One Simple Question, Part 2

Today on Summit Life with J.D.

Greer. Here's a definition of a servant leader. Taking initiative for the benefit of others. That's the leadership I'm giving in my marriage. A servant leader is one who takes initiative for the benefit of others. Spiritual headship. Men is not licensed to do what you want to do.

It's empowerment to do what you ought to do. Welcome to Summit Life with pastor, author and theologian J.D. Greer. As always, I'm your host Molly Vidovich. We are so glad that you're back with us today. Okay, let me ask you a question.

What if every time you saw your spouse or your friends or your parents or a boss or an employee, what if you had a thought regarding them that if you chose to act on it would radically change everything in the relationship? Today on Summit Life, Pastor J.D. reveals one simple transforming question that if asked and obeyed will transform every relationship. If you'd like to follow along with the transcript of each message, you can find that free of charge at J.D.

Greer dot com. Pastor J.D. is teaching from Ephesians chapter five in our study called First Love. Today we find out that one simple question.

God's point in marriage, one of his points is to teach you to love like him and to be loved by him. So I want to make this tangible for you through one simple transforming question. One question. I'm telling you, if every time you saw your spouse or your friends or your parents or your boss or your employees, if this one question popped into your mind and you answered it and you obeyed it, would transform everything in your life and in that relationship.

You ready? It's very simple. It's not profound. What can I do to serve you? What can I do to serve you?

Very simple. But what if every time you walked into a room you thought of this question and then you obeyed the implications? What if that's what I thought and said to my wife when I got home from work? What if my thought when I came in is yes, I'm tired, but what can I do to serve her? What if that was her thought when I got home? Because you know what she's thinking. She's thinking, I've been running around with these four heathens all day and I'm about to lose my mind. And you've been hanging out at the church with a bunch of your friends going out to lunch, right? And so it's about time for you to take care of these kids because you fathered them and they belong to you. So come deal with it, right?

You want a little insight from the Greer house? My wife and I really struggled with this for so many years in our marriage. And what would happen is I would always come home and I'd be tired, right? And I'd be like, I've been at work. I need a little space.

I would come home and I've been with kids and I need a little space. And both of our guard would be up and we'd do this little dance. Okay, how am I going to fence out my territory?

Okay, you got your territory and how are we going to do this? And we learned to compromise and we learned to stake out our, but our compromises were essentially me looking after my interest and then conceding some to her interest so that she would also look out for my interest when I needed them. And then somewhere along the way, I don't quite remember where, Veronica and I were talking about it this way.

We don't exactly remember where it came from, but somewhere we learned this principle. And I will admit to you that she learned it first and she put it into practice first. And she's still better at it than I am. But she began to think, okay, yes, I'm very tired, but when I got home and just one sliver of our relationship, she started to say, how can I serve you?

And you know what it did to me? It created that spirit in me for her. So now when I'm coming home, the first thing I'm trying to think about is how can I serve you? And the first thing she's thinking about is how can I serve you?

And I'm telling you, it has transformed our entire relationship. Being in that kind of relationship where we submit ourselves to one another is so much better than defending and protecting our turf and our rights against one another. Men, to ask this question of your wife, what can I do to serve you, would scare some of you to death because you are afraid of what she actually might say, aren't you?

But I'm telling you, this question is powerful and it unlocks the key to happiness for you and happiness in your marriage. Some of our wives are afraid to ask us to help them. They feel the resistance the moment they even approach you. They get in the proximity when you can tell they're about to ask you for some kind of help.

And the moment their mouth opens, they watch you get resistant. I'm telling you, this would transform your marriage. What if when you chose what you were going to do on your day off, for example, or where you were going to go on vacation, or where you go out to eat, what if your first thought was, and you verbalized it, how can I serve you? What if you started to ask this question romantically? What does she need from me?

What are her affection needs? Maybe she needs a weekly date night, maybe I don't feel like we need it, but maybe I know that she wants it and she needs it, and maybe this is a way of serving her. What if some of you men just started to serve your family by taking leadership in your family? I mean, some of you men are completely disengaged from your family. The primary sin of men is that we are enthusiastic in taking initiative in things that benefit ourselves, and we are lethargic and complacent when it comes to taking initiative for the benefit of somebody else like our family. And for many of you, I mean, you're zealous about your job, you're zealous about your hobbies, but your family's on autopilot, and your wife is unhappy.

But you don't care as long as she doesn't nag too much, she doesn't cheat on you or leave you. Now, the moment she starts threatening to do one of those last two things, starts threatening to leave you, you get all, like, religious, right? And you want to come to church, and you come into our offices, and we see this all the time, and you're like, how do I fix this? How do I change this?

How do you tell me what to do? Right? And you're sitting there with her, and you're like, I'll change, I'll change, I'll change. And those changes last for about three months until the threat of her leaving is gone.

Right? And the problem is, you've never fixed the problem. The problem was, the only reason you changed was because you thought your life was about to be affected. It was never a change for her sake. That's why she's leaving you. Hey, by the way, I'm not saying, I'm not saying she's right in doing so. I'm not telling you she doesn't have sin of your own. I'm just trying to tell you why she's doing it. She sees through all these changes that you're making, simply because you know that if you don't make these changes, your home is going to be affected, and you don't want that, so you're going to serve yourself by pretending to serve her for a little while.

It's got to be a whole fundamental change in how you see your relationship. Men, you were made the leader, but you were to be a servant leader. Here's a definition of a servant leader.

Men, you should write this down. Taking initiative for the benefit of others. That's what a servant leader is. That's the leadership I'm given in my marriage.

A servant leader is one who takes initiative for the benefit of others. Spiritual headship. Men, it's not license to do what you want to do. It's empowerment to do what you ought to do. Which means that 90% of the disagreements in my house, I should voluntarily lose. Because they're usually not about moral or the moral or spiritual direction of my family. They're about the color of the curtains and the carpet and where we go out to eat and what we do on vacation. And those are things that if I'm submitting myself to my wife, I'm going to think of her interests as more important than mine, and I'm going to lay down my life for her. Laying down your life for her doesn't mean taking a bullet or standing in front of a train. What it means is that daily you are submitting your interests to hers because they're more important to you than yours are.

Ladies, this is a powerful question for you to ask men. What can I do to serve you? Or what can I do to help you? Now, you know that if you say, what can I do to help you, most of your husbands are going to be like, nothing.

Right? But just asking them lets them know that you're aware of their burdens. What if that became the attitude in the home you create for them? How you treat them when they come into the home, when they return back home off of a business trip.

Yes, of course, you are stressed with the kids, but what if you thought of their needs as more important than your own? What if and how you relate to them, you do so through the filter of how can I build this guy up? How can I be Christ to this guy to become everything that he can be? How can I communicate honor to him? How can I communicate that I believe in him?

How can I submit to him? Can I brag on Veronica for a minute? She's not a perfect wife, but she is awesome at this part. The way that she has submitted herself to me and respected me, she is so affirming of me sometimes.

I've got to literally go into the bathroom and open my shirt to see if there is an S emblazoned on my chest. Because that's how she treats me, like Superman sometimes. And I know it's not because I deserve it, I just know that that's her way of serving me. You see, some of you ladies say, oh, but you don't understand, my husband is not like that. He is not a spiritual leader. He is so lazy.

He's hard to respect. Veronica was going to be up here and I got a chance to see what she was going to say. So I'm just going to rip it off and I'm just going to tell you what she was going to say. But she's like, many of the women that I talk to seem to have this attitude. They're like, well, yeah, if my husband was like your husband, he was a spiritual leader, I would gladly submit to him. She's like, and that's because you don't know the real JD.

You see JD as he presents himself, not JD as he actually is. And she had to make a decision at the beginning of our marriage that if she was going to submit to me and to honor me, it would be out of reverence for Christ, not always reverence for me because I don't deserve it, but he always does. And here's what's happened over time. Listen, ladies, over time, this is me talking down to her. I am becoming the man that she always told me that I could be. She has held the crown of Jesus over my head since the beginning of our relationship and she has grown me into it.

And somewhere along the way, I started to believe that I actually had the S emblazoned on my chest that she affirmed in me, even when I didn't always believe it about myself. It's you do it out of reverence for Christ and that changes them. But what if each of you had this attitude toward sex? What if sex were less about your needs and you started to ask, how can I serve you? What if in regards to sex, you let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus, who thought not of his interest first, but he thought more highly of the other's interest?

For many of you, sex in marriage is only about what you feel like. But this is, like all dimensions of our relationship, best experienced as an act of service, as an act of mutual submission. Now some of you men are like, that's the kind of service I'm talking about right there. I will show up seven days a week, 24 hours a day, I'll work overtime, nights, weekends, holidays, whatever, man.

Here I am, reporting for duty. I realize that, okay? By the way, could I get off on a soapbox for just a second? I read somewhere recently that 65 to 70 percent of the college students participate in what they call the hookup culture. Hookup cultures where you just, you know, have sex with somebody because you enjoy it for the night.

Which would include a lot of those that are listening to me right now and that go to our church. Sex outside of marriage is wrong and sinful in its own right, but would you just think about this with me for a minute? Girls, if a guy is going to serve himself with your body before marriage, do you really feel like he's going to change and begin to serve you and all the other aspects of your relationship after you're married?

Of course he's not. That's a character thing, right? You see, what happens is many of you girls listening to me right now, you hear me describe the kind of husband and spiritual leader and you're like, I want that! You don't just luck into that. And if a guy serves himself sexually before marriage, he's going to serve himself and all the other aspects of your relationship after you're married. That's a character issue. So for that very reason, you've got to start making decisions about the guys that you're going to be with, that they're going to be guys who understand this principle of mutual submission.

And if they understand that, they're not going to use your body for themselves sexually when they're not planning to commit to you. You don't just get there. You've got to choose to get there. We'll get right back to our teaching here in just a moment on Summit Life with J.D.

Greer. You know, one way to be sure that we continually see God's Word saturating our life is to participate in our daily email devotional from Pastor J.D. The best part is that it follows along with our teaching right here on the program so you can dive deeper into all that we're learning and share it with others. Sign up for this free resource at jdgreer.com slash resources. That's J-D-G-R-E-E-A-R dot com slash resources. Now let's return for the conclusion of today's message.

Once again, here's Pastor J.D. What can I do to serve you? Teenagers. Teenagers. What would it look like if you walked into the kitchen and just asked that question to your parents? Give you a little secret. They're not going to say anything because they're going to pass out.

And when they finally wake up, they're going to come open your room and they're going to offer to buy you anything you want. What if you tried this question in your job? Say it to your boss. What if you said it to your employees? I'm telling you, this would change the whole culture of your work environment. But what if you had this attitude when you were wronged? I'm hurt right now, but even in this, I want to serve you and I want to wash your betraying feet. Now please note here that I am not talking here about enduring physical abuse or ever keeping yourself in a situation where you're unsafe.

No, you should always get out of that immediately. But what I am saying is what if when you were wronged you washed the feet of the other person who was doing the wrong the way that Jesus did for you? You want to know what would happen? Probably the same thing that happened to Jesus' disciples. These cowards that just a few hours from them would depart from him would after this experience become faithful to him for the rest of their lives, endure persecution and death and be loyal to him to the last day.

That's what you would find probably happens. You see, that's the gospel secret. The gospel secret is that the most profound changes are made in somebody not by paying them back for their sin but by when you absorb their sin and give them grace.

That changes their heart. What would happen, church, if you started to ask this one simple question in all of your relationships? Here's what would happen.

For some of you, everything would change because the gospel would start to saturate your marriage or your home or your workplace and it would change the environment. You know what happens when the gospel comes into a place? It regenerates. It recreates. It makes all things new. So my challenge for you this week is going to be for you to say this at least one time a day one time a day to people in your families.

If you're single, to say it to a roommate. I've had friends who were like this with me. Their attitude was, hey, what can I do to serve you? You know what it did? It created that in me for them. It just brought out the best in me.

It's the way this is created. My challenge is going to be you say it one time a week to those in your life in a significant relationship. If you work, you're your boss. If you're a boss, say it to your employees one time a day. It's not hard.

It's simple. In fact, say it with me. I'll say it, then you say it. What can I do to serve you? What can I do to serve you? Come on, you're going to have to be more sincere when you say it, okay? You're going to have to mean it. What can I do to serve you?

Everybody. What can I do to serve you? If you're married right now, turn and look your spouse in the eye and say it after me. Look at them. What can I do to serve you? Say it.

What can I do to serve you? Did you feel that? You know what that emotion is called? Fear.

Isn't it? Isn't that what's going to keep you from doing this? For some of you, it's fear of what they might actually say.

Fear that you're going to be taken advantage of and fear that your personal needs are not going to be met. You're going to have to trust God. So it makes you afraid? Welcome to being a follower of Jesus. Fear is always included in faith. Can you think of what's going to happen? 99.8% of the things you're afraid of will never happen.

They're just spurious. But what's going to happen is as you submit and as you obey God, as you take the low place, God, Philippians 2, is going to reach down and He's going to exalt you. He is going to begin to make sure that your needs are met because in Christianity, the way up is always the way down.

And so you do it out of reverence for, out of fear of, out of trust in Christ. Now some of you say, but if I do this, they're never going to change. They keep taking advantage of me. They are so selfish.

Sure, they're probably going to take advantage of you a little. But one of the biggest myths that we believe in relationships, listen, the biggest myth we believe is that we change other people by paying them back, by making them feel the pain that we felt when they wronged us. And so I think if I pay you back, then maybe you'll think twice about hurting me again. Friends, the gospel secret is that grace is the most powerful change agent on the planet. The threats of the law can change my behavior, but grace changes my heart. That's how God changed me. Isn't that how He changed you? He didn't change me by threatening me with hell. He changed me by showing that He would take my sin, wash my feet, wash my soul and His blood. That's how He changed my heart.

You see, the threats of the law can coerce my behavior, but only God's gospel can change my heart. That's how my wife changed me in marriage, not by paying me back for the ways that I was treating her selfishly. She changed my heart by becoming a servant for me. And as she became a servant for me, it made me have in my heart that kind of heart for her. Some of you fear that if you live this way, you're never gonna be happy.

Listen, newsflash. The happiest person ever to live was Jesus, and He spent His life washing feet and dying for sinners. There is a joy in being like Jesus and walking with Jesus that you'll never experience if you're just the king and defender of your tiny, dark, cold, little, self-centered kingdom.

Now, where do you get the power to do this? Verse 21 clearly points you to where you get the power. That's why it's so important of a little verse. Verse 21, submit it to one another out of reverence for Christ. Out of reverence for Christ. We've already talked about that one.

Underline it if you haven't yet. You do it out of reverence for Christ. They're not always worthy, but He always is. You're so overwhelmed in worship at what He's done that it just overflows in your relationship.

You do it as an act of worship to Him, because behind them, you see Him standing. But there's one other secret in that verse you may not notice right at first. Remember how I pointed out it's mid-sentence? And if the translation that you're using, the English translation treats it as a standalone sentence, it's wrong, like the NIV here. NIV has one sentence. Okay, mark out the capital, the S, and mark out the period in verse 20, because that's not in Greek. It's one sentence. It's one long sentence that begins in verse 18, so look up there and see the first phrase of it.

You know what the first phrase is? Be filled with the Spirit. Be filled with the Spirit. And then what Paul does, watch, is he gives you a number of evidences that you are filled with the Spirit. You speak to one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs.

You give thanks in your heart always and all things, and you submit to one another out of reverence for Christ. If you're going to be able to do this, it's not going to come from you working up resolve. It's gonna be from the Spirit of God giving the ability inside of you to do it.

It's a supernatural strength, not a natural one. And the way that he does it is he does it by enlarging your eyes to how awesome Jesus is. You become so filled with reverence for Christ that it just overflows by the power of the Spirit into all the relationships that are around you. As in all things, always, the answer is meditate on the gospel because it is the gospel that produces in you the power to do everything that Jesus told you to do. It's not buck up and follow his example.

It's be overwhelmed by his sacrifice and you will become like him. So in all things, you always go back to the gospel. You know when we talk to teenagers sometimes, we'll say that romantic love ought to be like a triangle. It shouldn't be a triangle, but it ought to be like a triangle. And at the top of the triangle, you put God, and then you put you on one side and the person you love on the other side. And what we say is as you grow closer to God, you grow closer to each other. This is what we're talking about when we say that.

It is as you grow in awareness and in worship of God and the gospel that you begin to naturally serve your spouse and to treat their interests as more important than your own. So one time a day, one time a day in each significant relationship. It's not hard, right? One time a day.

Deal, can we do that? And just try it seven times. Between now and the time we see each other next week, you will have done it seven times. And if it doesn't work, you come right up here and you tell me, I tried that, it did not work. And that'll just give me a bunch of illustrations for the next time I preach about this, so you'll be doing a favor to me. Just try it. Release the gospel into your own. And if you're not married, try it with a roommate or if you don't live with anybody, try it with a random person at Starbucks. It might create a few awkward situations, but it'll be fun.

It'll be fun, I promise, okay? Seven times one day each week in your significant relationships and you watch how the gospel transforms. Have you experienced the love of Jesus in your life? If not, let me encourage you to learn more about what it means to be a follower of Christ.

We have lots of resources to get you started at jdgrier.com. Well, Pastor JD, today's message gave us something incredibly practical that we can do to transform all of our relationships. So can you tell us a bit more about this teaching series, First Love? In First Love, actually I love this series because we are looking at what Ephesians 5 has to say about building gospel-centered relationships, not just in marriage, really every relationship that we have. If there's one thing that I'm confident in saying we need help with, it's forming and building healthy, life-giving, life-restoring relationships. In many ways, these relationships become windows to our relationship with God. They are labs in which God grows us spiritually.

They are reflections of the quality of our walk with Him. So we've got a new resource we want to make available along with this series that will help you and those that you're in various types of relationships with help in talking to one another. We've made this set of conversation cards, simple cards that you can keep at your dinner table, around the kitchen island, or maybe in your car.

They just have a question or a prompt on them that can kick-start dialogue around important topics. To go along with that, we've got a book of 15 different devotions that are all around the topics of faith and rest and relationships, even a couple thrown in specifically for parents. I think you'll find not only the quality of your knowledge of the Bible increase when you use this resource, but the quality of your relationships and knowing how to apply it. I would love to reserve a copy for you, both of the devotion and the conversations card, and we can do that if you'll just go to jdgrier.com.

We would love to start this dialogue with you. This set of two resources comes with our thanks when you donate today to support this ministry. Give and request devotions for the distracted family along with your set of conversation cards when you call 866-335-5220.

Or you can request them both when you donate online at jdgrier.com. I'm Molly Vetovich. Thanks for joining us today.

Tomorrow we'll be diving into the topic of friendship, something I know we can all grow in. So be sure to join us again Friday on Summit Life with J.D. Greer. Today's program was produced and sponsored by J.D. Greer Ministries. .