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Commitment and Covenant: Relationships (Part 1 & 2)  This is going to be a series. Some of it is my own writing, but credit has to go to many others for much of it. Matt Evans my pastor, a book called Love and Respect and many more with which I have read, talked and discussed this subject for hours. In Self Esteemand the 8Cow Wife the idea of The value you put on a person greatly affects the way they value themselves. was introduced and many commented positively about it. This series furthers that idea and much much more. ---------------------------------------------------- Ever seen those Beta fishes in stores. A friend of mine and his wife bought one a little bit ago. They also bought this beautiful bowl. Once home they took the bowl and fish to their basement rec. room. Treated the water and set him up. It was beautiful. The next day he returns home and while downstairs he notices some water under the bowl. Getting a rag to wipe it up, he moves the bowl and soon as he touched it, it shattered. Now here he is with Beta flopping on the floor. He goes to the cabinet and gets a cup and places Beta in it with water after treating it with conditioner. The fish survived proving again that Betas are tough on top of being beautiful. The next day him and his wife went out and bought a sturdier more beautiful bowl and I can report Beta is doing well. The concept of marriage is a lot like a Beta fish. It’s beautiful when we think about it. But a lot of us are trying to put Beta fishes or marriages into containers that really if we are honest won’t hold water and over time they will leak and eventually if pressure on them get strong enough on them they will break. And this beautiful thing that God has given us that God has designed, Will flop on the floor and we’ll try and fumble and will not know what to do. And there is even a temptation that if it gets really bad and if your marriage gets really messed up, the temptation of our culture today is to let it flop along and around until it dies then flush it. In essence to cut our losses and move on. But the hope and the promise and the desire and the plan that we have from our Father in heaven and our God in heaven and our Creator the guy who gave us this thing called marriage, is that marriage when cared for, when maintained when placed in the proper environment, Marriage is like when you walk into a room and you see this beautiful fish created by God. In the right environment, in the right situation, it holds water and lightens up a room. Marriage lightens up families, marriage lightens up communities, and marriage brings hope and life to everything, the whole foundation of our nation. The whole foundation of Christianity in a sense rests upon good strong marriages. My hope and prayer through this series I am writing some of and borrowing other parts of is that all that read it rather married, divorced, dating or single, becomes more committed to what God intended than before reading this. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Hebrews 13:4 says, “Marriage should be honored by all, ...” and I think the key word in that is the word "ALL" That no matter if you are married, single again, want to get married, about to get married, will never get married, it does not matter. Marriage should be honored by all. All of us should be committed to God’s plan and God’s idea for marriage. And the hope that we have is that good and Godly honoring marriages are possible but not easy. Nobody can say that marriage is easy. The couple that has been married 50 years cannot say it’s easy. But good and Godly marriages are possible but never easy but here is the thing. It is never too early to start honoring marriage. If you are 12, if you are like 2, it is never too early to start honoring marriage. Because so many people, all of us when we do get married, will come into marriage with baggage. All of us. The less we have the easier it is and the more prepared we are for marriage the better it is. For those of us who are married or have given up marriage. It is never too late to start honoring marriage. I am going to give a few things here that I feel we have to inderstand to properly honor marriage. The first thing is: MEN AND WOMEN ARE DIFFERENT. For example, A man will pay 2$ for a 1$ item he wants. A woman will pay 1$ for a 2$ item she doesn’t want. To be happy with a man you have to understand him a lot, and love him a little. To be happy with a woman, you have to love her a lot and try not to understand her at all. You are going to have to read all parts of this series to have all this make sense because I can feel some of you getting mad already. I can feel it. One more for men cause I am an equal opportunity offender. Married men should quickly forget their mistakes, there is no use in 2 of you remembering them. Women marry men expecting us to change and we don’t. Men marry women expecting them not to change and they do. The woman always has the last word in any argument. Anything a man says after that is the beginning of a new argument. We’re just different! Men and women are just sooooooo different. The way that men and women see, and process and respond to the world are vastly and totally different. For example, A couple getting ready to go somewhere like on a date or out with friends. The woman says, “I have nothing to wear.” The man looks at the closet and says, “You have plenty to wear.” What she really means is that she has nothing NEW to wear. The man says the same phrase, “I have nothing to wear.” That simply means I don’t have any clean underwear. We are just totally, totally different. The cool thing is that we are different by DESIGN. That God created us, Man, male and female. And we have to learn to appreciate that. Because the second thing that we got to recognize about marriage is this. MEN AND WOMEN ARE DESIGNED TO COMPLIMENT EACH OTHER, and that is totally by God’s design. I am going to paraphrase a Bible story. The Garden of Eden, God created Adam first and gave him dominion and authority and responsibility for all the Earth. Adam named all the creatures and he brought them all to Adam. But not a suitable helper for Adam was found. And then God caused Adam to fall asleep and out of his flesh he created woman. And then Boom immediately sparks flew and the first marriage was created and existed. And Eve was a suitable helper. And it says for this reason a man should leave his father and mother and cleave or be united to or connected to his wife. It’s a beautiful story of what God had created up to but prior to the creation of Eve, did not adequately compliment or complete Adam. And so God responded. He created Eve to bring it all together and compliment. Now hear me very carefully. Satan’s goal and this is why marriage is so difficult, Satan’s goal is for you and your spouse, or your future spouse, or marriages that you are seeking or praying for or honor. And this is how you can pray for marriages if you are single or single again. Satan’s goal for in marriage is for you to compete with each other, for you to conflict with each other, and for your marriage to dwindle down to a contract. He wants us thinking like; “If you do, then I will"; "because you did, here is what I did"; "if only you do this, then I will do that.” Satan does not want marriages to be a compliment, he wants them to conflict, he wants them to be something like a contract, he wants them to be sort of like a competition for the love, desires and affections that people have. ----------------------------------- Part 2 We have got to understand how men and women are different and then once we do that we understand better how we have to compliment each other. Now let me point this out to those that are single and dating. When you are dating, you are checking out if this person compliments you. If at anytime in a dating relationship that you begin to feel condemned, or controlled, you need to get out. I know so many people who just the notion of being single scares them so much that they are willing to get into a bad dating relationship that becomes a bad marriage. Because they ignore this principle of complementation that men and women are designed to compliment each other. If you are married and your marriage is more marked by conflict, by compromise even feels more like a contract. Then you have to hang on here for the rest of this series as we wrestle with this. All of us though, and I mean ALL of us because when we stood at the alter our marriages looked so perfect and over time life happens and happen and career changes happen they begin to not fit together like God intended. But through God’s word and grace and hope He can relax and bring us back together where we compliment each other. The central focus of this series will be Ephesians 5, which is probably the greatest chapter on marriage ever written. But we are going to look at Ephesians 5:33 and break this verse down over the next few posts to explain how we compliment each other and what to look for in marriage and how it all sort of fits together. This is what it says in Eph 5:33 and this is Paul writing, “However, each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband.” Love your wives as you do yourself and wives respect your husband. Let me break this verse down because this is so powerful and the gist of this post. The first thing is ‒ The greatest need that a woman has in a marriage is to feel and experience love. A woman’s need is love. The greatest need that a man has in a marriage is respect. I am talking about the primary drivers. A woman’s need is love and a man’s need is respect. Sure a man needs love and a woman needs respect, but a primary driver for each sex male and female is that men need that respect from their wives and women need that special kind of love from their husbands. There was a survey done. Where they asked men this question. Would you rather be left alone and unloved in the world OR would you rather feel inadequate and disrespected in the world? 74 percent of men said they would rather be left alone and unloved. That is a powerful motivator for a man. Let me break this down by each sex for a minute. Women in love okay? You have to think through this for a second because it all comes from the Garden of Eden. In the Garden of Eden, Adam was asleep, and he had named all the animals. And all of them were cool but all of them did not complete something in him. And then God woke Adam up and presented to Adam this beautiful, wonderful, unique, special compliment to him called Eve. So in that situation you see Adam coming to Eve and he has already named all these other things, but when he saw her, he fixated on her, he responded to her with this beautiful statement, “…bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh;…” and he responded to her in love and acceptance and it was unconditional. Eve wasn’t there looking to name animals, she wasn’t there to see if she could cozy up to bear or dog, No, Eve was there for Adam. So Adam’s response to Eve was crucial. And he responded in LOVE. A lot of times we get into this debate about women submit to men and who’s first and who’s the head, who’s all that. Here’s the way we got to look at it. Men and women are created equal by God, but when it comes to women, they are created first in importance. Let me say that one more time. FIRST IN IMPORTANCE. Take this for example: Adam, you are responsible for the creation, you are responsible for the animals, and you are responsible for all the Earth. Here’s Eve, SHE’S FIRST over all those RESPONSIBILITIES. First in importance, how do you spell importance? U N C O N D I T I O N A L L O V E ! ! ! Now take men, take Adam, men and respect. Adam has been given this daunting task by God. “Hey, here’s the whole Earth. Fill it, subdue it, you are responsible for it. WOW.” Big responsibility, big task, He needs Eve, called the “helpmate” or the “helper” to help him feel adequate and able to complete this responsibility. So while Eve is First in importance, Adam is First in responsibility. How can you make someone feel they can live up to their responsibility, you respect them. Women, first in importance, LOVE. Men, first in responsibility, that is spelled RESPECT. An interesting thing, you know the song by Aretha, R-E-S-P-E-…, did you know that song was originally written two years earlier by a man named Otis Redding. And he said, “RESPECT, got to have it.” Same thing. So woman = love, men = respect. Now here’s probably the most crucial points to understanding this passage of scripture. Love and Respect in relationships are a cycle. They are a cycle. Notice the key phrase in Ephesians 5:33 is the word “AND”. “However, each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband.” It is a cycle, symbolized sort of by the ring. What Satan wants to do is take the circle and break it and make it like two one-way streets that run parallel to each other and don’t intersect. “I’ll meet you half-way if you do this.”, “He is doing all this so I will do nothing.” It is a cycle and they feed each other. Meaning when a woman receives love, it goes to respect, when a man receives respect, he responds in love. When there is a breakdown in love there is a breakdown in respect, and vice versa. Think about, ever had an argument and this is mainly for couples, and the issue wasn’t the issue. And you are wondering why we are fighting over this. You know what I mean. You get married and the ceremony, vows and honeymoon are great, then life starts happening. Later she is 6 months pregnant and you two are in the grocery arguing over the price of a can of Spam. It just sort of degenerates like that. I overheard a couple once shopping for linen, and the man said, “We don’t need a King size” I immediately thought, well your bed is either king size or not! The point is we will make any issue the issue when that is not the real issue. Then you look back 3 days later and think, that was so crazy and silly. Christianity for Dummies Chapter 4 Go to Church Christianity for Dummies Chapter 3 Sin and Repentence Christianity for Dummies Chapter 2 Salvation Christianity for Dummies Prologue and Chapter 1 Praying In the Heat of the Night Testimony Chapter 4 Judging and Gossiping , Commitment and Covenant For All Part 15, 16 and End Commitment and Covenant For All Part 13 and 14 , Commitment and Covenant For Men Part 11 and 12 Commitment and Covenant For Men Part 9 and 10 , Commitment and Covenant For Women Part 8 Commitment and Covenant For Women Part 7 , Commitment and Covenant For Women Part 5 6 Commitment and Covenant Relationships Part 4 , Commitment and Covenant Relationships Part 3 Commitment and Covenant Relationships Part 1 2 , Walk the Walk Self Esteemand the 8Cow Wife , I am a Christianx2026So What Now Communicating According to the Scriptures , Friend vs Spouse Christ in the cells of our body , The LoveHate list |
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 All things work for the good of those who Love the Lord,  Jenn friend
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5/29/2008 2:21 pm |
So are so right with everything you wrote. I wish all men and women knew what you knew. I really believe that there would be a lot less divorces. Loving unconditionally is loving from your spirit. Only once in my life did I love like that, hopefully there will be another.
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5/29/2008 2:15 pm |
More couples are living together rather than getting married because of the word "commitment." They don't know themselves much less know one another, but above all, they don't know GOD. People are not committed to a personal belief system that they trust. Most people I talk to don't even know what they believe about many topics! How can they trust another person enough to make a lifetime commitment when they don't evn commit to themselves.
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Very good Michael...am looking forward to "the rest of the story". He is no fool if he should choose to lose the things he cannot keep to gain what he can never lose.....Jim Elliott Deena 
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5/28/2008 6:44 pm |
just wondering if marriage is so wonderful, why are more couples not getting married? Life is an adventure.
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