FBC Spring Bible Conference

Alright, good evening. Glad you made it out on this Monday evening. Looking forward to a good service, a good time together in God's Word, and to be encouraged from the

Word of God tonight. I want to begin tonight with, in this blue book, with number 8, the theme of Mark's message tonight is encouragement in marriage, and one passage

I was thinking of reading was Ephesians chapter 5, which of course is the passage of exhortation to husbands and wives, encouraging them to be what they ought to be and so forth.

But in that passage, Paul makes the analogy that marriage is a picture of the bride of Christ and, you know,

Christ and His church, the church being His bride. So the two songs we're going to sing tonight have to do with the bride of Christ.

So begin with number 8 in this blue book, this supplement book, and it's this hymn,

Blessed Be the

Tie That Binds.

Before our Father's throne, we pour our ardent prayers.

Our fears, our hopes, our aims are one, our comforts and our cares.

We share each other's woes, our mutual burdens bear, and often for each other flows the sympathizing tear.

When we asunder part, it gives us inward comfort.

But we shall still be joined in heart and hope to meet again.

This glorious hope revives our courage by the way, while each in expectation lives and longs to see the day.

From sorrow, toil, and pain and sin, we shall be free.

And perfect love and friendship reign through all eternity.

We're glad that we have a friend with us tonight from out of town. Gordon Taylor has been here a few times before to speak, and I'm going to ask him to lead us in prayer tonight, please,

Gordon. Then, thank you.

You may be seated. So I'm going to go ahead and read that passage in Ephesians chapter 5.

If you have your copy of scriptures with you, you might want to turn to that passage and follow along.

It's Ephesians 5 and begins in verse 22 and goes down to the end of the chapter.

I would want to emphasize that verse 21, because of the way verse 22 begins, verse 21 says, submitting to one another in the fear of God.

Wives, he says in verse 22, submit to your own husbands as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife, as also

Christ is the head of the church, and he is the savior of the body. Therefore, just as the church is subject to Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in everything.

Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave himself for her, that he might sanctify and cleanse her with the washing of water by the word, that he might present her to himself a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but that she should be holy and without blemish.

So husbands ought to love their own wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself.

For no one ever yet hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as the Lord does the church.

For we are members of his body, of his flesh, and of his bones. For this reason, a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.

This is a great mystery, but I speak concerning Christ and the church. Nevertheless, let each one of you in particular so love his own wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband."

The Lord had his blessing on the reading of his word tonight. Before we sing next to him and then the message,

I just want to remind you that we are receiving a love offering for Mark and Diane Chansky, and the way you can give to that, there's a couple ways you can give to that if you would like to do so.

One is in that brown offering box on the table in the foyer. Just anything that goes in that box goes to the

Chanskys tonight and tomorrow night. A second way you can give is online. You can go to the church website homepage, faithbaptisterling .com.

There's a little tag on the menu bar, give online, and you can go there.

There's a little tile, they call it, that says love offering. You click on that and you can give that way.

Then the third option is through a mobile app, myVanco mobile app or whatever it is.

Those instructions are on the foyer if you prefer to give online. Anyway, I just want to remind you of that.

We want to be an encouragement to the Chanskys as they have come to us this week and Mark's messages are a great encouragement to us.

All right, before he comes to speak tonight, number 165 in your hymnal, The Church's One Foundation, 165.

The Church's one foundation is

Jesus Christ her Lord. She is his new creation by water and the word.

From heaven he came and sought her to be his holy bride.

With his own blood he bought her and for her life he died.

Elect from every nation, yet one o 'er all the earth.

Her charter of salvation, one

Lord, one faith, one birth. One holy name she blesses, partakes one holy food.

And to one hope she presses with every grace endued.

Mid toil and tribulation and tumult of her war.

She waits the consummation of peace forevermore.

Till with the vision glorious her longing eyes are blessed.

And the great church victorious shall be the church at rest.

Yet she on earth has union with God the three in one.

And mystic sweet communion with those whose rest is one.

O happy ones and holy, Lord give us grace that we.

Them the meek and lowly on high may dwell with thee.

Chansky, come on ahead. Again, I count it a great privilege and a delight to be able to be here.

I have found being at Faith Baptist here. I found a true kindred spirit and we share together a like precious faith.

And in these days this is no small thing to find a pearl of great price of a church here in Sterling, Illinois.

Also, I find it striking that Gordon and Raina Taylor are here.

Because Diane and I met them almost exactly 40 years ago in June of 1982.

Diane and I had been married for about 20 hours when we visited the

Sycamore Baptist Church. And now here I am preaching on marriage.

And in some ways I'll be telling you the rest of the story. About what happened after our little honeymoon visit to Sycamore Baptist Church.

Let's take our Bibles and turn to Song of Solomon chapter 4.

Song of Solomon chapter 4. Song of Solomon is just before Isaiah and just after Ecclesiastes.

Song of Solomon chapter 4. I'll read the first seven verses.

Your lips are like a scarlet thread and your mouth is lovely.

Your temples are like a slice of pomegranate behind your veil. Your neck is like the

Tower of David built with rows of stones of which are hung a thousand shields.

All the round shields of the mighty men. And your two breasts are like two fawns, twins of a gazelle which feed among the lilies.

Until the cool of the day when the shadows flee away. I will go my way to the mountain of Myrrh and to the hill of frankincense.

You are altogether beautiful, my darling, and there is no blemish in you.

Let's pray together. Our Heavenly Father, we thank you that we can meet with you in the cool of the day.

And we thank you that we can gather freely in this nation and be blessed by the opening up of your word.

And we pray that your Holy Spirit would come and that you would open up our eyes and open up our ears and do good heart work this hour.

We pray it in Jesus' name. Amen. In a

British period drama set in the early 20th century, around the 1920s, you may have seen this series.

There was a local farmer. His name was Mr. Drake. And he comes down with what's called a case of dropsy, otherwise known as congestive heart failure.

And he becomes a patient of the small town doctor, Dr. Clarkston.

And poor Mrs. Drake looks on as her husband progressively swells up with excessive fluid, particularly around his heart, and death seems inevitable.

But who will take care of her and her several young children, who are now staring at a life without a husband and without a father?

Well, there's a nurse. Her name is Isabel Crawley. And the nurse recommends to the doctor an innovative but risky surgical procedure that might save his life.

It enlists the controversial substance known as adrenaline. So nearly widowed and desperate,

Mrs. Drake approves of the procedure. And a rare vial of adrenaline is ordered, and it arrives from London.

And Dr. Clarkston then pierces Mr. Drake's chest cavity with this enormous needle, and he begins to quickly drain off pints of heart -drowning fluid.

And as expected, this stress to the heart induces a cardiac arrest, and Mr.

Drake's heart stops beating. But then the nurse, Crawley, calmly hands to the doctor a syringe of adrenaline, which is then injected directly into the heart area.

Then the adrenaline acts as a cardiac jump -starter, and Mr.

Drake almost instantly springs again into a healthy heartbeat. You see, it was adrenaline that was the life -restoring effect in the life of Mr.

Drake. And in healthy households, adrenaline shouldn't be used only as an exotic delicacy, but it should be on tap, that adrenaline of encouragement that we're talking about.

Encouragement, adrenaline for the soul. Encouragement should be part of the family daily diet, because it brings a real healthy pulse to the whole household.

And so in this session together, my desire is to consider the implications of encouragement for marriage.

And we'll have only two main headings in our time together. We'll consider first husbanding, and then wifing.

And with that simple outline, I hope nobody will get lost. So come on, firstly, with me to husbanding.

Encouragement, adrenaline for the soul, as it's applied to husbanding. You see, a famine of encouragement can bring a marriage to cardiac arrest.

There was an article in the Atlantic magazine years ago. It was called Masters of Love, and it reported on four decades of research that the psychologist

John Gottman conducted on thousands of couples to discover what makes relationships work.

This esteemed Gottman Institute set up what they called the Love Lab, and they brought in newlywed couples, and they hooked them up to electrodes, and they asked them to discuss the health of their marital relationships.

And then during the discussions, the electrodes measured the couple's blood flow, and heart rate, and sweat production.

And then the couples went home, and then the research contacted them six years later to find out if they were still married.

And as the research then studied, the data that they'd gathered, they found two distinct groups.

There were first the masters, who were still married after six years, and then also the disasters, who either ended their marriages, or they were miserably unhappy in their marriages.

Now, the disasters had appeared six years earlier, calm during their interviews, but the electrodes had recorded something different in their physiology.

Quote now from the article, their heart rates were quick, their sweat glands were active, and their blood flow was fast.

You see, the couples who demonstrated a more active physiology were more aggressive toward each other, and quote, the article says, showed signs of being in fight -or -flight mode.

When they discussed together, quote again, conversing with their spouse was to their bodies like facing off with a saber -toothed tiger, and their relationship deteriorated more quickly.

But on the other hand, there were the masters. And the masters, when they were interviewed six years earlier, they were calm both outwardly and physiologically.

They were loving and warm toward each other, even in times of conflict. And here was the explanation given by the

Gottmans in their Atlantic article. Quote, there is a habit of mind that the masters have,

Gottman explained, which is this. They are scanning the social environment of their marriage for things that they can appreciate and say thank you for.

They're building this culture of respect. Didn't you read something about respecting your husbands in Ephesians 5?

They are building this culture of respect and appreciation very purposefully. The disasters, on the other hand, seem to be scanning the social environment for their partner's mistakes.

Because here, in the disaster's marriages, they had a hawk eye, which sees sharply,

Jan, for the bad, but a bat's eye that doesn't see the good.

Quoting now again from the article. It's not just scanning the environment. It's scanning the partner for what the partner is doing right or scanning him for what he's doing wrong and then criticizing versus respecting him and expressing appreciation.

In summary, they said this. Contempt is found to be the number one factor that tears couples apart.

People who are focused on criticizing their partners miss a whopping 50 % of the positive things their partners are doing and they see negatively things that are not even there.

Well, I must admit that this Love Lab study convicts me as being guilty as a husband.

And here, Gordon, Raina, is the rest of the story of what happened after June 13, 1982.

Because Diane and I left East Moline. We drove through Illinois into Michigan, crossed at Detroit into Canada, eventually to Niagara Falls and then to Stratford and Toronto.

When Diane and I got married in 1982, our delightfully memorable honeymoon was stained with conflict.

You see, Diane spent so much time saying farewell to her bridesmaids and sisters in Waterloo, Iowa, that our getaway from Iowa was four hours later than expected.

This is not a happy thing for a new groom. And then she was so selective about the restaurant we chose in Niagara Falls.

And then I sat with her on a bench on a flowery Toronto boulevard and I lectured her that as we were going toward the

CN Tower, hand in hand, diagonally through the town, I'm going to go in this direction, she's going to go in that direction.

I sat her down in that flowery boulevard and I told her that I am the leader in our relationship and that she needed to be willing to follow.

And then after watching a Shakespeare play at Stratford, we quarreled about some difference of opinion that I frankly can't even remember.

And the bottom line for me was that I perceived in Diane flaws as if,

Raina, I were Mr. Perfect myself. Flaws. And I was going to fix

Diane. I was going to fix those flaws by criticizing and correcting her. And I prided myself in transparency and confrontation.

But now we fast forward 19 years later, 2001, when my dad died unexpectedly and suddenly.

And I was just stunned and I was just staggered. He was 71, but I thought, sure, he lived to be 91.

I'd lost my dad. My dad was my hero. And the brevity of life smacked me right in the face.

And I remember waking up about 3 o 'clock in the morning, staring there, laying alongside of me in my bed, through my tears, because I lost dad, and there was my darling

Diane laying beside me in our bed. And she had been such a fountain of blessing and goodness to me over nearly two decades.

And I mused to myself, am I really wise to spend the precious few moments that we have together in our fleeting lives circling around her perceived quirks and flaws?

Come on, Mark, I said to myself, or the Lord saying to me, come on,

Mark, let it go, let it go. Don't obsess on her blemishes.

Come on, Mark, bask in her virtues. And I will admit, Gordon and Reina, that after 19 years that night,

I made a quantum leap forward in wise and loving husbanding.

I even hope for some of you young 'uns here, like I think of Aaron and Diane, what, you're married about five months?

I hope that you can be made wiser far earlier than I was made wise, because Paul tells husbands to love their wives.

Pastor Brian read it to us. Love your wives as Christ also loved the church.

Ephesians 5, 25. As they are loving their own bodies.

As you love your own bodies, love your wife. It says in verse 28, he who loves his wife loves himself.

Now that's a mouthful. Charles Hodge, the great systematic theologian, perceptibly unpacks it and expounds it this way in his commentary.

Listen to what he says. Marital love, therefore, as much a dictate it is of nature as it is of self -love.

And you love your wife, you're loving yourself. And it is not as unnatural for a man to hate his wife as it would be for him to hate himself or his own body.

Which one of us realistically hate our own body? So unnatural to do such a thing. Hodge goes on. A man may have a body which does not altogether suit him.

He may wish it were a handsomer body, a healthier one, a stronger one, a more active one, but still it is his body.

It is himself. And he naturally nourishes and cherishes it as tenderly as though it were the best and loveliest body a man ever had.

Don't we all do that naturally, gentlemen? We do, don't we? Hodge goes on. So a man may have a wife whom he could wish she was better, or more beautiful, or more agreeable, but she is his wife.

And by the constitution of nature and the ordinance of God, a part of himself. In neglecting or abusing her, he violates the laws of nature as well as the law of God.

And it is thus that Paul presents the matter. And so we look at ourselves, gentlemen, and each of us can say, as my own scarred, blemished, odd -looking body, and Diane knows

I have this big nose, and it's just disproportionate to the rest of my body, but it's my nose!

And when I have a cold, I take care of it. And so, in the same way as we naturally daily pamper and primp ourselves, because it's us, our body, so I should primp my bride.

She deserves the same royal, tender treatment as my own body would get.

That's the natural way of things that Paul is arguing. Love your wife as you love your own body.

We all know the famous love chapter in 1 Corinthians 13, as Paul describes the love husbands should show also for their wives.

It's a text that's so often used at weddings. Love suffers long. It's kind.

It doesn't envy. Love doesn't parade itself. It's not puffed up. It doesn't behave rudely.

It does not seek its own. It's not provoked. Love thinks no evil.

It doesn't rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth. Love bears all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

Love never fails. And so, I think of my relationship with Diane.

She's like an exotic and delicate vase who deserves my honoring and my polishing and yes, my encouraging and not my belittling and my rough handling and my criticizing.

You know what Peter says in 1 Peter 3. Husbands, likewise, dwell with your wives in an understanding way, giving honor to the wife as to the weaker vessel.

Again, that delicate vase as being heirs together of the grace of life that your prayers may not be hindered.

Finally, all of you ought to be of one mind, having compassion for one another.

Love as brothers. Be tenderhearted. Be courteous. Not returning evil for evil or reviling for reviling, but on the contrary, blessing, knowing that you were called to this, that you may inherit a blessing.

So gentlemen, yes, it's true. In marriage, there is still a place for loving confrontation.

But gentlemen, if you're like me, which I know you are in many ways, we've got to dial it down.

We've got to pick our battles. We've got to take on the personality of an encourager.

And we've got to put off the persona of a fault finder. That can be our default setting, gentlemen.

It can't be like that. Husbands should be Proverbs 31 men. What does it say?

We know about Proverbs 31 women, and that's how we want our wives to be so virtuous.

Well, what about the complement of that, the man side of it? It says in Proverbs 31 .28,

Her children rise up and call her blessed, and her husband also praises her.

We ought to be praising our brides. I know some of you gentlemen, you say, well, I praise her.

But you know what? If you're like me, naturally, you may praise her with an eyedropper when you should be using a garden hose.

We need to be men who praise our brides and find their virtues.

We need, gentlemen, to take a page out of Solomon's husbanding manual. In that Song of Solomon, we read early on, men must be heavy on affectionate and affirming encouragement.

Gentlemen, we should find the good, and we should be willing to overlook the not so good in our wives.

See, you think of the passages that I read to you. In the Song of Solomon, that exemplary groom, that husband, did you notice how he's absolutely extravagant in loving his bride with words of encouragement and compliment and affirmation?

For instance, like in 115 of the Song of Solomon, Behold, you are fair, my love.

Behold, you are fair. You have dove's eyes, it says.

He's praising her beauty. I even read to you in 4 .2

where it says, Your teeth are like a flock of shorn sheep, which have come up from the washing, every one of them of which bears twins, and none is barren among them.

Did you hear that? Solomon even, he basks in the fact that his beautiful bride still has all her teeth.

And this is a stunning feature 3 ,000 years ago. And he commends her for it.

He's ever scanning her life for things worthy of his appreciation.

And he verbally expresses what it is about her that delights him. And that ought to be us, gentlemen.

We ought to be encouragers so that can be adrenaline to our wife's soul.

It says in Song of Solomon 6 .9, You are fair, my love. There is no spot in you.

It says in 4 .7, My dove, my perfect one, there is none like you.

Gentlemen, that ought to be us. And the way that we are encouragers to our brides and our interactions with her should not be like confronting a saber -toothed tiger.

It should be like confronting an adrenaline -pouring nurturer.

I can remember a few years ago, Diane got away for a couple of days. She's got sisters in Iowa and they met together for a rendezvous in Chicago.

They were gone like three days. And I still remember, we had the five kids and I was taking care of the five kids.

Oh, we'll be fine, honey. And there she goes off down the driveway and we're waving and she's gone for the first three hours.

We're just about fine. But then, every time I walk by the window, when is she coming back?

And the fact of the matter is that we know what it's like, gentlemen, how when our wives are with us, there's a liveliness in the household.

There's a technicolor to our lives. But when our wives leave for me and for our children, our life became like a black and white movie because we've lost our life.

We've lost the sparkle to us. I still remember her coming home from that gathering, just hugging her and telling her about this, that, honey, it was so dark and dingy without you because you provide things for the children and activities and meals and all kinds of nurturing things that when you're gone, it just isn't the same.

And I have, over the years, I think learned to be, since my honeymoon,

Raina and Gordon, a better husband. And life is good when there is this mutual love that is led by husbands being encouragers.

So that's the husbanding element. I've gone after your husbands. Okay, okay. I'll talk to the wives too.

In fact, even at Holland for years, it's been said, you know, Mark, he writes a book about manly dominion and Mark always goes hard after the men, but he always deals with the wives with kid gloves.

So, okay, I'll talk to the wives too, man. Okay, I'll do that. So we've dealt with husbanding, encouragement, adrenaline to the soul, but now just consider wifing.

Wifing. Remember at the outset, I talked about Mrs. Drake, whom we encountered at the beginning there.

She wisely helped her husband by seeing that he received strengthening adrenaline.

The heroic, life -saving action that she took for her husband in getting him adrenaline for his congestive heart failure, see that epitomizes well her

God -assigned role as a helper suitable, as a helpmate.

It says in Genesis 2 .18, the Lord God said, it's not good that the man should be alone. I'll make him a helper suitable, a helper comparable, a helpmate to him.

This term helpmate, it's the Hebrew word etzer. You've read the song, here

I raise my ebenezer, it means stone of help, rock of help.

Here I raise my ebenezer, hither by thy help I've come. And so the

Lord helped Israel to conquer the Philistines as that statement is made in 1

Samuel 7 .10, that the Lord is our ebenezer, our helper, our strengthener.

And so too, as the woman is the etzer of man, the helpmate of the man, the wife is to help her husband conquer the foes of life, and so she is called a helper, an etzer, a helper suitable to strengthen their husbands.

Now, some wives fail to strengthen their husbands by infusing strengthening adrenaline and inadvertently hurt their husbands by overexposing them to weakening kryptonite.

And Brian, since you don't read Marvel comics, kryptonite is that substance that weakens a

Superman, it's his point of vulnerability. Some wives can be like kryptonite at times to their husbands.

In fact, in her book, Fierce Woman, subtitled The Power of a Soft Warrior, Kim Wagner, some of you may have read this book,

Fierce Woman, Kim Wagner confesses how she, a high -octane woman, grew disillusioned with her husband's flawed leadership in their marriage.

Her husband was the pastor of a flourishing church, but he just didn't measure up in her mind.

Kim was critical, she was intimidating, she was impatient, leaving her husband feeling like he couldn't do anything right.

And so he spiraled down into discouragement. And Kim Wagner writes this, she says,

I was repulsed by his depression. He needed to get his act together. He needed to be a man.

And her husband stunned her by resigning at that point from the pastorate.

And Kim says, this was a real wake -up call for me. And the Lord convicted Kim through 1

Peter 3, 1 -6 that she had not been a gentle and quiet spirit helper, but rather she had been a brash and loud herder in that relationship.

And retrospectively analyzing her early marriage years, kind of like me analyzing mine, she recognized how she had harshly countered her husband's leadership with her superior plan, her hypercritical spirit, and her take -charge personality.

You see, she had systematically, she wrote, I had systematically emasculated him.

And Wagner isn't alone in her critical spirit. In confessing her own critical wifely tendencies,

Martha Peace, never heard of her before, Reina, Martha Peace confessed that she, too, was that same kind of a fierce woman.

And that's her tendency. Martha hits the mark by saying that as her husband's helpmate,

Martha writes, I need, he doesn't need my helpful suggestions, and he doesn't need my sarcastic put -downs, because they're not helpful in that sense.

Not saying a wife shouldn't ever come alongside a man and criticize a man, but not to do it in a sarcastic, condescending way,

Martha writes. For a wife, Martha says, a crucial battle is fighting the common plague of critical and disrespectful talk to her husband.

And you realize that the book of Proverbs make no small thing of this very issue. Let me just read what it says in Proverbs 21 .9.

It says, Better to dwell in a corner of a housetop than in a house shared with a contentious woman.

Then it says in 25 .24, Better to dwell in a corner of a housetop than in a house shared with a contentious woman.

You said, but you repeated that. I know, but the Scriptures repeat that. It's there in both verses.

And then it says in 21 .19, Better to dwell in a wilderness than with a contentious and angry woman.

And 27 .15 says, A continual dripping on a very rainy day and a contentious woman are alike.

You see, there is a pattern there that Martha Peace talks about. She finds herself to struggle with that very pattern.

You see, a husband needs his wife to be the reviving corner in the fight of life.

You've seen boxers. They go out in the middle of the ring and they get pummeled for three minutes.

But then at the round's end, they can retreat to their corner for reinvigorating encouragement and refreshment.

And in the corner, what happens there is getting rubbed down on the back. That exhausted boxer hears things like this.

Okay, okay. You took some hits, but you also delivered some good ones and well. You are the man.

You have what it takes to get back out there and to take down that Goliath. Ladies, that is your role in the fight of life for your man.

Wives are to be that strengthening corner in their husband's life.

And the adrenaline encouragement is a crucial ingredient in their helper coaching.

It says in 1 Thessalonians 5 .11, after all, Therefore, encourage one another and build up one another all the more as you are doing.

You are the etzers, the helpmates of your husband. A husband comes home to his wife.

That's his retreating to his corner. He's often bruised and beaten. And dear ladies, he doesn't need the kryptonite of a critical spirit, but he needs the adrenaline of a cheering encourager.

Ladies, you are to be your husband's helpers and not his hurters.

All wives, one writer says, all wives are daughters of Eve who was enticed into destroying her marriage and her world by a craving for more there in the

Garden of Eden. God had nestled her comfortably in a paradise stocked with unimaginable plenty, including trees with low -hanging fruit and a good, even a very good husband.

But paradise wasn't enough, was it, for Eve? Eve wanted more, more.

And it's that seed of dissatisfaction that the serpent craftily watered because he said to the woman, didn't he, in 3 .1,

Indeed, has God said you shall not eat from every tree in the garden?

You see, the serpent hissed the insinuation that God was stingily restricting her from something better.

And you may have your man and he may not be what you wish he were and you want him to be better and you're not satisfied.

That's where fierce woman Kim Wagner writes this, Eve's ingratitude took her from the lush gardens of peaceful contentment and drove her into the wilderness of desolate places, always seeking, painful longing, insatiable hunger, empty dreams.

But Kim Gardner gives this little statement herself, her relationship with her pastor husband, Leroy. She says,

While in the car, driving to my first meeting with Anne, a girlfriend involved in a forbidden fruit affair because her husband,

Gary, failed to gratify her emotional needs. While in the car, I called my husband to have him pray for me.

Before I hung up, I asked my husband, Leroy, to give me one word, one word from a husband's perspective, one word of counsel that I might need to give to Anne.

And the word that Leroy gave was gratitude. Tell her regarding her husband, she needs to be grateful.

Because, you see, no doubt Leroy himself had felt the burn of his own Kimberly's Eve DNA.

Ever heard of Dr. Laura Schlesinger? A little bit of a blast from the past. She wrote a book called

The Proper Care and Feeding of Husbands. And it grew out of her receiving and evaluating thousands of comments from men all around the country.

And she has a chapter that she writes in the book The Proper Care and Feeding of Husbands, which is written to women.

And the chapter is called, listen to this now, You're a nag. I love quoting women because I don't want to take that perspective here.

Here's what Laura wrote to other women in marriages. The universal complaint of men who emailed me and my website with their opinions about the proper care and feeding of husbands was that their wives criticize, complain, nag, rarely compliment or express appreciation, are difficult to satisfy, and basically not as nice to them as they'd be to a stranger ringing the doorbell at 3 a .m.

She goes on. Many men divulged how they were esteemed outside of the home as competent professionals by their colleagues, but were treated inside the home as a bumbling buffoon by their wives.

In fact, Jim wrote, quote now to Laura, he wrote in an email, I've always had superlative evaluations on my performance at work, but at home,

I can't do anything right. I sometimes spend several minutes and thought on a task at hand trying to decide exactly what to do, and after weighing the pros and cons,

I make a decision and I act. And almost inevitably, I get, why in the world did you do that?

What's the matter with you? What were you thinking? That was so stupid. And the man says in conclusion, it's just something that wears you down like erosion, like dwelling on the corner of a roof on a rainy day, right?

You see, discouraging talk can make a man's home kind of be like a kryptonite corner, but wives should know that there's a great upside to the wise bridling and kind use of their tongues, because it says in Proverbs 15, 4, a wise, a soothing tongue, in contrast, isn't it a kryptonite effect?

A soothing tongue, it says, is a tree of life. You see, ladies, kind and encouraging words from a wife to a husband, they're adrenaline.

I'm telling you that they send a man back out into the ring singing and swinging instead of sulking.

It's adrenaline when you encourage us, ladies. Your husbands won't tell you about this like I'm telling you about it.

We don't want to admit our vulnerabilities, but maybe I'm kind of their spokesman here tonight.

In fact, David Thoreau wrote this, the mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave without the song in them.

And he says, that's really sad, but it's interesting how the Lord got a song out of Adam by giving him

Eve. Remember in Genesis 2, it says, it's not good that man should be alone,

I'll make him a helper suitable to him. And then after the man woke up and behold his tailor -made wife, we then read the first recorded words that a man ever speaks in the scriptures.

And notice how it comes out in the form of Hebrew poetry, which is a song. Because the woman got the song out of the man.

This is bone of my bone, this is flesh of my flesh. The woman got the song out of the man.

Ladies, you have the capacity to do what no other creature on earth can do to get the song out of your man.

One man wrote this, do you truly understand the immense power, ladies, that you have in the life of your husband?

Every wife is a kingmaker. Every wife has the power to build him up or to tear him down.

How will you use your power today, ladies? And from the man's perspective, if his woman doesn't believe in him, if his wife isn't fanatically committed to his potential, it doesn't much matter what the rest of the world thinks.

And that's the way it is with me. When I, Gordon, when I go, you ever go off and visit churches and you know you're going to maybe

Puxico, Missouri and you don't know anybody in Puxico, Missouri and you feel really insecure when you leave the house and if Diane says to me, you can do this, go do good, it empowers me.

She believes in me that I can do this. Our wives are profoundly kingmakers.

The man goes on and says this, wives, we need your affirmation. We have to have it.

And oh, how we thrive on it. Typically, men are quiet about these things, but that doesn't mean that we need to enjoy our wife's affirmation any less.

In fact, there was a time when I preached this message in Taylors, South Carolina. An old fella came up to me, his name was

Lou Hastings with a southern drawl accent. And Lou said this after I preached this, he said, oh,

I've been waiting so many years for someone to tell that to my wife.

How long you been married, Lou? 54 years, he said. I'm telling you,

I'm telling you, Aaron, you're Diana. Diana, I'm telling you, it's early in marriage, but no need to wait 54 years to hear this.

In fact, Tim and Kathy Keller, there's a really good book on marriage. This is one of Keller's good ones.

A really good book on marriage where he perceptively explains the peculiar power that his wife

Kathy has as a helper to strengthen him. Listen to these perceptive words. Tim writes this.

In my own life, I must confess that I had never felt manly until I got married.

I was a nerd before it was fashional. Playing trumpet in the marching band and staying in the

Boy Scouts through high school. Good things, no doubt, but not cool, not macho. I was often mocked and excluded, especially during high school, for my uncoolness, but Kathy, when she came into my life,

Kathy looked at me like her knight in shining armor. And she's always told me, and she continues to tell me that though all the world may look at me and see

Clark Kent, she knows that underneath, I have on blue under. Do you understand that one,

Brian? Tim goes on. She's always been very quick to point out and celebrate anything

I have done that is courageous. And over the years, bit by bit, it has sunk in.

To my wife, I'm Superman, and it makes me feel like a man in a way that nothing else could.

Ladies, think of this. In reality, no Kathy pillow talk, no

Tim sermon roar. It's the woman that makes the man.

You are adrenaline to his soul. In fact, even Kim Wagner, the fierce woman, she asked this, do you brag about your husband to his face and in front of others?

Do you let him know how specific ways there are that you're proud of him? Do you affirm him for making difficult choices?

Do you remind him of things he's done well when he's struggling with fear of failure?

As I began doing that, Kim writes, I was amazed. I hadn't realized how much men need the wife's positive reinforcement.

It's like fuel for their motor. I still remember being at St. Simon's Island, that little family retreat for the

Rincon, Georgia church. And there sat Autumn, and there sat Josh, her husband.

And Autumn went out at this table to tell how my husband lost his job about a year and a half ago, and we were unemployed.

But he resolved that he was going to start his own business and take a risk. And he bought the equipment, and he went out and worked, and he hired some men, and the business was going great guns.

And I was wondering myself, we were talking earlier, weren't we Roger, about taking risks and how fearful some are to take risks.

This man, Josh, had been emboldened to take risks by her adrenaline -pumping wife,

Autumn, who made him to be the man that he was. And that's why his business was so successful, humanly speaking.

Ladies, be an Autumn to your Joshua. Be a helpmate to the man that God has given you.

In fact, Dr. Gary Chapman speaks about how he had met this couple, Bill and Betty, at the end of a conference, and their marriage was a shambles, hanging by a thread.

They're about to get a divorce. The last of this effort was coming up at the end of the conference, saying, could you just talk with us for an hour because our marriage is about to die.

And Chapman sat down with them. Okay, I got an hour. Sat down, assessed what was going on, and his conclusion was that he sensed that Betty was not at all grateful in her marriage.

And he said, okay, Betty, just write down a handful of things, right here and now, things that he's done that are just something good.

And she wrote, well, he hasn't missed a day of work in 12 years. He's received promotions at work.

He pays the gas and electric bill. He bought a recreational vehicle. He carries out the garbage once a month.

And she had some good things to say. And Chapman said, okay, take this, build on this, contact me in two months.

And Chapman went away. Two months later, he gets the contact from the man, and Bill called, and Bill said, the climate of our marriage has totally changed.

She has actually made me feel like a man again. We've got a long way to go, Dr. Chapman, but I really believe we're on the road to healing and health.

And what brought that into the life of this fatally sick marriage?

It was the adrenaline of encouragement. Adrenaline to the soul. Adrenaline to the marriage.

You see, sweet encouragement by far outperforms bitter nagging.

Just imagine this scenario. A wife wants to have the trash taken out after dinner.

Now, ladies, you could bark at your husband. You could nag at him every five minutes until he does it.

And then, finally, when he finally takes care of it, you say, it's about time. But ladies, you know, when he grabs the bag and he goes out and he puts it in, when he comes back in, look at him.

Give him a hug and give him a kiss. Those strong arms, as opposed to my puny arm, what you've been able to accomplish out there,

I could have never done it without coming back being sore. I mean, we laugh and we giggle, but those kinds of humorous adrenaline encouragements are medicine for the marriage.

And even think of that Kim Wagner story. The story of Kim and Leroy kind of has a happy ending as well.

In fact, Leroy writes appreciatively of Kim about his improved and sweetened and softened warrior wife.

Listen to what Leroy, the pastor, now says about his new, now she's still a fierce woman, but she's an encouraging woman.

Here's what he writes. Where at one point, I was so paralyzed for fear that I wouldn't even make a decision because I knew that there would be repercussions or negative consequences that she'd criticize me.

Now I don't fear reprisal. Now I have the freedom to go to God, to pray, to lead.

And even if it doesn't turn out to be the greatest decision if I fumble or drop the ball in some way,

I know Kim will say, well, you're still my man and we'll trust the Lord together. And I know that she'll give encouragement.

I once thought our marriage was gonna crush both of us and it'd be the death of me, but now we experience freedom and joy in our relationship and now our relationship is a safe place.

Now when he comes home, he comes home not to a kryptonite corner, but to an encouraging corner. And I'm just saying as I look at this, husbanding and wifing.

I've criticized you men. I've criticized you. You encourage her just with an eyedropper when it ought to be a garden hose.

Respond, maybe like the disciples responded in the upper room when Jesus said, one of you will betray me. What did they say?

They didn't cross their arms and say, not me. They said, is it I, Lord? Am I the one?

And ladies too. I've talked about the possibility that maybe it's a kryptonite corner instead of an encouraging corner.

I know this is hard stuff that I'm saying and who's that masculine guy up there saying that to me, but it's really the word of God and to be able to say, is it

I, Lord? Is it I? I'm just saying tonight, may the Lord Jesus give us grace to be daily dispensers of adrenaline -like encouragement to our spouses, bringing a healthy and strong pulse again to our marriages.

May the Lord do good. Let's pray together. Our Heavenly Father, we thank you that you take us by the chin and you look us in the eye and you tell us the things that we need to hear.

We pray that we would have ears to hear and that our marriages in this wicked and adulterous generation, that our marriages would sing and glorify you.

We ask it in Jesus' name. Amen. I appreciate that,

Mark. When I was listening to his punching me, the husbanding part,

I thought, yes, I hear that. Solomon is praising his wife because all her teeth match up.

There aren't any missing. Praise your wives. And I'm thinking, sometimes we need some help, just some practical how -tos, examples.

What, for example, if she doesn't have all those teeth, what do you do?

And my mind went to, this is the way my stupid mind goes, my mind went to an old song written in a previous generation.

It goes something like this. You're so sweet. Horseflies keep hanging around your face.

Kentucky moonshine could never take your place. Your eyes give me goose bumps down to my toes.

Why, I'm like the only rooster in a hen house, and I guess it shows. Your front teeth are missing, but that's fine for kissing.

And you're about as loyal as my dog, Sam, but twice as pretty. So there you go, guys.

Let's close with one stanza, just one stanza of 401, and the last one, the last stanza.

And I picked this one because it says, Open my mouth, and let me bear gladly the warm truth everywhere.

And of course, it's the truth of the gospel that we're to be bearing everywhere, but more than that, the warm truth, the truth, encouraging truth.

Let's stand together as we sing just that last stanza, 401. Open my mouth, and let me bear gladly the warm truth everywhere.

Open my heart, and let me prepare love with thy children thus to share.

Silently now I wait for thee. Ready, my

God, thy will to see. Open my eyes, illumine me, spirit divine.

Bless us now as we go, our Father, and may your peace go with us.

May your grace and mercy sustain us. And bless these words we've heard tonight to our hearts and challenge us with them.

We ask in Jesus' name, amen. You are dismissed. Lord bless you. Be back tomorrow night, 7 o 'clock.