Rejoicing Together Rejoice with the wife of your youth
We were in Bentonville the other week at a local coffee shop and there was a young married wife observing us. She commented about how well we got along as a married couple. We told her we’d be celebrating 20 years soon, and she stopped and said, “Wow. That's something these days. Not many last that long.”
I know there are a lot of married couples out there who have been together just as long and longer, but we're rejoicing in the 20 years we’ve had together. Rejoicing! We're magnifying what God has done in our marriage! We’ve been through some stuff, and we could have gotten divorced our first year of marriage. That's the truth. But we didn’t. Praise the Lord. Thank You, Lord! So, we're 20 years in, 70 more to go. Glory to God.
Thanks be to God, our marriage isn't dry and stagnant because the Lord has helped us to learn to celebrate and rejoice together in the middle of trials, tests, and temptations. This is exactly what we want to get into today… Things don't have to be "just right" in order to rejoice.
Looking back, if you would have asked us 7 or 8 years ago if our marriage was healthy, we would have said, “Of course!” But... it wasn’t. At least not like it could have been. Like many marriages these days, our marriage had gotten dry. It had become heavy, intense, and serious. Financial pressure, being-a-parent pressure, work pressure, ministry pressure—all the pressures pressing in on us—resulted in a hard, constricted, serious, and intense marital environment where there wasn't much laughing, let alone dancing, much less rejoicing.
I remember both of my moms—my actual mom and my spiritual mom—coming to me and asking, “Are you guys doing ok?” I reassured them that yes, we are doing great, fine, happy, all the things; but I was oblivious to how intense we had gotten. We were trying to carry it all, and it was heavy. Both moms encouraged us to HAVE FUN. They both told us to do things that made us “HAPPY.” Do fun things as a family. To lighten up. To not take things so seriously.
I don’t have to tell you, in this day and age especially, that many marriages, and yes, even Christian marriages, are in a drought. They are dessert dry. No one is laughing, rejoicing, or dancing. They have become withered and parched. What happens when something is super dry and ceases to be watered? It cracks, it breaks, it shrivels up and it dies. Our marriages are in need of some major refreshing and rejuvenation. Today, I’m going to tell you how to get this refreshment, or at least a good start on it.
First, you have to begin by being willing to invest—aka, GIVE.
Last weekend, Matt was ministering to a group of people, and the Lord gave him a specific word concerning marriages. I want to share it with you today.
He began by encouraging all of us to invest into our marriages… “The more you invest, the more your investments will produce for you. The more return you’ll have. And your spouse is some of the best ground to reap a harvest. If you want your marriage—which is the type of Christ and the Church—if you want your marriage to be successful, if you want it operating at the high capacity that it's called to, then you have to think about investing in each other. I'm not telling you exactly how to do that. That's up to the husband and the wife to talk about, and to hear from the Lord for themselves. What can you do for each other? What can you do to invest in each other?”
You see, investing takes effort. It takes resources. When you invest into your marriage, it requires something of you. To name just a few, your personal resources of humility, love, joy, energy, and time are all required.
A generous person will prosper; whoever refreshes others
will be refreshed. (Prov. 11:25, NIV)
Another version of this scripture says that he who waters will be watered himself. Do you need some refreshing? Investing into your marriage is a guaranteed return. A healthy marriage is a happy and healthy life, is an effective life, is a life worth living. The state of our marriage affects every aspect of our life.
If you don’t make investments, you don’t get returns. If you want to withdraw, you’ll have to deposit. If you want a return, you’ll have to invest.
Why are so many of us trying to squeeze the life out of something we’ve rarely given into?
So let each one give as he purposes in his heart, not grudgingly or of necessity; for God loves a cheerful giver. (2 Cor. 9:7, NKJV)
There it is. Cheerful. A cheerful giver.
This brings me to the second part that Matt was sharing with us from 1 Peter chapter 1. If we want our marriages to avoid severe drought because of trials, temptations, and pressures, we need an important ingredient, alive and active: We need us some good, old-fashioned, JOY.
The Apostle Peter tells us how we can obtain this JOY, even in the midst of pressure—a JOY that is, like the hymn sings, “joy unspeakable and full of glory.” That hymn came from this passage of scripture. As you read it, pay attention to the bolded phrases:
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, which according to His abundant mercy hath begotten us again unto a lively hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, To an inheritance incorruptible, and undefiled, and that fadeth not away, reserved in heaven for you, Who are kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.
Wherein ye greatly rejoice, though now for a season, if need be, ye are in heaviness through manifold temptations: That the trial of your faith, being much more precious than of gold that perisheth, though it be tried with fire, might be found unto praise and honour and glory at the appearing of Jesus Christ:
Whom having not seen, ye love; in whom, though now ye see Him not, yet believing, ye rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory: Receiving the end of your faith, even the salvation of your souls.
(1 Peter 1:3-9, KJV)
Matt went on to say (much of this is an exact transcript of his message), “So, according to this scripture, what brings about heaviness in your life? What's one of the things? Many kinds of temptations. Heaviness comes through many temptations, pressures, or troubles. Do you recall how the Bible says when you are married, you'll have trouble in the flesh? Well, especially when you're starting out in marriage, and as you progress, you find out all the different kinds of things that you have to work out in your marriage. What can these relationship tests bring about in your marriage? According to the Word, many temptations/tests can bring about some heaviness in your marriage.
Thank God there’s a solution! In order to gain victory and win against heaviness, we need what verse five says, the POWER OF GOD. The power of God through faith for salvation is the solution for the heaviness that many temptations bring into a marriage.
You and I need to access the power of God through faith unto salvation in our marriages. The Lord wants to save us in our marriages. He wants to save us out of dryness, out of these temptations—the temptation to quit in your marriage; the temptation to get mad at each other and stay mad; the temptations that belong to a man as a married man; the temptations that belong to a woman as a married woman—with everything from Adam and Eve, until now. All the problems and situations that husbands and wives have endured and overcome by the blood of the Lamb and the word of their testimony. There is nothing new under the sun. And though you have a temptation or a trial in your marriage, though you've had problems, or anybody has had problems of any length, you can come out of it, and you can overcome in it.
But let’s keep going because we need to access something to overcome it. We need to access the solution that God has brought to us. And what is that? That's the power of God. Through your faith unto salvation, your marriage, any marriage, can be saved and made better by the power of God. Your marriage, any marriage, can come up. It can come out and become great, it can become exemplary, a light and a beacon in this dark world where people today are getting divorces one after another. You can last and you can endure, and you can thrive in your marriage.
How do we access the power of God through faith, though? Paul starts to get into it in verse 6: wherein you greatly rejoice. But there's something that's connected to the rejoicing right here in verse eight, “whom having not seen you love and whom though now you see him not, yet believing, you rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory.” Even though a married couple might have a problem, or one of you might have a challenge in your life; maybe it's particular to the husband or maybe it's particular to the wife. Maybe it's a challenge that you both experience. We've already talked about how the Lord will bring you out, right?
That's His will. We all know that, but we need to access the power of God through faith. How do we do that? By our rejoicing, and by exercising our faith. Even though you don't see it yet, even though you don't see yourself on the other side of that problem yet, even though you don't see yourself living in victory in your marriage yet, even though you don't have a vision of victory yet…
You see what I'm saying? Apply this scripture. We believe in Jesus, don't we? Yes. Have we seen Him face to face? No. I can't say that I have. No, most of us can’t say that we've sat in front of Jesus and talked with Him face to face, yet we still believe. That's faith, is it not? Yes. Now, what about our marriage problem? Is that situation any different? If we can believe in a Savior that we haven't seen, can we not believe in a victorious marriage that we haven't seen yet? Can we not believe in an overcoming marriage that we haven't seen yet? Can we not believe and see ourselves as greater husbands, more loving husbands, more honorable husbands, than we've seen ourselves as, yet? Yes, we can!
If you’re a wife, can you see yourself as the bride of Christ in your marriage, even though you may not feel like you’ve arrived yet? Can we see ourselves as God has seen us, even though we haven't seen it yet? Can we still believe? You've already done it with Jesus. How is it any more difficult to do that in our marriages? It’s not. So, how do we access the power of God through faith? Well, verse eight again, “you rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory.” In your marriage or in any faith challenge, what's going to get you through? What's going to cause you to overcome?
You do the things to get in faith, but what's next? What's lacking? It's the rejoicing, it's waking up happy by choice, and being glad and being thankful and knowing, “God's got me today. God's got my marriage today. He is not going to leave us in this situation, in this problem.” And maybe it's not something between you two, but something you're experiencing together, like a financial situation, or a parenting situation, and you're both believing God to come up and out of it.”
I’ll add, we just recently went through a major situation in our family. And though the enemy wanted to, he wasn’t able to win. He wasn’t able to get us to turn against each other and fight against each other. Instead, we rejoiced our way through the problem, up out of it and into victory! It wasn’t easy! But our rejoicing with joy unspeakable and full of glory brought us to a place where we could receive the “end of our faith” and see salvation in the midst of a trying situation! And we are all three stronger together because of it!
Matt continued, “God will do the same thing for you when you rejoice together. Not separate. Together. Everything you do, you do it together. You overcome together. You pray together. You read your scriptures together. You get excited about life again together. You get excited about the future together. You do it together, not separately.
You overcome together. You rejoice together. And if you'll do this, according to this scripture, you're going to access the power of God through faith in your situation. What does that look like? That looks like Jess and me when we have a family situation, we come together.
We get in faith by our speaking, and we're going to get in faith by our praying. After we're in faith, what do we do? What's next? According to the scripture, if you want to access the power of God for your situation, what must you do? You have got to rejoice.
You’ve got to dance in your kitchen together. You’ve got to join your hands together and praise God and rejoice by faith. I mean, rejoice. Don’t hold back. You dance, you shout, you praise God. You give God access into your home. You give God access into your kitchen... You don't pray these little piddly prayers and just be like nonchalantly, “oh, praise God,” you know?
And don’t make it a planned, awkward situation. Let the rejoicing flow! You get in faith together and you start rejoicing. You rejoice even though you don't see it yet. You rejoice that your finances are strong, even though you don't see it yet; you rejoice that your romantic relationships are strong, even though you don't see it yet.
Rejoice. Rejoice. Rejoice. You rejoice when it looks like you have nothing to rejoice about! Then, when you do, you access the power of God, and God saves you in that situation. Verse nine says you WILL see it. Praise the Lord. Hallelujah. Alright, one more scripture…
Let your fountain be blessed: and
rejoice with the wife of your youth. (Prov. 5:18)
Who's that talking to? That's talking to husbands, right? So, who's supposed to lead this rejoicing? That's the men. It doesn't say, and doesn't mean, that the women can't participate in that and can't stir it up. But talking to men, we need to lead our wives and lead our family in this. There needs to be times when you get the whole family together and just start rejoicing over the goodness of God, and you get loud. You make it a rejoicing thing, not a quiet thing, not a solemn thing. Not a heavy thing. You rejoice like you mean it. It’s a joyful thing!
Our families, our children, need to see what rejoicing in the middle of a trial looks like. They need to see a victorious life and what that looks like. They need to see people who are actually Spirit-filled, because there's no such thing as an un-rejoicing, Spirit-filled Christian. We need to be rejoicing and rejoicing and rejoicing, all the time.
Rejoice in the morning when you wake up. Rejoice before you go to bed. Rejoice with your kids. Rejoice with your wife. Rejoice over the dinner table. Praise God. Rejoice. Rejoice. But now, “rejoice with the wife of your youth.” Sometimes men reach a point in their lives where they could be tempted to look at their wives as just “old hat.”
I'm not saying that I have, I'm not saying that you have. I'm saying there's a reason why the Bible says something like this, and that is why we're talking about investing in our marriages. The fountain can dry up if we don’t. This is a scripture that Jessica and I have done and do on a regular basis.
I want to rejoice with Jess. I want to invest. I know she does too, but I'm leading this thing. And this is me being a doer of the Scripture. So, husbands, I encourage you. Rejoice with the wife of your youth. Rejoice with her. Treat her just as special as when you first met her—how special she was, how beautiful she was to you, how endearing that you were to her, and loving. Don't forget that.
Laugh with your wife again. Go on dates again. Do romantic things again. Bring her home flowers. Stir up the rejoicing. Often, marriages get stagnant, and they get dead because there's no rejoicing with each other. There's no rejoicing over the goodness of God. There's no rejoicing over how beautiful your wife is to you. When joy is flowing, the water is flowing. You’ve just got to stir it up again and let the Lord deliver you in your marriage.
Bring the power of God into your marriage again by this rejoicing. Jessica and I, we're having more fun after 20 years than we've ever had in our entire life. We're more in love with each other than we ever have been. We're laughing with each other all the time. We're praying with each other all the time. We're best friends.
And that's because of the Lord. It's not because we're just so awesome and amazing. This is what the Lord has done. Don't get caught in the trap of the enemy where you don't rejoice with each other, where you don't invest in each other. And then husbands, get stirred up again. This is the wife of your youth that you fell in love with.
Treat her as special again and invest in her because there is a harvest that will come your way to bring your relationship to a place you never even imagined it could be. And don't be discouraged by the little challenges and problems, or with even the big ones. Rejoice in spite of that and watch the Lord bring you out!!”
Praise God!! Such a ministering, powerful word from the Lord. Let’s be doers of it, amen?!
Before we go, I want to leave you with one final scripture to bring it all home, one of my favorites on this topic. It goes right along with what Matt has shared:
Therefore with joy shall ye draw water
out of the wells of salvation. (Isaiah 12:3)
Wow. It doesn’t get clearer than that. If you need some refreshing water in your marriage (or any area of your life for that matter), how are you going to get it? Stirring up your joy by rejoicing draws it out, Folks!! You’ve got this!
Rejoicing over you today,
Matt and Jess