My wife and I married young. Our first consideration when looking for our first church together was, “Are there any couples here our age?” As we visited churches week after week, it was more and more obvious just how young we were! We finally found a church with one couple our age. We joined and quickly became good friends with them.
To this day, we’re thankful for those friends. At the same time, in hindsight it is clear that we and our church missed a great opportunity: everyone could have benefited from intentional fellowship among couples in different phases of life.
It is typical to gravitate toward those with whom we have the most in common. We inadvertently segregate into demographically-based sub-communities within the church. While the camaraderie that can be afforded by peers is great, a marriage fed only by peers is missing a vital nutrient: wisdom.
Here are four reasons a healthy church will see its older couples spending time with younger couples…
God designed the church to function as an extended family passing life lessons down through the generations. He doesn’t intend for us to figure out life—including marriage—in segregated mini-churches.
2 Older men are to be sober-minded, dignified, self-controlled, sound in faith, in love, and in steadfastness.
3 Older women likewise are to be reverent in behavior, not slanderers or slaves to much wine. They are to teach what is good,
4 and so train the young women to love their husbands and children,
5 to be self-controlled, pure, working at home, kind, and submissive to their own husbands, that the word of God may not be reviled.
6 Likewise, urge the younger men to be self-controlled. (Titus 2:2–6)
Do I smell a chiasm? I think I do! To simplify…
Older men
Older women
Train
Younger women
Younger men
We tend only to recognize the component of older women training younger women because that is what is explicitly stated in vv3-5. However, the structure of the verses, with the verb for training at the very center…older and younger women on either side, and older and younger men still further out in the structure…Paul indicates this kind of intergenerational training is not just for ladies.
Shouldn’t surprise us…this model is found elsewhere in the NT (1 Cor 11:1; Phil 4:9; 1 Thess 1:5-6; 2:7-12; 2 Tim 2:2; Heb 13:7). More mature believers help less mature believers to progress in the faith. If that is the broad principle, why wouldn’t it apply to older married couples and younger married couples? Certainly, such mentoring can happen just between men and just between women. However, older couples interacting in front of younger couples can serve as a living playbook for day-to-day obedience in marriage. The older helping the younger is simply God’s design for discipleship.
God intends to use our troubles to make us useful to others who are similarly troubled. What the twenty-something couple is facing right now, the forty-something couple weathered long ago. Those trials are not intended to benefit only self.
3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort,
4 who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God.
5 For as we share abundantly in Christ’s sufferings, so through Christ we share abundantly in comfort too.
6 If we are afflicted, it is for your comfort and salvation; and if we are comforted, it is for your comfort, which you experience when you patiently endure the same sufferings that we suffer. 2 Corinthians 1:3–6
We each have many kinds of troubles in the Christian life. Paul teaches through his own example that God allows these troubles and comforts us in them…so that we can later help others who suffer in the same ways.
Let’s face it: marriage is a blessing, but it can be difficult. We’re confronted with our own selfishness in ways that simply do not show up in other human relationships. There is much to learn about ourselves and the Lord in the process. What a tragedy to learn all that, grow from it, come out better on the other side…and then hide it under a bushel.
Marriage books can be helpful. They are not as helpful as two living, breathing humans sitting in front of you talking about lessons learned and how those lessons might coincide with your own circumstances.
Shelby and I learned a lot of things the hard way in our early years, and the Lord was very kind to us in all of it. Still, we would have benefited greatly had we sought or been sought by an older couple who had already learned those things. In our older years, we don’t want to be the ones just watching others bumble around in the dark. Rather, we want to help.
If you are older, what have you learned about yourselves and the Lord that would be of benefit to a younger couple? If you are younger, imagine how great it would be to have a map to help you navigate this early difficult terrain!
God uses those who have gone ahead as examples to encourage perseverance in those further behind. For many Christian couples, when the honeymoon ends and hearts start to be exposed, “til death do us part” sounds a lot longer than it did on the wedding day. Crossing the finish line together can seem like an insurmountable task.
1 Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us,
2 looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God. Hebrews 12:1–2
The great cloud of witnesses in Hebrews 12 are the saints of old catalogued in Hebrews 11. They are testifiers to the blessedness of persevering in the faith. Their lives call to us, as it were, championing our endurance in the difficulty ahead of us, encouraging us to find our strength in Christ.
Similarly, it can be tremendously encouraging for younger couples to spend time with older couples who persevered over many years of “sickness and health, joy and sorrow, prosperity and need” and found Christ to be faithful. Young couples can then see with their own eyes that not only should their marriage be a lifelong picture of Christ and the church, but by God’s grace it can be.
God intends for wisdom to be contagious. We all make choices about the human influences in our lives. Not all voices are the same…
Whoever walks with the wise becomes wise, but the companion of fools will suffer harm. Proverbs 13:20
While Christian peers are a great blessing and joy, they may not provide the context and perspective that an older couple can. Those in your phase of life are limited to the same field of vision, and therefore, are only able to give counsel based on that limited perspective. Older couples have already been around the corner and know what you’re not seeing. They have picked up the Biblical principles that are obvious in hindsight, but hazy in the onset. They no longer make the mistakes that you’re about to make. Having made those mistakes themselves, they grew in wisdom and found a better way.
Their wisdom is available to you, if you spend time with them. Surely, God gives wisdom (Jas 1:5; Pro 2:6), but the Scriptures indicate He uses means (2 Tim 3:15; Psa 119:98-100), including the influence of the wise (Col 3:16; Pro 13:20). It seems that a way to choose wisdom over harm in marriage, according to Proverbs 13:20, is to choose our company carefully.
So…
To the younger couples: Don’t wait for an older couple to notice you. Recognize the value of older saints’ wisdom and experience, and ask a couple you respect out for coffee, dessert, or dinner.
To the older couples: You don't need a counseling certification. Your history with the Lord is what qualifies you to be helpful to someone else. Recognize how God’s faithfulness has moved you from “Point A” many years ago to “Point B” today, and purpose to share that honestly with others who are just getting started. Don’t wait for an invitation; do the inviting.
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