“What a wonderful God we have—He is the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the source of every mercy, and the One who so wonderfully comforts and strengthens us in our hardships and trials. And why does He do this? So that when others are troubled, needing our sympathy and encouragement, we can pass on to them this same help and comfort God has given us” (2 Corinthians 1:3-5 TLB).

For our message this week we’d like to share with you some challenging thoughts that Chuck and Barb Snyder (termed as “The World’s Most Opposite Couple”) shared in their marriage seminar, “Incompatibility: Grounds for a Great Marriage.” We’ll only be able to share portions of their opening thoughts but we think they’re ones we can all learn from. We’ve discovered that it’s not just what you live through that’s important, but what you live through, and learn through, and pass along to others.

As the Snyder’s say, their “material comes from books and tapes, but mostly from hard knocks.” And because they’ve gone through so many of the struggles that others are having in their lives, they call themselves “walking examples of 2 Corinthians 1:3-5 which tells us that, sometimes we go through struggles and trials— not to build our patience or character, which are good things, but to allow us to pass along to other people the same comfort and encouragement that God has given us through this same struggle.” They say:

When we try to get out of a hard situation, we then aren’t valuable to anyone else struggling with the same thing. We need to be open to learning the lessons God has for us to learn and then turn around and share those insights with others.

Since we’ve experienced communication problems and other struggles in our relationship, we can stand here, not any better than any of you—but maybe a little older and have been down the path a little further so we can pass along to you the same comfort and encouragement, we hope, that God has given to us— because God has given us a lot!

Our principle message is about differences. You know, sometimes people think differences are to be endured. We’d like to present that differences are to be appreciated. And you can appreciate the differences. The world’s system doesn’t understand this because one of the grounds for divorce is incompatibility— which means ‘they were different from each other’.

But differences are actually God-designed. So it’s ok to be different. But we don’t always live out those differences in ways that can benefit the other. We read a poem a poem the other day, and it reminded us of what goes on every in our lives and it’s called: “He Said, She Said” and it reads:

Another marriage is shattered, Lord.
The divorce will be final next week.
He said it was the breakdown of communication
and a subtle infiltration of boredom;
She said it was an accumulation of things.
He said she was unnecessarily preoccupied
with home and children and activities.
She said he stifled her dreams and ignored her achievements.

He said he felt imprisoned and restricted—
that night after night he got the old push-away.
She said he was harsh and brutal
and he often embarrassed her in public.
He said her critical attitudes contributed
to his sense of inadequacy.
She said she felt lonely and unappreciated
with no claim to personal identity.

He said she wallowed in self-pity
and refused to acknowledge her benefits.
She said he was thriftless and irresponsible.
He said she didn’t understand,
She said he didn’t care.

Lord, how tragic!
Through all the wearisome years
neither of them asked…
what You said.

And what we want to do is tell you what the Lord says about relationships. It came to me that in Philippians, where we read about the minds of Christ in chapter 2, that unless we have the mind of Christ, we cannot carry out the things He tells us to.

Starting out in the 5th verse it says: “Have this attitude in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus, who although He existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself taking the form of a bond-servant, and being made in the likeness of men, and being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore also God highly exalted Him, and bestowed on Him the name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of those who are in heaven, and on earth, and under the earth, and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father.”

There are four things the Lord did in that passage, and He’s our example, so there are four things we have to do. First He denied Himself. Then He became a servant. The next thing that He did was humble himself before God—and if you’re going to do things God’s way you’re going to have to humble yourself. It’s not any fun to do that—especially when you know that you’re right. But then He humbled Himself and became obedient to the point of death—even death on a cross.

When you humble yourselves and become obedient, you think you’re going to die. And so you come back again to self-denial— and you have to go right through that again. So, you deny yourself. You become a servant. You humble yourself, and become obedient. And the thing that will happen is, you will be exalted. The Lord says, “humble yourself before the Lord and He will exalt you.”

And so that’s what’s happened to us as a married couple. Because one of us is willing to be obedient then the other is the benefactor. And when one of us is the benefactor, we’re both benefactors. And you get the good circle going instead of the bad circle.”

The Bible talks in Genesis 2 about the “helper” situation in marriage. It means to be a completer. It’s good that a woman and a man in marriage are different because that way you complete each other.

Further in Genesis 2 it says, “This explains why a man leaves his father and mother and is joined to his wife in such a way that the two become one person.” The word joined means glued. That’s why divorce is so destructive. When you put them together, it’s like two pieces of paper that you glue together. When you separate them there’s inevitably going to be scars of each on the other.

It’s a devastating thing to see the scars from a previous relationship carried into the present one. If you’ve experienced this, draw a line in the sand saying, “the past is past. I’m going to look to the future and make my present relationship maybe what my old one wasn’t.”

What Chuck and Barb shared contains so many truths. It’s so easy to get caught up in our own perspective of how we see ourselves being treated in a marriage that we can forget God’s perspective in all of this. He’s more concerned about our character than our comfort. He’s more concerned with what benefits the entire body of Christian believers, with us included in as part of that body, than what “he said or she said.”

It’s not that God doesn’t care about us as individuals because He does. But God sees the broader picture of what needs to develop in our character for the good of more than just us alone, but for the good of all His children.

What we often forget, and Steve and I (Cindy) have been guilty also, is that marriage is NOT about us— it’s about God. It’s not about “what can I gain from this marriage” but what can God gain for those He loves. As a friend once said, “The Bible emphasizes that this world is not our home. The suffering in this world is of secondary importance in the larger scale of things. God is working for all of eternity. The Bible emphasizes we’re to be faithful in the situation we’re in.”

The question is ARE WE? If we were to stand before the Lord today to give an account for how we’re interacting with the spouse we vowed before Him on our wedding day to “love, honor, and cherish,” would He be able to say, “well done, good and faithful servant”? Are we living a “life of love, just as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God” as we’re told to in the Bible in Ephesians 5? If not— today would be the day to start. As long as we still have breath within us, it’s never too late to start doing what is right.

Our hearts and prayers are with you as together “we lean not upon our own understanding”, but in all our “ways acknowledge Him”— knowing that He will make our “paths straight” (Proverbs 3: 5-6) in living with and loving our spouse to the glory of God so that others “may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day he visits us” (1 Peter 2:12).

Steve and Cindy Wright

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