Speaker 1: Hello everyone, and welcome to Pastor Rick's Daily Hope, the
Speaker 1: Bible teaching ministry that's here to encourage and inspire you
Speaker 1: every day. And today we're continuing our series called Awesome Relationships.
Speaker 1: In it, Rick Warren shares practical ways to help you
Speaker 1: take your relationships with family, friends, co workers, and even
Speaker 1: God from ordinary to extraordinary. And this is a series
Speaker 1: you don't want to miss. Okay, Now here's part two
Speaker 1: of a message called Fighting for an Awesome Marriage.
Speaker 2: The third reason God created marriage for the connection of
Speaker 2: men and women, for the multiplication of human race. Third,
Speaker 2: for the protection of children. God created God invented marriage
Speaker 2: for the protection of children. We all know that kids
Speaker 2: grow better, healthier, stronger when they grow up in a
Speaker 2: stable family, when they grow up in a marriage with
Speaker 2: a mom and a dad. Now, why did God create
Speaker 2: marriage for the protection of children? Because when you were born,
Speaker 2: you were born completely helpless.
Speaker 3: You could not do anything.
Speaker 2: You couldn't feed yourself, you couldn't dress yourself, you couldn't
Speaker 2: change your diaper, you couldn't blow your nose, shoot, you
Speaker 2: couldn't even turn over on your back. When you first started.
Speaker 2: You were literally totally helpless.
Speaker 3: God knew that.
Speaker 2: Human children needed a safe environment, and you were going
Speaker 2: to need somebody to feed you and dress you and
Speaker 2: nurture you. You were going to need somebody to protect you,
Speaker 2: to guide you, to train you, to care for you,
Speaker 2: and all these things. Now, I asked my researchers to
Speaker 2: go out and research all of the national and international
Speaker 2: studies on the effect of marriage or the lack of
Speaker 2: a marriage on children, and I ask them to find
Speaker 2: me all those studies. Here they are. These are not
Speaker 2: Christian studies. These are studies by Harvard University and the
Speaker 2: United States government and the National Institute of Health.
Speaker 3: That's about one hundred and fifty different studies. I want
Speaker 3: to read to you some of the statistics.
Speaker 2: Studies have shown that if children grow up without two parents,
Speaker 2: without a mom and dad, there's.
Speaker 3: An increased risk that they are going to a fail
Speaker 3: in school.
Speaker 2: Kids without two parents are more likely to not graduate
Speaker 2: from college. Kids without two parents are more likely to
Speaker 2: be involved in substance or alcohol abuse. They're more likely
Speaker 2: to experience distress, depression, and the risk of suicide. They're
Speaker 2: more likely to do jail time. They're more likely to
Speaker 2: live their entire lives in poverty, and they're more likely
Speaker 2: to increase the risk that they themselves will divorce or
Speaker 2: will bear children outside of marriage. On the other hand,
Speaker 2: children who live with their own two parents growing up
Speaker 2: statistically of ruth enjoy better physical health than children living
Speaker 2: in any other family form.
Speaker 3: Now I didn't say.
Speaker 2: This is just what one hundred and fifty or so
Speaker 2: studies have shown.
Speaker 3: How about women?
Speaker 2: Studies show that women who marry and stay married have
Speaker 2: lower rates of depression than either single women or mothers
Speaker 2: cohabitating with a guy that they're not married to. Women
Speaker 2: who marry and stay married have a lower risk of
Speaker 2: being a victim of a crime have a lower risk
Speaker 2: of violence in their life. Women who marry and stay
Speaker 2: married have a higher net work than those who are
Speaker 2: living with.
Speaker 3: A man they're not married too. Is that interesting? How
Speaker 3: about men?
Speaker 2: Studies have shown that men who marry and stay married
Speaker 2: earn more money than single men with similar education, job histories,
Speaker 2: and they live Men who marry and stay married live
Speaker 2: longer than single men. Men who marry and stay married
Speaker 2: a mass more net worth than those who live with
Speaker 2: a woman and not being married to them, and men
Speaker 2: who married and stay married have fewer injuries and illnesses.
Speaker 2: What's it saying. It's just seeing real, something real simple.
Speaker 2: When you do it God's way, it works out better
Speaker 2: in your life. Now, every single study done has proven
Speaker 2: that kids develop best with a mom and a dad.
Speaker 2: Now we're in a broken planet, broken worce. Not everything
Speaker 2: works right. We know that, but that doesn't mean that
Speaker 2: we say the ideal isn't real. It is, and the
Speaker 2: statistics bear it out. Children survive and thrive in families,
Speaker 2: not in institutions.
Speaker 3: That's why it's saddle back.
Speaker 2: We don't believe in in orphanages. We don't fund orphanages,
Speaker 2: we don't build orphanages.
Speaker 3: We don't believe in orphanages.
Speaker 2: Why because no kid deserves to grow up in an institution.
Speaker 3: They deserve to grow up in a family. It'd be more.
Speaker 2: Important to help finance a family to take that child in.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you're in clap for that.
Speaker 2: And children's instrests are best perfected in an intact family.
Speaker 2: Lo does this verse Proverbs fourteen twenty six. Those who
Speaker 2: obey and respect the Lord, in other words, do life
Speaker 2: the way God says to do it. Those who obey
Speaker 2: and respect the Lord have a secure fortress. Their children
Speaker 2: have a place of refuge and security. That's what every
Speaker 2: child needs, growing up a place of refuge and security
Speaker 2: and not worrying his dad going to walk out, his
Speaker 2: mom going to walk out, or whatever. Now you know,
Speaker 2: in the past, used to hear about couples they say, oh,
Speaker 2: they stayed together for the sake of the kids. And
Speaker 2: for many generations when people stayed together for the sake
Speaker 2: of the kids, that was considered an honor, a compliment.
Speaker 2: They're unselfish, they're mature. They stayed together for the sake
Speaker 2: of the kids. Today people laugh at that statement, staying
Speaker 2: together for the sake of kise, what are you talking about?
Speaker 3: You got to do what's best for you? Really do?
Speaker 2: You always have to do what's best for you. That's
Speaker 2: called narcissism. Can you sometimes do something that's maybe best
Speaker 2: for somebody else. Can you sometimes do something that's best
Speaker 2: for somebody for the sake of someone who's more vulnerable
Speaker 2: than you are. That's called maturity, that's called unselfishness, that's
Speaker 2: called love.
Speaker 3: Today, on our narcissistic.
Speaker 2: Culture, we judge everything by I've got to do what's
Speaker 2: best for me.
Speaker 3: No, you don't.
Speaker 2: In fact, you'll never be happy trying to always do
Speaker 2: what's best for you, you'll be a selfish little claude.
Speaker 3: Bitter claude. That's a pastor's cuss word. Number four. Okay.
Speaker 3: God created marriage.
Speaker 2: For the connection of men and women, for the multiplication
Speaker 2: human race.
Speaker 3: It's how we all got here. For the protection of children.
Speaker 3: Number four, This is a big one.
Speaker 2: God created marriage for the perfection of our character. God
Speaker 2: created marriage for the perfection of our character. It is
Speaker 2: in relationships that we learn to be unselfish, we learn
Speaker 2: to be loving. And no relationship has greater impact on
Speaker 2: your life than marriage.
Speaker 3: If you get married.
Speaker 2: Now another one of the facts about when you were born,
Speaker 2: not only were you helpless, you were completely self centered.
Speaker 2: Nothing on the planet Earth is more self centered than
Speaker 2: a new baby. A baby does not even have the
Speaker 2: capacity to think about anyone else.
Speaker 3: All it can think about is itself.
Speaker 2: I'm too hot, I'm too cold, I'm hungry, I just pooped,
Speaker 2: I need to be cleaned up.
Speaker 3: Or whatever. The first word a baby learns is.
Speaker 2: Ah, and it's all about me. As a baby, maturity
Speaker 2: and the purpose of life is to grow up and
Speaker 2: realize it's not all about you. In fact, that real
Speaker 2: happiness comes in giving your life away and.
Speaker 3: Being unselfish, and being serving and being loving.
Speaker 2: And so the whole goal of your life is to
Speaker 2: grow from your total self centered self as a baby
Speaker 2: to being an unselfish adult. Do you know some adults
Speaker 2: who are still selfish babies?
Speaker 3: Yes, you do. Don't look at them, but you know
Speaker 3: who they are. Now.
Speaker 2: This is called maturity. Life is the laboratory of learning
Speaker 2: how to love. Why is love the most important thing
Speaker 2: in life? Because God is love and God wants you
Speaker 2: to become like him. He wants you to learn how
Speaker 2: to love, and we learn to love and learn to
Speaker 2: be unselfish. Now, the Bible says this in Proverbs eighteen one.
Speaker 2: It is selfish and it is stupid to think only
Speaker 2: of yourself.
Speaker 3: And so how do I get out of that?
Speaker 2: Well, marriage is a lifelong course in learning to be unselfish,
Speaker 2: because once you get married, I can no longer think
Speaker 2: about me. I got to think about we. I can't
Speaker 2: think about just me and myself and hones. How many
Speaker 2: of you as who are married, had to learn pretty
Speaker 2: quickly that once you got married, you couldn't always do
Speaker 2: whatever you wanted to do.
Speaker 3: The rest of your liars.
Speaker 2: Because you don't get to do everything you want to do.
Speaker 2: Once you get married, you have to learn to compromise.
Speaker 2: You have to learn to think of the other person,
Speaker 2: and marriage is the laboratory.
Speaker 3: For learning how to love.
Speaker 2: Now, listen, God wants to make you like Jesus Christ.
Speaker 2: It's the number one goal in his life. He wants
Speaker 2: you to grow up. He wants to build character. You're
Speaker 2: not taking your car, your career, your clothes to heaven.
Speaker 2: You are taking your character. So the most important thing
Speaker 2: you can do in life is build your character. The
Speaker 2: number one tool that God uses in your life to
Speaker 2: build christ like character.
Speaker 3: If you are married, is your spouse.
Speaker 2: Oh no, yep, because every day you get hundreds of
Speaker 2: opportunities to not think about you. You get opportunities to
Speaker 2: think of the other person, to care about them. You say,
Speaker 2: but my spouse, my husband, my wife is not even
Speaker 2: a Christian. They're not a follower of Jesus, they're not
Speaker 2: a believer. Doesn't matter, they don't have to be saved.
Speaker 2: There's still God's number one tool to make you like
Speaker 2: Christ as they're closest to you and they have that
Speaker 2: most impact.
Speaker 3: I want you to write this down in your outline.
Speaker 2: The number one purpose of marriage is to make me holy,
Speaker 2: not happy. That is so counterculture, but it's the true.
Speaker 2: Now here's the interesting thing. Once you become holy, that's
Speaker 2: how you get happiness. Being holy makes you happy. But
Speaker 2: God's purpose in your life is to make you holy,
Speaker 2: not happy. And that's the purpose of God's marriage for
Speaker 2: your life is that you become more loving, more giving,
Speaker 2: more serving, more sharing, more mature, more unselfish. And as
Speaker 2: you become that, guess what you get more happiness. You'll
Speaker 2: never be happy if you make it the goal of
Speaker 2: your life. Happiness is elusive as a goal. It's never
Speaker 2: meant to be a goal. It's like a butterfly. You're
Speaker 2: always reaching for it and you never get it. When
Speaker 2: you start caring about other people rather than your happiness,
Speaker 2: you're going to get happy, just the way God wired
Speaker 2: the universe. So God wants us to learn how to
Speaker 2: love in marriage. Romans twelve says this love sincerely, hold
Speaker 2: on to what is good, be devoted to each other
Speaker 2: like a loving family.
Speaker 3: Excel in showing respect for each other.
Speaker 2: Do you do that in your marriage? Do you have
Speaker 2: a competition of who can show the most respect? I'm
Speaker 2: gonna beat you to dan being more respectful to you.
Speaker 2: I'm going to beat you todaan being more loving, excel
Speaker 2: in showing respect for each other. You know, before I
Speaker 2: got married so many years ago, I really thought I
Speaker 2: knew how.
Speaker 3: To love a woman. I knew nothing about love. Nothing.
Speaker 2: Now, after thirty nine years of marriage, I know that
Speaker 2: love washes the dishes.
Speaker 3: I know that love takes out the garbage shoot when
Speaker 3: you're sick. Love changes the bedpan.
Speaker 2: And out of that kind of love comes a connection
Speaker 2: and a companionship that gives you the strength and the
Speaker 2: stability to handle enormous amounts of stress.
Speaker 3: When you know someone that well and you're just committed
Speaker 3: to each other. Because of that reason. Number five.
Speaker 2: God made marriage for the connection of men and women,
Speaker 2: the multiplication human race, protection of children, the perfection of
Speaker 2: our characters. God created marriage for the construction of society.
Speaker 2: Marriage is the fundamental building block of every community, church, state, nation, society,
Speaker 2: and culture.
Speaker 3: If you know anything.
Speaker 2: About history, you know that where marriages are strong, cultures
Speaker 2: and nations are strong, empires are strong. You know that
Speaker 2: wherever marriages and families are weak, cultures nations are in decline.
Speaker 2: And we know that this that when marriages are devalued.
Speaker 2: The more a nation is in decline, it's real obvious
Speaker 2: what direction our nation is headed right now.
Speaker 3: America is not getting better, it's not getting stronger. It's
Speaker 3: going the other direction.
Speaker 2: Why because we don't value marriage and family anymore. We
Speaker 2: value it's all about me. I got to do what's
Speaker 2: best for me. We've made individualism an idol. So this
Speaker 2: for the construction of society. Proverbs fourteen thirty four says,
Speaker 2: this righteousness that means doing it God's way lifts up
Speaker 2: a nation. But sin not doing it God's way, brings
Speaker 2: disgrace to any society. Number six, This is the most
Speaker 2: important reason of all. And many of you have never
Speaker 2: ever even heard this reason for marriage. But it's the primary,
Speaker 2: the deepest, and the most or found reason that God
Speaker 2: created marriage between a man and a woman, and the
Speaker 2: unity of sex and all of that that involves. God
Speaker 2: created marriage for the reflection of our union with Christ,
Speaker 2: for the reflection of our union with Christ.
Speaker 3: It is Marriage is a metaphor, it is a symbol.
Speaker 2: It's a walking, living object lesson of how much God
Speaker 2: loves us and how we are to be in relationship
Speaker 2: with him. Marriage is a model of a profound spiritual truth.
Speaker 2: I said, it's a metaphor of showing us how we're
Speaker 2: to relate to God. Now let me show you one
Speaker 2: of the deepest passages in scripture, and Paul is actually
Speaker 2: talking about the church in Christ, but he uses marriage
Speaker 2: as a metaphor.
Speaker 3: They're on your outline.
Speaker 2: Ephesians chapter five says this, Husbands, love your wives as Christ.
Speaker 2: Christ loved the Church and gave himself up for her.
Speaker 2: How did Christ love the church? He sacrifices life. He
Speaker 2: died for the church. He says, Husbands, that's the way
Speaker 2: you're to love your wife. You're to die for your wife.
Speaker 2: That's the kind of love your dad, sacrificial love, where
Speaker 2: her needs are so before yours that you sacrifice your life. Husbands,
Speaker 2: love your wives just as Christ loved the Church and
Speaker 2: gave himself up for her. He Christ died so that
Speaker 2: he could give the Church to himself as a bride
Speaker 2: in all her beauty. In the same way, husbands should
Speaker 2: love their wives as they love their own bodies. No
Speaker 2: one ever hates his own body, but he feeds it,
Speaker 2: he takes care of it, and that is what Christ
Speaker 2: does for his church.
Speaker 3: His body. See, the church is a bride in church
Speaker 3: is a body.
Speaker 2: Now, the scripture says, and he's quoting the verse in
Speaker 2: Genesis we just looked at and the scripture says, a
Speaker 2: man is united with his wife and the two become
Speaker 2: one body. This is a profound mystery. But I'm talking
Speaker 2: about Christ and the Church. Wait, wait a minute, Paul,
Speaker 2: I thought you're talking about Mary's here. Husband's no, he says, Yeah,
Speaker 2: I know, I'm used in marriage. But it's a metaphor
Speaker 2: of our spiritual union with Christ and Christ and his
Speaker 2: love for his family, his body, his bride, the Christ,
Speaker 2: the Church. So he says, because marriage is a metaphor
Speaker 2: of Christ and the Church.
Speaker 3: So each husband.
Speaker 2: Must love his wife as much as he loves himself,
Speaker 2: as he loves himself. And it says each wife must
Speaker 2: respect her husband. Now that passage is so deep, I'm
Speaker 2: gonna have to take a whole other message sometime and
Speaker 2: explain it in detail. But let me just say it
Speaker 2: this way. This is the most profound meaning of marriage.
Speaker 2: There's some benefits of marriage that are obvious and quantifiable,
Speaker 2: like these, what it does to kids, what it does
Speaker 2: to women, what it does to men, the benefits of
Speaker 2: an intact marriage for life are incontrovertible, irrefutable. And there
Speaker 2: are a lot of benefits to marriage that you can
Speaker 2: just look at, you know, empirically judging the scientific data.
Speaker 2: But this one, the most profound meaning of marriage is
Speaker 2: is not as easy to grasp. It's harder to understand
Speaker 2: and appreciate how marriage reflects our union with Christ and
Speaker 2: our relationship Tim now listen. No other real relationship on
Speaker 2: planet Earth. None, none, including parent child relationship.
Speaker 3: No other relationship can.
Speaker 2: Adequately illustrate our union with Christ the way a marriage
Speaker 2: between a man and a woman does. This is the
Speaker 2: strongest reason, this number six, why marriage matters. This is
Speaker 2: the strongest reason why marriage cannot be redefined. This is
Speaker 2: the strongest reason why it must be protected at all costs.
Speaker 2: Because we are the body of Christ. We are the
Speaker 2: bright of Christ in union with Christ, and marriage is
Speaker 2: that metaphor?
Speaker 1: Thanks so much, Rick, what a great message today. Hey,
Speaker 1: if you've been listening to the broadcast for a while,
Speaker 1: well you know that Rick is always saying that God
Speaker 1: wants your relationship to be more than just fair, average, good,
Speaker 1: or even great. He wants your relationships to be awesome,
Speaker 1: life giving, filled with joy and purpose, and that's why
Speaker 1: he created the Awesome Relationships Bible Study. Through this four
Speaker 1: session video based Bible study with workbook, you'll discover the
Speaker 1: tools you need to build an awesome marriage and family,
Speaker 1: awesome friendships, and most importantly, an awesome relationship with God.
Speaker 1: This resource is perfect for individual or group study. Be
Speaker 1: sure to request Pastor Rick's Awesome Relationships Video based Bible Study.
Speaker 1: When you give a gift to help Daily Hope take
Speaker 1: the Hope of Jesus to a hurting world, it's our
Speaker 1: way of saying thanks. Just go to pastorick dot com
Speaker 1: to get your copy of this great resource. That's pastorick
Speaker 1: dot com. Or you can text the word hope to
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Speaker 1: join us next time as we look into God's word
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