The VowsToKeep Marriage Podcast

Marriage Myths: Debunking Common Lies We Believe :: [Ep. 285]

• David & Tracy Sellars • Episode 285

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Marriage Myths: Debunking Common Lies We Believe :: [Ep. 285]

This week, we are tackling common marriage myths that can derail relationships which in turn prevent couples from addressing their real issues. We will explain how believing lies about marriage can lead us away from God's design.

In this episode, we will talk about the following:
• Marriage myths are easy to believe but always cost couples something valuable
• Where true joy comes from 
• Marriage was created to model Christ's relationship with the church

We hope and pray you are encouraged!! Be sure to come back next week, as we will address more myths that hurt could be hurting your marriage! Don't miss it!


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Speaker 1:

Welcome to Vows to Keep Radio with David and Tracy Sellers. The mission of Vows to Keep is to help couples develop a biblically healthy marriage through the application of God's Word and a deeper relationship with Him. They desire to help you and your spouse grow closer to each other and closer to the heart of God's design for your marriage. Now here's David and Tracy with today's broadcast.

Speaker 2:

Hey, we're David and Tracy Sellers and, like you, we have made vows to keep.

Speaker 3:

Amen to that. I was thinking the other day about the time, David, back in about 2014, when the neurologist walked into the room with good news the symptoms that had taken me to the hospital that night with you looked to be of no consequence, which was awesome news.

Speaker 3:

But then he asked me this question and it felt like it was completely out of the blue. They were just about to dismiss me to go home and he said how long have you been having migraines? And I remember looking at you and then looking back at the doctor and I said I have never had a migraine. He looked at his clipboard that had my MRI results and he said you've been having migraines for years Now, since I was a teenager and, david, you know this too because you've seen me experience.

Speaker 3:

I had headaches and I had struggled with vomiting and extreme motion sickness, and I always thought it was my sinuses. I'd been to lots of specialists, I'd been on countless antibiotics for sinus infections, but as I learned the symptoms of the migraine, that day, suddenly this light bulb went on over my head. I matched every single one and it wasn't even the diagnosis that I was looking for. But in that moment I realized I had been believing something that wasn't true, and I've been believing it for years, and I had done everything I could think of to make the symptoms go away. And once I had the knowledge in hand of what was really going on, I could tackle it in a way that made sense.

Speaker 3:

There were telltale signs for two decades that I missed, and as I was thinking about today's broadcast, this situation came to mind because it describes the way that we think about our marriages. Sometimes we can go years and years believing untruths about our marriage and we try to fix the problem with the best of intentions, but it doesn't work. I so wish that when I was 19 years old I went to that first sinus specialist, that they would have dug just a little deeper and asked some of the right questions to be told early on. Hey, this isn't what you think, it is.

Speaker 2:

Wow, if only yeah, I can remember some of the first years when we were dating how often you'd get car sick and it was crazy. We're not neurologists, we're not theologians, but we are married and we've got the best source of truth, the only source of truth, at our fingertips, and that's God's Word. So over the next several broadcasts we're going to tackle some marriage myths. We'll call them. Just like Tracy had these symptoms that were gone for years that pointed her to pinpoint a problem that actually wasn't there and to not focus on the one that actually was there. Marriage myths are like that. They're easy to believe, and I think a lot of us actually do believe many of the things we're going to be talking about. It's never free to believe a lie. They always cost us something. They always derail us from what the real potential is. They cost our marriages deeply if we fall for them.

Speaker 3:

It's so important, david, I think, to constantly evaluate what do I believe about my marriage, because if you just ask me, hey, do you believe we're on solid ground right now, I'd say sure, do you think that we have the answer to our problems? Absolutely Like. In general, I feel like I've got the fundamentals of marriage down pretty well, but I've got to be pretty transparent with myself about my answers, because they can shift and change sort of based on my emotions. Sometimes what I have to do is go back to God's word every time. Can I back up what I'm believing with God's word every time? Can I back up what I'm believing with?

Speaker 2:

God's word, because if we can't, then a lot of times it's the truth that we have invented, or we've picked up from someone else who they've invented, some truth that serves them well, but you know what? That's exactly what a myth is. That's exactly what a lie is. We tend to buy into what's convenient, what's popular and what's going to serve me the best, what's going to get me out of this emotional jam that I'm in 2 Timothy, chapter 4, has something interesting to say to us about this, For a time is coming.

Speaker 3:

verse 3 says when people will no longer listen to sound and wholesome teaching, they will follow their own desires and will look for teachers who will tell them whatever their itching ears want to hear. They will reject the truth. 2 Timothy 4.4 says and guess what? They will chase after myths. Whenever I've heard this verse, David, I've thought about people looking for different churches, looking for the pastor to kind of tell them what they want to hear. But we're honestly looking for teaching everywhere we go. We're looking for teaching on the internet, typing in Google searches that will give us the answers we are looking for. We're not looking for sound teaching from God's word anymore. We're looking for someone to tell us that our own sinful desires are right. And when we hear that, when we feel justified in our own truth, we will reject the truth and we will chase after myths.

Speaker 2:

If it's not from God's word, if it's not what he asks out of our lives, then it is a trap, and long before we can fall down into these pits that we don't even remember digging ourselves into, we have to be willing to examine these things through God's word. Living in these lies is not a place of freedom. The truth is what sets us free, and there's a verse that's awesomely reminds us of freedom. The truth is what sets us free, and there's a verse that's awesomely reminds us of that.

Speaker 3:

That verse that we're going to read in just a minute, that the truth will set you free, comes from John, chapter 8. And in that same chapter, jesus says that when Satan speaks, he speaks out of his own character, for he is a liar and the father of lies. In fact, 2 Corinthians 11 says that Satan even disguises himself as an angel of light. That's how lies go. They always have a piece of truth in them. They are disguised enough to make us believe that they are the truth.

Speaker 2:

So, in this series of marriage myths that maybe you didn't even know you were believing, we're going to go look at some of the distorted illusions that look somewhat right at first glance but are absolutely not true. The first one, being marriage, is here to make me happy. The second one, marriage, is what's going to take all of the fun out of your relationship. The third marriage myth marriage is becoming an outdated institution.

Speaker 3:

And one of the other ones we're going to talk about a lot is I married the wrong person. I think these are lies that most of us have believed at one time or another. I bet, even if one of these doesn't ring a bell with you, that somebody in your life, a couple in your life, is thinking this right now, and we're going to give you, guys, the tools you need to debunk these myths, because the truth really is what's going to set us free. Like David said, that comes from a verse in God's word. It comes from a real conversation that Jesus was having with some Jews, where he is in John, chapter eight. Now I want you to kind of picture this scene here with me. These guys are following Jesus around, they're in close proximity to him. They probably haven't lunched together Yet. Jesus sees right through to what they really think. He says. I can see that there's no room in your hearts for me, even though you're claiming to believe in me.

Speaker 2:

These are people who are curious. I mean, they're still living their lives according to their own rules, but they wanted to look like they were doing the right thing. But the untruths they were believing crowded out the truth of who Jesus actually was, even though he's right there with them. It's kind of unbelievable. Yet I know I can relate to that myself. We go to church and we're always interested to hear what the pastor says and we know, generally speaking, what God and Jesus are all about. But we're so into doing things that are right in our own eyes, making up our own version of truth to live like we want to live.

Speaker 3:

I do it all the time, curious but not quite willing to buy all in, and then I end up believing the lie. So let's go to John, chapter 8 right now, starting in verse 31. Jesus turned to the Jews who claimed to believe in him and said this you are truly my disciples. Or guess what? You can be my disciples if you remain faithful to my teachings, if you follow my truth. You will know the truth then, and the truth will set you free. He's basically saying it's available, but here's how you get it. So it's in what Jesus teaches us that we find the truth to debunk the lies, the myths that we've maybe not even realized we're believing, the ones that actually shape our opinion of our husband or our wife, or even our marriage. So let's jump into a big one. I think that most of us can relate to David. The myth is marriage will make me happy.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, Well, see if these words sound familiar to you. All men are created equal. They're endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights. Among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

Speaker 3:

Okay, you guys all know those words. We've learned them in elementary school. We probably had to memorize them in like eighth grade for our DC field trip or something. They are words that our country was founded on, and I think that our founding fathers wrote them with good intent but left to individual interpretation. Well, we can see the results of that all around us, because if I believe I have a right to happiness, guess what I'm going to do? I'm going to make everyone and everything around me try to make me happy. The belief determines the actions.

Speaker 3:

So let me give you a real story that happened in my life. So I was on the phone with a friend and her marriage was not going well, and I knew where her mind had already gone. When she asked me this question, she said Tracy, I'm not happy, and wouldn't God want me to be happy? And I remember where I was standing when she said this to me. I remember what house we lived in. It was a yikes moment. Why? Because the next step for her that quickly followed this was well, since this marriage isn't making me happy, then it needs to end and someone else, who she'd already picked out, will make me happy. Scary, scary stuff, and you can trace many divorce proceedings back to this very belief. If you're still married and you're thinking this, let's talk.

Speaker 2:

And we're not kidding about. Let's talk. I mean you can email us at questions at vows to keepcom. That's questions at vows to keepcom. You can send us an email. We'd love to connect with you. If the myth is that marriage will make me happy, the truth is actually that marriage is joyful, but it's not the source of joy. When I was 18, I thought you know what? I'm not going to be happy unless I'm married. And when I was boy, every piece of my life, every part of life, would suddenly fit together like this puzzle that I hadn't been able to figure out yet. Picture would finally be complete, I would be complete, but God had to bring me to a point, even before Tracy and I started dating, that I got down on my face and my heart was totally open for the Lord and I realized that marriage, even to the perfect girl, would not deliver the image that was in my head.

Speaker 3:

What's so interesting about that is I had the exact same experience about the exact same time. God really had to get a hold of my heart where I finally understood, whether married or not, my contentment came from God, and God alone.

Speaker 2:

God never promised that marriage would be what would make us happy, but he told us how to be blessed and happy. Listen to Psalm 1.

Speaker 3:

So let's put this in real, practical terms inside the four walls of David and I's house terms, inside the four walls of David and I's house. So I've noticed that when I choose to treat him with respect, when I feel like being disrespectful guess what happens that makes me really happy. Even when it's hard, or when I forgive, all of a sudden I can be lighthearted towards you, and before that wasn't even possible. When I choose to be your best friend, it's easy to be lovers. I'm so glad God created marriage to be joyous, but, like I, possible. When I choose to be your best friend, it's easy to be lovers. I'm so glad God created marriage to be joyous.

Speaker 3:

But, like I said, there are going to be those hard days. It's a battle to choose, sometimes patience over frustration, grace over a grudge. We're real people, like we deal with this stuff all the time. But when I choose God's ways, when I follow his teachings, like Jesus was telling the Jews, that's when I experience real joy. So the next time you're just like smack dab in the middle of one of those situations where you're going to have to choose my way or God's way, I want you to think about James, chapter one. In fact. I just encourage you to read the whole chapter, count it all. Joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, and those trials sometimes a lot of times are right here, For you know that the testing of your faith produces patience.

Speaker 3:

Let patience have its perfect work so that you'll be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing. This is real stuff that you can live out in your home right now.

Speaker 2:

So if we forget where our life and our liberty come from, because it's not our nation, it's not our circumstances, we sadly will get to that point where we actually do believe I have the right to demand happiness in my life and because of that myth we make that our end goal, sometimes with things that don't necessarily seem convincingly good. If we get married to make ourselves happy, what happens when you have your first fight?

Speaker 3:

Or your hundredth fight.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, suddenly it all falls down. The people in our nation and around the world believe that it's up to them to make themselves happy, and we see this so deeply entrenched in our culture. Right now, we live in a society that is the epitome of Judges 17.6. Let me read that In those days, Israel had no king. Everyone did as they saw fit. Everyone did what was right in their own eyes. So in your life, who is your king? Who rules you If you're governed by your own laws, and one of them is that your spouse is responsible for your happiness. You just put them in a position they were never meant to fulfill. Your spouse is not responsible for your happiness. You aren't even responsible for your happiness. You just put them in a position they were never meant to fulfill. Your spouse is not responsible for your happiness. You aren't even responsible for your happiness. No-transcript.

Speaker 3:

I've come to realize that when God is my master and when I'm living my life like I'm his servant and not like he's mine, my goal is to bring him glory, that it really is a joyful, adventurous existence. So, david, if marriage isn't meant to make me happy, it sounds like maybe I shouldn't get married in the first place, right? Well, not exactly, because that leads us to our next myth Marriage takes all the fun out of a relationship.

Speaker 2:

And I bet there's been a hundred guys listening to my voice right now. Who've heard that one hanging out in the garage with their buds or out in the golf green with their friends? They're hearing complaints about how, when the knot is tied, the romance dies, and now it's just mortgage payments and diapers. Going to work every day to feed an ungrateful family and mowing the yard on the weekends for relief.

Speaker 3:

And I've heard this one a lot when the kids are grown, getting a part-time job just so I can get away from my spouse. Here's the deal, though. Actually, marriage rocks. God actually created it to rock.

Speaker 3:

When I think about the ways that God created male and female and how he wired each of us, how he gifted each of us and put us in relationship, it's really beyond my comprehension, because marriage is unlike any other relationship on earth. Right From the creation of the first man and woman, God had something special in mind this covenant relationship. It's not intended to be a 2d relationship. This is a multi-dimensional thing. God created marriage to provide us a picture of christ's relationship with the church. He made marriage to show us our sinful, selfish nature, which comes out all the time. He puts two sinners together for a lifetime, and you're going to get an expected outcome you're going to get sin. It's a crucible, a fire meant to refine our expected outcome. You're going to get sin. It's a crucible, a fire meant to refine our character. It gives us the opportunity to love like Jesus loved. That's probably my favorite part of marriage to live in the adventure of laying down my life for my spouse just like Jesus did.

Speaker 3:

Let's look at 1 John, 3, 23 and 24. That says this this is his command to believe in the name of his son, Jesus Christ, and if you haven't done that, you can do that right now. Today you can believe in the name of Jesus as your savior. And the result of that is the next part of the verse To love one another, as he commanded us. The one who keeps God's commands lives in him and he in them. I think the scripture David totally refutes the myth that marriage is boring. What an exciting thing it is to enter into marriage when we follow God's commands. You're never going to experience a boring day with your spouse if you make plans and carry them out to love and bless your spouse like Jesus did.

Speaker 2:

I want to say that again you will never experience a boring day with your spouse if you make plans every day to love and bless them like Jesus loves and blesses you. What actually takes the fun out of marriage is something that is actually really addressable and that is sin Sin of not fulfilling our role in our marriage, living a marriage that's based upon a checklist of to-dos, one repeat of the same day over and over again, just surviving barely. Of course, that's not going to be real fun. If there's bitterness and sin that's been undealt with between you, yeah, guess what? Not cool. It's not going to be fun. If you're trying to fulfill your spouse's role because they're not or you're not doing what God is asking you to do, you're probably going to start looking for fun in other relationships and interests. If your spouse isn't your best friend, isn't your biggest champion, your emotions can tell you very quickly, man, this woman is cramping my style.

Speaker 3:

Leaving these issues unsolved is going to make you feel like you're attached to this ball and chain relationship. Those unsolvable things just tend to get bigger if they're not dealt with, and then it's so easy to believe this third myth that we're going to talk about. Marriage is, or is becoming, an outdated institution that needs to be done away with, and that's a lie that many have taken on as their own personal mantra. It's like Eve in the garden Something was offered to her that looked very attractive, way better than what God had suggested, and that's what we've been doing in our society lately putting living together on a pedestal and marriage just kind of drops down to the bottom of the barrel. Eve was lied to and she bought into that, that God's ways weren't the best. They weren't even the only ways. There are other options. She wanted to be satisfied in a way that wasn't God's best.

Speaker 3:

Christians and non-Christians alike, I think, are taking a bite of a similar lie that the grass is greener on the other side, that marriage is bad for a relationship and that living together is going to give you your cake and you can eat it too. It boils down to this If you're putting your security in a piece of paper in a marriage license, then you're looking at marriage wrong. Or if you're putting your security in not having that piece of paper, you're looking at marriage wrong.

Speaker 2:

The truth that frees us from these myths is that marriage is God's idea. He created it. It was his plan for man and wife to do what we do inside a marriage. It's not wrong. For someone who wants to remain pure and single, that's fine. But marriage is required for two people who want to party it up in a bedroom, who want to be intimate, who want to have a long-term relationship. Like this God said in Genesis 2.18, it's not good for man to be alone, and I second that. So he's going to make a helper. That was suitable for Adam. And so God made Eve and brought her to Adam, and I can only picture that moment. Here's God in all of his majesty and glory and he brings a handcrafted gift for Adam. And then, like an artist, he presents his creation. And here's Adam's response from Genesis 2.23. He says wow, this is now bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh. Imagine this amazement as they stand there together, naked and unashamed, totally willing to enter into a covenant relationship with God as their witness.

Speaker 3:

I don't know about you, but to me that is astonishingly beautiful. That is awesome. It is something we need to be reminded of, even though we know that some lawmaker in the dark ages did not come up with marriage. It was God's idea from the very beginning. So if you're in a marriage right now that seems isolated, just far away, removed from that beautiful relationship that we see God intended, we caution you highly not to believe the next myth we're going to talk about today, which is I married the wrong person.

Speaker 2:

If things are tense in your house, if you're just existing next to each other, just cordially going through life together, but you're not connected in any way, maybe you don't feel like you're happy in your relationship, or you feel emotionally flat, or you think of your spouse and time together and your emotions actually flare up. Tempers flare up. We are aggressive, we're caustic. You may be telling yourself. You know what? This marriage isn't working because I married the wrong person. The wrong decision happened years ago when I tied this knot, and I think this lie can be especially easy to believe when the sin of that other person seems insurmountable. Maybe it's a sexual sin. Maybe it's an emotional affair that your spouse is having with someone else. Maybe you just discovered that pornography is a fight for your spouse. Maybe there's been dishonesty, extreme rage and anger. All of these things disrupt the unity that God has intended inside of our marriage relationship. And when sin butts its ugly head into our daily life, what do we want to do? Well, we want to run the other way.

Speaker 3:

Absolutely. I know there's been times where I've wanted to be free from David's sin. I'm sure he's felt the same way for me. It's not our default to turn towards one another in this time because we feel angry and betrayed and hurt. But in the mess that sin creates, you can tell yourself that line.

Speaker 3:

It's so easy to believe I married the wrong person that there's no way on this green earth that this person could possibly be my soulmate. So we jump to there must be someone out there who is the right person and we subtly or maybe even not so subtly start looking for our spouse's replacement. Here's the truth. The person you're married to right now is the person God wants you to stay married to. And not only that God has given you tools in his word to be successful in marriage. Don't believe the lie that you married the wrong person. God has a great plan for you and your spouse together, even if that person is not a Christian or is a Christian and isn't living according to God's word.

Speaker 3:

In fact, next time David on Vows to Keep Radio. That's where we're going to start, because that is where a lot of us find ourselves in our marriage. We feel like we're trying to do the right thing and we see our spouse as dead weight. We see, if I could just maybe start over that things would be better If I could just hit the refresh button and marry someone else, maybe someone who's strong after the Lord, then I could accomplish God's will and God's purpose for my life. Well, that's another lie, another myth we're going to jump into next time. So don't miss that here on Vows to Keep Radio and along with that we're also going to talk about is marriage 50-50?.

Speaker 2:

Is that a myth, or is that the truth?

Speaker 3:

In this series we're also going to be talking about. If I marry the right person, that means I should always feel in love with this person. Should our kids come first in our marriage, and are some marriages just beyond repair?

Speaker 2:

All these myths and more we'll be addressing over the next few weeks. Hit our website VowsToKeepcom, and again if you have questions about your own marriage.

Speaker 1:

Feel free to email us at questions at VowsToKeepcom. Vows to Keep is supported by a team which includes biblical coaches, writers and pastoral advisors. If you have a desire to serve marriages in your community, we would love to hear from you. Vows to Keep is a not-for-profit marriage ministry designed to bring God's encouraging truth to the marriages of our area. As a not-for-profit organization, our commitment to Christlike marriages includes providing much-needed services, regardless of a couple's financial ability to offset the cost of Vows to Keep operations. If you are unable to donate your time or abilities but would like to help support Vows to Keep financially, visit VowsToKeepcom and click on the donate link. Like what you heard today on Vows to Keep Radio, Listen to more life-changing broadcasts at VowsToKeepcom. This program is sponsored by Vows to Keep of Zanesfield, Ohio.

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David Sellars

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Tracy Sellars

Host