Pastor Rick's Daily Hope

Guest (Male): Everybody longs for deep lasting love. But strong relationships don't just happen by accident. Today on Pastor Rick's Daily Hope, we're continuing our series called Finding and Keeping the Love of Your Life.

Rick Warren will share practical biblical wisdom for building healthier, stronger, Christ-centered relationships. So, whether you're single, dating, engaged, or married, this series will help you grow in love, communication, and lasting commitment. And now, let's join Rick for the final part of the message called Unlocking the Marriage Matrix.

Pastor Rick Warren: As a human being, God gave you skin for a reason. You're not just a spirit. You have a body, and skin is meant to be touched. All of us, everybody, married or unmarried, need human contact, physical contact, hugs, pats on the back, handshakes. Everybody needs physical affection. Everybody does.

That's why in our church, every week, we touch each other at least twice. At the beginning and at the end of every service, we say, turn around and hug somebody, turn around and shake hands with somebody. I've had people tell me, Pastor Rick, the only physical affection I get all week is at church. That's it. When I'm out on the patio after the services, greeting people and hugging people, when people walk away, I often look and I wonder how long that hug's got to last that person. I've thought about going into full-time Christian hugging. I think it'd be a legitimate ministry because everybody needs to be.

Did you know that babies can die from a lack of touch? Failure to thrive syndrome. If they're not stroked and touched enough, they can die. And so can marriages. In fact, I read this last week, I'm not making this up. UCLA did a study and discovered that if you hug your husband at least ten times a day, you can increase his lifespan up to three years. And some of you are going, tough luck, honey. It's been nice knowing you.

If you're too busy to date your mate, you're too busy. You see, if there were more courting in marriage, there'd be fewer marriages in court. The problem is what you did to win your mate's love, you haven't continued to keep your mate's love. Before you got married, you couldn't keep your hands off each other. And you're hugging and you're kissing and you're walking arm in arm and you're holding hands. Now that you're married, you never hold hands anymore. And the touching and the tenderness slowly fades away. And when that happens, the devil has won a victory in your marriage and he's setting you up for failure.

Now, I know the old excuse and I've heard it many, many times. It's, well, I just don't feel affectionate. I just don't. Well, there could be a lot of reasons for that. Maybe you're too tired. Maybe you're too busy. Maybe there's a health issue. Maybe you've got unresolved resentment. There could be dozens and dozens of reasons you're not interested in affection or sex or anything else. Lots of good reasons that you could deal with and discuss.

But I will tell you this, it's easier to act your way into a feeling than it is to feel your way into an action. When you say, well, I'm going to wait till I feel like it to act romantic, it isn't going to happen. The devil will make sure you never feel like it. You have to act romantic even when you don't feel like it, and when you do, the feelings will come. In fact, I guarantee it. I guarantee it because feelings always follow behavior. And if you act in a loving way, you act in a romantic way, you act in an affectionate way, the feelings will come back. Don't wait for the feelings. Just do the right thing and never let a day go by without some kind of physical contact.

An attorney gave me this story. He said, a woman came into our law office seeking a divorce. And she said, I not only want a divorce, but I want to hurt him badly because all the times he's ignored me. So the attorney said, okay, go home and compliment him every day until I can get the papers drawn up. Tell him all the good things that he does. And especially, smother him with affection every day. Act like you really adore him. And then we'll file for the divorce and it'll devastate him.

A month later, she called back the attorney and she said, cancel the divorce. We've both fallen in love with each other again. It's easier to act your way into a feeling than to feel your way into an action. Physical affection is as vital to your marriage as communication and consideration and compromise and all these other keys. They're all important.

Of course, in marriage, that includes sex. And the Bible says in 1 Corinthians 7:3, the husband should not deprive his wife of sexual intimacy, which is her right as a married woman, nor should the wife deprive her husband. God doesn't intend for your marriage to be boring and lifeless and passionless and pleasureless and dull. Sex has profound implications for your marriage. In fact, God gave sex to cement marriages together. The primary purpose of sex is not to have children. That's not what the Bible says.

The primary purpose of sex is to cement a husband and wife together in a spiritual union and a bonding that is exclusive to them that involves nobody else in the world. And that's why God says, don't have sex out of marriage. It has profound spiritual implications. It is meant primarily for bonding a husband and a wife together. Notice the next verse, 1 Corinthians 6, there's more to sex than mere skin on skin. Sex is as much a spiritual mystery as a physical fact. As it is written, the two shall become one. There's a spiritual connection there.

Now, I read an article just recently called the Yuppie Dilemma: Too Tired for Sex. And that's sad when marriage deteriorates into simply a business partnership or two roommates living together to save on the bills. As I said, Satan has won a major victory because that is not what God wants for your marriage. That's not what God designed for your marriage and you are setting your marriage up for failure.

Now, I want to beg you, if you are having problems with your sexual relationship in your marriage, please, please, please get help. It is available. It is unnecessary for you to suffer in silence in this area. It just isn't necessary. And you can get help for all of the possible causes if you will be honest.

Now, I want you to rate yourself on contact. How do you rate yourself on daily physical affection? Are you too busy? Do you have at least a weekly date, a date night? Do you need to touch more in order to stay in touch? Give yourself a needs work or an okay. And would you welcome Terry and Susan to come share their story?

Guest (Male): In September of 2001, our small group decided to attend the Keeping Your Marriage Like workshop here at Saddleback. My first response to my wife was, why us? I felt we had a strong marriage and did not need it. However, I was outnumbered and trapped into attending the workshop with the rest of our small group. Actually, it was a lot of fun and it gave us some great tools to enrich and strengthen our marriage.

Guest (Female): Going to the marriage workshop created the climate where we could talk about some very delicate issues. One of those issues was expressing physical affection. We were given homework assignments to talk with each other in a loving but open and very honest way about how we really felt.

Guest (Male): We had some very intense discussions. We were talking about things I had completely avoided in the past. We discussed what we liked and disliked about each other and I realized we should have had these discussions years ago. The more we talked, the more we opened up to each other.

And as Susan mentioned, one of the key issues we talked about was showing affection. Growing up, my family didn't show a lot of physical affection to each other. We loved each other, but we didn't touch very much. And we never hugged or showed physical affection in public. I thought that was normal, so I had no idea how important it was to my wife and how essential affection is to a healthy and growing marriage.

Guest (Female): On the other hand, my family was very loving and very affectionate. So I couldn't understand why Terry was so reluctant to show me affection in public and around our friends. I thought he was ashamed of me. By discussing our childhood backgrounds, I discovered why he was so unaffectionate and he discovered how important a hug was to me. That changed everything. Today, Terry is very affectionate. He not only hugs me, but now he hugs everyone in our small group. I've created a monster.

Guest (Male): As Pastor Rick says, you keep in touch by touching. I've learned how important this is, especially when you are facing stress. Physical closeness helps you realize that you're not alone in the world and that's part of what marriage is all about, sharing the load.

Recently, the company I work for outsourced my entire department. For the past three months, I wasn't sure if I'd have a job after May 2nd. Previously, I would have kept this problem completely to myself, but with our new emphasis on staying close and in contact with each other, Susan and I tackled the problem together.

Guest (Female): I was devastated when Terry told me he might lose his job. But by staying close to each other, to God, and our small group, we survived this difficult time. Then the day before Terry's termination, the company offered him another job. That was great, but even if it hadn't happened, we felt more connected to each other through the test of our relationship.

Guest (Male): In closing, I'd like to say a word to all the guys. Hug your wife more often. Shower her with affection. You'll feel a lot more connected to her. Thank you.

Pastor Rick Warren: The fifth key we want to talk about this morning is the key of commitment. Commitment. If you really going to take one word that would best summarize the whole marriage relationship, it wouldn't be the word love. It would be the word commitment. Any two people, given the right circumstances, the right environment, could develop romantic loving feelings towards each other. But that's not really at the heart of marriage. In fact, the difference between marriage and just living together is commitment.

And God expects us to keep that commitment. In fact, look at that verse there under point number five, comes from the book of Malachi, the last book in the Old Testament, and they are very strong words. I hate divorce, says the Lord. So make sure that you don't break your promise to be faithful to your mate.

Divorce is a reality in our world and there are many, many people in our church who have been through the painful experience of divorce and thank God for His grace and for His forgiveness. But let's be honest this morning, it's not God's ideal. God wants every man and every woman who stand together and make marriage vows to stay together for life, no matter how hard it gets or what happens along the way.

And you will never build a strong, intimate marriage relationship when divorce is always an option. And there are many people who carry around secretly this little escape hatch. And in their minds, they think if it gets really hard or if things don't go like I thought or if I get really unhappy, I've got this little key to the escape hatch that will always allow me a way out. And the reality is that in our culture, it has become far too easy to run away.

So let me just encourage you, if you're married and you're here this morning, throw away that key. Don't leave yourself that escape hatch. Don't leave yourself that option. When you said till death do us part, that was a lifelong commitment. Don't leave it as an option.

Here's one of the things that people often don't realize is that commitment, somewhere along the way, will mean being willing to be unhappy for a while. Somewhere in your journey in marriage, your commitment will require you to be willing to be perhaps unsatisfied or unhappy for a season until things work out. And some people have this attitude, if I could just get out, if I could just be with that person, or if I could just get this kind of relationship. It's the whole idea that the grass is always greener over there. But friend, the grass is greener where you water it. And it starts with your commitment that no matter where you are right now or what's going on in your relationship, that you are committed.

I cannot even begin to understand and relate to some of the pain that I know some of you must be going through in your own relationships right now, but stay committed. My wife and I this summer will celebrate our 25th anniversary. We got married when we were twelve. But just honestly, in the early years of our marriage, I was clueless about how to be a good husband. I had distorted ideas of what it meant to be a spiritual leader in my home and far more than I would ever want you to know, I damaged her self-worth and self-esteem.

But even through all of those hard times, she never threatened to leave me. She never threw up divorce as an option. We were committed to each other as hard as it was. And I can tell you now that after 25 years, it's richer and more rewarding and more fulfilling than ever before. But it started because we had a fundamental commitment. And I want you to hear the story of someone, a couple who's worked through the hard difficulties of this word commitment. Would you welcome Gary and Lisa and hear their story?

Guest (Male): Fourteen years ago, Lisa and I fell in love. And in 1991, after I returned from the first Persian Gulf War, we were married. In 1995, we had our little girl Megan. But because we didn't have the skills or knowledge to build a strong marriage, four years ago, we found ourselves planning our divorce.

Guest (Female): Like most marriages, ours was filled with both good times and bad times. But as time passed on, we argued and fought incessantly. During our arguing, Gary and I threatened each other with divorce all the time. We each used that threat to hurt each other because of the deepening hurt and pain we were feeling. I felt hopeless and finally came to a point where I was done.

I was scared out of my mind to think of raising my daughter by myself alone, but I became more and more determined that I wanted out of this marriage. I listened to the same old faulty logic that Satan has used on millions of others. I justified in my mind that God wanted me to be happy and I was not happy. So I assumed that it would be alright with God if I left our marriage. We both were amazingly calm and deeply saddened that we both had failed at this marriage of ours.

Guest (Male): Lisa was unhappy all the time about everything. At first, I'd try to fix her problems by giving her my great advice and criticism. Surprisingly, that didn't work. Then I would get angry at her. I felt that all our conversations were about her problems and then there was no room for any of my problems. Finally, I stopped talking to her altogether. I found ways to avoid her. I worked late, I read, I watched TV. The more I withdrew from her, the unhappier she got. And the unhappier she got, the more I withdrew. It was a cycle we couldn't break out of.

I remember the exact point when I reached rock bottom in our marriage. We had been arguing and I went into our bathroom, which doesn't have any windows, and I shut the door and turned off the light. I just sat there on the edge of the tub and realized that I had nowhere to go and that our marriage was over.

But then God reminded me of two important truths. First, that quitting is a choice. I was choosing to break a commitment and a vow that I had made to God. Second, God reminded me that I cannot make it through life on my own steam. I needed Jesus in my life and marriage to make it work. So I sat Lisa down and I told her that I did not want to divorce her and that I was willing to do whatever it took to make our marriage work. I told her I was open to getting help for our marriage.

Guest (Female): When Gary said he was willing to work on our marriage, I felt a little hope, but I was still skeptical that anything could miraculously turn our relationship around. But we came to lay counseling here at Saddleback and our journey to restoration began. It began with putting God at the center of our marriage. Our counselors Larry and Barbara told us straight out that God did not want us to divorce. We had a commitment and God expected us to keep it, no matter how we felt.

Well, with the divorce taken off the table as a threat and no longer an option, all our energy suddenly shifted to making our marriage work. God started working miracles in our life and within weeks we started remembering the reasons why we fell in love in the first place. We learned how to communicate better and learned some new tools. One of those tools was to never, ever threaten divorce again. That option is off limits.

Guest (Male): Our testimony is brief, but it has an important lesson we've learned. You'll never be able to fix your marriage if you continue to harbor the possibility of divorce in the back of your mind. You must focus on keeping your commitment. Otherwise, you will not put in the effort needed to build a great relationship. If you focus on your commitment, not your bad feelings, the good feelings will return.

Guest (Female): We continue to work on our marriage each day. And now over the past two years, we have volunteered to help other marriages. We can now see how God has used the pain in our relationship for good. In closing, we want to say to those of you who are hurting, don't give up. Thank you.

Pastor Rick Warren: I love what Gary said, focus on your commitment, not on your bad feelings. If you have been married 25 years or longer, would you stand up right now and stay standing? Look at these people. Let me ask you before you sit down, let me ask you a couple questions. How many of you would say we have had some major conflicts in those 25 years or more? That's what I thought. How many of you would say sometimes I felt like giving up? That's what I thought.

I want to say to you, I honor you. I honor you for understanding the meaning of commitment in a world that knows nothing about commitment. Now, here's the sixth key to unlocking the marriage matrix. It takes communication and consideration, it takes compromise and contact, and it takes commitment, but most of all, it takes Christ. Christ.

It takes three to make a marriage stand, not two, three. You, your spouse, and Christ. God never meant for you to go through your marriage just with the two of you working on it. Marriage is a three-legged stool. It takes three legs for stability. You've never seen a two-legged stool. A two-legged stool will fall over. It has no stability. And if all you've got in your marriage is each other, it isn't enough, I'll tell you. It isn't enough. You need you, your spouse, and God. It takes a three-legged stool to stand up to stability.

And Jesus Christ is the key to all the other five keys in the marriage matrix. Colossians 2 says this out of the Bible, God's secret is Christ Himself. He is the key that opens all the hidden treasures of God's wisdom and knowledge. Now, we live in earthquake country, and we all know that if you don't have a strong foundation, when the earthquake comes, your home's going to fall.

In the same way, your marriage must have a solid foundation because you're going to face a lot of earthquakes in life. You're going to have some health earthquakes. You're going to have some financial earthquakes. You're going to have some emotional earthquakes. You're going to have all kinds of different problems and stresses and earthquakes in your life. And if you don't have a solid foundation for your home, it's not going to be stable. What is the foundation? Jesus Christ.

Look at the next verse. He will be the sure foundation for your times, a rich store of salvation and wisdom and knowledge. The fear of the Lord is the key to this treasure. What's the fear of the Lord? It's respecting God for who He is. God, you're God, and you have a right to be number one in my life, in my spouse's life, and in our marriage, and we're going to build our marriage around you. I want you to listen to our last couple, Don and Desi. Give them a warm welcome.

Guest (Male): Desi and I were married in 1991, but it didn't take long for the magical bubble of newness to wear off. We soon realized that marriage requires a lot of give and take.

Guest (Female): I was a new Christian, but Don had not yet committed his life to Christ. Of course, that caused many problems. Our first year was a major change because we were both very used to taking care of our own lives as single adults. It was a new stress to share one checkbook and one bank account. I was not used to sharing each and every item I purchased or being accountable for helping keep our budget in line. I was used to spending my money on what I wanted and just squeaking by paying my bills each month.

Don, on the other hand, wanted to save money each month. So we had many heated arguments over finances. And I'm sure none of you have ever had that problem. I was so discouraged because my idea of marriage had been you get to have the person you love around all the time, have fun, have a family, but still keep on spending the money anyway you want to.

Guest (Male): When we moved to the Saddleback Valley, we were invited to Saddleback Church by our good friends and our lives began to change rapidly for the better. We began to come close to God and have an understanding of the gift that He's given us in Jesus Christ. I don't have time to share all these details, but the bottom line is this. It wasn't until I allowed Jesus Christ to become the center of my life and our marriage that our relationship began to improve. We took the focus off of ourselves and we put it on to Jesus. That caused us to be more accepting and more understanding, more loving and more forgiving of each other.

Now, I know this sounds funny to some of you, but our marriage actually got better when we started to tithe as a couple. You may wonder why and I thought about it a lot. I came to a conclusion. It's because we consider money to be so important to us that tithing is the practical proof that Jesus really is the center of our life and our marriage. So many marriages fight over finances. Once Desi and I committed the financial part of our marriage to Jesus, we began to see incredible changes because God could see that we were trusting in Him and that we put Him first. God has so blessed us for this commitment many times over.

Guest (Female): One of the ways that has helped Don and I keep Christ at the center of our marriage is being a part of a small group. I can't say enough about how important our small group is in helping us maintain a Christ-focused marriage. We've grown so much through the fellowship, love, praying together, and being there for accountability in both good and difficult times. In today's world, marriages need all the support they can get, and our small group has provided that. They've encouraged us as we've faced financial issues, miscarriages, the responsibility of trying to raise two godly children, and many other issues.

Guest (Male): In closing, I'd like to say a word to those of you that are married to a believer, but you haven't made your own personal commitment to Christ yet. I know what this is like and I know how you feel. I stood in your shoes. My advice for you today is to open up your heart to Jesus today. It'll be the best thing you ever do for yourself, for your marriage, and for your family. Thank you.

Pastor Rick Warren: I love what Don said, the best thing you can do for your marriage is open your life to Jesus Christ. You want a strong marriage, become a godly man. You want a strong marriage, become a godly woman. Now, how do you do that? First, you open up your life to Jesus Christ. Second, you commit your life and your marriage to Jesus. Third, you get involved in a small group where you're going to get the support you need. And fourth, you talk about these six issues: communication, commitment, contact, compromise, consideration, and Christ.

Now listen, you can read your Bible all you want and pray all you want and your marriage isn't going to get any better. It takes more than reading your Bible and prayer. You've got to work on the things that God tells you to work on. But listen, if you will both love God with all your heart, and if you will both do what He tells you to do in marriage, these six keys to unlocking the marriage matrix, you can have an outstanding, incredible, great, strong, healthy marriage no matter what the past has been like, and it's your choice.

So I challenge you to commit your life to Christ and then commit yourself to these other five keys. Good marriages don't just happen. They are intentional. In all the things I've done in my life, and I've done a lot of things, the most challenging challenge in my life has been my marriage. Without a doubt, the hardest thing I've had to work on in my life. Building this church was far easier than building my marriage. But it has also been the single greatest source of growth in my life and it has also been the most rewarding thing in my life. What you put into it is what you're going to get out of it.

Now, let's bow our heads. Today could be a fresh start for your marriage. Would you like that? Would you say, yeah, I'd like some of the barriers to come down that have never fallen? I'd like to work through some of the hurt, the pain, some of the issues we've never talked about. I'd like to build our marriage.

If you'd say, you know, I'd like to work on our relationship and make it better during these weeks ahead, you might as a sign of intent just reach out right now for your husband or your wife's hand and squeeze it and hold it as we pray together and pray this in your heart.

Dear God, help us to learn to communicate better. Help us to be more considerate of each other's feelings. Help us to compromise in areas of disagreement. Help us to forgive each other. Help us to make contact with each other every day in some way. Help us to deepen our commitment to each other and to you. Help us to show affection. Jesus Christ, we need you in our lives. In your name we pray. Amen.

Guest (Male): Hey, thanks for listening to Pastor Rick's Daily Hope. And now here's Rick with a special message.

Pastor Rick Warren: Friends, we believe that God wants everybody to be saved. And in 2 Peter 3:9, the Bible says God doesn't want anyone to be lost. That means you'll never meet a single person in your life who God doesn't love and who God doesn't want to be saved. Now, if God wants every person saved, then we should too. And that's why I started Daily Hope.

You know, there are literally billions of people who've never heard the name of Jesus. And we can only reach them if we work together. And that's why I'm asking for your help. Would you be my partner in helping getting God's word out to the world, to the people who have no Bible, no believers, and no body of Christ? You know, there's nothing more important that we can do together than to help other people see God as He really is, and to help them understand the depth of God's love and grace for them.

It's your faithful support to this broadcast Daily Hope that helps us tell more and more people about the transforming power of Jesus Christ. Friends, if you'll make a monthly investment as a partner in hope, together we can broadcast this life-transforming message of the gospel through radio and through podcasts and online literally around the world. We need your support.

Guest (Male): To become a partner in hope with convenient automated monthly giving, just go to pastorrick.com. Or text the word HOPE to 70309. And when you do, we'll send you a very special welcome gift to say thanks. Again, that's pastorrick.com or just text the word HOPE to 70309. And thank you so much for your support. Be sure to join us next time as we look into God's word for our daily hope. This program is sponsored by Pastor Rick's Daily Hope and your generous financial support.