A New Beginning presents a great book from Pastor Greg Laurie called Hope for America. Yes, we're in a political season right now. We need to vote. We should be informed on the issues as Americans and as Christians, but we should also recognize the ultimate hope for our nation is turning back to God. So I talk about this and a lot more in a book I've written called Hope for America. And I want to send it to you for your gift of any size.
Get your copy at harvest.org. Here's my question for you. Is your marriage built on the rock or is it on the rocks? Coming up today, Pastor Greg Laurie offers help to keep marriages intact and out of divorce court. When you make a commitment to a person to be married, you want to honor that commitment. I wish we could take the very word divorce and strike it from our vocabularies.
It's brought up far too quickly, far too casually. Listen, wedlock should be a tadlock. Remember Mr. Rogers?
Yes, the won't you be my neighbor, Mr. Rogers? He was once quoted as saying, for a couple with young children, divorce seldom comes as a solution to stress, only as a way to end one form of pain and accept another. In our culture, divorce is often seen as the easiest path or the one with less pain. Today on A New Beginning, Pastor Greg Laurie wants to show you an alternative.
We'll see how God has a plan, a plan to give you hope. I heard a story about a fourth grade Sunday school teacher who was doing a talk on marriage. So she turned to her class and said, kids does anyone know what the Bible says about marriage? One little boy raised his hand. Seems like it is always a little boy.
And he says, yes the Scripture I am thinking of is, Father forgive them for they know not what they do. Now judging by the way a lot of marriages go these days you can almost understand why he would say that. I have often said marriage is like a three ring circus. Engagement ring, wedding ring, and suffering. In fact it was Oscar Wilde that said, and I quote, the world has grown suspicious of anything that looks like a happily married life. End quote. J. Paul Getty one of the richest men who ever lived said, quote, I would give my entire fortune for one happy marriage.
He had five of them. Apparently none of them were ever happy. So a happy marriage.
Is that even possible? Can a man and a woman fall in love like they do in the fairy tales and live happily ever after? Well with the divorce rate where it is at today one wonders. It is somewhere around 50 percent give or take a couple of points.
And it continues to rise. The more times you are married the higher the percentages are that you will get divorced. If you have been married a second time your divorce rate could be at 60 percent.
And for a third marriage it rises even higher to 73 percent. But the title of my message is not no hope for hurting marriages. It is hope for hurting marriages. Maybe you are listening to this message right now. Your marriage is in big trouble.
It is hanging by a thread and the thread is on fire. You are even considering divorce. You have given up.
But I want to offer hope from the Word of God. So back to that earlier question. Is it possible to have a happy and fulfilling marriage? I believe the answer is a resounding yes.
Quick product promotion. I wrote a book called Married Happily. And my wife and I are on the cover because we are married happily. It can be done. And if it wasn't true I wouldn't tell you it was true. So I want you to experience that as well.
Now don't get me wrong. I am not suggesting that there is a marriage that has no problems or won't face challenges. Every marriage comes under pressures and difficulties and hardships. But I do believe it is possible to have a very fulfilling marriage if you do it right. And I think I can speak with some experience on this topic for three reasons.
Number one. I have been up close and personal with divorce. I myself have never been divorced. But my mother was married and divorced seven times. Don't tell me it doesn't affect the kids. Anyone who says that has never had parents who divorced. I know how it affected me.
It was devastating. And so I have seen what divorce can do. In fact that very thing caused me to have a greater determination to find the right girl and have a successful marriage personally. The second reason I think I can address this topic is because I have been married now for 50 years. And I am thankful to God for that. And thirdly I have been counseling people with marital problems for almost 40 years now.
I have pretty much heard and seen it all. And let me say this at the beginning. I believe that most of the divorces that have happened did not need to happen. Now there are exceptions to that. And we will grant that.
But I am just saying most of them did not have to happen. I have seen marriages in the worst shape imaginable be put back together. So when someone comes into me for counseling I will often ask them a few questions. I will start with, are you guys both Christians? And almost always they will answer, oh yes we are Christians and that is why we are here to see you. So then I will ask them, well let me ask you do you believe that the Bible is the Word of God? And they will say, oh yes we believe the Bible is the Word of God. We love the Word of God. Now third question.
Are you willing to do what the Bible says even if you find it difficult? Now well now they know they are in trouble. And they want to say yes but they kind of have a sense as to where I am going. Quite frankly if they cannot answer yes to all three of those questions the conversation is effectively over. Oh I know you are going to say our situation is different Greg. You don't understand.
But you know what? The fact of the matter is your situation probably isn't different. It is just the same problems that other people are facing. So here is what we need to consider. We need a biblical worldview on marriage. In other words we need to think about this biblically not emotionally. And we can't take our cues from culture. What does culture know about marriage? What does Hollywood know about marriage?
I am going to go to an authoritative source and that is the Word of God. That is the only way we can pull this off. We need God's help. Right. Now prior to getting married Kathy and I courted for three years.
That is a word you don't hear very often. But we loved each other. But you know frankly we argued a lot. And we broke up three times. And they were big breakups.
Like I never want to see you again. But as time went by I realized that I really loved her. And as the Bible says in the Song of Solomon, many waters cannot quench love neither can floods drown it. And so I recognized that this love was real and it was from God because it grew stronger with the passing of time. James Dobson said, and I quote, don't marry the person you think you can live with. Marry only the individual you think you can't live without.
And I think that is right. And I think I have found the secret to a successful marriage. So if you have come here looking for tips or secrets I have got one for you now.
You might even write this down. Secret to a successful marriage. Are you ready? Marry yourself. No I am serious.
It worked for me. Because on my wedding day Pastor Chuck married us and he pronounced us man and wife. He said, I now pronounce that Greg and Laurie are man and wife.
He got confused. Instead of Greg and Kathy it was Greg and Laurie. See how I mean that. It is a true story. In fact people will say to my wife all the time, hi Laurie. And her name is Kathy. But they call her Laurie. And that is all right. So I found this secret to a successful marriage. Marry yourself.
Greg and Laurie got married. That was a joke by the way if you didn't understand where that was going. You are thinking is that true and how is that possible. It was a joke.
Obviously not a very good one. But our marriage has been tested like anyone else's. We have faced mighty storms.
And the most devastating storm was when our son died. Many marriages don't survive that. But we look to the Lord and He has gotten us through it and I might say He is getting us through it.
We are certainly not over it by any stretch of the imagination. But marriage has come under attack. Marriage has faced hardship. And the question is what are you building your foundation on? Jesus said at the end of the Sermon on the Mount, Anyone who listens to My teaching and obeys Me is wise, like a person who builds his house on solid rock. And though the rain comes in torrents and the flood waters rise and the winds beat against that house it won't collapse because it was built on rock. But if anyone who hears My teaching ignores it he is foolish like a person who builds a house on sand. And when the rains and floods come and the winds beat against that house it will fall with a mighty crash. So here is my question for you. Is your marriage built on the rock or is it on the rocks? Build it on Christ. Have you ever built a sandcastle on the beach? They are so much fun to put together and then some wave comes in.
It is gone. Or some crazy two-year-old comes over and stomps on it you know. Well that is what happens to marriages that are built on sand.
They will not survive. But a marriage that is built on the rock will not only survive but it will get stronger through these things. And notice Jesus did not say, If the rains and floods come, but rather when the rains and floods come, into every life a little rain must fall it has been said.
And sometimes it is a light drizzle and other times it is a mighty hurricane. But you may not know this and I have really never shared this before but I thought this would be a good time to reveal that I have actually been married to five different women. Absolutely true. Maybe more. I have lost track. Interestingly I know you think I have lost my mind. I love this.
I love this kind of tense moment I have created. Everyone is like, What? Yeah. Interestingly have any of you figured out where I am going with this yet? Ok. Some of you are alarmed. I would like to almost just linger in the awkwardness for a moment.
No. And all of these women I have been married to interestingly all have the name Kathy which makes it even stranger. Even more amazing is they all spell their name the same way.
Because guess what. The girl I am married to today is not the same girl I married back in 1974. And I am not the same guy she married either. The Kathy of age 30 is not the same as the Kathy of age 18. That is how old she was when they married her. And the Kathy of age 40 is not the same as the Kathy of age 30. And I am not the same person I was either. The point is you change to the passing of time. Now I am happy to say that every new Kathy is better than the last one.
And they were all good. But every marriage is going to go through changes. And every marriage is going to be tested. And so we want to build our foundation on Christ.
The Bible says, He that finds a wife finds a good thing and obtains favor from the Lord. I found that marriage halves our sorrows. It doubles our joys.
And it quadruples our expenses. But it is all good. I feel like his messages are very fatherlike and easy to understand. His stories are really funny. And it brings me a lot of peace throughout my day. I've been having a little bit of anxiety and it has totally helped me to just take a moment, re-center and get close again with God in a way that I haven't been able to in a long time. I am so grateful that they have so much new content because I can always turn something on when it comes to Harvest or Greg Laurie. Thank you.
We're so blessed to hear comments like that. Has Pastor Greg heard from you? Why not drop him an email? Send it to Greg at harvest.org.
Again, that's Greg at harvest.org. Well today Pastor Greg is giving a straight talk about the value of marriage and the importance of preserving it even when it's tough. One day when your life is over and that day will come there's only going to be three things that really will seem to matter.
Those are faith, family and to a lesser degree friends. You're not going to sit on your death bed and fret about how your business is doing or how much money you make. In fact the only thing you may fret about is who is going to get it when you're gone. Because it's going to be in your rearview mirror.
You're not going to think about how many things you own. It's not going to matter much to you in that day. You're going to think about God and you're going to think about your family. And in far too many cases you're going to be thinking about how you did not walk with God as you should have and you did not treat your family as you should have.
So instead of waiting for that day deal with it now. And when you make a commitment to a person to be married you want to honor that commitment. I wish we could take the very word divorce and strike it from our vocabularies. It's brought up far too quickly, far too easily, far too casually.
Listen. Wedlock should be a padlock. If a marriage is miserable the fault lies with the participants not the institution. Now I am going to deal a little bit with divorce when we look at our text together. But I will say that biblical divorces are a rarity. Most divorces that I have seen I can give you a lot of reasons why they came about. But it comes down to a cycle of selfishness that the couple gets themselves into and they divorce. And I have also seen the regret they have had because they should have given more attention to it. And this is not just me a pastor saying this.
Even people who are not Christians recognize this. They know the effects of divorce. I read an interesting article on the Huffington Post the other day. It was written by a lady named Gigi Lavange-Grazer. She is a Hollywood screenwriter. And she is not writing this from a Christian perspective as far as I could see. But she makes some really valid points. And I am going to read a little bit of her article to you. And she is very fond of the word sucks. Ok. So don't be offended by that. Understand who is writing it and hear what she is saying.
All right. So here is what she writes from experience. Divorce sucks. I mean it really sucks.
God kids if so don't do it. You probably have no reason to listen to me but hey I have lived a pretty long life by LA standards. I am ancient. I have had many life experiences. Among them two marriages. What I have learned since is that divorce lingers. It makes you feel sad when you least expect it. Divorce colors everything. Oh yeah I did it for my kids so they could grow up with a healthy mother, a happier mother who had more time for them. But single motherhood even with access to help is not for sissies.
Oh sure I have more control over my children under the circumstances but in return I am more strung out and overwhelmed. Here is some of her observations that she has in this article. The things that she points out. Why you should not get a divorce.
Number one. This is kind of funny. All men suck. She says, oh yeah all men are great and all men are annoying. All men are complicated. Do you get what I am saying?
Men are human. Weird. I know. But basically if you hate your spouse and get divorced you will be trading him for a similar model.
Number two. Raising kids on your own sucks. But this doesn't mean you want to raise them with someone new. Divorce with children is mathematically speaking 180 million times worse than divorce without children.
I am sure there is a New York Times study somewhere to back me up on that. Kids are not better off with divorced parents. Then she puts in parenthesis high angry tweets from aesthetically divorced parents. Then she makes this quote.
And this is a really good quote. Psychologist Judith Wallenstein conducted a 25 year study on the effects of divorce on the children involved. Her book chronicling her findings as more frightening than any TV commercial advertising an Anthony Hopkins movie. If you don't want to sleep at night read what she says. For example she points out children of divorce are more likely than children from intact families to drop out of school, suffer drug and alcohol problems, require psychotherapy, and get divorced themselves.
And number three. She says divorce sucks because bumps in the night. A single mother feels it every day when the sun goes down.
There is no one there to watch your back. I have to be a combination nursemaid in Rambo. I have not slept a full night in three years. It is hard to sleep with one eye open and a dog named Peanut being the only thing between you and your potential threat. On the stress scale divorce is just a tad less stressful than the death of a spouse.
Presumably one you liked. People don't behave well under that kind of stress. Money is tight. The kids are upset. And in the air is the odor of hatred. In the midst of our separation our family therapist, a cancer survivor in her 60s who had been practicing for many years gave me sage advice which I was too angry or blind to accept. She said, wait until the kids are launched.
Who knows? You may even find yourself in love again with your husband. She concludes, I chose not to take that advice. A big part of me wishes I had. It gets very well written. And this reminds me of a story I read. A woman went to see a lawyer and she said, I want to divorce my husband.
I hate him and I want to hurt him. So give me some advice. The attorney thought about it for a moment. He says, you know I have an idea. He says, okay you are going to divorce the guy right?
Okay so here is what I suggest you do. For three months don't criticize him. In fact speak only well of him. Build him up. Tell him how wonderful he is. Tell him how much you love him. Everything he does something nice commend him for it. Tell him what a great guy he is for the next three months. And after he thinks he has your confidence then just say, I am going to divorce you.
It will hurt even worse. So the woman thought, that sounds good. I like that. So that is what she did for the next three months. She affirmed her husband. She told him how much she loved him. She built him up in every way that she could. And then finally the divorce attorney calls her and says, okay let's get started.
She says, oh no we are going on our second honeymoon. See she changed her behavior. And it turned the relationship around. Having a successful marriage does not happen by accident. It is not unlike your relationship with Christ.
Though you become a Christian when you put your faith in Jesus your walk with the Lord is developed through daily commitment, through prayer, through Bible study, through effort on your part. The same is true of a marriage. The moment you begin to neglect a marriage it is going to start unraveling. You have to constantly be doing everything you can to keep your marriage strong and not even for a moment take it for granted. Great practical advice today as Pastor Greg Laurie is helping us see how to commit ourselves to our marriages for the long haul.
And there is much more to come in this study. Some straight talk today on a new beginning about our marital relationships. But Pastor Greg let's be candid for a moment about our relationship with God. Okay. Now that relationship is not automatic is it? We have to come to the Lord to begin a relationship with him.
That's right. What would you say to the person listening who just doesn't know if they've ever done that? They can't think of a time when they made a deliberate decision to come to God and ask him to forgive their sins. It's just not a good idea to assume everything's going to work out okay is it?
No this is one area of your life you want to be sure about. Where you're going to spend eternity. The Bible says these things we write to you that you may believe on the Son of God and that you may know that you have eternal life. Listen I know I have eternal life.
I know I'll go to heaven one day and I hope that doesn't sound boastful and if it does I'm boasting on what God has done for me not on what I've done for God. The reason I know these things is because I've turned from my sin and I've put my faith in Christ you see and if you do the same you can have this same hope. You just need to call out to the Lord an adventurous sinner and ask Jesus Christ to forgive you and come into your life. The Bible says whoever will call upon the name of the Lord will be saved. Will you call upon him right now? I'm going to pray a simple prayer and I'm going to ask you to pray this prayer after me if you would. So if you want to know that you'll go to heaven when you die if you want to know for certain that Christ is living in your life then pray this prayer with me.
Just pray these words Lord Jesus I know I am a sinner but I know you are the Savior who died on the cross for my sin. I turn from my sin now and I choose to follow you from this moment forward as my Savior and my Lord as my God and my friend. Thank you for hearing this prayer. Thank you for answering this prayer and I ask this in Jesus name. Amen.
Amen. And listen if you have just prayed that prayer with Pastor Greg and you've meant those words sincerely the Lord has forgiven your sin and you're now a Christian and we want to help you get started in this new life of faith. Let us send you Pastor Greg's New Believers Bible.
It's in an easy to understand translation and there are scores of features to help a new believer build a solid foundation. So get in touch and ask for the New Believers Bible. We'll send it free of charge.
Just call 1-800-821-3300. You can call anytime 1-800-821-3300 or go online to harvest.org and click know God. And then let us take a moment to thank you for praying for this ministry and for supporting it through your generous donation.
It's an investment in kingdom business. Isn't that right Pastor Greg? Yeah it's really true Dave and I believe it's so important because you know the gospel saves lives. It saves eternal lives because when a person believes in Jesus according to scripture they pass from darkness to light from the power of Satan to the power of God and then of course that changes the course of their future.
That impacts their children and their children's children. The gospel changes everything and thousands and thousands of people respond every single year. Thanks to the Lord. Also thanks to you for your investment in this ministry enabling us to reach people wherever they are. So if this is something you care about I encourage you to make a financial investment in A New Beginning and Harvest Ministries. Yeah that's right and we really do appreciate your support. Thanks for partnering with us today.
It can make a real difference not just for today or this week but for eternity. So get in touch with your support today by calling 1-800-821-3300. That's a 24-7 phone number 1-800-821-3300. Or write A New Beginning Box 4000 Riverside California 92514 or go online to harvest.org. Well next time Pastor Greg brings more help and hope for hurting marriages. Join us here on A New Beginning with pastor and Bible teacher Greg Lord.
