Sermon Transcript
to be married, or they may never get married. And I think about it as a dad, as I would do with my own kids. I talk with them about things that prepare them for what’s to come. Because here’s the deal with marriage, okay? We talk about marriage because we want everyone to have great relationships.
We want you to have the best relationships. We want to cast a vision for something as church and as leaders that our culture does a pretty bad job of. So we want to demonstrate to people that there is hope. If you’re a young person and you’re not married yet, the likelihood is high that you may be someday, and we want to give you hope that this can work. If you’re currently married or you know somebody who’s married, we want you to be able to take these things and take a very complicated subject but simplify it by taking some simple principles and recognizing that God’s way is the best way.
And so we’re talking about marriage even though we recognize that not everybody’s married. I think about marriage when I think about, obviously, how Shannon and I met. Shannon and I have been married for almost 22 years, and we met in one of the most boring ways possible. We met at church. We were in college, and we just met through our college group.
But before we actually physically met, I saw Shannon across a crowded room. I did. You know, like, you hear people talk about that, but she was singing on the worship team up on the platform. I was sitting out on the stage with a girlfriend that— who was not Shannon. Shannon and I had not met, but as soon as I saw Shannon, I was instantly attracted to her.
And over time, God somehow managed and maneuvered and engineered for us to be able to introduce ourselves to each other and to get married. Some of you may have a story that’s similar to that. Not all that exciting. Some of you may have a really, really exciting story about how you two got together. One of the fascinating things in our world that people are doing nowadays in order to meet people is online dating, right?
Online dating. There are, according to Forbes, an article I read, more than 2,500 dating sites, online dating sites, right now that exist in the United States. There are more than 8,000 worldwide. And there’s over 1,000 that are cropping up each year. And some of these dating sites are what you and I would expect.
I’m looking for some companionship. But sometimes people are really interesting and specific in what they’re looking for. These are actual websites that I want to share with you. For instance, if you’re a tall person and you want to find another tall person, there’s a dating site for you. It’s called Tall Persons.
And so, okay, that makes sense. Because tall people might want to date another tall person. But what if you’re not tall and you’re short? Well, we’ve got short people dating as well. So we’ve got— yeah, praise God for that— short people dating.
Okay, like let’s say that you’re a golfer or you want to date a golfer. Well, that’s pretty specific. Well, we have a site for you that you can date a golfer. You want to find somebody who’s a golfer. Now here’s an interesting one.
Let’s say you want to date a twin. Well, we have a site for you, and I don’t really understand what this site is. I spent some time looking through it, and I didn’t want to obviously sign up for it to be able to really discover it. What I’m not sure of is, do you have to be a twin to date another twin? Am I dating twins?
Like, am I dating 2 people? I don’t understand all of that, but you You can discover that for yourself. Some people want something even more specific. Let’s say that you’re, I don’t know, gluten-free. So we have a group for you that’s gluten-free singles.
These are actual sites that you can sign up for. Maybe you aren’t, you know, gluten-concerned, but you are concerned about food allergies. So we have just singles with food allergies. Okay, now sometimes though we have people who are even more specific than that. Let’s say I like croutons and Thousand Island on my salad.
Well, I can find a match through Salad Singles, okay, where you take what you like in terms of your salad and you find somebody else who likes the same salad as you. This is a site you pay money for. Okay, let’s say that we throw food out the window and we want to know about You know, finding somebody who has a similar interest. Let’s say you’re interested in, I don’t know, dating a clown. Well, we have Clown Dating for you.
Okay, this is scary to me. I personally don’t like clowns, but you know what I’m tolerant of? I’m tolerant of minds. Fortunately, there’s a dating site for minds that’s very distinct and different from the clown dating site. Okay, let’s say though that you’re interested in the paranormal or the supernatural.
You believe in ghosts, UFOs, and things like that. We have Supernatural Dating. Let’s say that you are a professional in the death industry. Maybe you’re a mortician. Well, we have a site that’s just for you called Dead Meat.
This is an actual site. You and your spouse or your partner can get together and dig a grave or whatever it is that you want to do together to celebrate your similar interests with one another. Let’s say you want to date a sea captain. Well, we have something for you. That’s a sea captain dating thing, a very, very specific, unique site.
I don’t know how many people sign up for this. Now here’s an interesting one: Amish dating. Amish dating. What’s interesting to me about this, I mean, obviously Amish people are going to marry one another, but I’ve— my understanding is that there are a number of people who are Amish who don’t use technology, so I’m not sure how this site applies to them. But I have a couple others here.
Let’s say, ladies, that you’re really into a guy who has mustaches. We have mustache dating, and I’m assuming it’s just the guys with the mustaches. It’s not the ladies with the mustaches. Doesn’t that guy look awesome to you that’s on there? We also have— this is my all-time personal favorite— is the mullet dating.
Yeah, business on top, party in the back. If you are interested in a person with a mullet for whatever reason, You have a site for you. Now, what does all this have in common besides the fact that the internet is an interesting place and a scary place? It’s the fact that we have people universally that regardless of how they’re going to meet and whatever their profession or interest is, they’re going to have this desire within them for companionship and for partnership and for and for relationship. That’s something God placed within us, this desire, this God-given need for relationship.
And people play it out in so many different ways. And I’m fortunate that I met Shannon the way that I did, because I don’t think I could do the whole online dating thing. But I also have a relative who’s met their spouse online dating, and they’ve been married for over 14 years, and they have a happy marriage. And so it can work. But here’s the bottom line, is that We talked about last week that there’s this tension that we live with, whatever your motives are for relationship, whatever you bring to the relationship, there’s this tension that we live with between what is ideal with what is real.
What is ideal with what is real. What is ideal is I meet somebody who’s going to be my life partner and they’re going to accept me for who I am. What is real is, is that sometimes the honeymoon period goes by pretty quickly and they begin to see other sides of you. What is What is ideal, right, is that I’m going to invest my time in this person and it’s going to be the most satisfying relationship of my life. What is real is that very often marriages don’t work out and people either physically separate or they emotionally separate and they’re both living in the same space but they’re emotionally distant from one another.
There’s this tension between what is ideal with what is real and we all bring that to our relationships and because of that our relationships are more complicated than they need to be. It’s complicated. It’s complex. One of the great things, though, about Jesus is that He had this supernatural ability to take the complex and to simplify it for us. For instance, when Jesus gathered His followers together the night before He died, His closest friends, He said, guys, I got a new command for you.
And they may have perked up. Okay, a new command. You know, we’ve got the 10 Commandments. We’ve got the 600-plus other laws that are in the Old Testament. What’s this new commandment, Jesus, that you’re going to give us?
This must be really, really complicated and really, really profound. So they’re probably leaning in. What is this new command? Jesus said, a new command I give you: love one another.
That’s it? Love one another? What’s so profound about that? What’s so unique about this? Give us something meatier than that, Jesus.
No, love one another. This is the heart of relationships. Love one another. And what’s unique about what Jesus said here is that he’s using love not as a noun like you and I have, the feeling of love, but as an action, as a verb. See, anybody with a pulse can fall in love.
That’s all that’s required is a pulse. You have to be able to breathe. Anybody can fall in love, but demonstrating love, when it’s hard to do that, showing love to somebody that at times is unlovable is hard to do. So how do we do that and what does that look like? That’s what we want to take a look at today, and we’re going to continue again in the book of Colossians.
So we’re going to look at chapter 3. We’ve got one verse there, and then we’re going to look at a couple other parallel verses and then just sort of summarize these things and then talk about some implications of these things. The book of Colossians, it tells us in chapter 3, verse 19, husbands— we’re talking here to husbands— love your wives and do not be harsh with them. Now, are wives supposed to love their husbands? Well, sure.
But it’s interesting that the Bible doesn’t really focus on that, and that wives have a different role. And we have different reasons why we think that that might be. It might be because love comes so natural to women. You don’t have to command them to love. But husbands, we’re a different creature, we’re a different animal.
Husbands, love your wives and do not be harsh with them. The book of Ephesians, chapter 5. 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. In the same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies, for he who loves his wife loves himself. After all, no one ever hated their own body, but they feed and they care for their body.
Just as Christ feeds and cares for the church. And lastly, 1 Peter 3:7 says, husbands, in the same way, be considerate as you live with your wives and treat them with respect as the weaker partner and as heirs with you of the gracious gift of life, so that nothing will hinder your prayers. A couple things that I want to just point out here. First of all, We take for granted how radical this teaching was. To the listeners in the first century, this would have been incredibly radical because of arranged marriages and all the different things.
I’m supposed to love this person that I have no feelings for?
I’m supposed to love this person that I’ve just now met? Husbands, love your wives. And in a day and when When women were treated like property and like cattle and like secondary citizens and as inferior, they’re saying, husbands, love your wives. Care for them, nourish them, nurture them, love them. That’s radical.
But there are 3 things that I want to just use to summarize those 3 passages that we just read. First of all is that love is more than a feeling. Love is more than a feeling. Similar to how Jesus used love as a verb and not as a noun, Paul does the same thing. Husbands, love your wives.
Love, verb, your wives. It doesn’t talk about feelings.
Obviously, the feelings, it’s wonderful to be able to have, but the feelings come and go. But the action, the verb that’s required because of love, That’s what he’s after here. You see, we think that feeling is the engine that drives our relationships and that drives our marriage, whether you’re a husband or a wife. But feeling is the caboose of the train. It’s not the engine.
It used to be the engine whenever you first met and your potential spouse could do no wrong, and you’re swept away in that. But eventually feeling has to give way to something else. Feeling is fine.
Love is a verb. It’s something that you do, and it’s something you continue to do, because the verb that’s used in the Ephesians passage is a continuing verb. That means keep on loving regardless of feelings. Keep on loving. Another thing that we saw there in those passages is that love is unconditional.
Love is unconditional. You didn’t see that word there, but the specific word that was used there and also by Jesus is the word agape, the Greek word agape, which is not a romantic love. It’s not an intimate love. It’s not a brotherly or friendship love. It’s a different type of a love.
That’s an unconditional love where there’s no ifs and there’s no conditions that are part of it. And he’s saying, husbands, agape love your wives, just as Jesus said, A new command I give you: agape, love one another. This is a command for all of us without conditions. Well, that’s, that’s really, really difficult because whenever you first meet somebody and you fall in love with them, you think you love the person, but you really don’t. You think you do, but you just met.
You can’t possibly love this person. Why? Because you don’t know them. That takes time. What you love is your idea of the person.
You love the ideal of what you think that this person might be like. But then seasons come and go, and you begin to get to know one another, and you see each other at your best and at your worst. And the layers of the onion begin to peel off, and you begin to say, who is this person I married? It’s like I’m marrying a stranger here. Maybe you begin to see that your spouse is a lot more irritable than what you thought.
Maybe your spouse begins to see you as being more impatient or disorganized or selfish. Maybe you married somebody who is judgmental. Maybe you married somebody who is a perfectionist and is difficult to live with. Maybe you married somebody who has little regard for your feelings, and you didn’t see that early on, right?
But through the time, you begin to say, okay, love is more than a feeling. And over time, I’m gonna have to learn to not just feel love, but I’m gonna have to love in action this person unconditionally. Husbands, love your wives— as a verb— husbands, love your wives unconditionally, but also sacrificially. Sacrificially. We saw that in the passage as well.
Husbands, love your wives— how? As Christ loves the church. Well, how did he love the church? By giving himself up for her. We can look up all kinds of definitions of love.
We can look in the dictionary, we can go to Wikipedia, we can go to an encyclopedia, we can study about love, but the best definition of love, for my money, is in 1 John chapter 4 where it says, this is how God showed his love among us. He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love. You want a definition? Here you go.
This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. Since God so agape’d us, we ought to agape unconditionally one another. And then verse 19, we love because he first loved us. What is this saying?
It’s just saying that there— Jesus is the model for us, the model for us of what love is and what love does. Jesus is the model of sacrifice, and there is never a day, according to this definition, there’s never a day, husbands and wives, in which sacrifice is not required. There’s never a day in your marriage in which you can withhold love. There’s never a day where you put your agenda above the agenda of your spouse. You are called to sacrifice.
Yeah, that’s hard. Yeah, this is a really difficult standard for us to reach. But there’s another piece here that I think that we miss, and that’s why we do this. Why, why are we to love like this? What’s our motivation?
Imagine me sitting down on the couch next to Shannon, and in a stern and monotone voice I say, Shannon, it’s come to my understanding that I’m supposed to love you.
So I want you to know that I’m going to fulfill my responsibility to you because I’m that kind of a person. I’m supposed to love you, and so that’s what I’m going to do. Do you think she’s going to throw her arms around me and say how lucky she is to have me? Neither do I.
The motivation is not love because I have to. It’s not love because I’m obligated to. That verse 19 there is huge in 1 John 4. We love, agape, because He first loved, agape, us. We love, verb, because He first loved, verb, us.
He’s the model. He’s the model. So that means that as I think about all the love that God lavishes upon me, And all the patience he has with me and his forgiveness, his grace, loving me even though I’m so undeserving and I could never earn it. I don’t— there’s nothing I could say about that. How can I then withhold love from this person that God has put together with me?
When I understand that, that transforms my heart. It changes me. Away from going, well, I’m gonna wait on her to do some things that I want, and then I will express love. It doesn’t work like that. Love initiates.
You don’t wait to be asked to love. You demonstrate love because it’s more than a feeling, and it’s unconditional, and it’s sacrificial. Now, on a day-to-day basis, what does this look like? I want to spend some time here with this. I’ve given some thought to this, and I’ve drawn out some some application types of things from the Scriptures that I think are thoroughly biblical.
And one is, is that when Peter— or excuse me, Paul— in the Colossians passage says, husbands, love your wives, he also says, do not be harsh with them. So we love by not being harsh with our spouses. Now, either spouse can be harsh towards each other, right?
Either spouse can be insensitive towards each other. But for some reason, Paul singles out husbands. Why? Perhaps we’re more harsh or insensitive than our wives. How are we insensitive?
With what we say, with what we do, and with what we fail to say or do. With what we say, with our cutting remarks or sarcasm.
Maybe by what we fail to say. Maybe we’re passive-aggressive.
Maybe we, maybe we are insensitive or harsh towards them because we lose our temper whenever we don’t get our way. Maybe we’re perfectionists and we’re demanding and difficult to live with. Maybe we’re judgmental. Husbands, do not be harsh with your wives. You love your wives.
Action: love them by not being harsh to them. Be sensitive to them. In the passage in 1 Peter, it said, husbands, live with your wives in an understanding way. Be considerate of them. Understand them.
And the phrase that’s literally there in the original language is according to knowledge. Live with them according to knowledge. In other words, know your wives. Know them. Understand and remember that they’re different people from you.
I’m fascinated by the world that we live in, that we can watch relationships on TV. And on the internet and things like The Bachelor and The Amazing Race. I don’t like The Bachelor. I do like The Amazing Race, but I’ve seen both, and I’m always interested to see how people on these shows navigate their relationships when they’re up against a trial and whenever things don’t go well and they begin to see another side of things and the feeling begins to sort of change, right? And because the feelings were there, but they didn’t know each other.
They didn’t really know each other, and travel will bring that out of you. If you’ve ever traveled with somebody, you come away going, okay, now I understand this person a little bit better. Or you go through a challenge with a person and you— okay, I think I understand this person better. I understand Shannon so much better because of the multiple miscarriages that she had and the things that we went through together and having 7 years without children. Before we adopted.
We understand each other in such a way, and I’m grateful for this, that she’s my best friend. So that whenever our children go off to college, we still have a relationship. We have something in common beyond that because she knows me and loves me, and I know her and love her. And God has been gracious to us in that way. And that’s, that’s ultimately what it means to live with each other in an understanding way, is to to understand each other.
And Peter says something here that some people are afraid to touch, and I’m gonna touch it. He says, live with your wives and treat them with respect as the weaker partner.
As the weaker partner. What does that mean? I spent some time— I asked a number of women this last week their opinion on that and what they felt, and they had their different ideas. I asked Pastor Dave. I also looked at some commentaries.
What’s interesting to me is nobody wants to touch this. This. Nobody wants to address what is Peter talking about, the weaker vessel, the weaker partner. Is he saying that she’s physically weaker? Well, in first century Middle East, yeah, maybe.
But I don’t think that that’s what he’s talking about. Is she intellectually weaker? Maybe again in that day because husbands had more access to education. But we cannot in our 21st century say that that’s true.
Does it mean that she’s emotionally weaker, as if having emotions is a weakness?
Is she morally weaker? Absolutely not. I think what— if you read the context, what he’s talking about here, and this is what it means to live in an understanding way with her as a weaker partner, is to understand he’s talking about the cultural weakness of women. He’s talking about women in the cultural perspective. And the word for weaker there means powerless, means without strength.
And so he’s using a term that could be used for a prisoner or somebody who’s been deprived by this society of freedom and opportunity to express who they fully are. And in that day when women were marginalized and were treated as second-class citizens and they didn’t have the chance to fully express their gifts and their talents and their personalities, He’s saying this is a cultural weakness, and he’s saying, husbands, I want you to treat your wife recognizing that she’s being held back here, and you are therefore to treat her with special honor and special respect.
He’s saying, in other words, don’t treat her like the culture. Treat her different and better than the culture treats their wives.
Treat them different.
Now, we can say, well, that’s the first century. Women aren’t marginalized nowadays. Really?
Women aren’t exploited. Really?
Very little has changed. Husbands, love your wives and recognize they have gifts and abilities that God wants to put on display, but Very often, they’re held back. But also, another possible understanding of this, as the weaker partner, is that it’s by saying yes to marriage, she is accepting a role of submission, which leaves her vulnerable to being exploited. It leaves her vulnerable to being hurt. So husbands, live with her in an understanding way by not taking advantage of her.
Live with her as the weaker partner. Live with her with understanding.
Living with wives in an understanding way also requires understanding their feelings, understanding their feelings and being sensitive to what that is. I’ve heard people talk about how, well, my husband doesn’t understand me. We never talk. He won’t talk to me. He won’t open up to me.
He doesn’t know what I think. He doesn’t know what I feel. He doesn’t, he doesn’t care about that.
And so understanding means listening. But what do we as husbands do? In an effort to love, we try to fix. We like to fix stuff. You tell me about a problem and I’m going to come in beside you and I’m going to try to fix this.
Living in an understanding way doesn’t always mean to fix. In fact, more often than not, I think it means to listen and not just listen to what they’re saying, but what is underneath what they’re saying and to take the time to do that. To spend time listening to each other, not for agreement, but for understanding. And she will feel loved as you do that, guys. Living in an understanding way also means to be chivalrous.
He talks about being courteous. It’s interesting, whenever I open the door for women, uh, or, um, I’m polite in any way, I’ve had a couple people who’ve pointed out, wow, chivalry is not dead. And I’m always fascinated by that because I think that all men should treat women with courtesy and with respect. And maybe your wife doesn’t want you to open up doors for her, I don’t know. Maybe she doesn’t want you to wait on her hand and foot, I don’t know.
But find something that communicates courtesy and respect for her that you know that she would appreciate. I learned early on that one of the ways that I can communicate love to Shannon is by having her car washed. Without having to be asked. Or getting her oil changed in the car. I can’t change the oil, I’m horrible with cars, but I can take it somewhere without having to be asked.
Or I can go to Starbucks and I can get her favorite drink on my way home and bring it to her. There’s ways that you might be able to do that, and there’s ways, listen, that I’ve missed the mark on this. There’s plenty of times where I’ve been insensitive towards Shannon, or I’ve failed to show chivalry or courtesy. But when Peter says, live with them in an understanding way, that’s one of the things he’s talking about. He also says, live with your wives and treat them with respect as the weaker partner and as heirs with you of the gracious gift of life.
So treat your wives in an understanding way as co-heirs with you. Your wife is your spiritual equal. She is spiritually equal to you. You both depend upon God’s grace. So don’t treat her like a second-class citizen.
Treat her as a partner. Treat her as a person who is equal with you, as a teammate that God has brought together to complement one another. And what’s interesting here, you may have missed this, I want to note that Peter doesn’t simply make casual suggestions here. He makes it sound like by saying, so that nothing will hinder your prayers, do this so that nothing will hinder your prayers, he’s essentially saying, Your doing these things, living with your wife in an understanding way, has a direct bearing on how your prayers are answered. Isn’t that interesting?
On how your prayers are answered, if they’re answered. What else does it mean to, to, to love our wives as Christ loved the church? I think it also means, guys, to find ways that speak love to her in a way that is most significant to her. And some of you are familiar with the concept of the love languages. That came out years ago, and I use this concept all the time, not only in my relationships, but as I work with couples.
And the fact is, is that there are 5 distinct ways that we communicate love to other people. We do it with our words, we do it through physical touch, we do it through gifts and through quality time and through acts of service. And one of these is gonna be a way that you would say, guys or gals, is gonna be a way that you would say, oh, Yes, I like to receive love in that way. And your spouse is gonna feel that way too. So learn to find ways to speak your spouse’s love language.
I know it seems so simple, but ask them on the way home. If you don’t already know what it is, ask them, which of these 5 ways would you most prefer that I feel loved? That when I love you in this way, you feel safe and secure and truly cherished. And nurtured? Which of these ways?
Guys, ask her. It may be a combination of things. And if you don’t know, do all of them.
Speak it all. Love her in a way that she needs to be loved, not the way that you prefer to be loved. See, that’s the concept of love language. We naturally speak a language that we want to prefer— that that we prefer, that we want to receive from others. But that’s not how love languages work.
If I speak to Shannon in a love language that is not her primary language, I might as well be speaking another language to her. We can’t communicate and she doesn’t feel loved. Similarly, she does that to me. She speaks her language to me, which is not my language. We’re talking 2 different languages.
We can’t communicate. We’re not on the same page. Husbands, love your wives by discovering what it is that will communicate love to her most of Another way to love your wives as Christ loved the church is to sacrifice. We talked about that word sacrifice, and of course Jesus modeled that for us. I’m doubtful, guys, that any of us will ever be in a position to actually physically lay down our lives for our spouse.
I don’t know if that opportunity will ever come, but there are other ways that we can sacrifice.
If you don’t— if you’re not in a position to lay down your life, Can you lay down your phone?
Can you lay down your gadget for her?
Are you willing to make her a priority over all of these other things? Do you hold your phone more than you hold your wife? Are you more attracted to an image, an inappropriate image I might add, on the computer or on the TV than you are to your own wife?
Are you willing to make her a priority? Why? Because she deserves it? Listen, I don’t know if that’s the case or not, but that’s not the issue. We agape love.
We love regardless. We stay and we love as Christ loved us, and we sacrifice and we do what he did for us. What if you don’t have those feelings of love? What if you don’t know how to get there? I understand that.
I really do, because those feelings come and they go.
What I’ve learned, and I think many of you have probably discovered too, is, is you can’t drum up feelings for a person. You can’t command a person to be happy. You can’t command a person to love. I can’t just automatically feel that. I can’t think and feel my way into acting.
I can’t noun my way into a verb, but I can act my way into a feeling. When Jesus said, love your neighbor, he wasn’t asking if you loved your neighbor. He didn’t say to bother considering whether or not you love your neighbor. He said, act as if you did. Love your wives, husbands, just as Christ loved us.
You say, yeah, but Steve, you don’t understand. My wife, she does this and she does that. And the question that Jesus would ask is, are you loving? Are you loving her?
Yeah, but you— no, you don’t understand.
Are you loving her? We talked about last week with the wives and how husbands sometimes go, oh yeah, we’re talking about submission. And wives maybe today, oh yeah, no, like we’re talking about husbands loving their wives. If we focus on the things that are written specifically to us, and apply those things, God will put it all together. I absolutely believe that.
But you say, I can’t fake something. I can’t feel something that I don’t feel. It’s too mechanical for me.
But Paul, in the Ephesians passage, is not calling us to just act without thinking. He’s telling us to act with thinking. Husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her. Think as you act. Remember what Jesus did.
In other words, you have to tell yourself at different times, guys, in your marriage, and perhaps ladies towards your husbands, you have to tell yourself, I may not feel love right now in this moment. And when Christ looked down from the cross, I can’t imagine Him thinking, you know, I’m giving myself to you because you’re so attractive to me. Because you’re so loyal to me. Because we’re not loyal, we’re disloyal, we’re unfaithful, we’re filled with sin and flaws, and we betray and we deny. And so what Jesus did on the cross, in the greatest act of love in history, is he stayed on the cross.
He sacrificed himself.
Husbands, love your wives in that way. A new command I give to all of you. Love one another as I have loved you. We talked about a couple weeks ago, Pastor Dave and his message, when he talked about doing whatever we do in the name of Jesus, doing it as if Jesus would do it. He said, don’t just do it, do it like Jesus would.
We talked last week about wives and the role of submission and what that looks like from a biblical perspective. We said, don’t just submit, submit like Jesus did, how Jesus submitted himself to the Father. Our bottom line today is so similar. Don’t just love. Love like Jesus does.
Love like Jesus did. Love like Jesus will continue to do. Love like Jesus loves you. Love your spouse.
Let’s pray. Father, thank you for how practical your word is. We have complex and complicated relationships that are difficult for us to be able to wrap our minds around as to what to do, and yet It’s amazing that you just simplify it for us and say, start with love. Start with looking at the cross. Start, start by looking at what I’ve done for you, and the rest will follow.
God, I pray that you would transform our hearts. I pray you would transform every individual here in this room. I pray you transform every relationship that’s represented here, that you would turn the hearts of husbands and wives to one another. And unite them and bring about oneness as they seek, Lord, to fulfill the purposes for which, Lord, you brought them together. And in moments when things are not happy, remind us, God, that your goal is to make us holy, that your goal is to make us more like your Son Jesus.
Your goal is to make us more mature. And we don’t have to scorekeep, and we don’t have to, to keep a record of wrongs. We can freely and lovingly express sacrifice because of what you’ve done for us. God, I pray for miracles to be done in marriages in this room. I pray for miracles to be done, especially in those situations where husbands and wives are not communicating well or they’re not loving one another.
God, I pray that as you raised Jesus from the dead, that you would raise this relationship from the dead, and I pray you would pour hope, new hope, Through what we’ve shared here today. I pray that you would transform our hearts.
If you’re here today and you’ve never said yes to Jesus’ invitation to eternal life, you can do that. And it starts there. If you want to learn to love others, you’ve got to understand you’ve got to receive his love first and his invitation. And if that’s you, you can just simply, quietly, on your own, just confess that to God. Say, God, I want to follow you.
Make my heart your home, as the kids sang earlier. Come and live in me. Come forgive me. Come take up residence in my life and save me, because my sins have separated me from you, but your Son’s sacrifice covers all those sins. Thank you for that, and I receive that in my life.
Father, as we leave from this place, may we go and may we be a light in this community. May we be salt. And may people look at our lives and see that we are not like this world and we are not like this culture. We’re different because of Jesus in our lives. We pray all these things in Your Son’s name.
Amen. Amen. Thanks for letting me be here with you. I want to invite you next Sunday to come back for what’s going to be an incredible morning altogether. Again, we’re going to have one service.
At 10 o’clock, and we invite you to come. Listen, if I can pray for you in any way, I’m just gonna be over here on this side. Please don’t leave with a prayer need being unprayed for. Come let me know if I can pray for you, or grab somebody next to you and let them know how they can pray for you, okay? God bless, thank you.
