Gettysburg Seventh-day Adventist Church

Scripture: Everything I have is yours, and everything you have is mine. John 17:10 (GW)

Observation: The words of our text today come from the prayer of Jesus on the night that he was betrayed and arrested.  This prayer was pronounced in the presence of His disciples while they celebrated the Passover meal together in the upper room.  While we think of “The Lord’s Prayer” as the one Jesus taught His disciples earlier in His ministry as a pattern for them to follow in their own prayers, His prayers, contained in John 17, are very particular and specific to and for His disciples of all ages.

Application: While the words of our text refer to the relationship that Jesus and God, the Father, have, they also serve asa good pattern for the type of relationship that husbands and wives should enjoy.  Often we are asked questions that have to do with financial matters in marriage.  Who should be in charge of the finances at home?  How should money be spent?  Should the husband and wife have separate bank accounts?, etc.

Once we enter into the marital relationship, not only are our bodies united into one, but so should our possessions, our interests, and our future plans be.  There should be no such thing as “what’s mine is mine, and what’s yours is yours.”  When we begin to look at things, information, or feelings as only a personal thing, not to be shared with the other, we prevent true and complete intimacy from taking place.  When we consider everything we have as the communal property of our marriage, then we will use it all to benefit us as a family, we will make short and long range plans that will be good both for our family now and for generations to come.

There’s another way in which we must understand that all we have and are is ours, and that is with our bodies.  Paul wrote that in 1 Corinthians 7: “The wife does not have authority over her own body, but the husband does. And likewise the husband does not have authority over his own body, but the wife does” 1 Corinthians 7:4 (NKJV).  Having said that, Paul continues his advice:  “Do not deprive one another except with consent for a time, that you may give yourselves to fasting and prayer; and come together again so that Satan does not tempt you because of your lack of self-control” 1 Corinthians 7:5 (NKJV)

So much trouble could be prevented if we stopped thinking and acting as if what we have and what we are is our individual property and instead were more willing to give to our spouse all that we are and all that we have – our funds, our property, our bodies, our thoughts, our plans, our feelings!  And the relationship would benefit so much more when receive the same in return!

A Prayer You may Say: Father, may the same unselfish spirit that reigns in the Godhead reign also in our home and in our marriage.  Since everything really belongs to You, help us then to remember that what we have in our marriage is simply Your loan to us.  Keep us from assuming possession of what You give us and instead help us to gladly share it with the person You gave us to be married to. 

Used by permission of Adventist Family Ministries, North American Division of Seventh-day Adventists.