Marriage Guidelines

Hello Salt Church, how you doing this morning? All right. So we've decided since we have the absolute perfect marriage of anybody in here and in the world, we were going to share some secrets about being married. And hopefully we can help you have a perfect marriage as well, or a future perfect marriage. So whether you're single, whether you're married or whatever, we've got a message for you today.

Y'all know I was being facetious, right? Okay. But yeah, so excited you're here with us today. If you, let me leave it to my wife. It is basically perfect.

I mean, he's married to this. I mean, yeah, I did most of the work. I'm just kidding. I'm super blessed. All right.

We're so excited you're here with us again. If you're new with us today, we would love for you to fill out one of those connection cards. That's online. Let me just talk about our online campus right now. If you're watching, we're so glad that you've tuned in as well.

And you can go right on our website, saltchurch.org slash card. Let us know you're here. And if you're new with us or check in on our, on our church center app. And we would love to know that you're with us today.

We want to build a, we know that the future of church is online and many of you are still online right now. And I hope you're with us this morning as we gather together in community. Can y'all give our online campus a good clap today? Just welcome, welcome them this morning. Yeah.

You're a part of us. Even though you're at home, you're a part of us. And we're so excited you're with us today. So we are in a series on first Peter, um, called Dawn is coming. And, uh, we're at an interesting piece here.

I think this kind of strikes a lot of debates about marriage and things like that. Um, so we're going to just dig right into this scripture and, uh, read it. And, uh, what's interesting is that, uh, if you go to chapter three, uh, where we're going to pick up here in a second, and it begins with verse one. Um, and, uh, let me just say this, if we can pop it up, if y'all want to go to the events page on the Bible app, if you have the Bible app loaded and you want to take notes, you can take notes right there on the Bible app. Um, so you go to, there he goes, select more, select events and select salt church.

And you'll find us, you'll find salt church live there. I apologize last week. We didn't have it up, but we have it up this week. So you can follow along with the scripture that we're reading right now. And, uh, I figured since this scripture opens up with, uh, Peter talking to women, um, I would allow my wife to kind of start off the scripture there and, and read this, uh, this passage, and then I'll pick up on the second part of it.

So, all right, let's begin. First Peter three, verse one, wives, that's us wives in the same way, submit yourselves to your own husbands so that if any of them do not believe the word, they may be won over without words by the behavior of their wives. When they see the purity and reverence of your lives, your beauty should not come from outward adornment, such as elaborate hairstyles and the wearing of gold jewelry or fine clothes. Rather, it should be that of your inner self, the unfading beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is of great worth in God's sight. For this is the way the holy women of the past who put their hope in God used to adorn themselves.

They submitted themselves to their own husbands like Sarah, who obeyed Abraham and called him her Lord. Lord, you are her daughters if you do what is right and do not give way to fear. Mine is not going to be that theatrical. Okay. I was trying to make it better, you know, because it's a little harsh.

Just trying to, you know. Okay. It says, husbands, in the same way, be considerate as you live with your wives and treat them with respect as the weaker partner and as heirs with you of this glorious gift of life so that nothing will hinder your prayers. And then he says, he goes, finally, and he's speaking to everybody, the church, and everyone. And he says, finally, all of you be like-minded, be sympathetic, love one another, be compassionate and humble, do not repay evil with evil or insult with insult.

On the contrary, repay evil with what? Blessing. For whoever would love life and see good days must keep their tongue from evil and their lips from deceitful speech. They must turn from evil and do good. They must seek peace and pursue it.

For the eyes of the Lord are on the righteous, and his ears are attentive to their prayers. But the face of the Lord is against those who do evil. God, we just thank you for this time together. We pray that your word, that your very breath would just speak to us today as we open our hearts and let go of everything so that we can receive what you have in your name. Amen.

Amen. So, again, repeating the context of 1 Peter is that he's talking to a first century church that's going through some tremendous times. They're facing a lot of evil in the world. The church was relatively a very small group of people, and they were under attack by a government that was kind of using them as a toy and a ploy in order to make a bigger picture happen. And there was a lot of pressures around them, and Peter's telling them to hang on.

You're going to get through these hard times. He says, don't give in to the pressures around you, but don't give up on the people around you as well. So, live in the world, but don't be of the world. So, there's this constant battle, as I talked about last week. There's this constant battle of either being imitators of the world or being different than the world.

But what are we to be? We are to infiltrate the world by being different, yet being among unbelievers and mixing with unbelievers. And then he gets to this passage here, as he talks about, like last week I talked about authority and authority issues and how we deal with authority. He comes into this next part saying, and in the same way that I just talked about you serving under an evil emperor named Nero, and you're going to obey that authority, I'm asking you to do the same thing in relationships. Relationships.

So, I thought it was very interesting that, and one reason, obviously I love co-teaching with my wife anyway, it's just kind of, we kind of bounce off of each other really well, but the first part of this scripture is rather long when it goes on with women. So, I was like, a man up here teaching about women kind of might not come across the same way. So, I think it's kind of funny that a big portion of this first part is women, and then it gives men this little bitty segment, you know, now men, you need to do that, you know? So, yeah. Is it my turn, dear?

So, the first part of this passage deals with women, and I think it's, perhaps there were many women in that day that had unbelieving husbands, as he talks about, you know, them being these people or these women that are above reproach, so to speak, and it's very interesting. Did you have some thoughts on this first part here? Well, I don't want to jump ahead, but just to get into that first section there, the first thing that struck me, of course, was all these adjectives that I thought, well, this is a problem because I don't think I have a gentle or quiet bone in my body. In fact, you know, just last night I was looking over my Myers-Briggs personality profile and talking about it with some friends, right? And I'm an ESTJ.

And if you know what that means, you've got this, like, little chart, you know, that says this is in your preference and this is out of your preference. In preference was enthusiasm, aggression, dominance, practicality, being right. It didn't say that, but I know that's what it meant, you know? And on the other side, it said timidity, quietness, tenderness, empathy, compassion, you know, those things. And so I'm reading this passage and thinking, I fail, I fail at being a woman above reproach.

What am I going to do? You know, wives submit to your husbands. And I'm thinking, you know, your beauty is supposed to come from this inner gentle and quiet spirit, not your hair. And my hair is good. I was thinking, I've got good hair though.

Why are you hating on my hair? You know, and it's not coming from your jewelry or your clothes. But then I went to the trusty New American Standard version. And that one says, I think, let me, I have really big font on this iPad because I'm super, I'm super, super, well, I don't know where I put it, but I put it somewhere. But it basically said, do not let your beauty merely, merely come from the adornment, the jewels.

It doesn't say you can't have those. Do your hair, color your hair, fix those roots, put some makeup on. Nobody needs to see those dark circles. So that made me happy too. I mean, they don't, but then I dug a little deeper into it and said, but this beauty is supposed to come from this gentle and kind spirit.

And I think that's the key word there, ladies, spirit, not personality. Because a lot of us don't have a gentle and quiet personality. And there's nothing I can do about that absent getting a personality transplant. But this spirit of being timid or quiet or gentle, it has nothing to do with the relationship with the spouse. It's this one.

The spirit that's being talked about here is your inner tranquility and peace with the Lord. This passage is saying you can't be contentious with what God wants for you. This isn't about fighting with your husband. This is about fighting with the Lord. Because let's be real, isn't that what we're doing?

This will come into alignment when this does. So it's saying, women, your beauty, what makes the world look at you and go, wow, that's a woman of God. That is like Sarah. By the way, the Sarah mentioned here is, did you know she's mentioned more than any other female in the entire Bible? Sarah of the Old Testament.

What made Sarah so beautiful was that she submitted to the Lord. Even when she hated it, she didn't want to do it. Even when her husband was not doing right, was not protecting her. Right. It said that peace, that tranquility, that gentleness, that's about you and God.

Don't fight with him. Yeah. Don't fight with him. So I really like that. And the reality is beauty fades.

I mean, in a physical form, beauty fades, right? And I want to speak to those in dating relationships where you're constantly looking at the outward, right? We're focused on the outward. There's nothing wrong with being outwardly attracted to someone, but this passage isn't saying that we shouldn't look good and we shouldn't, you know, put on makeup and all of that. I know I've come from backgrounds and there's been movements in history where people make that walk on all fours and you have women walking around with no makeup on and not, you know, shabby clothes.

And the men usually look great, right? Like, because they can get away with being kind of regular, you know? Not right. Exactly. But, but inner beauty is lasting.

So here's my question for you. How much time do you spend getting your outer appearance ready in the morning? And does it outweigh how you get your inner beauty ready in the morning? Do you spend more time on that outer beauty than you do in your inner beauty than you need to check yourself? Like, where is your heart?

Are you neglecting your heart? And are you neglecting God in the process of getting trimmed up and fixed up in the morning? Listen, I got a lot more hair than you. I'm losing my hair. So, yes.

It's, it takes time. It takes time, folks. Thanks. So, we are a physical society and outward appearances are just important to us. But here's, here's another thing I want to mention.

We live in a physical fitness culture. Yes, we do. More than I've ever seen it before. And I don't know if it's Virginia Beach or, or just the world in general. I mean, we got CrossFit movements happening all over the place.

People are all over social media. Look at me. Look at my, my muscles. You know, they're taking pitch selfies in the mirror with flexing. And then, and then Miranda showed me something last night while we were going over this.

Do we have, do we have that image? Do we have it? Okay. I just feel like this sums up, I feel like this sums up the fitness world of Instagram. You see what I'm seeing?

Girls on Instagram be like, I trained arms today. I mean, but it's real, right? Yeah. Isn't this what it ends up being about? Right.

Look at me. Look at, you know, my outward. You can take that away. He is not attractive. Yeah, right.

And so we see that going on and we allow that to dominate who we are and it's so important to people and we had a young lady even in our church take her own life and on the outward appearance when she was on Instagram and social media we thought she was perfectly fine because she was incredibly fit and had everything going through you know if you look at the highlight reel everything in the world is going great and nobody even knew that there was tragedy. happening in her inner self. She had no clue who she really was. Here's what first Timothy says about this and I think this is so applicable to today for athletic training only benefits you for a short season but righteousness brings lasting benefit in everything for righteousness contains the promise of life for time and eternity. So athletic training it only does it for a little while eventually your body's going to catch up with you you know as you grow older and but I mean there's nothing wrong with being physically fit we promote physical fitness both of us stay physically fit we try to eat right we exercise we keep physically fit but it's not our life it's not our identity it's not every our identity lies in Jesus our identity lies in this righteousness that brings lasting life because that's eternity that we're focused on.

Amen. So let's move on. So let's move on here. There's three things that we want to talk about today real quick and one of them the first one is God cares about marriage. In fact God cares so much about marriage that he decided to give you a blueprint for marriage.

He gives you an instruction manual for marriage. He gives you a YouTube. YouTube how many of you go to YouTube when you want to fix something right you go there and you look at the instructions we don't even read them anymore we go and look at them well God gives us the Bible which is basically our YouTube for how to work through marriage so it's extremely important to him and it's not just existing marriages it's for future marriages as well. And I think it's important for us if you're single here today that you have this thoughts of God needs to this guy needs to complete me. I need to find somebody to complete me and you can only no one can save you is really what it comes down to.

So God's trying to get us to see him rather than see the thing in this world that's going to complete us. Have you ever seen those couples that we've counseled a lot of people and talked to a lot of girls and men alike that are looking for that other half and what's one of the most. They are looking for the Jerry Maguire view of marriage. Right. You complete me.

You complete me. I'm looking for the one. You know that. You had me. Fix my world.

That's what we want that you complete me that you complete me. But you know I got news for you. No human can complete you. If you do not come to that marriage complete on your own it's a recipe for disaster. I feel like so often we think what can I do different?

What can I do better? How do I be better? How do I be thinner? How do I be prettier? How do I be more supportive?

How do I be quieter? Or how do I get him to change? How do I make him put the toilet lid down? It will just be better if he just does this thing. If he just makes this change.

It will never. There will always be something else wrong. There's always something. It's never enough. It's never enough.

It's just never enough. And I think that's probably even more common for the ladies. Because we do want, deep down, even if we think we're so buff, we do want that knight in shining armor. We do. Not necessarily to just come in and save us, but to protect us, to make us feel safe.

And we deserve that. And that's what we want. But we can't confuse that with completion and wholeness. My husband protects me. He makes me feel so safe.

Jealousy is not a thing in our relationship because of how safe he makes me feel. But I was whole before I ever met him. I'm whole now. And if I lose him, I'll still be whole. So we just can't confuse those things.

Okay, ladies? Amen. Yeah, for anyone, you know, that's for men as well. Men too, but you know. We need to be focused.

Men are always looking, you know, there's a lot of men out there that are just looking for the right girl. They are. I want that perfect wife, and she's not there. She's not going to be there. And you know what?

It's unfair to put the weight that only God can give on somebody else. Right. Like, God is the only one that can complete you. God is the only one that can make you who you are. He can give you everything you want, everything you need, right down in here.

And you cannot, it's unfair for me to expect Miranda to do that for me and put that on. I'm putting God, I'm putting the Godhead on her. I mean, that's an extreme, like, weight that we can't expect to put on anybody. So it's important for us to lean into God. And the more we lean into God and our goal being more like God and being more like Jesus, then we will discover some beautiful things in our marriage in the future when Mr.

Right or Mrs. Right comes along. And you even mentioned that, sorry, you even mentioned that in Genesis, Adam didn't have to go looking for Eve. God brought Eve to him. God gave Eve to him.

God fashioned Eve literally specifically for him and no one else. He didn't have to go out into this, you know, into the shopping aisle and pick what he thought was the best lady. God said, here she is. And she is good because I have said she is good. This is good.

Right. Yeah. And he's given us this beautiful gift of community. When we look at the Godhead, what do we see? The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

And how we can't even describe what that is. It's hard for us to even comprehend one God, three persons, right? But we see through the very nature of God this beautiful gift of community. And satisfaction only comes when Jesus is a part of a relationship. It only comes that way.

You will never, ever find what you want. You will never, ever find what you need going from someone else in this world. I don't care how much you love them, how much you know them, how much you care for them. Jesus said it himself. People will fail you.

They will. Your spouse is going to fail you. Your future spouse is going to fail you from time to time. But you've got to put Jesus in the center of this. And you know what?

It takes the pressure off of me. It takes the pressure off of her. It takes the pressure off of you. You are looking for that someone. It takes the pressure off of you that are in marriage because you know that you can't put that pressure on yourself or anybody else, that only Jesus wants to wear that, right?

So that's why we have two people walking closer to Jesus. That's what marriage is, two people trying to be more like Jesus. That's right. Yes. Yeah.

So the second thing here is God cares about your marriage. Not only does God care about marriage, God cares about your marriage. Not just the institution of marriage, but your specific marriage. He wants it to thrive. He wants it to prosper.

He wants it to be blessed. So don't settle for less than what God has for you. I just love this point because I think sometimes as believers, especially if we've grown up in the church, especially if we've grown up in a holiness or a very conservative church that has views on things like divorce and marriage, there can be this almost idolatry where we idolize the institution of marriage above the two people in it and the relationship that's in it. So we have to be careful not to save, you know, or work on our marriage for the sake of it being a marriage. And well, you know, God hates divorce.

Yes, he does. God also hates spouses who have been grievously harmed and hurt and living in a disordered relationship. And I think that's something we can all work on when I'm sitting here at home thinking, man, our marriage is not going well or things are not going well and we need to fix our marriage. I need to say, um, what's going on with Leon specifically? What is it about him that I love?

Not just a spouse or just a random husband, but what is it about him that I want to work on and work through with really make it individual and personal to your marriage? I feel like that's super, super key so that we don't get too wrapped up in just the institution, but in your marriage, yours specifically, because just like God cares about your problems specifically, he cares about your marriage specifically. Yeah. And I find it interesting that, uh, uh, how we plan for marriage is really important. Um, it's, it's funny how we spend like hours and hours and days and weeks planning for a wedding ceremony.

That's only going to last like three hours at the most. And we put tens of thousands of dollars into it and it's got to be perfect. It's got to be just right. Everything has to happen at a certain moment, but we spend hardly any time for, uh, for plan and planning what we're actually going to the person we're going to be with the marriage that we're actually going to the people themselves. We don't plan for the marriage itself.

We have the ceremony, the institution and all that kind of stuff is great, you know, but we don't even put in time. We don't put in time for counseling. We don't put in time for training. We don't put resources into even before we get to the, that marriage aisle where we're in front of a minister and giving our lives. And we're actually saying, Hey God, in front of you, we're committing ourselves to each other a lifetime where we will never part from each other, but we never prepare for that until challenges come and then we give up.

Mm-hmm. Well, and just think about, I was thinking about this last night. Think about the research, the time, the effort that goes into choosing a college, the standardized tests that you must take, the preparation courses for those tests, the money you have to spend, the application fees, the application itself, interviews, um, the, you know, all of the paperwork. You visit tons of schools. You go and you check them out.

I feel like we put, I don't feel like I put nearly that much time and effort into thinking about my marriage. I'm just being honest. I lucked out because I got Leon. Yay. But what if I had not, what if I had not put that time and intentional thought and care into knowing who he is and talking about all the stuff?

Because college just lasts for a few years. You're not going to be there forever. And, but we're talking about something that ideally would last until, you know, as long as you both shall live. And it's a beautiful thing. Marriage is like a fine wine.

And that comes from scripture, actually. You know, as, as marriage blooms and blossoms, as it gets older, it becomes, it's like a fine wine. It makes it, it makes it, it makes it better with time. And, um, you have a partner in life. We are partners in life.

And, and I don't know who else I'd want to do this with than her. I mean, we get the glory of, of serving God together, uh, serving this church together, raising these awesome, incredible kids that we have together. I mean, I, this is just an amazing thing that we get to do together. And why would we not want to pour into our marriage and make it better? Because it's something apart.

We just can't do it, do it. I mean, I couldn't do what I'm doing now. This calling that I have, I'm going to just say something here. I kind of find it funny, um, that, that, uh, you know, when you get people saying, well, I just don't have the time to help serve in the church once a month. I'm going to tell you right here, my wife works probably more than, I bet you she works more than anybody in this place, uh, on her own outside of the church.

Yet she puts in time, uh, to, to do all the things underneath, putting things together. And, and, and, uh, she sings up here. She fills in for the kids. She's, she's doing, she's getting ready for salt group every week and doing things like that. She puts in at least 70 hours a week just in her own job because she's one of the, she's a manager in her job.

She's got a lot of things, a lot of responsibilities. So sometimes I have to like laugh at people and it's like, oh, I'm working a 40 hour a week job and I just don't have time. And I got kids and stuff. Hello, you know, hello. My wife is, is, is, is awesome.

She's able to do that. And, and, um, and, uh, we do it together. She partners with me to be able to, to do this church. Well, and, and, and the reality too, and of that is it's not something that you have to do. It's not something that you're forced to do.

It's not this thing that you have to trudge through, right? We get to do that. We get to serve. I get the privilege of coming here every week and I get to do it alongside him. It's just all about that perspective shift, right?

And then that partnership, that co-laboring, it feels really good. It doesn't feel like a burden. Right. But we get to do this together when we see the value that comes out of serving and partnering in ministry and, and doing this together and, and doing it selflessly instead of selfishly. We, we, we compensate for each other.

The third thing is God has a plan for your marriage. He gives us the tools that we need to have. Amazing marriage. Here's what Warren Wiersbe quotes. If you'll read that for us, Miranda.

If both partners will imitate Jesus Christ and his submission and obedience and his desire to serve, there will be joy and triumph in the home. I mean, what more can I say? In the same way as chapter 2 expressed in 1 Peter that we should obey the authorities, we should honor the authorities, even if those authorities are bad. He says, in the same way, this is what you are to do in your marriage. If both people have a desire to serve regardless of who they are or what they do, imagine what could come out of that, this joy and triumph in the home.

And then he goes on to recite this first century hymn where he's focused on Jesus and what he did, that Jesus did not retaliate. He made no threats. Instead, entrusted him to the one who judges justly. See, we want to be the judge, right? That's why marriages don't work because we've got to be just.

We've got to, it's unjust. He's talking in Scripture about us going through unjust acts and still trusting the one who is a fair judge. Yet, we want to be the judge of our lives, right? That's what we want because we want to hold on to what we have. It's about us.

It's about us and it's about what I can get and what I can do. But Peter's telling us here, no, that's not what it's about. It's about what God, who God is and how he responded to this. So, husbands and wives, in the same way, and as we said a few weeks ago, for God's sake, not for our sake. For God's sake, honor the authorities.

For God's sake, submit to your husbands and honor your wives. For God's sake, do this. Not for your sake. It's not about our sakes. It's because of God and Jesus and who he is.

And the goal of marriage is two people, really, and I said this earlier, trying to be like Jesus. Becoming one in Jesus. It's not me trying to get close to Miranda or Miranda trying to get close to me. It's us trying to get closer to Jesus. And then Jesus meets us and there's this triangle effect that brings us together and makes our marriage work.

Both are like Jesus, therefore, when we become more like Jesus, we automatically grow closer together. And ultimately, we are able to connect. Which leads me to the next thing, and there's three S's I want to hit on real quick. Submit, serve, and study. Submit, serve, and study.

Three things we want to do with each other. So scripture says wives submit, but husbands, let's see, he doesn't speak directly to husbands about submitting in this scripture. But it doesn't mean that we aren't to submit as well. In fact, you need a scripture for that? Ephesians 5, 21, submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.

So it's two people submitting to each other. Although he's dealing specifically with women in this passage, it doesn't mean that we are not to submit to each other. There's times where we need to co-lead and submit to each other. Well, let's just drive this nail into the coffin of the idea that somehow submission is this dirty word. Because I think we're past that.

Because we know what this is really talking about. This is that vicious cycle, right, of love and respect. That in general, women want love and men want respect. And I really kind of, I would almost just change those words out for submission and protection or something like that. Whatever word kind of works for you where you get in that cycle where neither is doing it, right?

Well, she doesn't respect me, so I don't feel like loving her. I don't feel like lavishing her with attention and sending her heart emojis and holding her hand and writing her love letters. And she says, well, I don't feel like respecting him. I don't feel like going along with what he wants because he doesn't protect me. I don't feel safe.

I don't feel loved. I don't feel cherished. And you got this vicious cycle. And ladies, we are the privileged ones to whom Peter, that God through Peter is speaking and saying, can y'all just break this? I need someone to be a grown up.

And I'm choosing you, wives. The men are not going to do it. So women, I need somebody to step up and break this cycle and submit anyway for my sake, not yours, not his, mine. I need you to submit for me. I need you to get in alignment with me, and then you will watch the miracles happen.

You will watch the blessings rain down. You will watch what I'm going to do in his life because of you. Right. It's a privilege that he's talking to us this way. Right.

We're not being talked down to. We're not being told to sit in our place. And I'll go more into that in a little bit what that's, I really do think it's speaking specifically to an Old Testament passage. And some of you are asking, well, what about a tiebreaker? What if we both disagree?

Uh-oh. Then here's what I want to say. Then it's the man's duty to make that decision, to prayerfully, prayerfully make that decision. Not to make it out of just raw passion or anger or whatever, but to prayerfully, in the spirit, make a decision for the both of you. And in just about every case, if both of you are seeking God in the process, you are going to agree on that final decision anyway.

So sometimes men, and I'll tell you, in our culture, I think men need to step it up quite a bit. That's right. That's right. Right. And you need to make some decisions because your women are waiting for you to make the decisions.

And make good decisions and to be godly men that follow Christ. Amen. More women are receptive to the spirit. And getting back to this, why do you think Peter is dealing with women? Why do you think most women were coming to Christ during this time and men weren't?

Why were men absent? Why did we see all these women coming and how they should honor, you know, he was giving them a form of evangelism here, really. He was giving women a form of evangelism here. Like, if you're submissive and you do this, it honors God, and as a result, they'll come to Christ. This is how you can evangelize to your unbelieving men.

So here, he's starting off the scripture saying you've got these unbelieving men all over the place. Why is that? Because women are very receptive to the spirit. Yes. They're very receptive to things like this, spiritual things.

And the church was growing full of women. But where are the men? And what are men doing to be godly men? Even the men in the church. So it's time for us men to step up and start being godly men.

We need to be filling the seats of our house here today. And, like, there's women in here right now that are probably looking around. I grew up in church my entire life. My father's a pastor. And I can tell you I remember seeing tons and tons of women in church without their men.

Yes. Because not because they didn't think they had a relationship with Christ. They just didn't want to be at church. And they weren't being godly examples. And I would love to see that switch.

I'd love that to even out. Amen. Quite a bit. I got that. And we need to step up and we need to be spiritual.

Now, I will say I'm proud of our church because we got a lot of godly men in here and yeah, and we've been able to minister to a lot of men and it's been incredible starting this ministry. I've been able to really gather and minister to a lot of men and that's kind of unusual for a new church. Usually new churches go after the women because the women are more receptive, but we've been able to minister to men in so many ways. But but yeah, that's what I want to say to that. So, you know, submission is is is coming together, co-leading.

But ultimately, if there's an issue, we can tie break by the man making a decision. Then we have serve. Jesus came to serve, not to be served. And he breaks it up, this love and respect thing, because love is is hard and respect is hard. Yeah, you know, it's hard to to for men to love the way Christ loved.

And it's really hard for women to respect the way that God that God expects them to respect, you know, and and if we both can learn how to do that. Well, imagine what our marriages could be like. He gives us a really simple solution to the problem. And sometimes I think it it's just a matter of getting over that hump of discomfort, you know, where you're in that moment where you say, I don't want to do this. I don't like it.

I don't like how it feels. I'm mad at him. I'm upset with him. And this idea of service really comes in because I don't think Jesus probably super enjoyed all the things he had to do. But he came to serve.

He didn't come to be served. He didn't come to just sit and just, you know, get fed all the time. He came to serve. And I think that we've got to get more comfortable with discomfort. We avoid it.

You know, we don't we don't want to feel it. We don't want any discomfort. We don't want conflict. We're scared to death of it. We don't understand conflict resolution anymore.

And I think God is saying, if you can just get past that moment of discomfort, you're going to see what's on the other side. Amen. Amen. And then the third one is study. This is so good.

Study others, number one. And then number two, study your partner and yourself. Let's start with study others. He talks about the holy women in the Bible. This is Miranda's spot here because she knows this well.

The holy she says, he says, look at the holy women in the Bible and particularly Sarah. So this passage that we started out with, 1 Peter, go back up to that, 3, when he starts talking about Sarah, right? He says, we want to be like the holy women of the past, like Sarah, who obeyed Abraham and called him her Lord. You are her daughters if you do what is right and do not give way to fear. I think he's talking about a very specific thing that happened in the life of Abraham and Sarah.

And if you know their story, you know that God called Abraham out of his homeland, er, is that how you say it? His homeland. And he got up and left. Well, we have to, he was around 75 years old at the time. So we have to presume that Sarah was probably unhappy about being yanked out of her retirement village, you know, where she's like, this is it.

I'm in my glory days. I'm just going to like chill out and hang out by the pool. And Abraham's like, no, we're going to get up and become nomads because that's fun pitching our tent somewhere different every night. But she did it anyway. She submitted and she supported him and went along.

And of course they headed toward Canaan because that is what God said. I'm going to give you this land. I'm going to give you these descendants and it's going to be so great. Well, they head out there and then what happens if famine hits? So they travel on down to Egypt.

And this is right after Abraham has made this altar at Bethel and Ai and he's worshiping the Lord and they go into Egypt. And what does he do? Well, he hatches the, I'm just going to call you my sister plan. Because who thought that was a good idea? I don't know what man thought that was okay to do.

So they head on into Egypt and Abraham, because he is scared to death, that he's going to be put to death because his wife was super fine. She was well known as being very beautiful. I mean, she was like 65, so she must have looked really, really good. And he said, well, I'm scared and I don't want to die. So here's what I'm going to do instead.

I am going to pretend she's my sister because in that day, a brother would have been in a very good place if he had a beautiful sister because they would have had to negotiate with him for her hand in marriage. So that was the decision that her husband made, right? Pimped her out to the Pharaoh, left her and pretended that she was his sister. So, in that moment where Abraham has utterly failed in his duty to protect his wife and to love her the way she should be loved and to be a godly husband, God said, Sarah submitted anyway. She called him her Lord.

She did not give way to her fear. And immediately after that, God delivered them and made them even richer than they were. And I think that God, in 1 Peter, is talking specifically about that instance. He's saying, women, even if you're going through something like Sarah was going through, if you do not give way to fear, I am going to deliver you. And I am going to bless you and I'm going to lift your name up.

And that is exactly what he did with Sarah. Yeah. And then the second part of that, study your partner and yourself. You need to look at your partner and yourself. It says in verse 7, the weaker partner.

It talks about, you know, men honoring the weaker partner. But I think there's a weaker partner in all of us. And how we compensate for that is really important because you can be strong in areas where the other one is not able to be strong at the time. And weaker in areas that the other one is not as weak at. And I saw this representation of what it's like in marriage.

Like one person is like the Ford truck. And the other one is, it said Lamborghini, but she wanted to be an Aston Martin. That's right. So she's the Aston Martin and I'm the Ford truck. So they're equally strong in certain areas, but they're not in others, right?

I can haul and I can load and I can run through swamps and woods and all that stuff as a truck. But I can't go 150 miles an hour in two seconds. You know, it's not going to happen. So there's things that you compensate for each other and you calibrate with each other in order to do the most powerful things. It's like the church.

We come together with different gifts and different abilities and we cannot do it alone. We have to do it together. Everybody plays a part in the bigger picture. So it's a powerful thing. Study your partner and yourself.

I would just like to say, I know this is slightly, maybe it's slightly off the topic, but I think it goes into. Knowing who your partner is, and working together. But Leon, I saw this on social media that a friend sent, a video of a husband saying, husbands, you know, don't say, I help out my wife around the house, or I help out my wife with this. And this man never does that. I've never heard him say, I'm helping out Miranda around the house.

I'm helping her raise our children. I'm giving her a hand this week with the chores. There's no such thing. There's just the work of the marriage. And we're just gonna break it up in whatever way is working for us, because we study each other as partners.

And I don't just have a domain where I'm just expected to do things. And I think that's because he studies me, and he knows me. And he wants to do the work with me, and he wants to partner with me. I just wanted to thank him for that. Thank you.

Thank you. You're welcome. Put that lid down on the toilet. So, to wrap it up, because we're a little over time here, I've got, just real quickly, an application. He ends the scripture with verse 8 through 12.

And it's basically quoting Psalm 34. And he's talking to the church as a whole, but we can apply this to marriage. So, I just want to give you seven quick things that we can do in marriage or in our future marriages to make it better. First of all, it's play like you're on the same team. Live in harmony with each other is what it says.

Play like you're on the same team. You are on the same team. You're raising your kids together. You're doing jobs together. If you have this, people hate to hear this in my counseling sessions before marriage.

But if you have separate bank accounts, put those suckers together because you're on the same team. You need that. If you have separate bank accounts, put your name on each account and know what's going in and what's going out. There's no excuse why you shouldn't be able to open up absolutely everything to your spouse. Let them know anything.

There are no lies. There are no secrets. There's nothing you're doing on the side. This is my money for my boat. This is my money for my surfboards.

No, you talk about these things together and you make decisions together. Play like you're on the same team. Buy groceries together. Do things together. Don't have your separate cabinet over here and separate cabinet over there.

Don't touch my stuff. Don't touch my things. This is my room. You know, there's healthy boundaries we can make in marriage. But what we're doing, we're making very unhealthy boundaries by doing it this way.

So when you come into, if you're in marriage, these are things you need to talk about. How are we going to make, we are one. We are one person making these decisions together. And number two, don't retaliate. Compensate.

Don't repay evil for evil. You want to hit that one real quick? I don't know why he's looking at me. So, um, she's being funny. Um, you know, I, I think this is, this is hard when you're, when you're fighting, you know, fighting fair.

When someone's having a bad day, I know if Leon's having a bad day and he's, and he's struggling and he says, you know, I'm, I'm really feeling down in this. Well, my, my first inclination, my flesh is, well, I'm having a bad day too. Well, have you, have you looked at my day? It's worse than yours. I mean, that's, that's my.

She will confidently say that I probably have more bad days than she does. We, we, we might've had a little tiff last night talking about this. Um, um. It's not true. It's, it's true.

We had a fight. It's okay. So. Okay, we're going to have a tiff right now. But that.

What are you talking about? That is what, that is what my flesh says. That is what my flesh says. My flesh says, but what about me? What about my problems?

And, or bringing up stuff, you know, hey, Miranda, can you, um, not leave dishes? And it's like, cause I, I will let them pile up. I will forever. Can you, can you not, you know, he might say, hey babe, can you, um, I'd really like it if you could not leave the stinky dishes. Well, I would really like for you to put the toilet lid down, like the seat down just one time.

That is. Scrub the shower once in a while. That is retaliation. What did he just say? No, no, I, no, I was adding to what I need to do.

Scrub the shower once in a while. She's got on to me about that. I'm always the one cleaning the shower. Why don't you clean the shower? That's fine.

That's fine. I actually don't mind cleaning the shower because I'm not going to cut the grass ever. It's 37 years. I'm not starting now. I don't know how, don't even know how to turn it on.

So I was like, I will scrub the toilet if you will cut the grass. But anyway, so we do not retaliate. We compensate. We got to suck that back in guys. We got to suck it down.

When we, when we feel tempted to say, you know, to retaliate, no, I have got to come up when he is weak and I've got to be the strength for him. I've got to prop him up when he is, he is having a hard day. I have to get up and say, Lord, I need you to give me your strength because I don't have it. And then give it to him. And he's going to do the same for me.

But again, it's about him. It's going to come from there. Yeah. And, and, and to lose your life, gain it. Yes.

You gain it. If you lose your life, you gain it. That's Jesus' message. Die to yourself. Number three, try on each other's shoes.

Be sympathetic. See it from the other's perspective. Empathize with the other person, you know, walk in their shoes just for a second. See where they're coming from. Don't, don't try to retaliate.

Think about where they're coming from. Number four, bite your tongue. I think I covered that one. Hold back until you're ready to say the right thing and don't say, or don't say anything at all. Stop for a minute.

This is not a good time to really have this conversation. You're impassioned and you're angry. And you say, sometimes it's not the right time. And sometimes it is the right time. You know, we need to sit down and let's not let the sun set on this.

Let's, let's, let's deal with it and get through it. Number five, stay tender. I love how the Passion Translation says it, demonstrate affectionate love for each other. Uh, some, uh, some versions even say be tender hearted. You can choose to love them even when you don't like them because love is a choice.

I think this is great because again, this is another one that really pricked me when I saw it. It said, stay tender. And I was like, but didn't you see my personality profile? I am 0% tender. Like it says it.

Myers-Briggs told me you have no tenderness. So what am I supposed to do? But staying tender and it's all about love being a verb, you know, love instead of just being a noun, the love is a noun ideas of feeling. Well, I'm never going to feel tender. I don't have it guys.

I'm not going to just wake up and feel tender today. I don't think that's how that works. This is a verb. This is about actively choosing tenderness and choosing compassion and empathy when I don't want to. And you know what?

The feelings will follow. Feelings will follow. I will. Yeah. Yeah.

I mean, that's a big thing people go back to. Well, I don't feel like it. I don't feel God. I don't feel like it. I don't feel spiritual.

I don't feel like going to church. I don't feel like serving. I don't feel like serving my wife. I don't feel like being with my kids today. I don't feel like doing all these things, but suck it up, buttercup.

You know, like like this is life. This is the real deal. OK, let's get out there. Let's fight because life isn't a game we play. It's a war we wage.

Right. And you're never going to be content. You're never going to be happy until until you make that decision. And so stay tender and then look for beauty. Six of seven.

Look for beauty. Verse 10. Whoever would love life and find good day. Are you looking for beauty? Are you always looking at the negative?

Because you are going to see more of what you stare at. So you're staring at the negative all the time that you're going to see the negative. That's good. But if you stare at the positive, if you look for the beauty, you're going to find the beauty. That gentle and quiet spirit that he was talking about.

That's what Peter was referring to. That he's going to see that and he's going to and you're going to notice that and negative screams out, you know, it's negative. But often good is quiet and gentle and respectful. And then lastly, consider yourself. Consider yourself.

Look at yourself. What can I change? What can I do different? What am I purchasing that I'm not telling my wife or my husband or what am I? How am I reacting to a situation?

What can I do better? How can I how can I do this better? Or how am I living my life? You know, we got to stop for a minute and say, what is wrong with me? Stop pointing at the other.

Everything that they're doing wrong, they're doing wrong, they're doing wrong. Multiple counseling sessions I've had with marriages. And that's always the first thing. Will he? Will he?

Will she? Will she? And it just goes on that way. I say, stop. What are you doing that you can correct?

Because that's all you can do. All you can do is fix yourself. You can't fix her. You can't fix him. You can pray for them.

You can you can encourage them. You can go to the Lord about them. But ultimately, you cannot fix them. But you can you can fix yourself. And you can do that in your just in your quiet prayer life.

You know, when you're just laying down at night, and it's just you and the Lord, and there's no one else. You can go, okay, God, you know, this this anxiety I'm having and this resentment and this misery and this feeling of offense. What's in me? Yeah, you know, what? What?

What? Is it me? Is it me? God, you know, and when you're willing to do that, he takes it away. And he does a miracle.

And he will give you just the deliverance that you're seeking. And then stuff will happen. And it extends to your family, your kids, your friends. What's going on with my friends? What's going on with my kids?

Am I doing something? Am I contributing? It's just you and the Lord. No one else has to know. Yeah.

So let's pray for future marriages today as we close. I know that their marriage is a huge challenge. Probably one of the biggest things that come to our to us is marriage and relationships. There's always a battle. There's people here that aren't here today because of marriages, not because of what God has for them, but because their marriage and the issues that they have have kept them from being all that God wants them to be, whether it's a broken relationship or a relationship that needs healing.

So today we're just going to pray for that. And we're going to ask God to really intervene. If Miranda, you would just pray. Let's just pray together for all marriages. If we could have some background music and just make this a really personal decision that we have to make about marriages, about future marriages, about relationships.

Father in heaven, you are a good God. You are a God who loves relationship first and foremost. You are a relational God. That is who you are. Father in heaven, you love relationship.

You love relationship first, just with us individually as people. You see everybody in this room and everybody on this planet as an individual, unique human who has a purpose and a destiny in you, totally outside of their other relationships. Thank you, God, that that is who you are, that you are relational. You made us to be relational. You got together with the other members of the Godhead and said, man, I am going to create my magnum opus, the jewel in the crown, these humans.

And then you didn't stop there because you built us to be relational with one another. And marriage is so important. Thank you so much for giving us that. And for anybody in here who's not married and who wants to be, or maybe doesn't want to be because of the pain that they've experienced, we ask that you would heal that right now in Jesus name, that you would heal any disordered thoughts about relationships and about marriages, that you would put your word into people, that you would help us get right and not contentious with you. And that we would find that inner peace and tranquility and gentle spirit with you.

And then it would flow out of us into our other relationships. Yes. Yes, Lord, we fight the war for our families and for our marriages, Lord. We know that that is the foundation of everything, God. And we're just asking, God, that you just heal relationships, bring people back together, bring complete wholeness, God, because we know that's what you want.

And we know that the only way we can make a difference in this world as people who are called as salt and light in this world is we've got to start with us personally living righteously and living in whole relationships with each other, God. Because without that, without salt and light in our lives, we cannot show others the salt and light that you have for us. So we honored these words that Peter wrote so many years ago for our church and for us today to take and make practical. So we don't just stop here, Lord. We take it outside of this building and we apply everything that we learned.

And most importantly, Lord, we just ask today if there is someone that doesn't know you as Jesus, as Lord and Savior of their lives, that today would be the day. And that's my question here today with all heads bowed and all eyes closed. If you're here today, if you're here today, do you know that you would be with the Lord if you left this world at any moment? You can know today because it really starts with the relationship. Before you can have relationships with people in this earth, you need to know that you have a relationship with Jesus.

And if that's you today, if the Lord's tugging on your heart. I've got to get my life right. I've got to get back to Him. I've got to know Him. Make that your prayer today as you pray this with me.

Lord, in the name of Jesus, the Holy Son of God, I believe that You are He who came to this world as the Son of God and died on the cross for our sin, and that You ascended back into heaven, and You're creating a home for us, and You're going to return again. So today, come in my heart, come into my life, change me from the inside out. Make me new. Make me Yours today. In Your name.

Hallelujah. If y'all would just give God a good hand clap of praise. We thank You, Jesus. We thank You, Jesus.