Michigan Camp Meeting 2018: As a Witness, Matthew 24:14

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Michigan Conference of Seventh-day Adventists

To Have and to Hold on

John Lomacang

Becoming One - Part 1

Ten Relationship Challenges and How to Meet Them - Part 2

Do You Speak My Language - Part 3

Keys to Better Communication - Part 4

Holding On - Part 5

Precious, loving Father in Heaven, we thank you for the wonderful opportunity we now have to spend this time together and to just learn what it means to be husband and wife in the Lord.

We know that there are those who have been married for decades and those who just got married and everyone in between.

And we invite you, Lord, to tabernacle with us, to give us wisdom from above as we talk about a topic that is of great importance.

Sometimes it could be lighthearted, at other moments, very serious.

And so, strengthen us today in our time we spend together and may you be glorified.

I told you my wife and I, we have been married 35 years, and by God's grace, we have this new saying that we developed last year.

And I wanna invite my wife to come up and share with you.

You want to clap, whatever you want to do.

When we were in the Cayman Islands last year, we always try to celebrate.

1 of the things that we do is we celebrate.

Yeah, we do, especially our anniversaries.

So whenever something happens, we always tell people not that date, that's our anniversary.

We have a school in Thompsonville, and it just so happens that every year, graduation, everything about our life is around something that has to do with the church or the school of the conference.

Her birthday is when I'm at pastor's meetings, my birthday is when we're at camp meeting, and the school graduation is during our anniversary.

So we try to always work around that and we said to ourselves if we had known that our anniversary would fall at such a critical time in church we would have picked a different time but we picked May 22nd 1983 write that down next year we'll give you our address you can send us gifts when you like to but May 22nd 19 but this year what was our saying honey let's do it together.

Together, together, forever, eternity in view.

And that has become such a saying in our marriage, in our relationship, that sometimes we could be in an audience, in a room or an audience like this, and I'd make eye contact with her, and we'd go like this.

If you tell us how many times you use it, we'll just give us your credit card information.

We protect each other from the outside world and then sometimes we protect each other from each other.

But if you've been married you know what I'm talking about because no 2 people are alike and what I want to begin today by talking about I want to talk about the evidence of a long and prosperous marriage.

Because, you know, different people have different ideas about a prosperous relationship.

And we believe a prosperous relationship is a relationship that stays together through the ups and downs, the hard times, the easy times, when couples really get to the place where the wife wants to shoot the husband and the husband wants to run through a glass window without opening it, You know, you have those days.

And if you've been married more than a decade or 20 years or 50 years or 30 years, you know you didn't get there on a flowery bed of bees.

You got there because you decided, okay, honey, we are so messed up that if we left each other, nobody would want us anyway.

And there's some people that are so messed up when they leave They come back anyway because I can't find anybody that wants to do what I want them to do so I'm coming back But Marriage is intended by God to be a blessing.

But the devil, just like he attacks the Sabbath, he attacks the marriage.

He wants the marriage to be a perpetual hardship, a curse, and just like he says the Sabbath is a burden, he tries to make marriage a burden.

The only problem with marriage is it's a daily job.

But I heard something that's very important.

They said if you find a job you like, it's no longer work.

So if you If you love your wife, it's no longer work.

If you love your husband, it's no longer work.

But you don't fool yourself into thinking that.

You can show up every day and have a successful relationship without thinking, because you got to think.

Because wives ask questions sometimes that husbands answer and get in trouble just for answering.

So be careful when your wife asks you a question because she's thought long and hard about the answer.

By the time she gets the courage to ask you, notice her body language.

I mean, she has all the facts put together.

I mean, so you got to be really careful in how you ask questions.

But 1 story that I'd like to begin with this lighthearted, is 2 couples that were married for 50 years.

And after 50 years, they sat on the couch together, you know, by the way, you get to the point where you're so predictable, you know what I'm talking about?

Well, you could predict each other, you know what she's going to say, you know what he's going to say, you start ending each other's sentences.

But sometimes you take each other for granted and you sit down with family or on the couch and you're kind of like, okay it's the news.

And you just take each other for granted.

So 1 day the wife broke into the silent mode of the husband's recessitudes and she said, you know, I remember when you used to hug me.

And then he just slid over and put his arm around his wife.

You know who your spouse is Don't let me mess you up.

But anyhow, so he slides over and he puts his arms around her and hug her.

And then she said, I remember those days when you used to whisper sweet nothings in my ear.

And he just tilted up, began to whisper sweet nothings in her ear.

And she said, I also remember when you used to nibble on my earlobes.

Series

To Have and to Hold on

Do You Speak My Language - Part 3

Transcript

Parent Series

Parent Conference

Sponsor

Recorded

To Have and to Hold on

Holding On - Part 5

1h 13m

Two Peas In a Pod

Part 4: Connecting Through Conflict

42m

For Better or for Best

56m

Lovely Lord of the Lord's Day

7 - The Mark of the Beast Principle

30m

Breakout Session B

When You Mess Up, How do you Fix Up

1h 2m

The Great Decision: Who Should I Marry?

1h 19m

God's Love Stories (Noon Meetings)

9. Starting Right

42m

Husbands Love Your Wives as Christ Loves the Church

53m

Marriage Heart to Heart

2. Please Understand Me

1h 7m

Romantic Relationship Seminar

03 Five Behaviors Keeping You Single

52m

Malfunction to Miracles

56m

Love and Marriage

1h 4m

Sound Doctrine