Every Drop Counts - Bayside Marriage and Parenting Conference 2021

if you would find your way in your bibles if you have one with you uh to the old testament book of genesis we're going to be in chapter 26 so genesis chapter 26 if you have a copy of the scriptures and if you don't have a copy of the scriptures guess what we are going to put this enormous bible up on the screen for you and uh you can just say i like big bibles and i cannot no i'm sorry is well my my bible's bigger than yours wow it's not the size of the dog in the fight jenny it's the size of the fight in the moving right along genesis chapter 26 the title of our message if you do like to take notes in church which i do because then if you have add you still get something out of it later on when you look back at your notes you're like oh that's interesting i don't remember that but i wrote that down that's helpful the title of our message is every drop counts every drop counts and hopefully that'll make me make sense in the next 30 minutes or your money back guaranteed actually i have no authority no you don't we'll see um it's god's word god will do um we're in the book of genesis chapter 26 and starting in verse 12. it says then isaac sowed in that land and raped in the same year a hundred hundredfold and the lord blessed him the man began to prosper and continued prospering until he became very prosperous for he had possessions of flocks and possessions of herds and a great number of servants so the philistines envied him now the philistines had stopped up all the wells which his father's servants had dug in the days of abraham his father and they had filled them with earth and abimelech said to isaac go away from us for you are much mightier than we then isaac departed from there and pitched his tent in the valley of gerrard roar like a lion and dwelt there and isaac dug again the wells of water which they had dug in the days of abraham his father for the philistines had stopped them up after the death of abraham he called them by the names which his father had called them this passage if we can pause right there is perfect uh for us to focus on today because it shows us just how important it is uh that you have water to do the things you're called to do for jenny and i we thought immediately as we read this for the first time of a trip to south africa that we took you know south africa is really whenever we get asked to go there we're always like holy spirit are you gonna make us again because they keep it or really far ways away that's the problem with south africa it's beautiful and amazing and full of sharks but it's just so terrifically far away you fly for so long you start to forget who you are and where you're going and what you're doing like gosh i mean i'm a spiritual guy i bring my bible on these airplane trips i read my bible and then i still had 17 hours left to go you know what i'm saying i just it's unbelievable and so you watch a movie and then you you have a snack and you know and then you recline your chair oh i'm reclined now and it's awesome and and we get there we went we had our son who was like eight months old and he was that was not the brightest decision we've ever made uh i still have ptsd from that flight he was at the age do you ever need do you guys have the kids that go to the age where they make pterodactyl sounds just irregularly that was that flight from hell um but when you get to south africa there is only one thing that you want to do ladies and gentlemen it is called take a hot that is the secret to all secrets of jet lag as far as i'm concerned i know there's some people who take their shoes off and walk around and try and like magnetize themselves these are hippies they drink kombucha okay the remedy i figured out a long time ago is a strong cup of coffee and a nice hot shower and uh and they told us when we landed y'all we are in a shortage no one told us of the shortage when we accepted the speaking invitation the shortage was a water shortage it was apparently a historic drought that south africa was in and the moment we landed and went to the bathroom in the airport to try and wash our hands they said sorry there's no all you can use is hand sanitizer there's no water and uh it's a crisis and it's a huge problem i mean i'm telling you they were like doing rain dances and the church services for water i mean it was it was it was epically bad and when we checked into the hotel they told us we would ask that you keep your showers under 60 seconds i'm not a military man all right i don't do that nonsense i'm not it's just i might be in the lord's army but i like me a 30 minute long shower and it was i had to like really channel my inner pastor to not disobey the rules because there was no one from the hotel in our bathroom when i was taking my shower but we did it you turn the water on you get wet you turn the water off you soap up you turn the water on you get rinsed off you get out and you cuss uh that was what i remember you can't you're not even long enough for it to get hot oh but everywhere we went there were these conservation signs i even saw some in southern cal in central california yesterday every drop counts yeah every drop counts you see when you're in a situation where there's the fires or the potential for fires i know just a year ago there was terrible fires in napa and even now fires raging where we live or we were facetiming our kids driving here and they were telling us that there's air quality alerts in montana right now because the smoke's so bad and they won't let them go out and pe outside i mean just this sort of thing happens all the time when in those situations it is a crisis to not have water and here in this text a text that is full of things to help us learn how to grow believe it or not in our parenting lives and our marriage lives we see also how important water is yeah we see these wells and basically these were wells that had been dug for water in abraham's day and after his death because of the philistines envy of abraham and all that he had they literally went out of their way to fill all of these wells with dirt so that there wouldn't be fresh water coming out from them and i mean the first thing i even see from that is just what envy can do to somebody because digging dirt first of all i don't know if anyone uh like loves to garden or anything but even just digging like little pots of dirt like i get so dirty but like just imagining digging deep like shovels of dirt putting them into a well that's hard work but imagining the seeds of envy that would have started such an action such a a horrible thing to do to someone in their family and it just made me think like what are the seeds now that might be that might be starting something huge something drastic something horrible down the line and really keeping that in check just stood out to me from the get-go but what we want to do to tonight is just like it's important for us to have a well check physically i mean our those of us who have kids we bring our kids once a year uh to make sure they're doing well and growing well we should be also going to the doctor and making sure that we're doing where well our health is is good and we need to take care of the little things that might be a problem in the future but what i love about this is that this is an opportunity that every single one of you right now are taking to kind of take a well check of your relationship to take a well check of your parenting where your heart is how your heart is and i love so much that tonight is a night for that where we can gather together and kind of just be like okay god help me give me perspective to see where i'm at because sometimes we're blind to our own blind spots and we'll will not see the things that we struggle with and i think that it's so important to daily ask god to help us see where we can't see and that's something that is so beautiful about marriage and that's something that we found early when we first got married that it was like looking in a mirror every single day and seeing all the issues and all the flaws and that's hard in the beginning but the more that we can lean into that and and ask how am i doing what even this this week levi asked what do you love most um that i do as a husband like that was such a good question we could kind of talk about those little things but this is a moment in time to check the well of our heart perfect now context wise abraham the father of faith every single one of us if we're believers in jesus we're a part of the family that got started spiritually speaking when abraham put his faith in god and the bible calls us as children we're we're children of that promise grafted into that promise as we believe like believing abraham who had faith now his son isaac was the recipient of those same promises because if you flip just a few chapters backwards you see that abraham by this point has died and so all of the promises have been transferred from abraham to his son isaac promises that spoke forward to what god was going to do through jesus christ coming to this world so being a part of this family was a big stinking deal god's blessing was on isaac's life like it was on abraham's life and it will there'll be a fork in the road in a little bit because he's going to have twins and jacob and esau and there's going to be some hot drama we don't have time to get into it today but sibling rivalry one son smooth one son's chewbacca and it's a whole thing but but but god's blessing was on abraham and his wife rebecca and jenny and i have from the very beginning of our relationship really found inspiration from isaac and rebecca's marriage they have a beautiful marriage a marriage orchestrated by god a marriage like yours dreamed up in the heavens that god knit together and planned and fashioned and has a plan for it to be a part of his kingdom we also see out of all the patriarchs isaac and rebecca were only ever just married to isaac and rebecca so well done you know out of abraham and jacob who had four wives i mean just this they were doing really good just to be married to each other which is awesome but the holy spirit really brought them to each other and the bible says multiple different times in their whole courtship and dating and that whole process which did involve camels so for sure a different culture maybe a camilac escalade today but but the holy spirit kept saying in the scripture they looked up they lifted their eyes up and then they saw each other so them being brought together was the work of the holy spirit and them being brought together caused them to be entering into god's blessing but listen to me blessings take work and blessings if you look at them wrong they will feel like burdens so even this text that we read jenny began by reading that god blessed abe isaac and as he planted that he got a hundred fold what he put in now that's a pretty good roi i think you'll agree with me that he sows seed and gets a hundred fold increase on that now that's a great idea in in in in a dream to look forward to saying i wonder if there's a day that could come we'd have a hundred times the amount of agricultural ownership and and plants and and vineyards and that's all and well until they are actually yours and now you got a new problem because you got to get water to them all and now you got to take care of them all now you got to have leadership for all the herds and now again the blessings be careful who you covet blessings feel like burdens at times right and some of you were so excited to get married and then you got married and you're like ah the blessing and some of you are so excited to have kids and then you have kids and you realize oh it's a burden as well as a blessing and i think sometimes we make the mistake of looking where someone else is at like oh they're an empty nest that would be amazing well that's going to come with its own unique challenges right and so what we have to realize is all of god's blessings require water and every drop counts and that's why it's a priority for isaac and for rebecca to steward all that they've been given to participate in all they've been called to participate in to make sure there's enough hydration flowing enough water flowing to all the things that god had blessed them with and we are called to do the same as well to to have a well check because your marriage and my marriage is meant to be a part of the ultimate marriage ephesians 5 says all marriage is meant to be a little picture to the world a preview of coming attractions to the watching world of the gospel that's jot it down ephesians chapter 5 verse 32. this is the great mystery marriage but it is an illustration of the way christ and the church are one so your parent your marriage the way you love and serve each other is meant to be a living breathing evangelistic example to the world around you that there is a god in heaven how could someone love someone so how could someone sacrifice for someone so well the people around you are meant to see the way your marriage works not perfectly but sacrificially and full of the holy spirit and it's meant to be that's impossible how can you continue to love and serve each other how can you defy the statistics on divorce in your community how do you guys do what you do and not break with all you've faced it's meant to be an occasion for you to point people to the ultimate marriage of what it looks like to be a part of the bride of christ which is such a tender way for jesus to describe his bride the church and so we've kind of gathered some wells so to speak in our relationships in our marriage in parenting as well um wells that we should be working hard because we have an enemy of our souls who is really trying to put dirt into our wells wow great and trying to keep us from living this kind of um well the well that we're meant to be the the person with the living water flowing out of us flowing out of our marriage that's what we're meant that's what we're born because he's hoping that you'll have starving herds and and withered crops and just go oh well and just respond to the fact that that well's not flowing instead of doing what we hope you'll be engaged and committed to do like never before and that is to get that shovel out and to dig out those wells so the living water can flow to you and through you in jesus name amen amen amen and i just want to say um as we're doing the wealth check i know um we've had we have five kids and a few of one of them um was not at the the growth you know where you bring your kids in and they're like oh they're on this part of the growth curve and they're higher in this um their weight is higher their their body weight is lower like and every father's like yeah 98th percentile like yeah that's my boy right that's my girl like like you did anything you know it's like you know we've been trying really hard right classic any grand three i'm like taking total ownership over the success right good job um but like i think there are times where as parents even like we we see our kid and maybe they're not where they should be um but they're lower on the growth chart or higher on the growth chart and i just want to express just the the knowledge that we're all in different parts of our life we all are on a different journey in our relationship we're all um we all have different struggles and we're all in a different walk with the lord as well and we're not meant to look like this other couple we're not meant like what levi just said the point of our marriage is that it would point to jesus that it would bring glory to the lord that it would be a picture as imperfect as it is like you said of the gospel and so it's not going to look like someone else's it's meant to point to jesus and so just realizing and recognizing the fact that we're all in different areas of life some of us have grandkids some of us are not married some of us are have little babies where that's that is a journey in and of itself um but just recognizing that as we point to these wells in our relationship we're going to give you four different wells out of all that we could you know speak to that we can assess whether or not the water's flowing through these wells and the first is the well of spirit the well of spirit and of course i'm talking about your spirit because of course we know there is the holy spirit but the holy spirit is not the only spirit we all have a spirit and i've heard it said i think it was dr tony evans that the spirit is the part of you that's capable of communicating with and receiving power from god so you're not just body i'm not just body the day we die we're going to say ashes to ashes dust to dust but of course that's not the end of the road that's just a bend in the road because the bible says there is more to you than meets the eye and so the spirit is that part of you that can interact with and can communicate with god and we want to ask the question in our marriage in our family in our relationships how's the well of spirit doing because it is possible to focus exclusively on body to focus exclusively on grades to focus exclusively on what you're doing with your body what you're doing with your mind and to pretty much ignore the spirit and so we have to take time it's inefficient it's impractical at times even this right here that you're doing there's so many things you could be doing on a friday night in california but in sunday morning when it rolls around and you're in church what are you doing you're tending to your spirit you're hopefully when you start each day and you open up scripture and you take a quick minute to pray before rushing into your week what are you doing you're taking care of your spirit so these are the things that that we're asking ourselves the question are we doing these things are we planted in god's house are we serving on a team are we in a small group what are we doing to as a married couple each of us and us together as a family to minister to our spirits we feed our bodies every day we brush our teeth every day i hope so right but how many times do you or i interact with the world with our spiritual teeth unbrushed with our spiritual hair uncomb with no thought to what we're wearing in the inner man where we take off certain things and put on certain things the new testament says yeah well this is so important for each of us in our walks with the lord that we are receiving our power our satisfaction our joy from jesus because so often in marriage um you expect your husband you expect your spouse to be something that they cannot be they they are not your savior they cannot um be your strength they cannot be your guide but the beauty of marriage is receiving from the lord having a strong walk with jesus like levi said spending time on the word on your own hearing from jesus on your own and then when you come together as a couple there is a sweetness and there's a strength and there's a not a full dependence on each other but there's a like a strength that then happens um for i think it was valentine's day um i found this uh charging cord for your phone and i gave it to levi but it was kind of for both of us but it's this red little cord and you stick it in the power thing and it has a heart at the connection and out of the heart are these two cords that can charge your phone and i was just we were using it the other day but they're so small so we have to be really close together we were in an uber and we were like oh this is sweet and inefficient but but the picture of that is so beautiful because our power is coming from a different source but we're together we're connected together but receiving that power together and i was just thinking like that is such a picture of what it's meant to be we're supposed to be plugged into the source god and he's the one giving us the strength but we're connected together and it is like ephesians says it is a great mystery but when you see the picture and the glimpses of god's love flowing through you it's so beautiful when we put our kids to bed we'll say we'll see you in the morning and sometimes lennox will say where are you going to be and i said where do you think i'm going to be and he said out by the fire and it's like that's exactly right that's because when i wake up i go light a fire pit outside sit out there with my bible jenny eventually joins me out there and it's before the kids are up and and she has hot water and i have a coffee and that's that's that's the strength but by light you're by light of fire you you mean a gas fire just so everyone's clear it's not like he's out like not against you but just so you know like because we're obviously there's fires all around so i just wanted to clear the air you want to emasculate me in front of this whole room of people it's okay yes i i flicked my bic and lied to fire i i wasn't there trying to be like tom hanks on cast i know but there's like forest fires i just want the second well soul to use the analogy of paul to the thessalonians who prayed may the god of peace completely sanctify you in your spirit in your soul and your body continuing on if the spirit is the party that can interact with god the soul then becomes the part of you that can interact with yourself this is your emotions this is your thought this is the inside counsel and the soul is often neglected in church where we pastors up here say focus on your spirit and sometimes we forget about the soul and the soul is where david counseled himself the soul is where he said david why are you so disquieted within me what's the matter bro why you why so emo why are you why are you so sad and i think at times we can be guilty of neglecting the soul of neglecting the emotions and of blocking up a well the enemy would love to have your well blocked and in your marriage to block up the well of your soul so how do you undam the well of your soul because every drop say with me counts we be honest with our feelings both with ourselves and with each other we're talking about this well is emotional vulnerability and this is so huge and something that i feel like i have learned and i'm continuing to learn but even just that soul like speaking to yourself and i know that our inner critic um at least like for me and i'm sure for so many of us we talk to ourself probably more than anybody else and the words that we speak over ourselves sometimes it's sometimes we ignore ourselves but like in moments where we do something wrong what is the what is your first uh go-to response do you say oh you idiot what are you thinking you're you have no idea you're such a failure blah blah blah does that is that how you speak to yourself or is it more oh man that was such a bummer but we we got this we can do we can do better you're you're not as bad as as you think you are you're doing a good job and i think that that has helped me because i've grown up with that kind of self-critique voice speaking to myself of um jenny you're not worth you're not worth that or you're not good enough or um you're not strong enough or you're not pretty enough or whatever like those words that just can come out of nowhere but what am i listening to am i am i speaking am i being a coach to myself or am i being a critic to myself and i feel like as that has changed and where i'm asking god help me to see what you see in me help me to speak life over myself i've noticed that that has changed how i speak to levi how i view him and i think that that could change so much if we just started encouraging ourselves in the lord and really you see that all throughout the bible and like you said david he had to say why are you downcast on my soul right hope in god look to god and i think that we have to remind ourselves and and tell ourselves look up and one great resource if you want to google it we have one here on the screen it's called an emotional vocabulary color wheel uh where you literally i think can just look and see that behind every emotion are secondary emotions and and and so even just pulling this out at the dinner table with your family is just how are you feeling today because there's a lot of different emotions you might not just be happy you might be content you might not just be afraid but you might feel rejected and where you actually are getting a language to talk about how your soul is doing i was hurt and this is this made me feel sad this made me feel small and that's why because a lot of times we just lash out and we just deal with the actual outburst instead of actually asking what's the thing under the thing what's the sin under the sin and what are we dealing with and the more we are emotionally vulnerable with each other and emotionally vulnerable with ourselves and then of course with god and with our with our kids the more we're actually going to find that water flowing and healing and power instead of just each reacting to each other at the level of what the anger is or what the thing is and then not actually you know getting to a real relational next level that god wants us to it's very helpful so that's the second well we've gone to spirit we've got a soul well number three sex hey [Music] it's okay well what do you want to say about that well what do you want to say what are you doing later look why what i do want to say because the clock is running out of all the things we could say about this is one of the greatest ways the enemy will stop the waters of sexuality from flowing in your marriage like they're intended to is if you're getting those appetites met somewhere else and i think that in our day of pornography and in movies and things we're seeing on the internet the more we guard what we're seeing out there the more we'll have a great sense of pleasure in here yeah and and fighting for there to be the the flowing enjoyment of of marital intimacy and i think for me it's remembering that sex begins in the kitchen and then it involves the mind and it's not just a physical act in the bedroom but it's it's our love life all day long it's it's it's it's the it's the playfulness it's the caring and it's guarding myself from being affectionate or intimate with anybody else in any way besides just not having adultery but but really guarding my heart and thinking of jenny and bringing her into the day because making love is is something you do all day long with each other or can do all day long with each other well and it is such a mind thing um of complimenting each other or noticing something i know this kind of goes into the next one that we're going to talk about but really the little things actually matter more than we think the little um flirtiness or um compliment or whatever like those little things actually matter um more than we think and being clear and being and talking and and realizing sex is silly and it's funny and if you don't ever crack up laughing while having sex ever you're doing it wrong i'm telling you it's because if you realize this is a really funny thing god well done but wow it's out there it's up there with like the duck-billed platypus you're like this is an invention god made but bizarre and awesome all right and so keeping the waters flowing and as jenny said it does really dovetail into the fourth and the final one that we have time for today and that is the well of spending spending you're like well of spending well we're checking out well yeah i mean financial disagreements are cited as a cause of and a factor in nearly all divorce and yet that's not the way in which we're using it i think that out of all the things that you spend out of all the things that you buy there is nothing more important than what you pay attention to so good how is the well of your spending when it comes to your attention and when we say check the well of your attention we're asking the question are you being generous in your noticing each other because we so often pursue each other before we're married and then we just become basically roommates in a domestic situation after the fact but noticing hey there you are hey there i saw that hey i appreciate that hey are those are those new pants you look amazing in them and just the simplicity of noticing each other yeah well that was the answer that i gave him when he asked what what do you love most about me or what what is his husband well that was one of the things was um i love when you pay attention to a little thing a little detail something that no one else would notice or something that seems insignificant but when you notice that and you say it that means so much to me um and i think that that is something that seems insignificant in our relationships but that can go a long way like what i said earlier and i feel like sometimes you get that little like nudge to say something and it doesn't seem that big of a deal so you just like oh that's not a big deal but i think that that's something that god's been growing me in of just taking that moment that i feel like hey you should tell eva that he did a really good job yeah with the kids or whatever and it's those little things over a lifetime over years that as those collect that becomes such a strengthening thing in your marriage when you point out something like wow that was really cool how you gave that thing to that person or whatever i think those little things when you're hearing before the holy spirit speak to you he's speaking to you we just have to be in that uh put that antenna up to what he's saying and it's usually something very small and seemingly not that big and i think the more we can listen to the holy spirit speaking those little things to us i think yeah the better on the screen is a photograph that we love it's a photo of a fan of the green bay packers by the name of jim becker and he uh had 11 kids him and his wife had 11 kids and when he came home from the korean war he had no way to pay for the tickets to his beloved packers and so he discovered there was a red cross facility that would pay 15 of pint every time he gave blood and so he did that every single time there was a game happening and he paid for all of his tickets to the packers games by donating blood and years later 20 something years later of doing this year in and year out year in and year out it was no he was notified by his doctor that he actually had a life-threatening disease that his father had died of he had no idea he had had it his whole life the only it was called hemochromatosis and the only known cure for this disease is giving blood regularly he gave his blood thinking it was because he was receiving something football that he loved what he had no idea that jesus so well put it is that he was actually receiving something so much more as he gave that was his life being saved and given back to him jesus said luke 9 lose your life for my sake and you will find it the easiest temptation in marriage is to damn up the wells when they're not flowing like like they should be but what we will find if we will fight to flow and to give and to be generous is that in laying down our lives we'll receive them every drop counts and so father we thank you for this time looking at what isaac and rebecca did to undam ancient wells and as that water flowed the plants were hydrated as that water flowed the animals could drink god you have blessed us with so much not the least of which is being americans being here at this great church having access to all we have access to yes it's a divided time and a difficult time for sure but thank you for trusting us with such a painful time for this world for what time does the gospel shine forth better than in hard times thank you that you love our neighborhood so much that you've put us in the middle of them our marriages you love the kids that our school our our children go to school along with so much that you sent our kids into those classrooms we refuse to be defensive oh no we just got to survive oh no we just got to not get divorced oh no we just gotta not let the world corrupt us god we're going on the offensive we're shining our light we're a city on a hill we've been sent into this world to shine and to be ambassadors and to be the king's kids that we were born to be open our eyes father to see that we've been blessed with so much and now help us to fight to keep the wells flowing to these things it will be like the golden gate bridge we'll finish one end get to the other and got to start all over again we worked on the soul well then the spirit well then oh no the sex well and now back to the spending well and and so it will be until we're standing before you in heaven but today god we all have some wells that need attention if you're listening to the sound of my voice and you would say there's there's a well in my marriage that i i need i need to do some digging there's some i need some shovel this week very practically could you just raise up a hand thank you jesus thank you for the vulnerability here thank you for the the open hands here maybe pour your spirit out help us eat all of us to keep doing the hard dirty work that leads to living water flowing to those who are thirsty you can put your hands down we want to invite anybody who's here today and you've never made the decision to give your heart to jesus you might know some things about god or church or the bible but you've never received the living water that jesus said can quench the thirst deep down in your heart thinking the next relationship or possession or accomplishment is going to do it will only leave you dry but jesus is the one your soul craves he died on the cross for you rose from the dead and he is willing even now to come into your heart and to make you his to fill you with purpose and hope and peace if you never have we pray that you would make the decision even now to trust jesus for salvation you could just pray a simple prayer like this you could say something like dear god i believe that you're the king of the world i ask you to come into my heart and make me new forgive me help me to follow you i turn from my sins i pick up my cross thank you for new life thank you i give you mine in jesus name i pray amen you

Channel: Bayside Church

Views: 710

Rating: 4.8666668 out of 5

Keywords: Bayside Church, Bible, Hope, Compassion, Love, God, Levi Lusko, Jennie Lusko, Marriage, parenting, spouse, marriage checks

Id: GGoZ7aOaxmE

Length: 36min 22sec (2182 seconds)

Published: Sat Sep 11 2021