Riders on the storm

Remember the old saying, “You are the company you keep”? They say children, from an early age, go through a search for identity and, if their parents don’t provide effective mentoring and aren’t desired role models, kids with readily take their cues from their peers. They simply revert to wanting to fit in and be accepted by the group because they don’t have any strong intuitive sense that their parents really love them or care about how they develop.

Another thing is that children, starting as babies, are deeply affected by what they observe in their parents’ relationships to one another as husband and wife.

In a really old sermon I have on the subject of marriage, given by my pastor, Richard Jordan, he says, “Marriage is designed to confront selfishness. When you have a problem in marriage, the main problem is living for yourself rather than for your mate.”

Boy, doesn’t that just succinctly sum up the kind of dysfunctional couples issues you hear hashed out all the time anymore on daytime talk shows like Dr. Phil and Oprah?!

“You know what a wife needs more than anything, fellows?” says Jordan. “She doesn’t need diamonds and cars. She needs your love. Her basic fundamental need centers around a need for security. It comes from your love; the confidence that comes to her because of your love. She needs that security and commitment. She needs affection; a cherished place in your life.

“A wife needs to feel that she’s in partnership with you. That’s she’s got a unique position and that you’re a team together. She wants to have an intimate place in your life and that has to do with exclusivity.

“Now, for you ladies, you are to ‘reverence your husband,’ as Paul tells us. Inside that guy you’re married to is a little boy who needs to be somebody’s hero. He needs somebody to tell him he’s valuable, even warts and all, and that you’re going to love him, respect him, value him, need him. . . There’s that little boy inside of him that just thrives on being somebody’s hero.”

*****

Despite what all the gays would have us choke down about marriage, it is the divine institution God established from the very outset of creation.

“Marriage came off the drawing board of heaven,” says Jordan. “God instituted marriage at creation. He created Eve with the purpose of creating a wife for Adam. Marriage is not a church institution. Marriage is not a civil, governmental institution. The church didn’t create marriage and the government didn’t create marriage; God created it. And He created it as an institution for the basic fundamental functioning of humanity on the planet. It’s God’s way of bringing about the population increase. Children are not designed to be brought into this world outside of the marriage bond.”

As Jordan explains, “Eve was created to cure the only deficit that a perfect Adam had—
he was alone. God wanted Adam to experience in his life the divine principle of life.”

From the Bible, we know God is a trinity and all three distinct, identifiable persons in the Godhead—the Father, Son and Holy Spirit—are equal in essence and being, eternally co-existing and functioning as one.

“God wants to share with us the way He lives,” says Jordan. “He doesn’t live as a solitary being; He lives in a fellowship. So, He created Adam so that he couldn’t live as a solitary being either.

“You are created to be dependant upon others. You were created by God to be a dependant person. To be a creature means you are dependant upon the Creator. Did you make the air you breathe? No, somebody else did. Gen. 2:7 says God ‘formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.’

“You need to learn to live for the benefit and good of others. That’s how God lives. The Father never lives for himself; He lives for the honor of His Son. The Son lives for the honor of the Father. The Spirit lives for the honor of the Son. They all live for one another.

“God creates Adam, and takes out of Adam the wife. And the reason He did it that way, by the way, is if He had created Adam out of the dirt, and then created Eve out of the dirt,

He would have had two humans directly created by God. When they sinned, He would have then had to have two Redeemers. One for each one. He created Adam and took Eve out of Adam so there would only be one blood. One head of the human race. One source in which all humanity came. Therefore, there could be one Redeemer for all humanity.

“In your marriage relationship, you have this spouse for whom you now can live; live for them. For her to win is for me to win. For her to lose is for me to lose. You see we’re not playing singles here; we’re playing doubles. We’re not playing, ‘It’s me against her and her against me.’ We’ve left all that behind. We’ve become one, and now I’m going to serve the lord when I serve her.

Paul, under the direction of Jesus Christ’s ongoing revelations to him from heaven, writes in Eph. 5, “Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it;
[26] That he might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the word,
[27] That he might present it to himself a glorious church, not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing; but that it should be holy and without blemish.
[28] So ought men to love their wives as their own bodies. He that loveth his wife loveth himself.
[29] For no man ever yet hated his own flesh; but nourisheth and cherisheth it, even as the Lord the church:
[30] For we are members of his body, of his flesh, and of his bones.
[31] For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall be joined unto his wife, and they two shall be one flesh.
[32] This is a great mystery: but I speak concerning Christ and the church.
[33] Nevertheless let every one of you in particular so love his wife even as himself; and the wife see that she reverence her husband.”

Jordan says, “Do you see how he says, ‘This is a great mystery: but I speak concerning Christ and the church’? Notice how he mingles those two things together? ‘This is a great mystery.’ In other words, there’s a spiritual issue in marriage. And you’re never really going to understand the issue of marriage and what it’s about until you understand the identity the Lord Jesus Christ has had with us.

“Jesus Christ became identified with humanity so much so that for 2,000 years people have been arguing, ‘Is He God or is He man?’ They’re so close together. Theologians have developed all these words—‘hypostatic union’; ‘the theantropic person’—but all that means is they don’t understand what they’re talking about because it’s too big for them!

“ ‘Is He God or is He man?’ Yes, He’s God, and yes, He’s man. They’re so close you can’t separate them. And that’s exactly the identity God has given you with your spouse! You’re one with Him just like He’s one with us! And the identity is so close together. That’s the picture of marriage. His union with us is the reality. And when you understand that, then you begin to understand your identity with your mate.

“It’s, ‘We’ve been so identified together it’s hard to even think of one of us without the other.’ It produces what verse 32 is talking about when it says, ‘Let him love his wife as himself.’ ”