Welcome to the Paul Tripp podcast, where pastor and bestselling author Dr. Paul David Tripp

connects the transforming power of Jesus Christ to everyday life. In today's episode, you'll be blessed

with five pieces of marriage wisdom from Paul that can help you develop a relationship of

unity, understanding, and love like never before.

In this first segment, Paul explains why disappointment is synonymous with marriage

and how to find hope in the disappointment. Here's Paul teaching, marriage is disappointing.

So I want to talk to you about marriage and about looking at marriage from the vantage point of the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ.

And I want to say something that may surprise you, may at first discourage you, but I want to explain. Here it is. Marriage is just disappointing.

Think about this. You can't have two sinners living together in a dramatically broken world and ever have a relationship free of disappointment.

In fact, there's no one you know that has ever had a marriage free of disappointment.

In fact, there's no human being who's ever been married that's been free of disappointment. In fact, there's no human being who's ever been married

that's been free of disappointment. Here's what this means. Disappointment is not the sign of a bad

marriage. Disappointment is the sign of a marriage. Because a sinner, living next to a sinner in a fallen world,

there are going to be bumps and bruises and problems along the way.

I think that one of the big deals that gets us in trouble in marriage is unrealistic expectations.

Because we don't take seriously about what the Bible says about our struggle with sin,

and because we don't take seriously the reality of the fallen world that we live in,

we go into marriage expecting something that will never ever experience.

And so we are hit with disappointment that disappointment

leads to discouragement that discouragement leads to hopelessness and we

wonder if we should have gotten married we wonder if we should have been

married to this person and we're on the pathway to something pretty dark. Maybe that disappointment begins with an argument

...