Paul Tripp Interview on Marriage

Great interview here with Paul Tripp on marriage by the Crossway blog.  You'll want to pick up his book, What Did You Expect?: Redeeming the Realities of Marriage.

Here was one of the best questions from the interview:

Q: So what do we do when this inevitable point of disillusionment collides with our expectations?

Paul David Tripp: Both the problem and the solution can be summed up in one word: worship. I have become more and more persuaded that marriages are fixed vertically before they are ever fixed horizontally. We have to deal with what is driving us before we ever deal with how we are reacting to one another. Every relationship is victimized in some way when we seek to get from the surrounding creation what we were designed to get form God. When God is in his rightful place, then we are on the way to putting people in their rightful place. I am convinced it is only in the worship of God in our marriages that we find reason to continue.

Being a worshiper means that you attach your identity, meaning and purpose, and your inner sense of well-being to something. You either get these things vertically (from the Creator) or you look to get them horizontally (from the creation). This insight has everything to do with how a marriage becomes what it is. No marriage will be unaffected when the people in the marriage are seeking to get from the creation what they were only ever meant to get from the Creator.