SPEAKER_00: Summer times.
SPEAKER_00: It's the time of weddings.
SPEAKER_00: It's the time when marriage is in the air.
SPEAKER_00: I love weddings.
SPEAKER_00: I love marriage.
SPEAKER_00: And marriage is a profound institution created by God.
SPEAKER_00: We know that it came from a place of immense wisdom and goodness, and God endowed it with rich meaning and purpose.
SPEAKER_00: And yet, marriage is a very complex thing.
SPEAKER_00: It's wild and woolly.
SPEAKER_00: It will not take the bit.
SPEAKER_00: It's formidable.
SPEAKER_00: It is challenging.
SPEAKER_00: And if you've been married for very long, I think you have found yourself on many occasions desiring to hear from the chief engineer of marriage how it was intended to work over the years.
SPEAKER_00: Well, today it's my pleasure to begin what will be a series, a periodic series over several months on the subject of marriage.
SPEAKER_00: I've entitled it A Growing Marriage.
SPEAKER_00: And my goal in this series is for us to focus on aspects of marriage where there is likely to be the greatest potential for traction, for traction in your marriage and in my marriage.
SPEAKER_00: I think that's something that those of us who are married, we always want to really get to where the traction principles are.
SPEAKER_00: And how can we progress and grow and move forward and be fruitful?
SPEAKER_00: Well, today our series is going to, we're going to begin with a passage in Proverbs 3, 5 through 8.
SPEAKER_00: And I've entitled this sermon today, Beginning with Humble Dependence.
SPEAKER_00: Beginning with Humble Dependence.
SPEAKER_00: So I'd like you to turn in your scriptures to Proverbs 3, 5 through 8.
SPEAKER_00: If you don't have a Bible with you, you can find a Pew Bible in front of you.
SPEAKER_00: And I apologize, I don't have the page number, but it's in the Old Testament and it's probably around page 600-ish.
SPEAKER_00: Someone have that page for the Old Testament?
SPEAKER_00: 528.
SPEAKER_00: So Proverbs 3, beginning in verse 5.
SPEAKER_00: Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding.
SPEAKER_00: In all your ways, acknowledge Him, and He will make your path straight.
SPEAKER_00: Be not wise in your own eyes, fear the Lord and turn away from evil.
SPEAKER_00: It will be healing to your flesh and refreshment to your bones.
SPEAKER_00: The word of the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe you've been through a painful divorce.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe marriage is a painful subject for you.
SPEAKER_00: You're welcome here.
SPEAKER_00: That is okay.
SPEAKER_00: And we would like for you, as you hear these verses and hear these principles, to ask the Lord how they are going to work out in other important aspects of your life besides the marriage relationship.
SPEAKER_00: It's interesting how this passage came about.
SPEAKER_00: I had the privilege of officiating a wedding yesterday from one of our young couples here in the church out at Turtle River.
SPEAKER_00: And during the premarital counseling for that wedding, the bride to be selected this text as their wedding verse.
SPEAKER_00: And I thought, huh, that's an interesting verse.
SPEAKER_00: Usually it's a verse from 1 Corinthians 13 or something that highlights human love.
SPEAKER_00: And here is a passage that speaks, amongst other things, about a deep dependence in the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: And the more I looked at the passage, the more I marveled at what a wonderful passage this is about in its application to the marriage relationship.
SPEAKER_00: In fact, I think it is so central to marriage that it was the perfect place to start in a series on marriage and thinking about how to get traction in our marriages.
SPEAKER_00: This is the perfect starting place, beginning with humble dependence.
SPEAKER_00: And everything else that will come in the weeks ahead, hopefully, we'll build upon this.
SPEAKER_00: I'll also tell you right at the front end here, a kind of big picture idea of what I'd like to do today and what I think the Lord is doing in this passage.
SPEAKER_00: I think God is taking a big swing at independence.
SPEAKER_00: And he's commending a life of cultivating dependence on him.
SPEAKER_00: He's taking a big swing at independence.
SPEAKER_00: I love the passage that Jason read to us from Jeremiah that's quoted again in the New Testament.
SPEAKER_00: Let not the wise man boast of his wisdom, or the rich man boast of his wealth, and so forth.
SPEAKER_00: That's a word of independence.
SPEAKER_00: But let him who boast boast in this, that he knows me.
SPEAKER_00: That is a word of dependence.
SPEAKER_00: And that is where our passage is going ultimately this morning to a life of cultivating dependence.
SPEAKER_00: And to have us think a little bit about it as we go.
SPEAKER_00: But I hope that most of my time can be spent in a kind of application phase where we can talk about how do I know how well I'm engaging what God's commending in this passage?
SPEAKER_00: How do I know if I'm living a life of dependence, if I'm cultivating that?
SPEAKER_00: How would I know if my life is saturated with independence?
SPEAKER_00: What are the signs of that?
SPEAKER_00: What kinds of things can I see?
SPEAKER_00: So I'd like to really get us down to some nuts and bolts.
SPEAKER_00: If we're going to get traction in marriage, there has to be some practical thinking about these broad passages and principles of Scripture.
SPEAKER_00: You can think of this passage as highlighting three ideas, or even three words, three concepts.
SPEAKER_00: The first of the concepts I've entitled Wellness.
SPEAKER_00: Wellness.
SPEAKER_00: There's a whole industry that has grown up around the idea of wellness, right?
SPEAKER_00: There are wellness centers everywhere that are coming on the scene.
SPEAKER_00: And they've taken advantage of a kind of niche in the market that, hey, we have a lot of different things that address different aspects of our health, but we could really use a center that kind of is a full orbed, all under one roof kind of wellness to the human soul and to the human body and to the human heart.
SPEAKER_00: And so there's kinds of different attempts and different centers to minister and help and cater to the to people in our needs of wellness.
SPEAKER_00: Well, right away, one of the main words that we can miss in this well-known passage from Scripture is that God promises, in a Proverbs kind of way, He promises, He holds out a promise of wellness.
SPEAKER_00: It's put in these terms.
SPEAKER_00: And this will be like healing to your flesh and refreshment to your bones.
SPEAKER_00: Just full-orbed kind of wellness.
SPEAKER_00: And it would be easy for us to miss right away that the God who's giving us this passage that has commandments in us, things for us to do, is saying right at the front end, know something about my goodness.
SPEAKER_00: Know something about the God who is that I am a good God.
SPEAKER_00: I desire for my people, for them to taste and experience a real straight path.
SPEAKER_00: I desire for them to really taste what whole wellness really is.
SPEAKER_00: And it won't be what you think, but I want you to taste it.
SPEAKER_00: In fact, heaven to come is going to be a full drink of wellness.
SPEAKER_00: And it's going to be the fullness of a straight path.
SPEAKER_00: There will be no more crooked paths in heaven to come.
SPEAKER_00: But in this life, even in a fallen world, the good shepherd of our souls desires for us to taste what real goodness is.
SPEAKER_00: So let me just ask you: do you want goodness in your life?
SPEAKER_00: A straight path.
SPEAKER_00: Is that enticing to you?
SPEAKER_00: Success.
SPEAKER_00: Who doesn't want that in their life?
SPEAKER_00: Who doesn't want that in their marriage if you're married?
SPEAKER_00: I mean, of all the things you want, of all your relationships, you want your marriage to succeed.
SPEAKER_00: There's so much writing on your marriage.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, all of your life, in a sense, is lived out of your marriage if you're married.
SPEAKER_00: You don't just do marriage on the side and then have your regular life.
SPEAKER_00: Your life grows out of your marriage.
SPEAKER_00: I've heard a recent, there's a man who's encouraging pastors and ministry leaders, and one of his core principles is you lead out of your marriage, or you lead out of your singleness, whichever it is.
SPEAKER_00: You lead out of that.
SPEAKER_00: It's not something over here buried that doesn't have an impact.
SPEAKER_00: In fact, your marriage will tell you something, kind of about where you are in leading.
SPEAKER_00: And that might not be what you think, but there's an important principle to look at there.
SPEAKER_00: So deep down, as we think about this passage as it applies not just to all of life, but to marriage, we want straight paths in our marriage.
SPEAKER_00: We want wellness and refreshment as a couple and in our marriage.
SPEAKER_00: We really, really, really want that.
SPEAKER_00: Well, God is committed to helping us move in that place.
SPEAKER_00: The next word as we move on is the is the first of what I'm gonna call two paths to how you might approach achieving this wellness.
SPEAKER_00: So when you think of success in your marriage, there's a path.
SPEAKER_00: Whether you've sat down and documented it or not, you have a path in mind as to how you're going to get there on a daily kind of basis.
SPEAKER_00: It may not be a big vision strategy, but you have a way of relating.
SPEAKER_00: You have relational practices, you have a way of operating in your marriage that you think will lead you to this kind of wellness that God talks about.
SPEAKER_00: And so the first path I'm calling the path of the instinctive way.
SPEAKER_00: It's the way of independence.
SPEAKER_00: It's the way of instinct.
SPEAKER_00: Think with me about instinct for a moment.
SPEAKER_00: Instinct's a good thing, right?
SPEAKER_00: God built instinct into his creative order, at least for the animal kingdom and for humans.
SPEAKER_00: Much of the animal world moves and proceeds because of instinct.
SPEAKER_00: Birds build nests, lions know how to kill zebras, and a lot gets done in the animal kingdom.
SPEAKER_00: But instincts aren't always good.
SPEAKER_00: Not even in the animal kingdom.
SPEAKER_00: I have a dog, and my dog has an instinct to eat meat and fat of any kind at any time.
SPEAKER_00: And not too long ago, we mistakenly gave this dog, and she was all too happy to comply, with eating a bunch of pork fat.
SPEAKER_00: And uh, much to our dismay, we learned that wow, this is a really bad mistake for many dogs, and our dog really was very, very sick out of it.
SPEAKER_00: For days didn't come out of her kennel.
SPEAKER_00: You know, some insects have instincts.
SPEAKER_00: They have instincts to reproduce and they to find the love of their life, figuratively speaking, only to find out that they will be eaten.
SPEAKER_00: Instincts aren't always the way.
SPEAKER_00: And when it comes to humans, we are fallen beings, we're sinners, we're rebels to the very depth of our being.
SPEAKER_00: And our instincts, many of them, they've been twisted and marred.
SPEAKER_00: We've been made in the image of God, yes.
SPEAKER_00: And those of us who are believers have the Holy Spirit of God, yes.
SPEAKER_00: But our many of our instincts are twisted and marred, and they are the old way of Adam, the old way of relating, the old way of manipulating and controlling and being our own person in this world and making it in our own strength.
SPEAKER_00: And so this way of independence is signaled in this text by the three-letter word not.
SPEAKER_00: Lean not on your own understanding.
SPEAKER_00: Be not wise in your own eyes.
SPEAKER_00: Have you noticed that you are just wired to believe that you see and know more than you do?
SPEAKER_00: Have you noticed that we are wired to believe that we're wiser than we are?
SPEAKER_00: That we have it figured out, that we understand what just happened in that conflict, that we see over the whole arena of this marital difficulty that we're having, and we've got a bead on it, and we know what the problem is.
SPEAKER_00: Have you noticed that you have a natural bent to leverage your resources and your strengths to get your way in life and in marriage.
SPEAKER_00: Let me just say something here, hopefully a bit encouraging, but maybe discouraging at the same time.
SPEAKER_00: The encouraging part is we're all in the same boat.
SPEAKER_00: It comes natural to all of us.
SPEAKER_00: The discouraging part is that you probably have not seen one tenth.
SPEAKER_00: If you've been a Christian for a significant time, you probably haven't seen a tenth of how independent your spirit really is.
SPEAKER_00: You haven't come to grips yet, very much at all, with how fiercely your flesh, your flesh, the old part of Adam that still lives in you, the sinful nature, how much your flesh desires to make it in its own strength.
SPEAKER_00: My guess is that you have noticed this in your spouse.
SPEAKER_00: Have you noticed how your spouse is so independent?
SPEAKER_00: How they try to get their way with all kinds of things.
SPEAKER_00: They're really good at that.
SPEAKER_00: Let's move on.
SPEAKER_00: I don't want to take too long at it.
SPEAKER_00: We're gonna come back and fill these out, but I just want to kind of paint some picture here before we get too far in time.
SPEAKER_00: So that was one road, one road to wellness.
SPEAKER_00: It's the road we naturally take.
SPEAKER_00: It won't work, God says it in this passage.
SPEAKER_00: Don't do it.
SPEAKER_00: It will lead to crookedness and illness.
SPEAKER_00: Soul illness, bone illness.
SPEAKER_00: Uh don't try it.
SPEAKER_00: The other way that he gives is really his way.
SPEAKER_00: Uh I've called this the counterintuitive way.
SPEAKER_00: It's the way of dependence.
SPEAKER_00: The way of dependence.
SPEAKER_00: That really seems to kind of clash wellness and dependence.
SPEAKER_00: Um, especially for adults, we we tend to think of wellness as something about going out and working hard and getting it.
SPEAKER_00: Dependence doesn't seem like it really goes well with wellness, but it actually does.
SPEAKER_00: And it's the only word that goes well with wellness.
SPEAKER_00: And so this is signaled in the passage.
SPEAKER_00: I've just summarized a couple of them here.
SPEAKER_00: We're gonna look at the phrases trust in the Lord with all your heart in all your ways, in all your ways, in all your ways of life.
SPEAKER_00: High schoolers, singles, and married in all your ways.
SPEAKER_00: Acknowledge him.
SPEAKER_00: Acknowledge him or know him is actually the word there.
SPEAKER_00: To know him.
SPEAKER_00: It's a relational word of rich, rich relating before the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: Think with me for a minute about trust.
SPEAKER_00: If this is the road, we want to know what this road is.
SPEAKER_00: What is this road to wellness?
SPEAKER_00: It's the road of trust.
SPEAKER_00: And I've been super helped recently.
SPEAKER_00: I've thought about trust a lot over the years.
SPEAKER_00: There's a lot of different aspects of it.
SPEAKER_00: It's a really rich concept.
SPEAKER_00: And I came across this kind of categorizing of trust.
SPEAKER_00: It's just a helpful tool.
SPEAKER_00: It's not the last word at all, but I'm going to use it today, and I think it might help you thinking about trust toward God.
SPEAKER_00: What it means to trust God.
SPEAKER_00: And at one level, there's a kind of reliability trust.
SPEAKER_00: We'll call that reliability trust.
SPEAKER_00: If you're trusting in the Lord, you have to have some confidence.
SPEAKER_00: It's the idea of confidence and belief that the Lord is reliable, that he's truthful, that his words are factual.
SPEAKER_00: That he's there.
SPEAKER_00: That he'll do what he says he'll do, that he'll keep his promises.
SPEAKER_00: Right?
SPEAKER_00: We have to believe that about the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: That's a reliability kind of trust.
SPEAKER_00: It's one level of trust.
SPEAKER_00: You have the same trust, by the way, in your marriage.
SPEAKER_00: And we'll talk more about this on another week.
SPEAKER_00: But you have a reliability trust with your spouse.
SPEAKER_00: You have to believe that they're going to keep their word, that they're going to treat you with respect, that they have your best interest at heart and they're loyal to you.
SPEAKER_00: Otherwise, your marriage is not going very far.
SPEAKER_00: But there is a deeper kind of trust.
SPEAKER_00: And it could be called a heart trust.
SPEAKER_00: And maybe you could start with your spouse and think about how this looks there, and it would help you envision how it might look with God.
SPEAKER_00: A heart trust means you believe your spouse is safe to open all your heart to.
SPEAKER_00: Your spouse won't be there to pounce on you.
SPEAKER_00: Your spouse will be there to meet you where you are and to engage you in a way that's loving and helpful and upbuilding.
SPEAKER_00: Well, isn't there that same kind of trust with the Lord?
SPEAKER_00: Isn't there a kind of trust that we engage God if we trust him enough?
SPEAKER_00: We're willing to open up our heart to him more and more.
SPEAKER_00: That doesn't come naturally to most folks.
SPEAKER_00: I believe I was a Christian for decades before I really got moving with some traction in that particular way.
SPEAKER_00: Part of the problem is we're not really aware of all that's going on in us because we intentionally won't go there.
SPEAKER_00: It's painful, it's vague and fuzzy at times, and we really it brings up too much stuff for us to deal with what's going on on the inside.
SPEAKER_00: It's safest just to kind of keep that on the down low.
SPEAKER_00: And so if we feel angry, I'm not angry.
SPEAKER_00: If we feel envious, let that thought go.
SPEAKER_00: Let it go, let it just go by.
SPEAKER_00: And it's gone.
SPEAKER_00: And we're good.
SPEAKER_00: We're good.
SPEAKER_00: We didn't engage it, we didn't name it.
SPEAKER_00: So a hard trust with God would be as we learn, as we learn before the Lord, that we can be naked and unashamed before Him.
SPEAKER_00: That we can begin to put our inmost thoughts out there as we see them, that we can begin to engage Him to lift them up, and that we can sit with Him in this kind of place.
SPEAKER_00: A part of what I want us to see about this passage today is this is an Old Testament text long before the days of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: And I don't want you to hear this passage as Old Testament saints who don't know Jesus or who have a kind of forward-looking trust in a provision of some kind that God would make.
SPEAKER_00: I want you to hear this passage.
SPEAKER_00: As believers in Jesus Christ who came in the fullness of time, at the end of the age, once and for all, and established a way for his people to be reconciled to him fully based on his law-keeping and his sin bearing.
SPEAKER_00: And then as we look to him in faith and embrace what he did and receive it as our own, he credits that to our account.
SPEAKER_00: And so if you don't have a good sense of that, why would you ever open up your heart to the Lord?
SPEAKER_00: Why would you ever tell him, Lord, I you know, I really feel envious right now of my brother.
SPEAKER_00: Why would you do that?
SPEAKER_00: You wouldn't, because you're going, more than likely, because you're going to feel shame and condemnation, and you're going to feel like, oh, I don't want to go there.
SPEAKER_00: And if you have freedom and you're really trusting in Christ, and you know the freedom of the gospel, you can come and sit before the Lord and tell him everything that's going on in your heart as he lifts it out.
SPEAKER_00: You can put your sin on the table and name it in the starkest of terms.
SPEAKER_00: And God delights in that.
SPEAKER_00: That is worship in a very high form.
SPEAKER_00: For you to sit in the mess of your anger and to name it as anger and petty and oh man.
SPEAKER_00: And to just relish in Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
SPEAKER_00: Lord, you got me.
SPEAKER_00: You got my back.
SPEAKER_00: I'm safe.
SPEAKER_00: It's interesting that this word trust actually has in it, and I learned this from a linguist.
SPEAKER_00: I think it's true.
SPEAKER_00: That built into the word, the Hebrew word for trust, there's an idea of lying flat on your face with your face down.
SPEAKER_00: Face down on the ground.
SPEAKER_00: Isn't that interesting?
SPEAKER_00: This is in contrast to the one who leans on their own understanding.
SPEAKER_00: That's the picture of somebody propping themselves up with some strength of their own making.
SPEAKER_00: Well, let me move into now some kind of some application phase here.
SPEAKER_00: Again, I want you to hear these applications as people, as many of you as trust Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: You come before the Lord safe.
SPEAKER_00: You're under the covering of his blood, and you have the Holy Spirit in you.
SPEAKER_00: Praise God.
SPEAKER_00: You have God's own spirit living inside of you that is at war against your flesh, that is breathing desire deep, and creating within you movement for you to grow more and more into the image of Christ, to have more of his own heart for people and for him.
SPEAKER_00: One of the great questions to ask, and there was a actually kind of a Christian philosopher who raised this question, and I think it's a great one to write down somewhere and just kind of keep it near your mind.
SPEAKER_00: And this question was put forward as an important question when you're thinking about sanctification and discipleship.
SPEAKER_00: And the question is this What kind of person would I have to become to do this or to be this?
SPEAKER_00: What kind of person would I have to become?
SPEAKER_00: What kind of person would I have to become to quit leaning on my own understanding?
SPEAKER_00: To quit propping myself up in the way of dependence?
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, we know that won't happen in this life completely.
SPEAKER_00: It won't happen fast enough.
SPEAKER_00: We're going to gain small ground in this over a lifetime.
SPEAKER_00: This isn't something you're going to master at the end of the month.
SPEAKER_00: What kind of person would I have to become to lean on God in the kind of way that He says for us to lean on Him?
SPEAKER_00: Somebody in the first hour, we were talking about this in the adult Sunday School class, this passage, and somebody helpfully said this.
SPEAKER_00: I said, you know, this is, I'm really, I or I, you know, I see a kind of backwardsness in the way I approach life.
SPEAKER_00: Is, you know, first of all, I I desire the good.
SPEAKER_00: And then I try it in my own strength, and I fail.
SPEAKER_00: I realize I can't do it, and then I realize I need to trust God for this.
SPEAKER_00: I just I need to trust God.
SPEAKER_00: So I turned to God at that point and began to see what He can do with this.
SPEAKER_00: Something along those lines.
SPEAKER_00: What kind of person would I have to be to reverse the second and third of those?
SPEAKER_00: To have the good that the Spirit of God gives us.
SPEAKER_00: But as the first movement, the first movement, be a movement of trust.
SPEAKER_00: Not passivity, but trust.
SPEAKER_00: Heart trust, reliability trust before the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: Well, here's a couple of questions that might help us out in thinking that through.
SPEAKER_00: How would I, what are some of the signs of independence in marriage?
SPEAKER_00: How do I know if I'm really someone who spends a lot of time in independence in marriage?
SPEAKER_00: And we all do, so let's just get that on the table.
SPEAKER_00: Here's a few that I came up with.
SPEAKER_00: I'm sure you could multiply this list many times over.
SPEAKER_00: When you have a conflict with your spouse, you replay the conflict many times over, and you win every time.
SPEAKER_00: I had a professor in seminary that said, I never lost a replay yet.
SPEAKER_00: You know, just think of that for a moment.
SPEAKER_00: Oh my gosh, I've had years of replays.
SPEAKER_00: Years.
SPEAKER_00: And most of those years on the replays, I had no awareness, no awareness really, that I was in the cycle of replaying and winning, replaying and winning, replaying and winning.
SPEAKER_00: And where that came from, and what that really told me about myself.
SPEAKER_00: Why?
SPEAKER_00: Because I was a person who had not learned to engage the inner world.
SPEAKER_00: I hadn't learned that we were there really is something called the heart in Scripture, and that is in fact central to what Jesus and what God in the Old Testament would have us live out of and be aware of and be guarding.
SPEAKER_00: And so I would regularly have replays and win every time.
SPEAKER_00: Now, when I have replays, sometimes, I'm able to catch myself at some point in the replays.
SPEAKER_00: And suddenly it dawns on me.
SPEAKER_00: I can come before God with this.
SPEAKER_00: I can come before Him.
SPEAKER_00: And I can come confessing this replay.
SPEAKER_00: And what really is my heart behind this replay?
SPEAKER_00: Because there's a lot more at stake here than just me winning.
SPEAKER_00: There are attitudes and desires that need to be named before the Lord and confessed and asked for forgiveness.
SPEAKER_00: And to begin to ask Him to do something different in my soul at this point.
SPEAKER_00: How about this one?
SPEAKER_00: In marriage, you use your gifts and mind to solve or win conflict.
SPEAKER_00: Some of you are in marriages where one spouse would say, I hate, I hate conflict with him or with her.
SPEAKER_00: She's really smart.
SPEAKER_00: And she outwits me every time.
SPEAKER_00: And I always lose.
SPEAKER_00: In I never feel satisfied like we really talked about what the issues were, what was important to me, what's important to her.
SPEAKER_00: If you're gifted to be smart, if you're whatever your giftings are, you're going to use them in bad ways.
SPEAKER_00: You will.
SPEAKER_00: Isn't it true?
SPEAKER_00: Every gifting has a negative side to it.
SPEAKER_00: It has a dark, shadowy side to it that you'll engage and you'll do it, and it will be harmful.
SPEAKER_00: So if your God's given you great intellect when it comes to arguing, oh man, your spouse doesn't have a chance, maybe.
SPEAKER_00: Because you're going to win that argument every time.
SPEAKER_00: You're going to use your lot, your gift of logic.
SPEAKER_00: You're going to show them how illogical they are.
SPEAKER_00: How about this one?
SPEAKER_00: Trying to prove yourself to your spouse.
SPEAKER_00: Trying to prove your worth to them.
SPEAKER_00: It's the road of independence.
SPEAKER_00: Independence.
SPEAKER_00: You're going to labor in your own strength to prove to them that you're worthy.
SPEAKER_00: And maybe they want you to do that.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe we came across this one of maybe we build security into our life apart from our spouse.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe you're a person who has lost hope in your marriage, and now you're you're stalking away some money and you're exercising at the gym and you're working on your body image because you may need it real soon in the future.
SPEAKER_00: And I'm not trying to make light of what that might feel like to be in a marriage that you didn't have hope in.
SPEAKER_00: But I am trying to say that can you just see, right?
SPEAKER_00: There's a strong thread of independence right there.
SPEAKER_00: That's leaning on your own understanding of how this is going to go down and how it needs to go down.
SPEAKER_00: You're making your own provision in advance.
SPEAKER_00: Or maybe you're someone who, when you've had a bad conflict with your spouse, you you get you get on the horn with your friends.
SPEAKER_00: And you especially keep doing that till you hear from a friend who agrees with you really well.
SPEAKER_00: And you want to process this with people.
SPEAKER_00: Well, there is something good about processing things.
SPEAKER_00: If you have conf a few confidants in life, God gives us brothers and sisters to help in those kinds of ways.
SPEAKER_00: But first and foremost, we're to be a people who trust in the Lord and know him in all our ways, who walk with him through every circumstance of life and engage him with a hard trust in him.
SPEAKER_00: If we bring that into our marriage, we'll have a different kind of marriage.
SPEAKER_00: So what I really mean by that is if you begin to cultivate that in your marriage, nobody will bring that into their marriage, but if you begin to make that an important value for you in your marriage, you begin to go after this kind of dependence and instinct that's from the flesh, your marriage is going to look different.
SPEAKER_00: So let me uh let me ask quickly this question.
SPEAKER_00: What would dependence look like then if you really were cultivating it in life?
SPEAKER_00: How might that look?
SPEAKER_00: It might look like this beyond what we've said.
SPEAKER_00: It might look like you sit down and engage the Lord and you ask him wholeheartedly, as much as you're able, Lord, teach me to love.
SPEAKER_00: Break me.
SPEAKER_00: Just break me from believing that I really know what it is to love this woman or this man.
SPEAKER_00: Teach me what it means to love them with their background, their story, their baggage, all their brokenness that they brought into your marriage that you pledged before God and a company of witnesses that you would always be true to.
SPEAKER_00: Father, what would it look like to cherish this spouse of mine?
SPEAKER_00: What would that actually look like in practice?
SPEAKER_00: I need practical help, Father.
SPEAKER_00: Show me.
SPEAKER_00: Begin to unearth my hidden heart and attitudes.
SPEAKER_00: The ones, especially, that bring my spouse harm.
SPEAKER_00: Bring those to the surface.
SPEAKER_00: Let me see them.
SPEAKER_00: Show me where I'm grieving my spouse.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe when you're in the middle of a conflict, it might look like this.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe it's one of those Nehemiah arrow prayers.
SPEAKER_00: Father, whatever truth there is in what they are saying right now, I'm feeling very justified in this moment.
SPEAKER_00: I'm feeling like I have got this argument.
SPEAKER_00: I've got it.
SPEAKER_00: I know I don't have it.
SPEAKER_00: I don't see.
SPEAKER_00: Lord, whatever truth there is, may I see it.
SPEAKER_00: May I have eyes to see it.
SPEAKER_00: May I just have a brokenness that can embrace that, a humility that can sit with that.
SPEAKER_00: These are some of the paths that trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your understanding, are going to look like in marriage.
SPEAKER_00: They're going to be very practical.
SPEAKER_00: They're going to involve you engaging your heart.
SPEAKER_00: If you have had a whole lifetime of not doing that, it's okay.
SPEAKER_00: You can start today.
SPEAKER_00: And you can start today by just coming before the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: In how you might go away.
SPEAKER_00: Some people might go away, some of you, you might, depending on where you are today in your walk with God.
SPEAKER_00: Some of you might go away discouraged.
SPEAKER_00: Because you haven't really come to grips with the gospel yet.
SPEAKER_00: At least, I'm not saying you're not a believer, but you haven't really engaged that Jesus is your righteousness.
SPEAKER_00: You're still trying in the backdoor kind of way, trying to earn your sanctification.
SPEAKER_00: You're trying to be good enough and work harder.
SPEAKER_00: And you've given up long ago.
SPEAKER_00: It doesn't work.
SPEAKER_00: I can't do it.
SPEAKER_00: I'm going to come to church.
SPEAKER_00: I'm going to be happy and greet people.
SPEAKER_00: I'm going to be there.
SPEAKER_00: That would be a tragic irony.
SPEAKER_00: Because in this passage, wellness is not achieved by passivity, it's achieved by an active trust that doesn't have to go do something.
SPEAKER_00: It needs to be open before the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: Another tragic irony would be for you to go away and actually try harder and believe that you can manage it.
SPEAKER_00: You haven't got to where they are yet.
SPEAKER_00: You're still thinking that you're going to work harder and get this marriage squared away.
SPEAKER_00: You're going to read a book, you're going to go to a conference, and those are all great things.
SPEAKER_00: Please do them.
SPEAKER_00: But you're thinking you're going to figure this out on your own.
SPEAKER_00: And yes, you're going to pray, but really the traction of your work, you're hoping, it's going to be your own mind, your own work of your hands, and it's not going to be something that God's going to bring into your life in a profound way that shows that He is the glorious God who gets all the glory.
SPEAKER_00: The whole point is the importance of a humble, active openness before the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: Can you leave today with an affirmation to the Lord that you see it and that you want it.
SPEAKER_00: You want it in your marriage.
SPEAKER_00: And you want him.
SPEAKER_00: You're bringing nothing to the table.
SPEAKER_00: You want him to start affecting this today.
SPEAKER_00: Throw the conlet down.
SPEAKER_00: You've lived long enough in your own strength.
SPEAKER_00: Put a stake in the ground today.
SPEAKER_00: Psalm one twenty-seven says, unless the Lord builds the house, the builders labor in vain.
SPEAKER_00: Will you pray with me?
SPEAKER_00: Father, thank you for your word.
SPEAKER_00: You are a rock.
SPEAKER_00: And may we have the grace to stand on that rock even stronger today, having heard and having believed that you're reliable and truthful, and that we can bring our whole heart to you where we are in Christ.
SPEAKER_00: His name we pray.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.