WHAT ABOUT ME?

I'm going to combine the lesson summary and mid-week tune up into one blog this week, because I've been busy trying to bring my business bookkeeping up to date. Accounting and bookkeeping are my least favorite thing to do and I usually find myself scrambling to get it all done. I'd rather fix houses all day than spend five minutes doing the paperwork. I'm sure that is why businessmen hire accountants. 

Back to the lesson.

I hope you'll bear with me while I share an anecdote I did not share Sunday morning. 

My career field in the Air Force was Structural Maintenance. In layman terms, I fixed the metal skin and structure of the aircraft. One bright morning while I was sitting in the flight line dispatch truck waiting to go back to the shop after a hard night of fixing planes, I made the mindless remark that I would like to see an aircraft that wasn't broke. The Staff Sergeant driving the truck pointed toward and F-111 roaring down the runway. “There it goes, you fixed it two hours ago.” he smiled at me and waited for the realization of my stupid remark to come to me. “They're only broken while they're on the ground.” he added. The same is true of marriages, they're only broke when they are on the ground and can be inspected. It's only when we're able to stop and take a look around us, that we're able to make an evaluation of where the marriage has been and where it's headed. The problem with looking closely at your marriage, is you're not the only one in the mix. That's why so many of us, men and women alike, get hung up on what our rights are in a marriage. We're still focused on ourselves and not the unique creation that is 'us.' This is a concept the 'world' can't understand, and I will make no apologies for. The day of the Church trying to make sense to the world should be over. Oneness is a spiritual issue.

Some of you probably wonder why I hang up on certain thoughts and ideas in our men's group. Especially since we've been in chapters 8 and 9 for over two weeks now. The conclusion we've come to is rather simple. We're slaves of Jesus Christ. We have no rights and our time is not our own. So, why can't we move on? Don't we have it?

I can't answer that. All I know is that the Holy Spirit won't let me jump forward, yet. Maybe it's because in the time that it has taken me to write this small portion of the blog, another Christian couple have decided to end the unique oneness that God created. Statistically, there is a 1 in 10 chance that the underlying reason for the divorce was adultery. Statistics actually show that the other 9 divorces were probably filed under “mutual incompatibility” or “no fault.” In other words, one spouse or the other wanted their way and felt trampled on. The abuse may be real, the justification for divorce may make sense in the eyes of the law, but there is a deeper issue to which Jesus was alluding. The divorce is not the issue. The issue is our need to exercise our 'rights' above the need to serve one another. The fun of the courtship is over and the hard work of becoming the unique creation God intended us to be has begun.

If you're wondering when this study is going to be fun, you'll be waiting a long time. Marriage is not for the faint of heart. In Matthew 19:11, the Master makes it clear, not everyone can receive his teaching on marriage. Actually, a true marriage, not just cohabitation, requires a great deal of work. We're not talking salvation, religion, or studying the intricacies of the Word of God. We're looking at the one institution that predates any 'Word' of God. Marriage is primal, and basic. What changes it up for Christians, is the Spirit of God dwelling within us. It took me a long time to figure out what the Lord was saying when he was addressing the Rabbis who asked him about divorce. Now, I know, and it brings me to consider and repent.

I must think differently about marriage.  I used to go around complaining to God and whining to him; "What about me?"  Then, one day he showed me what I was actually saying; "It's all about meeeeeeeeee."   My wife wasn't and never was the problem, I was. I had a legalistic view of marriage and it stunk.

As a slave of Jesus Christ, I am bound by a higher standard than the 'law.' I am bound by the breath of God and the 'vow' I made at an altar, with God and man as witnesses. There is no fun in that.  There is no way to make it a carefree casual moment. The only fun I'll have now, is what "we" have together. This is a tough teaching and one that not everyone will receive.  At that altar, God took two people, killed them both, and recreated a new life. Therefore, the instruction, “Let no man put asunder what God has joined.(Dave's paraphrase.)” When I died at that altar, my rights as an individual died with me. I'll explain what I mean as I detail the lesson.

We began the lesson by turning to 1^st Corinthians 7, reading verses 1 through 20. I asked everyone to pull out their different translations and read specific verses, like verse 3, 4 and 10. These verses bring to light the truth that marriage is not to be entered into casually. The days Paul lived in were perilous, and today even more so. Here in America, Christians enjoy great freedom from religious persecution, but this is not the case everywhere. Persecution can involve torture of family members, as well as killing them right in front of you. This wasn't uncommon in the Roman empire during the beginning of the Church. Paul's concerns weren't for the issue of celibacy, as much as it was for the concern of the family. The institution of Marriage was God's most glorious creation. Everything he'd done to that point was 'good,' but when he made the unique being called 'Adam and Eve,' he stepped back and announced it was "very good." 

The reason I even brought up the passage in 1^st Corinthians, is because of verse 4. There is no gray area or ambiguity about this verse and it supports the theme in chapter 8 of Every Man's Marriage. Once we are married, we have no rights beyond the needs of our spouse. This goes way past the issue of sex (which is what Paul is addressing.) The wife is not in charge of her own body, but her husband is; likewise, the husband is not in charge of his own body, but his wife is. 1^st Corinthians 7:4 CJB

In my lifetime, I've seen this verse perverted by men to demand sexual service from their wives when the wife didn't want to have sex. HELLO, did they forget to look at the second half of the verse? We have to remember that Paul sees marriage as a spiritual metaphor. He is not going to say anything to conflict with or confuse his view of our spiritual relationship with Christ within the metaphor. As Paul continues the instructions for whether people should stay married, he drops a bombshell in verse 10. He references the Lord's command. So, what was the Lord's command? We went to Mark 10:1-12 and Matthew 19:1-12. I wanted to read both of these from “The Message.” The question the teachers were asking was the wrong question to ask Jesus. “Is it legal for a man to give a woman a divorce for any reason?”

Jesus' reply is to push the issue of legality into their lap. “What did Moses say?” If legal issues are what you are hung up on, then what did Moses command? He was well aware that religious leaders of the day were deeply divided between two schools of thought about divorce. To answer their question based upon Moses would play into their hands. Time hasn't changed anything. We still want a legal reason to dismiss a woman when she is no longer attractive to us for whatever reason. Not to hang the problem on men only (more than half of all divorces are filed by women today,) the issue is ignorance of God's intent. Covenant, commitment, and communication are no longer important. Erotic and familial love are misconstrued to be enduring love, while the fertility idol of passion is given center place in our homes. The common misconception today, is if we're not having fun, something is wrong. I'm sure Jesus would push everyone's button by saying: “In the beginning it was not so.” He spoke out twice against no-fault divorce. YET, there is an even deeper issue happening in what the Lord says in Matthew 19:6. “(Mat 19:6) Wherefore they are no more twain, but one flesh. What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder.” Here we have 3 thoughts we have to carry forward into our discussion of 'rights.' Jesus defines the issue of marriage in terms of what God intended from the beginning: (a) The two are now one. (b) The oneness is formed by God (c.) No man should attempt to destroy it.

The last admonition strikes a chord with me. I grew up with my mother warning me to never come between a man and a wife. Within her heart was the sure conviction that any woman or man who broke up a marriage were doomed. Let's put this in simple terms. God is the one who has created the married being, don't try and end it except for adultery or fornication. The admonishment isn't to some outside third party, it is to the 'couple' themselves. The vow spoken with the breath of God, is not to be broken. The permanence of the vow is broken only when one or the other 'joins' to another. This act alone destroys the unique being formed by the Lord. The act of adultery is as if a sword is used to cut the couple in half. The death of the unique creation is just as heinous as if a killer went in and murdered one of them. The victim of adultery is trust. Within the act of infidelity, is the murder of the faith and love in the other person.  Our Lord did not make very many commands, but this is one of them. It's as if he's saying “thou shalt not kill the married being.”

This is where 'demanding your rights' comes into play. The problem with demanding your 'rights,' is completely different than a single act of infidelity. You don't kill the marriage with one swift blow, but you kill the marriage one little knife cut at a time. It is as if you die of a thousand little cuts, with your spouse slowly oozing the blood of her love. When we demand 'our rights,' we drive the knife in deeper, and deeper each time. “Our time” becomes “my time,” our money becomes my money, and so on and so on. All the while, God's creation lies dying in a pool of blood.

This isn't popular thinking. In today's modern age, marriage is no longer a unique creation, but a phantasm that scares people. Our Brother Tony, mentioned that he'd heard how the Mexican government was toying with the idea of 2 year marriage licenses. If the couple aren't happy at the end of 2 years, they simply wouldn't renew their contract. What Bro. Tony didn't know, is that I'd already read the same story and had it ready to read. The people proposing the idea didn't want couples to go through the hassle of a divorce.

If this kind of humanistic thinking continues, there will be more regulations governing the breeding of animals than the joining of man and wife. It's childish thinking. A four-year-old is capable of more selfless thinking than that. It's as if a little child says: If I don't get “my rights,” I'll just walk away. I'm not happy! Forget the little lives brought into a world where they'll never know their real parent!  Forget the significance of the sexual act and it's meaning to God. The days of Noah are fast upon us.  

The servant leader, knows his rights, knows his position, but yields with joy to the one who created the unique married being. Now, it is a new body we have to maintain, and that body is more than one body, more than one flesh, one spirit, one heart, one mind. This concept goes to the idea of 'body' ministry taught by Paul concerning the church. How can we expect to get the church body ministry right, if we can't get the marriage body ministry right?

As I said earlier, this idea of 'rights' is not unique to men, but like our Bro. Aaron said, if we practice the idea of being the servant leader to our wives, we are only answerable for ourselves. We must do what is right before our Lord.

Bro. Jim put it even more succinctly when he said that as we become more of a servant leader, it allows our spouses to respond to us in love and the marriage will improve little bit by little bit. The more we practice it, and make it real within ourselves, the more our wives will trust our servant hearts.

YES! I agree whole-heartedly! More than them changing their minds about us, I believe we are the ones who are changing. In putting the servant leader concept into practice, we no longer focus on our 'rights.' We'll discover the true joy of servanthood. The little child within us finally grows up and becomes mature. We love as God loves, we participate in the divine nature. Even if our wives haven't moved one inch in our direction, we've come a thousand miles toward them. It would appear to us as if they'd drawn closer. It is the same thing Christ did for us. At one time we were at enmity with God, antagonistic, and without concern for him. God sent his son to pull us to him. He made the sacrifice. He valued us more highly than himself. He wasn't satisfied with just rescuing us, he made a way for us to be joined with him in spiritual matrimony. We are not our own, we are bought with a price. The same is true of the marriage. If we can't love our wives as Christ loved the Church, we are already separated from them. When we demand our own way, insist on our rights, we build a wall of hurts that cuts us off from one another. Every 'right' we demand is another brick in the wall between us.

As servant leaders, we only have one right, one privilege, one gift; and that is to love our wives as Christ loves the church. Instead of a wall dividing us, Christ becomes a cornerstone we can build a successful marriage on.

Class over, we can all go home.

In next week's lesson we'll look at the importance of time and how it gives value to our spouse.