Dating Your Spouse | Craig Groeschel | The Best of One Marriage

[Music] [Music] [Music] hey everyone welcome back to the best of one marriage conference last night we heard an incredible message from pastor jensen franklin and if you missed it it's right here on our youtube channel and tonight we're going to hear from a very special guest pastor craig groeschel of life church so sit back turn up the volume and enjoy one of our all-time favorite messages from one marriage conference [Music] it is a great honor to be with you all and i want to congratulate you on making a fantastic decision to invest in your marriage it's a great decision if your marriage is strong it's a brilliant decision if your marriage needs to be strengthened it's a brilliant decision it really does say a lot about you that you would take the time to invest in your marriage and i am very sad that we missed last night's session we were watching my two sons compete against each other in a soccer game so we flew in late but we missed the session on making love last [Applause] which would have been really helpful in my early 20s but now that i'm in my 50s it just does last and longer than before so [Applause] wow let's have some fun today in the house is that okay i don't know i just said it can't take it back it's out there let's go to the bible quickly quickly quickly genesis chapter 2 genesis chapter 2 let's start with the word of god i'll give you the context god had created man he looked at man he said everything's been good except for man being alone he needs some help it's not good that man's alone verse 21 so the lord god caused the man to fall into a deep sleep and while he was sleeping he took one of the man's ribs and then closed up the place with flesh then the lord god made a woman from the rib that he taken out of man and he brought her to the man and the man said this is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh she shall be called whoa man for she was taken out of man this is why a man leaves his father and mother and is united somebody say united and is united to his wife and the two would become one flesh i want to park on that word united for a moment it comes from a hebrew word the word is dabak this word can be translated to cling or adhere it can be translated to catch by pursuit it means to pursued to pursue hard with affection and devotion i want to show you where debac is translated slightly different than united in uh in psalms 63 verse 8 the today's living bible translates it this way i follow close behind you that is a stalker's favorite bible verse i follow close behind you judges chapter 20 verse 45 and the king james version translates it this way this the word debac they pursued hard after them this is why a man will leave his father and mother and is united is joined is continually pursuing with affection and devotion i want to talk to you in this session about the continual pursuit of your two why you're two have you ever noticed that again and again and again whenever some young guy meets some young girl some girl meets some guy they fall in love all the love songs on the radio make sense she does this he does this they float around and every single time you'll hear one of them say something like i i i i i i i i i think i met the one i think i met the one she's so amazing he's so perfect he has a job the last four guys i dated were unemployed and addicted to video games but he actually has an eight to five he's a man she is so incredible she lifts up her hand and when she does this during worship during the praise break i love it when you say take a praise break when she does this there's no ring on that finger yet it's been reserved for me i think i met the one i think i met the one one time i'd love to hear somebody say i think i met the two and the reason is because christ is our one and our spouse should be our two what are we to do we are to love the lord our god with all of our heart mind soul and strength and we love our neighbor as ourself that when we have christ as the head when he is the lord when he is first when we are growing toward him he is the one our spouse is our two that's why today we will always pursue our two lean over and elbow your two and say i'll pursue you two say we'll make love last [Applause] i'll always pursue my two how many of you have ever made a fool out of yourself for love you might make fooling yourself i want to um introduce to you my bride amy is here my best friend we've been married for 27 years we have six children people say you must love children i love our children but i really love my wife and all god's people said amen pastor do you know what causes that yes we do and we're unwilling to give it up we have one grandkid we have another one coming when i met this girl i i want her to be my two i went crazy for her we're just dating we're like lovely um we we're just dating and we named our two children we're gonna have two i had no idea we're gonna love each other six times good we we named our future children we were gonna have a boy first name josh and we have a girl named joy i was so in love with her i was in a walmart store after christmas maybe it was like go come on valentine's day and i found a uh a rug with a pillow a pillow with the name joy on it that was 50 off but god is so good and so i bought her the joy pillow i got it home it wasn't a pillow it just looked like a pillow on the outside the box it was actually a latch hook rug that was not latched it was a pre-assembled latch of grug so i'm telling you for like seven years i took little threads little red ones little white ones i bent them over i can still do this thing i took the little latching thing went in to the side around and pulled 43 million 972 000 threads trying to win this girl i'll show you a picture of the latch hook rug that i made if we have the picture do we have the picture there's my joy rug if you'll notice it's actually a christmas rug now i know why it was 50 off in february i had no idea that's how much i love this girl i i wasn't sure she liked me back until she got me a dog i'll show you the dog she got me we were dating she got me a dog i was so excited i want everybody to know that this girl liked me so at my college graduation i took the dog to graduation just so everybody would ask me why you had the dog and i would say i had the dog because my girl got me the dog because we are so in love that we're going to get married one day she got me a dog if you ever done anything crazy for love i know you have you've all done stuff like this you've you've you've traveled across the country you've you've done you've you've stayed up late so you spent too much money on a concert because your your dream girl loved it you you stayed on the phone until two in the morning just breathing remember that you you you wouldn't talk like do you hang up i'm not going to hang up you hang up first i'm not going to hang up you hang up no i'm not going no you hang up we'll just breathe not heavy sinful inappropriate breathing godly loving spirit honoring breathing you're crazy for love what happens one day years later when you wake up and say i'm not sure i still want to be married what happened somewhere along the way when you would do anything possible to win this person to catch this person to express love for this person and then one day you wake up and say where did all the fire go let me tell you what most likely happen in most cases we all do it somewhere along the way we tend to get a little bit lazy we take each other for granted we simply get lazy i would ask you is there any other area of your life where you can get lazy and see improvement think about it can you get lazy about your your body and improve no you get lazy and you'll look like you have body sponsored by twinkie can you get lazy in your business not crush the numbers not motivate your team not work on the culture and have a better business no eventually your business will cave can you get lazy about your yard the water no fertilizer now you can walk out there later and go oh it's a beautiful yard no it looks horrible and so often in our marriages we look at someone else's yard and say the grass looks greener over there listen to me whenever the grass looks greener somewhere else it is time to water your own yard but we just don't really love each other the way we used to we just don't love each other we just we just we're just gonna divorce we don't love each other to get divorced because you run out of love it's like selling your car because you run out of gas what do you do when you run out of gas you go fill up the tank what do you do when you're running low on love you come to a one marriage conference you get in the presence of god you seek him through his word you refill that tank you let his spirit renew your faith i will always pursue my two one of my favorite stories of pursuit what i love about pastor jensen is he like preaches 43 old testament messages in every sermon it's amazing so here's my one one of my favorite stories of pursuit is is jacob and rachel in the old testament uh a really interesting story if you if you know it uh rachel has an older sister named leah and the bible's funny if you if you haven't read the bible you should read the bible it's it's not only change your life but it's funny there's a verse and i'm a quote it's not on the screen but it says rachel had a lovely figure and was beautiful and leia had weak eyes that's in your bible word for word what it's saying is say leo wore glasses before eyes okay i wear glasses too but that's what it says that's what it what it says in the hebrew rachel had a lovely figure it was beautiful leia had weak eyes in the hebrew that means that rachel was hot and leah had a great personality that's what it means in the hebrew language i'm just saying i studied hebrew and cemetery seminary back your years ago [Applause] and if you've been around the church world for a while you'll know that jacob is like i got to have rachel i love this girl and so he says to the father laban can i have your daughter and the dad says sure worked for me for seven years and so he's like bro i'm so down give me a shovel and put me to work for seven years he works his brains out and time passes because he's so in love and then he goes for his prize and he says i want rachel and then i said no no no no no in our culture you get the oldest daughter here's weak eyes no no no no i want figure you're giving me eyes and as far as it know if you want rachel you have to work for seven years i just worked for seven years what i always thought growing up was i thought that he had to work another seven years to get his prize what i didn't realize upon closer study is that the father actually gave him rachel and said you still have to continue to work seven more years what i love about this story is this that jacob continued to work for rachel after he already had her what if in our marriages we continue to pursue our two continued to work for each other long after we had each other i want to talk today very practically about how we can live it out because nobody ever thinks oh you're perfect oh we got to get married the years later we'll be struggling hurting taking each other for granted dealing with real problems and considering untying what god tied together how do we do it we all have good intentions but we don't always follow through i want to talk about closing the gap between our intentions and our actions three very practical tools that i pray the spirit of god will plant in your heart and will help you thrive in your relationships thought number one if you're taking notes is this when you think something good say it everybody help me out with that when you think something good what will you do you will say it you will release it you will bless somebody why in the world would you ever think a positive thought about your spouse and rob them from the blessing of receiving it every time you think something good say it you may say i'm not very expressive we'll learn to express give life to it set that blessing free every single time you think something good share it with your spouse hebrews said this in chapter 3 verse 13 but encourage one another daily imagine how different your marriage would be if you continue to be a voice a stream of blessing and encouragement as long as it's called today men let me talk to you for a moment because i've got a different assignment for you gentlemen how do you pursue her with your words you pursue her with words of affection with words of affection and let me qualify affection by affection what i mean is non-sexual affection non-sexual you say what is that let me explain it this way non-sexual affection is non-sexual it's not sexual it's affection that's not related to you scoring somewhere in the next seven days it's it's affection that's not tied to an end physical result that you desire with all of your heart it's non-sexual affection it's affection just because because guys can make anything sexual honey we need to rotate the tire i'll rotate your tires [Applause] honey can you can you please mow the grass i'll mow your yard you know what's funny about women is is is they're unpredictable the only absolute statement i can make about women is you're unpredictable you never you can go up to a woman sometime come up from her behind your wife and come up and give her a little hunka hunker and and sometimes you're like a cute adorable and playful and in the next day same exact thing same time of day same climate you give a little honkahanka and you get a go to the hot place where the worm never dies and there's weeping and massive teeth look you pervert don't touch me think you are [Applause] there's a gamble every time but you take it cause you're a man all right gentlemen here's your assignment words of non-sexual affection fill in the blank this is it game changer i love you because fill in the blank say something different every time every day i love you because you've been faithful for so many years i love you because you sacrifice so much to pour into our children i love you because you seek god every single day faithfully for almost an hour a day and this is real i love you because you are my best friend i love you because i wouldn't want to be with anybody else in this whole wide world i love you because you've stood by my side you've taken so much heat with me for me you sacrificed you put your dreams on hold you you have served jesus faithfully with me for years and years i love you because fill in the blanks time and time again pursue her with words of affection ladies your assignment's a little bit different pursue him with words of affirmation with affirmation because here's a little secret about guys that we don't like to admit to [Music] we're a little bit insecure the cockier we are generally as an indication that we're even more insecure the thing about men is this is we tend to become what you see in us for better or for worse and when you encourage good things in us we tend to grow into it when you tell us what we're not we have a real difficult time becoming what we could become and that's why i would say gently and i know there's lots of complications and i know i know you could say you know another man i'm married to interviews and i'm not you and me as you know i don't understand that okay but but but but but work real hard not to tell him what he's not because it strips him of the confidence of the one that he finds most valuable and important to finding his security from someone else who lives on earth what you want to do is you want to help tell him what you see him becoming even if it takes a lot of faith one of the big complaints i hear from a lot of christian women is my husband is not a spiritual leader i want him to be a spiritual leader well he didn't know what that means for one thing a lot of times he thinks it means going through like a beth moore bible study he ain't going to do that okay and so when you tell him what he's not good at he wants to take his ball and go home and and he's done because what you want to do is when you see anything in him that is remotely spiritual you want to encourage that when he says hey let's go to church today just look at him and say oh man i love it when you say let's go to church today if he prays one time a year it's thanksgiving meal it's not even a good prayer it's probably i mean it's like a god you know bless this turkey and all the little turkeys in our house on them you go up to him afterwards and say you know what when you pray to god that turned me on okay then put your tongue in his ear and say praise the lord and he's gonna start speaking in tongues at the next thanksgiving meal you have no idea what your words of affirmation does for us i i i you know we get criticized some as pastors we got a lot of people who love us but criticism kind of kind of gets to you i'll preach a sermon and and when i sit i walk off every week come and sit down next to amy and then i'm just kind of i'm just leaning over and all i want is one little like that was great that was powerful you're amazing god use you you can lie if you want to but just give me give all i want all i need is for the person who knows me best to believe in me the most it's amazing it's amazing how much more we can do as men when we believe that our wife affirms us it may take affirming by faith like literally it might be calling things that are not as though they were men here's what she wants to know she wants to know do you love me today today today ladies he wants to know do you believe in me today when you think something good let's say it together what are we going to do every time you think something good what do you do you're going to say it set that blessing free and pursue your two with words of affirmation and words of affection number two whenever you think something special do it whenever you think something special for your spouse james chapter 4 verse 17 tells us this anyone who knows the good that they ought to do and doesn't do it as sin for them stop sinning in your marriage with good intentions think about what you can do to be a blessing anytime you think something good do it it's even better when you do it when it's not expected for example around our house we don't do valentine's day we decided years ago that we're going to express our love before valentine's day when we don't have to and half price chocolates after valentine's day when they're cheaper what we're doing is we're not letting culture we're not letting expectations drive us to express love and do nice things we're going to do them just because this is one thing i've learned like like flowers on a day for no reason means so here just a little side tip ladies don't listen to this i've learned this through over years to be bear if you send flowers to where she is when other women are around the points double it's not just about her seeing them it's about everybody else going who are those from those four points double they double the problem is you need to know this points evaporate at midnight you start over they don't carry over from one day to the next one time i was really overwhelmed and uh amy called my assistants and said clear his schedule don't let him take anything after three o'clock she booked a room packed my bag walked up in my assistant said your next appointment was here and it was amy walking into my office with this big smile she took whisked me away and it was one of the most thoughtful things you could imagine because she took initiative to bless me in the middle of a time with something special it wasn't just a thought it was action on the thought write a thoughtful note if you're going to go on a trip for two days get like those little yellow post-it notes and just put sweet nothings on them and hide them everywhere hide them in her bra drawer hide them in the refrigerator you know put put them in you know when she opens up the cleaning cabinet there's i love you thing listen when you come home she may be just wearing post-it notes you have no idea and it doesn't have to be something big what i found is one of the great ways just to show love is to join your spouse in something that they care about that means gentlemen you may have to watch the wedding dress show your ladies you may go golfing or go hunting or whatever it would be but when you join them in something special be intentional make a date just set sets get a sitter make a dinner light some candles play some marvin gaye draw a bath if you got little kids just turn on door the explorer say you got 30 minutes go d.a go go i don't know i've heard of people who set sex dates they're so busy like sunday's your day monday's your day whatever sunday funding monday madness two for tuesday wild thing wednesday i can keep going throw down thursday freaky friday wild thing saturn i don't know it just you back to god's word number one when you think something good what are you gonna do you're going to when you think something special what are you gonna do you're gonna number three when you want something different you're going to be it when you want something different you become it i wish he was more this i wish she would you know i wish he'd be less uptight i wish she'd be less critical i wish she'd initiate i remember back in 1967 when she did i wish he'd be more thoughtful i wish he'd be less passive i wish she wouldn't be on her phone all the time don't gripe about what your spouse is not you continue to become who you're supposed to become you let god work on you gentlemen i i um i never have a hard time getting up in the men's business women i get a little nervous because they'll smile at you but they'll cut your tires man we'll go toe-to-toe i don't care i'll stand up to you i'll take this jacket off and show you i've been in the gym i'll get up in your business gentlemen i'm getting up in your business you take the lead you take the lead you take the lead you're under christ you take the lead you take the lead you take the lead you initiate you take charge you say we're people of the word we study god's word in our household we are we we don't go to church we are the church we serve in the church we are the body of christ listen to me there's never in one time ever in our household and this was before we were in ministry where any kid ever said are we going to church this weekend that's not a question we ask we are people of god we are in the house of god gentlemen lead your families into the presence of god because here's the thing about ladies and i don't mean this insulting in any way but women are multipliers they multiply you give them you give them authority to do something they multiply it okay you give them well like i i had this bachelor pad amy came in she multiplied it everything matched you know she you you give them your physical love they multiply it you get babies out of it okay you bless them you lead them they multiply they'll love you back in ways you couldn't imagine you give her a hard time she'll give you hell on earth like you've never known before she'll multiply it and i i know there's all sorts of exceptions and there's all sorts of whatever but for when you take the lead spiritually and you lay down your life and love your bride as christ loved the church if there is any bit of the spirit of god dwelling within that woman she will love you back in ways that you didn't even know were possible on this earth because she'll multiply if you want something different be it let's stop pointing the fingers i'll tell you what when i did marriage counseling is never that one person's fault there's always the other ones oh it always takes two you take your part and let the spirit of god work in you i like to say this you had it before right you all had it before there was that something baba baba you you were in crazy love before to get what you once had you just go do what you once did go pursue again pursue again forgive do the hard work let the holy spirit dwell within you revelation 2 5 scripture says this remember the height from which you've fallen repent and do the things you did at first repent and do the things you did at first loosely applied to marriage hey you did some things in the early days you pursued with passion with faith in the early days pursue again let the holy spirit do a work in you it is hard work it is worth it it is honoring to god when our god unites together the enemy wants to divide you do not give the enemy foothold in your house you stand strong no weapon formed against you will prosper greater is he that dwells within you than he that is in this world when you step into the room you're an ambassador of the most high god you have the same spirit that raised christ from the dead dwelling inside of you you have faith that move mountains you have a heart to hear from the word of god you have the sword of the spirit which is living active powerful dwelling within you you quote his word you live his word you let his spirit move within you and you don't just heal a hurting marriage but you change generations to come for the glory of god jesus is always our one and we will always pursue our two so father we pray for every marriage that is strong today that you would strengthen it to honor your name and to build your church god for those that are hurting for those that may have drifted for those that are just flat and complacent god help us to remember the things that we did at first god help us to put you first god in every single way submitting ourselves to your lordship letting your spirit convict us of sin in our lives repenting turning away from that which is hurtful to you god embrace our relationships renew our minds god with your truth god help us to lay down our lives as christ gave his life for the church may we submit to one another in love out of reverence for the one who gave his life for us jesus is our one and as the holy spirit continues to pursue us we will continue to pursue our two reflecting the love that christ has for his church as we are your church lifting the name that is above every name the name of jesus that one day every knee will bow and every tongue will confess he is our savior he is our king and what is he he is our lord the king of kings the lord of lords it's in his name that we pray and all god's people said amen amen you

Channel: Free Chapel

Views: 69,208

Keywords: Free Chapel, Christian, Church, Jesus, Jentezen Franklin, Gainesville, Georgia, Atlanta

Id: plJdnx7zFFs

Length: 36min 46sec (2206 seconds)

Published: Sun Feb 21 2021