“Fear not little flock for your heavenly Father has graciously chosen to give you the kingdom.” That is good news for your marriage. There is a better way, and it’s empowered by the grace of a transformative Redeemer. There’s a better way. Jesus died so that you would know it. Why would you be content with the small purposes of the divisive, little kingdom of one when this beautiful Kingdom of love, and joy, and peace has been offered to you by the Redeemer? Run from your kingdom. Seek His Kingdom in your marriage, and you watch what God will do. Let’s pray: Lord, what we’ve looked at just now is both deeply convicting and gloriously hopeful. We’re convicted because it’s been exposed that we’re such committed small kingdom people when You have offered us a much better Kingdom. We’re hopeful because You have chosen us for something glorious. And You are with us, and You will empower us to live in a new and better way. May we, in specific and concrete ways in the context of our marriages, seek Your Kingdom of love, and joy, and peace, and know the beautiful harvest that that will bring us. Lord, we recognize that that’s war. We recognize that to ourselves we have neither the power to desire that nor the power to do that; we just don’t. And so we would pray, even in this moment, that You would meet us by Your grace. May we, by grace, love Your Kingdom more than we love our own? And by grace, may we live according to Your Kingdom purposes, seek Your Kingdom treasures, and may we see the harvest of good fruit happen in our marriages? We pray these things again in the name of the One who was willing to suffer and die so that we could escape our kingdom and live forever in Yours. In the name of Jesus, we pray, Amen. SESSION 9 Well, we want to complete the circle. We want to finally answer the question: What does it actually look like to have a marriage that’s rooted in worship? And find this place in your notes. What does it look like to have a marriage that’s rooted in worship? Well, here’s the first thing. If you are going to treat your husband or wife with esteem and respect, creating a relationship of unity, and understanding, and love, it begins with worshiping God as Creator. Now, stay with me; that’s your hardwiring--That there are certain things that God has created you to be that you didn’t have a choice. We’re talking about your natural gifts; we’re talking about your personality; we’re talking about the shape of your body; we’re talking about your tone of voice--all of those things are choices of the Creator. Now, here’s what often happens. The very differences that attracted me to you in courtship now irritate me in marriage. And I want to rise to the throne of creator and re-create you in my image or in the image of something that would be more comfortable for me. Now here’s what I say, “How can you look at another human being, as vastly different as we are from one another, and not see the glory of God?” I want you to do something for me--this will seem weird, but just look at the noses in the room--just do it right now. Have you noticed how many noses has God created, and He hasn’t yet repeated a model--how many billion? And your nose is an incredible creation. It matches the architecture of your face, although we don’t think that in our culture--we’re nose-freaked out, and we’re always wanting to alter them. And imagine if your nose was upside down. Not only would that look very weird, you couldn’t go out in the rain. And what if your nose was here-cachoo, cachoo, cachoo? Not only would that be weird, but it would be way too close to your armpit. But here’s what happens --we reject one another in marriage for choices we didn’t make. We actually fall into thinking that we would have been a better creator than the Creator. I was counseling a husband and wife; the woman was an academic woman. She loved books. She thought that books were the portal to every good thing in life. Her husband was a mechanical man. He liked books too--He liked to prop things up with them. And she was deeply persuaded that he was poorly created, and she needed to re-create him in her image. They had a vacation home about three hours away. She would hide books under the seat in the car so when they got up to highway speed, she would pull out the book and start reading aloud to her husband. Oh, he loved that! At one point he grabbed the book, hit the button for the window and threw the book of the window. He hit the button for her window so the book would fly by her face
Transcript: Session 9
WHAT DID YOU EXPECT?
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