A few thoughts on an amazing day at NewSpring Church…
- Today we saw around 100 people surrender their lives to Christ…that NEVER gets old!
- Really excited about our Columbia campus adding a 6pm service today!!!
- I honestly thought it was the best opening Sunday of a relationship series in the history of our church.
- Marriage is going to have fights…there’s no way to avoid that reality…the question we must ask is are we going to fight IN our marriage or FOR our marriage!
- Anyone can point out the perceived imperfections of their spouse…but fighting FOR our marriages begins when we focus on the areas where we fall short.
- We fight for our marriage by focusing on our responsibilities…NOT our rights! (The message will be available online on Tuesday…I really take time to develop this throughout the message!)
- The homework I gave married couples this week was to read Philippians 2:1-11 every morning and then pray two things…
- #1 - Jesus, help me to see the areas where I am falling short as a spouse…the areas that I can improve in…and…
- #2 - Jesus, teach me to see my spouse through your eyes (warning…when you begin to pray like this you will see your spouse NOT as your servant but rather as your opportunity to serve!!!)
- The questions that married couples should ask each other based on Philippians 2:1 are…
- Am I the #1 source of encouragement to my spouse? OR…how do I talk TO them and ABOUT them?
- Do I bring comfort or conflict into my marriage?
- Am I looking for opportunities for me and my spouse to spend more time together…or less time?
- Do I talk to my spouse with tenderness and compassion?
- To say that it was tense today when I was addressing the single girls would be an understatement…but…ladies, seriously…you know that you should not be dating a guy that you constantly need to make excuses for.
- NEXT WEEK the message is almost exclusively focused on the men!!! (AND November 14th will be the message where we primarily focus on the women.)
- My prayer is that IF you are a married couple and are having problems…PLEASE ask for help…don’t allow church to become “the Christian prom” where we all dress up and pretend that everything is ok!!!
- Jesus didn’t DEMAND our affection…HE FOUGHT FOR IT! He didn’t focus on His rights…but He came as the surrendered Son of God and focused on the responsibility given to Him by the Father to reconcile the world to Himself!
- If we want to be like Jesus in our marriages (Philippians 2:5) then we can’t DEMAND that our spouse be affectionate towards us…we need to be willing to fight for it. (AND…that fight for us begins with who WE are…not who they are!)
We will continue this series next week…but before I close I want all of you to know that the BEST things we can do if we want our marriages to be where God wants them to be are…
#1 - Make sure you are dating a person that is radically in love with Jesus.
#2 - Like I said earlier, make sure that if you need help to ask for it.
#3 - Be here next week…and bring someone with you!!!