Marriage God's Way

To give somebody a high 5A hug. Come on, tell them God is good,

God is good. Come on everybody.

Welcome to Next Level Church. We're so thankful you're here

today on this holiday weekend. My name is Pastor Josh.

I'm one of our executive pastors and also on our teaching team.

And we are so thankful that you would choose to spend this

weekend with us. Hey, I want to welcome in all of

our locations around here, Next Level Church.

We say that we're one house with multiple rooms.

So I want to welcome in our E location.

Come on Pastor Willie, we're so thankful you're back downtown

location Cape Coral here at Fort Myers, everybody watching

online. Come on.

Would you guys give it up for all the people who are watching

in another room today that make up next level church, we're so

thankful for you. Speaking of thankful, I'm so

thankful for our pastors. Pastor Matt and Sarah Keller,

our Co lead pastors been my pastors my entire life and I'm

so thankful for you. I'm thankful for the way that

you've pastored my life, my marriage, our kids and our

church. We're just so thankful for you.

Come on, would you honor our pastors today?

Just so thankful for you. And Speaking of our pastors,

Pastor Matt did an incredible job to kick off a brand new

series. Come on, brand new series.

Help. Relationships are hard.

Can I get an Amen, everybody, come on, Amen.

What a great, great kickoff last week.

And I am so thankful that this week we get to jump into Part 2

of this series and I get to talk about marriages.

Come on, they gave me the easy one.

Everybody come on, they gave me the easy 1.

And I just want to encourage you listen, if you're married in the

room in any room watching right now, I just hope that your

hearts would be open. But also as I was praying for

this message, I was preparing really felt the Holy Spirit said

that this message is not just for married couples.

This is for singles as well. Come on, all the married people

in every room would say, I wish that I heard this message before

I got married. Come on, everybody.

So I want to challenge everybody in the room.

Come on, let's take notes together.

There's a no card in the seat back in front of you can take

notes on your phone. We're going to have some fun

together and we're going to see that God's going to move in a

powerful way. Come on, let's pray together as

we open God's word. Lord, right right now, we just

thank you. We thank you for your word.

We thank you for a house God that preaches your word.

And so lo, we pray right now, God, we stand on the promise

that your word does not return void.

And so father, I pray that people would not hear my voice

God, but they would hear yours. It's in Jesus name we pray Amen

and Amen. So we're talking about marriage

today. And so I thought it would be a

good time to show you a picture of I love my family.

Come on, everybody. That is the home and family

right there. And my wife, Irena and I in the

middle. Hey, in October, it'll be 19

years that we've been married over 20 years together.

Come on. She's put up with me for a long

time. And as you can tell, I really

love my wife. That's why we have 4 kids.

Come on, everybody. And this is our four kids, our

oldest, Gracie, Oliver, Adelina, and then little Joshie there in

front of me. And yes, the older ones are

getting taller than us. All right, everybody, that's

happening now. Have you ever looked at a family

picture like this and thought, man, that that family must be

perfect, right? Like that fan, like, like how in

the world did they get their boys to wear those button up

shirts? I'm sure that they didn't fight

with them at all to make this picture happen, right?

That the girls weren't taking forever to get ready, right?

Like like that picture this, this is a picture of how perfect

their family is. Everybody's smiling.

But the truth is that's not the reality, right?

Like how many times you look at a picture and you're like, man,

that must be the perfect family. They're not like ours.

They don't go through what we go through.

Hey, the, the truth is it took forever to pick out all the

outfits and get everything to happen.

And we had to bribe them with ice cream.

And they're probably going to tell me later that we didn't get

the ice cream yet. But but that's right.

We look at families and we go, man, that family must be

perfect. That marriage must be

incredible. But what we don't see in this

picture is the last 20 years of everything that Irene and I, and

mostly God has poured into our marriage.

The heartache, the tears, the fighting for our marriage, the

the healing that God has brought us through.

And really it's not even just the last 20 years, but it's

really what we brought into our marriage.

I want to show you another couple pictures right here.

Here's another couple pictures. This is, this is me right here.

This is little Joshy as I used to be called.

Now we have another little Joshy and I'm not so little anymore.

I'm just being honest, right? And then there is my beautiful

wife. There's little Irena.

And this was pictures of us when we were kids.

And when you see those pictures, you see two really happy kids.

But the reality is, is that we both had quiet childhood.

We both came from different, literally different sides of the

world. I, I was born in Indiana and,

and I was born into a family where most of my family had been

divorced and remarried at least once before I was even born.

Like people would say, how do you have so many grandparents?

Because I got step grandparents and regular grandparents and

aunts and uncles, right. And some of you got a nod in

your head because you know what that's like to be in a family

like that. But we grew up in a family where

man, we were loved and we were cared for, but divorce so often

was a part of our families lives.

We would hear things like divorce is not an option, but

all too often we would get to a place where honestly, the people

that we looked up to, my brother and sister and I would end their

marriage, end divorce. And it was hard.

And then there's my wife. My wife was actually literally

born on the other side of the world in a small village in

Ukraine. And when she was five years old,

her mom and dad and five of her, her and five other brothers and

sisters made a decision to move from the only home that they had

ever known from Ukraine to the US.

She was 5 when they moved, but it took four or five months to

get to Buffalo, NY. And so by the time she got

there, she was six years old. And here's the reality.

Her mom and dad have done everything to provide for their

family and to give them a better life.

And I'm so thankful that they made that decision.

But it was hard growing up. It was hard coming to a country

that you'd never been before and trying to learn a language that

you never heard before. And honestly, so many of the

relationships and the marriages that she saw growing up, they

were not divorced. They never got divorced.

But if they look closer, they were unhealthy and they weren't

close to the Lord. This is what Irena and I brought

into our marriage. Here's the next picture that

you'll see of us. This is one of our earliest

pictures when we got together. This was when we first started

to date, which dating wasn't long because it was after a

month of us dating that I asked Irena to be my wife.

Yeah, I knew I had a good one, and I had to snatch her up fast.

Come on, everybody, you can tell them that picture.

I married up. So I had to get, you know, get a

ring on it. And she said yes, she said yes.

And we started to plan our wedding.

And can I tell you, we were so in love.

We were so in love with each other, man, it, it, it was, it

was really love at first sight. And we just, we just grew in our

love for each other as we continue to date and get to know

each other. And then and then she said we

had to have a 15 month engagement.

That was a lot of trust. Come on, that was a long time to

wait right? And I said yes to that and we

got married on October 27th, 19 years ago.

We are so happy we got married and Irena's sister and brother

in We had so many dreams, we had so many things that we wanted to

do and so many things that we felt like God had put in our

heart for what God wanted to do in and through us in our

marriage. And, and it was in that on that

day that we didn't just make a promise to each other, but we

made a covenant with each other. Here's another picture with

somebody you might recognize. That's Pastor Matt at the altar

marrying us. And if you could tell, I would

look too scared to death, by the way, Come on, husband, you know

what I'm talking about. But it was at the altar that

day. The Pastor Matt, like he has in

so many other ways, LED us pastorally to a place to not

just make a promise to each other, but to make a covenant

with each other, a covenant that would last a lifetime.

But we had no idea. We had no idea how hard it was

going to be and what we were stepping into.

And, and for a moment, I want to slow down with our story, but I

want to really slow down and talk about what biblical

marriage is. Because it was in this moment

right here that Pastor Matt was pastoring us and leading us in

our marriage at the very beginning to say this is how

you're you're supposed to live your life.

When it comes to biblical marriage.

I want to give you a working definition of biblical marriage.

Marriage is a holy and sacred union between one man and one

woman. This union is made through a

biblical covenant, not just between a couple, but also with

God. God designed marriage to reflect

the sacrificial love of Jesus and the church, Jesus and the

church. And so I want to give you a

couple things that come out of this when it comes to biblical

marriage. The first one is this is that

biblical marriage is a covenant made between one man, one woman

and God. You see, what was happening at

the altar that day wasn't just between Irena and I.

It wasn't just something that we were making a promise or saying

that we hope we were going to make it one day.

No, we were making a covenant before God.

It was a holy thing that that we just believe that marriage

should not be answered into lightly, that it's a serious,

serious holy thing when we say yes at an altar to somebody in

marriage. Here's what we see in Scripture

that that from the very beginning in Genesis verses 2,

chapter 2, verses 23 and 24, it says this.

The man said this now is bone in my bone and flesh in my flesh.

She shall be called woman. That's what I said when I saw

Arena on the wedding day. Come on, right, she shall be

called woman, for she was taken out of the man.

This is why a man leaves his father and mother and is united

to his wife, and they become one flesh.

Something supernatural happens when you get married, that it's

no longer just the husband and the wife, it is one.

It is one and the Lord. And this is such a powerful,

powerful thing when it comes to marriage that Jesus actually

quotes the Creator and quotes this verse in Matthew 19 verses

Matthew 19:4–6

4 through 6. When He said this, haven't you

read? He replied that at the beginning

the Creator made them male and female and said for this reason

a man will leave his father and mother and will be united to his

wife, and the two will become one flesh.

Therefore, let God, what God has joined together, let no one

separate. Come on, we've heard that at

weddings, right? Like what God has put together,

let no one separate. See, Jesus was reiterating the

fact that that what happens in marriages is that we become one

together, that we actually come together, not with a promise or

a contract, but with the covenant.

You see, there's a difference between a contract and a

covenant, right? A contract is a legal, binding

document that has to be drawed up so that the two parties

involved in the in the relationship are can be held

accountable by the contract. But a covenant, a covenant is so

different because the covenant is actually based on trust that

the parties involved in the covenant are going to put your

needs above their own. That's what happened that day at

the altar, that Irene and I were making a covenant not just

between each other, but with God, believing that God was

going to hold each other accountable and hold each other

together. And here's what we see in

Ecclesiastes, that that 2 are better than one.

But even more than that, when we have God in our lives, in our

marriages, that we're a three strand cord that is not easily

broken. Look what it says.

It says that well, though one may be overpowered, 2 can defend

themselves. And a cord of three strands are

husband, a wife, and God is not quickly broken.

So the first thing that a biblical marriage is it is a

covenant made between one man, one woman and God.

The second thing that I want you to see is this is that a

biblical marriage is designed by God to reflect the sacrificial

love of Jesus and the church. This is such a big deal because

here's what the devil doesn't want us to realize is that a

marriage, our marriage is actually a picture.

It's a reflection of how Christ loves the church and because of

Christ's love for us and how much we love him, that when we

actually do marriage the way that God's called us to, that it

is the greatest reflection of what it looks like to be in love

with Jesus. My greatest testimony to my 4

kids is actually how I love my wife.

It communicates to them so much more than anything else I will

ever say or do. But how I love their mom will

communicate how much I've received Christ's love and vice

versa. Here's what it says in Ephesians

5. This this incredible verse,

these verses where Paul breaks down what it looks like for

husbands and wives to be in marriage together the way that

God has called us to. But at the end of this

conversation, I love what he says because he brings a

profound mystery into the light. What the devil doesn't want the

world to know is that our marriages are one of the most

powerful things that we have to share the gospel of Jesus

Christ. Look what he said.

Look what he said here in Ephesians 5, 31 and 32 said for

this reason. Listen, this might sound

familiar, which is amazing because it goes all throughout

Scripture. For this reason, a man will

leave his father and mother, you're going to be able to quote

this by the end of the the message and be united to his

wife and two will become flesh. 1 flesh.

This is a profound mystery. Paul says this is a profound

mystery, but I am talking about Christ and the church.

When we think about marriage, when we think about marriage,

the way that God has called us to live out our marriages, we

have to start with the fact that Christ loved us first.

Remember last week Pastor Matt talked about this verse in first

John 4/19. He said we love, come on,

somebody we love the way that God's called us to love because

he's first loved us. I don't know about you, but I'm

so thankful for the salvation that we have found in Jesus

Christ. Can I get an Amen that he saved

our lives, that he loved us enough, God loved us enough to

send his Son Jesus to come and to die on the cross for us.

It's kind of love that God's called us to live within our

marriage. So I want to show you a new

picture of Irene and I. This was taken just a couple

months ago. This was after we were out to

dinner for somebody's birthday and we were hanging out

afterwards. And the reason I picked this

picture is because some of the early pictures, when I see them,

I actually see a lot of the heartache and the pain that we

went through. But when I see this picture, I

see a husband and wife who love each other because Christ first

loved us. I'm so thankful that Irene and I

have gotten to this place. But I want you to know, listen,

first of all, we're not perfect. We're still figuring it out.

And sure enough, the, the week that I preach on on on marriage,

we get in a huge fight on Monday.

Come on, everybody, right. Like we're just figuring it out

too. We're trying to work through our

stuff just like everybody else's.

But we have we've learned so much from so many other people

that we want to share with today.

I love and the Ephesian verses where it actually talks about in

Ephesian 5 where Paul actually lays out what it looks like for

husbands to love their wives, for wives to love their husbands

so that we could be this profound mystery being unlocked

to the world that we are the love of Christ and the love that

he has for the church and the church to him.

Here's what I see in Ephesians 525.

It says this husbands love your wives just as Christ loved the

church and gave himself up for her.

We see this, we also see a little further where he

encourages wives to respect and submit to their husbands as the

church submitted to Christ. And then he continues on and he

does that verse that I just went to where it talks about this

profound mystery that is unlocked when we're talking

about Christ and the church. But can I be honest with you?

There was probably about 9-10 years ago, Irina and I were

trying to figure out how to live life out, how to live our

marriage out in this way that that Paul was talking about.

Can I be honest with you? There were times that I did not

want to lay down my life for my wife.

Just being real with you, there were times when my wife looked

at me and said, it's hard for me to respect you and to follow you

because of the way that you're living your life.

It has me thinking about a story that happened to me about 1213

years ago. We were actually going to have a

staff retreat here at the church.

And we love to have fun at the church.

We love to have a good time. And so we had a decision to

start our staff retreat out with bubble soccer everybody.

All right now, bubble soccer is a fun sport.

It's a fun sport. You might be wondering what in

the world is bubble soccer, right?

Well, I I figured you would ask, so I wanted to actually show you

a video, a bubble soccer. This is bubble soccer.

Yeah. That looks like a good time,

right? Come on.

That is a good, good time, right.

And so we made a decision that we were going to do bubble

soccer. And I was so excited.

I grew up playing football. I thought, man, this is the

first time in 10 years I get to hit somebody else and it's

legal. Come on, somebody.

And so we go out, we get into the big bubble balls.

They come down to right to my knees.

I'm literally above my head because I'm sure.

And we're in these bubble balls and we're playing soccer.

And I actually never really played soccer before, but I was

excited. I see the ball, I see an open

goal. I run up to the ball, I plant my

left leg, put all my weight on my left leg, and I kick the ball

in about the right. At that same time, somebody from

my peripheral comes up and one of the other males on her staff,

and he hits me as hard as he possibly can.

In that moment, something snapped in my leg.

Oh yes, yes it did. It's I can still feel it.

I can still hear the snap. It snapped in my leg.

And what I would later find out is that I tore my ACL, did way

more than tore my ACL. And in that moment, Pastor

Lewis, another staff member, they picked me up.

They started to Take Me Out to the car and I passed out.

Now, have you show of hands? How many has ever passed out?

It's weird, right? It's just a weird experience,

right? So I pass out, I wake up and

I'll never forget this. I wake up, I'm on my side, I

wake up and my pastor, Pastor Matt, who's been there for me

since I was 15 years old at my wedding when my kids were born,

all kinds of stuff. Walk me through thinking my

pastor is rubbing ice on my neck and praying for me.

Come on, That is the pastor that you have.

He's there for us. I'm so thankful for he's just

rubbing ice on my neck and he's praying for me.

And next thing I know, somebody's praying for my knee

and they're touching my knee and I'm like, stop touching my knee.

And, and here's what they told me later is that as soon as it

happened, it sounded like a bear was bear was being hurt

somewhere that I was like, and I was stuck in the bubble ball

because it was plastic and there was sweat.

I couldn't get out of the bubble ball.

I finally got out of the bubble ball.

All this happened. I go to the hospital, sure

enough, I tear my tip my, my ACL after three or four weeks, my

wife is taking care of me. She's taking care of the kids.

She's feeding all of us, she's cooking.

We go to all these doctor's appointments.

And sure enough, after three or four weeks, I'm up.

I'm, I'm starting to move around a little bit, but we go to the

orthopedic and she looked at me and she said, Pastor Josh, if

you don't have surgery to replace your ACL, you'll be able

to move around. You'll be able to do some stuff.

But 10 years from now, you won't be able to do the things that

you do today. You won't be able to go out and

play with the kids in the backyard.

You won't be able to walk up on a stage and preach because

you'll have to go upstairs. And so we need to go in and we

need to replace that ACL. So we made a hard decision, my

wife and I to do that. She said, hey, there might be

some more painful days of in the future to get to a place of

healing, but we got to do that so we can get you to where you

need to be. We had the surgery, we were in

the surgery. They told us that they would

replace the ACL and I'd be able to put weight on.

It came out, I didn't just fracture or tear my ACL.

I fractured my tibia at the same time.

They said you can't put weight on it.

So it was months, months of being on a scooter for six

months, going to physical therapy, All the pain, all the

heartache. But I'm so thankful that I had

that surgery because there was something on the inside that I

had no idea was affecting my day-to-day life.

That God allowed that surgeon to go in and use her gift to fix

it. That today I can go out and I

can play with my kids. I can watch two walk two or

three miles three or four times a week.

I can walk up on this platform and preach God's Word to you

because I made a decision. But can I be honest with you?

I want to submit to all of you in the room, whether you're

married or you're not. I have a feeling that there's

some things happening inside of our hearts that we've brought

into our present day life that because we haven't allowed the

surgeon, the Holy Spirit to come in and bring some healing to

some unhealed places in our life, they're affecting our

day-to-day lives in ways that we can't even imagine.

I want to show you this picture again of little Josh and little

Irina. You see, the reality was, is

that the things that happened to us when we were children, we

brought into our marriage. The things that we went through

when we were little kids, we brought into our marriage when I

was six years old. I'll never forget my mom and dad

had tried so hard two or three times.

My dad had moved out, moved back in, and they finally made the

decision they were going to get a divorce.

I'll never forget the day that my brother and my sister and my

mom and I were in the car when we were leaving.

We packed up the car. My dad walked around to the

window of our car. I rolled the window down because

that's how you used to roll the window down.

And he kneeled down to me and he said, now you're the man of the

house. Now he was innocent in what he

was saying, but I took that as to heart that day.

And can I tell you that throughout my childhood,

everything, every time something bad happened, every time the

water got cut off because we couldn't pay the bill, every

time somebody got sick and we couldn't do something or we

couldn't do anything good in our family.

Literally, I felt like I wasn't good enough because I had this

mindset that it was me, that it was up to me, 5 year old little

Joshie. I took this mindset into my

adult life and the enemy used it to, to reinforce this mindset

that I wasn't good enough over and over again.

I had a learning disability. And because of that, I believe

that I just wasn't good enough. I was dumb and then I had failed

relationships after failed relationships.

And I really believe that the devil was true in my life, that

that I was not good enough. And I brought this into our

marriage. Adelina or Irena, Adelina's my

daughter, and she looks just like her in that picture.

Irena she was six years old, first grade, came into a

classroom for the very first time after moving from Ukraine,

did not know any English. Nobody in her family did, and

her mom and dad provided for her food and shelter.

But it was over those next couple years that she realized

that if anything else good was going to happen in her life,

that it was up to her. That if she was going to learn

English, it was up to her. If she was going to go to

college, it was up to her. If she was going to do things

like play soccer, it was up to her.

It was all up to her. And the truth is, is that we got

to a place where we have what we believe and what we call is a

stronghold in our lives and our freedom curriculum, which I'm

going to talk about in a minute, we actually lay out what a

stronghold is. But I want to read to you the

definition of what a stronghold is.

A stronghold is a defensive mindset that sets itself up

against God's voice and provokes unhealed places in our hearts.

It provokes unhealed places in our hearts.

My stronghold was that I wasn't good enough, that I was not good

enough. And it did not matter how much

God would speak to me over and over again when I was a child,

when I was became adult because I had a defensive mindset that

was set up against the very voice of God in my life.

And then Irena, it was all up to her.

That was the stronghold that she brought into our marriage, that

it was all up to her. And here's what I want you to

see is that our strongholds actually provoked each other.

That these unhealed places in our hearts, these strongholds,

they provoked each other. Here's the best way I can

explain it. When Irene and I first got

married, she worked third shift at the hospital as a CNA, and

she would give me A to do list, the honey To Do List.

Come on guys, you know what I'm talking about, right?

And let's say there was 10 things on the honey To Do List

and she would come home on Thursday or on Friday morning

when it was my day off. She would go to bed.

And then all day long I'd work on the hunting To Do List.

And can I tell you I'd get 8 out of the 1010 things done almost

every time. Like it.

I tried. Yeah, yeah.

Come on. You can clap for me.

Yeah, that's good. And and hey, this UN dealt with

unhealed, healed, healed place in me was like, I can't wait

till she wakes up. I can't wait to tell her about

the eight things that I did. All the how great of a husband I

am, how awesome I am. And then she would wake up and

sure enough, she would ask me about the two things that I did

not do right. Come on, you know what I'm

talking about. And here was the reality was it

poked, it poked. It provoked the unhealed place

in my heart when she brought up the two things and I freaked

out. I had freak out moment after

freak out moment after freak out moment and I would go forget it.

I can't do anything that's going to be enough for you.

I'm just not good enough. I can't believe that you're even

with me. And I would even go to the place

that I believed in my heart that she was going to leave one day

because I had a stronghold that I walked into our marriage with.

And then here's what I want you to see.

At the very same time, when I would freak out because I was

provoked and an unhealed place, I would provoked her unhealed

place too, because now she started to believe the truth or

that the lie that what she started to believe a lie to be a

truth that it was all up to her. Now I'm going to have to take

care of everything. Even in my marriage.

I had to do it growing up and now I got to do it with my

husband. And can I tell you, the last

thing that was on my mind when we were fighting, we were going

through all of that was I want to lay down my life for my wife,

just as Christ did. The last thing that was going

through her mind was I want to respect Him and submit to Him.

That was the last thing. The last thing in our minds was

that we were going to do this together.

We thought for sure that this was going to end in tragedy.

But then the Lord reminded us about 10 years ago, we came to a

crossroads. He reminded us the commitment,

the covenant that we made to each other, that it wasn't just

me and her in this marriage, but it was me and her and God.

And it was about that time that we came out with the Freedom

curriculum. And I'll never forget Pastor

Matt and Sarah said, hey, we want some of you to go through

it for the very first time. And so I said yes, I think they

actually said we're going to need you to do it as a staff

member. So I said yes.

And Freedom is just this special thing.

If you've been through it, you know, honestly, there's been

thousands of people that have gone through it now we went

through it and we started to identify the lies that the enemy

had been lying to us about, started to identify the fear in

our life. The fear of abandonment in my

life was so real. And then to get to a place where

I identified that I had this, this stronghold, this, this

mindset, the defensive mindset up against God's voice in my

life that was provoked that I wasn't good enough.

I'll never forget week 10 freedom experience.

And when you do it, you're it's guys with guys and girls with

girls and I'm I'm around the circle with six other guys.

We had just walked through so much together and and my leader

walk me through going back to that moment, being in the car

that day when I was five years old.

Walk me through the moment where my father kneeled down and said,

now you're the man of the house. And, and I just had this picture

because I remember what happened, but I in that moment,

God actually showed me what was really happening in the

supernatural. I just felt like God the father

was just reaching his hand out, putting his hand on my shoulder

and just saying, Josh, I love you and I'm never going to leave

you or forsake you. This isn't up to you.

This isn't your job. This isn't your weight to carry

and you're more than enough. I'll never forget what I felt

that day. I felt like the Lord literally

say that you are. You are fearfully and

wonderfully made like you are clever, you are smart, you're

not dumb. Literally in that moment, it was

like literally it was healing that I didn't think was

possible. I didn't know that there was

such this deep, deep thing that was inside of me that was

affecting my everyday life and I was healed.

I was healed from it. It was, it was the next

semester, Irena was asked to go through freedom and, and she

said yes. And I'll never forget, we get to

the end of the freedom semester and we're back in Pastor Sarah's

office, myself, Irena and Pastor Sarah.

And she's walking her through that moment in that classroom,

that moment, that moment when that little girl started to

believe a lie from the enemy that she was all alone.

And then it was all up to her. And here's what happens.

Like, like if we're not careful, we do a couple different things

in our marriage. If we're not careful, we

actually, instead of going to God, we go to other people.

And, and some of it's innocent. Some of it's like, man, I'm just

going to go to my accountability partner, my friend.

I'm going to go to my, you know, Irene into her girlfriends.

And some of it's innocent. But the truth is, man, my

friends only heard one side of the story.

Her friends only heard one side of the story.

And so, so when we go to God, there's something powerful that

happens. When we go to a counselor,

something powerful happens because they see the whole story

and they want to help us. And maybe you're hearing you

actually went to somebody else and you stepped out in your

marriage and you thought you thought, I can't get what I need

in this marriage, so I got to go get it from somebody else.

And here's what I just believe. I believe that that you're

trying to fix the problem, but really you're looking at

symptoms because the symptom is when we go everywhere else and

try to find fixes everywhere else.

And here's the reality. We do this with our spouses too,

because the truth is, I can't get everything that I need from

my arena. I can only get everything I need

from God and the healing that needs to take place so that all

the other things don't keep happening.

You're like, why do I keep cheating on my wife?

Why do I keep doing this with my against my husband?

It's because there's some undealt with pain inside of your

heart that God wants to heal. And he's the only one.

And then Irene and I, sometimes we would go to each other.

But as I've already illustrated, the problem is when there's

strongholds that aren't healed by God, we just provoke each

other over and over and over again.

And there is a time, there is a time in a Christian marriage

where we come back together, Amen, where God heals us.

But I want you to see this because as we started to go

through freedom, as we start to live out a freedom like life,

listen, freedom, we say this all time, the, the freedom, the the

destination is the journey. That freedom, living it every

single day is really the goal. It's not just going through a 12

week course and being done, but it's living in freedom.

And when we did that, when we kept going closer and closer to

God, when we were willing to let him bring healing to our hearts,

we got closer to each other. We got closer to each other.

And it was in that moment when we came back to each other with

healed hearts that we were able to say, God, this is what we

want to give back to you. This is the kind of marriage

that we want to offer each other.

It's in this moment that I'm willing to say, I will lay down

my life for my wife. It's in this moment that my wife

goes, you know what? You're the kind of husband that

I'll follow. Come on, somebody right?

Like this is what God has for us in our marriages.

But all too often, all too often, we stay here and we let

the enemy use these strongholds against us.

When the reality is, is that when we get closer to God, that

he uses what the enemy meant for evil for good.

Because now with healed hearts, my wife is able to look at me

when I get 8 out of the 10 things done because that still

happens and say, hey, I love you.

How can we work together to get these things done?

Because I still got to get done. And I can look back at her in a

safe place and go, I have no idea how to fix that fan and

install it so it doesn't click over and over and over again.

And instead of letting it make me feel like I'm not good

enough, you know what? I'm just, it's just not my gift.

And she says, we'll figure it out.

And then what it does is it brings healing to her because

she goes, I don't have to do it all by myself.

It's not all up to me. So you might be going, Pastor

Josh, what do we do? What, what steps do we take next

here? Here's what I just believe.

I believe that you have to make a choice was a choice that I

made when I when I tore my ACL to say, you know what, doctor, I

trust you to go in and and actually do surgery.

I trust you to take care of the things that I can't see so that

I can live the life that you've called me to be right now.

Some of us were in our marriages and then we're just, we're up

against it. And God is saying, are you

willing? Are you willing to come to me?

Are you willing to find freedom? The first way is this is, it is

a counselor or biblical Christian counselor.

And we, we have vetted a ton of them and we have some amazing

counselors that we want to lead you to.

And here's what I'm asking you to do.

If that's you, if you're here today at the end of service when

our prayer team comes out, Pastor Kevin's going to lead us

after everybody else is left, I want you to come to the prayer

team and I want you to tell them, hey, would you pray for

our marriage and then ask for a counselor.

They're going to give you some next steps to find the right

counselor for you. And you might going, Pastor

Josh, I don't want to come down. People are going to know,

listen, it's OK, we're for you. We're excited for you.

And there's going to be people that come up for other prayer

too. Let's take that step of faith.

Let's let's step into it. Listen, people are anointed and

called and used by God as counselors and therapists.

Amen. And then here's the other thing.

I want to encourage you to sign up for freedom.

We have freedom in the fall again, we do it in the in the

spring and in the fall. You can go to

nextlevelchurch.com/freedom. I want you to write that down.

Listen, husbands, there's part of that Ephesians verse that

talks about how we should lay down our, our lives for our,

our, our, our wives, just as Christ did the church and talks

about how we love because we know how to love ourselves.

Some of us don't know how to love ourselves.

We don't, we don't know how to deal with some of the stuff from

the past. We want to help you with that,

wives, we want to help you with that.

Some of us, we just don't even know what's on the inside that's

affecting our today. And so I want to, I want to

challenge you, I want to implore you to please sign up to be a

part of a freedom group this fall.

Hey, listen, we need help in our marriages.

We need help in our relationships.

And as we close today, I just want to invite everybody at

every location to stand because I, I want us to take a final

step because I think that final step is honestly just to give it

all to God. If you're a single person in the

room right now, this is for you too.

I want to lead us to a simple prayer of a forgiveness of

repentance and then a prayer over our marriages.

Come on. Would you bow your heads and

close your eyes if you're here today?

I love the verse in Psalms 139 where David says, search my

heart, O Lord, and know my innermost thoughts, my anxious

thoughts. If you're here right now, you

say, Pastor Josh, I need to repent right now.

If there's something right now, an act, something said, a way of

thinking maybe with your spouse, maybe somebody else right now, I

just pray that you would just just repeat this prayer to me in

your heart. Lord, I'm sorry.

I repent for those things. I receive your forgiveness now.

Maybe you're here right now and you need to forgive.

There's not enough grace in our marriages as we need to give

more and so right now, whatever that is that that thing you need

to forgive. I just pray that you would have

the strength we this is how we say it in in the freedom

creaking Lord, just as you've forgiven me.

Come on. He's forgiven us of so much.

I choose to forgive. Forgiveness is a choice.

Come on all across this room. Lord, I choose to forgive.

I choose to forgive what they said or what they did or didn't

do. Lord, I forgive right now.

And Lord, we make a choice right now to run to you and our

marriages to run to you before we even get married, God, so

that we could be the spouse that you've called us to be.

Lord, right now I pray a blessing over every marriage

under the sound of my voice. God, I pray right now in Jesus

name that reconciliation and freedom and healing would reign

in our marriages, God. God, that we would run to you

and that you would heal every hurting and broken place in our

hearts so that we could be in great covenant relationship with

each other. And God, we pray that our

marriages would be a reflection, God, that the world around us

would look at us and go, God, that is the people who love you.

And I want to be more like that. Lord, I love you and I'm

thankful for all that you've done in every marriage today.

God, we pray blessing over them in Jesus mighty name.

All of God's people said Amen and Amen.

Come on, can we praise God?