July 12, 2025 Rooted Conference - Pat Peglow Navigating Marriage: Dispelling Myths

Music.

If you haven't met Pat and Kim yet, we're very glad they're here.

And we're excited about their week with us.

And Pat's got a, you got notes ready. So he's just going to start and talk about

marriage strengthening. So let's pray.

Jesus, I pray. We've been praying a lot, asking for you to meet us this week.

I pray this is our first night that you would bless this time.

Thank you for Pat and his willingness and Kim's willingness to come.

Pray that you would grow us in your word and who you are. In Christ's name we pray. Amen.

Amen. Thanks, Josh. And we're excited to be back with you guys.

Met some new friends tonight.

Great to see you guys from last year. And we've been excited and looking forward to this week.

Just being here last year could help to fall in love with you guys.

You've got a wonderful church. You really do.

Some of you were here last year and we spoke about marriage as well.

And so Josh asked if we do that again.

And when I say we, my wife said, Pat, you can certainly do that.

Now, so what you have in your hands are really some discussion notes.

So it won't follow you along. It's for afterwards.

If we, Josh, I'm going to let you determine what the night looks like.

If we decide to do some discussion as couples, because it's really more for

you and your wife, not the whole group.

You may want to do it later this week. You may be one of those who just throws it in the garbage.

I'd encourage you to consider for your own self and your marriage if some of

this might be helpful for you.

My hope tonight is to really lay a biblical foundation for marriage.

Foundations are so crucial. And right now, I'm concerned that there is a culture

that is fighting against the whole institution of marriage.

The world, as Romans says, squeezes us into its mold.

And the way the world's going right now with marriage relationships is very dangerous.

Then we got an enemy. His name is Satan. I remember going to a conference once

for pastors, and it was—Kim was there, pastor's wife—it was about burnout.

And the first guy to speak was a medical doctor. So I figured I might hear,

you know, watch your weight, make sure you're exercising.

But the first thing out of his mouth was this. You have an invisible enemy who

has an organized army, who's invisible, has.

Millennials of experience, and a sole goal is to destroy you,

your ministry, your marriage, and your family.

That's the real life. Satan wants to destroy us. He wants to destroy our marriage.

And you know what? There's also some difficulties and common stresses about

marriage that come just from two people,

a man and a woman, who are absolutely equal in their being, but gloriously different

in their makeup down to the core of their being. And that can be a stress in itself.

And so my hope tonight is just talk about some foundations that can help us,

as we navigate marriage in this day and age.

A lot of tradesmen in here. Sit next to Zach, run up with Dusty and listen to

some discussions tonight, blueprints, foundations.

You know, if a foundation is off, the rest of the building is in trouble.

And when, you know, the stress comes on it, it can create great trouble.

So my hope tonight is to make sure that our foundations are built on God's word for marriage.

That's really what I want to talk about. Because, you know, God is the one who created marriage.

He's the one who created the two people that are involved in marriage, male and female.

And not only is he the one who created marriage and male and female,

he's written an instructional manual on how this thing is supposed to work.

And the one who created it is the best one to be able to tell us how it should operate.

There's great wisdom in the Bible that relates to marriage.

It isn't just all the passages about marriage, there's passages about child-rearing,

there's passages about love, passages about communication, you know, you go on and on.

So there's a lot that the Bible tells us to build our foundation for marriage.

You know, Matthew 7, 24 says,

I'll just read it to you out loud. Talks about this.

Therefore, everyone who hears these words of mine and acts upon them may be

compared to a wise man who built his house on the rock.

And the rain fell and the floods came and the winds blew and slammed against the house.

And yet it did not fall for it had been founded on the rock.

Then he goes on to say, everyone who hears these words of mine and does not

act on them will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand.

The rain fell, the floods came, and the winds blew and slammed against the house,

and it fell, and great was its fall.

The difference between these two wasn't that they didn't hear the words.

Both of them heard the words.

The difference was whether they acted upon them or not.

And the one who acts upon God's word, and again, we're going to try to talk

about God's word with marriage tonight,

is going to find their marriage can be built upon a rock that can get through

the storms of the culture, the storms of Satan, the storms of just two people

who are gloriously different living together close up.

I remember many years ago, might

have even been our second, third year in ministry, We decided to build it.

We have three daughters, and we decided to build a swing set in our backyard.

So I pulled out the instructional manual, of course, that you're going to follow.

It's like you're talking about blueprints. Followed those earlier.

It's kind of an instructional manual, kind of like that.

And I started to put it together, and my next-door neighbor named Roger came over.

And Roger says, you know, pastors don't usually last long in churches.

He says, I got an idea how you can put this thing together and be able to take

it with you if you have to go. And I thought, hey, well, let's.

So I followed Roger's idea. Sounded good. Looked good.

And so the next day, because we put it up on, I think, a Saturday and a Sunday.

And I remember being at church, and Kim calls me up and says,

we got a problem. I said, what's that, baby?

Every time the kids would go forward, the back end of the swings would go up

like this. They go that way and go like this. So I was like, whoa.

So you know what I did? I went home, pulled out the instructional manual,

followed it step by step.

That thing lasted us 30 years. By God's grace, I was still at the same church in 30 years.

But you know what? We followed the instruction. And I went for the advice of

others. And this is my concern.

Too many Christians are listening to the experts of the world,

the experts that supposedly have the answers.

And maybe sometimes we're watching the way, forgive me, guys,

the way our parents did it. Trust you guys did it good, and that's a good picture.

Not everybody's parents did do it well, you know, but some, they're not really

looking at the instructional.

They're looking at their friends. They're looking at their family.

They're looking at the experts, and they're not looking at God's Word and building

their marriage off of His Word.

So my hope tonight is to share with you really what I want to call two myths

that the world builds their marriage off of and then five biblical foundations

that Kim and I have tried to share our marriage off of. We good? We're together?

So, you have to forgive me for looking

at my notes so much. We've been so occupied with just getting here.

But, you know, the first myth is really this. marriage was designed to make you happy.

You guys got that? Well, you're already aware of that one. I love what Henry Cloud says.

He has a friend of his who was single, and he said, you know,

I'm single, I'm insecure, and I'm unhappy. And then he got married.

And yeah, Henry Cloud's friend said to him, you know what? Now I'm married,

and I'm insecure and unhappy.

And so marriage really wasn't designed to make us happy, but so many people do that.

Happiness fluctuates, goes up and down by the circumstances.

It could even be our own physical emotions or body stuff, but it fluctuates.

And you know, when it starts to wane, we start to blame, blame the other person,

or maybe even be tempted by the devil to look around and say,

man, maybe they would have been a better choice.

God isn't against happiness, but he's got higher purposes for us than being happy.

And the second myth is this.

Marriage will complete me, make me complete, make me whole.

Many people, you know, they feel that. I'm trying to think who said that might have been Augustine.

You know, every person is born with this God-shaped vacuum in their heart until

God fills it. They feel like something's missing. They're looking.

God is the one that can fill our hearts. But many people think it's their mate

that's going to fill their hearts.

And so they find themselves in a place where they're frustrated by the marriage

because they thought, I thought I got married, and I thought that because I'm

with this person now, I'm going to feel really good deep down inside and feel really okay.

And we find out often that's just not the case.

You know, the Bible says this. Listen to Genesis 2.18.

It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make him a helper suitable for him.

So out of the ground, the Lord God formed every beast of the field and every

bird of the sky and brought them to the man to see what he would call them.

And whatever the man called the living creature, that was his name.

And then he gave names to all of them.

But he said that but for adam there was not found a helper suitable for him

i emphasize word helper you know what we were created marriage was created to

help one another not to complete one another,

and so a real piece of that other person god brought somebody with me to walk

with me in life to address that aloneness issue to help me, but never was designed to complete me.

And the problem is this. When we look to our mate to complete us,

first of all, we make an idol out of him because that's what God is supposed to do.

But second of all, we frustrate them and we frustrate ourselves.

You know, when you get your completeness from God, You're in a place where you can bless your mates.

If you're not getting your completeness from God, guess what?

You're trying to get from your mate. You following me?

It's all that there's from moving towards that person to bless them and to give

to them and to really help them in their life, become all that God created them to be.

But if I don't receive that from God first, then I'm trying to get it from her

to somehow make me feel okay deep down inside. Make sense?

So marriage was not designed to make us happy, and it was not designed to complete us.

I want to talk about five things it was designed for now that might help us some.

First of all, marriage was not designed to make us happy, but to make us holy.

There's a book, I don't know if you've heard of Gary Thomas before.

It's a book, if you're interested in, he wrote two great books about marriage

that you might be interested in if you want to go further.

One is called The Sacred Marriage, and that's where he talks about this.

The other one's called Cherish.

There are two wonderful books about marriage from a very biblical perspective.

But when you look at marriage from the ultimate lens of God,

we've got to stop and look back.

Romans 8, 28. Anybody able to quote that here? You know what Romans 8,

28 is? Things work together for good.

Yeah. God causes all things to work together for good. Who knows what verse 29 is? Yeah.

There is a verse 29, but great question. I love that.

Most people don't put them together because we kind of look at that verse in

isolation and we kind of think that the good, the guy's doing something good

for my life and something good's going to come out of this. It's going to be whatever.

The next verse is this. For whom? For.

The key word is for because for explains what just came before.

For whom God foreknew, he also predestined to become conformed to the image of his Son.

God's ultimate purpose for our life is to make us more like Jesus for us that are believers.

And they're causing all things together for the good. Guess what?

That's not so some kind of good thing comes into my life.

The good is that it's making me more like Jesus.

And when we look at the marriage from the lens of God's purposes in our life

and his purpose to make us more like Jesus, he's using our marriage.

And he's using the frustrations in our marriage. And he's using the pressures

of two different people trying to walk together and figure this thing out.

He's using the difficulties, everything comes in, to make us more like Jesus.

And I'll tell you what, it makes all the difference in the world when you look

through the lens of what you're going through in your relationship.

Not saying is this making me happy or not is

is this making me holy or not is that is god wants to make us holy through our

relationship again he's not against happiness but that's not his ultimate goal

his ultimate goal is to make us more like jesus and so i think it's so important

for us to realize that when we look at marriage,

one of the great foundations, I tell people,

say, Pat, how did you make it 39 years in the same church?

And you know, the reason is, is this verse right here, because I look at everything

in my life through that lens.

When the difficulties come, when the trials come, when the temptations come, you know what?

God is trying to use all of this to shape me and remake me and transform me.

And he's doing the same thing in marriage.

And when we start to look at it, it changes the way we respond to the things

that come in our life and the way we just even perceive them.

So the first foundation I think is important for us to realize is that God is

using marriage to make us holy, not happy.

The second one is this, in marriage, our differences are designed to bless us, not divide us.

Has anybody noticed that they might be a little bit different than their mate?

I mean, male and female, by God's glorious design, we're different.

We're absolutely equal in our being, but gloriously different in the way he's

made us. And that's for a purpose.

And a part of that purpose in marriage is to help us become all the person that God wants us to be.

But God created man and woman as the perfect fit to help one another.

I love that verse in verse 18.

We just, it's not good for the man to be alone. I will make him a helper suitable for him.

Then in verse 20, he said, again, Adam was not found a helper suitable for him.

So I love the word suitable. it really means they're the perfect fit.

They're the counterpart.

They're the complement. Actually, the Hebrew word means to answer back.

Now, some guys go, man, my wife answers me back all the time.

She feels that that's not what they mean by that.

But they're the perfect answer. They're the perfect fit.

They're the perfect solution to what man needs. A man is the perfect fit and

solution to what a woman needs.

They correspond to one another. They're the right fit. They're just right.

They harmonize perfectly. That's what suitable means.

So God has made us different on purpose, and that's the part that helps us.

But the suitable part makes us—because this animal couldn't fit because he took

all the animals in front of the world, and he still came up and said, none of these work.

Only helper that is suitable for man and woman are each other.

And we're the perfect fit for one another. And God has designed our differences to bless us.

And so many people, it's at that point of their differences where they divide.

Now, you know, as I say that, I don't want to make it sound,

would you want to say that life's been real smooth and easy for you?

Kim and I are about as different as they come.

Kim came from a family with six girls and one boy, and the boy was way at the

end, so it was a very female family.

I came from a family of four boys with a girl way later at the end,

so it was a very male family.

I'll never forget the first week we were married, man. We got home from our

honeymoon, and she was making meals, and these portions were like this big.

You know, and I was the good husband for about three days, you know,

going, okay, Lord, This is—I said, Keon, this isn't going to work.

I'm going to die here, man.

You've got to make more food. I mean, that was just the start of it. She's a perfectionist.

I'm the anti-perfectionist.

And so you can imagine for years we've learned and wrestled and didn't do well,

have grown, you know, whatever, and just in how God wants to use them.

And I could talk for a long time about how I've seen that, How God does use

Kim's differences to complement me, to build me, to help me,

to make me more like Jesus, and mine the same for hers.

I think of this, I'm going to tell you two illustrations I think of when I think of this.

Here's man, here's his strengths, here's his weaknesses.

Here's woman, here's her strengths, here's her weaknesses.

And what does God do? He puts us together as one, where woman is the perfect

solution to what man needs, and man's the perfect solution to what woman needs.

But part of it is we've been made different so we really can help one another.

I love this illustration I heard. I think David Jeremiah is where I first heard

it on the radio about two mighty rivers.

And I don't, you know, you guys are around water way more than I am.

We've done some rafting in the past. We've gone to camps that have rafting.

And you're coming down and you got this river that's strong here and you got

this river that's here. And you're rafting along nice and smooth. Then the two meet.

And there's tremendous turbulence. And that's when the ride really gets exciting.

And that's what happens with us. Guess what?

We're two different people who've been living our lives and it's been pretty smooth.

And all of a sudden, man, we converge to one another. There's great turbulence.

But once that turbulence settles down, guess what happens down the river?

That's a much mightier, stronger, powerful river than either one was by itself.

That's what God wants to do with our differences. And we need to keep coming to God.

If you're struggling with that,

saying, Lord, I know you want to use these to make me more like Jesus.

I know part of this is to help me become the person you want me to be.

Lord, how do we work through these things? So anyhow, our differences are designed

to bless us, not to divide us.

The third one is this. See where my notes are. There it is.

Marriage is a covenant, not a contract.

Another what a con it's not a contract it's

a covenant but you know many of

us think about marriage as a contract because that's one

of the closest things we can think about with covenants covenants not a big

part of our culture even though our marriage is a covenant do you realize that

our entire relationship with god is built off of a covenant so the whole way

we relate to god is on the basis of covenants.

And really his whole program, if you want to understand what God is doing in

this world, you know, from start to finish and what's yet to come,

all you got to do is study the covenants, the Abrahamic covenants,

the Deuteronomic covenants.

You look at the Davidic covenant, you look at the new covenants.

And as you start to study those out, you're going to see these are promises

that God has bound himself to.

Matter of fact, a covenant, death is big in covenants.

The reason is the penalty for breaking a covenant is death.

And so when you understand when God's made a covenant, he's saying,

you know what, if I break this, I'm worthy of death.

That's how big God's covenants are. And so God is working out his entire program

based on the covenants he's made and that our marriage is based on a covenant.

So here's the difference.

Did you have a question? Oh, okay. I didn't know if you had a question.

You have a question? Oh, I didn't know what.

That covenant thing is so serious that I don't think people even realize that

back when God created the covenant with Abraham, it was with blood.

And Jesus' death is the fulfillment of the covenant that he made.

And when you start thinking about like that, then marriage becomes way more important.

Absolutely. Christ takes his bride, his blood. Thank you. Absolutely right.

You know, our understanding of covenant is so small in our culture.

You know, in contracts, we do this. we exchange

property and we usually

give our promise to fulfill it you know i go to the dealership

and i write on this contract i sign

it you know uh you know with my hands in ink whatever and what i'm doing is

give my promise that i'll pay this much money if you give me this piece of property

that's a contract it's a exchange of property based upon promises a covenant.

Or I'm sorry, it's based upon our word, I should say.

Covenants, on the other hand, is an exchange of people, not property.

So guess what? God becomes mine and I become his. Marriage, I become yours,

you become mine. The two become one.

All that's part of covenant language that we often don't understand.

And so with a covenant, not only do we exchange people,

but also oaths are called in—we call them vows—are called in on the covenant,

and that means we're involving God in this.

You see, when I buy a car, I'm just giving my word.

When I make a covenant, I'm calling God in it. I'm calling God in really for two basic reasons.

One, to hold me accountable if I don't fulfill this covenant,

and second of all, to help me fulfill the promises that I'm making today.

Marriage is a covenant, and when we operate on that basis, it makes everything different.

Covenant is the strongest word in any language to help describe what a relationship is like.

And death is right at the heart of the covenant.

It does two things. Death ratifies the covenant, the shedding of blood,

the shedding of an animal.

That's why the new covenant, which was ratified by Jesus at the cross,

was the shedding of his blood. Now, that tells you how big the new covenant is.

With Abraham, I think there were five, six different animals that were used

that were shedding their blood.

When you shed the blood of the Son of God, you understand how big that covenant is.

And so death ratifies it, and the reason they do that is because the death of

the animal pictures something about a covenant.

And one thing is this. it pictures that I have died and I no longer live to myself.

I live to the terms of this covenant that I'm making with the person that I'm doing that with.

And so in other words, I've died to the independent life. I've died to living for myself.

Now my new and Kim has died to living to herself and living an independent life.

We're both agreeing to come together now with our new life together to live

for this new relationship where the two have become one.

And so we're so much a problem with selfishness in marriage.

I'm living for myself. I want what I want. Rather than I said,

what's best for us? It's not me, it's we.

And how do we operate in this relationship, it becomes a win for us.

So marriage, we have to look at as a covenant.

Just two more. I love this one. It really changes a lot of things.

Cherishing is the driver of marriage, not commitment.

We hear people say all the time, you know what? Marriage is all about commitment.

Love is all about commitment. I couldn't disagree with that more.

I'll say I disagree with it 99%. I will give it 1%, and I'll explain what I mean by that in a second.

But that's fine. Do what you got to do.

Commitment's an aspect of love, but cherishing should drive it.

Cherishing means it's that soft, tender heart that values the other person highly

and cares for them out of a tender love. You cherish them.

See, commitment is I got to because I made a promise.

Cherishing is I get to because I delight in that person. You see the difference?

Now, ladies, you tell me, would you rather have your husband hold your hand

because he has to, because I promised that when I got married to you,

I'd do this, or is it because he delights in me so much he can't help but hold my hand?

You see, cherishing is the goal we need to drive toward, not commitment.

In so many people, it's all about commitment to them.

This is where I think commitment fits in. I look at commitment as the spare

tire for when cherishing blows out.

For whatever reason, it's not working, it's not going well.

We need to pull out the spare tire of commitment, which is closely connected to covenant.

You know, I'm going to continue on. but our commitment is designed to be the

spare tire that we pull out when we're in trouble.

Delighting and cherishing and tender love for one another is the goal that we want to pursue.

You read the book of the Song of Solomon.

I mean, that's about cherishing, wanting, delighting, get to be with versus

I have to, I'm supposed to, I should.

And so we really need to, Again, we're trying to build the foundations and look

at where do we go. Here's the final one.

Marriage models our relationship with Jesus Christ.

Ephesians 5, you know, so many of us look at that passage, first of all,

from the perspective of marriage.

Actually, the writer of that passage is talking about the relationship between Jesus and the church.

He says, nevertheless, let every man love his wife and her husband respect.

Let me read that passage to you.

And, you know, you can start this whole passage, you know, the husband and wife

is an illustration together.

This mystery is great, but I'm speaking with reference to Christ in the church.

Nevertheless, each individual among you also has to love his own wife,

even as himself, and the wife must see to it that she respects her husband.

You know, marriage becomes a picture for the world around us,

for our kids, for our friends, for our brothers and sisters in the church,

of how Jesus loves his church, laid down his life for her.

And so the way I respond as a husband, which should be modeled off of the way

that Jesus loved his church,

is the way that as I love my wife like that, it becomes a picture for my kids,

my friends, people around me.

To say, oh, because a lot of things are better caught than taught.

We can talk a lot of words, but when we see it, oh, that's how that works.

And so this picture that God's using of me loving Kim like the church and Kim

loving me the way the church responds to Jesus with respect is a picture that

God wants to use in our relationship.

So that's what I wanted to share tonight. There's a couple of myths.

This thing's all about making us happy and making us complete.

And that's where we often, you know, many people are building a relationship.

So God has much greater purposes.

So I did create some discussion questions.

Josh, I don't know if you want to do them now. It'd be a place for a husband

and wife to get a few minutes to talk. We can spread around.

Or you could say, we want to do these later. But let me review the questions to you.

They hit all the high points of what I said, so hopefully they can be reminder notes for you.

First one is, is the northern point of the compass of your marriage happiness or holiness?

What is one particular area of your marriage we can see God seeking to use it to make us more holy?

What's going on in your life right now? You say, you know what?

We never thought about that, but God's probably using this to do something in

our life to make us more like Jesus.

Second question, what differences in particular are you struggling to see the blessings in?

How might God want to use that as a blessing rather than a battle point in your relationship?

Third question, on a scale of 1 to 100, 100 being I'm a walking dead man.

How much have you died to yourself and lived for your mate? That's that covenant question.

You know what? 100 says, man, I have fully died. I'm like a walking dead.

Nothing about my life's about me. It's all about this relationship with my wife

and where you at, how you doing?

It took me a while to figure out what that meant.

What can I ask you? What's a walking dead meant? Do you understand it now?

Yeah. I want to explain what 100 was.

And you know what? but it would be fair to say I'm using man generically there.

I could even say a walking dead woman.

So how much have I really died to myself? How much am I living for the sake

of our relationship and my mates? I wasn't dead.

Here's one. Does our marriage feel more like cherishing or keeping a commitment?

Where's your marriage at? What is one thing you can each do to grow the cherishing

aspect of your relationship?

The fifth one, from the way you two are loving and respecting each other,

what picture do you think people see of Jesus and the church through your relationship?

And is this starting to rain? It's starting to rain, yeah.

You know what, that's a good God saying, take this home and talk to your mate about it.

What relates to you? What can you act upon?

So like we said at the start, it's the one who acts upon God's word that is

the wise man whose marriage will make it through the storms versus one who heard

the words through the stuff away, just kept living like they're living.

The goal is progress, not perfection. Nobody does this perfectly.

But the question is, am I better now than I was six months ago, a year ago?

So seek for progress, not perfection. Love you guys. thanks for letting me share

with you tonight. Thank you. Thank you.

Music.