Well, hey, my name is Keith. I'm lead pastor here at Resonate Church, and I'm excited to see you guys.
Real quick, how many of you guys were at the Summer Movie Series out in the park? It's all frozen.
Right, Shannon? Awesome. That's really cool. Yeah, it's exciting to see all that happening, exciting
to see some of the stuff that we have as resources for Resonate getting to be used through Bless Our
Community, but we're excited about you being here. We're excited about tonight. We're excited about
this new series, Blueprints for a Thriving Family, this home builder series that we're going to be
engaging in. And so we're going to be kind of walking through for the next five weeks, exploring
what it looks like for the Bible to speak into our marriages, into our families, into our parenting,
stuff like that, trying to really make it applicable to us. And so this is going to be hopefully fun
for us to be able to get into this, and it gets really real for us. And it gets so real sometimes
that I think that when we are in this setting, and for those of you who are here with a spouse,
oftentimes things can be said and you really resonate, so to speak, with those things
on behalf of your spouse, right? So I really want to clarify some stuff. We want to get to have
some ground rules for the rest of this series. So I'm going to introduce the ground rules for
this series and let us know some of the rules that we can abide by to make this really land
and really make an impact. So first of all, we're going to be up on the screen here. Really,
only one elbow, only one of these per evening, okay? So if you're here with your spouse, there's
only one time that you can kind of do this and kind of let them know that you think that they
should pay attention, right? One of those. Use it strategically, right? Know writing down what
your spouse needs to hear, right? So in the margins, you know, you're taking capitious notes
for them, right? None of that. And no, did you hear that, whispers? Or are you listening,
whispers? And so just letting us know what the ground rules are. I thought they were funny,
but anyway, you might be here and not all of us are married. And so if you're here and you're
single, I still think that this is worth your time in engaging this topic. In fact, it could be
very strategic for you. If you have a conversation and, you know, he just kind of begins to figure
out, do we have the connection? You can always bring up, hey, I've already been through the
blueprints for a thriving family, right? And so I have that information. But I think that, you know,
wherever you're at, if this is a place where you're married, it is very applicable to you or
you're not married yet, I think this is something that's going to give you a heads up. This is
going to give you a starting place. This is going to give you an opportunity to kind of know what
you're getting into and really what we're getting into, what we're going to explore, are things
that are crucial to even put a lens towards you exploring how you fall in love and what does that
look like and how are the steps and how do you begin on the right foot? And so I think this is
really applicable for you if you're single here tonight as well. You know, I think that we have
to be sensitive when we talk about this because we're really all over the place as a church. And
there's some of you here who maybe you think, man, I'm killing it, you know, in terms of
marriage, I mean that and doing well kind of thing. But this is really happening. This is
really going well. We're doing great. And this will just be extra additional stuff. Some of you
are on life support, so to speak, when it comes with your marriage. You're struggling. There's
some pain. There's some confusion. There's stuff that is, it's stuff that you're trying to figure
out and you're here and you're just like, give me something. I need anything. For some of you,
you have had marriages that have dissolved and there's a pain there too. And you currently arrive
here and this is kind of an interesting place for you too because you've had the pain of having a
marriage that is dissolved. And so I know that we're all over the place on this. I still think
it's worth us exploring this and allowing this to kind of land wherever we're at. And I just want
you guys to know that we know that we're dealing with a very broad audience and a narrow topic in
this. And so I hope that the Holy Spirit begins to work in all of our hearts and that none of us
check out just because we're not in the specific place. Because the Bible I think has something
especially tonight to say to all of us. But when we begin to think about this, one of the things
that we wanted to speak to that really we've never spoken to, we've talked about falling in love.
We've talked about dating. But really this idea of what does it take to stay in love? And there's
a movie that's called Juno. And then this movie Juno, there's a girl in Alaska who is trying to
figure out a dilemma in her life. And she has gotten pregnant and she is not married and she's
trying to figure out what to do with the baby. And she's kind of processing all of this and she
goes to the family planning place, the abortion clinic and she says that's not really what she
wants to do. Ultimately she decides that she wants to give the baby up for adoption and begins the
process of finding out who she could give her baby to. And at first it seems like it's going great.
And then she finds the couple that she wants to give her baby to. They start to have some
conflict and it doesn't seem like it's going to be the perfect solution that she had hoped for.
And there's this moment in the movie and I think that the thing that she's dealing with and she
begins to dialogue with her dad about this dilemma and really the dilemma of staying in love.
And she says this, she kind of phrases this incredible question in a couple of different
ways. She's talking to her dad in this moment and she says this. She says, I guess I wonder sometimes
if people ever stay together for good, like people in love. And then she kind of rephrases it and
says the same thing. Dad, I just need to know if it's possible for two people to stay happy together
forever. And I think this question of what does it take, is it possible for two people to stay
happy together forever? In the context, in the landscape of marriage in our world,
is a question that is a really good question to ask. And for us, I really think that this is the
truth that somehow even in the marriage carnage that we see around us, you know, even in all of
this, you think that it just might be possible. I think for most of us, we think I think I could
stay happy together forever. I think that that's a possibility in the world. I even think that might
be a possibility in my life that this is something that is available out there. No one really wants
a short-term thing. I've never talked to anyone who says, you know what, I just kind of want to be
married to this person for a little while. When we make the big pomp and circumstance about marriage,
when we say those things, I think we think staying in love forever is a given. And yet,
when we begin to see the reality, we know that that's not true. You see, oftentimes we think it's
possible, but the question is, is it probable for us? And I believe that the answer is this,
that it could be, but we have to work at it. It's not something that's intuitive. And oftentimes,
we have this idea, if I just choose right, then it'll end up right. And for those of you who are
in the choosing mode, I want you to know that the choice is not where it ends. Who I choose to be
married is not the end of the equation. And for those of you who are married, you know that all
too well. You know that reality that you chose that person and then what happened, you know? Then
there was conflict and you're like, I didn't say yes to that, you know? And so this is the struggle
that we deal with. And I think that there's some reasons for this. Why is staying in love so hard?
And I think that there's three aspects to this. One is this, we haven't seen it modeled to us.
We've often, many of us have grown up in homes and one of two things happened. Either our parents
didn't make it, they didn't stay together in love, they divorced. Or the other thing is,
they might have kind of white knuckled, gritted their teeth, I committed and I'll just live it out,
but it wasn't staying in love, right? It was staying in a commitment. And that is admirable,
but that's not the vision I think that we have. That's not the desire that we have for our marriages
and our lives, right? We want to stay, we want to be the people who are in, you know, the nursing
home with the walkers, you know, wearing out the tennis balls on the back, you know, getting to the
place that we're going to eat and we arrive there with our honey and we hold hands, you know? And
other people say, wow, they're so old and still in love, right? That's the hope. But we haven't seen
that model. We don't even know what that looks like. This is something that is oftentimes,
it's a hope, but we haven't actually seen this accomplished, this not seemingly something that
we've seen modeled to us. Number two, the reality is, is that we aren't emotionally equipped to
engage in long-term relationships. Some people who are far smarter than me got together and
created a list of what is required for people to be emotionally equipped for long-term relationships
in terms of in their childhood. And here's the list of things that they need and need it in large
doses. Security, stability, attention, affection, comfort, respect, encouragement, support, and
approval. These are the things that in large doses that we have to have throughout our childhood
to be prepared to live and thrive in long-term loving relationships. And so when we begin to
think about, you think about your childhood, in large doses, did you receive security, stability,
attention, affection, comfort, respect, encouragement, support, and approval? Did this characterize
your childhood? In fact, oftentimes this is not the case and we arrive out of our childhood and
we're looking for someone to date and we're asking the question, will you give me security,
stability, attention, affection, comfort, respect, encouragement, support, and approval? Is that
something that you're going to provide for me? Or are you just cute? So this is this struggle
that we have, or do you just have a great job? And we arrive with a deficit in terms of the
things that we need to be emotionally equipped for long-term relationships. And so this is compounded
by this fact that this year the percentage of children that are born into families without
any male presence is over 40%. And I'm not saying anything, I'm not here to talk about the ability
of single parents to create loving environments, but I'm just saying in that environment that
our kids are getting put into, it's a struggle, it's hard for us to emerge out of there with
all of these things that equip us to live in these long-term relationships. Number three,
this is another thing that I think is hard for us to have these long-term loving relationships,
is we have a low pain tolerance in our relationships. And this is just the truth
of our generation, that we have really lived out something that didn't give us a lot of the ability
to have high tolerance for pain. And some of that is because of the transitional nature of our world
compared to people living for generations and generations. And this is why you have
feuds anymore because everybody leaves, right? People don't stay long enough to actually get mad
at somebody, forgive them, reconcile the relationship and start over, right? And so in terms of us
seeing how it is to live in a high pain tolerance relationship, we just have no experience in that.
And so these are the things that really make it difficult for us. You see, it's easy for us.
It's easy for us when we begin to think through this to kind of get a narrow view, but what I
want to say is into this chaos, Jesus speaks, into this chaos, Jesus gives us something that I think
will transform us and it has the potential to transform our marriages. And we need to hear this
because it is never, let's say it's never been easier to fall in love, but I would say it's never
been more difficult to stay in love. You see, there's over 1,500 organizations that will take your
money, if you give them your profile and say, we'll match you up to someone, you know, we'll
partner and your choice will be a good choice and it'll be a better choice because we had all these
levels of compatibility that we fused together to deliver you your mate, right? So it's never been
easier to meet people with social networking, with media and stuff like that. It's never been
easier to fall in love and to meet someone like that, but it's never been harder to stay in love.
And so we get to this reality and this teaching. And I'll say this, the thing that we're going to
be talking about today, it's probably the simplest thing that I've ever taught from the stage at
Resonate Church. In fact, it's so simple that if we don't, if we're not careful, we're going to miss
the power of this. We're going to miss the power of this idea to transform our marriages. And what
we're going to do is we're going to look in the Gospel of John, the story of John about Jesus'
life, the book of John. And we're going to see a moment where Jesus is about to leave earth,
but he gives his disciples a commandment. In John 13, 34, this is where we're going to land.
If you have your Bible, you can turn there. It's going to be on the app for Resonate Church,
or it's going to be on the screen and you can follow along here with us. And we're just going
to take the first little bit and it says this, it's Jesus talking to his disciples. It says,
a new command I give you. Love one another. A new command I give you. Love one another.
That's it. You might say, oh, hey, that's, that's all you got for me, Keith. I came here. I brought
her here. I brought him here. You know, we got here. Maybe you should have spent a little bit
more time in the study room, right? Maybe you should have spent a little more time on this.
And I don't want us to, to miss this because this is so profound because what Jesus does
is he gives us the key, the secret to understanding how to stay in love. And if we don't look at it
closely, we're going to miss it because here's what Jesus does. He takes something that we normally
use as a noun and he makes it into a verb. See, Jesus, Jesus takes and says, here's what I want
you to do. I want you to go and love one another. Oftentimes we think of love as something that
you, that you fall into, right? I fell in love. Something that we are, we're using as a noun,
something that we take and we say, I just fell in love. And really what we do is, or I used to be
in love and stuff like that. But when we look at this, he's saying, you're using as a noun, but
I want you to look at this in terms of a verb and really it's profound the difference in these things
because when we begin to see love as a noun, we see it in kind of a passive form. But when we
begin to see it as a verb, it becomes something that is very active. And here's the key thing. It's
kind of like the difference between a botanist and a farmer. A botanist identifies plants. A farmer
grows plants. A botanist has a passive role in the plant life. A farmer has a very active role
in the plant life. And what Jesus is doing is something that I am guilty of oftentimes in my
marriage, that it's really easy for me to say, I can identify where I'm being loved or where I'm
not being loved. And that's really easy for me to be the identifier, the passive agent, being able
to say, hey, you've done me wrong or that doesn't feel right or I don't feel loved in this situation.
But the thing is, when we begin to see what Jesus is saying to us, he's not saying that we are to be
passive identifiers, but to be involved in the growth of this. So our idea of love is to be a
farmer, someone who is cultivating, who is growing, who is actively engaged in the process, not being
able to just say that's it or that's not it. See, we begin to kind of transform what we did and try
when we try to find a mate and begin to say, okay, well, I just need to identify something.
And then we take and we fuse that into our marriage and begin to say, I'm just identifying your
actions or lack of actions as love or not love, right? And that is not what that's what lets us
fall in love, the identification of that, but it's not what allows us to stay in love. Are you
following me? Are you tracking? Because this is profound. It is not my responsibility. It's not
your responsibility in marriage and these relationships to simply identify love. It is your responsibility
to grow love. Can I get an amen? Amen. All right. You're with me. See, I don't think Jesus would
have been a great marriage counselor because here's what would happen. You know, you'd go
in and sit on Jesus's couch that he made, you know, because he's a carpenter, right? And so,
good job, Jesus. That's great. But I have these problems with my husband and my wife, right?
Or husband or my wife, right? So, this is this idea that I'm struggling with. And so, here's
what happens at home. She says this and he says that. And I think Jesus would say, you know,
he would look at you and say, well, are you loving her? And you'd say, well, I used to.
And Jesus would say, well, you don't used to. You don't used to as a noun. You don't used to a
verb. And he would say, here's what you need to do. He said, I'll fix this for you. You need to go
home and you need to love one another. And you would say, well, we don't love one another. He
said, well, you ought to because you're married, right? And so he said, but we don't. And he's
saying, you don't feel it. Here's what I'm helping you with. I want to help you feel it. I want you
to foster love. I want to help you grow love. You need to stop treating love as a noun and
treat it like a verb. So I want you to go home and I want you to love one another. This is what
he's saying to us. This is how, this is what it looks like that we've got to be able to understand
what this looks like to move from being passive to active. And so let me tell you this. Here's
this simple secret to staying in love. You see the foundation to staying in love is to make love.
Long pause. A verb. See, this is the idea. You know, the foundation for staying in love is to
make love a verb, right? And just between you and I, this doesn't leave this room. Here's the thing.
If you make love a verb, it's more likely that you'll make love, but you didn't hear that for me,
right? So that's just something that you can take and understand. But this is the secret. This is
the idea. He says this, if you would take and make love a verb, which you would move from active,
from passive to active in this, and it doesn't stop there because once we begin to understand this
active to passive thing, we begin to understand, okay, I've got to stop seeing my marriage is
something that I'm just calling the shots in in terms of identifying love or not love, but
beginning to have an orientation towards my spouse to say, it is my job to grow love. I'm a
I'm a farmer in this. I'm a love farmer, right? And so this is this is what we're called to be,
not the botanist. And he says this, he goes on, he says, as I have loved you, this is the second
half of the verse, right? As I have loved you, so you must love one another. Okay, here's the other
mind blowing part of this one is you've got to love make love a verb, right? The second thing in
this that helps us to understand what staying in love looks like is to understand that all love
is not created equal. And what Jesus is doing brilliantly here is he's introducing a way of
love. He's introducing a concept of love. Jesus is saying, I don't want you to take your cue
for what love looks like. So we can take and make love a verb, right? But what kind of love are we
making a verb? Are we making the love that this is the verb? I was trying to figure out how to say
that sentence in my head. So are we taking this and doing it based upon the model that we had
from our parents or from the relationships that we saw and saying, okay, I'll make that kind of
love a verb, that kind of you do what you need to, you know, you do something for me, I'll do
something for you kind of contractual thing, or we'll just kind of live at peace, but not in love
kind of thing. Or we kind of take and say, okay, there's this love out of the context of these
issues. And so if you'll help my issues, if you'll provide security, stability, support, respect,
approval and all of this stuff, then I'll love you. And that's kind of the game here. Or maybe we'll
just try to figure out how to love actively and have the lowest pain tolerance available.
And so this is kind of the way, so it's not just any kind of love, but Jesus is saying there's a
specific kind of love. And I want you to get this because oftentimes, as we begin to think about
what love looks like. So if I was just to tell you to make love a verb, to grow, to be a love
grower in your relationship, you might say, you know, okay, Keith, does this mean, you know,
I need to buy her flowers more? Well, yes, you know, or to do nice things for her or to
do romantic kind of things. Yes, you need to do those things, but that's not, that's kind of this
heart shaped love, right, that we get from a romantic kind of way. And so there's this heart
shaped love that we can begin to say, okay, that's, is that what we're talking about? So I just need
to kind of gear up and be more romantic in that. And that's, that's not what Jesus is talking about
here. This is more, more love, I mean, so more notes, more romance, more roses, kind of that,
that's not really what we're talking about in this context. And there's this other thing in the Bible
that we see that that's this idea of love that is being a kind of do unto others, that the golden
rule, the great commandment, do unto others as you would have them do unto you. So love others
as you would be loved. And so we begin to think about that in terms of how we're to love other
people. And, you know, and some of you guys are like, man, that's awesome. I need to love her
like I want to be loved. And so let's choose this action movie, right? Because that's what I love,
you know? And so I thank you, Keith, for giving me the excuse to be able to do that now. I can
choose whatever because I just have to love the way that I want to be loved, right? And that's,
just doesn't work, you know? And that's, that's, that you can use your elbow there, right? Ladies.
And so in that, there's a whole other concept to this. And it's this idea of a cross shape love.
And that might kind of sound cheesy, but it's not the heart shape love. It's not the mirror shape
love. The kind of love that Jesus is talking about is this cross shape love. And it's kind of strange
because he says, I give you a new commandment. And you might say, I think I've heard about loving
other people in the Bible before this point. And it's true. But Jesus is saying there's a whole
another way to love. And I want you to understand that here's the new way to love. It's not the
heart shape love. It's not the mirror shape love. It is the cross shape love. It is loving your spouse,
the way that you have been loved by your heavenly father. And I want you to, to get this because
what Jesus does is he says, I want you to take this a step further. I want you to love each other
as I have loved you. And Jesus is on his way to the most selfless act of love that has ever been
demonstrated. We call this the gospel. You see, our heavenly father, there's a sin that created
a gap between us and our heavenly father. And what happened is we wanted to do our own thing.
We wanted to do the things that we desired. And they weren't in alignment with our heavenly father.
And that created a relational distance that created a gap. And to fill that gap, our heavenly father
sent his only son to earth to live here among people. He became flesh. His name is Jesus.
We celebrate him coming into this earth on Christmas. And what he does is he lives a perfect
sinless life. And as he lives this perfect sinless life, he teaches us the way to live in the way
that we are to follow in the footsteps of our heavenly father, but ultimately the last act
of his life was to sacrifice his life, to give his life up on our behalf, to redeem us to a
heavenly father by sacrificing his life on a Roman cross, allowing himself to be killed
so that the payment for our sins could be finalized and settled. And this is what Jesus did for you,
to allow you to have a relationship with your heavenly father. So there's not a
distance between you and God anymore, but that gap has been filled. And this kind of love,
this is how powerful this is, is that this is Jesus saying this is the kind of love that you
need to live, not just the heart-shaped love, not just the mirror-shaped love, but a cross-shaped
love. This is how you stay in love. This is the love for your marriage. It's the love that allows
you to say in a selfless kind of way, I orient my life towards my spouse in a way that mimics that
kind of love. Not what you deserve, not what you owe me, but I give this freely to you because I've
been given freely. And this is profound. As we see Jesus loving us in the selfless way, commanding
us to love others as we have been loved, it blows apart often our view of marriage. And for me and
Paige, this has been something that has really helped us. A few years ago when we started Resonate
Church, about a week before we started our first gathering, we found out we were pregnant for our
second child. And so for the first year, we were kind of birthing a church and preparing to birth
our second child. And this was this kind of this pressure cooker of all these things. And one of
the things that really got pressed on was our marriage. And as we began to experience some
struggles and some confusion, ultimately, I can't remember if it was Paige and I had said, hey,
we need to go to, this is getting acute, we need to go to a marriage counselor. And really here's
what I was thinking in my head. I was like, okay, that sounds like a great idea. Finally, there's
going to be a ref, right? Finally, there's going to be someone who can say, you know what, that's
a really good point, Keith. And Paige, did you hear that? Because Keith, that seems incredibly
reasonable that you would think that, you know? And so I just think Paige, that you're just not
listening. And so let me help you to listen because he's making a really good... So here's this idea
that I thought that somehow that things were going to get reconciled if we got some conflict
resolution strategies and stuff like that. And so I go in and I'm ready for these sessions, you know?
I've got my notes ready to, you know, whatever, to go over. Here's the issues from my, you know,
I go in and I just, in the best way that I can, I kind of unload and kind of just sell it, right?
And I get done, you know, I can't remember first or second session or something like that. And I'm
like, all right, even you with your degree has to admit that there's some validity to this, right?
You know? And I'm just thinking I'm going to get, you know, yeah, absolutely, Keith. And I remember
getting zero. And I remember, like, there was no affirmation of this logic that I'd built my case
upon. And there was a simple, you know, question of how does that make you feel? And I was like,
no, we don't need to go there, right? I know how we've had that conversation before, right?
I know how it makes her feel. I'm just saying those feelings are invalid, right? So this is,
yeah, fun getting married to Keith, right? So this is the thing. I didn't understand love.
And I didn't understand what it took. And I didn't understand, I mean, I'm pastoring a church. I've
been a Christian for a long time. And yet making love a verb was a struggle. And I began to understand
that it was my intimate connection to my wife and not a conflict resolution strategy. It was us
learning to love one another. And here's the secret. And this is what, over the next few months,
us beginning to understand that our connection with each other was the primary thing. And
everything else was secondary. We can figure out fights. We can figure out conflicts. We can figure
out issues that I have primarily. We can figure those out. But our primary thing was understanding,
are we connected to each other? And that is something that doesn't take one party or both
parties sitting back and say, foul, you can't do that. It takes us saying,
I'm actively growing and seeking to grow love in this marriage. That's the profound thing.
This is what Jesus is saying. You might think, okay, this doesn't sound like marriage advice.
He's just saying love. But here's what I want you to know. This is at the very core of your
relationships, your marriage. And so if you think about concentric circles outside of that,
it starts with your marriage. And let me tell you, the truth of how you love is revealed in the way
that you love your spouse. You don't really love others if you don't first love your spouse.
If you want to know the kind of love that you have or the love of Christ in you, ask yourself,
are you loving your spouse selflessly? This is the first relationship. And so it has to do
in every way with marriage. As we begin to think, love one another starts with your spouse.
And this is the key. This is the thing that we need to understand. How is it that we go from
being passive agents to active agents? This is what we're building this entire series on.
So I want you to get this. I know it's simple, but you have to be in a place where I'm saying,
I'm wanting to do this. I want to actively engage this. If you are not at that point,
I don't have a whole lot to say to you. So it starts with making love a verb. And when we begin
and when we begin to think about this in terms of what it looks like to go from passive to active,
here's what it looks like. We oftentimes in our lives, in our worlds, it kind of gets pushed
in on us, our marriages, from our jobs, from our kids, from our hobbies, from our social life,
all these things press in and kind of squish our marriage. And if we don't begin to make the transition
from making a passive to an active view of our marriage, then we're in trouble. We have to make
our marriage a priority. And oftentimes, you've had things that you've made a priority in all
of these different areas. The question is, have you made your marriage a priority? And I could
talk to you about this, but I want to kind of engage this because I want this to land a little bit
to us and maybe show you a picture of what does it look like for us to see marriage prioritized
or deprioritized. You can check out the screens.
It's one of these things that kind of sneaks up on us sometimes. And we begin to think about
have we established a pattern or have we established a priority? And I think we can relate
in some ways to those things that press in on this. So I want to really walk through real quickly
what does it look like for us to take and understand how it is that we make our marriages a priority.
And so I think that that is basically a two-step kind of thing. One, we have to create a vision for
our marriage. And two, we have to create a plan for our marriage. And let me just kind of walk
through this because those can kind of be difficult things to understand. But when we begin to think
about creating a vision for our marriage, if you've been around Resonate, this is one of my
mantras, mantras for life, is making sure that in everything that we do, we know where we're going,
that we understand where we're headed to. And that's vision. Vision is simply this,
just establishing where you want to be. And so when we begin to think about our marriage,
when we begin to think about aspects of our marriage, do you know where you want to be?
Do you have an understanding of where you're going in this? Because if not, you're just kind of
meandering. You're just kind of walking along. And I think that that's what is the pitfalls.
That's how drift happens, right? We all just drifted apart. Why? Because we didn't know
where we were going. And knowing where we were going starts with a vision. And so there's a
few things that I just thought I'd pick out and begin to say, what are these things? And so
it could be that establishing a connection is a part of establishing a vision or understanding
in terms of a connection. And here's a sample vision is we want to work towards being connected
on an emotional level that leads us to assume the best about each other. I want you to be able
to at some point in this process or even this week to be able to think through, do I have a vision
something? And so we have a vision for emotional connection. And so we want to do this. We want
to work towards being connected on an emotional level that leaves us to assume the best about
each other. That just as a sample to understand what is it that we're aiming our efforts towards
in our marriage. You might have a vision for your sex life. And maybe it looks like this.
And maybe it's lots of sex, right? No, just kidding. It may be something like this,
to create a sexual environment that creates both emotional and relational intimacy
while meeting each other's sexual needs. And that's just the overall picture. This is where
we're headed. The decisions that we're making in our marriage, this is why we're making these
decisions. Maybe it's something that's based upon needs. And you begin to think about,
we need a vision for understanding the needs that we both have in our marriage. And so a sample
vision might be to identify and take specific action towards meeting each other's needs.
And so you begin to say, here's the direction we're going. Here's the pathway that we're going
towards this. It might be in spirituality, here's an aspect. So the idea might be to grow together
in spiritual intimacy through talking about what we are learning and growing in and praying with
each other regularly. These don't have to be your visions. But I want you to be able to understand,
do you have something in these areas of your life that you're aiming your marriage at,
that you're not allowing drift to happen, that you're prioritizing and saying,
this is what we desire for this. And this is the first aspect to have a vision to say,
here's where we want to go. We were talking today and someone was talking about one of my
mentors and he said, you know what? The vision for my marriage is this, that we're best friends
when all the kids have left the household. That we're best friends when all the kids have left
the household. And they begin to orient their marriage towards that. This is what understanding,
what is the vision for your marriage? Visionless marriage is destined to drift. Staying in love
is part of prioritizing and keeping love a verb. It starts with that. And the second thing is that
you have to create a plan for your marriage. So falling in love is easy. Staying in love
requires a plan. I want you to say that with me. Staying in love requires, sorry,
staying in love requires a plan. One, two, three. Staying in love requires a plan. Here's where
the thing, you're going to forget these words that I'm going to say in roughly, you know,
two weeks. You probably won't remember anything this, but if you develop a plan,
months and years will go by and this moment will create a trajectory, a new trajectory in your
marriage. But when you begin to think about connection, what are we going to do? What's our
plan? It might be like this. We're going to have a weekly time to talk about our marriage.
We'll create a list of questions and ask me, are your needs being met? Are you sexually satisfied?
What are you learning in Christ? What is it that you're struggling with?
These are things that, do you have a plan to communicate or you're just trying to fit it
in between things? This is the prioritization of marriage with sex. Do you have a plan?
You know, and this is, this might seem weird, but I think in terms of meeting expectations,
what does this look like? There's a book called The Love Dare and they said, you know, the key
to beginning the right track is to have sex every day for 30 days, right? And that's kind of their
solution. Guys, now would be a good time to elbow your wife. You can use that this one time, right?
But begin to say, what's that going to look like? Do we have a plan for this so that the
expectations are met for what this looks like? You might have needs and then begin to say,
what's our way that we're meeting our needs? And this is a great place to be able to say,
learning the love languages. There's a great book called The Five Love Languages that talks about
quality time, words of affirmation, gifts, acts of service, physical touch, to be able to say,
how can I identify my spouse's love language and begin to actively figure out a plan to,
to meet them in their love language? This is how you make love last. And you have spirituality.
How are we going to, you know, my parents, they were just at, at my house, but they, all through
my life, I saw them having devotional time together, like they would sit down and read the
Bible together, right? And, and I would see that and say, these people are passionate about
their relationship with Jesus, but they also allowed them to have an understanding or a time
to be able to connect spiritually. Maybe that's not what you do, but I'm just saying, have a plan.
Figure it out. Don't just allow drift to happen. And so here's the thing, you know,
falling in love is easy. Staying in love requires a plan. What does it look like for your life?
Is your marriage a priority to you? What would your spouse say to that question?
What's the biggest threat to you staying in love? Right now, begin to think through these.
And we're going to have a little bit of time for you to process this. And I think it's going
to be essential for us to actually begin to say, what does this look like for us?
What's the biggest threat to you staying in love? Where is it that you need a fresh vision
for your marriage or to say it another way? Where is it that you need to establish a direction?
Where is it that you need a plan? Where is it that you need to add some verbs to your marriage
and to this relationship? And here's what we want for you to do. Again, the most powerful thing
that you can do is you can talk to your spouse. You can have a conversation. The worst thing
that you can do is to just leave here, maybe inspired or bored, whatever, but you just go
and you don't say anything. And so what we want to do is we want for you to just to have a little
bit of time to think about this, to maybe to answer some of those questions on your handout,
on your program. But ultimately what we want to do is give you a space for you to interact
with this content, to be able to have conversations for you to say, you know what, we've been drifting.
We've been kind of letting life happen to us instead of taking our marriage and having
pre-a priority. So even tomorrow night, we're going to have an opportunity for you to
to have an event for your kids, drop your kids off, and have an opportunity for you to have a
conversation. And you don't have to use that, but we want to make sure that there's no excuses
for our marriages in Resonate Church, not to have an opportunity to deal with some of these issues
and to meet some of these head on. When you go out, you're going to get a sheet of paper
that's going to give you an opportunity to say, what are the visions? Where is the direction
that I want in communication, connection in our sex life and needs and anything that you have
as a part of something you say, I think that this needs to be a part of in your spirituality,
even in anything that you can identify, we need a direction in this. And you're going to have some
questions that you can go to. And so if you want to go out to eat or you just want to go back to a
quiet house and you want to get into this, there's some questions that allow you to answer these
things. So I just want to take a moment and I'm going to pray for us. And we're going to just
have a little bit of music playing, but if you are married here and you just want to think through
some of these questions, I think this is going to be an appropriate time or even write down some
stuff. What are the threats? What do we need to direction? What's the plan? What's the vision for
us? See, the answer to the Juno's question is yes. There's a way for us to stay in love,
but it's not because of who you picked. It's because after you picked someone, you did the right
things. And you do the right things when you choose every single day to love that person,
the way that you have been loved. That's the way you stay in love, making love a verb. Let me pray
for us. God, I pray over the marriages in this room, I pray that you would take and you would meet
us where we need to be, God, that you would infuse a passion for each other, Lord, that you would
make our marriages a priority, Lord, that you would take and completely change the way that we see
our marriages from being passive agents to activate and so that you would create farmers
of lovin' this, that you would help us to understand that it is not a heart-shaped love or a mirror
shaped love, but it is a cross-shaped love that you have called us to, Lord, and that you would
allow us to deal with our issues and so that we might be able to love our spouse the way that
you've called us to love, Lord, that we understand that we have been loved so selflessly that we
might love others in that same way. Lord, bless our marriages. Pray over them in this, in your holy name. Amen.
