Even among believers, instruction in Ephesians which teaches a woman to be subject to her husband as the church is to Christ often is misunderstood, according to a popular pastor and movie producer.<\/p>\n
Michael Catt, the executive producer of \u201cFireproof,\u201d speaking at a March 27-28 marriage conference in Daytona Beach, said that\u2019s because the follow-up verses, which say that husbands are to love their wives as Christ loved the church, are not as prominent.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is a time when churches are not a picture of marriage and marriage is not a picture of the church,\u201d said Catt, pastor of Sherwood Baptist Church in Albany, Ga., which produced Fireproof.<\/p>\n
Stephen Kendrick, producer and co-writer of Fireproof, said a godly marriage has at its center agape love, the kind of love that is unconditional and is demonstrated best by Christ\u2019s love for the church.<\/p>\n
\u201cMen who are motivated by love will take responsibility for their home,\u201d Kendrick said. \u201cLove causes a man to say, \u2018I refuse to let the devil destroy my marriage.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
MARRIAGE IS GOD\u2019S IDEA<\/p>\n
Catt said Ephesians 5 shows God is the source of marriage.<\/p>\n
Looking at the picture of how men and women relate, God also caused them to think and respond differently even though he made them from the same substance, Catt said.<\/p>\n
Telling a story of a man who comes home from work and tells his wife he has a terrible headache, Catt said the woman tells her husband she had one the previous week. He thinks she\u2019s trying to tell him she has a bigger one. He thinks she\u2019s competing. He\u2019s getting competitive. She\u2019s just being sympathetic. All she\u2019s trying to do is convince him she knows how he feels, Catt said.<\/p>\n
Put the shoe on the other foot, Catt said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe wife comes home and says, \u2018Honey, I have a headache,\u2019 and the guy says, \u2018Take two aspirin…. Don\u2019t you know how? … This is not rocket science, lady. Take two aspirin and get over your headache.\u2019 He\u2019s in fix it mode,\u201d Catt said.<\/p>\n
Understanding and acknowledging God as both the source of marriage, and His part in designing men and women despite their differences, can help individuals understand God\u2019s role in marriage.<\/p>\n
Citing the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act signed into law by former President Bill Clinton defining marriage as between one man and one woman, Catt said it was necessary because there are some who would redefine marriage because they are not comfortable living up to God\u2019s standards. Recently Catt said he was told a homosexual person had purchased \u201cThe Love Dare\u201d book to use in a relationship.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt won\u2019t work. The parts don\u2019t fit,\u201d Catt said. \u201cYou see, we have people trying to redefine something God has said is very sacred and it is a representation of Christ and His love for the church.\u201d<\/p>\n
Addressing the need to speak frankly on sexuality in church, Catt said he grew up in a time in the church when the topic was avoided.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe said to all our little girls, \u2018You be like Lottie Moon,\u2019 and then we expected them on their wedding night to become like Marilyn Monroe,\u201d he said. \u201cWhy have we made sex dirty? Because we\u2019ve let the culture define it and not Scripture…. We forget the fact that God designed it. He thought it up. It was His idea.\u201d<\/p>\n
Speaking further of the unique relationship between a husband and wife, Catt said marriage requires leaving and cleaving, a voluntary choice for individuals to join each other and stay together.<\/p>\n
\u201cQuite honestly, there are way too many marriages today where the parents and in-laws are speaking too much about how those families function,\u201d Catt said.<\/p>\n
Pointing back to a picture of submission as taught in Ephesians, Catt said in the context of the passage and the culture of His day, Jesus Christ was known as the \u201cgreatest liberator of women who walked this planet.\u201d Even at the cross, \u201cmen took off running and the women stayed,\u201d Catt said.<\/p>\n
Drawing from the example of Christ and the church, the husband is to be the source of a wife\u2019s security — a leader and not a dictator, Catt said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI have never met a woman who had a problem with that verse [about wifely submission] whose husband was loving her as Christ loves the church,\u201d Catt said.<\/p>\n
Catt challenged the men to do some homework during the upcoming football season by spending time hanging out with their wife at a local mall instead of watching the game.<\/p>\n
\u201cBy the way, would you go home tonight and ask your wife a question: \u2018Do I make you radiant?\u2019\u201d Catt said. \u201cJesus wants to radiate His life through the church. We ought to make our wives radiant, not have them rolling their eyes….\u201d<\/p>\n
AGAPE LOVE LASTS<\/p>\n
Kendrick said men who learn to love God with all their heart, mind, soul and strength can bring that kind of power to their marital relationships.<\/p>\n
Love is powerful and can cause a marriage to bloom as well, Kendrick said. Even imperfect people will feel valued and cared for when they are loved and given permission to fail.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen you get married, give your wife a year off…. Love her and accept her,\u201d Kendrick said. \u201cAnd then, after that treat her every other year like the first year.\u201d<\/p>\n
Explaining the difference between agape, phileo and eros — the New Testament Greek words for love — Kendrick said true love often is confused with eros, which is a sexual, romantic type of love.<\/p>\n
\u201cAgape love is what God wants you to build as a foundation\u201d of your marriage, Kendrick said. And you don\u2019t \u201cfall in\u201d agape love. It\u2019s purposeful and requires commitment. It\u2019s also unconditional and doesn\u2019t change depending on circumstances.<\/p>\n
\u201cGod\u2019s got a better way, and it\u2019s with agape love,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Appealing to the crowd, Kendrick, who has appeared in all of the movies Sherwood has produced, mimicked popular love songs while his brother Alex accompanied him on the piano.<\/p>\n
\u201cI will always love you,\u201d Stephen Kendrick crooned, noting that Whitney Houston\u2019s marriage ended in divorce despite her song. He belted out, \u201cStand by your man,\u201d adding that country music star Tammy Wynette left a confusing legacy with five marriages.<\/p>\n
\u201cTrue love doesn\u2019t give up,\u201d Kendrick said. \u201cWhat God is calling us to do is impossible for us to do\u201d without agape love.<\/p>\n
Tim Mann, pastor of First Baptist Church in Daytona Beach, which hosted the conference where nearly 800 people represented more than 60 churches, said he believes the weekend had a great potential to impact couples for the long haul.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs the family goes, so goes the culture. But as the family goes, so goes the church. And so goes the church, so goes the culture,\u201d Mann said. \u201cIf the family is fractured and dysfunctional, it is not healthy, [and unhealthy churches can\u2019t be] the salt and light we need to be in our culture.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Even among believers, instruction in Ephesians which teaches a woman to be subject to her husband as the church is to Christ often is misunderstood, according to a popular pastor and movie producer. Michael Catt, the executive producer of \u201cFireproof,\u201d speaking at a March 27-28 marriage conference in Daytona Beach, said that\u2019s because the follow-up […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4597,68,474],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5181"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5181"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5181\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5181"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5181"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5181"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}