Service . . . Service . . .it’s kind of a weird word that can mean lots of things.

1. If you were the manager of a restaurant and I complained about the service, what would I be talking about?
2. If I was talking with my mechanic and asked him to service my truck, what would I be talking about?
3. If I was at a tennis tournament and I leaned over to you and said that was a bad service what would I be talking about?
4. If I told you that I was going to quit my job as a pastor and joined the Armed Service, what would I be talking about?
5. If I went to see my mom and dad this afternoon and they asked how the service went this morning, what would they be talking about?

Service is a strange word that has all kinds of baggage attached to it, and so I want to be really clear about what we’re going to be talking about today. I want to talk about the verb “To Serve”. This kind of service depicts action and this is the definition that I’d like to lay out before us as we get started:

Work done by one person or a group to benefit others.

Service is the way that Christians are called to display our love. If I say, “I love you” to my wife or my kids, but then don’t serve them in any way that reveals my love for them, then no love is present.  Therefore, service is critical to the life of a believer.

The Bible tells us to “Serve one another in love” Read the rest of this entry »

Why do we worship? What keeps us from worshipping more? What keeps us from falling more in love with God? What keeps us from falling on our face in front of him speechless because of the wonder of who he is? What keeps us from singing at the top of our lungs because of who he is? What keeps us from praising and loving God more?

In case you guess it, I just want to state that my point this morning is to move our worship to the next level. The point of this morning is to take your worship with God and put it on steroids and grow it bigger Read the rest of this entry »

Look at this amazing promise. Peter says, Humble yourselves that God may lift you up, and this is the part that we hate, in due time. Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you. 1 Peter 5:6-7

You see, due time for me is different from due time for God, because I heard the sermon on Sunday and I applied it on Monday and by Thursday there ought to be some activity in my marriage, right? I emptied my box by Monday and by Monday at 5:00 and we’re back over here (Desires box), and I say, “Ok God, why isn’t he or why isn’t she looking in my box and taking notice of my wishes, dreams and desires?”

Here’s the promise. In due time, God will intervene on your behalf. What does that look like? I don’t know because everybody’s circumstances and everybody’s issues are different and everybody’s personalities are different, and everybody’s baggage is different. But in due time, God will intervene on your behalf. And let me tell you, I’ve seen some men and women live in the due time for a long time. But at the end of their due time with their humility and faithfulness, they’ve seen God do some amazing, amazing things – in their life personally and in their marriage.

I’ve seen a woman who waited 30 some years for God to change her husband – faithfully casting all her wishes, dreams, desires and anxieties upon God and then at the end of 30 some years God opened her eyes and she realized she was half the problem. She had been thinking that he was the whole problem, but then God showed her how she had been acting, obviously without knowing it, but that she was a major part of why her husband had responded to her in ways that did not meet her wishes, dreams and desires. Read the rest of this entry »

Good morning! If this is your first time here, then you’re coming in at the middle, a bit toward the end of the movie, so you don’t know what the plot is and so some of this morning’s message isn’t going to make sense.

So this is the third message in a four part series on marriage, not just everything there is to talk about marriage, because we’ve taken a very thin slice, a simple dynamic in marriage, and have asked a question that maybe you’ve never been asked and hopefully have been getting some answers that have been practical and helpful.

So let’s review for a second, so that we all get started on the same page. We said that we all get married with a box load of wishes, dreams, and desires. Like, I hope that one day we’ll be able to live in a certain kind of house. I hope that we’ll schedule our marriage in such a way that he’ll come home and she’ll come home at a certain time and eat together at a certain time and I hope me husband doesn’t do these things like my dad because they really irritate me, but I hope that she does these things like my mom because those are really great for me, and I hope she never wears anything like that to bed, and we’ll raise our kids like this and not like that. I mean we all have these wishes dreams and desires when we go down the aisle. It’s natural. It’s normal.

But when both man and women walk down the aisle together, they each have a box full of wishes, dreams, and desires and those wishes dreams and desires all revolve around “I”. And what we said is that sometimes we walk into the church and up to the alter with a box full of wishes, dreams, and desires and we walk out with a box of expectations.

There’s a difference between desires and expectations and we don’t know how this happens, but things that are fun to talk about – you know, “One day” or “Some day” move from becoming desires to becoming expectations. And as things move out of the dreams, wishes and desires box to the expectations box the whole dynamic of the relationship changes, because what was fun over here, now seems to be really heavy and no fun over here.

We said that if this has happened to you then your relationship is characterized as a debt debtor relationship. You owe me because, after all, you’re the wife and that’s what wives are supposed to do. And you owe because you, after all, you’re my husband and that’s what husbands are supposed to do. And you promised and I thought and you should, and why don’t you and your relationship devolves from this fun, joyous, romantic marriage into one that is just drudgery where all the fun and all the romance has been sucked out of it.

  Read the rest of this entry »

Movie Clip: Pay it forward 29:44 – 33:40

Last week we started a new series on marriage and we said that when we come into marriage with a great big I and we can’t help that because all we have is me, myself and I, and so we walk down the aisle saying to our selves, “I imagine it’s going to be this way and I hope it’s going to be this way, and I’m hoping and imagining that she’s going to be this way and our marriage is going to work this way and it’s going to function that way. We walk down the aisle with a big box of dreams, desires, and wishes and we say “I do”

In our box of dreams, wishes and desires, there’s ideas about how the money’s going to be made and how it’s going to be spent and how we’re going to make financial decisions. And we have dreams, wishes and desires about when we’re going to start a family and have our first kid in the first year, or the first five years, or, well, maybe there’s enough kids in the world all ready. Or we dream about what my wife will come to bed in, but she’s dreaming that it doesn’t really matter what she comes to bed in, because he’s going to love me for who I am.

There’s wishes hopes and desires like we’ll start in a small house, but then we’ll move into a bigger one before our kids are born, and you have ideas about what that house is going to look like and what color it will be and whether it will have a white picket fence or a barnyard full of animals, and you dream about what kind of car you’re going to drive and someday, she’s going to or he’s going to start their own business and work as this or as that.

I mean we all do this. It’s natural. We all come into marriage with a big box full of hopes, dreams, wishes, and desires and we take that big box of desires and we walk up to the alter and we say “I do”. Of course you do, because there’s only you at that point, but from that point on, it’s not about I, it’s about “We” and how do you make that work with two big I’s with two big boxes of desires hopes and dreams.

But here’s the deal and this is where we’re going. A Christian marriage is not a marriage where you throw Bible darts. Do you know what a bible dart is? A Bible dart is saying to your spouse, well the Bible says that you’re supposed to love me unconditionally – swisht! Ohhhhh. Well that’s nothing, the bible says that you’re supposed to submit! Ohhhhhh!

Christian marriage isn’t where you use the Bible to control the other person’s behavior. You know what that is? That’s just an I marriage with a cross hanging around it’s neck. That’s what that is. That’s not a Christian marriage. That’s an I marriage all over again where they’re using the Bible to convict and control the other person.

A Christian marriage answers this question, “What does my spouse owe me?” They owe me nothing. And if that scares you, I understand that. And if that bothers you, because you’re not sure how that works out practically, then I’m glad you’re here to hear it.  But that’s the answer to the question if you want to have a Christian marriage.

  Read the rest of this entry »