Marvelous Marriage: God Does Want You To Be Happy

This week I came across Red Skelton’s Recipe for the Perfect Marriage, so since we are talking about marriage these weeks, I thought I’d share it with you:

1. Two times a week, we go to a nice restaurant, have a little beverage, good food and companionship.

6. She has an electric blender, electric toaster and electric bread maker. She said "There are too many gadgets and no place to sit down!"

7. My wife told me the car wasn't running well because there was water in the carburetor.

Most of those jokes are based on a model of marriage that pits one partner against the other. There’s not a lot of teamwork in those lines, not a lot of unity between husband and wife. Which is why they all have a bit of a wry twist to them. They are funny, but they are also painful, because they contain more truth, they describe more marriages, than we would like to admit.

This morning I have good news for you: God wants you to be happy in your marriage! I can’t promise that He wants you to be healthy and wealthy, like some preachers do, but I can assure you He wants you to be happy. How many of you believe that? How many disagree? How many are not sure? He does, and that’s a good thing because everyone seeks happiness.

It’s not wrong to seek our own happiness, in spite of how you may have been taught by your fundamentalist parents! That’s just the way God has made us. We are always trying to maximize our happiness. Some people are very short-sighted about that—they are looking for instant gratification, for the quick fix, and are usually focused on their physical pleasures. Such a person might spend all their paycheck on food and entertainment, for example, without thinking about the longer range needs they have.

Other people, more maturely, realize that there is greater happiness to be gained in many cases by delaying their gratification for a greater good. They say things like, “I’ll choose to forgo the fancy vacation and expensive car now in order to have enough to retire on later.” Still others have the wisdom to see that their happiness can be increased through the happiness of others. They find their joy in life in serving others, helping people, becoming a doctor or nurse or teacher, for example. But in all these cases, it is still true that they are doing what they do in a personal quest for happiness.

Seeking happiness is even the motivation for someone who commits suicide: they are convinced that life is not worth living, that the pain they are in is too much to bear, and it would be better for them to be dead. Islamic suicide bombers believe that by killing themselves along with other “infidels” they are guaranteed a place in Paradise with seventy virgins standing by to maximize their happiness.

Nobody ever hates himself in the sense of choosing what he is sure will make him miserable. Some teens have taken to cutting themselves, and we adults can’t understand that at all, but they do it because in some way it makes them feel better. Blaise Pascal, the French mathematician and philosopher, put it like this,

All men seek happiness. This is without exception. Whatever different means they employ, they all tend to this end. The cause of some going to war, and others avoiding it, is the same desire in both, attended with different views. The will never takes the least step but to this object. This is the motive of every action of every man, even to those who hang themselves.[1]

—deliriously so! God is not the killjoy that He is sometimes made out to be. Some distortions of the truth portray God as a Marine drill sergeant, or a crabby teacher who finds fault with our every effort—in other words, someone whose main goal in life is to make sure we don’t have any fun. That’s a lie. God loves you as His very special creation, and He wants you to be happy.

The thing is, God knows what will give us the greatest joy and delight better than we do, and that’s where the situation gets interesting. In the words of C.S. Lewis, we tend to settle for mud pies. Lewis wrote, “...if we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.”[2] True happiness and joy and fulfillment are all found in God and His ways. Consider some of these passages of Scripture:

· Isaiah 55:2, “Listen, listen to me, and eat what is good, and your soul will delight in the richest of fare.

· Matthew 7:11, “If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him!”

· John 15:11, “I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete.”

The most complete joy available to us on earth is in Christ. God is a wonderful heavenly Father who loves to give good gifts to His children. We can be completely satisfied and fulfilled by feeding on God.

But not every married person believes that. All too many people think that it is their spouse’s job to make them happy. Oftentimes, people are unhappy in themselves, and they look to their spouse to fill them up. Barbie has made the observation that women, especially, are often looking for Prince Charming. They read a lot of romantic novels, and watch a lot of romantic movies, and all of that creates a wrong expectation that their husband is going to fill up their empty emotional tank. Folks, that’s not going to happen. Only God can be completely fulfilling. We were made for a relationship with Him, and until we learn to draw our spiritual nourishment from Him, we are always going to be disappointed in others.

Maybe “happy” isn’t quite the right word to describe what God wants for us, because, as a pastor I know likes to say, “happiness depends on what happens.” It’s a rather surface-y feeling that comes and goes depending on whether we happen to like what is happening at the moment. So rather than “happy”, let’s say that God wants us to be satisfied at the deepest possible level. He wants our deepest desires and longings to be overflowingly met. He wants us to experience the purpose for which we were made, which will bring a level of completeness and fulfillment to our lives that we cannot find on our own or in anyone else. For the sake of brevity, I’ll keep using this word “happy”, but that’s what I mean by it.

We have this stereotype of marriage that we learned in the fairy tales from our mother at a young age. Usually, there is some obstacle the couple has to overcome, and then the story ends with, “And they lived happily ever after.” Cinderella marries the prince; Belle (the Beauty) marries the Beast (who turns out to be a prince after all.) (I’m afraid too many young women marry who they think is the Prince, but who turns into the Beast later!) We’re all seeking happiness in marriage. No one gets married thinking, “Well, it will be tough, but I can handle it. Only 50-60 years, and then we’ll be done.” No—we all get married because, as with everything else we do, we think it will make us happy. And that’s why it is such a blow when people discover that they are not happy. They are shocked to find that marriage is hard, and they are not happy, so they sometimes conclude the only way to get happy is to get out of the marriage.

Very often when a person is trying to justify leaving their spouse, they will say something like this:

I can either be married or happy, but I cannot be both. I have to choose between being married and miserable on the one hand, or being divorced and happy on the other. To the one who wants to leave, this sounds as elementary as a simple geometry proof. It is so logical and clear that they cannot see the flaw in their reasoning. Christians in this situation feel trapped, because they know God hates divorce, and they intuitively know (even if they consciously deny it) that divorce will irreparably hurt their children, but they don’t see any alternative: it’s either stay in the marriage and be miserable, or leave and be happy, and they are convinced God wants them to be happy.

I used to challenge people on that. I would say things like, “Marriage is not about you. God is more interested in your character than your comfort. Yes, it’s hard, but suck it up!” And there is truth in that. But now I would say, Yes, God does want you to be happy in your marriage. But He wants you to be happy with the person you are currently married to. This little syllogism is a false dilemma, based our own selfish and proud natures. What we are really saying when we say this is,

This goes back to the attitude that says, my spouse is supposed to make me happy. It’s their job, their responsibility. We have this unshakeable confidence in the notion that other people have the power to make us happy or unhappy. Do you believe that? Do you believe that your happiness depends on how other people treat you? Have you ever said, “You make me so mad!”? I think most of us have at one time or another. So if you are not happy, it must be because your partner is not making you happy. So you try to change them. When they don’t change, you try harder, applying more pressure. When they still don’t change, you get frustrated and angry and punish them, which makes them even less willing to change the way you want them to, and the cycle starts all over again.

We are so stubborn, and prideful, and self-centered, that it never occurs us that maybe we are the ones who need to change. Men and women both spend years of time and untold emotional energy trying to change their spouse. When I see that, I want to play Dr. Phil and ask them, “How’s that working out for you?” Are you being successful? Are they changing in the ways you would like? If not, do something different! Maybe you should change yourself. Because it is certain that you won’t be able to change your partner unless they want to change. You are the only one you can change.

In our Love and Respect Seminar, the speaker asked the question, Who goes first? It is possible for either partner to take the initiative to change themselves in ways that would help the marriage; who should take the first step? His answer was, The one who considers themselves the most mature. That makes sense, and it puts the burden squarely on our own shoulders, because few of us in that situation are willing to admit that we are the immature one in the relationship. So if you are the more mature, then do the mature thing and change yourself first.

This takes us back to the point I made earlier about trying to get all our emotional needs met by our spouse. Ultimately, it is God who “satisfies our years with good things” (Ps 103). When we feed on Him, our “soul will be satisfied as with the richest of foods” (Ps 63). So we have to constantly nourish our souls in God. We know how to do this, but we often don’t. And when things are not good in a marriage, I can almost guarantee that one or both partners are not growing in Christ. At least one has slacked off, and is not soaking in the Word daily, not praying earnestly for the success of the marriage, maybe not even attending church regularly. But if we will do these things, then we will find that He fills us up with Himself, and we have the emotional and spiritual resources to take the initiative, to go first, to reach out to our spouse and do what we have to do to make it work.

In his book, Desiring God, John Piper has a chapter in which he addresses this truth that God wants us to be happy in our marriages. He says, “ The reason there is so much misery in marriage is not that husbands and wives seek their own pleasure, but that they do not seek it in the pleasure of their spouses. The Biblical mandate to husbands and wives is to seek your own joy in the joy of your spouse.”[3] Let that sink in for a minute: the way to be happy in marriage is to seek your joy in the joy of your spouse.

There are three parallels in Ephesians 5 that help us see this point: a person and their own body; Christ and the church; a husband and wife. In each case, these pairs are one in the sense that what is good for one partner is good for the other. Watch:

In Ephesians 5:29-30, Paul points to the first two pairs and draws the parallel: “No man ever hates his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, as Christ does the church, because we are members of his body.”

When we think about the relationship between a person and their own body, this point is patently obvious. We nourish and care for our bodies, because they are an integral part of who we are; so when we make our bodies healthy and strong and comfortable, we are increasing our own happiness.

Paul makes the parallel point with Christ and the church. Why does He nourish and cherish the church? Because we are members of his own body, and no man ever hates his own body. In other words, the union between Christ and his bride is so close that any good done to her is a good done to himself. This is why Christ was willing to die for the church—because He knew it would bring Him joy in the end. He was thinking about the long term gains for Himself, and the joy of being completely united with a pure, spotless, beautiful bride, the church.

Eph 5:28 gives us the third pair, and the parallel to marriage, “Husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself.” In other words, husbands should devote the same energy and time and creativity to making their wives happy that they naturally devote to caring for their own bodies and making themselves happy. The result will be that in doing this they will make themselves happy. For he who loves his wife loves himself.

Since the wife is one flesh with her husband, the same applies to her love for him. When she makes her husband happy, she is making her own life better and increasing her happiness.

It’s interesting to me that when a couple is about to get married, they are usually pretty excited about the prospect of becoming one flesh. Usually, they have a pretty narrow definition of what that means, but they are eager to experience it. But then, later in the marriage, they forget that they have become one flesh, and they begin to think and act like they are two separate beings, as though what happens to the other doesn’t affect them.

Husbands and wives need to recognize that in marriage they have become one flesh. What is good for one is good for the other. If you live for your own selfish pleasure at the expense of your spouse, you are living against your own best interests and destroying your joy. But if you devote yourself with all your heart to the holy joy of your spouse, you will be living in such a way as to maximize your own joy.

Selfishness seeks its own private happiness at the expense of others, but this is counter-productive. Almost by definition, you cannot be truly happy in your marriage if your partner is not happy. We have a saying, “Ain’t Momma happy, ain’t nobody happy,” and that goes for Daddy, too. So how can you possibly think that by treating your partner negatively, it will increase your happiness? If you nag them, or punish them, or judge them, or belittle them, or just neglect them, how is that going to help make them the kind of person who brings joy to your heart?

How many marriages could be healed by this simple prescription: seek your own happiness in the happiness of your partner. You are one. Not two. Have you seen the tv commercial that shows two identical people walking along, with different symptoms, and then they merge into one person when they take this wonderful medication? That’s the picture we need to get in our heads. We are not two; we are one. Our grandparents understood this. They had a saying, “What’s good for the goose is good for the gander.” What is good for one is good for the other; what is bad for one is bad for the other; what increases your happiness increases my happiness. Is that not obvious? Does that not offer a third way out of the false dilemma of either misery or divorce?

But wait! you say. You don’t know my wife/husband. If I do this—if I start living my whole life in such a way as to make them happy, fulfilled, satisfied, joyful, they’ll just take and take and take and never give anything back. It’s a nice theory, but it won’t work in practice—not in my house!

Well, I don’t know every marriage all that intimately, so you could be right. But before you give up, try it for a year. Yes, a year! Because if you have spent multiple years acting selfishly toward each other, it’s unlikely that your partner is going to notice the first unselfish thing you do and suddenly say, “Oh! Honey! That was wonderful! I can see you have dramatically changed, and I’m going to respond immediately with the same kind of unselfish love and devotion to your happiness.” It’s likely that you have made some attempts at this sort of thing before, but you didn’t have the staying power, and gave up. So your partner is a bit leery of any supposed changes in your behavior and attitudes. They may need to see that you mean it this time, and the only way they’ll know for sure that you do mean it is if you maintain that course for a long time.

It may take a year. It may take longer. But unless your spouse is completely sold out to selfishness and their own misery, if you keep loving them unselfishly, looking out for their best interests, nourishing and cherishing them, working sacrificially for their good and their joy, eventually they will come around and start acting that way toward you. If you have spent 5 or 10 or 20 years being selfish, it may take a year or more for you to change those habits. But wouldn’t it be worth it to have a marriage where each of you were dead set on increasing the other’s joy? How can you not respond in kind to someone who is obviously determined to do you good, to make you happy, regardless what it costs them?

Yes, God does want you to be happy in marriage—with your current spouse. And He has told you how to have a happy marriage—one that is filled with joy and delight in each other, that shares so much love between you that you have plenty left over to spread around to others. The secret is fairly simple: find your happiness in the happiness of your spouse.

[1] Blaise Pascal, Pascal’s Pensées, trans. by W.F. Trotter (New York: E.P. Dutton and Co., 1958), p.113 (thought #425).

^[2]Quoted in John Piper, Desiring God (Portland, OR: Multnomah Press, 1986), p.15f.

[3] Piper, p.171.