← MarriageToday with Jimmy & Karen Evans
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Jimmy Evans
It's spring Black Friday at the Home Depot. So what are you working on? If you're sprucing up your lawn, you know there's no such thing as too much mulch, so don't miss this special. Buy five bags of Scott's EarthGrow mulch for only $10 at the home Depot. Promote healthier soil, prevent weeds, and beautify your yard with mulch that maintains its color for up to 12 months. Shop 14 days of deals during spring Black Friday, now through April 16 at the home Depot. Welcome to the Marriage Day Podcast. I'm Jimmy Evans, and I'm thrilled to have you with me today. In this episode, we're exploring the theme of lasting passion in marriage and drawing parallels between our relationships and our relationship with Jesus. I'll share personal experiences and biblical insights on the importance of passion, the consequences of losing it, and the steps to restore it. I'll also talk about how prioritizing marriage and family over other responsibilities saved my marriage and why loving from the will, not just the emotions, is crucial. Let's dive into this transformative conversation together. When you're getting married. There are two big words in marriage that people want. It's passion and intimacy. Those are the two big problems, prizes of marriage. And this is talking about the secret of lasting passion in marriage. And the word passion, this is Webster's Dictionary. When just defining it, it means strong and barely controllable emotion. That's one of the definitions, a state or outburst of strong emotion, intense sexual love, an intense desire or enthusiasm for something. And that's the main one I want to point out. There is passion in marriage means you just have an intense desire, enthusiasm for your spouse in marriage. And the other definition is a thing arousing enthusiasm. And so when we think about marriage, this is what we want. But what happens is the cycle many times in marriage is we're very passionate when we meet each other, sometimes very passionate when we marry for the first, you know, we call the honeymoon phase of marriage, then the passion fades. And sometimes, you know, when that happens, you know, it makes us wonder, you know, can we get it back? Is there something wrong with our marriage? And so in this message, I want to talk about the good news. It's possible to never lose your passion in marriage. And for many of us who have been in that place where we fell out of love, Karen and I were out of love after we were married about three years, it's possible never to lose your passion. And if you have lost it, it's possible to get it back Better than ever. And so you can live the rest of your life with a spouse who have passion, intimacy in your marriage. So I want to begin in this message by talking about Jesus. Marriage problems. Jesus has some very serious marriage problems, and he addresses those in Revelation 2, the letters to the seven churches in Revelation 2 and 3. This is to the church at Ephesus. Jesus is addressing them. Revelation 2. The angel of the church of Ephesus writes these things, says, he who holds the seven stars in his right hand, who walks in the midst of the seven golden lampstands. I know your works, your labor, your patience, and that you cannot bear those who are evil. And you have tested those who say they are apostles and they are not. And you have found them liars. And you have persevered and have patience and have labored for my namesake and have not become weary. Nevertheless, I have this against you, that you've left your first love, your passion. You've left your first love. Remember, therefore, from where you have fallen. Repent and do your first works, or else I will come to you quickly and remove your lampstand from its place unless you repent. So this is the first letter that Jesus writes to the seven churches in Revelation 2 and 3. And he's saying to them, here, you're dutiful. You know, you're a good wife. You do the dishes, you do the clothes, you know, you clean the house. You're a dutiful wife. You're just not passionate anymore. And I'm not okay with that. I'm not okay with that. And I'm warning you, if you don't get your first love back, I'm going to remove your lampstand. Well, the lampstand, and this is just, you know, my interpretation of it, the lampstand to a church is God's supernatural advertising to a church. When God is pleased with a church, he draws people to that church. And that church becomes big because they're passionate about Jesus. When they lose their first love, God no longer wants to advertise them. You say, why? Because lukewarm Christians are a bad advertisement for a great God. Right? God doesn't want people to see a bunch of lukewarm Christians that fall out of love with him. It's just a bad advertisement for a great God. He wants the world to see passionate Christians. And so the church is Jesus bride. When I said that Jesus has marriage problems, we're his bride. And so the way that we interact with Jesus is a big deal to him. And the church at Ephesus was dutiful but distracted. Okay. And so in spite of their hard work and courage, they had committed a terrible sin. They had left their first love. And in the Greek, that is protos agape, you've blessed your first love. The word protos means it has to be first. Agape is the type of love that God has. I'm going to talk about that more in just a minute. So protos agape, first love is a love that must be first, is driven by the will and not emotion. So one of the common experiences that we have as Christians is that we fall in love with Jesus. We're very passionate about Jesus. Just like marriage, that we fall in love with Jesus and then the longer that we're believers, the longer that we're Christians, we lose that passion that we had in the beginning. This is what Jesus is addressing here. We lose the passion and we become believers. But maybe we don't have the same passion that we had for Jesus in the beginning. And I'm saying that's not okay. That's not okay with Jesus. And so I wanna ask some questions. These are very important questions. The first question is, is there something wrong with Jesus? Okay, so we get married and we have passion, Then we lose our passion. And many times when we lose our passion, what we're thinking is, there's something wrong with our spouse. I must have made a mistake. If I married the right person, we would continue to have passion. Well, the question is, you become a believer and you're passionate about Jesus, then you lose your passion. Is there something wrong with Jesus? Well, there's nothing wrong with Jesus. And so this is a very important question because, see, Karen and I were having all of our marriage problems and I talked about diabolos. Ephesians 4 says, Be angry, don't sin, don't go to bed on your anger, or you'll give a foothold to the slanderer diabolos. And so I'd gone to bed on anger many times in our marriage or early in our marriage, and Karen and I had a fight in the kitchen one day and we'd probably be married a year or two. And we had a fight in the kitchen. And I remember when we had this fight, thinking to myself, this little thought came to my mind. I made a mistake. She's not the one. Now, how many of you know she is the one? Did you know that? I've settled that a long time ago. She is the one. But I remember thinking, if this could not be right and this be happening, I must have made A mistake, something. It's a very common thing to do. And 86% of divorces are for non severe circumstances. Most people don't divorce. Some people divorce and there's something horrible happening. And there's a biblical justification for it. 86% of divorces are just because people get in a bad place and they get in that bad place and the passion has left, they're having problems and they think, well, I made a mistake and so they get out of the marriage. So here's the answer. I asked the question, is there something wrong with Jesus? The answer is, Jesus is perfect. There's nothing wrong with him. His bride just doesn't understand the principle of lasting passion in marriage. And this is something I did not understand. This is something I want to teach today. And so the number two thing, this is another question. Why is passion so important in our relationship with Jesus? Protoz agape, why is it so important? Here's the answer. If Jesus doesn't have our first love, somebody else does. So we all have a first love. So if Jesus doesn't have it, we have given it to someone else, making that person an idol. And so idolatry simply means putting something in the place of Jesus. It can be something good, it can be something wonderful. But only Jesus deserves our first love. See, no person died for our sins, right? God made us in our mother's womb. He has given us life, he's given us eternal life. He died for our sins. No one deserves Jesus place. Innocently, the church at Ephesus, they gave something else. They gave Jesus place to something else. And you know what it was? It was service to Jesus. Jesus came to them and he said, you're a good wife, you're dutiful. You challenge people who say they're apostles and they're not. And you do all these good things, but you just don't love me anymore. You know, you do the dishes, you know, you take care of the kids, you do all that kind of stuff, but you just don't look at me the same way. You just look at me. The passion's gone, the thrill is gone. And it's not my fault, it's yours. And so passion is so important is because we all have it. And if we give it to somebody else, that's a problem. And so here's another thing. Whoever has our first love has our passion. So your passion is telling on you. That's another way to say it. Your passion is telling on you. Because when we give something else we're not passionate about Jesus that means somebody else has our passion in marriage. It was golf for me. I told you our testimony. I was passionate about golf. I love to go play golf. But when I came home, I just didn't have any passion for Karen. And that was the problem. So here's the principle of lasting passion. And this is Matthew chapter six. This is where lasting passion comes from. Matthew, chapter six. Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth where moth and rust destroy, where thieves break in and steal. But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven where neither moth nor rust destroys, and where thieves do not break and instill. For wherever your treasure is, there will your heart be also. Okay, so the word treasure there is the word thesaurus and it means treasury. It can mean treasure here, it means treasury. It means a treasure chest. It means the place that you put your treasures. So Jesus says, here, don't let for yourselves treasures on earth. Well, there's nothing wrong with saving. There's nothing wrong with being responsible. But the problem is, if all you're doing in this life is investing in things in this life, it means you're not investing in heavenly things. Well, how do you invest in heavenly things? Giving to the Lord, serving the Lord, helping people. You know, the things that the Lord wants us to do. Every time you do something, it's eternal. Let me say this another way. Did you know that everything you give to the Lord you have for all of eternity when you get to heaven someday, every service you've done to the Lord, everything that you give, he says, lay up your treasures in heaven where moth doesn't destroy or thieves break in and steal. Okay, what does that mean? That means you eternalized it. But what you have in this life, you have very temporarily. What we have in this life, you have 60, 70, 80 years. My father in law, I've told you about my in laws in Dallas. Very wealthy man, you know, lives in a huge mansion in North Dallas and everything. Well, he died several years ago. And I was there when they came and got his body. And so the funeral home came and got his body. They took his body and a suit and a shirt and a tie, and they rolled him out and put him in the hearse. You can't take it with you, but you can send it on ahead. And so whatever you lay up here, so a lot of people live for this world and this world's gonna go up in smoke and we're gonna die someday. And so what Jesus is saying is, if you're focused on this life and you're laying everything else in this life. And your focus is here. You know, your passion is going to be wherever that is. So the word heart, there is the word cardia. It means the seed of human desires, affections, feelings, and passions. And so Jesus says, wherever you're investing the best of your life, your passion's going to be there. There's no secret to it. And you can't separate it. You can't separate your treasure and your heart. Wherever you're investing the best of your life, you're going to be passionate about that thing, whatever that thing is. Okay? So your passions are telling on you. And so the question is, what am I most passionate about? Well, so I'm gonna go through the list here in just a minute, but we should be most passionate about Jesus. We should be passionate about our spouse, about our family. Those are the three most important things in life. So if I'm investing properly in life, it means my passions will always be in the right place. If I'm not, I'm gonna have wrong passions. And so what Jesus is basically saying here is, if your passion is not in Jesus, you're investing yourself. You're investing the best of your life in someone other than him. It's not rocket science. So how do you restore lost passion? So that's the principle of lasting passion. Wherever you're investing yourself, that's where your passion's gonna be. So how do you get it back? So here's Jesus again. Revelation 2. I know your works, your labor, your patience, that you cannot bear those who are evil. You have tested those who say they are apostles and are not and have found them liars. And you have persevered and have patience and have labored for my namesake and have not become weary. Nevertheless, I have this against you that you have left your protoz agape, your first love. Remember, therefore, from where you have fallen. Repent and do the first words, or else I will come to you quickly and remove your lampstand from its place unless you repent. Remember, therefore, from where you have fallen. Remember it the way it was in the beginning. Repent and do the first deeds. Well, when I got saved at 19 years old, you know, I gave up all my friends, Karen and I. It was just me and Karen and Jesus. I mean, I lost all my friends in one day. And we, Karen and I pursue Jesus with all of our hearts. And so I've never. I've never lost my passion in the sense for Jesus that I've backslid. But I've, you know, had this, you know, where sometimes I was More passionate than others and whatever. And so it was because I, you know, was investing myself somewhere else, but with Karen and me. I met Karen in the. We went to elementary and middle school together, but we didn't know each other. In our graduating class, we had 770 people. So we were baby boomers. We were at the peak of the baby boomers. So in sophomore and high school, we went to biology class together, and Karen sat in front of me. And, you know, I just. I thought she was gorgeous. First of all, I just really liked her. And I waited till the end of the year to ask her out on a date, because if something went bad, I didn't want to have to see her in class. And so I was pretty strategic about that stuff. So I had a friend named Cindy Smith. Karen's name was Karen Smith. Had a friend named Cindy Smith, and they were in homeroom together. And I called Cindy and I said, cindy, ask Karen if she'd go out with me. And so Cindy called me back and said yes, she said she would. So I asked Karen to a three Dog Night concert. Now, here's Karen's version. I asked her the day of. I know I asked her the day before. I don't think it was the day of, But Karen said, he called me the day of. So we went to a three Dog knot concert. Well, I worked at Scrub It Up Car Wash. I mean, I was rough. I had blonde hair down to here, you know, And I worked at Scrubbed Up Car Wash. I had a 1964 Dynamic 88 Oldsmobile that was wrecked. My mother had wrecked it. My mother wrecked a car for my brother Mike, gave it to him. She wrecked a car for my brother Randy, gave it to him. Then she wrecked a car for me. It was a gift that kept on giving. Yeah, My mother, she's a horrible driver. So my car was. First of all, it was a family kind of a car. You know, I was 16, and so I washed it. I worked a straight up car wash. So I washed my car. I went home, got all ready, you know, wear my best shirt, all this stuff. And so I went to pick Karen up, and I pulled up on the good side of the car. Now, literally, it was weeks before she found out there was a bad side of my car. So I was always strategically parking, so we would go in and come out on the right side of the car. And, you know, I drove very carefully. You know, everything I said was poetic and careful. You know, I was trying to impress her, you know, and we went three dog nights. So she went out with me again. And she went out with me again. And of course I was faking it. Cause I was an idiot. And so I was just totally faking it because. But I wanted to gain her affection. And in the process of all this, we fell in love. I mean, I loved Karen. I was passionate about her. She was in love with me. As soon as I had her affection, as soon as I knew she was mine, I began to revert. And I stopped being as careful when we got married. I mean, I just was a bad husband. I mean, I loved her. I loved Karen. Very attracted to her. But I just did not put her first. I just not. And so then I started playing golf and all that. And we went from here. So Jesus says, remember. Remember those days? Remember those days that you gave everything up for me? Remember those days you woke up and prayed? Remember those? And read your Bible. Couldn't wait to get to church. Couldn't wait to do all these things for me. Everything else was second. You gave up all these things for me. Remember? This is what he's saying in the churches. Remember? Here's the second thing. Repent because you sinned. When you took your heart away from me. And you began to give it to somebody else, you sinned. You're into idolatry. No one deserves my place. And I want you to repent for that sin. Here's what repentance means. I take full responsibility for what I've done. And I'll do anything to make it right. Sorry is not repentant. Regretful is not repentant. Repentance means I sinned and I'll do anything to make it right. Here's the third thing. He says, redo the deeds you did. At first. He doesn't require any emotion. This is the great thing about getting your passion back. It doesn't require any emotion. He's not saying, you better stir up some emotion right now, pal. And I know how you're feeling. That's not what he's saying. He said, redo the deeds you did at first. Let me say this. So there's an engine and a caboose. And for many people, emotion is the engine. They're slaves to their emotions. They worship their emotions. If I'm not feeling it, I can't do it. Okay? And the caboose is the action. I'm not going to act unless I'm feeling it. You have to switch that around. The engine is action. The caboose is feeling. If you do the right thing, you'll feel the right Way, right? You don't feel like working out, you don't feel like eating good, but you do it. You don't like it doesn't feel good, you know, but you do it. And you wake up one day and you look in the mirror and you feel good, right? You feel better, you look better because you did the right thing. And so what Jesus is saying here is, redo the things that you did at first. In other words, begin to come back to me and begin to give to me first the way you did it first. And here's what happened. So when Karen and I fell out of love, what healed our marriage was I began to change and I began to do the things that I did at first. So here are three simple steps to lasting passion in your marriage. And the first is, you make your marriage first. So this is Genesis 2:24. The law of priority. For this cause. A man will leave his father and his mother and cleave unto his wife, and they shall become one flesh. You cannot have passion when there's anything competing for your attention. See, jealousy in the Old Testament, I think it's Exodus 34:14. Jesus says, I'm a jealous God. My name is jealous, capital J. One of the names of God is jealous. Jealous means intolerant of rivalry. I'm not going to compete for your attention. And if I'm competing for your attention, I'm going to get jealous. Karen got jealous over golf and many other things because it had my attention and she didn't. And so the law of priority is marriage has to be first. I can't be competing for your attention. Okay, so protecting the priority of your marriage communicates love and creates passion for. A couple of questions here. The first question is, what are you willing to give up for me? That's one of the most important questions in marriage. And also with our relationship with Jesus. What are you willing to give up for me? Every time you say no to someone or something else for me, you're proving the priority of our marriage and making me feel loved. What are you willing to give up if you're not willing to give up? Don't tell me you love me, okay? If you're not willing to give anything up for me, don't tell me you love me. Just wasting time. Not protecting the priority of your marriage communicates rejection and creates resentment. So Karen resented golf, and you know, rightly so, because it had taken her place, by the way, yesterday. We were talking yesterday morning. She said, jimmy, you need to go golfing. You need to play more golf. And I said, yes, ma'am, I haven't played golf in a long time. And so we solved the golf issue. And then I came to work for the church. The Lord healed our marriage, and people in the church began to come to us for marriage counseling. That's how I came on staff here 42 years ago, and people started coming to us for marriage counseling. The pastor of the church, Larry Titus, asked me to come on staff as a marriage counselor. I came on staff, and 10 months later, he left to go to Florida to take a church. This is when we were over on Bonham street, and the elders asked me to fill in preaching until they figured out what to do. They still haven't told me what they're going to do. So I'm still. I'm trying out here. Pastor Jimmy. So after about a month, they hired me as a senior pastor. I was 29 years old, terrified. I was in business a year before. I had never done anything. I'd never done a wedding or a funeral. I had never led a staff. I'd never done anything in the church. So I was terrified. So I worked every day as hard as I could. And Karen was very supportive of me being the pastor here at Trinity. But for two years, I just. I'd go home and I was trying to be all things to all people. I was trying not to fail. But my total motivation as the senior pastor of Trinity was fear. Fear of failure, fear of rejection, fear. Fill in the blank. So I was just trying to be all things to all people. I was just trying not to fail. And so Karen put up with it for a while. And then I started walking in the door at night, exhausted. Didn't have any energy for her or the kids. And she would meet me at the door and she would say, I need this. Julie needs this. Brent needs this. And I just looked at her. I was just. I was giving out. And I just thought, you know, I'm trying to protect the world from evil, and she's persecuting the Lord's anointed. And I was just thinking, jesus, don't kill her. I need her. Don't kill her. And so we started fighting. And I would come home and she would begin to make demands of me. And so I started sleeping on the couch. And, I mean, we were just in a cold war. And I just knew she was wrong. I just, like, I know she's wrong. You know, I'm trying to do good and trying to succeed as a pastor, and she's, you know, persecuting me. And so the third night on the couch. This is the truth. I'm praying for her. I'm laying on the couch praying for her. And I was praying for Karen, just saying, lord, change her heart. Just let her see the light. You know. You know how she is, Lord. She's hard to break through. So just. And the Lord said, you have communicated to Karen in real terms that the church is more important than her. Now you go repent. And I remember laying there on the couch thinking, you mean I spent three nights on the couch to hear that? But I knew it was right. So I went into the bedroom, and I think Karen was enjoying the evenings by me and being on the couch, frankly, but. And I knelt down beside her, and she was in bed. And I said, I'm going to quit. And she said, no. I said, the church, it's just sucking the life out of me, out of us. I don't want this anymore. She said, jimmy, don't quit the church. Just turn your heart back to me and the kids. And so the next day, I met with the elders right after that. And I said, this is killing me and I can't do this anymore. And so they helped me to make some changes, saying, no parameters to protect my home life and everything. And people left the church over. People got mad at me because I wouldn't be all things to all people anymore. And so let me say this. It saved my marriage. So you want a preacher with a good marriage, right? You want a preacher with a good family. By the way, you've got them right down here. Pastor Jimmy and Kim, wonderful marriage, wonderful family, but it takes time. You have to protect your marriage and your family to be able to have the life that you're supposed to have. So I started coming home. We set parameters. I started coming home, spending time with Karen and the kids, and it healed everything. But I'm saying many of the things that destroy marriages aren't bad things. They're good things out of priority. Church is a good thing. It could destroy your marriage. Good things can destroy your marriage in this church. Not because of the church, but because of the mistakes that I made. I lost my first love. And by the way, in those two years, I lost my first love for God, too. As the pastor of this church, I was dutiful, I was a hard worker. But I didn't have the time to spend with Jesus that I had before. Here's another critical question. The first question was, what are you willing to give up for me? The second question is, what are you willing to give me up for every time you say no to me for someone else, you're proving I'm not first and making me feel hurt and rejected. So to be able to have a marriage where you know that you're first, it means I'm not willing to give you up for anything and I'm willing to give up other things for you. It always comes down to that if you're going to have passion. So first of all, your marriage has to be first in real terms, not just words. You're first, and I'll prove it. But I'll prove it by saying no to other things. But I'm not gonna give you up for those other things. Here's the second thing of making, prioritizing your marriage and having passion, lasting passion. The second is protect higher priorities from lower priorities. Okay, so Matthew 10:37. He who loves this Jesus, he who loves father or mother more than me, is not worthy of me. He who loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. The brutal reality of passion is it forces you to choose who's most important if you're gonna have lasting passion. It's constant, constant choices that you're making. And what Jesus says is, if you love father and mother more than me, you're not worthy of me. Son or daughter, you're not worthy. You have to choose. You have to choose who's most important. What Jesus is saying is, I'm not gonna constantly be competing with people for your affection and attention. And there's nothing wrong with people. He's just saying I've gotta be first. So what are right priorities? Here's the questions. What are right priorities? Let me tell you three that you'll never regret. These are the top three. These are absolute. If you're married, if you have children, number one is God. And God is not church. God is your personal relationship with God. And this is what I tell pastors. Pastors across America have some of the worst marriages in the world because the church has replaced God. And what I tell pastors is the church comes down the list. God means my personal relationship with God. If I'm a plumber, if I'm a teacher, if I'm a farmer, whoever I am, that just means I wake up in the mornings. I seek the Lord, I serve the Lord, I give to the Lord, I have a personal relationship with the Lord. If I was a pastor, if I was anybody. Okay, number two is your spouse. Absolutely. T. Totally. And by the way, Jesus never is a problem for a marriage. Jesus makes our marriages better. And so Jesus is number one. Your spouse is number two. Your children, grandchildren, they're number three. One, two, three. You'll never regret that for the rest of your life. And next week, I'm going to come back and tag on to this. But I'm saying for the rest of your life, on your deathbed, you will not lay on your deathbed saying, I hope. I just wish I wouldn't love Jesus so much. I just wish I wouldn't love my wife and children so much. It just got me in so much trouble. But you'll regret it if you give up something for that. You'll say, I may be rich, I may be successful, but I lost my family. I didn't know the Lord. What are right priorities? God's spouse and children. God. I have to protect my relationship with God from the demands of people that keep me from knowing and serving him first. Luke 14. Now, this is Jesus. Now, great multitudes went with Jesus, and he turned and said to them, if anyone comes to me and does not hate his father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, his own life also, he cannot be my disciple. Whoever does not bear his cross and come after me cannot be my disciple. By the way, Jesus has not died on the cross yet. The cross was just an instrument of death. If you're not willing to say no to yourself, you can't be my disciple. By the way, here, he's not telling us to hate our family. This is a comparative term. Compared to me, I'm not going to compete with anybody else. And so, by the way, this is an interesting thing. Everybody's trying to get a big crowd to follow him. Jesus had a big crowd following me. He turns around and says, let me tell you something now. If you're going to be my disciple, you better make up your mind right now. I come first, nobody else. Jesus, passion comes when no one's competing for your affectionate attention. Your focus is what Jesus is saying. And so in our lives. I had a man come to me one time. I was working for my dad. The first month I ever sold, I sold for my uncle. First circle in appliance, I think it's still there. Back in the 70s, I worked for my uncle there, and he made me a salesman. I was a delivery man. He made me a salesman. And I was the number one salesman the first month I ever sold. And I was a good salesman. I just loved to sell. My dad was the same way. And so this guy came to me and said, I want you to go to work for me. And he said, how much money you want to make? And I was making beans. And I said, you know, I don't know. And he said, you want to make 100,000 a year? And I said, sure. He said, you'll make 100,000 a year. First year you go to work for me. And so we were, he came to me with carrying me in our home and he said, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. 100 grand a year, the first year. This is back in the early 1970s. And he said, you'll need to work on the weekends. I usually work at nights, blah, blah, blah. And I remember sitting there and I said to him, now we're serving in our church and we go to church on the weekends and we also have a group on Wednesday night, our life group that meets on Wednesday night. And he said, hey, did you hear me? Hundred grand. You want to make that 100 grand? Now I'm going to need you on the weekends, I'm going to need you at nights. And I sat back in my chair and I said, I'm not willing to give up church for that. I'm not willing to give. And he looked, he looked at me and he said, seriously? I said, seriously. And he wants. Those are the kinds of. And I look back on that and I thank God that I didn't sell my soul for money because I could have made a lot of money like that. But I'm saying there's something more important than that. It's a relationship with Jesus and your family. What will a man give in exchange for his soul? That's what Jesus said. So I've got to protect. You're going to have opportunities in this life that cause you to compromise your relationship with Jesus. And what Jesus is saying is, I want you to say no to that. Whatever those opportunities are, spouse, I have to protect the time and energy to serve my spouse from competing demands. I can't allow anything to compete with my spouse as being number one, my in laws. I worked for my mom and dad until I went to work for the church. And my parents, they worshiped their business. It was the center of their universe. And Larry had asked me to come on staff as a marriage counselor. And Karen and I prayed about it and we decided that I was going to come on staff here. And I went into my dad's office and I said, daddy, I'm going to go to work for the church. And he said no, because I was the future of the business. I was going to take over the business. He said, no, you can't. And I said, daddy, I'm going to go to work for the church. And he said, I never want to see you again. And I walked out. My mom wouldn't look at me. And I went out and got in the car and drove off. And we didn't talk for 10 months. They didn't see the grandkids for 10 months. And finally they called one day and asked if they could see the kids. We said, sure. So we had a polite relationship. And then they lost everything they had several years later. And I led them both to the Lord. They came to Trinity, sat right back there every Sunday. They thought I was Billy Graham. I'm so glad that I didn't let them control me and keep me from my destiny. In God, there's choices that you make. And by the way, they blame Karen. They said, karen, ever since you married Karen. Because all their world was business and money. But they were the most wonderful Christians. We had the most wonderful mom went to be with the Lord last August at 94 wonderful Christians. They were so thankful for what I did. Children and grandchildren. I have to protect my time and energy to spend time with my family and to meet their needs. Children are precious give. They're not as important as our marriage. They need to see us having a good marriage. But besides God and our marriage, they come next. We have to protect the time and energy to be with them. And so the motivation of everything I do is derived from my commitment to God, my spouse and my children, in that order. Whatever we must sacrifice in life, it can't be God and each other, God and family. When you're laying on your deathbed, God and family is what you're going to be thinking about, not about how much money you have in the bank or how successful you've been, how many degrees you have on the wall. And all those things are fine in their place, but they can't be. First, here's number three step for lasting passion. Love from your will and not from your emotions. First, love is protos agape. Agape is the only kind of love that doesn't need an emotion. Eros is sexual love. It has to have an emotion. Phileo is a friendship love. It has to have an emotion. Storge is passion. It has to have an emotion. Epithumea, all those kinds of things. Storge is family love. Epithumea is passion. All those things need an emotion. And that's why people say, I'm out of love, I'm out of gas, I can't love you anymore. Agape Never says I don't love you anymore because agape means I'll do the right thing for you in spite of circumstances or emotions. There again, the engine is action, the caboose is emotion. And there are some people that just literally worship their emotions and they can't act above their emotions. So when I'm saying to you that I love you, and this is what I ask people in marriage conferences and things like that, when you say to your spouse I love you, what do you mean by that? See, when God says I love you to us, what he means is I will always do the best thing for you regardless of how I feel or the circumstances. Agape love rises above emotions. It's an action that causes emotions. When you agape love your spouse, you'll always have the right emotions that follow. But when you have an emotional love and basically you're just saying I don't have any passion for you anymore so I can't love you, everything begins to tank. I've lost the reason that I'm married. I'm married because of passion. I'm married because of emotion. No, I'm married because I'm committed to you for the rest of my life. And that commitment means I will sacrifice for you, I will serve you, I will put you first. Regardless of what we're going through, you're going to go through stuff, you're going to go through hard times. Regardless of what we're going through, regardless of the season we're in, you won't know that there's a difference. I will love you in the good times as much as the bad times. I'll love you in the valleys as much as the mountaintops. Because my love is not this cheap emotion. My love is not is protos agape love that comes from the will. Love that always loves, love that never says I don't love you anymore. And when I said 86% of divorces are for non severe circumstances, it's because people just wake up one day and they lose the emotion because they're giving their. Their treasure is sports, Their treasure is friends. Their treasure is social media. Their treasure is work. Their treasure is something else. And they're putting their treasure there. So their cardia, their passion moves to that treasure. And now I'm passionate about that. I used to be passionate about you, Jesus. I used to be passionate about you, your wife or husband. But now my passion's over here. Well, the problem is not with Jesus or your spouse. The problem is you sinned, you made a mistake. Remember where you Fell from now repent. Because when you took your best and started giving it somewhere else, your passions followed that because they always do. The secret of lasting passion is Jesus Christ is first in my life. And I'm never gonna give my first to anybody else. Period. End of story. The first of my day goes to Jesus. The first of my money goes to Jesus. First of my time goes to Jesus. First of my energy goes to Jesus. Jesus will always get the first. I'll always be passionate about Jesus Christ. I'm married the second part of my life, but the most important human relationship is my spouse. You will always get my best, and you'll never have to compete for my energy or. Or attention. You'll never be jealous because I'm willing to give up anything for you, and I'm not willing to give you up for anything. It's not rocket science. And so I began this message by saying the two prizes of marriage are passionate and intimacy. You can have a passionate marriage for the rest of your life. It's just. It's a choice. It's not an emotion. It's just a choice. And this choice is I make you first. As a human relationship, you're first. And I'm not willing to give you up for anything else. You don't have to be jealous. You don't have to fight for my attention. I'm willing to sacrifice anything to make sure that you're always first. When you deal with this issue, it always comes down to choices. Jesus said, you're gonna have to make a choice if you're gonna be my disciple. And I'm saying it's a lifetime of choices. At 70 years old, been married for 50 years, still making choices every day that affect the integrity of my relationship with Jesus and the integrity of my marriage. This is good news. And the good news is you can have the marriage of your dreams. Jesus told me that. Hey, this is Brent Evans with Xomarriage, and I want to thank you for listening to the Marriage Today podcast. We believe your marriage has a 100% chance of success if you do it God's way. If you enjoyed today's teaching and want to keep learning. Hey, subscribe to the Marriage Today podcast and take some time to leave us a review. 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