 So years ago, I was traveling somewhere with Jason. We had gone to do something together and we were at a layover in an airport and he classically wanted pizza and I wanted salad and so we agreed to like split up and go get some food and then come back and eat it together. And so I ran to another place and I got my salad and I come back and he's still in line to get his pizza and he's bent over to get a drink. And so I just stood by him and I'm rubbing his back and then all of a sudden as I'm just kind of rubbing his back and looking around, I see him looking at me from across the restaurant. I look down and I see a very scared employee who was restocking the soda shelves who happened to be wearing a black shirt which my husband was wearing and I looked down and it was so embarrassing and often I was thinking about that story as I was thinking about this because a lot of times as wives, we have a case of mistaken identity where we go into it thinking this is gonna be great, this is gonna be wonderful, I know exactly what is gonna happen and suddenly whether it's us or our husbands, we don't seem to know who each other are and it's mistaken identity and God kept bringing my heart back to Song of Solomon but I do want to be clear that I'm not gonna be like spicy like Sandy was, like I'm thinking Song of Solomon, I love reading Song of Solomon and every once in a while I think about my husband but I'm like, you know the whole like, God is the king and we are his brides and so I'm not being spicy but in chapter one she says, let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth for your love is better than wine because of the fragrance of your good ointments, your name is ointment poured forth, therefore the women love you, draw me away and then all of her friends, these daughters of Jerusalem, they say we will run after you. See she lived her life in such a way where she loved her husband and they said if you think that his love is that good after you as you chased him and girls, Isaiah tells us that our maker is, it's his love that we need by us. The love of Jesus is the refreshing rest in this weary world that our souls long for. See the love of God is just better. It's better than any love we could experience in this life. It's better than any love that our husbands could give and our marriage as great as it could ever be. Husbands as wonderful think as awful as yours are, they're never going to get to the place which longs to be satisfied and I think C.S. Lewis said it best when he said if I experience or if I can never experience anything in the world that could satisfy me, inclusion that I was made for another world. You're be able to satisfy you where your savior can. Your marriage can never be what it want you to be, what you want it to be and it can never be, it actually could be until you are set on chasing your King alone. You know, and I think that that's something that we've all heard, that we've heard for years, that we know that our husbands can't satisfy us and we might even say that to the young girls getting married, you know your husbands can't satisfy you. You know only Jesus is the one who can satisfy you. But girls, do we live with that awareness day to day? Do we live with that acceptance or do we know in our heads that our husband could never satisfy us the way that God can, but do we still keep expecting them to satisfy us the way that God can? If we don't live it out, it's a case of mistaken identity. It's a case of rubbing the wrong person's back. It's a case of looking for love in all the wrong places instead of running after the King for his perfect love. We're chasing an adorable bag of flesh, begging him to satisfy us in a way that he was never designed to do. And the Shulamite woman in Song of Solomon, she comes to the conclusion that anyone who was truly ever tasted of the love of the King comes to and she declares of everything I've ever tasted and tried, the King's love is better. You and I will never know a truly satisfied identity and satisfied marriage until we are satisfied in the love of the King. Until we are satisfied with the rest that he pours out upon us. Until we are satisfied with the love that he quenches our thirst with. We will never find the security, the identity, the complete love that we seek in anyone but our true love, Jesus. Like I said in Isaiah, God says to his people, God says to us, I am your maker. I am your husband. We will never be able to be fully satisfied in the earthly love of our human husband. And so we're satisfied in the heavenly love of our heavenly God. And this woman, she had found such love in her King that the girls around her say, we want to come and see this love too. And isn't that what our world needs? You know, last I heard the statistics of divorce rate in the church were just as high as they were in the world. And you can argue that maybe there are sometimes church attenders and maybe they don't quite know God and maybe they're just, you know, American Christians but either way that's devastating facts because you and I, the Bible says, have all we need for life and godliness. You and I have perfect love. And I remember when my friend's parents got divorced, my friend looked at me and she said, well, if they can't make it, no one can. Girls, you are the vase of someone life. You are the ones that this world needs to see make it. You are the ones that this world needs to see that it can be done, that we can find action in our earthly marriage because we know that it was never meant to fully satisfy that we have the satisfying love of God. We've got to get it together in this room because out there they have no hope. Out there they have no chance. We have the God who says that he holds all things together and in him all things consist. We have the God who can be the glue to our marriages when all other marriages are breaking apart and failing. I was watching TV with my kids the other day and they're 21, 19 and 17 and our 21 year old is off in Orange County and I've got my 19 year old and my 17 year old and like my husband says, I have no energy and so most of the time I'm just sitting around reading and I'm watching TV with my kids and it's so annoying and I love spending time with them but I just really hate sitting around. And so we're watching TV the other day and it was a show and this couple was married and the wife was just mean and she was calling her husband idiot and making him sleep on the couch and just all this stuff and my son looks at this and he's 19 and he says, I just cannot imagine ever marrying anybody like that. Is that how you treat dad when I'm not looking? They said no, he said, do you ever make him sleep on the couch and I'm like, no. All right, is that this world has a marriage with an agenda and whether it's someone who's telling us that we should call our husband idiot and treat him like their kids that they don't know what they're doing or whether it's that this world is telling us that they should be so romantic and like a Hallmark movie, those movies were written by girls and agenda be satisfied. It's no wonder that the divorce rate is so high. It's no wonder that we think things are so different. When we let the culture dictate who we think we should be as a wife and when we let the culture dictate who we think our husband is supposed to be as a husband instead of the word of God and his heart and his ways and his design dictate to us how it should be. We're bound to mess up. We're bound to be miserable. We're bound to do it wrong and to think wrong and to have wrong perspectives of what marriage should be and what marriage should look like. When I woke up this morning, I was just praying over you girls and praying over our time together and God just kept putting Proverbs 14 one on my heart and it wasn't in my notes and I'm reading this old English King James version of a Bible right now and I just love it and so I flipped in it to Proverbs 14 one and I love the way it said it. It said the wisest women build up their homes but the foolish pull them down with their own hands. And I was thinking this morning I remember doing a retreat on wisdom and that verse was one of the studies and it was, I don't know if you guys do it but it was one of the retreats that had the skits before you come out and I remember they had kind of thrown together this frame and somebody came out and read that verse and it showed a woman and she was on the phone and she was yelling at her husband and while she was doing that somebody came in and they just started bashing that home frame with a sledgehammer and just breaking it apart but then it showed this woman and she was saying nice things to her husband on the phone and they started building it and putting that beautiful flowers and I was like well I kind of don't need to teach it anymore because there you have it. That's a great visual that a wise woman builds and a foolish woman tears down and I loved what Sandy said about us having Rachel and Leah in us and I think that we could say the same about this verse that we have wise and foolish in us that you're not just one or the other and you're doomed to be who you are if you're foolish and you're blessed to be who you are if you're wise. It's a day to day moment by moment choice into thinking that everything we do causes our marriage to stay the same. Now in every moment in every word and every action you and I are either building in wisdom or we're tearing down in foolishness and you know some days we can get demo day mixed up with the building can't we? It's not our job to gut the guy like you are not chipping Joe of your husband it is not demo day for you take off your goggles put down the sledge hammer because gutting the guy is not building day. You spirit that's rubbing the wrong guys back take it from me. See marriage 101 is us knowing who we're supposed to be in the marriage because if we think you know I hear some wives it just breaks my heart some wives are like oh yeah I got three kids you know the two little ones and then this guy when we think we're supposed to be the mom of the marriage when we think we're supposed to be the boss of the marriage when we think we're supposed to be the master of the marriage then it's no wonder we got the job description wrong but God is their holy spirit and God you know he's so gentle he doesn't come in with a jackhammer demo day is not destructive to him and we just had to move we just got rid of our house in the desert and we got our house and ocean side and I have no energy but I need the house to look clean and so I had everybody put everything out in the garage and every day I bring in a couple of boxes and unpack those so that my house can stay clean but things can get done and I was thinking you know that's kind of the way that God is with us right with us with our husbands it's not demo day and destruction is everywhere and you've got sin in your life so it's going all over the place God is so gracious to point it out to pull it out in such a loving way right Romans tells us that it's his kindness that leads us to repentance and so a wise woman builds her house it's not demo day I'm gonna tell you everything you're doing wrong it's instructive it's encouraging it's good it's gentle not a jackhammer just a flashlight it's not our place to demo day or husbands girls we were given to help we were given to encourage that word means to impart courage to help build them up into who they're supposed to be you know I love this description that we see in David and Abigail so you remember that part in second Samuel where Nabal I'm gonna just go so fast through it but Nabal is just so rude to David and David's like strap on your swords we're going to decimate them and Nabal's servant tells Abigail what happened and so Abigail's like make food right because every angry man needs food and so I'm like he needs food and also I don't know how Sandy missed it but like the whole point of the whole Solomon's bed carriage thing was that everything smelled good like the point should have been brush your teeth men come on angry men need food and girls that are happy need good smelling things and so Abigail's like everybody make food and so they make food they come and Abigail meets David and he is on his way to decimate her household and all that she's included with and she speaks to him do you remember all the words that she says go back and read it later I kind of want to say it's chapter 17 but I could be wrong and she speaks to him and she reminds him of who God's made him to be she reminds him that God used him to chase Goliath down she reminds him that God has designed him to be a king now was he being a king in that moment was he being that face filled guy that destroyed Goliath no he was being a rabid warrior who was on his way to wipe out an entire village of people because he didn't like something that somebody said but Abigail came to the wild man and she spoke to him like a king and because of that she got the king in return and girls see sometimes you and I we see the wild man we see the hungry guy we see the disrespected one and so we disrespect him more and we make him more wild and a soft answer will never ever ever turn away wrath I mean a soft answer is sorry goodness okay it's a sickness talking I never made mistakes before this just kidding always a soft answer is what turns away wrath the wild answer will never ever ever turn away wrath and Abigail speaks to the king and the wild man and she gets the king in return and girls some of us today you're living with the wild man we all have our wild man moments and we've got to speak to the king we've got to speak to who we know God designed them to be and I know that this is marriage 101 but it's what God put on my heart to share and in song of Solomon two four she says he brought me to the banqueting table and his banner over me is love love that's it that's our answer and I know that husbands need respect but like Jason talked about we all hear love in different ways and when you and I choose to speak respectfully regardless of what they sound like we are choosing to love the Bible tells us to let all that we do be done in love our husbands hear love when we choose to build them up with our words when we're with them and when we're not with them and on my heart today was just the idea of the dance of our speech I remember when we had been married a year or two Jason came home and he was a high school pastor at Calvary Chapel Vista and he was just beaming and he's telling me the story about the pastor and he was talking about marriages and how they need to be faithful husbands and he said in there because not everybody thinks that their husband walks on water the way that Jason's wife does and he was so excited and I thought well that means I'm doing a great job because I mean if there's anybody who knows that Jason doesn't walk on water it's me but you know have you ever been in those conversations or had friends who just husband bash? I hate that don't you? It's like talking to someone with spinach all in their teeth it's just an awkward moment. You're thinking I don't know how to respond to this I'm not gonna say yeah your husband is like that and it's also awkward to say oh but I love your husband because that's like scandalous talk you know like you just there's no way to respond to that. A wise woman built her house with the kind words that she says to her husband and about her husband. God's banner over us is love. So this lady said she took me he took me to his banqueting table and his banner over me is love and maybe you feel like your husband's banner over you is perfect love and it's so great. Probably not but don't worry this woman ended up sharing her husband with 999 other women so it could be worse but the good thing is that it's not our earthly husband's banner over us that determines our identity that determines our satisfaction. It's our heavenly husband's banner that is the agape love that's the most beautiful perfect love that we could ever imagine. And the dance of disrespectful speech comes when a wife doesn't feel secure in her marriage or secure with who her husband is but girls that security can only come from the love of God that's it. And in the Olympics do you remember when they march in at the opening procession and they're standing under that identifying banner that tells you what country they're from who they represent what they stand for. Girls your banner is not your husband. Your banner is your God. You represent him. You stand for his love. You stand under his care. Your identity is fully loved by God and you know what that love is not going from the love will do that your husband's done from that perfect banner in Numbers chapter two. The Lord's giving Moses the order that the Israelites are to march through the wilderness in and he says in there all the tribes are to travel in the same order that they camp in each in position under the appropriate family banner. They all had a family banner that identified who they came from, who they served, what they did, what their responsibility was. And I love it because it was from one month old and on they knew what their job was, what their identity was. Their entire lives were raised knowing their identifying banner that was over them. Their identity wasn't their husbands. Their identity wasn't their children. Their identity was the mark of their God upon them and who it was that he called them to be. And curls, that's who you are. You're not identified by your husband, by your children, which is a good thing because identities change. You know, I remember for career day in high school I put a pillow in my tummy and I carried a Bible because I wanted to be a pastor's wife and a mom. I'm like, living my dream. Except that my kids are all older and they're all busy and I loved all that time when I had my little flock beside me and I think as a pastor's wife I just loved that everybody would look at the chaos around me instead of me, that was great. Now I'm like, ooh, what can distract them now? Let me hold your baby. Now I don't get to be a part of my church anymore because I'm allergic to my church. I just had to turn over my women's ministry because I can't go to my church. See, every other thing that we put our identity in can be shaken, can be changed, can be taken, but curls, we were never meant to have a temporary identity of this world upon us. See, you are a wife and you might be a mom, but in those relationships, you represent Jesus. You represent God's love. You don't represent how you feel. You don't represent what you wanna say. You don't represent what you wanna think. You don't represent him and so he better stand up straight and he better look good and he better not say anything because he's your banner. No, he's not your banner. Your banner is God's love and so is his. Your brothers and sisters in Christ, we have an identity that cannot fade, that cannot change no matter what the world brings our way. Pressure off? Because isn't sometimes the anger and what we say and the words to show and see to look over and see where their grass is greener, but as it's been said before, probably that grass is greener because it's got a septic tank leak. You just don't see what's going on underneath this of that. I know we need to wrap it up. You and I have the security of knowing that we have the love of God as our banner and you were designed by God to love your husband. You were designed by God. You know, one of my favorite prayers in the Bible right now is help and I don't sleep very much and I get blisters all over my skin and I'm allergic to mattresses and I'm allergic to pillows and I'm allergic to sheets and I'm allergic to just everything, toothpaste and shampoo and conditioner and soap and water and it's just, it's wild and I don't know what to pray most nights other than God help me. Just helpful. I pray two things, Lord rapture tonight and then when it doesn't happen, I pray help, help, help and God is always so faithful to help and I know that some of you are in difficult marriages and some of you are in difficult times and some of you are in seasons that you don't know what to do with and you wanna be good girls, right? Like we all wanna be good wives and I used to like get up in the morning so early and I would just think I love my husband so much and I love my kids so much and I'm gonna be so nice to them and I don't know, like the second they woke up I was like, now you're bugging me. Like we wanna be so good, right? But we just don't have it in us and praise God we have the Holy Spirit like Jason said but you know, the problem is that we already, like Jason said, learned how to dance and okay, tell me when he was showing you his dance that you don't understand why I don't wanna dance with him. Like it's not some, he's trying to be so sweet he's like, and the problem is, is that we come into marriage and you're doing the waltz and he's doing this and you're like, you stepped on my toe but maybe your foot's in the wrong place. Like the only way that we are going to know how to do this thing called marriage is to be women of the word, to not get our cues from TV and Hollywood but to get our cues from the God who designed you for your husband specifically. The God who says, if you cry to me, I will answer you. We each have our parts, we each have our dance and when you and I are doing it the way that God designed, it can go smoothly. It can be beautiful. You will have people running after you saying, oh, I wanna chase your king, he seems great because you have a God who can fix your marriage, who can give you love in your marriage, who can give you respect in your marriage, who can help you in your marriage, who can give you kind words to say in your marriage who can show you what a heavenly marriage looks like here on earth and God I just pray over every one of us, God in each one of our places, Lord would we seek you, would we look to you, would we not look to the world's wisdom that you call foolishness but would we be women of the word and women of prayer and women who cry out to you on behalf of our families and it's in your name we pray, amen.