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Kindle Notes & Highlights
by
Larry Crabb
Started reading
July 26, 2020
marriage presents a unique opportunity to put the gospel of Jesus Christ into practice.
Merely changing what we do will not change who we are.
The only sure path to real and lasting joy is the steep, rugged road marked “Obedience.”
“For to me, to live is Christ”
But relatively little effort has been directed toward developing a comprehensive understanding of God’s design for marriage.
However, commitment to the lordship of Christ and the authority of Scripture will provide the needed motivation and strength to live responsibly. Responsible Christian living will gradually yield personal dividends of deep joy and unshakable hope.
The alternatives are following God or following our own preferences.
God’s Word must take priority over what I think would best meet my needs.
a deep experience of personal intimacy through relationship with a person of the opposite sex.
I understand the Scriptures to teach that relationships offer two elements that are absolutely essential if we are to live as God intended: (1) the security of being truly loved and accepted, and (2) the significance of making a substantial, lasting, positive impact on another person.
Christ has made me secure and significant. Whether I feel it or not, it is true. I am instructed by God to believe that my needs are already met, and therefore I am to live selflessly, concerned only with the needs of others. The more I choose to live according to the truth of what Christ has done for me, the more I will come to sense the reality of my security and significance in him.
our mutual needs for security (I am loved) and significance (my life matters).
Developing this kind of relationship is the goal of marriage.
A relationship in which their deepest needs for security and significance could be substantially met.
No marriage can ever follow the biblical pattern unless both partners know that at the deepest level, their personal needs have already been met.
our longing for love represents one set of needs that partly defines what it means to be a person or spirit.
As soon as Adam and Eve were separated from God by sin, their capacity for love was no longer filled and was therefore experienced as a need — a need for love or, in the term I prefer, a need for security.
need for significance.
God is a personal being who in his essential nature is love and who, as a God of design and purpose, is the author of meaning.
God is love; we need love. Whatever God does is significant; we need to do something significant.
Thus, being a person (or spirit) centrally involves an identity that requires security or significance to function effectively. When both these needs are met, we experience ourselves as worthwhile people.
It would appear that as we seek to meet our personal needs in marriage, essentially four courses of action are open to us. We may 1. Ignore our needs;
2. Find satisfaction in achievement; 3. Attempt to meet our needs in each other; 4. Depend on the Lord to meet our needs.
The most accepting husband or wife in the world cannot meet a spouse’s need for significance.
The most loving husband or wife in the world can never meet a spouse’s need for security.
We simply are not enough for each other.
To put it another way, all that we need to function effectively as persons (not necessarily to feel happy or fulfilled) is at any given moment fully supplied in relationship with Christ and in whatever he chooses to provide.
In that love, I am secure.
These truths, when realized and acted upon, provide unparalleled significance.
Our fourth option, then, is to depend on the Lord to meet our personal needs.
Error 1: Because someone has rejected me or because I have failed, I am less worthwhile as a person.
Error 2: Hiding behind the truth of our worth in Christ to avoid feeling pain in relationships
Error 1: Rejection and failure mean that I am a less worthwhile person
Step 1: Fully acknowledge all your feelings to God
Step 2: Reaffirm the truth of your security and significance in Christ
our feelings need never determine how we believe or what we do.
Step 3: Commit yourself to ministering to your spouse’s needs, knowing that however he may respond can never rob you of your worth as a person
Error 2: Christ is all I need; therefore I can avoid intimate relationships with others
It is Christ alone who grants us security and significance, but it is often (by no
means always) our spouses who help us to feel worthwhile.
Conclusion
The concepts behind Spirit Oneness lead naturally and necessarily into a style of husband-wife relating that I call “Soul Oneness.”
This oneness grows from a mutual, intelligent, and unreserved commitment to be an instrument of God to deeply touch a spouse’s personal needs in a unique, powerful, and meaningful way.
Or, more simply, if the foundation of Spirit Oneness is mutual dependence on the Lord for personal needs, then the foundation of Soul Oneness is a mutual commitment to minister to one another’s personal needs.
Only a deliberate shift from the subtle commitment to manipulate to the deliberate commitment to minister will shatter that barrier and permit the rich, intimate, fulfilling relationship of Soul Oneness.
Beliefs determine goals.
The best way to understand why we do what we do is to ask, “What are we trying to accomplish or avoid?” or “What is our goal?” When we determine what our goals are, we can identify and challenge the wrong beliefs behind the goals.
we will fail to see the point clearly and to make needed personal application without the Holy Spirit’s help.
purpose of this chapter: to uncover the hidden and destructive objectives that guide the interactions of so many couples.
When a husband replaces the goal of ministry on behalf of the other with the goal of manipulation on behalf of oneself, he is guilty of a serious misrepresentation of Christ’s love for his bride.
