SPEAKER_00: So we've been going through the book of Colossians, like I mentioned in the greeting.
SPEAKER_00: And so what we've been talking about, if you haven't been with us, is that chapters one and chapters two of Colossians are all these promises, promises of God to us.
SPEAKER_00: The big word for that would be indicatives, what's been indicated to us.
SPEAKER_00: And it's just promise after promise in chapters one and two.
SPEAKER_00: It's just promise after promise of what Jesus has done for you, what God has done for you in Jesus, how He has pulled you out of darkness, what He has done.
SPEAKER_00: What we don't see in one and two is a lot of what you should do.
SPEAKER_00: But we definitely don't see a lot of what you have done to earn something.
SPEAKER_00: This is incredibly freeing.
SPEAKER_00: This is wonderfully freeing.
SPEAKER_00: We should live in one and two of Colossians.
SPEAKER_00: Our hearts and minds should rest in Colossians 1 and 2.
SPEAKER_00: And then we see a shift moving into chapter 3 and maybe three or four sermons ago.
SPEAKER_00: We saw this shift, and all of a sudden there's this shift, and Paul takes all these promises, these indicatives, and all of a sudden you start to see some imperatives.
SPEAKER_00: You start to see some things we should do because of all of this.
SPEAKER_00: But what what we what we have to understand is we don't leave one and two to just move on, like, oh well, chapters one and two, that's how that's how I became a Christian, and now I that's over with.
SPEAKER_00: That's like the doorway in.
SPEAKER_00: Now I will move on and I will work my way to maintain my standing before God.
SPEAKER_00: Uh I will wake up each day, and what I do will be my validation of standing before God.
SPEAKER_00: No, no, no.
SPEAKER_00: What it is is one and two are the roots, the promises, and they're they're they're good for you today.
SPEAKER_00: They're good for you when you became a Christian, they're good for you tomorrow, the next day, when you succeed, when you fail, when you're doing great, when you're doing horrible, you have a lot of faith, or a little bit of faith.
SPEAKER_00: And out of those promises are all these things that a Christian life should look like.
SPEAKER_00: And so last week we talked about uh how do we view different races and different social economic uh demographics in our society and people around us.
SPEAKER_00: This week, another landmine for me uh topic um roles for husbands and roles for wives.
SPEAKER_00: So it is a landmine, right?
SPEAKER_00: Because um, you have a particular past, you have a particular view on gender roles, you have a particular view on roles for a husband and roles for a wife.
SPEAKER_00: Uh you grew up with that mom or you grew up with that dad.
SPEAKER_00: You grew up in that conservative house or that progressive house or that liberal house, or your house now is a conservative house or a progressive house or a liberal house.
SPEAKER_00: And maybe you pride yourself in one of those categories.
SPEAKER_00: Some of us are married.
SPEAKER_00: Some of us are single and used to be married, some of us are single and want to be married, some of us are single and you're good and you don't want to be married.
SPEAKER_00: So some of us are married, then single, then remarried.
SPEAKER_00: And maybe, maybe uh this morning will just explain so much for you of where you came from.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe it's nothing like for you to do today.
SPEAKER_00: Because maybe you're not married.
SPEAKER_00: But maybe it will explain so much about where you came from, or maybe it will explain so much about maybe one day where you will be.
SPEAKER_00: We're all over the board on this.
SPEAKER_00: But I think what we can all agree is we all want great families.
SPEAKER_00: We all want great families.
SPEAKER_00: Nobody's here is going, you know what, no, I really want that manipulative, life-sucking, passive-aggressive uh family.
SPEAKER_00: That's what I'm going for out of life.
SPEAKER_00: No, no, nobody, nobody's saying that.
SPEAKER_00: So let's look at these verses, and maybe you're not even gonna like them at first, a few of you, but hang with me.
SPEAKER_00: Hang with me as we go through them.
SPEAKER_00: So, so first Colossians 18 and 19 is what all we're gonna read this morning.
SPEAKER_00: Um, we're just gonna talk about wives and husbands.
SPEAKER_00: Wives, submit yourselves to your husbands, as is fitting in the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: Husbands, love your wives and do not be harsh with them.
SPEAKER_00: And maybe you're here and right away go, here we go.
SPEAKER_00: Typical Christian, patriarchal, male dominance.
SPEAKER_00: Uh you know, I knew it was coming.
SPEAKER_00: You know, you've been talking about grace for a year and a half.
SPEAKER_00: I knew this was coming because I read ahead.
SPEAKER_00: I knew it was coming.
SPEAKER_00: Or maybe you're just here and you agree with it and you read that and you go, I have fallen so short of this.
SPEAKER_00: And before any of us get too upset or too closed off, you know, let's let's see, even Paul expounds on these thoughts in Ephesians.
SPEAKER_00: And in Ephesians 5, he takes the same thought and he he expounds on it a little bit.
SPEAKER_00: So we get a greater, a bigger idea of it.
SPEAKER_00: So Ephesians 5, sorry, verse 21.
SPEAKER_00: So, wise, if you're really upset about that verse 18, or you don't know what to do with it, you're gonna love Ephesians 5.21 because this says, submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.
SPEAKER_00: So before the Bible asks wives to submit to their husbands, it's asking both of you to submit to one another.
SPEAKER_00: So in Colossians, Paul's simply pointing out something to wives, an application to wives, that he's he's also saying to all of us, to one another, to submit to each other.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 22 wives submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: For the husband is the head of the wife, as Christ is the head of the church, his body of which he is the Savior.
SPEAKER_00: Now, as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe this feels old-fashioned to you.
SPEAKER_00: I don't know your background.
SPEAKER_00: Uh you have to remember at the time, this would have been revolutionary.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, uh a woman had little value more than a cow.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, this was huge.
SPEAKER_00: This is I mean, this was revolutionary that a husband would not relate to his wife harshly.
SPEAKER_00: That the call would be to love your wife lovingly and with loyalty and sacrifice and gently and kindly.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, this would have been an elevation of status for women at the time.
SPEAKER_00: So, what does submission mean?
SPEAKER_00: Well, it simply means you support and respect your husband.
SPEAKER_00: This is about support and respect.
SPEAKER_00: It's not about oppression, it's not about ignorance.
SPEAKER_00: Submission is not about value.
SPEAKER_00: Submission is not about intellect.
SPEAKER_00: Submission is not about ability.
SPEAKER_00: Meaning this, wives, this is what it means.
SPEAKER_00: It means your husband, your husband's not smarter than you.
SPEAKER_00: You already know that, right?
SPEAKER_00: You already know it.
SPEAKER_00: It doesn't mean he has more value than you.
SPEAKER_00: You already know that.
SPEAKER_00: It doesn't mean he has more ability than you to succeed in this world.
SPEAKER_00: It doesn't mean any of those things.
SPEAKER_00: You may be, you're probably smarter.
SPEAKER_00: You're definitely emotionally smarter.
SPEAKER_00: You may be smarter, you you you you may have greater intellect, you may, you, you, you may have greater ability.
SPEAKER_00: So this is talking about a role.
SPEAKER_00: It's not talking about intellect, it's not talking about oppression, it's not talking about ignorance.
SPEAKER_00: That's how the world has come to define this, but it's not what this is.
SPEAKER_00: So Christy and I, we've been talking about this this week, fleshing this out.
SPEAKER_00: Uh and I asked her, you know, I said, well, what does this mean to you?
SPEAKER_00: What does submission mean to you?
SPEAKER_00: Um, what does it mean to you for you to submit to me?
SPEAKER_00: So that's a weird conversation.
SPEAKER_00: It's not like you have these conversations all the time.
SPEAKER_00: And because I'm almost, I almost feel I I'm in the same culture you are, I almost feel uncomfortable with the word.
SPEAKER_00: Right?
SPEAKER_00: Because we kind of work as partners.
SPEAKER_00: So I'm I'm well, what does that mean to you?
SPEAKER_00: Because I feel like most of the time we work as partners.
SPEAKER_00: And she said, well, but she said, what it means so much for me, it means that I trust you hear from the Lord and you seek to.
SPEAKER_00: And so I don't have to try to over-control everything.
SPEAKER_00: That's that's what women like to do.
SPEAKER_00: See, women like to over-control and then men like to isolate.
SPEAKER_00: And see how that's a spiral.
SPEAKER_00: So men isolate, so women overcontrol.
SPEAKER_00: Women over control, so men isolate more.
SPEAKER_00: And so submission is about the wife beginning to learn to trust that maybe the Lord can work in the husband and speak to the husband without the wife over-controlling.
SPEAKER_00: And maybe you say, well, you haven't met him.
SPEAKER_00: You have not met Billy Bob because the only thing he cares to hear is ESPN, ESPN radio, ESPN satellite radio.
SPEAKER_00: Like that's it.
SPEAKER_00: Like, hear from the Lord, I don't think so.
SPEAKER_00: He lays around, he never communicates when he does.
SPEAKER_00: He's just like the boss or the dictator.
SPEAKER_00: Um.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe he's not worth submitting to.
SPEAKER_00: But it says to submit to each other out of reverence for Christ, not out of reverence for the other person.
SPEAKER_00: So what does that mean?
SPEAKER_00: Well, this is what it means.
SPEAKER_00: It means Christ is the incarnate love of God to humanity, right?
SPEAKER_00: The grace of God to us.
SPEAKER_00: So you don't have to carry the weight of your own sin, the weight of your own, uh, the burden of your guilt.
SPEAKER_00: You don't have to carry the weight of you trying to earn your way out of uh red status to get to green status.
SPEAKER_00: He takes that, he threw away the scorecard on you.
SPEAKER_00: So when he sees you, he's not looking down, I can't believe she did that, I can't believe he did that, you know, I can't believe the way she's living her life or living his life.
SPEAKER_00: He's looking down at you through the blood of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: I love, I love that lady, I love that man.
SPEAKER_00: That one there, that lazy husband who has not awakened to his calling for toward his wife.
SPEAKER_00: I love him.
SPEAKER_00: I love that hard-hearted man.
SPEAKER_00: And why is God looking down at you and all your tendencies to control rather than to trust?
SPEAKER_00: And he's looking at you, I love that fragile woman.
SPEAKER_00: And it's out of reverence and reaction to that grace of God to us, to Christ, that you can submit to Billy Bob.
SPEAKER_00: So you can respect and submit to him even while he is unresponsive to you, because this is how God loves you every single day.
SPEAKER_00: One of my favorite stories is from the last few years is a friend of mine will call her Ginny, and and and Ginny was uh, I don't know if she was fully nagging her husband, but she would get on to him a little bit, and he'd come in from a long day of work, and he'd show up, and and she would just sort of uh right away, like, hey, can you do this?
SPEAKER_00: Can you do this?
SPEAKER_00: You haven't done this, I need you to do this, you haven't done this, and then you know, of course, what he what how did he react to this?
SPEAKER_00: Well, he didn't want to do those things.
SPEAKER_00: Who wants to do those things when as soon as you walk in, you're like, blah.
SPEAKER_00: You know, so he would react and he'd sort of, you know, maybe half do some things or not do some things or try to avoid her, avoid the list, and and so this was just sort of a downward spiral, right?
SPEAKER_00: She and she was she was scorekeeping on him.
SPEAKER_00: You know, like he's not he, I'm doing more than he is, he's not keeping up.
SPEAKER_00: And so slowly Ginny realized that she wasn't as great as she thought either, and and began to give her husband grace when he came in.
SPEAKER_00: How are you?
SPEAKER_00: How was your day?
SPEAKER_00: You wanna sit down for a few minutes?
SPEAKER_00: Like this she threw the scorecard away.
SPEAKER_00: I'll take care of things.
SPEAKER_00: You need a you need a break.
SPEAKER_00: So she began to live in chapters one and two of Colossians, that her full sufficiency was not in the responsiveness and the greatness of her husband, but it was in what Christ was for her.
SPEAKER_00: So she was good.
SPEAKER_00: She was good, and she had fuel beyond her own effort, like a divine spirit-fed fuel.
SPEAKER_00: And the weirdest thing happened over time.
SPEAKER_00: Slowly the husband began to respond.
SPEAKER_00: Right?
SPEAKER_00: This is human nature.
SPEAKER_00: The more we try to score keep, we think we're gonna win some battle.
SPEAKER_00: Like in a relationship, we think we're gonna win a battle.
SPEAKER_00: We can get more things done, but it's the most anti-productive, destructive thing you can do because scorekeeping and demand, it creates rebellion and resentment.
SPEAKER_00: So this is uh we go to the beach every summer, and and y'all know this guy.
SPEAKER_00: This is the umbrella anchor, which means I'm too cheap to pay the lifeguard to set up the umbrella in the chairs.
SPEAKER_00: And so I'm, you know, we go to Hilton Head, that's our beach of choice, and we go for our beach week.
SPEAKER_00: And so I got the cart, it's loaded, chair, like five chairs.
SPEAKER_00: I got I have girls, so they don't carry anything.
SPEAKER_00: I got five chairs, I have umbrellas, I have toys, I have a cooler, it's me, and and literally it's me and like five or six girls.
SPEAKER_00: And so we're I'm just pushing it out there.
SPEAKER_00: I get out there, and Hilton Head sand is not uh panhandle Florida sand.
SPEAKER_00: This is this can be concrete, like if the tide has just gotten out of the right time.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, this is like you know, people ride their bikes on it, and so getting this guy down in that sand can be incredibly difficult at the wrong time.
SPEAKER_00: And so, you know, and I'm not CrossFit strong.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, I mean y'all picked up on this.
SPEAKER_00: You I mean, you can look at me, and so I'd so I'm you know, I I I'm pushing this in, I'm turning it, and I'm turning it and turning it, and you know, I think there's probably been a time or two where you know it gets down about two-thirds of the way, but you've got to get it all the way down for the wind, right?
SPEAKER_00: Like the, I mean, so you've got to get the thing all the way down in there.
SPEAKER_00: And so I think there's been a time or two on this tiny little handle where I'm like, Chrissy, can you just push on this side?
SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna push on this side, and we're just gonna and just kind of zip it in, right?
SPEAKER_00: And if both people are pushing in the right direction, the revolution works.
SPEAKER_00: And you go deeper.
SPEAKER_00: But if one person begins to uh not quite work, and then if both people begin to work against each other, the revolution occurs the opposite way.
SPEAKER_00: See, if both people are relating in grace to each other, there's a revolution in the relationship that goes deeper and deeper and deeper into joy.
SPEAKER_00: But if scorekeeping and demand takes over rather than grace toward each other, then you're gonna reverse the revolution.
SPEAKER_00: And that revolution is gonna be out of joy and it's gonna be into despair.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, so wives, we talked to some about submission.
SPEAKER_00: So, husbands, how do you help this revolution of joy in a relationship?
SPEAKER_00: So let's read Ephesians 5, 25 through 33.
SPEAKER_00: It's a bit of reading, but hang with me.
SPEAKER_00: Husbands, love your wives just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, and to present her to himself as a radiant church without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless.
SPEAKER_00: In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies.
SPEAKER_00: He who loves his wife loves himself.
SPEAKER_00: After all, no one ever hated their own body, but they fed and cared for their body just as Christ does the church, for we are members of his body.
SPEAKER_00: For this reason, a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.
SPEAKER_00: This is the profound mystery, but I'm talking about Christ and the church.
SPEAKER_00: However, each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband.
SPEAKER_00: So so, men, you're you're called to die for her.
SPEAKER_00: That's what this passage says.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, you're called to love her and lead her with loyalty and sacrifice.
SPEAKER_00: So, so it means be gentle, don't be harsh.
SPEAKER_00: It means be kind, it means to engage.
SPEAKER_00: This is what headship is.
SPEAKER_00: So this week, uh Tuesday, I think, I come in from work, and I don't know what funky mood I was in and what funky mood Christy was in, but those two moods didn't do well, right?
SPEAKER_00: When we came, I came in, and I I walked in and uh I said something, and then she said something, then I felt blamed, I didn't react well, and then there's like this bickering for like 10 minutes, and then our oldest daughter is like cutting in, and she's like, Y'all stop it! And she's trying to be the problem solver, and and so you know, we like sort of make up and kind of talk it through a little bit, and mainly just kind of let go of it.
SPEAKER_00: And um Christie goes to sleep, and I stay up, I'm watching TV for a little bit, and and I'm just sitting there and I'm thinking about why did that bother me?
SPEAKER_00: Like that scenario, that the way that played out, it just sort of ate at me unusually, and why did it bother me?
SPEAKER_00: And and I think I sort of discovered it.
SPEAKER_00: And it's that she operates at an unbelievable rate of respecting and supporting me.
SPEAKER_00: So, but man, I don't operate well when I think, whether whether she is or not, I don't operate well when I think she doesn't have my back.
SPEAKER_00: It's the same reason that when I grow, when I grow distant and I isolate, you know, and this happens like for a few days, and and then it's always Christy who comes to me.
SPEAKER_00: I'm never going, you know what, dear, I've I've been I've been isolated.
SPEAKER_00: I realize it, I want to come back.
SPEAKER_00: And it's always her, um, unfortunately, in our relationship.
SPEAKER_00: It probably should be me, um, but it's her that comes and she says, you know, hey, we're not connecting.
SPEAKER_00: That's the that's the line, right?
SPEAKER_00: That's the line in our relationship.
SPEAKER_00: We're not connecting.
SPEAKER_00: Here's the moment.
SPEAKER_00: Like, here's the moment.
SPEAKER_00: It's always the moment, and it's either like, do I continue to isolate or do I enter the chaos?
SPEAKER_00: Headship enters the chaos.
SPEAKER_00: That's what headship is.
SPEAKER_00: We walk into the battle.
SPEAKER_00: In fact, headship seeks out the chaos.
SPEAKER_00: Like headship seeks out the chaos in the heart of the wife.
SPEAKER_00: Headship seeks out the chaos in the heart of the child.
SPEAKER_00: We'll talk about that next week.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, you want to you want a mission?
SPEAKER_00: Man, you want a mission, you want an adventure, then you set yourself into that.
SPEAKER_00: You set yourself into engaging, finding, not fixing, listening, loving in your wife's chaos.
SPEAKER_00: That's a huge ask, right?
SPEAKER_00: I mean, that is a huge ask of us.
SPEAKER_00: It was so easy for us to isolate and live independently.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, it feels like jumping off of a cliff.
SPEAKER_00: But it's the definition of manliness, to sit on a couch, the kids are in bed, to have the TV off, sit on the couch, look eye to eye, and just to say, hey, what man, what's going on in your heart?
SPEAKER_00: And it's the hardest thing for us to do.
SPEAKER_00: To engage on that level.
SPEAKER_00: And it is absolutely what headship is.
SPEAKER_00: But do you see what happens here?
SPEAKER_00: So that's headship, so that's leadership, but that's submission.
SPEAKER_00: Right?
SPEAKER_00: I mean, you're you're submitting over everything you sort of want to do.
SPEAKER_00: Like you want to live on your own and kind of be your own man and do your own thing.
SPEAKER_00: That's the last thing naturally you want to do, is sit down and have this emotional, like entering this chaos relationship after a long day.
SPEAKER_00: But that's the call.
SPEAKER_00: That's submitting to her out of reverence for Christ, just like she's called to submit to you.
SPEAKER_00: And that's the revolution of joy.
SPEAKER_00: We we can say to her, I'm I'm here.
SPEAKER_00: I'm in this, I'm for this, I'm for you, I'm not going anywhere.
SPEAKER_00: And the good news is failing, I meant failing in your role to lead is not failure.
SPEAKER_00: We all fail.
SPEAKER_00: Failure is refusing to ever lovingly engage.
SPEAKER_00: So I'm not the best leader of a family.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, there's there's some of y'all in here would run me out of the room if we went around and said, like, logistically, how do you lead your family?
SPEAKER_00: I'd be like, that's a fantastic idea.
SPEAKER_00: I never thought of that.
SPEAKER_00: I would have never thought, I don't do that, I don't do that, I don't do that.
SPEAKER_00: The one thing I'm decent at, decent at, is a measure every once in a while to expose a bit of my failure.
SPEAKER_00: A bit of what's going on, right?
SPEAKER_00: To let her in.
SPEAKER_00: So Wednesday I come in from work and I'm just stressed out and I'm anxious with my issues, and she's organizing the girl's closet, so right away she's won my heart over.
SPEAKER_00: That's going on.
SPEAKER_00: And I sit on the bed, and I just said, man, I've just felt I've just felt so stressed today.
SPEAKER_00: I felt so anxious today.
SPEAKER_00: And we talk a little bit, and she and I think she said, I don't think I came to this conclusion.
SPEAKER_00: I think Christy said, you know what?
SPEAKER_00: I think it's just because you're just trying to like control everything and you want everything to be perfect, and it's not gonna be, and so then it just makes you anxious.
SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, you're right, that's exactly what it is, and I knew that, but I needed to hear it.
SPEAKER_00: And maybe you say, Well, that's not headship, you're not like being the Leader there.
SPEAKER_00: See, headship is not always having your act together because none of us always have our acts together.
SPEAKER_00: Headship is leading your marriage into honesty and into confession, into a place where a real conversation occurs, where a real relationship can occur.
SPEAKER_00: Like phoniness and pretending and isolating and moving away from each other, all that just stops.
SPEAKER_00: So the passage in Ephesians that breaks this down says, husbands, love your wives like Christ loved the church.
SPEAKER_00: I want to be very clear here.
SPEAKER_00: What did Jesus do?
SPEAKER_00: He made himself nothing and he died on the cross in loyalty, loving, sacrificial death for us.
SPEAKER_00: He became what all of us are so scared to be in front of someone else.
SPEAKER_00: But it's the very thing that creates intimacy and joy and relationships.
SPEAKER_00: He became weak.
SPEAKER_00: Christ is the example for us of how to love our wives.
SPEAKER_00: And man, is it good news also that he was the substitute for us?
SPEAKER_00: Because we don't always live up to that.
SPEAKER_00: So maybe you're not the smartest, you're not the maybe not the smartest in your family, you're not the most prayerful in your family.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe she's like running you out of the house when it comes to devotions.
SPEAKER_00: I don't know what's going on in your house.
SPEAKER_00: But you can be honest about your weaknesses.
SPEAKER_00: You can begin to ask to hear from the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: You can let your wife into that.
SPEAKER_00: See, great marriages and families, they're not great because they go on killer trips.
SPEAKER_00: Did you get you get Christmas cards?
SPEAKER_00: I got a bunch of Christmas cards this year.
SPEAKER_00: You're looking through them, you're like, oh, dang, man, where'd they go?
SPEAKER_00: Oh my gosh.
SPEAKER_00: That's unbelievable.
SPEAKER_00: Right?
SPEAKER_00: And you're like, oh, they're so together, and she's beautiful, and look at him.
SPEAKER_00: He's so respectful.
SPEAKER_00: And you're looking through these, and you sort of forget what it took to get to the picture, right?
SPEAKER_00: Like, our picture is like this.
SPEAKER_00: Oh, we're so cute, and we're up in the mountains, and I'm like, man, I'm looking at that day.
SPEAKER_00: I remember that day, that picture, and like our girls are running around.
SPEAKER_00: We're like, you stand right here and you smile at that camera, like right now, and then cheese, and then it's like, get in the car, we're going, we're going back to the cabin for just bedtime, you know.
SPEAKER_00: Like, I mean, that's what's going on.
SPEAKER_00: Right?
SPEAKER_00: Like, horrible families can take good pictures, horrible families can take great trips, horrible marriages can fill fantastic restaurants.
SPEAKER_00: Great families are filled with people who live in chapters one and chapter two of Colossians, who say to each other, I will be for you.
SPEAKER_00: I will submit to you, I'll be for you because he is always for me.
SPEAKER_00: So I can be for you all the time because he is always for me.
SPEAKER_00: So I can be for you, I can submit to you, I can lead you even when you aren't for me, because he is always for me.
SPEAKER_00: Let's pray together.
SPEAKER_00: God, we come before you and need fresh confession that we, even though we see you as our example of how we should submit and lead, we do not always do this well.
SPEAKER_00: And so we come with great gratitude as we come to this table and we remember you weren't just an example, you were our substitute.
SPEAKER_00: Though we are not great leaders, you are a great leader for us.
SPEAKER_00: Though we are not great at submitting, you submitted yourself to weakness so that in you we might find strength.
SPEAKER_00: Those of us in the room that feel such failure when it comes to marriage, we pray that today would be great encouragement.
SPEAKER_00: Because in the grace of God, we don't have to earn our way out of red to get to green.
SPEAKER_00: But Jesus, you're enough.
SPEAKER_00: Would marriage just be another picture of us to understand how wonderful you love us?
SPEAKER_00: God, we thank you for this picture that we might move toward great marriages that might glorify you.
SPEAKER_00: In Jesus' name.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.