Be The Fruit

David Powlison on Marital Intimacy

by Bill Blair on 09/09/09 at 12:03 pm

Take some time to watch the video below that features David Powlison discussing marital intimacy. Powlison touches on some key issues that often escape us when we examine marriages.  Here are some of the points that I got from watching this video:

1. Love is hard — Too many people see love as merely a euphoric emotion, but love is hard because it involves self-denial and sacrifice. Think of Jesus & his death on the Cross as a true expression of love.
2. We are all in a process — Powlison links blameshifting that happens in relationships and counseling to what Jesus said about the spec and log in people’s eyes.  Very often people enter counseling with a desire to fix the other person, but each of us has growing to do.  Remember we are to be progressing to look like Christ, and I think we can all admit we have a long way to go.
3. Interpersonal Relationships are tied to our relationship to God — In the video, Powlison uses the parable of the four soils which to demonstrate how our hearts can be in different conditions in how we relate to one another just as they can be in different conditions in how we relate to God.  It makes sense because Jesus said the greatest commandment was to love God, and the second, which is like the first, was to love others as ourselves.  As Jesus tied these two concepts together he showed that the vertical and horizontal are tied together.

That was my quick takeaway.  Watch this video and learn.  The video was posted here and is the first in a series so be looking for the next two.