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City Light Church Las Vegas | Jabin Chavez
How To Change Your Spouse | Jabin Chavez | City Light Church
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How To Change Your Spouse | Jabin Chavez | City L…
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Matthew 19, everybody say, My heart's open. Speak to me, Lord, in Jesus name. Matthew 19, verse 3 says some Pharisees came to him to test him. And they asked, is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any and every reason? Like, can we just. If we get bored, can we, can we try. Can we trade her in for a new one? Is this like a car lease? Are we allowed to do this? This is obviously a very unhealthy question they are asking. Amen. Now, here's what they're doing. They're quoting the law of Moses, but Jesus is going to take them before the law, and he's going to take them to God's original plan in the garden of Adam and Eve. So, you know, always be careful when you go to the Bible to look for a verse to justify something you want to do. Did that make sense? Like, just be careful of that? Usually you got to go find a verse and you're going to take it out of context and you're going to butcher it because you're fighting the inward leading of the Holy Spirit. He's already told you what to do, but you want to do it. So now you go try to. This is what these guys are doing. They go in and find some weird verse in the Old Testament to try to justify not honoring their marriage. So Jesus goes, haven't you read that at the beginning? So he takes them thousands of years before the law. At the beginning, the Creator made them male and female and said, for this reason, a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh. So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore, what God has joined together, let no one separate. Let no one separate. Why then they asked, did Moses command that a man give his wife a certificate of divorce and send her away? Now, we don't have time for this. But Moses didn't command it. They're, they're, they're, they're twisting again. Jesus replied, moses permitted. See the difference? Moses permitted divorce because your hearts were hard. He goes, you were jacked up. That's the only reason God allowed it. But it was not this way from the beginning. That was never God's intent. And we. And that's what Jesus is saying. He's saying that. And by the way, this is just true. Anytime there's a divorce, someone in the relationship's heart has grown hard, right? Someone's heart has turned against the other one. And, and, and Jesus is trying to get to the heart of it, to Heal that. Because he does. It's. It's not his will for the separation. He. He's. He's hoping that you can fight for that thing and make it work. Amen. So I gotta. I got a great title for you tonight. I want to preach about how to change your spouse. How to change. Mitch, you look nervous. How to change your spouse. Oh, it's gonna be good. A couple. Couple of days ago, did a wedding for our staff. Eliel and Lauren got married. And we were doing the. We were doing the vows. And. And. Yeah, yeah. And. And we got to this point in the vows where I said, for better or for worse. And they went, for better or for worse. And they said it, but their face said, that's never gonna be us. For better, for not us. We just going from glory to glory, baby. We just. We just going from better to better. And I'm not calling them out. I'm calling out every young married couple who's getting married, going worse, sickness. We're just gonna be good. This is gonna be good. This is all gonna be good. And it is amazing that when you're getting married, you do have the best of intentions, but they're not all realistic and they're not all healthy. It's just what we bring into it. The vast majority of divorces happen because of irreconcilable differences. So the vast majority of people who get a divorce don't get a divorce because of adultery or addiction or betrayal or abuse. They just can't get along. The word irreconcilable means the inability to agree. We're just different. And we didn't know we were going to be so different. You're just different than me. And you're different than the story I told myself about you. I knew you were going to be different, but I was convinced I was going to change you. So, one, I didn't think you were going to be so different. And two, the differences that I did see, I thought I'd just mold you and shape you over time. And we tell ourselves a story that is not true. And then we get into marriage and we think it's going to be for better or for better. And then we hit worse. And. And we don't. And then we go, I didn't sign up for that. You actually did. You actually made a covenant for that. You're just different. So what if we took even just a portion of the energy that we are currently using to try to change our spouse, to change ourselves? What if you just took 10% of the energy that you're using right now to be frustrated about them and just said, you know what, I'm gonna work on me a little bit. Let me remind you, you are not the Holy Spirit. And if you were wondering when I'm getting to the points about how to change your spouse, you can't. You can't change nobody but you. But you can. Number one, you can change your words. You cannot complain your way into a better life. You cannot complain your way into better relationships. You cannot complain your way into a better job. You can't complain your way into a promotion. You can't complain your way into the next level. You can't complain your way into the will of God. So though I can't change my spouse, I can change my words about my life and about my spouse. What God has joined together. Matthew 19:6. Therefore, what God has joined together, let no one separate. Let's start with with you in that you don't separate, changing the words you speak and the words you allow into your marriage. Let no one separate. So every voice of separation that you are currently allowing into your marriage, you must silence starting with yourself so that the number one way that you will cause separation in your marriage is complaining. You never. You always. You never. You always. You never. You always. You never. You always. You lost. It's over. You have to. You're gonna have to change your language about how you talk to your spouse. By the way, if you're sitting here right now and you're single, I hope you're taking notes. I'm gonna help you a lot right now. But not only do you have to change your words, you have to change the words that you are allowing into the marriage. All right, so let's just talk about a few. How about well intentioned in laws. Baby, she doesn't love you like we love you. Baby, she doesn't get you, man. I love mother in laws, but you got to be careful, mama. You got to be careful not to sow discord into your child's marriage. And I know you love your son or I know you love your daughter and I know you want what's best for them, but you got to be so careful that you don't that you're not feeding separation. Just come stay with us for a couple of days. You got to be careful. You can't have a great marriage if you have not left your father and mother. That's what Jesus said. Did you notice he said before you have he told this to Adam before you have sex with Eve you got to leave mom and dad before you cleave. You gotta leave. We don't do that well, especially in America, we have sex on the first date. I mean, it's like not even a thing anymore. No judgment. Glad you're here. You're like, we're supposed to wait till marriage. We didn't make it the first night. Okay, you can stop. By the way. You can stop until you get married. But I got awkward. I was like, oh, who is this guy? Is he preaching from the Bible? Yeah, but before. But. But I want you to catch it because it's just, it's just the principle. I can't truly cleave to my wife. I can't truly embrace this new life in this new family until I have separated from my old family. That doesn't mean that I don't love my parents, honor my parents, and invite my parents and their wisdom into my life and hopefully a little bit of their money into my life. Amen. But it does mean that their view, the person you're married is of course going to be a little bit skewed because they're going to have a bias for you. And I would just say if you know that's happening, you need to be careful. Yeah, just. You need to be aware of it so that you can process what they're saying to you. How about single friends? I mean, you're married, but if all your friends are single, man, those are going to be voices of separation. You gotta go home tonight, bro. I don't have to answer anybody, bro. We can tell. I just. Be careful. Be careful of a bitter friend group. All you ladies getting together, be careful. Go to. Go to brunch, but don't let it turn into a gossip session about how bad your husbands are. I'd be careful. I'd just be careful. Dude, go play golf. But I would just make sure that that golf round doesn't just turn into four hours of complaining about. About your wives. And again, you have to be able to vent to somebody and process with somebody, but you can't allow voices of separation in. How do I change my spouse? I can't. But I can change the words that I am allowing to speak into my marriage and my family. We just gotta be careful because words have power that create inward realities. And I want to remind you again, we're inside out people. Meaning that as the words go in, they create a reality and then eventually they begin to manifest on the outside. A good man. Look at this. Luke 6:45. A good person out of the good treasure of his heart produces good. An evil person out of the evil treasures of their heart produces evil. For out of the abundance of the heart, his mouth speaks. And Jesus said, divorce happens at the heart level. So we just got to be careful of our words. And let me just challenge the men real quick. You decide the tone of the home, decide the language of the home, decide the sound of the home. Just decide it. And I'm not. I don't have all this figured out, but, you know, even today, I. My morning started this morning. I was in Johnson City, Tennessee. This morning. I preached for our board member, Robbie Hilton. Last night was their church's 40 year anniversary. And so we were celebrating that. And then this morning, my pickup was 5am East coast, that's 2am this time. Flew to Charlotte, and then Charlotte, Vegas. And then I got home about 11am and I just. I pulled into the driveway and I turned off the car and I went, let's go, let's go. Go right now. Let's go. And I kicked that door open. Hey, I'm old. And Goldie comes running around. She ran past the hallway. She was running so fast. She meant to turn the corner and run into the hallway. She just ran by. I was like, where did she go? And then she ran back in. Dad. Oh, my God. So glad to see you. And I just wanted to die. So tired. Started at 2am this morning. But I just knew I could set the tone or I could have walked in. There's no WI FI on the plane. It was terrible. I can't believe I did that. Can't believe I had to wake up 2am Woe is me. The sacrifices I make for my friends and family. I was kind of feeling all that. I swear, I won't let that get in me. I set the tone and I kiss my wife and I smack her butt. And I. That's true. She was busy. I said. I said, you want to go, like, take a nap real quick? She was like, I got too much to do. Family was coming over. I was like, all right, y' all know about a nap? Any. Okay. Too real. You're a preacher. You're not supposed to love your wife. Okay, my bad. My point is, I don't even know if I wanted a nap. I was just trying to. I was trying to connect because I didn't want to. Does anybody know what nap means? If y' all got kids in the room, we got a kids ministry that all the kids are like, what do you. What? Huh? I just wanted to set the Tone for the day and not change your words number two. So you can change your words number two, you can serve. Here's a great question. I want you to write this down and I want you to think about it. And when you get the courage this week, I want you to ask your spouse, here's the question. What do you need from me? What do you need from me? You might already know the answer. You might not. What if you just started over again? What do you need from me in this season? School just started, lot going on, sports are going, lots happening. What do you need from me? Not, what did you need from me in the summer? What do you need from me right now? Here's another great question. How can I pray for you? Well, if we just started asking some questions, you should know. Don't know. Don't put that on anybody. You know what I mean? Just what do you need from me, ladies? Your husband might look at you and be like, maybe a nap. You know what I'm saying? Maybe. I don't know. Whatever. Nothing. I'm good. Just, what do you need? This got funny tonight. I gotta get this together. Cause you can serve your spouse, even if you're mad at them, even if you're frustrated, even if it's a tough season right now, even if it's been a little cold, even if. Even. Man, just what do you need from me? Because the number one person I'm called to in my life is my spouse. Look at 1st Peter 3. The Bible says that even if some refuse to obey the good news, here's what Peter's saying. Some of you are married to non believers. You've gotten saved, and your husband or wife has not become a Christian yet. Look what he says. Even if they don't obey the good News, your godly lives will speak to them without any words. They will be won over by observing your pure and reverent lives. Man, just keep loving your spouse. And that's true. Christian or not Christian, saved or not, Just like, take this, men can take this principle, women can take this principle. This is whether your spouse is a believer or not. Your life is speaking to them. And according to the Apostle Peter, it's changing them. You can't change them, but your lifestyle is beginning to transform them. Not by you telling them what they need to do, but just by the way you live. So this is an interesting thought in view of First Peter 3, that how I treat my spouse on some level will affect their actions. Wow. Just think about that. Just. You can't. You can't. Change them. And it's. And it's definitely not always your fault, of course, when they sin against you. That's not what I'm saying. But I am saying that what Peter is telling us is, hey, you don't always have to preach to them. You know, you don't always have to remind, you know, we really. You really do need to be in church. You know, we really do need it. You really need to read your Bible. You really, maybe, maybe just the life you live, over time, they're going to start seeing it in you, and it's going to start winning them over to you and to the Lord. How can I. How can I serve you? What do you need from me? How can I pray for you? What do you. What do you need from me? In this season, Peter is telling us that our actions speak louder than words and are helping shape and change the life of our spouse and our marriage. This is powerful. You can serve. You. You can't. You can't do everything, but you can serve. You can't change them, but you can serve them. You know, even for our church, like, you know, it's never been, like, a part of our language. Like, we're gonna change this city. Sin City's gonna be great city. We don't talk like that, but we can love Vegas. We could serve Vegas. We could be a blessing to Vegas. You see the, like, every one of those casinos is gonna be a church one day. What. What are we talking about? Why do we talk this way and we talk weird and we think weird, and if you don't think that goes down into every relationship, it does. But I can serve and I can love, and I can be kind, and we can love our city, and we could be a blessing to our city, and we could be a blessing to our spouse. Wow. So the third thing is you can love, you can love. And I'm gonna have the team come because we're gonna have a time of worship. The love you need and the love your spouse needs will usually be different and counterintuitive. Just think about that for a second. Not only because you are different people, but because he is a man, she is a woman. So there's just going to be different needs and different ways to accept and receive love in different ways to give love. And this can be very challenging because right back to, like, how to serve someone. What do you need? What can I do for you? It's actually having conversations with your spouse around. How can I make you feel loved? Because I do love you. But how Can I make you feel what makes you feel loved? See, but if all you do is watch TV and movies, you think all love is so organic and spontaneous and unplanned and. And it just all, like, should happen. No, no, real love, it's actually an art. I mean, for a long time, right? Like, you can. You can have some hot, fiery, passionate thing for, like, you know, seven months to a year. But, like, if you're going. If you're going to be married forever, you're going to have to go back to your spouse over and over and over again and go, how can I love you? What do you need from me? And by the way, and here's what I need from you. When you do this, I feel loved. And when you do this, I don't feel loved. And you're going to have to get that honest. And it might turn into a fight at first, right? Amen. It might. And then you got to cool off, and then you got to reengage. Marriages work. Y'. All. Y' all looking at me shocked, like, really? Yeah. Yeah, you gotta work at it. Look, what Paul says in now Ephesians 5. Further, submit to one another out of reverence for Christ. This is where marriage starts. Mutual submission. I am not the boss of the Chavez home, and Shannon is not the boss of the Chavez home. Jesus is lord of the Chavez home. And out of reverence, our reverence for the Lord of our home, we submit to each other. It doesn't mean that I can't make a call if I need to make a call. It doesn't mean that. It doesn't mean that I'm weak and always waiting on her. She's. But it does mean that, like, you know, there is. There is no. Like, I'm the head of this house. We don't talk that way. We just don't. So that's where marriage starts. Now, here's what it looks like specifically. So, for wives, this means you submit to your husbands as unto the Lord. Now, for husbands, verse 25, this means love your wives. Now, notice that Paul does not have to tell a wife to love her husband, right? Because you know how, ladies, you know how to do that. And what your husband needs is. Is not just the, like, the love side of it. He needs that honor side of it. But what the wife needs is the love side of it, the tenderness. So I've shared on these things before. Let me. Let me say it one more time. Security is the woman's mega need. Every woman has four basic needs. Every man has four Basic needs. But the mega need of the woman is security. She, your wife, sir, feels loved when she feels secure. A woman needs to feel safe. A woman needs to feel safe around other women when you're. When you're present. A woman needs to feel safe with the finances. A woman needs to feel safe. When you get angry, it's not. I'm not telling men they can't get angry. I'm telling you can't let anger. Anger rule you, because a woman needs to feel safe. A woman needs to feel safe about your friendships, bro. If she doesn't like that guy that you're hanging out with. Yeah. Don't move on. No big deal. It's actually that easy sometimes. Like, you're going to tell me who to be friends with. I mean, I guess if you want to fight that, because her mega need, she may not be able to know how to word this to you. She wants to feel safe. And what she's really saying about that friend is, I don't feel safe with him in our life. All right? So a woman's mega need is security. A man's mega need is respect. Respect. Not sex. Respect. Like, women don't understand this. Like when. If a man starts making money, he's real proud of himself, and he wants. He wants his wife to be like, oh, my God, great job. But women don't care. We love you, bud. You know, it's like, whatever, but, like, if. If. If we do something and we get a win, we want to. We want to hear affirmation from our wife, but it actually goes down to a much deeper level. It's just, we want some praise. We want some respect. So, ladies, you have to learn how to communicate. It's not what you say 99% of the time is how you say it. Can you please help around the house and take out the trash? Babe, you're so good at taking out the trash. Did I get you over there? I saw that. See, I love when you do the dishes. He looks so hot behind that sink. Okay. Yeah, okay. Right. Where's the soap? It's. It's how you say it. Can you please go watch the kids? Hey, you should do like a dottie daddy daughter date. Or you should take the kids out to eat. They just love you so much. I just love that you have time with them. You just want a break. But. But if you just say it in a way that helps us, because we just need to feel respect. It's. It's thanking him for things that you know he needs to do. And he knows he needs to do. But if you'll affirm it, it'll go a long way for him. So I just want to remind you, you, especially for women, you have the right to say anything you need to say to your husband. But just remember who the enforcer is. It's not you, it's the Holy Spirit and men for you as well. You have the. You have the right. State whatever you need to say to your wife, but just remember who the enforcer is, because the moment you start trying to push something, it's. It's going to cause separation. So how do I change my spouse? I can't. But I can honor God in such a way and invite God's presence in such a way into our marriage that transformation starts happening both of our lives. So your story is not in 5, 10, 15, 20 years. I changed them. The story is we submitted our marriage to the Lord. Watch, watch. And he changed. And I don't think I could say it any better than that. So I'm going to quit preaching. Can you say amen to God's word tonight? Amen.