Redeeming Talk

This information came from my Marriage Vine daily emails. I thought it said so much, and spoke a whole lot of truth about communication in marriage. What a different way to see how we should communicate with each other.

Today's Focus: Redeeming Talk

In Focus This Week
Dan Allender and Tremper Longman share this week on the topic of Connecting Communication from their book, The Intimate Mystery. If you know anything about Dan Allender and Tremper Longman, you know this little book is packed with eye-opening truths that will certainly expand and stretch your current thinking.

Redeeming Talk
There are three strands that are to be woven into our dialogue: yours, mine and God's. The mystery of intimacy is not that it occurs between a man and a woman but that a third party is privileged to be included in the most intimate exchange of words and eventually bodies. As we talk, God is ultimately the means by which we converse and the end to which our conversation is meant to move.

Let me quickly clarify: a conversation doesn't have to be about God to be about God. It is of course not wrong to theologize together. Many of the most intimate conversations I've had with my wife have involved imagining God together. And theologizing and imagining can occur in prayer, a casual conversation or a fight.

Redeeming talk, however, acknowledges that God is an intimate player in our moment. My wife's and my involvement as speakers for Family Life has taught us to say in tough moments, "I am not your enemy." The number of times that phrase has saved us is legion. It is a time-honored and well-rehearsed sentence that transports us from the debauchery of our sin to another realm in the blink of an eye. This is different from the magic of abracadabra, for it reminds us of why we are not enemies: we have a common, undying, relentless, wild third presence in our marriage - GOD. He is my friend and he is my wife's friend; therefore whether we like it or not, he intends for us to be friends and not enemies.

Redeeming talk borrows hope from God to risk another encounter. In fact, not just one encounter but seventy times seven. This is the most outlandish component of marriage - the willingness to reenter a marred terrain with hope.

Today's Daily Focus content is taken in it's entirety from The Intimate Mystery by Dan Allender and Tremper Longman III. Published by InterVarsity Press, copyright 2005. Used by permission.