Hey, what is up one and all, Pastor Rory here.

We are delighted that you have tuned in today for week number three of a series we titled, Relationship Killers.

Now, before we begin today, I actually wanna pause and celebrate something very special that's been happening in the life of our church.

This past week, we wrapped up our fifth summer camp.

It started with our boys' leadership course and our girls' leadership course.

Then there was two more.

junior high camp, and this past week, we actually ran two camps at the same time, our high school camp and our kids camp up at Forrest Home.

And to say that God showed up would be a drastic understatement.

They say that a picture is worth a thousand words.

So take a look at what God has been doing in the life of our young people.

It's been absolutely incredible to see so many kids take next steps in their faith, choose to trust Jesus for the very first time, In fact, at our last one night, there were over 600 junior high and high school students that showed up.

And then last week at our young adults gathering, there was over 400 young adults that showed up and nine of them got baptized and it's the summer.

This is typically the low season and God is just continuing to show up and show off in our midst.

So I wanted to make sure we pause and we celebrate what God is doing in the life of our young people.

Now, speaking of camps, I got to head up and hang out at kids camp a little bit and actually had to take my son and his buddy Evan a little bit early from camp because we needed to race down to San Diego for their end of season baseball tournament.

And so we grabbed the boys and we're heading down the mountain and we're going through this city called Menifee.

I like to call it Middle Earth.

It's pretty rough.

It was a little shady and we had to stop at a Circle K to go to the bathroom.

So we stop at the Circle K and we get through the door and again, it's a little shady.

It's a little sketch.

It's a little late at night.

I kind of get this weird feeling that something's going on, but I got to keep my eye on the boys.

So they go and use the restroom.

I'm trying to watch my car, but I'm not doing a very good job of it.

And sure enough, after the boys go to the bathroom and we grab a couple snacks, We come out of the door and my luggage has been stolen.

Yes, my luggage and a car mat has been stolen and along with it, something very near and dear to my heart.

In fact, if you've seen me preach on this stage over the last seven years, you know that this very special clothing item is really near and dear to my heart.

What am I talking about?

Yes, friends, my jean jacket was taken and I was devastated.

I was heartbroken, but then I realized, then something really cool happened.

We got down to San Diego and you know, your pastor here, he can do more than just preach.

He can actually coach a mean nine U travel ball baseball team.

We actually went to the tournament, actually ended up winning the entire thing.

And my son actually won the MVP for the championship game.

It was really, really ridiculously awesome.

And I'll just have to go to Macy's and get a new G jacket.

Anyways, enough about me.

relationship killers.

And in week one, Pastor Michael, he talked about negative scripts and how they can kill relationships.

And if you were here last week, you know that he also then spoke about the importance of Sabbath, of resting.

You learned that naps are a spiritual thing.

How cool is that, that a nap can be a spiritual thing?

Well, today what I wanna do is I wanna talk about people, groups, that if you believe these lies, your relationships, they're going to be hard and they might actually be killed.

But before we do that, I'd love to pray and then we'll dive in.

Would you pray with me?

Lord Jesus, thank you for your living and active word.

Thank you that it meets us right here in this space and that it never returns void.

It always accomplishes that which it sets out to do.

I pray now by the power of your Holy Spirit, Lord, that you would start changing us from the inside out today, conforming us into your image, making us more like you, because ultimately that is the goal.

We wanna leave the four walls of this place, a new people.

And it's in your name we pray.

And everybody said, amen.

Now, how many of you know that music, music can take you back to all sorts of places and times, even particular songs.

Like whenever I hear these lyrics, one, two, three, and to the four, Snoop Doggy Dog and Dr.

Dre is at the door, I'm immediately transported back to 1995 in my friend Roland's basement.

His basement was awesome.

He had a Super Nintendo.

He had a Sega Genesis.

We would dunk on his little Nerf hoop.

He lived right across the street from the community park and pool where we would play basketball for hours on end, play baseball for hours on end, and then go cool off in the pool.

He even lived just a block away from the local 7-Eleven where we would go get Slurpees.

Those were some of the best summers of my life.

And every time I hear that song, I'm transported back there.

Or any time I...

I hear a 90s country song, maybe something like from Alan Jackson.

Oh, way down yonder on the Chattahoochee.

See, you guys think that Pastor Michael's the only one who can sing, but this guy can sing a little bit too.

No, I'm just kidding.

I'm just kidding.

I hear an Alan Jackson song or a Garth Brooks song.

I got friends in low places.

Really, I can't sing.

We'll leave that to Michael.

Or I hear a Dixie Chicks song.

I know they're a little controversial or something, but like wide open spaces.

Whenever I hear a 90s song, I'm transported to my mom's Camry.

See, my mom loved country music and she was always listening to 94.1 KMPS.

And I remember all the times that she would be driving me to a practice or after practice and we would go have these McDonald's McFlurry runs and I'm just transported to that place and music takes me there.

And then there's this other genre of music.

It's probably perhaps my favorite genre of music is 90s R&B.

And you guys know the greats.

I'm talking Usher.

I'm talking Genuine.

I'm talking Jodeci.

Like it's the good stuff.

But there's this little lesser known R&B singer from the 90s.

His name is Kevin Campbell and he's got this song called Can We Talk.

And whenever I hear that song I'm transported to the year 2008.

and I'm sitting in the hotel lobby of the Grand Floridian Hotel at Disney World.

See, my friend, he had this Disney Vacation Club package thing and he was able to get us into the Grand Floridian for free somehow.

He just said, if you can get the money for the airplane ticket, we've got this hotel and it's amazing.

And so I said, man, I'm in.

And I had just finished my first year of vocational ministry as a youth pastor, Wanted a little break so I said, yep, I'll buy the ticket.

We fly to Florida.

We're staying at the Grand Floridian with another group from our church and and while I'm sitting in the hotel lobby, it was late one night.

I couldn't get this this one girl off my mind.

She had just joined our small group a couple months before.

And as I started listening to her interact in group and hearing her heart for students, she was a high school math teacher.

Man, I was just getting really intrigued by her.

There had been a lot of people trying to set me up.

They're always trying to set up the youth pastor, but I wasn't interested.

But this girl, there was something different about her.

I could tell that she had a genuine passion for Jesus and a love for people.

And I had to get to know her.

So there was this new fangled contraption an iPhone that I just got my hands on and there's this newfangled thing called an app and I had this thing called a Facebook app and on the Facebook app you could message people and so I decided that night in the Grand Floridian hotel lobby that I was just gonna I was gonna shoot Laura a message and so I just I just sent her a little message on my Facebook app and lo and behold the next day she responded with a message back.

Now that was day one of the trip.

Day two, I responded again with a couple more sentences and then she responded back with a paragraph.

And what happened is over the course of seven days, we began to write novels to each other.

We were learning each other's life story.

In fact, by the end of that seven day trip, we had 27 pages of Facebook notes that we had written to each other.

about our dreams and our passions, about life experiences.

And when we got back, man.

We actually fell madly in love.

Eight months later, we were married in front of 700 people, if you can believe it or not.

And then along came four children.

And on August 14th of this year, we're gonna actually celebrate 14 years of wedded bliss.

But I would be lying to you if I would tell you that it's all been bliss.

Because if you're married, you know that it's not all bliss all the time.

No, marriage and relationships, they can be very, very hard, but they can also be really glorious.

In fact, I don't know if you know this, your relationships can actually be a picture of the gospel.

See, we have a God who loves us so much that he came in and he entered into the human story and he lived this passion filled life for people, but it was hard.

He was betrayed, he was kicked out of towns and ultimately he went to a cross and he bled and he died for the people of the world so that they could be set free from their sin and know the life that is truly life.

It's this hard life, but it was also glorious.

Your marriage, your relationships, it can actually be a picture of the gospel.

But we'd be lying if we were to tell you that relationships, they're not hard.

No, in fact, they're very hard.

They're very hard.

And so what I wanna do right now is I wanna share with you three lies that if you believe them, your relationships are gonna be hard.

In fact, your relationships might be destroyed or killed.

And I wanna talk to three specific people groups and I actually wanna start with single people.

Now, if you have something to take notes with, I wanna encourage you to pull it out.

right now.

Write some notes down.

Even if you're not single and you're married, these are going to be good for you.

Even when we're talking about singles and when I'm talking about marriages.

Guess what?

Single people, it's going to be important for you to jot down some notes.

So take some notes right now, jot some things down because this is going to help you have better relationships and thrive in a world that can be very, very difficult.

So here's the first lie, and this is again, specifically for those people who are single right now.

Don't believe this lie, that the goal of your life should be marriage.

Don't believe the lie that the goal of your life should be marriage.

In fact, if you were to read the Bible, you would find out that there are scores of people who actually live single lives and did amazing things for God.

People like Joseph and Ruth, Jeremiah, Lydia, John the Baptist who prepared the way for the Lord.

Oh, and by the way, lest we forget that we actually worship a man who is a 33 year old virgin, Jesus.

And then there's this other guy, his name's Paul.

And he penned two thirds of the New Testament.

And he writes this when it comes to singlehood.

He says, I wish that all of you were as I am.

But each of you has your own gift from God.

One has this gift, another has that.

Now to the unmarried and the widows I say, it is good for them to stay unmarried as I do." Now, what is Paul saying here?

He's saying that singleness is actually a gift.

Now some of you might be thinking to yourself right now, I want to exchange that gift.

No, no, no, no, no.

No, he says singleness is a gift.

Now, why would singleness be a gift?

If you were to continue to read 1 Corinthians 7, you would find out that singleness is a gift because you can live in undivided devotion to God.

you'll have time to actually discern the gifts and the talents that God has given you and leverage them to advance his kingdom.

You as a single person have a greater ability than someone who is married to actually say yes to things, to serve at a camp, to go on that mission trip, to be the hands and feet of Jesus because you're not distracted, crazy enough, with marriage or with kids.

You can live in undivided devotion and passion towards God.

And it really is a gift.

There's a pastor and author, his name's John Chapman.

And he said that there was a number of friends who would love to take him on long walks.

And they said, hey, if you really want to be a pastor that can preach to the people and reach the masses, hey, you got to be married.

And then he commented in one of his books, he wrote this.

He said, it would have been great if those friends had actually read the Bible, wouldn't it?

See, if they read the Bible, they'd know that your worth, your value doesn't come from somebody who's on your arm.

It doesn't come from somebody else.

No, your value and your worth, it comes from God and God can actually make you whole.

You don't need another person because you have God.

In fact, we read this in 1 Thessalonians 5, verses 23 and 24.

It says, may God himself, The God who makes everything holy and whole make you holy and whole, put together spirit, soul, and body.

You don't need somebody else because somebody else can't complete you.

Jerry Maguire, he was lying, right?

You don't need somebody else.

No, God is the only one who can complete you.

He's the only one.

And there's great work to be done in singlehood.

I have a friend, Nancy June Depp.

She just passed away a couple of years ago.

Nancy was an older lady at the church that I grew up in and she had some medical issues.

She had to wear an oxygen tank and take it everywhere she went, but she liked to dye her hair in these bright pink and blue colors so that she would stand out a little bit and it would be a conversation starter.

And every single day, she would go to this little restaurant called Taco Time.

Kind of think Del Taco, but just.

a tiny bit more upscale.

And she would go every single day and she would do what she called taco time ministry.

Single lady, bright pink and blue hair, but she would go and she would show up day in and day out for years on end.

And over time, she just built so many relationships with people.

She led so many people to the Lord, workers at the restaurant.

moms coming in with little kids pulling out their hair, not knowing what to do and how to make it.

She would just mentor them and love on them and care for them.

She called this living her life in color and she could do it because she had an undivided devotion to God.

She wasn't worried about other relationships outside, a marriage relationship.

She could focus on this taco time ministry and quite literally hundreds of people came to faith because she just kept showing up and God showed off through her.

and she used her singlehood in a powerful way.

But then you might say to yourself, well, what if I don't want to be single?

What if I want to be married?

That's okay too.

In fact, it's a good thing.

Genesis chapter two, it's not good for man to be alone.

So what does God do?

He creates woman, right?

And that's a good thing.

God makes you whole whether you have a spouse or not, but it's okay to have a spouse.

In fact, Paul says this in 1 Corinthians chapter seven, verse nine, if they cannot control themselves, and I'll be someone to say this, I couldn't control myself.

I was ready to be married.

I wanted to be married.

If they can't control themselves, then they should marry, for it is better to marry than to burn with passion.

Now, raise your hands if you're a single person in here.

Raise your hands, raise your hand.

Now look around.

So you thought you were coming for a little Jesus today, but look around, you might leave with something a little bit extra, okay?

There's some single people around and there's no better place to find somebody than at church.

But if you wanna find a spouse, can I give you three hot tips really, really quick?

Number one is this.

If you're single, You need to invest in yourself in order that you can invest in someone else.

You need to invest in yourself now in order that one day you can invest in someone else in a marriage relationship.

I love how Rich Wilkerson Jr.

puts it.

He's a pastor in Florida.

He says, if you wanna be happy and married, start being single and secure.

Let me say that again.

If you wanna be happy and married one day, start single and secure.

What is he saying?

Invest time now pouring into your relationship with Jesus and understanding who he has made you to be and who he says that you are, that you are fearfully and wonderfully made, that you are made in his image, that you are the head and not the tail, that greater is he who is in you than he who is in the world and start pressing in to those truths and walking out those truths in daily life and being secure with who God made you to be.

Invest in yourself so that one day then you could invest in someone else.

Andy Stanley asked this great question and I think it's really important for us to ask.

It's this.

Are you becoming the person that you are looking for is looking for?

Are you becoming the person that you are looking for is looking for.

If you're single, let me encourage you to ask that question.

Are you investing in yourself in order that one day you can invest in someone else, invest in your relationship with Christ?

Here's hot tip number two.

When you do choose to date, date with marriage in mind.

See, if you are dating someone that you know you're not going to marry, what are you doing?

You're just practicing divorce.

You're just practicing heartache.

You're just practicing a breakup.

That's not how God made it to be.

In fact, let me encourage you with this.

When I talk about dating, I like to think of it as three concentric circles.

In our culture, the concentric circles look like this.

It starts with the physical.

Ooh, she's hot.

She's this, she's that, or he's this and he's that.

And so the physical then moves onto the feelings.

Oh, I feel this way.

Oh, they make me feel some kind of way.

And then, then maybe at the very end, we'll start talking about faith.

But really where your relationships need to start is right here in the middle.

It needs to start with faith, with your core values, what you believe about God and the world.

And from there, it moves to your feelings about each other.

And then when you're married in a God honoring way, then it can move to the physical.

Our culture though, it gets it backwards.

So let me encourage you to date, but when you date, date with marriage in mind.

And I haven't got a lot of things right.

And there are people who have probably different perspectives.

I'm gonna sound like an old fuddy-duddy here.

But when I started dating Laura, she was the first person I ever really dated.

And I was actually in a position where if I married her, I could actually care for and support her.

And if you're not in that position, let me ask you to just think logically for a minute.

What are you doing?

Like if you can't care for somebody, if you don't know who you are in Christ, if you're just dating to date and go through the motions, that's ridiculous.

and that's gonna lead to heartache and heartbreak and you're practicing things that you don't wanna practice.

You're practicing breakup and divorce.

When you date, do it with the intention that you might actually marry this person.

Now that might not be how it goes, but if you're gonna walk into a relationship, let me encourage you to do it with marriage in mind.

Now here's the last thing.

If you're looking for a spouse, one of the greatest things you could do, there's all sorts of tools.

You can go online.

There's some tools online to go out there, but let me encourage you.

One of the greatest ways that I've seen time and time and time again that works is just start serving somewhere.

Start serving somewhere.

And let me encourage you, start serving somewhere in the church.

serving kids ministry or youth ministry, going on a mission trip, something like that.

Start serving and as you serve, just serve with passion and serve for Jesus.

And then every once in a while as you're serving, just look up and see who's around and who's serving and who's going after Jesus.

and just keep serving and keep serving and keep serving.

And look, is anybody still just hanging around?

And over time as you serve, you're gonna start to see the people who are hanging around, who are still around.

And I think you're gonna find a mutual connection, a God honoring relationship.

So those were three hot tips, but friends don't believe the lie that the goal of your life, if you're single, the goal of your life has to be marriage.

It's not true.

Marriage, it's a gift from God, but singleness is as well.

It really, really is.

And if God calls you to a life of singleness, it's not some junior varsity form of Christianity.

Not at all.

No, it's the major leagues.

And God can use you in a powerful way to make a crazy difference in this world.

So that was for the singles.

Now let's talk to the married couples.

And this is a lie that many married couples believe.

It's this, is that marriage is supposed to make you happy.

You believe that marriage is supposed to make you happy.

Now, by show of hands, how many of you know that marriage can be a blessing?

when it's a blessing.

How many of you know that marriage cannot be a blessing when it's not a blessing?

See, marriage can be a blessing when it's a blessing.

And the Bible even paints this picture.

It says this in Proverbs 18, verse 22.

It says, the man who finds a wife finds a treasure, a blessing, and he receives favor from the Lord.

Now, marriage is a blessing when it's a blessing, but it's not when it's not.

There's another verse in Proverbs.

This is Proverbs chapter 27, verse 15, and this is gonna get me in trouble, but it says this, a quarrelsome wife.

is as annoying as a constant dripping on a rainy day.

Now, in order to be an equal gender offender, let me give you another verse.

This is 1st Rory 4.9.

It says this, it says, it's better to pass a kidney stone than it is to marry a self-centered narcissistic jerk.

That's from the SBIB version, the should be in the Bible version.

No, marriage, marriage is a blessing when it's a blessing.

It's not when it's not.

But but you have to understand this simple truth that the point of marriage is not your happiness.

No, marriage isn't supposed to make you happy.

Marriage is actually supposed to make you holy.

Supposed to make you holy.

Tim Keller and his wife, Kathy, wrote a real awesome book a number of years ago called, The Meaning of Marriage.

And in that book, they talk about the power of the covenant.

See, a lot of our world looks at marriage as a contract, right?

And contracts inherently have a little distrust built into them.

If you do this and you fulfill your commitments, then I'll do this and fulfill my commitments.

But it's only if you do this, Marriage is so much more than just a contract or this horizontal relationship.

See marriage as defined in the Bible is actually a covenant.

And yes, there's a horizontal and legal requirement, but more importantly, there's this vertical and spiritual requirement.

You know, if you stood before God and got married in the church, you took an oath to God.

that for better or worse, for richer or poorer in sickness and in health, you are going to love this person.

You are making a promise to God that you would sacrificially and selflessly love one another.

Think about those vows, for better or for worse.

Now, my brother-in-law, Kyle and his wife, Zulbu, they just had their first child last week.

And my brother-in-law, he did something kind of stupid.

He accidentally threw away some of his wife's breast milk.

Now, I've never been a mom, I've never pumped breast milk, but I know how valuable it is.

He made a mistake.

Now you tell me, does marriage require forgiveness?

Does grace need to be shown?

Yeah, yeah.

See, does marriage, marriage, it can actually make you a little bit more like Jesus.

Remember the vows when you said, for richer, for poorer.

I remember the days where we just had two boys and Laura stopped teaching so she could focus on raising the boys.

We didn't even have our girls yet and money was so tight.

And so I just had to do anything for money.

I had to sacrifice.

I remember how humiliating this was.

But I had an opportunity.

There was a guy who worked at our church and said, hey, if you will don this like green skin tight, morph suit and run around the Microsoft headquarters and hand out invitations to the annual Christmas party while you're making funny noises, I'll give you a hundred bucks.

And we were so strapped for cash, I did it.

Now that was embarrassing.

It was sacrificial, but you do that, right?

In sickness and in health.

I think about that vow.

When I think about these vows that we make to God as we're married, these are promises we're making not only to each other, but to God.

In sickness and in health, my parents were married for 49 years.

Last three years of my mom's life, she lost the ability to walk.

And so my dad became her full-time caregiver.

Do you know what love is?

Love is action.

Love is learning in your 70s how to dress a woman's hair.

how to buy all sorts of contraptions so that your wife can be mobile in the house.

Love is going down to the grocery store, picking up groceries, getting a call from your wife who can't take herself to the bathroom and racing back, leaving the groceries, coming back home and taking her to the bathroom.

Love, love is changing bedpans, right?

See, marriage is not supposed to make you happy all the time.

It's supposed to make you more like Jesus.

It's supposed to make you holy.

It's to teach you selflessness, sacrifice.

It's supposed to teach you love.

Tim Keller again says the purpose of marriage is really three things.

There's companionship.

We read about that again.

Yes in Genesis 2.

There's procreation.

Like arrows in the hands of a warrior, children born in one's youth, are children born in one's youth.

Blessed is the man whose quiver is full of them.

Children, they're a blessing from God.

But if you want to know the deepest meaning, Tim Keller says is this, the deepest meaning of marriage, the purpose of marriage is your sanctification.

That's just a big fancy theological word is for making you more like Jesus.

What is the purpose of marriage?

Is to make you more like Jesus.

more selfless, more sacrificial.

Jesus, the Bible says, did not come to be served, but to serve and to give his life for other people.

That's what marriage is.

So now I want to move on to the last lie.

The first lie is that the goal of your life, if you're a single person, it should be marriage.

It's not true and it's not even biblical.

Yes, marriage is a blessing, but also singleness is a blessing and a gift.

The second lie is that marriage, it's supposed to make you happy.

It's all about you.

No, it's not.

It's not, it's supposed to make you more like Jesus.

But here's the third lie, and this is an all play.

This is for everybody, whether you're single, married, somewhere in between.

And this is a lie straight from the enemy.

And he will make you think this, but it's this, it's that prayer can't actually change things.

The lie is that prayer can't change things.

I've told this story but it's been a while and I'm gonna tell it again because we just celebrated the 4th of July and I miss the days where you could just blow things up.

See my childhood you go to the fireworks stand and you could spend weeks just blowing things up and it was great and so one day I got what I thought was a little red smoke bomb.

You know those cute little things you light the wick and a cute colorful plume of smoke comes up.

So I go out to the middle of my cul-de-sac and I light what I think is a cute little red smoke bomb.

I light it, I walk away.

And when I'm expecting a cute little plume of red smoke, all of a sudden it's like a small scale scud missile goes off in my cul-de-sac.

It was so loud and it was so violent.

I was out of there faster than my self-esteem at a Zumba class.

I was gone.

I was so scared.

Because what I thought...

was a little smoke bomb was actually a cherry bomb.

And if you don't know what a cherry bomb is, a cherry bomb is like half a stick of dynamite.

It blew out the windows in my neighbor's car.

Here's the thing, I had no idea the power that I was playing with.

And when you and I pray, we have no idea the power that we're playing with.

The Bible says the prayers of the righteous are powerful and effective.

We see Jesus break a loaf of bread, bless it and feed 5,000 people when all he had was a little boy's Lunchable.

That's the power we're playing with when we pray to God.

It's God's spirit at work in and through us, through our prayers, it's power.

And it's the kind of power that can actually change things.

You've heard me quote Mark Batterson a number of times.

The greatest tragedy are the prayers that go unanswered simply because they go unasked.

And so if you are here and you need God to show up in your life, then your first line of defense should be prayer.

It shouldn't be your last resort.

And specifically, I wanna talk to single people right here.

Maybe you're wrestling.

Maybe God has given you the gift of singleness, but you don't have a clear vision for your life.

Let me ask you this question.

Have you prayed to God?

because his power is available to you.

One of the things I pray for my children all the time is that they would have a clear vision for God because I believe that the clearer the vision you have for your life, the fewer the options you have and the easier the decisions that you can make in your life.

Let me say that again.

The clearer the vision, the fewer the options, the easier the decision.

If God gives you a clear vision, you know what you can say yes to and you know what you need to say no to.

And so if you don't have a clear vision for your life and you're single or you're not ready to be married yet, maybe you want to one day, but not now, ask God for a clear vision and he will show up.

Maybe not today, but over time, he will make that vision clear for you.

He will show you your gifts, your talents and abilities and how you can make a difference and use the season of singleness to impact for eternity.

Now, maybe you're a single person and you wanna be married.

Guess what you can pray about.

You can pray for your future spouse.

You can pray that God would send the right person in the right time, in the right season, so that you together could come together and honor him and make an impact together.

Have you prayed?

about who your future spouse will be.

Have you asked God if you're longing, if your heart desires that and it just seems like it's never happening, the right person hasn't crossed your path.

Have you prayed about it?

Maybe God's just waiting on you to ask.

He's a good, good father and he desires to give good gifts to his children.

But the question is, have you prayed?

And now for the married people, and this is why I really have this point here.

Counseling is ridiculously important.

And if you're married, I would encourage you to go to counseling anytime.

But if you wanna divorce proof your marriage, and I've talked to hundreds of people over my 15 years, 16 years of vocational ministry, The couples that do this simple thing, I have yet to see one of them, one couple ever be divorced.

What is it?

It's simply the couple that prays together.

If you are a couple that prays together, I have yet to see in my 16 years, and I'm sure they exist somewhere, but I have yet to find the couple that actually prays together daily and has ever gotten divorced.

Because you know what?

It's kind of hard to do stupid things to do things that are gonna destroy your relationships when you're praying together every day.

Craig Groeschel actually puts it this way.

He says, if you miss one day of prayer, don't miss two with your spouse.

Keep it short, keep it simple.

If you miss one day, don't miss two, right?

Just pray.

Pray with your spouse.

If you wanna divorce proof your marriage, if you wanna have a marriage that actually like grows and thrives and your relationship grows together, one that's gonna sustain even beyond when your kids leave the house and you're just there together, then simply do this.

Just pray together.

You have no idea the power that you're playing with when you simply pray together and for one another and for each other's needs.

So don't believe the lie that our culture will tell you that prayer doesn't actually do anything.

No, I'm telling you, I've seen prayer do things time and time.

I've seen prayer heal people.

I've seen prayer bring kids who are far from God back into the fold.

I've seen prayer heal marriages.

I've seen marriages that were on the brink of divorce come back.

I've seen marriages that ended in divorce reconciled back together because of the power of prayer.

So pray, pray that God would give you vision.

Pray that God would bring the right person into your life at the right time.

Pray together as a couple and watch your marriage and your relationships flourish.

Don't believe the lies.

We have an enemy, friends, and he loves to steal, kill, and destroy.

He loves to twist God's word.

He loves to lie to us and tell us that, hey, your prayers, they don't really matter.

God's not really listening.

No, he is listening.

You've got an enemy who likes you to think that marriage really should be all about you and your happiness and your satisfaction.

When God says, no, it's about becoming more like me.

It's not about your happiness.

It's about holiness.

And I want you to become more and more like me.

And don't believe the lie that if you're single, that God's done with you or doesn't have plans for you.

Not at all.

No, God's got great plans for you.

Incredible plans for you.

So press into them and ask God to show up in your life.

Would you pray with me, Lord, thank you.

Thank you for the series where we can dive into relationships and we can learn from your word about your truth, that you do have a plan and purpose for our life, that you can use every season of life.

from young adulthood and singlehood to being married and even old age, God, you can use every season.

If as long as there's still breath in our lungs, you have a purpose for us.

If we're not dead, then you are not done with us, God.

Lord, I wanna pray specifically for every single person in our church community, God, that you would give them a vision and in the right time, if it's the desire of their heart, that you would put the right person in their life.

on their path to do life with.

And I wanna pray for every single married couple in this place that they would draw together with you, knowing that.

Their relationship really is a three-chord strand, that it's them and it's you, God, right in the middle.

And as they pray together and they found their relationship on you, that you would build and strengthen their marriage and that it would be a light to the world around them so that other people would ask, what do they have that I don't have?

And they would be able to answer, God, we have you in the center of our marriage and relationship.

And even though life is not always hard, it's not always sunshine and rainbows, you have never failed us and you will never fail us.

Lord, I pray that their marriages would be a testimony.

Lord, we love you and we thank you.

And it's in your name we pray.

And everybody said, amen.