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.
ED YOUNG:
Yesterday it piled up literally so much that Lisa decided, unbeknownst to me...
LISA YOUNG:
No, I just couldn't take it anymore.
ED YOUNG:
She couldn't take it.
LISA YOUNG:
I'm going out there to take the dogs out, which my dog is a Maltese. Big difference in what is left in the yard. Big difference.
ED YOUNG:
I was riding the Peloton, trying to stay in shape, and I happened to look out and I see Lisa dressed in like, it was almost combat gear, picking up the dog doo-doo. So we had an argument over that.
LISA YOUNG:
He took a picture and he sent it on the family text of me outside doing that. I walked inside just for a brief second and he was on the Peloton and he mentioned to me, he said, "They make low impact Peloton rides," because I struggle with my knee. And I said, "You know what? Picking up dog poo-poo is low impact. You would enjoy it."
ED YOUNG:
Whoa.
LISA YOUNG:
That was our disagreement.
ED YOUNG:
The metaphor is true in marriage. We pick up a lot of doo-doos. Think about it.
LISA YOUNG:
I was not going to say that.
ED YOUNG:
But it's true.
LISA YOUNG:
I felt really good about the progression of the "we" to the "I" and the selflessness and all of that. It's a serious matter.
ED YOUNG:
It is. It is.
LISA YOUNG:
It really is. We have to add humor because you know what? These subjects are so tough that laughter causes us to relax. So, take a deep breath, because I know in this room and in all of our different environments, we have people who are, they feel great about this thing called marriage. And they feel really good about the stage that they're in, but others are not so good. Hopefully you can just take a breath and absorb what we know to be true about God's plan for your life and marriage.
ED YOUNG:
Lisa, what's so interesting about marriage is, and I've done so many weddings, you have a bride and a groom looking at each other, starry eyed, looking into the future, and believe me, marriage is great, if you're willing to work and do what the Lord wants you to do, and you have the right anchor. It can be amazing.
ED YOUNG:
But looking at these people saying, "I do," and kissing and going to the honeymoon, no one would say, "Hey, in just a few short years, maybe a decade or two, they're going to be at each other's throats, and they're going to have to call in the lawyers to pick up the pieces." It's diabolical when you think about it, but there are also some indicators and some things that we can do. It starts, though, with the anchor, Jesus Christ, because without the gospel, you're not going to have that foundation for reconciliation. You're not going to have that foundation for oneness, for selflessness. And again, I apologize for not going out in the yard and shoveling the...
LISA YOUNG:
Thank you for that. There's always more to come.
ED YOUNG:
Yeah, believe me. But, Lisa, we've been looking at some of the things that cause divorce, and these are some indicators that all couples deal with in one form or another. The first is CRITICISM.
LISA YOUNG:
Last week we spoke about communication and what's involved in communication. It's the exchange of information, affirmation, and confrontation. But what happens when we're in confrontation mode, we tend to go into criticism mode, and rather than dealing with the "what", we start attacking the "who".
ED YOUNG:
We attack the core character of the person when we're critical, and it's the "who", not the "what".
LISA YOUNG:
In other words, we begin to tear down the personality, the character of our spouse, rather than building in affirmation and support.
ED YOUNG:
With that in effect, there's the antithesis of it that the Lord wants us to operate, and that is the REVEAL.
LISA YOUNG:
He wants us to reveal the definite problem or the issue at hand. Ed and I have disagreements, as we mentioned, and yesterday, that was kind of a funny disagreement. Not so funny at the time, but now we can laugh about it. And most of those disagreements, you can eventually laugh.
ED YOUNG:
Yes. Most of them.
LISA YOUNG:
We have to reveal the real issue. Not against the person, but what is the real issue. We talked last week about the percentage of resolvable versus unresolvable issues.
ED YOUNG:
Unresolvable issues in marriage. 69% of all marriages deal with issues that you're not going to solve totally and of completely. Yet the other, like the 31%, are definitely solvable. It doesn't mean that you have a horrible marriage all the time. It means there's compromise, there's sharing. That's where the selflessness comes in, which happened to be my issue yesterday.
LISA YOUNG:
Instead of criticizing, reveal the real issue and determine "is this a solvable issue or is this one that we need compromise on" and say, "Okay, this is how we're going to move forward in this situation."
ED YOUNG:
The other one is CONTEMPT. What does that mean? It's kind of ...
LISA YOUNG:
We're kind of leading toward in these a step toward deeper and deeper trouble in marriage. So you might begin with criticism and then it moves toward contempt.
ED YOUNG:
Contempt is like, I'm here and you're there. My spouse is beneath me. You know that kind of vibe.
LISA YOUNG:
Marriage can create power struggles. Usually it's over sex, money and control. Would those be the things?
ED YOUNG:
It's PMS. It's power, money and sex. No one laughed at that. PMS.
LISA YOUNG:
No. PMS. Okay.
ED YOUNG:
That was funny. I've said it before, but it's still funny to laugh at it again. A good joke is like a good song. You don't just hear ...
LISA YOUNG:
Marriage issues can be over control, about who gets to decide what, about power. Contempt begins when you feel like you're the powerful one and their opinion, your spouse's opinion, means nothing. You give no value to what they bring to the relationship. This is like one of those slow moves. Sometimes it's slow. Sometimes it's faster. But moving from criticism to contempt.
LISA YOUNG:
The opposite of contempt would be RESPECT. We respect. This is something that you've talked about. We don't always respect how a person is behaving, but we respect the position that they hold. We're talking about our spouse. I'm talking about my husband or you're talking about your wife. This is a person who holds a position in your relationship that demands respect. And that is the opposite of contempt.
ED YOUNG:
Yes it is. And then another one, Lisa, that would be CANCEL. We live in the cancel culture. I'm sure you've been canceled before. I've been canceled before. I shared with you a while back I wrote a book about a year and a half ago, and I was very excited because I was going to be on this platform where 4 million people was going to watch this interview with myself and this person. Well, this person just canceled me the day before the interview because of things that we stand for at Fellowship Church, the word of God, marriages between one man and one woman. This person canceled me over issues like that. It hurts and it still hurts. That can happen in marriage. We can cancel one another. That's like the ultimate. That's when the anchor is way off the bottom and we're being blown across the lake.
LISA YOUNG:
Because to cancel your spouse means that you have finally come to that point where you just disregard them completely. You turn your back on the relationship. You begin to move further and further away. It could be you don't even want to hear a conversation with them. You have time for conversation with anybody, but not for them. You have no eye contact, no compassion, no caring there. It's just where the relationships become null and void. It's a very dangerous thing, but it is a part of this progress from criticism to contempt. And then finally canceling out the relationship.
ED YOUNG:
And the antithesis to this is RECONCILIATION.
LISA YOUNG:
And that's where the anchor comes in. When we have the anchor of Jesus Christ.
ED YOUNG:
Yes.
LISA YOUNG:
Jesus is our model for reconciliation. If I call myself a "Christ follower" and I don't rush to forgive, now there are varying degrees of pain, suffering, hurt, marital discord. We know that. There has to be a spirit of reconciliation in every relationship. And it is left upon us, those of us who have a relationship with Jesus, who have been forgiven. Do you realize what would've happened if Jesus had canceled us? Turned his back on us? Would it look like us?
ED YOUNG:
Wow. You're starting to preach. You are preaching. Yes.
LISA YOUNG:
But that's what we should be reminded of when we have this temptation to cancel our spouse.
ED YOUNG:
Yes, it's all about that reconciliation. Lisa, I remember when our kids were small. When I say small, they were going to school and we would take them to school. We had to drive across this dam, this bridge. So oftentimes, there were arguments, "Who's riding shot gun". Whatever. Blah, blah, blah.
LISA YOUNG:
Most of the time. Most of the time. Yeah.
ED YOUNG:
Then inevitably, I would just say, "Quiet. No one talk anymore, unless you have something great to say." So we would just ride in silence for a while. Inevitably, as we were crossing the bridge over the dam, I would hear this. "I'm sorry." And then there would be, believe it or not, reconciliation among the siblings. We began to call that the dam bridge of forgiveness of reconciliation. So in marriage, things can dam up your marriage. Things can mess your marriage up. In fact, the enemy wants to mess your marriage up. Our culture is anti-marriage. So regularly, we have to understand the bridge that God built to man. That bridge is Jesus. Yet we have the free will to cross it or not. When we cross it, we become Christ followers. Then in this relationship, we have to keep on crossing it amongst spouses and our families and everything.
Those are just three markers of divorce, Lisa. And all of us though, in marriage, and this sometimes shocks people. All of us deal with the same issues. I'll say this over and over. Every marriage here deals with the same conflicts, the same selfishness or selflessness, but there's a lot of transitional times.
This summer, we were talking to a lady that represents us. She's a book agent for some of our books. We were talking about writing a book on pain, because as some of you know, most of you know, our daughter, a week ago, I mean, this week a year ago, suddenly and tragically passed away.
She was asking us about pain. How do you deal with pain? She said, "You guys need to write a book on the subject." Then Lisa said something about marriage that I thought was so compelling regarding pain and regarding the transitions that every marriage moves through.
LISA YOUNG:
If you study conflict in marriage, most of the time, it's about TRANSITIONAL TIMES in your life, either the birth of a child or a having a teenager, a move, all of these different things. So, for our family, I just started going through in my journal, especially in those months following LeeBeth's passing, outlining some things that Ed and I have gone through. He always says, "Lisa and I've been married for 40 years." I'd always think, "Ed, people know. I feel like we're bragging." Blah, blah, blah. And no, really and truly, those 40 years represent more than days dropping off the calendar. They represent transitions in our lives where we have made it.
ED YOUNG:
They represent the fact that the anchor is firm and secure, and the anchor holds.
LISA YOUNG:
Is firm and secure.
ED YOUNG:
That's what they represent.
LISA YOUNG:
Because I will tell you right now, people think, "oh, but y'all are pastors and you are in the church and this is your job and blah, blah, blah." Yeah. Blah, blah, blah. Because it is not easy. It is not just a walk in the park. Ed said it last week, "Jurassic Park". That's the park you're walking through.
LISA YOUNG:
So yes, we have had so many times in our relationship and I just starting naming them and she looked at me and she goes, "Oh, wow." So I just want to share with you some of the things over the past 40 years that Ed and I have walk through, which ...
ED YOUNG:
And the good thing is, Lisa, we can look, I want to interrupt you for a second. We can look ahead at these transition times and we can know, "okay, I'm going to face this, I'm going to face that, so we can be ready". And then that anchor is secure. And if it's not secure, it can be secure today so we can weather these storms.
LISA YOUNG:
Yeah. So, if you've been married for a year, many years like Ed and I, or if you're not married and you're thinking, "Oh, one day I will be," you need to prepare for the transition times, and you need to make sure that your anchor is Jesus, because that's the only anchor that will work. One of the things that I read that is something that is a transition and leads to conflict is if you marry young. Ed and I were 21 years old when we got married.
ED YOUNG:
That's young.
LISA YOUNG:
We dated for a long time, but we were very young, and we were very young and dumb. We didn't understand. We didn't go through counseling.
ED YOUNG:
Go through premarital counseling. Lisa and I didn't, and it was horrible that we did not. We had a lot of issues in the early years of our marriage because we didn't listen to messages like this.
LISA YOUNG:
Well, there weren't. I'm just here to tell you.
ED YOUNG:
There weren't a lot of marriage messages, and we didn't go to any Christian counseling. That's why, for 32 years, Lisa and I have spoken unapologetically about marriage. Sadly, as you look around at our churches, in North America, churches rarely talk about marriage, the most important relationship on planet Earth. Obviously, God being number one, that's the vertical, but this horizontal thing. That's why we have done this because we want to give you the ammunition, the stuff, the utensils, the luggage, everything. So, you can process these issues.
LISA YOUNG:
Another thing was distance. If you and your spouse are living in separate cities, well there was a period of time where Ed was going to seminary. I had a baby at home, LeeBeth. I was in Houston. He was in Dallas. We lived, I believe, for six months apart. He would come home on the weekends, but still, that's a very stressful thing on a relationship. Another thing is we had a baby. That's a transitional time. But then we went through a miscarriage.
ED YOUNG:
Talking about having a baby, 50% of marriages get into the deep weeds when they have a child. After the seven year mark, that's the average.
LISA YOUNG:
Then we went through infertility. So, miscarriage and then infertility. Yes, we had a baby. So, you say, "Well, what is that? How are you going through infertility?" It's called secondary infertility. And so, lots of tests, lots of things that we found out. Basically, we found out that every birth is a miracle, but our firstborn was a real miracle because I should not have been able to get pregnant.
LISA YOUNG:
Then, by God's grace, we had our second child, EJ. He was four weeks old when we discovered that he had a genetic disease called neurofibromatosis. Now, EJ and his wife, Jess, lead in our downtown Dallas campus. If you were to meet EJ, you would probably have no idea of what he has gone through, through his entire life. But four weeks old, we were given this news and back then, in 1991, there was no home computers. You could not Google neurofibromatosis. Ed and I had no clue what we were about face. What it meant was that tumors form on nerve centers in your body.
ED YOUNG:
In the brain, eyes. The worst would be elephant man's disease, sort of.
LISA YOUNG:
Well, it's not the same. But it is disfigurement like Elephant's Man's Disease if you're familiar with that. That is a transition. Through faith and by God's grace, we had people who surrounded us in the church. That is why Ed and I, when you talk about the anchor being Jesus, Jesus provides his body, the body of Christ for you to get support. Don't take for granted what God has given you in the church, because that is how we walked through those times. When we had to go to MD Anderson Hospital in Houston for EJ to see the best specialists, when he had to have tests and more tests. Then when he was going through his junior high years, and there were some developmental issues. All of these different things that we faced, it was the anchor of Jesus and the body of Christ that got us through.
ED YOUNG:
Yes. Lisa, when we have, for example, our weekend worship experiences, and when we do what we do as a church, we're not playing games. This is not some entertainment vibe. This is not something you do just to check off the, "I've gone to church" box. This is life and death, what we're talking about here. This is eternity here. The stakes are sky high here. So, to sit back and think, "Oh, wow, that's a cool church. Look at the LED screens. They've been married for 40 years. That's so cool and so sexy. And yeah, I'll go to church now and then, but if there's something else better, I'll do that." This is what life is all about. I'm telling you, forget Lisa and I being pastors. We would not be where we are today in our marriage without, obviously, Jesus, and without the church.
If you don't have that, I'm just going to tell you straight up, man to man, it's not going to work. Let me say it again. It's not going to work. I don't want to pull any punches. I don't want to lie to you. I don't want to say, "Oh yeah, it's going to work. It's not going to work. So, if you want something to work, and marriage should work, simply build your life, your marriage on the anchor of Jesus and the implications of that. I'm here to tell you, he'll take you places that you can't even dream of. He'll give you stability in the midst of these transitional times, even in neurofibromatosis. Then, the next thing, Lisa, you talked about to our friend who helps us in writing, you talked to her about having multiples twins. We have twins. The twin towers.
LISA YOUNG:
When I was pregnant with the twins, I was huge, massive, large. I broke the girth record at our gynecologist's office for the size of what was to come.
ED YOUNG:
I wish I could catch a large mouth bass with that kind of girth. It'd be a world record. You looked great. I'm just saying to you...
LISA YOUNG:
Thank you. Listen, I'm fully aware.
ED YOUNG:
It was unbelievable.
LISA YOUNG:
The week before the twins were scheduled to be born, their due date, this magazine came because it was around Father's Day. And this magazine went on about what fathers desire from their home life. One of them was peace and tranquility. And I was like, "Okay, we've got a toddler who's just turned three. We have a seven-year-old who's upset about all of it, and we have twins who are going to be born next week." And in the middle of our den, there were two swings. There are two play mats. There are two highchairs. There's two of everything. This is not going to be a place of tranquility. I'm certain of that. This was a huge time. I even read about the statistics of divorce increasing after multiples. So, I'm like, "Oh boy. We got to go..."
ED YOUNG:
Dog doo-doo is nothing compared to that stage.
LISA YOUNG:
Compared to that.
ED YOUNG:
Nothing.
LISA YOUNG:
Wow. Talk about diapers. Whoo. Then, fast forward several years later, and I didn't even throw into that whole mix here, is we made a major move by leaving Houston when LeeBeth was a baby and coming to Dallas to start Fellowship Church. That's a massive thing.
ED YOUNG:
A lot of people don't know. Okay, starting a church, it's like starting a business. We started with zero. Even though dad's church is one of the largest churches in America, definitely the wealthiest church in America. No one's close to his church. How much money did he give us to start? Eh. How much money has he given us? Eh. So, you want to talk about stress?
ED YOUNG:
Here we come up here. 30 families, the average age is about 60, and we're in a little office complex. We're in this rent house. It wasn’t that great. One old suburban, one dog, one kid. I remember rejoicing when our offerings were near $1000. I remember when we bought our first typewriter. I know a lot of you don't even what that is. Major, major stress. Because 85% of church plants fail. Let me say that again. 85% fail. We're dealing with this. I'm not whining. I'm just speaking the truth and shaming the devil. We're dealing with all of this while these things are happening. And then we go into Landra. fast forward it a little bit.
LISA YOUNG:
One of our twins struggled with an eating disorder at the end of her high school years. That was a huge thing going through with her. Then, several years later, we discovered that LeeBeth, our oldest daughter, had an addiction and severe depression. Her addiction was alcohol. Then, ultimately, a year ago, that ended in her death. Nobody plans for that. Nobody thinks about, not just the transitions, but it could end in a transition like that. That is what we call an "out of order death". It was my prayer that as we shared this with you guys and all of these things over the past 40 years, that Ed and I could stand here today, as we did a year ago when we told the story initially. And tell you that God is faithful.
ED YOUNG:
Amen.
LISA YOUNG:
We stood here last year on this stage and said it. We talked about how we were leaning into him. I want to tell you without hesitation that though this year has been the hardest year of our lives. God has moved in our lives in ways that we cannot fathom, we cannot explain. I'm talking about beautiful ways, gorgeous ways, eternal ways. Where Ed and I step back and go, "God, thank you." And I cannot explain that, but I will tell you that when Jesus is your anchor, everything changes.
ED YOUNG:
That's right.
LISA YOUNG:
Everything changes.
ED YOUNG:
I've seen it too. I obviously would love to have LeeBeth back up compared to what we've gone through. I don't know if that makes sense. But I've seen God move in our church since her death like I've never seen before in the 32-year history of Fellowship Church. One of the things about going through a crisis or a time of pain, like we have experienced during this, on one hand, nightmarish year. It draws you together at first when the tragedy strikes, whatever it is. Just named it tragedy. It draws you closer to one another. However, then as we've discovered, you begin to grieve or process pain in your own way. That's when it can get dangerous.
LISA YOUNG:
Yes. One of the things that Ed and I have come to understand is first and foremost, when people say, "I just can't imagine. How do you prepare for something like this?" Well, I will tell you, you can.
ED YOUNG:
Say that again. That's powerful.
LISA YOUNG:
A lot of people, well, meaning said, "Oh, you just can't prepare for something like this." I was the first to say, "Oh, you're right. You're right." Then it dawned on me. Yes, you can. As horrific, as awful, as terrible as this has been, you can. I equate it to depositing money into a bank account and it's drawing interest. You deposit and you deposit and you deposit, and then one day you might need to use the interest for something. Maybe an unexpected event happens, or I don't know what, but you have to dip into it. That's what you do with your faith. You deposit faith by consistency in your walk with Jesus, by studying his word every day on your own. Not because it's a duty, but because it's how you get life. You study his word, you are involved in church, you serve, you share, you sow, you do all those things that we talk about. They sound catchy and all of that. But as Ed said, this is serious. That's how we have made a deposit so that this year we drew from it. We drew completely from it. You can do that.
ED YOUNG:
Yes, we had savings. We tapped into our savings spiritually to process this.
LISA YOUNG:
The other thing is, being careful not to put unrealistic expectations on your spouse. Ed and I grieved differently. Some days Ed would be great, sometimes I would be great. But it wasn't Ed's responsibility to fix me nor my responsibility to fix him. We had to pray it through, work it through, communicate and talk. But it wasn't about pressure...
ED YOUNG:
In other words, you cannot put pressure on your spouse to become the anchor. You cannot put divine pressure on a depraved human being. In any situation when it comes to marriages. Your spouse is not your savior, your spouse is not your Lord. They can be and they are a reflection of that. But too often we put too much pressure.
LISA YOUNG:
Then finally, and I think this is so important, don't trade what you do know for what you don't know. Last year we faced so many unknowns, we didn't know how we were going to feel on her birthday. We didn't know how we were going to feel at Thanksgiving, at Christmas, and then this week at the anniversary of her death. We did not know. There are a lot of unknowns. What we do know is that Jesus is at the center of it all. We do know that we have a hope in heaven. We do know where LeeBeth is in this moment, at this time. We do know that because of what God's word tells us. So don't trade what you don't know for what you do know. Don't let feelings mess up the facts of our faith.
ED YOUNG:
Yes.
LISA YOUNG:
One of my favorite stories and favorite songs is about Horatio Spafford. He was a very wealthy man who lived in Chicago and in 1871, he lost everything. His son died of Scarlet fever, he lost his business in the Chicago fire. He and his wife had four daughters remaining and they said, "We'd be better if we just go back to Europe and start over." Horatio had things to do and things to button up in Chicago, so he sent his wife and four daughters on ahead. They were traveling across the ocean on a ship and the ship encountered rogue winds and heavy waves and they were cast overboard. Four of his daughters perished, he had lost a son and now he had lost his four daughters. When his wife, who survived, got to Europe, she messaged him, telegraphed him and said, "Saved alone." When he made the trek to join her and the ship that he was on covered that same area where his children had been lost. He pinned the words, "It is well with my soul." There's no way to explain having peace in the midst of a storm like that unless you have Jesus as your anchor.
ED YOUNG:
The question is, do you have Jesus as your anchor? Or are you trying to use clotheslines and Clorox bottles for your foundation? It's our prayer that we will make that decision individually, also collectively in every marriage and in every relationship here. That we can boldly proclaim through tears, through doubts, through heartaches, it is well.
LISA YOUNG:
Father, we thank you for this time. I pray Lord that if there's someone here who hasn't made a decision to follow you, that today would be that day that they would open the lid of their heart, receive the gift of salvation, turn from their sins and walk with you. Father, we thank you for every single person in this room and all of our environments. I just ask, Lord, that if there are marriages that are broken, that you would heal them. I pray for individuals who are going through pain and suffering in different degrees. Lord, you are our great peace giver, our great helper, our great strength. We pray all of this in Jesus name.
