In this episode, we pick up where we left off last time talking about living our lives on mission. If your marriage is not focused on the right mission, then your mission will become only about your marriage. If you haven’t yet, make sure and listen to Episode 018 of the podcast.
We start talking about values here. Values are not just the words we say, they are the way we live born out of what we believe, because of who God is. We also answer a listener question about “What is the biggest thing your kids have taught you?”
Success as a parent is not found in obedience or outcomes, but in offering them my best.
If I take the blame for my kids’ mistakes then I’ll also take the credit for their success, and when I do that, I’m taking the place of God in their life. If their mistakes are my fault and their successes are from my strength, then neither they nor I need God. All my kids need is me, and all I need is for them to do well.
Ephesians 5:31-33 31 As the Scriptures say, “A man leaves his father and mother and is joined to his wife, and the two are united into one.” 32 This is a great mystery, but it is an illustration of the way Christ and the church are one. 33 So again I say, each man must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband.
If you have stated values but don’t live them out, they aren’t values, they are aspirations.
Value #1: Together – We will live out our lives TOGETHER!
Ephesians 2:10 For we are God’s masterpiece. He has created us anew in Christ Jesus, so we can do the good things he planned for us long ago.
If you’re married, the best thing you could ever do for your kids is model to them that they are not the center of your universe. Jesus is, and then mom and dad, then your children.
Even when it comes to decisions we have to make. While we might disagree behind closed doors, once a decision is made, we are going to stand together in it.
Value #2: Intimacy – We will live in INTIMACY
Intimacy is a core value for us. It’s something that takes effort, and work, and the enemy is fighting against it with all his might. And not just sexual intimacy. That’s a part of it, but all aspects of intimacy are a value. There are different kinds of intimacy. We hear “intimacy” and in our over-sexualized culture, we immediately jump to sex.
I fully believe that sexual intimacy is the fruit of being healthy in the other areas of intimacy. If there is not regular and consistent sexual intimacy in a marriage, it’s a sign of something else wrong in the marriage or in the individuals.
“Sex is not a need — even in marriage. Sex is fruit. It is a gift for covenanted couples. It is a Gospel metaphor within the Gospel metaphor of marriage. It is something to be used to worship God, not to be demanded.” — Laurie Krieg in An Impossible Marriage
Before you’re married, the devil does everything he can to get you to have sex. After you’re married, he does everything he can to stop you from having sex.
While our marriages should model to the world how Christ and the church are one, sex models to our partner, in the ultimate and most revealing way, how Christ is one with us.
Saint Augustine said, “Like a bridegroom, Christ went forth from his chamber. Jesus came to the marriage-bed of the cross, and there in mounting it, he consummated his marriage…and joined himself to his Bride forever.”
Sex is about physical touch, to be sure, but it is about far more than physical touch. It is about what is going on inside us…sex becomes a form of physical prayer — a picture of heavenly intimacy that rivals the shekinah glory of old. Our God, who is spirit, can be found behind the very physical panting, sweating, and pleasurable entangling of limbs and body parts. He doesn’t turn away. He wants us to run into sex, but to do so with his presence, priorities, and virtues making our pursuit. If we experience sex this way, we will be transformed in the marriage bed every bit as much as we are transformed on our knees in prayer. — Matt Krieg
Sex in marriage is a metaphor inside the metaphor itself. Marriage between a husband and wife is a metaphor of God’s desire to be one with humanity. It points to the ‘marriage’ between Christ and the Church. The covenant of sex in marriage is modeling what Christ bodily did for us on the cross. Jesus saying, ‘I am holistically giving and covenanting myself to you on the cross.’ So, we say that through our sex. But we also say to our spouses through sex, ‘This is how God wants to be one with you. He is the completer of you. He is the one who pursues you and desires you.’ We’ve over emphasized sex, but completely diminished it by not holding it up as this theological dance.” — Laurie Krieg
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