From His Heart

Dr. Jeff Schreve: God didn't create marriage and family to be a burden, to be a bust; He created it to be a blessing. He wants it to be one of the greatest blessings this side of heaven. And people are interested in getting in on the blessings of family. God, the one who created marriage and family, He gives us the key as to what is it going to take to have an awesome marriage and family. And as we look at Psalm 127, we see that the key is not hidden under a stone; it's hanging on the front door.

Larry Nobles: Is it even possible in this modern day and age to have an amazing family and raise your children in the fear and admonition of the Lord? Yes! All this month on From His Heart with Pastor Jeff Schreve, we're featuring messages about family and marriage. And today's new series, "We Are Family," is aimed at helping us navigate the obstacles we face as parents, spouses, and children in this age of technology and ever-changing secular culture.

In today's first insightful message from the "We Are Family" series, we'll discover how to let the Lord build our house and how we can successfully do family His way. As always, if you missed any programs along the way, you can listen to the ones that have already aired when you go to fromhisheart.org. Click the "Listen" link to catch up. You ready to stand up and fight for your family? Then open the Psalms to chapter 127 as Pastor Jeff reveals the most important key to an awesome family.

Dr. Jeff Schreve: Family is something that is a universal interest to people. Whether you are a Christian or a non-Christian, saved, lost, whether you're a Muslim or a Buddhist or a Hindu or an atheist, every single person is interested in having an awesome marriage and family. No one goes into marriage thinking, "Well, I'm shooting for mediocre. I mean, this will probably be a miserable experience."

We wouldn't get married to the person that we were thinking about if we thought this is going to end in misery and heartbreak and pain. We go into marriage thinking this is going to be wonderful, and then should God allow, we're going to have children and then we're going to have a great family. We have these great ideas of what it's going to be like. God put that into our heart because God is the author of marriage and family. And God didn't create marriage and family to be a burden, to be a bust; He created it to be a blessing. He wants it to be one of the greatest blessings this side of heaven. And people are interested in getting in on the blessings of family.

All of us say, "I want to come from a good family. I want there to be in my family that I grew up in, I wanted there to be love and I wanted there to be joy and I wanted there to be peace. And I wanted my mom and dad to love each other and I wanted them to love me." And so we want to come from a good family and we want to experience that for ourselves when we get married—if and when we get married, if and when we have children.

But here's the truth of the matter: the sad reality is so many people don't have a good marriage and they don't have a good family. And divorce is rampant. And homes that are supposed to be "home sweet home," so much of the time they're filled with arguments and tension and bitterness and discord. And kids grow up in a home like that and they think, "Man, I know one thing: I don't want to have a home like I came from." Some are saying, "I've seen disaster in my parents' marriage and in divorce and all that. Maybe I don't want to get married at all."

That's sad because God has created marriage and family to be wonderful. On a scale of one to 10, God wants you to have a 12 for your marriage and for your family. And for many of us, we don't really know how that comes about. We go into marriage thinking, "This is going to be great and she's going to meet my needs and he's going to meet my needs." If you go in thinking the other person's going to make you happy, you're in trouble. Somebody described marriage this way: it's two ticks and no dog. You're in trouble when there are two ticks and no dog. But marriage is you're giving; you're not just taking from the other person.

But you say, "How? What is the key? Maybe there's a key to this thing called a successful family, having an awesome marriage and family." Ogden Nash, the poet, he offered this key. He said, "To keep your marriage brimming with love in the loving cup, when you're wrong admit it and when you're right shut up." And that's pretty good advice, but that's not the key. God gives us the key. God, the one who created marriage and family, He gives us the key as to what is it going to take to have an awesome marriage and family, one that's filled with love and joy and peace and satisfaction.

And as we look at Psalm 127, we see that the key is not hidden under a stone; it's hanging on the front door. Psalm 127:1: "Unless the Lord builds the house, they labor in vain who build it. Unless the Lord guards the city, the watchman keeps awake in vain." What is the key? The key is Jesus. The key is the Lord Jesus Christ. He's the key. Now that's a very broad answer to the question. And you say, "How do I get my hands around that?" We're going to look at Psalm 127 and break it down and see what He wants from us and what He says: "If you will do this, then this will happen." There are three requirements in order to experience an awesome marriage and family.

Requirement number one: the Lord must be the builder of your home. He must be the builder. "Unless the Lord builds the house, they labor in vain who build it." Now, the Lord loves to build things. It wasn't just by coincidence that Jesus was born into a home where Joseph was a carpenter and Jesus became a carpenter. Before He started His ministry, He was a carpenter in Nazareth. And as a carpenter, He built lots of things. The Lord loves to build.

The Bible says about Jesus—Jesus said of Himself, told the disciples: "Let not your hearts be troubled; believe in God, believe also in Me. In My Father's house are many dwelling places; if it were not so, I would have told you, for I go to prepare a place for you." I'm building you a heavenly place. "And I'm going to come back and get you one day so that where I am, there you may be also." The Lord is building us a heavenly home.

The Lord is building a church home because He said to Peter and the disciples: "Upon this rock"—speaking of Himself—"I will build My church, and the gates of hell will not prevail against it." So He builds the heavenly home, He builds the church home, but He also wants to build your family home. And unless He does, the scripture says your labor will be in vain. I don't care how hard you try; without the Lord, as Jesus said in John chapter 15, apart from Me, you can do nothing. But with Me, you can do all things. So you have to have the Lord as the builder of your home. Now, the question is, how does that work? What does that look like? How do I get Jesus to build my home, to build my marriage, to build my family?

Joshua put it this way in the last chapter of the book of Joshua before Joshua went to be with the Lord. It says he said this to the people: "And if it is disagreeable in your sight to serve the Lord, choose for yourselves today whom you will serve." What God are you going to serve? You going to serve the Baals? Are you going to serve the god of yourself, the god of pleasure, the god of money, the god of sex? What god are you going to serve? "But as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord." How do you get God to build your house? You make the decision to serve Him with all your heart.

See, the Lord wants you to fully submit to Him. Not partially, not mostly. He wants you to fully commit to Him with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength, with all your might. To love Him and to commit yourself to Him. He's worthy of that. Now, it is such a slam, such an insult to the Lord that we would say, "Lord, I believe in You and I want the blessings that You give, but I don't want to follow You with all my heart. I want to do some other things, Lord. I don't want to become fanatical about You. I would just like to give You a little bit of my heart and then go do some other things and have some other loves and some other interests and, Lord, just have You when I need You." Like God's some kind of lucky rabbit's foot. When you're in trouble then you grab on to the Lord, but when you're not, you just leave Him in the dust.

Jesus said to that church in Ephesus, "You do a lot of good things, but I have this against you: that you've left your first love." I'm not number one in your heart anymore. And a person who makes the Lord the builder of his marriage and his family, that's a person that's fully submitted to the Lord. The Bible says in Colossians chapter one, verse 18, speaking of Jesus: "He is also head of the body, the church, and He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that He Himself might come to have first place in everything." Now, a question: does the Lord have first place in everything in your life? First place in your job? First place in your marriage? First place in your family? First place in your finances? First place in your free time? Is He really number one? For most of us, it's hard to answer that question and say yes.

Larry Nobles: We'll continue to explore the answer to this question when Pastor Jeff Schreve returns on From His Heart in just a moment. It's called "The Key to an Awesome Family" from the series "We Are Family." Marriage and family life were designed by God to be a source of love and joy and blessing, yet so many people struggle to find and maintain that joy.

Earlier this month, we aired lessons from Pastor Jeff's new series, "In Love and Marriage," doing family life God's way. And now we're in the lessons from the series "We Are Family." He's sharing biblical wisdom on recognizing God's original purpose for marriage, on how to choose the right spouse, and how your home can be a place of harmony and peace. And you can experience the joy and blessing of a home built on the rock of truth when you surrender your life to Him and live in humility, obeying Him.

For your gift today of any amount to From His Heart, we'd like to say thank you for supporting this ministry with this four-lesson series, "Love and Marriage: Doing Family Life God's Way." The series is our thanks to you for your support this month. And we'll also send you the companion booklet, "I Still Do," written by Pastor Jeff and his wife, Debbie, both for your gift today.

It's a big month for us, as it is our fiscal year-end, striving to meet our expenses for the year and launching into the next 12 months on a sound financial footing. Will you help this month with a timely gift, and perhaps a sacrificial one? Pastor Jeff receives no income from this ministry. To make your gift and get the series "Love and Marriage," call 866-40-BIBLE, 866-40-BIBLE, or go online to fromhisheart.org to make that gift. God bless you; we really, really appreciate you. And now back to part one of the lesson, "The Key to an Awesome Family."

Dr. Jeff Schreve: Wilbur Rees wrote a poem some years ago, and it really hits the nail on the head with where so many people are in America concerning God. He entitles the poem, "Three Dollars Worth of God." He says this: "I would like to buy three dollars worth of God, please. Not enough to explode my soul or disturb my sleep, but just enough to equal a cup of warm milk or a snooze in the sunshine. I don't want enough of God to make me love a foreigner or pick beets with a migrant. I want ecstasy, not transformation. I want warmth of the womb, not a new birth. I want a pound of the eternal in a paper sack. I would like to buy three dollars worth of God, please."

If you have that attitude before the Lord that you want to just get a little bit from Him but you're not willing to submit your life to Him completely, the Lord doesn't do business with people like that. The Lord does business with those who mean business. And if He really is God of the universe, then He is deserving of all your life. Elijah called the people out in Israel in first Kings chapter 18, and he said, "How long will you hesitate between two opinions? If the Lord is God, serve Him; if Baal is God, serve him. But quit riding the fence." Quit trying to live with three dollars worth of God. God is deserving of all your life. That's how He becomes the builder, when you fully submit to Him. And He wants you to not only fully submit to Him, but genuinely walk with Him.

John said this in first John chapter one: "This is the message that we announce to you from the beginning that we announce to you, that God is light and in Him there is no darkness at all. If we say we have fellowship with Him and yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth. But if we walk in the light as He Himself is in the light, we have fellowship with one another and the blood of Jesus, His Son, cleanses us from all sin." What is the Christian life? It is a walk by faith in the light with the Lord Jesus Christ.

You walk in the light, which means you bring your sins into the light. We don't like to do that; we like to hide them in the darkness. You have to bring them to the light and confess those to the Lord and deal with those things so that you can walk with Him. If you don't, then the Bible says you're just saying you have fellowship with Him; you don't really have fellowship with Him. You're the "three dollars worth of God" person. You just want a little bit of God, just sprinkle a little bit of God over the top of my marriage, over the top of my family, and then I want to have an awesome family. It doesn't work that way. "Unless the Lord builds the house, they labor in vain who build it."

And then it says in verse two: "It is vain for you to rise up early, to retire late, to eat the bread of painful labors, for He gives to His beloved even in his sleep." As we walk with God, we trust Him day by day. We trust Him to provide for us. That doesn't mean we sit around doing a bunch of nothing; we work, but we don't work ourselves to death. We are human beings, not human doings.

Some people, once they get married, then the husband is like, "Okay, honey, you take care of the kids and I'm just going to go work and work and work and work, and I'm going to earn us a big living." And they don't work eight hours a day, they don't work 10 hours a day; it's 12 hours a day, it's 14 hours a day. "I gotta make my way in this world, I gotta provide for my family." I'm all for that, but listen, if the practice of your life is for you to work 12 hours, 14 hours a day, there are only so many hours in the day. And you're going to burn yourself out. If you're spending all your time at work, you're not spending your time with your spouse and with your children, and the Lord says don't do that. It's vain to do that. You might amass a lot of money, but you're going to lose in the long run.

My surgeon, when I had my hip surgery—young guy, 34-year-old guy, orthopedic surgeon. I called him Doogie Howser because he was just so young. Some of you will get that reference if you're old enough to understand who Doogie Howser was, that 16-year-old doctor on a TV show back in the 1800s. Anyway, I never called him Doogie to his face. But we were talking and I asked him—I was about 20 years older than he was—and I said to him, "How many hours a week do you work?" I said, "Is it over 60?" And he laughed. He said, "60?" He said, "Try 80 to 100."

I said, "You work 80 to 100 hours a week?" He said, "There are some weeks I don't even come home." He had a three-year-old son and a newborn son, and I said, "Why are you doing that?" And he said, "Because I'm on call and people need me and if they have an accident or something happens, I have to be there to help them. I just feel an impulse to do that and a compulsion to do that." I said, "You know who needs you? Your wife and kids. They need you." I said, "Listen, I'm 20 years older than you are, let me give you some wisdom: take care of your wife and your children. Let somebody else do the surgery in the middle of the night. You be there for your kids. And you trust God to provide for you." It is vain for you to rise up early, to retire late, to eat the bread of painful labors. God gives to His beloved even in his sleep. Unless the Lord builds the house, they labor in vain who build it. The Lord must be the builder of your home. That's the first requirement.

Second requirement: the Lord must be the protector of your home. Look at verse one again: "Unless the Lord guards the city, the watchman keeps awake in vain." Now, what is a city? A city is a collection of homes. And so the Lord is still talking about the home in verse one. And the Lord not only needs to be the builder of the home, He has to be the protector, the guard, the keeper of the home. And if He's not, then the watchman keeps awake in vain.

In Old Testament times, they would have a wall around the city. If you didn't have a wall around the city, your city was in trouble. That's the whole book of Nehemiah; he comes back to Jerusalem to rebuild the wall around the city so that the city can be vibrant once again. Without a wall, you couldn't defend it. And so there's a big need for the city to have a wall so that you can have watchmen on the wall so that you can protect the city. And the Lord is saying, "I need to be the watchman on the wall. Unless I'm guarding your house, you're going to not be protected. And the watchman's going to keep awake in vain. Unless you're working 24/7 on the wall, it's still not going to be enough."

Now, why do I need the Lord and why do you need the Lord to guard your house? It's because you have an enemy prowling around the perimeter. That's why. You have an enemy, I have an enemy, and that enemy is the devil. First Peter chapter five, verse eight, says, "Be of sober spirit, be on the alert. Your adversary, the devil, prowls about like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour." The devil is outside on the perimeter; he's outside the wall. And if you don't have the Lord guarding the house, the devil is looking to see, "Who can I take out? Who can I devour?" And the devil is too strong for you or for me. We can't stand against the devil in and of ourselves. We need the Lord to be able to stand against the devil. And unless the Lord guards the city, the watchman keeps awake in vain.

And let me tell you something about the devil: he has a plan. He comes to steal and kill and destroy. That's what—he's the original terminator. He's not going to stop. He doesn't ever take a break. He is going to try and destroy you and he wants to hit you where it hurts the most, and where it hurts the most is at home. If he can hurt you in the business world, hey, you know what? You can get another job. But if he hits you at home and hurts your marriage and hurts your family, you're in serious, serious trouble.

My friend Charles Lowery, who's a psychologist and used to pastor Hoffmantown Baptist Church, he told me early on in my ministry: "Let me give you some advice, Jeff: take care of your family. Take care of your family." He said, "The church can get another pastor. Your wife, your kids, can't get another husband and dad." You take care of your family. And Charles had seen his own father, who had given himself away to the church, get discarded when he got old. And Charles said, "That's not the way it's supposed to be." Adrian Rogers used to say, "The church is Jesus' bride; she's not mine. My bride is at home and I need to take care of my bride." Yes, I work hard in the ministry, but I don't sacrifice my family for the ministry.

When you do that, you open the door to the devil. The Bible says in Ephesians chapter four, "Be angry and yet do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, and do not give the devil an opportunity." Don't give him a place. Don't give him topography in your life. And in marriage and in family, when we don't deal with problems, when we let the sun go down on our anger, then we give the devil a welcome mat. He prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour. And when you throw out a welcome mat, he's very glad to come on in and steal and kill and destroy. Deal with issues in your marriage, deal with issues in your family. Sometimes you might have to agree to disagree, but you can't let those things just swept under the rug. It doesn't go away when you sweep it under the rug. And watch out for the way the devil comes in because we so often give the devil just an open invitation. We do things that the devil says, "Oh, I like it when you do that."

Larry Nobles: This has truly been an important warning and admonition to believers everywhere to be on guard against Satan's attacks on family. Well, there's much more to be said on the next broadcast and this message, "The Key to an Awesome Family." An awesome family starts with a great God-guided marriage. God has a plan that you and your spouse should follow. It's guaranteed to work. It's described in Pastor Jeff's seven-message series, "We Are Family," that we started today and will be in the rest of these messages for the rest of the month.

In it, you'll discover how to unlock those doors that are closed to your marriage and discover how to let the Lord build your house and family His way. To find out more about the series, go to fromhisheart.org, click the "Listen" link. And for your gift of any amount this month, we'd like to send you Pastor Jeff's new series, "Love and Marriage: Doing Family Life God's Way," and the booklet "I Still Do," both for your gift today at 866-40-BIBLE, 866-40-BIBLE, or go to fromhisheart.org to make that gift.

Know how much we depend and appreciate your partnership so we'll all be able to stand against the forces of evil in this world, aiming all the weapons of war on families, seeking to destroy them. Thank you for joining us today on From His Heart. I'm Larry Nobles, trusting you'll be able to be here tomorrow for part two of the first lesson in this "We Are Family" series called "The Key to an Awesome Family." Join Pastor Jeff Schreve on Friday when he'll again open up God's Word and share real truth, real love, and real hope from His heart.