Intentional Marriage Part I | Vik Fomenko

[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign. [00:00:08] Speaker B: Last week Pastor Roman started a message and I want to continue on that. And he talked about the truth about marriage, that was his title and basically it was essentially why marriage matters. I mentioned that marriage is a reflection of God's image. It reveals Christ and the church. That mystery is beautiful. Marriage is built by covenant. Talked about the headship in marriage and you know, man being the, the head of a woman and, and how that really represents Christ being the head of the church. And what did Jesus do with that headship? He gave his life, he sacrificed. It was self giving love. And so a great marriage is built on humility, sacrifice and intentionality. So that was just a quick summary of the message from last week and wanted to continue that theme. I really feel like God wants to strengthen relationships and marriages. If you're not married, that's good news. God wants to strengthen your relationships because marriage is just really one relationship that you have. God's really given us five relationships on this earth that we are going to steward. I may mention them, they're in my notes. By the way, I really recommend with this particular message I have a lot of appendixes with lots of tools and notes and practical tips. So I have a 16 page PDF that assists me in my message today. So if you want to tap the disc in front of you, you can download that. If you don't do it that way and you want to, you know, you're later on you're like, ah, he mentioned this tip, I wonder what it is. You can download it on our website as well. You can go to kingdommovement.com you can go to the media page media tab and then you'll see messages in there and you'll look at, you'll find intentional marriage. That's today's message. And so if you want to tap that disc there, you can get the notes as we go into this. But God's given us various relationships in this world to steward. One of them is marriage. And marriage is one of the deepest, most intimate of the five relationships that he's given us on this earth. All of them are temporary. I'll just really, really quickly list them. The five relationships God's given us. The first one you're born into is a child. God gave you that relationship. You know why? Because he wants you to learn how to be loved first. Not to serve, not to love, just be loved. You're born to be loved and forever. You're a child of God in eternity. Why does he give us this temporary experience called being a child? Because forever we're children of God. The second relationship God gives us on this earth is you have relationships called siblings. And you didn't choose them. They're your family. You didn't choose them. But you get to love them and you get to learn to be loved and love your siblings. It's a really beautiful relationship. It teaches a lot of us a lot of things. What's interesting is Jesus is not ashamed to call us brothers and sisters. Jesus, after his resurrection, said, he said, go tell my brothers, right? So that's another relationship God gave us to steward. You know why? Because forever we are siblings with Christ. I mean, that is a mystery. The Godhead and humanity is not God even close, right? But God says, hey, I love you. I'm gonna give my life for you. I call you my. My friends, and I call you my brothers and sisters. We're part of the family and household of God. Wow. I think we sometimes take those Christian words very lightly. That's incredible. You know, so that's what God's upgraded us into. So, you know, the third relationship that we get to experience is relationships that we choose by choice, right? So you can't choose your parents, you can't choose your siblings, but you do get to choose your friends. And so now, outside of family relationship, God gives you this thing called friendship. Why? Because God calls us in eternity to actually be friends of God. There's an invitation for all believers to not just be saved, but to become friends of God. And the secrets of the Lord are for those who fear him. Those are that are his friends. In Luke 15, I believe Jesus said that, I no longer call you servants or slaves because they don't know what the Master is doing. But I call you friends because I've told you everything. So the disciples of Jesus weren't just saved, but they actually grew up into the friendship of God. God wants to offer his friends friendship to believers. Amen. And then another relationship, which is the one I want to kind of focus on today, but really these rules apply to all relationships is marriage. God allows us this gift of marriage. And it's also a school. All of these relationships on this earth are a school. Why? The school is to teach you how to love, because eternity is about love. First Corinthians 13 says that, you know, if there's tongues, they're going to fail and cease. If there's gifts, they're going to cease. If there's knowledge, it's going to cease all the things that we think our life is about. First Corinthians 13 says it's all going to cease. But there's three things that will remain and won't cease. Faith and hope and love. Those are going to be in eternity. But the greatest of all the things that remain, they're going to go into eternity, is love. So God's point on earth with you and I is, Vic, did you get on this earth? Did you go through the five relationships? Did you learn how to love? Because that's what's carried into eternity. Because all of these relationships on this earth are temporary. Jesus said that actually there won't be marriage in heaven. You know, the Sadducees were trying to trick Jesus with the seven guys that married the same woman because they all died and didn't have kids. And he's like, you don't understand. There's no marriage in eternity. So marriage being a child, being a spouse, being a friend, being a sibling, being a parent. These five relationships are temporary, but they're to teach us to love. So can I tell you, marriage is the deepest and most intimate way where we can probably learn how to love. It's. It's unique and it's this mystery of Christ and the church. There's an invitation to all believers to not just be saved, to not just be friends, but to actually be the bride of Christ. I don't. I don't believe that every Christian actually attains that. I don't believe every Christian attains friendship with God. And I don't believe every Christian becomes the bride of Christ. But the bride is actually the invitation of Jesus, his whole message. He actually invited people not just into salvation. Jesus did not preach the gospel of salvation. He very briefly mentions it, but he preached the gospel of the kingdom to enter into the kingdom. I believe that. That being the bride is actually entering the kingdom. So it's very interesting concept. A few years ago, I preached on it. I've been writing a book on it. But I think there's an invitation for us to have more than just faith in God. He calls us to be his disciples. That's more than a believer, because a disciple. There's requirements for discipleship. There's like 11 of them. Unless you hate your father and mother, give up your life, do all these things, you cannot be my disciple. Cannot be my disciple is different than cannot be saved, right? So God is inviting believers into more relationships. Why? Because you can live on this earth and just die as a child and never learn siblings or, or friends, never step into marriage, never step into being a parent. Right? You can be just a friend or then you can actually graduate and be more than a friend. Right? You start with my wife. I'm so glad I married her. But we started out as friends. But I'm so glad we graduated to more than friends. And we. She became my wife. And I'm so glad that beyond her being my wife, we graduated into the next level of relationship. We became parents. That changed our life. I tell you, all of it's a school to teach us to love. So I want to talk about love, loving, you know, because it's all. It all grows from a child. First you be loved, you know, from a sibling. You learn to share your toys and your space. To a friend. You choose someone. They didn't choose you, you choose them right in one sense. And then you choose someone to marry, and then you choose to have children. So there's this progression of relationships that. So beautiful. And it's meant to be God's school. Key passage I want to focus on today is 1st Peter 3, 1 9. We may or may not go through all of it, but there's so much there because the first, I think seven verses talk about wives, so wives. And then the next couple verses talk about so husbands. And so Peter is addressing wives and addressing husbands. And really powerful. A lot to unpack. They're really, really good theologically and tools for good relationships. But I want to go beyond just, you know, the theological and scriptural pro. I actually today primarily want to focus on some practical tools that I want to put in your hand so that you can have incredible relationships. Are you here for this journey? Let's go on this journey together. Amen. I hope that you're going to refer back to this message, these notes, some of these tools, because sometimes we hear a lot of truth, but we don't practice, practice a lot of truth. And we're wondering why our. Our relationships are still hurting. Can I tell you the greatest pain that you will experience on this earth is actually relational pain. More than physical pain, more than financial pain, you'll experience relational pain. The deepest traumas that we experience are actually relational pain or broken relationships. And I kind of tell you one of the things that exposes how healthy we are as individuals is how much relational brokenness do we still have in our life? Are we still getting triggered and angry and frustrated and yelling and leaving and putting up walls and all that stuff, all that relational friction that we experience in life? You know what? It's from unhealed brokenness in our own life, from relational pain. But when you get healed and whole Relationships become so awesome when you become love, relationships become so awesome. Do you that. That Jesus, he had relationships and they were really awesome. And when you're really healthy, like Jesus on the earth, you're going to have really healthy relationships. And then those that don't want to have the healthy relationships, they just basically kind of excuse themselves from access to you. You know, the ones that were really broken, the religious ones, they kept trying to have access to Jesus, but he was so healthy that they, they didn't find much in common. The broken and the healed don't find much in common, you know, and so the healthier you get, the healthier your relationships will be. And one of the signs that we need to grow up into more maturity and health. This year, one of our focuses as a, as a church is that we would grow up into the fullness of Christ. Galatians 3 or 4. I believe that Paul says, I labor again for Christ to be formed in you. I'm in labor with you. I'm so. Children, I'm in labor with you. Until Christ has formed you. Can I tell you that it's time for us as, as believers to. To grow up, to not just be children, not just be siblings, to be friends, to be the bride of Christ, to. To disciple others. Like that parenting type of relationship where we not only live for ourselves, now we live for somebody else. It's time for us to grow up. Amen. And so that's what we're going to talk about in this. So. So I want to say this, that great relationships are not found. They're formed. Great friendships are not found. They're formed. Great marriages are not found. They're formed. Great community is not found. It's formed. A lot of people come to our church or any other church, and they say, you know, this place. They just don't have really good community. They don't do, you know, like, no one's reaching out to me. No. No one's giving me anything. No one's doing this. No one. No one. No one. No one. And they're a victim to bad community. Can I tell you, good community is never found. No matter how many churches you jump to, you're going to feel the exact same pain because of relational brokenness in your own life, because it's not found. It's formed. Maybe the table that you're looking to sit at is the table you need to form and invite people to. Amen. Because sometimes we're like, I'm a victim. No one likes me. No one wants to be around me, no one wants to talk to me. Well, be a friend, right? To have friends, you have to be a friend. That, that's the, that's the invitation in scripture. But sometimes we're looking for it to be made for us, you know, you know, you know, you know what? You know what? That is childishness. Because a child, they can't get anything for themselves. Everything has to be given to them. So only a child will feel like, well, no one's enough for me. But when you grow up and you're like, hey, you know what? I'm old enough. I have siblings. I've learned how to do this thing. I'm gonna go find my own friends. Like my daughter Emmy. She's five. And every single day she asks for a friend to come over. Dad, right now, text Andrea's mom, tell her, can she come over? Dad, did you text her? What did she say? Show me the message. What did she say? Can she come over? Right? So she's in this age where she's maturing. She learned how to be loved, she's learning how to interact with her sibling. They're figuring it out, they're doing better. But now she wants her own friends, right? So it's time for us to grow up. And what is she doing? She is pursuing, suing her own friends. She's not a victim to like, there's no community, no one wants to be my friend. She's gonna go get them. We gotta learn from our kids sometimes. Go get what you want. And what does she do? Tell her to come over to my house. So the table that she is wanting to sit at, she's forming at five years old. Wow. Come on. It's time for us to step up a little bit, folks. My five year old is teaching me some things about community. Amen. So if you're lonely, I promise you it's not because your community doesn't offer community. It's maybe because the relational brokenness in your life is causing lenses, walls, things where you feel still a victim to the pain. But can I tell you, there's hope you can be healed from that. I, I've been, I've been realizing that in my life, there's, there's been relational pain that has, that has, has caused me a lot of pain in my life. And I didn't know about it. I mean, I went on my. In 2025, January 2025, Lord started to speak to me. I went to this multi day inner healing retreat thing that my wife wanted to go to. And the theme like, you know, this leader of it, she was like, hey, the theme of your life is rejection. Like, are you going to deal with that? I'm like, nah, I'm good. Like, I've preached on rejection to everyone. I'm good. Like, cute, but I don't know, you know. And then, you know, another one of my friends, you know, in. In May is like, hey, man, how are you doing? You can tell by that point I was like, you know, pretty anxious. Like, I was dealing with, you know, burnout, really, for the last few years. So I went into my sabbatical because I was really burnt out. But when you don't deal with burnout, it turns into depression. When you don't deal with depression, turns into anxiety. You don't deal with anxiety, turns into insomnia. And so that's where I was by the end of July. And so it was like, man, I'm crashing because I don't know how to have good boundaries and health relationally. So, like, I. I need to go on sabbatical. And so. But what the Lord invited me to is like, hey, Vic, let's deal with the root of all this rejection, because your rejection is not allowing you to be healthy. And so you're allowing yourself to run 100 miles an hour when you're actually not designed to run that way. And as a runner the last five years, I should have known that, like, I can't sprint the marathon. I will blow up, you know, but that's what I was doing, because life is a marathon. But I was sprinting it because of the pain of rejection. I didn't want to hurt people. I didn't want to disappoint people. So I'm saying yes to everyone and everything, but I wasn't having health, right? And so the Lord's like, hey, can we deal with your rejection in January 25th? I'm like, I'll put that on the shelf. It doesn't make sense, doesn't resonate, you know? And then in May, Lord's like, through my friend, like, hey, so you're. You don't. You don't really seem okay, Vic. Like, he's like, I feel like the Lord's saying this is connected to rejection. I'm like, let's put that on the shelf. I don't really know, you know? And then in July, another person was like, hey, I've been praying for you. I know that you've been going through a lot, just emotionally anxiety and insomnia and all this stuff. Like, man, I just been praying for the last two weeks for you. And the Lord just saying, like, he wants to deal with the rejection. I'm like, ah, three strikes, I'm out. I better deal with this stuff. Anyways, I say this to say that the pain that I had in my childhood, you know, that pain started to knock on my door in my 20s. Like, hey, hello. Kind of ignored me. Hello, I'm here. You know? And then in my 30s, I started, like, pounding the door. I was like, yo, it started disrupting my life. And I had some moments in my life where the pain disrupted me to the point where it's like, I did some really, like, ugly things, even in public, in front of, like, even leaders in this church, like, at a men's retreat in, like, three years ago. I just, like. I got so triggered by the pain that I had no clue where it was coming from. I just, like, I, like, kicked this guy, one of my. One of my guys. It's, like, over a game with. With Bazooka blasters. It's like. And I was like, what is wrong with me? How did I get here? I had no clue. Well, there was undet with pain that's pounding my door in my 30s, you know? And then a year later, on a rafting trip with our team. And again, like, you know, I. I didn't know that there was this, like, unaddressed pain, Wasn't even a memory. All of a sudden, like, I get into this moment, I feel attacked. All this. And I'm all of a sudden, like, people are trying to, like, throw me off the raft for fun, but I'm like, they're going to kill me. I have to protect myself. So I'm, like, punching them, trying to drown them, hurting them, yelling at them. It's like, do you know how I was like, okay, I got to turn my resignation and, like, I can never leave ever again. Like, I'm done. And I just sat with the Lord and I just wept. I was like, lord, what is wrong with me? Where did this come from? I just sat with him. I'm like, God, I'm not leaving my room until you show me what the heck is wrong with me. I can't lead like this because your pain will pound your door down in your 30s, or it'll pound on your door in your 30s if you don't deal with it. And so the Lord, like, flashed me back to some moments in my life where I actually had, like, some trauma and I had no clue. I mean, I'm a Christian kid, Christian family, love, God, my Whole life in church since I was a kid. My dad's a pastor. Like, what trauma? Vic, you're good. You know, and the Lord flashes me back to this moment, and, like, specifically, like in middle school and where I got ganged up on and got strapped to a bed, this and that. And so God's like, this is where that's coming from. Are you ready to deal with that? And I didn't know how to deal with it. So I just, you know, you move on. And now I'm in my 40s, and it's like, at that point on, your unhealed pain will actually break the door down and tear your life apart. So, like, because God's like, hey, Vic, let's talk about this. Let's talk about this. I'm like, sure, let's talk about it. I just don't know what to do, right? So now I'm in my 40s, and now I'm actually going on the journey of dealing with the relational stuff that has been broken in my life since I was actually really young, you know, and, you know, if I told you, kind of just, you know, my story, an immigrant didn't know English, you know, didn't speak the language, was in special education classes. There was a lot of stuff that made me feel like I am so dumb and no one should ever be my friend. That was like the theme of my childhood. But then by the time you get in high school, you know, your body gets better and you're, you know, I'm a physically an athlete and I start getting good at school. So now I would go from the bottom of my class to the top of my class, and all of a sudden it's like, life is good. Everything's fixed. Let's just close the door on everything that happened in middle school and before. And now I'm awesome. I'm going to go into ministry, learn, love people. But all that stuff pre middle school did not just magically go away because I got saved. Love Jesus, pray and fast. And all that stuff. All that stuff was sitting there knocking, pounding, and then kicking my door down and saying, like, let's deal with this, you know? And so this is the journey I've been on, and I'm. I'm on it. And I'm. I'm actually now putting in the work to get healthy because I realized if I want to have healthy relationships in my life, not like, kick my friend over a game, you know, or try to drown my friend over, you know, a rafting trip, if I don't Want to do that, then maybe I have to deal with where, how I got here. Amen. So I'm going on this journey and I want us to understand that your relational health will be connected with. How are you going to deal with, with the relational pain that has been happening in your life. Praise God. This is not really the intention of the direction of my, my thing, but this, that was my introduction. Are you doing okay? One thing I like to do is vulnerability because no one can relate to being perfect, but people can relate to, to being on a journey. So I want to invite you to the journey. Thank you. I love you too. Yeah. Marriage relationship is really a covenant relationship. You can have friendships that are covenant friendships. Not all friendships are covenant friendships, but you can actually have covenant friendships. Really important. But then you can go beyond a covenant friendship, friendship, and you can actually have a covenant called marriage. So marriage is a covenant different from a contract, because a contract, you make a contract with someone because there's gonna be a mutual benefit. And as long as it continues to benefit you, you're in that contract. When that contract stops benefiting you, you try to get out of that contract. But a marriage is a covenant, and it's not based on whether you are going to be benefited or not. You're just saying, you know what, I choose you. This is holy. I love you and I will pursue you whether you pursue me or not. That's covenant. And actually God models that with us, his children. He pursues us over and over again. And the children of God rebel, cheat on him over and over again. And he's just like, don't you know that I'm going to keep pursuing you? And so much so that he. He calls one of his prophets, Hosea, and he says, hosea, I want you to go marry a prostitute. Get behind me, Satan. No, this is the Lord. This is the Lord. Hosea, go marry prostitute. Demons come out. You know. No, this is God. Hosea, do that. Why in the world would you would I do that, God? Because I want, I want Israel to see in an example what I've been doing my whole life with you. Go and marry a prostitute. She's going to continue cheating on you, but go make a covenant with her and pursue her. And pursue her and wash her with your words and heal her trauma and pain and, and, and, and restore her. Your love will heal her. Hosea, go marry Gomer the prostitute. And so he does. Why? Because this is what God has done for us, not a contract with you and I. It's a covenant. Covenant love. It's time for us to learn covenant love, not convenience. A lot of marriages are based on, you scratch my back, I scratch yours. A lot of people come into marriage thinking it's 50. 50. You bring 50 or bring 50. That'll work. That's actually a contract. A covenant's like, I'm going to bring all of myself. I. I want all of you, but I'm not. That's not going to destroy my world. If you don't bring all of you, I'm going to give all of me, period. That's what God has done for us. I give all of myself to you. Wow. So my first point is that marriage is built by covenant. My second point is that marriage is broken by selfishness. The greatest thing that will destroy your relationships is selfishness. Whether it's marriage, whether you're single, no shame in the game. Although, quickly repent of that condition and move along. If you're an adult and you're single, I'm going to say something really strong to you. If you are past the age of 23 and you're single, consider if you're single not because of God's call on your life, but because of the brokenness in your life, you can blame it on words, prophecies, revelations. You can blame it on whatever you want. But consider because God did not make man to be alone. So if you are an adult, you're still alone. It might be strong. You might have to forgive me for this. But could it be that, well, God has not led me to. God has not given me. Well, God. God doesn't really force people into something that's free will. Could it be that it's not God that's the problem? Could it be some relationship brokenness, bad expectations, false examples, things that you need to heal from? Because a healed person, a healthy person, will naturally progress into wanting to get married. So if the desire for marriage is broken, maybe there's something else that's actually broken because the desire is for. Marriage is for. From God. So what if we dealt with the pain in our life that's masking us and then we're spiritualizing why we're still single. Okay, that was a lot. I don't know. I'm gonna submit that to you. I might be wrong. I'm gonna just submit that to you to chew on. Okay. Praise God, I am for marriage. The only regret I had is that I did not get married sooner. I got married at 23. That's why I use the number 23, because I just if you're 23, get married, you know, like me. Because if I would have said, like, 22, then I would have had to confront myself a little bit. Okay, my wife was 22, I was 23, so she's better than I. But marriage is meant to teach you about selflessness, because a good marriage is grown by love and it's destroyed by selfishness. First Corinthians 13 talks about love. It has. It has, I think, 16 statements about love. Two of them are what love is and the rest are what love is not. Love is patient. Love is kind. Now, if you just knew what it was and you didn't know what it was, not if you just did those two things, 95 of your problems in your marriage would never exist if you were always patient, always kind. You don't even have to know what it's not. Just always be patient and always be kind. You're gonna be good mostly, you know, and then one of the 14 things that love is not. I think there's 14 or maybe there's 12, but I forget the number. But it says this. It's in verse five. It says, love does not seek its own benefit, or it's not self seeking. Can I tell you one of the greatest things that will destroy relationship? Whether that's a friendship, whether that's a sibling relationship, whether that's, you know, a parenting relationship, whether that's a marriage relationship, is selfishness. Selfishness will do that. Marriage is a school of learning how to love. Philippians 2, 3, 5 says, do nothing from selfishness. Do nothing from selfishness, Instead humility. That's the Bible's recipe for successful relationships. Do nothing from selfishness, instead humility. Do you know where selfishness comes from? Selfishness is rooted in the flesh. And the flesh is something that is not our identity. As. As new believers, as sorry, as new creations in Christ. You have been born again. You have been infused with the incorruptible seed. But guess what? It's in seed form and it must grow. And guess what? So if. If my body is like a circle, who I am is like a circle. When I'm born again, there's a lot of maybe, like wickedness, darkness, sin, stuff that, you know, was in my life, but all of a sudden there's a. A new seed right there. Bam. Of righteousness, the incorruptible seed. But a seed will stay seed unless it grows. So your job is to partner with God and grow up. And as that seed grows, it pushes away all that darkness. All that thing is called flesh. And the more that seed grows into maturity, the full measure of the statue of Christ, the more the flesh is not there. So the flesh is what needs to be done away with. And the flesh pretty much by definition is not body. Because the word flesh in Greek is sarks. The word body in Greek is soma. So the body is not bad. Your body is a gift from God. Jesus had a body, but he didn't operate under the flesh. Flesh is basically fueled by selfishness. So it's basically you, but without God. Fully independent, fully. I don't need God. It's about me. Self, self, self, self. That's. That's a good definition of flesh. I have a deeper one. It's in the notes. You can check it out. Really good. But selfishness is an expression of flesh. [00:27:12] Speaker A: And. [00:27:12] Speaker B: And actually that's the thing that destroys relationships. Flesh kills marriages and relationships. And you know what the thing that kills flesh is? What's that? Cross. The cross? Yeah. That's a good one. Take up your cross. You know what kills that? Fasting is a good one. Fasting kills flesh. Pretty good. Maybe you wonder why. You know, your relationships are broken. I. Dr. Vic's gonna prescribe something to you. Fast twice a week. Like the early church. That's what they did for like a few hundred years. Fasted twice a week. Wow. Because we got really big fleshes that need, that are. That are hungry and they'll never be filled and they'll break all your relationships. Okay, my last section of these notes. This is where I really wanted to focus on. Got a little distracted. Is. Marriage is built by regular rhythms. Marriage is not a decision. It's not a moment, but it's a. It's rhythms. Can I tell you that all relationships are built by rhythms. So if you're gonna have good friendships, you're gonna have rhythms to that friendship. If you're gonna have a good sibling that you have a relationship with, you're gonna have rhythms to your communication, to your. All that stuff. Right. If you're going to be a good parent, you're gonna have a good rhythm with your children. If you're gonna be a good spouse, you're going to have rhythms. Rhythms of grace. If you're going to be a. Have a good relationship with God, guess what? Rhythms. Not a moment, not a once a year, not a once a week at church. Rhythms of grace will change your life. Amen. There's six pillars of a relationship, and this is really important. There's actually a book called Six Pillars of Relationship. I have A link to it there. It's by the. The. Alyssa and Tony D. Lorenzo highly recommend it, but it talks about six pillars. I'll give them to you because sometimes we think that, oh, I'm good in three pillars, but actually, you will fall to your weakest pillars. A lot of relationships have a lot of things, right? And then some things that they've ignored. So emotional intimacy. You won't have a good marriage unless you have emotional intimacy. I'd actually put that one as, I don't know, maybe first, because I know a lot of relationships have a spiritual intimacy, but, man, they just kill each other. You know, Emotional intimacy will probably be something that will create the biggest difference in a broken relationship. Emotional intimacy, that means you. You openly share your feelings. You openly share. You're. You're honest with each other. You're 100% honest about how you feel. Because a feeling is not an accusation. A feeling is just an indicator light. So. And then you don't turn your feelings into an accusation. That's a huge problem. Hey, I felt really hurt. You're rude, you know, like, you did this. Okay, that's not what you do. Instead, I feel because feelings are real, you can't change them. You can't choose them addressing how you feel. And then, okay, where did this come from? Did it come from someone else or actually, is it from me? Oftentimes you'll find that the feelings you have. No one can make you have a feeling, including God. You, feelings are what you're living with because of what you're cultivating. But those are really important. But emotional intimacy, I didn't know that. When I've been married for 18 years in March. This. This year. This March, you know, a couple weeks ago, I celebrated 18 years. It's actually one day apart from Roman's anniversary. He's a year ahead of me. They celebrated 19 years. For the first 15 years of my marriage, I did not speak the language of emotional intimacy. I didn't know how to speak it. I knew. So I became an extremely good question asker because whenever my wife was like, hey, babe, so how are you doing? You know, she would, like, open up all this stuff. Her pain, her fears, her. All this stuff. I'm like, wow, this is awesome. Like, I really enjoy when you open up to me. And she's like, so how are you doing? Good, Fine. Four letter F word that breaks every marriage. I'm fine. F, I, N, E. What is it? Frustrated. What? Frustrated, insecure, Neurotic. Emotional. Fine, you know, thank you. That's good. I've heard that. And so she's like, well, tell me more. Well, what do you mean? Like, I'll tell you what I did today. So I woke up, that was good. And then, you know, I, I prayed and then I went to school and then I did this. So like, so yeah. So like, let's talk about the kids. Like, how are the kids? Are we doing good with that? Awesome. So I knew how to talk about managing life and tasks, but I didn't know how to open my heart up. I didn't know that vulnerability there. So every time she was asking me like, babe, like, I want more, I'm like, I'm really nervous. I don't know how to give you more. Like, I just. She was asking me to speak Chinese, but I didn't know any Chinese words because she was speaking Chinese fluently to just open up her heart to me. And I loved it. It sounded awesome, but I didn't know how to speak it back. So about three years ago, I finally went on a journey of emotional health. It's changing my life. I'm a better husband, I'm a better parent, I'm a better friend. Friend. You know, I, I'm realizing where, you know, some of this came from, but emotional, right? Another thing, another pillar of, of relationships is physical intimacy. Now this is not sexual, this is physical. This is non sexual contact. So like hugs, holding hands, you know, the things that would be normal in, in a family, right? So there's physical intimacy, which is actually really important for a marriage. Then there's recreational intimacy there. That means we're going to go do trips, we're going to have fun together, we're going to go on hikes together, walk together, whatever you do. Then you can have directional intimacy. In the book it's called financial, but better it's directional because it deals not just with finances, but really the vision of your family. Vision, plans, direction, finances. A lot of, you know, the two pillars that destroy relationships the most are the sexual one and the financial one. Those two reasons most marriages struggle over and they need a lot of help with those. So the fifth one is, is sexual or romantic intimacy. Very important aspect of, of, of, of covenant. The enemy. I mean it's so important that the, the, the, the enemy will try to get you to be sexually intimate before you're married. That is his top goal for you, is for you to have sexual experiences before you're married. You know why? Because there's no way to destroy your soul. Soul deeper and more and longer than that the deepest way to damage a human is sexual experiences before marriage. And then as soon as you're married, he flips the script and says, I will do everything to prevent you from being sexually intimate. Because now that's where covenant bonding, chemicals, everything is formed. Like, God designed this to like, literally bond you, help you restore your soul. Soul. There's nothing more restorative than physical intimacy. So the enemy will do everything to a generation before they're married to have sexualized experiences, abusive experiences, wrong experiences, weird experiences, because it will trash your soul like nothing else in this world. First Corinthians 6 says that, says this, that no other sin is so severe against the body, but sexual sin is against the body. And it's actually in a different category. It's more destructive than others. Sexual intimacy in marriage, the devil fights against it. So important. This is where a lot of relationships struggle. And then spiritual intimacy. This is where you actually pray out loud together. That takes intimacy. A lot of couples do not know how to pray a lot together. There's a lot of shame there. There's a lot of insecurity there. They don't pray together out loud over each other. Not like, hey, I'm praying for you. No, no. Pray out loud. Let them hear you pray over them. Pray out loud together. Pray in the spirit together. Right? Do read. Read scripture together. Do. Do devotions together. Go to church together. Worship together. Encounter the Lord together. Spiritual intimacy. Okay, so six forms of intimacy. Real quickly hit those. But I wanted. Maybe I'll continue this next week. I don't know. But I wanted to get to the practical. Yes, but they're all in the notes. So download the notes. But I think, number one, if I could recommend that has changed my relationship, marriage, and actually even my friendships, because again, these principles apply across all relationships is daily emotional connection with my wife. Can I Encourage you take 15 minutes every single day? Just 15 minutes. I mean, there's science behind this. They actually say that you can even start with 10. They say that if you spend 10 minutes a day with every child face to face, about 80 to 90% of behavioral issues go away. If you do face to face time with each child individually and no one else is welcome into that space during that 10 minutes. Not your spouse, not a sibling. It's whatever they want for 10 minutes. You and them intentional face to face. [00:35:55] Speaker A: Wow. [00:35:56] Speaker B: FaceTime changes kids. It's kind of like how God created us. FaceTime changes his kids. What if we just did? Even 10 minute science shows will reduce 80 to 90% of all bad behavior. FaceTime. Right? What is it? Emotionally connecting with your kid over what they want to connect with. Every season is different. 10 minutes a day. So if you have 10 kids, it's 100 minutes, you know, then you better organize your life really well. And then your spouse, give them a little more than what you give your kids. Give them 15 minutes, give them 150% of that, you know, give them 15 minutes and say, hey, this is not a time for us to just talk about business. It's not a time for us to talk about operations, family management, kids, finances. Hey, how is your heart? What's been heavy for you today? How can I pray great for you? I have some questions that you can ask. I didn't know those hard questions before. What's going on inside of you? What's been heavy? What's been giving you life today? Emotional connection. I'm telling you, with your friends, with your kids, with your spouse, game changer. Daily. Emotional connection. Prioritize it. Proximity does not mean intimacy. Just because you sleep in the same bed, share a house, share a car, share a meal does not mean intimacy. Proximity does not equal intimacy. Emotional intimacy will start to feel like intimacy if you don't know how to express your emotions. One of the tools that you started using three years ago, which taught me emotional intimacy was a wheel of emotions. I picked these seven. There was these seven emotions. I have them in, in the notes. And what I started to do is like, hey, I'm going to tell you which of these emotions I felt today. Anger. Did I feel angry today? Yeah, you know, that was like every day, you know, because I didn't realize that my rejection led to anger. I actually never had an anger problem. I just had unhealed pain problem. So now I'm actually going after that every single week. I have a spirit filled Holy Ghost, incredible Christian counselor that helps me go after the pain. Pain. So that the symptom called anger isn't in my life anymore. Yay. So I've been doing that work since the beginning of January and it is so awesome. I. My life is changing. Thank you, Lord. I thought my whole life I need to pray against anger. No, I need to heal the pain of that. You know, pre teen kid. The man went through some serious craziness. Back to this in emotions, wheel, anger, shame, fear. You know, did I feel this today? Let me tell you about that moment because it helped turn on the emotional connection. When you talk about what you felt, not just what you did, right? So that, that's point one There's a lot of good scriptures and stuff in there. Check them out. Number two, forgive and repair conflict quickly. Really practical tip. The worship team is going to come up. We're going to start worshiping here. I'm going to invite you to just respond to God, whatever he tells you to do. We're going to go on a journey, though. I mean, I've been going on a journey. I think we're going to go on a journey as a church to actually be healthier this year. We're going to be whole. We're going to be more like Jesus. We're going to be formed into his image. Our relationships will be healthier. Our parenting, our children will be healthier. We're going to be healthy this year. This is a year for us to grow up into who we are in Christ. New creation. Husbands and wives that love each other, that don't tolerate each other, that have to partner together really, until their kids are out of the house. But really there's no relationship there. All too common in marriage. Christian marriages, they're basically just partners in parenting, but they've lost intimacy a long time ago. But forgive and repair conflict quickly. You know that forgiveness is a huge key of healing. The first step of any healing is forgiveness. And then the second step is go on a healing journey. Forgiveness is a decision that you make. Sometimes you need to make it over and over and over again, but forgiveness allows. Now, the second thing, which is healing. You will never have healing unless you have forgiveness first. That's why forgiveness is a command in Scripture. You've been forgiven, you must forgive. It's in the notes. Check out the scriptures over and over again. The Lord teaches us, we must forgive. Colossians 3. And then. So when you forgive now, you can't forgive something that you're unaware of. So one of the things that you have to do is you have to get awareness. One of the problems is that we stay stuck because we're unaware of what's broken. I stayed stuck in anger because I was unaware of what was broken. I stayed stuck in outbursts of, like, crazy trauma being triggered. You know, like at the men's retreat a few years ago and at the rafting trip a couple years ago. Why? Because I didn't know what was broken. And until I was like, lord, I am not leaving my room until you tell me what's broken. He's like, that's easy. Brought me back to a moment I didn't even. I wasn't consciously aware of it, had never remembered that story. God's like, let me, let me make you aware of what you're, of what's happening in your life, you know, and then he wanted to heal it, but I didn't know how he heals it. So now I'm on this journey of like letting the Lord heal me. Because healing actually doesn't require someone else. It requires me and the Lord to go minister to that little boy. Me and the Lord can do that. Because now I'm a full grown man and I can love that boy. I know how to love people. People come up to me with their trauma and pain. I know how to weep with them, I know how to hug them, I know how to speak life over them. And God Lord's like, Zeke, will you do that first for, for Vic? Will you do that for the, for the 12 year old boy that was, you know, tied to a bed naked and left there? You know, will you do that for him? Because that boy never got seen or loved or validated. Actually, you just forgot that memory because it was so traumatic. Like, will you go and do that for him? Because you're really good at doing that for my kids. Will you go do that for my kid? I was like, teach me, Lord. And it's working. I'm finally getting healed because me and the Lord can go love whatever pain that I've gone through in my life. I don't need my wife to go and love it. I don't need my counselor to love it. I need me and the Lord to go love that we're not a victim to someone loving us. You and the Lord, you can be healed, right? You can be healed. Heal from your past trauma and pain. I'm telling you, unhealed pain is causing all of your relational brokenness. If there's any behavior you don't like in your life, I bet you it might be connected to some unhealed pain in your life. I don't know. I'm submitting that to you. Maybe that's way too simplistic. I don't know. But check it out. Ask the Lord, get some awareness and then go into some repentance, get into some community, maybe do some counseling. I mean, it's changing my life, you know, But yeah, rhythms. We're gonna, we're to finish with this rhythms. What if we practiced honesty all the time about our feelings? What if every single week you made it non negotiable, it's on your schedule, you sat with your spouse and say, hey, is there anything that made you even 1% uncomfortable this week? Me, our kids at work, anything. Did you experience something that made you uncomfortable? Let's talk about it. I'm telling you what. You're going to build a really strong, healthy marriage. Schedule weekly dates, be religious about it, get it on the calendar. But don't just show up and talk about the weather or activities of the family. Actually talk about one another. Your hearts connect right in here. I have a seven day marriage challenge. It just has five things. What if a takeaway from this message was, I'm gonna do a seven day marriage challenge. Every day I'm gonna do these five things and they're very short, very easy. Anyone can do it. You can start here, but there's a seven day marriage challenge. Pray together out loud for five minutes a day. Ask one heart level emotional connection question. Speak one encouragement over the person out loud. Schedule one time together that week to go on a 20 to 30 minute walk to practice five out of the six pillars of intimacy. You know, the sexual one, maybe don't do that on the walk. Do that one after. Come and then number five, like resolve one lingering tension you've been avoiding to bring up. There's been this tension in your heart. You don't want to bring it up, but you're gonna be like, you know what? This week I'm gonna bring it up and we're gonna, we're gonna go after it. I included in these notes some like fair fighting rules to help you navigate conversations. If you feel like all your conversations end in fireworks in a bad way, print out the fair fighting rules. There's like seven of them. And only communicate through those. It'll help you. It's a tool I started using. I have it, I have it in a few places on my electronics so that I always remember, this is how I'm going to communicate in a healthy way. Because I used to communicate in an unhealthy way. Now I want to be healthy. So I give you guys some tools there, but, all right, let's stand to our feet and Lord, thank you that you want to upgrade our relationships this year in 2026. Maybe you've been divorced. Maybe you have some pain. Maybe you're a man that a man that was at a men's retreat and you really opened up some deep stuff. But you don't know how to move past it. It's time to get some community and put in the work. Your marriage has a high success rate. If you choose to make it a covenant that you'll pursue the power of a prayer, Praying wife will change A man. It worked for me. The power of a praying husband will change a woman. The power of love will wash over them like Hosea washed over Gomer, that prostitute, until she was restored and clean and whole. A whole person will make someone whole. A healed person will heal someone. A hurt person will hurt someone. So, Lord, we just invite you. What are you speaking to today? What's a practical thing, Holy Spirit, that you want us to do? From what we've heard today, we ask that you would take us on a journey, Holy Spirit, we yield to you. We yield to you. We yield to you. Lord Father us. Make us aware, God, of brokenness that we're not aware of and give us the tools and the. And the. And the boldness to go after it. Lord, in Jesus name, let's worship and let's respond to God accordingly. Let's just take a moment, maybe ask the Lord, as the team is worshiping, ask the Lord, Lord, how do you want me to respond? What do you want me to do? What do you want me to know, God, and what do you want me to do? [00:46:51] Speaker A: This is my desire. This is my desire to honor you. I worship you. All I have within you. I give you praise. Know that I adore is in you, holy worthy Lord. I give you my heart, I give you my soul. I live for you every breath that I take, every moment I'm awake. [00:48:21] Speaker B: I just want to invite our ministry team up here. Unless you as a ministry team person need ministry, then don't come up. But if you're ready to minister, you just come up here and just kind of invite you to respond. Maybe you have had some pain in relationships. Maybe it's from your marriage, maybe it's from a divorce, maybe it's from you're single and actually you have pain from relationships that didn't work out. And the Lord wants to touch you. He wants to heal you, he wants to minister to you. Today, would you let him love you? Today? Would you let him love you? Would you let him touch you? Would you let him touch that place of pain that has caused brokenness in your relationships? You don't want it. It's not who you are. You're a good man of God, you're a good woman of God, you're a good daughter, you're a good son. And you hate what you do. Like Romans 7 says, like, I hate this stuff, but I do it. Paul felt that way. And there's stuff that you're doing that's make. That's caused you a lot of shame. You feel shame even how much you, how much resentment you have towards the relationships in your life. There's. There's walls up, there's resentment. There's been isolation, but you're gonna break up with that today. You're gonna break up with isolation, you're gonna break up with rejection, you're gonna break up with past pain. You're gonna break up with self destruction, self abuse, self hatred. If you want to do that, come on. We just want to welcome you to come and just be loved by God by some of our leaders today. Let's just respond to the Lord if he's. Even if you don't know why you're coming up, but there's something the Lord's like, I want to deal with some stuff. Would you just respond in humility, open up ourselves to God and say, God, help me, I need you, I need you, I need you, I need you, I need you, God. We need you, God. We need you, God. Thank you for joining Kingdom Movement online. I pray and hope that that sermon impacted you deeply. I would love if you shared this with a few friends and family. And before you go, don't forget to subscribe. See you next week.