Will Love Really Keep Us Together?

Moravian College Come on, sing with us! Our God is the Lion, the Lion of Judah He's roaring with power and fighting our battles And every knee will bow before Him Our God is the Lamb, the Lamb that was slain For the sin of the world, His blood breaks the chains And every knee will bow before the Lion and the Lamb Oh, every knee will bow before Him So open up the gates, make way before the King of Kings Our God who calls to save, is here to set the captives free Who can stop the Lord Almighty? Our God is the Lion, the Lion of Judah He's roaring with power and fighting our battles And every knee will bow before Him Our God is the Lamb, the Lamb that was slain For the sin of the world, His blood breaks the chains And every knee will bow before the Lion and the Lamb Oh, every knee will bow before Him Oh, we bow before the Lord Sing out, who can stop Him? Who can stop the Lord Almighty? Who can stop the Lord Almighty? There's no one Who can stop the Lord Almighty? Who can stop the Lord Almighty? Who can stop the Lord Almighty? Yeah Who can stop the Lord Almighty? Who can stop the Lord Almighty?

Who can stop the Lord? Our God is a lion, the Lion of Judah He's roaring with power and fighting our battles And every knee will bow before Him Our God is a lamb, the Lamb that was slain For the sin of the world, His blood breaks the chains And every knee will bow before the Lion and the Lamb For every knee will bow before Him Yeah From heaven's throne You came to us And set Your heart upon the cross You'll never know the sacrifice You've made For all our sin and all our shame, you took the nails and took our place. No one else could do what you have done. But one name is higher and one name is stronger than any grave, than any throne. It's Christ exalted over all. From the grave where death would die, you rose again and brought us to life. You're reigning now, the Savior of the world. You're reigning now, the Savior of the world. One name is higher and one name is stronger than any grave, than any throne. It's Christ exalted over all. The only Savior, Jesus Messiah. To you alone our praise belongs. It's Christ exalted over all. We sing your praise, sing your praise. We sing your praise forever. And lift your name, we lift your name, Jesus of our own. We sing your praise, sing your praise.

Sing your praise forever. And lift your name, we lift your name, Jesus of our own. One name is higher, one name is stronger than any grave, than any throne. Christ exalted over all. The only Savior, Jesus Messiah. To you alone our praise belongs. Christ exalted over all. To you alone our praise belongs. Christ exalted over all. Well, I am holding on to faith. Because I know you'll make a way. And I don't always understand. And I don't always get to see. But I will believe it. I will believe it. I will believe it. You make mountains move. You make giants fall. You use songs of praise to shake prison walls. I will speak to my fear. And I will preach to my doubt. That you were faithful then. You'll be faithful now. Stand on your word. I am standing on your word. Calling heaven down to earth. You will fight my enemies. And there's healing in victory. And I will believe it.

Yes, I will believe it. You make mountains move. You make giants fall. You use songs of praise to shake prison walls. I will speak to my fear. And I will preach to my doubt. But you were faithful then, you'll be faithful now. You were faithful then, you'll be faithful now. And I know that I know you never will. Oh yes, I know that I know you never will. And I know that I know you never will. Oh yes, I know that I know you never will. For you make mountain move. You make giants fall. You use songs of praise to shake prison walls. And I will speak to my fear. I will preach to my doubt. You were faithful then, you'll be faithful now. For you make mountain move. You make giants fall. You use songs of praise to shake prison walls. And I will speak to my fear. And I will preach to my doubt. You were faithful then, you'll be faithful now. You were faithful then, you'll be faithful now. Praise the Lord for his faithfulness today. And as you know, today is Mother's Day. And it's a good day in our series, Shining the Light and Exposing the Darkness. It's a good day to shine the light on marriage and family.

Because our world believes the lie that all you need is love. That love will keep us together. Did you know the number one reason why people get married is because they're in love. And the number one reason primarily that people get divorced is I'm not in love anymore. And it's just this feeling that we need more than just love. Now love's a big part of marriage. It's a huge part of marriage. But you need more than just love because love alone won't keep you together. So, what does your home really need? Your marriage, your family. What does it really need to not only survive, but to thrive? You know, the goal in marriage and family is not just to make it to the end. I didn't get divorced. We hated each other, but I didn't get divorced. That's not the goal. The goal is to not only survive because as we said with all the couples on the stage, hey, it's hard. Raising little kids is hard. But you want to survive those difficult times, those times where you're not sleeping and everybody's irritable and the baby's crying and the baby's got colic and whatever it might be. You want to survive those times, sure. But you want to thrive.

And you've heard me say before, on a scale of 1 to 10, 1 being the worst, 10 being the best, God wants your marriage and family to be a 12. God is pro-marriage. He's pro-family. He wants to bless you and bless me in the most important area of our lives and that is where we live, our homes. So what does the Bible say? Psalm 127. It's a psalm of, a song of ascent, which means they had certain psalms that they would sing as they would ascend up to Jerusalem for one of the three great feasts that they were required to be there. And as you started to walk up to Jerusalem, Jerusalem's up on a hill, you would sing these songs of ascent as you ascended up to Jerusalem. And this is a song from Solomon. And he says this, Unless the Lord builds the house, they labor in vain who build it. Unless the Lord guards the city, the watchman keeps awake in vain.

It is vain for you to rise up early, to retire late, to eat the bread of painful labors, for he gives to his beloved even in his sleep. Solomon is going to give us three essentials for a happy home and for your home really keeping together because love alone won't do it. So three essentials that we see here in Psalm 127. Essential number one, what do you need to have a home that survives and thrives, a marriage that survives lives and thrives, you need a growing personal relationship with Jesus Christ. That is key. Unless the Lord, all in caps, Yahweh, the personal name of God, unless Yahweh builds the house, they labor in vain who build it. We desperately need Him. And if the Lord doesn't build your house, my house, our house, all our labor, the Bible says, is in vain. That means it's empty. It's useless. It's futile. It's nothingness. It's going to just come to naught unless the Lord is building your house. We say, well, what does that mean? I mean, the Lord, unless the Lord builds the house,

is He talking about the actual physical structure? No, He's talking about your home. You're the house of David or the house of Shreve or the house of you put your name in there. That's what He's talking about. So you say, well, what exactly does that mean, that the Lord builds my house of, you know, my surname? Well, it means that Jesus is the chief cornerstone of your life. You know, we read that in Psalm 118, the stone which the builders rejected has become the chief cornerstone. Jesus quoted that to the religious leaders. Have you never read? He would say things like that to the religious leaders because it was a stinging rebuke. You guys, you pride yourself on the fact that you know the scriptures. Have you never read the stone which the builders rejected? This became the chief cornerstone because He was speaking of Himself and they were rejecting Him. Well, the chief cornerstone in the building process is the stone that aligned the whole building. It determined angles. It set the straight lines. It provided stability for the walls. It was the everything stone. And that's what Jesus said He is. He's the stone that the builders rejected, but He is the chief cornerstone of life.

You're never going to have a life that matters, that lasts, that stands the test of time, that is rewarded in the end of it all unless you surrender your life to Jesus Christ, unless you have that personal relationship with Him and a growing personal relationship with Him. You know, you hear people and you talk to them about, well, what's your relationship like with the Lord? Well, you know, I got saved when I was 12. This person's in his or her 40s. I got saved when I was 12. Well, what's happened since 12? Well, really not anything spiritually. Well, you start to wonder, did you really get saved at 12? Because when the Lord comes into a life, He changes that life. And so, like with my girls, we wanted them to find guys that didn't just say they were Christians, but guys that love the Lord, that had a passion for the Lord, that had a growing relationship with Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is the cornerstone of life, and He's the cornerstone of marriage and family. So, as a single person, He is to be the cornerstone of your life. He is to be the one who sets the angle and the direction for your life. And then when you get married, you come together, and guess what? Jesus is to be the cornerstone of your marriage and family. You can't make it without Him, unless He aligns your home.

You're now, as Debbie and I got married March 15th of 1986, and we began the Shreve family, Jeff and Debbie Shreve. We established, I have a plaque that we got from Family Life Ministries that said, Jeff and Debbie Shreve established March 15th, 1986. And we look at that on a regular basis. It's right there in our living room, and we pass by it, and we say, yes, this is our home, and the Lord is the one who is building our home. He sets the tone. He sets the direction. And so, when you think about the Lord building your house, you say, well, okay, how exactly does He do that? Well, this is the way it works. He's the chief cornerstone, and He will build your house as you obey His word. That's how He does it. It's through obedience to His word. Jesus said, why do you call me Lord, Lord, and do not do the things that I say? That's a contradiction. I'm not your Lord if you're not going to obey me. Jesus said, at the conclusion of the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew 7, He said, everyone who hears these words of mine and acts... upon them. Let me tell you what he's like. He's like a wise man who built his house on the rock. You hear his word and you act upon him. Then he says, well, there's other kind of guy

who hears his word and doesn't act upon him. He's the foolish man who built his house on the sand. You know, Joshua said to the people in Joshua chapter 24, verse 15, he said, choose you this day whom you will serve. But as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord. Now, who are you serving in your life? Who are you serving in your marriage? Is your marriage dedicated to serving the Lord? Are you saying, hey, I want to do what the Lord says to do? I'm going to do what the Bible says in Psalm 119. I lift my hands to your commandments, which I love, which means I'm surrendering myself to your commandments. Lord, your word is what I want to do. Jesus said, if you know these things, you're blessed if you do them. The blessing doesn't come in the knowing. The blessing comes in the doing. Now, you can't do what you don't know. But to one, James 4, 17, the one who knows the right thing to do and does not do it, to him it is sin. You know, going to church is dangerous because if you hear things and you don't do them, you're going to have to give an account on the day of judgment. You know, to whom much has been given shall much also be required. And when we hear truth, then it's incumbent upon us to act upon that truth and to put it into practice in our lives.

Are you building on the rock or are you building on the sand? You say, you know, it doesn't make sense to me why anybody would build on the sand. You know not to build on the sand. Here's why people build on the sand. It's easy. It's a shortcut. It's cheap. It's hard to dig on the rock. It's easy to dig on the sand. It's hard to put in a foundation on the rock. It's easy to do it on the sand. And so people want to just do the cheap way, the easy way, the shortcut way in life, in marriage, in family. It doesn't work that way. If you're going to experience the blessings of the Lord and a growing personal relationship with Jesus, you have to hear what he says and put it into practice in your life. Do you have a growing relationship with Jesus? Are you seeking him? That's the big question. Essential number two, you need to be aware of the enemy targeting your home. Unless the Lord builds a house, they labor in vain who build it. Unless the Lord guards the city, the watchman keeps awake in vain. Now, we need the Lord to build our home, our marriage, our family, and we need him to guard and protect our marriage and home and family. Why is that? Because you and I have an enemy. Your adversary, 1 Peter chapter 5, verse 8,

your adversary, the devil, prowls around like a roaring lion seeking someone to devour. But resist him firm in your faith, the Bible says. But we have this sinister minister of evil, this entity, this being, this created being. He was Lucifer, the star of the morning, the most beautiful angel, most powerful angel God ever made, who rebelled against God and God threw him out of heaven. And Lucifer, the star of the morning, became Satan, the father of the night. He was so persuasive in his rebellion, he got a third of the angelic host to go with him and come and choose his team to go up against God. And they all were thrown out. And Lucifer became Satan and all those other fallen angels became filthy, hairy demons. And so we have the angelic beings and then we have the fallen angelic beings, which are demons. And the devil wants to hit you where it hurts. And as we said, the most important area of your life is home. That is the place where he wants to destroy. Now, I have said this before, it's worth repeating. The test of your Christianity is not how loud you can shout on Sunday morning and how much you can praise and say, amen, hallelujah.

The test of your Christian life is how does it work at home? Because that's where you live. That's where you let your hair down, so to speak. Not me, but you. You let your hair, my hair fled long ago. But you just kind of let your guard down at home. Debbie would do that sometimes. Debbie's a great housekeeper. And when the kids were little, sometimes she would just kind of be, I'm done. Dishes would be piling up and she would tell me, she goes, I let my guard down. I said, yeah, can we get it back up again? Cause this, and so yeah, I'd start cleaning up and I'd helped you a lot of the times, a little bit. I unload the dishwasher and I'm a good eater. But anyway, I let my guard down. It's like, yeah, I don't like it when you let your guard down because everything, I'm just used to everything being, you know, just running so smoothly. Debbie was great at that. But in the spiritual realm, you have an enemy who wants to destroy you at home and you cannot let your guard down because if you do, he will come after you. He prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking a chink in the armor, seeking to get in. I told the congregation Wednesday night, as I was preaching on 1 Peter chapter five,

we've had a problem with squirrels getting into our attic and squirrels, once they get in there, they're like, this is home for us. And they don't want to, it's hard to get them out. And so we had to figure out where they were coming in. We were having a hard time figuring out where they were coming in. And we could hear them on the roof at night, landing on the roof. And it's like, I hate you little suckers, you know? And, but they would get in there. They had babies in there. It became a nursery in our attic. It was awful. Well, they want to come in to take over. The devil, he's looking. And what does he do? Jesus said the thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. That's what he does. See, the devil is determined to destroy your home, to destroy your marriage, to destroy your family, to wreck and ruin your kids. And he's doing a pretty good job of it. I read a statistic that said 40 to 45% of first time marriages fail in divorce. 60 to 67% of second time marriages end in divorce. And over 70% of third time marriages end in divorce. And God hates divorce because divorce is so painful. He hates what divorce does to people.

He does not hate the divorced. He hates divorce. And anybody who's ever experienced divorce, you would say it's awful, it's horrible. The two become one flesh and then you rip them apart. And it's terrible. So the devil is wanting to do that. And how does he come about that? He uses different things to try and steal and kill and destroy. And I want to name several things that he uses. Number one is sexual immorality. The devil will use sexual immorality to wreck and ruin your marriage, to wreck and ruin your kids, wreck and ruin your home. And sexual immorality, we're just bombarded with sexual immorality in our world today. I pray with some of our deacons every Sunday morning and we were talking about the fact that when we grew up, all those guys are my age or older, when we grew up, the temptations were not what they are today. And when we were raising kids, we didn't have the internet. Al Gore hadn't invented it yet. And so we had to, there were other things that you had to watch for, but there weren't all the plethora of temptations out there that are just as close to you as your smartphone. But you have to watch out and just know that the devil uses sexual immorality to destroy.

1 Corinthians 6, verse 18 says, flee immorality. Every other sin that a man commits is outside the body, but the immoral man sins against his own body. Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God and that you are not your own for you have been bought with a price? Therefore glorify God in your bodies. Sexual immorality. The Bible says in 1 Thessalonians chapter four, this is the will of God, your sanctification, that is that you abstain from sexual immorality. You know, the one caveat on marriage concerning divorce, marriage and divorce says, except in the case of immorality and adultery. Sometimes people can't get over that and it just destroys the marriage. It's like an atom bomb. It nukes the marriage. And so stay away from that. Remember last time we talked about how James said, this is pure and undefiled religion in the sight of God to visit wizards. widows and orphans, and to keep oneself unstained by the world. And we have a tendency, we like to come up right at the edge of the world, and we get real close to the edge, and the Bible says don't do that. Let the man who thinks he stands take heed lest he fall. You need to stay away from that. I ran across this statistic. It said that 45% of men and 35% of women have some kind of an emotional attachment

to a person of the opposite sex. Now not a full-blown sexual, you know, adultery, but they're getting real close. You know, once you get married, then the people of the opposite sex, you have to keep arms distance from them. You can have a couple friends, sure, but like your best friend can't be the opposite sex. Your best friend needs to be your spouse. You have to watch out for that. You have to watch out for the internet and pornographic websites and things that relate to social media and connecting to people digitally and electronically, things like that. That can just get you into all kinds of trouble. The Bible says in the book of James, each one is enticed and carried away when he's tempted by his own lust, and when lust is conceived, it gives birth to sin, and when sin is accomplished, it brings forth death. Death. Do not be deceived, the Lord says. So the devil uses that sexual immorality to destroy your home. He used it against David when David saw Bathsheba and ended up having an adulterous relationship with her. It wrecked his family. In the very next chapter, he's got his son Amnon who rapes his daughter Tamar, Amnon's half-sister Tamar, and then Absalom, David's son Absalom, ends up killing Amnon, and then Absalom ends up trying to kill David. David unleashed all kinds of hell into his family because of sexual immorality. Secondly, the devil uses drugs and alcohol to destroy your home. He loves to use that, and people don't think anything about it. Now they might think, well, drugs, we're not going to, you know, mess around with drugs, but alcohol, I mean, they have it at all their celebrations, and even at the wedding reception, we're going to drink, and we're going to celebrate. Alcohol is that thing that has no upside but has a tremendous downside, tremendous downside.

It will wreck and ruin your life. Drugs will wreck and ruin your life. Adrian Rogers used to say, drugs and alcohol, they're instant heaven that leads to everlasting hell. Wine is a mocker, Proverbs 20 verse 1, and strong drink a brawler, and whoever is intoxicated by it is not wise. So I've always had the attitude, it's like, there's nothing good that comes from that stuff. So why don't I just not have that in my life? Because you know, nobody goes around, you know, my life just stinks. Why does it stink? Well, because I quit drinking and it just, you know, I just have to have it. It's just so terrible. Well, if you have to have it, you are an alcoholic. That's not a good thing. You know who never becomes an alcoholic? People that don't drink. I mean, it's not, you know who doesn't have trouble with smoking? People that never smoke. You just, James Dobson used to say, there are certain things, as the Lord said, behold sin is crouching at the door and its desires for you, you must master it. There are certain things that you don't want to let in because if you do, it will grab hold of you and it won't let go. The old proverb says, first the man takes the drink, then the drink takes the drink, then the drink takes the man. And pretty soon it's all of a sudden, I want to stop and I can't stop. Some of you may remember the name Jan Michael Vinson. He was a Hollywood actor. He was a Hollywood heartthrob in the 1980s. He had a television show called Airwolf and he was the highest paid television actor on TV.

He made somewhere around $250,000 per episode of his television show. This is a picture of Jan Michael Vinson back in the day. I know it looks like your pastor, but that was Jan Michael Vinson back in the day, back in the 80s. Here was a picture of him in 2016. drugs and alcohol had wrecked and ruined his life. He lost his leg and everything just imploded. He just, he couldn't keep a job. He got canned from his high-paying gig as a Hollywood actor because he couldn't function with the drugs and with the alcohol. He ended up dying in 2019. You know, they said in his heyday, he's making almost $250,000 per episode. His net worth was about $8 million. And when he died, he was worth about $200,000. Just imploded his life. Hey, stay away from that stuff. It's not worth it. There is no plus to that, only minus. But the devil uses that and he uses that to destroy so many homes and so many lives and so many young lives. Matthew Perry, who recently died, he said he took his first drink when he was 14 years old. That's Chandler Bing from Friends. Took his first drink when he was 14. He was a full-blown addict when he was 18. And he said at one time in his life, he was so addicted to alcohol and opioids that one day he took 55 pills of Vicodin or whatever he was taking,

hydrocodone. I don't know how you stay alive doing that. But he eventually passed away from all of that. It destroyed his life. How about just greed and selfishness? The devil uses that, greed and selfishness, to destroy marriages and families, to destroy lives. You know, he says it's vain for you to rise up early, to retire late, to eat the bread of painful labors. People that are burning the candle at both ends. And why are they doing that, working so hard? Now, some people are doing it just to put food on the table and others are doing it because they're trying to get more and more and more. They're keeping up with the Joneses and they say, I don't have enough and we have to have more and more and more. The Bible says in Hebrews chapter 13, let your character be free from the love of money, being content with what you have, not desiring more and more and more and more. For he himself has said, I will never leave you, nor will I ever desert you. So that we may confidently say the Lord is my helper. What can man do to me? I have the Lord, I don't need more and more and more. I have everything I need in Jesus. Greed destroys homes. People who are greedy for gain and ready to do, you know, a quick deal to make a buck.

And they're very susceptible to gambling temptations. That's a way, gambling is a way to make a quick buck or lose a quick buck. My daughter, Sarah is going with her husband to Las Vegas on a sales trip that he won. And she was talking to us about that. She's never been to Las Vegas. I said, Debbie and I have been there once. I won a sales contest in 1992 when I worked in the chemical business and we got to go to Las Vegas. And Las Vegas is a place where you can lose everything you hold dear in about 30 minutes. Your marriage, your morals, your money, you can lose all of that just like that. You have to be very careful of that place. But greed gets in there and selfishness. Debbie told me that when we had Jill back in 1987, our firstborn, Debbie said, I never knew how selfish I was until we had Jill because Jill was more selfish. And as little babies are, they don't care that mom hadn't gotten any sleep. I mean, it's all about me. And when you're a mom, when you're a dad, you just know, hey, it's gotta be about the kids, especially when they're little because you can't reason with a six-month-old. You just have to do whatever they need done. Selfishness is a big problem.

The Bible says, let not selfishness reign in your heart and in your life. Do nothing, Philippians 2, do nothing from selfishness or empty conceit, but with humility of mind, let each of you regard one another as more important than yourself. You know, in marriage, you can't have a successful marriage if you're selfish. You have to be selfless and self-giving. And then something as simple as bad friends. Bad friends can destroy your house and the devil will use bad friends, bad influences, bad company, as it says in 1 Corinthians, corrupts good morals. Or as it says in the CEV version, don't fool yourselves, bad friends will destroy you. Mom and dad, when. When it comes to your kids, you need to know who they're hanging out with. Because if they're hanging out with some bad friends, there's going to be a cost associated with that. As it says, don't fool yourselves. Bad friends will destroy you. Proverbs 13, verse 20, he who walks with wise men will be wise, but the companion of fools will suffer harm. Think about who you hang out with. Now we're to be friends with everybody, we're to show love to everybody, and let people know that, hey, Jesus loves you, and he says to you, no matter what you've done, no matter where you've been, come to me, all who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest.

He invites you to come. But you have to be careful as a Christian that you're not hanging out with lug nuts, right? I mean, if it's a, if, he who walks with wise men will be wise. You need to choose wise men to let them mold and shape you, because the companion of fools will suffer harm. And let me add one more, it's not on your outline, but it's the issue of bitterness. The Bible says in Ephesians chapter 4, be angry and yet do not sin, and do not let the sun go down on your anger, and do not give the devil an opportunity. When you let the sun go down on your anger, when somebody does something to hurt you, every hurt turns, eventually turns to anger, and when you don't process the anger correctly, that anger will turn to resentment. I start to resent this person who did this thing that hurt me, and then when you don't deal with the resentment, you get bitter toward that person, and how horrible it is when that person is your spouse, or when that person is your mom, or your dad, or your son, or your daughter. You give the devil a place. You give him an opportunity. That's the, just like the squirrels getting in my attic, that's one of those events that's opened up where they can come right in, and the devil will come in and he will wreck and ruin what God has wanted to bless. Catch for us the foxes, it says in the book of Ecclesiastes, Song of Solomon, or yeah, Song of Solomon. Catch for us the foxes, the little foxes that are destroying the vineyard while our vineyard is in bloom. You have to watch for those little things that hurt you, that turn to anger, that you don't resolve. So many women just say, well, he ought to know that he hurt my feelings. Newsflash, he doesn't know. You have to tell him.

You remember the t-shirt, all men are idiots, and I married their king. It's one of those kind of things, and women need, men don't speak your language, and so you have to tell us. We do so well. I tell guys this all the time. I said, my wife is so wonderful because she tells me when I'm hurting her feelings, because I don't wake up in the morning thinking, how can I hurt Debbie today? What could be good to hurt her? No, I want to be a good husband, and so she tells me, hey, I'm not feeling very cherished. You did this, and it really hurt my feelings, so it gives me an opportunity to make that right. Hey, you need a growing personal relationship with Jesus. You need to be aware of the enemy targeting your home. Unless the Lord builds the house, they labor in vain, they build it. Unless the Lord guards the city, the watchmen keep awake in vain. And then number three, essential number three, you need to see the value and responsibility of children. Verse three really changes gears, and it moves from the marriage to the children, and it says, Behold, children are a gift of the Lord. The fruit of the womb is a reward, like arrows in the hand of a warrior, a mighty man. So are the children of one's youth. How blessed is the man whose quiver is full of them. They will not be ashamed when they speak with their enemies at the gate. Now it starts off with the word, behold. That's used a lot in Scripture, but that's a word in Hebrew, in the Hebrew language, that means, hey, wake up, look at this, pay attention, behold, children are a gift from the Lord. The fruit of the womb is a reward. Children are God's priceless gifts to your marriage. God's priceless gifts to your marriage.

They're a gift from God to you. Now those of us who have had the privilege of having children, we know that. We know there's nothing in our lives that we would give for our children. I mean, if somebody says, hey, would you sell me your kid for $100,000, for $1 million, for $2 million? Unless you're just a person that has totally rotted your brain out with drugs or alcohol or whatever, you would say no to that. I wouldn't, you couldn't give me any amount of money for my kids or my grandkids because they're priceless. We know that, and we'd do anything to help our children because they are so precious and special. Now, are children difficult? Yes, they're a great blessing, but they're a great source of stress. They're a lot of work, but they're not a burden. They're not a penalty. They're a blessing. You know, somebody said, well, children make a rich man poor. No, they don't. They make a poor man rich. You can't take your money to heaven, but you can take your children to heaven if they put their faith and trust in Jesus. Now, Jill and Jay, they have two beautiful girls. They're not gonna have any more kids. And Sarah just got married, and she has three stepchildren, beautiful stepchildren. And then Amy and Travis have three little boys, Jack, Chase, and Drew, four, three, and one.

And they talk about having a fourth. And Travis said, well, I'm about 100% sure that if I knew it was another boy, we don't want another child. And I'm 90% sure if I knew it was a girl that we don't want another child. He said, I feel like we've been climbing the stairs, and we're almost at the top of the stairs, and we're getting ready to take that last step. And to have another baby would be to get kicked in the crotch and knocked back to step number one. And you know, he's tongue-in-cheek. Obviously, children are wonderful. But anybody that's had a lot of kids, and we would say in today's world, four kids is a lot of kids, it's hard. Amy will call us a lot of times. Hey, when are you coming to see us? And I said, when are you going to move here? Because that would help us a lot. But it's very, very difficult. And so children need lots of help from mom and dad, right? Obviously, lots of help. Foolishness, the Bible tells us in the book of Proverbs, is bound up in the heart of a child. The rod of discipline will remove it far from him. Now, the Bible says that children are like arrows in the hand of a warrior. I want you to think about arrows for a moment.

What was an arrow before it was an arrow ready to be shot from the bow? It was a crooked stick. And that's how we have the children come into our lives. They're crooked sticks. And they need help from mom and dad to become an arrow. See, they need to be, first of all, shaped and sharpened. A child is a crooked stick, and foolishness is bound up in that child. That child needs to be shaped. You have to form the character and set the direction and build life skills, honesty and integrity and hard work and responsibility. Those are things that the parents give to the children. That's part of the shaping, and that's part of the sharpening that you would do to an arrow. Secondly, they need to be protected and polished. You know, a guy that's working on his arrows from a crooked stick, he's whittling that stick, he's working on that stick. He's making sure that nobody's taking a cart and running over the stick, you know, because it'd be like, I'd have to start over. You're going to break this. And so he protects the stick, and he gets it ready. He polishes the stick. He's got to do all this stuff to make that crooked stick shaped arrow, a sharpened arrow. Parents are to protect and polish their children.

Bad company corrupts good morals. You have to watch out for their friends. You have to watch out for the negative influences. You have to watch out on their phone. You need to know, a good parent is going to know what my kids are involved in. You remember the Columbine massacre that happened, I think, in the 90s? This one guy said one of his sons was one of those killers, and he said, I worked at home. And he said, my son was planning all this stuff, and I never had a clue of what was going on. Well, I feel for that dad. He would never have thought that his son would do something so. Horrific, but it was really on him. Hey, mom and dad, you got to insert yourself in your kid's life. You got to know what's going on. You got to know about the friends. You got to know what kind of frustrations and things are going on in his or her life. That's part of being a parent. You need to protect them. I like what my friend Trent does. He said, you know, with our kids, we don't allow them to take a phone into their bedroom. All the phones stay downstairs at night. We lock them up. They don't have access to the internet

at night in their bedroom. Why? Because there's just too much temptation and you can get into trouble with that. Protect family time, protect dinner time. That was one of the things that Debbie was so good about. She made sure as a family, we ate together at least three times a week. And so we would sit down at the dinner table and we didn't have to worry about the no phone zone because nobody, the phone was on the wall. It was just there for phone calls. Did you notice now that people have cell phones? You know, the one thing that you don't really use a cell phone for, talking on the phone. People will text you and people say, the nerve of that person, they just called me. You need to text me to see if I'll take your call, you know? But back in the day, in the dark ages, we just had a phone and it would ring and you'd answer it and you didn't know who it was. You just answer the phone. And then your dad would yell at you, get off the phone. You're on the phone too long. That was back in the day. So we would have family time together and we just talk about the day and how things were going. And we'd get with the kids, they loved that. I still remember that as a kid, being around the table. That was fun.

You protect your children that way and you polish them. You prepare them. I like what Colt McCoy said about his dad. He said, my dad taught me that you prepare your child for the path. You don't prepare the path for your child. We have a lot of parents today that wanna prepare the path for their child. They'll insert themselves in any and every situation to try and, I'm gonna talk to your teacher. I'm gonna talk to your coach. This isn't fair, this isn't right. You got railroaded here and they're inserting themselves in the situation. That's preparing the path for the child. We need to prepare our children for the path. Now, we don't wanna throw them out to the wolves and put them in a bad path, but you have to teach them how to stand alone. You have to teach them how to trust God. You have to teach them about difficulties of life because life doesn't always turn out well, right? So there's, you know, it's disappointment. Get used to it, kid. There's gonna be some disappointment in life. If you take away all the disappointment, then he doesn't really know how to do things or she doesn't know how to do things because she had never had that before. A friend of mine, I say a friend of mine,

a guy that I used to listen to who was a counselor, he talked about how this couple found a fox one day, a little baby fox, and they took that fox home and they cared for that fox. Like it was just a little pet and it just became this pet and they would, you know, feed the fox and first on a bottle and then feed him, you know, special food and it just raised him up and he grew and he just, man, he was loving it. Everything was provided. And then they took him out to the woods one day and let him go and in 24 hours, he was dead because he didn't know how to be a fox. You know, he's like, hey, where's the food? Where's the water? What's going on here? They didn't let him learn and grow. Prepare your child for the path. Don't prepare the path for your child. Protect them, yes. Polish them, yes. But then lastly, you have to prepare them to be an arrow, to be shot from the bow. Parents, they need to be thinking in those terms. I had this child for so long to, they're an arrow in the hand of a mighty man, a mighty warrior, but then what do I do with an arrow? I don't just keep it in my hand, I put it in the bow and I shoot it. And I shoot it at the enemy.

They will not be ashamed when they speak with their enemies at the gate. And so you're preparing your child to take off. Kathy Porter is running for governor of California. I didn't think anybody could be worse than Gavin Newsom, but she'd be worse. She has a commercial out where she says, I'm just like all of you. I got a grown son that lives on my couch. Like, this is your commercial to why we should vote you in as governor? You got a ne'er-do-well son that is living on your couch? That's not good. Well, get him out of there. Listen, you don't prepare your kids to just be slugs. You don't let them stay on your couch. You're like, hey, it's time for you to get out of the quiver, to get in the bow, and to be shot. Now, I realize that sometimes things can happen where your children come back, but they can only come back for a season. They don't need to be comfortable just being in your house, children. They need lots of help from mom and dad. But the job of mom and dad is to raise those kids to be arrows that can be shot at the enemy. Now, you say, well, Jeff, I don't think I have what it takes to do all of this. Well, let me tell you a little secret. I don't have what it takes either. He has what it takes. The Lord has what it takes, and He will do it through you as you trust Him, because you can build your house on the rock or you can build your house on the sand. But know this for certain, the house on the rock and the house on the sand,

what did Jesus say about those houses? And the rains descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and burst against that house. And the house on the rock stood, and the house on the sand was destroyed, and it fell, and great was its fall. And you have a choice. I can build on Jesus and His word, or I can do it my own way. But know this, doing it your own way is destined to fail, because unless the Lord builds the house, they labor in vain who build it. Now we come to the most important question of all. Have you turned from sin and selfishness and given your heart and life to Jesus? Listen, if not, today is the day for you. Just pray this simple prayer from your heart. Lord Jesus, I need you. I know that I'm a sinner and I can't save myself, but I believe, Jesus, that you are God in the flesh. I believe you died on the cross for my sins and rose again from the dead. And right now, I ask you to forgive me and save me, come into my life, change me, make me the person you want me to be. I surrender my life to you, and I promise to follow you all the days I have left. Now, if you pray that kind of prayer and mean it, the Lord will come in and your life will never be the same. Listen, I would love to hear from you. So please contact me and share with me what's going on so we can pray for you. And if you are ever in the Texarkana area, we would love for you to visit us live and in person at FBC Texarkana. Listen, you really are important to God and you're important to us. And we're here for you.