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God intended marriage to be a kind of foretaste of heaven. It is his model to reflect the richness of the relationship he intends between Christ and his church. However, when God's prescription for marriage is abandoned, the marriage relationship can appear to bring a foretaste of hell. We have already noted the way in which the influence of society has contributed towards this breakdown. We now turn our attention to some of the personal factors that can put marriage under stress.

Introduction

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Walter Chantry, a contemporary Christian author, put his finger on one of the great marriage wreckers when he wrote, "How soon marriage counselling sessions would end if husbands and wives were competing in thoughtful self-denial." In other words he is saying, that selfish self-centredness lies at the root of many failing and failed marriages.

God's purpose in bringing two people together is not to make the one the mindless slave of the other, but to produce a single unit, where each is no longer thinking of themselves but the good of the other. It should no longer be a case of what is best for ME but what is best for US

Stress Points in MarriageConsideration:

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Self-centredness can cause the marriage partner to evade their God-given responsibilities. The husband may seek to absolve himself of the spiritual headship of the family. The wife may decide she’s going to wear the trousers and take the lead. Both are recipes for disaster! In the past he role of headship has been abused as husbands have treated it as a charter for bullying! That’s an approach that needs to be challenged.

The God-given role of headship involves not just leadership but care protection and sacrificial love, "as Christ loved the church” Eph. 5.25. Like Christ, the husband has to be prepared to make great sacrifices for the good of his bride. If feminists and chauvinists alike understood this, I doubt the women’s liberation movement would have gained much momentum.

Stress Points in MarriageConsideration:

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The wife's role also involves self-denial, expressed in submission to her husband. In Eph. 5.22 we read, "Wives submit to your husbands”. The Bible provides us with a model for that submission. It is the kind of submission that Christ gave to his Father. It did not deny his equality with the Father. It did not make him a doormat. It enabled him to fulfil his God-given task. Jesus did not lose his self worth but was exalted to the right hand of the majesty on high.

The submission of wives is to be modelled on that! Submission should not cause the violation of conscience, or produce a "yes sir no sir three bags full sir" servility. It recognises the husband's God-given role of leadership.

Stress Points in MarriageConsideration:

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The importance of these respective roles can be illustrated. Imagine a couple waltzing around a dance room floor with a gracefulness and beauty. The man and woman have different roles, different steps. One leads the other follows. As far as the observer is concerned the graceful harmony is the product of both accepting their roles. However if the woman were to say, "I'm fed up with these dance steps, I want to do exactly the same steps as my partner” the result would be disaster.

Or if the man were to say, "I'm fed up taking the lead I want to do exactly the same steps as my partner" the result would again be a total disaster. The graceful harmony is only produced when each accepts their role, so too in marriage!

Stress Points in MarriageConsideration:

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A second marriage breaker is the growth of conflict within the relationship. God gave Adam a partner but didn’t intend her to be a sparring partner. He created a helpmeet not a RIVAL. Rivalry can occur at a number of different levels. First, a quest for recognition. Whenever we begin to take our partners for granted then we're stripping away our partner’s sense of self worth.

Husbands are often more guilty of this and their wives begin to think "All I am is this man's scivvy". In that situation the wife will often fight for recognition as she seeks to assert her self worth. In her mind her partner’s faults are magnified while her own are minimised.

Stress Points in MarriageConflict:

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A second area of conflict is that of priorities. Major disagreements over what is truly important arise! Is the husbands profession more important than his family? Does the wife spend too much time with children and not enough with her husband? Is too great a priority given to a hobby or sport to the neglect of that which is more important?

We joke about golfing widows but a great deal of conflict can be produced within a marriage if a woman feels she takes second place to a set of matched woods or Slazenger irons.

Stress Points in MarriageConflict:

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A third area of conflict concerns trouble with the in-laws. Parents who refuse to let go of their children can place enormous strains on their children’s marriage. There is often a very real conflict of loyalty, which pulls a person between loyalty to marriage partner and loyalty to parent.

Some parents want their children to live just around the corner after they are married or insist on scheduling how many visits are made to them in the course of the week, or insist upon the newly weds giving inordinate weight to their views?

Stress Points in MarriageConflict:

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A fourth area of conflict concerns finance. How should the money be spent? Whose money is it? Who should have access to it? Often major purchases are made without consultation or budgeting thus causing great strain on the relationship.

A final area of conflict concerns unrealistic expectations of one’s new marriage partner. It is said that “love is blind” and during courtship a person can convince themselves that their partner is faultless or that any little faults they possess will soon be changed. That illusion is soon shattered, and some people find it very difficult to live with the reality, warts and all!

Stress Points in MarriageConflict:

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Nothing puts marriage under stress like a breakdown in communication. God made man to communicate, one of the things which marks man out from the rest of the created order is his rationality, which equips him to communicate, ideas, feelings, concerns etc. It is that which enriches the quality of the marriage relationship.

Adam was not given a pet dog or a robot as his partner but a soul-mate with whom he could communicate. Good communication in a marriage allows problems to be confronted and misunderstandings to be resolved without hurting one another. As soon as a problem is put into words it is already partially resolved.

Stress Points in MarriageCommunication:

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Of course the marriage partner needs to choose an appropriate time to communicate. Arriving home after an exhausting day at work and before his coat is removed a husband may resent being asked to solve half a dozen domestic problems, when all he needs is ten minutes to put his feet up.

Or, the husband may try to offload all his work problems immediately after his poor wife has bathed the children and put them to bed. She too may need a little time to recover from a gruelling day.

Stress Points in MarriageCommunication:

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However the problem of communication often runs deeper than that. Some people don’t want to discuss problems, they want to pretend they don't exist, they want to run away from them and ender a private world of escapism, taking refuge behind a newspaper, book or in front of the TV screen.

Their partner thinks, “I might as well have married a trappist monk or a stuffed monkey for all the conversation I get”.

I read recently, "There is no lonelier person than the one who lives with a spouse with whom he or she cannot communicate".

Stress Points in MarriageCommunication:

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Where there is no verbal communication, we are nevertheless sending out all sorts of signals to our partner: "I'm not interested in … I don't place much value upon you …etc." Now when there's no communication, resentment and anger build up and eventually there's an explosion of communication but its not reasoned but abusive, not constructive but hurtful.

Communication acts like a pressure valve in marriage, where the pressure valve is not in use the boiler blows up.

Stress Points in MarriageCommunication:

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We need to guard against letting our young people rush into marriage. It’s better to remain unmarried than to marry the wrong partner! A young Christian woman shared her heart-breaking story. Desperate to get married and in the absence of young Christian men, she married a man who had no interest in Christ or in the things, which she held dear . As a result her life was one of total misery. She said with tears in her eyes, "I was prepared to marry at any cost and for 15 years I’ve being paying a terrible cost”. It was as though she were standing on a table and trying to pull her husband up to enjoy the things of God. The reality was that is was far easier for him to pull her down.

The church needs to be increasingly committed to pre-marital counselling.

Response of the ChurchPreparing for Marriage:

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In addition we need to be constantly exposed to the biblical teaching and pattern for marriage. If our marriages are to be preserved there is no substitute for an unwavering commitment to make them work. We need to learn the areas of danger and threat to our marriages and learn how to deal with them?

Someone has said, "marriages may be made in heaven but man is responsible for the maintenance work."

When we fail to give the business of maintenance serious attention we're soon faced with major repairs.

Response of the ChurchPreserving a Healthy Marriage:

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We need to be realistic about our marriage partners and accept each other warts and all! Why? Because it is within the marriage bond that we should find our greatest security, which rests in the knowledge that our partner accepts us with all our weaknesses. They are not thrown in our face or joked about in company! Difficulties in marriage should be addressed as soon as they arise and not allowed to simmer and produce estrangement. "A happy marriage is a union of two good forgivers”. Do not take one another for granted.

Billy Sunday the American evangelist gave this advice, "Try praising your wife even if it does frighten her at first“.

Response of the ChurchRepairing the Broken Marriage:

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Marriage is one of God's greatest gifts. Once we are convinced of that surely we will do all in our power to prepare our young people for marriage and to preserve and enrich the marriage relationships that are current. At the same time we have a God-given responsibility to seek to bring healing to relationships, which are currently under strain.

Jesus has called us to the ministry of reconciliation. He alone can provide the grace and empowering gifts that we need to sustain and develop the deepest of human relationships.

Conclusion

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