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I guess I've been looking for you. I guess I've been looking for you.

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Welcome to Brewing Better Marriages with Philip and Debbie Sanders, coming to you live from T South Dakota. The last two sessions have been more on just an introduction of who we are and what we've done in our life and giving you a little bit of a documentation where that's concerned. But today we're going to step into a little bit of advice where marriage is concerned. We want to talk about a responsibility that we have to do it right. This world doesn't carry much, but we have a responsibility to have a marriage God's way. Why? Because God is the one that instituted this marriage. First of all, let's go to the scriptures. What does it say?

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Hebrews 13 4 says, Marriage is honorable in all. What does that mean? Honorable. It means honored, esteemed, precious, costly.

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Do you think this generation has any of that in it?

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Not much.

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Just very few. Those that have a commitment to God. But as far as out in the world, that honored and esteemed, that precious thing, it's not there. So what else does God say about it?

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Well, it's a responsibility in Ephesians five says, five thirty-three. Nevertheless, let every one of you in particular so love his wife even as himself, and the wife see that she reverence her husband. Ephesians five twenty-two to twenty-four says, Wives, submit yourself unto your own husbands as unto the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church, and he is the Savior of the body. Therefore, as the church is subject unto Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in everything. In Ephesians 5 31 says, For this cause shall a man leave father and mother, shall be joined unto his wife, and they too shall be one. Same scripture again in Matthew nineteen five. First Peter three seven says, Likewise ye husbands dwell with them according to knowledge, giving honor unto the wife as unto the weaker vessel, and as heirs together of the grace of life, that your prayers be not hindered.

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Now I like that weaker vessel part, but I don't like that it puts a condition on there that my prayers be not hindered. Maybe that's the reason why some of us guys aren't getting our prayers answered, is we have not been honoring her. That's what it's esteemed, precious, honoring her as a weaker vessel. So there's other scriptures, Titus 2 and 3, Proverbs 31. It's very simple. It talks about the the woman who is able to uh take care of things the way she needs to. You have a responsibility to do it God's way. Now, in that, you know, this is a hard thing to to cross over here, but the D word should never be in your vocabulary.

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Divorce, yes.

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You should never threaten, it shouldn't even be in your mentality. But that's the pressure of this age that we're living in, is is you know, just it's not a commitment.

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Right. I mean, you know, this world looks at marriage like 50-50. I'll do my uh part, 50% of it, or whatever, you do your 50%, but marriage is work and it's 100-100. If you go into it thinking like, well, I have my part to do and he better do his part. Listen, God gives us in the word, in his scriptures, what our part is. He explains that yeah clearly to us.

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For us guys, uh, you know, I've tried volunteer to wash the clothes.

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Not that. I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about the part, just love your wife.

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Oh, okay, okay. And that brings me to this. You know, she's looking at things through pink eyes, and I look at things through blue eyes. Now there is a book, it's called Love and Respect, written by, and he does some courses, by Emerson Eggrich, and it's very good if you'll apply those to it. But one of the phrases in there is it's not wrong, it's just different. Let's say that together. It's not wrong, it's just different. She's looking at it from a different perspective because of the way that God has made her, and I'm looking at it from a different perspective, the way God has made me as a man. Men, for the most part, are all about stature or I call it isness. It's on who's the big dog in the pen. Say, for instance, I get on an airplane and I sit down beside a guy, and I don't ask him, Are you married? He'd probably well, not in today's society, but I'd hope he'd feel like punching me. Uh I will ask him, What do you do?

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And if I were to get on an airplane, sit down by a woman, I wouldn't ask her what she does, but I would ask her, Are you married? You have children, what do we do? We start looking at the pictures, talk about the grandkids, because women are all about relationship.

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So it's not wrong. It's just different. So the stature thing, and Emerson Eggrich says we get into this crazy cycle, and what happens is if she doesn't give me respect, then I'm not going to give her love. And if she doesn't, if I don't give her love, then she's not going to give me respect. And so we get into this cycle to where we don't know how to get, and we live this way. We just we live silent lives in a home. And it's not what God has destined or planned for a marriage to be. So we've got to work on these things. And really, marriage is nothing but a uh a great sanctifying part. It's dying out to self and and and just giving your life totally. So we have got to work at this. It's not something that's just going to come because we say I do, or something because we've signed a piece of paper that's called a marriage certificate. It's something, as she said a while ago, it's got to be 100 100.

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Eggridge also says, uh, how do you get out of this crazy cycle?

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Usually in our relationship, it's me.

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A more mature one. Right. Okay. Hey, listen, the first sense of that you know, ladies, when you have said something that has not been respectful and you've dishonored him, and you can see it all over him. Sometimes a man will just shut down completely, or he'll walk away. You know, he he won't he'll just close it up stonewall.

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That's the same thing with you fellas. You know exactly when you have said something that has wounded that love. You're not shown it of what she needs. And you know, this is one thing, one reason why God commanded us. It wasn't a suggestion, it was a command. Husbands, love your wives.

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Wives, respect, honor your husbands.

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So it's a command, it's something you have to work at. It doesn't come natural. You just have to work at, yeah, let's fall in love. Well, you don't fall into this. Amen. It's an act of the will.

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And so when when you know you've done that, what do you do? The first thing we need to do is say, honey, I'm sorry. That wasn't respectful.

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I'm sorry, you're sorry, honey.

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No, that's not what you say.

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Oh.

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That wouldn't help anything.

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Okay, all right. And then and then also where God's concerned, he has placed this with a chain of command. Somebody in years past has developed a uh a basic principle of called the umbrella of protection. It's first Christ or God, and second is the husband, the third is the wife, and the fourth is the children, if you can visualize this as just umbrellas stepping down. But when one of them gets out from underneath that, you've got the responsibility to do it yourself. Whereas if you stay under that, Christ, men stay under Christ, stay in the word, stay in prayer, stay walking in the spirit every day. And wives?

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Wives stay under the protection that God's given you, your husband. And you know, that just lets me realize there's some things I don't even have to worry about. I don't need to be uh fretting over because it's not for me to fret over. It's his because God's given him that responsibility.

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And then there is also the leave and cleave principle we talk about. He said leaving father and mother and cleaving unto your wife. Well, can I say it this way? Um when we do that, we're also carrying some luggage with us, how we're raised, how the atmosphere of our home is or was. And so what we must do is sometimes we gotta start unpacking that stuff. We gotta we gotta put it out of there. I mean, uh, you know, my wife and I, she was raised um a Yankee, but God forgave her of that. Okay, she was raised in Columbus, Ohio, and north. I was raised in south, down in the Missouri, bottom Missouri, Neosho, Joplin area. Why? You know what? She didn't know what it was like to eat biscuits and gravy for breakfast. White gravy? No.

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I was skinny then, too.

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Well, she didn't know what uh fried okra was or eating pinto beans or brown beans. She didn't, there's everything was navy beans for her. And so she her old philosophy was that up north we bake, broil, and boil. And down south we fry, fry, fry. Then I get an amen in the church. But some of this stuff we have to we have to unpack it and put it outside of our home, of our marriage, because it's not going to do any good. Even going to let's just touch on this, we'll get it a little deeper later, but our finances. You know, she was raised a budgeteer. Okay. Uh you know, it's kind of like the musketeer, and she even had the sword uh when we first got married, a budgeteer. I was raised at man, God of supply. Don't worry about it. God'll take care of that. And so I needed some of what she had.

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And I needed some of what he had.

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So we've had to work over the years. Has there been difficulties? Has there been times of frustration? Yes, has uh wait a minute.

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I just backing you.

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Remember, it's a hundred hundred, honey. You preach it. So this leave and cleave thing is something that we have to do. We have to, we have to keep. And um and make sure that we leave that stuff outside and not cleave to it. We cleave to our wife. You know, we take the worst and put it outside, but we take the best from our raising and apply it to our marriages so that we can become one and make our own home.

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We build that from there. Yes, that's right.

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Well, we're glad that you joined us today. And um, as we have said before, this is just a work in progress. We've never done these type of things before, so here we are. But I just want to tell you how much we appreciate you listening. And uh we want you to uh if you can get on the website, look at the website, and um email us with any questions you might have at sandersministries at gmail dot com. And on the website, it's sanders ministries.org. I'll say that again, sanders dash ministries.org. Thanks again for joining us with Brewing Better Marriages from T South Dakota.