Season 13 Ep.2 / What is My Marriage For?
Brenda Payne (00:01.198)
Well, I'm here today ready to welcome back our guest, Adam Coppock, who is our longtime friend and pastor along with Alex. Good to see you guys today and excited to continue our conversation. We are in season 13 and we've titled it Good Together, which I love that you guys gave it that title.
God's redemptive story in marriage because a lot of times when we think about marriage we don't necessarily think about what being good together or what is good together because we're going to be talking about creation today and that's really the emphasis that marriage is good.
And so often as we are going to talk about that is not our starting point or even where our focal point is. And so being an exhorter myself in gifting, I really like this idea of focusing on the goodness of marriage. So we kind of had a little bit of a challenge before we came on to say, hey, what can you name that's good or beautiful or right in your marriage? And so Alex, you immediately said you came up with something. So I'm going to let you jump in and share.
Alex Kocher (01:04.848)
Mine's so easy. If you know my husband, you already know what I'm gonna say. But I think I was convicted because last time I told the story of I will never teach marriage again. And I'm such a pro-marriage person. I always say like my marriage is really my most favorite thing about my life. And it's mainly because my husband is fun and funny and likes to play. And those are all things that I am not. I'm not fun.
Brenda Payne (01:22.114)
Mmm.
Brenda Payne (01:26.542)
Hmm.
Alex Kocher (01:30.896)
funny and I'm not good at play so he brings all that to me and it has saved us in so many difficult seasons it has saved us in chronic pain and all different struggles that we've had so yeah that's a easy that's a easy one for me to name
Brenda Payne (01:49.454)
That's good. I think you're fun and funny. You just don't mean to be funny. You're right about that. And that's good for somebody who is funny because yes, yes, you can appreciate that. Very good. What about you, Adam and your sweet wife, Stephanie? In fact, why don't you tell our listeners a little bit just about your family, your children and all the how long you've been married. Just a little over a little bio.
Alex Kocher (01:53.84)
like to laugh, which is different than being funny. I'm an appreciator, yes.
Adam Coppock (02:14.329)
Yeah, so I mentioned last time Steph and I have been married for 18, we'll be 19 this November. I mean, it's seven months out, but it's presumptuous. But 19 this year. Yeah, yeah. So why do this podcast? But really, you know, we met in college through Campus Outreach. She was in Louisiana, southeastern Louisiana. I was at Troy. We met through one of those beach projects through college ministry and
Brenda Payne (02:25.646)
Hahahaha!
Alex Kocher (02:26.023)
You can do it!
Adam Coppock (02:43.329)
and really dated through college, dated long distance. Really one of those defining questions for me was, am I more about the kingdom of God whether without this person? And that was a no-brainer with Stephanie. And so we joke that we have married our twin. People always talk about like marrying opposites. We married our twin, which means we have a lot of fun and then we both struggle to do the dishes. And so like there's this...
Brenda Payne (03:07.63)
hahahaha
Alex Kocher (03:08.441)
you
Adam Coppock (03:10.201)
As I think about what joy it is that, or what's beautiful in marriage, is this one anothering through life together. That you really do have this best friend. That you're working through hard things together. You see the beauty of redemption through tougher seasons. We have three kids, so 11, 13, and 15 right now. I was trying to think of that. And so it's just real humbling to think having almost a driver and
Brenda Payne (03:34.158)
Mm-hmm.
Adam Coppock (03:39.418)
another teenager about to have another soon. And just the beauty of raising kids together, we see our personalities, good and bad, coming out in them. But it is just the beauty of journeying together and celebrating one another. And that's been what's been beautiful is to see the gifting of the Lord in each of these. And so for, y'all know this, but my wife is a Cajun from Louisiana. She's got a lot of this Cajun culture, but then she just...
Brenda Payne (03:48.654)
Mm.
Adam Coppock (04:06.947)
has such a gift of music and how she uses that in the church and community theater, in schools, in just different ways. so one of things I just love about our marriage is getting to experience the goodness of God through her display of love of music and then to see that now happen in our kids. so a little snapshot of us.
Brenda Payne (04:25.08)
Mmm.
I mean, I think we could just have a whole podcast just on the goodness of God and our marriage. It'd be just so edifying to us and our spouses. I love so much of what you said. And now I'm like, oh, I don't know if I want to share that. Oh, maybe I should share that. Maybe I should go there, but I'll stick with my original. And Paul and I married as exact opposites.
All I want to do is play and all he wants to do is work, you know, do the dishes and task. He's task oriented. I'm people oriented. I would say we both like fun, but we just find our fun in very different ways. But I think that has part of the beauty and goodness of my marriage is that we are not clones. We are not alive. There's no expectation of that. And particularly as we've entered the empty nest years, which have just been really delightful, loved raising my family, but empty nesting has been really so much fun. And one of the things I
Alex Kocher (04:46.448)
Mm-hmm.
Brenda Payne (05:13.136)
we've done really well is to encourage one another in our hobbies, our pursuits, our interests. And so Paul is all about sports and sports writing and attending sports events. He just got back from Scotland where he got to play the old course and tour the Royal and Ancient and and I could be so excited for him and enter into that and look at all the pictures and hear all the stories and be so excited. And you know for me on the other side I just like getting on the water and paddle boarding or hiking or a lot of times doing things outdoorsy.
So which he likes a little bit, but not as much, but he's always encouraging me to go and really wants to hear about it when I get back. And of course, even the podcast and things like that are part of just him cheering me on and really wanting me to excel in the areas that God has gifted me. And so I just see that beauty of the individuals, but also coming together because we've spent most of our really married life doing a lot as a team, raising a family, building careers and all of those things. And now I feel like we're getting to enjoy
the fruit of that labor in a lot of ways, but also getting to enjoy more of who we are as individuals. So, super sweet. Well, we want to go back to this idea of the grand narrative or God's big story and where we see marriage not just in those key marriage verses, as we've been calling them, but throughout the story. And so, one of the ways we talk about this, Adam, is pulling the thread of marriage through
Alex Kocher (06:14.555)
Mm-hmm.
Brenda Payne (06:42.922)
the Bible or through the big story of the Bible. And so to jump off our time today, could you just pull that thread for us and then we're going to come back and zero in and focus on just creation for today, but let's put creation in the context of the story before we get started.
Adam Coppock (07:00.097)
Yeah, if we're thinking of that big progressive plan of God's redemption in Jesus Christ, we start with prologue. We start with before there was, there was a God. So even before creation, there's this loving, wise, eternal God who has authority and sovereignty. And as we're thinking of specifically the realm of marriage, it is not a social construct. It is a design of a good designer, of a good God.
We go from the prologue to creation and creation. We see how this good God has designed marriage for our good, both as individuals and as this communal experience, as this one anothering and oneness that actually mirrors the oneness we experience in relationship with our creator God. In the fall, as we move to the bad news of the story, we see
how marriage gets distorted as our, you know, God's design for us is now used to consume and destroy what he created instead of seeking the flourishing and the blessing. And even as we began our time about appreciating the goodness, there is, you know, sin and suffering's distortion from marriage now in many ways blinds us from God's good design. The hope of the scriptures is in redemption. We will see how Jesus is the hope for mankind.
for our salvation and for our marriages and for how his work on the cross brings healing in marriages. It brings the capacity to forgive, the capacity to repair ruptures and really for all of our relationships, not just in marriage. And then the last chapter of restoration is our forward-looking view of Christ's return again. That even though no marriage is heaven, even as much as you may have just rose-colored glasses for your spouse,
that the story of restoration for the believer says our best days are always ahead of us. And that's hope for those who think marriage couldn't possibly get better and that's hope for those that marriages feel really hard today is that restoration shows us God is working at an ultimate good and one day the hope is even the fullness of new creation coming as Christ comes again.
Brenda Payne (09:17.691)
That was a great recap. Thank you. Well, today we want to focus on creation and we're saying in creation, marriage is good. And one of the things as you were both speaking of your husbands, you can't help but be pointed back to the goodness of God because you can hear. I mean, your wife and your husband.
Adam Coppock (09:31.417)
To be fair, I didn't speak of my husband. I just, I felt a need to really put a roadblock there. We needed to, I really felt like a red flag. Yeah, yeah.
Alex Kocher (09:33.594)
Hahaha
Alex Kocher (09:38.951)
You
Brenda Payne (09:40.526)
As I'm looking right at Alex and totally missing you in my frame, hilarious eyes, as you spoke of your spouses, I couldn't help but just, there's something about talking about the goodness in somebody else that then...
Alex Kocher (09:42.651)
You start some stories.
You
Adam Coppock (09:51.565)
Very good, very good, very good.
Brenda Payne (10:01.902)
points us upward toward the goodness of God because we know that good comes from God. so, Adam, let's just talk about what do we mean when we say marriage is good.
Adam Coppock (10:17.739)
I think I froze for a second. I'm back.
Alex Kocher (10:17.946)
think we lost them.
Brenda Payne (10:22.458)
We're just talking about that marriage is good and it's God's design for marriage to be good. And so maybe talk just a little bit more about what we mean.
Adam Coppock (10:34.393)
Yeah, one of the things we said in that first podcast was just this reality that sometimes right now people are questioning is marriage even worth it? Is it good? Because it's at times costly or we're trying to work through conflict and it feels like we're stuck. And so really as we consider creation, what we're considering is not is my experience today in the momentary circumstance good in itself? What is God's design?
marriage in its design is good and it's good for us. Like God even as he describes his creation, he is delighting in his creation. We'll talk about this in a moment but there's this almost like an artist looking at his painting one stroke at a time like this is really good and marriage is given that and I think we live in a culture sometimes that doesn't speak that kind of delight and that cherishing of.
Brenda Payne (11:22.787)
Mm.
Adam Coppock (11:31.319)
the institution of marriage and the experience of marriage. And so what we're really talking about is that it's good in the sense that it is life giving. It's meant for our flourishing, both as individuals and again, as a couple, not only in prayerfully capacity for children or future generations or just the experience of being together with someone, but there is this flourishing that we are meant for.
in a sense that one place we experience it is in marriage.
Brenda Payne (12:04.046)
Hmm.
I think I love that you differentiated between the institution and the experience. I think that's really helpful as well. Well, I know when I first got married, I was in a church. I feel like that a lot of the emphasis just generally the gospel and just the message of the Bible started with the fall. So on a personal level, I was always coming back to what a terrible person I was or what a worm I am or those sort of things. And so when I got married, I think it was just really easy to notice all that was wrong.
with my marriage pretty quickly as opposed to really seeing looking for the goodness in the experience and looking for the goodness in the institution. And so Alex, I know this is something that we've talked about before of why it's so important to start with the creation and not the fall.
Alex Kocher (12:52.582)
I think you're echoing a lot of people's experience who've grown up in the churches feeling like we start with we're sinners and we want to start first with that we're image bearers, we're made in the image of the trying God and because of that we're made to experience relationship and community and delight and just the glory of who God is in each other.
And then we also want to start with creation to know that we have these longings because of the way God designed us and that these longings are for good things. And yes, they do get twisted in the fall, but there is an origin story here where we know that God put these longings in us. when we don't have these longings and they, you know, when those longings aren't met, they become warning lights for us that something's wrong.
the way that we're living out our
bearing and we want to remember that we were designed as good, God called us good, and God designed our spouses as good so that we can take delight in one another. So I think we talked last time about not having this negative outlook on who we are as people and who our spouses as people. The Gottmans call that this negative sentiment where we begin to frame every story just really ungenerously, just telling ourselves a negative
or unkind story about the other person and we want to remember that God created us as good and so we can always look for and always find something good in our spouse.
Brenda Payne (14:28.302)
Well, I think that's really good and can be really hard and we'll talk about why that's hard the next session, the next episode, but we're going to stay with the goodness and creation for this one. Well, you talk about the pattern of creation and that being important as we approach the idea of marriage.
Alex Kocher (14:45.924)
Yeah, so what we see in Genesis is I think just so interesting in the way that the narrative goes. We see of course that from the beginning, in the beginning God, that God spoke and the world came into existence. And so we see this pattern in Genesis 1 of God said and there was and God saw that it was good. And then evening and morning and the first day, evening and morning, the second day, we see this order and structure and design and this reference
of goodness in the creation that God is pleased with it and then we also see that there is a pause in the creation story that God pauses and he rests on the seventh day and I think we want to highlight these because they have implications about who we are.
Brenda Payne (15:35.318)
Okay.
I'm just thinking about moving on from here, Adam, we see that there is a rhythm, but then there's an interruption or a change in the rhythm that happens when we come to creation of humans, of men and women.
Adam Coppock (15:49.668)
You
Adam Coppock (15:55.383)
Yeah, I mean as we get kind of towards the end of that section, you know, there has been in some ways this creation of the arenas, know, the skies and the seas and land and then the creation of the inhabitants of those arenas. And so you see all these parallels, but something happens when it gets to God creating man. And, you know, I'll read this just briefly. It says, Let us make man in our image.
after our likeness and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth. So God created man in his own image in the image of God. He created a male and female he created them and God blessed them and God said be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.
And God saw everything that he had made and behold it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning the sixth day. As Alex just pointed out there was this refrain of it's good it's good it's good. But when it gets to man this creation of male and female it was very good. There is something that is especially good and we see it in that text of like we are made unlike anything else in creation.
in the image of our triune God, Father, Son, Holy Spirit, in the image of this relational God. And like I said, like I just love it because you you almost said it a moment ago, it's hard for us to stay in the goodness and considering the goodness because we're so prone, we're so prone to like run ahead and look at what's bad or what's hard. And it's hard for us to embrace that.
Brenda Payne (17:35.694)
It is.
Yeah.
Adam Coppock (17:46.017)
And what the creation account really does is it shows us this uniqueness of being made in the image of God. And so a couple of things I think is really helpful for us to think about in light of that is one is this image bearing of male and female that this privilege we get unlike anything else in creation to bear God's image, to mirror Him, to show
reflection of Him to each other and to all of creation. It's this beautiful way that we get to represent Him in the world. And so there is this truth that no matter how the person across from you has let you down today, they bear something of the goodness of God today. And I would venture to say if we started there, a lot of our conflict would even shake out differently if we could really hold the tension of what of the goodness of God.
is in front of me in this person. Two, think in this creation of male and female and even of this, you know, what we see in Genesis 2, this creating Eve from Adam and then presenting Eve, we see that the mystery of marriage is two people made in the image of God coming together in a one flesh relationship. And the uniqueness of this is this idea of this language of being one flesh yet two individuals.
Brenda Payne (18:42.55)
Yeah. Yeah.
Adam Coppock (19:10.497)
And I'll probably say this to the whole podcast is we have another tension here to wrestle with of being individuals yet a collective, individuals yet union together. And so it's just this beautiful mystery that God has created in marriage. And in that, Alex will talk about this, but this idea that we have agency, purpose, belonging, rest, these aspects.
Brenda Payne (19:11.704)
Mm-hmm.
Brenda Payne (19:19.031)
Delicious.
Adam Coppock (19:40.755)
our image bearing very particular elements of our image bearing and he says that he created us without the experience of shame and Here's a place that I always pause Because I can't even get my mind around that It's hard for me to really lean into So experiencing another person
Brenda Payne (19:58.67)
Hmm.
Adam Coppock (20:06.239)
in all of their goodness, but also fully embracing the goodness God has created in me that I am able to offer to them and not in any way wonder, I enough? Or am I too much for this person? That the image of the scripture says that God made us naked and unashamed. This image of closeness, of intimacy, of nothing mediating, like nothing between us. And it's just so...
Brenda Payne (20:16.814)
Hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Adam Coppock (20:34.829)
beautiful for us to sit there and to wait in a sense until we get it. And then there's just this aspect that in marriage we get to mirror the relationship of God to his people that as we pull that thread through scripture, marriage is this image of that oneness, of that intimacy that God isn't just saying for you to experience laterally, but that you are meant to experience vertically, like with your creator God.
Brenda Payne (20:40.302)
Hmm.
Adam Coppock (21:03.627)
And so he gives us the intimacy, even that image of sex, as this, like, such a closeness where you almost can't tell where one ends and the other begins. That is what we are supposed to experience in our union in Christ, and that is the glory and the beauty that's on display in what marriage is.
Brenda Payne (21:25.752)
Wow, I love that explanation, Adam. I feel like that really highlighted the goodness of marriage and makes you want to look at the goodness of your marriage and hopefully will make somebody want to be married if they are thinking about it. I think that's just really beautiful and I think so much of that is missed in our churches and just in our culture today. So we've been talking about the grand narrative or God's big story.
Alex Kocher (21:38.437)
Hmm.
Brenda Payne (21:51.254)
And we said that there are these five eras with prologue all the way to redemption. And now we're kind of coming down in the creation part today. And we're specifically in creation, even looking at what it means to be an image bearer and how that is going to impact our ability to relate to one another in a good way in God's design. And so Alex, you have talked about just this idea of kind of zooming in and zooming out. Explain a little bit of what that looks like and then take
us through these characteristics. Adam briefly mentioned them, but these four characteristics that we talk about that make up our image bearing. Yeah, and let's go from there.
Alex Kocher (22:36.314)
Yeah, I you did a good job of explaining those zoom zooming out or we see God's big story and we pull the thread of marriage through that story and now we want to we want to come in and look at what it means for two image bearers to Reflect and represent God in the world and the four characteristics are agency purpose belonging and rest and I just wanted to define them quickly and then we'll talk about how they play out specifically in marriage, but
Agency is just a word we don't use very much, but it's just the ability to make choices like the God who made us. Adam and Eve were created and immediately God placed them in a context of the garden and he gave them a choice. May not see it the language like that, but when he set up that you should not eat of this tree, you can eat of these trees. There's choice right there in front of them because they were going to be active and not passive participants in their lives. He gave
them the ability to make choices and determine the direction of their lives. And then we see that they had purpose, this idea of glorifying God, our purpose, we're here to glorify God and enjoy Him. But then he specifically asked Adam and Eve to be fruitful and multiply, to fill the earth and subdue it. He gave them a purpose as individuals and then as a couple to fulfill that purpose. And then he gave them
sense of belonging. So we see that here we have this God and in the pattern like we talked about of the creation narrative it's God said God said God said until we come to Adam and Eve and then it says God said let us make man in our image and we see this communal God this triune God making communal beings and then later he even adds more to that by saying it's not good for man to be alone.
that man needed to be in relationship with somebody like him is what Adam said about Eve. And then finally we were made for rest and I put rest and beauty together that God put Adam and Eve in this beautiful garden and that beauty brought rest to their bodies and their souls but then God also modeled rest for Adam and Eve right from the beginning we see the pattern of the creation being evening and morning.
Alex Kocher (25:05.963)
that God showed us that we rest first and that our work flows out of that rest. And then also he rested on the sixth day, on the seventh day, I'm sorry, he rested, showing us I don't think God needed a break. I think he was modeling something very important for us, letting us know we were made finite, limited beings that were going to need rest and beauty to restore us.
Brenda Payne (25:36.034)
I think, let's talk now Alex about how these characteristics play into our marriage. And I just want to.
Let's just repeat them again. There's agency, purpose, belonging, and rest and beauty. We're putting rest and beauty together. So if these are new concepts for anyone, you might want to stop or just rewind, listen to what Alex said one more time, because it's going to be real important to understand like this is kind of the crux of the rest of the teaching as we're going through the grand narrative, but really coming back to what it means to be created in the image of God, because it is so central to what a
good marriage is going to be in terms of our the individuals that come into the marriage and then being a married couple. So go through both of you if you will just begin to go through and let's just really slowly break this down and connect the dots with marriage and give some examples that will help people see how this is going to play out.
Adam Coppock (26:38.155)
Yeah, and I did want to just say like, you we've talked about this, there's probably other things we could have said in some ways, even broken some of these up even more, but these are really four really good main buckets to kind of think of putting a lot of categories of our making to understand how is it that we're created, how is sin affected it.
you know, how is Christ redeeming us. So, you know, as we start with that first one of agency, it's really, like Alex said, it's just simply the ability to make decisions or make choices and to act independently. Like, we do things. We are made to actually have agency and the capacity to affect other things, to make choices, and even in many ways discernments about things, like to choose between things.
And so, you know, a question it makes us perhaps ask is what is mine to do? As one of the things Alex said is created with limits, you know, a basic question of our marriages is what is mine to do? And what are the limits that I can even operate in? And so that agency is our capacity to actually make choices and to operate in like that. It's learning to make choices. It's...
We bring our thinking, our desires, our convictions into our shared decisions. Both parties have a voice. Like that's what's really important to you as we think about agency. It's not just my agency, it's Stephanie's agency. It's our spouse's agency. And so what does it mean to really appreciate the voice of the other? To really learn to see what goodness of God comes forward in the decisions and the...
Brenda Payne (28:11.756)
Yeah. Yep.
Adam Coppock (28:26.391)
the capacity to do good work in marriage. And it's one of the tensions is how do we merge lives in the daily doing? And that comes, you know, I gave the silly example of like, we both love the same things, me and my wife, but we also struggle at the same things as well. But there is a sense where we like merge our lives. And so what does it mean to do things together? Not solely independent, but also to have shared.
Brenda Payne (28:43.822)
you
Adam Coppock (28:52.097)
meaning and purpose together as we make choices and that's what Alex will go into. And it also helps us just recognize as individuals we are not made simply to complete each other. We actually are complete as image bearers in God. And that's like a weird like story of our culture or a different kind of narrative for us to live by is like you complete me. Okay that's a sweet movie like sentiment but that is not true because we are made.
Brenda Payne (29:06.434)
Yeah. Yeah.
Alex Kocher (29:18.617)
Ha
Adam Coppock (29:21.463)
to be one in Christ and there is this beauty that we get to be one in Christ together but actually I never stop being Adam. I don't get absorbed into Stephanie or I ought not to. And so there's an element that we get to celebrate that, the uniqueness of each other's choices and decisions to do things and even interest in that regard but there's also this idea specifically as we get to the making of Eve of what does it mean that Eve compliments?
Brenda Payne (29:28.728)
Yeah.
Brenda Payne (29:32.374)
Yes, that's right.
Adam Coppock (29:51.443)
Adam. What does it mean that she is made in such a way to not get absorbed into Adam nor Adam into her, yet there's a way that they actually both bring something to each other that is for the mutual benefit because each has separate agency, yet for the good of the other.
Brenda Payne (30:11.96)
out of all the teaching that you did at the church, I heard you talk about this idea of, again, how a woman is to compliment the husband. And I think when we talk about agency and making choices, it's one of the place that we will talk more about the fall, but it's one of the places that we can really get confused about what that means in marriage, particularly with one person ruling over the other. And I think particularly when we look at some of the teachings of Paul, you know, that specifically have to do with the husband.
leadership or a woman's submission. not to get into the fall part of it yet, but how do you see that as God's design? Like what are we talking about that a woman's the helper and what does that mean? Because that doesn't sound like she has choice. It sounds like she just needs to do what he chooses.
Adam Coppock (30:56.353)
Yeah. Yeah. So this is probably a part of when we teach this together that me and Alex like fight over who gets to teach this part because we both just like, it's just, it's such like a, yeah, I mean, and really Alex does such a beautiful job with it, but it's just so beautiful to look at Eve's making and, and
Brenda Payne (31:06.446)
I like you both speak to it.
Adam Coppock (31:20.641)
And a couple just things to note is one is she is made of Adam. Like there is something that is really particularly beautiful that they share such core design yet are uniquely different. And when God says it's not good for Adam to be alone, like there's this element that God created Adam with a defect. He created all of humanity with a defect. It wasn't like God was like, man, what part did I leave out? No, like God actually designed us.
with somewhat of a deficiency, of a need for the other. And actually as we talk about belonging, that's where that shows up too. But in Eve's making, he says, let us make a helper fit for him. And that language there in the Hebrew is iser kanegdo, which I'm from small town Alabama, so my Hebrew has a twang to it. But that iser kanegdo is this beautiful expression.
Alex Kocher (32:14.66)
You
Adam Coppock (32:18.947)
that is only used of Eve and of God himself in the scriptures. And when it speaks of God as the Isaiar Conegdo, it is a helper who contends for and against and fights for. It gives the image of one who is for the good of the other and who is even willing to battle for the other. And I always forget where we...
where I heard this, again, I'm a pool of other people's expressions, so nothing's original with me. But like the language of Isère Canegdo and that idea of pushing against, and it's probably from you, Alex, so here we go, I'll just straight rip it off of you. But like, it's just this image of like almost like a roof truss, like of two braces against the other that they push against to support the other. That that Isère Canegdo is this image of contends with or pushes against.
Brenda Payne (32:52.119)
I'm
Brenda Payne (32:58.954)
Hehehehehe
Adam Coppock (33:15.703)
for the good of the other. Now culturally, yeah, let's not jump ahead to the fall too much, but there is this like misalignment language of that text, like Adam is above Eve in this regard, but there's this, instead of like a leveraging one over the other, it is a uniqueness of design and of agency that is for the good of each other. So I don't know if you wanna jump on any of that, Alex.
Brenda Payne (33:42.07)
Yeah, Alex, what do you want to add to that?
Alex Kocher (33:43.885)
You know, just today I had a conversation with a married couple and one of the questions that we were posing was could the wife in this case help her husband feel like she was on his team? And she said, how can I do that when there's some destructive behaviors happening? And I was like, fantastic question because I think if you're going to be a good teammate, if you're going to be a good helper teammate, you are going to contend for
you're going to delight in what is good, but you're also going to contend against what is destructive. So I'm not asking you to turn a blind eye or you know, pat him on the head and say, that's okay. You're you know, dirty little sinner. I mean like that's not the point of just like we're not we're not excusing or overlooking things in the other person's life that would be destructive. We want to encourage them to live out God's good
sign as image bearers in a way that they can flourish. And so that often means having to push back and remind somebody of the ways that they are not doing that.
Brenda Payne (34:55.694)
That's a teaching I didn't get when I first got married and that would have been really, really helpful to the sanctification of my husband and for me because in our boundaries we talked about being, know, doormats and being, what do we call them, doormats and...
Alex Kocher (35:01.027)
Mm-hmm.
Alex Kocher (35:05.059)
Mm-hmm.
Brenda Payne (35:12.94)
Thank you, fortresses, right, where I'm the doormat and Paul's the fortress. But that would have been a great teaching for me to have really understood, instead of the way that I understood it, that actually I didn't have agency. Or that my agency wasn't really good, that my decisions weren't gonna be as good as his decisions. And that wasn't something Paul imposed on me, that was actually something, a message that I got from some of the teaching that I was involved with from the church, oddly enough.
Alex Kocher (35:23.672)
Mm-hmm.
Adam Coppock (35:25.826)
Hmm.
Alex Kocher (35:36.888)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Brenda Payne (35:38.772)
So Alex, the next point of image-bearing or characteristic that we want to talk about is purpose in marriage. How does this play out?
Alex Kocher (35:47.503)
So we're kind of just defining purpose as the reason we exist. And we've said, you know, the reason we exist is to glorify God, to be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth, and keep it. And what we're asking is just how do we do that in marriage? Asking the question, certainly, what does that mean for each one of us as individuals? What is each individual living for? But then why does the marriage exist and how does the marriage fulfill God's purposes? Because marriage is
family being created and it's hard to think that when we're 20 year olds you know coming together that we're creating a new family but those two people make a new family and they are created to achieve a common purpose and yet still hold on to this individuality in their calling. I'm glad that God has not called me to do some of the things that my husband does. I am not cut out for it and I think he's glad that
Brenda Payne (36:42.582)
Mm-hmm.
Alex Kocher (36:47.416)
he hasn't been called to do some of the things that I do. But then how do we also begin to see how those purposes come together and how that unifies us in marriage? And so how does it unify us when we think about specific areas of marriage and family like parenting and finances and sex and what are the priorities of the marriage going to be? So we're asking these questions, yes as individuals, but also
Brenda Payne (36:56.674)
you
Brenda Payne (36:59.95)
Mm-hmm.
Alex Kocher (37:17.387)
the marriage and the joining of two people.
Brenda Payne (37:20.174)
Mm-hmm.
And the good answer is the answer that is going to most glorify God and allow us to enjoy him and one another. And I think that gets missed. Like we can sometimes be so focused on the issue, we miss the purpose. And if we can zoom in and zoom out, if we can zoom out to like, well, what's the purpose? How do we glorify God here? How do we enjoy him? And how are we going to enjoy one another? As we as we're living in this purpose, then it begins to realign. And I think we will have a much better, we'll have a less polarized fight.
back and forth kind of marriage because there's going to be more unity there. So, all right Adam, can you take Belonging and tell us how that fits into the marriage picture?
Adam Coppock (38:01.591)
Yeah, it's kind of this idea that we have been made to experience intimate relationship both with God first and then with others. And so really this idea of belonging is that I have a place, I have people, I am meant for relationship. Possibly a question that helps us understand it is who am I safe with or who can I experience?
I feel like this is language from someone, but who am I most human with? You know, where I don't have to pretend to perform or to hide from another person. And we really like see this in the garden. I gave that image a moment ago where it says that Adam and Eve were naked and unashamed, meaning there was no sense of needing to hide from this other person. That's a sense of belonging that I'm not too much nor not enough for this other person. Like, that's your design.
And with it comes a safety to live generously towards one another, because I want to give of myself because I'm safe to be with you and to be received by you. so really in many ways, it's also this aspect of friendship in marriage. When we talk about belonging, sometimes we almost go straight to sex and sexual intimacy, but it's...
I think you say it Alex, like it's not merely a mingling of bodies, it's a mingling of souls. And so there is this beauty of, and really when I think of like that theme of good together, this is one of those places it jumps out at me. It's like, man, like I feel my most human self when I'm with you, aspect of marriage.
Brenda Payne (39:51.694)
You know, again, as we're going through, just, you know, looking back so much over 35 years of my own marriage, and I wish that Paul and I had really understood the idea of friendship because again, I think we came in with so much about roles, who is responsible for doing what, who's in charge, what's my role, what's your role, maybe even some shared, you know, meaning, understanding, we want to have a family, we want to build a family, he's got to go to work, I'm going to whatever. But I think along the way,
if the friendship aspect had been emphasized to us more, it would have pulled in more scripture because friendship isn't just about roles. It's like, I mean, what does it mean to have a role in a friendship? Like we don't talk about friendships this way. Like, what's my role, Alex? And what's your role? And Adam, what's your role? We do play roles. mean, our giftings and our abilities and those sort of things may give us a certain role when we have a lot of different friends people have to, but you know what saying? There's not like a role in a friendship. Friendship is just a place that we come in, we are safe and that we feel
Alex Kocher (40:27.425)
Yes.
Brenda Payne (40:51.588)
known and seen and loved. And wow, I to be able to start off your marriage is saying that is what we want. Like if we shoot for that and Tiffany Higginbotham is, you one of our favorite people who we've had on the podcast. And I have to say that I've always admired her marriage with her husband because I've always felt like they have gotten that really good. Like there seemed to always be this sense of like leading with friendship. And that has been evident. And I think very
beautiful and I think it's something that is really going to serve her children well as they get married to not have to back up and figure it out. So yes, the belonging, the friendship, the goodness and beauty in it of God is just a part of the rest in beauty, which Alex you're going to go into next. It is a part of rest in beauty, but I think it's something as we do a lot of marriage counseling, we just see that people aren't even friends. They don't even know how to be friends and they've lost friendship.
Alex Kocher (41:51.04)
Yes. Yeah.
Adam Coppock (41:52.885)
And I think it's one of the best apologetics for God and really for faith in Christ is marriages that show enjoyment and delight in one another. Not a fake pretense, not a pretending, but a learning to explore the other, to have kind of a hopeful anticipation of experiencing more goodness with the other, like growing friendship.
Alex Kocher (41:56.93)
Hmm.
Alex Kocher (42:04.195)
Mm.
Adam Coppock (42:17.913)
and say that it is one of the greatest apologetics for us, not pretending we don't have problems, but a growing appreciation and a, enjoy, because at the end of the day, we want to be delighted in. It's not that we just want to do that for other people. We actually want to like walk in the room and somebody say, I'm glad you're here today. And that's a beauty in marriage.
Brenda Payne (42:18.104)
Yeah.
Alex Kocher (42:30.327)
Mm-hmm.
Brenda Payne (42:36.01)
Yes. Yes.
Alex Kocher (42:38.517)
Yeah, and I think there's a, if you've ever come to me for a marriage counseling, you've heard at some point me step up on my soapbox and rail against Disney culture of this idea of like soulmates and that that is what we're talking about. This enjoyment, this friendship is instantaneous. There's one person that you experience that with because what we see in our own marriages and in other marriages of people
that we walk with is like that has to be cultivated that does not happen overnight just like any friendship is cultivated this belonging and intimacy and marriage is cultivated I think it's emotional it's spiritual it is physical and I call it recreational just how do we have fun together and that this is done in small moments over time sometimes seemingly really mundane moments over time where we where we build this emotional
Brenda Payne (43:26.958)
Yeah.
Alex Kocher (43:38.391)
intimacy, we build this trust in one another and we learn how to delight in the other person. And if we come into marriage with a story that that should happen naturally, we're going to be severely disappointed.
Brenda Payne (43:54.062)
Yeah, that's a good point. Well, Alex, walk us through the final characteristic or bucket that we are putting this idea of the idea that we are image bearers and how rest and beauty play into the idea of marriage.
Alex Kocher (44:02.251)
Hmm.
Alex Kocher (44:12.055)
Well, one of our favorite words when we think about these concepts like rest and beauty is shalom and shalom is that idea not just of peace as in lack of
conflict or quietness, but of wholeness and completeness and who God made us to be. so we want to know how do we experience that wholeness and completeness in marriage. And some of that wholeness and completeness is recognizing that we are finite creatures, that God did not make us infinite as He is, but we need rest and beauty for our bodies and souls. And not only do we need that
to feed us but we need that we are called to partner with God in creating that and creating Shalem in the marriage relationship and then as we face outward toward the world how are we going to go into the world and create rest and beauty and to recognize that rest is often experienced in beauty and then that beauty creates spaces for rest and they have this reciprocal relationship where where the
the shalom builds or feeds on each other. This wholeness and completeness builds and again it's not just for us to experience in marriage and kind of hunker down and say this is my shalom place but it's also to turn outward to the world and ask how are we going to display that and cultivate that in the cultures and in the places that God's placed us.
Brenda Payne (45:49.378)
I'm so glad you added that last part because we're...
We are blessed to be a blessing to others. And I love that facing not because I think sometimes people do get married and they turn very inward and they circle the wagon. It's just me and my spouse and it's just our family. And if we can just keep everybody else out and we can be perfect in here. And as we're going to find from the fall, because there's nobody perfect in here, then things don't go perfect in there. Even you try to do that. But I love that idea that as we are experiencing God's rest in beauty, then we begin to push that out to a world.
Alex Kocher (46:07.683)
Hmm
Alex Kocher (46:12.931)
Mm-hmm.
Brenda Payne (46:22.616)
that is in so much need of rest and beauty and that rest and beauty like all of these attributes then what does it point us to? It points us right to back to prologue to the Lord the wise and good and loving God who created the world and created the relationship and particularly this relationship of marriage. Adam did you want to add anything to rest and beauty? No? Okay.
Well, I want to say that we have been talking about God's ideal. I don't know if people still say this about relationships, but I can remember a time like if somebody had a really good relationship, everybody be like goals, goals, goals, goals, you know, and it'd be like over social media or you do air quotes. Like that's what you wanted your relationship to be like. So that's what's in my mind right now is like this creation, design of marriage is like goals, you know, and it is God's ideal. But we are going to learn in the
Alex Kocher (46:59.937)
Mm-hmm.
Brenda Payne (47:18.03)
episode that the fall is, you know, coming on the heels of God's good design and it's going to to mar this good design. And thankfully that's not the end of the story, so stick with us the whole podcast. don't want you to get, please don't get stuck in the fall. That would be terrible. But I also don't want people to be discouraged.
about this idea of creation and as we say that marriage is good and so I wonder if one of you might just give a word to how to be encouraged if maybe you're not experiencing this goodness in your marriage.
Adam Coppock (47:55.137)
Yeah, mean, yeah, I think it's helpful. We sometimes think like the Genesis account, like, well, that's good, but what does that matter now that the sin is here and it's all, you know, broken now anyway, like, what does that matter? And, you know, I almost think about folks who like are car collectors and, you know, they buy an old Mustang and there's almost this like beating heart.
Brenda Payne (47:55.756)
I just threw that one at y'all.
Adam Coppock (48:25.219)
for the love of the original Mustang, recognizing the years have aged it, rust has come, and there's a delight to restore to what is a good design, instead of just saying, it's crap anyway, let's trash it. And so I think it's helpful for us not just to think about a fantastical, I think it's helpful for us not just to think of some fantasy ideal, but of foundation and design and.
Brenda Payne (48:42.494)
Hmm. I think that's such a...
Alex Kocher (48:42.7)
you
Adam Coppock (48:54.221)
goodness and beauty and so it helps us nurture appreciation and in many ways like a word I spent a lot of time this year thinking about again from someone else, prophetic imagination. It's holding out capacity for what could be and so we don't do that simply by looking forward but also by looking back and in many ways like if we think of at church we come to
Brenda Payne (48:54.765)
Yeah.
Brenda Payne (49:16.056)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Adam Coppock (49:23.449)
communion, we come to the Lord's table and in many ways it's at this intersection of looking back to the work of Christ and looking forward to the second coming of Christ and where we are in between and it's holding out the full work of God in the moment that we're coming to the table where we don't feel so good, where we feel broken. What we're talking about isn't trying to make people feel bad that they don't look like the ideal.
it's actually to say what you're experiencing like you actually should be bothered if it doesn't feel good. Like it's okay that there's anger, that there's sadness, that there's grief, that sometimes you feel betrayed by the, not just your spouse, but by the image of marriage that has been cast to you. And so all of that, when we look at creation, it's...
Brenda Payne (49:53.656)
Mm-hmm.
Alex Kocher (50:01.078)
Mm-hmm.
Adam Coppock (50:17.407)
it helps us consider what am I supposed to even be feeling even in this moment as a human when things don't feel so good. That'd be my thought on it.
Brenda Payne (50:28.158)
Mm, spoken like a true pastor. Yeah, this is so good.
Alex Kocher (50:28.898)
I'll answer it. Yeah, but Adam gave the pastoral answer. I'll give the practical answer. And we said that, you know, with each one of these segments, we're giving tools and we've derived a lot of the tools from the Gottmans who are a married couple, Jewish married couple. They've been studying marriage for decades and they build their model of marriage counseling on this idea of emotion.
Brenda Payne (50:35.69)
Okay.
Brenda Payne (50:41.784)
Mm-hmm.
Alex Kocher (50:58.852)
What does it mean to build an emotional intimacy? And again, that that's done in small moments. And so the tools that we're going to give for this particular era of creation are about building a culture of flourishing in your marriage in small moments of looking for bids for connection and in moments of expressing gratitude and appreciation. And both of those are tied to our image bearing in that there's always something to celebrate in the other person.
and gratitude and appreciation and there's always a place for us to seek connection. My kids laugh at me and I'll say this in the video on the tools. Our kids laugh at us because we are always calling each other to the window to look at the cardinal or look at the chipmunk or look at the new whatever wildlife is in our courtyard and these are just these small moments of connection between me and Mason. Yes, our kids think we're old because of it
But it's something we enjoy together, takes less than 30 seconds oftentimes, but there are these small places that if we don't see these things being cultivated in the big picture of our marriage, can we trust the Lord that this design is good, that these good things are in our spouse? And can we be willing to build it moment by moment to create this beautiful picture that is not done overnight?
done while waving the magic Disney wand, it's actually done in small moments where we intentionally cultivate appreciation and connection with each other.
Brenda Payne (52:38.318)
Well, I know those tools and have used them in my own marriage and you are right the intentional
Well, just the intentionality of looking for what's good and entering into somebody with somebody for connection is makes a huge difference over time. So I'm excited for our listeners to be able to hear that tool and begin to use it. Adam and Alex, I just want to thank you both. I to thank you for just the time that you've put into thinking through marriage along the lines of the grand narrative. And already, think, gosh, just in this episode and the last one is so rich. There's so much to consider.
So again, some of these concepts may be new to our listeners or may feel a little bit heady, but hopefully we're continuing to bring them down to a place that is very understandable. And I think you guys have done a really good job of that. So thank you. Next time we meet, we're going to be in episode three and we're going to be talking about the fall and why marriage is often not good or why marriage is hard. And again, that's not the end of the story. So if you're going to listen,
to episode three, then stay with us for four and five. But it is going to explain a lot of why this good design is not always experienced to the fullest and sometimes very difficult to find in our marriages. So I look forward to seeing you guys again when we meet for episode three.
Alex Kocher (53:48.0)
Hehehe