 We are going to continue a serious relationship goals today. We are so excited because in our church we have a ministry for people who are getting married. It's called pre-marriage classes and so they're about to start in a few weeks. So if you are engaged or you're going to get married this year, reach out to us. We would love to sign you up and so that you can also receive a blessing and encouragement in that area. Let's open our Bibles to Ephesians chapter 5 and verse 22 verse 25 and verse 33. Ephesians chapter 5 and verse 22 says the following. Wives submit to your own husbands as to the Lord. I want us to underline first of all that God does not say for women to submit to men. And all the women said, this is only for wives. So if you ain't got a husband, you don't need to submit to no men unless you're still living with your dad. Then you got to submit to your dad. Amen. Amen. And all the fathers said amen. So this is wives submit to your own husbands. Now you may say, but my husband is not a good husband to submit to. And it says to submit to him as to the Lord. Your husband might not be acting like the Lord, but if you submit to him as though he is Jesus Christ, you will be shocked with how God can change him to be more like Jesus Christ. That means you don't honor him in the way he is. You honor him on what you want him to be. As a woman, you have a power to change your husband by honoring him into the person you want him to be. Not brow beating, pushing him, trying to put him into this mold that you created, but honoring him to be that person that God created him to be. Somebody say amen. All the husbands said amen. If we scroll down a little bit later and we see verse 25, it says husbands. Any husbands were having a house this morning, afternoon. Okay, all right. Husbands, love your wives just as Christ loved the church. Now I genuinely believe that no woman will have a problem submitting to a man who loves her the way Christ loved the church. Many times people say, well, the Bible says women submit to your husbands and everything, but the harder job is not to submit. The harder job is for men to love their wives, not as they love themselves, but as Jesus loved the church and Jesus died for the church. Jesus gave his life for the church and Jesus continues to live for the church. Husbands love your wives as Christ loved the church and he gave himself for her. And then verse 33, nevertheless, let each one of you in particular so love his own wife as himself. So Paul now lowers the standard. He says this is the standard, like this is what to aim for. Love your wife as Jesus loved the church. He said, but I know where all you guys are at. He said, let's start with this. Why don't you just start with loving your wife first as you love yourself? And then let's build toward loving her as Jesus loved the church. He's almost like lowers the standard because he knows where all the dudes are at. And so he's like, let's start with that and then let's just start going slowly up to the level where God wants us to be. Let love yourself as you would love. Love your wife as you would love yourself and let each wife see that she respects her husband. So the primary needs of every man, number one is honor and respect. Honor and respect. Every husband wants to be first honored. The husband does not need to feel loved. He needs to know he's honored. The way a husband feels loved is if he knows he's honored. That means you don't need to tell him that you love him, for him to know that you love him. Respect him. And a lot of women, what they give to their husbands is the things they want their husbands to give to them. They give them this emotional, you know, smoochy stuff. Like, man, you're darling. I love you and everything. That's not what their husbands need the most. The Bible says that the wife is supposed to give their husband respect, meaning men's love language for men to know he's loved is when you honor him. Amen? The second thing that every husband needs is sex. Amen. He's not a pervert. He's not just a person who struggles with lust. He doesn't need prayer line. He needs sex. That means as a woman, you have to understand men are visual. If you're a wife, you have to understand men are visual. So with that knowledge, you have to let the Lord lead you in what you're supposed to do with that knowledge. Secondly, you have to understand, as a woman, you have to be more sexual than you feel if you want your husband to be more verbal than you feel. A lot of husbands, they're not very vocal. A lot of husbands, they're not very communicative. The same way a lot of wives are very modest when it comes to their sexuality. And so with your husband, you have to understand that it's not just his, it's not just his want, it's also his need. The third need that every husband has and that is the shared activity. Men enjoy and that's when the men open up is when you have an activity with them and walking in the park holding hands and talking about the weather is not an activity for a man. Men's activity is like, you know, doing something together, breaking something together, fixing something together, killing something together, catching something together, building something together. That is a shared activity. For me, I enjoy the times when I would do something and my wife alongside is with me doing that. She doesn't have to do exactly the same thing by being present there. That's when I open up. If your man doesn't speak to you, find out what he enjoys doing and then pretend that you enjoy doing that. Do it with him. You will be surprised. He won't shut up. And don't think that that activity is walking in the park. Now, if you have a husband that enjoys walking in the park and he looks forward to that, God bless you, but he's a little bit weird. Most of the guys do not enjoy just those kind of aimless activities. Most guys like things that at the end you can see this is done. This is what we accomplished. This is what we did not do. And when a man has a woman that's involved with him in those areas, this is when he opens up. The shared activity is a very important need that every man has and the fourth one is support at home. It doesn't mean that your wife has to, because we have now wives they work full-time. It doesn't mean that you have to cook and clean and everything, but that you show support at home. Amen. Now, every woman's needs, four major primary needs. Number one is security. And I decoded what security is because when I found out that my wife's number one need is security, I felt very comfortable with it because I have locks installed in our house, so I'm like, we got it. She's secure. We have an alarm in our house, so that's good. She's secure, but that is not the kind of security that every wife needs. The security for a woman is spelled by two words, sensitivity. I mean, she wants to know that she's sensitive with her. And a lot of men's sensitivity comes very impossible for us. It has to be sometimes we need to be reminded to be sensitive because as guys we can be very straightforward, we can be very blonde. And women, they need you to be sensitive with them. In other words, nice, sensitive and sacrificial. In other words, it's okay to spoil your wife. Actually, I think it's supposed to be a rule to spoil your wife, especially if you are a man, you're frugal. Every woman usually has an obsession and a weakness. For some it's purses, for some it's jewelry, for some it's like the stuff with their hair or they're doing their nails, and it's so expensive you can buy three cars and four houses after you find out how much they spend on nails and their hair and all the eyelashes and all of that stuff or their clothes. So each woman has a weakness and that's completely normal. The problem with us as guys is that what we do many times is we come to a woman and we find out that she really likes those shoes and she has 60 pairs of them. And so instead of giving her a lecture, what we do is we give her a lecture about you shouldn't be hoarding. Never tell that to your wife. If she wants 57th pair of sneakers, you say, babe, you go for it. But can we do one thing? For every pair you buy, why don't you give one pair away? And the woman's like, oh my goodness, that is a brilliant idea. I'll be buying them every week. When we just got married, I struggled with this area because I was very frugal and I would discipline. We would have these talks where I would tell my wife, you need to cut back on all of that. You can't be buying those shoes. For my wife, it's the shoes. You don't need that hat. You don't need those nails. I'm like, my nails are just fine. Your nails will be just fine. I'm like, I can dye it for you. I take a marker and paint it for you. You don't need to pay 50 bucks for that or 60 bucks. And I realize, you know what? Divorces are more expensive. Be nice, be generous. Woman feels, and a lot of times as guys, we do that when we date them. We broke like a joke, but we find those $20 or something and we spoil them. And then when we get married, we become like Dave Ramsey, become so frugal. We become so like, you can't do this. No, no, you can't do this. We need to save. It's interesting how you won her heart because you were generous with her. Never stop being generous with your wife. Be stingy with yourself, but always be generous with your spouse. That's how she feels secure. It's not about the money. It's not about the shoes. It's not about the purse. It's about the she sees. It's a sacrifice. She sees Jesus in you. Blood is gushing out of your hands, out of your side because you're giving your last thing for her enjoyment. But this is how she feels loved. Hallelujah, my God. Number two is non-sexual affection. And this is a physical affection that you render to your wife that it's a physical touch. All the women, they need physical touch. I'm not talking about punching. I'm not talking about pushing. I'm not talking about pinching. And I'm not talking about giving her that bare hug where she's gonna die. Like you do it on a football field, on a basketball court, or you do it with your buddies. I'm talking about that gentle, that non-sexual. And I'm not talking about it has to lead to something. It has to lead to absolutely nothing. Amen. When I heard that first time, I started to apply that. I forget to do it applied. But I've been really just reminding myself. And what I like to do it is that when my wife is like in the kitchen, she's doing something or somewhere else to come up just from behind her, give her just a really tender hug from the back, kiss her in the cheek for just about five, six seconds, and then just walk away. That woman cannot stop thinking about what just happened for the next four hours. Husbands, try that no longer than five seconds. Because if you do longer, you might say stuff that's wrong and stuff, but if you just just quickly and just just walk away, she's like, what was that for? You're like, well, that's up to you to figure it out. It's because I love you. Guys, try that today. You never know what that might lead. Number three, honest communication. And every woman wants, she's like this CIA interrogative person. She wants details. The problem is guys is we give headlines. I met with Bob. How was it? Great. But you know, women, they want details. And so what we would encourage for us as men is to try to go into details. Where did you meet, Bob? Did you come on time? Did he came on time? Did you get water without eyes or was it with eyes? What did you order out of that menu? Who paid for that meal? What did Bob talk about? Did you guys talk about me? What did you feel about when Bob said that to you, at least five minutes, go in and especially you start talking about feelings. The next thing you know, a woman, that she feels that she's a part of the life with you when you don't just give her the headlines, but we give the details because it draws her in. And a lot of men, what we do is we're like, well, I don't feel like talking. What would happen if she would react to sex the way you react to talking? The reason why many women are not sexual toward their husbands is because their husbands are not communicative toward their wives. It doesn't come naturally for women to be more sexual. They're more reserved in this area. The same way it doesn't come naturally for men to be very expressive in their talk. And therefore we have to take a leap of faith and the wives have to also take a leap of faith. Can somebody say amen? And number four is the wives, they want their husbands to be leaders at home. That does not mean that you have to be a pastor, a title of a pastor. It means that you have to lead her. It means you have to lead the family. That means that you might not even manage the finances. You might even make less money than your wife. It doesn't matter, but that in home you are the leader. You're the one that knows who you are in Christ, and you don't have to know every scripture in the Bible to be a leader in your home. You just have to love Jesus with all your heart the way you love Jesus. That's enough and follow and lead them and they will follow you if somebody say amen. Now I want us to jump in quickly into just four secrets that I want us to go in from the word of God that will make our marriages better. Now all the single people, I just ask you that you write notes. You will need this, trust me. And all the married people, I ask you that you focus on few things from this message today that you can apply to improve your marriage. You can't do everything, but if you can do one thing it can make an improvement in your marriage. The first one is marriage is like a triangle. If two people get closer to God, they get closer to each other. The Bible says seek first the kingdom of God and everything else will be added to you. When we begin to, like in the triangle, when you see husband and wife, when they're just focused on each other, they can actually make an idol out of their marriage. But if they focus on God, they actually begin to come closer to each other. God will never push you away from your spouse. Every man in this room and every woman at the sound of my voice, I can tell you one thing. God is for your marriage and if you get closer, he'll actually draw you closer to your spouse. Women, you want your husband to love God more than your wife because then he'll love you in spite of you. Husbands, it's better that your wife loves God more than you because she'll be able to love you in spite of you. And trust me, we will need that. Are you with me? Your commitment to God supposed to be better than your commitment to each other because you love God before you loved each other and God loved you before you even knew each other and you are going to continue to live forever even after you will die. Therefore your commitment to God always has to be higher and better and greater. Their marriage is throughout the history of Christianity where sometimes couples were separated from each other for decades. Sometimes the wife or the husband would say if you love Jesus I'm going to leave you and they still had to be loyal more to Jesus than to the relationship on marriage. Jesus will take care of the relationship but you have to put Jesus above your relationship. Come on somebody. I want to also give a word of advice to those who have spouses that are passive. Maybe you're married to someone who is not as passionate for God as you are. Maybe they don't want to go to church. Maybe you dragged that man today to church with you. Or maybe you dragged that woman today or maybe they didn't come and you constantly use other techniques to make them become Christians. I want to share something from the word of God that I believe can bring freedom to those relationships. I want you to see what apostle Peter said to people who are going through that right now. He said this, wives likewise. It's interesting because it's typically men are the ones that are a little bit slower after God. I mean we saw in baptism today women getting baptized. Women are more sensitive to things of God. We as husband were a little bit slow. So it was not only like now it was like that 2000 years ago. So Peter is writing to wives who are passionate for God and somehow their husbands are a little bit slower in this area. He says, wives likewise be submissive to your own husbands that even if some, some do not obey the word. They without a word may be won by the conduct of their wives when they observe your chaste conduct accompanied by fear. It's not you putting fear in him by threatening him. It's you having the fear and reverence of God and having reverence toward your spouse who is not a believer. I want us to go back to the first part of this verse. Peter is giving us a secret. He says if you want your husband to be one to your way, stop talking. He said without a word. One of the things that drives men and women away from God is when one spouse gets on fire for God and can't shut up. You might say, but that the Lord says to evangelize everywhere except your home because your home you already evangelized. They're tired of you. Every time you say something more about God, there's a turn off to them and Peter knew that. So Peter is saying this. He says, guys, if you are at home, they already know you're Christian. He says, why don't you talk less and love them more? How can I love him? He doesn't go to church. That's the point. Don't treat him based on where he's at. Treat him based on where you want him to be. And God says, come on, so by Jesus and God says in the second part of this verse, He says that you will win him not because you brought a coolest argument, but because you love him in spite of the fact that he doesn't come to church. He doesn't read the Bible. Maybe he doesn't or she doesn't pray. Guys, flowers, trees don't grow because you pull them. They grow because you water them. Stop pulling your husband. Stop pulling your wife. God doesn't call you to change them. God calls you to love them. And many times we disobey what this says and we're there and we're trying to preach and convict and be the Holy Ghost. That's not going to work. The best thing you can do is do what God called. Water them and see how slowly that tree begins to blossom. How those flowers begin to blossom. How that person begins to rise. Hallelujah, my God. When we were married, me and my wife, she's not from here. She's from Vancouver, Washington, and her parents are pastors. And so she grew up in ministry. And when she moved here, there was a generational curse on her life, the generational curse of loneliness. It was activated. The moment she got married, everything seemed to be fine as though it was late dormant. And one of the things that this generational curse was doing is that my wife felt extremely alone and lonely here in our church. And she couldn't connect even to God. She was on fire for God. But the moment she moved here, she became almost like paralyzed a lot of times. Spiritually, she was struggling. And so what had happened is that I started to spiritually kind of, you know, become more passive. I started to skip on my prayer time because she was a night owl and I was like the morning person. So I stopped, you know, kind of seeking God as I used to. And now I would blame it on her because I'm like, well, it's because you don't wake up early with me and everything. I was letting her passivity affect my passion for God, which was my first mistake. The second mistake that I was making is that I was blaming her all the time. And say, listen woman, come on, you got to get your act together. We're pastors. You got to be passionate for God. You got to be an example. We have this, we have this, you know, reputation that we got to uphold. And my wife, she has this like, this very tenacious personality. She doesn't care about the image. She focuses more on being real. You know, she doesn't know the politics of the church that, you know, as a wife, you have to act a certain way. And when we had prayers at the time in our church, as a church was a lot smaller about eight years ago, seven years ago. And so the prayers were just mainly made up of most of our relatives and few new people that would come there, you know, and it's just like 15 of us in the room, like praying to heaven down, speaking in tongues, walking around. I mean, Holy Ghost power. Whether you felt it or not, you got to be loud. Come on, somebody. Thank you, Jesus. My wife would come there, you know, and she would behave like Lot's wife. She would just stand there, you know, and as a husband who's passionate for God, whose reputation is at stake, you know, she's not praying. And I'm like, we service will be over. I say, Hey, babe, what's up? Why aren't you praying? We got to pray to make it through the day. I'm say, Hammer said, we got to pray. She says, I just didn't feel it. I said, What do you mean you didn't feel it? I'm like, you're a mature believer in Christ. You know, it's not about our feelings. The righteous men shall live by faith. And so I'm starting like, you know, giving my wife a pastoral counseling. She starts crying. I remember one time in a driveway in our duplex, she says, I want to go back home. I was like, we just arrived back home. She's like, not this home, my other home. I was like, you mean Vancouver? She's like, yeah, she's like, I don't belong here. I was like, woman, get your act together. You promise you will be with me. What is this going on with you? And I did a little bit more of, you know, those exhortations. I was just speaking life into her situation. The more life I spoke, the more life was in her. I mean, the less life was in her. I'm sorry. It was more life in me, less, less, less life in her. And one particular time the Lord started dealing with my heart and he said, Vlad, I want you to forget about changing your wife in your image and likeness. He said, pretend in your mind, how would you live with a wife who's an atheist? And I said, well, of course I would not try to push Christianity on her. He said, why are you doing it on your wife? He said, give her some space. Stop bugging her for not showing up to morning prayer. Take responsibility. You show up on your morning prayer first. He said, you're not even showing up there. He says, change your approach and love her. Stop monitoring her Bible reading plan. Are you reading the Bible? Have you read the Bible yesterday? What did you read? Show it to me. He said, stop doing that. He said, to read your own Bible by yourself, but couples that pray together, stay together. He said, relax. You pray by yourself first. And honestly, within a few years I started to notice, first of all, I became more patient. When I would look, I'll go to prayer and she's sleeping. I would come back instead of saying, I already talked to God. Michael Gabrielle Angel already visited me. What demons are tormenting you right now and holding you back? I would come and I would kiss her as a baby. It's so good to see you. She's like, you went to prayer. I was like, oh yeah, it was wonderful. We would eat breakfast together. And I would see that my passion for the Lord started to, you know, when you set up a fireplace in your house, the fireplace doesn't have to preach. The heat comes automatically. It warms you up. Husband, wife, you're the fireplace in that house. In that house, you can warm them up. But some of you, you're like a tormentor. You're constantly bugged at the living lives out of the other person. Relax. Let the Lord change. You love them. You honor them. Can somebody say amen? Can somebody say amen? Hallelujah. Number two, catch the foxes. So not only we have to draw closer to God and not punish the other person, but we have to learn to catch the foxes. This is the principle from Song of Solomon. If we go to Song of Solomon chapter two, verse 15, it says the following, catch us the foxes. The little foxes that spoil the vines. For our vines have tender grapes. This author of Song of Solomon says that the vineyard that they had had tender grapes. Every marriage that begins in the first 10 years has tender grapes. Every marriage within 20 years has tender grapes. Within 30 years, it has tender grapes. Actually, until you die, your marriage is very tender. And the devil sends foxes within your vineyard. These foxes are thoughts in the mind of a man and a woman, especially when things are not good in the marriage, when things are not good in the health, or things are not good with kids, or things are not good with the job. And these are the thoughts that go in. Man, I should have married someone else. Maybe I made a mistake. You know what? I'm only 35. If I get rid of this loser, I might still find someone else. I still got some time. What am I doing with this person? The devil sends these foxes in our vineyards. You know what? I did not marry God's best for me. I married, I married, I met him in a club. Maybe I need to get rid of them and actually find somebody in church. Maybe I'll find somebody better. Because I know that the beginning of our relationship wasn't right. We lost, we lost the purity before we got married. Maybe that's why this is happening. And so, and you begin to allow foxes to travel in your vineyard. The foxes are thoughts of condemnation, shame, the thoughts that your marriage will not make it, the thoughts that your spouse is not good. And these foxes, they can actually turn your vineyard into World War III. Remember this. You can't win in your marriage if your marriage lost in your mind. Your marriage has to be clean in your mind. That means if the devil sends a thought that you made a mistake, it's a listened devil. You made a mistake. You're talking to the wrong person. You take that lie and go back to hell where you came from. You don't let the devil send those thoughts into your marriage. Maybe the devil says, you know what? You could have married someone else and been happier saying, you know what devil? Shut up. This is the best person that God has for me and I'm going to be with them and we're going to have a great marriage. And just because we're going through the valley right now, we're going to come out of it and things are going to get better. You got to fight those foxes. Let me give you something practical. One is that do not vocalize the negative thoughts you have against your spouse. Those thoughts are from the devil. They're not from God. And those thoughts are not from you because the devil is an expert at planting thoughts in your mind and making them feel like they are your own thoughts. So they will take root and once they take root, they become a stronghold and you become resentful and you become bitter because you've entertained thoughts against your spouse. And one of the ways we release those thoughts into action is when we become honest and we begin to tell our spouse, hey, you know, I've been thinking, I made a mistake marrying you. I'm just unburdening myself. That's all. If you ever say that to your spouse, they can put a bullet right between your eyes. Those things you don't tell to your spouse. You go to prayer. You say, Lord, these are not my thoughts. These are from the enemy. The enemy shot a fiery dart and I'm not going to be shooting at my wife. See how she can help me with that stuff. You don't do that. You just come to Lord, say, Lord, I reject those thoughts. These are not mine. These are not yours. You have a plans for me, plans for good enough for evil to give me hope and future in God. You place me with this person and I see the best. I'm going to believe for the best and I reject those lies. I won't let them take root in my mind. Don't vocalize everything the devil tempts you with. Jesus did not repeat what the devil sent him. He says, it is written and you got to come back those lies in Jesus' name. Come on somebody. Another very important thing is that we got to burn bridges to our past. A lot of times before you are with the person that you are with today, you've been with some other people and many people, they love to keep the phone numbers of those people on their phones. Keep them as friends on Facebook just in case marriage goes difficult. You begin to reach out to them and say, hey, how are you? God wants you to burn the bridge to every x that you had. That's why they're x. There's no path that's there. And when your marriage is difficult, you're not running back on that bridge. That bridge has to burn inside of your mind. It's gone. It's gone. It's over. Come on somebody. You know, there was one emperor and he was trying to attack a city. He brought his army, but his army was so exhausted because they fought so many wars and the enemy that they were up against was so much better equipped than they were. They were in a fortified place and his, this general knew there's no way his enemy, his army will win against the enemy, but he didn't want to lose. And he knew that their problem is the fact is they still think they can run because they had ships. And then in the morning he took his generals. He went to the, he went to the seashore and they burned all the ships. He got up in the morning. He looked in the eyes of his army and he said, guys, we're all going to die today. You just choose where in here or drowning. And that army, because it had no plan B, because it had no bridge to run, it had no, oh, well, if this doesn't work, I'm going to go there because they had this, none of that stuff. They won that battle. I wonder how many of our marriages will succeed if we will not treat them as temporary. If your marriage is permanent in your mind, the problems are temporary. If your marriage is permanent in your mind, problems are temporary. Problems are permanent. Let me, let me say it again. If your marriage in your mind is permanent, all the problems are temporary. If in your mind your marriage is temporary, all the problems are permanent. The problems you're having with this spouse, you will have with the next one. You will have with the other one and you will have with the other one because you make your problems permanent when you make your marriage temporary. And God wants us mentally to make our marriage a permanent marriage. And another thing that I want to share when it relates to this, to winning in marriage in your mind is we need to bleep out and delete the word divorce when we argue. A lot of times, people don't mean when they say I'll divorce you. What they mean is this. They want to threaten the other person. They want the other person to wake up to the seriousness of the problem they're having, especially women. You know, sometimes when you're hurting and you feel like that, that Joker is not paying attention to you, he being sarcastic. And so you want to increase the heat. And so the way you increase the heat, you know, some people, they go off and they start using very colorful words. Other people just simply, you know what? All right, if you want to be like that, I'm going to give you divorce paper tomorrow. Now you don't mean it. You just want the Joker to wake up. You just want him to like to realize how serious this is that you're very, very serious. But when you release the word divorce, you actually open the door to a demon and to the devil. The Bible says the power of life and death is in your tongue. You may say, well, what if like, I'm, I'm like very, very intense, like, and he is not listening, threatening him with murder. I'm just kidding. Do not do that. Don't do that. I think I heard the story of Billy Graham's wife. They asked Billy Graham's wife, have you ever thought about divorcing Billy Graham? She said never. But divorce, but murder many times. I'm not in any way suggesting you should threaten your spouse with anything at all. But the point is when you are suffering and you are in conflict and they're not paying attention. Throwing word divorce around, it might be a joke to you. I'm going to leave you. You might be joking. You have no idea what you're doing. God created this world with his words. You can destroy yours with your own words. Don't destroy your marriage with your words. When I hear couples argue and they're throwing word divorce or ask couples that divorced, how many times they used word divorce in an argument and every couple that divorce will tell you all the time. It's a matter of time. You will have what you confess because you possess through your confession. You believe with your heart that Jesus is Lord, confess it with your mouth. You receive salvation. How do you receive divorce? You believe it in your mind that your marriage is temporary. You confess divorce with your mouth. It's a matter of time and you'll have it. In your mind, marriage is permanent. Now there are cases where divorce happens and everything. I'm not going to go into that. But what I'm talking about right now for the couples that are struggling, it's don't throw these words around. Catch the foxes. Don't exalt them. Kill them. Get them out of your vineyard. Come on somebody. Thank you Jesus. Number three, choose to cheat. Choose to cheat. Cheating is very good in marriage. Now, I'm not talking about that cheating that we're thinking right now. Don't cheat on your marriage with work and hobbies. Instead, cheat on your hobbies and your work with your marriage. It doesn't mean that you have to leave early. Don't do your job. We're going to talk about it in just a second. But I want us to take a look at Matthew chapter 15 verse 5 and verse 6. It says, so Jesus was talking about how the law says that I should honor your father, their mother. But you say, so the Pharisees, you say whoever says to his father and mother whatever prophet you might have received from me is a gift to God. And then he no need, he then, he need not honor his father or mother. Does you have made a commandment of God of no effect by your tradition? So when I was in Israel, they kind of notified me that when the Bible says thou shall honor your father and your mother, it's not actually specifically referring to when you are with your parents house and you're young. It's mainly referring to a retirement policy or when your parents are old and they need to retire and they cannot work no more that you honor them by taking them to live with you when they're old. Now, it also applies to be honoring to them when we live with them, but it's mainly applied to honoring them when they're old because Israel didn't have retirement homes. They actually had children's homes. That's why it was so focused on having kids because that means nobody will take care of you when you're old, when you're of age. So the Pharisees were very tricky. The Pharisees have taught this that if you take a room of your house that you were planning to give to your mom and daddy when they're older, when they retire, retire the age, and you give that room to God and you dedicated, you come in and you said, this room belongs to God. You call your mom and daddy, your mom and dad is like getting older already. They've been providing and helping you and now it's your time to take them in and provide and care for them. You're like, mom and dad, I'm sorry, I don't have room. What do you mean you don't have room? We saw the room. I give it to God. God lives there now. So Pharisees found a loophole saying if you can give it to God, you don't have to house them in and Jesus come in. He says, you guys are morons because you guys are crazy. He says, God doesn't need a room that belongs to your parents. God doesn't like those kind of sacrifices. Don't give to God what belongs to your family. You may say, but everything belongs to God. Certain things out of things that you give to God, God wants them to be allowed into your family. You have, if you have a family, you have a wife, you have a husband. If you have parents that are older, God wants us to give things that we may say, but I just rather give it to God. God says, you want to give it to me? Give it to your family. Come on somebody. Are you with me? Cheating, not on your family, but cheating on your hobbies. Cheating sometimes on your friends, meaning not spending as much time with your friends as you did when you were single so that you can spend time with your family. Cheating maybe on your business or you're working 12 hours a day or 10 hours shifts just so you can, you can get the final, that breakthrough while your family is suffering. You're gonna cheat. The question is, where are you gonna cheat at? Are you gonna cheat on your family or are you gonna cheat on your work? Because remember, when you had an emergency, your boss won't be in the hospital. It's gonna be the people you cheated on. When things get tough, it's your family that's gonna care for you. God forbid you have an incident or an accident where you cannot work. Two months and everybody forgets about you. And guess who's gonna stand beside you? The very people that many times we tend to cheat on. And I'm not talking about sexual cheating. I'm not talking about unfair. I'm talking about when we, when we put our family second, when we put our marriage last, hobbies first. I like what Andy Stanley says. He says, you love your family in your heart, but you don't love them on your schedule. They can't see your heart. Nobody gets at the end of his life and wishes they spend more time in the office. And I wish I would have just had one more sales. I wish I could have just worked one more weekend so it could make extra $100 to spend on new golf clubs. My God. G.D. Jake said this, he said, I'll never get finished everything I need to get done today. I will always miss something every day. Never let it be the same thing twice. So for example, if today you sacrifice your family to get something done, make sure tomorrow you sacrifice something to be done for your family. So don't have the same thing you sacrifice all the time. And he said this, he said, touch everything but hold nothing too long. If you hold it to have it, you're not hiring the right people. Eleventh president of India, scientist, he passed away now. He said this, a person who stays late at the office is not a hardworking person. Instead, he is a fool who doesn't know how to manage work within stipulated time. He is insufficient and incompetent in his work. I wonder how many times the things that we do at our jobs could be done faster. If we would cut back the office chatter, the use of social media and just kind of cruising around, because then by the time that we look, we need to leave, we realize we haven't done much, so we have to stay later. And if you don't stay later, you drop the job. And very soon, you're over, they give you a review and they fire you. You're like, man, I've been putting my family, but you have not been using your work productively. A person who stays late in his office all the time, he's not planning, he's not competent, and we need to improve on that area. This is your work and this is your family. Now, this is something that if you drop, see these things every single week, have you noticed that you're not worried about this ball? But in life, it's the opposite. This is the one that we're most concerned about. This one, our family can take it. They know I'm providing for them. This ball, if you drop this ball, what happens? Bounces back up. You work, you'll always have it. But when you drop this one, I'm not sure if it's going to handle that. Now, it handled it, please God. First year of marriage, they got it. So you're like, well, I gave my whole year to my job, they're still good. My wife, look, I mean, she's a little bit tense, but she's fine. And so guess what you're doing? You're increasing the speed. You're like, let's do more. This is good. Praise God. And so what you're saying, I can sacrifice my family. This has to break, my God. In the first service, first time it just broke. My sister provided these, and she's like, latch, she's like, the glass thing is not going to break at all. I was like, trust me, it will break. And so, but the challenge what we have is that as many times we would play with it. And so, you know, I'm just going to save you guys from it. And this is when this happens, what happened? It was just fine. Why couldn't she handle it? What do you mean? You mean my kids are doing that stuff now because I was gone all the time? See, your kids don't need your existence. They need your presence. How many of you know the fact that God exists? It doesn't change us. It's the fact that God is present with us that changes us. And many times we as men, we look at this and we're like, man, I was praying for God to make them stronger. Why do we always toss them? Why we don't toss this? Nothing's going to happen to this. It's going to bounce back up. Your work and your hobbies, if you give up golf for a year for the sake of your marriage, listen, you won't die. If some of your single friends and other things and new opportunities and everything, you have to prioritize this because once this hits the ground, it breaks. And just because you've trained your wife or you've trained your husband maybe today to take the hits and you know they're doing good, listen, there will be a day where there will be that last drop and they will snap. And you can't blame them for it. You have to take responsibility as a man and as a woman to keep that ball as most important. I'm not saying to not treat your work with importance, but a lot of things that we do at our job, we can do so much more efficiently and more effectively that we have more time for our families. I tell our staff all the time is that guys, your mornings belong to God, your evenings belong to your family. They don't belong to meetings. I was like, you're here at the staff at the church for a reason. Most of the people that you would meet with, they can come during the day here. I was like, let's not spend time chatting, working around doing secondary things and staying up till 11 o'clock doing meetings where we could improve our eight hour day, fill them with important things and then go hang out with our family. Most people know that when it comes to the evenings, I prioritize my marriage and prioritize my time with me first of all. I have a lot of people who would say, Vlad, we need to meet, we need to meet and it's great, but if I'm going to take every single meeting and let my health and let my wife and let my relationship with God take the back seat, if I'm on a cheat on my relationship with God, stay up late every day. If I stay up late, there's one thing, I have to cheat on Jesus. John Bovier taught me a lesson when I was a teenager and that's this, every minute I spend after 10 o'clock is the minute I took away from Jesus in the morning, period. And so I made a decision, Jesus, my time with you starts after 10. So after 10, I gotta hit this head in the pillow. Why? Because the next morning I gotta give it to Jesus. Jesus is more important to me than anybody else. And the second thing is my family. And so we have to prioritize that, choose to cheat on your habits, on your social media, on your TV shows, on other things so that family, your health and your relationship with God doesn't suffer, but it's doing good. Somebody say amen. Somebody say hallelujah. So practically what this means is give 15 minutes a day of meaningful conversation with your spouse and also take one night a week to go on a date with your spouse. Whether that date is in the park, whether that date is you hike a mountain, you prepare a little sandwiches there, whatever there is, but preferably that it's not the same routine that it's every day in your house. If the routine in your house is the husband is watching the game and you're on your phone or on a computer, that's not a night with your spouse as a date. That's a good night to be together, you're relaxing, but that's not a time where you are into each other's face, you're talking to each other and you're having a good time. And maybe you don't have a lot of resources right now to go into something a nice or a restaurant, that's fine. Olive Garden has really large meals and breadsticks are free. And meals usually come with salad and salad fills you up, you split the meal into two, take hot water with lemon, bring mint tea with you, stick that tea. That's how we did it for years. Me and my wife could not afford to go to, when we went on our dates we had $100 for whole month, and so on those dates we would have our envelope for a date night, $20 for a date night. Now you know with $20 nowadays you can't even buy much, so we would go in and for me, I mean I was like, man great, I saw this as a challenge to fit it within $20. And she wasn't very happy because she liked the food under the images, which is usually very expensive because they're specials. I looked for the price, $11 pizza in Olive Garden, great, they discontinued that by the way now, and stuff. So I was like, we split that into two, we still have $3 a tip, and we even have maybe $1 to get something, they don't have a dollar menu, sucks, it's McDonald's, that has a dollar menu. And so we did it for years, but one thing that I did not do is I did not break our date nights. I was like, you know what, if we broke, we'll date like we broke, but we're gonna still date. And I gave her a promise and I said, babe, in one day when we get a little bit more of money, you'll be able to order what you want, I'll order what I want, we'll be so happy. I remember she reminded me, she said, because now she can order what she wants. And so we go in and she orders whatever she wants, I order typically whatever is cheapest. She looks at the images, I look at the price. And then when the bill comes in, I'm like, what? What did you order? And so, but now we can afford a little bit more, but at the same time, you got to value those date times. Come on, somebody. I recorded and said, he said, if there will be more courting in our marriages, less of our marriages will be in courts. And then once a year, take a vacation, leave amazing three cities for seven days. Your wife's been nagging you about that probably for a while. You're like, we can't afford it. If you have five rooms in your house, rent one room for 250 and in 11 months, you will accumulate enough money for that. Put that money aside. When you get a promotion instead of buying a boat, why don't you put that money aside and say, you know what? This extra money will go toward us leaving town, going somewhere, whether it's in a tent or whether it's to Mexico or whether it's to Hawaii, whatever your budget allows you. But when you leave for seven days and you disconnect, it will do magic to your marriage. Are you with me? And lastly, it's fight like a pro. Fight like a pro. In marriage, there's two kinds of fights. There's those that are like street fighting with no rules. And there is a fighting like a boxer. Boxer is a pro. They don't hit under the belt. They have a referee. They don't just go swinging anywhere they want to hit. They have a certain time where they can hit and then they have to stop, go to the corner, get kind of fixed up and go at it again 12 times. And after they win the fight, they hug the other opponent. They don't stab them to death. Now in street fight, what are the rules? Kill the other guy. You look for anything. The rock is the weapon of choice. You have a knife on you. Awesome. It makes it faster. You have a gun. Man, it'll make it quicker. And many people fight in their marriage like a street fight. There is no rules. You can say whatever. You can curse. You can exaggerate. You can do whatever. And then they wonder, why is the marriage so beaten up? Because you're street fighting. There's those who are religious. They say, well, perfect marriage has no fights. Are you crazy? Even if you will be married to someone just like you, you will still fight. Marriage is good when people fight. But when you fight like a pro, not like a street fight. So let me just give you a few tips on how to fight like a pro. One, let's read the verse. Ephesians chapter 5 verse 26, it says the following. Be angry. Somebody say, be, come on, everybody say, be angry. Some of you, that's probably the only verse in the Bible you're fulfilling on a daily basis. You're like, I did not know the Bible tells me to be angry. It doesn't even have to tell me that I'm doing that by myself just fine. How many of you find this verse is very easy to live by? Thou shall not lie in the church. The Bible says, be angry. You're like, amen. Bible is not against you being angry. If God will be against you being angry, then God being angry would be, God will be a sinner. God gets angry. Anger is a good thing. There's nothing wrong with being angry. The Bible tells you, be angry. If you see injustice, be angry. If your spouse keeps leaving those dirty shoes and then dirty socks and under words, be angry. If you ask them to fix it and clean those dishes, be angry. But the problem is not with that. The problem is it says next thing, do not sin. Do not let the sun go down in your wrath, nor give place to the devil. It means if we stay angry through the night, we give place to the devil by next morning. So let me give you a practical tip. Number one, don't go to sleep angry. Stay up and fight. Do not ever go to sleep angry. Stay up and fight. Now, if you're a husband and you love sleep, admit you're wrong and go to sleep. I mentioned that I'm usually right. Every argument with my wife, I'm always right. She married Mr. Right, she didn't know my first name was always, always right. But I'm usually right until nine o'clock. When it comes to 9 p.m., there's a possibility I might be wrong. By 9.30, there's a very high chance I might be wrong. By 10 o'clock, she's 100% right, I'm wrong. 10.30, this is when, you know, I'm like, I'm already humble that I am wrong. 11.30, I'm like Apostle Peter, oh, I am such a sinner, depart from me, Lord. When we just got married, I wasn't like that. I remember an argument that I'll never forget, because this is the only time I fall asleep when she was still angry. We had an argument that started with during the morning and I was so like, I didn't love sleep at the time. I love to be right more than anything. And so instead of fixing the issue right away, I tried to say, well, it's her fault. She needs to apologize first. And I'm not going to apologize. Why? Because out of this argument, she is responsible for 95%. I'm responsible for five. The five should never apologize in front of 95. I know my math. So there I am sitting on the couch, mean I'm not talking to her. And of course, she's not talking to me. And so the time comes to about six o'clock. And I'm thinking, well, I mean, it is three hours. It will take us three hours to fix this. Maybe I should begin. So I come out and I was like, you know, I really think that what you did was wrong today, which is not our best way to start to finish the argument. And so she's not talking. I was like, well, great, you don't want to talk? I'm not going to talk either. So I turn around on the bed, I'm facing the wall, and I'm trying to pretend that I'm not breathing, not to give her the satisfaction that I'm alive. When you're married, you will know exactly what I'm talking about. And so I'm not even breathing. She's like, you're still there? No. I'm not here. Like, you want to talk? What is there to talk about? There's nothing to talk about. I was like, great, nothing to talk about. So nine o'clock hits, nothing to talk about this deep silence. And I accidentally fell asleep. With me, I can fall asleep with anything and everything. So it wasn't hard, especially when it's tense, I fall asleep faster. Women, she cannot usually fall asleep just like that. So I fell asleep and then I wake up to somebody hitting me in my ribs. Pow! And I woke up and I was like, what's going on? Who's here in the house? It's like, you loser, it's me. And so now we're arguing about the fact that I fell asleep. We're not arguing about whatever happened in the morning. That's not important. What's important is how dare you fell asleep. You don't love me. You don't care about this relationship. Can we talk about what happened in the morning? That doesn't matter now. We have a bigger issues at hand. You fell asleep. I was like, woman, I'm so sorry. I was like, I was trying to stay awake, to wait until you open up. You didn't want to talk to me, so I fell asleep. And so we fixed it. I apologize. Repentant of everything I've done, thought of doing, didn't do everything, took the blame for myself, for everybody. And then she recognized after that that it was a little bit of her fault too, just a little bit. And so we hugged that out. We went to sleep next morning. When we went on a date, coffee date, I told her, I actually did not mean to disrespect you when I fell asleep. It's just when you don't talk for two hours, I fell asleep. And she said, I didn't mean to hit you. It was just, it was really hurting to me that you dare to fall asleep knowing that I can't sleep if I am angry. I was like, well, it seemed like I handled it just fine. You should have just maybe, and then I realized, like, no, no, no, no, no, no. And I was like, yes, yes, babe. So we made a promise and it's been seven years that if we're angry, if we are fighting, we don't go to sleep until we finish it. Now, if sometimes, sometimes, because in marriage, there's three problems. There's the proactive problems, reactive problems, and radioactive. Radioactive is stuff you can't talk about. You won't fix it in one argument. It's like heavy stuff. And so in the heavy stuff, what typically we do is we just bring the stuff to the minimum where both of us can sleep knowing we still love each other. We're not going to do anything. We're not going to poison and like stab each other during the sleep. Everything will be fine. And next morning, we'll resume when we're better rested. And so, but you have to not go to sleep angry. If both of you go to sleep angry, if the other person sleeps on the couch, you sleep in the other room, and it's always the, and you're angry, you're tense, you have to listen to the Bible. Bible says, do not let sun go down on your wrath. Stay up. And husbands, let me give you just the practical tips on how to dissolve this. One, how to fight like a pro is approach a woman and touch her. No, don't push her. Don't pinch her. Just gently touch her. It's crazy what a touch does to a woman, especially when she's, now if she's one of those, don't touch me. You might want to stay away. So I'm just going to share what worked for me and stuff because my wife is the opposite. For me, like if we're arguing, I don't want to touch her because I'm by accident. I might like break something, you know. And so I don't want to touch her. But what she taught me, she's like, if you could only just come in and just touch me gently on my shoulder and reassure me that everything's going to be okay. And so when you start with that, but that means you got to get control of your stuff. When your wife is mad, it doesn't mean you're a horrible husband. It's just because you got a woman. A woman is a woman. She has her stuff. It's completely fine. Don't take it personally. It's not, it's not because you're a terrible husband. It's just because you have an amazing wife. And so, but the second thing after that, and that's typically with brothers that we struggle with is that we try to be sarcastic when we are fighting. Now your humor attracted her to you, but you're typically not that funny. You're definitely not funny when you're fighting. Let me ask you a question. Would you consider Jim Carrey funny if he would laugh at your mom's funeral and crack jokes? Would you consider a comedian funny if they would come to a funeral of somebody that you loved and crack jokes? No, you would think they're crazy. Man, when there's a tense moment, World War III is about to happen. It's not a time to be funny. You're not funny. You got to understand it. You got to be sober, minded. You got to be vigilant. And you got to be, you got to put on like, like Mardukah in the Bible, like put ashes on yourself, like come in broken with reverence. And I'm not, I know I'm being a little bit funny in this right now, but you really have to be heartbroken. When the woman sees that you're serious, when the woman sees that you're like, you're understanding the weight of this problem. Like, you understand, this is like life and death issue. And you're approaching this like that. It makes you feel like, okay, I'm not the only one that's hurting. He at least understands I am hurting. I can, I cannot tell you. The second one was the hardest thing for me to be delivered from. My goodness, through sarcasm, how many of our fights could have been fixed in five minutes? And they had to last five hours. Because I was such an idiot. I love, I'm not funny guy at all. It's just when we are getting into an argument, I turn on stupid. And I start cracking things that, and I think they're funny. She looks at me. She's like, you're stupid. She's like, why don't you stop that? She's like, you were, you were, you were moving so good. She's like, why did you slip from the right path of righteousness? And I keep laughing, laughing, and I know it's wrong, but I can't stop. It's coming out naturally. It's so creative. I feel this creative juices like, man, somebody used to record this is rhyming. I'm losing my wife, but I'm gaining the gift of humor flowing through me. Come on, all the, all the wives will admit sarcasm doesn't help, right? Third one is validate her feelings. When she's hurt and she's complaining that's good. She's sharing her feelings. One of the things that we can do as men is that is this, instead of coming and say, you're feeling that cry river, build a bridge, get over it. You can't come in and say, well, uh, oh, I know why you told me that the monthly cycle thing messed up with your chemicals and stuff, like emotionally and that's stable. That's, that's why, that's why I know you're mad. It's, it's because you have a period in three days. Everything will be fine. Anytime you blame women's feelings on her monthly, or if you're a super spirit, you're like, I've really been sensing this, this spirit over you, the spirit of like this anger, spirit of jealousy. I got it. Jealousy. I see you're jealous over other women and I really think we need to deal with that right now. You want me to lead you in a prayer of renouncing? Can I sign you up for inner healing in our church? You really, you really need to go to prayer line. Anytime you shame her with her feelings, even if it's demon behind it, even if it's a monthly period, even if it's a generational curse, stop being a counselor and a deliverer and a derrick prince in your marriage. You validate those feelings, something like this. So you feel like I've been ignoring you. Really sorry about that. I'm really sorry that you feel like that now. Don't, don't admit anything yet. Don't sign up for anything. I'm really sorry that you're feeling like that. You're not saying what she's feeling is right. You're just saying that you're sorry that she's feeling that. If right away causes the woman to feel loved and appreciated, you're hearing her and then this is the magic comes in. Ask the Lord for wisdom to find your 1% of the fault of why she's feeling that. You're not responsible for more than that, just 1%. Remember, she's responsible for 99, but you're responsible for 1% of the fault like that one that you didn't respond to the text message. Like the one where you didn't bring roses. You didn't say I love you in the last four days. You didn't kiss her. You didn't hug her. You didn't spend time. You were always so busy. All of that. It's so not important at all, but you find that 1% that you are guilty of and you focus on that 1% and you exaggerate that 1%. And you said how bad it was and you will never do it again. And next thing that happens, she will run to you, give you a hug and says, I knew I made a good choice that I married you. Everything is over. Amen. Takes a lot of grace to do that. Takes a lot of Jesus to do that. Takes a lot of Holy Spirit to do that. Amen. Because we insist on being right. Never use word never and always in an argument. Word always and never belongs to God, not to your husband and not to your spouse. God never leaves us and he's always with us. You're always on your phone. Not really. If he has not been on his phone, one time in seven years of your marriage, the word always is not proper English for that situation. You're never picking up after yourself. Actually, if he picked it up once in the whole marriage, that word never cannot be applied to him. But when we say never and always, we actually exaggerate the drama. We have to stop exaggerating and become real. Another thing, don't bring somebody's past into the present situation when you're fighting. If they were unfaithful to you, you've talked it over. You have no right to bring that in a present argument. I know that you don't have enough ammunition to shoot them. So what you do is you borrow from the past. The problem is anytime you make trips to the past, you're not moving forward. Now, if something bothers you about their past, you talk about it after this is over, but you don't talk about it in an argument because you just brought a nuclear weapon to a boxing match. You're gonna kill somebody with it. Somebody's gonna suffer through that. Is yet to come.