To give somebody a high 5A hug. Come on, tell them God is good,
God is good. Come on everybody.
Welcome to Next Level Church. We're so thankful you're here
today on this holiday weekend. My name is Pastor Josh.
I'm one of our executive pastors and also on our teaching team.
And we are so thankful that you would choose to spend this
weekend with us. Hey, I want to welcome in all of
our locations around here, Next Level Church.
We say that we're one house with multiple rooms.
So I want to welcome in our E location.
Come on Pastor Willie, we're so thankful you're back downtown
location Cape Coral here at Fort Myers, everybody watching
online. Come on.
Would you guys give it up for all the people who are watching
in another room today that make up next level church, we're so
thankful for you. Speaking of thankful, I'm so
thankful for our pastors. Pastor Matt and Sarah Keller,
our Co lead pastors been my pastors my entire life and I'm
so thankful for you. I'm thankful for the way that
you've pastored my life, my marriage, our kids and our
church. We're just so thankful for you.
Come on, would you honor our pastors today?
Just so thankful for you. And Speaking of our pastors,
Pastor Matt did an incredible job to kick off a brand new
series. Come on, brand new series.
Help. Relationships are hard.
Can I get an Amen, everybody, come on, Amen.
What a great, great kickoff last week.
And I am so thankful that this week we get to jump into Part 2
of this series and I get to talk about marriages.
Come on, they gave me the easy one.
Everybody come on, they gave me the easy 1.
And I just want to encourage you listen, if you're married in the
room in any room watching right now, I just hope that your
hearts would be open. But also as I was praying for
this message, I was preparing really felt the Holy Spirit said
that this message is not just for married couples.
This is for singles as well. Come on, all the married people
in every room would say, I wish that I heard this message before
I got married. Come on, everybody.
So I want to challenge everybody in the room.
Come on, let's take notes together.
There's a no card in the seat back in front of you can take
notes on your phone. We're going to have some fun
together and we're going to see that God's going to move in a
powerful way. Come on, let's pray together as
we open God's word. Lord, right right now, we just
thank you. We thank you for your word.
We thank you for a house God that preaches your word.
And so lo, we pray right now, God, we stand on the promise
that your word does not return void.
And so father, I pray that people would not hear my voice
God, but they would hear yours. It's in Jesus name we pray Amen
and Amen. So we're talking about marriage
today. And so I thought it would be a
good time to show you a picture of I love my family.
Come on, everybody. That is the home and family
right there. And my wife, Irena and I in the
middle. Hey, in October, it'll be 19
years that we've been married over 20 years together.
Come on. She's put up with me for a long
time. And as you can tell, I really
love my wife. That's why we have 4 kids.
Come on, everybody. And this is our four kids, our
oldest, Gracie, Oliver, Adelina, and then little Joshie there in
front of me. And yes, the older ones are
getting taller than us. All right, everybody, that's
happening now. Have you ever looked at a family
picture like this and thought, man, that that family must be
perfect, right? Like that fan, like, like how in
the world did they get their boys to wear those button up
shirts? I'm sure that they didn't fight
with them at all to make this picture happen, right?
That the girls weren't taking forever to get ready, right?
Like like that picture this, this is a picture of how perfect
their family is. Everybody's smiling.
But the truth is that's not the reality, right?
Like how many times you look at a picture and you're like, man,
that must be the perfect family. They're not like ours.
They don't go through what we go through.
Hey, the, the truth is it took forever to pick out all the
outfits and get everything to happen.
And we had to bribe them with ice cream.
And they're probably going to tell me later that we didn't get
the ice cream yet. But but that's right.
We look at families and we go, man, that family must be
perfect. That marriage must be
incredible. But what we don't see in this
picture is the last 20 years of everything that Irene and I, and
mostly God has poured into our marriage.
The heartache, the tears, the fighting for our marriage, the
the healing that God has brought us through.
And really it's not even just the last 20 years, but it's
really what we brought into our marriage.
I want to show you another couple pictures right here.
Here's another couple pictures. This is, this is me right here.
This is little Joshy as I used to be called.
Now we have another little Joshy and I'm not so little anymore.
I'm just being honest, right? And then there is my beautiful
wife. There's little Irena.
And this was pictures of us when we were kids.
And when you see those pictures, you see two really happy kids.
But the reality is, is that we both had quiet childhood.
We both came from different, literally different sides of the
world. I, I was born in Indiana and,
and I was born into a family where most of my family had been
divorced and remarried at least once before I was even born.
Like people would say, how do you have so many grandparents?
Because I got step grandparents and regular grandparents and
aunts and uncles, right. And some of you got a nod in
your head because you know what that's like to be in a family
like that. But we grew up in a family where
man, we were loved and we were cared for, but divorce so often
was a part of our families lives.
We would hear things like divorce is not an option, but
all too often we would get to a place where honestly, the people
that we looked up to, my brother and sister and I would end their
marriage, end divorce. And it was hard.
And then there's my wife. My wife was actually literally
born on the other side of the world in a small village in
Ukraine. And when she was five years old,
her mom and dad and five of her, her and five other brothers and
sisters made a decision to move from the only home that they had
ever known from Ukraine to the US.
She was 5 when they moved, but it took four or five months to
get to Buffalo, NY. And so by the time she got
there, she was six years old. And here's the reality.
Her mom and dad have done everything to provide for their
family and to give them a better life.
And I'm so thankful that they made that decision.
But it was hard growing up. It was hard coming to a country
that you'd never been before and trying to learn a language that
you never heard before. And honestly, so many of the
relationships and the marriages that she saw growing up, they
were not divorced. They never got divorced.
But if they look closer, they were unhealthy and they weren't
close to the Lord. This is what Irena and I brought
into our marriage. Here's the next picture that
you'll see of us. This is one of our earliest
pictures when we got together. This was when we first started
to date, which dating wasn't long because it was after a
month of us dating that I asked Irena to be my wife.
Yeah, I knew I had a good one, and I had to snatch her up fast.
Come on, everybody, you can tell them that picture.
I married up. So I had to get, you know, get a
ring on it. And she said yes, she said yes.
And we started to plan our wedding.
And can I tell you, we were so in love.
We were so in love with each other, man, it, it, it was, it
was really love at first sight. And we just, we just grew in our
love for each other as we continue to date and get to know
each other. And then and then she said we
had to have a 15 month engagement.
That was a lot of trust. Come on, that was a long time to
wait right? And I said yes to that and we
got married on October 27th, 19 years ago.
We are so happy we got married and Irena's sister and brother
in We had so many dreams, we had so many things that we wanted to
do and so many things that we felt like God had put in our
heart for what God wanted to do in and through us in our
marriage. And, and it was in that on that
day that we didn't just make a promise to each other, but we
made a covenant with each other. Here's another picture with
somebody you might recognize. That's Pastor Matt at the altar
marrying us. And if you could tell, I would
look too scared to death, by the way, Come on, husband, you know
what I'm talking about. But it was at the altar that
day. The Pastor Matt, like he has in
so many other ways, LED us pastorally to a place to not
just make a promise to each other, but to make a covenant
with each other, a covenant that would last a lifetime.
But we had no idea. We had no idea how hard it was
going to be and what we were stepping into.
And, and for a moment, I want to slow down with our story, but I
want to really slow down and talk about what biblical
marriage is. Because it was in this moment
right here that Pastor Matt was pastoring us and leading us in
our marriage at the very beginning to say this is how
you're you're supposed to live your life.
When it comes to biblical marriage.
I want to give you a working definition of biblical marriage.
Marriage is a holy and sacred union between one man and one
woman. This union is made through a
biblical covenant, not just between a couple, but also with
God. God designed marriage to reflect
the sacrificial love of Jesus and the church, Jesus and the
church. And so I want to give you a
couple things that come out of this when it comes to biblical
marriage. The first one is this is that
biblical marriage is a covenant made between one man, one woman
and God. You see, what was happening at
the altar that day wasn't just between Irena and I.
It wasn't just something that we were making a promise or saying
that we hope we were going to make it one day.
No, we were making a covenant before God.
It was a holy thing that that we just believe that marriage
should not be answered into lightly, that it's a serious,
serious holy thing when we say yes at an altar to somebody in
marriage. Here's what we see in Scripture
that that from the very beginning in Genesis verses 2,
chapter 2, verses 23 and 24, it says this.
The man said this now is bone in my bone and flesh in my flesh.
She shall be called woman. That's what I said when I saw
Arena on the wedding day. Come on, right, she shall be
called woman, for she was taken out of the man.
This is why a man leaves his father and mother and is united
to his wife, and they become one flesh.
Something supernatural happens when you get married, that it's
no longer just the husband and the wife, it is one.
It is one and the Lord. And this is such a powerful,
powerful thing when it comes to marriage that Jesus actually
quotes the Creator and quotes this verse in Matthew 19 verses
4 through 6. When He said this, haven't you
read? He replied that at the beginning
the Creator made them male and female and said for this reason
a man will leave his father and mother and will be united to his
wife, and the two will become one flesh.
Therefore, let God, what God has joined together, let no one
separate. Come on, we've heard that at
weddings, right? Like what God has put together,
let no one separate. See, Jesus was reiterating the
fact that that what happens in marriages is that we become one
together, that we actually come together, not with a promise or
a contract, but with the covenant.
You see, there's a difference between a contract and a
covenant, right? A contract is a legal, binding
document that has to be drawed up so that the two parties
involved in the in the relationship are can be held
accountable by the contract. But a covenant, a covenant is so
different because the covenant is actually based on trust that
the parties involved in the covenant are going to put your
needs above their own. That's what happened that day at
the altar, that Irene and I were making a covenant not just
between each other, but with God, believing that God was
going to hold each other accountable and hold each other
together. And here's what we see in
Ecclesiastes, that that 2 are better than one.
But even more than that, when we have God in our lives, in our
marriages, that we're a three strand cord that is not easily
broken. Look what it says.
It says that well, though one may be overpowered, 2 can defend
themselves. And a cord of three strands are
husband, a wife, and God is not quickly broken.
So the first thing that a biblical marriage is it is a
covenant made between one man, one woman and God.
The second thing that I want you to see is this is that a
biblical marriage is designed by God to reflect the sacrificial
love of Jesus and the church. This is such a big deal because
here's what the devil doesn't want us to realize is that a
marriage, our marriage is actually a picture.
It's a reflection of how Christ loves the church and because of
Christ's love for us and how much we love him, that when we
actually do marriage the way that God's called us to, that it
is the greatest reflection of what it looks like to be in love
with Jesus. My greatest testimony to my 4
kids is actually how I love my wife.
It communicates to them so much more than anything else I will
ever say or do. But how I love their mom will
communicate how much I've received Christ's love and vice
versa. Here's what it says in Ephesians
5. This this incredible verse,
these verses where Paul breaks down what it looks like for
husbands and wives to be in marriage together the way that
God has called us to. But at the end of this
conversation, I love what he says because he brings a
profound mystery into the light. What the devil doesn't want the
world to know is that our marriages are one of the most
powerful things that we have to share the gospel of Jesus
Christ. Look what he said.
Look what he said here in Ephesians 5, 31 and 32 said for
this reason. Listen, this might sound
familiar, which is amazing because it goes all throughout
Scripture. For this reason, a man will
leave his father and mother, you're going to be able to quote
this by the end of the the message and be united to his
wife and two will become flesh. 1 flesh.
This is a profound mystery. Paul says this is a profound
mystery, but I am talking about Christ and the church.
When we think about marriage, when we think about marriage,
the way that God has called us to live out our marriages, we
have to start with the fact that Christ loved us first.
Remember last week Pastor Matt talked about this verse in first
John 4/19. He said we love, come on,
somebody we love the way that God's called us to love because
he's first loved us. I don't know about you, but I'm
so thankful for the salvation that we have found in Jesus
Christ. Can I get an Amen that he saved
our lives, that he loved us enough, God loved us enough to
send his Son Jesus to come and to die on the cross for us.
It's kind of love that God's called us to live within our
marriage. So I want to show you a new
picture of Irene and I. This was taken just a couple
months ago. This was after we were out to
dinner for somebody's birthday and we were hanging out
afterwards. And the reason I picked this
picture is because some of the early pictures, when I see them,
I actually see a lot of the heartache and the pain that we
went through. But when I see this picture, I
see a husband and wife who love each other because Christ first
loved us. I'm so thankful that Irene and I
have gotten to this place. But I want you to know, listen,
first of all, we're not perfect. We're still figuring it out.
And sure enough, the, the week that I preach on on on marriage,
we get in a huge fight on Monday.
Come on, everybody, right. Like we're just figuring it out
too. We're trying to work through our
stuff just like everybody else's.
But we have we've learned so much from so many other people
that we want to share with today.
I love and the Ephesian verses where it actually talks about in
Ephesian 5 where Paul actually lays out what it looks like for
husbands to love their wives, for wives to love their husbands
so that we could be this profound mystery being unlocked
to the world that we are the love of Christ and the love that
he has for the church and the church to him.
Here's what I see in Ephesians 525.
It says this husbands love your wives just as Christ loved the
church and gave himself up for her.
We see this, we also see a little further where he
encourages wives to respect and submit to their husbands as the
church submitted to Christ. And then he continues on and he
does that verse that I just went to where it talks about this
profound mystery that is unlocked when we're talking
about Christ and the church. But can I be honest with you?
There was probably about 9-10 years ago, Irina and I were
trying to figure out how to live life out, how to live our
marriage out in this way that that Paul was talking about.
Can I be honest with you? There were times that I did not
want to lay down my life for my wife.
Just being real with you, there were times when my wife looked
at me and said, it's hard for me to respect you and to follow you
because of the way that you're living your life.
It has me thinking about a story that happened to me about 1213
years ago. We were actually going to have a
staff retreat here at the church.
And we love to have fun at the church.
We love to have a good time. And so we had a decision to
start our staff retreat out with bubble soccer everybody.
All right now, bubble soccer is a fun sport.
It's a fun sport. You might be wondering what in
the world is bubble soccer, right?
Well, I I figured you would ask, so I wanted to actually show you
a video, a bubble soccer. This is bubble soccer.
Yeah. That looks like a good time,
right? Come on.
That is a good, good time, right.
And so we made a decision that we were going to do bubble
soccer. And I was so excited.
I grew up playing football. I thought, man, this is the
first time in 10 years I get to hit somebody else and it's
legal. Come on, somebody.
And so we go out, we get into the big bubble balls.
They come down to right to my knees.
I'm literally above my head because I'm sure.
And we're in these bubble balls and we're playing soccer.
And I actually never really played soccer before, but I was
excited. I see the ball, I see an open
goal. I run up to the ball, I plant my
left leg, put all my weight on my left leg, and I kick the ball
in about the right. At that same time, somebody from
my peripheral comes up and one of the other males on her staff,
and he hits me as hard as he possibly can.
In that moment, something snapped in my leg.
Oh yes, yes it did. It's I can still feel it.
I can still hear the snap. It snapped in my leg.
And what I would later find out is that I tore my ACL, did way
more than tore my ACL. And in that moment, Pastor
Lewis, another staff member, they picked me up.
They started to Take Me Out to the car and I passed out.
Now, have you show of hands? How many has ever passed out?
It's weird, right? It's just a weird experience,
right? So I pass out, I wake up and
I'll never forget this. I wake up, I'm on my side, I
wake up and my pastor, Pastor Matt, who's been there for me
since I was 15 years old at my wedding when my kids were born,
all kinds of stuff. Walk me through thinking my
pastor is rubbing ice on my neck and praying for me.
Come on, That is the pastor that you have.
He's there for us. I'm so thankful for he's just
rubbing ice on my neck and he's praying for me.
And next thing I know, somebody's praying for my knee
and they're touching my knee and I'm like, stop touching my knee.
And, and here's what they told me later is that as soon as it
happened, it sounded like a bear was bear was being hurt
somewhere that I was like, and I was stuck in the bubble ball
because it was plastic and there was sweat.
I couldn't get out of the bubble ball.
I finally got out of the bubble ball.
All this happened. I go to the hospital, sure
enough, I tear my tip my, my ACL after three or four weeks, my
wife is taking care of me. She's taking care of the kids.
She's feeding all of us, she's cooking.
We go to all these doctor's appointments.
And sure enough, after three or four weeks, I'm up.
I'm, I'm starting to move around a little bit, but we go to the
orthopedic and she looked at me and she said, Pastor Josh, if
you don't have surgery to replace your ACL, you'll be able
to move around. You'll be able to do some stuff.
But 10 years from now, you won't be able to do the things that
you do today. You won't be able to go out and
play with the kids in the backyard.
You won't be able to walk up on a stage and preach because
you'll have to go upstairs. And so we need to go in and we
need to replace that ACL. So we made a hard decision, my
wife and I to do that. She said, hey, there might be
some more painful days of in the future to get to a place of
healing, but we got to do that so we can get you to where you
need to be. We had the surgery, we were in
the surgery. They told us that they would
replace the ACL and I'd be able to put weight on.
It came out, I didn't just fracture or tear my ACL.
I fractured my tibia at the same time.
They said you can't put weight on it.
So it was months, months of being on a scooter for six
months, going to physical therapy, All the pain, all the
heartache. But I'm so thankful that I had
that surgery because there was something on the inside that I
had no idea was affecting my day-to-day life.
That God allowed that surgeon to go in and use her gift to fix
it. That today I can go out and I
can play with my kids. I can watch two walk two or
three miles three or four times a week.
I can walk up on this platform and preach God's Word to you
because I made a decision. But can I be honest with you?
I want to submit to all of you in the room, whether you're
married or you're not. I have a feeling that there's
some things happening inside of our hearts that we've brought
into our present day life that because we haven't allowed the
surgeon, the Holy Spirit to come in and bring some healing to
some unhealed places in our life, they're affecting our
day-to-day lives in ways that we can't even imagine.
I want to show you this picture again of little Josh and little
Irina. You see, the reality was, is
that the things that happened to us when we were children, we
brought into our marriage. The things that we went through
when we were little kids, we brought into our marriage when I
was six years old. I'll never forget my mom and dad
had tried so hard two or three times.
My dad had moved out, moved back in, and they finally made the
decision they were going to get a divorce.
I'll never forget the day that my brother and my sister and my
mom and I were in the car when we were leaving.
We packed up the car. My dad walked around to the
window of our car. I rolled the window down because
that's how you used to roll the window down.
And he kneeled down to me and he said, now you're the man of the
house. Now he was innocent in what he
was saying, but I took that as to heart that day.
And can I tell you that throughout my childhood,
everything, every time something bad happened, every time the
water got cut off because we couldn't pay the bill, every
time somebody got sick and we couldn't do something or we
couldn't do anything good in our family.
Literally, I felt like I wasn't good enough because I had this
mindset that it was me, that it was up to me, 5 year old little
Joshie. I took this mindset into my
adult life and the enemy used it to, to reinforce this mindset
that I wasn't good enough over and over again.
I had a learning disability. And because of that, I believe
that I just wasn't good enough. I was dumb and then I had failed
relationships after failed relationships.
And I really believe that the devil was true in my life, that
that I was not good enough. And I brought this into our
marriage. Adelina or Irena, Adelina's my
daughter, and she looks just like her in that picture.
Irena she was six years old, first grade, came into a
classroom for the very first time after moving from Ukraine,
did not know any English. Nobody in her family did, and
her mom and dad provided for her food and shelter.
But it was over those next couple years that she realized
that if anything else good was going to happen in her life,
that it was up to her. That if she was going to learn
English, it was up to her. If she was going to go to
college, it was up to her. If she was going to do things
like play soccer, it was up to her.
It was all up to her. And the truth is, is that we got
to a place where we have what we believe and what we call is a
stronghold in our lives and our freedom curriculum, which I'm
going to talk about in a minute, we actually lay out what a
stronghold is. But I want to read to you the
definition of what a stronghold is.
A stronghold is a defensive mindset that sets itself up
against God's voice and provokes unhealed places in our hearts.
It provokes unhealed places in our hearts.
My stronghold was that I wasn't good enough, that I was not good
enough. And it did not matter how much
God would speak to me over and over again when I was a child,
when I was became adult because I had a defensive mindset that
was set up against the very voice of God in my life.
And then Irena, it was all up to her.
That was the stronghold that she brought into our marriage, that
it was all up to her. And here's what I want you to
see is that our strongholds actually provoked each other.
That these unhealed places in our hearts, these strongholds,
they provoked each other. Here's the best way I can
explain it. When Irene and I first got
married, she worked third shift at the hospital as a CNA, and
she would give me A to do list, the honey To Do List.
Come on guys, you know what I'm talking about, right?
And let's say there was 10 things on the honey To Do List
and she would come home on Thursday or on Friday morning
when it was my day off. She would go to bed.
And then all day long I'd work on the hunting To Do List.
And can I tell you I'd get 8 out of the 1010 things done almost
every time. Like it.
I tried. Yeah, yeah.
Come on. You can clap for me.
Yeah, that's good. And and hey, this UN dealt with
unhealed, healed, healed place in me was like, I can't wait
till she wakes up. I can't wait to tell her about
the eight things that I did. All the how great of a husband I
am, how awesome I am. And then she would wake up and
sure enough, she would ask me about the two things that I did
not do right. Come on, you know what I'm
talking about. And here was the reality was it
poked, it poked. It provoked the unhealed place
in my heart when she brought up the two things and I freaked
out. I had freak out moment after
freak out moment after freak out moment and I would go forget it.
I can't do anything that's going to be enough for you.
I'm just not good enough. I can't believe that you're even
with me. And I would even go to the place
that I believed in my heart that she was going to leave one day
because I had a stronghold that I walked into our marriage with.
And then here's what I want you to see.
At the very same time, when I would freak out because I was
provoked and an unhealed place, I would provoked her unhealed
place too, because now she started to believe the truth or
that the lie that what she started to believe a lie to be a
truth that it was all up to her. Now I'm going to have to take
care of everything. Even in my marriage.
I had to do it growing up and now I got to do it with my
husband. And can I tell you, the last
thing that was on my mind when we were fighting, we were going
through all of that was I want to lay down my life for my wife,
just as Christ did. The last thing that was going
through her mind was I want to respect Him and submit to Him.
That was the last thing. The last thing in our minds was
that we were going to do this together.
We thought for sure that this was going to end in tragedy.
But then the Lord reminded us about 10 years ago, we came to a
crossroads. He reminded us the commitment,
the covenant that we made to each other, that it wasn't just
me and her in this marriage, but it was me and her and God.
And it was about that time that we came out with the Freedom
curriculum. And I'll never forget Pastor
Matt and Sarah said, hey, we want some of you to go through
it for the very first time. And so I said yes, I think they
actually said we're going to need you to do it as a staff
member. So I said yes.
And Freedom is just this special thing.
If you've been through it, you know, honestly, there's been
thousands of people that have gone through it now we went
through it and we started to identify the lies that the enemy
had been lying to us about, started to identify the fear in
our life. The fear of abandonment in my
life was so real. And then to get to a place where
I identified that I had this, this stronghold, this, this
mindset, the defensive mindset up against God's voice in my
life that was provoked that I wasn't good enough.
I'll never forget week 10 freedom experience.
And when you do it, you're it's guys with guys and girls with
girls and I'm I'm around the circle with six other guys.
We had just walked through so much together and and my leader
walk me through going back to that moment, being in the car
that day when I was five years old.
Walk me through the moment where my father kneeled down and said,
now you're the man of the house. And, and I just had this picture
because I remember what happened, but I in that moment,
God actually showed me what was really happening in the
supernatural. I just felt like God the father
was just reaching his hand out, putting his hand on my shoulder
and just saying, Josh, I love you and I'm never going to leave
you or forsake you. This isn't up to you.
This isn't your job. This isn't your weight to carry
and you're more than enough. I'll never forget what I felt
that day. I felt like the Lord literally
say that you are. You are fearfully and
wonderfully made like you are clever, you are smart, you're
not dumb. Literally in that moment, it was
like literally it was healing that I didn't think was
possible. I didn't know that there was
such this deep, deep thing that was inside of me that was
affecting my everyday life and I was healed.
I was healed from it. It was, it was the next
semester, Irena was asked to go through freedom and, and she
said yes. And I'll never forget, we get to
the end of the freedom semester and we're back in Pastor Sarah's
office, myself, Irena and Pastor Sarah.
And she's walking her through that moment in that classroom,
that moment, that moment when that little girl started to
believe a lie from the enemy that she was all alone.
And then it was all up to her. And here's what happens.
Like, like if we're not careful, we do a couple different things
in our marriage. If we're not careful, we
actually, instead of going to God, we go to other people.
And, and some of it's innocent. Some of it's like, man, I'm just
going to go to my accountability partner, my friend.
I'm going to go to my, you know, Irene into her girlfriends.
And some of it's innocent. But the truth is, man, my
friends only heard one side of the story.
Her friends only heard one side of the story.
And so, so when we go to God, there's something powerful that
happens. When we go to a counselor,
something powerful happens because they see the whole story
and they want to help us. And maybe you're hearing you
actually went to somebody else and you stepped out in your
marriage and you thought you thought, I can't get what I need
in this marriage, so I got to go get it from somebody else.
And here's what I just believe. I believe that that you're
trying to fix the problem, but really you're looking at
symptoms because the symptom is when we go everywhere else and
try to find fixes everywhere else.
And here's the reality. We do this with our spouses too,
because the truth is, I can't get everything that I need from
my arena. I can only get everything I need
from God and the healing that needs to take place so that all
the other things don't keep happening.
You're like, why do I keep cheating on my wife?
Why do I keep doing this with my against my husband?
It's because there's some undealt with pain inside of your
heart that God wants to heal. And he's the only one.
And then Irene and I, sometimes we would go to each other.
But as I've already illustrated, the problem is when there's
strongholds that aren't healed by God, we just provoke each
other over and over and over again.
And there is a time, there is a time in a Christian marriage
where we come back together, Amen, where God heals us.
But I want you to see this because as we started to go
through freedom, as we start to live out a freedom like life,
listen, freedom, we say this all time, the, the freedom, the the
destination is the journey. That freedom, living it every
single day is really the goal. It's not just going through a 12
week course and being done, but it's living in freedom.
And when we did that, when we kept going closer and closer to
God, when we were willing to let him bring healing to our hearts,
we got closer to each other. We got closer to each other.
And it was in that moment when we came back to each other with
healed hearts that we were able to say, God, this is what we
want to give back to you. This is the kind of marriage
that we want to offer each other.
It's in this moment that I'm willing to say, I will lay down
my life for my wife. It's in this moment that my wife
goes, you know what? You're the kind of husband that
I'll follow. Come on, somebody right?
Like this is what God has for us in our marriages.
But all too often, all too often, we stay here and we let
the enemy use these strongholds against us.
When the reality is, is that when we get closer to God, that
he uses what the enemy meant for evil for good.
Because now with healed hearts, my wife is able to look at me
when I get 8 out of the 10 things done because that still
happens and say, hey, I love you.
How can we work together to get these things done?
Because I still got to get done. And I can look back at her in a
safe place and go, I have no idea how to fix that fan and
install it so it doesn't click over and over and over again.
And instead of letting it make me feel like I'm not good
enough, you know what? I'm just, it's just not my gift.
And she says, we'll figure it out.
And then what it does is it brings healing to her because
she goes, I don't have to do it all by myself.
It's not all up to me. So you might be going, Pastor
Josh, what do we do? What, what steps do we take next
here? Here's what I just believe.
I believe that you have to make a choice was a choice that I
made when I when I tore my ACL to say, you know what, doctor, I
trust you to go in and and actually do surgery.
I trust you to take care of the things that I can't see so that
I can live the life that you've called me to be right now.
Some of us were in our marriages and then we're just, we're up
against it. And God is saying, are you
willing? Are you willing to come to me?
Are you willing to find freedom? The first way is this is, it is
a counselor or biblical Christian counselor.
And we, we have vetted a ton of them and we have some amazing
counselors that we want to lead you to.
And here's what I'm asking you to do.
If that's you, if you're here today at the end of service when
our prayer team comes out, Pastor Kevin's going to lead us
after everybody else is left, I want you to come to the prayer
team and I want you to tell them, hey, would you pray for
our marriage and then ask for a counselor.
They're going to give you some next steps to find the right
counselor for you. And you might going, Pastor
Josh, I don't want to come down. People are going to know,
listen, it's OK, we're for you. We're excited for you.
And there's going to be people that come up for other prayer
too. Let's take that step of faith.
Let's let's step into it. Listen, people are anointed and
called and used by God as counselors and therapists.
Amen. And then here's the other thing.
I want to encourage you to sign up for freedom.
We have freedom in the fall again, we do it in the in the
spring and in the fall. You can go to
nextlevelchurch.com/freedom. I want you to write that down.
Listen, husbands, there's part of that Ephesians verse that
talks about how we should lay down our, our lives for our,
our, our, our wives, just as Christ did the church and talks
about how we love because we know how to love ourselves.
Some of us don't know how to love ourselves.
We don't, we don't know how to deal with some of the stuff from
the past. We want to help you with that,
wives, we want to help you with that.
Some of us, we just don't even know what's on the inside that's
affecting our today. And so I want to, I want to
challenge you, I want to implore you to please sign up to be a
part of a freedom group this fall.
Hey, listen, we need help in our marriages.
We need help in our relationships.
And as we close today, I just want to invite everybody at
every location to stand because I, I want us to take a final
step because I think that final step is honestly just to give it
all to God. If you're a single person in the
room right now, this is for you too.
I want to lead us to a simple prayer of a forgiveness of
repentance and then a prayer over our marriages.
Come on. Would you bow your heads and
close your eyes if you're here today?
I love the verse in Psalms 139 where David says, search my
heart, O Lord, and know my innermost thoughts, my anxious
thoughts. If you're here right now, you
say, Pastor Josh, I need to repent right now.
If there's something right now, an act, something said, a way of
thinking maybe with your spouse, maybe somebody else right now, I
just pray that you would just just repeat this prayer to me in
your heart. Lord, I'm sorry.
I repent for those things. I receive your forgiveness now.
Maybe you're here right now and you need to forgive.
There's not enough grace in our marriages as we need to give
more and so right now, whatever that is that that thing you need
to forgive. I just pray that you would have
the strength we this is how we say it in in the freedom
creaking Lord, just as you've forgiven me.
Come on. He's forgiven us of so much.
I choose to forgive. Forgiveness is a choice.
Come on all across this room. Lord, I choose to forgive.
I choose to forgive what they said or what they did or didn't
do. Lord, I forgive right now.
And Lord, we make a choice right now to run to you and our
marriages to run to you before we even get married, God, so
that we could be the spouse that you've called us to be.
Lord, right now I pray a blessing over every marriage
under the sound of my voice. God, I pray right now in Jesus
name that reconciliation and freedom and healing would reign
in our marriages, God. God, that we would run to you
and that you would heal every hurting and broken place in our
hearts so that we could be in great covenant relationship with
each other. And God, we pray that our
marriages would be a reflection, God, that the world around us
would look at us and go, God, that is the people who love you.
And I want to be more like that. Lord, I love you and I'm
thankful for all that you've done in every marriage today.
God, we pray blessing over them in Jesus mighty name.
All of God's people said Amen and Amen.
Come on, can we praise God?