You men need to enter your spouse's world and believe me, you will die there.
We're talking about warring for your marriage.
And in episode one, I talked about putting the first thing first, seeking first the kingdom of God.
In this message, I want to stay in Ephesians 5.
If you have your Bible, look at verse 25.
And I'm a guy, so I'm a man.
So I'm going to speak from a male perspective.
So I'm talking to men and women here, but I'm really targeting men because I feel like men so often are so disengaged in their marriage.
They're engaged at work.
They're engaged maybe even at church.
They're engaged with their buddies, but a lot of times they're disengaged when they get home.
So I really want to emphasize this, but in a way, this is for both the husband and the wife.
And it's verse 25, verse 25.
We read husbands love your wives just as Christ also loved the church and gave himself for her.
So action number two, enter your spouse's world and die there.
Enter your spouse's world and die there.
Now, specifically, Paul is talking about a man, a husband, entering his wife's world and dying there.
The key to this is to love your wives just as Christ also loved the church and gave himself for her.
So there's this love aspect of looking at Christ and his love for us.
Jesus left his world.
Jesus left his comfort, his father, and he entered into our world and gave his life on a cross.
Jesus left the comfort of heaven.
Jesus left his father.
Jesus left a perfect, united world.
But then he entered our sinful, negative, selfish, divided world, and he became like us.
He became a man.
He identified with us by becoming like us, and he died here.
He entered our world and he died here.
And men and women, this is one of the craziest concepts for a man to get.
And I'm going to preach it to women here also, is when you get married, you are signing up to enter your spouse's world
and understand them and study them and love them and know what their strengths and weaknesses are.
Be able to enter into that world and begin to love them there in that world.
Just as Christ entered our world and he came here and he died here.
He gave his life for us.
You men, you ladies need to enter your spouse's world.
And believe me, if you enter their world, you will die there.
It's really, really hard.
When you get married, I've often said you don't need so much of a marriage license as you need a passport
because you've entered a totally new world.
You men know what I'm talking about.
You ladies know what I'm talking about.
It's a different language.
It's a different culture, different smells, different clothes, different values, different tone of voice.
It is tough.
And so it's like you've entered a whole nother country.
For you women, it's entering into male country.
For you men, it's entering into female country.
And it is tough.
And the challenge for a successful marriage is for you men and you women to be able to enter your spouse's world.
And believe me, if you enter that world, you will die there.
It is so different.
When I married Liz, holy smokes.
Just the first three weeks, I was just in perpetual shock by so many different things.
I can't even remember all the details.
But I remember just being kind of shell-shocked and actually felt like I was a missionary entering into her world.
It was so different.
I remember our honeymoon.
First day.
Okay, so this is how it all got started.
So first day, honeymoon, Hawaii.
I mean, we're in Maui.
We're in Maui, Hawaii.
We just got flew out of Tokyo 12 hours before.
I wake up.
I am ready to go to the beach and there's a cliff there.
Man, I want to dive off the cliff.
I want to get snorkeling equipment.
I want to go snorkeling.
I am pumped and Liz absolutely doesn't want to have anything to do with it.
She just wants to sleep.
She's exhausted from the wedding.
she's exhausted from the dinners we've had and all the festivities and I
realized uh-oh this is really different because I to me it was just obvious we
need to be out on the beach we need to be snorkeling we need to be diving off
the cliffs and for her it was resting and staying inside for a while and so I
had to calm my jets slow down and begin to realize that life had just changed I
had to enter into my wife's world and I had to die there the key words in this
verse are love and grace men you have to enter your wife's world with love and
grace women you have to enter your man's world with love and grace think
how powerful our marriages would be if just on this one concept we began to do
this if we as men began to think every time we are together with our wife that
we're trying to understand where they're at and we try to enter into their world
and we try to understand where they're at with love and grace and then identify
with that and love them there and I'll tell you man this is so hard it's so
difficult to leave our comfort to leave our buddies to leave our hobbies and
enter into our wife's world or husband's world you will die there and it is
really really tough but it is the key it's the key to a happy marriage is to
be able to enter into our spouse's world understand their values understand who
they are so I studied my wife and you know it's been over 35 years and so I
know her intuitively now but for many years I had to literally think through
you know where's Liz coming from on this and to try to even anticipate her
perspective in relation to a particular issue especially parenting I can tell
you guys out there if you have kids you know what I'm talking about for you out
there that haven't had kids you're gonna understand it later but a woman's
perspective on parenting is really different than yours in most cases I
mean it's pretty rare that the husband and wife are exactly the same in how to
raise the kids but Liz came from a very loose family background there weren't a
lot of rules or a lot of there wasn't a lot of moral or spiritual guidance and
so as we moved into parenting Liz wanted a pretty structured environment and she
was a little more strict than me I came from a background it was very clear what
the expectations were and what the boundaries were but there was a lot of
grace in it so Liz the pendulum swung over a little bit stronger on the
boundaries and for me it swung a little bit more on the grace so we were you
know butting heads a lot on that but when I understood where Liz was coming
from in her background it really helped me understand how she wanted to make
sure that the children had clear boundaries now I did too but the way in
which she was emphasizing it was just really different than me so we
compromised we found that common ground because we began to understand each
other and love each other a discipline I mean disciplining kids that's a whole
another talk we can talk about as far as parenting but we kind of came across
that in two different ways also and we compromised we found that common ground
in parenting our kids and disciplining our kids I would say that both Liz and
I were always a bit skeptical of corporal punishment of like whacking
kids and stuff like some Christian parents do we never felt like that was
the best way to bring discipline so we learned to have the kids run around the
house clean up bathrooms that was pretty good punishment you tell a kid to go into
the guest bathroom and clean out the toilet they I think they would rather
have had a spanking than that but that's what I mean we we we work together we
know our backgrounds we study each other we go in there and we try to bless each
other and in the process of that blessing it's it's exciting it's really
fun and so now here we are in the later stages of our parenting we just have one
child still at home she's 18 but we're in this new phase it's kind of fun
because I know Liz likes to exercise but she doesn't like to exercise the way I
like to exercise
I love to get on the weights and do push-ups and do the elliptical and take hardcore walks
and things like that and Liz likes a less strenuous but more consistent workout.
So even today, our son Samuel who's getting ready to move to DC, he's been with us since
law school, in charity we took a long, hour long, hour and a half long walk or hike and
we did that mainly because Liz loves that and I like it too but her especially and then
this afternoon we're going to play pickleball and so you know you change, you change as
you get older and you again, you try to enter your spouse's world and if you want to stay
unified and you want to stay together, you compromise a little bit.
I know some of you guys like to play golf and golf's great, tennis is great, those sports
are great, hunting and fishing's all great but if your wife is not involved or not in
complete approval, you're going to have to compromise probably on some of that kind of
stuff if you want to keep your marriage, if you want to keep a successful marriage.
So learn to enter your spouse's world, learn to be willing to go to the cross and die for
that person and watch what God will do, it's worth it, it's an exciting life.
So in my next message, I want to talk about action point number three so join us for that.