prayer this evening that you would just come into this place God open up our hearts and minds God to which he would have us learn about God speak through will and we show this evening as we learn about the connection that you have to marriage into different types of relationship goals God I pray that we would each get something out of it and grow closer to you your name I pray Amen. I want to study. Are you sure that's your? I would be like to explain that you don't want to protect it so I thought we needed to happen and so I'm really excited about this all about talking.
Well welcome. We're so glad that you guys are all here. Sorry we're getting situated. I know.
But I'm definitely blessed to be sitting alongside my wife. For those that don't know this is my wife Alicia. We have been married for two and a half years so this sermon will definitely be like we know everything about marriage so be in song just kidding we really don't we're still learning through the process but before we jump in I just want to take this time just to pray and just so that God presents and it's his words that are being spoken instead of mind and Alicia so just speak through me and speak through my wife as we just speak on what a godly marriage looks like and how we are called to have a godly marriage that is radically different than marriages of this world that reflect you and your character and reflect the gospel to this world and in your name you pray Amen. So there is a story of a man who died in went to heaven and when he got there he sees two different signs and one of the signs says this is for all the men who have been controlled by their wives stand here.
So he sees this long line of men it seems to be going through the heavens and out to infinity and then there's another sign that says for all the men who have not been controlled by their lives stand here and there's one guy there so the man goes over the man that just died goes over to the guy and he grabs me and he says how did you get here like what's your secret you're the only guy here and there are millions of other men over there and the guy looks around and he looks really puzzled and he's like you know I don't know how I got here my wife just told me to stand here. And it's a funny joke because sadly we've seen this reality play out in so many marriages throughout our culture and through our society and we're talking about relationship goals. We're in the second week of relationship goals last week we talked on the goals of being a friend a godly friend and we saw the three different characters that Pastor John talked on on being a godly friend depending on the situation that was needed. And this week we know that marriage is something sacred to God.
He created it and it was something that he holds dear to his heart and so as we walk through this series and this I'm talking to this sermon tonight I'm sorry. We're going to look and to see what it looks like to have that godly marriage and how we can use our marriage not only to reflect the character of God to each other as a husband and wife but also reflect the character of God through how we love each other and how we interact with each other to the world that then allows them to see the gospel through our marriage. But first before we even try and deduce the God's vision of marriage and how we're called to live that godly marriage we first got to look at how the world sees marriage and what they see it as and how they perceive it and so my life has an amazing definition for this. Well Webster does.
So Webster defines marriage as the state of being united as spouses in a consensual and contractual relationship recognized by the law. So Will is going to talk tonight about the responsibilities of the husband that the Bible gives and I'll be speaking on what the responsibilities of the wife in a marriage that the Bible gives. And then at the end we're going to talk about how they come together and they compliment each other and how it becomes really just one instead of two separate people. So as Will talks about his points just keep in mind that if your husband leads and if he loves and serves you the way that he's supposed to and that God has called you to then as wives we will want to reciprocate that and we will want to voluntarily do our responsibilities that God has given to us.
Yeah and Alicia talked about this point of unity and our last point was going to be on on on oneness and we see the word in Webster's definition that it said unity but unity and oneness sound very similar but the reality is that unity is just two people coming together for a common goal whereas oneness is they're coming together two different people coming together to becoming one and complimenting each other in that and even though I the husband will have different responsibilities than my wife even though it's different we're still equal there's not any difference between that because just because we have different responsibilities does not mean we're equal and we'll go into that as we go. But before we jump in let me just read the text that we're going to be studying from tonight and if you don't have a Bible it's going to be up here on the screen but it's Ephesians 5 if you want to do the flip and find you can just remember General Electric Power Company Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians to the New Testament so it's mine says it's on page 975 so I don't know what it is in your Bible but Ephesians 5 verses 22 to 33 verse 22 says wife submit to your husband's as to the Lord for the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is head of the church his body of which he is the Savior now as the church submits the Christ so also wives submit to their husbands in everything verse 25 husbands love your wives just as Christ love the church and gave himself up for her to make her holy cleansing her by washing with water through the word and to present her to himself as a radiant church without staying 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 his own body but he feeds and cares for it just as Christ does the church for we are members of his body first everyone for this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife and the two will become one flesh this is a profound mystery but I am talking about Christ in the church however each one of you must also love his wife as he loves himself and the wife must respect her husband and so you see from these passages you begin to start to get a glimpse of the different responsibilities that God has placed on the husband and that God has placed on the wife and as we go through I will be talking from the husband side of you because I don't really know the wife side but as we follow as husband as we follow the example of Christ we are placed with the humbling responsibility to first lead our wives second to die for our wives and third to serve our wives and so this first point tonight our first responsibility which basically all our responsibilities as husbands stem from and so when you are able as a husband and as a man to get this down everything else just naturally will flow out of it and our first main responsibility as a husband is to be a spiritual leader what does that mean you might hear it said often like oh you got to be the spiritual leader you're the spiritual head of the household but what does that mean you look at the life of Christ and look at what he did and how he led the church he did it in a profound way you know he did everything he laid his life down for them and so just like Christ did for the church and how he led that church and didn't do it in a way that was dominating wasn't pictorial he didn't know that was loving and serving we are called to love and lead our wives in that same way you know it said God placed the ultimate responsibility with respect to the household on the shoulders of the husband and so that's a lot of responsibility that falls on us because you look in verses let's see 23 says for the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is head of the church this head does not mean male dominance where a man is Lord of our woman and demands her complete and total obedience to his every wish and command God never viewed women as second-class citizens his word clearly states that we are all equal all equally his children in Galatians 3 28 it says there is neither Jew nor Greek male nor female we are all one in Christ Jesus and what is that is saying is that God doesn't see us any differently we're equal but again like we said earlier like we have those different responsibilities but Paul is also saying that God is placed the husband in this position of responsibility that it doesn't matter what kind of personality that you may have you may be a naturally born leader it might be easy for you to be a leader or you might have a personality where it may not be easy for you to lead but we are still called to be that that leader in the house you know I you might even might be facing someone your wife might be resisting you she might be fighting you might be sturpering your attempts to lead but you still got to push through and I hold hard we both believe that our wives need us to lead they want us to be leading in this relationship and it's not again it's not a demanding position God placed us there so and no we're not going to lead her perfectly trust me I don't lead Alicia perfectly there are many times I will fail and and she rightfully lets me know in a great way that that honors me and helps me know hey you're not doing this right you're not doing responsibility right and so she's helping me become a better spiritual leader of our household but I want you to know because I also know that there's people here that aren't married and you're single and you're like okay but how does this apply to me by being single the great question being a spiritual leader does not start when you're married it starts beforehand it starts with spiritually leading yourself and what that means is that you're spending time in your word you're spending time in communion with God you're spending time praying you're spending time worshiping you're a part of a local body of Christ you're serving alongside them whether in the church or outside the walls of church when they're doing something in community you're a member of that church so that's what it looks like to be doing it as you're single as you're preparing for marriage because there's going to be a time and everyone knows that that sometimes the experiences you go through those help you later on in life and so when you're able to build on this foundation of spiritual leading yourself well when you get married it's going to be even more so and so I want you to think about this what does the word leadership mean when you think of leadership what do you think of you think of someone that's in control you think someone that's has the ability to make decisions but what else does it mean it means influence you have the influence over them so as a husband as a spiritual leader I'm called my primary role is to lead spiritually and that means by bidding a biblically based husband I should influence my family and my wife in accordance with biblical teaching and that I should exemplify with my voice and my actions the attributes that bring glory to God and that value my wife and my family and that the fruit of a good biblically based husband is a strong confident and spiritually mature wife and family that's a lot that's a lot that we are called to do but as we have the spiritual leadership and we live it out well you know I think back to when I worked it I worked at Kids Across America and we had we had men's discipleship with between all the men's counselors and our men's staff leadership here and I remember our camp director he would always say you guys have two options as being men you have an option to be a thermometer or to be a thermostat and we have the two pictures here a thermometer what to do it just reflects the temperature that's in a room a thermostat it sets the temperature so as men and even more so as husbands we have two choices we can reflect the temperature we can reflect the norm of society in marriage or we can be a thermostat and we can set the temperature we can set the tone by our example and we can be the ones through how we are leading ourselves spiritually we can set that for my wife and I can set that eventually when we have kids I'll be setting it for our kids and so we see that Christ exemplified the spiritual leadership over the church again he wasn't a dic-tarial he set the tone but he did it in love he led it through the point of death and as we properly leave our leader lives these next two responsibilities are just going to flow straight out of it and the first one is like Christ and like what Christ did on the cross and it's loving to the point of death and that's our second point that's our second responsibility is love to the point of death you know sometimes you've heard it said and I know this was the first marriage advice I was ever given from a couple actually like two or three couples that when we worked at Chick-fil-A they were elder couples and this was the advice they gave me they said well remember happy wife happy life and they also said just say yes to everything she's always gonna be right just say yes you're like okay like whatever like okay you guys have been married for else I guess I'll take it but as I think about it I realize like it's okay advice but the what it's trying to portray is so much more powerful you see those important values in those statements they're helping us understand that in leadership comes compromise all great leaders had to look at what they want versus what is best for those that they're leading and usually the leaders that make history they're not losing sight of who they are or their identity without neglecting the needs of those that they're leading and so as even though I say happy wife happy life and say yes dear to everything that is true like I'm not trying to appease her but I'm also trying to understand that there are bigger things at play than making sure that I'm 100% right and that I'm always right and she's wrong or I win the argument and she doesn't that's not what we're trying to do but as we follow this example of Christ we look at his leadership how did he lead he led as a shepherd and so for as a shepherd he did what he could to ensure that his disciples were brought to the pastors so they could grow and flourish even if it meant that his life was in danger you know you look at the story of the woman at the well and where did he go he went to some to a place that no one else would go it was a place that put himself in danger but he did it so that he could disciple not only the woman at the well but he could also disciple his disciples and so we see that Christ expressed that the love for his bride by taking upon himself this brutal death and putting himself in danger and understanding that sometimes he had to there were bigger things at stake and so we are called to do this thing at this same thing so sometimes we're gonna have to be the ones that are gonna have to dive on the sword per se so you're probably thinking okay what does this look like we're still learning this so I'll just give you a few examples maybe sometimes you're gonna have to give up your own time maybe you're gonna have to give up watching the football game you're gonna have to give up playing video games because your wife is overloaded with a ton of stuff and needs help that's dying to yourself maybe you have to die to yourself early in the morning when your child is screaming and yelling and your wife is starting to get up and you're like no so I got this because you know she's been kicking butt and so you want to let her sleep in more because you know how much exhausted she's been from taking care of the kids or maybe it's even spiritually or emotion like how what are you gonna do you just have to make sure that you're not putting your needs before hers um friends and again you ask like okay I'm not married but how do I do this look at your relationship with Christ what are you supposed to be doing you're supposed to be putting to death your own fleshly desires for the desires of God and so again just like earlier when we talked about being a spiritual leader for yourself before you became married now you have to ensure that you're doing you're putting to death yourself for Christ and so I'm gonna do the same thing for my wife um and so one of the best ways to do that is constantly to affirm her let her know that you verbally verbalize how much you love her you value her and you respect her and I've discovered that I can't simply do this enough and it's interesting to see when you put yourself in a position where you're able to love her by putting to death yourself you begin to see some amazing things happen because let me ask you this question have you ever thought about why Eve was taken out of Adam's rib have you ever thought about you guys can answer have you thought about that or is it just kind of like I'm not sure why well I think Matthew Henry who's a theologian from hundred two years ago pretty old guy I think he puts it the best way he says it shows a beautiful picture of the relationship between us to God because it she came from his not from Adam's feet to be walked over or his head to be superior over Adam but rather from his side to be equal under Adam's arm to be protected and close to his heart that she may be no love because we were able to see our wife in that way that yes we have different responsibilities she is still my equal thus as we understand our wife is in the same race that we are it allows us to properly lead her not as someone who is inferior but someone who is pushing me to become better in doing that I'm able to love her in the way that Christ loved the church for his leadership reflected that and as I follow that example of Christ I'm not only loving her to the point of death but I'm also loving her the same way that Christ also did by serving her and that's our last one our last responsibility of husband is to serve my wife through serving my wife it shows value and the respect I have towards her we look go ahead and put up verses again versus 26 it says right here to make her holy cleansing her by the washing by washing her through the word how different is that than what Christ did to his disciples by washing the feet their feet it's not okay maybe the only difference is that they actually got washed by like the true living water they got washed by Jesus so it's a little bit different but we're still to do that we're still to serve her the same way Christ did if Christ came to serve his disciples then why am I as the husband not supposed to serve my wife and so one of the best ways that I can serve my wife is to understand her needs and to try and meet them let me ask you do you know what your wife's top three needs are do you know what her hopes and her dreams are do you know what she's worried about right now do you know what she's nervous with how can you help her overcome those how can you help deal with those pressures and that's a way we can serve her because being us because serving her doesn't mean that she can't do it by herself she can easily do it by herself but serving her lets her know that I love her and I value her and I want to help her and I want to help her and push her and challenge her to become even more of the person that God has created her to be and even more so help her to cultivate the responsibilities that she has because as a shepherd as we follow Christ example as a shepherd let me just give you this picture of what a shepherd is and please hear me I'm not saying that our wives are like sheep please I don't want you to go home and go he literally said my wives are like sheeps but as a shepherd what do shepherds do they first they lead to greener pastors they don't be they don't abuse they don't neglect they don't use violence to lead the sheep they use their voice they use their actions they use love and so in doing so the sheep follow the shepherd's voice wherever they need to go second the shepherd loves them even when he doesn't want to be out there sheep are stinky they're messy they're a pain in the butt to deal with sometimes but he still goes out even when he wants to be at home sleeping because he knows that if he's not out there they're not going to be protected they're going to be lost and they're going to have no idea where to go and lastly he serves this sheep she tends them he feeds them he makes sure that they're healthy he helps them grow he helps them become in lack of a better way better sheep because he's bringing them from a pasture that is empty that is void of anything nutritional to pastures that are greener that will help them grow in nutrition so that they're that wool yeah their wool is wider and fluffier and can be used for whatever is necessary and so in doing so just as we are husband we're called to be like that shepherd that's what we're called to do and so we can also help our wives by cultivating her responsibility because just like I have my responsibility as a husband to do certain things in the marriage God has placed amazing things on the wives to be responsible for in the marriage too and so sweetheart you're up all right so let's go through this so the first responsibility that we're going to look at we're going to go back to creation so in genesis it talks about how and why women were created in fact the bible is the only ancient text from Middle East that even offers the commentary of why women were created so when other people said it's not important and it doesn't matter God said no they're my beautiful creation and how and why they were put on his earth has a purpose and a meaning and so I mean one of that is just like what we was talking about with the rib and why God chose a rib instead of any other body part so before woman was created though God had already stated a responsibility for her so in genesis 218 it says the Lord God said it is not good for the man to be alone I will make a helper suitable for him so therefore we're given our first responsibility which is to help for one the Lord knew that men would need it so let's make the verse down some though so the first thing he says is not good for man to be alone so God made us companions for men even though Adam had all of these animals around him they could not relate to him the way that he would need to be related to and they could also well and then so let's go to the second part of the verse then God says I will make a helper suitable for him so again these animals were they would be able to help Adam to a certain point they could help feed him as far as they were the food um and they could also help with you know carrying things or pushing things that he needed done um but God said that's not the kind of help you need so God was looking for more of a spiritual help and not so much the physical help so being a helper to your husband it does not mean that you are beneath him instead the ultimate purpose of being a helper is to further the kingdom of God and hopefully to help him with getting more followers of Christ for example right now will overlook family ministries and part of that is students which we consider middle school and high school students and I meet with Amani on a weekly basis and we do a bible study and we just hang out and we have fun and we talk about life and boys and it's a great time I love hanging out with her um she would not be able to get that quality time if I did not help Will because Will has never been a teenage girl and he cannot relate to her the way that I can so if I did not help him there would be a whole other side so particularly girls that he would not be able to reach and just like I cannot reach boys the same way that he would be able to so that's the main way that we can be a help to our husbands is in the ministry and then another way that I help Will is with my words so I try to be an encouragement as much as I can um when he is feeling drained emotionally and mentally and physically I try to come alongside him and lift him up and give him encouraging words um you know when Satan attacks him with lies to try and remind him of God's truth and what the word says um I try to leave notes around different places for him to find to hopefully lift his spirits up for the day and make his day brighter and that is just something that Will needs right now is life and that's the best way that I'm able to help him right now so being a helper though to your husband it's going to look different for every marriage because we're all in various circumstances and different situations and we go through seasons and life so my help to him will not always look the same just as yours but not always look the same to your husband so maybe your husband is a student right now and the best way that you can help him is to be a study partner or go over capers before he submits it maybe your husband has a really stressful job right now and the best way for you to help him is to make sure he comes home to a clean house and dinner on the table because he just left a super stressful situation and now he gets to come home and relax and be in a calm situation and be able to spend time with you and give quality time so like I said it'll look different throughout time the most important thing is that you're always looking for ways to help and you're willing and if you're not sure what your husband needs it's okay to ask him and he'll probably actually really appreciate it every once in a while I have to ask well what are one or two ways I can help you this week what will help you and he really appreciates it so your goal and marriage should be to be a helper both physically and spiritually um this next responsibility that wives have is a word you hear often and it's in songs and everybody wants it it's a little uh re-s-b-e-c-t-funked out like means to me will add images so I had to sing I had to do something but I'll stop the song there if you guys want to hear more though I'm available after service to sing to you all right so let's look at Ephesians 533 we're going to go back to the original text that will was reading it says however each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself and the wife must respect her husband again if your husband is loving you the way that God has called him to love you you will want to respect him this is something that um naturally you'll want to do so what does respect look like to your husband there are lots of different ways to respect him I think that one of the biggest ways is to make sure that we are praising him in public and criticizing in private and this is something really that's good to remember for anyone because nobody likes to be embarrassed um but especially for your husband so I know that um I have heard both unbelievers and believers completely just bash their husbands in front of either myself or other people and I mean the words that they say it just really like tears their husbands down it's not pretty it's not nice um and so remember we just talked about being a helper to our husbands we can't help him if we're not respecting him and so I know that we love to talk to our best friends and love to talk to our sisters and our parents and we like to tell them what's going on in our life and everything the one thing that you should not talk to them about is your husband's and the mistakes that he makes or the things that make you mad you just don't need to do that um it's really easy naturally your parents are going to be biased because they love you and they want to protect you um and so saying these things to them it it can give them a bad perception and then they can also think differently of your husband or your student to be husband and then it can start tearing relationships apart and that's not what you intended that's not what you wanted so it can really like lead down a path that you never wanted to go to so if there is something that's bothering you about your husband something's going on you need to take it to god first um talk to him about it pray about it read the word on it and then take it to your husband but in the right manner make sure that you're doing it because you want him to grow and because you care about him not because you just want to throw it in your face or throw it in his face um and try to make yourself feel better about it but make sure that you're coming from it with care and with a good heart um and if you need to you can also seek out you know Christian counseling go to your pastor and his wife and talk to it but you're like inner circle of people your friends and your parents they don't need to know about all that stuff you need to be praising your husband in front of them um my mom adores will she loves a little some action i i really try not to ever speak anything bad or ill about him or what's going on in our marriage at the time um so some other ways though if you're looking at how to respect your husband you can honor him you can admire his wisdom and his character um you can consider his needs and his values and listening to him and valuing his opinion so your goal in marriage should be to respect your husband by praising him in private or praising him in public and criticizing him in private or doing and probably doing all these other things as well so our last responsibility that we're going to look at is also any fusions five 22 through 24 which will read it says wives to submit to your submit yourself 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 a savior now is the church submits to Christ so also wives should submit to their husbands and everything so i think we all know what the responsibility is here and that's to submit um this word typically gets a bad rap a lot of people associate it with being inferior or weak or losing um etc so this verse along with many others in the bible that talks about wives submitting is misinterpreted often and it should never be interpreted that it implies that it's okay that the husband abuses or rules in a dictator way over his family um that's not how it's supposed to be it also should not imply that women are to lose their identity um or become inferior so you know just say a few things about submission hopefully it'll help you guys and clear it up a little bit if you believe that god is good and you believe that that the bible is true then you know that what is stated in the text is for our own good and it's out of love god originated marriage and so he knows what's best and he knows what the wife should be doing what the husband should be doing and so submission is not supposed to be a bad thing for us it's for our own good and then also submission is not just for the wife submission really is for everybody so it talks about um how the church submits to christ so that's all christians that's all believers and that's not a degrading thing honestly it is to our glory that we get to submit to god because we know that by obeying him and by submitting he has good things for us and he loves us and he wants those things for us and so by doing that we are able to be blessed we're able to have life change happen to us and sometimes other people around us and then we know that our husbands are to submit also to god because what we'll just talk about all of that that stems from submitting to god and leading and serving and loving the way that he is so really the only one that gets out of submission is god which is great because he is god and he doesn't need to submit to anyone but everybody else we are supposed to submit it's just sometimes it looks a little bit differently or to different people um submitting to your husband looks a lot like the trinity so the trinity you have the father which is god and then you have the son which is jesus and throughout the new testament you will see how much jesus submits to god because he relies on him to do miracles he prays to him he relies on him to sustain him and then he does the ultimate submission and he is obedient and he goes and he dies on the cross for us when none of us deserve it and we still don't deserve it but he gave the ultimate submission so if christ did that how much more should we um and then you have the holy spirit which is the third part of the trinity and that's the midst of both of them so they all have their own parts but they're all fully equal and fully duty so likewise in a marriage the husband and wife are both equal but the wife's responsibility is to submit to her husband's loving insensitive leadership um and to obey him this is something that should be voluntarily like i said um you should want to submit to your husband if he's leading the way that god has called him to lead and he's loving your family the way that he has called him to um your husband should have you and your family's best interests in mind and if he's doing this and he is obeying god and what god has asked him to do then submitting is something that you should want to do so your goal in marriage should be to voluntarily submit to your husband's leadership and guidance so all of these responsibilities of a wife promote oneness um so now we're going to look back on the worldly definition of marriage so that definition says the state of being united as spouses in a consensual and contractual relationship recognized by the law and now we're going to take a look at god's definition of marriage which is an intimate and complimenting union between a man and a woman in which the two become one physically in the whole life so its main focus is that the man and the woman compliment each other and that the two become one and there are physical ways to become one such as joining big accounts and mind becomes ours um saying faithful to one another sharing a home together um but there's so much more than just the physical things so how do we become one spiritually? Some of the spiritual side of things because it looks very similar to joining of the physical things you think when you get into a marriage you have your own relationship with god and my wife has her own relationship with god but now because we've become one we now have a joined relationship with god we both have a one relationship with god so just like we are called to join that really to build our relationship with god we now have to cultivate that relationship so we have to spend time together praying daily we have to spend time studying god's word together daily we have to spend time we're shipping god daily we come to church and serve together as a family unit we serve together we worship together we do these things together but also it comes to when you go through life decision for instance when we moved up here um and basically upended everything and like we alisha had an amazing job and amazing opportunities ahead of her and um for her to leave those things it took a lot but it wasn't me just going to god and praying about it and her just going to god and praying about it but we went together as a family and sought god's wisdom and guidance out on this decision we went together for this life decision of like okay god what do you want us to do not what do you want my husband to do what do you want my wife to do it's we're going together and we're we're going together as a collective and it may and it looks different whatever that situation is but no matter what you're going together if you have to seek some of godly guidance you're going together you're not doing it separately sorry my voice crack um but that's the biggest thing about being one because as i'm as i'm able to lead as i spiritually lead properly and i'm able and i love my wife properly and i love her to the point of death like christate and i serve her like christ serve the church it allows her and it cultivates her ability to be able to respect my leadership and my loving her and my serving her it allows her to um to um to submit to my leadership voluntarily because it's because of how i'm needing because i'm following god's example she's not even though she is submitting to me she's truly just submitting to god because i'm just exemplifying god's leadership and god's character to her and so as we come together as this one of this husband and the wife as paul says here in in effigence but also in it says in in genesis that you know this is now boning my bone slash in my flesh she will be called woman for she was taken this is why a man leaves his father and mother and is united to his wife and they become one flash so as we take all of this to say that as we take these different responsibilities and we basically come together almost like a like a is it a braided rope a twined rope of course the time i can't figure out what this what it is when i got called a voice hound earlier i can't remember the name but basically a rope that we've together where you can't if you separate it destroys it and it's unrecognizable it's the same thing between us because of our responsibilities being joined together and we're helping cultivate each other and helping challenge each other as we grow in these responsibilities if you destroy that you destroy something that god has made amazing and his work has been a part of it and so as we close and as karly comes back up and we go into the time of reflection we're probably you're going to be in two probably two different times of life you could be newly married married for three years you could be married for fifteen years you could be married for fifty years but as we take this time to i just want to ask you to just reflect on how you can um become a better husband become a better wife how we can follow these responsibilities that god has placed before us and how we can live these out in our daily life to our wives and to our husbands and if you're not married if you're single take this time to obviously talk to god that he's cultivating these responsibilities in your life but also if you're dating someone maybe you just have to sit there and go god like may this person be living out these responsibilities in life may it be someone that you that is following your example that is submitting to you that is loving you that is serving you that is honoring you and respecting you because i just as Alicia said we are all called to do these things in our life to god and so no matter what we're all going to have to be doing it but also may he just be able to cultivate this in in your own life and so i just pray that as we do this time of reflection that we can all just reflect on that and just seek out on that and so go ahead we're gonna play really quick um god thank you for your love thank you god for your creation and for including us in it they thank you for creating marriage would i pray that you would that we would be the husbands and the wives that you called us to be it's the Lord that we would um carry out the responsibilities that you've given us and god i pray for those of us who are not yet husbands and wives that you would just prepare their hearts Lord and their spirits for when the time comes god we thank you for all that you do we thank you for your love and your mercy and we love you in Jesus' name human