Main Idea: Supporting each other by mutually sharing responsibilities secures lasting compatibility.

This morning we come to the last message in our series "Desperate Husbands and Wives." We’ve talked about things that husbands and wives are desperate for in their marriage. We’ve said they are desperate for closeness, companionship and trust. Today we want to talk about something that often isn’t noticed immediately in a marriage but over time creates feelings of anger, resentment, frustration and, ultimately, divorce. Because couples can’t seem to pinpoint the one reason for their divorce they will say it was the result of incompatibility. What makes couples compatible? It isn’t some mystical pairing of two very likeminded people because most marriages are made of people who are two very different people. What makes couples compatible is their ability to support each by mutually sharing responsibilities.

I believe one of the hidden things that husbands and wives are desperate for is a simple thing called support. How do you define support? Technically it means to keep something from falling or to hold something in place or to bear the weight of something. It can also mean to give strength or enable something to last. In a marriage, support is that ability each person has to keep your marriage together, sharing the load of living life, strengthen it when it’s threatened and give it the ability to last. How do you do that? I believe you demonstrate your support for each other by mutually sharing the responsibilities of your marriage.

What are those responsibilities? There are four areas that I want us to talk about this morning that must be mutually shared for either person to feel they have the support of the other. The four areas are financial responsibility, household responsibility, family responsibility and emotional responsibility. Three of these areas of support involve our actions more than our words, while the fourth requires both our actions and our words.

We’ve had a lot of fun talking about the "love bank" or "love checkbook" idea over these last few weeks. Your "love bank" is the way your emotions keep track of your feelings of closeness, companionship, trust and support. The concept is that good experiences that meet the needs of closeness, companionship, trust and support make deposits in your love bank and bad experiences make withdrawals. The key, we said, was to keep your deposits ahead of your withdrawals so you don’t get overdrawn. It’s been hilarious to hear your stories about making deposits and keeping score on your accounts.

However, if there is one area that will consistently deplete the units in your love bank with your spouse it will be in your failure to support each other by mutually sharing the responsibilities of your marriage. The key words in that statement are "mutually sharing." It means the sense of equal give and take regarding the things that make your marriage work. It means your willingness to do what Paul said in Ephesians 5:21, "You will submit to one another out of reverence for Christ." If you do not reach a place in your marriage where you choose to subordinate your needs and wants to the needs and wants of the other, you will never be able to support each other. If you don’t support each other then your marriage will fall apart because the weight of responsibilities is just too great.

Why do you stop supporting each other? Well before you got married couples follow a very basic rule: Do whatever you can to make the other person happy and avoid anything that makes the other person unhappy. After marriage the rule changes to: Do whatever you can to make yourself happy and avoid anything that makes you unhappy. Now both of you still have moments where you are willing to live by rule number one. What happens is that one person will be living by rule number one and giving support while the other person is living by rule number two and taking all the support for themselves. If you are giving and not receiving support, then your love bank is going to be overdrawn. If you are receiving and not giving support, then your love bank with the other person is overdrawn. If it doesn’t change, then somebody is going to file for Chapter 11!

The first place where support needs to be shared is the financial responsibility of your marriage. (I Tim. 5:8, I Tim. 6:6-8). In I Timothy 5:8 Paul has been giving instructions about responsibilities that individual family members have to provide for those who are widowed in their own family. By providing care for the widowed in your family you won’t create a drain on church resources. He says, however, that a person who fails to care for his or her own family has denied what it means to be a Christian. The word he uses means "to think beforehand." It means caring or providing for your family won’t happen without some intentional planning.

Failure to share the financial responsibility in marriage is the cause given of at least 50% of those who are divorced. The truth is that money problems are symptoms of an inability to relate on other levels. What you do with your money reflects your priorities and if your priorities are not shared mutually then you are going to find supporting each other financially difficult. And the biggest reason your priorities get out of balance is because of an inability to be content with what you have. Paul said in I Timothy 6:8, "So if we have enough food and clothing, let us be content." The problem is "enough" is never enough for most of us.

So how do you show your support for the financial responsibility of your marriage? It begins by making a mutual commitment to work together on your finances. Some of you are amazingly specific budget people. You have every nickel and dime accounted for. Others are general budget people—if you have it, you generally spend it! Seriously, Kathy and I have found that sitting down from time to time and putting down on paper our income, expenses and goals then talking about them helps us communicate support for the financial responsibility of our marriage. I have discovered that when I do this then she feels that I am supporting her not only financially but also emotionally.

Many of you will say to me that your financial problems can’t be solved that easily and maybe they cannot. But I assure you of one thing and it is most of us have one basic problem: We spend more than we make! Unless you both make a commitment to spend less than you make, you will not resolve your problems with financial responsibility. So today make some quality time, take a deep breath, say a prayer and ask the question, "Honey, where can I show my support for you by mutually sharing our financial responsibility?"

Another area where we need to show support is by mutually sharing the household responsibility (Prov. 31:27). Proverbs 31 is a chapter that describes the qualities and characteristics of a godly woman. The passage is one that should guide the lifestyle of every Christian woman because it describes someone who is strong, vibrant, and active and is a leader in both her home and her community. One of the characteristics is that she "carefully watches all that goes on in her household." The word "watches" means to be alert, aware or focused on what needs to be done in order to make the household run smoothly. By her attentiveness to the household then her home doesn’t suffer the results of laziness or carelessness.

I chose this verse not to say that responsibilities of the home is "woman’s work" that is beneath a man but the truth is that a woman generally cares more about "things around the house" than a man. I know that we have many two-income, two-career homes and that many of your household responsibilities are shared. Yet studies show that 59% of wives do more than ten hours of housework a week while only 22% of husbands even come close to that. While we men may say we share the household responsibilities, our wives know it’s mostly talk. I may think that I’m doing some big deal by occasionally cleaning the bathroom or running the vacuum, but it really is such a small part compared to the things Kathy does. We can joke about this and offer some not so gentle ribbing but William Harley says that failure to share the household responsibilities is a time bomb in many marriages. It lies there ticking, waiting until the frustration gets to the breaking point and then it explodes. More often than not it is the wife who feels the pressure for the household and if the responsibilities aren’t shared mutually, then there is going to some major withdrawals in the love bank!

If you feel the time bomb ticking in your marriage about household responsibilities, what can you do? First, you need to take some time to stop and sort out your assumptions and expectations about your home and how it should be maintained. Then make a list of all the things that have to be done from cleaning the toilet to washing to the cars. Next, divide up the list by taking the tasks that you like to do then decide how to handle the ones you don’t like to do. After you have made the list, divided the list and shared the list, do this: take responsibility for the thing that the other person wants done the most! Why should I clean the toilet if I hate doing it? Because it’s a big deal to your wife! Why should I cook a big meal when we can get pizza on our way home? Because it’s a huge deal for your husband! You make deposits, big deposits, by sharing the household responsibilities!

The next area that we need to demonstrate support for each other is by sharing the family responsibility. (I Tim. 5:8, I Tim. 3:4, 12) Go back to I Timothy 5:8 for a moment. I want you to see that caring for those in your own household is more than just meeting the financial responsibility for their care. In fact, Paul says that for pastors and deacons that one of the requirements is that they "must manage" their own family well. In other words, those who are leaders in the church must demonstrate intentional responsibility for the care and well being of their family. In I Timothy 5:8 Paul says that those who won’t care for their own household are worse than those who don’t even believe. The point is that if there is one place our faith is most needed and tested it, it is in our success or failure in sharing the responsibilities of our family.

Where is the biggest source of stress that prevents us from sharing the responsibilities of our family? There are two areas – one is time and the other is work. Our inability to set boundaries on our time and our work deplete the energies that we want to give to our family. Those who are successful in supporting their family are those who manage time and work like money. In other words, they talk about them, share their feelings that come up when time and work crunch family responsibilities, plan their use of both and prioritize things that waste both time and work.

Men, more often than not this is the place where our wives feel they have the least support. Two-career families make it especially hard but I believe that a marriage with a working husband and a wife working at home can make it equally as difficult. Why? Because we say, "She’s at home all day, she can give the kids what they need." The answer is while she can do some, she can’t do it all – they need you and she needs you. Supporting your family takes time, skill, some very intentional planning and making a decision about what is most important. Unless you as a couple choose to set some clear intentional boundaries on your use of time and your work, they will both eat up the quality of life needed to support your family.

Now I want to recommend two books to you that will give you more help than I can give in a sermon: Choosing to Cheat: Who Wins When Work and Family Collide by Andy Stanley and Making Room for Life: Trading Chaotic Lifestyles for Connected Relationships by Randy Frazee. They are very readable, practical guides to help men and women do the right things to create support for your family relationships. Take it from someone who continually struggles with setting boundaries with time and work, I wish I had read these when our girls came home from the hospital instead of after they left home for life. You are not going to fix this in a day but beginning the process of asking the question about boundaries on your time and work is an investment in support for your family responsibility.

There’s one last area of support that husbands and wives need to share and that is in the area of emotional responsibility (Prov. 31:26, Col. 3:19). The woman of Proverbs 31 is a woman who uses words wisely and kindly in her household. Paul instructs husbands in Colossians 3:19 to "love your wives and never treat them harshly." The actual thought in Colossians is to not use them as a place to vent your anger, either verbally or physically. The biblical challenge, then, is for both husbands and wives to invest in the emotional responsibility in the marriage. That means we find ways with our words and with our actions to affirm each other. We do those things that build them up and not tear them down.

Husbands and wives need the other to be their biggest fan. The need for self-esteem is usually something that is met or unmet long before you ever say, "I do." In other words, you bring that into your marriage from your home. Kathy and I were both very fortunate in that our parents had such a strong belief in what we could do. They believed in us so much that we felt there was nothing we couldn’t try. One of the things that both of us miss about not having our fathers living is that we feel that void of affirmation. (When we first got married I used to call Kathy "Ford" because she always had a "better idea"!) If that inherent sense of affirmation is missing, then a husband and wife are going to need to fill that void by supporting each other emotionally.

What can you do to support each other emotionally? The very best thing is to communicate appreciation for one another by your words and by your actions. Most of us have a deep need to be respected, valued, and appreciated by our spouse. We need that affirmation clearly and often. Your communicating appreciation is one of the easiest needs to meet. By a simple "You look great!" or a phone call on a hard day can build your love bank in ways that you would never imagine. On the other hand, ignoring someone or hurting someone with a word or action can deplete someone in an alarming way. You can let the air out of one another’s balloon with just one small thing. If you can be affected that easily, then why not affirm them by communicating your appreciation for them. We show our support for each other by sharing the emotional responsibility.

Now here’s the thing, husbands and wives, if showing support for financial, household, family and emotional responsibilities adds deposits to your spouse’s love checkbook, then why do you want to only make withdrawals? If you and your spouse love each other and are in love with each other, then you will have a happy marriage. If you are not in love, then you will feel cheated. If you feel cheated, you will become desperate. When you become desperate you will look for closeness, companionship, trust and support. If those needs are not met by your spouse, then you become vulnerable to someone who will meet those needs. The fact is, whatever you have to do to trigger the feelings of being in love with each other is worth everything to your marriage.

How desperate is your marriage? Tomorrow is Valentine’s Day and while you should do whatever you need to show your spouse you remembered the day, how much more important is it to remember your life together. Isn’t it time you said to each other, "By the grace of God found in Jesus Christ we don’t need to be a desperate husband and wife anymore. Together we will do everything we can to meet the needs we both share in our marriage."

Sunday, February 13, 2005

Dr. Bruce Tippit, Pastor

First Baptist Church

Jonesboro, Arkansas