02142021 Power Couples Al Robertson

good morning church man you surprised me this is a pretty good crowd i was uh i was expecting us to be a little thin you know we don't respond too well to cold weather or polar vortexes right here in louisiana happy valentine's day i don't know where you land there's always a debate about valentine's day is it just commercialized or whatever but i always say these three remain faith hope and love and the greatest of these is what so anything that celebrates love i'm in i like it i think it's good just don't spend too much money on all the junk you know that's all you got to do so welcome to fellowship center you guys are piping in now welcome to our live stream audience uh you know for those of you i know there's a lot up north we got a lot of folks from canada uh that tune in every sunday and then catch our live stream and so you know we talk about when we get to 40 degrees in louisiana we have a word for that you know what's called winter and so we don't know quite what to do with all these you know single digit temperatures and all the snow and all the ice and so it's been a quite the weird year we don't understand negative anything uh in louisiana so uh we know you laugh at us but you know we're cold here uh and you look at me today and you say no you're sporting the nice vest you know i'm into vests right this is my that i save this for cold weather this is my alpaca vest alpaca is a south american animal kind of like a llama and whatever the almighty when he made the alpaca he made something that cold would not penetrate it's fantastic and so you say well ow it looks great on you you know i've explained to you why i like vests and all their purposes and you say but what happens you come inside because you know it's it's warm inside here i got something new for you today check this out the double vest the double vest for the you up and comers just hitting middle age and you're trying out the best and i'm seeing you guys out there i'm tipping my hat to you this is the next evolution the double vest is great for the wintertime still keeps everything packed in nicely right so dr fauci wants us to wear two masks i'm out on that but if he wants to go for two vests i'm in i'm all about the best so i thought i'd reveal that to you today and tommy emman you're watching from somewhere today if you would go to the two vests you would have the coolest nickname we would call you tommy two best which i think would be really cool so anyway emory come on up we have the lovely emory lancaster last time we found out that she was a redneck princess because she has many talents including driving heavy equipment today i find out that you just got your driver's license which is kind of scary for the rest of us right in washington parish and then also she's 6-0 in basketball about to go to the playoffs so i think that's pretty good you know her talents keep rising right can you hold it two are better than one because they have a good return for their labor if either of them falls down one can help the other up but pity anyone who falls and has no one to help them up also if two lie down together they will keep warm but how can one keep warm alone though one may be overpowered two can defend themselves a quarter of three strands is not easily broken ecclesiastes four nine through twelve all right give us a go tigers too go tigers all right there you go i like it i like it thank you emory that's clayton you guys uh out there watching um power couples that's what i want to talk about today we our theme for last night we had a great event here last night it was called better together and we had dinner together and some challenges we had some uh some fun we had some guys reading scripture over their wives and that was really great and awesome and um you know we we talked last night about this text quite a bit it came up and shows you how the holy spirit was working through the host couples because we kept coming back to this text in ecclesiastes and we've been studying in the book of acts and we're going to have a story from there a little bit later but i want to talk a little bit about the concept of what it looks like to be a power couple you know i wasn't i'd heard that before and so i kind of did a little research in our culture on what it means to be a power couple and so here was the definition i found on the internet i don't know who put it there so take it for what it's worth it's just an internet definition but it would pretty much confirm what i thought about power couples a power couple is created when two powerful people people who care about succeeding in their respective careers come together in a relationship and manage to empower one another instead of dragging one another down i thought well that's pretty good right i'm all about empowerment so this sounded pretty good until i got to the last line and this showed me the shallow nature of what power couples are in our culture the last senate said a big part of being a power couple is public perception although so in other words you really may not be powerful at all you merely may be falling apart and have nothing good to offer but as long as the public perception is a certain way then there's a power couple now when i looked on the list because then they have a list of who power couples are in america in you know this age in 2021 and there were a lot of names i recognized they were celebrities and entertainers a lot of athletes they were married to celebrities or entertainers there were politicians of course husband and wife power couples and i started looking down the list and i was like where's anna and trey tomlinson they should have made the list they're a power couple i mean i admire him i look up to him what they do every day they didn't make the list i didn't see danny and beverly dobbs on there man i see him everywhere around here power couple i didn't see billy and lindy loveland but i sure see the results of what power can do in their lives other people i didn't even see al and lisa robertson aren't you shocked we are we are d-list celebrities lisa and i mean we've been on television we wrote books right i've even been in a movie that's going to release by the way i think we're going to show it here called roe versus wade i had a cameo in the movie i was acting a thespian up for awards and everything had two scenes in the movie and you're gonna it's the best 18 seconds of your life when you look for al in this movie i get shot in the movie just spoiler alert and yet we're not on the list all we try to do a lot of couples here that i know is help other people see christ help other people gain some wisdom and knowledge into their life to refine trust after it's been betrayed i think i'd rather have that power couple romans 15 13 says this may the god of hope fill you with joy and peace as you trust in him so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the holy spirit that's what i look for in a power couple how active is the holy spirit in their lives did you catch those words joy peace trust hope that's what you see flowing out of true power that's what so many people are lacking in our culture right you look at lives and there's that fake public perception that behind the scenes there's anything but joy and peace and hope and trust and it rots from underneath there is power and that's what we have to plug into i want to talk a little bit about this text in ecclesiastes chapter 4. you know solomon i guess having a thousand wives it would make you some bit of an expert on marriage but i'm not so sure that he always you know kept himself where he needed to be when you look at his writings and you see he kind of got to the point after a while that you know how many is too many right and ecclesiastes answers some of that but he does have an interesting thing on relationships here now look this is broad this could be any relationship but today i want to focus in a little bit on marriage i want you to think about these words in terms of how they reflect on us as a married couple for those of us who are married or who will be married one day first he says two are better than one because they have a good return for their labor so i think about this phrase i think about a term that we use now kind of in our current culture called synergy it's a business term it means basically if you take one and you add another one to it sometimes the result can be more than just two it can be even more and it can grow this idea of synergy that there's something happen when people put their creative energy together and that's kind of what i see in this text and i don't know if you're like me the whole time i was in school all the way through from college and back to high school when i would take math classes i didn't get it i mean i got the early stuff that was okay but as it got more complex i thought because i kept telling myself when will i ever use this in real life do anybody else have the same effect and then i see these math nerds like kim shackleford or beverly emmon people that really know their math did you notice what i did there i just called them a nerd what happens is when you i want to make it sound like i'm not dumb they're just too smart you catch that that's how we do right they understood it though their brains were wired in such a way that they put those numbers and letters together and it all made sense and it just seemed like another language to me well i have to tell you today math nerds whom i love you are right because i'm about to use a math illustration with synergy so i am using it later in life now i'm going back to you know my grandson could get this but that's okay i'm a simple man one minus one equals what come on you're making me look smart you can say it out one minus one equals zero thank you i could hear the fellowship center got that one one minus one is zero what does that mean in relationship well that means if i'm constantly only concerned about what i can pull out for myself we're never going to get where we need to get as long as we live in the minus only what can be done to satisfy me me me sin of selfishness was the very first one in the garden and it permeates to this very day only me one minus one zero won't work one times one equals what one you say well one times one equals one so we just basically stay the same when you're working against one another even if maybe you're not going backwards but you're not going forward you just stay the same i can't tell you how many relationships are just mediocre and people just begin to accept that and so you say well i got my thing you got your thing as long as we got that x in the middle we'll just coast and go but it's never an improvement because one times one just stays at one that's not what he means but one plus one equals what thank you brother one plus one equals two which is much better right now we're working together this is a plus lifestyle i wanna add things into your life i wanna make your life better even that internet definition you know i just don't wanna drag you down and that's good as well but when we talk about what solomon brings out here we're talking about one plus one equals three which is even better synergy then he said if if either of them falls down one can help the other up when i think about this i think about responsibility and accountability having someone in your life that knows everything about you that's a great bit of accountability for all of us but it's also a responsibility to help one another solomon said if you fall i think a better word would have been when right we're not perfect we fall short and who better to help you up than the one you love if two lie down together they will keep warm that's the idea of intimacy now obviously warmth from physical body you think about physical intimacy but god made us for physical emotional and spiritual intimacy all three and we have to be helping provide that for the spouse we want you to be emotionally strong i want you to be spiritually strong i want you to be physically strong god put that in us though one may be overpowered two can defend themselves their security and again security in the same way physical security emotional security spiritual security i mean look the evil one is the enemy not each other sometimes we get in the midst of some battle inside our own relationship and we start thinking man this person is the enemy no they're not that's the evil one working to bring division just like he did in the garden the very first husband and the very first wife were wrecked because of sin and it's been going on ever since and there's only one way i know to be different and that's the last thing that solomon said a court of three strands is not quickly broken that's brilliant we just went from two to what see one plus one when you include the almighty is three and now we've got a whole different animal now we've got a power couple because now the power of the holy spirit can infuse in us something that's divine and beyond anything this earth has to offer that's why you see true power in jesus christ and change lives in ministry to other people this uh triangle behind me i don't know if you guys can see it we used this yesterday for our photos last night for our event and i love it uh who i don't know who did it anna trey i guess but i love the idea of the triangle and the idea better together and we use this a lot in illustration on marriage because when you look at a triangle if you imagine the top being god his son jesus christ and the holy spirit the trinity that same three in one that he made us in his image and if you imagine us being on either so we enter into a relationship and you could use this triangle for any relationship but it especially works good for marriage you enter into this idea of i want to spend my life with this person and help them grow and i want to have children and i want to have a legacy and a future and so you enter into this and you're on either point of this lower triangle by the way geometry hello i'm using more of my math math nerds so you're down there at the bottom that i love so you're down there at the bottom and you're in christ and the idea is that we want to be more like him what every single day i want to keep growing i'm going to keep growing in him i want to keep being more like him and i mean i want to time this thing out where when i take my last breath i'm realizing just how close he really is and then when i look at my spouse and i realize that if we're doing this together the closer we get to the almighty the closer we're getting to whom each other that's what god has laid out for us to understand that's what being a power couple means to be more like my lord every day to follow his example to let the holy spirit flow the fruit from me last night at least and i talked about philippians chapter 2 about having that same attitude as christ jesus how do you do that well you look out to the interest of the other and that works in any relationship but it especially works well in marriage if i'm waking up every morning thinking first of all thank you lord for new mercies and sacrifices for my sin and secondly how can i make this woman be better today our marriage can't help but thrive yes better together you know the bible has a lot of power couples in it one of the ones that was a power couple about 3 000 years ago was a couple named ahab and jezebel now it's interesting because ahab was king and jezebel of course his wife but she loved bail and she had all these false prophets brought in and i mean israel was just being trashed because this power couple and so god decided to have just you know we're going to have a little awakening and so he put a little three-year famine on him just to let him know he was still up there and he had his man elijah hiding out and then there was this big huge confrontation in first kings 18. all the prophets of baal versus this one guy elijah and it was quite the epic battle i mean it was taunting and it was wonderful and that day god brought down the fire and then he brought down the rain to show that he is supreme what's interesting is about the story is that ahab and jezebel weren't convinced especially jezebel what's interesting is her name three thousand years ago she was alive does anybody here know anybody named jezebel i mean it's not really a popular name right in fact my grandmother used it she used two words when she would describe i guess you call them loose women hussies and jezebels that was the word you some of you old times you remember right that being used jezebel the definition for it is the mo is uh where is it she was a brazen shameless or morally unrestrained woman which sounded a lot like jezebel the bible until i researched this i didn't realize that jezebel was making a comeback in our modern culture you don't know about who modern feminists they love her i wonder why here's their explanation of her she's one of the most intriguing women in scriptures a blood-stained yet strong-willed politically astute courageous woman who i will just tell you went to the dogs literally didn't end well for jezebel that's why you don't hear a lot of that name i guess you'll get get it now in feminist circles if they ever get married and have kids you don't want to be jezebel or ahab either one they were a power couple that were basing their power on the wrong thing if you put any power based on anything money fame your ability your beauty any of those things that make our so-called power couples and culture it will fail if it's not fueled by the holy spirit in acts 18 there's a great power couple that i want to highlight this morning we're in acts so i'm jumping forward a little bit to acts 18 verse 18. paul stayed on in corinth for some time then he left the brothers and sisters and he sailed for syria accompanied by priscilla and aquila now this is the power couple i want to be what they do to be so powerful jump down to 24. meanwhile a jew named apollos a native of alexandria came to ephesus he was a learned man with a thorough knowledge of the scriptures he had been instructed in the way of the lord and he spoke of great fervor and taught about jesus accurately this is a dynamic talented young man in the kingdom of god but he was lacking something though he knew only the baptism of john remember we're in this transition period he had the baptism of john you know while jesus was on the earth but then when jesus left he says look there's going to be a bad new baptism it's in me and it's going to include the holy spirit that will live in you and as powerful as this man was he had missed that last component so verse 26 he began to speak boldly in the synagogue good preacher he's bringing the word old testament it's only new at this point when priscilla and aquila heard him because see they heard that oh wait a minute he didn't know the last piece of puzzle they invited him to their home and explained to him the way of god more adequately simple thing i doubt many people even knew that this happened and yet they were willing to get involved they were willing to invite him in their home they were willing to engage them spiritually and they were willing to invest in the kingdom of god that's a power couple whether anybody knew it or not you know what we know about it now 2000 years later why because luke wrote it down that's who i want to be like verse 27 when apollos wanted to go to ikea the brothers and sisters encouraged him wrote to the disciples there to welcome him when he arrived he was a great help to those who by grace had believed for he vigorously refuted his jewish opponents in public debate proving from the scriptures that jesus was the messiah this couple invested in this young man and the kingdom expanded that's what being a power couple is all about there's a power couple here that also didn't make the list on the internet but i want you to hear a little bit about their story guys roll the video don't go first i'm a grateful believer in jesus christ who in the past has struggled with perfectionism materialism codependency and today still struggle with pride selfishness and people pleasing my name is debbie hey baby hey i'm uh chad johnson uh the lucky man i got to marry debbie and uh i'm believing jesus christ uh i've struggled um with uh being selfish being insecure acknowledgement anger lust it's really uh trying to grow through all those things uh and today i'm working on being the man that god wants me to be my name's chad hey babe i grew up in a christian home as i got into my teenage years i rebelled i started chasing the party scene there was a lot of you know drugs and alcohol around i wasn't big into that but i was very drawn to the crowd that was and i ended up in a nine-year marriage that was just full of addiction chaos lots of lies deception lots of pain and um through that though during that time i did i turned back to god i turned back to what i had learned growing up to what i'd been taught i mean i was brought up in a good home christian home we worked played when school and all that i got out of uh high school and spread my wings as they say wound up jumping into a marriage early had a beautiful daughter the four years of pretty rough times pretty much hit the bottom of my barrel and uh that night you know it was a it was a bad night i'm sure a lot of people had them but that was the bottom that uh that i didn't want to go any lower and i just remember saying uh lord i'm done i said i'm done and uh i said i got a bible in there and uh i said i'm gonna start reading it and uh a couple of years later was uh i was in house church at allen lisa robertson's house at white's railroad still active uh here and this guy showed up with a swoosh yeah swoosh haircut and uh we started dating but we were both thinking well we're both christians so this relationship will be easy right i mean what can go wrong if you both love god and you know what could be wrong we found out you remember in the marriage counsel when we take the test you know they do the personality test or something and they're like uh you need to shut it down actually they were just like look we don't recommend this and um like mud and water oh but we're in love and you know we're both christians what could go wrong well we were our whole marriage was driving kids back and forth to meet the exes you know because we were a blended family so that brought in so much more stress and just things we weren't prepared for and instead of really seeking god in those things i think we started seeing the flaws in each other and we um we both are pretty stubborn and pretty hard headed so we did uh we clashed we knew that we loved god and we weren't going to go anywhere we weren't going to get a divorce we decided that early on that we could live in the opposite ends of the house if we needed to but we weren't going to do that again because we knew what divorce was it wasn't a solution so you know we just said we have to do whatever we have to do and we just battled it out so we were basically starting some rent houses and we had talked with josh about doing that but god had other plans for that yeah yeah so josh calls one day and says hey man i need to start a women's recovery house and i was like no the market the paper mill you know fish and hunt and uh it's a long story short but we knew we needed something and so debbie and uh and some others were just like hey you need to start a thrift store and i'm like no no don't need to start a thrift store i don't want to be hauling furniture on saturday no we'll start a restaurant we'll start any well the recovery homes once we when we started that everybody had to go get a job and so that's how you know we weren't going to be involved lady you know they were going to go get jobs and we were just we just had the house and so these ladies would come in and they would go get these jobs and we just were seeing a high turnover um you know it wasn't you know we i think we could see that it could be better well during all this i mean these are dilapidated to dilapidated buildings and there's just chad is basically rebuilding just massive amounts of stuff and i'm saying we need to do this this and this and he's getting it done and we'd clash you know we'd have you know things that would happen and we'd you know argue about something what we didn't realize until later was god was using that to basically refine us yeah well i mean for me it was valuing you it was hey we're we're a team now we're this partnership you were his creation he designed you for his purpose and his pleasure and i need to get on board with that and then in all of the sweat blood and tears you would see that someone's lives would be changing and i just remember that as saying hey this is worth it this is worth the grind and i remember i mean and there still is i mean we're still we still are under attack uh or discipline or refining and testing all of those things are still going on today you know and then just thinking about where we were 20 years ago 15 years ago we pretty much couldn't be in the same room for very long and yeah i think we were the first ones that left the marriage retreat so if any of y'all go and you do leave you'll be number two because we were number one we realized that we both loved god we both loved our savior we wanted to serve jesus and we wanted to we knew we were going to live for him and that working together in ministry just brought us together in ways where we could you know not just focus on each other's flaws and all the things that drove us crazy but we were able to start seeing how our our different our weaknesses my weakness you know we complemented each other and getting things done so it's definitely it's definitely worth fighting for staying in god's word reading praying saying i'm sorry saying i'm wrong i struggle but just uh you know realizing that there's a lot more to what's going on you know that satan is he's going after marriages he can't stand them he can't stand ours he can't stand it when pressure comes trouble happens you know we stick a stick closer together i would say we're closer together than we've ever been and just keep trusting them [Applause] now that's a power couple but you heard debbie say at the end why because jesus told paul that in our weaknesses his power is made perfect so the more we submit to him the more powerful he becomes in us lisa and i were there to walk with both these individuals through their collapse of their first marriage into the finding of one another as she described and then everything beyond you know what saved them though you know what was the ultimate salvation of their marriage when both hearts got focused on what they could do for the kingdom that changed everything and it can for you we say all the time with anything in marriage you got a bad marriage we want to help make it better if you got a mediocre marriage we want to make it a good marriage if you got a good marriage we want it to be a great marriage remember we're growing up that triangle and we never arrive in this life but i know the first step is very important and that is jesus must be lord i've told you my story before elise and i shared our story here many times that until jesus became lord and we began to see things together that's when we started growing up that triangle and things started getting better and lives started getting blessed

Channel: Whites Ferry Road Church

Views: 2,409

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Id: ehCL7LH_O5A

Length: 32min 23sec (1943 seconds)

Published: Mon Feb 22 2021