Loveology – Generous Love

This podcast is presented to you by Pastor Jason Burns and Access Church in Lakeland, Florida.

For more information, visit Access.tv.

So let's get to work today, everybody.

Today we are in part two of a series that I'm really excited about.

As we're in this month of love, the series is called Loveology, and we're going to do a study of love.

And this is a study of everything from love and friendships to your dating and your engagement seasons to marriage seasons.

And we're going to talk about all of it.

Last week I kicked off the series with this message on what marriage should look like according to the Bible.

Not a contract.

That's how the world sees marriage, but a covenant.

A covenant is a solemn, sacred, holy promise between two people and God.

And the only exit strategy we said last week on a covenant marriage is till death do us part.

Today I want to take it and expound upon it, but I also want to do something fun.

Last week I started with some questions, and I wanted to show you that many of us just see and experience love so differently.

So last week I asked three questions, and we're going to do it again.

And here's how this works here in North Lakeland Church Online, wherever you're joining us.

It's a thumbs up for yes and a thumbs down for no.

We're going to practice this everywhere you are.

Come on, if you say yes, thumbs up, yes, yes, thumbs up, everybody.

Practice, practice, come on, thumbs up, all right.

Let's practice thumbs down if you want the Eagles to win.

Thumbs down.

Cool, cool, cool, cool, cool, cool, cool, cool, cool.

All right.

These are all gonna be Valentine's Day related, so let's get after it.

Question number one Is Valentine's a holiday just for the ladies?

Yes or no?

Yes or no?

Oh boy, you are all mixed up, everybody.

This one I like a lot.

Ready?

Think about the movie.

Are you ready?

The notebook, yes or no?

Yes or no?

I remember the first time Liz and I watched this, I think we were dating, and she starts hysterically crying, blubbering all over me.

And I'm like, girl, I'm not going anywhere.

Like, what are we doing?

All right, here's my favorite one.

This one's the most controversial.

Are you ready?

Is a vacuum ever an appropriate Valentine's Day gift?

Yes or no?

Oh, we gotta fight right here.

We've got issues right here, everybody.

All right.

I told you it was gonna be fun.

All right.

Let's get to work today.

All right.

Hope that didn't cause any problems for you.

Maybe we can undo it with this message.

All right, here we go.

Have you heard of this thing?

It's really popular.

It kind of went around social media a couple years ago.

It's not true psychology, it's kind of pop psychology, but it's just something fun.

It's called the Green Line Test.

Have you heard of this before?

The Green Line Test, if you haven't heard of it, is don't put the pictures up for me yet.

The Green Line Test is this is this belief that you can tell a lot about a couple's romantic interest based on how they pose themselves in pictures.

And the belief is that if a person stands up straight or sits up straight in the picture, they are the strong ones.

They are the ones with strength and stability.

And when a person leans into them, they are essentially enveloping themselves and taking on the characteristics and personality of the person who is the straight line.

Okay, so so here's how it works.

Okay, like here's a picture just from the internet.

I don't know these people, I bet they're great.

But this one is straight, and then this one is leaning in.

Are you seeing how this works?

Okay, I'm gonna ruin all of your pictures from now on.

This is what's gonna happen, okay?

And so here's another picture of another couple, he's standing straight, she's more leaning in.

I mean, he's kind of head-tilted a little bit, but you can see she's the one who's all in, and he's the strong one.

And so I read this thing online that says, Ladies, never marry a leaner.

Because you want your man to be strong, right?

But then this lady didn't get the memo.

Like, you just find people.

So last night I was like, I wonder how this works in my pictures.

And so Liz and I did a photo shoot for our 20th wedding anniversary, which was a few weeks ago, and here's us.

Um, and I want you to notice, I want you to notice something.

Ba-bam.

And then I went two pictures later, and I saw this one, and I want you to notice, babam, there's the lean.

And so here's the question, all right?

I know this isn't real, this isn't true, but in a relationship, in a dating relationship, in an engaged couple, in a married couple, who should lean?

Like, like, really honestly, I want you to think about this.

In a dating or an engaged couple, who should lean?

Who should be the one who prefers the other one?

Who should be the one who takes on the characteristics and personality of the other?

Who should lean?

And I just want to submit something to you.

In a Christian, God-honoring relationship, and especially in a God-honoring marriage, ready, we both lean in.

Like the picture thing, the green line test is silly and it's fun, but it's all pop psychology.

But in a God-honoring marriage, we both lean in.

I saw this thing years ago, and it's gonna seem silly, it might even seem a little simple or elementary, but I want you to see this.

This is actually how a God-honoring relationship, a marriage, should look.

You can see it like a triangle.

And on one side you've got the husband, on the other side you've got the wife.

And if they both lean, and if they both pursue God, what tends to happen is, husbands, I want you to look at me for a second.

The more you pursue God, wives, listen to me, the more you pursue God, inevitably, what inevitably what happens is you naturally find yourself getting closer and closer, not just to him, but to each other.

How does this work?

It's because if you're becoming more and more like him, naturally you're going to be a more loving, kind, thoughtful, generous, intentional person.

If you're becoming more and more like him, naturally you're gonna take on his nature and his characteristics, so naturally you're going to get closer to each other.

So actually, some of my best advice ever to you is make the decision in your relationships that you're going to pursue God with everything you have.

When Liz and I were first dating, I think we were like a month into dating each other.

We were brand new, but I was head over heels.

If if there's the green line lean test, I was this.

Like I was all in on this relationship.

And so I was with her parents, and one day she and her uh her dad and I just kind of got separated from the group.

And I said to him, I was like, all right, look, I'm crazy about your daughter.

Good work on her.

Um, what advice would you have for me as I pursue a relationship with her?

And he just said, just keep Jesus number one in your life, and everything has this way of working itself out.

A study was done several years ago from the University of Virginia, and they asked a question, what is it that makes couples happy?

Like sincerely, what is it?

And I want you to think about it before we answer it.

What is it that you think makes couples happy?

You you might think it's pursuing intimacy in a way that's fulfilling for both, and that's certainly good.

You might think it's high amounts of income and money and financial security, and nothing wrong with that.

You you might come up with your own group of definitions, but after surveying thousands of couples, they were surprised to find that one of the secrets that made couples happy was what they called the generosity scale.

Now, one of the things I love is I love talking about generosity.

I it is actually probably my life message.

I love living open-handed, I love giving, I love listening for ways to bless people.

And the truth is, the Bible talks a lot about generosity, and the most common application that we use to generosity is the area of money.

And I want you to hear, generosity unequivocally applies to money.

But generosity also applies to every part of our life, and it really includes our relationships.

So when they did this study, they asked the question okay, if it's generosity that seems to make couples feel the most happy, the most satisfied in the relationship, what does that mean?

Is it buying the most stuff?

Is it buying the biggest gifts?

Is it purchasing the most extravagant vacation?

Is it the big grand gestures and there's nothing wrong with those things?

But the truth is, it wasn't those.

It was the regular, everyday, kind, thoughtful acts of behavior that caused the person to feel loved.

In fact, the study said this: it said the higher they ranked in generosity towards each other, the happier they were.

The higher couples rated generosity in the way that they felt that their spouse prioritized and loved and honored and showed kindness and open-handed generosity to them, the happier they were.

Now, maybe you've heard stats like this, but here's the stat that goes around often in relationship talks that in every good relationship, there should be five positive or good interactions to every one negative interaction.

In relationships that get this flipped, it gets heavy, it gets to be nagging, it gets to be like constantly you feel like you're beat up all the time.

But in a good relationship, certainly there's gonna be things to address.

We're not saying don't address difficult issues, but we are saying is the generosity scale says that I'm going to far outmeasure the negative with things that are kind and loving and good and of great virtue.

And I want you to understand this.

This is how they defined generosity in the study.

They said generosity is the virtue of giving good things to your spouse freely and abundantly.

It's the virtue of giving good things to your spouse.

And don't think of things like objects.

Think of your time, think of your energy, think of your emotions, think of a listening ear or a shoulder to cry on or arms to envelop your spouse in a hug.

This is what generosity looks like.

So I asked my wife, I said, babe, like what is something that I've done for you recently that made you feel loved?

And don't think big gestures like we just had our 20th anniversary.

Like, don't think about something big or expensive that I did.

Think what is something small?

And she had to think about it, and she goes, you know, this might sound like a dumb answer, but you take care of our finances.

And she goes, the funny thing is I don't think about it often because it's always taken care of for me.

But every time I think about it, or when I hear about a friend who's dealing with something difficult financially in their marriage, it reminds me, oh, he consistently takes care of me and I feel loved.

This is what love looks like, and this is a biblical principle.

In fact, according to the Bible, there's a really simple, beautiful definition for love.

In fact, let me say it to you like this.

Um, something weird about me is if you catch me on a Sunday morning before church and say, How do you feel about today?

I'll be honest with you and I'll tell you, psh, not very good.

Like I only ever feel about 70% ready, so I am terrified every Sunday before church.

And and a lot of Sundays, I'm still working on it.

Like Ask Liz, there will be Sundays where we're sitting on the front row during worship, and I'll lean over and I'll go, hey, you got an example of a story about this, and she always is like, I don't write your sermons for you.

Like, that's not very loving.

Anyways, and so um, years ago, it was a Sunday morning, and I was preaching on love, and I was I was around up early, getting myself ready to walk out the door to get to church, and I was, you know, gonna go serve God.

My wife was still in bed because I'm way more spiritual than her.

Anyways, and so like, I will deal with that one later.

And um, I'm getting ready, and Liz is in that like half-asleep, kind of half awake, kind of slowly waking up mode.

And I asked her this question.

I was like, babe, what is love?

This is one of the biggest questions in the history of the world.

Scholars and philosophers have argued over it.

Brilliant thinkers and and and brilliant orators and brilliant philosophers have argued over what it means.

Philosophers like Socrates and Plato and Aristotle and Taylor Swift and Beyonce, like the brightest of bright, have argued over what love is.

And very often what we think of when we think of love is how I feel.

We think of, oh, I get goosebumps when she walks in the room.

Oh, he's got temples.

You know, like young girls when they talk about love, they do this thing with their hands.

Like they we think of it as a feeling.

Love was never a feeling, love is a choice.

And here's what Lizette said, babe, what is love?

Half asleep, she said these three words.

It's you before me.

I said, Dang girl, if you're that smart when you're half asleep, how smart are you when you're awake?

Like, this is what love is.

And happy couples understand this that love and showing affection and kindness is about living generously, not transactionally.

I want you to see this.

Happy couples understand that for our love to work, for this relationship to thrive, I've got to think generously, open-handedly, not transactionally, but the truth is we're conditioned to think transactionally.

Our whole world exists to say, what's in it for me?

What do I get out of it?

What comes back my way?

If I do my part, what am I gonna get back from this?

This is how the world works, but God's world works different.

God's economy is different than ours.

He thinks generously, not transactionally.

And I want you to see this.

If our love for each other is meant to be a reflection of God's love for us, the foundation should be generosity.

Like I want you to understand this.

That what we talked about last week, that idea of covenant love, was never just meant to be about two people falling in love and committing our lives to each other.

It was actually meant to be a testimony to the world around us of God's love for us.

That's what it was meant to be.

And if we're gonna show the world how God loves us through our relationships, then our relationships better be generous.

God did this.

The most famous verse in the Bible, John 3.16.

I learned it as a kid in the King James Version, and then I learned it later in the NIV version, but I want you to see this from the NLT translation, John 3.16.

For this is how God loved the world.

Ready?

He gave.

I want you to see it one more time.

Let's highlight it this time.

This is how God loved the world.

He gave.

It's not enough to say you love.

Love was never intended to be words only.

Love was intended to be an intentional, demonstrative action.

You cannot say you love someone without acting on it.

God loved us this way, he gave his one and only son, that everyone who believes in him will not perish, but have eternal life.

In the book of Mark, it says this.

It says, For even the Son of Man, talking about Jesus, did not come to be served, but he didn't come to get his needs met, but to serve.

And here it is again to give his life as a ransom for many.

You cannot say you love God without living a generous kind of life.

In our most important relationships, like in your marriage, you cannot say that you love God and treat your spouse like garbage.

It just doesn't work this way.

And here's the thing I want you to understand this applies to every part of your life where generosity is attached.

This is your money, your time, your energy, your efforts, your thoughts, your emotions, all of it.

Here it is, ready.

You can give without loving, but you cannot love without giving.

And this is interesting.

When it comes to money, a lot of Christians are like, oh God, I love you.

When it comes to your money, yeah, I'm gonna be stingy.

Think about your marriage.

Sweetheart, I love you, I love you, I love you, but we won't get off the couch, we won't turn off the video game, we won't serve them, we won't meet their needs.

No, no, you can give without loving.

It's easy to do that.

But it is impossible to love without giving.

Solomon in the book of Proverbs, the book of wisdom, he says this, and I love this line.

He says, one person gives freely, we read that word earlier, yet gains even more.

Another withholds unduly but comes to poverty.

Pause here for just a moment.

This has never made sense to me when it comes to money.

Like I've never understood how a person can live open-handed and give sacrificially, bring back to God the first 10% of their money, and then somehow as a result of it, like the even though the mental math doesn't work, God makes up for it and blesses.

And I can't explain it to you, I've just experienced it like my whole life.

The same principle's true in your relationships.

I want you to think about the way love's expressed in your relationships.

One person gives love freely, yet gains even more love.

Another person unduly withholds love but comes to poverty.

And then the next line is a generous person will prosper.

Let's let's add some language to help us think about it in love.

A generous person in love will prosper in love.

Whoever refreshes others with love will themselves be refreshed.

Happy couples understand this principle that we have to live generously, open-handedly, and we have to be intentional about it.

The second thing I want you to understand today, and this is so important, a lot of people think of love as a feeling.

A lot of people think of love as an emotion.

A lot of people think of love as a noun, it's something I fall into like I fall into a ditch or fall out of like I fall out of a tree.

Love was never those.

Love was intended to be an action.

And because of that, if you're gonna be a happy couple, if you're gonna be till death do us part, and you're gonna die actually still in love with each other, you need to know this.

Happy couples have a choice.

You have a choice in the matter.

And a lot of people are like, wait, oh, if if she'll just do this for me, if he'll just serve me, if he'll just bless me, then I'll love.

No, no, no.

You have a choice in the matter.

Let me show you the choice.

In the book of 1 Corinthians 13, it's it's one of the most famous chapters in the Bible.

Chances are that if you've been a follower of Jesus your whole life, or maybe you're new to this and you're skeptical and you're kicking the tires, but you've been to a Christian wedding, chances are you've heard the verses we're gonna read read at the wedding.

It's called the Love Chapter.

The funny thing is, when you understand this chapter in the context of the whole book of 1 Corinthians, it doesn't actually feel that much like a marriage chapter.

Like here's what's happening.

Paul, who writes this letter to a church in Corinth, some 50 miles west of modern-day Athens, he writes this letter to this church, and this church is full of people who are these new believers, they're these new followers of Jesus, but they're living in a world that's called polytheistic.

Polytheistic means people who worship all different types of gods, but the word gods would be a lowercase g.

That they worship all kinds of gods.

It would be not uncommon to worship lots or hundreds of gods.

And the problem is he's trying to unprogram and to unwire some of the misconceptions they've heard about the gods plural.

That the gods in Jesus' day were often all about themselves.

They were never about other people.

So your relationship with the gods was exclusively vertical.

It was all about what you could do to earn their forgiveness, is what you could do to earn their trust.

And if you ever did anything to break their trust, you had to sacrifice all kinds of things, including your own children, to try to get a blessing for yourself.

These relationships were so backwards, and here's the key I want you to understand.

They were always vertical only.

And Paul's gonna come along and he's gonna say to this new church full of these new believers, these new followers in Jesus, there's a different way to do this, and God, our God, capital G, the one and only God, you need to understand this about him.

He's got a different way of expressing what this looks like.

And here, here's what he says.

And these are the famous verses from the wedding, 1 Corinthians 13, verse 1.

1 Corinthians 13:1

Paul says, If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love.

Tuck that sentence away.

Have love.

He says, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging symbol.

Pause here.

Here's what Paul is saying.

Let's define love a little differently for all of us.

If I can speak in the tongues of men or of angels, he's like essentially saying, if I knew every poetic thing to say about whatever religion or religions you tend to believe in, if I knew everything to say about all of them, but no part of my life showcased love.

All I am is a bunch of noise.

So here's a practical application for you, and it's something I think you should think of when you think of the church that you belong to.

You shouldn't judge pastors and preachers on how good their speaking skills are, on how much they know the Bible, because the truth is both of those are skills that can be learned, taught, and developed.

Are you with me on this?

The real litmus test of whether or not you should be a part of a church is actually how does that pastor that you follow treat his wife?

How does he treat his kids?

How does he treat those who work with him?

And the way you find that out is talk to people who really know them.

This should actually be the litmus test of love.

So Paul comes out and he's like, look, if I if I can speak the language of men, if I could even in some ways like interpret the language of angels, which would be this weird spiritual thing, but I'm unloving.

If I don't have love, I'm nothing but noise.

Next verse he goes on and he says, This if I have the gift of prophecy, like if I can hear from God and speak the future and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but I do not have love, there it is again.

He says, I'm nothing.

So so in this verse, here's what he says If I'm the smartest person you've ever met, I'm I've got all the degrees that a person can get.

I've learned all the different languages.

I've done everything one can do to be smart, but my life doesn't exhibit love.

He says, I'm nothing.

This is something that I've been passionate about for years.

Because one of the things I say to Christians, and this always upsets somebody, is that so many Christians are way more educated than they are obedient.

It's like we know all about the things of God, but no part of our life resounds that He's changed us and it's affected us.

Like we treat church like a buffet, oh, feed me, feed me, feed me, feed me.

But if you're not out like working out what you've learned from the Bible, you become a spiritual glutton.

Getting a little quiet today.

Here we go, verse 3.

He says this.

So here's what he's saying.

So if I put on a show with my money and I give it all away, and everyone looks at me and says, Oh, I want to be like that person because they give so much.

But I don't have love.

What good is it?

Here's a practical application for you.

If you reduce your relationship with God to giving in order to get back from God, you've missed the point altogether.

Three times in three verses, he uses this two little, two-word little phrase.

He says, have love.

And here's what he's trying to say to these people.

You need to understand that love, the way we're defining love, is not just internal, it's not just the feeling.

And it's not vertical only, it's not just my relationship with God only.

According to Paul, the way love is expressed in my relationship with God is vertical and horizontal.

That every part of my life, that if God has changed me, if God has redeemed me and made me a different person, it should be experienced and felt by people around me differently.

And that's so contrary to the world in which those people lived.

Then he's gonna put some language to it.

He's like, here, I'm gonna explain what love is.

He says this.

He says, love is patience.

Love is kind.

I like the word here defers.

I want what you want.

It does not envy to celebrate the goodness in others.

It does not close.

It doesn't need a one-up everything.

It is not proud.

Pause here for just a moment.

A fun exercise is to read these verses.

And every time you see the word love, put your name in it and say to your spouse, like, how am I doing at this?

I would say to Liz, Jason is patient.

How am I doing at this?

Hey, hurry up.

How am I doing at this?

Like, and just ask the question, like, how am I actually doing at this?

This is how he defines love.

Then he goes on to say this about love.

It, love, does not dishonor others.

Do your words build or tear down?

It is not self-seeking, because the very definition of love is you before me.

It is not easily angered.

It keeps no record of wrongs.

How fun would it be if this was true in your home?

Then he goes on to say this.

He says, love does not delight in evil, but rejoices with the truth.

And then I love this next part because he's going to give us four things that love does, and three of them make perfect sense to me, and one of them makes no sense to me.

Here they are.

He says, It, love, always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

And I love this, and if I could just be honest with you for a moment, the problem is I can do three of these things without really loving, but there's one that's the hardest one.

Here's what it is it always protects.

I can protect without really caring or loving, but always trust.

Let's skip that one.

Always hopes.

Like I can always want the best for you.

Always perseveres, which means I'm willing to fight through whatever relational strain we have because you're worth it.

But trust.

Like these other three, I can do.

And here's the secret that happy couples know.

It's that trust is it is the foundation of everything.

You see, in every relationship, you're going to experience a gap.

Here's the gap.

It's the gap between what we experience, what we expect, and our experience.

The question is, when what you expect from your spouse doesn't meet what you experience, what do you do in the middle of that?

Like what do you do with your spouse when they say, I'll be home in 20 minutes, and they don't get home for an hour and a half?

Where does your mind go?

When they make some sort of a promise and they fall short of keeping their word.

When you said, for better or worse, for richer or poor, and sickness and health will death those part, and it just feels like you're doing your part, but they're not really carrying their end of the weight.

What do you do?

Here's what most people do.

Assume the worst.

He's an hour late.

Are you are you kidding me right now?

He's probably with someone.

She's probably with that work husband, and we fill in the gaps with the worst.

Can I tell you what happens when this happens?

This becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy because you will be seeking out something to validate you, which pushes your partner into that very behavior.

That's wild.

Here's what happy couples do.

In the gap, we don't assume the worst, but we believe the best.

What does believe the best mean?

Believe the best means when you've committed your life to each other, when there's a gap, and listen to me, there will be a gap.

It means that I choose to trust you.

Silly story.

Some years ago, it was a just a regular afternoon at the house, and Liz comes up to me like with her eyes like deers in the headlight, and she's holding a diamond earring, and she says to me, What is this?

And I said, That, my love, is an earring.

And she says, Whose is it?

And I said, I'm gonna assume yours.

She said, It's not mine.

I've never had an earring that looked like this.

What is this?

And I said, I don't know.

Now here's the truth.

Nothing had happened.

I had never had another girl over to the house.

But in that moment, my heart started to race, thinking, I am in trouble.

My wife's family is Italian.

I will wake up with the horse head in my bed.

And she held this earring.

She had every reason to be worried.

I mean, I get it, but she goes, okay.

Choose to believe you.

Like, really?

And then she stormed off.

Sent a picture to our family, found out it was my sister-in-law's.

And I'm like, girly, no chance I'm going there.

Don't worry about that.

They had dropped it in some sort of family gathering or whatever.

There are gaps in your relationship.

What do you do with it?

Here's what God-honoring happy couples know.

I'm going to find the most generous explanation for each other's behavior.

Then I'm going to choose to believe it.

I'm going to believe it.

Here's the verses we just read a moment ago.

Remember, he says, Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth.

It always protects, always trust.

Other translations of this verse say, believes the best, always hopes, and always perseveres.

Let me try to land the plane quickly here.

Here's the truth, what happens.

Some of us are like, I want to, but I can't.

We have these two massive obstacles to really believing the best and trusting our spouse.

And here's the two obstacles.

It's what what we experience and who we are.

Like, here's the truth, man.

Like, I want to believe it, but I've just seen too much from them.

Or I just know me.

Like I know the real me.

And I I bring all kinds of baggage and pain and hurts and daddy issues and relationship wounds and uh insecurity and difficulty trusting into the relationship.

And I just know me.

How how can I do it?

Let me say this to you one more time.

Happy couples have a choice.

And the choice is what will you put in the gap?

One last thought.

So what happens if you don't?

Like what happens if you assume the worst?

If you don't take option A, you're gonna settle for option B, which is not God's way.

And here's what option B is I'm gonna delight in uncovering mistakes.

I'm gonna thrive on speculation, assume the worst, and just embrace my doubts.

Who wants that?

Who would sign up for this?

Who thinks that your marriage would get better if you or your spouse just went full throttle on these four thoughts?

Certainly none of us.

So what if we just made this decision?

That we're going to be people that make this decision.

Number one, happy couples understand I can live open-handedly, generously in my marriage, and the generosity scale is what drives uh happiness in a way I can't even begin to wrap my mind around.

Number two is this when there's a gap, and there will be a gap, there will be lots of gaps in your relationship.

I fill in the gap by believing the best, leaning into trust.

See what happens.

Can I give you a challenge?

Then I'm gonna pray for you.

Ready?

Just try this for one week.

Just just just for one week, just assume the best in your spouse.

For one week, if you call and they don't answer right away, just assume the best.

For one week, if you text them and text them again and again and again and they don't text back right away, just try it for a week.

Assume the best.

Come up with the most generous explanation of the story and apply it to your partner.

When your partner spends some money, assume the best.

When there's a gap in your relationship, assume the best.

And watch how it changes things for you.

Here's what I want to do today to end.

I want to pray for you.

And as we worship and thank God for how generous He is, I just want to challenge you to say, God, would you open my heart to be that kind of generous person?

And let's be the kind of church who just throws around love and generosity on our spouse like confetti.

Would you bow your head and close your eyes?

So, God, give us courage.

Courage to love you.

Courage to understand that our relationship with you was never intended to be only vertical, but it was meant to be experienced horizontally, which means in our relationship.

God, give us the courage to be the kind of people who put Paul's words from 1 Corinthians 13 into practice.

If I live my life and do all these amazing things, but I don't have love, my life is nothing.

It's nothing but noise.

It is complete waste.

May we be the kind of people who don't say, God, we love you, but we treat those around us as less than.

That may we be the kind of people who in all of our relationships, but today specifically at home with our spouse, may we be the kind of people who live generously and who fill in the gaps with believing the best.

We thank you for that, God.

God, I pray that you'll do a miracle in so many relationships.

Relationships that feel like they've gone cold, relationships that feel separated or starting to feel stale.

God, would you do a miracle in those relationships?

And as we do these things, would you rekindle that fire?

We thank you for it, God.

With your head still bowed and eyes still closed, if you're here today and you don't know if you're right with God, maybe that means you've never started with God, or maybe you just feel like you've walked away, but today you need to make things right with Him.

I want to give you this moment.

If you know you need to start or restart with God, would you raise your hand right now?

If this is you, thanks.

Yep.

Thank you.

North Lakeland, I'm talking to you.

If you need to start or restart with God, this is for you.

Thank you.

If this is you, I'm going to invite you to pray this prayer with me.

Praying a prayer changes everything when you mean it with your heart.

Would you say, Jesus, today I give you my life?

Would you be my Lord and Savior?

I thank you that Jesus, you came into this world and died on the cross in my place.

And because of that sacrifice you made, and because you rose again from the dead, I believe you can forgive my sins, and I believe you can make my heart new.

So, Jesus, would you take my life?

I give it all to you, and from this day forward I'll follow you.

I love you.

I give you my life for the rest of my life.

And it's in your name we pray, Jesus.

Amen.

Church, fam, we just had people everywhere.

Pray to make that decision.

Come on, let's celebrate, everybody.