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Become the kind of person you would want to marry so don't be looking necessarily

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Only at someone you might be interested in be also be looking in the mirror

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And asking god to make you the kind of person that you're most attracted to

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I'm talking about warring in marriage and we're looking at ephesians 5

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And in my

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first message I talked about

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making the first thing first

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Seeking first the kingdom of god as individuals

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and then secondly

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I talked about entering your wife's world or entering your husband's world and dying there

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and loving

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our spouse

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The way christ loved the church and christ left heaven. He came in he entered our world. He died here

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So we as men

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So we as women are to enter our spouse's world and be willing to die there and it's hard work

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And I talked about that in the second message the hard work that's involved in being able to take your

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Heart and your mind off of yourself

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All of us are selfish. We go into marriage selfish and god's making us selfless

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Probably the number one tool

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That god uses in our lives to make us more sanctified to make us more like christ

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Is marriage so marriage can be the worst thing in your life

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If you're not working on it, you're not strategizing. You're not trying to make this a great marriage marriage

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By itself if you don't do anything

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Can be a disaster

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Because it's such a selfless environment that person knows you privately and that person knows you publicly

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And if you're a big faker a poser

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or a hypocrite

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The first person who knows that is your spouse and so I would say to any of you out there that are still single

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become

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The kind of person you'd want to marry

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Become the kind of person you would want to marry

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So don't be looking necessarily

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Only at someone you might be interested in be also be looking in the mirror and asking god to make you

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The kind of person that you're most attracted to because kings marry queens and queens marry kings

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so

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The kind of person the standard that you have you live up to that standard

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That's crucial. So today I want to talk about action number three

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And this is in ephesians 5 26 ephesians 5 26 if you have your bible

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That he might sanctify and cleanse her

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with the washing of water by the word

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That he might present her to himself a glorious church not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing

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But that she should be holy and without blemish now here. He's talking about the importance

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Of god's word cleansing us, but he's but he's identifying it with marriage that the man's

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One of the man's biggest responsibilities in a marriage is that he's in god's word and he's actually washing and cleansing

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his

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wife

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With god's word. So here's my action

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Number three action number three is grow together

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grow together

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Grow in the word together learn to spend time together this morning liz and I

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Like every morning we wake up and you got to get the first thing first and that is coffee

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You got to have coffee

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Now if your wife or your husband's into tea then tea

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Or maybe you're really into fitness to max and it's water whatever

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for liz and I it's

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Coffee, and if you haven't had pete's coffee, you probably don't have a happy marriage. No, i'm only kidding

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But we have coffee together and we grow together. So we have coffee

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Either in bed or in the study

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And we open god's word to a proverb. So what's today today is the 23rd

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So we did proverbs 23 and we read it slowly

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We read it together. It stimulated a whole lot of conversation

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day before

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It was proverbs 22 two days ago. It's proverbs 21. So we just

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Systematically follow the calendar and go through the proverbs together

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And usually I mean we always get through

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all of the of the proverb, but usually

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We camp on one or two proverbs that really speak to us. We underline them

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And we talk about them today

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We read that as a man thinketh so he is and so there's a there's a book

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Liz and I are reading on the renewing of the mind

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the importance of

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How you think is is the kind of person that you become?

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so

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we we

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Opened that book and read a few. I think we read chapter one

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As a man thinketh because of the Proverbs that we had so here's my point grow together

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Don't grow separately. I mean you should grow separately somewhat because

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You're you're gonna have time with the Lord. That's just you and the Lord

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But I want to challenge you and a happy marriage and a joyful marriage that you also learn how to grow together

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So I would challenge you men out there

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I challenge you women out there that you guys come together in the morning and even if usually there's one that's a little more

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Mature than the other it's pretty rare that we're all exactly at the same place

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So even if your spouse doesn't want to why don't you challenge him to 15 minutes or maybe it's only 10 minutes

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Let's read one chapter

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Let's pray together

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Let's journal together and then go you know

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Do your do the rest of your day at the different things that you're doing?

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But that's how for the last 30 years

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Probably 35 years Liz and I have begun our days not perfectly. We've gone times where we haven't but I would say

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Almost every day we get up have coffee. Don't look at our phones. Don't look at any

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Social media don't look at the computer zero nothing nada

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We just open the physical

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Pages of scripture. So we have our Bible right there by the bed. We get up

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We read a chapter. Sometimes I read sometimes she reads and then we talk about it

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And what's so cool about this is it usually launches us into a bunch of different other areas

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So we started talking about other things that are going on in the kids lives. We talk about things happening at church

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We talk about things happening maybe in our rental one of our rental houses, whatever it might be

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It usually lends itself especially Proverbs, you know, because Proverbs is skill in living

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That's a great way to think of the theme of Proverbs

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So by virtue of the fact that we're in the book of Proverbs right now

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We're talking about very natural

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practical stuff

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Every morning and then we pray together

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We after we've gone through that and we've talked to stuff. We we just we pray for every one of our kids

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We pray for all the grandchildren

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We pray specifically about different issues that are happening at the church or in our lives

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But we but we pray together. So we're united now. Why is this so important? I think it's important because

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When you're growing together

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You're not growing apart, let me say that again if you're growing together, you're not growing apart

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I think the easiest thing that can happen in a marriage is you gradually grow apart from each other

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She has her life. I have my life and

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You know, we talked a little bit here and there but by and large

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we're thinking on a different wavelength, but by starting the day and

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Maybe a good way to think of it is almost like a company if you're starting your company there

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You have an executive meeting and there's a president and there's a vice president or maybe there's co-presidents

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Whatever you want to call it, but it's coming together about life. It's coming together about the kids

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It's coming together about the staff

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It's coming together about the mission and the vision of

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your

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Family and that would be the rubric. I want to go to underneath grow together is do you have a mission?

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Do you and your spouse have a mission together?

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because here's what the verse says it says that he might that means Christ might sanctify and

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Cleanse her with the washing of the water by the word that he might present her to himself a glorious church on the same way

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We as men come

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We as women come that we might sanctify and cleanse our

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Spouse through the washing of the water of the word

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So have a mission. What's what's the vision of your marriage?

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Have you and your spouse ever written down a mission statement written down?

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why you think God brought you together and what's your purpose in being together is on this earth and

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Then grow in that

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check that mission statement check that vision statement on a fairly regular basis and see if you're growing in

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Relation to what God's given you as a vision of your marriage because there's a purpose

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There's a specific purpose for you meeting that person

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Falling in love with that person and marrying them and I believe under God's

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Rubric of the Great Commission and the Great Commandment of what he's called us to do. He wants you to grow together and

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So want to challenge you

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you start your day reading God's Word together, start your day praying together, start your

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day maybe even asking for forgiveness for something that happened the day before.

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Again coming together as a couple in God's Word, in prayer, maybe even in worship, Liz

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and I sometimes put on worship music and we just worship the Lord, some of the mistakes

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of the day before.

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Some of the getting crossways with the other usually gets dealt with.

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I'll tell you it's really hard, I think it's harder for women than for men, but it's really

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hard for women to connect emotionally and relationally with their husbands if they're

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angry toward them, if they're bitter toward them.

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So this is another way to keep short accounts, quickly forgive, quickly build bridges again

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after there's been mistakes made, and so grow together.

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Spend time in God's Word together.

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It can be five minutes, 15 minutes, 30 minutes or an hour, but start somewhere.

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Start with spending time together in the Word and praying together.

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You say, well I don't really like to pray out loud, I definitely don't want to pray

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out loud with my spouse.

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Okay, get over it.

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I'm going to challenge you to get over it because it's power in it and that's the devil,

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man.

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The devil does not want you to do what I'm saying.

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You say, well how do I start?

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Well just start with Jesus helped Liz be a good person today.

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I mean you can start off with one sentence, but just start there and then the other one

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and say a prayer.

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Just start there and watch what will happen with time.

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You'll get hooked.

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You'll get hooked on the miracles.

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You're going to see miracles happen in your marriage because you guys are praying together.

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You're going to see miracles happen because you guys are in the Word together.

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You're going to see breakthrough in issues of disagreement in your marriage because you're

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regularly growing together.

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I promise you it works, so God bless you.