The Spurgeon Files- Premarital Counseling

Welcome back to Clearcast. I'm your host, Tim Dukeman, and I'm here with Pastor Dave and our special guest, Pastor Joseph Spurgeon from Sovereign King Church in Jeffersonville, Indiana, in the Louisville area. So what's the next commandment? Okay, you have to stop calling them commandments. They're principles. They're rules. What's the next principle? Go ahead, Joseph. I already said this, but stick to the issue at hand. Don't make the fight about everything from the past or every irritation you've ever had. But we haven't fought for six weeks, so we've got to get all the backlog taken care of, right? Yeah. No, you've got to keep short accounts. What I tell people about fighting is I said, you know, it's really good if you can let love cover a multitude of sins. That's the ideal. If everything's functioning the way it should be, your spouse can do something that irritates you or that's sinful or whatever, and you're able to forgive them without even having to bring it up. You're just like, you know what? Bad day, tough time, whatever. We can get past it.

Then I tell them, you have to be honest about whether you actually can have the love to cover that sin. And if you don't, if it's really actually just stuck in your craw and you're upset about it, then you actually need to address it. Because if not, what you're doing is holding it in a queue to come out later. And by then it's going to be all rotten and nasty. And you're telling yourself you're loving them by not doing it when actually that's not what you're doing at all. You're treasuring up hurts or offenses to use. At the worst possible time. Yeah. And what it does is it creates a relationship where it's like, well, the only time you're honest with me is when we fight. That's an awful thing to hear in a fight. And what it means is you've not been keeping short accounts. Oftentimes, I ask couples, and this has been my experience, I say, who picks most of the fights? Because nobody picks fights. And I'm like, okay, well, but who's often the one who's discontent? And they'll say, well, it's my wife. Or the wife will say, it's me.

Like she's usually the one who's willing to like, not maybe whether it's perfect or not. She's the one who brings up the problem. She's like, Hey, there's this problem. And then you say to the man, it's like, and because then she brings something up and then he just starts being like, well, you did this and you did that. And here's this other thing. And I'm just like, wait, time out, dude. If you, if I'm not disputing whether she did those things, whether they were right or wrong or anything like that. What I'm asking is why have you been holding on to all that stuff and not saying something to her in the moment?

You can't wait and hold and bring that stuff up in a fight. The part of keeping short accounts is dealing with it when it happened. You'd probably have a better chance going to your wife and saying, honey, I really don't appreciate when you say that or when you do that. Would you please do it this way? And maybe she won't respond well to that. But really, I don't care if she responds well to it. It's an effort in the right direction. It's a more productive fight. That's actually loving them. The other way is not loving them. It's ammunition. That's right. you have an enemy to take out and this is all I can use to take them out. Right. Yeah. And I think, I think that if you're going to have a good marriage, then you have to act like you have some confidence in the other person. And that's, that gets to this issue that you guys were talking about, because if you aren't bringing it up in the moment or you're not keeping short accounts from the standpoint of actually rebuking them when they sin,

Like, the reason you aren't is because you've decided, well, they're not going to change. And there's a sense of, like, abdication that you're not taking responsibility to help them. And there's a sense of you're kind of giving up on them in a way. And that's death for a marriage is when you give up on each other. Yeah, you're communicating to them that you have no hope for them. And the scripture tells us that love hopes all things and believes all things. not dealing with your spouse according to what their sins deserve, knowing that they're going to struggle and that you could probably articulate the ways in which they'll struggle because you've experienced in the past and yet not treating them as though they've already or inevitably will fail in that way. This is the sort of help that husbands and wives provide for each other. I read something a while back.

It may have even been from secular counselors that said the most toxic thing in a relationship is if one or the other person believes that the husband or the wife believes that their spouse is incapable of change. That, yeah, a marriage can last through a lot of things until one or the other person decides, my spouse is never going to change. And as Christians, of course, the hope of grace. is really a foundational hope for us, the belief that no matter how messed up we are right now, that there's some potential that we can actually improve, even if this is the hundredth or the thousandth time that we forgot their birthday or whatever it is. We can do better.

How many principles are we in here? I won't call them commandments. I'm up to five and I've only got six. I don't know if you have this last one. It's kind of a... We've got different ones from here on out. Okay. I've only got one more. You go ahead with yours. The one that I tell people is I say no ESP. Okay. Oh, no mind reading. No mind reading. That that's actually a rule that you may not live in your marriage. expecting your spouse to know what you think, desire, want, are afraid of if you haven't told them. They cannot read your mind, actually. It's true that after years of marriage, you do come to know your spouse well enough to be able to anticipate where their strengths are going to be on display or where their weaknesses are going to be on display. But that's after years of marriage, and to be honest, years of fighting, that you're like, okay, I know where the weaknesses are likely to show up here.

Then you have the choice, am I going to despise you because this is where your weaknesses are going to show up, or am I going to provide for you because this is where your weaknesses are going to show up? What we want is to be able to provide, and we need to be able to talk about it, but in a hopeful way. Not like, you always do this when this happens. That's miserable. Isn't there a corresponding principle there, too, that no SP, ESP, it's not only don't expect your spouse to be able to read your mind, but also... Don't think that you're reading your spouse's mind like, I know what you're thinking. I know what you want. That's what I was going to bring up. You actually have to have the conversations. A lot of times you won't actually have – it goes back to they'll never change because you've read their mind. And now you know that whatever the conversation is going to be, this is how they're going to respond. It's the default. I knew that's what you were going to say. Yes. And so you're just not going to talk about it.

Or you're going to accuse them of stuff that they can't. It's almost that little meme where the man and woman are laying in the bed and she's like, he's thinking about cheating on me. He's thinking about this podcast. That's it for me and my things, but Joseph has more. What's your next ones? No taking your ball and going home. Don't just throw up your hands and check out of the fight. In Filipino culture, there's this word called tempo. And a lot of women in the Philippines do this. My wife does not anymore. I like that anymore. And they give you the silent treatment for like days. Okay. Oh, wow. And you're supposed to read their mind to figure out what's wrong. And then they check out of arguments. And so it's just – that's – but not just Filipinos. I've seen a lot of people do that. Like they – They clam up. I'm done. I'm just done. I'm done with this discussion. And now all this has been left here. No decision has been made. And you're just going off on your own. Maybe you're just going out to the garage to work in the car or whatever. And we always have a commitment that we won't let the sun go down on our anger.

That doesn't always necessarily mean the fight will be completely resolved, but it does mean that we're going to make sure that we can say, you know, I love you. We're going to deal with this in the morning and go to bed. There have been some nights early in my marriage where we stayed up way too late. And then we finally figured out that's a dumb thing to do. We're way less likely to resolve this at 2 a.m. than we are to... Time out. We love each other. Part of that was me. I was going to make sure that we're not going to bed angry. And so we started to realize that, well, we can actually resolve this easier, quicker. Now, my next rule is going to seem to contradict that, which is it's okay to take a break if it gets too heated. You can let your spouse call a time out. But don't abuse this rule.

as a way to run off and avoid the arguments yeah all the stuff we're talking about are like the boundaries they're just like when you run across the you know you transgress one of the boundaries the whole point is just for you to know that you are standing over near that boundary and you're walking across it then you actually have to say okay would it be better for us to take a break right now or to just keep fighting like cats and dogs and make a bad situation worse I think it's almost like saying we have a rule, never push anyone. Well, never push anyone unless they're getting ready to get hit by a bus. And then you should push them. So don't walk out on an argument because you're being selfish. Don't stay in an argument because you're being selfish. Like sometimes you have to step away and say, okay, I don't want to say what's going through my head right now, so I need to step away so that I can get my mind, get my emotions back under control and we can come back to this.

Everything is done from love, not from selfishness. From my pastoral experience and also just marriage experience, there's usually one person in the marriage who will fight all the way. They'll just keep pushing, pushing, pushing, pushing, pushing. And the other person is a fleer. Yeah. And these two rules are designed to work against both of those, right? The person that's a fleer needs to stay and fight. The person that would push and follow you, the person that flees all around the house, needs to give the person a chance to be able to gather their thoughts and think about it. I'm laughing because I know exactly which one of those two things me and my wife are. Right, yeah. But you've got to have patience and love for each other knowing that. Sure. My next rule, I've got two more real quick, is admit when you're wrong. Ooh.

Wow. Profound. Confess sin and forgive. Now, I'll tell a sexist joke. There was this piece of paper that I saw this guy wrote. At the top it said man. At the bottom it said I'm sorry. On the other side it said woman and I'm sorry. And then he took a pencil and he just drew from man straight down to I'm sorry. And then he drew from the woman and it started. making a curvy line. It went all over the paper and it ended up going over to the man and down to I'm sorry. So the woman's never sorry because she's never wrong. Yes. So you have to be willing to be wrong and to admit it when you're wrong. Some men do struggle to say that they're wrong and they're sorry. I had a guy one time tell me that in his fight with his spouse that he was convinced that she was right and he was wrong.

and he fought with her for like another 20 minutes simply because he wasn't going to admit it. He knew in his head that she was right, and he saw it clearly, but his pride, and these are his words, his pride would not allow him to say, honey, I'm sorry, you're right. I've got a friend who told about being in a marriage counseling situation. He was a pastor, and he said they were just kind of on the rocks, the couple, and they came to talk to him, and the wife's like, she was just beyond exasperated. And the husband was like, I don't know why she's so upset. Like things are fine or whatever. And my friend asked the woman, she's like, well, what happened? She said, well, the other day she was just like sitting in the living room and he comes downstairs and just says, do you know what really upsets me? Like the first thing out of his mouth and goes on about something that she was just doing terrible about. No introduction, no nothing. And at that point he's like, I can understand why there's problems in this marriage.

If that's how it happens. He just brought up something just completely out of the blue. She was sitting there having a great day. It's like, if that's the pattern, maybe there's some problems. Joseph, what's the last final and most helpful rule you have? Enjoy the makeup after the fight. Amen. Right. So if you fight according to the rules, that's usually what will happen. All right. Yeah. Yeah. I said to a couple, I mean, this wasn't. too long ago, and it's not the only time I've said to it, they called me in the middle of a fight. And it's worth noting that that was a good thing for them to do. They were not able to get resolved and they were right in the middle of it. And one of them called me. And at one point during the conversation, I asked the spouse who was interjecting, I said, are you going to participate in this conversation or not? And they've been married for years and they're both growing.

like a Christian couple, but boy, they were having a hard time that night. And I just said to them, the one spouse called, the other spouse refused to participate in the conversation, but kept interjecting. And I just said, are you going to participate in the conversation or not? And they said, no. And I said, okay, then you need to be quiet. And I talked to the spouse. Now, what I didn't know was that this one spouse was following the other spouse around with me on speakerphone. And we all kind of laugh at these things. This is what being a pastor is like. Joseph's over here nodding his head and kind of, because it's like, this is what happens. The pastor gets called in, you're fighting like cats and dogs, and here he is supposed to fix all your problems. And it's like, oh, what was really sweet was that the spouse who wouldn't participate, and they didn't, they stopped talking.

Called me the next day and apologized for their behavior. And they actually got reconciled that night, which was sweet. And so when I'd seen them, all that happened throughout the week. And then when I saw them at church on the following Sunday, I said, now you have the good part. Now you get to enjoy the makeup. And it's like, is the pastor supposed to talk about that? I mean, we all do realize that we're talking about intimacy, right? That once you've been reconciled, actually reconciled, it's actually sweet. you know, that's just the thing pastors aren't supposed to ever say or acknowledge, but it's like, seriously, like one of the kindnesses of God is that once you get a reconciled to your spouse that he's given to you and you've both repented and forgiven and buried it all that now you're actually with someone you enjoy and you get to enjoy and that that's actually a sweet thing. This is a general principle of life. I mean, as a Christian, we go through conflict to come out through the,

greener pastures like through the valley of the shadow of death he leads us to green pastures or uh one of our pastors in our presbytery calls this the tunnel of chaos yeah right your argument is entering into that and when you're in that it's chaos and you can't see and but when you come out of it it's like coming out of the tunnel of darkness into a light and you see the green pasture and and so what i have found is in the times when pastor davis come over to help us just having somebody else that just lets you tell your stupid argument out loud, and you realize how incredibly dumb it sounds when you say it out loud. To someone else, yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh my goodness. Because between the two of you, you have so much baggage, like there's so many pieces that have gotten duct taped onto that thing that it feels actually reasonable. And then you say it out loud to the pastor and you're like, oh my goodness, this is humiliating. Yeah. But the temperature like very quickly goes back down and you're able to work through it because

it's not good for man to be alone. And it's also not good for married couples to be alone. Like you need people that are able to help you through those times. My wife, a couple of times has, these are times where I was wrong in the argument. And she is like, okay, if we go talk to Pastor Dave about this on Sunday, do you really think he's going to take your side? And as soon as she said that, I was like, yeah, okay, you're right. Sorry. Does your congregation use you in the middle of arguments to settle their disputes? Yes, they do sometimes. Can you talk to my husband? So, on a more serious note, though, what would—I've got two pastors here. I have to ask this question. What would be a good—like, do you have any guidance for us, like, as congregants hearing this? Like, when is the time to bring in the pastor? Like, when should we be calling now?

I love the silence that descended after he asked the question. Well, here's the danger. At least my pause was because I don't want, like one of the things that Scripture teaches me is that I'm to equip you to do the work of the ministry. And so I actually don't want to create a dependence on me in conflict. So that was part of my first hesitation was like, I don't want to be the guy who always has to come in and adjudicate things. And I have actually, one time my wife and I were involved with a couple and I felt as though the wife was getting into the habit of calling us when she was upset at her husband. And I told my wife, I said, honey, I want you to reach out to her and I want you to tell her to stop tattling on her husband, but rather to work on it with him. And that blow landed on her. She felt it. And because she kept, she immediately started using the word tattling.

I'm not tattling, but I'm just asking for help. And what I was trying to do was say, listen, I'm not always there. You actually have to work on your marriage, and I can give you some tools and some guidance, and I'm happy to. But I can't live your life and be your personal moderator of your life. I can give you advice, counsel. But you have to actually put it into practice. And so I would say, when should you call the pastor? Well, when you've tried and either it's gotten so intense that you don't want to do any more damage, yeah. But it doesn't just have to be your pastor. This is what elders are for. Wives, this is what Titus II women are for. This is what your pastors and elders' wives are for. If you have never called them and said, my husband and I are having a problem and I need help, you're neglecting a really helpful resource.

And so on the one hand, like work at it yourself. If things have gotten too intense, then yes. The other thing I would say is if there's a habitual problem, like something keeps coming up and it's becoming more and more intense, more of a problem, like you're just sort of stuck in a rut and you're really struggling to keep the rules where it's like, you're just like, I can't help but think they're just going to keep doing this thing. Then that may be a time for you to call and get counseling or to say, Hey, can you come over and help us? But it shouldn't be the, I would say it's not, shouldn't be the first thing, but every couple at some point should call the pastor or the elder or like, and say, hey, we're having a problem. Hey, can you, you know, can you, can we meet? But I also think that pastors ought to be like, if pastors are doing their work, they're going to know their couples. And from time to time, at least I have done this, I just would assume you do. If you know a couple's having trouble, like just in the greeting at the door or at the

church potluck or whatever, you ask them, Hey, how are you guys doing? You know, your fights, you know, you would, you join the issue and say, Hey, you guys getting along? You keeping the rules. Yeah. And they always get this really bashful look on their face. Like, you know, we fight and it's like, of course I do. And so I think that there's like, there should be a, you know, an atmosphere of, we're not all just going to. lie to each other about how life actually is. And Joseph mentioned that at the very beginning, is he's like, one of the things I want to establish in premarital counseling is a rapport and a relationship where when you have problems that you're really struggling with, you reach out to us. And it also helps the pastor. One of the questions at the very end of the questionnaire we ask is, it's sort of a catch-all question. It says, is there anything else that we should know about you or your past that would be helpful to us in caring for you?

We ask that both in premarital counseling and in our membership interview for anyone coming into membership in our church. Hey, here's the catch-all question. Maybe we didn't word it quite. Is there anything else you think we should know? Because we intend to be helpful. We want to be helpful, but we need information from you. We need to know if some terrible, tragic thing happened or if there's some longstanding trouble. You got to tell us because I can't help what I don't know. We pastors even don't have ESP. We cannot. know what's going on if you don't tell us. There's a passage in Scripture, I love the way Paul puts it, because he says two things almost back to back, where he says, so every man should bear his own burden. And then just a few verses away, he says, bear one another's burdens. That's Galatians 6. Yeah, Galatians 6. And those two words for burden are actually different words in the Greek. And the one refers to, when he says every man bears on burden, it's like a backpack.

Like, everybody has a load you need to carry. And when he says, bear one another's burdens, he's referring to a large load that's too heavy for us to carry. And in life, those are kind of your two guardrails. Like, on the one hand, if you're calling the pastor every single time that you guys get in any kind of—and it's two nights later, it's like, there's probably more issues that need to be dealt with. On the other hand, I appreciated how you pointed out, Pastor Dave, that, like, there's other elders, there's other people, and it might be a situation where— You just need more people's input in your life. Like you need more openness to people in your church and other leaders in your church too. It can't just be, I have this little one-on-one with my pastor and he fixes me every two weeks. Yeah. And Joseph, I want to hear your thoughts, but I also want to say, listen, your pastor, your pastor's wife, don't make some...

perfect guy, perfect counselor, perfect somebody who can solve your problem. God gave you your pastors and your pastor's wives, and they're not perfect people. And we all know that, but here's the thing, neither are you. And better to have people who know you and care about you and have a vested interest in your life and your marriage and in your kids being involved than somebody who has no particular knowledge. You can give all these rules, but I... I'm sure I can speak for Joseph in saying that when we're actually in counseling, depending on the couple sitting in front of us, we give more or less time to these rules based on what they're like and what their pasts are like. And there's no substitute for that. And so whenever I get requests, which doesn't happen often but has happened, where someone from another church will reach out to me and say, hey, can you help me sort out X in their life, whatever's going on?

often trying to push them back to their own pastors and say, listen, I don't want to be in the position of subverting the people who actually know you way better than I do and have probably been doing work with you. I'm not trying to throw my hat in the ring for your allegiance. I want you to be allied with them. And so I'm not going to let you put me in that position of undercutting their work in ministry. That being said, what have they said to you? And many times they'll say, yeah, it sounds like good counsel. Did you do what they said? Did you listen to them? Because I don't have some magic answer for you. Joseph, you're shaking your head. I'm agreeing with you. What about you and what you say to, a while ago, Tim asked the question, what do you say to these young couples as far as how often or not often to come to you? Anything to add to what Pastor Dave has said? No, I don't really have anything.

To add other than, you know, by the grace of God, it should be less often as we meet because you start to apply what we've been telling you. Right? If the Bible says don't just be hearers of the word, be doers. And I will tell you there's nothing more discouraging for a pastor, I think, than to have you come ask for advice, they to give you counsel and even tell you. Hey, if you go down this road, this is what's going to happen. And then they go and they go down that road. And it's like, why did you even ask me? I mean, and if that happens enough, I don't know, I give up. Yeah, I wouldn't say that I give up, but I will say to people, I often ask them, if we give them homework, not that every counseling session has homework in it, but advice. And any, I mean, if you went to the doctor, they would ask, like, are you doing the things I told you to do?

And if the answer is no, but it still hurts doc, like all the doctor is going to say to you is then start doing the things I told you to do. And so I try to like, I want to be helpful, but I also don't enjoy beating my head against the wall. And so if you haven't done the things that were counseled, that you were recommended to you first and you're just like, well, I didn't feel like it or it did, it didn't work. Oh, you tried that thing that you're going to have to need to work at the rest of your life and it didn't work after seven days. Huh?

Well, we need a little more perseverance. It takes time for these things. These are good things to do, whether they work according to your standards or not. And so I'm not asking you to evaluate on a minute-by-minute basis the counsel I've given you. I'm asking you to apply it. Apply yourself to it. I have been known to say to a couple, how can I be helpful to you? If they seem like the kind of couple that isn't real motivated to do what I've counseled in the past, but they keep having problems, have you done the things that I've asked you to do? No. Okay. How can I be helpful to you today then? Yeah. Because I'm not interested in saying all the same stuff to you that I've already said to you because you didn't listen. And I do actually expect people to listen and to put into practice. I remember one time I was in a counseling meeting and we were reading a book together that pertained to the subject of counseling that we were having counseling over. And the couple wasn't doing the reading.

And they'd always had an excuse. Well, we were busy. Well, the kids, well, whatever, you know, and my wife and I have more kids than them. We are, we are quantitatively more busy than they are. The husband doesn't work more than I do. The wife doesn't do more than my wife does. And yet we're going over, we're counseling with them. And I told my wife, I said, honey, I'm just telling you how to time. Cause it's going to be awkward. If we show up the next time we show up and they haven't done the reading. I'm going to tell them, well, I know that you had tonight blocked out for counseling, but you haven't prepared for counseling. So what's going to happen now is my wife and I are going to go on a date and you're going to do the reading that we assigned to you because it's inappropriate that my wife and I would be spending more time than you thinking about and preparing for your marriage than you are. So you have a free evening, do the reading. And it happened. And that's exactly what I did. And they never missed a reading assignment again.

There's a sense in which if you're going to ask for counsel, you better be inclined to listen. Not just because it is discouraging, like Joseph said. It is discouraging. But it's like, if you're not going to listen, let's just be honest about it. And let's deal with the fact, instead of talking about whatever you're fighting about, let's talk about why you don't want to listen to counsel. And you both seem to have this problem. And actually, I think that's more of the root cause of why you guys keep fighting is you don't listen to anybody. You're a rule unto yourself. And I can't help that. As much as I would like to. Jesus says, you know, he wept over Jerusalem. Said, you know, like a mother hen, I wish I could spread out my wings and gather you, but you wouldn't. You wouldn't do it. And sometimes in counseling, you end up with people that don't, they think they got it all figured out. And I say, okay. There was another time I was in counseling. This couple was constantly having fights about money. And me and one of my elders went to their house.

And sat down with them and they were having, they were, that couple is since divorced and they had, they had bigger problems than money in their marriage, but that's what they were fighting about. And so we went over there and we talked with them and I said, well, have you considered this? Have you considered that? Have you considered the other? And all of the things that I had recommended or wanted to talk about, they're like, no, we have to do it this way. We have to do it this way. And at one point. I looked at my elder that was with me, and I looked at the couple, and I said, well, then I don't think that we can be of any more help to you. Everything that I would have thought that needed to be addressed to help you with your problems, you've already discussed and are agreed about, so I'm sorry. I don't know what else to say to help you. And we prayed, and we left. Wow. Because if I can't help you, I don't want to waste your time or mine. You know, I wanted to circle back around to one thing here.

It does take time to make some of these changes that you have to give. And they're not magic buttons. There's no magic button in the marriage. And that takes patience. You know, I once gave somebody advice about something to go get his wife flowers and all that stuff. And it totally backfired on him. Because it didn't work. It didn't work. First time I did it, Pastor. Because he had never done it before, so the person was skeptical. The wife was skeptical, like, what's going on? Sounds like she's the problem. No, but you know what I mean. So he's like, it didn't work? Well, it didn't work because you've got to keep doing it. And a lot of the problems that you're having are things that you've built up over time.

And they just take time to slowly – you have to have faith then for sanctification, faith that God will, as we talked about earlier, actually change you and your spouse. A lot of times it's, but my spouse will never change when it's actually you're the one that needs to change. Yeah, that's absolutely right. I remember Pastor Bailey preached at our church in January, I think, of last – It was this year – or last year. About a year ago now. And he told a story about how he had a problem with anger and it was affecting his wife. And what he told her was, I've got nothing else for you except for Philippians 1.6, that he who began a good work in me will bring it to completion. And I'm sorry that I keep sinning against you. But if you trust – like put your trust and your hope in God to do what he's promised to do.

I absolutely feel that, too, because I sinned against my wife in the same way over and over again, and she just has to keep forgiving me. And so, at the end of the day, we're both throwing ourselves on the mercy of God to change us and to change our spouse. And our confidence has to be in Him, ultimately. Right. And that's, I think, you know, that is the Christian's hope, is that God will... complete the work that He's begun in them, and that they have to have that hope for themselves and also for their spouse, and then they have to persevere. And I wish it could be more romantic and flowery and beautiful than that. There is beauty in the relationships, but when it comes down to it, this is what we're dealing with, our two sinners, and our expectations need to be set according to that so that we're not spending our whole lives in our marriage disappointed and upset and looking at the greener pastures next door because

We didn't understand what we were getting into. We didn't have reasonable expectations. What I'm actually hearing from you, though, is actually hopeful. You just used the phrase green your pastures. And when we look at somebody's beautiful maintained house, oftentimes you don't see everything that works behind the scenes to make it work. Like it's not as if a beautiful green lush. even lawn, is a work of magic. It's not like they had the little fairy dust on their lawn, and so it works for them, and yours is all crappy because you don't have the magic fairy dust, so stinks to be you. It's like marriage is work, but there's also hope, because even if your marriage doesn't look great and really feels like it needs a lot of help, every single marriage needs work, but because of the grace of God, every marriage has hope.

Yeah, and you know, you think about Ephesians, talks about what does Jesus do with his bride? Washes her with the water of the word so that he may present her pure and holy. Jesus has been doing that for over 2,000 years now. And he still hasn't presented the whole bride to the Father yet. So if it's taken Jesus that long to sanctify his people. And he's got that. There's a reason that he's doing that is teach us that this is how it works in our lives. Amen. And glorification comes later.