August 18, 2024 | Heirs of Life Part 2

Transcript:

Every time I sing that song, I think that phrase, if ever I love thee, my Jesus, tis now, and I really want to be able to sing it honestly on the first three verses. And I don't always feel like my love for Jesus is the most it's ever been. But I love that we can sing the fourth verse and say in Mansions of Glory one day I'll say, if ever I love thee, my Jesus, tis now, and it will be completely wholehearted, true.

And I love that last ending of the song. Because if you're headed out the door to children's church, you can go ahead and do that. If you're staying in here with us, we're glad to have you in here as well. We're going to continue in first Peter chapter three. And as we continue, I want to also take a moment and draw back a little.

We've talked about for several weeks. We've talked about government and our relationship to government. We've talked about servants and masters and how that applies to employers and employees. We talked about wives last week and this week we're going to emphasize husbands from first Peter chapter three and verse seven. But I want to take a moment and draw back a little from the specifics and look at what Peter is actually doing overall in this section, Peter wants to shepherd his readers.

It's Peter the Shepherd. That's what we're seeing throughout this book. It's not Peter the Theologian, although he is a theologian. It's not Peter the Ethicist. Although he talks about ethical principles. It's not Peter the apologist, like he's trying to convince people that Christianity is true. This book is Peter the Shepherd, because I think echoing in Peter's mind over and over is the fact that when the last time, I mean not the last time, one of the last times he saw Jesus, Jesus sat by him and said, feed my sheep.

He said, I know you betrayed me, but feed my sheep. So Peter is trying to be a shepherd. Primarily, these are his three goals that he gives you. It's distilled from first Peter two nine through 11. He wants God's people to proclaim God's glory. Whatever situation you find yourself in, if you belong to God and you're living in this world as an exile, a stranger who doesn't really belong here because you belong in heaven, that's your citizenship.

He wants to make sure you proclaim God's glory. He wants to make sure you guard your soul because your internal responses matter and you face danger to yourself. And he wants to make sure you act with honor. That's trying to summarize what he says in verse 12 of chapter two, where he says to act honorably before those who aren't believers so that they will see what you do, even when they might speak evil of you.

They see what you do, and they glorify your father who is in heaven is the way Jesus said it in Matthew. So those are your three big principles. Now, what he's done is he's going through three case studies government servants, marriage. And in each case, there's three themes that relate to the three goals he has. So the first is you bow to God, meaning your highest allegiance is to God, not government, not master, not husband or wife.

We can see this if you just look back into chapter two, verse 17. We're going to see it in each of these three case studies. Verse 17 says, honor everyone, honor the Emperor, love the brotherhood, but fear God. He's your highest allegiance is to God. You bow before him right after that in verse 18, be subject to your masters with all respect or with all fear of God, is what he's saying there?

He says, look, as you think about your masters, you ultimately bow to your God. He continues in that section he says everything you do. Verse 19, you do it mindful of God. The end of verse 20, the strength to do good, even if you suffer, for it is found in God's grace, a gracious thing in the sight of God.

Down. Chapter three. He says to act with purity in the fear of God. Or verse five and six. He talks about women who hope in God and who are fearless over and over. This theme, in all these case studies bow to God. He's your highest allegiance. Because when you do that, what are you ultimately doing? You're proclaiming his glory.

When you bow to God, you're saying he really is the most worthy. You're also guarding your souls because when you bow to God, that means guess who's not on the throne of my life? Me. It's dangerous for my soul, for me to act like I get to rule my life. Instead, I have to bow before God. If you put any other human being, whether it's the Emperor, that's the highest allegiance.

Obviously, in our context, you say whatever governmental head you want to look at, you want to say the president, you want to say Congress, you want to say whoever no human belongs on the ultimate throne of a believer because that's God's place. That means I shouldn't be there. That also means government heads shouldn't be there. Masters employers shouldn't be there.

Husbands and wives shouldn't be there. You know, it's just as bad to put your husband or your wife on the throne of your life as it is to put yourself on the throne of your life. They're both idolatry. They're both worshiping and serving the creature rather than the creator. So his first theme that shows up over and over about a God is second theme.

I titled it this way don't be rebellious. That's where at the beginning of each section that we've looked at so far, he says, be subject to really? This is what that should translate as in our mind, don't be rebellious. The opposite of submission isn't leadership, it's opposite. In some other ways, the opposite of submission is rebellion. So in other words, he said he's looking at the people he wants to shepherd and saying in different authority structures, in different relationships, if somebody comes and takes initiative, it says, I think we should do this.

If your knee jerk reaction is, you can't tell me what to do. That's not a healthy soul. I don't mean you always agree with him. Of course not. Sometimes you'll say, I have to bow to my God. That's why number one is up there and why it's number one. I have to bow to my God. And I can't bow to you in where you contradict my God.

But I don't just want to shake my fist in your face. We have these examples in the Old Testament of Daniel, of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. We're not going to worship your idol, but it's not. You're just a puny emperor. You can't tell me what to do. I don't want to listen. It's not that attitude.

Why does he say this particular goal? Don't be rebellious. Because remember, there's three purposes. He wants them to proclaim God's glory. And they do that. But they're guarding their souls. He's saying, if you have a spirit that just wants to not listen to anyone and is suspicious of everything that comes at you and shakes your fist in rebellion at it, that's not a healthy soul.

So Peter is shepherding his readers for these three things. Then he has certain themes come up. Don't be rebellious. The last one that I mentioned is only God defines good and evil. This has come up over and over. Chapter two, verse 15. This is the will of God, that by doing good you should put aside once the ignorance of foolish people.

God's the one who defines good. Or chapter two, verse 20 when you do good and suffer for it, well, who defines good? God does well. Chapter three and verse six. If you do good and are fearless, in each case he's come back to you are supposed to do good, but the way that you do good matters.

If you're trying to do good with a rebellious attitude that's not guarding your soul, that's his framework. That's how he's shepherding you. And he knows there are times when doing good according to God's standard means. I have to say, I can't obey this human authority. I can't follow their leadership. He knows that. But when you have to do that the way you do, it matters.

This is what Peter is doing throughout this section. He's shepherding you. He's not telling you every situation that'll be in your life. But if you take this framework and say, I've got difficulties in my life, I've got a relationship, I'm not sure what to do with it. Start there. I need to proclaim the glories of the one who called me from darkness to light.

Does the way I act point to how great and wonderful and wise my God is? I need to guard my soul. There are dangers that can lead to unhealthy patterns of emotional responses of internal responses. I need to guard my soul, and I need to act in such a way that people around me can see I'm doing good and can glorify my father.

And you say they won't think it's good. They might not think it's good. God defines it. So you take those three goals and then you take these three themes. Say, how do I act in this situation with those three things in mind? And you'll get the idea of what Peter is doing as he goes through these. He's using case studies.

He knows not everyone sitting here is going to be a servant or even an employee. He knows that he's not trying to address every single person. He's trying to show you a pattern of how to guard your soul and proclaim God's glory in difficult, relational situations.

So with that background. Peter gets to verse seven of chapter three and he says this likewise, husbands, live with your wives in an understanding way, showing honor to the woman as the weaker vessel, since they are heirs with you of the grace of life, so that your prayers may not be hindered. God, this is your perfect word. You breathed it out.

Would you use it today to change us, to shape us, to help us to honor you as we should? In your name, Amen. All right. The first question we need to get out of the way is, why are there six verses, two women and one verse? Two men? Maybe it comes to your mind. You read it and you first answer is Peter didn't really tell us, so you have to guess.

But I think it's probably because in this situation, in their cultural setting, women faced more danger and difficulties. That's just true. And if they were going to believe in Jesus when their husband didn't, that was going to be harder than the other way around. Because the society expected not that this was right, but the society expected that if the husband believed in Jesus, the wife was going to as well.

And if he didn't, the wife wasn't. So if they were going to really bow to God in that they needed more encouragement, they needed more principles, they needed more protection. That's the reason I think Peter could tell me otherwise when I get to heaven. But I think that's probably why he begins with the same word he started each of these sections likewise.

In other words, Peter is telling you I'm still doing the same thing I've been doing. I told you before, proclaim God's glory, guard your souls, and act with honor. I'm still telling you the same kind of thing. It's also more specific than that because with with women, he directed their attention from external beauty to internal beauty. That's verse three and four of chapter three.

He said the outside isn't what's really important, it's what's inside that really matters. And he's going to do the same thing for husbands. He's going to say the outside actions aren't the real important part. The attitude and what's within your soul as you relate to your wife, that's the more important issue.

So he tells husbands to relate to their wives. I'm going to use three categories here to relate to their wives in three ways. By the way, this is not unique to husbands and wives. These relational categories actually apply to every human relationship you have. Now it's a little different in husbands and wives, but the three things that I'm going to point to that he says here should be the same thing with your friends, should be the same thing with your parents, should be the same thing with your kids.

Should be the same thing across any human relationship. So first relate with understanding. He says, live with your wives in an understanding way. We say understanding of what? What am I supposed to be understanding of? There's no object stated here. He doesn't say directly. Understand your wives, although that's part of the implication he says relate in an understanding way.

Literally it says live with your wives according to knowledge. So knowledge of what? Well, yes, knowledge of your wife. That would be one thing. We'll come back and talk a little more about that knowledge of yourself. Husbands, the way you know yourself impacts the way you treat your wife. When you know the patterns that come up in your life that tend to make you angry.

And you're coming home and you say, all of those things have already started making me angry. When you're aware of that, you're in a better position to relate well to your wife.

You have to know and relate to God well in order to relate to your wife. That's part of the knowledge, which means you need to know God's word. You could say, relate to your wife according to a right knowledge of God's Word. That'd be good and helpful, or the situations around you. In other words, I don't think what we should picture here is there's this specific type of knowledge.

I've checked the box, I've gotten that knowledge. Now I know how to relate to my wife, what he's calling you to do. Husbands, is take all of the knowledge that you have and use it in a way that you relate to your wife. Well, your knowledge of God is not separate from your relationship with your wife.

Your knowledge of yourself is not separate from your relationship with your wife. Now you might think, well, if I'm supposed to know everything about my wife, everything about me, everything about God, everything about His Word and everything about the situations we face. How on earth will I ever obey that passage? That's not what he's saying. You should want to know more.

You should want to learn. But he's not saying relate according to all knowledge. He's saying, take the knowledge that you have and relate well to your wife with it. In other words, you may not know everything. May not. I mean, some husbands may, but you may not know everything about your wife. It's possible, but take the knowledge that you have and live with her according to that knowledge.

He doesn't say, live with your wife according to omniscience because you don't have it. But he says, live with your wife according to knowledge as you learn things about her and you and God and His Word. Don't let that stay in this silo over here where you say, here's how I live my life. But when I relate to my wife, it's so totally different.

Instead, say no. How do I take this knowledge and relate to my wife?

Practically, how do we pursue this? Well, we could talk all day about how to get to know God better and how to know his word better, but other texts emphasize that. So I just want to give you a couple thoughts about how to know your wife better, and you better. First thing you have to know is actually stated in this verse.

At the end, since they are heirs with you of the grace of life. If you were married to a believing wife, that means she is going to reign with Jesus. She's a queen. And I don't mean in just a figurative sense. She's going to reign with Jesus. She's going to inherit the same grace of life and salvation that you have.

Your wife's going to inherit that that means the way you treat her is impacted by that knowledge.

The way you show respect or don't, the way you show honor or don't should be impacted by that knowledge. That also means part of being the air of life is that you have the Spirit of God inside you. The Spirit of God dwells with you. That means when you live with your wife and you interact with her, both of you have the third person of the Trinity living with you.

If I knew the third person of the Trinity was sitting across the room for me, I think I would show some respect and kindness to it. To him. Don't you? But it's easy to look at another human supply's two wives. But it doesn't have to be only wives to look at another believer and not show them honor and kindness.

I want to read this quote from Paul Trip. He said, The Spirit of God lives in you, and the Spirit of God lives in your wife. And the Spirit of God will relate well with the Spirit of God. If we get out of the way of trying to force our own way. The more we remember that the Spirit of God is in both of us, that's going to impact the way we relate to one another.

It has to. And as we live that out, we're living according to one element of knowledge.

So practically, there's a million things we could say. I just want to give you some suggestions. I'm going to go ahead and tell you this is my to do list for the next I don't know, however long. These are not things I do what really well, and you could ask my wife and she'd say that that's fine.

Study your wife. Husbands, observe her. Observe her reactions. Observe the good things. Observe the struggles. Ask her. What's hard right now? What's good right now in your life? And just listen to their answer. What's exciting right now? What's disappointing?

Find your wife's strengths and praise God for them. And find her weaknesses and lovingly pray for her.

Study your wife. Talk to her about who she is and what's going on. Study your responses to her. Find your sinful responses and fight them. Like what makes you defensive? Husbands, when do you get angry? When do you respond with self-pity? Now, if you're like me, you could say, well, I know I get angry, but I'm not really sure why and how.

And well, let me tell you two things that can help you figure it out one, you need other brothers who will walk alongside you. You need to be able to sit down and say, I got angry the other day when this happened. Help me understand what's going on in my heart.

That may sound hard. That's the easier one. The harder one is to sit down across from your wife. And say, I just responded with anger to you or the kids or whoever, and I'm not sure what's going on inside me that made me respond that way. What do you see?

And then lay down your weapons. And just listen. Study your responses. Go ask your wife. I know some of these things. I get it that I can say this. And you think, I don't know if I want to do that? Go ask your wife. Where am I struggling? With you? With the kids, with work, with church, with friends.

Where do you see me struggling? And why do you think that is? I'm not saying she's perfectly right in her perception. She's not, I'm sure. But I'm saying her perception isn't yours. And you need as much help as you can get. So do I. Your wife is a gift from God because she has a different perception. You can say you can go to her or say, I have this relational challenge.

Would you help me think about how to interact with somebody else? I've got this hard email to write. Would you read it and tell me what you think? For me, sometimes that I've got this sermon to preach. Would you tell me what you think about some thoughts here?

Relate to your wife with understanding all the knowledge God's given you, and all of the transforming and renewing of your mind that he will continue to work in you. Take all of that knowledge and say, all right, how can I use that knowledge and relate to my wife? Well. Relate with honor. Notice he says that showing honor to the woman.

I really want to just put this in one question. Does the way you treat your wife communicate that she is valuable or not? That's really honor.

Does it show that she is worth something to you? Or does it tend to show that she is worth less to you? That's really showing on her. We can talk about all the specifics. We could say, well, you pay attention to the things that you value. You speak with kindness to people that you value. You express appreciation for things that you value.

We could go down a whole list, and honestly, if I did the whole list, every husband in this room would say, I've heard those things before. You're right. I should do it.

So I don't want to go down the list. I just want to ask the question. If you really think about the way you interact with your wife, does it show that she is valuable to you? Does it tend toward saying she's worth more and more and more, or does it tend to are saying she's worth less and less and less?

Nobody in this room is batting a thousand on that. If you feel like, oh, sure, I never do that. I know we all know.

But what he points us to is a direction to say, if you're going to proclaim God's glory, guard your soul and act with honor. Here's what you need to do. You need to show in your practical actions that you are valuing honoring your wife. So relate with understanding, relate with honor, and relate with care. I could say tender care, but some of us guys are like, I don't know if I'm supposed to be tender, so we'll we'll leave that alone for a minute.

Relate with care, he says, showing honor to the woman as the weaker vessel. All right. So why does he say vessel? We don't talk like that. And why does he say weaker? I'm guessing there's probably some women in this room who bristle a little at that word. Okay. It's not weaker in the sense of weaker in faith or mind or soul or emotionally weaker or any number of crazy things that have been said throughout history.

It's not that I know women who endure emotional torment far better than men. I know women who endure pain far better than men. All we have to do is talk about the man flew right, and you guys know what that is? Yeah.

What he's doing is he's talking just about physical strength. I know there are women who are stronger than me. Probably in this room. I just watched the Olympics. I would not gold medal in probably any women's sport. I wouldn't.

But overall, the strongest men are stronger than the strongest women. And it's just true. The bell curve, like the average man, is stronger than the average woman, is just true. Our world can talk about transgender and all kinds of things all they want to. It doesn't change that reality that the world record holder in the 100 meter dash for women wouldn't have won the high school championships in most states this last year.

It's just different. So how do you know that's what he's talking about? Are you sure he's not just being, ancient and talking about actually emotional strength? Yes, because he says vessels. And when he says vessels, he's drawing your attention. A vessel is like a clay pot. That's the thing that's on the outside that holds the important stuff in the middle.

Just like our bodies are like vessels. And what's important, the internal beauty is inside it. Also notice he's not saying women are vessels and men or something else. He says show honor to them as the weaker vessel. That means there's also a stronger vessel in this picture, which is men. So he's saying, show honor to the women as the physically weaker body in general.

That's his point.

Notice, though, the response to being physically weaker is not, well, I'm better than she is because I'm stronger. The response is honor. I played around with like, what's the best illustration for this? There's a million ways we could, but I think this works for most guys. Guys, if you need a hammer, you use a hammer. You probably don't go get your expensive level.

I hope you don't. Don't do this bad plan and say, I'm going to pound in this nail with the level. Why? Because you show a certain honor to the level. Because it is, in one sense, more fragile. You're not worried about hitting it with the hammer. You're probably not worried your hammer is going to break. But you know, if you hit it with the level, it probably will break.

So you show a certain honor to your tools that are a little bit more fragile. They're not worthless. They're actually worth more. But you show honor towards the weaker tool. In this case. And you do that because that's how value works. So men, he's calling you not to view women as less productive or something like that. He's calling you to say, generally speaking, women are physically weaker than men generally are.

So show honor to them in that way. Yes, that means simple things like if there's something heavy to be moved, I don't sit around and watch my wife do it.

And we could talk about disabled men and say, well, if you can't, if you're in a wheelchair, can you be a real man? Absolutely. It's not trying to say that. It's just talking about the kind of guy who says, no, I'm not going to do that hard work. I'm going to sit on the couch, watch my wife move the heavy thing.

Show honor to the woman. It's a weaker vessel. It's one reason why, historically, especially in this time, if you went out to war, the men went out to war and women stayed home. Because if you're going into hand-to-hand combat, you want the strongest people. And it's not about value. You could argue the more valuable ones are the ones that are protected.

It's just strength. Why did God make it that way? Maybe I'll do a Q&A that follows up on that. Why did God make it that way? I just want to say one thing. The picture of the man and woman in marriage is Christ in his church. I am so glad that Jesus is stronger than we are. I'm so glad that he has more power than we do.

I think that's part of what he's picturing. So what do we not do? Well, we don't intimidate. Sometimes men use their strength. I'm guilty. Use their strength, use their size. That's not really my problem because I don't have a lot of it. Use the volume of their voice. Use the depth of their sound to to intimidate because they're go, I'm going to act stronger than you.

So once we do with our kids, not good either, because these principles apply to relationships, so long as we try it with our wives. Don't be intimidating. Don't be threatening. Don't be demeaning. I thought of a guy I knew in college. His name was Gabe. He was a huge, just, muscular mountain of a man. I still remember one time we were in the cafeteria.

He had a suit coat like this on, and he went to grab some glasses of milk and he goes like this. And it just ripped the seam in the back straight down because he was so strong. He just ripped it. He was the softest spoken, gentlest guy I've ever known. I never heard him raise his voice above this in the guys dorms.

He was a firefighter. The dude was as masculine and strong as he could be, and nobody doubted it for a second. But he never intimidated. He never threatened. He never demeaned.

That's what we should be. Husbands relate with your wives, with knowledge, with honor, and with, I'm going to say, tender this time. Tender care. Last section here, he says, so that your prayers will not be hindered. This can lead us to some really bad theology if we're not super careful. So I want to point out first he says he doesn't say that your answers to your prayers will be hindered, although that might be implied.

He says that your prayers would be hindered.

In other words, it's not. God hears you humbly coming to him, pouring out your heart and really coming to him the right way. And then he goes and checks your wife report card and says, nope, I'm not answering you. That's not how God works. Sometimes we hear God resists the proud, gives grace to the humble, and we have despair because we're like, I'm proud.

I don't know how I can fix that. No, no, no, God does not resist someone coming to him saying, I'm proud. Would you help me? Because that act is humble, right? You're humbling yourself to come to him here. God's not resisting you because you go, I didn't figure out how to treat my wife well enough. So I've got to figure that out first and then go get God's help.

If we stop and think about it, we know we need God's help to treat our wives correctly in the first place.

So what does it mean for our prayers to be hindered? Well, in other places in the New Testament it says things. This word hindered is used and it says things like, we long to come to you, but we were hindered, like, I want to come, but I'm stopped or. It says, I won't detain you, I won't hinder you, I won't keep you.

In other words, I think his focus here is that there's certain kinds of things in your relationship that will make you not want to come to God. Not that if you come with a humble attitude towards God, God's going to look at you and go, nope, not answering your prayer because you haven't measured up yet.

But there are certain things that, especially the relationship of a husband and wife, creates problems that will make you not tend to come to God in prayer, or at least not come to him with the right attitude. First, unified prayer is important. God says, where 2 or 3 are gathered in my name. Well, husbands, you, you answer this one in your mind.

If you have not been treating your wife with understanding, honor and care. How good does it feel for both of you, for you to come together and pray together? It's not so helpful. I read of a pastor who talked about this, and he said there were times he and his wife were going through deep, long counseling for themselves.

And he said, sometimes we kneeled by the bed and we were silent for a few minutes. And then I said, help. And that was the only words he could get out. But he prayed with his wife. I respect that from him. And I get the impulse that says, when there's this relational issue, how are we supposed to come before God together?

Perhaps it's pride if a husband says, I'm really better than my wife because I'm stronger. He never says that usually. But if he thinks it, if a husband says I'm an heir of the grace of life, I'm not sure my wife is quite up to that yet. That pride is going to make him where he's not likely to come to God humbly in prayer.

So relate with tenderness and understanding and honor so that you're not going to be sitting here proud on your throne like I can handle it, but you're going to humbly come before God and say, God, I need your help. Or I think this may be even a more specific reason. Your treatment of your wife affects the way you view God.

God said the husband and wife is a picture of Christ and the church. So if God treated you husbands, this one's mainly for you. If God treated you the way you treat your wife, would you be more or less likely to come to him in prayer?

Or be more specific? If God didn't relate to you in an understanding way, would you be likely to come to him in prayer if God didn't come and show love and honor to you, would you be likely to come to him in prayer? If God was intimidating, threatening, exploited his power, abused his power towards you, would you be likely to come humbly before him in prayer?

I highly doubt it. You might come before him in prayer, but you're going to come and say, God, I really did all these things, so can't you give me something good here?

God wants you husbands to interact with your wives in these ways. So you proclaim his glory, guard your souls, and act with honor before those around you. And if you don't, if you ignore that, it's going to skew your view of God. And if you come to him in prayer, you'll tend to come with pride. But you might just say, I don't want to come before him at all.

So, husbands, I want to come back to a few things that I've said already. I hope you feel like I don't do that perfectly, because I know you don't.

I hope you feel like I could do that better. I hope you don't feel like woe is me. It's terrible. I stand no chance because you have to come back. The first place you have to run is that there's only one perfect husband, and that's Jesus. And in that relationship, husbands, you're part of his bride. And he loves you perfectly.

Husbands, you need your wife's help. You need her perspective. You need to talk to her about these things.

You might feel like I'm showing honor to you in this way. And she might feel like I don't feel honored at all by that. Please tell me I'm not the only one who's been there.

You need her perspective. You need other brothers. He with other Christian men, talk about God's word, talk about his truth. Learn more about him. Talk about your relationships so that you can learn so that you can have accountability to one another.

God is doing this in marriages. He's demonstrating his love through two imperfect people.

But Peter wants to shepherd husbands here particularly. But you could take these same principles to other relational issues to say when you relate to your wife with understanding and care and honor, you are proclaiming God's glory by saying he's wise and good. His forgiveness is so good that I can forgive her for anything she does to me. See, I'm really proclaiming the glory of his forgiveness when I forgive you.

Guard your soul by relating to your wife like this, because it protects you from anger and bitterness and pride.

And you're acting with honor before people who are watching. Even more importantly, now in our culture. Because long term, loving, understanding, caring, honoring faithfulness is so rare in our world.

If you I'm not saying if you're perfect, if you remotely try to live that way and you're married and you stay married for ten years, you know that's in some people's lives, that's unheard of, much less in this room 40, maybe 50 years. And when they talk to you and people see you've been married for that long, and you try to treat your wife with understanding and care and honor, why do you do that?

Because, my God, so great. That shines a light that they don't see a whole lot of places. We need that same light to be shown in here to one another.

Man, God made you to be warriors. Some of you may not feel like warriors. Some of you do. But he made you to be warriors, the kind that kick the door down and strangle sin in your life. The kind that help. Yes, physically protect. Of course. But the kind that lean into the spiritual battles that are around them and fight scene in their lives and fight sin in the lives of others around them and help others.

He made you to be warriors, the kind that kicked down the door and kill sin, but also the kind that can carry civilians out of harm's way. Gently.

That's what he wants you to do with your wife. You're in a battle. Relate with understanding. Care. Fight that sin. Do so gently. So that God's glory will be proclaimed. Your soul will be guarded, and others see it, and glorify your father which is in heaven. Let's take a moment. Let's go before God in prayer, and then I'll close.

God, we want to relate to our wives as husbands. We want to relate to everyone around us in ways that lift you up.

Would you help us to use the knowledge that we have? Well, to interact in an understanding way? Would you help us to learn more?

Would you fill us with gratitude for your gentle care for us, and make us people who give that to others?

Lord, we fall short many times. But you took that. You took those sins on the cross for us.

Give us your grace to live out that kind of forgiveness and love and care in our human relationships, and continue to shepherd our souls all the way through this life. Until we gather around your throne.

It's in Jesus name that we pray. Amen.