Moving From Expectations to Unconditional Love | Cornerstone Church | Pastor Linn Winters

So we laugh, right, because their expectations of each other were a little bit outrageous, but we we also laugh a little bit because we know that we kinda did the same thing when we came to marriage. We said, hey, there's certain things I expect my spouse to do.

If they're gonna be a really good husband, then here's kind of like my list of expectations for them, and husbands, we did the same thing. We went, hey, if she's gonna be the kind of wife that I've always wanted, then I've I've got this list of expectations

that these are the things that a great wife does for a husband, and some of them we said out loud to each other ahead of time, some of them we didn't, we just thought you should know automatically that those are what a good wife, a good husband does. What if? What if it's our expectations that actually

diminish our marriages? What if it's the things that we put on each other and say, hey, if you're going to be the wife, I expect. If you're going to be the husband, I expect it. And then we begin to measure each other based on whether or not they perform

the way we expected them to perform. What if what if that's the thing that actually makes our marriages less? And what if God's original design was something completely different and we're missing out?

And so today we're just going to go back to the garden. We're going to go back to that first marriage and we're gonna take a look at how it started and what God intended for that relationship between a man and a woman to be like, and then we're gonna have to make a decision about what to do with our expectations

in marriage. Alright. So go ahead and grab your bibles real quick and go with me to Genesis chapter two.

So first book of the bible, Genesis chapter two is actually an account during the time of creation. I happen to be a guy who believes in the seven days of creation. Well, that's another series. We'll talk about that.

But it's interesting that as the bible chronicles God creating this world on the end of every single day, so whether God created the light in the sky or whether he created the oceans or whether he created the animals, at the end of every single one of the days of creation, it ends with this phrase, and it was good until

you get to the sixth day. On the sixth day, God creates Adam and then it ends with this, it is not good for man to be alone. And then, God puts Adam through a very interesting exercise. He says to Adam, Adam, I want you to name all the animals. And so, God causes the animals to come before Adam, male and female,

and it's his job to name them. And so, he says, okay, you're you're a bull and you're a cow. You're a ram, you're an you're a rooster and you're a hen. And we don't know, but we do know that because Adam is a man, he was probably slow to catch on till he eventually goes, hey, there's something out of balance here.

I'm convinced that the reason that God did that is he wanted Adam to come face to face with his aloneness. We've all heard about the parent who gives their kid everything and then they appreciate nothing. And I think in this moment, God is trying to show to Adam in just an incredibly powerful well, Adam, there is something

missing in you so that when he finally gives Adam Eve, you ready? He will cherish her. He will see her as God's greatest gift to him. So grab your bibles, just go to that moment that happens in scripture. It's Genesis chapter two. We'll begin in verse 20 and here's what it says,

so the man, talking about Adam, gave names to all the livestock, the birds of the sky and the wild animals, But for Adam, no suitable helper was found, so the Lord caused the man to fall into a deep sleep, and while he was sleeping, he took one of the man's ribs and then he closed up the place with flesh,

and then the lord god made a woman from the rib he had taken from the man, and he brought her to the man. And the man, that is said, this is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh, she shall be called woman for she was taken from man.

That is why a man leaves his father and his mother and is united to their his wife and they do not live in the basement. That's another sermon. And they become one flesh. And Adam and his wife, ready best verse in the bible, Adam and his wife were both naked and they felt no shame.

Okay. Maybe not best verse, but it's up there. Right? It's top 10 for sure. I've I've got this dear friend who's in his mid seventies and he came to me a little while back and he said, hey, Lynn, I just want you to know that my wife and I have decided not to get a divorce. And I went, well, you've been married fifty years.

Why did it take you this long to finally decide you're never gonna get a divorce? And he says, well, we've seen each other naked and no one else would want us.

Get what's happening in the moment. God makes for Adam, Eve and Eve knows beyond a shadow of a doubt, she is God's gift to Adam. I believe Adam felt the same way about her, that he was God's gift to Eve and the absolute desire of Adam's heart was every day to wake up and thrill the heart of his wife. The absolute desire of Eve

was every single day to make Adam just absolutely thrilled that he was married to her and they live, we ready for this? In an absolutely selfless love. This isn't, hey, you know, I need to get from you what I need to get. This was instead, I want you to know how deeply God loves you by how I treat you as my spouse.

Think about that, think about if you and I could have that kind of a marriage where, hey, women, every single day, the top priority for your husband was not advancing his career, it wasn't, you know, engaging in his, the top priority of his heart was to make you thrilled to be married to him. Men,

what if what if every day your wife woke up and said, hey, my desire, the thing that I most want to accomplish this day is that my husband would be absolutely thrilled to be married to me, and he would know how deeply God loves him because of how I have loved him. Wouldn't that just be an unbelievable, remarkable

marriage to be? And this is what God made in the garden. This is what God always intended the relationship between a husband and a wife to be, absolutely selfless love and commitment to bringing joy to one another. And then, and then comes the fall, and the fall absolutely hemorrhages what God intended marriage to be.

So here's what happens. Satan comes to Adam and Eve and he says, hey, you know why God has said to you that you can eat of any tree in the garden except that one, the the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Here's the deal, it's because God knows that that tree, that's the one tree you really need.

That's the one tree that will make your life complete and God is actually withholding from you the thing that you most need. And just like us, when when we're told, hey, that's the thing you shouldn't do, that that's the sin you shouldn't chase, the minute the minute we then that becomes the thing we most want to do.

And so, Adam and Eve both reached out, they ate the fruit. We don't know what that fruit was, but we know that that moment of disobedience changed everything within their relationship. They never they never again would be able to have that selfless love for each other.

See, God had created them, you ready, to be completers. There was something that Eve brought to that relationship that completed Adam and was missing without her. There was something that Adam brought to that relationship with Eve that completed her and it was absent without him. But now, they're gonna become competitors.

Here we go. It's Genesis chapter three, it's verse 16, and God is beginning to tell Adam and Eve, hey, because you just your relationship not only with me has changed in this moment, but your relationship with each other has changed in this moment. It's Genesis chapter three starting in verse 16, he said to the woman,

I will make your pains in childbearing very severe. Your painful labor, you will give birth to your children. Ladies, when you get to heaven, you needs to have a conversation with Eve because apparently, before this, you would have given birth and then an hour later done Pilates. Eve ruined it for you.

But then God goes on and he says, hey, here's what's gonna happen in your relationship with one another. Eve, your desire will be for your husband and he will rule over you.

So often, don't think we grab what God is saying in this verse, so let me unpack it for you. When he says to Eve, hey, Eve, your desire is gonna be for your husband, this is not sexual desire. The reality is that before the fall, she had wonderful

physical desire for Adam. She was pretty convinced that he was the best looking guy she'd ever seen. You'll get that later. Alright. It's not sexual desire. He's saying to Eve, Eve, here's what's happened in this moment. You will live now with fear. You'll live with a fear that Adam doesn't know how to love you properly,

and so your desire is gonna be to steer him, to make sure he does the things that you need him to do for you, and you will try to control the relationship so that your heart can be filled.

He then says to Adam, Adam, you're gonna respond by trying to rule over her and we're not talking about being the head of a home. Adam was already head of his home in the garden. God chose that word rule very specifically. Here, look look. Men, as you lead your home, you're to lead it as a leader.

And here's what leaders do. Leaders lead to the benefit of the people they are leading, which means men, as you lead your home, every decision you make should be to the benefit of your wife and your children, even if it means sacrifice

for you, even if it means you take your plans or you take the thing you wanted and you set it to the side in order to benefit your wife and your children because leaders lead to the benefit of those they're leading. But rulers, rulers believe that people are there to benefit them.

And he said, Adam, in this moment, you're gonna feel your life, your wife competing for you for controlling this relationship and you're gonna swear up and you're gonna try to rule over her in this moment. You realize what's happening. Two people who were created to be completers have now become competitors

for control of the relationship and what you need to know is is that every son and every daughter of Adam has this same struggle in their heart. It's why we wrestle in marriage with one another when instead we should be thrilling one another. So what does it look like to be in a competitive marriage? A wrestling marriage.

So here's what happens. We come we come to marriage with expectations, things that I expect my wife to do, things that I expect my husband to do, and those expectations begin to rule in the relationship. So

she has an idea of what kind of car the family should own. Of course, it's a pink Barbie Bronco. That's that's the car she we should have. He has his idea

of what kind of car would be a good family car.

She, she wants to travel the world. He hates traveling. He hates being somewhere, he doesn't know where the drugstore is or where the best restaurant is, if he had his way, he'd be a homebody.

He, he would like to pay cash for everything. She says, I've still got charge cards.

He believes if you're not ten minutes early, you're late. She doesn't even own a watch.

She's thinking one child.

He's thinking basketball team.

She's certain that he wants her to be comfortable when she comes to bed. He doesn't.

Lisa and I, we we came to our relationship with expectations. Probably one of my biggest curses is that Lisa's dad was this incredibly kind man. For the entirety of his marriage to Lisa's mother, every single week he would go and fill her tank with gas. Lisa then expected that's what husbands do,

they fill their wives tanks with gas. She soon found out I did not meet that expectation. Through most of our marriage, she would have more of the family car, know, they could carry people around. I tended to have a little bit more of a sports car and

she would come to me every once in a while and say, hey, Lynn, I'm I'm gonna go to lunch with so and so. It'd be really fun if we could take your car and I would go, oh, sure. And then I would go out and get in her car only to find that it was literally running on fumes. The empty needle was bent on the car.

She'd come home, I'd say, Lisa, I had to go to the gas station with prayer And she would say, well, if you had filled it when you should have. We had we had a college girl staying with us for two years and one day she was standing in the lobby at the church and she was telling people that Lisa had an electric car.

And Lisa walked up to her and said, why are you telling people that you that I have an electric car? And she said, because I've never seen you put gas in your car.

I came to the marriage with expectations. I had waited, for Lisa and therefore I thought in my mind, hey, I'm way behind and we need to spend our entire marriage catching me up, which is what we've done for forty years. So we all come with expectation. It's what we do with our expectation

that then causes damage to our relation because here's what happens.

We bring that expectation into our relationship.

When she looks at her husband, she looks at him through her expectation. If you perform the way I expect you, if you do the things that I've decided a husband ought to do, then I'm happy, I'm more than happy to be the wife you want.

He looks at her through his expectations and he says, hey, as long as you meet my standards, as long as you perform the way I've decided you should perform, I'm more than happy to be the husband you want. You realize this is a conditional relationship. It's a wrestling relationship

because you have to do and the truth is I'm setting the terms for you, And then here's what happens, one of them doesn't meet the expectation. It may be because they just didn't think about it or forgot, it could be they looked at the expectation and said, that's dumb.

That's not even a reasonable expectation and so no, I'm not interested in meeting that expectation. But then, the other person says, well, I can't just let that go unnoticed. If you're not gonna meet my expectation,

then I need to not meet one of your expectations. You need to feel what it's like to be on the other side of you and then we go, well, wait a minute, you picked my favorite expectation, that's not fair. If you're gonna do that, then I'm gonna take another expectation away

and we get in this downward spiral, hey, you didn't, so I'm not going to. Well, if that's how you are, then watch and see what I don't do. Oh yeah, well, let me make it worse and we get in this downward spiral relationally. Ready? Fighting for control and this is this is no longer selfless love. This is selfish love.

If I don't get what I want to get, then you're not going to get what you want to get.

Grab your bibles.

Go with me to the book of Philippians and if you're not familiar, if you go to the back of your bible, then work to the left, you're going to find this book of Philippians.

Philippians chapter two

starting in verse three. Here's what it says, do nothing out of selfish ambition. Now look, there should not be anything that you do in your relation that comes from a place of selfishness. Right? God created in the garden relationship was a relationship of selflessness.

Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit rather, you ready, in humility, value others above yourselves, not looking to your own interests, but each of you to the interests of others. Here's the thing you need to know. This is not a marriage verse. This is an everybody verse.

In other words, God is saying, hey, look, this is how you should treat your relatives. This is how you should treat your neighbors and your coworkers. This is how you should treat the cashier at the store when you're checking out, that you do nothing out of selfishness

but that in humility, you actually regard others as more important than yourself. Singles, we said, hey, this is a marriage series, but there's tons for you to learn in here and here's the deal. If you can learn to be unselfish in the way that you treat others before you get married,

you're gonna be set up for great success in your marriage because you ready for this? Marriage is a contest of how to be selfless.

And then it goes on and it says, verse five, in your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus. Now just note that, Just note that he says, hey, here's the answer to what this just have the same mindset that Jesus would have.

You realize that in a competitive marriage where like we're measuring each other by how the other one performs, you realize that that what you're offering in that moment is conditional love. In other words, if you do what I've established you need, well then I'm gonna love you really well,

but but if you fail to do what I've established for you, then you real I'm gonna withdraw my heart. This is exactly what we do when we go, hey, I fell out of love. You failed, you failed, you failed. I pulled back, I pulled back, I pulled, I no longer have affection for you. Conditional love.

Guys, this is not what was happening in the garden. You realize that Adam and Eve had selfless unconditional love. There there were no, hey Adam, if you, Eve, when you, they literally woke up every morning saying the thrill of my heart is to bless you, no conditions, unconditional love. And then we come back and go, Glenn,

see I can't do that for my wife. I can't do that for my husband. I mean, I've got expectations. Besides, unconditional love is what God does, right? And I'm just human. How can you ask me as a human to unconditionally love another human? And here's the answer, you already do. How many parents who got in the room?

There you go. Every one of you unconditionally loves that little brat. I don't know why because here's the deal. They were born and all they did was poop everywhere. They kept you up 10 times a night and you loved them. You put them up on your shoulder, they threw up on your shoulder and when they get older, it gets worse.

And and and do you know what we don't do? We don't go, okay, I've told you nine times to clean up your room, you're 12 years old, you should have gotten this right by now, come here, come here buster. Alright, let's go to the corner, we're gonna see if some other family wants a jerk like you. Why?

Because we love our children unconditionally and isn't it true that when our kids are at their worst, we don't pull back, we lean in and we go, can we restore this relationship? Can we fix this thing that's broken between us? Because we love our children unconditionally.

Why is it that we reserve for our children unconditional love and we refuse to give to our spouse? Unconditional love. Isn't it true that in the worst moments, we should be leaning in and saying, how do we fix this? How do we restore this instead of throwing each other away?

You realize this is what confuses our children because mom and dad say, hey, you know, sorry but but mom and dad fell out of love with each other. And what we're saying is, you know, dad didn't meet the expectations. I mean, over and over and over again. Hey, mom didn't come up to the standard

over and so, you know, I just took my heart away But I'll never stop loving you and our kids cannot put that in and understand it. How is it that you can stop loving my dad but you'll always love me? And somewhere in their little hearts, they know that this is wrong.

So the question comes, how do we get back to the garden? How do we get back to that selfless, unconditional love for one another that makes a marriage thrive? Grab your bibles one last time.

Go with me to the book of Ephesians. If you've closed your bibles, just again, go to the back, start working to the left. It's Ephesians chapter five.

Ephesians chapter five is the marriage chapter. Matter of fact, in the next two weeks, we're gonna go through because it gives this incredibly powerful job description. Husbands, here's how to love your wives. And then it goes through and gives us incredibly powerful job description of wives,

here's how to treat your husbands. And we're gonna unpack that together. But here's the interesting thing, the very first verse is something that surprises us. It's Ephesians chapter five, verse 21, here's what it says. This is like the groundwork of having a great marriage. And it says, submit to one another

and then here's that phrase again, out of reverence for Christ. The question is, what am I supposed to submit? You understand submitting to says, hey, there's these two things and they're both important, but what I decide is one is more important than the other. So I place one underneath

the one I've decided is more important. I submit it to the one of greater value. So, what is it that I'm supposed to submit? And here's the answer, I've got to be willing to change my expectations. So, I've got a couple, they're going to come back out here, they're going to help us.

They're going to help us because they've been married for eleven months and they totally understand this. It's going perfect for them.

So here's what God is saying to do. You ready? Take your expectations and surrender them to me. No longer hold your spouse accountable for what you said they had to perform. Instead, give those expectations to me and when you do, they stop being expectations and now they become your hopes.

And what I'm saying to that moment is, God, look, I I'm no longer judging my spouse by how they perform, I'm gonna take those desires, those things I was hoping would be part of my marriage, I'm gonna give them to you and God I'm simply gonna trust you

and if those are things that I really genuinely need, then God I'm trusting you to provide them in my marriage, but God I also know there may be some things you say, hey, that wasn't that wasn't what you needed and I'm gonna trust you in your decision. I'm no longer gonna wrestle it out of my spouse, I'm gonna

surrender it to my God. And then you ready? And then comes the moment of submitting. And submitting is this, it's the husband going back to those hopes and saying, you know what, the hopes of my wife are greater than my hopes. I'm gonna submit my hopes to hers because it's my job to be God's gift to her.

I have found somebody that I love more than I love myself and it's him going to her and saying, hey, I don't like to travel. That's not what I want to do, but if that's what thrills your heart and because I want you to know how much God loves you by how I love you, let's travel. It's the wife

going to the hopes of her husband and saying, I'm gonna submit my hopes to your hopes. I want to be God's gift to you. I want you to know how much God loves you by how I love you. And so she says, you know that stupid car you wanted? I guess we're gonna get a stupid car because

because I want you to know the love of God by how I choose to love you. Selfless love, submitting one to the other. Hey, thank you guys. Thank you for doing that for us.

Did you catch in the passage it said, do this out of reverence for Jesus?

Why would he say that? You know what he's calling us to? He's calling us to treat our spouse the way that Jesus treated us. You get when Jesus went to the cross, there was no benefit for him. There was only blessing for us. And Jesus literally said, hey, you know what? I love you more than I love myself,

and I'm willing to die for you to bless you even though it cost me everything. And he simply says, treat your spouse the way that Jesus treated you. And I know, I know, I know. I know there's some in the room and you go, Lynn, you don't know my husband. If if I were to give to him selfless love, he would simply take advantage.

Hey, Lynn, you you don't understand my wife. I I could be selfless with her from now to she would never see it. She would never understand it.

You realize your only other option is to stay on a wrestling match, a downward spiral.

I'm simply gonna ask you to do this. Do what Jesus would do if he were in your shoes and had a husband like you have or had a wife like you have, and I've got a feeling he would offer them selfless, submitting love. And I'm just saying, I can't promise, I can't promise what it does to your spouse.

I can just promise you it's your best chance for your spouse to then turn around and respond and say, I can love you back the same way. Here's my challenge. Would you and I, for fourteen days, go back to the garden? Would you and I for fourteen days say, I'm gonna choose to love my spouse selflessly?

I'm not gonna evaluate them by what they do for me. I'm simply gonna love them so that they would know how much God loves them. I'm gonna be God's gift to my spouse. My greatest joy is gonna be to thrill my husband. My greatest joy is gonna be to thrill the heart of my wife for fourteen days. And just see what would happen

if you lived a marriage like the garden. Let's pray. Hey, dear Lord Jesus, this is hard for us. We are truly the sons and daughters of Adam, and that same brokenness that came that day in their marriage is the brokenness that we bring to ours.

This idea that I've got to wrestle to get what I need from my spouse. I've got to I've gotta insist that they perform the way that I want them to perform, and we've lost the garden. We've lost marriage the way you built us to be. So God, give us the courage for fourteen days to selflessly love our spouse.

To simply say you're gonna see the love of God in me because of how I love you. I have found the one that I love more than I love myself for fourteen days. And this we pray in Jesus name. Amen.