Welcome to the Susquehanna Valley Baptist Pulpit, preaching a life worth living, abundant life in Christ. And now the message. We're in Ephesians chapter 5 in this session. Ephesians 5.17 says, Wherefore be ye not unwise, but understanding what the will of the Lord is. And be not drunk with wine wherein is excess, but be filled with the Spirit. speaking to yourselves in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord, giving thanks always for all things unto God and the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, submitting yourselves one to another in the fear of God. Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as unto the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church, and he is the Savior of the body. Therefore, as the church is subject unto Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in everything. Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it. Shall we bow for prayer? Heavenly Father, I pray that you'll bless this opening session on Saturday of the family conference. I pray, Lord, that you'll stir our hearts to see a truth that will help us in our families. And I pray, Lord, that you give me clarity of thought as I'm challenging your folks. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. Amen. four-year-old little Susie had just been told the story of Snow White for the first time in her life. She could hardly wait to get home from nursery school to tell her mom about Snow White. And so with wide-eyed excitement, she retold the fairy tale to her mother that afternoon. And after relating how Prince Charming had arrived on the beautiful white horse and kissed Snow White back to life, Susie asked loudly, and do you know what happened next? And her mommy's mom said, yes, they lived happily ever after. No, no, responded Susie with a frown. They got married. getting married and living happily ever after are not necessarily synonymous. And so the attack of Satan targets the family today as we all know. If he can gain victories and destroy families, he can injure individual lives, he can weaken a church, its outreach, its testimony, he can cripple a whole community and nation and make no mistake about it, The battle today is for the family. Our response as Bible-believing Christians must be to determine with God's help to build our families for the glory of God. We want to build them the way that God wants us to build them. Now today I'd like to help some families escape maybe a holding pattern or get back on track in the marriage. Our premise today is that there are no perfect marriages. Now some say we have a perfect marriage. It's impossible because there are no perfect people right and it would take perfect people to have a perfect marriage and since we all have Imperfect we are all imperfect and we have imperfect marriages every one of us approached this topic today with the idea that we can improve and There are little things that we can do, maybe big things, that will help our marriage to be a better marriage and one that's closer to God. Of course, the starting point is that both the husband and the wife must be Christians themselves. And by that I mean they both have experienced repentance and trusting Christ as their only Savior. I talked to one man one time and led him to Christ, or so I thought. And so I went through it with him again and he was from an Indian background with many gods. And I asked him, now, who are you trusting for your salvation? How do you know that you're saved? Well, Christ died for me, and I have all my other gods too. No, you haven't got it. It is in Christ alone. Let's go over this again. And we did go over it, and after a while, he got it and received Christ as Savior then. How can you expect to have a marriage and a family that God intended for you to have unless both partners know Jesus Christ as their Savior? They're looking to Him for guidance. And that's why you must come to Christ immediately. It's good that one partner is saved. It's really good, but it's not enough. The other one must receive Christ as well. So if you're here and your wife has received Christ, but you have not, You need to come to Christ today if your husband has received Christ, but you have not you need to come to Christ today and start The starting point for building a godly family is salvation. You must be born again now with both of you as Christians and There's still an element of that is missing in most marriages and families to make them what they ought to be. A missing element. You won't be able to follow God's plan for your home without this element. This is the element that brings joy, lasting joy, in your home, in your family. Some might guess that the missing element would be, I think it's the church preacher. That is important and it is necessary, but it is kind of taken for granted that a person who receives Christ as Savior will find a church of like-minded believers to associate with and be a part of. So that's taken for granted. Some may guess that the missing element is a beautiful house. and three cars in the garage, and a gorgeous wardrobe in the latest fashions, and growing jobs, five and six digit savings accounts, lots of money and things. That certainly is not what God says is necessary for us to have successful families, although some are living like that. Some may guess that the missing element is having children. No. And thank God for every child that he allows us to have. But a husband and a wife can still please God and have a full and happy life without children. Watch this. The missing element in so many homes is so important to God that God prefaces the primary passage in the Bible on marriage and family with this qualifier. He starts the discussion on this family passage in Ephesians chapter 5 verses 22 to 33. That's the most important passage and the missing element is in verse 18. It comes before the passage on the most important passage on marriage. In verse 18, and be not drunk with wine where it is excess, but be filled with the Spirit. I know there's a lot of false teaching out there about the Holy Spirit. I was involved in some of that one day, but God has something in mind here that we can't overlook. He expects every Christian husband and wife to grasp it because he made this a command. He made it a command and applied it quickly to our homes. In verse 18 again, this is a command. You understood. Be not drunk with wine wherein is excess, but be filled with the Spirit. It's imperative for every home. Missing element in too many homes and it's a Bible command. I wonder today if you're filled with the Spirit as you're attempting to have the right kind of home before a holy God. Now today we want to examine the first page of God's plan for your home as we look at what it means to be filled with the Holy Spirit. Number one, our first point is that. what it means to be filled with the Holy Spirit in verse 19 verse 18 talks about the Holy Spirit filling verse 19 says in essence there will be a bubbling there will be an overflow in your life in verse 19 speaking to yourselves in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord we find almost the same wording in Colossians chapter 3 and verse 16. So if you keep your hand in Ephesians, we're going to stay there most of this message. But over in Colossians 3.16, it says, Paul's writing to the Church of Colossae, Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom, And then he says about the same words that he said to the church at Ephesus. Teaching and admonishing one another in psalms, here it is, psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with grace in your hearts to the Lord. In your marriage, are you sad? Do you find yourself discouraged? Maybe even bored? Have you almost completely given up trying to make your marriage or family work? Or are you singing? Are you rejoicing? Are you singing his hymns and his songs and singing with grace in your heart? I mean, you're bubbling over. You have a song in your heart. If you're excited that the spiritual truths will be running through your mind and through your mouth, you have that song in your heart. It happens when, listen to me, when the word of God gets in you. When you let God's word get in you, it becomes part of your fabric. There's a desire for God's Word and as an outgrowth we're bubbling over and praising it is real to walk with God and we're sensing that and so we're singing, humming the hymns throughout the day. We've read the Bible and the Bible has spoken to us. We've had our prayer time and we spent time with God and we know that God is with us that day and we're bubbling as we walk about our life. Is that it? Or would it better describe you as it's just becoming a matter of fact? Yeah, I'm a Christian. Yeah. I'm not really too excited about it. A spirit-filled Christian is effervescing with joy, bumbling over about the things of God and the things he's learning. He's walking in the Bible and reading the Bible and excited about what he's reading in the Word of God. And so the Bible teaches us to be filled with the Spirit so we can have the right kind of marriage. Maybe today there are some Christians who need to be filled again. You'd have to say that your walk with the Lord is currently not as dynamic as it could be, as it should be, as it used to be. And so you need the missing element again. You need to be filled with His Spirit again. Secondly, In verse number 20, Ephesians 5.20, not only will there be a bubbling over if we're filled with the Spirit, but there will be a gratitude that will be obvious in our life. It says in verse 20, this is context now, following being filled in verse 18, giving thanks always for all things unto God and the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. You can see the connection between being filled in verse 18 and the big passage on marriage to follow. And you can see being filled and the connection in verse 18 with verse 19 and the effervescing joy and the bubbling over and the singing. And you can see the connection with verse 18 with being filled and verse 20 with having this attitude of gratitude. We need this in our families. This is living the Christian life now in the filling of the Spirit. I wonder if that is evidenced in your life. Do you have this evidence of the filling of the Holy Spirit that you are full of gratitude? Gratitude towards your mate. First and foremost, gratitude towards your God. Are you thankful? Are you thankful for what you have? Or is it always about the things that you don't have, that you're grasping for? I think we ought to have dreams and visions too. I think we ought to have things that we're reaching out for. But are we grateful in the meantime for what we have? I heard about this lady out in the fires in California, maybe you saw it too, where she said, we just lost everything. but we have the most important thing and I'm so grateful we have our lives that we have nothing of anything that went on in our life prior to today but we have our lives and she was expressing gratefulness thankfulness in a tough tough time think about this gratitude in 1st Thessalonians chapter 5 if you'll slip over there and come back to Ephesians First Thessalonians. This gratitude is not a silent gratitude. It is not just in the heart. It is communicated gratitude. It is not a once and done. It is continual. The Bible says always having that gratitude. This gratitude is not for a few things, it is for, it is consistent, it's for all things. A Christian full of the Holy Spirit gives thanks for everything. He is full of trust that God has a purpose for everything that's happening. We could say it this way, the steps of a good man are ordered by the Lord and he delighteth in his way and he believes that and so did you know that this is the will of God for every person here that we show a spirit of gratitude In 1 Thessalonians 5.18 it says, In everything give thanks, for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you. It's the will of God that we be grateful people and that we show gratitude to our God. He's been good to us. Look at all that we have. Look at all that He's blessed us with. We ought to take time to say, thank you, dear God. We ought to thank God for our meat. We ought to thank God for our children. Thank God for our church, for our pastor. There ought to be an attitude of gratitude. Thank God for your health. As you get older, more and more, you're grateful to the Lord for good health. And, of course, the possessions that God's given you, the food and the shelter and the freedom and the friends. And if you're married, make sure that you give thanks for your wife or your husband, your parents, your children. It's really time for a reality check. As we start these meetings, could I ask you, would your mate, maybe your children, describe you as a person that's full of gratitude? Is that how it would work? Would they say, well, he's really a grateful person. She's really a grateful person. They're thankful. They express it. And they're like that. Or would they say that you are full of grumbling? Gratitude or grumbling? I mean, would they say that you are full of Christ or you're full of complaints? Would they say that you're making melody in your heart to the Lord or that you're murmuring all the time? Which would it be in your family? Because if we're full of the Spirit, we're going to have these attributes. Number one, that we'll be bubbling over because we're walking with God. And secondly, we'll have an attitude of gratitude. I'd like to say more here. I will say this, that the New Testament made this a qualification for a spiritual leader in the church. It says in Acts 6, 3, wherefore, brethren, look out, ye out among you seven men of honest report, full of the Holy Ghost, and with wisdom, and wisdom, whom we may appoint over this business. That's the example of a leader for everybody to follow. full of the Holy Ghost. Anything less than that is us letting our flesh get involved and dominating our talk and our attitude and our thoughts. Anything less is selfish, don't you see, and carnal. It's not God's plan. We may be brilliant, we may be good-looking, we may be skilled at work, and smooth-talking, and influential, a great housekeeper, or a great homemaker, and financially set and saved, but we cannot control our thoughts and attitude and tongue, then mark it down, we're not filled with the Spirit. We need to get that control in our lives. Acts chapter 4 and verse 31, slip over there with me. Why is that so important to the family? Why are you talking about that to the family? First, it's in that context that we're to be filled with the spirit and then family relationships follow. But where do most offenses come from in the family? They come from hurtful words. They come from things that we say to each other that dig into the heart of the other one. So we need to be filled with the spirit that he might control our emotions and thoughts and words. The Holy Spirit's the one who empowers us to bubble over to be filled with gratitude. And now look at one other thing here, two other things very quickly. The third quality found in those who are filled with the Spirit is a boldness to speak God's Word. 4.31 says, When they had prayed, the place was shaken where they were assembled, and they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and they spake the Word of God with boldness. This is not a boldness to do something. It is certainly not a boldness to speak our mind against the man of God. I've had some people thought that's what the boldness was about. It's not a boldness to conduct business. It's a boldness to speak God's Word. Why? Because that's what we're full of. Let the Word of Christ dwell in you richly. We're full of the Spirit of God and the one that we are full of is the one who inspired the Word of God. The Bible is the sword of the Spirit. Holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost. according to 1 Peter 1.21. And so this isn't just for the preacher or for the spiritual leaders in the church. Every father needs this boldness to speak the Word of God to their family, to his family. But beware, a family can see through a boldness that's not in the Word of God. And so beware of that. Every mother needs this boldness. But it's not a boldness to set your husband in his place or to nag him or to be sarcastic toward him. It's a boldness to speak forth the word of God. So those filled with this Holy Spirit have a bubbling, a gratitude, and a boldness. In Ephesians 5.21, In the context of what we're talking about, one more time, it says submitting yourselves one to another in the fear of God. Again, in the context of being filled with the Spirit. Submit means to line up, to get in order, to be arranged properly. It's a military term that means to fall in rank beneath. Find where you're supposed to be and stay there. Submission speaks of our humility toward each other in the church, but it also has its widest application in the home. No home will have God's endorsement stamp of approval without this mutual submissiveness present. The wife is commanded to submit. The husband is commanded to love. And the greatest demonstration of this sacrifice, of his love, is his sacrifice and his giving to meet his wife's needs. And he is to be submissive to Christ. The children are commanded to obey. The parents are commanded not to provoke their children to wrath. All of these can be expected to be present in a home where the parents of the children are full of the Holy Spirit and submissive. So we are to be submissive at some point in our relationship. It's an earmark of the filling with the Holy Spirit. You know, marriage is not a power trip. I've been watching this preacher. Some folks think it's a power trip. Who can Wield the power in the family who can that can say something that'll dig the other one that'll get control That's not what marriage is all about not at all Christian marriage is each one going the second mile to make the other one happy and fulfilled That's what it is. Surely I call it spoiling each other and doing little things that Just we want to bless the other one And so we go out of our way to do that. You do that in your homes. We need to do it more. We can, and by the way, our marriages need this mutual humility and submissiveness to each other, and it doesn't naturally occur, but it does supernaturally flow from being filled with the Spirit. So we can say that being filled with the Spirit means to be under the control of the Holy Spirit. In Ephesians 5.18, we are not to be drunk with wine, but under the control and influence of the Holy Spirit. If we say we're not to be drunk with wine, that means under the control of the wine, but rather under the control and the influence of the Holy Spirit. If you're under the control and influence of wine, you do bad things that you wouldn't normally do. If you're under the influence and control of the Holy Spirit, you do good things that you wouldn't think that you could do. It's supernatural. But God, the Holy Spirit, controls you. And at the end of it all, it's not how much of the Holy Spirit I have, it's how much of me He has. How much of you does He have? Are you holding back? Or are you yielding to Him? the filling of the Spirit. What does it mean? Secondly, what kind of experience is it? We will not get to that. It's very valuable. It's needful. But how can I be refilled? In Luke 11 and verse 13, it says, If ye being able know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your Heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask Him? Start to become taken up with the Bible again. Number one, pray and ask Him for a refilling. Number two, start to be taken up with the Bible and prayer again. I'd like to elaborate on that, but you know what that means. Remember that they were filled with the Bible. The Bible became rich to them again. Are you experiencing that? Or do you maybe pick up the Bible once every two or three days? Maybe you have a Sunday school class so you pick it up to study for that, but you're not really yourself Becoming a student of the Bible even though the Bible says that we are to be workmen that need us not to be ashamed and We should be studying the Bible. We should be students of the Bible. We ought to be opening the Bible. Maybe you just read the Bible. Whatever happened to the study of the Bible? We need to get back to that as old-fashioned Christians and open the Bible, find a time and clear out our schedule and put this as priority in our lives. And then number three, not only get taken up with the Bible and prayer again, but yield your will to the Holy Spirit's will every day. As things come up, when you face temptation, trial, a habit, when you want to explode or be discouraged, yield to the Holy Spirit's will. What does He want in my life? If you do these things, then the Bible points us to the filling of the Spirit as a result. And your relatives, something will happen. Your relatives are going to pick up on it. They're going to notice it. Your neighbors will notice it. Your boss, co-workers will notice something's different. Your fellow brothers in Christ will notice it. But most of all, your family will notice it. Your wife, your husband will notice something's changing. in your spirit because you're committed to being filled with the Holy Spirit. Husbands need it, wives need it, children need it. Teenagers need it. A missing element in the family's fulfillment of the Holy Spirit. Thank you for listening. If you'd like to contact us, please write us at P.O. Box 126-541-Harrisburg, PA 17112. And visit our website at www.sdbcpa.org. Until next time,