Security and Significance: Part 3
by Dr. Larry Crabb   

Editor's Note:  The articles all week  presume you understand the author's underlying principle that we are created with the deepest needs for security and significance.   

Because I have asked my spouse to meet my needs, she now has the power to withhold what I need- and thereby to destroy me.  Fear has entered our relationship.  We have become afraid of each other.  We play cat-and-mouse, wait-and-see games.  Neither of us can find what we desperately need in our relationship because of fear.

Yet God intends that I become one with my wife in a relationship that deeply touches her need for security.  And she is to become one with me in a way that satisfies my longing for significance and worth.   

God planned for our marriage to develop into an intimate relationship in which we experience the truth that our deepest personal needs for significance and security are genuinely met in Christ.   

When God presented Eve to her husband, the Bible tells us, they became one flesh, that is, they fully experienced a relationship of Oneness.  Developing this kind of relationship is the goal of marriage.

This article is taken directly from The Marriage Builder: A Blueprint for Couples and Counselors by Dr. Larry Crabb.  Published by Zondervan Publishing. 

Sharing Feelings Leads to Intimacy
by Dr. Gary Chapman  

Feelings are our spontaneous emotional responses to what we encounter through the five senses.  I hear that the neighbor's dog has died and I feel sad (or elated!).  I see the fire truck racing down the road and I feel troubled.  You touch my hand and I feel loved.  I see your smile and I feel encouraged.

All day long, every day, life is filled with feelings, but no one sees them.  It is the sharing of feelings that builds emotional intimacy. Allowing another person into your inner world of feelings by being willing to say "I'm feeling a lot of fear right now," or "I am really happy tonight," or "I felt embarrassed last night about..."  These are statements of self-revelation.   

In making such statements, we are choosing to be intimate with our spouses, to reveal to them something of what is going on in our emotional world. 

Learning to talk about emotions can be one of the most rewarding experiences of life.  It leads to a deep sense of intimacy in marriage.

Article is based on the book,  The Family You've Always Wanted by Dr. Gary Chapman. Published by Moody Publishers.  For a complete listing of Dr. Chapman's resources, click here. 

But thanks be to God that, though you used to be slaves to sin, you have come to obey from your heart the pattern of teaching that has now claimed your allegiance.

Romans 6:17