Marriage Takes Work | Cornerstone Church | Pastor TJ McConahay

maintain, or fix your marriages. All right. You guys ready for this? If you're ready, stay ready. Ready. Alright. There we go. Here we go. Alright. Proverbs twenty seven fifteen through 16. But if you have a bible, go ahead and turn there. This is what Proverbs twenty seven fifteen through 16 says.

A quarrelsome wife is as annoying as constant dripping on a rainy day.

Stopping her complaints is like trying to stop the wind, trying or trying to hold something with greased hands. Alright. First of all, you guys need to know this before you women start throwing like shoes at me right now. This can go both ways. You know what's just as annoying as a complaining wife? A complaining husband.

Alright? So this was written by King Saul Solomon to his sons, so it has this kind of gendered language, but it can work for all of us. All right? And so, they were to get three kind of metaphors built right on the thing, the constant dripping.

And in your NIV translation, says it's a leaky roof. So, the dripping isn't happening outside, it's happening in your house. If you guys have ever had a leak in your house, it feels horrible. Like, man, I can't do anything right now about that. It's just gonna keep as long as it's raining, it's gonna keep on happening.

And then it says, stopping the complaining is like trying to stop the wind. You cannot do it. Or like trying to pick up something with greased hands. You guys see what the Proverbs is talking about, the impossible nature of complaints. Guys, we live in a complaining culture.

For some reason, we have gotten to a place in our society where complaining is somewhat of a virtue. There's so many podcasts and and books out there and influencers and all they do is complain over and over and over. It's where we get social points for who's got the best grievance, who's got the best complaint.

And the crazy thing is as everyone starts to complain and keeps on complaining, we all just keep getting further and further into the mess. Well, here's what you guys need to know is that complaining kills connection. It does. If you're in a marriage where there's constant complaining,

chances are you don't feel connected to that person. If you're in a relationship where somebody's complaining all the time, chances are you don't feel connected. And so we have to figure out a way to stop the complaining.

Right after Britt and I got married, right after we got married, like I think it may be like three or four months, we got to do something really, really special. We got to go to a baseball game. We got to go to a Mariners baseball game and we were living in Oregon and Portland at the time, so it was like a three hour trip up to Seattle to watch us. Now, what you need to know is I love baseball.

It's my thing. I've been to so many baseball games, but this is the first time I've been to a baseball game with Brit. Now, here's the thing is, I got a little bit of a tradition I do every right around the fourth of the fifth inning. I get up from my seat and I go and get ballpark nachos. Now what you need to know

is ballpark nachos are the greatest of the nachos and nachos are the greatest of the foods. And so for me, there is very few experiences than watching a baseball game and eating ballpark nachos.

And so I'm getting up, it's a fifth inning, I'm trying to kinda like try to go and Britt goes, hey, where are going? And I go, was gonna go get some nachos. And she goes, why don't you just wait here and I'll go get the nachos? Okay, marriage is the best thing ever.

I don't have to get up. I'm gonna get the nachos. I get to watch the game. This is awesome. So she leaves. One inning goes by. Two innings go by.

Three innings go I'm hungry at this point. We're in the eighth at this point. And finally she comes and in her hand she has something that sort of looks like nachos and she hands it to me and it's cheesy fries. Now, cheesy fries are fine. Okay? They're fine, but they're not ballpark nachos.

And I go to eat them and they're cold and stale and I'm upset. Okay? But here's the thing is we're with friends, so I don't want to make them feel awkward so I just kind of get quiet. We drive the three hours back and Britt's entertaining the whole time and I'm literally just in my head thinking,

what the heck happened at this baseball game? I'm complaining and I'm thinking about the fight we're gonna get into. I'm I'm being quarrelsome in my mind. Finally, we drop them off and she knows that I'm being quiet. She's like, why have you been so quiet? And I go, why didn't you just get me the nachos? She started crying.

She goes, TJ, I'm so sorry, but I

went all around the stadium. I went to every vendor and for some reason that day, they didn't have any nachos. And by the time that I had gone all the way around the stadium, they were closing up all the vendors. And I had to beg the guy to sell me those cheesy fries because I knew you were hungry.

Oh, I felt like a dirtbag after that.

Man, if all we ever do is complain, we will not connect with each other. So, what's the answer? The answer is simple. You have to pray for your spouse. You have to replace the complaints you have about your spouse with prayer for your spouse. It's really hard to keep your complaints when you're praying to God.

Imagine if I would have taken just a little bit of time in my head on the way back from Seattle and started to talk to God about this, you know, like Adam talking to God after they sinned. God, why did you give me this woman?

In instant, I would have realized how petty and small and little I was being. I would have realized that my complaints would have held no water, and here's the other great thing is when you talk to a God who's so far above you and you know that that God died for you, nothing has ever happened to you that hasn't happened to Jesus.

And if he can forgive and if he can be merciful and if he can be graceful, you can do that too. Gotta replace the complaining with a with a great prayer life. Okay? Alright. Let's jump back in the text. Let's go to another proverb here. Let's let's check it out here.

You're go back in your bibles to Proverbs 15. And we're gonna just talk about, fifteen one one. Alright. So it says this, gentle answers deflect anger, but harsh words make tempers flare. Gentleness, it's kind of contrasting two things. Gentleness deflect Gentleness begets gentleness and harshness begets harshness. Guys,

most fights can be avoided by just choosing better words. Your words matter. We kind of are living in a time and I've heard this a lot, especially from younger generation that words don't really mean anything. Actually, words are some of the most powerful things we have. You know, when God created the universe, he spoke

it into existence. When he created me and you, he spoke us into existence. Our salvation story starts with God identifying himself as the word. And it says this in John one, the word became flesh and made his dwelling amongst us.

Probably the most powerful thing we have to connect and to relate and to have a relationship with each other and have a relationship with God is our words.

So our words matter. But here's the problem is, when you're in relationship with somebody for a long time, you start to get lazy with your words. You start to shorthand everything. And when you do that, what happens is problems start to arise

because you're choosing bad words. You're shorthanding where you're not. So it takes discipline to choose the right words. We have to, as people, learn how to choose the right words. Now,

as a pastor, sometimes I do marriage counseling and couples come to me when they're having a really hard time. And one of the things I start with on every single one, especially when there's conflict, is I start them with a picture and I say, hey, I want you to picture you

and your spouse and you're on opposing ends of a table. You're sitting at a table and you're on opposing ends of the table and the thing that is on the table between you is the problem or it's all of the problems. Now, what I'm going to do in counseling

is I'm not gonna get to try to try to side with her or side with him or try to get you What I'm trying to do is move you from opposing ends of the table so that when you see the problem, all you'd see is the person to moving

to the same side of the table so that you're looking at the problem together. I need to move them from competition to a place where they're cooperating with each other and they're seeing the problem as their problem, not his or her problem. And the only way to do that is to choose better words. Choose better words.

Can I make a confession to you guys? Okay. I'll over I'll I'll make it over here. Can I can I can I make a confession to you guys? Yeah. Alright. This this this side wants the tea. So here it is. I am a serial offender of not closing the cupboards in the kitchen. It has been a pain in our marriage.

Now here's the thing is, here's the crazy thing is, I I know why it happens because I wasn't raised right. I come from I come from a trailer park in Wyoming. Like, the fact that I'm here is a miracle so big that only God can get the credit for it. And my wife, I feel for her on this one. Right? I want to

be better but for years all she ever did was complain and insult me on these things. And here's the thing is I received the insults because I get it. She would look at me and she'd say, TJ, how do you get up in front of a thousand people and preach with no notes? Just all off of your memory, but you can't remember?

You can't remember to shut the cupboard? And I'm like, I don't I don't understand it. I don't get it. Well, this month, she changed her words. She stopped with the complaining and and and the insults, and she switched it up. She said, TJ, will you come in here for a second?

My my wife's a was a fourth grade teacher so I know when the tone is different. And she's standing in front of an open cabinet door and then like a trail of open cabinet doors.

Story of what I fixed is all just right there, you know? Like if ever I committed a crime, it would just be so obvious at this point, you know? And she's standing in front of it and she says she says, hey, we got this problem. She she she switched to the side of the table. We have a problem.

She goes, what I want is to change this from a complaint, but I wanna challenge you. Okay? When you open the cabinet, there's a loop. There's a loop in the universe that's open, and you got to close that loop. In my head, like, this is so dumb.

This is no way. Heck no. Like but the next time I come into the kitchen, it's weird. I open a cabinet and I hear her voice, close the loop. She changed the words that she had. And the crazy thing is the last month of our life, guys, I have been delivered. You know?

I'm shutting the cabinets. I'm hearing it close the loop. In fact, I come in, I'm like, hey, I closed so many loops today. You wouldn't believe how many loops I close in that way. Now here's the thing is, it's funny, but it's real. And those things that happen in our marriages, they are real. And so my question for you is what is your cabinet?

What is the loop that you have to close? And what I want to challenge you with is discipline yourself to change the way you've been saying it because I think that if you change the way you say it, you might find some hope and some healing and you might be able to close some of your own loops. Alright. One more proverb.

One more proverb and this proverb is not in the book of Proverbs. Did you know that proverbs are just like wisdom nuggets in the bible and there's lots of proverbs actually throughout the bible? In Ecclesiastes,

there's an awesome proverb in four twelve and it says this, a person standing alone can be attacked and defeated, but two can stand back to back and conquer. Three is even better for a triple braided cord is not easily broken. Alright. So first of all, what it's kind of saying here is there's a defensive strategy.

Something's going on. Hey, if you're alone, somebody can run up on you and they can attack you. So the trick is don't be alone. Find somebody who literally

has your back. You can stand back to back. I'm reminded of Forrest Gump here. When Bubba says, hey, you lean up against me, I'll lean up against you, then we don't have to sleep with our heads in the mud. Right? Having somebody who has your back is so important, but there's even a better thing though. Three is even

better for a triple braided cord is not easily broken. What is the third thing in the marriage that makes it even stronger? Jesus. Jesus. Guys, we are supposed to bind our marriages to Christ. It is supposed to be the center of our lives. And here's the thing is, and

this has been around forever, so I always, I always feel like, hey, whoever invented this should be famous, but every pastor stole it, so no one knows who's it is at this point. All right? But here it is. Picture a triangle, right? At the top is God, right? At the top is God.

On the two other corners are you and your spouse, you and your partner, you and your boyfriend or girlfriend. Alright? Now here's the thing is, when you get into a fight, the first instinct

is to move further away from each other. Okay? The first instinct is to kind of just separate out and in that time you get further away from your spouse and you actually get further away from God because there's no redemption, there's no restoration.

But then you're like, hey, you know what? We gotta make up. So the next instinct is actually to get closer together, to find middle ground. There's that old country song. It's like, we made in the middle, right? So it's

right here. So you're trying to find that middle ground, but the problem is is neither one of those are actually what the Bible teaches and what the Bible teaches is actually beautiful. Here's the thing is, if you want to fix your marriage, what you gotta learn to do is connect with Jesus. If both parties

start moving closer to God, guess what? Guess who else you're moving closer to? Your spouse. And when you finally get to that spot where you're all three in the same vicinity, that's where it a cord of three strands is not easily broken. You want a marriage

that the the gates of hell can't prevail against? Then center it around Jesus. Wrap it around Jesus. Move closer together to Jesus and you will ultimately find each other in that place. Some of you guys in this room, you're just fighting the back and forth batter battle of trying to find each other in the middle.

What you have to do is you have to figure out a way to center Christ in your marriage. My wife and I have been married nineteen years in December. Here's our wedding photo right here. There it is. The beard did a lot for me, by the way.

First of all, how did that guy end up with that girl? Right? Here it is, dudes. Have a little bit of wit and love Jesus and you will get a 10, okay? All right? But here it is. Now, I gotta tell you guys, that day was wonderful in so many ways, but our honeymoon was an absolute mess.

Okay. We were two poor bible college kids and we couldn't really afford to go on a honeymoon, but someone gifted us a little bit of money, but it wasn't enough money to get plane tickets anywhere. So we got married in j we got married in December and we decided to do a road trip from from Oregon to Wyoming.

We're gonna go to Jackson Hole, Wyoming because I had this idea of like a a cottage with snow on it and it's gonna be really cool. But the crazy thing is it's a pretty perilous track. We had to go over four passes in a little tiny Honda Element to get there,

right? And the crazy thing is it's right around the holidays, so like nothing is open. And so we find ourselves in the town of Pocatello, Idaho, okay? First of all, the greatest name in the history of names. Pocatello, Idaho is fantastically named, but there's not much there, okay? It's a little

town, it's actually a little college town and it is Christmas Eve and we can't find a hotel that is open,

okay? This is kind of before we had all the internet things that we could book ahead of time so you had to actually go in and like ask, hey, is there vacancy in these places? Every place is closed except for one place called the black swan in. Now this is a homemade themed hotel. Every room has got its own theme

and the eccentric lady who owned it themed each room. I always said, hey, give us the cheapest one. So they gave us one that was called the Romeo and Juliet room. Hey, you walk in, it's got green carpet to represent glass and Glass. Grass, and it's got like a stone pathway,

and you turn this way and there's a bathroom right here, but she's turned the toilet into a throne. Okay? Alright? You walk over here and there's two turrets and a hot tub in the middle. Each turret, one has spiral staircase

leading up to a loft bed which is above the hot tub, okay? It's pretty weird. I'm gonna say that. It's pretty weird and we're like, okay. So we get in there and the hot tub's running but then the hot tub starts to smoke like it's on fire.

And so we shut it off, we call the lady up, we say, hey, you know, it's us again and there's something wrong with the hot tub and our room's really smoky and like, like, you and she's like, oh yeah, yeah, I'll come back and you know, I'm gonna upgrade you to our nicest room.

And was like, oh, okay. You know? And so she upgraded us to to to tropical jungle. We came in. There was foliage and vines and fake trees everywhere. There was a two story waterfall that went into a heart shaped tub. Alright? And and there was these animal sounds.

And she had like a loop like playing in the background. So it was like jungle animal sounds like, oh oh. Britt and I couldn't have figure out how to shut that off. So we didn't sleep well that night because we felt like we were in the jungle.

The next day, we go over this crazy pass. We barely make it. We get into Jackson Hole, Wyoming. Here's the thing about Jackson Hole. There's nothing we could afford to do in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. It was so stinking expensive. We realized if we stay here for too much longer, we won't make it home, right? So we left after two days and now we're heading back and so we decided not to head back the same way and we roll into a town called Anaconda,

Montana. Okay? These are great names for towns by the way, every single one of these. And we're trying to redeem the honeymoon because everything's been so strange and weird and the other thing. And Britt was like, hey, found it. There's a New Year's Eve train ride where you welcome in the New Year's on a train

and there's music and there's food and it looks like it's pretty cheap. I'm like, that sounds great, sounds awesome. So we get there and we realize that everybody else on this thing is at some wedding slash family reunion and they're all together, okay? And we're just kind of there.

And then we get on the train, and here's the thing about the train, is you can't see anything because it's dark. So they put a spotlight, but it's all these kind of creepy shadows that you're seeing as the train's like driving into the night, and the music was karaoke.

And so now you're trapped for four hours on a tiny little train ride with a family doing their best Garth Brooks and Shania Twain impression. All right? The food was like one of those Costco trays with crackers and meat. We got off of this and we're like, man, we gotta stop trying at this.

You know what the crazy thing about that was is this, we absolutely loved it. Nothing went right, but we had each other and we had Jesus. In the quiet moments of that trip, me and Britt used to do this thing where we'd have a prayer contest. I know that sounds kind of weird, but what we do is we do thank you prayers,

and we would try to just say thank you, God, for something, and then the other person had to say thank you, God, for this other thing, and we had to go until something was repeated. What we did is we wrapped our marriage around Jesus. You know, guys, we live in a world

where a lot of people are getting married for a marriage. With Instagram and Pinterest, every woman's got this idea of this beautiful and perfect day, but they don't really work on their marriage before their marriage. As if we're going be a strong church,

we shouldn't worry so much about all the extra things in the day of. What we should worry about is this, does our marriage look like Jesus? Does our marriage look like Jesus? And the most important thing that if you forget everything else I said today is you've got to figure out a way to make Christ the center

of your marriage. So here it is, guys. I came up with a little challenge for you. You can take a picture of this if you want. If you have different things that are going on in your marriage,

there's three challenges from the three proverbs, the three tools that I gave you today that you can run-in your marriage. This is stuff that Britt and I are doing together, and we're

hard on our marriage. Alright, guys. Can you stand with us as we pray? And if you're with your person, wrap your wrap your arm around them. Let's say thank you to God for today. God,

we thank you for today. We thank you that your mercies are made new every day. Thank you for sending Jesus to die on the cross so that we can be forgiven and redeemed and free. Thank you for an empty tomb and the living hope that rises with Jesus.

Thank you for the Holy Spirit who guides us and lives inside of us and brings strength to this relationship that we have with you, God. Thank you, God, for your scriptures that speak truth to us even when it hurts. God, thank you for every answered prayer and every unanswered one. God, thank you for the hard times in marriage that you were doing great things. God, in this place today,

we ask the peoples whose marriage in this place is barely holding on. God, would you make broken things beautiful again? God, would you take the brokenness that we are existing in every day, will you turn it around into a redemption story so big that you can get the glory?

God, I thank you for the strong marriages that represent Cornerstone, and we just ask that you would put strength upon strength, They would be the people that we look to when we're looking to how to do this thing right. God, I pray that we would do the hard work of the ministry. I pray that you, God, would be glorified

through our marriages. And God, we know that this marriage that we have here on earth, it's preparing us. It's preparing us to be united finally, fully, completely with you. Jesus, your church is your bride, and we long to be with you. So I pray that our marriages would be testaments

to your glory and to your gospel. Pray that when people look at our marriages, they see

you. God, would you strengthen them so much that the outer world looks at us and say, what do they have? And then in that moment when they look at us and say, what are you doing different? We would have the courage to stand up for you and say, my life is completely wrapped around Jesus. God, we love you.

We pray all these things because you live. All God's people said, amen, amen, amen. Guys, the prayer team is down front if you need prayer.