Keeping Love Alive - Planning - How to Strengthen Your Hope, Part 1

For over 30 years as a pastor I have counseled couples and I will tell you one thing when they lose hope.

When they think there's no hope for their marriage, their marriage usually how you keep hope alive. How do you build hope into your marriage so that it will endure so that it will last still gets better and better. That's today living on the state with welcome to this Edition of Living on the Edge with children Living on the Edge features the Bible to helping Christians really live like Christian friendship series called keeping the love alive is walking us through four biblical practices prepared to seven, the first practice listed is available online.

LivingontheEdge.org in this program.

He explains the second practice, which doesn't sound very romantic. As you listen you will discover the power it has to survive the tough times. Once Georgia Belfour's message planning how to strengthen your hope from John chapter 14 as we get started I have on my wall and I had memorized it. I read it almost every day because left to myself and you left yourself we all focus on you know about me right my needs.

My will, my desires. This is what I want to see happen in on my wall. Is this the prayer says Lord, make me an instrument of your peace and where there is hatred, let me sow love.

Where there is sorrow. Let me sow joy where there is injury, let me, so pardon where there is darkness.

Let me so light where there is despair, let me sow joy, O divine master grant that I wouldn't seek so much to be consoled as to console to be understood as to understand is to be loved as to love for its in giving that we receive. It's in pardoning that we are pardoned and it's in dying that were born to eternal life messenger attributed to St. Francis of a sissy, but just I need every single moment to get the paradigm shift, you know, this series is about four biblical practices. The great marriages have in common in the first one is about love. But you know when Jesus wanted to show his love. What did he do he took up a towel and he got down on his knees and the king of kings and the Lord of lords and the son of God whose been worshiped by myriads of angels from eternity past, bent down and he washed the feet people that were too proud to wash their own or anyone else's.

And not only of the 11 that he knew that would be faithful but he washed the feet of someone that he knew was going to betray him, and all I can tell you is when God tells us to serve. You can't do it and I can't do it in my power. I mean, that's like one of his assignments like this is what you really need to do and unless you come to. I can't say God that you can do this through me and there's a promise Jesus and give them to be given unto you. Good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over back into your lap.

For whatever measure you give you'll receive and it's a process and it's a journey.

I think one of the most fundamental shifts. If you want a great marriage and I mean it starts in your mind moves to your heart and that has to get into your hands is that this will only be a great marriage. Not if or when my make changes, but when I begin to serve them as an act of worship of serving him with the recognition that I don't have the power to do that and as you do that no units will I just can't. I don't feel it. Here's what happens with that classic picture is you can stand on the edge of the water and say there's no way it's the moment when they stepped into the water.

That's when you get the grace but you know, just like you go into training for other things. Your discipline God gives grace to discipline. Discipline is learning to do over time. What you can't directly do currently. I never forget my assistant of many years ago had never done anything athletic and we were learning this idea of what you can't do directly, you can learn to accomplish over time. When you going to training some others I can't love my wife today directly, but I can go into training to build the capacity to be sensitive to meeting needs, but it takes times in training. So never forget. She she had a friend who was a marathon. As you know, here's the plan, and she said how many hours you sleep and she started walking that she did little but a jogging. It was like six months later and she says, is there any way I could come in late on Friday I said but why what's up she goes well. My training I need to run 10 miles Friday morning, I sit all at once, and she hadn't said anything I said can you do that, she was yeah I said her name, you can walk around the block six months ago. How can you run 10 miles you as well. This is what we ate and then I jogged and it was this that I got the one model that have the 2 miles and and I have a 10 mile run and you know we only have five more weeks.

She did 26.2 miles without stopping. Because she wanted to training it affected what she ate how much she slapped how she exercised. Here's what I want you to understand there's many things you can't, will and do today. You have to get the spiritual disciplines praying renewing your mind reading Scripture having fellowship from the heart. You go into spiritual training and you can actually build the capacity to love in ways that you currently can't do by willpower and that's how God dispenses no sometimes he gives these flashes of supernatural amazing. You have new eyes and see everything different me. I have a handful of friends who that's that's how they overcame their porn addiction or their drug addiction and they cried out to God and how, but the great majority was recognizes that a problem getting in a group putting limitations on their phone giving their passwords to someone else having weekly accountability and they went into training to renew their mind so all I'm saying is your potentiality for not a good marriage but a great marriage is has little or nothing to do today with how your mate is acting or not acting, or what you want them to do or not do because if you turn this one in and get another one. You have exactly the same problems and the other thing is, is this person you will have to live with. That's really the biggest problem is you that you have a fairly healthy self-concept.

I can look in the mirror. No, the core of my life is unselfish. I want my own way. Now I can put verses behind it and I can believe me I can I can make it sound sophisticated and very Christian, but left myself apart from the Holy Spirit working powerfully in my life. I'm really about my needs. My once I get frustrated and angry or whatever. When that isn't delivered apart from the spirit of the living God living in me and me allowing him progressively to have more and more control as I give him control than the fruit of that relationship begins to come out in my speech, my behavior and in my thinking and that fruit is what is love's joy, peace, patients's goodness, kindness's faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. As I abide in them that is who begins to buy God's power express through the conduit of my personality to my wife and guess what her emotional needs are met, and her heart feels safe and secure and and then this this weird thing starts happening. Then she wants to treat me that way, which makes me want to treat her even more that which which makes her want to treat me that way. See, every relationship is either on an upward spiral of growth and kindness and love or he did that. I do this well you know what sheet she said that to me so I'm not going to do that and pretty soon you play the silly game and you both lose me. I've been in the ditch in my marriage I been in the darkness in my marriage.

I've been where I didn't love my wife. I don't even like her coming at all just angry and hurt and wounded, and it was just a choice because I made a commitment to God. I said, till death do us part.

If there was a plan B or if there was an exit door. I would've taken I'm ashamed to admit that it is true, but the good thing. What I saw was when you choose not to take it, then what.

The only other option is you get you to work this out and if you can't change then there's only one person left in the room right and so that was when that's when my marriage started really change okay. She makes me nuts. I can't change her God and to me and she came to the same conclusion. Love is the foundation of any relationship, but the oxygen what brings it forward is hope and want to teach you. Now the second practices great marriages have in common is hope and if you open your Bibles to John 14 want to show you in the midst of a desperate death rate crisis how Jesus is going to give hope to his bride. Remember, there is a great mystery. The great mystery is that there is this marriage and this marriage is between Jesus and his bride, the church and he's going to model for us exactly how we can love one another were in John chapter 14 and the situation is very taken.

The Last Supper biggest song to him. He is told them a lot about he's going to leave and think think crisis think you get to be apart for a long time. Think of military being deployed. Think of. I wonder if I ever see you again. Think of the worst and most difficult parting think someone has told you some very terrible things to happen to them and you don't know how it's all going to turn out what you need more than anything else, is what you need. Hope one of the great challenges and marriages is if you don't have hope. If you're not looking forward to something this week. If you're not looking forward to something this month. If you don't have a couple things you're thinking about this year there's some challenges as ups or downs or struggles or skids or sickness. There's lack of money, but all this is coming up. As long as you have hope. Hope allows you to endure daily struggles because there's something that you look forward to and what you can find is that Jesus is going to give his disciples hope and follow along as we discover how he does it. Peter said him Lord, why can I not fall you right now. I'll lay down my life for you. This is a good reminder of those who make those of us who make promises to God. Jesus answered at the end of chapter 13 where you lay down your life for me. Truly, truly, I say to you, a rooster will not grow until you deny me three times. Then he shifts gears do not let your heart be troubled.

Believe in God believe also in me.

Why in my father's house there are many dwelling places.

If not so I would've told you, for I go to prepare a place for you if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to myself. But notice the focus that where I am, there you may be also their greatest fear is abandonment and he's promising I'm going to prepare a place so that we can be together and then he goes on to say, and you know the way where I'm going and Thomas said him, Lord, we do not know the way that you're going how do we know the way Jesus said him.

I am the way, literally, that word is road hot us on the path or I am the way the truth and the life. No one comes to the father except through me. If you had known me would've known my father also. From now on you know him and have seen him meet these are great questions.

Philip goes we know maybe you missed something in this three years but Lord, show us the father it'd be enough. Jesus said to him, have I been with you so long you still have not come to know the father. How can you say shows the father. Do you not believe that I am in the father and the father is in me the words that I say to you I do not speak on my own initiative, but the father abiding in me does his work. Believe me that I am in the father and the father is in me otherwise believe because of the works themselves. Speaking of all the miracles they seem truly, truly, I say to you, Hugh believes in me, the works that I will do not listen to this.

There's going to be hope because there's a place that's going to be hope because I'm gonna come back for you is going to be hope because you don't really get it, but I am I am God in song and keep my promises, then notices going to say there's hope, because I'm not only not going to leave you alone, but I have a omissions in the purpose for you, I say to you, you will also do greater works than these, because I go to the father. Whatever you ask in my name, that will I do so, the father may be glorified in the son.

If you ask me anything in my name.

Notice I will do it if you love me you will keep my commandments. I will ask the father and he will give you another helper, speaking the Holy Spirit, that he may be with you forever. That is the spirit of truth in the world cannot receive, because does not see him or abide in him or know him, but you know him because he abides with you and will be notice it's all future and will be in you. I will not leave you as orphans, I will come to you after little while the world will no longer see me you will see me because I live, you will live also in that day you will know that I am in my father in you and me and I Hugh has my commandments and keeps them is the one who loves me and he loves me will be loved of my father and I will love him and my father and I will come to him and I will disclose myself to him.

The command is, do not be afraid.

In other words, don't let fear or anxiety speaking to his bride men as we go through this. I want you to be thinking first and foremost about what your role is good. You're supposed to love your wife how the way Christ loves the church so first he says to his church, you don't need to be afraid and you need to be anxious. I am going to take some responsibility for our future. The man's role. Second, he says why because I'm not can abandon you. And I'm not can leave you a woman's greatest fear is abandonment.

One of her greatest needs. As security and so Jesus says you don't have to be afraid. You have to be anxious what I'm going to secure a place you ever wondered why you know some of you have had to move around a lot and for many of us as man, a member we moved from West Virginia to Dallas from Dallas to the West Coast from the West Coast to Atlanta and from Atlanta back in and each time.

These are traumatic things for my wife that I remember we were leaving the West Coast go to the East Coast and most my kids were grown and still had a daughter at home and it was a tiny little house, but it's where kids mostly grew up in my life actually went through each room and said goodbye to the rooms and touched the wall enough. I did know her better I would think she's really having little low moment here to see for me. If the house for her it was it was it was the place it was the unit it was the the security it's it's what mattered. It was what it was the home that are best memories of the transformation of our marriage and of her children where it occurred, and entrustment. Sometimes it's were utilitarian units got four walls of couple bathrooms looks good to me. You know, who cares. At the end of the curtains of this color that color and the furniture doesn't really matter. This, it matters to her consultant environment. It's the nest it's the place and it soon isn't it interesting that when Jesus leaves the disciples. There is a place not some you know mystical floating around, there is an actual place and there's a place of dwelling.

There's plenty of them there for you and I'm going to go prepare it for you and I'm to prepare it for you because not all there is a place, there's a relationship and I want you to feel secure and know there's hope for the future because I promise to come for you and I prepared a place for you and then he tells them. By the way, there's a strategy to get there were not just moving, there's an actual strategy that you can know how to go from where you're at in your anxiety and fear to where were going to be and often don't know we memorize verses and quote them, and sometimes we get them. So what are mine.

Okay, I'm the way the truth and the life. No one comes to the father except by me. I got that down. Jesus is the only way he's truth you know about this is where he reveals his deity. I am the father want to get all her theology, you understand the context there were some very scared young men who he was telling them there's hope there's there's it's on my word and I want to know there's a pathway to this hope it's that you can trust there's a game plan here. It's not like I'm just coming home and saying I got transferred. I've taken a new job and is not a game plan and the timing and he wanted them to know how to work how we can get from point A to point B basically set up on the way, I'm the path and then the thing about hope is but what's the purpose why are you leaving and why do we have to relocate and because you will do greater works and so he tells him there's a place it's rooted in the promise he tells them there's a way to get there and then he tells them. I have a purpose for you that everything that you have seen me do you actually are going to do greater works. I want you to believe in me, and if not for all of our time and intimacy and relationship at least look back on all his miracles a note this is the way see he's building a very clear pathway so they can know you know what what's it what you tell them later in the world you have tribulation, but I've overcome the world. My piece at the very end of this chapter, I give to you and all of it is rooted around hope someone has rightly said hope is the oxygen of the soul. You know whether your discouraged in your marriage or whether there are seasons I just call it a grind anybody that you know she's like you get up. She gets you do this if you have kids you taken here.

You got this. There's these evenings are supposed to do this evolving church to do this over here okay every so many weeks and and you just you living in the present, completely and then when you have some challenges. Write your human absent challenges.

She says a little something he said he was gonna do this but he didn't do it, you know, one of the kids you got a problem with one of the things you how to do this another thing shall do that Neville argument about it and what if you live only in the now.

The grind will eat your relationship with hope is a picture of the future that says that what were doing today is going to produce a better tomorrow and enduring the grind of the today's and the struggles and the challenges and the little hurt feelings and the downtimes and the illnesses and the hurt and the kids who are going astray and the people that are treating you unfairly, the anchor of your soul is there is this hope, and ultimately, yes, it's heaven ultimately is Jesus coming back ultimately is. No one has the power to make you happy for you.

If you're a follower of Christ. He's told you I am your living hope I am your security. I am the deep well of your life my spirit dwelling inside of you.

He will be with you and will be. Here's the promise again future in you. Did you notice how many times that I will listen to you, I will come again. It's all based on this promise of the future in your marriage. You have to build in hope and are you ready for this. This sounds so unspiritual look at the title of the session planning. Did you realize this is what Jesus is doing the sitting down with his bride and saying I'm leaving, but I don't you know the plan. Here's the plan. The plan is there's a future date. In a future time that you don't know about and I got an amazing house and that's were to lift and here's the plan. There is an actual pathway it's not I 40 is not I 75. It's me, all you gotta do on the path on the truth the way all you do you follow me, and you can a land at the ultimate hopeful place where were to be together no sin, no pain, no problems everything seen all the miracles are normal, like I have a purpose for you. You're going to start doing what I've been doing impact later on the disciples don't know it were to call this the body of Christ we use that sound like a religious phrase think of. Think of how how did God express his miracles and his power. Jesus was walking on the earth is not your question, Jesus walks in and he speaks little girl arrives. He touches a person in the leprosy is healed. He teaches a multitude he is in Capernaum. How do he get from Capernaum over to Tiberias. He walked you guys look now I'm making this way too hard. Jesus was fully God, we had a physical body didn't, and when he did his miracles, the spirit of God, Jesus, God the son and God the father are working together and in his physical body.

He spoke, he touched.

He walked and he moved and he accomplish the will of God through his body when he was resurrected and the Holy Spirit came and Pentecost in the church was born the spirit of the living God came into who whosoever would believe in turn from their sin and repent and receive Christ as so the Holy Spirit the fullness of the Godhead came to dwell inside of you is a follower, and now he says the body of Christ is not just one singular physical body. It's whoever the Spirit of God lives in.

So now, how does he touch people. How does he speak to people. How does he love people through us right so he saying not only is there hope about the end. Not only do you know the path but I've given you a purpose because each and every time where the Spirit of God comes through the conduit.

I see myself like a piece of PVC pipe.

There's all this grace in heaven. It's available in the power the Holy Spirit lives in me and I have to I have to open the tap and and surrender my life. So the spirit can flow through me when the spirit flows through me like it flows through any Christians that's open and when something out of my mouth brings healing. When I take something out of my pocket and give some money to someone who's hungry or when I sit across the table and counsel a couple when I get to share the gospel in the spirit of God uses that and there's life and there's healing and there's restoration all I can tell you unbelievable you've experienced it.

He sat across from someone and you heard them bow their head and prayed to receive Christ you talk with them for hours and they decided not to leave their husband. You saw someone that was really hurting was in a terrible situation was clinically depressed and you came around them and now they're helping what you really God used me what to do because you hope to remind you he's real power listing the part is planning to strengthen your hope from his series keeping love alive for biblical practices.

Great marriages have in common. For each of these four practices gives you a couple of principles that explain why it's true practical implications of what those principles look like in the day-to-day and then very specific tools to get this practice into action and classic chip fashion. He unfolds the roadmap to give you clear directions each step of the way you want to hear how to deepen your love, strengthen your hope multiply your joy and restore your piece.

You owe it to yourself and your spouse to dig into the series and integrate what you learn for the long haul.

You'll be hard-pressed to find a more practical resource for the health of your marriage for limited time resources for keeping love alive are discounted and the MP3s are always free to order your copy or to send it to a friend visit us online at http://livingontheedge.org or tap special offers on the app for additional information. Just give us a call at AAA 333-6003 chip. As I listen to you in these messages you you sound more like a mentor if you were actually meeting with a couple what curriculum would you go through with them. I mean, what would be your number one resource to help them in your mentoring sessions will Dave after many many years being married and then counseling people. I wrote a book called marriage that works. So I then took all the truth out of them and I put them on these cards that you can review, each day, just three or four cards very small, very measurable, very specific ways to love your mate a some specific lies that we all tend to believe and we took that book and we took those cards and we made them a bundle that would be the curriculum that I would use because in that what I do. I go over the basics but I get super practical everything from communication to meeting together to finances to even parenting issues in your marriage. Those cards in that book come together to be the actual content.

I would use if I was personally mentoring a couple sounds like a perfect combo thanks trip okay so let me give you that again in case you didn't catch it all with bundled chips book marriage that works with a companion resource called marriage that works truth guards knowing the book represents the biblical design for marriage what God intended it to look like, what is the unique roles of men and women and how they play out in things like finances and parenting and then in the cards. He spotlights relational lies that tend to derail marriage providing biblical truth to get us back on track. This is a powerful combination of resources that will give you the tools you need to strengthen your marriage or help you build a solid foundation before you even start to check out the discounts on this marriage that works bundle go to LivingontheEdge.org Special offers on the app or give us a call at AAA 83336003 as we closed today's program you might've been thinking initially now. How is this really going to help me in my marriage, I mean chip you talking about Jesus in John chapter 14 and him speaking to a group of disciples. Let's pause for just a moment, who is had the greatest love for his bride than anyone in the world. It's the Lord Jesus and the very last thing he did before he left, was first to serve them and then second, he provided a plan. I know that doesn't sound like while so romantic. I would love to have a plan but it's a long term plan. It is projecting out into the future that gives hope to your partner. It gives them perspective when times are difficult and challenging is learning how to have a plan, not just for this week or this month, but what we can do for the next 3 to 5 years. What's our plan for the next 10 years and you don't have to have a lot of spreadsheets to be super detailed, but it is in the practice of planning that sets expectations that says cheer mate. This is going to work. This is how were going to make it work and by the way, did you notice he outlined how they felt. Your fearful.

These are the things that are going to come I'm going to be with you. You reassured them, and then he gave them a very specific plan with very specific details so that they can know in the midst of their hurt. The challenge the uncertainty and the pain now.

Don't we all go through those things in marriage. That's why wanted to teach you, Jesus models for us what we need to give our mates now for some of you.

You are planners and you love the plan and you want to plan out the weeks and the months and you get calendars out and there's others of you that are very spontaneous and in love is about the moment and enjoying there right now I happen to be more of the last category and I happen to marry a planner and what I found early in my marriage and then in the big times when we really struggled. What I didn't provide for her was clarity of plan. What were going through right now how does that fit into the longer-term.

How are we going to get over this hump.

You know, maybe you have a new child or 1/3 child. Or maybe you've relocated or in my case, we started a new ministry.

What I failed to do. Early in my marriage was to do what Jesus did with his disciples, think through what was coming up where the challenges were going to be and come up with a plan that made for special time together that our marriage was a priority that we would work through things together where we set expectations now in our next broadcast, I'm gonna get super specific about the practical implications and I'm getting give you a tool that we have used for decades in our marriage. That is, allowed us to endure and then endure and then endure in the mist of some really challenging times and it's given us hope and I just celebrated recently over 40 years with my mate and I've got to tell you that the mind of a man plans his way, but the Lord directs his steps.

It's so worth it.

Working to learn to plan in order to plant hope in the hearts of those we love. Just before we close.

I want to thank each of you who's making this program possible through your generous giving 100% of your gifts are going directly to the ministry to help Christians really live like Christians.

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Just go to LivingontheEdge.org Donate on the app or give us a call at AAA 83336003 help me. Thank you in advance for whatever the Lord leads you to do: selects time for everyone here is saying thanks for listening to this Edition of Living on the Edge