Is a Similar Sense of Calling Required for Marriage?
00:00:00.000 | Hey everyone, this is Tony, and before we dive into today's episode, I want to ask you a favor.
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00:00:36.080 | Will God give my future spouse a similar calling to the calling he has given me?
00:00:46.320 | Should we expect marriage to be a harmonizing of vocational passions?
00:00:51.520 | The question is from a listener named Arielle.
00:00:55.040 | Hello, Pastor John. As I look forward to marriage, Lord willing,
00:00:58.240 | I wonder if the partner God has for me, my future husband,
00:01:01.920 | will have a similar calling for God's specific purposes.
00:01:05.280 | For example, will he give my husband the same level of desire I have for missions?
00:01:11.360 | Is that what God designed for marriage to be, a union of purpose?
00:01:14.640 | Or is this naive? Are marriages more likely comprised of a husband and wife who are on
00:01:20.480 | their own individual trajectories with unique and different callings?
00:01:24.720 | In your pastoral experience, how does this normally work?
00:01:28.800 | Perhaps I should start with this sentence. Marriage is not fundamentally the linking of arms
00:01:37.600 | in the pursuit of an agreed-upon vocation. Now, here's one of the ways to see why that is true.
00:01:45.760 | When you get married, you have no certainty whatsoever that the person you marry
00:01:52.880 | will not undergo profound changes. Your spouse may become an unbeliever in 10 years.
00:02:00.080 | He or she may totally change his or her mind about what vocation they want to go after.
00:02:09.920 | They may experience deep depression. They may be in an accident and become disabled
00:02:16.000 | and never be able to work a day in their life. They may turn to drink or drugs or sit in front
00:02:22.880 | of TV every night or just become a total lazy couch potato doing nothing. When you get married,
00:02:30.400 | you take a huge risk and don't have any way of predicting for sure how this will turn out.
00:02:37.840 | So, Jesus, unlike our culture, even our church culture, I am sad to say, said divorce is not
00:02:47.120 | the Christian response to these unforeseen changes. Matthew 19, 9, "Whoever divorces his
00:02:53.760 | wife except for sexual immorality and marries another commits adultery." Now, the disciples
00:03:01.680 | respond to that statement with typical man-centered skepticism. They say, this is
00:03:07.520 | Matthew 19, 10, "Well, if such is the case of a man with his wife, it's better not to marry."
00:03:14.800 | In other words, if there's no back door to the marriage leading to a better marriage,
00:03:20.000 | second marriage, third, then this unexpected disappointment I might walk into is not worth
00:03:27.680 | walking into. I'm not walking into the front door if there's no back door for a second marriage.
00:03:33.360 | Now, Jesus' answer to that response, that skeptical man-centered, I could never do that
00:03:39.040 | response, in Matthew 19, 11 says, "Well, celibacy is a worthy option. Not everyone can receive my
00:03:47.840 | standards of marriage, but if you can trust me for it, then I will be sufficient to help you keep
00:03:56.560 | your covenant no matter what changes come." So my point is, marriage is most fundamentally
00:04:05.280 | a covenant commitment to live as husband and wife till death do us part, even if there are totally
00:04:12.720 | unexpected changes in vocational preference or disability or capacities for work or changing
00:04:23.360 | preferences on a hundred things that might alter your life. Marriage is not most fundamentally
00:04:31.200 | about linking arms in an agreed-upon vocational track. It's about covenant keeping to the glory
00:04:40.240 | of Christ till death do us part no matter what. Now, to answer Ariel's question, I need to draw
00:04:47.680 | out some biblical realities about the roles, the glorious realities, of how husband and wives
00:04:54.880 | in marriage are to relate to each other. For example, God created man first and then woman
00:05:02.000 | in Genesis 2, which Paul says that order is of significance for the cause of leadership in the
00:05:10.240 | home, and then God said in Genesis 2.18, "It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a
00:05:17.760 | helper fit for him." And then in the New Testament, God says, "Wives, submit to your husbands as to
00:05:25.040 | the Lord, for the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church," Ephesians
00:05:30.960 | 5.22. So these two texts, Genesis 2.18, Ephesians 2.22, these two, not to mention several others,
00:05:42.720 | point—and I think the combination of the two makes the point especially strong—point to the
00:05:48.480 | protection and the provision and the leadership of a husband toward his wife. In other words,
00:05:54.960 | the man bears a unique responsibility for the direction and biblical functioning of the family,
00:06:02.800 | not the only responsibility, a unique one as the head. The reality of woman as helper in Genesis
00:06:12.320 | 2.18 and the reality of headship and submission in Ephesians 5 point to a relationship in marriage
00:06:20.880 | where the wife is following the lead of her husband's sense of calling and finding her own
00:06:29.200 | ministry in that helping, supportive framework. So my counsel to unmarried people would be to the man,
00:06:40.240 | seek God's vision for your life, and don't be a jellyfish just coasting or floating along.
00:06:49.120 | See a goal, pursue it for the glory of God. And when a woman comes into your life
00:06:55.600 | and it looks like God may be knitting your hearts together toward marriage, be sure
00:07:02.960 | that her commitment is to you, not your vocation and not her vocation. Ask her, "Will you follow
00:07:13.280 | me wherever God leads me, provided we do not sin? I do not lead you into any sin."
00:07:22.640 | I wouldn't have married Noelle. I wouldn't have married a woman who said, "Well, I don't think
00:07:27.680 | your sense of calling should guide us, but my calling should guide us," or "We should split
00:07:33.280 | the difference and always find a way so that I can do my vocation and you can do yours." I don't
00:07:40.080 | think that way of relating as husband and wife fits the biblical teaching about how we should
00:07:46.000 | relate to each other. And to the unmarried woman, I would say, "Look to God in this second most
00:07:53.680 | significant decision of your life—marriage, Christian commitment is the first—look to God in
00:07:59.520 | this second most significant decision of your life and discern if this is the kind of man you want in
00:08:08.640 | the headship of your life and marriage." Now, with that biblical framework in place, I should say
00:08:16.800 | this. God does not teach that any of His children, male or female, should be without a fruitful,
00:08:26.400 | meaningful ministry, whether vocational or non-vocational. Nobody, nobody in Christ should
00:08:33.840 | be coasting. Nobody in the kingdom coasts. Nobody is wasting his or her life watching TV or merely
00:08:42.000 | playing with hobbies. Home and children are among the highest callings, and there will almost
00:08:49.920 | certainly be lengthy seasons of life when the children are not home, they're out, they're gone,
00:08:55.920 | that don't require the total focus. God has always put His daughters to work in a thousand ways
00:09:03.760 | that bless the church and the world, and what I'm arguing for is that God loves to do this
00:09:10.960 | within the framework of a marriage where the wife delights to stand by her man,
00:09:17.520 | support him, help him, follow him, and find in that drama of Christ in the church a ministry,
00:09:26.080 | vocational or non-vocational, that blesses the world and glorifies God.
00:09:32.800 | Thank you, Pastor John and Ariel. Thank you for the very good question. Appreciate it.
00:09:37.760 | And the weekend hits again, and we return on Monday, the third Monday of January,
00:09:42.960 | which marks our celebration of Martin Luther King Jr., a day fitting to step back and assess
00:09:49.520 | the current state of race relations in the church in America, which we will do on Monday.
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00:10:16.880 | Thanks.
00:10:18.080 | [BLANK_AUDIO]