Dave & Ann Discuss: Tim Keller on Marriage

Ann: We all have those situations where we want to hold on to hurts, and how our spouse has let us down, or they haven’t been there; or you feel betrayed, or you feel forgotten; you feel alone; you feel unseen. All of us have those situations, and God is saying, “Take your eyes off of them, and forgive them.”

Shelby: Welcome to FamilyLife Today, where we want to help you pursue the relationships that matter most. I’m Shelby Abbott, and your hosts are Dave and Ann Wilson. You can find us at FamilyLifeToday.com.

This is FamilyLife Today!

Dave: So, today is: lessons we learned from the best marriage book we’ve ever read.

Ann: Honestly, it’s the best one, I think.

Dave: If you think we’re going to say our marriage book, Vertical Marriage, [Laughter] no! It’s not ours. It’s Timothy Keller’s The Meaning of Marriage. It came out in 2011. I’m not kidding! If you haven’t read this book, we’re going to just give you a plug right now: you need to!

Ann: I think I had the whole book underlined, basically. [Laughter] There are so many rich things in it.

Dave: We have no guests in the studio. We’re talking straight to you, the listener, to say, one of the things we remember that Tim taught us, from The Meaning of Marriage book, is the “three powers of marriage.” It’s based on this idea that, when you get married, you really don’t know who you’re married to. [Laughter] I mean, you think you do, but you change over the years.

Ann: Totally!

Dave: In fact, there’s a quote, at the beginning of this chapter, by Stanley Haurwas. It says this: “We never know who we marry. We just think we do. For even if we first marry the right person, just give it a while, and he or she will change. For marriage, being the enormous thing it is, means we are not the same person after we have entered it. The primary challenge of marriage is learning how to love and care for the stranger to whom you find yourself married.”

So, the question is: how do you love the stranger you find yourself with?

Ann: Yes.

Dave: That’s sort of what Tim and Kathy Keller, who wrotethis book sort of entered into. They talk about the “three powers” that come with this thing called marriage.

As I think about one of my favorite passages for me as a husband, [it] is Ephesians 5:25, where Paul commands husbands to “love your wives as Christ loves the Church.”

Ann: I love this Scripture, too! [Laughter]

Dave: Every wife does! And every husband (and wife) would ask: “What does that look like? How do I love her—how do I love him—as Christ loved the Church?” It’s easy to quote; I can memorize it; but how do I do it?

So, here’s what we’re going to talk about: the three powers of love. The first one is the power of truth. The idea here is that God brings you together in this relationship, that’s closer than any other relationship, called marriage. You’re together 24/7. You see all the greatness; you see all the ugliness. [Laughter] The problem is you only saw some of the good before, but after, it’s like, “Oh, my goodness! I didn’t even know this person.”

Ann: I remember—

Dave: —that’s why you think you’re sort of married to a stranger.

Ann: I remember reading this one author who talks about marriage as being like a costume ball. There comes a midnight hour when everyone has to throw off his mask. Then he says, “Welcome to marriage!” There’s a truth to that.

Dave: Yes, and Keller talks about the Mac truck illustration that you’ve talked about many times.

Ann: Oh! This is one of my favorite—I remember reading this in the book, and putting the book down and thinking, “This is the truth.” He talks about how marriage is like a bridge. Before you were married, or maybe [in] some of those first years of marriage, we just walk over the bridge. We stroll over the bridge. The bridge is perfectly built; it looks stable. There are no flaws in the bridge. But then, you put a five-and-a-half-ton Mac truck, which is the pressures of life, kids, job loss, money problems—you put some pressures on that marriage (that bridge), and suddenly, the cracks in the bridge are exposed.

I remember, in the early years, we had a fight. I was going crazy, yelling; and I thought, “This is what you’ve made me become! I’m this crazy person now, who’s yelling. I’ve never yelled in my life! You have made me like this!” But the truth is, according to that illustration, the pressure of our marriage was revealing that I have cracks in myself. God wants to do something with those and heal them.

The question is: could He use our marriage, and even the stress of marriage, to help point us to Him?

Dave: That’s exactly what marriage does. It has the power of truth. [Laughter] The truth comes out. It’s like marriage is this—and we love this, but we hate this; it’s this—institution that reveals what’s there.

Ann: Yes!

Dave: You may be able to cover it up, but once you’re married, it’s uncovered. You can’t cover it up! It just comes out.

I’ll read you a quote that Tim wrote in this chapter; he says it this way: “Marriage by its very nature has the power of truth; the power to show you the truth about who you are. People are appalled when they get sharp, far-reaching criticisms from their spouse. They immediately begin to think they married the wrong person. But you must realize that it isn’t, ultimately, your spouse who is exposing the sinfulness of your heart. It’s marriage itself. Marriage does not so much bring you into confrontation with your spouse as confront you with yourself. Marriage shows you a realistic, unflattering picture of who you are, and it takes you by the scruff of the neck and forces you to pay attention to it.”  [Laughter]

I hate that!

Ann: Me, too.

Dave: And yet, it’s so good! Honestly, in the chapter before, Tim makes the point that one of the goals of marriage—like the mission of marriage—is God wants you to be friends, and in that friendship, to sharpen one another to become like Jesus. That’s our goal in life: to be like Him.

We won’t be perfectly like Him until glory! Tim calls it “until we reach our glory selves.” But between now and then, it’s a fixer-upper project. [Laughter] God has given you a spouse who can see things that you may have been able to hide from others, and she (or he) will call things out. You can get mad and be appalled as he says in this quote, or you can say, “This is a gift I’m getting. I can become better. I can become more like Christ if I’ll deal with this unflattering picture of who I really am!”

Ann: Well, let me ask you: has anything changed you as much as our marriage has?

Dave: No!

Ann: Yet, we are better because of it.

Dave: I mean, go back to Ephesians 4:15, which is a verse we’ve taught many times, here, even, at FamilyLife Today. It says, “Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will grow to become in every respect the mature body of Him who is the Head, that is Christ.”

One of the things we miss in this passage—because we always talk about “speak the truth in love,” and marriage is an institution where you can speak the truth, and it needs to be with grace and love; but what I think we don’t realize—is he says, “If you want to mature in Christ, how do you get there? Speak the truth in love! Receive the truth in love.” You don’t become mature in Christ without hearing and speaking truth!

When we first got married, I had no idea (until we got married) that I ran from conflict. [Laughter] Again, we’re not going to tell the story about you yelling at me and saying, “Get back here and fight me like a man, you big chicken!” [Laughter] When I literally walked out of the room when we were having a conflict. Many have heard that in our Vertical Marriage book.

But here’s the truth: I was a withdrawer when it came to conflict. Some of it is the home I grew up in, watching abuse, adultery, and divorce, and thinking, “Conflict is bad;” but you and marriage itself forced me—it’s the power of truth—to realize, “This is not a good thing. I need to learn to mature and to stand in the room and say, ‘Okay, we need to talk.’”

Ann: Think about what I said: “Come back here and fight me like a man, you chicken!” It shows you where I’m coming from in my family, where we used our words as weapons. That’s never healthy! So, for both of us, we’ve gone through a transformational process of Jesus changing us, because we become mirrors to one another.

Dave: Yes, and I think truth is hard, but it’s very, very need.

Ann: Let’s give, after each point, an application.

Dave: I was going to ask you that: what would an application be for the power of truth? My first thought is, “Don’t be a sermonator.”

Ann: Yes; that’s what I was.

Dave: We can come in with a gun, almost, and just blast our spouse away, because we see things. You’ve got to really sit, pause, pray, and say, “Okay, there’s some truth I need to share with my spouse.” First of all, look in the mirror and realize: there’s truth you need to receive from your spouse. But when it comes to the time to speak the power of truth, do it gently; do it honestly and accurately. On the other side of it, realize that God is shaping you to become more like Him through the truth that you hear from your spouse. They love you!

Ann: That’s good.

Dave: They’re telling you this to benefit you.

I know you’ve told me things, and I get defensive and mad. I have to come back later and apologize: “I’m sorry I got that way,” because I know you’re trying to help me. And there are times you didn’t say it well or I didn’t say it well; we yelled it or even used sarcasm in an unhealthy way. To speak it gently, but firmly, as the truth—

Ann: I think, too, for you, because you withdraw and you don’t necessarily speak the truth, the times that you have, have changed me. They’ve been really beneficial.

For those of you who [find] it really hard to come and speak a truth, pray about that. Ask God how you can present it; but your spouse may really need to hear it. I like it when you do that for me.

Dave: Yes; and I would say, being on the other side (the one that receives the truth), we literally have to ask God to make us humble.

Ann: Yes, yes.

Dave: I would encourage you to look at it this way: it’s not just a truth “stab,” it’s a gift. If they’re seeing something—and God has given them eyes to see, because they’re living with you; if they see something—and they speak it, even if they don’t say it perfectly tenderly and packaged in love, it’s a gift.

Ann: Yes.

Dave: It’s going to make you more like Jesus if you’re willing to humbly receive this, and say, “I’ve got to work on this.”

Okay! So, that’s the first one of three powers. The first one is the power of truth. The second one is “the power of love.” And here’s a famous Keller quote (and I bet you’ve heard this quote, but you didn’t know it came from this book, The Meaning of Marriage). He said, “To be loved, but not known, is comforting, but superficial.” It’s like, “They don’t really know me!” So, it feels good, but we know, “They don’t really know me.”

Then, he [Keller] goes on to say, “But to be known and not loved is our greatest fear.” So, we hide, because we’re [thinking], “They won’t really love me if they know me.” So, they don’t really know me; but our fear is: “If they knew me, they wouldn’t love me.” Here’s the final quote: “To be fully known and fully loved is rich and divine. It’s like being loved by God.” Fully loved, fully known. I think that’s the goal of marriage.

Ann: Me, too! And I think it’s the fear—that’s where God wants us to go. I think the battle is: Will we go there? Will we understand it?

I like this quote, too—I think this is so true! You’ve done this for me. He says this: “But now”—

Dave: —talking about marriage—

Ann: —yes; “But now, into your life comes someone who has the power to overturn all the accumulated verdicts that have ever been passed upon you by others or by yourself.” Think about that; that power your spouse can have.

“Marriage puts into your spouse’s hand a massive power to reprogram your own self-appreciation. He or she can overturn anything previously said about you, to a great degree redeeming the past. The love and affirmation of your spouse has the power to heal you of many of the deepest wounds. Why? If all the world said you are ugly, but your spouse says you are beautiful, you feel beautiful.”

“And to paraphrase a passage of Scripture, your heart may condemn you, but your spouse’s opinion is greater than your heart.” That’s exactly what you’ve done for me. I think of what I thought about myself and what other people had said about me—when you told me, “No, Ann, this is who you are!” Do you remember, I would say, “No, I’m not!”

Dave: “No.”

Ann: “No, I’m not.”

But the more you said it, it’s like God has given you these words to kind of reprogram some of the lies and the pain of my past. That’s been such a gift, and that’s what marriage can do.

Dave: Keller hit it! It’s so powerful that when your spouse loves you unconditionally—which is only possible through the gospel of Jesus; I mean it’s not possible [on your own]; when you feel loved in your weakest, and darkest, and ugliest moments, by your spouse, there’s not a love like that.

Ann: Right.

Dave: That’s why it’s called the “power of love,” because, as he said, the world can say you’re ugly, but your spouse says you’re beautiful. She or he has the power, because they see the ugly better than anybody else, and they still see you as beautiful. It’s the gospel! Jesus sees us in sin and still loves us.

Ann: It’s a reflection, too, of Ephesians 5:1-2, which says, “Therefore, be imitators of God as beloved children, and walk in love, just as Christ also loved you and gave Himself up as an offering and a sacrifice to God, as a fragrant aroma.”

Dave: What’s that mean?

Ann: Just how His love is unconditional. It’s beautiful; and because of that, we are to be imitators of God.

Dave: Yes; we’ve shared it here before, and I won’t go into details, but I remember the night when I said to you, “I’ve been getting critiques on my sermons.” I crawled into bed thinking, “I don’t know if I’m very good. The people in my congregation don’t like me. They don’t think I’m a good preacher.” I had doubts!

Ann: I’m so embarrassed, because this was when I was training myself not to say whatever I was thinking. I was thinking, “Well, if you would just spend more time reading God’s Word, your sermons would be way better!” But I didn’t do that. Instead, I went before God and said, “God, should I say that?” He said, “No!” Then, I asked, “Is there something I could encourage Dave with?” And the thought came into my mind, and then, I said it: “I can’t imagine what it’s like to be you. You have thousands of people depending on your walk with God. What a heavy thing that must be to carry.”

Then, there was silence! Then, you pulled me over, hugged me, and whispered in my ear, “You are my life.” Man, I’m really glad I didn’t say, “If you’d just read your Bible more!” [Laughter] I mean, that’s speaking truth, but also in love.” It’s the power of love.

Dave: I remember it like it was yesterday, because it felt like, “Everybody else is saying I’m ugly, and you see my ugly; and you still say I’m beautiful.” That’s why—I mean, I didn’t think these words; they just came out of my mouth: “You are my life.”

It was like, you could call me uglier than anyone, because you see the bad; and you choose to love me.” So, there’s the power of truth, because you’ve spoken truth. I needed to grow. There’s the power of love; and then, the final power—Keller calls it: the “power of grace.”

Let me read you a quote under this section of the book. He says:

“Truth without love ruins the oneness, and love without truth gives the illusion of unity, but actually stops the journey and the growth. The solution is grace. The experience of Jesus’ grace makes it possible to practice the two most important skills in marriage.”

Do you know what they are? He says, “The two most important skills in marriage are forgiveness and repentance. Only if we are very good at forgiving and very good at repenting can truth and love be kept together.”

Ann: Oooh, that’s good.

And it also reminds me of Ephesians 4:32: “Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other just as, in Christ, God forgave you.”

Dave: I think we all know this. I think it’s the hardest thing to do in marriage—

Ann: —me, too.

Dave: —and in life! When you’ve really been hurt deeply, to forgive. And it’s a choice! We’ve had to forgive thousands of times.

Ann: And I would say, too: if you have that piece of unforgiveness, which then creates bitterness—and I walked in bitterness, it’s an open door, to me, of the enemy. Because now, I’m bitter, and it creates division. It’s like a stronghold of Satan for our family.

So, how do we recommend for people to forgive? To go into repentance and forgiveness?

Dave: I mean, it’s a deep, deep journey. I had to forgive my dad after 30-something years of holding bitterness; but it’s also every day, little things—the big ones and the little things. I’ve heard you tell the story of the great repair job I did on our car, with the clutch.

Ann: You know, we’re basically missionaries, so we’re raising our own support. We had two boys, and I was pregnant. Our car had broken down; I had to walk home, and Dave was like, “Oh, I can fix that! We don’t need to take it to a dealer to get it fixed.” You were super-proud of yourself. You walked in the house and said, “I fixed your car!”

Dave: Yes, I put a vice grip on the back of the cable of the clutch.

If anybody knows anything about a clutch, you’re thinking, “That will work, but it’s not going to last.” Well, it lasted for months, actually; but every time you pushed the clutch, it would sort of go, “Clink, clink, clink.” [Laughter] Because there was this vice grip hanging onto the cable.

Ann: So, there was a night where we were having this big fundraiser for our ministry. It was winter—in November, there was snow on the ground, and Dave had to go early. I was waiting for the babysitter. It was a very formal night, so I was dressed in a dress.

The babysitter came. I jumped in the car; I was in a hurry; I needed to get there quickly. I was driving, and all of a sudden, I hit the clutch, but I could tell the clutch fell to the floor.

Dave: The vice grip fell off.

Ann: [Laughing] I was in a neighborhood. It was dark, at night, and this was before cell phones. So, I went to a house, knocked on the door, and I opened my coat to show that I had a belly (I was pregnant). I said [demure voice], “Hi. My car just broke down; you can see it down the road. Could I please come in and use your phone?” They said, “We’re sorry, but we don’t let strangers into our house.”

Mind you, I was totally dressed! I had a dress on; I was dressed up! So, I said, “Well, I’m pregnant.” She said, “Sorry.” Then, I hit another house, and they weren’t home. So, then, I was so mad! Who was I mad at? Dave!! For having a pregnant wife and fixing the car with a vice grip.

Dave: Yes, not a good move.

Ann: I decide to trudge through the backyards of all these houses to get home. I’m jumping over fences in my high heels and my dress. I am so mad! I get home, change my clothes, and I have to borrow a car. I get to the event where Dave has just finished this big talk—a speech, and I walk in the door. This woman grabs me. She pulls me by the side, and she holds my hands. She says, “Are you Ann Wilson? Are you Dave Wilson’s wife?”

I said, “Yes, I am!” She said, “It must be something to be married to him!” And I said, “It is really something, let me tell you!” [Laughter]

Dave: This literally happened just as she said,

Ann: I want you to know—

Dave: —it was a terrible moment.

Ann: —I went into labor three days after that—early! I had to be on bedrest for four-and-a half months after that.

Dave: And somehow, that’s my fault!

Ann: It is!

Dave: But here’s the question: what does that have to do with the power of grace?

Ann: In marriage, we all have those situations!

Dave: You’re supposed to say you forgave me!

Ann: Wait, I’m getting there. We all have those situations where we want to hold on to hurt [in] how our spouse has let us down, or they haven’t been there, or you feel betrayed, or you feel forgotten; you feel alone; you feel unseen. All of us have those situations.

Dave: Yes.

Ann: And God is saying, “Take your eyes off of them, and forgive them!”

It took me a little bit—

Dave: —yes, it did!

Ann: —to forgive you for that; but honestly, you were doing your best, you know?

Dave: No, I blew it! I blew it. But the truth is, you did forgive.

I said it earlier, and you may not have believed it, but in 44 years of marriage, we’ve had to forgive each other—it has to be in the thousands.

Ann: Oh, thousands!

Dave: I mean, many times per week; some really hard, deep wounds, and others, small—that one’s smaller, even though it was a horrible night. If you don’t choose, as Tim said, to be a forgiver and a repenter—forgiveness is on the side when your spouse has hurt you; when you’re the spouse who’s hurt your wife or husband, you’ve got to repent.

That means [to] be humble, and apologize, and make it right.

Ann: And you were super-humble.

Dave: Well, I blew it! [Laughter] Somehow, I had to spend a couple hundred bucks and get it fixed right.

Ann: Can we just both say: the integral part of this, the most important thing, is your walk with God.

Dave: You can’t do it without the power of God.

Ann: The continual surrender to Him.

Dave: Literally, the power of God is available to you. You cannot forgive without God’s power.

Ann: Yes.

So, where are you with Him? Are you sitting at His feet? Are you reading the Word? Have you given your life to Him? That’s where it all starts.

Shelby: This is one of the major things I love about the Wilsons. They’re not telling you to try harder to be better. They’re calling you to admit your need, to ask for God’s help, and to live a life of faith that sees God work through you to experience growth and change.

I love them, and I love the call that they’ve given us today by giving us examples from their own personal lives.

I’m Shelby Abbott, and you’ve been listening to Dave and Ann Wilson on FamilyLife Today. We’ve been, basically, in many ways, talking about what it looks like to pour into your marriage, to invest in your marriage; to be intentional about seeing growth. We are firm believers in that here at FamilyLife (in case, maybe, you haven’t noticed). Building a strong marriage (we’ve always said) takes intentional effort.

So, one of the resources that we have available for you is the FamilyLife Weekend to Remember^® marriage getaway. At the Weekend to Remember, we provide the tools and the environment for couples to grow closer to God and to each other, and we want you to participate in that. Since today is September 16^th, it’s actually the last day to take advantage of our half-price sale and register for two at the price of one.

All you have to do is click on the Weekend to Remember banner at FamilyLifeToday.com, and you can start investing in your relationship right now. Again, that’s FamilyLifeToday.com. Now, coming up tomorrow, one of our favorites here at FamilyLife Today, Dane Ortlund, is going to be here with Dave and Ann Wilson to talk about Christ’s empathy and nearness to believers. Do you believe He is near to you? He is! Dane’s going to talk about that tomorrow. We hope you’ll join us.

On behalf of Dave and Ann Wilson, I’m Shelby Abbott. We will see you back next time for another edition of FamilyLife Today.

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