[0:00] uh we please be seated i'm gonna read that scripture in the text or in in in the sermon okay so if you'll just be seated and i hate to break a tradition uh but that's not uncommon for me so uh so anyway so thank you so nice to see you and uh you know it's interesting in my neighborhood if i would see you as a kid with all these masks on i would think you're trying to rob me but uh we do have to make adjustments um it's exciting to be here this weekend and uh i'm grateful to pastor kevin for the opportunity to share the word of god with you and this weekend is really sort of the brainchild the visionary vision of mrs hickman who a couple years ago wanted gary chapman and me to come here for the opportunity of improving race relations to talk about our story and what god did but also talk about marriage and there's a lot of spiritual warfare involved and so instead of having one day what god did he gave us basically three days this weekend to be here so i'm excited uh i went to covenant college about 100 years ago so it's kind of good to come back and see some faces i do have some books for sale i have uh i'm gonna spend most of the sermon talking to singles because a lot of times we do marriage stuff singles get left out so if you're in middle school or older i'm talking to you if you've been married you're now single uh most of the content is going to come from here and that it'll be out there uh first book i wrote 20 years ago it's about winning race to unity and it's asking questions racial reconciliation really working and it really gives some some some context of how to improve race relations culturally and not just be binary and then a book that uh a lot of men and women like is called keeping your wife your best friend some guys misquoted and said making your wife your best friend but it's been my experience you can't make women do anything so uh so i'm just i'm just saying so anyway but uh so i hope you would go and buy the books are out that way i uh there are four women in my life so i'm the minority in their sorority so i just pray for me and uh i'm so grateful that you're praying for ukraine uh two years ago brenda and i were over in ukraine doing marriage conferences and so we have dear friends that we're supporting and we also have invitations to go to russia and moldova so we're waiting to see what god's going to do with all of this well let me get started because kevin told me i need to be out of here by two o'clock so uh did i say something wrong so and the spiritual warfare has just been so amazing normally i don't preach from a laptop but uh this is what it is well i want to talk about relationships and to me relationships are keys in the song of life and as we talk about relationships so often single people and i have a passion for single people i was in my 30s before i got married so i don't know how you feel but i can understand sometimes the pressure we get even from well-meaning church folk while we've been single is anybody well i want to even ask you raise your hand i won't embarrass anybody but if you're single and you're not married i just want to share this with you if you're in christ you're complete if you're in christ you're complete you don't quote have to be married so so keep that in mind so there's nothing wrong with you or maybe a better way of saying that is that i think everybody is abnormal just some of us are more abnormal than others okay so that's a more accurate way to say that well in genesis chapter 2 verse 18 and you're single you may have read this and god said it's not good for the man or the woman to be alone i will make a helper suitable for him and if you heard that then maybe you're saying silently okay if it's not good to be alone to be cut off or isolated i'm ready now so what's the delay and and maybe you're thinking this if you're single whether you're in middle school high school college or out of school am i not worthy enough am i not good looking enough or deserved enough or athletic enough those are from satan don't go there don't question yourself as if you're not enough because that's the enemy because remember in christ you're complete now satan normally and i leave my phone there yes we i'm on medicare so i don't remember everything very well thank you y'all laughing with me right okay thank you well and you know satan tries to get us to question god when adam and eve were created um he went to eve and tried to make her think that god was somehow holding out on her even though she was a crown she and adam the crown of his creation and in genesis chapter 3 verses 1 through 7 i'll just read it to you real quick it says the serpent was the shrewdest of all the wild animals the lord god had made one day he asked a woman did god really say that you must not eat from any of the in the fruit of any trees in the garden of course we may eat from fruit in the trees of the garden the woman replied it's only fruit from the tree in the middle of the garden that we are not allowed to eat god said we must not eat it or even touch it if you do you will die now god didn't say anything about touching it and what's happening here eve is wondering if god is really holding out on her if she's missing out on something and she's actually looking for a way to sin when she talks about being about touching the tree i don't remember if you were if you remember when you were little but are any of you in here did you ever play your parents against one another you know and and a child always went to the weakest parent i mean if you're a boy you went to your mom because she was so soft and silly if you're a girl you go to your dad and and so whenever i was trying to do something like if i wanted permission i'll go ask my mom can i go play basketball and she said go ask your father and so by the time i got to my father the message had changed a little bit and so the message when i got to my dad said hey dad mom said i go play basketball if it's okay with you and so he was looking for a way to sin in this process but then it goes on and says the woman was convinced when she saw let me go back here but then satan says you won't die when he sees her weakening he basically calls god a liar you won't die the serpent replied to the woman god knows that your eyes will be open as soon as you eat and you will be like god knowing both good and evil now what's interesting in this is that being like god she already had that you see god had already given the man and the woman his dna and so satan was trying to give her something she already had see satan by his very nature can't really own anything and even we translate it demon possessed or something like that it's it's really demonization what has to do with influence not ownership because he can't create anything so so keep that in mind but when she saw that it looked good and she thought again god was holding out on her some kind of way uh she ate something she gave something to her husband and then after the husband ate both her eyes were open and at that moment they realized that suddenly their shame came because at their nakedness and so they sewed big leaves together to cover themselves i thought it was really really amazing but remember you're complete in christ so god's not holding out anything from you well another thing is satan can't give us peace you know and he wouldn't give it to us even if he could in isaiah 26 verse 3 it says you will keep in perfect peace him or her whose mind is steadfast because he trusts you we need to focus on the lord when things aren't the way we think they should be and even when they are the way we think they should be we should focus on him that he should be that uh our god and listen to this spiritual emptiness can't be filled by physical actions or things and that's why we can accumulate so many things but unless that god vacuum is filled with jesus and we're really honoring holy spirit we're gonna still be frustrated so this is shula theology and pastor kevin probably here next week to clean this up but i believe that god's best for me is always right now not yesterday not tomorrow god's best for me if he's really sovereign is always right now not yesterday not tomorrow you see the scripture saying lamentation that the faithful love of the lord never ends greatest is faithfulness his mercies begin a fresh wind every morning see if i'm focusing on the past i'm not seeing what god's doing today and if i'm focusing on the future and i don't mean we can't think about the future but if we want god to change things we need stuff now then i'm missing what god's trying to do today so i'll never forget when i was uh in seminary i was uh it was a rare occasion i was actually making straight a's because god had gotten into my head and say you know if you're not faithful with these books i'm not going to trust you with people and so the word of god became much more important well not the word of god but studying became much more important it actually became an act of worship and and so but i remember i was giving myself a break so i go down to the gym play basketball and i tear my acl and so i'm in a cast for like three weeks hopping around seminary and as i'm hopping around seminary i'm meeting people i would normally have never met and god used those different people to enrich my life while i was on on his own crutches and so even in the midst of that god was glorifying himself so god's best it's it's not yesterday and it's not tomorrow it's right now and so the key for us as christians say god what do you do in my life today what do you want to teach me today what are you showing me today now we need to realize that that god always has my best interest at heart so god really knows what's best for me more than i do that might be a foreign concept we we won't we've never said that theologically but sometimes our actions say that right that we think we know more than god and so i want to read from our our text and you don't need to stand up but i want to read from psalm 139 verses 13 through 16 and i'm reading from a new living translation and it says this and i'll keep us out of here i promise by one o'clock it says he's talking to god say you made all the delicate parts of my body and knit me together my mother's womb thank you for making me so wonderfully complex now now guys we know we know that women are complex right y'all y'all quiet y'all scared okay they're supposed to be the weaker sex we're scared of them right but we do know that women are complex right and how do we know women are complex because when god created woman he had to take a day off i mean he had he had a day of rest right right i mean that's in the scriptures right the last thing he i mean right and so and we know that's not god's character because psalm 121 says what god neither what he doesn't slumber he doesn't sleep but when he created woman i got you know so anyway uh i'm just saying just just i was having a little fun but then the god of all creation listen this the god of all creation he says your workmanship is marvelous we are god's workmanship you know i live in colorado beautiful mountains pike peak i mean it's incredible listen no matter what people say about you no matter what your relationship status is the god of all creation the god who has that sun shining calls you and me marvelous that's good news you know if i'm depressed that might get me out of my depression because the god of all creation calls you marvelous anyway it says you watched me i was being formed in utter seclusion i was woven together in the dark of the womb one of my friends uh his daughter makes a fortune of filming childbirth it would gross me out but a lot of people want that and and they pay good money for it i mean it's just unbelievable but god was actually with you in the womb and i don't know how you how that how that happens but he says you saw me before i was born every day of my life was recording your book now listen to this every moment was laid out before a single day had passed god did not create you for the day god created the day for you you understand what i'm saying god did not create you for the day he created every day for you and so every day you live god is simply saying to you i love you here's 24 hours we can spend together what are we going to do together what a gift what a gift anyway we could almost take an offering on that right now okay okay now so listen to me so based on that you have a godly destiny so don't wish your time away on tomorrow or waiting for things to be different learn to embrace today you know i was sitting here this morning and the spiritual warfare attack has just been crazy and i was getting frustrated and in my righteous indignation i'm not sure how righteous it was but i was frustrated and so during the worship time you know guys begin to through the holy spirit begin to say hey you know this is about me you need to be speaking about me this is not about you you need to focus on me and i said i said man you're right you're right this is so not about me and it's so easy for us to get distracted from what's really important so we need to really learn to focus and refocus sometimes so let's embrace today so if you're saying here's some principles you might need to understand embrace and i'm just going to throw these out again there in the book they go in much more detail um ask god what do you mean you're trying to teach you in the midst of your singleness is it it's all about trusting god even when we don't feel like it we're made in god's image now what's so significant about it in genesis 126 and 28 when we made this image uh he says three times in those verses that were in his image that means we have his dna and in fact he may have his dna that means in verse 28 it says he blessed them and some hebrew scholars said when he says he's blessed us that means when god looks at you he sees himself in us and so what he basically says is the word wow now can you imagine again the god of all creation he looks at you and me he goes wow because he sees himself in you and i always have a phone just i think it's true you know now now all babies are beautiful right i mean i mean if they're related to you they're beautiful right because they look like you but there are other babies we see sometimes that that uh that you know we go like oh lord let's pray help help they grow out of that you know but uh but when god looks at us he sees his dna he goes wow and so we should not focus on self-worship we should focus on but we should focus on gaining a better understanding of self-worth there's a difference between self-worship and self-worth because we have self-worth we have value we have purpose we have a destiny and think about this in genesis 126 because god is sovereign he knew we were going to mess up and he created us anyway so the god of all creation he wanted us in the midst of our imperfection so no matter what anybody says to you no matter what anybody treats you god wanted you and he created us anyway and to him we have value we have purpose we have a destiny is that good news okay so let's keep rolling here so here's the deal i will think this is really important for singles if you're not content being single you won't be content in a friendship a dating relationship or marriage you need to like you because you bring value to the table and christians sometimes we struggle we have what i call this false humility oh i'm so unworthy no god has made you worthy you have value so when you go into a relationship the other person shouldn't make you but it's what you bring into the table because we don't do that we can unintentionally put that girlfriend or boyfriend or husband or wife on a performance track to please us and a lot of christians have developed an improper theology that god wants me happy god's not called you to be happy he's called you to be holy but if you're holy you'll be happy you understand the difference some other things you might be asking if god loves me so much then why am i still single i hear you i hear you but you may not be emotionally ready which may cause you to become dependent and needy and if we're dependent and needy then we become codependent dysfunctional and ultimately destructive in relationships you with me we can become codependent we become you know dysfunctional and ultimately destructive because it's selfishness and i know none of you in here are selfish but you know other people that are but selfishness is a cancer to relationships and because i'm on medicare i had to say stuff where i can think about it listen to me if you want to have a long lasting relationship it's not about getting it's about giving it's about serving see the world's culture is talking about taking and getting because it's all about me god is always about serving and giving because it's all about him and if we serve we'll receive but if we take it and try and keep we can't always hold on to it so maybe the person god wants you to connect with isn't ready yet some people define themselves for their relationship status and so as soon as they get out of one relationship they try and get into another one because they're single then they say something's wrong with me or they perceive people think something's wrong with me another reason for our singleness is maybe your broken heart hasn't been healed and so the worst thing you can do is go into a relationship with a broken heart the other thing is god does not want to compete for our affection with anyone for some of you being in a relationship has become your god or your idol you know it's funny when i was in seminary and i was dating a lot of really great girls but they were not really god's best for me which meant that i was not god's best for them but my buddy's trying to get me uh trying to get find me a girlfriend so we would sit in in a traditional black church a lot of times the minister sit up in the pulpit during the sermon and so we developed a code and it was his idea not mine but he but but you know in the black church i don't know y'all hang out in the black church black church is really funny stuff's always happening and so if people were coming in later attractive girl would come in my buddy uh amos would be sitting on the pulpit and he would sit back here and uh if a pretty girl came on that side he he would move his leg over here and uh and while the pastor was preaching he would say help me lord jesus something like that and i knew to look over that side she would look at that side and uh if she was and if she's on this side of church he would he would just cross his leg the other way say he said help me lord jesus and i would know to look on that side so uh yeah i know i was bad we had issues but anyway uh but i got tired of doing that so anyway could it be that the spiritual lessons god wants you to learn before you get into a relationship maybe god is allowing you to see whom or what you love the most him would be in a relationship and i remember i this girl and i we just broke up uh during december right before uh before christmas break and i remember going home and talking to my grandmother actually my adopted grandmother she was actually white and we were sitting there and we're talking and she was taking through the book philippians she says when god does not change things and so i began i don't do well with living with expectancy i don't think god owes me stuff and so i just began to say you know maybe i'm never gonna get married and i said god if i'm not gonna get married you gotta help me with this because i'm tired turning my neck every time somebody walks in church you know what i'm saying and uh and so i just you know i'm proud i'm gonna get married guy just help me i might need to take a lot of cold showers but i'm good and so when i met my wife i was not looking for my wife are you with me that was no longer a priority for me i said god this is what you want i'm gonna focus to you and so as i began to focus on him i was not looking toward her but then she comes to school and she wears this this hairstyle i can tell she's from dc maryland area about her where her due was and uh and i could tell she was sassy a little bit classy and and uh and so i've been traveling over around the world playing basketball and sharing the gospel with christian teams and she started talking about missions she got my attention and my buddy assigned me to walk her through registration and so i was just being you know submissive to authority and uh and one thing led to another well maybe god wants to determine we you to continue living with for him if you never get into a relationship let me hurry up maybe god wants you to understand that life's ultimate goal is not getting married it's a personal relationship with him and maybe your singlehood is a time for you to get to know god personally an individual before getting into a relationship getting to know god better is going to really help you know what you're looking for and you know even better because you get to know yourself better as well being single regardless of your age could be because god has your best interest at the center of his heart think about that so if i'm single and god really loves me that's god's best for me for right now i need to focus on that doesn't mean i can't date that i'm gonna do but but i think we need to have a different perspective is this making sense okay could it be that god's not holding out on you but maybe holding his best for you did y'all hear that could it be that god's not holding out on you but holding his best for you maybe god sees what we can't see hence it could be that god who loves us protecting us but would you rather be single or be in an abusive relationship i'm just okay y'all kind of quiet on that okay uh could it possibly be that now listen to this could it possibly be that you're so special a guy that he don't want to share you with anybody just a thought just a thought so here's my last i want to say to singles i still want you to stay tuned though uh because i want to talk to married folks i'm gonna help you not make some mistakes that we married folks make but here's the last i want to say to singles don't seek to be don't seek to find god's best focus on being god's best because god won't bring his best to mess don't seek to find god's best focus on being god's best because god won't bring his best to mess if you look in the scriptures the way a lot of christians or christ followers or god followers found god i mean found their mates god would bring their mates to them i think he still does that anyway all right let me talk to married folks and if i don't finish you know we had marriage conference yesterday and stuff so but i love my single folks okay now the first thing i want to share i want to share seven practices that are revolutionizing my marriage okay and i say revolutionizing because we're in process uh this summer july 27th will be 37 years for my wife and me and uh thank you and uh she told me she said you know uh i would like to trade you in for a younger model but your warranty's worn out and i can't i can't it's your warranty's expired i can't trade you in i said hey i said well you're stuck anyway so anyway here's the deal i counsel so many christian couples is it's it's kind of a lot it's amazing now i'm counseling nfl and nba people who say we're christ followers so let me say this your marriage if your marriage is a supernatural thing it's supernatural because god's involved we have a supernatural enemy called satan and satan knows he can destroy our marriage he can impact our marriage negatively for the next three to four generations what you do in your marriage either impacts your marriage and your family either positively or negatively for the next three to four generations but i'm amazed how many christian couples don't read and apply god's word together see you can't really have physical intimacy as a christian couple if you don't have spiritual intimacy okay so that's one thing we need to do that's really important not in fact one of the first things i do when couples who are in trouble come to me i have a reading a biblical reading program that's just a week that i have them do and and they also do something else and then they come back i say what did god do for you and a lot of times just reading the word together and one more thing turns their marriage around it's unbelievable how powerful the word of god is anyway of course the bad thing is they stop coming and i lose a client but anyway um so reading god's word and applying it with your spouse is really critical the most important thing you can do with your spouse is pray with your spouse the most important thing you do with your spouse is pray with your spouse if you're a christian couple and you're not praying together and you're married you're an accident waiting to happen it's like driving down the road with no car insurance you hear what i'm saying why do i say that well research shows that couples who pray together i'm not talking about three or four hours i'm talking about three or four minutes couples who pray together and i try and give them to hold hands couples who do that they lower their chance of divorce to one out of ten thousand couples now the divorce rate in america somewhere around 50 percent give or take if you can just pray with your spouse three to five minutes a day and you lower your chance of divorce to one out of ten thousand couples i think it's a good investment what do y'all think but i bet if we ask people in this church right in this setting maybe only 15 percent you probably do that and satan loves that and that's why he beats us over the head so much in our marriage we're struggling our marriage with conflict because we're not doing that when brenda and i pray together because brenda and i both were strong will and we're stubborn we can have great fights but when we're praying together and holding hands it softens our heart it gives us patience with each other in the area of communication right it just we're not so have to get our way so many things happen and on top of that god's being glorified and we're also protecting our marriage against satan as we're praying together in fact they said the most important thing you can do from a book called couples who pray if you want to have a happy marriage then you got to pray the number one factor having a happy marriage is praying together i mean it's just unbelievable how much research is in that so i encourage you and challenge you begin to pray together now maybe my favorite point is uh the next is being a pleasure to be married to i i speak a lot for uh do marriage conferences i was in charlotte north carolina where your pastor is today and we were doing a marriage conference about 800 people were there or we speak for family life uh marriage conference and on saturday that the old format i was speaking four times on saturday so that's four hours and so it's the last session that i'm supposed to give that day and i'm really kind of tired so my buddy's wife was at the speaker table and i was telling her before i was getting ready to go up and talk to the audience i said i'm really tired i gotta get psyched up so i go do this sermon her husband hears me he grabs his manual goes up on the podium and does my talk for me i'm stunned i look at her i said i can't believe you did that and she says this she says he's a pleasure to be married to i said man and mrs h that messed me up because the rest of the weekend i'm wondering if brenda thinks i'm a pleasure to be married to so so this was sarah so sunday we finished the conference i fly home brenda picks me up from the conference and we're driving home and i'm trying to get my nerve mrs h to uh you know and travis trying to get my nerve my nerve up to ask my wife does she think i'm a pleasure to be married to you know because i think i'm a pretty good guy right so uh so i finally get my nerve up i go brenda do you uh you say i'm a you think i'm a pleasure to be married to and she looks at me and she smiles and uh you know she said me travis she said you all right and uh and uh my first thought was not praise the lord okay uh my first my first thought was your mama but anyway uh but uh but i didn't say that but i thought that but then the holy spirit said i thought you want me to pledge your marriage i said okay so then i said i got some work to do so i came home and i started doing stuff around house i never did like like my wife we had this rule the last one out of bed makes the bed now personally sheets are clean i see no reason to make the bed every day just it's the extra work because you make it you gotta go back in it just it's just but then my wife i learned that the bedroom really didn't belong to me that the bedroom is in my wife's room you know because she wants to fix the room she's got 59 teddy bears she puts on all this stuff and so y'all feel me on that okay so anyway so i'm doing all this stuff so i actually make the bed one time and then i rearrange her teddy bears so she comes in the next that morning she said oh that's so sweet you're so creative i said hmm that works let me write that down and so i'm doing all this kind of stuff and my wife thought it was invasion of the body snatchers actually because she kept coming said did you do and so everything's cool so one day she says we need to counsel this couple and she said you need to clean your office and when i'm writing books of my office i just throw stuff you know because i'm doing research so she so i said okay i'll clean my office it took about six hours to clean my office it was really bad and she's really mechanically inclined i mean her her dad is uh he builds his house from scratch she designed college curriculums around the globe he's a renaissance guy he all this stuff and she who's who in college but she married me so i don't do any of that stuff so anyway um so i said well you take care of sprinklers she said okay so we i cleaned my office we counsel the lady uh and her husband but she didn't do the sprinklers and so i'm trying to be really spiritual and um i let her go she just became an executive for this non-profit and so but two weeks go by and i asked her she said oh i forgot another week goes by i forgot and i finally asked her again she says well will you help me do that and my first thought was that's not fair i didn't say it to her i'm thinking i did my stuff you know but marriage is not 50 50 it's 100 100 so anyway um and so i'm about to give her all these reasons why i shouldn't help her with that and all of a sudden the holy spirit says i thought you would be a pleasure to be married to i go drag man and so i help her do the sprinklers and god showed me that if i'm gonna be a pleasure to be married to it's not serving her when it's convenient for me it's serving her whenever she needs it because i'm committed to her because i'm committed to the lord anyway okay let me keep going and so we have to develop a consistent attitude of adjustment now first 20 years i was married i don't think i ever washed any clothes i'm not sure i knew where the washing machines were because i was always working i was traveling but anyway now that i'm a writer i work out of my house and so it's easy to wash the clothes in the context you know when i when i'm home i'm taking breaks from writing and so i thought it's pretty good i know how to sort them i know not to get clothes colors all mixed up i even fold the clothes i think i'm you know pretty good so so one night and i know clothes that go in and dry don't go in and dry i think i'm pretty good right so so one night it's 10 o'clock at night and i'm trying to put some her clothes over her towel rack so they don't go in and dry and they can just dry themselves right and she's got a lot of stuff in front of the the tub i can get to the thing i said i said baby you got a lot of stuff here in front of the tub it's hard to get your clothes up and instead of her saying oh yeah i need to move those you know she said to me travis she said you got a lot of junk over here in front of your chest i got no you didn't and so uh and so we're about to go to war y'all know what i'm talking about and uh and the holy spirit says is it worth it she's tired you're tired can you let that go so we have to learn sometimes to make an adjustment and he said if it's really that important you can talk about in the morning we both are ready to the more better shape to talk about it well i want you to see something really important it's a video clip it's called it's not about the nail so so watch this clip some you may have seen it watch this clip it's just there's all this pressure you know and sometimes it feels like it's right up on me and i can just feel it like literally feel it in my head and it's relentless and i don't know if it's going to stop i mean that's the thing that scares me most is that i don't know if it's ever going to stop yeah well you do have a nail in your head it is not about the nail are you sure because i mean i'll bet if we got that out of there stop trying to fix it no i'm not trying to fix it i'm just pointing out that maybe the nail is causing you always do this you always try to fix things when what i really need is for you to just listen see i don't think that is what you need i think what you need is to get the nail see you're not even listening now okay fine i will listen fine it's just sometimes it's like there's this achy i don't know what it is and i'm not sleeping very well at all and all my sweaters are snagged i mean all of them yeah that sounds really hard it is thank you ow come on if you would just don't try to see things my way do i have to keep on talking till i can't go on okay now it's a fundamental truth here ladies we are fixers when you come to a problem our natural inclination is to fix things but guys where our wives are wired most women not all women are wired when they come and share something with us they're not necessarily asking us to fix it they're trying to get us into their their world they want us to be in in their us their one being our world as well so what's important was he he tried to empathize with what she was saying he's not going to totally know what she's saying understand but he's trying to so here's here's a tip from all that when your wife or girlfriend comes to you and she's expressing a problem listen to it you may ask clarifying questions whatever but don't offer suggestion to fix it unless she says what do you think are you with me that would keep you out of a ton of trouble right so you older married guys okay anyway okay next point you know brend i've been married for i don't know maybe 25 30 years at the time can't remember and i found myself sometimes talking to her a way that i would not normally talk to her no profanity nothing ugly but i began to take it for granted i was talking to her way i would never talk to her when we were dating engaged first few years of marriage but i began to take it for granted and and god being to say he said to me one day he said you know uh you prayed for a long time get married and i gave you brenda she's my gift to you and the way you treat my gift is reflection of how you're loving me how you treat brenda's reflection of how you're worshiping me i got my attention and so now i i you know so so and it was funny because when i first saw brenda crossing seminary whatever walking around i'll start saying yes jesus loves me and so and i'd go from that to not talking always the best way so number next point is tell myself i'm doing this because i love my wife and so a lot of times she asked me to do stuff i don't want to do i do it because i love my wife and biblical love is not based on emotion it's based on action according to mark chapter 14 verses 32 36 that's why biblically we can't fall out of love are you with me and it's why god didn't fall in love with us i'm not talking about anybody's been divorced i'm not putting anybody down i'm simply saying from a biblical perspective love is an action it's not an emotion okay number six i'm a friend of mine melanie uh fleming she's a counseling peer she wrote this great book that i take couples who've had affairs through called dance of restoration she makes this statement she says much more risky for the woman to have sex with the man for the man to have sex with the woman we're wired differently and i'm talking about sex here briefly you know the late howard hendrick says we should not be ashamed to talk about what god's not ashamed to create and some people even christians say oh we don't ever talk about sex especially in church where are we going to get a biblical understanding of sex if god created it he's got a purpose for it right are you with me on this i'm not going to embarrass too many of you no but but but it's really important to understand that it concerns me if we don't talk about that because the world is not waiting for your kids to get age appropriate whatever they're bombarding them with improper information about sex right now and they need to know the truth so i just want to say that i think it's important we do that and use these opportunities to talk about that from a biblical perspective what's age appropriate but the reason i say this point here is that most women not all women have to open themselves up to a man emotionally before they can do so physically and so our reunion melanie says it requires a depth of emotional involvement in order for the woman to fully enter into the act so practice number six really requires husbands or couples to be sexually sensitive to each other and then men have issues too that i won't talk about here in church in church but that women and wives can be aware of and guys when you begin to have problems in this area you need to talk to your wife remember communication is to marriage what location is to real estate you got to communicate communicate communicate assume nothing and talk about everything then what that book is a great resource it's called the dance of restoration overcoming marriage infidelity and then practice number seven it requires becoming a student of your spouse because as we're doing this research for this book for young men it's called choose greatness 11 wise decisions brave young men made when we went into that we found a lot of young men have been sexually abused by an older man or fellow relative whatever and and and the and the research shows that one out of six men have been sexually abused so probably one out of six men in this room have been sexually abused and as well as women can sexually abuse or mentally abused and so what that means is that we need to have an understanding our spouse may be unintentionally or intentionally wounded by their parents or some people in authority as a child and so their wounds may result be result of emotion verbal even worse physical abuse so why do i say that because sometimes if you notice your spouse may respond in a different way or overreact to something it may be from becoming abuse and so when you remove from that particular conflict you might want to ask him or her you know and say honey you know i know that something happened but it seems your response that was really over the top is there's more to it than what happened and god may begin to use you to begin healing your spouse opening the door not be his or her counselor not saying that but just make aware and i just want to say this last thing is that you can have the marriage you've always wanted if you're willing to work for it you can have the marriage you've always wanted if you're willing to work for it let me pray for you heavenly father i thank you for the power of your word i thank you for your grace i thank you for your wisdom and lord help all of us who are working in this context of marriage and relationship and i pray for singles as well not to feel less than that you would glorify yourself and i pray those for any truths that come out today that you would help us to apply it and lord anything that's not of you i pray you help this group to forget it may be glorified in all you say and do father amen for you okay yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah