How to Be Happily Married - Jeff and Debbie Schreve

[Music] welcome to from his heart with pastor Jeff Shrieve who's in his new how-to collection this month today you'll learn how to turn a difficult joyless marriage around in this lesson called how to be happily married [Music] [Music] [Music] now when I was a kid growing up one of the things that we did we didn't have a lot of the media that kids have today but we had stories and one of the fun things to do as a kid was to hear the stories call fairy tales you know a fairy tale is a story of some kind of magical place and you have some magical beings and these things happen and they're just exciting it's always good versus evil and evil always is beaten by good and so often in these stories whether it be Cinderella or Sleeping Beauty or The Little Mermaid or some Beauty and the Beast some kind of story like that it ends up with the the beautiful young girl and the handsome prince coming together in the end and it ends up with a marriage and it ends up with these words and they lived happily ever after you know why we like as human beings you know why we like stories like that it's because we love to see a story that has a happy ending we love to see good triumphs over evil and then we love to see the beautiful girl and the handsome prince get together and live happily ever after we want that for ourselves there's there are little girls today who are dreaming right now of their wedding and living happily ever after and boys do the same thing but the sad reality is so many of us after marriage we don't live happily ever after I've done many many weddings and the bride and groom there at the altar they're thinking this is going to be wonderful and we're gonna live happily ever after but the statistics show that's not the case you know we talk about the sad truth of about roughly 45 to 50 percent of marriages fail here are the stats for first marriage second marriage and third marriage 41% of first marriages fail 60% of second marriages fail and 73% of third marriages fail that's horrible and of those marriages that don't end in divorce many of them husbands and wives are not very happy so we want to talk today about how to be happily married some people say we're happily married I think that's an oxymoron I don't think you can be happily married some say well that's just a pipe dream some say that's just wishful thinking that to think that I could be married to this person and we could actually be happy but it's not a pipe dream it's not wishful thinking it's not an oxymoron it's an attainable reality but you have to understand some things about marriage and you have to put those things into practice so Debbie and I want to share some things with you today we're gonna use as our theme verse Ecclesiastes chapter 9 verse 9 where Solomon says this enjoy life with the woman or the wife whom you love all the days of your fleeting life which he has given to you under the Sun for this is your reward in life and in your toil in which you have labored under the Sun let's let's look at some key things about marriage things to understand so that you can apply so that you can experience as the Lord says your reward in life now notice not everyone is going to be married God calls certain people to special service and it's it's a it's a solo kind of thing and that's a gift from God to be able to do that so marriage is not for everyone but it's for most of us because most have a desire in their hearts to be married one day so don't think that if you're not married say well this this isn't for me because I'm not married you need to listen extra close if you want to get married one day because you need to know how to have a good marriage so four key points the first thing understand that marriage is a good thing it's a good thing when God created men and he put Adam in the garden and Adam was in a perfect place he had he was perfectly related to God he had a perfect God to worship Adam himself was perfect everything was perfect and the Lord said it's not good that the man should be alone I will make a helper suitable to him and God made that helper and God brought that helper to Adam and he named her Eve and there was the first marriage right there in Genesis chapter 2 in the Garden of Eden marriage is a good thing proverbs 18 verse 22 says this he who finds a wife finds a good thing and obtains favor from the Lord it's a good thing that word good means pleasant it means happy it means gracious and it's good marriage is good now in our world today many people would say I don't think marriage is very good Jeff you know you know you didn't grow up the way I grew up my parents hated each other in our home that was just fighting and there was I see tension perhaps there was abuse just awful things and you say and and you know maybe you're here and you've experienced a bad bad marriage and you say you know when God says marriage is a good thing I'm just not so sure about that it doesn't seem like a very good thing why are there so many unhappy marriages if marriage is a good thing my pastor when I was on staff at champion Forest Baptist Church he was kind of lamenting how many people in the church were struggling in marriage and bailing out on marriage Christians and he said to me one day he said Jeff you know what I think is one of the main causes of divorce in marriage I said what's that he said people make a bad choice they make a bad choice when they choose a life partner and if you make a bad choice you're gonna have a rough go of it so when we talk about marriage being a good thing choose the right person marry the right person now this point is for all those who are not married because if you say oh I I hasten out for me I didn't marry the right person and man I'm feeling a lot better about this divorce I'm contemplating no if you are married that is the person for you right when Debbie and I first got married she had a little cross stitch that she put on our wall and it said this choose your love love you choice choose your love love your choice so those of you are already married you've chosen your love now love your choice those of you who are not married be wise when it comes to marriage and marry the right person make a good choice don't get married just based on emotion don't get married just based on a whim just based on feeling you know like the couple that been dating for a week and they're like man I like you and you like me let's just get married that's that's a terrible idea I mean you're not talking about let's just go to the movies I mean this is this is for life right so we want to be very careful when it comes to marriage we want to check this person out we want to do our homework as it relates to this person we want to ask some important questions is this person a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ the Bible says don't what Fellowship has light with darkness and what Fellowship has Christ with Belial a believer is not supposed to marry an unbeliever is this person a true believer but more than that is this person a growing Christian a growing believer do they have a desire to grow in the Lord do they have a desire to walk with God and if the answer is no then that huge red flag goes up that says hey you need to be aware of this this is not a good thing and so we have to as we were in the dating process we have to make sure is this really a good fit for me is this person the right one for me is this what God has for me and you can learn a lot from your parents or from people who love you as they observe your ship because they can pick up on things that you don't pick up on you know the old saying is really true love is blind the marriage is a real eye opener so if you you get you know you're at the altar and you're just hi you just said I'm so in love so in love and and this is gonna be so easy and then you get married and you find out ah your eyes are open to the faults of the other hey it's critical to marry the right person okay the second part is that we not only need to marry the right person and make a wise choice but we have to be the right person and I can remember looking back on my life a time that I really made a commitment to be the right person I grew up in a Christian home I came to know the Lord at the age of 11 but when I went away to college I just went crazy and I made some really stupid decisions and I lived a life that was so far from what I had been raised to live I did not at all as Psalms 37 says delight myself in the Lord and he'll give you the desires of your heart i delighted myself in me and what i wanted to do and in that timeframe I met a young man he was a great guy and we fell in love now this man was not a Christian and at that time I wasn't living my life as a Christian and we just seemed very very compatible so when he asked me to marry him I said yes and it wasn't too terribly long after he put that little ring on my finger that the Lord started speaking to me in making me uneasy in my spirit and it became very aware to me or I became very aware of the fact that if I were to follow through with this marriage it would be disastrous and I was not being the person God wanted me to be so I was not attracting the type of person that I knew that I needed and so I really had to make a commitment to that and as hard as it was because this was a good guy I had to break off that engagement and it was hard to do and when that breakup took place not only did we split up but I had to make some lifestyle changes and I had to recommit myself to make sure that I delighted in the Lord above all else I had to be around people who were in agreement with the fact that we needed to delight ourselves in the Lord and I had to become the person God wanted me to be so that I could attract the right person and it wasn't too terribly long after that split up and I had started really making life changes and really recommit committed myself to the Lord that I met this handsome fellow right here and let me tell you short of accepting Christ as my savior that has been the wisest decision I've ever made in my life because God gave me the desires of my heart as I delighted in him he gave me a godly husband who prays over me who leads our family and I would not have had that had I have not made the right choice so for those of you who are not yet married it's imperative that you be the right person so that you can attract the right person now for those of us who are already married it's important that we remember we have to continually be working on being the right person it would be wonderful if we could just have a one-time decision and just always be the right person and always make the right choices but that's not how life works and I can't change Jeff there's nothing I can do to change him I can only work on me and so it's imperative in our marriages that we continue to do the things that God calls us to do that we continue to delight ourselves in the Lord so that he can give us the desires of our heart we can only change us and we have to be committed throughout the course of our marriage to being the right person so we choose the right person we commit to being the right person so marriage is a good thing it's designed to be a blessing from God it's not a penalty it's a blessing but now the second thing that we learn that we must understand marriage is a challenge thing it's a good thing but it's a challenging thing why because we take a sinner on the female side and the sinner on the male side and we put two sinners together and you're gonna have difficulty in marriage because at the core of who we are outside of our relationship with Jesus we're selfish and we go into the selfish mode so often and too selfish people have trouble somebody said what is marriage it's two ticks and no dog it's just you have these these two ticks getting together and they're thinking well I can just feed off you and she's thinking no I can feed off you and there's no dog there and so we have trouble it's a challenging thing the scripture says in Psalm 127 1 as I shared with those who are dedicating their babies and dedicating their lives today unless the Lord builds the house they labor in vain who build it because marriage is so difficult and the things that God tells us to do in marriage as a husband as a wife those are things that we can't do without his strength and without his power and unless he builds our home no matter how hard we try we're gonna have tremendous trouble and it's going to end up in unhappiness or divorce listen marriage is a challenging thing and men and women are so different and so guys we don't innately know a woman and she doesn't innately know us and so God gives the job description for a man in job description for a woman in his word and marriage goes great when the husband does his job regardless of what his wife's doing and when a wife does her job regardless of what her husband is doing so I'm gonna talk to the guys and Debbie's going to talk to the women so what is the job of a husband the Bible makes it clear it's to love and cherish his wife that's what a husband is to do that's his job description before God you love her and you cherish her and you nourish her Colossians chapter 3 verse 19 and the amplified version says this husbands love your wives and that means to love her with an affectionate sympathetic selfless love that always seeks the best for them and do not be embittered or resentful toward them because of the responsibilities of marriage have you ever wondered why it seems like when you're dating it's just so much easier and then you get married things are so much harder the reason is this because when you're dating there's little responsibility there everything is just fun time when you get married then it turns into real life it's not necessarily just fun and games it's not just going out on dates all the time and especially when you have children then all the sudden responsibility sets in and stress fuels selfishness and when the selfishness comes then you start having conflict listen the command is clear to a husband we're to love our wives now here's the thing guys we would all probably say every husband in this room hopefully if I asked you do you love your wife I said raise your hand if you love your wife I think every hand would go up mainly because your wife is here and you wouldn't want to be the only guy not so so yeah I love my wife here's the thing about loving your wife does she feel loved that's how you know you're fulfilling the command and God's Word and Colossians chapter 3 there's also a sister passage in Ephesians chapter 5 and in that passage in 9 verses God says three times that a husband is to love his wife now if God says it once it's important if he says it's twice in a short period of time it's really important B says it three times in nine verses that's almost as if the word is shouting at us hey guys wake up love your life nourish her and cherish her and love her as Christ loved the church well I can't do that I don't have that within me to do that and you don't either that's why we need the Lord's power and in the passage in Ephesians 5 that tells us how to love our wives and how wife is to be to her husband before it says that it says do not get drunk with wine wherein is excess but be filled with the spirit because you're not able to do that I'm not able to do that he has to do it through us love our wives to nourish her and cherish her and make her feel it now when we get when we're dating in recording our wives but we're really doing good with this the women love romance most men most husbands especially they say I'm not good at romance but you had to be good at it at one time or you wouldn't be married because women are attracted to romance and here's what we do guys we we send flowers and we send notes and we have text going and we're calling them and we're talking for hours on the phone can you imagine that most married guys what's their telephone conversation like with their wife now yeah what do you want I mean it's just there's not a lot of let's just talk and we just talk I'll talk to you later you know I'm busy right now so we did all that stuff when we dated and then we said I do and what a most men do they put their wife on the trophy shelf and she's on the shelf and it's like yeah that's I won her back in you know 1982 I won her and now I'm off to do other things to catch more you know slay more dragons and make money and provide for the family and do these other things she doesn't like to be on the trophy shelf she's like hey what happened to the guy that was coming after me and pursuing me and romancing me and loving on me where did that guy go guys we need to keep doing that we need to keep dating our wives you may remember some years ago I told you about something that I learned in a marriage book had to do with the story that Nathan told David in second Samuel Chapter 12 when the Lord sent Nathan the Prophet to confront David over his sin with Bathsheba and Uriah the Hittite and Nathan tells a little story about this man who had a little ewe lamb and it was like a family member to him and it would it would eat of his bread and would drink of his cup and it spend time in his just on his chest he just loved that little lamb and then the rich man comes who had many flocks and herds he takes that little lamb and he sacrifices that lamb to feed to his wayfaring friend it was a story that showed that David was this terrible guy that stole Uriah's wife but here's the point of that in the book it was like do you notice how the man treated his little ewe lamb and he said guys that's how we're supposed to treat our wives we're supposed to cherish her she is so precious to us she's a treasure and we're to be like that I told Debbie that story years ago and she still refers to herself as y lel your little ewe lamb I said Debbie how do you pronounce that she said I don't know we just go by y lel but she'll write me notes and she signs love y le oh that's a reminder to me that I need to be treating her like my little ewe lamb now she is great at telling me when I'm not treating her that way and that that that's funny but it's important ladies we as men we don't get it a lot of the time and it helps us if you tell us that you're not feeling very cherished that we need to work on some things because you're not feeling cherished because love only counts if you feel it and guys that's our responsibility as a husband even if our life is not very lovable at the time we are commanded by God to love our wives ok the second part of that verse says in Ephesians 5:33 let the wife see to it that she respect her husband so ladies our job as a wife is to respect and to build up our husbands now every man deep within him has a longing and a desire for his wife's respect and for her support years back there was a book written by Shante Felton called what let me make sure I get right for women only and to do the research for this book she surveyed a thousand men and ask them all to fill out the survey and one of the questions that she asked was this think about these two negative experiences and what they would be like to feel alone and unloved in the world or to feel inadequate and disrespected by everyone if you were forced to choose between those two things which would you prefer 74% of men said that they would much prefer to feel alone and unloved than to feel inadequate and disrespected and as she did some further research she found out that a lot of the men had trouble even answering that question because in their hearts being respected and being loved were the same thing so ladies it's imperative that we respect our husbands and the problem with it is that it's a choice we have to make so we're in control of it so there are times when it's gonna be easy to respect our husbands then there's gonna be times where it may not be as easy to respect our husbands but unfortunately that verse in Ephesians does not have any conditions listed with it okay it doesn't say there why she respect your husbands if they're respectable you respect your husbands if you feel like respecting him you respect your husband if he earns your respect there are no conditions it's simply an imperative command respect your husbands and choosing to do that on an on a regular basis is without these conditions that's what allows your husband to come the man that God designed him to be that empowers him to do that and he's not gonna do everything right newsflash you're not gonna do everything right either okay so it's not dependent upon if he's doing everything correctly now I don't necessarily speak respect and that I don't receive respect as love I don't equate those two things and most women are like that if women were to have taken that survey we would have much rather felt disrespected and inadequate than to feel unloved and alone because our hearts desires to be loved but for a husband they need to feel that respect and so we need to make sure that we go about doing that and for me I know sometimes I can do some things that make Jeff feel disrespected and that was not the intent of my heart but because I don't speak that same language I'm insensitive to the fact that something that I do might be considered disrespectful to him so I have just prayed and asked the Lord to make me ooh BRR sensitive to that that if there are any actions or attitudes or words that I'm saying that are gonna cause him to feel that way that I'll instantly feel that and since that in my spirit and I'll guard my tongue or I'll encourage in a different way so we can do that supernaturally with God's help and God will honor our obedience in that area we need to respect him and then we also need to be as big as Cheerleader how many of you have little boys anybody have little boys in here moms we're real good at being our little boys cheerleaders right because little boys are like this mom did you see me do that mom did you see me see my muscles see my muscles see how strong I am mom did you see me pop that wheelie did you see how fast I did that did you see held it and we just oh you're just so wonderful oh you're just so great I'm so proud of you we just have such an easy time and we did that with our spouse when we were dating but something happens when we get married and all of a sudden was like you have seen your muscles put them away you know so we have to continually be doing that and continually being their cheerleader because they need that so desperately we need to let them know that we're thankful for the hard work that they do to provide for our family we need to let them hear that we're proud of them for the good decisions and choices that they make they need to hear that we trust them as they seek to lead our family and again they're not gonna do everything right but that we trust them to do that and they need to know that we are always on their team we are always there for them that we have their back that they you can know that we support them and that we're always there for him so we have to choose to respect him out of obedience to the Lord because they're not always going to be doing things that we're going to deem respectable but out of obedience to the Lord and we keep doing those things and then we choose to cheer them on and just like Jeff said man that part of marriage is challenging it's very challenging and the only way we can pull it off is if we ask the Lord to fill us and he gives us supernatural power to do that that's the only way that we can get it done so we've seen point number one that marriage is a good thing point number two marriage is a challenging thing point number three marriage is a pleasurable thing a pleasurable thing back in Genesis chapter 2 just as Jeff was saying the Lord created things and things were good things were good things were good then all of a sudden things weren't good because man was alone and then Eve came and then all of a sudden things just weren't good things were very good okay and that's because God placed within each of our hearts a desire for relationship and a desire for community to have fellowship with other people and God uses that marriage relationship not only to provide us with companionship but to provide us with pleasure and to provide us with fun it's important that we have fun with each other and that we keep dating each other that verse that we started off the whole sermon with and Ecclesiastes says this enjoy life with the woman whom you love all the days of your fleeting life which he has given to you under the Sun for this is your reward in life and that word and joy means this to live joyfully to delight to rejoice to derive pleasure from and that's what we need to be doing in our marriage relationships we need to be delighting in each other rejoicing together having fun together and sharing life together and again when we were dating we did this all the time we could do the stuff that we hated to do but because we were with the other person it was all of a sudden fun our first date we went shopping jeff hates to shop it sucks the very morrow from his bones the moment he walks in the story's exhausted but he that was our first date and we had so much fun we look back we can still think about that day and have enjoyed those memories that we made together on that very first day but if we're not intentional about continuing to date each other and continuing to have fun together what's gonna happen is we're gonna naturally drift apart because that's the natural drift in marriage is to drift apart and in depth feeling isolated and alone so we have to be very intentional about making that a priority to keep dating to keep spending time together to keep having those times where we give each other undivided attention in our early marriage we did not have any money okay we were just broke and now we always had money to pay the bills but we did not have anything extra we had to be really careful with how we spent our money but even in the midst of that we made it a priority that somehow or another we would go on a date together just the two of us once a week and we would try three or four times a year to get away overnight just the two of us so that we could have uninterrupted time together now we did not have the privilege of having a lot of family that could watch our kids so we had to save money up to pay for sitters to do that but we made it a priority to do that because we knew how important that that was because in your lifetime your kids are not gonna be with you to be your focus all the time you've got to keep that relationship the number one relationship and so we made it a priority to do that we were very intentional about it and as we have been married these 32 years now as we look back we have had to make sure that we intentionally continued to find things that we can do together that we enjoy because those things change as the seasons in your life change and so we're always on the lookout for those things that we can do together that we can enjoy together now when we first got married and Jeff didn't drink coffee and I know this probably sounds kind of silly but you didn't drink coffee and I was just appalled like who doesn't drink coffee you know and I told him one day I said you have got to learn to drink coffee he's like why I hate it like because when we are old we are gonna want to sit and enjoy a cup of coffee together that is what old people do in the mornings they enjoy a cup of coffee together and so bless his heart he started drinking it even though he didn't like it and now he drinks way more of it than I do but the point is we still enjoy that we are those old people now because we do that in the morning we enjoy our time together in the morning we read the Bible together we have our coffee together we talk through the day another thing that we do that makes us know we're really old as we do the crossword puzzle together and we really enjoy it I'm not competitive he is he always wants to know how long it took me always wants to know how many mistakes I might have made you know but those are things we do together we like to take walks together there TV shows that we like to watch together and we like to do those things because we are best friends you have to continually make sure that you stay best friends with your spouse it's so so very important so we make sure that we do that and we do that not only so that our marriage is fun now and is pleasurable now but it gives us memories that we can look back on and laugh about and that can still bring enjoyment and fun into our lives so we enjoy life together in marriage and then we enjoy love together in marriage now the Bible has a lot to say about love physical love in marriage it's really important to remember it's in marriage the Bible says this let the marriage bed be undefiled for fornicators those who aren't married but are having sex and adulterers those who are married but they're having sex with somebody that's not their partner God will judge serious language in Hebrews chapter 13 verse 4 God created sex not Hugh Hefner and God created it to be enjoyed by a husband and a wife in the safe confines of marriage and that's the only place that that has a place marriage is the fireplace and sex is the fire and if you get the fire outside of the fireplace you can burn your house down you can burn your life down look what the scripture says in proverbs chapter 5 let your wife be a fountain of blessing for you rejoice in the wife of your youth she's a loving dear a graceful doe let her breasts satisfy you always may you always be captivated by her love you say Jeff doesn't really say that in Proverbs 5 yeah I didn't make that up that's what it says let her breasts satisfy you at all time oh that you can't talk about that that's that's talking about sex you can't talk about sex you know Baptists don't like to talk about sex think it might lead to dancing [Applause] Howard Howard Hendricks the longtime professor at Dallas Theological Seminary he's in heaven now but he used to say this we shouldn't be ashamed to talk about that which God was not ashamed to create and we need to be able to talk about about that especially in marriage I have found that many many couples that's kind of the taboo subject they don't really talk about it there's just kind of like hinting around about it but listen husbands and wives communicate very differently and so if you hint around to your wife about it and she doesn't get the hint then you feel like well she's not interested she's shutting me down again you need to be upfront and you need to tell her what your needs are now the Bible says this in first Corinthians chapter 7 let the husband fulfill his duty to his wife talking about sexual love let the husband fulfill his duty to his wife and likewise also the wife to her husband the wife does not have authority over her own body but the husband does and likewise also the husband does not have authority over his own body but the wife does stop depriving one another meant sexual expression of love in marriage is important that's like the oil in the relationship you may have heard before that sex can become a misdemeanor in marriage because of the longer he misses it the meaner he gets I mean that's just kind of the way this thing works not always for the man sometimes the the woman has the stronger drive but here here's the thing the Bible says fulfill your duty to your spouse now listen guys if you will do your job as a husband and love your wife and nourish her and cherish her and fill up her emotional love tank she will be very interested in helping you and meeting that need is there heard this from James Dobson one time it's so true it says this men use intimacy and romance to get sex and women use sex to get intimacy and romance we come out at at it at a different point of view different perspective but listen if the husband does his job the wife does her job the marriage goes like this and there is tremendous oneness so marriage is a pleasurable thing and then lastly marriage is a lifetime thing we get married for life we have the vows I promise to be to you a true and faithful husband a true and faithful wife until death do we part it's a lifetime commitment it's a permanent commitment jesus said when he was talking about marriage and divorce in Matthew chapter 19 for this cause he quoted from Genesis chapter 2 for this cause a man shall leave his father and his mother and shall cleave to his wife and the two shall become one flesh consequently they are no longer two but one flesh what therefore God has joined together let no man separate when they become one God says don't separate that don't separate that now the Lord says in Malachi that he hates divorce he doesn't hate divorced people he hates the whole concept of divorce why because when the two become one divorce rips a person apart God hates divorce because he loves people that's why now listen in our world and in the biblical world there were grounds for divorce biblical grounds for divorce the first one is adultery and Jesus in Matthew chapter 19 talks about adultery and if there's continued adultery the unrepentant adultery you can't have a marriage with a person like that secondly if there's abandonment first corinthians talks about one partner abandoning another the bible says you're not you're not bound in such a situation you're free to marry only in the Lord and the third one is not specifically mentioned in Scripture but it's just rooted in the character of God and that's abuse if you are getting physically abused you're getting beaten and hurt you get out of there God didn't call any wife to be a punching bag you get out of that situation I have three daughters I have a wonderful son-in-law J buds illowsky my other daughter youngest daughter Sarah is getting ready to get married in August and getting ready to have another wonderful son-in-law in Tyler Lindsay but listen if those guys ever went off the rails and did something to one of my daughters Debbie and I would get her out of there because we wouldn't want her to be around when we killed her husband I mean that would be bad just joking right I just roughed him up I but that's not a good thing okay then here's the thing was so bad about the abuse guys we're called to love our wives to cherish our wives to protect our wives to nourish our wives and when the protector becomes the the Punisher the the the one that's hurting her that's that's just totally opposite of what you're supposed to do we tell people in family life we say listen guys we know there's some of you out there and you're hurting your wife and I always say this I said listen you need to know that we don't hate you but you need to get help and you need to get help ASAP because you can't continue doing what you're doing that's that's just disastrous to your life to your marriage to your wife to your children stop doing that and get help one of the things that's I open for me as a husband I learned this a few years ago is to see that when I married Debbie Debbie is a child of God debbie is God's daughter I married God's daughter now J bud married my daughter and so he's cognizant of the fact that Jeff is my father-in-law and he's watching how I treat his daughter but I don't see everything they do God sees everything you say he sees everything you do you're married guys to God's daughter and God says you better treat her right and we need to be cognizant of that fact that puts the fear of got into you that I'm married to God's daughter god forbid that I would ever do anything that would cause God to sit up from his throne and take a look like that I need to love her and I need to know that marriage is a lifetime permanent thing and when you have bumps in the road that doesn't mean hey we're gonna bail out let me tell you something we're talking about how to have a happy marriage Debbie and I were working on this yesterday we got into a big fight sitting there thinking ha I don't know if I can preach this tomorrow how to have a happy marriage I don't even like you right now and and that was nothing compared to how she didn't like me and but we said we're gonna we're gonna push through and we're doing much better today thank you but that's the way marriage is it's up and down and you just say I'm in it for the long haul I'm never gonna leave you when we got married we took divorce out of our vocabulary that just didn't exist adultery doesn't exist and divorce doesn't exist we're gonna stick through through thick and thin no matter what trusting the Lord and loving each other and respecting each other hey marriage is a good thing a challenging thing a pleasurable thing and a lifetime thing let me close with this story some of you have seen the movie the greatest showmen if you haven't seen it I would recommend you see it is one of the best movies I've seen in years and years and years it's clean throughout and if you know the story it's the loosely based on the life of PT Barnum and PT Barnum you know he grew up in the movie anyway as just a poor tailor's son and he fell in love just as a young kid just probably 10 12 years old he fell in love with this rich man's daughter and it's like well that'll never work but they stayed in touch and they wrote letters to each other as they grew up and finally he was of age and she was of age and he married her her father wasn't very excited about it and told her you'll be back pretty soon because you'll get tired of being poor with this guy but then PT Barnum after some failed attempts to make a living he hit on the circus and he came up with the three-ring circus and it took off like gangbusters and he started to have lots of money and lots of influ and he got gin eel into the great singer in Europe to come to the United States and he was kind of her frontman and they did all these shows and she would sing in these shows and just sang the stars down and people were pouring in but that took him away from his beautiful wife and two girls because he was on the road with Ginny Lynde and then in one scene he's there with Jenny Lynn and they're toasting their success and all of a sudden you can just feel it turn that she wanted their relationship to be more than just friendship and he was tempted and she's looking at him and she's beautiful and he's tempted and I'm watching this saying to myself don't do that don't do that don't wreck your marriage and your family and he turns away in the moment of temptation and says I got to get out of here goes back to his family and things are bad because the circus is not doing well and and he is in a scandal because they said there was some kind of liaison between him and Jenny Lind even though it wasn't true and he goes home and he rebuilds and at the end of the movie he's in the the three-ring circus and he's doing his thing and then he steps off the stage in the middle of the song and he hands his hat and he hands his little cane to his understudy to his partner says you take over now he said what are you gonna do and he said I'm gonna go watch my girls grow up and he leaves there and he goes to the theater where his daughters are in this ballet one daughter is the ballerina and the other daughter is not she's playing a tree and that anyway he goes and he's in the theater with his wife and her head is on his shoulder and he's watching his girls and he begins to sing a piece of this song it's the theme song for the movie and as he looks he sees it's everything you ever want it's everything you ever need and it's here right in front of you it's marriage and it's family and it's the reward of God life our friend the power to live the Christian life it all starts with a personal relationship with Jesus if you're watching and you don't have that today is the day for you just pray this simple prayer Lord Jesus I need you I know that I'm a sinner and I'm lost and I can't save myself Jesus I believe that you are God in the flesh I believe you died on the cross for my sins and rose again from the dead and right now I open my heart to you forgive me of all my sins come into my life change me and make me the person you want me to be and I promise to follow you all the days of my life my friend if you'll pray that kind of prayer and mean it the Lord will come in and your life will never be the same I'd love to hear from you to know that you're watching to know that God is using this broadcast to make a difference in your life to know that you just prayed that prayer to receive Christ as Savior and Lord please take the time to call that toll-free number on the screen write me email me let me know what's going on and how we can pray for you you are important to God and you're important to us and we're here for you and thank you for watching from his heart today the viewer supported broadcast outreach of dr. Jeff Shrieve who believes that no matter how badly you may have messed up in life God still loves you and he has a wonderful plan for your life find out more go to from his heart god fo RG real true [Music]

Channel: From His Heart Ministries

Views: 1,293

Rating: 4.9024391 out of 5

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Id: WvqXSA0YK8c

Length: 47min 36sec (2856 seconds)

Published: Tue Nov 19 2019