SPEAKER_01: My gosh.
SPEAKER_01: Thank you, Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: How's everyone doing?
SPEAKER_01: Any everyone have a good Valentine's Day night or day?
SPEAKER_01: Who brought their kids and like went on a date?
SPEAKER_01: Who was able to enjoy that?
SPEAKER_01: Wasn't that awesome?
SPEAKER_01: I figure this time next year our children's ministry will double by the yeah, that's how you grow a church.
SPEAKER_01: Okay, Lord, help me.
SPEAKER_01: Oh, Jesus, Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: Father, I thank you for what you're doing in this service today.
SPEAKER_01: I thank you for what you intend to do.
SPEAKER_01: Lord, we we recognize your presence.
SPEAKER_01: We recognize your kingship and authority over this church, Lord, and over our life.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus, you are the King, Lord.
SPEAKER_01: I lift up every single marriage in this place.
SPEAKER_01: I would lift up every single person watching online who's married.
SPEAKER_01: I lift up every single person who's not married yet, but one day will be.
SPEAKER_01: I ask God that you would pierce our hearts with your word.
SPEAKER_01: The word that separates lie from truth.
SPEAKER_01: The word that separates, Father.
SPEAKER_01: I thank you that you are bringing revival to marriages, Lord.
SPEAKER_01: Not just marriages that are alive, but that are abundantly living, Father.
SPEAKER_01: Come and have your way today in the name of Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: We say no weapon formed against the marriages in this place is going to prosper.
SPEAKER_01: We thank you, Father, that there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: I ask for a spirit, Lord, of grace, freedom, release, Lord.
SPEAKER_01: I thank you, Lord, that your blood washes us and cleanses us as white as snow.
SPEAKER_01: In the mighty name of Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: And I thank you, Father, that you are the ultimate healer, Lord, and we invite you today to heal wounds that need to be healed.
SPEAKER_01: We invite you today to go to those deep areas of our life and our heart, the things that even we don't want to talk about or think about, Father.
SPEAKER_01: You know about them.
SPEAKER_01: We give you access today to heal and restore, not cover up.
SPEAKER_01: In the mighty name of Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: Everybody said, Amen, amen, amen.
SPEAKER_01: It is so good to see you all.
SPEAKER_01: It is so good to be here today in the house of the Lord, Garnet.
SPEAKER_01: Anna, I am so pumped.
SPEAKER_01: Next time you all see them, they're going to be married.
SPEAKER_01: The Lord is the best matchmaker.
SPEAKER_01: Their story is a story of God matchmaking.
SPEAKER_01: God, I, you know, the Lord brought us together, and I I mean, you know, it had to be God for me to catch her.
SPEAKER_01: God of the impossible! Why are you laughing at that?
SPEAKER_01: I'm just joking.
SPEAKER_01: But this is something it's so interesting to me when I talk to young people.
SPEAKER_01: I really encourage them.
SPEAKER_01: I'm like, okay, so God who knows all the plans he has for you is unaware of who your spouse is.
SPEAKER_01: So you've got to go and like date 30-something people and you feel like you need to sleep around, bask and robin's, try every flavor.
SPEAKER_01: What if the God who designed you?
SPEAKER_01: What if the God that designed you actually knows who he intended for you, and maybe he knows you better than know yourself, and maybe he knows the spouse he has for you.
SPEAKER_01: Why not just consecrate yourself to him and trust him?
SPEAKER_01: Doesn't the Bible say men treat the single ladies as sisters?
SPEAKER_01: How many of y'all making out with your sisters?
SPEAKER_01: Let's go there.
SPEAKER_01: Right?
SPEAKER_01: That's not today's message, though.
SPEAKER_01: It's a little taste.
SPEAKER_01: But the Lord has brought them together.
SPEAKER_01: When he calls you, he knows even the ministry that when you're united, you're one, you're called.
SPEAKER_01: But there's an anointing on them.
SPEAKER_01: I'm I'm grateful to have you here.
SPEAKER_01: There's a breaker anointing.
SPEAKER_01: We are contending for revival.
SPEAKER_01: That's not easy.
SPEAKER_01: We are stepping in and saying there's spiritual warfare and we're suiting up and diving in, okay?
SPEAKER_01: And I believe that you're called here too.
SPEAKER_01: I believe that you're here today because the Lord says you play a part of the body and the body of Christ that I am doing that you are needed of.
SPEAKER_01: That you're needed.
SPEAKER_01: Amen.
SPEAKER_01: So, revival and all the stuff we talk about, this is about a harvest.
SPEAKER_01: If we boil this down, that's what this is about.
SPEAKER_01: The body of Christ is meant to be the witness of Jesus Christ on this earth.
SPEAKER_01: He ascended, and all of a sudden, we're the body now.
SPEAKER_01: And we're intended to do a work.
SPEAKER_01: We're intended to have a hard harvest.
SPEAKER_01: God does not want anyone to perish.
SPEAKER_01: He's coming back, and I think he's coming back soon.
SPEAKER_01: Well, we know he's coming back soon, but the definition of soon, you know, is a little bit, I'm not really sure if that's 2,000 years or 50 more years.
SPEAKER_01: But he doesn't want anyone to perish.
SPEAKER_01: And there is a lost and dying world.
SPEAKER_01: I look at the stats, you know, there's there's thousands upon thousands of people living just in a twelve twenty-mile radius of this church that are not Christians, not saved, that if they die today, they would go to hell.
SPEAKER_01: God cares about that.
SPEAKER_01: So he wants the church not to just come together and have, you know, really awesome services and worship, which I love, but there's meant to be a point that we're coming, encouraged, trained, and equipped to go out and do the ministry of Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_01: And you're called to that.
SPEAKER_01: If you're not doing that, what happens is this is my personal conviction.
SPEAKER_01: But if we're not doing the work in the ministry, we're stagnant Christians.
SPEAKER_01: We're lukewarm, okay?
SPEAKER_01: We're cups that are being filled but never pouring out.
SPEAKER_01: God's reviving that.
SPEAKER_01: God's convicting my heart just as much as He's convicting y'all's, I'm sure, that He wants some things revived because He wants He wants people to be saved.
SPEAKER_01: But revival starts in the home.
SPEAKER_01: You are not going to be able to function the way that you need to function as part of the body, like when I say the corporate body, until your home life, that's your first call to ministry.
SPEAKER_01: This is a pet peeve of mine, and I'll go ahead and share it to you, and I'll vent for just like two minutes.
SPEAKER_01: I see guys in particular that they get really passionate about fire, and a lot of times what they have because they're pursuing purpose is that they want to do ministry.
SPEAKER_01: I see this a lot, it drives me nuts.
SPEAKER_01: And what they do is that they want to go and spend all their time going and ministering, witnessing, serving.
SPEAKER_01: They got some type of ministry they're passionate about, and you know what they do is that all of a sudden they don't go and provide for their families.
SPEAKER_01: Their bills are tight, their bank accounts are tight, their wife is stressed, they neglect even being able to be with their kids and their wife a lot because they're doing ministry, and that's not God's calling.
SPEAKER_01: The Bible says a man that doesn't provide and take care of his family is worse than an unbeliever.
SPEAKER_01: Ministry can become an addiction.
SPEAKER_01: It's a way to like feel like you have purpose in life.
SPEAKER_01: I'll go ahead and tell you this.
SPEAKER_01: It can become something, and I'll see men and I'll see women do this, and then in their minds are thinking, well, I'm serving Jesus, but you're neglecting the home.
SPEAKER_01: You've got to get the marriage right first.
SPEAKER_01: I don't I don't want you trying to serve.
SPEAKER_01: I don't want you trying to lead life groups, I don't want you trying to do all this stuff until the home life is tended to.
SPEAKER_01: I'm not talking about being perfect.
SPEAKER_01: None of us are perfect, but let's just go ahead and address it.
SPEAKER_01: Your call to ministry starts with the home.
SPEAKER_01: Men, the most important thing in your life is your wife.
SPEAKER_01: Well, I gotta serve Christ.
SPEAKER_01: Well, you know what he says?
SPEAKER_01: Make that the priority right now.
SPEAKER_01: Anything else is secondary.
SPEAKER_01: And an overflow of that, when you get the home life right, then all of a sudden this beautiful thing is gonna overflow.
SPEAKER_01: Okay?
SPEAKER_01: So I just want to go ahead and make sure we get that clear.
SPEAKER_01: Anyone that wants to serve and lead at this church, this is questions I'm going to ask you.
SPEAKER_01: I'm going to look, and I'm good at observing.
SPEAKER_01: I'm not trying to be braggy, but I look at things.
SPEAKER_01: I notice things.
SPEAKER_01: I notice the posture of wives and their attitude.
SPEAKER_01: The men are on fire for God, their wife's miserable.
SPEAKER_01: And I'm like, you're not tending to her.
SPEAKER_01: You're neglecting her.
SPEAKER_01: I don't want you leading and serving right now.
SPEAKER_01: So I do love you though.
SPEAKER_01: If you're new here, if you're a first-time visitor, welcome to this house of love.
SPEAKER_01: The first last week we talked about covenant.
SPEAKER_01: A lot of people come into marriage thinking it's a contract.
SPEAKER_01: I'll do my part if you do your part.
SPEAKER_01: That's not covenant.
SPEAKER_01: Covenant says when you don't do your part, I'll pay the cost to make sure that we stay in relationship.
SPEAKER_01: We have a secularized view of marriage.
SPEAKER_01: And how do why do I say that so boldly?
SPEAKER_01: Because the divorce rates in the church are just as bad as the divorce rates in the world.
SPEAKER_01: The marriages in the church are just as secular as the marriages in the world.
SPEAKER_01: We come into this with the wrong perspective.
SPEAKER_01: I'm coming in to satisfy myself.
SPEAKER_01: I need my life to be fulfilled.
SPEAKER_01: I want to have someone that emotionally fulfills me.
SPEAKER_01: That's not marriage.
SPEAKER_01: That's a secular perspective of marriage.
SPEAKER_01: That's very new, by the way.
SPEAKER_01: That's only like really 30, 40 years old.
SPEAKER_01: This idea that marriage is for emotional fulfillment.
SPEAKER_01: How many thousands of years has marriage been around?
SPEAKER_01: The challenges that we have in marriage today are have skyrocketed compared to the challenges that people had 34 years ago, even 20 years ago.
SPEAKER_01: The challenges you have today, if you're young and you're newly married, you need to know something.
SPEAKER_01: There's a lot of things working against you more than anything else.
SPEAKER_01: Culture, perspectives.
SPEAKER_01: Then we got people writing books that claim to be Christian books and they completely miss the Word of God, what it means, what it's intended for.
SPEAKER_01: People are thinking reading these thinking, oh, this is the way it's supposed to be.
SPEAKER_01: They're getting deceived.
SPEAKER_01: Their whole perspective is deceased, their interpretation and application of marriage is just off.
SPEAKER_01: And then we wonder why do we have dead marriages in the church?
SPEAKER_01: We pray and we cry out, but nothing changes.
SPEAKER_01: God cares about this.
SPEAKER_01: But also, God is the author of marriage.
SPEAKER_01: God's the one who defines it.
SPEAKER_01: He doesn't need our help.
SPEAKER_01: He doesn't need to.
SPEAKER_01: Even the Bible says, don't act in here.
SPEAKER_01: But what we do is we come to this and we think that we're better and more wise than God.
SPEAKER_01: We think that marriage is something that meant to be improved upon.
SPEAKER_01: It's not technology.
SPEAKER_01: I understand technology gets better over time, but you don't just make changes to something that God and things are going to get better.
SPEAKER_01: What is happening is getting worse.
SPEAKER_01: Even to the point that people aren't wanting to get married.
SPEAKER_01: Do you know there's this thing where men are just not wanting to get married anymore?
SPEAKER_01: Women are losing their minds.
SPEAKER_01: They're losing their minds.
SPEAKER_01: I understand.
SPEAKER_01: Okay, let me just I'm gonna I'm doing a lot of venting today.
SPEAKER_01: Probably something I ate.
SPEAKER_01: I understand that it's been like a man's world for a long time, and then what happened was was there's a backlash.
SPEAKER_01: You know, I understand that there's been you know imbalances, there's been unhealthy things done for many years.
SPEAKER_01: But what happens is when there's a problem, people what happens, they respond to something that's wrong, and they say, Well, I'm never gonna do that again, I'm not gonna have that happen, so they pin them swing.
SPEAKER_01: And what happens sometimes is they go too far to fix the problem, and now they've created another problem.
SPEAKER_01: We're living in a time where it's not the man's world problem, it's the woman's world problem.
SPEAKER_01: And men are being kind of pushed out.
SPEAKER_01: We don't need you, we don't respect you, you don't have a place, you know.
SPEAKER_01: Just go get in art, what is it, artificial insemination?
SPEAKER_01: You don't even need a man, just have a baby.
SPEAKER_01: We don't need men.
SPEAKER_01: You can have a job, you can make money, you can have your own career, you don't need a man.
SPEAKER_01: And so men are men that are be are being treated a certain way, and they're just disengaging.
SPEAKER_01: They're like, I don't even want to get married.
SPEAKER_01: And then people are just sleeping around.
SPEAKER_01: Like it's nothing.
SPEAKER_01: Like people don't even feel convicted about it.
SPEAKER_01: They talk about body counts, they're sleeping hundreds.
SPEAKER_01: I mean, women brag about have sleeping with like hundreds something people.
SPEAKER_01: Dudes as well.
SPEAKER_01: Why get married?
SPEAKER_01: They don't have to.
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
SPEAKER_01: Now we're gonna get into the message.
SPEAKER_01: Covenant is about fixing a relational problem between us and God.
SPEAKER_01: He's holy, we're not holy.
SPEAKER_01: We cannot be in his presence and survive.
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
SPEAKER_01: And so part of this is that this is the agreement that demonstrates God's faithfulness, but then there's another purpose of marriage.
SPEAKER_01: And the purpose of marriage is to is for transformation because, in order for something unholy to be in the presence of something's holy, that unholy thing has to become holy.
SPEAKER_01: So, what that means is we have to change.
SPEAKER_01: So God uses marriage as a tool to change us.
SPEAKER_01: We come into marriage a lot of times thinking, oh, I'm just adding something to my life to make my life better.
SPEAKER_01: No, marriage is actually meant to transform you, it's going to expose what's wrong with you.
SPEAKER_01: And then we're shocked when it does that, like, oh my gosh.
SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna hit, I'm gonna hit a controversial place in the Bible.
SPEAKER_01: It's Ephesians 5.
SPEAKER_01: Let's go to this verse.
SPEAKER_01: It says, And further submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.
SPEAKER_01: The verses following after this, verses 22 through 33, can be very controversial, okay?
SPEAKER_01: Primarily it's controversial, and this is hard to receive on women's perspective.
SPEAKER_01: Women do not like or tend to not like the next few verses that I'm about to read.
SPEAKER_01: Amen.
SPEAKER_01: They should.
SPEAKER_01: But they don't.
SPEAKER_01: It's triggering.
SPEAKER_01: They don't like it.
SPEAKER_01: They they they assume, oh, it must mean something else.
SPEAKER_01: This this doesn't apply to me.
SPEAKER_01: We live in a woman's world right now.
SPEAKER_01: We live in a culture that's rebelling against God's model and God's order of the home.
SPEAKER_01: And we're seeing the fruit of that.
SPEAKER_01: We're seeing the fruit of that.
SPEAKER_01: A lot of times, before I go into these verses that are so controversial, is a lot of times what we miss is this first verse that opens up this section.
SPEAKER_01: It's verse 21.
SPEAKER_01: It says, and further, this is talking to men and women.
SPEAKER_01: It says, further, submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.
SPEAKER_01: I want you to know something.
SPEAKER_01: This is a hot topic world.
SPEAKER_01: Is this word submit?
SPEAKER_01: Men love to say submit.
SPEAKER_01: They love to have this expectation of woman, submit.
SPEAKER_01: Me man, hear me roar.
SPEAKER_01: Submit, right?
SPEAKER_01: Well, Paul opens up and he says, both of you submit to each other.
SPEAKER_01: Men say amen.
SPEAKER_01: They're like, I'm a submissive husband.
SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna make a shirt.
SPEAKER_01: Submissive husband.
SPEAKER_01: It says out of reverence for Christ.
SPEAKER_01: This is the big thing, okay?
SPEAKER_01: A lot of times we come into marriage, and you know what we do?
SPEAKER_01: We wait to be motivated to do our part in the marriage.
SPEAKER_01: And our motivation comes from looking at our spouse.
SPEAKER_01: I'm going to come into the marriage and I'm going to watch you, and if you do your part, then I'll be motivated.
SPEAKER_01: But if you don't do your part, I'm not going to be motivated.
SPEAKER_01: And I'm not going to do my part.
SPEAKER_01: This section here opens up saying the reason that you're going to do your part is because you want to obey Christ.
SPEAKER_01: This is beautiful, okay?
SPEAKER_01: God is such a genius.
SPEAKER_01: Oh, he's such a genius.
SPEAKER_01: He understands that people are now coming into a covenantal union.
SPEAKER_01: Alright?
SPEAKER_01: Two imperfect people.
SPEAKER_01: And he says, I'm going to tell you to do some things that's going to be very hard for you to do, and you're not going to want to do it.
SPEAKER_01: And this is why I want you to do it.
SPEAKER_01: It has nothing to do with them.
SPEAKER_01: It has nothing to do with their conduct, has nothing to do with whether they're willing to do it or not to do it.
SPEAKER_01: This is why you're going to do it.
SPEAKER_01: You're going to do it in reverence to me.
SPEAKER_01: Submit to one another.
SPEAKER_01: And this is where the tricky part comes in.
SPEAKER_01: And I understand why.
SPEAKER_01: It's legitimate reasons.
SPEAKER_01: The tricky part is, is does submit look the same for men and women?
SPEAKER_01: Or does it look different?
SPEAKER_01: God made them man and woman.
SPEAKER_01: God made man and woman women different, regardless of what the world says.
SPEAKER_01: The world is coming against the truth of God.
SPEAKER_01: Okay?
SPEAKER_01: God made them man and woman.
SPEAKER_01: We're different.
SPEAKER_01: We're programmed different.
SPEAKER_01: They'll get the music going.
SPEAKER_01: I'm like, whoa.
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
SPEAKER_01: This is beautiful.
SPEAKER_01: I actually noticed this this week.
SPEAKER_01: It's always been there.
SPEAKER_01: You ever have something in the Bible that's right in front of you the whole time and then you notice it after years?
SPEAKER_01: That's what happened to me this week.
SPEAKER_01: This verse starts with and further.
SPEAKER_01: Now understand that with this translation, they added that just to give clarity to what's happening.
SPEAKER_01: There's not like an and further in the Greek, but what is happening is that this verse is a continuation of something that's already been set and founded.
SPEAKER_01: Did y'all hear that?
SPEAKER_01: Like there's a foundation set that we need to look at before we go into the hard verses.
SPEAKER_01: Y'all want to do it?
SPEAKER_01: Okay, this is good.
SPEAKER_01: So in Ephesians 5, verse 1, it says this.
SPEAKER_01: This is the foundation, okay, again, and further, this is going to be the stuff that comes before the further.
SPEAKER_01: Alright?
SPEAKER_01: This is going to be the foundational perspective that before we get to the hard stuff that we're going to challenge and not really want to do, let's get the foundation correct.
SPEAKER_01: Alright?
SPEAKER_01: The whole reverence for Christ, what does that mean?
SPEAKER_01: Paul's going to show us.
SPEAKER_01: Verse 1, it says, Imitate God, therefore, in everything you do, because you are his dear children.
SPEAKER_01: Okay, so we're coming to marriage.
SPEAKER_01: Y'all can take note.
SPEAKER_01: What's the goal of our conduct?
SPEAKER_01: Imitate God.
SPEAKER_01: To imitate God, you've got to know who God is.
SPEAKER_01: You gotta know what God does.
SPEAKER_01: You can't imitate what you don't see.
SPEAKER_01: You've got to have the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: You've got to be a person of prayer.
SPEAKER_01: You've got to be a person of the Word.
SPEAKER_01: Then if we don't read our Bible, if you don't know about God, how are you going to imitate Him?
SPEAKER_01: The job is not just for pastors to understand the Bible.
SPEAKER_01: You've got to read the Bible.
SPEAKER_01: Ladies, you too, amen.
SPEAKER_01: Just make sure I'm keeping it even, right?
SPEAKER_01: Equal conviction.
SPEAKER_01: That's the type of church we are.
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
SPEAKER_01: Verse 2.
SPEAKER_01: Live a life with love.
SPEAKER_01: Following the example of Christ, okay?
SPEAKER_01: Imitate God.
SPEAKER_01: What's that look like?
SPEAKER_01: Live a life of love.
SPEAKER_01: Not just emotional love.
SPEAKER_01: It's love in action, like Christ.
SPEAKER_01: What kind of love does Christ show?
SPEAKER_01: Sacrificial love.
SPEAKER_01: That means that he's going to do something hard for the sake of someone else.
SPEAKER_01: I'll show you what sacrificial love looks like.
SPEAKER_01: It's Jesus who's perfect.
SPEAKER_01: No sin.
SPEAKER_01: Doesn't deserve any bad stuff to happen to him.
SPEAKER_01: And he's about to go, and he talks to his father.
SPEAKER_01: I'm about to be brutally murdered.
SPEAKER_01: And I'm going to be mocked.
SPEAKER_01: And the mocking is going to be so heavy and demonic.
SPEAKER_01: Understand, like all the demons of hell mocking him.
SPEAKER_01: It wasn't just people.
SPEAKER_01: I'm going to be naked on a cross.
SPEAKER_01: Brutal.
SPEAKER_01: The most almost the most painful thing that you could experience that is drawn out.
SPEAKER_01: It's not a quick gunshot.
SPEAKER_01: You don't die in a minute.
SPEAKER_01: This is drawn out for hours.
SPEAKER_01: I don't want to do this, Father.
SPEAKER_01: Is there any other is there any way that I could get out of this?
SPEAKER_01: Is there any other way that we can redeem them?
SPEAKER_01: No, son.
SPEAKER_01: You have to do it.
SPEAKER_01: So out of reverence for his father, he does it.
SPEAKER_01: And what we do is that we get with our friends the moment that our spouse does one little thing and we banter about them and we become rebellious, and all of a sudden, the very least amount of showing in any type of mercy and any type of grace, we're ready just to feud with them and just to repay evil for evil for evil.
SPEAKER_01: And we wonder why our marriages have problems.
SPEAKER_01: Because we're meant to imitate God.
SPEAKER_01: We're meant to have suffering, sacrificial love towards the other, the kind that Jesus displays.
SPEAKER_01: This is not an argument on what is fair.
SPEAKER_01: This is not an argument on what is deserved.
SPEAKER_01: Because Christ did not deserve to go to the cross.
SPEAKER_01: He went to the cross to redeem us and show us mercy.
SPEAKER_01: He didn't want to keep score.
SPEAKER_01: This is the kind of love that we're doing out of reverence for Christ.
SPEAKER_01: He loved us and offered himself as a sacrifice for us, a pleasing aroma to God.
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
SPEAKER_01: Verse 3, let there be no sexual immorality, impurity, or greed among you.
SPEAKER_01: Such sins have no place among God's people.
SPEAKER_01: No sexual immorality.
SPEAKER_01: That includes your thought life.
SPEAKER_01: That includes the books, what you're watching, watching porn, having lustful thoughts of other people.
SPEAKER_01: Let there be no greed.
SPEAKER_01: If you look at the heart of greed, it's not just financial, it's selfishness.
SPEAKER_01: I want to accumulate more for me, more for me, more for me.
SPEAKER_01: I had my boy Tyler.
SPEAKER_01: Ty, my boy.
SPEAKER_01: My boy Ty.
SPEAKER_01: Ty, my boy Thai.
SPEAKER_01: He made me some Ori Bros.
SPEAKER_01: Ori bros is where you take Oreo, you mash it up, like crumble it up, and you put it with cream cheese, and you make like a cake pop and cover it with melted white chocolate.
SPEAKER_01: It's the best dessert in the world.
SPEAKER_01: And they're dangerous, they're addictive.
SPEAKER_01: And so he's my dealer.
SPEAKER_01: So he brought me some Ori bros Wednesday, had a whole container of them.
SPEAKER_01: And I don't share them.
SPEAKER_01: Like I'm very generous, but when it comes to those things, I'm like, no, you can't have them.
SPEAKER_01: I'm just trying to be open and transparent here, okay?
SPEAKER_01: I'm in a process.
SPEAKER_01: And so we have Garner Annan over.
SPEAKER_01: We're doing some premarital counseling.
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, brother, you better.
SPEAKER_01: Hey, no, no, no, come back to the seat.
SPEAKER_01: I go upstairs to print off something.
SPEAKER_01: My wife's down there hosting them.
SPEAKER_01: You know what she we we we fed them well, but we forgot dessert.
SPEAKER_01: You know what she does?
SPEAKER_01: She gets my Ori bros.
SPEAKER_01: And and she gives them the Garner Anna.
SPEAKER_01: I had like four left.
SPEAKER_01: I had planned it out.
SPEAKER_01: Like, I'm gonna eat these two tomorrow and then I'll wait.
SPEAKER_01: And they're gone.
SPEAKER_01: And I'm not gonna lie, there was a l like there was a second where I was legit mad.
SPEAKER_01: I looked at Catherine and she knew it.
SPEAKER_01: I was like, honey, how dare you?
SPEAKER_01: But I forgive you.
SPEAKER_01: That's fair.
SPEAKER_01: No, I received that.
SPEAKER_01: I received that rebuke.
SPEAKER_01: And that's how humility happens.
SPEAKER_01: Master of humility, can let's just give me a hand real quick.
SPEAKER_01: Like ten of you gave me a hand.
SPEAKER_01: Come on, people.
SPEAKER_01: Keep up.
SPEAKER_01: I'm just joking, by the way, if you're new.
SPEAKER_01: I'm not that prideful.
SPEAKER_01: I'm a little prideful.
SPEAKER_01: I'm working on it.
SPEAKER_01: But not that prideful.
SPEAKER_01: Oh gosh, Lord help us.
SPEAKER_01: Get back on track.
SPEAKER_01: So he is this thing.
SPEAKER_01: Verse 4 says, obscene stories, foolish talk, and coarse jokes, these are not for you.
SPEAKER_01: Instead, let there be thankfulness to God.
SPEAKER_01: So essentially he's saying, hey, don't sin.
SPEAKER_01: Covenant is this structure that God sets up.
SPEAKER_01: This is beautiful.
SPEAKER_01: It's the structure that God sets up to redeem an imperfect people, okay?
SPEAKER_01: And bring us back into his presence, but it still is able to address sin.
SPEAKER_01: Y'all catch that?
SPEAKER_01: A lot of Christian messages or what we see in the church today, they they miss this aspect of the new covenant.
SPEAKER_01: They celebrate grace and they say the sin's not a problem anymore.
SPEAKER_01: It doesn't matter if you sin or not, it's all covered by the blood, and so they excuse continued sinning.
SPEAKER_01: We don't do that here.
SPEAKER_01: Like we're gonna go fire on the altar repentance, and that's not because you know we're religious or pharisaical, it's because we understand that that there is a Holy Spirit that is convicting us that God does care about sin, that we are being sanctified.
SPEAKER_01: There's a balance to this, okay?
SPEAKER_01: So God has this beautiful thing, it's sacrificial love, it's merciful.
SPEAKER_01: He died on a cross.
SPEAKER_01: Yes, his blood covers it.
SPEAKER_01: It's not by works, but it's his but it's by faith, right?
SPEAKER_01: But yet he still cares about sin.
SPEAKER_01: Understand, when we're going into marriage, what we do, how we act, and doing wrong still matters.
SPEAKER_01: Can I go ahead and just do take relieve the ladies for like 20 seconds?
SPEAKER_01: Let me just provide some relief.
SPEAKER_01: What I'm about to teach you, okay, does not mean that you do not have a voice.
SPEAKER_01: In fact, if you're not using your voice and you're not standing up for yourself, you're not being a godly wife to your marriage, okay?
SPEAKER_01: What men have tried to do is to make you fearful and suppress you, and that's why women have gotten so mad and they don't like this verse.
SPEAKER_01: Because these religious dudes have no idea what they're talking about, miss the heart of God, and then women are upset about it, so they don't want to do it.
SPEAKER_01: You need to have a voice.
SPEAKER_01: You need to stand up for yourself to your husband.
SPEAKER_01: Okay?
SPEAKER_01: You are not called and you're not called to stay in a marriage that is harming you physically or unpotentially, and especially the children.
SPEAKER_01: If you're in a state where something is causing someone's causing you physical harm, you need to separate.
SPEAKER_01: I would say call the cops, but also let us know.
SPEAKER_01: We got some boys that are ready just to take some rebellious guys behind the barn and teach them five-fold ministry.
SPEAKER_01: And also, ladies, this is something not talked about.
SPEAKER_01: There's ladies that could be abusive, and men don't talk about it.
SPEAKER_01: Every time you get mad, you cannot keep your little temper down.
SPEAKER_01: You get physical and stuff.
SPEAKER_01: Also, if that's happening, men, keep her in check.
SPEAKER_01: Call the cops.
SPEAKER_01: And then let Pastor Catherine know.
SPEAKER_01: She may be little, she is feisty.
SPEAKER_01: She scares me sometimes.
SPEAKER_01: That's not okay.
SPEAKER_01: That's not what the Word of God is calling you to do.
SPEAKER_01: Okay?
SPEAKER_01: So we can just make that clear.
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
SPEAKER_01: Let's keep going.
SPEAKER_01: Verse 5, you can be sure that no moral impure greedy person will inherit the kingdom of God, for a greedy person is idolater, worshiping the things of this world.
SPEAKER_01: Six.
SPEAKER_01: Don't be fooled by those who try to excuse these sins.
SPEAKER_01: Now, this is profound, okay?
SPEAKER_01: What we see in our world is people are trying to excuse people's behavior in marriage that's not holy and not righteous, not heart, God's heart.
SPEAKER_01: No, that's okay.
SPEAKER_01: It says don't be fooled.
SPEAKER_01: Do y'all catch the warning here?
SPEAKER_01: Because people and things are going to try to fool you.
SPEAKER_01: Don't be subject.
SPEAKER_01: Just because you read a book and they've got a PhD or whatever, doesn't mean they're right.
SPEAKER_01: There's a lot of fools with a PhD.
SPEAKER_01: The word of God is where the wisdom's at.
SPEAKER_01: That's where the truth is at.
SPEAKER_01: Amen?
SPEAKER_01: Alright.
SPEAKER_01: Also, by the way, Dr.
SPEAKER_01: Randy, you're a PhD guy.
SPEAKER_01: He's he's very wise and he's got his stuff in line, okay?
unknown: Amen.
SPEAKER_01: But they're all have other PhDs.
SPEAKER_01: No.
SPEAKER_01: Verse 7.
SPEAKER_01: Don't participate in the things, these things that people do.
SPEAKER_01: So that's a big thing.
SPEAKER_01: Don't participate.
SPEAKER_01: Eight, for once you were full of darkness, but now you have the light from the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: This is, I love this.
SPEAKER_01: We were once in darkness.
SPEAKER_01: Even some of you here today, maybe you're going to come out of this and you're saying, you know what?
SPEAKER_01: I've been living in the dark with my marriage.
SPEAKER_01: But God's light, you know what it does?
SPEAKER_01: It does two primary things.
SPEAKER_01: It exposes what's in the dark that needs to be addressed.
SPEAKER_01: That's why marriage is uncomfortable.
SPEAKER_01: It's going to expose things.
SPEAKER_01: I never really thought I was a selfish person when I got married, and I realized, oh my gosh, I'm very selfish.
SPEAKER_01: I still struggle with that.
SPEAKER_01: I'm not perfect.
SPEAKER_01: Like, just so you know, I'm not a holier art, holier than thou art.
SPEAKER_01: Holier than thou art.
SPEAKER_01: Why is that so hard to say?
SPEAKER_01: Holier than thou.
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
SPEAKER_01: Noah?
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
unknown: Yeah.
SPEAKER_01: She has see?
SPEAKER_01: My wife.
SPEAKER_01: She's my helper.
SPEAKER_01: I don't do everything perfect, y'all.
SPEAKER_01: I mean, there's things I've said to my wife and things I've done, like if you played it on screen up here, I'd be very ashamed.
SPEAKER_01: Okay?
SPEAKER_01: I've said mean things.
SPEAKER_01: I've been mean to her.
SPEAKER_01: I've said hateful things.
SPEAKER_01: I've been very selfish a lot.
SPEAKER_01: I've had to repent many times.
SPEAKER_01: And I'm still not perfect at this.
SPEAKER_01: I uh the reason I'm saying this, men, is that you need to understand is that none of us are perfect.
SPEAKER_01: And the goal is not trying to fix everything in the past.
SPEAKER_01: A lot of the times you can't.
SPEAKER_01: You just need to forgive and move forward.
SPEAKER_01: That's why Paul says, I don't look behind me, I look before look ahead of me, okay?
SPEAKER_01: We're all imperfect.
SPEAKER_01: And the same goes to ladies.
SPEAKER_01: There's lots of things.
SPEAKER_01: If everyone could just see everything play of all your fights and issues, you'd be very ashamed.
SPEAKER_01: You probably wouldn't even want to come to church here anymore.
SPEAKER_01: We all have this.
SPEAKER_01: We all have things.
SPEAKER_01: We all have we can all have times.
SPEAKER_01: Like when we fearful, when we feel like a rejection or something like that, we can become different people.
SPEAKER_01: We can have things from our past, traumatic things trigger us, and all of a sudden we're like flipping out.
SPEAKER_01: And our spouse is wondering, who did I marry?
SPEAKER_01: This is real.
SPEAKER_01: This is not an expectation of perfection, this is a pursuit of it.
SPEAKER_01: Together.
SPEAKER_01: Having grace with one another, recognizing, listen, we've all we're in this process together.
SPEAKER_01: Amen?
SPEAKER_01: Okay, okay.
SPEAKER_01: Verse 8 For once you were full of darkness, but now you have the light from the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: And so light is going to expose things.
SPEAKER_01: And God wants to expose things.
SPEAKER_01: He doesn't want things covered up and hidden.
SPEAKER_01: He wants to expose it and deal with it.
SPEAKER_01: But then light also provides clarity of path.
SPEAKER_01: The word of the Lord is a light unto my feet.
SPEAKER_01: It's going to provide clarity.
SPEAKER_01: What path do I take?
SPEAKER_01: Verse 9, for this light within you produces only what is good, right, and true.
SPEAKER_01: So this light, as things are exposed in our lives, is going to produce something that's good.
SPEAKER_01: It's going to produce something that's true.
SPEAKER_01: This is beautiful.
SPEAKER_01: And it hurts.
SPEAKER_01: I'm a guy like I want to succeed at everything.
SPEAKER_01: And when something exposes that I'm not doing a good job, when my wife's let me low, hey David, you could work on this.
SPEAKER_01: I don't like hearing that.
SPEAKER_01: It hurts.
SPEAKER_01: But what it does is if I listen and I adjust and I change and I humble myself, it brings so much life to my marriage.
SPEAKER_01: Carefully determine what pleases the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: Ooh, this is a good one.
SPEAKER_01: Carefully determine what pleases the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: I love this.
SPEAKER_01: This is when I looked at this, God is such a genius, okay?
SPEAKER_01: He is such a genius.
SPEAKER_01: He makes men and women, and men and women are very different in their makeup.
SPEAKER_01: Okay?
SPEAKER_01: Their biological makeup.
SPEAKER_01: Men are created with a God-designed need at the core of who they are.
SPEAKER_01: Okay?
SPEAKER_01: Women are made with a God-designed need at the core of who they are.
SPEAKER_01: And the two are very different.
SPEAKER_01: They're like stark opposites, right?
SPEAKER_01: But what's amazing is that God puts the ability to fulfill the woman's need in the man.
SPEAKER_01: Okay?
SPEAKER_01: And God puts the ability to fulfill the man's need in the woman.
SPEAKER_01: Okay, then you put these two people together.
SPEAKER_01: Now let's make matters a little bit worse.
SPEAKER_01: The man naturally does not have any understanding of knowledge of how to fulfill that need.
SPEAKER_01: They don't.
SPEAKER_01: You do not have an understanding and a knowledge of how to fulfill your wife's need that God put there.
SPEAKER_01: And the same is true for women.
SPEAKER_01: And ladies, I need you just to hear me.
SPEAKER_01: Okay?
SPEAKER_01: A lot of what I'm going to tell you today, this is not theory and this is not ideas.
SPEAKER_01: This is this is statistics from people who've done thousands upon thousands of marriage counseling psychologists, and a lot of this is from women psychologists who've studied women, who's a woman themselves.
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
SPEAKER_01: Women a lot of times think that they understand.
SPEAKER_01: And they're very wrong.
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
SPEAKER_01: They think that they understand their husbands and what they need.
SPEAKER_01: And they miss it a lot.
SPEAKER_01: You do not have a natural ability to understand what your husband needs, but you do have the thing that fulfills it.
SPEAKER_01: Okay?
SPEAKER_01: I'm going to go somewhere with this.
SPEAKER_01: This is the genius of God.
SPEAKER_01: He puts two people together.
SPEAKER_01: They're the only ones that can fulfill certain needs in their life, okay?
SPEAKER_01: And they have needs in their life, and they're both very unaware of how to do it.
SPEAKER_01: Why does he do this?
SPEAKER_01: So that they will learn.
SPEAKER_01: So that they will seek to find.
SPEAKER_01: In Hosea 6, 6, you know what God says?
SPEAKER_01: He says, I want you to know me.
SPEAKER_01: I don't want your burnt offerings.
SPEAKER_01: I don't want just your religious activities.
SPEAKER_01: I want you to really know me.
SPEAKER_01: If you draw near to me, I'll draw near to you.
SPEAKER_01: In Romans 12, it says, carefully discern what pleases the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: What do you have?
SPEAKER_01: You have to learn about God.
SPEAKER_01: You have to learn what pleases him, right?
SPEAKER_01: We have to make effort to learn, and then when we learn, we do it.
SPEAKER_01: God puts marriage in your life that forces you to learn.
SPEAKER_01: It's beautiful.
SPEAKER_01: The biggest mistakes I make is when I think that I know and assume that I know what my wife wants.
SPEAKER_01: And time and time again I'm wrong.
SPEAKER_01: And then I'm like, I don't get it.
SPEAKER_01: I did everything that she liked.
SPEAKER_01: It didn't work.
SPEAKER_01: Women, you're naturally processors that you're external.
SPEAKER_01: You talk, you're community, okay?
SPEAKER_01: You want to talk things out.
SPEAKER_01: You understand this, right?
SPEAKER_01: This is not ideas, this is this is like facts, statistical facts.
SPEAKER_01: You want to talk things out.
SPEAKER_01: Guys are not like that naturally.
SPEAKER_01: Now, there's always exceptions.
SPEAKER_01: There's some dudes that are just talkers, you can't even be quiet.
SPEAKER_01: I get it.
SPEAKER_01: It's like, bro, chill.
SPEAKER_01: Take a breather.
SPEAKER_01: But generally speaking, guys don't communicate well.
SPEAKER_01: That's not natural to them, okay?
SPEAKER_01: And they're not necessarily good at it.
SPEAKER_01: They have to learn.
SPEAKER_01: Women, you communicate.
SPEAKER_01: And when there's not communication, there's like a sense of separation, right?
SPEAKER_01: The way that you feel close to your man is you talk, and then he can share things with you.
SPEAKER_01: But but men do that.
SPEAKER_01: And you know what?
SPEAKER_01: Sometimes when you want to talk to your man, this is this is crazy.
SPEAKER_01: When you want to know your man, when you when you come and ask your man questions, you know what he's thinking?
SPEAKER_01: She's getting into my business.
SPEAKER_01: He interprets that as you disrespecting him.
SPEAKER_01: And so, do you ever have this thing where you're trying to talk to your man, all of a sudden he's like, I don't want to do this, and he shuts down the conversation, just goes away.
SPEAKER_01: And then you want to hang out with him, and he's doing some activity where he's away from you, and you're wondering, why is he not wanting to spend time with me?
SPEAKER_01: He's avoiding stuff.
SPEAKER_01: Because he's out of his comfort zone.
SPEAKER_01: He's avoiding you.
SPEAKER_01: He's doing activities, and you're wanting to be close, you're running to him, and he's just he's running away.
SPEAKER_01: Guys are not good at telling you.
SPEAKER_01: They're not good at it.
SPEAKER_01: And then they feel awkward trying to tell you what they need.
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
SPEAKER_01: Are you all right?
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
SPEAKER_01: We're gonna, I'm trying to not go too deep too quick for my own sake.
SPEAKER_01: Carefully determine what pleases the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: This is beautiful.
SPEAKER_01: This thing is we have to learn about God and learn what pleases them.
SPEAKER_01: The same is true for your spouse.
SPEAKER_01: If you're here today and you haven't asked your spouse, How do you want me to love you?
SPEAKER_01: How do you want me to treat you?
SPEAKER_01: How do you feel in the marriage?
SPEAKER_01: And you just assume there's a good chance that that we're not doing this well.
SPEAKER_01: I do this all the time.
SPEAKER_01: My wife is so covering of me, but I do this all the time.
SPEAKER_01: I just assume what she wants.
SPEAKER_01: Honey, I got a great date night planned.
SPEAKER_01: Oh, really?
SPEAKER_01: What are we gonna do?
SPEAKER_01: We're gonna stay home and eat pizza and watch Star Wars.
SPEAKER_01: Garna, am I right?
SPEAKER_01: That's a date night.
SPEAKER_01: And then I'm surprised when she's like, that's not what I want to do at all.
SPEAKER_01: I'm like, what are you talking about?
SPEAKER_01: That's love.
SPEAKER_01: Greatest love story ever known?
SPEAKER_01: Padme was a little bit rebellious at the end.
SPEAKER_01: He was just trying to use the dark side to protect her, and she didn't want to follow him.
SPEAKER_01: And I was like, whatever.
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's a story of wife's rebellion.
SPEAKER_01: Why do you think they call it the rebellion?
SPEAKER_01: Okay, y'all rip reel it in.
SPEAKER_01: All right.
SPEAKER_01: Bunch of nerds.
SPEAKER_01: Verse 12, it's shameful to even talk about these things that godly people do in secret.
SPEAKER_01: Verse 13, but their evil intentions will be exposed when the light shines on them.
SPEAKER_01: Verse 14, for the light makes everything visible.
SPEAKER_01: This is why it said, Awake, O sleeper, rise from the dead, and Christ will give you light.
SPEAKER_01: In this verse, it says, Wake up, sleeper, and rise from the dead.
SPEAKER_01: When we are spiritually asleep, think of it like this.
SPEAKER_01: When we're sleeping on the job in our marriages, that could be a good determiner of why our marriages are dead.
SPEAKER_01: Now you might be here today and you might say, Okay, my marriage is not dead.
SPEAKER_01: We don't have these like crazy fights, and you know, we're still together, we're not committing adultery, we're not trying to hurt each other, our marriage is healthy.
SPEAKER_01: What happens sometimes is that when your needs are not met, we have a thing built inside of us to survive, to learn to make do with life.
SPEAKER_01: We have a thing inside of us that says, okay, I guess this is as good as life's gonna get, I'm just gonna learn to be okay with it and just move on.
SPEAKER_01: Does that make sense?
SPEAKER_01: And so we learn to survive.
SPEAKER_01: A lot of times marriages who think they're healthy are actually surviving and they're running on fumes.
SPEAKER_01: You're not actually having your needs met by your spouse because they're fully unaware.
SPEAKER_01: You wonder why there's this underlying tension and aggravation that's constantly there.
SPEAKER_01: You wonder why maybe your husband's not as affectionate towards you and cherishing you the way you fully desire.
SPEAKER_01: You wonder why he feels like that, and then he's wondering why does it always seem like my wife doesn't actually like me?
SPEAKER_01: She says she loves me, but I don't think that she actually likes me as a person.
SPEAKER_01: That all this stuff is lingering because we've learned to survive, but we've never simply asked the question is it is it am I missing something?
SPEAKER_01: Am I missing something?
SPEAKER_01: We have to carefully determine and we have to learn.
SPEAKER_01: It's not about you having all the answers and making this stuff up.
SPEAKER_01: I try to make this up all the time and miss it all the time.
SPEAKER_01: It's simply going and communicating.
SPEAKER_01: God is a community, He communicates.
SPEAKER_01: He says, talk to me, and I'll talk to you.
SPEAKER_01: Right?
SPEAKER_01: He's trying to, he's using marriage to teach us how to relate to him.
SPEAKER_01: But we can't be lazy, we can't be sleeping on the job.
SPEAKER_01: And also, I don't know what your marriages are like.
SPEAKER_01: I'm not coming up here with all this information, like, oh, I gotta address this.
SPEAKER_01: I have no idea.
SPEAKER_01: I'm just following the Holy Spirit the best I can.
SPEAKER_01: God is reviving marriages, He's breathing life in.
SPEAKER_01: And I'm not even saying that your marriages are bad, but we've got to be honest.
SPEAKER_01: We're not continuing for just good, we're continuing for great.
SPEAKER_01: Abundant life.
SPEAKER_01: Abundant life, our cups overflowing.
SPEAKER_01: Amen?
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
SPEAKER_01: So we go on to verse 15.
SPEAKER_01: So be careful how you live.
SPEAKER_01: Don't live like fools, but like those who are wise.
SPEAKER_01: Wisdom is very important here, okay?
SPEAKER_01: Because a lot of times we can have knowledge, we can know stuff, and then you need understanding.
SPEAKER_01: You need to understand, well, how do I apply the stuff that I know?
SPEAKER_01: And then you need it one step further, the willingness to actually do it.
SPEAKER_01: Wisdom is the is having the knowledge and the correct understanding and then actually applying it.
SPEAKER_01: Many people stop short of understanding.
SPEAKER_01: I understand stuff, but you don't ever make the hard decision to do the stuff.
SPEAKER_01: I find myself falling short many times.
SPEAKER_01: Oh, yeah, I understand stuff.
SPEAKER_01: I've read some books of marriage or studied this Bible.
SPEAKER_01: I pray to God feel convicted.
SPEAKER_01: But it comes down to, David, what are you doing?
SPEAKER_01: What is the what is the sacrificial loving things that you're doing to put your wife before your own needs?
SPEAKER_01: What is the things that you're doing to, when you want to be rude and show contempt to your spouse?
SPEAKER_01: What are the things that you're doing to take control of your tongue and your attitude?
SPEAKER_01: When you're wanting to publicly shame your spouse and talk to your friends about their shortcomings, what is the things that you're doing to stop?
SPEAKER_01: That's the individual choice you have.
SPEAKER_01: I found myself that's the individual choice that I have over and over and over again.
SPEAKER_01: I have the choice to do this.
SPEAKER_01: I have the choice to control myself.
SPEAKER_01: I have the choice to stop self-satisfying and only seeking what brings me fulfillment and what brings me joy, and actually say, her tick.
SPEAKER_01: What is it that energizes her?
SPEAKER_01: And what are the things that I could do every single day, putting thought to it to put her before myself?
SPEAKER_01: But we come into marriage, I'm waiting for you to satisfy me.
SPEAKER_01: I'm waiting for you to fulfill my life.
SPEAKER_01: That's the perspective.
SPEAKER_01: And then we watch, and you know what we do is we keep score.
SPEAKER_01: Oh, ladies, you're you're masters at this.
SPEAKER_01: You get in an argument, you start losing the argument because you have no actual logical evidence.
SPEAKER_01: What you do is you bring up the 20 things he's done in the past 10 years.
SPEAKER_01: Do you know Paul says that's sinful?
SPEAKER_01: That's not love at all?
SPEAKER_01: As much as you feel justified in doing that?
SPEAKER_01: Do you know that 1 Peter 2, it's it's talking about in this context of slaves and marriage, but it's saying you need to act like Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: Do you know Jesus never retaliated when he was insulted?
SPEAKER_01: And you feel so holy and righteous, retaliating, retaliating, saying all the critical things you want to say to your husband, banging him down, nagging him.
SPEAKER_01: The Bible says it's better to live on the rooftop than in a house with a nagging wife.
SPEAKER_01: And you wonder why he wants to go fishing every weekend?
SPEAKER_01: You're making his life hell.
SPEAKER_01: You're draining him of all his virtue.
SPEAKER_01: He has no love for you because you have drained him.
SPEAKER_01: Because you don't know how to respect him.
SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna get the men too, by the way.
SPEAKER_01: I'm trying to do a ping-pong thing.
SPEAKER_01: Be careful how you live.
SPEAKER_01: Don't live like fools, but apply the wisdom of what God's telling you to do.
SPEAKER_01: Verse 16, make the most of every opportunity.
SPEAKER_01: This is where we get lazy.
SPEAKER_01: It's in the dating world, especially men are horrible at this.
SPEAKER_01: When you're dating, men we're like hunters.
SPEAKER_01: It's like a prize.
SPEAKER_01: And we put on our best, we put it like we comb our hair, we put on our best clothes, we're spending all of our money doing good dates, even sometimes dates we can't afford, but we're trying to make her think that we're rich and ballers, but we're not.
SPEAKER_01: Guilty.
SPEAKER_01: And then we get married, and all of a sudden we got the prize, and then we start chilling, and we become familiar with them, and all of a sudden we stop putting effort in.
SPEAKER_01: I'm guilty of this.
SPEAKER_01: And the women are thinking, where's that passion and flair for me that used to be there?
SPEAKER_01: Where's that where's that pursuit?
SPEAKER_01: There's this idea, there's this aspect of God that he wants to be pursued.
SPEAKER_01: Draw close to me, and I'll draw close to you.
SPEAKER_01: It's an invitation to pursue.
SPEAKER_01: You know, you know, men and women, we both, our nature came from the nature of God.
SPEAKER_01: God's not not just a man.
SPEAKER_01: Within him contains woman and man, right?
SPEAKER_01: Y'all agree with that?
SPEAKER_01: I hope you do.
SPEAKER_01: There's a part of him that wants to be pursued.
SPEAKER_01: Your wife still wants to be pursued, even when you're 20, 30, 40 years into marriage.
SPEAKER_01: Honey, what effort are you putting into this thing?
SPEAKER_01: Are you still trying to pursue me?
SPEAKER_01: And when you're not, she doesn't feel safe with you.
SPEAKER_01: She doesn't feel like you care.
SPEAKER_01: There's something missing.
SPEAKER_01: And you can go, you can go years, you can go bust your marriage depleted of affection.
SPEAKER_01: Because your husband doesn't get it.
SPEAKER_01: He does not understand.
SPEAKER_01: And even if he does, he's not willing to make the choice to make the most of every opportunity.
SPEAKER_01: Every single day is an opportunity to fulfill that God given need in your spouse.
SPEAKER_01: Going to require sacrificial love.
SPEAKER_01: The love of Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: The love that is undeserved, by the way.
SPEAKER_01: Putting them before you, it's not going to feel good.
SPEAKER_01: The way you are programmed to naturally respond, and the natural things you want to do is going to be opposite of what they need.
SPEAKER_01: Why did God do that?
SPEAKER_01: Deny yourself, take up your cross.
SPEAKER_01: Galatians 5.
SPEAKER_01: The Spirit wants what the flesh does not want.
SPEAKER_01: Are y'all catching this?
SPEAKER_01: The Spirit of God is calling us to do things that does not feel natural to us.
SPEAKER_01: Amen?
SPEAKER_01: To follow Jesus means to die to yourself.
SPEAKER_01: If you try to save your life, you'll lose your life.
SPEAKER_01: But if you give up your life for my sake, you'll find your life.
SPEAKER_01: Are y'all seeing the pattern here?
SPEAKER_01: I'm going to put marriage here, and it's going to require you to do the very opposite of what feels natural to you.
SPEAKER_01: It's going to require you to do the very opposite of what you want to do and how you want to love them.
SPEAKER_01: Because you're not doing how you want to love them.
SPEAKER_01: You're learning how they want to be loved, and how they want to be loved.
SPEAKER_01: It's not going to feel good.
SPEAKER_01: But you're going to deny yourself and you're going to love them.
SPEAKER_01: And then you're going to fill their tank.
SPEAKER_01: And then your marriage is going to be alive.
SPEAKER_01: But what do we do?
SPEAKER_01: Over and over and over.
SPEAKER_01: I'm going to satisfy myself.
SPEAKER_01: And I'm going to love you only the way that fulfills me, by the way.
SPEAKER_01: And then I'm going to wonder why is my marriage dead?
SPEAKER_01: God's a genius in his design.
SPEAKER_01: Genius.
SPEAKER_01: Because it's meant to transform us.
SPEAKER_01: It's an illustration of Christ in the church.
SPEAKER_01: What is Christ doing?
SPEAKER_01: He's transforming the church.
SPEAKER_01: He's making the church holy, washing her clean.
SPEAKER_01: Marriage is making us holy into the image of Christ.
SPEAKER_01: And it hurts.
SPEAKER_01: It hurts our pride.
SPEAKER_01: It hurts our self-image.
SPEAKER_01: It hurts us when we think we have all the answers.
SPEAKER_01: Some of the times I think I'm the most right is when I'm the most wrong.
SPEAKER_01: And that hurts, and I don't like it.
SPEAKER_01: Verse 18, don't be drunk with wine, but because that will ruin your life.
SPEAKER_01: Instead, be filled with the Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_01: The Spirit filling us, this is beautiful.
SPEAKER_01: This is the setup to the hard stuff.
SPEAKER_01: When you're filled with the Spirit, what does that do?
SPEAKER_01: That empowers you to do things that you can't do.
SPEAKER_01: The instruction that we're about to dive into is impossible for you to do on your own.
SPEAKER_01: It's very hard.
SPEAKER_01: And that's the point.
SPEAKER_01: That's the point.
SPEAKER_01: I'm going to call you to do something for your spouse out of reverence for me that you're not going to be able to do on your own.
SPEAKER_01: Why?
SPEAKER_01: Because I want you to be dependent upon me.
SPEAKER_01: So be filled with the Spirit.
SPEAKER_01: Do you know?
SPEAKER_01: Listen, my wife can talk to me about things that need to be fixed.
SPEAKER_01: Do you know what has corrected me more than anything?
SPEAKER_01: Is the Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_01: There's certain conversations she's never had to have with me because I'm listening to the Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_01: We need the Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_01: We need God's help.
SPEAKER_01: We are imperfect.
SPEAKER_01: We are weak.
SPEAKER_01: We are going to have our selfish moments.
SPEAKER_01: We need the Spirit of God inside of us.
SPEAKER_01: We need to be fanning the flame of that spirit.
SPEAKER_01: We need to be in the presence of God on a daily basis, okay?
SPEAKER_01: Don't let that close off.
SPEAKER_01: That's your source to help you do that thing that's going to be very hard to do, and it's going to be very hard to do.
SPEAKER_01: And you know, at times it's going to require you to suffer.
SPEAKER_01: And it's going to require you to not be satisfied.
SPEAKER_01: It's going to require you simply to give.
SPEAKER_01: And you're going to feel like you're giving, giving, giving all the time sometimes.
SPEAKER_01: And you're going to feel like they're so selfish, selfish, selfish.
SPEAKER_01: But when in those moments, you know what you're doing?
SPEAKER_01: You're displaying the love and the character of Christ.
SPEAKER_01: Because while we were still sinners, he hung on a cross.
SPEAKER_01: And he hung on a cross with not a guarantee that we would choose him.
SPEAKER_01: He still left that as our choice.
SPEAKER_01: Do you know what's beautiful about the hard stuff that I'm about to go over?
SPEAKER_01: And this is something that's been missed across the board.
SPEAKER_01: You know what's beautiful about it?
SPEAKER_01: They don't have to do it.
SPEAKER_01: Women, can I go ahead and tell you something?
SPEAKER_01: You don't have to respect him.
SPEAKER_01: You don't have to respect him as some head or leader of your household.
SPEAKER_01: You don't have to.
SPEAKER_01: No one's forcing you to do that.
SPEAKER_01: It's got to be a personal choice.
SPEAKER_01: And husbands, it's not your job to force them to submit to you.
SPEAKER_01: If you're trying to do that, you've missed the whole heart of what your job is.
SPEAKER_01: You're not pleasing God, you're doing a bad job at your role.
SPEAKER_01: God's not pleased with you, and he's going to deal with you, by the way.
SPEAKER_01: And he's got his ways to do that.
SPEAKER_01: It is not your job to force them to do their role.
SPEAKER_01: They have to make a choice.
SPEAKER_01: That's why God does not force salvation on us.
SPEAKER_01: He makes a choice.
SPEAKER_01: You've got a road to life and you've got a road to death.
SPEAKER_01: You've got a road that's going to obey Christ in your marriage, or you've got a road where you're going to obey yourself.
SPEAKER_01: But that's your choice.
SPEAKER_01: And vice versa.
SPEAKER_01: Women, it is not your job to force your husband to love you.
SPEAKER_01: You are not his Holy Spirit, and you're not.
SPEAKER_01: But some of you talk to your man like your mother, like you're his mother, and you are you are you are pulling the energy out of him.
SPEAKER_01: You are disrespecting him.
SPEAKER_01: You feel entitled to talk to him however you want.
SPEAKER_01: Listen, I want you to know this.
SPEAKER_01: When you fully understand what God means here, you're not allowed to talk to your husband however you want if you want to please the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: You're not allowed just blah blah blah blah.
SPEAKER_01: No.
SPEAKER_01: You cannot force your husband to love you.
SPEAKER_01: He's got to make that choice.
SPEAKER_01: He's got to make that self-sacrificial choice just like Jesus did.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus had the choice.
SPEAKER_01: Y'all good?
SPEAKER_01: Alright, now let's hit the hard stuff.
SPEAKER_01: 1216.
SPEAKER_01: We're still gonna go there because y'all need this.
SPEAKER_01: We all need this.
SPEAKER_01: Verse 22, it says, For wives, this means submit to your husbands as to the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: Verse 23, for a husband is the head of his wife as Christ is the head of the church.
SPEAKER_01: He is the savior of his body, the church.
SPEAKER_01: Verse 24, as the church submits to Christ, so you wives should submit to your husbands and everything.
SPEAKER_01: For husbands, this means love your wives just as Christ loved the church.
SPEAKER_01: He gave up his life for her to make her holy and clean, washed by the cleansing of God's word.
SPEAKER_01: Verse 27, he did this to present her to himself as a glorious church without spot or wrinkle or any other blemish.
SPEAKER_01: Instead, she will be holy and without fault.
SPEAKER_01: In the same way, husbands ought to love their wives as they love their own bodies.
SPEAKER_01: For a man who loves his wife actually shows love for himself.
SPEAKER_01: No one hates his own body but feeds and cares for it just as Christ cares for the church.
SPEAKER_01: And we are members of his body, as the scriptures say, a man leaves his father and mother and is joined to his wife, and the two are united to one.
SPEAKER_01: This is a great mystery, but this but it is an illustration of the way Christ and the Church are one.
SPEAKER_01: And then in verse 33, I want you to see this.
SPEAKER_01: It says, So again I say, each man must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband.
SPEAKER_01: This is the this is taken so many times where it's used to force the other.
SPEAKER_01: And that's not God's heart.
SPEAKER_01: He wants you to make a d a decision to be this to the to your spouse because you want to obey the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: And the whole buildup is beautiful to get to all this.
SPEAKER_01: Imitate God, love sacrificially.
SPEAKER_01: Don't allow sin.
SPEAKER_01: Don't make excuses for sin.
SPEAKER_01: Don't participate in people that even try to say it's okay, it's not okay.
SPEAKER_01: But you want to please the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: Determine what pleases the Lord, okay?
SPEAKER_01: And then it goes into this thing where it calls women to respect your husbands and it calls husbands to love your wives.
SPEAKER_01: Your husband needs love, but he speaks it in the language of respect.
SPEAKER_01: You are not programmed this way, ladies.
SPEAKER_01: This does not make sense.
SPEAKER_01: This is very different from how you naturally think.
SPEAKER_01: The things that he needs from you, it's going to feel foreign.
SPEAKER_01: And so you have to ask and you have to learn what does the language of respect?
SPEAKER_01: Because ingrained in your husband is a man who's willing to die for you and wants to serve you, and he wants to put you on a pedestal and cherish you.
SPEAKER_01: But if you keep disrespecting him, and a lot of times this is what happens.
SPEAKER_01: Most spouses in most marriages that we think you know have all these problems, they both intend to do good.
SPEAKER_01: They both want to be good spouses.
SPEAKER_01: This is the majority.
SPEAKER_01: There are always exceptions.
SPEAKER_01: There are evil people that are just not going to do good no matter what happens, right?
SPEAKER_01: But the majority of marriages, this is coming from the actual statistics of marriage counselors, by the way, Christian marriage counselors.
SPEAKER_01: They say the majority of the time you have well-meaning, good-willed people that literally they care about their spouse and they want to be a good spouse.
SPEAKER_01: The problem is that they're not understanding what to do.
SPEAKER_01: And the wife does something with good intentions, but the husband is interpreting it as disrespect.
SPEAKER_01: And the more he interprets it as disrespect, he feels wronged.
SPEAKER_01: But also all of a sudden, the energy inside of him, his fuel tank, is running low to show love to her because he feels disrespected, but she has no idea what she's doing is affecting him the way it's affecting him.
SPEAKER_01: There's an idea out there that men are tough and they can just take it.
SPEAKER_01: Do you know that's a secular idea?
SPEAKER_01: We say it all the time.
SPEAKER_01: Well you're supposed to be tough, you can just take it.
SPEAKER_01: I can, you know, you know how to handle me, I can react however I want.
SPEAKER_01: Do you know you can say things?
SPEAKER_01: You have access to your husband to actually hurt him and destroy him on the inside?
SPEAKER_01: And you'll never know it because again, he has to be tough.
SPEAKER_01: And he's not he's not good at communicating his emotions, so you're not gonna know it.
SPEAKER_01: You're gonna think he's fine, and he's destroyed on the inside.
SPEAKER_01: His confidence level is depleted because of how you talk to him.
SPEAKER_01: You think, oh, I really didn't mean it.
SPEAKER_01: He's tough, he's gonna still take it.
SPEAKER_01: Do you know that sometimes I've done this too?
SPEAKER_01: When my wife's talking to me, sometimes I'll, you know, I'll try to retaliate and I'll say something cutting at her.
SPEAKER_01: And I and sometimes if she says something cutting to me, it doesn't really affect me that much sometimes.
SPEAKER_01: And I think, well, I'll just give her a taste of real medicine, and then I'll say something, and it really hurts her.
SPEAKER_01: Like really wounds her.
SPEAKER_01: Ladies will do this thing sometimes where they'll walk away, you know.
SPEAKER_01: Don't even talk to me.
SPEAKER_01: You know what I'm saying?
SPEAKER_01: Don't even talk to me.
SPEAKER_01: And they'll just walk away.
SPEAKER_01: They're wanting you to run after them.
SPEAKER_01: No, don't do this.
SPEAKER_01: Well, if they said don't, they're wanting you to pursue them.
SPEAKER_01: This is legit.
SPEAKER_01: No, this is for real.
SPEAKER_01: Because they want to be pursued.
SPEAKER_01: But I tried this on my wife one time.
SPEAKER_01: I was like, whatever.
SPEAKER_01: I just walked away.
SPEAKER_01: And I didn't call her all day.
SPEAKER_01: Went to, you know, I went to work.
SPEAKER_01: It it really hurt her.
SPEAKER_01: It really hurt her.
SPEAKER_01: More than anything like that has ever affected me.
SPEAKER_01: The point I'm making, man, is that little things that we think are not a big deal can be like we would never believe.
SPEAKER_01: Honey, I hey, you want to go on a walk?
SPEAKER_01: Too busy.
SPEAKER_01: Oh.
SPEAKER_01: We don't realize they have these calls to connect with us.
SPEAKER_01: They have the it's it's it's not just financial stability that they need from you.
SPEAKER_01: It's not just the fact that you have guns and ARs and ready to take down China if they ever invade to protect her.
SPEAKER_01: She needs to like it it at the core of women.
SPEAKER_01: Okay, I'm not like a womanologist.
SPEAKER_01: Did I make that up?
SPEAKER_01: Sounds good though.
SPEAKER_01: Womanology.
SPEAKER_01: But we'll share this, okay?
SPEAKER_01: I just want you to know that, okay?
SPEAKER_01: They'll say at the core of women is a desire for security.
SPEAKER_01: They want to feel safe.
SPEAKER_01: Like if finances are tight, they're gonna get stressed, they're not gonna feel safe.
SPEAKER_01: And when they get stressed, they're gonna become a different person.
SPEAKER_01: And even their desire and ability to be intimate with you men is going to be depleted because they're afraid and stressed.
SPEAKER_01: And then all of a sudden you're not getting the intimacy that you want, and then all of a sudden you get aggravated, and then all of a sudden you got this spot or just women need to feel emotionally safe.
SPEAKER_01: And you are the person that is meant the you're the person where they your wife is meant to be the most important person in your life.
SPEAKER_01: She's meant to be the most important, not your family, not your bros.
SPEAKER_01: Sorry, Ty.
SPEAKER_01: She needs to be the most important.
SPEAKER_01: And so what she's gonna do is she's gonna watch your actions.
SPEAKER_01: Okay?
SPEAKER_01: And she's gonna interpret all of your actions and everything you say through this lens.
SPEAKER_01: Am I the most important thing motivating him right now?
SPEAKER_01: That's how she's gonna look at love.
SPEAKER_01: So if you make a decision flippantly that affects her negatively, she's going to interpret that as he doesn't love me.
SPEAKER_01: I don't feel safe anymore.
SPEAKER_01: I don't feel like I'm cherished.
SPEAKER_01: When you don't take time to listen to her and her needs, and you just get aggravated, she's going to interpret that as he doesn't really care.
SPEAKER_01: I know you had a hard day at work, and I know you're tired, I know you're emotionally drained, and you don't have time to do an in-depth conversation because it's very foreign to you.
SPEAKER_01: It requires you to self-sacrifice just to listen, but she needs that.
SPEAKER_01: Because you're not she's not gonna feel safe.
SPEAKER_01: If you're not there, if you don't have an open ear.
SPEAKER_01: When you're making a decision and you don't bring her in on this decision, how's he supposed to lead me?
SPEAKER_01: He doesn't even know me.
SPEAKER_01: She doesn't feel safe.
SPEAKER_01: Her call to respect you is not the point is not to silence her.
SPEAKER_01: She needs to be very active in the marriage, very vocal.
SPEAKER_01: Her call to respect you doesn't mean that she's silent.
SPEAKER_01: It means that if there's a correction and she needs to address something wrong, she does it respectfully.
SPEAKER_01: But that is the most loving thing that she can do because you're called to be a leader, right?
SPEAKER_01: Well, a good leader knows that he has to have all the facts to make the best decision, right?
SPEAKER_01: Well, you have to have all the facts.
SPEAKER_01: And if if you're not listening to her, you don't have all the facts.
SPEAKER_01: And if your very objective is to take care of her, then you have to know her.
SPEAKER_01: But if you don't ever let her talk, how do you even know her?
SPEAKER_01: And he's called delete.
SPEAKER_01: Do you know what's interesting?
SPEAKER_01: And I'll probably close in 20 minutes.
SPEAKER_01: Ingrained in men, and this is what they found again, I'm going back to the data, they found that men tend to struggle with shame.
SPEAKER_01: They tend to feel disqualified.
SPEAKER_01: They disqualify themselves.
SPEAKER_01: What I mean is that if I'm supposed to lead you, I don't feel qualified to lead you.
SPEAKER_01: And they tend to view their wives as more righteous.
SPEAKER_01: I'm disqualified, and I don't deserve to lead.
SPEAKER_01: Okay?
SPEAKER_01: They struggle with shame naturally.
SPEAKER_01: Yet this is what's beautiful.
SPEAKER_01: What does God call them to do?
SPEAKER_01: To lead.
SPEAKER_01: They naturally don't feel qualified to lead.
SPEAKER_01: Okay?
SPEAKER_01: Follow me.
SPEAKER_01: I'm calling you to lead.
SPEAKER_01: Why does God do that?
SPEAKER_01: So that his grace can be shown.
SPEAKER_01: Grace empowers us to do that which we thought we'd never be able to do, right?
SPEAKER_01: And you know what women struggle with naturally?
SPEAKER_01: Self-righteousness.
SPEAKER_01: They say that most of the time in most in most marriage counselors of marriages that are in trouble, that women typically are only willing to confess two primary sins.
SPEAKER_01: They're willing to confess that they're sinful when they respond to their husband's shortcomings, and they're willing to admit when they've had lack of patience with the children.
SPEAKER_01: But everything else, they don't really see it as sin.
SPEAKER_01: They're not willing to own that.
SPEAKER_01: Interesting enough.
SPEAKER_01: They struggle with self-righteousness.
SPEAKER_01: So here you have a man who naturally struggles with shame, yet he's called to lead.
SPEAKER_01: He feels unqualified to lead, and the very person that could fuel his tank, right?
SPEAKER_01: Becomes critical.
SPEAKER_01: Are y'all catching this?
SPEAKER_01: We talk, we talk to our spouses like they're trash because we're looking at the scoreboard.
SPEAKER_01: We came into our marriage with a contract.
SPEAKER_01: I'm only gonna do this if you do your part, and I'm going to retaliate.
SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna when you are evil to me, I'm going to repay evil with evil.
SPEAKER_01: And Jesus Christ says, I want you to glorify me, and I want you to demonstrate my heart to your spouse.
SPEAKER_01: They're not going to deserve it sometimes, and I want you to give that undeserved respect.
SPEAKER_01: And she's not going to deserve it sometimes.
SPEAKER_01: And then sometimes she's going to anger you and get on your nerves, but I want you to show her that unconditional love.
SPEAKER_01: And times you don't want to be gentle, I want you to be gentle.
SPEAKER_01: And times you don't want to talk and spend time with her, I want you to spend time with her.
SPEAKER_01: And I want you to ask her how she feels.
SPEAKER_01: And when she tries to talk to you, I want you to really listen.
SPEAKER_01: And really listen.
SPEAKER_01: Don't just say, okay, yeah, and then just forget it.
SPEAKER_01: I do that too.
SPEAKER_01: And I'm sorry.
SPEAKER_01: I do that so many times.
SPEAKER_01: I sit there and I'm like, and all I hear is wah, wah, wah, wah, wah.
SPEAKER_01: Guilty.
SPEAKER_01: Men, we drain our wife's virtue.
SPEAKER_01: They're scared, they don't feel cherished, and then we wonder why they're not happy.
SPEAKER_01: And you know what happens is that when they don't have fuel in their tank, they're going to naturally disrespect us.
SPEAKER_01: But if you want your wife respecting you, why don't you lay your life down?
SPEAKER_01: Because that is going to fuel her desire to respect you.
SPEAKER_01: It'll make her life easier.
SPEAKER_01: She can have the choice and have to make a faith-based choice to obey, but you can make her life easier.
SPEAKER_01: When my wife knows that she's the most important person in my life and I'm willing to make sacrificial decisions, you know what?
SPEAKER_01: Respecting me is not hard.
unknown: That's right.
SPEAKER_01: But men, but women, when your husband knows that you respect him and believe in him, when it's unqualified, y'all hear this.
SPEAKER_01: It's undeserved respect.
SPEAKER_01: It's unconditional.
SPEAKER_01: Okay?
SPEAKER_01: When he knows you believe in him, even in the midst of his failures, that you still believe in him, that he's the man of your household, that you trust him, that you're willing to follow him, that's going to put fuel in his tank, and you're going to find all of a sudden this man who maybe does have a past of failure after sudden, that man's going to become a lion.
SPEAKER_01: He's going to break through.
SPEAKER_01: He's going to have breakthrough.
SPEAKER_01: And all of a sudden, this man that used to be weak is now strong because he's got a woman that believes in him and says, Even though I see death, I'm going to speak to these dry bones.
SPEAKER_01: I'm going to speak like to respect you, even though you don't deserve it.
SPEAKER_01: Because I'm doing this out of reverence to Christ.
SPEAKER_01: And Christ is the God of the impossible.
SPEAKER_01: Christ is the one that speaks to dead things and says, Come alive.
SPEAKER_01: He's bringing life to marriages, church.
SPEAKER_01: Not that just so we can be stagnant and get by, not just so we can be roommates who successfully raise children, but to be passionate about one another.
SPEAKER_01: In this together for the long haul.
SPEAKER_01: I'm committed to you.
SPEAKER_01: I'm never going to leave you.
SPEAKER_01: I'm never going to forsake you.
SPEAKER_01: And the things that you need for me, I'm willing to put myself on the altar so that I can glorify my God.
SPEAKER_01: And I'm not looking for you to be perfect.
SPEAKER_01: And I'm not looking for you to qualify to make me act right towards you.
SPEAKER_01: I'm just going to do it.
SPEAKER_01: Amen.
SPEAKER_01: Let's stand.
SPEAKER_01: Thank you, Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: Thank you, Jesus, for your cross.
SPEAKER_01: Thank you, Jesus, for sacrificial love, Father.
SPEAKER_01: I thank you that you're reviving marriages, God, with the love of Christ.
SPEAKER_01: I thank you, there's no condemnation for those who are Christ Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: You've got a rough past, join the club.
SPEAKER_01: But today is a new day.
SPEAKER_01: Joy comes in the morning.
SPEAKER_01: I'm telling you this right now.
SPEAKER_01: Joy comes in the morning.
SPEAKER_01: I thank you, God, that you're giving grace to these men and women of God, to these beautiful marriages that you've formed and put together.
SPEAKER_01: We rebuke every lie and every attack of the enemy, every stronghold that has tried to keep marriages bound.
SPEAKER_01: I rebuke you in the name of Jesus, and I plead the blood of Jesus over marriages.
SPEAKER_01: And Lord, we say we need help and we need grace to treat our spouses you call us to treat them.
SPEAKER_01: We need help and we need grace, Father.
SPEAKER_01: Men, let me do this.
SPEAKER_01: Just agree with me if you want to.
SPEAKER_01: If you don't want to, then don't.
SPEAKER_01: But agree with me quietly.
SPEAKER_01: I'm going to say a prayer of repentance, and I want you, if you connect with this, then say it to the Lord also internally.
SPEAKER_01: Is that fair?
SPEAKER_01: Lord, I could I come to you, Father, as a sinner, and I come to you as someone who's been selfish, who's been blind to the needs and the cares of my wife, Lord, who I've just been self-motivated, I've been prideful, I've been st I've I've been bitter, I've harbored unforgiveness, Father.
SPEAKER_01: I ask that you would forgive me for the way that I've treated my wife.
SPEAKER_01: I ask you forgive me for the way I've talked to her.
SPEAKER_01: I ask you forgive me for the way that I've neglected her needs, Lord.
SPEAKER_01: I've been so fixated on my own issues and my own desires.
SPEAKER_01: Lord, forgive me for doing that.
SPEAKER_01: And I ask that you would help me, Holy Spirit, and give me the grace of God to love her as you've called me to love her.
SPEAKER_01: And Lord, I ask that you would help me.
SPEAKER_01: Your word says you will change my desires and give me the ability to do what pleases you.
SPEAKER_01: I need your help, Lord, to show the love of Jesus, to love her as you love the church, to lay down my life, Father, my will, my emotions, my well-being, Lord.
SPEAKER_01: I say that I put her first now.
SPEAKER_01: She is the most important person.
SPEAKER_01: She is the one that I cherish, Father, and I say yes in the name of Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: Help me to glorify you in my marriage.
SPEAKER_01: And now to the ladies, if you will do this.
SPEAKER_01: Lord, I come to you and I repent for the way that I've treated my husband.
SPEAKER_01: I've repent for the ways that I've talked down to him.
SPEAKER_01: I've I repent for the ways that I've not been willing to learn or even own up to the idea that maybe I'm doing this wrong.
SPEAKER_01: I repent for not being aware of the own sins of my life.
SPEAKER_01: I've looked at I've looked at the speck in his eye and I've ignored the log in mine, Lord.
SPEAKER_01: I ask that you'd forgive me for being self righteous.
SPEAKER_01: I ask that you'd forgive me for being critical.
SPEAKER_01: I'd ask that you forgive me for being uncovering, telling my Friends mocking him in public, telling others in public I wish he would do this stuff, demeaning him, showing contempt for him, always complaining, trying to use sex to control him.
SPEAKER_01: Forgive me, Father, for doing these things, trying to manipulate him.
SPEAKER_01: Father, forgive me for the tone that I've used with him.
SPEAKER_01: Forgive me when I, instead of trying to address bad behavior, when I've attacked his identity, when I've assassinated his character to try to get him to comply, forgive me, Father, for trying to force him, Lord.
SPEAKER_01: I say that I trust you with my marriage and I trust you with my husband.
SPEAKER_01: And I thank you, Lord, even in the midst of his failure, that it's your spirit that is strengthening him and empowering him to be the man that he's called to be.
SPEAKER_01: And I trust you, and I come out of agreement with fear in the name of Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: And we break off fear of the wives in the name of Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: Fear and lack of trust in God's ability to take a man who is weak and miserable and make him strong and mighty.
SPEAKER_01: Thank you, Father.
SPEAKER_01: Honey, did you have anything?
SPEAKER_00: Um, I love the message.
SPEAKER_00: Do you guys feel encouraged?
SPEAKER_00: It was intense, but it was awesome.
SPEAKER_00: Um so I I'm excited, I think, for next week.
SPEAKER_00: Um, because he talked, he already told me this, I'm giving you guys a spoiler.
SPEAKER_00: He's gonna talk more about practicals of what this looks like.
SPEAKER_00: Because just to be vulnerable for a second for for our marriage, for me, you know, when it came to submission, um, I was excited about submitting, but you know, you're young, and then they're young, and you know, they're I think I think the South has created a wrong perspective of what submission is, where it's almost like, okay, the woman just has to close her eyes and be blind to anything and leave her brain somewhere and can't give an opinion, and that's not submission.
SPEAKER_00: And what and what he talked about with respect is such a I I love it.
SPEAKER_00: It's like I just want to, you know, just break this secular idea again that he said is respect is not earned.
SPEAKER_00: That is a secular viewpoint.
SPEAKER_00: That's that's such a cultural thing.
SPEAKER_00: Like I'm I'm only gonna give you respect, you know, once you prove to me that that you're able to do this.
SPEAKER_00: But the reality is, is what here he's saying, is Christ is on the inside of our men, amen, if they've accepted Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: And we're trusting that that Christ is on a journey to grow them into the leader that they're created to be.
SPEAKER_00: It doesn't mean we leave our brain at home, but it means that we're cheering them on.
SPEAKER_00: And whether we agree or disagree about the decisions that they're making, we're saying, I believe that you are going to be God is making you into the leader that you're called to be.
SPEAKER_00: You're called to lead this home.
SPEAKER_00: And so we're cheering them on.
SPEAKER_00: It's not saying that we agree with everything all the time.
SPEAKER_00: It's not saying we can't say, hey, you know, you had this idea for the finances, and I want to submit another idea to you.
SPEAKER_00: What about this?
SPEAKER_00: You know, we're a team.
SPEAKER_00: The Bible says that two is better than one.
SPEAKER_00: So it's not just one brain leading the household, we are one unit working together for the good and the glory of God.
SPEAKER_00: And so he doesn't all of a sudden, you know, he's not, it's not like he's making all of these decisions and just saying, you know, you just have to submit and go with what I'm saying.
SPEAKER_00: That's not it.
SPEAKER_00: If if we view submission like that, we've totally missed the picture.
SPEAKER_00: And I I'll say this when we begin to operate in our God-given roles, it is amazing what what what what you said about God being a genius.
SPEAKER_00: When I'm when I'm respecting him like I'm called to, whether he whether he's doing everything right or not, is his his tank is fueled and he begins to treat me the way that I desire to be treated, and it starts this beautiful cycle of you actually finding fulfillment in your marriage because why?
SPEAKER_00: God's ways work.
SPEAKER_00: So we're not all of a sudden having these moments of like, well, you did this to me, so I'm gonna do this to you.
SPEAKER_00: No.
SPEAKER_00: My my focus is I'm here to please the Lord, and that means that I walk in forgiveness, that means that I don't hold grudges, that means that my identity doesn't just come from him, but my foundational identity is secure in Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: So I'm gonna do the right thing and as best I can be the wife that God is calling me to be and trust that the Lord is going to fix him as he's also fixing me.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: So I think it's I'm excited about the practicals because I remember coming into marriage and being like, well, what about this?
SPEAKER_00: What if he has this idea?
SPEAKER_00: Can I just not say anything?
SPEAKER_00: And what about this?
SPEAKER_00: And that's not it at all.
SPEAKER_00: Is we're running together and we're best friends, and we're just discovering and asking the humble question, hey, how do you want to be loved?
SPEAKER_00: And it might not make sense to the other person, but when we do that, there's so much fulfillment and love and joy and peace in a marriage, and doing it, I would just say doing it God's way works, and I'm excited about the next sermon for the practicals.
SPEAKER_01: Amen, amen, amen.
SPEAKER_01: I love you, boo boo.
SPEAKER_01: It was from last week if you're here.
SPEAKER_01: Insider joke, right?
SPEAKER_01: Um, we love you all.
SPEAKER_01: Take this week, start to have the hard conversations with your spouse.
SPEAKER_01: Have grace with one.