CC Midweek

[00:00:00] Speaker A: Hey, welcome to midweek. How's everyone doing? That was a tired Wednesday night. [00:00:07] Speaker B: Woo. [00:00:09] Speaker A: We are kicking off a brand new series and it is a relationship series. And when we were planning this, I've had the privilege of watching Lex and Jer from their early relationship to when they awkwardly would see each other at church and both thought each other was cute but didn't know how to talk each other. Those are good stories. Come catch me after if you want to know more. But I've watched them constantly put God first in their relationship. I've watched them turn towards each other. You are about to hear from two people who love God with all their heart and who are for each other. And so as you listen to this relationship series tonight, I encourage you to think about the relationships in your life. If it's a husband or a wife, if it's just friendships, if it's dating season or if you are, you're not with anyone but you long to be. I think when we prepare our hearts for what God has for us, something really good happens. So would you guys give a huge round of applause for my beautiful Lex and her handsome jeer. [00:01:29] Speaker C: Let me welcome God in this room for us real quick. Heavenly Father, I just thank you for this opportunity. I thank you that I get to do this with my best friend. We're so grateful. We love you. I thank you for everyone who made it here tonight and I pray that you would just work through us and give us the right words so that we can reach some hearts tonight. We love you and praise you and thank you and it's in your son's name we pray. Amen. Hey guys, how are we doing tonight? That's not bad, not bad. Lex and I are super honored and grateful to be up here. And like I said, I'm just grateful that I get to do this with my best friend. And I hope that you guys are as excited as we are to dive into this series. It's a two week series and Lex and I get the opportunity to preach tonight. And then Doc and Sharon are going to be closing this sermon series up. So it's going to be awesome, guys. And if you don't know me, my name is Jeremiah. I run the high school program here at the church and it kind of gives me the okay to act like a high school student for the most part. But I do like one thing. And then Lex on the other hand, she runs the worship. She also partially runs the high school. She does a lot of like the social media and tech stuff and preaches Goes on mission trips. She does a lot more than I do here. But yeah, give it up for Lex. But I wanted to start tonight by telling a little bit of our past. And like before Lex and I met, we couldn't be any more opposite. Like you know how they say opposites attract? Well, we were as opposite as it gets. I wasn't the best student in school. My mom's here somewhere tonight. She can attest to that. I was very bad at doing homework. I would rush through tests and not even pay attention to what I'm writing. I just wanted to be done and out of class. I skipped school a lot. And then outside of school I was the type of kid who would do whatever I could to get the adrenaline pumping, whether it was dangerous or eventually led to like substances and stuff. But I was just like wanted to do stuff was a yes man would do anything and most of the time it was dangerous. Where Lex on the other hand was probably a pretty good student in school. Like got all A's. I know she got like a four point something in college. She loved the opportunity to learn. And I know Lex is not someone who likes to do things that would harm her. She likes to stay more on the safe side. But just as it goes, like magnets opposite attract to each other. Right. And Lex and I met here at the church as one should. Right. And now we're here. And this year is going to be our seven year wedding anniversary, which is awesome. But our relationship has been very beautiful. But there have been times that have been extremely hard for us. And we aren't sitting up here today pretending that we got this all figured out at all. And we're not sitting up here trying to hide anything or sugarcoat anything. Like we've made mistakes and we are up here to show the faithfulness of God in our marriage and what he can do in your marriage as well. There have been a lot of days that Lex and I felt like we didn't know what was going to happen in our relationship where we felt like there were days where we were hopeless and we didn't know if we were even going to make it in our marriage. And I, I share my story often. So if you've heard me preach a couple times, you've heard this story a couple times. And I'm sorry, but I'm a recovering addict and it started with me in high school just like smoking weed. And then by my senior year I started using opiates. And then year couple years and years go by and I was just struggling with addiction and depression and pain. And it was just like I was trying to get sober, but I didn't know what to do. And I was feeling like I was just throwing years of my life away. Like, years would go by, and I was still doing the exact same thing. And I was watching all these people, like, get good jobs and go into college. And I was just struggling, depressed, and in pain. And my addiction, it led me to other addictions in my life. It led me to start looking at things that I shouldn't be looking at and just consuming things that were making me a reckless and selfish person. And it led into all my relationships. And I went through treatment finally, a couple times, actually. And I finally stopped using the opiates, but I didn't. Thank you. [00:06:42] Speaker B: That's my sister. [00:06:45] Speaker C: But I didn't stop smoking weed. And I had, like, these other addictions. I stopped using opiates, but I didn't fill it with the right things. So these other addictions, like, still kind of followed me for a couple. Couple years. And it eventually followed into our relationship and into our marriage. And then I was, like, hiding the fact that I was still doing these other things. I was hiding that I was smoking and still looking at these things. And slowly the truth started to get exposed, and I couldn't hide it anymore. And I felt like there was a point where I couldn't do this. I knew God had to do something in my life, and I had to get serious about my faith. And I stepped into that role that he was calling for me. I had to become the man that God wanted me to be, the man that I knew I was meant to be. And it was a very long battle for me. And God knew the plans that he had for me, and he knew that my fight would not be for nothing. So this March, actually, in one month, will be my five years of being sober. And that's because of our Father in heaven. But now I get to use this story of my past. I get to use this to help others who have struggled with the same thing or are going through some of those problems that I had to go through. You see, God has been the author of our story. And by his grace, we get to sit up here as best friends and share what he has done and what his beautiful design for marriage is. So if you are here tonight, or if you're listening or watching online and you're in a season of hopelessness or a season that you feel like there's no way out, there's no way forward, we want to Offer you some encouragement and testify that God can mend what feels like it is unfixable. He can save what feels like it's beyond repair. When you allow him in and live the life that God is calling you to live, your relationship can not only be repaired and, but it can become a beautiful partnership that cannot be broken. So we're going to talk about a few verses in the Bible that are a little difficult. And I hope that you are open, you open your hearts and just are able to receive that. We are able to receive what God is trying to speak to us. And before we get into the scripture, I'm just letting you know, Lex and I are going to use this verbiage of marriage a lot. But I promise you this will apply to everyone. Whether you're married, dating, single, this will apply to you. And we just want to talk about this, how it can apply in your life. And you can become a better man because of this. Not just a better husband, but you can just become a better man based on this scripture or a better woman. [00:09:57] Speaker B: So, yeah, so we are going to look at Ephesians 5, chapter 5, verses 21 through 33. And I think at first glance, some of these verses can feel a little bit uncomfortable. I know that when I stumble across it, especially before I studied it, I always felt a little bit uncomfortable. And I think that if we don't understand what the text is trying to tell us, then we put our own understanding and our own context, and we're misunderstanding what Paul is trying to say. And these verses have historically been plucked out of context and distorted and sometimes used as a weapon. And so tonight, I want to help us see that when we read these verses the way that they were intended to be read, we can have an outline for a beautiful, healthy, wonderful marriage. And so we're looking at Ephesians 5, verses 21 through 33. And I want to read a few verses and then give us a little bit of context. And so I want to start at verse 22. I think I've got it on the screen. It starts by saying, wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord, because the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church. He is the savior of the body. Now, as the church submits to Christ, so also wives are to submit to their husbands and everything. When we read the New Testament, it's really important for us to remember that it wasn't written in English, it was written in Greek. And in the original Greek text and the oldest manuscripts that we have verse 22. Can you pop it back up for me, Gage? Beginning of that, verse 22 does not have a verb. So where we see wives, submit to your husband as to the Lord, in the original, oldest manuscript would actually read something like wives to your husband as to the Lord. And so when that happens, what we have to do is that we carry the verb from the previous sentence over into the next sentence. And so we need to look at verse 21 and what verb is in that sentence? It says submitting to one another in the fear of Christ. Submitting to one another mutual in the fear or reverence of Christ. And so this verbal idea of submitting in verse 22, wives submit to your husband is understood to be carried over from the submitting to one another found in verse 21. And so it's this idea of mutual submission and in the instruction for wives to their own husband is framed within this overarching idea that it's mutual submission out of reverence for Christ. We are mutually submitting to each other out of our reverence, our fear, our respect, our love of Christ. And I think submit sometimes has not a super positive connotation when we hear that word. It's not super positive. And so I want to help us to frame this word in the biblical idea of submit. And so I want to define it like this tonight. I want to define it as submit means to put your partner above yourself and seeking to honor Christ. And so when we are mutually submitting to each other, we are seeking to put each other above ourselves and seeking to honor Christ. When we submit, it's voluntary. It's saying, I'm choosing to put you above me. I'm choosing to put you first. I'm choosing to humble myself in this marriage. It's saying, I'm seeking your highest good above my own. I'm putting you first. I like to think about it this way. There's a pastor, his name is Andy Stanley, and he talked about it's constantly racing to the back of the line. If you were in a race, it's constantly putting them first. I want you to win this race. I want you to succeed. I want you to go ahead of me. And so we're both constantly racing to the back of the line, me racing behind him, him racing behind me. And we're both trying to put the other first, and we're putting our partner first out of our love and respect for Jesus Christ. And so that means we should all married, dating, single, we should all be submitting to our Lord Jesus Christ. First that we are called as Christians to humble ourselves before the authority of our Lord, to say, it is not my will that I want to be done, but it's your will. I want you to be the king of my heart. I want you to be the one that directs my path. I want you to be the one that is my leader. Wherever you go, I want to follow you. In the Book of James, he tells us to submit to God and resist the devil. In First Peter, he tells us to humble ourselves under the mighty hand of God. Jesus himself prays, not my will, but yours be done to the Father. The book of Proverbs reminds us to trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding, but in all your ways. Acknowledge Him. Submit to him, and he will make straight your path. It is found over and over and over again in the Bible that we are to place ourselves under the leadership of Christ. And so if you're single, if you're dating, if you're married, that is the first person that you submit to. You submit first to Christ. Put him first. Invite him into your decision making. Live obediently to Him. Surrender all. And if you're dating right now, if you are in the process of going on dates or you've been seeing someone for a while, it's really important that you're looking for someone who's doing this. It's really important that you're looking for someone who not only just says they believe in God or they go to church because it makes you happy, or they are. Their relationship to God is tied only to and what you want. But it's important to look for somebody who has a personal, deep relationship with Jesus, that it's not tied to you and what you want, but it's tied to their love for Him. As someone who doesn't just have a Sunday faith, someone who reads their Bible, someone who trusts in his path, somebody who bears good fruit, someone who reflects the quality of Jesus, someone who's gentle and lowly, someone who seeks to serve and not to be served, someone who has a real relationship and history with God, someone who chooses to submit themselves to the Lord and are willing to put him above everything else. And I would also encourage you to if you're dating or you're single and you want to be married, that's something that's the desire of your heart. I would highly encourage you to look for somebody who has the same values as you. And in order to do that, you have to know your values first. And so think about what you want out of life, like what you genuinely want, not what you're already in, not the box that you're already in in your life, not the path that you're already going towards, but the ultimate. If I get this one chance, I get this one shot, what do I want out of my life? What kind of marriage do I want? What kind of person do I want to be? Do you want kids? Where do you want to live? Is it important to you that your future family prioritizes going to church on the weekend? Is it important to you that your kids are raised in the kind of way where they know Christ? What kind of school district do you want your kids to grow up in? Do you want a homeschool? Do you value travel and adventure? Do you want your kids to be. How do you want your kids to be raised? Do you value living on land or do you want to live in the city or a suburb? What kind of job do you want? Do you value honoring your body with the food that you eat and the lifestyle that you live? Do you value humor or do you value deep conversations? I just, I encourage you, get specific about what you value. Get specific about what's important to you. Get specific about the kind of future that you want. And then when you're dating, these can be first date conversations, like, this is what I'm looking for out of my life. This is the man I want to be, this is the woman that I want to be. These are the things that I'm dreaming of. This is the future that I imagine for my family. Is that compatible with what you're thinking? And then, you know, you know, it's no worries, it's not compatible, no worries. You know, it was, thanks for dinner, you know, but it's super important that you're looking for those compatible values because it's going to save you a lot of hurt and it's going to save you a lot of disappointment. And you can really fine tune your dating life and say like, yeah, this person, we're not compatible, but, you know, maybe this person, we're compatible. And it doesn't have to be perfect, you don't have to be compatible in every single way. But the big ones, you know, the really big ones, it's really important. And so verse 21, it's saying we're submitting to each other, we're putting each other first because we love and we revere Christ. And so the other context that we have to look at is the things that Paul said before he ever even mentioned submission in chapter 5, in verse, in chapter 4 of Ephesians, Paul talks about walking in a manner worthy of our calling, with humility and with gentleness and patience and bearing with one another in love. Chapter five starts with him calling us to be imitators of Christ. He's encouraging us to walk in love in the way that Christ loved us. He gave himself sacrificially, and so this is the context that he's setting up. These are the things that he's calling us to do before he ever calls us to submit. And everything we do in our Christian life should resemble Christ. Christ's behavior. It should resemble humility and gentleness and patience and love and submission. We are called to be imitators of God and then to submit to one another. It's both people seeking the other's best in Christ's honor. So when we're looking at this biblical submission, I don't want us to picture, like a harsh commander and his soldiers. I don't want us to picture a king and his subjects. But. But instead we should look to the perfect example of humility and submission, which is Christ, who perfectly submitted to the will of the Father. So, wives, that means, I think we have to take an honest look at how we're acting and how we're treating our husband. Do you have a history of being more flexible or history of being more controlling? I know for me it's definitely the latter. Do you have a history of being more encouraging or a history of being more critical? If God is calling us to voluntarily humble ourselves in our marriage, to consider our husband above ourself, I think that means we're going to have to change some of our habits. Our husband is not our child. He's our partner. He's our best friend. And when we're having conversations with him, we need to remind ourselves who we're talking to. Because there's been times where I talk to Jer in ways that I would never talk to my best friend. It matters how you talk to him. When you belittle him, he's going to shut down. But when you encourage him, he's going to rise to leadership. And if we skip to the end of the section, verse 33, he says, to sum up, each one of you is to love his wife as himself, and the wife is to respect her husband. When you don't respect your husband, I think it's pretty obvious when we see couples that the wife just has no respect for her husband. When we don't respect him, we're talking to him like he's the worst version of himself. But when we respect him, we're talking to him like he's the best version of himself. And there's been times where I had a really hard time feeling respect for Jer at times in our marriage where I just. I couldn't feel respect, and I had to encourage myself to speak with him as though he was the best version of himself, to speak to him in the kind of way where I was calling out the man that I wanted him to be and not talking down to the one that I was disappointed in. And so if you're in this season where you're just struggling and you're. You're struggling with having respect, you're struggling with talking kindly, you're struggling with saying not being short, with being patient and gentle and kind, then I encourage you. Remember why you fell in love with him. Remember the traits that you felt so fondly toward. Maybe it was that he was hardworking or gentle or loyal or passionate or funny, kind, charming, good dad. Whatever you come up with, talk to him from that context. There's a quote that I heard that I really loved. It says, a foolish wife speaks to the fool in her husband, and she gets the fool back. But the wise wife speaks to the king and her husband, and she gets the king back. If you want to see leadership and growth in your husband, if you want him to initiate health in your home, if you want him to cherish you and to love you, well, you have to start talking to him like a leader and stop talking to him like he's a fool. And when Paul says husband is the head of the wife, I think what he's really talking about is leadership. And the man is called to be the leader in the home. And when we treat him with respect and we talk to him in the kind of way that calls the best out of him, he feels more equipped to lead the home towards health. And I think we all really do desire for our husbands to lead us to health, to initiate the good things, but we have to talk to him ways that are encouraging instead of ways that are criticizing. And we have so much influence. Moms, wives, we have so much influence on our home. And when we're treating our husband the way that God is calling us to, our marriage is healthier, our home has more peace, and our kids feel the most safe. [00:27:54] Speaker C: So Paul has been setting up this idea of this mutual submission. And he started with what it looks like for the wives, and now he's going to transition to what it looks like for the husbands. So, boys, you're going to want to strap yourselves in. We're about to become men here. It's going to start if you don't have your Bibles open or you're not following along. It's Ephesians 5, starting at verse 20, 25. It says, Husbands, love your wives. Just as Christ loved the church and gave himself for her to make her holy, cleansing her with the washing of water by the Word. He did this to. He did this to present the Church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or anything like that, but holy and blameless. In the same way, husbands are to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife, loves himself. For no one ever hates his own flesh, but provides and cares for it, just as Christ does for the Church, since we are members of his body. For this reason a man shall leave his father and his mother and be joined to his wife, and the two will become one flesh. This mystery is profound, but I'm talking about Christ and the Church. To sum up, each one of you is to love his wife as himself, and the wife is to respect her husband. So wives are called to honor their husbands through genuine respect. And husbands are called to cherish and honor their wives through true love. And at first glance, when the men read their part, it seems like we got the easy part right. Like when you first look at it, it feels like we got the easy part. But the kind of love Paul is talking about here, and the quality of that love is a heavy burden of responsibility in the role of leadership. And Paul is. There's. In the Greek, there's a lot of different ways to describe different types of love. And Paul in this verse is talking about agape love. And this kind of love seeks the best in the other person, even at the price of our own comfort, our own safety, our own benefit. Paul is saying husbands are called to an unconditional, self sacrificial kind of love. And he points to Christ as our perfect example. Christlike love looks like surrendering, sanctifying, forgiving, honoring. Christ surrendered himself to death on the cross for our good. He found us and helped us become more and more like him. And he forgave our sins so that we can be with him in eternity. And he perfects us with his own radiant glory. Because we are called to love like Christ, our love for our wives should move us to surrender what we want. The selfishness that we want to let go of that in order to meet her needs. Our submission looks like exercising this extreme humility and giving up whatever is is needed for the sake of our wives. Men, if your love isn't sacrificial, I promise you, your wife knows it. When I was using and putting the things that I wanted first, I knew that Lex not only knew it, but I knew that she felt unsafe every single day. And if you're unwilling to sacrifice for her, I promise you guys, she can tell. She knows that you're unwilling. And it makes it a lot harder for your wife to submit. So, guys, we have to love in such a way that makes it easy for our wives in a way that we're not even trying or worrying about what they're doing. We're just loving them in such a way that it just makes it easy for her to want to submit to us. We have to be the men that are worthy for what God is calling out of us, for the leadership that God is calling out of us. It doesn't mean that whatever we say goes. It doesn't mean that we don't make decisions together. It just means that God is holding us accountable to the health of our marriage, the health of our home, our families. We are called to lead our family to Christ. That's what God calls out of men. So love your wives as Christ loved the church. Now, what does this look like? It looks like encouraging her growth. It looks like encouraging the things that she enjoys, that she loves. Christ's relationship with the church promotes spiritual growth. And we are called to do the same with our wives. We are called to help her grow in her relationship to Christ. We're called to help our kids grow in their relationship to Christ. And this is not done by forcing in any way. This is done by leading by example. If we wake up every morning and we read our Bible, our wife, our kids, are more inclined to want to do the exact same thing. And I want to be the one to initiate. I want to be the first one to say I forgive you or say that I'm sorry. I want to help Lex when she's going through struggles or hurts. And I want to be at her side when she's dealing with wounds of anything. I want her to feel loved and cherished, and I want to be the one to lead her in it all. And for our daughter, Selah can never talk about her. It's too hard. I want her to see firsthand what it looks like to have parents who live by this scripture. To have parents who. To have a father who loves his wife well, to have a father that when she gets older and she's 50 and finally decides to get married. That she has a perfect example of what a man should be doing in his life. Life, how a man should love. Maybe 60, I don't know. Yeah, we'll see. But leading in a home is a huge responsibility that God has given us. It's a huge responsibility that we are called to lead the way that Christ led. And we are reminded in the Gospels that Christ did not come to be served, but he came to serve others. And that is what we are called to do in our marriage. Paul goes on to say that a man is to love his wife as he is to love his own body. And sometimes this might not resonate with us. Cause sometimes we're going through insecurities. Or maybe we don't like the way we are, or don't like the way we look, or we don't treat ourselves the way that we're supposed to treat ourselves. But if you think about it, we're always thinking about ourselves, men and women. Whether we're thinking about what we want for dinner, whether we're thinking about what sports to watch or who hurt us, or we're thinking about how we were disrespected. Or maybe we're going through something in life that just feels unfair. Paul is saying to care for your wife. To care for her in the same way that you think about yourself, care for her, wants her, needs like you care and think about your own. Nourish her, cherish her, fulfill her heart's desires, deepen her love for the Lord, affirm her, show her affection and provide for her. And I know one thing that can be hard for wives is if you have a really strong relationship with Christ but your husband doesn't. And in this scenario, the wife is called to lead the family. The wife is called to lead the husband to Christ in a humble and honoring way. And another thing that can be hard is when a husband abusive or harsh or treats his wife or family in an ungodly way. And I want to share with you this idea that John Stott wrote about this situation. He says we have to be very careful not to overstate this biblical teaching on authority. It does not mean that the authority of husbands is unlimited or that wives are required to give unconditional obedience. No, the submission required is to God's authority delegated through human beings. If therefore, they misuse their God given authority by commanding what God forbids or forbidding what God commands, then our duty is to no longer submit, but to refuse to do so. We are called to lead in the kind of way that makes it easy to. For our wives to want to follow us, to want to be led by us. The kind of way that brings health into our homes. The kind of way that makes our wives and our family feel safe and cherished. I want to call all of us men to something better tonight. I want to call us to step up and to lead. Well, to lead the way that Christ led. To put him at the throne of our life and to love our wives sacrificially in the kind of way that we are voluntarily putting her first, making ourselves feel uncomfortable so that she can feel comfortable. Guys, I'm calling us to provide. If it's financial debt or something. I'm calling us to lead our wives to Christ. I'm calling us to lead our families to Christ. To grab her hand and want to pray with her and ask her to read the Bible with me, to ask our daughter to pray with us and to read the Bible together. Be a man of integrity. Prune out the things that are in your life that are bringing you down, the things that are causing you to be lazy or whether it's addiction or excuses, prune those things out of your life. Take care of yourself and your family. God trusted you to take care of them. And we have to step up in that responsibility that God placed on us men. This is what we're called to. This lifestyle will lead to a marriage that will sustain, a marriage that will last. A marriage that when we get off work and we get home, we want to get out of the car as fast as possible and give our wife a kiss and grab our daughter and pay. A marriage that we are just excited to be a part of. And we have some application pieces that are some ways that you can start to either connect or repair or reunite something in a healthy way. [00:39:33] Speaker B: Yeah. So Jer and I went through this book called Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work. It's by John Gottman, who's just a leading expert in marriage. He's awesome. He's done such good work to help marriages repair and get back together. And we highly recommend the book. And in it there is a section, and it's called Love Mapping. And the basic idea is that there is strength in knowing your partner better. And so he put questions together to ask each other so that you can grow in your own understanding of your spouse. [00:40:10] Speaker C: And. [00:40:10] Speaker B: And I think I have a QR code that I want to toss up. This is our resource guide. So if you want to scan that there's Going to be a few pages of some questions. This is what I want you to do, is I want you to go on a date, maybe multiple, and ask each other these questions. I want you to be open and honest, to genuinely listen to your partner's response, to have a posture of humility. But when you're talking through these questions, don't get defensive, but go in with the motivation to honestly get to know your partner better. Even if you've been together for decades, I think there's going to be some questions on here that maybe you've never thought to ask. And if you're single, at the very bottom of the resource guide, there are a list of values. So my challenge for you would be to find a quiet space, maybe go get a cup of coffee, and write down what you really want out of your life. There's words that are on this resource guide, but when you put the word down, make a list of what it means to you. Why is that value? Why does that value matter to you? Why do you want to put that as a priority in your life? What does that mean to you? And write down what your values are. What are your priorities in life? What do you want to get out of it? And I think that it's something that I thought about a lot before we started dating. But when I met him, I think it was something that you were really just starting to think about. [00:42:06] Speaker C: Yeah, I don't think I even knew what the word value meant before we started dating. I just didn't ever really think about my values in life at all. And I never thought I was gonna get married. And until I met Lex, and I was just kind of like walking in life with no direction and made a lot of bad decisions and was still coasting even after Lex. So I definitely recommend that you figure this out before you start dating. But if you're already dating, you can still go through and write your values down and talk about them with the person you're dating. And if you're married, it's not too late. Find your values that you have in common. Find out if one of you likes going on adventures and the other likes to stay at home. That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about find your core values and try to realign your marriage. If it feels like something's falling apart in there. Figure out what you both love about yourself and what you love about each other. [00:43:12] Speaker B: Yeah, I think marriage is God's good design, and he wants you to be in a marriage that's fulfilling A marriage that represents him well, a marriage that advances his kingdom, a marriage that helps us look more like Jesus. And so I encourage you to fight, put the work in, seek him in all that you do, and experience what a healthy marriage can look like. Would you pray for us? [00:43:44] Speaker C: Yeah. Heavenly Father, I just thank you for this opportunity of being up here tonight. I pray that as a man and a woman, we can look at this scripture and try to abide in what you tell us. Father, I pray that we can just learn to love each other in healthy ways. We can learn to move to the back of the line and put our spouse, whoever it is, in our relationships, in our life. We can put others first, Father, and we can focus on you above all things. We can submit to you above all things. Father, I'm just grateful that I got to do this sermon with my best friend. And I just pray that your words touch somebody in this room or somebody online. Father, I'm thankful for everyone here, and I pray that we all get home safe. It's in your son's name we pray. Amen.