Marriage Has A Mission
“Sometimes the shortest distance between two points is a winding path walked arm in arm.” - Robert Brault
Have you ever been to an ox pull?
We were in New England, seated on a set of old wooden bleachers at a county fair; we had never experienced a real, live ox pull.
Let us try to describe it to you: two mammoth oxen are yoked together, side by side, and behind them is an apparatus like a hitch. The hitch is connected to a large chunk of concrete weighing thousands of pounds. The oxen are commanded by their owner (called a driver) to pull together and drag the concrete slab as far as they possibly can. It was quite entertaining, and we immediately began to realize something with the teams of oxen. Some were young and inexperienced. Some pairs were noticeably different sizes. Some simply refused to work with their partner. But those teams that were mature and experienced knew how to work together, with their driver shouting out commands at their sides. Those teams, we noticed, pulled the heavy concrete a lengthy distance.
We found ourselves thinking about how the teams of oxen were a picture of marriage—specifically, the picture of a team of two either working together successfully or failing miserably to pull in unison. It was not the biggest or strongest team that won; it was the oxen that could work together, each performing to the best of its ability. Working alone, the block wouldn’t move an inch; but working in complete harmony, the teams would succeed in reaching the goal. It astounds us to discover how many couples do not know why they are married. This is the question this article will probe—what is your mission together as a couple? For what reason(s) has God called you together into this union? Those who once were two have been called to move as one. When the two oxen didn’t compete with one another and acted as one, they were surprisingly successful. Businesses, civic organizations, churches, and the military all have mission statements. If they understand this statement and what goals are to be accomplished, all of the members or employees of these organizations know why they belong. Mission statements are composed of descriptive terms like “to serve the homeless of our city,” “to build a better and more efficient home,” or “to protect our nation’s borders.” When God created man, He also created a mission for man. God gave Adam and Eve an assignment from heaven—to tend the Garden of Eden and to rule over creation.
This assignment was not just busy-work; it was a charge from God to care for God’s creation and to replenish the earth. There was purpose, a co-mission in this first marriage, and Adam and Eve went about each day fulfilling that call of God upon their lives. Both you and your spouse can discover your co-mission, just like Adam and Eve. You each have both spiritual and natural gifts that balance and complement. As husband and wife, you are a team, yoked together to fulfill all that the Father has planned for you. Perhaps God has called you to the business realm, to be in worship ministry together, or to raise your children and to pay off your mortgage early. All of these can become pieces of your mission together as a married couple.
Life can get busy and pass us by rather quickly. Before we know it, we’ve been married for five or even ten years. We can begin to myopically focus on the stuff of life that has no real or eternal value or lasting effect upon our lives and the lives of others. It’s important to remember why God called you together in matrimony, and writing your mission statement as a couple can help to refocus your marriage on the things that truly matter.
Where It All Began for Us
When Mary and I first discovered the idea of mission as a couple, we were already many years into our marriage. Looking back over several decades, we realized that our first co-mission assignment came from our local church. Our pastor asked us if we would consider starting a bus ministry. The idea was to fill a bus with unchurched kids and bring them to Sunday school. We loved visiting the kids and their families every Saturday and picking them up in our red-and-white converted school bus early Sunday morning. Sometimes they ran to the bus half-dressed due to a lack of parental involvement, but they were excited nonetheless.
The bus ministry was so successful that we began a second route, and then a third. Soon we were reaching the parents as well as the children and were helping to grow a multicultural fellowship. Some years later, we would help to direct a foster children’s home for adjudicated delinquent teenagers. Then we began to give birth to our own children, changed jobs, moved, saved money, and built a home—all ingredients of our mission together. We soon discovered many other areas of married life that sealed our reasons for marriage and confirmed why God chose Steve to have a teammate called Mary.
“It’s important to remember why God called you together in matrimony, and writing your mission statement as a couple can help to refocus your marriage on the things that truly matter.”
Every time we facilitate premarital counseling, we share the principle of two individual missions merging into one co-mission as the couple is called to marriage. One particular couple found their life missions as individuals to be so opposite that we sent them away to think and pray more deeply about their future together, asking themselves how they would reconcile the differences. As they took several weeks to process what they individually felt God was asking of them for their futures, they found the differences to be too great. Both were unwilling to compromise what they sensed was God’s direction for them as singles. They parted before saying “I do” and found tremendous peace in their decision. Have you ever observed an athletic team that simply could not flow together? Sometimes, rather than opposing the other team, in effect, they oppose themselves. It’s a recipe for disaster. As husband and wife, you are not opponents; you are on the same side. Teammates don’t place impossible demands upon one another; they look for the strengths of each player so they can effectively make use of those strengths as a team. Being on the same side, you do not sabotage each other’s efforts but agree on how to serve together.
Teammates
Teammates provide a sounding board of encouragement; they believe in each person who makes up their team. One teammate dare not express to another a negative message like, “When you’re up to bat, we know you’re going to strike out.” It’s just not part of a healthy game. If it is, you’re defeated before you begin, and the coaching staff has missed some valuable team-building principles. Teammates work with each other’s weaknesses rather than exposing them. Teammates are teachable and accountable to one another; they are individually aware of the fact that they do not know it all. Teammates have high expectations of each other, but they are expectations that they also have of themselves. And teammates believe in one another, even when mistakes are made and they struggle to believe in themselves.
Qualities of a Successful Marriage Team
The following are some qualities that we feel will help strengthen your marriage team and fulfill your co-mission. We will also thoroughly address God’s government within marriage. This teaching alone can bring tremendous freedom, unity, and purpose to your marriage future.
1. Collaboration
Collaborative teammates do more than just work with one another; each person brings something to the table that adds value to the relationship and synergy to the team. To collaborate is “to work, one with another; to cooperate.” Synergy is “the combined action of two or more substances or agents to achieve an effect greater than that which each individually could achieve”—sounds a lot like marriage. Team members can never have the perspective of looking out for only themselves. The leader of the family is not free to do whatever he/she wants but rather is the one who surrenders his/her freedom to make sure his household is protected and cared for. The lead position is not a position of ease but the position of greatest responsibility.1 If as a husband we say we cannot change the baby’s diaper because we’re too busy watching the game, what we’re really saying is that our personal agenda is more important than our wife and child.
2. Selflessness
Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider [your spouse as] better than yourselves. Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of [your spouse] (Philippians 2:3-4).
Marriage is about serving one another harmoniously. Great teams help carry one another. Truth be told, my wife is the greatest servant in our relationship. I am not afraid to admit that. I wish I could say that our marriage has always been like a figure skating pair that moves together in synchronized motion throughout its routine, but that routine lasts but a few short minutes while marriage is a lifelong commitment.
Selflessness requires being a giver without posturing oneself in such a manner as to receive all of the benefits. Serving is about interdependence, not independence. Interdependence means we make decisions together and share the weight of responsibility, failure, and success. A great marriage team faces the trials, draws closer to God and one another, and becomes stronger as a team. When a football coach wants to build a great team, he doesn’t send them out onto the field to run into pillows and jump on mattresses; they run strenuous, sweat-producing exercises. God does the same with us—He has us face tough opponents like illness, debt, difficulties raising teenagers, and unexpected transitions, and He has us do it together. Whether we grow closer together or fall apart is up to us. “For our struggle is not against flesh and blood,” but against evil spiritual forces (Eph. 6:12).
3. Tenacity
To be tenacious is to be steady, to hold firm, to be persistent. It requires 100 percent. Tenacious people do not give up; there is no surrender in tenacity. Mary said to me in complete frustration one day, “Ugh, you are so tenacious!” She didn’t mean it as a compliment, but I took it as one because tenacity pushes through adversity until the answer comes. It is running with perseverance: “Let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us” (Heb. 12:1). The Bible says that perseverance is a work that must be finished in us so that we may be mature and complete, not lacking anything (see James 1:4).
4. Submission
Addressing mission as a couple would not be complete without addressing the biblical term submission. To some, this is a word and action to be avoided. To others, it is a convenient way of getting what they want from another. How do we properly understand this all-important scriptural term? We believe the teaching that follows will bring freedom to you and your marriage and will rid your mind of any negative religious overtone concerning this word.
“Most men love the word ‘submission’ until they discover it’s their responsibility to define the mission.”
God’s Government in Marriage and the Value of Submission
God has given man authority over the fish of the sea, the birds, and every living creature (see Gen. 1:28). God placed man in the garden to work and care for His creation (see Gen. 2:15). From the beginning, God has established an order to things. He is not without government. Think of what this world would be like without God’s management. God’s scriptural basis for order in the Christian marriage is found in Ephesians 5:21-33.
What is submission? The prefix sub means “under.” The root word is “mission.” Therefore, the literal meaning of submission is “to be under the mission.” The Greek word for submission in Ephesians 5:21-22 is hupotasso. Hupotasso is primarily a military term. Hupo means “under” and tasso means “to arrange.” Christ has a mission, so then men are in submission to Christ’s mission. If the husband has a mission, then the wife is in submission to her husband’s mission. The man is not more important than the woman, but he is the one responsible before God to be clear about the mission. Men, are you clear on the mission from God for your marriage, for your family, for your ministry, and for your future? If you are not clear, how can your wife be clear in her role of submission? Does the husband force the submission of the wife? No! It is God who commands, first, “submit to one another” and, second, “wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord” (Eph. 5:21-22). Both uses of the word imply that the one doing the submitting is choosing to place him- or herself under the authority of another. “Under” does not mean “less than.” Imagine a bridge spanning a river valley. Is the bridge merely a road crossing over the water? If it is, it won’t stand for long! An extensive support structure under the bridge is essential for it to function. Now imagine a train chugging across a prairie. Can the train go anywhere without a track underneath it? Of course not; one cannot function without the other. There can be no attitude of superiority in the husband or the wife. Both roles are significant. One is not more important than the other, just different. Sometimes we have a tendency to think that the most visible position or the one with the highest level of authority is the most important. However, no army ever won a war with just generals.
5) Team Mission
Amos 3:3 asks, “Do two walk together unless they have agreed to do so?” Teams figure out what it takes to achieve victory and then do it—this is mission. Teams succeed when there is a unified team mission and a cooperative spirit among team members. As a couple, Mary and I pray about our cooperative mission. We write down aspects of that mission in order to develop our mission statement. We have areas in which we are called to serve as individuals; however, our mission statement expresses our calling from God as a couple. One key to mission is leadership. Once the mission is recognized, who is ultimately responsible to achieve it? Who has the authority to lead the team in fulfilling its mission? John Maxwell says that leadership is the capacity to translate vision into reality. When leadership is hindered, reaching the goal of the mission will be hindered. Lou Holtz, the great Notre Dame football coach, once said, “You’ve got to have great athletes to win; I don’t care who the coach is. You can’t win without good athletes, but you can lose with them. This is where coaching makes the difference.”
6) God’s Mission
God had a mission. He sent His Son to earth to bring the life-changing good news of the Kingdom of Heaven while He lived among us (see John 3:16). Jesus Christ also had a mission. He obediently gave His life for all of mankind on the cross of Calvary (see John 6:38). As Jesus would be resurrected and ascend to be with His Father, having finished His mission on the earth, He sent the Holy Spirit to live in us as we would remain, walking out our mission on the earth (see Acts 1:8). All three members of the Trinity—God the Father, Jesus the Son, and the Holy Spirit—had a mission. Adam and Eve were given a mission, as were Moses, Jeremiah the prophet, Paul the apostle, Luke the physician, and so on.
As you look over these six qualities of a successful marriage team, what areas are present in your relationship and what areas need to be strengthened? How will you strengthen the weak areas, and how will you maintain the qualities that presently exist within your relationship?
