Experiencing genuine forgiveness in the marriage

<p>Experiencing genuine forgiveness in the marriage</p>

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Restoration International

Marriage Heart to Heart

Tom Waters

Alane Waters

Singleness of Mind

You know, there's nobody I'd rather spend time with than this woman right here.

There's nobody I'd rather spend time with, and we've come to enjoy a new facet of our married life.

You know, many people find it painful to be together, but we find it painful to be apart and a privilege to be together.

Well, gentlemen, Ladies, you can be included in this too.

But I'd like you to go back to your wedding day.

I'd like you to go back in your thoughts to that day when you saw your bride.

Well, I'm going to tell you what happened with me, then you can picture it however it happened with you, okay?

We were married in a very large church, big 1300 member church, and saw the aisle was very long.

And I saw those doors open in the back and my heart just began to pound.

I found the Feelings of excitement and enthusiasm and anxiety my heart was just pounding I could feel the palms on my hands starting to sweat Now my wife as we talked about this later were you feeling those kind of not at all I was so excited.

I thought he was the most wonderful man in the world.

He's the most wonderful man in the world for me.

Well, I don't want to give the wrong impression.

All those feelings I was having was not because I didn't think she was the most wonderful woman in the world.

You know, we're supposed to be brave and all these things, and I'm just standing out there wondering, can the people see my heart pounding through my shirt?

Well, it was a special, special day for us.

And we look back over that and it's nothing but beautiful memories.

It would be wonderful if I could say to you that all the words of that song became a reality from that day forward.

But as you're coming to recognize in your own experience, just because we desire to do the will of God is not enough, is it?

We've got to understand how to walk the walk and we did not understand that then.

We were very sincere, so sincere that that night, the first night of our honeymoon, we were staying at an airport hotel, getting ready to fly to the place where we were going to have our honeymoon and we started a tradition that we said we were going to do all of our married life.

To read the 1st Corinthians 13 every night together.

We're supposed to read that every day, aren't we?

You know, I understand why in the dispensation of Israel of old, they gave them a year off.

Our honeymoon only lasted for 5 days or 6 days.

A year off to adjust to moving from a mind that's operating in more of a me mode to the mind that's operating in the us mode and that's what we're going to talk about today is singleness of mind.

The reality was after the honeymoon and we both got back into work our minds were taken off and all the busyness and all the pressures and all the duties that we had to do And I thought that outside of work every extra moment of time we would just be together We would talk and we would do things and we would just have a wonderful time, and it was just exciting that was my Anticipation and that was my expectation.

I thought every moment we're not having to work, we're going to be together for the rest of our lives.

Unfortunately, I didn't have the same vision.

Now I didn't know that I didn't have that same vision then.

I wasn't intentionally having an opposite vision, but I didn't really understand myself.

And so what I found myself doing was trying to fit my new wife into my old life.

I'm just adding in a new wife into my already existing life.

Because when you're trying to fit your new wife into a lifestyle that God is really trying to get you away from and call you away from, it doesn't work very well.

And it creates a lot of hurt feelings, because in reality, as I look back at it, It took me a few months to start realizing this in our marriage, but as I looked back at it.

I was trying to Live a married life with a single lifestyle mindset And it just doesn't work very well at all What we want to talk about today is singleness of mind.

That means that our attention is to take 2 individuals and to blend them together as 1, in harmony with each other.

It's a state of being 1 to be separate from all the others.

And the difficulty that many couples go into is when they enter into the marriage relationship, they have a part of their thoughts that are married thoughts and a part of their thoughts that are very much self-focused.

It becomes me and I and my way, and the other spouse can have me and I and my way, and we find that it begins to divide instead of bringing us together into harmony.

It doesn't mean that when we come together to have the single of some mind that I have to get my wife to be like me.

That I have to get my wife to think like me.

We had to get our wives to think like we think?

I mean, when you really think about it, the reason God brings us together is because the 2 together, blended together in Him, makes a better whole, doesn't it?

At least That's the way God desires it to be That means we'll be wholly devoted in every decision that we have in our home Wholly devoted that we consider the other person We are not making decisions based on my thoughts and my way, but based on we are together as 1, blended together, heart to heart.

And we will make our decisions based on both of our understandings so that we come to an agreement.

Learning that to think in the relationship it is us, it is not me.

And that's what 1 Corinthians 13 says, Love seeketh not her own.

Now naturally it's not the way we think though, is it?

More naturally what we think is, well, if she would just do this, then I'd be happy.

If he would just do that, then things would go better.

It's still thinking of the me focus instead of the us focus.

I remember 1 day we went into town and we go into town as infrequently as we can because town is just town days because we live 65 miles from where we do our shopping, town days are very big days.

So we don't look forward to all the things that have to be accomplished in those days.

So she goes 1 place and I go another place.

I tend to like to go to the places that men would tend to like to go to more.

I don't mind going to Costco and seeing what's there in the tools.

Maybe they've got new tools out and I can look at those while she's over in the grocery section.

I don't mind going to the Walmart, but I don't really care that much about going to the grocery store.

But here on this particular day, I was sitting in the vehicle and I usually bring along things to do so that I can be efficient with my time, take along ministry correspondence or things that need to be done so that I'm sitting there and she's in the grocery store.

This particular day, the Lord just prompted me, go with your wife.

Into Super 1, that's 1 of our grocery stores there.

I mean, I just visualized myself pushing this basket around in the store.

I can be out here in the van using my time more efficiently.

Respect and Restraint

You know, it was about a year ago that the youth in our family, we were talking together and they said, you know, Mother does messages for women sometimes and Father, you do messages for more kind of aimed at the husbands and they said wouldn't it be nice if you got up and did something together for the men and women together So that 1 message or 1 series has kind of both sides happening at the same time.

That was really the impetus for us doing the series Marriage Heart to Heart.

You know, children are a real motivator, aren't they?

They've been a motivation to us from very young to help us really begin to seek God in ways that we had never understood to seek Him before.

So we're going to be doing 1 of those messages from the series today, respect and restraint.

Now I suppose all of you know the definitions of respect in the marriage relationship and proper restraint in the marriage but we're going to share together in some simple and practical ways.

I'd like to open with a very classic example of respect and restraint.

You don't know yet whether it's going to be a good example or a bad example.

All of us can relate to driving at some point, at least the married people here, right?

And we were driving home from Wisconsin back to Illinois 1 day, and There was a lot of traffic.

If you've ever driven back into the Chicago area, then you know what I mean by a lot of traffic?

And I was looking for 1 of those shortcuts.

Husbands, have you ever heard of a shortcut?

Now, what do you wives think of shortcuts?

Well, I saw 1 of those shortcuts and then I'll let my wife go on from here.

Well I saw the traffic and I saw this sign and I saw my husband starting to make his way for that exit.

And I said, honey, Do you know where you're going?

That's a pretty basic question, isn't it?

And I was very reassuring to her that I knew where I was going.

Well, we drove for quite a while, and The further we drove, the more unfamiliar things began to look to me.

So of course in my heart I said, honey, are you sure you know where you're going?

Well at this point now, even though I didn't understand a lot of the things that I understand today, I knew something was agitating in my heart.

Can't exactly put your finger on it, but you know something is agitating.

Well, I can tell you what was agitating me, because you see, my wife just happens to be 1 of these people that she can drive somewhere 1 time, if it's daylight, and she can find her way back there again in 5 years.

I'm the type of person that I can drive there half a dozen times and if I'm not really paying close attention then somebody's gonna have to tell me how to get there the seventh time and she knows that And now I've gotten a lot better at that, by the way.

But I knew that my wife was very good with her directions.

And I had 1 of those little promptings that I didn't really recognize.

I think we recognized them then, but I didn't respond to the way that I know how to respond to them today.

And so instead of just saying, I humble myself, I don't know where I'm going, really.

I just had to keep up that, you know, that facade that everything's gonna be okay.

Well, I was pretty unsure that he knew where he was going, and so I made 1 of those classic suggestions that went something like this.

Honey, why don't we just pull off and ask somebody where we are?

And that's why we use a simple illustration.

Because I didn't really want to pull off and ask.

Because there's something about us that we want to be able to do it ourselves.

It's not just, it just happens in these scenarios that it quite often happens that that's, that's the role the husband takes and the wife is the 1 saying, but honey, you know, it'll only take a minute, can we just pull off?

Well, he did also say, there's no place to pull off.

So I got the map out and I started looking at the map and I started trying to look at the signage and try to compare the 2 and I could not figure out where we were even with the map in my hands.

Now that was my opportunity then to blame her.

Because don't we look for that opportunity?

Who taught that kind of spirit back in the Garden of Eden?

We look for somebody to blame and I'm saying, well, honey, you're supposed to be able to read the map.

And I really did try to figure it out, but I couldn't.

And the 4 lane road we started on was now a narrow two-lane way out in the middle of the country which neither 1 of us had any idea where we were and I have to admit that in all reality that two-lane road went down to nothing We were out in the middle of, I don't even know where we were.

We were out there and I was brought to the place that God likes to bring us when we're stubbornly in self.

Sometimes, I don't know what the circumstances are for your situation, but the Lord brought me to the place where, what can I say?

What if I would have had just some basic respect for my wife?

Just some basic respect for the fact that she does know her directions and has a better handle on directions than I do.

What if I would have just had some basic respect for that?

What if I would have exercised a little bit of restraint?

Common Goals

You know, before we got married, I can remember my wife and I sitting...

We sat together and We talked about what was important to us.

And we sat down and we talked about what goals we thought were important.

We wanted to get financially established before we had children.

We wanted to have a home and live in a country setting and we wanted our home to be a happy home.

We talked about these things before we got married.

Then we began to get involved in church work.

We thought that we needed to be serving God.

So when we got married, we began to serve God.

We got involved in all kinds of outreach, Bible studies, and doing Revelation seminars.

We got involved as Sabbath school leaders, in-gathering leaders, social committee leaders, church elder.

In fact, it was very difficult for us to not get involved when we were asked to get involved by the nominating committee.

But you know, we really didn't understand some of those goals that we had set and how to accomplish them.

You know we had the goal of buying our first home.

What it was like saving up to get enough to have a down payment to buy your first home?

And before we were married we decided we wanted to live in the country because as we studied and read we knew that would be the best place to live but when we got married we couldn't we couldn't afford a home and so we bought We had a rental and it was sort of in the country, but we found that it was a long distance to commute to our employment.

And you know how the devil is good at getting us all involved in just life to go on and on and on and be caught up with everything the way everybody else does it and get so involved in these activities and our work responsibilities and our social outreaches that when we finally had enough money to purchase our first home with a down payment, you know our home ended up being in suburbia.

Because our minds were so influenced by the way everybody else was doing things and the only way we understood.

And we came to realize that even though we really weren't in the country driving in that rental home, we found that we had so little time together that that certainly couldn't mean that we really had to live in the country because we thought we wouldn't have any time together at all.

And then About a year and a half later after we were married we had our first child there's another 1 of our goals that we had set that had changed and Little Allison was a delight and so our goals changed again and I decided We talked about when we had children that I would be home with our to raise the children and so I removed myself from my full-time employment and just worked every other weekend as a nurse and Thought I was doing what God was asking me to do by staying at home But I want to emphasize what I mean by that.

I was at home in body, I was at home physically, and I took care of my little children, Allison and then Emily came along, but I wasn't there in spirit.

I didn't understand what it means to really invest ourselves as mothers to our children.

So I basically was a good care provider and making sure they were clean and fed well and they had a nice environment to live in, but I didn't really spend much time with them.

I think it's important to emphasize that while we had goals, those goals were not founded on Jesus Christ.

Now that may sound strange, but we didn't understand that at the time.

We were making goals just the way You make goals in the church in the mainstream of things We didn't really understand how to allow God to work in our lives to have Christ as a personal savior.

And so consequently, our goals eroded away and we got involved in the fast pace of life.

We got on the merry-go-round and we were going faster and faster and faster until 1 night.

It was a Friday night, the only occasional quiet night, when we didn't have lots of other things to do.

And so here we were on a Friday night with just Allison and Emily.

A Friday night sitting by our fireplace and the Lord brought a question to my mind.

It wasn't anything to do with the conversation that we had.

Of course, I didn't really recognize the Lord was bringing this to my mind.

But I turned to my wife and I said, Honey, what is the most important thing you can accomplish in this life?

Now you think about that question right now.

If your husband-wise was to turn to you and say, Honey, what's the most important thing that you can accomplish in this life?

And fathers and husbands, you think about that question in reverse.

Because while I am very quick to answer, and I had my goals, my professional goals that I had outlined, my degrees, certification, advancement in my profession.

That night, that question struck home to my heart, a mother's heart.

I praise God that He knows how to reach into our hearts to really dig out that yearning and that longing that he has put there for him.

Because as I sat quietly and contemplated that question, and I thought back over my interaction with my children that evening, realizing that now I, that evening, you know, I was a bit more involved.

Where you're more attentive to your children, you're restful enough and you're relaxed enough that you can really see and hear and enjoy your little children.

And my thought, this was what came to my thoughts, I looked at Tom and I said, honey, to see our children in the kingdom of God.

I wouldn't have been surprised if my wife might have said, well, I've been thinking about getting my master's degree in nursing.

That's not because my wife was not a dear wife and a committed wife as best she understood it, but I didn't expect that kind of an answer.

And that's partly because I didn't generate the question that night.

The mercy and the love of God put that in my heart to ask that question.

And so I stopped and I thought for a moment and I said to my wife, honey, if that's what we really want, Then something's got to change in our lives And from that night forward brothers and sisters God began to open our eyes because now We were willing we were ready to see that we had a need Before that time we were so involved in doing good things that we weren't taking time to recognize our need.

We knelt down with our 2 little girls in their footie pajamas.

We knelt down with them between us and we clasped our arms around each other.

And I prayed a prayer that I've never forgotten.

If we can hear the words, well done thou good and faithful servant.

And see the crown of life placed upon the heads of our children.

And Brothers and sisters, we have never turned back from that commitment that night.

And I praise God that he has wooed us and drawn us in our mistakes and failures and he has never let us go through that process.

That night, God began to take the scales off of our eyes as husbands and wives.

That night, he helped us to see our children as we had never seen them before.

And we began that night to set eternal goals, eternal goals, that we have never turned our backs on.

We're going to be sharing with you today those goals.

We want to talk about the importance of having common goals in the marriage.

You know many marriages today, it is shocking to know that husband and wife come together in marriage and they have no goal set at all.

It seems almost ridiculous, but it's true.

Or there's many who have goals, but they were often like ours, kind of generic, I'll call them generic goals, nebulous, oh yes we want to serve the Lord and so that's a good goal and that is still our commitment today.

Beyond serving the Lord we want to come to know the Lord first.

But sometimes our goals are very vague, they're very nebulous, and we find that we begin in the marriage relationship and we begin to drift through our lives as husband and wife And we find ourselves not having the same direction, not having the same understanding, not having the same motivation, not having the same goals, because we haven't taken the time to sit down and practically say what goals would God have us set in our home to have our home be a little heaven here on this earth.

We want to talk about those common goals today.

You know sometimes we can think that attending church and being involved in church programs is synonymous with serving God with our whole heart.

Forgiveness

When I couldn't say I'm sorry to my wife, it was because I wasn't willing to allow God to work in my heart.

I wasn't willing to surrender because you know what surrender would mean in that situation?

Surrender would mean I'd have to say I'm sorry.

Surrender would mean I'd have to say I forgive you.

Sometimes we can say them, but they're difficult to say with meaning unless we're surrendered and willing to allow God to work in us.

We want to talk tonight about forgiveness.

It's something we see is so desperately needed.

An unforgiving spirit is destructive to a marriage.

So tonight we want to talk about practical ways to deal with forgiveness.

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Series

Marriage Heart to Heart

Forgiveness

Transcript

Description

Parent Series

Sponsor

Parts

Singleness of Mind

56m

Respect and Restraint

51m

Common Goals

54m

Forgiveness

54m

Money Matters

47m

Solution to Every Problem

50m

Sound Doctrine