Ep. 187: What Does Marriage Mean to You?

Kourtney Cromwell:
Welcome to the indoubt Podcast where we explore the challenging topics that young adults often face. Each week, we talk with guests who help answer questions of faith, life, and culture, connecting them to our daily experiences and God’s Word. For more info on indoubt, visit indoubt.ca or indoubt.com.

Kourtney Cromwell:
Thanks for joining us on this episode of indoubt. My name is Kourtney, the indoubt coordinator, and I’m so happy you’re listening today. On this week’s episode, we’re talking with author Jonathan Holmes on the topic of marriage. If you’re already married, in a dating relationship or are single and looking forward to being married, this episode is for you. Isaac and Jonathan start the discussion by challenging the current views on marriage in our culture. Recognizing that for many, marriage has become disposable and dispensable and something that should just make you happy. As you listen to this episode, I’d encourage you to hear that marriage isn’t the focus, but instead it’s a tool that we can use to show God’s love for each one of us. By using what God has supplied us with our singleness, our dating relationship, our spouse we’re ultimately growing closer to God. With all that said, I hope you enjoy this episode.

Isaac Dagneau:
Well, it’s great to have with us again, pastor and counselor and author Jonathan Holmes. Jonathan is a pastor at Parkside Church in Ohio and among other things, he oversees the counseling and marriage ministries at the church. It’s great to have you with us again, Jonathan.

Jonathan Holmes:
Thank you so much, Isaac. It’s great to be back with you too.

Isaac Dagneau:
Jonathan, can you just share with us a little bit of a primer on who you are and how you came to know and to love Jesus?

Jonathan Holmes:
Well, it’s a great question. I grew up in south Georgia. I was adopted at a pretty young age. I grew up in a Christian home and heard the gospel, preached and taught pretty much as often as the doors of the church were open. My parents were the type of people where the church was open and we were going to be there and it was great for learning things about Jesus, but maybe not so great in terms of actual heart transformation. And I think later as I grew older, around late elementary, early junior high, I just knew I was going through the motions. I did not like church, did not like reading the Bible, knew that deep down inside it was just more a set of rules for me rather than the living faith and experienced a pretty radical change around my sophomore, freshman year of high school and that summer I was on a church camping trip with our youth and I still remember the speakers.
They brought in these speakers that went around to different youth camps and they spoke on just the doctrine of repentance and I think it was the first time I just ever really came to a sense that even my good works were unacceptable that to making me right with God. And went forward, I really was embarrassed and kind of deeply ashamed here I was in the youth group. Everybody thought I was a Christian. I was really embarrassed to kind of go forward in that kind of proverbial campfire type commitment. But finally the Holy Spirit just got ahold of my heart in the last night of the camp actually I went forward and I really think that that was the time that I truly gave my life to Christ and made him Lord of my life and things began to pretty radically change as it related to my faith and the way that I saw what before it had been just works. And these are things that you have to do in more things that were just an overflow of what it meant to be in relationship with God.

Isaac Dagneau:
In the introduction of your new book, which is Counsel for Couples or I think it may be your first chapter that’s speaking the truth in love is the heart of what counseling is. I don’t know if you used the exact words but something like that. And you also say that all Christians are supposed to be doing this. So, I’m just wondering if you could develop this idea for us. Where do you find it? What exactly does that mean?

Jonathan Holmes:
Yeah. You look at the book of Ephesians and the first three chapters are these wonderful truth-packed, grace-soaked gospel-infused passages about this is who you are in Christ. And then Paul makes a transition in the latter three chapters talking about, because you are in Christ, this is how you should live. So, our activity flows out of our identity. So, everything that we do flows out of who we are. And in chapter one, he kind of lays out a broad picture. He kind of starts individually. He says, listen, individually, you need to fulfill your calling. You need to be kind and patient and gentle and humble. And then he moves forward. And he talks about how when Christ ascended on high, He gave gifts to men and he talks about the different gifts that He left to church and he talks about the gifts of the apostles and the prophets and the evangelists and shepherds and teachers.
And he says, all of this was really meant to build up the body of Christ. But when he gets to Ephesians 4:15 and 16, he broadens it not just to those individual gifts, but he says, and listen, all of us rather speaking the truth in love we, that corporate we, are to grow up in every way into Him who is the head by speaking truth in love. And so, what Paul does first, he talks about some of our growth individually and he talks about how that individual growth can get facilitated by the different callings and giftings that God has given to the church. But he says, listen everybody. Everybody though is called to speak truth in love. And actually, that transaction when we are speaking into one another’s lives, building them up, living out the one another’s of the gospel, that we are literally growing up together in Christ like maturity. And so, speaking the truth in love is not just something for an educated few or an educated elite, but it’s really something that every believer should be aspiring and practicing to do.

Isaac Dagneau:
Yeah. I know that Paul wouldn’t disagree that the fact that we have to speak and also just live our lives in such a way that helps people. But why specifically is he talking about this idea of speaking, verbally speaking the truth in love?

Jonathan Holmes:
Yeah. Well, a lot of us say, well I love people but I’m not really good with people. I’d rather kind of just stay in the background, be a background player, which I understand. But sometimes what that can do is it can lead us to a non-verbal love where we just kind of put ourselves a little bit in the background. We leave it to other people. We kind of outsource that more verbal aspect. But again, referencing Old Testament in Proverbs 27:5-6 the author says, “Better is open rebuke than hidden love. Faithful are the wounds of a friend and the kisses of an enemy are deceitful.” And I think our church is full of a lot of people who say, “Listen, I love you but it’s hidden and I don’t want to really come out and be open and do the hard work of truth-telling and truth-speaking.”
And the author of Proverbs says, listen, better is open rebuke than hidden love and better to be open and corrective and to speak truth in love than to keep it under a bushel as it were. And I find a lot of times that’s just our own personal fears and anxieties. Again, going back to what we talked about, the front end of this, just hearing what other people think about us, but it’s important that that last constituent element of in love is in place. So, all three of those components together make up this matrix of what it looks like to do, I would just say life in the body. So, it’s speaking truth and love. And so, if you try to take one of those out from the other, it’s kind of like a three legged stool, it gets a little wobbly. So, you kind of need all three legs there I think for really good local church embodied ministry.

Isaac Dagneau:
Yeah. That’s so good. Now, Jonathan, you’re a counselor, obviously you believe in counseling. I believe in counseling and it’s essential. But I think I was reading something recently talking about speaking the truth in love and in kind of the focus and the theme of discipleship in the church. And I think the author was saying that if more people actually spoke the truth in love to one another, then perhaps there’d be less people lining up for counseling. Would you agree with this?

Jonathan Holmes:
I would say a hearty amen to that. I run a counseling center and I’ve told people jokingly that we would love to be put out of business. If we could be put out of business because the local church was full of this type of conversation, that would be ideal. That would be wonderful. And I absolutely agree that if all of Christ’s redeemed were doing this work of speaking truth in love, I do think that a lot of the issues that we see in counseling, if not completely eliminated, would be significantly reduced because at some earlier point in that person’s life. Somebody would have lovingly come up to them and either given them encouragement, edified them through affirmation, confronted them in their sin, called them out on something. That would have already taken place before, 5, 10, 15 years down the road, they’re coming to us for counseling to deal with this issue that’s had endless amounts of time to grow and to be nurtured apart from any type of confrontation.

Isaac Dagneau:
Absolutely. I think that’s really important. Now your book, let’s get to your book here, Counsel for Couples. Now, correct me if I’m wrong, but you’ve primarily written this book for pastors and to help them, or church leaders as well, and to help them in counseling those that are married. So, I guess my question for you is what brought you to spend all the time and the energy you have spent on this specific kind of direction here? Why not just write a book directly helping those marriages?

Jonathan Holmes:
No, no, you’re absolutely right. It’s a great question. I think that the reason that the audience is primarily for pastors and ministry leaders and the reason why the book is written for that audience is because I personally couldn’t find anything out there that addressed a lot of these topics. And so people would email me and I’d be researching, “Hey, here’s five different articles, or here’s two books.” But there wasn’t just a central resource that just laid out a basic methodology of, how do I do just good interpersonal care for people that then also covered the practical topics that you encounter in most marriage counseling situations?
So issues ranging from abuse to infertility, to issues with their children, to being married to an unbeliever. I would get email after email or phone call or consultation after consultation saying, “Hey, I have this couple with X problem. What do I do?” And so selfishly I wrote the book so that I didn’t have to answer those emails anymore. I could just tell them to read something in the book. But in all honesty, I wrote it really to be a service not only to myself but to other people that we could do this type of care in this type of work in the best way possible in a way that really honoured Christ.

Isaac Dagneau:
Yeah. I think kind of as a side question as I was thinking about this idea that you’re writing for pastors to help them help others in their congregations. And I think in your book as well, you kind of give reasons why there’s already benefits of a pastor helping a couple that he already knows and so on and so forth. But in your years of pastoral ministry, Jonathan, how would you describe the general, or maybe just the average church-goers, perception of their pastor and just pastors in general? Because maybe I’m wrong, but I feel like there’d be some, maybe North American kind of couples who would rather just kind of do things on their own. Maybe go find a book on their own. Just try to do with their own because maybe they don’t have the same respect like they used to do for their pastor and so on and so forth. Yeah. Anyways, how would you handle that?

Jonathan Holmes:
You’re bringing up a really important point, Isaac, and I think, it probably does vary from congregation to congregation. Maybe I’ll put up the ideal scenario, and an ideal scenario where a couple is at a church where there is a level of trust with their pastor, a level of respect and a level of just trust in his competency and in his abilities, that pastors make for natural counselors. Not that they would be the only counselors, but that a couple would feel comfortable at some point in their struggle coming to their pastor and saying, “Hey, we need some help, would you mind meeting with us and talking with us?” And that’s for a variety of reasons. They see their pastor regularly. They probably have had some interpersonal interactions with them. There’s typically no fee to see your pastor. You don’t have to pay your pastor like $50 to set up meeting with them.
So it kind of offers a level of care with an outside mediator that for a lot of church-goers I do think is appealing for them. Now for the person that maybe, Isaac, you’re referencing where there might not be as good of a relationship or that level of trust, then that’s where that paradigm breaks down a little bit in terms of a couple might not feel comfortable going to the pastor because they’re not as plugged into their church or they don’t have a good relationship or a good rapport with their pastor. Or in many ways they’ve maybe been hurt by a pastor in their past where maybe a pastor or a ministry leader has not really offered really good biblical wise, compassionate care. So they are little turned off to that. So the book really is designed to offer a corrective to the latter, but also an encouragement to the former.

Isaac Dagneau:
Yeah, absolutely. As I think about people listening, young adults listening, maybe they’re in relationships, maybe they’re considering marriage, maybe they are married. At the beginning of your book, you do emphasize your foundation when it comes to counseling couples is God’s Word. You make that a very straightforward point right at the beginning. And as people hear that, they might think, are we supposed to do some sort of emotional tests with one another and so on and so forth. So maybe elaborating on what you’ve already talked about, what exactly do you mean by the fact that you’re basing everything that you’re saying about counseling couples in God’s Word and is that easier said than actually done?

Jonathan Holmes:
Right, right. It’s, a good question I think especially like you recognized and alluded to Isaac about with younger couples where just the primacy of God’s Word in everyday life. It feels a little bit more like an aphorism and something to sell books but doesn’t really hit home in everyday life. In the illustration I use, it’s a silly one, but we’ve all seen Little Mermaid and Ariel and little mermaid, she’s collecting all these things from the real human world. And she has all these forks down in her cave. And she asks, the seagull, she says, “Hey, what is this?” And the seagull says, “Oh, it’s a dinglehopper and human beings use it to brush their hair.” And she takes his word for it and she goes with it. And she transforms into a person with legs. And one day she’s having dinner with Prince Eric and his court and she sees the fork on the table and she picks it up and she starts to comb her hair with it. And everybody kind of looks at her really puzzled. And in all that to say that a lot of times if we see something but we don’t know what its original design and intention is, we can misuse it and misappropriate it. And I find that a lot of people think that they know what marriage is, but they’ve never actually talked to the person who created marriage. And so they think, “Oh, marriage is about my happiness. It’s about having a good life, having emotional safety and intimacy with somebody. It’s finding somebody who completes me. It’s finding somebody who meets my strengths and weaknesses.”
But if you’re going to understand what marriage is really about, you have to talk to the person who created it and who designed it. And that’s God. And the way that he has revealed his design for marriage is in scripture. He’s told us that this is what marriage is for. This is why he brought Adam and Eve together. And this is what the marriage union is all about. So if you don’t have God’s Word as a foundation for marriage, that practically informs it, you’re going to be a little bit lost. You might have a good marriage even, the fork can definitely comb your hair. But I guarantee that’s not why the person who created the fork made the fork. And so a lot of people might be involved in a really good marriage thinking, “Hey, this is good.” But you actually might not be living God’s purpose and story and design for your marriage.

Isaac Dagneau:
Yeah. I want to take this opportunity right now because I think we should take advantage of it. Jonathan, what is God’s vision for marriage? So if someone’s listening and you are saying that the Bible provides that, I just think we’re missing it if you just don’t say it because I think people need to know.

Jonathan Holmes:
Yeah. Absolutely. Ephesians 5:32 says this mystery is profound talking about marriage, about man leaving his father and mother and holding fast to his wife. Paul says this mystery is profound and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church, marriage is a story that tells an unbelieving world about God’s relationship to us, that God joins himself to us, that he reconciles us through his son to himself. And so marriage then as a relationship has what I call a gospel storytelling power. That the way that couples do marriage actually has an opportunity to tell a story of the gospel. And we a lot of times just miss that. And that’s why bad marriages are in many ways, bad testimonies for the gospel. It’s like a chapter of a book that’s not been edited and doesn’t make any sense. We need to have marriages that aren’t perfect, but that are striving towards that goal of glorifying God through the way that we love and serve our spouse.
And as you know, marriages today, especially for younger couples, marriage is very disposable. It’s very dispensable. It’s a bit antiquated, it’s just a piece of paper. It’s about what makes you happy. We have starter marriages now where, hey, you start on one marriage but then you just discard it for another one. Marriage is anything but what God regionally designed and intended it to be. And so in many ways Counsel for Couples is a restrutive kick in the gut to say, “Hey, for marriages that aren’t telling good stories of the gospel, how can we attack that? How can we address that through gospel-centred counsel?”

Isaac Dagneau:
Yeah. And I think you would probably agree with the truth that as you start to apply more biblical principles to your marriage on your way to trying to be more like Christ in the church and doing that. It’s not going to get rid of trials in your marriage, but I think there will be a greater satisfaction in the souls of both the husband and the wife.

Jonathan Holmes:
Right. Absolutely. There’s going to be ups and downs in any marriage. That’s a fundamental reality this side of heaven. But the difference in a gospel-centred marriage is that there is a motivation and a power, a power inside of you, and a motivation inside of you that says, “Listen, you can pursue your spouse for the glory of God. You can live for the good of another person because of who Christ is and because of what he saved and designed and created you to be.” And in many ways, I think that actually brings a greater level of fulfillment to you as a person. And that’s a couple than just living for your own happiness. Living for your own marital bliss as it were.

Isaac Dagneau:
Yeah, no, absolutely. And just for the listeners, just to go back two seconds here, just want to encourage you that if that’s a completely new reality of marriage that you’ve never heard before, then don’t feel like kind of foolish. I remember growing up in the church, I grew up in a great family and it wasn’t until my first year of Bible College that my mentor told me that that was the division of marriage and I was dumbfounded. I had no idea. So it’s okay if that’s the first time you’ve heard that, but it’s important, I encourage you to keep pressing on, so.

Jonathan Holmes:
Yeah, and Isaac in Counsel for Couples at the back in one of the appendicies I tried to include a number of gospel-centred resources. So it’s not just my book that I want to promote, but there is a number of other wonderful, solid resources out there for both premarital and marriage that can really help couples who, like you said, maybe are not as aware of what God’s intention and design for marriage is. There’s a lot of resources out there, secondary of course, to scripture that can help you on that path.

Isaac Dagneau:
That’s so good. Jonathan, from your work on this book, what are a few practical things that you could say to young adults who are maybe in relationships, they’re looking forward to marriage in the future? What would you say to maybe challenge them, encourage them, what they should do even today to kind of bring them towards that vision?

Jonathan Holmes:
Yeah, I would say, what makes for a good husband and a good wife is what makes for good Christian, what makes for a good child of God. Scripture, and I tell people this all the time and it’s odd coming in front of someone who wrote a book on marriage, but the Bible doesn’t actually have a lot to say about marriage. Outside of a passage in Ephesians, a passage in Colossians three, Genesis two. The Bible has a lot more to say about how we greet one another, how to build a tabernacle than it actually does about marriage. And that might surprise a lot of people. And I think that that’s intentional on God’s part because what He seems to be saying throughout the story is, “Hey, this is what it looks like to flourish and thrive as a human being.”
And that when you’re doing that as a human being, somebody who is living out their fullest ideal of being an image bearer of God, that that’s going to translate into marriage. So in Ephesians 4:1 it talks about living your calling and being someone who is long suffering and patient and humble and eager to maintain the unity of the spirit and the bond of peace. Well, good news, that’s going to reap dividends then in marriage. And so sometimes I think people think, well, is there a specific skillset that I need for marriage? Or maybe I need to sharpen up on my communication skills, or maybe I need to do this or that. And those were all helpful, but just live the Christian life, how God’s designed and intended it for you. Be a person who is slow to anger, quick to hear, and who’s quick to listen and slow to speak. Those imperatives that we get throughout the pages of the New Testament of what it looks like to be in Christ and to be a part of this body make for people who do well in marriage.

Isaac Dagneau:
Yeah, no, that’s so good. We’ll finish up here Jonathan. We were talking earlier about speaking the truth in love. This is kind of the heart of counseling in a sense. And the whole body of Christ, no matter their relational context, whether they’re single or married or engaged or whatever they are to do this. So perhaps this is a very specific question, but maybe you could speak into it for those listening that are hearing this and they’re like, yes, this is great. This is what marriage is about. And they’re single. How can they, or what maybe steps can they take to begin to have the courage to speak the truth in love to maybe those couples that are in their life that they can actually help and encourage? I mean people are scared to encourage and challenge moms in their mothering and dads in their fathering and especially dads in their way they’d love their wives and so on and so forth. So how would you encourage single Christians to have the courage to speak the truth in love to those?

Jonathan Holmes:
It’s such a good question. I’m so glad that you brought up because again, we talk a lot about marriage, but I wouldn’t want anybody who finds themselves single, widowed, divorced to think that they are in a lesser tier of Christianity. That is not the case at all. God prioritized the single people. Scripture moves in a pro-single direction in many ways. We aren’t going to be given and offered in marriage in heaven. We all relate to one another as friends in Christ. So single people absolutely have a significant place to play in the family of God specifically, like you said, as it relates to working and ministering and speaking truth and living life with other married couples. And a lot of times I find that younger single people might be intimidated to enter into a family unit, to speak truth in love to a husband or a wife, a father or mother, because they think, “Well, because I am not this, there’s nothing then that gives me credibility to speak into that.”
And so what it does is it says that the basis of your counsel is on your experience or whatever you know, and not the Word of God. Jesus Christ was never married and never had any kids, but yet he gave terrific parenting advice and terrific marriage advice. So the sole arbiter of whether or not you can offer counsel is not your experience. Again, taking us back to what we talked about earlier, it’s your confidence in God’s Word. So can single people speak truth in love to married people? You bet you. Absolutely. Because we are all part of one body and we are designed to speak truth in love. It’s not speak the truth in love if you map onto the exact same experiences as the person that you’re speaking to.
And again, sometimes when we have that mentality, it’s actually because we’re focusing on ourself. We’re focusing on what we have done or what we’ve not done, or a fear of what others might think of us. We’re not really placing our confidence in God’s Word. We’re not really placing our confidence in the person and work of Christ. And so to all of my single brothers and sisters out there, please step up to the plate, get involved, find community, find other married people and push and move and we desperately need you.

Isaac Dagneau:
Yeah, that’s so good Jonathan. And I think you really hit a great point talking about the fact that so many of us feel like unless we have experience in a certain area, we can’t speak truth and help build up and encourage, but you’re absolutely right. With Jesus, Paul, same thing – he was most likely single and he was saying some really strong things to married couples and to the fathers of their children and so on and so forth. So I think that is just critical. So I appreciate that. I wanted just to open up say, is there anything else about your book, about this topic that we’ve been talking about that you would just like to share before we wrap things up?

Jonathan Holmes:
Yeah, I hope that the book is a help to pastors, ministry leaders. The book is also able to be a resource for couples and so it might not be specifically designed and written in a way that a couple might typically think of a marriage book, but there are definitely truths and applications that you can take from any of the chapters on any of the topics I cover and you can glean help from it, whether it’s the chapter on conflict resolution or on communication or addressing the problems of rebellious children. There is going to be ways that you can take the truth. So I’d encourage all your listeners, if you have opportunity to pick up a copy and really seek to either help other marriages in your church and your context, be better for the glory of God or to address issues in your own marriage to become better for the glory of God. And that’s really my prayer and my hope for people who utilize and read the book.

Isaac Dagneau:
That’s so good. Well, thank you so much, Jonathan. If you’re listening and you’re interested in Jonathan’s new book, Counsel for Couples, I’d encourage you to find it, to grab it, to read it, to maybe offer it to your pastor. You might also be interested in his earlier book, The Company We Keep: In Search of Biblical Friendship. You can check that also out. We’ll put the links to both of those books on our episode page. But anyways, Jonathan, it was so great to be able to talk with you again.

Jonathan Holmes:
Oh, thank you. It was great to reconnect with you, Isaac, and with your listeners

Kourtney Cromwell:
Thank you so much for listening today. As Isaac had mentioned, we’ll have the links on the episode page online for both of Jonathon’s books, The Company We Keep: In Search of Biblical Friendship and Counsel for Couples: A Biblical and Practical Guide for Marriage Counseling. If there’s anything that you’d like to share with us, feedback, ideas, or critiques, I’d encourage you to send us a DM on social media. We’re on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter, or you can email us at info@indoubt.ca. Thanks again for joining us for this episode and I look forward to having you with us next week.

Kourtney Cromwell:
Thanks so much for listening. If you want to hear more, subscribe on iTunes and Spotify or visit us online at indoubt.ca or indoubt.com. We’re also on social media, so make sure to follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter.