Starting Together

We often forget that we are living in the middle of a spiritual battlefield. There's spiritual warfare going on all around us all the time.

Dave Harvey says that's one reason why marriage can be so difficult. We struggle not against flesh and blood. The devil is a roaring lion seeking whom he will devour. There are these things in scripture where scripture is clear that these issues are influences. We don't necessarily understand all the ways that they influence or where they influence, and it's not like we study scripture and we come away with one, two, three. This is the pathway that Satan attacks us.

Nevertheless, we cannot understand personhood from a biblical perspective unless we include these influences as well. This is Family Life Today. Our hosts are Dave and Anne Wilson.

I'm Bob Lapine. You'll find us online at familylifetoday.com. When we begin to understand that there is an enemy who wants to destroy our marriage and who is actively working toward that end, that can change our perspective on conflict in marriage.

We'll talk more about that today. Stay with us. And welcome to Family Life Today.

Thanks for joining us. You know, this was more than a decade ago that I got a book sent to me that had an interesting title. I mean, if you think you want a book to be something that people would go, oh, yeah, I want to read this, a book called When Sinners Say I Do, you look at it and go, I don't know if I want to identify there, right? At least not at the start.

But I picked it up. It's a great book on marriage. We called the author Dave Harvey. We said, come in and do some interviews.

They were great interviews because the book was great. That was a long time ago, Bob. It was a long time ago.

Ten years? This was more than ten years ago because we started a few years later putting the Art of Marriage video series together. And I said, we need to do an interview with Dave Harvey for The Art of Marriage.

I went to Philadelphia where he was, sat down with him, videotaped an interview that wound up in The Art of Marriage. And it was really good, too. What Dave said was great.

It was great content that was a part of that. And so Dave's been back here a few times since then to talk about other books he's written. This is the Dave Harvey that threw a pitch that Dan Marino hit like a thousand feet. You know the story.

Yeah, I heard about this. Dan Marino still talks about that, I'm sure. Dave is joining us again on Family Life Today. Welcome back. So good to have you here. It's great to be back, Bob. Dave is not only an author, but he has been a pastor for more than three decades.

He and his wife Kim live in South Florida. And now, more than a decade later, he is revisiting the subject of marriage with a new book called I Still Do. And part of this really came out of the fact that you've had so many people over the years who have been impacted by When Sinners Say I Do. You said, there's stuff I forgot to say or still want to say. A decade later, you've ruminated on the subject a lot.

Yeah, Kim and I have been married now for 37 years. I think I began writing this after we were married for 35 years, and we were just found ourselves reflecting upon just the last 35 years, progress that we've made, places that we've plateaued. And began thinking about, yeah, boy, there's these things that I, we really wish we would have known that.

We really wish, you know, that we could have heard that or read that somewhere. And those kind of began to pile up, and I realized a lot of those things were things that I didn't address in When Sinners Say I Do. And so, this was an opportunity to write a little bit about that. And I thought it was interesting, because the book's broken up into three sections. There's the starting together, then the sticking together, and the ending together.

So, you're really following the trajectory of a marriage. But the guy who wrote a book about the impact of sin on a marriage starts off this new book by talking about it's not all sin that's the issue. There's a bigger picture than—and I found this really fascinating and helpful as I read this beginning part of your book. Yeah, I think the older we got, the more we came to appreciate the other categories that Scripture talks about that are so significant in marriage but don't often get discussed.

Things like weakness, suffering. And in the book, I tell a story about being in a room with the late Dave Paulus, and Dave Paulus was the president of CCEF. And that's the Christian Counseling and Education Foundation.

Christian Counseling and Education Foundation, right. A brilliant Bible teacher and counselor, somebody who really understands the human condition in a profound way. Brought great thought leadership to the biblical counseling movement and a small group of people sitting in the room, and somebody posed the question to him. Just said, so, how should we understand personhood?

How should we—can you basically map out for us how you understand and articulate the nature of change? And so, he was just thrilled at the question and exhilarated to be able to answer it. So, he stood up and went up to a whiteboard with a marker and drew a circle and wrote in the circle, the human heart. And he began describing how Scripture talks about the human heart, that the human heart is the source of motivations. It's the, you know, that we're born worshipers, we have longings and desires, and that out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks. Jesus said, guard your heart with all vigilance, for from it flows the springs of life. And he just said, you know, that we know that the heart is really where one starts when you want to think about how Scripture describes who we are and why we are what we are.

And so, I'm sitting there and I'm thinking, okay, yeah, you know, I've seen that, I've been that, I've done some counseling training, and I was aware of that category. But then he said, but it doesn't end there, and he drew another circle around that and he wrote in that other circle, the embodied soul. And he said, but the heart is, you know, doesn't stand apart, the heart is not alone, that the heart is embodied, that there's a flesh wrapped around the soul. And that you can't separate the two as if there isn't a direct relationship, because that heart is physically embodied. So, we're in a frame that is decaying, we're, you know, we're aging, there is depression, there's menopause, there's all these physical things that are happening. He's talking about our life right now, isn't he?

We can testify to what you're talking about here, yeah. So, you know, just things that people have to deal with all the time that are a vital part of bringing understanding to if you're going to have a marriage that is really unified. And we can't just reduce life down to heart, we can't reduce it down to motivation, because oftentimes that reduces it down to sin. You're saying our physical frame affects who we are and how we relate to one another, not just the motivations of the heart, but our bodies are a part of this whole equation.

Yeah, I mean, you take the average parent and you remove two days of sleep from them, three days of sleep from them, and then you ask them to do bills or to watch four children. And there's all kind of fireworks that are going to be coming out, but the rational person does not think, oh, we need to correct them, oh, there's issues of sin emerging now. The rational person knows that that person needs sleep, but the physical part has a direct effect upon the soul, has a direct effect upon what's happening in the heart. So, we're physically embodied, our souls are directly connected.

Since I was a teenager, I have struggled with like a mild form of depression that I would say visits me in unpredictable times and is at times related to circumstances, is at other times unrelated to circumstances. But I have learned that what I eat and how I exercise has a direct effect upon managing that, and that part of the soul work that I do includes eating well and exercising, even though I do neither very well. So, you know, it all just comes back around to this idea that there is, in this world, in the fallen world, there is an inseparable bond between the body and the soul, and that when we're going to live, if we're going to live with each other in a really understanding way, we have to understand not only the heart, but that the heart is physically embodied.

So, I'm in a room and David Paulson is drawing a circle, and so all of a sudden I'm thinking, okay, now that's really good. I haven't really heard it put that way. And then he draws another circle, and he says, but that heart and that body are socially embedded. And then he begins to describe how, you know, we all have social systems, we have families, or we don't have families, or, you know, there's something that has affected us and influenced us in our upbringing, in our past, and that can have a profound and shaping effect on us. It doesn't necessarily determine who we are, but it has a profound effect. So, you know, you've had an abusive father, or you were raised in poverty, or on the other side, you're raised in a loving two-parent family where you were affirmed in all kind of different ways.

Those kinds of things have a profound effect on who we end up becoming. And if we're going to live with our spouse, again, in a way that's united, in a way that's really able to help, in a way that knows them, these are the kind of things that we wade into, that we surface, that we talk about in the process of getting to know one another. So, you take a wife, for instance, who has a history of being sexually abused, and perhaps for her, it's really difficult to negotiate their sexual lives. Well, you know, a husband's not going to just sit across from her, flip open to 1 Corinthians 7 and say, hey, you know, give your spouse their conjugal right. You know, it's just, there's nothing about that that makes sense.

There's no love in that. Obviously, there is a way of understanding her experience and importance in understanding her experience that becomes an important part of reaching her, an important part of loving her and caring for her, and bringing the relationship to a place where enjoyable sexuality can be a part of their relationship. And yet, most people, as you write in your book, Dave, don't think about any of these things before they get married. I know I didn't. We didn't either. I mean, I was just like, I like her, she loves me, we love Jesus.

I mean, we literally walked down the aisle with no idea of these three circles times two. So, you've got complexity going on, and you just described my wife, she's been sexually abused, so I was the naive honeymooner who said, oh, that was years ago. It's not going to affect us now. It's kind of like that attitude of get over it.

That happened a long time ago. Why is it affecting you now? When I was younger, I think that was very much my approach and my attitude. I think it was as I got older and connected with more people and sat with more couples, and then just even just trying to evaluate yourself and your marriage in a healthy way.

You begin to realize, wow, no, these things have influence, and grace is potent enough to help us to move beyond them, but man, only the full would act like they have no influence whatsoever. And so, part of living with each other in a way that is building for the future, is building for adorable marriage, involves really being able to talk about those things and, more importantly, understand them. For many years, I remember having conversations with Dennis Rainey, who was the host of this program, and we would run into people who would express what seemed like irrational fear or rage or anger at a level that was not commensurate with what they'd been through, something where just emotions were out of proportion to the facts.

And Dennis would often, in those situations, I'd be describing something or he'd say something, and he would often say, you know, everybody's got a context. And that phrase just kind of became a mantra for us to recognize that a lot of the acting out that we do in marriage, that we see other people do, that our spouse does or people around us, a lot of that is influenced by the context, what you're talking about, the social context that they grew up in, which doesn't excuse how they're responding. Their rage is still sinful rage, but it does now give us a framework and an understanding of what's going on and allows us to bring grace to that situation in a different way than if they were just being purposefully sinful in that moment, right? Yeah, we're not trying to displace blame or culpability or go light on sin. We're just trying to acknowledge these influences that exert a powerful imprint on who we become. And because I think it makes grace more amazing, you know, when we understand it and don't ignore it, it makes the work of God and the power of the gospel all the more amazing in who we're becoming and some of the things where he has transformed us. But those things, they don't determine who we are, but they can have an influence over who we are. So Dave, how do you then, now as you sit with couples at this point in your life, in your marriage, how do you counsel them now in comparison to what you used to do? So what kind of things do you do to help them? I think that as a pastor and as a husband and as a father, I think that for a long time, I felt like my task was to help another person uncover, you know, the sin that was in the human heart and that by uncovering that sin, that was going to be the biggest help to them so they could apply the gospel.

It's not as if that is unimportant now, it's more the pathway that we take in order to get to the human heart. So I'm talking with a guy not long ago who is just acknowledging a history of fear and has sat with different people and tried to get help and has kind of locked on this idea that because his father was abusive, that he has these fears. And so I realized that that was a really deeply entrenched idea that had kind of locked in through counseling and that I, in order to love him and in order to serve him, I really had to park there and let that breathe a bit and find space for him to be able to express that. Ask him a lot of questions and so we kind of parked at that socially embedded phase and talked around his upbringing, talked around his father, talked around that influence and how those things affected him. And as we continued there, he became open to beginning to think about, okay, what else is going on? So we talked a little bit about, you know, his physical, how's he doing? You know, has he had a physical lately? Is he on many medications?

Is there anything I should know about? And then we opened up the Word of God and we looked at John 12 together where there's this description of fear, many even of the authorities believed in Jesus, but for fear of the Pharisees, they didn't confess it because they didn't want to be put out of the synagogue. And so we talked about how there's this legitimate fear that comes from the circumstances, comes from the environment and it's an understandable fear because their reputation would be completely trashed if they identified with Jesus. But the next verse kind of pops the hood and helps the reader see the engine that's driving the fear where it says, for they loved the glory that comes from man more than the glory that comes from God.

Translations say they loved the praise that comes from man. And so we began to look at the heart. We began to look at what are the longings and desires and drawings of the heart that are in play here that are causing you to experience some of the fear. Let's not relate to fear as if it's bottoming things out.

Let's see fear as maybe a want or a desire that's masquerading as a fear that we can get beneath of. So, you're saying the pathway to the heart is important for us to be aware of and to acknowledge. When we want to address heart issues rather than just diving straight to what are the sin issues that may be present in your life, we may need to spend some time working our way through these circles, through the life circumstances, through the physical issues.

And there are other, we haven't covered the full circle yet, have we? Yeah, so what I'm saying is that this helps define the path of care. This helps define the path for helping other people. In other words, they're not just like a heart on a stick where we just approach them and all we see is their heart. We want to recognize them holistically. We want to identify their personhood, which was the exercise that Dave Paulson was getting at.

He was saying this is what personhood looks like. It has all of these layers. Each circle, each layer affects another layer. So, you're looking at all of those layers. That's right.

You used the analogy earlier in your book, and it's what you're saying right now. I love the picture of the luggage that we bring into marriage. I mean, Anne and I, when we do our marriage weekends, every once in a while, we'll have a couple stand up on their wedding day and have bags beside them and make a joke. Suitcases. Yes, actual suitcases at the altar. This is what you don't see, but every couple's bringing, and when you get married, you're like, what is that? And the husband's like, what do you mean, what's this?

This has been part of my life my whole life. You're getting at layers of bags. There's not just one sin bag, which a lot of us identify, you're a sinner, and you've got to deal with that sin. You're saying there's a carry-on, there's an 80-pound, there's multiple, and every one of them matters. Yeah.

What's in the bags has changed. It's broadened. That's why the title of the chapter is Brokenness is Broader than Sin. Right. Because our brokenness includes all these other categories.

That is so good, yeah. In addition to our heart motivations and to our physical bodies and the social environment we're in, Pauluson gave you two other layers to consider as a part of personhood, right? And the next one was mind-boggling because I just did not expect David Pauluson of biblical counseling fame to go here. But he drew the next circle and wrote down spiritually embattled and began talking about how we struggle not against flesh and blood, about how the devil is a roaring lion seeking whom he will devour. And that there are these things in Scripture where Scripture is clear that these issues are influences. We don't necessarily understand all the ways that they influence or where they influence, and it's not like we study Scripture and we come away with one, two, three, this is the pathway that Satan attacks us.

Nevertheless, we cannot understand personhood from a biblical perspective unless we include these influences as well. And marriage as well. At the Weekend to Remember Marriage Getaway, we've said for years, your marriage does not take place on a romantic balcony, it takes place on a spiritual battlefield. And when we recognize that that's the environment in which our marriage is happening, all of a sudden we can see the conflict with different eyes. We can see the tension between us and go, oh, this is not just the two of us in this, there's somebody who's trying to take our marriage down every day.

Yeah, and I think that particular category is the one that we're least likely to reference in the West, and we're more apt to just go to the other ones and talk around those. And it's also easy to think, my spouse is the devil. Or my enemy. And there's that.

But honestly, and couples do that, but yet there is a real devil, is what you're saying, and it's not your spouse. But there's a third entity that we often don't even acknowledge, but it's real. Yeah, I think when we get to heaven and the veil is pulled back, we're going to be astonished at the extent of some of the ways that the enemy sought to influence us and marvel over the power of God and the power of grace and the potency of the Gospel in holding him at bay.

What's the last circle that Paulson drew on the board? Well, the last circle is by far the most glorious, and that is that he just wrote in the last circle, the God of Providence. He just began to describe how a providential God is encircling all of these things with his good purposes, that he is the God who causes all things to work together for good. You know, Joseph is this object of a totally dysfunctional family with an enabling father and brothers that sold him into slavery. He lives in exile as a result of their decisions.

He is unjustly incarcerated. He is oppressed, and yet, you know, he comes out of the whole thing and he comes into a position of influence. But fast forward to the end of his story, and it's you meant it for evil, but God meant it for good. And so there is this sense where there is a sovereign, and not just sovereign, but the providence of God, the goodness of God in his sovereignty encircles all these things and works through all these things so that his purposes are worked out for our good, and godliness is created even through the worst circumstances.

I've got to tell you, this chapter, I mean, you can, the rest of the book is a bonus and not an inconsequential bonus as we'll hear as we continue our conversation, but the book's worth just this chapter. I remember reading this the first time and thinking how helpful for a couple to be able to go, the conflict we're dealing with, the lack of oneness in our marriage. There are other factors, not just my sinful heart, which is real and at work here, but my background is a part of this, the social construct I grew up in, my physical body, how much rest I got or whether I'm cranky for some other reason, the spiritual warfare that's going on around me and in our marriage. And then it may be that God for providential purposes, as it were, now all of a sudden I go, there's more at play here than just my wife said something cranky and she needs to be confronted about that. And that reshapes the way we think about how we interact with one another and about how we serve one another in marriage. I think that's really important because it takes the blame off because so often when Dave and I were struggling and our kids were little and we're tired and I think what I would do is I would think, what's wrong? And my finger would go directly to my husband. That was never me.

Never. But I think it's good to have those things in mind. There's much more going on than just him being at fault. And to pray through those categories and to think about those categories and say, where do I need to pour grace on this because there are places you may need to pour grace on a conflict. And that doesn't mean you minimize or you dismiss what are sinful patterns or tendencies, but now all of a sudden you see them in a different context. And when I picked up your book, Dave, I Still Do, and I read the first chapter, I thought to myself, this is going to be a different marriage book than any marriage book I've read in a long time.

And it is. The second thing I thought is this chapter right here is worth the whole price of the book, what we've been talking about today. This is a paradigm shift for a lot of couples and a healthy paradigm shift. Dave's book is called I Still Do, and we've got copies of the book available in our Family Life Today Resource Center. You can go online at familylifetoday.com to get your copy, or you can call 1-800-FL-TODAY. Again, Dave Harvey's book is called I Still Do, Growing Closer and Stronger Through Life's Defining Moments.

Order the book from us online at familylifetoday.com or call 1-800-358-6329 to order. That's 1-800-F as in Family, L as in Life, and then the word Today. I think all of us are going to look back on the spring of 2020 as a defining moment for our marriages, for our families, for our nation. This is one of those seasons where we're having to come back to what is most important. And that's why we've seen so many people coming back to family, coming back to the home as the most important thing. I'm guessing you have had more contact with extended family members, adult children. You're talking more regularly with one another in your family than maybe you've done in a long time.

In that way, the pandemic we've been living through has been a good thing for us. God has been at work in the midst of this season, and we've been at work here too at Family Life. Our commitment in every season is to provide you with practical, biblical help and hope for your marriage and your family. We want to see marriages and families thrive, and we want to make sure that marriages and families are ready for seasons like we're living through, that we're building our homes stronger in season and out of season. And we appreciate so much those of you who are able to stand with us and to support the ongoing work of Family Life today.

During challenging times, all of us have had to reexamine priorities. We understand that, and we're doing that here at Family Life and making adjustments as a result of that. Those of you who are able to continue to support this ministry on an ongoing basis, just know that you are helping tens of thousands of marriages and families every time you make an investment in this ministry, and we're grateful for the partnership we have with you. You can donate to support Family Life today by going online at familylifetoday.com, or you can call 1-800-FL-TODAY to donate. We are grateful for your prayers for us, and we're grateful for every donation that is made during this challenging season.

Thank you. And we hope you can be back with us again tomorrow. We're going to talk about seasons of suffering in a marriage and family and how God is at work in the midst of those seasons. Dave Harvey will be with us again. We hope you can be with us as well. I want to thank our engineer today, Keith Lynch, along with our entire broadcast production team. On behalf of our hosts, Dave and Anne Wilson, I'm Bob Lapine. We will see you back next time for another edition of Family Life Today. Family Life Today is a production of Family Life of Little Rock, Arkansas, a crew ministry. Help for today. Hope for tomorrow.