Re_boot: Re_build with Pastor Clayton Tyner

Welcome to the MetaCurch Podcast.

My name's Clayton.

I'm the pastor here at MetaChurch.

And my hope is that today's podcast finds you at the perfect time in your life that God uses it to inspire and enlighten you.

I hope that you enjoy today's message.

All right, well, I want to welcome you guys again and wish you a very happy Valentine's Day.

If you're new with us, maybe joining us for the first time, my name's Clayton, and I'm the lead pastor here at MetaCurch.

You know, every once in a while, Valentine's Day actually lands on a Sunday.

And to be completely honest with you, it's kind of difficult to write a Valentine's Day sermon for the simple fact that people are in such different places in their relationships.

It's hard to focus on one of those to the exclusion of so many other people and what they're dealing with and living through.

And I think that maybe, just maybe, I'm hitting a broad range of categories today that no matter where you're at, this could actually be helpful for you.

There's no way that I could actually speak to or represent every single situation people are living through.

But I've I've tried to think of this in three different categories, and maybe you can find yourself within one of these categories.

The first are those who it's Valentine's Day, and you are in love.

Like you are in love, love.

I call this category the happy honeymooners, you know?

It's like you're early in your relationship, or maybe you're early in your marriage.

Maybe you just recently actually had your real honeymoon, and it seems like after that, some couples get weeks, some get months, some are really lucky and get a couple of years of just this bliss and romance and intensity and passion.

Maybe we've all met like one of those really weird couples who it's like 10 or 15 years in, and it seems like that never ever wore off.

These are the couples who everywhere they go, they can't help but just to stare at each other.

There's lots of touching and back rubs and giggles.

It's like, you know, they just kind of gross everyone else out.

They're just, they're so in love, and man, they celebrate Valentine's Day hard.

They go all out, they buy each other like, you know, miniature horses and go on hot air balloon rides, and they're like Instagram, perfect in love to the T.

Now, if that's you, first of all, just you know, congratulations.

You can go ahead and throw in the chat happy honeymooners represent.

You can throw some hearts in there.

We're all very, very happy for you.

Also, the next two categories kind of hate you a little bit.

Like the very next category are the people who are obviously kind of miserable on Valentine's Day.

And I categorize those as the salty singles, you know.

And I realize that not all of the singles hate being singles.

Some people are really enjoying it, but a lot of people hit Valentine's Day, and really it's like singles awareness day.

The salty singles are the people who, it's like every conversation, every moment, they're gonna find a way to sneak into that conversation that they're single, even though it has nothing to do with what you're talking about.

You're just trying to order at Whataburger, and you can't order a number one without them reminding you that they're the only number one in their own life.

It's like I get it.

All they do is post the memes of stick figures dancing and there in the corner.

These are the salty singles.

Shout out to the salty singles.

I hope that you will take all the money that you would have spent on roses and rings and steak dinners and have a treat yourself week.

Just take advantage, just for this time, our salty singles.

Now there's a third category which is the most difficult, and it's the most difficult because a lot of Valentine's days it represents actually the biggest category.

These are people who are not single, they're in some form of relationship.

Not single, but also not happy.

Not single, not happy.

Just kind of going through the motions.

The honeymoon period is like way, way, way behind them.

They can't stand being around happy honeymooners.

It just reminds them of how short that will probably last for them.

It reminds them of days where they thought, like many people do, that their entire life or their entire marriage is going to be nothing but happiness.

But now they find themselves jaded and angry, resentful, and to categorize their relationship the best might be the word regret.

Valentine's Day, maybe they try their best to go through the motions, or maybe this is one of those Valentine's Days where they're gonna really go above and beyond to try to relight that spark and get something going again.

Not single and not happy.

Even when you try to be romantic, it just falls on its face.

It never ceases to amaze me just how many people are in the not single but not happy category.

Today we are wrapping up our series called Reboot.

And part of the reason that we decided to do this relationship talk inside the boundary of our reboot series is because it gave us an opportunity to do what we've done week after week, which is to skip all of the surface level ideas, struggles, and to dig down to the very core issues in our life.

If you're new with us, the reboot series has been based on a really simple premise.

We've been living through unprecedented times.

The year 2020 was incredibly painful and heavy.

It was an emotional burden that all of us carried at different levels.

And in 2021, we've moved into all sorts of new tension and frustrations and now polar vortexes.

It's like life is hard.

And in this series, we have put forward the belief that if we live our life according to the deepest, most core truths of scripture, that even in the midst of the suffering, we can live an incredibly significant life.

That even while going through all of the pain, we can live a life that is deeply, deeply filled with purpose.

And today we're talking about our relationships.

If we're really going to have a life that is rebooted, we must learn to thrive in our most significant relationships.

These are the people that we are building our lives with.

These are the people who have the biggest influence on who we are and what we're doing.

We simply cannot live in miserable romantic relationships and fully meet our God-given potential and purpose in life.

In other words, to reboot our lives, we must rebuild our relationships.

To reboot our lives, we must rebuild our relationships.

Now, before anybody tunes out, I want to suggest that this is a message for everyone.

It is maybe most obviously for those who are in a crappy relationship and want to find some way to make it better for those who are in a happy relationship and don't want it to turn sour, and for those who lack a relationship but want to make sure that they are fully prepared if one is on the horizon.

Would you pray with me?

Father, today we are digging in deep on this Valentine's Day, this day that we celebrate love and relationships.

A day that is so much fun for so many people and so painful for so many others.

God, we don't want to get caught in the commercial trappings of hearts and rainbows and baby Cupid.

Today we want to be intentional about digging to the core of what will give us a long, meaningful, sustained, healthy relationship.

God, this is gonna require some very real honesty, and so I just ask that we can lay down whatever hurt we're bringing in today.

That we can lay down our own ideas, our own prescriptions of what relationships should look like and how they should function, that we would really, even if just for this message, open our hearts and our minds and allow you to challenge us, God, that we would begin to rebuild our relationships.

The broken ones, the happy ones, and all of them in between.

We love you, and we pray these things in Jesus' name.

Amen.

If you've spent any time in church, you've probably heard all of the tips and tricks to like a healthy marriage, a healthy relationship, and there's a lot that you can gain from those kinds of series.

As a matter of fact, most years we will do a relationship series to talk about those very things.

But today we are talking about a reboot.

In this series, we've skipped past the surface level teaching and we've really tried to dig down to the core of these issues at hand.

And so, yes, like lying is a very big deal and it will fracture and destroy your relationships.

Communication is key to effectively loving the person that you're in relationship with.

Boundaries are essential for your well-being, and there's a place for series and sermons on all of those.

However, if we dig deeper, we begin to see that there is one thing that is the ultimate cause of relational damage.

There's one thing that turns a happy, healthy relationship into a loveless, jaded, resentful, regretful one.

There is one thing that if you dig down is at the core of every problem listed on every divorce decree.

And yes, it is a big, churchy, religious word.

It is sin.

Now, this is kind of obvious.

Sin is missing the mark.

It's actually an archery term long before it was a religious term.

It meant not hitting your intended target, missing the bullseye, missing the mark.

Sin is falling short of God's standard for our lives and for our relationships.

So, I mean, obviously, not loving each other well and all the things that are attached to that, things like lying and cheating and cursive and passive aggressiveness and even things that seem smaller than those, like laziness and disrespect, manipulation, all of those things are sin.

But today, I want us to dig even deeper.

I don't want to just talk about certain sins.

I don't want to just talk about how they show up in different forms to ruin our relationships.

Today I want to talk about how sin functions, how it works, and how it operates in our lives.

I'll say from the start, I don't think that many of us think about sin correctly.

If we don't understand how it operates, we will struggle to overcome it.

And all of a sudden, the odds of a happy marriage or a successful dating relationship just become like rolling the dice.

Like, maybe it will work and maybe it won't.

Maybe we'll stay as happy honeymooners and maybe we will end up miserable.

Maybe I'll have a good relationship someday when it comes along, and maybe I won't.

And I'd suggest that the odds are not in our favor.

Fifty percent of marriages are ending in divorce.

And that's just the tip of the iceberg.

I mean, there are countless other relationships that are begrudgingly staying together.

But the love and the passion, the companionship and camaraderie, the quality of that relationship no longer exists.

Sin is what breaks our relationships.

At the very core, if we're willing to dig down all the way to the root issue, it is sin that destroys our relationships.

And if we want to fix our broken relationships, if we want to safeguard our thriving relationships, or for those who are single, if we want to prepare for future relationships, we must learn how to deal with sin.

Scripture tells us exactly how sin operates in our lives.

We're first gonna look at the first chapter of the book of James.

It says this in verse 13 when tempted, no one should say, God is tempting me.

For God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does he tempt anyone.

Okay, so before teaching on how sin does work and operate, James first is gonna make a couple things clear about how it does not operate.

God, in his very essence, is holy, which means that God cannot be tempted by evil, and that God does not tempt us to do evil.

In other words, God is never our way into sin.

And the even better news is that God always offers us a path out of our sin.

Verse 14, but each person is tempted when they are dragged away by their own, their own evil desire and enticed.

Verse 14 states plainly where the responsibility for our sin rests.

This alone is such a significant truth that if we could really grasp it and really apply it to our life, it could transform many of our relationships.

The whole reason that James takes the time to write this is because he's very aware of the fact that humans are experts at excuse.

We have an excuse for all of our worst ways.

We can rationalize them, and through that excuse, we can minimize them, and when we've minimized them, we can continue living in them, expecting that they will not have much consequence in our life.

We see this all of the time.

Everyone else can see that you're being a jerk.

That's the problem.

You're just being an angry, malevolent jerk.

And your excuse is listen, I just say it like it is.

There's the excuse, the rationalization.

I just, I'm just straight up with her, you know?

She needs to know exactly how it is.

I'm not being mean, you know, I'm not, I'm not aggressive.

I just, I'm just straight up.

It's like, no, you are a jerk, and you are minimizing this aspect of your relationship that eventually is gonna cause some serious damage.

We've seen people who are controlling and manipulative, and they're like, listen, if I didn't make things happen for him, he would never get anywhere in life.

Like, I've got to kind of go around him.

It's for his own good.

It's like, no, you're controlling, you're manipulating.

These things are sin, but we're expert at excuses.

I've seen an entire culture now, and so many men who have given into the idea that pornography, which is tearing relationships apart, like the wildest excuses.

It's like, no, no, no, this is man, this is how I keep our sex life fresh, you know?

Or or even even wilder, like, no, this is this is okay, you know.

This is how I keep from really acting on these impulses.

This is this is how I keep, you know, from cheating.

Man, we are so good at rationalization, we're so good at excuses, we can get there so quick and minimize our sin so small that we're able to look right past it.

You see, here's the problem.

If nothing is ever our fault, then there is nothing that we can ever fix.

And so if you're in a crappy relationship and nothing is ever your fault, then there is nothing that you can fix, which means you are stuck on the course you are on forever.

Everyone who's in a happy relationship has minor problems.

And we can either see them as real problems or we can rationalize and minimize them, and they might just be the very thing that has you on track to move out of the happy honeymoon period and into not single but not happy.

You see, there is real power in taking responsibility.

There is real power because, in a literal sense, it makes you able to respond.

It empowers you to have a path forward, to rebuild your relationships.

James's first point is simple.

You are in control of your sin, at least you are for now.

In verse 15, he's gonna demonstrate exactly how it is that sin works and operates.

Verse 15 says, Then, after desire has conceived, so when you give into your temptation, temptation plus our action to it conceives and it gives birth to sin.

And we all have sin in our life.

We all have many ways every day that we fall short of God's standards.

After desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin.

And sin, when it is full grown, gives birth to death.

There is a natural progression to our sin.

James paints this picture of our temptations giving birth to sin, and then it says, when sin is full grown, let's stop just for a second.

Because what James is teaching us is something that we may be aware of, but we live rarely acknowledging, and that's the fact that sin is not stagnant.

That is worth writing down somewhere.

Sin is not stagnant.

Sin grows, it matures, it grows and grows and grows, it reaches its tentacles into every area and aspect of your life.

We know this.

We know this.

But we rarely acknowledge it.

In your relationship, if you lie once, you have made it exponentially easier to lie again.

And your first lie in a relationship is rarely going to be a big one.

Maybe it's a little white lie, maybe it's to avoid some awkwardness, maybe it is to pass on some responsibility that rightly belongs to you.

Little lies grow.

They begin a countdown to bigger and bigger lies.

And of course they do.

Because lying is awesome.

You were gonna get in trouble, you lied, and now you're not in trouble.

That's awesome! Like you were gonna have to be held responsible.

You tell one little lie, and you have passed the blame on.

Just keep living your life.

We wouldn't do it if it wasn't effective.

We wouldn't do it if it didn't have some awesome properties to it.

Those little lies.

We see the benefit, we reap the reward.

And sin, scripture tells us, James tells us, sin grows.

Lust begins with the eyes.

In the Old Testament, a righteous man named Job said he had made a covenant with his eyes to not look upon any other woman because he knew that lust started with the eyes, but it does not end with the eyes.

You see, it grows.

It grows, and it's like, okay, so I've I've kept my eyes on my coworker for like maybe a little bit too long, and that didn't really do any damage.

It's like, who am I really hurting?

And so if I can look at her and maybe think some thoughts in my head, then what would really be the damage of talking to her a little bit and maybe even flirting a little bit?

It's like I'm really just complimenting her.

Everyone likes to be complimented.

A lot of women are really insecure, so I'm really doing her a favor.

It's like, I know I'm not complimenting the other women, and but I don't want to be seen as like a flirt, I'm just doing it with her.

And it's like, listen, it grows.

It grows and grows and grows.

And most of us live our life as if sin is stagnant, as if the little sins are gonna stay little sins.

And we're so good at excusing them, we're so good at rationalizing and minimizing and tucking them away and putting them in our pocket, ignoring and denying them.

But sin grows.

Where an affair was just discovered.

And I have to tell you that never, as in like not one time, has the person who cheated looked me in the eyes and said, I knew this was gonna happen.

I totally knew it was gonna happen.

It was like we were in love, we were in the honeymoon phase, everything was good.

I woke up one morning and was like, you know what?

I'm gonna write out a plan, and by the end of this, I'm gonna have cheated on my spouse.

It never happens.

As a matter of fact, every single time they say the same thing, they say, I have no idea how I did this.

I have no idea how this even happened.

In other words, I have no idea how my sin grew this big.

Our sin grows and we must destroy the idea that our sin is stagnant, that it doesn't morph and grow and mature.

And what does James say?

He says that when it's full grown, that if we just allow it to Progress that if we keep excusing it along the way when it's full grown, that sin gives birth to death.

And this could be physical death as the natural consequence and result of our sins.

But there's a lot of different kinds of metaphorical deaths.

This could be the death of your career, your promising path and future that you traded in for the little sins that grew out of your control.

This could be the death of your autonomy or your ability to control yourself and your desires, like we see when something that wasn't a problem turns into a full-blown addiction.

And often this can be the death of your relationship.

Sin stun our growth, both as individuals, and it stunts our growths within our relationships.

We all sin.

We all give in to temptation.

The question is: are we willing to acknowledge the gravity of even what we see as small sins and stop them before they've gone too far?

James seems to be saying that either we must grow or our sin will.

The author of Hebrews says it this way in Hebrews 3, verse 12: See to it, brothers and sisters, that none of you has a sinful, unbelieving heart that turns away from the living God, but encourage one another daily, as long as it is called today, so that none of you may be hardened by sin's deceitfulness.

There's an incredible sense of urgency in these verses.

It says that we must turn back to God.

In other words, we must turn away from our sin, and we must do it while today is still called today.

In other words, if you wait to get a handle on your sin into the proverbial tomorrow, I'll deal with it tomorrow, I'll figure it out next week, I'll get some help later, I'll wait till it's a real problem, that that might not be an option.

We must deal with it now because tomorrow might just be too late.

To use modern sayings, we must get ahead of this thing.

We have to nip this in the bud.

If you have an area of your life where you're allowing sin to mature because sin is never stagnant, to grow, to spread its reach, to bankrupt your life, the time to turn back to God is now.

And here's why: because your sin is growing.

Your sin is growing, it's growing and it's growing.

And eventually, if nothing is done.

James says that sin will lead to death.

Hebrews says, your heart will be hardened.

This word hardened in the Greek is the word where we got our word for calluses.

These areas of our body that become so built up that we can't feel anything and we cannot function.

We cannot feel and we cannot function.

And some of you are recognizing right now this is where you're at in your relationships.

You've become so calloused that the things about your relationship that used to break your heart, now you don't even bat an eye.

You no longer feel and your relationship no longer functions.

This is the path of allowing sin to grow and grow and grow.

When we get to this point, this point that James calls death, Hebrews calls being hardened, there's a good chance that our relationships without serious intervention are doomed.

It doesn't necessarily mean that you break up our divorce.

You might just end up living out a loveless, jaded, resentful, and deeply regretful life.

If you and your relationships are in shambles, it doesn't matter how many of these other truths that we've learned throughout the series that you seek to apply to your life, you will get incrementally better, but to really actually reboot your life, to really live out that purpose and significance, you will be stuck in the pain and heartache of the world.

To reboot our lives, we must rebuild our relationships.

If we don't understand how sin works and operates, and if we allow it to roam and grow freely in our life, we will not reboot.

We will not rebuild our relationships.

Instead, we will live a life of deep, deep regret.

Your relationships matter, God put us on earth to be in relationship.

Especially romantic relationship, and the highest of all forms of that in marriage.

So how do we do this?

How do we begin to understand our sin, to spot its patterns in our life, to take it seriously and turn away from it?

How do we turn back to God while today is still called today?

The verses we just read in Hebrews are a part of a larger context in chapter three.

The author had just reminded these Jewish Christians of a moment generations earlier in their history.

Now, we read verses 12 and 13, the ones that said to turn back to God before our hearts are hardened, but I want to look at this quotation from the Old Testament book of Psalms.

Directly before it, it starts in verse 7.

Says this, so as the Holy Spirit says, today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as you did in the rebellion.

Here's the history during the time of testing in the wilderness, where your ancestors tested and tried me, though for forty years they saw what I did, and that is why I was angry with that generation.

God said, Their hearts are always going astray, and they have not known my ways.

And so God declared an oath, they shall never enter my rest.

This is a quotation from the Old Testament book of Psalms.

It takes us back to a time where God is leading Israel, his special chosen people, to the promised land that he had prepared for them.

However, Israel had allowed sin to continuously come into their nation.

They didn't intervene.

Instead, they would rationalize it away.

They had all the right excuses, and sin is never stagnant.

It grew and it grew, and by the time God brought them to the promised land, their hearts were so hardened that they no longer trusted that God would give them the victory.

They saw all the fortified cities, the armies.

They saw all of the excuses of why it wouldn't work.

They lost faith.

They turned their back on their relationship with God.

And God declared, You will not enter my rest.

Instead of going in and taking the promised land, they wandered in the wilderness for 40 years.

Sin, when it is full grown, leads to death.

This generation of Israelites died in the wilderness.

It was their children who would inherit the promised land.

And so why is the Bible still talking about this to these Jewish Christians thousands of years later?

Why are we still reading it about it today in our Bibles?

You see, what Hebrews is doing is something that the Bible does very often.

It either points to past events or to future probabilities.

It points either to past events or future probabilities where we can see the effect of our sin if we don't do something about it.

This is God intervening in our lives just like a good parent does.

You see, good parents, when our kids tell these little bitty white lies, we don't just correct what they're doing, we point them to the future of what happens if lying becomes their standard operating way of living life.

To be honest, your little kids can't really lie of anything that has much consequence.

It's like maybe they, you know, lied about their test that they took, or they lied about, you know, some some small toy that they didn't share that they stole.

It's like, really, what does that matter in the big grand scheme of things?

What matters is that if they learn to lie, they will continue.

What matters is that sin is not stagnant, it grows and it grows.

And if you catch your kid cheating on a test, it's like you gotta address that they cheated, but even more importantly, you have to help your child fast forward to a future where they learn to be cheaters in life.

This may cost you a failing grade, but a life of cheating will cost you careers and friendships and marriages.

The Bible does this often, it points to past events or to future probabilities to help us see the weight of what our sin becomes if we don't take it seriously and turn back to God.

It often paints the picture now of what our little sins will grow into later.

Now I've come up with a word for this, and I've uh I can't say I've ever invented anything in life, right?

Like that's a really hard thing to do, to think of something first.

And I probably haven't invented this either, um, but I've never heard it before, so I'm I'm gonna trademark it today just in case.

And it it's really um, it's probably not been invented before because it's well, it's it's kind of dumb.

But I I think within it there is something really profound and really powerful, and it's a habit that if you could add it to your life, it could transform your relationships now and it could safeguard them into the future.

You see, the worst thing that we can do is end up in a relationship that we regret.

The not single, not happy crowd, many of them would characterize even the decision to be in that relationship as a regret.

There's there are a few things as painful as looking back at what seemed like a good decision and now seeing it as possibly the worst decision.

Regret is so powerful.

And so, to avoid regret, I'm ax, I'm asking you to practice pregret.

I told you, it's not like I invented the smartphone here, okay?

To avoid regret, practice pregret.

I believe that this simple invention could possibly save your marriage that's on the rocks.

Safeguard your marriage that's currently thriving, and ensure for those of you who are single that you are truly prepared to enter into relationships when they come.

Here's how it works: Pregret is stopping to evaluate what your decisions today will turn into over time.

It is a chance for you to fast forward into your future.

And if you can be honest, to see what the little sins you've given birth to turn into when they mature over time.

You see, it's the little things.

It's like we live in a culture that largely views pornography as a positive thing.

So it's like pulling up your hidden browser and hitting up that side, it's like, who am I hurting?

You know?

Nobody even sees this, uh, nobody's aware of it.

The culture is giving it a stamp of approval.

It's like, what is the big deal?

Also, non-coincidentally, at this point, every single, and I mean 100% of men who I have walked through having cheated on their spouses, 100% started with an addiction to pornography.

You see, this little lie, this little thing that you're keeping, this little thing that you think would cause too much conflict or hurt their feelings or cause you too much trouble.

Those little things become hidden big things.

Sin grows.

Pregret acknowledges a very valuable truth that the little things become the big things.

It's a truth that we're aware of, but we often fail to acknowledge.

This is the power of pregret.

It's what James was doing for his church, and it's what Hebrews was doing for these new Jewish Christians.

Remember how this turns out.

Don't wait for tomorrow to take care of what is in front of you today.

Tomorrow your sin may have already gone too far.

Listen, you can't live all the time like this.

This is an exercise for those quiet moments, but if it is a habit, if it is a habit that you can begin to add into your life, your relationships can escalate significantly.

Pregret is allowing yourself to feel, to actually feel the regret of your actions before you've taken them.

It's the ability to feel the regret of actions that you haven't yet taken, but your sin is leading you toward.

Pregret asks questions like where does this end?

Where do my actions eventually lead me?

What would happen if they found out?

Pregret allows you to honestly think through when you are going to tell your spouse.

Like, how long can you actually keep this thing hidden?

How long can you sustain juggling all of the different pieces of yourself that you're not allowing them to see?

How long can you avoid the conflict?

And maybe this sounds like it's just for that one category of people, you know?

Not single, not happy.

But I'm telling you, there are many relationships that extend their honeymoon period, not by honesty and truth, but by hiding the things that they think would cause them to be unhappy.

It's a short-term solution that will lead to long-term devastation.

Maybe you're single and you're wondering how any of this has anything at all to do with you.

Maybe you have yourself convinced in this aura of invincibility, like there's nothing that's gonna ever cause you to not be happy.

That's for those other people.

You have to realize that's what everyone thought at some point.

We all have pieces of our relationships to rebuild.

And I know this because we all, we all struggle with sin.

We are broken people in a broken world, and sin does not mean evil all the time.

It's not always hellfire and brimstone.

It is missing the mark.

It's missing the mark in our lives, and it is missing the mark in our relationships.

We're so good at excuses.

We're so good at minimizing and rationalizing.

The power of practicing pregret is it takes away your ability to see the little things just as little things.

It gives you the ability to get ahead on the very things that might destroy your destiny in your relationship.

The time to stop and turn back to God, the time to confess and trust in God's mercy, the time to be honest and to stay honest with your loved ones, the time is now.

The time is today, while it's still called today.

Either we will grow up or our sin will.

And so today, as a day that we often celebrate the commercialization of our relationships and the unreal expectations of what love should look like and feel like, what if Valentine's Day 2021, we made a decision that we were going to use this day to pause, to fast forward, to get honest about our life, to ask the question: if I were to ruin my marriage, if I were to ruin my relationship, what would I have done based on how I'm living right now?

That is pregret.

And if we are audacious and courageous enough to practice it, we might just be able to avoid the regret that most relationships end up in.

Would you pray with me?

Father, I ask that even right now we would give you room to begin examining our lives and our hearts.

Even right now, you would give us the courage to fast forward one year, five years, ten years, God.

The honesty to examine how are some of the ways that I'm living right now going to grow and how will they affect my relationship down the road.

God, I pray for those who are single and not too happy about it.

I know how painful that can be.

I know the desire to have a companion.

And God, I pray that in the loneliness, in the pain, in the frustration of watching other people who are seemingly happily married or happily dating, God, that they would not allow any of that to stop them from pursuing you and who you have created them to be.

God, I pray for a new goal on Valentine's Day 2021.

That the goal would not be to get in a relationship as quickly as possible, but that the goal would be to become the kind of person that can ultimately lead the relationship that you might have in store.

I pray for those, God, who are not single, but not happy.

Perhaps that's a majority of the people listening.

When our marriages, when our relationships are off, it can devastate every other part of our life.

God, so often we want to look at the person sitting across from us and dream about how great things would be if they would just change.

I pray that even just for today, this week, God, that we would look inside.

That we would get honest about our contributions to the lack of happiness and the lack of health.

That we would get honest about the little things that we have ignored for so long, the little things that maybe if we look upon closer inspection are actually no longer little things.

God, that we would turn back, that maybe even today, even this message, even your word that we're reading today would be the catalyst for us turning that around, I pray, for those who are happy.

God, I pray that their happiness is built on things that are healthy and sustainable.

God, in the happiest couples among us, we all have sin in our life.

And I pray that it if it's the big things, God, are even just the smallest pieces, even if it's just the pride that makes you wonder every once in a while if maybe you're maybe you're just a little bit better than your spouse.

That little piece of pride that will grow into massive resentment.

God, even if it's this little piece of conflict that they're just avoiding at all costs, they just don't want the argument, that they would be transparent.

God, we pray that you would give us the power to fast forward, that we could practice pregret and live great, incredible, rebooted relationships.

We love you.

We pray these things in Jesus' name.

Amen.

I want to thank you guys again for joining us.

Uh, just so you guys know, if you're joining us for the first time, we normally meet in person at two different locations.

One of those is at the 4-H event center in Helotus, Texas, directly across from O'Connor High School.

The other one is at the 151 Saloon at the corner of 151 and Westover Hills Boulevard.

All of our times and everything about MetaCurch can be found on our website at metachurch.tv.

We also want to encourage you guys to follow us on social media.

For those of you who are a part of this movement, be sure that you're doing your part to help fund this work.

We invest in what we believe in.

And if we're all doing our part to give generously to the financial operations of our movement, then God is going to continue doing exactly what he's been doing, which is reaching people and changing lives.

Man, we hope that you guys do your best to stay warm, to enjoy some time in with the people that you love.

I love you guys, and we hope to see you on Sunday.

Thanks so much for listening to the message today.

If this was helpful to you and you want to help us get the word out, you can subscribe to this podcast.

You can rate and review or share it with your friends.

If you want to get connected further with what MetaCurch is doing, you can go online to metachurch.tv.

There you can learn how to take next steps.

You can learn where our different venues are at if you ever wanted to visit, and you can also give financially to help push this movement forward.

Man, I love you guys, and I hope you have a great rest of your day.