The Space Between Us: Love That Lasts

[Music] You're listening to the weekly teaching podcast of Beaverton Christian Church in Beaverton, Oregon. We hope that what you hear today inspires you to laugh, question, think, and grow. If you'd like to connect with us even further, hit us up online at Beaverton.cc or shoot us a direct message on Instagram or Facebook. Thanks for listening, and we hope you enjoyed this week's episode. Good morning. Thanks for being here. I haven't been here. We are one church in five locations, and so like for the last few weeks I've been in different parts of the city, and I've really enjoyed being with those folks, but why is I'm glad to be home? You guys laugh at my jokes. [Laughter] I've got some today, so I'm just letting you know in advance. It's you laughing and also saying like, "Ain't in. Those are appropriate things to do." This series, it's called The Space Between Us. And in it, we're talking about the relationship gap that opens up between us and another person and things go wrong. Sometimes you say something, and it's misunderstood, or you have an expectation, but it doesn't get met, or maybe sometimes you say something, and you 100% minute, but you shouldn't have said it. And now there's a gap, and you don't know how that gap is going to close, so you can be in close relationship with people. And as we've looked at this, we've talked about the fact that God uses that space as a sacred space. That he will step into that spot, and he will bring us closer together with someone that we love, because that's what God does, right? When God looked at us and saw us in sin and broken, Jesus came and died for us to close the gap between us and God. And this is the heart of God for us, is that he wants intimacy and union with us, and he wants us to have relationship with each other. And so when we're willing to commit to being slow, to become angry, and slow, to speak, and eager to listen, we create this space for God's spirit to move when we surrender and submit to Him. And today we're going to be talking about a gap that opens up in our most intimate relationships, right? Our loved relationships, our marriages. And we're going to be talking about it because I think a lot of times something goes wrong, and then we don't really know what we can do about it. And the truth of the matter is, right, that love goes to whatever lengths it can to close a gap. And if that's Jesus stepping out into time and space to close that gap between us and Himself, then we ought to be willing to step into that space and sacrifice to make that happen with the people we love. There's a shortage of perfect movies in this world. My money, one of the most perfect, is 1987's The Princess Bride. And if you haven't seen it in a while, football's over. Go home. Treat yourself. You'll enjoy it. It's great. It's a movie about the lengths true love will go to close a gap between lovers, right? Wesley and Buttercup. They're in love. But then this gap opens up because these three thieves step in, right? There's a giant, and then there's a swordsman, and then there's an alleged genius. Now, they've stolen Buttercup, but Wesley has to go get her back. And because Wesley is trying to kidnap what they have rightfully stolen, the genius has to lay all these traps to try to open up more space between Wesley and Buttercup. But Wesley keeps overcoming it, right? It turns out he's not left-handed among other things. And every time he closes that gap, the alleged genius says the same thing, right? He goes, "It's inconceivable." After about the third time this happens, the swordsman, who's not especially bright, but is really good-hearted, looks at the alleged genius, and he says, "You keep using that word." I don't think it means what you think it means. And it's this classic moment in cinema where the allegedly dumb person busts the chops of the allegedly smart person for not being as smart as they think they are. And to this day, if you use this line on somebody who's being Mr. Smarty Pants, but actually is, in fact, Mr. Dumb shirt, or whatever it is, you will be considered a genius. Here's the thing, right? This concept of you keep using that word, but it doesn't mean what. I don't think it means what you think it means. I think that if the Apostle Paul or the Apostle Peter, or Jesus himself, were here with us today in this present era, they would look at us, and they would say, "Hey, there's a word you keep using, and I don't think it means what you think it means." Specifically in terms of relationships, and it's. This word found in this verse in Ephesians chapter 5, the verse says this, "For wives, this means submit to your husbands as to the Lord." Whew! All right, this is the moment that you're kind of like, "Oh, why did I come to church today?" This is not the church I was looking for. I guess for a lot of us, right, this is one of those verses that you're like terrified that your friends might come to church on a day that the pastor talks about this verse. But for others of us, it's worse than that, right? This is a verse that has been a significant source of hurt and pain for you in your life, because this verse has been used against you. And I don't know what that feels like, because I'm a husband, so this hasn't been used against me. But I am going to tell you, right, that we keep using this verse, and this verse doesn't mean what we think it means. Here's what we think it means. What we think it means is, "Recognize my authority and obey my desires." That's what we think it means, right? It comes out of a holster, and it's used to solve a problem, and then try to get back to our real life and act like the gap didn't actually widen. But I'm going to tell you this, this verse doesn't mean that, and this verse is part of a complete set of verses. And if you take one part of a complete verse and use it for something that's not supposed to be used for, you're actually going to create an even bigger problem, right? I got this staple gun at home that doesn't shoot staples anymore. I picked it up to try to use it, and I squeezed it as hard as I could, and nothing came out, and I was like, "Man, I am getting old." And then I looked at the other side of it, and it was all dinged up, because it had been used as a hammer. And now it was broken. Anybody have kitchen tools? Sometimes you put them on the counter in that dish. If you don't put them on the counter in this dish, you have to put them in a drawer, and then now you can never open that drawer, because there's a pair of tongs in there. And so you need a second set of rescue tongs to send in after the, or, anyway, you get what I'm saying. These tools, right, they belong into a complete set, and they're all used for different purposes. I don't know what that hammer is for. Some of you all are like, "You don't know how to cook," and the answer to you is, "Yes, I do not know how to cook." I don't know what that hammer is for. In most cases, that hammer goes inside of a drawer, and it just stays there, and I hope to never use it. That's how most of us treat this verse. And if you think that this verse is about, recognize my authority and submit to my desires, and then I hide this verse in a drawer, and I whip it out, and smack somebody with it, and then everything is going to be great. God wants, and too, that's not how that verse works. So, I'm going to spend a little bit of time talking about this, because this is something that I want you to know, that submitting ourselves to each other is something God expects of all of us, not just of wives to husbands. God isn't asking women to do something different than he's asking men to do. And we're going to see that in this passage, this passage was written by a man called the Apostle Paul. It's a word means, Apostle means being sent out. He was sent out by the first Christians in Israel to go talk to all the other people who had become Christians and make new Christians in the rest of the world. And so, he arrives in a city called Ephesus, and there in Ephesus, he's talking to people who religiously used to have to follow 613 rules. Actual laws. If you didn't follow the laws, the religious leaders would punish you for not following the laws, and you weren't allowed to be in the religion anymore. But when Jesus came, and he said, "I'm setting those laws away." This is, by the way, is why we don't follow those old testament laws about "don't eat that lobster," and make sure your pants are from the same fiber. Jesus set aside those laws by fulfilling them in his own body and perfection to God. And now we live according to the power of the Holy Spirit. When you give your heart to Jesus, the Holy Spirit comes to live inside of you and guides and directs us. God will tell you what He wants, and He will give you the power to do it. That's the beauty of following after Jesus. But I don't know if you remember, like maybe you graduated from high school or you went off to college, and suddenly the family rules didn't apply anymore, and it was kind of like spring break, "Woo, all day long." Set free from these laws, the Apostle Paul had to tell Christians how to listen to the voice of the Holy Spirit and how to walk in obedience to Holy Spirit so that you live the life that was pleasing to God. And so he starts in Ephesians chapter 5, 18 and 19 by talking about spring break. "Don't be drunk with wine, because that will ruin your life." This is good advice. If you're here today and you're not a Christian, this is still good advice for you, too. Get drunk, it will ruin your life. Instead, be filled with the Holy Spirit. Are you saying the word "play" happening here? He's like, "Hey, there are spirits that will numb you and distance you from really being alive." And there is another spirit, God's Holy Spirit, that you can be filled with that will bring you to life, that will cause you to live in such a way that is, you are pleasing God and you are having a connected relationship with Him and other people. Now you're probably thinking, "How do I do this?" What does that look like for me to be filled with the Holy Spirit? Here's the great news. He goes on to tell us and he's going to give us a few spiritual disciplines, right? Things that if we are disciplined in practicing, you will be filled with the Holy Spirit. Says this, right? Singing Psalms and hymns and spiritual songs among yourselves and making music to the Lord in your hearts. One more is coming. He says, "And give thanks to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ." So you've got Trinitarianism right here in the passage. You've got the Holy Spirit that Jesus wants us to be, the Paul wants us to be filled with. And he appeals to giving thanks to the Father in the name of Jesus Christ, Jesus the one who died for us, so that we could be filled with the Spirit, and the Father who is the blessed controller of all things. So if you want to be filled with the Spirit, there's some things you can do. And this is the moment that I tell you, in all religions, there are beliefs and there are feelings. But the only way to get from the beliefs to the feelings is to engage in the practices. You're here today and you don't feel close to Jesus. There are practices you can engage in spiritual disciplines that will cause you to feel the feelings that you want to feel. It's not just enough to have Christian beliefs. There are Christian practices and then there are Christian feelings that flow from them. And so in these practices that Paul lists, he starts off with Psalms. Psalms are in your Bible. They are songs that have been written by ancient people to describe their interactions with God. And they have become scripture. If you want to know God, you have to engage in reading the scriptures. Now the beautiful thing is it's truth, but it's truth set to music. I don't know if you've been paying attention over the course of maybe say your whole life. But if you set anything to music, you'll never forget it. I can prove it to you in my own life, right? It was all a dream. I used to read Word up magazine. Salt and Pepper and Heavy D up in the limousine, hanging pictures on the wall. Saturday, rap attack, we have no biggie fans in the house. Right back there. I'm more west coast in my affiliations, but I got a lot of love for Biggie. Look, pop quiz. Okay, here's a story of a lovely lady who was bringing up three very lovely girls, right? All of them had hair of like their the youngest one in, right? It's also the story of a man named who was bringing up of his own. There were four men living all together, but they were all alone until the one day when the lady met this fellow and they knew that it was much more than a hunch. That this group would somehow form a family. That's the way they all became. See, you didn't even know you were going to get tested on it. It's in your heart because it went in your ears. This is the most beautiful thing about the truth contained in the songs. If you want to know who God is, what God cares about, what God does, applying yourself to the songs is going to put it into your heart. You also says singing songs and singing spiritual songs and hymns. How many of you all came in today and you're like, "Oh man, I really don't want to sing. Don't raise your hand, but the person next to you will point at you." You don't always feel like singing, do you? Then you're up there in the band, it's like the third song, but then they're going back to the bridge and like, "Oh, how long are we going to be here?" The Bible refers to singing, to worship as a sacrifice of praise. Sometimes we don't feel it, but we surrender to it and we engage in the practice and then we feel the feeling. Then giving thanks to God the Father through Jesus Christ for everything. If you sit down and you write out the good things that God has given you, you might be having a terrible day, but when you look at those good things and then you choose to, by prayer, thank God for them. It will change the way you feel. Prayer, scripture, singing. If you engage in these spiritual disciplines, you will be filled with the Spirit of God and then you will be able to accomplish the things that Paul says next. If you are not like, if you're here today and you're not a Christian, you're not following after Jesus, that's fine. We would encourage you to join us. But if you do not engage in these practices, you won't be able to live a Spirit filled and led life that accomplishes the things that God tells us to do next. In many cases, these bad understandings of scripture that are used as hammers on people flow from people who are not walking by the Spirit of God, but looking for hammers to swing at people. And hammers don't close gaps. They drive home points. And in many cases, that's what causes gaps to widen. You see, in life, you have a choice to be an evil ruler or to be like Jesus, talking about Psalms, truths describing who God is and what God does. This is a Psalm from Psalm 34, verses 17 and 18 says this, "The Lord hears His people when they call to Him for help. He rescues them from all their troubles. The Lord is close to the brokenhearted and He rescues those whose spirits are crushed." This is how God responds when he hears people crying out in need, specifically in the lives of the people of Israel, the Hebrew people. They had lived as an oppressed minority people group in the land of Egypt. So living there, right, their people began to grow and soon they caught the attention of the evil leader of Egypt. His name was Pharaoh. It's their term for king. And Pharaoh, the Bible says, "saw that this people group was expanding and he felt his way of living was in danger." So the Bible says he appointed brutal taskmasters to oppress those people. This is a bad thing to do no matter where you are in the world or whatever time frame you're living in. But the people of Israel then called out to God and He heard their voice and He sent Moses and his brother Aaron with the power of God's spirit to break those chains and set them free. This is the God we serve. But God hears our cry and He responds in care, compassion and deliverance. You have a choice in life to be an evil ruler or to respond like Jesus. And out of that understanding, this is what Paul says next in verse 21. And further, so on top of being filled by the spirit, submit to one another out of reverence for Christ. You and I and every person who's ever followed Jesus, this is the only way it works is to submit ourselves to each other out of reverence for Christ because on the cross Jesus surrendered his life so that we could live out of reverence, out of respect for what Jesus did on the cross. You and I are called to live lives of sacrifice, to hear the cry of the people in our life and to step in with care and compassion, to sacrifice so that needs are met. All submission is the starting point for lasting connection. You want to be involved in a relationship with anyone, husband, wife, son, daughter, friend, coworker, mutual submission is the starting point for lasting connection. This is how Jesus did it. It's the only way we can do it. One of the great mistakes we're living with in our time is this belief that you can accomplish what Jesus would want by doing something Jesus would never do. Trying to do a thing that Jesus might want in a way Jesus would never do it is following our own spirit. It's not following the Holy Spirit. So, for wives, this means submit to your husbands as to the Lord. Why? For the husband is the head of his wife as Christ is the head of the church. He is the savior of his body, the church. Because the church submits to Christ so you wives should submit to your husbands in everything. If you think that the verse means recognize my authority and do what I say, obey me, then you're going to think this verse means treat your husband like God and do whatever he says. There's only one person we treat like God and do whatever he says. Pop quiz. Who was that person? Oh. He's killing it. It says Christ is the head of the church, the savior of his church, the savior of his body, the church. What does that mean to be the person who does that in your marriage? This is interesting to me, right? Because there is this truth demonstrated in the book of Philippians that leadership isn't actually about authority. It's about responsibility. The Bible says that Jesus Christ made Himself of no reputation. So is He pursuing authority? No. He's making Himself of no reputation. He stepped out of heaven a place He is obeyed on in heaven, the way He wants it to be on earth. He makes Himself of no reputation. He humbles Himself, taking upon Himself the form of a servant, humbling Himself to death, even death on a cross. And because of that, God gives Him a name that is above every name. That at the name of Jesus, every knee would bow and every tongue confess that Jesus is Lord. To Jesus own glory? No. To the glory of God, the Father. Jesus is the head of the church because Jesus took sacrificial responsibility for the welfare of the church. If you want to be a person of influence or authority in the life of another person, you have to take sacrificial responsibility from Him. You have to be willing to sacrifice for that person the way Jesus sacrificed for the church, which means it's going to cost you how much. Everything. So surrendering and submitting to another person is a choice we make based on our willingness to love and respond to their care for us. If it happens any other way, right? If someone takes authority over you but has not taken responsibility for you, what does that produce 100% of the time? It produces rebellion. Don't think so, talk to a teenager because they understand what it's like to have people take authority over them but not actually care for them, to command them but not nurture them, to provide for them but not respect them. The American colonies, the 13 original colonies were told by England, by this tea, give us this money in Texas. They were like, what are you going to do for us? They're like pretty much nothing but take what you have. So they dressed up like a bunch of native people, chopped up the tea, threw it in the harbor. You demonstrate authority over someone but you take no care for nurture and responsibility in their life. You get rebellion every time. To be the head of something means to be the person willing to sacrifice and die for. I'll prove it because look it says, for husbands, this means, love your wives. Just as Christ loved the church. How did He do it? He gave up His life for her to make her holy and clean, washed by the cleansing of God's Word. He did this so that He could become glorious and powerful? No, He did this to present her to Himself as a glorious church. Without a spot or wrinkle or any other blemish, instead, she will be holy and without. "Fault, Jesus made our righteousness, His responsibility so that we could experience justification, sanctification and glorification." Because He did this, God gives Him a name that is above every name. He gets a blessing from making a sacrifice. He doesn't demand everyone makes a sacrifice so that He will be blessed. In fact, He came and lived and was murdered because people would not bless Him and recognize Him. Now, what's interesting is you see this part four husbands, this means, love your wives. From this, sometimes we get the mistaken idea that women submit to their husbands and husbands love their wives. You love your wife. It says what you say, that's how it all works. Remember I said it to beginning, God actually asks us all to do the same thing to one another. And He asks husbands and wives to submit themselves to each other as well. You're probably going, "Yeah, but I don't see the word submit here in this passage." You're not wrong. It's not there. I rarely do this, what I'm about to do. But I think it's important and helpful in the fastest way for us to do this. It's also not there in the verse for wives either. This is the Greek text of this passage. The Bible was written in Greek, the New Testament because everyone spoke Greek back then. It was the trade language. So the New Testament was written down in Greek. Verse 21, which is the one that says, "Submit yourselves to one another out of reverence for Christ." You'll notice that it says, and if you read the read, the read is the English translation of the Greek. De-submitting yourselves to one another in reverence of Christ. The word submit is there. It's called hypo-tesalmanoid. That's the word they would have said in Greek. In verse 22, the very next verse, it says, "Wives to the own husbands as to the Lord." It doesn't say submit. It's inferred by the first verse. So it's supplied by the English translator. Any of us who speaks two languages knows that when you translate what you're saying to another language, you sometimes add words for clots. Clarity for brevity, for consistency. Verse 25, "Husbands love the wives just also as Christ loved the church." The word submit is put in because it's in the first one. We're talking about submitting ourselves to one another. So wives, submission looks like this. And for husbands, it looks like this. It's just not supplied in the English for the second one because a pronoun is used instead. Y'all know what pronouns are, right? Too soon. Let's go back one slide. For husbands, this is a pronoun, right? If I were to say to you like today, you and I are talking, and then afterwards you go home and you're like, "I was talking to John Furman. I don't like that dude." He talks too much. We and dude are both pronouns referring back to John. For husbands, this is the pronoun referring to submission. In the same way, for wives, submission, they're both pointing back to submission. So for husbands, submission means die for your wife, the way Jesus died for the church. I'll promise you if you do this, it'll change the way your marriage works. The sacrifice is always a love given to see something else good happen. There is no, we say this a lot, right? There is no love without sacrifice. Sacrifice is the demonstration of love. You give up something you love for something you love more, right, moms? Well, it's true for husbands and fathers and dads and grandparents and bosses. When you're willing to sacrifice a good thing to see a better thing, that's sacrifice. That's love. Paul goes on to say, "In the same way husbands ought to love their wives as they love their own bodies. For a man who loves his wife actually shows love for himself. No one hates his own body, but feeds and cares for it just as Christ cares for the church." This next thing I'm about to say sounds like it comes from like a Whitney Houston song, not Christian theology, right? Because Whitney wants you to love the greatest love of all is inside your heart, learning to love yourself. That's the greatest love. It's a great song. You should listen to that one too. Biggie Smalls, a Whitney Houston when you go home. There's more swearing in one of them than the other, but just prepare yourself. The truth is God wants you to love yourself. Doesn't sound right when you first hear it. It sounds selfish. But the scripture says, "You shall love the Lord your God with all your hearts on the mind and strength and your neighbor as yourself." It is assumed that you should love yourself. The challenge is when you do not love yourself. You do not feel good about yourself. You don't care for yourself, and that's always someone else's fault. If you're here today in this room, don't fall in love with someone who doesn't already love themselves. They won't know how to love you. They won't be capable of loving you. You will always become the scapegoat for their lack of love. Learning to love yourself in Christ is the step you take before learning to love another person in Christ. And if someone doesn't love themselves, you should not expect they will be able to love another person. If they can't sacrifice to engage in the spiritual disciplines, to be a spirit-filled person, they won't be able to sacrifice to help you truly live the way God calls us, to sacrifice to help others truly live. You're always faced with the choice. Are you going to be Pharaoh? Or are you going to be Jesus? My wife and I are both from the 1900s. In the 1900s, people didn't have phones. Now some of y'all are like, "I was alive in the 1900s. I had a phone." No, you didn't. The building you were in had a phone. Because there was a pole that had a phone, then you paid to use it. But people did not have phones. Phones, I don't even know why we had a phone. This is what our phone looked like right here. I don't know why we had a phone because we weren't allowed to use it. We always had to keep the line clear in case somebody was calling to talk about something important. And you would never call to talk to a child. The last thing you would want when you called some places to- get a kid. Not even on your birthday, your grandparents didn't even call you to talk to you. They'll be like, "Okay, and tell John Happy Birthday and they hang up because it costs so much money to call from Florida." Your job as a kid, if you were home by yourself, was to answer the phone, identify that you were a child, get the information that they had, write it on a note pad, and make sure the next adult that walked in, you gave them the paper. That was your whole job. That tape is there to record a message if no one is home to answer the phone. They would use electrics and magnets and they would burn a message onto a piece of something, and then you'd press a button and it would play back. Also, if the batteries in your walkman died, you could put your Cindy Loper tape in there and hit play and listen to it. Also worked with Teddy Ruck's pen, but that's less exciting than you think it's going to be. So I developed as a child, always having to steer clear of the phone. What we like to call technically in advanced terminology, terrible phone manners. I'm awful on the phone. Don't call me on the phone if you need help. I can't see your eyes, I can't read your body language. I'm just literally going to be like, "Yeah, what do you need?" That's why I can write it down on this piece of paper and I'm the adult, I'm going to give it to afterwards, and I'm going to try to get as much done as I can, but this is the worst way to get a hold of me ever. My wife on the other hand, her father was in the military, so they had two phone lines. One of them was just to keep clear in case like a whole red dawn situation broke out. The other phone line, she got to use as much as she wanted. She was calling her friends on the phone and talking about their thoughts and their feelings. She's finding out about boys and what they were doing, seeing if anybody wanted to go to the movies, developing what we call in reality, healthy relationships, healthy verbal skills, and we got married and cell phones became a thing. She expected to call me on the phone and have a good relation, to talk in ways that would really develop our marriage. I was like, "Babe, that's not the best thing you should even be thinking about." She would get in the car and start to drive home from work 35 minutes away and she'd be like, "I'm just going to call John. See what he's doing." I don't even know what my job is here. On this, on my air traffic control, on my talking you down, does your landing gear failed? I can't help you. She'd ask me questions about, "Now I'm getting interviewed. I told you everything about my day. What do I do now?" She'd be like, "What about you?" I'd be like, "You called me. Why are you asking?" I was talking to my friend about this because that's what you do. If a gap opens up between you and the person you love most, you go find somebody to complain about that too, closes the gap immediately. He's like, "Wow, it sounds like she really likes you." And I was like, "What?" It doesn't sound right. I don't know. Maybe it works hard. She's putting up these people all day and she just wants to make a connection with another person that she cares about, that cares about her. Maybe she sometimes gets a little bit lonely. I'm like, "I'm never in the car. I'm not lonely. I got TLC. I'm chasing waterfalls. I got arrested development. I'm going to Tennessee. I'm having a great time in this car. Sometimes I will turn on the radio and listen to two dudes I don't know. Talk about a sport I don't care about. Four hours in the car." It was kind in that moment I was faced with this decision, "Am I going to be like Pharaoh to hear a need and double down on my way of living, my lifestyle, to make other people suffer for my lifestyle preferences? Or am I going to be like Christ in this situation?" If the Spirit is forming Christ in me, so that God will do His kingdom work through me, I'm faced with this decision. So I would just like, I would answer the phone and then I would ask a question back, changed everything. Why do you think she said that to you? That sounds really hard. How dare they? Try that one on the phone. You will instantly close again. You know what's amazing? I was willing to make this sacrifice of something I loved, my way of thinking and being in the world. I was willing to make a sacrifice about that for her. Do you know who got blessed by it? Me. Because the version of her that walked in the front door, sometimes still on the phone, to find me somewhere in the house, was so much happier and energized and energetic than the version of her that was like, "Oh, my day was terrible." I sat in the car for 35 minutes by myself doing over it. I was blessed because I was willing to make a sacrifice to see my wife come alive, because I submitted to my wife and met her needs. My life was changed. Don't miss this. Christ like love doesn't dominate. It lays itself down. You and I are here today because Jesus laid his life down. You hear, you and I are here today because the apostles laid their lives down. It's the only way it works. The beautiful thing about Jesus is he's never actually made you or forced you to do anything in your whole life. There's a whole world out there doesn't want anything to do with Jesus. Guess what they get? Nothing to do with Jesus. When we surrender and sacrifice for each other, we don't do it because someone commands us. We don't do it because someone forces us. We don't do it because someone coerces or abuses us. We do it because we consent to love and be loved. That's what God is asking for. He's asking us to consent to being loved by him and to love other people and they get to receive it when they consent to be loved. He wants to do something in you and through you to change not just you but the world we live in. That begins now and goes into all of eternity. Here's the clincher, right? The clincher is he's not just asking us to respect somebody or love somebody. Look at what Peter says in 1 Peter 3.7. It says this, "In the same way you husbands must give honor to your wives. Treat your wife with understanding as you live together. She may be weaker than you are but she is your equal partner in God's gift of new life. Treat her as you should so your prayers will not be hindered." You've got to love a God who's like, "I'm sorry, bro, I can't hear what you're saying because I don't like the way you're treating my daughter." So can that one for a minute. That's how serious God is about this. Also notice she may be weaker than you are but she is your equal partner in God's gift of new life. The gospel changes everything. It changes the way we relate to each other. It gives us the ability to relate to God. It transforms marriage and all relationships into relationships of equal partnership instead of power based on physical strength intellectual knowledge access to resources. The gospel changes the whole world. That's what we get to be a part of. That's what he's calling us to be. That's how he's calling us to live. Love and respect are not separate commands. They're shared practices. And when we engage in those practices not only is the way we think change, the way we feel changes. He shows up in that gap which he has turned into a sacred space and he closes that gap and unites us because of Jesus' sacrifice on the cross. So this week here's just a couple of things I want you to consider. Ask yourself, where am I protecting my preferences instead of prioritizing our partnership? Where is it that I've got like, no, this is the way it should be based on how I grew up, based on my life experiences, based on what I'm not good at. And I'm forcing an adaptation in another person because I'm all that because that's how Pharaoh lived. I got a lifestyle where y'all are working to support me. And if I got to appoint harsh taskmasters to get what I want from you, then that's how I'm going to be. How can I exploit this situation to get what I want, not the gospel, not Christ-likeness? Second, how can I show honor this week in words, attitudes, or actions? Now you hear all these little simple ways we disrespect the person we love. They slip outside ways, right? Well if my main happy nobody's happy so I'm going to do what she wants. Is that honor? I don't, it doesn't feel like honor, right? There's a million ways we do it. But if instead of trying to keep someone happy, you actually honored their dignity, it would transform the way those gaps close. Lastly, how can the way Jesus loves me with humility, grace, and willingness to sacrifice first? How can I do that? How can I love the way Jesus loved me? Most beautiful thing about Scripture, right? The Bible says this, we love him because he first loved us. He sacrificed first. He went first. So if you want to change that broken space, be the first person to sacrifice. It doesn't guarantee the other person's going to respond. Which means you did what was right. You made the sacrifice God calls for and he's going to bless you. They got a choice in how they're going to play that game. But when you do what Jesus would do in a situation, you give everything, the best chance, to be transformed into what God is looking for. Being the first person to sacrifice requires humility and grace. What means there are spiritual disciplines that if you engage in this week, you will be filled with the Spirit, you will have the ability to do them. Stay close to Jesus, walk with His Holy Spirit, sing, pray, worship, read Scripture, be filled with the Spirit. He will show you exactly what to do and He will give you the power to do it. Are you praying with me? God, we love you because you loved us first. And we are so grateful for that love, teach us to be people who experience that love and then people who express that love. We love you and we are grateful. Jesus name, amen.