Grab your notes and open them up to this section where we're dealing with family life cycles. Family life cycles. You see here we're still working on the issue of process dynamics in counseling, in counseling marrying the family, marriage and family issues. We've been talking about in our last session about things that affect the family, like gathering data, we've got to look for evidence that would either confirm the presence or the absence of some of the most common marital problems.

That's important for us as counselors, but it's also important to understand that many families are at a particular stage in life, and that stage in life reflects a lot of uniquenesses compared to other stages in life. It's going to bring to bear upon that family a certain amount of pressures, stresses.

And that's one of the reasons why oftentimes it's kind of interesting to look at churches and to watch how Sunday school classes are grouped together. Most often you'll see Sunday school classes grouped together on the basis of these life cycles. There is the young marrieds. Why do all the young marrieds like to meet together?

Because they're all facing the same problem. Or a young parents class. Why do all the young parents like to get together in a Sunday school class? Because they're all facing the same pressures and problems. There is the senior saints class. Why do all the senior saints want to get together?

Because they're all facing the same kind of problems together. Very rarely do you ever hear a class called the middle-aged class. They don't like to be called that. They're really middle-aged, but they like to think of themselves as still young couples. And so they call themselves something else. I'm the faith builders class, I'm the joiners class, I'm the whatever you call it.

That's what they like to refer to it. And those seem to be the very popular classes. Rarely do you ever find a class that's truly intergenerational. Why? Because most people like to hear the word of God taught to whatever stage of life they're in. And applied to whatever stage of life they're in.

That's usually what they like. When sometimes we ignore some of our greatest learning is if we could mix those young marrieds in with some of those senior saints and let some of those senior saints teach some of those young marriage some of their wisdom. But they're divorced from that.

Wisdom that they've acquired over many, many years living out the word of God, being faithful to Christ in their marriages, or even the wisdom that they've gained through their failures in their marriage or in parenting. So that's one of the reasons why we study this because as counselors I think it's important for us to be cognitive of these things.

Several years ago I started studying these things and it was interesting how I was really familiar with the ones that I had passed through in terms of my stages of life. But I was, the other stages of life, the other cycles of life, I was totally unfamiliar with the stresses and strains that were a part of that.

And it was interesting to think that through. Because when I have somebody sitting in front of me that's coming out of that particular life cycle, then all of a sudden I have a new perspective on them. They're coming at this particular problem that they're facing from a unique vantage point with a unique set of pressures that are turning up the heat in their life.

What is it? And as a result of that, that heat is producing a certain fruit in their life. And sometimes I like to compare it like this. And I want to use the analogy over here that, and sometimes I'll do this in counseling. This is like the sun here in my analogy.

And this is the heat in life and all the stresses and pressures and history of the relationship is part of that heat. And we're going to use the biblical analogy that Psalms 1 does on comparing the Christian's life to a, or the believer's life to a tree that bears a certain amount of fruit.

And this particular tree has fruit on it. And sometimes the fruit that's produced in this person's life as a result of this is anger or bitterness or a hatred or constant strife with other family members, with a husband and a wife, with their children, lies, lying, all of this is rotten fruit.

And you could list a lot more that's there. Why is it? Because the heat's turned up in their life and this tree begins to produce a certain type of fruit. Now this fruit actually comes as a result, what really fuels this is down here in the roots of this tree.

This is what fuels and motivates that fruit. Like in the past, in a previous class, I talked a little bit about how a husband or a wife can want something out of their spouse. All I want, a wife may say, is for my husband to love me or sometimes a husband may say, all I want is for my wife to respect me.

That's all I want. Now, in and of itself, that's a legitimate desire. But that desire can become a idolatrous desire that captures all of their heart, it becomes more important than being God's kind of husband or God's kind of wife in their life. And so, we put in this little heart here, I want my husband to love me.

That's something in this particular case that this woman becomes or this wife, this is all she lives for, is that. She may call herself a Christian, she may genuinely be a Christian, but at this particular time, having a husband who loves her is far more important than her being a godly woman.

And so, when she doesn't receive the love and appreciation that she thinks she deserves in that marriage, then what happens? Well, then it produces or motivates the fruit. She becomes angry, she's bitter, there's hatred, there's strife, there's lying. You would say, well, that's all kinds of fruit that's characteristic of an unbeliever, yeah.

Is it possible for a time for believers to act like unbelievers? Yeah, we can see that in 1 Corinthians 5. The man who commits adultery with his stepmother is told to be removed from the church. In fact, Paul says, "Turn him over to Satan for the destruction of the flesh that his soul might be saved." And then, later on in 2 Corinthians 2, he repents.

He shows himself to be a believer, but in the short run of things, he looks like and acts like an unbeliever because of his adultery and because of his fornication with his stepmother. This is what the heat will do in a believer's life, it will produce all kinds of lying, strife, hatred, bitterness, anger, and there's a host of other things that can be a product of that.

Well, I'm really interested in this life cycle at taking a look at what are the unique cycles of life that marriage and the family goes through that brings about the pressure that produces the fruit, because you can almost anticipate wherever that person is coming to you from, whatever life cycle they're coming, you know that this is part of the heat that's being turned up in their life.

These are part of the pressures. So let's look at this. The first area is probably what we call early marriage. This is pre-children. Young adults without kids. Most often, this is not a strict rule, in fact, this as time goes on is increasing age-wise, but approximate age is 21 to 25 years of age, but it seems like with each generation it's creeping up there a little bit later and later.

I mean, it goes into the 30s and mid-30s now, but early marriage pre-children is the idea. They face a lot of developmental tasks at this particular age. For example, have they appropriately separated from their parents? That is versus enmeshment or opposite, an emotional divorce that is from their parents.

Has that occurred? It's something that they didn't really want, but there's a struggle with young couples. Early married, how much are we attached to their respective fathers or mothers? Or then there's learning how to balance allegiance with the family of origin. This may be difficult, and you can see it because when they attempt to make a decision as a couple, do they run back to their parents and constantly consult them?

Or maybe they go to their respective parents. She goes to her parents, he goes to his parents, or just one of them goes to their parents. There's pressures that can come as a result of that. How well have they severed that relationship? This is what is expressed in Genesis 2:24 about a young man leaving father and mother.

The Bible says that's a good thing, that doesn't mean you abandon your parents, it doesn't mean you forsake them, it doesn't mean that you no longer have any relationships with them. That's not what it's saying. It's that your primary relationship is no longer to them, it is to your spouse.

That's the issue. And young couples sometimes, to varying degrees, depending on the young couple, struggle with that issue. How much allegiance do I have to my family of origin? Or there's also establishing mutually agreed upon rules for the relationship. There are certain things where, well, let's take their connection to their parents, for example.

There could be many other things. There are rules that this couple talks through and say, "Okay, we're not going to run to our fathers or our mothers and talk about these issues. If we have problems, we're going to work them out together. But if we agree that we need wisdom from our parents, then we'll go together to our parents and ask them.

But we'll always do that together." So this is a young couple working those various things through so they can establish their own home. That's establishing some of the rules for the relationship. And it's interesting sometimes to listen in counseling to what are the rules that you established early in your relationship when marriages get into trouble?

And certain expectations that they have that they assumed were a rule in that marital relationship. They assume that the other person agreed with this particular rule, but they didn't agree. And when they didn't agree, this causes problems, and it causes quite a bit of stress. And they don't resolve it, and they don't resolve it.

Sometimes months turns into years, and years turn into bigger problems. And now we have an issue. Or there's also the issue of establishing a work identity. Usually if the husband is working and he's the breadwinner of the family, I realize that there are certain temporary exceptions to the Titus 2 rule in 1 Timothy 5 where a man has to be the breadwinner for his house, and the woman is supposed to be busy at home, Titus 2.

There are occasional exceptions to that during different stages of life, maybe when a guy is in seminary, and his wife needs to work more, and she becomes more of the breadwinner during those seminary years on a temporary basis, but they're working towards her being in the home. They know this is temporary.

Or maybe he has health problems, and he has to stay home for a short amount of time until those are resolved, and she has to go out and earn the money. That's okay. She's being a suitable helper, but that's not the norm that they're working towards. So for him, when they're young, he's trying to establish some kind of identity in his job.

He's usually at the bottom of the totem pole, and so everything gets dumped at the bottom of the totem pole. If there's extra work or time that has to be spent at the job that's overtime, they expect the young guy, the young buck to do that because he's new.

He's got to pay his dues, so to speak, in this particular job before they advance him. And so he works really hard at establishing his identity in that work role, and that may be very, very difficult for her because he's gone a lot. But if he's going to advance, this is going to have to happen.

And then establishing adult status is another big issue. Establishing adult status. This is part of the developmental task of this particular cycle. The history of their relationship is primarily dating, having fun, not a whole lot of stress or responsibilities until they get married. Now these things start to mount, right?

And now you can't just go back and rely upon mom and dad. You're an adult now. Everybody begins to view you as an adult. You're a married man, you're a married woman, so you've got to act like an adult. There's no room here for lots of pity parties. You've got to learn to accept the pressures and the stresses and strains of life the way an adult would accept them.

You're mature now. That doesn't mean that there isn't quite a bit of area where you need to mature, but you're mature to the point, or should be, where you can bear the weight, the stresses and strains that marital life will bring, and even the stresses and strains that eventual parenting will bring.

You're also in the process of learning how to solve problems and establish priorities together. When you're a single person, you don't have to consult anybody. You just go about solving your problems. Now you're married, so you learn to solve problems together, and the way in which you solve problems when you were a single young man or when you were a single young lady may be different from the way in which you solve problems as a couple.

He maybe grew up in a type of a situation where his parents taught him that when there's interpersonal strife and struggle, you go immediately to those people and you work that thing out. Well, that's not the type of home she grew up in. She grew up in a home where if there was a lot of struggles or strife or conflict between people, you just avoid it.

You just avoid it. Well, now, you're a couple, and now you have a problem with someone else, maybe another younger couple. There's a stress. Well, she wants to say, "Let's just ignore it, wait, let it go by, not deal with it," and he says, "No, we've got to deal with this.

We've got to go to them. We need to sit down. We need to talk with them. We need to make sure we work this thing. Oh, no, we can't do that. That's just going to cause more problems. How am I going to resolve this?" How do you solve problems together?

How do you establish your priorities together? It's really important in life. For guys that are really anxious about ministry, the ministry becomes a very, very high priority. For their wives, oh, it's up there, but it's not up there nearly as high. Family trumps it every time. For him, that may be a little bit harder to discern between those two things.

Ministry family, ministry family, "Well, I'm helping my family by being a good minister." There's all kinds of rationalizations that take place there. What do I do? How do I balance this out? You're adjusting to what you prioritize in terms of your marriage, and furthermore, you're adjusting to the ideas and responsibilities of marriage, or the roles and responsibilities, I should say, of marriage.

What does it mean to be a godly husband? I know when I first got married, the premarital counseling that I had was all taught to my wife and I by a Christian psychologist, and I got to tell you, I think the guy was incredibly well-meaning. I mean, he was a well-meaning guy.

I believe that he was a genuine Christian, and to this day, I still think he's a Christian, but he taught us some horrible stuff about the roles and how you deal with roles in the husband and wife relationship. My view of my role as a husband was not a biblical view at all, and I believe if my wife were here, she would probably say the same thing.

Her view of her role as a wife was not a biblical view that God would have. We're going to talk about that later on in this class, about how God defines the husband's role, how God defines a wife's role, but there's adjusting to these roles and responsibilities in marriage, and what are they?

If he's a real fun-loving guy, he's taking on a lot of responsibilities because now he's got to supply not just for himself, but he also has to supply for his wife. That's a lot of responsibility that requires a lot of maturity. Or there's also, as a young couple, adjusting to each other sexually.

For some young couples, this is easier than for others. It can be a very difficult adjustment for some Christian young couples, and you need to know that if you're counseling them. Even if you teach them, as we're going to talk about later on in the class, even if you teach them a biblical view of sexuality, what will often happen is she has a good biblical view of sexuality, and he has a good biblical view of sexuality.

They can still miss each other like ships passing in the night because she will try to satisfy her husband the way a woman would be satisfied, and he will try to satisfy her the way a man would be satisfied, and never the twain shall meet, and so there's difficulties.

We could even talk about physiological difficulties because usually early in marriage, it's not uncommon for a wife to have lots of yeast infections because what's being introduced into her body is foreign to that body, and until her body builds up a certain amount of antibodies to that and so on, it's not uncommon for these things to happen.

So there's adjustments physiologically. The same thing's true with him. So they go through an entire adjustment. How do I deal with this new relationship, especially if you have a real godly husband and wife who have kept themselves pure for each other, and they have basically, they both have had sexual desires prior to marriage, or he has a sexual desire, she has a sexual desire prior to marriage, but they've said no, no, no, no, no to those sexual desires, and now you put them in a marital relationship where not only is it okay, it's expected.

So to say no, no, no, no, no, and all of a sudden automatically to turn it on and say yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes is a hard transition for some couples. That's very difficult to do. It's hard to make that rollover, and we'll talk about why in the theology why this is.

For the Christian young couple, the question is not when do we have sex. The question is, according to 1 Corinthians 7, 3 through 5, it's when do we not have sex. Sex is always assumed in the marriage. The question is not when do we have sex. The question is when do we not have sex.

So you're saying no, no, no, no, no, and then all of a sudden you're married. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. It's hard to turn that faucet the other direction. That's very difficult to do. So you're adjusting to each other sexually, and then there is this, the beginning process of one fleshness.

Now, that includes sexual oneness, but again, this is that Genesis 224 thing where a man shall leave his father and mother and cleave to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. It's oneness in the fullest sense of the term. They're one in their direction in life. They're one in their purpose in life.

They're one in their outlook in life. They're one in their parenting in life. That doesn't happen overnight. That is a deliberate process of weaving two lives together in marriage, and it takes a while to do that. For some couples that are very independent in their thinking, it may take longer.

With other couples, it's a little bit easier. They can weave their lives together pretty easy, and then there are some couples who think that their lives are woven together pretty tight, and then a major problem comes up and they realize, "Oh, it's not as tight as I thought it was." So all of that has to do with the process of one fleshness.

So those are some of the circumstances. Again, going back to our analogy here, this is part of the stresses and pressures and history of the relationship that begins to bring heat on their lives. That's what begins to happen. Now, what are the family strains and temptations within this stage?

What are the family strains and temptations? Well, one of them is coordinating two schedules. Usually as young couples, at the beginning of marriage, in order to get themselves established, they both work and they're both very busy. They work outside of the house, both of them for a time. She has her job, he has his job.

They're trying to get themselves established financially so eventually she doesn't have to work anymore, and so they're both very busy, establishing two separate schedules. Now, when they were single, they didn't have to do that. They just went about and led their life their own way, and now they have to think about the other person all the time, and they have to think about that other person's schedule.

Maybe they can't afford, they've got two jobs and one car. Now, how do we deal with that? How are we both going to get to work? Everybody's got a time schedule set here, and that's very difficult. Or there is the constant exposure to your mate. Now, before you're married, you think that's going to be nothing but bliss, but you find out after you're married, it's not always bliss.

When you were dating them, well, except for you, Jim, all right, I saw what you said. I didn't hear it, but I saw it. It's not always bliss for everybody, let's put it that way. When you were dating, you always enjoyed your time together because you weren't together all the time.

You had a little bit of time of retreat from the other person. You can go back and think about how wonderful the relationship is and dream of better days and stuff like that. Some of you are going through that right now, aren't you? Those kind of things, that's going on.

Then you get together again with them, and it's such a wonderful time, and all of a sudden you're married and you're around them all the time. I mean, it's like too much chocolate. There's never too much chocolate, Ruben says. I think this summer when I went over to teach in Zurich, Switzerland, when we go over there, we teach right in this church that's right off the Zurich airport.

Right next door to the church, my wife always loves going with me when we do that, is a chocolate factory. We smell it all the time. It's just wonderful if you don't live there, but the people in the area kind of get tired of it after a while, and marriage is a lot like that.

It's wonderful to be around so and so, but this is new. So I have to learn how to ... I'm around them so much, and they've got habits that I didn't know that they had. I'll never forget the first time when we were first married, walking into the restroom and seeing all kinds of girly things hanging all over the restroom.

What is this? I mean, hanging on every free thing in the restroom, drawing. I'm going, "I've never seen anything like this before." That was just kind of a shock. You can't move without those things touching you when you're in there. I never had to deal with that as a single guy.

That was a whole new experience for me, and I'm sure my wife had to deal with similar things. I don't know what it would be. She's always been very kind and not shared a whole lot, but I'm sure that there's a lot there. Maybe my smelly shoes or something like that.

Whoa, I've never had to deal with that, but there's a constant exposure to your mate. That's a difference. That's a change, something you're adjusting to, and then you've got financial difficulties. Oh, financial strains and stresses. Now, it's interesting. I talk about this a lot in premarital counseling, and when we do premarital counseling, we have a whole section where we deal with financial issues and getting themselves established financially because that becomes one of the big pressure points of early marriage.

But what happens, if I were to compare it like this, it would be like when that couple got married, they came out of a home where mom and dad had a certain standard of living. Let's say that it's represented by here. And so that couple naturally does not want to step down in standard of living.

They want to continue, at least equal that, as they move in their marital relationship. Now the problem with that assumption is that it took mom and dad years to get to that level, to have that kind of furniture, to have those particular automobiles, to have the house that they live in.

It took mom and dad years to get to that level. But this couple thinks, "Oh, no, no, no. I'm going to step from here right into that same socioeconomic level." And so they have to, and what you find out in counseling is a lot of these couples go into deep debt to step from the same level that mom and dad were, right into the same level, same kind of house, same kind of car, same kind of food, same everything to equal that level.

And now they have now enslaved themselves to debt for several years into their marriage in order to step there. And they don't realize that they really need to start down here. That when they get married, they're going to have to step way down and start back here and then start working their way up as time goes by and in their marital life where they're being frugal and they're saving their money, they're doing the right thing, the supply for their kids, and eventually as the years go by, they're up there where mom and dad was.

Or what happens if the couple doesn't go into great debt, mom and dad from one side of the family or maybe even both sides tries to make sure they start off on the same level. That's not good for those kids. It's not good. Nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, because they don't learn the appreciation of that money.

It's just handed to them. Not good. That doesn't mean that mom and dad can't loan them some money. But every time that happens, by the way, if you're a young couple, there's always attachments to that money. Even though mom and dad will claim that there's none, there's always attachments, always expectations.

It may not show up until five years later when all of a sudden you do something that mom and dad doesn't like and they say to you, "I can't believe we loaned you that money." "What? What? I thought there was no attachments to that money." "Well, there isn't." "Oh, yes, there are.

There are all kinds of hidden attachments to that money." So you've got to be very careful then. We're not saying it's a sin. We're just saying that these are the unique pressures, strains, and stresses that this particular young couple has to decide. What are we going to do? How are we going to establish ourselves financially?

We're not looking to get rich. We're a Christian. We want to be able to give the Lord and support ourselves and not rely upon anybody else. And just in doing that, it's going to bring a lot of difficulties. We're not trying to be Donald Trump's, not trying to be that.

Everybody else in the world is trying to be that way. They'll probably sink themselves doing it, but we're not trying to be that way. And then there's the pressure of work responsibilities. As I said, usually if he's working, he's starting at the very bottom and there's a lot of pressure on him to perform and show himself to be a valuable, contributing member of that particular company.

So he's trying to be reliable, faithful, be a hard worker. And when that happens, there's also a corresponding low satisfaction with the job. He comes home at night and he says to his wife, "I cannot see myself doing this for the rest of our marital life. I can't see that.

I can't handle this." So there's low job satisfaction. When a couple is also trying to get themselves established financially, there is also quite frequently home tasks that are neglected. Home tasks that are neglected. Usually both of them are working. The house and the regular things around the home are neglected, the laundry backs up, the dishes don't get washed, the sink breaks down, the commodes break down, they don't get repaired.

Why? Because you're so busy just trying to make it from one paycheck to the next paycheck. So a lot of things get neglected when a couple's young. And sometimes, as a young couple, they don't know how to repair them to begin with. Sometimes he doesn't know how to repair them, she does.

Sometimes she doesn't know how to repair them, he does. Sometimes they both don't know how to repair them. They don't have a clue how to do it. That's something that dad always did. We don't do that. It's something dad does. So home tasks get neglected. And then you have the general pressure of just blending two different lives together.

When she was single, she had plenty of free time to spend time with her friends, go out shopping, go play tennis, all this stuff. Now she's a wife. She has much more responsibility, even prior to kids coming along. She didn't have the free time that she did before, before they were married.

He'd do the same thing. He'd go play golf with his friends, go out fishing, take off, do this, that, and the other thing. But now he's got to think of his wife. He doesn't want to leave his wife alone at home when he's out there running around the woods shooting bears.

He doesn't want to do that. And she doesn't like going in the woods. And she doesn't like bears, all right, much less shooting them and eating them. So there are two different people coming together. What sometimes is viewed as liability later on eventually in that marriage becomes a great asset because her feminine ways complement his masculine ways, and his masculine ways do the same thing with her feminine ways.

But at first, it can really be a source of conflict and a rub. It's a difficulty. So you're blending two lives together, two different lives together. And you've heard the old saying, you know, different personalities are sort of attracted to each other. And there's a little truth to that.

You don't marry someone just like you. Oh, you know how horrible that would be? If you married somebody just like you, you married somebody different. If she's a little bit quiet and he's really outgoing, she marries him because he's really outgoing. And he marries her because she's so solid and quiet and, you know, not all over the place the way he is.

Then when they get married, the very strengths become their partner's weaknesses. Because he eventually says, "Wait a minute. She's so quiet. She barely says anything. Are you ever going to communicate with me?" And he looks, or she looks at him and says, "He's all over the place. You know, he's 20 miles wide and a half inch deep.

He's just all over the place." So the very thing that was their strength prior to marriage becomes their greatest weakness after marriage. Now, you notice your partner hasn't changed when that happens. But our perspective of our partner has changed. They haven't changed a bit. They're still the same person.

That's the same person that you were attracted to. But now afterwards, it's that very characteristic that repulses you. It's your perspective that's changing, blending two different lives together. And then there's resolving inevitable disagreements and differences. There's going to be disagreements. There are going to be differences. You can't have two different people who have a sinful nature without these things happening.

So this quasi-myth that's out there, and it's perpetuated, by the way, by these computer dating services, that there's somebody out there in the world that is absolutely compatible to you, and a computer will find that person for you. Just give us all your data, we'll run it through, and you think, "Oh, I have finally found the one person that matches up to me.

We're not going to have any problems at all. Give me a break." That's not true. This myth of compatibility is now, this great big balloon, if you will, is now punctured with the pin of reality. Those people get married and they have their first fight, and you say, "They're in tears.

I can't believe this is happening. We were so right for each other after all the computers said so." I don't realize that there is no such thing as two compatible people. Any two people on the planet, theologically, are incompatible. Why? Because of their sinful nature. The only thing that really makes marriage work in true intimacy and harmony, now there's a lot of artificial type of intimacy and harmony out there in the world, the only thing that makes it work is God and the gracious enablement of Jesus Christ in a couple's heart and life.

You can have a facsimile of marriage and even survive this lifetime with a facsimile of a marriage, but just sheer survival does not necessarily make a marriage of companionship and intimacy. So there's going to be inevitable disagreements, there are going to be inevitable differences that are out there. There are also going to be differing ideas about roles and responsibilities.

Like for instance, she grew up in a household where mom loved to work outside, and so she did all the gardening and she took care of the lawn and everything, while he grew up in a household where that's something that dad did, so he expected that he was going to do that responsibility.

He wants to take care of the lawn, he wants to take care of the gardening and stuff. That's not your responsibility. Your responsibility is the inside of the house, my responsibility is the outside of the house, he says to her. And she says, "Wait a minute, no, I like the outside too, so we need to share.

I want you to help me with the inside and I'll help you with the outside." And he says to her, "Wait a minute, I don't do inside work. I don't do that, all right." "What? You don't love me. This is terrible. I'm married to a beast." Differing ideas about roles and responsibilities.

What's your role? What's your responsibility? His mother always did the laundry. He never had to do laundry, never had to do laundry. In her household, she grew up, everybody did their own laundry. So when his dirty clothes start to back up and the ham, what do they call it?

>> Hamper. >> Yeah, hamper. Starts to back up and they're not washed. He goes to her, "Hey, what about my clothes?" She says, "There's a washer." "Wait a minute, I don't do laundry. That's not me. I don't do that. That's your responsibility." "Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

Everybody takes care of their own laundry in this household." "What? Where did you get that?" "That's the way I grew up." "Well, just because you grew up that way doesn't mean that that's the way our household is going to be." "Oh, wait a minute. So you want me to be the way your household was going to be.

Is that it?" she says. "Well, yeah. We always did it right." There's differing roles and responsibilities. What's going on there? There's also facing reality. There's facing reality. And there are a lot of things that kind of slap a couple in the face when they're young. They come out of school or university training.

They think that, wow, they're the best thing that's ever happened to the world. As soon as people realize that, they'll put us in huge areas of responsibility. And they'll pay me a lot of money to do this. And they begin to face the reality that's not the way life works.

And there's going to be then sexual differences as well. She's going to view things one way sexually. He's going to view things a different way. She's going to view things from a masculine point of view, and she's going to view things from a feminine point of view. And if they learn, those two can complement each other.

But that can be a difficulty. That can cause strife in a marital relationship. And then, of course, there's always in-law problems. Oh, my goodness. You want to find in-law problems, kind of put a little camera inside of a young couple's first Christmas holiday discussions. Whose family are we going to go and visit?

Well, she assumes on the holidays, we'll always go to my family, right? Or he assumes, we're always going to go to my family, right? No. So here in the American holiday season, usually November has the national holiday of Thanksgiving. And then December has the national holiday of Christmas. So what most Christian families do, okay, one year we'll go to your family on Thanksgiving, and then we'll go to the other family on Christmas, and then vice versa.

And then the in-laws start to get involved. I dealt with one seminary couple that were having some major problems with the in-laws because they had it all set up what they were going to do, they had agreed upon and everything was set. And unbeknownst to them, one set of parents bought plane tickets for them to come to their house over the holidays without telling them.

Uh-oh, now we have problems. They already had all their other plans and the other set was ready for them to come to their place, and now this set now has, and you're not going to turn down these expensive tickets. You're not going to throw this money away, are you?

That's rather manipulative, don't you think? Oh boy, now we've got in-law problems. And they come to me and they say, "How do we resolve this?" Well, sometimes when in-laws do those kind of things, the sinfulness of your own human heart as a counselor wants to tell them, "Just buy a 45 and take them out, all right?" But that's the sinfulness of your heart, and you don't give them that kind of advice.

They're being rather manipulative when they do that, no, no. You're going to have to, even if it's offensive to them, you're going to have to say to them, "Listen, we already made plans, we've already told people about the plans, we are going to come to your house, but if you went ahead and bought these tickets, I'm sorry, we can't honor them." And they're going to be hurt, that's going to be difficult.

They did it without consulting you, in other words, they didn't appreciate you as a young couple and your own marriage and home, they didn't respect that. But now they're going to have to, they're going to have to. You do that once and they'll never do that again, by the way.

Ruben? >> If you approach the situation that way, but your wife doesn't think that that's the best approach. >> Yeah, that's a great question, let me repeat it. What if you approach things that way, but your wife doesn't think that that's the best approach? It's her parents that bought the airline tickets, right?

That would be the idea. Her parents, and maybe we need to honor them, we don't want them, after all, they're showing us love by doing it. Well, if you're going to follow biblical rules, then you need to say to her, "Listen, this is not what we agreed upon, and they're not respecting our relationship as a marriage." If she still doesn't want to follow the lead of her husband on this, then there are deeper problems than this particular episode.

And it goes back to her view of roles within the Christian home. If you have gotten to the point where you reach an impasse as a couple, then eventually somebody is going to have to make a call and it's going to have to be him, assuming that it's not something that's overtly sinful.

If he's leading her to do something that's overtly sinful, then she has a biblical responsibility to say, "No, I'm not going to go there, can't do that because you're not my God." But if it's not something overtly sinful, it's a matter of opinion, and it just may seem offensive to people, but he's trying to side with righteousness, even though it may appear that he's favoring his own family, he's got to make a good decision on this.

So, there are all kinds of problems, and last of all, we'll take a break here, there's the independence-dependence issues too. How independent are we of one another and how dependent are we with one another? Sometimes it takes a young couple a number of years to work that one through.

How independent are we, how dependent are we? Typically with a young couple, they're working towards an interdependence upon one another, but it's not so much of a slavish dependence that if God and His sovereignty were to take one of them home, the other one would have no reason to live.

So there is a certain independence that person has before God in their own walk before God, but it is also something that is blended together as a couple, where they're moving forward as one, not as two separate people. They're always moving forward as one, they always have one goal, that's part of that one fleshness we're talking about.

Let's get back to the family life cycles, and we're gonna talk about the expanding family. This is preschoolers, this is where now children entered into the picture, and now things become a little bit more complicated with kids coming into the picture, and we put on here ages approximately 24 to 30 years of age.

We realize that for some couples it may be earlier, for other couples it may be later, that's just an approximate age. What are some of the developmental tasks here? Well, adjusting to the wife not working outside of the home. Usually for most Christian couples, that seems to be the drawing line.

She may work outside of the home until the children come, and immediately when the kids show up, she quits her job, and now she begins to pay full attention to the home, and she begins to really practice Titus chapter two, where women are to be busy at home, is the idea there.

There's also resettling into a new community, and it's amazing how this changes the perspective of that young couple, because when they're young, they're almost willing to live anywhere, wherever's the cheapest, that's where they're going to live. Once kids come into the picture, it radically changes them, because anywhere's not going to do it.

We don't want our kids to grow up in that environment, and so they move to a different environment. That's where they want their kids to grow up. They want it to be safer. They want it to be cleaner. They want the kids to have a little area where they've got a backyard and they can play.

So that usually requires upscaling their living conditions, requires more money, financial commitment, a lot of stuff that happens there. That happened with my wife and I when we had our first child, little girl, Christa. Christa came into the world back in 1980, so October 12, 1980, and it changed our whole perspective in life, because at that particular time, I was still in seminary and we were living in a basement of an older couple, and there was a lot of moisture in that basement, a lot of mold in that basement, and we were willing to put up with it as a young couple.

We didn't realize how dangerous it was even for us back then, but as soon as the baby came along, that changed our whole perspective. We've got to get out of this basement. So we began to frantically look for another place to live to get the baby out of that kind of environment, and we eventually found another place where we could live above ground.

So you resettle into a new community, and that's primarily because of the kids, and that's what's usually going to happen with a young couple. Furthermore, there's adjusting to a new physical, social, or economic conditions. Sometimes moving to another community means you have to change churches, because the church you previously attended is too far away now.

You can't go there anymore, and so you're in a new neighborhood. Socially, you have a whole different new set of friends. There's new economic conditions. You're not going to the same stores or shopping at the same grocery that you used to shop at before. All of that has radically changed.

You're making decisions about family size, and after the first one comes along, it's amazing how that begins to shape your idea about family size. Sometimes you talk with couples prior to the first baby coming along, and they'll both look at you with stars in their eyes, "Oh, we both could have 20 kids." After the first one comes along, maybe two.

So it's greatly reduced. They don't realize all the responsibilities and the pressures that are going to come along with that new little child. It's a big deal. So they're beginning to make decisions about family size that they'll stick with, not just an opinion. Or they're suggesting to increase responsibilities, work, home, community, church involvement.

By the way, let me make another comment about family size. My wife and I, now, from my perspective, I love kids. I could have a dozen of them. It would be easy for me. I would have made a great Roman Catholic, just have kids forever and ever and ever, and never stop having kids.

All right? I would love them. I didn't care about the responsibility and stuff. My wife was a little bit more sane about that, and she wasn't looking at a dozen kids at all. So we had our first two, which were two girls, and then we had our third kid, and our third kid turned out to be twins.

So it was third and fourth. And when I saw what the twins had done to her physically, I'm going, hmm, maybe we should stop there. Because the birth and birth process takes a toll on the wife and so on, and it's time to bring this to a halt at this particular time.

So you're adjusting to family size, and you're adjusting to increased responsibilities at work and home and community, church involvement. Usually with kids, there becomes... You're not just involved in Bible studies and going to worship service. Now you've got kids' programs that you're going to, and you're taking the kids to kids' programs and athletic events, and all of that changes what's going on in your schedule.

And the couple begins to realize, one day they wake up and they realize, you know, we don't have as much freedom as we used to have. Where before, when they were dating, and then when they were newly married, they could go and do things, they didn't have to think about kids, and they had all this freedom.

It was unbelievable. Make decisions. Take the kids. All that's gone. I mean, every time you do anything, you've got to think, "Okay, now what are we going to do with the kids? Are we going to take them with us? Are we going to leave them with grandma? Are we going to get a babysitter?

Are we going to turn them loose in the backyard with the dog and just leave them? What are we going to do?" There's a genuine loss of freedom, and there's adjusting to reduced husband and wife privacy with the kids. A lot of couples, for the children's sake, and it's amazing how the children almost become their functional god, they start this bad habit, and let me emphasize, bad habit of bringing the kid in sleeping in their room.

Bad habit. Bad habit for the kid, bad habit for mom and dad. Mom and dad needs time away from the kids in their room with the door closed. They need that. If that kid thinks that the only way they're going to go to sleep is when mom and dad is present, and you train them to think that, you have now surrendered all of your privacy and all of your intimacy to that kid.

Don't do that. So you're adjusting to reduced husband and wife privacy. You're adjusting to career changes as well as promotions. He starts to receive some promotions in the job, and usually with those promotions comes greater responsibilities as well, or there's a change of jobs that occur. Then there's establishing priorities and structuring your life according to those priorities.

What are our new priorities now? The children become a really high, very significant priority. It's amazing how the children and thinking about them changes your daily decision making. Before they didn't, now they do, and it affects everything, even in seminary. Should I buy this book or should I buy formula for the kid?

Oh yeah, he's got to live, so it's got to be formula, all right? But I'd really like to buy this book. I mean, this is really key, I'm not going to get another deal on this book again in my life, so it's a hard decision. What do I do?

And then you're adjusting new roles of being a mother and a father. It's not all cutesy. There is a cutesy side to it. Really cool. Later on, I'm going to talk about this. Same thing's true with grandparents when they're adjusting to new roles. I just recently, just a year ago, became a grandparent, so I'm about ready to become a grandparent for a second time.

And again, I know you guys are all surprised. How could a guy that looks 25 years of age be a grandparent? I know I have the same problem, but I am. During the conference recently at the NAMC conference, my daughter and my granddaughter came down to the conference, and so we got to spend a lot of time with my granddaughter.

My granddaughter has a little security blanket, and attached to it is a little bunny's head, as cute as can be, and she holds it. In fact, she takes the ear of the bunny, which is a little terry towel ear, and she holds the ear of the bunny right up there near her nose like this.

And then she'll trace her lips around like this, all right? And that's her security, and she'll just sit there and look at you like that, all right? That's her little security blanket. I was holding her one day during the conference, and she grabbed my finger. And by the way, she can't say bunny, so she calls her little security blanket buggy.

This is buggy, all right? So I'm holding her during the conference, and all of a sudden, out of nowhere, she grabs my finger, and she pulls it up to her nose, and then she starts tracing her lips with it. I'm going, "Oh, I'm on buggy level." That's a really high level to be on, is buggy level.

My wife was a little bit irritated with me because it took her two additional days to get on buggy level, all right? But I made it to buggy level before she did. But anyhow, kids are interesting. As a young couple, you're adjusting to be a mother and a father and all the little cute things.

And sometimes, it's cute things that kids do, and sometimes, it's not so cute things. I think one of my kids has the world record in projectile vomiting. She had had a lot to eat during dinner, and we put the kids to bed one night, and all of a sudden, we heard this, "Ugh!" And we go, "Oh, one of the kids are sick." So both my wife and I go running upstairs, and she's laying there just so peacefully there on her bed, and we're going, "Hmm, she must be fine." So we turn around to walk out of the room, and the whole side of the other room is covered and dripping.

And we're going, "How did she do that? I've never seen anything like that in my entire life. Oh, my goodness." It's a whole change. And you think to yourself, "Oh, this is late at night. One of the last things I want to do is spend the entire night wiping down a room.

All right? This is going to take us half the night." And then all it took was one, "Ooh!" on her part to do it. That's all it took. So you're adjusting those new rules, and it's very demanding. Now that girl who did that, which was Melissa, is about ready to have her first baby.

So we're hoping that that baby returns the favor. So we're adjusting the new rules of mother and father. Then there's handling the pressure of the criticism from grandparents. "Oh, this is a biggie. You know, you're not doing what grandma and grandpa on either side thinks is right. That's not a good way to rear your kid.

And you're trying to make the best decisions you can, and yet you want to be an independent home. But you want to learn from your mother and father, but you're not going to do everything that they did. And you're not going to do it the same way that they did.

And so it's going to be different. It's going to be different." And you're getting pressure, and some of that pressure comes in the form of criticism. "Why are you doing it that way? We never did that with our kids. Oh, that's quite a statement. We never did it that way with our kids.

We never treated you that way when you were a kid. Well, hmm." So there's pressure there. If you're not doing anything wrong, physically wrong to the child or sinful in God's eyes, then you got to be able to look at the grandparents and say, "You know, we love you, and we think you did a great job, I mean, pretty great grazing us.

But we're not always going to do things exactly the way you did, but that doesn't mean we don't love you. It's going to be different. We're a different couple. We're different than you and dad." So, yes, Ruben? What about discipline? Yeah, see, there's another area. In the area of discipline, it may be different than the grandparents disciplined people.

For example, here's another issue. Recently counseled a couple who spanked their children, but always did it in a very controlled way, in a very loving way, but firmly spanked their kids and let the kids know that when they did wrong, well, one of the sets of parents said to those parents, "If we ever see you do that to our grandkids, we're going to report you to social services." So the couple comes to me and they say, "What do we do?" And I said, "Number one, is it wrong?

Is it a sinful thing that you're doing?" "No, it's not a sinful thing you're doing." "Number two, is it something unlawful that the government says is wrong?" "No, it wasn't something that was unlawful the government said was wrong." So they can report all they want, but eventually you're going to be innocent.

But if they're going to try to control you and the way that you're dealing with your kids and you're not doing anything sinful and you're not doing anything unlawful, then you may have to get to the point where you say to them, "We love you, but as long as you have this stance, we're not going to bring our kids around you anymore." And that's what they had to do with that set of grandparents.

If grandma and grandpa are going to be that intrusive into the life of their kids and are willing to imply that they're going to have their kids locked up for something that they're not doing that's wrong, then that has become a destructive relationship. So that's how bad it can get with grandparents if they get that manipulative and that controlling in the life of their grandkids.

Now rarely, you know, in probably the past 30 years that I've been doing counseling, the past 30 years, maybe I've had that happen once or twice at the most. Rarely will that ever happen. Most grandparents don't take that position. But every now and then, you'll run into that kind of a situation.

And those parents have got to make the decision what's right before God and follow their conscience. Hopefully their conscience is informed by the word of God, but they've got to follow their conscience on that issue. And in that case, they're going to have to restrict their kid's exposure to grandpa and grandma because this is their children first.

Well, first they belong to God, then it's their children, and only thirdly do those kids have any relationship to grandpa and grandma, but that's third down the line. Kids belong to God first, then they belong to us. We only have a short amount of time with those kids, and we have to exercise good stewardship with them, and then only thirdly are they a reflection of whether they belong to grandpa and grandma.

So, pressure, criticism from grandparents can be a pretty serious thing. All right, so those are some of the developmental tasks. What about the family strains and temptations? Well, again, when kids come into the picture, that changes everything. And one of the issues that it changes is finances. There becomes financial pressures, strains, and stressors that are now turned up.

It's amazing. And my wife and I were always fairly healthy as a couple, weren't sick very much, hardly at all until kids came into the picture. I don't know, I used to say that it's because these kids are so close to the ground, they're down there where the germs are, all right?

That's where they are. You pick them up from the ground, so you're bringing all these germs up with you, all right? But all of a sudden, kids come into the picture, they are little teeny incubators of bacteria. That's what they are. And they incubate these bacteria, and they spread them around the house.

And then all of a sudden, you have more colds, and more flu, and more... That's what kids do. Now, some of you had kids. Am I right about this? I mean, this is what happens. Kids change the whole dynamic. And so there's more doctor's bills, more hospital bills that are going on.

Our twin boys now are in college, and just this past weekend, they were playing an intramural college football game, and the one boy got elbowed in the nose during the game, and it just started gushing with blood. So he had to go to see if he got his nose broke.

Because the previous year, same circumstance, his twin brother got his nose broken. Well, he didn't have his nose broken, but it was sure draining a lot of blood. So there's doctor's bills, and x-rays, and stuff. This is the way kids are going to... Financial pressures, those are the things that come up.

That's always going to be there. And I always see couples, they'll say to me, I said, "When are you going to have kids?" They say, "Well, we're waiting until we're financially able to then." "Oh, well, you're never going to have kids then, right?" No, you just kind of fit kids around your finances.

You don't wait until you have a lot of money to have kids. If you do, you'll be waiting forever, and the kids will think that they were born to grandparents. So they'll never know they're real grandparents, they'll think you're the grandparents. There's different views in regard to father and mother responsibilities.

Now sometimes different views on what they consider to be responsible behavior. I've seen couples get into arguments over what's being fed the baby, because she and her family, her mother used to feed babies certain amount of things, or certain types of things. And he and his family used to feed babies different things.

And he sees her feeding the kids what her family used to feed them. "You're going to feed our kid that stuff? That's horrible." "You shouldn't feed her that stuff, you're going to ruin our kid." "What do you mean? I grew up with that stuff. You think I'm ruined? You think I'm a ruined person, because I grew up with that." Well, there's a different role, father and mother, and responsibilities there.

There's different views in regard to parenting, different views about whether or not to spank a child. How do you spank a child? Do you use a rod or an instrument to spank a child? Do you use your hand to spank a child? Do you use a belt to spank a child?

Or one, husband or wife, may come to the conclusion that you're not supposed to spank a child at all. Don't spank a child. That'll ruin their self-esteem. It'll harm their psyche if you do. And so they have this negative view, and most of that has probably been culturally informed, and a lot of that is built upon a wrong analysis of studies.

Most of those studies go back to the mid-1950s, and Benjamin Spock did a whole series of studies that was government-funded on infant monkeys, and he found out that if you spank infant monkeys for doing something wrong, and you reintroduce those infant monkeys back into a cage with other monkeys their same age, then the ones that have been spanked becomes very aggressive.

They'll hit and bite and steal, and they're much more angry, and so as a result of that, he very committed to an evolutionary view of man, believes that an infant monkey is only a half step down from an infant human. There's very little difference between the two, according to Benjamin Spock, and so if you do that to a child, when a child's growing up, then you're gonna teach that child aggressiveness, you're gonna teach that child anger, but we would say as Christians, there's a radical difference between that infant monkey and that child, radical difference.

And furthermore, usually most of the studies that are done on spanking make no differentiation between a parent who spanks a child in uncontrolled anger and a parent that spanks a child for the child's benefit. There's no distinction made between the two, so the conclusion is that if you spank your child, then your child will grow up to be an angry, aggressive child.

Well, I wanna let you know that I was spanked my entire childhood, and that actually was a positive thing for me. We spanked all of our children as they were growing up. They have not turned out angry or aggressive, none of that is the case. I've never met in all of my years of ministry, couples that spank their child where the child grew up aggressive because they were spanked.

But I have met children that grew up aggressive because when the parents spanked them, they took out their anger on them in uncontrolled anger, and a child understands the difference between the two. And so a child learns from the parent's example that when you get angry, you just go out and hit something or hit somebody.

No, no, there's a huge difference between spanking in uncontrolled anger and spanking a child for that child's benefit, even though you may be angry at the child, 'cause I know there are some Christian psychologists out there that teach the philosophy that you should never spank your child in anger.

Well, if that's true, I would have never spanked my child, because I'm always angry about the fact that they have done something wrong that they know better. Even my little 14-month-old granddaughter, Abby, has a conscience, and she can't say, "Forgive me," or, "Will you forgive me," so her mother has taught her to say, "Ta-ta." And she loves doing something wrong.

You know what it is? It's taking a tissue box and unloading it. She just loves it. She loves to see how long it's gonna last, and there'll be this pile of tissues, all right? Just taking all the tissues out of the tissue box and unloading those tissues until there's a great big pile there, and she can do it, oh, so quietly, but she gets more fun out of doing that, and she knows it's wrong.

And she'll do it without her mother knowing, and then she'll go into her mother and say, "Ta-ta." What did you do, Abby? Mother will go in the other room, "Abby, ta-ta, ta-ta." I'm sorry, I'm sorry. Abby, you know that's wrong. At 14 months, that kid's got a well-defined conscience.

Kid knows. Tell me an infant monkey that can do that. I don't do that, because that kid has a conscience. It's a God-created conscience. So there's gonna be differing view of parenting. There's gonna be differing views about family boundaries. He grew up in a household where everybody in the household, when you walked out of your bedroom, you were fully clothed.

She grew up in a household, when you walked out of the bedroom, people would run around the house in their underwear. So her brothers and sisters and mother and father ran around the house in their underwear. So she leaves the bedroom in her underwear, and he's horrified. "What are you doing?

Get behind closed doors." "We don't do that." "Oh, our family always did this." Differing views about boundaries. And this can go into several different areas. Maybe she writes a, she keeps a diary, and these are a diary about her private thoughts about things. And she doesn't want anybody to read that.

It's just her private thoughts before God. So she leaves it around the house, and one day she walks in, and her husband's sitting there reading her diary. "What are you doing? You're not supposed to be reading that." She grabs it from him. "What? You're my wife. Those are just my private thoughts before God.

What are you doing reading my diary?" "I didn't mean to. I saw it sitting there, and I thought it would be interesting, and you're my wife, and we share the most intimate part of our lives together. What's the issue? What's the big deal?" "No, that's just for me. My wife used to keep a diary, but I never read it.

She'd always have it sitting around the house, kept it on a daily basis, pretty extensive thing. I think we still have it somewhere stored away. Her thoughts before God. I wish I would have read it, because 15 years into our ministry, she got saved. She knew how to function around Christians.

She knew how to act like a Christian. She had grown up in a pastor's home, but she wasn't a believer until 15 years into our ministry. And after she got saved, she showed me her diary, and I began to read past years. I'm going, "I didn't know she thought this.

I had no idea. She kept it very, very private. Now, she didn't tell me I couldn't read it. I just respected her space, so to speak, but now I wish I would have read it. If I would have read it, it would have been very plain what her spiritual condition was before God.

And actually, she came to Christ when she was teaching a Sunday school class of fourth and fifth grade girls. And she came to me one night, and she says, "You know, I don't think these girls really understand salvation, so what do I need to study in the Bible, and what's some books that I need to read in order to teach these girls about salvation?" So I gave her some ideas, and here's some following passages you need to study.

So she went up to the room, and she began to work on this, and began to work on it, and started reading, reading. And all of a sudden, the thought dawned on her, "You know, as I'm reading about what it means to really be a believer, this is not true of me." And God ended up using that to bring her to Christ.

She didn't tell me that night what had happened. The next day, I get a call. One of the secretaries says, "Your wife's on the phone, and she needs to talk with you right now." So I go, "Whoops. Something must be up." So I answer the phone, and she says, "Can you meet with me for lunch?

I need to talk with you about something." Now, when my wife says that, I'm going, "Uh-oh. Something's going on. Okay. Let's meet for lunch." So we set up a little lunch appointment at Arby's Roast Beef, and we sat down, and she says, "Do you remember what I asked you about?" "Oh, yeah." And then she shared with me how God used that to convict her of life.

I thought, "This is great." She didn't know how I was going to react. "This is great. This explains everything." Now, the issue began, "How do we break this to our church? Their pastor's wife, for the last 15 years, has not been a believer." So we carved out an entire Sunday evening service, and I stood with her, and she shared how God changed her life.

Interesting mixed reaction from our church because she had counseled and worked with an awful lot of ladies there. Some of them were really joyful, and then there were others that were mad at her. "Oh, that can't be. That can't be. I can't accept that." "You weren't a believer before?" "I can't be." "That can't be.

I trusted the fact that you were a believer." I actually got angry at her. But I had the opportunity to then baptize her later, which was really great. But I wish I would have read that diary long before. Boundaries, boundaries. Sometimes they're legitimate ones. Sometimes they're not legitimate ones.

There's also problems caused by fatigue and busyness. Children especially introduce that one. It seems they never let up. They never let us have a full night's sleep once the kids get there. There's something that's always interrupting you in the middle of the night. Some kid wakes up crying, or they've had a bad dream, or they have some illness or sickness, and they're not sleeping well.

And so as a result of that, you're not sleeping well, and you're constantly busy taking care of them. Plus, you have your own responsibilities at work the next day, and your wife has responsibilities. So there's lots of pressures there. There's concern about family health, and most of that is because of the kids.

The kids themselves have changed the whole dimension of family health. There's also decisions that you need to make, and these become more difficult, especially with in-laws and the family, on holidays because the kids are there. Having to visit relatives and vacations, and grandpa and grandma always wants to see the grandkids.

They always want to see. So who do we visit on the holiday? Because we've got her family who wants to always see the kids, his family always wants to see the kids. Where do we go? Holidays, vacations, you can't always go one place. How do we divide this out, and then how do we work it into extended family schedules?

Because they have their own families, they have their own schedules, they have their own things that they're doing. How do you do that? That can cause some serious strains and temptation on the relationship. And then, with all the business that's going on, then how do you fit sex into a schedule like that?

Wow. Oh, that's hard. Too tired tonight, sweetheart. Well, when are you not going to be tired? The second Tuesday of next week. Too tired. So how do you fit that into what's going on in these family relationships? For some couples, they end up postponing and postponing and postponing and postponing their intimacy and their relationship, and it ends up causing a serious problem in their relationship.

And this is exactly what 1 Corinthians 7:5 warns about. Grab your Bible just for a moment, and let's go over there. 1 Corinthians 7.5. Here Paul's talking about the intimacy between a husband and wife, and he says here, "Stop depriving one another except by agreement for a time so that you may devote yourself to prayer and come together again so that Satan will not tempt you because of your lack of self-control." I'm interested in the latter part of that verse.

Once this husband and wife is used to an ongoing mutually satisfying sexual relationship, and then there is an extended period of denial of that relationship, then that sets both of them up for failure. Because he goes to work, and all of a sudden there's a nice young lady at work that starts paying attention to him, and wow, she's very, very sweet.

And she goes about her duties, and all of a sudden there's a really nice young man who starts paying attention to her, and all of a sudden he's really, really a nice guy. So once a husband and wife is used to a regular mutually satisfying relationship in the marriage on a sexual level, and then you deny each other, the Bible says you give Satan a foothold in your marriage.

Satan gains territory. He says, "Come together again so that Satan will not tempt you because of your lack of self-control." The introduction of children into a marriage can cause that to happen. And you have got to reserve time for one another. Sometimes it takes much more deliberate planning rather than maybe you're used to a relationship where everything just always happens spontaneously.

Well, you can't do that with kids. It's got to be much more deliberate and planned now because the kids get up at a certain time, and they go to bed at a certain time, and they eat at a certain time, and so you got to be prepared. So everything in your life is scheduled around what's going on with those kids.

So now your times of intimacy have got to be much more scheduled. Just because it's scheduled and not spontaneous does not mean that's a bad thing. It's a good thing. Well, it's not as fun if it's scheduled. Well, that's all in the mind. When you want to go visit an amusement park, you have to schedule it, and you still have fun, right?

Yeah, you have to schedule it. You don't just spontaneously trip into an amusement park. Well, a few people don't do that. You don't do that. It's scheduled. But you still have fun. And you can still have fun if you schedule your relationship and say, "Okay, we know the kids are going to be asleep now, and they're not going to be demanding or nothing's going on, so the two of us need to get away separately and spend a little time together." That's all right.

That's okay. But understand, when you're counseling young couples that have children, this is a pressure point. So it's not uncommon for me when I'm counseling couples that are at this particular life cycle to ask, "Hey, how are things going?" I mean, "How are things going sexually? Is everything going on in your marriage?" I am not probing that area because I'm curious about their particular sexual life.

You know what? I know way too much about way too many people, and you're going to get this way too. There's not a bit of curiosity left in my entire body. It doesn't exist, all right? The only reason I'm asking them that kind of question is because I'm interested in their marital welfare, and I know that that is a stress and temptation at that particular stage of life.

I know that. So how is it? I'm a nosy pastor, okay? How's it going? Well, to be perfect frank about it, it's been a while since we've been intimate. Really? Why? Well, I'm busy at work, she's busy with the kids at home, you know, and when we get done at the end of the day, we're so exhausted, we just kind of just drop into bed exhausted.

Well, you know, you're giving Satan a foothold in your marriage. We are? Yeah. Well, look at this. 1 Corinthians 7, 5. You're setting yourself up for a disaster here. That means you have got a plan to have times together. That's vitally important. Long after the kids are grown and out of the house, you'll still have your relationship, and part of that intimacy is making an investment into the future of your relationship.

You start building your life around those kids, you're setting your home up for a disaster. One of the worst things you can do as a Christian family is to have a child-centered home. That's one of the worst things you can do. You're letting the kids determine everything that happens in that home.

No. What's the kind of home you need to have? You need the kind of home that is a marriage-centered home. It's something that the kids revolve around. A little bit later on in the class, I will talk about why that is so vitally important because that makes a lot of decisions for you.

When you have a marriage-centered home instead of a child-centered home, that changes the whole dynamic of the house, and that's exactly what God says you ought to have. God loves you. God loves you. God loves you. God loves you. God loves you. God loves you. God loves you. God loves you.