Anchored Series

7 SENSES OF MARRIAGE : ANCHORED

JANUARY 23, 2022, 9:30AM

ED AND LISA YOUNG

ED YOUNG:

How's everyone doing today? You guys doing well? Please be seated. I want to say hi to all of our different locations and all of our different platforms on social media. I had the opportunity to grow up across from a lake. It was about 25 acres and was really windy. We even called it "Wind Lake". When I was younger, I had a little rowboat and I really wanted to have an anchor. I needed an anchor because this lake, Wind Lake, was pretty deep.

I found some clothesline. I read this somewhere. Some of you don't know what that is. You'll have to Google that. Found some clothesline and I measured it out just by looking and guessing how deep the lake was. Then I got a Clorox bottle, put some sand in it, and that would be my anchor. The clothesline would be the anchor rope. I left my house, walked across the dirt road, through the woods, made it to the rowboat, tied the clothesline to the rowboat. Put the anchor Clorox bottle in the boat and paddled out against the winds in the middle of the lake.

I'm like, "Okay, now I can throw the anchor overboard and I can have some stability. I can stay in one place, even though the winds hit. I threw the anchor overboard and I still found myself being blown all over the lake. I looked down and as I peered down into this coffee black water, I could see that the anchor, the Clorox bottle, was just about five feet off of the bottom, and the sand began to dissipate from the Clorox bottle. So, I'd made a very dumb mistake. I'd misjudged the length of the clothesline, I'd misjudged the depth of the lake, I didn't have a secure anchor, and was blown all over the lake that day. So, don't make an anchor with clotheslines and Clorox bottles. That's your take home.

When it comes to life, especially when it comes to marriage, isn't it true that so many of us are using clotheslines and Clorox bottles to try to secure our marriages, to try to remain steadfast in the currents and the rogue waves that hit? I'm here to tell you, if you have the right anchor, your marriage can soar. The right anchor will give you stability, strength, even when the rogue winds hit, even when these waves come out of nowhere, even all of the elements, or you might say helements that come our way in this relationship called marriage. I'm telling you, if you have the right anchor, great things will happen.

The book of Hebrews 6:19 (NIV) tells us that "We have this hope as an anchor for the soul, firm and secure." That hope is the person of Jesus Christ.

LISA YOUNG:

No one gets married expecting divorce. In fact, when we say, "I do," we are planning for sometimes unrealistic expectations, but we're planning for perfection, Nirvana, all of these things. Yet within that, we never think about divorce. As life goes on, the "I do's" bring us to what we call the pronoun of "we". Everything is about "we and us", "We as a couple". In fact, the book of Genesis says two shall become one. And so, we have moved from individuals to "we". But when those rogue waves and winds hit, and the troubles come and the difficulties, we find ourselves slowly taking steps away. We abandon the "we" and move toward the "I".

Recently, I had a conversation with a woman who deals in marriages and therapy, and she was talking to me and I asked, "Tell me what would be the number one issue that leads to divorce?" She said, "We as couples, or couples who are struggling, go from the idea of selflessness to selfishness." They abandon "we" and move to "I". I think all of us can understand how things start happening in our relationship and how the difficulties come.

Disagreements happen. I don't know if you know this, but that happens in marriage. Ed and I just yesterday were preparing this message and talking and going through the outline, and boy, things heated up. I mean, I'm not going to give you the details of the story...

ED YOUNG:

I will. Let me tell what it was over. This is terrible, but I'll just tell them real quick. Lisa and I have four dogs and one is a Great Dane, and we have, and I'll just say this. We have a lot of dog doo-doo, I call it. Some people say poo. I like doo-doo. We have a lot of dog doo-doo in our yard. I pay someone to come by regularly and pick up the dog doo-doo because it's so much, and I just really don't want to do it.