Deconstructing the Myth of Perfect Soulmates

Ever wondered why marriage, as age-old a tradition as it is, seems to be quickly fading away in modern times? This week, we're taking a magnifying glass to the mission and purpose of marriage, as seen through the lens of scripture and modern societal changes. Our conversation delves into the shift in attitudes towards marriage, the rise in cohabitation, and how a deeper understanding of the mission of marriage can offer valuable insights for enhancing relationships, regardless of your marital status.

Moving forward, we ponder over the power of promising in marriage - the mutual vows that bind two individuals in a covenant. We dissect the dual structure of these vows, each part promising loyalty to God and each other, and how this differs from a mere contract. Plus, we explore the self-resignation that goes hand-in-hand with a covenant and how God communicates with us within this covenant. It's all about the power of a promise.

Lastly, we discuss submission in marriage - a topic often misunderstood. Drawing from Paul's letter to the Ephesians, we understand the concept of forgoing personal rights to serve one another. We debunk the myth of the 'perfect soulmate' and shine a light on the importance of humility, grace, and mutual allowances - the real ingredients to a successful marriage. Trusting God, in marriage and in singleness, is the cornerstone of a fulfilling relationship. Ready to explore the intricacies of marriage and trust? Let's dive in.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:17

Good morning, northgate. It's always great to be here and getting the opportunity to share with you. Before I get started in today's message, i just want to say how appreciative I am of Pastor Larry, and I hope you are too. I just got to tell you no one knows the weight that the senior pastor of this church carries Nobody does And I hope that you pray for him. I hope that you support him, send him thank you cards and words of encouragement. I know it firsthand. So whatever you can do to encourage him, pray for him, support him, i just wholeheartedly encourage you to do all of that, all right? So, yes, we are starting a brand new series this week.

Speaker 1: 1:01

It's all on relationships, and the thing that I've been asked to talk about is the mission of marriage, which is a pretty important relationship, and I'm not really sure why I got asked about this one. Maybe it's just because I'm the old guy and it's all that wisdom and experience that I've had, but we actually just last month celebrated our 47th wedding anniversary. Yep, this is what it looked like in 1976. Yes, 1976, the year of the Powder Blue Tuxedo Cutting the cake. Yes, this next one actually is my favorite shot here. Oh, isn't that cool? Look at that hair. I mean, it's not Pastor Jeff hair, but it's pretty doggone close. Let me ask you, does that look like two people who have any idea what they are getting themselves into? Not a clue, not a clue at all. You know the whole idea of a mission. I said mission. Who needs a mission? We're in love? Yeah, well, there is a mission to marriage And really it all comes down to God's design and God's purpose and God's intent for it.

Speaker 1: 2:18

And I think because, particularly in our culture, we have lost this sense of mission or purpose in marriage, that it's led to a real decline in marriage in our culture, particularly in the United States. I saw this just in the last couple of weeks ago. This is a couple of charts. Let me show you the decline. So the 1970s that's when I was married the living arrangements for young adults ages 25 to 34. Since the 70s to 2018, it has declined from 81.5% down to 40.3% And the increase in people living with a partner just cohabitating went from 0.2% up to 14.8% almost 15% of adults living from 25 to 34 year olds. If you go to 18 to 24 year olds, it's even worse. The decline in marriage has gone from 39, almost 40% down to 7.3%, and there's actually more people in that age group now that are living with a partner not getting married, just cohabitating And I think because of that it becomes really important that we understand there is a mission, there is a purpose to marriage.

Speaker 1: 3:35

So today's message I want to speak to, first of all to married couples who have discovered that it's a lot harder than you thought it was going to be when you started down this road. And I also want to speak to those married couples where everything's going good and this is just kind of a refresher course. But I also want to speak to singles, because I think there's a number of singles who feel like it's not really necessary. What's the value in it? I don't have the need for it. Or maybe on the other end of that spectrum is a single person. You are overly anxious about finding a mate and getting married because you just got to get married. So I'm going to try and cover for a broad range of people here, and even for those of you who maybe have gone through a divorce or have lost a spouse or a partner through death. You know it's hard to talk about this subject when there's such a broad range of people, but I'm going to try to address each and every one of those And I want to start with.

Speaker 1: 4:29

This whole idea is what did God have in mind? Because if you're going to discover the mission for marriage or the purpose in your marriage, the best place to go is back to the beginning, back to the origin. So we're going to start in Genesis 2. We're not going to go through the whole Bible today, but we're going to start in Genesis 2. And it's a creation story, it says.

Speaker 1: 4:47

The Lord God said, verse 18, it is not good for man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him. Now. The Lord God had formed out of the ground all the wild animals and all the birds of the sky. He brought them to the man to see what he would name them. And whatever the man called each living creature, that was its name. So the man gave names to all the livestock, the birds in the sky and all the wild animals. But for Adam no suitable helper was found. So the Lord God caused a man to fall into a deep sleep And while he was sleeping he took one of the man's ribs, closed up the place with flesh. Then the Lord.

Speaker 1: 5:23

God made a woman from the rib he had taken out of the man And he brought her to the man And the man said This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh. She shall be called woman, for she was taken out of man. That is why a man leaves his father and mother and is united to his wife and they become one flesh. Adam and his wife were both naked and they felt no shame. From the very beginning, marriage has been part of God's design. I just got a spam call in the middle of a sermon. How rude Marriage is by God's design And he had a very specific intent for it. Marriage is God's design for intimacy. That is the whole idea.

Speaker 1: 6:11

The very first dilemma in all of the creation story is this idea of isolation and loneliness. If you're familiar with the creation story, you know there's a repeated phrase that keeps coming up as God is doing the creating And it says and God said Let there be and there was and it was good. Good. You remember that? Okay, that phrase repeats all the way through the creation story. God said Let there be and there was and it was good. And then you get to verse 18. And the Lord. God said It is not good, it is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him.

Speaker 1: 6:54

Okay, in creation, in all of creation, adam experienced a perfect relationship with God, nothing getting in the way of it, a perfect creation with no flaws, no problems, anything. But there was still something missing This idea of a suitable helper. In fact he repeats it in verse 20, for Adam, no suitable helper was found. That even though he had this perfect relationship with God, lived in this perfect environment, something was not good, there was still something missing. And because of that God created woman, he created a companion. Now it uses the word helper there and that really doesn't convey the idea. It kind of gives the idea like I'm an assistant or a subordinate or someone who's just kind of pick up the stuff behind you, which maybe in some marriages that's what happens. But that was not God's design. The idea of helper, suitable helper, has to do with the idea of suitable and complementary, being equal and capable, being a strong ally I like the term an indispensable companion. That's God's design and that's God's intent And that, by the way, is the biblical understanding of it, all the way back in the early 1700s, matthew Henry wrote his commentary on this particular passage, and this is what he wrote Woman was made out of a rib, out of the side of Adam, not made out of his head to rule over him, nor from his feet to be trampled on by him, but out of his side to be equal with him, under his arm, to be protected by him and near his heart, to be loved by him.

Speaker 1: 8:41

God's remedy to this idea of isolation and loneliness was companionship, deep companionship, intimacy. The Scripture puts it this way a man leaves his father and mother and is united to his wife and they become one flesh. And later, in Jesus' ministry on this earth, when he was asked about marriage and divorce and all of this, he went back to that very same thing. Jesus affirmed it in his earthly ministry. For this reason, a man will leave his father and mother, be united to his wife and the two will become one flesh. Then he amplifies on it, so they are no longer two but one flesh. Therefore, would God has joined together. Let no one separate.

Speaker 1: 9:25

This idea of intimacy is not just physical intimacy. It's a whole being merging together with another whole being, because we are a lot more than just physical beings. Yes, there is a physical intimacy in marriage, but we are also intellectual beings. We have thoughts and ideas and in a marriage you want to be able to share those and understand your spouse's thinking, understand their ideas. We are also social beings. There are activities that we enjoy doing, people we enjoy doing things with, and a social intimacy has to do with doing the life together. We are also spiritual beings And I'll tell you as a pastor and when I do premarital counseling with couples and I talk about this, i say you know, what I have found over my years in pastoring is there's a great deal of attention put on physical intimacy and some on emotional intimacy and intellectual intimacy, but the one that gets ignored the most is spiritual intimacy, and one of the things that's most heartbreaking for a pastor is to see a mom come with the kids but without dad, to a church service, to the gathering, to learning about God's ways, or a husband that comes without his wife, because this is probably the most important relationship.

Speaker 1: 10:47

You have your relationship with God and you're not able to share that with the person that is closest to you in your life When he's talking about becoming one. It's about a lot more than just physical intimacy. It's about emotional, intellectual, social and spiritual intimacy. And intimacy has to do with what is in most, that part of me that nobody else gets to see, and God's intent for a marriage is that kind of an intimacy. But that type of intimacy requires trust.

Speaker 1: 11:19

Intimacy is built on trust. Why? Because I'm not going to expose those parts of me that I keep hidden from everybody else. I'm not going to expose that to anyone unless I feel safe and I trust that person with that information. That's where we have a lot of acquaintances but very few close friends, because we don't show those parts of ourselves to most people, we keep them to ourselves. But in a marriage it's all about exposing yourself. It's about forging a whole new relationship with somebody, and that means making yourself truly known.

Speaker 1: 11:55

Genesis 2, 24 puts it this way a man leaves his father and mother which is, by the way, the most intimate close personal relationship you have in the early part of your life leaves that relationship, father and mother, and is united to his wife and they become one flesh In that closest intimate relationship that you have and forging a brand new one. And that takes this exposure, this intimacy that I am giving myself completely to another person, and leaving Father and Mother is not just about relocating physically. It's about a complete transfer of my affection, of my devotion, of my dependence, that two people, two very, very different people with different backgrounds and different experiences and different personalities, come together and forge something brand new, something that is a oneness and intimacy. By the way, anybody here ever watched Forged in Fire? It's not many. It's one of my favorite programs. That's my wife Crazy, but I love it.

Speaker 1: 13:07

And they have these challenges and four guys start out and they've got a challenge and they've got to forge out of this metal certain types of metal. They've got to forge it together and make a knife or whatever it might be. And there are two things that are absolutely essential in forging Heat and pressure. And in a marriage you will experience heat and pressure, but it is part of forging this new relationship. And that begins with a promise And that's what the marriage vows are all about.

Speaker 1: 13:41

And I don't know if you notice this or even thought about this, but in your marriage vows there are two parts to the marriage vows. The first part is a vertical that has to do with the promise that you make before God, and then there's a horizontal part in which you make this promise to each other. So in the vertical, what we do is I stand with my wife before God, before this pastor, and I'm giving these words Ken, will you have Betty to be your wife, to live together after God's ordinances, in the holy estate of marriage? Will you love her, comfort her, honor her, keep her in sickness and in health, forsaking all others, keeping only to her so long as you both shall live? And I say I do, i will. I make that promise before God to you. But then there's a horizontal aspect where I actually put those words to her And I say I can take the Betty to be my wife, to have and to hold from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish till death. Do us part. And what I'm doing in those words is I am saying I have no idea what the future holds for the two of us. I know there's going to be sickness and I know there's going to be health. I know there's going to be better and I know there's going to be worse. I know that I don't know what it's going to look like, but here is my promise I'm going to do it with you and only you, and that's the promise. And what you are doing, by the way, is you are forming a covenant.

Speaker 1: 15:27

Sometimes I've had people say to me well, why bother to get married? It's just a piece of paper. It's not. It is something much deeper. And it's not just a contract. It's actually establishing a covenant, and they are two very, very different things. For instance, if you hire me to build you a new fence, okay, we will come to an agreement and we will negotiate and I say, okay, well, i'll build this, but I'm going to charge you this much money and say, well, i don't want to pay that much. How about this? Okay, so we come to an agreement And what we do is we write up a contract and the contract is based on a mutual agreement. I will build your fence, you will pay me this much money.

Speaker 1: 16:10

A covenant is not about a mutual agreement.

Speaker 1: 16:14

It's about a personal promise.

Speaker 1: 16:16

A covenant says I'll build a fence for you.

Speaker 1: 16:22

That's it.

Speaker 1: 16:23

I will build a fence. See the difference? The one is we come to an agreement and we make a promise to each other, but the other one just says I'll make the promise unilaterally. The difference is that one is about self-protection and the other is about self-resignation. If we form a contract, it's really about protecting myself, because if I do the work and you don't pay me, we have a problem. Or if you pay me upfront and then I never build the fence for you, we have a problem. And so what we do is we write up a contract, even though it's something we've agreed upon. It's really about protecting myself, that if I do my part, you got to live up to your part.

Speaker 1: 17:04

A covenant is about self-resignation. It says no expectations on you. I'm just going to do this. I am making this promise unilaterally And I let go of any expectations that you have to give me anything back.

Speaker 1: 17:22

The other thing about a contract is there's always a recourse if it's violated. If you pay me to do the work and I don't do the work, you can take me to court and sue me. Or if I do the work and you don't pay me, i can sue. You See, there's recourse. That's why we do the contract. It's all about self-protection, and if you don't do up your end of the bargain, i get to do something to you.

Speaker 1: 17:46

But in a covenant, if it's violated, i absorb the pain of the violation, and the last thing about it is that in a contract there's always conditions, but a covenant is absolutely unconditional, which, by the way, is exactly how God deals with us. God deals with us in covenant. He says I will be your God and you will be my people. I will love you with an everlasting love. I will never leave you nor forsake you, no matter how many times I mess up my end of that bargain, he just keeps loving me and he keeps forgiving me. And when I wander away in my own sinful willfulness, he came and gave his life on a cross and absorbed all of that so that I could be forgiven. God always deals with us in covenant, and that's why the marriage vows are so important. It is a promise. It's a promise that I make.

Speaker 1: 18:51

Lewis Schmeeds wrote an essay called The Power of Promising. He wrote this. He said My wife has been married to five husbands. Every one of them has been me. The only thing, the thread that has kept all five of them together, is my promise. My promise is I will be there for you. I will be faithful to you. It's the power of the promise. Those are the marriage vows, because when we're just starting out in this life together and we have no idea where it's all going to go and how we're going to manage and navigate through it all. It is our promise that keeps us moving forward together. It's a promise that allows us to keep going, with all of our faults and flaws against each other still, to keep loving and committing to each other, because intimacy is built on trust, and trust takes the risk of openness and vulnerability. See, when I have that promise, it gives me the freedom to start showing all those parts of me that I kept hidden during the dating years, because, boy, she sees that I don't know. But then we make those vows to each other and I say, well, here's maybe a part of me you never saw before. And she goes Oh really. And we do that with each other.

Speaker 1: 20:13

Scripture talks about this in the uses this word called submission. It said In Genesis. God said This is what marriage is all about. And then Jesus affirmed it during his earthly ministry. And then Paul wrote a letter to a church in a city called Ephesus and he wrote about it as well, and he affirmed the same thing. It's about this idea of letting go of my rights, my expectations, my securities, my agendas, and I begin to give myself up to another person. And so Paul wrote this to the Ephesians church, in chapter five submit to one another out of reverence for Christ, wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord, for the husband is the head of the wife, as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the savior. Now, as a church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything. Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, and to present her to himself as a radiant church without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless. Skip down to verse 31. For this reason, a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh. Again, he's quoting that same scripture. This is a profound mystery, he says, and it is, but I'm talking about Christ and the church. However, each one of you must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband.

Speaker 1: 21:45

Now let me talk about this idea of submission, because that's one of those words again that people have a hard time with. And if you grew up kind of in the 60s, like I did, the idea of submission kind of carried with it, this idea of a chain of command where the husband is over the wife, who's over the kids, who's over the dog, who's over the cat, you know, and on down the line, and we always kind of got that And all the every time people would talk about or preach about submit, it was usually about why submit your husband, why submit your husband? what are your submissive wife? blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Well, the trouble is that's not at all what that passage teaches And in fact that sentence that says why submit your husband's, the word submit is not in that verse in the original language. That verb submit is actually from the sentence before which says submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.

Speaker 1: 22:40

Then he goes on and says wives to your husbands. As to the Lord, husbands, love your wives, just as Christ led the church and gave himself up for her. That's the KJV, the Ken Jensen version. What he's saying is that what makes a marriage work is a mutual submission. Because you see, if I remain single, then pretty much every decision, every choice, every option, every direction that I take from my life pretty much just affects me directly. But when I get married now, every one of those choices, options, directions and decisions directly impact somebody else. And how do you make that work? You both are willing to give up your own rights. You both choose to put someone else before you. Now he says submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.

Speaker 1: 23:35

So he says within the church community, that's all about humility and grace giving, that we all know that in this room. None of us are perfect, but we give grace to one another because we all know that we're these people in process and so we make allowances for each other and we humbly accept our own flaws. Well, the same thing works in your marriage. You humbly admit you're not perfect and you actually make your flaws known to the other person. And, by the way, when you do that, she is not going to be surprised. She already knows. She's just glad that you've come around to her way of thinking.

Speaker 1: 24:19

Because here's the thing You married a prideful, self-centered, self-serving individual and they married a bigger one. And the only way this is going to work is if you both realize that about yourself and about each other, and you work through that. It is about humility, it is about giving grace, it is about moving in the direction that I submit myself so that you become the best version that God intended you to be of who you are. Because that's what Christ did He gave Himself on a cross so that we could be restored into this relationship and become the best version of who He created us to be. And I've said this often I never realized how selfish a person I was until I got married, because I was doing my own thing and it was all about me. And now, all of a sudden, i had to start thinking about somebody else.

Speaker 1: 25:19

And, by the way, your spouse is not going to be perfect. We have this myth in our culture again, this myth of a soulmate. A soulmate is that perfect partner. They are well adjusted, have no character flaws, they are fun-loving, attractive, has no emotional baggage. They are a perfect match. They are supportive of everything I want to do, they fulfill all of my desires, they make no demands on me and they let me be myself. There ain't no such animal. We are all imperfect and we are not fully compatible. Marriage is about building the compatibility together. It's taking these two different people from two different backers, with two different experiences, with two different personalities, and making one. Stanley Howarwas put it this way we never know who we marry, we just think we do.

Speaker 1: 26:12

The primary problem is learning how to love and care for the stranger to whom you find yourself married. And the truth is that we are always changing, and so we commit ourselves to changing together, and I commit myself to letting my wife become the very best version and helping her become the very best version of herself that God created her to be, that I see something in her that God designed and I want to bring that out, and she does the same for me, and together we both grow and we become better. And I don't do it in a in a manipulative or nitpicky kind of way to tell her all of her faults. I help her become the best version of her and she does the same for me. I will tell you, this church would not exist like this were it not for my wife, because we started this church in our living room And every Saturday night she cleaned up and cleaned up the whole place so it would look good for the guests that were coming, and we set up chairs and we got all ready for church and we had church in our living room And then everybody stayed at our house all afternoon and ate cake and made a mess of things.

Speaker 1: 27:32

We put everything back and she had to clean the house that night to start all over again because it was a mess. And she did that for a full year when we had church in our living room. And then when we went into the post office building, she fulfilled and took part in just about every single ministry that was involved in it, because it had to be done and somebody had to do it and I couldn't do all of it And she did all that. And when I went through some of my darkest times and most difficult times of pastoral ministry, she was the one who stood by me, supported me and cheered me on and encouraged me, and this church would not exist were it not for her. And I'm the one to get to stand up here and get all the accolades and all the attention, but she's the one who made it happen. That's what a partnership is That she used her strengths for my personal growth and I use my strengths for her personal growth, and we neither one give up on each other.

Speaker 1: 28:33

Tim Keller describes this way about marriage It is a deep oneness that develops as two people journey together to the same destination, helping one another through the dangers and challenges along the way. They rescue each other, push, provoke and exhort each other to win through, because their common mission turns them into friends and their differences become strengths. By the way, i highly recommend this book. That quote comes out of this book. It's called the meaning of marriage, by Timothy Keller. This passed away about two or three weeks ago, but it's just a phenomenal book if you want to improve your marriage.

Speaker 1: 29:11

The ultimate example that we have in all of this is Jesus Christ himself, and that's what Paul writes about. It's his self-sacrificing love that allows us to have this relationship with God. He sees us with all of our flaws, all of our failures, all of our sinful wandering and outright rebellion, and he loves us anyway, so much so that he gave his one and only son, who came and died on a cross, to absorb all of that imperfection on himself, all of that waywardness, all of that sinfulness, and he took it on himself and he absorbed it so that we could live in a relationship with God When we put our faith and trust in him, he, by his power and his grace at work within us, starts to change us and make us that better person. And in a marriage we become a part of that with each other. By trusting in him, i'm not just forgiving, i'm giving the power to change. He sees us, in us the person God created us to be, and he helps us become that. So that's what Paul says in verse 31,. For this reason, a man will leave his father and mother, be united to his wife and the two will become one flesh. This is a profound mystery. I'm talking about Christ in the church, because marriage is so much like our relationship with Christ that you don't fully grasp the depths of your marriage without looking at him And by his power and strength. Then our marriages can become an expression of him. In the world that we live, in the culture that we live, our marriages can become an example of his love.

Speaker 1: 30:54

Would you bow your heads with me? I don't know where you're at this morning. Maybe you're married and it's gotten hard, and maybe you're almost to the point of breaking. Don't give up. It might be hard, but something beautiful is being forged. Or, like I said before, maybe everything is going good and this is just kind of a refresher for you. But would you commit to your spouse in a new and fresh way, not for your benefit but for hers? What you'll find out is that when you do that for your spouse, you get better too.

Speaker 1: 31:37

And if you're here today in your single and maybe didn't see the value of actually getting married, maybe today I hope you saw something beautiful here that God would like to do through you and in you. And if you're here and you're kind of just single but over-anxious and worried about it, would you just be willing to say God, i'm going to put you first, i'm going to let you do the things in my life that you need to do, that I might be a better spouse in the future, hopefully, but I'm not going to make that my number one priority. I'm going to make you and rest in your hands. Maybe you're here today and you don't know that relationship with Christ And there's a starting point for that. Maybe today you just say you know that's the kind of relationship I want to have with God. Well, he came and gave His life so you could, and it's just simply in the same way that you make a pledge.

Speaker 1: 32:29

In those marriage vows, you say, god, i give up, i'm putting my life in your hands. I'm trusting you. Because I trust you, i know that you'll love me and I want to live and become that person you created me to be, wherever you're at. Let me just pray for you as we close. God, thank you for this wonderful design that you have, that we can experience that kind of intimacy on this earth, knowing that what you have for us in eternity is something far, far greater. Thank you, lord, that you gave your son so that we could have that kind of a relationship with you, starting now, carrying into eternity, and for each one of us, wherever we are at. Our prayer, simply today, is Lord, you take me as I am. I'm going to trust you with every aspect of my life. I'm going to trust you with my marriage. I'm going to trust you with my singleness, but, more than anything else, teach me to follow you In Jesus' name. Amen, amen, thank you.