Video Transcript: Spiritually Connected

All right, welcome back. Again, my name is Steve Elzinga. We're in the pre  marriage coaching class. And we're looking at the seven connections that a  couple has. And in this session, we're going to see how a couples are connected spiritually speaking. Our spirituality in our marriage is reflected in creation in  Genesis 1, then God said, Let us make man in our image in our likeness, God  created mankind in his own image in the image of God, He created them, male  and female, He created them. So in some ways, we fulfill that image of God, in  which two of us it takes two to sort of reflect the image of God. And remember,  God is a triune, God. Three, and one and husband and wife reflected, reflected  in the two and one that's Genesis 2:24, a man leaves his father, and mother and his united to his wife, and they become one flesh, the Trinity is the mystery of  the three in one, marriage is the mystery of the two in one. So this desire that  that a couple has of coming together, getting engaged, getting married, forming  a family, is part of the image of God, at work in them, and the mystery of the  Trinity, how in the world can three persons, God the Father, the Son, and the  Holy Spirit, how can three separate persons be one God? Well, it's a mystery.  Their connection is so close, that that that, that their separateness is overcome  by their oneness. And the same mystery now is being reflected in a man and a  woman. How is it that we become one? Well, we're not sure it's a mystery. It's a  mystery of being so close, it's a mystery rooted in who God is. Our spirituality in  our marriage is reflected in Christ in His Church. Ephesians 5:21 starts out this  way, submit to one another, out of reverence to Christ, he's talking about a man  and a woman. Notice that Paul, the author of the book of Ephesians, begins his  discussion of marriage, saying that husbands and wives need to submit to one  another. This is not one submitting to one. It's both submitting to one another.  Verse 22, Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the  Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ as the head of the  church's body, which he is the savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so  also wives should submit to their husbands in everything the wife submits to the  husband like the church submits to Christ. Some see this as submission as  respect, respect issue that the that the wife needs to respect the husband. Verse 25, Husbands love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave Himself  up for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the Word, and to present her to Himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle  or any other blemish but holy and blameless. In the same way, husbands are to  love their wives, as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. After  all, no one ever hated his own body, but they feed and care for their body just as Christ does the church, for we are all members of His Body. For this reason, a  man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will  become one flesh. That's what we read in Genesis 2. This is a profound  mystery. But I'm talking about Christ in the church, however, each one of you  must also love his wife, as he loves himself and the wife must respect her 

husband. So the husband submits to the wife, as Christ loves the church and  was willing to die for the church. Some see the husband submission as love.  The wife wants love. And a lot of times a husband wants respect. So the wife  submits with respect. The husband submits with love. The wife submits with  

respect, and they're both versions of love. They're both versions of subjecting  yourself to one another, we're made differently. So women want love men want  respect The husband submits with love. Okay? Our spirituality is also reflected  reflected in marriage is reflected in our habits. Our habits of relationships are  reflected in creation, it's reflected in Christ and His Church. And marriage is also  reflected in relationship habits. The basic habit of any relationship is and you  should know these things if you've taken that connection class already. Talking,  listening repeatedly, if you want to get to know anyone, if you want a relationship with anyone, it takes talking, listening, and you'd have to do it many times  repeatedly. Over and over again, that's how you have a relationship with your  parents, your friends, people at school, people at work people at church. And it's certainly true of a relationship of two people that want to get married. It takes  talking, listening repeatedly. A husband and wife need to have habits of talking  and listening to each other, ie, date nights, meals together, evening walks, text  messages, emails, phone conversations, if a couple wants meaningful, a  meaningful relationship, then they need time repeatedly talking and listening,  and they need habits in their lives. A lot of relationships fail, because people  don't have habits, that they're talking and listening opportunities are haphazard.  They don't have standard times that they meet together to make sure it  happens. That's That's what church is all about. For example, church, why do  we have church once a week? We can have it every other week. We can have it once a month. But we need this habit of once, one day and seven to stop  everything we're doing and say what are we doing? Let's reflect on who we are,  and what it's all about. Let's reflect on what's important. Let's reflect on our  relationship to God, our relationship to our family and the people that we care  about. Let's get our marching orders. We go to church, we give praise we give  thanks. We get encouraged by the word. And we do it every week. And the  people that don't do it every week, you know that they're haphazard, and then  they stopped coming all together. It's it's habits that keep us going forward.  Husbands and wives not only need connection habits in their relationship to  each other, but they also need connection habits in their relationship to God.  Habits of prayer. So that's, we call talking to God we call that prayer. We call  listening to God, Bible reading and we and we talked about repeatedly. When  the word devotions, devotions is talking and listening to God repeatedly. And out of that a relationship is formed. Now often, each one in a marriage has their own personal devotions. Like I you know, I get up in the morning, I do my devotions.  My wife gets up in the morning, she does her devotions a time of talking and  listening to God. But if a couple wants a marriage connection to God, they need 

to have habits of talking and listening to God together. Now, that might be a new thing for the couple that you're trying to coach. Maybe they have their own  devotional life, if they don't they need to get one. If they don't, if they have a  devotional life that they do separately, and they're engaged and not living  together, so it's probably likely that that's the situation. How do they start moving towards doing devotions together, reading the Bible, praying together doesn't  have to be some big elaborate thing. But without it, there's an old saying a  couple that prays together stays together. So how do we get that habit in their  life? Genesis 3. This is how sin, the story of how sin comes into the world. Now  the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the Lord God had  made. You said to the woman, Did God really say you must not eat from any  tree in the garden? The woman said to the serpent, We may eat from the trees  in the garden, but God did say you must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the  middle of the garden, and you must not touch it or you will die. You will not  certainly die. The servant said to the woman, For God knows that when you eat  from it, your eyes will be open, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.  When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom. She took it and she also gave it  to her husband who was with her, and he ate it. Then the eyes of both of them  were open, and they realized they were naked. And they sewed fig leaves  together and made coverings for themselves. Then the man and his wife heard  the sound of the Lord God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the  day. And they hid from the LORD God among the trees of the garden, but the  Lord God called to the man, where are you? Alright, questions. These are two  questions. And I want, you know, they have their book, and I want them to  answer these questions separately. Number one, What two things did the man  and the woman hide from? So we just read this passage, you read this passage  to the couple that you're coaching, okay, as you've listened now, in this passage, what two things did the man and woman hide from verse seven, and verse  eight? In verse seven, if you go back and look at it, you'll discover that they hid  from each other sin comes into the world, they can no longer face each other in  their imperfection in their nakedness. There's something wrong with me, you're  noticing something. I'm insecure about it. Okay, there was there was a  brokenness element that came in the relationship between the man and the  woman. That's what sin does. It makes you hide, it makes you distrustful of  others. And then verse eight, God comes walking in the garden of the cool the  day, and where's the man and the woman they're hiding. So they hide from each other in their nakedness. And now when God comes around, they're hiding from  God. So this is what sin does, it makes us hide? It breaks our relationship to  God. And that breaks our relationship to the people around us. And we end up  hiding from God when he comes around, and we ended up hiding from each  other, we guard our lives, we're not vulnerable, we're not open. So question, in 

what ways? Does what ways do the does the average couple hide from each  other? So this is just a general question that I want each one to answer? what  ways do you think couples hide from one another? They spend money don't tell  the other. They flirted with somebody of the opposite sex, they were at work.  And they don't tell someone. They're on the internet looking at sites they  shouldn't be listened to. They're going through struggles, and they don't share  with each other. So all the different ways that husbands and wives hide from one another. In what ways do you hide from your fiance, so it's easy to talk about  other couples? So so you're getting them started? And they're thinking about  other couples and what they do? But now Okay, so what ways do you hide from  God? And what ways does the average couple of hide from from God? what  ways do you hide from your Fiat fiance? But what ways do you hide from God?  In what ways do you personally hide from God? So you have each one of them  do that? And then they'll look at their answers together. What walls get in the  way of spiritual connection habits, which wall gets in your way. So again, in a  broad, general way, and then zeroing on that person. So here's some walls for  them to think about what was get in your way of getting connecting habits with,  with your potential spouse, getting into connecting habits with God, getting a  prayer life, getting a devotional life, doing devotions together as a couple  praying together, reading the Bible together, going to church together, studying  the Bible together, taking CLI courses together, all these things that help a  couple grow spiritually, what is keeping you from doing this? What are the walls  that that get in the way? Procrastination? Okay, maybe maybe you are one of  the couples. The guy or the gal is struggling with procrastination, they want to,  they want to start praying together, but they just don't do it, or the wall of a  critical attitude. The way you want to study the Bible is not the way I want to  study the Bible. You want to go in deep, I want to be shallow or vice versa. Or  there's the wall of no discipline. We start things that we never finish the wall of  fear of vulnerability. I don't you know, when we pray together, it's too vulnerable.  We're sharing our intimate thoughts. It's weird. You know, husbands and wives  can be married. They can have a sexual relationship in the bedroom, which is  very intimate, but they can feel like it's even more intimate when they pray  together. I mean, if you've never prayed with your spouse, try it. Go home  tonight and say, Honey, you know, I watched this thing as in the guy suggested  we sit down and pray. Alright, so let's do it and see how awkward it is if you if if  you don't have the practice of doing that the wall of the fear of facing the truth,  you know, when when you start walking with God and you invite God to sit at a  table, all of a sudden, you share more deeply than you would otherwise. It's very interesting. husbands and wives that sit down and they invite God to sit there,  you know, I can, I can be fighting with my wife about things. And, you know, I'm  a lawyer type person, and I'm arguing and I'm, you know, I'm trying to get my  way, and then all of a sudden, now we're gonna pray about it. Okay, while we're 

praying, I can't I can't be pushing. I can't be like winning an argument because I  know that God, the One who knows everything about me, he knows my motives, is sitting right there. All of a sudden, I'm feeling a little more intimidated, that  maybe I should look at some of my own issues, rather than blame my wife for  everything, you know, in a conversation, I might just freely blame her. It's your  fault. If you just changed, things would improve. But with God sitting right there,  and he knows the truth, and I know that he knows the truth, it's going to be very  difficult for me to point the finger over here. When I know there's probably things that I need to work on so so people can become way more responsible way  more willing to take on some of the blame for things themselves, and way more  gracious to the other person. Wall of unteachable attitude, we don't want to be  taught, we don't want to have an intimate relationship with someone who's who,  you know, we're gonna start talking about our behaviors and how well well we  get along. Wall of past relational hurt, you know, I'm not as willing to go. Some  couples are not willing to go that deep in a relationship, because they've been  burned in the past, they keep everything and at the surface, they don't tell the  spouse things. There's plenty of married couples, who don't go in deep with their deepest thoughts, their fears, their hopes, their dreams, their disappointments,  their frustrations, they keep them to themselves, and they never really get to  know each other. And it's in the spiritual dimension that some of that can be  talked about and dealt with the wall of fear of what people think of you, I guess,  the wall of unbelief is all kinds of walls, walls of laziness, the wall of distraction,  the wall of other priorities, we don't have time to go to church, we don't have  time for a Bible study. We don't have time to pray for one another, we get other  things that we're doing, we'll get back to it one day, when we have time, we'll get to this thing. These are all just, they're just walls, they're just things that keep us  apart from one another. It's, it's, it's that original sin we're hiding from each other  in our nakedness. We don't want to face our brokenness. And when God comes  around, we want to hide in the bushes from him to see we know that we need to  come out from outside those walls, the wall of past failure, maybe the one  couple was married before and it ended in failure. And so how are we going to  deal with the wall of any you can come up with whatever walls sort of stand in  the way of a relationship. Okay. So those are things that you're looking at each  one individually is, you know, looking at these things, writing things down. And  now you come together to talk about this stuff. So questions together. Think for a moment of how close each of you are to God. Mark an X on your line in the  diagram, draw a line between the two exes. That's the distance between you  and your spouse. You can see that the closer you both are to God, the less  distance you will have to overcome in your relationship to each other. So here's,  here's the diagram I'm talking about. So it's all in the book. But in the diagram,  you see God at the top, and then you see husband and wife. So the husband,  you know, puts an X on that line, you know, if he puts it an X really high, then 

he's saying I'm really close to God. If he puts an X really low, then he's saying  he's kind of distant from God. And then the wife on the other side is the same  thing. If she puts an X closer to God, then she's saying I'm really close to God. If she puts an X way down, then she's not close to God. So let's say the husband  puts an X is not that close to God, he puts it towards the bottom. The wife isn't  that close to God puts that x closer to the bottom, and then you draw a line  between the two x's. And you can see if they both put it On the bottom, that line  between the two is really long. The point here is, the closer you both are to God, the closer you are, the more potential you have to be closer to each other. The  distance between the two of you is smaller when you're both close to God. If one is close to God and one isn't, is still see, there's that distance. So you both have  to have a close relationship to God you both have it was relationship to God,  then the distance between you is smaller. God is the key to making that distance between two people remember, the sin makes us hide from one another. And  Grace is what takes us out of the hiding. God sent His Son to die for us. You  know, God didn't leave Adam and Eve hiding from him. He came and said,  where are you? He went and found them that's what God's grace does. God's  grace takes the man and the woman, you don't have to hide from one another,  we can face each other. The brokenness can be made into wholeness. Number  two, what walls keep you both from from the spiritual connection habits? What  are the what are the things that are holding you back from having a real spiritual  connection with this person? Not they're dating, they're not married, they're not  living in the same house, hopefully. So you know, what experiences do they  have right now they can already start working on becoming one spiritually, start  working on habits of sharing the Bible, working on habits of actually praying  together, going to church together, go into Bible studies together, involved in  Kingdom activities together, so that, you know, the closer they get to God, the  closer that they get to one another. Number three, what spiritual connection  habits can you commit to in your relationship? So as you're working with this  couple, you're trying to get them? What things will you commit to, at least once a week sitting down with the Bible open and looking at it and discussing it? You  know, prayer, how many times together are we going to pray this week, every  time we meet once a week, once a month, I don't know. Most couples do  absolutely nothing. So whatever you can get a couple to agree to. And now you  can hold them accountable to do it. You want to start getting those habits going,  even before they're married. Each of you are asked to form your own prayer  using A.C.T.S., A.C.T.S. prayer guide. If this is a retreat setting, this is what I've  done in retreat settings, I asked a couple to do this, to write out their prayers.  And I'll show you what this A.C.T.S. thing is. And then at the end of the retreat,  we do communion together. And I have each couple do the communion for the  other. So the one couple, you know, gives the bread and gives the wine to the to the other for or I mean the the one person of a couple. So the man first, I'm 

going to give you my potential spouse, the wine and the bread and she does the same. But in that little mini ceremony together, I'm going to have them praying  for each other using this A.C.T.S. formula. works really, really well. But this is the A.C.T.S. Formula. A stands for adoration. So I praise you God for another couple writes things down that they want to praise God for confession, I confess, I  confess that, you know, I have not I've not pursued habits in the spiritual world. I  confess that I haven't been a very good listener. I confess you get the couple to  say you know, things that they're sorry about Thanksgiving I give thanks for you  know, the gifts and the abilities that I see in this, this person. supplication, I ask  God that he would bless us that he would show us the way that he would you  know, whatever the needs are. So these are the four, four areas and you get the couples to write lists, write things down and then if this is a retreat at the  communion time, you can have them actually pray these things to each other  works really, really really well. Okay, so at the end of this session where we're  talking about spirituality again we can close in prayer. So a husband or you  know potential husband or wife hold hands and all pray together. Dear God, I  need your grace to love you and my wife or my future wife more wife or future  wife Dear God, I need your grace to love you and my future husband more both  together help us both to know you more both help us both commit ourselves to  you and each other. Both help us both to experience more of your grace and  power on our lives. The future husband help me Lord to put practices and habits in my life that draw me closer to you and my wife, my future wife, future wife  responds, help me, Lord, to put practices and habits in my life that draw me  closer to you and my future husband. And finally, both in the name of Jesus we  pray, amen. And again, we're trying to, you know, every, every session, we're  trying to help them open their mouths and get used to praying with each other.  Because again, a couple that prays together, stays together.