Lecture 8: Marriage and Family Counseling

00:00:00.000 | [Silence]

00:00:06.100 | Grab your notes and open them up to this section where we're dealing with family life cycles.

00:00:13.900 | Family life cycles.

00:00:14.900 | You see here we're still working on the issue of process dynamics in counseling, in counseling

00:00:22.480 | marrying the family, marriage and family issues.

00:00:27.260 | We've been talking about in our last session about things that affect the family, like

00:00:36.340 | gathering data, we've got to look for evidence that would either confirm the presence or

00:00:40.400 | the absence of some of the most common marital problems.

00:00:44.360 | That's important for us as counselors, but it's also important to understand that many

00:00:48.620 | families are at a particular stage in life, and that stage in life reflects a lot of uniquenesses

00:00:59.780 | compared to other stages in life.

00:01:02.500 | It's going to bring to bear upon that family a certain amount of pressures, stresses.

00:01:08.900 | And that's one of the reasons why oftentimes it's kind of interesting to look at churches

00:01:15.620 | and to watch how Sunday school classes are grouped together.

00:01:19.900 | Most often you'll see Sunday school classes grouped together on the basis of these life

00:01:25.300 | cycles.

00:01:26.540 | There is the young marrieds.

00:01:28.620 | Why do all the young marrieds like to meet together?

00:01:31.220 | Because they're all facing the same problem.

00:01:34.540 | Or a young parents class.

00:01:37.620 | Why do all the young parents like to get together in a Sunday school class?

00:01:41.580 | Because they're all facing the same pressures and problems.

00:01:45.980 | There is the senior saints class.

00:01:49.940 | Why do all the senior saints want to get together?

00:01:52.100 | Because they're all facing the same kind of problems together.

00:01:58.420 | Very rarely do you ever hear a class called the middle-aged class.

00:02:02.540 | They don't like to be called that.

00:02:05.860 | They're really middle-aged, but they like to think of themselves as still young couples.

00:02:11.060 | And so they call themselves something else.

00:02:14.740 | I'm the faith builders class, I'm the joiners class, I'm the whatever you call it.

00:02:22.980 | That's what they like to refer to it.

00:02:25.820 | And those seem to be the very popular classes.

00:02:29.100 | Rarely do you ever find a class that's truly intergenerational.

00:02:33.220 | Why?

00:02:34.860 | Because most people like to hear the word of God taught to whatever stage of life they're

00:02:43.340 | in.

00:02:45.060 | And applied to whatever stage of life they're in.

00:02:47.940 | That's usually what they like.

00:02:52.460 | When sometimes we ignore some of our greatest learning is if we could mix those young marrieds

00:02:58.420 | in with some of those senior saints and let some of those senior saints teach some of

00:03:03.020 | those young marriage some of their wisdom.

00:03:05.740 | But they're divorced from that.

00:03:10.620 | Wisdom that they've acquired over many, many years living out the word of God, being faithful

00:03:16.460 | to Christ in their marriages, or even the wisdom that they've gained through their failures

00:03:22.180 | in their marriage or in parenting.

00:03:27.720 | So that's one of the reasons why we study this because as counselors I think it's important

00:03:32.180 | for us to be cognitive of these things.

00:03:36.860 | Several years ago I started studying these things and it was interesting how I was really

00:03:41.340 | familiar with the ones that I had passed through in terms of my stages of life.

00:03:47.700 | But I was, the other stages of life, the other cycles of life, I was totally unfamiliar with

00:03:52.940 | the stresses and strains that were a part of that.

00:03:55.220 | And it was interesting to think that through.

00:03:57.620 | Because when I have somebody sitting in front of me that's coming out of that particular

00:04:00.500 | life cycle, then all of a sudden I have a new perspective on them.

00:04:06.620 | They're coming at this particular problem that they're facing from a unique vantage

00:04:11.560 | point with a unique set of pressures that are turning up the heat in their life.

00:04:17.140 | What is it?

00:04:18.320 | And as a result of that, that heat is producing a certain fruit in their life.

00:04:26.000 | And sometimes I like to compare it like this.

00:04:28.340 | And I want to use the analogy over here that, and sometimes I'll do this in counseling.

00:04:35.700 | This is like the sun here in my analogy.

00:04:40.740 | And this is the heat in life and all the stresses and pressures and history of the relationship

00:04:59.620 | is part of that heat.

00:05:03.060 | And we're going to use the biblical analogy that Psalms 1 does on comparing the Christian's

00:05:08.860 | life to a, or the believer's life to a tree that bears a certain amount of fruit.

00:05:17.420 | And this particular tree has fruit on it.

00:05:22.340 | And sometimes the fruit that's produced in this person's life as a result of this is

00:05:28.780 | anger or bitterness or a hatred or constant strife with other family members, with a husband

00:05:52.300 | and a wife, with their children, lies, lying, all of this is rotten fruit.

00:06:01.340 | And you could list a lot more that's there.

00:06:05.460 | Why is it?

00:06:06.460 | Because the heat's turned up in their life and this tree begins to produce a certain

00:06:11.740 | type of fruit.

00:06:14.620 | Now this fruit actually comes as a result, what really fuels this is down here in the

00:06:22.140 | roots of this tree.

00:06:28.060 | This is what fuels and motivates that fruit.

00:06:33.740 | Like in the past, in a previous class, I talked a little bit about how a husband or a wife

00:06:41.260 | can want something out of their spouse.

00:06:43.140 | All I want, a wife may say, is for my husband to love me or sometimes a husband may say,

00:06:48.980 | all I want is for my wife to respect me.

00:06:51.620 | That's all I want.

00:06:52.620 | Now, in and of itself, that's a legitimate desire.

00:06:55.620 | But that desire can become a idolatrous desire that captures all of their heart, it becomes

00:07:03.540 | more important than being God's kind of husband or God's kind of wife in their life.

00:07:08.260 | And so, we put in this little heart here, I want my husband to love me.

00:07:29.940 | That's something in this particular case that this woman becomes or this wife, this is all

00:07:37.940 | she lives for, is that.

00:07:41.340 | She may call herself a Christian, she may genuinely be a Christian, but at this particular

00:07:44.940 | time, having a husband who loves her is far more important than her being a godly woman.

00:07:51.220 | And so, when she doesn't receive the love and appreciation that she thinks she deserves

00:07:57.340 | in that marriage, then what happens?

00:07:58.940 | Well, then it produces or motivates the fruit.

00:08:02.620 | She becomes angry, she's bitter, there's hatred, there's strife, there's lying.

00:08:09.300 | You would say, well, that's all kinds of fruit that's characteristic of an unbeliever, yeah.

00:08:13.900 | Is it possible for a time for believers to act like unbelievers?

00:08:17.060 | Yeah, we can see that in 1 Corinthians 5.

00:08:19.780 | The man who commits adultery with his stepmother is told to be removed from the church.

00:08:25.020 | In fact, Paul says, "Turn him over to Satan for the destruction of the flesh that his

00:08:30.380 | soul might be saved."

00:08:33.620 | And then, later on in 2 Corinthians 2, he repents.

00:08:37.900 | He shows himself to be a believer, but in the short run of things, he looks like and

00:08:45.780 | acts like an unbeliever because of his adultery and because of his fornication with his stepmother.

00:08:55.380 | This is what the heat will do in a believer's life, it will produce all kinds of lying,

00:09:02.580 | strife, hatred, bitterness, anger, and there's a host of other things that can be a product

00:09:09.020 | of that.

00:09:10.020 | Well, I'm really interested in this life cycle at taking a look at what are the unique cycles

00:09:16.340 | of life that marriage and the family goes through that brings about the pressure that

00:09:24.100 | produces the fruit, because you can almost anticipate wherever that person is coming

00:09:30.660 | to you from, whatever life cycle they're coming, you know that this is part of the

00:09:35.260 | heat that's being turned up in their life.

00:09:37.300 | These are part of the pressures.

00:09:38.700 | So let's look at this.

00:09:40.420 | The first area is probably what we call early marriage.

00:09:44.220 | This is pre-children.

00:09:48.180 | Young adults without kids.

00:09:53.240 | Most often, this is not a strict rule, in fact, this as time goes on is increasing age-wise,

00:10:00.220 | but approximate age is 21 to 25 years of age, but it seems like with each generation it's

00:10:06.420 | creeping up there a little bit later and later.

00:10:09.060 | I mean, it goes into the 30s and mid-30s now, but early marriage pre-children is the idea.

00:10:17.980 | They face a lot of developmental tasks at this particular age.

00:10:21.500 | For example, have they appropriately separated from their parents?

00:10:27.940 | That is versus enmeshment or opposite, an emotional divorce that is from their parents.

00:10:39.740 | Has that occurred?

00:10:41.100 | It's something that they didn't really want, but there's a struggle with young couples.

00:10:47.220 | Early married, how much are we attached to their respective fathers or mothers?

00:10:55.300 | Or then there's learning how to balance allegiance with the family of origin.

00:11:02.620 | This may be difficult, and you can see it because when they attempt to make a decision

00:11:07.500 | as a couple, do they run back to their parents and constantly consult them?

00:11:16.260 | Or maybe they go to their respective parents.

00:11:18.220 | She goes to her parents, he goes to his parents, or just one of them goes to their parents.

00:11:28.900 | There's pressures that can come as a result of that.

00:11:31.760 | How well have they severed that relationship?

00:11:36.700 | This is what is expressed in Genesis 2:24 about a young man leaving father and mother.

00:11:44.180 | The Bible says that's a good thing, that doesn't mean you abandon your parents, it doesn't

00:11:49.420 | mean you forsake them, it doesn't mean that you no longer have any relationships with

00:11:53.380 | them.

00:11:54.380 | That's not what it's saying.

00:11:55.380 | It's that your primary relationship is no longer to them, it is to your spouse.

00:12:03.060 | That's the issue.

00:12:05.780 | And young couples sometimes, to varying degrees, depending on the young couple, struggle with

00:12:09.740 | that issue.

00:12:11.780 | How much allegiance do I have to my family of origin?

00:12:20.980 | Or there's also establishing mutually agreed upon rules for the relationship.

00:12:29.580 | There are certain things where, well, let's take their connection to their parents, for

00:12:34.620 | example.

00:12:35.620 | There could be many other things.

00:12:37.860 | There are rules that this couple talks through and say, "Okay, we're not going to run to

00:12:42.980 | our fathers or our mothers and talk about these issues.

00:12:48.180 | If we have problems, we're going to work them out together.

00:12:52.060 | But if we agree that we need wisdom from our parents, then we'll go together to our parents

00:12:56.900 | and ask them.

00:12:57.900 | But we'll always do that together."

00:13:01.620 | So this is a young couple working those various things through so they can establish their

00:13:07.740 | own home.

00:13:09.540 | That's establishing some of the rules for the relationship.

00:13:17.060 | And it's interesting sometimes to listen in counseling to what are the rules that you

00:13:21.420 | established early in your relationship when marriages get into trouble?

00:13:28.820 | And certain expectations that they have that they assumed were a rule in that marital relationship.

00:13:38.860 | They assume that the other person agreed with this particular rule, but they didn't agree.

00:13:44.740 | And when they didn't agree, this causes problems, and it causes quite a bit of stress.

00:13:48.980 | And they don't resolve it, and they don't resolve it.

00:13:50.940 | Sometimes months turns into years, and years turn into bigger problems.

00:13:57.020 | And now we have an issue.

00:14:02.940 | Or there's also the issue of establishing a work identity.

00:14:07.540 | Usually if the husband is working and he's the breadwinner of the family, I realize that

00:14:12.580 | there are certain temporary exceptions to the Titus 2 rule in 1 Timothy 5 where a man

00:14:20.100 | has to be the breadwinner for his house, and the woman is supposed to be busy at home,

00:14:25.700 | Titus 2.

00:14:27.060 | There are occasional exceptions to that during different stages of life, maybe when a guy

00:14:33.820 | is in seminary, and his wife needs to work more, and she becomes more of the breadwinner

00:14:40.420 | during those seminary years on a temporary basis, but they're working towards her being

00:14:45.340 | in the home.

00:14:46.340 | They know this is temporary.

00:14:47.940 | Or maybe he has health problems, and he has to stay home for a short amount of time until

00:14:53.100 | those are resolved, and she has to go out and earn the money.

00:14:56.820 | That's okay.

00:14:57.820 | She's being a suitable helper, but that's not the norm that they're working towards.

00:15:04.220 | So for him, when they're young, he's trying to establish some kind of identity in his

00:15:10.260 | job.

00:15:12.660 | He's usually at the bottom of the totem pole, and so everything gets dumped at the bottom

00:15:18.540 | of the totem pole.

00:15:20.060 | If there's extra work or time that has to be spent at the job that's overtime, they

00:15:25.020 | expect the young guy, the young buck to do that because he's new.

00:15:30.980 | He's got to pay his dues, so to speak, in this particular job before they advance him.

00:15:38.740 | And so he works really hard at establishing his identity in that work role, and that may

00:15:43.580 | be very, very difficult for her because he's gone a lot.

00:15:51.260 | But if he's going to advance, this is going to have to happen.

00:15:57.820 | And then establishing adult status is another big issue.

00:16:02.780 | Establishing adult status.

00:16:03.940 | This is part of the developmental task of this particular cycle.

00:16:10.820 | The history of their relationship is primarily dating, having fun, not a whole lot of stress

00:16:19.820 | or responsibilities until they get married.

00:16:21.820 | Now these things start to mount, right?

00:16:26.980 | And now you can't just go back and rely upon mom and dad.

00:16:36.660 | You're an adult now.

00:16:38.420 | Everybody begins to view you as an adult.

00:16:40.220 | You're a married man, you're a married woman, so you've got to act like an adult.

00:16:48.340 | There's no room here for lots of pity parties.

00:16:56.980 | You've got to learn to accept the pressures and the stresses and strains of life the way

00:17:03.620 | an adult would accept them.

00:17:05.860 | You're mature now.

00:17:07.100 | That doesn't mean that there isn't quite a bit of area where you need to mature, but

00:17:12.420 | you're mature to the point, or should be, where you can bear the weight, the stresses

00:17:21.820 | and strains that marital life will bring, and even the stresses and strains that eventual

00:17:28.380 | parenting will bring.

00:17:31.460 | You're also in the process of learning how to solve problems and establish priorities

00:17:34.820 | together.

00:17:38.180 | When you're a single person, you don't have to consult anybody.

00:17:40.740 | You just go about solving your problems.

00:17:42.540 | Now you're married, so you learn to solve problems together, and the way in which you

00:17:47.220 | solve problems when you were a single young man or when you were a single young lady may

00:17:52.860 | be different from the way in which you solve problems as a couple.

00:18:04.940 | He maybe grew up in a type of a situation where his parents taught him that when there's

00:18:12.480 | interpersonal strife and struggle, you go immediately to those people and you work that

00:18:18.740 | thing out.

00:18:19.740 | Well, that's not the type of home she grew up in.

00:18:21.880 | She grew up in a home where if there was a lot of struggles or strife or conflict between

00:18:26.740 | people, you just avoid it.

00:18:30.300 | You just avoid it.

00:18:31.300 | Well, now, you're a couple, and now you have a problem with someone else, maybe another

00:18:38.540 | younger couple.

00:18:41.980 | There's a stress.

00:18:42.980 | Well, she wants to say, "Let's just ignore it, wait, let it go by, not deal with it,"

00:18:48.900 | and he says, "No, we've got to deal with this.

00:18:51.060 | We've got to go to them.

00:18:52.060 | We need to sit down.

00:18:53.060 | We need to talk with them.

00:18:54.060 | We need to make sure we work this thing.

00:18:55.340 | Oh, no, we can't do that.

00:18:56.940 | That's just going to cause more problems.

00:18:59.180 | How am I going to resolve this?"

00:19:03.540 | How do you solve problems together?

00:19:05.180 | How do you establish your priorities together?

00:19:08.660 | It's really important in life.

00:19:20.300 | For guys that are really anxious about ministry, the ministry becomes a very, very high priority.

00:19:29.840 | For their wives, oh, it's up there, but it's not up there nearly as high.

00:19:36.180 | Family trumps it every time.

00:19:38.360 | For him, that may be a little bit harder to discern between those two things.

00:19:43.620 | Ministry family, ministry family, "Well, I'm helping my family by being a good minister."

00:19:48.460 | There's all kinds of rationalizations that take place there.

00:19:53.580 | What do I do?

00:19:54.580 | How do I balance this out?

00:20:00.740 | You're adjusting to what you prioritize in terms of your marriage, and furthermore, you're

00:20:06.820 | adjusting to the ideas and responsibilities of marriage, or the roles and responsibilities,

00:20:14.540 | I should say, of marriage.

00:20:24.500 | What does it mean to be a godly husband?

00:20:28.460 | I know when I first got married, the premarital counseling that I had was all taught to my

00:20:35.740 | wife and I by a Christian psychologist, and I got to tell you, I think the guy was incredibly

00:20:43.540 | well-meaning.

00:20:44.540 | I mean, he was a well-meaning guy.

00:20:47.460 | I believe that he was a genuine Christian, and to this day, I still think he's a Christian,

00:20:52.100 | but he taught us some horrible stuff about the roles and how you deal with roles in the

00:20:59.380 | husband and wife relationship.

00:21:00.900 | My view of my role as a husband was not a biblical view at all, and I believe if my

00:21:08.100 | wife were here, she would probably say the same thing.

00:21:10.220 | Her view of her role as a wife was not a biblical view that God would have.

00:21:17.380 | We're going to talk about that later on in this class, about how God defines the husband's

00:21:22.540 | role, how God defines a wife's role, but there's adjusting to these roles and responsibilities

00:21:28.860 | in marriage, and what are they?

00:21:32.980 | If he's a real fun-loving guy, he's taking on a lot of responsibilities because now he's

00:21:38.740 | got to supply not just for himself, but he also has to supply for his wife.

00:21:45.260 | That's a lot of responsibility that requires a lot of maturity.

00:21:53.780 | Or there's also, as a young couple, adjusting to each other sexually.

00:22:03.020 | For some young couples, this is easier than for others.

00:22:07.180 | It can be a very difficult adjustment for some Christian young couples, and you need

00:22:12.020 | to know that if you're counseling them.

00:22:16.260 | Even if you teach them, as we're going to talk about later on in the class, even if

00:22:19.260 | you teach them a biblical view of sexuality, what will often happen is she has a good biblical

00:22:28.420 | view of sexuality, and he has a good biblical view of sexuality.

00:22:32.820 | They can still miss each other like ships passing in the night because she will try

00:22:41.900 | to satisfy her husband the way a woman would be satisfied, and he will try to satisfy her

00:22:52.060 | the way a man would be satisfied, and never the twain shall meet, and so there's difficulties.

00:23:03.320 | We could even talk about physiological difficulties because usually early in marriage, it's not

00:23:13.040 | uncommon for a wife to have lots of yeast infections because what's being introduced

00:23:20.160 | into her body is foreign to that body, and until her body builds up a certain amount

00:23:25.040 | of antibodies to that and so on, it's not uncommon for these things to happen.

00:23:30.880 | So there's adjustments physiologically.

00:23:34.340 | The same thing's true with him.

00:23:37.000 | So they go through an entire adjustment.

00:23:39.280 | How do I deal with this new relationship, especially if you have a real godly husband

00:23:45.560 | and wife who have kept themselves pure for each other, and they have basically, they

00:23:53.480 | both have had sexual desires prior to marriage, or he has a sexual desire, she has a sexual

00:24:01.520 | desire prior to marriage, but they've said no, no, no, no, no to those sexual desires,

00:24:06.760 | and now you put them in a marital relationship where not only is it okay, it's expected.

00:24:14.120 | So to say no, no, no, no, no, and all of a sudden automatically to turn it on and say

00:24:18.840 | yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes is a hard transition for some couples.

00:24:24.240 | That's very difficult to do.

00:24:26.800 | It's hard to make that rollover, and we'll talk about why in the theology why this is.

00:24:34.640 | For the Christian young couple, the question is not when do we have sex.

00:24:37.920 | The question is, according to 1 Corinthians 7, 3 through 5, it's when do we not have sex.

00:24:44.540 | Sex is always assumed in the marriage.

00:24:47.880 | The question is not when do we have sex.

00:24:49.800 | The question is when do we not have sex.

00:24:52.160 | So you're saying no, no, no, no, no, and then all of a sudden you're married.

00:24:55.440 | Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.

00:24:57.100 | It's hard to turn that faucet the other direction.

00:25:00.880 | That's very difficult to do.

00:25:05.200 | So you're adjusting to each other sexually, and then there is this, the beginning process

00:25:11.200 | of one fleshness.

00:25:12.200 | Now, that includes sexual oneness, but again, this is that Genesis 224 thing where a man

00:25:20.320 | shall leave his father and mother and cleave to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.

00:25:27.920 | It's oneness in the fullest sense of the term.

00:25:30.400 | They're one in their direction in life.

00:25:32.980 | They're one in their purpose in life.

00:25:34.920 | They're one in their outlook in life.

00:25:36.640 | They're one in their parenting in life.

00:25:40.960 | That doesn't happen overnight.

00:25:42.400 | That is a deliberate process of weaving two lives together in marriage, and it takes a

00:25:50.760 | while to do that.

00:25:52.560 | For some couples that are very independent in their thinking, it may take longer.

00:25:59.920 | With other couples, it's a little bit easier.

00:26:01.480 | They can weave their lives together pretty easy, and then there are some couples who

00:26:05.800 | think that their lives are woven together pretty tight, and then a major problem comes

00:26:10.560 | up and they realize, "Oh, it's not as tight as I thought it was."

00:26:15.200 | So all of that has to do with the process of one fleshness.

00:26:19.720 | So those are some of the circumstances.

00:26:21.520 | Again, going back to our analogy here, this is part of the stresses and pressures and

00:26:27.360 | history of the relationship that begins to bring heat on their lives.

00:26:32.440 | That's what begins to happen.

00:26:33.800 | Now, what are the family strains and temptations within this stage?

00:26:40.200 | What are the family strains and temptations?

00:26:42.560 | Well, one of them is coordinating two schedules.

00:26:46.400 | Usually as young couples, at the beginning of marriage, in order to get themselves established,

00:26:51.160 | they both work and they're both very busy.

00:26:56.560 | They work outside of the house, both of them for a time.

00:27:00.560 | She has her job, he has his job.

00:27:03.120 | They're trying to get themselves established financially so eventually she doesn't have

00:27:07.320 | to work anymore, and so they're both very busy, establishing two separate schedules.

00:27:12.520 | Now, when they were single, they didn't have to do that.

00:27:15.240 | They just went about and led their life their own way, and now they have to think about

00:27:19.440 | the other person all the time, and they have to think about that other person's schedule.

00:27:23.840 | Maybe they can't afford, they've got two jobs and one car.

00:27:26.560 | Now, how do we deal with that?

00:27:29.280 | How are we both going to get to work?

00:27:31.360 | Everybody's got a time schedule set here, and that's very difficult.

00:27:37.640 | Or there is the constant exposure to your mate.

00:27:41.200 | Now, before you're married, you think that's going to be nothing but bliss, but you find

00:27:48.200 | out after you're married, it's not always bliss.

00:27:56.400 | When you were dating them, well, except for you, Jim, all right, I saw what you said.

00:28:05.160 | I didn't hear it, but I saw it.

00:28:09.520 | It's not always bliss for everybody, let's put it that way.

00:28:20.880 | When you were dating, you always enjoyed your time together because you weren't together

00:28:26.060 | all the time.

00:28:29.080 | You had a little bit of time of retreat from the other person.

00:28:32.840 | You can go back and think about how wonderful the relationship is and dream of better days

00:28:38.600 | and stuff like that.

00:28:40.920 | Some of you are going through that right now, aren't you?

00:28:43.520 | Those kind of things, that's going on.

00:28:48.800 | Then you get together again with them, and it's such a wonderful time, and all of a sudden

00:28:53.600 | you're married and you're around them all the time.

00:28:59.000 | I mean, it's like too much chocolate.

00:29:09.200 | There's never too much chocolate, Ruben says.

00:29:17.360 | I think this summer when I went over to teach in Zurich, Switzerland, when we go over there,

00:29:23.000 | we teach right in this church that's right off the Zurich airport.

00:29:30.120 | Right next door to the church, my wife always loves going with me when we do that, is a

00:29:35.320 | chocolate factory.

00:29:38.040 | We smell it all the time.

00:29:41.920 | It's just wonderful if you don't live there, but the people in the area kind of get tired

00:29:47.140 | of it after a while, and marriage is a lot like that.

00:29:52.320 | It's wonderful to be around so and so, but this is new.

00:29:57.560 | So I have to learn how to ... I'm around them so much, and they've got habits that I didn't

00:30:03.600 | know that they had.

00:30:05.200 | I'll never forget the first time when we were first married, walking into the restroom and

00:30:11.520 | seeing all kinds of girly things hanging all over the restroom.

00:30:22.000 | What is this?

00:30:23.400 | I mean, hanging on every free thing in the restroom, drawing.

00:30:30.200 | I'm going, "I've never seen anything like this before."

00:30:34.760 | That was just kind of a shock.

00:30:36.840 | You can't move without those things touching you when you're in there.

00:30:43.240 | I never had to deal with that as a single guy.

00:30:46.640 | That was a whole new experience for me, and I'm sure my wife had to deal with similar

00:30:51.880 | things.

00:30:52.880 | I don't know what it would be.

00:30:54.240 | She's always been very kind and not shared a whole lot, but I'm sure that there's a lot

00:30:58.280 | there.

00:31:01.640 | Maybe my smelly shoes or something like that.

00:31:04.000 | Whoa, I've never had to deal with that, but there's a constant exposure to your mate.

00:31:11.920 | That's a difference.

00:31:12.920 | That's a change, something you're adjusting to, and then you've got financial difficulties.

00:31:19.280 | Oh, financial strains and stresses.

00:31:22.760 | Now, it's interesting.

00:31:25.640 | I talk about this a lot in premarital counseling, and when we do premarital counseling, we have

00:31:29.480 | a whole section where we deal with financial issues and getting themselves established

00:31:33.920 | financially because that becomes one of the big pressure points of early marriage.

00:31:38.400 | But what happens, if I were to compare it like this, it would be like when that couple

00:31:44.880 | got married, they came out of a home where mom and dad had a certain standard of living.

00:31:51.080 | Let's say that it's represented by here.

00:31:55.340 | And so that couple naturally does not want to step down in standard of living.

00:32:01.920 | They want to continue, at least equal that, as they move in their marital relationship.

00:32:09.200 | Now the problem with that assumption is that it took mom and dad years to get to that level,

00:32:17.080 | to have that kind of furniture, to have those particular automobiles, to have the house

00:32:21.960 | that they live in.

00:32:22.960 | It took mom and dad years to get to that level.

00:32:26.140 | But this couple thinks, "Oh, no, no, no.

00:32:27.680 | I'm going to step from here right into that same socioeconomic level."

00:32:32.880 | And so they have to, and what you find out in counseling is a lot of these couples go

00:32:38.280 | into deep debt to step from the same level that mom and dad were, right into the same

00:32:45.920 | level, same kind of house, same kind of car, same kind of food, same everything to equal

00:32:52.060 | that level.

00:32:53.280 | And now they have now enslaved themselves to debt for several years into their marriage

00:33:00.160 | in order to step there.

00:33:02.360 | And they don't realize that they really need to start down here.

00:33:07.560 | That when they get married, they're going to have to step way down and start back here

00:33:13.500 | and then start working their way up as time goes by and in their marital life where they're

00:33:20.620 | being frugal and they're saving their money, they're doing the right thing, the supply

00:33:26.060 | for their kids, and eventually as the years go by, they're up there where mom and dad

00:33:32.000 | was.

00:33:34.320 | Or what happens if the couple doesn't go into great debt, mom and dad from one side of the

00:33:40.000 | family or maybe even both sides tries to make sure they start off on the same level.

00:33:46.080 | That's not good for those kids.

00:33:48.240 | It's not good.

00:33:50.620 | Nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, because they don't learn the appreciation of that money.

00:33:58.000 | It's just handed to them.

00:34:01.100 | Not good.

00:34:02.100 | That doesn't mean that mom and dad can't loan them some money.

00:34:07.960 | But every time that happens, by the way, if you're a young couple, there's always attachments

00:34:13.320 | to that money.

00:34:14.320 | Even though mom and dad will claim that there's none, there's always attachments, always expectations.

00:34:19.440 | It may not show up until five years later when all of a sudden you do something that

00:34:23.480 | mom and dad doesn't like and they say to you, "I can't believe we loaned you that money."

00:34:28.640 | "What?

00:34:29.640 | What?

00:34:30.640 | I thought there was no attachments to that money."

00:34:33.240 | "Well, there isn't."

00:34:35.000 | "Oh, yes, there are.

00:34:37.040 | There are all kinds of hidden attachments to that money."

00:34:42.400 | So you've got to be very careful then.

00:34:44.320 | We're not saying it's a sin.

00:34:46.360 | We're just saying that these are the unique pressures, strains, and stresses that this

00:34:50.960 | particular young couple has to decide.

00:34:53.040 | What are we going to do?

00:34:55.280 | How are we going to establish ourselves financially?

00:34:58.520 | We're not looking to get rich.

00:34:59.680 | We're a Christian.

00:35:00.680 | We want to be able to give the Lord and support ourselves and not rely upon anybody else.

00:35:06.600 | And just in doing that, it's going to bring a lot of difficulties.

00:35:12.480 | We're not trying to be Donald Trump's, not trying to be that.

00:35:17.560 | Everybody else in the world is trying to be that way.

00:35:19.680 | They'll probably sink themselves doing it, but we're not trying to be that way.

00:35:25.800 | And then there's the pressure of work responsibilities.

00:35:28.500 | As I said, usually if he's working, he's starting at the very bottom and there's a lot of pressure

00:35:34.200 | on him to perform and show himself to be a valuable, contributing member of that particular

00:35:39.440 | company.

00:35:43.400 | So he's trying to be reliable, faithful, be a hard worker.

00:35:51.040 | And when that happens, there's also a corresponding low satisfaction with the job.

00:36:00.200 | He comes home at night and he says to his wife, "I cannot see myself doing this for

00:36:05.760 | the rest of our marital life.

00:36:07.680 | I can't see that.

00:36:10.560 | I can't handle this."

00:36:13.560 | So there's low job satisfaction.

00:36:18.560 | When a couple is also trying to get themselves established financially, there is also quite

00:36:26.760 | frequently home tasks that are neglected.

00:36:34.200 | Home tasks that are neglected.

00:36:37.000 | Usually both of them are working.

00:36:40.360 | The house and the regular things around the home are neglected, the laundry backs up,

00:36:49.080 | the dishes don't get washed, the sink breaks down, the commodes break down, they don't

00:36:58.560 | get repaired.

00:37:00.080 | Why?

00:37:01.640 | Because you're so busy just trying to make it from one paycheck to the next paycheck.

00:37:05.600 | So a lot of things get neglected when a couple's young.

00:37:11.080 | And sometimes, as a young couple, they don't know how to repair them to begin with.

00:37:18.360 | Sometimes he doesn't know how to repair them, she does.

00:37:22.880 | Sometimes she doesn't know how to repair them, he does.

00:37:27.360 | Sometimes they both don't know how to repair them.

00:37:29.240 | They don't have a clue how to do it.

00:37:31.960 | That's something that dad always did.

00:37:35.200 | We don't do that.

00:37:36.200 | It's something dad does.

00:37:39.720 | So home tasks get neglected.

00:37:44.800 | And then you have the general pressure of just blending two different lives together.

00:37:50.600 | When she was single, she had plenty of free time to spend time with her friends, go out

00:37:55.280 | shopping, go play tennis, all this stuff.

00:38:02.840 | Now she's a wife.

00:38:03.840 | She has much more responsibility, even prior to kids coming along.

00:38:06.920 | She didn't have the free time that she did before, before they were married.

00:38:11.440 | He'd do the same thing.

00:38:12.440 | He'd go play golf with his friends, go out fishing, take off, do this, that, and the

00:38:16.600 | other thing.

00:38:17.600 | But now he's got to think of his wife.

00:38:18.600 | He doesn't want to leave his wife alone at home when he's out there running around the

00:38:23.200 | woods shooting bears.

00:38:25.320 | He doesn't want to do that.

00:38:29.920 | And she doesn't like going in the woods.

00:38:31.480 | And she doesn't like bears, all right, much less shooting them and eating them.

00:38:42.480 | So there are two different people coming together.

00:38:47.560 | What sometimes is viewed as liability later on eventually in that marriage becomes a great

00:38:52.840 | asset because her feminine ways complement his masculine ways, and his masculine ways

00:38:58.840 | do the same thing with her feminine ways.

00:39:01.600 | But at first, it can really be a source of conflict and a rub.

00:39:06.320 | It's a difficulty.

00:39:07.320 | So you're blending two lives together, two different lives together.

00:39:15.360 | And you've heard the old saying, you know, different personalities are sort of attracted

00:39:24.520 | to each other.

00:39:27.840 | And there's a little truth to that.

00:39:30.040 | You don't marry someone just like you.

00:39:32.000 | Oh, you know how horrible that would be?

00:39:35.560 | If you married somebody just like you, you married somebody different.

00:39:41.680 | If she's a little bit quiet and he's really outgoing, she marries him because he's really

00:39:48.480 | outgoing.

00:39:49.480 | And he marries her because she's so solid and quiet and, you know, not all over the

00:39:57.200 | place the way he is.

00:39:59.720 | Then when they get married, the very strengths become their partner's weaknesses.

00:40:08.040 | Because he eventually says, "Wait a minute.

00:40:11.640 | She's so quiet.

00:40:12.640 | She barely says anything.

00:40:13.640 | Are you ever going to communicate with me?"

00:40:18.960 | And he looks, or she looks at him and says, "He's all over the place.

00:40:23.840 | You know, he's 20 miles wide and a half inch deep.

00:40:29.000 | He's just all over the place."

00:40:33.820 | So the very thing that was their strength prior to marriage becomes their greatest weakness

00:40:38.560 | after marriage.

00:40:40.080 | Now, you notice your partner hasn't changed when that happens.

00:40:45.600 | But our perspective of our partner has changed.

00:40:49.100 | They haven't changed a bit.

00:40:50.100 | They're still the same person.

00:40:52.260 | That's the same person that you were attracted to.

00:40:54.040 | But now afterwards, it's that very characteristic that repulses you.

00:41:02.600 | It's your perspective that's changing, blending two different lives together.

00:41:08.400 | And then there's resolving inevitable disagreements and differences.

00:41:14.800 | There's going to be disagreements.

00:41:16.000 | There are going to be differences.

00:41:17.100 | You can't have two different people who have a sinful nature without these things happening.

00:41:22.920 | So this quasi-myth that's out there, and it's perpetuated, by the way, by these computer

00:41:31.360 | dating services, that there's somebody out there in the world that is absolutely compatible

00:41:38.320 | to you, and a computer will find that person for you.

00:41:43.040 | Just give us all your data, we'll run it through, and you think, "Oh, I have finally found the

00:41:50.760 | one person that matches up to me.

00:41:53.240 | We're not going to have any problems at all.

00:41:55.880 | Give me a break."

00:41:59.440 | That's not true.

00:42:04.200 | This myth of compatibility is now, this great big balloon, if you will, is now punctured

00:42:10.800 | with the pin of reality.

00:42:14.080 | Those people get married and they have their first fight, and you say, "They're in tears.

00:42:20.400 | I can't believe this is happening.

00:42:22.400 | We were so right for each other after all the computers said so."

00:42:27.520 | I don't realize that there is no such thing as two compatible people.

00:42:34.960 | Any two people on the planet, theologically, are incompatible.

00:42:40.200 | Why?

00:42:41.440 | Because of their sinful nature.

00:42:44.080 | The only thing that really makes marriage work in true intimacy and harmony, now there's

00:42:52.380 | a lot of artificial type of intimacy and harmony out there in the world, the only thing that

00:42:56.480 | makes it work is God and the gracious enablement of Jesus Christ in a couple's heart and life.

00:43:09.560 | You can have a facsimile of marriage and even survive this lifetime with a facsimile of

00:43:15.680 | a marriage, but just sheer survival does not necessarily make a marriage of companionship

00:43:22.420 | and intimacy.

00:43:25.680 | So there's going to be inevitable disagreements, there are going to be inevitable differences

00:43:29.760 | that are out there.

00:43:30.760 | There are also going to be differing ideas about roles and responsibilities.

00:43:36.640 | Like for instance, she grew up in a household where mom loved to work outside, and so she

00:43:41.100 | did all the gardening and she took care of the lawn and everything, while he grew up

00:43:45.220 | in a household where that's something that dad did, so he expected that he was going

00:43:48.900 | to do that responsibility.

00:43:50.580 | He wants to take care of the lawn, he wants to take care of the gardening and stuff.

00:43:55.420 | That's not your responsibility.

00:43:57.260 | Your responsibility is the inside of the house, my responsibility is the outside of the house,

00:44:00.900 | he says to her.

00:44:01.900 | And she says, "Wait a minute, no, I like the outside too, so we need to share.

00:44:09.460 | I want you to help me with the inside and I'll help you with the outside."

00:44:15.260 | And he says to her, "Wait a minute, I don't do inside work.

00:44:20.920 | I don't do that, all right."

00:44:23.840 | "What?

00:44:25.200 | You don't love me.

00:44:27.580 | This is terrible.

00:44:29.140 | I'm married to a beast."

00:44:34.860 | Differing ideas about roles and responsibilities.

00:44:37.100 | What's your role?

00:44:38.100 | What's your responsibility?

00:44:41.660 | His mother always did the laundry.

00:44:44.400 | He never had to do laundry, never had to do laundry.

00:44:49.620 | In her household, she grew up, everybody did their own laundry.

00:44:55.220 | So when his dirty clothes start to back up and the ham, what do they call it?

00:45:00.420 | >> Hamper.

00:45:01.420 | >> Yeah, hamper.

00:45:02.420 | Starts to back up and they're not washed.

00:45:05.500 | He goes to her, "Hey, what about my clothes?"

00:45:09.900 | She says, "There's a washer."

00:45:10.900 | "Wait a minute, I don't do laundry.

00:45:17.300 | That's not me.

00:45:18.300 | I don't do that.

00:45:19.300 | That's your responsibility."

00:45:20.300 | "Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

00:45:22.820 | Everybody takes care of their own laundry in this household."

00:45:25.420 | "What?

00:45:26.420 | Where did you get that?"

00:45:27.420 | "That's the way I grew up."

00:45:29.020 | "Well, just because you grew up that way doesn't mean that that's the way our household is

00:45:33.940 | going to be."

00:45:34.940 | "Oh, wait a minute.

00:45:38.940 | So you want me to be the way your household was going to be.

00:45:43.180 | Is that it?"

00:45:44.180 | she says.

00:45:45.660 | "Well, yeah.

00:45:48.660 | We always did it right."

00:45:49.660 | There's differing roles and responsibilities.

00:45:57.060 | What's going on there?

00:45:59.380 | There's also facing reality.

00:46:01.980 | There's facing reality.

00:46:04.140 | And there are a lot of things that kind of slap a couple in the face when they're young.

00:46:11.880 | They come out of school or university training.

00:46:17.980 | They think that, wow, they're the best thing that's ever happened to the world.

00:46:24.940 | As soon as people realize that, they'll put us in huge areas of responsibility.

00:46:30.620 | And they'll pay me a lot of money to do this.

00:46:34.340 | And they begin to face the reality that's not the way life works.

00:46:41.280 | And there's going to be then sexual differences as well.

00:46:46.680 | She's going to view things one way sexually.

00:46:49.380 | He's going to view things a different way.

00:46:53.220 | She's going to view things from a masculine point of view, and she's going to view things

00:46:56.220 | from a feminine point of view.

00:46:58.180 | And if they learn, those two can complement each other.

00:47:01.500 | But that can be a difficulty.

00:47:03.300 | That can cause strife in a marital relationship.

00:47:09.780 | And then, of course, there's always in-law problems.

00:47:13.060 | Oh, my goodness.

00:47:14.700 | You want to find in-law problems, kind of put a little camera inside of a young couple's

00:47:21.940 | first Christmas holiday discussions.

00:47:28.380 | Whose family are we going to go and visit?

00:47:31.340 | Well, she assumes on the holidays, we'll always go to my family, right?

00:47:37.380 | Or he assumes, we're always going to go to my family, right?

00:47:41.500 | No.

00:47:43.260 | So here in the American holiday season, usually November has the national holiday of Thanksgiving.

00:47:51.540 | And then December has the national holiday of Christmas.

00:47:57.100 | So what most Christian families do, okay, one year we'll go to your family on Thanksgiving,

00:48:04.060 | and then we'll go to the other family on Christmas, and then vice versa.

00:48:08.740 | And then the in-laws start to get involved.

00:48:12.780 | I dealt with one seminary couple that were having some major problems with the in-laws

00:48:17.460 | because they had it all set up what they were going to do, they had agreed upon and everything

00:48:22.620 | was set.

00:48:23.620 | And unbeknownst to them, one set of parents bought plane tickets for them to come to their

00:48:30.880 | house over the holidays without telling them.

00:48:34.180 | Uh-oh, now we have problems.

00:48:39.540 | They already had all their other plans and the other set was ready for them to come to

00:48:43.220 | their place, and now this set now has, and you're not going to turn down these expensive

00:48:48.380 | tickets.

00:48:49.380 | You're not going to throw this money away, are you?

00:48:54.180 | That's rather manipulative, don't you think?

00:48:57.460 | Oh boy, now we've got in-law problems.

00:49:01.460 | And they come to me and they say, "How do we resolve this?"

00:49:06.140 | Well, sometimes when in-laws do those kind of things, the sinfulness of your own human

00:49:13.620 | heart as a counselor wants to tell them, "Just buy a 45 and take them out, all right?"

00:49:23.260 | But that's the sinfulness of your heart, and you don't give them that kind of advice.

00:49:28.900 | They're being rather manipulative when they do that, no, no.

00:49:34.300 | You're going to have to, even if it's offensive to them, you're going to have to say to them,

00:49:39.300 | "Listen, we already made plans, we've already told people about the plans, we are going

00:49:43.740 | to come to your house, but if you went ahead and bought these tickets, I'm sorry, we can't

00:49:48.340 | honor them."

00:49:49.340 | And they're going to be hurt, that's going to be difficult.

00:49:52.940 | They did it without consulting you, in other words, they didn't appreciate you as a young

00:49:57.300 | couple and your own marriage and home, they didn't respect that.

00:50:04.540 | But now they're going to have to, they're going to have to.

00:50:08.020 | You do that once and they'll never do that again, by the way.

00:50:10.700 | Ruben?

00:50:11.700 | >> If you approach the situation that way, but your wife doesn't think that that's the

00:50:17.820 | best approach.

00:50:18.820 | >> Yeah, that's a great question, let me repeat it.

00:50:21.320 | What if you approach things that way, but your wife doesn't think that that's the best

00:50:25.100 | approach?

00:50:26.100 | It's her parents that bought the airline tickets, right?

00:50:28.160 | That would be the idea.

00:50:31.980 | Her parents, and maybe we need to honor them, we don't want them, after all, they're showing

00:50:35.580 | us love by doing it.

00:50:37.660 | Well, if you're going to follow biblical rules, then you need to say to her, "Listen, this

00:50:46.980 | is not what we agreed upon, and they're not respecting our relationship as a marriage."

00:50:57.860 | If she still doesn't want to follow the lead of her husband on this, then there are deeper

00:51:01.800 | problems than this particular episode.

00:51:07.620 | And it goes back to her view of roles within the Christian home.

00:51:18.920 | If you have gotten to the point where you reach an impasse as a couple, then eventually

00:51:24.460 | somebody is going to have to make a call and it's going to have to be him, assuming that

00:51:29.500 | it's not something that's overtly sinful.

00:51:33.500 | If he's leading her to do something that's overtly sinful, then she has a biblical responsibility

00:51:38.420 | to say, "No, I'm not going to go there, can't do that because you're not my God."

00:51:42.260 | But if it's not something overtly sinful, it's a matter of opinion, and it just may

00:51:45.660 | seem offensive to people, but he's trying to side with righteousness, even though it

00:51:51.020 | may appear that he's favoring his own family, he's got to make a good decision on this.

00:51:57.940 | So, there are all kinds of problems, and last of all, we'll take a break here, there's the

00:52:05.060 | independence-dependence issues too.

00:52:07.980 | How independent are we of one another and how dependent are we with one another?

00:52:15.740 | Sometimes it takes a young couple a number of years to work that one through.

00:52:21.320 | How independent are we, how dependent are we?

00:52:25.460 | Typically with a young couple, they're working towards an interdependence upon one another,

00:52:32.180 | but it's not so much of a slavish dependence that if God and His sovereignty were to take

00:52:36.820 | one of them home, the other one would have no reason to live.

00:52:43.380 | So there is a certain independence that person has before God in their own walk before God,

00:52:50.140 | but it is also something that is blended together as a couple, where they're moving forward

00:52:57.300 | as one, not as two separate people.

00:53:01.540 | They're always moving forward as one, they always have one goal, that's part of that

00:53:05.220 | one fleshness we're talking about.

00:53:10.500 | Let's get back to the family life cycles, and we're gonna talk about the expanding family.

00:53:15.820 | This is preschoolers, this is where now children entered into the picture, and now things become

00:53:20.060 | a little bit more complicated with kids coming into the picture, and we put on here ages

00:53:25.860 | approximately 24 to 30 years of age.

00:53:29.220 | We realize that for some couples it may be earlier, for other couples it may be later,

00:53:34.660 | that's just an approximate age.

00:53:36.740 | What are some of the developmental tasks here?

00:53:38.980 | Well, adjusting to the wife not working outside of the home.

00:53:42.940 | Usually for most Christian couples, that seems to be the drawing line.

00:53:47.620 | She may work outside of the home until the children come, and immediately when the kids

00:53:51.140 | show up, she quits her job, and now she begins to pay full attention to the home, and she

00:53:57.500 | begins to really practice Titus chapter two, where women are to be busy at home, is the

00:54:04.060 | idea there.

00:54:06.780 | There's also resettling into a new community, and it's amazing how this changes the perspective

00:54:13.160 | of that young couple, because when they're young, they're almost willing to live anywhere,

00:54:18.900 | wherever's the cheapest, that's where they're going to live.

00:54:21.540 | Once kids come into the picture, it radically changes them, because anywhere's not going

00:54:26.500 | to do it.

00:54:28.080 | We don't want our kids to grow up in that environment, and so they move to a different

00:54:32.780 | environment.

00:54:34.220 | That's where they want their kids to grow up.

00:54:35.940 | They want it to be safer.

00:54:38.480 | They want it to be cleaner.

00:54:44.080 | They want the kids to have a little area where they've got a backyard and they can play.

00:54:50.440 | So that usually requires upscaling their living conditions, requires more money, financial

00:54:58.400 | commitment, a lot of stuff that happens there.

00:55:07.600 | That happened with my wife and I when we had our first child, little girl, Christa.

00:55:14.240 | Christa came into the world back in 1980, so October 12, 1980, and it changed our whole

00:55:32.840 | perspective in life, because at that particular time, I was still in seminary and we were

00:55:37.400 | living in a basement of an older couple, and there was a lot of moisture in that basement,

00:55:47.480 | a lot of mold in that basement, and we were willing to put up with it as a young couple.

00:55:54.940 | We didn't realize how dangerous it was even for us back then, but as soon as the baby

00:55:59.420 | came along, that changed our whole perspective.

00:56:02.880 | We've got to get out of this basement.

00:56:05.200 | So we began to frantically look for another place to live to get the baby out of that

00:56:10.120 | kind of environment, and we eventually found another place where we could live above ground.

00:56:19.600 | So you resettle into a new community, and that's primarily because of the kids, and

00:56:23.720 | that's what's usually going to happen with a young couple.

00:56:26.960 | Furthermore, there's adjusting to a new physical, social, or economic conditions.

00:56:33.840 | Sometimes moving to another community means you have to change churches, because the church

00:56:39.400 | you previously attended is too far away now.

00:56:43.280 | You can't go there anymore, and so you're in a new neighborhood.

00:56:48.720 | Socially, you have a whole different new set of friends.

00:56:54.360 | There's new economic conditions.

00:56:57.320 | You're not going to the same stores or shopping at the same grocery that you used to shop

00:57:02.840 | at before.

00:57:05.320 | All of that has radically changed.

00:57:07.520 | You're making decisions about family size, and after the first one comes along, it's

00:57:11.840 | amazing how that begins to shape your idea about family size.

00:57:15.200 | Sometimes you talk with couples prior to the first baby coming along, and they'll both

00:57:19.000 | look at you with stars in their eyes, "Oh, we both could have 20 kids."

00:57:24.080 | After the first one comes along, maybe two.

00:57:31.160 | So it's greatly reduced.

00:57:33.600 | They don't realize all the responsibilities and the pressures that are going to come along

00:57:36.880 | with that new little child.

00:57:39.280 | It's a big deal.

00:57:40.560 | So they're beginning to make decisions about family size that they'll stick with, not just

00:57:47.520 | an opinion.

00:57:48.880 | Or they're suggesting to increase responsibilities, work, home, community, church involvement.

00:57:57.360 | By the way, let me make another comment about family size.

00:58:02.080 | My wife and I, now, from my perspective, I love kids.

00:58:04.720 | I could have a dozen of them.

00:58:06.520 | It would be easy for me.

00:58:07.880 | I would have made a great Roman Catholic, just have kids forever and ever and ever,

00:58:12.760 | and never stop having kids.

00:58:14.000 | All right?

00:58:15.000 | I would love them.

00:58:16.000 | I didn't care about the responsibility and stuff.

00:58:18.760 | My wife was a little bit more sane about that, and she wasn't looking at a dozen kids at

00:58:27.100 | all.

00:58:28.880 | So we had our first two, which were two girls, and then we had our third kid, and our third

00:58:34.120 | kid turned out to be twins.

00:58:36.080 | So it was third and fourth.

00:58:37.160 | And when I saw what the twins had done to her physically, I'm going, hmm, maybe we should

00:58:42.160 | stop there.

00:58:44.760 | Because the birth and birth process takes a toll on the wife and so on, and it's time

00:58:51.240 | to bring this to a halt at this particular time.

00:58:53.840 | So you're adjusting to family size, and you're adjusting to increased responsibilities at

00:59:01.280 | work and home and community, church involvement.

00:59:04.640 | Usually with kids, there becomes...

00:59:08.700 | You're not just involved in Bible studies and going to worship service.

00:59:12.040 | Now you've got kids' programs that you're going to, and you're taking the kids to kids'

00:59:17.080 | programs and athletic events, and all of that changes what's going on in your schedule.

00:59:25.000 | And the couple begins to realize, one day they wake up and they realize, you know, we

00:59:29.480 | don't have as much freedom as we used to have.

00:59:32.960 | Where before, when they were dating, and then when they were newly married, they could go

00:59:37.880 | and do things, they didn't have to think about kids, and they had all this freedom.

00:59:43.040 | It was unbelievable.

00:59:44.800 | Make decisions.

00:59:45.800 | Take the kids.

00:59:46.800 | All that's gone.

00:59:47.800 | I mean, every time you do anything, you've got to think, "Okay, now what are we going

00:59:52.960 | to do with the kids?

00:59:53.960 | Are we going to take them with us?

00:59:59.440 | Are we going to leave them with grandma?

01:00:04.440 | Are we going to get a babysitter?

01:00:10.880 | Are we going to turn them loose in the backyard with the dog and just leave them?

01:00:14.040 | What are we going to do?"

01:00:19.040 | There's a genuine loss of freedom, and there's adjusting to reduced husband and wife privacy

01:00:27.720 | with the kids.

01:00:28.720 | A lot of couples, for the children's sake, and it's amazing how the children almost become

01:00:37.000 | their functional god, they start this bad habit, and let me emphasize, bad habit of

01:00:46.920 | bringing the kid in sleeping in their room.

01:00:52.880 | Bad habit.

01:00:55.560 | Bad habit for the kid, bad habit for mom and dad.

01:00:59.320 | Mom and dad needs time away from the kids in their room with the door closed.

01:01:06.080 | They need that.

01:01:07.080 | If that kid thinks that the only way they're going to go to sleep is when mom and dad is

01:01:12.000 | present, and you train them to think that, you have now surrendered all of your privacy

01:01:18.280 | and all of your intimacy to that kid.

01:01:22.240 | Don't do that.

01:01:25.320 | So you're adjusting to reduced husband and wife privacy.

01:01:29.040 | You're adjusting to career changes as well as promotions.

01:01:33.480 | He starts to receive some promotions in the job, and usually with those promotions comes

01:01:38.120 | greater responsibilities as well, or there's a change of jobs that occur.

01:01:43.480 | Then there's establishing priorities and structuring your life according to those priorities.

01:01:50.440 | What are our new priorities now?

01:01:52.040 | The children become a really high, very significant priority.

01:01:56.640 | It's amazing how the children and thinking about them changes your daily decision making.

01:02:04.200 | Before they didn't, now they do, and it affects everything, even in seminary.

01:02:11.840 | Should I buy this book or should I buy formula for the kid?

01:02:15.040 | Oh yeah, he's got to live, so it's got to be formula, all right?

01:02:21.800 | But I'd really like to buy this book.

01:02:24.400 | I mean, this is really key, I'm not going to get another deal on this book again in

01:02:27.960 | my life, so it's a hard decision.

01:02:31.440 | What do I do?

01:02:35.180 | And then you're adjusting new roles of being a mother and a father.

01:02:40.640 | It's not all cutesy.

01:02:42.480 | There is a cutesy side to it.

01:02:45.480 | Really cool.

01:02:46.480 | Later on, I'm going to talk about this.

01:02:49.200 | Same thing's true with grandparents when they're adjusting to new roles.

01:02:51.880 | I just recently, just a year ago, became a grandparent, so I'm about ready to become

01:02:56.000 | a grandparent for a second time.

01:02:57.840 | And again, I know you guys are all surprised.

01:03:00.440 | How could a guy that looks 25 years of age be a grandparent?

01:03:04.280 | I know I have the same problem, but I am.

01:03:13.320 | During the conference recently at the NAMC conference, my daughter and my granddaughter

01:03:16.760 | came down to the conference, and so we got to spend a lot of time with my granddaughter.

01:03:21.120 | My granddaughter has a little security blanket, and attached to it is a little bunny's head,

01:03:25.840 | as cute as can be, and she holds it.

01:03:27.680 | In fact, she takes the ear of the bunny, which is a little terry towel ear, and she holds

01:03:32.120 | the ear of the bunny right up there near her nose like this.

01:03:36.440 | And then she'll trace her lips around like this, all right?

01:03:41.080 | And that's her security, and she'll just sit there and look at you like that, all right?

01:03:44.480 | That's her little security blanket.

01:03:46.680 | I was holding her one day during the conference, and she grabbed my finger.

01:03:51.040 | And by the way, she can't say bunny, so she calls her little security blanket buggy.

01:03:57.720 | This is buggy, all right?

01:03:59.840 | So I'm holding her during the conference, and all of a sudden, out of nowhere, she grabs

01:04:03.680 | my finger, and she pulls it up to her nose, and then she starts tracing her lips with

01:04:09.560 | it.

01:04:10.560 | I'm going, "Oh, I'm on buggy level."

01:04:15.480 | That's a really high level to be on, is buggy level.

01:04:18.920 | My wife was a little bit irritated with me because it took her two additional days to

01:04:22.360 | get on buggy level, all right?

01:04:25.120 | But I made it to buggy level before she did.

01:04:28.320 | But anyhow, kids are interesting.

01:04:32.800 | As a young couple, you're adjusting to be a mother and a father and all the little cute

01:04:36.480 | things.

01:04:37.480 | And sometimes, it's cute things that kids do, and sometimes, it's not so cute things.

01:04:42.040 | I think one of my kids has the world record in projectile vomiting.

01:04:52.240 | She had had a lot to eat during dinner, and we put the kids to bed one night, and all

01:04:58.480 | of a sudden, we heard this, "Ugh!"

01:05:00.480 | And we go, "Oh, one of the kids are sick."

01:05:04.520 | So both my wife and I go running upstairs, and she's laying there just so peacefully

01:05:09.760 | there on her bed, and we're going, "Hmm, she must be fine."

01:05:14.680 | So we turn around to walk out of the room, and the whole side of the other room is covered

01:05:20.360 | and dripping.

01:05:22.760 | And we're going, "How did she do that?

01:05:28.160 | I've never seen anything like that in my entire life.

01:05:31.320 | Oh, my goodness."

01:05:33.360 | It's a whole change.

01:05:36.200 | And you think to yourself, "Oh, this is late at night.

01:05:37.920 | One of the last things I want to do is spend the entire night wiping down a room.

01:05:43.080 | All right?

01:05:44.080 | This is going to take us half the night."

01:05:45.880 | And then all it took was one, "Ooh!" on her part to do it.

01:05:49.600 | That's all it took.

01:05:52.640 | So you're adjusting those new rules, and it's very demanding.

01:05:59.040 | Now that girl who did that, which was Melissa, is about ready to have her first baby.

01:06:05.360 | So we're hoping that that baby returns the favor.

01:06:11.560 | So we're adjusting the new rules of mother and father.

01:06:14.760 | Then there's handling the pressure of the criticism from grandparents.

01:06:17.480 | "Oh, this is a biggie.

01:06:20.600 | You know, you're not doing what grandma and grandpa on either side thinks is right.

01:06:27.960 | That's not a good way to rear your kid.

01:06:31.240 | And you're trying to make the best decisions you can, and yet you want to be an independent

01:06:35.520 | home.

01:06:36.520 | But you want to learn from your mother and father, but you're not going to do everything

01:06:41.600 | that they did.

01:06:42.600 | And you're not going to do it the same way that they did.

01:06:44.400 | And so it's going to be different.

01:06:46.600 | It's going to be different."

01:06:50.520 | And you're getting pressure, and some of that pressure comes in the form of criticism.

01:06:54.480 | "Why are you doing it that way?

01:06:58.320 | We never did that with our kids.

01:07:00.320 | Oh, that's quite a statement.

01:07:02.720 | We never did it that way with our kids.

01:07:06.040 | We never treated you that way when you were a kid.

01:07:11.760 | Well, hmm."

01:07:14.860 | So there's pressure there.

01:07:16.800 | If you're not doing anything wrong, physically wrong to the child or sinful in God's eyes,

01:07:25.120 | then you got to be able to look at the grandparents and say, "You know, we love you, and we think

01:07:29.740 | you did a great job, I mean, pretty great grazing us.

01:07:35.600 | But we're not always going to do things exactly the way you did, but that doesn't mean we

01:07:39.280 | don't love you.

01:07:40.280 | It's going to be different.

01:07:44.160 | We're a different couple.

01:07:46.080 | We're different than you and dad."

01:07:47.080 | So, yes, Ruben?

01:07:53.200 | What about discipline?

01:07:54.200 | Yeah, see, there's another area.

01:07:56.440 | In the area of discipline, it may be different than the grandparents disciplined people.

01:08:03.440 | For example, here's another issue.

01:08:07.360 | Recently counseled a couple who spanked their children, but always did it in a very controlled

01:08:18.600 | way, in a very loving way, but firmly spanked their kids and let the kids know that when

01:08:24.800 | they did wrong, well, one of the sets of parents said to those parents, "If we ever see you

01:08:36.000 | do that to our grandkids, we're going to report you to social services."

01:08:39.440 | So the couple comes to me and they say, "What do we do?"

01:08:47.960 | And I said, "Number one, is it wrong?

01:08:49.800 | Is it a sinful thing that you're doing?"

01:08:51.200 | "No, it's not a sinful thing you're doing."

01:08:54.380 | "Number two, is it something unlawful that the government says is wrong?"

01:08:58.640 | "No, it wasn't something that was unlawful the government said was wrong."

01:09:03.280 | So they can report all they want, but eventually you're going to be innocent.

01:09:06.720 | But if they're going to try to control you and the way that you're dealing with your

01:09:10.440 | kids and you're not doing anything sinful and you're not doing anything unlawful, then

01:09:15.480 | you may have to get to the point where you say to them, "We love you, but as long as

01:09:19.320 | you have this stance, we're not going to bring our kids around you anymore."

01:09:24.560 | And that's what they had to do with that set of grandparents.

01:09:29.780 | If grandma and grandpa are going to be that intrusive into the life of their kids and

01:09:37.420 | are willing to imply that they're going to have their kids locked up for something that

01:09:44.640 | they're not doing that's wrong, then that has become a destructive relationship.

01:09:54.000 | So that's how bad it can get with grandparents if they get that manipulative and that controlling

01:10:04.700 | in the life of their grandkids.

01:10:06.920 | Now rarely, you know, in probably the past 30 years that I've been doing counseling,

01:10:11.400 | the past 30 years, maybe I've had that happen once or twice at the most.

01:10:18.700 | Rarely will that ever happen.

01:10:20.520 | Most grandparents don't take that position.

01:10:23.200 | But every now and then, you'll run into that kind of a situation.

01:10:29.480 | And those parents have got to make the decision what's right before God and follow their conscience.

01:10:37.120 | Hopefully their conscience is informed by the word of God, but they've got to follow

01:10:40.360 | their conscience on that issue.

01:10:43.320 | And in that case, they're going to have to restrict their kid's exposure to grandpa and

01:10:50.720 | grandma because this is their children first.

01:10:55.880 | Well, first they belong to God, then it's their children, and only thirdly do those

01:11:00.320 | kids have any relationship to grandpa and grandma, but that's third down the line.

01:11:06.200 | Kids belong to God first, then they belong to us.

01:11:09.080 | We only have a short amount of time with those kids, and we have to exercise good stewardship

01:11:13.260 | with them, and then only thirdly are they a reflection of whether they belong to grandpa

01:11:22.240 | and grandma.

01:11:23.240 | So, pressure, criticism from grandparents can be a pretty serious thing.

01:11:28.120 | All right, so those are some of the developmental tasks.

01:11:30.320 | What about the family strains and temptations?

01:11:32.680 | Well, again, when kids come into the picture, that changes everything.

01:11:37.300 | And one of the issues that it changes is finances.

01:11:40.600 | There becomes financial pressures, strains, and stressors that are now turned up.

01:11:46.840 | It's amazing.

01:11:48.040 | And my wife and I were always fairly healthy as a couple, weren't sick very much, hardly

01:11:55.600 | at all until kids came into the picture.

01:11:58.520 | I don't know, I used to say that it's because these kids are so close to the ground, they're

01:12:03.280 | down there where the germs are, all right?

01:12:06.000 | That's where they are.

01:12:07.000 | You pick them up from the ground, so you're bringing all these germs up with you, all

01:12:10.400 | right?

01:12:11.400 | But all of a sudden, kids come into the picture, they are little teeny incubators of bacteria.

01:12:16.920 | That's what they are.

01:12:18.400 | And they incubate these bacteria, and they spread them around the house.

01:12:23.040 | And then all of a sudden, you have more colds, and more flu, and more...

01:12:27.280 | That's what kids do.

01:12:28.280 | Now, some of you had kids.

01:12:30.200 | Am I right about this?

01:12:31.200 | I mean, this is what happens.

01:12:33.760 | Kids change the whole dynamic.

01:12:37.040 | And so there's more doctor's bills, more hospital bills that are going on.

01:12:44.760 | Our twin boys now are in college, and just this past weekend, they were playing an intramural

01:12:51.640 | college football game, and the one boy got elbowed in the nose during the game, and it

01:12:59.840 | just started gushing with blood.

01:13:02.820 | So he had to go to see if he got his nose broke.

01:13:06.520 | Because the previous year, same circumstance, his twin brother got his nose broken.

01:13:12.280 | Well, he didn't have his nose broken, but it was sure draining a lot of blood.

01:13:18.760 | So there's doctor's bills, and x-rays, and stuff.

01:13:22.360 | This is the way kids are going to...

01:13:25.200 | Financial pressures, those are the things that come up.

01:13:27.520 | That's always going to be there.

01:13:29.160 | And I always see couples, they'll say to me, I said, "When are you going to have kids?"

01:13:33.640 | They say, "Well, we're waiting until we're financially able to then."

01:13:36.680 | "Oh, well, you're never going to have kids then, right?"

01:13:39.560 | No, you just kind of fit kids around your finances.

01:13:42.680 | You don't wait until you have a lot of money to have kids.

01:13:46.360 | If you do, you'll be waiting forever, and the kids will think that they were born to

01:13:51.600 | grandparents.

01:13:53.920 | So they'll never know they're real grandparents, they'll think you're the grandparents.

01:14:01.800 | There's different views in regard to father and mother responsibilities.

01:14:06.760 | Now sometimes different views on what they consider to be responsible behavior.

01:14:14.000 | I've seen couples get into arguments over what's being fed the baby, because she and

01:14:21.760 | her family, her mother used to feed babies certain amount of things, or certain types

01:14:25.800 | of things.

01:14:27.420 | And he and his family used to feed babies different things.

01:14:32.600 | And he sees her feeding the kids what her family used to feed them.

01:14:37.480 | "You're going to feed our kid that stuff?

01:14:40.600 | That's horrible."

01:14:41.600 | "You shouldn't feed her that stuff, you're going to ruin our kid."

01:14:46.560 | "What do you mean?

01:14:47.560 | I grew up with that stuff.

01:14:49.080 | You think I'm ruined?

01:14:50.080 | You think I'm a ruined person, because I grew up with that."

01:14:53.480 | Well, there's a different role, father and mother, and responsibilities there.

01:15:01.240 | There's different views in regard to parenting, different views about whether or not to spank

01:15:07.200 | a child.

01:15:08.200 | How do you spank a child?

01:15:09.200 | Do you use a rod or an instrument to spank a child?

01:15:11.840 | Do you use your hand to spank a child?

01:15:15.080 | Do you use a belt to spank a child?

01:15:24.440 | Or one, husband or wife, may come to the conclusion that you're not supposed to spank a child

01:15:30.360 | at all.

01:15:31.360 | Don't spank a child.

01:15:34.000 | That'll ruin their self-esteem.

01:15:39.560 | It'll harm their psyche if you do.

01:15:44.000 | And so they have this negative view, and most of that has probably been culturally informed,

01:15:48.320 | and a lot of that is built upon a wrong analysis of studies.

01:15:52.080 | Most of those studies go back to the mid-1950s, and Benjamin Spock did a whole series of studies

01:16:00.360 | that was government-funded on infant monkeys, and he found out that if you spank infant

01:16:06.280 | monkeys for doing something wrong, and you reintroduce those infant monkeys back into

01:16:10.520 | a cage with other monkeys their same age, then the ones that have been spanked becomes

01:16:14.520 | very aggressive.

01:16:15.520 | They'll hit and bite and steal, and they're much more angry, and so as a result of that,

01:16:20.920 | he very committed to an evolutionary view of man, believes that an infant monkey is

01:16:26.040 | only a half step down from an infant human.

01:16:29.480 | There's very little difference between the two, according to Benjamin Spock, and so if

01:16:33.200 | you do that to a child, when a child's growing up, then you're gonna teach that child aggressiveness,

01:16:38.140 | you're gonna teach that child anger, but we would say as Christians, there's a radical

01:16:43.840 | difference between that infant monkey and that child, radical difference.

01:16:50.320 | And furthermore, usually most of the studies that are done on spanking make no differentiation

01:16:55.280 | between a parent who spanks a child in uncontrolled anger and a parent that spanks a child for

01:17:04.080 | the child's benefit.

01:17:05.080 | There's no distinction made between the two, so the conclusion is that if you spank your

01:17:09.420 | child, then your child will grow up to be an angry, aggressive child.

01:17:13.780 | Well, I wanna let you know that I was spanked my entire childhood, and that actually was

01:17:21.020 | a positive thing for me.

01:17:23.300 | We spanked all of our children as they were growing up.

01:17:26.500 | They have not turned out angry or aggressive, none of that is the case.

01:17:31.780 | I've never met in all of my years of ministry, couples that spank their child where the child

01:17:38.460 | grew up aggressive because they were spanked.

01:17:42.460 | But I have met children that grew up aggressive because when the parents spanked them, they

01:17:48.700 | took out their anger on them in uncontrolled anger, and a child understands the difference

01:17:54.400 | between the two.

01:17:58.540 | And so a child learns from the parent's example that when you get angry, you just go out and

01:18:02.700 | hit something or hit somebody.

01:18:05.220 | No, no, there's a huge difference between spanking in uncontrolled anger and spanking

01:18:12.500 | a child for that child's benefit, even though you may be angry at the child, 'cause I know

01:18:18.380 | there are some Christian psychologists out there that teach the philosophy that you should

01:18:27.420 | never spank your child in anger.

01:18:29.140 | Well, if that's true, I would have never spanked my child, because I'm always angry about the

01:18:36.740 | fact that they have done something wrong that they know better.

01:18:43.580 | Even my little 14-month-old granddaughter, Abby, has a conscience, and she can't say,

01:18:52.020 | "Forgive me," or, "Will you forgive me," so her mother has taught her to say, "Ta-ta."

01:18:59.140 | And she loves doing something wrong.

01:19:01.780 | You know what it is?

01:19:02.920 | It's taking a tissue box and unloading it.

01:19:08.580 | She just loves it.

01:19:09.980 | She loves to see how long it's gonna last, and there'll be this pile of tissues, all

01:19:15.020 | right?

01:19:16.020 | Just taking all the tissues out of the tissue box and unloading those tissues until there's

01:19:20.620 | a great big pile there, and she can do it, oh, so quietly, but she gets more fun out

01:19:26.300 | of doing that, and she knows it's wrong.

01:19:29.580 | And she'll do it without her mother knowing, and then she'll go into her mother and say,

01:19:35.700 | "Ta-ta."

01:19:38.420 | What did you do, Abby?

01:19:40.540 | Mother will go in the other room, "Abby, ta-ta, ta-ta."

01:19:46.900 | I'm sorry, I'm sorry.

01:19:50.500 | Abby, you know that's wrong.

01:19:52.980 | At 14 months, that kid's got a well-defined conscience.

01:19:58.980 | Kid knows.

01:20:01.860 | Tell me an infant monkey that can do that.

01:20:04.740 | I don't do that, because that kid has a conscience.

01:20:09.580 | It's a God-created conscience.

01:20:14.300 | So there's gonna be differing view of parenting.

01:20:16.700 | There's gonna be differing views about family boundaries.

01:20:25.820 | He grew up in a household where everybody in the household, when you walked out of your

01:20:34.060 | bedroom, you were fully clothed.

01:20:37.300 | She grew up in a household, when you walked out of the bedroom, people would run around

01:20:42.380 | the house in their underwear.

01:20:44.540 | So her brothers and sisters and mother and father ran around the house in their underwear.

01:20:52.500 | So she leaves the bedroom in her underwear, and he's horrified.

01:21:01.660 | "What are you doing?

01:21:04.660 | Get behind closed doors."

01:21:05.820 | "We don't do that."

01:21:07.780 | "Oh, our family always did this."

01:21:12.220 | Differing views about boundaries.

01:21:17.380 | And this can go into several different areas.

01:21:21.060 | Maybe she writes a, she keeps a diary, and these are a diary about her private thoughts

01:21:29.740 | about things.

01:21:33.460 | And she doesn't want anybody to read that.

01:21:38.100 | It's just her private thoughts before God.

01:21:42.300 | So she leaves it around the house, and one day she walks in, and her husband's sitting

01:21:45.420 | there reading her diary.

01:21:47.500 | "What are you doing?

01:21:50.620 | You're not supposed to be reading that."

01:21:51.860 | She grabs it from him.

01:21:53.580 | "What?

01:21:55.140 | You're my wife.

01:21:56.140 | Those are just my private thoughts before God.

01:21:59.260 | What are you doing reading my diary?"

01:22:02.620 | "I didn't mean to.

01:22:04.460 | I saw it sitting there, and I thought it would be interesting, and you're my wife, and we

01:22:07.500 | share the most intimate part of our lives together.

01:22:10.380 | What's the issue?

01:22:11.380 | What's the big deal?"

01:22:14.060 | "No, that's just for me.

01:22:21.180 | My wife used to keep a diary, but I never read it.

01:22:26.500 | She'd always have it sitting around the house, kept it on a daily basis, pretty extensive

01:22:31.380 | thing.

01:22:32.380 | I think we still have it somewhere stored away.

01:22:35.980 | Her thoughts before God.

01:22:39.700 | I wish I would have read it, because 15 years into our ministry, she got saved.

01:22:49.580 | She knew how to function around Christians.

01:22:50.980 | She knew how to act like a Christian.

01:22:53.020 | She had grown up in a pastor's home, but she wasn't a believer until 15 years into our

01:23:00.940 | ministry.

01:23:03.460 | And after she got saved, she showed me her diary, and I began to read past years.

01:23:10.300 | I'm going, "I didn't know she thought this.

01:23:14.500 | I had no idea.

01:23:16.620 | She kept it very, very private.

01:23:18.620 | Now, she didn't tell me I couldn't read it.

01:23:21.860 | I just respected her space, so to speak, but now I wish I would have read it.

01:23:29.540 | If I would have read it, it would have been very plain what her spiritual condition was

01:23:34.660 | before God.

01:23:35.660 | And actually, she came to Christ when she was teaching a Sunday school class of fourth

01:23:43.000 | and fifth grade girls.

01:23:45.620 | And she came to me one night, and she says, "You know, I don't think these girls really

01:23:48.420 | understand salvation, so what do I need to study in the Bible, and what's some books

01:23:52.780 | that I need to read in order to teach these girls about salvation?"

01:23:55.940 | So I gave her some ideas, and here's some following passages you need to study.

01:24:00.500 | So she went up to the room, and she began to work on this, and began to work on it,

01:24:03.820 | and started reading, reading.

01:24:05.180 | And all of a sudden, the thought dawned on her, "You know, as I'm reading about what

01:24:08.180 | it means to really be a believer, this is not true of me."

01:24:15.100 | And God ended up using that to bring her to Christ.

01:24:21.540 | She didn't tell me that night what had happened.

01:24:23.740 | The next day, I get a call.

01:24:24.740 | One of the secretaries says, "Your wife's on the phone, and she needs to talk with you

01:24:29.340 | right now."

01:24:30.340 | So I go, "Whoops.

01:24:31.340 | Something must be up."

01:24:32.340 | So I answer the phone, and she says, "Can you meet with me for lunch?

01:24:35.220 | I need to talk with you about something."

01:24:36.860 | Now, when my wife says that, I'm going, "Uh-oh.

01:24:40.140 | Something's going on.

01:24:41.140 | Okay.

01:24:42.140 | Let's meet for lunch."

01:24:43.420 | So we set up a little lunch appointment at Arby's Roast Beef, and we sat down, and she

01:24:48.820 | says, "Do you remember what I asked you about?"

01:24:50.900 | "Oh, yeah."

01:24:51.900 | And then she shared with me how God used that to convict her of life.

01:24:56.500 | I thought, "This is great."

01:24:59.100 | She didn't know how I was going to react.

01:25:01.180 | "This is great.

01:25:02.180 | This explains everything."

01:25:03.180 | Now, the issue began, "How do we break this to our church?

01:25:09.460 | Their pastor's wife, for the last 15 years, has not been a believer."

01:25:14.860 | So we carved out an entire Sunday evening service, and I stood with her, and she shared

01:25:19.900 | how God changed her life.

01:25:22.460 | Interesting mixed reaction from our church because she had counseled and worked with

01:25:25.300 | an awful lot of ladies there.

01:25:27.860 | Some of them were really joyful, and then there were others that were mad at her.

01:25:30.820 | "Oh, that can't be.

01:25:31.820 | That can't be.

01:25:32.820 | I can't accept that."

01:25:33.820 | "You weren't a believer before?"

01:25:34.820 | "I can't be."

01:25:35.820 | "That can't be.

01:25:37.420 | I trusted the fact that you were a believer."

01:25:39.580 | I actually got angry at her.

01:25:45.100 | But I had the opportunity to then baptize her later, which was really great.

01:25:50.900 | But I wish I would have read that diary long before.

01:25:54.980 | Boundaries, boundaries.

01:26:01.220 | Sometimes they're legitimate ones.

01:26:02.500 | Sometimes they're not legitimate ones.

01:26:06.340 | There's also problems caused by fatigue and busyness.

01:26:10.020 | Children especially introduce that one.

01:26:12.140 | It seems they never let up.

01:26:13.340 | They never let us have a full night's sleep once the kids get there.

01:26:19.780 | There's something that's always interrupting you in the middle of the night.

01:26:22.840 | Some kid wakes up crying, or they've had a bad dream, or they have some illness or sickness,

01:26:29.140 | and they're not sleeping well.

01:26:31.220 | And so as a result of that, you're not sleeping well, and you're constantly busy taking care

01:26:36.140 | of them.

01:26:37.140 | Plus, you have your own responsibilities at work the next day, and your wife has responsibilities.

01:26:42.900 | So there's lots of pressures there.

01:26:44.100 | There's concern about family health, and most of that is because of the kids.

01:26:53.060 | The kids themselves have changed the whole dimension of family health.

01:26:57.940 | There's also decisions that you need to make, and these become more difficult, especially

01:27:02.300 | with in-laws and the family, on holidays because the kids are there.

01:27:09.420 | Having to visit relatives and vacations, and grandpa and grandma always wants to see the

01:27:16.460 | grandkids.

01:27:17.460 | They always want to see.

01:27:21.420 | So who do we visit on the holiday?

01:27:24.200 | Because we've got her family who wants to always see the kids, his family always wants

01:27:29.620 | to see the kids.

01:27:30.620 | Where do we go?

01:27:31.620 | Holidays, vacations, you can't always go one place.

01:27:39.460 | How do we divide this out, and then how do we work it into extended family schedules?

01:27:46.420 | Because they have their own families, they have their own schedules, they have their

01:27:49.080 | own things that they're doing.

01:27:52.380 | How do you do that?

01:27:54.220 | That can cause some serious strains and temptation on the relationship.

01:27:59.940 | And then, with all the business that's going on, then how do you fit sex into a schedule

01:28:03.860 | like that?

01:28:05.300 | Wow.

01:28:06.300 | Oh, that's hard.

01:28:11.540 | Too tired tonight, sweetheart.

01:28:15.300 | Well, when are you not going to be tired?

01:28:22.460 | The second Tuesday of next week.

01:28:29.340 | Too tired.

01:28:30.340 | So how do you fit that into what's going on in these family relationships?

01:28:39.740 | For some couples, they end up postponing and postponing and postponing and postponing their

01:28:47.220 | intimacy and their relationship, and it ends up causing a serious problem in their relationship.

01:28:54.580 | And this is exactly what 1 Corinthians 7:5 warns about.

01:28:59.580 | Grab your Bible just for a moment, and let's go over there.

01:29:02.420 | 1 Corinthians 7.5.

01:29:10.140 | Here Paul's talking about the intimacy between a husband and wife, and he says here, "Stop

01:29:17.140 | depriving one another except by agreement for a time so that you may devote yourself

01:29:25.260 | to prayer and come together again so that Satan will not tempt you because of your lack

01:29:30.420 | of self-control."

01:29:31.420 | I'm interested in the latter part of that verse.

01:29:38.100 | Once this husband and wife is used to an ongoing mutually satisfying sexual relationship, and

01:29:50.700 | then there is an extended period of denial of that relationship, then that sets both

01:29:57.340 | of them up for failure.

01:30:03.100 | Because he goes to work, and all of a sudden there's a nice young lady at work that starts

01:30:06.820 | paying attention to him, and wow, she's very, very sweet.

01:30:13.980 | And she goes about her duties, and all of a sudden there's a really nice young man who

01:30:18.820 | starts paying attention to her, and all of a sudden he's really, really a nice guy.

01:30:28.020 | So once a husband and wife is used to a regular mutually satisfying relationship in the marriage

01:30:38.920 | on a sexual level, and then you deny each other, the Bible says you give Satan a foothold

01:30:46.660 | in your marriage.

01:30:52.940 | Satan gains territory.

01:30:56.000 | He says, "Come together again so that Satan will not tempt you because of your lack of

01:31:00.780 | self-control."

01:31:01.940 | The introduction of children into a marriage can cause that to happen.

01:31:10.500 | And you have got to reserve time for one another.

01:31:16.620 | Sometimes it takes much more deliberate planning rather than maybe you're used to a relationship

01:31:23.380 | where everything just always happens spontaneously.

01:31:26.260 | Well, you can't do that with kids.

01:31:29.600 | It's got to be much more deliberate and planned now because the kids get up at a certain time,

01:31:34.820 | and they go to bed at a certain time, and they eat at a certain time, and so you got

01:31:38.700 | to be prepared.

01:31:39.700 | So everything in your life is scheduled around what's going on with those kids.

01:31:44.980 | So now your times of intimacy have got to be much more scheduled.

01:31:52.160 | Just because it's scheduled and not spontaneous does not mean that's a bad thing.

01:31:57.680 | It's a good thing.

01:32:01.180 | Well, it's not as fun if it's scheduled.

01:32:07.380 | Well, that's all in the mind.

01:32:12.880 | When you want to go visit an amusement park, you have to schedule it, and you still have

01:32:18.340 | fun, right?

01:32:19.340 | Yeah, you have to schedule it.

01:32:21.900 | You don't just spontaneously trip into an amusement park.

01:32:25.180 | Well, a few people don't do that.

01:32:28.260 | You don't do that.

01:32:29.540 | It's scheduled.

01:32:30.540 | But you still have fun.

01:32:31.540 | And you can still have fun if you schedule your relationship and say, "Okay, we know

01:32:35.620 | the kids are going to be asleep now, and they're not going to be demanding or nothing's going

01:32:40.140 | on, so the two of us need to get away separately and spend a little time together."

01:32:44.020 | That's all right.

01:32:45.580 | That's okay.

01:32:47.460 | But understand, when you're counseling young couples that have children, this is a pressure

01:32:55.100 | point.

01:32:58.860 | So it's not uncommon for me when I'm counseling couples that are at this particular life cycle

01:33:03.540 | to ask, "Hey, how are things going?"

01:33:06.300 | I mean, "How are things going sexually?

01:33:08.340 | Is everything going on in your marriage?"

01:33:11.820 | I am not probing that area because I'm curious about their particular sexual life.

01:33:17.380 | You know what?

01:33:18.380 | I know way too much about way too many people, and you're going to get this way too.

01:33:22.020 | There's not a bit of curiosity left in my entire body.

01:33:25.540 | It doesn't exist, all right?

01:33:28.060 | The only reason I'm asking them that kind of question is because I'm interested in their

01:33:32.620 | marital welfare, and I know that that is a stress and temptation at that particular stage

01:33:38.280 | of life.

01:33:39.460 | I know that.

01:33:40.460 | So how is it?

01:33:43.920 | I'm a nosy pastor, okay?

01:33:47.260 | How's it going?

01:33:48.260 | Well, to be perfect frank about it, it's been a while since we've been intimate.

01:33:58.340 | Really?

01:33:59.780 | Why?

01:34:01.140 | Well, I'm busy at work, she's busy with the kids at home, you know, and when we get done

01:34:08.220 | at the end of the day, we're so exhausted, we just kind of just drop into bed exhausted.

01:34:13.260 | Well, you know, you're giving Satan a foothold in your marriage.

01:34:19.540 | We are?

01:34:20.540 | Yeah.

01:34:21.540 | Well, look at this.

01:34:22.540 | 1 Corinthians 7, 5.

01:34:25.660 | You're setting yourself up for a disaster here.

01:34:29.200 | That means you have got a plan to have times together.

01:34:33.780 | That's vitally important.

01:34:35.580 | Long after the kids are grown and out of the house, you'll still have your relationship,

01:34:40.500 | and part of that intimacy is making an investment into the future of your relationship.

01:34:46.480 | You start building your life around those kids, you're setting your home up for a disaster.

01:34:52.940 | One of the worst things you can do as a Christian family is to have a child-centered home.

01:34:57.900 | That's one of the worst things you can do.

01:35:01.860 | You're letting the kids determine everything that happens in that home.

01:35:05.220 | No.

01:35:06.220 | What's the kind of home you need to have?

01:35:07.220 | You need the kind of home that is a marriage-centered home.

01:35:13.980 | It's something that the kids revolve around.

01:35:18.980 | A little bit later on in the class, I will talk about why that is so vitally important

01:35:26.500 | because that makes a lot of decisions for you.

01:35:28.980 | When you have a marriage-centered home instead of a child-centered home, that changes the

01:35:33.500 | whole dynamic of the house, and that's exactly what God says you ought to have.

01:35:39.420 | God loves you.

01:35:40.420 | God loves you.

01:35:41.420 | God loves you.

01:35:42.420 | God loves you.

01:35:43.420 | God loves you.

01:35:44.420 | God loves you.

Lecture 8: Marriage and Family Counseling - Dr. John D. Street

Chapters