Mission Driven

Hello, and welcome to the Salt Church Podcast. Thank you for tuning in to this week's message. Join us as we explore God's Word, providing practical teaching for day-to-day living. The message you are about to hear was recorded live at our Sunday morning worship experience. If you would like to learn more about Salt Church, please visit us at saltchurch.

org. We hope that you are encouraged by today's message. So we're in a series called Relationship Goals, and I'm pretty sure most of you know hashtag relationship goals. If you're on social media, particularly Instagram or anything online, you have seen the hashtag relationship goals, and there's usually a photo that goes along with one of those relationship goals. Last week I showed you a few of them that are interesting, because here's the thing about the relationship goal pics, is that it's an ideal situation of a couple.

You know, they post, and it's like, oh, relationship goals, this is what we're aiming towards. But some of these pictures I see are rather interesting. And so I was looking for some more pictures. So if you'll show me the first picture here, here's a relationship goal picture, if you have that available. Isn't that precious?

Isn't that wonderful? I'm getting cold just thinking about that. I'm just going to tell you that's the last thing I want to do, Miranda and I want to do is go out on an icy glacier and lay there, how romantic, and stare at the sky freezing cold. Here's another one that I found interesting. Yeah, that's very romantic.

Relationship goals. Hashtag relationship goals, right? The last thing I want to do is hang off a train over a, yeah, I hope they have a harness done for sure. But it's an ideal situation. You're like, wow.

And people are like, I want that when they see these posts. But do we really want that? Because that's not real. And all these pictures we see, these posts online, oh, look, they're precious. They're having a great time.

They're sipping wine beside a fire. But honestly, there's a lot more that goes into relationships than meets the eye. And we often compare ourselves to those posts and those relationship goals. So we're digging into what that means. What does a godly marriage mean?

How do we live out real relationship goals? And in week one, we talked about being Christ-centered last week. And we talked about if anything else is in the middle of your life, is in the center of your life, outside of Christ Jesus, you cannot be effective. You cannot be fulfilled. You cannot make the influence that God has for you, if anything else in the way.

But when Christ is the center of your life, you are fulfilled. You make great impact because you are a powerhouse together in the name of Jesus. Because he is in the center of your life. Next week, we're going to talk about the spiritual warfare piece that goes along with it. We're going to call that devil stomping.

I'm Pentecostal. I come from a Pentecostal background. And we use devil stomping a whole lot, you know. We talk about devil stomping, you know. And you see those preachers talking about, let's get devil stomping.

Everybody stand up and devil stomp. We're going to talk a little bit about what it means to have a devil stomping relationship. A relationship that seeks God and fights Satan and puts on the boxing gloves and goes at it. You're going to fight for your marriage. We need to fight for our marriage.

We're going to talk about that next week. But this week, I want to talk about being mission driven. Mission driven. And I use an excerpt from an unknown author in all of my wedding ceremonies that I perform. Some of you, if I've married you, you probably have heard this excerpt.

It says, as a man and a woman come together in marriage, they are not intended to exist as two individuals merely living together, sharing only part of their lives. But they are to be like two rivers converging together with a combined strength, endurance, and love that could never be experienced individually. So I thought about that, you know, rivers coming together. I thought about confluences, you know, how rivers, these confluences and how cities are built around them and what they look like. I started doing some research because when you think about a convergence or a confluence or two rivers coming together, you think, wow, that's pretty impressive.

But there's all kinds of confluences out there. There's there's there's ones that smaller rivers come into larger rivers and the larger river overtakes the smaller river and and it becomes that one river. Then you see others that like a polluted river, maybe a muddy river where there's more banks and more mud and more pollution that comes out of the ground. And then you have this crystal clear stream coming together and flowing together and then the polluted water kind of overtakes the the clear water. And it's it's not so impressive once it becomes one river.

And then you see different confluences that come together and they go different directions. You know, they're kind of all over the place and they can't decide where they're going and they have to go around Rocky Plains to go where they're going. And so there's so many different. So the beauty of seeing an equal stream or equal to equal rivers flowing together in one direction is nice. But there's so many different rivers out there, isn't there?

In relationships, there's so many different confluences, different rivers happening. But it's beautiful. It's beautiful. And it's lovely. And it's strength when we see two rivers merging together equally, flowing in the same direction.

So I want to talk a little bit about that. Because after counseling a number of couples and I've had the privilege of counseling many people in my in my time in ministry, premarital counseling, marital counseling, just sitting down and having chats with with married couples. I can tell you that I found that there's not much of a concept of a beautiful confluence. Oneness is a hard thing to see in marriage when when the two become one, when there's a perfect merger of those relationships. In fact, unfortunately, it's not the norm.

When people walk into marriage or come into marriage, they often come in with different ideas and different thoughts and different mission statements. And they're driven in different directions. They come into the marriage, not as one, but as two people just simply living together, simply just they're not even sharing bank accounts. They're not sharing sides of the house. They're not sharing groceries.

And you would not believe some of the things I've I've talked to people about, you know, that I've seen in in marriage. Oh, yeah. Right. Relationships, because it's not the norm these days. And the couple, when they come together, they continue down this path and they end up lacking strength.

And they end up lacking trust. And they end up lacking endurance. And eventually they conclude that, you know, we're not really in love. Because they equate love to a feeling. They equate love to something that they experienced in the hashtag relationship goals post.

And when they don't see that happening in their marriage, it must be that we're two different people. Because they never really were equally coming together in the first place. The larger river takes over the smaller river. The polluted river takes over the clean river. However that looks, that's what happens in a relationship.

And people aren't just not on a separate page in the same book. They're not even in the same book. And it's so the norm. And we set rules on our relationships. But rules without relationship is disaster.

Just like it is with Christ and God. When we look at God and we see relationships. We see a relationship with Him. He doesn't set rules on us. He gives us grace.

And He loves us just where we are. But we, in our model of relationships, want to set rules. We want to set standards. And this is the way it should be. And this is the way it always happens.

Instead of coming together and flowing together. So my question is, what do you want in your marriage? That's a fair question. What do you want in your marriage? If you're a single, what do you want in your future marriage?

What is that? And I think the answer is, and if I went back and sat across the table from my counselor or pastor, and many of you going back, sitting in front of your pastor or your counselor or whoever it is, and he asked you that question, what would your answer be? Probably happiness. Happiness. That's what I want.

Happiness. I want to be happy. This will make me happy. If we're together, the things that I feel inside myself, because, you know, when we're together, it's just so one, yeah, oh, oh, but here's the deal. The goal or the foundation of a godly marriage is not happiness.

Because why? Happiness will fade. Happiness will fail. There will be times that you will not be happy in your relationship, can I be honest with you? You're not going to be happily ever after.

Sure. There's going to be times where you're like, why in the world am I in this? What happened? We were so happy at one time. We're not happy now.

So let's just go our separate ways. Why do we feel that way? Because that's where we set our foundation on happiness. But if we set our foundation on happiness, it's going to end roughly. But if our foundation of our godly marriage is set on unity, unity, that will last.

So the goal or the foundation of a godly marriage isn't happiness, it's unity. It isn't happiness, it's unity. Happiness is a byproduct of unity, but it's not the foundation of our marriage. So a common goal and a common God-honoring goal is what we're setting ourselves towards, a mission-driven marriage, a mission-driven marriage. So the first thing that God said, and I find this very interesting, when God made the married couple, if you go back to the book of Genesis and you start looking at what God, when God made man and he put them out there, the man and the woman, and he sent them and commissioned them, and he driven them, the first thing he told them was to do something, right?

Look at Genesis 1, 27. It says, so God created mankind in his own image. In the image of God, he created them, male and female, he created them. And God blessed them and said to them, what did he say? Be fruitful.

He gave them a commission. Be fruitful and increase in number and fill the earth and subdue it. So the first thing that God gives the couple is a commission, a mission, right? He gives them direction. He tells them to multiply, expand, conquer, create, subdue the earth.

Present my glory to the earth, to the world. Show my glory to the world. You were created in my image, and now I'm sending you out into the world to reflect my image, and to go out and multiply, build families, conquer, take land, take care of the land, bring it into a place where it reflects my glory. All of my creation is under you. And I think it's interesting if you look down in Matthew, and you see the Great Commission.

What was Jesus' commission? To go and make disciples of all the world, baptize them in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and teach them all that I have commanded you to do. It's a commission. Very same thing. A mission-driven, commission-driven life.

A mission-driven, commission-driven marriage. A common goal is a common mission. So we see a common mission, a common goal. And it says this, and if we go down to Genesis chapter 2, verse 24, and it says, this explains why a man leaves his mother and his father and is joined to his wife, and the two are united into one. They are to be united.

That was God's plan. It wasn't good for man to be alone. So what did he do? He put a partner with him, a helpmate with him, a team player with him. They were a team, and when they're together, they're a force that can't be reckoned with.

And that's why God created marriage. It wasn't just to be happy. Be happy is a byproduct of this thing called unity. And Satan knows this because what God seeks to unite, the devil schemes to divide. Go back to Genesis and think about what happened between Adam and Eve.

I can imagine Satan in the garden looking at Eve. Come on over from your mate. Come over here. Come over here. And you see that tree.

No, no, don't go to Adam. Don't go to Adam. Don't even talk to him. Don't even have a discussion about it. Look at this.

He separated them. God's holding something back from you. He divided. He disturbed the relationship with God. He distracted the mission.

He dismantled the unity that they had to gather. Thank you. And what happened? Adam blamed God and Eve, right? The woman you gave me.

And then Eve blamed the serpent, and then the serpent was like, well, he didn't have a leg to stand on. Some of you take a minute. So the enemy strategy is to divide. I love how Amos says it, Amos 3.3, can two people walk together without agreeing on direction?

Can two people walk together and not really agree on the direction they're going? If Brandon and I are walking in two different directions, I mean, we're not going to agree. She's going to be going one way or the other. We're not walking together. Can they agree on the direction?

Division is broken into two. If you want to really get the definition of division, D, it means two are divided, and vision means direction, or the thing that we can see. And when it's brought together, or when it's divided, we're not able to see vision. For instance, in Proverbs 29.18, it says, Where there is no vision, the people perish.

Can I say it like this? Where there is no common mission in our marriage, they perish. Marriages perish without a common mission. And one of the greatest tragedies in marriages is when two people are together but not united. Two people are together and not united.

And the most powerful couple in the Bible. Let me just share with you this. What do you think the most powerful couple in the Bible is? I would say maybe Ruth and Boaz. That's a really good one, right?

Well, some of you might say, well, Abraham and Sarah. Or maybe even Mary and Joseph. But I want to take you to two people in the Bible that you may not see often. Maybe you've read it in the New Testament from time to time as you were reading Paul's letters. Paul has this couple that he looks to and he commends for their ministry in Jesus Christ.

If you look at Romans 16.3 and 5, here it is. Give greetings to Priscilla and Aquila. Priscilla and Aquila. He talks so often about Priscilla and Aquila.

And anytime you hear Priscilla's name, Aquila's attached to the back. And anytime you hear Aquila's name, Priscilla's attached to the back of it. Because what? They're a team. And he says this about them.

They're my co-workers in the ministry of Jesus Christ. In fact, they once risked their lives for me. I am thankful to them. And so are all the Gentile churches. So they were well known in the Gentile churches.

And also, I give my greetings to the church that meets in their home. So what do you see here? You see they're together in ministry. They're together in Paul's ministry. They risked their lives for Paul.

They've done some incredible things together. They're leading a small group. They're leading, or you could call it a church in that day. They were pastors together. They ministered together.

They were a powerful, dynamic couple because they were together on mission. And Paul just could not get away from how powerful of a couple they were. And how they were being used for the glory of God. Because they were together in it. They were completely together ministering.

They loved God. They loved their church. They loved Paul. They loved everything that God was doing. And they held hands.

They walked through it together. I wish we had a book just about them. Just to see all that they did and all that they went through. And all that went on risking their lives for the ministry in that particular period of time. Now, if you're single, you're probably listening to this and you're like, Well, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah, yada, yada, rada, rada.

This doesn't really apply to me. But I mentioned it last week. If you want to live a Christ-centered marriage in the future, you live a Christ-centered life today. Well, can I say that today with this? If you want to live a mission-driven marriage in the future, live a mission-driven life today.

You don't live to find that person you're supposed to live with. You're supposed to live to find Jesus. To find Jesus is perfect. You're living for Jesus. You were created for the purpose of ministering and giving God glory in your life.

It isn't about so many young people, so many older people, single people. They live their lives trying to find the one when they have the one. A mission-driven life. Here's just an example. This story that was shared with me years ago, and it was just so impactful.

There was this young girl. She was a Christian. She was raised in a godly home. And she went off to college, and she began to, as any college student, they faced a lot of peer pressure. She joined a sorority.

She began to kind of dabble in drugs and alcohol. And before she knew it, she was completely consumed in drugs and alcohol, was partying all the time. One time she went a little too far with a guy, and then she started going too far with many guys. And she just went into this very, very dark place. She was once, you know, just following Christ.

She was mission-driven. But she kind of fell out of where she was, and she was in a dark place. Then she met this guy. She says, this is him. This is the one I've been praying for since I was in the church youth group, you know, thinking about the boy.

He's a Christian guy. He loves the Lord. He's got plans. He's focused on a job and a career and all these wonderful things. And he's just a Christian.

He loves Jesus. And she goes home and shares that with her mother. And she tells him, look, look, Mom, I found this guy. And I just think he's perfect, and he's the one. He's everything I've wanted in a Christ-like marriage and a Christ-mission-driven marriage.

It's just everything I've ever wanted. And her mom looks at her and says, honey, sweetie, a guy like that is not looking for a girl. A guy like that is not looking for a girl that's living the way you. I love you, but I've got to tell you the truth. A guy like that is not looking for a girl like you.

If you're here today and you want a mission-driven marriage in the future, you need to live a mission-driven, God, Christ-centered life today. And watch what God does and how he opens up. That's your focus. That's what you're doing. Become the person.

I love how Andy Stanley says this. He says, become the person you are looking for is looking for. Become the person you are looking for is looking for. Who are you becoming? That should be the first thing you think about if you're walking this.

And if you are someone who is Christ-centered, who is following God, who is covenant-keeping, who is devil-stomping, who is mission-driven, who is Christ-centered, that's your focus. And what's going to happen? You're going to be walking the path, and you're going to be in your river, and you're going to be walking down the road. You're going to be going on mission and you're going to be doing your Bible studies. At work, you felt like you're led to start a Bible study because I'm mission driven.

I want to reach people for Christ, so I start doing that. Or I want to minister in my church and I want to do more in my church or I want to do more outside my church. There's some ministries out there I really want to get involved in and you start focusing on that. I'm reading my Bible. I'm studying scripture.

I'm going to the Lord. I have a regular prayer life and I'm just focused on becoming more like Christ. I'm shedding the sin that so easily entangles me and I'm working more towards like a Christ-like character. And as you're walking down that road, you'll all of a sudden look over and say, hello there. Well, how are you doing?

And they're walking the same path as you and you're like, wow, they're rather attractive and they love Jesus too. And you guys just start, okay, you start walking together and let's go, let's follow Jesus together. And all of a sudden you're like, hey, let's let's build a friendship around Jesus Christ. And you start walking that path together and ultimately you make the decision. You know what?

We're better together and we're mission driven. And I think that if we come together in marriage, we can make a greater impact for Jesus. Why get married? Not to be happy to serve Jesus better. Why do we get married?

Because we are greater. We are better together. We are better together. We can minister because we are Christ driven. We are mission driven.

And the result of that is a love. The result of that is an impact that we can, that's dynamic. We can make greater impact together than we can walking separately. So just in practicality, how do, how, where do I start? What are, what are, what are, where do we go with this?

You know, like I'm, I'm married. So how do I, I'm married. So how do I have this conversation? What, where do we go with this? Well, I think there's two questions you should ask yourself here.

First of all, what are you passionate about? Second one is, what do you hate the most? What are you passionate about? And what do you may hate, hate the most? It's a common enemy and it's a common mission that, that unifies.

A common enemy and a common enemy and a common mission. So what do you both righteously love? And what do you both righteously hate? How does that work? You know, you talk these out.

What do we, what do we both love? And what do we both hate? And where those two come together and intersect is where we go with our mission and life. You both may be passionate about hospitality. You know, maybe you, you're both, you love serving people.

You love cooking and, and, and you want to get together. And what you're going to do is you're, you're going to make meals and you say, Hey, we can do this. We can make meals and we can go and help the sick and give people food. And we can show up at church one Sunday and we can just start blessing people with food and, and things like, maybe that's what you have together. Maybe you hate the fact that many kids don't have a home or have a father or have a mother.

Maybe you're unified. mission is to foster kids or support fostering organizations and to help kids have a home or a mother or a father. Maybe you have a heart to help young women who are caught in sex trafficking. And you decide to join something like the safe house project to build homes to help young women. And you and your spouse come together and you want to make this happen.

You have a common goal. Maybe you've been able to get out of financial debt and you hate debt more than anything. And maybe you're that couples. We watch what that's done in our life and our relationships. I want to start a small group or I want to start a class that helps people get out of debt.

And that's your thing. It's a unified goal. It's a common enemy and a common mission. mission. So what are we, what are we, what are we married for?

Not to be happy to be on mission and you are better together to accomplish what God has called you to do. He's called you to do something together. I've got a few examples here of some people and I know we're running a little over time here, but just stay with me a few minutes and we'll close in just a second. But there was a couple I knew that had a heart for international students. So they ended up opening their basement in their home to, to welcome students in from other parts of the world that may not know Jesus or, or, and, and, and they welcomed them in and took care of them and gave them an opportunity to experience.

God, uh, had a, had a friend and pastoral ministry that just recently flew to Bulgaria to take in some older kids, to adopt some older kids and bring them home. He already had a family of four and he just posted the other day. Now our new family of six, because he and his wife had a heart, had a bleeding vision for those poor children in Bulgaria that didn't have homes and didn't have mothers and didn't have fathers. When Miranda and I were in law school, actually Miranda was in law school. I was just a law husband by, by the way.

Um, we had a, a professor there. He and his wife had a common mission to open up their home for disabled children that weren't expected to live a long life because they were severely handicapped and disabled. And they would take them in and they would take care of them. And they would nurture them through their lives. So they'd have a stable, loving Christian family home.

They sacrificed so much of their home. They sacrificed so much of their life and their time because they had a common mission. They had a common vision. They had a common Christ centered goal in their life. I heard about a couple that, uh, I heard about a couple that, that formed a, a CrossFit, uh, a ministry and they would, they would bring people in and it would, they would do CrossFit and then, and then they would, uh, offer an opportunity to know Jesus through that.

They would develop relationships and offer opportunities. They had a common goal in mind through something they were passionate about, a common goal and a common enemy. But let me say this, unity doesn't mean you are the same. It means you are together. And when I was looking at the, uh, the confluences, I noticed this one confluence that came together and, and, uh, it was the Amazon and the Negro Rio, the Rio Negro, sorry, the Rio Negro.

And, uh, they, they, they come together and, uh, they, they come together and because of the difference of, of temperature in, in, in Brazil, that when they roll together, they, they, they go for, for three miles, three and a half miles without ever crossing. And then. Eventually, they bleed together and become one river. I thought that was interesting. It's like a phenomenon of nature.

People go and see this natural phenomenon because it's so interesting that you have this clear blue water and then you have this muddy water that comes together and they're like going side by side for three and a half miles. Just this beautiful thing, this thing in nature, just the look of it, picturesque poetry of it, you know, it's like in your mind. It's just so beautiful. And I thought about that and the thing is unity doesn't really mean that you're the same. You're going to be different.

That's the beauty of it. That you bring different things to the table. If one has a heart for something, the other shares in that heart and vice versa. You don't just share an address. You share a life.

You don't just share a sex life together. You share a common goal, a common goal, a common vision. You don't just share the same sports team. You don't just share the same vacation ideas, you know, hashtag vacation goals. You know, you don't just become roommates because life is all about your kids, which typically happens.

But why are we together? Because together we have a common mission, common goal. Because together we serve Jesus. Jesus is our goal. Jesus is our goal.

Jesus is our all in all. Jesus is our hope. Jesus is our focus. I think of Hebrews. He who endured the cross, despising all shame.

And he kept his eyes. And he kept his eyes on the reward, on the goal. And our goal is Jesus. Jesus is our goal. And as we focus on that goal, we will watch the blessings.

And the end of the Aquila and Priscilla giving their lives through ministry moments. As you watch people's moments. As you watch people's moments. As you watch people's lives change. As you see the kingdom of God extended through your lives.

The impact, the purpose that God has for you. The amazing calling that He has in your marriages. In closing, I think it's interesting that in the word united, if you move the I just one place differently, you get untied. If you flip the I and the T, you get untied. So, I ask you to assess yourself.

Where am I united? Where am I united? What do I need to do? Where do I need to be placed? Where am I going?

Am I untied? Or am I united? So, in practical application, I just leave this with you. I leave this with you today. Make a decision.

It's going to take a little work. It's going to take a little time for you to get together and talk about these things. But that's what I'm commissioning you to do today.