February 12, 2023
Valentine’s Day is this week! We’re in a message series on love called, “What Happy Couples Know.” Last week we introduced the “box.” When a person gets married, they have a box of their hopes, dreams, and desires for their relationship. We all imagine our future relationship, organized around our box: our hopes, dreams, and desires. It’s what we want our new marriage to be like as far as hopes: will we rent or buy a home, how many kids will we have or we won’t have kids, how we’ll divide up the chores or not divide them, vacations we’ll go on, the way we’ll deal with conflict. We all have a box. And when you get married or get serious in a relationship, you hand your partner your box. And it feels like the moment of a lifetime, “At last, I have found the person who will give me my hopes, dreams and desire and make me happy!” But to your spouse, it feels like expectations. It feels like, “You need to come through on these or I will be very disappointed!”
The thing is, we spend years imagining our future relationally, for when that special someone comes along. But the problem is, when I was single, I never dreamed about becoming the perfect person for someone. I dreamed about finding the perfect person for me! It’s kind of a selfish imagining of marriage. And you know, I have my box, and everything in my box seems perfectly reasonable to me. And my spouse, Kevin, brought his box, and his box seemed perfectly reasonable to him. But his box to me felt like heavy expectations, and mine to him felt the same.
Our hopes, dreams and desires for a relationship come from the past. We either want our marriage to be like our parents’ relationship. Or we want it to be the opposite of our parents’ relationship.
When we exchange boxes with our spouse, we begin negotiating.
No one intends for this to happen, to hand a long list of expectations for our spouse to fulfill. But eventually it becomes a debt/debtor relationship. You owe me. That is what husbands are supposed to do. That is what wives are supposed to do. You owe me. And we don’t feel as grateful for our spouse. How do we change this? Last week we learned we can change our thinking. Happy couples know their spouse owes them nothing. They are just grateful for their spouse, without expectations.
Today we’re looking at Christian marriage in the Scriptures. We find that Christian marriage is a submission competition. Jesus taught us how to love, not as a negotiation, not like someone owes you something. When Jesus was eating the last supper with his disciples before he went to the cross, he said, “A new command I give you. Love one another as I have loved you. So, you must love one another.” He’s saying, treat other people the way I have treated you.
How did Jesus treat us? He gave his life on our behalf. His death paid the price for our sins. So, Jesus teaches us: when you’re not sure what to do in a relationship—love as God in Christ has loved you. Happy couples put each other first. It’s a race to be the back of the line. I’m going to put my spouse first. I’m going to love my spouse as Christ loves me.
Here’s a Scripture that most brides do not want in their wedding! Ephesians 5:22, “Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord.” It sounds at first like, wives, be a servant to your husband.
But the verse before this, Ephesians 5:21 says, Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ. This is not just for wives. Submit to one another. Everybody in the church should be submitting to each other, out of reverence for Christ. As Christ loved you, you love each other.
The Scripture goes on to talk specifically about husbands, and they get some submitting to do as well. Verse 25 says: “Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her.” The husband has to value his wife’s life above his own! Verse 28 says, “In this same way,” meaning, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, a completely self-emptying love, “husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself.” We start out not liking Ephesians 5 because it seems like wives are supposed to submit to their husbands. But as you get further, you see that husbands are to say, “my wife’s life matters more than my own.”
And that passage starts with verse 21, “Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.” I’m not here for you because you’re here for me. I’m here for you because God was here for me. We may have different roles, responsibilities, gifts and talents in a relationship. But we do not have different value.
Ephesians 5 is about equality, respect, and love. As God has loved you, love one another. Wives and husbands, follow Christ and treat each other as extremely valuable. It’s about mutual submission. Happy couples put each other first. It’s a race to be the back of the line.
We can use the word defer, that’s another way to say submit. If we’re married, we defer to our spouse. We put our spouse before us. But you can’t do that, you can’t defer, if you have a big box of expectations sitting between the two of you. How do you get that box out of the way? You decide: my spouse does not owe me.
Last week the homework was to ask yourself: what’s in my box? What are my hopes, dreams, and desires for my relationship? It’s good to know. You need to know. And the next question was: “Is somebody carrying your box of expectations around? Have you charged someone with fulfilling your hopes, dreams, and desires, and to them it feels like a weight and a burden?
Now this week’s homework is to ask your spouse, “What’s in your box?” What do you hope for in our relationship? And then after you ask the question, stop talking. Listen, maybe write it down. This isn’t a negotiation, “well if you would only do this, I would do that!” No, it’s not that. This is listening to your spouse, letting them tell you their hopes, dreams, and desires.
When you ask, “What’s in your box?” Your spouse may faint! From happiness! I can’t believe you want to know! Or he/she may get mad. “We’ve been married 20 years and you finally ask me what I want?” Just give her/him space to talk. Or when you ask, your spouse may say, “Nothing, I have nothing in my box.” We don’t talk out loud about this much. It can be scary to talk about. But we all have these hopes, dreams and desires, and we expect our spouse to fulfill them. So, give them time to think.
When you ask, “What’s in your box?” you’re starting to defer, you’re interested in your spouse’s opinion.
You may think, well, I can’t start asking them what they want. “I have to tell them what I want. I have to make clear to my spouse what they need to do! If I don’t, they won’t follow through.” Or “I’m afraid if I don’t tell her what I expect, she’ll stop doing anything.” We can get in a tug of war in our marriage.
But as Christ gave himself up for us, we are to love and defer to our spouse. So, listen. Respect. Go first in listening, because God went first for us. God gave us life; Christ gave up his life. God went first with us. So, we go first and listen to our spouse.
You may ask, “What am I supposed to do with everything that’s in my box? I can’t just ignore it.” That’s what we’ll talk about next week, what to do with all that you have in your box.
Happy couples put each other first. It’s a race to the back of the line. Because respect leads to respect, listening leads to understanding, and happiness grows when you defer. Amen.
Maureen Duffy-Guy's blog 