What God Joined Together - Family Radio

threaten, bully, or beat her, but this only makes his wife even more
unresponsive to his advances, and as a result, deepens his frustrations and
anger.
Without realizing it, the wife is laying the groundwork for another day of
estrangement, quarreling, silent treatment, or cruelty which the husband uses
to try to get even for the tremendous battle he lost in the bedroom. The husband
and wife are not rationally thinking about what is happening. They are reacting
with the intuition of the sinful tendencies that dwell within them.
The husband might strike back to even the score. What can he take from his
wife that she loves the most Aha! She is a Christian and always makes a big
point of going to fellowship, or listening to Family Radio, or reading the
children Bible stories. He knows how he can really hurt her. He will forbid her
to do these things.
All her Christian friends can see is an unregenerate tyrant of a husband who
is in rebellion against God. They, of course, do not have the slightest idea of
what is going on in the marriage bed.
Meanwhile, the wife goes about appearing to be a martyr and receiving the
sympathies of her friends. She may not realize that her conduct in the marriage
bed (as legitimate and logical as it may seem to her), is reprehensible to God.
She is violating God’s rule that she is to be in quiet submission to her husband.
She is violating God’s rule that she is to continuously forgive her husband. She
is violating God’s rule that her body belongs to her husband.
The weapon of unresponsiveness in the marriage bed should never be used.
It will drive the husband into the arms of another woman quicker than anything
else. It will serve to destroy the marriage more quickly than anything else
because it is tampering with God’s design that makes the two one flesh.
On the other hand, consider the wife who loves the Lord and lives by God’s
rules. Her unsaved husband may begin to wonder, “How can I be married to
such a wonderful, forgiving, thoughtful woman” He may become
increasingly embarrassed by his own thoughtlessness and cruelty. So, when
she asks if she can go to fellowship on Sunday, he has no reason to deny her.
He does not need to get even with her.
One could ask at this point, “Are you saying that all the problems of
marriage begin in the marriage bed” The answer is that they may not
necessarily begin there, but it is there that they can be greatly advanced, and
it is there they can to a very high degree be solved.
The idea of becoming one flesh with one’s spouse embraces much more
than the marriage bed, but it is there that it is the most obvious that the two
become one flesh. That is why it is one of the most sensitive areas in the
marriage relationship.
When the lady married her husband, she was quite sure she loved him. After
the honeymoon was over, and after living with him in the confines and intimacy
of the marriage relationship, she found that he had many qualities she did not
like. He made unwise decisions. He was self-centered. He squandered the
money that should have been used to buy groceries. He was lazy. He could not
hold a job. She found that all her dreams about a pretty white house with a white
40 What God hath joined together...