LOVE VS DESIRE - Marriage Book Club, Part 9

good evening everyone good evening everyone and welcome to our ninth and final marriage book club scope where we are on our final session here we're studying this book by Gary Thomas called a lifelong love and if you've been with us for the past couple months we have been talking about how this book has really really really transformed our marriage and lots of great ways and taught us a lot of great stuff and we're sharing our final lesson here tonight which will cover the last three chapters and the first thing that I'll tell you before we start is that usually sometimes you'll see like my daughter pop in here or my son and kind of be on at the beginning well tonight we have to turn the movie on for them downstairs because tonight's topic could get a little bit racy if you know what I'm saying so that should be enough reason if nothing else to go ahead and swipe right and share this scope with all your friends on your social networks as we kind of talked about the last three chapters here which as I said the title is love versus desire okay so Mary Ann is gonna start us off here so on the first chapter it was called love isn't desire and I love this chapter I think this was worth the price of the whole book where he just makes the point that we often confuse desire for love and when a five-year-old says I desired this candy right now I must have this candy in the mind of this five-year-old he thinks he loves the candy um you have a 19 year old guy who says I desire this lady I want to be with this girl I love this girl he doesn't really he desires her so there's a big difference between love and desire and we mix them up and that causes problems in our marriage so we talked about okay well we all know what's desire well what is love and the way he's defined love is the way he's defined it for the whole book which is living and working toward another person's good so that is what love is that's biblical love so it's not being a doormat it's not having you know your spouse walk all over you if they're committing a crime if they're addicted to something and you saying okay I love you I'll give in to you that's not love obviously love is what is the best thing for this person what is the best thing for their salvation what is the best thing for their eternity so that's kind of our measuring stick and how we are to treat our wife or our husband and he had a really nice quote the biblical love is a shared experience of God living in us and God's love being made complete in us I may not desire a wife who doesn't respect me but I can still act but Neven benevolently I can reveal or I can sorry travel in the love that God pours out on me and because of that abundance I can pour it out onto others even this spouse that's disrespectful so we can love our spouses only because we have received God's love and we are returning God's love to in the form of loving our spouse so what I like so much about this is it kind of put into words something that I've never understood and I'm glad there's someone else out there who doesn't understand it as well which is the whole concept of falling in love his whole point is we use this expression you know we all say that people will come to him for counseling and I love her but I'm not in love with her anymore or you know we fell in love but you know we're no more in love and he's and he said basically that in love is is is a childish immature desire okay it's just a selfish wanting and he's saying a Mary Ann set like a five-year-old would say I love this pizza but that's not real love in the biblical sense that's not the agape love that we read about that that that we're called to have for one another and God has for us that's a selfish that's a desire that's I want this right now and when we look at it and and we say you know I'm no more in love with my wife okay what we're really saying is ain't no more desire her but though if you if you if you force yourself if you force yourself to kind of change your language and say not you know do I still love my wife but if you force yourself to say do I still desire her um you may realize that it's it shows the selfishness that's right there so here's what here's what he kind of poses out to the couples stop saying I can't love him my spouse because you know she's selfish or she's arrogant or he's critical or he's irresponsible stop saying I can't love them okay the truth is you what you're really saying is I can't desire someone like that but as Maryann said if the true meaning of love is to seek their own good can you love a spouse who is selfish can you love someone who's arrogant can you love someone who is irresponsible absolutely and that's actually the whole point of what marriage is all about is to love our spouses even when they're not really worthy of that love because that's what it means to be a god-like person a christ-like person he quotes from first John chapter 4 verse 12 no one has seen God at any time but if we love one another god abides in US and his love has been perfected in us so there it is that's kind of like the purpose of marriage in a nutshell is to love one another not to desire one another okay and the desire kind of comes and goes but the love is what we are called to do okay yeah absolutely marriage is 100% about self-sacrifice but is it appropriate to point out your own sacrifices it's definitely and not if they don't recognize it it what what I would say like there's in first Corinthians 13 it talks about like the different characteristics of love and I remember which one it is but there's one of them that I always think of it's like love does not keep score okay love does not like remember its own thing so no it's not good to constantly be pointing out what things that we do that are good now in some circumstances yeah like your spouse is unaware of certain things nothing wrong with you know like you know making those things evident but that is that's different to me it's all about the spirit okay is my spirit to get credit for myself is my spirit just to you know kind of let my wife know what I'm doing or let her she tell me what she's doing okay so love versus desire not the same thing okay love is what we're called to do desire comes and desire goes okay what love is what we're called to do for the rest of our of our married life together okay which is forever you're welcome thank you now with that said this is a super important idea of desire versus love as we get to chapter 20 because chapter 20 is the adult only chapter of the book if you know what I'm talking about when it comes to marriage because it talks about the sexual aspect of marriage and it talks about desire but here's the thing here's the thing ladies and gentlemen especially ladies listen up carefully to this anytime you read a book about marriage especially this whole book has been about like giving and giving and giving and giving and then you say there's gonna be this chapter on sex so you automatically think like all the other marriage books out there it's gonna tell the wife wife you got to give to your husband and wife like that's what they all say but Gary Thomas once again kudos to mr. Thomas right here he is fantastic because what he does is he flips the table flip the script and he's talked mainly to the guys and he says that if the goal of marriage is giving not receiving is loving okay and sacrificing for the other usually when it comes to sex we made else we start to think selfishly about our own needs and and like we do have needs and wives I'm not taking away from your husband's need your husband has his needs but men he speaks mainly to us in this chapter and he says that sex is just about as just as much about our wife's emotional needs as it is about our physical needs okay and this is how God made it beautifully like man woman to complement one another and what he means is this he says your wife grew up and lives in a society that constantly belittled her and criticizes her and gets her to doubt her own desirability and attractiveness in your eyes okay that's the society we live in okay the magazines the TV commercials everything like that so your wife grew up and his living day to day constantly feeling feeling like she is lacking and she's not good enough okay from whatever aspect that's just kind of the truth of life so sex is just as much about us getting our needs met as it is about us building up our wives and they're hurting Souls and and for them it's healing when they feel desirable to their husbands so we men we may say you know what I'm not in the mood for tonight or I'm tired or whatever it may be or or we just kind of focus on getting our needs met and quickly and things like that but what we're doing is we're killing our wives soul because if our wives don't feel like they're desirable to us if our wives don't feel like they're attractive in our sight and that we desire them we're killing them on the inside okay and one of the things that he says is like like our sexual desire okay and this one ladies can learn from this too is that sometimes you look at your spouses you look at your husband's sexual desire or a man looks at his own sexual desire and says like it's a bad thing we think it's like it's a bad thing because it leads to sin and leads to you know whatever excuse me but the truth is is that sexual desire if it wasn't there then like I don't know was gonna get offended by this or anything but if that sexual desire isn't there then your husband wouldn't be as eager to pursue you and he would be as eager to meet your emotional needs because one things the book talks about is about the whole oxytocin the nerve chemical oxytocin which maybe maybe you've heard about it's the the chemical inside of us that makes us feel like warmth and affection it's what bonds uh it's the the chemical that's released in a woman's body when she's like nursing a baby that's why them feeling of bonding that okay the oxytocin level in a man versus a woman okay by nature is just like men just have less of it so we're just less warm and cuddly and fuzzy okay then women by Nature if a man goes up by like 200% and a woman goes down 200% there's still be a huge gap okay between the two when does a man feel the most oxytocin feel the most clothes feel the most sense of affection okay and oneness with his wife is right after sex okay after a man and a woman have had sex together that's when the man feels it so a woman wants to feel close emotionally a man lost the physical well God made it so that for the woman to get what she wants the man has to get what he wants from the man enjoyed he wants the woman has to get what she wants but the whole point is all pointless chapter is that we are approaching even sex okay men we are approaching it even sex not in terms of what we need what we want or what we desire now she has I did this for her she has to do this for me we're approach it that way we approach it in we want our wives to feel like they are desirable in our eyes and they are beautiful because the world is telling them the exact opposite right Mary Ann she made me do like 90% of these jobs you say something at the end there was one really nice story in there about this Lee it was kind of sad actually but it was about this lady that um she just wasn't having it she wasn't really into sex very much and she told her husband and she told their marriage counselor the reason is her husband's just so critical all the time he's critical of how she raises the kids how she cooks how she does her own stuff her own jobs so she didn't want to give him one more thing to be critical about especially like such a sensitive area so his whole point was that if we want to have a good sex life then we need to have invest in our marriage and the other skills of our marriage so we need to be humble we need to be a patient and compassionate all those things that we've been talking about with this book that's gonna affect the marriage bed yeah and and his his point there is that the skill set needed to be successful in life is the same skill set needed to be like to have a good sex life as well is that you have to be empathetic you have to listen you have to be gentle you're doing patient okay you have to be vulnerable okay these are all things that that will lead to success in in one's sex life and satisfaction there as well as the rest of marriage so again the whole point of the book is that marriage is all about making this holy making this christ-like not just making us happy and that gets us to the last chapter okay which is chapter 21 which is titled living is giving and this is just basically a summary of the whole book where he talks about again he summarized it and saying marriage like Christianity and we said this in the very first week and all of Christianity we look at it as I go to work okay I'm there with my coworkers I'm not there to make myself happy but I'm there to as Christ to not to be served but to serve all right and to give my life for the sake of others and when we're and work we think that way and when we're in the street when we're with the homeless people we think that way when we are serving and churches we always think that way but somehow a marriage we get rid of that way of thinking we think it's all about me his whole point is is that to be a married person is the same as to be a Christian in the rest of all your life which is to give your life for the sake of the other you can't be godly without being a giver because the number one characteristic of God okay the famous verse that we all know that God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son so we have to be givers as well and he gives a nice finishes up the book by like some very practical small little ways that you can give to your wife or to your husband and and he opens it up with a verse from proverbs chapter 3 proverbs chapter 3 where he says basically talking about not just things that we do but things we don't do he says do not withhold proverbs 3:27 do not withhold good from those to whom it is due when it is in your power to act okay do not withhold good from those to whom it is due when it is in your power to act so basically what he says is most people would say you know I'm a good husband why cuz I don't cheat on my wife I don't hit my wife I don't steal but from the our bank account I I don't do any of these bad things but that doesn't make you a good husband all right that that does make you anything what makes you a good husband is when you don't or when you avoid things like laziness things like selfishness okay things like resentfulness okay when you when you it's in your power to do something to make your wife happy or wives to husbands and you do those things that's what makes you a good spouse okay so it's kind of explained that he kind of he quoted from he reference to books Gary Chapman's book the five love languages which I'm sure many of you have heard of about how your wife or your husband their love language and meeting with their love language but then he also referenced a book by Shaun T Felton okay well you may not have heard of her book she wrote a book which was titled the surprising secrets of highly happy marriages the surprising secrets of highly happy marriages by Shaun T Felton in it like she did her research and through her research she found that most men obviously there's exceptions most men agreed about these five things that make them feel loved in marriage and same with the women agreed on these five things that make them feel loved in marriage okay so I'll read you the list okay there's five from the man and fire for the women what you read the one two the men and I'll read the ones of the work this is what makes a woman feel loved hold her hand leave her a message could be boys text email that you're thinking about her put your arm around her touch her in the small of her back when you're walking put your hand on her in public places tell her she's beautiful and when you're grumpy or depressed get over it or talk about it but don't withdraw okay so just so those are those are five Marian didn't say them one at a time but Milan's hold her hand number to give her a message that you're thinking about her text voicemail whatever it is so hold her hand send her a message that you're thinking about her number three put your arm around her or touch her while you're walking okay obviously in an appropriate way but just to show that you number four tell her you're beautiful and number five when you're grumpy or depressed talk about it but don't withdraw okay and just to prove that these work when I read this earlier today today I did all the last one I didn't because I wasn't grumpy or depressed but I didn't before them in a one-minute period okay and I got major bonus didn't come here does it give me your hand so held her hands put my arm around beautiful of course yeah I am smart she figured out she's on me reading like this in the old day so those are the five for the women five for the men here all right ladies listen up these are the five things that your husband okay will make him feel loved and these are the five things that if it's in your power to do them and you don't do them then you are withholding love for man number one noticing his effort and sincerely thanking him for it all right we men we like when someone tells us I noticed you took out the trash thank you very much taking out the trash okay number two verbally saying you did a great job at whatever all right again like noticing what we did in telling us they did a great job number three praising him in front of others number four demonstrating that you desire him sexually and that he pleases you sexually right number five making sure he knows that he makes you happy if I had to put my own summary on this and you can tell me if you disagree on the women's ones the way yeah okay so you hit the nail on the head there sandy shanshu men okay we are like doers and we want we are willing to do and do and do and do but we need to know that our doing is bringing forth like fruit that y'all notice it and y'all appreciate it and we kind of have egos and we kind of have sensitive egos so we need to know that we're doing a good job all right and we like to know that we're doing the job in every area and we are making we're doing the job making happy women okay for you gentlemen out there women need to know that they are like cared for all right then they need to know like so affirmation like Sandi said is kind of the men one I would say attention is the female one that females need to know that like we're thinking about them and that we care about them and that they're important to us now sometimes a little touch an arm around okay little things like this they make they show our lives that we care about them and we are paying attention to them okay yeah yeah women should be man's chew is that that's a great way of looking at it because all listen if you're married your husband okay he needs a cheerleader on his side and he needs to know I remember when we used to play basketball back in college okay every guy does this no more little minute we sit down we played and go back and forth and all of a sudden a girl walks in and all of a sudden everyone okay we step up our game who's trying to show off we all because we all have that feeling of like insecure or inadequate and we want to look good in front of somebody else and it's you can argue and say that's bad or that's you know weak but that's how God made us okay each one of us okay we're different last verse okay that I'll finish you off with right here these five things what you notice about them is they are small not big holding a hand is small send text message said I love you is small we especially men tend to tend to think in terms of big things I would buy my wife a dozen roses I'm gonna take her out for this fantastic weekend that's not what communicates love and in fact that actually in my opinion actually could have a negative impact okay because you can do something really great and then your mind okay all right I'm off for the next month because I did something so great this weekend that's not how they think all right so these little things and the verse to keep in mind Galatians 6:9 let us not grow weary while doing good for in due season we shall reap if we do not lose heart let us not grow weary while doing good let us commit to doing little things showing our wives and our husbands that we love them and that we are committed to this marriage and then we are in it to give not to receive and let us not grow weary while doing good for in due season we shall reap if we do not lose heart okay that's our marriage look okay here's what we're gonna do Marian came with a good idea we're gonna close our eyes and say a prayer for you right now okay we're praying for all the marriages out there then as soon as we finish usually we take questions but what I'm gonna do is this time I'm gonna actually ask you a question and I want you to tell me tell us what one thing you're gonna take away from this study well what one thing did you learn then hopefully make you a better husband or wife whether currently or in the future or anything like that okay so let's close our eyes we'll say a prayer for you name the Father Son the Holy Spirit and God amen Lord we thank you for the gift of marriage thank you that you have given us a chance to become more like you through the sacrament I pray for our marriage and for all the marriages that are out there watching this scope that you helped them to achieve intimacy and oneness the gel is to put aside our own egos and our own desires and what we call our own needs and to really be christ-like and serve the needs of our spouses let our families be stronger let our marriages be stronger but those who are single and preparing for marriage let them to be prepared to be great husbands and great wives that please you and that have great marriages we pray this in the name of your son Jesus Christ the prayers of all your sins amen okay we've been answering y'all's questions for the past however many weeks now it's time for us to ask you tell me one thing that you learned put your name on there so I can see who it is tell me one thing that you learned amen thank you that's mr. Schluter my friend from across the pond tell us one thing that you learned or one take or one way that you can be a better husband or a better spouse tell us your name and what it is that you learned I know I don't see anything up there that I'm gonna be really discouraged and I'm gonna stop doing these scopes because no one learns nothing then what's the benefit of us doing these things is this over forever can we do another book I three more months that's great I appreciate it thank you nurse Tina be a giver we will may another book like like we don't know I know this is it for right now but we'll see what happens in the future the real meaning of love versus iron thank you very much la dy d be the right person rather than look for the right person Thank You Marianne Garrigus very good be the right person versus look for the right person okay what else you got out there importance of sacrifice and marriage thank you very much very good what else what else what else did you learn anything else you learned no one else learned anything tell us your name and what it is that you learned on the scope Rosaleen think of your spouse's godson daughters so God is your final that's the number that you that's actually one of the greatest takeaways because when you stop saying my husband or my my wife he starts saying God's daughter and God's Son it'll definitely change the way that you treat the other person okay sandy says that our greatest need is to learn to love not to be loved amen to that yes baby eighty-six guides and affirmation girls need attention very good love your spouse in the way they want to be loved very good Thank You Jessica but Jessica was long before that thank you cheerleader very good Shenouda but you're not the cheerleader okay but because but yeah very good done my part do my part okay very good any other lessons out there we got another two minutes before the kids movie runs out and they're gonna rush up here wondering what we're doing talking about without them any other lessons and if you have any questions you're welcome to ask us any questions do but if not I know done said I have a question but you never asked it in the middle I don't know if a still on but feel free to ask oh sorry missed that small things consistently rather than huge romantic things and frequently very good ever very very good it's a great lesson right there we don't need big things we need lots of small things very good okay thus ends our marriage book club if you learned nothing from what we said go out and buy this book and read it for yourself as a woman I enjoyed hearing the list for women confirmation good it's helpful good killing you sacred love so here's the thing there sandy okay as much as we would love to do all these great books is that we we basically gotta pray about it we did this mainly not for you we did this for ourselves okay we felt God wanted us to read this book and this is a way to hold ourselves accountable and we'll see Thank You Devin appreciate the encouragement right there we'll see what look like who knows but we're definitely what we're stopping for a time period kind of catch our breath right here it's been kind of hectic a couple weeks right here as we approach the new year and things like that but you never know stay following me on periscope I'll still be doing my own scopes on Wednesday afternoons follow me on my blog father Anthony calm and we'll let you know when we do something else all right thank you all very much god bless you all we're praying for your marriages have a great New Year and see you all in 2016 good night

Channel: Fr. Anthony Messeh

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Length: 27min 36sec (1656 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 10 2016