Cultivating a Healthy Marriage (Part 2) – Q&A

Welcome to Gospel in Life. You're listening to Cultivating a Healthy Marriage with Tim Keller. This short podcast series features the messages from the most popular sermon series of Dr. Keller's time at Redeemer Presbyterian Church. Preached in 1991, this series was the basis for the best-selling book by Tim and Kathy Keller, the meaning of marriage. With your single, married, widowed or divorced, this series helps you learn how to apply God's wisdom about marriage to your life. Okay, I think I'm going to have Kathy. It's not that we. it's fun to have interaction where people get up at the mic, but as you know, we go through far fewer questions if we didn't do it this way. We're just going to go whipping right through and I hope we can answer every question that we've got up here. That's going to mean answers way too brief, but. Go ahead, Kathy. Okay, three or four. Can you talk about in-laws? Can you talk about the impact in-laws can have on a marriage aside from their influence on habits, values, struggle with loving my spouse's parents because they endorse different things than I was raised to endorse it in your first of my love with the spouse. A couple of those on in-laws. Okay, you are a new unit. The family of origin you came from has customs, habits, ideas, and you've got to create your own. You can borrow from the family of origin on either side, but you are a new one-flesh unit. What happened before will have an effect on you. You've got to deal with it, but you have got to also say, "That was then. This is now. This is our marriage and we have to create a new unit ourselves." In-laws are not out of the picture. They are part of your life, but one rule of thumb I will just say before moving on to the next question. Like I said, way too brief. He has to deal with his parents. You have to deal with your parents. It's no good trying to cross like that because that will just lead to a lot of real grudge holding and unhappiness. There's a problem with Tim's parents, I say, you talk to them. I got one from a guy on, asked the same thing. Sorry, I should just add, you have to have a united front. Yes. However, then I have to speak to my parents on our behalf. I have to defend the way we do things to my parents. She has to defend the way we do things to her parents. I can't do it to her parents. She can't do it to mine. Okay. A whole bunch of them about sex. Do you have to have sex every time your spouse wants to? What is the healthy number of times per week to have sex? How do you have a frequent sex life if you're trying to recover unsuccessfully mostly from damage that was done in that area on both early on in your marriage and from outside the marriage? My husband and I have extremely hectic work days where we usually tie at the end of the day. How do we make sex as much of a priority as other things in our life? These are complex questions and there's not any one answer that fits. The healthy number of times to have sex is the number you want to have sex. That's going to vary from season to during illness during times that you're especially busy. It's going to vary and it's whatever the one who wants it more often wants is probably the better number to aim at. If it's the question do you have to have sex every time a spouse wants? No. But the Bible says don't withhold yourself from one another. You can be a part for a season of prayer. There are reasons to say really not now could you be high. If you're both trying to serve each other, if sex is about giving to the other person the one who wants it more frequently isn't going to be demanding and hurt and all of that because you're not doing it. How do you make progress in making sex life a priority? You make anything else a priority. Brush your teeth, you've lost, you fit it in. You've got it done. How do you get over damage that was done early in your marriage in the sexual area? That may take counseling. It may take going to another couple to be accountable. It may take reading some books. It's going to take some work. You don't get over scars. I mean scars stay with you a long time and Jesus kept his scars by the way and they became his glory after he was resurrected. The scars that a bad sexual experience, bad sexual life have left on you when they're redeemed and forgiven can be a trophy of grace rather than something that you have to be afraid of. I hope that's not an oversimplification. Some really quick ones. How can I learn the love language of my spouse? How can I help my spouse learn my love language also? How can I help? How can I learn love language if I don't even know my own love language? There's a book called Help, You're My Librarian Love Language by. It might be out of print. It might be out of print, but they get this Google. Hudson's Why Heart. Tim has a love language test actually and we were toying with the idea of telling you that we had to get it up on the website for people to take where you mark down the ones that are most important to you. Your spouse marks down the ones that are most important to him or her and then you compare. No, you mark down what's important to you and what you think is important to your spouse. He or she marks down what's important to them and what they think is important to you. Then you compare where you're off by more than a whole bunch on what you thought was important to the other person. You think we should do that? Eskregan to put it up on the web? Sure. First of all, it's been part of the pre-marital seminar. It's part of the pre-marital seminar has been for years. And now I notice there's a lot of books. If you just go on Amazon Common, put in love language, there's a number of different sorts of books that look to me like they're basically giving you the same concept. What does the Bible say about fear of more children? A couple of people called to parenthood before having children. One about contraception in here. Should you use it or not? I didn't want to have children. I actually shot myself in the foot because I took a course in seminary about marriage in children and I had this great plan where I was going to devote myself to doing Christian work and children were just going to get in the way and I wanted to be in the city and blah, blah, blah. Everything I read in the Bible. I did a paper on children. I was going to prove like this was okay. Children are always called a blessing from God. Not having them is called a curse everywhere they're looked at as a blessing. And so after about like a thousand verses I said, "Now whom I going to believe me or the Bible?" You know, when it comes down to, I didn't want them. I'd grown up with like, I was the oldest of five. I'd had kids up to here. I'm not a kid person. The older my children get, the better I have like them. My little babies scare me to death. You know, they can't tell you what they want. Teenagers I'm fine with, but little ones scare me. But I couldn't get past what the Bible said. The Bible said they were a blessing. But as far as using contraception, "Hey, God gave us a mandate to take care of all creation. We cut the grass. We cut our hair. We interfere with nature in about a million different ways. Why not? That one. I mean, I don't think you're allowed to say no children. But I think you can decide when and how many. So contraception doesn't seem like a problem to me. Maybe that's too quick of an answer, but that's the answer we've always given. Over to you, Chet. Where are I? You're dating yourselves and these people don't know who Chet was. Dan? I don't know. I don't watch the news, so I don't know who's current. Alrighty. You know what the news like? I don't know whether we're poor. I know. Actually, there's some of these. There's a little overlap, obviously. Here's one. In heaven, how will we relate to our spouses? And actually, even though I don't think this comes up in here, I think, first of all, there's a place where Jesus actually talks about the fact that obviously our relationships are different because there's a place where the Sadducees ask Jesus in order to make fun of the resurrection. They say, "If a man marries a woman and she dies, or is it a little bit rare?" It's a woman, isn't it? Who marries? It has seven spouses. When the resurrection happens, when the new heaven's new earth, who's the spouse? And Jesus basically says to them, "It just goes to show that the new heavens and new earth are better than the way things are here. And so there will be different." And I've often thought about what that means. It probably means something like this, that on earth, there's no way you can have the kind of absolute, exclusive love. You can't have the depth of intimacy with more than one person at a time. You have to have one spouse, not multiple spouses, and that's the one person you give yourself to completely. I actually think that in the new heavens and new earth, there's going to be a way in which we will actually have all of us with one another. All brothers and sisters in Christ, everyone who's a new heavens and new earth, will have absolute perfect love relationships and intimacy with everyone else. Obviously, what happens there is sex. The erotic gets somehow merged in with everything else. It's not just something that's. In some ways, I don't think the intimacy we're going to have in that situation is less than erotic sex. It would be something greater. But my guess would be that somehow this specialness of the relationship that we had on earth with our spouses is going to be intact too. This is heaven. This is new heavens and new earth. You shouldn't worry about it. It's going to be terrific. It's. When John Edwards was dying, "No, we got plenty of time. I'm looking." We got lots of questions. We got you. When John Edwards was dying, and he knew he wasn't going to see his wife before he died, he called his daughter to himself, and he said, "Tell my wife that the uncommon union that's a long has subsisted between us has been, I trust, spiritual and therefore will last forever." And I think that's true, but on the other hand, Jesus says that there's not the same kind of exclusive relationships in the future because we won't need it. So in other words, I don't know. All right. Do you have. I can't say, "Why don't you say that right away?" But it was so much more interesting. Don't you think? One of those. Don't, "Marn those inconclusive thoughts, absolutely inconclusive thoughts, interesting?" I thought so. All right. Do you have any recommendations for men on spiritually leading their families? And I think it's actually, evidently, I think it's talking about what may be talking about books and the answer there is no. I would say the main thing you need to do, if you're talking about families, if you're talking about your children, the best thing I have was ever did, was take my children out to eat one on one. For whatever reason, my son's always considered that, no matter how young they were, you know, eight, six, twelve, twenty, twenty-six today. Absolutely love it. For some reason, especially guys, I didn't have any daughters. So, especially for sons, it was no other situation in which they would just open up. They felt like, "Oh, you're taking me out to eat. Let's talk about my life and what I'm thinking about girls and what I'm thinking about, you know, career and so forth." It was extremely important to do that. I found when I tried to spiritually lead my family by getting my wife and my children all together and lead a Bible study or do something like that, and after all, I'm probably better than you are at that. It just never seemed to work. Was it disaster? It was always a disaster. I spiritually led my family one-on-one with my wife, with my kids. When I try to all get them together and say, "I'm about to spiritually lead you and moss," it just didn't work. So be very, very careful. If you see somebody who has family devotions and it's all wonderful, just be careful. So that's the model. I got to do that. No, you don't. There's an infinite number of models. Wait a minute. This is just to chime in on what Catholic said recently, Redeemer member in a magazine article, stated that she was rethinking the whole issue of procreation, seeing childbearing not simply as a decision to be made, but as the purpose of the sexual union to which a marriage should remain open, at least I think, that's what she said. So what do you think? Yeah. That's what Catholic just said. And actually, I know it comes. It's not far from the Catholic position. The Catholic position says, "You have to have your marriage remain open to life, and the way to do that is not to do contraception." We think that there's some balance there. First of all, I think that pushes where I don't think the Bible has spoken. When Kathy said, "You cut your hair, now she cuts her hair." I obviously don't cut my hair, at least I don't need to. But she says, "We're allowed to have some dominion over our bodies. We can cut hair, you can do things like that." There's no reason why you can't do contraception. But what she's saying, and I would agree with this person, is I don't think you should deliberately say, "I don't want to have children." If that's the way God works it, then maybe you shouldn't have children. But for you to simply say, "We're going to do everything we can to prevent children." Probably, I can't give you a chapter of verse, but probably that doesn't fit in with the Bible's very, very positive approach to children. Children are never seen as a burden. Kathy, you seem to be. Yes, I'm ready. Ready to go back, we can't. There's five, all on the same sort of subject. She's got one. What do you recommend for a couple who are at different places spiritually? Growth is really difficult at times. There's a lack of love, and there's another one that says, "What if your spouse doesn't cooperate with you to develop the relationship? Give me advice for when the spouse is in a dry spell, hardness, perllessness, not seeing. How do you minister without criticizing your spouse when you believe your spouse is not obeying Christ? When the spouse does not step up to the plate and is responsible financially making decisions, taking steps to change, then the relationship does not feel like it's complementing one another, the other person feels short-changed. A preface to this, well, no, then I won't put the preface. You're all married already. If I was talking to unmarried people, I would say, "Well, that's the point of not marrying somebody who's at a different place than you spiritually, the unequal yoke thing." That's your marriage. Once you're married, then it's God's will for you to be married. It's not God's will for you to say, "Oh, this person's not where I am spiritually, so I can get out of this marriage and go somewhere else." If someone is not where you are spiritually, you minister to them. What do you do to somebody in the church that's not where you are spiritually or somebody in your small group that's not where you are? It's just a lot more intense, it's more 24/7 than it is once a week. You find ways to be creative, to minister, to be sacrificial in the first Corinthians, what, seven. It talks about women who are married to non-Christians, that if the non-Christian husband is willing to stay married to you, that you can win them without a word by your behavior. It's a great saying by the same Francis of a C.C., which I saw on a T-shirt and a Wendy as Molibe or not. It says, "Preach the gospel continually to every creature. Use words if necessary." I mean, there are so many opportunities in marriage for the more mature spouse or the believing spouse or whatever to be Christ-like and not to just harang continually about Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, until you make the person sick to death of the name. But I shouldn't need to detail them. You can think of them yourself. But you read the scripture for some advice there. You should be aware of the fact that God's given you a difficult assignment. I'm not calling it easy when you are married to someone who doesn't want to grow, isn't where you are spiritually, isn't loving the Lord that you love. It's a difficult situation to be in. But it's also a ministry that God's given you. You know, he could have called you to work with lepers in Africa, but he called you to be married to this person. In fact, Jonathan Edwards, whom Tim just quoted, the biography of his wife is, "The man is entitled marriage to a difficult man." And we're talking Jonathan Edwards here. So I'm not sure any man is easy to be married to. And ones that are, I mean, or any woman, I'll be fair. I mean, marriage is tough. You've got two centers trying to live together. How are you? How are you? But if you are married to a non-Christian or someone who is not stepping up to the plate, taking the headship and leading the family in the way they should, then it doesn't mean you step into their shoes and you lead the family. It means that you find ways to be quite like and bring grace into the family by your behavior in any way you can. Okay, a couple others really fast. That's the same one. When you live in New York and your spouse has a high demanding job that regularly pulls them away from the family, how do you know when it's truly detrimental to the family and this spouse should no longer do the job? All this when we are committed to the city and to Christians being in high positions, but where do you draw the line and help your spouse see this may not be the best? Give her some China plates. Yeah. If you have not got good communication skills, this is going to be a hard one to talk about because men get very invested in their jobs and think of that as the place that they really shine the way that they're supporting the family, making their mark in the world. Whereas women are often much more invested in the family and rather than opposing those two to each other, you should both think of your marriage as being a unified thing. What are you getting done in the world? I mean, what are you raising children? Are you trying to have an effect on the culture? It's a joint thing. It's not his job and your kids or vice versa. It's something that you have to jointly figure out. What is your marriage all about? What is his first point is planning what your marriage means, what is your marriage all about? You have to go back to the beginning. You can't start with, should I quit this job and take another one. You have to start down at the bottom and say, "What's our marriage all about? What are we trying to accomplish? Who are we? What is God's assignment for our marriage?" What if headship is as hard for the man as submission may be for the woman? Well, what if? It is. It's very difficult for the man to be the head and you be as helpful as you can by being who you ought to be. That's all you can do. This is a three of them right here. My husband has, by his lack of engagement and emotional affairs with other women, shows he does not want to be married to me. My pastor tells me I must continue to forgive, but as important as this is, my husband does not want to be married to me. What should I do? Everyone just like it. What do you say to the person who says, "I married the wrong person." That's painful. That hurts because that's a rejection of somebody who knows you intimately. The whole idea of marriage is that you are vulnerable, you're naked, you are emotionally naked with another person who has seen you and known you and is rejecting you. There is nothing that I can imagine more painful than that. What do you say to the person who says, "I married the wrong person?" If you're married, then God means you to work it out. I mean, that's not one of the basis for divorce. This basis for divorce fell down the Bible, abandonment that can't be remedied and adultery. But just saying, "Oh, I found somebody better." I mean, that's what a marriage vow is all about. That's what it means whenever you make that promise. You're not promising that you love them now. You're promising to love them later when they're sick or older. You found somebody more interesting. You're making a vow of future behavior. So you can't have married the wrong person. You're a good husband and you married the person you met you to marry. And maybe I can be careful what I said. Some of the people that I know the most closely have married someone whose flaws are just in the place where their flaws rub them the wrong way. It's a perfect match of flaws, of each one making the other one nuts. And that's great because man, can you grow that way? If you really put your mind to it, if you say, "Gosh," you know, if you're sailing and floating along and everything's easy, you won't go looking for any help. But if you have troubles, you will. As far as forgiving when your husband says, "I don't want to be married to you," I think it would be more useful to go get a counselor or to go smash some plates or to do something dramatic and say, "There's no way you can talk like this if you're going to claim to be a Christian." If the person's not a Christian, then you may be find yourself in one of those situations for divorce. Do you want to talk? I was just going to say, "I married the wrong person." If I had, when I came to New York, people said, "Are you sure that I wanted you to be a client of church here?" And I said, "No, I'm not. I think so." And of course, that gets in a whole area of guidance because I don't. The only thing I know for sure in the Bible are things that are in the Bible that say, "Thou shalt not lie, thou shalt not commit adultery." And there I know I've got. That's God's will. But when I moved here, I thought that this was the right thing to do. And I wasn't sure. I couldn't be sure until the church actually happened, right? But what I remember saying to myself and others, I said, "If I've found what I got here that I really did make a mistake, in the sense that I misunderstood the opportunity, I misunderstood my gifts, I misunderstood the match." And others, if I'd married the wrong career move and turned out that I really made a mistake, I said, "If I get here and I find that the church doesn't happen, then, though it's a mess, and though it's a mess that came through my wrong choice, it's the mess that God wanted me to be in in order to prepare me for something else that I couldn't envision." In other words, I came here with a confidence that either God was going to help me plant this church, or if it turns out I made a mistake, he would be preparing me through the suffering to be something that he wanted me to be. I say the same thing with. Once you make the promise, it's a death to his part, you married the person, afterwards you say, "Oh my gosh, this wasn't a very smart choice at all. It's kind of a mess, right? But it's the mess now God wants you to be in. It's a suffering God wants you to be in. You're not in a wheelchair. You've got a marriage to a person who's going to be hard to love. That is something that God wants you to embrace and do all of these things that we're telling you about in order to become the great person that he wants to make you. Keep going. Do some of yours. Oh, okay. Minor falling in categories. What do you suggest? What do you do when you cast a tiebreaker vote but your wife ignores you? In other words, what do you do when you try? When you try the headship and your wife doesn't grant it. Here we go. Number one. You bring her to this seminar. Number one. You get the tape and the place. Wait a minute. I would say the first thing you ought to ask is maybe she doesn't trust you because you haven't earned it. There is a sense in which Jesus, Paul says, "Husbands love your wife as Christ of the Church. So if she doesn't really trust your sacrificial love, if she doesn't trust you enough to give you that type of breaking authority, then you need to sit down and say, 'What do I need to be to take my place where I should be in the marriage? What do I need to do to earn your respect and your trust enough to do that?' The second possibility is she just might not buy the whole headship submission thing. There's plenty of Christians who don't for various reasons. We want to talk to you like we think this is the way it goes. We also know there are other Christians who don't. It could be that the two of you might need it would have been great if you had worked this out ahead. But if you haven't, you might want to sit down and talk to a pastor or a minister or somebody like that. I mean, around Redeemer, we're not going to say you've got to buy into this. We know that every single, you know, all Christians have different views on this. We're going to say this is the way we think is biblical. This is the way we think it works. But we're not going to be sure of it ahead. But it might be. It could be the wife has a conceptual problem. An intellectual problem. I don't buy it. Or it could be that she doesn't trust you. In which case, you need to find out why. In either case, it might be a good idea to talk to a pastor or a counselor. Should I keep going? Yeah, sure. We've had conversations on how to better resolve conflict. But after our next argument, we regress to our former bad habits. How do we stick to our resolves? Well, here's the accountability thing. We would have talked about this later. I don't think we could pass. Can I chime in on one to answer the same one? Yeah, sure. It's the same thing. Where is it here? I like a progress. You need help. You need people coming alongside you. It's just, for example, if you can. Talk about the power of grace to sustain and grow a marriage relationship in the face of temperamental habitual weakness and sin. I was going to say, if you. There are certain things you can do without any accountability structure at all. Like you can say, "I can do it. I can stick on this diet." And sometimes you lose the weight. Other times you say, "I can't do that. I'm going to need to be in a group. I'm going to need to have somebody calling me. I need to have a partner." And I need to have a coach. And so you find. It takes. If you need to lose 20 pounds, you do what it takes. If you find that you can't do it by yourself, and yet you aren't willing to get other accountability structures, then that's your fault. I'd say the same thing here. You've got to have probably some Christian couples who are. You let all the way in and they let you all the way in and you talk about the intimate details of your marriage. It's got to be something that you do that with life long. Secondly. And one of them standing right back there. We have some friends. I mentioned to Dell and this is David is in the back. David Midwood is a good friend. He and Louise have been lifetime friends. And we've talked about intimate details, right David? Really intimate details all the time. So. Also. Pastors and counselors. You have to have friends. You have to have pastors. You have counselors. Maybe you say, "Well, we've tried all that." Well. I bet you you didn't. Because I really think usually this progress when both husband and wife go get those accountability structures. Marriage is one of the most profound human relationships, but it's one that at times can be difficult and painful. We'd like to briefly highlight a resource that provides help for anyone who wants to have more loving and stronger relationships. Tim and Kathy Keller draw from biblical wisdom and their own experiences to offer a year of daily meditations for couples in their book, The Meaning of Marriage, A Couples Devotional. The book is a 365-day devotional that includes stories, daily scriptures, and prayer prompts that will help couples draw closer to God and to each other throughout the year. If you would like to make a gift to help gospel in life share the love of Christ with more people, we'll send you a copy of The Meaning of Marriage, A Couples Devotional, as our thanks. To request your copy, simply visit gospelonlife.com/divo. That's gospelonlife.com/divo. Now, here's the conclusion of this episode of Cultivating a Healthy Marriage. You want me to do some? No, because actually, okay, unforgiveness. How do you confront? Oh, yes, this is an easy one. If you start saying, "I am forgiving you," or "I have forgiven you," doesn't that incite the other person to feel that you're being self-righteous? Actually, yes, I had written this down. I would say it's much more important to actually forgive than to say, "I'm forgiving you." It can sound incredibly self-righteous. At the moment, you know, I mean, later on, obviously, at certain points you have to say, "I've really forgiven you for what you did." But I mean, at the moment, when feelings are kind of high, yes, to say, "I forgive you." Sounds very much like a punishing thing to say, or trying to get them all high ground. So I would say, "Be very careful." The important thing is to actually do the forgiving, not to announce it, or even use the word in some cases. My husband's close friendship to other women caused a lot of problems in our marriage. I felt very threatened and exposed by these relations. Any solution wisdom to this issue. Many people have asked this over the years, and I know what Cathy would say, too. And here's what I will say. If a husband's relationship to other women is too close for the wife's comfort level, the husband adapts to the wife's comfort level, whatever it is, period. And vice versa. In other words, the person who's got the most to lose, the person who feels that I just cannot handle that. There's some people who can handle it, some people can't. You adapt to your wife's comfort level, or vice versa if the role's reversed. I would, with one qualification, I do know that there are manipulative controlling spouses that don't want you to have any friends in the world who said, "Just him or just her." That's a different category than just the normal thing. And then you're into counseling territory. But I was going to say, usually, if that's the case, then you may have other problems in your marriage. Work on your marriage, and maybe later on. your spouse will not be quite as controlling. But for the moment, you need to take that away as a problem. And the way to do that is to simply say, if that's a problem for you, I will definitely pull back out of that relationship. OK. I can do a couple of these really fast. How do you get results without sounding like a nag? I wouldn't know. [LAUGHTER] How dare you ask us that question? [LAUGHTER] Why would you know we have? No. Because I'm a terrible nag. Drip, drip, drip. Define nagging, dear. No, nagging me. I guess means, in my language, it means just always being on the same subject all the time. And you never actually sit down and have a fruitful conversation. It's just a drip, drip, drip, all the time sort of thing. I think what I have learned is you pray about it. I'm sorry if that sounds really, really, really right. But that's what you do. And you ask God to create opportunities for there to be meaningful conversations and train wrecks, even in your relationship or in your life, so that stuff will come to light. I mean, if it's important enough to really want the change, then you pray for God to do whatever it takes. Another one, what percentage of a marriage do you consider sexual? Can you have a good-- I.E. Can you have a good marriage without frequent sex or low libido? Sure. I've been sick for the last four years. How much sex you think we had? Gosh, it's been in the hospital for like a million times. But a relationship can be completely sexual, even if it's not having sex. I mean, what was that thing we read about that couple? Yeah, there was a man-- I-- We read it at the right time. Right the right time. It's a man whose wife had been paralyzed, somewhat paralyzed, and he took care for the last six years that are lives. And of course, there was no sex for the six years. And he actually said, he says, the intimacy that they arrived at went past. He says, it was an incredibly central relationship. He said, neither of them missed it because the relationship was so intense. And I know what he means. Yeah, that's not the best situation, but sometimes you find yourself in that situation. What do you do if you have a hard time respecting your husband's intelligence and judgment? Well, first of all, you don't. [LAUGHTER] What if he has a hard time respecting your gentle spirit? And-- [LAUGHTER] I think there might be flaws on both sides with this. But it's true. I mean, if you have a hard time respecting your husband's intelligence, or if your husband has a hard time respecting your intelligence, either way, it's going to cross a rift. I mean, but you know, intelligence isn't everything. It really isn't. There's plenty of ways in which people can be much more godly and much closer to God and not have the SAT scores or the IQ points or the investment savvy, et cetera. I mean, some of the most successful relationships I know of are ones in which the wife may have multiple degrees and the husband not ever even gone to college. So that's not the basis of how you respect your husband. You should respect him as a godly person, not for his intelligence or his judgment, which might be lacking, same as yours might. What's the best way to give my husband advice without making him feel? And then it sort of stopped. And I imagine, feel bad or feel nagged, which would have been the end, but they passed it into soon. What's the best way to give my husband advice without making him feel bad or nagged? What's the best way, dear? Well, I used to do it, which is-- I asked Kathy at one point to say, I said, I know. I shouldn't be this fragile, but I really would love you to-- when you're about to give me criticism about an area in my life, put it in the context of all the other things that you think are great about that area though. Oh, remember that. And here's what we just do. I actually said, let's say-- I came up with this. I came up with this. You did. Now, or sometimes we found that after you spent eight hours talking about something and you came to a conclusion, you wanted to remember that eight hours. But we developed a certain shorthand. And so there were certain signals in the signal that you used to give us. I used to say, this is nothing but a net's eyelash. In the grand scheme. In the grand scheme of things. But it is a net's eyelash. And that-- And that's-- And that's-- And that really-- humor, humor, really diffuses-- Yeah, and that meant-- Remember that eight hour conversation in which I told you that somehow I can still worship the ground you walk on and still be really, really, really upset about this about you. In fact, that's the reason why I'm so upset about this thing about you is because I worship the ground you walk on. After eight hours of saying, oh, you mean this isn't a lack of respect. This is actually a vote of confidence that you'd come at me like this. You want to remember the whole eight hours. And we just had a little shorthand and we used to use it to remind ourselves of that whole conversation. Do you have more? How important is it for men to come in touch with their emotions and develop empathy and develop an understanding of how they really feel in marriage? Actually-- Oh, can I answer that? Can I answer that? Please. That's part of the purpose that God has in having a man married to a woman is you are supposed to be coaching each other. You're supposed to be discipling each other in the things that the other one doesn't have. If you're all in touch with your feelings, all touchy feeling and your husband is not, that's one of the areas in which you look at, I can disciple him in that. Not nag him, not beat him up, not make him feel like, what a lousy you are, what a poor spouse you are. But that's one of the areas I look at he needs to be discipled. And vice versa, he may look at me and say, you're always crumbling at the first sign of any kind of suffering. And I'm going to disciple you in that. I want-- you don't have to say it to each other, you just do it. Exactly what I was going to say. Actually, I was going to say-- 30 years of marriage. How important is it for men to come in touch with their emotions and empathy in themselves and in marriage? And the answer is that's the reason you get married, guys, is to learn that. And here's my way of putting it. You know how Eskimos, they say, I've been using this illustration for years. Somebody's going to tell me, I'm a cultural anthropologist and you're wrong, it's not true. Eskimos have 11 words for snow, they say, or 12 words for snow. Different words, totally different, because they're in the snow so much, they see these little distinctions. Now, when you and I, we have one word for snow, we can say big flakes, little flakes. That's about it. We're big flakes, but they still snow. When an Eskimo looks at snow, it's because of the different vocabulary, the Eskimo actually sees more than you and I see. This is, by the way, it's an interesting subject. Your language actually affects the way you see the world. Women actually are Eskimos when it comes to feelings. They look at feelings. And they'll see all sorts of nuances and spectra, all sorts of categories. And by and large, the men don't have even vocabularies. We have big feelings, little feelings. [LAUGHTER] You know, strong feelings, indifferent feelings. And the women have got a vocabular, and they're there to teach us. They're there to teach us. What I would have said at the end, I would say it now, you some of you heard me say this perhaps before, but one of the great joys of marriage is that after years and years and years and years of fighting, you get into a situation. And when something happens to you, you immediately know what your wife would do. You immediately know what she would say. You immediately, before you even say or do anything, you know what she would say or do. And what's intriguing is you get a moment to actually a split second moment in which you can say, maybe that's the more appropriate response of this situation. And you actually have a moment in which you can actually respond the way she would have responded, because you realize that's probably the wiser. And it means that over the years she has the same thing for me for her, is we've actually so inhabited one another's worlds that we actually now have two sets of eyes in which to look at the world. And we have a greater range of responses. And as a result, we become vastly wiser than we would have been otherwise. And in the emotional area, that's one of the main ways in which you grow. Can I do two more really fast? Yeah, sure. Could you spell out, again, a script for how we talk about a problem in our marriage? We have a problem, as I see it, it would help me. Then there's three that are all in the same. What if it takes years to achieve forgiveness? And you get beaten down and harmed in the meantime before you can successfully confront? How do you deal with a husband who's not supportive? Instead of telling me everything's going to be OK. He tells me frequently on the problem. What if his spouse is unwilling to address a problem? How long does one wait? What does one do in the meantime? What are the resources? And how much does one take? That goes back to being married to somebody that you don't respect, being married to someone is a different place with you spiritually. It's suffering. You're suffering. It's a hard road to ho. You need a support group around you that's praying for you. You need to be in maybe counseling by yourself. If your spouse won't go to counseling with you, you need to be supported. You can't do this alone. An awful lot of failure of Christian marriages or a failure to get over big problems in the Christian world and drug abuse, homosexuality, all kinds of stuff like that is because we won't take them out into the light of the community where grace and the means of grace is available. We're too afraid of what other people will think. We're too ashamed. We're too upset. And so we don't get the resources of the community in our problems. So if you are in a very difficult marriage where your husband is unsupportive, you won't work on problems. You feel beaten down all the time. You need community around you to support you. hold up your arms like Moses. And the one I'm going to show you. When I saved for last, what's the wisdom in getting married? What's the big deal with marriage? I think someone singles muck in here. Or maybe someone who's a couple, but it's not official. That could also be it. Because it's the closest thing to heaven that you're going to get on this side of being dead. I mean, our friend Adele, when she got married, says her marriage, started at the gates of hell and ended at the gates of heaven. It's not ended yet, but they were close enough that she felt like she could say that. God has given us this incredible privilege of having the ability to show the world what forgiveness looks like, what commitment looks like, what grace looks like, and where else can that happen besides a marriage? If you can split anytime you board or tie it of it or just, you know, fed up with it, then none of that will take place. I mean, marriage is something that I would like to get all the singles and redeem her together and say, you know, I'm giving you three weeks, find somebody or three months. Because an awful lot of the fear of getting married is actually a fear of God's sovereignty in your life. What if, you know, she develops problems? What if I don't like our kids? What if I don't like kids' period? I mean, you're afraid of the future because you think as a single person you've got control and as a married person, a married person now the control is out of your hands because you're linked to somebody else who may have different ideas, different problems, different issues. Hey, you're not in control, even if you're single, you're not. And getting married will expose an awful lot of idols in your life that otherwise are going to be just left festering there. So there's about a million reasons to get married. I don't even get through ten of them. If you have any more questions, you're going to try and answer. I know this sounds contradictory because Shkaadi just said, "Why get married?" Because the possibilities of union and love, the possibilities of another person inhabiting, you inhabiting another person's soul to the degree that you actually become infinitely wiser. All those possibilities are impossible unless you're married. However, I think it's very important to say that marriage is a form of suffering too. So is singleness. Singleness brings a lot of pain into your life. Marriage brings another kind of pain into your life. And I think it's also fair to say because you need to see this as normal. Marriage is one set of problems after another. Now I said that very carefully, listen carefully. It's not the same set of problems. The mark of a good marriage is not that you don't have tons of problems. The mark of a good marriage is you have tons of problems but they're not the same problems as five years ago. They're not the same problems as ten years ago. You can see yourself making some progress. Many of the things that used to be problems aren't but now we've got a new set. Some of the reasons for that. That's because life is sponge as a problem. Because you can insulate yourself from that if you're a single person and you can't if you're married. Lewis Mead says, you know, he was in the 70s when he wrote this. He says, "My wife has been married to five men. They were all me." And it's no doubt that a young person, when you're young, when you're a little older, when you're with young children, with the older children, empty nest, every one of those, you get remarried practically. You have a whole new set of problems. Well that's the mark of, in marriage you're going to have a whole lot of problems. You definitely are. Here's a couple more. It's love a choice. Now basically yes. That's too simple. It's not just a matter of a listen, but I tried to say tonight it is. My grandmother was betrothed my grandfather when she was a child. There was a very tight Italian family and when my grandmother was something like 10 years old, her parents came to her and said, "You see that man? You're marrying that man when you turn 17." She says, "Okay." And so she got married because she had no choice in it. And I used to talk to her about the thing and she used to say, she says, "You start out cold. I hardly knew him." I remember that this is the man who I was going to be his wife and we were going to raise our family and I gave myself to him and I served him and as time went on, I loved him. Here's a great example of this. I won't even mention the name. You know how I'm talking about that? Yes, because the table was where. When what happened in Hopewell, as we had certain people, especially a couple of couples, who had endless problems, we call them black ones. It didn't matter how much love and advice you put into them, they were still empty at the bottom. There was no, you couldn't fill them up. They were always having problems. But because I was the pastor, see, before I became a pastor, Kathy and I were, you know, just we did everything together. When I was a pastor, it was my duty. It was my job to spend time with some of those people, week after week after week after week. And I remember one day, after a couple of years, we had our day off and I remember saying to Kathy one day, I said, "Let's invite." I'm not saying so. So and so. Well, let's invite so and so and so and so over today. And Kathy looked and said, "Are you nuts? Nobody wants to spend any time with them." I mean, they're just, all they're going to do is this and are you kidding? That's work. And I'd realized because I spent so much time with them and I invested so much time into them, I'd come to really love them. I'd come to like them. You know, I start out loving them and as a result, I came to like them. There's a lot to that in marriage. That's what I was trying to get across. Wait one more thing. Is a difference of view on family size suitable for resolution through a headship assertion? And I wanted to mention this because we haven't talked much about headship. See I would say, watch out. Wait a minute. Whoa. Is right. When I say tie breaking authority, there are some decisions that have to be made. Do we move to New York or not? But there are a lot of decisions that don't have to be made right away and you ought to be very, very, very slow to say, "What? We can't make up our mind. I'm the husband." Now, by the way, don't forget husbands that the only authority you've got to ever overrule your wife is if you think she's doing something that in the long run will hurt her. You never, ever, ever exert your authority in order to get your way. Never. Things like, "She wants a red car. I want a green car. We can't agree. I'm the husband." It's green. Never, never. In fact, as far as I know, if you, at that point, if you're going to exert your authority, you ought to buy the red car because the Bible says you have to exert your authority the way Jesus did, who gave himself, who died for his spouse. So in this case, the point is it may be in the end. If your wife and you both agree, we can't agree, you decide what you think is best for the whole family. I trust you. Yes. But if there's this disagreement, this tugging, you can't agree, and you think, "I think it ought to be this number," and she says, "That'll kill me." Or, "That'll really hurt me." I don't believe it's a husband's job to say, "Well, tough. I'm the husband and we're going to go in this direction." So be very, very slow about using your authority like that. Okay. Application. Well, there are a couple of questions on here that I didn't answer. If you say, "Hey, my question wasn't answered." There's a couple of questions that, unless I got specific examples, I wouldn't know even how to go with them. So, I'm going to, these are good counseling questions. But I couldn't even begin to answer them unless I said, "Give me an example." So there's a couple I didn't, we didn't get to, and I'm sorry about that. Do you want to start with the application? The application that I had in mind to say is just, don't walk out of here going, "Hmm, how interesting." So I have a whole page full of notes to show for my evening. Find something that you can take into your marriage and apply in a way that will add growth. I mean, this is an exercise and futility if it doesn't issue in some repentance or some growth in some area where you start praying together where you apologize for something that you've been nagging about or find something, some action step. Is that the, Lingo, find some action step you can take away and use because- They call it take away. Okay, thank you, take away. I've well, Dick Koffen used to call them action steps anyway. Find something that you can use and use it. Don't be passive in your marriage, either men or women. You can't be passive about a garden. We started out with this whole image of a garden. I actually tried having a garden. We owned a house for five years. Oh, yeah. That's exactly the reaction. We owned a house of Philadelphia for five years and I tried to have a garden and I made a came-palete mess of it. I put it in the wrong place. It was boggy. It didn't get enough sun. The only thing that grew after thousands of hours and I mean, where the zucchini, I mean, that stuff's going to be around with the cockroaches after the atomic holocaust. Cockroaches and zucchini. I mean, unless you- They will survive. They will survive. But they take efforts. They take work. They take specialized knowledge. You can't just have good intentions. I had a beautiful little apple tree and I was just going to nurture that little thing. I remembered the apple tree. I had as a child that grew outside my window and it had some kind of bug infestation and I went and got advice and I got, you know, okay, the right stuff to spray on it and I sprayed it. And I had about a cup of the stuff left because it's just a little apple tree. I said, well, if something's good, more is better. And I dumped it over. The thing was dead in two days. I mean, you can't apply information. indiscriminately, you have to think, you have to read, you have to talk, and you have to be in community. Community. If you're not in a small group, we'll shame on you. I mean, it's hard with your schedule, it's hard with your spouse's schedule, but you need to be in some kind of fellowship, especially if you're married. I mean, single people need it desperately too, but especially in your marriage, you need to know that other people are going through the same stuff that you're going through. You need, especially, one of the most successful things that ever happened here is Dace and Rush Ascroft ran a small group for newlyweds, and they had a curriculum, but they never used it. They only got together each week and they said, "Oh, you mean we're not the only one?" I mean, that was the whole reason they came. It's just so they could be with other people and say, "Oh, you're not the only one having problems." We thought that, you know, it was this big, dark, dirty secret where Christians we got married, and we thought that was a problem, so no, this is terrible. But you need to know you're not the only one, and you need the wisdom of other people. So that's my takeaway. Yeah, well, I think the last thing to say is that, and I know I'm opening myself for three years from now, you're remembering this and saying, "Hey, where's the action to back this up?" Redeemer is well known for being a single's church. I forget, I mean, the survey indicates we're still at more than two-thirds single. Somebody had a number. Yes. It's still two-thirds single. And which is, that's huge. And of course, that reflects Manhattan, which is still basically a single's culture. What we've said rhetorically, we've said over the years, that that means that we're in the reverse of most churches, most churches, especially large churches, are kind of made up of families and married people. And the poor benited singles are over here saying, "Nobody, we have our special needs, and nobody cares about us, and so we hire a singles pastor, and we have singles programs." We're kind of in a different situation. We do need to say that the families are the minority, and the married people are the minority. And for a number of years, we said, "You know, we actually need to start staffing in that direction." There's no doubt that what Kathy and I are saying besides the seminar that the counseling center is putting on, is we do not have lots of great support programs for supporting newlyweds, supporting married people, supporting families. But we are committed to turning that rhetoric into reality over the next few years. It's one of the reasons we want to buy buildings so we can have places for family programs during the year. If any of you are at the vision service, you know that actually part of the reason I do think we do need to have buildings over the years is actually they would probably, if we use them properly, be great community buildings basis for families. Families will probably benefit from them more than anybody. And I have come more and more to see how silly it is for me to think that we're going to create a long term, significant Christian community in the middle of a cultural center like New York. If we can't provide the support and infrastructure for married people and families to stay in the city. Now, there are certain things about the city that means transients will always be here, not just for you but for single people too. Nevertheless, we haven't done anything close to what we want to do. So our application here at the end has been, "You have to right now still make it happen." You have to find some other Christian couples that you become very intimate friends with and you talk about your marriages. You need to be willing to overcome the stigma of counseling for marriage, almost every marriage at some point is going to need counseling at some point. You need to be willing to go get that accountability and form those groups but unfortunately I'm saying you have to make it happen. Do it, you're Manhattan people, so many of you, you know, you're entrepreneurial. Nevertheless, I want you to know that as the pastor of Redeemer I recognize the responsibility that we have corporately to support you in a way we have it in the past. And we, I'm committing myself to seeing that happen. Won't go any further than that because if I give you details you're going to take notes and say two years from now, "What didn't happen yet?" So I'm not going to say. But now I am going to close you with prayer because I think believe it's time. It is. Would you mind standing so we could pray? Did I write? Let's just stand to pray. Let us pray. Our father, two and a half hours, we stood here and talked about the nuts and bolts of gardening, cultivating a healthy marriage. There are untapped treasures in a marriage. There is a, the soil is richer than we know because you invented marriage. It's not a human invention. It's not something that just developed out of the, out of the, out of human culture. It's an institution that you developed and you created and you gave to us. If we learn how to plant and seed and, and water and fertilize and weed and prune in all these ways, we will eat the fruit of labor. We will be transformed and will transform each other in some day. We'll all stand together before the throne. Lost in wonder, love and praise. Beautiful and glorified and we will have all been participating in one another's journey to your throne and we can't wait to be there. So give us the way with all's in order to serve one another and to sacrifcially love our spouses into your bosom, into your kingdom. And we pray this in Jesus' name. Amen. Thanks for listening to Cultivating a Healthy Marriage. We trust you were encouraged and that it gives you new insight into how you can apply God's wisdom to your life. If you'd like to find more Gospel-centered resources from Tim Keller, simply visit gospelandlife.com. There, you'll find articles, sermons, devotional and other helpful resources. You can also stay connected with us on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and Twitter. [Music]