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The Wake-Up Call
Why Love Is Blind and Marriage Is an Eye-Opener (Part 2 of 3)
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The fruit of surrender is splendor.
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Foreign Good morning Sower Nation. It is Tuesday, May 12th, in the year of our Lord 2026. I'm John David Walt and this is your wake up call. Thank you so much for joining me this morning.
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I am your host.
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I am the doorkeeper in the house of the Lord. But you're not here to meet with me. We're here to meet with Jesus. And he's here. He's with us. You know, Jesus is ascended to the right hand of God. He is seated at the right hand of God and he is on earth as it is in heaven. He's here by the presence and power of the Holy Spirit. Kind of in the same way, in a similar fashion we, Ephesians tells us, are seated in heavenly places and we're standing on earth in the kingdom of God. We're in two places at one time, which is what makes the whole on earth as it is in heaven, real and working itself out. So every morning we want to start the day with this meeting together with Jesus. And we'll begin with consecration. So wake up sleeper. Rise from the dead and Christ will shine on you. Jesus, I belong to you. I lift up my heart to you. I set my mind on you. I fix my eyes on you. I offer my body to you as a living sacrifice. Jesus, we belong to you. And we're praying in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen. Well, today's entry we are, as I've told you, in the midst of a mini series. It's a three part series on marriage really. Yesterday was part one, today's part two. Tomorrow will be part three. The title of today's entry is why Love. The whole series why Love is Blind and Marriage is an Eye Opener. This is part two of three. Our text today, Ephesians 5, picking up with verse 25 through verse 30. Hear now the word of the Lord. Husbands, love your wives. As Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the Word, so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish. In the same way husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife, loves himself, for no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church, because we are members of his body, the Word of the Lord. Now consider this in order to reiterate the point of the mini series Love is blind, but marriage is an eye opener. Yes, that's what my mentor told me on the eve of my wedding. Roman Catholics consider marriage a sacrament, while Protestants do not go that far. I think it would be fair to say we consider Christian marriage to possess a sacramental quality. What does that mean? Sacraments like baptism and the Lord's Supper are signs and symbols that point to a greater reality beyond themselves. We not only look at them, we look into them and even learn to see through them. Sacraments open the eyes of our hearts to behold something extraordinary in the substance of ordinary for instance, Paul can't talk about marriage without also talking about Jesus and the Church. More than a metaphor or analogy, Paul gets at a divine mystery in the way he deals with marriage. Note how he even reaches for baptismal language in this text, the washing of water with the word wow. Remember, marriage is an eye opener. Love is blind. We mostly come into marriage with a vision of our spouse that turns out to be a mirage. Why? Because we see them not as they are, but as we are. It's why early marriage, which can go on for decades, can be such a battle as we unwittingly attempt to conform the other into our own image. Codependence happens as one or both of the spouses succumb to this strategy, becoming not who they most truly are, but who the other most needs them to be. Independence happens as one or both of the spouses enclose and protect themselves from one another's brokenness. Independence in marriage always leads to divorce, whether actualized or not, for independence rarely comes without war. You think I'm heading toward the happy medium of interdependence? I'm not. And I know all of this can sound more like therapy than theology. As an aside, therapy means a treatment intended to relieve or heal. If our theology does not turn out to be a source of healing, we should question whether it is really Christian. It turns out marriage is about resplendence, which means shining out. Did you catch that verse 27 so that he might present the Church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish. Now, interestingly, the resplendence does not come from one spouse outshining the other. It comes from unconditional surrender to God. Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the Church and gave Himself up for her. Jesus did not give Himself up to us, but for us. He gave Himself up to God. It sounds like the Invitation and calling of marriage is not to give myself up to my spouse for God I. E. Christian codependence, but to give myself up to God for my spouse. That is holy matrimony. The fruit of surrender is splendor. Marriage designs to be a window into the heart of God which is the mind of Christ. And let's take care to remember the way in which Jesus gave himself up for us. The cross. Not just one horrific Friday, but the entirety of his existence to the present day. Jesus gave himself up to God for us as a seamlessly unfolding gift of self giving love. He delights to do this in and through the mystery that is marriage. As couples give themselves up to him for each other, he makes their marriage an eye opening gift to the watching world. This is the resplendence of holiness, bright shining as the sun. Let's pray. Abba Father, we thank you for your son Jesus. We see in this one who never married the very mystery of marriage. The way of unself interested giving that is both suffering and joy simultaneously. Fill us with your spirit and grant us the grace to surrender everything to you. To give ourselves up to you for the sake of others. And a special prayer here today Father for those who are married just want to invite you if you're married to make a fresh consecration. You've consecrated your lives to the Lord but I want to invite you into the way of consecrating your marriage to the Lord. To give your marriage up to the Lord for the sake of your family, your friends, your community, the world. And that your marriage I just speak this blessing over your marriage. That it would become a place where others might behold the resplendence of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. That they would see the cross in your marriage, the burning bush on fire, but not consumed. This place of giving and receiving, of receiving and giving. This place of self giving, this place of endless capacity because Jesus is at the core of it. I just speak this blessing over your marriages today. Your marriage that it might become capacious, filled with capacity for love to flow like a river. And everywhere the river goes, everything will live. Yes. Thank you Lord. And particularly today for those who are struggling in their marriage. Just let that wonderful cross rise up where something must die in order for something greater to live. The you know what that is Lord. So order our steps. We pray in Jesus name. Amen. That was. I don't know. I felt like the Lord was helping me in that prayer journal prompts today. Can you think of a marriage through whom you witnessed the resplendence of grace and holiness. I'd love for you to describe that. Just reflect on it. Describe it in your journal, your workbook. Number two, how do you see the difference between codependence and independence on the one hand, and surrender on the other? It's like there's codependence and there's independence. And I think it's a kind of a worldly teaching that wants to sort of try to land in some kind of a middle ground, middle way that. That they would call interdependence. But I think the way is total dependence on God. That's how a marriage can work. Total dependence on God. That's what surrender is. It's not surrendering one spouse, surrendering to the other spouse. It's giving oneself up to God for the sake of the other. Yeah, that's it. Number three, why is Christian marriage so challenging? Yeah, well, that's why. What will it take to stop seeing people as we are and to begin to see them as they are, to stop projecting an image of ourself on the other and trying to conform the other, to be like us and just allow them the giftedness of being who they are, seeing them as they are. Lots to say here, lots to reflect on, lots to journal about. But we gotta sing, okay, we're gonna sing 1, 5, 4 in our hymnal, our seedbed hymnal, our great Redeemer's praise. Tis so sweet to trust in Jesus let's sing verse one and four today.
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Tis so sweet to trust in Jesus Just to take him at his word Just to rest upon his promise Just to know Thus saith the Lord Jesus Jesus How I trust him How I proved him O' er and o' er Jesus, Jesus precious Jesus O for grace to trust him more verse 4. I'm so glad I learned to trust Him Precious Jesus Savior friend and I know that thou art with me Will be with me to the end Jesus, Jesus how I trust you How I proved you or.
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And.
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Or Jesus Jesus, precious Jesus O for grace to trust you more
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the more you trust the more you surrender. The more you surrender the more you depend and the more you depend, the more you are met with his life flowing through you, flooding into the world, blessing everyone, everywhere, every time. That's how it works. Well, as we close, I want to invite you to keep A lot of you are. Have. Have said. You know what? I want to sponsor a day at Wake Up Call and I want to say thank you for that. Some of you have said, I want to sponsor a week. Wow. Thank you. Some of you sponsored multiple weeks. Thank you. And I just would like to invite anybody who's still maybe on the fence. I'm not trying to persuade you. All I'm asking you to do is pray about it. Ask the Lord, does he want you to make an offering into this work that we're doing every day together to wake up to Jesus. We're trying to help you wake up to Jesus every day. And we got. The Lord has given us a lot of vision and it's. It's going to take a lot of provision to do this. And we want to acknowledge that provision comes from God, but it comes through you. Comes from God through you. And so talk to him about it. We'll put the link today. The various ways that you can get involved in this through. Through a sponsoring a day, an entry, the. The email, the. The podcast platforms, the YouTube platform, y'. All. This YouTube platform was. Was made possible by a sower out there who's on our seed team who gives. The seed team are simply people who give. And this couple really gave the money to help us start the YouTube channel back in September of last year with the gospel series. And do you know that in eight months, eight short months, we have had 1.2 million views on that channel? On the YouTube channel. It's astonishing. The people that. That helped us do this are kind of like w. Wowed by it. And. And they're wowed by it because we haven't bought this. This following. You could, you know, view you if you got the money. YouTube's got the time. This has been organic. It's. It's sprung up and we have like approaching 10,000 subscribers. Again, we haven't bought those subscribers. It's come from people sharing it. But it started with someone hearing the Lord say, give to it. And there's other places we want to go with it. I keep wanting to get us out into other rivers and other streams and other oceans. I'm like, I want to get on substack. And again, we're following Jesus. We're not. This is not just ambition that we have. We're. We're trying to walk in abiding. So all that to say, I'm inviting you to pray about it, to pray, to ask God, does he want you to get involved at this level with us? And you can go anywhere from $10 or whatever to a million dollars. I mean, I'll just say it. Maybe there's somebody out there that's just got a million dollars burning a hole through their pocket. We could do a lot of good with that. And we will. I'll stop there. It's Tuesday. Tacos. Yeah. We're ready for the fields. And you're gonna do a lot of good today. You're gonna do so much good. So, for The Awakening, I'm J.D. walton, and I'll see you on the field. Working to get dad back in later this week, so look forward to that.