For a marriage to be in the awesome category it must be blessed by God. There are a number of activities or conditions that will bring God’s blessing into our marriage, and there are several that will guarantee that we will not be receiving anything from God to make our marriage special. The number one thing on the part of either husband or wife that will negate every speck of blessing from God is bitterness. Bitterness is failing or refusing to forgive someone of an offense, real or imagined, that they have committed against us, especially our spouse. In The gospel of Matthew Jesus says that if we don’t forgive others God won’t forgive us, and we then experience all the consequences of unforgiven sin in our life and in our marriage. In Matthew 18 Jesus says that if we don’t forgive, that God turns us over to the “torturers “, which would probably mean that demons are allowed access to our life to make us miserable. Sounds like a miserable marriage to me. God expects us to forgive anybody of anything, not because they deserve it, but because He has forgiven us of everything and we didn’t deserve it either. Husbands and wives often refuse to forgive their spouse because they think that by staying angry and bitter they will discourage further offenses, and by forgiving quickly they are saying that the offense was “no big deal”. God’s presence, power, and protection are promised to the person who humbles themselves and forgives their spouse of anything, and trusts God to change their spouses character. In the gospels when Jesus visited His home town it says that “He could not do many miracles there”. Jesus was limited in what He could do by the small faith of the people. God can change the heart of our husband or wife, but we greatly limit what God can do in our spouse’s life and in our marriage by our failure to forgive. It takes some work, but we can train ourselves to forgive anybody of anything quickly, it is not an impossible command. The trilogy of commandments “take no offense”, “give no offense”, and “forgive quickly”, would powerfully impact and change any marriage if the marriage partners could train themselves to successfully do it.

So I have identified 10 key principles that I call commandments that contribute to a really good marriage. The third one is, “Don’t say or do anything that angers, irritates, hurts, or offends your spouse. It doesn’t take very long being married before we discover what our husband or wife doesn’t like or appreciate, what we can say that will hurt their feelings, and what irritates them. It is amazing to me how many spouses will do one of these things on purpose as a payback, because we are upset about something that happened to us, or because we are just being thoughtless. Ephesians 4:29 ought to be an often meditated on verse for every married person, which says, “Let no unwholesome word come out of your mouth, but only such a word as is good for edification, according to the need of the moment, that it might give grace to those who hear.” A life purpose of mine is to “be God’s instrument of righteousness in the life of Patty to give her great joy so that she is the happiest woman alive on the planet earth.” I make a commitment every morning to pursue this purpose diligently and I ask God for the wisdom and strength each day to make it happen.

At JBC’s marriage retreat this past weekend at Odell Lake Lodge I taught on the “Ten Commandment’s for an Awesome Marriage”. The second is “Take No Offense”. The longer description is that we allow ourselves to feel hurt, offended, angry, or even slightly irritated because of something our spouse said or did or didn’t do for just 5 minutes and then we get over it. The 5 minutes is arbitrary, and in fact when we get this skill reasonably perfected we can make that 1 minute. Most adults will get their feelings hurt, get offended or angry at something their spouse says, does, or doesn’t do, and then they camp there for awhile replaying the event, mulling it over, and amplifying the emotional response that they feel to the point that they respond in such a way that conflict erupts and often escalates. In 1 Corinthians 13, the love chapter in the Bible, it says, “love does not take into account a wrong suffered”. We choose to dismiss the offense from our mind, not because it doesn’t matter, but because Jesus has done that for us, and He asks us to do the same. If our reactions to the offenses of our husband or wife actually changed them to the point that they wouldn’t do that same thing again, it might be justified, but the fact is that our emotional responses of hurt, and anger rarely if ever change anything, they just make it worse. Let me suggest a plan to overcome this major problem in most marriages. (1) Admit to yourself that getting your feelings hurt is natural, but reacting in anger, with harsh words, and other forms of retaliation and payback is childish and immature. (2) Admit to yourself that your childish responses don’t change anything, don’t make you feel any better, and in fact make things worse and you feel worse. (3) Make a firm commitment to stop and to take captive the thoughts you have in less than 5 minutes. (4) If you blow it, don’t justify your behavior or blame your spouse not even a little bit, but instead confess it to God as sin, and remake your commitment. (5) The key way to control your thinking is consciously set your mind on something else that is good, and key Bible verses that you have memorized just for this purpose are amazingly powerful to change your emotions and attitude that have come as a result of rude, thoughtless, selfish, or mean behavior on the part of your husband or wife. A basic law of life is, “You don’t have to act the way you feel”. Another basic law is, “I don’t have to let others control my behavior by how they treat me”. And another, “Jesus has forgiven me of everything I have ever done, and He expects me to do the same”.

JBC had a marriage retreat at Odell Lake Lodge this weekend, and it was amazing. Our host, the owner of the lodge and his crew were so good in their service, and the food they prepared for us. We had 24 couples here, and they all seemed to have a great time. Pastor Mike and I both taught in the sessions. The title of my sessions was “The Ten Commandments of Great Marriages”.

The first commandment is “keep God first place in your life, and your spouse second”. Jesus said, “if you love father or mother or husband or wife or son or daughter more than Me, you are not worthy of me and you cannot be my disciple”. Whatever we are depending on as our primary source of joy in life is our god, and many well meaning Christians have made their spouse their primary source of joy. That expectation sets us up for continual disappointment in our marriage partner, and also because we are practicing idolatry, we lose God’s blessing on our marriage. The writer of Psalms 73 said, “besides you I desire nothing, and besides you I need nothing”. Doesn’t seem very romantic to say, “God is my main source of joy”, but if we want God’s blessing we need to be able to say that. God will have no other God’s before him, not even our husband or wife.

So, a key to our marriage growing in intimacy is for us to grow in our relationship with God. The more intimate our relationship with God, the more intimate our relationship with our spouse can be. Paul said in the New Testament, “I consider everything in life to be like garbage in comparison to my desire to know Jesus”.

My seventh, and final goal for the class is to find those exceptional guys who I can recruit for key positions of leadership in our church . Future Elders, leaders of small groups and accountability groups, and even pastoral staff in the future for JBC and other churches who are looking for staff. These exceptional guys would be men who have a high level of self-control and a high level of commitment to the Word of God and to prayer. They would love their wives and be devoted to leading their family as disciples of Christ. They would be Squeaky clean when it comes to moral purity, and would not be careless in what they watch on tv, the movies, or the internet. They would be those who are teachable and life long learners. They would be super faithful in that whatever they commit to they would be careful to do. They would be guys who have a high level of relational intelligence, that is they know how to get along with people even the weird and cranky ones. They would be very positive, not a complainer or a grumble, who are careful to always speak words that edify, build up, and give grace to those who hear. Everything rises and falls on leadership, the higher the level of leadership the more successful the group that they are leading will be. Over the 40 years of teaching the leadership class I have developed a sensitivity to spotting high character, exceptional men who will be a major asset to the work of God. As a 69 year old pastor who has a few years left in ministry, investing my life in the life of men who can do way more than I have done is very rewarding and fulfilling.

The sixth goal that I have in teaching the leadership class is to get close to and become friends with each of the men in the class. As a pastor I want to know well as many people as I can so that I can be that kind of Shepard that Jesus said that He is in John 10 when He declares that He is the good shepherd, and as the good Shepherd He knew His Sheep by name and they knew Him and knew His voice, and followed Him. Leadership as the Senior Pastor of a growing church is tricky. A pastor must be strong enough to maintain the unity of the church and also the corporate vision of the church so that everyone buys into that vision and becomes a functioning part of accomplishing it. But he must not become a CEO type of leader who leads on the basis of the power of his position. All leadership is earned, both from God by being faithful and from the people being led by being a servant and a good example of a godly man. Unless I get close enough to people leading by example is not possible. In the class I hear the men’s stories of how they got where they are and what has shaped them to be who they are. They hear my stories and get to know my history, my weaknesses, my passions, and see my walk with Christ up close. I enjoy very much having men friends who I can hunt and fish with, go out to dinner with, golf with, and sit, have a cup of coffee together with, and talk about life.

The fifth goal of the “Men’s Leadership Class” is that each man would be part of a ministry or lead a ministry at JBC or in the church that they attend. In Ephesians, a letter written by the Apostle Paul to a local church that he started, he says that the job of Pastors is to train those in the church to do the work of the ministry in the church, not to do the work of the ministry.  That admonition is a key passage for me in defining my job description. A basic, easily observable fact is that in most churches 20% of the people do 80% of the work. Anybody knows that it isn’t supposed to be that way. My personal leadership goal is that 100% of the people would be actively involved in  a meaningful and significant ministry. Of the people who are in most churches who are not actively involved, the reason isn’t that they are lazy, or don’t care, or even to busy, it is because they don’t know exactly what to do or if they would be successful at doing it. A motto that I have is that “there are as many active ministers (people involved in some sort of ministry) that have been trained”.  Ministries are meant to meet needs that people have, needs of all ages and for people in the church and those outside the church.

Our ministries have 3 characteristics:  (1) The staff doesn’t micro-manage the ministries in the church. If a person in our church has a ministry we give them as much help and counsel as they want, but we aren’t looking over their shoulder to make sure they are doing it right. It is their ministry and they can pretty much do what they want. (2) The staff doesn’t start ministries unless their is a lay person in the church available to lead it who is passionate about it. Our motto is, “We never start ministry on the basis of need, we always start ministry on the basis of available leadership”. (3) As the staff we train, encourage, cast vision, and influence those in the church so that at least 50% of the ministries in JBC would be outward focused and effective as a tool to attract people to a personal relationship with Jesus Christ.

The 4th goal of the class is to teach each of the guys to be skilled goal setters. Goals are to our life what a steering wheel is to a car. Without a steering wheel a car is useless, and if out on the road moving it is also very dangerous. Goal setting assumes that each individual is responsible for his life amounting to something. The goals that we write for our own life defines success for ourselves. Each year as I write out my goals I am searching for what I believe is God’s will for my life, and as I become confident that I am sure what the Lord wants me to do I write them down clearly, very measurable, and as strategic as I can make them. I then read my goals every day for several months and then 3 times each week the rest of the year. As I read and reread my goals that discipline is to my life what a gas pedal and transmission is to a car, the more I read them the faster I go. There isn’t much more rewarding than to see men write goals for their marriage, their kids, their health, their spiritual life, and their jobs, and to see them start to take control of their life, and begin to grow and accelerate. Goal setting is not a hard skill or discipline to learn how to do, but very few stay at it without some accountability in their life.

The 3rd goal of the class is that each man would grow in confidence and boldness in order to be a strong leader in their family, the work place, their community, and in our church. The words strong and confident are not even close to being arrogant, obnoxious, assertive, loud, angry, bossy, or proud. To be strong and confident is having an assurance in your faith, not being timid to share a thought graciously, being quick and decisive to help someone in need, being in control of your time so you can take the time to be involved in something that matters, and most importantly a strong and confident man is not intimidated by failure, he is willing to take a chance doing something he may have never done before. There are several exercises and assignments in the class designed to build this confidence. The first is each guy is asked to memorize approximately 2 Bible verses each week and quote them in class in front of the other guys. Almost all of them say something about not being able to memorize very well when they start the class and there are many men who never join the class because of this requirement. We take about 15 to 20 minutes at the start of each class for each man to quote their verses, and I also ask them old verses that they have memorized from several weeks to several months ago, so they need to review verses that they have already quoted. Most will stumble as they try and quote the verse and will usually say, “Boy, I had that verse down cold this morning and in the car as I quoted it to my wife on the ride to church, I don’t know what happened?” The answer is that the pressure created by the other guys listening messes with their confidence and there goes their memory verse along with their confidence. But as they continue this assignment each week there is a marked improvement in most in remembering the verse but also in the poise and confidence they have as they quote it.

Another assignment is that each guy shares in a church service a 5 minute testimony about 2 months after the class has started, and then their graduation assignment is to preach a 15 minute sermon in a regular church service as well. These are my favorite services of the year. We have one coming up the last weekend of April when we will have 3 guys share in each of the 3 weekend services. Those sermons are a huge confidence builder in most of the guys. It is extremely intimidating to stand up in front of your church family and preach the Word of God to people who know you and your weaknesses and failures.

It is the most rewarding thing I have done in almost 42 years of pastoring at JBC, to teach, train, and coach men to be great leaders in every area of their life.

I had 17 men finish this years class that I teach that starts in October and usually ends the end of May though this year we are ending at the end of March because of my upcoming 3,400 mile bicycle trip. I have 7 goals for the class and for the men who are in the class. The first goal is that each one would faithfully practice the seven basic disciplines of the Christian life such as Bible reading and prayer. Very few Christians faithfully practice these basic disciplines consistently because they are to busy, are to tired, just plain forget, don’t think they are that important, to lazy, to apathetic or to lukewarm. If these disciplines are not faithfully practiced it is impossible to grow in maturity as a Christian, it is impossible to be strong enough to successfully win against the devil, the world or even are own flesh, and it is impossible to do anything with our life that really matters. The only way any man will ever be consistent in practicing these basic disciplines is by being part of a group of men who meet regularly and often, weekly is good, and who have learned how to motivate each other, stir one another up to faithfully do these disciplines, encourage each other to run with endurance the race that God has given to each one of us, to hold each other accountable by reproving one anther when we mess up, and by praying for one another. Teaching on the importance of being part of an accountability group is something I do in the class over and over and over again so that when the class is finished each one of the guys will choose to be in such a group until the day they die, at least that is my goal and is the second goal of the Men’s Leadership Class. Each one of the men will grow spiritually in the class more than they have ever grown before, but if they don’t choose to be part of an accountability group after the class finishes, in one year they will be right back where they were in maturity when they started in the class. Often guys become part of a group that is nice, friendly, enjoyable, and even encouraging but it doesn’t produce any growth because there is no accountability. I call those kinds of groups “good old boy’s clubs”. In the 8 months that the class lasts I work hard to model with the class what a good group looks like and how it works so that they will work hard in their own group when they are in one to make it a true accountability group where each person consistently grows.