Marriage Matters - Matthew 19:4-6 Pastor Daniel and Sena Reese

We're going to be in Matthew 19 here for a little bit.

When I think about our church and our community and how our church can best be used in our

community, I want to be able to offer help in practical ways.

So like when we do surfests in the spring, it's going to look a little different because

I want us to become more engaged with the people that we live by, the people that we

go to school with, the people we work with.

So maybe instead of painting storm drains that benefit the whole city, maybe we can

help one of our neighbors fix a fence.

That way we can, we're able to engage in conversations with people within our own community.

When I think of us as human beings and as I understand that we all have a lot of the

same issues, whether you're a believer or not, we all have these issues.

If I think of ways that the church has helped me over the years, I want to offer that to

people who might be outside the church.

One of those things I want us to be able to help with, not only us within the church,

but also those outside the church is with their marriages.

Now, I don't think anyone who is married, I hope, I don't know anybody that's married,

that hopes to one day just have a roommate.

To just have somebody that lives in the same house as them.

I don't think anyone who gets married hopes that one day this thing ends in divorce and

our kids have separate homes.

When we get married, we are hoping for the best and we are hoping that this is just the

beginning of a new life together.

But here's the issue.

Studies show that young adults suggest that they want their initial marriage to last,

but are not particularly optimistic that it will happen.

There's also evidence to suggest that people are moving toward embracing the idea of serial

marriage where a person gets married two or three times depending on the stage of life

that they are in.

That is the trend that we are seeing.

Research shows that 33% of Christian marriages end in divorce.

Now that is not a good testimony to the gift that marriage is supposed to be.

I feel like one of the best ways that we can help our community is to show people that

we care about their marriages.

I think it's important for you to know that come to this church that we care about your

marriage as well.

This morning we are going to be looking at God's design for marriage and then we are

going to look at how our enemy and how our culture fight against marriage and then we

are going to try and give you some tools that will help strengthen your marriage.

I'm going to invite Elijah.

Where is he at?

There he is, over there in the corner.

Elijah is going to come up.

He's going to read our text this morning out of Matthew 19.

He's going to read verses 4 through 6.

As we read the word, I'd encourage you to stand as we honor the Lord's word together.

If you're able, if not, no big deal.

He answered, Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them

male and female?

He said, Therefore, a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his

wife, and the two shall become one flesh.

So there are no longer two but one flesh.

What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.

Amen.

Let's pray.

Father, we thank you for Elijah and I thank you that he was willing to read your word.

I pray that you will give him a strong desire to continue to study your word and know your

word.

I pray, Father, that as we look at this text this morning, as we look at your design,

design of what marriage looks like, I pray, Father, that we will honor you with our words,

but also, Father, I pray that you'll speak to our hearts.

We ask all these things in your name.

Amen.

Thanks, buddy.

Now, now this morning is a topic that I wanted a little bit of help on because I am not just

talking to a group of men.

We are mixed company in here and sometimes it's important for the benefit of our church

to hear both perspectives when it comes to a topic like marriage.

So I'm going to invite my smoking hot wife.

I'll get in trouble for that later, don't worry.

Seen up here as we navigate this passage together.

So if you look at this passage, what Jesus is referring to, the passage that Elijah just

read is he's actually quoting Genesis 2 when God created Adam and Eve.

Now we know that there's not a whole lot of great marriages in the Bible.

There's not a whole lot of good representation of what a good marriage looks like in the

Scriptures.

In fact, you would have a hard time looking through the Bible and trying to find a marriage

that you would want to model yours after.

Now I'm so grateful that Sina is not like Gomer, both in her behavior and also her name.

That would be tragic to me.

That would have probably been a deal breaker for me.

I'm sure that she is grateful that I'm not like Solomon and she is just one of 700, right?

And so there's not a lot of good ideas or representation of what a good marriage looks

like.

But we know from Scripture that it was God's intention when he created Adam and Eve that

marriage would be between a man and a woman.

Now when I was growing up, I never realized how controversial that statement could be

that marriages between a man and a woman.

Scripture is filled with references to marriages.

We hear about weddings.

We hear about brides and grooms.

God constantly refers to his people as his bride.

In the Bible there's more analogies and references to a marital relationship between God and

his people than any other comparison.

Now oftentimes it's in the context of adultery because as people go chasing after other gods,

his people go continue to pursue other things and he's rebuking them for this, but you can't

have adultery without the covenant of marriage.

The entire book of Hosea is based on the comparison of marriage and God's relationship to his

people.

If you pay attention to the Old Testament and I would encourage you to do so, look

for ways in which God longs for his people, in which God pursues his people.

He's so passionate when speaking of his love for them.

Isaiah 54 says, For the Lord has called you like a wife deserted and grieved in spirit,

like a wife of youth when she is cast off, says your God.

For a brief moment I deserted you, but with great compassion I gather you in overflowing

anger for a moment.

I hid my face from you, but with everlasting love I will have compassion on you, says the

Lord your Redeemer.

I think I would go so far as to call God a romantic based on Scripture.

He's a romantic, but he's also a righteously jealous husband.

When his bride is real for sakes God to pursue idolatry, God does label them adulterers.

And he has righteous anger toward them.

But this is evidence of his great love for them.

If he was indifferent to his people, if he was not so fiercely committed to his bride,

then he wouldn't feel so strongly about their betrayal.

But even in the midst of Hosea, as God is pouring out his utter heartbreak over their

betrayal, he says to them, how can I give you up?

How can I hand you over?

My heart recoils within me, and my compassion grows warm and tender.

This is a relationship between God and his people that goes far beyond the distance.

God and subservient worshiper relationship that you see in other religions, God is intimate

with his people.

And God's feeling toward his people in the Old Testament Scriptures mirrors God's intimacy

toward his church in the New Testament under the New Covenant.

Ephesians 5 and Revelation 19 speak of the church as being the sanctified bride of Christ.

Now even though we went through Ephesians recently, Ephesians 5 is just so great in

stating this comparison.

So in 525 it says, husbands love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself

up for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing of water through the Word,

and to present her to himself as a radiant church without stain or wrinkle or any other

blemish but holy and blameless.

In the same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies.

He who loves his wife loves himself.

After all, no one ever hated their own body, but they feed and care for their body just

as Christ does the church.

For we are members of his body.

For this reason, a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and

the two will become one flesh.

This is a profound mystery, but I'm talking about Christ and the church.

However, each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself and the wife must

respect her husband.

Y'all, God is so kind to give us these earthly representations of spiritual truths.

Things like communion and baptism like we saw today and every biblical feast and festival

in the Bible, these are all means of grace.

They are things that we can touch and experience and partake in here on earth to help us remember

and understand what God has done for us.

Marriage too is an earthly symbol of a heavenly truth.

Marriage is something that we get to partake in in order to understand God's love and

commitment to us.

We are able to enter into this covenant relationship with another person and experience this intimacy

with another person that surpasses all other relationships.

And in doing so, we can have a glimpse not only of God's passion that he has for us,

but also just the nature of God himself.

God is fiercely committed to his bride.

God desires to be one with us.

God is jealous when his bride lasts after lesser things.

God the Son laid down his life for his bride.

Why does our world love a good romance?

Because we are created in the image of God and he is madly in love with us.

God gave us marriage to point us to the truth of who he is and to be a shadow of the relationship

that we will experience with him in heaven.

Our marriage is preach something to the world, whether we like it or not.

Is your marriage preaching Jesus to those around you?

Because if you look at most marriages in the world, they're preaching a gospel of self.

As soon as the marriage stops serving oneself, he or she is out.

The reason the divorce rate is so high is because our marriages are about us, or maybe

they're even about our spouse, but they're not about God.

Bringing oneself to the ultimate place in our hearts is a recipe for disaster.

God must hold the ultimate place in our hearts.

He must be our true love in order for our marriages and our lives as individuals to bring him

glory.

For this reason, we need to realize that our marriages are about something so much bigger,

so much greater than just two people living together or raising a family together.

The reason God created marriage is the same reason that he created everything in the beginning,

and that is for his glory.

Ecclesiastes 12, 13 says, the end of the matter, all that has been heard, fear God and keep

His commandments, for this is the whole duty of man.

Our marriages should display the truth and the beauty and the worth and the goodness and

the sacrifice of God.

They should point to one who gave us marriage, who designed marriage.

Our marriage is living out their design of being an earthly representation of a heavenly

reality.

I think it's so easy to get caught up in the day-to-day schedules and craziness of the

world, especially if you have kids, that we lose sight of what our marriages and families

and lives are ultimately supposed to be about.

We are so short-sighted that we forget the lasting impact that we can have on the world

and on the generations that come after us.

We don't want you to just have strong marriages so that you can be happy in your lifetime

or that you can just glorify God in your lifetime.

We want you to have strong marriages because we care about the legacy that you are leaving.

We have no idea what effect a marriage that pursuing God can have on the generations to

follow.

We have to remember that we need to have a kingdom of perspective.

That goes for all of our lives, not just for those of us who are married.

We need to see the bigger picture and have a kingdom perspective.

In our former church, there was a lovely couple named Mac and Mary.

They had been successful business owners in La Mesa, but they were older and they had

retired and they had earned every right to sit back and enjoy life.

They had worked hard.

Even though they had earned that right, they didn't.

They instead started a program in our community to serve the many poor and undereducated women

in particular in our community.

They also started a thrift store to fund that program.

Mary actually passed away in 2015, but when she did, this program was still alive and

thriving and it is today as well.

She left something behind that's going to outlive her, that is greater than just her

life.

Sadly, Mac and Mary's only child passed away, so they're not leaving a legacy if we're only

speaking in familial terms.

They weren't able to leave much of a legacy there, but Mary had a kingdom perspective.

She didn't want to waste her life.

She wanted it to make a difference for the kingdom.

We need to realize the huge impact that we can have on the kingdom and leave a legacy.

It's easy to see the legacy that they left in this story, but remember that godly marriages

and godly families have such a huge impact on the kingdom of God.

We need to remember that investing in our marriages is kingdom work.

I think it's important to also understand that this is God's design.

This is how he created us to function as human beings, but we also have to understand and

realize that at the same time, Satan hates marriage.

He's working extremely hard and doing everything he can to destroy the institution of marriage.

We see it everywhere, but do you notice when you see it?

First Peter 5.8 reads, the enemy is like a roaring lion looking for something to devour.

Satan is constantly on the lookout.

He's constantly hungry.

He's constantly on the hook.

Therefore, we need to be on guard.

We need to be on guard not just in our marriage relationships, but we need to be on guard with

other relationships even within the church because we have to protect those things.

We know that Satan is a deceiver.

We know from Jesus and John 10 that he comes to steal, kill, and destroy.

We know these things about him, and the main way I've seen him destroy things is through

lies and deception.

I'm sure you have to.

He will get you to believe lies.

He will get you to begin to doubt the goodness of God.

Remember when he told Eve in the garden, did God really say that starts planting these

seeds of doubt?

Have you heard that from him?

Have you heard that in your life?

There have been many times where the enemy has whispered things to me that I've kind

of grabbed a hold of, and they sound ridiculous now.

I know you're going to walk out of here judging me for the things that I've grabbed onto,

but I've believed the lies at times in my marriage for things that are completely ridiculous

today.

When you say that I'm out loud now, you're like, man, I was an idiot.

For instance, one of our first arguments after we got married was over laundry.

I'd been doing my laundry for years.

And this woman thinks that she knows better than me.

I don't remember what she did.

I can't remember.

It's probably she hung my shirt in the closet instead of folding it and putting it in the

drawer like I wanted it to be.

What happened?

It wasn't that I was doing his laundry wrong.

It was that I was doing it at all.

He didn't want me touching his laundry.

He didn't even want my laundry mixing with his laundry.

Like there was something wrong with it.

But he grew up in a family where everybody did their own laundry.

I grew up in a family where my mom did everybody's laundry and then we put our individual stuff

away.

So whenever he was like, I got this, it made me feel like he didn't think I was a capable

wife or a good wife.

And that is silly because today the more mature of me is like, do your own laundry.

I'm happy to let you have it.

Now it's like, why aren't you doing my laundry?

Now it's completely different.

But I've been in ministry long enough.

I'm sure you've been in church long enough to know that it starts with one little lie

like that, that starts this downward spiral, that ends with a couple eventually just calling

it quits or friends ending relationships.

And I remember thinking, what in the world have I gotten myself into?

What have I committed my life to?

She's going to screw everything up.

And I've had moments, I've had moments where I didn't think she cared for me because she

didn't answer her phone.

I pay for that phone.

And I can remember, I can remember really feeling like if she loved me, if she cared

for me, she would answer her phone when I called.

And for a few hours, multiple times, I would sit in that thought about my wife.

I would just sit there and dwell on the fact that she didn't love me.

And if I didn't take those thoughts captive, I would begin to notice other things that

she was doing wrong.

I'd begin to notice all the other little things that made me think that she doesn't care about

me.

And it starts off with these little small lies that snowball into really big issues.

And then you stand on a stage like this and you tell us, you start saying these things

out loud and you're like, that was a lie from the enemy.

Satan is a deceiver.

And he will try to get you to believe lies about your spouse.

He will try to get you to believe about lies about a fellow church member or coworker in

order to drive a wedge between the two of you.

And if from the beginning God saw the need for community, he saw the importance of doing

life together because he wanted us made in his image.

As the Trinity has perfect community within the Godhead, he created us to live in community.

And Satan's goal is to corrupt everything that God intended to lead us to life.

Another way that Satan will try to destroy relationships between spouses, between believers,

between friends, inside the church is through expectations that people can't live up to.

Expectations that we put on people are potential disappointments in people.

Paul tells us in Philippians 419 that God will supply all of our needs.

But we tend not to look at God sometimes for our emotional needs.

We look to others.

And the truth of the matter is nobody can carry that weight because we are going to disappoint

you.

We're going to let you down.

Scripture says that God is our comforter.

And we shouldn't have expectations on others to bring us comfort.

Now it's a bonus when they do.

It's a bonus when the community comes together.

They do bring us comfort.

But sometimes just for clarity's sake, ladies, sometimes our husband minds don't work that

way.

Sometimes when you need a hug, we're thinking about something else.

And we don't realize that.

Scripture says that Christ loved us enough to lay down his life for us.

That he considered us worthy of that.

But how many times have you or us looked for others to tell us our worth through Instagram

likes, through social media views?

How many times do we look to others for things that we should be getting from our spouse?

And how many times do we look to our spouse for things that we should be getting from

the Lord?

God has promised these things to us.

When we make our marriages all about us, when we make it about us and not the glory of God,

we are playing right into the enemy's hands.

I mean, he really doesn't even have to do much, but sit back and watch our sinful nature

and how our sinful nature is all about ourself.

It's all about us.

When we take our focus off of God and our true purpose for our relationships, we will naturally

elevate ourselves, we'll naturally elevate our spouses or our children to that highest

position.

And we start looking for our spouse to complete us.

I hate Jerry Maguire because he's looking at this woman and what does he say?

You complete me.

And our culture eats that stuff up.

But the reality is my wife can't complete me.

She wasn't created to complete me.

She was created to work beside me.

We start looking to our spouse to do those things.

We look to them for affirmation.

We look to others for affirmation and worth and purpose that can only be fulfilled by

God.

And when our spouses inevitably fall short.

Now I don't know about you all, but Sina will tell you I tend to fall short on some expectations.

And I'm so grateful that she understands that and that I'm not the most important thing

in her life.

And when our expectations are not met, it always will end in disappointment.

Here's what I find really, really fascinating about the whole institution of marriage.

This is a holy act ordained by God in the beginning for man and woman to come together

as one.

That is a spiritual act.

And yet it has been completely integrated into our world and into our secular culture.

Every culture actually, past and present, has some form of marriage in their practices.

Most non-Christians who won't even step foot in the door of a church or partake in the

other means of grace that we've talked about, they're willing to get married.

So this is a spiritual act that has become integrated into the secular world and practiced

by most cultures around the world.

And of course, Satan hates anything that's God's idea and that God created and named

us good and he's out to destroy it.

And so instead of just completely doing away with marriage, he takes marriage and he uses

our culture to attack it, to attack what God has created and offers up these twisted, counterfeit,

selfish versions of marriage.

You see, Satan is terribly uncreative in his attempts to attack the kingdom of heaven.

He can't come up with anything original and so he just takes God's idea and twists it.

A great example of this is with the all familiar pride flag, right?

We see it everywhere.

Satan has taken this beautiful symbol of God's promise, the rainbow, and he has twisted it

to become a banner for a sinful culture, right?

But if you pay attention, it is missing something.

There is only six colors in the pride flag as opposed to the seven offered up by the

actual rainbow.

You see, everything that Satan offers you is less than what God is offering you.

It will always fall short.

It will always be lacking.

So instead of this spiritual union between a man and a woman with the potential to display

the sacrificial love of Jesus, we're offered the lesser alternatives of homosexuality, transgenderism

living together without the commitment of marriage or just being flippant about the

holy act of sex and giving our bodies away to whomever.

And if you can't get, and if he can't get you to engage in these more obvious acts of

sin, then he will just play to our natural state of complete selfishness like Daniel

was saying earlier.

And this is where we forget that our marriages aren't about us, that they're about the glory

of God, right?

And we start focusing on our own happiness instead of God's glory.

And even though Satan will try to convince you that looking out for number one will make

you happier, that that is the better option, it will always leave you wanting.

It will always be less than God's best for you.

So don't be willing to settle for less than God's best.

The enemy's version will always leave you wanting and God's version will always leave

you fulfilled.

So knowing what God's design is, this is how God created us to work as humans.

This is how he created us to live.

This is what his design for marriage is.

And then knowing how Satan is going to do everything he can to attack it.

He's going to lie to you.

He's going to deceive you.

He's going to make you believe things about your spouse, about other Christians, about

other people around you.

He's going to do everything he can to deceive you.

He's going to use every single tool in his toolbox to destroy it.

He's going to do everything he can to destroy the church.

And we as a church, we're going to do what we can to stand firm against it.

We're going to do what we can to defend God's design.

And what that looks like is we are going to offer you resources that help direct you back

to a healthy, strong, God-honoring marriage and what that looks like.

For now we're going to do that in two ways.

First we're going to offer marriage classes here at the church.

In which we will discuss biblical ways to confront issues in marriage and provide insights

that will hopefully give you some tools to help strengthen your marriage.

I want you to think of these like a tune-up.

If we were to just drive our cars and never do anything besides fill them with gas, they

wouldn't last too long, would they?

We need to change the oil.

We need to replace the filters.

We need to rotate the tires and care for them if we're going to get our money's worth out

of them.

Marriage is very similar in that way.

We have invested our lives to this person.

We've committed our lives to them.

We have invested our lives into relationships.

If we don't tune up some things along the way, those things are going to break down.

Our marriages are going to break down.

Our relationships with each other is going to break down.

Think about this.

How many relationships that you have have ended because you didn't put in the work?

If we don't work on our communication, if we don't discuss our frustrations, if we

don't set some goals, then our relationships are not going to thrive.

I want my marriage to be the best it can so that when our children look at us, when they

see the good and they see the bad, they'll never see perfection.

But when they look at our marriage, I want them to see that this thing is important to

us.

We're going to put in the work so that when they get married, when they get married and

they have hard days because we all know they're going to have hard days, they can look back

and remember my parents didn't throw in the towel.

My parents put in the hard work.

When we're in public and we're sitting at a baseball game or whatever, I want our relationship

to look like a reflection of the goodness of God that's at work in our lives.

I want our marriage to preach Jesus.

That doesn't come easy.

It takes a lot of work, right?

A lot of work.

A lot of work.

A lot of work.

Okay.

No, I can't be very much.

Absolutely.

But you know, when Daniel and I got married, we had like everything going for us.

I mean, I'm not trying to brag, but we had both sets of parents were still married.

There was not a history of divorce.

They still were married.

They still loved each other.

We had both grown up in the church and had this really strong foundation of faith.

We were both Bible majors in college and we were even taking classes on how to like do

Christian counseling.

We both had the same vision for the future.

We both wanted to be in ministry.

We were united in our calling.

We wanted our marriage to glorify God.

We took premarital counseling.

We knew all the things.

We were the poster children for a successful marriage.

And yet we struggled like big time struggled.

We still do, but in the early days of our marriage, we struggled like seriously.

And for this prolonged period of time, and I think that's because we did not ask for

help.

We were 20 something church planners in Ohio.

We didn't have a strong community of support around us.

We were trying to lead others and we thought we have to have all the answers and we have

to have it all together.

And so we would go out in public with a smile on our face and look like we had this great

relationship and one of us was sleeping on the couch most nights.

We were afraid to ask for help.

And so we missed out on this beautiful joy that you can get from a marriage pursuing God

and a marriage united and we had just needed to ask for help.

So even if you feel like you've done everything right or maybe even if you haven't struggled

like we have, you still can reach out and ask for help.

And because we all need it and we all need encouragement.

We all need that tune up.

And this is where I failed.

This is where I failed early on in our marriage.

I knew we had some issues.

Sina knew we had some issues.

She was saying, hey, we need to go see a counselor, but I wouldn't go.

I'm not going to that.

I was unwilling to make myself vulnerable.

I think I even told her that I know what the counselor is going to say.

I've been through those classes.

I thought I had all the answers.

And here's what I think happens, at least in my marriage.

Here's what I think happens is Sina has a different standard than I do.

And for instance, I would be fine if our bedding didn't match the color of our walls.

I'd be just fine with it.

I wouldn't lose a moment's sleep about it.

If they clashed, no big deal for me.

Sina wouldn't be able to sleep.

She wouldn't be able to live in a place that didn't have matching colors.

So what's she going to do?

She's going to do something about that.

She's going to paint the walls.

She's going to get new bedding.

And as men, because of the fall, because of our sinless nature, we tend to have a passivity

in our relationships.

We tend to have a that's good enough mentality.

And one of the most God honoring things that you can do for your marriage is to lead your

wife by creating a marriage that is in line with God's design.

That happens when we are vulnerable.

That happens when we seek help.

That happens when we place her needs above our own.

So let's go men.

Let's go against our culture.

Let's stop being passive and weak.

Let's lead our wives well.

Let's lead in our church well.

The second way we want to help marriages is to offer marriage mentoring.

I mean this is our discipleship model in action.

There are many of you have learned a lot of hard lessons throughout your marriage.

You've seen God grow.

You've seen God grow your love for each other.

You've seen God grow your love for him throughout your time together.

And like Sina said earlier, let your marriage be a legacy for others.

Speak of the goodness of God to others who are struggling in their relationship.

We did our last church.

We did a marriage intensive Bible study called reengage.

And Daniel and I led that and we each led our own small groups in that.

And when we started it, I was I was like, I am not equipped to do this.

This is I don't know enough, I've struggled in our own marriage.

And at that time we were in a pretty good place, but still I just felt so inadequate

for this task.

And so we started doing this and throughout leading the Bible study, our marriage was

strengthened as well.

We grew and we learned so much through that in leading it.

And then as we were leaving and telling everybody by, and let me say to come here, one of the

couples in that Bible study came up and said, you saved our marriage through that.

And of course I said, no, God saved your marriage and you were willing to put in the work in

order to save your marriage.

But man, it felt good to know that God had used me in that way.

It feels it's so rewarding for God to use the heartache and the pain that we went through

in the past in order to bless somebody else.

And so even if you don't feel equipped to possibly be a mentor, we want you to just know that

God has a plan for you and he has a plan for the pain and the hurt and the lessons that

you've learned.

And he wants you to use that to bless others.

Second Corinthians 1-3 tells us about comforting others by the comfort that we've received

from God.

It says, bless to be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies

and God of all comfort who comforts us in our affliction so that we may be able to comfort

those who were in any affliction with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted

by God.

We need bold believers who are willing to step out and help mentor as well as those who

who are ready to receive mentoring.

I mean, this is discipleship, but this is also outreach.

And we want you and we want to participate in both, come to the class, bring a friend

of yours to the class because you could both benefit from that.

We are actively going to fight against Satan and his work to destroy marriages and families.

Anything of value takes work to keep it.

Your marriage is valuable.

Relationships are valuable because God created us to live in community.

He created marriage so that we would have help.

And for those of you that aren't married or maybe you've had a bad marriage, I want to

remind you that it does not lessen your worth and value.

I don't know how single parents do it.

Seen and I play zone defense with our four kids and they still get past this all the

time.

We as a church want to do anything we can to help support you single parents.

As a church, we can never put our guard down.

You can never put your guard down and we need to be aware of the lies the enemy might be

whispering in your ear.

Satan loves the vision.

He loves the vision and God hates it.

If you have animosity with another believer, maybe it is time for a tune up in that relationship.

Seen in community is God's design for us as humans.

And if the enemy's goal is to split that community, whether you're in a church or whether you're

in a marriage, we need to fight against that.

And I think one of the ways that we can fight against that is be aware that our hearts are

deceitful.

And Satan will use our deceitful hearts against us where we will completely ignore truth,

we'll completely ignore what's right and base everything on our feelings.

This is why classes and communication and mentoring is the key to the health of our

relationships.

So would you consider joining a class?

Would you consider being mentored or mentoring somebody else?

Would you consider laying down your frustrations and trusting that the Lord will change your

heart?

This isn't just about marriage, this is how God created us to be.

So we need to fight against that.

Let's pray.

Thank you so much.

You are relentless in your pursuit of our hearts.

Thank you that you do not just leave us where we are, that you have offered and continually

offer something better for us, that your design is perfect.

So God, I pray that you would help us to trust that design, that you would help us to trust

you and your plan for us, Lord.

And God, I just pray over this church and the marriages of this church, Father, I pray

that the enemy would have no place here.

In the name of Jesus, I just pray that you would sanctify our marriages, Lord, that they

would be for your glory.

God, I pray that all of our relationships, all of our lives would be lived for your glory,

that it would not be about us, God, that you would sanctify our hearts, that we would have

a desire that would be one with you and our purpose to bring glory to your name.

I ask this in Jesus' holy name.

Amen.

Thank you.