Marriage: whose agenda? Part 2.

John Farley
Pastor-Teacher
Sunday,
February 14, 2016

Featured Mission:

www.basictraining.org

Basic Training Bible Ministries is led by Gene Cunningham with his wife Nancy as his support and companion. 

Their mission includes evangelism and the training of pastors and workers in remote regions of the world.

 

Practical Christianity:

Marriage:
Whose Agenda?
Part 2.

EPH 5:22-33

Husbands, love your wives. Every day.

Wives, respect your husbands. Every day.

And both of you, keep forgiving one another.

EPH 4:32

The issue is not whether or not you know these three skills.

The issue is whether or not you have been practicing these things lately in your marriage.

Are you forgiving each other?

Wives, are you giving respect to your husband at all times, or are you making him earn it?

Husbands, are you loving your wives, making sacrifices for her, …

…or has something gotten in the way of doing that lately?

JAM 1:22-25

JOH 13:17
“If you know these things, you are blessed if you do them”.

MAT 7:24-27

Forgive.
Love your wife.
Respect your husband.

Whose agenda are we to be running in the marriage: the husband’s, or the wife’s?

EPH 5:25

We husbands are to be loving our wives with a Christ-like love.

And that is a love that gives yourself up for the one you love.

Lays down your life.
 Gives up OUR agenda …. For HERS.

MAT 20:24-28

Those who would be the head…. must be the slave of all the others in the group.

This is the kind of love Jesus has in mind when He tells the husband to love his wife.

So husbands meet the love agenda of the wife.

Forgive.
Love your wife.
Respect your husband.

The wife is to subject herself to her husband in everything.

So she gives up her agenda -for his.

God designed Christian marriage so that the husband meets the wife’s agenda,

…and the wife meets the husband’s agenda.

What is on top of the husband’s agenda , the thing he needs to get from his wife, is respect.

And the top of the wife’s agenda, what she needs from her husband, is love.

Forgive.
Love your wife.
Respect your husband.

So the wife submits to the husband’s agenda, only to discover…

only to discover that his agenda has become handling her agenda .

When he lays down his life for her, he finds out that …

She is right beside him respecting him and subjecting herself to him in everything.
 

Forgive.
Love your wife.
Respect your husband.

None of this is to say that the husband is not the leader of the family. He is.

1CO 11:3
But I want you to understand that Christ is the head of every man, …

1CO 11:3
...and the man is the head of a woman, and God is the head of Christ.

1PE 3:1-10

When it comes time to make decisions, the husband has the responsibility to do it.

Someone has to ride up front on the Harley.

There is a place at the head of the table, and God decides who fills it.

But the one who fills it is to be the servant of the rest of the people at the table.