Well good morning everybody, so glad you're here. Did you hear about that guy and his wife had an argument and he just wanted to get out of the house, and he went out and he went on a walk there along the beach and he was thinking to himself how much he would just love if there was a highway that went all the way to Hawaii. He could just get away from his wife, and don't nudge anybody right now, and when he was walking along the beach, this bottle comes up and this genie comes out and the genie says, "I'm going to grant you one wish". And the guy says, "It's funny you'd be here. I was thinking about getting away from my wife and I would love to have an interstate that went all the way, just drive to Hawaii". And the genie said, "Man, that's a big one. There's a lot of concrete. That's a lot of miles. You got pylons that got to go down in the ocean. Do you have any other requests"? The guy thought about it for a second, he said, "Well, I guess what would really help me is if you could grant me wisdom to understand my wife". And the genie said, "You want that two lanes or four lanes"?
We're going to talk today about marriage. We're going to talk about a marriage relationship. And somebody said, "Uh-oh", in a marriage relationship, and if you're single I will encourage you that if you're single and you eventually want to get married, there's some truth that you'll be able to apply. But also if you're single, let me just encourage you in your singleness, that you can be complete in your singleness. And if you're called to be single and you desire to be single, you don't need another person to complete you, you are complete in Christ. And if you're wanting to get, amen, if you're wanting to get married, I would encourage you, don't work on your date-ability, work on Christ being formed in you. That'll make you a person whole and complete and then able to present yourself to someone else, a person worth living with, another amen opportunity there. We have a problem, when we really don't understand marriage I would remind you that God created marriage. Marriage was created by God and came from the mind of God. He said, "For this reason, a man should leave his father and mother, and cling to his wife. The two should become one". The idea of marriage comes from God.
We struggle with marriage. We know that, even just from research, that as women desire love that is a sense of protection and provision, security, men primarily desire respect. This is why, and honor, we want to ride in and rescue something. Even if it means just changing a light bulb at the house we want at least three people to celebrate the fact that, "Oh my gosh, you did it. You're so wonderful", and if men feel disrespected, it's a problem. And if women don't feel secure in love, it's a problem among other things. But in the world and the world's way of thinking is we say, "If you give me respect, then I will love you". Or the woman would say, "If you would ever love me, maybe I'd show you a little respect". I don't know if this sounds like any conversation you've ever had.
I would encourage you not to include your parents in your arguments with your spouse, "You're just like your mother. You're just like your father". Pretty soon you're having a family reunion right there as you're arguing. But in the kingdom of God, everything is turned upside down. In His kingdom we're taught that in order to receive, what do you do? You give. So you don't wait for this person to love you before you give respect. You say, "I'm going to give you respect, whether you love me or not. Because this is what I'm called to do as a follower of Christ". I'm going to love my wife. I'm going to give and then I may receive. So it starts with you, and I'm beginning to say this just because we're going to go to the word of God and we're going to find out if God made marriage, this is the premise, then He has the right to speak into it and show us how it would work best.
We, in our culture, think that we know how relationships work. We prove that we really don't know what we're doing because our idea of marriage and the way that we do this now in our culture, is first what we do is we work on all of our date-ability, not really character or deep down who we are, but just date-ability and our Instagram accounts and how we look. And then when we get all that figured out, we go out and find someone. If we like that someone, we have sex with them. And if that works out, then we live with them. And then we wonder why relationships don't work. Let me encourage you, if you're a young adult here or a teenager, or if you're a virgin, save your virginity. Save yourself for marriage. When God wants you... the reason that God says save your virginity is not to limit your pleasure or your joy, but He wants you to have pleasure and He wants you to have peace.
And in this world, we seek after pleasure, but we never find peace. We find pleasure. It's not a question of oh is this enjoyable or not, the question is, does this actually work? Does it bring you peace? Why is it troubling to your soul? So when God says, "No", and, "No, don't do this", it's not that He's trying to limit our fun or our pleasure, His no always comes from a place of love where He's saying, "I'm saying no right now because I have a ginormous yes for you later". If you have fallen into sin in that way, you can repent, you can have your sins forgiven, and you can walk in a new level of purity before the Lord, and you should. You say, "Well, I want to follow the Lord". And not all of us here have done this well in our lives, and we carried into our marriage some baggage and some weight of sin, because our way seems right to us, but it is not God's way. And there's a way that seems right to a man, but in the end it leads to death. But His ways are pure and right and good and Holy. And so what we want to do is we want to learn His way of living.
I remember when we gave our life to Christ and my wife and I, before we were married, and we weren't serving God before but as soon as we gave our life to Christ, we knew it's time for us to be married. We want to live an honorable life before the Lord. And we know that His way will work when our way doesn't. So, we're going to talk today primarily from Ephesians chapter five and find out what God thinks and how a Christian marriage should work. But I heard a story of a couple in our church. They'd been coming to the church about three years and they were struggling in their marriage and they have an incredible story of where they kind of started to reach out and God started to work in their life. And the story was so compelling, I thought you might enjoy seeing it. So check this out:
Laura:
We met in high school, we were high school sweethearts. I was 15 and he was 16 when we met.
Dominic:
Oh, we got engaged when we're really young, and then subsequently it wasn't too long after her graduation from college that we got married in August... June. June. I know it.
Laura:
We're definitely young when we got married. I think we had this pretty picture perfect idea of what marriage was going to be like, and what our marriage and family was going to be like. And we had three kids pretty quickly.
Dominic:
I think that Laura was really excited about having kids pretty early, as was I. At the same time, I was really excited about potentially growing my career. So I think that I got kind of addicted to that sensation of success. And selfishly I think that I kind of thought her job was to be at home and take care of the kids and my job was to do my job. And I think that starts to build some resentment and some, you don't understand me, I don't understand you.
Laura:
There was a lot of pain, a lot of hurt, a lot of frustration and resentment, and we just didn't know what to do with it. So we had kind of come to a place where we had decided that it was the end of the road for us. Knew that it wasn't what we wanted for our family, but just didn't feel like there was any hope of saving what was wrong with us. Dom's brother and his wife had been coming here to Vineyard for several years and had invited us multiple times to come. They always ask anybody, invite anybody to come down for prayer, and he looked at me and said, "I'm going for prayer, do you want to go with me"? And we walked down there and we met, we call her Angel, who just had a way of speaking God right into our hearts. And we really had this moment then where we felt God starting to work in our story, in our situation, in a way that we hadn't ever felt. We came in for prayer on a Monday night and-
Dominic:
Just wasn't what we expected.
Laura:
... and we turned around to leave and we kind of looked at each other and just kind of shrugged, "Well I guess that was it". The security guard on the Monday night was walking by the auditorium and kind of noticed us and we asked if there was just anybody else in the building.
Dominic:
We were a mess. He noticed us because we were sitting there like a total mess.
Laura:
And the officer took us to find Mark and Megan who ended up sitting with us and praying with us and just again really speaking God's love over us. And we left that night, not fixed, but just with a glimmer of hope that there could be some redemption to our story and our family. After a couple of months there was a marriage class starting and we decided to go to the first night of that and just see, we weren't sure if we were at a place yet to even be able to begin working on our marriage.
Dominic:
I think it became clear to us that just every time we did something here for the right reasons, something good always seemed to come out of it.
Laura:
We just kept taking classes, every class that was offered here.
Dominic:
It wasn't really until we got involved in different things here that we kind of realize once people let down the facade, you recognize they've all got their own stuff too and have been through their own stuff too. And I think it made us feel safe, to be honest.
Laura:
We gained some even practical tools to be able to put into our marriage, and we found ourselves implementing those in our everyday life and we would kind of look at each other and feel, "Oh we're doing it, this is great".
Dominic:
And I think that that was a major shift for us. Seeing your spouse as actually your partner and figuring out who you are.
Laura:
Now looking back, it didn't make sense to me then, but now I can say that He had a plan for redemption for our marriage and our family.
Rob King:
Great. I would encourage you today there's hope for your marriage. If you're struggling in marriage today, there's, at the end of this service, just like the [Franchinies 00:12:09] experienced, there's a prayer team that will be across the front and just come forward for prayer. And also I would encourage you, if you're struggling with some habits or hangups, addictions, or struggling in a relationship, you can always go to Life Reset, they talked about that as well. Happens Mondays at 7:00 PM and I'd encourage you to be a part of that. What I love about that story is there was a willingness of people to be honest and say, "We just need some help". And if you're struggling in your marriage, you're not alone. Every person who's married goes through the same stuff that you're going through, so I just encourage you to get the help that you need.
Now what we want to do is turn our attention to the scriptures in Ephesians chapter five and see what God says about a Christian marriage. So I'm going to read a long passage and then we'll go back and see what the Lord has to say. Ephesians chapter 5:17 says this, this is all in the context of marriage, "Don't act thoughtlessly, but understand what the Lord wants you to do. Don't be drunk with wine, because that will ruin your life. Instead, be filled with the Holy Spirit", bless you, "singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs among yourselves, and making music to the Lord in your hearts. And give thanks for everything to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. And further, submit to one another out of reverence for Christ". This is where it starts getting fun, "For wives, this means submit to your husbands as to the Lord. For a husband is the head of his wife as Christ is the head of the church. He is the savior of his body, the church. As the church submits to Christ, so you wives should submit to your husbands in everything. For husbands, this means love your wives, just as Christ loved the church".
"He gave up his life for her to make her holy and clean, washed by the cleansing of God's word. He did this to present her to himself as a glorious church without a spot or wrinkle or any other blemish. Instead, she will be Holy and without fault. In the same way, husbands ought to love their wives as they love their own bodies. For a man who loves his wife actually shows love for himself. No one hates his own body but feeds and cares for it, just as Christ cares for the church. And we are members of his body". As the scriptures say, "A man leaves his father and mother and is joined to his wife, and the two are united into one. This is a great mystery, but it is an illustration of the way Christ and the church are one". There's an illustration of the way Christ and the church are related to one another and the illustration is in marriage. That we should, as married people, understand if we understand the church, we'll understand the structure of marriage.
There's some things that you read in scripture that you're, "That's tough". And this goes totally against what so many of us are taught in this culture. As a matter of fact, I've done over 140 weddings now I think, and there was one time where the wife in no uncertain terms told me I could say anything that I wanted, but I was not allowed to ever use the word...
Submit.
Oh, you already picked out that word? I mean, I read a big ole' long passage here, but somehow you keyed in on the one thing that's going to give you and your flesh the most trouble when you are following Jesus as a disciple of Jesus Christ, you are called to submit to him. Now, the beautiful thing in the church is we love to submit to Jesus. Do you know that you're going to be submitted to Jesus for all of eternity? There's never a time where you're going to be God. Oh, what a relief, huh? And you sometimes think you are, but you're not and you're never going to be. Only Lucifer, Satan wanted to be God and elevated himself to a place of being God. Even Jesus didn't consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing of no reputation. But for all of eternity, we will all agree there will be no elections. There will be no democracy. It's a total theocracy. It is Jesus Christ, Lord of all, and we all say, holy, holy, holy Lord, God almighty, and we don't think about what we are totally thrilled. I'm thrilled to be submitted to Jesus. It's people I have a problem with, right?
All authority has been given by God. If the authority that's over you not asking you to sin, you know what you need to do?
Submit.
Oh, see, you weren't as excited about saying that the second time through. Some of you are looking for a way out and God has put you under. And you're looking for a way out, but God has said, "Submit". It's the only command with the promise, honor your father and mother and it will go well with you. Why does he say honor your father and mother? Why does he put authority anywhere? I mean, we're all just equal. Why does he do that? He gives you authority that you can be under for protection and provision. So let's go through just the... I'm getting a little ahead of myself because I'm really excited about this word submit. I know you are too and I can feel it in the room. So let's go through this kind of a little bit verse by verse. Here's what it says, "Don't act thoughtlessly, but understand what the Lord wants you to do... be filled with the Holy Spirit".
I would say this, if you're married, if you're going to be married, the key to a successful marriage is a cord of three strands is not easily broken. So you have the husband, you have the wife, and you have the Holy Spirit. There's a bond of peace between all believers. And if there's not peace between believers, that means the Holy Spirit has been broken there because the Holy Spirit is the bond of peace. If you're offended at someone, if you have unforgiveness towards someone, you don't sense the spirit when you're together. When they were gathered together in one accord, the one accord was the Holy Spirit, they were in agreement with one another. So how can two people go together if there's not agreement? So you need your marriage to be filled with the Holy Spirit. Filled with the Holy Spirit. I want my home, I want my parenting, I want my life, I want my marriage to be filled with the Holy Spirit. You know what that means? Don't let the sun go down on your anger.
See, it got really unfun real quick. Because you can talk about spirit filled life, but what does the Holy Spirit require? See, we need New Testament miracles. Some people say, "We need New Testament miracles, walking on the water and raising the dead". No, the New Testament miracle is you filled with the Holy Spirit walking across the kitchen and apologizing to your wife. That's a New Testament miracle. That's bigger than walking on water, I'd rather him say, "Go out and raise the dead". I don't want him to say, "Get out of your recliner and go apologize". I'd rather, send me to the lake and let me go try to walk across, at least I could fish a little bit. I don't want to go across the kitchen and say, "I'm sorry". I'm not sorry and I wasn't wrong. Have I been in your house? Huh? Oh, you can be right, or you can be righteous. You can be right and be on the couch or you can have a bond of peace in the Holy Spirit. What do you want? Do you really want to be right? Being right's overrated. It's better to be righteous. It's better to be humble. It's better to be loving and gracious and kind and make it right, but don't let the sun go down on your anger. Have the Holy Spirit fill your marriage.
This is one of the keys to marriage, have the Holy Spirit fill your marriage. And then it goes on, bless you again, that's your limit. "Singing Psalms and hymns and spiritual songs among yourselves", isn't this a beautiful picture of a relationship and so out of step with our world? Can you imagine? We share, my wife and I, share text messages often, and a lot of times we'll share a YouTube video or a message, either something funny or a song or a worship song, can you imagine always making melody in your heart to the Lord? Can you imagine walking around... this is the goal. The Old Testament, they talked about putting the scriptures on the doorpost, and putting the scriptures on your wrist, and on your forehead, having your kids know the scriptures.
I believe scripture needs to be on the walls of your home. Scripture needs to be on the mirror in your house. Scripture needs to be in your car, the way some of you drive you need lots of scripture in there. Cincinnati people get out of the left hand lane, get a scripture in there. It's called a roundabout, not a stop-about. In Jesus' name, go into all the world but first get through the roundabout. There was a scripture in there. Oh man, your marriage needs to have scripture. There's nothing more intimate in your marriage, nothing more intimate than praying together, sharing what God has shared with you, speaking scripture, and you've talked about the issue long enough. Why don't you talk to one another about what's the Lord's saying? And then don't allow each other to go totally off on the subject, hold one another accountable to what's the Lord saying about this? And you may say, we've had this before where we say, "I don't really know what the Lord saying, but this I do know, He's working out all things together for His good because we love him and we're called according to his purpose". And that might be the one thing you say, but you're rooting your relationship on Him, filled with the Holy Spirit, and you're sharing scripture with one another.
How do you do that? See, your marriage must be infused with God's word. There's life in His word. There's hope in His word. There's victory in his word. There's strength in His word. And there's strength for you and your marriage if you'll rely on His word instead of your feelings, then what you're doing is you're increasing your faith and your trust in Him. And it's real because you're living in a real world and a real life and you've got real issues, and you really might not know what to do, then you turn to his word and you say as a Christian, what do we hear him saying? This is why I'm so thrilled to think about this morning, I know before you came to church 100% of the folks read Project 3:45. An average of three minutes and 45 seconds to read a chapter. And what you do there is you're feeding on His word, "Your word have I hidden in my heart that I might not sin against you"? How can a young man purify his way but live according to your word?
And see what a lot of times you'll get a word and it'll be, "Man, that really, that says something to me today". And then what you'll find out is that's actually there because somebody else you're going to run into needs a word for the weary that day, and you have a word for them. So put the word, get the word, into your relationship, into your marriage. And I'll be honest with you, my wife and I were together for five or six years before we knew Christ. And so, when we started to share Christian stuff, it was kind of awkward. It's funny how you could date somebody and you can talk about every other thing in the world, but as soon as you want to start talking about Jesus, it feels a little awkward. I would encourage you, if you're a young person and you're dating, and if you're never talking about the Word or the Lord or the Holy Spirit or church, that's not a right relationship. If you're not comfortable talking about the thing that's most important to you and the Savior of your life, there's an issue there that you need to resolve. You need to sit down and say, "This is the most important thing to me and we need to be able to talk about this".
The other thing the scripture says, besides being filled with the Holy Spirit, infused with the word, says "Submit to one another". So a Christian marriage is one of mutual submission. There is no lording over one another in a Christian marriage. Ever. Ever. Does the Lord Jesus lord over us in some mean way? We're happy to be led by Him. Why? Because when it comes right down to it, He straps on the apron and comes in washes feet. Now was there any doubt that there was a chain of authority in that upper room, and who was in charge and who was the leader? Who was the leader? Well, Jesus was the leader. And what was He doing? He was washing feet. Well, this is what we do as a leader, in the home you say, "You the head foot washer"? "I am indeed", means first one to sacrifice, first one to ask for forgiveness, first one to love, first one to give, first one to forgive, first one to die, first one. That's actually the call of leadership.
It's why so many of you avoid leadership like the plague because you know God given authority and God given leadership has an incredible responsibility to it. It means your first. Your first to die, first to serve first, to give first, to forgive, first to love, but we mutually submit. My wife and I have never made a major decision in our marriage that we weren't in agreement on. When it was time to come to Cincinnati it's not like I came out to my family and said, "I just changed a light bulb. I feel good. We're going on to Cincinnati". No, I didn't say that. We prayed about it, we talked about it and we agreed on this in the spirit and we came. We had teenagers, we needed some agreement. So Ephesians 5:22 it goes on it says this, "For wives", let's dig into this part, "this means submit to your husbands as to the Lord. For a husband is the head of his wife as Christ is the head of the church. As the church submits to Christ, so you wives should submit to your husbands in everything".
So speaking of submission, which this is by the way absolutely unavoidable, as soon as we talk about submitting to one another, it goes further and now it's going to tell the role of the husband and the role of the wife. And this is where it gets dicey. You just really, as a pastor, you just kind of want to skip over that and just kind of go to the end of the chapter. But we can't avoid that God has a structure here that He's talking about. He has a structure and a design that He's talking about. What we have to remember is that when we hear the word submit or we hear the word authority, we immediately think in earthly terms. We've all experienced bad authority and we've all experienced a pain maybe from people who have led us poorly. But as we think about Jesus, and this is why Paul ties it into the church, in the same way that the church is happy to be led by Christ, so a godly woman is happy to be led by a godly man.
We have to remember that godly authority is for provision and protection, not power. It is one of cherishing and not domineering. It's an upside down kingdom where we think, "Oh, if you're in a place of authority, that means you have power. That means you can tell people", no, that's not God's view of authority. God's view of authority is the one who is the servant of all, but yet still the head. We're not upset as a church that Jesus Christ is the head of His church. We're happy to have Christ as the head of the church. And so, in the same way Paul's drawn this comparison, so the man is the head of his home. But if you are a man and you've ever said this in your house, "I'm the head of this house", that proves that you've already lost, because you're reverting to power instead of leading by love. And wish I would say, "Go ahead and use that statement all you want, and see how that works with your wife". Anybody who's been married about more than five minutes understands that's not what God means when He's talking about being the head of your home.
I had an experience this past a couple of weeks. I asked my daughter, Peyton if I could share this, she's 19 and she goes to Miami, Oxford, she studies music. And so, we were having these conversations, I won't go into the details, but it had to do with a father who has wisdom and has authority and the ability to see things that, if you can imagine a 19 year old might not be able to see. And without going into detail, we were not in complete agreement, my daughter and I, and she had one a way that she wanted to go and I had a way that she wanted to go that she didn't want to go. I mean, is this diplomatic or what? Well, we talked about it. Stephanie and I were praying about it. We're having conversations about it. And I'd come to a place where I just said, "Hey, this is the way, walk you in it. And this is the way it really needs to be and I need you to pray about this and see if you can agree with this".
And I know that she's 19 so she doesn't have to submit to that. It was time to watch football so I went upstairs to watch football. And at that time I didn't know until later that my wife then came over to my daughter Peyton and said, "Peyton, you need to trust your dad. You need to submit to his leadership. He's never steered you wrong and you need to trust his wisdom". Now to me that is a beautiful picture of a family working together. Now what was cool is she called me this past week and we were talking again about this issue, I was seeing where she's at. And you know as a parent how you can gauge when there's a softening in the heart. And there was an abyss, there was just this yielded-ness to say, "This is going to be painful. I don't want to do it. I still don't want to do what you're saying, but I'm going to trust you and I'm going to yield and I'm going to do what you want". And when she was... I said, "I just feel that you're just really tender in this area".
And I'm standing there in my office and I'm talking and I start to cry because I'm a cry baby and I cry. And she said, "Dad, are you crying"? And I said, "Yeah, I'm crying", then she started to cry. It was a mess. It was a mess. I said, "I'm just so thankful that your desire is just to honor me". Because see, even as a person in authority, I could be wrong, but do you know God will honor her as she submits to me even if I'm wrong, but God will not honor rebellion just because you think the authority in your life is wrong. I have a word for you, as you're working as a Christian right now, you have a boss, you have somebody that's over you, they're not asking you to sin. Submit, it's godly. And here's what God sees, God doesn't see the authority that's over you. God sees the authority that's over your authority, which is God. And when God sees the authority that's over your authority, you're not honoring just the authority that he has in your life. You're actually honoring God.
And this is one of the most challenging tests of your Christian life is, can you submit to godly authority? Can you, as students, as children when you're living at home, can you look at your parents and say, "I am going to honor you, even though I disagree with you. You're not asking me to sin, so I'm just going to honor you". And in that God gives you a promise that you'll have long life. It's the only commandment that has a promise affiliated with it. You're honoring His way of doing things. In marriage it should be, no surprise that God has a structure and a way that He's saying, "This is the way that this should be done". In your sex life, God has a way that this should or shouldn't be done. He knows what He's talking about and we should trust Him in that.
Ephesians 5:25 goes on and says this, "For husbands, this means love your wives just as Christ loved the church. He gave up his life for her". This is killer statement right here, "In the same way, husbands ought to love their wives as they love their own bodies". What a love this would be, and I know every woman is saying, "I hope my husband heard that part". And every husband is saying, "I hope she heard that previous part", and the way it goes in a Christian marriage is I go and pray for my wife and God changes me. She's in the other room praying for me, and God's changing her. God is not interested in the person you're praying for, He's interested in the person that is praying. He's interested in you and your submission, your mutual submission, and the part that you play. As long as you worry about what the other person's doing, you just take all the focus off what God has you doing. Isn't Christianity fun? Isn't it wonderful?
Ephesians 5:32 says this, "This is a great mystery". You think? "But it is an illustration of the way Christ and the church are one". So Paul concludes this argument and says, basically our marriage is our first ministry and our greatest testimony. Our marriage is our first ministry, and our greatest testimony. The first place you get to live out your Christian faith to see Christ formed in you is in your marriage. I've met with men who thought they were phenomenal men of God. I've met with people who thought they were phenomenal men of God. It will be proven in your marriage because that's the first place your Christianity is tested men. Second places with your kids. So if you're single and you think you're a great Christian, just get married and God will test it. The problem in your marriage is your discipleship. You're surrenderness to Jesus, as is the problem in all of your areas of life.
You can be single and say, "Man, I have these issues", it's always a discipleship issue. Am I going to surrender to the Lord? And the beautiful thing about surrendering to the Lord and living for Him is that then you get to live with the fruit of the spirit. Think about this, what if you had more love, more peace, more joy, more patience, more kindness, more goodness, more gentleness. You think you'd be a better wife? You think you'd be a better husband? Absolutely. So when we serve Christ as a disciple of His, He'll make us like Him, which is what we want from the very beginning. And in that we'll be better at being sons, at being daughters, and being husbands and fathers, and moms and wives, and single people complete in our singleness.
Would you stand with me? We're going to pray before we go today. You did good. You made it through a really tough passage and I'm proud of you. You can talk about me on the way home. I don't care if you talk, just keep going through those circles, you know what I'm saying? If you're a guest or visitor here today, the way we like to close every service is to give you an opportunity to give your life to Jesus. And what I'm going to ask you to do today is we say, I like to call it the yes prayer, and we pray a prayer where we're just saying, "Yes", to Jesus. And I need to say yes to Jesus every single day. So I like to use this prayer anyway, but maybe you're here today and you're here with your wife or husband and it'd be a good time just to take their hand and during this prayer as we're praying this, maybe it's just a chance for you to say, "Yes", to what the Lord wants in your marriage. Yes to your future together. Yes to hope. Yes to what he's doing.
So if you're willing, would you bow your heads with me and we'll pray this prayer together. Would you pray? Dear God.
I know mankind needs a Savior.
I know I can't save myself.
Jesus, I believe you're the son of God.
I believe you died on the cross for my sins.
And God raised you from the dead.
Right now.
I confess you.
As my Lord and Savior.
As the one who forgives me.
And restores me.
Thank you Jesus.
My past is forgiven.
I have a relationship with you.
I'm a new creation in Christ.
Because I've said, "Yes", to you.
So father, we're thankful today for all those who prayed that yes prayer and we prayed as well. We say, "Yes", to you. Yes to your will. Yes to your ways. We want to know how to live. So we ask you to fill us fresh and new with your Holy Spirit. Help us to ground our marriages, and our lives, and our families, in your word, Lord God. Help us to live in a way, in a manner, pleasing to you, submitting mutually to one another, loving one another well in the same way that you love us. God, I pray for your people as they go today, that their homes would be filled with your Holy Spirit. There would be life, there would be joy, and there would be new levels of peace and hope where hope is needed. I pray in Jesus name. Amen.
God bless you. Have a great day.