Marriage:

The Intimate Myste

ry

Congratulations! This is no doubt one of the most exciting moments of your lives and I am honored to be one of the many people who will get to share in it with you. My hope is that over the next several marriage counseling sessions your knowledge and love for each other and God will only grow and increase.

What is marriage counseling like?

Marriage counseling is a lot like videography. Whoever guides you through this process is aware of the limitations of time and must utilize panning effects (taking you as couple through a broad set of issues that effect marriages), camera zooming (narrowing your focus in upon a few key areas of marriage), and wide angle lenses (Looking at the big picture of marriage, ie seeing how it fits into the biblical story).

I enter into this with you through much prayer and will continue to pray with and for you.

- Sincerely Pastor Tony Stiff

Counseling as “Videography”

Session One - Beginnings: Marriage Within the Biblical Story

Session Two - Story: Understanding the Narrative of Your Partner

Session Three - Change: Relationships Are a Mess Worth Making

Session Four - Communication: The War of Words

Session Five - Finance: Money Can’t Buy Me Love But It Can Complicate It

Session Six - Sex: The Oasis in the Desert

MARRIAGE COUNSELING101

SESSION TWOSTORY

Understanding The Narrative of Your Partner

When we say “I do” we are not just saying I do to a person. We are also saying I do to the ‘story’ they are living their lives from. We are saying I love you and I commit myself to a lifetime pursuit of understanding the ‘story’ you are living from. Not necessarily agreeing with that story but understanding it and loving and serving you in light of it.

What is ‘story’? A ‘story’ is the answer we give to these basic questions in life: who am I, where did I come from, what’s wrong, and where am I going. All of us live from a

“ALL OF HUMAN LIFE IS SHAPED BY SOME STORY.”

- MICHAEL GOHEEN, READING THE BIBLE AS ONE STORY

“THE WAY WE UNDERSTAND HUMAN LIFE DEPENDS ON WHAT CONCEPTION WE HAVE OF THE HUMAN STORY: WHAT IS THE REAL STORY OF WHICH MY LIFE IS A PART?”

- LESSLIE NEWBIGIN, THE GOSPEL IN A PLURALISTIC SOCIETY

If stories are so important where do they begin to take shape? What forms a persons story? Is it their faith, their political interests, their friendships, their families? Yes, yes, yes, and yes. If everyone lives form a story and everyone’s stories have these things that have shaped them then how can two people ever find enough common ground to have a meaningful relationship? When we say “I do” we are also saying “I don’t.” Every marriage must begin with the couple taking stock of each other’s stories and saying to one another I will not

‘story’. Many of us live our lives at different points with different stories in mind. For instance when we change our answer to questions like “who am I” or “what’s wrong” our lives ultimately move onto a different set of tracks and if our partners don’t know we’ve switched tracks, we’ve switched stories they will not understand why we’re living the way we do. Communication is dependent upon a clear understanding of the ‘story’ your partner is living from (we’ll talk more about communication latter).

become one flesh. And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed.” We will spend the rest of this session discussing this verse and its practical impact upon our lives.

LEAVING - ENDING A STORY

Genesis says the foundation of marriage begins in leaving the place that many of us, but not all, have found to be the safest and most comfortable place in the world - family. Today we leave our families by making a geographical and financial shift toward separation, but

understand “who I am”, “where I came from,” “what’s wrong,” and “where I’m going” without doing that with YOU. Every marriage is the beginning of a new story in a couples life and the ending of old stories.

Couples are called by God to leave dimensions of their old stories behind, weave together a new story, and then cleave to that story in the ups and downs of life.Genesis 2.24-25 says, “Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall

separation from family in geographical and financial terms, but the command to leave our mother and father behind and allow a new story to be shaped with new priorities and commitments remains as real as ever.

Marriage is about leaving our old identities behind, our old stories behind, and courageously venturing out into what will be our new story together. Each partner in a marriage brings with them family identities regardless of whether or not those identities are positive or negative that

in the Ancient Near East, the culture in which Genesis was written, a couple did not leave in that sense. They continued to live in the tribe, in the home of son, but within a separate room. They ‘left’ their mother and father in the sense that even though they lived under the same roof and shared the same bank account their relationship to one another supplanted all other commitments and loyalties. They honored their mother and father but not at the expense of their relationship with each other. Today it is getting harder and harder to have

that will be different than the intimacy you’ve had with others (ie romance, sex, etc.). The reason behind leaving is summed up well by Tremper Longman III and Dan Allender, “Leaving also involves a clean and deep division from anything or anyone that might harm love.” It is impossible for you as individuals and as a couple to leave such things behind if you do not understand the narrative, the story you partner is living from.

WEAVING - Forming a New Story

must be allowed to fall into a lower place of priority beneath the new story being formed for the couple. Leaving takes time, you could say leaving takes a lifetime. And leaving involves more than just renegotiating what your new family will be like. It also involves considering how you spend and save your money and time (ie the idea of flourishing in Genesis; finances, etc.); who you will spend your lives with (ie friends, local church communities, social events, etc.); and what you kind of intimacy you can expect with your partner

another dimension to the tensions we’ll experience as we weave together a new story. Dave Harvey uncovers the sides in the weaving war well, “The sides in this war are not male versus female, husband versus wife, or controller versus enabler. It is a clash of desires - desires of the flesh against desires of the Spirit. It is trench warfare for supremacy of the human heart.”

Every story that a person lives from has a fallen, broken, sinful dimension to it. The stories we live by feature self-interest, pride,

We get an amazing opportunity in marriage. We get to create our own relational and family culture, our own traditions, or our own patterns, ultimately our own stories. We do this by weaving together all that we believe is right, true, and honorable for a family. It is within weaving together a new story for our marriages and families that we have to confront the individuality of our old stories. Individuality that we had before we became joined together in marriage will cause tension here. But this tension is not simply husband versus wife preferences. There is

wed in the fullest sense of the word until they become each other’s favorite storyteller and listener,” Tremper Longman III and Dan Allender. Not only do couples need to leave behind old stories, weave together new stories, but they also must live out every moment of their marriages with the desire to cleave onto that new story they are making together. We cleave together in marriages by allowing each other to be our favorite storyteller which means we believe that our spouses know themselves and know us better than anyone else except for

selfishness, and other sinful traits as key interests in the plot lines of our lives. Understanding the narrative (ie story) of your partner means understanding that within their story sin is at work. Weaving together with them means confronting in love in the broken parts of their story, but it also means being open and willing to likewise be confronted. We have fabric that needs to be left out of the new story we are weaving together.

CLEAVING - Holding on tightly

“A marriage is a womb of stories...A couple will never become

vulnerability your marriage will foster, BUT they will also bless you and heal you in ways that no one else will ever be able to do so.

As we shared earlier in our last session the world is a desert and our marriages are an oasis in that desert. It is a place where we cleave together for life, for pleasure, for security and comfort. A place where we can experience what we did as children which is a sense of being at home. What makes a home ‘home’ is that the people there share a story and understand each others stories.

God, and because of that we seek to always grow in becoming better listeners to them.

Cleaving together is done through redemptive communication, change on both partners ends, and the intimacy that only a marriage can offer. Which means cleaving together is not free of conflict. Paul Tripp, a biblical counselor and author says, “It’s inevitable. If you live with other sinners, you will have conflict.” Your spouse will wound you more deeply than anyone else is able to wound you because of the

First Presbyterian Church515 Sunrise Avenue, Roseville, Ca, 95661

Pastor Tony Stiff, (916)782-3186

The Mystery’s Just Begun