MarrIage Blind Spots Keeping You Stuck: Dave Harvey

Dave Harvey: Christianity is not constructed in such a way that we simply go out into the wilderness and grow because it’s just us and God. We’re not meant to walk alone, we’re not meant to grow alone, so we grow in community. God gives us the church, he gives us each other, but it’s not just that we have relationships, it’s that growth happens in community. That can begin in the home.
Ann Wilson: Welcome to FamilyLife Today, where we want to help you pursue the relationships that matter most. I’m Ann Wilson.
Dave Wilson: And I’m Dave Wilson, and you can find us at familylifetoday.com. This is FamilyLife Today. We’ve got Dave Harvey with us talking about a book. Dave, how many years ago did you write When Sinners Say I Do?
Dave Harvey: I think it was released in 2007. I’m bad at math.
Ann Wilson: And you also wrote I Still Do: Growing Closer and Stronger Through Life-Defining Moments. So, we’ve just got a marriage expert on our hands.
Dave Harvey: I feel like less of an expert with the passing of every year, but it’s something I love. I’m very grateful to God for Kim. We’ve been married for 43 years, and it’s something I have the privilege of teaching on regularly and doing seminars, conferences, and events, and seeing other people helped by the stuff that’s helped Kim and me brings great joy to me.
Dave Wilson: It’s a reality check because you open both books with this concept of we bring luggage into our marriage. Even at my church, I remember one time trying to talk about this, so we did a mock little drama skit where we had a husband and wife come up like they’re getting married. It was their wedding day.
Ann Wilson: It was our son actually and his wife.
Dave Wilson: And beside them, we had all these bags. We just wanted the audience to go, "You don’t see these bags, but we’re all bringing stuff. We bring it." And then you get married and you’re like, "What is that?" And they’re like, "This is who I am. What do you mean?" So you say that as well in the very beginning, but you say one of the bags, if not all the bags, are sin. So explain that.
Dave Harvey: For me, that was a huge epiphany within marriage. I remember one of the first conflicts that we had. I don’t remember all the specifics. What she would say is I just remember making these stunningly remarkable insights into Kim’s behavior. My logic was utterly impeccable because Kim was saying some stuff that was inaccurate, and my sense of justice was being violated. In an attempt to skillfully identify the essence of the problem—and this is still so embarrassing—I said this very matter-of-factly, not in a threatening way: "Dear, please stop talking. You’re making me angry, and you’re making me sin." The thing is, it made perfect sense to me because that’s where I was. Prior to marriage, I was growing daily more Christlike. It was amazing. I was the amazing specimen on earth, and nobody else noticed, but I was really amazed by myself because to me, sin was becoming a thing of the past. It was certainly an issue before I was converted, part of my story before I was converted, but now I was a Christian and behold, the old has passed away, the new has come, and sin was this old-school thing. Then I got married to somebody who had sin issues clearly, and my hopes for the sinless life were being flushed down the toilet. The sin nature in us makes us think it’s them. They’re the reason I’m acting the way I am. It wasn’t there before, and they’re bringing the sin luggage in but not me. And if I have it, it's a little tiny tote bag and they’ve got a U-Haul truck.
Ann Wilson: Wait, how did Kim respond to your response to what you said to her?
Dave Harvey: I think the whole thing got elevated. I took it to a whole new level, which I think I did that regularly. Paul makes this statement in 1 Timothy. He says, "The saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save this category of beings: sinners," and then he personalizes it and he says, "of whom I am the foremost." The thing about that statement is that’s Paul on the back end of his life. This is a statement of a mature, seasoned, godly, powerful witness for Jesus Christ, and yet somehow his godliness led him into a deeper grasp of his sinfulness, and his sinfulness sparked a fresh gratitude to the Savior for what he had done for him. So to say, "I am the worst of sinners," for Paul was actually a sign of maturity. It was a sign of health and growth.
Dave Wilson: I believe that the deeper we are in Christ, the more mature we are in Christ, the more wicked we see we are.
Dave Harvey: Yes. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen Jack Miller’s diagram. There’s a sideways vector of V. Imagine two lines, one going up and one going down. He says right here is conversion, and if you look at the cross right here, the cross connects this line going up and the line going down. The line going up is the holiness of God, the goodness of God, the majesty of God, the greatness of God. The line going down is our awareness of our sin. We’re converted, we come to Jesus, we really don’t understand fully what the gospel is all about, and so the cross is really small there, but it’s enough to connect those two and we get converted. But what happens is we begin to grow. We go to church, we listen to scripture, we get teaching, we’re around other believers, and God in our mind grows bigger and bigger and more majestic and more holy, while at the same time we’re growing. We’re married, we’re seeing our sins in a greater way, we’re having kids, we’re at work, we have a conscience that’s engaged, we have the Holy Spirit at work, and the awareness of our sin is growing more and more with the passing of each month. If that cross remains the same size as it did at conversion and you’re there, then you’ve got this big gap between the holiness of God and the gospel, or the sinfulness of us and the gospel. You need the cross, the gospel, to be growing in your life in every season because ultimately what that leads you to is "I’m the worst of sinners." That’s what Paul was saying, and he was able to say that because the gospel was huge to him.
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Dave Wilson: What does it take to realize, "I’m the problem here. It’s not her. It’s not him." Of course it is in a sense, but the bigger problem is look in the mirror: "I’ve got a sin issue I’ve got to deal with," because it’s so easy to go, "What is your problem?" We all do it.
Ann Wilson: I love some of the titles of your chapters in all of your books. You’re such a good writer and a creative writer. Chapter two, "Waking Up with the Worst of Sinners: The News About Who We Really Are." And it’s that point exactly.
Dave Wilson: But our sin nature says, "Yeah, I wake up with the worst of sinners; she’s laying right beside me. Thank you for naming her."
Dave Harvey: Right. One of my favorite Puritan authors, Thomas Watson, says, "Until sin be bitter, Christ will not be sweet." What the gospel does is it first begins with bad news, really ugly news. The really bad news is not, "Hey, you’re a sinner, but," it’s "You’re a sinner, and actually the sin is to the degree that you cannot solve the problem." There’s nothing that you can do to save yourself. You are wholly inadequate. You could be Mother Teresa and live the rest of your life for the poor, and that’s not going to change your condition. You need something from outside of yourself. You need a savior. But the gospel starts with that bad news. We think we get converted under that message, and then we think we leave that whole category of sinner and we move on into brighter pastures.
Dave Wilson: I'm a saint now!
Dave Harvey: That’s right. That was me. Sin was part of my past, part of my story, part of my testimony, but getting married, you realize, "Oh my goodness, I wasn’t even aware of how much I’ve sinned." You’re having conflict, you’re newly married, or even deeper in marriage, and you can’t figure out half the time what’s going on. It’s like, "Am I possessed? Is she possessed? What is happening here?" Because if marriage is so great, why does it seem to reveal the worst in me? To which we would say, yeah, now we’re beginning to understand one of the primary purposes of marriage. Marriage is about ministry to each other. For ministry to take place, God will be faithful to show each other those weak parts and those sinful parts so that you can put the gospel into place and you can grow together. You can begin to apply the gospel and enjoy the gospel in the context of your home.
Ann Wilson: I think that’s so rich. It’s so beautiful. Where do you think you had a blind spot?
Dave Harvey: Mine may have been, "I'm sure I'm a sinner, I'm just not as bad as you are." If you’re listening, how many marriage conflicts can be traced back to one spouse believing that they are morally superior to the other and that they actually exist on a higher moral ground? In actuality, they don’t understand the gospel, they don’t understand how the gospel levels the playing field, and they don’t understand how destructive self-righteousness is to the marriage, because their belief is, "My spouse is the foremost of sinners."
Ann Wilson: I talk to a lot of other wives, and we can think our husband isn’t as good relationally or their relational IQ for us isn’t as good as mine. What we can think is he’s out there doing all this stuff, but I know how I could make us great, and I’m looking at you like, "Hello, are you seeing what needs to be done in our home, in our family, in our marriage, as a dad? Are you seeing any of that? Because I’m noticing all of the relational aspects in our home and how he’s not meeting them." So there’s my pride. We’re sinking because you’re out here giving your best energy away, but in here, we’re dying for some attention. Then that pride says, "It’s your fault." As soon as we start pointing fingers, we’re in trouble.
Dave Harvey: The beauty of marriage is that as you begin to mature and the gospel moves to the center and you can own your own need for the gospel, then you can be mirrors for one another where you can talk to your spouse about what you see in them. Most often we would hope that’s the good things you see in them where God’s grace is at work in powerful ways and you’re able to celebrate that. But also you can be honest with each other, and because of the security that’s drawn from the gospel, that doesn’t bring the marriage or the relationship under threat. You’re actually helping each other grow.
Dave Wilson: I love this analogy of Nathan coming to David and addressing his sin. Talk about that in marriage because as soon as I read that, I’m preaching that. You want, you need a Nathan in your life. You don’t want them because they’re a prophet and they’re going to come and point out something that you need to hear, but that’s what your spouse can be.
Dave Harvey: In marriage, and then if God gives you children, the children become part of this as well, you’re trying to build a culture within the family. An important feature of that culture needs to be: we are honest with each other, we are gracious with each other, and we’re helping each other grow. We’re going to be truth-speakers and we’re going to make a place for truth-speakers. When that culture is in play and it’s being cultivated and the gospel’s at the center of it, people within the home are more aware of the areas where you enjoy in them rather than the areas of your weakness, and they live in the reality of God’s approval because the gospel is magnified. Truth-telling becomes a part of the culture. Being able to say to each other, "Thou art the man," doesn’t break down or tear the relational fabric within the home, but it actually is servicing and satisfying and embodying the very culture that you’re trying to build. The result of that is growth. The result of that is change. That’s what happened with David; he repented as a result of that because he was smitten by it and he needed to be smitten by it. It’s important to realize that Christianity is not constructed in such a way that we simply go out into the wilderness and grow because it’s just us and God. God could have ordained the economy of our growth to happen in that manner. He did not. In the garden, he created the woman for the man. We’re not meant to walk alone, we’re not meant to grow alone, so we grow in community. God gives us the church, he gives us each other, but it’s not just that we have relationships, it’s that growth happens in community. That can begin in the home. If we have a vision for that, the home becomes a place where people that are grown up reflect back and think, "The most formative years of my life had Jesus at the center and I learned to be gracious and to celebrate good things, but I also learned to be honest. I learned to be Nathan."
Dave Wilson: At some point, thinking of David, there had to be a sense of humility to receive that from Nathan. That has to happen in a marriage too because I have to at some point realize, "I am the chief of sinners. It is not her. It is me." Now she’s got her issue too, but it’s me, so that when she comes to me or he to her, there’s enough humility to say, "I need to hear this, I don’t want to hear it, I don’t even want to believe it, but you love me and you’re telling me because you love me. This is true about me. What am I going to do with this?" Otherwise, it’s going to be isolation, I’m going to pull away, I’m going to blame you, you’re going to blame me, and that’s what most marriages do. It’s just so sad rather than, "I have issues. Please point them out. I want to be better. God’s given me a gift. You are a gift." And the gift sometimes is going to speak truth and it’s going to hurt, but I’m going to get better and you can’t get there unless you’re willing to say, "I am the chief of sinners."
Ann Wilson: I’d also point out that the way you said you have gratitude in your speaking life and good things into each other so that when a truth is spoken, it can be received. It’s not this badgering, this constant battering of your esteem because you’re not doing anything right. You’re saying both are taking place. But Nathan was a genius in his approach to David. I think sometimes if we can put some prayer into it of how to approach our spouse with a truth, because it’s not easy to receive some hard truths. For us to put some prayer into it and ask, "Lord, how should I frame this? How can I package it in a way that they’ll hear my intent isn’t to harm them but to help them?" But what if we have spouses that never give us any input? I’ve talked to a lot of women that would say, "My husband will never tell me anything, and I’m open, like tell me, tell me," and I know that that can go both ways because some people can perceive this as conflict and don't want to hurt them. What do you think you’d say to those people? Dave, you’re a little bit like that, my Dave.
Dave Wilson: I’m so nice! No, I think sometimes I’m afraid. I’m afraid of where it’s going to go and it’s not that big a deal so I’ll just live with it, but deep down it is bigger than I want to admit. It could get messy and complicated, and we want to keep peace.
Dave Harvey: I think that when it comes to sharing something with another person about an area of sin or weakness, I think that needs to start in prayer. So often we can skip over that because of our desire to just get it done. To engage God, and then I think we’re going to them as fellow sinners who ourselves have received mercy. We’re not Moses coming down from the mountain with the law, kind of glowy, and we know their sin. There’s a humbleness and a humility, absolutely, because we’ve sinned in the same way. Also, we could be wrong in what we see. 1 Corinthians 13: we know in part, we prophesy in part. The most I’ll ever get on anybody is part. The most I’ll ever get on my kids, the most I’ll ever get on my spouse. That’s why questions have to be asked and observations are brought, not conclusions, but we bring observations to them and have conversation around that. One of the ways that I know that my heart is moving towards self-righteousness or that there is resentment in what I’m saying towards Kim is that I’ll become almost graciously prosecutorial.
Dave Wilson: Graciously prosecutorial?
Dave Harvey: Like I’ll have this inner attorney who appears, who is preoccupied with times and dates. "Dear, let me just stop you right there, dear. May I remind you that on May 6th, 2021, at 7:12, I have a photo right here, you said and I quote..." It’s evident that I’m trying to win an argument, I’m not trying to serve a soul. I’m not trying to help her connect with Christ. My luggage is now fully in play. I think there needs to be a lot of mercy and a lot of reflection upon how much we’ve been forgiven, and then that helps to cultivate a personal heart and a culture within our own heart to be able to go to others and manage to help the other people with their sin.
Ann Wilson: You come in with humility, "Honey, I know I’m not perfect and I mess up all the time and I could be wrong about this." That right there just diffuses all that defensiveness. Let me add this too because we need to if any of this kind of discussion, if you are in a relationship where your spouse is being abusive physically and harming you or your kids in any way, we’re telling you first of all, you need to get help and I would say to get out and get safe because the most loving thing you can do is to get safe and get your kids safe. This is important.
Dave Harvey: Yes, because true mercy and true love does not enable abuse. It in fact sees that the highest form of love is not to submit to abuse but to expose the evil of abuse. That’s why it’s important to get other people involved and to not be alone and not buy the lie that, "Hey, I just need to be in this, I just need to weather this." We need to get other people involved and help us with the interpretive process of what it is we’re going through.
Dave Wilson: So to wrap up, if you are looking at two sinners who just said "I do," what would you say to them?
Dave Harvey: I would say congratulations. You’re in for a glorious adventure together. There will be surprises and delights that you could never have even anticipated, and there will be hardships that you never dreamed would take place. There are going to be times where you love each other in ways that you can’t describe through words, and other times where you don’t want to even be in the same room together. But God is forming you and shaping you through this marriage in a way that in heaven, though you will no longer be married, you’ll be amazed at the soul that’s formed in you and how much you love Jesus because of the marriage.
Dave Wilson: That’s right. You can get this book, familylifetoday.com, click on the link in the show notes. We’ve got When Sinners Say I Do: Discovering the Power of the Gospel for Marriage. Great stuff. Thanks.
Dave Harvey: Thank you for having me on.
Dave Wilson: Hey, we want to make sure that you know the back-to-small-group sale—did you hear that? The back-to-small-group sale ends August 31st, and that’s 25% off every FamilyLife video study and workbook. And you don’t need a code; you just go to familylife.com/shop. Any study: Art of Marriage, Vertical Marriage, Art of Parenting. We’ve got them there for you, and you can get them at a discount.
Ann Wilson: There’s not much time left; sale ends August 31st.
Dave Wilson: If you’re like me, you’ll be clicking that link right now: familylife.com/shop.
Ann Wilson: FamilyLife Today is a donor-supported production of FamilyLife, a Cru Ministry. 50 years of helping you pursue the relationships that matter most.