October 24, 2025 • 38 mins
In this Episode we explore why family is the cornerstone of life. Family takes precedence over careers, wealth, and achievements. We discuss how the family's strength shapes every aspect of your world.
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(00:01):
Welcome back to the church talk podcast today we begin
connecting faith to family join us today for a conversation
about family matters that. Was.
(00:23):
Great. All right.
Welcome back. Welcome.
Here, good to be in the studio for another session.
Yes, it is. It's good to be back in the
studio. We are here again.
We are here again. We love this place.
We. Do we have not been in here in
a. While we haven't, and it is so
(00:47):
good to be in the studio, I hopeyou can see the enthusiasm on
our face and hear it in our voices.
We're so glad that you're here and we're glad that our
producers in the room. We are taken.
For our business, he's the unknown man and we are so glad
(01:08):
he's here and he does a fabulousjob.
Great job. Did you hear about the that
priest and the rabbi and the pastor that walks into the bar?
I. Hadn't heard about.
That, the bartender said. Was this some kind of joke?
(01:29):
We're glad you're here. Please don't leave.
We promised that they get better, actually.
Don't be making those kind of promises.
With that segue, we will only promise they get better if you
send us more jokes, yeah. Please come on now, that wasn't
a bad. One all right, it was it was OK.
(01:50):
It was, it was good. One out of 10.
Like a six. OK, OK, I got some work to do.
That is my first time hearing it.
So, you know, totally based on that rating.
So drop some jokes in the comments, whether you're
watching on YouTube or you're onApple or Spotify, leave us a
(02:13):
review and then drop a joke thatmaybe you want to hear us tell
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Just throw it in the comments somewhere or e-mail us at
podcast at Ocala dot church and we will we will grab some of
those jokes that you send us andyou might just hear it right
(02:34):
here on. Church and if it's if it's good
enough, we might even give you credit for.
It we might that's that's a stretch.
But probably not. But maybe.
But maybe. And if you do have any other
questions? Hey, leave comments because we
if you leave your comments, it doesn't matter.
(02:56):
We read the comments on every platform that the podcast goes
to, and so leave your comments and we just might read one of
your comments on the podcast andgive you a shout out.
So now that you have laughed andmaybe a couple of you boring
(03:18):
people have groaned a little bit, let's get into this content
content. We're going to go to the Book of
Ephesians chapter 6. Book of Ephesians chapter 6, all
right verse #1 starts us off with children.
Obey your parents in the Lord. This is right.
(03:41):
Come on, somebody. Hey, Amen.
Where's my organ? Honor thy father and mother,
which is the first commandment, with promise that it may be well
with thee, and thou mayest live long on the earth.
So the first thing that I want to bring out about this passage
(04:03):
of Scripture, this this is not simply parental advice.
Paul is not just giving you advice about parenting.
This is Paul laying out God's divine order for the home,
(04:24):
parents at the top and then children, not the other way
around. That is the order of authority.
See, I was looking at some otherfamilies at Walmart the other
day and I thought it was the other.
Way around, yeah, just. Wasn't sure.
The monkeys are running the zoo.No, I kid, we're too high.
(04:50):
No, they're just as you know, the Bible talks about how the
anointing flows in Psalm 133, Bible talks about how the
anointing oil flowed from the head of Aaron down into the
(05:12):
beard, down into the rest of thegarments, all the way down to
his feet. So the anointing flows from the
head down, not the feet up. Yeah, right.
And so it family, in order for family to operate correctly,
(05:37):
there has to be a head down dynamic within the home.
And we're discussing this because there's nothing more
important to a society or to thechurch then strong healthy
(06:02):
families, strong healthy marriages and family units.
And so we talk a lot about church culture on the POD.
I do not like that this abbreviation culture gets me.
(06:27):
That's my hot take for today is we can say the whole word.
Just say the whole word. OK, anyway, Well, so so anyway,
family we have, we have got to go back to the Word of God and
(06:50):
build our families based on biblical structure.
If our society is going to last and especially if our churches
are going to have longevity, they've got to be built on
strong family. And so that begins with proper
properly placing the members of the family right.
(07:14):
And so the Bible tells us that it the that honoring your father
and mother and putting them at the head of the home is what
gives longevity to life. That is the that is the promise
(07:35):
of putting the mother and fatherat the head of the home.
Not, not the children are in charge and the parents are at
the beckoning call and every whim of a spoiled child.
(07:57):
We've got to be the head of our homes as fathers, serving our
wife and our children well, as Christ gave himself for the
church and the family of God. So Romans 13 and one.
The Bible says let every soul besubject unto the higher powers,
(08:20):
for there is no power but of God.
The powers that be are ordained of God.
So authoritative structures. We can get mad about them all we
want to, but God is the one thatput them in place.
Whether that be governments, whether that be church
(08:44):
governments, whether that be thewe, we take this all the way
down to the family unit, the husband and the wife.
You can try to tweak those rolesand move those roles around all
you want to try to appease whatever culture in society is
telling you that is popular currently.
(09:06):
But what's popular does not meanthat it will bring longevity.
In fact, what is popular in our society today is proving that it
is swiftly eroding us into non existence.
(09:27):
We cannot continue down the trajectory that the, you know,
40s, fifties, 60s and 70s produced in this nation and
continue to exist and neither can the church.
The church has to be a shield and a buffer between what is
(09:52):
popular and current in the culture and give people a safe
place to go that operates on a different economy than what the
rest of the world is operating on.
Yeah, at some point we got to look at it and say, is what
we're doing working? And if if it's not working,
(10:13):
what, what can we do to change it?
And I, I, I feel like, you know,because we talked about the
culture of a church, it comes from strong families.
That's what builds the culture of the Apostolic Church.
Without that, the culture becomes chaos.
And it, it ought to be peace, order, Lovejoy, happiness.
It, these ought to be what is produced within the Apostolic
(10:36):
Church and the, the tenor of ourworld is going towards something
that just does not work. And at some point the church has
to defy that. They have to push back against
it and not just be the, you know, just a, we kind of are
(10:57):
there, but we're not there. But it has to be a, a beckon
call that says, hey, there's something different.
There's something that works. The.
Church is the city. It is the city set on a hill.
Yeah. It is.
It is the light in a Dark World.That light is the Word of God.
We are we shine the brightest when we're closest to the
(11:22):
principles of the light of God'sWord.
Well, yeah, if the church looks like the world in the way that
their families operate, nobody'sgoing to want to be like the
church. Yeah, yeah.
If every family in the church isbroken, yeah, then we're not
alight. I'm thankful for a church
(11:43):
environment where people can come in and family structures
can be healed and mended and putback together.
Marriages are put back together and relationships with parents
and their children are put back together.
Give me, give me the last verse of the Old Testament.
(12:04):
The very last verse of the Old Testament is in Malachi chapter
4 and verse 6. And he shall turn the heart of
the fathers to the children, andthe heart of the children to
their fathers. So one version, I believe it's
the NET. The new English translation says
that he will turn the hearts of the parents back to the children
(12:28):
and the children back to the parents.
It doesn't just put it in the masculine form, it's talking
about parents, he said. Now read the last part of that
verse. All right, the last part of this
and the King James says, lest I come and smite the earth with a
curse. And so the last verse of the Old
(12:52):
Testament says that if there is not a a realigning of the family
unit, that God will smite the earth with a curse.
Wow. So I believe it might be
important to God and important to our future that we take the
(13:15):
time to focus on what really matters.
And it seems to me that from Scripture, family is what really
matters. Yes, family matters more than
our careers. Family matters more than our
education. Family matters more than our our
(13:38):
portfolios. Family matters more than our
next deal. Family matters more than
anything else that we've got going on in the world.
If we don't build strong families, we have nothing.
We have no foundation. And God will smite the earth
with a curse. Let's take some time and work on
(13:59):
the family. So the most powerful, long
lasting churches. This is a a concept that my
Bishop and I have talked about and I I believe it is worth
discussing here. But he, he made this statement
(14:24):
one time that just bothered me. So I started doing, I started
doing some of my own investigative work and I found
what he said to be very true. He said the the longest lasting
churches and the most dynamic and powerful churches in our
(14:44):
movement are not built on hype or trends.
They're built usually not in places where you would think
they would be built. They're not built built in New
York or LA or New Orleans. They're not.
(15:04):
You think a lot of people think that if I got to go, if I'm
going to build a big church, I've got to go to a densely
populated area where all the people are.
Well, usually the most dynamic churches that we have in
Pentecost are located in rural areas.
Yeah, yeah. And.
(15:25):
That's true. He says he said that the reason
for that was because in rural areas there's still a huge
premium put on the family. Family still matters in those
small town settings. Yeah.
(15:47):
When all you got's a stoplight. You ain't got nothing to be busy
with. And you can focus on family,
family, can you still, you stillhave time to focus on the family
in a larger city setting. We get so busy with life and
jobs and, and partying and, and the social networking and, Oh
(16:16):
yeah, all of the things that go on in a city setting that you
cannot you, you, you don't have the time to have family dinner
at the table every night. Exactly what I was about to say
is that I feel like the elementsof the dinner table is gone from
our society. Yeah, and, and it was such an
(16:38):
important thing growing up. It was like, no, no, we eat at
the table as a family and it's just what we do.
This is where we talk. This is where we.
I grew up in the metropolis of JS Mississippi, where she's
booming. We had JS General store and
that's it. But the, the church was powerful
(17:07):
and the church was strong and the church was vibrant and
growing. And I remember it was our custom
that if we if, if we didn't havechurch that night and dad and
mom wasn't coming straight in from work to get ready to go to
(17:27):
church, we went to church as a family.
You know, if if if you wasn't sick, you was going to church
and then if you said you was sick because you didn't want to
go to church, they say throw up and prove it.
It was and. Then you'd throw up and they
(17:48):
say, well, don't you feel better, Go to church.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. But mom would would make us wait
until Dad got home and she wouldhave the meal prepared.
We would set sit down at the table and talk about our day and
(18:11):
talk about what went on at school and talk about what went
on dad's job. And, you know, there was this,
this bonding as a family that isso foreign in in environments
and cultures where we're so busythat we've forgotten what the
(18:32):
cornerstone and the foundation of everything else is.
Oh, yeah, that's the family. If the family falls apart,
everything else falls apart. So I.
(18:55):
Well, you make mention of that, and I don't want to interrupt
the thought, but no, go ahead. This recent news show shows, you
know, people in impositions and whatnot, they get caught in
affairs and talk cheating on their wives, on their husbands.
And one of the things that almost inevitably happens is
(19:19):
that has nothing to do with their work, but they lose their
job. Yeah.
Because it's not just something that does not when when you
start tearing the family apart, it really rips every part of
your life apart. It's, it's not just some little
thing that's like kind of cool to have.
But if you don't have, if you don't put it together, if it if
(19:43):
it's chaotic, then fine, whatever.
It controls every part of your life.
Yes, family. Family is a blessing.
Family is a gift from God. You know it.
We have, we have so perverted intimacy and the relationship
(20:09):
between husband and wife and sexuality in general, that
sexuality and intimacy is a commodity.
Yeah, right. It's not about relationship and
it's about it's about happiness,not about holiness.
(20:31):
That's good. And marriage is not designed to
make me happy. Marriage is designed to make me
holy. That's good.
And so God gave us the institution of marriage to show
(20:54):
us what the show us what the relationship between Christ and
the church was supposed to look like.
God created man in the garden because he wanted relationship
and he in order to show man how important and how special that
(21:21):
relationship was, he said, I'm going to put you to sleep and
I'm going to bring the most beautiful creature that you've
ever seen into your life. And I'm going to give you this
incredible home to keep and to guard and protect together and
to enjoy together so that you will know what our community,
(21:43):
what our communing means to me. Wow.
And then God that that relationship was violated
through disobedience. And so everything begins to
spiral out of control. Well, God comes in the form of
(22:10):
man and he's, he dies to producea new type of relationship with
his church, the bride of Christ.And he said, this is the, this
(22:30):
is the part of the scripture that that everybody gets tripped
up on. This is not a bleak or or
chauvinistic scripture. This is one of the most
beautiful passages of Scripture in the Bible when Paul talks
about in in first Corinthians wives, submit yourself to your
(22:52):
own husband's respect them, honor them, be loyal to them and
in a in an in our fallen state, in the female fallen state,
(23:13):
submission to her husband is is against her will as a fallen
being because our desires have been perverted by sin.
(23:34):
Yes, right. Then you have the scripture that
Paul goes on to say, husbands love your wives.
So he's telling. And if you've never read the
book or been through the series,love and respect.
(23:56):
Oh. That's fabulous.
You owe it to yourself to go through it.
It will revolutionize your marriage.
I'm not sponsored by them at all, but I ought to be.
I have, I have gifted their material to a lot of people and
happy to do so. It's fabulous material.
(24:19):
But so he, he says in in essence, he says wives respect
your husbands and husbands love your wives.
Well, all a man wants really, isto be respected.
(24:40):
Yeah. And all a woman wants really is
to be loved, to feel loved. Well, in our fallen condition,
through the perversion of sin, the wife and the woman doesn't
(25:02):
know how to respect the man. And the man has a major issue
knowing how to love his wife. Yeah, right.
And that causes the rift betweenhusbands and wives that that are
destroying so many marriages today because we live in this
(25:23):
cycle of, well, the woman says, well, I don't feel loved.
So it causes her to lash out, which causes the husband to feel
disrespected, which causes him to respond in anger, which makes
her feel unloved, which causes her to disrespect, which causes
him to lash out in anger, which causes.
(25:46):
The crazy cycle the. Crazy cycle of marriage that
ends in disaster. But through redemption we
understand that we are we are able to redeem this beautiful
institution called marriage backto what it was originally
(26:08):
designed to do. And that is be a a example of
what the relationship between Christ and his church was
supposed to look like. Love and respect.
Nobody has problem respecting Jesus because he gave himself
for his church 0. That's good.
(26:31):
That's good. He she has a a problem
respecting me and you because we're not giving ourselves for
our families. But the most successful
marriages I know are led by men who know what it's like to lay
(26:51):
themselves down for their families.
Wow. And so I think that in this
episode, we this is this is yourcall back to the proper
(27:12):
understanding of what family is supposed to look like.
And maybe in a different episode, we'll get into the kids
and what that looks like. But it starts with Mama and
daddy being back in their properplace and we cannot listen to
me. The reason why we are We are not
receiving the honor that the Bible tells our children to give
(27:39):
to our parents. The love and the honor that is
supposed to come to the people that brought us into the world
is because the reason we're not receiving that from our children
like we should be receiving thatfrom our children, is because
we're not love loving and respecting each other correctly.
(28:03):
Mama and Daddy's got to learn how to live in harmony with one
another before the kids can reciprocate love and honor back
to the family. So the only way to put Mama and
Daddy back in their proper placeis to get the marriage fixed.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Where we can have conversations
(28:27):
without them descending into chaos.
Yes, where the dinner table can actually be.
Happy and yes. Be a place that we can actually
sit at for a couple hours, yes. You can't.
You can't go to the dinner tableand have a meal if there's so
much tension between the husbandand wife that the kids can feel
it. Yeah, that's right.
(28:48):
And if there's anything that ourchildren in this day need, they
need if children are going to besuccessful and have a the best
platform to build their life on,it's going to be built on a on
the platform and the stage of a stable home life where dad is
(29:10):
respected and Mama is loved unconditionally.
Yeah, children have a stable home life not by it being
manipulated in their viewpoint, but it's just by the example of
mom and dad. Yes, so, you know, it's you
(29:31):
know, we could we could talk about, you know, you know, we
could, we could do episodes about, you know, discipline in
children and and and all of thatkind of stuff.
But if really it is, it is very,very wrong for parents to
(29:57):
discipline children when the parents don't have discipline
themselves. That's good.
I know some people are not goingto like that, but if I'm not
disciplined enough to do what ittakes and be adult enough to do
what it takes to have a wonderful, loving, caring
(30:21):
relationship with my wife, how in the world am I supposed to
have the rapport with my children that I need to correct
them and discipline them and andguide them in the way that they
should go? Right?
(30:42):
The breakdown between children and the most important influence
in their life comes from up. Too many times.
It comes from children getting old enough to realize how flawed
their parents are. And so they say, well, they
don't have it anymore together than I do.
(31:02):
Why would I want their directionor their advice?
It may not just, it could be, but it may not just be a
rebellious teenager issue. It could be that mom and daddy's
not loving and respecting each other well.
(31:23):
And so that's causing a ripple effect, a trickle down effect
into the rest of the home. But if you can fix Mama and
Daddy, bring love and respect back into the home, bring make
date night great again. Amen.
I ought to get some fire emojis,some heart emojis in the comment
(31:48):
section, some Amen pastors from the comment section.
Go take the time, take off work,lose some hours, lose some
overtime, and invest in your spouse.
And you'll find out that if you'll start investing in your
(32:09):
spouse again the way you did when you fell in love in the
beginning, that fire just might start burning again.
Every wood that you quit, every fire that you quit fueling burns
out. Yes, that's.
(32:30):
Good. I've never seen a fire that you
keep fueling it, it goes out, itwill burn if you'll feed it.
That's good one. One of the things that came to
mind here is you mentioned a book earlier.
What are some good recommendations for reading?
(32:51):
It'll help some people on this topic.
OK, so the five love languages. Gary Chapman.
Gary Chapman is a great great book for you to understand each
other. One of the things that this is
not a book recommendation, but one of the things that I would,
(33:12):
and this may sound strange but it has helped my marriage, is do
an enneagram test and find out what y'all's personalities are.
Find out what your personality types are.
That will help you. I'm not saying that Enneagram,
(33:34):
the Enneagram test is a perfect test and it's because I don't, I
don't think that it is, but it is something to give you an idea
of who you're living with, what makes them tick, what their
personality is. And so I think that's AI think
(33:55):
it's a wonderful thing. It's a thing you can do
together. It's a lot of fun and and so you
find out things about each otherwhen you do your personality
test that you may not have knownbefore.
And so you can understand, you know, the cause of different
personality traits, why they're responding this way in this
(34:18):
circumstance when you just don'tunderstand.
Well, it's because people are unique, they are different and
so different things set some personalities off that other
personalities are completely cool with, etcetera, etcetera.
So do that. I think that's an A wonderful
(34:43):
thing to do. Another book is Sacred Marriage.
It's a it's a great book. There's this this would be with
just for the adults we're talking to married couples, but
(35:03):
sheet music is a great. Book, yes, highly recommend
that. There is a book for him and her
called The Flirtation Experiment.
I've not heard of that. And if you stop flirting with
(35:26):
your spouse, some spouses, some people, men and women alike
don't know how to flirt. And that can be an issue.
And so there is, there's these, there's a, a book for him and a
book for her called The Flirtation Experiment.
(35:49):
It's, it's worth the read. Pick that up and that will
greatly help you. So I just want to say in, in the
ending of this episode that God wants your marriage to work.
(36:09):
I believe that there's hope for your marriage.
I believe there's hope to salvage your relationship and if
both of you can get on the same page.
If I'm talking to someone, that feels like all hope is lost.
(36:31):
If you can both agree to get help, there's hope.
Yes. You don't have to like each
other right now. You don't have to want to be
around each other right now. You can be you can have major,
major rift in your marriage relationship, but if you can a
(36:52):
boat, you can both agree. How can two walk together if
they don't agree? But you don't have to agree on
everything to be in a loving relationship.
And so let me just say, find a common ground.
(37:18):
If you can both agree that you need help to in order to make
your marriage work, and you can both agree that you go get help,
then there's hope for your marriage and your marriage and
your family is worth fighting for.
(37:39):
The real victims of the split isnot you.
It's going to be the children that are left in a broken home.
So please, I'm asking you to please pray.
Fight for your marriage, fight for your family.
(38:01):
Family matters. Musicians come.
Welcome back to the church talk podcast today we begin
connecting faith to family join us today for a conversation
about family matters that. Was.
(00:23):
Great. All right.
Welcome back. Welcome.
Here, good to be in the studio for another session.
Yes, it is. It's good to be back in the
studio. We are here again.
We are here again. We love this place.
We. Do we have not been in here in
a. While we haven't, and it is so
(00:47):
good to be in the studio, I hopeyou can see the enthusiasm on
our face and hear it in our voices.
We're so glad that you're here and we're glad that our
producers in the room. We are taken.
For our business, he's the unknown man and we are so glad
(01:08):
he's here and he does a fabulousjob.
Great job. Did you hear about the that
priest and the rabbi and the pastor that walks into the bar?
I. Hadn't heard about.
That, the bartender said. Was this some kind of joke?
(01:29):
We're glad you're here. Please don't leave.
We promised that they get better, actually.
Don't be making those kind of promises.
With that segue, we will only promise they get better if you
send us more jokes, yeah. Please come on now, that wasn't
a bad. One all right, it was it was OK.
(01:50):
It was, it was good. One out of 10.
Like a six. OK, OK, I got some work to do.
That is my first time hearing it.
So, you know, totally based on that rating.
So drop some jokes in the comments, whether you're
watching on YouTube or you're onApple or Spotify, leave us a
(02:13):
review and then drop a joke thatmaybe you want to hear us tell
in the comments. Maybe you're just seeing a reel
on Instagram, Put it in there too.
Just throw it in the comments somewhere or e-mail us at
podcast at Ocala dot church and we will we will grab some of
those jokes that you send us andyou might just hear it right
(02:34):
here on. Church and if it's if it's good
enough, we might even give you credit for.
It we might that's that's a stretch.
But probably not. But maybe.
But maybe. And if you do have any other
questions? Hey, leave comments because we
if you leave your comments, it doesn't matter.
(02:56):
We read the comments on every platform that the podcast goes
to, and so leave your comments and we just might read one of
your comments on the podcast andgive you a shout out.
So now that you have laughed andmaybe a couple of you boring
(03:18):
people have groaned a little bit, let's get into this content
content. We're going to go to the Book of
Ephesians chapter 6. Book of Ephesians chapter 6, all
right verse #1 starts us off with children.
Obey your parents in the Lord. This is right.
(03:41):
Come on, somebody. Hey, Amen.
Where's my organ? Honor thy father and mother,
which is the first commandment, with promise that it may be well
with thee, and thou mayest live long on the earth.
So the first thing that I want to bring out about this passage
(04:03):
of Scripture, this this is not simply parental advice.
Paul is not just giving you advice about parenting.
This is Paul laying out God's divine order for the home,
(04:24):
parents at the top and then children, not the other way
around. That is the order of authority.
See, I was looking at some otherfamilies at Walmart the other
day and I thought it was the other.
Way around, yeah, just. Wasn't sure.
The monkeys are running the zoo.No, I kid, we're too high.
(04:50):
No, they're just as you know, the Bible talks about how the
anointing flows in Psalm 133, Bible talks about how the
anointing oil flowed from the head of Aaron down into the
(05:12):
beard, down into the rest of thegarments, all the way down to
his feet. So the anointing flows from the
head down, not the feet up. Yeah, right.
And so it family, in order for family to operate correctly,
(05:37):
there has to be a head down dynamic within the home.
And we're discussing this because there's nothing more
important to a society or to thechurch then strong healthy
(06:02):
families, strong healthy marriages and family units.
And so we talk a lot about church culture on the POD.
I do not like that this abbreviation culture gets me.
(06:27):
That's my hot take for today is we can say the whole word.
Just say the whole word. OK, anyway, Well, so so anyway,
family we have, we have got to go back to the Word of God and
(06:50):
build our families based on biblical structure.
If our society is going to last and especially if our churches
are going to have longevity, they've got to be built on
strong family. And so that begins with proper
properly placing the members of the family right.
(07:14):
And so the Bible tells us that it the that honoring your father
and mother and putting them at the head of the home is what
gives longevity to life. That is the that is the promise
(07:35):
of putting the mother and fatherat the head of the home.
Not, not the children are in charge and the parents are at
the beckoning call and every whim of a spoiled child.
(07:57):
We've got to be the head of our homes as fathers, serving our
wife and our children well, as Christ gave himself for the
church and the family of God. So Romans 13 and one.
The Bible says let every soul besubject unto the higher powers,
(08:20):
for there is no power but of God.
The powers that be are ordained of God.
So authoritative structures. We can get mad about them all we
want to, but God is the one thatput them in place.
Whether that be governments, whether that be church
(08:44):
governments, whether that be thewe, we take this all the way
down to the family unit, the husband and the wife.
You can try to tweak those rolesand move those roles around all
you want to try to appease whatever culture in society is
telling you that is popular currently.
(09:06):
But what's popular does not meanthat it will bring longevity.
In fact, what is popular in our society today is proving that it
is swiftly eroding us into non existence.
(09:27):
We cannot continue down the trajectory that the, you know,
40s, fifties, 60s and 70s produced in this nation and
continue to exist and neither can the church.
The church has to be a shield and a buffer between what is
(09:52):
popular and current in the culture and give people a safe
place to go that operates on a different economy than what the
rest of the world is operating on.
Yeah, at some point we got to look at it and say, is what
we're doing working? And if if it's not working,
(10:13):
what, what can we do to change it?
And I, I, I feel like, you know,because we talked about the
culture of a church, it comes from strong families.
That's what builds the culture of the Apostolic Church.
Without that, the culture becomes chaos.
And it, it ought to be peace, order, Lovejoy, happiness.
It, these ought to be what is produced within the Apostolic
(10:36):
Church and the, the tenor of ourworld is going towards something
that just does not work. And at some point the church has
to defy that. They have to push back against
it and not just be the, you know, just a, we kind of are
(10:57):
there, but we're not there. But it has to be a, a beckon
call that says, hey, there's something different.
There's something that works. The.
Church is the city. It is the city set on a hill.
Yeah. It is.
It is the light in a Dark World.That light is the Word of God.
We are we shine the brightest when we're closest to the
(11:22):
principles of the light of God'sWord.
Well, yeah, if the church looks like the world in the way that
their families operate, nobody'sgoing to want to be like the
church. Yeah, yeah.
If every family in the church isbroken, yeah, then we're not
alight. I'm thankful for a church
(11:43):
environment where people can come in and family structures
can be healed and mended and putback together.
Marriages are put back together and relationships with parents
and their children are put back together.
Give me, give me the last verse of the Old Testament.
(12:04):
The very last verse of the Old Testament is in Malachi chapter
4 and verse 6. And he shall turn the heart of
the fathers to the children, andthe heart of the children to
their fathers. So one version, I believe it's
the NET. The new English translation says
that he will turn the hearts of the parents back to the children
(12:28):
and the children back to the parents.
It doesn't just put it in the masculine form, it's talking
about parents, he said. Now read the last part of that
verse. All right, the last part of this
and the King James says, lest I come and smite the earth with a
curse. And so the last verse of the Old
(12:52):
Testament says that if there is not a a realigning of the family
unit, that God will smite the earth with a curse.
Wow. So I believe it might be
important to God and important to our future that we take the
(13:15):
time to focus on what really matters.
And it seems to me that from Scripture, family is what really
matters. Yes, family matters more than
our careers. Family matters more than our
education. Family matters more than our our
(13:38):
portfolios. Family matters more than our
next deal. Family matters more than
anything else that we've got going on in the world.
If we don't build strong families, we have nothing.
We have no foundation. And God will smite the earth
with a curse. Let's take some time and work on
(13:59):
the family. So the most powerful, long
lasting churches. This is a a concept that my
Bishop and I have talked about and I I believe it is worth
discussing here. But he, he made this statement
(14:24):
one time that just bothered me. So I started doing, I started
doing some of my own investigative work and I found
what he said to be very true. He said the the longest lasting
churches and the most dynamic and powerful churches in our
(14:44):
movement are not built on hype or trends.
They're built usually not in places where you would think
they would be built. They're not built built in New
York or LA or New Orleans. They're not.
(15:04):
You think a lot of people think that if I got to go, if I'm
going to build a big church, I've got to go to a densely
populated area where all the people are.
Well, usually the most dynamic churches that we have in
Pentecost are located in rural areas.
Yeah, yeah. And.
(15:25):
That's true. He says he said that the reason
for that was because in rural areas there's still a huge
premium put on the family. Family still matters in those
small town settings. Yeah.
(15:47):
When all you got's a stoplight. You ain't got nothing to be busy
with. And you can focus on family,
family, can you still, you stillhave time to focus on the family
in a larger city setting. We get so busy with life and
jobs and, and partying and, and the social networking and, Oh
(16:16):
yeah, all of the things that go on in a city setting that you
cannot you, you, you don't have the time to have family dinner
at the table every night. Exactly what I was about to say
is that I feel like the elementsof the dinner table is gone from
our society. Yeah, and, and it was such an
(16:38):
important thing growing up. It was like, no, no, we eat at
the table as a family and it's just what we do.
This is where we talk. This is where we.
I grew up in the metropolis of JS Mississippi, where she's
booming. We had JS General store and
that's it. But the, the church was powerful
(17:07):
and the church was strong and the church was vibrant and
growing. And I remember it was our custom
that if we if, if we didn't havechurch that night and dad and
mom wasn't coming straight in from work to get ready to go to
(17:27):
church, we went to church as a family.
You know, if if if you wasn't sick, you was going to church
and then if you said you was sick because you didn't want to
go to church, they say throw up and prove it.
It was and. Then you'd throw up and they
(17:48):
say, well, don't you feel better, Go to church.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. But mom would would make us wait
until Dad got home and she wouldhave the meal prepared.
We would set sit down at the table and talk about our day and
(18:11):
talk about what went on at school and talk about what went
on dad's job. And, you know, there was this,
this bonding as a family that isso foreign in in environments
and cultures where we're so busythat we've forgotten what the
(18:32):
cornerstone and the foundation of everything else is.
Oh, yeah, that's the family. If the family falls apart,
everything else falls apart. So I.
(18:55):
Well, you make mention of that, and I don't want to interrupt
the thought, but no, go ahead. This recent news show shows, you
know, people in impositions and whatnot, they get caught in
affairs and talk cheating on their wives, on their husbands.
And one of the things that almost inevitably happens is
(19:19):
that has nothing to do with their work, but they lose their
job. Yeah.
Because it's not just something that does not when when you
start tearing the family apart, it really rips every part of
your life apart. It's, it's not just some little
thing that's like kind of cool to have.
But if you don't have, if you don't put it together, if it if
(19:43):
it's chaotic, then fine, whatever.
It controls every part of your life.
Yes, family. Family is a blessing.
Family is a gift from God. You know it.
We have, we have so perverted intimacy and the relationship
(20:09):
between husband and wife and sexuality in general, that
sexuality and intimacy is a commodity.
Yeah, right. It's not about relationship and
it's about it's about happiness,not about holiness.
(20:31):
That's good. And marriage is not designed to
make me happy. Marriage is designed to make me
holy. That's good.
And so God gave us the institution of marriage to show
(20:54):
us what the show us what the relationship between Christ and
the church was supposed to look like.
God created man in the garden because he wanted relationship
and he in order to show man how important and how special that
(21:21):
relationship was, he said, I'm going to put you to sleep and
I'm going to bring the most beautiful creature that you've
ever seen into your life. And I'm going to give you this
incredible home to keep and to guard and protect together and
to enjoy together so that you will know what our community,
(21:43):
what our communing means to me. Wow.
And then God that that relationship was violated
through disobedience. And so everything begins to
spiral out of control. Well, God comes in the form of
(22:10):
man and he's, he dies to producea new type of relationship with
his church, the bride of Christ.And he said, this is the, this
(22:30):
is the part of the scripture that that everybody gets tripped
up on. This is not a bleak or or
chauvinistic scripture. This is one of the most
beautiful passages of Scripture in the Bible when Paul talks
about in in first Corinthians wives, submit yourself to your
(22:52):
own husband's respect them, honor them, be loyal to them and
in a in an in our fallen state, in the female fallen state,
(23:13):
submission to her husband is is against her will as a fallen
being because our desires have been perverted by sin.
(23:34):
Yes, right. Then you have the scripture that
Paul goes on to say, husbands love your wives.
So he's telling. And if you've never read the
book or been through the series,love and respect.
(23:56):
Oh. That's fabulous.
You owe it to yourself to go through it.
It will revolutionize your marriage.
I'm not sponsored by them at all, but I ought to be.
I have, I have gifted their material to a lot of people and
happy to do so. It's fabulous material.
(24:19):
But so he, he says in in essence, he says wives respect
your husbands and husbands love your wives.
Well, all a man wants really, isto be respected.
(24:40):
Yeah. And all a woman wants really is
to be loved, to feel loved. Well, in our fallen condition,
through the perversion of sin, the wife and the woman doesn't
(25:02):
know how to respect the man. And the man has a major issue
knowing how to love his wife. Yeah, right.
And that causes the rift betweenhusbands and wives that that are
destroying so many marriages today because we live in this
(25:23):
cycle of, well, the woman says, well, I don't feel loved.
So it causes her to lash out, which causes the husband to feel
disrespected, which causes him to respond in anger, which makes
her feel unloved, which causes her to disrespect, which causes
him to lash out in anger, which causes.
(25:46):
The crazy cycle the. Crazy cycle of marriage that
ends in disaster. But through redemption we
understand that we are we are able to redeem this beautiful
institution called marriage backto what it was originally
(26:08):
designed to do. And that is be a a example of
what the relationship between Christ and his church was
supposed to look like. Love and respect.
Nobody has problem respecting Jesus because he gave himself
for his church 0. That's good.
(26:31):
That's good. He she has a a problem
respecting me and you because we're not giving ourselves for
our families. But the most successful
marriages I know are led by men who know what it's like to lay
(26:51):
themselves down for their families.
Wow. And so I think that in this
episode, we this is this is yourcall back to the proper
(27:12):
understanding of what family is supposed to look like.
And maybe in a different episode, we'll get into the kids
and what that looks like. But it starts with Mama and
daddy being back in their properplace and we cannot listen to
me. The reason why we are We are not
receiving the honor that the Bible tells our children to give
(27:39):
to our parents. The love and the honor that is
supposed to come to the people that brought us into the world
is because the reason we're not receiving that from our children
like we should be receiving thatfrom our children, is because
we're not love loving and respecting each other correctly.
(28:03):
Mama and Daddy's got to learn how to live in harmony with one
another before the kids can reciprocate love and honor back
to the family. So the only way to put Mama and
Daddy back in their proper placeis to get the marriage fixed.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Where we can have conversations
(28:27):
without them descending into chaos.
Yes, where the dinner table can actually be.
Happy and yes. Be a place that we can actually
sit at for a couple hours, yes. You can't.
You can't go to the dinner tableand have a meal if there's so
much tension between the husbandand wife that the kids can feel
it. Yeah, that's right.
(28:48):
And if there's anything that ourchildren in this day need, they
need if children are going to besuccessful and have a the best
platform to build their life on,it's going to be built on a on
the platform and the stage of a stable home life where dad is
(29:10):
respected and Mama is loved unconditionally.
Yeah, children have a stable home life not by it being
manipulated in their viewpoint, but it's just by the example of
mom and dad. Yes, so, you know, it's you
(29:31):
know, we could we could talk about, you know, you know, we
could, we could do episodes about, you know, discipline in
children and and and all of thatkind of stuff.
But if really it is, it is very,very wrong for parents to
(29:57):
discipline children when the parents don't have discipline
themselves. That's good.
I know some people are not goingto like that, but if I'm not
disciplined enough to do what ittakes and be adult enough to do
what it takes to have a wonderful, loving, caring
(30:21):
relationship with my wife, how in the world am I supposed to
have the rapport with my children that I need to correct
them and discipline them and andguide them in the way that they
should go? Right?
(30:42):
The breakdown between children and the most important influence
in their life comes from up. Too many times.
It comes from children getting old enough to realize how flawed
their parents are. And so they say, well, they
don't have it anymore together than I do.
(31:02):
Why would I want their directionor their advice?
It may not just, it could be, but it may not just be a
rebellious teenager issue. It could be that mom and daddy's
not loving and respecting each other well.
(31:23):
And so that's causing a ripple effect, a trickle down effect
into the rest of the home. But if you can fix Mama and
Daddy, bring love and respect back into the home, bring make
date night great again. Amen.
I ought to get some fire emojis,some heart emojis in the comment
(31:48):
section, some Amen pastors from the comment section.
Go take the time, take off work,lose some hours, lose some
overtime, and invest in your spouse.
And you'll find out that if you'll start investing in your
(32:09):
spouse again the way you did when you fell in love in the
beginning, that fire just might start burning again.
Every wood that you quit, every fire that you quit fueling burns
out. Yes, that's.
(32:30):
Good. I've never seen a fire that you
keep fueling it, it goes out, itwill burn if you'll feed it.
That's good one. One of the things that came to
mind here is you mentioned a book earlier.
What are some good recommendations for reading?
(32:51):
It'll help some people on this topic.
OK, so the five love languages. Gary Chapman.
Gary Chapman is a great great book for you to understand each
other. One of the things that this is
not a book recommendation, but one of the things that I would,
(33:12):
and this may sound strange but it has helped my marriage, is do
an enneagram test and find out what y'all's personalities are.
Find out what your personality types are.
That will help you. I'm not saying that Enneagram,
(33:34):
the Enneagram test is a perfect test and it's because I don't, I
don't think that it is, but it is something to give you an idea
of who you're living with, what makes them tick, what their
personality is. And so I think that's AI think
(33:55):
it's a wonderful thing. It's a thing you can do
together. It's a lot of fun and and so you
find out things about each otherwhen you do your personality
test that you may not have knownbefore.
And so you can understand, you know, the cause of different
personality traits, why they're responding this way in this
(34:18):
circumstance when you just don'tunderstand.
Well, it's because people are unique, they are different and
so different things set some personalities off that other
personalities are completely cool with, etcetera, etcetera.
So do that. I think that's an A wonderful
(34:43):
thing to do. Another book is Sacred Marriage.
It's a it's a great book. There's this this would be with
just for the adults we're talking to married couples, but
(35:03):
sheet music is a great. Book, yes, highly recommend
that. There is a book for him and her
called The Flirtation Experiment.
I've not heard of that. And if you stop flirting with
(35:26):
your spouse, some spouses, some people, men and women alike
don't know how to flirt. And that can be an issue.
And so there is, there's these, there's a, a book for him and a
book for her called The Flirtation Experiment.
(35:49):
It's, it's worth the read. Pick that up and that will
greatly help you. So I just want to say in, in the
ending of this episode that God wants your marriage to work.
(36:09):
I believe that there's hope for your marriage.
I believe there's hope to salvage your relationship and if
both of you can get on the same page.
If I'm talking to someone, that feels like all hope is lost.
(36:31):
If you can both agree to get help, there's hope.
Yes. You don't have to like each
other right now. You don't have to want to be
around each other right now. You can be you can have major,
major rift in your marriage relationship, but if you can a
(36:52):
boat, you can both agree. How can two walk together if
they don't agree? But you don't have to agree on
everything to be in a loving relationship.
And so let me just say, find a common ground.
(37:18):
If you can both agree that you need help to in order to make
your marriage work, and you can both agree that you go get help,
then there's hope for your marriage and your marriage and
your family is worth fighting for.
(37:39):
The real victims of the split isnot you.
It's going to be the children that are left in a broken home.
So please, I'm asking you to please pray.
Fight for your marriage, fight for your family.
(38:01):
Family matters. Musicians come.
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