Tag: Marriage Myths

Bride and groom playfully pull a rope during their wedding ceremony while guests cheer.

Whole and Fair Aren’t the Same

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I’ve got another blast from the past for you today. This one is the next part of the marriage series we pulled back out of the mothballs last week. We live in a culture that highly values equality and fairness. That commitment plays itself out in just about every area of our lives including our marriages. Marriages are supposed to be equal relationships of equal partners, right? Well, it depends on what you mean by equal. In this message we are going to do a deep dive into equality, talk about the kind of equality that does and doesn’t exist in marriage, and set our sights on something entirely higher than that (and far more consistent with the teachings of the apostles) as the goal we should be striving for together. Let’s take a look.

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Smiling couple walking through a busy evening street market

Becoming a Soulmate

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We’re going to go with a throwback post today. I’ve been thinking a lot lately about relationships and what it takes to really get them right. As a pastor, I tend to hear about everybody’s junk at some point. It may not be because they tell me about it directly, but I almost always manage to hear about it anyway. I can think of at least three couples who are at various points of struggling in their relationship without really trying. And, wouldn’t you know it, one of the posts that went live today almost ten years ago was a sermon I preached in a series on marriage. Our culture preaches the gospel of soulmates. According to this gospel, there is a person out there who is your soulmate. All you have to do is find them, and everything will be sunshine and rainbows from that point forward. And yet, what if something happens that leaves you thinking the person you thought was yours…isn’t anymore? Does that mean you were wrong this whole time? Nope, it means you’ve been thinking about it wrong the whole time. Let’s talk a walk down the blog’s memory lane today and have a conversation about relationships and marriage that still feels remarkably fresh almost ten years later.

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The Happiness Trap

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In this final part of our series, Marriage Myths, we look at one last myth our culture tells us about marriage.  This is the myth that marriage is primarily about our happiness.  It sounds nice, to be sure, but just like every other myth, it does not compare with the truth.  Keep reading to find out what the truth here is and how we can live in it, and stay tuned for next week when we start a brand new teaching series called The Big Story.  If you’ve ever wondered what the Bible is all about, over the next four weeks we’ll talk about it together. Read the rest…

The “All’s Fair” Dilemma

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In this third part of our series, Marriage Myths, we take a look at the cultural myth that the perfect marriage is one in which the husband and wife are perfectly equal in every way.  While there is no difference in their value to the relationship, the husband and wife are not the same, nor were they designed to be.  Marriage isn’t about equality at all, as it turns out.  To see what it will do, keep reading…

 

The “All’s Fair” Dilemma

I brought a little something for show-and-tell this morning.  Who knows what this is?  Good.  It’s a mousetrap.  Okay, next question: Who knows what it’s for?  Close: It’s for breaking the spine or neck of a furry little woodland creature that is only a fraction of our size and was just out for an evening snack.  Its wife and 5,000 kids are probably going to starve to death now.  (Anybody feel guilty yet?) Read the rest…

The “One” Syndrome

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This Sunday as we continue our series, Marriage Myths, we started unpacking the first myth: The soulmate myth.  Our culture says that when we find our soulmate, everything about our life will be on the up and up from there on out.  The truth is something entirely different than that…and a lot better.  Keep reading (or listening) to find out what this is.

The “One” Syndrome

So, my boys were watching the movie Frozen again the other night.  And I’ll admit it: I sat there and watched a lot of it with them.  After all, I set it to record…for them of course.  Okay, I’ll go ahead and admit it: Frozen is a good movie.  It’s actually pretty unique as far as Disney princess movies go.  Now, at one level it’s just like all the rest.  But at another level it’s very different.  It does something no other Disney movie I can think of does.  Again, though, for most of the movie you wouldn’t know it. Read the rest…