The marriage relationship as a Dance Part II

[This is the second half of part one dealing with the vision of marriage using the metaphor of a dance. ]

Two, Dance is a social interaction. Now this point does not strays far from the first point, because such an expression does not stop in a formal comparison but digs deep into the heart of lived reality. The gospel is also seen in our social interactions. First the necessity of order: One leads and one follows both participate in an elegant expression of harmony and cooperation. This participation is an art of learning, serving, and loving.

Dance takes timing and timing takes knowing the other person. I remember when I was 12 first coming to the knowledge of this truth. We were at a football game and Dad was watching mom more than the game. I asked why? All he said was “I’m learning son, one day you will too?” another time I found him reading, “Jane Austin,” yep learning (Don’t tell him I told you!). My dad understands what’s at stake is the gospel. The expression of their dance together is the expression of the Gospel. So he learns and repents and forgives and learns anew. They have been married 45 years and he tells me he’s still learning.

Second is service. This is important for men to here. Christ’s way of humble service and Christ’s example of leadership by service is (and men here me clearly) THE WAY WE ARE TO LEAD! We are to give of ourselves wholly in service to her sanctification, and to use the metaphor, we are to wash her feet. This is the leading that leads her to love well. When we care for her needs, discerning her needs from her wants, and seek to be present with her in her moments, these are some less than obvious ways we serve her well. Biblical is the man that finds little moments to creatively remind her that you deeply understand, "He who finds a wife finds a good thing..." Proverbs 18:22. Men we must never forget she said, yes! We may have taken the initiative and asked and risked trauma to our pride (not always a bad thing) BUT she made the choice. God has given every woman the power to say yes or no. She holds the keys to open or shut up the hope dwelling in every word of that one question.

Third is loving. This should come easy for any man trained in Christ’s school of humility. If you’re not a student well pray for entry, ask God to enroll you in Job University. Later you can go for a Mdiv at the providential smack-down school of divinity. Christ will train you in such things. Best part, you can’t fail. You just take the tests over again until you pass. But I digress. Love is clearly not just a verb. It is a deeply heart felt passion that gives, sacrifices, and is totally voluntary, unforced, and free of manipulation or control. A love that hears before it acts, moves and operates in grace and stands firm so to dare the other to move in faith, to risk, dream, and discovery God’s grader glory in unyielding reliance. In short, a love that is supportive, kind, and understanding. Such love sees with eyes fixed on God’s glory and loving the lover in a lesser love that puts her worship ahead of his passion for her. In short, the husband’s first passion is to see his wife a greater worshiper of God. And a wife’s first passion is to see her husband captured by one thing, a passion for the glory of God. All secondary love flows clean and with passionate intensity from such a centering source.

Loving Her more by loving her less.
May be I’m weird, Ok we all know I’m weird. But I believe that God’s glory is ultimate and all other things are in its shadow. I believe in Love shadowed by the glory. I believe, a person is no more a radiant vision of beauty and attraction than when they are worshiping, repenting and obeying. Take Sasha a friend from Greece. I remember seeing the moment God worked his grace. Seeing her eyes light up just as her heart was opened to the gospel. Her repentance beautiful, in tears and pain, then tears and joy it was all just a stunning display. Even, the snot, the swollen eyes red from crying, hair once pulled back now in disarray, the repentance lased with self-defacing profanity, it all was beautiful. It is true, Messy repentance is beautiful. She stood up and looking back at me for the first time the cleanness of soul went all the way down, she was exquisite. If a man can’t see a woman as radiant beauty in those moments he is not ready to love as God would have him love.

Back to my story, two weeks later I saw Sasha again this time she was clothed in greater glory. As I laid a daisy on her casket, I saw her face at peace, home, free from a life of soulless domination. She was completely a worshiper of her Warrior king. “The One that won her” was how she described to me, how a missional atheist could drop the drugs and fallow lovers for Jesus. “The One that won me,” it was this truth that gave her the courage to tell her Muslim family. No one even thought that such life remade would not remain. I stood there at her casket crying little man tears sober and streaming, remembering telling her of Jesus, her telling me to go to hell. The long lunch’s about the benefits of communism and the joy of Good coffee. The moment, when out of the blue, she told me, “this week I will go to church with you, Barney Rubble.” Further still Her words, “He is real! AND He LOVES ME, to death he loved me!” I will never forget that look as long as I live! When I told her just talk to him and hearing the sound of honest, real, raw, worship! Worship bursting forth, bright and full as a sunrise over the Macedonian mountains. How were we to know what such a luminescent life was too bright for earth? Yet it was the knowledge that she was and still is worshiping that still trains my heart to love all the more. I smile and rejoice for she is doing what she was created to do. She is a worshiper. One that adores the one that won her. She is beautiful because she is a worshiper now and forever more. I still tear up sometimes but not in lose, in her gain. she lost the world but gained the One desire worth knowing. The knowledge of worship before her warrior King. When we talk of earthly love it rest best in the shadow of the eternal. Love is only as real as our hearts are captured with a vision of God’s passion to make worshipers. We must understand how to love well for the gospel is at stake. Be must move in effortless love for a life for the glory of God is a life loving someone more by first loving them less. This is at the root of marital love.