Honesty and Hope in a marriage

Really, not a thug

Paul Tripp, May 4, 2012

What did you expect when you got married?

Part 2

As he threw out his foam frisbees with a mustache on them (this guy has an amazing 'stache), to be traded in for free book or CD or DVD, Paul said he believes in the sovereignty of God and so if you catch it, God wanted you to have it... Because you need it!

Much of our problems would begin to be solved if we acknowledged that we are not alone in our troubles. God himself is in them, working to change me, not just the circumstances I'm in. We need to have restored awe in God, that stuns me and leaves me breathless and excited. I don't care what I'm facing, my life is worth it because I have come to know God.

So if the heart is the problem, what is the problem with the heart? II Corinthians 5:14-15, love of Christ controls us.... Christ died so we would not live for self, but for him who loved us and died for us. Sin causes us to construct a claustrophobic world where there is only room for me. But God meant me designed me to live in worship and love of God and love for my neighbor. Sn makes me absorbed in me and gives me no time for God or my neighbor. Paul is saying that the DNA of sin is selfishness. You never sin for another person. I sin for me.

Inn justification the power of sin is eradicated but we remain sinners in our sanctification until glory, so we still have the DNA of sin in us. Sn is antisocial in its fundamental form because it turns me in on myself and makes me less concerned about others and more about me. We must confess that we carry around in ourselves that which is destructive to relationships.  Sin. I don't need anything outside of me, another person, circumstances, I bring my own destruction with me to my relationships.

Sin causes me to dehumanized the people in my life. They are no longer objects of my affection, they are vehicles or obstacles. I reduce other people to being vehicles or obstacles. He told hilarious stories about being a kindergarten teacher for four years. He can be a total crack up, great communicator. It's not your party! The sooner we realize this the better. God's world was made for his glory, not ours. Marriage cannot work if we are in the center. God is the center. Marriage is not my party. So much of what we think is love for someone else is actually an expression of our own self love. We choose a mate to complete our idea of ourselves. When couples think love has gone away, it more likely was never there in the first place.

Jesus came to accomplish the rescue of us from ourselves, not husband from wife, or wife from husband. Jesus came to accomplish my rescue through his death and resurrection, through the gospel of grace that rescues us and gives us the freedom to love as we have been loved in the gospel. There is no hopeless marriage. Husbands and wives don't find the power to change in themselves. They find it in what Christ has already done in the rescue. We need Jesus. Jesus has invaded your marriage by his grace. What I love about the Bible is that it is devastatingly honest and full of hope.