Biblical Principals of Marrage — George Verwer

Biblical Principals of Marrage — George Verwer

We're just a little limited in time and we need your help to condense this material. I really believe that some people's marriages, even if they're marriages that are not yet started, are dependent in regard to their victory and success, on whether people are willing to get serious about these things tonight.

We thank you that we can preach and teach the whole Council of your Word. We don't have just one message. We have many messages because we have your whole book. Guide us now as we speak on these things.

In Jesus' name. Amen. Marriage. One of my great burdens before I was married, and of course after I was married as well, was to really become a Christ-like person. To know more of Christ and to be more sanctified and more holy.

At about 19 or 20, I thought I was really beginning to do well. Becoming more patient and seemed to be getting on with people better and learning to take up my cross. I thought I was really learning something of dying for self.

Marriage as God's School of Spiritual Growth

Then I got married. God's graduate school. I began to discover whole un-crucified areas of George Berwer. I think this is something we need to understand. Whether you're already married or you're praying about marriage, that marriage is not primarily just to satisfy your particular emotional needs.

That is involved and God is concerned about your emotions. He can meet them and satisfy them within or without marriage. Some of the great men of God today have never been married. John Stott, William McDonald, Lymel Gurney, and quite a few others.

Not to speak of women of God who have never been married. Believe me, this message tonight is in some ways just as much for people who are single because it's about communication. Communication is one of the most important parts of marriage.

I really believe that marriage is one of God's graduate schools, one of God's graduate programs to teach spiritual life, to teach the way of the cross, to prepare us for heaven. If it's true what it says in the book, Destined for the Throne, that intercession is part of God's program to prepare us for heaven.

So we must also say that marriage is part of God's program to prepare us for heaven. And I hope that we can somehow, this evening, develop a more revolutionary view of marriage. My own marriage has been greatly enriched in the past few years because God has given us a greater view of what it's all about.

Communication, of course, is vital on your team. You're going to work on a team this summer. You're not going to O .M. Summer Crusade to get married, so if that's your goal, please stay back here. You're going to be on a team.

On the team there are going to be men, there are going to be women. You're going to have to learn to communicate. You're going to have to learn to relate to people. And so these principles of communication, though I'm going to be referring at times to marriage and to my own marriage, are basic on many other levels.

And I hope you will see that. I've listed here just some areas where I believe we have to learn. A disciple is a learner. We make a great mistake if we think that we're going to become spiritual through a series of crisis experiences.

I'm not against crisis experiences, and I know God meets people in special ways, and I know He can fill people with His Holy Spirit. I know that people have experiences at Keswick Conventions in England in which their lives are turned around, or in some other special series of meetings.

But I would yearn that this evening we could be a little more objective and understand that no matter what crisis we may have, if the New Testament has a purpose, then we must learn. We must learn biblical principles.

The biblical principles of communication. The biblical principles of marriage. By God's grace, this is what I have been trying to do now for almost 20 years. I was married about 19 or 20 years ago. And through some of my mistakes, and I hope you can learn from some of my mistakes, I remember the man who said, Any fool can learn by experience, but it takes a wise person to learn by instruction.

Believe me, if you learn from some of my mistakes, and you take seriously some of the instruction tonight, you'll still have to learn other things by experience. So you're not going to lose that privilege, no matter what.

No matter how smart you get tonight, and how much you determine tonight to get serious about biblical principles in regard to relationships and marriage, you're still going to have plenty of experiences.

I know a lot more now than I knew 15 years ago, and yet I'm still having experiences. I'm still having to learn by mistake. And here's something we need to remember as we get a little bit older. That many things in life must be re-learned.

They must be re-learned. Life is big, it's complicated, it moves fast. And we sometimes forget. And that really, really bugs me when I forget something that I thought I knew. Sometimes little things.

Little things I know you're not supposed to say. There are several things I know I'm not supposed to say to my wife. I know that. I've preached about it. But I still say them. And so we're going to have to re-learn.

And in a sense, I am so convinced that true spirituality and the victorious life and total commitment, it is a continual process. You don't arrive. This is why it is such utter nonsense to run around thinking you're going to find the perfect church group.

When you join it, you'll know it won't be perfect anymore if it ever was. This is why it is so foolish to run around looking for the ultimate experience. I find people looking for the ultimate experience, like someone looking for a double dose of marijuana.

And they think that somehow in this meeting or that meeting someone's going to throw them a spiritual pet pill. They're going to get high on Jesus. True commitment is a process. There may be moments of crisis.

It's a process. Marriage and growth in marriage is a process. Let's get into some of these basic points. Number one, in marriage we need to learn to be unselfish. I think of verses like Philippians chapter 2, verse 3 and 4.

So many verses I want to share with you, but I'm only going to be able to share some of them. Philippians 2, 3 and 4. Let nothing be done through strife or vainglory, but in lowliness of mind let each esteem others better than themselves.

Look not every man on his own things, but every man also on the things of others. In other words, learning to be unselfish. Learning to really esteem that marriage partner or that fellow team member better than yourself.

This is so radical. You know, some people think that the radical aspect of OM is our burden to reach the Muslim world, or our vision to reach the whole world, or some of our special efforts, or our attitude toward materialism.

They think of this as the radical aspect of OM. I will tell you, the more radical teaching of OM is linked with verses like esteem your brother better than yourself. I want to tell you that is harder than selling all your possessions.

That is harder than going to the Muslim world. Someone once writing about the self-life explained that the self-life will live anywhere. The self-life will go to the Rajasthan desert and live in a tiny house.

The self-life will join OM with no problem at all and even exist on peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for the summer. The self-life will sleep on the floor. The self-life will travel in old trucks that have no windows and get overheated and with 14 people from 7 nationalities come forth with a series of aromas that one has never experienced before.

The self-life has only one major need. It must live. It must live. And it can live in the desert, it can live in a shoebox. And don't think you're a disciple because you've learned to sleep on the floor or endure hardness or cross deserts reaching souls for Christ or any other such thing.

That is not the radical aspect of discipleship. The radical aspect of discipleship is when you begin to die to self. And this is why marriages come apart even when the people who are involved in the marriage outwardly seem to have the principles of discipleship.

They may have had certain principles of discipleship but they didn't have the really heart core of discipleship which is crucified living. Get a hold of Mr. Maxwell's book from your great Bible institute here in Canada, Prairie Bible Institute.

Born Crucified. You get halfway through it without repenting you probably have a heart condition or a brain tumor. Learn to be unselfish. And believe me, it will take more than coming forward or going forward at a Keswick convention or an O .N. meeting or any other meeting to turn the likes of us into unselfish Christ-like transparent marriage partners or friends or husbands or wives.

Long after I learn to preach. Long after I learn to lead people to Christ. Long after I learn to lead teams, write books, sell books, all kinds of things. Long after that, I was still at times storing very low when it came to being the unselfish husband.

And I have no credentials to use and to display tonight that gain me merit to speak on this subject. I only come as a sinner and as a failure. And if I can help any other sinners and failures in marriage find a little grace and a little reality and a little source of life then my visit to Canada would be well spent.

I can honestly say from the depth of my heart that I am as concerned about marriage as I am about mission. And sometimes I've thought that perhaps all I should do is go around and hold marriage seminars because how are we going to evangelize the world with endless rows of divorced people?

And what are we going to do with missionaries on the field who are plunging into immorality and divorce? And if you don't think this happens on the mission field you must be more even naive than you look.

Learning to be unselfish. This may be one of the reasons God has brought you into OM. Not that you're going to become the great ambassador for Christ in France but that somehow you're going to learn to die to self.

You're going to learn how to repent, how to deal with obnoxious areas in the self life. Extremism. I can't speak for Canada but of my own country the United States I can say I believe without exaggeration we are a nation of extremists.

We go from one extreme to the other. One thing I like about Canada is people seem to be a little more even level, even keeled up here. I don't know whether it's the British influence or the cold weather or what it is.

But I think it's good for those of us who are from south of the border to acknowledge our national weaknesses. We are a nation of extremists. We have produced some extremely good people. Some really great missionaries.

Even some really balanced people. But so many of us we go into extremes and it's unbelievable the extremes we are into in the USA today. And we usually export them to Canada quite freely without duty.

And of course there's nothing that will blow a marriage apart quicker than extremism. I had a case once where a woman read a Watchman Knee book. A book that I thought was a great book. Most of these books I read, I always have part of the book that I take with a grain of salt.

After all, everybody is a human being. What was Watchman Knee? An angel? One third of his material he got from Jesse Penn Lewis. Another third of it he got from some other British people. And one third of it he got probably on his knees in China.

Now I love Watchman Knee. I distributed his book. But I found people get some of these books and they go extreme. This lady was reading this book Release of the Spirit and she was getting all caught up in all these different terminologies and getting her spirit released.

And she felt her husband wasn't released. And pretty soon she felt, I don't know, through some twitch of the imagination that she couldn't fellowship with an unreleased husband. So they broke up. Praise the Lord.

Some of us got under the burden of that marriage and prayed those two people back together. I love the writings of A .W. Tozer. But recently I was greatly helped for listening to one of his tapes in which he acknowledged that many times his own temperament and his own intensity caused him to say things that were extreme and do things that were extreme.

Maybe that's why children have gone astray. We're all vessels of clay. We all can learn more. We all can read somebody else's book and learn something from it and grow and become more like Christ and more unselfish.

That to me is lesson number one. But it's amazing how this touches little areas of our life. I was selfish about my quiet time. I was a quiet time neurotic. I still am a little bit. And so I had my quiet time in the morning no matter what.

I hardly ever thought about the fact that my wife was not having her quiet time very much because she was serving me. Because in my quiet time I want a cup of tea. Who's going to bring me a cup of tea?

A wife. And after my quiet time I want my breakfast. Who's going to cook my breakfast? And I want a good breakfast. And I want the egg medium. So when I dip my toast in it goes straight down, it doesn't bounce up.

And here I am feasting on God's Word, memorizing God's Word, and going from God's Word to the breakfast table and really, there I am sitting, a selfish little man. A selfish little man. I'm at his little egg in his little cup of tea and very, very unsoughtful about the fact that his wife maybe hasn't got the chance even to break the pages of her Bible yet.

And it's just one of endless illustrations that I could give you just in my own life which is a very limited scene of how selfishness creeps in. And I pray that husbands tonight will declare war against it and women, you declare war against it as well because oftentimes as men and women we all cooperate very well in our selfishness.

Patience and Self-Control in Marriage

Number two, learning to be patient. There was a hard blow for me when I discovered there was more in the New Testament about patience than evangelism. I had to change the whole strategy of the work. But it's true.

And it's so easy for us as men and sometimes women as well to go around justifying our impatience. And I tell you, God hates it. God hates it. And sometimes our convictions our strong biblical convictions about discipleship and especially how money should be spent lead us into the sin of impatience.

And there's more about impatience in the Bible, in the New Testament than there is about forsaking all or about the use of money which some of us in OM become almost neurotic about. I was an extremist in the area of money.

I had the word around when I was a student at Moody that if I ever did find a girlfriend I would spend zero on her. Zero. I wouldn't enter into the sweet shop. I didn't believe in a sweet shop. I think probably then I thought it was a trick of the devil to make people overweight or something else.

I just felt that every penny should go to world evangelism. And I got really uptight about this. And I used to judge other people. Now God was merciful. He still used me and I guess today in the present evangelical scene this really isn't a major problem in too many places.

And in one sense I'd rather see even today young people going a little bit extreme on some of these things we can bring them back. As Brother Andrew once said to me we were preaching in Holland together.

And I'm very slow to give invitations and he said to me in this rather big meeting he said, Brother George, did you give an invitation? I said, well, no. He said, well, I think I'll give an invitation.

And he said, I think I'll give an invitation because I discovered it's easier. How did he put it? He said it was easier to cool down a fanatic than warm up a corpse. And today I don't think our great problem is too much enthusiasm for Christ and too many people becoming extreme on some of these things.

But it is sometimes a problem. Amazing how merciful God is. I don't know how I ever made it. Fortunately, even early in my marriage it began to change a little. Little by little. My wife reminded me of a time when I lost my temper.

I'm ashamed even to tell her. But I used to feel and I still do to some degree that my wife should get her clothing from Charlie. You say, what is Charlie? This is orientation. Charlie is the OM used clothing store.

People who have too much clothing they give it to Charlie. We put it in a nice room. We try to make it look nice. Some of it is, you know, 7th century. And we got a big one. We got a big run one year on mini skirts.

What are we going to do? What are we going to do with 200 mini skirts back in 1971 or whenever it was. We discovered how to convert them into book bags. You can just imagine. These are selling very cheap.

I used to be rather tight with the money that I would give my wife. And I used to put her into a guilt trip all the time. One day we were sitting in a car. This was so bad that I repressed it. So she reminded me of it.

Some years later she was in a depression. Months of depression partly because of me. Partly because I lacked sensitivity. Partly because I knew how to put her into a guilt trip. Partly because I was taking advantage of her submissiveness.

Partly because I was holding the Bible over her head. She reminded me of how I put pressure on her when we first got married to sell her sewing machine for Jesus. And then the rest of her life she had to watch other O .M. women who had sewing machines because there's no rule in O .M. that a woman can't have a sewing machine.

And years later when I forgot that I put this pressure on her I said, Boy, a sewing machine, that's a tremendous thing to have. Look at the money you can save sewing clothes. But in this particular incident I was sitting in the car and I was driving down the highway and I must have been in one of my uptight days.

Of course, most of you don't have that problem. But there I was driving down the highway and she finally got the courage to share with me that she had just purchased a new dress without my permission.

This was in a time of financial pressure. We were paying in money. We had bills to pay for literature, for Bibles. And my wife goes out without my permission and buys a dress. She already had three dresses.

But I did not react with a joke or with humor. But I relapsed into a pre-pagan stunt and jammed the brakes on full force of the car, beeped the horn, and skidded to the side of the road. I thought this would make an impact.

And I'm telling you the truth. And to this day, neither my wife and I remember whether I repented or not. I think I did. How God hates impatience. And how subtle Satan is to take a strong conviction and let it go sour and lead us even into sin.

Self-control is as basic to marriage as the very ring we put on one another's fingers. And God this summer wants to teach us patience. You may have to stand in some queues or lines or whatever you call them.

You may have to wait on your leader. I don't arrange it, but God does. And believe me, I believe patience is one of the most important virtues in the Christian life. God has done a miracle in my life in this area, but I still have a ways to go.

God has done a miracle in our marriage, but I have a ways to go. And I hope you will go along with me. Number three, learning to really accept one another. This is so basic. We project on each other our spiritual goals.

And I had certain things that I was projecting on my wife from the marriage onward and even before. And I had my little sermons for her. And I discovered after we were married that she wasn't exactly the same as I thought before the wedding.

She also discovered that about me. And so, of course, I proceeded to make changes to see her grow in the Lord, to see her become more spiritually mature. It was obvious that she had some blind spots. Not me, she.

And so there were the exhortations. She didn't even go along with my exercise program. Now, I believe this thing of exercise is important. Get up early, push-ups, jumping jacks, jogging. She would have none of it.

We discovered that we, our whole life, we were a different metabolism. And the doctor told me I had a high combustion engine. Everything I go in or take in to eat, it just burns up. My wife has a totally different kind of engine.

Everything she takes in, converted to fat. Now she's not fat, because she's disciplined. I'm so thankful to God for that. But a major breakthrough came in our marriage when she, I believe, already accepted me as I was.

She didn't have this trouble. I'm sure she must have had some struggles because at times I was so obnoxious and I'm sure I was such an enormous disappointment. But I can say, as far as I can remember, my wife never once belittled me or discouraged me or used my weaknesses to run me down.

I can't say that in reverse about my attitude toward her. And God had to really break me and just enable me to accept her as she was. I tell you, this is so important in marriage. Some women have more trouble than men.

They want their husband to be somebody on the mission field in major divisions. This particular husband, he's quite happy to be the number two man. He's a phlegmatic type. He doesn't want to be the boss.

He's quite happy to be number three man, number four man. He's worshiping the Lord. He just wants to get on and be Joe Faithful. But his wife, oh no. She feels that his potential is not being recognized by the missionary leader.

And she is pushing him, just slowly. She is pointing out the weaknesses of his leaders. She is pointing out to him that he, certainly in a number of these areas, had greater wisdom than the boss. Pretty soon he's thinking, oh man, maybe I'm not just the number two.

My wife has got wisdom. Maybe I should be the boss around here. And his whole life becomes a disaster because of his wife's push to get him to the top. It happens. It happens all the time. On the mission field and at home.

How important it is to accept your partner as she or he is. That doesn't mean together you don't want to see growth, of course, and greater holiness in your life, of course. I couldn't even walk down the street with my wife.

I didn't realize this before we were married. She was just slow. Not slow, but slower than me. And it was very difficult. I'd have to wait on the corner and give out tracts and wait for her to come along.

But a lot of the countries we work in, you're not allowed to give out tracts. It became a great tension. And I didn't understand women. And most of us as men, I think, if we're honest, we don't understand women.

And I couldn't understand why she couldn't be ready quicker. I operate a lot on spontaneous things. I get an idea, let's go. I'd give her five or ten minutes notice. I couldn't understand, what is she doing in the bathroom?

And I would have tremendous struggle for this. And I'd try to control myself. I remember once going out to the car. I'd given her even 20 minutes notice. I didn't know where we were going. She was up there doing this and that.

I was hitting the car and I was saying, Lord, guard my tongue. Guard my tongue. I don't want to say anything. I don't want to hurt her. Such a wretch. I got it all in the head. All in the head. She gets in the car.

I didn't say a thing. One dirty look. Some women cry easy. You know, Billy Graham says with our tongue, we can smite. We can hurt people. We hurt one another. We hurt one another. So totally ridiculous.

Just the other night. Here I am, 19 years marriage. I should be, you know, improving. Just here, right here in Toronto. The other night. I'm going to bed. I'm reading something. My wife comes. She wanted me to turn off the lights.

So, go to sleep. I had told her to go to sleep two hours ago. I was a little upset. Why was she still walking around? So she just gave me a rather, just a rather sympathetic look. Some kind of a nice look.

And I used it to say, of all things, can you imagine? Here in Toronto, such a nice place. Of all things. I said, why are you giving me a dirty look? And that just hit her. Because, of course, she hadn't given me a dirty look.

My wife hardly has ever given me a dirty look. I mean, once in a while. Boy, I tell you, when it comes heavy. And so that hurt her. And that bothered her. And often I do ask forgiveness before I go to sleep.

But I fall asleep quick. And that was it. I fell asleep. And so I wasn't able to repent until the next morning. So she had to sleep with that on her mind. And it hurt her. So easy for us to hurt with these unnecessary comments.

Unnecessary words. And they come because we're not abiding in Christ. Or we're in a bad mood. Or something. And I'm reading a book right now. And it nails it right on the head. And irritability is sin.

And that's been one of the sins that has just plagued my life. And I'm going to stay in the battle against it. I want to wipe it out. I don't want to defend it. I don't want to say I inherited it from my grandfather, who was an incredibly irritable character.

But I want to nail it to the cross. Irritability is one of the most destructive forces in marriage. Moodiness. Nothing to do with D .L. Moody. Moodiness. Creeps into the marriage. And we get on each other.

Forgiveness, Humility, and Acceptance

But on the other side, I want to say something that's just as important. That leads me to the next point. Forgiveness. Is that again and again, my wife has used the therapy of forgiveness to break me, and to bend me, and to keep me going.

Now, my wife is more phlegmatic. She's shy. She's introvert. I am aggressive, choleric. You know, that type of thing. With a melancholic streak, according to a choleric friend of mine. It's really bad.

But some of you have a reverse situation. I counsel people. The husband is a real phlegm. You know, the morning his wife's up doing her jumping jacks, he's in bed, she's a nut, she's a nut. And, you know, he's wanting to go out for a milkshake.

He's feeling a bit of, you know, his tongue is dry. She's wanting to go out. Let's keep our tracks. Let's go door to door. It happens. He wants to sit home at night, watch the football game. No, no, no, we've got to go to church.

We've got to go to church. We've got to go here. We've got to go there. And I tell you, that makes an interesting program. That makes an interesting program. And any of you husbands that have that kind of wife, you know, I'd like to become your permanent prayer partner.

Really. Because, you know, if I was married to that kind of wife, I'd probably, you know, just, you know, just a pistol. And for any of you women that are like that, you know, I can only say try a little bit of balance.

You know, just pull back a little bit. Maybe even read Marilyn Morgan. I know she's taboo among the conservative evangelicals. But, you know, just for balance, just for balance, just go halfway back. Then throw her out the window.

But believe me, there's got to be forgiveness. There's got to be forgiveness and acceptance. Think of verses like Ephesians 4 .32. Ephesians 4 .32. So beautiful, so appropriate. And be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God, for Christ's sake, has forgiven you.

That's the basis of marriage. My wife and I, in the first year of marriage, we read Calvary Road, Revival in the Home, and that has kept us going. When I have failed, when she has failed, we've repented, and we've been cleansed by the blood of Christ, and have hardly ever gone to sleep at night, without knowing we were right with God and right with Him.

It can be that way. It can be that way. And then number five, after forgiveness, accepting one another for forgiveness. Five, learning to bend and to break. 1 Peter 5 .6 speaks about how God resists the proud and gives grace to the humble.

If I hadn't learned a little bit about this, and I'm still learning, I think I would have blown our marriage into pieces. How to bend, how to break, how to admit you've made a mistake. Do you ever discover how hard it is to admit that something is totally your fault?

There's something in us that resists that. And to just be able to learn that. How to admit it's your fault. Take the blame. If that person, your marriage partner or someone else, if they were 98 in the wrong, and you were only 2 in the wrong, you only have to worry about the 2%.

They will have to worry about the 98%. Put your 2 right. Go to the person or go to your partner and say, Look, I'm really sorry for saying that or doing that or forgetting that. And let the Lord convict that person of the 98%.

Brokenness is so basic for marriage and marital happiness. Bending. And this also works in a practical level. And I call it compromise. In my early Christian life, I thought the word compromise was totally from the devil.

We can't compromise on the basic doctrine. We're Bible-believing Christians. We don't compromise. We don't compromise. I was brainwashed into this. Don't compromise. I dragged it into my marriage. Marriage is impossible without compromise.

Impossible without good compromise. Each person giving in a little bit. Each person going the extra mile. If I hadn't learned this with my strong convictions, some of them on minor issues, I wouldn't destroy my own wife.

Probably myself. Why is it that some of the men that have gone the furthest for God and have been so mightily used of God have gone so low in their marital situations? Because the things that help us be strong in some areas of our Christian life produce weakness in other areas.

Why is it that many times missionaries can't get on with each other? I'll tell you why. Because it takes a strong-minded man to get to the mission field. He has to plow through all kinds of problems, all kinds of difficulties.

He finally gets to the mission field. When he gets to the mission field, what does he meet? Other strong-minded men who have plowed their way to the mission field. And so they can't get on together. What helps you in one area, being strong-minded, becomes your deadliest enemy in another area.

That's why without balance, without compromise, it doesn't work. The very things that help us to be successful in business destroy our own. That which may help me in the pulpit will destroy me in the living room or with my children because they don't want my sermons.

They want my love. They want my patience. They want my time. And we men of God get so incredibly busy and we think it's all for Jesus. It's all for God's work. And we're in for a big surprise. And we're going to discover that a lot of what we have done hasn't been for God's work.

It's been our own ego on a full-scale charge. God is first and the family is second. And if we're too busy to spend time with our children every week, except maybe when we're away. And that means when we come back we have to spend double time.

And remember, it isn't just the quantity of time you spend with your children. I learned this the hard way. It's the quality. Because I would take my children out thinking I was doing them a great big favor.

What an egoist. I was doing my kids a great big favor. There are dozens of people who are trying to see me. They're being counseled by me. And now I'm going to give an hour of my time to my kids. And I go out and I take them out.

I blow the whole thing. I did it again just a couple of months ago. In an intensive schedule. I was going to be Big Daddy. Take my children out on Sunday for a walk in the woods. I blow it. My daughter wanted to take a picture of me.

I don't like cameras. But I decided to be, you know, give it a try. So I posed for her. She's my daughter. She's only 14. Is she going to tell me where to stand? Yes. She says, Daddy, move over. I lost my cool.

I said, forget it. You're not taking pictures of me. And I walked away. That was the end of the whole afternoon. Lovely family time in the woods of Sweden. My daughter was so upset, she froze. You know, she becomes quiet.

I don't know where she learned it. She walked down other paths. She walked, you know. I begged her. I asked her for glory and mercy. I apologized. I repented. I said, look. Take the picture. Anything.

What did she say? You think she'd forgive me? She said, no. You're always like that. Finally, after an hour and a half, we got restored. Why do I tell you this? I tell you this because if some of you have been trying to be the ideal father, and you've been trying to be the ideal husband, and you're still failing, I can tell you there's at least two of us, so let's not give up.

Let's not give up. Learn to bend. Learn to break. Learn to compromise. Grow up. Watch out for your ego. And it'll make you a better father and a better husband. And then the next point. I always lose track of my numbers.

I think it's six. Learn to love. Love isn't something that you just got in a funnel on the wedding day. Learn to love. 1 Corinthians 13. Apply it to your marriage. And dozens and dozens of other verses on the subject of love.