Marriage Q&A

Automated transcript of the sermon audio, generated with OpenAI Whisper (small.en). It has not been checked against the recording and may contain errors, especially in names and Scripture references.

So this last session is a time for us to answer some questions potentially. And we thought about who should be up here trying to answer the questions. And we thought that if it was all of us and our wives, that eight might be a lot. And then we thought, well, you know, we could have, we could just choose a couple of the couples.

And then as we kept going, we thought, well, look, if we can’t stick our feet in our mouths, than who can. So we’re the ones who talked and actually we’re the ones who are responsible to give an account for the flock. And that includes both husbands and wives. It’s interesting in Titus chapter two, where it talks about older women teaching the younger woman, who is that passage written to Titus? Titus is supposed to help the older women get the younger women in line and teach them and train them. So we actually do have responsibility for the husbands as well as the wives, even if we can talk more specifically about being husbands and then all of us are going home to wives. So if we get it wrong while we’re up here, you know, rest assured some of us at least we’ll hear about it.

Mo, Mo was talking during the break that if, um, if I said something dumb, she just really loud go, that’ll be my cue to know. So I want to express my thanks for all of these guys. I mean, as I was sitting listening, you know, it’s just so totally different. Dave’s is kind of like, he’s waving his hands around and then he gets up and messes up your hair. And Jonathan’s is like, very deliberately, I am stringing this bow and you can see the arrow about ready to come right at you. And Jim’s is kind of like, is just, and Mo said Jim is just so likable. And I didn’t get offended at that, like, that I am not likable.

But Jim’s is just like, is so likable. And then sometime in you realize he has already removed your internal organs because they’re just ripped out through bullet points on an overhead slide and they’re just gone. But it was nice in the process to talk about it. So we will try to answer any questions that you might have as well in a similar style. So what do you got? And you can stand up where you are, say the question, then one of us will repeat your question for sake of the recording and then somebody will get to answer. When it says husbands love your wives and we talk about that, what kind of love should husbands be doing in their loving to their wives? What are the specifics of that? First Corinthians 13, something else. So I don’t love them very well. So what do you guys think?

How do you do that? Well, the first thing I think of, and I’m the least qualified one to answer, but I immediately just think of the context of the passage that you said. We got to read at least three times today. John read it this morning, Jim read it this morning, and then we, Sean read it tonight, and I read it tonight as well in Ephesians 5, 25, the passage to husbands. It is pretty clear. Husbands love your wives. Then he goes on, he doesn’t just stop there. As Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of the water with the word so that he might present the church to himself and splendor without spot or wrinkle or any such thing that she might be holy and without blemish.

And in the same way, I’ll just keep going because it’s actually really good, husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself for no one ever hated his own flesh but nourishes and cherishes it just as Christ does the church because remembers of his body. Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife and the two shall become one flesh. This mystery is profound and I’m saying that refers to Christ in the church. However, let each one of you love his wife as himself and let the wife see that she respects her husband.” So in there Paul is is clear that the the love that he says not only did Jesus love but he talks about how he loved and it was it was sacrificial and it was It was intentional. So it was with a with with a view to an end her her purity So if we were just to try to apply what Jesus did according to Paul, even in here, I think it’s a pretty tall task.

And I think this actually gives pretty clear direction. That husbands are, too, to love their wives selflessly with a view to their purity and with sacrifice. So, I mean, what else? You mentioned 1 Corinthians 13. I don’t think that’s a bad place to go either for definition of love. love thinks the best. Many times as husbands respond to their wives, she may not say something in a way that we appreciate and we may start to assign wrong motives, evil motives to her. Well, you’re trying to hurt me. Well, love doesn’t think that way. You know, love thinks, No, love doesn’t think she’s crazy. Love thinks she actually loves you.

And the reason she’s coming to you is because she cares. So that’s one practical way that when I’m thinking about loving my wife is thinking through that list of 1 Corinthians 13 and not taking offense, not being easily offended, even if she states something poorly, even if she states something I don’t want to hear, think the best of that her motivation in approaching me is proper and right and go from that basis.

Living with her in an understanding way would be another application of loving her. Understanding that in the position as the wife, she is not in the pecking order, she’s not down here below me because I was somehow smarter or better or I was male. It was simply got assigned roles and she has been asked to take that position under my headship and so that requires a degree of sensitivity on my part to be mindful of that as I respond to her. Yes, I mean you got love provides, love protects, you know, guards, love purifies, and love includes care. Nobody said it today, which is good because I don’t want to have to get mad about it.

But nobody said today that love is just a decision. Love is just a choice to sacrifice because that’s baloney. If all that love meant was a choice, then why couldn’t the command be, choose to do the right thing for your wife? So like love does actually include affections. So there ought to be in loving your wife as Christ loved the church, there ought to to be affectionate pursuit, which is intentional in affectionate provision, affectionate guarding and protection, and affectionate purifying, which is just different ways to say, you know, the nourishing and the cherishing, the helping become more and more holy, all from Ephesians chapter five, but definitely including the delight in her. And I mean, sometimes that comes easy. And sometimes guys, guys have to work at developing the mature affection. But But that’s what I would say.

Did you want to add something, Dad? First Corinthians 13.4, Love is patient and kind. Love does not envy or boast. It is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way. It is not irritable or resentful. It does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends. As for prophecies, they will pass away. As for tongues, they will cease. As for knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away. When I was a child, I spoke like a child, and I thought like a child.

I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up the childish ways. For now we’ve seen a mere dimly, but then face to face. I know in part, then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.” So the issue if we all just respond with patience, kindness, not arrogant, not rude, all those things, we’re doing pretty good. Yeah, and it was you, Jonathan, who talked about in your session about specifically taking on the responsibility for, you know, the husband taking on the responsibility for his wife’s sin. So that’s part of the love. Um, not distancing himself from her when she is sinning, uh, also dying to himself, dying to some of his preferences or, um, desires for sake of serving her, but I think that’s all. Let me try to restate the question. So are we discouraging Christian women from obeying their husbands by talking about how many husbands are idiots?

And so should we make light of any husband’s immaturity or inability, does that end up discouraging women in potentially what’s a difficult assignment to obey? take my responsibility seriously does not mean I have to take myself seriously. So I don’t have to actually think that I am great or, and obviously, you know, believe in having confidence, having Yeah, a confidence to do what’s right is valuable from a leader. But again, in my case, I have actually failed enough times that I don’t want to act like I haven’t. Also, there is and a lot of us have this sort of experience when it comes to any sort of leadership, not just leadership in the home, but we assume that if a leader admits weakness or failure that therefore he has lost his platform to lead.

And it’s actually just the opposite. When a leader does not admit his wrong or his sin or his inabilities or his weaknesses, And he actually loses credibility at that point because he’s playing like there’s nothing that’s wrong. So it is possible to go too far. But so a cringing sort of, oh, I’m never worthy, don’t follow me kind of thing. But when I do it, I typically follow it up with a stronger statement about how everybody else needs to repent. So that’s been the conclusion for me, is when I have failed, it’s not like, okay, so then I don’t have to do anything. So I’ve failed, I haven’t known what to do, so then I had to repent.

And that repentance, because of the gospel, actually oftentimes enables me to be a better leader and a more followable leader than if I never act like I’m confused or I’m at a loss or that I’ve done, I’ve sinned, I’ve done something wrong. So making light of it at times is, at least for me, is a way to, like, because I, again, me, one of my sins would be taking myself too seriously. So not everybody has that temptation, that leaning, but that would definitely be the case for me. So I need to fight that. I need to fight thinking that I am the know it all. I need to fight thinking that everybody else does need to do exactly what I say. So reminding myself, actually they don’t.

And I don’t deserve that. I have to earn that is valuable for me. I think when sometimes we can answer very forcefully, if it’s very clear in Scripture the answer, sometimes our opinion is asked. And I think we are allowed our strong opinion, but we want to clarify to people that that’s our opinion on that different thing. if it’s a clear biblical thing or is clearly sin, then we can speak with great authority and not have any problem. But I think that to be able to realize you are only empowered by God to even realize these things is a necessary humility that you should have and understand that only when we have a clear revelation from God can we just bang the pulpit here and not even have a discussion. But there are a lot of questions that are, you know, I mean we’ve had it at your house, is this the right guy? I don’t know, but I can tell you what I think, you know. So that’s kind of where it lays for me anyway.

One reason our culture makes fun of the clueless husband or dad is because, again, there’s some truth in the statement. That’s why it’s funny. Now, your point is well taken that, especially among ourselves, we don’t want to send the men in this room away thinking, well, we’re still dummies. But the truth of the matter is, at least in my experience, in the common Christian home, it’s often the wife who is initiating the conversations about what can we do to make the relationship better, what goals can we set for the family, those kinds of conversations. It’s more common for the wife to initiate those conversations than it is for the guys. And all we’re trying to do is either through humor or whatever way we can, as we do want to get the message to the guys, you are the dude, you’re the guy, you’re responsible, the buck stops with you, step up, you know, be the leader.

So yeah, if any guy was walking out of here today thinking we said you’re you’re stupid and you’re already toast, you know, we’re sorry, that’s not the message. We want them in to be the leaders here, but we do recognize and the reason we poke on ourselves is we realize that our guys’ sin nature is to let somebody else take the buck, somebody else take responsibility. A wise sin nature is I’ll take charge, I’ll be the boss. And so when you have those two sin natures both in play, then you get problems. And so what we’re trying to do is get guys, you initiate those conversations, you be the leaders and then wise you happily, you know, contribute to that conversation, but then follow along, let your husband lead.

So what do you do when you are appropriately trying to to unsettle your marriage and it’s unsettling. Yeah. Well, the first thing I know is you wanna find out a day when both of you have to get up really early the next morning and then you wanna start at about 11 p.m. Cause nobody’s gonna bother you. Kids are sleeping and you’re fresh. So I definitely recommend that as the time to unsettle your marriage after 11. Yeah. You don’t unsettle it. It’s amazing how God will choose that time to make it happen. Yeah, I’ve got this weird pillow at home that I use every time I put my head on it. This little voice says, honey, can we talk?

Gail, the battery’s out for pasties. But, you know, I guess, you know, get used to the feeling. It’s, now, nobody wants to be constantly unsettled and constantly stirring the beans at the bottom of the pot. There’s always room for improvement. So I’m not saying that it’s not okay to have seasons where, you know, we’re doing okay. It’s not like every day I’ve got to wake up and think of something else to provoke the marriage and move to the next level. Some of these changes may happen over months or even years. but is it in the back of our mind? That message, I could have just told you all to go home and just preach it to myself.

I’m one of those guys that just says, I’ve got a really good marriage that I’m really happy in. I could leave it there and die a happy man. But is that what God wants? Is that settling for less than what God wants? And so it’s incumbent on me, and as the head of the home, how can I stir it up? How can I make it better?

especially of we as a couple, how can we make it more of a clear witness to the community? So I don’t know how I don’t think there’s any answer to how not to avoid that irritation, but at the same time don’t go home and like don’t come up with 400 things you have to change you know next week just but as the head of your home initiate those conversations. Don’t wait till the wife says, well honey, what can we do to make our marriage better? You initiate those conversations periodically. I know couples that go off and do a once a year getaway, and that’s part of what they do with their getaway time, is to have those kinds of conversations. So just be purposeful. But again, that’s why I didn’t give you the bullet list of all the things to do, because I don’t think there’s one size fits all. I just want you to get the principle that you need to be thinking in this way so that your marriage doesn’t stagnate but keeps on growing.

Yeah, I mean, one of the conversations can be, you know, what would be beneficial for sake of unsettling our marriage? So it’s not just even necessarily getting right into issues, but talking about, you know, would you like it if we read a book together? Would you like it if we had a special appointment? had a special appointment. You know, we make meetings with other people.

What do you like having these kinds of conversations at the beginning of the day, in the middle of the day, at the end of the day? So actually having a common strategy to even know that you’re both gonna work on it together and then get into the issues. One of the benefits of a seminar like this, or of reading a book, whether that’s actually reading it together or reading it at the same time, but separately, is that you get some similar vocabulary so that your terminology is the same when you’re talking about issues. So sometimes if you do marriage counseling together with another couple, that ends up provoking things in your own marriage that you want to work on.

Sometimes reading a book gives you ideas. And again, if you’re doing that together, you know, you can both talk about that idea, the, the one resource that is recommended in the back of the booklet. That’s not by Wilson is actually not even explicitly Christian. It’s the one called fighting for your marriage. Jubal and Suzanne went to a marriage seminar for a weekend, a year or so ago. Yeah, so and and they they got that book and It would maybe we even one of the authors was there talking No, but but they were using that book. So then They shared that with Mo. She started reading it Mo shared that with me I started reading it and it wasn’t explicitly Christian and yet it actually had some really practical things for like a Couple who has trouble talking about issues could actually plan some strategy and agree upon how they’re going to talk about difficult issues.

And maybe some couples don’t need that, maybe some couples do, but again talking about how you’re going to approach it and attack it together is just as much a part of the conversation as the actual issue and can build a kind of togetherness in that. But as Jim said, it’s still going to involved work and an unsettling is unsettling internally. And some of that is good. I mean, one of the things that first attracted me to Mo was that I knew she was not going to be satisfied with the status quo about anything. She was not going to be satisfied with the status quo about our relationship, about parenting, about education, about ministry. She was not going to be satisfied with status quo.

And most of the time I really even still do appreciate that. Some of the time I’m like, isn’t the status quo pretty nice? Right. But like you, you talk about how you’re going to approach even talking more about it and yet not after 11. Yeah. There’s, cause there’s, there are numerous times, at least in, um, in our house where we, we have to decide, look, we still love each other and we’re going to pick this up tomorrow, you know, rather than we’re not mad. We might not necessarily have come to the resolution, but we’re not mad. And we actually need to go to sleep because we have responsibilities tomorrow. We’ll not, we’re not going to forget about this.

we’ll come back to it rather than drag it all into the wee hours of the morning. So the question is, the second session in particular talking about the wife as the mirror of the husband. And so that means it starts with the husband, at least in their relationship, starts with the husband. So if there’s a problem, it’s the husband’s problem. That was your session, Dave. So could you give us the elevator pitch summary of what you said? Do you guys have the book for Gloria in a cover? It’s already in my hand, it’s not in the order. Okay, good. Excellent. It’s about 4.30. That’s where, I mean, I’m just giving you Chapter 3.

A drone is flying over your house right now. That’s it. That you are the reflection of what he does. And it’s really a great honor to you. And it should make him happy that you’re doing that. And it’s, but the responsibility is all you’re doing is reflecting what he’s projecting. And that’s, it’s like, when I first heard that stuff, I just went, this is nuts, because I’d never heard it taught. And then I said, okay, I’m going to shoot holes in this guy’s exegesis. And then when you start going through it, you realize, no, that is what it says. And it is a really good picture of Christ and the church. The church should reflect the gospel back onto the world.

And in your family, you’re reflecting how he’s guiding you. That’s the bottom line. And then the second little part I had was that it’s proper for him to be jealous of you. You are his prized possession. And that’s not wicked to have a proper godly jealousy. So that’s basically it. But when you think that your wife is a mirror of you and you’re the husband and you see your wife doing something that you don’t especially like, you realize, what am I doing to make her act that way? It’s very convicting. So how is the husband responsible for sin in the household that isn’t necessarily sin he committed? And what does that look like?

Who’s the head of the house? Who’s the head of your family’s life? leads it. So if you’re leading it and it’s going off track, even though your wife might be doing something really stupid, you’re not guiding her right. You’re not leading her right. And Gail and I have had wrecks in a marriage. For the audio, that was a… I’m trying to use a good word, you know. One of the things that we do, we’ve been together a lot. We started a business together. We homeschooled together with, you know, all of that. Whenever we wanted to make an important decision, we both needed to say yes, go for it. If one of us went, oh, I don’t know, And usually she was going, oh, I don’t know.

And I said, well, I’m the guy, I’ll just make the decision, we’ll go for it. Both times I made big things like that, it was wrong. And I finally learned after two times not to do that. If she says, I don’t think so, and she didn’t even need to give me a right answer, just women’s intuition, they just know in their gut sometimes, don’t do it. Wait till you both agree on it. So sometimes you, by leading in a way that you haven’t really wisely considered all the options, you can cause her to be in a spot that she didn’t wanna be in and then cause her to sin. It goes on and on, there’s all kinds of ways. Yeah, I think some of it is just never forgetting that the husband and the wife are inescapably connected.

And so there isn’t an appropriate time to distance for a husband, for example, to distance himself from his wife. You know, like when a Muslim terrorist gets on a plane to take it down, when they’re in the air, he doesn’t hand out parachutes to the volunteers who say, we don’t actually believe in all of the Western secularization that has taken place. We’re actually on your side. Now, all of the people on the plane are going down with them. They’re all associated with America. Therefore, they’re all getting punished. Whether they themselves have committed the atrocities against the Quran themselves or not, they are associated together enough with it that they’re identified with it.

So husbands are identified with the sins in their household, even the ones they’re not committing because they are connected. And so the godly husband doesn’t get to say, oh, well, I didn’t do that. And therefore, look over there, it’s a connection because obviously, we don’t have responsibility to be the redemption for anybody else’s sin because we can’t do that. And yet that is in Ephesians 5, the example that just as Christ took on sin that wasn’t His and gave Himself for that, we’re willing to take on some of the consequences, do some of the covering, still be connected, associated with, rather than just try to make ourselves feel better because we didn’t do it.

But it’s still connected to us. Oh, can you have spontaneous behavior in a liturgy? I think to try and… So tell me if I’m off the rails here in terms of just representing your question. The question is, is liturgy only related to the planned and the structured, or is it more broadly that plus just the general symbolism that comes out of lifestyle? And I would say it’s the second. Dave, didn’t you teach on the worldview wheel, riffing off of Doug Wilson? So Doug Wilson did a series entitled The Worldview Wheel. And with Christ at the Center, was there four spokes or five? Okay, so five spokes are Liturgy, Catechesis, Worldview.

Four spokes, which one? Okay. Grace at the Center. Okay, so Grace at the Center. Liturgy, Catechesis, Lifestyle. Narrative. Narrative, thank you. And there’s some helpful teaching about liturgy there that I think has helped even my thinking. Yes, we commonly hear the word liturgy and apply it in context of corporate worship. I think even like the five C’s of our Sunday morning service. And that is clear liturgy. Liturgy is kind of like a husband and wife representing Christ in a marriage. It’s unavoidable. There is a liturgy to even every corporate service. Some people say they don’t like liturgy. What they mean is they don’t like high liturgy.

But a liturgy is the symbolism related to your worship. And I was using it even more broadly than that and saying it is the symbolism of your life and your decisions in general. So, as relates to the decisions that the godly husband or the godly wife make, there is a liturgy to all of it. And that was even under the broader heading of intentionality. So we need to be self-conscious about the statement that we’re making with all of our lifestyle and worship and catechetical and behavioral and educational and commercial decisions. Because we are saying something in all of those behaviors about our loves, about Christ, and in our marriages, we are saying something to the world, which is watching with varying degrees of interest, about the relationship of Christ and the church.

And importantly, we’re saying something to our kids. So that can be structured. That can also be free. So I can spontaneously decide to take my kids out for ice cream. And there is a liturgy even to that spontaneous decision. Sure. Well, if you’re both Christians, you’re led by the Spirit. And if she has a great idea, just jump on the boat. She’s got a bad idea. Give her a better one and she can jump on your boat. There is a method to the madness of freewheeling it a little bit, I think, because if we’re guided by it… You don’t believe in freewheeling. Just a little. But the idea is God, through His Spirit, is energizing our thoughts, or should be, right?

If you’re not, you need to confess it back up and be walking in the Spirit. So even though the personality is different, the way you’re applying it can mutually complement each other. So the, you know, and you want, you want the like structure, and then she wants a little more artistic flow, right? He’s saying it’s the other way around for them, but yeah. Is it, well, I don’t know. Yeah. You’re not quite, he likes the structure. Liturgy, as Jonathan is using the word, liturgy does not mean every Wednesday at four o’clock, intentionality, purposefulness, because part of your liturgy could be to be spontaneous, to set the random clock that goes off at weird hours and you get the kids out of bed and go down to get ice cream or whatever. So, but you are, there is a liturgy to that. There is a purpose of what we’re trying to accomplish in our home. But yeah, if you’re equating structure with you’re driven by a calendar or a clock, that’s not necessarily what we mean by liturgy.

Although, I mean, it may be in your liturgy, you guys have a custom. You may say, we always go out to lunch after church on a Sunday, or whatever, you know, which would be a structured time thing. But don’t equate liturgy with structure in terms of run by calendar, run by clock. Well, right, because provision can’t be spontaneous. Protection really ought not be spontaneous either.

there has to be in terms of like how’s the husband love his wife well there are spontaneous ways he loves his wife but there have to be structured ways he loves his wife as well that you know she can depend on that actually enable the spontaneity to thrive just like prayer should you pray on a schedule or should you pray whenever you have the urge to pray well actually a lot of people never get the urge to pray if they don’t ever make it a practice of discipline at other times. So they’re not necessarily competing and actually won some amount of structure as necessary to make spontaneity not terrorizing. Chesterton’s quote, and I don’t remember the quote exactly, but Chesterton’s quote about how there were some people living up on top of a plateau that had steep cliffs down into the ocean and it had walls. And while the walls were up around the edge of the plateau, the people played and laughed and danced and sang. And as the walls generally over time deteriorated, then you found all the people huddled in the center because they were afraid that if

they kept playing, they’d fall over the edge. So actually the walls enabled them to have the freedom to play and be, you know, have the spontaneity because they were protected. So if there’s no walls, then the spontaneity is less certain. A daily 90 minute studies on Ezekiel up to age two. And then it just gets longer as they get older. They love it. Profits. Yeah, I love it. Yeah. I mean, some, some houses and And some guys are going to be more formal and some guys are going to be less formal. I have more formal bones in my body. I am more like that. And yet, it did not take very long in talking with my wife and living with her according to knowledge before I realized that too much formality when it was just like me and her She was like, what meeting are we at?

We’re just you and me. And even when we started having kids, the more formal I tried to make it, the more stressed out I got when everybody wasn’t following exactly like I said to do. Like make the three month old be quiet. I’m trying to give my devotional. Well, and like that, that was just, I, I Rica, I’m sorry. I was wrong at that.

I, I did have to, you know, increase in my understanding of what the family, uh, would be blessed by, not what I was going to force them to take for their blessing, be blessed. You know, somebody depends on how much the dad is at home. If he’s not at home, maybe, you know, he needs to have some more planned time. If he’s at home a lot, you know, conversations can happen without maybe as much structure and plan time. Probably depends on how many kids you have. Depends on how old they are.

You can never go wrong with praying and singing and even reading the Bible, but potentially like, again, the younger that they are, or the older that they are. I mean, when, like, at the house I grew up in, when my mom got out the Bible to read to my sister and I for devotions while we were in high school, I didn’t go, yay, it’s devotion time. So, and could be a variety of things that went into that. But like trying things as well as good, as opposed to making all the decisions ahead of time. This is how it’s going to be. And never then being flexible or even abandoning those plans and trying something else is at least more so how we’ve done it at our house. We really, I mean, we try to eat dinner together and we pray before we eat and we have conversation but we sing together on Saturday night’s dinner and try to make it a little bit more formal but at least for us spousily and with family we don’t have very structured sit down we’re going to talk about these three questions no matter what until we’re done.

So one of the things that Mo needs to do for sake of her health is walk. And so because of my schedule, I have really tried to make myself available more times than not to go on those walks. And whether we have kids or not, that ends up being a great time to talk. So but again, I don’t take a book with me. I do sometimes have a list of things I need to talk to her about, you know, on my phone, in my app. So, I’ll look at that and we’ll talk. But that’s a very intentional time, but not necessarily one that, well, we didn’t get that out of a book. We’re just talking specifically while being together. So I’ll answer as well.

And then I do find it ironic that the first two to answer are ones without grown kids. So, by the time it’s all said and done, my kids may despise this, but we’ll. Jim often says that you’re not qualified to teach a parenting class until you have, you’re youngest about 25. So he’s there. Congratulations.

So, I would say a few things that help me me and my family in this area. First would be, hi Charlotte, would be the intentionality piece. If your mindset is one to be thoughtful about the things that you’re already doing, it doesn’t remove spontaneity and it doesn’t mean that you can’t be fun. It just means that there’s a recognized purpose to all the different things you’re doing. First, my attitude to serve and lead my family is helped profoundly by the prayer that I’m doing for them when they’re not around. So when it comes to things to do to help lead your family in the area of corporate worship or anything else, I find for me that I’m helped tremendously by praying for them because then my attitude toward, you know, my orientation toward serving them is helped.

And it’s a matter of doing the things that you’re already doing with care. So having thoughtful conversation at dinnertime. And most families go to bed at some point. So having an intentionality behind bedtime routines, so on that. So for us, we have always struggled to get to bed at an early time. And that’s because there’s actually a fair amount wrapped up in the SAR family bedtime routine. So just sending your kids off to bed at 7.30. Hey, sweetheart, it’s 7.30. Good night. For us, there’s more, too, than that. So it ends up being, it’s always been like 9 o’clock. But reading and praying, and we share very quickly low points and high points in the day.

And you can hear a lot about the kids’ hearts. And even in those short few minutes, it gives opportunity to talk. And even giving the kids opportunity to pray, you hear their hearts as well. So what you don’t hear, well, and then even, and I think you’d appreciate this, being intentional about the books that you read to them. So good fiction, which is still fiction and is fun, but is Christian. And what I mean by that is wicked is wicked and good is good Doesn’t necessarily mean it’s completely sanitized or that everybody gets converted in the end or if it’s a romantic one they get engaged Because that’s what happens, right?

Those sorts of things filled our minds with great stories and the kind of worldview that we’re trying to cultivate and it’s not necessarily explicit explicit Bible study Though that absolutely has its place. I’m saying it’s broader than that We sing all the time, but sometimes we sing songs that the rest, like good Christian families don’t sing.

We like a breath of music that’s mostly jazz. No, but there’s all sorts of things, but the point is being intentional about a lot of things you’re already doing. So none of those things really add time to our existing routine. They’re just things we’ve kind of built in, except for the bedtime routine is kind of a self-inflicted. But it’s intentional. I think what you’re hearing so far is that there is no thus saith the Lord and there’s no cookie cutter approach. As a head of the home, you just want to make sure you’re responsible that your family is growing and maturing in their faith. I’ve known dads who really tried to enforce that, you know, three or four times a week, we’re going to sit down at X hour, we’re going to do our little study, and actually grew a tremendous hatred for timer on the word because of their legalistic, cram it on your throat now approach.

Obviously in the season of life you’re in, it’s probably going to be more common for you guys to sit down as a family and have family devotionals and those kinds of things. We did that, I think most of these guys, the young ones did that. Gail and I today, now that there’s no kids in the home, we’re not typically sitting down together and reading a passage of scripture. But she is every bit as spiritually mature as I am. She’s been a believer longer. She’s reading stuff, I’m reading stuff. We do interact and share things that we’re learning, talk about that. We typically go to bed together and I’ll be reading something, she’ll be reading something.

was reading George McDonald recently and he says hey listen to this and she’ll want to read me a couple paragraphs but there’s no formal let’s sit down together and study something together. Once in a while we will read a book together. So again there isn’t a, I don’t think any one of us can give you the formula to go home and copy but the principle is are you aware of how your family, how your wife and your kids are obviously tiny but as they grow older, how are they doing? And then shape a program, shape an approach, shape a liturgy that makes sense for your family. But be mindful of those pitfalls where you can be doing things for the right reason but it totally backfires because you’re not sensitive to what the spirit’s trying to do and you end up breeding resentment in your family, especially if you’re not living it and then you want to sit down and have your devotions with the family.

You’re really going to, that’s going to bite you in the long run. Okay, well to give all of you the maximum amount of time before 11 o’clock to go home and unsettle your marriages, thank you for coming. And again, thank you to the army of people who helped make it special. I’m going to pray and then we’ll be dismissed. Father, we do thank you for your kindness and gift to us of your word and of salvation and the gospel and your spirit and marriage, our spouses, kids that many of us have and the church and fellowship and few food and beauty and the sacrifices that many have done you have by grace given us all of those things to enjoy so may we walk away mostly thankful and even thankful for areas that you have exposed where we need to develop and mature thankful even for exposure of sin perhaps that We need to confess and repent from and seek forgiveness for.

Thank you for the hope that we do have that you are at work. And so fill us with your spirit and cause us to live in a way that honors you, reflects you, especially husbands and wives, and we pray this in Jesus name. Amen.