This is Sam from the Masking Journey Podcast, and our goal with the podcast has helped you to try to find your way in this difficult world. Your chosen Truth Network Podcast is starting in just seconds.
Enjoy it, share it, but most of all, thank you for listening and choosing the Truth Podcast Network. If not for God is going to be on marriage. And if there was ever a category where I thought, Mike, if not for God, I have no concept of how somebody gets through marriage without God.
I really have no way of trying to figure that out. But it is an if not for God subject matter. It is. I don't know if you guys have ever seen the movie Dumb and Dumber. If you haven't seen the movie, don't worry about it. But there was a part in the movie where Jim Carrey and the other guy, I can't think of his name, but they're talking and he says, I had this girlfriend for a long time and I was dating her for a while. And she would say that, you know, how I never really listened to her. He says, I don't know what she was saying.
I wasn't really listening. And then, you know, and they ended up breaking up and, you know, so but hopefully things are not to that point. I know we've had Pastor Steve on and Steve actually wrote a book called Marriage Triage. And that's where when things are getting really bad that you want to definitely take a look at that and see how it could work from there.
But, you know, I think a lot of people who are married or people who are not married and want to get married want to know what it takes to have a successful marriage. And you read the Bible. There's there's actually Ephesians Chapter five.
And we were just looking at this a minute ago. But the part for I guess the part for the wives is, you know, Ephesians five twenty two through twenty three. It says, wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord for a husband has authority over his wife, just as Christ has authority over the church. And Christ is himself the savior of the church, his body. And so wives must submit completely to their husbands just as the church submits itself to Christ. Husbands, love your wives.
Here's the other side. Just as Christ loved the church and gave his life for it. He did this to dedicate himself to dedicate the church to God by his word after making it clean by washing it in water in order to present the church to to himself and all its beauty, pure and faultless without spot or wrinkle or any other imperfection. Men ought to love their wives just as they just as they love their own bodies. A man loves his wife. A man who loves his wife loves himself.
People never hate their own bodies. Instead, they feed them and take care of them just as Christ does the church. For we are members of his body, as the scripture says. For this reason, a man will leave his father and mother and unite with his wife.
And the two become one. There is a deep secret truth revealed in this scripture, which I understand is applying to Christ in the church. But it also applies to you. Every husband must love his wife as himself and every wife must respect her husband.
There's a lot in that, Robbie. Well, you know that that's what makes it, you know, having been married 34 years, a journey that is actually so fulfilling at some point as you begin to actually enjoy what I consider that intimacy that's available through marriage. It's so critical that you have intimacy with God because that certain needs were meant to be met by him where we so often are expecting our needs to be met by our wives or our wives are expecting their needs to be met by their husband. And some of those needs for intimacy just clearly only come from God.
So there's the challenge. You know, I know how I look at that passage and everybody doesn't have to look at it as I do, but I don't pay a lot of attention, actually. I mean, I see what it says with the wives are supposed to do for their husbands, but I really focus on my part and think, OK, if I'm having the relationship with God that I should have and he's meeting my needs for intimacy and and and study and all those things being nourished by his word. And I feel loved and secure by him. Then I look to my wife and go, OK, how can I meet, you know, those needs that she has? How can I love her? How can I make her feel loved? What can I do, you know, to make her feel like she's getting listened to? And not that I'm succeeding in this, but I understand at least that.
Right. OK, I can't force my wife to do any of the above that the other stuff that's that's between her and God. But my part is to how do I love her? Well, as as God loved the church. And there's a beautiful thing in Hebrew, as you study marriage from a Hebrew standpoint, is that the letter Het, which is C H E T, which you would think would be Chet, but it's actually Het.
It is is sort of like the letter for marriage. It also is the matter for life. And what it is is a male energy that is coming from heaven that's called above. So if you can imagine a male energy coming down like the light of Christ coming down, that's a male energy, a female energy, then reflecting back God's glory back to heaven.
So that's the Zion, actually. And so you got this male energy coming down, a female energy going back up. And across the top is something called a hetateric, which is the wedding canopy, which is this connection of God uniting the two powers to bear fruit. So when you have marriage, what what really is a beautiful thing from my standpoint is as Christ comes down into you man or woman, you reflect his glory.
There's some way that your spouse, my my spouse happens to be a phenomenal caregiver for children or for elderly adults, either way, or even for special needs, which we teach. And so by spotting my wife's glory, like, I can see that she reflects God in the way that she is an amazing caregiver. And so how can I bring out the best in Tammy? Right. How can I love her well by getting her, you know, to accept the gift she has, you know, helps her feel fulfilled and pushes her towards closer to God through the way that she's reflecting him.
And guess what? And she feels that type of intimacy with her own gifting and with her own life with God. She loves me well because she sees that my part of that, you know, and I end up having this phenomenal time and often I feel like the luckiest man in the world.
I really do. I'm like, man, I was just came off vacation with Tammy and I and I just several times we were out at the beach and I was just like, man, my lines have fallen in such pleasant places. Like, wow, I just can't believe how wonderful this is to have this partner that actually had the kind of intimacy we have. But it was thirty four long, hard years and some real, you know, raising kids. Oh, my goodness.
I mean, the fights and the it was not just a bed of roses there. It's interesting that you say that because I think, you know, to a lot of the people that I know who are unmarried, they all want to get married. And I almost feel like when you're in the church or when you're in the church setting, there's almost some pressure. People who are unmarried have told me this. There's pressure that they need to find someone.
There was a guy that we have a Tuesday night meeting last night, a guy named Scott. He says so many times he says, I'll go into the church and I feel all alone. And, you know, I see all these people with their they're married and they've got kids and stuff like that. So if you're not married, that's OK, too. As a matter of fact, I'm sure there are a lot of there are a lot of people who were married. If you ask them for marriage advice, they're going to give you a first Corinthians seven verse eight. It says to the unmarried and to the widows, I say that it is good for them to remain single. So if you ask them, you know, hey, you're married, I want to get married.
No, they say it's good for you to remain. So just because somebody is married doesn't necessarily mean that they're happy. Doesn't necessarily mean that they're having a good time or everything is good. I heard Pastor Chad, who is on the way over here this morning, he's now back on the Truth Network. What he was saying was, he says, what happens is, is when you compare yourself to other people, what you're doing is you're comparing your backstage to their front stage.
And their front stage is whatever they put up on Facebook or whatever they put up on Instagram. And he said, when we're asking people advice on our marriage or people on how do we raise our kids, he says he actually reminded us of the verse where I think it was the apostles. They were going around. They said Jesus was saying you're going to die an early death.
This is going to happen to you. And I think Peter went up to Jesus and he says, well, what about John? You remember what Jesus said to him? What business of it is yours if I have him stay until my return? So in other words, if he lives a full life, don't worry about what everybody else is doing. It's interesting. One of the things that I've learned for, I think, to have some success in marriage or relationships is to put the phones down, turn the TV off, take time and have quality time. And so what we do at night is we say we're going to take 30 minutes every night, put everything down, no distractions, and we're just going to talk. And it's interesting because you say, well, we're going to do that anyways. Right. But there are so many distractions that are out there.
The television, the Internet, the phone, all that stuff where you can really live and be around somebody all the time. And you don't really get to spend any quality time with that person. And I think sometimes we give more attention to people that we're not even married to trying to do our job. We pay more attention to our boss. What do we need to do with this? What do we need to do with that?
But we need to give that same energy and attention and even more so to our wife or our husband and our children at home. Challenging. You know, you would think that, wow, is your children get older that things get. But actually, you know, there's a lot of pressure with adult children. A lot of stuff going on. You know, in the last two weeks, you know, I can't believe how many things happened. You know, my one daughter's boyfriend lost his job, which at 30 something to crisis, you know, for for for him.
My other daughter, you know, his relationship had struggles. And and it was just crisis after crisis after crisis. Right. And so, oh, yeah, it's there. And then quite often, you know, Tammy has one view of how this should be dealt with. And I have another.
And that leads to more crisis. And even more so than that, where I always get in trouble, just candidly is I'm a very open person, like I would tell anybody almost anything about me or anybody else. My family generally is not. And so when I open my mouth and I tell somebody this or that or the other, like, man, I'm immediately in all kinds of trouble. Like just last night, as I recall, one of my kids was, you know, just how could you tell people that this did it? You know, and I'm like, whoa, man, I'm so sorry, because, you know, we make mistakes. Right. We do. And and so sometimes maybe it just means saying you're sorry.
I tried that. She told me, I know you don't really think you did anything wrong, so your your apology means nothing to me. So, you know, it's really I like the way God has rigged this world. So we cannot do it without him. And marriage is definitely in that.
Like it isn't OK. You just do this and everything is going to be good. Now, you're going to need to go after God tonight and you're going to have to go after God tomorrow night. And you're going to have to, you know, in order for because, you know, if if he could give us the formula, then we just take off, you know, be all our own and, you know, we'll talk to you when we need you, God. And he knows that. And so, oh, my goodness.
There's opportunities abound when it comes to marriage for a deeper intimacy with God, because he's got you kind of right where he wants you. We're like, I don't have any answers. I'm not understanding women at this point, God. I don't understand why they are so caught up in this. And what, you know, because I have two daughters and a wife and a mother in law that that, you know, are quite often in my house and a granddaughter.
So I'm swimming in the estrogen estrogen ocean at this particular point in time. And they just see things differently. But that's the beauty of it. Yeah. And conversely, it's my wife and and two boys and me. So but we got a girl coming.
So that'll help. But, you know, one of the things we're talking about this is Jeff Hoover. His dad had something written on his Bible. And this is what it says. It says, Beloved Christian reader, in matters of grace, you need a daily supply. You have no store of strength. Day by day, you must seek help from above. It is a very sweet assurance that a daily portion is provided for you in the word, through the ministry by meditation and prayer and waiting upon God, you shall receive renewed strength in Jesus. All needful things are laid up for you.
Then enjoy, then enjoy your continual allowance. Never go hungry while the daily bread of grace is on the table of mercy. And I think sometimes we say, well, I went to a marriage conference three years ago. And so I've got everything from that that I have to work on my marriage and everything's going to be fine.
And I'm never even going to have to look at it again. No, that might have worked for about three days. And then it reminds me of what that says.
We need a daily renewal of grace. And I'm also reminded of what we talked about with with Dr. Tony Evans. When he said when he was younger that he met his wife, his wife wasn't acting the same way that he wanted her to act. She wasn't feeling as close to him as he wanted to. He took her on the scariest ride in the whole amusement park. And he said at the beginning of the ride, she was about as far away from me as she could get. As the ride started to go on, she was getting closer and closer and closer to me.
He said, by the time the ride was over, you would have thought we were one person. And so maybe sometimes that if you're seeing that you're having trouble in your marriage, one of the things that may be happening is that it may not have been terrible before, but maybe God was showing you hate or making it a little bit tougher for you to expose some of the weaknesses so he could help you work on them. Because for the for the non-Christian who's listening to this, the best you can do is read a book.
The best you can do is try to follow some advice by Dr. whoever who's on TV. But the good news for us as Christians is we have the power of prayer and that we believe that prayer changes things. And God can do things in our marriage that we could never do. You've got to love Mike's enthusiasm, right?
If you're missed out on that. And I and I I see it so clearly and I you know what you just described is the heat comes up, which pushes you closer to God on that, you know, amusement ride, if you choose to call it an amusement ride or you call it a terror ride, depending on, you know, how your marriage has been recently. But by the same token, you know, the growth through relationship, you know, and I heard recently that there's this painting of Stephen as he's being stoned. And as you look at his face, this was done, as I understand, from Michelangelo. And it is the person that was describing it says, you know, literally he is engaged with God, looking at God's face at the point that everybody's throwing stones at him. In other words, he stayed relational with God at a point where people are crushing his head with stones. Yeah. OK. Yeah. And that's what I would like, like when all the stones are coming my way from my family or from my friends or for whatever else is coming at my own life.
Maybe it's a person tailgating me this morning that somehow or another, I can stay relational like Stephen did there being stoned with my face engaged in his face. Right. And him right there with you in the moment is really that my grace is sufficient for you. While you're going through those struggles.
And so when I talk about the good points in my marriage, which I believe here are awesome, those good points come after a great deal of struggle. You know, there's a there's a peace that only comes on the other side of war. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes.
In other words, intimacy at times means I have to tell my wife, stop doing that. You're driving me nuts. Yes. Because it really is driving me nuts.
Yes. And that causes a war for a period of time. And at some point in time, she needs to know me well enough to know that that kind of thing drives me nuts. One of the things when you're talking about this and when you're talking about what drives you nuts, our friend Chuck Riesch, who's been on the show. One of the things that he does is he gives the analogy where he takes a blank sheet of paper and he draws a dot on the sheet of paper. And he said, what do you see there? And most people will say they see a black dot. He says, do you realize ninety nine point nine percent of the paper is white? And he's like, you're focusing on that black dot, that little black dot.
Well, in the same way, Philippians four, eight, it actually says finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report, if there be any virtue and if there be any praise, think on these things. So I know so many people who are married and I heard Pastor Chad give this, tell this story one time. He said he had a husband and a wife who came into him for marriage counseling. And he said, so what's going on with your marriage? And the wife sitting there and the husband's right next to him.
And she says, my husband's not any good. He doesn't take out the trash. He doesn't listen to me. He's not this. He's not that.
The other whatever. Pastor Chad said after a few minutes, I said, maybe you should get a divorce. But then he said so he sat back and he asked the wife, he says, so let me ask you this. What is something that you like about your husband? She said he works really hard.
He goes to work every day and he works really hard. And she started to talk about this and expound on this and talk about the good things that she liked about her husband. And he said after a while, they were moving closer and closer together. And I believe it ended up working out.
If you want the recipe for disaster in your marriage, focus on everything that's wrong with your spouse and focus on everything that's right with you. And there will never be any reconciliation. That's a beautiful example of that very thing.
However, you know, intimacy requires honesty. Right. It really does, in my opinion. And I've done shows on this, that one of my recipes for a good vacation is one or two good fights, because there's people's expectations get raised on a birthday party. Have you ever noticed the kids get extra wild on their birthday? Yeah, they're wild all the time.
But yes, extra wild on the birthday. Of course, because guess what happens, their expectations, their expectations of what this day is going to be, of what I'm going to get and what I'm going to receive are always raised. And and so are your expectations on vacation. Well, when things are not happening to meet your expectations, you know, obviously you can take that to God and all those things. But the other thing is sometimes you need to take it with the up with the people that are with you so that you can share. And they might share with you some of their expectations that aren't being met. And and you can begin to see, wow, how to love this person better.
Right. And when it comes to all kinds of intimacy, gee, would I wish my wife would be completely honest with me. What is it that's hurting you? What is it that's making you feel better?
What is it that makes you feel great? You know, because as I get that kind of information right, I can act on it. It might cause my feelings to be hurt.
It might cause me to to do a lot of other stuff. But true intimacy requires at the heart of it. Right.
Real communication, real like you got to take off the mask and say this is this is where I'm at. And it and I believe it also requires two parties. I don't know if you've ever seen this, but there's a triangle that people have done where God is at the top of the triangle. The man is on the one side of the triangle.
The woman's on the other side of the triangle. Oh, that's the head to Terry that you're describing that I'm that it's at the top of the letterhead. Right. Right. And so what happens is, as the man and the wife get closer to God, they actually get closer to each other.
And as they get further away from God, they get further away. Romans Chapter one, verses 20. And about a week ago, I was actually was in the morning for work. What I did, I was in front of my mirror.
I was getting ready. And all of a sudden, I just started to quote this verse out of nowhere. Romans Chapter one, verse 20.
And what the verse says is it says, for since the creation of the world, God's invisible qualities, his eternal power and divine nature have been clearly seen being understood from what has been made so that people are without excuse. And so that I don't care how much you think you've got things figured out if you're not getting closer and closer to Jesus, getting closer and closer to God through a son, Jesus Christ, that you can have everything else figured out. You can have the best marriage.
You can make the most money. But, man, you're missing the whole picture. You're missing the whole picture on the other side. I mean, there are people who really made their marriage may not be great. Things may be tough with your kids.
Nothing else seems to be getting better. But I tell you what, you're getting closer and closer to Jesus. You may not be able to control everything else. We have control over how seriously we take our relationship with Jesus Christ. Right. You love.
I do. I just always think about the line when you talk about that, the line that Jesus said, you know, when he was talking about I'm the vine dresser and that kind of thing. And I think it's John 14 anyway, says, apart from me, you can do what? Nothing.
And it's interesting. King David in the in the 16th Psalm says, My goodness is nothing. Verse two. My goodness is nothing apart from you. And so it's interesting to me that King David knew that, that, wow, what can I do without Jesus?
Absolutely nothing. So, you know, in order to bear any fruit, good fruit requires being connected to the vine. It just it just really does. And so, you know, what wonderful advice that I could ever give anybody is is to spend time, quality time in the word of God, because if you're trying to find him, he's not hard to find. He's in that book. Every word it says in the beginning was the word and the word was God and the word was with God.
So, I mean, there it is. There's Jesus right there. And you can't read one of those words that Jesus isn't in there. All those expressions itself, by spending time there, you do get the ability to bear much fruit and you do get closer to God, just like what you're talking about. That's it. And it says in scripture, it says that Psalm 75, it says, We praise you, God, we praise you, for your name is near.
He's close. People tell of your wonderful deeds. You say, I choose the appointed time. It is I who judge with equity when the earth and all its people quake. It is I who hold its pillars firm to the arrogant. I say, boast no more into the wicked. Do not lift up your horns. Do not lift your horns against heaven. Do not speak so defiantly. No one from the east or from the west or from the desert can exalt themselves.
It is God who judges. He brings one down. He exalts another in the hand of the Lord is a cup full of foaming wine mixed with spices.
He pours it out and all the wicked of the earth drink it down to its very dregs. As for me, I will declare this forever. I will sing praise to the God of Jacob, who says I will cut off the horns of all the wicked. But the horns of the righteous will be lifted up.
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