Mutuality in marriage is living life together focused - not on the “me” - but loving each other in “we”

National Family Retreat 2018: Living Faith

<p>Mutuality in marriage is living life together focused - not on the “me” - but loving each other in “we”</p>

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Restoration International

Alane Waters

Tom Waters

Mutuality

Tonight we're going to be talking about mutuality.

That's the title of the message and I actually love this word.

Now I don't love the word, I love the meaning of this word and what it's coming to mean more and more in our marriage.

So this is a marriage message, and it's about mutuality.

And when we think of mutuality in marriage, we're talking about how we are not just thinking of me.

We come into marriage, and most of us, unfortunately, even if we've gotten some counseling, we come into marriage not really recognizing how me-centered we are, how self-centered we are.

And so we know that when we get married, the 2 of us, this 1 that we love, the 2 of us are going to become what?

The problem is, in how this happens, is which 1 shall we be?

Because when things start going wrong, who do I think is right?

I mean, why would I think it if I wasn't right?

You know, we wouldn't think the way we did if we didn't think it was right.

So that's what causes the conflict sometimes.

And so we come in sometimes very unprepared and then when difficulties come up, instead of Mutuality, which is really not so me-centered.

When we're in a marriage, now we're supposed to be us-centered, because that's what becoming 1 looks like, and it's supposed to be like, and that's often a difficult transition in reality.

Well, it's how we grow our love, and so we're talking about mutuality in the relationship.

It is that we are both giving and receiving love from 1 another, And as we do that, our lives come closer into harmony.

If I stay in my position, if I stay in my perspective and then I'm right all the time, and that if there's problems, it's always his fault, then we do not have mutuality.

So mutuality is growing that love closer together and seeking to grow our love together in Christ, which is the person, the 1, who brings us that true harmony and mutuality in the relationship.

In Philippians, the second chapter, in verse 3 it says, let nothing, Let how much?

Let nothing be done through strife or vainglory.

I want to stop right there and make this very simple and practical.

We all know what that feels like, what that's like in our relationships.

But sometimes we miss what vain glory is.

This is a demonstration of our selfishness.

It's a demonstration of our self-centeredness.

It's a demonstration of I want my way, and it's vanity, and I want to get the glory that should be going to who?

It says, let nothing be done through strife or vain glory, but in lowliness of mind.

Is that natural for us to have lowliness of mind.

Okay, it says, but in lowliness of mind let each esteem the other Better than who?

But this is what God wants us to do to experience mutuality in our marriages.

All his biddings to us, which this is 1 of his biddings, let nothing be done through strife or vainglory.

In other words, he never asks us to do something that he is not, through his grace and his power, working through our weakness, able to accomplish in us as his people.

It's just that it's not just something he's trying to do in 1 person, it's something he's trying to do in 2 people at the same time.

And that's why our theme, it goes along with our theme, Living Faith, because it's impossible to do this aside from Christ.

For 2 people to have harmony and mutuality in the marriage relationship, needs to have 2 people who are living by faith in the power of Christ.

And so as we go through this message this evening, we're going to cover 3 basic areas of mutuality.

Think of what your relationship is and how you've done over this last week or the last few weeks in your marriage and how have you grown in your mutuality or how have you been stagnant and in reality we're not stagnant if we're not growing we are what declining right we got to go 1 way or the other There's no level spot here in the Christian experience.

Also in the marriage, it should continue to grow.

We wanna help create a vision tonight in our relationships as husbands and wives that helps us to continue to press on to gain and grow in that mutuality.

So I want you to think about something tonight.

It's a word that we often use in our own relationship and also as we're sharing and counseling with others.

And that is, I want you to think about your mindset tonight.

If you have the mindset of mutuality, and hopefully you'll have more of it if you don't already tonight by the time we're done sharing, but if you don't have that mindset, then you're probably experiencing the default mindset.

That means that when something happens that we disagree about, I default to wanting my way.

That's the default setting and that's the default mindset.

If tonight we can move our thinking by the grace of God and its surrender to the will of God, we can change, he can change that mindset so that we think in terms of mutuality and not in terms of my way.

So we're gonna look at these 3 areas here tonight, and these are 3 areas that often cause conflict.

In fact, the 2 of them are the number 1 and 2 cause for separation and divorce.

So we wanna look at those tonight in the context of mutuality and the scriptures and what God desires for us to grow in our love for 1 another.

1 area we're going to look at is the financial part of a relationship.

That's number 2 area of separation and divorce.

The number 1 is communication or lack of communication.

We're going to look at mutuality and how we communicate.

And the last area we're going to talk about is mutuality in our spiritual connection.

We were very fortunate and many of you, or some of you that have been long time family retreat people, know that we had a marriage that was made in heaven, we have no doubt.

But we thought we were going to just live happily ever after we said I do.

Yeah, so we found out that that we had some big difficulties that we faced, especially in our first 2 years of marriage, that some of you know and you've heard us share.

And so our mindset in financial mutuality was 1 area we didn't struggle with.

Because that might have been too much with the issues we faced.

But we came from homes where there was very strong financial management, particularly on the part of each of our mothers, okay?

That was not something that we had to struggle with to get equilibrium.

Many couples that we have gotten to know over the years, in the last 28 years of marriage and in counseling situations, have major struggles where You've got 1 person, and I won't say which it is because it's been both in both many different ways, but you've got 1 person that if there's money that's available to me, it must be there to be spent on something I'd like to get right now.

And then there's the other person who's saying, can't we save a few dollars out of our paycheck?

If we don't save for a rainy day, we're going to be in serious situations, and that creates some of those difficulties.

So, mutuality in the relationship, it's not my money and it's not his money, it's our money.

We came into our marriage both working full time as health professionals.

I had my own apartment, my own car, my own money, my own savings account.

But when we got married we pooled it immediately together.

It was now 1 account under both our names to be shared and and The decisions on how we spent that money was to be discussed and agreed upon in the relationship That was a huge blessing for us.

It's our money And it's really God's money, but we're the stewards That's right And the other example that our parents were very good to instill in us by precept and example, that means they demonstrated that.

They lived it out, not they just told us what was the right thing.

And that was to look at the principles of God's word in economy, particularly in the area of tithing.

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Mutuality

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