Sanctifying Effect of Marriage – Sin Extraction Without Anesthetic

“Marriage is the operation by which a woman’s vanity and a man’s egoism are extracted without anesthetic."

Helen Rowland, quoted in Sacred Marriage by Gary Thomas

Keeping a Marriage Exciting Day to Day - What's the Secret?

My parents have been married for 62 happy years. What's their secret? Well, here is one: They always say nice things to one another and keep the fun alive. Here are a couple of conversations we overheard in the last week.

Deborah and Claudia were taking my parents to the store, and my father was in the front seat and mother was in the back seat. It was quiet for a while and finally my dad broke the silence, "Hey Mary, you still back there?" My mom replied, "Bill, I'm still following you."

The other day, my dad said to my mother, "So, how come you are wearing two different ear rings?" She replied, "Oh no, I can't believe I did that!" Then she felt the ear rings in her fingers, and said, "No I don't - These are the same." He replied, "I know, I'm just kidding."

It Can Be Done - Poems for Hardship, Sacrifice and Dominion

It Can Be Done - These poems are about real life. They will make you smile, square your jaw, lighten your load, heighten your step, and grow rebar in your spine. They will lift you up, make you soar, and give you a view of the smallness of your problems. They will help you think bigger, feel better, laugh harder, and eat your problems for breakfast.

The book was originally published in 1921 and contained 239 poems. I have cut these down to my favorites - the ones my wife read to me in her quest to be a good helper of her husband by inspiring him that, “It Can Be Done!”

This is a book for the rescue of 21st Century manhood and womanhood. The world needs real men and women today.

Our world is sick with feminized, soft, mollycoddling, sensitive males who are always looking for permission and affirmation and certification to do anything. These male maladies are ripping our culture apart. The average male today never grows up and rarely leads. He is an emotional basket case, constantly jerked around by his feelings - not governed by eternal principles. He is worried about his hair, spends his life playing games and has a therapist. The result is, he settles for “whatever.”

Our world needs real women as well. It is reeling under the influence of dizzy ditzy women whose vision is centered around themselves. It is languishing at the hands of women whose energy and joy have dissolved under the pressures of life. Instead, we need strong women who refuse to be unraveled or frightened by any fear. The world is crying out for a new version of resolute visionary women who are able to rise above their disappointments to see the goal. They sacrifice their lives for their children and follow their men to the ends of the earth.

“It Can Be Done!” by those who look hardship in the face, ready themselves for sacrifice and engage themselves in dominion.

On Your Love Language

Commenting on the message of the popular book, The Five Love Languages, David Powlison writes,

“Gary Chapman’s world seems so sunny and blithe, so easy, so matter-of-fact in comparison. The problems of life seem so fixable. His advice is so doable. A bit of education and a bit of self-effort are all that’s needed for life to sing. The marriages in his book don’t need Jesus’ blood, sweat, and tears.”

Affection, Like a Mighty Current

My friend Mike Davenport sent me this wonderful statement about the sweetness of the affections of a man toward his wife,

From Ray Ortlund’s blog…
“The man whose heart is endeared to the woman he loves . . . dreams of her in the night, hath her in his eye and apprehension when he awakes, museth on her as he sits at the table, walks with her when he travels. . . . She lies in his bosom, and his heart trusts in her, which forceth all to confess that the stream of his affection, like a mighty current, runs with full tide and strength.”

Thomas Hooker (1586-1647), quoted in Leland Ryken, Worldly Saints: The Puritans As They Really Were (Grand Rapids, 1986), page 40.

A Marriage for Holiness

“What if God designed marriage to make us holy more than to make us happy?”

Gary Thomas in Sacred Marriage.

Jesus’ Vision of Marriage is Better than Ours

In a sermon on marriage, John Piper says,

“That was the case in Jesus’ day as well, and ours is vastly worse. When Jesus gave a glimpse of the magnificent view of marriage that God willed for his people, the disciples said to him, “If such is the case of a man with his wife, it is better not to marry” (Matthew 19:10). In other words, Christ’s vision of the meaning of marriage was so enormously different from the disciples, they could not even imagine it to be a good thing. That such a vision could be good news was simply outside their categories.

"I mention all this in the hopes that it might possibly wake you up to consider a vision of marriage higher and deeper and stronger and more glorious than anything this culture—or perhaps you yourself—ever imagined. The greatness and glory of marriage is beyond our ability to think or feel without divine revelation and without the illumining and awakening work of the Holy Spirit. The world cannot know what marriage is without learning it from God. The natural man does not have the capacities to see or receive or feel the wonder of what God has designed for marriage to be. I pray that this message might be used by God to help set you free from small, worldly, culturally contaminated, self-centered, Christ-ignoring, God-neglecting, romance-intoxicated, unbiblical views of marriage.”

How to Handle the Weaker Sex - or, Why I need to be Nicer to Deborah

Here is something I read yesterday from William Gouge, in Domestical Duties, writing in 1627 on Ephesians 5 in the section on the role of a husband. I have never heard any one ever express this, yet it is so true and has been so helpful to me since I read it. The net of it: I need to be nicer to my wife when she gets upset with me.

"Because wives through the weakness of their sex (for they are the weaker vessels) are much prone to provoke their husbands. So as if there be not love predominant in the husband, there is like to be but little peace betwixt man and wife, for "Love covereth a multitude of imperfections." Because Christ by his love provokes the church to love him, so a husband by loving his wife should provoke her to love him again; showing himself like the sun which is the fountain of light, and from which the moon receives what light she has: so he should be the fountain of love to his wife."
- William Gouge, Domestical Duties, 1627

When Looking for a Wife, Acknowledge the Dangers of the “Matrimonial Seas”

John Newton speaks of a friend who is looking for a wife. He speaks of the dangers of finding a bad wife. In a letter, he refers to a mutual friend who was,

“very busy about that precious piece of furniture called a wife. May the Lord direct and bless His choice! In Captain Cook's voyage to the South Sea, some fish were caught which looked as well as others, but those who ate of them were poisoned: alas! for the poor man who catches a poisonous wife! There are such to be met with in the matrimonial seas, that look passing well to the eye, but a connexion with them proves baneful to domestic peace, and hurtful to the life of grace. I know two or three people, perhaps a few more, who have great reason to be thankful to Him who sent the fish with the money in its mouth to Peter's hook. He secretly instructed and guided us where to angle; and if we have caught prizes, we owe it not to our own skill, much less to our deserts, but to His goodness.”

A letter on “Worries about the Journey--A Good Wife,” by John Newton, July 15, 1777

George Whitefield on Sarah Edwards and Her Marriage

George Whitefield commented on Jonathan and Sarah Edwards’ relationship following his visit to Northampton in 1740:

"A sweeter Couple I have not yet seen … She … talked feelingly and solidly of the Things of God, and seemed to be such a Help meet for her Husband that she caused me to … [pray] God, that he would be pleased to send me a Daughter of Abraham to be my wife." (Marriage to a Difficult Man, 1971: 80).

English Puritans Speak with Passion on Marriage

The Puritans get a bad rap for being joyless and emotionless... nothing could be further from the truth. They waxed eloquently with emotion and grace on the subject of "the grace of life." Check these wonderful quotations from English Puritans on the wonders of marriage.

So Many Endearments…

In a letter to his wife Polly, John Newton writes,

“It is no wonder if so many years, so many endearments, so many obligations have produced such an uncommon effect, that by long habit, it is almost impossible for me to draw a breath, in which you are not involved.”

From "Counterfeit Gods," by Tim Keller

Sarah Edwards – “Rendering in everything- agreeable and pleasant”

[Sarah Edwards] uniformly paid a becoming deference to her husband and treated him with entire respect, she spared no pains in conforming to his inclinations, and rendering everything in the family agreeable and pleasant: counting it her greatest glory, and that wherein she could best serve God and her generation, to be the means, in this way, of promoting his usefulness and happiness. (Edwards “Works” Banner, Vol 1: xlv).

The National Review has posted a very powerful article, Getting Serious About Pornography, showing the terrible threat it is to our marriages and our children. It is, in fact, the drug that destroys marriage,

The author begins the article by correlating pornography use with drug use,

"Imagine a drug so powerful it can destroy a family simply by distorting a man’s perception of his wife. Picture an addiction so lethal it has the potential to render an entire generation incapable of forming lasting marriages and so widespread that it produces more annual revenue — $97 billion worldwide in 2006 — than all of the leading technology companies combined. Consider a narcotic so insidious that it evades serious scientific study and legislative action for decades, thriving instead under the ever-expanding banner of the First Amendment."

The article goes on to say that the stages of drug addiction are very similar to addiction to pornography,

"According to Dr. Victor Cline, a nationally renowned clinical psychologist who specializes in sexual addiction, pornography addiction is a process that undergoes four phases. First, addiction, resulting from early and repeated exposure accompanied by masturbation. Second, escalation, during which the addict requires more frequent porn exposure to achieve the same “highs” and may learn to prefer porn to sexual intercourse. Third, desensitization, during which the addict views as normal what was once considered repulsive or immoral. And finally, the acting-out phase, during which the addict runs an increased risk of making the leap from screen to real life."

The author points out an amazing contradiction. The use of pornography, instead of increasing sexual activity in marriage, it actually destroys it for the majority,

"In a study published in Sexual Addiction and Compulsivity, Schneider found that among the 68 percent of couples in which one person was addicted to Internet porn, one or both had lost interest in sex."

Not surprisingly there is an economic impact,

"The fact is that the moral and financial needs of couples struggling with this form of addiction will remain unaddressed in a country that views pornography use as a constitutional right."

A Ghastly Story Showing That Singleness Does Not Work

Marriage is better than singleness. This is what the Bible teaches. Martin Luther illustrates that Celibacy Does Not Work:

"St. Ulrich, bishop of Augsburg, related a fearful thing that befell at Rome. Pope Gregory, who confirmed celibacy, ordered a fish-pond at Rome, hard by a convent of nuns, to be cleared out. The water being let off, there were found at the bottom, more than six thousand skulls of children, that had been cast into the pond and drowned. Such were the fruits of enforced celibacy. Hereupon Pope Gregory abolished celibacy, but the popes who succeeded him, re-established it.

"In our own time, there was in Austria, at Nieuberg, a convent of nuns, who, by reason of their licentious doings, were removed from it, and placed elsewhere, and their convent filled with Franciscans. These monks, wishing to enlarge the building, foundations were dug, and in excavating there were found twelve great pots, in each of which was the carcass of an infant. How much better to let these people marry, than, by prohibition thereof, to cause the murder of so many innocent creatures."

Martin Luther, The Estate of Marriage, 1522. (Translated by Walther I. Brandt).