ROOMMATES, BAD DATES & GREAT MATES
Marriage “. . .the two are united into one”
Hello, and welcome once again to The Journey. Last week, in 27 inches of snow, we kicked off this brand new series called Roommates, Bad Dates and Great Mates. Many of you showed up. You were able to make it here last week, and if this is your first time or second time in this series, we are really glad that you are here. Last week, we sort of began this series by looking at this idea of sex “and it was good” and that title there should let you know that this series is rated PG and today’s message is also rated PG, so if you want to take the kids on down to Journey Kidz, right now might be a really good time to do that. Because we are going to dig in and honestly look at what the Bible says about sex. And there is not a prudish note in the Bible. The Bible is never prudish about this issue, so as we began last week, we looked at three big truths regarding sex. I put this whole message on journeyipod.com, if you want to listen to it at any time, but the three truths are:
1. God created sex. And the Bible says that God created sex. Sex and love were God’s ideas. Sex is not dirty. It’s only dirty when we use it against the way that He created it. 2. So what you need to know about sex, is God elevates sex. That was truth number two that we looked at last week. God hold sex in a much higher regard than we do. We tend to pull sex down. We tend to make it low. We tend to drag sex down into the gutter by abusing God’s original plan. 3. And finally, what we talked about last week, when you have sex, according to God’s way, you get God’s blessing on that relationship and God’s plan for sex is one man, one woman, inside of marriage. So, today, that’s what we are going to talk about, how in marriage, two people are united into one.
So if you will, go ahead and find your message notes and find that first verse from the Book of Hebrews. The Bible gives us some very clear advice on marriage. Today, whether you are married, we have something to say to you. Or maybe you are engaged, we have a lot of engaged couples inside of our church, and one of our couples today is getting married, and it’s been kind of a cool weekend because of that. A lot of people are engaged inside of our church. And even if you are single, it is helpful and important that you understand God’s plan for marriage. So I think there will be something for all of us today, regardless of what our background is and what has brought us here. But I want us to begin by looking at Hebrews 13, and let’s read this verse out loud together, as a foundation for this whole message. Are you ready? Here we go. “Honor marriage and guard the sacredness of sexual intimacy between wives and husbands.” Would you circle the two words—honor and guard. And draw a line between those two. God says we are to honor marriage. Just as we do with sex, sometimes we tend to lower the value of marriage. We make marriage into some kind of civil ceremony, instead of some kind of Christian commitment and we are going to talk about that today as well. And then you will see the word—guard. The Bible says you have to be on guard. There is a lot to unpack on that verse, but one of the things about being on guard is that you have to work at it. You have to stay alert. You have to pay attention. You can’t let your guard down. So successful marriages require attention. Successful marriages require work. Successful marriages, while blessed by God, don’t just automatically happen. You can’t be lazy. You have to be proactive. You have to honor and guard the sacredness of sexual intimacy between wife and husband. You see, God elevates marriage. Marriage in God’s eyes is an eternal commitment. And God says marriage is a sacred bond. And when we have a marriage God’s way, we get God’s blessing on our marriage. But it is really easy for us to fall into some of these myths regarding marriage. In fact, if you look in your notes, I list three misconceptions of marriage. Let me give you these misconceptions so we can get them out of the way and get on to the truth.
Misconception number one regarding marriage: I have to be married in order to be happy. I hear this all the time. People say—I’ve got to be married if I’m going to be happy. Not true. God never said that you have to be married to be happy. Being single is a perfectly legitimate direction in life. Singleness can be blessed by God. If you are single, you can still get all of God’s blessings on your life. Yesterday afternoon, I turned the television on. Maybe you watched this as well. Jerry McGuire was on television. Remember this movie about Jerry McGuire? I laughed about the “show me the money” part. It’s a really great movie, but you know that part, that line when he walks into the room and he says to the girl—what? You complete me. That makes for great drama in Hollywood, but that’s really bad theology. The idea that you have to have another person to complete you. That’s just not true. God says that you can be happy with or without another person. That singleness can be blessed by God. Look, we did a whole series on happiness about a year ago, called 40 Days with Jesus. We looked at the first few statements in the Sermon on the Mount where Jesus talks about the happy life. This is what Jesus said it takes to be happy. Jesus says, “In order for you to be happy, you have to live God’s best plan for your life.” If you live God’s plan for your life, you are going to be happy and His plan may or may not include marriage. As a matter of fact, I Corinthians 7 says that it is perfectly fine and in some ways more commendable to be single if you can. You may want to read that whole passage in I Corinthians 7, if you have been wondering about—do I have to be married to be happy?
Misconception number two regarding marriage: A successful marriage is all about being in love. And the key word in that is “all”. All of marriage is about this feeling. You know marriages, successful relationships, often begin in the heart. That’s true. Successful relationships begin with feelings. But successful relationships are maintained not with the heart, but with the brain. You make this decision. You make this commitment to stay with one another. Sometimes, the feeling lasts. Sometimes, in marriage, you don’t feel in love. Sometimes in marriage you can feel anger. Sometimes you can feel hurt. Sometimes you can feel disappointed. As a matter of fact, sometimes you can feel nothing at all. And sometimes the people say the feelings pass so the marriage is over. No. Successful marriages aren’t built on feelings. Successful marriages are built on commitment to one another. Sometimes that’s an act of the will as much as it is a feeling of the heart.
Misconception number three regarding marriage: I may have married the wrong person. That’s usually how most of the emails start when someone is telling me that their marriage is falling apart. I think I have married the wrong person. A lot of people feel this way. I was flying back the other week from a speaking engagement on a plane. I rarely strike up a conversation with the person next to me, but this was a friendly guy and we were talking. I looked over at him and I noticed that he had his wedding ring on the wrong finger. I said—Hey, man. Your wedding ring is on the wrong finger. He said—that’s okay. I married the wrong woman. Now, look, I don’t know if this guy did or not, but I know a lot of people feel that way.
Well, Pastor Kerrick and I want to show you today that if you are a Christian, and you marry another Christian, it is impossible to marry the wrong person. I know that is counter-cultural. A lot of what we are going to look at today is counter-cultural, because we are going to look at what the Bible says regarding marriage and you may be very surprised of what the Bible says. To do this, we are going to look at what we are calling The Math of Marriage. And this is not the regular kind of math, but it’s sort of God’s mass. Let me give you a preview of where we are going. I brought out two sheets of paper. Construction paper. Let me just tell you a little bit about myself. I have been married to Kelli now for 11 years. We will be married 12 years on August 6 of this year, if she is listening so that she knows that I know our anniversary date. And we live on the upper west side. As you know, we are expecting our first child, after 11 years of marriage, but before we got married, we dated for about a year and then we were engaged for about 10 months. So what happened, this is me and this is Kelli. We met. We were actually set up on a blind date. And then we got engaged and we had this engagement for 8-10 months or so, and then we had this ceremony in front of God and in front of all of our friends and this kind of deal, and something supernatural happened in our ceremony. This is a glue stick in case you can’t see it from where you are sitting. And what happened in this ceremony is God put His blessing on our relationship. And so God put His glue on over this relationship inside of this ceremony and what happened? Two people, inside a marriage, became one. And this is what God did in our marriage. And I want to use this as an illustration to talk about the mass of marriage. Pastor Kerrick is going to help me with this in just a moment. If we are to understand the math of marriage, we have to look at it in sort of stages. So we are not going to deal with the dating stage, we are going to talk about dating next week, and that’s for you whether you are married or not because we are going to look at how to date your mate, but there is a dating stage, but we are going to pretend for this message that the first stage is engagement. What happens in this first stage is one individual with an individual history has determined that another individual with an individual history could be their potential mate. So one plus one in engagement, equal two. This is the engagement stage. Now, the first thing you should know about engagement is that engagement is not mentioned in the Bible. There is no mention of that. There are other ways mentioned in the Bible. Engagement is more of a societal kind of thing in our day. An engagement is a natural result of the dynamic that God set in motion in creation, in Genesis 2. Look at what God did. “The Lord God said it is not good for the man to be alone.” Because of this dynamic, God will allow certain people to meet other people. God will allow one person to come together with another person and then those two people agree that they should move toward marriage so engagement in many ways is like a ramp up toward marriage. In our day, engagement almost always leads to marriage. But that’s not necessarily what engagement is all about. Engagement is a time for couples to deal with the history that they are bringing into the marriage, because when you are in the premarital state, you are dealing with your history and you have all this history of who you dated in the past, what your life is like, your career goals, and now you are thinking with this other person about the merger of these two histories. And the other person has a history, and their dating relationship. So engagement can be a period to figure that out. Well, unfortunately, what is happening in our day is engagement sort of sets into motion this push toward the ceremony, so engagement is actually lost in our day and many people find that once they get into an engagement, it is very hard to get out. The first thing I do when I counsel marital couples, I say to them—look, this engagement time is a time for you to determine that indeed, you should be married. And I give this advice, and sometimes it comes across a little strong. I don’t mean it this way, but it is really easier to break off an engagement than it is a marriage. As a matter of fact, it is difficult, it’s painful to break off a marriage. So engagement can be a time where you really can determine who you are and who this person is that you are marrying. This requires some thought. And the Bible does give us some guidance on this even though the word engagement is not in the Bible. For example, one piece of advice the Bible gives very clearly is in II Corinthians 6:14. You see that in your notes. This is probably one of the most controversial verses in the entire Bible. It says, “Don’t team up with those who are unbelievers. How can a believer be a partner with an unbeliever?” So when you are in this stage of one plus one equals two, you have to deal clearly with the spiritual dynamic inside of your marriage, because the Bible says, not that you shouldn’t do this, but it is almost impossible for this to happen. When people read this verse, they legitimately ask—what’s going on here? I mean, what is the Bible saying about this “don’t”. Now, what you should understand is when the Bible gives you a “don’t” it’s doing that so that you will not miss out on God’s best. You see, every don’t in the Bible carries with it an underlying concern on God’s behalf for your well being. So the “don’ts” in the Scriptures aren’t there to keep you from having pleasure, but they are there to protect you so that you can experience God’s best. How does this work when a believer dates an unbeliever? Because I know this can sound like Christian exclusivity. About God is very exclusionary. Here’s what happens. God understands that when two people come together, that they have to meet on a certain level. And the level is not always on compatibility. As a matter of fact, a lot of marriages aren’t built on compatibility at all. God says nothing about compatibility in the Scripture. But marriages are built on love. So when a non-believer comes together with a believer, the levels of love are often different. Because there is a principle of love in the Bible called the principle of experienced love. And the principle of experienced love simply says—you can’t love until you’ve been loved. And you can only love according to how much you have been loved. I know that’s a difficult principle, but think about it this way. If one person is a believer, and they have experienced the grace and love of God, they have experienced perfect love, because they have experienced God’s love and love is defined by God and God’s love is perfect. If another person is an unbeliever, they may have experienced a good type of love from their family, from their friends, but they have never experienced perfect love, so by definition, the level of love that they have experienced is not as deep as the other person. This is like mixing oil and water when they cove together. One person can give more love than the other person can return. When one person is not willing to give up or love as much as the other person, this leads to problems. That’s why the Bible says, you must be careful about dating an unbeliever because they can’t love at the same level that you can. It’s not an issue of you being better, or they being worse, but it’s that you have experienced love. So that’s why next week we are going to say to you in the dating message, that the best way to avoid an engagement between a believer and an unbeliever, is to avoid dating an unbeliever or a believer and an unbeliever dating. So when you get into this situation, you have to ask yourself some tough questions. And so God gives you this period of engagement to figure that out. Now, one of the things that you do inside of this engagement, assuming that you are both believers, is you begin to figure out how do we make our marriage work? We ask the tough questions. Look at what the Bible says in I Peter 3:11. It says, “Work hard at living in peace with others.” Now, that’s a verse for marriage. And what you talk about in this engagement stage is how do we live at peace with each other. And here’s what that verse doesn’t say. That verse doesn’t say that you have to live together to do this. It is common in our day that during stage one that a couple will move in together. But you know, study after study has found that cohabitation actually is a greater predictor of divorce later on. In order to learn to live in peace doesn’t mean you have to live together, but you do have to deal with two unique individuals with a unique history, coming together to prepare for their becoming one. And that’s what this stage one is all about. If stage one works out really well, then engagement can lead up to the big ceremony and that can really be a big day for us.
So stage one is engagement. In stage two, we move forward to the ceremony, to the actual act of being married. A lot of times when we think about the wedding ceremony, we think about a civil or a legal contract where two individuals are brought together and they are brought together by a legal, binding contract. They still remain two individuals, but they are together because of that contract. Well, in God’s eyes, marriage is not a contract. In God’s eyes, marriage is a spiritual commitment. It is a spiritual covenant and the math of a spiritual commitment is a little bit different. You see, one plus one equals two, this is the math of a contract. But the math of a covenant is a little bit different. That says, one plus one equals one. This is the math of a merger, not a contract. Where the two entities that existed beforehand, one plus one, they no longer exist as they did beforehand. They no longer exist, instead something new has been formed as a result of this merger. Look at how God says it in the very beginning of the Bible in Genesis 2. God says, “This explains why a man leaves his father and mother, and is joined to his wife and the two are united into one.” Underline that—two are united into one. Now, although Adam and his wife are both naked, neither one of them felt any shame. See, marriage begins as two separate individuals from two separate families, and they come together to form a new family. And the imagery of two becoming one is very powerful. The imagery of a new family coming into existence. The imagery of a spiritual, of an emotional, of a sexual combination and coming together to form one, this is very romantic, isn’t it? That sounds so romantic, but in all honesty, two becoming one isn’t very romantic at all. In fact, it’s one of the most difficult and most painful processes that you can go through as an individual. Here’s what I mean by that. For two people to become one, one plus one, can only equal one when each individual going into this covenant, has to become less than they were before. Now, what I mean by that, I don’t want you to get me wrong, when you get married, you become greater than you were before because you have another person added to your life, you become greater. But in order to enter into this marriage, you have to become less. You have to give something up. You have to be willing to sacrifice. There is no way that two people can become one in marriage without sacrificing, without submitting, without each person becoming a little bit less. When Jesus began His ministry on earth, He was 30 years old, and when He began His ministry, there was another famous preacher and teacher that was also teaching and had people following Him at the same time. And when Jesus began His ministry, this guy’s name was John the Baptist. And when Jesus began His ministry, all of the people that were following John the Baptist, left John and went to follow Jesus. And some of John’s friends felt sort of bad and so they went to John and said—John, look everybody that was following you is now following Jesus. You have to come up with something. You have to do something to get them to come back. And then John the Baptist said, and I think it is one of the greatest lines I’ve ever heard. He said this, “I have to become less so that He can become greater.” You see, this is the key to one plus one equaling one, to two becoming one. This is the key—I have to become less so that we can become greater. I become less as an individual so that we can become greater as a couple. And that means, I have to give up control of things that are no longer mine. They were mine, but they are now longer mine, but they are now ours. And this includes even our own bodies. Look at what Paul said in I Corinthians. Paul writes this, “The husband should not deprive his wife of sexual intimacy which is her right as a married woman. Nor should the wife deprive her husband. The wife gives authority over her body to her husband, and the husband also gives authority over his body to his wife.” Now, I don’t want you to misunderstand or misrepresent what Paul is saying here. Paul is not saying that it is okay for there to be abuse or rape inside of marriage. He’s not saying that at all. What Paul is saying is that when two people become one in marriage, that even their own bodies are theirs to do with as they please. Even our bodies belong to one another and they to be used to please one another within marriage. If this is true of our own bodies, it is also true of other areas of our life as well. For instance, our time. My wife, Lori, and I, our 7th wedding anniversary is coming up on May 29 of this year. We were married on May 29, 1999. Now, I have learned a lot over the seven years, but I know that before we got married, my time was mine. I decided when I wanted to do things and I could use my time any way that I wanted to. Now that I’m married, I find that my time is now our time. And what I mean by that, don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that I can’t go out and have a good time, or do things apart from her, I can, but my time is our time so I am also responsible to her for the way that I spend my time. This is also true of money. Before we got married, my money was my money, and I did with it whatever I wanted to whenever I wanted to. But now that we are married, I can’t just go out and spend money any way that I want to, because it is now no longer my money, but it’s our money. So I have to become less.
But two becoming one also means that marriage is not about finding the perfect mate, or even a soul mate. You see, marriage is not about compatibility. Marriage is not about finding that perfect person that can put up with me just the way I am and then we can live the rest of our lives in perfection, happily ever after. No, marriage is a process. It is a process where God changes you on the inside to make you into the perfect mate. You don’t find Mr. or Mrs. Right when you are dating. As a matter of fact, there is no one in this world, exactly the way that you are right now, that will be able to put up with you. There is no one that will be able to stand you for. . .in fact, the way that I am right now, if I stay exactly the same as I am, there is no way that my wife will be able to put up with me for the rest of our natural life. I have to change. When you are married, God works on you and turns you into Mr. and Mrs. Right. You don’t find them when you are dating. Some of you are here today and maybe you are wondering—did I marry the right person? Am I married to Mr. Right or am I married to Mrs. Right? Well, here is the truth—once you put that wedding ring on the other person, in God’s eyes, they are Mr. Right. They are Mrs. Right. They are the right person, so your responsibility in marriage isn’t to go around wondering—well, did I marry the right person? The answer is yes. You are married, they are they right person. And your responsibility is not to go around trying to change them to Mr. or Mrs. Right. Because you can’t do that. Your responsibility is to allow God into your life so that He can change you and turn you into the spouse that you need to be to make your marriage the best marriage that it can be. You see, one of the biggest reasons for divorce, is that married couples never really want to do what it takes to move to stage two. They want to stay at one plus one equals two because that’s easier, it’s about compatibility, and that’s about getting along. They don’t want to go to one plus one equals one, because that takes sacrifice. But the key to a lifelong marriage is allowing God to make you into the right person, learning to put the other person’s interests in front of your own, learning to sacrifice, becoming kind, patient, forgiving, submissive and above all, loving. Becoming less as an individual so that you can become more as a couple. Look at how Paul says it, “Love is patient and kind. Love does not demand its own way. Love is not irritable and keeps no record of when it has been wronged.”
Let’s review real quickly about where we have been in this math of marriage. Stage one—one plus one equals two. And then stage two—one plus one equals one. And now we are into stage three, and stage three is what we might consider the ever after kind of stage and in this stage, this is what happens beyond the ceremony, and in this stage it is one plus one equals eternity. This is like the sideways eight if you remember from your math class. One plus one equals eternity, forever after. This is sometimes rather difficult. It doesn’t mean that your marriage is going to be perfect. Perfect marriages are the only kind that last for eternity, but you have to work at it. D. J. Chesterton, the Catholic writer, he said, “Marriage is an adventure. Like going to war.” Billy Graham was asked one time about his particular marriage, and he had been married 54 years, so what’s the secret of love. And he said, “Ruth and I are happy incompatible.” Bill Cosby talking about marriage, he said, “For two people in a marriage to live together day after day is unquestionably the one miracle the Vatican has overlooked.” This is a miracle process of how two people can stay together forever. As a matter of fact, the classic book on this is called The Mystery of Marriage. It’s by Mike Mason. If you are a married couple here today, we have some copies of this book, they are by the wedding cake or over by the resources there. We want to give you a free copy of this. This is just a classic book, called The Mystery of Marriage. And we want to recommend this because this is a mystery. I mean, how can one person stay together with another person for all of eternity? And the mystery of marriage, the miracle of marriage is that God in His supernatural way, makes us eternally connected. And this is the way that God blesses. You see, when you live your marriage according to God’s plan, you get God’s blessing on your marriage. That’s why in Mark 10, look at what Jesus said, this is summing up all that we’ve talked about today. He said, “God’s plan was seen from the beginning of creation. For He made them male and female. This explains why a man leaves his father and mother and is joined to his wife and the two are united into one. They are no longer two, but one. Let no one separate them, for God has joined them together.” That’s the math of marriage from Jesus’ standpoint.
Now, last week, after the message on sex, my email, as you can imagine, was slammed with a lot of questions. And we were asked questions on everything related to sex, from the masturbation issue, to marriage, to divorce, and we are going to try to deal with some of those questions in the rest of the series, but there were a couple of questions that were asked about marriage that I want to deal with here. One was about divorce. Why is the Bible against divorce? Well, the Bible is against divorce because of what it does to the people that are involved. Because of the pain that is created and that is involved in divorce. Is divorce mentioned in the Bible? Yes. Does God hold it in high regard? No. The Bible says that God hates divorce. Now why is that? You know earlier when I did the little thing with the glue stick and now it’s kind of dried up here and the two that have become one. . .this is an image of what happens. Two become one and then when we try to separate what God has put together, you can see that that is difficult, if not impossible to do. And the reality of this is, my heart is just broken because I have seen so many people who are in the pain of divorce. They have tried to separate. They tried to pull apart, but divorce has hurt them. It’s hurt their kids. It’s hurt their families in a terrible way because when two things come together, no matter how careful you try to do it, you just can’t separate them. And many of you have lived with this pain of divorce. You have grown up with this pain of divorce. Now, is divorce the unforgivable sin? Of course not. God can forgive that and God can work through that process. But it’s not God’s best plan. God’s best plan is one man, one woman, together for eternity. One of the things I said last week in the message on sex, is that God’s plan for maximum sexual fulfillment is inside marriage. And so in this one plus one equals eternity, God wants you to enjoy your mate for all eternity. And there were a lot of questions about that, related to sex inside of marriage. And obviously, God is for that. God is pro that. As a matter of fact, if you are married, I’m giving you permission to go home and practice that this afternoon. I am giving you a homework assignment to help get you in the mood, or whatever. You can do that. That’s perfectly fine. But I wish you could have seen some of the emails about some of the delicate ways that people in the church tried to email me about this. One person said—you know, I understand sex is inside of marriage. What kind of freedom do we have inside of marriage? And I think what that person was getting at was what kind of liberties can a couple take inside of marriage. The thing is there is a lot of liberty, as long as you don’t fall into the area of sin, there is great freedom. For example, you shouldn’t go out and watch pornography together as a couple. Even though you say—well, we agree to this. From now on we should do that. No. It’s bad. It’s dangerous. When a man and a woman are together and they focus on each other, there is a lot of freedom. Another person said, what about positions inside of marriage? And there was no way I was responding to this email. You know. I referenced them to a recent survey that I read that said the most common position inside of marriage, in this particular survey, was the position known as the doggy position. And I don’t know if you are familiar with that position, it’s where the guy gets down on his knees and begs and then the girl rolls over and plays dead. Have you seen that position or whatever? I’m not going to answer these things. All I can tell you is that maximum sexual fulfillment is to be enjoyed inside of marriage. And there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. It’s not dirty. It’s not demeaning. It’s a powerful thing that God can bless. And you see, when you submit your marriage to God, you get God’s blessings. And look, many of you stood at a church, or in front of a bunch of friends and family with maybe a pastor or a priest, and you committed your marriage to God. And you think that one time was enough. Kind of like the guy who told me one time, he said—you know, I told my wife that I loved her when I got married, if anything changes, I’ll let her know. No. You have to go back. You have to make that commitment every single day. That’s why the Bible says, look at what it says in Psalm 127:1, “Unless the Lord builds the house the work of the builders is useless.” The Lord has to build it. You can replace the word “house” with the word marriage. Unless the Lord builds a marriage, the work of the couple is useless. So the couple has to work in this marriage. They have to work under God and let God do His work in the marriage.
And so I want to leave you today with four actions, four works of marriage. I am going to put them in This Week at The Journey because you may not have room enough to write them on your page. Just real quickly. If you want to build a marriage that is going to last for eternity, under God, here are some works:
1. At least once a day, express your love and pray for one another. Just a daily activity. You know, I am amazed at how many couples tell me they don’t pray for their spouse. Now, sometimes you can pray together. Sometimes you can’t. But you can pray for your spouse every day.
2. At least once a week, date your mate. You know, we dated before we got married, we should date after we get married. It’s just a night. It may just be an hour or two, but you should set aside and you date your mate. And this doesn’t always end in sex. Some guys think, well we always have to end it that way. No, it can just be time together as part of that. Date your mate. Someone said, our wedding was many years ago, but the celebration continues to this day. I think it’s a beautiful image of dating your mate.
3. At least once a month, give extended focus to your marriage. I don’t know what that might mean for you. It could mean going to some kind of marital seminar, it could mean listening or reading some kind of book together, it could mean having some kind of discussion together. It could just mean going to a ballgame together if both of you enjoy that kind of thing, but some kind of extended focus, put away the distractions and just focus on one another.
4. At least once a year, go away with your mate. You know, get out of town with your mate. It might be as simple as going to the Poconos, going to the shore in the summertime or whatever, but you get away with your mate. It may just be a nighter or whatever, if you have kids, but it’s the two of you doing that.
These daily activities, these weekly activities, these monthly activities, day by day, week by week, month by month, you are building a marriage that will last for eternity. So here’s your homework for today. I want you to go home as a couple, married, and I want you to read I Corinthians 13 together. Just do that together as a couple. And if that sparks something inside of you, all the better, and we will expand Journey Kidz in the fall. Okay? Whatever. Don’t be afraid of this. Let the emotional bond happen on that. If it doesn’t, that’s okay, too. Look, just work on your marriage. Make the commitment. The word for love in I Corinthians 13 is the Greek work agape. It’s the highest kind of love. And it’s the highest kind of love that you share with your spouse so you honor and guard that love in marriage. So let’s wrap up today by reading I Corinthians 13:7, out loud together. It’s our memory verse. Go. “Love never gives up, never loses faith, is always hopeful and endures through every circumstance.” Claim this verse for the rest of your marriage. Build a marriage that lasts, under God, one person together for eternity.
Let me pray for you, if I can. Let’s just bow our heads for just a moment.
Father, I want to pray for every person in our church. God for those You may have called to a life of singleness, that You will be near to them, that You will give them insight as to how You created them and according to what I Corinthians 7 has to say. For the engaged couples in our church, I pray for them. I pray that this engagement time won’t just be a time of securing a facility and sending out invitations, but it will be a time where they can openly and honestly discuss how You have created two individuals and prepared them to be together for eternity. And then God, mostly today, I pray for the married couples in our church. Marriage is under attack and it is difficult and there is a lot of counter truth out there about marriage. So I pray that the marriages in our church through this teaching and through the books that are followed up on and the homework and all that will just be strengthened today. God, I pray that Your spirit will be poured out strongly upon the marriages and the families that are represented in our church. And God, we realize that ultimately, our love for one another is based on our love for You. So God, we just want to again renew our commitment to follow You, to live for You, to know Your love and to return that love to those around us.
Maybe you would just want to pray that as well. And if you have never turned your life over to Jesus Christ, if you have not experienced that perfect love that God offers us, maybe today you are ready to do that. Maybe you just want to say,
Dear Jesus, today, I’ve decided to follow You and I want to live for You as an individual, as a single person, or as a married man or woman. God, I am making this commitment in Jesus’ name, we all pray. Amen.
