Hey, welcome to One and All.

We're so glad you are here to watch week three of our sermon series, How to Fix Your Marriage.

Now, if you're single, engaged, dating, barely married, married for a long time, this week's message is for you no matter what stage you are in.

So I want to encourage you to download our One and All app so that way you can follow along on the sermon notes tab.

Let's jump into it.

Well, I am glad to be here, and I'm glad you're here.

I'm going to read a passage from Ephesians 5, and most of you are going to be familiar with it.

But over the last 20, 30 years, as I've encountered challenges in my own marriage, I've gone back to this passage and try to get a better understanding of what the writer intends to communicate.

So let me read it first.

I'm going to stop along the way, but let me read it.

It says, and this is the verse, most people start at verse 22.

But verse 21 says, submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.

Most people like to start with wives, submit to your husbands.

But from the get-go, it's a mutual submission.

And the word means to create space.

So there's a sense in which both the husband and the wife, once you get married, you're supposed to create space for each other.

But for what purpose do you create that space?

Verse 22, he singles in on the wives.

He says, As wives submit to your husbands, your own husbands, as you do to the Lord.

For the husband is the head of the wife, as Christ is the head of the church, his body of which he is the Savior.

Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything.

Husbands, love your wives just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, and to present her to himself as a radiant church without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless.

So we'll get to the nitty gritty in a moment, but the one thing we've tried to say during this whole series is the most important decision you'll ever make in your life is the one about marriage.

Other than your commitment to Christ, the most important decision you'll make is marriage.

So if you approach the marriage with kind of a cavalier attitude of, hey, you know what, I'm not sure this will work, but let's give it a try.

If it doesn't work, we'll divorce or we'll separate.

If you go into the marriage like that, what I've been trying to say is the marriage never works.

It never works.

It never turns out the way you think it's going to turn out.

And you can have a great season from one, two, three, four, five years.

And that's why we're told that if a marriage makes it into the sixth year, it has three, four times the chance of making it for good if you get past those years.

But a lot of couples don't make it past those years because of the attitude with which they approach marriage.

The other thing about this is, the Bible talks about God hating divorce, but He doesn't hate divorced people.

I'm sure you've heard that.

But once you go through a broken family or broken marriage, the wounds that occur in you are not easily healed, which is why, what is it, over 70% of second marriages and over 80% of third marriages don't work.

So there's some wound that happens in you when you give your heart to another person.

And you go in with these unrealized expectations, or you go in with, well, expectations that are...

typically just not realistic.

And then you go into the marriage relationship and you realize about four or five years in that these expectations are never going to come to fruition.

And so something happens in you there.

And if you don't go the right direction and make the right decisions at that point, then the relationship starts to go this way, which we'll talk about why in a moment.

And if it breaks, if the relationship ends, no matter what culture society tells us, we now know different.

And that is that there's wounds that happen in the lives of people that go with them the rest of their lives.

Now, can Jesus give you grace and mercy?

And can healing come?

Well, of course it can.

But you just have to understand there are wounds that happen in a broken marriage that you carry with you through the rest of your life that will impact every relationship you have after a broken family or broken marriage.

So, what I want to deal with in this next message is, what do you do when the marriage is not going the way you thought it would?

if I wait pastor Jeff you said it never does and it doesn't therefore since you now know that it will not go the way you think it should go or would go what do you do I remember speaking with my mother when I think my mom was in her mid-50s And I could tell that my mom and dad were struggling.

So I've got two strong Christian parents brought up in a, brought up with the idea that you do not divorce under any circumstances.

And yet I see my mother, especially, I see my mother drifting away little by little by little.

And finally, one day I said to my mother, who I was really close to, I said, Mom, what's going on?

I said, are you, are you angry at dad?

Are you hurt?

I can tell something's not right.

And my mother said something to me.

And I think at that moment, just for a moment, she forgot I was her son and she did treat me as pastor.

She said, I wish I was angry.

What do you mean?

She goes, I'm numb.

I feel nothing.

I don't feel anger.

I don't feel sad.

I don't feel anything.

Now, I know it's rare, but I was able to actually coach my own parents through this process because I knew something was missing.

And a big part of it, you've got to understand in my father's generation, you didn't tell your wife you loved her.

And you didn't show any kind of public display of affection in those days.

That was a very private thing.

The problem is the love language of most women has never changed.

And it varies between one, two, and three of the love languages.

One, it's typically quality time.

I need time with you.

Or for some women, it's gifts of affection, a gift that shows me that you really do care.

But for a lot of women, it's not even gifts of affection.

It's quality time plus acts of service.

I want to know that you're serving me and the family.

So in my father's mind.

He comes from a generation that says, hey, I don't have to tell you I love you because I go to work 40, 50 hours a week, and I come home and I support this family.

That's my love language.

That's my way of saying I love you.

And if you want acts of service, I'll give you acts of service 50 hours a week in the plant, you know, in the warehouse.

So those two generations come together, and what you have is just two people who tolerate each other, and over time, they start to grow apart, and that's exactly what had happened with my parents.

In my parents'case, they went to a counselor because my dad was incredibly humble.

When the counselor pointed out his faults, my dad humbled himself and said, man, I've got to change my attitude and my actions.

Both of them did.

They came together, and then the latter years of their marriage were the best years.

And that was a good thing because my mother only lived to be 61 years old, so they only had about five good years before my mom passed away.

Now, what's the point of all this?

There is absolutely no way that we can know what we're supposed to be like, act like, what we should expect about marriage unless we answer the question is what is the essence of marriage?

I mean, if God truly ordained this thing called marriage, why did He do it?

And...

What's the purpose of marriage?

If you don't know the end goal, there's no way you can know or measure anything.

Are we achieving what we're supposed to be achieving?

Are we marching towards success?

So that's what I want to do in this third part.

I want to answer three questions.

The first I want to answer is what is the essence of marriage?

According to the Bible, if you care, now if you're not a Christ follower, you're not going to care about this.

But if you're a Christ follower and you gave your life to Jesus, then the question is, in God's eyes, what is the essence of marriage?

So, doing a lot of marriage counseling over the course of my life, one of the common things that I hear is a young woman will come to me.

It's usually the young woman, not the young man, and they will say to me, I want to get married, but my husband keeps saying, why do I need a piece of paper?

Why do I need a piece of paper?

Now, and I always translate that for the young woman.

I'll say, here, let me translate that.

I love you, but not enough to bind myself to you.

That's what he's saying.

He's smart.

He knows what that, he knows what marriage means.

And here's the essence of marriage.

Here's the definition.

And I'll repeat it.

According to the Bible, marriage is a long-term binding commitment epitomized by a covenantal contract.

Marriage is a long-term binding commitment epitomized by a covenantal or covenantal contract.

Marriage is not merely about feelings of emotion and love, because emotions and love, they're going to fluctuate.

You know, sometimes you're going to look at your husband and say, you are so handsome.

Other days you're going to look at him and say, can you not do something with your hair?

Or can you just change your attitude?

The ebb and flow of life is like this.

Some days you're going to feel so in love.

Other days you're not going to feel so much in love, and actually you want nothing to do with him.

Marriage is about how you act when the feelings are not there.

That's what marriage is.

Now, there are two kinds of relationship, right?

And this is true of anything.

So you've got the consumer relationship and the covenant.

The consumer is kind of the one you have with your grocer.

You know, if your grocer gives you good price and good produce, you go to your grocer.

But if a better grocer down the road gives you a better price and better produce, you're not committed to the other grocer.

Your individual needs are more important than the relationship with the grocer.

But covenant is different.

Covenant is the type of the relationship that you have with your children.

So if you're not a young mother yet, when you become a young mother, one of the first things you're going to realize is how much is required from the kids without any gratitude.

And there's almost expectation and entitlement.

You know, you're feeding, you're clothing, you're changing diaper again and again and again.

Because, you know, here's the thing.

Even though you give so much, you give, give, and give to the child, you would never think about taking the child over to the next door neighbor and dropping him on the doorstep.

And do you know why?

Because you're in a covenant relationship, not a consumer one.

And when you're in a covenant relationship, you don't abandon the relationship when things aren't going the way you think it should go.

And if you did abandon the child, you'd probably be arrested.

Now, when you're dating another person, during the dating process, you're in the consumer relationship.

I mean, you're kicking the tires.

You're test driving.

You're in the marketing and promotion phase.

And you're trying to figure out, you're showing your strengths, you're hiding your weaknesses.

You're trying to figure out, do I want to take this home or not?

But after you've kicked the tires long enough and you come to the decision that you're satisfied with the product, maybe it's not perfect, but you're satisfied, then you sign on the dotted line.

In the dating relationship, you're a consumer.

But in the marriage relationship, you're in covenant.

So in a covenant relationship, here's what you're basically doing.

When you enter marriage, now this is in God's eyes.

This is according to Scripture, and we'll get to that.

So, according to the biblical concept of marriage, it's when two people say to each other, okay, you got all the goods on me and you have all the bads on me, and I have all the goods on you and all the bads on you, at least as much as I can right now.

So, here's what we're going to do.

In this Christian marriage, both of us as partners are going to say, I now reject the consumer mentality of this relationship and now choose to enter into a covenant relationship.

So my commitment to you in the future is not going to be based upon how I feel or the ebb and flow of my emotions.

Instead, my commitment to you is going to be based on a covenant that I have now made with you.

I desire to create intimacy and stability in the other person's life.

I'm not merely giving you my word that I'm going to stay with you.

I'm binding myself with this covenant and this contract that I'm committed to you, no matter how I feel.

Now, part of that is because God says that to us.

You know, God says, I will never leave you or forsake you, that I will never leave you orphaned.

God enters into us, into a covenant agreement with us.

and it's not based on how he feels.

I'm sure there are times if God feels, he wouldn't be very happy with us.

But he responds to us on the basis of the covenant he made with us.

And so the Christian marriage is supposed to work primarily the same way.

Do any of you remember the famous myth, Ulysses?

Do you remember?

And Ulysses, the boat would go by this island, and the sirens would call out.

So he knew that when the ship goes by the island, that if he didn't restrict himself somehow, the temptations may be so strong that he didn't trust himself.

So he bound himself to the mast, so that when they went by the island, even if his desires were pulling him away, he couldn't get loose.

In marriage, both partners agree.

that they're going to bind themselves to the mast.

Knowing that future temptations, and I'm not talking about sexual temptations, although that's probably part of it too, I'm talking about the temptation to walk away.

The temptation to say, this person was not who I thought he was or she was.

They're not as mature as I thought they would be.

He's always working.

You know, she is not very good with intimacy or she withholds intimacy or his family brings too much baggage, whatever.

You're making the commitment because you moved into a covenant relationship.

you're assuming that there are going to be times in your life that you're not going to feel like being committed to this man or woman, but you are because you entered a covenant.

You're no longer in a consumer relationship.

So in the Christian marriage, two people agree that love and intimacy, now this is important, two people agree that love and intimacy are just as much an act of the will as it is an emotion.

I want you to think about it for a moment.

The hardest thing that I had to get my head around, love is emotion, but love is also an act of the will, which means you can choose to love someone even when you don't feel like it.

Now, that's not just the Bible saying that.

I mean, that's part of your vows.

Isn't that what you promised?

The vows?

I so-and-so take you so-and-so to be my husband or wife, to have and to hold?

For richer, for poorer, sickness and in health, whatever it is, I bind myself.

I commit to you.

I'm entering in a covenant to you.

You're basically in your marriage vow saying that you're not going to make a decision based on your emotions or your feelings, but upon a covenant.

Now, there's a great psychologist named Noam Spencer.

And he writes an article called Action Creates Emotion.

And this guy's not a believer now.

This is just something that we learn in psychology.

And basically, the article says this.

You want to change how you're feeling?

change what you're doing.

Wow.

I want to read the quote.

It's a good quote.

He says, many people assume that the link between emotion and behavior is one way.

Emotions shape behavior.

You love him, therefore you kiss him.

You hate him, therefore you hit him.

This view, he says, is incorrect.

In fact, the relationship is reciprocal.

Much of the time, behavior actually shapes emotion.

You ever wonder why so often the actor and the actress who play a couple in a movie fall in love on the set?

Multiple processes are involved to be sure, but both are usually young and attractive.

They have a lot in common.

They hang around each other a lot to film this movie.

All these are known predictors of mate selection.

but they also do love scenes together.

They have to act like people who care deeply for each other.

They look into each other's eyes.

They touch each other.

They act out the behaviors of love.

No wonder the emotion in love often follows.

Recent research in clinical psychology has shown that the fastest way to change an emotion is to change the behavior attached to it.

That's amazing.

You see what he's saying?

Acting out the covenant of marriage actually ends up creating in you a deep, intimate emotion for your spouse.

So, okay, Jeff, how does one act out the covenant of marriage?

By committing to love the other person for better or for worse.

When things are not going well, when there's financial struggles, life struggles, health struggles, emotional struggles, you continue to express love because of the covenant that you made.

And now when I go through this with young couples or even middle-aged couples who are having a lot of problems in the marriage, and I say something like that, oh, man, you can see the look on their faces.

Oh, man, you're telling me I've got to act like I love this guy?

And then I say, and I can tell by the body language, and I'll say, what's the problem?

He goes, man, that's going to take a lot of humility.

Yep.

Sacrifice.

And then I like to read Philippians 2 to them.

If they're both believers, we're supposed to model the behavior of Jesus.

And probably nothing describes Jesus'behavior toward us than humility and sacrifice.

So when a young man tells a young woman or middle-aged, older, whatever, it's just a piece of paper.

What that person means is, I want to keep my options open in case things turn worse.

And I want to tell you something.

If that's your attitude, you will never experience the most precious gifts associated with covenant relationship.

This is what this generation doesn't get.

When your husband or wife knows you're in a covenant relationship with them, it creates a sense of security and trust.

And guess what happens next?

Intimacy.

Full intimacy only happens when there's security and trust and you know the other's in a covenantal relationship with you.

And by the way, it also brings freedom.

I'm not...

When I say that, someone will say, whoa, whoa.

A covenant brings freedom?

It seems to me that the marriage covenant is the end of all freedom.

Louis Smedes is kind of an author comedian.

He says, when I make a promise, I'm committing to rise above all the wacky stuff I got from my parents.

Took me a while to get that.

He's saying, you know, my emotions come from my parents.

My attitudes come from my parents.

I am so like my mother and father.

But when I make a covenant, what I'm saying is, I don't care about all that.

All I care about is this.

I am committed to this marriage relationship.

And if you don't know the discipline of making a promise, I don't think you can ever understand marriage.

Because the marriage vows say that I will promise to be faithful, loving, serving, regardless of my feelings in the future.

I mean, think about that.

That's a big ask, isn't it?

Because usually we think, well, my emotions have got to be good.

If my emotions are not good, why would I?

If I don't feel love, why would I stay in this relationship?

Here's the answer.

You will feel love if you stay in the relationship and live as though you're in the covenant.

As you express love by an act of the will, the emotions will be sure to follow.

You don't need the Bible to tell you that.

We were just told that by psychology.

That's how it goes.

It's reciprocal.

So, again, somebody will say, he wants to live with me, but he doesn't want to marry me.

He loves me, but he doesn't want to marry me.

And the translation, again, is, I love you, but I don't love you enough to marry you.

I love you, but I don't love you enough to lose my independence.

I love you, but I don't love you enough to be bound to you.

And sometimes I'll say that and someone will say, no, no, you're wrong, Pastor Jeff.

It's a financial issue.

Really?

How long have you been dating?

Seven years.

Seven years, and he tells you it's a financial issue.

Tell me something, during this, has he bought a new car, new golf clubs, new clothes?

Oh, yeah.

So he'll sacrifice, just not for you.

The point is, the Christian marriage is not one of consumerism, but it's one of covenant, and only in covenant can you have true intimacy.

Okay, now that was the first one.

That's the big one.

The other two go very quickly.

The second one is this.

What is the mission of marriage?

What are you hoping to accomplish in marriage?

Well, I want to have fun.

I want somebody to grow old with, romance.

We want to merge our net worth, all of that, which when I married Robin, our net worth was negative.

So what is the mission of marriage?

Here is the Christian goal of marriage right here.

Deep character change through deep relationship.

Deep character change through deep relationship.

In Romans 8, most of us know the passage in verse 28 where we're told that God will work everything to good for those who love God called according to His purpose.

And then the next verse, 29, says for those whom God predestined, He foreknew to be conformed to the image of His Son.

When Paul writes Ephesians 5, one of the things he has in mind, and I'll show you just in a moment, is that...

Perhaps the mission of marriage, maybe not the only mission, well, definitely not the only mission, but a large part of the mission of marriage is for you to enter into the covenant of marriage with a deep friend who's going to help you become like Christ.

Man, there's no other relationship on earth that will help you become more like Jesus than your spouse because there are going to be times you want to kill them.

I mean, I make jokes about that, but I just got through watching like 30 episodes of Dateline because I was sick for four days.

And it's always the spouse who commits the murder.

I mean, who gets that?

Why don't you just leave them or divorce them?

Why do you kill them?

Well, the point is, you're going to have emotions that run so high.

When you get married, whatever emotions you brought into the marriage, they're going to go on warp speed.

If you struggle with your temper, your temper is going to get worse.

If you struggle with feelings of rejection, those feelings are going to get worse.

Because you've given your life, you're in the deepest relationship you've ever been.

So all your emotions are on warp speed now.

So if you don't enter the marriage understanding that part of the reason God has brought you, so when people say opposites attract, well, of course they do.

Because if you married somebody like you, you'd never grow.

But if you marry someone that's opposite to you, they're going to point your flaws out.

You're going to point theirs out, hopefully in a gentle, grace-filled way.

But one of the missions of marriage is God brings two people together.

Iron sharpening iron, so that you can help each other through deep character change through a deep friendship.

Now, eHarmony disagrees with me.

eHarmony says that people today are looking for the perfectly compatible soulmate.

And the definition as they put it is this.

Someone who will accept me just as I am and I can appreciate her or him just as she is or he is.

So the survey says this is the new definition of soulmate.

Someone who will not try to change me, someone who will accept me as I am.

Now, I've told young people a thousand times, if that's your definition of marriage, that's why you're not married.

Because that person doesn't exist.

And you may be trying to pose as somebody like that, but you're not like that either.

When you come into the marriage, both couples, both spouse, both male and female, into the marriage bring all of their flaws.

And most of the flaws, and our friends have told us this for a long time, but now it's starting to dawn on us maybe they were right.

Our flaws are intense.

So we may be a little proud with selfish tendencies.

We may be inflexible with a tendency to be demanding.

We may be undisciplined with a tendency to be unreliable.

We may be impatient and irritable with a tendency to hold grudges.

Everybody has them.

When you come into the marriage relationship, all your relational flaws, insensitivity, insecurity, insanity, whatever it is, and again, people have been telling you this all your life, suddenly, you haven't taken it seriously, but suddenly you get it.

Flaws that created small problems before marriage now create huge problems.

Everything goes on warp speed.

One of my favorite television programs, Everybody Loves Raymond, and I mention that program a lot.

And then my wife asked me.

about two weeks ago, why do you like that program so much?

And then she just waited for me to answer.

And I said, well, Raymond's funny.

No, she says, that's not it.

You love that program so much because you're Raymond.

Everybody loves Jeff.

The same life he has is what you've had.

Your mother told you you were wonderful.

Everybody loves you.

And she goes, that's a major part of your problem.

I said, what problem?

Well, you think the world evolves around you.

And you know, I'm 60 years old and I feel like I'm too old to have to hear that now.

But the reality is she's been saying that for 40 years.

You come in with the flaws in your life that your environment, your coaches, your teachers, your family.

And Robin's right.

She's right.

And marriage will not only expose your flaws, but it'll bring...

it'll bring out the worst of them.

So you need a partner.

In my hometown of Elizabeth in Tennessee, I think I've mentioned this before, we have a covered bridge.

It's the only famous thing we have.

I mean, it's a little town of 16,000, but we got a covered bridge and people drive from all over East Tennessee and Western Virginia, North Carolina, South, to see this beautifully, the beautiful white covered bridge.

And it covers the river.

It runs right through the middle of town.

Well, not through the middle, middle of town, but you know, it's in the middle of town.

And they have what they call the covered bridge days where they have bluegrass, country music, cotton candy and all that stuff.

Well this bridge, as I've said before, is not really a bridge.

It's termites holding hands.

I mean, this thing is just about ready to fall.

And when a mag truck, because you used to be able to at least, they'd let you ride your bike or walk through it.

But now you can't even do that, so they put a big pole.

But it's still there, but you can't use it.

Because mag trucks would go through, and as it did, the weight would expose all the cracks.

You know, it would just kind of open up and barely be hanging together.

And people realized that, man, this bridge is not safe.

Well, here's the deal.

Your spouse is a huge mag truck running constantly through your life, exposing all the cracks and the problems and all your flaws.

That's just how it's going to be.

You can either get angry or you can say, you know what?

God has given me this beautiful, wonderful gift of a wife or a husband to help conform me to the image of Christ, to be like Him, to work on these flaws.

Stanley Howis, who's at Duke University, again, most of these quotes aren't by Christ followers.

It's just the way life is.

But here's what Stanley Howis says.

This has infuriated so many people who aren't religious, okay?

He says this, The assumption is that there is someone out there just right for us to marry, and if we look closely enough, we will find that just right person.

This assumption overlooks a very crucial aspect of marriage.

It fails to appreciate the fact that you always marry the wrong person.

What?

Even if we think we marry the right person, just give it time and he or she will change.

One of the challenges of marriage is learning how to love and care for the stranger to whom you so often find yourself married.

Man, is that true.

You have this idea, love is in the air.

It's all good, man.

I mean, it's good to fall in love and you ask the right questions.

And then about a year or two into the marriage, you're thinking, who on earth is this person?

Because it's life.

People change.

Their attitudes change.

Their temperament.

We are, to a degree, chemically imbalanced, all of us, and we're always changing.

If we marry incompatible people who are flawed, and we do, and if they're not incompatible at first, they become incompatible, the big issue then is what is the Christian's response?

And the response is that you embrace the reality and you commit to help each other grow.

The purpose of marriage, its mission, deep character change and deep friendship.

Now, having said all that, can I read the passage?

He says, submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.

Wives, now I think the reason he says wives submit to your husbands is because husbands have a hard time loving their wives as Christ loves the church.

That's why he's going to tell them to do that.

And wives, big struggle is going to be to submit to their husbands, as you do to the Lord.

But wait a minute.

How does a wife submit to the Lord?

By allowing the Lord to shape her character.

What he's basically saying is, wives, you already get that.

Because your husbands are hard-headed.

We are.

But you wives, you love Jesus.

You've got this special sense of who Jesus is.

You love his lordship.

You love his compassion.

And you're in a relationship with him, and you're wanting him to change you.

And you're open to that change.

a lot more than your husbands will be.

So your challenge is, let them sharpen you like you're wanting to sharpen them.

That's your call.

And then he goes on to say, for the husband is the head of the wife, as Christ is the head of the church.

But hold on, how is Christ the head of the church?

By servant leadership.

This isn't an authoritative passage.

It's about Jesus served his church because he loved them.

So let your husband serve you in the sense.

sharpening you like you want to sharpen him.

But then he goes, now let me talk to the husbands.

Now, as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything.

Husbands, you love your wives.

I think wives don't have trouble loving their husbands unconditionally.

I just don't.

Now, that doesn't mean all of them, but women typically get it.

They get that, I'm going to have to love this man even when he's not behaving, okay?

Because women have this ability to unconditionally love in a way that men do not.

And there's a reason for that, and it's associated with love language, which I'll get to in a moment.

But why does Christ love the church?

He sacrificed to make her holy.

What?

by washing with water through the word and to present her to himself.

So Jesus loves the church, not because she's beautiful.

he loves her to make her beautiful.

So he loves the church not because the church is holy, but he loves the church so that by loving her, she becomes holy.

And so this is exactly what the role of both the role of the husband and the wife is to come together in this deep relationship of love and trust of a friend.

in order that that friend can sharpen you.

And it's both ways.

It's mutual submission to each other.

As you learn from her what it is to love like Jesus, and as you learn from him, whatever it is God needs you to learn from him.

Because there will be traits in your husband that you don't have.

That's why it's good that opposites attract.

It's the whole idea of if God...

If we're told that God works everything together for the good of those who love Him and are called according to His purpose, and if we're told that we are predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son, then that tells me that marriage is part of that whole predestination thing, that it is ordained so that you and I could become more like Jesus.

And there's nothing that's going to make you more like Jesus than how you respond to your spouse after 10, 20, 30, 40 years of marriage.

Now, how do you...

transform your husband or your wife, well, ultimately, you can't.

So the job is to point them to Jesus.

Constantly point one another to Jesus.

I always tell couples, you need to have some kind of agreement upon conflict resolution so that when conflict comes, you agree, okay, we're in conflict.

Let's employ what we've agreed.

So my wife and I had one.

So when we got to a standstill, when we realized, hey, we're in conflict right now, we would immediately separate and go and pray.

All right, Jesus, what role am I playing in this?

Help me to see what role I'm playing.

You'd be surprised how much that saves in the conflict.

Because Jesus will tell you, well, you're not listening to your wife or you're not listening to your husband.

Okay, what do I need to do from here?

and then help us to come back together.

And then when the time was right, that was our conflict resolution.

But there's so many processes of conflict resolution.

But if couples agree on what that resolution will be like, you'll find yourself having deep character change in this deep friendship.

Okay?

Now, I'm trying to figure out, once you and I understand the essence of marriage, which is a covenant, which is a covenant.

And that we're able to enact the will, and when we enact the will in seasons we don't feel like it, actually the emotions will follow.

That's an amazing truth.

And then to know that Christ is conforming us to His image through marriage.

I want to encourage the young ladies especially to do something for me.

You process and think differently before you got married.

And men and women are, I mean, what's the old book?

Men are from Venus, women are from Venus, men are from Mars, something like that.

And the whole, I mean, it sold millions of copies.

And it was like it was rocket science, but it's something we've known for a long time.

We're different.

We're wired differently.

When I was in, so to the young women, when I was in New Zealand, there was a beautiful mountain called Mount Ruhapahu.

And it was on Highway 1.

There's only one highway that runs north to south through the entire country.

And I would go down to visit a friend of mine in Wellington, which is like a five-, six-hour drive from Auckland.

And about halfway there, and I can't remember if it's exactly halfway, was a cafe right by Highway 1, and I would sit there and have a good coffee.

And Mount Ruapeo was in the distance, and you know it's in the distance.

The problem is the clouds cover it almost 99% of the time.

and only probably out of the 50 times that I sat in that cafe did I see it maybe three times.

And it's great when you're there with a cup of coffee, and somehow suddenly the clouds break, and boom, I mean, right in front of you, this incredible mountain.

And you know what?

When you married your husband, you saw something.

You got a glimpse somewhere along the line of what he could be.

See, what women do is they don't, they not only marry the men.

that you are right now, they see something in you.

They're marrying the man of 10 or 20, 30 years away.

Now, that doesn't mean they're trying to shape or mold you.

They just see something of great potential in you, and they decide to grow old with you and to celebrate when you get there, which is why sometimes we men think they're a little bit hard on us, but they actually know the potential that we have more than we do.

So...

The Christian idea of marriage is that when you fall in love, you're not just falling in love with a person, but with the person they're becoming.

Not with just who they are now.

and that person excites you.

You see the hand of God.

You see the enormous potential.

You commit to growing old together.

And once you encounter, once you go into the marriage with eyes wide open, with the essence of marriage, the purpose of marriage, then the secret of marriage, which is the end, the secret of marriage, is the thing that I think will sustain you ultimately.

Here's what the secret of marriage is.

Let me define it, and then I'll repeat it.

The secret of marriage is to love your spouse in seasons where you're getting little to no love back.

That's the secret.

So as I said before, there are going to be times in your marriage you just don't feel like you're getting a lot from your spouse.

And there's so many different things that can play a part in that.

Maybe he took a new job, and man, he's trying to work so many hours to keep his job.

Or maybe you've got something going on in your life that's causing a lot of heartache.

Maybe it's with your family.

Maybe it's with your sister, your brother, and you're just distant, and he's feeling like, man, what am I, chopped liver?

You know, what's going on here?

You're inundated with this, and I've just been placed on the back burner.

Or when the children come along.

Man, when the children come along, I think wives underestimate what that does to the husband, and husbands underestimate what it does to the wife.

And so there's going to be seasons when that happens.

So the question is, when that happens, what's your choice?

And the choice is, somehow, you've got to be able to love somebody when you're getting little to nothing in return.

And the only way that's going to be possible, folks, the only way that's going to be possible is if you're getting a deeper, greater love somewhere else other than your husband or your wife.

If all your love that you're getting all hinges on your spouse, you're in deep trouble.

Because then when you don't feel like the love is coming, you're going to want to run or you're going to get angry and you're going to be more about justice and revenge than anything else.

Because you're going to feel, you feel violated.

Listen, the whole idea of marriage, the way it works in the Western way, oh my goodness, you think about how it works in the West.

It's a disaster compared to the East.

In the West, what happens?

You date, you get married.

You go spend a lot of money on your honeymoon.

in a wedding, okay?

Now, first day back, it's immediately he goes out or she goes out or sometimes both to do what?

Make a living.

So this woman who has been reticent to give her heart to a man because she's not convinced she's going to be a front burner item all of her life.

Over time, he courts her and convince her, oh, I really am.

I really am the most important thing in his life.

Okay, if he proposes, I'm in.

And then as soon as the honeymoon's over, She gets placed to the back because he goes now to go back to make a name for himself, to climb a rung on the corporate ladder, to do that little checklist his daddy taught him to do on the refrigerator door, mow the grass, clean up your room.

So he's checked marriage off the list.

His mind shifts.

Now she feels incredibly hurt.

You acted like I was going to be front burner.

I'm back burner.

At the same time though, the husband, all right, we've got time to be honest.

You're adults here.

You're adults.

I'm going to get to this.

But the husband thinks, man, I'm going to get married.

I'm going to have sex every day.

That's funny.

And my wife's going to, she's going to meet me at the door because I've seen it in movies.

She's going to meet me at the door every evening with a lingerie on.

And man, that marriage is great.

And suddenly he comes home and she's tired.

She's been working all day, didn't bring the kids along.

She's got no interest whatsoever.

And now he feels violated.

Now, when that happens, typically here are the residual impacts.

The wife says, well, you're not being a husband anymore, so I'm not going to be your wife.

I mean, I'll be a mother to our kids, but I'm not going to be your wife.

And the husband, he says, well, you're not being a wife anymore, so you know what?

I'll be a dad to the children, but I'm not going to be a husband because you're not being a wife.

Justice and revenge sets in.

And do you know what happens?

Do you know what ends up happening?

Both spouses do this for 18 years because the kids get the attention.

And then when the children have graduated high school and move on, they look at each other, and what do they do?

Divorce.

They've got nothing in common.

They don't even like each other that much.

The funny thing is, we know what covenantal love is like because we keep giving it to our kids for those 18 years.

Teenagers, whoo!

You know, no matter what they say to us, what they do, we never stop loving them.

We never stop serving them, never stop giving them.

When I was in New Zealand, We hadn't started our church yet, so we were attending another church.

And we were there for about six months.

And the couple that were pastoring the church, they were our age, so they were very young.

We're talking about mid-20s, late-20s.

And they already had three kids.

Beautiful kids, beautiful kids.

And one day after church, the pastor, John, said, hey, Jeff, can I talk to you a minute?

I said, sure.

And he took me in the back room.

I said, what's the problem?

He goes, I'm going to leave my wife.

John, what are you talking about?

You're pastor of this church.

You've got a great church.

You've got three beautiful children.

He goes, well, you know what?

I just don't have any feelings for her anymore.

Now, even in my 20s, I knew something was wrong because I said to John, I said, John, do you have any feelings for your kids?

Oh, yeah, I'll never lose that.

Really?

Well, then, do they give you everything you need?

No.

No, of course they don't.

I mean, they're my kids.

It doesn't matter if they give me everything I need.

They're my kids.

I said, she's your wife.

It doesn't matter if she gives you everything you need.

She's your wife.

So you're in a covenantal love with your kids, but you're in a, what, consumer relationship with your wife.

Just go back and love your wife.

Man, that hit him hard.

really hard.

And I knew enough about marriage because I'd read everything I could about marriage, even in my late twenties.

Now let's go back.

The only way that you can love someone.

And remember we told, we said that when you love someone, when you love them by an act of the will, I'm telling you, the emotion will follow.

You think it won't, it'll follow.

But the only way you can love somebody when you're not getting love in return is what Tim Keller calls.

And let me just go ahead and say this, the best book.

Ever written on marriage is The Meaning of Marriage by Tim and Kathy Keller.

I would encourage you to go read it.

Buy it, read it, both of you, and then talk about it.

But he says the only way that you can give love when you're not receiving it is what he calls love philanthropy.

Now you think about the only reason you can be philanthropic is because you have amazing resources.

So yeah, Bill Gates gave millions and billions of dollars away, but he's got a lot to give away.

He's got large resources.

He can afford it.

He's got a stockpile.

The only way you can give a lot of love to your spouse is if you're getting a lot somewhere else.

And the only way to get that kind of love from somewhere else without being unfaithful to your spouse is to have a deep, intimate relationship with God.

And so in those moments when you're not feeling the emotional tug or pull or love that you need from your spouse, if your main source of love is your spouse, you'll freak out during difficult seasons.

But if it's not, if God is the main source of your love income, you'll be able to handle it.

And you'll get through the tough seasons.

And I'm telling you, I'm going on 40 years.

The last 25 have been, whoo!

I mean, it's been great.

The first eight, oh my gosh.

Is this marriage?

Okay.

And I'm the same way.

Some days, you are so beautiful.

Other days, don't you want to do something with yourself today?

You know, it's amazing.

Your emotions ebb and flow up and down.

They have to be based on something other than consumerism.

There has to be a covenant that you've made.

Now, I think it's amazing that we have a Savior.

And I mentioned this last week, who went to the cross.

And the song says he could have called 10,000 angels.

So he's hanging on the cross.

And he could have called the angels.

He'd have been saved.

But he chose not to.

And he didn't choose not to because we're so lovely and worth it.

But he chose to stay so that he could make us lovely.

So right now, when God looks at us, he sees us as saints.

because we've been made holy and washed clean by the word because of the sacrifice Jesus made on the cross.

That generosity that he gave us, when God looks at us, he sees us as pure and righteous.

It's an amazing thing.

Well, that's what marriage is, really.

We continue to love each other, even though we feel sometimes the other is unlovable.

And through the act of the will of love, the emotions will follow, okay?

Now, I never get to do this last part, but since we're recording, since everybody's watching us today, Okay.

Here are what I believe, by experience, are the three non-negotiables that will always bring health into your marriage.

So even if you have no problems, or even if you have a lot of problems, don't miss these three.

Okay, here's the first one.

I've mentioned it before.

Date night.

So when the children come along, I know what this is like.

I've never been so angry at my wife than when we had small kids.

Because I remember just standing outside on the porch of our home, just seething.

Because what am I?

You know, what am I, a piece of meat around here supposed to bring home the bacon or bring home?

What am I?

Because I got nothing.

Because I don't have any understanding at all what her days are like with two little toddlers.

Okay?

Now, somebody mentioned to me, a friend of mine said, hey, you better fix this because I was having, there were thoughts entering my mind that I thought would never enter my mind.

And then somebody gave us the idea of date night.

Here's the beauty of date night that we haven't talked about.

When the kids come and life gets busy, men, you have no idea what it does to your wife when she realizes all of a sudden, She's not a front burner item anymore.

It's devastating.

You know, it really is.

And it's a deep wound.

And she'll deal with it different ways.

Now, women, you have no idea what it does to your husband when you're not interested in sex.

See, right now your husband's just real still.

Finally, somebody's going to say this.

We're all about, you know, love languages are crucial things.

And as I said before, most women, their love language is quality time.

That is, you don't, you know, you spend time and you listen to your wife.

You talk to her.

You ask her her hopes and dreams.

You ask her how you're doing in the relationship, and she really feels like you're listening to her.

That is gold.

And the other is quality time, gifts of affection, which I don't think.

is in a lot of women, but some.

And the other is, I'm trying to think of what the other is.

Brain, brain.

No, that's men.

That's usually men.

There's another one, though.

Acts of service.

So it took me a while to learn that if I was interested in having intimacy with my wife, it started in the morning by emptying the dishwasher and running the vacuum.

and doing all those little acts of service where she says, wow, he gets it.

He gets it.

I'm pretty busy here, and he's trying to help.

And that is just the beginnings of an intimate night together.

Now let me go back to what I was saying before.

Date night.

Have a date night.

Because this does wonders for the husband and the wife, because here's what the husband gets.

He says, okay, I'm frustrated, but I know our schedules are so busy.

We can't find time to come together.

What are we going to do?

So what you do is you set aside at night.

Robin and I had Thursday night, and we agreed on Thursday night.

We'd not go to a movie.

We'd sit across the table and have coffee and talk and dream.

And, man, Thursday after Thursday, we just started really forming this deep friendship.

and we always assumed that the night would end with us coming together in love, in intimacy, the act of marriage.

Now, what that does for the man is, okay, I got five more days.

I can make this.

She's not thinking like he is, but he's thinking, okay, I know our agreement.

We're in a season of life.

And then what happens because of that agreement, it kind of frees her up to know, hey, wait a minute, the pressure.

It frees him up to be angry or upset.

He can just say, okay, I know in this season this is how we're doing this.

Marriages that are in trouble in this category, I always say, just set aside one night for each other.

Set aside one night.

Have a date night, and then at the end of that night, come together again as husband and wife.

Now, everybody wants to read the Bible.

Let me read a passage to you, okay?

This is the same guy who wrote Ephesians 5 in 1 Corinthians 7.

The husband should fulfill his marital duty to his wife, and likewise the wife to her husband.

the wife does not have authority over her own body, but yields it to her husband.

In the same way, the husband does not have authority over his own body, but yields it to his wife.

Do not deprive each other except perhaps by mutual consent, if you both agree.

And he says, even then for a short time, so that you may devote yourselves to prayer.

Then come together again so that Satan will not tempt you because of your lack of self-control.

Let me tell you, as a husband, speaking on behalf of your husbands, The devil loves this part because, man, we get angry.

As mad and frustrated as you get when you're a back burner item and when there's no time for you, quality time, and when there's no words of affirmation, as angry as you get because the husband's love language is touch and feel and words of affirmation.

So it has to go both ways.

We have to speak each other's love language.

and you can't just say, well, he has to speak mine, but I'm going to ignore his, and you can't say she has to speak mine, but I'm going to ignore hers.

You have to come together and learn what that language is and speak it often.

Okay, so first, date night.

Second, love language.

And third, my goodness, we go to a doctor for physical checkups all the time, or at least you should.

You know, we go to church to kind of stay connected spiritually with where we ought to be in our lives.

Marriages should always periodically go to marriage ministries of some kind to get a checkup on how you're doing and to communicate problems or area problems so that you can use the act of the will to come in and to...

to bring healing where healing is needed.

All right, so I hope that helps.

The essence of marriage, you're in a covenant now.

You're in a covenant.

The purpose of marriage, conform you to the image of Christ.

And the only way, the secret to marriage is having such a deep, intimate love with Christ that in those seasons where you don't feel love from your spouse, then they'll come, your love reservoir is filled with the love of God.

And I promise you, in that love reservoir, He will show you and your spouse how to love each other again.

Now, one quick quid pro prel.

There's only one exception to all of this.

What I'm about to tell you, I think that there's a lot of pastors who would disagree with me, and there are many who would agree.

But there is an exception to this, and that's sexual immorality.

When a husband or a wife cheats on their husband or wife.

It's a topic that's been talked about for so long, but in Matthew chapter 5 and Matthew chapter 19, Jesus says that if you divorce your husband or your wife for any other reason other than sexual immorality, the Bible's word for sexual immorality is pornea, from which we get our word pornography.

But basically what that means is any sex outside of the marriage contact between a husband and a wife.

So if you're watching pornography regularly and your wife catches you, some men don't see that as cheating on their wives.

Oh, yeah, you are.

Oh, absolutely.

You're having sex with anybody other than your wife?

Yep, yep.

Now, the question is, why does Jesus allow that?

Man, that's a hard one.

Because God loves us unconditionally, right?

And of course, most scholars will tell you it's because of the hardness of our hearts.

But Paul says something in 1 Corinthians where he says, all other sins are outside the body, but this is a sin inside the body.

My gut tells me that the reason there's an allowance for this is it's such an offense, it's such a betrayal, that it is extremely difficult to recover.

It's extremely difficult to gain the trust back that you once had when you've been cheated on.

And I think there's an allowance in that.

Now, does that mean you have to divorce?

No, of course not.

but just understand that the marriage bed is so sacred in the eyes of God that you don't violate that.

When the violation occurs, man, the marriage has been broken.

In fact, in 1 Corinthians 7, we're given actually three reasons a person can divorce.

Did you know that?

A lot of people say, well, there's only one, but no, he gives three.

Number one, or sorry, three reasons that a marriage can be dissolved.

Okay, number one is sexual immorality.

Number two is death.

You know what number three is?

When both are unbelievers and then one becomes a Christ follower, the other does not, and that one decides to leave, Paul says, let them go.

Because now your whole passion, you've got nothing in common now.

He says, don't demand it, but if they leave, let them go.

And he uses the word because the marriage bond is broken.

And that leads me to believe that the marriage bond is broken at sexual immorality, at death, and at an unbelieving spouse.

Hopefully and prayerfully, we'll never get there.

But just remember, no marriage is beyond repair.

If you stop and remember what the essence and the purpose, the meaning and the secret to marriage is, if you remember what they are collectively and you start employing those into your life, I believe any marriage can be saved even after adultery.

I believe that it can.

It's just going to be a long road in cases of adultery.

All right, pray for your marriages.

Let me pray for us.

Father, I just thank you for your goodness and I pray that you would give us a renewed passion for marriage, for one another.

It's so beautiful.

So many beautiful, wonderful things come out of it.

What a privilege to have a friend to go through life with, a deep, intimate relationship with a deep, personal friend who shares our goals and our objectives.

with whom we begin to have children and have families.

What a joy, what a privilege.

I only pray that through this we would recognize there will be challenges and we should never be surprised.

But a godly marriage will respond to those challenges in a way that is godly.

And that's our prayer for this whole series.

To equip us to be able to respond in seasons when the fillings aren't there with a love...

that comes only from God and then is experienced with one another.

A prayer in Christ's name, amen.

We hope you enjoyed today's message.

I want to encourage you, if you want to know more about our church, to go to our website, oneandall.church.

And from there, you can explore the whole page, see different ministries, see what we're doing, see how we can help you become a better Christ follower.

I want to encourage you as well to join our YouTube channel.

Subscribe there because we have more content, especially from this series, How to Fix Your Marriage.

where I get to sit down with Pastor Jeff, and we just get to dive deeper in his sermons.

So if you want more content like that throughout your week, go ahead and subscribe to our channel.

And we'll end as we always do with one hope, one life in Christ.