Marriage Matters: Built to Last February 05, 2012 “Spiritual Friendship: The Basis for a Great Marriage” Presented by Pastor Jim Ennis

Friends A relationship becomes personal and real the moment you begin to single out a person from the crowd. ~ Anthony Bloom “His speech is most sweet, and he is altogether desirable. This is my beloved and this is my friend, O daughters of Jerusalem.” ~ Song of Solomon 5:16 (NRSV)

“The simple Truth is That Happy Marriages Are Based on a Deep Friendship By this I mean a mutual respect and enjoyment of each other’s company. These couples tend to know each other intimately—they are well versed in each other’s likes, dislikes, personality quirks, hopes, and dreams. They have an abiding regard for each other and express this fondness not just in the big ways but in little ways day in and day out…Friendship fuels the flames of romance because it offers the best protection against feeling adversarial toward your spouse.” ~ John Gottman, The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work

Best Friends When God brought the first man to his spouse, He brought him not just a lover but the friend his heart had been seeking. Proverbs 2:17 speaks of one’s spouse as your ’allup, a unique word that the lexicons define as your “special confidant” or “best friend”…your “covenant partner.”

Spiritual Friends Marriage…is a way for two spiritual friends to help each other on their journey to become the persons God designed them to be…our future glory-selves, the new creations that God will eventually make us.

The search for an ideal mate is a hopeless quest. This is also a radically different approach from the cynical or cold method of finding a spouse who can just deliver social status, financial security, or great sex. If you don’t see your mates deep flaws and weaknesses and dependencies, you’re not even in the game…

…But if you don’t get excited about the person your spouse has already grown into and will become, you aren’t tapping into the power of marriage as spiritual friendship. The goal is to see something absolutely ravishing that God is making of the beloved. You see even now flashes of glory. You want to help your spouse become the person God wants him or her to be. ~ Timothy Keller, The Meaning of Marriage

“Love is Focused attention.” ~ Leighton Ford, The Attentive Life “They fail to notice the pattern of personal preferences, attitudes and values that lie behind accommodations to their own. They also fail to recognize that these differences reflect the contours of a person who is quite distinct…The challenge facing both men and women is the same—to pay loving attention to the ways in which our spouse differs from us and then to honor these differences.” ~ David G. Benner, Sacred Companions

“The one thing you need to know about happy marriage: find the most generous explanation for each other’s behavior and believe it.” “Love begins with positive illusions, but in strong marriages, these positive illusions give way to a dispassionately accurate understanding of each others strengths and weaknesses. Instead these positive illusions weave their strength into the fabric of the relationship. They make themselves come true. Stated more bluntly, your positive illusions will make your love last.” ~ Marcus Buckingham, The One Thing You Need to Know About… ~ Marcus Buckingham, The One Thing You Need to Know About…

The Michelangelo Phenomenon ~ Daniel Goleman, Social Intelligence “…Something rather remarkable tends to happen with couples who live together for decades, finding happiness with each other. Their continual rapport even seems to leave its mark on their faces, which come to resemble each other, apparently a result of the sculpting of facial muscles as they evoke the same emotions over the years. Since each emotion tenses and relaxes a specific set of facial muscles, as partners smile or frown in unison they strengthen the parallel set of muscles. This gradually molds similar ridges, wrinkles, and lines, making their faces appear more alike.

That marvel was revealed in a study where people were shown two photos of couples—the first from their wedding, the other taken twenty-five years later—and were asked which husbands and wives looked most similar to each other. The couples’ faces had not only grown more alike, but the greater the facial similarity, the happier they reported being in their marriage. In a sense, as time goes on the partners in a relationship ‘sculpt’ each other in subtler ways, reinforcing desirable patterns in each other via countless small interactions. That sculpting, some research suggests, tends to push people toward their partners ideal version of who they should be. This quiet push to get the love we want has been called the Michelangelo Phenomenon, where each partner shapes the other.”

A marriage made in heaven is one where a man and a woman become more richly themselves together than the chances are of either of them could ever have managed to become alone. ~ Frederick Buechner