Well, good morning.
I didn't realize this until this week.
My oldest daughter, who is 37 years old,
you say, why are you telling that?
Because I'm going to tell you a story about it.
She said, are you preaching at Pick and Sunday?
I said, yes.
She said, are you going to preach a sanctity of life message?
And I had already prepared a message.
I said, I'll take care of it.
So I'll mention it.
Today is Sanctity of Human Life Sunday.
And we should care about life.
We should not just be against abortion.
We should be for adoption.
And we should practice it.
My oldest daughter that I mentioned is 37 years old.
Over five years ago, she finally came to a conclusion after going through surgeries and different drugs and all kinds of specialists.
And the doctors told her that most likely she would never be able to have children.
So she and her husband started the adoption process.
And usually they had been told it could take up to two years.
Well, within a matter of nine weeks, they had adopted a little boy and brought him home from the hospital.
Now, people ask her, she started getting phone calls from all over the place.
And how did you do that?
And she said, the only thing I can tell you is just God answered our prayers.
And that little boy is a little over five years old now.
His dad is left-handed.
And guess what?
He's left-handed.
And he looks like his papa.
And he is as much a part of our family in any way, in any depth.
He's one of us.
He's with us.
He's ours.
But a few weeks ago, she sent us a text.
It had a picture in it with one of those sticks that women use to tell if they're pregnant.
And it was showing positive.
And then at Christmas, they gave us, as we were opening our gifts,
we opened one package and it was a frame.
And it says, we're having a boy.
And not only that, but the doctors told her that everything so far in the development of this child is perfect.
And he doesn't consider this an at-risk pregnancy at all.
When she went to the doctor and he was examining her, he said, now you've had this and this and you've had this surgery and this surgery and you've been on these drugs.
He said, and you're pregnant.
And then the doctor said, wow.
And my daughter said, well, I want you to know that there's some women in my church that have been praying for me to get pregnant.
And his nurse said, oh my goodness, that makes the hair stand up on my neck.
But we think our first grandson in that family was a miracle.
And we're sure that the second grandson is a miracle too.
So, sanctity of human life is about respecting life.
It's about opposing things that would destroy life, but promoting things that bring about a better life.
Well, this morning I want to talk to you about marriage.
Now, I know some of you have been through, I don't know, I've done three seminars and then I've done retreats twice.
So, probably everybody here has heard this.
Let's just be dismissed and go home.
I know you're going to want to pray for Fred as he recovers and hope that that procedure, as far as the recovery goes, will be quick and he'll be on schedule for Wednesday night.
We have been away a lot.
I did tell Fred before we joined, we would be the sorriest members that you have.
And we've pretty much lived up to it.
We went to one interim and then two weeks later we went to another one and then we stopped that at the end of the year.
And then I started a Bible conference on Sunday night in Inman.
And we finished that tonight.
And then next Sunday we go to Union Baptist Church in Iva for no more than three months.
And then, to highlight it all, on the first Sunday in April, we'll be going to preach at the First Baptist Church of Lowndesville.
Do you know where Lowndesville is?
A man came to the convention and came up to our booth and said, would you preach for me sometime?
I said, I'd be delighted.
And he said, well now we just got a little old church.
And I said, you do not.
He said, what do you mean?
I said, you got the biggest church in Lowndesville.
He said, that's right.
That's what he tells everybody.
Well, Genesis chapter 2 and verse 24 is the most important verse in the Bible about marriage.
It's quoted by Jesus in Mark 10, Matthew 19.
It's quoted by Paul in 1 Corinthians 6 and in Ephesians 5.
It says, for this reason or for this cause,
A man shall leave his father and his mother and be joined to his wife and they shall become one flesh.
We've heard for some time, for a period of years, that we had a divorce rate in this country of about 50%.
And then the last few years we began to hear, no, that's way down now.
We don't have a divorce rate anywhere near 50%.
Well, Bella DiPaolo, writing in a recent edition of Psychology Today, said,
The chances that a marriage will end in divorce is probably somewhere between 42% and 45%.
But couples who go for at least eight hours of premarital counseling increase their probability of staying married by 32%.
So it's important to prepare for marriage.
Dysfunctional marriages includes divorce is about 50% of all marriages now.
Well, when you get married, you should prepare for it.
We should enter it thinking you want this to last a lifetime.
If you want to be an electrician, approved electrician, you have to work and get a license.
If you want to be a contractor, you have to get a license.
If you want to be a driver, you have to take a written test and then you have to drive to get a license.
Oh, and pass them.
To be a counselor, you have to get a degree, a graduate degree, and then you have to do two years of clinical,
and then you have to take an exam.
So in just about everything that you're licensed or certified in, you have to have some kind of preparation.
But in order to get married in this country, all you've got to do is go down to the courthouse,
get you a license, get somebody to sign it, and you are married.
Preparation precedes blessing, and that includes marriage.
Now as I look out, I can tell in some of your faces, you look at me and you're saying,
but I've been married for a long time and I don't need this.
And I love you, but you do.
Because if you're okay, there is somebody else that needs your encouragement and your help as they build their marriage.
So when you look at Genesis 2.24, he's really talking about doing three things.
The first thing he's talking about, he said, for this cause a man shall leave his father and his mother.
So the first thing is leave.
Now what does that mean?
Well, I've had people over the years when I was doing counseling,
and a fair amount of it would come for premarital counseling,
and I would ask the question, where are you going to live?
Sometimes I'd get this answer.
Oh, we've got a place, we've got a lot next to mom and daddy.
And I would respond, can you live at least an hour away from your mamas and your daddies?
And the reason for that is, you have to achieve some emotional distance from your family of origin
in order to establish your own family,
and it's easier to achieve emotional distance if you have geographical distance.
That and some other practical things.
If you live next door, it's real easy for anybody to just pop in anytime unannounced.
But if you live an hour away, they've got to make some preparations to let you know they're coming.
So leave.
He says, leave your family to build a new family.
And then he says, and shall cleave to his wife.
And if the Hebrews had a word for super glue, this would be it.
To stick together, through thick and through thin, through sickness and in health,
to stay with each other, to cleave.
And then the third thing is implied.
It's weave.
Have you ever seen those ladder back chairs that had cane bottoms in them?
They were woven?
Anybody?
We can be interactive.
Anybody?
Okay.
If you took a ladder back chair and you took a five-gallon bucket of water
and you poured it in the seat of that chair, what would happen to the water?
You got the answer.
What is it?
It would go through.
That's right.
Thank you, Mike.
It would go through.
Then you wipe it off because it's covered in polyurethane and everything.
You wipe it off.
Then you sit down in that chair.
What's going to happen to the chair?
And the answer is nothing.
And that's the way marriage ought to be.
We ought to have enough space between us that a lot of stuff can pass through.
But we need to have enough strength in that weave that we're going to stick together.
So he says, leave and cleave and weave.
Now, I want you to look what he says for this reason, for the reason for the cause of marriage.
A man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife and they too shall become one flesh.
So if you look in Genesis chapter 2 and verse 18, it says,
The Lord said, it is not good for the man to be alone.
I will make a helper suitable for him.
And that operative word in that verse is suitable.
It means to correspond to each other.
It doesn't mean to be exactly like each other.
And it doesn't mean that you complete somebody else.
I heard it when I was growing up.
Many of you heard it.
I heard preachers preach it.
They'd come and they'd preach on the family and they'd say,
You need to find you a young man.
You need to find you a young woman.
We're talking about young people.
And you can complete her and she can complete you.
And I bought it.
I thought, yeah, that's the way it is.
Until years later, I realized that's just not true.
There is nobody on this earth who can complete you but Jesus Christ.
Augustine says man has a God-shaped vacuum inside of him.
And the only thing that will complete him, that will fill him, that will make him whole
is a relationship with God through Jesus Christ.
So what does he mean when he says suitable?
He means someone who can complement the other.
Not complete, but complement to aid each other.
Well, I want to share with you this morning what I call the four F's of marriage.
And the first one is the foundation.
The foundation of marriage is commitment or love.
The greatest commandment is love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind.
The second is like it, love your neighbor as yourself.
And your number one neighbor will be your mate.
So you love God, that's the foundation.
And then the very next thing is you love your neighbor.
Who is your neighbor?
Anybody that God puts in the path of your life whose needs you can help meet.
So you love your wife, you love your husband.
Well, what does that really look like in practice?
Well, first of all, it's the word agape.
And agape is not necessarily a feeling word.
It's a word of commitment.
So sometimes we talk about love.
And in our culture, we bandy around a word.
And we have one word that covers a multitude of things.
The Greeks had four.
And they were more specific in what that word meant.
But love that's talked about in Scripture.
For God so loved the world, for example.
Love one another.
Love the brethren.
Love your enemies.
That word is agape.
And it's not talking so much about feeling as it is a commitment.
Have you ever noticed when two people meet?
And they meet because, well, they like the way each other looks.
And then they like each other's personality.
And then they like some of the things they have in common.
And they date for two or three weeks.
And invariably, somewhere along the way, somebody's going to say,
I love you.
And what they mean is this.
I am infatuated with you.
And we know that all relationships begin with infatuation.
We also know if it doesn't grow out of the infatuation stage,
before people get married,
it becomes a predictor for trouble later in the marriage.
But in a practical sense, what does that look like?
How does it show up in marriage?
Well, 1 Corinthians 13, verses 4 through 7,
describes agape, describes this love.
It's not a definition of it.
It's a description of it.
Love is patient.
Love is kind and is not jealous.
Love does not brag and is not arrogant.
Does not act unbecomingly.
It does not seek its own.
Is not provoked.
Does not take into account a wrong suffered.
Does not rejoice in unrighteousness.
But rejoices with the truth.
Bears all things.
Believes all things.
Which, by the way, means gives the other person the benefit of the doubt.
Hopes all things.
Endures all things.
Love is from God.
God is love.
The fruit of His Spirit is love.
And we can't really love another person
until we have the love of God inside of us.
But it's seen.
It shows up.
What it looks like in practical ways,
when you love your mate,
you show your mate that you value them.
If you devalue them,
it is the opposite of love.
So, two people that say they love each other
and are going to build a marriage
are two people who are going to be showing that other person value
throughout their marriage.
Even when they get angry with each other.
Even when they don't agree with things,
they still show the other person value.
So the foundations.
Love God.
Love your neighbor and your first neighbor as your mate.
The second thing is friendship.
Our best friends should be our mates.
That's not always the case.
And a lot of dysfunctional marriages,
it's not the case at all.
And some people have even been taught
that your wife or your husband should not be your best friend.
Your wife or your husband should be your best friend.
Have you ever heard of a man named John Gottman?
Anybody?
John Gottman?
He was a professor out at the University of Washington.
He had a place called the Love Lab.
And it was an apartment that the university set up for him.
Couples that were having trouble in their marriage would come.
This apartment was set up with cameras and microphones.
They would take their blood pressure and their heart rate periodically.
And you'd think that going into a situation like that,
it sounds kind of clinical and sterile,
that there would be, people would be so self-conscious about,
how am I going to act?
What am I going to do?
But they found out that after being there,
get settling in,
for two hours,
they started acting like themselves.
And in over 35 years,
they recorded all this stuff.
And Gottman and his associates put it all together.
And he started to publish his material
and then write popular books.
One was called Why Marriages Fail.
Another one was The Seven Principles to a Successful Marriage.
If you were to go to the Gottman Institute today for 2018,
they've got a program.
You go online to Gottman Institute.
He's Professor Emeritus at Washington now,
and he heads up the Gottman Institute
with his wife, who's also a clinical psychologist.
But they've got this plan.
Now you go there, I think it's for 10 minutes a day
for a certain period of time,
how to build, how to strengthen your marriage.
Now, John Gottman is a Jewish man.
John Gottman is not a Christian.
But he is regarded by those who look at relationships
as one of the leading experts.
He's been called the guru of relationships in America.
Well, friendship, is it important?
This is what Gottman says.
The determining factor in whether wives feel satisfied
with sex, romance, and passion in their marriage
is 70% by the quality of the couple's friendship.
For men, the determining factor
is by 70% the quality of the couple's friendship.
And then he makes this little caveat here
that sounds like a shot at John Gray,
who wrote the book,
Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus.
He said,
So, men and women come from the same planet after all.
We need to build friendship.
Song of Solomon, chapter 5 and verse 16 says,
The king is admiring his wife,
Nesheulamite.
And he says,
This is my beloved and this is my friend.
Well, if we're going to keep our friendship,
and that's going to be a big part
of keeping a marriage strong,
making a marriage last,
what do we need to do?
We need to make sure that the positives
are more than the negatives.
That pleasing behaviors
are more than negative behaviors.
Gottman also came up with this formula,
and he says,
Any successful marriage
will have a ratio
of at least five positives
to one negative.
And he said,
Anything less than that
brings about a degree of tension
and even dysfunction
inside the marriage.
1 Corinthians, chapter 7,
verse 32,
Paul wrote,
I want you to be free from concern.
One who is unmarried
is concerned about the things of the Lord,
how he may please the Lord.
But one who is married
is concerned about the things of the world,
how he may please his wife.
Because marriage is an earthly institution.
It is of this world.
And his interests are divided.
The woman who is unmarried
and the virgin
is concerned about the things of the Lord,
that she may be holy
both in body and spirit.
But one who is married
is concerned about the things of the Lord,
how she may please her husband.
So what he says in that verse is this.
Here's the ideal thing to do.
Don't ever get married.
Spend all your time,
all your money,
all your devotion
in serving God.
But he goes on to say,
but most of us,
I'm thinking 99% of us
don't have that gift.
And then he comes with this principle.
So,
if husband,
you have a wife,
he says,
please her.
And wives,
if you have a husband,
please him.
Now I think that has to be
disciplined by reason
and common sense.
If my wife told me
I would like a new,
a spanking new BMW,
my response would be
we can't afford it.
She would say,
but I've been watching,
I think it's Snyder's in Greenville.
She said,
I've been watching Snyder's
and between 2 and 3 o'clock in the morning,
there's no security.
She said,
I've got this thing
that I downloaded,
here's how you hotbar
one of those BMWs
and get inside of it.
She said,
you could steal it for me.
Now she said,
and then she said,
that would please me.
And I'm going to say,
nothing doing
because I'm not interested
in starting a prison ministry.
So it has to be with reason
and good sense.
But husbands,
please your wives.
That's what he's saying.
Wives,
please your husband.
And now,
in order to do things like that,
we have to communicate.
Inside a relationship,
in any kind of relationship,
there's a communication equation
that equals 100%.
7% are the words we use
and we thought they were so important.
7% of the words we use,
38% is the way we say the words,
and 55% are non-verbals,
body language.
And all those years
I spent preaching
and doing the seminars and stuff,
I developed a gift.
When I'm preaching to a congregation,
I can tell.
100% of the time,
I look out
when somebody's not listening.
I can tell.
Somebody's got their legs crossed like this,
they got their hands crossed like this,
their heads roll back
on the back of the pew
and I hear this noise.
I know they're not listening.
Non-verbals are important.
How you look at somebody
in a relationship is important.
One of the things
that's real important
is how we have an open posture
to one another.
How we imply to that person,
I'm open to you.
And sometimes we don't.
Sometimes it's a habit.
Sometimes we're talking to people,
we automatically do this.
Well, that's an example
of closed posture.
Sometimes you do it
because you're cold.
I was leading a retreat
in Ridgecrest
and there was a group of people
and there was this one
little woman on the front.
This was in February
and it actually was snowing
a little bit that night.
It was cold.
They had problems with the heat
and she's doing this
the whole time like this.
And I said, stop.
I shouldn't have done it.
I've asked God to forgive me.
But I said, stop.
I said, this is an example
of closed posture.
Well, we had a break.
And then she comes up to me
and she's,
I'm talking to somebody
and she tugs on my sleeve.
She says, Dr. Gray?
I said, yes, ma'am.
I want you to know
I was listening to you
but it's so cold in here
I'm about to freeze.
She was right.
It was cold.
She was trying to stay warm.
But there are clues.
Maintain contact.
A little principle of solar.
If you want to really
communicate with somebody
face that other person squarely.
Square it up.
Have an open posture.
Don't close anything.
Lean slightly forward.
By the way,
you listen to sermons better
if you find yourself
leaning slightly forward.
Just lean slightly forward.
Maintain eye contact
with that person
and then breathe and relax.
And that helps you become
a better listener.
Now, sometimes men
have a problem with listening.
How many women in the room
would say, I agree with that?
If you agree with that,
would you raise your hand
high and proud?
Okay.
Alright.
In fact, the number,
you know what the number one
complaint that women
have about men is?
They don't listen.
So then I ask the men,
is it true?
Do you listen?
Jeff said in the first service,
he's listening as long as
there's not a ball game on
that he's interested in.
Men, Deborah Tannen
wrote a book called
Men and Women in Conversation.
She'd done her PhD work
on communication,
especially in relationships.
And she said that men
actually hear.
But she kind of explained it
this way,
that because men
don't like to get
all involved in messy
emotional stuff,
because men just don't
like that stuff,
that they kind of,
we kind of come
to this conclusion.
Okay, she's going to
share something with me.
I can tell this is going
to be emotional.
It's going to take a while.
It's going to tear me up.
So, I'm just not really
going to listen.
I hear her.
I know what she said,
but I'm not going to listen.
And she gets mad at him
and she goes off
and they have a little
dispute.
And he thinks he's won
because he thinks he's won
because he thinks
her anger is less
than him having to go through
dealing with all that stuff.
Well, since I said something
about number one complaint
women have about men,
what's the number one complaint
that men have about women?
Huh?
Talk too much.
That's not right,
but that's good.
All these seminars
and stuff I've gotten,
that's the top answer I get
is women talk too much
and women are more verbal
than men.
But here's the number one.
Women say their number one
complaint about men
is that,
men say their number one
complaint about women
is that women are always
trying to change them.
Always trying to change them.
And I suppose you have
to talk some in order
to do that.
Well, the third F
I want you to look at
is finances.
Finances.
For years and years,
the top three problems
in America
has been sex,
in-laws,
and money.
Today,
and it has been
for the last several years,
number one is money.
We have over
one million bankruptcies
a year.
We've had that
since 2007.
We have a total
credit card debt
for all Americans
of around
700 billion dollars.
Most couples
in America
have a debt problem.
The average amount
of unpaid credit card debt
per family
in America
averages
15,355 dollars.
And the average debt
excluding the mortgage
is 129,579 dollars.
And we've got
an undisciplined
approach
to finances.
Now, Gottman,
Dave Ramsey's one,
Larry Burkett was one,
say everybody
should have a budget.
And like I told
the service at 8 o'clock,
I would not suggest
to the First Baptist
Church of Pickens
that everybody here
doesn't have a budget.
I know you do.
I know you follow it.
I know you plan it
every year.
I know that everybody
here has got a budget.
But for those two couples
that don't have one,
this is what they say
how you go about
preparing a budget.
You list all
of your expenditures.
All the money
you've got going out,
you list it.
You come up
with a total.
And then you come over here
on this side of the ledger
and you list up
all of your income.
List all of your income.
And if your expenditures
are greater
than your revenue,
guess what you've got?
You've got a federal government
on your hands.
No, you've got a problem.
You've got a problem.
And so the idea,
and all of these
finance councils
say the same thing,
you've got to cut down
on expenditures
because you have to have
a balanced budget.
And in that balanced budget,
you should leave room
for tithing.
Not just nodding to God,
but to actually tithing.
And here's the good news
about that.
Tithing ought to be
a part of our budget.
And the good news is,
you don't have to give
just 10%.
We live in the age of grace.
You can give 20%
if you want to.
Saving should be
a part of that.
I have had couples
over the years,
usually the man
would say to me,
and this happened
to one guy in particular,
I still remember it,
and he was a student
at Southwestern Seminary.
He said,
I can't afford to tithe.
And my response to him was,
you can't afford
not to tithe.
Years later,
he came back to me
and he sat down
and he said,
I want you to know something.
That was right.
He said,
when I stopped tithing,
we got in all kinds
of trouble,
all kind of financial trouble.
He said,
we finally got it
straightened out.
But yeah,
tithing should be a part.
Our children should know
that we value God enough
that we put aside
what we're going to give
to God
in our family budget.
And God calls us
to be good stewards,
to be faithful stewards.
1 Corinthians 4 and verse 2
says,
it's required of stewards
that one be found
trustworthy or faithful.
And Malachi says,
bring the whole tithe
into the storehouse.
We don't love money.
We shouldn't live for money.
But everybody here
has to use money
for certain things.
And we should be good stewards
with what God has given us.
In fact,
Proverbs 13 and verse 22
says,
a good man leaves
an inheritance
to his children's children.
So finances.
Our finances could be in shape
because if it's the number one problem
that couples have now,
then it means that
once we get that in shape,
then we've reduced
the number one problem
that most couples have.
Well,
the last thing is
finishing well.
Finishing well.
Marriage is an earthly institution.
The Bible says
they're neither giving
nor receiving
in the resurrection.
It's made for the earth.
No marriage in heaven.
I know some people
have been married a long time
and love each other
and care for each other
and just have endeared themselves
to each other
will say things like
I can't imagine heaven
without my husband
or without my wife.
I even heard a president
of a Bible college
at one of our conferences
he was speaking
and he said
I can't imagine heaven
without his wife.
But the truth is
when we get to heaven
that is such a higher,
greater experience
than we've ever seen,
it won't matter.
I mean,
it'll be something
so much greater
it'll be enveloped
in something greater.
We'll know people
but we'll know them
and understand them
at such a higher level,
such a spiritual power
and dimension
that there won't be
the need for marriage.
Well,
couples get into difficulty
along the way
and sometimes
they don't finish well.
So I want to give you
four things
that Gottman says
and he says
these are core things.
He says
if these four things
are present in a marriage,
there's a 94% chance
that marriage
is going to fail.
So number one
is contempt.
Contempt.
And that is the intention
to insult,
to hurt,
or to damage
your mate.
It's things like
name calling
and hostile humor
of ridicule,
mocking,
negative body language,
sighs,
eye rolling.
Have you ever been
talking to your mate
and they do something
like this?
Or they just
roll their eyes at you?
How do you interpret that?
Well,
what Gottman says
is they're sending you
a message.
That's a message
of contempt
and he says
don't do it.
The second one
is criticism.
Now,
he makes a distinction
between a criticism
and a complaint.
He says
a criticism
is global.
A criticism
is broad
and a complaint
is specific.
A criticism
is an attack
on somebody
and a complaint
is pointing out
something
that can be done.
Suppose that Mike
is kind of
sloppy at home
and he gets ready
to go to bed
at night
and he just
throws clothes
all over the place
before he gets
to the bedroom.
And finally,
his wife just had it.
Oh,
that's you.
Oh,
we'll just reverse it.
So,
and then
she finally
had it with him
and she says,
Mike,
honey,
look at this.
I want you
to pick up
your clothes.
I don't like it
when you leave
your clothes out.
Now,
that's a complaint.
He can do
something about that.
She hasn't attacked him.
But if she said,
Mike,
look at this,
you are a slob.
That's criticism
because he's
attacked his person.
So,
Gottman says
marriages
can thrive
on complaints
when they're
delivered rightly
but they'll dry up
from criticism.
The third thing
is defensiveness.
You retaliate
against your mate
in order to
protect yourself.
In other words,
you make something
the problem
that's not a problem.
For an example,
you get married,
guys,
and you promise
your wife,
I'll always
carry the garbage,
put it in the can,
I'll always
push it out
to the curb
on the days
when the truck
comes to pick it up.
And that
goes good
for three months
and then you
stop doing it.
and the garbage
just piles up
right there
in your mud room.
Maybe spills
over in the garage.
And you know
what happens
to garbage
if it sits
around a few days?
What happens?
It stinketh.
Yeah,
it stinks.
And she's
just had it
and she comes
to you
and says,
you promised
you would carry
this garbage
always out.
The house
smells as a stench.
You need to
take this garbage out.
Well,
he gets defensive
and he says this,
well,
you don't cook
anymore.
You used to cook
supper every,
and you don't ever
cook anymore.
What's going on
with that?
And all of a sudden
she's kind of
backpedaling
and she's thinking,
wait a minute,
is that true?
I don't cook
supper anymore?
That's a simple
illustration,
but that's what
defensiveness is.
It's putting a
problem out there
that's not a problem
in order to
protect yourself
against something
that's presented
to you.
And then the last
thing,
the fourth one
is stonewalling.
And when you
stonewall,
you send a message.
Have you ever
heard of people
in the south,
I know this is
true,
that say that
they're not getting
along with each
other and they
say,
what's going on?
They say,
we're not speaking
to each other.
You ever heard
that?
You ever seen
people do that?
Not speaking to
each other?
I remember
watching my parents
do it.
One day I went in
and they both were
sick and I go in
to see them and
they're sitting on
different ends of
the couch and
they're not talking
to each other.
And I'm there for
several minutes and
they're not talking
to each other.
They talk to me but
they're not talking
to each other.
What's going on
with y'all?
We're not speaking
to each other.
Stonewalling is
like that.
It's a deliberate
move to build a
barrier to get
away from dealing
with the other
person.
Now the big
question is,
who does it the
most?
Men or women?
We did this at the
8 o'clock service,
let's do it today.
How many of you
think women stonewall
the most?
Would you raise
your hand?
Oh, not many.
Not many.
How many of you
think men do it
the most?
Would you raise
your hand?
Oh, and the rest
of you are non-committed.
I see.
Gottman says 85%
of the time it's
done by men.
And it goes back
to what I said
earlier, men
stonewall because
they don't want to
have to deal with
some of that messy
emotional stuff that
they may have to
deal with.
When all four
things are present,
Gottman says there's
a 94% chance that
marriage will fail.
So if you want your
marriage to last,
these are four
important principles
to keep in mind.
Life is short.
James says it is a
vapor that appears
for a little while
and then vanishes
away.
This year is going
to be a banner year
for Ann and myself.
Coming up soon,
she's going to have
both her knees
replaced.
We are going to
turn 65.
We are going to
sign up for
Medicare this year.
Looking back over
the years, I wonder,
you know, sometimes,
how did they go by
so fast?
I used to hear old
people say that
when I was younger
and I said, can't
they talk about
anything else?
And then I got to
be old and I
realized, well, they
were telling the
truth.
It's like, bam,
it's gone.
Life is short.
Life is precious.
Marriage is something
given to us by God.
It deserves our
attention.
It deserves our
time.
It deserves our
energy.
It deserves our
commitment to God
and to one another
to do those things,
to please that other
person, to please
God, to love him
and to love our
mate.
Well, what's the
state of your
marriage?
How are you
getting along?
If you're not
married and you're
preparing, you think
someday you will be
married, I hope
you'll prepare for
it.
Don't just do it,
prepare for it.
But how about your
marriage?
You say, my marriage
is great.
Can you help
others?
Can you encourage
others?
Can you let them
be a part of your
life?
Your marriage is
going good.
And if you're
struggling in your
marriage, try to
put these things
into practice
because they work
and your marriage
can be better
because of it.
You know, one of
the things they
used to say, it's
still true, that
repetition is the
mother of learning,
that you repeat
it enough, you
repeat it enough,
it becomes second
nature with you.
Just like some of
these things.
You repeat it
enough, it becomes
second nature.
How's your
marriage?
How's your
influence with
others?
Most importantly,
how's your
relationship with
God?
Do you know,
do you walk with
Jesus Christ as
your Lord and
Savior?
Would you bow
your heads?
A musician is
going to play,
Jeff's going to be
here.
if God has
spoken to your
heart, you need
to make some
kind of public
commitment.
You have a
prayer request,
you have a
concern, or God
leads you in any
other way, maybe
to trust Christ.
If God speaks to
your heart and
leads you, while
she plays, but you
listen to God, you
come as He leads
of one half of
couple weeks.
All right.