Monday, August 13, 2007

The Promises of Marriage, Part 41 of 43

TEXT: "You shall not commit adultery" (Exodus 20:14).

IDEA: In a covenant marriage, there is always greater depth a couple can reach in their relationship.

PURPOSE: To review the spiral leading to further, deeper commitment.

Did you ever take music lessons?

How far did you go?

How far can a musician go?

At any level you realize that you haven’t reached the peak when you hear someone who does it better than you.

Some people destroy a marriage before they ever even begin to enter into its depth. But a marriage relationship can grow deeper and fuller over the years.

I. We’ve been discussing a cycle that can be present in a covenant relationship.

While we talk about the parts of the cycle as separate entities, they flow in and out of each other. We discuss them separately because we cannot discuss them all together.

The first stage of the cycle is love.

It is a commitment to the other person’s welfare, in spite of circumstances expressed in a marriage ceremony—sickness/health, poverty/wealth—till death do us part.

Growing out of love there is grace showing itself in forgiveness.

Grace demonstrates itself in serving to build the other person up.

All of these together lead to intimacy.

II. Intimacy in the relationship reinforces the commitment that we make to the other person. It strengthens the love.

Sometimes people say that they make sweet music together. In a relationship based on covenant, the music can be deeper and more profound as the years advance.

People who have been married for decades will often say, “we were very much in love when we got married, but we had no idea of how deep our love could be. We love each other more today than we ever did when we began.”