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Never Give Up*

June 30, 2015 by Leave a Comment

fromthisday

 

From this Day Forward – Never Give Up*
Sycamore Creek Church
June 28/29, 2015
Tom Arthur

Peace friends!

Today is a great day to be here at SCC.  We’re wrapping up this series, From This Day Forward.  We’re looking at five commitments to failproof your marriage:

1. Seek God
2. Stay Pure
3. Have Fun
4. Fight Fair
5. Never Give Up

Two weeks ago I spoke on the commitment to have fun and made a suggestion that if you’re having a hard time finding time to have sex, then put it on the calendar.  Sometimes things I suggest get taken in a way that I didn’t intend.  A wife in our church sent me this screen shot of a calendar invitation from her husband:

 

declined

 

As you can see, she declined to put S.E.X. on their calendar every day for the rest of the year!  Come on guys, work on your approach!

Today we’re talking about the final commitment to failproof your marriage: Never Give Up.  I’m reminded of the Faith Hill Song, Love Ain’t Like That:

You can’t buy it at the store
Try it on for size
Then bring it back if it don’t feel right
No love, love ain’t like that

You can’t trade it in
Like an automobile
That’s got too many miles an’ rust on its wheels
No love, love ain’t like that.

Some of us are wondering if we can take our marriage back in and get a refund.  It may be because you married your opposite.  When you’re dating, opposites attract.  But when you’re married, opposites attack.  What’s cute when you’re dating is not so cute when you’re married.  Some of you are punctual.  Others are creative with your time.  Some of you plan.  Others spin a bottle and start driving.  Some of you are spenders.  Others are savers.  Some of you like thin crust.  Others like deep dish.  Larry Burkett says, “If you are the same, then one of you is unnecessary.”

These differences can over time cause us conflicts and problems.  John Gottman, one of the leading researchers on thriving marriages, has found that 2/3 of conflicts are unsolvable.  When you get married you choose your set of problems.  The grass isn’t greener on the other side of the fence.  If you ditch one relationship, you’re just ditching one set of known problems for one set of unknown problems.

Let me say up front that this message is NOT about staying stay in an abusive marriage. According to research compiled by the American Bar Association:Approximately 1.3 million women and 835,000 men are physically assaulted by an intimate partner annually in the United States.  9% of female rape victims are raped by a husband.  Intimate partner have killed approximately 33% of female murder victims and 4% of male murder victims. This message is not a guilt trip for the divorced.  Many of you did everything you could.  Some of you look back and see that you could have done more.  But this message isn’t about that.  It’s about living From this day Forward!

Jesus teaches about marriage when some religious leaders try to back him into a corner one day.  We read:

Some Pharisees came and tried to trap him with this question: “Should a man be allowed to divorce his wife for just any reason?”
~Matthew 19:3 NLT

Let’s get a hold of the cultural context in this story.  In Jesus’ day and age women were property.  A man could just say, “I don’t want you” like he’d sell some livestock.  These religious leaders are trying to put Jesus in a corner on this issue of divorce and what Jesus says SHOCKS everyone:

“Haven’t you read the Scriptures?” Jesus replied. “They record that from the beginning ‘God made them male and female.’” And he said, “‘This explains why a man leaves his father and mother and is joined to his wife, and the two are united into one.’ Since they are no longer two but one, let no one split apart what God has joined together.”
~Matthew 19:4-6 NLT

Jesus says that when you get married, you are one in the eyes of God.  He is NOT saying that you no longer have individual personality, gifts, and identity.  Divorce is like ripping two superglued pieces of paper apart.  It’s messy.  It rips and tears.  It’s very painful.

One of the reasons for this is that marriage is a covenant not a contract.  A contract is based on mutual distrust.  A contract limits my responsibility and increases my rights.  A contract says that I’m in as far as you are in, and I trust you as far as you perform.

A covenant is something very different.  A covenant is based on mutual trust.  A covenant is a permanent relationship.  God is a covenantal God.  The Hebrew word for “covenant” is “beref” which refers to a cutting.  In ancient times a covenant was made and a bull is cut in half and laid on the ground.  Each party who made the covenant would walk through the cut in half bull essentially saying, “If I break my covenant may what happened to this bull happen to me.”

Vows are supposed to be a covenant.  But too often they are something else:

In the name of God,
I take you to be my husband/wife/spouse,
to have and to hold,
from this day forward,
unless someone better comes along, or things get worse
until someone richer comes along, or you lose your job,
unless you get really sick and lose your health,
to love or to neglect,
until we are parted by divorce.
This is my solemn vow.

NO!  Till death do us part!  My wife got the “in sickness” part really quickly.  I ate some contaminated food and came down with Hepatitis A on our honeymoon.  I was down for three weeks!  I lost thirteen pounds.  I’m glad she stuck with me.  I’m glad we made a covenant, not a contract.

So what happens when marriage is difficult?  You say, “I don’t love her/him?”  Giving up would be like selling your car because you’re out of gas.  Go refill the love.  Or you say, “I don’t have any love?”  That’s when seeking God pays off, because the God who is love fills you with love when you don’t have love.  God forgives you when you can’t forgive.  You let God do what you don’t have the strength to do.

But what do you do when you’re not seeing any change.  Well, let’s look at the principle of sowing and reaping as Paul, the first missionary of the church and the author of many of the books of the Bible, describes it:

Don’t be misled—you cannot mock the justice of God. You will always harvest what you plant.  Those who live only to satisfy their own sinful nature will harvest decay and death from that sinful nature. But those who live to please the Spirit will harvest everlasting life from the Spirit. So let’s not get tired of doing what is good. At just the right time we will reap a harvest of blessing if we don’t give up.
~Galatians 6:7-9 NLT

There are two principles of reaping and sowing in marriage:

1.       You Reap What You Sow
You reap WHAT you sow.  Apple seeds produce apple trees.  Smiles lead to smiles.  Grace, compassion, and thoughtfulness lead to grace, compassion, and thoughtfulness.  But complaining, criticizing, and criticism lead to defensiveness, anger, and self-justification.  If you don’t like what you’ve been getting, look first at what you’ve been giving.  Don’t point your finger at your spouse without first taking a hard look at yourself.  Taking a hard look at yourself may require inviting other people besides your spouse who you trust reflecting back honestly what they see in you and your marriage.  You reap what you sow.

2.       You Reap Where You Sow
You reap WHERE you sow.  If I plant all my energy and passion into my hobby, will it help my marriage?  No.  If I put all my energy into my kids, will it help my marriage?  No.  If I put all my energy and passion into my career and job, will it help my marriage? No.  In your life, God is your number one.  Your spouse is your number two.  Not your kids.  Not your career.  Not your hobbies.  God = One.  Spouse = Two.

But this is hard.  Sowing and reaping takes patience and perseverance.  Have you ever experienced the “fog of learning”?  When I was learning Hebrew they referred to the learning process as being in a fog all the time.  Whatever you were learning seemed so hard.  It made no sense.  But if you kept at it and pressed forward, you could look back and see progress.  While you always stayed in the fog and that fog never lifted until you mastered the language, you could nonetheless see progress.  This doesn’t just happen with learning a language.  It happens with learning anything.  Learn how to play a musical instrument and you’ll be in the fog.  Learn how to become a better parent and you’re in the fog.  Learn how to have a better marriage and you’re in the fog.

You say to me, “I still don’t feel like it.  I just don’t want to do it.”  What other area of your life can you make that excuse and get away with it?  I just don’t feel like work.  I don’t want to do it.  I just don’t feel like taking care of the kids today.  Let them fend for themselves.  I just don’t feel like paying taxes.  NO! You get over your feelings and you do what’s right.  C.S. Lewis offers us some helpful instruction at this point:

“The promise, made when I am in love and because I am in love, to be true to the beloved as long as I live, commits me to being true even if I cease to be in love. A promise must be about things that I can do, about actions: no one can promise to go on feeling in a certain way. He might as well promise to never have a headache or always to feel hungry.”
~C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

So let me be really clear here.  When I say we don’t give up, I’m not saying, “We’re going to clench our fists and grit it and stick together and suffer.”  No.  When I say, “Never give up” I mean never give up seeking God first.  Never give up staying pure.  Never give up having fun.  Never give up fighting fair.  NEVER GIVE UP!  Remember what Paul said:

So let’s not get tired of doing what is good. At just the right time we will reap a harvest of blessing if we don’t give up.
~Galatians 6:9 NLT

What does it mean to have a harvest?  It means you’ve got a testimony, a story.  Look where we were and look where we are now.  You wouldn’t believe how neglectful I was.  Our kids saw it but look how our kids believe in us again.  We didn’t give up and it was hard hard hard hard hard hard work, but God used that commitment to turn it around.  We don’t give up because we didn’t make a contract, we made a covenant.  It’s the same kind of covenant that God makes with each one of us.  God doesn’t give up on us.

Prayer
God, from this day forward help us to never give up seeking you.  Help us to never give up staying pure.  Help us to never give up having fun.  Help us to never give up fighting fair.  Help us to never give up because your love never gives up on us.

*This is based on a sermon first preached by Craig Groeschel

Filed Under: Sermons Tagged With: , ,

SCC and the Supreme Court

June 29, 2015 by Leave a Comment

Dear Friends,SCOTUS-bldg1

This past Friday the Supreme Court made gay marriage the law of the land.  Many in our church have been celebrating this ruling.  Others in our church have been struggling with this development.  Still others are uncertain what to think or do and are just trying to get through the end of the week with their bills paid and food on the table.

Throughout its history Sycamore Creek Church has taught little about gay marriage.  I have shared about my own experience of reading about the topic and finding that there are people on both sides of this issue that I respect.  I am drawn to believe that faithful Christians disagree.  People who really do want to follow Jesus end up having different convictions on this particular decision.  John Wesley was fond of reminding us to seek “unity in essentials, liberty in nonessentials, and charity in all things.”  Of course there is disagreement among Christians about how essential or nonessential this issue is.  While disagreement may be honest among Christians, we can all agree that loving those with whom we disagree is what it means to follow Jesus.

Sycamore Creek is still committed to show compassion to everyone.  No matter whether you are celebrating the Supreme Court’s decision or struggling with it, we’ll do our best to show you God’s compassion in Jesus Christ.  You are welcome at Sycamore Creek.  You are welcome if you are gay.  You are welcome if you are straight.  You are welcome if you don’t know whether you’re gay or straight.  You’re welcome if you’re a Democrat.  You’re welcome if you’re a Republican.  I have often pointed out that George W. Bush and Hillary Clinton are both United Methodists.  That either scares you or it delights you.

We can find our unity and identity in something beyond the political challenges that face our country. We find our unity in the grace we all have received through forgiveness and new life in Jesus Christ.  When we were baptized we died with Christ when we went under the water, and we were raised with Christ when we came up out of the water.  That means that “there is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to the one hope of your calling, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is above all and through all and in all” (Ephesians 4:4-6 NRSV).

In times of disagreement like this I am guided by my mentor from afar, Martin Luther King Jr.  King taught during the civil rights movement that the ultimate goal was the “Beloved Community”, something like what we see in the Ephesians passage above.  He described that Beloved Community as a community where blacks and whites were reconciled in friendship.  His vision of the end precluded him from doing anything that would put unnecessary roadblocks or obstacles between blacks and whites becoming friends.  Thus, he resisted the racism of his day with non-violent methods (as violence would create significant roadblocks to ultimate friendship).

However you are responding to the Supreme Court ruling, seek to do so in a way that does not put unnecessary roadblocks between friendships across gender identities and across ideological responses.  Last week in response to the deaths of nine black people at Emmanuel AME in Charleston, I urged us to build friendships across boundaries of race, age, economic status, and gender identities.  That is no less true this week than it was last week.  Jesus, to the ire of most religious leaders of his day, hung out with people of all stripes and persuasions.  We will too when we faithfully follow Jesus.

Here is a favorite prayer of mine that I believe everyone can pray in the coming weeks.

O God, by whom the meek are guided in judgment, and light rises up in darkness for the godly: Grant us, in all our doubts and uncertainties, the grace to ask what you would have us to do, that the Spirit of wisdom may save us from all false choices, and that in your light we may see light, and in your trustworthy path may not stumble; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Peace,
Pastor Tom

Filed Under: Ponderings Tagged With: , , ,

Have Fun

June 24, 2015 by Leave a Comment

fromthisday

From this Day Forward – Have Fun*
Sycamore Creek Church
June 14/15, 2015
Tom Arthur

Peace friends!  Today we’re going to have some fun in this message.  That means it’s rated PG.  So parents, be guided.  We’re in this series called From this Day Forward.  We’re looking at building a thriving marriage by making five commitments:

  1. Seek God
  2. Stay Pure
  3. Have Fun
  4. Fight Fair
  5. Never Give Up

I want to give a plug for next week.  Fighting fair is probably one of the most important things we can learn to do well to help our marriage thrive.  So don’t miss next week.  But before we get to the fighting, we’re going to have some fun.  What’s the best advice on marriage you’ve ever been given?  I’m not sure it’s the best advice, but here’s some advice from famous people and celebrities:

Will Ferrell: “Before you marry a person, you should first make them use a computer with slow internet to see who they really are.”
LeAnn Rimes: “A good friend just told me that the key to a successful marriage was to argue naked!”
Phyllis Diller: “Never go to bed mad. Stay up and fight.”

What’s the best piece of marriage advice you’ve ever heard?  We asked people around our church what’s the best advice they were given about marriage.  Here’s what they said:

The best advice I was ever given was by my dad, who has been married three times.  I think he knows something about what doesn’t work.  He told me: “You either grow together or you grow apart.”  In other words, there’s no coasting in marriage.  You can’t just set your marriage off on a shelf to the side and hope it will stay thriving.  I was reminded of this the last time I was at my dad’s house.  I saw my trick bike from High School hanging in the garage.  I had so much fun on this bike growing up.  I took it everywhere.  It gave me hours and hours of fun.

My son has just learned to ride a bike and I thought it would be fun to bring my old bike home and ride it with Micah.  It was fun back then.  Surely it will be fun right now.  The next time we went to the skate park, I put it on the bike rack and took it with us.  When I hopped on it and began riding, I realized the truth that my dad had taught me.  The tires were so brittle from 20 years of disuse that they almost immediately shredded and disintegrated.  They literally fell apart.  (Not to mention that I’m no spry teenager hopping around on a trick bike anymore.)  You can’t ignore something for twenty years and imagine that you can just pick it back up and it will be just as fun as it was.  You either grow together, or you grow apart.  You either take the time to keep at something, or it falls apart.  You either work at it, or you lose it.  There’s no coasting when it comes to keeping up a bike, and there’s no coasting when it comes to marriage.  One of the key ways you pay attention to your marriage so it doesn’t fall apart is have some fun together.

The author of Ecclesiastes took a long and hard look at life and all that this world has to offer and wrote down what he saw.  Here’s one of his observations:

Relish life with the spouse you love
Each and every day of your precarious life.
~Ecclesiastes 9:9 (The Message)

Without some fun, adventure, romance, and physical intimacy, marriage is reduced to a business partnership.  What bills do we need to pay?  Who is picking up the kids after school?  What do we need to do in the yard this weekend?  People don’t fall in love having a bad time: “I went out with this guy and we had nothing in common and did nothing and it was such a turn on!”

When Sarah and I first got married we had a lot of fun keeping up dating one another.  We would each plan one surprise date a month.  We were super creative about these dates.  One time I took Sarah on a scavenger hunt around town.  We would sit down on a bench and taped underneath it was a love note.  We’d walk by a tree and clipped to a branch was another love note.  She had an awesome time walking around finding all these love notes hidden.  Then there was the time she created an “Eco Challenge” for me.  The Eco Challenge was this adventure race on TV.  She made a miniature version of it that included hiking, biking, swimming, and ended at the beach with a little boat she had just bought me.  Wow!  But here’s my favorite one I ever planned (or at least the favorite one I’m willing to talk about publicly).  I took her to a sushi place.  We have this little “tradition” of putting “in bed” on the end of the fortune cookies we get.  So to surprise her, I talked to the manager earlier in the day and gave him some custom fortune cookies I had made all ending with “in bed.”  When we were done with dinner, he delivered the fortune cookies to the table.  I’ll never forget Sarah’s surprise at opening one fortune after another of what life was going to look like in bed.

Let me provide one note of caution before we dive further into this idea of having fun in marriage.  The kind of fun we have in marriage changes over time.  Usually as a culture we idolize the puppy love and infatuation that romance begins with.  We spend a lot of time and energy trying to reclaim or rebuild that same puppy love even though we’ve been married for twenty years.  C.S. Lewis has this wisdom to share with us:

“It is simply no good trying to keep any thrill: that is the very worst thing you can do. Let the thrill go—let it die away—go on through that period of death into the quieter interest and happiness that follow—and you will find you are living in a world of new thrills all the time. But if you decide to make thrills your regular diet and try to prolong them artificially, they will all get weaker and weaker, and fewer and fewer, and you will be a bored, disillusioned old man for the rest of your life. It is because so few people understand this that you find many middle-aged men and women maundering about their lost youth, at the very age when new horizons ought to be appearing and new doors opening all round them. It is much better fun to learn to swim than to go on endlessly (and hopelessly) trying to get back the feeling you had when you first went paddling as a small boy.”
~C.S. Lewis (Mere Christianity)

So be ready for the kind of fun you have in a relationship to change over time.  But remember fun is not a luxury in marriage.  You don’t have time not to have fun.  If you don’t have time to have fun in marriage, then one day you may not have a marriage.  So I want to share with you three ways every couple needs to have fun.

1.       Face to Face Fun

When you’re dating you talk and talk for hours on end. Run out of things to say and just listen to each other breathe.  (Not that kind of breathing!)  But when you get married there’s a temptation for the face to face time to become business time.  How are the finances doing?  How is school going for the kids?  Did you get the oil changed in the car?

The Song of Solomon is probably the steamiest book in the Bible.  It’s a love song between two people madly in love.  Sometimes the woman sings to the man and other times the man sings to the woman like here:

How beautiful are your sandaled feet,
O queenly maiden.
Your rounded thighs are like jewels,
the work of a skilled craftsman.
Your navel is perfectly formed
like a goblet filled with mixed wine.
Between your thighs lies a mound of wheat
bordered with lilies.
Your breasts are like two fawns,
twin fawns of a gazelle.
~Song of Solomon 7:1-3 NLT

Did you notice anything about how the man sings to the woman besides the fact that he talked about her breasts?  I know, a lot of you got stuck right there.  But here’s what I’m driving at: he talks about details.  Some of us like headlines but others like details.  This reminds me of an article I once read about writing a really good thank you note.  There were four parts:

  1. Be specific – “Thank you for the extra time you put into…on Friday.”
  2. State the cost – “You could have been relaxing, biking, etc.”
  3. Personal affect – “It made me feel great and helped me do what I needed to do.”
  4. Thank – “Thank you so much for…”

Be specific.  Give details.  Find the face to face time to have fun.

Sarah and I began having a weekly date night when we moved into the Isaiah House while we attended seminary.  The Isaiah House was a Christian intentional living community.  We lived with other Christians and offered a couple of rooms to woman and children in transition.  Every night we ate dinner together with twelve or so other people.  We realized after the first two weeks that we had barely talked to one another because we were no longer talking to one another at dinner.  We were talking to the other twelve people around the table.  We needed a time apart for just the two of us to talk about the details of what was going on in our lives.  Enter date night.

Do you have a time when you have face to face time with your spouse?  Let me be clear here.  Face to face time is NOT driving your kids to an activity.  It’s NOT talking while watching a show.  It’s NOT talking while messing with your cell phone.  Face to face time is focused time with your spouse.

Sarah and I have found after eighteen years of marriage that we need a little help moving from business conversations to personal conversations.  So we often use a conversation starter book.  Before we head out on a date, I look through a little book and rip out one of the pages to help us start conversations.  Sometimes our conversation flows just fine.  Other times we find the questions on the page helpful for having some fun conversation.  Last Friday, here’s the question we talked about: “If you could wear a magical pair of glasses that allowed you to read your partner’s MIND for 60 seconds in a 24-hour day, when would you want to wear them most?”  Wow!  That was an interesting conversation.

When do you have face to face time with your spouse?  (By the way, if you’re not married, we all need face to face time with our friends too!)

2.       Side to side Fun – Men generally crave

You might say that generally speaking, women crave face to face time while men crave this second kind of fun: side to side fun.  Side to side fun is enjoying time doing common activities.  Back to the Song of Solomon:

Come, my love, let us go out to the fields
and spend the night among the wildflowers
~Song of Solomon 7:11

In other words: Weekend getaway!  Campout!  Cabin!  This kind of fun has changed over time as Sarah and I have grown.  Before we had kids we liked to ski together, downhill and cross country.  We liked to bike together.  We would hike and camp together.  We’ve spent five nights on the trail together backpacking.  Now that we’ve got kids our side to side time is a little less exotic but still important and fun.  We go on walks together.  We go to a bookstore and pick out books to show one another.  Last time we did this Sarah suggested we each pick a book of somewhere we’d like to travel together some day and spend time looking through it together.  We go see plays (we particularly enjoy plays at Peppermint Creek Theater).  Sometimes we go shopping together.  Neither of us is big shoppers, but Sarah likes shopping with me.  She says I pick out better clothes for her than she picks out herself.  Here’s my secret: I just pick out clothes I like.  She likes that I like them and somehow they always seem to fit better and feel more comfortable.  This was not a skill I knew I had before I got married.  But we have fun doing it together.

Do you know what your spouse enjoys doing?  Does he enjoy golfing, hunting, classic cars, NASCAR?  Have you ever tried to do these things with him?  Does she enjoy Downton Abbey?  Shopping?  Running?  Have you ever tried doing these things with her?  And I mean really trying to do them?  To enjoy them?  Maybe they’re not your favorite thing to do, but you’ll be building bridges with your spouse when he or she sees you making the attempt.

Here’s a little tip, women.  I mentioned that men tend to crave side to side fun more while you crave face to face fun.  You’re more likely to get face to face time if you include it with some side to side time.  Your man is more likely to open up when he’s doing something he enjoys, or right after he’s done something with you he enjoys (if he doesn’t fall asleep first!).  Which brings us to the last kind of fun every couple needs.

3.       Belly Button to Belly Button

I know you think the Bible is just boring literature with nothing sexy in it.  But I’m about to blow your mind here.  Back to the Song of Solomon.  The woman sings to the man:

Let us get up early and go to the vineyards
to see if the grapevines have budded,
if the blossoms have opened,
and if the pomegranates have bloomed.
There I will give you my love.
~Song of Solomon 7:12 NLT

“There I will give you my love.”  What’s she talking about?  She’s saying, “Let’s go have sex in a park!”  Whoever said that men were the only ones with crazy sex ideas just didn’t know women very well.  Now I’m not telling you to go have sex in a park, unless…well, no.  But I am telling you that every marriage needs some good belly button to belly button fun.

My dad gave me another piece of advice when it comes to sex that has turned out to be just plain wrong.  He said that if you put a quarter in a jar every time you have sex the first two years of marriage and then take one quarter out every time you have sex after the second year, you’ll never run out of quarters.  That’s just not right.  Every piece of research I’ve read says that married people have more sex than unmarried people.  Here’s my own tip for you: calendar sex.  I know it doesn’t sound very romantic.  And I’m not saying you can’t have sex if it’s not on the calendar, but if you know sex is coming on Thursday night, then everyone will be ready for it.  The anticipation will build.  Who knows, the anticipating may be too much to wait for Thursday night!

My dad’s not the only dad who gave his son advice about marriage.  The book of Proverbs, an ancient wisdom book, records the advice a dad gave to his son about marriage.  Although it could as well be the advice given to a daughter by a mother:

Let your wife be a fountain of blessing for you.
Rejoice in the wife of your youth.
She is a loving deer, a graceful doe.
Let her breasts satisfy you always.
May you always be captivated by her love.
~Proverbs 5:18-19

“This is the word of God for the people of God.  May God add blessing to the reading of his word!”  In other words, enjoy sex.  Enjoy the body of your spouse!  Enjoy sex.  Let it be intoxicating.  The word “captivated” is Shega in the original Hebrew.  Shega almost always is translated as “led astray” by strong drink.  Or the dad could say, “May you always be intoxicated by her love.”

Let’s talk a bit about sex here.  Yes, we’re going to talk about sex in church.  Yes, that’s because the Bible talks about sex in church.  Well, not sex in the church building, but giving the church counsel on sex.  Here’s two tips.  One of you, generally speaking the man, needs to work on your approach.  What worked when you first got married and were young lustful bunnies, probably isn’t working for you anymore.  I know that men can turn anything into a sexual innuendo.

Wife: “Honey, will you get me some cereal.”
Husband: “Yeah, I’ll get you some cereal.”

Wife: “Honey, will you get the oil changed in the car today?”
Husband: “You know I’ll change your oil, baby.”

Well, actually, in my house, we find this pretty funny.  But if that’s all you’re doing, men, then you’ve got to improve your approach.  Think of the whole day as foreplay.  Actually, think of the whole marriage as foreplay.  You can’t go from zero to sixty in the time it takes you to roll over onto her side of the bed.

So if men need to work on their approach, then generally speaking, women need to work on making an approach.  “But we’ve got kids, and I’m always exhausted because of them.”  Well, put the kids in front of the TV, pop in the Dora the Explorer DVD, run to the room, lock the door (very important!) and say: “We’ve got 30 minutes.  Go Diego!  Go!”

I know I’m speaking in a lot of stereotypes today.  The stereotypes aren’t meant to suggest that this is the way things are supposed to be, but rather to suggest that this is the way things generally are.  Generally speaking most men desire physical intimacy more often than women, and women desire more face to face fun or emotional bonding than men.  Here’s the hitch.  Women have legitimate and holy  opportunities for emotional bonding outside of their husbands.  But a husband has no other legitimate sexual outlet other than his wife.  Wives, when you turn off the physical intimacy faucet in your marriage, it’s the equivalent of an emotional crisis for yourself.  Men, when you turn off the emotional intimacy faucet in a marriage, it’s the equivalent of a sexual crisis for yourself.

But I don’t feel close to my spouse.  Remember, feelings follow actions.  You had fun once.  Learn to have fun again.  If the grass is looking greener somewhere else, then it’s time to water your own yard.  Take off the old brittle tires from the relationship bike, and put on some new ones.  Stop ignoring the fun in your marriage.  From this day forward…

God the Eternal keep you in love with each other,
so that the peace of Christ may abide in your home.
Bear witness to the love of God in this world
so that those to whom love is a stranger
will find in you generous friends.
The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ,
and the love of God,
and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit
be with you all.  Amen.

 

*This sermon is based on a sermon first preached by Craig Groeschel.

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Seek God

June 3, 2015 by Leave a Comment

fromthisday

From this Day Forward – Seek God*
Sycamore Creek Church
May 31 & June 1, 2015
Tom Arthur

Peace friends!

You’ve heard of Chuck Norris jokes, right?

At Chuck Norris’ wedding, instead of flower girls dropping flower petals, they were tossing dead ninjas to walk on.

After his wedding, Chuck Norris sent “You’re Welcome” cards to his guests.

Chuck Norris is starring in the sequel to “Four Weddings and a Funeral”.  It’s called “Four Funerals and a Funeral.”

Chuck Norris tried to be romantic once, so he wrote a love letter to his girlfriend. It went something like this: Chuck Norris.  She married him.

Ok, maybe Chuck Norris isn’t the best model for how to live a happy marriage.  So today we’re beginning a new five-week series called From This Day Forward.  For those of you not married, we want to spend the next five-weeks helping you prepare for marriage someday.  For those of you who are married we want to make your marriage better.  And if you’re single and have no plans for marriage, there’s nothing more holy about being married than being single.  Jesus was single after all.

When we get married there are some stereotypical dreams many of us have.  If you’re a lady, you probably dreamt a lot about the wedding, what kind of dress you’d wear, how many kids you’d have, what you’d name them, how you’d write your name.  If you were a man you maybe dreamt of having sex twice a day and three times on Sunday.  So how many of you are still dreaming?  Some of us may be asking, is a good marriage possible? Today I am celebrating 18 years of marriage, and I can tell you that the answer to this question is: Yes, a good marriage is possible, but it is not likely if you do what everyone else is doing.

Divorce Statistics
According to a New York Times article summarizing the current research on divorce, the divorce rate is thankfully on the decline.  In the 1970s-1980s it was 45-50%.  But current trends still show a 33% divorce rate.  The reason for this decline is complicated.  One key reason is people are getting married older.  In 1890, Men got married at age 26 and women at age 22.  In 1950 men got married at age 23 and women at age 20.  But in 2004 men were getting married at age 27 and women at age 26.  Research also shows that the more education and income you have, the less likely you are to divorce.  Although if you make less and have less education, the divorce rates are comparable to the 70s & 80s.  Add to this continued change in gender roles.  2/3 of divorces are initiated by women (Men, you better pay attention the next five weeks!).  The social acceptability of single parenting has reduced the number of “shotgun weddings.”  And the feminist revolution of the 70s & 80s has slowly begun to find a new normal for gender roles in a marriage.  All of these things have contributed to a decline in the divorce rate.

Although there is one more big reason the divorce rate is in decline: fewer people are getting married.  More people are cohabitating, living together without getting married.  More cohabitation = more “breakups” rather than more “divorces.” According to an Atlantic Magazine article, in the 1960s there were less than 500,000 people cohabitating.  In 1996 that number jumped up to 2.9 million, but by 2012 7.8 million people were cohabitating.

This raises an interesting question: should you “test drive” the relationship before you decide to “buy” the marriage?  While this may sound like common sense, research has shown that cohabitation can have a negative effect both on the quality of marriage and the length of it: “The likelihood that a marriage would last for a decade or more decreased by six percentage points if the couple had cohabited first” (New York Time article).  Prof. Pamela J. Smock—PhD, University of Michigan—says, “From the perspective of many young adults, marrying without living together first seems quite foolish…Just because some academic studies have shown that living together may increase the chance of divorce somewhat, young adults themselves don’t believe that” (New York Time article).  So if you want to do what everyone else is doing, live together before you get married.  But if you want to give yourself the best chance for a healthy long-lasting marriage, do what no one else is doing: wait to move in until you’ve made the life-long commitment.

So if you’re an average person, you’ve got a 33% rate of divorce in your marriage.  What other area are you satisfied with a 33% chance of negative outcomes?  33% chance of getting cancer from eating something?  33% chance of not getting your money back from the bank?  33% chance of getting attacked outside your house by man-eating-cats?  I’m not satisfied with a 33% chance of divorce.  I want to live fully into the vows I made when I got married:

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,
until we are parted by death.
This is my solemn vow.
This is not a beat up on divorce series.  It’s a series about making changes from this day forward.  We’re crossing a line from the past and living by God’s grace into the future.  We’re going to do this over the next five weeks by make five commitments:

1. Seek God
2. Stay Pure
3. Have Fun
4. Fight Fair
5. Never Give Up

Seek God First
Let’s start at the beginning: Seek God first.  Most of us are seeking not God first but a spouse first.  We have this idea floating around in our culture that you can’t be happy until you meet the ONE.  You’ve heard that one right?  The ONE soul mate out there for you.  The ONE who you are always looking for and if you miss that ONE person, then you’re doomed for the rest of your life.  Now, I don’t believe that God has only ONE right person for you (there are a lot of good God-honoring people you could marry), but there’s something wrong even deeper with this way of thinking.  What if someone said, “I think I’ve found my TWO”?  TWO?  Yes, your TWO.  Your ONE is God and your spouse is your TWO.  Jesus teaches us that:

“You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind.” This is the first and greatest commandment. A second is equally important: “Love your neighbor as yourself.”
~Jesus (Matthew 22:37-38 NLT)

God is your ONE.  Your spouse is your TWO.  You get that mixed up, and you’ve built a faulty foundation.  So let’s explore this idea further with two further commitments.  If you’re not married, but you’d like to be married someday then make this commitment today:

1.       I will seek the One while preparing for my two!
Too many of us put the God thing off until later when you “really need it.”  We party now and find God later.  This reminds me of something St. Augustine said:

“Oh, Master, make me chaste and celibate – but not yet!”
~St. Augustine (4th & 5th Century Church Leader)

If you hope to have a godly marriage one day, seek a godly life today.  Here’s the key: It doesn’t matter what you want, like attracts like.  If you want a particular kind of person to marry, then you must first seek God to become that kind of person.  If you want someone who has had multiple sex partners, then by all means, have multiple sex partners.  If you want to marry someone who tells you white lies, then learn to tell the best white lies right now.  If you want someone who is critical, then learn to criticize before you get married.  If you want someone who has no idea how to manage money, then don’t learn how to manage your own money.  If you want to marry someone who is in denial of their mental and physical health, then deny your own mental and physical health issues.

During my second year of college I began to notice some serious relationship challenges I was having with my family, particularly my dad.  I made a decision that year that has had positive consequences for the rest of my life.  I decided to go see a counselor.  You see, my dad was not being the dad that I wanted him to be.  I was so frustrated and angry with him.  Over a year of counseling I began to realize that the problem wasn’t with my dad.  The problem was with my expectations of my dad.  Moreover, I began to realize that I played this pattern out with most everyone around me.  I was trying to get them to all fill my expectations and if they didn’t, then I was sorely frustrated with the relationship.  In a word: I was very judgmental.

Over that year, my counselor helped me in some very subtle ways to let go of my expectations and have a relationship with the person my dad actually was.  It was incredibly freeing to give up judgment and let grace define the relationships around me.  My relationship with my dad improved in significant ways.  But even more importantly, I met Sarah, my future wife, during this year.  I went into this relationship with her with my eyes wide open about my own judgmental tendencies and patterns of relating to people around me.  I can’t say I don’t still struggle with this, but it’s one thing to be ignorant or in denial, and it’s another thing to actively seek God’s grace for a better way forward.

If you’re not yet married and you want to be, then begin by seeking the ONE while preparing for the two.  For those of you who are already married, here’s a commitment for you to make today:

2. I will always seek the One with my two!
We have a tendency to idolize our spouse when we put them in the ONE spot.  Perhaps the highest moment of idolization is the most romantic moment ever captured on film.  You know it.  The “You complete me” scene in Jerry Maguire.  Come on!  Sarah does a lot of things for me, but to think that she is the total completion of myself is to say that Jesus was incomplete without a spouse and that God is not the one who ultimately completes each one of us!  This idolization puts undue pressure on our spouse who is incapable of meeting all our needs.  When they let us down, we stop idolizing them and we demonize them.  When we’re idolizing our wives we say, “She’s so organized and driven and passionate.”  But when then we demonize the saying, “She’s a control freak.  She wants everything her way.  She just nags…nags…nags…”  When we idolize our husbands we say, “He’s so laid back, comfortable and easy going.”  Then we demonize him saying, “He’s a bump on a log.  He does nothing.  He’s not a leader.  All he does is play video games.”  In each case, we’re making our two our ONE rather than seeking the ONE with our two.

So how do we seek God together?  There’s lots of things I could say about this.  We could read the Bible together.  We could attend worship regularly together.  We could join a small group together.  We could serve together in the church and community.   We could raise home run kids together.   All of these things are excellent ideas and practices. In fact, the common wisdom that Christians divorce at the same rate as everyone else is actually false.  It all comes down to how you define Christian.  Ed Stetzer, Executive Director of Lifeway Research, summarizes the effect these spiritual practices have on our marriages:

“What appears intuitive is true. Couples who regularly practice any combination of serious religious behaviors and attitudes—attend church nearly every week, read their bibles and spiritual materials regularly; pray privately and together; generally take their faith seriously, living not as perfect disciples, but serious disciples—enjoy significantly lower divorce rates than mere church members, the general public, and unbelievers.” ~Ed Stetzer, Exec Dir of Lifeway Research (Christianity Today Article)

When you practice these spiritual habits together regularly, your chance of dodging divorce and staying happily married improves:

“Catholic couples were 31% less likely to divorce; Protestant couples 35% less likely; and Jewish couples 97% less likely.”
~Ed Stetzer, Exec Dir of Lifeway Research (Christianity Today Article)

So let me focus down on one keystone habit of all of these.  A “keystone habit” is one discipline triggers positive or negative habits across the board.  For example: flossing is a keystone habit.  I floss every morning because it gets me going with the day in the right direction.  When I stop then my discipline goes out the window.  I stop exercising.  I stop eating well.  I get fat.  I stop working because I don’t have the energy.  I get fired.  In frustration I speed home.  I run a red light.  A cop chases me.  When I finally get pulled over after a high speed chase on the news, I go to jail.  All because I stopped flossing!  Flossing is a keystone habit.  OK, you get the point.

The keystone habit I want to encourage you to make a commitment to today is to pray together.  Seek the ONE with your two by praying together every day.

If my people who are called by my name will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sins and restore their land.
~2 Chronicles 7:14 NLT

Can we say, “Restore their marriage?”  I think so.  It all begins with humbling ourselves before God together in prayer.  But how do you pray together?  It seems kind of obvious, but I think most of us are a little clueless about how to do this.  I want to share with you one way that Sarah and I pray together each day.  We meet in bed at or around 10PM (if you’re not married, don’t pray in bed together!).  Then we use the Daily Devotions for Families and Individuals from the Book of Common Prayer (you can find the whole thing here).   Here’s the prayer for bedtime:

At the Close of Day
Psalm 134

Behold now, bless the LORD, all you servants of the LORD, *
you that stand by night in the house of the LORD.
Lift up your hands in the holy place and bless the LORD; *
the LORD who made heaven and earth bless you out of Zion.

A Reading

Lord, you are in the midst of us and we are called by your
Name: Do not forsake us, O Lord our God.    Jeremiah 14:9,22

The following may be said

Lord, you now have set your servant free *
to go in peace as you have promised;
For these eyes of mine have seen the Savior, *
whom you have prepared for all the world to see;
A Light to enlighten the nations, *
and the glory of your people Israel.

Prayers for ourselves and others may follow. It is appropriate that
prayers of thanksgiving for the blessings of the day, and penitence for our
sins, be included.

The Lord’s Prayer

The Closing Prayer

Visit this place, O Lord, and drive far from it all snares of the
enemy; let your holy angels dwell with us to preserve us in
peace; and let your blessing be upon us always; through Jesus
Christ our Lord. Amen.

The almighty and merciful Lord, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit,
bless us and keep us. Amen.

That’s it.  It takes us about five minutes to pray through this prayer each night.  Other friends of mine take a moment to ask what went well and what didn’t go so well in their day.  Then they thank God for the good stuff and ask God for help with the bad stuff.  Others just pray the Lord’s Prayer together each day.  Another set of friends uses a prayer list together that has all the important people in their life and various other prayer requests on it.  Sarah’s parents take time each morning at breakfast to listen to Pray as You Go then pray for two people they received Holiday Cards from.  They then send them a post card letting them know they prayed for them.  Another couple reads a devotional together and discusses it before they go to bed each night.  Another friend texts prayers back and forth throughout the day.  There’s no one right way to do this.  There are lots of good ways to pray together.  The question is: will you seek the ONE with your two by praying together daily?

OK, I know it’s complicated for some of you.  You’ve got a spouse who isn’t a believer.  So do you pray for your spouse each day?  There’s a popular country song out right now by the Notorious Cherry Bombs titled, “It’s Hard To Kiss The Lips At Night That Chew Your Ass Out All Day Long.”  Well, you could say it’s hard to chew the ass off the person you’re praying for all day long.  It’s really hard to fight with someone you’re praying with.  It’s hard to commit adultery or get hooked on porn when you have regular spiritual intimacy with your spouse.  It’s hard to divorce someone you’re seeking God with.

So you’re thinking this is too hard?  Fine, take the odds.  33% failure rate.  Or you’re thinking, But we don’t do that.  Well, from this day forward do it.  But we don’t like each other.  From this day forward.  We don’t know how to do this.  From this day forward.  But I’m uncomfortable.  Get over it.  From this day forward!

I was listening to an interview with Elmer Towns.  He was asked about the recent death of his wife.  He said that toward the end of her life as she lay in bed drifting between this life and the next, her favorite gospel song came on the radio.  Elmer prayed to the Lord in that moment, “God, this would be a good time for my wife to end this life and begin the next.”  By the end of that song, the Lord answered that prayer.  I sat in my car crying and thought, I want to be the kind of husband who prays with and for his wife so much that when it’s time for her to meet the ONE, I’m ready to let go of my two.

Lord, make it so in each of our marriages.

 

*This message is based on a message first preached by Craig Groeschel.

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Baggage Claim – Sexual Baggage

March 5, 2013 by Leave a Comment

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Baggage Claim – Sexual Baggage
Sycamore Creek Church
March 3 & 4, 2013
Tom Arthur

Peace Friends!

Today we wrap up a series looking at claiming our baggage and knowing what to do with it once we’ve claimed it.  We began with family baggage, spent two weeks on divorce baggage, and today we finish with sexual baggage.

It’s worth taking a moment and remembering what I’ve meant when I use the term baggage.  Baggage almost always has something to do with sin.  Sin is missing God’s will for our lives.  When we miss the mark God has set for us, we sin, and when we sin we feel guilty.  That guilt is baggage.  The way we deal with it is we confess it and then we do whatever we can to make things right.  But sometimes we confess our sin and guilt persists.  That persistent guilt is baggage.  Or perhaps someone has sinned against us and left in us scars and memories that won’t go away.  That’s baggage too.

We all accumulate baggage over time.   Think about the most saintly person you know.  They’ve got a past that includes some baggage.  Think about the worst sinner you know.  In Christ they have a future.  Every saint has a past and every sinner has a future.  You can’t do anything to change your past, but Christ can change your future.  Jesus can take your baggage and create something new from it.

This isn’t a series of judgment and condemnation.  But it is a series of truth telling.  We’re telling the truth about ourselves.  And when we tell the truth about ourselves, then we have the opportunity for real and true compassion and mercy.  Truth telling and mercy aren’t mutually exclusive.  They actually walk hand in hand.

Throughout this series we’ve tried to follow the example of Jesus who was presented with a woman caught in adultery.  The crowd wanted to know what Jesus would do to her.  Would he stone her as the law required?  Jesus bent down and began writing in the dirt.  As he wrote, each person in the crowd began to leave one by one.  Then we read:

Jesus straightened up and said to her, “Woman, where are they?  Has no one condemned you?”  She said, “No one sir,” And Jesus said, “Neither do I condemn you.  Go your way, and from now on do not sin again.”
John 8:10-11 NRSV

Jesus tells the truth about the woman when he says, “Go and do not sin again.”  But he shows her compassion and mercy in the midst of it when he says, “I don’t condemn you.”  So we take that same attitude today and we turn it toward the sexual baggage that we all claim.

I know you all think that because I’m a pastor that I’ve got no sexual baggage.  Well, you would be wrong.  In my premarried days I didn’t always save sexual intimacy for marriage.  That guilt persists at times with me today.  I grew up in a church that at times seemed to think that the only sin a teenager could commit was to not save sex for marriage.  I internalized that and so I carry around some persistent guilt even today from decisions I made before I was married.

One area that I particularly struggled with was pornography.  I’m not sure it was “clinical” but I struggled mightily with a split personality between my private viewing of pornography and my public persona of being a leader in my youth group at church.  One day I felt so guilty about this that I felt compelled to go talk to my youth pastor and resign from my leadership roles because of my sin and hypocrisy.  So I met him in his office and confessed and “resigned” from my leadership positions.  Amazingly, he wouldn’t let me resign!  He told me that I was finally being honest about myself, something that a lot of teenage guys weren’t doing.  In that moment I met the joining together of telling the truth about myself and having mercy and compassion extended to me.

So what sexual baggage do you carry around with you?  Here’s some questions to get you thinking:

  1. Were you sexually active before marriage?
  2. Are you currently sexually active outside of marriage?
  3. Have you looked at porn in the last month?
  4. Have you been sexually abused?
  5. Are you satisfied with your current marital sexual intimacy?

All of these, and probably many more, can be ways we accumulate sexual baggage.  I can’t possibly hit on all of these in one message.  So here’s the problem I want to deal with today: We think that casual sex has no consequences.  We live in a sex-saturated culture that continually tells us we will only be satisfied when we have as many non-committal sexual encounters as possible.

I was recently listening to the NPR (National Public Radio) show, This American Life.  The host of the show, Ira Glass, was interviewing a guy about a decision he and his girlfriend made about their relationship to have a month-long “rumspringen” where they could have sex with as many people as they wanted.  “Rumspringen” is the time in the Amish culture when a teenager is given the opportunity to “sow their wild oats” before deciding whether to become Amish or not.  So the guy Ira Glass is interviewing tells the story of how he goes out and tries to sleep with as many women as possible in this month-long period.  The only problem is that he becomes emotionally attached to the women he’s sleeping with.  He can’t just have casual sex.  He bonds physically and emotionally with each woman he has sex with.  Then it’s over.

Of course, over time he learns how to not become emotionally attached, but this is something like taking a piece of tape and sticking it to one thing after another.  Over time, it won’t be sticky anymore because it’s being used in a way that it was not intended to be used.  After the 30-day period, he gets back together with his girlfriend and they decide they need ninety more days for their Rumspringen.  After the ninety days, they decide it’s over.  Did you see that coming?  Of course you did.  Because even if you’ve bought into the culture’s idea that casual sex has no consequences, when confronted with this situation, you know that the culture is lying.  Casual sex does have consequences.  You either bond with those you have sex with or you have so much bonding and breaking that you become emotionally numb to bonding and have to relearn how to bond with someone.

Let’s take a moment and look at what God’s plan is for sex.  We can find this laid out pretty clearly in the first book of the Bible, Genesis.  I find in the story of creation four purposes for sex.

Multiplying
When God creates humans, God blessed them and told them, “Multiply and fill the earth and subdue it” (Genesis 1:28 NLT).  Sex is about creating life.  We are made in the image of God and some of what that means is that we too can create living breathing intelligent life that is able to love and communicate and have a relationship with its creator.  That’s amazing!  Sex is in part for multiplying.

Companionship
When God made Adam he realized his creation was incomplete.  We read, And the LORD God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone.  I will make a companion who will help him” (Genesis 2:18 NLT).  Adam and Eve were created as companions to one another in a way that was mutually compatible.

Pleasure
Some Christians throughout history have seemed to make sex into some kind of obligation and duty you have to perform and along the way you’re supposed to try to ignore or even suppress the pleasure that it brings.  But that’s not the way that we read it in Genesis and many other parts of the Bible.  After God creates Eve for Adam, we read, “At Last!” Adam exclaimed, “She is part of my own flesh and bone!  She will be called ‘woman’ because she was taken out of a man” (Genesis 2:23 NLT).  My Hebrew professor at Duke liked to say that “At last!” was way too tame of a translation.  She liked to translate “At last!” as “Now that’s what I’m talking about!”  Adam is pleased with what he sees.  And of course both of them were.  They were both looking at one another butt naked in all their original human bodily perfection!

Unity
The author of Genesis sums this story up saying, This explains why a man leaves his father and mother and is joined to his wife, and the two are united into one (Genesis 2:24 NLT).  Sex creates a bond of unity that goes so deep that the author of Genesis says they become one flesh.  That deep spiritual and physical unity is why Jesus says that if you divorce and remarry you may have dissolved the legal bond, but you can’t dissolve the unity bond that came through marriage and sex.  Thus, if you remarry, according to Jesus, you’re committing adultery because you can’t un-flesh the one flesh that comes through marriage and sex.  You’ll carry that other person around with you for the rest of your life.

So here’s the whole point of this message: sexual purity is intended for intimacy.  Multiplying, companionship, pleasure, and unity create an intimate bond that is nearly impossible to break.  We were built for intimacy, a bond between two people that excludes all others, and sex ultimately bonds us with another person.

When you have a life-long committed marriage that has experienced the birth of children, companionship, the pleasure of one another’s bodies, and the unity of becoming one flesh, you’ve got an exclusive bond of intimacy unlike any other.  But if you’ve slept around and moved from one relationship to another delighting in many bodies and birthing children with many partners and sought companionship with many, then you don’t have a unity that leads to intimacy because you’ve got a bond that has been shared with many people.

The writer who compiled the book of wisdom called Proverbs, expresses this truth about sex in this way:

Drink water from your own cistern, flowing water from your own well.  Should your springs be scattered abroad, streams of water in the streets?  Let them be for yourself alone, and not for sharing with strangers.  Let your fountains be blessed, and rejoice in the wife of your youth, a lovely deer, a graceful doe.  May her breasts satisfy you at all times; may you be intoxicated always by her love.

So God’s plan for sex is that it be saved for one person in a life-long commitment of marriage that creates an intimacy unlike any other.  Sexual purity is intended for intimacy.

So about this time now, if you’re like me, you’re looking at some sexual baggage that you’re carrying around with you.  It may be sexual baggage that is accumulated because you didn’t save sexual intimacy for marriage.  Or it could be sexual baggage you accumulated because someone stole that sexual intimacy from you.  I want to recognize the latter, but speak mostly of the former.  Here’s what I want you to do today:

  1. Stop ignoring sexual sin.
  2. Stop idolizing sexual sin.

Some of us have bought into the culture’s claim that casual sex has no consequences or that God’s plan for sexual purity being saved for the intimacy of marriage doesn’t apply to us.  We just ignore the sexual sin in our lives.  If you err in this direction,  then today I want you to stop ignoring the sexual sin in your life and recommit today to save sex for marriage.  It may take a massive reordering of your life to make that happen but I think in the long-run God will bless you for making that commitment to sexual purity.  Today receive God’s grace to live a transformed life.

Some of you err in the other direction.  You idolize sexual sin.  I fall in this category.  Because I grew up in a church that seemed to take sexual sin more seriously than just about every other sin, I really tend to beat myself up about this one area of sin.  I “idolize” it by making it worse than others.  But sin is sin, and we’re all sinners.  Today, receive God’s mercy and forgiveness and know that God can take that baggage of guilt from you.

In the book of Luke, we read about Jesus encountering a prostitute amidst a religious leader, Simon’s home-party.  Simon isn’t very happy about this woman showing up at his party and is even less thrilled about how Jesus is treating her.  We read:

Then turning toward the woman, he said to Simon, “Do you see this woman?  I entered your house; you gave me no water for my feet, but she has bathed my feet with her tears and dried them with her hair.  You gave me no kiss, but from the time I cam in she has not stopped kissing my feet.  You did not anoint my head with oil, but she has anointed my feet with ointment.  Therefore, I tell you, her sins, which were many, have been forgiven; hence she has shown great love.  But the one to whom little is forgiven, loves little.
Luke 7:44-47

Jesus shows compassion to the woman who had sexual baggage, while he seems more than a little put off by the self-righteous religious leader.  Baggage of any kind, including sexual baggage, draws us to the feet of Jesus where we meet both truth and mercy.  We then lay the baggage at the foot of the cross.

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Baggage Claim – Divorce Baggage, Week I

February 18, 2013 by Leave a Comment

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Baggage Claim – Divorce Baggage Week I
Sycamore Creek Church
Tom Arthur
February 17/18, 2013

Peace friends!

Today we’re in week two of a four week Baggage Claim series.  We’re claiming our baggage, then we’re figuring out what to do with it.  We began with family baggage and today we turn toward divorce baggage.  We’re going to spend two weeks unpacking divorce baggage.  The first week—this message—we’ll claim the baggage.  The second week we’ll figure out what to do with it.

Before we dive in to divorce baggage specifically, let’s just spend a moment asking the question: what is baggage?  “Baggage” can probably mean a lot of things to a lot of people.  When I talk about baggage I mean one of three things and they all have something to do with sin, missing the mark of God’s plan for our lives.  Baggage can be un-confessed guilt from past sin.  Not all guilt is bad.  Guilt that leads to confession is good guilt, and you might even call it good baggage.  You deal with this kind of baggage by claiming it through confession and then doing everything in your power to make right the wrong you did.  The other two kinds of baggage are harder to deal with and best figured out on a case by case basis.

A second kind of baggage is persistent guilt left after confession of sin.  Here we’re talking about the inability to receive God’s forgiveness when we claim our baggage through confession.  A third kind of baggage is painful memories or scars created when someone sins against you.  These are memories you just can’t shake, feelings of worthlessness, or feeling alone, among many other things.

Here’s a truth: we all accumulate baggage.  Every saint has a past, but every sinner has a future.  You can’t change your past, but Christ can change your future.

During this series I want to help you not accumulate the baggage in the first place, but if you already have it, to know what to do with it.  I want you to be able to name clearly what the baggage is, and to have a clear path forward for how to receive God’s grace to dump it and live a new baggage-free life.  And that brings us back full circle to knowing what it is and not accumulating it in the first place.

This is not a series of condemnation and judgment, but it is a series of truth telling.  Truth telling and compassion, mercy, and grace are not mutually exclusive.  Actually there is no true compassion without truth telling.  Jesus models truth and mercy together when he encounters a woman caught in adultery:

Jesus straightened up and said to her, “Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?”  She said, “No one, sir.” And Jesus said, “Neither do I condemn you. Go your way, and from now on do not sin again.”
John 8:10-11 NRSV

Divorce Baggage: The Problem and the Point
So here’s the problem I want to deal with today: Marriage costs us something.  We think that the feelings of love we have when we get married will see us through our marriage, but marriage turns out to be hard.  Sometimes really hard!  And sometimes we find ourselves in a very long stretch in our marriage with little to no positive feelings and an accumulation of negative feelings.  Psychologists tell us that the healthy ratio of positive to negative feelings in a marriage is five positive for every one negative.  Some of us are experiencing five negatives for every one positive!

So here’s the point of today’s message: Marriage is a covenant.  It’s a covenant that teaches us something about following Jesus even when we don’t feel the positive emotions we once did.  Perhaps we learn the most about following Jesus when we no longer have those positive emotions.  Marriage is a discipleship covenant where we learn to practice love even when we don’t feel love.  That means that divorce deteriorates discipleship and we, and those around us, accumulate baggage (guilt, painful memories, feelings of worthlessness, and more) in the process.  Let’s unpack this idea of marriage as a covenant.

Marriage is a Covenant
Marriage is a covenant.  It is a commitment made before God.  When you said your vows, if you did so in a Christian marriage ceremony, then you made those vows not only to your loved one, but you also made those vows to God.  But the idea of marriage as a covenant goes even deeper than just the commitment you’re making to another individual.

Marriage expresses God’s love and commitment to God’s people.  The covenant to love one another through all the ups and downs is a symbol of God’s love and commitment for the community of God’s people.  This commitment that God makes goes so far as to remain even when God’s “spouse” is unfaithful.  We see this most clearly in the book of Hosea.  Hosea is told by God to marry Gomer, a woman who will be unfaithful to Hosea.  It’s a pretty crazy situation.  Here’s what we read right at the beginning of the book of Hosea:

When the LORD first spoke through Hosea, the LORD said to Hosea, “Go, take for yourself a wife of whoredom and have children of whoredom, for the land commits great whoredom by forsaking the LORD” (Hosea 1:2 NRSV).

But then later on we read this:

And I will take you for my wife forever; I will take you for my wife in righteousness and in justice, in steadfast love, and in mercy (Hosea 2:19 NRSV).

God’s faithfulness to the covenant remains even when our faithfulness waivers.

Marriage also represents Christ’s covenantal love for the church.  In St. Paul’s letter to the Ephesians, he uses the example of marriage to explain how much Jesus loves the church:

Be subject to one another out of reverence for Christ…Just as the church is subject to Christ, so also wives ought to be, in everything, to their husbands. Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her (Ephesians 5:21, 24-25 NRSV).

Notice the command to submit to one another.  Marriage isn’t about the woman submitting to the man.  Marriage is a covenant of mutual submission.  That first sentence colors everything else Paul says in this passage.  Women already know something about this because it’s in our cultural background, but Paul has to explain it to husbands.  He says that husbands are to submit to the point of following in Jesus; footsteps: giving yourself up entirely for your wife, even to the point of death!  Notice here the connection of loving your wife as Christ loved the church.  Marriage is good in as much as both husband and wife represent and replay Christ’s deep unconditional self-sacrificial love for the church.

So marriage is probably best understood as an act of discipleship that is grounded not in feelings of love but the practice of love.  It can be hard.  Sometimes, maybe even often, you have to pick up your cross and carry it.  You may have to learn to love your enemy who sometimes shares a bed with you.  You will most certainly have to learn how to forgive.  If you want to learn how to follow Jesus, getting married is one way to learn.

Divorce is Covenant Breaking
So if marriage is a covenant with another person and with God and represents the covenant God has with God’s people and the love that Christ has for Christ’s church, what does it say when we break that covenant?

First, divorce breaks a covenant made with your spouse and with God.  Second, divorce breaks the sign of God’s covenant with God’s people.  Third, divorce breaks the covenant of discipleship that exists between Christ and the church.  Maybe this is why God says, “I hate divorce” (Malachi 2:16).  What was once a symbol of God’s unconditional love for God’s people becomes an expression of conditional love.

God’s Kingdom
At this point I think it is important to point out something that theologians call the “already and not yet” of God’s kingdom.  When we pray in the Lord’s Prayer that “your kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven” we are recognizing that we live in a broken world.  The way that God designed the world has been damaged in so many ways.  We pray that God would heal that world and bring his kingdom and his reign here on earth in the same way that God fully reigns in heaven.  But implicit in that prayer is the idea that this is a process and we are not yet there.  Thus, God’s kingdom here on earth is already present, but it is not yet fully present.

Covenant Breaking
In a fully present kingdom, there would be no need to ever break the covenant of marriage.  But God’s kingdom is not yet fully here, and so the question arises, does the Bible ever think it is OK to break the covenant of marriage?  The answer to that question depends on where you look.

Moses seems to allow divorce for “something objectionable”:

Suppose a man enters into marriage with a woman, but she does not please him because he finds something objectionable about her, and so he writes her a certificate of divorce, puts it in her hand, and sends her out of his house; she then leaves his house and goes off to become another man’s wife (Deuteronomy 24:1-2 NRSV).

What is “something objectionable”?  Maybe Jesus can clear this up for us.  Well, it depends on where you look for Jesus to clarify things.  In the book of Mark, Jesus interacts directly with this teaching from Moses, and says that Moses allowed divorce because we had hard hearts.  He erases the loophole for divorce when he says,

“Whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery against her; and if she divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery” (Mark 10:11-12 NRSV).

In Mark, Jesus doesn’t seem to allow divorce for anything, whether “objectionable” or not.  When you get married you become “one flesh” as Genesis says, and you can’t “un-flesh” yourself.  (On a side note: Jesus raises the woman’s status to equal with a man in this teaching.  In Jesus’ day, adultery was technically a sin against a man, because a woman was a man’s property.  So when you sleep with a woman who is married, you commit adultery against her husband.  But Jesus says that you commit adultery against her.)  So when you seek guidance about divorce from Jesus in the book of Mark you seem to get this answer: divorce is never permissible.

But if you keep reading you will eventually come to Jesus’ teaching about divorce in the book of Matthew. Here Jesus seems to qualify his previous teaching saying,

“And I say to you, whoever divorces his wife, except for unchastity [porneia], and marries another commits adultery” (Matthew 19:9 NRSV).

What is translated as “unchastity” is the Greek word “porneia.”  That probably sounds familiar because it’s where we get our English word “pornography.”  Porneia or unchastity is a pretty broad term.  And perhaps like the Supreme Court, we can’t define it, but we know it when we see it.  There are a lot of sexual infidelities besides just sexual intercourse that would seem to fall under the umbrella of porneia.  Thus, in Matthew Jesus teaches that if your spouse is unfaithful in a variety of sexual ways, it is permissible to break the covenant of marriage.

St. Paul takes this a step further.  He says in his letter to the Corinthians,

“To the rest I say — I and not the Lord — that if any believer has a wife who is an unbeliever, and she consents to live with him, he should not divorce her. And if any woman has a husband who is an unbeliever, and he consents to live with her, she should not divorce him” (1 Corinthians 7:12-13 NRSV).

So Paul says that if you’re married to an unbeliever, and that unbelieving spouse wants to leave, then what can you do?  You let them go.  Perhaps the principle behind Paul’s direction is this: you can’t force discipleship on anyone.  God gives us the freedom to reject God’s love.  Discipleship and covenant keeping is never forced from God onto us.  Could this also apply to someone who considers themselves a believer but says they want to divorce you?  Again, you can’t make anyone follow Jesus.  You can’t make anyone keep a covenant, even if it was a commitment made to God.

An interesting point to notice in Paul’s teaching here is that he says, “I and not the Lord.”  Paul seems to be adding to Jesus’ teaching with some of his own.  Paul is practicing some continued pastoral discernment for his situation and the situation his churches find themselves in.  Maybe Paul is living into the same act of discernment that we see between Jesus’ answer in Mark and Jesus’ answer in Matthew.  As both Jesus and Paul encounter new situations and circumstances, they’re finding that God’s kingdom is already but not yet.

In this spirit, I would like to continue some discernment myself.  I, and not the Lord, want to suggest that sustained violent abuse (both physical and possibly verbal) is porenia.  It is sin against the “one-fleshness” of marriage.  You are not treating your spouse as “one-flesh” with yourself when you violently abuse him or her.  One problem here is that this kind of abuse is often kept secret rather than made known.  What would happen if your spouse hit you the first time or violently cursed you verbally and instead of keeping it a secret, you shared it appropriately with some of the community around you that witnessed the covenant you made together at your wedding?  What if that community then became a community of accountability to help a spouse who has trouble expressing his or her anger in healthy non-violent ways?

Something implied in all these teachings is that even if your spouse is unfaithful in one of these ways, and the Bible allows for divorce in that circumstance, it does not require it.  God’s grace is always interested in reconciliation even if the brokenness of the world makes that near impossible.  Remember, Hosea remained married to an unfaithful spouse to show that God’s love is faithful even when our love is not.

Remarriage?
If divorce is covenant breaking and sex after divorce is adultery, then several questions arise about remarriage.  First, is remarriage de facto adultery?  The Bible is not particularly optimistic about remarriage.  Except for the explicit situations we covered above, the Bible teaches that remarriage is adultery.  Please don’t shoot the messenger.

Second, if I’m remarried after divorce and the divorce wasn’t because of one of those explicit circumstances, should I get divorced from my second marriage?  No!  The Bible always speaks against this kind of ascetic idealism.  There is grace and salvation in the midst of brokenness!  As Richard Hays, a New Testament scholar, says, remarriage could “serve as a sign of God’s love in the world…A second marriage after divorce could serve as a sign of grace and redemption from the sin and brokenness in the past” (The Moral Vision of the New Testament, pg 373).

Third, what should I do now that I am remarried?  Here are several questions to ask yourself:

  1. Did you confess your role of sin in the divorce (if there was sin)?
  2. Did you confess your sin to your ex (if possible)? Or someone else?
  3. Are you doing all you can to live at peace now with your ex?
  4. Are you committed for life to your current covenantal marriage?

Fourth, should I remain single if I have been divorced?  Let me suggest that remarriage is best approached as a process of discernment.  The Bible isn’t very optimistic about remarriage, but it’s not the only one not optimistic about second marriages.  We all are familiar with the statistics about second marriages.  Don’t make this decision alone.  Include your friends and family.  Make sure you’ve got some friends who are providing guidance who aren’t “yes men.”  Make sure you’ve got some people asking you hard questions about your motivation and the timing of any particular commitment to a second marriage.  Run your previous marriage and any thoughts about a second marriage through the four questions above.  Perhaps then, a second marriage can serve as a new covenant that represents how God can and does redeem this broken world.

So today we’ve looked at claiming the baggage of divorce.  We’ve spent our time telling the truth about what marriage is, a covenant, and what divorce is, covenant breaking.  But this series isn’t just about claiming the baggage.  It’s also about knowing what to do with it once you’ve got it.  Doing both of those in one sermon was too much.  So next week we’ll be looking at what to do with the baggage of divorce once you’ve claimed it.  I hope you’ll join us as we seek to take the baggage and give it to God to work something new.  Because in the family of God, there are no carry-ons.

Prayer
God, help us to tell the truth about divorce.  Help us to claim the baggage divorce has created in our families.  And open our hearts to how you can continue to work in and through a broken and wounded world.  Help us to renew the covenants that we have made to others and to you.  Help those covenants be signs and symbols of your love for us.  In the name of Jesus and in the power of your Holy Spirit.  Amen.

 

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Ten Lessons to Transform Your Marriage by John & Julie Gottman

April 19, 2012 by Leave a Comment

10 Lessons to Transform Your MarraigeTen Lessons to Transform Your Marriage
By John & Julie Gottman
Rating: 8 of 10

I first heard about the Gottmans while listening to Malcolm Gladwell’s book Blink.  Gladwell described them as relationship experts who after briefly listening to a couple argue could predict whether they would be together or not in seven years with 90% accuracy!  That got my attention.  It turns out that there are four “horsemen” that the Gottmans look for: criticism, stonewalling, defensiveness, and contempt.  If one of these behaviors shows up in an argument (especially contempt), your relationship is unlikely to have a happy future.

Ten Lessons is the Gottman’s positive take on their negative research: what can couples do to enhance their relationship and dismount the four horsemen?  What makes this book so engaging is that the ten lessons are ten different scenarios that regularly come up in many relationships and are explored through verbatim conversations with real-life couples.  These ten lessons range from addiction to work and healing form an affair to lack of passion and nagging.  Anyone deal with those issues in their marriage?

In each chapter the Gottmans introduce you to a new couple and their argument.  The verbatims are like sitting in on a real-life counseling session.  You hear how the couples discuss and argue.  Then the Gottmans do some teaching and training on how to have the conversation in a different way with tips like, “How to complain without criticizing,” and then the couples give the conflict another go around.  It is fascinating to see how a conflict that had deep ruts built over years and years of arguing can actually change course.

I liked this book and the Gottman’s take on marriage so much that Sarah and I have decided to use their home-retreat package for a personal home workshop on our fifteenth anniversary.  The box, which arrived in the mail last week, comes with DVDs, two workbooks, and several cards for exercises.  We’ve scheduled a two-day two-night getaway at an historic inn that also has a DVD player and comfy chairs in the room.  Given that Sarah and I have made it to fifteen years, I don’t think we’re in any danger of failing the Gottman’s seven-year prediction test, but that doesn’t mean that we don’t still have things to learn about loving one another better.  If Ten Lessons is any indication of what we’re in for, then our commitment, connection, and love for one another will learn even more lessons over this marriage getaway.

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The Downfall of Kings – Passion

January 16, 2012 by 1 Comment

The Downfall of Kings

The Downfall of Kings – Passion
Sycamore Creek Church
January 15, 2012
Tom Arthur
2 Samuel 11 & 12 (Selections)

I have a covenant with my pants. I will never leave them nor forsake them. So when they get too tight, it’s time to lose weight. I’m currently trying to lose about twelve pounds. I’m not overweight; I was just getting to the top of my healthy weight range. And because most of the men in my family are overweight and struggling with various forms of diabetes, I pay a lot of attention to my own weight. My body often wants to eat all kinds of junk food, but I don’t always give my body what it wants. The body’s senses are a beautiful gift, but if continually fed, they will also undo us.

Today we continue in a series called The Downfall of Kings. We’re looking at the ancient kings of Israel and moments when they fell. It’s my hope that we can learn something from these kings so that we won’t repeat their mistakes. Last week we looked at Israel’s first king, King Saul, and his struggle with power. Today we look at Saul’s successor, King David, and his struggle with passion. Let’s dive right into the story.

2 Samuel 11:1-2 NLT
The following spring, the time of year when kings go to war, David sent Joab and the Israelite army to destroy the Ammonites. In the process they laid siege to the city of Rabbah. But David stayed behind in Jerusalem. Late one afternoon David got out of bed after taking a nap and went for a stroll on the roof of the palace. As he looked out over the city, he noticed a woman of unusual beauty taking a bath.

How We Spend Our Time
Here we see that David wasn’t doing what he probably should have been doing, leading his army. Rather, he was lounging on his couch. It is not clear whether his seeing Bathsheba was intentional or unintentional, but it doesn’t matter. If he had been doing something besides lounging around, his mind might have been preoccupied with worthwhile action, thoughts, and ideas and might have been able to resist an unintentional and unexpected temptation.

When do we do the same thing today? When are we lounging on our couches when we should be out joining the mission of our community? Do you realize that today most of us live at a standard of living way beyond what any king of old ever lived. Air conditioning alone is a luxury beyond comparison. And what do we do with that luxury? We watch TV and we surf the internet. How much time do you spend lounging on your couch or in your LazyBoy watching TV or surfing the internet at your desk? I’m not suggesting that TV or the internet are all bad. But most of us probably could do with a little less of each. What we feed our minds by what we choose to watch sets us up either to live for God or to fall like David.

What about your reading habits? When was the last time you read a book? I suspect that most of us when we do read, read magazines. And what kind of magazines are we reading? I admit, that I am tempted to read pretty low-grade magazines, or at least focus on the more banal stuff in the good magazines that I do read. A year ago I tried a subscription to Entertainment Weekly. I thought it might be a good way for me to stay on top of current pop culture. The only problem was that I regularly found myself turning first to the section of the magazine where they grade the fashion choices of various celebrities. Reese Witherspoon – A. Melissa Joan Hart – D+. I don’t even know who Melissa Joan Hart is, but know that she can’t choose a fashionable dress to wear. Is this really what I want to be spending my time doing? Or is this setting me up in some way to have my own personal downfall with passion?

2 Samuel 11:2-4 NLT
He sent someone to find out who she was, and he was told, “She is Bathsheba, the daughter of Eliam and the wife of Uriah the Hittite.” Then David [took] sent for her; and when she came to the palace, he slept with her. (She had just completed the purification rites after having her menstrual period.) Then she returned home.

Giving in to Your Passions
David sees Bathsheba and wants her. So far there isn’t much he’s done wrong. What happens next is where it spirals downward. His body wants what he isn’t supposed to have, and he gives it to his body anyway. Here we see the anatomy of an affair (no pun intended).

Sometimes I tend to think that affairs happen in an instant. But they don’t. Affairs are built upon subtle but cumulative actions. Here’s what David did to build his affair:

He looked Bathsheba up on Facebook.
He was told her relationship status was “married” to one of his “close friends.”
He “messaged” her and used his power and privilege to bring her to his palace.
He waited while she came to the palace.
He “slept” with her.
She went home.

This is all David’s work. It is slow and deliberate. There is plenty of time throughout the whole thing for David to change his mind, to decide not to give his body what it wants. We’re going to come back to the steps of this affair more at the end of the message, but for now let’s notice that Bathsheba is the victim here. Many commentators in the past have accused Bathsheba of some plot to tempt David. I’m not buying it. She is trapped by the power of the king. The only time she is the subject of the sentence is the last one: she went home. Otherwise David is the one acting throughout the entire passage.

Restraining the Passions
While David attempts to take from Bathsheba’s body to fulfill his passions, her body cannot be fully controlled, and bites back. She conceives. She sends word to David. David figures that there is a simple solution to his problem. Bring home her husband, Uriah. Surely a sex-starved warrior from the battlefield will sleep with his “hot” wife when give the opportunity. But things don’t go as David expects. Uriah sleeps outside and does not sleep with his wife. David calls him and asks why.

2 Samuel 11:11 NLT
Uriah replied, “The Ark and the armies of Israel and Judah are living in tents, and Joab and his officers are camping in the open fields. How could I go home to wine and dine and sleep with my wife? I swear that I will never be guilty of acting like that.”

In contrast to David, Uriah is principled and restrains his own passions for higher ideals. Uriah fasts from giving his body what he wants. He recognizes that sometimes you must give up something good (there is nothing wrong with sex in marriage) for something better (focus and community commitment to a mission).

What a contrast Uriah is with our behavior today! We eat whatever we want when we want it. We consume entertainment without considering its effect on us. We indulge our sexual appetites as much as possible.

Jesus’ Passion
Uriah is a kind of Christ-figure. In this moment, he is like Jesus in many ways. When Jesus was tempted by Satan to indulge his own bodily appetites, he resisted.

Luke 4:1-4 NLT
Then Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, left the Jordan River. He was led by the Spirit to go out into the wilderness, where the Devil tempted him for forty days. He ate nothing all that time and was very hungry. Then the Devil said to him, “If you are the Son of God, change this stone into a loaf of bread.” But Jesus told him, “No! The Scriptures say, ‘People need more than bread for their life.'”

Jesus is on a spiritual retreat rather than lounging around. Because of this spiritual retreat, he is “full of the Holy Spirit.” In some ways a spiritual retreat in the wilderness is a kind of lounging, but it is a different kind of lounging. It is a purposeful resting, Sabbath keeping. When was the last time you took a spiritual retreat?

Not only was Jesus on a spiritual retreat in the wilderness, but he was also fasting. He was giving up something good (food) for something better (spiritual strength). When was the last time you fasted intentionally for spiritual reasons. I’m not talking about fasting to make weight for your wrestling tournament or fasting in the morning before having a procedure done at the hospital. I’m talking about giving up food or some luxury for a set period of time so that you could focus more fully on communion with God.

Jesus also is focused on the well being of others rather than just his own well being. While Satan thinks he can tempt Jesus with the passion of his stomach, Jesus has his own end in mind, the salvation of the world.

Let’s get back to David…

2 Samuel 11:14-17 NLT
So the next morning David wrote a letter to Joab and gave it to Uriah to deliver. The letter instructed Joab, “Station Uriah on the front lines where the battle is fiercest. Then pull back so that he will be killed.” So Joab assigned Uriah to a spot close to the city wall where he knew the enemy’s strongest men were fighting. And Uriah was killed along with several other Israelite soldiers.

When David realizes that his plan to pass his own child off as the child of Uriah won’t work, he makes another plan – kill Uriah. David is in deep here. I know that all sin is simply sin in God’s eyes, but there is something quantitatively different about murder as compared to adultery: someone dies. David tramples others to “feed” his body’s passions.

I think it is very tempting at this point to excuse yourself from the story. Most of us have never killed anyone or even come close. But let’s not neglect the times when our actions trample on the well being of others. We ignore the people who serve us at the grocery store, gas station, coffee house, restaurant, drive through and the like. We eat food without paying attention to way it was grown/raised and the impact that has had on others, especially low-wage immigrants and migrant workers.

This past week I was talking to Jeremy about this point in the sermon. He told me a story about his Freshman year at MSU. He was not yet fully sold out to following Jesus, but he had never been to a strip joint. His friends decided that he needed to go, so they took him to Omars. When he walked in, he immediately recognized one of the strippers as a “friend” of his from high school in Traverse City. He went up to her and called her by her first name. She immediately told him not to do that. She didn’t want people to know her first name, and the culture of strip joint is that you don’t go by your real name. The stripper has a stage name that helps keep the fantasy going. What it does is depersonalize the whole experience and objectify the women who are paid to fulfill the passions of the men in the room. But Jeremy wasn’t able to make that leap. Once he realized that it was a friend of his who was the stripper, he could no longer enjoy it. He couldn’t depersonalize and objectify her to feed his body’s passion for lust. His “friend” ruined the whole night for him. This is what theologians call “prevenient grace.” It’s God’s grace at work in Jeremy before he even recognizes that it is God at work. Thank you, God!

The Anatomy of an Affair
David gave his body what it wanted, an adulterous tryst with Bathsheba. I mentioned earlier that there were several progressive and slow steps into this affair. I’d like to look at a modern day example of this kind of slow progression.

In the movie, He’s Just Not That Into You, we see the slow progression of an affair unfold between two people, Ben (played by Bradley Cooper), a married man, and Anna (played by Scarlett Johansson), a single woman. They bump into each other at the grocery store and begin flirting, but as she’s getting ready to give him her number, Ben confesses that he’s married. She is an aspiring singer and he works in an office that can help her, so he decides that it’s OK to exchange cards so that he can offer her advice on her singing career. Eventually he calls her to offer advice on her career, and when she comes to his office, he can’t find the “advice” he wanted to give her. He goes to a yoga class that she’s leading, and they go swimming afterward. She says she just wants to be friends but then jumps in naked. It’s all downhill from there…

Throughout this movie, Ben as a married man crosses a lot of boundaries. I asked on Facebook what people thought were appropriate boundaries for married people with friends of the opposite sex. I’ve never had so many comments on a sermon question on Facebook before! And what you all didn’t get to see if you were following the conversation was how many private messages I got from people who have been burned in the past by spouses or boy/girlfriends who walked all over boundaries. Here are some of the boundaries that people suggested:

• Always behave with them as if their spouse was sitting next to them.
• If you wouldn’t feel comfortable telling your partner about it, then it is probably a bad idea.
• Anything my grandmother would raise an eyebrow at is probably not OK.
• If you are married and on Facebook, have more friends of the same sex than the opposite sex.
• If you are being nicer than you need to be, you are flirting.
• Keep no private email addresses or Facebook accounts.
• No opposite sex friends that your spouse does not know about.
• We agree to have full access to each others Facebook accounts and cell phones.
• Talking negatively about your spouse to the other person or problems you may be having in your marriage.
• If we want to hang out with a good friend of the opposite sex, we invite each other and the friend’s spouse/significant other.

Modern life has made this more complicated, hasn’t it? Did you hear how many times Facebook was mentioned in this list? And these are only a selection of the comments left to my question.

I originally asked this question on Facebook because I was intending to write a set of guidelines for this message, but I just couldn’t do it. I couldn’t make a list that I thought was appropriate for everyone. So what I’ve decided to do is make a list of what my boundaries are. As a pastor, I have to pay extra special attention to this issue because the appearance of an affair can be just as damaging to our community as an actual affair. And yet, as I wrote this list, I also realized that these are all things I would do whether I was a pastor or not. They are also boundaries that for the most part, I expect the leaders of our church to be living into as well. So if you are a leader, pay close attention! But if you are not a leader, then I offer these to you for your own consideration.

First, a couple of preliminary thoughts. These boundaries are not always completely solid. They are tendencies. They are things I do most of the time. There are exceptions to all of them, but it would take too long and be too cumbersome to write out all the exceptions. And yet, they are very firm boundaries. I pay special attention to these boundaries when Sarah is out of town and/or when I am with someone close to my age or younger. I also pay close attention when I begin to notice patterns rather than exceptions. Am I spending a lot of time with one person over and over again? I also follow these boundaries when Sarah and I offer hospitality in our home by inviting someone to live with us. Enough with preliminaries. Here’s the boundaries:

• I don’t meet one-on-one in private spaces (I always meet in public spaces), and I try not to ride one-on-one in a car with someone of the opposite sex (but this is not always possible).
• When I have met one-on-one with someone of the opposite sex even in a public space, I tell Sarah about it (so she’s not surprised should someone mention to her that they saw me and so-and-so at such-and-such), and if she isn’t happy about it, I DON’T DO IT AGAIN!
• I tend not to do dinner or after-dinner events (even in public places) one-on-one with someone of the opposite sex.
• I don’t drink alcohol one-on-one with someone of the opposite sex.
• I do have male accountability partners that I share openly (give a true account of myself) about crushes I might be experiencing (those didn’t go away when I got married), and I seek their wisdom about appropriate boundaries with this person.
• I don’t share sides of myself or emotions that I’m not sharing with Sarah.
• I don’t discuss my sex life one-on-one with someone of the opposite sex.
• I do have open conversations with others about these boundaries.

Now that’s a lot of “don’ts” but all those don’ts are really built around the “I do” that I said at my wedding. I don’t do some things so that I do do other things. Saying “no” to some things is all about saying “yes” to other things.

Repentance
David’s downfall isn’t the end of the story. In fact, it’s what happens next that makes him such an amazing king. He has an issue with the passions of his body, but he also is passionate for the LORD. God sends a prophet, Nathan, to confront David about his affair and murder. David has the power to execute Nathan, but he doesn’t. Here’s what he does do:

2 Samuel 12:13-17 NLT
Then David confessed to Nathan, “I have sinned against the LORD.” Nathan replied, “Yes, but the LORD has forgiven you, and you won’t die for this sin. But you have given the enemies of the LORD great opportunity to despise and blaspheme him, so your child will die.” After Nathan returned to his home, the LORD made Bathsheba’s baby deathly ill. David begged God to spare the child. He went without food and lay all night on the bare ground.

Notice how David is no longer lounging on his “bed/couch” – he’s laying on the ground. He is no longer giving his body what it wants – he’s fasting. He is no longer trampling other people – he’s focused on the well being of others rather than his own body’s desires.

David has turned his life around, repented, and is now following in the ways of the LORD, the same ways that Jesus was following in when he was tempted in the dessert. And God forgave him. There were still consequences. Bathsheba’s baby still died. God rarely takes away the consequences of our sin, but God is in the business of reconciling with us and reconciling us with others.

Maybe you’ve had an affair in the past. Maybe right now you’re on the slow path to an affair. Maybe you’re in the middle of one. Confess it and repent. Stop giving in to your body’s passions. Join the mission of God in the community of this church. There is forgiveness. There is new life. Thank you, God!

Next Steps Discussion
1. When do you not give your body what it wants?
2. What do you think are good boundaries in marriage for opposite-sex friends?

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Ultimate Prizes by Susan Howatch

March 7, 2011 by Leave a Comment

Ultimate Prizes
By Susan Howatch
Rating: 5 of 10

I’m afraid that Susan Howatch’s ultimate prize is accurate knowledge about one’s past.  Meanwhile, this Church of England series is getting to be a little formulaic.  The formula goes something like this:

Anglican clergy + life crisis + big sexual sin + denial of sin + emotional breakdown + spiritual director + confession/psychoanalysis of one’s past family history (especially the skeletons in the closet) = happy, healthy, and effective Anglican clergy.

This is the third in the Church of England series.  The first two, Glittering Images and Glamorous Powers, were gripping, and I couldn’t put them down.  This one sat unread for several weeks at a time.  I found the characters less compelling and the formula just a little too heavy handed.

Ultimate Prizes tells the story of Archdeacon Neville Aysgarth’s search for the ultimate prizes of life: climbing the ecclesial ladder, marrying the right woman, having the right children, and so on.  The only problem is that once Aysgarth has won the prize, he seems to no longer really value it.  Thus, when his first “perfect” wife dies, he courts and marries an eccentric socialite only to end up having an affair while she is recovering in the hospital from a disastrous labor where the child was killed in order to save the mother.  This behavior along with his increasing habit of turning to alcohol leads him to seek help from the spiritual director, Jonathan Darrow, who is the spiritual director in the first book in the series, Glittering Images, and the subject of the second book, Glamorous Powers, and who Aysgarth has had run-ins with as Darrow’s church superior.  The plot thickens.

Darrow, along with some help from his other Fordite Monk friends, help get Aysgarth back on the straight and narrow.  They do so by exploring his past.  What we come to find out is that Aysgarth has had an extremely rocky relationship with his mother, father, and uncle.  Over time his denial has grown about what exactly happened between these three key figures in his upbringing.  Darrow helps Aysgarth explore the landscape of his childhood and young adulthood so that he can give up chasing the ultimate prizes and instead have healthy relationships with less-than-perfect people.

At the very beginning of the book Aysgarth says, “I did not understand why I had wound up in such a mess, and without understanding, how could I promise that my appalling behavior would never be repeated.”  At the end of the book after Aysgarth has “confessed” the truth about his past without denial of the skeletons in the closet, Darrow exclaims, “You’ve grasped the truth.  You’ve demonstrated with every syllable you utter that you repent.  Can’t you see your demon’s vanquished, cowering with terror in his pit?”  Notice the lowercase “t” for truth.

Here’s the problem: understanding and knowledge alone can’t save us.  Yes, they can help us grow in maturity, but it was knowledge that got humanity in the pit in the first place.  It’s not knowledge alone that will get us out of it.  Rather it is only when we grasp firmly on to the Truth, capital “T”, of Jesus Christ that we will be saved.  I do not necessarily think that truth and Truth are incompatible.  It is more a question of priority.  Howatch’s books major in truth rather than Truth.  This kind of truth can only be helpful when it is in service of Truth.

There was one particularly poignant moment that I found especially compelling.  When Asygarth is meeting Darrow’s old Abbot-General, Father Lucas, for spiritual direction, Lucas says, “I presume that most of your private prayers are ex tempore?  Well, there’s nothing wrong with ex tempore prayers, of course, but at present you want to be very careful that your prayers aren’t merely a flurry of words which will mar the inner stillness you must cultivate in order not only to maintain your equilibrium but to receive the word from God which will undoubtedly come.”   “Ex tempore” is Latin for “out of the moment,” and ex tempore prayers are spontaneous prayers.  Lucas goes on to suggest mixing in some written prayers from the Daily Office, the set pattern of prayers prayed several times a day.  I have found this suggestion exceedingly helpful in my own spiritual journey.  I grew up Pentecostal where written prayers were frowned upon.  Over time I have come to appreciate both types of prayer.  I think a mix of both would help most Christians grow in the spiritual maturity.

I would likely give up on this series at this point if it wasn’t for one interesting twist Howatch makes in the next book.  She picks up the story from the perspective of someone outside the church.  I am intrigued to see what she will do with this outsider’s perspective.  I hope there will be a new formula for this outsider’s spiritual journey.

Currently Reading/Listening:
Generation to Generation by Edwin H. Friedman
Sacred Parenting by Gary Thomas
Scandalous Risks by Susan Howatch
Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Jesus’ Childhood Pal by Christopher Moore
The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ by Phillip Pullman

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