In this sermon, Steve Hopkins discusses the potential consequences of a misunderstood or failed courtship within a church community, emphasizing the importance of communication and understanding between the families involved. He explores the two definitions of courtship as either the solicitation of a woman to marriage, or the act of wooing in love, and highlights the need for fathers to lead and guide their families through this process. Hopkins also warns against gossip and sharing disappointments during the courtship process, which can lead to divisions within the church. Ultimately, the speaker urges fathers and families to be proactive in understanding and following biblical principles regarding courtship and marriage, and to protect the hearts of young ladies during this process.

The National Center for Family Integrated Churches welcomes Steve Hopkins with the message How to Split a Church Through a Courtship. This morning, I tremble, not for fear in the sense of the apprehension of impending evil, but fear in the sense of trepidation from a due regard for the serious matter that is before us, the nature of the subject matter before us. Think about it. What our families conclude at this conference concerning the marriage of our sons and our daughters, will most likely affect our posterity for generations to come. The evidence is all around us, and you've heard it if You've been to many of these conferences, you've heard this.

God is doing a work on our time. The hearts of fathers are being turned home to their wives and children. I've watched this thing, myself, grow for years and years. It's like the mustard seed. It's the smallest of the seeds, but its potential is to grow into the largest of plants, and I believe we're seeing that.

As the result of hearts of fathers being turned home to their wives and children. We're seeing the hearts of children being turned to their fathers as well, aren't we? And the curses are being lifted. Praise God, curses are being lifted, amen? Everything's out of place here, I just realized.

One of those cursed things we see being lifted from our families is that cursed institution called dating. Would everybody agree that's a cursed institution? The dating game has been a scourge and a curse on our families and churches. Those of us who were involved in that scourge, that curse, that unscriptural and thus failed experiment in this nation are resolved, that our children will never have anything to do with it. Amen.

Last year, I spoke at the Love the Church conference right here at this same Ridgecrest Center. I spoke on the subject of excommunication. I always get the real difficult things to speak on. The ones that people really, I want to talk about excommunication and church splits and that sort of thing. And I mentioned or I quoted Thomas Brooks in his 1646 work, Precious Remedies Against Satan's Devices.

How that Satan strives mightily to keep those things from seeing the light that tend imminently to shake and to break his kingdom of darkness and to lift up the glory of Christ, the word of Christ in the lives of men and the souls of men. I tell you there's no doubt in my mind that Satan is working and striving mightily to keep the biblical precepts of courtship and betrothal and gospel-centered marriages from taking root in families and churches across this nation. But understand what I'm about to say and be encouraged. When God turns the hearts of fathers and the hearts of husbands home to their families, When men are resolved to lead their families according to the word of God, Satan's kingdom of darkness quakes. When Satan's, when Father's resolved as Abraham resolved, to shepherd his family in such a way that his future posterity might keep the way of the Lord, Satan's kingdom quakes.

A return to the biblical foundations of biblical marriage and that which leads up to Christ-centered marriage and family life is an earth-shaking phenomenon of our time. That's what I see. It's an earth-shaking phenomenon of our time. But listen to this. It's coinciding simultaneously with an unprecedented headlong plunge of the masses into hedonism.

You see that? The world and the worldly churches are going this way and God's people are going this way. So don't be surprised if you go home to your families, your extended families maybe, in your churches and you find opposition to the biblical precepts of courtship and betrothal that are being expounded here at this conference. Opposition to truth comes with the territory. In the revelation of Jesus Christ it is written, let him that is filthy be filthy still.

Let him that is holy be holy still. Growing in holiness and in the fear of the Lord. I'm a man who passionately loves the ancient hymnody. And there's this theme that pervades the ancient Christian hymnody that's almost completely unheard of in modern worship music. The Puritans understood it well.

Charles Wesley, the co-founder of Methodism, even had a glimpse of it. Our church back in Texas raises our voice with his and all those who have ever understood the gospel when we sing that glorious hymn Wesley penned in 1746, Rejoice the Lord is King. Has everyone ever heard that song? Anyone ever sing it? Jesus Christ, King.

Not will be King, but is King. And I refer to this principle of scripture as we get started this morning, and to Wesley's hymn because the theme of this conference is gospel-centered marriages. And gospel-centered marriages are Christ-centered marriages. And Christ is presented to us in the gospel as both Savior and King. And it's my prayer, and we've been praying a lot about this conference, it's my prayer, my earnest prayer, that God might be pleased to use the preaching and teaching at this conference to tear down that high thing, that abominable thing called dating, that has exalted itself against the wisdom and the knowledge of God and against the holiness of God and the churches of our land and lift up the virtues and purity of gospel-centered, Christ-centered marriages, marriages that exemplify, marriages that preach the gospel of Jesus Christ.

In Wesley's hymn, we catch a glimpse of what it means to bring every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ. Rejoice, the Lord is King. Your Lord and King adore. Rejoice, give thanks and sing, and triumph evermore. I love this hymn.

Lift up your hearts, lift up your voice, Rejoice again, I say, rejoice. Now listen to this verse. He sits at God's right hand till all his foes submit and bow to his command and fall beneath his feet. Lift up your hearts, lift up your voice. Rejoice, I say again, rejoice.

We've got great cause to rejoice this morning as we see the smashing of idols that have stood so long unopposed in our churches. That we don't need to be so naive as to think that such a work can be manifested in our time or returned to biblical Christ-centered marriages and biblical precepts concerning the marriages of our sons and daughters. And at the same time assume that we, the recipients of these great blessings, will not face devices by the enemy of our souls to throw a wrench into the works. Oh no, Especially now that we're beginning to see so many unions of our children even into second and third generations. No with every work of God you may expect great opposition.

In the 1500s Martin Luther wrote, the world is so utterly perverse and Satan so heinously wicked that he cannot allow any good work to be done, but he must persecute it. Expect it to be persecuted. My wife and I, I said a few minutes ago, been raising sons and daughters now for 25 years. Our oldest is 25, married with two children we introduced. Our youngest is one year old.

Get this, our youngest has a niece that is one year older than she is. We like that. Can I go over and play with my aunt? When all is said and done, should the Lord grant us length of days to see little Christiana married, we'll have been raising and preparing children for marriage for nearly half a century. Praise God.

But my wife and I have said it over and over again. Ours is a history of grace. We should have ruined everything a thousand times over. I won't go into my heavy metal past, but my head banging past. If you knew our past, you would agree that we should not have 16 children in a happy home today.

Just shouldn't, shouldn't be. It's a history of grace. Where sin abounded, grace abounded all the more. The Lord took something really ugly and made it into something really beautiful and he can do that. The title of this morning's talk is how to split a church with a courtship.

It's a message that hits close to home for our family because, you know, we experienced a courtship years ago that didn't quite turn out the way we had intended. In fact, it divided close friends to the great grief of our souls. Our family's trial, however, taught us many lessons. As I said in my talk last year, the Hopkins family learns everything through the school of hard knocks. Our church learns everything through the school of hard knocks.

But isn't it wonderful that God takes the trials of this life, the hard knocks, and uses them for his glory. He uses them, he tends to use them to drive us to our knees to find answers, doesn't he? And then he gets the glory. We can't rely on our feelings, we can't rely on some notion in our heart that we're following the Spirit. We have to be subjected, we must subject ourselves to the Word of God and trust the sufficiency of His Word in every area of life.

How many here this morning know that wars have been instigated, fought, over courtships and contracts for marriage? It's the history of the world. Kings and kingdoms plotting for territorial dominion. Wars threatened. Wars averted.

Nations manipulated. Nations hanging in the balances of marriage negotiations. Some cite as many as 33 suitors as having sought the hand of Queen Elizabeth the first of England. 33, the list is amazing. The wars that were averted as a result of some of those strategies were actually pretty amazing.

But how many have understood even the basic biblical principles of what courtship entails? And what about our own continent? Anyone ever heard of two families called the Hatfields and McCoys? Okay, the Hatfields and McCoys. Most of us have heard of the Hatfields and McCoys.

We know that there was a stolen pig, you know, and the Hatfields and McCoys, you know, went against each other. There was even a murder at one point. But what a lot of people don't realize is that a part of the controversy of the feud between those two families was a failed courtship. I tried to contact the living descendants. I just wanted to ask them about it, but I wasn't able to get a hold of them.

They still have descendants alive. The feud between the Hatfields and McCoys lasted over 100 years, 100 years. And according to the descendants of those two families, if you read any of the history of that. It was not officially laid to rest until the year of our Lord 2003. That's when it ended.

My first proposition this morning is that that which has the potential to divide families and plunge nations into bloody conflicts, also has the potential to divide our churches. My objective this morning is hopefully prayerfully to help avert such painful experiences among God's people. More on that in a moment. My second proposition is that your church or network of churches, may well prove to be the primary pool from which potential spouses are drawn for your sons and daughters. Our first daughter-in-law was in a former church, a member of their family, a member of a former church that we were a part of when Ryan was younger.

It just seems to be the way it happens. Now, if our proposition is true that the churches we covenant with will constitute a primary pool from which spouses for our children will be drawn, our churches need to be prepared for the trials that lie ahead. Wouldn't you agree? Satan's oft-plied strategy is to fight not against great nor small, but against leaders. And that's being waged today against our families and churches as much as ever.

Strike the shepherd and the sheep scatter. If you're a father here today, you're the shepherd of a little flock called a family, and because you are, there is a bull's eye painted right on your forehead. You're a target to be taken down. Divide and conquer is the age old strategy of the evil one. Divide the fathers from one another in a church, you split the church.

There is no more emotionally charged issue your families and churches will ever face than those which concern the marriages of your sons and daughters. I can guarantee it. I've been through it. I've seen it. Close friends can be pulled apart.

Friends you thought you could never separate from. Churches that you thought were as solid as a rock can be split. Is it any wonder so many fiery darts at the enemy of our souls are being aimed at fathers who have abandoned that unscriptural institution called dating and are seeking to guide the process leading up to the marriages of their sons and daughters. I want to give a short answer to the question How to split a church with a courtship. The short answer is do nothing.

Just assume everything's going to work out alright. Don't be proactive, just do nothing. Go into a courtship blindfold and you're halfway there. The alternative and the first prescription to prevent family and church splits is for the household heads of our churches to be proactive. Fathers should be meeting with each other, talking specifically about what a potential courtship in their church would look like, expressing to each other their individual understandings of the definitions of courtship and espousal, espousal, Engagement.

The men of our church met to discuss the issue of courtship and betrothal recently to see if we were all on the same page. Meeting didn't last very long. A gun battle ensued after the smoke cleared away. I was the last man standing. Actually, the household heads of our church agreed rather quickly, whatever you want to call it, courtship, trial of facts, family negotiations, whatever terminology you prefer to describe the process that leads up to a promise to Mary, that process should be guided by fathers.

That's what we concluded. It didn't take long to see that from scripture. In our examination of the scriptures, we found no room for doubt. Fathers are to lead and guide their homes, and that leading and guidance doesn't somehow end with a process directly leading up to the marriages of our sons and daughters. We found the patriarchs of scripture, leading, guiding, directing the events, leading up to the marriages of our sons and daughters, and we also found godly daughters throughout scripture, serving in their father's homes, living under that protective care of their fathers until they were given in marriage.

Going from one blessed institution to another, one family to another. Second thing I want to say is that families should be engaging in hospitality and fellowship with other like-minded families. Families of young men and women who are seeking marriage. This should be happening on a regular basis. Fathers engaging and guiding any process towards a marriage.

My assignment this morning is not to lay down a step-by-step methodology or blueprint for the perfect courtship, especially since there isn't one that is in existence, but to act as a watchman on the wall, to give warning specifically with regard to those things that will most certainly bring on difficulties that could divide our families and split our churches. What I want to do is I want to provide you with a real-life story of a courtship that ended with the division of two families in the same church that were once very close. And I beg of you please don't think well this couldn't happen to us. Let him who stands take heed lest he fall. It could happen to you, and it could happen to your families, it could happen to your churches.

Our families were very close. The family that I'm going to speak about, These families were very close. Closest of a family is a wonderful thing, but the potential of closeness alone will not prevent a courtship controversy from arising with the potential for widespread damage. In this particular case, a family of a young lady understood the process of courtship according to Webster's 1828 dictionary definition, the solicitation of a woman to marriage. The solicitation of a woman to marriage.

But guess what? That's not the only definition in Webster's 1828 under courtship. The other family, the family of the young man involved, understood the process of courtship according to Webster's 1828 dictionary definition, the act of wooing in love. Oh boy. While the parents of the daughter expected a process that was more akin to a trial of facts, the parents of the suitor expected something quite different.

First family thought, everyone involved surely understands there'll be no touching, no holding hands, no romantic expressions of any kind during the courtship. This is simply a time to gather information, not a time to excite emotions. The second family understood this to be a time for their son to woo the young lady in love and to win her heart with gifts and cards and romantic language, something the family of the young lady believed would only be appropriate should the courtship proceed to betrothal. That courtship lasted less than two weeks. After many heated discussions, phone calls, letters back and forth, the issue went before the church elders, and after many meetings with both families, the conclusion of the elders was, fathers involved hadn't communicated to each other.

They weren't communicating their understandings of what a courtship would actually entail and involve before agreeing to initiate it. The courtship was never reinitiated, and one of the families involved eventually asked the elders of the church if they could leave the church. How does your family understand courtship? How do you understand betrothal and espousal, engagement? We heard of one family that confused the two.

They somehow got the impression that courtship was covenantal. That is, that agreeing to court was the same thing as agreeing to a contract for marriage. They somehow assumed that an agreement to court always led to betrothal or engagement. In other words, that a Courtship could not fail to produce a marriage. For the record, courtship has never been defined by any culture or people as a promise to marry.

You won't find it anywhere. Fathers need to be on the same page going in so that defrauding does not occur. Courtship, if you wanna use the word, is actually any and all of that process which leads up to a contract for marriage. Betrothal is that contract. It is possible for a courtship to end without marriage, whereas a betrothal may not, not legally.

Biblically speaking, and of course if you're a Christian, biblically is the only way to think and speak and act, betrothal or espousal is viewed as binding his marriage in Scripture. Once a woman is espoused to a man, she's called in Scripture his wife and he her husband. If he dies during the betrothal period, she's called a widow. You remember when it was assumed that Mary had been unfaithful to Joseph, that he was minded to put her away. He was called husband, she was called wife.

Biblical concepts like these need to be communicated or need to be understood by men, fathers, who are trying to guide the process of courtship. Fathers either need to be on the same page going in to the pre-marriage process or at least know what page other fathers are on, defining the rules of engagement ahead of time, no pun intended, actually it was intended. Why just keep mix matching these. An older couple that joined our church years ago commented to me once that one of the attractive things about our church was that the people seemed to be really closely knit together. The families of Burnet Bible Church are intimately involved in each other's lives.

Hospitality amongst the members is engaged in on a continual basis. We like being together. By the grace of God, we don't have any cliques. My wife says we're too small to have any cliques, we're just one big clique. Families need to be thinking through these things ahead of time and talking about them.

You know it's possible to split a church before you even get into a courtship? How a father, split families at least, how a father, for instance, responds to a suitor at the onset matters. I'm gonna give you an example. A young man, James, approaches the father of a young woman he believes he is to marry. The father of the young lady responds, I think you're a fine young man, James, but not at this time.

The young man goes home, sits down with his father and tells him what happened and they talk about it and decide that the response from the father of the young lady was trying to let the young man down easy. A no-no. Two months later, the father of the young lady, question announces the espousal of his daughter to another young man in the same church. Emotions run high, feelings are hurt. Did the father of the daughter defraud the young suitor?

If the father of a young lady has not closed the door immediately, completely, to a particular young man, he should make that very clear. If he has closed the door, so to speak, he needs to make that clear as well. It would be defrauding the young man if the father of the young lady would lead the young man to think that there was a possibility of a courtship or marriage if there were not. We have to be very careful of our words as well as our interpretation of the words of others. There's a thousand scenarios like this I could go through.

One sure way to split your church over courtship is to share disappointments about the way things are going in the courtship process with others in the church. Controversy develops during a courtship and someone in the family has loose lips. People take sides, the church is divided. It's happened. It's a consensus of the men in our church that it would be best if no one even in the church even knew there was a courtship until there was a contract for marriage.

Now that's just our opinion. The announcement of a betrothal or espousal is a cause for a celebration or feast, not the announcement of a courtship. You don't celebrate when you when you when you put in your resume, you celebrate when you get the job. Wisdom seems to dictate that the process leading up to an engagement be kept as much as possible between the families involved. This is not a principle of courtship, just the conventional thinking of the men of our church.

Others can do it differently. There's no step-by-step rules, you know, for courtship laid down in Scripture, only a framework of what we would call the biblical principles of courtship. But understand this, at any rate, gossip and whispering to members privy to some aspect of a courtship in your church is a recipe for disaster. Gossip always is a recipe for disaster. It should be dealt with quickly in our churches by the leadership in order to avoid church splits.

That's if you have a real church, you know, one of the marks of a true church is that they do discipline. But that that's last year's message. What I'm about to say is also very important. Whatever your definition of courtship is, whatever process leading up to marriage you choose, all parties involved should be resolved to protect the hearts of young ladies with the utmost care and diligence. I listened to a teaching series on courtship recently by a ministry not associated with the NCFIC and it left me with a deep sense of sadness.

The answers just weren't there. And there was a series of couples that went on tape and I was listening and they were speaking about these failed courtships and the thing that struck me, the thing that made my my heart to sink and really made my blood to boil, was that the vast majority of the young ladies involved were emotionally demolished. No one had taken care at all to protect them and there were just no protective measures suggested by this ministry as a response. No real biblical solutions provided. It was just well it happens you know and they go on with this emotional baggage to carry for years.

I want to say if you're a father here today or a son here today and you're not resolved to protect the heart of that young lady you intend to pursue for marriage, you're not ready for marriage and have no business whatever approaching her father. The man who will not honor the weaker vessel before marriage is not likely to do so after marriage. Always remember this, Her price is far above rubies. Her price is far above rubies. Now, what about when things don't go as planned?

What if there's been dialogue, communication between the fathers, regardless of the preparatory work going in and things still go belly up, as we say in Texas? How then do we prevent a courtship from splitting our church? First, we must view the circumstances of this life through the lens of the sovereignty of God, in a word, providence. Our church subscribes to an ancient confession that says in part, there is not anything that befalls any by chance, and that whatsoever befalls any of God's elect is by his appointment, through his glory, and for their good. It may be that a courtship, or even a prospect of a courtship does not go in the way intended.

It may be that all your proposals to God were rejected. Do you believe the Scriptures? I know you do. Proverbs 19, 14 says, a prudent wife is from the Lord. That wife is going to come from the Lord, not from your scheming.

John Flava writes in the 1600s that Providence has a special hand in our marriage, is evident both from scripture assertions and the acknowledgements of holy men, who in that great event of their lives have still owned and acknowledged the directing hand of God. He quotes Proverbs 18, 22. Whoso findeth the wife findeth the good thing, and obtaineth favor of the Lord. Here again, a gift from God. The same we may observe in children, the fruit of marriage, says Flauvel, lay children on heritage of the Lord, and the fruit of the womb is his reward, Psalm 127-3.

Psalm 68 verse six says that it is God who sets, quote, the solitary in families. It's God who sets single people in families. It makes families out of single people. You see a wise, direct, and governing providence which has disposed in order to all things, get this, beyond your own plans and designs. It is not in man that walketh to direct his steps, Jeremiah 10 23.

Not what you plan, but a higher counsel than your own plans and designs. We have to face the difficult trials of faith and the issues of this life with the understanding that whatever happens could not have happened had God not appointed it. We have to humble ourselves before God and confess, it is good for me that my family went through this trial of our faith. God will be glorified in this. We're not going to murmur, we're not going to complain.

To do so would be to say that God doesn't know what's best for us in our family or our future family. Example, a baby reaches out for a sharp knife or to put her finger in the light socket. Mom says no, she's sure. That'll provide me with happiness. I'll be very happy if I could just touch that steak knife.

We've raised a lot of children, they're all like that. They know it's the best thing for them. And then, mom says no, and slaps her hand and they cry. That's what we're doing. When we, when we, when we, things happen in our lives and we say, I didn't want it to go that way, God.

I knew what was best for for me, you didn't know. The fact of the matter is that we don't know what's good for us, but God does. We don't know what's good for us, but God does. We may seek God's will by his word, but ultimately we must humbly and gratefully accept that he is our sovereign, that we are not our own, and that he may therefore dispose of us according to his good pleasure. Amen.

All things work together for good to them that love God, who are the called of God according to his purpose. Remember the words of the hymn, He leadeth me, O blessed that, O words of heavenly comfort, fraught, where'er I go, where'er I be, it is God's hand that leadeth me. Lord, I would clasp thy hand in mine. No, never murmur nor repine, content whatever lot I see, for tis God's hand that leadeth me. Thirdly, I want to plead with you, walk humbly with your God, walk in meekness with your brethren, your potential future in-laws, walk in charity with them, and above all, exercise restraint.

You might consider asking potential suitors, or rather their fathers, to consider listening to this talk, or hopefully the entire series from this conference. A lot of potential problems could be averted. I guarantee it. John Owens in his treatise on temptation speaks of the Christian man doing nothing without first consulting God and his word. Consult God and consult his word.

Speaking about the Word of God, I always do these little rabbit trails at my church. They know, I was like, is he gonna come back? I wonder if he's ever going to come back. That's kind of on topic because it's talking about the word of God. We're on our way here, and we're in the hotel room.

And you have to imagine this. First off, you've got children everywhere. I mean, We have to find two rooms, and you have to find a place that will let you have that many people in each room. So I've got children strewn all over the floors, you know. And you get up in the middle of the night to go to the restroom.

You have to do hopscotch to get to the bathroom. And you always step on someone's leg or someone's hand, but here we are the next morning, we're trying to get ready. Gotta get out of here, we gotta get going to North Carolina, you know? And hustle and bustle, everything's going crazy, and all of a sudden, my six year old, out of the blue, in a very clear and distinct preaching voice, he does this. He says, man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.

And that was it. That's all. Just went on about this stuff, tied his little tennis shoes and everything. Oh, okay, great. Sometimes our children, They encourage us with things like that.

Sometimes they embarrass us. All the stories I could tell. Sometimes they preach too. You know when they're only three or four years old? Yeah, my wife was at a, here I go, rabbit trail again.

My wife was at a doctor appointment. And she's been pregnant for like 27 years, 26 years or something, but she's either having babies or pregnant. So she's at this doctor appointment, and Emily is sitting in the waiting room while she's being checked out and it's packed out, you know. Here's the these two little boys sitting here and one of them's three years old, one's four years old, you know, their little tennis shoes barely off the edge of the seat there. They're just kind of sitting there in the waiting room, you know?

It's real quiet like a library. And I just, I just, in family worship time, gone through Sodom and Gomorrah and the destruction of those cities. So they're sitting there, it's real quiet, And this is in Austin, Texas, which is known as the Sodom of the South, by the way. And they're sitting there, and all of a sudden, a little four-year-old just blurts out in a very clear preaching tone, I'm not a sodomite. And it was like, and just right on the heels of it, The three-year-old just responds, and he says, I'm not a wicked sodomite.

And everyone just in the whole waiting room just acted like nothing happened. They were just sitting there, kind of looking like their readers died just going. Out of the mouth of babes. Amen. Anyways, I asked a man in our church recently, what are we going to do in the future if a situation arises over a courtship where there are controversies, where there's accusations, hurt feelings, unresolved issues.

One of the men said, well, we're working out. I said, sure, we've gotta work it out. If we're Christians, of course, you've gotta work it out, right? But again, our church has a great asset in our 300-year-old confession, the 1689 Baptist confession of faith. You see, when a family covenants with BBC, the household head sent a short two-paragraph solemn agreement.

My good friend, Noah Webster's 1828 definition of covenant, that provides a remedy for just such controversies. In addition to agreeing to walk together according to the scriptures and be accountable to the leadership of the church, the men also state that they are in substantial agreement with the Nicene Creed and the Second London Baptist Confession of Faith of 1689. In that confession, it states, no church members, upon any offense taken by them, having performed their duty, required them towards the person their friend had, ought to disturb any church order, absent themselves from the assimas of the church, or administration of any ordinances, upon the account of such offense at any of their fellow members, but to wait upon Christ in the further proceeding of the church. You see how many problems getting this stuff worked out in advance can avert, can solve? We're not going to, all of a sudden the Smith families just, they're not in church anymore.

All of a sudden one of these families, we're not, we're not going to take the Lord's Supper. We're not, we're protesting. No, no, no. We're going to wait on the further proceedings of the church. In other words, we're going to go to the church elders and we're going to take this case before we let them decide.

After the biblical Matthew 18 process, okay, personal, witnesses, church. The Scriptures are clear on these points and affirm what our Puritan fathers concluded in many of the great confessions that come forth from the Reformation era. If you want, you might jot down to read Hebrews 13, 17, Ephesians 4, 2 through 3 on that subject. I'm going to run out of time here. My good friend, Noah Webster, defines forbearance.

We need to have long suffering with one another. We need to forbear, the scriptures say. Noah Webster defines forbearance as the restraint of passions. There's nothing like a controversy over a courtship in the church to cause passions to just go awry. The exercise of patience, he says.

Long suffering, and get this, indulgence towards those who have injured us. We must remember that we are imperfect men, dealing with imperfect men. And as such, we need to entreat one another with as much graciousness and charity as possible. Now that's how not to split a church through a courtship. The last thing I'm gonna address in this talk is life purpose.

Because you know, the best way to avert a lot of potential problems in a courtship is not only to be on the same page with regards to how it's all going to work in advance, but to determine if the vision of a potential suitor or prospective wife is the same as that of your son or daughter. What is their life purpose? What is the life purpose of your son or daughter? What is the life purpose of that potential spouse? If your son or daughter, for instance, desires with all his or her heart to be a living sacrifice, dedicated to the advancement of Christ's kingdom, a potential spouse wants only a comfortable life, a husband with a good paying job and an early retirement.

The two may not be compatible. Our family made a covenant with one another, a solemn agreement before God years ago that speaks to life purpose. Our solemn agreement was to surrender all we have or ever will have, all we are or ever will be for the glory of God and the advancement of Christ's kingdom. That's what we're about. That's what our passion is.

These words that I just read are taken in part from the Maple Flower Compact. We adopted the words into our family covenant because we knew that our pilgrim fathers were serious about life. They were serious about the gospel. They had Christ-centered objectives and goals for the entire continent. Plans for the conversion of the heathen population living around them and godly expectations for their own posterity after them.

We too have such aspirations. By the way, you don't have to go to the jungles of Africa anymore to find unbelieving, half-naked pagans to preach the gospel to. They're all around us, just go next door. We need to be preaching the gospel. But my point is that it behooves you as fathers and mothers and families to extract the genuine life purpose, vision, and objectives of potential spouses for your children in advance.

Our family also adopted a family psalm that we pray at our family worship time that speaks to life purpose. It's our family Psalm, Psalm 67 verses one and two. I love this Psalm. God be merciful unto us and bless us and cause his face to shine upon us that thy way may be known in the earth by saving health among the nations. That's our purpose for existence.

My passion, all my desire, that by the mercies of God, by the grace of God, that our family, finding grace in his sight, might be so blessed as to have a part in making his ways known in the earth, his salvific health among the nations through the gospel. It's so exciting to me that I find myself daydreaming about it at times. Gospel-centered Christ honoring happy homes, biblically ordered marriages of our sons and daughters, fruitful vines, children like olive trees, branches, around about our table. It's a glorious, hopeful future, the blessed heritage of the people of God. By the way, my wife has to get a new table every couple of years.

She's always seeking out at garage sales, the bigger, the longer separate table. First it was a six foot table, then an eight foot, then a ten foot, then a twelve foot. And now the twelve foot has two leaves, so it can go as far as 16, I think, or 14 feet. Because you can't just make room for your immediate family, you've got to make room for those that are coming. I called into a radio program in Austin, Texas last year to talk about the topic of the day.

There was a shooting at the University of Texas and I called in to talk about gun control and tell them how you know all my children owned guns some from the time they're three year old three years old and up you know all these guys were you know going nuts and and Swanson Kevin Swanson played a clip from it on one of his Generations Radio broadcasts back in January, if you want to look it up on sermon audio. It's really interesting because he interjects, you know, how funny he is, interjects all this good stuff in there. But the purpose of my calling into Calvary Jail was to make the point that my father had taken his 44 to school on the school bus for show and tell in the 1940s and nobody thought anything about it. He carried a 44! Seven years old, show and tell.

Nobody thought anything about it. What, he thought that was strange? That would be dumb enough to put bullets in it and take it to school, you know? And I was just wanting to make the point that the answer to the issue of crime in our country is not the restriction of personal liberties, but the need to rebuild the culture on biblical principles, I'm rabbit trailing again, aren't I? Not really, you'll see.

But after the two hosts on that radio show found out I had 16 children, they couldn't get past it. And after I got off the air, they started mocking me and ridiculing me. They wait till you get off the air, then they really make fun of you, you know? So they started mocking and ridiculing and talking about vanishing resources, you know, and all of this nonsense. And about that time, this caller calls in.

He was right on the heels of my call, he calls in, they go, yes, what do you have to say? And it was the last caller of the day. He said, hey man, I did the math. Now listen, if this dude has 16 children, if each of his children grow up and marry and they have 16 children, he's gonna have 256 grandchildren. And if those grandchildren do the same, he'll have 4, 096 great grandchildren.

And if they keep doing that out in little country, little man, they'll be taking over. To which one of the hosts immediately responded in kind of a dry tone, maybe that's the plan. And he wasn't saying that because he agreed with it. He was a little bit scared. He goes, Maybe that's the plan.

It's a great program. Get my email address and I'll send it to you. So I look forward, the purpose of saying that, I look forward to the day, this is life purpose of your potential suitors and potential spouses. I look forward to the day that I have to buy three school buses to take all my grandchildren fishing. I look forward to that day.

I mean, even now we'll go past some small daycares or whatever, daycares, and I'll go, we've got more kids on this bus than that, they've gotten their daycare. Glory to God. If God so blesses us, I don't think we'll have any problem contending with our enemies at the gate. Amen? Amen.

Yeah, every year we try to come, actually this is the second year we've come here, and spoke last year. And if you heard the tape from last year, You hear all the difficulties we ran into and ended up, you know, everybody was sick and just all these problems, you know. Soon as Scott Brown said, would you come and speak on this topic? Oh man, everything just turned upside down. So, We had bought a bus last year for six hundred and fifty six dollars and twenty six cents I believe it was in St.

Louis, Missouri. It was rusted out. It was a rust bucket, but it made it made the trip You know went back sold it for twenty five hundred but anyways we tried to get one all this year. You know, the kids save their nickels and dimes to get us down here, get us up here. And we just work.

We're not a family that's wealthy. We're not the Duggars. We have a 7, 000 square foot house. We have a 2, 100 square foot double-wide mobile home with an addition, okay? All the girls sleep in one room.

The boys are spread out to a couple of rooms. And so this year we start doing our, you know, fundraising to get out here at all, and we ended up finding a bus at the last minute after we drove all over Oklahoma for $1, 323. So if this keeps going on in 10 years, we should have about a $20, 000 bus, or whatever keeps going that way. But I wanna close by doing something that I believe that it's lost in most of our churches today, where In the early days of the church, pastors, elders, shepherds sang to their flocks. I've already done a little bit of that today.

But I want to sing to you one of our church's favorite hymns from the Trinity hymnal, Blessed the Man that Fears Jehovah. Anyone familiar with that hymn? Blessed the man that fears Jehovah. Take it back to your church, just take it to your families. It's a wonderful hymn.

This ancient hymn expresses so much of the joy and blessedness that is set before us as we seek to honor God through the future marriages of our sons and daughters. Here's how it goes. I hope I get all the tune right. Blessed the man that fears Jehovah, walking ever in his ways, everything, ever in His ways. By Thy toll, Thou shalt be prospered, and be happy all thy days.

In Thy wife, thou shalt have gladness, she shall fill thy home with good, happy in her loving service, and the joys of motherhood. Joyful children, sons and daughters, shall about thy table meet, olive plants in strength and beauty, full of hope and promise sweet. Lo, on Him that fears Jehovah Shall this blessedness attend For Jehovah, out of Zion shall to thee his blessing send. Thou shalt see God's kingdom prosper. On thy people, Lord, be peace.

Thou shalt see that God's kingdom prosper on thy people, Lord be peace. For more messages articles and videos on the subject of conforming the church and family to the Word of God and for more information about the National Center for Family Integrated Churches where you can search our online Network to find family integrated churches in your area, log on to our website ncfic.org.