Created during an online meeting with the Central Jersey Church of Christ, this devotional highlights the Christian foundations of marriage, Gottman’s research, and personal sharing during these troubled times. Especially now, Pam and I realize how marriage remains a crucial priority in strengthening our hands and hearts as new challenges increasingly rise.
Pam and I discuss some Christ-centered solutions as we struggle through the “social crunching” of quarantine and offer one solution to getting resolved!
Join us for the second video as we discuss insights into intimacy and Rituals of Connection during challenging times!
Moments of crisis have the potential to create for us moments of relational growth and new levels of intimacy! Join in as Pam and I had the honor of teaching and sharing our lives with our brothers and sisters at the Path for a Facebook Live Marriage Seminar!
Moments of crisis are moments we can pivot to what is most important in lives! Enjoy this brief encouragement to remain psychologically and spiritually resilient, even in an atmosphere of fear and confinement!
“Therefore, you should pray like this
-Our Father in heaven,”
Matthew 6:9-13
After describing how NOT to pray (Matthew 6:5-8), Jesus brought into prayer, for those who are committed to learning from him, the unique approach of addressing God as “Abba” (Galatians 4:6, Romans 8:15) Father. Today, this seems kind of obvious, but at this period of time it was a huge paradigm shift. The great and mighty God of Israel and of all creation is addressed with the same way every Hebrew child addressed his earthly father. Jesus taught that our relationship with God begins with an understanding of our identity as children of God. The way we relate to God will determine HOW we relate to our spouse, our neighbors and our selves. The amazing thing is it’s also true of our earthly parents.
In counseling couples one of the first things I look for is an idea of each person’s family history. In other words, I want to understand what their relationships were like growing up with their parents and siblings. I want to understand how they have made sense of their history with the adults who’ve raised them. This has been proven to be a critical issue in ALL relationships. The latest research has even verified that our own parental connections will determine the nature all of our other relational connections. Specifically, it’s how we have made sense of our childhood relationship to our parents (Collins, Read 1990). It is the story we tell ourselves and others about our moms and dads that sets the stage for everything. I believe this is equally true with God. Jesus knows that our working model of how we view God will affect everything. How we treat our spouses is a portrait of our working model of God and of our personal family history.
God is not condemning. God is not blaming. God is not contemptuous and critical. God does NOT treat us as our sins deserve. If you have come to Christ, then you can come to this God as your Father, whose acceptance of you is without question. You can come to God as your Father, who wants to know all your fears, failures and temptations. You can come to God as your Father, who accepts all your ugly parts, ugly emotions and embarassments. You can come to, this God as your father being real, being vulnerable and being open with Him on a daily basis.
Here are some Psalms that reflect this truth!
Psalms 23, 42, 84, 116, 117, 118, 121, 131
But wait there’s more!
Another great thing about the Father is that he is OUR Father! Jesus explicitly uses the plural, in contrast to our individualistic approaches to faith here in America. We are not alone in this family! He also surrounds us with the right brothers and sisters at the right time and not just our husband or wife (1 Timothy 2:1- 3:16). We are God’s household!
James 4:17
Challenge:
Reflect: What does my marriage say about my view of God?
Be open with your Father and be also open with a trusted sibling (brother to brother, sister to sister) about your fears, failures and temptations. Be healed.
What does prayer have to do with marriage?
During Jesus’ days on earth prayer had become, on the one hand, the vain babbling of pagan worshippers, or on the other hand, a performance of piety for “righteous Jews”. In the first case, it was the repetition and abundance of words that would appease the gods, who would reluctantly squeeze out a blessing because of the worshipper’s verbal workout. In the second case, it had become a theatrical production for the street corner and the synagogue. It seems that words themselves had became an idol with magical powers over the spiritual realm or it became about elegant wording that become a tool of status in the “church”.
Not much has changed since those days. It seems that much of our prayer lives end up either being for a human audience (even if it’s for us), or as a magical incantation, that if recited properly “in Jesus Name”, or some other verbal rite, would gaurantee blessing. Personally, I have always struggled with prayer as a discipline, much like most of us struggle with dieting and exercise. It has been a mixture, at times, of great pride in my potent and personal piety or it was an area I hoped no one asked about! And let’s not talk about praying with my wife! It has been an on again-off again carousel of guilt or embarrassment.
The Lord’s Prayer has always fascinated me because it seemed either too simplistic or too complicated. Even as a young Christian we were taught to the “ACTS ” prayer as a model, rather than the one Jesus actually gave for disciples. Could it be we have been missing something by ignoring this model? As a side note, I do not believe Jesus called his disciples to recite the prayer as a strict incantation, but I do beleive he intended for us to embrace it as a pattern.
So here was my challenge; to embrace the Lord’s Prayer, on a committed daily basis for the next year. I would do so in the hopes of understanding its depths and exploring its power. The only other detail I added was that this would be, each and every day ,a prayer in a “closet”, meaning without interruption and NOT just on-the-go. My challenge began in January and now, in February, I have already noticed a definite shift in prayer’s personal meaning for me.
The Lord’s prayer is about relationship, at its core, and it is the sum of all the prayers in the Bible, especially the Psalms. Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote, “It would not be difficult to arrange all of the Psalms according to the petitions of the Lord’s Prayer. We should need to change only slightly our arrangement of the order of the sections” (Life Together and Prayerbook of the Bible: Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works. Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 1996, 177). It lays a relational foundation that will transform ALL OTHER RELATIONSHIPS.
We have made a horrible shift in our day away from relationship, (especially in the religous world) and our marriages have suffered accordingly. Dr. John Gottman, (America’s foremost relationship expert), lists trust and commitment as the “walls” of the Sound Relationship House and “love maps”, really getting to know your spouse’s inner world, as its foundation! Simply put, in our knowledge of God, this is what prayer is actually about!
What Jesus has given is is a distillation of all biblical prayer and a model that allows us to approach God in such a way that simultaneously heals our wounds and moves His heart.
We can divide (my personal approach) the Lord’s Prayer into seven parts;
Our Father…
Your Name Be Holy
Your Kingdom Come…
Give Us…
Forgive Us…
Lead Us…
Close
It’s about relationship!
Little world, full of little people
shouting for recognition, screaming for love,
Rolling world, teeming with millions,
carousel of the hungry,
Is there food enough? Wheat and corn will not do.
The fat are the hungriest of all, the skinny the most silent.
James Kavanaugh
Today’s culture is missing something. It’s missing something so fundamental that just being religious, or even zealous, won’t fix. The religious and the un-religious “pagan” actually both share this quality, because we both share the same culture. We are empty on the inside and, even when we lay claim to heaven, there is something wounded in us all that increasingly demands to be healed. Modern living is living in the world of broken relationships and neglected hearts.
“Less Common and More Fragile”
MARRIAGE
85% of the U.S. population will marry at least once. (U.S. Bureau of the Census, 2006) Approximately one-third of all weddings in America today form stepfamilies. (Deal,
2005)
Of the 2.3 million marriages in 2006, about half (53%) took place in a religious setting. (PREPARE/ENRICH E-Newsletter, 2007)
While the average cost of a wedding is $27,500, less than a third of first marriage couples seek premarital preparation and less than 25% of pre-stepfamily couples do (see the section on Preparation for Marriage).
Age at first marriage has been on the increase for more than four decades. In 1960, the median age for a first marriage was 22.8 years for men and 20.3 for women. In 2005 the median age for first marriage was 27 years for men and 26 years for women.
(Popenoe & Whitehead, 2005)
Over the past forty years, marriage has become less common and more fragile.
Between 1970 and 2005, the proportion of children living with two married parents dropped from 85% to 68% (US Census Bureau, 2005). Also, the percentage of two-parent families varies by ethnic/cultural group: 87% of Asian children live in two-parent homes; 76% of Caucasians; 70% of Hispanics; and 42% of African American. (U.S. Bureau of the Census, 2006)
Almost 20 million Americans—about 9.9% of the U.S. population—are currently divorced ( U.S. Bureau of the Census, 2006); 25% of all Americans have been divorced at some point (Barna, 2008. Used with permission.).
About 75% of those who divorce will eventually remarry. (U.S. Bureau of the Census, 2006)
Closeness with either a biological or step-father is associated with a decrease in the likelihood that an adolescent boy will expect someday to divorce. (Risch, Jodi & Eccles, 2004)
Religious attendance is positively correlated with higher G.P.A.’s for teens. (Fagen, 2006)
Couples who agree on spiritual beliefs report significantly higher marital satisfaction and couple closeness than couples who are low on spiritual agreement. (Larson & Olson, 2004).
For adults, a stable, happy marriage is the best protector against illness and premature death, and for children, such a marriage is the best source of emotional stability and good physical health. Decades of research have clearly established these links (Burman & Margolin, 1992; Dawson, 1991; Verbrugge, 1979).
Marriage education is effective in promoting marital quality and stability. Well- researched marriage education programs have demonstrated that brief, skills-based educational programs for couples increase couple satisfaction, improve communication skills, reduce negative conflict behaviors including violence, and may prevent separation and divorce (Markman et al., 1993; Wampler, 1990).
Single-parent families rose to an all-time high in 2005 to 37% of families. (U.S. Bureau of the Census, 2006)
(compiled by Ron Deal 2014)
As reported above marriage is presently “less common and more fragile” than ever, but I am convinced that this is merely a symptom.
We are experiencing the natural consequence of life without God. Note that I did not say life without a belief in God, or a religious label or even “fired up” commitment to our doctrinal stances. I mean life without God in the sense of a daily experience that actively sees God revealing himself, healing our “issues” and learning to trust Him in the details.
This begins a series of posts that are an exploration of the ground zero of all our issues and concerns. Yes, it’s about prayer but it’s not a new technique. Yes, it will deal with marriage and family concerns (including blended families), but also speaks to the single, empty-nester, the divorced, the campus student, etc… We will look at Jesus’ solution to turning what has become “less common and more fragile” into what God intended for it to be.
To pray is to engage in life with God. Prayer is first and foremost the active path of healing our souls from all the damage accumulated over the course of our lives. Prayer, first and foremost, changes us before it changes anyone, or anything, else. The Lord’s Prayer is a condensed summary of all that it means to communicate with God. There is no greater outline, no greater approach and no greater teaching on prayer. So follow along and let me know your thoughts! I am not a master-teacher, but I want to become more tomorrow than I am today,
Challenge: How would you presently describe your prayer life to a friend? Write it down and keep it so that you can refer to it later.