We're talking about uh marriage and and relationships and it it's kind of a strange thing because we're different places with with our marriages. And we and we've got you know some of us have a lot of of pain. We're in crisis mode. Some of us have uh had marriages that hadn't worked, um, and we don't need to feel any guilt or shame. We need to start right where we're at uh today. Um you know, some of us are just excited and we have hope, and and some of us aren't married, don't ever care to be. And um we take take all of those that and we're all different right where we're at. And um what we need is the Holy Spirit to talk to us. And this morning we're gonna talk about something a little a little different, I think, and but it's gonna apply mostly mostly to marriage. I think the next couple of weeks that what we're gonna talk about are are God's principles that will apply to to all of our relationships. But that doesn't mean he can't speak to us right where we're at today. That's one of the great things he does, is uh and that's what I want to ask him for, is no matter where we're at, what our needs are today, that there'll be something this morning that God will translate right into your heart, and every single one of us will walk away with uh with something from God. So let's ask ask him to do that. Father, thanks for being such a great God. Thanks for adopting us as your children and caring for us and and uh guiding us. Jesus, thank you so much for being our Savior and our King and our friend. We just uh we praise you and we love you. Holy Spirit, thank you for being our teacher, and and I ask you now to teach each one of us that you would even translate right from what we talk about, right into uh into our hearts. Give us each something to uh to leave with from you. So we thank you and and we trust you. We ask all this in Jesus' great name. Amen. So we're talking about relationships, and and uh for the most part it's gonna apply to a lot of our relationships, friends and in school and and work and and kids, parents, that type of thing. But there's there's one relationship that is by far the most difficult and also has by far, I think, the deepest rewards, and that's being married. And last week our goal was pretty simple. Um it was that God would give us hope. And we looked at Luke 137, for nothing is impossible with God. And then we saw that that's true because we watched John and Stephanie Newby's God's story. You know, it was pretty rough driving last week, and so if you couldn't be here, um you missed John and Stephanie's story. That is that is on the web. If you go on the website, hishandschurch.com, you can um you can watch that God story. You can listen to last week's message there now if uh um if you're if you'd like. But if you're struggling with your marriage, um please take the time to together um watch their story because it will inspire you. It is it is a true miracle. And God is no respecter of persons. He did the possible in their relationship, he's done and is doing the impossible in Susan and I's relationship, and he can and will do the same in your relationship. Ephesians 3, 20 and 21 is the verse we look at a lot. It says, God can do anything, you know, far more than you could ever imagine or guess or request in your wild dreams. But then this next part is key because it's how he does it. He does it not by pushing us around, but by working within us, his spirit deeply and gently within us. And ultimately, our relationships and our marriages, he changes us individually, deep and gently within us. And as we become more healthy, we have a healthy and great relationship. And so our homework last week was was to believe, to believe that God can do a miracle in our relationships, and also to pray for our spouses. This morning I want to start with a question. Which marriage in the Bible can we look to as an example of a good marriage? You may not have read much of the Bible, it's probably not going to hurt you on this one. Let's let you think about that for a second. Which marriage do we hold up as an example to follow? An example of a good marriage in the Bible. The truth is there are not many, if any, marriages in the Bible that we look to as an example for what a good marriage is. You know, there's a lot of great examples of other things. If you want to talk about faith, you know, there's uh Hebrews 11 goes through a whole list: Abel and Noah and Abraham and Sarah and more, courage, David and Daniel and Samson and Joshua, leading Moses and Deborah, who was uh a judge over Israel, building. We look at Nehemiah, and we can look at Solomon. Where is our example in the Bible of a good marriage? Is it Adam and Eve? That went kind of bad. Abraham and Sarah, they had a lot of drama, for sure. David and Bathsheba, maybe not the best example. Where's the good marriage? You know the only example Paul gives is Jesus and the church? That's what our marriage can be like? Like Jesus and the church? What an example of love and of unity and selflessness. But um, man, that's a pretty high bar. Jesus and the church. Shouldn't there be some people in the Bible that we could look to and say, with God's help, they had a good marriage? We should. We should. So if we can go through the Bible and not find many, maybe not any examples of a good marriage, then maybe it is what we perceive that makes a good marriage that is wrong. Maybe we're not looking at marriage quite the right way. In our culture, a good marriage feels complicated. We need to be head over heels in love. It's kind of a no-brainer. The sex should definitely be great. Our finances should be solid. We should be on the same page with parenting. We should be at the same place with our faith and our walk with God. Those five are a little bit tough, but we should be physically fit, enjoy our in-laws, not have any real baggage, not have any addictions or depression. At least one of us should be a great cook. We should not snore, both pick up after ourselves, agree on the best temperature, not be exhausted or irritable or discouraged or scared. Like the same shows, both want to go to sleep at the same time, appreciate each other's driving. And last but not least, we should both load the dishwasher the right way. You know, it's a little complicated. Maybe our definition of marriage could be a little wrong. Definitions are huge. A definition is is huge. For instance, if our definition of success is solely centered around uh uh money and achievement and stuff, we will never achieve success. I mean, we can work all we want, we can develop the skills, we can be great at time management, we can do all that stuff, and we will never achieve success. We'll be miserable. We'll be looking for the next deal, the next thing, because our definition is wrong. You know, and it's true in our marriages. It doesn't matter how many communication skills we learn, how many date nights we have, if our definition is wrong, if we're trying to achieve the wrong thing. And we'll be looking for the next relationship, the next deal to make us happy. On the other hand, if our definition has been wrong, maybe we're a lot closer to a good marriage than we think. Maybe some of us came in with little hope, but we're actually only one conversation. One humble, open, prayerful conversation away of being back on track with a good marriage. So, what's a good marriage? Let's uh let's go back to the start. There was a brief time on earth when things were as God had planned. It was in the Garden of Eden. It was before we chose, you know, mankind in general, before we chose our plan, our way, over God's way and God's plan. His plan was life. We got off on the knowledge of good and evil. But it's good to start there because we can see his plan. We can see the creator's plan. We can see what his intentions were. And we can see how things are supposed to work. He created us in his image. Each one of us. It says in his image, he created male and female. That he created each one of us in his image. In a relationship with him, with meaningful work and responsibilities. Everything was perfect then. This is before the fall. Everything's perfect. God realized something right away. In Genesis 2.18, it said, God said, it is not good for a man to be alone. I'll make him a helper, a companion. I want to talk about an idea that in the Christian world we take too far. And that idea is all I need is God. I want to be careful because there's truth to that. There's going to be times in our lives, maybe whole seasons in our lives, that God is all we have. And in those situations, he is all that we need. In fact, he'll be enough. He'll be more than enough. He'll be all that we need. He is the main thing that we need. But in general, God created us to be in relationship with people. And that's why when Jesus is talking about the most important things, he says, you know, love God with all your heart, mind, and soul. And he doesn't stop there. He says, and love your neighbor as yourself. You know, we're created in his image. He was, his desire is to be in relationship with people. We're created in his image. And so our desire is to be in relationship with him, in relationship with people. And we don't need to be married to be happy. Just a quick uh rabbit trail there. But we do need to be in relationship with other people. Matthew 19 and 11, Jesus said, not everyone is mature enough to live a married life. It requires a certain aptitude and grace. Marriage isn't for everyone. Some from birth seemingly never give marriage a thought. Others never get asked or accepted. And some decide not to get married for kingdom reasons. But if you're capable of growing into the largeness of marriage, do it. See, we need to learn to walk out God's love, God's humility, God's selflessness through friendships with people. God said, it's not good for man to be alone. I'll make him a helper and a companion. And the thing about that, I'm not sure I can even communicate that well, but that was before the fall. That was when everything was perfect. When we had an unbridled relationship with God. When he was coming down in the evening and we were talking and we had meaningful work and we had all these things. God still said, it's not good for us to be alone. We need to be in relationship with other people. And so God created an opportunity for companionship and relationship with the closest companionship of all. So the definition that I would use to sum up a good marriage would be best friends. It would simply be best friends. This was long in the garden, this is long before everything got got complicated. God gave us a companion, a helper, what we would call a best friend. Not a good lover, not a good cook, not a good provider. You know, we can grow in all different aspects and areas of our relationship. But mostly what God wanted us to have was a lifelong friend. Best friends. The Bible is not a comic book about Jewish and Christian superheroes. It's a story about regular, flawed people and what God can do in their lives. And what God can do in our lives. And so the reason most of the marriages in the Bible seem all jacked up is that the people in the Bible were all jacked up. I mean, they were they were flawed. They made huge mistakes. They had stuff they had to work through. But they were best friends. It was hard back then because the culture was a little twisted. And again, this is a little off-subject, but sometimes we look in the Bible and we're like, oh, that was God's plan in the old law. The old law was not God's plan. The old law was God's accommodation for our hard hearts. That's what it was. And so we say, yeah, but they had a lot of wives, and that must be okay with God. It was not okay with God. It was his accommodation for their hard hearts. That's why when Jesus came and brought the real plan, the way he had originally attended, to get us back to where we were in the garden, it was it was one husband, one wife, one relationship, lifelong friends. That was the plan. And so in the Old Testament, they're working through some pretty uh um tough stuff culture-wise, but that wasn't God. You know, there's different laws. And and the Pharisees would say to Jesus, they'd say, Yeah, but God said this, and he'd say, that's not what God wanted. It was his accommodation for your hard heart. And so we don't want to put that on God, because if we do, we'll never understand God, what he's really like, and what he really wants, and how he really cares and how he really thinks. The whole purpose of the Old Testament was to get us back to the tree of life, where we know that just knowing what's right and wrong is never going to get us there, that we need him. We need life, we need relationship with him. And so in the Old Testament, they had all those uh burdens besides the ones, ones that we have. And so Abraham and Sarah, their marriage was was pretty uh strange. There was a lot of strange things that happened. But if you're doing the one-year Bible, you saw just this week that when Sarah died, just how emotional and loving Abraham was, how much she meant to him. You know, David and Bathsheba, okay, here's one that'll that'll okay, we'll just see where this goes. But uh David and Bathsheba had a good marriage for their culture. And they got off to a horrible start. I mean, a horrible start. Their relation started with her married, an affair, and David having her husband killed. And there were deep consequences for that, that they both shared in those consequences. But God didn't just leave them there. You know when David died, he was on his deathbed. And the way things worked in in those days was that your firstborn son, if you were king, the firstborn son would be king. And so he's on his deathbed, and his firstborn son has already assumed the throne, and and the people of uh of Israel assumed that he'd be king. And so the firstborn son is having a big celebration and a big party to uh um you know kick off his inauguration, to kick off him being king. And Bathsheba comes to David and asks David if instead their son could be king. David's affection for Bathsheba was so great that he said yes. And instead, Solomon became king of Israel, one of the greatest kings that ever led Israel. He led with wisdom and love. Even the genealogy of Jesus and mentions David and also Bathsheba. However bad they started and huge mistakes they made, they were lifelong friends. They had a good marriage, we might say. Our marriages are gonna have tough places and things we're gonna have to grow past and get through because we're all flawed. God doesn't expect us to be superheroes either. We can't always do everything at once. We can't always be super lover and super parent on the same day or same week or same year. We can't necessarily be super provider and sort out personal baggage and stuff and issues all at the exact same time. We're gonna have tough times, we're gonna have flaws. It's gonna be difficult in spots, but we can help each other, we can love each other, we can be best friends, lifelong friends. You know, it's so simple, I know it seems sort of goofy, but if we're gonna build out how our relationship can be good and eventually great, we need to know the essence of what we're building. What is it we're trying to build? What is it we're we're doing together? That essence is deep lifelong friendship. I know it's hard to be best friends if we can't stand the side of each other, but we'll work. Through that. We will. We'll work through that and we'll start next week. Next week we'll talk about really all of our differences and what we do with all of that. Um I'm excited about next week. Um God has taught Susan and I a lot in in marriage. And I think it's helpful to me and us when we're talking about this, that our marriage has been difficult, not easy. You know, it's like uh Mike Mamon leading the recovery group. I mean, you want a crack addict that's recovered, that's been through the tough times, that knows exactly what to do. And I think it's true in marriage. I don't know, sometimes you we we get together and and it's like, oh, we just have the best marriage, you know. We give each other back rubs and everything's great, and if you just do that, and and um that's not been my experience. My experience is that marriage is difficult. Um, but it's worth it. It is worth it. And uh God's kept us together 26 and a half years and and uh and counting. And next week, amongst other things, I want to share one of the most important things that He taught us. It's really helped us tremendously. You know, the homework last week was to believe and to pray. Um if there's homework this week, it would be to continue believing, continue praying, try every time we think of our spouse, whether it's a good thought or a negative thought, to just take a second and pray. Pray for our spouse, pray for our relationship. But then the other thing is just think about regaining and growing our friendship. That can be the essence of our relationship together. Okay, with that, let's stand. We're gonna get ready to finish one more song together. We're gonna pray in a minute and ask God to help each of us in our relationships, and He will. We can get to a good marriage pretty quick. A great time, I mean, a great marriage takes time. And that does take work, and we'll have to learn skills, and we'll, you know, and and but mostly, mostly we need Jesus. Because it's Jesus that takes each of us and changes us from the inside out. And to have a healthy relationship, we need two healthy people. You know, and so that's gonna go kind of back and forth, and we'll be on different pages at different times. But if we can both just connect with Jesus, turn our lives and hearts over to him, then he will do just like we read. He will change us from the inside out, and he will do the heavy lifting. And as we focus on him and if we grow with him, our relationships will continue to grow. And we will go from good and we'll end up with great. But I know that only Jesus can do that. We got to connect with him. We need him. It's simple, really. We just turn to him and say, you know, I've been doing it my way and it's not working out. I need you. We're created in the very image of God, all of us. We're created in God's image. How could we possibly live without God Himself? We have to have God. We have to have His presence, we have to have His Spirit, we have to have His strength, we have to have His love, we have to get reconnected with our Creator. And we do that through Jesus, just by turning to Him and saying, you know, please, I need you. I'm gonna follow you, I'm gonna trust you. And then He'll take it from there. And He'll do it gently yet powerfully, and He'll do it within us. We can all do that. I mean, if you haven't, I hope you will today. And then together we'll work on our relationships and we'll get to good fast and then we'll go to great. So let's pray. Father, I praise you. Thank you for being such a great God. Thank you for creating us in your image. Thank you for seeing how much we need you, but we need people and giving us all the opportunity for friendships. And some of us the opportunity for a lifelong friend, a companion, a helper. And we praise you for that. God, we need you in our relationships. It's one of the toughest things we'll ever do. We need you to change us from the inside out. We need you to show us what to do. We need you to give us patience and grace and humility and forgiveness. We need you to encourage us. We need you to give us love and romance and passion. We need you to help us to move forward from wherever we're at today and grow us into lifelong friends. And so we thank you and we trust you and we love you. And Jesus, it's in your name we pray. Amen.