Latest / truthunedited / From Struggle to Strength_ 12 Bible Verses to Transform Your Marriage

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From Struggle to Strength_ 12 Bible Verses to Transform Your Marriage · truthunedited

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Speaker 1: Twelve rooms. Twelve places. And in every one of them,
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Speaker 1: there's a verse that belongs there. Not floating in the air, somewhere.
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Speaker 1: Not on a list you'll lose, but tied to a floorboard,
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Speaker 1: so that six months from now you can't stand at
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Speaker 1: your own kitchen sink without it coming to mind. That's
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Speaker 1: the point of doing it this way. You've read these
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Speaker 1: verses before. You've probably read all twelve. Reading them again
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Speaker 1: in a row won't change anything. And I'm not going
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Speaker 1: to insult you by pretending it will. But a verse
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Speaker 1: with an address is different. A verse with an address
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Speaker 1: ambushes you. So, standing in the driveway, let's start with
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Speaker 1: the ground it's sitting on. Standing in the driveway. Unless
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Speaker 1: the Lord builds the house, those who build it labour
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Speaker 1: in vain. Psalm 127.1 Solomon wrote that, which is almost
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Speaker 1: funny when you think about it. The man who built
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Speaker 1: the temple. Seven years, 30,000 men. Cedar hauled down from Lebanon.
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Speaker 1: Stone cut so precisely they didn't hear a hammer on
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Speaker 1: the site. Nobody in the ancient world knew more about
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Speaker 1: the labour that goes into a building. And he says,
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Speaker 1: unless the Lord does it, all of that is nothing.
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Speaker 1: The word for house there is baith, and it means
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Speaker 1: both things at once. The structure and the family living
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Speaker 1: in it. In Hebrew you can't separate them. The building
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Speaker 1: and the marriage are one word. Now look at what
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Speaker 1: you built. 30, 40, 50 years of labour. The down
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Speaker 1: payment you scraped together. The mortgage you finally burned. The
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Speaker 1: roof twice. The furnace three times. The bathroom you did
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Speaker 1: yourselves and still argue about. The children you raised inside
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Speaker 1: those walls and the money you didn't spend on yourselves
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Speaker 1: so they could go somewhere. All of that is real
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Speaker 1: work and none of it is what held this up.
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Speaker 1: I'd like you to think about the year that should
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Speaker 1: have ended you. Every long marriage has at least one.
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Speaker 1: The diagnosis, the layoff, the thing your son did, the
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Speaker 1: six months you don't talk about even now. You survived
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Speaker 1: it and you've mostly filed it under. We got through it.
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Speaker 1: You didn't get through it. You were carried through it
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Speaker 1: and you were too busy carrying to notice. Stand there
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Speaker 1: a second longer before we go in. At the front door.
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Speaker 1: As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.
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Speaker 1: Joshua 24 15. You've seen this one on a plaque.
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Speaker 1: Probably in somebody's entryway. In cursive next to a bowl
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Speaker 1: of keys. Here when he actually said it. Joshua's 110
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Speaker 1: years old. This is the last speech of his life.
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Speaker 1: He dies four verses later. He's standing in front of
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Speaker 1: a whole nation and he does something no preacher today
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Speaker 1: would dare. He lays out their options honestly. You can
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Speaker 1: serve the gods your father served on the other side
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Speaker 1: of the river. You can serve the gods of the
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Speaker 1: people whose land you're standing on. He doesn't pretend the
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Speaker 1: alternatives aren't attractive. Then he plants the flag. Me and
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Speaker 1: my house. Two things in that sentence that matter for
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Speaker 1: you standing at your own front door. It's public. He
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Speaker 1: says it out loud in front of everybody. which means
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Speaker 1: he can be held to it. That's the difference between
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Speaker 1: a conviction and a decision. One lives in your head
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Speaker 1: where nobody can check it. And it's future tense. We
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Speaker 1: will serve. 110 years old at the very end. And
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Speaker 1: he's still talking about what his household is going to do.
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Speaker 1: Not what it did. Not the good years. What's ahead? Now,
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Speaker 1: before we go in, I have to say something to
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Speaker 1: some of you. And I'd rather say it here at
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Speaker 1: the door than have you carry it through the whole house.
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Speaker 1: Some of you are walking this alone. There are two
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Speaker 1: of you living here and you've been the only one
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Speaker 1: praying for 20 years. Your spouse might even go to
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Speaker 1: church with you. They will not sit down and open
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Speaker 1: a Bible with you and you've made a kind of
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Speaker 1: peace with that which isn't really peace. You can still
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Speaker 1: make Joshua's declaration. He said me and my house while
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Speaker 1: standing in front of a crowd that hadn't agreed to
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Speaker 1: anything yet. He wasn't reporting a consensus. He was staking
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Speaker 1: a claim over a household and inviting them to catch up.
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Speaker 1: Everything I'm about to walk you through Works on one person.
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Speaker 1: Every single verse. Keep listening. Come in. The kitchen sink.
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Speaker 1: Bearing with one another and forgiving each other. Colossians 3.13
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Speaker 1: Here's where the dishes are and here's where I want
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Speaker 1: to talk about the throat. You know what I mean.
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Speaker 1: He clears his throat. He's cleared it the same way
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Speaker 1: for 41 years. Three times. Always three. And there is
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Speaker 1: a small violent place in your soul that lights up
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Speaker 1: every time. Or she tells a story with 19 unnecessary
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Speaker 1: details and you can see the ending coming from four
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Speaker 1: minutes away and you have to arrange your face. Or
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Speaker 1: he cannot walk past a light switch without saying something
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Speaker 1: about it. Now here's the thing about that list. Nobody's sinning.
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Speaker 1: There's no repentance available for any of it. You can't
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Speaker 1: ask a man to stop clearing his throat and you
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Speaker 1: can't ask a woman to compress her stories and the
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Speaker 1: couples who try end up in a fight where both
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Speaker 1: of them are technically right. So what does scripture actually say?
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Speaker 1: The word Paul uses is anechomai. It means to put
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Speaker 1: up with, to endure, to hold yourself back from reacting.
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Speaker 1: That's it. That's the counsel. Not resolve it, not communicate
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Speaker 1: about it until it dissolves. Put up with it. And
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Speaker 1: I've come to think this is one of the more
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Speaker 1: merciful things in the New Testament for a reason nobody
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Speaker 1: ever says out loud. You cannot become a patient human
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Speaker 1: being around someone who never irritates you. It's not possible.
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Speaker 1: Patience isn't a thing you get in a quiet time.
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Speaker 1: It's built the way muscle is built, by resistance, over
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Speaker 1: decades in small and glamorous increments. So God gave you
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Speaker 1: a person with a handful of permanent, harmless, maddening habits,
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Speaker 1: and then asked you to love them anyway, every day,
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Speaker 1: since 1979. That's not a design flaw in your marriage,
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Speaker 1: that's the machinery. You're standing in the middle of the workshop,
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Speaker 1: where God has been slowly making you into someone bearable.
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Speaker 1: Ask your spouse, sometime this week, what your version of
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Speaker 1: the throat is. They'll know instantly. That's the funny part.
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Speaker 1: They've known for years and they've been putting up with it, quietly,
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Speaker 1: the whole time. The Table Let every person be quick
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Speaker 1: to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger. James 1.19.
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Speaker 1: Sit down. James gives you three things and the order
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Speaker 1: isn't decoration. It's a chain. Hearing slows the speaking. Slow
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Speaker 1: speaking cools the anger, which means James thinks anger is
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Speaker 1: downstream of listening, and if you fix the first one,
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Speaker 1: you never have to manage the third. Here's how this
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Speaker 1: breaks at your table specifically. You stop listening because you
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Speaker 1: already know. That's the honest version. You've heard the story.
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Speaker 1: You can identify the sentence from the first four words
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Speaker 1: and predict where it lands so you're not listening. You're waiting. Composing.
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Speaker 1: Ready to answer the version you've already assembled in your head.
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Speaker 1: And nine times out of ten you're right. That's what
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Speaker 1: makes it impossible to quit. But the tenth time she
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Speaker 1: was telling you something new. Something she'd been working up
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Speaker 1: to for a while, maybe since Tuesday, and you answered
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Speaker 1: the old thing, the way you always do, and she
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Speaker 1: looked at her plate and said, never mind, it's nothing.
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Speaker 1: You've heard, never mind, it's nothing, at this table. You have.
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Speaker 1: That's where distance in a marriage comes from, not the fights.
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Speaker 1: The fights are loud and they get resolved. It's the
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Speaker 1: tenth time, over and over, until one of you simply
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Speaker 1: stops starting. Tonight at supper, when they begin a story
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Speaker 1: you're sure you've heard, let them finish it anyway. The
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Speaker 1: desk where you open the bills. Love keeps no record
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Speaker 1: of wrongs. 1 Corinthians 13.5 This is where the accounts live.
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Speaker 1: The checkbook drawer, the folder, whatever you use. The place
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Speaker 1: in your house where you keep track of what's owed.
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Speaker 1: Paul's word here is an accounting term. Logizomai. It's what
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Speaker 1: you do when you enter an item in a ledger.
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Speaker 1: Same word Romans uses for God crediting righteousness to a
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Speaker 1: man's account. Bookkeeping language, straight through. So the verse says plainly,
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Speaker 1: love does not keep books on people. And you keep books.
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Speaker 1: I know you do, because everybody married more than ten
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Speaker 1: years does. You've got entries going back decades. What he
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Speaker 1: said at your mother's funeral. What she did with the
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Speaker 1: money in 97. The Christmas he chose his brother. The
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Speaker 1: remark she made in front of company that you laughed
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Speaker 1: off and have never once forgotten. You don't bring them
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Speaker 1: up much. You don't need to. They're on the books,
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Speaker 1: and both of you know the balance. And in the
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Speaker 1: middle of a bad night, you can produce a receipt
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Speaker 1: from 1994 with the date on it. That's why we
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Speaker 1: keep the ledger. It's not sentimentality. It's ammunition. Now, I
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Speaker 1: want to head off the objection because it's a fair one.
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Speaker 1: How am I supposed to stop remembering? You're not. Nobody's
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Speaker 1: asking you to develop amnesia, and any preacher who tells
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Speaker 1: you godly people forget is selling something. The word isn't forget.
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Speaker 1: The word is reckon. Stop treating it as a debt
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Speaker 1: that's still outstanding. Stop carrying it as a balance that
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Speaker 1: can be called in. You can remember an entry and
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Speaker 1: close the account. Those are two different acts. Some of
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Speaker 1: you have one entry that's much bigger than the others
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Speaker 1: and you know exactly which one it is and you
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Speaker 1: flinched a little when I started this section. Don't try
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Speaker 1: to close that one alone on a Tuesday night but
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Speaker 1: close it this year. In humility count others more significant
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Speaker 1: than yourselves. Philippians 2.3. Strange place for a verse. Stay
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Speaker 1: with me. This is the one room in the house
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Speaker 1: where you're guaranteed to look at yourself every day, and
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Speaker 1: this verse is about exactly what happens when you do.
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Speaker 1: Count is a reckoning word again. Do the math and
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Speaker 1: put them above you. Here's the marital version, and it's
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Speaker 1: very specific. In every disagreement there's a moment, usually about
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Speaker 1: 90 seconds in, where you can see their point. It registers.
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Speaker 1: Something in you goes, oh, he's not entirely wrong, and
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Speaker 1: you decide not to concede it. because conceding costs you something. Position. Face.
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Speaker 1: The argument. Counting them more significant means that in that moment,
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Speaker 1: you let them have it. i want to say something
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Speaker 1: to the men here because i've watched this go wrong
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Speaker 1: for a long time somewhere along the line a lot
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Speaker 1: of us got the idea that leading a home meant
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Speaker 1: winning in it it never meant that read the next
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Speaker 1: two verses paul's reason is christ who had every right
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Speaker 1: to hold his position and let it go anyway If
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Speaker 1: that's the model, then the head of a house is
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Speaker 1: the one who concedes first. Which means the most spiritually
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Speaker 1: serious thing that will happen in your home this month
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Speaker 1: might be you saying you're right before you're forced to.
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Speaker 1: Look at yourself in that mirror and ask which of
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Speaker 1: you concedes more. You already know the answer. You knew
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Speaker 1: it before I finished the sentence. Short. 30 seconds. Real.
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Speaker 1: The room in your own house where you learned one
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Speaker 1: of these the hard way. Name the room. Name the year.
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Speaker 1: Name what was said. Keep it unflattering. The version where
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Speaker 1: you were the one in the wrong is the one
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Speaker 1: people believe. The car in the garage. A soft answer
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Speaker 1: turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger.
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Speaker 1: Proverbs 15.1 I put this one in the car on purpose.
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Speaker 1: Think about where your worst conversations have happened, not the kitchen.
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Speaker 1: The car. Because in a car neither of you can leave,
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Speaker 1: neither of you has to make eye contact. And there's
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Speaker 1: a long, straight stretch of road with nothing to do
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Speaker 1: but continue. Solomon's word for soft is rack. It's a
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Speaker 1: word for something tender to the touch. And notice it's
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Speaker 1: a soft answer. He's not telling you to agree. The
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Speaker 1: content can be a flat disagreement. It's the delivery he's
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Speaker 1: talking about. Because here's what almost nobody realises about their
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Speaker 1: own marriage. The damage isn't usually in the content. Take
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Speaker 1: the worst argument you've had in the last five years
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Speaker 1: and imagine it typed out on a page. Just the words.
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Speaker 1: It would look nearly reasonable. Two people with different opinions
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Speaker 1: about a real thing. The words weren't the problem. It
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Speaker 1: was the pause before you answered. It was the little laugh.
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Speaker 1: It was the way you said their name. So here's
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Speaker 1: the smallest assignment in this whole house, and I think
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Speaker 1: it might be the most powerful. When your spouse says
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Speaker 1: something that irritates you, wait two seconds before you reply. Two.
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Speaker 1: Count them. Do that for a month and you'll discover
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Speaker 1: how much of your marriage has been running on reflex.
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Speaker 1: The doorway of the room where one of you is sick.
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Speaker 1: If they fall, one will lift up his fellow. But
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Speaker 1: woe to him who is alone when he falls. Ecclesiastes 4.10
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Speaker 1: You know which room I mean. Every long marriage has one.
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Speaker 1: Maybe it was the recovery after the surgery. Maybe it
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Speaker 1: was the winter of the depression nobody named. Maybe it's
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Speaker 1: a room you're in right now. Solomon's not being poetic here.
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Speaker 1: He's writing about a world where a man travelling alone
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Speaker 1: gets robbed. Where the night is cold enough to kill you.
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Speaker 1: Where being by yourself isn't lonely. it's how you die.
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Speaker 1: Two are better than one because sooner or later one
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Speaker 1: of them's going to be on the ground and physically
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Speaker 1: unable to get up. So here's the question I want
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Speaker 1: to ask in this doorway, and it's the hardest one
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Speaker 1: in the house. Which one of you does the lifting?
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Speaker 1: You know, it's not even close. In most long marriages
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Speaker 1: there's a designated strong one, and everybody in the family
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Speaker 1: knows who it is, including the grandchildren. And here's what
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Speaker 1: I've watched happen for years. That person has never once
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Speaker 1: been carried. Not because their spouse wouldn't, because they never asked.
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Speaker 1: They decided somewhere around 1988 that their job was to
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Speaker 1: stay standing. And they've stayed standing. And they are tired
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Speaker 1: in a way they have never described out loud to
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Speaker 1: a single human being. If that's you, the strong one,
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Speaker 1: I want you to say one true sentence to your
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Speaker 1: spouse this week about how you're actually doing. One. Not
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Speaker 1: the whole thing. One sentence. And if that's not you,
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Speaker 1: then your job is to ask and then to be
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Speaker 1: quiet long enough for a real answer to come out.
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Speaker 1: It'll take longer than you think. Let it be uncomfortable.
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Speaker 1: The room that used to be a child's. These words
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Speaker 1: shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently
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Speaker 1: to your children and shall talk of them when you
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Speaker 1: sit in your house. Deuteronomy 6, 6-7 It's a guest
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Speaker 1: room now. Or an office. Or it's exactly the way
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Speaker 1: she left it, which is its own kind of thing.
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Speaker 1: The Hebrew word behind teach diligently is shanan, And it
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Speaker 1: means to sharpen, to wet a blade. It's repetition against
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Speaker 1: a surface until an edge appears. That's what Moses is describing.
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Speaker 1: Not a lesson. A thousand passes. And look where he
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Speaker 1: says it happens. When you sit in your house, when
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Speaker 1: you walk by the way, when you lie down, when
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Speaker 1: you rise. Four ordinary moments and not one of them
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Speaker 1: is a formal teaching setting. He's describing a house where
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Speaker 1: God comes up in the middle of things. Now some
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Speaker 1: of you are standing in that doorway. with a specific grief,
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Speaker 1: and I'm not going to talk around it. They don't
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Speaker 1: walk with the Lord. You raised them in the church,
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Speaker 1: you did the family devotions, or you meant to, and
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Speaker 1: mostly didn't. And either way, here you are, and they're 44,
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Speaker 1: and they don't believe any of it. And you've done
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Speaker 1: the arithmetic on this a thousand times in that doorway,
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Speaker 1: and every version of the arithmetic ends with your name
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Speaker 1: in it. Two things, and then we'll move on. The
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Speaker 1: sharpening Moses talks about is a lifetime process, and yours
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Speaker 1: isn't over. There is not one word in scripture, that
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Speaker 1: says the work stops when they turn 18 and move out.
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Speaker 1: You have influence you've retired from using because you assumed
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Speaker 1: the window closed. It didn't close. And the second thing,
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Speaker 1: this house is still teaching. They come back, Thanksgiving or
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Speaker 1: when something goes wrong, and they walk into this house
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Speaker 1: and they see how their mother and father talk to
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Speaker 1: each other at 72. That's a lesson. It's being delivered
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Speaker 1: right now, whether you're conscious of it or not. and
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Speaker 1: it may be the loudest sermon you have left. Something
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Speaker 1: I want to tell you before we finish the house.
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Speaker 1: I've been giving you the short version of every one
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Speaker 1: of these. You can probably feel it. Each of these
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Speaker 1: has an hour underneath it, and what I've handed you
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Speaker 1: today is the top layer. Enough to change a room,
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Speaker 1: not enough to change a year. So let me tell
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Speaker 1: you what I built for the people who want the rest.
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Speaker 1: It's called Founding Member. It's the library. Every video lesson
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Speaker 1: we've made. The long ones. the ones that go through
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Speaker 1: a passage word by word instead of in six minutes.
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Speaker 1: All of it opens the day you join, and everything
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Speaker 1: we make after that comes with it. Here's the part
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Speaker 1: that matters at your age, and I'd want to know
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Speaker 1: it if I were you. It doesn't go away. It
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Speaker 1: isn't a channel that can get flagged, or an algorithm
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Speaker 1: that decides tomorrow this kind of teaching isn't allowed anymore.
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Speaker 1: It's a place. You go there in the morning with
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Speaker 1: your coffee, and it's the same place it was yesterday,
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Speaker 1: and the same place it'll be in five years. Nobody
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Speaker 1: takes it away from you. The price locks the day
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Speaker 1: you join and stays locked for as long as you stay.
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Speaker 1: Not this year's price. Your price. Permanently. That's what founding means,
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Speaker 1: and it's why there are only a thousand seats. When
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Speaker 1: they're gone, that's the end of it. And I'll tell
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Speaker 1: you what I actually want. Which is this. The two
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Speaker 1: of you at that kitchen table, going further into a
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Speaker 1: passage than you've ever gone, and one of you looking
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Speaker 1: up in the middle, because something landed. That's the household
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Speaker 1: this is for. Not a perfect one. A quiet one
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Speaker 1: with the book open more often than it's shut. Links below.
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Speaker 1: Look at it after we're done, not now. Two rooms
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Speaker 1: left and they're the two that matter most. The hallway
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Speaker 1: at three in the morning. Be angry and do not sin.
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Speaker 1: Do not let the sun go down on your anger.
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Speaker 1: Ephesians 4.26 One of you is out here. It's dark,
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Speaker 1: the house is ticking. And you came out because you
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Speaker 1: couldn't lie there next to them one more minute. Notice
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Speaker 1: what Paul permits first. Be angry. It's allowed. He doesn't
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Speaker 1: tell you not to be angry with your spouse. He
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Speaker 1: assumes you will be. and he doesn't call it sin.
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Speaker 1: He puts the whole weight on what you do next,
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Speaker 1: and what he says is, put a clock on it,
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Speaker 1: not resolve it. He doesn't say settle every dispute before bed,
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Speaker 1: and I'm glad because some things can't be settled in
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Speaker 1: an evening, and forcing it just produces a phony treaty
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Speaker 1: at 11.40 at night that neither of you believes. He
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Speaker 1: says don't let the sun go down on the anger itself,
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Speaker 1: the hot part, the part that wants them to hurt
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Speaker 1: a little. There was a couple I knew, married 61 years,
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Speaker 1: and their entire rule was that they said goodnight. That's all.
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Speaker 1: Not resolved, not apologised, not explained. The word goodnight out loud,
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Speaker 1: even on the nights it came through gritted teeth, and
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Speaker 1: fooled absolutely nobody. Sixty-one years. Go back down the hall.
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Speaker 1: You don't have to fix it. Say the word. The bed.
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Speaker 1: Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother,
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Speaker 1: and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become
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Speaker 1: one flesh. Genesis 2.24. Last room and the oldest verse
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Speaker 1: in the house. This one's from before there were houses.
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Speaker 1: Three verbs. Leave, hold fast, become. Nobody notices the middle one. Dabak.
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Speaker 1: It means to cling, to stick. It's the word you'd
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Speaker 1: use for glue. And elsewhere in the Old Testament it's
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Speaker 1: used for skin clinging to bone. It's not a feeling
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Speaker 1: and it's not a legal arrangement. It's a grip. It's
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Speaker 1: the thing you do with your hands when the boat
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Speaker 1: is moving. But it's the third verb I want to
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Speaker 1: leave you with, and it's the reason I put this
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Speaker 1: one last. Become. You did not become one flesh at
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Speaker 1: that altar. Whatever happened that day, it wasn't completion. Genesis
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Speaker 1: puts it in the future tense. They shall become. And
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Speaker 1: it's been true every year since, which means the two
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Speaker 1: of you have been becoming one flesh for four decades,
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Speaker 1: and you'll be becoming it the week one of you dies.
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Speaker 1: Here's why that matters tonight. Somewhere along the line, The
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Speaker 1: two of you quietly decided the marriage is what it is.
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Speaker 1: The shape's set. You know each other. The pattern's fixed.
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Speaker 1: And whatever's left is maintenance. That is not what this
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Speaker 1: verse says. There is more of this available to you
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Speaker 1: at 74 than you have currently received. not a better
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Speaker 1: version of the past something you have not had yet
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Speaker 1: you know each other's habits you know the footsteps in
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Speaker 1: the hall the tone that means don't ask how she
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Speaker 1: takes it what he's like on the second day of
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Speaker 1: a headache what you don't know is each other's soul
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Speaker 1: what she's afraid of at four in the morning what
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Speaker 1: he's never forgiven himself for What either of you actually
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Speaker 1: expects when this is over? Twelve rooms, twelve verses. Do
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Speaker 1: this and in a year you'll know. And two people
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Speaker 1: who know each other's souls have something that doesn't depend
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Speaker 1: on health, or money, or how many years are left
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Speaker 1: in the account. Ten seconds. Where you're standing right now,
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Speaker 1: or the last thing your spouse said to you today.
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Speaker 1: Ordinary is the goal. They're in the other room right now.
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Speaker 1: Or asleep. Or at the store. Start at the sink.
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Speaker 1: It's the easiest one and nobody has to say anything
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Speaker 1: solemn to begin. You're not finished because.