Is anybody ready to continue on in our 52 series? And we're going to start love and marriage. Anybody excited for that? If you are married or have been married before in this room, will you raise your hand? I just want to see who I'm talking about. OK. If you are not married yet, you hope to be married someday. Will you raise your hand? If you're dating somebody and one of you raised your hand and the other didn't, you can walk out the back door here. You can go to Henry's across the street and y'all can go talk that out.
For some of you here, a topic like love and marriage and you get a little angsty, you're like, I've done the marriage thing and it was too painful. I don't want to talk about it again. Or you're single and you don't want to be single. And you're like, every time they talk about marriage, I feel left out. I'm not going to leave you out today because what Paul is doing in Scripture, where we're going today, is he's painting a better picture than what your traditional view of marriage normally is.
The age of our church is so much fun because people are getting married left and right. They're getting engaged, left and right. They're having babies left and right. It's just a very-- we've got a ton of empty nesters here and I love y'all. But there's so many young people that are thinking about getting married. And I think at Sanford, when you graduate, you agree and a ring at the same time. And you're just trying to figure all that out.
But one of the things Courtney and I have noticed with pre-marriage counseling, we do a lot of it here because we just get invited to do a lot of weddings. Is there's so much-- we'll call it pressure on how do we make sure this wedding is awesome. There's a lot of that pressure. So when we usually meet with people four times and we sit down with them first and second time, it's like they're sweating pressure. You start asking me, how are you doing? And they break out a long list of things. They're like, I'm doing this. I've got the invitations. I have to contact this person. I've got-- you know, they just started. Anticipation and pressure.
Even on the wedding day, when I'm there for the wedding, I'm just like the chillest guy in the world because I'm like watching the wedding planner and the moms do the whole battle of things. And I'm watching the bride try not to sweat and they keep dabbing her forehead to make sure she's not shiny in the pictures. And I'm like, everybody's stressed because there's so much pressure on the wedding.
Because for somewhere in their mind, the young people have this idea that the marriage and the wedding is like the destination you get to. They have this idea of like, if we can just get married and if things can just go well, then we'll be ready to launch into our next season of life. But they don't understand that you're like stepping into something way more holy than that. And then a million things can disrupt it.
One time I was doing a wedding with Jameson, who's on staff here, I was doing his wedding. And we went back to do communion. And their wedding was planned so well. And I turned and the spiritual tech came immediately. Their back was to the audience. And I looked down. And the biggest red wasp in the entire world was on his wife's leg. And I'm like, oh my gosh, she's going to get stung during communion. We're about to have real blood right here. Like, it was a whole thing. And I was like, look at Jameson. And I was like, this is your moment. You can be like Romeo. You can rescue her. Like, you're going to be John Eldridge. You can save the woman. And he swiped it off. And I was like, yes, nobody knew it was going on.
There's another moment of a couple in our church that we were doing the communion moment again. Maybe this is an attack. The communion is getting. And we were standing in the back. And their backs were to the audience. So I looked down. And their wedding plan had been a lot. And she was pretty good until she wasn't. And we got to the communion elements. And the plate was there. And the cup was there. Those are just absolutely nothing in them. And so we did-- I was like, all right. Guys, we're about to take communion. Nobody can hear me. This is just us. I was like, we're about to take communion. We're going to do a fake communion. Because sometimes you have to fake it until you make it. So we did a whole communion moment. It was like, this is Christ imaginary body. Broken for you. And they like fake children. It's like, this is this blood of the new covenant. They're like, hey, we're just up there. I have a good moment.
I mean, some of you were probably this guy. I was a wedding recently. I get so distracted occasionally by things happening in the room. And it's usually out here when I'm doing a wedding that I'm like, that person's a sleep. Or this person's really into it. It was this one wedding that was behind me. I heard a dying animal right here. And I'm like, I don't know what that is. And it was the nicest groomsman in the world, weeping. Like, [GROANING] And I'm like, don't look at him. Because I'll get totally derailed in the ceremony.
But it's so funny, because the amount of pressure that this thing has to be perfect and then everything can fall apart in the middle, it's just fascinating. The wedding still goes on and that it's beautiful.
And sometimes I wish I could just hit pause on some things for them. Here's something I always say at the ceremony, because I don't want them to believe the lie. I literally don't. I don't want the young married to believe the lie that once they're married, everything else will work out. Because those of us that have been married for more than a few years, you are like, nope, marriage is quite exposing. And it can be difficult and challenging and beautiful all the same time. And I don't want them to think they're just at the arrival point. They're at the launch point.
So I always stand in front of them. And I talk about covenant. And here's how I do it. If I've done your wedding or you've been in a wedding, I've done, you'll recognize this, unless you aren't paying attention. I say this:
You're promise in this covenant. This marriage is about loving each other to the same degree that Jesus has loved you. At your highest highs, he loves you. At your lowest lows, he loves you. And right now, he's madly in love with you. The love that Jesus modeled wasn't soft or sentimental. It was sacrificial. It moved towards brokenness. It forgave quickly. It gave generously. It stayed when it didn't have to. And that's the love that you're called to embody in this marriage, not because it works, but because it's a witness. Your marriage can be a demonstration of the kingdom of God. When others see your marriage and your love for each other, they will know that you are his disciples and your marriage will help fulfill the great commission.
And then everybody goes, oh, yeah. The groom and the bride are smiling each other, want them to be crying usually. The guy who says he's not going to cry. The grandmother's over here, weeping, but they're the bride's weeping. And it's just this beautiful moment of like, no, this is what God is doing.
I wish I could hit pause on that moment. And I wish I could look at the couple. They don't have the maturity yet to understand what I'm even talking about because they haven't necessarily lived the life yet. I don't want to hit pause on the moment because I'm like, guys, you are standing in front of us making a promise to stay married more than entering into a covenant. Because I've seen it so often that people get married and then they start to drift in different directions. And it's like something about the covenant love gets lost in there. And the promises that they made to each other in front of everybody start to drift away.
I heard a pastor say it one time. He said, your patterns are a better predictor of your future than any promise you could ever make. The patterns you observe for the patterns that you live are probably going to predict your future more times than not than any promise commitment, vow, that you tend to make.
And as a pastor, I just get to watch this over and over and over again. And this isn't an inditing on anybody. It's not an indi-- it's just as inditing on myself as anybody else. Because here's the patterns that are recognized over and over again.
These unbelievably young newlyweds spend the entire engaged period doing what? Focused on your wedding and focused on the wedding day and getting the apartment ready or getting the house ready. And everything becomes themcentric. The whole world is about you and focusing on you and making sure you're your day is special.
So when the wedding happens and they come back from the honeymoon, what do they have a natural tendency to do? Isolate. You've seen it before. The young married couple that was all in. And then they got married. And you're like, where'd they go? We bought them a blender. They should be around here more often.
And-- but they got married. They promised us to each other for better or for worse. And then they isolate themselves. Not all good, not all bad. But then inevitably, in a lot of cases, there's a child that comes, whether it's a planned child or whether their birth control was an order ring. And they're like, we don't know how that works. I know my sleep score, but apparently we're pregnant now. You know, like--
[LAUGHTER]
They've isolated, focused on themselves, all of a sudden, a pregnancy happens. The baby comes. And they're like, what in the world do we do? They're staring at the wife. It's like, this is everything I ever dreamed of. She's wearing pink. The husband's like, it's a ball of flesh. The cries and calls money. And you're like, I love the thing. But you're like, oh my gosh, what a do-it-the-thing.
And all of a sudden, what a child does is it starts exposing. You already got exposed when you got married. You realized how selfless you were. But then all of a sudden, you really get exposed when the child shows up. And you start seeing the gaps in formation. You start realizing that you have desires. And then you have plans that you've never articulated with anybody else. That you've actually, when you got married, you did not become one. You became partners in crime, moving in parallel paths. And all of a sudden, when the child comes, it interferes in your life. And all of a sudden, you're like, I'm stressed about this. This is a blessing. And it's good. But I feel a lot that I didn't know I was going to feel that when this blessing showed up.
But then your life becomes about management together. You become a great management team. And it's, in a lot of cases, overly stereotypical. The wife is at home trying to raise the kids, or carry a career and manage the carpool line at the same time. And they were trying to do all of this. Got to make sure the meals are cooked. Got to make sure the linens are folded just the right way. And the husband's over here are thinking, I don't care about the linens. I'm trying to keep my job so we can pay for those linens that we keep buying. And so you've got these parallel paths, moving in a slightly similar direction and all the other things.
So a sudden it becomes about management of what do you need just to survive for men and a lot of women. This is the season of life that vices start to raise up. Not because you choose to start making bad decisions. This is the area where you've got so much management happening and you're moving in parallel paths and you've got so much stress in the middle that some is good, some is not, that you're like, "I've got to cope in some form or fashion." So you start introducing things into your life that were once felt like God's gift, but all of a sudden they're not anymore. You're starting thinking, "I cannot wait to put this child together to bed so I can go start drinking wine. I cannot wait to get this child to our in-laws house just so we can breathe." You start taking small little steps in parallel paths just to cope and manage.
And then all of a sudden when your kids get older and they start, this is the season Courtney and I are in, your kids get older and then all of a sudden they have things that they want to do. We spent over four hours at the baseball park yesterday because we got two kids playing baseball and it's not all bad, but it's not all good because oftentimes the kids schedule start shaping the values of the family quicker than the values you thought you had in the first place. What your kids are into, all of a sudden becomes the foundational part of what your marriage is about. And it's not all good, but it's not all bad.
The tricky part comes and this is where I've seen this pattern show up over and over and over. The tricky part comes when I have conversations with college students. And the college student, well I'll be like, "Hey, tell me about the family you grew up in." And they start describing things and I ask, "Do your parents like each other?" And they're like, "Yeah, maybe, yeah." And then they'll say the worst thing. They're kind of like roommates. They've been together for so long. Or the kid goes to college and then the mom or dad calls and says, "Hey, we're getting divorced." And the kid's like, "Was everything. I grew up. It's so disoriented."
Because there were some promises made in front of everybody at a ceremony where two were supposed to become one. But the parallel path the tax never became one is stayed, too.
When we do pre-marriage counseling, what people are always asking in these sessions over and over and over. Here's the primary questions that young people are asking in pre-marriage counseling. They skin it a million different ways and they frame it a million different ways. They're asking, "Who's in charge of our family and how do we make decisions?" It's 100% all they're asking. And they're like, "Who's in charge? Is the husband in charge? Is the wife in charge? Are we doing this together? Is my mother-in-law in charge or my father-in-law?" They're asking, "Who's in charge?" And when someone's in charge, how do we decide what to do? How do we decide where to invest our money? How do we decide where to invest our time? When do we choose to have kids? When do we not choose to have kids? When do we need to go to counseling? When do we not need to go? There's who's in charge? And how do we make decisions? Is the primary question people are asking.
But I think it's just the wrong question.
The question we always ask couples. Every time is, why in the world do you think of all the people in the world? Why do you think God brought you two together? And you're sitting there with a 24-year-old, 23-year-old, 33-year-old, and you're looking at them. Why do you think of all the people in the world? Why did God bring you two together? And you've got this young, idealistic, full of energy and optimism, beautiful young couple that are staring at you like you just spoke French. And I'm like, "Bah, I don't know why." He brought us together. And when you don't have clarity on that, you start missing some other things.
In Genesis chapter 2, God said that a man will unite with his wife and become one flesh. If God said that two become one, why in the world does it more often look like two people have married and stayed to?
A million people will give you marriage advice. And a million people will tell you how to do marriage and you can watch other marriages and you can ask your parents. These are all good things. You can go to counseling. But today when we ask the question, what is God doing with marriage? And why is it important? And if we're going to up the bar on the meaning of marriage, where do we get that answer from? We're going to scripture to you.
Ephesians chapter 5. My Bible in Ephesians chapter 5 about halfway through is where we're going to start verse 22. We'll get there in a second though.
It says, "Instructions for Christian household. If you're familiar with your Bible and you've gone to this section before, you know this is pretty prescriptive on this is how Christian households are going to work. The danger in reading a text like this isolated from the rest of the scripture is that it becomes damaging. It's taken out of context and it gets twisted and manipulated for broken people to try to get their way. Ephesians is not a book like that. Ephesians is so much bigger and so much broader that I want to give you the overarching thing of what Paul is trying to do.
Paul is writing a letter to a church. He's trying to help them understand a central issue because of the blood of Jesus. This church that Paul is writing to, he's trying to help them understand. This is what the whole book of Ephesians about. He's trying because of the blood of Jesus, you can have unity in Christ. Unity in Christ is the whole purpose of the letter. He's writing a letter to a church that's pretty fragmented and divided and he's like because of the blood of Jesus, you can have unity but not just for Cumbia, unity, sake. It's so much bigger and broader than this.
Like literally if you flip back a page, Ephesians chapter 1, if you just kind of glance at it, it's this praise for the spiritual blessing, then there's this massive prayer at the end where it's like he keeps asking God to reveal more and more for them. He's trying to get them to understand that because of Christ's broken body, they have a power to be unified. He's like, you've got to understand this. The letter opens up with, you've got to understand because of the blood of Jesus, there is unity available to you. There is massive life changing unity available to you church. He's writing to a church, not just a family, a church.
And then in chapter 2, fast-forward, he's like, they're made alive in Christ. But then he starts naming individual groups. He starts talking about the Jews and the Gentiles are going to come together. How are they going to come together under Christ because this is where the language of Christ as the cornerstone is inserted. So he's painting this picture. He's like, you can have unity and imagine the day. The unimaginable thing happens where the Jews and the Gentiles come together. How? Because Christ is our cornerstone and our anchor holding the whole thing together.
And if that happens, if the unity of Christ happens and the Jews and the Gentiles come together as Christ is a cornerstone, something massive and significant is going to happen. Not that the news is going to pay attention or cultural pay attention. Here's who pays attention. Chapter 3, it says, the like, principalities will dumb-found the darkness in the heavenly realms. He's saying what happens in the unity under Christ as he's the cornerstone when the Jews and the Gentiles and the church comes together in practice unity, the dark principalities of this world are going to look at it and be like, I don't understand how that works.
It would be like this. Imagine a desert and all of a sudden you stumble into an oasis, but it's like a fully functioning oasis. It's like the city in a parts land and you stumble across it and you're like, I don't get it. I don't get the source of it. I don't get how they pull it off. I don't understand anything about it. That's what Paul is saying when the church practices unity under Christ where the Jews and the Gentiles come together, the principalities in the world take notice and have no way to explain it.
Chapter 4 goes back to everybody has a different role to play. It's not everybody go do the Jesus thing. It's not, no, play your part, play your role because when you play your role you matter here. Chapter 4 and the beginning of chapter 5 just do highlights between the massive differences between the bitterness and anger and darkness of the world and the love and forgiveness and light.
He paints this huge picture. He just keeps stair stepping one thing above another thing of like your unity matters and it's going to be noticed by the whole world. The church as a small working model of the kingdom of God. If you want to know what the kingdom of God is supposed to look like when his rule in reign takes over the entire earth, if you want to get an early picture of what his rule in reign looks like, you look at the church. This is what the church's role is in Paul's writing. They made beautiful letter saying your role as a church, the collective body of believers, the Jews and the Gentiles submitted under Christ as Christ is our cornerstone who's dumb founding the darkness, whose worship is going to happen. That is a small working model of what the whole world should be like.
So he builds this massive crescendo moment and then he inserts marriage.
Whole world is going to be changed by the church and the inserts a marriage. Here's what he says about marriage. Chapter 5 verse 22. Brace yourself.
Wives, do we have any wives in here?
Wives submit yourself to your own husband as you do to the Lord.
Somebody recently asked me in a wedding, they're like, "Hey, can you read a scripture at our ceremony?" I'm like, "Of course I can read scripture at your ceremony. I'd love to. What do you want?" They said, "Ephesians, chapter 5 verse 22." And I was like, "No, not doing that. I'm not. No, not staying out of that one."
Wives, submit yourself to. Can you imagine in the middle of your ceremony, you're all standing? I have a word from God. Wives, submit yourself to your own husband as to the Lord. Amen, let's go. And you know, the men are like, "Aha, ha, ha." And the wife's like, "This is why I didn't want to come here today with you."
Here's the problem with this verse. Again, when you pull it out of context, it is so bad and it's so destructive. Because manipulative men, for centuries, have pulled biblical words out of context in the scripture. What's Paul writing about unity? Is he talking about power and control? Yes, but it's God's. He's talking about unity. And he's talking about the marriage and the church being a picture of what God's kingdom looks like. So for a man to take this verse and be like, "Do what I say to do now because this is what scripture says" is to pull it so out of context and to make massive wounds in your bride's life.
Continue on. Here's what he's talking about for the husband, verse 23:
For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he, Jesus is the Savior. Now, as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything.
Submit for what? Submit such a negative word. Submit such a power dynamic word. How do you do this?
Well, I need you to know this, wives. This is an invitation to be a part of the church. If Paul could have easily just written to the husbands and then it becomes this male-dominated things where the wives have no role, this is your invitation where Paul is painting a picture of what the church could be like, what the family of God looks like. And he's like, "You have a role here and it's to be a part of what God is doing." You were included in the story and the family of God and you have significance and you have power and you have a hard mighty call. This would be a spiritual endeavor to trust your husband in the same way that Christ trusts the church. This is about trust. This isn't about power.
But however, husbands, you have a massive role too, verse 25:
Husbands love your wife, 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, to present her to himself as a radiant church without stain or wrinkle or any blemish, but holy and blameless. In the same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself after all. No one ever hated their own body, but they feed and care for their own body, just as Christ does the church for we are members of his body.
If the wife's call is to submit to the husband, the command for the husband is to come and die. Is it about control? Is it about being in charge? Is it about having headship? Is it about feeling strong or is the invitation of like, "Hey, I need you to come and die," because if this is carry over from what Jesus did for the church, we know that he died and gave himself up for the life of many.
The invitation of the wife is to submit to her husband. What's the husband doing? He's laying down his life totally for what end so that he can be seen as good, to what end so that he could serve to eventually get his own way. That's manipulation. No, it's the call to die for what? To present his wife as a radiant church, holy and blameless, without blemish. That's been washed by the word.
Take this out further, husbands in the room. We have the opportunity to die to self. Why? Because we've got a family that's running behind us that we eventually want to present as radiant church, holy, blameless, washed by the Word. Is that a reflection of anybody's family in here?
This marriage thing is often so much of who makes decisions, who's in control? How do we figure out how to do this? The invitation here from Paul is, "Wives, submit to your husbands, why your husbands are dying for the sake of the church." It's just massive.
This is for husbands how exposed we get because we've earned a reputation and culture of being pretty self-centered or pretty aloof. Take any kind of stereotype in any media that you watch on TV and there's two types of father figures in the room. There's the one that's absent in aloof and a little bit dumb. This is like, "Bluey's dad." On Bluey, anybody ever watch Bluey? It's a great show, but the dad is just not a contributor. He's just a punchline. On the other side, the dad is angry or absent, or has caused the pain that now the story is telling. That's it. Why? Because we've struggled to come and die and to take our role as the men and women of God. Because the men of God, we want to chase our leisure activities. We've got hobbies. We've got wills that we want to exert on our family. We've got financial goals that we need to achieve. We've got so much control and control, but the invitation from Paul is to present your family as a radiant church. How? Come and die.
So wife submit, husband die to self, and then he continues on:
For this reason, a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.
This is Genesis again. Genesis chapter two, but this is so crazy to me because he's talking about marriage and I see it as the pattern that is two on a parallel line. Why don't they ever become one?
Verse 32, this whole marriage thing, how does it work? How does it impact the world? This whole marriage thing? What does it look like to stay in love? What's it look like to stay on track together? Why did God bring us together in the first place?
This is a profound mystery.
It's what verse 32 says. But then Paul is super clear.
But I'm talking about Christ and the church.
Go back to 23. Christ is the head of the church. That's the point of the verse. 25 through 27. Christ sanctifies and cleanses. That's the point of the verse, not just marriage. 28 through 30. Love your wife as your own body. This is all that the whole marriage thing is a metaphor of a small working picture of what the kingdom of God is and should be like. Your marriage is not just about you two becoming the perfect couple you always thought you would be. This is so much more than that.
I read this at weddings as well. Towards the end of my message, I say:
So here's my charge to you. Build your marriage on Jesus. Make your home a place where the gospel is normal. Let your fights end in forgiveness. Amen? Let your wins be shared. Let your rhythms be anchored in grace and more than anything. Don't try to be the perfect couple. Be a surrendered one. Because when Jesus is the center of your love, that love becomes unshakable. Today, you're not just saying yes to each other. You're saying yes to Jesus again. To walk with Him. To honor Him and to reflect His love in the world together.
And somebody says, "Amen, that's what happens." And then they try to start doing the work. They go back to the verses that we just read in Ephesians and they're like, "All right, the wife's like, all right, I'm going to figure out how to trust my husband so I can submit." Okay, cool. The husband's like, "I don't even know how to die." But I'm going to try to die. But then I was like, "I want to do all this stuff." And I'm like, how do we become one?
The problem again, when you take verses out of context, you just get all kinds of twisted directions. The verses we just read are application for something else. There's a thesis statement that we skipped over. There's a massive linchpin right in the middle of the text that we just jumped right over. Because if you try to do the wife's submit and the husband's die to self, and that's all you're doing, it's going to be really good effort and you're probably going to create some bitterness in the long run.
So how in the world do two become one? Here's what it looks like, verse 21. Go back up. Here's what it says:
Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.
If you could memorize a verse this week, this is it. Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ. Submit to one another, who on another? How out of reverence for Christ?
Most people in the book of world, called this mutual submission. Who's in charge? How do we make decisions? Christ, what does that mean? Mutual surrender. I'm going to submit to you as you submit to me and we're both submitted under Christ.
This is like a race to the bottom. It's when you're in an interaction with your spouse, your family, and you're like, how do I win this conversation? No. It's how do I die to self? How do I make sure our family is a working model of the kingdom of God? So that when others see our family, they might actually catch a glimpse of what the kingdom of God is actually like and fall in love with Jesus. This is mutual submission.
Who's in charge? And how do we do this? It's mutual submission.
But if this is at all true, Christian marriage is not about one person in charge. It's about two people under Christ. Here's the whole summary of the thing.
Two become one when both surrender.
This is a dance you have to do. Two become one when you both surrender. But marriage matures surrender. You could even say normalizes surrender in there and magnifies Christ.
Do you understand if you're engaged in here today, do you understand the weight of what you're being and invited into? You're not being invited into just creating another family that populates the suburbs of Birmingham or wherever you're from. You're being invited into the desert land to create a whole working model of what it looks like for the kingdom of God to come alive.
Why is it matter? Why is it under attack so much in our country and in our church? Why are marriages on the edge? Why is it so hard? Like this week, I knew I was preaching about marriage. So what did Courtney and I do all week? We argued. Because it's just that the enemy doesn't like the small working models being healthy. And we've got to be people that surrender over and over again in mutual submission. And we've got to normalize and mature in our submission.
Why so that people can think we're awesome? No, Christ is awesome. Christ is everything. He's in all and through all. And he's the purpose of all this. If Paul is writing this letter and all the focus gets on marriage, he's like, you're missing the point. Do you understand that you, this church and our family is a light into the world where you can demonstrate unity with everything else's fragment? And that's the invitation that you're being invited to today.
But if that's all true, how do you do it? Because you've bumped into the moment. You've probably rid this way and it's a youth group. Like I give everything for Christ. And we're a Christian couple. United under Jesus. I'm like, cool, but it's Tuesday. And I'm hungry and I'm mad at them. How do you do that? In real, how do you stay mutually submitted? In real time, in real ways that are ongoing and sustainable.
I think you need structure and I think you need formation. Those are the two things I think you need.
Here's how structure works. For us, we have core values. For others of you, it's going to be a rule of life. The problem is you get married, you say all the things on your wedding day and then you walk away. And you're only marching orders for why did God bring you together? The only marching orders you have are to be like, we're going to be a good, strong Christian family. Let's go. If you don't have anchors or guardrails or structure, the waves of culture are so devastating.
Let me paint this for our family. Courtney and I knew when we got married, we got married at 31 years old. And we knew while we were dating, that was so clear to us. Why would God of all the people in the world bring us together? We know specifically for us is to love and serve the local church. It's that clear. We didn't come up with that. It just kind of-- we were like talking, we're like, oh, shoot. She loves the local church. She wants to give her life away for it. I love the local church. I think I'm supposed to give my life away for it. That's why we're together.
Now, the waves of culture around us are so strong. Like yesterday, we're at the baseball field, like I said, for four hours. Man, the cultural waves are so strong there. It's like, I need all the things. I need-- well, I need another bat. I actually bought another bat yesterday, confession. I need the wagon that doesn't squeak. And I need the chairs that are cool. And I should have more Gatorade and why is my son's name not stitched into the bag of his hat and theirs are. How does that guy already have a hat? And I don't have a hat. I need a hat. I don't even like the royals. But everybody-- you know, the cultural waves are strong.
About a year into marriage, we did a marriage retreat. And someone gave us the assignment. There's like, hey, here's what we need you to do. We need you to come up with some family core values. And I was like, cool. Sounds great. We got back to the room. I was like, all right, what are we watching on Netflix? And she's like, no, I'm a rule follower. We just got married. We are doing the thing. We're doing the assignment. And I was like, fine.
And so they had a word bank. And it's like, OK, if your family was about something, what is it? And we sat there well over 10 years ago. And we came up with these words:
Simplicity. Discipleship. Whimsy. Team. Vulnerability. Generosity.
Those are our guardrails. Those are our family core values that are posted in our house.
And they play out in a million ways. They end up becoming the language of the covenant that we stepped into together.
Like last week, Courtney was supposed to go to Auburn to hang out with some friends, but she was feeling slightly under the weather. But like, gung ho for it. I knew the week we had ahead. And we were having a conversation. She literally had a backpack. And a gift she was going to take. It was a favorite things party. We had a whole conversation. I was like, she's like, do you think I should go? I'm like, honestly, no. And those tears. And I was like, oh, but then I remember. I was like, not just because I'm preaching this week. We looked up on the wall. I was like, you're practicing vulnerability. Your heart just got exposed. And now I said, we have language to keep us on mission.
Or this, we do the pre-marriage counseling stuff. And it's like, we're going to dinner with random people. And it's 5:30 when we're sitting in our kitchen. And our kids are eating chicken nuggets. And we're like, all right. So and so is going to come be a babysitter. And we're going to go to dinner with these people. And our kids are like, why? We're like, because of that. That's why. Like, and we're like, no, but look at the wall.
And we'll look at Elijah, our nine-year-old, and we're like, Elijah? Discipleship, what's it mean? Because he goes to Christian school. And he goes, he'll say something like, follow Jesus and taking people with you. And you're like, God's good. That's what we're doing. We're going to go show this young couple how to follow Jesus and start their marriage, follow Jesus. This is discipleship.
And we'll look at Elijah and say, Elijah, who's someone that follows you? And he'll look at his brother and sister. Smith, you're in the middle. Who follows you? And a little bit. John? Right. Do you show John how to follow Jesus? And he's like, yeah, it's discipleship. Henley, you're five. You can barely speak. You're cute as a button. Who follows you? And she'll make up a name we've never heard of before.
Every major life thing that we've experienced over the last 10 plus years, these have guarded us. Because everything in the culture will tell me to go a different direction. But when we're trying to make a decision, we need structure to keep us in line.
And if you're in here and you're thinking about getting married or you're early in your marriage, find your words that are going to be your guardrails. Because your marriage is too important to let it just do whatever it wants to do. Your marriage is too important to the kingdom of God. Your marriage is a small working model of the kingdom of God that's going to bring light to the broken world. But the darkness is coming in at every single angle that it can. So if you don't have words that kind of hold you in, get them.
And if you've been in here married 30 plus years or so, however long it is, and you're like, oh man, the drift conversation you had earlier, it's not too late to start building the structure around you right now to protect your future generations. You're going to have grandkids looking at grandma and grandpa and trying to answer the question, do grandma and grandpa like each other? Yes, they do because it's never too late. Because you need the structure around you to be formed.
Because the formation, the oneness is personal and it's ongoing. So if you're a single person in here, and you're like, I'm bitter at the dream in talking about this because I don't have a spouse or I had a spouse and they're not around anymore, it's not too late for you to start practicing oneness.
Most of your arguments that you observe in a married couple is not just one person versus another person. It's whole families of origins on this side versus family origins and expectations that have been unspoken of on this side, colliding together. And what you can do in the work of forming your life into the image of Jesus by the power of the Holy Spirit is you become one. When people interact with you, you are the same person you were over there, right here or over there. You have oneness, but as I am under Christ, I am submitted under Christ as an individual. I submit myself to everybody at a reverence for Christ, not just in marriages and I get to practice oneness.
While we were single, Courtney, before we even knew each other, we both started going to counseling individually. Why? I don't know. With a million reasons. I went to counseling because everybody that was older than me that I respected, my mentors, told me to talk about counseling.
And I remember scheduling an appointment with a guy. And he said, "All right, what do you here for?" I was like, "I have no clue." But everybody I look up to comes and talks to one of you guys. So here's my hundred dollars, and I'm ready to talk. I did not know the level of fracture in my soul. And if I had not done years of counseling, I would have brought numerous people into our marriage. But because of God's grace, I was able to start practicing oneness quickly.
Courtney and I had unbelievable friends that weren't all the same people. She had a real community, and she served real people. She was already the person that I wanted to marry. She didn't have to grow into it, because she spent her 20s growing in oneness and wholeness to Jesus and submitting her life unto Jesus that we were able to step into marriage. A little bit more whole.
So whether you're in here and you're not even more close to marriage, you can practice the wholeness. Or if you've been married in here for a long time, there's probably some fracture you need to address in your own spirit within your marriage. There's probably wives in here that need to apologize to their husbands about some bitterness that they have been allowing to well up and leak out. And there's some husbands in here that probably need to repent from some. Not good, not bad. But some hobbies that have been pulling you away from the mission that God has brought you together to do.
Why? If you're married in here, why do you God bring you together? Well, all the people in the world. I don't know. Your marriage is a working picture of what the kingdom of God is supposed to be. So the responsibility placed on your shoulders is to be a light and a witness as you present your family as a radiant church washed by the Word without fault and blameless. Why? So that Christ might be magnified.
Every wedding tends to have the ceremony that goes pretty well followed by a meal. Every covenant ceremony in scripture is celebrated by a meal. Jesus, when he established the new covenant, didn't hand out a manual. He goes, I'm establishing a new covenant with you and the world. And he says, here's how the covenant's going to do. My body's going to be broken for you. And my blood's going to be shed for you.
What this means is that real time right now in the space that you're sitting at, Jesus has already done all of the work to include you at the table. If you feel inadequate, if you feel less than, if you feel hurt, if you feel afraid, if you feel you just don't belong at the table with Jesus. The covenant ceremony that is a model of our Christian marriage is based off Jesus doing all of the work first. His body was broken for you. His blood was shed for you so that you can sit back with your shoulders rolled back, smiling from ear to ear, that the savior of the world Jesus has gone before you to rescue you, to call you sons and daughters, and includes you in on getting to be a light in a broken world, whether you're single or whether you're married.
This meal that you're invited into is holy. And this reminder of the covenant you've agreed to with Jesus. So husbands, if there's ever been a day to pray over your wife, today might be the day. If you're single in here and you're like, I need somebody to pray with me, grab somebody on your left, or your right, somebody who'll pray with you. But we take this communion. And remember it's a family, you're blessed, to receive communion.