Last summer, I tackled a home improvement project that nearly got the best of me. I knew the eight-feet tall privacy fence in my back yard was in pretty bad shape when Sherron and I moved into our current home a couple of years earlier. After making a few repairs along the way, I began to realize that at some point replacing it would be my only option. One day, after a pretty bad storm, I went out back to find a couple of the fence posts had broken and the fence was leaning over against some trees on our property. The time to replace the fence had come.After finding the style I wanted, I purchased all the lumber and began what became a two-week project of building my new fence. The fence turned out great but building it reminded me that I am not a spring chicken anymore and that I don’t recover as quickly from a really hard day of labor. In thinking of this project, I often use the analogy of building fences in our lives that serve to protect us from sin and temptation. I specifically want to speak today about building fences to protect your marriage from an affair.
A fence serves two purposes. First it protects a person’s property from visual or physical entry by people or animals that do not belong there. Second, it helps provide boundaries that prevent children or pets from leaving the safety of the property. In the same way, setting up fences in marriage helps protect them. They provide barriers from anyone entering that sacred space that does not belong there and helps keep us from wandering outside of its covenant boundaries.
Let’s look at a few fences that can be implemented in a marriage relationship to see what they look like. These are things that every married person should be proactive in building and maintaining to protect their marriage. Here are a few examples.
• Be proactive in understanding and meeting your spouse’s needs unconditionally (Eph. 5:25-29; Eph. 5:33; 1 Cor. 7:3). A general rule for this is that men typically desire respect and physical intimacy and women typically desire love and emotional intimacy.
• Treat your spouse in such a way that they know you value them or someone else will (Eph. 5:22-24; 1 Peter 3:7). Your spouse should feel that you are their biggest fan and that you consider them of great worth.
• Even at the expense of appearing unfriendly, never open yourself up emotionally to anyone other than your spouse. Never spend time with someone of the opposite sex such as taking them to lunch and never share intimate personal information with them (Psalm 141:3-4; James 1:13-15).
• Always look for and acknowledge the best qualities in you spouse and avoid dwelling on the negative (Proverbs 31:10-31; Malachi 2:13-15). We often focus on the personality traits and habits of our spouse that irritate us or cause discomfort. To combat this we must be proactive in looking for, appreciating, and affirming their positive qualities.
• Finally, and most importantly, see to it that your relationship with Christ remains strong and intimate. It is through this relationship that you will find both the desire and the ability to be the spouse God directs you to be (Phil. 2:13 NLT).
In closing, let me say that if you think your marriage is not susceptible to an affair then yours may be one of the most susceptible. Why, because you are the least likely to be proactive in building and maintaining these fences in your life. If that happens, your marriage will go on unprotected and Satan will attempt to send someone into that sacred space that does not belong there. You can “affair proof” your marriage but, like my fence project, it takes time and often great effort to do so.
