MARRIAGE MATTERS
Session 1: God’s Pattern, Teamwork
February 7, 2016
Series Intro: God wants your marriage to be successful! We all may define that in different ways, but God is determined to make your marriage all you want it to be. Not for Himself, but for you! He wants you to have fun, pleasure, enjoyment, fruitfulness, growth. After all, God said:
Proverbs 18:22 (MSG) Find a good wife, you find a good life— and even more: the favor of GOD!
Over the next three weeks I want to talk about marriage from this point of view. Often we hear messages about our responsibilities before God, and there are some. But before long, marriage becomes a list of rules and regulations that are as tedious and tiring as the other church rules and regulations. Marriage is supposed to be a well-spring of life, not a drudgery!
Your marriage matters to God. After all, marriage is God’s idea!
Marriage matters also matter. There are matters within marriage that work together with God to bring maximum happiness and fulfillment.
Let’s look at three things:
GOD’S PATTERN FOR MARRIAGE
GOD’S PLAN FOR MARRIAGE
GOD’S PURPOSE FOR MARRIAGE
Today, “SESSION 1: God’s Pattern for Marriage, TEAMWORK”
There is a little sports event going on today...
From John Maxwell… Super Bowl winners have three very special things in common. These three are also found in successful marriages.
1. Successful Teams Have a Soft Heart.
Football is not a game for the overly-sensitive or softhearted. It’s a difficult game that demands acute focus. But, Vince Lombardi, two-time Super Bowl winning coach for the Green Bay Packers, knew the value of bringing “feeling” on the field. He understood that unless the team had a strong mutual care for one another, their game would lack necessary connection. The team would be out of sync.
Jim Taylor, one of Packers who played for Lombardi, remembers one of the coach’s tactics that required mutual care and led to their success in the first-ever Super Bowl. “We had established the power sweep,” he recalls. The strategy required a unified force and an unyielding trust in the man on the line by your side. It was based on a foundation of awareness for the other guys on the team. And it led to two Super Bowl victories. “With our blockers we were a ball-possession offense that could move the chains. It’s still only blocking and tackling.”
Lombardi said it this way,
There are a lot of coaches with good ball clubs who know the fundamentals and have plenty of discipline but still don’t win the game. [They’re missing] the third ingredient: if you’re going to play together as a team you’ve got to care for one another. You’ve got to love each other. Each player has to be thinking about the next guy and saying to himself: ‘I have to do my job well in order that he can do his…’ The difference between mediocrity and greatness is the feeling the teammates have for each other.
God created couples to care for each other. We call it love. God designed us to ’fall in love’ and then express that love over a lifetime.
Genesis 2:21-25 (MSG) GOD put the Man into a deep sleep. As he slept he removed one of his ribs and replaced it with flesh. 22 GOD then used the rib that he had taken from the Man to make Woman and presented her to the Man. 23 The Man said, “Finally! Bone of my bone, flesh of my flesh! Name her Woman for she was made from Man.” 24 Therefore a man leaves his father and mother and embraces his wife. They become one flesh. 25 The two of them, the Man and his Wife, were naked, but they felt no shame.
Proverbs 5:17-20 MSG Bless your fresh-flowing fountain! Enjoy the wife you married as a young man! Lovely as an angel, beautiful as a rose— don’t ever quit taking delight in her body. Never take her love for granted!
Super bowl couples care for each other and take care of each other. They have soft hearts.
2. Successful Teams Share The Load.
Coach Bill Parcels, like Vince Lombardi, knew that individual players, no matter how outstanding or capable they were, couldn’t carry the ball alone. Team effort was the only way to the win.
Parcels has a sign hanging in his office that states his philosophy plainly, “Individuals play the game but teams win championships.”
In Super Bowl XXV, Parcels’ winning year with the New York Giants, the final score was 20-19 over Buffalo. We can’t contribute that one point to a single failure or success by either team, but the team that worked in sync: setting a record for the amount of time of ball-control offense (40 minutes and 33 seconds) is a good indication that the team was the victor— not any one, individual player.
Giants quarterback Jeff Hosteler converted three third-down plays—an 11-yard pass to running back David Leggett, a 14-yard toss to wide receiver Mark Ingram, and a 9-yard pass to Howard Cross to give New York a 17-12 lead in the third quarter. Hosteler was never a one man show; it took the team.
Parcel’s coaching proves that what we can do alone pales in comparison to the potential we have when we work together.
God created couples to be at their best when they work together.
Genesis 1:27 (MSG) God created human beings; he created them godlike, reflecting God’s nature. He created them male and female.
Genesis 2:18 (MSG) GOD said, “It’s not good for the Man to be alone; I’ll make him a helper, a companion.”
Super bowl couples share the load in their marriage.
Ecclesiastes 4:9-12 MSG It’s better to have a partner than go it alone. Share the work, share the wealth. And if one falls down, the other helps, But if there’s no one to help, tough!
Two in a bed warm each other. Alone, you shiver all night. By yourself you’re unprotected. With a friend you can face the worst. Can you round up a third? A three-stranded rope isn’t easily snapped.
3. Successful Teams Trust Each Other.
Coach Dick Vermeil, who guided the St. Louis Rams to victory in Super Bowl XXIV, prepared for success long before he ever headed to the big game. He’d been learning about his players and becoming a person they could count on since their first practice season.
When asked about his number one priority in leading his team, Vermeil said without hesitation,
Anyone who has coached for long knows that you’ve got to establish trust with your players before you can ever lead your players. Trust is the most essential thing to establish as a coach; trust precedes influence for every leader of a team.
Coaches like Vermeil foresee the thoughts and emotions that will be generated by an upcoming challenge. Then, they have the authority with the players to redirect their mindset away from fears and worries by reminding everyone of their strengths and focusing their attention on the task at hand.
Successful coaches have a history of accountability and loyalty to their team. And, success in the Super Bowl begins with a coach who understands the value of team unity and deep-rooted trust long before dreaming of being #1.
There is an absolute certainty that they can be trusted win or lose, and that’s how they win.
God created couples to trust each other.
1 Peter 3:4-7 MSG The same goes for you wives: Be good wives to your husbands, responsive to their needs. There are husbands who, indifferent as they are to any words about God, will be captivated by your life of holy beauty. What matters is not your outer appearance—the styling of your hair, the jewelry you wear, the cut of your clothes—but your inner disposition. Cultivate inner beauty, the gentle, gracious kind that God delights in. The holy women of old were beautiful before God that way, and were good, loyal wives to their husbands. Sarah, for instance, taking care of Abraham, would address him as “my dear husband.” You’ll be true daughters of Sarah if you do the same, unanxious and unintimidated. Cultivate inner beauty, the gentle, gracious kind that God delights in. The holy women of old were beautiful before God that way, and were good, loyal wives to their husbands. Sarah, for instance, taking care of Abraham, would address him as “my dear husband.” You’ll be true daughters of Sarah if you do the same, unanxious and unintimidated.
The same goes for you husbands: Be good husbands to your wives. Honor them, delight in them. As women they lack some of your advantages. But in the new life of God’s grace, you’re equals. Treat your wives, then, as equals so your prayers don’t run aground.
Super bowl couples trust each other.
How does God work with us to make this happen?
Philippians 1:6 MSG There has never been the slightest doubt in my mind that the God who started this great work in you would keep at it and bring it to a flourishing finish on the very day Christ Jesus appears.
Philippians 2:12-13 MSG Be energetic in your life of salvation, reverent and sensitive before God. That energy is God’s energy, an energy deep within you, God himself willing and working at what will give him the most pleasure.
FOUR AREAS OF COOPERATION
1. Honesty
2. Transparency
3. Priority
4. Urgency
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