Michigan Camp Meeting 2017

<p>Free sharing permitted under the Creative Commons <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/">BY-NC-ND 3.0 (US)</a> license.</p>

Michigan Conference of Seventh-day Adventists

Marriage Heart to Heart

Alane Waters

Tom Waters

1. An Enduring Commitment

2. Please Understand Me

3. Malfunction to Miracles

4. For Our Love

Father in heaven, we are thankful for this camp meeting.

We're thankful for the opportunity to have meetings that encourage our walk with you.

And today we're going to be encouraging our marriages.

The topic today, Father, we just ask for your Holy Spirit to guide us and to bless each 1 of us that we will be more understanding.

Understanding of your will, understanding of your power in our marriages, and understanding of 1 another as husband and wife.

Now you know that each of us in the marriage wants to be understood.

I don't have to ask you if you want to be understood.

We just want to be understood, not realizing that she would like to be understood too.

And we talked about the me focus yesterday for those that were here.

In the me focus, I just want to be understood and as long as you understand me, then I feel understood.

And so the beauty of the gospel and of surrender to the Lordship of Jesus is that in the golden rule, you remember what the golden rule says?

It says that we ought to do unto others as we would want them to do unto us, right?

And when we're really tuned into the Lord, it isn't just please understand me, it's I want to also understand you, right?

Not as loud as this 1, but it will trade.

We have had too many times in our marriage dips where there was a lack of understanding.

And when that happens, there's feelings and emotions that accompany that.

And then sometimes if we don't deal with it right away, they continue to get bigger and bigger and bigger and more and more ugly.

And we actually got to points in our marriage.

It hasn't happened for a long time, but we got to points in our marriage where we would just avoid certain topics because we knew from past history that they always brought conflict and heartache.

And today we want to tell you the good news is that we don't have to do that anymore and neither do you.

There can be any topic about our relationship that we can talk through.

Nothing has to go shoved away in the closet anymore.

And that can be for all of us here today, because we're going to be talking about the fundamentals of learning how to understand 1 another, and most importantly, how the power of God works in our hearts so that we can go outside of our human abilities and experience the joy that God brings in the harmony in the relationship.

I want to tell you a simple, a very short and simple story, but it's very illustrative.

And it is true, this 1 doesn't happen to be our story, but we have plenty of our own stories that you'll hear through the week but this 1 is somebody else's story that that we have been allowed to share.

1 day this gentleman, he wasn't actually acting much like a gentleman at this moment, but he walked into the kitchen and his wife is frying a couple of eggs on the stove top.

And he comes right over her shoulder and he said, watch out, flip those things, they're gonna burn.

You don't have enough oil in the pan turn them quick they're too long on that side you never listen to me when you're in the kitchen And his wife turns around and says to him, what in the world is going on with you?

You don't think I can fry a couple of eggs?

And he said, well, I've been looking for a way to somehow get you to understand how I feel when I'm driving.

How many men have ever felt like your wife didn't understand when you're driving?

Well, sometimes they're just afraid to raise their hands.

Their wife might think something or whatever.

He said, you know, We're going to share plenty of examples, but I have to say that this was an issue in our marriage.

Because, and we talked about this morning, because even as we, you know, refresh this little story in our minds, we were discussing it, it's like, yeah, and my mind had all these flashbacks of how many times, you know, I'm thinking, oh honey, you know, did you notice it went to 35?

And I said, sometimes, honey, you see things I never see.

And I am looking at things that say construction ahead, and reduce speed ahead, and the orange signs, the white signs.

And I have to be very, very honest he's very attentive now.

I wonder where you're gonna go with that.

She used to say to me, this is a classic, we're going down the interstate and they have these big signs over the interstate that are flashing, construction ahead, mile marker 126.

We'd go under that sign and she would say, honey, did you see that sign?

So part of the funniness of this story that's real is that we are guilty men, often, guilty as charged, but we still want to be understood, don't we?

I mean, we wish that she could see the whole picture, but...

He told me this morning, honey, the problem is, is that before I even, I see the sign, but before I can even kind of, you know, take my foot off the accelerator and start to coast and slow down, you already are saying something about it.

Sometimes we are ahead of where they are because their mind is somewhere here and then, oh, 0 yeah, I think I just saw that, you know, that sign is at 35 now.

So I am learning, because it's still a growth of grace, I am learning not to be so quick, but he has actually in times thanked me for seeing signs that he missed, especially when there's a little black and white down the road with the radar set and he isn't 1 that gets the little flashing lights after him, somebody else.

And I tell you what, this is heads up, if you ever drive through Arizona and they have a construction zone, they mean what they say.

Every time we go from our little, you know, in to get our mail 30 miles away, there's a new construction zone there.

They're putting a new bridge in on the interstate.

Series

Marriage Heart to Heart

2. Please Understand Me

Transcript

Parent Series

Parent Conference

Sponsor

Recorded

To Have and to Hold on

Holding On - Part 5

1h 13m

Husbands Love Your Wives as Christ Loves the Church

53m

For Better or for Best

56m

Marriage as a Covenant

51m

Singleness, Dating, and Relationships in the Church

How to Pray for A Godly Spouse

45m

To Have and to Hold on

Do You Speak My Language - Part 3

1h 16m

Relationship Revival

2. Loving Out Loud

1h 11m

Marriage Heart to Heart

Money Matters

47m

Dane Griffin: SWYC 2005 Practical Christianity Seminar

Practical Christianity Seminar, Part 2

56m

Mutuality

55m

The God-Arranged and Blessed Marriage

Principles of the God-Blessed Marriage

57m

Marriage as a Covenant

07 Covenant Marriage and the Mission of the Family

38m

Sound Doctrine