3 Things to Let Go of for a Successful Marriage

Posted on January 17, 2018 by dkoop

I want to share you three things from Genesis 2 that we need to let go if we’re going to have the exciting, fulfilling and happy marriage that God always meant for us to have in the first place.

 3 Things We Must Let Go:

  1. We Must Let Go of Parents

“For this reason a man will leave his father and mother.”  We need to leave or let go of our parents.  This is referring to more than geography or moving out of the house.

In Jewish culture during Biblical times, when a couple got married they would usually built a room of the side of the man’s father’s house.  Or build across from a courtyard.  Genesis is referring to leaving psychologically.  Leaving literally means to break your dependence.  It’s to cut the emotional umbilical cord.  Your relationship to your parents changes the moment you’re married. No doubt about it.  God says it.

A brand new baby cannot live if the cord is not cut from the mother.  A marriage cannot make it if you don’t psychologically leave your parents.

We can live next door to your parents and see them everyday and be psychologically independent.  Or they can live 3000 miles away on the other side of the country and be dependent upon them.

When Niki was in Physical Therapy School her last semester and right before we got married she had an affiliation at Brackenridge here in Austin and moved in with her parents.  We they really butted heads.  She was an adult, so she thought and felt her mom and Dad were treating her like a child.  She said when we got married, “Your stuck with me because I’m not moving back in with them!”  I’m so grateful because she didn’t have any place to go when we have had hard times and it forced us to work it out!  It forced us to work on our problems.

What is God saying?  He’s saying that your partner should not have to compete with your parents.  It’s unrealistic.  It puts all kinds of pressure on a marriage and it makes wives feel insecure and it makes husbands feel inadequate.  So let go of parents.

Before couples get married I try to get them talking about these things because we do this without even thinking.  We have expectations based on our own parents that will let us down.

For instance I will say to the husband to be: “So what was a typical Saturday at your house growing up?”  “Well Mom would make Bacon, Eggs and Pancakes then me and dad would sit around all day and watch sports!”  “Cool.”  “Well wife to be, are you going to get up and make a hot breakfast?”  “Heck no!  If he wants a hot breakfast, he can light his corn flakes on fire!”

To the wife to be, “Tell me about Saturday s at your house.”  “Well dad would get up, mow the grass and change the oil in all the vehicles and mom and I would go shopping!”   Husband to be here is mechanically challenged,  he forgets that the car even needs oil.   See the problems?   All based on expectations we learned from parents.

You didn’t marry your Dad.  Thank goodness! You husband is different.  Adam and Eve had an ideal marriage, because they had no in-laws!

Here are two major signs you are too psychologically dependent on your parents:

  1. When your obligations to your extended family take priority over your own marriage.
  2. When your parents can influence you more than your spouse can.

Here’s the second thing to let go of…

  1. Let Go Of Other People in Your Past

 Especially former boyfriends or girlfriends.

I was really stupid about this and didn’t even realize it.  I am a history buff and could watch the History channel all day. I’m also a history person about my family and myself.  I keep letters and cards.  Like an idiot, I had kept love letters from past girlfriends.  Niki said, “if you don’t get rid of that history our relationship will be history!”

Contrary to Willie Nelson and Julio Iglesias song, forget “all the girls you’ve loved before!”  Let go of them.  They are gone.  It’s out of the way.  Focus on this relationship. If you don’t let go of other people, you will fall into the trap of comparison.  Old relationships all of a sudden start looking better.  When things start going wrong in your marriage you start thinking, “If only he/she were like…”  “If only I hadn’t broken off that relationship.  Maybe I should have married that person.” We have selective forgetting and we tend to forget the problems in those relationships and why we ended them in the first place.

This is the “Grass is Greener Myth.”  When you’re over here, the grass is seems greener over there.  Frank Freed said, “The grass is greener where you water it!”

Stop comparing and start cultivating. Stop comparing your mate to everybody else — water your own relationship and watch it grow, watch it develop, watch it expand and become all that God wants it to be.

Marriage is an exclusive relationship.  It takes priority over everything else except your relationship to God.  . Other relationships must take second place, even ones in the past.

It’s like the lady who went through four marriages.  First she married a millionaire.  Then she married a film producer.  Then she married a butler.  Then she married a funeral director. Somebody asked her why.  She said, “I married one for the money, two for the show, three to get ready and four to go!”

The third thing to let go of

  1. Let Go Of Problems in your Past

Marriage is going to have enough problems on its own.

Most people are totally unaware of the excess baggage they bring into a relationship when they get married.

There are two kinds of past problems you don’t need to hold onto.  You need to let go of them because you surely don’t need to wreck your relationship on things that happened in the past.

Let go of grudges.  Don’t allow people who’ve hurt you in your past to hurt you today.

God says, “Let go of it!”  “Get rid of all bitterness” Ephesians 4:31

Unresolved anger that we carry into a marriage from the past, we tend to take out on our spouses, whether it’s their fault or not. We have all this anger against a relationship or situation or person or parent that was built up and maybe we don’t express it at the time and so we carry it into our relationship and take it out on an unsuspecting bride or husband.  We emotionally vomit on them.  And they say, “What did I do?”

One little thing can make them so mad.  It wasn’t that one thing but in their mind they’re thinking (and if you’ve ever thought this sentence it means there’s some resentment in your life that you have not cleared up) “You are just like…”  It’s means you’re carrying it into today’s relationship. Let go of that problem or person from the past

Let go of guilt.  Many marriages die from secret guilt.  “If my spouse ever found out I would die!”  So as a result, I build a wall to prevent my mate from knowing me because they might just find out that secret skeleton in the closet.  I never let them get close.

Guilt destroys marriages.  It ruins openness.  It damages trust. It kills intimacy.  It destroys your sex life.  Guilt does all kinds of terrible things.  I meet people all the time who are torturing themselves and their marriage for things that even happened before they were married.  And that’s not fair to your spouse.

There’s only one solution.  Confession and Forgiveness.  We ask forgiveness from God, we accept forgiveness from God and then we offer forgiveness to those who’ve hurt us.

 All of a sudden we feel clean again and can enjoy the relationship.  Don’t let the past manipulate the present.

No good marriages happen without forgiveness.  It’s one of the essentials of a good marriage.  You must constantly be forgiving. Why?  Because we hurt each other.  Sometimes intentionally, sometimes unintentionally. But we still need to forgive.  Forgiveness is the way you let go.

The three things to let go of for a successful marriage:  Let go of your parents.  Let go of other people.  And let go of the problems in your past.

Darrell

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Foundation of a Great Marriage

Posted on January 16, 2018 by dkoop

The problem with marriage is that most marriages start off as an ideal and then they become an ordeal and pretty soon you’re looking for a new deal.

Marriage affects all of us.  Either you are married, were married, thinking about getting married or know someone who is married.  We have all kinds of needs.  God has a specific word for every person.

I heard about a couple, both of them were in their 90’s when they got married for the first time. Instead of throwing rice; people threw vitamin E pellets!

Let me share the foundation of marriage in Genesis Chapter 2:18-25

Adam was put in the Garden of Eden and it was a perfect environment.  He had almost everything that he wanted.  He had a place to live, food, a purpose to live for and a relationship with God. But something was missing.

I read about a neighborhood outside of Chicago.  It was a nice neighborhood, well-kept for a few years.  Before long there were major potholes and the foundations of the homes began caving in.  They called in a team of inspectors and discovered that the entire neighborhood had been built on a garbage dump.  All the homes were built on trash.   With marriage crumbling for many in our society I hope that we can see that God’s plan is good and we have a strong foundation.

The Blue Prints.

 Genesis 2:18 “The LORD God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him.”

God looked at Adam and He said, “It is not good…”  That is the first time God had ever said that in his creation.  “….for man to be alone.”  Man’s oldest problem is loneliness.

Is it wrong to be single?  No, the Bible teaches the exact opposite of that.  Singleness is encouraged as a great honor in 1 Corinthians 7:8-9. Paul is single, Jesus is single, Daniel is single.  What He is saying is that God never meant for anybody to be lonely.

Someone joked that the conversation in the garden went like this….. “God I sure am lonely.” Adam says.  God said, “I have the perfect creation called a woman, she will cook and clean for you and never say a cross word.”  “Great!” Adam says.  God said, “But it will cost you an arm and a leg.”… Oh, “What can I get for a rib?”

God made Adam a wife.  First, he let Adam name all the animals. It looks like Eve was an afterthought.  But she wasn’t an afterthought.  What God was doing was helping Adam realize “There is two of everything except me!”   Something is missing!

The Architect of Marriage is God.

 Marriage along with creation was his idea.

Back in the old days of Model T’s a man was broken down on the side of the road, before long behind him pulled a brand new Lincoln.  A well-dressed man got out opened the hood of the model T and made some adjustments and cranked it right up.  The man who was broken down said, How did you do that?!   The man stuck out his hand and said Hi, I’m Henry Ford.  I made this car and I know how it works.

Adam had a need and God met it.

“Then the LORD God made a woman … and he brought her to the man.” Genesis 2:22

“Made” the Hebrew word is “Bana” which means to build.  So Eve was built!  “Wo! Man!” Is what Adam says when he first sees her.

In Marriage there are three ways main ways people obtain a spouse: All of these can lead to long lasting and happy marriages: because is to be built on Commitment not feeling:

  1. Someone else can choose for you. An arranged marriage.
  2. You can choose. Many people feel that they choose wrong or they wonder.  Hang in there you can make it!
  3. You can let God chose. Pray and wait for God’s timing. This is what God did for Adam when he needed it, God brought it.  Several other times in scripture:  Rebecca was brought to Isaac.  Ruth moved to a different town and met Boaz.

The Timetable is God’s.

“So the LORD God caused…”  Genesis 2:21  Notice God caused, God made, God brought.

Everything was on his timetable.  Are you waiting to get married? Just keep praying.  It’s on God’s timetable not yours. Matt. 6:33 “Seek first  a spouse?  No God’s kingdom..”  Marriage is God’s timetable.

 God Provides the Person Suitable for You.

“But for Adam no suitable helper was found. Genesis 2:20

When you do decide to get married you want someone suitable for you.  Not your parents, friends or business associates but suitable for you.

Here’s how Niki and I met.  When I was a Jr. at A&M there were forty thousand students, so at least 20,000 girls and I had no prospects.  I was a little nervous. I had been in the Frat scene and met many Sorority girls, I had been to Christian groups, Campus Crusade, Inter-varsity, BSM.  Dating seemed so fake to me. Finally I said,  “Forget it! I’m tired of washing my car, spending hard earned time and money on dates that don’t work out. It’s in God’s hands.”  So I began praying for my wife and that God would take care of it if he wanted me married.  That was the end of 1989. Five years later 1994, I was in a place of no prospects:  I taught drivers ed. (15 year olds), I was a youth minister(more 15 year olds!) I was in Seminary (no Women there) As O was hanging out with some of my high school buddies, they began teasing me.  Saying, “You’re never going to meet anyone!  You better not at Driver’s Ed or youth ministry! 15 will get you 20!  You need to start going to clubs, or single groups.”  “No, I believe God will take care of this,”  I said.  Sure enough, a few months later on July 4th, 1994, we were having a fourth of July party at church for the youth, I went home to get some matches and there was a college buddy with two girls on my front porch.  He was considering moving in with me.  He was in Med. School and had met two girls from the Health Science Center at a Christian bible study there.  One he liked, and was trying to put some moves on, one was just tagging along.  That was Niki.  So there we met that night and the rest is history.  God literally brought Niki to my doorstep.  I found out later that in 1989 when I began to pray for Niki that was the year that she gave her life to Christ.  God was working in her life and in my life and brought us together at the right time.

If you are single and would rather not be; All throughout the Bible it says that God knows our needs and will meet them to pray to ask.  God will provide; on his timetable with a mate that is perfect for you.

 God’s Design Is For:

  •  Companionship

   “It is not good for man to be alone” vs. 18   Adam God but he also needed human companionship.

  •  Partnership

     “…a helper suitable” vs 18     Do you help your spouse to be all they can be?  Do you compliment them and build them up?  Do you partner together in the trials, tribulations, and challenges of life?

  •  Equality

“from the (side) of the man” vs 22   We get ourselves into trouble when we think that one sex is better than the other.  Both sexes have strenghs and weaknesses. We are to compliment each other.  Rabbi’s have taught that woman was taken from the side of man for a reason:  not from the foot to be trampled under, not from the head to rule over but from the side to be close to his heart, under his arm, side by side.

  •  Security

“be united to his wife” vs 24   This is what makes marriage great!  Security systems are great for cars and houses but more important in a marriage.  The relationship needs to be safe.

  •  Unity

   “they will become one flesh.”  vs 24     Not uniformity, not cloans.  We must be different, but having the same purpose and goals.

  •  Intimacy

     Physical, Emotional, Sexual and Spiritual intimacy

 “The man and his wife were both naked, and they felt no shame” vs 25     Intimacy is to be known and loved.  People try different ways of achieving intimacy: pornography, prostitution, adultery, but they always turn out leaving the person empty and full of guilt.  God’s way in marriage is designed for full intimacy without any shame.

God says in marriage there are some things you need to hold onto and there are some things you need to let go of.  In order to have a marriage that really works there are some things you have to give up and there are some things you have to grab onto.  We will look at these in the next post.

Darrell

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The Wonder of DNA

Posted on January 13, 2018 by dkoop

DNA is another reason, but not the last of many of Scientific Reasons to Believe in a Creator.  Hang with me as I draw an analogy here.

Since 1960, there have been concerted efforts by the U.S. government and private scientific groups to point satellite dishes toward the sky in a search for extraterrestrial life. One project scanned 8 million radio channels listening for signals from space.

What are they listening for? Normally, satellite dishes merely receive random static from space. But as the late astronomer Carl Sagan pointed out, all they need to receive, in his words, is just a single message from space, and if they were to get a single message from space, they would know for a fact that there is intelligent life out there.  There was a movie based on this called “Contact.”

Why would they know it for a fact? Because they would instantly know that random static could not accidentally form a single sentence by chance. The odds would be too astronomical. One sentence would conclusively prove that there’s intelligence out there because information requires an intelligence behind it.

If you got a message from space, wouldn’t it convince you that there’s intelligence out there?

This is a depiction of a DNA molecule. DNA is inside every living cell in every living creature, including you. What is DNA?    INFORMATION CODES!!!

DNA is literally a chemical language based on a genetic alphabet, a language every bit as real as the words you’re reading right now. DNA is like computer software that records the precise instructions for piecing together every part of you, from your 600 muscles to your 2 million optic nerve fibers to your 100 billion nerve cells.

The blueprints, programming, a thousand million lines of code for every cell, and every organism is different.  THINK OF THE VASTNESS OF GOD”S INTELLIGENCE!   the information about how to create that in you is contained inside the DNA in every single cell in your body. In fact, if the genetic information in the DNA of a microscopic single-cell organism were translated into English, it would BE MORE THAN  an entire 30-volume set of Encyclopaedia Britannica — all of that inside the DNA in one single-cell organism. 

*If all the DNA information from YOUR BODY was written down in books it would fill the grand canyon not once but 50 times over. (Eastman, The Creator Beyond Time and Space, 1996)

One teaspoon of pure DNA can hold the assembly instruction for every protein in all of the one thousand million species of animals that have ever existed on the planet and have room left over for all the information of every book ever published. Wow…one teaspoon of DNA. How does that kind of complexity get wired into something so compact? How do those assembly instructions exist? How can that get there by random mutation and chance?

To me, if one single sentence received from outer space would convince scientists beyond any doubt that there must be an intelligence behind it, then doesn’t the encyclopedia of information written inside every DNA molecule prove conclusively that there is intelligence behind life?

I think so.  How can you have such a sophisticated software without a programmer to create it?

 “When we see written language, we can infer that it has an intelligent cause.  We can legitimately use the analogical reasoning to conclude that the remarkable information subsequences in DNA also had an intelligent cause.  Therefore, this means life on earth came from a ‘who’ instead of a ‘what.’” Walter Bradley, professor and author of The Mystery of Life’s Origin

King David in Psalm 139 said,

“You, God, created my inmost being. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Your works are wonderful. I know that full well.” Psalm 139:13-14

 But some scientists aren’t willing to even accept the possibility that there is an intelligent designer.

There’s a picture of two hand puppets talking to each other. One puppet says, “I don’t know. Sometimes I question whether there really is a hand.” How can people look at the handiwork of nature and not see God behind it? And yet I know there are smart people out there, intelligent well-meaning people, who don’t see God there.  Why?

One answer is that some people rule out the mere possibility of God at the outset.

Remember Dr. George Wald, the Nobel Prize-winning Harvard biochemist quoted in the last post? He’s the guy who said that he’s absolutely convinced that it is impossible for life to have been spontaneously created from non-life. Said it’s impossible.

But listen to rest of his quote. He said, “That leads us only to one other conclusion, that of supernatural creation. But,” he said, “we cannot accept that on philosophical grounds. Therefore, we choose to believe the impossible, that life arose spontaneously by chance.”

Here is a brilliant scientist saying he chooses to believe the impossible. Why? Not based on science, but because he says he has a philosophy that will not accept the possibility of a divine creator, no matter how much evidence is provided. So he takes a blind leap of faith by continuing to believe what he himself acknowledges to be unbelievable.

I hope that you won’t make that mistake.

Don’t close your mind to the clear implications of the evidence that you are fearfully and  wonderfully made, not by some combination of chance plus time over millions of years, but by a loving God who has made you in his very image and who stands there with his arms open wide and who beckons you to Him. Don’t shut your mind to that conclusion which is so well-supported by the evidence.

Rather be like Rex Sandage. Rex Sandage was one the leading observation cosmologists in the world and one of the most influential astronomers of the 20th century.[5  He’s the one-time protégée of Edward Hubble. He spent his life quantifying the expanse of the universe and finding quasars and other solar systems, staring up into the most powerful telescopes on planet Earth. That’s what he did his entire life. He stood up in a conference in Dallas, Texas, on science and faith. Everyone pretty much knew he was an atheist. He had been an atheist and had been pretty public in his life. He stood up, and they all knew which side of the deal he would fall on as he spoke. Yet in a talk on the Big Bang, Rex Sandage said at the age of fifty he had come to believe in God, and he had become a Christian. A bang that was big went across the room. Here is what he said afterwards as he talked with a reporter: “It  was my science that drove me to the conclusion that the world is much more complicated than can be explained by science. It was only through the supernatural that I came to understand the mystery of existence.” The leading observation cosmologist in the world, through his exploration of the order of the universe, stars, galaxies, and all of that was eventually driven to the conclusion that an intelligent designer must have created it all.

I believe that “God created the heavens and the earth.”  Do you?

Darrell

Other Sources:  The Case for a Creator, Lee Strobel

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allan_Sandage

 

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Scientific Reasons to Believe in a Creator-Part 2

Posted on January 11, 2018 by dkoop

A little girl once asked her mom, “Where did people come from?” and the mom said, “an all-powerful and loving God made man in his own image. Then He made an upgraded version called woman and they had children.” Then the little girl went in the living room and asked her dad the same question, “Where did people come from?”  He said, “Well, many years ago there were monkeys and humans evolved from those monkeys.” She went back to her mom and said, “I’m confused you said God created …dad said we evolved from monkeys? Who’s right?”  The mom said, “It is very simple I explained my side of the family. He explained his!”

The theory of evolution by Charles Darwin (pictured) proposes that we came from monkeys.  Genesis explains that God is created us.  What should we believe?

Here are more scientific reasons to believe in a creator.

 The Complexity of Living Cells

 Even as intelligent as we are, as creative as we are, we can’t even create a machine as efficient as a one-celled organism.

Microbiologist, Von Noiimen says that every living machine (organism) is..

  • SELF-SUSTANINING – with gas prices so high wouldn’t you love for your vehicle to be able to find its own fuel!? That’s what single celled organisms can do.
  • SELF-REPARING – does your car repair itself? It would be nice.  If we can’t even with all our technology and intelligence build a machine like this.  Why do we think chance can?
  • SELF REPRODUCING, **Does your computer have baby computers? *If mine did instead of Dell I would open a company called Darrell!   

Our sound technician Gary Willingham often looks into getting new speakers and sound equipment.   Let’s say that Gary in here with some new speakers or sound equipment, (that would be nice right Gary?) and we said, where did you get that equipment?  If he said, well the wind blew around in my garage for the past few years and one day I walked in and these speakers were assembled!  We would say, yeah right!  No really where did you get them?  Hermes, Guitar Center? But if he insisted, “no its true!  Someone would call the funny farm and have him committed!  Not me, but someone would!

 Biochemistry professor Michael Behe has a book on this topic called Darwin’s Black Box that has been devastating to evolutionists.

In this book, Behe explains  a concept called irreducible complexity by using this analogy:

Now, notice that all five of the mousetrap’s parts — the platform, the spring, the hammer, the holding bar and the catch — must be present and working together in order to catch any mice.

You can’t start with part of the mousetrap — say, start with the platform and then catch a few mice and then add a spring and catch some more and so on as it grows in complexity and in efficiency. All the parts have to be present and they have to be working together or the whole contraption is totally useless.

Now, in a similar way, Behe has pointed out numerous examples of living biological systems, living biological machines that cannot function unless all of their parts are already present and working together in an interdependent way.

The implication is clear. They could never have evolved gradually, a little bit at a time like Darwin theorized, because an incomplete organism, just like an incomplete mousetrap, could do nothing. It would be totally useless, and so there would be no reason why it would continue to exist and evolve further.

Because of its complexity, it would be nothing short of a miracle if the whole organism suddenly sprung into existence all by chance.

Well, Darwin knew that the discovery of such organisms would destroy his theory. Listen to Darwin’s words: “If it could be demonstrated that any complex organism existed which could not possibly have been formed by numerous successive slight modifications, then my theory would absolutely break down.”

And,  it has broken down. Dr. Behe and other biochemists have demonstrated that these complex and interconnected organisms abound on the molecular level of the living cell.

 Here is another so called simple celled organism….

Description:  This is bacteria cell with a flagella.  This flagella can turn 10,000 revolutions per minute – My truck with a 350 redlines at 4000!  Not only that but it can stop on a dime and turn 10,000 revolutions in the OPPOSITE direction! This high tech engine in is about a micron, or 1/100,000th of an inch. A Harvard scientist said “it is the most efficient motor in the world.” We can’t create anything like this!!  It doesn’t run on gas, it runs on acid, and scientists are still trying to figure it out.

There is not an engine in the  universe that can do that, or that we’ve been able to create. Yet at the most basic cellular level, that’s the kind of complexity that we are seeing. He said when it comes to that kind of complexity, when it comes to looking at all of that and unpacking it, how did it evolve to get to that place?   By chance?

 So how do evolutionists explain the complexity of life just happening? How do they respond? Well, Dr. Behe searched the scientific literature dating back several decades, and listen to this — there was not one single scientists who has published any detailed explanation of how that or various other complex biochemical systems could possibly have evolved. Nobody’s even come up with an explanation of how this could happen.

So Dr. Behe’s conclusion is this:

“The result of these cumulative efforts by scientists to investigate the cell, to investigate life at the molecular level is a loud, clear, piercing cry of design. Therefore, there must be an intelligent designer.” Michael Behe, Professor of Biochemistry, Lehigh University, author of Darwin’s Black Box

Intelligent Design.  It sounds like what the Bible says…

For by him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, …all things were created by him and for him.  Colossians 1:16

In the next post we’ll look at a few more reasons to believe in a creator.

Darrell

Sources:  Darwin’s Black Box, Michael Behe

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