5-23-10 Marriage: Two Big I’s

The below texted version of this message is basically a word for word duplicate of Andy Standley’s series called I marriage. The message that was given at our church was my edited version of this text with additions, changes and deletions. I give Andy Stanley all the credit for this message series. My intention of posting it is to give God the glory, and so that it might be used to build up His Church.

Hi, for the next 3 weeks we are going to be talking about marriage. And if you’re like most couples, the wife, she’s really excited that we’re going to be talking about marriage, but the husband, he doesn’t really want to talk about marriage. Women often times want to talk about it and understand how it should work. Guys on the other hand don’t want to understand it, they just want it to work.

Women will drive a car until it breaks down and the mechanic will say to her, didn’t you hear a horrible metallic clicking sound and the woman will say yeah. Well, the mechanic says to her, if you had brought the car to me when that began it would have went a whole lot better, but now it’s really going to cost you.

Women want their car to work, they just don’t want to work on them. They just drive them until they break down. Men on the other hand, don’t like to work on relationships. We want our marriage to work, but we don‘t want to work on it . We’d sometimes rather drive it until it breaks down and then trade it in on a new one, instead of fix it.

So here’s the deal, we want our marriages to work and we don’t want them to break down, and we don’t want to trade them in, because that’s not God’s plan for our lives and it’s not good for anybody.

Marriage is much more important then your car’s maintenance and so this morning we’re going to start a three week series devoted to marriage.

Now, in this series I am deeply indebted to Andy Stanley’s series entitled I Marriage, because he helped me understand something I’ve been trying to communicate with couples for years, and so it’s that wisdom that has helped many badly broken marriages and some divorced marriages be brought back together again.

So, today is the introduction for this series, and I just want to warn you, this is not going to be a Bible lesson. If you’re a person who doesn’t even know if you believe the Bible then this is going to be the best message you ever heard. But if you’re a person who is listening going, “Where’s the Bible, where’s the Bible?” then come back next week when we’re going to jump into the Bible up to our arm pits. All right?

Now, there is so much we could say about marriage that there’s no way we can cover everything in three weeks, and so here’s what we’re going to do. We are going to pick a really, really narrow slice of God’s wisdom on marriage and were going to drill down really deep on it, so that we can come away with something very practical to make our marriages better.

However, if you’re single, or divorced, or a youth, or otherwise not married, You might be thinking, why am I here, because this doesn’t pertain to me at all. But I want you to know that I’m very excited that you’re here, because for the next three weeks what we’re going to be talking about has everything to do with every close relationship that you’ll ever have. I am convinced that if you’ll stay with us and stay attentive during these three weeks that you’ll go home with some real treasure toward making every relationship and every future relationship you have, better.

Let’s start this way. All of us when we come toward marriage come with a big box full of desires. Right? We have dreams and wishes and desires. I imagine we’ll live in a big ole house and we’re going to fill up our house with kids beginning in that first year of marriage or we’re going to put off having kids for five years and travel all around and see the world. I imagine that my wife will be like this because my mom was like that, and I imagine my husband will be like this because my dad was like this, and I imagine that some day I’ll have made enough money that I’ll be able to drive one of those and we’ll be able to live there. I imagine that we’ll spend all our time together. Or I imagine that we’ll spend some time together, but we’ll also spend time away from each other with our own friends.

When you get married or when you’re thinking about getting married, even if you haven’t thought about these things much, you have ideas and dreams because of a book you read or because of a movie you watched or because you’ve seen someone else’s marriage and you said to yourself, “I want my marriage to be like that”, or I don’t want my marriage to be like that! Wishes, dreams and desires come naturally to all of us. It’s part of who God created us to be.

Men, you get married with a dream about what your wife won’t wear to bed at night, right? And ladies, you know that he’ll love you for who you are and it won’t really matter what you wear to bed, right?

We all come to marriage with all these wishes, dreams, and desires and that’s normal and that’s natural and you can’t help that. But the thing that all these desires have in common is “I”. This is what I imagine, this is what I desire, this is what I dream, this is what I want. All of us do and we walk down the aisle with a box full of wishes, dreams, and desires. And we walk down the aisle believing that I want to share my wishes, dreams and desires with the person who I’m saying my vows to.

But here’s what happens. Somewhere between the alter and the honeymoon period and those first couple of years of mariage, and this is what we‘re going to be talking about for the next three weeks, we trade our box of hopes, dreams and desires in for another box labeled “Expectations”. Without knowing why or understanding what’s really happening, we trade in one box for another and it changes everything in our marriage.

We begin to place all these things, how we want our marriage to look financially, how things are going to go romantically, who’s going to do what in the home, what we’re going to own, who’s going to cook supper and how it’s going to taste, etc, etc, etc. And we begin to transfer all of our wishes, dreams and desires into a new box called Expectations. Are they bad hopes dreams or desires? No, but as soon as we transfer them into the expectation box it takes the romance out of our marriage and it puts big, weighty burdens on the shoulders of our spouse.

We don’t know when it happens and we’re not sure how it happens. You may have walked down the isle with hopes, dreams and desires, but you walked back down the isle with a box of Expectations. It may have happened instantly, because after all, you’re now my wife, or you’re now my husband. When we walked down the isle you were my finance and we can dream, but now you’re my wife and now I can begin to expect, because, after all, that’s what wives are supposed to do isn’t it? Before you were my finance, but now you’re my husband, and that’s what husbands do don’t they?

Somewhere along the way, wonderful, blissful, hopes, dreams and desires becomes expectations and when this transfer happens, the dynamic in the marriage is instantly, instantly changed.

It’s changed because now there’s not just one Big I in the marriage, there’s two Big I’s in the marriage. You know, everybody walks down the aisle with dreams, wishes and desires, that’s normal and it can’t be helped, but when the two Big I’s collide in your marriage there are just a couple of options.

One option is that you leave. You go, “You know what, I’m not going to be able to measure up to your expectations. That’s not what I expected, and so we say, “She just wasn’t a good wife” or “he wasn’t a good husband.” What does that mean? It means that I had expectations about what a good husband or about what a good wife was supposed to be and he wasn’t one or she wasn’t one. Or he expected so much of me or she expected so much of me that I couldn’t measure up to their expectations, so I’m leaving, I’m out of here.

Now the problem is that you just pick up your box of desires and you think to yourself, I’m just going to find someone else to dump these on. That’s why a lot of second marriages feel a lot like your first marriage, because where ever you go you bring along your great big “I”

The other thing that we do sometimes is the stronger partner wins, they conquer the weaker more submissive partner. The weaker one cowers and the more dominant one explains and scolds until their partner finally understands what it means to be a good husband and she finally understands what it means to be a good wife. As she begins or as he begins to live up to your expectations, you begin to think to yourself, this is working out, this is a pretty good marriage.

What you may not understand is this, this may be a huge insight for you today. It’s very easy for me to be me. None of you even wrote that down. It’s really easy for me to be me. It is very easy for you to be you, but here’s what happens. When you finally win in those first few years of marriage and you finally explained and explained and explained until they finally got what it meant to be a good husband or what it meant to be a good wife, what it meant to handle money your way, or to cook your way, or to do romance your way, or to raise kids your way it was really good for you, because it is effortless being you. It is not stressful being you, because you can be you without even thinking about it.

But when your spouse tries to be you it is extraordinary stressful. You don’t even realize it because it’s natural for you to be you. Consequently things are great for a little while. But the more submissive, peace keeper in your marriage says, “Ok, ok, ok, if that’s what it takes to keep the peace, then that’s what I’ll do. I’m not going to like it, but I’ll do it if that’s what it takes to keep the peace. If that’s what you need in order to think that we have a good marriage, then I’ll do it. But you see, conforming to what someone else wants you to be is extraordinarily stressful and takes a great deal of energy to be someone you’re not, because you weren’t made to be them.

Here’s my observation. Late 30’s, early 40’s it all begins to break down. Emotionally, physically, people who have tried to pull up to that bar and measure up and measure up and the other partner thinks things are great, but you’ve been working and working to be somebody you’re not and eventually, emotionally and physically that begins to unravel. Do you know what the problem is, either the one conforming or the one who is asking for the conformity? Big “I”, because “I” is right there in the middle of your marriage.

The other option, and this is the one that many people opt for is just a compromise. Ok, you do your part and I’ll do my part and we’ll split the bills and we’ll split the jobs and we’ll split the time, split the money, you have your friends and I have my friends, you have your space and I have my space and you have your car and I have my car and you have your room and I have my room and we have it all worked out.

And everything goes good for a while, but the problem with the compromise marriage is that it is still an I marriage because I will do what you ask me to do, if you’ll do what I’ve asked you to do. The compromise marriage is still a commitment to “I”.

Do you know what happens in a compromise marriage, that says, “I will, if you will, and you will if I will”? You see that’s not a covenant, that’s a contract. That’s not biblical, that’s carnal. That’s not holy, that’s worldly. In a contract marriage one of the first things to go is romance and intimacy. When you were dating, you could not stay away from each other. It was not about a contract, it was, “I’m here for you and you’re here for me,” and it was really, really good.

Understand this, I’m not saying that compromise is never important as the first steps toward peace in the home, but when it’s all about two “I’s” living in the same home, and if you do that, then I’ll do this, and if I do this, then you’ll do that, then you’ll never experience what God intended for your marriage.

The good news is there’s another option. You don’t have to run away, and you don’t have to become something you’re not and you don’t have to conquer your spouse and teach them, and teach them, until they get it and subdue him or her until you can get them to be what you think he or she should be, and you don’t have to compromise, if you’ll do this, then I’ll do that in your marriage. There is another way, a godly way, a way that the Bible says that your marriage was made to be.

We’re going to spend the next two week’s talking about it, but let me spend the next couple of minutes roughing this in for you, because nobody like a marriage that doesn’t work. Nobody wants a marriage that’s going to end in a train wreck, and yet it’s really hard, unless you have God’s word to guide you, to put your finger on what’s wrong and how do we begin changing things in our marriage so that it blesses both of us.

Here’s the deal, as soon as a marriage is centered around expectation, then the intimacy and the romance just evaporates and here’s the reason why. Let me explain. When your desires are translated into expectations, you move your relationship from a covenant, as I just said, to a relationship that is a debt debtor relationship.

When our wishes, dreams and desires change into a list of expectations, then suddenly our relationship changes to a debt debtor relationship with our spouse. Here’s the deal. Another way of expressing our expectations to our spouse is, “You owe me”.

All of us could create a case for why our husbands or why our wives really owe us our expectations. I mean, after all, there were vows and promises and he should be this kind of an or she should be this kind of woman. Am I not justified in expecting some things from my husband? Am I not justified in expecting some things from my wife?

Here’s what I want you to understand. As justified as you may feel, and as justified as you might be in certain ways of viewing marriage, you end up in a debt to debtor relationship with your spouse if you bring all your expectations and dump them on him, or dump them on her.

Any time a relationship revolves into a debt debtor relationship, the intimacy, and the trust, and the romance are gone, because in a debt debtor relationship there is no place for unconditional love.

If your expectation is for your husband to get you roses on Valentines Day, then how much credit does he get if he actually gets you roses on Valentines Day? None, because he was expected to get them, because after all, that’s what husbands are supposed to do, right?

Congratulations, you are up to zero now. You’re up to break even now. You’re up to par. And I’m not going to throw a party for you because you’re just doing what I expected you to do. You’re not going to get credit for loving me. Your husband is simply meeting your expectations and obligations as a wife, right?

If your expectation is for your wife to make you dinner and have it on the table every evening by 6:00 and she actually does it, how much credit does your wife get if she actually does that? None, because she was expected to do that, because, after all, that’s what wives are supposed to do, right? My wife is just meeting my expectations and obligations as a husband, right?

Once my marriage or your marriage devolves into two big I’s, and as long as there’s a debt debtor relationship it squeezes out the potential for receiving or expressing unconditional love, because love, the kind of love that you and I were created to receive, is a gift. And if everything is expected, then there is no opportunity to give or receive the gift . . of . . . love.

See if this helps you see it more clearly. You’ll never receive a personal, in-depth, perfume laced letter, with a gift card attached to the letter from your mortgage company. “Dear Adam, once again this month, we just want to thank you for sending in your mortgage payment. For a long time we have tracked with you and Shannon and your wonderful kids and all that you do in life, and we just want to show you and your family how much we value you, so enclosed is a $100 gift card for you and your family to have a night out on the town on us. We’re so appreciative of you and wanted to support what you guys are doing there in Lawton. Sincerely, Your Mortgage Company.

I don’t get a letter from my mortgage company like that do you? It’s because we have a legally binding contract. That’s the way debt debtor relationships work. In fact, the only time that I’ll ever get a personalized letter, the only time that I’ll ever get special attention is when? Yeah, when I miss a payment. It works this way for your electric company or your telephone company and on and on it goes. If you miss enough payments, they’ll call you on the phone. If you call them, you’ll be in phone confusion for hours trying to talk with someone real, but if you don’t do what they expect you to do, then you’ll get, not a machine, but a person will call you on the phone. Someone from the mortgage company will call you if you don’t meet their expectations.

And you know what, that’s something that some of you feel in your marriages. Because as long as you do everything right, everything is peaceful, but . . . there’s not a lot of love, and even when there is, you know it’s conditional. If you mess up and you leave something undone, you get some personalized attention. And it’s negative, right?

I like to come home to a nice neat orderly world, right? That’s just who I am. 99 percent of the things at my house are good, but I focus on the one percent. I ‘m looking at all the things that are wrong as I come up my driveway and into my garage. Somebody scooped the litter box, but left it in the garage and now it’s got flies buzzing around it and it stinks and I’m mad. How many times have I told them?

I can desire a nice neat, everything’s in order or I can expect it. If it’s one of my desires and it happens, I’m really thankful that I got such a great wife, but if I have everything neat and in order in my expectation box and it happens, I don’t even notice it, because it’s an expectation. In fact you know what I notice . . . Ohhhh hoho hoho hoho, (with head nodding negatively) Shannnon, come here. “Do you see that? Why is that right there? Do you know how many times I’ve told you that I don’t want the cat liter in the garage”, and then I can get mean or explode and throw little tantrum so that she gets the point, so that she pays for not meeting my expectations. 99 percent of everything can be ok, but that one thing is out of place and I’m angry. Why? Because I got a bucket load of expectations.

When everything is good, nobody gets credit; nobody gets loved, because everyone is trying to get to the bar in order to keep peace in the house. Keeping the peace becomes more important than growing in unconditional love. Why? It’s because a desire has moved to an expectation and now it’s not about love but about meeting the standard.

And this all happens because a legitimate desire migrated to an expectation, and you can argue all day long that these are justified and that’s fine, but as long as you conduct your marriage from here (expectation box) then you will always be functioning out a debt debtor relationship where you owe me and that will always rob your marriage of intimacy and trust and romance. It goes right down the drain because of what’s in the box (expectation) right there.

And the ability to identify or share or receive unconditional love doesn’t exist and your marriage was not created for that kind of a relationship.

The crazy thing is what starts off here (desires) really do start off as legitimate God given desires.

Now, where this isn’t going is, “Well, you just shouldn’t have any expectations. Just let go of everything, don’t have any dreams, don’t have any desires, just give it all up and I will just become this neutral, “Yes Honey” kind of guy, where I don’t have any thoughts, I don’t have any ideas, I don’t have any preferences, it’s just “yes honey” or “what every you say honey” – I mean Shannon doesn’t want a husband like that. That’s not a marriage made in heaven. That’s not what God desires for you and for me. God desires something much great than that for each of us.

Because many of your hopes and dreams and desires that you went to the alter with are legitimate, God given hopes, dreams and desires and to ignore them is to ignore how God created you, and to ignore them, or to pretend that they’re bad is not helpful and it will not take your marriage in a healthy direction.

I made a list:

God designed you to want to be respected

God designed you ladies to want to be cherished

God designed you to want to feel accepted

God designed you to want to feel loved

God designed you to want intimacy and as sex relates to intimacy God designed you that way.

The desire to be appreciated, the desire to be understood, the desire to be desired, the desire to be followed, the desire to be taken care are all God given desires

You see, many of these things are what fuels our marriage issues in the first place and those desire are legitimate. But the minute I take those God given desires and place them on the shoulders of my wife and the God given desire begins to feel like an expectation and I begin to relate to Shannon as if she owes me something and then we go right back into a debt debtor relationship, which cannot function in unconditional love.

When our marriage’s becomes all about what you owe me and about what I owe you, we leave God’s love out of it and our marriages quickly begin to fall apart.

Do you know how you move from here expectations back to desires? It’s really very simple. It’s kind of convicting but it’s very simple. Here’s how you do it. Just two simple things. Expressions of gratitude and the acts of service in your marriage. That’s it. Expressions of gratitude and the acts of service.

We don’t express gratitude for things we’ve come to expect. That’s just her job. That’s just his job. He’s the husband. Why would I say thank you for that, isn’t that what wives do? When you husband or wife gives something of themselves to you, it might be as simple as unloading the dishwasher or making supper, if you don’t feel gratitude for the way they just served you, then you have expectations in that area.

The frequency or the infrequency of your expressions of gratitude for the remedial, daily, weekly things that go on in your home tells you in a moment, that things emotionally and physically have transitioned from desire to expectation.

If you’re a stay at home mom and you can’t remember the last time you looked your husband in the eye and said to him, “I just want to thank you again for working so hard and providing for me the opportunity to be a stay at home mom”, then you’ve moved from that being a desire for you to being an expectation. Why wouldn’t you thank your husband for making one of your dreams come true?

Even if that happened 5 years ago, continue to thank him so it never becomes an expectation in your marriage. If you haven’t done that then maybe him working has moved from a desire to an expectation simply because it’s become commonplace.

Guys, If your wife is a doer and she just gets things done, because you walk into your bedroom or your closet and there is a pile of clean cloths all washed and folded, then when was the last time you thanked her for all the work that she does each day or each week? If it’s been a while maybe some of your desires have moved from here (desire box) to here (expectation box). And if you’ve done that then you’ve moved to a debt debtor relationship and you’ve come to the point where you are acting like she owes you something. When’s the last time you showed your gratitude to your spouse for the things that they do every day.

It’s all about expressions of gratitude and acts of service. Acts of service. If you see something that needs to be done that your wife or your husband normally does, do you walk by thinking “she’ll get it” or “He’ll get it”. dishwashers full, I’ll just set them on the sink, that’s her job. And you can’t think of the last time you thanked him or her for emptying the dishwasher and you might say, awe come on!

It’s ok, you can stay there if you want. You can maintain a relationship built upon you owe me and I owe you, but all I’m saying is that when things get weird and squirrelly and difficult and you can’t quite figure things out begin looking here.

So, that’s the dilemma. Now, I want you to imagine a marriage where everything stayed over here (desires). Is that possible? Imagine a marriage where all the dreams wishes and desires stayed in the category of dreams wishes and desires.

Imagine a marriage that was built around fulfilling the wishes, dreams and desires of the person you married, rather than trying to live up to the expectations of the person you married. I’m telling you, it is a completely different dynamic. It is a completely different experience. This fuels intimacy, trust and romance, and I’m thinking that if you think back to when you were dating, this is how you treated one another and that’s why you had so much intimacy and romance. Expectations simply erodes love.

This (desires) is a covenant. I will even if you won’t. This is a contract (expectations). I will if you do, but I won’t if you don’t. So here’s what we’re going to be talking about over the next two weeks. How do you get all these (expectations) over here (desires).

It’s possible and it begins with your answer to this one question. I‘m going to ask you one question and then as you leave today I‘m going to give you a little card that, believe it or not, that has three passages of scripture. We do believe in the Bible here.

Here‘s what we‘re going to do. I‘m going to ask you a question and I don’t want you to come up with an answer immediately, but I want to challenge you this week to think about this question over and over. Over the course of this week I want you to read and meditate on each of these different passages of scripture and they will set you up for next week. So here we go, here’s the question:

What does you spouse owe you? Ladies, what does you husband owe you? Men, what does you wife owe you? This is your opinion. This is the assumption that you’ve been operating under. What do they owe you, think about that, because your answer to that question will tell you what’s in this box (expectations). Until you know what’s here, you won’t know what to do next in order to move it there (desires).

What does you spouse owe you and then read these verses in light of your answer to that question.

 

Question: What does your spouse owe you?

But God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us.    Romans 5:8

My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends. John 15:12-13 (NIV)

Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ. Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord. Husbands love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her Ephesians 5:21-22,25