In this sermon, the speaker emphasizes the importance of finding a spouse who exhibits signs of revival, such as real spiritual life, love for God, and personal holiness. The significance of having a secret prayer life is discussed, along with using the Lord's Prayer as an outline for personal prayers. The speaker also stresses the importance of knowing and embracing one's calling in life, whether it be a specific profession or a role within the church. He encourages single people to use their unique abilities and time to serve their local church and to be cautious of the influence of culture on their faith. Additionally, the speaker highlights the importance of taking the Word of God seriously and seeking to live a life in accordance with its teachings.

Okay, we're gonna start. Somebody just said we need to start, so we need to start. So we have a bunch of questions that you asked, great questions. And, but to, in order to begin here, each of us are gonna share just a quick thought, quick charge, a word of encouragement. And I've got actually a couple of things to say.

First of all, the things that you just heard about revival, signs of revival, and then, and I'm just gonna list them off. These are the thing, if you're looking for a spouse, these are the things you should look for in a spouse. I thought they were just very helpful, but they're helpful on a number of levels. And I'm just gonna jam through them just as a way of reminder. First, real spiritual life as opposed to institutional religion.

Second, personal ownership of salvation. This was of course Jason's message. Third, love for God. Fourth, love for God's words. Fifth, a desire for and carefulness about personal holiness.

Six, staying power. In other words, they've been walking with the Lord for a while. And then Jeff Johnson's six things. First, His grace. Second, surrender yourself to God.

Third, fighting Satan. Fourth, pursuing God. Fifth, pursuing holiness. And sixth humble yourself before God. You know those are the kinds of things that are treasures in a marriage and you want to find a woman like that and marry a woman like that.

It's so important. Those signs of revival are really critical guidelines that these brothers shared with us that I just think are so helpful. Well, I want to make that comment really before we start, but let's pray. Father, we need your help. We need your wisdom.

We are mere men. We are so thankful though that you've rescued, that you've poured out your spirit, that you've given us words of life, that we're not left on our own to do life on our own, but we have help, help to do everything. And Lord what a kindness it is that you would treat us in such a way. And I pray now, O Lord, that you would bless all of us, that you would take us higher, that you would take us deeper, that you would increase our love for your kingdom, that you would bring us to repentance, that you would bring us to satisfaction in your word. Lord, I pray that you'd bless these men.

I pray that you would pour your grace out upon them and prosper them. I thank you Lord that you have implanted within them a desire for glory and may they seek your glory with all their hearts. Amen. Okay so for an exhortation I think Jason maybe we'll begin with you We'll jump over to Jeff and then finally, then with Paul, and then I'll follow it up, and then we'll start dealing with the questions. We're going to have to be done at noon, then we're going to go up back up to burnings in the soul where we'll have lunch first and then a number of the preachers are just gonna come and give a quick 10-minute here's what's burning in my soul.

This is really a helpful time by the way. You get something that's unusual and really, really helpful. But we'll have to bust out of here right at noon. I'll just, we're gonna be in the middle of something. I'm gonna say, we gotta go.

That's how it's gonna work. Okay, Jason, why don't you start? I wanted to exhort us, exhort us briefly from Matthew chapter 6 this is Matthew 6 6 Jesus says but you when you pray go into your room and when you have shut your door, pray to your Father who is in the secret place and your Father who sees in secret will reward you openly. So I want to just begin by stating the obvious and say we need to have a secret prayer life. It's possible to have that eroded in your life to the point where most of your prayer is corporate with other people.

I love some corporate prayer, but the, the foundation of our prayer lives is actually happens behind a closed door when nobody sees or knows. And I just want to say that Christian men are built are built in times in secret with God. A Christian men become strong and robust in their faith. In alone times with God, Jesus calls us to it in Matthew 6 6 and then just to follow that up by saying. The disciples wanted to be taught how to pray, so Jesus gave them a model prayer.

Well, we call it the Lord's Prayer, but he's actually teaching us how to pray. I grew up in a church where we recited it by rote every Sunday. No one really gave it a second thought. It was just the recitation. Your mind could be elsewhere while you were reciting it.

That's actually contrary to what Jesus had just said, don't pray like the heathen who think they'll be heard for their babbling. So you can be turned into babbling, but it is an incredibly useful outline for prayer. So use the Lord's Prayer that way. It is a systematic way to touch on categories that we need to touch on in prayer. Thankfulness, holiness, provision, forgiveness.

I struggle with forgiveness. Well then you're not using the Lord's Prayer as an outline. If you use the Lord's Prayer for an outline, you actually don't struggle for forgiveness because you're forgiving people every time you pray. So anyway, view the Lord's prayer as an underutilized asset and begin to, when you pray, open up your Bible to Matthew chapter 6 and just start praying through the outline. Think of it as an outline.

Ah, our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. That's a category. Pray through the category. It's easy to pray for ten minutes in that category. You just go word by word and the word means something.

There's a significance to our. Our Father. We're part of a people. God has bought a people. So just sort of approach it that way It means something that it says our not my okay, so just like pray Pray with that in mind, and and I'm just using that as an example.

You can go all the way through all of it as meaning hold as value. Can I just add one thing to that? You know, I, you know, I've, I've always, I've always struggled with my prayer life, but what has rescued me so many times is praying the Bible, because my mind is so dull, and I can't remember everything that needs to be prayed for, and the Bible helps you out. Even just a couple of days ago when I arrived here, I took a long walk through the woods, and I turned the Psalms on my audio, and I just prayed the Psalms while I was walking. I found that when I'm walking, my mind gets really distracted, but it helps me to have the words of God and just to pour out those things in prayer.

My mind is able to work better in prayer when I have the Word of God. It's just so helpful to me. Anyway, that's just one thing. Probably what I'd want to, what I want to encourage you guys with is To know what you're doing and do with all your heart. The Bible says, what are your hand finds to do?

Do with all your might. And I think what are struggling with the manhood today in our culture is men wait to their 30 or 40 before they become men. And part of about being a man is knowing what you're gonna do with your life. If your career, you know, I don't know what I wanna do, and you struggle through college, you struggle after college, and you're going back taking this job or taking that job, and you're just waffling, waffling. And there's a command to figure it out, and then not just figure it out, but know that whatever it is, you're commissioned by God to do it.

I remember being called to preach, and for the first two or three years, I would just struggle with that calling, and I would say, well, no, I'm not called, and I'd want to quit, then I can't quit, then I'd want to preach, then I'd want to quit. And I struggled back and forth for years, and it was not healthy. I don't know, I was a humble guy. No, it wasn't healthy. And it wasn't until I made up my mind that I might be the worst preacher in the world, but someone's got to be the worst preacher.

And I'm going to do this, and I'm going to put my effort behind it. I'm going to give my life to it. I'm going to give my life to what I'm called to do. And if you're going to be men, you need to figure it out if it's a baker, barber, or if it's a doctor, if it's a deacon, elder. And then you need to not just settle in on something, you need to know that it's a commission from God.

Martin Luther, the died of Ermes, was facing death, and he asked for a recess. Asked him to recant and he didn't know what to do and he asked for a recess. Then there's a recorded prayer where he prays this long prayer and he's wrestling with Satan, wrestling with God. And he has this line, I know you called me to this. I know that I can't do it.

He knows his weakness. He knows that he's not able to do it, but he come to the conclusion that he was there by God's appointment. And he strengthened himself by knowing he was on mission with God. You men need to know that whatever you're doing is a mission from God and it's not your choice that I'm a barber because I chose to be. You know, God's put you in a physical profession and God is your master And he's the one that tells you to cut hair to the glory of God.

He's the one that tells you to raise your family to the glory of God. You need to you need it. It is not prideful. It's not arrogant to go. I'm called for this.

I'm called to do this. And there's no confidence in self, but there's a confidence in knowing that whatever you're doing, it's, it's poor God's glory in us on commission of the Lord. And once you come to that realization in the quicker, the better. Don't wait till you're 30 or 40 or 50 to come to this. But once you come to it and it'd be great if you could come to it today.

Some of you have already come to it. Come to it and say, I am equipped of God to do this, and I'm going to do this with all my might, with all my strength, and I will be successful. I will conquer, I will be victorious in what God has called me to do. So be men, and as I figure that out, don't rest until you know what you're going to do with your life. Just writing off that hard cry, we have a series of core values that we build for every life.

I preach over and over to create a culture. And one of the things is that a humble man does not think too much of himself. He doesn't think too little of himself. He just doesn't think of himself. Another thing is, is the attitude that you ought to have is that, and I use myself as an example to our men, I owe, okay, I'm sitting in the office of the director of Parkfire, but say the whole world comes in and says, there's a million other men better than you for this position.

I would agree with them. Yes, you're Right. That's true. But God put me here. And I have to do what I have to do.

And that's the way to look at it. You know, the devil, other men, others can come to you and go, you know, there's a better man than you for this position. And you go, you're exactly right. If God sends him here, I will step down and carry his bags but the fact of the matter is I'm here and while I'm here I'm gonna do what I have to do in the fear of God. Another thing that brother Jason brought up that I think is just maybe one of the greatest sins one of the greatest theological oversights in the modern-day church.

Jesus was the man of prayer. They never asked him, show us how to cast out demons. They never said, teach us to preach. So it must be the most extraordinary thing they saw about Jesus was not him walking on water, it was his prayer life. Because they never said teach us to walk on water, as they teach us to pray.

And when he was directly asked to do that, he says basically in modern vernacular, okay, pray this way. And he recited the Lord's prayer, and I will bet you that although there are good men in this room, hardly any of them have made the Lord's prayer the alphine for the furloughed. And yet it's the only time Jesus, the Word made flesh, was asked, how do I pray? And he said, okay, do this. It's also not surprising that Antichrist took this very prayer and turned it into root.

And in Roman, Cabela says, now when he looks at this prayer, just really quickly, pray then in this way, Matthew 9, our Father who is in heaven, the perfect dichotomy, the perfect psychology of prayer, he is your Father, but never forget your Father is in heaven. Take the wisdom of Solomon on this. Be careful with your words when you approach hell. Not be out of some fear of a father who is inconsistent in his nature and his action. No, out of respect.

When it says Abba, Father, it does not mean Daddy. Because that word does not carry with it in the English language, the respect that's due. It is more affection than Daddy, but far more reverence also than the addict. Then he says this, How would be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. This is almost a trinity.

It is one and it is three. How would be your name? What does that mean? That your name be separate. What does that mean?

Don't ever say, keep Jesus number one in your life. Don't ever say that. That's unbiblical language. Keep God number one. That's unbiblical language.

God's not number one. Because God is not in the number system. He's in a complete other category. He's not in the same category with creation and at top of it, he's in a complete other category than creation. He's all alone and that's what it means that God be separate, distinguished from absolutely everything else that is.

You pray that internally that that be reflected in my life, That he be exalted above everything in a completely other category, with no competing loyalties? That it be that way in my church? That it be that way in my family? That it be that way in the world? Hallowed be your name.

Separate, separated. Not put in a groove. You see, there's a greater difference, logically, between one and two than there is between two and a million. Because one is one. Two, PD.

So he's one, all alone, separate. Hallowed be thy kingdom come. This, especially in American theology, has been so played down, because we don't see the present reality of kingdom. There is a king. He reigns over the nations.

He's casting them down. He's lifting them up. He's doing terrible and frightening things this very day that I'm speaking. Your kingdom come. But when you pray your kingdom come, your kingdom, your reign come in me, come in my family, come in my church.

But that's also, as in hallowed be thy name, that's a commitment. I am committed to hallowing your name. I am committed to advancing your kingdom. Whether you're a welder or a doctor or a preacher or a... Just anything.

You're committed to that. And you're just as committed to that as you are, as is the missionary is working in the most remote part of the world. It's the same passion, the same commitment, thy will be done. Just the expression of his kingdom, If he is a king, he has a will. If he has a will, it is to be obeyed.

And then this also reflects your working in prayer with regard to the sovereignty of God. And I, this really perturbs me about Reformed G-d. I've got to the point where I'm so sick of that word, I think I'm gonna start calling myself a particular Baptist. Because we use the sovereignty of God as an excuse. There is a mystery there.

There is a going into God. There is a grabbing hold of the horns of the altar. There is the Jacob. I will not let you go into. There are men who wrestle with God.

They fight with God. God delights in such men. Watchmen on the wall. Don't give me rest. Don't give me rest.

Till I make Jerusalem exactly what I promised about her. You see, and so how do we deal with this? Alright, let's say a man has chronic pain and it's a terrible. And he says this, God I hate this. I hate it.

Take it away. Just take it away. Should pray your desires. You'd be a fool if you wanted chronic fame. But it's in the backdrop of this.

God, if by taking away my pain, your name will be greater separated, your kingdom will come in a greater way, and your will will be done in a greater way, then take my pain away. But if through keeping this pain, even increasing it causes your name to be hallowed, causes your kingdom to come and your will to be done, then crush me with it. See, that's the prayer. And then the whole idea of, and I'll finish here, give us this day our daily bread. If I hear this preached one more time with, He doesn't say give us bread for tomorrow, but to today, I think I'm going to scream.

That is a point, but it's not the point. That's not the point of this prayer at all. What is the point? You just prayed that God's name will be hallowed, that his kingdom will come, and that his will will be done. Now you're praying, give me those things I need materially in order to dedicate my life to carrying out these three things.

That's what this means. Give me the food I need. If I need a car, give me a car. If I need a wife, give me a wife. If I need children, give me a children.

If I need a certain job, give me that job. Give me all the things I need to enact this. That's what this... That's the expectation. And I want to...

I was taken this morning in one of my readings after I got up this morning to 2 Kings 17 and 18. I've been reading through 1 and 2 Kings. And here's, I want to connect it with something Paul said last night, he was talking about the culture. And he said, you've been affected more than you think. And that dropped me because I think that's so critical.

The greatest difficulty that the people of God have always had is syncretism. It's following the culture. It's the most dangerous thing. And it's the most dangerous thing for all of us. But when you're young, the culture seems to have more pull.

And you just need to be very careful in the culture that you live in. And I'm reading through this narrative, and you have these statements, they walked in the ways of the nations. The ways of the nations are always wrong. Walk in the opposite way of the nations, the philosophies of the world walk in the opposite way. You shall not follow their statutes, that's 17 verse 34.

They have their statutes and their ordinances or the law. They have laws and they want you to follow them and you get acceptability if you follow their little laws. There's a section in here where it says, they feared the Lord, but then it says they did not fear the Lord. In other words, they were naming the Lord. They were naming the Lord in all of their worship and all of their deeds, but it wasn't the Lord God.

It was the ways of the nations. They had baptized the ways of the nations and called it the way of the Lord. And this is the greatest danger in the modern evangelical church. It baptizes the ways of the world while they're mouthing the Lord, the Lord, the Lord. And that's the most dangerous thing to all of us.

And it's just so critical that we, in our churches and our families, that we find ourselves regulated completely by the word of God. That means that you take the word of God seriously, heavily. Modern Evangelical Church doesn't take it heavily, they take it lightly. And I think that's the greatest danger to all of us. So that's my exhortation.

I want to get to some of these questions here. A lot of these questions, you know, really have to do with finding a spouse. They have to do with serving in the local church. They have to do with dealing with years of extended singleness. So I'll just throw these out and then we can all weigh in on them.

I'll start with the Church. What are some of the unique ways that single people can serve their local church? I'm really glad for this question because the local church is really the central institution And the church must be strengthened by her members. And so this is just a great question. So what are some of the unique ways single people can serve their church?

So I'm a church leader. Once in a while someone has been observing things that need to be done, and they'll just come and ask, could I take ownership of this? Here's how I do it. Here's how I would let you know that it's taken care of so you don't have to worry about it I like to kiss church members that do that other seat so hey that that's one thing as a singer just Look for something that is being done, but maybe done by the wrong person What do I mean by that Sometimes somebody who should be focused on prayer in the ministry of the Word is doing something that pulls them off of prayer in the ministry of the Word. Sometimes deacons do things that anyone in the church could serve the church by doing, And there are particular things that only the deacons should be doing, and they should be focused on that, but if you have reliable deacons, sometimes they do too much.

So, go to your deacons and say, can I take that off your plate? I would say that The evenings, there's so much pressure on pastors to counsel people of the E-leaks. Everybody works during the daytime. Pastors, you know, like I have a family. My wife is covetous of my time.

She lets me know when I need to spend more time at home. And it's like I get twice a week someone, can you meet me at six o'clock, seven o'clock on Thursday or Tuesday? And I have to say I can't. I'd love to. But If I don't spend time with my kids, my family, I'm going to have marriage problems.

But if you're single, you have your evenings free. And those evenings are very important, very important. And I would say, give your evening, sacrifice your evenings if you're single. And the way to do that, prepare yourself by becoming a verse in the scriptures that you can be a counselor. Be a counselor and you have to know the word of God to be a counselor.

And you've got to love people and be available. And if you can start giving your evenings, I think go to your elders, go to your deacons and say, what could be done on Monday nights or Tuesday nights or Thursday nights, or how can I avail myself at these times? If I had someone that said that to me that I thought was competent to counsel, that they'd have to be competent to counsel, but if I thought, if this person loves people and he knows his word, I would find all types of people that they could spend time with. The elderly, there's a people, older people. Ha.

I would, that's a great name. Singulhood gives you that opportunity to do that. You do one thing that Navy overlooked is me. One of the greatest gifts I could ever give my wife is another buzzword. The greatest gift I could ever give my children is another fauch.

I don't mean another man. I just mean it better, mate. The godly character of a man who has no specific ministry in the church, but when he is with the brethren, is care for, is loved, is joy, is life. Nothing, nothing trumps character. Nothing trumps the fruit of the Holy Spirit, that person.

The second thing is, and please don't get me wrong here, how is it though that Elon Musk is able to do so much and we're able to do so little? Now he's fighting certain entities, we're fighting the devil. Okay, so that does make the battle a little bit more difficult, but... There are sometimes principles that secular men learn by common brace that are actually in the scriptures. 2 Timothy 2-2 Training Men So I don't have time to train men, whether you have time to keep doing what you're doing.

I mean, I want you to think about this. The pastoral ministry, one important aspect of it is 2 Timothy 2 and trusting these things to faithful men. Alright, so, let me ask a question. What are the entities in the church, main entities? We have elders.

Many of them, if you were to ask them, have you ever just gone into the New Testament, pulled out every command in the scripture with regard to what an elder is supposed to do and fasten your life according to that. Most can say, no I've never done that. So what are elders supposed to be doing? We find that out. Then probably the most most overlooked, most important office is that of deacons.

So deacons, a lot of men are deacons who are not qualified. Some men are deacons who are good men, but they have never been taught, so they carry out their ministry in ignorance. The reason why most pastors cannot do the work of the ministry is because there are not trained deacons in the church. Let me ask you a question. I'm not going to say how much time have you spent training your deacons, I'm going to say how many years have you spent training your deacons in the office of being a deacon?

In the Old Testament, one of the reasons they were sent to Assyria and to Babylon is because they didn't take care of widows. Yet when that came up in the New Testament Church, the apostles said that they would not take care of widows. They wouldn't neglect them but they wouldn't take care of them. An elder has this job. He's to study the Bible, to preach the Bible, and he is to pray.

And he preaches the Bible in the pulpit, he preaches the Bible behind the counselor's desk, preaches the Bible house to house, everywhere he goes. If he goes into deacons' maiden, It is simply to bring the scriptures to bear on whatever they're dealing with economically or materially. The deacons take every job off of the minister so that all he does is the word, that's it. That's why if I would put a full-time deacon on staff who would be the head of the deacon. This silly thing about pastor of administration, throw that out, that's a deacon.

Make him head of deacon and then make him, he runs the entire deacon ministry. And it is active and going and men, they're delegated, they're sitting in seats, they own it. And then from there, who's your next group of leaders? Fathers and husbands. How many years have you taught them how to disciple their family?

I mean you directly taught them. You actually sat down with them. You had a workshop where you were sitting there with your wife and showing them how you disciple your wife. I mean think about it, we're not training men. Everything from accounting to this to that to missionaries, everything in the last two years.

People are mad at me because I'm not traveling, I'm not even, but I got a plan. I'm investing everything so that now all the accounting is turned no. I don't have to worry about it because better men than me are doing. Then all of this aspect, all the foreign mission thing is all the coordinators are under one man who talks to me, so that I'm going to be eventually freed up to just minister the word, because that's what we're supposed to be telling. We say, train men, and don't leave out fathers and husbands for the doing.

You know, this, hey, next year, our conference is called Making Disciples. That's what you're talking about. That's what you're talking about. We had a conversation the other day about this matter, about how it's easy to get that wrong. You know, we at our churches, we're very focused on the ordinary means of grace.

And I called you up and I said, I think there's something wrong in some of our churches because we're neglecting other aspects of making disciples. Now, the command to make disciples is for all believers. It's not just for pastors. I don't believe that was just given to the apostles only and their successors as pastors. I think it's given to every believer.

Since we talked about that, what have been your thoughts, Seth's, that fact you just came off of an interview where we're asking all these questions about making disciples. The thing is, first of all, look at your leaders. There are some that'll argue that there's a ministry of evangelists. You know, I believe that people think they're evangelists, but we look in the pastoral epistles. We have what?

We have pastors, our elders, and we have deacons, right? So are deacons really, really disciple? I mean, could they go to every verse in scripture dealing with deacons and exposit it and show you that's exactly what they're doing every week? I mean, just think about it. Knowing a lot of ways, church, It's just like Congress.

God forbid. Yeah, but think about it. A business has to make money. They have to move forward. They have to profit.

They have to do something. There's a bottom line. They have to reach or they're gone. If you don't perform your own work, Congress can just keep going and going and going and asking and asking and asking and make no progress. You have to figure out problems in a business.

Will you figure out problems in the church? Why are we continuing to go downhill? It's not because we need a new invention from some charismatic personality, we just need to go back into scripture and say, what does a pastor do? And those men do it and the church is taught not to ask anything of them but that. What do deacons do?

Then what do fathers do? You get fathers and husbands doing what they're supposed to do and many of them want to but how many years have you invested in the men to teach them how to love their wives. When you get those men involved, you get deacons involved, and you get elders doing what they're supposed to do, there ain't gonna be a whole lot left of it. And then you go on with this thing that Scott's been looking more and more into that needs to be rediscovered and made biblical. And that is everybody evolved the gesache ship.

Not in the same way, but everyone. Back in the 70s, everything was personal one-on-one discipleship. And do you want to know why? Because the pulpits were so weak. And what we did was, we put all this emphasis now on the pulpit, But you didn't have to leave the one to get the other.

The pulpits need to be strong in the one-on-one discipleship. I was in a coffee shop a year ago, two years ago, and I heard this. It was a woman, she's about, I don't know, five feet from me, six feet from me, sitting at a table. She was about 35 and the girl was a college student. And I kind of understood what church they were from.

An Armenian church. Just solid normal American evangelical. That woman couldn't have expounded from Romans 9 to me. But I want to tell you something, there were two women sitting there, an older woman and a younger girl. They were so excited about the book of Romans that you would have thought they were going to blow up.

Praise God. They're all looking at that older woman and go, man I'm seeing things I've never seen before. This is amazing. And they're going back and forth and I'm going, that's life right there. That's life.

That's life. Remember this, brother, Christianity is not less than good doctrine, but it is far more than good doctrine. It's life. And that's what I think one-on-one discipleship kind of brings back to the Turk. Okay, good, good stuff.

Yeah, come next year, making disciples. That should be a really helpful, helpful conference. Okay, I'm gonna ask a question here. I don't think I want to marry anyone in my local church. What should I do?

He owns the cattle on a thousand hills. I actually think this is something we need to give a lot of thought to. Why is that? Because are our our our convictions in the majority or the minority the minority do we have big churches or little churches we have little churches are we all gonna marry girls in our little church no But what that means is we need to be proactively doing things that deepen the pool. Most of us are in a really shallow pool.

Hey, what's happening here right now is one way to put a few more inches of water into the pool, but it's not the only way. You hate to reduce it to something that feels so worldly as networking, but there's a sanctified version of that, where there's a hundred good reasons for brothers and sisters outside of our own church to know each other or work together. So it doesn't have to be mercenary. It doesn't have to just be about marriage. But there can be, you know, it can open up opportunities in that category as well.

So anyway, I think we need to deepen the pool. Uh, pastors, you know, we're, we're pastors. Oh, our, I'll speak for me in our church. We can and should do more with other churches. One of the reasons is to deepen the pool for our young people.

So you said, whoever asked the question said, I don't think I want to marry anybody in my local church. What should I do? You should develop a network that starts in your local church but doesn't end in your local church and make friends of your friends' Friends outside your local church meaning extend the network. No, and Genesis 28 twice. Since Jacob away says you shall not take a wife from the daughters of king, verse one, or six, you shall not take a wife from the daughters of king.

And I think about here one more time, someone get up in a conference and say, some of you boys and girls that just showed up here to try and find a wife or fuzz mess rock, I'm going to give up and say, no, it's not hot, Rush. It's just not hot. I, you know, I know that there's what, you know, if it didn't go out and do fresher on peach, I would literally have a conference to just say All the single people who are looking for a husband or wife, we're going to have a conference and we're hoping you find somebody in this conference. You've got to understand something. What would you say, the last two years?

Our country has changed more in the last 20 and in the last 20 and in the last 200? We are a subculture. We are almost under trapped. Almost under trap and and I see especially among girls godly girl who just hit breaks on hard that I thought about I'm going to organize a young men's conference and bring them and then have all the girls I know come and just you know like wait tables or something. I don't know.

No it's the fact that listen we live in a place a lot of you young men your heads above me when I was your age, I don't want, I'm tired also of people talking down to you. Every generation has its problems. But the sad thing about it is when any leaders get together and say, how do we solve this problem? Automatically, at least from the outside, they're snickering like some kind of crazy honor school thing is going on. But I see men and women who are hurting and they want to be buried and it's not to be snickered about or let it out.

And then we need to do something. I mean I've even, you know, don't record. I mean, you know, if you'd have told me an online thing 10 years ago, I would have gotten angry with you, but I see people who are desperate. And I'm not talking about silly people. I'm talking about godly women and godly young men that are desperate.

But also some of you fathers need to realize something. You weren't a whole lot either when you got married. So don't put so many demands also on a young man. You know, who do you think you are? There needs to be biblical demands, but be very, very careful.

Because I've met men that their daughters are never going to be married. But the fact is, those men don't even measure up to the standard they're requiring for their daughters. So be very careful also. It's very hard. Very hard.

And I think we need to sit down, leaders, and sit down and address it as a serious issue. It's the same, I mean, the wives forbid of me. It's just like, we need to do something. I always want to give counsel that, kind of like, a priori says, don't answer a fool according to his folly then it says answer a fool it's like don't be too picky but be picky and I think there's ways that we can be way too picky And there's ways that we can be not picking it up. So you want a godly woman.

Sometimes I think that, especially men, I think men do this, is that they want all this natural beauty and all this natural glory, holiness and visible beauty and charm that, but you, I'm not saying lower your standards, but, I'm not saying lower, to get desperate lower your standards. I'm saying don't be so picky yourself. That you realize that upstairs, wherever those women are... I saw them, I mean. You see?

What are you guys waiting on? I'm like, do you guys need a testosterone shot? I'm not with you. Like, if you can't find a wife out of that group, I mean, you're being too big. Those are some godly women and they're beautiful.

But the other thing that's a problem, alright? Sometimes homeschool people are just weird. Weird, alright? Like, it's got to the point where if a 21-year-old guy, he can't even, like, walk into a room and there's a 19-year-old girl, he can't say hi to her unless he has an interview with the father. I mean, the art, he goes over and picks up a book that dropped on the floor for and everyone's like but good brand like this I mean some of you people just need to be slapped it's it's silly there's so much pressure that if they start talking there ought to be look in the church we ought to create a society where young people can just be, there's a big word for you, write it down, vamo, or I've just like talked each other.

Like if a guy goes over and goes, what are you reading? You know, no one, you know, the women shouldn't be all huddled around making wedding presents. Yeah. Well. We need to take the pressure off also, because some guys are so scared.

If I go over and talk to her, everybody's going to think we're courting. Yeah. And you have to throw in some humor on this to kind of light up the situation, well, Viff. Yeah, some of you guys are weird. Hey, and how do you break that culture?

You have to break it, right? You have to break it. Your pastors need to rebuke nosy women who are looking across the room and say, aren't they courting? Are they, oh, they're talking, they must be courting. You know, those women need to be dealt with.

Because you have to create a culture where people can actually normally get to know each other. So you do that, you do that. Don't, you know, hey, everybody's awkward. Everybody's awkward. So don't worry about it.

You know, you mentioned, how do you get rid of awkwardness? Oh, everybody's awkward when they're talking to somebody that they think they like, okay? That's just the way it is. So you have to charge the fire. Guys are afraid to approach a girl because they think they're gonna ruin their reputations of an in conversation.

That if they talk to this girl and then laugh about, you know, over next week or talking to this girl, whatever, just normally a re-interaction, people are like, what's the deal with this guy? He talked to my daughter last week. And? And I think with, we got to openly point these things out so that they could just have normal human interactions of course within the context of what God leaves out the ship. It would normally be that.

And here's how I describe it to our church. And I, oh, because I've seen that for a little while. How are you supposed to treat one another in the church? You treat one another as brothers and sisters. Yeah, right.

And you're the end as brother, you don't, brothers don't avoid their sister and sisters don't avoid their brothers. So if they should treat one another like brothers and sisters, that's what you are. And that's, that's how you break the culture. He should be. So here is Paul writing to Timothy 1 Timothy 5 1 and 2 do not rebuke an older man, but exhort him as a father younger men as brothers older women as mothers younger women as sisters with all purity.

So that nails it. Relating to your sisters in Christ as sisters with all purity, it sort of covers both bases. Being able to have a level of familiarity with them because they're your sisters, but not overly familiar where you cross over the line where it's not with all purity. And have a bunch of them, Have a lot of them. If you don't have a lot of them, that's what leads to like, oh, he's interested in her because he never talks to anyone else, but now he's talking to her.

But if you treat all your sisters like sisters, all sisters with purity, it can be a well-kept secret until you're ready to advance things. And I think that's what you want. I think you don't want to relate to one person in one way that makes it the worst kept secret in the history of the world. Everybody can see like he's trying to make progress with her. But If you cultivate a life where you have a lot of sisters, where your sister is in Christ, you're nice to them, you laugh with them, but it's with all purity and you treat them all like you would treat a sister.

Then you can get to know a lot and then advance with one based on an actual level of relationship that you've been able to cultivate relating to a lot. And that's Christian, fellas, that's a fishing pole. I think, Scott, that we talked about this a week is, I'll leave it, not create programs, but we have to realize that we need to have activities in our church that are social. They can't go to the mall. Where can they go?

I mean everything is almost anti-Christ. Where can they go? This is not Kansas in 1858. This is not the colonial period. We're living in Sodom and the war and I think the church needs have activities everything from volleyball on the beacons to just different things that they could get to get it.

Another thing, if you point out things straight up, you take off all the pressure. Let me give you an example. I know a lot of young men who are so concerned in a right way about their reputation. But in the church there's this attitude like, I've got one shot. Like if you talk to that girl and begin to investigate if she's a possibility And she likewise, then you have to go forward.

If not, you're going to look like some bandy that's hopping around from girl to girl. And that pressure used to be taken off. There's a lot of guys in Girls' Cleat. I got one shot. And everyone's going to think I'm some kind of, you know, loose person if it doesn't work out.

And it ought to be pointed out from the pulpit. Sometimes you're going to meet someone, you're going to... Your relationship, you're going to be kind of investigating, is this God's will? And you're going to find out, no, we're just friends. That's good.

That's okay. You know? But that's okay. And then it takes the pressure off because you've publicly stated it. Is that it's easy to grow up in this culture and have unwise standards.

You mentioned it, a bar too high, how did you say it? Something like that. But, you know, that girl might be in your church, but you have unwise standards. And you're not seeing what God's put in front of your face. And that godly woman is there, but she's not as beautiful as you're thinking.

Beauty is good but beauty can fake you out big time and that's why I wanted to repeat these things about what is a revival look like and stuff like that at the beginning, you wanna find a woman like that. You know, I was, I didn't get married until I was 28. And I'd met Deborah when she was seven years old, we were in church together. And then when I was 26, I went down to pastor a church in San Diego, and she was in that church. And she'd always been right under my nose.

And I'd been interested in other girls, you know, along the way. But she was always right, she was under my nose. And there were reasons I didn't pursue her, but I, And then one day it dawned on me when I was pastoring that church, there she is. She's always been there. And I'm so glad I married her.

I'm so glad I had married those other girls that were, you know, had whatever. So she might be right under your nose, but you have an unwise grid for what it's worth. I wanna give you some encouragement too. Just like real encouragement. And I firmly believe that you have a responsibility and you've got to go talk to the girl and you can't just wait on God to plop her in your lap and you just take her.

So I believe there's a responsibility side. So everything we've said is on that responsibility side. But what if I said to you and if I had a word from God and I said, God's got this taken care of for you. What if you had that province That because God knows it's not good for man to be alone. He knows that loneliness is is not a sin in and of itself.

He knows that that you have He's made you to be incomplete. He's made you to need a wife. And that's one of the great need. And said the Lord's prayer, you know, your kingdom come, seek first the kingdom of God and all these things Jesus said will be taken care of all your needs. If you could be certain that God's got your wife picked out.

The Lord did a work in me when I was 21 years old, it kept me from killing myself. The Lord converted my wife at the age of 14 within this basically a month apart. He's working on me, working on her. We're seven years apart. We couldn't get married.

I want to get married at 21. But looking back, God had her in preparing her as He was preparing me. I can, I've seen enough people, I'm old enough to see generations get married and singles get married. And I just want to encourage you, God's got a wifely. He knows that this is a need for you.

You can do your responsibility, go talk to these girls, I mean, put yourself around them, network, all these things, do that. But do it with some confidence that God has got this taken care of. And trust the Lord. This is a need. He knows you need it.

And trust Him. The time will come. It'll be glorious. And I pray for thee, the Lord will thrive you. We're so glad that God's provided us wives.

We're a blessing from the world. Why? You know, I asked a young man to come out of his work and he wanted to marry this girl. I asked her, she's beautiful, she's bodily, she's something very helpful, my name is Isavitch, she's a self. And I could really talk to her and and and all these things and I listen I say so let me see if I understand it.

You want to marry her because she meets all your selfish self-centered desires. He goes no that's not what I said I said exactly I said she's beautiful What happens when someone more beautiful comes along and they will, if I leave her? You can talk to her. What happens when you can talk to your secretary better than you can talk to her because your secretary is actually paid to be my street? If I leave her, what?

Marriage has many blessings to it, but they're not foundational. Foundational is, you have been called of God to take care of one of his daughters, protect her and labor for her sanctification until he calls her comb to glory, whether you get anything out of it or not. Period. You are a steward of a daughter. If my daughter's lost, if you find her in a strange land and furred, forty years, I find out for forty years, you've sacrificed for her, you starved yourself for her, you gave up everything for her, and I'm a great king.

When I finally discover that there is no, your reward will be greater than all my other administrators all my other stewards all my soldiers all my warriors every one of them because you care for the things most precious. And that's what you need to understand. This is not, this is not about you even being fulfilled sexually. It's not about being fulfilled spiritually. Because you know what God's men do?

God's don't give you a wife that is strong in the areas where she must be strong so that you're not tempted beyond what you can bear. But he's also going to give you a wife that is strong in the areas where she must be strong so that you're not tempted beyond what you can bear. But he's also going to give you a wife who is weak in many of the areas where you most wanted a woman to be strong. Why? How can you learn?

You want to be like Christ? What is the main thing about Christ? Unconditional love. How can you learn unconditional love if you're married to a woman who always deserves every ounce of affection. You realize something, you look at some men, you say, man, they're the greatest husbands in the world, now they're not.

They're selfish little boys. Well then why do they act so great? Because they're married to a woman who meets every one of their desires. You put them in a situation where they're married to a woman who can't and they'll fall apart. This is about stewardship of a daughter and your conformity to the image of Christ.

And you need to understand that in the beginning. It's not all the marriage is, it has foundation, that's good. The marriage is and that's foundation. Two things. I would ask them are they working 70 hours a week?

And if they're not, say first of all you need to be kicked in the pants. When you're young, work. Second of all, work smart. That's going to require going to men you know are successful. That are Christian men, that are godly, who know how to manage their time and everything else and say teach me how to work smart.

But I am amazed that all these guys that think they quit in a 40 hour week because, oh my gosh, what's wrong with you? That's pitiful. I mean, I scorn you. I mock you. Don't Come to me and tell me this stuff.

I will kick you. Well, let's just stop there. Puff, puff, puff, puff, puff, puff. No, you work, but you have to learn to work smart. So one is just do it, and the other is learn from it.

I read books, gone over efficiency, all kinds of fakes. How can you do, what are you doing? It's the word. It's hard for me to believe that if you can take care of yourself, you can't add a wife to them. That's just hard for me to believe because she doesn't eat that much.

I mean, really, if you can afford your own place to live, it doesn't cost more to put her in there. I mean, rice and beans, you can... Like, how much money do you have to have to have a family. Go to the rest of the world. They don't have a lot of money.

I think there's another restrictions on parents. You got to provide for my wife and my daughter. You got to have this big bank account. You got to have this big job. No, you don't.

Just give her beans and rice. This is not the biblical matter, but I had $800 when I got married. If in the— Well, you just heard a message on how to have a tough conversation. We have two minutes. That's like a hundred dollar question with two systems.

I know. I think it's a great question. It's really a great question. And I guess I would just say you've just got to enter into honorable conversations where the where the word of God is ordering your spirit in your approach and all those things that we talked about last night. That's the filling of the Holy Spirit.

I don't know, there's so much to say about that. You know, we have a book, we have a book on our book table called Preparing for Marriage, I think it is. It's the premarital advice of John Calvin. You know, Calvin believed that sometimes parents are very wicked in their counsel toward their, and then they withhold marriage from their children. You have to discern that.

I think pastors every once in a while have to discern that. Is this parent unrighteously withholding marriage from that kid because of some thing? And So there are, I'm gonna just call those edge cases, right, where a parent really is wicked. And Calvin believed, you know, that a person could get married once it's determined that it was really wickedness that was driving that parent. On the other hand, Parents should be honored.

And a lot of times they see things that nobody else sees. They know you better than anybody else. And you better listen. You really better listen to what they say, even if they're not believers. There you have it.

The two-man version. Paul, would you pray for his men? Thank you, President Pritchett, the opportunity to be afraid, Lord, for all of us, that we would be conformed to the image of Christ, hardly faith, profit, and my life, was not somehow related to not be like Herself. O God, in marriage, ministry, friendship, church life, we've be conformed and promised to Jesus. Okay, We're back up to burnings in the soul, strips hears.