Rick Warren - Rick Warren Speaks About Marriage at the Vatican

I am very honored to be here with you. I want to thank Cardinal

Mueller for inviting me to this colloquium. Thank you. I want to thank

Archbishop to know You for introducing me, and I thank all of you for

caring enough about this topic. You know, there's always a danger in being

the twenty eighth speaker. What's left to say? And after hearing so many

great speakers yesterday, I canceled my dinner engagement last night to go write a

new message because what I had prepared to say had already been said over and

over and over. I had prepared a message called why marriage Matters, but

I didn't want to repeat what you've heard many many times. I actually had

prepared to speak on how God reveals his presence and his character through marriage,

but that was eloquently explained by Cardinal Mueller, Thank you. I then had

prepared to speak on the specific ways that our lives and our culture, and

especially our children are damaged when we reject God's plan for marriage and sex,

but that was eloquently explained by Pastor Arnold, Thank you. I then had

prepared to speak about how gender idol ideologies confuse our identity and destroy our dignity.

But of course, Sister Prudence brilliantly explained that now I'm starting to sweat,

and then I'm not kidding. Part of my message had prepared to speak

about how the covenant of marriage and the act of sex parallel our intimate relationship

with God and the one that He wants to have with us. But then

my former friend Rabbi Sachs powerfully explained that one, so what would you guys

like to talk about? With every single speaker, I kept finding myself crossing

out more and more of my speech. So in conclusion, I now understand

what the Lord Jesus felt when he said in John ten eight, all who

come before me are thieves and robbers. So I had to write a whole

new message, and I'm not kidding I did. Hebrews thirteen song as this

interpretation, if you say so, Hebrews thirteen four says this, We're giving

this very clear command. Marriage is to be honored by every everybody, whether

you're single, married, divorced, annulled, widowed. The Bible says you

are to honor marriage. Now. Sadly, today we all know marriage is

dishonored by a lot of people. It's dismissed as our cake man made tradition.

It's denounced as an enemy of women. It's discouraged as a clear career

limiting choice. It's demeaned in movies and television. It's delayed out of fear

that it will limit one's personal freedom. So today, instead of being honored,

marriage is ridiculed, resented, rejected, and redefined. What are we

going to do about this? Well, the church cannot cower in silence.

As you've already heard from all these great speakers and from these great film clips.

The stakes are too high. We cannot not do something. So after

all of what we've heard, I sat down and detailed a little action plan

for myself and possibly maybe you might want to do some of these things after

the colloquial amends. And so rather than speaking on why marriage matters, I

want to speak on my new title, what must we do? Hey God?

Okay, what are we going to do? And I have a number

of suggestions here, and just for fun, I put them in alphabetical order.

So if you're taking notes, A, is this affirm the authority of

God's word? That's the starting point. We don't base our worldview on fads

or feelings, or opinions or political correctness. We build our lives on the

unchanging truth of God's word. Jesus affirmed, heaven and earth will pass away,

but my word will never pass away. Isaiah affirmed the grass withers and

the flower fades, but the word of God abides forever. And David affirm,

your word, oh Lord, is eternal. It stands firm in the

heavens. You see. Truth is still truth, no matter how many people

doubt it. And I may deny the law gravity, but it doesn't change

gravity. And just because we break God's laws does not invalidate them. We

don't really actually break God's laws. They break us, and everything in this

planet is broken. So we start with affirming the authority of God's words.

Second thing we need to do be believe what Jesus taught about marriage. We

just need to believe it what Jesus taught about marriage. And in Mark chapter

ten, verses six to nine, we have the Owner's Manual for marriage in

America, we have a phrase, when in doubt, check the Owner's Manual.

And in Mark chapter ten, verses six to nine, Jesus quotes the

Old Testament and gives us, as I said, the Owner's Manual and marriage.

A lot of speakers have referred to this. Let me read it to

you from the New Living Translation. God's plan has been seen from the very

beginning of creation, when He made us male and female. This explains why

a man leaves his father and mother and is joined to his wife, and

the two are united as one body. Now since they are no longer two

but one, no one should separate them, for God has joined them together.

Now. In this one passage, just one single passage, Jesus gives

us the five convictions about marriage that are unchangeable, incontrovertible, and unmovable.

Five convictions we must believe. First, and this has been referred to many

times, gender as God's idea. God chose to make us either male or

female. Our identity is either a man or a woman. It's far deeper

than a sociological construct, a psychological condition, a personal preference. God made

us male and female. Second, this passage teaches that marriage is God's idea.

He defines it. He defines it, not us. It's not a

man made idea that we can just toss away. God created marriage. Number

three. Sex was created for marriage. God created the male and female body

parts to fit naturally together. That's obvious. But they don't just fit together.

They fit together for a purpose, and that is the creation of life.

And even if you disbelieve the Bible, every human body and every living

person is a witness and a testimony to God's intended purpose for sex. Sex

was not created for recreation, but it was created for connection of a husband

and wife and a procreation of life. By the way, when a husband

and wife make love, it releases oxytocin into their bodies. Oxytocin is the

chemical, the bonding chemical that creates emotional closeness oxytocin. If you're high on

oxytocin, you have easy ability to relate to people. If you're low in

oxytocin, you have a hard time making connections with people. When a husband

and wife make love, it releases oxytocin in both the husband and the wife,

and it bonds them together. It as an emotional cement. By the

way, when a woman nurses a baby, it releases oxytocin in both the

woman and the mother and the baby. Studies have shown that if you own

a pet, and you have a dog, and you pet a dog for

thirty minutes, it releases oxytocin in both the dog and the owner. They've

done studies about oxytocin. There's an animal in the Midwest in America called the

prairie rols like a little hamster, and prairie voles is one of the few

animals in the animal kingdom that actually make for life. And when they studied

the prairie roles, they found that they were off the chart in oxytocin,

and that's why they connect with a mate and bond for life. And they

discovered that when they took the oxytocin out of the prairie les, they were

as promiscus as rabbits. Now, God created sex for not just the procreation

of new life, but for the connection of a husband and a woman.

And if sex was only physical, then unfaithfulness would not hurt anybody. But

it does because it's far more than just physical. And when I was a

youth pastor, I used to tell kids there's no such thing as safe sex,

because they don't make a condom that can prevent a broken heart. It's

far more than physical. Now, the fourth thing Jesus said in that passage

was that marriage is the union of a man and a woman. Now there

are many other kinds of relationships, but those aren't marriage, and definitions matter.

And then fifth, in that passage, it says marriage is to be

permanent. Jesus repeats Genesis, saying what God has joined together, no human

beings should separate. So it's meant to last a lifetime. Now we know

that all five of those truths that I just gave you are disputed, debated,

and denied today, every one of them. But a lie doesn't become

a truth, and wrong doesn't become right, and evil doesn't become good just

because it becomes popular. Truth is truth. So we affirm the authority of

Scripture, and we believe what Jesus said about marriage and sex. Number three

see Celebrate healthy Marriages. It's not enough to defend marriage. We have to

celebrate it. We have to celebrate it. We have to be a proponent

of what's right, not simply an opponent of what's wrong. We have to

offer an appealing alternative to the empty promises of the world. And celebrating and

highlighting and honoring marriage, I believe is the best defense when you show people

what's real. Now, how do you do that. I'm a pastor,

so let me give you if you are a pastor, a parish priest,

or if you're over some priest, let me give you some suggestions for a

local church to celebrating healthy marriage. Number one, use testimonies of happy marriages

in your church services. We need more testimonies. People need less hear a

sermon, They need more see a sermon, and both single adults and married

couples are actually inspired more by example than they are by exhortation. So we

have these testimonies in our church, but people never hear them, and if

you could, can incorporate them into your services. A marriage doesn't have to

be perfect to be healthy. Last month, Kay and I sat on stage

at our church for six services in a row and talked about how our nearly

forty years of marriage has been worth all the effort. Now, our marriage

was not perfect. In fact, the two years is pretty much hell on

earth. We said, we're going to make this marriage last if it kills

us. It nearly did. Kay thought she was going crazy and I ended

up in the hospital. We went and got fifteen weeks of marriage counseling.

In the early years of our marriage, it cost me one hundred dollars a

week, and I was making four hundred dollars a month. It's easy to

figure out that I put it on my credit card. I've often said I

should do a commercial MasterCard. Saved my marriage, saved marriage priceless. And

when people say, well, I can't afford counseling, I say, how

much is your happiness worth? Really? To me, what I've got today

is worth a million dollars. My wife is my best friend. There would

be no saddle Back Church. There would be no purpose driven life, no

movement, no training of over four hundred thousand pastors in one hundred and sixty

four countries. None of that would have ever happened if our marriage had fallen

apart. And so whatever it takes, but have testimonies of happy marriages.

Second, I would encourage you to do an annual wedding renewal of vows service.

We do one every year at Saddleback. I take an entire weekend,

We dress up, We invite people to wear their original wedding gowns if they

can still get on them. We have a professional and we do a renewal

of the vows every year at saddleback church. It's very tender service. People

weep and it's a great model. And by the way, we found couples

who were living together who said we would like to get married. We always

announced it several months in advance, so they can take our eight weeks of

premarital counseling, repent and get married. And we do that. Number Three,

Publicly recognize and reward long term marriages in your parishes. Whatever gets rewarded

gets repeated. So whatever you want repeated that kind of behavior, you need

to figure out a way to reward it. And you need to reward anniversaries,

and you need to honor them and celebrate the sweetness and the beauty of

a love that lasts a lifetime, because we're wired to crave this and then

another thing. Continually point out the benefits of marriage is a good way to

celebrate healthy marriages. For instance, when a culture claims, and in Western

culture, we claim this to care about children, we must point out the

children who grow up with both mom and a father grow up healthier, happier,

and stronger. They're less likely to fail in school, less likely to

abuse drugs and alcohol, less likely to do jail time, less likely to

experience distress, depression, thoughts of suicide. They're also less likely to perpetuate

the problem in the next generation. So do you really care about kids,

then promote marriage lasting marriage. When a culture claims to champion women, we

must point out that those who marry. Women who marry and stay married have

lower rates of depression, have a lower risk of being a victim of crime

or violence, and have a higher net worth than women living with an unmarried

men. When a culture claims to care about the poor, we must point

out that the dissolution of marriage disproportionately hurts the poor. A single mother with

the child has never been a viable economic unit. That's why God created fathers,

and poor children get hurt the most by the economic consequences. Divorced children

who grow without both mother and father more likely to live their entire lives in

poverty. It's just a fact. What about men, Men who married and

stay married have fewer illnesses, have fewer injuries, and live longer than single

men. They earn more money, a mass more net worth, and single

men with similar education and job histories, including the men who live with unmarried

women d Here's a fourth thing. Develop small groups, small group courses to

support marriages. I believe the small group unit in the church is the healthiest

expression to support marriages. Twice in scripture, the Book of Acts, it

tells us that in the New Testament Church they met in the temple courts and

from house to house twice large group worship and small group fellowship. And we

have done this and developed that at Saddleback. We have small groups that study

marriage all the time. It's one of the keys to our growth. Last

Saturday, I was in Berlin at Saddleback Berlin and teaching pastors and priests there

how to start small groups for the new evangelization. I started Saddleback Church thirty

five years ago with a one member, my wife. I preached the first

sermon. She said it was too long. It's been downhill ever since.

She still says they're too long. Today, Saddleback is the only church in

America with more people in small groups than come on Sunday. Last Sunday we

had I don't know, maybe twenty five thousand people in attendance, but we

have about forty thousand involved in small groups in eight four hundred small groups,

and they go from Santa Monica to San Diego in California, And one of

the things we teach in small groups that as a couple, you should never

have as your best friends couples who are not as committed to their marriage as

you are. If you want your marriage to last, you should choose as

your best friends couples who are as committed to their marriage as you are,

because if not, when the heat is on, you're going to go the

wrong way. They're going to give you bad advice, they're not going to

support you, they're not going to fight for your marriage. So develop small

groups. He is engage every media to promote marriage. This is something we

really need to do. We need to engage every single media to promote marriage.

Right now, friends, the church is being outmarketed by the opponents of

marriage. Everybody agree with that, and the minority view is getting the majority

of the press, and they're they're the minority. There is so far the

minority, and yet you would think that they were the majority. And right

now, Christians, we are more known for what we're against than what we're

for. I think we need to change that. I intend to change it.

And whichever side tells the best stories wins. So we have to tell

better stories about marriage and about sex. So excited, and I was telling

them on Senior Steven, how much I appreciate these videos we've been watching.

We need more of these, and every every church should show these and use

them in your services so that we're not just the ones that are seeing them,

but that everybody is seeing them. And we need more TV shows.

We need more movies that portray joyful, committed marriages. When was the last

time you saw a happy marriage on television? The father is usually a joke

on in most Disney movies. The mom and dad are absent. I don't

know if you've noticed this, but almost every Disney character is an orphan.

Dad is never around, our mom's never around, or that killed off early

in the scene. We have to use media to question what I call the

cultural lies, and the lies that are being perpetuated in our culture are told

over and over and over, and people simply believe them because they're not being

questioned. For instance, one of the lies we have in our culture is

that the only great sex is sex outside of marriage. We hear this all

the time. You never see a loving couple that our husband wife on TV.

Sex is always between single people. Or adultery. Yeah, and I

think we need tasteful movies and TV that celebrate sex and marriage. They could

be done tastefully. Sex is not dirty, it is holy. It is

holy, and it is a gift to married couples. I'm so glad the

Rivers are here today. All I just want to say is they're my kind

of people. You know, you have honorary membership at Saddleback, God bless

him. We need movies and we need films, and we need stories that

teach the difference between love and lust. Most love songs today are not really

love songs. They're lost songs. Give it to me, give it to

me, or I'm going to take it. That's not love. That's not

love. Love can always wait to give, lust can never wait to get.

Now, as Christians and we represent a lot of different tribes here,

we need a cooperative media strategy for producing television shows, films, and YouTube

videos that portray the joys and benefits of healthy marriage and the hard work it

takes to maintain a great marriage. And by the way, on a personal

level, I want to encourage every one of you, no matter who you

are, to use the social media to mentor the next generation. If you

want to mentor the next generation, you have to be on social media because

that's where they are. They're on Facebook and MySpace and YouTube, and they're

on Twitter and Instagram and Google Plus and LinkedIn and I'm on nine different accounts.

And by the way, if you're not following me on Twitter, you're

going to hell. Just kidding, f We must face attackers with joy and

winsomeness. We must face attackers the critics with joinment. Yes, there's a

raging cultural battle, but the Bible says we don't use the weapons of this

world. We don't use the weapons of this world. And the Bible says

you overcome evil with what yeah, good, good, And the Bible tells

us to bless those who curse you. These attackers are not the enemy.

They are the mission field. There are people that Jesus shed his precious blood

for. He wants them in heaven. And sometimes you have to decide,

are are you more interested in making a point or making a friend. My

definition of evangelism is you build a bridge of love between your heart and theirs,

and Jesus walks across. Before people will trust Christ, they've got to

trust you. And before they want to know is he real? They want

to know are you real? Can you be trusted? And so we face

attackers with joy and winsomeness. I have done hundreds, maybe thousands, of

interviews with antagonistic reporters, and I will have to say I've learned you never

get your point across by being cross, and you are never persuasive when you're

abrasive. That it is in winsomeness that we win the battle. And our

culture has accepted two lives today. One of them is that if you disagree

with somebody's lifestyle, then you either hate them or you're afraid of them.

I don't hate them, and I'm not afraid of them. I'm not phobic

and I'm not hateful. I just disagree, and that's a myth. And

the other is that if you love somebody, you must agree with everything they

believe or do. Well, that's nonsense, because nobody agrees with everything you

do, including your wife or your husband or whatever. Both of those are

nonsense, I said earlier. Over past thirty five years, I've had the

privilege of training over four hundred thousand pastors in one hundred and sixty four countries,

and one of the things I've learned in talking to that many pastors is

that every leader needs learn how to represent Christ when attacked. And if you

stand courageously for the truth, you're going to be attacked. You can count

on it. So how do you stay winsome under attack? How do you

do that? Well, let me give you a couple ways. Number one

is, remember the reward you're gonna get. Remember the reward. Jesus said

it like this in the Beatitudes, Blessed are you. And men shall revile

you and persecute you, and say all manner of evil against you falsely.

For my sake, rejoice and be exceeding glad, for great is your reward

in heaven, for so persecuted they the prophets which were before you. This

is not the end of the story, and we must be willing to be

ridiculed and even suffer for the truth. Courage by its very nature, means

that sometimes you have to take a stand that's unpopular. And I meet a

lot of pastors and priests who are afraid to be unpopular. You cannot please.

You have to do what Peter said, we must obey God rather than

men. When the Sanhedrin took them in you know. In the concluding message

at the end of the Extraordinary Synod, the Holy Father said this, we

must avoid quote, the temptation to come down off the cross to please the

people instead of staying on the cross fulfilling the will of the Father. The

temptation to bow down to a worldly spirit instead of purifying it and bending it

to the spirit of God. Wow. Wow, Jesus said, if they

hated me, they're gonna hate you. So you remember your reward. And

the other thing you do is you live for an audience of one that you

don't care about really what other people think. If you haven't got people's approve

of by now, you're not going to get it. And I'll tell you

this, you don't need it to be happy. You don't need it to

be happy. Remember who is the one that we are answering to you at

the end of the day. It's not Time magazine, it's Jesus Christ.

I remember one time I was interviewed on CNN, and every time I'd go

on there, they asked me the same question about gay marriage. And one

of the well known speakers on CNN asked me, said, Rick, as

a pastor, do you ever think you will ever change your opinion on this,

and I said no, And he said why, and I said,

because I fear the disapproval of God more than I feared your disapproval or the

disapproval society. And I wasn't saying that in a mean way. I was

just trying to be honest. The only way to always be relevant is to

be eternal. Anything that is in style is going out of style by its

very nature, styles go out of style, So you should never try to

be stylish. No, you know, no revolution lasts, including the sexual

revolution, No dictator last. No revolution lasts, and every lie eventually crumbles

under its own deception. Cultures rise and fall, they come and go,

but the Word of God and the Church of God continues. So what I'm

saying is it isn't necessary to be on the side of culture. It's not

even necessary to be on the right side of history. It's just important to

be on the right side. Okay, I guess what I'm saying is that

the debate over the definition of life and of sex and of marriage is in

reality a question of leadership. And the question is who's going to lead.

Will the church follow the crowd, or will the church lead the crowd,

and in Exodus twenty three to two, God says this, do not follow

the crowd in doing wrong. Why because history shows the majority is often wrong.

Remember the dustbinds of history are stuffed with conventional wisdom of cultures that proved

false, and truth is not decided by a popularity contest. G give people

confidence. This is something. We need to give them confidence that their marriage

can make it. Two of the Catholic leaders that I respect the most,

and I've talked about this, Archbishop Kurtz told me. He said, Rick,

we must restore confidence that even in a broken world, the biblical marriage

is attainable. Brilliant and Cardinal Chapy right here has said believers don't have the

luxury of pessimism. That's great. We must give people confidence. We must

preach the good news about marriage with hope and faith, not doom and gloom.

This is important. Instead of merely telling it like it is, pastors

must tell it like it can be. Telling it like it is it changes

nothing. It just labels people. And if somebody says you're a bad husband,

then you tendancy say, yes, I am a bad husband. Look

how bad I can be. But if somebody says, I see in you

the potential to be a great husband, I see in you the potential to

be a man of God, that your wife loves, your kids, honor,

the community respects. This could be you, with God's Holy Spirit in

and through you that changes me. This is preaching for faith. Preaching for

faith. Give people confidence the good news of marriage. With hope and faith,

we can show that they can beat the odds. Jesus said, according

to your faith, it will be done to you. We must help couples

imagine, imagine how good their marriage could be if they'll just make the effort

to improve it. And we must help people. This is important. Help

people see that their primary identity is found in Christ, not their sins or

any other distinction. Help people see that their primary identity is in Christ,

not their sins or any other distinction. Before I left Los Angeles, I

had lunch with Archbishop Gomez and we talked about this issue of identity, which

we both feel very deeply about. Let me just give you an example.

At Saddleback, we have a recovery program based on the Beatitudes. We started

it twenty five years ago. Tens of thousands of people have been through it

through saddleback around the world. It's called Celebrate Recovery and it's based on the

Beatitudes of Jesus as the steps of recovery. And one of the things that

makes Celebrate Recovery different from alcoholics anonymous is if you go to AA meeting,

at every meeting, you stand up and for the rest of your life you

say Hi, I'm John and I'm a alcoholic. Your primary identity is your

sin, your weakness, and Celebrate Recovery said no, no, you don't

do that. You would say Hi, my name Rick is a Rick and

I'm a disciple of Christ who struggles with alcohol. See the difference. My

primary identity is in Christ and I'm just struggling with an area in my life.

That makes a huge difference in theology and practice. Finally, teach the

purposes of marriage. I skipped all the way to Tea because the amount of

time teach the purposes of marriage. You cannot value something you don't understand its

purpose. Now, anytime we forget God's purpose for any of his gifts,

that gift's going to be misused, abused, confused, wasted, perverted,

and even destroyed. It's true of your time, your money, your health,

your gifts, your freedom, your sexuality, even marriage. Now,

the Bible in Genesis gives us the six purposes of marriage, and I'll close

with this, and we've discussed these at the conference, but let me just

summarize them in a list. The Bible says that there are six purposes for

marriage. Number one for the elimination of loneliness. It's the first thing God

said, Genesis one eighteen. God tells Adam, it's not good for the

man to be alone. I will make you a companion. It's the first

thing God said. Elimination of loneliness. Number two for the expression of sex

Genesis two twenty four. For this reason, a man will leave his father

and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh.

Elimination of loneliness, expression of sex. Number three, the multiplication of

the human race Genesis one twenty God says, be fruitful and multiply and fill

the earth. By the way, this is the only command of God that

the human race has ever been able to keep. We did this one successfully.

There are seven billion of us to prove it. Number four, By

the way, it always amazes me that God chose to bring people into the

world through sex, so that Jesus could bring them into heaven. Think about

this, Jesus told that this there's going to be no sex in heaven,

but without sex on earth, there'd be no people to go to heaven.

Number four for the protection and the education of children Phesians four sixty four.

God says, fathers, bring up your children in the nurture and the instruction.

Protection and education in the nurture instruction of the Lord. And a lot

of people have already pointed out that children are hurt the most in the culture

that devalues marriage. I love the message paraphrase of Malachi to eighteen. Let

me read this to you, God, not you made marriage. His spirit

inhabits even the smallest detail of marriage. What does he want from marriage?

Godly children from your union. So guard the spirit of marriage within you.

That's beautiful. The fifth purpose for the perfection of our character. First Corinthians

seven fourteen tells us very clearly the husband is sanctified through his wife, and

the wife is sanctified through her husband. One of the purposes of the marriage

is to make you holy, not just happy. Now, holiness creates happiness,

but marriage is the laboratory for learning how to love. It is the

school for learning sacrifice. It's the university for learning unselfishness. It's the lifelong

course for becoming like Christ. And if you are married, the number one

tool God uses to shape you is your spouse. And then number six the

sixth purpose of marriage for the reflection of our union with Christ. Ephesians four,

five twenty two to thirty three, very powerful passage. He explains that

marriage is a metaphor. Marriage is a model of the mystery of Christ's love

for his bride and his body. It is a spiritual object lesson. Paul

explained it this way. Let me read this to you, Husbands, love

your wives. Love your wives, just as Christ love the Church and gave

himself up for her, to make her holy and to present her as a

beautiful bride to himself, a radiant church, without staying or wrinkle or blemish,

but holy and pure. In this same way, husbands must love their

wives as their own bodies. And he who loves his wife loves himself.

After all, no one ever hated his own body. But he feeds it

and he cares for it, just as Christ does his church. For we

are members of Christ's body. It is for this reason that a man will

leave his father and mother there it is again, and be united to his

wife, and the two will become one flesh. This is a profound mystery,

but I am talking about Christ and his church. So each of you

must also love your wife as you love yourself and your wife. You wife

must respect your husband. This is the deepest meaning of marriage. This is

the most profound purpose of marriage, and this is the strongest reason why marriage

can only be between a man and a woman. There is no other relationship,

including the parent child relationship, that can picture this intimate union. And

to redefine marriage would destroy the picture that God intends for marriage to portray.

And we cannot gave on this issue. It's a picture of Christ in his

church. Jesus said, there's no marriage in heaven. Why because you're not

gonna need any of these six reasons. In heaven. You're not gonna need

We're not gonna need the protection of children in heaven. We're not gonna need

the connection between men and women. We're not gonna need the perfection of character,

and we're not even gonna need the reflection of our union with Christ.

We don't need the metaphor because now we've got the real thing. So in

closing, I just throughout the other message because I wanted to encourage you to

never give up and to never give in. The Church cannot be salt and

light in a crumbling culture. If we cave into the sexual revolution and if

we failed to provide a counter culture witness. It is a total myth that

we must compromise and give up on biblical truth and marriage in order to evangelize.

People say, well, the reason people aren't coming to church is because

we're two. We're too That's just not true. Twenty years ago I wrote

a book called the Purpose Driven Church, and the subtitle of that book was

called growth without compromising your message and your mission. And I think we proved

it. Last month I baptized the forty thousandth adult convert at Soetdlebeccha forty thousand

adult converts, and we didn't compromise, and we didn't cave in. Now,

in the end, we have to be merciful to the fallen. We

have to show grace to the struggling. We have to be patient to the

doubting. But when God's word is clear, We must not. We cannot

back up, back down, back off, backslide, or just give in.

The Church must never be captivated by culture, manipulated by critics, motivated

by applause, frustrated by problems, debilitated by distractions, or intimidated by evil.

We must keep running the race with our eye on the goal, not

on those shouting from the sideline. We must be spirit led, purpose and

mission focused, so that we cannot be bought. We will not be compromised,

and we shall not quit until we finished race. May God bless you

and all who serve our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.