Clough Divine institutions Lesson 7
Divine Institution #3 - Right Man, Right Woman
We move to the third part of the exposition of the divine institution of marriage. We have been moving through the various divine institutions; the divine institution of volition or the responsibility of man over and against the animal kingdom, what separates him off from the rest of the universe; the second one, marriage and the relationship between male and female within Homo sapiens. And now we are on the section dealing with the prelude to marriage. We have dealt with the design of marriage or the fact that marriage typifies the saving relationship between Christ and the believer, and that although this was not understood in the Old Testament it is understood far more clearly in the New. And once, of course, Christ enters history and once he is made known, once the church occurs on the day of Pentecost, 33 AD and following, then since the reality is here now the antitype of the marital relationship, which was designed by God, is now clear.
We traced through at least three areas where the marriage relationship typifies Christ’s relationship with the believer. This is important because in our day 95% of the people have been indoctrinated with the idea that marriage is a simple social institution that evolved over time and so on. And of course this is thoroughly anti-scriptural, anti-Biblical. From the Biblical point of view marriage is not an evolved social institution. Marriage is a divine institution that God Himself ordained; it has been distorted through history, yes; but nevertheless, in its ideal form pictures Christ and the believer. Since it does, we can therefore attain a lot of insight as to the role of the male and the female by studying the role of Christ and the believer in that relationship.
Thus we said in marriage typifying this relationship we find it typifying grace and faith. Grace, of course, is the man, faith is the female. These are the roles that the New Testament specifies in Ephesians 5. So we have this, by studying the concept of grace that man must be the initiator and the woman must be the responder, we find then we have two concepts, grace and faith. Grace is the giving, faith is the trusting. Now faith can’t operate unless grace has first occurred, so similarly the female cannot operate or respond in absence of a male initiative and so we have that.
The second principle we found was that in the marriage there is a union and the union is greater than the sum of the parts; there is a entity that is established, marriage, and that marriage union which is greater than just simply two individuals coexisting. This is the concept of one flesh.
And then thirdly the sense of design of marriage; the design of marriage means that God created man for a purpose and you remember from Genesis 2 that you first have the man, then you have the plan, then you have the woman. The woman was given as a help fit, not one word, not a helpmeet, but a help fit for the man operating with the plan that God has assigned him, and therefore operating on a Biblical point of view we refute the customary view of marriage taught by various sociologists that marriage is simply a relationship between people who are psychologically compatible to greater or lesser degrees. We do not say that’s marriage. What we’re talking about in the Bible is people and the ideal form is people who are not just psychologically compatible, that’s not the issue. The issue is whether they are spiritually compatible, whether the man has found God’s plan for his life and the woman is the one who is designed to help him fulfill that plan. That’s what we’re talking about. So we’re putting it in an entirely different area; it’s an entirely ballgame here than just the idea of psychological compatibility. That’s not true. We’re not after psychological compatibility, it’s spiritual compatibility and the psychological things can take up the slack later on.
And then last time we dealt with some peculiar attacks against marriage and we found that in essence our society attacks the second divine institution in the sense that it is anti-sexual, in the sense that our society is taking the man and making a female out of him and taking the female and making a man out of her. In other words, this is a confusion of the roles. Those of you who are married and believers, you know if one of you get out of fellowship or the other does, if you’ll look carefully you’ll see that oftentimes in carnality you begin to play the other’s role; you begin to shift roles so the man tends to become the responder and the woman tends to become the aggressor or the initiator. This is one of the aspects where carnality distorts this relationship. So we traced this through last time, even such things as clothing styles. We traced it through hair styles and lifestyles.
Tonight we come to the prelude to marriage or divine guidance into marriage. Now tonight it’s really probably fro those of you who aren’t married; those of you who’ve made the step already all you can do tonight is wish you might have applied some of these principles but it’s too late for you; you’re coming up next week. But what we’re covering tonight is some of the principles that can be used by single people in guiding themselves into a marital relationship, and that is what I have called the right man/right woman. God, if you are a believer, wants you to have the best in life and He wants you to have the right man or the right woman. God is not a meany and He’s not interested in giving you a hard time. In fact, the sign of salvation is that your life is led, at least relatively, by the Spirit of God, because in Romans 8 Paul says the children of God are led by the Spirit of God, and so the leading of the Holy Spirit is one of the signs of salvation. Well, I will subsume under 8 principles the doctrine of right man/right woman, in other words, guidance into marriage.
The first principle is that the concept of a right man and a right woman proceeds immediately from the design of the second divine institution. If you go back to Genesis 2:18 you find you have Adam plus the fact, the commission given in Genesis 2:17-18, and then you have the woman made for Adam. In other words the point is that it’s not a random happening; it’s not something that accidentally comes together and coalesces; they come together to perform as a team a plan of God. And so out of this design of marriage we have the concept that there’s a right part to the plan. And so it follows that there must be a right man and there must be a right woman, that people are designed. We not only get this from Genesis 2:17-18 but we get it also from the fact of the new creation. What does marriage typify? It typifies Christ and the believer. But when Christ died on the cross, although He died for the sins of the world, He also knew who it would be in history that He would save.
We call this the doctrine of predestination. Now if you’ve studied this in philosophy class my advice to you is forget everything you’ve ever heard in philosophy class because you go the wrong pitch; unless they have done an exegesis of Ephesians 1:2-10, unless they’ve exegeted Romans 8:28-32, unless they’ve gone through the concept of the election of Israel they did not understand predestination. So you may have some nasty images associated with this word, just forget it, because that’s not Biblical predestination. Biblical predestination means that God has set forth for the believer a destiny which means adoption into His family; conformity to the image of His Son. In other words, as I have said oftentimes it’s like this. Here you are in history as a believer in Jesus Christ and God has a design for your life. God has a design for my life; the designs differ in many aspects but there’s one in which they never differ, and that is in the end goal you are going to be matured through the experiences of life, through some of the adversities of life and through other activities between now and the time you appear before the Bema Seat of Christ you will have gone through various activities and various situations which have as their purpose bringing you into conformity to Jesus Christ. In other words, given your particular personality that God has given to you and your uniqueness as an individual, God has designed for you a destiny in eternity that will be like that of Jesus Christ. Though you do not have His particular personality, nevertheless you share certain characteristics of His essence, of His person in His humanity so you will share this in phase three or eternity. That’s predestination.
Now it means then, that God has designed the body of Christ, every part of that body has been designed for a function and a purpose. We need not go into any more detail about predestination and the design of the body except to say this too points to a right man/right woman, in that Christ didn’t come into the world and die and say ho-hum, I hope a few people believe and check out. That’s not the way history was set up. Christ came into history dying for the sins of the world and knowing that there would be…the names, knowing the names, that’s predestination; God knows the names of those that will believe. And so there is the right head, that’s Christ, and the right body, and so from this principle we get our first principle of the evening, that there is a right man and a right woman and this follows from the design of the second divine institution. Not to say there’s a right man and right woman would introduce chaos and randomness into the second divine institution.
The second principle is that the doctrine or the right man/right woman follows directly from the gracious provision God has made to you as a believer. One of your needs, whether you are male or female is a member of the opposite sex, with one exception, and that’s in 1 Corinthians where Paul says that God at certain times in certain places takes up the slack in the sense of the gift of celibacy which, because of various reasons He has you called to a particular ministry, a particular job, a particular line of duty where it’s dangerous to be married and so on; in that case His grace takes up the slack. But the norm is that it’s God’s will that every person, every believer, be married.
Now in Philippians 4:19 we have that famous
promise that He will provide for your every need. Without turning to Philippians turn to
Proverbs 18 and we’ll see that it’s legitimate.
Philippians
In Proverbs 18:22, one of the famous
sayings of ancient
In Proverbs
One tragic illustration is since you know the right man/right woman concept it should lead you, if you are single, into prayer right now for the person to whom you will ultimately be married. That goes for you parents, you should be praying that your children, if they are believers in Jesus Christ will be led to the right person; it’s your responsibility to uphold them in prayer. And you who are single who are believers, you have every right I the world to ask God for that right person and pray for that right person wherever they might be tonight; you don’t know them, you have no idea who they are but you have the right to pray for them. So that would be an application of this second principle. We are going to have before the service ends a tape in which I will show you how this is applied in one practical illustration, just so you don’t think these are abstract principles, never going to work in real life. I have taken a couple whom I married a short while ago and you will hear how they came together utilizing these principles so you don’t have to say it’s some abstract thing that never works.
The third principle is the right man/right woman relationship also follows from the disastrous effects of promiscuity. Now there are three principles here that we’ve given. Right man/right woman follows from the divine institution number two; it follows from the concept of grace, and it also follows from the damage that is done in promiscuity by turning to Ezekiel 16. I’m going to approach this passage in an unusual sense tonight; I’m going to start in verse 15 and I’m going to reverse the analogy. Now Ezekiel never intended this passage to be used the way I’m going to use it because he presumed this information was known to the people to whom he spoke. What Ezekiel is doing is taking the concept of promiscuity in a physical way and he’s using it as an analogy of promiscuity in a spiritual way, in other words, apostasy. And his whole thrust is at the apostasy and he’s using the example of physical promiscuity to underscore the disastrous effects you have with spiritual promiscuity. But tonight, for our topic, I’m going to reverse it and so I’m not going to deal with the spiritual thing; I’m just going to go straight to the physical relationship that Ezekiel is expounding here.
Ezekiel 16:15, this is the story of this
woman, she in essence is
Ezekiel 16:16, “And of thy garments thou didst take, and decked thy high places with various colors, and you played the harlot thereon, and the like things shall not come, neither shall it be so.” And here you have this person, the harlot, in the high places here is the Canaanite worship. Verse 17, “Thou hast also taken thy fair jewels of my gold and of my silver, which I had given thee, and madest to thyself images of men, and didst commit whoredom with them.” Now the “images of men” in verse 17 were part of the Baalism of the Old Testament. These are Phallic symbols that these women used and so on, and here you have the concept in verses 16-17 of a promiscuous person getting so promiscuous they get involved with autoeroticism and so on, and in verse 18, “Thou tookest thine embroidered garments, and coveredst them; and thou hast set mine oil and mine incense upon them.” Notice the word “Mine,” you’ve done this to “Mine,” I gave you these things and you did them with “Mine.” The Lord had provided for her every need and she had taken His provisions and promiscuously distributed them around.
Ezekiel 16:20, “Moreover, thou hast taken thy sons and thy daughters” and you have killed them. In verse 24, “Thou hast also built unto thee an eminent place, and hast made thee an high place in every street.” Now that’s a fantastic statement. This means that this woman not only couldn’t be satisfied herself but she had set up houses of prostitution on every city block. And so she was going on full tilt here in verse 24, you’ve “made an high place in every street.” [25] “You have built a high place at the head of every way, thou hast made thy beauty to be abhorred,” now isn’t this ironic, verse 25, one of the strange results that always comes, as sure as night follows day, from her promiscuity is the destruction of the beauty of the individual. The beauty that was trusted in back in verse 15, which was the cause of the problem, in the end can’t bear the weight. Every idol crumbles when you trust it. Only God is sufficient to carry the weight of your trust. And when you put your trust in something other than God, if you bear down hard enough it will crumble, and here you have it already crumbling in verse 24-25. “You have made your beauty to be abhorred.” In other words, you’ve lost the beauty that you trusted in.
In Ezekiel 16:26, “Thou hast also committed fornication with the Egyptians, thy neighbors, great of flesh, and hast increased thine whoredoms,” now the point here that he is making is that the Egyptians were fat old ugly men; in other words, she got to the point where the only people she could have relationships were were these fat old Egyptians.
Ezekiel 16:27, “Behold, therefore, I have
stretched out My hand over thee, and have diminished thine ordinary food,” or
the ordinary items of life, in other words God is reducing His grace toward
her, “and delivered thee unto the will of them that hate thee, the daughters of
the Philistines, who are ashamed of thy lewd way.” I other words, the Philistines were known in
history as sexual perverts, but this person was so far down the drain that even
the Philistines couldn’t stand it. And
then finally in the Assyrians, in the same passage, verse 28, here you have the
Assyrians, they were known in the ancient world as sadists and they were known
for all sorts of operations they did and here this person who is so
promiscuous, it got to the point where she can’t stop herself and she goes
deeper and deeper and deeper into these perversions. In verse 29, “Thou hast, moreover, multiplied
thy fornication in the
Then in Ezekiel 16:30, “Holy Spirit weak is thing heart, saith the Lord God, seeing thou doest all these things, the work of an imperious whorish woman [harlot].” Now let me translate that into English; what that means is an old nag, it means this woman has now lost her beauty, she has lost what attractiveness she did have because she trusted in it, began to use it as a tool and it was destroyed. Not only that but the word ruling or “imperious” means that she has completely taken over an aggressive male role. So she now has not only lost her female beauty but she’s lost her very female-ness; she’s in essence, I the way she behaves and acts and speaks and carries herself, she’s a man. She’s become a man; she’s lost her delicate female-ness and the thing that makes her a woman. And then finally in verse 33, “They gave gifts to all the whores; but thou givest gifts to all thy lovers, and hire them, that they may come unto thee on every side for thine whoredom.” And here she gets to the end of the abominable abyss of promiscuity where she can’t have people make love to her for money; she’s got to pay them to make them have love with her and so on. So she’s reversed this; this is how bad it’s gotten. And this is the logical chain of cause and effect, cause and effect, cause and effect, whatsoever a man shall sow, that shall he reap; of the flesh he shall reap corruption, and here’s an exposition from Ezekiel 16.
So here we find a person trying to get happiness, trying to meet the right person in the wrong way. We also find the same thing illustrated in 1 Corinthians 6:16. The Bible says that not only is this cause/effect operation extend over the physical body, not only does it destroy the person physically but it destroys them in their mental attitude. So finally we have this, “What? Know ye not that he who is joined to an harlot is one body? For two, saith he, shall be one flesh. [17] But he that is joined unto the Lord is one spirit. [18] Flee fornication. Every sin that a man does is outside the body;” not without the body, outside of the body, “but he that commits fornication sins against his own body.” In other words the sin of fornication does something to the body; all that it does I do not know. Research at this point does not know the extent of damage that is done in promiscuous relationships. When I went through this in the Deuteronomy I read you a paper done by one of our young people on this area and it showed you some of the research that’s being done as they discover that serious, deep-centered disturbances are created in the person’s response pattern and so on through promiscuous relationships. So when the Bible says you sin against your own body there’s a lot more then than meets the word; you may not know all that it does but you can just take it by faith that God says it and therefore there’s something there worth looking into. So that’s the third thing; that the concept of the right man/right woman relationship proceeds from the dangers of fornication.
Now we come to the fourth principle and that is found in Ecclesiastes 7:26, 29. The right man/ right woman relationship cannot be found on a human viewpoint basis. There are two ways that you can operate in your life; human viewpoint or divine viewpoint and if you operate on human viewpoint you’re never going to make it as far as marriage is concerned. You’re never going to get with the right man/right woman and Ecclesiastes 7 tells you. Solomon tried it. Verse 26, “And I find more bitter than death the woman whose heart is snares,” now he’s not saying I find more bitter than death the woman whose heart,” it means all women’s heart are this way, “I find more bitter than death woman,” just category, “woman whose heart is snares and nets, her hands as bands; whoso pleases God shall escape from her but the sinner shall be taken by her. [27] Behold, this have I have found, said koheleth, counting one by one, [to find out the account],” in other words, he tried out all the girlfriends, he had a thousand of them so it kept him occupied for a few years, and he tried to find Mrs. Right Woman and he never could do it, and he’d go with one for a while and he’d drop her, then he’d got for another one for a while and he’d drop here, and then he’d go for another one for a while and drop her, and he said I did this one by one and I still can’t find out; can’t find the ideal actually, the account or the design, “I can’t find…” the word “account” or design is the right person, I can’t find the right person, I tried and tried and tried.
Now obviously there’s a reason for
this. God so sets up the Christian life
so that it will frustrate you when you are out of fellowship, and no matter how
hard you try, when you try to operate in the Christian life on the human
viewpoint basis God’s going to see to it that you never attain your
victory. The reason for this is that He
wants to teach you the principle to trust Him as your Father in heaven. Eccl
The fifth principle, the right woman, the
right man, must be found by starting with God’s plan for your life, Romans
12:1. You start toward your right man or
your right woman by not starting toward them.
Here is the first item of business:
“I beseech you, therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God that ye
present your bodies a living sacrifice, wholly acceptable unto God, which is
your reasonable service.” He goes on,
“Be not conformed to this world.” Now
what Paul is saying there, there’s the concept of dedication. We don’t have dedication services in
Dedication means that you get the concept that God has a plan for you; you don’t know what that is, all you know is that you trust that He has a plan for your life. You don’t know the details of that plan, you don’t know whether it’s school, what it is, what job, person or anything else, you just know to start with that He has a plan for your life. He loves you enough to care for you, you’re alive, so therefore He must have a plan for your life, if He didn’t you’d be dead, you’d be with the Lord. When your ministry is finished God will take you home; not until. So if you got up this morning and you could touch yourself and feel that you’re alive, that means God has a plan for your life. Now the corollary to this is that you say to God in essence, listen, I am willing to have Your plan and therefore I am willing to take the person that you have for me, in advance. In other words, you’re willing to trust Him. Here’s where you trust in the character of God revealed through His words and His works. You come to the point where you trust that whatever He brings you will take. Now this takes a little… because inevitably Satan comes along and says boy, you know the ugly person God has picked out for you? He went to the place and got the ugliest person, furthermore for the last 15 years He’s been feeding him ugly pills. So now He’s got a whopper, wait until this person walks in the door, man, you’re going to flop on your face. Now this inevitably what Satan does, just the same thing he does when people say, I’m going to… before God I say I want Your will, I have the guts to say I want your plan for my life, and then Satan comes along and says hey, do you know what He’s going to do to you? He’s going to send you to Africa some place and you’re going to be crawling off the trees with the army ants and you’re going to be doing this and all the rest of the things. And all of a sudden you get cold feet.
Now where did those ideas come from? They certainly don’t come from God; they come
from Satan. We know this because in the
New Testament what did Jesus say? He
said look, how many of you people are fathers?
When your son comes up and asks you for bread, what do you do? Give him a stone? Or for a fish, what do you do, give him a
snake? So Jesus’ point was that God
isn’t that kind of a God. If He wants
you to go to
The sixth principle: how do you apply this in practice? In summarizing all the various verses and techniques and so on of divine guidance, the one that is easiest to get across, and I’ve found that seems to make things clearer in counseling cases, is what I call the continuity principle; it’s sane, it’s rational, and it’ll keep you out of trouble. The continuity principle says this: stay in the path you are now moving unless you get a definite strong indication to turn. Don’t go off wild, trying all sorts of things unless you get a chance to turn and I base this on passages such as 1 Corinthians 7: Genesis 24 and so on. These passages all indicate that these people were guided by starting where they were, in the direction in which they were moving and kept moving unless God said move to the right or to the left. In other words, you keep going. Those of you who have studied physics know the concept of the laws of motion and so on, and you’re just going down and you’re not applying the force to the trajectory to change it. God is applying the force to the trajectory and let Him do the changing. But as far as you’re concerned you go right down there.
Paul in 1 Corinthians 7 warned the people
in
If you want a startling example of this, think of Paul. What did Paul do before he was converted? He studied the Old Testament; he was an expert in the Old Testament, a brilliant theological genius. What did he do after he was converted? A brilliant theological genius. He had completely shifted but in one sense there was a continuity there…there was a continuity. Peter, the fishers of men concept; before he became a full fledged disciple Peter was a businessman. Afterwards he was doing the same kind of thing in fishing for men, and Jesus kept this principle of continuity. But notice, Peter had a divine call. In other words, in Matthew 4 when Jesus says all right, you’re a fisherman now and I’ll make you fishers of men, he wasn’t saying Peter, you’re a believer now. Peter already was a believer; that was the point where God said now Peter you have become a believer, you’ve matured to a certain point, now I want to start using you and I want to start moving your path a little bit; I want to start moving, and that’s what Jesus was saying to Peter.
In other words, you’ve got up to the level
of maturity where I can use you now so we’ll start moving you. But notice, God didn’t ask him to move too
minutes after he became a Christian. And that’s the same thing; don’t worry
about what God is doing. Many persons
become Christians and automatically they think tomorrow they’ve got to be in
the middle of
Then the seventh thing in finding the right man/right woman and that is there must be self-control over the sex drive and this is through the filling of the Holy Spirit. Now today, unfortunately, we live in a promiscuous… I don’t say we have too much sex, I think I’ve made it clear that from the biblical point of view we don’t have enough, in the right sense of the word, in the right sense of the word. We have promiscuity but I don’t consider that sex. In a promiscuous society young people are under fantastic pressures. The tendency is to get married to avoid the pressures. Now some people distort 1 Corinthians 7, it’s “better to marry than to burn,” that’s not what that’s talking about, just disregard that verse, that does not apply here. The point is that people feel rushed into marriage relationship on the basis of sex drive alone, and that is wrong, and that’s why actually the later you are when you marry the better off you’re going to be because the later you are, the older you are the chances are the greater is your stability and you’re not just marrying because you have an urge to go with somebody or something. You have a stability of character, you’ve been around enough to evaluate other people; you can evaluate the other person’s character.
Remember, part of a love relationship is
loving, the Bible says, with your eyes opened.
And it doesn’t mean this business, oh, I fell in love. Now that’s not really Scriptural. Love is always with the eyes open. Now I know what happens, you go into the
greeting card store and pick up some Hallmark card and it quotes 1 Corinthians
13, “love believes all things, “ and you look at that and you think well, this
means naiveté; now that’s not what 1 Corinthians is talking about either. We have specialized in distorting Scripture
in our time so love in the Bible means you love with your eyes open. If you want and example of loving with your
eyes open just think of Deuteronomy.
We’ve just been through the Deuteronomy series. What was the command of Deuteronomy? Love the Lord with all your mind, and with
all your soul. How were these people to love
the Lord? Through consideration of
what? Through consideration of His words
and His works. See, they applied the same old test—words and works, the truth
test, and they were challenged to respond on the basis of this. God said you read My character, I love you
The eighth principle and final one is what about the right man/right woman when you’ve had a death or divorce? The concept of the right man or right woman is modified at this point by the grace principle; God will supply your every need. And therefore we can legitimately deduce that he has another person at that point in your life that will fulfill your need and you will fulfill their need. Again, please remember all of these eight principles apply only to people who have accepted Christ as their Savior who therefore are led by the Spirit of God.
Now I have said that I’d like to play a
practical example of this so that you can see how in one particular case this
worked out. Now I do this with some
reservations because of our sound problem here.
I’ll give you some background on this particular illustration. I do this fundamentally for one motive. I would like, particularly the young people
to be fully aware of the fact that it’s possible in practice to apply every one
of these principles and to work this out in your experience. There’s nothing abstract, there’s nothing impossible
about this. God has provided, it’s going
to work. What I have done is to take two
tape recordings; one recording is of a wedding of this couple. This wedding, to give you some dates on this
is May, 1970, and another tape was February, 1970 of their engagement
party. This engagement party, both the
man and the woman involved gave a short description of how each met the other
and how they applied many of these principles.
Now they didn’t say we’ve got Charlie Clough’s 8 principles. It was just that they got up there and they
simply stated how the Lord had led them to each other. And unfortunately the first tape the girl’s
voice does show up so we’re going to have to cut sections out of it. As it is,
I’ve highly abbreviated so we won’t be here all night, it should take about 20
minutes and we’ve got the marriage ceremony in which you can hear both the man
and the woman. Those of you who have
been to
[Difficult to hear tape; brief parts left out] I believe it was mainly the time when Jan wasn’t here; they had just left to go home. And all summer long during my prayer time, and going through the list that I had trying to take different things different days and Jan’s name kept coming up. And I didn’t have room for it and I didn’t know her and I didn’t know what to pray for. And I don’t know if you’ve ever prayed by yourself, [can’t hear] that was about the way Jan’s name came up. And I didn’t know what it meant, and so I wrote to her, knowing she was coming back, I’d seen her car and I knew she had to come back and pick it up or someone was going to have to come back and pick it up so I wrote to her that I’d like to see her for lunch when she came back to pick up the car. So she wrote a letter back, she said fine, glad to. I didn’t know quite what it was, I didn’t really know why I would take her out to lunch because in the past I have had quite an active history of dating through junior high and high school, and college, and then when I received Christ my senior year in high school and I really didn’t get along doing anything spiritually until I got in the service over in Japan and it was just by God’s grace that kept me from making a mistake or getting involved with someone along the way, for I never did have real assurance that it was God, I never did have the peace that now there. So I started growing scripturally and started getting into the Word and doing Bible studies. God gave me Proverbs 24:27 and it says, “Prepare thy work without, and make it fit for thyself in the field; and afterwards build thine house.” And I said well God, I don’t understand that but I see how you’ve protected me to here. And then I saw Matthew 6:?? which many of you know, you put God first and boy that’s tough, that was really hard.
Clough: Now let me just clarify, up to this
time one of the principles that I have just given you is principle number 5,
you must start with Romans 12:1. What
Tape: [can’t hear first few sentences] And so at that time I said well God, I don’t understand but I’d like to start praying now about a wife and the first of September, 1967 I started praying well God, if you would give a wife that would love You and would be true to You, and then that she would be in a fulltime active ministry of her own, and that You would have the same things on her heart that was on my heart, give her the same desires as mine.
Clough: Now you see what he’s doing is going back to that concept that I showed you about the man, the plan and the woman. Now he’s praying, not just for a wife but he’s praying for one who will fit with how he has ascertained God’s leading him. In other words, in this particular case he was in the army, and God had led them into a dental practice is what he’s doing, and he also has some missionary activities on the side and so therefore that is how he sees God directing his life. Now what he does is pray for a wife who will fit with that particular plan, with that particular emphasis, and that’s what he just said and in September, 1967 he started praying; he met Jan in September, 1969, so there were two years when he trusted the Lord to provide.
[Tape] As I met Jan that day in August it was hot and we just had a short time to go have dinner, and we had dinner, we talked about the ministry here and who’s doing what and she talked about her ministry with Campus Crusade at Arrowhead Springs and I finally said well, you know, I don’t really understand because I was still in this frame of mind that you know, I don’t know what’s going to happen but I really didn’t think of Jan as being a help meet. I told her I said well Jan, I really don’t understand this but it seems like it’s been real frequently and just about every day that God is putting you on my heart and that’s all I knew how to say and I thought well, that’s the dumbest thing. And I didn’t know what it meant, and I couldn’t explain it because I didn’t know her at all and that was [can’t hear] because normally you date and you learn the person and you say well, you know, they look all right, but that wasn’t the case. So she left and I thought well, maybe it should clear up and I shouldn’t pray for her any more, but at the time she said she’d had a real tough summer spiritually. Aha, that’s what it is; God wanted me to pray for her and so I’d start praying for her balance in the Christian life and that God would reveal Himself to her and give her clear wisdom of why she was having this tough time spiritually. So at least then I knew why I was praying for her. But I didn’t know any more. So as the time went along I thought well, I’ll write Jan and tell her that I am praying for. So I wrote about the guys here and what was going on and different things which she wasn’t interested in I guess, and the fact that I still had continued to pray for her. And I said well God, I don’t know what it is but if You want to have her write back maybe there’s some other things that I could pray for. So we corresponded through the fall. In the meantime I continued praying about this prayer list for my wife. And I shared it with some of you and it was about the last of October or the first of November that it was like a 2x4 crash, I connected Jan with prayer list. [can’t hear] Gosh, maybe that is the case. So I started praying Jan’s name into each one of the requests and I didn’t know. She’d been sharing some of the things about how the [can’t hear] multiplication, you share everything you know in the Christian faith to another, in the prayer that they would help another. And I’d never seen that in her life her.
Clough: Now what he’s talking about here is that he had been praying for two things; see he had been praying first for his wife; he was operating on the principles I’ve been talking about and then over here he had had this prayer request concerning Jan’s ministry in Campus Crusade and then along about the fall he suddenly connected the two. That’s what he says when it crashed like a 2x4, he was talking about the fact that he hadn’t consciously thought of Jan as fitting the categories of a wife for him, and that’s when he put the two together and then he said, another interesting thing which I think shows spiritual discernment at this point. Remember earlier he had said I wanted certain things in my wife, I wanted certain characteristics. And then I don’t know whether you caught it but the last part of that tape just now he said something about multiplication or something, and he said about a particular type of characteristic in the ministry and he said, “but I had never seen it in her life here.” In other words, he was still comparing the facts in this prayer; he was not going to accept an answer to prayer unless it fit, and so he had had prayed this prayer for a wife with certain specifics, but as he looked at Jan he didn’t see this at that point.
[Tape] So I didn’t know what else to pray for so I wrote her that I’d call her. And I called her to drop by Christmas on her way home, assuming that she was going to be home. And to stop overnight and see if God was working in her life in the area that it might be similar to mine.
Clough: Here he’s talking about again the same concept of looking for objective features in her life that would fit with the prayer that he had prayed.
[Tape] So after Christmas I really felt that God was fulfilling in her [can’t hear] that I’d been praying and I started to feel confident that God was working. And over a period of time I’d been praying, back in 67 Lord I really prayed that You would give me a wife and then as I noticed in the same prayer later on, Lord if You would direct, but You would just give a wife that You would choose, in the same prayer, but I noticed my attitude had changed. Lord, you know, I don’t want just a wife but I want a wife that You provide. And then it came to a point that I thought Lord, I know You’re going to provide a wife and I don’t know who or when but I just know You are. So then I noticed in the same prayer over a period of time that God said you know, I’m going to provide a wife; but boy, prepare me, start working with me, because I’m not ready. And so I prayed that God would prepare me and make me the man that I needed to be and that I would be fulfilling the need to be the initiator and the planner and all that [can’t hear]
Clough: Here he has shifted now in his prayer, and I cut this out of this tape because I wanted to show you something that comes out here; and that is that he’s not just praying for his wife but now because he’s got the concept of the plan and she fits in the plan, he’s praying that he might fit in the plan so that’s why he said I not only pray for a wife but I pray that now I might be the man for that woman. And all the time here please notice, don’t be so abstract about your doctrine of sovereignty so that you become a fatalist and you kind of waltz along as though God’s going to provide out of the clear blue; it requires some prayer requests; you have not because ye ask not. And here’s a perfect illustration that God asks us to pray, and don’t be embarrassed about praying, it’s part of the concept of grace. If you’re embarrassed about praying my suggestion is that you are theologically embarrassed about the concept of grace. See, prayer flows out of the fact of our dependence on God.
[Tape] So when she left, it was Christmas time and she wrote back and I saw that there were some similarities in our lives and I prayed all the time that God would not give me a flesh desire, she wasn’t here and I wrote for a picture for her for my prayer picture guide that I go through and I pray for them by their picture and I wrote to Jan for a picture and I never got one. And I said well Lord, [can’t hear] have a desire, have a need that this is not it and so I thanked Him that I didn’t get a picture because then I knew it couldn’t be her flesh because I didn’t have anything, I didn’t even know her. But as [can’t hear] went along He started to put her more on my heart and more of a desire for her person and yet I wanted His desire. So it went along and He gave me verses like Proverbs 21:2 that said “Every way of a man is right in his own eyes, but God ponders his heart.” And I said well God, you know the story and I don’t know what it all is but I pray that you work the same in Jan’s heart. So I didn’t write for a little bit.
Clough: Skip to 0986 on the tape; the point here that he’s making is that he is closing in on some of the details and comparing Jan, what he knows of her, going by the words and works, comparing that with his prayer. I want you to see this drawn out comparison because here’s a guy that used his mind and too often it’s all in the area of the emotions and here he’s using specifics, he’s got his opened to specifics here. Now this is not saying that this is the only way it an be done. My point is though is that this, because of the fact that they were separated and so on, gives an example, a clear example that’s easy to use to teach.
[Tape] So I went home and sat down on the bed and picked up the phone and I called Jan. And she talked about every one of her girls, you know, Pam this and Chris and I thought well, that’s not what I want to talk about. I finally almost just had to almost butt in and say Jan, would be you be my help mate in God’s service. And there’s this long pause. I said, Jan, would you be my wife. And she said [can’t hear]. I said well, I just prayed that God would give me an answer in His timing. So she said well, when do I have… do I have a time limit. I said, well, there’s…. and she didn’t know anything about this weekend, that’s the other thing.
Clough: I just played that because it was kind of a humorous note when he started to propose to her, he proposed to her and he asked her would you like to be my help meet in God’s service and there was this long silence at the end and then she says do I have to make an answer now, something like that but it’s kind of interesting how it does, it gives you sort of the personality of them. But skip to 1145; I want to give Jan’s side.
[Tape, she says stuff, can’t hear first part] my goals, my desires, I really never had a desire to be married, that was always in the future, but I could see [can’t hear] and one thing in particular I was learning how [can’t hear] so God has a plan in a man’s life before he brings along his help mate, so I knew that I wanted a guy that really was stable in the Lord, and I never [can’t hear] about a husband, only that he [can’t hear] because I knew if I fell and I fell down that that would pull him down, but I knew that if he were stable in the Lord and he loved Him first that you know, if [can’t hear] that this wouldn’t hold him down, that he could take care of it. Another thing that was on my mind [can’t hear] okay Lord, I know you have a plan for my life but I don’t know what it is. I’m just going to wait.
Clough: While I’m commenting on this last section, skip to 1293, here we can’t play Jan’s because her voice isn’t coming through too clearly but the point is that she, there was telling about unknown to Kent and independently of him she had been praying for a husband with certain characteristics in the sense that she was just thinking in terms of…she recognized the idea that the man has to be the spiritual head and that she couldn’t really deeply respond to a man who wasn’t spiritually her elder. In other words… this is a tremendous concept and this is what’s wrong in a lot of Christian marriages is where the woman is spiritually more advanced than the man and then the problem comes in her subjection. That’s why we have problems in subjection; we wouldn’t have half the problems of the woman in subjection to the man if the man were the spiritual head and she’d naturally respond to him. The problem is, and it’s due not just to the laziness of the men it’s due to the whole society; it has the men so busy from dawn to dusk that they don’t have time to spiritually prepare themselves, with the result that in crucial areas the woman isn’t in subjection to her husband and in effect she really can’t be; she should be but she can’t and there’s this tension here that’s going on. And here she recognized that principle and there were various other factors that entered in here but she was looking for a man who knew, was more spiritually grounded than her, who would be the rock in whom she could trust. And this is important; you young men don’t ever forget this. You can’t sidestep your spiritual life without tubing out your wife. That’s just the way it is; if you’re going to let your spiritual life go to the rocks you’re going to see your wife go on the rocks or the woman that you love because she’s got to have something in which she can trust. Remember the concept, Christ and the believer; I as a believer in Christ have to have something I can trust. So the woman in faith has to have something that she can rest on. We’ll play this last section; this is a section from their wedding ceremony and I just play this to give you kind of an interesting variation on a wedding service. I have a type of wedding service where I ask the couple, they can do what they want to with it, there are just certain essentials I demand in the service and they can put what other things in that they’d like to. At this point Jan and Kent made up their own vows and I thought these vows were very interesting because, particularly because the people that were there at the service many of whom were families of this couple who were not yet Christians, and they made up their own vows and I thought this was kind of ingenious. And so we’ll conclude with this section.
[Tape]
With this ring I pledge myself to you, with all the affections of my
heart, so long as we both shall live.
Jan, what token do you give to show that you will faithfully perform
your vows. Jan you will place this ring
on
We have had eight principles of divine guidance and I hope that what we said tonight at least partly, I would hope wholly but my realism being in the ministry tells me nobody is going to pick up all of it, but at least in part we will have some of the young people at least get a vision for what can happen; you can improve at certain points but at least accept the challenge that this is one area in your life where you’re going to have to devote to prayer and God is willing to provide.
I’m going to conclude the service by calling a man who is going to shortly take the step, one of our potential grooms around here, so if you’ll come up and close the service in prayer please.