Playing For Keeps – Part 2 of 2

Let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith.

If your marriage is in trouble, don't touch that dial. Today, you'll hear teaching that could bring you back from the brink, principles to help you navigate what may seem to be impossible waters. Your marriage can be put back together.

Stay with us. From the Moody Church in Chicago, this is Running to Win with Dr. Erwin Lutzer, whose clear teaching helps us make it across the finish line. Pastor Lutzer, today's teaching might save a marriage. Tell us more about playing for keeps. You know, the real issue, Dave, is for all who are listening is, do they have open hearts to God's grace?

Those are the kinds of issues that need to be confronted when you talk about saving a marriage. But I have some urgent news. This is the last day that we are making available a very special resource. It's really three resources in one book. First of all, it includes the transcripts of all of these messages fighting for your family. In addition to that, questions and also provides a link so that you can listen to these messages again and again. And this resource is yours for a gift of any amount.

Go to rtwoffer.com or call us at 1-888-218-9337. Remember, this is the last day that we are making this resource available. And now let us listen carefully. The principle that I wrote down yesterday afternoon is the principle of God's glory, the principle of God's glory. If you are in pain in your marriage, the first question should not be, how do I get out of this pain? The first question should be, how do I glorify God in the midst of this difficult relationship that seems to be going nowhere?

That's question number one. And so you really begin by giving your marriage to God, and you desire His glory above your own happiness, above the own situation. You desire the glory of God first. Now I always like to emphasize that there's a big difference between committing your marriage to God, giving it over to God, and praying. I meet people all the time who say, well, you know, I'm praying for him, or I'm praying for this situation. It's good to pray, and we want you to pray. And God brings us to desperation so that we do pray, but sometimes we can just pray without any faith. I've discovered in my own life that when I commit something to God, sometimes it is so difficult to commit it to Him, because now I know that I can no longer manipulate the situation. I'm recognizing that it is out of my hands, and it is very difficult to give it to God.

Why? Because I need faith to believe that it is in His hands and not my own. That's what it means to commit your marriage and yourself to God. Now furthermore, what this means in practical terms is that now you're not going to live in retaliation. One of the great lessons that we have to learn is this, that when we are sinned against, we should not sin in return. I'm using here the illustration of David, who when Saul threw a spear at him, didn't say, oh, you threw that spear at me? Here's one I'm throwing back.

David didn't do that. He didn't retaliate. Don't retaliate.

Why? Vengeance is mine. I will recompense, says the Lord. If you've given your marriage over to God, it is now His responsibility, because all that really matters is His glory. The end of the day, nothing else really matters. The principle of God's glory. Secondly, the principle of self-examination.

The principle of self-examination. We live in a culture that is filled with woundedness, woundology. And of course, we live in such a culture because of the brokenness of the home, because of abuse, sexual immorality, molestation.

The list is long. Now as a result of that woundedness, which I recognize is very serious, people bring to their marriage all kinds of issues, all kinds of baggage that I mentioned before, that they aren't really willing to deal with. And the reason they aren't is because they reason in their mind, considering the way in which I was treated, I have every right to be angry. I have every right to be angry with my husband. I have every right to expect his complete affection. I have every right to be jealous.

And on and on it goes. And so as a result of those wounds, what people are really saying is, I want you to heal my wound. That's why I married you. I want you to heal my wound.

But if you touch it, if you touch it, I will scream and hold her and make this the most miserable marriage you have ever possibly imagined. You know, I know a reason that I prayed about this message so much and gave it over to God is because I know human nature. I know my own heart. There are things in our lives that we will never admit to unless God shows us. Until that time, we are fully justified. In fact, some of you for whom this particular point is intended, right now you're missing it because in your mind you're saying, I'm justified to be who I am. Look at the way in which he acts. Look at the way in which he treats me. I have a right to be angry. I have a right to resentment. Look at the way in which life treated me. And I have entitlement considering what I'm through. Folks, if you don't see that in your life and deeply repent, your marriage is always going to be in difficulty.

There will always be obstacles to harmony. So the second principle is the principle of self-examination. The third is one of individual responsibility. Number three, individual responsibility. Now I spoke earlier about the fact that there are men who, their wives who've come to me and have said, you know, my husband is into pornography. What do I do?

A couple of comments. First of all, be assured of this, that nobody who does not want to be fixed can be fixed. If your husband doesn't want to be fixed, most assuredly, you can't fix him and you can't even contribute to his fixing, if I can put it that way. Because if he doesn't want to be fixed, he won't be. Now, one of the things, and now I'm speaking to the wives, though it could be the other way around, you understand that when I preach this, it could be flipped.

It could be the wife versus the husband, the husband versus the wife. But the simple fact is that everyone who is addicted has one agenda, and that is to this, he wants to continue on in the way in which he is living without interruption and with a minimal amount of problems and hassles. That's his great desire. Now what you have to do is to help him to own his own stuff, to use an expression. Because you can't own his stuff for him, nor should you cover for him. What you have to do is to help him to understand that unless there are positive changes and accountability, not just to you, but to others, that you will expose him, that you will not allow this to go on in your home, particularly if it is such an addiction, if it is abuse, you are not going to lie for him, you're not going to cheat for him. Why?

Because you love him too much to contribute to his particular lifestyle. It must be confronted and exposed. And so what we must do as individuals is to realize that it is so important for us to take responsibility. Alcoholics, stop blaming your employer, stop blaming your wife, stop blaming your parents, stop blaming whoever you're blaming, because I know something about the characteristics of such people, stop blaming and take responsibility and say, I am responsible for my attitude, for my actions, what I am doing, I resolve to own my stuff.

Would you do that, please? Number four, this is critical. The principle of communication, the principle of communication.

Years ago when I did marriage counseling, I used to say to the couple that would be in my office, now I want you to write down all of the faults and the problems of your mate. Here's a sheet of paper. Some people would say, one sheet of paper?

I need the whole notepad. Okay, just one pen? It might run out of ink. They would write and write and write. It would come like the pen of a mighty writer. Then I would say, all right, now I want you to do is to write your own faults. Here's another sheet of paper. Oh, I didn't see well.

You know, I guess I did lose my temper one time and yeah, it's true I hit her, but not very hard. My friend, do you see the problem? How we can see other people's faults with 20-20 vision and we ourselves can be filled with pride and anger and self-serving and all those things and we are as blind as a brick on the wall to see it.

Communication. I find it incredible to think that there are some parents who think that the way in which they really should raise their families is to be supercritical of everybody. So you have a wife who's supercritical of her husband, a husband who's supercritical of his wife, and they even bring up the children that way constantly. These children are making mistakes. They can't obey.

No matter what they do, it's wrong. My friend, do you realize how you're destroying any possibility of a relationship? Do you remember that story that I told you about a counselor, an attorney who said to a man who wanted to divorce his wife, he said, I hate her. He said, in order to make sure that you really hurt her because you want to hurt her, why don't you just for one month always say kind things, encourage her, thank her for whatever she does for you, and just don't say a single negative thing. Then she's going to think that you really love her and so forth, so you're going to set her up and then you're going to really shove the sword in her heart by handing her divorce papers.

Well, you know, since I'm getting rid of her in a month anyway, I guess I can try the experiment. So all that he did was praise her, thank her for everything. In any area in which he wanted her to improve, he would always say, you know, this is really great. Instead of coming home and looking at what was in the frying pan and sarcastically suggesting that it was an unidentified frying object, he now spoke words of love and compassion. Well, you know the rest of the story, of course.

Within a month, they had a second honeymoon. Of course, the words that come out of our mouths. Now, something else that is so critical in the relationship is listening. Listening. You must talk to each other and you must listen. I know I have problems with that. I think all of us as men do to listen. One woman said to me, you know, my husband won't talk to me. He sits there like the great stone face.

Yeah, I understand. I wonder why he doesn't talk to you. I'll bet. Wait a moment, I'm the pastor. I venture to say that he probably talks to his friends. He probably talks to them very freely and tells about everything that's going on in his life and he gets home and he won't talk to his wife. I have a suspicion as to why he doesn't.

Because he fears being judged. He thinks to himself she's going to shame me. She's going to blame me.

She's going to ask what kind of a person I am to have these kinds of struggles. Wives, would you be able to handle it if your husband ever became so honest with you that he honestly told you the struggles that he's going through with lust and maybe pornography? Could you handle it or would you just simply say as one wife did that I know about what kind of a pervert are you? Well, that really took care of that relationship. That was the last time he would ever talk to his wife about anything that was personal. If your husband begins to talk to you, you need to enter into his world and realize that this talk, no matter how hard it is, is really bringing about healing.

So you have to be at his side. I know a situation in which a wife had to confess to her husband that she was unfaithful to the relationship with another man. The Holy Spirit worked in her heart and she knew that she had to come clean on that and she did.

And later on I heard that they talked from evening all the way to four o'clock in the morning. And as she spilled out her heart to him, he in turn spilled out his heart to her. And they said later it was the first time we really connected soul to soul honesty in the relationship, in the communication. Number five, the principle of forgiveness. The principle of forgiveness.

This is a huge topic and I preached on it before in more detail. One writer says couples don't fall out of love, but they fall out of repentance. The ability to forgive. Now there's a kind of reconciliation that forgiveness sometimes brings about. And then there's a kind of forgiveness where there is no reconciliation. I've spoken about that kind of forgiveness too. Because remember, whatever you don't forgive, you pass on. You're an angry mother, your children grow up angry.

You are a person who is violent in terms of the way in which you deal with issues, you pass that on. So what you need to do is to go through this matter of forgiveness. And now we're really at the heart of the gospel, aren't we? Because the gospel is a message of forgiveness.

The gospel says that Jesus Christ died on the cross for our sins. And if we receive him as Savior, we are forgiven. We are accepted by God.

We become God's children, his daughters and his sons. And God now loves us unconditionally. God loves us unconditionally. That unconditional love is not given to everyone. It is given to those who are the sons and the daughters of God. And now we have the privilege of knowing that no matter how badly we mess up, no matter what kind of a past we've had, no matter what kind of mistakes we've made, no matter all of the scars that we bring to the relationship because of the way in which we live before marriage, regardless of all that, now we have a Heavenly Father who goes on loving us, accepting us, caring for us all the way through. And that gives us the stability to be able to forgive others, to be able to move on in our relationships and to grow in our love for one another. It is all there in the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Which leads me to say that if you've never received Jesus Christ as your Savior, if you're listening to this and God is a stranger to you, he becomes your Father if you believe on him and believe that the Lord Jesus Christ died for sinners and because of that death, we can be saved, forgiven, and welcomed into heaven. There is a story I would like to tell you about a man whose name is John Barger. This is taken from the book Sacred Marriage.

I have no clue who this man is, but he says, my relatives grew up on the streets during the Depression, learning the fury and scorn that characterizes so many people in dire circumstances, drinking, seeing women, etc. He said, as a result, I swaggered through marriage for many years, ruling my wife Susan and my seven children with an iron hand while citing scripture as justification for my privileges and authority. Years of dominating my wife and children left them habitually resentful, even fearful of me, unwilling to challenge me because of the fury it might provoke. I alienated my wife, my children, and lost their love. Home was not a pleasant place to be, either for me or for them.

Susan would have walked out of the marriage were it not for the fact that we had children. Then he says, a number of dramatic events occurred which wrought a profound change in my moral, psychological, and spiritual life. And this was just trials.

I mean, it was a stillborn baby. It was just one trial after another pounded on this man until he submitted himself to God. He said, in the midst of these many afflictions, I found that the only way I could learn to love and to cease being the cause of pain was to suffer, to endure, to strive every moment to repudiate my anger, resentment, my scorn, my jealousy, my lust, my pride, and dozens of other vices. I started admitting my faults and apologizing for them.

Now men get this. I quit defending myself when I was judged too harshly, for the important thing was not to be right or well thought of, but to love. Took three years of patience, listening, and growing in Susan's trust. Hundreds of hours talking until Susan's anger dissipated. She became loving, trusting, and caring. Well, the rest of the story is Susan had terminal cancer. He cared for her in the last months of her life. And later on, he said that he had the memory that he had experienced something that few couples do. True soul deep companionship.

God brought it about. It can't happen without brokenness. It can't happen unless we give up our right to always be right, as long as we still have our right to be served and the feeling that our anger is fully justified considering all that has happened to us.

You can't have that. Soul deep companionship comes only with honesty, with taking personal responsibility and saying, with God's grace, this marriage can make it. Do you agree that with God's grace, the marriage can make it? Some of you should go home and have a long, honest talk, accepting each other, connecting your souls, and saying, by God's grace, we don't have to divorce. We don't have to live this way.

A loveless relationship. We can have true companionship, which is, after all, exactly what God intended. Would you join me as we pray? Father, however imperfectly this message was preached, we pray today that you might work in the hearts of many couples, some of whom may be in a relationship that is frayed with anger and resentment and mistrust. Come to us, Lord Jesus, and show your glory in the midst of our marriages.

Overcome the bitterness. May there be forgiveness. May there be understanding.

May trust be rebuilt, we pray. And for those who have never accepted Christ as Savior, may they do so today knowing that they too can know that they are loved no matter what. And now before I close this prayer, I'm talking to you, the congregation, and all who are listening. If God has talked to you, would you talk to him right now? Would you tell him what he has spoken to you about? And by his grace, would you agree to be obedient?

Would you tell him that right now? Help us, O Father. Come to us in our need. Show us our selfishness. May grace be poured out upon our marriages and our families. Abundant, matchless, radical grace. Because we need it. We ask in Jesus' name, amen.

And I certainly trust that many people who are listening will take my advice to have a long talk and to repent together. Well, this is the last day we're making a very special resource available for you. It's entitled Fighting for Your Family. It includes the transcripts of all of these messages. It's really three resources in one book. It includes the transcripts. It has questions for reflection. And also, it provides a link so that you can listen to these messages again and again.

If you've been with us, you know that we discuss such issues as abuse and, of course, also the impact of technology in the home, conflict, children. For a gift of any amount, you can have this resource. Here's what you do. Go to rtwoffer.com, or you can call us at 1-888-218-9337. Now, because this is the last time we're making this resource available, I'm going to be giving you that contact info again. But let me thank you in advance for helping us. Thank you so much for your prayers. Thank you so much for being a part of what I like to call the Running to Win family.

Here's what you do right now. Go to rtwoffer.com. Of course, rtwoffer is all one word.

Rtwoffer.com or call us at 1-888-218-9337. Ask for Fighting for Your Family, a very special book with three resources. You can write to us at Running to Win, 1635 N. LaSalle Boulevard, Chicago, IL 60614. Running to Win is all about helping you find God's roadmap for your race of life.

Have you ever been in a pit of your own making or a pit caused by the dilemmas of life? If so, you'll appreciate the wisdom found in Psalm 40, where you'll find a firm place to stand. Next time on Running to Win, we begin a brief series on Lessons from the Psalms, so plan to join us. This is Dave McAllister. Running to Win is sponsored by the Moody Church.