Devotions for Marriage

Today on Building Relationships with Dr. Gary Chapman.

It's an occasion that forces people to sit down and have a conversation and reflection and pray together who may not have done any of those things on a regular, deliberate basis. Someday we're going to stand before the throne. We're going to look at each other.

We're going to say, I knew you could be like this. I'm so astoundingly joyful because I knew I was part of the way in which God brought you to become the person He meant you to be. Welcome to Building Relationships with Dr. Gary Chapman, author of the New York Times bestseller, "The 5 Love Languages" . And on this weekend before Christmas, we have a great conversation, particularly if you're married and you want to draw closer to your spouse. We're welcoming back Dr. Timothy Keller and Kathy Keller, who wrote the book, The Meaning of Marriage, facing the complexities of commitment with the wisdom of God. That book has helped so many, both single and married. It gives a vision for the purpose of marriage as God intended in a culture that is so confused about marriage and sex, gender, you name it. Now they've developed a one-year couples devotional based on that same material. And Gary, I think this is going to be one of those resources that has the potential to really help marriages thrive in the new year. Well, Chris, I agree with that because I think any time that a couple comes together and is listening to the same word, devotional, scripture or comments, they've got something to talk about and they've got something to discuss with each other. And you cannot do that on a regular basis without stimulating the relationship with each other as well as your relationship with God. Well, our featured resource is the book, but Dr. Tim and Kathy Keller, The Meaning of Marriage, a couples devotional. Back in 1989, Tim started Redeemer Presbyterian Church in Manhattan, which has become a thriving ministry. Kathy Keller received her MA in theological studies at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, and our featured resource is their fourth collaboration, again, The Meaning of Marriage, a couples devotional.

You can find out more at FiveLoveLanguages.com. Well, Dr. Keller and Kathy, welcome back to Building Relationships. Thank you.

Thanks for having us. Now, the inception of the original book, The Meaning of Marriage, came almost 30 years ago when you taught this material to mostly singles in your church. Talk about that and how things have changed over the last three decades.

First of all, of course, that was 30 years ago. It was preaching to a group of singles like that who mainly needed to hear what marriage actually was. The reason we preached to them a long series on this was because so many of them expressed fears of getting married, and we felt like, well, they don't even seem to understand what the biblical ideas of marriage are.

No wonder they're afraid. They don't really know what it entails. And so originally, it really was a series of messages to single people. But later on, we came to realize, well, basically, we were just laying out what marriage is. And that's the reason why our book, Meaning of Marriage, we thought of as being given as much to single people as to married people, because single people need to know what marriage was if they were going to get into it.

And married people need to know what it was in order to do it better. So even though we did have one chapter on singleness in that book, we understood the entire book being written to singles as well as to married people. So Kathy, what kind of feedback have you heard from that book on the meaning of marriage from singles or from marriage? Oh, we've heard a lot of feedback from really all around the world.

We get letters, we get emails, people come up to him, especially at conferences and say, save my marriage, save my life, I'm married. The most famous feedback was a couple of summers ago, when Justin Bieber was spotted walking around with a copy of the meaning of marriage. And that went viral, you know, people calling, what is this book?

Who are you? Why is Justin Bieber reading it? The fact that it even got into the hands of someone like that just shows the far reaching the far reachingness of the book. Yeah, we've never met Justin Bieber.

We don't know him at all. However, when he was seen reading the book, of course, all kinds of these little fan websites and all these magazines started looking at the book. And I actually heard an interesting interview with a woman, a young woman who's a journalist who decided to read the book. She was not a Christian.

She was living with a boyfriend. And she read the book, and then she was interviewed about the book. And what was intriguing was she spent about three or four minutes saying it's filled with horrible, regressive views of sex.

And it's even its view of marriage is terrible, because we all know marriage is a patriarchal institution. My boyfriend and I were never going to get married. And then she spent the next 15 minutes saying is, once you get past that the book was strangely moving and very helpful for our relationship, strangely moving and extremely helpful for our relationship, which I thought was fascinating, that even without really accepting the basic biblical teaching about marriage, the wisdom of the Bible when it came to marriage was such that she was drawn in even to even to try to apply it apart from the framework, which I think does attest something to the power, not so much of our book, but to what the Bible says.

Yeah, that's powerful. Now, one of the things you said in that book was that marriage is glorious, but hard. Now, how long have you all been married? And is it still hard?

It will be 45 years, January 4th of this coming year. Yes, it's still hard. And it's hard in new ways. It's always sort of like raising children, raising a marriage. It's like raising children, just as you figure out one stage, they grow on to another stage that you have no idea what to do about. Marriage is that way too. You get through the honeymoon stage and the childless stage, and then you have young kids, and then you have kids that aren't so young, and then you have young adult children, or maybe you've never had children.

And there's so many stages. Tim, who was it? You're my library resource who said my wife has been married to five men, and they've all been me? Louis Meades.

Yeah, Louis Meades. Okay, we change so much, just in ourselves, in our spiritual growth, that staying married to the same person, a lot of times it gets a bad rap. Oh, monogamy, good heavens, how could you be married to someone, one person, for that long of a time? You really aren't, because everybody changes, and it's like a kaleidoscope. I change, Tim changes, and we still are adjusting.

We're staring down the barrel, it's a 70, and we're still figuring it out. Yeah, one of the interesting concepts you discussed in that book was the problem of looking for a soulmate, or a perfect match. Why is that a problem? We were trying to overcome the growing belief on the part of young people, that if they could find a person who didn't want to change them, and therefore fit them perfectly, that's how they would define it, fit them perfectly, because they didn't want to change them, and we only had lots of wonderful time together. And then, of course, the downside of that belief is that if we have any fights, that means that we weren't the perfect match. Any conflicts, and we just didn't find the right person.

That's a toxic belief. The fact is, we're trying to say over and over again that there's two sinful people that are going to be in every marriage, and that actually one of the purposes of marriage is to find your flaws and your faults, to have them pointed out to you by your spouse through forgiveness and repentance and admonition of one another to actually change. So there's really nothing wrong with saying somebody's your soulmate, but that's not the way people are using it today. I mean, Kathy and I would probably call each other soulmates, of course, but that's not what the culture means by it.

It means someone who doesn't want to change you and who you'll never have any fights with. This culture has even become a meme. FOMO, FOMO, fear of missing out, and people are passing up really good relationships for lifelong marriage, because they say, well, maybe someone better is just around the corner, but if I commit to this person and then somebody else comes along, then what? We've seen some very sad cases of that. No one's the perfect person because you're both sinners. And there are no humans that don't have conflicts, right?

That's correct. I tell people, think of your relationship to Jesus. Is that always wonderful and happy and warm and close?

And they look at me like, well, no. And I said, well, and one of you is perfect in that relationship. So what's it going to be like in your marriage? You mentioned that word happy. I think that's a common concept today also, which you deal with, and that marriage is supposed to make you happy. And if you're not happy, then you need to find somebody who can make you happy. That's still pretty pervasive today, isn't it?

Yes. I just read a little book by a philosopher called Happiness, a very short introduction. It was put up by Oxford University Press. And it's not a Christian book, and the man's not a Christian, but even he recognized that there's a difference between happiness and deeper satisfaction. And he actually says, happiness usually means no troubles, everything's pleasant, everything is just fine, and I'm having all my needs met. And he actually says, what we're really looking for is really not happiness. We're looking for satisfaction, fulfillment, something deeper and something that often happens on the far side of difficulty and trouble. When you come to decide what is the most important things and you learn perseverance, etc. Even he understood that happiness is kind of like, you know, always grinning and like being at a party and satisfaction is something deeper. And I think it's fair to say that the satisfaction fulfillment that comes from marriage is on the far side of a lot of the conflicts and a lot of the bearing one of those burdens, and a lot of the reconciliations that really will give you a much deeper kind of satisfaction. But no, if you just go in saying, I want marriage to make me happy, you probably mean I don't want ever anything to go wrong.

I don't want there to be any problems. And that's a fiction. That's an illusion. Dr. Keller and Kathy, the main problem that every marriage faces, you say in the book, is the self-centeredness in both spouses hearts. And I'm really interested in a devotional way to look at that. Can a year-long devotional cure that self-centeredness? Absolutely not.

No way. But what it can do is it can establish habits of discussing things, discussing your conflicts, praying together, paying attention to one another. If you have something that you are doing every day that's forcing you to be face to face and in conversation, that can be a habit that grows and nourishes and sustains a marriage. The devotional itself, not so much.

That's the prop. That's the occasion for the talking and the praying and the discussing. But the devotional itself is not any kind of magic book, believe me. We know that a devotional book is very different from just a common topic book. So what does the devotional help us do that the book typically doesn't help us do? The devotional slows you down so that every principle or concept is digested. And it also helps you apply it. It gives you an opportunity to think, all right, so what difference would this make if I believe this? If you're just reading a 200-300 page book, the ideas come by awfully fast and you say, okay, there's idea one, idea two, idea three, and we discuss it maybe even in a small group or I'm reading it and I'm thinking about it and then on you go.

Whereas the devotional actually takes every single concept. It just isolates it. It puts it in front of you and then it helps you think out the implications of it.

And I actually think that it slows you down. And I also think that people are probably more used now, because of the Internet, to reading shorter pieces and digesting them. So we were partly adapting to the culture and we're also recognizing that it's one thing to kind of give people a sermon on marriage, another thing to give them the application for how they can apply it to their lives. And that's really what the devotional does. Going back to what I said, it's an occasion that forces people to sit down and have a conversation and reflection and pray together who may not have done any of those things on a regular, deliberate basis. So that's the real value of it that I see. Yeah, and I can see that.

Because otherwise he can read a book, she can read a book and not even discuss it. But in the devotional, chances are you're going to be discussing it a bit. Well, how did the two of you come to value a daily devotional time together? We'd hit a hard patch in our marriage. I'd been sick.

I'd been in and out of the hospital. We'd had a number of major issues on the table. And at one point we were sitting in bed, hadn't turned the light off. And I said, you know, Tim, if we don't pray together, we're not going to make it.

We just aren't going to make it. So we committed then and there to pray before we went to sleep every night for even the briefest amount of time, long, short, about this or that. We didn't have any kind of set rubric. Now, I have to admit, and we had tried praying together when we first got married and it was a terrible failure, horrible failure. Tim prayed in long pastoral paragraphs about everything under the sun. And I was the kind of person that wanted to do sentence prayers back and forth, batting it forth.

You know, I do a sentence, he does a sentence. And after about a week, it fizzled. We just didn't ever get back to it. But during this really hard patch, we just said, if we're not going to be praying together, we are not going to make it. And since then, we haven't missed a night.

And I don't know how many years, how many years has that been, Tim? He calls me from Seoul, Korea. He calls me from Kuala Lumpur, you know, just so that we can pray together at night.

So I would add this. I think that now that we're empty nesters and we also do like to get into bed and read for a while before turning off the lights, we not only pray just before turning off the lights, but it's, we naturally talk about how the day's gone, how we're feeling, how we're doing, how relationship is just rather naturally that last sort of half hour every night. I think for people with children, they're going to have to create that. As an empty nester, it's a lot easier to actually get the time to actually say, how are we doing with God and how are we doing with each other? It happens much more like readily.

When we had kids at home, it was, it just didn't happen. And this devotional is an excuse to create some time in which you do that, because it's really not easy. I can certainly see that. Let's just think in terms of, okay, so a couple's got this devotional and they say, okay, we're going to try this. So maybe one of them is going to read the devotional that day, the scripture and the comments that day to the other person.

And then, you know, a prayer, a response prayer. How does the day, if you're just starting that, what's the dynamic? How is that likely to go?

What might you feel or experience in the early stages of doing that? A young couple that we know has done something that I think every couple ought to do, no matter how frantic their lives is. They have established something they call talk time, which is a half an hour every night that they're both in the same house, where they talk to each other, not about the grocery list or the car repairs or what the kids did that day or their jobs, but how are you? How are you doing? What's going on with you and God?

And that has been to them the most renewing thing. So if you don't have something like that already happening, this would be a great occasion to create it, is to create a talk time island in your day, whether it's early, early in the morning or late at night after the kids are in bed. Contra, Tim, I'll disagree with him a little bit. I'm not sure last thing at night is the best time to do this devotional, because some of the subjects are pretty, they delve pretty deeply into our sin patterns. And I'm not sure that talking about those right before you go to sleep is the most helpful thing.

Tim and I have discovered that nothing really good gets said after 10 o'clock at night. We're tired, we're grouchy, and we have a lot of repenting to do in the morning if we start a heavy topic late at night. Well, to be real, real specific, I think there's two ways to do it. One would be that you read the devotional together, and the only way to do that would be one person actually reads it out loud, gets to the spot where there's a reflection question, and when that question is posed, then two of you just discuss it. I would take turns, in other words, one night do it one day, do it one person reads, the next day the other person reads, because actually when you're reading it, you actually sometimes hear it differently than if you're listening to it audibly. But somebody reads it, asks the question, you discuss it, and then whoever is reading could pray the prayer for the two of you.

That's one way to do it, and just take turns that way. The other way to do it is individually read it, maybe take a couple notes down, in other words, answer the question in your own mind, or else maybe write it in the journal, and then when you get together, you could discuss it. And I would think, even though I'd be careful about this, you might want to say, we can only do this two or three times a week, so we have to read it every day and take our notes, but then maybe two or three times a week we would meet and talk about it.

But to me, the best would be every day. So you could do it individually and then discuss it, what you've learned, or you could just read it right there together, which would probably be the least amount of time that you're having to give to it. But one person poses the question, the other person tries to answer it, and then one person ends in prayer. You know, I think sometimes for couples who aren't praying together, some time ago I did some research and it indicated that probably not more than 15% of Christian couples actually pray together on a regular basis. I mean, if you don't count, you know, thank you for the food, amen, you know. But having a devotional like this and a prayer at the end can be very helpful in getting started hearing yourself pray out loud, you know.

So to me, that's one of the powerful things about it also. In all three of our devotionals that we've written, we think of the prayer as like an on-ramp to a prayer. You could just literally read the prayer and say amen, but it would be better to read the prayer and then continue in your own words for a bit. So you see what I mean by being an on-ramp? If you feel comfortable, if you feel comfortable. I mean, there are going to be some people who've never prayed out loud with anyone, not their spouse, not with anyone, and I think those people would be more comfortable just reading the prayer, it's there, I don't have to think of words, and possibly as they go along, they will get more comfortable adding on.

I like that, I like the concept. It's an on-ramp, it can be an on-ramp for them. If they've never done it before, that may be all they do, but after a while, they'll start saying some other things, you know. Now, you also make the point that this devotional is not to be in place of a person's individual time alone with God.

Why is that so important? The problem with making this the only devotional is that this is more about how does my relationship with God influence my marriage, which is very important, but it doesn't necessarily get you to talk directly to God about God. For example, in prayer, it's supposed to consist of adoration and confession and thanksgiving and supplication. So you're adoring God, you're confessing your sins, you're thanking God for all he's done, and you're asking God for things. Well, if the only devotional is this marriage devotional, you do very little praising, and the only confessing you would be doing would be confessing sins that, you know, things you've done wrong in your marriage.

And speaking for myself, I don't only sin inside my marriage, I sin all over the place. And therefore, it really wouldn't be sufficient as a devotional that looks your whole life over and brings you to God and praises God. Therefore, we think that this would be great for your time with a spouse, and of course it orients you toward God, but you really need to have your own devotional time, too. You need to seek God for himself, not really as a means to an end like improving your marriage or really anything else, because God is the end. He's not the means to an end, and therefore this devotional can help you with your marriage. But that's not why you seek God. So you need a time set aside where it's just you and God talking about your soul and your relationship together. I really want to put over the headline over this conversation with the Kellers today is, Tim Keller admits he sins all over the place. I think a lot of people already believe that.

They know it. Okay, one more question before we take a break, and that is, if marriage is two self-centered people coming together, then if we do a devotional together, I'm going to be looking at that devotional and thinking, yeah, God, get my wife. You have to go into this open with your own heart rather than looking at your spouse for God to smack her or him upside the head.

Kathy, what do you think of that? Well, we deliberately wrote it in a way that we hope will make that impossible to happen, because the reflection question is not one question. It's husbands, do you believe this, or is this how you treat your wife? Wives, how are you with the same subject on your end? So the reflection questions, as far as I can remember, every one of the 365 devotionals is addressed differently to both the husband and the wife. So it's not like just one question, and you know, it's yours.

See, that's addressed to you, honey. It's two sides of a coin. Along those lines, let me give the format for what I'm seeing for one day.

This is for December the 18th. There's a quote from a section of the original book, The Meaning of Marriage, about the term comprehensive attraction. So the devotion goes through that, what the culture says, and what the Bible says. After that, there's a series of reflection questions, couples married or dating, what do you see on your partner's inner being that attracts you? And there's another question there, and then a thought for prayer that reads, think of the ways that you have already seen God change your spouse toward Christlikeness during the time you have known him or her. Praise and thank God for them, and ask him for more of this growth in both of you so much more.

That's just a taste of what you'll find in a book by our guests today. Well, we're talking about couples having a devotional time together, but there are some of our listeners right now who have a spouse who's not a believer. What would you say to that person? Well, you don't have to wait for an invitation to begin to serve and love and pray for another person. So if your spouse is not a believer, you can do the devotional by yourself. Obviously, it will be a different experience. But you don't even need to inform the other person, hey, I'm trying to grow in our marriage, so I hope you notice.

It would actually be a bad idea. One of the reasons I think that Paul told women that they can, by their quiet and gentle spirit, win their husbands without a word, because spiritual sermon nagging, there ought to be a word for that, sermon nagging, is never going to bring anyone into the kingdom. It's just going to breed resistance. So the same thing with this kind of devotional. If you flaunt it, if you cram it down somebody's throat who's not ready for it, you're going to have the reverse effect that you intend.

Work on your own heart, and if the devotional helps you, then great. But if your spouse isn't ready for it, that doesn't mean you can't do it. It's interesting at first, Peter 3 is very pointed in saying that if your husband is not obedient to the word, you could win him without a word by your behavior, by your attitude, by your inner beauty, and so on. Pretty clear that Peter is actually warning the Christian spouse from trying to talk too much to their non-Christian spouse, trying to talk them into the kingdom of God. They're really being warned not to do that.

If they are going to be won over, it's by your loving behavior, the beauty of your character, that's really quite important. And every Christian is supposed to work on that anyway. We're supposed to be Christ-like in our character. We're supposed to be growing in love, joy, peace, patience, kindness. In some ways, the Christian spouse in a marriage with a non-Christian is really only being asked to do whatever the Christian should be doing anyway. But we've got to be careful to not do the nagging and to not do the preaching, but just do the living. You know, I've sometimes given the individual this challenge if their spouse is not a Christian. Let's speak their love language unconditionally for six months without even talking about it and just see what happens. Absolutely. Great idea.

That's perfectly right. And because we so desperately need love, you know, they start getting love in the right language, they're open to an idea or, you know, a request, let's say. But let's say the couple that both are Christians, one of them may be further down the road than the other, and they suggest, you know, I just heard about this devotional.

Why don't we start doing this in the new year? And the other spouse says, I don't know, I don't feel real comfortable with that. You know, would you say the same thing to that spouse or is there something different, assuming they're both believers? The same thing that you say to anyone that you're trying to recruit to do something they're not sure about, like teach Sunday school or any role that's even in the secular world, you say, give it a try. Let's try it for six weeks or let's try it for one week and see what you think.

And it may be that their fears are based on a mistaken idea of what this is going to entail. And just having a one week or a couple of weeks experience will really reassure them that it's not something that's beyond their capabilities. Or even less than that, you could actually just say, could you do three with me? And then after that, if you don't want to do any more, I won't say a word because three sounds less than a week. And one is almost too little.

You never know. One just might be awkward or you may not hit a particular topic that really connects with both of you. And most men will do three. You know, I sometimes say to the wife, don't ever ask your husband to read a book on marriage. Ask him if he will read the first chapter and tell you what he thinks about it.

And then maybe two weeks later, read a second chapter. I'm assuming you found this true that often the wife is further ahead, further along the road in growing in her relationship with Christ. That is the husband. And she's more verbal about it than the husband. First of all, have you found that to be true in your relationship?

And then what would you say to that wife who is further along in terms of how she responds to her husband? Well, there's two parts to answering your question. The one is, generally speaking, in most churches there's more women than men. And therefore you are, in general, going to find more Christian women married to non-Christian men than the other way around. Yes, I did some research that showed that, interestingly, when it comes to Orthodox Jews and Muslims, men are more likely than women to go to worship regularly. Interesting.

In other words, you can find this online somewhere. Muslim men are more likely than women to say, I get to the mosque every week. It's always been true though that from the very beginning that more women than men were Christians and in the churches. And so in general, that's the reason why I think in First Peter, you actually have a case of, okay, if your husband is not a believer and you are a believer, how should you treat that?

That's because that was more common. Nevertheless, I even think, Kathy, you might want to speak to this, that it's probably true that even when both are believers, the wife very often is maybe more willing to read books and want to talk more about it. Isn't that fair?

Oh, I think definitely that's fair. I think one of the things that people don't know about marriage is that we're supposed to be discipling one another from the gifts that come with our specific roles in a marriage. And I don't think there's any question that people agree that women are more verbal and more emotionally expressive.

Men can be less in touch with their feelings and not as verbal about the ones they are in touch with. But there's great promise in a marriage where you can help one another grow in those areas in which you are not naturally gifted, and therefore you can become a more multi-dimensional person. One of the reasons for women being more of a majority in the church is we're all going to be Christ's bride. And so to Jesus, we're all submissive. We're all in a posture of obedience and, Lord, thy will be done, not my will be done. And that may come more naturally to women, and that is something that we have to help our brothers, our husbands, our sons, all the men in our lives understand how that works, because we have a ringside seat on doing that in our daily lives.

So let me help you, brother, figure out how you do that to Jesus. Yeah, I think there's another roadblock that couples will often say to having a daily devotional time. One is we're too busy. You know, the kids take up all of our time. We can't get them to bed before 10 o'clock. We both work. We fall asleep.

We would fall asleep if we tried to have devotions. I mean, how do you speak to that couple? Because we've been there. We've had kids. How do you speak to that couple? Kathy spoke to this some years ago.

She confronted me when we were actually having a pretty rough patch in our lives, in a number of ways, and she gave the example. And the example was, if a doctor told you, you have a disease, and you're going to die of it unless you take this medication. And if you take this medication every day at 9 p.m., you will live. But if you forget to take it at 9 p.m., you'll be dead by the morning. Would you ever forget to take the pill? Would you ever fail?

And that was your illustration to me. And I remember thinking, of course not. And then she says, well, you know what, if we don't pray together, we're not going to make it. And you could say the penny dropped when I said, you know, anything I really think is absolutely necessary, I do. That's what Kathy said, you know, we always find time to do the things we want to do. It's not just that.

We find time to do the things that we know we have to do, or we're not going to live the lives we want. And that's where the penny dropped. And I said, if I believe this, and I do intellectually, that we need to pray together, then I will never fail, just like that pill. And that's really when we turn the corner. And I think it was mainly in me that I said, yes, you know what, I have to put my, how do I say, money where your mouth is.

I've got to put my life where my belief is. And that's when we made a change. Let me call a time out right here, because I just heard you say something, Dr. Keller, that when we were going through a rough patch, and it's so refreshing to hear a couple that's been together, it'll be 45 years coming up. It's so refreshing to hear people say, yeah, we had some big struggles. Boy, you look back at this year or these 10 years or whatever it is, there are many people still in the church who are believing that lie that we talked about earlier, that it's supposed to all be roses and cotton candy, and you have no problems, there's no problem patch. But Kathy, you're saying, yeah, we went through some deep water, but it helped bring us together on the other side of that, right?

Oh, absolutely. And more than once, and on different issues. There were, Tim's overworking, especially when we planted the church, there were issues with our kids and how we were raising them and how they were behaving.

I was really sick for a decade, in and out of hospitals. And, you know, Tim thought about giving up the ministry, and there were rough patches of different sizes and shapes, and nobody can expect their life to be without them, whether they're married or not. If you think avoiding marriage or being married to a different person is going to somehow give you a smoother road, you're wrong.

You are just not at all thinking correctly. One of the other subjects that you deal with in the book is that marriage is a covenant as opposed to a contract. Why is that understanding so important when it comes to marriage? Well, it's important because it's a biblical term, and it's a biblical term, therefore we can't just say, well, people talked about covenants back then, but today we talk about contract. Well, contract, as you hint, is not an identity, it's not a synonym. The word covenant is really something we actually don't have a modern synonym for, so you have to explain it, and this is what I would ordinarily do. I would say a covenant is much more intimate and filled with love and relationship than a contract, but it is much more binding and solemn than an ordinary friendship. In friendship, you basically, it's kind of consumeristic, that is, we like each other, we really have fun together, and so as long as we both are having fun together, we hang out together.

And so we're meeting each other's needs, but we don't have any, there's no obligation to stick with each other, especially if one person is going through hard times. So it's a friendship without a binding agreement. On the other hand, a contract is a binding agreement that can just be just legal and not personal. So a covenant is more intimate and filled with love than a contract, more binding and solemn than a mere friendship, and therefore it's a fascinating and amazing combination of law and love. It's a combination of law and love that makes the bond stronger because it's so intimate and makes the intimacy stronger because it's so bonded.

So we really don't have anything quite like it. The relationship between husband and wife is a covenant. The relationship between parents and children are actually a covenant, even if the child never took a vow or anything like that. And so covenant is really important.

It's a non-consumeristic, permanent relationship filled with love, but also faithfulness. Yeah. Whereas the contract is, if you don't, if you do your part, I'll do my part.

You make me happy, I'll make you happy. Yeah, even a contract by itself is also consumeristic. I mean, hey, you're not doing your part, so I'm out. Just like a friendship can be, but a marriage, a covenant is really different.

Yeah. I want to come back to the question that Andrea just asked. Will this devotional improve your sex life? What do you think, Kathy?

My answer is absolutely yes, and not necessarily for the reason that you think. It's partly because you can't have good, someone said this to us early, early days in our marriage, you can't have good sex if your bed is filled full of baggage. And baggage meaning is a metaphorical term with all the issues that you haven't actually solved in your marriage.

So if you are methodically going through a devotional or any kind of book, really, it doesn't have to be a devotional. But if you're methodically looking at the issues that cause the uneasiness or trouble your marriage, the things that you routinely fight about and repenting for them or solving them or bringing them to God together, that baggage is going to start disappearing from your bed. And of course, your sex life is going to be better. I mean, not in any mechanistic way, but in just in the fact that you will have more love for each other, more tenderness for each other, more understanding of each other. We've used your understanding of love languages since day one.

I mean, but even when we were being counseled for our premarital counseling with R.C. Sproul, we heard about love languages and he told a great story. His love language was expensive, extravagant gifts. So for his birthday, he was hoping for a new set of golf clubs and his practical wife, Zesta, gave him six white shirts. So he was disappointed. So for her birthday, he gave her a mink coat because extravagant, uh, big gifts.

And she was disappointed because what she really wanted was a washing machine. So understanding each other's love languages is something you can only do with some patients, some study and communication. And so if you're doing that, this is a long way around the barn, yes, your sex life will get better. Communication always makes your sex life better. Yeah, except for the rare, fairly rare occasion where there's some physical or physiological problem with sex. Generally speaking, your sex life is just an extension of all the other part of your marriage.

That's what Kathy is saying. If your communication is great, your friendship is great. If you're doing everything else right, your sex life comes along with it. And so yes, of course, if the devotional improves your marriage, of course, it'll improve your sex life.

Yep. You say in the book, marriage is friendship with a mission. What do you mean by that? I tell newlywed couples that until they really get into the nitty gritty of child rearing or career or into the weeds of their lives, they're really just on a really long date. It's not until the issues and the problems start coming up that you start to really solve those and go to God and become stronger as individuals and as a marriage. A marriage has got friendship as maybe its ground floor or its sub-basement as foundation. But then you have to think about what is God calling you as a married couple to do and be that you couldn't have done as individuals.

I don't really think God calls, well, I know for a fact that God doesn't call husbands and wives in opposite directions. I feel called to be a missionary in Indonesia. Well, interesting.

I feel called to be working with the homeless in New York City. Well, see you. Well, right.

That kind of thing doesn't happen. God calls you together into a mission. It may sometimes be to Indonesia and sometimes be to New York City, but he does call you together in a way that he can't win your single. Singleness, he can call you as well, too. I have often told singles that they're like little speedy sports cars that can go zip, zip, zip, zip, and turn on a dime, whereas a family is more like one of those 18-wheelers that takes three blocks to make a left turn.

So they should take advantage of it while they're single. But nevertheless, you have a calling from God in your marriage. By the way, I would just add that another part of friendship with a mission is that ordinary friendship tends to be just individuals who support each other on their way to their different missions. So, you know, I might be a minister and I have a friend who's a physician and we're really good friends and we get together, but we're really supporting each other as he's, you know, he's doing his calling as a physician. I'm doing my calling as a minister and we support each other in it.

Kathy's not only saying that the difference in marriage is besides the fact you're best friends, but you're looking for a joint mission together. How is God going to use us in the world? But you also have the mission of bringing the other person into Christ's likeness. That you also have the mission of saying, I want to do everything I possibly can to help God or be a vehicle for God to make you into the person I see God making you. So that someday we're going to stand before the throne. We're going to look at each other. We're going to say, I knew you could be like this and I was, I'm so astoundingly joyful because I knew I was part of the way in which God brought you to become the person he meant you to be.

Yeah. Well, this has been an exciting discussion and I think this devotional book that you are releasing here at the end of the year is going to be a wonderful guide for couples who have not had this kind of relationship. Or maybe they've used another devotional book and this one is going to be very, very helpful to them. So thank you for being with us today. Thank you for what you have done and what you are doing for the kingdom. Well, thank you for having us.

I still appreciate the honesty and the openness of Tim and Kathy Keller. If you go to the website, fivelovelanguages.com, you'll find out about our featured resource. This would be a great way to start 2020 Together, The Meaning of Marriage, A Couple's Devotional.

Just go to fivelovelanguages.com. And next week, our final opportunity to open the phone lines and take your questions. It's our year-end Dear Gary broadcast coming up. Don't miss it. Before we go, let me thank our production team, Steve Wick and Janice Todd. Building Relationships with Dr. Gary Chapman is a production of Moody Radio in association with Moody Publishers, a ministry of Moody Bible Institute. Thanks for listening and Merry Christmas.