in a series or preaching on prophecy. I am going to be preaching on the family, and I'm going to draw some application from a passage of scripture. We'll interpret it, and then we'll apply it. I want you to learn something tonight. God is for your family. God's for it. God is for your marriage. He is. He's for it. I was preaching a marriage conference here some time back for my dear friend, Brother Rabin, at Beacon Baptist in Raleigh. We spent a couple days together. I was preaching to his people, and the Lord impressed upon my heart several messages, and while I was there, I thought to myself, when I finish Jonah, I'm going to go right here because I need help. I want to grow in my marriage. I want to grow in my relationship. I want to grow in my family. I know that we all need that, don't we? And I want to challenge you. You know what? Sometimes, when you talk on marriage, it's sort of like preaching on money. walls start going up all over the place. We begin to harden our heart. We begin to say, I don't need that, or I don't want that. But yet we do need it, and we should want it. If God's for something, we ought to be for something. Wouldn't you agree with that? and God's for something in your life and it's your family. Look if you would, Revelation chapter 2 verse number 1. And to the angel of the church of Ephesus write, here are seven letters that the Lord Jesus wrote personally to seven local churches. This one is to the church at Ephesus. Great church, great history. These things saith he that holdeth the seven stars in his right hand, who walketh in the midst of the seven golden candlesticks, I know thy works, and thy labor, and thy patience. Have you ever noticed the Lord knows everything about us? And how thou canst not bear them which are evil. And thou hast tried them which say they are apostles, and are not, and hast found them liars. And hast borne, and hast patience, and for my name's sake hast labored, and hast not fainted. Nevertheless, I have somewhat against thee. Everything looks good, but you have a problem, because thou hast left thy first love. When you come to verse number five, you find three action words. Number five, verse five, remember, there's action word number one, remember therefore from whence thou art fallen, and repent. You know, I found that repenting is more for saints than sinners. I found that while repentance and faith, and we understand they're Siamese twins, they go together. You can't believe without repenting. You can't repent without believing. I believe, I would submit to you that repenting is believing. I believe that. It's all throughout the Gospel of John. Repent. Change of mind. Change your mind and do the first works. Or else I will come unto thee quickly, suddenly, and will remove thy candlestick, thy lampstand out of its place, Thou repent." I've entitled this series, you say, how long is it going to last? I have no idea. I'm just going to preach on this subject until the Lord says, stop. I have subjects in my mind that I want to address over the next several weeks. I don't know how long it's going to be. But I called it family 2.0. And you say, well, what does that mean? You know, if you have an iPhone, and I do, I don't know why anybody have anything else, and it's not an Apple commercial, it's just, for me it's simple, okay? And I need simplicity. And so there's all the time an upgrade. I think I'm on like 13.1.6, I don't know. But every time I turn around, they're upgrading the operating system or the, you can tell I'm techie, can't you? Whatever it is, I just know it has a number, okay? I just know that, all right? And I believe that when we look at this thing called family and marriage, there's two ways we can do it. We can do it our way. I call that family 1.0. Doing it our way. I just ask myself, how's that working out for us? Our way. Or we can do family 2.0 and we can do it God's way. By the way, the message title, we're going to get there in a moment. I'm not there yet. It's going to be marriage 2.0. You see, the family is no stronger than the bonds that make up that family. Can I challenge our parents? If I could impress on every young couple, we've got myriads of them in our church, and if you're here and you're a part of a family, and maybe you've got a young family, maybe it's your daughter, your husband, daughter or a son, and they're a member of our church, maybe they're not here tonight. Could I encourage you to have them listen to this message and be here on the Sunday nights moving forward? I believe that as we preach, we're going to help them. It's going to help me. Because the best thing you can give your children is a dad and a mom that love each other. A lot of times we get the idea that we want to give our children stuff, and somehow when we give them stuff, that that's going to make up for the deficiencies everywhere else, and it just doesn't do that. Now I realize that I'm going to be preaching here, and there's single moms here, there's single dads here, and I understand that, and it's not by choice. and you're in a very difficult situation in your life, and it's not what you want, and my heart breaks for you and goes out to you, and I know that just preaching on this subject brings a sense of uncomfortableness in your heart, and I fully get that, and I fully understand it, and I believe that God can help you, even through this series of messages, to be what your child and children need. That God can make up the difference in that situation. I believe that. I believe all of us can be helped. But I do want to preach to us and understand that that is the ideal of marriage. A man and a woman. Biological man and a biological woman. Just so we all know what I'm talking about. They're married. They have a family and they have children and they give love to those children and that family. And it's not just loving children, it's loving each other. Grandparents. The best thing you can give your grandchildren. as a grandma and grandpa that love each other. You say, preacher, why would you address us? I'm going to tell you why. Because just as there is scars in the lives of children when their parents divorce, there are scars in the lives of grandchildren when their grandparents divorce. Can I tell you, people get divorced at 50 and 60 and 70 years of age. There's no moment in marriage where we get to a point in age where we're home free. It always takes work and it takes energy and it takes effort to have a family the way God designed it. A strong family, a loving family, a bonded family. To have that, it's intentional. In your marriage, it's intentional. It's not just going to happen. You have to follow God. Do it God's way and make it happen. To be committed to this matter. family God's way because God originated it. When you come to Revelation chapter 2, you find a church that has a love problem. They're lovesick. Verses 1 through 3 of Revelation chapter 2, everything looked right about this church in Ephesus. I believe that if we lived in Ephesus, we were saved, we'd gladly, if we moved there, we'd gladly join this church. We would have in our minds think that we are joining a great I mean, they had it all right. I mean, their works was right. Their labor was right. Their patience was right. Their stand against evil and sin was right. They stood against doctrinal error in verse number 3. And they found them to be liars. And they've stood faithfully for the Lord's name. And they've not fainted. They've not given up. Everything on the outside looked good. But listen, when you got beneath the surface, everything wasn't what it seemed. They had a problem. They weren't well on the inside. The great physician has examined this church. He says, I found an issue, a problem. They were deathly sick. This church was deathly sick. There was a cancer in this church that had been allowed to grow that would lead to the demise of this church. And he diagnosed it in verse number 4. He said, Thou hast left thy first love. They had drifted into complacency. They had cooled in their affection for the Savior. It wasn't that they didn't love Jesus. It was just that they weren't excited about Jesus anymore. Can I tell you, Revival is falling in love with Jesus all over again. It's rekindling that flame. I believe we had a measure of that this past week in Spring Jubilee. I believe we can say on the other side of it for many of us, you know what? I'm just a little more committed. I love Him just a little bit better. I want to live for Him in just a little bit greater way than what I did before we started last week. Can I tell you what's true of the love relationship between Jesus and His church? Because that marriage relationship, that union, is pictured in the love relationship between a husband and a wife. Husbands Love your wives even as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself for it. Wives, submit yourselves and your own husbands as unto the Lord. It tells us in Ephesians 5 that the love relationship, the marriage relationship is a type, it's a pattern, it's a picture of the relationship we have with Christ. Can I tell you there's more than one marriage that looks good on the surface. But inside all is not well. Drifted into complacency. Cooled in their affection. Can I tell you this church didn't fall out of love with Jesus. And we don't fall out of love with our mates. We don't lose it. We leave it. It's a choice. This church had chosen They left it. It's a decision. Can I tell you that the demise of a marriage is a decision? It doesn't just happen. It's a decision that we make. When we cool in our affection for one another, we're saying, I love you, but I'm just not excited about you anymore. There's a prescription here in verse number 5. We saw it. We'll get to it here in just a moment. Can I remind us that true love is not an emotion? It's not a feeling. I'm thankful for feelings. I don't wake up every day and have fuzzy feelings that I'm married. But I do like it when I get fuzzy feelings about being married. It's a good thing. Do you realize that you cannot command your feelings, your emotions? But you can't do that. Isn't it amazing that when it comes to this matter of love, that it's not an emotion. It's greater than that. It's a decision. It's a choice. It's an act of the will. We choose to love our mates. I hear this so often. Well, I just don't love him anymore. I just don't love her anymore. What we're truly saying is this. I don't feel like I love him anymore. I don't feel like I love him anymore. Those fuzzy feelings have sort of gone away. We allow, as one writer said, the love busters such as mistreatment of one another, anger, arguing, bickering, bitterness, resentfulness, neglect, all of these things. We allow them to deaden the feelings of love. And because of that neglect, the feelings begin to dry up. And we will say, well, I just don't love you anymore. But the reality of it is, you do, it's just we don't feel it. But we have this lie. Remember we talked about the lies of Satan this morning and deception? And here's the great deception when it comes to marriage and love and the longevity of it. We think that once we leave, or we will say in our minds, let's use the lingo, we lose those feelings of love, the fuzziness of love that will never get them back. And can I tell you something? That's not true. That's a lie. Feelings don't produce love. Love produces feelings. Now in the early years of my marriage, excuse me, the early years of courting my wife, you know, you hear that voice, I love you, and you just melt. I mean, you just get wobbly. You know, it just affects you a little bit, you know, and all of that. And that draws, and suddenly, you know, she affects you like no one else ever has, and he affects you like nobody else ever has, and you begin to sense this love between you that's growing and building, and there's a connection there, and suddenly we just tie it all together, and we tie the knot, and we're married, right? We make a commitment to one another. We're married. Can I tell you the love that I had for her 34 years ago pales in comparison to the love I have for her today? It's not even the same. The depth of it is totally different. Oh, there's still times we get the fuzzy feelings. But I'm going to tell you, love and commitment does stuff for one another. as you age that you never dreamed you'd do when you first get married. Setting beside hospital beds. Giving care in times of sickness and struggle. One thing I know that no matter what comes into my life, no matter what sickness I might face, no matter what may happen, that woman will be there. I know that. I don't question it. It doesn't even enter my mind that she could possibly not be there. My prayer is she would have that same sense about me. You see, love is a decision. It's a commitment. No one falls out of love. We don't lose it. We leave it. It's a choice. You remember what He said in Revelation 2 verse 4? Thou hast left thy first love. Revival is rekindling. Here's what the Lord is saying. I want you to rekindle when He comes to verse 5. I want you to rekindle the love that you had for Me at the beginning. That's the first love. That initial love. And husbands and wives, if I could just say to us tonight, we need to rekindle the love that we had for each other in the beginning. We need to rekindle the flames, so to speak. And I believe He gives us a prescription, a three-step plan for doing that. I'm going to pull it right out of the text. There is absolutely no originality. You say, preacher, why? Because Jesus has already said it. We're just going to take His words. And He said, if you want to rekindle your love for Me, then here's what I want you to do. I want you to remember. I want you to remember this thing 2.0. These guys, I've been all over the place, they have no idea where I'm at. Thank you, fellas. Remember, alright? And if it never came up, it's okay. Remember, but I know many of you like to take notes, and so I try to help you out with that. Remember what it used to be in the early days. Remember what it was like when you loved me like you used to love me. When you first came to know me, when we first entered into the relationship of salvation, and you were zealous for me, and you were hungry for me, and you desired me, and you were affectionate for me. That's what the Lord is saying. Remember that. That's what He's saying. And can I say, you never have to leave your first love. You can always be rekindling that flame that you had In the very beginning. Listen. Do you remember what it felt like? In that first love. Somebody had called it in poem. I climbed the door and opened the stairs. I said my pajamas and put on my prayers. Then turned off my bed and crawled into the light. All because you kissed me goodnight. Next morning I woke and scrambled my shoes, polished my eggs and toasted the news. I couldn't tell my left from my right, all because you kissed me. Good night. That evening at last I felt normal again. I called up my mother and picked up the phone. I spoke to my puppy and threw my dad a bone. Even at midnight the sun was still bright, all because you kissed me. Good night." Oh, there's fuzziness there, isn't there? That first love. Remember. Remember what it was like. I began to contemplate. I was doing a marriage conference and I began to contemplate those early years of love. You know, we lived before text and cell phone. Many of you did. We got married before all of that. Okay? We remember that. I can remember talking on the phone. You remember those early days when call waiting came along. And mom and dad quit limiting the amount of time that you could talk to that special one. Anybody remember those days? Before it was... I wish somebody would get off the phone so I could... I mean, nobody ever get through. Call waiting. How many remember call waiting? Wasn't that amazing? If y'all don't know what that is, just Google it. You know, I remember talking to Lori and somebody would be... My mom had a business, okay? She has a beauty salon. And that phone rang all... Lori, you know what I'm talking about. That phone rang all the time. I'm trying to talk to this beautiful young woman. I'm trying to talk to her and people are wanting their hair done. Can you believe that? I mean, it was hang up, let my mom talk on the phone, get back to Lori. You know, talk a few minutes, and then you hear it. And you're trying to ignore that beep in the background, you know. Because I know if somebody said to my mom at that point, hey, listen, I tried to call, but you weren't home. Because it wasn't a busy signal anymore. I knew what was coming next. I was going to get an earful. I remember that we had first met and Lori went on vacation with her family. That was the awfulest week of my entire human existence. Why in the world do you want to run off with your family when you could have stayed and courted me? And she ran off on family vacation. It was the most miserable week of my life. And can I just say her sisters told me it was the most miserable week of their life. Because she was away from me. And we could not wait to get back together. You know, there was just something there. Can I tell you something? And I'm not bragging. And I'm not saying we've got anything different than anybody else can have. I'm just telling you because of the work, and the commitment, and the longevity. Can I tell you, when I'm away from her, it's still the most miserable week of my life. My favorite place to be is with her. Remember. And then we go to step two. Maybe some just, you need to do some remembering. And by the way, you don't have to be married a long time to leave your first love. It can happen quickly. You know, after the honeymoon's over, there's a rude awakening. We realize things we didn't know before. He leaves stuff laying around the house. Stuff. His stuff. I think that was preached on this past week. You just wish that mom trained him better before you got him. Right? Moms do things for sons that it's different when you get married. His feet really do stink. They really do. He's so gross. I mean, really. We're being honest. And then she has a good memory. Remind. Remind. You remember that message? All kinds of things. If we're not careful, we'll leave it. The Lord said, not only in our love with Him, but with each other. And it doesn't matter how far along you go, you don't ever have to lose the flame in the relationship. We need to repent. The word repent is not making a U-turn. It's not what it is. It may lead in moving in a different direction, but that's not what it is. That's not what the Word means. The Word means to change your mind. You can't change your direction if you never change your mind. Repent means to change your mind. Change my mind about my sin. I change my mind about my relationship to the Lord. I change my mind about the direction of my life spiritually. I change my mind. And then it moves. There's an act of the will that responds to that and moves me in a different direction. The same is true in this practical relationship with one another. We change our mind about the direction of our marriage. We change our mind about how we're doing marriage. It's not been working out our way. Now we're going to do it God's way. We're going to repent. We're going to change our mind about the stagnant love for each other. We're going to change our mind about taking one another for granted. We're going to change our mind about not doing the little things that build the relationship. We're going to change our mind about it not being worth the effort to fix it. We're going to change our minds about marriage 1.0 and we're going to do it marriage 2.0. We're going to change our mind about our way and we're going to start doing it God's way. Somebody put it this way, said, in those days the words, I love you honey, were said with different inflections and meant 50 different things. They could have meant, thank you for opening the ketchup bottle. Or even though you said that I'd, or excuse me, went on to say, thank you for opening the ketchup bottle, even though you said that I'd loosened it first. Or, I love you could mean I enjoy our talks, or when you come home from work, or I love you. It means that there's just two of us to share and to dream, or simply that I appreciate all those things that make up you. Your sensitive strength, the way you smile me off of my soapbox, or the way you pretend you're listening when you read the paper. You sense that? That's what I love you, honey, meant. Fifty different things. But she went on to write, somewhere along the way we turned, and instead of floating with the current, instead we floated with the current instead of struggling against it. It wasn't one action or one word, but a series of little unresolved spats and quarrels that make the TV the solution, or now the computer, or the cell phone, or the game box. The solution to the problems of a hard day. And silence us when we should say, thank you or you really look nice today. Today I no longer tell you that I love you because the sound of those words mocks the special meaning that they carried when we were first wed. And it's too painful to remember that those feelings we said we would never lose were tear by tear left in the past. I just want to ask you a question. Why leave your love in the past? Reignite it. Rekindle it in the present. Action word number one, remember. Action word number two, repent. Change your mind about the direction of the relationship. Maybe we need to change our mind about not just what we're doing, but what we're not doing in the relationship. And then he comes to point number three. Action word, do. And do. Redo. Start doing. Do the first works. We can encapsulate that into one word. Redo. Do what you used to do when you had what you used to have. That's what He's saying. He's saying, don't harden your heart against Me. Make the hard yet unselfish choice to soften your heart, to humble yourself before Me, to love Me like you used to love Me, to do for Me what you used to do for Me when you loved Me that way, when there was life and there was vibrancy and there was fire and passion in your love for me as your Savior in that love relationship. And can I tell you, and I can switch that right back over into the marriage relationship, as I sit here even now and talk about it, if we're not careful, Satan will create a stronghold in our hearts and will harden our heart against the one that we should love the most next to Jesus Christ. I challenge you to make the hard yet unselfish choice to soften your heart. Humble yourself before the Lord and your mate. Confess failure. Seek forgiveness. Grant forgiveness. And then do the first works. Ephesians 4.32 works in marriage. And be ye kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ's sake hath forgiven you. begin to restore your love by putting in place those things that are missing, those little things like saying, I love you. I pick at my wife all the time. We'll be riding down the road or anything and she'll say, I love you. I'll say, I love you. And then she'll say, I love you. And I said, I think you just said that 30 seconds ago. And then she'll say it again. She'll say it again. She'll say it again. She'll say it again. And I'll say, honey, you've already said that. She said, get used to it. She said, I almost lost you where I could not tell you that. She said, I'll never miss an opportunity again to tell you I love you. You do not know you have tomorrow. You do not know you have the next moment. Say I love you while you can. There may come a day you can't. Begin to restore your love by putting those things into place. Somebody had an acronym of love, and it went like this, and I'm going to give it to you. It's not going to come up on the screen. Just write down in your notes. L-O-V-E. And I'm going to give it to you. Number one. Love. Listening. When the other is speaking. Fellas, listen to her with your ears, but love her with your eyes. Pay attention to her. Value her. We have devotion before every deacons' meeting, and I'm always blessed by our deacons when they bring devotion. We can't make spiritual decisions if we're not spiritual men. And the first half hour of every deacons' meeting is a time of devotion and prayer. Brother Nathaniel Bullman brought a devotion this week that really impacted me this last meeting. I wrote down some notes. It was on listening. Now, I appreciate him saying, preacher, you don't need this, I do. I appreciate that. That sort of encouraged me, Nathaniel. But he made a statement. He left me with an acronym, alright? I'm going to give you another acronym. Are you ready for it? It's called WAIT. W-A-I-T. Why am I talking? I'll never forget that. Why am I talking? You know, our wives come to us, guys, and they begin to share something, and we get impatient while they're sharing it. You know why? Because we want to fix them. We already got the answer. Matter of fact, we've got the outline, three points, and a poem, and ready to go just as I am. You come on down the aisle, honey. I'm going to help you. Men are fixers by nature, aren't we? Can I tell you, that wife really doesn't want you to fix her, she wants you to listen to her. She wants to be heard. My wife desires to be heard. That's one of the hardest things we do as men, is to listen. My biggest struggle as a husband is listening to my wife. But if I love her, I'll listen to her. How am I going to rekindle the flame? How are we going to put the fire back into the relationship? How are we going to get it back the way it used to be? Number one, by listening. Letter O. Overlooking petty faults and forgiving failures. Overlooking would be my word. Petty faults and forgiving all failures. You ever notice how the small things become big things in marriage? You ever notice that? It's amazing. Can I tell you, in all of my years of counseling couples, are you all still with me tonight? In all of my years of counseling couples, I don't know. We may be going into the... I know we're in the hundreds. Way up into the hundreds. Maybe even more. Of couples in 33 and a half years of pastoring. And I found that seldom do marriages end because of big things. What we call blowouts. It's the accumulation of little things. The straw that breaks the camel's back. We've swept it under the rug enough times till finally we're done. It's learning to realize that nobody's perfect. Nobody's going to meet every expectation. We're going to fail. And it's a willingness to overlook and forgive. V, are you ready? Valuing. There's our word. Valuing your mate for who they are. not what they can do for you. I tell young adults, many times they have a list, they're looking for particular parameters, and I tell them, you know, the biggest thing that you can put at the top of your list is somebody to love you. If you put at the top of your list looks, that fades. Life changes. But love doesn't change. One car wreck, one fire, one accident can mar the look of our mates forever. You still going to love them? Are you still going to be there? You're still going to be committed? Because if all you have is looks, you have a very flimsy foundation for your relationship. Oh, that might have got it started. You like the way he looks. You like the way she looks. But you better have a whole lot more than that. Or you're not going to make it. Valuing your mate for who they are and not what they can do for you. Instead of what I get, it's what I can give. E. Expressing. I didn't intend for this to be a shout the house down hallelujah message. I didn't intend for that. I want it to be informative, helpful, practical, challenging. I want us to walk away with something that can change our relationships. Expressing your love in a practical way. Don't just say it. Show it. That's so much easier today. Can I tell you, you don't spell love S-T-U-F-F. Stuff. A pair of diamond earrings might help, but it ain't going to fix everything. I didn't want to say, ladies, that diamonds weren't important to you, or gold, or pearls, or whatever it was. But I'm telling you, stuff's not going to fix the marriage. It's not how you spell it. How do I show love? It's the little tangible things that say you're on my mind. I've thought about you. I care about you. You're important to me. It's never been easier to send a love note. You don't even have to write it. You don't even have to type it. You just send an emoji. I love emojis. I love them. Little blow kisses. Do you ever send those? Little fire emojis. Anybody know about them? Anybody ever seen them things? Y'all know what that is? By the way, if you don't have a smartphone, I'd get me one. You couldn't do that flip phone. Somebody bragging, I don't have one of them smartphones yet, but you can't send fire emojis either. How about that? And you don't have to work hard to learn how to do it. You know, I'm just being facetious. A love note on the refrigerator will do the same thing. I'm just being facetious. I'm just having fun. I love to send those. Sometimes we get an emoji wars. She always wins. I mean, it's line after line after line. I just get tired. I mean, but yet, you know what, sometimes out of the blue, just a little I love you with an emoji when it's unexpected. It's a little thing that says, hey, I'm on his mind or I'm on her mind. She cares about me. He cares about me. I love him. I love her. They love me. You just show it. Don't ever lose that. You want to keep the fire in your relationship. Do those things that you used to do at the very beginning. That's what you did. You wrote little love notes. I used to love, but the guys when I did plumbing, I plumbed in Bible college and then, and I don't know how to do it today. So don't call me when your commode stops up. Okay. I don't know how to do that today. All right. I'm a pastor, not a plumber anymore. All right. I can't even do my own plumbing. It's changed, okay, from when I did it 30 some years ago. But the guys were so jealous. I'd get my lunch box. I didn't care about the sandwich. I didn't care about the Twinkies, although the Twinkies were good. Especially had the cream and the strawberry inside of it. Anybody ever have any of those? They're really good. All right. It was the love note inside of it that I wanted. And no, they didn't get to read it. That was for me. Let me ask you a question. When was the last time you showed your love? When was the last time you went out of your way? When was the last time you really worked at rekindling the flame? That's all I'm asking. Because I can promise you this. There's nothing more miserable than being in a relationship that's dead. And so you know what people's answer is? Get out. But you know what the real answer is? Repent. Because if you take the same baggage in this relationship and the next one, guess what you're going to have? The same outcome. That's why For every one marriage, and I got a couple that sits in front of us, I'll say, you got a 50% chance of making it. That's first words out of my mouth. Because that's reality. Second one, 70% chance of not making it. And it goes up from there. Because we carry the baggage from one into the next, into the next, into the next. And the problem is not the person they're with. The problem is the person who's looking in the mirror. And it's me. Or it's you. And we need to repent. And we need to redo. That's where it starts. You say, well, if my mate... No, that's not where it starts. It doesn't start with my mate. It starts with me. It starts with you. That's where it starts. And Jesus said, if you want to have what you used to have, then remember. Remember what it was. Remember what you did. Remember how wonderful it was. Repent. Change your mind about where you're at. And then do what you used to do so that you can have what you used to have. Now I've got about six more things to say, but I'm not going to say them tonight. I'm going to stop right there. Because that's the challenge. Do you want marriage 1.0 or do you want marriage 2.0? The choice is yours. I can promise you if you choose 1.0, it may not be a happy ending. I'm just going to be honest with you. It's up to you to choose. When heads are bowed and eyes are closed, you need to take that wife by the hand, regardless of how many years you've been married, and slip down to an altar and recommit and rekindle and get back what you used to have. That's what I would do. Let's bow our heads in prayer.