Boundaries and Values In Marriage

Values are the foundation on which a marriage stands

Weak foundation = weak marriage

There are 2 kinds of people in life, those who focus only on what they want and never attain it. And those who focus on what it takes to attain it.

Value 1 – Love for God

• Jesus said that the greatest commandment is to love God with every bit of your self.

• Love God with all your heart and all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength (Mark 12 : 28– 30)

• Why this value is tops?

• When loving God is your top priority and core principle, we are always ready to adjust to what he requires from us.

• God is whom we ultimately report and must always give our account to. It is his yardstick that matters, not what we think and how we feel.

• We must love God enough to do what he asks us to do and not to do. As a result couples will care for each other.

• Loving God empowers us to change. And tells us how to change

• We all need someone bigger to answer to, so we will make the changes we need to make.

• Love God first, with all your heart, mind, soul and strength. Lose your life to him and you will gain it.

• Husband & wife should individually and collectively be having a great time with God
  
  

Value 2 – love your Spouse & Respect

1. We hear a lot about love and we all have our own ideas about what love means.

2. The love that builds a marriage is the kind of love God has for us. It is called “Agape Love”.

3. Agape is love that seeks the welfare of the other.

4. Jesus 2nd greatest commandment is love your neighbor as “yourself”.

In marriage this means

1. Deeply identify with your spouse that you feel the effects of your own behavior in you spouse.

2. You think first of making your spouses life better

3. You want the best for your spouse even when your spouse can’t see what that is.

4. True love is taking action. The more familiar we are with each other, the lazier we are, and the lesser we work at expressing and showing love.

5. True love is showing deep respect for each other.

6. True love will not allow itself to get cold. When it does, there is a call to take action and rekindle the flame as Jesus said in Rev. 2: 5. (Do the things you did at first…….)

7. Make love your highest value in your marriage and it is likely to return. 1 Cor 13.

8. None of us is able to live at this description of love completely but as we live out. Eph. 5:22-33. It requires perfect submission to each other & self sacrifcice
   
   
   

Value 3 – Honest

• Dishonesty damages fabric of marriage  

• Couples usually lie about some things e’g Feelings, disappointments, desires,  anger, sex, sins failure, needs.

• Intimacy comes from knowing the other person at a deep level Eph 4 vs 25

• Share the deepest feelings

• Deception usually takes place for good defensive reasons

• Make a commitment to each other to total honestly. But, remember honesty has a price. It may be painful sometimes   

• Honesty must also be accompanied by enough grace to hear and deal with the truth it brings.

Value 4 – Faithfulness

• Faithfulness should go beyond the physical
• A faithful spouse is one who can be trusted, depended upon, believed in and one in which you can rest
• Many marriages are physically faithful but not emotional faithful
• They are faithful with their bodies but not their hearts. It goes beyond not sleeping with someone other than your spouse.
• Faithfulness means you can be depended upon to do what you have promised, to follow through on what your spouse has entrusted to you
• Do you feel so well taken care of by your spouse that you don’t have to even worry about taking care of yourself?
• You can rest in the knowledge that what needs to be done will be done. This is beautiful picture of faithfulness
• Don’t commit emotional adultery; you can have an ‘affair of the heart’. This means taking certain aspects of yourself and intentionally keeping them away from the marriage
• We have to be fruitful irrespective of what the spouse does or does not do like God in 2 Tim 2 vs. 13. God does not become unfaithful if we do not love him correctly. He remains faithful, no matter what we do
  

Value 5 – Compassion and Forgiveness

• Think of the wonderful qualities of your spouse that you admire and what attracts you the most
• “ I am a sinner, I will fail you and hurt you” (Husband & wife should say this to each other)
• The person you love the most and have committed your life to is an imperfect being. The person is guaranteed to hurt you and fail you in many ways
• The failures will come because there is not a righteous man on earth ( Eccl 7 vs. 20 )
• What happens when your spouse fails you
• 2 options: beat, nag, hassle him/her out of it or love him out of it 1 Peter 48
• Love & compassion covers over a multitude of sins
• Greeks dictionary definition of compassion; “to bend or stoop in kindness to an inferior”.
• Just as God did for us when your spouse is hurting or failing, you are not morally superior but you are in a stronger position at the moment to be able to help (Col 3 : 12 – 14)
• Calls for tender heartedness
• There must be a willingness to repent and forgive on both sides. The person who fails must own up to his failure and show a change of heart. Forgiveness must be given in return.
• Compassion, tenderness and forgiveness holds the other values together

Value 6 – Holiness and spiritual growth/Conclusion

• “Without holiness no one can see God.”
• There must be a hunger and thirst for righteousness’ not for anyone or other things
• It has to be pursued with everything.
• When we are growing in purity, spirituality, the marriage also GROWS.

Finally

Guard your marriage and keep out external intruders. As a bank guards its money, each spouse must guard and protect the core of the of the marriage. Love for each other and for God.

Dr. Phil & Stella Osagie.

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