If after church today you were to hop in your car and your
husband were to look at you and here to say, listen, here's the
plan, I am going to drive for the next 45 minutes with my eyes
closed. Would you stay in the car?
If the answer was yes, take less stupid pills.
Here's my question. Do you have an aspirational
vision for your family or an actual vision for your family?
An aspirational vision is one that you dream about, you hope
for. But an actual vision is
something you work towards. It shapes your decisions.
It serves as a budget for how you're going to allocate your
time and your resources. It determines roles and
responsibilities. And if that question was not
heavy enough, there's another one.
Does the vision that you have for your family aligned with the
vision that God has for your family?
Today we are in week two of our sermon series, Lovers and Land
Mines. Last week we learned that there
are land mines everywhere and they exist in every
relationship. So while being a Christian, it
will keep you from some land mines, but it will not keep you
from all of the land mines. And so when you come across a
landmine, you don't have to step on it.
And if you need to remove it, if you use the wrong tools to try
to defuse it, you can make matters even worse.
And your marriage and your family has an enemy.
Satan has come to steal, kill and destroy.
But the good news is Jesus has come that you and I might have
life and have it abundantly. That's where we get the phrase
God's way is the best way because God has a plan for you.
And I want to welcome all of our different campuses, those of you
watching online and inside. And in just a few weeks, we're
going to have some incredible guest communicators here because
I'm going to be taking a group of people from our church to
Greece. And so while I'm there, for
those of you who are going, hey, I'd like to see Greece without
having to pay to go to Greece, you can follow me on Instagram.
So while we're going around the Mediterranean Sea and we're
talking about all the stuff that's happening in the book of
Acts and part of the New Testament, if you're going, hey,
I'd like to go without having to go.
That's how you can go. And I, I'm not a great poster
because you kind of know how I feel about social media, but I'm
going to at least try to be whatever a person on social
media does for like those 12 days.
So if you're the kind of person who wants to watch, that's where
you can do it. Now, I need to kind of frame
this message for a couple of reasons.
When we wrote the series, it was because I wanted to take you all
through premarital counseling. So I need you to kind of see
this series through that lens. And you're going.
But Clayton, I'm already married.
And so I have #2 if you're already married, turn to your
spouse and say, hold on, this sermon's going to hurt.
So if it hurts, if at some point in the message, you go, this
kind of sucks, I don't want the kids coming after you to feel
the same way. You're going to feel everybody.
OK? OK, last thing, everybody just
take a deep breath. We're going to get through it.
God designed the family to do 4 main things.
One, to prepare the family for godliness. 2 To prepare them for
future roles in the family. That means that not only is your
family designed to help you become more like Jesus, your
family is also designed to help you raise a good future husband,
a good future father, a good future mom, a good future wife.
3 To prepare them for future roles in the Kingdom.
We want our family to do the things of God and to be about
the things of God when they get older And four, to prepare them
for future roles in society. And depending on which news
channel you watch, you are keenly aware that some we, we
may not be hitting #4 and we might be missing numbers 1-2 and
three. And so God uses the family to
prepare us for godliness. Just like marriage, being in a
family sanctifies us. It helps us to destroy the idols
in our lives. It exposes our sin and our
selfishness. And God uses parenting to teach
us. You will learn a lot about God
as a parent. You will learn a lot about God
as a child. Proverbs 22 verse 6 has this to
say. Start children off on the way
they should go and when they are old, they will not turn from it.
Some of you, you grew up in a maybe a different environment,
you heard it a little bit differently.
You heard train your child in the way that they should go.
There are a couple of things to kind of point out here.
The first one is that we need to start earlier than we probably
think. We want our kids to experience
what I call accelerated maturity, not delayed maturity.
Accelerated maturity would be a 13 year old acting like a 19
year old. That would be awesome.
Some of you would like to skip 13 altogether.
I would like to have an 11 year old, a 12 year old, and maybe a
14 year old, right? I don't want a 13 year old or a
15 year old. I'd like him to skip it.
Accelerated maturity helps them to get through the stupid years
faster. There's other people who have
delayed maturity. They're a 30 year old who acts
like a 17 year old. You guys, maybe you've married
them. You want accelerated maturity.
Starting implies early, and if you wait until you're sending
out graduation invitations to prepare your kids for godliness
and life, you have waited too long.
This is why so many parents overly invest in the lives of
their married children. You can't let go because you did
not fully train and equip. Second thing to notice is that
this is not natural. Training implies that this is
not second nature for us. We are taking on the sinful
nature. We are taking on the flesh and
we are trying to drive it out of our kids to make room for the
ways of God in their lives. We have to train for it.
And the third thing is as parents in the home, we are to
direct them in the way that they should go, not the way they want
to go. One of the land mines and
parenting is that they put kids in the driver's seat.
And if you have ever taken a 15 year old or a 16 year old in a
car when they're learning to drive, you know that that is a
moment where a lot of people find an intimate personal
relationship with Jesus Christ. Deuteronomy, how are we supposed
to do this? Deuteronomy chapter 6 verses 5
through 9 gives us some insight. Love the Lord your God with all
your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength.
This is or God talking. These commandments that I give
you today are to be on your hearts, impress them on your
children. Talk about them when you sit at
home, when you walk along the road, when you lie down, and
when you get up. In other words, when you're at
the house, at the dinner table, you should be talking about
this, talking about the things of God when you're driving them
to school, when you're picking them up.
You're talking about Jesus when you're getting them out of bed
and when you're putting them to bed, tie them as symbols on your
hands. Bind them on your foreheads.
Write them on the door frames of your houses.
This is where Hobby Lobby makes their whole marketing appeal.
Put Jesus everywhere and on your gates, he sang.
Surround them with the ways of God.
Train them in the Lord and in his commands.
You guys have heard me talk about this before.
I have a very rigid prayer that I pray over my family.
My prayer when I'm taking my kids to school, almost every
single, I mean every day I take them to school, I pray this
prayer. If we pick up neighbor kids,
neighbor kids are hearing this prayer.
Heavenly Father, help my kids to grow up to love you with all
their heart, mind, soul, and strength, and help them to
embrace the Great Commission to make disciples of all nations.
Help them to be leaders of others and followers of you, and
help them to find a spouse who will love you and love them
well. And if God answers those
prayers, my heart will be full. I don't care if they're sick.
I don't care if they're happy. I don't care if they're wealthy.
I care that they are in Christ and that they are in a
relationship with people who are in Christ and that they are
committed to the things of Christ because no matter what
you're going through, if Christ is in you, you're going through.
Now you can take about all of the issues of life, all the
major concerns that I just talked about, and you can find
them solved or resolved in that prayer and in that passage.
You know what this is? This is a vision for your
family. Proverbs 22 verse or 29 verse 18
has this to say. Where there is no revelation,
people cast off restraint, but blessed is the one who heeds
wisdoms instruction. You may have heard it
differently. Where there is no vision, the
people perish. So let me ask the question
again, do you have a vision for your family?
Because if you do not have a vision for your family, the
people perish. There is no wisdom to heed,
which means there will be no blessing.
Tougher question, does the vision that you have for your
family align with the vision that God has for your family?
And are you training for that vision?
So what I want to do for just a little bit of time is I want to
talk about some basic, simple steps that you can take towards
living this out in your life and in your home.
And in order to do that, we need to see and recognize how God
creates and forms a family and the boundaries that he places
around it. So let's talk about the very
first family, the one that God put together.
Genesis chapter 2 verse 20 goes like this.
But for Adam, a no suitable helper was found.
So the Lord God caused the 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 woman
from the rib he had taken out of the 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 woman, for
she was taken out of man. This is like Hebrew slam poetry
right here. And that is why a man leaves his
father and his mother and is united to his wife, and they
become one flesh. Everybody say 11 flesh.
Now, women, real quick, don't get too spun out here about you
getting made a helper. Like did I just get made a maid?
Kind of, but not really. The word helper is the same word
that is used of God over and over again in the Old Testament
when He comes to the aid of His people in dire circumstances.
And if that terminology of helper is not a bad descriptor
of God, it can't be a bad descriptor of you.
And then this is so. This is not a less than
statement, but it is a description of a beautiful role
that you are invited to step into.
Let's keep diving in. So women are this helper to the
family, this special helper. There is also a leaving of the
former family to the creation of the new family.
So when our daughter Kennedy got married, we did not get a son at
all. We're not saying, hey, welcome
to the family. You're not in my family.
You and her have a family. We love you.
We care for you. We're with you.
We're not kicking. You know we're not.
We don't hate you, but you are your own family.
He got a wife. We didn't get a son.
They are their very own. Many parents cause a lot of harm
because they do not allow their kids to start their own family.
Let me show you what this looks like.
You end up doing all the former family traditions instead of
allowing them to start their own.
You have 10 Christmases you have to go to to accommodate all the
other family traditions of the other families.
And so your family's tradition gets last place.
When you start your family, you have to put up a boundary for
your new family. And that means at times you're
going to have to put your old family at a distance.
Clearest example, when people are in my office for premarital
counseling, I go. There's going to be a time when
problems show up in your marriage.
When problems show up in your marriage, who are you going to
call? And if they say they're mom, I
go because I don't care how spiritual your mom is.
And I'm not listening. Moms, I'm not being plain mean.
Today. You need somebody who will root
for the marriage, not their child.
You want to know my family? Thanksgivings and Christmases
get a little funky because the ma or because the wife called
the mom to tell her about all the bad things that the husband
did that did and then when he shows up, she doesn't want to be
nice to him. I got to pull you aside and have
a conversation with you. So here's how it works in my
marriage. In my marriage, you you, I
present a list of people that hey Jennifer, if you don't like
the way things are going and you can't get through to me, here's
a list of people that I'm OK with you calling or Jennifer can
come to me with. Here's a list of people I would
like to call. I get a pick out of the list of
people that she puts forth. Who's the person I'm OK with?
Because I want somebody who is going to love me but root for
us. Love her, but root for us.
You want to know why people get so much divorce advice?
Because they're talking to somebody who is rooting for
them. Not we, not us.
Jennifer needs godly counsel. Not a mother who's going to make
things awkward at Thanksgiving. Do you think things being
awkward at Thanksgiving are going to help our marriage or
make it worse? And Judy, wherever, you know,
wherever campus you're at, she goes to this church, too.
I love you. I think you're the best, best
mother-in-law ever. Wish I could see you more.
OK, well, I got so many family at all of our campuses.
I'm like ducking and weaving. She's been great.
Hear me. Marriage.
This is another landmine. Marriage is a spiritual act.
Two people become one. When you have two unspiritual
people going through a spiritual act, or when you have one
spiritual person and one unspiritual person participating
in a spiritual act, you create chaos.
You become one flesh. You are united.
You become one, which means your family has one vision, one plan,
one set of boundaries, one set of standards, and yes, one set
of bank accounts. When you have different visions,
different boundaries, your family is divided.
And Jesus says a house divided cannot stand.
And when you have division in your home, you don't have
clarity in your home, which means you have confusion in your
home, which means you have chaos in your home.
What that means is there's one set of rules for the house when
mom's around, and there's a different set of rules in the
house when dad's around. That creates chaos.
Which rules actually matter? Who's actually in charge?
I like to get my kids energy drinks.
That's kind of my thing because I'm a cool hip dad.
Jennifer, not so cool, not so hip.
She says no to getting the kids energy drinks.
And hear me, I, I, I violated that.
She had told the boys we're not doing that anymore.
And I might not have been listening when she said that.
OK, this is I got a good woman. She said it is important to me
that they don't have that stuff in their system.
I'm asking you to respect that now.
My kids hate both of us. And you know why they hate both
of us? Because we are one.
One set of bank accounts. Only in the most dire of
circumstances should your spouse be isolated from the money,
because it's not your money and her money.
It's our money. It's we money because we are
one. Can I ask you a question?
Why on planet earth would you trust somebody with your heart
that you wouldn't trust with your money?
If you're not doing well, it only gets worse.
Ephesians chapter 5, verse 21 through 30.
Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.
Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the
Lord. For the husband is the head of
the wife, as Christ is the head of the Church, his body of which
he is the Savior. Now as the Church submits to
Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in
everything. Husbands, love your wives just
as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, to make
her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the
Word, and to present her to Himself as a radiant church,
without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and
blameless. In the same way, husbands ought
to love their wives as their own bodies.
He who loves his wife loves himself.
After all, no one ever hated their own body, but they feed
and care for their body, just as Christ does the church.
For we are members of His body. Let's look at the vision that
God has for the marriage and the boundaries He's put in place.
One, both of them are to live into submission to one another
out of reverence for Christ. This is not just husbands and
wives. This is all of us.
You are to live in submission to me.
I am to live in submission to you.
We are to live in submission to one another out of reverence for
not you, not me, but out of reverence for Christ.
And just so you know, he's the one who says I have come that
you may have life and have it abundantly.
So the one who wants to give you an abundant life has a plan.
That plan includes you and I being in mutual submission to
one another and I got to ask you a question when it gets to the
marriage stuff. How can someone submit to you
out of reference for Christ if they are not in Christ?
So you just chucked A landmine into your home then Paul gives
this instruction to wives and two husbands.
Wives are sub to submit to their husbands.
Hear me clearly. This is done willingly, not by
force. Women willingly submit to their
husbands. Husbands do not domineer their
leadership over their wives. They do not take their
submission, they receive it. Christian women who believe that
God's way is the best way willingly give their husbands
headship in the home. Just like every company needs
ACEO, just like every team needs a head coach.
Just like the car that you came in has one steering wheel.
Can you imagine Co driving your car home with your spouse?
She would not be your spouse by the time you got home.
Just like every company, he's the CEO.
Just like every team needs a head coach, just like every
steering or every car has one steering wheel, the family needs
a point leader in the home. This does not mean that the wife
does not make decisions. This does not mean that the wife
does not have a voice. What it does mean is that
somebody is ultimately responsible.
If the husband and wife are in fight for control in the home,
Satan is the one who's in control.
God hear me men. God will judge the man for the
health of the family women. God will judge the wife on her
willingness to come alongside of her husband to help create that
godly family. Now men, I hope you did not get
too excited about what I just walked you through because I did
not write that part for you. I wrote that for your wives.
This is for you men. TuneIn husbands love their
wives. And when Paul wrote this to his
culture, to his environment, this was the incendiary
statement. When I read it in my
environment, everybody's like, Oh my goodness, wives are
supposed to submit to their husbands.
But when Paul wrote this, you know the part that they were
freaking out about. You mean I have to love her
because submission was expected and enforced in the 1st century.
The radical teaching that Paul lifts up is that husbands, you
are about to love your wives the way you love your own body.
It was radical. It was out there.
And so I'm going to push in for a bit.
Men, how are we to love our wives?
We are given a model, the way Christ loved the church.
And here are things we know about Jesus.
We're getting ready to do a sign up for men's conference.
We're getting ready to sign up for Rise for a women's
conference. Do you know which one signs up
the fastest? The women.
Because women love Jesus. So if you want your wife to kind
of chase after you, maybe you should start acting a little bit
more like Jesus. So pay attention.
I'm going to give you 3 things that Jesus does for the church,
which is your Model 1. He sacrificed for her, He wants
what's best for her. He's selfless and he dies for
her. You want to know why women love
Jesus? Why they submit to Jesus while
they follow Jesus? I just gave you 3 reasons, which
means men. You don't get a point at verse
22 and ignore verse 25. You don't get to go home tonight
and go submit. Because let me tell you, while
it may be hard to submit to your husband's, it's almost
impossible to submit to an ungodly one.
And the burden you are putting on your wife to submit to a man
who is not equipped to lead the way Christ leads and loves is an
unbearable task. And imagine her carrying the
weight of trying to live out God's way while following a man
who is not God's man. So men, if the leadership in
your home is not sacrificial, selfless, and painful, the
submission issue in your home might be because there is a love
issue in your home. Men, we are to lead through our
love. You can watch this later and
take notes. Our love shows up in three PS.
Priority, Provision and protection.
Priority. God is to be your first
priority, your wife your second priority, your kids your third
priority. It is impossible to be a godly
man, husband and father if you are selfish.
Provision. We are to provide.
We provide spiritually, physically, which means we're
present emotionally and financially.
We get up early, we get right with God.
We make space in our lives to be with our family in undistracted
ways. That's the area right now where
I'm struggling and I'm trying to do better.
We are emotionally available and connect on matters beneath the
surface. We go to work and when we go to
work, we work hard. And if you do all of that really
well, then you can hunt and then you can golf.
But you earn that right, you earn that opportunity, you earn
that blessing. But how on planet earth can you
be in a duck blind? Or how on earth can you be in a
tree stand? And how on earth can you be
golfing if you have not loved your family first, your God
first. The third P is protection,
spiritual protection. To make sure that our family is
moving in the right direction, is moving and growing in
obedience to God's command, we provide physical protection.
Here's what this means. In the home, we die first.
If you're a dude and you're like, what's that noise?
Go check sweetie, you just got an F.
We provide physical protection. We die first.
And hear me, the fact that God has hardwired you to protect
should mean that they are never afraid of you have fear of you.
They need to know that you would lay down your life for them.
We protect them emotionally by making sure that our home is a
safe place for questions, doubts, confession of sin.
We protect our family financially.
We make sure that our spending does not outpace our earnings
because that would by doing so, we are able to reduce stress and
amplify joy in the home. Too many men in an effort to
provide financially sacrifice in all the other areas and are thus
able to, are not able to protect their family from unseen
spiritual and emotional threats. Can I just give a little devo to
the dudes for a minute? There are some of you who you
are absolute killers, assassins, savages at work.
You manage chaos, hardship and challenges.
You lead through market adjustment, staffing issues, and
if you were to just take a fraction of that energy and
leadership and leverage it in your home, you would be a gift
to the people that you love the most.
You have led planning meetings over and over again at your work
because you know that if you don't have a vision for how
you're going to get through the next season, you know the
company's not going to do well. But when it comes to your own
home, no vision, no protection, no provision.
So we are to prepare our family for godliness.
We are to prepare them for future roles in the family,
prepare them for future roles in the Kingdom of God, and we are
to prepare them for future roles in society.
When was the last time you had a planning session in your home, a
strategy session in your home for that?
And once you have the same vision as God has for your
family, your job is to lead them in this direction.
And a clear vision creates boundaries.
No boundaries means your family has no vision.
A person who is a vision of being fit?
Don't laugh. Establishes boundaries around
sleep and nutrition. A person who has a vision of
losing weight establishes boundaries, I'm told, around
calories and workouts. A person who has a vision for
financial freedom has boundaries around debt and spending.
That means that your vision for your family should impact your
schedule, your finances, your phone usage, your dating.
And if you have not held a discussion and decided what your
vision and boundaries are, that means that somebody else is
deciding. That means it's either your
kids, society or Satan, and I wouldn't put either of those
three in the driver's seat in my home, would you?
Let me give you an example. I love youth sports.
Love it. I think they're great.
I love it when parents do everything they can do to make
their kids great at sports so they can sell insurance when
they grow up. And I think it's a blast to make
memories. I think it's fun.
Parents, you get them coaches, you get them trainers, you buy
them all the equipment. And I think, hear me, I think
it's great. What I'm telling you is you
already know how to do it. How come you just don't do the
same thing when it comes to them spiritually?
One of the most satanic things I've ever heard is when somebody
came up to me and said I don't force my kids to come to church.
I was just thinking, OK, well, do you force them to brush their
teeth? Do you force them to take
showers? Do you force them to go to
school? Like there's a list of things
that you've decided. I don't care how you feel about
it, you're going to do it. What's the point of having good
breath in? Hell, it didn't make a bit of
sense to me. And you'll hear people go, oh,
yeah, you're just really forward thinking.
Like, yeah, we just don't. We don't let our kids.
Well, how many other decisions do you let your kids make that
are life and death for all the athletes out there?
I was doing the math, thinking about my own kids.
I ran through a list of a whole bunch of sports, football, men's
basketball and about what are the probability of them going
pro. I put a lot on there for you
dance people. I didn't put that on there
because I figured if I put going pro and dance, you guys would
think glitter and that's not where I was wanting to go.
So here is here is the chance. Let's just do football.
There's a 3% chance that your kid is going to go to AD One
school for being a great football player.
That's pretty cool. That's awesome.
Here's the chance that you're going to get some of the money
back that you spent on them playing football. 1 to 2% chance
of them getting a full ride. Here's the chance of them going
pro .08%. In other words, I wouldn't bet
on it. You can pick your sport.
You got all of them up there but dancing.
But I also did the math. There is a 100% chance that your
kid is going to need an intimate personal relationship with Jesus
Christ, 100%. There's a pretty high
probability that they're going to be a husband one day, a
mother one day. Your job is to prepare them for
the home, society, godliness, and the Kingdom.
Now, in just a second, I'm going to do something.
What I want to show you is the kind of vision that I have for
your family. It is a letter that I read every
so often to kind of awaken my own heart into my home.
And specifically, this is for the men.
This is the way that I want the men in our church to love your
wives. This is the kind of kids that I
want you to create so that they will be these kind of men as
they become fathers, as your daughters become mothers.
And I believe with God's help, this is possible.
And if you are lucky enough for a second to be here at church
today with your spouse, would you just hold hands for just a
second while I read this letter? This letter was written on
October 17th, 1946 by Richard to his wife Darlene.
Darlene, I adore you, sweetheart.
I know how much you like to hear that.
But I don't only write it because you like it.
I write it because it makes me warm all over inside to write it
to you. It is such a terribly long time
since I last wrote to you, almost two years.
But I know you'll excuse me because you understand how I am
stubborn and realistic and I thought there was no sense in
writing. But now I know, my darling wife,
that it is right to do what I have delayed in doing and that I
have done so much in the past. I want to tell you I love you, I
want to love you. I will always love you.
I find it hard to understand in my mind what it means to love
you after you are dead, but I still want to comfort and take
care of you. I want you to love me and care
for me. I want to have problems to
discuss with you. I want to do little projects
with you. I never thought until just now
that we can do that. We should.
What should we do? We started to learn to make
clothes together, or learn Chinese, or getting a movie
projector. Can't I do something now?
No, I am alone without you. And you were the ideal woman,
the general instigator of all our wild adventures.
When you were sick, you worried because you could not give me
something that you wanted to and thought I needed.
You shouldn't have worried, just as I told you then.
There was no real need, because I loved you in so many ways, so
much. And now it is clearly even more
true. You can give me nothing now, yet
I love you so that you stand in my way of loving anyone else,
but I still want you to stand there.
You dead are so much better than anyone else alive.
I know you will assure me that I am foolish and that you want me
to have full happiness and don't want to be in my way.
I bet you're surprised that I don't even have a girlfriend
except you, sweetheart, after two years.
But you can't help it, darling, nor can I.
I don't understand it, for I have met many girls and very
nice ones and I don't want to remain alone, but in two or
three meetings they all seem like ashes to me.
You only are left to me. You are real, my darling wife.
I do adore you. I love my wife.
My wife is dead rich. PS Please excuse me not mailing
this. I don't know your new address.
That is a vision. If you had one, what would it
be? And if you had it, would it
align with Christ's? And if it does, will you pursue
it? We're moving to a time of
decision. To those of you who are here
today or watching online who don't yet have an intimate,
personal relationship with Jesus, I'm going to say
something that's a little hard to hear.
But he ends the letter not knowing the mailing address.
I have a question for you. If you were the day to die, what
is your mailing address? Where are you going?
And if you don't know or you don't like where it is, you can
change that today. That through the power of Jesus
Christ, through his perfect life, and through his
sacrificial death on the cross. And His resurrection from the
grave, He made a way possible for you and I to be united with
Him forever in heaven. And if you are outside of
Christ, you are outside of that promise.
But that promise is extended to you today.
You cannot be the godly husband you need to be.
You cannot be the godly wife you need to be.
You cannot be the godly father or mother you need to be until
God is in your life, till He has saved you and begun the process
of sanctifying you, making you more like Him.
And you can start that journey today.
And in just a few moments, the people around the room are going
to stand and sing. Some of them are going to come
to the steps and pray. And I want to encourage you to
walk right over there underneath that screen next to the
baptistry and start asking the questions that you need to ask
to the rest of you in the room, to those of you who already have
a relationship with Jesus Christ.
Is there an area of your life that you need to spend time on
your knees repenting? Do you need to spend time on
your knees asking God to give you the strength to start
setting the right direction in your family?
Do you need to start turning over areas of your life to your
family, of your family, to God's leadership?
Do you need to come to the steps and get down on your knees and
pray over your family, pray over your spouse?
What do you need to do to get right with God?
Lastly, if you're here today and you are a widow, I know that
this sermon sucked. So what I would like to do is
I'm going to walk out those back doors after I finished praying.
And if you are here today and you are a widow and you just
want someone to pray with you, I would love to do so.
Would you stand with me? Heavenly Father, I just thank
you so much for today. I thank you for sustaining us
and being gracious to us and long-suffering.
And I'm asking that you would do a mighty work in this church
right now, that not only would you convict us where we've gone
wrong, but you would you equip us to do what's right.
We stand zero chance to be the people that you've called us and
created us to be without the presence of your Holy Spirit.
So inhabit this place. In your name I pray.
Amen.