Hook

• What I know:
  • God builds great homes on great marriages 
  • The home is as healthy as the marriage
  • Great marriages don’t happen accidentally. They are FOUGHT FOR! 
• What does it mean to fight for?
  • “to struggle against opposition in order to overcome, defend, protect, or achieve something.”
  • The natural order of marriage is entropy, decline, cool down. Today I want to get you inspired to FIGHT! 
  • I’ve told this story before, but I was once in a fight. A man punched me in the face because he had mistaken me for another man. I was inspired to fight. 
• We don’t need to fight against our spouse, we need to fight FOR our spouse. 
  • We start to look at our spouse as an adversary that needs to be overcome. 
  • Like a chihuahua with its teeth flared, we get set into a mode that is unrelenting. 
    • Our tone, our thoughts, our word choice
    • We can even be fighting just to fight. 
• Marriage is what GOD DESIGNED, HE CREATED THIS IDEA!! This is what it looks like:

Passage

• Genesis 2:18 (NLT) Then the LORD God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper who is just right for him.”
• Genesis 2:21-25 (NLT) 21 So the LORD God caused the man to fall into a deep sleep. While the man slept, the LORD God took out one of the man’s ribs and closed up the opening. 22 Then the LORD God made a woman from the rib, and he brought her to the man. 23 “At last!” the man exclaimed. “This one is bone from my bone, and flesh from my flesh! She will be called ‘woman,’ because she was taken from ‘man.’” 24 This explains why a man leaves his father and mother and is joined to his wife, and the two are united into one. 25 Now the man and his wife were both naked, but they felt no shame.
• Comments
  • The Lord was clear, man shouldn’t be alone. 
  • He took a part of man, and created woman. In order for man to get his rib back, he would have to leave his father and mother to be reunited with his rib. 

Fight For Three Things:

Fight for the TEAM

• Passages
  • It says “the two are united into one”.
  • Another passage says “what God has joined together, let no man separate”
• There is a natural desire for WE to turn back into ME
• The Selfish Mindset
  • What do I want?
  • What’s best for me?
  • My time, my money, my friends. My trip. My pattern. My preference. 
  • The more you build your private world, the less you build your shared life. 
• Fight for ONE MIND
  • Our Decisions
    • Funny story about the truck.
  • Our Dreams
    • Dream together about the future. Have conversations about what we want to see one day. 
  • Our Plans
    • Talk about what’s coming down the pipe. Talk about how to be together. 
  • Our Time
    • No longer looking at your calendar as my calendar, but OUR Calendar. 
  • Our Stuff
    • This points about money, retirement, savings, etc. 
    • It’s not MY paycheck, it’s OUR paycheck. 
• We SHARE
  • Room, bed, closet, deodorant, paycheck, fajita platter
• Team Stockstill

Fight for PURSUIT

• There’s not much more passionate than a young man pursuing a bride. 
  • Me at Chimes street
  • Me telling Angie I love her, and she not saying it back
  • Angie in Italy and flying home early.
• Most marriages stop pursuing one another at certain points
  • After the honeymoon
  • After a baby
  • After life gets crazy
• What we once pursued, we now presume.
• We pursue what we want and neglect what we won.
• We must make commitments to PERPETUALLY PURSUE
  • Posture of pursuit - smile, eye contact, patient, touch
  • Attitude of pursuit - I want to spend time with you, I want to know you better, I want to be close to you
  • Action of pursuit - I will serve you
• The importance of MUTUAL PURSUIT
  • One of the tragedies of marriage is when you have one person pursuing and another running their own way. It’s like a hamster wheel, there is no end because the other person is not responding. There must be response, or there will be break down. 
  • How I see it play out
    • One person goes for years, serving, asking, trying, but then one day they put it to the test. They say, “what if I stop pursuing, what will happen?” The sad reality is the other person doesn’t do anything, and the wheels start to come off.
    • The person who is used to being pursued gets shocked and immediately starts to feel unloved. Fighting starts and everything spirals downward. 
  • What to do? Make up your heart that you will be a pursuer. If you don’t feel pursued by your spouse, let them know that you feel that way, and ask them if there are ways they are attempting to show pursuit that you aren’t recognizing. 

Fight for ALIGNMENT

• What does misalignment look like?
  • Two visions
  • Two sets of values
• What does alignment look like?
• Ephesians 5:21-26 (NLT) 21 And further, submit to one another out of reverence for Christ. 22 For wives, this means submit to your husbands as to the Lord. 23 For a husband is the head of his wife as Christ is the head of the church. He is the Savior of his body, the church. 24 As the church submits to Christ, so you wives should submit to your husbands in everything. 25 For husbands, this means love your wives, just as Christ loved the church. He gave up his life for her 26 to make her holy and clean, washed by the cleansing of God’s word.
• Submit to one another - Before we see anything, we see this joint submission to one another.
• Submit to your husbands. Hoo-poh-TAS-o
  • Orient yourself
  • Used of Jesus and Joseph and Mary (He wasn’t inferior to them, but aligned himself for the purposes of God)
  • Used of the Church and Christ
• Let’s talk about the importance of Honor in the marriage 
  • Ladies, the language of men is respect. A man that’s not respected becomes a shadow of a man, a deflated person, defeated, and unable to lead with confidence. 
  • The way a man perceives respect is WORDS and ATTITUDES
• Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church.
  • Men, the challenge here is dramatic. We are to love our wives as Christ loved the Church.
  • How did Christ love the church - HE DIED! 
  • The way you love is SERVE
  • The way you love is SACRIFICE 
• When a man loves a woman, he is actually loving himself.
• Ephesians 5:28-29 (NLT) 28 In the same way, husbands ought to love their wives as they love their own bodies. For a man who loves his wife actually shows love for himself. 29 No one hates his own body but feeds and cares for it, just as Christ cares for the church.
• Danger
  • I will honor him, when he loves me
  • I will love her, when she honors me. 
  • By God’s grace, you will be the one to start! 

Closing

• The gravity of the marriage
  • God’s design for the home.
  • Homes build the future
  • Homes build the society
  • All of it revolved around the home.
• I want to minister to the marriages here
  • If you have drifted away from being a team
  • If you have stopped pursuing each other
  • If you have fallen out of love and honor
  • We can’t lose you! 
  • I want all of our marriages to stand right now.
• If you are here, and your spouse is not with you, and you are in a bad spot with them, I want to pray for you.