The Biggest Landmines Waiting for Every Relationship

So good to spend today with you. I want to welcome all of our

different locations, those of you watching online and those of

you who are part of our Inside Family Quick report.

Last week was Easter weekend. Many of you were joining me and

praying for 16,000 people to come to our services and more

people to hear the gospel than ever before in the history of

our church. And I'm pleased to report that

God heard our prayer. He did what we asked Him to do

and it took place at all of our locations.

I'm telling you that because listen, this is not about the

crossing. This is just about the fact that

God hears our prayers. And when you are praying to God

about people finding a relationship with God, He is not

the enemy that you are trying to convince to do the thing that

you want to do. He is your greatest advocate in

helping people come into an intimate personal relationship

with Jesus Christ. And if you are joining us again,

you came maybe for the first time or the first time in a long

time on Easter weekend and you came back.

You need to hear me say this. We are so very glad that you are

here and we want to encourage you.

Swing by the new here booth day before you leave.

Today we are launching A5 week sermon series.

And to be honest with you, we are launching what I believe

will be the most contested season in our church is from a

preaching and teaching standpoint.

We're going to be spending five weeks on the family, then we're

going to spend three weeks on generosity, and then we're going

to spend 4 weeks on the Holy Spirit.

And if you want to know where the Holy Spirit loves to attack,

it is in those areas. It is in how we handle our

finances, whether or not we are attuned to the Holy Spirit and

what he wants us to do and how to handle things at home.

And we called this sermon series Lovers and Land Mines.

You picked it when you voted on the app.

And the reason we called it lovers and Land Mines is because

there are land mines all over our world.

There's land mines emotionally, spiritually, financially,

sexually. And stepping on them can be

disastrous. And I know that many of you know

all about that. But I believe that there is no

more field populated with land mines than when two people fall

in love and start a family. And this series was born out of

a desire to kind of take our whole church through premarital

counseling. I wish I could sit across the

table from every single one of you and walk through the land

mines that exist or will exist, and keep you from stepping on

them. Just so you know, we have an

incredible staff at all of our locations who will be a

fantastic resource for you if you find yourself, as we're

going through the series, needing somebody to talk through

some of the land mines you may have already stepped on.

And I want you to know they would love a chance to meet with

you, but there might be others of you who you're in a season

where you're going. I think I need a little bit more

elevated help, some elevated coaching.

And if you find yourself with an issue that's maybe more serious

or more complicated, I want you to know that we have Vineco

Counseling Company. And if you want more information

about that, it is in your app. It's always down at the very

bottom, but this week it'll be near the top of your For you

section. And if you're going, I could

probably use some coaching, some help that's a little bit more

intensive than what Clayton's giving on stage or what maybe

our pastors can provide. They are incredible people,

people that I would trust myself to, and you should have no

worries trusting yourself to them.

Now additionally to that or in addition to that, right now we

have a team of people here at our church working behind the

scenes to roll out an even better premarital counseling

program. And our plan is to certify a

majority of our staff so they will be more than qualified to

serve you even better in the future.

We are all in here at the Crossing.

We want to be in your corner. We love you, we love your

family, and we want to help you learn to trust and believe that

God's way is the best way in every area of your life,

including how to navigate family.

So let me give some disclaimers, OK?

No matter what stage of life you are in, as we are going through

this series, there will be challenging stuff for you if you

will allow it to challenge you. You might be going to Clayton.

I'm not in that season. Hear me.

There will always be either a wisdom for you to apply or a

wisdom for you to pass on. You will either need that tool

for yourself or God will allow you to use that tool to be a

blessing in somebody else's life.

And there are going to be some of you as we're going through

this series, that you're going to start praying for something

that God will not give you. You're going to start praying

for a time machine so you could go back in time and do it

differently. And you need to hear me say

this. God does not give time machines.

How many of you wish there's some areas in your life where

you had a time machine and you could just go back and not do

what you did preach. God does not give us time

machines, but He does give us the gift of repentance, and He

promises that His mercies are new every morning.

You might have dug yourself into a pretty big hole.

I have a really good news for you.

The Holy Spirit has a really big shovel.

OK, there's this obscure passage in the book of Joel of the

prophet. It's Joel chapter 2, verses 12

Joel 2:12–14

through 14. This is what He says to the

people even now, declares the Lord.

Return to me with all your heart, with fasting and weeping

and mourning. Rend your heart and not your

garments. In other words, do the internal

work. Don't just do this big spectacle

on the outside. Do something deep right here in

the heart. Return to the Lord your God,

because what kind of God do we serve?

For He is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger,

and abounding in love, and He relents from sending calamity.

Who knows, he may turn and relent and leave behind a

blessing. Joel is crying out to his

people. Get right with God.

Do what he says. Hear me.

God loves it when you turn to Him.

God loves it when you turn from sin.

And look what God promises to do when we do that, when we turn to

Him and away from sin. Verse 25I, I will repay you for

the years the locusts have eaten.

In other words, God will allow you to make up for time lost.

He's not going to give you a time machine, but he is saying I

will redeem the wasted years. I will undo the punishment of

sin. So as we get ready to go into

the series, I want to kind of give you a little bit of context

today. I'm it's going to be somewhat

depressing. Turn to your neighbor and say

depressing. OK, this is a 5 week series.

This one's a little depressing. There's some good stuff in

there, but you're going to feel like it's going to feel a little

chicken a little, it's going to feel a little the sky is

falling. OK, so let's just kind of talk

through land mines. Where are all these land mines

and why are there so many land mines?

Well, one, Satan wants to to destroy your marriage and your

family. John chapter 10, verse 10,

John 10:10

you've heard us talk about this all the time.

The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy.

In other words, your marriage and your family, and for that

matter your very life, have a very real and powerful enemy.

Real and powerful. Well, why does Satan attack the

family? I'm going to give you at least

three reasons. One, because there is no pain

like family pain. There is no pain like family

pain. Nothing can destroy, can destroy

a faith like problems in the family. 2 Research has caught up

to what the spiritual world has always known from the very

beginning. A strong family is the backbone

of a strong society. If Satan can destroy the family,

he can destroy a society. And if he can destroy a society,

then he can destroy a nation. I want to give a word of

caution, slash rebuke to those of you who are like all in

American patriots, and maybe you're a better American patriot

than you are a Christian. Can I just issue this

encouragement to you? One of the most patriotic things

you can do is raise a godly family.

Three, the spiritual world knows that the family is the primary

way that faith is passed on to the next generation.

So to those of you who are super upset at whatever generation

came after you, I want to remind you, you raised them.

So this might not be a them problem.

This might be a you problem. OK.

And I'm saying, I mean, OK, let me pause for just a second.

All right, here's what you need to know.

Everything we're going to do over this series is highly

spiritual. And it's not just going to be

this series, it's going to be the next two.

And you need to know that this stuff is incredibly real.

And I am not trying to step on anybody's toes.

I'm not trying to be mean. I'm not trying to make you feel

bad. And I have this deep concern

going through the series that some of you who are not yet

spiritually qualified are going to start grabbing a hold of

promises that you're not ready to take a hold of.

And then others of you who are more than spiritually qualified

will be too passive to actually engage in them.

And I have this other burden, which is as you're going through

the series, you may feel, watch this, things get worse at home

and you'll be going, I'm going to church and I'm listening to

what he's saying and I'm in my word and things are getting

worse. And at home, I'm going to tell

you why, because Satan is attacking you because you are

trying to go into his territory that he's already claimed and

reclaim it. I'm not saying this as a martyr,

but you just need to know what it looks like in my world, every

time it is Christmas or Easter, I just know that someone's going

to Chuck a grenade in my home. I don't know if that grenade is

going to show up in my marriage or in my parenting or at work.

I just know that when it means the most, there's going to be

attack. Every time I do a family series,

every time I do a family series, I write that series in pain in

my own house. Now I've done it long enough

that I know to expect it, but the reason why I tell you that

you may be fighting more on your way to church.

Have you ever noticed that that sometimes you get into your best

fights on the way to church? Hear me, that's spiritual.

If he can get you angry before you worship, you won't worship.

If he can get you so upset at your spouse that you can't hear

the word of God, and then he will keep you from applying the

word of God and you'll walk out of church, justify that you

showed up for church and they didn't, or you came to church

and you came away with a really clear message from God.

They're the problem. I need you to see this.

You are at war with an enemy who is real and powerful and takes

no days off. Satan knows that by attacking

the family he can get you to abandon the faith, destroy

society, and as a result the nation, and he can keep your

family from finding the life changing message of Jesus.

So gear up for this series. Second reason is that when you

step into your marriage, what marriage does is it is an idle

crusher. This is actually a good thing

that God sets up in your marriage because marriage and

family are one of the ways in which God sanctifies us.

Sanctification is making us more like Jesus, and you thought you

were pretty awesome until you got married and then your spouse

told you you're not. That's because your spouse is

starting to step on your idols. It is one of the blessings that

God gives to us to make us more like Him.

In order for us to become more like Him, the idols in our lives

have to be torn down and dealt with.

And dealing with idols is painful work.

You see, marriage is a lot like money and power.

It is a magnifier. Let me explain.

Money doesn't change you, it magnifies you.

If you're a greedy person and you're poor, nobody notices.

If you're a greedy person of means, everyone knows.

If you're a generous person with very little and you come into

money, you coming into money will only magnify your impact.

If you are a selfish person with almost no influence, very few

people will be hurt by you. If you are a selfish person with

lots of power and lots of influence, tons of people are

impacted. A person who desires to serve

people and bless people, when they find themselves in a

position of power, their impact is magnified.

Money and power do not change you, they magnify you.

And the same is true in marriage.

When you're single with no kids, it's hard to tell how selfish

you really are because nobody cares.

You just get to do you all the time, but then all of a sudden

you find yourself married and you have kids and your

selfishness will be on full display.

Marriage magnifies you. There will be land mines

littered in almost every room of your house, and the people that

you love the most will step on them every single day.

If you're a control freak, maybe nobody really notices at work.

They don't see how deep you're crazy goes.

But you get married and you have kids and boom, landmines

everywhere. The problem is that in your

marriage and your parenting is that these pain points

associated with your sin, they're not to destroy you, but

to make you more like Jesus. Your marriage and your family

are tools that God uses to reveal the shortcomings in your

walk with Him. When was the last time when you

were dealing with an issue in your home?

You went, I think God is using this to make me more like Him.

I'm guessing about 0. Instead, you went, This person's

crazy. It's always them.

So when this happens in your home, you have two choices.

You can defend your sin and get mad at your family, or you can

repent of your sin and become more like Christ.

And if you choose to repent of your sin and become more like

Christ, you will become the person your family desperately

needs. Here are three common areas

where I see Satan at work in marriages and families.

I'm going to go by categories, so let me talk to the single

people for a second. Satan will get you to think that

your identity is tied to your relationship status, that you're

worth is tied to who you're with.

I just need you to know, I just need you to hear me say this.

Jesus was single, so was the apostle Paul.

And I would say that those two people are two of the most

influential people who have ever walked planet earth.

So you can be one of the most impactful people on planet earth

and never settle down and get married.

In other words, your ability to serve God is heightened in your

singleness. If God chooses to bless you with

a marriage, so be it. But being single is in and of

itself a blessing to those of you who don't have the gift of

singleness. You're going.

I need to get married. Great.

Satan gets you to spend all your time trying to find the right

person instead of becoming the right person.

You can either spend your time looking or growing, but you

can't do both. What I would encourage you to do

is grow in such a way that other people come looking for you.

I've heard it said by what can I go?

Great single people, parents. OK, there we go.

I've heard a lot of pastors say this, so I have zero clue who to

attribute it to, but it's really good.

It's really complicated sentence, but it's a really gold

sentence. You'll think about it throughout

the week. Here's the question that a bunch

of pastors have posed. Are you becoming the kind of

person that the kind of person you're looking for is looking

for? Are you on the process of

becoming the kind of person that the kind of person you're

looking for is actually looking for?

In other words, if you are a gift from God to your future

spouse, what kind of gift are you becoming to the dating and

engaged community? This is going to be my spiciest

to take. I see two major landmines.

Satan will get you to spend more time on the parties around your

wedding than in preparation for your marriage.

There's the engagement party, the wedding shower, the bachelor

party, The Bachelorette party, the rehearsal party, and the

reception. Tons of time and money are spent

on colors, flowers, videographers, invitations, DJs,

menus, and almost no time is spent developing a game plan for

success in your marriage. It is like people are going out

and buying a plane and never bothering to get a pilot's

license and then wondering why they crashed.

Here is my free advice. This is not in the Bible.

Turn to your neighbor. Say this is not in the Bible.

I don't want you guys putting this on anybody.

Don't even put this on Jesus. This is just Clayton's advice.

But it's good. You're one of the biggest

challenges that couples face, especially young couples.

You know, one of the number one things cited as a as a cause for

divorce, money problems. Watch how crafty Satan is.

I tell fathers to make this offer.

Here is the budget for your wedding.

Do whatever you want to do. If you want, do the wedding for

$5000 and take the rest and put a down payment on your house.

Or if you want, take the rest and put it in a retirement

account and leave it alone. Let me give you some stats to

stress you out. The average wedding last year in

America was between 30 and $36,000.

The average. So if you this is the first time

in your life you've ever wanted to be below average.

You're like, I want to get AD OK?

I, I, we are not getting an A, we're getting AC minus on this.

OK, Can I just walk you through it?

In our region the average house is $170,000, which means if you

were to put $30,000 on the down payment of your house, one,

you'd save yourself from PMI which is about 100 bucks a

month. Two, it would say save $200 a

month or a month off of your house payment, which means

that's putting 2400 or that is putting $2400 a year back in

your bank account. Which means that over the life

of the loan it would give you back north of $70,000.

That is a 2X return and you just reduce the financial stress in

your home. If you want you ready for this,

don't put it on the House, put it in a retirement account and

leave it alone until you're 65 and that $30,000 will give you a

53 X return and you'll retire with $1.6 million in the bank.

By saying no to the dress instead of yes.

I'm just telling you, I've done a lot of weddings.

I've done a listen, I love being a part of people's special days.

I'm doing almost 0 weddings this year.

I love being a part of those special days.

And I want you to know I've been in weddings in my office that

were just two people and their parents, and they were

beautiful. And I have been on top of a

private mountain in Aspen, Co doing a wedding.

I've seen the extremes. And I want you to know neither

one of them is more guaranteed for success.

It will have everything to do with who they become in that

marriage. Spend the time on becoming who

you need to be. So in other words, regardless of

whether or not you overspend on the wedding, make sure you

overspend on your marriage. Do intensives, read books,

attend retreats, get guides to help you navigate all aspects of

your marriage, whether whatever you don't talk through, whatever

you don't talk through before your marriage, you will likely

fight about in your marriage. Are we OK?

Someone was going time machine, time machine, time machine, time

machine, OK married people. Here are two landmines that I

see over and over again. The 1st is that Satan gets you

to think that you married the wrong person.

After the wedding dress is hung in the closet, the thank you's

have been sent and life starts to get normal.

It starts to get hard. You shifted from pulling off a

wedding to trying to pull off a marriage and there will be all

kinds of problems and challenges to navigate and Satan will get

you to think that they are the problem.

You married the wrong person and you'll spend all your time

trying to talk yourself through marrying the wrong person

instead of you trying to become the right person.

How often in your marriage do you go I'm the problem, own your

part? Or is it always your spouse

who's the problem? And just because they don't,

just because they have major flaws, doesn't mean that you

don't have any. Hear me?

Your wedding vows were a declaration of war against your

feelings. Your vows were commitments,

promises about how about who you were going to be in the

marriage. Remember the lines for richer or

for poorer, in sickness and in health, in joy and in sorrow.

You were saying regardless of the situation, you can count on

me. My word is good, and with Christ

as my example and my strength, I'm going to keep it.

Imagine what would happen if that is who walked into your

marriage when you got home from church today.

The second area where I see Satan at work inside of

marriages is that when trouble comes, he gets you to fight with

the wrong weapons. Here's a couple of the weapons.

When trouble comes knocking, we're going to pull out the

weapon of volume. We're just going to get loud,

really, really loud. And when I say it like that, it

sounds stupid, but a lot of you have done it.

I know what this problem needs me to yell louder.

And can I just ask you, how often has that ever worked?

We don't even like circle back and go, hey, has yelling really

improved our marriage? Has screaming just magnified in

a positive way? My parenting, Nobody can point

to it. Oh, yeah.

When we started yelling, things really started going the right

way. We don't even evaluate whether

or not the weapon we're using is the right weapon.

And so guess what? Our weapon becomes a landmine.

How many of you were going? Yeah, everything's going better

because we just. We just made a commitment.

I looked at her and I go, babe, let's yell more.

Look what Proverbs 15 one says. A gentle answer turns away

wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger.

Another weapon that couples love to use when trouble shows up in

their marriage that's also from Satan is the weapon of

withholding. They withhold their words.

They withhold their emotional connection.

They withhold sex. They're choosing to starve their

spouse. How many couples problems have

ever been solved by silence? How many challenges have been

solved by you know what, let's just stop connecting

emotionally. How many problems have been

solved by not having sex? Can I show you how crafty Satan

is? First Corinthians Chapter 7,

1 Corinthians 7:5

verse 5 Do not deprive each other, except perhaps by mutual

consent. In other words, hey, do we both

want to not have sex like that would be a question.

You'd have mutual consent, which I'm guessing most of you haven't

had that conversation. How about we both stop so that

we we can devote ourselves to prayer.

This is a 2 parter babe. I'd like us to dial down the

amount of sex that we have in our home so we can pray more.

Said almost no Christian ever. The wives are like, oh, we're

supposed to pray? Yeah, then watch this, then

Satan watch, then come together again so that Satan will not

tempt you because of your lack of self-control.

Do you see this When you are depriving each other sexually,

you are giving Satan another foothold in your life.

Do you see how crazy this is? In your pain of navigating the

landmines of life, Satan convinces you to use a tool that

gives him more access and power in your home.

To those of you who struggle with volume, this is a

self-control issue. In the moment you are not able

to temper yourself, calm yourself, steel yourself, and so

you're prone to being angry and saying things you regret.

This is a self-control issue. People who withhold is

premeditated. You're trying to find a way to

hurt your spouse. This is a special kind of evil

because you're not trying to get even, you're trying to punish.

And the sad thing is, none of us need trainings in these weapons.

We are all proficient at day one.

They are as natural as our flesh and our sin.

When I've counseled people, this is one of the questions I asked

to try and get them to get perspective.

How would you feel if you saw someone doing to this this to

your son or your daughter? How would you feel watching

somebody yell at your daughter and fear washed across her face

immediately? You see these couples go, Oh my

goodness, I would want to go hold that emotion.

How would you feel if somebody that you knew that you loved was

being withheld from? You looked at your son or your

daughter and you saw their spouse withholding from them to

punish, intentionally being cruel, choosing not to serve.

They are a daughter and they are a son to God our Father.

Have you ever thought that the way you treat your spouse in

your home is an act of worship to God?

Here's the good news. Depressing part over.

The good news is that Jesus offers a better way.

The rest of the verse in John 1010 is this.

The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy.

But I have come that they may have life and have it to the

full. That's where we get the phrase

God's way is the best way. And Jesus has a plan and He has

the power for you and I to live a full and abundant life.

What that means is that your worst days in your marriage can

be behind you and your very best days ahead.

That means that your worst days of parenting may be behind you,

and your best days could be ahead.

Hear me? There may be land mines

everywhere, but you don't have to step on them if Jesus is your

guide. And when you see him through his

power and his strength, you can remove them.

And I hope you'll start doing that.

We're moving to a time of decision.

To those of you here today and watching online who don't yet

have an intimate personal relationship with Jesus, I want

to be very clear to you. You cannot have a godly home

until Jesus is the leader of your home.

And Jesus will not be the leader of your home until he is the

leader of your life. You cannot avoid the land mines

if Jesus is not your guide. You can't remove them if Jesus

is not your strength. You cannot recognize them if he

is not your wisdom. You cannot disarm them if he is

not your teacher. So if you're here today and

you've never started an intimate personal relationship with Jesus

Christ, you are not giving your family the spouse or the father

or the OR the mother that they desperately need.

And so today, maybe one of the best things you could do for the

future generations that will come after you as you start a

path to getting right with God. And in just a few moments, the

people around you are going to stand and sing and some of them

are going to come to the steps and pray.

And I want to encourage you to walk right over there underneath

that screen next to the baptistry and go.

I need to start asking some of the questions that have been

holding me back to the rest of you in the room.

To those of you who know Jesus, I'm going to kind of get paint

with a really wide breast for just a second.

Maybe not all of these are going to hit you, but some of these

will hit you. Maybe just one of these will hit

you. Is there something in your life

right now that is being magnified that you don't want

magnified anymore? The Bible clearly teaches that

you reap what you sow, so maybe today, through God's help, you

will stop sowing into that area. You're tired of all the anger in

your house and yet you keep sowing words of hate.

You keep using volume. You want your family to be warm

and cozy, and yet you keep withholding.

Maybe today you'd go. You know what?

This is an area where I've been sowing for too long.

You listen. You can sow grass and you can

sow weeds, but if you sow weeds, you can't get mad at the yard.

You hear me? Some of you need to go.

You know what? I've been sowing into this and I

need to stop. Maybe for some of you today,

there's a weapon that needs to be laid down, A weapon that

you've been using your whole life and you've justified it.

You've justified it because of how you were raised and you've

justified it because of how tough your job is and you you've

done it because of how things are happening.

I'm just saying if you're using the wrong weapon, things will

never get better. I don't care how many excuses

you wrap around it. The wrong weapon will never

bring about the right conclusion.

Is there a weapon that needs to be laid down?

A sin that needs to be repented of?

And if for some reason none of those two things apply to you,

that is a scary self-righteous position for you to put yourself

in, which means that you may have a hard heart spiritually.

And that means that maybe you need to start repenting and

going. God reveal the things in my life

that I'm not doing or that I'm doing that are causing harm.

And at the very least, at the very least, would you use this

time to pray over your spouse and pray, pray over your kids?

One of the consistent things that I do, you'll hear this in

the one of the later series is I pray over my kids future spouse

six days a week. I don't know who they are.

They could be in this room. Pencil boys like older women.

So, I mean, my boys are in junior high, you just graduated

from college. Be on the lookout.

They're going to have a good credit score and they want to

put the money towards retirement and get married in my office.

Can I just say this to you, of all the regrets I have as a

father and as a grandfather, can I just tell you one of the

regrets I do not have the prayers I have prayed over them.

Would you use this time to do that?

Would you stand with me? Heavenly Father, you've been

great and gracious to us. Thank God as we go into the

series, truthfully, I'm just nervous.

I know that there's just a lot of landmines and there's some

that people are going to step on today after the service and all

throughout the week. There's me some people that are

here this week and gone next week.

They're just going to get blown up by stuff.

But God, I'm asking that you just right now put a hedge of

protection over our church during this series, Not just as

the church, but and not just the body, but the individuals that

are here, the guy you'd begin to do something significant and

mighty in their life that would change things for the days

ahead. And your name I pray.

Amen.