Marriage 8 of 10 - Spiritual Unity (John Wile)

This series about marriage is dedicated to men and women serving their Lord in a country, a culture, a language that is not their own. Is that you? We know that this life creates great stress and your marriage will either contribute to increasing that stress, or your marriage will help you to deal with the stress, will bring you great personal joy, will bring praise to God and will have the added benefit that your ministry will be richer and more powerful.

Kathy and I have been married for 26 years and we've spent a few more years than that in various forms of pastoral ministry. During that time, we've learned a lot about marriage. In this series, we're distilling that learning into what we call The Eight Underpinning Truths: Today's truth? The Deepest Level of Marital Oneness is Spiritual Unity. Kathy and I lead several marriage retreats each year. One of the components in each retreat is on the spiritual relationship in marriage. What we've discovered from talking with hundreds of fine, faithful believers is that this is one of the most desired aspects of Christian ministry marriages and simultaneously it is one of the most discouraging and frustrating to many. In fact, one woman, a grandmother many times over, is a woman who has seen a generation rise up after her in ministry including several of her own children. She candidly calls spiritual oneness in marriage a myth. She hasn't seen much of it in her own marriage or in others she has gotten to know well. If it happens that you and your life partner have a great experience of spiritual oneness, then all I want to say to you today is keep it up. For the rest of our time my thoughts are with those who have found the journey towards spiritual oneness in marriage to be short of your expectations, frustrating and perhaps even empty. It could be that you have given up trying. Is that you? If so, I wouldn't be surprised if (1) you thought you and your spouse were the odd ones, and (2) that you may not have talked with anyone about your sense of failure. You've just hoped no one would discover it -- especially your team leader and your sending congregation. The truth, is you aren't the odd ones but it's not one of the items on the safe agenda for group discussion. People who have been successful in their journey toward spiritual oneness talk about it freely. Those who have stumbled don't talk about it at all; thus we're left with the impression that this deep sense of spiritual unity is normal in Christian marriages. From our experience I would say that spiritual oneness in ministry marriages is not uncommon, but neither is it uncommon to find couples with a profound sense of failure. If that's where you find yourselves today, let me make four suggestions:

First, please remember the basics of the faith. God loves you in Christ. You are clothed in His righteousness. You don't seek spiritual oneness in marriage in order to climb another wrung of the spiritual ladder. The Father already sees you shining with all the brilliance and beauty of His own Son. We seek oneness to share our hearts with the man or the woman we love.

Second, let me invite you to shift your goal. Most Christians have an assumption that their marriage should have some particular habits such as praying together daily or couple devotions or Bible study. Now those habits are usually a good thing but they aren't the goal. They are simply a setting in which spiritual oneness might happen, but they aren't the oneness. I invite you to lay the thoughts of those particular habits to the side and instead embrace the picture given by the apostle Paul in his letter to the Romans. He said, "I long to see you so that I may impart to you some spiritual gift to make you strong. That is that you and I may be mutually encouraged by each others' faith". That's marriage spirituality. I long to see you so that you and I may be mutually encouraged by each others' faith.

That thought naturally leads us to the third point which is a question. What could you do today, tonight, tomorrow morning that would be spiritually encouraging to your wife, your husband? By way of suggestion, first let me tell you what would not be helpful. That would be to say something like: I was listening to a pastor today who was talking about spiritual oneness in marriage. Why don't you ever want to pray together? I'd like to. That or any form of it would be ridiculous. Your goal is not to push your partner into a corner. Your call is to encourage. So what would be encouraging? For instance many people find it works to ask questions: "how can I pray for you?" "What has God been speaking to you about lately in your quiet time?" It also often works great to make a short and sweet statement: "I'll be praying for you at your meeting tonight", "I read a great promise today. Here let me read it to you." Be careful not to push and don't expect a counter question. "Ahh how can I pray for you?" Just give as Paul said. Impart a spiritual gift to make the one you love strong.

Finally, if you sense openness from your partner, take the risk and break open the topic. "Dearest, I've been thinking lately that I'd like to talk about our spiritual lives, about how we could encourage each other more spiritually. Would you be open to talking about it sometime?" Who knows what discoveries, what oneness might be waiting for you?