Part 3 Love And Marriage The Other Half

By your hands, and reflect on incredible confession we just made about His holiness and our sinfulness and our incredible need for cleansing. Father. That is our confession. We want to be clean, We need to be clean. We acknowledge that tonight. Tonight, we don't compare ourselves to people on the news who do terrible things that we've never done. Tonight, we don't compare ourselves to people whose flaws we think are more significant than our own. Tonight, we don't even compare ourselves to the standard of our culture or even of our church. We compare ourselves to You. And as we do that, it forces us to cry out, wash me. And so as we continue this two way conversation that we call worship, as we come to this place where we've set some things to you and about You that we know and believe to be true, we now come to this moment where we anxiously anticipate You speaking to us clearly and powerfully through your word to the end that our lives would be challenged and changed and transformed and conformed to the very end of Christ. You would wash us that we might be holy as you are holy. This is our prayer and the earnest desire of a very soul. And we do ask it because we believe that it is in accordance with the will and the nature and the authority of Jesus, who is the Christ. And all God's people said, Amen, Amen, Well, we have come to what is for me the most difficult part of this series. We should have gotten a little slip when you came in that on one side says he must be that's for you ladies. On the other side it says, I must be that's for us. Man. This is when we look into the scriptures and into the mirror of God's word and ask a very simple question, what is required of a man who would call himself a husband? What does the Bible say a man must be if he's going to call himself a husband? Not what's the standard that we're used to, Not you know, what are we willing to settle for? But what does the text clearly teach? And the reason that this is so difficult is because it is something like that. It just I get beat up every time I read this because I continue to realize that, apart from the power are in presence of God in my life, I'm not there and I'll never get there. Apart from the grace of God in my life, I just won't be. But here's my prayer, more today than yesterday, and more tomorrow than today. Amen. And so this is what we're looking for. We started part of it on last week and looked at the first requirement. But I want us to read this passage of scripture again and then just walk through these requirements that the Bible has for a man who would call himself a husband Verse twenty five of Ephesians chapter five, and it reads, husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the Church and gave himself up for her, so that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water, with the word, that he might present to himself the Church in all her glory, having no spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but that she would be holy and blameless. So husbands ought to ought also to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his own wife loves himself, for no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the Church, because we are members of his body. For this reason, a man shall leave his father and mother, and shall be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh. This mystery is great, but I am speaking with reference to Christ and the Church. Nevertheless, each individual among you also is to love his own wife as himself, and the wife must see to it that she respect her husband. He must be ladies. I am going to talk to you tonight the same way I talked to my fifteen year old daughter. My fifteen year old daughter and I have been talking about this for a while. My son, my oldest son, has been my partner in this process for a while. My oldest son, you know, my daughter's twelve, and my oldest son is my daughter's fifteen. My oldest son is twelve, and for the longest time, we've been teaching my son and coaching my son on how to treat his big sister. And so, since he's big enough to be able to move a chair, he's pulled out his sister's chair, says, he's big enough to handle a door. He's been opening his sister's door. We've been teaching him how to speak to her. We've been teaching him how to address her. You know, we've been teaching him. You know, when we come to breakfast and sit down at breakfast every morning, the men don't sit down until the ladies have been seated. We just we just doesn't happen. And so early on when we're doing it, when we're outside walking. If we're outside walking, my son will catch my daughter on the outside on the curved side of the street and he would just look at her, like, girls, talk with you, get over there. You're not supposed to walk on that side. Well, at first, he wasn't necessarily with the game. He didn't understand, he didn't understand why he was to lavish this kind of treatment on his big sister. He didn't even like her that much. And I looked at him and I told him, I said, son, you are partnering with me in a process. Said what process? I said, I am training you to treat your sister so well that no loser would ever have a chance with her. That's your job in this family. And he was like, oh, okay, I get it. And here's the deal. My prayer is that for my daughter later on in life, that a man who doesn't rise to the basic level of what her little brother has done for her for his whole life. If a man doesn't even rise just to that basic level that he wouldn't even appear on her radar screen. And so I want to talk to you ladies tonight got talked to my fifteen year old daughter about what she is to hold out for about some things that she is to jot down and say to God. Unless these minimum requirements have been met, I'm going to assume that you're not ready for me to have a husband, because I will not settle for less than this. That's why your piece of paper says he must be now, he should be, he must be. These are the basic ground floor assumptions for a husband. Dad, You got that. Men, while I'm talking to the ladies tonight, who are sort of being my daughter's here tonight, you listen to the voice of a father and hear me saying this to you tonight, don't you set foot around my doorstep. So you got this right here, I'll chase you away. Husbands love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave himself up for her first. He must be a man who leads in love. We talked about this on last week. You remember that definition I gave you, not the Greco Roman myth of romantic love. We're not talking about Cupid here. We're talking about the biblical definition of love. Could you say it with me? An act of the will accompanied by emotion that leads to action on behalf of its object. One more time, an act of the will accompanied by emotion that leads to action on behalf of its object. That's the kind of love in which this man must be able to lead. Not the Greco Roman myth, but this Biblical idea that leads with the will, that is a choice that's not led by emotion, nor is it void of emotion, and that demonstrates itself by actions on behalf of its object. We spent the whole night last week talking about that. And so just to understand what we talked about last week, that's step number one. He must be a man who leads in love. Secondly, and here's what's interesting, because last week we looked at a couple of passages of Scripture and I talked to you about this whole biblical concept that we are absolutely as Christians forbidden from marrying unbelievers. As clear as day, the Bible could not be clearer about that point. We must not marry unbelievers. We must not even get into situations where we would potentially compromise ourselves in that regard. It's not even optional, it's not even up for discussion from a biblical perspective. Tonight. I want you to sort of look behind that. I want you to understand what we're talking about, what the significance is here, and what is at stake. Because secondly, not only must he be a man who leads in love, but he must be a man who leads in the word. Look at the next part of the passage, so that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of the water, with the word, that he might set her apart, having cleansed her by the washing of the water with the world. He must be a man who leads in the word. In other words, if he is not a man who can mentor you in the scriptures, he's not worthy of being your husband. So forget this that standard of they have to be a believer. That's like, that's way down there. And usually we try to get around that, you know, because if we can just get to God to say, you know, well, I was baptized one time way back in whatever you know, didn't want to. Oh, he's a believer. He's a believer. To marry him. Can he disciple and mentor you in the Word of God. That's a whole nother standard, isn't it. By the way, go over to chapter six and look at verses one through four. It gets even more interesting. Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. Honor your father and mother, which is the first commandment, with a promise, so that it may be well with you and that you may live long on the earth. Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord. It is the father's responsibility to teach the children to believe like Christians and to behave like Christians. He is to be equipped to mentor and disciple the children who come into your home as well. When you hear this, ladies, do you see what you are doing to the future of your family when you pursue a man who's not even a believer. Do you see that when you see the bare bones minimum biblical requirements that he's to lead in biblical love, and secondly he's to lead in the Word. He is to be priest and prophet in the home. If he is not capable of mentoring and discipling you and your children, you have just compromised the very foundation upon which your marriage and your family is to be built. Remember what I told you about procri We talked about those two purposes procreation and then illustration told you procreation wasn't just about having children, but it was about the process of bringing children into the world, and then training, disciplining and discipling and mentoring children so that they grow up and are capable of walking with God. If we understand this big picture, it changes the way we choose ladies. If you're just being selfish and you just want somebody you like to look at, you just want somebody you know, you just love the way it feels when you're in his arms. If that's it, and if that's all you base this on, and you close your eyes to these basic principles, you'll be like countless women that I've talked with, counseled with, and prayed with. When I've gone places and done me messages on family and on children and things of this nature and had women walk up to me with that familiar look, I already know what it is. And they're weeping, and they say, will you pray for me? Because my husband is not the spiritual leader in our home. My husband I don't even believe knows God. And I don't even have to I mean, I don't have to poke, I don't have to prid. Because here's what happens. When that happens in another setting and we're sitting down and we're talking about problems that they're having in their family and the desire that they have for their children to be raised a certain way, Here's what usually happens. They talk about this man who is not doing what he's supposed to do biblically, and I ask a few questions, and here's what it comes down to. They knew it before they got married. But what they said was because our belief is in the Greco Roman myth of romantic love, and because we believe that love is just the overwhelming force and that that's the most important thing. Here's what they assumed. If God let me fall in love with this person, then God must be trying to tell me that he's going to turn this man into a spiritual giant someday. So I will take this man based on the Greco Roman myth of romantic love, and this overwhelming feeling that I have trusting that God wouldn't dare give me this feeling for this man if he wasn't going to turn him into all these things that the scriptures say he's supposed to be. Is that your final answer? That's backwards, that's putting the cart before the horse. He must be this before you even think about it. He must be a man who leads in love, and he must be a man who leads in the Word. That's what he's called to be. That's his responsibility. Man, this is an incredible weight to bear. It's unbelievable. You know, as I look in my home, and as I look at my children, and as I look at the time just ticking away, I continue to ask myself, have I been on top of my job? Have I been pouring into them biblically what God calls me to pour into them? Now, this doesn't mean that my life doesn't do any mentoring, that my wife doesn't do any discipleship. That's not the point here. We both do that we partner in that process. But God has given me headship and that relationship, which means that the buck stops with me. It's ultimately my responsibility that's waiting. That's huge. So when you're way down here on the baseline, you know, still dealing with this idea of you know, even contemplating the relationship with somebody who's not even a believer. Well, once you get past that first point that they must lead in biblical love to this second point that they must lead in the Word, you realize that that you're in the weeds on this one, not even close on this one. He must be a man who leads in the word. Men, you must be a man who leads in the word. As a father, I can't even imagine think about this. There's a lot of symbolism that's kind of lost in the whole wedding process. But biblically, it's my responsibility to see to it that my daughter ends up with a man who's biblically qualified. You know what the symbol of that is, who gives this woman to this man. I know we think that's empty rhetoric, but biblically, here's what a father says on the wedding day. This young woman has been my respect for all of these years. It has been my job to protect her spiritually, physically, and emotionally. My job to train her, to mentor her, to disciple her, to protect her purity, to protect her virginity. Yes, that's my job as a father. And I'm standing here on today telling you who's about to marry her, that I have done that with every fiber of my being, and by placing her hand in yours, I am now saying that that job belongs to you. What kind of man would I be to give my daughter away to a man who didn't at least meet these requirements. How irresponsible is that? He must lead in love? He must lead in the word. Thirdly, he must also lead in righteousness. Look at his verse twenty seven, that he might present to himself the Church in all her glory, having no spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but that she would be holy and blame with us, that he might present to himself the Church without spot or wrinkle. Jesus Christ loved the Church so much that he provided for her righteousness so that he could present to himself a bride that was righteous. He must be a man who leads in righteousness. Men on your side, I must be a man who leads in righteousness. I must be I must demonstrate that I'm willing to do everything in my power to preserve the righteousness of this woman. Ladies, that's what you're looking for. You're not looking for a man who acts like an octopus every time you're around him. You're not looking for a man that you have to constantly keep telling stop quit enough now. You're looking for a man who says things like this. You know what, I'm not too sure it's all that good of an idea for us to be alone like this. That's what you're looking for. You're looking for a man who goes out of his way to make sure that your purity is preserved. A man who leads in righteousness. Here's the irony there. It lies you relationship with guys that continue to press you on stuff. They still talk right there in high school. If you really love me, we take this thing to the next level. Help you. If you're dealing with a man like that, leave him, please. And ladies, you fall for that stuff because you don't speak man. But what I'm gonna do tonight for you is I'm gonna translate. All right, here's the deal. When a man asks you to compromise yourself sexually. Here's the deal. First, you have to understand the way we don't think, because here's what we're doing. We're not sitting around going I can't wait till that day when I stand at the front of that church and they play that music and they open those doors and in she walks with that long, flowing, beautiful red dress. That's not what we're looking for, ladies. We want those doors to open up, and we weren't her to walk through there in a long flowing, beautiful white dress, pure as the driven snow mine, not minding a whole bunch of other people's mind. That's what we want. So when a man asks you to compromise yourself sexually, what he's saying to you is this. If you speak man, I have some needs right now, and I want you to satisfy those needs thereby making yourself the kind of woman that I don't even want for myself. That's what he's saying. I want to use you to satisfy myself, and I want to dishonor you. That's what he's saying. Don't fall for it. What you're looking for, ladies, is a man who says, Okay, here's the deal. We just we need to make some other arrangements. Why, because girl, if you knew how bad I wanted you, you'd be scared right now. So here's what we're gonna do. Can your little brother come with us or something? Somebody I don't care. We take your mamma, can't? Is your mama available? Your mama can come sit, can sit with us? Somebody just needs to be with us, all right? That's what you're looking for, because you want a man who wants you. But more importantly than that, you want a man who desires for you to be pure, which means that a guy who asks you to move in with him completely and utterly disqualified. Because here's what that man is saying. That man is saying, I want all the benefits and none of the responsibilities. Thank you very much, amen, lights, that's what that guy's saying. I want all the benefits and none of the responsibilities. That's what I'm looking for right now. You think you could do that for me? Do you think you could come and give me everything that I would get from a wife with out me stepping across the line and manning up and saying to you that I commit myself to you, body and soul until they put me in the ground. That's what he's saying to you. He's to lead in love, he's to lead in the word, and he used to lead in righteousness. Let me put a footnote right here. We live in a sexually charged culture. We live in a culture where, if you know, you turn on the television and here's the way the situation is supposed to go. You meet somebody and then on the second or third date, you have sex with him, and then a few days later you begin to ask yourself if you really love them. That's our culture's view. By the way, you've sleep with somebody for months, and I mean, have you ever seen something like this? People have these conversations. A girl's been sleeping with a guy for months, and she's talking to your girlfriends and you go, I think I might be in love and she goes, oh my god, girling, you think you're ready for that? What? He was sleeping with him for months and we're worried if you're risking Are you ready to drop the L bomb? That is a huge step. What's the rest of that stuff? Flee sexual immorality. Listen to me. Sex is a beautiful thing. It is a wonderful thing. It's all that in a bag of chips. I promise you, I just God was good to us on that one. Okay. But here's the deal. Sex is like fire. You put fire in a fireplace and it warms the whole room. You let it out of the fireplace, it will consume and destroy everything in its path. It must be in the upper context, and biblically, the only proper context is marriage. If you haven't understood that, understand it tonight. If you hadn't heard that, you heard it tonight. If you hadn't grasped that, grasp it tonight. Because here's the deal men, for us, especially what we want to present to ourselves. Look at what the text says again, that he might present to himself the Church in all her glory, having no spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but that she would be holy and blameless. That's what we're desiring to present to ourselves. But he is. That's what you're looking for. A man who desires for you to be holy, for you to be righteous, everything that he can to lead you in that regard, difficult as it may be, Look at the next part of the passage. So husbands ought to love their own wives as their own bodies. He who loves his own wife loves himself. For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the Church, because we are members of his body. He must be a man who leads in selflessness. He must be a man who leads in selflessness. He must be a man who understands what it means to put others before himself. You know what, I was an only child until I was like fourteen years old, selfish, spoiled mama's boy. That was me by a single teenage mother who doted on me and gave me everything. Not everything, she gave me everything, me as poor, she gave me everything, and all of a sudden I walk into this reality where I'm called to lay down my life for another. It's one of the most incredibly difficult things that I've ever been called upon to do. And apart from the grace of God, and apart from the life of Christ in me, I never could have learned how to do that. One of the things that I pray is Lord, if anybody in my house ever has to go without anything, I'm first. If anybody in my house ever has to sacrifice anything, I'm first. If anybody in my house ever has to endure anything, I'm first. That's what it means to leave in selflessness. That's what it means to put others before yourself. And by the way, the way you see this, ladies, is in the way that he treats you. That's the way you see it. You know what breaks my heart but breaks my heart is sometimes you know, we'll go to a restaurant as a family, you know, and we're there at the restaurant and I'm on one side pulling out Bridge's chair, and Trays on the other side pulling out Jasmine, and we put the baby in. We sit down, and you know, and we do we don't wait till ladies get to the table and sit down all this kind of stuff. And people come up to us sometimes, you know, ladies come, especially older ladies, they come up to us, and I just just so sweet. I did love you, y'all just do. Oh yeah, why because we do just tiny things in order to say to the women in our lives, you're first, We're to serve you and meet your needs. You know why that bothers me because it's supposed to be the norm. Men, Can I suggest a few things for you. It's not gonna hurt you to open the door. It's not gonna hurt you to pull out a chair. It's not gonna hurt you to watch your mouth around women. It's not gonna hurt you. To learn how to be a gentleman. By the way, it will help you. That's one of the things I tell my son, you know, I tell trastit trade. You're twelve and you don't understand this right now. But here's the deal. Okay, we're teaching you chivalry. We're teaching you how to treat women. We're teaching you all this stuff. We're turning you into a gentleman. You already gonna be tall, dark and fire because you're my son. Boy. Okay, So here's the deal. You must learn to use your powers for good and not for evil, because it doesn't take much. Here's the deal. Men, Let me just let you in on this, because in our culture, men have no clue about how to treat women. It doesn't take much just to blow them away. I'm serious. You open a car door and then you get up there, and you open the door to the restaurant and you walk in and you pull out a chair, and you do this, just the few that you walk on the outside and stuff like that. All of a sudden, they're like, he ain't even that cute, and I want him. You know why, because feminism has sold us a bill of goods, and feminism has men scared to be men. I ain't scared of nothing, especially no feminists. I'm not scared. Learn to lead in selflessness. I mean, here's how I look at it. If okay, my wife she washes my dirty clothes, which includes my dirty underwear, she I can wash my dirty underwear, had to pull out her own chair and open her own doors. They just they're just not a good trade right there. Now. Treat women like they deserve to be treated like they're precious, nurture, nourish, care protect when they're with you. They ought to feel incredibly valued and protected when they speak, Look at them in the eyes, Listen to what they say, respond to it. Ask a couple of questions every now and then. That gets the discussion off of you. You will be amazed at the kind of mileage you can get out of this eighties. If he's more interested and what he can take from you than what he can give to you. Then he's not the kind of man who leads in selflessness if he doesn't treat you like a delicate flower. Keep stepping, because what you're looking for biblically is a man who nourishes you as he would his own flesh. And you don't even have to tell me that's good. You don't even have to tell me that you want that. You don't even have to tell me because I know, because that's what you were created to want. God knows exactly how you put together, because he put you together that way. News flash, when we look at these things, men and ladies, when we look next week, here's what's so beautiful about it. God's the one who put us together, and he knows exactly what women respond to. And so he says, men, here's what you're to be as a husband. You're to be all the things that women respond to. Next week, what we're gonna see is what he says to you, ladies, is here's what men respond to, and I'm asking you to be all those things that men respond to. Lastly, for this reason, a man should leave his father and mother and should be joined to his wife, and the two should become one flesh. He's the leading intimacy. Now here's what's difficult for us men. Because we've been raised in this culture. We think intimacy is a three letter word that begins with S and ends with X. Let me define intimacy for you, man. Intimacy happens when I let someone into a part of my life that's not readily available to everyone. Let me say that again. Intimacy happens when I let someone into a part of my life that's not readily available to everyone. By the way, you know where affairs start. Affairs don't begin naked in a bed somewhere. Affairs begin when men or women who are married begin to share things with someone who is not their husband or their wife that they don't readily share with everybody else. Did you guys see the movie Finding Neverland? The movie Finding Neverland? You thought it was about the guy who wrote Peter Pan. That movie was about adultery. That movie was about a man who was in the wrong place at the wrong time, who befriended a widow and her sons and spent inordinate inappropriate amounts of time with them and inappropriately was in their home when he should never have been. It's about a man who, at one point in the movie tells her a story from his childhood and a painful experience, and any he says these words, I've never said that to anyone else before. And I looked around to my wife and I just said, he just committed adultery. Now it's just a matter of time before they consummated. He just said to her, I'm yours. He just said to her, you have access to all of me. You have access to places in me that no one else has access to. Folks, that is intimacy, and that's something that we struggle with as men, but biblically, that's something that we're called to lead in. And one of the ways we're called to lead in that is by creating a hedge of protection around the marriage relationship that says this relationship is prioritized above all others. That's what it looks like when we lead in intimacy. And it's not an easy thing for us. It's not necessarily a natural thing for us. Put these things together, and you have a picture of what he must be if he's going to call himself husband, he must be a man who leads in love biblical love. He must be a man who leads in the Word. He must be a man who leads in righteousness. He must be a man who leads in selflessness. And he must be a man who leads an intimacy. Here's the beauty of it. When you have this man leading this way, what you have is a picture of Christ in his church verse thirty two. Listen to what he says. This mystery is great. But I am speaking with reference to Christ and the church. Remember that second reason illustration illustration for a lost, hurting, and dying world to have a picture of the relationship between Christ in his church that they would value. One of the greatest compliments I ever received my whole life. I received from my son when he was about six, and he didn't even know that he's paying me a compliment. Well, I was preaching somewhere and the whole family was with me, and I don't know, somebody came up to him, Hey, how you doing, a little man talking to him, shaking his hand, I'm doing flying. Oh it's great. And you know, like you do with the little blue kids, you know, you always asking him, well, what do you like? You know, what do you do? What do you like school, how's school going? All this kind of stuff. What do you want to be when you grow up? And he asked my son, And this guy asked my son that, and he's like, ah, I don't know. And the guy goes, you know, we want to be a policeman. And Tray's just sitting there and he's thinking, you know, he's working on this thing, you know. He said, no, no, I don't want to be a policeman. How about a fireman, you know, any fire and said, no, sir, I don't think you want to be a fireman. He said, oh, like this just moment of revelation. And everybody sits around and looks. And when your kid's six years old, you worry about moments like this. And he looks at the guy and he says, I think a husband. I told my wife, I mean ready to go cry. I'll be back after a while. I don't do this perfectly, I don't. But my prayer is better today than yesterday, and better tomorrow than today, because you see what I don't want is I don't want my children to read the scriptures and for God to say that he is our father, and for them to say, don't like that word. I want them to read that, and somewhere deep in the recesses of their soul, I want them to say, oh, that's good. That's good. And my prayer is that I would be a man who would love my wife, who would serve my wife, who would nurture and cherish and lay down my life for her in such a way that others would look and say, that's good. That's good. That looks about like what Christ would do for the church. But I can't do this in and of myself. I can't do this in my own strength. There is no way in the world. But if any man is in Christ, he is a new creation. All things that passed away and new things have come. His divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness through our knowledge of Him who calls us by his own glory and excellence. Man, if you hear this and you say to yourself, I'm not there, you're in a good place because none of us is there. But here's the deal. Now you've got a game plan, and instead of focusing your life on trying to conquer the woman of your dreams, focus on trying to become the man of hers. Because Here's what happens when you are transformed into this man right here, when you spend your life trying to become the man who can lead in love, lead in the world, lead in righteousness, lead in selflessness, lead in intimacy. When you're in the Word of God, and when you're being transformed to the image of Christ and you're pursuing Christ's likeness so that you can become this man, what begins to happen is God says, boy, go to sleep. Remember what happened to Adam. He went to sleep and he woke up, Rib was gone. You got something whole lot better than a real You pursue becoming this man, this man that is worthy of a wife, and I believe God will give you one. Because here's what I don't believe. I don't believe you know that God's out there just kind of you know, just whatever likes of days ago, well yeah whatever you yeah, yeah, cool whatever. I believe He designed marriage in order to be an illustration of the relationship between Christ and his church. And I believe God delights in finding men who have pursued this picture so that he can say, yes, I can trust you with the illustration of the relationship between my son and his Church. I believe that with every fiber of my being, ladies, he must be these things. And you come to a place where you trust God enough where you'll say, God, I believe you have the best for me. And so there are certain baseline things about which I will not compromise. He must be a man who leads in love. He must be a man who leads in the world. He must be a man who leads in righteousness. He must be a man who leads in selflessness. And he must be a man who leads an intimacy. He must be If he's not these things, then we don't even move to the discussion of anything else. He must be these things, because these are the things that you, God have said that you desire to give to me. And all of a sudden we enter into marriages that have the big picture in mind, and there are all these little pictures. It's the little, living, breathing illustrations of the relationship between Christ and his Church. Not perfect, none of us is going to do it perfectly. But by the grace of God, he will take our imperfect attempts and use them to bring glory and honor to himself. That is what marriage is all about. He must be these things I must be. These things cannot be in and of myself. So I must constantly lay myself at the feet of Jesus and say, more today than yesterday, more tomorrow than today. Let's pray, Father, thank you for loving us enough to give us. That's what we truly need. Not something that fits this wide eyed mythological fairy tale, but something that meets us right where we are in the real world, and makes us more like you, and which paints a picture for a lost, hurting and dying world of who our God truly is. I pray for the men in this room that they would be all the things that they must be, more today than yesterday, more tomorrow than today. And I pray for every woman under the side of my voice, just like I do for my daughter, that tonight they would draw a line in the sand and say, God, if that's the minimum of what you desire to give to me, I won't even consider anything less