Three things on your outline, I'll highlight each, and then I'll consider some of the broken stories that maybe might represent where you are as you invest this afternoon with good friends.
So, when the gospel of God's grace is beginning to meet us exactly where we are, either preparing to be married, or like for Darlene and I, a quarter of a century into marriage, here's what we want to begin to understand and experience.
What is a gospel-shaped marriage?
Well, it is a relationship in which each spouse is coming alive to the only love better than life, the only love that will never let go of us, the only love that is enough, God's love for us and our ultimate spouse, Jesus.
That language, I don't want to be too abstract, we don't want it to be sentimental, don't want to be just uh mere metaphor.
Why do you suppose the Bible says that in eternity we will not be living together as couples?
Now you remember that unique conversation Jesus was once queried by a group of scribes about, so Jesus, what if what if a man is married?
Now, what if a woman is married and is married to seven different husbands, who is she going to be living with in eternity?
Now they were trying to play stump the band, Jesus.
But Jesus' response was profound.
You don't understand the scriptures themselves.
Don't you know that in that day we are neither, they are neither given nor taken in marriage?
See, marriage as we understand it, as God designs it in this world, is a temporary relationship looking toward the day when Christ returns, and our deepest longings for relational intactness will be fulfilled as we live as the family of God in eternity in the rich, most robust, fulfilled relationship with God Himself.
It's while we are called the bride of Christ.
And as we begin to discover, again, let's ramp it down from mere metaphor or something that sounds so abstract that sounds silly, when we really begin to understand the profound reality that we are more married to Jesus than we will ever be to a human spouse.
It begins to free us to think about our marriage differently.
There is not an eternal marriage in this room.
Now, sometimes in our culture we put such unbelievable expectations on marriage, and it's why we get so dang angry.
It's a part of the reason why we are so frustrated.
It's why we harm each other's hearts too much of the time.
We put a burden on a human relationship God never intended.
See, a marriage shaped by the grace of God, the good news of Jesus, and the story that He would tell to us and through us, it is each one of us realizing, Lord, truly, your love is the only love that is enough.
That's why the second affirmation will be this of a gospel-shaped marriage, a marriage more defined by the grace of God than something else.
It will be learning to love your spouse as Jesus loves you.
That will be a theme tomorrow morning, but just think with me about this paradigm.
What would it look like for you personally in your spiritual relationship with God through the finished work of Jesus as you come more alive to Jesus' love for you, to basically begin to do a paradigm shift where you hear Jesus say to you, love others as I love you.
I mean, that was a that was a incredibly freeing beginning of a journey for Darlene and I when we unplugged the umbilical cord, when we stopped being ticks, and started understanding that as Jesus loves us, we will begin to love each other.
What does that look like?
Forgiveness.
Think about several of those scriptures that maybe come to mind where you readily can remember some of those Bible verses you grew up with, or if you're a new believer, you're just beginning to hear.
When the Bible says to us, forgive one another just as God in Christ has forgiven you.
See, the most operative part of that equation is as God has forgiven me, I want to learn to forgive.
If I forgive my spouse only to the extent that they deserve my forgiveness, that's just the recipe for a very miserable marriage.
And you see, what Darlene and I began to realize was we had hurt each other very deeply in many ways.
Not physically, but incredibly emotional harm.
And we needed to learn that the rootedness of our journey of forgiveness would be in God's forgiveness of us in Christ, that we would begin to extend to one another.
Let me tell you, there are a few more revolutionary powers on the face of the earth, and when a couple begin to be humbled and gladdened by God's forgiveness and they begin to forgive one another.
When grace begins to become the culture of your marriage, that's when healing and freedom really begin to move into play.
We're called to accept one another just as God in Christ has accepted us.
Now, surely, for those of you that have been married more than five minutes, you have discovered some fodder for irritation.
I mean, really think about it for a few minutes right now, and I'm not going to ask you to kind of speak out, you know, your most irritable moments.
But what on any given day can absolutely frustrate the fire out of you about the way your spouse does certain things?
Now, I'm not asking you to write a bunch of stuff down because this is not an afternoon to focus on irritation and frustration.
But let me tell you, you put two unglorified, two unglorified, two unperfected human beings together, and in time everybody's gonna hurt.
See, the the foolishness, the naivete we assume is this if I had married the right person, we would always agree about what to set the thermostat on, when and how to have sex, where to go on vacation, whose parents get Christmas, whose parents get Thanksgiving, where the kids go to school, how close the underwear actually gets to the hamper, how permissible it is for a peanut butter knife to be in the sink longer than 15 minutes before it makes it to the dishwasher, how fast to drive, what car to buy, what color of towels.
I hope I'm not pushing too many buttons, just to think about the litany of how life itself can be so frustrating.
And I think for Darlene and I, again, just to be very vulnerable with you, we began to realize how did that little irritant have the power to rob us of joy for a whole week?
And had more to say about the bankruptcy of our own enjoyment of the Lord, our own lack of awareness of God's love for us, and our tragically unrealistic expectations for one another.
Marriage shaped by the gospel, coming alive individually to God's love for us in Christ.
Darlene began not to lower her longings for our marriage, but to unhitch her demandingness from me, from being the perfect husband.
I was never going to be enough for her.
She was never going to be enough for me.
Only coming alive to the great love Jesus has for us.
And then thirdly, and this one sometimes underscores how, as it was for Darlene, so it might be for you.
A third aspect of really seeing your marriage more shaped by the gospel than some other narrative would be learning to love your spouse as unto the Lord, especially in the challenging seasons of marriage.
Now, what do I mean by that?
When God's grace is more in play in your relationship, in the culture of your marriage.
See, every marriage has a culture.
Every marriage has a culture.
It might be a culture of perfectionism, might be a culture of pretending.
You feel so much burden so that even when you move from that parking lot into this room, you put on your Christ the Redeemer pose.
How are you doing?
Good, how about you guys?
How school is good, kids are doing good.
You know, it's tragic how we wear these different poses in life.
Only the gospel can deconstruct the pose and to say, I have needs, she has needs.
God be merciful to us.
But you see, if you happen to be like my wife Darlene, becoming a healthier spouse before your spouse does, a part of your journey is going to be learning how to love as unto the Lord.
That's unique language.
It comes to us in several places in the New Testament.
The Apostle Paul in the book of Colossians talks about learning how to serve your masters as unto the Lord.
And that would mean learn to love someone as though you were loving Jesus Himself.
And just ponder the complexity and the profundity of that.
See, Darlene, Darlene had a long wait.
She had kind of a wait like, you know how many years Joseph was in prison before he finally was raised to the right hand of Pharaoh?
It was 17 years.
We sometimes read the Bible and we think stuff happens quick.
Where Darlene is long, she's she's even got the paradox of seeing God use me in the lives of so many people, but she's so lonely as a spouse.
She had to learn to love me as under the Lord.
God, give me grace to love Scotty.
He is a marvelous man, but he irritates the fool out of me because he's so capable of making sense of God's grace for other people, but he's such a clueless man.
God, how do I love a clueless man?
Some of you have that calling.
Now, if it's a calling, and truly, if you're married right now, you're married to the right person.
You need to throw down this thing about I really know I should have married that guy that I met as a sophomore in high school.
You know, you gotta throw down this burden of comparison.
Comparison is cancer.
You're married.
If you're married right now, you're married to the right person.
And a part of your journey is gonna be learned to learn right now by God's grace, how do I love this spouse right now if she or he never changes?
How do I love them now as unto the Lord?
Now things get very complicated.
If there are stories and narratives which you read need wisdom, you get wisdom.
I'm not gonna hesitate to say just from Russ, like he needs you know 50 hours of marriage counseling to do.
You start with saying, help us, Pastor.
Here, where can we go to begin to sort out the fact that we really do have some dis-ease in our relationship?
And every time Darlene and I do our marriage encouragement weekend, we always say this, whether it's to 300 people or 50 people or 15 people.
It would not be unusual in a wonderful church like Christ the Redeemer, Church of Marietta, for some of you to be in very harmful patterns in your marriage.
If any of you are being abused in ways that are a threat to your heart or body or your children, I'm not asking you today to blow the whistle on anybody.
I want you to know you are not called by God to suffer harm.
There is a redemptive way to deal with any darkness and any marriage in this church.
And that will start with humbling, humbly, quietly, and confidentially, beginning to get wisdom for wherever you might be in your relationship.
Domestic abuse happens.
I will go so far as to say, just for the sake of letting us know the permission we need to get help, in all churches, there will be people who are being harmed in ways that are not okay, but we don't feel like we have their permission, and we don't know what we are to do when that happens.
There will be a redemptive way for you to deal with any chapter in your marriage.
Again, you start humbly, you start in confidence, you go to trustworthy sources to find out what am I to do?
Okay, I that's that's just that's an important thing I, Darlene and I always want to say.
I'm married to a trauma counselor.
I'm married to Darlene, who right now is walking in a story in Nashville, Tennessee, that I'm sure is true in Marietta and Atlanta.
Darlene now is walking with many women coming out of human trafficking.
And a part of her calling in life right now is to walk with this remarkable group of women, many of whom have been in prison because in human trafficking, one of the first things that happens is you're beaten unto submission, and then you are addicted to drugs, so that you're so dependent upon drugs you'll do anything to get your drugs, including violating the law.
And many of the women, few of the pimps, end up in prison.
Darlene now is walking with in the stories that we've encountered, uh, and again, this is relevant to this conversation, just allow me to trust God's Spirit in this one hour with you to kind of say a few things that will give some of you permission to go to certain places.
Darlene and I are walking now with a woman whose first pimp was her mom at age 15, began to sell her for sex to support her own drug habits.
This is a beautiful woman, so free in Christ right now, so healthy, and she is leading us to other women and women in our community, many of whom who grew up in churches just like ours, who ended up being seduced or tricked in some way into a narrative of incredible brokenness.
Again, I trust the Lord prompting me even to share that part of our current story to say to any one of you, wherever there is darkness in your story, there is grace for you to find freedom to begin to understand.
How can the Lord meet me in this?
Well, this journey of loving as of the Lord, fortunately for most of you, is not going to look like overcoming one of those narratives.
But there are certain narratives that we really begin to say, this has been, as long as we've been married, this has been far more the storyboard that we've been living by.
Look with me next on your outline to point number two, and I simply want to highlight some of the stories that compete for your marriage that will never work, but some of us unwittingly, this is what we've been living with ever since we first got married.
Here are a few, maybe you would add to my own list.
See, each of us experiences life in a story format with a beginning, middle, and an ending.
That is, each of us embrace some script, some storyboard or life narration to explain how we think things are supposed to be, including marriage.
Darlene and I were fairly naive about God's storyboard for marriage.
We did a better job of giving God bit parts in our stories than embracing our place in his story for our marriage.
Now, here's some groundless and graceless marriage stories.
And as I mentioned these, just think about who you are.
Don't answer for your spouse right now, but just think about okay, is this really a part of what would define why I'm so miserable right now, or why I'm so angry, or why I get so triggered?
Because if you're living by some of these uh narratives competing for your marriage, it's just not gonna work.
And in time you're gonna know that.
If the gospel is not the storyboard of your marriage, here's some options.
The Jerry Maguire narrative.
You complete me.
If you haven't seen that movie, I don't suggest you go to Netflix tonight and see Jerry Maguire.
But it opens with this incredible scene that's so telling.
Here's Tom Cruise and all of his handsome, seductive selves looking at his love interests, and what are the words out of his mouth?
You oh come on.
Please don't tell me I'm the only one.
There you thank you.
I heard it.
You complete me.
Friends, no human being can complete you.
Oh, they can enhance your life.
Please hear me say you know, a marriage to God's glory is deeply sensual.
It is deeply pleasurable, but that's not all that it is.
God is committed to make you like Jesus, not like your Uncle Fred.
He's gonna expose your need.
A good, healthy Christian marriage is gonna be in, is gonna have moments in which you're gonna say, how could heaven itself be any more fulfilling than what it means to be married to you?
But then also marriage by God's design is gonna meant to say, how long, O Lord?
No human being is gonna complete you.
If you had seven of your ideal spouses, it would not be enough.
Again, some of you are ridiculously angry in your demanding this of your spouse, and they're never gonna be enough.
Here's another narrative: the escaping my crazy family narrative.
Entering marriage as a reaction, not a calling.
See, I think for Darlene and I, that was a part of our story.
We both grew up in these incredible stories of loss, of betrayal, of death.
And we just thought, finally, there you are.
And we both had to escape crazy.
Because we were shaped by some really bad theology, uh, being children of the 60s, you know, we thought that Jesus would probably be back by 1975.
We got married in 1972, so we thought, great, we've got three years for sex and evangelism.
That's not bad, you know.
Live for Jesus because the world's gonna be over by 1975 and have all this wonderful legal sex.
Folks, um, if you started marriage just to get out of the crazy of your family, not shame on you, grace on you.
Consider this.
I mean, where have you unwittingly, unconsciously been trying to recover from the crazy of your family?
Expecting, once again, your spouse or your the burden of your marriage to be the undoing of the crazy you grew up with.
If that's who you are, again, hear me say it again: not shame on you, grace for you.
You start where you are.
A few more.
The savior narrative.
Marriage is a way of salvation and validation.
Uh, some of you grew up uh like me, uh a veritable orphan.
In many ways, after my mom died, I was an orphan in my own family.
I mean, I would write my name, my dad's name on my report cards uh in my life, and don't pity me, but just know this is part of my story.
Never once in my entire life did my father ever wish me happy birthday.
Call me, touch me.
I have no memory of my father physically uh disciplining me or or or embracing me.
I grew up so alone, youngest of two boys, and and and I I think I thought marriage would be finally.
Marriage is going to give me everything I never had.
And and yeah, um that one didn't work too well for me.
And you see, if if you are, and that works in two ways, by the way, the the marriage motif of salvation as marriage.
Either you want your spouse to be your savior, or you have this calling to fix somebody.
And you live as a savior, you live as a person, and your marriage is gonna validate yourself by remaking your spouse after your image.
I I know Darlene felt that pull for me.
Uh I know there were years in which as she began to really show me an emotional field of force that intimidated the dickens out of me.
I tried to fix her.
I remember years thinking, I bet Darlene has demons.
She's so moody.
You know, again, uh Russ, thank you for having a church where we can be comfortably vulnerable.
You're not called to fix your spouse.
You're called to love us into the Lord.
You're you're called to know, Lord, your grace, your love, your mercy for me will begin to unlock my heart for you.
And then you're gonna give me a way of owning my own brokenness, you're gonna give me a way of really entering into my own weakness that I might be someone for a spouse to live with me in a way where I will, because of the gracial working in my life, it'll be easier for my spouse to repent, to change, to heal, to get healthier.
Darling gave me that taste and time.
I tell you, for a while she was so angry at me until she began to realize I could never be her savior.
Um A few more of these, and then I'm going to finish up in my remaining 15 minutes with just what are some practical things we can do?
Where can we start?
The Christian caveman narrative, I plunder, provide, you cook and have babies.
Now, that was the culture Darlene and I grew up in.
That's not your culture.
That was kind of the assumption.
Women are to make great apple pies, have babies, and men are to pay for life.
That's not a biblical story.
Now, if that happens to be your story, where you in your coupleship say one of us makes enough money to finance this incredible family, and both of us are called to love any children God gives us, but there's the stereotypes.
I mean, when Darlene and I got married, it was horrible.
There was this horrible submission teaching that was taken to an extreme.
And I remember one time thinking, all right, I'm the husband.
Darlene should submit her eating to me.
Now, what's that rooted in?
Part of my story was I was a, the way I dealt with my sexual abuse and my mom's death was I found comfort in food.
And when I was a ninth grader, I was five feet tall and weighed 170 pounds.
And I got so shamed by a high school football coach who basically walked up to me one day and said in front of my friends, I'd be so ashamed if I had a body like yours.
And then walked right on by.
The body image, the the confusion about what it meant to be a physical person, well, that did not just go away.
I brought that into my marriage.
And again, I'm vulnerable enough with you to say, if you're living with someone that has harmed you, if you are the harmer, there's grace for where you are that's not just connected to the fact that you're reading too many fashion magazines.
I needed to understand the shame I had about my body, so I would not compel my wife to think she's always supposed to fit in a size four dress.
It's been a part of the healing in our marriage.
Part of the healing for which God's grace meets you there.
Corporate enterprise narrative.
Marriage is 50-50, you do part and I'll do mine.
Folks, biblical marriage is not 50-50.
You know what 50-50 marriage ends up being?
Okay, if you do 37%, I can do 37%.
You're hitting on 16%.
I can do 16%.
Watch this.
It's a it's a it's a hundred percent as unto the Lord.
Lord, you've called me to love one person well the rest of my life when it is fabulous and when it is crazy.
You'll give me wisdom for the chapters in which there is harm.
And let me say this.
No, I'm not gonna say it.
And now you're gonna wonder what I was gonna say.
Don't worry about it.
Lastly, the Pollyanna narrative, and they live happily ever after.
Please give up the notion that if you marry the right person again, you will always be happy.
God's more committed to making you like Jesus than simply giving you one giant feast of enjoying yourself.
All right, lastly, so for 14 and a half minutes, turn to the last page, next last page.
I want to talk about ordinary practices of an extraordinary grace.
If you go to this, yeah, go to your last page, but the not the back side of the page, but the front of the page.
And I want to simply finish with uh, okay, Scotty, you've given some biblical framework.
You you you've given us some of your heart and story.
So where can we start?
Not as a formula, not to merit anything, but but but what might this begin to look like where you are right now?
Let me just go through several of these until it's time for me to pray and we'll go on with this lovely evening.
So, what are some ordinary practices of an extraordinary grace?
Uh did I see right at the website you're gonna have a class this year called Growing in Grace or something like that?
All right?
Here's just gonna be a way of saying, here's some ways you can grow in grace in your relationship.
And it's not about merit.
Hear this language.
The gospel puts an end to all earning, but not all effort.
Let me say that again.
The gospel puts an end to all earning.
You're not earning anything from God.
It's freely yours in Jesus, completely.
God cannot love you any more than he does today, and he'll never love you less because the gospel's true.
The gospel puts the gospel of grace puts an end to all earning, but not all effort.
What can effort look like?
All right?
Here's some things.
Uh here's some things every one of us can do.
Take care of yourself.
Preach the gospel to yourself daily, exercise, eat well, dazzle your heart with Jesus.
This is something Darlene began to do before I joined her.
She so wanted, as she was getting healthier, coming alive to God's love, becoming someone that would have the courage to enter into her brokenness, she wanted me to immediately go there.
I couldn't go there.
So what she began to understand was I need to cultivate a deeper, richer, meaningful relationship with Christ.
And she really began.
And that will look like different things to different ones of us.
For Darlene, you know, she's not just this gigantic person that reads the hour, the Bible four hours a day.
Hymns mean a lot to her.
And beginning to meditate and ponder and get more of the good news of the gospel into her heart, through the Psalms, through hymns and all.
But really, take care of yourself.
Um, you know, sleep.
One of the godliest things you can do is sleep.
It really is.
If you go 72 hours without REM's REM sleep, people will start looking like Ardvarks, possums, and octopi to you.
Sleep.
Um part of what led to my burnout was I ended up sleeping three hours a night, and I thought I literally said, this is pretty awesome.
I only have to sleep three hours a night.
I can write more books, I can do more stuff.
I didn't realize I was depressed.
If you're not sleeping at all, you may be depressed.
So take care of yourself.
You know, a godly thing to do is to get a physical.
If you only eat three boxes of honey nut Cheerios a day, it might taste good, but it will rot your bones.
And see, we're made body, soul, and spirit.
And there's the interplay of everything.
But for yourself, um, indeed, take care of yourself spiritually, physically.
Um, another thing, pray your spouse to the throne of grace daily, and if possible, pray with your spouse.
It's hard to commit heart murder towards someone you are consistently bringing to Jesus.
Think about how radical it would be if you simply, rather than each day reminding yourself everything that disappoints you about your spouse.
What have you thought about praying for them?
Lord, I I did not see this when we were engaged.
I don't know what's going on in the life of my spouse, but Lord, I thank you for your love for me, and Lord, I bring her to you.
Lord, I help me understand the whirlwind of the emotion, Lord.
It frightens me, it angers me.
Lord, uh, give me your grace.
I mean, I learned this, Darlene and I learned through our spiritual parents, Jack and Rosemary Miller, who lived out before us their own gospel renewal.
He was a seminary professor of mine and spiritual dad for 22 years.
We got, we had spiritual parents that trusted us with the vulnerability of their marriage.
And they really began to pray for each other before they could pray with each other.
Is it not something to ponder that we can be completely and physically, sexually intimate, but we find more difficulty praying with one another, talking to the God of all grace, than really enjoying one another's bodies.
Now that's again not shame on anybody.
All of that's interplay, and even let me say this because this would be relevant to some of you.
Uh when Darlene and I both began to ponder our stories of sexual abuse, it required grace to allow each one of us to rethink that part of our relationship.
There were seasons when one of us had no libido, there were seasons when neither one of us had any desire to physically connect.
What but God's grace can meet you in the changing seasons of even your sexual intimacy as a couple?
I mean, there's just things that happen in this journey of loving each other well that you don't think about just on those first three months of after the honeymoon.
It's a long-term journey in God's grace.
So learn to pray for yourself.
Pray, uh, bring your spouse to the throne of grace.
Here's another one, and it may seem cutesy, but it's profound.
Catch each other doing it right, not just doing it wrong.
Encouragement is a discipline before it's a feeling.
Um, you know, in our counseling, we had some we had some remarkable counselors in our journey.
Uh, and and and they would say things like this: Scotty and Darlene, we listened to the way you conflict at one another.
You are clueless about good fights.
We had to learn how to have good fights.
See, we were under this burden of if you really love Jesus, you're never going to fight.
Hogwash.
There's redemptive fighting, and there is destructive fighting.
One of our counselors, I will never forget her words, a marvelous woman.
We did a 10-day intensive on the West Coast, which our elders graciously, generously paid for when I hit that burnout.
And one of our first counselors, she said, you know, look at the dance you guys have built in this relationship.
Darlene, you fear devaluation so much.
Scotty, you fear abandonment so much.
And you got this dance that's constantly sabotaging your intimacy.
Let's learn a new dance.
See, some of you have gotten used to a dance that sabotages your intimacy.
And you're not just going to figure that out by yourself.
It's in community, it's being honest with one another.
We needed to realize that, you know, we we had gotten this pattern of what disappoints me in you, that's what I remember.
What if you start, thank you?
That meant a lot, sweetheart, when you did this.
Now, this isn't like, what's y'all's dog's name?
Brother.
Brother, that's right.
Have y'all met brother yet?
You know, this delightful golden doodle.
It's not like training a dog where you give them doggy bones.
Good girl, good boy.
You don't do that to your spouse.
But let me tell you, listen to this very clearly, and if you only hear this in my last three minutes, hear this.
The only command in Scripture, the only command in Scripture that is qualified with this addendum, and all the more as you see the great day of Jesus approaching is encouragement.
Both in the book of Hebrews and in 1 Thessalonians, the scriptures say, encourage one another and all the more as you see the day approaching, the day of Christ's return, when everything sad will become untrue, when all things will be put right.
When you see your spouse in eternity as they will be, you would be tempted to worship them, as C.S.
Lewis said, because they will be so healthy and whole and like Jesus.
What would it mean if you just, even before you felt it, you began encouraging?
I want to thank you.
That note you gave me.
Folks, it is a it's let me tell you, in this culture right now of cynicism and vitriol and just diatribe, one of the most radical things we can do individually and as couples is to cultivate gratitude and encouragement.
It is waging war against the spirit of our age.
Couple more, and you can read the rest.
Again, grace in your marriage.
Um, identify the names and labels you've tattooed each other with.
Only the gospel is powerful enough to erase those tattoos.
Compare what Jesus says about your spouse with what you say.
Um, my grandfather had the worst tattoo in the universe.
It scared me from ever getting tattoos.
He was in the Navy in the 40s, so he had it was a tattoo of his wife, but 50 years later it kind of looked like I don't even know what it looked like, but in.
But tattoos aren't very pretty things in time.
And you just think through how have you begun in your heart, or literally to their face, have you begun to tattoo your spouse?
Why are you always?
Why do you never?
What are you silently, or maybe worse, to your girlfriends or boyfriends?
How do you speak about your spouse?
That's homicide.
You see, these are things we drift into, and then these are things we rehearse that basically are fueled by the king of darkness himself, Satan.
Because let me tell you, folks, and this is not fanciful, this is not Dante's Inferno, this is not Saturday morning cartoons.
There is a Prince of Darkness that's looking to devour you.
He knows, he knows he's lost you for eternity.
He'll do anything he can to destroy your marriage.
Look for the subtle ways of patterns that you sabotage kindness in your marriage.
It's God's kindness that leads us to repentance.
Where do you think your shaming your spouse is gonna lead them?
Kindness is revolutionary.
You know what?
I'm gonna stop.
You can read the rest.
Because I'm gonna be, I'm gonna have in the seminar righteousness.
So I'm gonna pray, and then we'll go in with this evening.
And I hope to see a lot of you in the morning.
Father, thank you for my brother Russ and his beautiful, kind wife, Christy.
Lord, I thank you for them and their girls, their dog, their home.
I thank you for how Russ is seeking to steward this church family, Lord, as you teach them.
And uh, I thank you for this taste of this community he's described to me in so many beautiful ways this these last 90 minutes.
Lord, be with us.
Some of us, Lord, maybe heard some things that cause fear, maybe hope, maybe both.
I pray, Lord, that moving forward this congregation would come more fully alive to the only love better than life.
Help us help one another, Lord.
Uh we suffer in our silence and isolation.
I pray that uh the the culture of grace, a culture of grace would go even deeper in Christ the Redeemer Church of Marietta.
I pray this will be one of the safest communities where everybody will seek to outkind one another, where honesty, we're bearing each other's burdens, we're encouraging one another, uh, will increase, I pray, in Jesus' name and for his glory.
Amen.