Slide 1
“How is your beloved better than others,
    most beautiful of women?
How is your beloved better than others,
    that you so charge us?”
“My beloved is radiant and ruddy,
    outstanding among ten thousand.”
Song of Songs 5:9-10

Slide 2
1. Conserve Your energy

Slide 3
“Above all else, guard your heart, for it is the wellspring of life” Prov. 4:23

Slide 4
2. Cherish is Given, Not Earned

Slide 5
“He does not treat us as our sins deserve or repay us according to our iniquities” Psalm 103:10

Slide 6
“We all stumble in many ways” James 3:2

Slide 7
Classics:
The closer you get to God, the more convicted you become of your own sinfulness and the more compassion you have for the sins of others

Slide 8
“Live a life worthy of the calling you have received. Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love. Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace.” Ephesians 4:1-3

Slide 9
Cherishing an imperfect spouse trains your mind to think like the GOSPEL
“While we were still sinners, Christ died for us”

Slide 10
3. Give your spouse the benefit of the doubt

1 Cor. 13:7
Love “believes all things”
A trustful disposition that doesn’t immediately jump to negative conclusions

Slide 11
Not naïve, BUT
– Gives the benefit of the doubt
– Assumes the best
– Is slow to distrust or judge harshly

Slide 12
“Relational Generosity”

Slide 13
The STAND method

Slide 14
4. Recognize Royalty

Slide 15
“But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s special possession, so that you may declare the praises of Him who called you out of darkness into His wonderful light” 1 Peter 2:9

Slide 16
“You husbands in the same way, live with your wives in an understanding way…and show her honor as a fellow heir of the grace of life…” 1 Peter 3:7

Slide 17
The Bible calls us to a view of marriage that is not based on the expressed worthiness of our spouse, but is based on reflecting to the world God’s love for us, which gives worth to our spouse

Slide 18
Jan Karon
Come Rain or Come Shine
“So we love, and that is good. We cherish and that is even better.”

Some years ago, about this time of year, I was in Winnipeg, Canada, which I don’t recommend anybody else does. Even in Canada, they call it Winterpeg. And at this time of year, it was so cold. I know it felt cold this morning. Your teeth freeze in Winnipeg. It was amazing. But I, this one time I was glad it was like this because it was so snowy and icy. The guy who was driving me from the convention center, I was speaking back to my hotel, had to go really slow, and he had time to tell me his life story. He started out by saying, Gary, I don’t know if you realize how true everything you say is. What do you mean? He goes, well, I’ve proven it through two marriages. He’d been married twice his first marriage. He says, it was pretty traditional. We had traditional roles.

I love my wife. We thought we had a pretty good marriage. And after 15 years, she became really sick. The last eight months of their marriage, it became terminally. So, and he had to do everything for her. He had to shop, cook, clean, help her dress, because when someone you love is dying, it’s what you do. She died. He was single for four years, fell in love with another woman, and on the day he got married, he said, Gary, I decided to do this. I, I want to treat my second wife. Like I treated my first wife the last eight months of our marriage, and I’ve done everything on my own as a single man for four years. I wanna keep doing all of that. I don’t wanna look at her as a servant. And, and I wanna call her princess to remind myself she deserves to be treated like a princess.

She sadly also contracted a terminal illness after about 12 years and died. Looking back on these two marriages, Terry told me, Gary, my second marriage was so much more fulfilling and even happier for me than my first marriage. Not because my second wife was better than my first. She wasn’t. They, they were kind of the same person when it comes to spiritual maturity and relational pleasantness and all that, that they were about the same. But the difference is that while he sought to love his first wife, he wanted to love and cherish his second wife. And not only made it a better experience for his second wife, but a better experience for him. And that’s what we talked about this weekend. The power of lifting the bar in our marriages from love to love and cherish, and how that can help us create an entirely new climate for our marriages.

Now, cherish is a modern word. It’s even actually kind of an American word that created problems for my Italian publisher. They really wanted to put Cherish into Italian, but it took ’em six months to come up with a way to call it the, the title that they chose because there’s no equivalent word in Italian. They finally chose this. It’s from Song of Songs five nine through 10. How beloved, how is your beloved better than others? Most beautiful of women? How is your beloved better than others that you so charge us? My beloved is radiant and ruddy, outstanding among 10,000. My Italian publisher chose that last line, outstanding among 10,000 to capture what we think of here in this country when we use the word cherish. So let me ask you, those of you who are married is someone rounded up 10,000 people randomly in your orbit, and they ask your spouse, where do you think he or she ranks, in your opinion, are they even in the top a hundred, maybe in the top 10?

Does your spouse feel like you treat them like they are outstanding among 10,000? The answer to that is probably the level to which your spouse feels cherished. I was in a hotel some years ago and had a lot of floors. I was in there first, and then this couple came in. The guy’s wearing a business suit and his wife is with him. I stepped off to the left so they could fit in. So he’s standing right in front of the number panel with all of the floors, and he’s just staring at the numbers. And you could tell he’s just kind of in a brain fog. And so his wife finally says honey, it’s it’s floor, floor nine. He nods, and then it looks like she’d given him a geography test. He’s still just staring at trying to find it. And the snarky part of me wanted to say, Hey, buddy, nine is between eight and 10.

All right? Just find eight, find 10 go right? That would’ve been mean. And, and his wife was much better than me. Instead of looking at me and rolling her eyes, see what I have to live with, she, she grabbed his arm tighter, a sign of affection, she kissed his shoulder and she said, you’re still thinking about that deal, aren’t you? He goes, yeah. She goes, don’t worry. It’s gonna work out. I know it will. And I, as they stepped outta that, this is such a great marriage that she could have made a sarcastic comment about it. She could say, my husband can’t even find nine on an elevator. And said, she thinks the best of him. He’s off doing more important things than finding nine on an elevator panel. And, and it hit me how these little moments in life so impact our marriages. Every moment in life, you’re basically pushing a button in an elevator that has taken you up to the top floor of cherishing each other, or you’re pushing a button that is taking you down to the cellar of contempt.

And what I’m praying will happen this weekend and here this morning, is that we will elevate our expectations for what a Christ honoring marriage would be here at Cherry Hills. And I wanna talk about four ways that we do that to develop a cherishing marriage. If you want this kind of marriage, the first thing you have to do is you’re gonna have to conserve your energy. You’re gonna have to conserve your energy. Proverbs 4 23 says this. Above all else, above all else, guard your heart. It is the wellspring of life. It’s true for our relationship with God. It’s true in our relationship with others. We have a limited amount of thought, energy, time, and focus. And we have to choose. Life is chosen. Your success and fulfillment in life is largely determined by how seriously you take this verse and how much you guard your heart.

I worked with a couple years ago where very successful had two kids, a wonderful couple, attractive couple, but they said, GE, we just, we’re just not connecting. We feel like we’re increasingly getting distant from each other. We don’t know what to do. We need some strategies to, to keep the romance alive. So we started talking about their life, looking at it, this, that, and I became really alarmed ’cause they only spent about three hours a night in bed together. She had a job where she worked nights and weekends. He worked more office hours. They were passing off the kids. They had all of these activities. And then I, I got through how much they were earning. She earned about 325,000 a year. He earned about 175,000. I was just trying to say, trying to get practical. Do you need to earn that much? Oh yeah. They both said, oh, absolutely. To live in the house we live in, to live in the neighborhood we live in, for our kids to go to that school and, and our social set, we that, that’s minimum.

And I, I kind of stepped back and I, I think I scared him a little bit when I said, well, I don’t know that I can help you. Like, what do you mean? I said, I don’t know how you can stay connected if you keep running the schedule. And I think the hard decision you have to make, do you wanna cherish your neighborhood? Do you want to cherish your style of life? Or do you wanna cherish each other? You’re gonna have to choose. You can’t do all three. There’s not enough of you to do that. You see, we act like our marriage is important. We say our marriage is important. Oh, yeah, it’s one of my top priorities. But is it, if you look at our thoughts, if you look at our efforts, do we act like it’s that priority? Cherishing each other does call us to a new level of energy, thought and time for this very reason, and I’ve proven this in my own life, tired people and overly busy people don’t cherish very well tired people.

Judge, criticize and let everyone know how everybody else is letting them down. If you talk, if I listen to you how you’re talking, you’re not encouraging others. You’re not blessing each other. You’re judging people. You’re criticizing each other. Everybody is letting you down. Usually. The problem below that is you’re just tired. You’re trying to do more than you can. To live a life of cherishing our spouse, we have to be focused and realize this is a priority. And make it so. Look, the Olympics are ending this weekend, right? Those athletes are ruthless with their schedules. They put their training at the top, how they sleep, how they eat, socialize, all of that. Certainly the day of an event, their focus entirely on that event. Can I say something that might sound bizarre to you, but I believe it’s true from the bottom of my heart.

A cherishing marriage is better than a gold medal. A gold medal is one moment in time, but a cherishing marriage will feed you every day. It is as worth a ruthless pursuit as getting a gold marriage. It is. I wanna coin a phrase from Dallas Willard and change it a little bit about how we need a ruthless elimination of lesser pursuits. It’s really the success in life. A ruthless elimination of lesser pursuits. We only have so much energy. I became really alarmed a couple weeks ago when I read, I didn’t know this, I was just kind of blind to this. It tells me that 50% of men under the age of 50 have a betting app on their phone. Now, let me just, just put aside the morality of that. I just, I, I, I don’t wanna go there. I just wanna ask the men who are doing that this, do you really think having an app where you’re putting a lot of energy into the, over, under the point spread the injury report?

What’s the weather gonna be like? What is the head-to-head all of that time and energy and thought so that you can lose more money than you win? Because if you still have the app, you’re losing or they expect you to, they have an algorithm. If you start winning, they will eliminate your account. Instead of reserving that time saying, honey, how was your day looking at your kids? You seem distracted worshiping God, meditating on subscription. Do you really think at the end of your life, you are happier trying to beat the spread and connecting with and cherishing your wife? And what really concerns me as a pastor, the statistics of domestic violence following online gambling debts is through the roof. Now, I hope there’s no domestic violence here. We would deal with that seriously here. But maybe it makes you angry. Maybe it makes you frustrated. You’re more focused on the game, and then you’re frustrated. So you’re short with your kids or you yell at your wife, or you just don’t even realize what’s going on in their life.

Is it worth it? Guarding your heart is a ruthless elimination of lesser pursuits. Joy and fulfillment is found in worshiping God and loving our closest family members. We don’t have time for these things that steal our heart above all else, above all else. Proverbs tells us, guard your heart. It is the wellspring of life. The second step in cherishing, we have to recognize that cherish is given not earned. Proverbs 1 0 3 10 says, he does not treat us as our sins deserve or repay us according to our iniquities. Cherishing is based on the gospel message that God doesn’t treat us as we deserve. He treats us in Christ with kindness and compassion. I mentioned this at the conference. You’re not being asked to cherish a perfect person. It would be easy if you were married to the fourth member of the Trinity, but none of us are.

We’re married to somebody according to James three, two, that stumbles. In many ways, they’re not a perfect person. So we need to learn to look at our spouse like God looks at the imperfect us. John Calvin had a phrase that I love, and I know people look at John Calvin differently. We’re not all Calvinists, but I had a seminary professor who took him so seriously. Every time he mentioned Calvin, he would say, John Calvin, who by the way, has the same initials as our Lord, which kinda tells you what he thought of the great reformer. But Calvin said this, once we are in Christ, we’ve surrendered our lives to Christ. We’re trusting him for our salvation. Once that happens, God no longer looks at us like a prosecuting attorney. He looks at us like a physician. He just want to condemn you. He doesn’t wanna ruin you.

He wants to heal you. He’ll convict me of sin and point out my sins ’cause he wants to call me to a better, healthier life. When I was in high school, I was a third of four kids. I didn’t think I mattered. And I tried to use sports to matter. I was on the cross country team, and I had to win. It’s not I wanted, I had to win for my sense of self-worth. And in my senior year, I’m the, I’m the first runner on our team. And the season opened with an invitational with six high schools. And all summer, I knew it was coming, and I, it’s, I had to win. I was going to win. And it was ter, it was really hot and humid. And I do terrible in the heat, but I didn’t care. I had to win. And, and I did.

But I ran myself literally into the ground. I don’t know if it’s dehydration. I don’t know if it’s stress. I started to go into seizures later that day, and then cramps where I couldn’t control my body. It was embarrassing. My tongue was sticking out on my mouth. My parents are appalled. They take me into our doctor, and he’s looking at me kinda writhing on the table. And then he says to my parents, Jerry and Geneva, I, I need you to leave the room, please. My parents went out and the door was closed, and he looks at me, Gary, nobody’s gonna get you in trouble. You’re not going to get arrested, but I just need to know what drugs have you taken? It’s nothing. I I don’t touch this stuff. I’m a runner. He goes, okay. And now he knew it wasn’t a physical issue. He just had a psychological basket.

Case <laugh>, maybe needed to call him a psychiatrist or something, but I, I’ve never forgotten that. He’s long since died since then. But it just, the, the care of a man, he was a great physician, Gary, nobody’s gonna hurt you. Nobody’s judging. I just need to know what’s going on so that I can heal you. And that’s the way that God looks at us. And when we wanna cherish our spouse, it’s the way that we have to look at our spouse. You know, I, if you’ve been here long, I’m a lifelong lover of the Christian classics because they take me out of my generation, out of my tradition. And I think one of the most insightful things I’ve learned, because so many of them grieve with this, is that holiness is not just what I avoid to do holiness. Spiritual maturity can be defined by this.

The closer I become to God, the more convicted I become of my own sin. And the more compassionate I become toward the sins of others, the closer we get to God. If it’s true intimacy with God, the more we’re convicted of our own sin and the more compassion we have for the sins of others, people think of Christians as the opposite. We’re blind our sins, and so aware of everybody else’s. This is not just the Christian classics, it’s scripture. Look at Ephesians four, one through three. Live a life worthy of the calling you have received. What does it mean to live life worthy of this calling? We have received? Here it is. Be completely humble. Don’t exalt yourself above others. Serve others. They’re not there for you. You’re there for them. Gentle. Be soft with their falls. I don’t need to be gentle with somebody who’s perfect.

I need to be gentle with somebody who’s kind of messing up. Be patient. Again, you’re not patient with a perfect person. You’re patient with a person who’s really getting on your last nerve, bearing with one another in love. Again, I have to bear with that somebody in love, not if they’re just wonderful and perfect and loving and affirming. No, it’s with somebody who’s messing up. Christian Holiness is about learning how to love people who frustrate you, sin against you, and hurt you with the spirit of Christ, not the spirit of condemnation. And here’s what I love about being called to a cherishing marriage. Cherishing an imperfect spouse trains your mind to think like the gospel for everybody. While we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.

The third thing we have to do is to give our spouse the benefit of the doubt. This is from one Corinthians 13, seven. It’s a phrase that doesn’t get, I, I’ve never heard a sermon on it. It deserves a full sermon. It’s just kind of in this list. And so it gets looked over. Love believes all things. What does that even mean? We’ve all heard it. We’ve all said it. What does it even mean? That love believes all things. You do. A deep dive into the Greek. I don’t have time for all of it, but basically I would summarize it like this. It’s a trusting disposition that doesn’t immediately jump to negative conclusions. A trusting disposition that doesn’t immediately jump to negative conclusions. It’s not about being naive, but it is about giving our spouse the benefit of the doubt. Trying to assume the best slow to distrust or to judge harshly.

A phrase that I love to describe it is relational generosity, relational generosity. Would your spouse, would your kids, would your parents roommates say you’re relationally generous? Are you quick to judge and doubt and condemn? And marriage gives you a lot of moments to learn how to be relationally generous. When Lisa and I bought out a, bought a house in Katy, Texas, which is one of the worst mistakes I made, traffic was terrible. But then they built like 53 lanes on I 10. And so traffic is solved for six months, and all the developers build houses out further. So traffic just backs up again. And so we, we bought this house we were lured in because it was a great brand new brick house with a huge yard. And we got it. I don’t even want to say this. It’s like for less than $400,000. I don’t wanna say it here, because if we open up those windows and look outside Highlands Ranch, 380,000, we’ll get you a lawn chair under an overpass here, <laugh>.

So we’re lured in. And the problem is the traffic just starts backing up by the month we bought the house. As long as I leave the house at 5 45, I’m gonna beat the traffic. Six months later, I gotta leave by five 30. And then after a two year, I gotta leave at five 15 and one morning, who, of who I slept in, it was 5:00 AM I thought, oh, no, I could feel the traffic backing up. I jump into the shower, I shave, and then I, I can’t find my keys. Now, Lisa had solved my problem of, of losing keys because she said, Gary, look, when you come in, just put your keys on the hook. And when you leave you, you take them. And, and it worked. I, I did that all the time. It was, it was amazing. I knew I’d left my keys on the hook, but they weren’t there.

Something I, I’m in a rush. I could feel the traffic backing up. So I go, what pair of pants did I wear? Maybe I left them in my pants. Did I leave em in a coat? Well, I don’t wear a coat and use, I mean, I’m just looking everywhere. And they thought, well, maybe they’re on the floor. I open up my phone with the flashlight trying to see on the floor. ’cause Lisa’s still sleeping. Well, Lisa wakes up and all of this and, and kind of go, well, what’s, what’s wrong? I said, I, I can’t find my keys. I I can’t find my keys. I’m, I’m running late. She goes, oh, yeah. I couldn’t find my keys last night, which you think, why didn’t she put it on the hook? Well, guys, you’ve learned wives are much better at solving your problems than theirs.

Most husbands have learned that. So she didn’t use the hook. So she goes, yeah, I, I couldn’t find my keys last night, so I had to borrow your car. I’m like, okay, great, great. Where, where would my keys be? It, it would be in one of my purses. Okay, okay, we’re making progress. Which purse? Let me see what outfit I was wearing. I had those cute brown shoes. So I probably okay, so she got up and she helped me find, we finally find her purse. You know, I, i, I, I could feel the traffic backing up as we’re doing. She finally and she says, Gary, I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry. And she really was, she knew what it meant. I didn’t have to tell her, do you realize what this means to my day? And I’m gonna lose another 45 minute and all and all this.

And I just said, honey, I, I know it’s okay. Don’t worry. Go back to sleep. It’s fine. And I think of what I would’ve done 10 years ago. She had to know you realize what this means and why would you do this? And you tell me to put my keys on the hook. Why don’t you put your keys and certainly put my, but, but as I’m driving away, really remember the Lord telling me, Gary, you always use James three, two in so many talks. We all stumble in many ways. And this is one of the ways Lisa stumbles. It’s not gonna think of all the wonders she brings into your life, all the goodness. But this is one thing where it happens. You don’t have to have a fantasy fight. You don’t have to make your case. She knows what this means. So I just stopped at a Starbucks, got a special drink, put on a podcast and said, I’m just gonna chill.

And it’s so much more fun being relationally generous and having a fight over something when, you know, it didn’t, wasn’t intentional. Anyway, a woman who read this part of Cherish reminded me of it. And she contacted me and she said, I do the same thing. And she goes, I want my husband to respond that way. And so she developed an acronym. She, her name Charlotte Hillman. She calls herself the Queen of acronyms. And she says, when I stumble, you stand. And Lisa and I got to interview her. I wish I could give the stand acronym, but I don’t have time for this. One of the hardest things I do here is trying to fit in 35 minutes, but I have a QR code. If you get out your phone and look at that QR code it’s like a 22 minute conversation that Lisa and I had where Charlotte says, if I stumble you stand, if you wanna learn how to be relationally generous, why don’t you leave that up for a little bit?

‘Cause I see people are searching for their phones. Like I was searching for my keys. So let me say this next one before you put the four up there. The fourth thing then is that you want to recognize your spouse’s royalty. This might surprise you, but let me, let me use an analogy. And here we have to bring up the picture. I wanna bring up the picture of a young boy. I want you to ask, tell me who this boy is. Anybody know who that is? If you don’t know, here’s the next picture that will really tell you in context who that boy is. Don’t you like William’s haircut? I mean, that’s the haircut of the future King of England. That’s the haircut of a man who’s going somewhere, right? He doesn’t have to worry about wasting time putting product in his hair. He’s just gonna run the country.

I like, like that haircut. But here’s the thing about George. He, he may be the most fa famous boy in the world. Why? He, he could be brilliant. He might be an idiot. He could be so gracious and kind. He might be a brat we don’t know anything about. He’s not celebrated because of his athleticism or his intellect or his character. He celebrated because he has royal blood. He’s in line to become the next king of England. This might shock you. Your spouse, spiritually speaking, has royal blood. One Peter two, nine. But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s special possession, so that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light. Now, this is the context. When Peter addresses marriage, here’s what he says to husbands in three seven, you husbands in the same way live with your wives in an understanding way and show her honor as a fellow heir of the grace of life. Do you realize how radical this is in the first century when women are seen as property and didn’t have the same rights? And Peter says to Christian husbands, your wife is a fellow heir of the grace of life. So you treat her with respect. You treat her with understanding.

It’s a clear statement. The we’re to treat each other in light of our spiritual royalty. In traditional Eastern Orthodox weddings, I’ve, I’ve seen them, they’re, they’re amazing. They have this crowning ceremony where they crown the bride and they crown the groom in. In traditional times, they, the, the crowns were connected and they would keep connected for like eight days, which I think is perfect way to blow a honeymoon. I mean, you talk about being tied to your spouse for eight days and trying to keep romance alive. I don’t know. But now it’s usually for a few hours during the reception. But it’s recognizing, I want you to see this. When you become a Christian family, you’re part of a long order of royal couples. You are king of your house. You are queen of your house. You’re gonna raise your kids and you honor each other for that role.

It goes back to the long line of royal couples descending from Adam and Eve, who were told in Genesis 1 28 rule over every living creature that moves on the ground, going down through Abraham and Sarah, Jacob and Rachel into the New Testament zacharia and Elizabeth and Joseph and Mary. You become a king and a queen when you get married. And here’s how it changes the way men, we look at our wives. A queen might have a bad day, but she’s still a queen. A king women might put his foot in his mouth. He’s still a king. And he gets that respect for who he is. And these are things that have to be learned. When Paul says to older women in Titus two, four older women should train the younger women how to love their husbands. Women get this. They didn’t get to choose their husbands.

They were told, this will be your husband. And that’s why they had to learn how to love their husbands. They, they were just hard to learn to love this guy that they didn’t even maybe like, or choose or love. It was just, you have to learn how to do that. What does this tell us? The way the Bible presents it, if we could bring that quote up, because I think this is so key. The Bible calls us to a view of marriage that is not based on the express worthiness of our spouse, but is based on reflecting to the world. God’s love for us, which gives worth to our spouse.

Whole different view. Okay, let me try to wrap this up. What does this mean? Husbands, Lisa and I were walking from this funky restaurant. I was speaking somewhere and Lisa had picked out this outta the way restaurant. We’re walking up the sidewalk. It’s up a hill. We heard the loudest explosion we’d ever heard. It sounded like a bomb went off right behind us. I mean, and there was that, and, and just instinctively, I wasn’t thinking, I just throw myself over Lisa. I didn’t know what it was, but I just thought, if there’s danger here, and Lisa here, my job is I got, I gotta throw myself over it. It’s not like I chose to do it. It was a reflex. Lisa, get under here. And we waited. The sound stopped, and, and the dust started to settle. And we just looked up. And right across the street, there was this huge industrial accident that had these major still beams and a chain of something must have broken.

And it fell onto the concrete and threw dirt everywhere and was so loud. And Lisa starts to get up and she says, oh, you saved my life. No, I didn’t. It wasn’t at risk. But here’s the thing, I, I’m not bragging, I think any husband in this church, I hope every husband in this church would do it. It’s what a Christian husband does. Love our wives as Christ loved the church who gave himself up for her to be married is to say, I will die for this woman. But here’s the thing, guys, that’s love. Cherishes, will I live for her? It’s one thing to say, I will die for her in one glorious moment. That’s instinctive. Cherish is choosing to live for her. Will I be ruthless with those lesser pursuits? Will I reserve my energy? Will I listen to her? Will I seek to get to know her better?

Will I cherish her? Will I give her the benefit of the doubt? Will I honor her as a fellow heir of life? Or will she feel like a burden and an afterthought and a disappointment? Like I, I’ve seen this guys act like, oh, I’ll marry you, but you’re gonna get the leftovers after I’ve done everything I wanna do, my hobbies, my whatever I’m doing online and, and, and my job and all of that. And then I’ll give you what’s left over. And I’m gonna assume the worst of you. Every time you say something, I’m not gonna honor you as an he of life. ’cause You’re not even living up to being a wife, much less a queen.

Guys, that’s a sick marriage. Just because you haven’t gotten a divorce doesn’t mean that honors God. It’s a sick marriage and it’s gonna be sick to you. It’s not fun. I say we don’t have to be that way. We might fall that way. But cherishing calls us to an entirely different kind of marriage. But wise, let me ask you a question now that I’ve challenged the men. In the 12th century, there was this famous castle called the wiseberg castle. It was a jewel waiting to be taken. Nobody had messed with them. They got wealthier and wealthier and wealthier on a big trade route. And Conrad iii, who was the king of Rome at the time, said, I, I could use some money. And there’s a lot in the Wiseberg castle. So he besiege it, he seals it up tighter than Tupperware. The walls were too strong.

It would be, it would be brutal trying to tear it down. But he said, I’m gonna starve them out now in the wiseberg castle. They knew they were gone there, there was really no hope. And in slow starvation was just brutal at that time, in that era of human civilization. So they made negotiations with Conrad. They finally settled on this. We know the men are gone, that you’re gonna kill them, but we ask that you let the wives go with any treasures that they can carry. Coran thinking, man, they’re filled with wealth. How much wealth can a, a woman carry and I don’t have to be here for nine months, waiting to starve him out? He said, okay. He agreed to those terms. So they opened up the wiseberg castle doors and even some of the hardened soldiers’ weapon. ’cause Every wife in Wiseberg carried her husband on her back.

Conrad knew he had been tricked, but he was a man of his word. And those husbands whose wives treasured them, got to live. Wives, if you were given the choice, what is the one thing in your life that you value above all others? Does your husband think he would even be considered? Does your husband think you would even that would come to your mind? If I can save him, I want to do it because I talk to a lot of men and I, I hope not in this church, but, but I hear this, the disappointment. So many contemporary, even Christian men have, Gary, I feel like I’m there to open jars and fix the garbage disposal and bring home a paycheck and, and help with the kids. There’s no thank you. There’s no one, there’s no, no physical effects. It’s just, just be there and do your job. It’s utilitarian.

I talked to a guy, he was a quarterback. He said, Gary, what’s so hard for me? As I go out there, everybody’s yelling my name, they’re cheering for me. I’m a star. I come home and it’s boo boo boo. Everything is wrong. Wives, does your husband get more acclimation in the office or the golf course or the dear blind than he does at home? Does he feel like he’s outstanding among 10,000 in your eyes, or does he feel like he’s the biggest disappointment in your life that’ll make him miserable and it will make you miserable? Now, remember how we started with Terry. You can take roughly the same marriage and say, it’s not just about being faithful, loyal, serving and sacrificing. That’s love. If I add, cherish, I can have a completely different marriage, not just for my spouse, but for me. And that’s why Lisa and I are here in Highlands Ranch. We wanna stick around long enough that marriages are fundamentally different. This church will only be as strong as its marriages. Jan, Karen, in her novel, come Rain or Come Shine said this. So we love, and that is good. We cherish, and that is even better. Let’s pray.

Father, this sounds like an obligation, but it is such an invitation. It’s a blessing. You wanna lift

Us from contempt? You wanna bring us into a whole new world where we learn to honor each other and enjoy each other, to cherish each other? Thank you, Lord, for your word that directs us in this way. In Jesus’ name, amen.