Stop Stressing Over Imaginary Scenarios

A lot of you are in love with the picture

of marriage, the picture of relationships, but then we introduce

a word like duty. That word doesn't even sound that's

like the most unromantic sounding word, and it's the one

Paul uses.

He said, it's a duty sometimes, and.

We've got all these people going into marriages based out

of desire and not knowing about the duty.

Like, if you're gonna get.

Married, you better be ready to go to work some days.

Not just go to work.

You're gonna go to work and do a job. Then

you're gonna come home and do another job. Because it

takes work to make this thing work. My marriage isn't

working us.

You're not.

If you went to your job like you came home,

you wouldn't have a job.

But somebody needs to say this it somebody needs to

tell you.

It is sometimes where you come home and you have

to do a drive by before you pull in your

driveway and just do a couple laps before you can

go inside and face what's going on inside. Because sometimes

it's not pretty like a big job.

Sometimes there's sometimes it's challenging.

Yeah, sometimes it's sometimes it's difficult to go through different

seasons and you change, and they change, and maybe they

change in a way that you don't change.

And you got to accommodate each other. And where are

you now? And I got to overlook a fence. Now.

I know what you look like when you first wake up,

and you know what I look like at the end

of a hard day. And we're not pooling each other anymore,

because we had a whole lot of pre memorized, pre

program stuff that we did for each other during Daton

and all that craps out the window now because it

just got real out a sense of commitment. If you

come in here to this marriage thing, this relationship thing,

this life thing, with what can I get out of it,

you've missed.

The point, Paul says.

He says, come to it, whether it's sexually, emotionally, relationally,

come to it not for what you can get, but

what you can give. You are giving yourself away. And

I think a whole lot of us want the gift

of a relationship without the giving of ourselves.

In a relationship.

I think a whole lot of us are messed up

about this. Marriage is the best thing, but it's not

the easiest thing. And if you go in knowing that

you probably have a blessed marriage. If you don't, here's

what will happen. You'll go in with expectations of romance,

and then you'll meet a friend called reality. Romance and

reality don't always get along. And then romance and reality they.

Get together and they have a baby, and the baby

is called romance Reality.

Then it's probably going to be a resentment, which is

going to create rebellion.

If you go into it look in for what you

can get. Now, I'm not just talking about marriage anymore either.

This is why some of you don't have any deep

relationships in your life, because you go into relationships so needy.

You're a taker, not a giver. And Paul says, you've

got to get past this. A mature view of marriage,

a mature view of relationship, a mature view of Christian living.

Being a follower of Christ looks like this. Look verse five,

He says, don't deprive each other. Don't deprive each other. See,

because when you go into relationships led by desire and

you end up disci pointed, the next step is deprivation. Now,

because you didn't give me what I expected, I'm gonna

withhold from you what you need and It happens in

marriages all the time. The passion needs parameters if it

is to serve the correct purpose. And what's gotten a

lot of us and trouble in our lives is we

had a good passion but no parameters. So rather than

building purpose, it destroyed purpose. And that's what happened to Moses.

He had the right passion, but he put it in

the wrong place and acted on it in the wrong way.

Right passion, wrong expression. Bring me my sermon illustration. So like,

I was just thinking of a way that I could

show you.

This, a simple way to show you this.

And it's like, imagine right now that at this point

in my sermon, I know.

This is simple. Just go with me.

Hey, I got an idea. Let's build a fire on

the stage. I just think it'd be cool to build

a fire on the stage. I'm stacking wood to build

a fire on the stage. I actually thought about how

far should I take this sermon illustration, and I thought

about gasoline, and I thought I would see how far

I could go before people started leaving, exiting the building.

But I think it suffice it just to say that.

Everybody in the room understands the problem with this proposition,

and the problem isn't building a fire. The problem is

building a fire in a place where there's nothing to

contain the fire. It's fine if you want to build

a fire. Building a fire without any parameters would be

to unleash See that the same substance that warms your

home when it's in a fireplace is the same substance

that burns a forest in Colorado in the summer. The

difference is whether it's contained. And when you release passions

that were intended for marriage outside of marriage, you're building

a fire with nothing to contain it.

And God says the fire is a good thing.

Fire purifies, fire brings warmth. Fire is a source of life.

There's nothing wrong with fire. But if you build the

fire in the wrong place, if you put the passion

in the wrong place, it will burn your home to

the ground.

It's a misplaced passion. It's a good thing in a

bad place.

And I wonder how many of you would have avoided

some serious pain in your life if some good He

would have shown you. Before you build a fire, you

need somewhere to put it. And the only human relationship

that can sustain this force of passion is a covenant

relationship called marriage. If you go building fires and other

relationships that aren't built to contain the power of passion,

is gonna. It's gonna spread the places you don't intend

for it to spread, and it's gonna it's gonna destroy

things that God gave you as a gift. And so

Paul is not saying put the fire out. He's saying,

find the right place to build the fire.

Make sure you have the right place for the passion,

or you'll get burned.

And I'm seeing so many people and so many families

get burned because they were trying to get warm, because

it's cold out there, and because I need relationship, and

because I need somebody.

So I think I'll stand up next to this fire.

I did a word study this week.

I studied the word intimacy, which is what we're all

truly longing for.

That's really what we all want.

That's what all our sexual expression, emotional expression is about.

We want intimacy. That's what we want.

That's what we desire from God and from others.

We want to be known, we want to be accepted.

We want intimacy.

But then I studied the word infatuation, and I was

fascinated to find out that. In Latin, this will make

you sound so smart at lunch this week. In Latin,

infatuation literally means false fire looks like fire but really

can't warm you. Looks like fire, but really can't empower you.

Looks like fire, And that's what the world offers is

an infatuation with images of sexuality, but it won't really

warm you. In fact, it can actually run away from

you and burn your house down. And some preacher needs

to get up in front of you and just have

the guts to care to sense worth of nothing, what

you think about it, and say, if you're building these

fires in the wrong place, it's going to burn you.

It's going to burn you.

So it's mismanaged passions.

Passion is pure.

The enemy wants to pervert it and use what God

wanted to use to develop intimacy in your life to

destroy your capacity for intimacy. When you start in a

relationship with a person, especially a romantic relationship, you celebrate

everything about them, and you celebrate everything about them that's

different than you, and it's attractive. That's where the saying

came from. Opposites attract. But how many know that in marriage.

Sometimes the same opposites that attract, then the opposite start

to attack. Amen. Amen, because what you celebrated in one

stage ends up being the very thing that frustrates you

in the lifelong stage.

Oh, he's just so funny. I just like him because

he's funny. He's just like hilarious. He's always funny, and

he's three years in.

Why can't you ever be serious about anything?

Celebration frustration.

The whole wedding ceremony is a celebration.

You force your.

Friends to buy all the same color clothes and come

support you and stand around you to a big celebration,

and people go along with it, and they do it.

They come out for you, and they do the whole thing,

and people get up and say nice things and all.

Of this, but celebration. I should have put a different

stage in there.

This isn't exactly true. It goes not just celebration to frustration.

It goes celebration. Then for a little while its toleration.

But if you tolerate what God has called you to celebrate,

it will eventually frustrate the relationship.

Let me teach you something. I didn't make this up,

but it's good. I don't even know who made it up, but.

It's still good. It's called the eighty twenty rule. Have

you ever heard about the eighty twenty rule? Eighty twenty

rule goes like this, in a relationship, nobody is going

to give you one hundred percent.

Of what you want. Nobody so a good relationship.

Let's say they'd give you eighty eighty twenty rule goes

like this.

People have a proclivity to leave.

The eighty that they love to try to get the

twenty that they want. This is why a lot of

people leave churches. Incidentally, you love eighty percent of what's

going on, but there's a twenty in every church.

Shoot man, our church.

We might even have a thirty or a forty that

you won't like if you stay around long enough.

I don't know.

I don't know the exact percentage. Let's just call it twenty.

Let's just call it twenty. I mean, obviously there's at

least twenty.

Percent that you don't like.

We'll leave a church to get the twenty that they

didn't have and.

And leave the eighty that they loved.

Or we just love how people are getting saved here

and baptized here, and our family is conducting our kids

their own country, and our group is great.

It's durisy. We can serve wet during the city. We go,

We go all these organizations. But you know when time

it was instinct. Wait a minute, one time you leave it,

because one time you show up every week and get

the word. But what time.

Here's the dangerous thing. Before you leave eighty for twenty.

In any relationship, you better make sure that that twenty

is really worth it, because you might find out that

twenty is all it was.

Here's the thing.

She comes up to you in the office, and she's

got that twenty that your wife no longer has because

your wife has had some kids now. But you might

find out that that twenty is the only twenty she's got.

And your wife was a really good eighty. And you,

oh god, I'm preaching. You left eighty for twenty. Now

you're stuck with twenty. You better be careful.

You better be careful, because I promise you, even if

they got an eighty, they got a twenty two.

Teuch, somebody say you got a twenty. And sometimes you

don't discover the twenty that you don't like until you

get in the relationship. But by then it's too late,

because you left the eighty for the twenty, and some

of y'all have been running from relationship to relationship, from

church to church, and what you used to celebrate begins

to frustrate.

You because you get used to it and you.

See them in all kinds of different ways, and now

all of a sudden, I'm more frustrated about the twenty

that you're not given than the eighty that you are.

And it's a trap.

I am called to encourage your strengths. We need to

point this out because, as we've been saying, our tendency

is to feel that I am called to fix your

weaknesses or expose your weaknesses. And there's times in marriage

to talk about things. You know, Holly helps me with

my temper, but not in the middle of my temper tantrum,

as she said, It's about timing.

She helps me.

And one of the greatest ways that she helps me

is not by going straight to the c's and d's

and f's on my report car, but talking about the a's.

We call this and I got this from a book

about changing things when change is hard, and the book

is called Switch, and they talk about bright spots and

they talk about a epidemic. There was a starvation epidemic.

Somebody went in to try to fix it. They couldn't

fix it. Somebody else came in to try to fix it.

They couldn't fix it. Somebody else came in and tried

to fix it. They couldn't fix it. One person came

in and tried to fix it, and they began to

fix it. Because everybody came in the first several times

trying to fix what was wrong. They would find out

the problems, why were these people starving? Trying to fix it,

couldn't fix it systemically. But then one person had the

foresight to find one family that was in the same

situation with limited resources, that was not starving, and find

out what they were doing right and then teach that

to the surrounding village. Bright spots if you look for

the bright spots. Like somebody said to me the other day,

who tells you when your sermon isn't good? And I'm like, God,

Holy Spirit, I feel that way. You know, I did

a survey of preachers. I'm getting way off track and

we got to close, but I did survey of preachers,

and I was telling you this of some of the

top preachers that you would know their name.

And I've been asking them, how many.

Times do you feel like you preached great when you

walk up the stage, And the most common answer was

one out of five at best. Ah, that's crazy. These

are the best guys in their whole field. And we

said one out of five at best. And so somebody

who's asked me one day, they said, who tells you

when your sermon isn't great? Well, usually I don't think

it is anyway, So nobody has to really tell me.

I'm beating up on myself way more than anybody else could.

And they said, well, I bet your wife does I

bet you she tells you? And I said, no, she's

my CEO. That's just for Chief Encouragement Officer, and you can.

Do what you want to do. You don't have to

listen to us.

But there's something about when I walk off that stage

with her and she tells me, you know that was

that was a word? Yeah, that was powerful. And you

know she doesn't just say it. I think that would

be one thing, but she shows it shows encouragement. Encourage

means put courage in, and she puts courage in me

by her presence. Did you know that every weekend she

sits through all three of my sermons.

It's the same sermon every time. Of course I change

it a lot time, but she and you're like, oh,

he shows it is yeah, right, she talks to me

that way all the time. And you know what's weird.

You can trick a man into believing he's brilliant. He

doesn't have any strengths. Make something up and he'll get

good at it. With enough repeat you can. I mean,

I'm just it's like inception. Women, you have power to

just plant stuff. We'll think we're good at stuff.

You're such a great dad. Why you came home? It's

so true.

Yeah, encourage and and so what gives me a lot

of boldness a lot of times is you know, we

run around in life looking for likes from a bunch

of people, social media, analogy. But if you get the

right like from the person that you love the most,

you don't need all the other stuff.

And you have the power. And I have the power

to tell her I love the way you look.

I love the way you look, I love the way know,

I love the way you cook.

I love the way she does more than just cook

and look good. I have the power.

You're doing a great job of creating the culture at

our church for staff spouses, which is what she focuses on.

And I am called to encourage your strength.

What if you change your.

Job description as a spouse today and wrote it the

head at top of the thing, the job description that

you're going to make, and said CEO, Chief Encouragement Officer.

You think God would bless your marriage more? You think

some stuff would come alive?

What if that was the main thing? What if you

started with what you could?

It means so much when it comes from your spouse,

because because I know everything there is to know about you.

But yet I'm telling you that was a great message,

or you're doing a great job, or you know, I

want him to go to work and feel like I

believe in him. I want my husband to know that

I believe in him. But I have to tell him

and I also have to show him with my actions

and with my attitude.

How about imaginary scenarios? You ever deal with any of those?

It's unnecessary complication. You're long your energy to be eating

by something that may not ever happen to you. And

even if it does happen, why live through it twice,

once in your mind and once in your real life.

I don't need a preview. It sucks enough as it is.

And I know we got to think about things and

think into the future, but we can't live in the future.

You can't affect the future in the future and only

affect it from now. So all this time we spend

playing out stuff. There's all these conversations you have with

yourself in your head.

You know, I wonder who's texting him.

At this hour.

She sounds hideous. Have you seen that commercial? She sounds hideous? Yes?

What if? What if? What if? What if? What if?

What if? What if? What if? What if? What if?

What if? You know? I remember the Old Testament prophet Elijah.

He went running one time. He went running from a woman.

Called Jezebel, and Jezebel says she was going to kill him,

and so he was scared he was going to die,

so he ran. But years later Jezebel died, but Elijah

never died. When the Lord wanted to take him, he

took him up to heaven.

In a roll win. He was one of the only

people in history that didn't actually die. God just took

him and so he went.

He went to heaven, but without dying, and God spoke

to me one time about that thing. He said, you

know what, sometimes you're running from something that you're never

even going to have to face. You're going to create

complications by messing with that. Some of us we create

complications in our relationship by actually.

Thinking that our wives want their problem solved. They don't.

They want their problems heard.

So just do it like this, just like one word

answers and she's walking you through the.

Thing, you know, with her mom or whoever. Just go

what crazy, stop, no, and she'll think you're the best.

Try it for a week. That's your MMA. Monday morning application.

Limit yourself to those four words what, no, stop crazy, Good.

Things will happen. Hey, thank you for watching.

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Thanks again for watching.