Let’s pray: Lord, it is hard for us to confess that we need help; there’s resistance to that inside of us. We want to hold on to the possibility that it’s not us. We want to resist your diagnosis. And yet the truth is that we give empirical evidence again, and again, and again, and again of the selfishness of sin--Maybe in a thoughtless word, maybe in an unkind action, maybe in needless criticism and judgment, maybe in impatience and irritation. We picture, again, that we need to be rescued from us. Oh, soften our hearts; make us willing, ready to say, “I need the help that you alone can give.” We’re so thankful that the Bible is not just a bunch of theology, and rules, and principles; but the Bible is a story of how the perfect Son of God would enter our mess so that we would have the help that we need. Your greatest gift to us is not a thing. Your greatest gift to us is Yourself. And if we’re your children, You’ve invaded our marriages by Your grace; You are with us, and in that there is hope. May husbands and wives all over this room take advantage this evening of having that conversation, and may that begin to create movement in marriages that have been stuck. Thank you for placing Your transformative love, Your rescuing grace on us. In Jesus’s name, Amen. SESSION 5 Well, I want to put two words together for you. These two words need to be put together. You won’t find these two words on the front of a Hallmark anniversary card. If you saw them on the front of a Hallmark anniversary card, you wouldn’t buy that card. But these are two words about marriage that need to be together. Here they are: “Marriage is war!” Now, I don’t mean all of those nasty, little, horizontal skirmishes between a husband and wife that make moments uncomfortable and tense. What I’m talking about is this--that all of that uncomfortable tension and conflict is really the fruit of a deeper war. It’s only when you begin to understand that deeper war--that you will gain ground in those nasty little moments that all of us experience. Now, here it is--marriage, this side of eternity, is always a war between the Kingdom of God and the kingdom of self. That war isn’t fought between you and your husband; that war isn’t fought between you and your wife; that war is fought on the turf of your heart. That war is fought for control of your soul. Marriage is always a war between the Kingdom of God and the kingdom of self. I want to turn you to Matthew 6, and I want to read for you a rather lengthy passage. And you’ll understand as we work through this passage why I read the whole passage. Matthew 6, verse 19: Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. The eye is the lamp of the body. So, if your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light, but if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light in you is darkness, how great is that darkness! No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money. Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life? And why are you anxious about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is alive and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith? Therefore do not be anxious, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the Gentiles seek after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all. (ESV)
Transcript: Session 5
WHAT DID YOU EXPECT?
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