The “good enough” husband is extinct. Men often believe they possess the different qualities, characteristics and attitudes to be good enough husband. He may measure himself by his own father, other husbands, his wife’s admonitions, societal standards and/or what he believes is necessary to be a good enough husband. But he keeps coming up short.

His wife may prod him to spend more time with her or share more of his thoughts and feelings with her, be more affectionate to be a good enough husband. Books abound about how to be a good husband and the Internet brims with articles and experts encouraging husbanding. While occasional sightings continue today, the “good enough” husband died off over 2000 years ago.

Who Gets to Decide?

Who determines what is “good enough?” Wouldn’t his wife determine whether he is good enough? She is the recipient of his efforts, but not being a man she doesn’t know what it takes to be a husband. On the other hand, wouldn’t he determine what good enough is, after all he is responsible for being the good enough husband. Neither wives nor husbands can determine what constitutes a “good enough” husband.

The concept of “good enough” is about shame and measuring up to some predetermined standard. From this framework a man is either good enough or he is not good enough; he is adequate or inadequate; good or bad; right or wrong; strong or weak; he either measures up or doesn’t measure up. Couples caught in the paradigm of “good enough” measure each other by standards of performance, which build in obligation, resentment, entitlement and ultimately emptiness all leading to failed relationships. Fortunately, there is another way.

Another Way!

Surrendering to the truth of the human condition, husbands are not capable of being good enough regardless of whether the standard is his wife’s, his or an idealized standard. Acknowledging this reality in every circumstance and encounter in marriage is the first step to being the husband God intended a man to be. Jesus did not allow his disciples, religious leaders or anyone else to establish his standard for being adequate or good enough.

The standard of being a good enough husband was met in the person of Jesus Christ and as a result the “good enough” husband became extinct. Husbands are directed to love their wives as Christ loved the church. This admonition is not about being good enough or measuring up to some obligatory standard.

Jesus loved the church by allowing the Father to live in Him, through Him as if the Father was Him. Similarly, husbands are to love their wives allowing the indwelling Christ to live in him, through him as if it’s him to her. This frame of reference has nothing to do with the “good enough” concept.

First, Jesus’ motivation for loving the church came from always listening to His Father. Knowing his Father increased his motivation for surrendering and listening to Him. As Jesus experienced life on this earth, He learned what he instinctively knew; His Father was the personification of love. God is love. This “knowing” came from life experiences in which difficulties were the proving ground for incrementally surrendering to His Father because He always knew this was in His best interest.

Secondly, surrendering to His Father’s will through death and burial resulted in resurrection. Surrendering to the Father in ways that lead to death, burial and resurrection today is also the process for loving wives, as Christ loved the church.
Finally, listening to the Father was essential for being able to know the Father and surrender. Jesus loved the church by listening, knowing and surrendering to the Father. Today, the key component for husbands loving their wives is listening, knowing and surrendering to the Father and as a result, husbands will be resurrected from extinction.

You chose your partner and your partner chose you. From all the friends, acquaintances and colleagues in your life, you chose your partner. You could have chosen anyone else, but you chose this person. You might ask, “What was I thinking?”

Your Partner

You weren’t thinking as much as you were responding to the WOW factor, a deep and powerfully unconscious need for “resolution” to your own idealized image of how you wanted beliefs, actions, reactions and interactions from your family to be different. The determining factor for who you choose and the motivation for resolving these “old and deep” unconscious patterns is more about you than your partner. How you approach your partner given your intensity for needing this idealized image fulfilled is critically important for achieving resolution or unintentionally replicating these patterns for future generations.

Matthew 16: 25, For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. (ESV) Two broad approaches are available for managing your feelings, thoughts, actions and reactions as you re-experience the pain, disappointment and fear from your growing up family in the actions and reactions of your partner.

Your Approach

Saving Your Life, to Lose It.

Saving your life manifests in a variety of ways. Insisting that your partner be the person who fulfills your unconscious, idealized image of who he or she should be in an attempt to heal the pain from your family of origin is one way of saving your life and the result will be losing your life. As your partner experiences your demands he or she may comply for some time, but ultimately retaining some small measure of self-respect your partner will defy your efforts at manipulation and eventually realize there is only one person in the relationship: You.

Expecting your partner to respond to you based on how you give to your partner is another way of saving your life and losing it as a result. This quid pro quo ultimately results in obligation, resentment, entitlement and emptiness with both people feeling objectified, diminished and minimized as a result of the relationship approach. Continually insisting on saving their lives results in chronic anger, resentment and bitterness ultimately ending the relationship with so much polarization neither knows how or why they ever got to the point of divorce.

Losing Your Life to Find It.

The key to losing your life is surrendering what you have to have when you have to have it, not for the sake of your partner, your sake or the sake of the relationship. Your motivation for losing your life is “for my (Jesus’) sake.” The reason you do what you do is not even to overcome these old and deep unconscious patterns of hurt and pain. Losing your life for Jesus’ sake is the motivation and the idealized image of what you wanted from your family of origin will be overcome. The result is finding life.

Relationships work because two people choose each other. In anticipation of another person choosing you, would you choose you? Knowing yourself; your strengths and weaknesses, your tendency to be emotionally reactive, your tolerance for others weaknesses, your avoidance of conflict or tendency to indulge yourself, looking at your personality, social interactions, initiative with others or inclination to withdraw, thinking about your work ethic, ability to slowdown and rest, considering your education and intelligence, how well you care for yourself or don’t care for yourself and your character as a person, would you choose to be in a relationship with another person who had the exact same characteristics as you do?

Qualified Congratulations

If you would choose you, then allow me to extend qualified congratulations to you because you are part of a small percentage of people who would choose to be in a relationship with themselves. The exception for these congratulations is that narcissists would also choose themselves because of their lack of empathy or appreciation for their personal weaknesses or limitations. Given that exception, a person with a healthy self-image would choose to be in a relationship with himself or herself even given their frailties and shortcomings because they have forgiven themselves or are in process of personal acceptance.

NO, of course Not

If you would not choose you, then how can you respect the person who has chosen you? Have you pulled the wool over your partner’s eyes? Have you tricked him or her to choose you when you wouldn’t choose you? Perhaps you’ve not revealed some of those qualities you would not ever choose in you. Forgiving yourself is critically important for an intimate relationship because that history or those characteristics you’re avoiding are mastering you rather than you having mastery over them. As you grow closer to your partner, the power of those secrets will prevent the closeness you want over time.

Maybe you’ve had the courage to tell your partner those things you wouldn’t choose in yourself, and he or she still chose to be in the relationship with you. Often this is the case, but you don’t want to escape into your partner running from those characteristics in yourself or that history in your past that you’ve not forgiven yourself for. Choosing yourself is important even with your character defects because self-respect is essential for maintaining a healthy ongoing personal relationship.

How do You Choose You?

Choosing you begins with surrender, humility and brokenness. Self-acceptance begins with an awakening of your need for acceptance and forgiveness beyond yourself. The smallest openness to receive and apply that acceptance to yourself is the beginning place. Efforts from self-sufficiency, self-determination and self-reliance are centripetal in nature or moving inward and are dead ends toward fully accepting and choosing you.

Surrender, humility and brokenness lead to openness and vulnerability yielding to a spiritual acceptance that transcends your character defects, failures and disappointments so that these no longer master you. Being able to admit these openly and honestly to yourself and others reveals a self-acceptance that is centrifugal or moving outward toward others. Incrementally appropriating this transcendent acceptance of you frees you to choose you.

Have you ever wondered what the essential difference is between a healthy and unhealthy relationship? How would you tell? Is there a fork in the road that if you turn right you’re traveling down the healthy road and if you turn left you’re travelling down the unhealthy or dysfunctional road?

There is such a fork in the road. It is in the moment you receive from another person. How you receive anything from others is critical for having healthy or unhealthy relationships. How you receive determines your responses, whether you trust that person or not and it determines your personal maturity.

You can’t do anything about how a person gives. Your partner may give expecting something in return; may give initially freely, but then hold it against you when he or she doesn’t get some expected response; may give freely expecting nothing at all. You can receive freely and say, Thank you responding in gratitude.

Fair

Feeling guilty, obligated or indebted, immediately begins a trip down the dysfunctional road. Obligation over time feels heavy and leads to resentment. Trying to measure up and be good enough to fulfill an indebtedness to another person is exhausting because you can never get back to even, square or zero. You live in a hole of guilt, obligation and resent it. Constantly trying to measure up and be good enough to another’s standard eventually leaves you empty inside. Receiving from a model of fairness, results in obligation, resentment, entitlement and eventually emptiness inside.

This model is driven by fear that you won’t get what you want if you don’t hold your partner to what you expect in the relationship. The motivation is what the other person does or doesn’t do in return. Usually, your partner stops receiving anything from you because he or she doesn’t trust you are giving freely. Your partner would rather do without than have to deal with your reactions when you don’t get what you think you deserve. Ultimately, the relationship ends in polarization and self-protection from each other.

Freedom

Feeling gratitude, thankfulness and appreciation, begins the journey down the healthy road. Responsibility in response to the giver, rather than obligation leads to gratitude rather than resentment. Ultimately, rather than entitlement or building a case against your partner for all you’ve done for him or her trying to measure up or be good enough to your partner’s standard, humility brings you back to spend more time with your partner because you want to and are free to. Receiving from a model of freedom results in responsibility, gratitude, humility and eventually contentment.

This model is led by trust that you will get what is in your best interest allowing your partner the freedom to love you as he or she will. Your motivation is not in your partner, but in your relationship with God to sustain you after you have given freely knowing your partner will never respond to you in your way or in your timing. Receiving this way opens the door for personal growth as both people trust each other. When reactions of entitlement or frustration occur they are met with understanding and forgiveness. Ultimately, the relationship expands to influence others to give freely and receive freely as well.

Recent school violence has prompted questions swirling around adolescent boys, discipline and the availability of guns. These conversations miss the point that adolescent boys, a lack of discipline and the availability of guns all have one thing in common. Each, in its own way, comes out of a context.

Adolescent boys don’t magically show up in our high schools as violent killers. Parents have dropped the ball when it comes to exercising authority in their children’s lives because it takes more effort and investment than just letting them develop on their own. Is it any wonder that non-invested parents result in disconnected adolescents? The lack of personal and parental authority in parents shows up in adolescents who are directionless and have no concept of personal identity let alone responsibility.

Indulgent mothers and absentee fathers create an emotionally abusive and functionally neglectful cocktail of shame, resentment and helplessness in children to know how to even start having relationships of worth and value with other people. This lack of personal and parental authority in parents is the beginning point for correcting what is a generational problem in families today. The violence in our schools erupts from the path-of-least-resistance mentality adopted by parents who don’t discipline their children today. This is the context from which adolescent males emerge and commit great acts of violence.

The lack of discipline in children is also the result of parent’s not understanding human development in its most basic form. From birth to two-years-old, meeting a child’s every want and need is a function of loving that child. The transition from meeting a child’s every want and need because parents love their child to telling him or her NO because parents love them must occur around this two-year-old stage of development.

Unfortunately, again because of a lack of personal and parental authority parents continue to indulge their children for a variety of reasons. As a result, children learn that loving them means parents and others should only and always meet their every want and need. Parents have failed to make the transition that loving their children means telling them NO as an answer because they love their children, not because they don’t love them. This indulgent mentality sets the stage for two-year-old fits in adolescents with profound implications for society.

Finally, the availability of guns in the context of such abject parental neglect and adolescent entitlement provides the stage for acting out the two-year-old fit in adolescence. Guns are the tools of rage and helplessness that emerge from years of neglect, indulgence and entitlement for lashing out and having a deadly change effect in other’s lives. The conversation surrounding gun violence must incorporate parental authority, adolescent entitlement and personal emptiness. Solutions to quell societal violence begin with personal and parental authority in parents, recognition that discipline is a function of loving children, telling them NO as an answer instead of indulging them and personally investing in children’s lives through valuing them as people with worth and value. As parents recognize that their children will only master adversity as responsibly as they have, perhaps these parents will exercise personal and parental authority.

Cancer is a silent killer working its pernicious way into organs and eventually permeating the whole body. Cancer always has two characteristics: it never learns from its mistakes and it is unregulated or never tells itself no.

Will-Conflict is a vicious relationship cancer. This particular cancer has no limits and knows no boundaries once unleashed between two people. It thrives most in marital bonds, turning them into binds, yet can also manifest in professional interactions as well.

The Cause of Will-Conflict

Will-conflict is caused by two people resisting each other based on what each believes is fair. While the concept of fairness would appear to stabilize relationships keeping them together, it actually destabilizes relationships tearing them apart.

This fairness concept is fed by expectations from each persons different families growing-up. As two people interact based on what each thinks is fair, the disease slowly grows into attempts to “correct the record” and “balance the ledger.” The disease grows stronger as both people’s loyalty to fairness continues until full blown will-conflict emerges.

The Symptoms of Cancer

Relationships are dying at unprecedented rates infected by this cancer that grows silently below the surface masked as other symptoms. Most common symptoms of Will-conflict:

“We just can’t communicate.” Even insignificant conversations devolve into emotional reactivity.

Taking what your partner’s comments too personally, literally and seriously.

Assuming your partner knows what you know and should think, feel, act and react in ways that you’d think, feel, act and react reveal the budding seeds of will-conflict.

“I would have never said this or done that” is a telltale comment pointing to the developing disease.

Feelings of injustice continue the disease process and opposing positions are held more vehemently as differences threaten to undermine the relationship.

Eventually, polarization and self-protection format the relationship so completely that little to no listening, openness or understanding is even possible.

The Cure for Will-Conflict

A comprehensive reorientation to relationship is required to cure will-conflict.
Rather than allowing fairness’ tit-for-tat or quid-pro-quo to format relationships, the curative element designed to reverse will-conflict’s destructive path is the humility to receive freely and simply say, “Thank you.”

Receiving freely and as a result functioning from personal ownership and responsibility rather than obligation to another’s standard is the chemotherapy that begins the healing process.

Men and women are different. Duh! But how different are they? The popular book, Men are from Mars and Women are from Venus attempted to explain how men and women are different. I have come to explain the differences between men and women using the phrase, “Head and Bed.”

A Woman’s Place is in a Man’s Head

Where in a man’s life does a woman find a place, safety, security and belonging?
As a man shares his thoughts, feelings, hopes, dreams, aspirations, seeks her thoughts and opinions about issues, has meaningful conversations with her, she has a sense of belonging and significance in his life. Equally, when he only has eyes for her, tells her how beautiful, intelligent and loved she is, she feels connected and cared for by him. A man’s humor, playfulness and wittiness is another way she finds belonging and meaning in his thoughts or head.

Pornography, gazing, staring or gawking at other women and sharing more of his views, perspective or thoughts with another woman, she may feel threatened, hurt and often betrayed. Comparing a man’s head to a beautifully appointed room, it’s a man’s responsibility to appoint that room with her colors, furnishings and maintain the room so that she feels comfortable and can rest there. This is expressing yourself in kind and gentle ways so she knows you treasure and cherish her. Allowing other women into your “head space” shares her place with other women when she may not have invited them into her place in your life.

A Man’s Place is in a Woman’s Bed

At the same time, where in a woman’s life does a man find meaning, security and belonging? In a completely different way, men find belonging, significance, place and meaning in a woman’s life when she opens herself to him sexually. Intercourse, in the context of a committed and exclusive relationship (marriage), both establishes and reveals the sacred bond a man wants with his partner. Assuming the physical position necessary for intercourse expresses vulnerability and susceptibility to her partner. Historically, men have been known to kill other men for being in their place. Obviously, this does not justify murder, but it does indicate the significance of this place for men.

Clearly, intercourse has been cheapened in a variety of ways so that from a societal perspective, it has far less significance as a place of belonging and meaning when women are objectified and dehumanized for the sake of sex. Both men and women are responsible for this just in different ways. Men, mistakenly thinking that jokes, groping, making casual references to sex is attractive to women, when in fact, most women feel objectified. These behaviors are incredibly unattractive, immature and repugnant to women because they are self-serving for the man.

As men assume responsibility for providing an uncontaminated, loving, caring, nurturing place for a woman thinking of her, only having eyes for her and preserving her place in his life, trust begins to build between the sexes. Equally, receiving this effort on a man’s part, believing the best about him, allows a woman to open herself to him sexually trusting they are mutually invested in the relationship, just in different ways.

“We just can’t communicate.” The problem is as common as the common cold, and as mystifying as an unexpected sneeze. This “communication” problem is actually a symptom of each person’s emotional reactivity. Couple’s communicate in a narrow range of predictable actions and reactions increasing each person’s resentment and contempt for the other person.

Color and Intensity

Emotional reactivity can be thought of as a light with two primary characteristics: color and intensity. The color or the reasons for each person’s reactions comes from their unique history and expectations. The level of intensity of their reactions is exactly the same for both people. In other words, a one hundred watt person bonds with a one hundred watt person in terms of intensity. A sixty-watt person will not bond with a one hundred-watt person. The level of their intensity is different and as a result they will not attach.

While the reasons for their connection are always different, the intensity of their attachment is at the same level. A man who avoids conflict at all cost may find himself attracted to a woman who is equally compelled to tell him why he does what he does attempting to understand him. Their emotional reactions, why he avoids conflict and why she needs to understand him are different, but the level of their intensity is the same. While their emotional reactions are different, they occur in a predictable pattern because of the intensity.

The Process

1. The Trigger. The trigger can be any look, gesture or even silence that results in the other person reacting too personally, too seriously and too literally. Almost anything can and does act as a trigger. One person’s sensitivity uniquely reinforces the other person’s sensitivity reducing communication to accusation.

2. Closing Down. Self-protection drives detaching, distancing, blaming and emotionally withdrawing to prevent more hurt and disappointment from the trigger. A parting sarcastic jab may even punctuate closing down. Often the reaction of the person closing down is greater than the look, gesture or comment that triggered closing down in the first place.

3. Pulling Away. Pulling away creates physical and emotional distance reducing the chances of more hurt and disappointment from each other. Protecting one’s self from more emotional reactivity, this distance may last several hours, days or weeks. Silent treatment, limited eye contact, no affection, and short or curt answers usually characterize pulling away.

4. Re-Opening. After pulling away, lines of communication begin to reopen signaling that the distance is no longer necessary. This occurs in small ways with eye contact, a word or two, a look, a smile, the use of humor, a little more time together, answering questions more pleasantly, or some limited affection.
Sometimes one person signals that he or she is ready to reopen, but the other person is not. This results in another, less intense, pulling away that can last a little while longer. Eventually, both people start re-opening to each other, re-establishing their connection, but nothing is resolved.

5. Re-Connecting. Exhausted from the emotional drain the process of reactivity has taken, both people gravitate back toward each other. Familiar feelings return as they re-connect, but the intensity of their reactions remains the same. At the same time, the content of their attempted conversation is lost to the emotional reaction and as a result nothing is resolved. While emotional stability returns to their relationship, the emotional intensity increases each time the process of emotional reactivity reoccurs.

6. Repeating. Predictably the process begins again triggered by any look, gesture or comment. Couples seem to be at the mercy of their own emotional reactivity, when in fact, they have the ability to reduce their reactions to each other by assuming responsibility for themselves and their emotional maturity.

7. Polarization. Couples may go through this process so many times that they no longer reconnect. They remain disconnected living at an emotional and physical distance maintaining their self-protection. Their emotional standoff is most easily characterized by the couple sitting across the table from each other who have nothing to say. In fact, when couples protect themselves completely from each other they may continue living together but be wholly cut-off from each other.

Example

John and Carol are in the pattern of trigger, closing down, pulling away, reopening, reconnecting and repeating. Over the years, John tries to be a better husband doing more chores, assuming greater responsibility, and trying to take the pressure off his wife. The fatal flaw in John is that his wife is the one who determines whether all of his effort is good enough or not. Moving toward her, he has never been good enough and the cycle of disappointment results in closing down, pulling away, reopening, reconnecting and trying harder … all to no avail. He continually looks for the approval he did not get from his father. No matter what he does or how hard he works the process of reactivity continues.

Carol, on the other hand, is numb from John’s anger and chalks it up to his inability to get beyond himself. She believes he is self-centered and everything he does is self-serving and self-centered. She is just as embittered as John just in different ways and for different reasons. Carol’s efforts at trying to get John to understand her fall on deaf ears and she gives up trying to make their relationship better. Carol’s diagnosis of John is a reflection of her complete focus on him and her need to be protected by her husband because her father was distant and uninvolved. John and Carol have different reasons for their emotional reactions, but the intensity of their reactions keep them stuck in this predictable pattern of interaction.

How do you exercise personal authority and humility at the same time? While these seem to be opposites, they actually complement each other. Personal authority is the ability to be present having a quiet confidence transcending difficult circumstances. Parents exercise parental authority disciplining children. Police exercise legal authority keeping drivers safe. Similarly, personal authority exercised in adult relationships is necessary for two people to humbly listen and consider each other.

Infants have no ability to exercise personal authority because they are completely determined by their internal and external circumstances. Feeling cold, hot, hungry or thirsty an infant reacts to get his or her caregivers to meet his or her wants and needs. Adults allowing the demands of their day, the demands of others, fear of hurting other’s feelings, fear of being taken advantage of, or allowing guilt, anger or frustration to determine their reactions reveal a lack of personal authority.

Personal authority is not complying nor defying others. Complying, avoiding conflict, people pleasing, appeasing, placating or pacifying another is evidence of a lack of personal authority. Similarly, defying, withdrawing, distancing and retreating, as patterns of interaction is evidence of a lack of personal authority. These two patterns of complying and defying have been characterized as the quilt/anger cycle. Ironically, often adults exercise little to no personal authority because they are completely determined by their fear, guilt and/or shame.

Personal authority is a quiet presence that transcends feelings, impulses and circumstances. An example of personal authority is thinking something without saying it or speaking confidently about a subject. Maturity, mindfulness, consciousness, being thoughtful, considerate, and socially aware are indicators of personal authority.

Personal authority doesn’t presume you know what’s in your best interest. In fact, a person with personal authority recognizes he or she doesn’t know what’s in his or her best interest and can exercise the humility to be still, cooperate with others and think beyond their particular fame of reference or personal situation.

Humility is one of the clearest indicators of personal authority. Narcissists are devoid of humility because it requires stepping back from their particular point of view and humbling considering others thoughts and feelings. Personal authority is a prerequisite for listening in a relationship. Efforts to “balance the ledger” or “correct the record” in the moment can be emotional reactions that reveal a lack of personal authority.

Personal authority and humility develop as a result of resting in the confidence derived from knowing you belong and have significance in the universe. This rest grows from “knowing” your life is being lived with intentionality and purpose transcending words, thoughts, feelings, actions and reactions in any particular moment. Developing personal authority is critical for successful relationships.

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See the webinar How to Have a Successful Relationship.

In my initial webinar, I outlined the differences between Door Number One and Door Number Two. To summarize, Door Number One is characterized by the emotional reaction experienced when you’re told “No.” It is the tendency to believe you are wanted and loved only when your partner meets your every want and need.

Door Number Two is characterized by accepting “No” as an answer and maturing and persevering through difficulty and adversity. This perseverance builds character, which provides a foundation for further growth and maturity. Door Number Two thinking allows you and your partner the space and opportunity to be yourselves while being connected in a relationship. Door Number Two thinking requires a significant measure of humility.

John Piper, a renowned pastor and author asks the question: Do you feel more loved by God when he makes much of you, or do you feel more loved by God when he frees you and enables you, at great cost of his Son’s life, to enjoy making much of Him forever?

My purpose in this article is to associate John Piper’s question with Door Number One and Door Number Two.

Door Number One

Do you feel more loved by your partner when your partner: focuses on you, accommodates you, recognizes you, understands you, initiates toward you, listens to you, serves you, and makes you the focus of his or her attention? Or, do you feel more love when, at great sacrifice of your time, effort, and energy, you free your partner to experience the love of God through you and to be uniquely who God has created him or her to be?

Clearly, nothing is wrong with feeling loved when your husband or wife expresses how much he or she loves you. But is that all there is? Do you love your partner for what he or she can do for you? Do you love your partner because he or she meets your every want and need? This kind of love is consistent with Door Number One thinking.

With this thinking, your love for your partner comes from what your partner does for you, and you suspect that your partner’s love for you comes from what you do for your partner. This performance-based relationship is exhausting, as both people rely on acts of service to hold the relationship together. This way of interacting is self-serving, and while efforts to meet the other person’s wants and needs appear to be for him or her, they actually serve as leverage to stake a claim against the other person if he or she doesn’t reciprocate.

Under this framework, you and your partner love what you get from one another at least as much as you love one another. In essence, you place your wants and needs in your partner’s hands and take these on for your partner. You might even think is how to have a relationship. It’s not surprising that your partner feels taken advantage of or slighted the first time you don’t meet his or her wants or needs, especially when your partner has worked so hard to meet yours. The relationship is dominated by the fear that you won’t measure up or be good enough. This fear formats the relationship.

This is John Piper’s point in asking the first part of his question, “Do you feel more love for God when he makes much of you?” Loving God for what He can do for you is idolatry. From this self-referential position, you believe God serves you to help you get a job, get that promotion, get married, have children, buy that house, etc. Everything is about YOU.

Under this framework, all you do “for” God may be to balance the preverbal ledger for all that God has done for you. Rather than loving God for God, you love God for what He does for you. But this is not a relationship with God, nor is it a life lived according to Christian faith. This is using God to get what you want, when you want it. When God doesn’t give you what you want, you get disappointed with God and give up on the relationship.

This pattern of frustration with God also occurs in relationships with others. As you look at all you’ve done for your partner and how little your partner has done for you, you can claim you’ve been cheated, taken advantage of, or that your partner isn’t keeping up his or her end of the relationship. You measure the strength of your relationship by all you’ve done for him or her, rather than valuing and appreciating your partner for who he or she is as a person. So, the relationship is formatted by the fear that if you don’t constantly do enough for your partner, your partner won’t stay in the relationship. This is not a relationship of love, but of performance and shame driven by fear. This way of interacting with another person doesn’t recognize the value or character of that person.

Door Number Two
This brings us to the second portion of John Piper’s question. “Do you feel more loved by God when he frees you and enables you, at great cost of his Son’s life, to enjoy making much of him forever?” More specifically, do you feel more love for your partner because he or she, at great cost to him or herself, frees you of your pride, misconceptions, and arrogance so that you might enjoy making much of your partner? That’s a mind-bending question!

Door Number Two poses the same question in a different way: Is it possible to accept and embrace “No” as an answer when it is said because your partner loves you? Believing this “No” is in your best interest and receiving it freely open the door for receiving grace as you surrender your will to parents, partner and God’s will for you.

Let’s break down the second half of Piper’s question to better understand how it is different from the first.

First, Do you feel more loved by God when He frees you? What does God free you of? God frees you of the bondage of obligation, resentment, entitlement and emptiness. God frees you from relying on fairness to keep your relationships together. Is life fair? Obviously not. But how often do you think, “That’s not fair.” God frees us from the self-deception inherent when we admit that life is not fair, but constantly work to fashion relationships into what we think is fair.

Second, Do you feel more loved by God when He enables you? How does God enable you? God enables you to enjoy the freedom He gives through His Spirit. You can abandon the exhausting performance-based mentality in Door Number One when you realize that your hope is not in your ability, but in your availability to God doing His work in you and through you. Empowered by His Spirit, you can rest in His sufficiency and depend on Him for your strength to love others.

This enabling power of God is best characterized in the story of Passover. Moses directed the Hebrews to put the blood of a lamb on the doorpost of their homes to protect their first born from dying from the final plague God used to free His people from Egypt. Equally important, the Hebrews were directed to roast and eat the lamb so they would have the strength to leave Egypt the next morning. The blood and body of the lamb empowered the Hebrews to leave Egypt. Similarly, the blood and body of Jesus empowers believers to live a life freed from the bondage and slavery of fairness’s obligation, resentment, entitlement and emptiness.

Third, we must consider the great cost of His Son’s life. What is this great cost, and why was it necessary? Here, John Piper is referring to Jesus’ death on the cross. Jesus’ death and subsequent resurrection broke the power of the grave and set mankind free from approaching relationships from mindsets of performance and fairness.

Understanding the significance of Jesus’ death is important for knowing how to have successful relationships. Many well-intentioned believers contend that Jesus’ motivation for dying on the cross was to redeem mankind from sin. This is not true! His motivation was to obey His Father. In the garden of Gethsemane He prayed, “Father not my will but your will be done.” The redemption of mankind from sin was a result of Jesus’ death, but not the motivation.

Jesus did not die “for” you so you are obligated to live “for” him. This quid pro quo is the bondage He died to set you free from. Yet too often this distortion of the “good news” is erroneously touted as the gospel.

Jesus’ death and resurrection breaks the bondage of the quid pro quo and allows us to give freely. It sets husbands free to love wives as Christ loved the church, and provides wives the freedom to respect their husbands. The abundance of the Christian life is found in giving one’s life away to another in order to see the Father continually bring resurrection out of death. As husbands and wives increasingly give more of themselves in surrender to the Father, they are empowered to submit more of themselves to each other. Submission to each other without first surrendering to the Father results in resentment, score keeping and, eventually, emptiness.

Finally, we consider the joy found in making much of Him. To enjoy making much of Him, you must find pleasure and abundance in loving God for God’s sake rather than loving God for what He can do for you. Making much of God requires eyes to see and ears to hear the work of God in your life. The abundance of the Christian life manifests as enjoyment in celebrating who God is, even when your wants and needs go unmet. It allows you to experience the fullness of living obediently to the Father, receiving freely and trusting Him to sustain you when your wants and needs are not met by your partner.

Piper’s question exposes the difference between fear and love. Divorce is a relatively easy alternative to loving your partner as you would if you trusted God to sustain you when your partner does not meet your wants and needs. Divorce is a declaration that resurrection is impossible. But for Christ followers, resurrection is not only possible; it is the foundation upon which all of Christian faith rests.

So how do you walk through Door Number Two and love your partner at great expense to yourself? How do you do this without enabling him or her to take advantage you? What is the difference between giving yourself to provide grace to your partner and enabling an abuser’s intimidation or bullying?

Grace is doing for another what he or she is unable to do for himself or herself. Enabling is doing for another what he or she is able to do for himself or herself. This distinction is critical for determining whether you are extending grace to your partner or enabling a partner’s unrepentant predisposition.

Your motivation is one of the most important factors for distinguishing between a relationship built on grace and one built on enabling. When motivated by the desire to obey your Heavenly Father, you can die on the cross of your anxiety in anticipation of the resurrection that will follow. The Holy Spirit enables this process, and thus, though painful, it is not a burden, nor is it heavy or hard. Matthew 16:25 tells us, “For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will find it.” By extending grace in giving your life to your partner, you experience abundance of the Christian life.