Effectively Communicating (God's Love to Your Mate), Part 1

The greatest thing you can do for your marriage is draw closer and closer and closer and closer to walk with God. The only one, that can ever satisfy the deepest needs of your heart and your life is Christ. The only way that you or I or anyone will be able to treat our mates in a way that will cultivate and develop them becoming who God wants them to become is when God gives that to us, by the Holy Spirit, through the Lord Jesus, through His Word and the community of God’s people.

And so, it’s super counterintuitive. We are all human. We just so want that other person to come through for us. And so, what I want to do now is I want to talk about how to effectively communicate.

And when I talk about communication, not so much in the classical, the meeting of meanings. That’s I think a good definition of communication. It’s the privilege of exchanging vulnerabilities, in the words of Norm Wright. It’s the process of sharing yourself verbally and non-verbally in such a way that the other person can both accept and understand what you’re saying.

What I want to do is I want to talk about how do you communicate God’s love to the person He gave you?

I want to encourage you that biblical communication is the transfer of God’s love – and underline each one of these words: in meaningful, understandable, supernatural ways through you to your mate.

It’s kind of hard to grasp that other than the Lord Jesus Himself, other than the Spirit of God living inside your spouse, the number one agent of expressing God’s love to your mate is you. I mean, that’s sobering.

Our text is Colossians chapter 3 verses 12 through 17. And it starts out with what we already possess. “So as those who have been chosen of God, holy and beloved, put on a heart of compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience.”

So, putting on a heart of compassion, compassion is empathy to action versus being cynical. You talk about something that’ll change your marriage more than any technique or any skill? You start putting on a heart of compassion.

Empathy is the first step to every great relation – it’s beginning to look at life through their lens. The second, he says, “Put on a heart of kindness.” Kindness is whatever is helpful, beneficial, versus being critical.

To begin to see your mate and get up in the morning and say, “What would a kind act look like? What would uplift her day? What would make his day? What small thing could I do? What word of encouragement? What is something is special to them?” It’s just being helpful.

Third is humility. It means putting their needs first. It’s the posture of a servant.

Philippians chapter 2, verses 5 through 11 are the key passage. We are told, “Have this attitude in yourselves, which was also in Christ Jesus. Although He existed in the form of God, He didn’t regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself,” literally, He veiled His attributes, “taking the form of a bondservant and becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a shameful cross,” is the idea. “Therefore, God highly exalted Him,” it goes on to say. Because of his humility, “Every knee will bow, every tongue will confess in heaven, on earth, and under the earth, that Jesus Christ is Lord.”

And His humility was He left the worship of angels as the most supreme Creator, Sustainer Being who spoke the galaxies into existence, and came born as a hopeless, vulnerable baby, by Himself. And that He went through the rigors of humanity and rejection. He came to His own and those who were His own did not receive Him.

And why? It was for the joy set before Him, He endured the cross. And the omniscience of God looking down the tunnel of being outside and seeing all things of time, He saw you! And He said, “It is worth it,” to leave that glory to take on human flesh, to live a perfect life, to die for you, unfairly. To be rejected, to be stripped naked, to feel the rejection of the Father when He took your sin and my sin.

And He says, remember when He told the disciples? This is sort of missing in Christianity today. He didn’t say, “Follow Me and you’ll feel good. Follow Me and you’ll be happy. Follow Me and you’ll be upwardly mobile. Follow Me and everything will go out right. Follow Me and all your desires will be fulfilled.” He said, “Follow Me, take up your cross, deny yourself, and walk in the same manner that I walk.” “Because unless a grain of wheat fall into the earth and die, it remains by itself alone. But if it dies, it brings forth much fruit.”

At the heart of my human marriage struggles is I need to die to myself and I need to be co-resurrected and live with the perspective to put on a heart each and every day. The reason I go over this each and every day, I pray this each and every day, “God, today, please, give me a heart of compassion. First, for Theresa and then for everyone I meet. God, please give me a heart of kindness. Help me to see through Your eyes.”

I was, yesterday, just in between times, and I went to a little coffee shop and I got a cup of coffee and there was a, let me just say this nicely, a very sad, unattractive woman who gave me my coffee and I asked her, “How are you doing?” And she looked at me with these sad eyes and said, “Okay.” And she didn’t have to say much more, but I…

There’s a man that gave me a checkbook and he put five thousand dollars in it and he said, “Meet me in three months, and I have money, but I don’t have a whole lot of time. I own this company and you’re a pastor in this high-need area. Whenever you find someone that can’t pay their electricity, you find a girl that was going to abort her baby, whatever you need to do, you just, just for me, you just pay for it”

And so, I found myself in these early years and at first it was like this huge responsibility, and then it was like, I kept this checkbook back in the days when people had checkbooks, in my back pocket. And I mean, I would be at a grocery store and here would be a young mom and I found out she was abandoned by her husband and three kids and they are crying and she’s putting groceries back because she can’t afford it. And I was able to come by and say, “No.” I ended up walking around the grocery store and I heard her story and I paid for all of her groceries and I filled her car with gas.

Who do you think left filled with joy? And I made that a habit, you know, in the early years I couldn’t do very much, so maybe five-dollar bills. And then as life got a little bit better, twenty-dollar bills. And as life even got a little bit better, when I travel, just certain times, I keep four or five hundred-dollar bills. And I just think, God, if there is someone…

You know, the people, I’m in airports a lot, there are people that clean the restrooms in the airports. I walk in and I see a man who is sixty-six, sixty-eight, seventy years old, grey, bent over. And at this stage of his life, he’s cleaning the trash cans in airports. And this isn’t, this isn’t natural for me, but I think, God, I want to see him – he’s so valuable to You. Does anyone see that? I want him to know. And I keep those hundred-dollar bills and just only when God prompts me say, “Excuse me. Thank you so much for what you’re doing here, keeping this clean. The Lord Jesus told me that He knows what you’re doing and He sees you and He cares about you.” And I give him, I just fold it up so he can’t see how much it is. And then I leave.

You know who is changed the most? Me. And it’s not because I gave him a hundred dollars. It’s because it’s in my pocket, I’m looking every day for someone that God wants to be kind to, that He wants me to be the conduit through. Do you understand what happened? New glasses. You look differently. This is what He is saying. This is – and if that happens out there, can you imagine what would happen if you said, “Oh Lord, what would it look like to be generous to my husband today? What would it look like to be generous to my wife, or one of my children?”

The next is gentleness. It’s strength under control, especially your emotions. Matthew 11:28, Jesus – it’s that great invitation. People are hassled and stressed out and, you understand when Jesus came, eighty percent of the Roman world was slaves. Rome was just flat brutal. I mean, the majority of small children died. But the rule of Rome was when a child was born, it was brought to its father and if it was a girl, often, “I don’t want a girl,” and they would just be killed.

It’s in this harsh, just terrible environment that Jesus said, “Those of you that are weary, come to Me, take My yoke upon you, and learn from me.” Here’s our word, “For I am gentle and lowly of spirit. Take my yoke upon you. My burden is easy; my load is light.” It’s a picture of the oxen that are, that have this yoke and Jesus says, “I’m on this side. I want you to come and let’s do life together.”

This isn’t a God whose arms are crossed and toe tapping and looking at your morality and, “Why don’t you go to church more? Why don’t you read the Bible more? Why are you looking at that pornography? And why did you blow up one more time? Bad, bad, bad, bad, bad.”

This is a God who says, “Aren’t you tired of all of that? Come! Let me walk with you. I am gentle.” The word was used in classical Greek of a wild, powerful stallion that had been tamed. In other words, it’s extraordinary power under control.

Jesus didn’t stay on the cross because He had to. Jesus stayed on the cross because He was gentle. His power was under control. He didn’t demand His rights for legions of angels to come and say, “This is unfair! This is wrong! Wipe them out!” He goes, “No. I am willing to withhold My rights and channel My power for the benefit of others.

It’s the opposite of being harsh, demanding, arms crossed, those looks that say to your mate, “Did you do that again?” The look that says, “Don’t you ever do anything right?” to one of your kids. It’s gentle. It’s approachable.

“Put on a heart of patience.” It means to endure with a good attitude. 2 Peter 3:9 says – people, he was talking about, you know, “He’s coming back!” And everyone goes, “Yeah, yeah right. He’s coming back. You’ve been saying that for a long time.” And Peter says, “You don’t understand. God is not slow as some think slow. For to Him a day and a thousand years is the same. He is patient,” macrothumos.

Can you hear the two words? Macrothumos: heat. It’s dispersed. He wants all to be saved, to all to come to repentance. It’s putting up with, enduring, one more time, one more time, “I’m not going to give up. We’re going to keep working at this.”

Jesus was patient with the disciples. Do you realize the only time, read all the gospels, and then list all the things He criticizes them for. All the times He comes down on them, criticizes them. We get one clear time when Peter gets very self-focused and his agenda and his kingdom. I can’t imagine Jesus looking you right in the eyeballs and saying, “Get behind Me, Satan!” The only time He reproves them is, “Oh you of little faith.”

Did you ever wonder, So, what does God really want from me? How do you become a “good” Christian? I mean, what does He really, really want? You ready for this? They asked Him that in John 6. He said, “This is the work of God, that you believe in whom He has sent.”

You know the greatest question you can ask yourself every single day? You might write this down. “What does it look like to trust God in this situation?” What does it look like to trust God with how he is acting right now? What does it look like to trust God with these finances? What does it look like to trust God with this deployment? What does it look like to trust God when the biopsy report comes back positive? What does it look like to trust God with a wayward child? What does it look like to trust God when you don’t like where you live? What does it look like to trust God with overcoming the infidelity of your mate? What’s it look like to trust God with the infidelity that you had and the guilt that you share?

See, you can be moral, you can go to church, you can read your Bible. Without faith, it’s impossible to please Him. Faith is nothing more or nothing less is believing in God’s character and God’s promises to the point of acting on them. Faith isn’t some ooey-gooey feeling. “Ooh! I think I got it! I think I’ve got faith. I believe You! I believe You!”

Faith is a picture of a bridge and we think faith is this rickety bridge like on one of those Indiana Jones movies and there’s missing pieces and they are superheroes and, “I hope we’re going to make it!” And they take two steps and they almost fall through and then they get to the other side and we think, “Oh! Indiana Jones Christians! They have such faith.”

That’s not faith. This is faith, biblically. Steel, concrete is three feet thick, it’s the object of your faith. God says this will hold me up. Let’s walk across.”

That’s why, you don’t need a lot of faith. Jesus said you could, you need the faith of a mustard seed. It’s the object of your faith. What if there is an all-powerful, all-knowing God who died, rose from the dead, who dwells inside of you, and the same power that raised Him from the dead dwells inside of you, and apart from Him you can do nothing. But in Christ, you can do all things.

And you just say, “Okay. I can forgive him.” “Okay, well, I guess we will cut our budget and I don’t know how we are going to make it financially, but we are going to keep moving forward.” “Okay, it’s a wayward child, we can’t control him. We are going to trust God, we are going to get good counseling, here’s the path. Lord, You love him more than we do. You love her more than we do.” It’s faith. Patience.

I’m going to give you just a little tool, you can write it at the bottom of the page. I call this little tool: I know you really care when…

Okay? Just write that. “I know you really care when…” Because some of you are thinking, I want to be compassionate and I want to be gentle and, okay Chip, I really want to be all this, but I’m not sure what it would look like. I can’t read her mind and I can’t read his mind.

Here’s what you do. There’s a little column and if you’re a husband, you write, “I know you really care,” speaking to your wife, “when you,” one, two, three. Just write the top three. You can go five if you want. But, I mean, give her a break. Just write, “I feel loved when you,” and just write the top three things that when she does them, you feel loved.

Ladies, you write, “Here are the top three things,” you can go four or five, “I feel most loved when you,” and just write them. And then just exchange lists. We have made this whole thing about, “It has to be so spontaneous and if he could read my mind or if she would only know.”

I did this with my wife. We were struggling. The counselor gave us this tool, okay? Everything I give you, I got out of counseling. So, but, it’s like, okay, here are the top things. “When you take out the trash, when you help with this, when you help with the kids’ homework,” I’m thinking, What in the world has this got to do with love? And finally I said, “It doesn’t matter what I think.” If this makes her feel loved, guess what, I love her. Guess what, I made a vow. Guess what, I’m committed to her.

So, she made a list and I just decided I’m going to do at least one of those things every day. If nothing else, at least, you know, every day she is going to get loved by me with some compassion and gentleness and vice versa. Try it.