Couples Night - Part 8

Believers that God said be like Sarah, and the way Abraham must have honored her and honored her and honored every word he uttered to her, every reaction honoring her, that love was kept intact, kept alive into old age, and sporting with her. You can only do that if you really love one another, each other, with a real love. Do you still love your wife, sir? What's left of life, sir? Are you going to let it be? The saints told me tenderness is gone, gentleness, the warmth, the honor, the thrill of being with her, of loving her, cherishing her.

And you, lady, I do so hope that Jenny will have the privilege of being married to a man when he's old, like that woman was. I feel sorry for Jenny, by God's grace. I think that makes marriage holy, sir, not stage respectability.

That's more a soul, but empty, tenderness. I think holiness is soul, throbbing with love in marriage. That's holiness.

What do you honestly think holiness is in marriage, if love went out the door? Well, to everyone here who has a need to ask God to heal the wounds that somehow come in, to bring back the tenderness and the words, to give forgiveness to each other, to every single married person here tonight. You may think you've shocked the world by saying it's me. I'll tell you something, there's no one to be more shocked than the devil, if you let God undo in one moment all the damage he's somehow done so subtly.

To ask for forgiveness, for cleansing in the blood, and for God's grace by the Holy Spirit to give you back love and tenderness and gentleness and warmth and honoring in your marriage. To ask God to take the little bit left and make it holiness, like Sarah and Abraham were, like that old couple in Ohio down here. To believe with all your heart that God's great enough to still do that, if you really ask him, and you're willing to obey him and be what he wants you to be.

And to ask God to give grace to the one, to your spouse, to give you another chance, and love you the same, no matter how much you've failed. I'm going to shock you all now, who makes an appeal like this, but I'm going to dare. I want everyone whether you're a preacher, whether you've been married 50 years and you're from a holiness church, whether the Mennonites think of all you as the godliest couple alive.

I want every one of you to know you need to say, God, God, I need forgiveness, and God, I need the blood, because of my marriage. And God, I ask for grace, what's left of it to be what I should be. By a miracle of the Holy Spirit in my heart, make me what I should be.

Please. Every one of you that desperately need to say that to God, I want you to stand up right now and say, God, it's me. And those that stand, I'm going to pray for them.

Oh, it's going to cost you to stand, isn't it? But imagine what it's going to cost you if you don't stand and you just carry on keeping the front. I won't ask you again. Just those that are standing and those that still want to stand, let's just pray now.

Will you all pray with me, please, this prayer? Oh, God, forgive me for how I failed Thee in my marriage. Wash me in the blood of Christ for every grief I have given Thee and my loved one. When I was not utterly Christlike as I could have been, if I just let Thee have my way, by Thy grace, give me a new start here tonight.

That what is left of my life, I may be holy in my marriage. I may love my wife. I may love my husband with God's love.

Help my spouse to forgive me and to give me another chance as I try again.