Several years ago a fellow seminary student told a heartbreaking story in class one day.  His home as a child was atop a high bluff with a massive back yard that led up to the edge of a very steep cliff.  One day he and a friend were riding together on the friend’s bicycle with his friend in front doing the driving.  They headed toward the edge of the cliff and, just for the thrill of it, he began to dare his friend to pump faster and faster as they got closer.  He thought this guy would only take the dare so far and then stop before it was too late.  But, for some reason, he didn’t.  So, at the very last instant, he baled off the back of the bicycle only to watch his friend disappear over the edge and down onto the rocky cliffs below.  He was only a child when it happened.  But, well into adulthood, he carried the memory with him and the lesson it taught.  Beyond not daring someone to do something they might actually be dumb enough to attempt, it’s wise to remember that you can only go so close to edge of danger without paying a terrible price.

The title of the sermon this morning is one of the three toughest questions I have ever been asked.  Like the other two, it was asked of me by my then six-year-old son.  I will never forget having to face and answer that question.  To this day, I’m not exactly certain what he meant when he asked it. 

Maybe he was simply asking, “How do you go about the process of getting a divorce?”  In that case, a very perfunctory answer would do.  As a rule, in Texas, an attorney files papers with the proper court and then, sometime after the required minimum of sixty days, you stand before a judge in a courtroom and listen while she pronounces the legal death of your marriage. 

I’ve often wondered, however, if that was all my son was asking.  I’ve often wondered if he was asking something more akin to “How can you do this?”  Or, “Why can’t you find another way?”  The only thing I knew to do at the time was answer the question I knew for certain he was asking.  That’s all a parent can really do.  The worst thing a parent can do is leave a child’s questions unanswered that legitimately deserve one.  But, this morning, I want to answer it another way. 

Jesus said, “‘what God has joined together, let no one separate.’”  If you listen carefully to those words and to everything else Jesus said about marital failure that leads to divorce it’s impossible not to hear him warning us that we are never able to go over the edge of what God has defined as good in human relationships without paying a terrible price.  Yet, if it is so wrong and so bad, how is it that so many people end up divorced, even those who take marriage seriously and the word of God seriously?  Obviously, it is not because we don’t know the rules. 

The little boy on the bicycle didn’t go over the edge because he didn’t know the law of gravity.  Yet, he learned, very painfully, that certain events, once set in motion, have a certain inevitability about them.  Despite how seriously any two people may take their vows at the altar, too often, with the first step they take away from the altar, they set in motion behaviors and attitudes that have a certain inevitability about them that can often lead to the death of a marriage. 

Now, the tough part.  How do I go about reducing a very complicated subject into such a short time as a sermon allows?  Please allow me to attempt to do it this way.  I’m going to give you three words that I’d like to serve as something like boxes into which you can place many other issues related to them.  Again, my premise, long before the judge slams down the gavel that ends the marriage, forces were set in motion that led to that day.  I believe these three words encompass the most significant issues that will determine the outcome of most marriages.

The first word is, nurture.  People who stay happily married a long time learn how to nurture each other.  Ephesians 4:29 reads, “Let no evil talk come out of your mouths, but only what is useful for building up, as there is need, so that your words may give grace to those who hear.”  Very few words are neutral words.  They either build up or they tear down.  The specific instruction of this scripture is to discipline ourselves to speak the kinds of words that build up, nurture, each other.

Though I have forgotten the author, I once read a principle that has proven to be one of the most helpful skills I have ever learned.  It’s called “The Love Bank.”  It works like this.  Every person in every marriage has a love bank in their heart for their mate.  Every word that is spoken and every deed of each spouse either makes a deposit or a withdrawal from that bank.  Words that build up and encourage and express love make deposits.  Deeds of kindness, such as learning to listen, tend to nurture.  Words that hurt and embarrass and ridicule make withdrawals.  Dishonesty, for example, always makes a major withdrawal.  Over time, if you make more deposits than withdrawals from each other’s love banks, your relationship goes bankrupt. 

One day a husband walked into his house and found it a wreck.  From the front door all the way to the back the kids’ toys were scattered.  Dirty laundry was spilled all over the floor.  Not only was there no dinner on the table but the dirty dishes in the sink from the day before were spilling onto the counter.  When he finally found his wife in the back of the house he asked her what was wrong.  She said, “Every day you come in and ask me what I did that day.  Today, I didn’t do it.”  How well that husband heard what she said I don’t know.  But, what she was trying to say was that his questions about how productive she had been every day made major withdrawals from her love bank.  The scripture in Ephesians is saying that we ought to make more deposits than withdrawals.  People get divorced, often, because they stop nurturing the one they promised to love and the relationship just goes bankrupt.

By the way, a word of stern warning to both husbands and wives.  If you do not, for any reason, nurture your mate in loving, kind and gentle ways, someone will likely come along and do it for you.  If you want to build what is called an affair-proof marriage, learn to nurture your mate.  It may appear, when adultery destroys a marriage, that it was assaulted from the outside.  But, long before the summer heat destroys a beautiful flower, someone stopped watering the roots.  It died from the inside out.  And, I might add, it’s nearly impossible to nurture your marriage if you’re never home.  Or, if you are both working so hard that, when you finally get home you’re so tired you don’t care anymore.  If you want your marriage to not only survive but thrive, you may have to make some proactive choices about scaling back your lifestyle so that some of that energy you’re spending on making money will be left over for making love happen.  But, honestly, I don’t know why I waste my breath saying that.  No one is going to scale back.  Because we all believe it will never happen to us, right?  A word to the wise, if you think scaling back your lifestyle is painful when you choose to do it, you can’t imagine how painful it is when some judge who doesn’t even care who you are does it for you.  The first word is, nurture.

The second word is, gratitude.  Long before two people ever get divorced, someone stopped obeying this command of scripture from 1 Thessalonians 5:18, “give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.”  Right before our friend and pastor, George Mason, performed our wedding ceremony I asked him if he had any marriage advice.  All he said was this.  “Every morning when you wake up, before you do anything else, thank God for what your mate brings to your life.” 

When you practice this discipline of giving “thanks in all circumstances,” your marriage will be strengthened in two very specific ways.  First, it is nearly impossible to stay angry at someone when you are constantly thanking God for them.  Second, when you are practicing gratitude, you are learning to measure the value of the other person in your life more in terms of what they bring to your life than what they take away from it.  If that ever gets out of balance the other way, really bad things can happen in a hurry.

A coach and a referee recently got into a brawl at a YMCA sixth-grade football game in Rockwall.  Before it was over the coach was ejected and the game was called in favor of the opposing team.  All the parents subsequently received a letter informing us that a commission has been appointed to investigate the incident.  It also included the little reminder that life is about ten percent what happens to us and ninety percent our attitude toward it.  Sad, for sure, that the parents were the ones needing the reminder.  Yet, it’s true.  Especially in marriage.  If two people get married and start measuring the significance of it only in terms of what the other one takes away from them, there won’t be enough referees to keep what happens next from ending the game before it’s time.  Everyone makes a bad call now and then.  People who stay happy in their marriages are more grateful for the good calls than they are resentful of the bad ones.  The first word is nurture.  The second word is, gratitude.

And, the third word is, forgiveness.  1 Corinthians 13:5 reads, love “is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.”  (NIV)  Previously in that same chapter, the apostle Paul stated that, when he was younger, his thoughts and perceptions of life were childlike.  But, there came a time when, as he grew, he chose to see life from a different perspective.  Whatever else it is, forgiveness is the choice to see others from the perspective of grace.  Choosing to see others from the perspective of forgiving grace is one of the most significant steps we ever take from childhood to adulthood.  Simply put, a child measures the world with himself at the center.  A spiritual adult measures the world with God at the center.  A forgiving God.  A God whose love knows no bounds.  People who stay married, happily married, aren’t very good at keeping score on the failures of their mate because they are so grateful that God isn’t keeping score on theirs.

A fellow pastor tells me that, when someone comes to him for help with their marriage, he always likes to ask them to try to figure what percentage of the marriage’s problems are his or her responsibility.  Most people like to assign the lion’s share of the blame to the other person.  So, he lets them do that all the while asking which percentage they are willing to accept as their own.  It takes a little work.  But, eventually, the one who has come for help will usually admit to at least five percent of the responsibility.  Then, my friend will say, “O.K., that’s good.  Now we know that you are at least five percent at fault.  Why don’t we work on that five percent and see what happens?” 

Here is a good rule of thumb about that five percent.  If there is nothing else you can work on that you believe will have a positive affect, the five percent we can all work on is learning to be more forgiving.  If the only five percent you add to your marriage is forgiveness the entire chemistry has to change.  It doesn’t mean things will turn out the way you want.  But, at least you will have beenresponsible for the five percent you could.  And, if you can’t do five percent, try one percent nurture, one percent gratitude and one percent forgiveness. 

I suppose you want to know what happened to the guy who went over the cliff on his bicycle.  Well, he did live.  But, he suffered a terrible gash across his face.  And, shortly thereafter, he moved away.  My classmate didn’t see him again for a long time.  But, one day, years later, he was walking through an airport and he ran into his friend.  The scar was still very visible, he said.  But, he also observed that, despite how bad it was, it had healed and he had learned to live with it.

Take it from someone who has been over the edge.  By a grace of God I could never explain, my scars are healing and I am learning to live with them.  But, they will never go away.  If I can keep you from having to go over the edge with me, then maybe my fall to places I never dreamed I’d go was worth something after all.  And, maybe, just maybe, you’ll never have to find yourself answering your own children when they ask that terrible question that always means more than it sounds like.  “How do you get a divorce?”  Maybe now, you know.  I hope so.