Fasting for Marriage

Satan can show up real quick and he likes to start on the honeymoon. Dr. Tony Evans says the problems with your marriage may go deeper than you think. If you don't deal with the spiritual, you're dealing with the fruit and not the roots. This is the alternative broadcast featuring the timeless biblical teachings from the archives of Dr. Tony Evans. Marriage is a divine tool God uses to fulfill some of our deepest needs. But Dr. Evans says there's more to it than that and he'll explain as he talks today about how fasting can strengthen your connection with God and with your spouse.

Let's join him. It's hard to build a strong marriage. It doesn't take much to tear it down. We're living in a day when marriages are on the rocks. Most marriages, at least half of them end in divorce. Most of them are not particularly happy.

They are tolerated. And it seems to be happening with people younger and younger and younger. Fundamentally, the issue is that people do not understand what is happening underneath the obvious. Yes, it's obvious. We have personality differences. It's obvious that she stays up late and I go to bed early or vice versa. It's obvious that we're moving in two different directions.

All of that is obvious. And so we spend time on the obvious and never get to that which is not quite so obvious. And so what I want to talk to you about today is how to reclaim intimacy in your relationship. If you're single, these will be principles that you can use with others but also you can prepare for use for yourself. The principle is laid out for us in verse 5 of 1st Corinthians 7 where Paul says, stop depriving one another. He's speaking of sexual relationships. Stop depriving one another except by agreement for a time that you may devote yourselves to prayer and come together again sexually.

Let Satan tempt you because of your lack of self-control. Now the context is very important. He's been speaking in the first four verses about sexual intimacy. He said in verse 1, it is good for a man not to touch a woman.

The Greek word for touch means to light a fire or to create passion, if you will. That it is not good for a man to excite a woman, to elicit passion from a woman, except, he says, in the context of marriage. He says, let each man have his own wife.

Let each wife have her own husband. Then he describes this relationship in a way that we don't have time to get into today. It's more graphic than it may originally appear, but he says, let a man's husband fulfill his duty to his wife.

Let a wife fulfill her duty or responsibility to her husband. He cites here a fundamental difference between physical intimacy between non- Christians and Christians. For non-Christians, physical intimacy is satisfying one's needs. For a Christian, physical intimacy ought to be satisfying the needs of another. He says, stop depriving one another, robbing one another. He says, with one exception.

What's the exception? He says, to give up intimacy in order to gain spiritual intimacy, to give up the physical in order to gain the spiritual. He introduces to us sexual fasting. That is, instead of food, in this case he's talking about giving up physical intimacy. But he's not talking about giving up physical intimacy because you have a headache. He's not talking about giving up physical intimacy because you're tired. He's talking about giving up physical intimacy because there is a need for a greater intimacy, and that is between the two of you and God.

Please notice, he says, except by agreement. In other words, it takes two. Just like in the physical realm, it takes two. You must both agree in order for it to be a rich, rewarding experience. So it is in the spiritual realm, it takes two in order to make contact with God about the deeper spiritual underlining issues that may be challenging your intimacy. Sexual fasting seeks to regain the intimacy created by God when he made marriage and family.

Sexual fasting is designed to get at the root of the intimacy problem. Yes, I know you have different personalities. I know you have different orientations, but the issue is deeper than that. And because many times couples never go deeper than the stuff that they fight about, they keep dealing with the fruit and never get down deep enough to touch the roots of what is wrong in the relationship. So let me give some history here to help us understand why you and your mate, if you're married, are having such major personality conflicts. Why the differences now, two years after you married, seem to be a lot weightier than they showed up before you were married. Why?

It seems to be coming unbearable. It's not simply that it operates on the obvious realm. God created the first marriage, he created Adam and Eve, and told them to fulfill his program. But guess who showed up in the garden? Satan showed up and did what he does well. He's an agitator. Anybody have any agitators in your life?

People just get on your last nerve. He is the invisible agitator. He comes and whispers in Eve's ear, girlfriend, you see that tree in the middle?

Try it, you'll like it. He gets Eve, watch this now, to disregard God and Adam. She decides to be independent while married, and what she did was sacrifice the spiritual in order to get the physical.

It says in verse 6, when she saw that the tree was good for food, when she saw that it was going to be able to make her wise, she ate of it, that is, she acted in rebellion. Now, Adam joined her, but Adam's rebellion was indirect, although he's held responsible. Satan agitated Eve, but Eve got Adam to join her. Adam, instead of being God's leader, telling her she was wrong, that was against God, he became the passive follower, the passive male. And as a result of this, their beautiful marriage was in trouble. And they hadn't been married that long.

Satan can show up real quick, and he likes to start on the honeymoon. Adam does not understand the repercussions of his decision. They both rebel against God, and the Bible says God came looking for them, but they hid themselves from God and covered themselves with leaves. Conflict develops between the two of them. The man blames the woman, the woman blames the serpent. God then comes and says, because you have done this, he says in chapter 3 verse 16 of Genesis, your desire shall be for your husband, and your husband shall rule over you.

He announces a curse toward the institution of marriage, you and I call it today the battle of the sexes, where you fight for control, where you want more, you want more sensitivity from him, and he wants more domination over you, and you want rebellion against him, and he says no woman is gonna tell me what to do, and you say I don't have to be treated like this, and its ultimate expansive application is brutality, where a man tries to rule over his wife by brute force, or where a woman seeks to dominate her husband and become a dominating woman that overrules the position of her husband. Now, why did all that stuff happen? Here's my point. All that stuff happened because of satanic instigation.

Now, why is that important? Because if you're fighting each other, you still haven't gotten to the root of your problem. If you're still fighting over personalities, and while God, Satan, uses personalities, if that's the core of your battle, that means you aren't fighting the right war yet. You're fighting a symptom and calling it a problem. You're coming into a counseling session and simply saying, he mistreats me without understanding that the agitator is in the room. Or to put it another way, if you don't deal with the spiritual, you're dealing with the fruit and not the root. Man said, in our marriage, me and my wife decided never to go to bed angry.

We have men to sleep in three weeks. Because that's what Satan does, and he not only starts stuff, he keeps it going. He brings stuff up to remind you of the stuff that you said you were forgotten. And if you miss him, then you're missing the agitator, you're missing the spiritual initiator.

Now, that doesn't exonerate you from the things you're doing wrong. It does say simply to address that is not to address the root, thus sexual fasting. Sexual fasting exists to get to the spiritual agitation that is producing the physical confrontation. Sexual fasting is designed to address the underlining causes in the spiritual realm that is producing the conflict in the physical realm. Because remember, everything physical is because of something spiritual. So to address the physical, you must address the spiritual that's bringing about the physical, and most people do not address the spiritual so they cannot control the physical.

So it is to regain intimacy. Dr. Evans will tell us more about the concept of sexual fasting when he returns in a moment with more of this message from his sermon series on Fasting the Key to Spiritual Victory. This two-volume collection digs deep into the surprising relationship between food and faith. You'll discover how it may be the key you need to unlock revival, free you from burdens, guide you toward the future, and more. There's a lot packed into this series, and all 14 messages are our gift to you when you make a contribution to help support our work here at The Alternative. And for a limited time, along with the audio messages, we'll also send you the Cultivating a Year of Kindness Perpetual Flip Calendar, filled with inspiring quotes, scriptures, and insights from Dr. Evans that'll help encourage you to enjoy a life marked by the goodness of God. To take advantage of this special offer, visit tonyevans.org, where you'll find this deal featured right on the home page, or give us a call at 1-800-800-3222 and let a friendly member of our resource team help you out. I'll repeat that contact information after the second part of today's lesson and this.

Too many of us want to throw in the towel before we've thrown up the prayers. Dr. Tony Evans says Christians have a habit of underusing or overlooking our most valuable spiritual resource. Grace is available, but only at the throne, and you can only approach the throne through prayer. You can deepen your connection with the Lord through our in-depth course on Kingdom Prayer at the Tony Evans Training Center. You'll discover how God has wired the world to work by prayer and experience for yourself how it connects heaven with earth and time with eternity.

You'll not only gain a new understanding and appreciation for prayer, you'll actually pray in transforming ways you've never experienced before. The course is intense, but you can work through it at your own pace and get all the help you need through our online forum. And of course, there's custom content from Tony not available anywhere else. Connect with the Tony Evans Training Center at tonyevans.org. It's like having a seminary on your smartphone or other device.

Start today. tonyevans.org. Let's go to point two, the process of sexual fasting. When a couple is physically intimate with one another, what they do is explore the mysteries of another person. What God had in mind was using the physical to explore the inner dimensions of the emotional and ultimately the spiritual.

The process of sexual fasting is to enter into a trade to sacrifice the physical for the spiritual so that you get God into digging beneath the obvious to get to that which is not obvious to deal with the root of the problem. And this is actually done even in athletics. Most NFL football teams sequester their players Saturday nights. Now they have two reasons for this. One reason is so they can have them all together in a unified place and that's when they have their team meetings and talk about the team team that they're gonna play. But as a second reason, to keep them away from their wives. They sequester the football players to keep them away from their wives if they're married, from women if they're single, because they understand that if there is physical activity the night before the game, it could produce a draining physically and a focus. And they so much want the concentration to be totally on the game that they sequester them, they put them away from females. Because it's so deep, it's so serious, the game is, that they want absolutely no distraction because the game is of highest importance.

It's a sexual fast. God did the same thing. In Exodus chapter 19, God says, I'm coming down to the mountain. When I come down to the mountain, I'm going to reveal myself at a level that the people have never ever ever seen before. And in Exodus 19 verses 9 through verses 15, God says, tell the men not to go near a woman. Not to go near a woman because I am coming down and when I come down, all of their energy will be needed to receive me.

I will be operating at a much deeper level. He told them in Joel chapter 2 the same thing. I am going to visit you. Tell the husband to come out of his bedroom.

Tell the bride to leave her bridal chamber, for God is about to visit. In fasting, you are asking God to visit you at a deeper level. Now, why?

There's a question that one of the members asked me. Why fasting? Why did God choose this as his method of hooking up to him in serious situations?

Now, you fast because something serious is on the table. You pray as a way of life, but fasting is connected when something difficult is on the table. God finds great joy not only in what he knows, and he knows everything. God knows everything intuitively. He has raw knowledge of everything that was, is, and ever will be. He is the all-knowing God, but he does not know everything experientially. God has not experienced everything. He's a spirit. That's why he had to become a man to experience life on earth.

As a spirit being, he hasn't experienced everything, although he knows everything. So let me tell you what gets God hyped, what gets God excited. God gets excited when what he knows also becomes what is. For example, God knew that the worlds would come into existence, but only when he said, let there be light, did he also say, it is good. It was when he entered into the experience of bringing it to pass that brought him into the joy of it, even though he already possessed the knowing of it.

Let me give you another example. God told Abraham to kill his son, his only son, which was the son of the Covenant. In other words, God said, I'm gonna make of you, Abraham, a great nation, and I'm gonna do it through your baby boy, Isaac. He tells Abraham to kill his son. Why would you tell Abraham to kill the son if the son was going to be the way to keep the Covenant going?

The boy isn't married yet. There are no other kids, so if you kill Isaac, the Covenant is dead. How could God tell Abraham to kill Isaac in light of the promise to make of Abraham a great nation through Isaac? Abraham said, I don't understand it, but I'm gonna do exactly what you said. He took Isaac up, raised up his knife, God took his wrist, and this is what God says, now I know that you fear me. But God, you know everything. What do you mean, now I know? Well, I knew everything intuitively before you did this, but now I enter into the experience of joy in seeing you do it. So God gets an experience, he gets a high, if you will, out of the experience of seeing us, now watch this now, watch this now, choose the giver over the gift.

He gets excited when he sees it, not just when he knows it. When he sees Abraham take up Isaac and he enters into the experience of it happening, he gets high in knowing that we value the giver more than the gift. Now what has God given us? Food. But he says, when you fast, you give up food to spend time with God, and I get high knowing that you consider being with me more important with being with the stuff I gave you. What did he give marriage? Sex. But he says, I get high when I see you value the giver of sex more than the sex that he gave. It's from the Father of lights.

But you know what we do? We spend so much time having fun with the gift that we forget the giver, and we lose out on the mystery of intimacy with God. If you're ready to trade the broken pieces of your life for the eternal future God has in store for you, here's Dr. Evans once again to talk about how that can happen. If you've been listening to our broadcast and you have not personally trusted Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins so that he can give you the gift of eternal life right now, I want you to go to God and transfer your trust from any and everything else except the Son of God who died on the cross for your sins and arose from the dead. In fact, I'm going to say a little prayer, and you can repeat it after me. You just have to mean it for yourself. Heavenly Father, I know I'm a sinner and that I can't save myself.

I believe Jesus Christ, your Son, died on the cross in my place for my sin, and I now am trusting Him alone to forgive me and to give me the gift of eternal life that He promised to give to anyone who came to Him for it. Thank you for saving me and help me from this day forward to live a life pleasing to you. Congratulations.

Welcome to the family. God bless you. Tony would like to tell you more about what that decision means and how to start living it out. Just visit tonyevans.org and follow the link that simply says Jesus.

There he'll walk you through everything you need to know to start your brand-new life, and he'll return in a moment with a final story to wrap up our time together today. First though, I want to let you know that today's lesson was called Fasting for Marriage, and it's available both individually and it's a part of Tony's two-volume series called Fasting the Key to Spiritual Victory. As I mentioned earlier, you can get all 14 full-length messages in this collection as our gift to you in appreciation for your donation to this ministry, along with a special bonus, the Perpetual Cultivating a Year of Kindness Flip Calendar. Visit tonyevans.org today to get all the details before time runs out. Again, that's tonyevans.org, or call us at 1-800-800-3222. Our resource center is open 24-7. That's 1-800-800-3222. At one point or another, many of us will change our diet in pursuit of goals like weight loss, cholesterol reduction, or some other physical need.

But tomorrow we'll explore some of the profound benefits our eating habits have on our spiritual health as well. Right now, though, Dr. Evans is back with his closing story. The snowstorm and this man went out to do the snow, but every time he tried to get rid of the snow, it snowed again. So he'd go out, try to get rid of the snow, it snowed again.

He'd go out there, it snowed again. He said, it's a waste of my time. I quit.

I'm not going out there anymore. Every time I go to try to fix the snow, it snows again. Anybody like that in your relationship? Every time you try to get rid of the junk, more junk come. Every time you try to make peace, more war. Every time you try to be nice, more meanness. Every time you try to solve one conflict, more conflict, and you're tired, and you say, I quit.

I'm tired of this. Well, the next day the sun came out. Guess what happened? The sun melted the snow, apart from anything the guy did. You see, when the sun comes out, you can take it easy. When the sun comes out, you don't have to try so hard. When the sun comes out, it takes care of the problem for you. And guess what? When the S-O-N, when the sun comes out, because you fast and pray and throw your relationship at the altar, he melts the madness, melts the pain, melts the personality conflicts that you've been digging with all day, all year, all decade long. I believe somebody in here needs the sun to come out. You've been digging, and it's going nowhere.