The Myth of "Happily Ever After"

Marriage is an unconditional commitment to an imperfect person. Let me say that again. Marriage is an unconditional commitment–in other words, good, bad, hard, easy, great, difficult–you’re committed to an imperfect person. We’re all married to imperfect people. That means that wonderful, amazing, loving, over-the-top wife or husband that you have will have a few days, and hopefully it’s just a few days, where they won’t be so amazing and they won’t be so wonderful.

In fact, they’ll make mistakes that drive you crazy. It’s worse than mistakes. They’ll sin against you. On a bad day, their flesh will take over and they will say some things that everything in them wish they could take back, but they can’t and they’ll wound you. And that they’ll do some things that you could never believe as amazing and great and wonderful as they are, how could they ever do that?

We can love Jesus with all of our heart and, yet, there are times, there are days. I mean, read the Bible, men and women of great faith, men who love God, women who love God, there are moments, weak moments, where they do very selfish, sinful things.

And so that means there’s going to be challenges that’s just reality. No one married a perfect person. On top of that, if you have the most wonderful, the most loving, the most committed marriage, you’re on the same page, we get before God, we are in community, we are on mission, we read books about marriage, we are absolutely committed to having a great, great marriage.

There’s external forces, there’s times where a job will get lost, you’ll be betrayed at work, you’ll have a financial setback, you’ll have a medical issue that you didn’t see coming, Hurricanes happen to Christians, drunk drivers go left of center and hit Christians.
The world we living in now, there’s a good chance that one of you will be struggling with some mental health issues, anxiety issues, panic attacks, depression, “Where do we go from here?” And that doesn’t even account the normal things, right?

Well, if the goal was to make you very discouraged and depressed and give you some really negative expectations, I probably did that. But that’s not why I’m sharing these things. Remember, lies tear down your relationship. truth is what builds it up.

Foundational Truth number one is you can’t live this life, I can’t live this life without the supernatural power of God. And so, following Jesus personally is the number one priority. Foundational Truth number two is I must choose to love my mate whether I feel like it or not.

Foundational Truth number three we will have ongoing challenges with communication, sex, finances, parenting and extended family. These issues are not deal-breakers, they are heart makers as we learn to listen, understand, and follow God’s path.

In marriages that aren’t prepared you’ll see each of these barriers as excuses and the enemy will whisper, “See, this isn’t the right person.” "Oh, this is too hard." "This is too hopeless." No, it’s normal. You’re going to have issues with your in-laws. You’re going to have issues in your sex life, your communication, your parenting. These are all normal. And there are going to be some things that you can’t control that will come into your sphere of influence – and if you have children, into their life – that will produce incredible pressure and stress.

Those issues don’t have to be deal-breakers. They can actually become heart-makers. When you go through some of the hardest times you’ll ever face, and as you cling together and cling to the Lord and trust Him – and it doesn’t mean it won’t be hard, it doesn’t mean you might get out of sorts with one another, – but you will come through those times stronger and better.

These barriers don’t mean something is wrong. They mean you are living in a fallen world with an imperfect person, but with a sovereign God who loves you and is for you and wants to give you the support and love that you need through this person called your husband or your wife.

So, here’s the truth that I want you to get, here’s the passage, (James 1:2-5) “Consider it all joy when these things happen in your life.” There’s conflict, difficulty, medical issues, external or internal, when you’re stuck in your relationship. “Consider it all joy, my brethren, when you encounter various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance. And let endurance have its perfect result so that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.”

And then it has this caveat, “But if any of you lacks wisdom,” in other words, I don’t know what to do with this problem in our sex life, I don’t know what to do with this issue with your in-laws, I don’t know what to do because we don’t have the money to address this issue and you’ve got cancer, I don’t know what to do because I lost my job. Should we relocate? I don’t know what to do about one of our children. Right? Are you getting the idea?

“If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God,” and then notice, “who gives to all men generously and without reproach.” Without reproach means sometimes, are you ready? Sometimes you have a problem, but that problem isn’t because someone out there did something to you. That problem isn’t because of even your mate. That problem is because of you.

You made a mistake or you sinned, you did something that was really, really unwise and now you have the consequences and when we experience that, our emotions and our mind says, “I can’t come to God. God’s not going to help me.” And this passage says when you are in a difficult, challenging, painful time, even if it was your fault, you come to your Heavenly Father and He’s generous. It's an amazing New Testament word. He's generous. He’s lavish with His mercy. He wants to forgive, He wants to help, He wants to give grace.

You won’t get a God whose arms are crossed. “See, I told you not to do that and you did it anyway.” You’ll come to a God when you genuinely, “I need Your help. Show me what to do.” And notice the promise. When you come to your heavenly Father, He’ll give you wisdom. The passage goes on, “But let him ask in faith, without any doubting, because the one who doubts is like a person who is tossed by every wind or on the waves of the sea. Let not that person expect he will receive anything from the Lord.”

And the issue there is you can’t come to God and say, “I really want Your counsel. I really want to know what we should do about this issue in our marriage or this external trial and I’m going to take it under consideration whatever You tell me, God.” God says: No, no wisdom. Sorry.

But when you come to God and you say, “Lord, I don’t know what to do. I lost my job, my husband has got cancer, one of my kids needs special treatment and we don’t have the money. You're going to have times where it’s difficult, where it’s challenging, where you don’t know what to do. I know for me I have shared this a number of times, but I was praying about a huge struggle in our marriage and we couldn’t fix it And the Lord whispered, Go to counseling.

And it was, “What? That’s for losers, that’s for people who can’t fix themselves.” And the Holy Spirit said, ‘No, it’s for people that are humble, people that recognize they need help.’ And I pushed against it. And then finally I realized, You know what? That’s just my pride. So I just want to encourage you, if you’re willing to say, “Lord, whatever You show me, I’ll do it.” His promise in this passage, He’ll give you wisdom.

Now, notice, these are normal things that are going to happen, right? Some that are very predictable in every marriage, some that are external, some of you have some extra baggage. Theresa and I, both came from alcoholic families. Wow, that’s like putting steroids in this whole mix. But the command, how do you handle it? “Consider it all joy.” The word “consider,” it's an accounting term.

This isn’t like, “Oh, great, we are going through cancer together.” Or, “Oh, great, one of our kids is really sick.” Or, “Oh, great, we can’t sort of figure out this area of our marriage.” No, this is a reality, it’s very challenging, it’s very painful, we hurt, and we are going to take this reality and it’s an accounting term. It would be like a ledger where you’re listing all the different things you know, these are my assets, these are my liabilities, and then you look at them and you examine them.

“Consider it all,” literally, unmitigated – the word is – or pure joy. Well, how could you ever do that? The next line "when you encounter various trials." Not if. “When you encounter,” and this word for “various trials” is when external trials, when stuff comes into your world that you didn’t plan. The other time this word is used is remember the story of the Good Samaritan? It’s when he was surrounded by robbers, this is this word.

So, stuff comes in your life. you can’t control the economy, you can’t control a flood, you can’t control a hurricane. Where I live, you can’t control earthquakes. Those things happen in our world and they impact us and they impact our marriages. How do you respond? How do you go through?

Theresa and I went through cancer. It was a heart-maker, it wasn’t a deal-breaker. Was it scary? Oh. Did we cry out to God together? Did I pray like never before? You bet I did. Why? Because I was desperate and I love my wife and I didn’t want to lose her. I know He’s good, I know He cares about me, but did I get before Him and fast and pray and say, “Lord, would You please grant us more years?”

And in my particular case the answer was yes. And some of my closest friends the answer was: I am bringing My son or I am bringing My daughter home. I will give you the grace to get through this. So he says, “Consider it all joy when you encounter,” not if, “various kinds of trials.” And that’s the first command. And that’s, again, a choice. That’s not emotion.

I am going to look at this very difficult situation, whether it’s internal or external and I’m going to examine it knowing that the testing of my faith, that’s what this is. Am I going to trust that God is sovereign? Am I going to trust that He’s good? Am I going to trust that He’s going to get me through this? Am I going to trust that He’ll use it for my good somehow, someway?

Which is the whole message of the last third of the book of Genesis. The whole story of Joseph has one point. What does a good God do in a fallen world when people experience extreme injustice? And whether it’s being sold into slavery by his brother, by being falsely accused by Potiphar’s wife, being forgotten in prison. Each and every time, the text says, “And the Lord was with Joseph.”

And what God did is He built capacity in this man through all those difficulties that gave him the wisdom and the resilience to be a man He would greatly use as the second most powerful person in the world. I don’t know God’s plans for my life, you don’t know God’s plans for your life or for your wife or your husband or your kids. But it’s in these challenges, in these painful, difficult times, that’s how God works.

But it’s out of His goodness and His kindness. It’s not about punishment. He loves us and He cares for us. And so, He says: If you will endure, if you won’t bail out, if you won’t blame your mate, the Lord can use this. And I just want you to know, that’s got to be one of your building blocks, because this isn’t, this isn’t about if it’s going to happen.

Some of you are laughing thinking, we have already been through a lot of hard times. And others it’s a little new. But when you build this into: This is how I think about marriage, this is going to be a part of the foundational building blocks. We will go through difficult times choosing to count it all joy knowing that through that process we will become more like Jesus and that somehow, someway that God, in His love and sovereignty, we may not be able to see it now, we may not be able to see it for quite a while, but a good God will even use the evil aimed at us, the betrayal aimed at us, the injustice aimed at us and He’ll flip it and turn it for our good.

And I’m finding myself saying this a lot more these days than I even did five or ten years ago. But one of the great beauties of entering my seventh decade is my rearview mirror is way bigger than most of yours. I can now look back at the biggest, hardest, most difficult, this-isn’t-fair-type experiences that I have had and in God’s kindness and sovereignty, faithfulness, and love for me turned so many of those into things that I think, I begged God to take that away. I begged God to get out of that as soon as possible. And I was wondering if He even cared about me. And now, where I am today, what has happened today, who I’m with today, and how God is working today, none of that could have happened unless that occurred. And so, I just want to encourage you, you can trust Him.

And the next building block is I’m going to go from number three to number six because they really go together. Foundational Truth Number six I will not consider a divorce as an option and I will never threaten my spouse with divorce. I have made a holy and binding covenant before God to let nothing undermine our lifelong commitment.

And the reason I wanted to share this one next to the one about challenges, because it’s during these kind of challenges that the enemy whispers or some well-intended friends kind of whisper, “You just can’t keep living that way. That’s so unfair. That’s so difficult. He’ll never change. She’ll never change.” Or private thoughts will whisper like you’ll just sit alone sometimes at a stoplight and, you get a beep, beep, beep because you were lost in space; it’s been green for a couple seconds.

And where your mind went was, I just can’t take this anymore. Right? I just can’t take this anymore. She is never going to change. Or, He is never going to change. This is a lifeless marriage. I just can’t perceive, I can’t emotionally think about living like this the rest of my life. Anything, anything is better than this. Yeah, it’ll be hard. Kids are resilient. They’ll all bounce back. This won’t have big impact on them. Lie, lie, lie, lie, lie.

Now, there are some very unique cases when divorce may be something to consider: when you or your children are not safe, when you are married to someone who is unfaithful, sexually, on a regular basis and won’t change. I’ve got a situation I’m aware of where the man just simply won’t work and lays it all on his wife. And that’s a moment where, I would have biblical grounds but I need to get some help and go to my church, talk to my pastor, and begin a game plan that puts the responsibility back in that person’s court.

So I’m not saying there aren’t exceptions, but what I am saying is that by and large, we in the church, we don’t take this seriously. Listen to the words of Jesus. Matthew 19:6 through 9, “So, they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore, what God has joined together, let no one separate. ‘Why then,’ they asked, ‘Did Moses command that a man leave his wife and give her a certificate of divorce and send her away?’ Jesus replied, ‘Moses permitted you to divorce your wives because you hearts were hard, but it was not that way from the beginning. I tell you that anyone,’” listen carefully, “who divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality and marries another commits adultery.”

That word for “sexual immorality” is the most general word in Scripture. It’s pornea. We get our word pornography. It’s a violation of the holy covenant. We have some good material and others do about certain unique conditions when divorce is a biblical possibility. I obviously believe there’s some biblical grounds for divorce or I would have not married a woman who was abandoned as an unbeliever and on the grounds of adultery got a divorce.

What I’m saying in the contemporary church today we act as though this verse is not there. And if we are unhappy or things don’t really work out we divorce casually, we used to go to this church, now we just go to another church in town, and we think everything is okay. I’ve got news for you. There are consequences when you disobey God, and they are big consequences.

And so, if you’re one of those people listening to me and thinking, Oh, wow, I didn’t have biblical grounds, it wasn’t immorality, I was very unhappy, I got a divorce, that was two years ago, five years ago, ten years ago and now I have remarried. Well, what do I do? Repent.

Now, the Bible is clear. Don’t go divorce this wife and try and make it back to the other one. Tell God, “I blew it. Will You forgive me? It was a sin.” And for some of you, I just want to encourage you, you were the victim. Someone ran off with someone else. You were the victim that they got into pornography or got involved in some perverted things and you feel like maybe there’s no hope.

In those cases, God wants you to know there’s hope. First and foremost, He will be there for you. If you find yourself being abandoned by someone or someone has left you, can you just not for at least a year or eighteen months get involved in any other relationship? You are so vulnerable. And what I can guarantee is you will get in a relationship that will bring more and more pain and you’ll be tempted to cross some boundaries.

Refuse, as a married couple, to entertain divorce as an option. God hates it. You need to learn to hate it. And if it becomes an option, you will not endure, you won’t consider it all joy, and you’ll find yourself going down a path and all the research says your kids won’t just bounce back. It will follow them all the way into adulthood.

We have glossed over things because we don’t want to face the hard truth that when you violate God’s command of the most precious vow you ever made and the sacred trust of a wife or a husband and children, when you mess around with that, you bring destruction in your life.

There’s always forgiveness with repentance and God’s kindness and love is always available. But it almost always comes with consequences. And so, let me encourage those of you that are married, would you covenant with God and your mate, never use this word, never threaten with this word, never consider this word.

I actually have a friend, true story, shortly after he got married, he took real thin knives, and he got a dictionary out and he and his wife, opened up a dictionary and they actually cut the word: divorce out So it’s not in their dictionary. And they said, “We will never use this word in a conversation with one another.” That’s kind of symbolic, but that’s how drastic you need to.