - – slide above, notes below – - – - -

A. Lessons for the Christians

1. Christ told us, His disciples, this:

a. “If you keep My commandments, you will abide in My love; just as I have kept My Father’s commandments, and abide in His love.” (John 15:10 NAS)

b. Showing that He is our example as Paul also confesses, “Be imitators of me, just as I also am of Christ.” (1 Corinthians 11:1 NAS)

2. We may reflect either poorly or well on the names of Christ and Christian

a. “Christians who are slaves should give their masters full respect so that the name of God and his teaching will not be shamed.” (1 Timothy 6:1 NLT)

b. “To this end also we pray for you always that our God may count you worthy of your calling, and fulfill every desire for goodness and the work of faith with power; in order that the name of our Lord Jesus may be glorified in you, and you in Him, according to the grace of our God and the Lord Jesus Christ.” (2 Thessalonians 1:11-12 NAS)

3. Many live as though their lives would never end, that they would never be called into account: “We think all men mortal save ourselves”

6 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 6

Consider Mahlon and Chilion

A. What three things happened to the two sons

1. They came to a marriageable age

2. They took wives from among the people of Moab

3. They died without children

B. How did the two sons fare as a result of Elimelech’s decision?

1. Every indication is that they really did not prosper!

– - – - – slide above, notes below – - – - -

A. During this period, the two sons became of marriageable age

B. The names mean

1. Mahlon – ‘sick, sickly’ – husband of Ruth (4:10)

2. Chilion – ‘pining, languishing’ – hence, husband of Orpah

3. There is an unlikely Jewish supposition that their real names were Joash and Saraph, based upon the genealogy of the descendants of Judah given in 1 Chronicles 4:22.

4. Whether this be true or not, these names here may have been descriptive epithets given to them later as they sickened and died

5. In any event, this was not a prosperous result!

7 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 7

The matter of their marriage

A. “Furthermore, you shall not intermarry with them; you shall not give your daughters to their sons, nor shall you take their daughters for your sons.” (Deuteronomy 7:3 NAS)

B. “No Ammonite or Moabite shall enter the assembly of the LORD; none of their descendants, even to the tenth generation, shall ever enter the assembly of the LORD,” (Deuteronomy 23:3 NAS)

C. Bible interprets itself: Nehemiah 13:1-2, 23, 25, 27

– - – - – slide above, notes below – - – - -

A. The first of these passages applied particularly to the Israelites marrying the people of the land of Canaan, the 7 nations that God would have them drive out

B. The second is was the separation that was to be maintained from Ammon and Moab on account of their hiring Balaam to curse Israel

C. These verses are particularly applied by both Ezra (9:2) and Nehemiah:

1. “On that day they read aloud from the book of Moses in the hearing of the people; and there was found written in it that no Ammonite or Moabite should ever enter the assembly of God, because they did not meet the sons of Israel with bread and water, but hired Balaam against them to curse them. However, our God turned the curse into a blessing.” (Nehemiah 13:1-2 NAS)

2. “In those days I also saw that the Jews had married women from Ashdod, Ammon, and Moab.” (Nehemiah 13:23 NAS)

3. “So I contended with them and cursed them and struck some of them and pulled out their hair, and made them swear by God, “You shall not give your daughters to their sons, nor take of their daughters for your sons or for yourselves.” (Nehemiah 13:25 NAS)

4. “Do we then hear about you that you have committed all this great evil by acting unfaithfully against our God by marrying foreign women?”” (Nehemiah 13:27 NAS)

D. Therefore, Jewish writers say that the early deaths of both the young men were divine judgments inflicted on them for those unlawful connections, that the consorting of Elimelech and his sons with Moab was an act of unfaithfulness to God.

8 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 8

Lessons from Mahlon and Chilion

A. What lessons can we learn as Christians from what happened to these two sons?

1. Wrong or poor decisions that we make will have bad effects upon others

2. Do not underestimate the power of being either a good or a poor example

3. For the Christian, the matter of relationships is important, too (2 Corinthians 6:14)

– - – - – slide above, notes below – - – - -

A. Resulting from Elimelech’s decision

1. We see his boys thrown into acquaintance with wrong people, wrong ideas, wrong actions; how we as parents pay for how we fail to protect our children in this respect!

2. Yet, we cannot put a wall around our children – we may try, but eventually the right way of living must come from the Holy Spirit’s work inside them – so our example should be a means of guidance; “Train up a child in the way he should go, Even when he is old he will not depart from it.” (Proverbs 22:6 NAS) … but between youth and maturity there may be side excursions.

3. “Do not be bound together with unbelievers; for what partnership have righteousness and lawlessness, or what fellowship has light with darkness?” (2 Corinthians 6:14 NAS)

9 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 9

Consider Naomi

A. The meaning of the name Naomi is ‘fair’, ‘pleasant’ or ‘pleasantness’; How does her name compare with her situation?

B. How did Naomi fare as a result of Elimelech’s decision?

C. In practical terms, what has God done to Naomi?

– - – - – slide above, notes below – - – - -

A. Remember the meaning of this name, because Naomi later will ask people to call her by a new name. Also, as opposed to her situation, keep your eyes open for how Naomi’s name compared with her real character.

B. She is left bereft in a foreign land with 2 foreign daughters-in-law; apparently without means of support other than any accumulated savings; the prophecy of Isaiah against Judah is similar:

1. “But these two things shall come on you suddenly in one day: Loss of children and widowhood. They shall come on you in full measure In spite of your many sorceries, In spite of the great power of your spells.” (Isaiah 47:9 NAS)

2. “These two things have befallen you; Who will mourn for you? The devastation and destruction, famine and sword; How shall I comfort you?” (Isaiah 51:19 NAS)

C. God has removed …

1. … everything that would give her independence: in that society, a husband and / or sons were the providers and the mark of blessedness and success

2. … every tie that would hold her in the land of Moab where she did not belong

3. … apparently, every human helper (what can she expect from these young women, kind as they have been); in an agrarian, patristic society, without the benefit of Israel’s God-given social laws, the widow without means was in a terrible situation

10 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 10

Lessons from Naomi

A. What lessons can we as Christians learn from Naomi as she finds herself in this situation?

1. God is still on the throne, Psalm 47:8, regardless of where we may find ourselves through either our own wilfulness or the actions of others

2. God will work out His plans and purposes despite us (Isaiah 46:10-11, Ephesians 1:11)

3. What God does he does for our good (Romans 8:28)

– - – - – slide above, notes below – - – - -

A. When we find ourselves experiencing the same situation as Naomi, what are some truths that we need to call to our mind (we do not yet see these being true for Naomi but we will)?

1. “God reigns over the nations, God sits on His holy throne.” (Psalms 47:8 NAS)

2. God is working out His plans

a. “Declaring the end from the beginning And from ancient times things which have not been done, Saying, ‘My purpose will be established, And I will accomplish all My good pleasure; Calling a bird of prey from the east, The man of My purpose from a far country. Truly I have spoken; truly I will bring it to pass. I have planned it, surely I will do it.’” Isaiah 46:10-11 NAS)

b. “also we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to His purpose who works all things after the counsel of His will,” (Ephesians 1:11 NAS)

3. God works these plans out for our benefit, “And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose.” (Romans 8:28 NAS)

11 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 11

Next week, Ruth 1:6-18

The characters of three women

– - – - – slide above, notes below – - – - -

A. We have a longer passage for next week

1. We will look at the relationship between Naomi and her two daughters-inlaw

2. And each of their characters

B. We may finish that passage or not, but, Lord willing, in any case we will look at the final few verses from another perspective in a subsequent lesson

Marriage Matters

Proverbs 31:30

I get some mail from readers asking for advice on shaky marital situations, sometimes with a third person involved. I am not a qualified counselor on the subject, so I can’t give advice except to say, “The grass is often greener on the other side of the fence, but once you are over there, the grass often turns brown pretty fast.” The other question to ask is, would God approve of your plans? Believe it or not, it’s pretty easy for us to talk ourselves into doing some pretty foolish things.

It would be wonderful if all couples could have the kind of happy relationship Betty and I have. In personality we are total opposites, but we’ve learned the valuable lesson of accepting each other for who we are, and we don’t try to re-make each other. That doesn’t give us license to have a “who cares” attitude. It gives us the challenge to be the best we can for each other. We would wish the same for you.

Listen to Prov. 31:30, “Charm is deceptive, and beauty is fleeting: but a woman who fears the Lord is to be praised.” May I add — the couple that fears (respects) the Lord together is to be praised

Boaz Gains Land and A Hand

Ruth 4:1

1 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 1

The Beauty of Ruth

Boaz Gains Land and a Hand

Ruth 4:1-10

– - – - – slide above, notes below – - – - -

A. Today we approach the end of this short story of Ruth, this being our last but one study. Next week we shall complete the study, along with a review of the book as a whole.

2 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 2

A Review

A. Ruth, the Moabitess, the widow of Mahlon and the daughter-in-law of Naomi, has spent the summer gleaning to provide for Naomi and herself. This has been in the field of Boaz, a near kinsman. At the end of the harvest, when the winnowing took place, Naomi sent Ruth with some strange instructions.

B. What was Ruth to do?

C. What was the result?

– - – - – slide above, notes below – - – - -

A. We will recapitulate just the most recent happenings.

B. Ruth was

1. To cleanse herself, dressing herself for the occasion

2. To attend the winnowing without letting herself be seen

3. To observe when and where Boaz lied down and to go and uncover his feet and to lay herself at his feet

C. Ruth obeyed according to Naomi’s instructions and

1. In the night Boaz stirred and found Ruth at his feet

2. In response to his question, she claimed him as Kinsman-Redeemer

3. He pointed out that there was a nearer Kinsman-Redeemer, but that he would confront that man in the morning, so that one of them would redeem (and marry) her.

4. He sent her home early in the morning before it was light enough to be recognized and gave to her 6 measures of barley

5. Ruth told this to Naomi who assured her that the matter would soon be settled

3 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 3

Boaz goes to court, 4:1-2

A. Boaz keeps his promise immediately, bearing out Naomi’s assessment that he would do so

B. What things often took place in the gate of the town?

C. What was Boaz’ first purpose in being in that place?

– - – - – slide above, notes below – - – - -

A. 1 Now Boaz ascended to the gate and just then the near relation was passing by of whom Boaz had spoken; and he said, ‘Turn aside, sir, sit here; you are just the one!’ So he turned aside and sat down. 2 Then he took ten men from the elders of the city, and he said ‘Sit down here,’ and they sat down.

B. A review question … it was the place for judgement and commerce. The people lived in the towns or cities and worked in the fields and pastures which surrounded them. To do so, they would have to pass in and out through the gate of the city. (Cf eg., Deuteronomy 12:15) Thus it was a place where the people of the city would meet and greet each other in the course of the day.

C. Boaz purposed to meet the nearer kinsman. His greeting is equivalent to ‘you’re just the man I want to see!’ We do not know his name, so let’s just call him “Go‘el”. There are some clues in the story as to his character but we will only touch upon the obvious.

4 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 4

4:1-2, continued

A. Deuteronomy 19:15 …how many witnesses were normally needed?

B. What do you think his calling for ten means?

C. What was the atmosphere of this court scene?

– - – - – slide above, notes below – - – - -

A. Two or three were the normal requirement and the is continued into the church (Matthew 18:16, 2 Corinthians 13:1, 1 Timothy 5:1)

B. Boaz wanted the decision established beyond all doubt. What emphasizes this? The nature of the witnesses which he solicits: they were elders (ie., rulers, men of consequence; “aldermen”) in the city. The Jewish Mishnah specifies that there be at least ten persons present to bless the bride and bridegroom at their wedding … but this may be a consequence rather than a cause of Boaz’ calling out these ten.

C. Simple, informal (from one point of view, in that it did not have to be preceded by a formal announcement and scheduling), friendly. There was an certain unhurriedness in the events as they unfold, with people prepared to spend the time on such an occurrence. This can be found in rural communities with small landholders where they will chat for quite a while before getting down to the business at hand.

5 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 5

Land ‘For Sale’, 4:3-4

A. Boaz introduces into court the matter of the land, the first subject of the transaction in view.

B. Let us read Leviticus 25:23-31 which gives us some of the real estate laws for Israel.

C. What problem did Naomi’s situation give with respect to her land? What right did she have respecting it (Leviticus 25:25)?

– - – - – slide above, notes below – - – - -

A. 3 And he said to the Kinsman-Redeemer, ‘Naomi, who has returned from the plains of Moab, is about to sell the portion of the fields which belonged to our brother, Elimelech. 4 And I decided I will disclose this to you, saying, “Buy!” before these witnesses sitting there and before the elders of my people; and, if you will redeem, then redeem; and if you will not redeem, then tell me, that I may know since there is none except you to redeem, and I am after you.’ And he said, ‘I myself will redeem.’

B. This passage deals with fields, houses in walled cities and unwalled villages; it continues on to talk about the land belonging to the Levites and of those becoming so poor that they have sell themselves to becoming slaves. Sales of fields were not final for the land reverted in the jubilee; in effect they were leased for a single payment until the jubilee.

C. She had no descendants, so the land would pass out of her family. As one of the poor, she had the right to sell it. With no descendants, it would not revert in the jubilee.

6 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 6

4:3-4, continued

A. ‘About to sell’

B. What would make this land attractive to Go‘el?

C. Why do you think Go‘el accepted so readily?

D. What do we gather that Go‘el had not done since the start of the barley harvest?

– - – - – slide above, notes below – - – - -

A. The words ‘about to sell’ can be past or present; the situation was …

1. Naomi still owns the land of her husband (the story of Zelophehad’s daughters illustrates her right) and has now purposed to sell it.

2. Naomi (with Elimelech) had sold (“leased”) the land when they left for Moab, or mortgaged it since, and is now selling her right of return at the jubilee, unless a Kinsman-Redeemer should redeem it for her

3. Naomi is seeking to have the land redeemed to Elimelech’s family by a marriage to Ruth in order to raise up a descendant to Elimelech for the purpose of inheriting the land,.

4. Boaz’ using the word ‘redeemed’ makes the last two more likely

B. As Elimelech had no descendants left, the land would appear to be a permanent addition to his property and inheritance

C. He had the financial means to buy the land and it was attractive; probably close to his own or even adjacent (way land was allotted)

D. He does not seem to have sought Naomi’s situation to help her as per Leviticus 25:35 (previously read) although he had money

7 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 7

Hand ‘For Sale’, 4:5-6

A. Now Boaz informs the Go‘el, ‘this is a package deal!’

B. Deuteronomy 25:5-10:

1. what was the purpose of Levirate marriage?

2. what if he refused to do so?

C. How might Go‘el’s inheritance be marred?

D. Does Boaz understand Go‘el?

E. What do you think of the court-room procedure? …of Boaz’ approach?

– - – - – slide above, notes below – - – - -

A. 5 Then Boaz said, ‘In the day that you acquire the field from the hand of Naomi; also you must acquire Ruth, the Moabitess, the widow, to perpetuate the name of the dead unto his possession.’ 6 So the Goel said, ‘I am unable to redeem it to me, lest I should spoil my inheritance; redeem to yourself my right of redemption, for I am unable to redeem.’

B. Levirate marriage:

1. That the first-born perpetuate the name of the dead brother (kinsman; here, Elimelech);

2. The sandal incident was associated with the shame in his refusing

C. The first-born would get the land of Elimelech; any born thereafter would be allotted from his own possessions; all this at Go‘el’s expense.

D. It seems so by the way he introduces the subject of Ruth and the response he gets which agrees with his own feelings and purposes

E. Go‘el cannot complain he did not have a fair deal. There is nothing underhanded in how Boaz approached him before the witnesses.

8 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 8

The transaction sealed, 4:7-8

A. Note that in this court, no judge presides, except the witnesses who observe that it is justice is done

B. Read Jeremiah 32:10-11; what was different about the way this would be done later? What did the former method of doing this business require?

C. Is Go‘el under any illusions as to Boaz’ purpose?

D. Do you have any comment on the character of Go‘el?

– - – - – slide above, notes below – - – - -

A. 7 Now this was the custom formerly in Israel concerning the redemption and concerning the exchange to ratify the whole matter, one drew off his shoe and gave it to the other party, and this was for a testimony in Israel. 8 So the Kinsman-Redeemer said to Boaz, ‘Acquire for yourself,’ and he drew off his sandal.

B. Later, such a transaction would be written out. The former method depended wholly upon the trustworthiness of the principals and of the witnesses.

C. No; Go‘el was aware from the first of Boaz’ desired because

1. Boaz sought him out and initiated the discussion

2. Boaz formalized the proceedings by calling witnesses

3. Boaz has already pointed out that only Go‘el has precedence over himself in this matter

D. He seems to me to be an honest but not overly generous person … that’s just an opinion.

9 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 9

The contract declared, 4:9–10

A. Boaz now declares his intent to fulfil the contract and to carry out the Go‘el responsibilities which have been transferred to himself. We will look at the declaration of the witnesses next week.

B. What does this conclusion demonstrate about Boaz?

C. Why this publication by Boaz?

D. What is Boaz’ tone of voice in this announcement?

– - – - – slide above, notes below – - – - -

A. 9 And Boaz spake to the elders and all the people, ‘Witnesses are you this day, that I shall buy all that which belonged to Elimelech, and everything that belonged to Chilion and Mahlon, from the hand of Naomi: 10 and also Ruth, the Moabitess, the widow of Mahlon, I have thus acquired for myself for a wife to raise up the name of the dead unto his inheritance, so that the name of the dead not be cut off from the midst of his brothers and from the gate of his hometown. You are witness this day.’

B. He is

1. Trustworthy for he has carried our all that he promised to Ruth

2. Thorough for he has observed every obligation and will look after every part of the contract; his purchase is fully complete (“everything”) and in accordance with his previously demonstrated kindness and his position.

C. Ever seen a creditor notice in the newspaper? … this makes known to one and all that Boaz will settle with anyone holding any debt of Elimelech and his family. ‘All that belonged’ in the Hebrew (‘all that which pertains to Elimelech’) is wide enough to include both assets and liabilities (just as when you buy a business, a farm, etc.) Moreover, marriage by its very character, demands to be publicly declared and acknowledged.

D. Jubilation?!

10 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 10

4:9-10, continued

A. What is one purpose of Boaz’ in taking Ruth as wife?

B. What is our relation to our Kinsman-Redeemer respecting inheritances?

1. Hebrews 2:11

2. Romans 8:17

3. 1 Peter 1:3-4

4. John 14:6

– - – - – slide above, notes below – - – - -

A. That he raise up a posterity to his dead kinsmen, Elimelech and Mahlon, that their inheritance should not disappear from the people of Israel. In these words, too, there is an unspoken, sad story told of what Orpah lost by her decision to return.

B. Our Go‘el, the descendant of Boaz and Ruth, the Messiah has

1. Accepted us as the closest of kinsmen: as brethren

2. Gained us the position of being joint-heirs with Himself

3. Through His resurrection given us a living hope of an eternal inheritance

4. Is returned to heaven to prepare that inheritance for us

11 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 11

4:11-12, for next week …

A. 11 And all the people which were in the gate and the elders answered, ‘We are witnesses; May Yahweh establish the woman who is coming unto your house as Rachel and as Leah who together the two of them built the house of Israel. Now do mightily in Ephratah and make a name in Bethlehem. 12 May your house be as the house of Perez, whom Tamar bore to Judah, of the seed which Yahweh may give to you from this damsel.’

– - – - – slide above, notes below – - – - -

A. This is the declaration of the witnesses for next week. This is the transition from the court to what follows.

12 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 12

– - – - – slide above, notes below – - – - -

A. Well, you tuned in this week … what happened? … did Boaz get the girl?

The Leader and His Wife 1:18:03

by Aaron Hurst

The sermon emphasizes the importance of understanding God's design for marriage, with the husband loving and caring for his wife as Christ loved the church.

Wives, Reverence Your Husbands 1:29:08

by Aaron Hurst

The sermon emphasizes the importance of reverence in marriage, specifically for wives to reverence their husbands and use their power of influence for good.

Counsel to a Distressed Wife

by Art Katz

As a Christian wife, it is essential to honor your spouse, maintain self-control, and trust in God's sovereignty to achieve peace and righteousness in your marriage.

(1 Corinthians) Overview to Chapter 7 51:17

by Brian Brodersen

Paul addresses the Corinthians' questions and opinions on marriage, celibacy, and spirituality, refuting the ascetic view and emphasizing the importance of understanding Christiani

A Marriage Gone Sour 48:46

by Chuck Smith

The sermon explores the biblical principles of marriage, emphasizing love, respect, and the consequences of communication breakdowns through the story of David and Michal.

Matthew 5:31

by Chuck Smith

Chuck Smith explores the biblical teachings on divorce, contrasting the Law of Moses with Jesus' perspective on marriage and separation.

Understanding Marriage - the Shared Life 34:14

by David Guzik

A Christian marriage is built on a self-sacrificing love that puts the wife's needs before one's own, as demonstrated by Jesus' love for the church.

Crash Course to a Wonderful Family - Part 2 59:09

by David Servant

The sermon emphasizes the importance of traditional family values and the need for Christians to prioritize their relationships and values over worldly pursuits.

Rejoice With the Wife of Thy Youth 1:09:36

by Denny Kenaston

A loving marriage is a blessing from God, and it requires commitment, dedication, and a relationship that is constantly interacting and building.

How to Have a Happy Home 15:40

by E.A. Johnston

E.A. Johnston teaches that a happy home is secured through mutual submission, sacrificial love, holiness, and guarding against worldly influences by placing Christ at the center of

The Sin of Fornication 5:28

by E.A. Johnston

E.A. Johnston boldly confronts the widespread sin of fornication, urging believers to honor God's design for marriage and flee youthful lusts in a culture that normalizes sexual im

According to the Will of God

by Erlo Stegen

To live a life that pleases God and ensure a successful marriage, one must seek God's will and flee from sin.

These illustrations have been gathered from many sources over many years and are offered to preachers as a study aid. Each is credited wherever the source is known, and we have made every effort to respect the rights of authors and publishers.

If you hold the rights to anything here and would like it credited differently or removed, please write to us and we will act promptly.