April 2, 2025 • 41 mins
In this powerful and transparent episode, Pastors Jay and Stacey Coleman kick off the weekend conference with a message that hits every married couple right where it matters most—the heart. Whether you’re in a season of struggle or simply want to strengthen your bond, this episode is a call to do the real work in your marriage.
Drawing from their own journey, the Colemans get honest about the “baggage” we all carry into marriage—unfulfilled expectations, untreated pain, unhealthy self-image, and unrepentant sin—and how it silently weighs down our relationships. Using the metaphor of traveling with overpacked luggage, they illustrate how many of us are walking through life with things we were never meant to carry.
Through biblical truth, personal stories, and Spirit-led encouragement, this episode guides couples to:
Whether you came into marriage with scars or picked them up along the way, this episode is an invitation to surrender the weight and allow God to bring transformation to your life and your home.
Grab your spouse's hand, open your heart, and let’s do the work—together.
Listen now and be encouraged to approach grief with hope and grace.
Let’s continue building stronger marriages and families—together.
Whether you're a young family seeking encouragement or simply love uplifting stories of faith and family, this episode offers heartfelt wisdom, humor, and inspiration.
Don’t forget to:
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Podcast Produced by Hi Hello Labs
Website: hihellolabs.com
Drawing from their own journey, the Colemans get honest about the “baggage” we all carry into marriage—unfulfilled expectations, untreated pain, unhealthy self-image, and unrepentant sin—and how it silently weighs down our relationships. Using the metaphor of traveling with overpacked luggage, they illustrate how many of us are walking through life with things we were never meant to carry.
Through biblical truth, personal stories, and Spirit-led encouragement, this episode guides couples to:
- Identify the baggage affecting their marriage
- Understand the lies they may have believed
- Receive God’s love, healing, and freedom
- Begin a journey toward restoration and deeper connection
Whether you came into marriage with scars or picked them up along the way, this episode is an invitation to surrender the weight and allow God to bring transformation to your life and your home.
Grab your spouse's hand, open your heart, and let’s do the work—together.
Listen now and be encouraged to approach grief with hope and grace.
Let’s continue building stronger marriages and families—together.
Whether you're a young family seeking encouragement or simply love uplifting stories of faith and family, this episode offers heartfelt wisdom, humor, and inspiration.
Don’t forget to:
- Like, subscribe, and leave a comment with future topic suggestions
- Share this episode with friends or anyone facing a tough season
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Podcast Produced by Hi Hello Labs
Website: hihellolabs.com
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:22):
The great riverage of starting out the conference and starting
out this morning with worship and then of course with
an amazing, amazing word from Yes.
Speaker 2 (00:32):
I want to introduce our first set of speakers. You
may know that you may have seen them a time
or two, but they have pioneered this whole vision of
love like crazy. There is a podcast out that they
have curated with lots of content where their heart and
tol is just to invest in marriages, marriages and family.
(00:53):
But we know to invest in your family, you've got
to start with your marriage, right. So today, yeah.
Speaker 1 (00:59):
We would love for you to a great warm welcome
to the ones you know in love Pastors Jay and
Stacy Coleman.
Speaker 3 (01:09):
We're going to just dive right in and do some
real good work on our marriages this morning. And here's
what I'm gonna tell You're gonna get out of this
today what you put into it. There's some of you
in this room. You came here because your spouse made
you come. There's some of.
Speaker 4 (01:22):
You in it it is.
Speaker 3 (01:25):
There's some of you here today that you came because
you genuinely, Hey, we love each other.
Speaker 5 (01:30):
We want to call on this marriage. There's some of
you in this room.
Speaker 3 (01:32):
Maybe you're kind of at that place where it's kind
of like this is a last ditch effort.
Speaker 5 (01:36):
We got to work on our marriage. We're not doing well.
Speaker 3 (01:39):
And so if you really have the heart to say, Lord,
work on me, change me, shape me to be the husband,
the wife that the spouse that you've called me to be,
you're going to get a lot out of this. In fact,
I'll say this to you, it is very easy for
me as a pastor. I'm so focused on speaking to
kind of just focus on that and not really focus on, Okay,
(02:02):
what am I going to get out of this? But
right over there, right in the middle of worship, I
just laid hands on myself and I said, Lord, I
thank you that today I'm going to get something out
of this, and you're gonna work on me, and you're
going to change me to be the husband to her
that you need me to be. And so here's what
I want you to do. Close your eyes real quick
and just lay hands on yourself right now and just
(02:24):
say Lord, work on me, Lord, change me, shape me today,
holy Spirit, to be the spouse that you have called
me to be. I'm going to deal with the things
in my life that need to be dealt with, and
I thank you.
Speaker 5 (02:42):
Holy Spirit, you'll give me guidance in Jesus' name. Amen.
Speaker 3 (02:48):
Now, when I said that, work on the thing, y'all
got real quiet, and you're like, ooh, I don't want
people to hear me say that. Now, this was actually
this message was actually my wife's idea.
Speaker 4 (03:00):
Well, as you can tell, I love to travel. How
many of y'all love to travel? Okay, almost everybody? I
would think. I would think anytime I get a chance
to hit the road, take a plane somewhere, even go
on a cruise boat. I am all in. I love
to travel. And but what is what is the worst
(03:21):
thing about traveling? Paying for it? That's true, you gotta
have you gotta you know, have it saved up and
ready to go for your trip. But did somebody say packing? Okay? Packing? Now?
I am absolutely one of those women who I want
(03:44):
to take everything. I need, six pairs of shoes, I
might need this extra outfit. I mean, I know we
only we're only going to be gone for two days,
but I'm packing for like it's a whole week. That
kind of thing, right, And so I end up with
more bad baggage then I need. Well, recently, a couple
(04:04):
of trips back that we took, we came to an
agreement because every time we would travel, and especially go
on a plane, I would get nervous every time I
would check a bag, thinking what if they lose my luggage? Right?
What if I get there and I don't have this,
that or the other, and I can only take so
(04:25):
much with me because I would constantly overpack, right, So
you know I would be nervous about that. And so
we came to this agreement that on an upcoming trip
that we were going to take, that we would only
take a carry on. Well, let me tell you, ladies,
that really stressed me out because how was I going
(04:47):
to fit all the things and all the extra things
that I need into one suitcase? So I told him,
I said, well, I can't pack just to carry on
And he was like why not? And I said, because
we only have one carry on. You have to buy
me a new one. And he was like, okay, I
will buy you a new one.
Speaker 5 (05:05):
This was the old one, this is the new one.
Speaker 4 (05:07):
This is the new one.
Speaker 3 (05:09):
Yes, and this one's mine now, Yes, she got the
new ones.
Speaker 4 (05:13):
I got the new one. And he really is kind
of jealous of it because it's got cool stuff on
the inside, more cool than that one anyway. So so
we decided that we would just go with a carry on.
And so to my surprise, since that trip, every trip
after that, I am delighted to only take a carry on.
(05:36):
I got rid of that extra baggage that I was
taking a bunch of things that I would get there
and I would only wear one or two outfits, but
yet I had six or seven. And so so we
decided we're going to do carry ons. Right, we weren't
gonna over overpack. It's easy for him. He would rather
just take a backpack and like, let's go backpack, and
(05:57):
someone I'm like, that is just ridiculous. I mean, a
carry on is one thing, a backpack that is another. Okay,
So but I was always afraid that I would lose
my luggage.
Speaker 3 (06:11):
Now here's the crazy part about carry on, and this
is kind of what's settled her down. Is that you
don't give this to the airline. You keep it where
with you. It's always with you. Your baggage is always
with you everywhere you go.
Speaker 5 (06:25):
And this is kind of what the heart of.
Speaker 3 (06:27):
This message is today, is that the same thing holds
true in life that every person in this room, I
don't care who you are, we all have baggage in
our lives, am I Right? And we are so accustomed
to holding on to our baggage and keeping it with
us and never really dealing with it, never really getting
to the place that where we can really unpack and
(06:49):
just kind of begin to deal with the things that
come along that it begins to call strain and stress
within our relationships, within our marriages with our kiddos. And
today this message is all about dealing with the baggage
in your life that might be causing some issues within
your life, dealing with the baggage that you brought into marriage,
(07:11):
and dealing with the baggage that you've maybe even picked
up along the way of a couple years of marriage
or twenty years of marriage that is causing strain and
stress and dealing with it. And so today that's what
this message is all about.
Speaker 5 (07:26):
Right.
Speaker 4 (07:26):
So when we decide that we're going to get married,
we each bring in our own set of baggage into
our marriage, right, And that might be a lot of
different things. It could be that we have differing opinions
about things, maybe because of the way that we were raised,
or we bring in, you know, some past relationships, good
(07:46):
or bad, into our marriage. And then we may even
have like some traumatic experiences that we dealt with and
it's just something we're carrying around with us. We haven't
dealt with that, and we bring that into our marriage.
And so we we come in to the marriage with
a lot of baggage and a lot of baggage that
(08:08):
weighs us down. And we don't really realize that sometimes
until we get married, uh, just how some of it
extra baggage might just come to the surface. Right. So
we were, we were in our early twenties. Whenever we
we got married and and we realized, you know that
we we brought in quite a few different things into
(08:30):
the marriage, you know, just from our upbringing, from our
from our childhood, and and and then you know, things
begin to just come to the surface. Whenever coming you know,
when you get married and you're trying to learn how
to live with another person that you've never lived with before.
So I want to ask you, where where does all
(08:50):
this baggage, you know, where where does it come from?
All of a sudden it comes to the surface, and
and you don't realize really, you know, what you're carrying
around with you becomes part of the journey that you're on,
and now the journey that you're on together. Right, So
we're gonna like hypothetically go to the baggage claim, right, go.
Speaker 3 (09:12):
Ahead and talk about what what what baggage looks like
in your life. Now here's where it kind of comes down.
At the airport. Whenever you do check a bag, you
see people at the luggage claim and it's the things
going round and what are you doing? You're looking for
your bag and you see people step up, Oh, that's mine.
Speaker 4 (09:29):
I see my bag because I worry that it's not
going to be there.
Speaker 3 (09:33):
I don't get excited because she has a big pink
ribbon tied on it and I have to go over
and take that. And all the guys look at me
like that's yours, and I'm like, yeah, no, it's actually
my wife's like twenty pairs of shoes in here. Uh,
but you claim that, and you and each person claims
their bag is now here's the problem. We have a
lot of times we spend a lot of effort and
energy denying the things that are in our life. Well,
(09:57):
I don't have a problem with anger. What are you
talking about? And there's things that are causing issues in
our marriage baggage and we say that's not mine, and
somebody it'll come up in convers that your spouse will
say you need to deal with this and you don't
claim it. The only way that you can really deal
with something in your life is if you say you
know what, yes, I have that, and you grab a
hold of it, you identify it so that you can
(10:19):
deal with it.
Speaker 5 (10:19):
So here's what we're going to do.
Speaker 3 (10:21):
We're going to walk through some different We can't hit everyone,
but we're going to walk through some different areas of baggage.
And some of these things are going to be very
familiar to some of you. And today you need to
be able to claim this or identify this within your
life so that you can allow the Holy Spirit to
deal with this so that you can have a healthier
and happier marriage. You guys ready for this, Okay, So
(10:43):
nudge your spouse and say pay attention because this is
where it gets real, okay. Because the first bit of
baggage that oftentimes comes around that we have in our
life for unfulfilled expectations and here's kind of what it
comes down to. How many of you in this room,
since you have been married, there has been at least
one disappointment in your life, in your marriage and in
your life. Raise your hand. Come on, now, this is church.
(11:05):
Y'all be real, Okay, who's had at least one disappointment?
Speaker 5 (11:08):
Raise your hand? All right?
Speaker 3 (11:09):
Some of y'all raise in both hands. Settle down, all right.
It's true we have disappointments. You know why, because life
is hard and marriage is hard, and we had these
expectations going into marriage, and we had these expectations when
we're young and we're starting out this life, and a
lot of times things don't work out quite the way
that we thought that they would work out, Am I right?
(11:32):
And so a lot of times we get to that
place for like, you know what, my marriage isn't quite
where I thought it would be, and I'm stuck in
this job. And we got married and I had such
these these huge hopes and what life was going to
be like these expectations that are unrealistic and they're somewhat unfulfilled.
So as a result, there's anger inside of me. As
(11:55):
a result, there's bitterness inside of me as a result,
I'm frustrated. And when you're frustrated, who do you take
it out on? The one who's the closest to you.
So those unfulfilled expectations in your life and in your marriage,
they begin to spill over because of the baggage that
you were building up. You say, what does this look like?
(12:17):
Proverbs thirteen twelve. Actually I love this verse. It says,
hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a dream fulfilled
is a.
Speaker 5 (12:26):
Tree of life.
Speaker 3 (12:27):
I had these hopes and these dreams and these ideas
of what marriage was going to be like, and it
didn't quite work out the way that I thought it would.
And it just makes me sick whenever I think about that,
and that begins to build up in your life, It
begins to build up in your heart, and then it
spills over onto your spouse.
Speaker 5 (12:47):
Here's the problem.
Speaker 3 (12:49):
A lot of time, the disappointments that we have come
from the fact that we think that Earth is supposed
to be like Heaven.
Speaker 5 (12:57):
Is Earth a perfect environment? Nuh? Not at all.
Speaker 3 (13:02):
In fact, some of you probably got frustrated on the
way here this work. Can somebody cut you off in traffic? Why?
Because we live in a sin filled place, a fall
in place, a broken place, and the only perfect environment
one day is in the presence of God in heaven.
But we have those expectations here and we think that
things are going to be easy and things are going
(13:24):
to come to as easy. And as a result, oftentimes
when things are hard, when things get difficult, we take
it out on our spouse because of the baggage that
we have picked up and we begin to carry along
the anger, the frustration that comes along because of the
unfulfilled expectations. And so I would dare say that in
this room today, there's some of you that this is
(13:46):
some baggage, it's built up in your heart that you
need to deal with within your life, and we're going
to get to that here in a moment.
Speaker 4 (13:52):
So we're carrying around all of this, these things that
cause our baggage to be even heavy than it should be. Right,
So we're also even carrying around untreated pain. So you've
got unfulfilled expectations but also untreated pain. And I think
(14:13):
you know a lot of times that we're just we
might be carrying around a lot of pain in our lives,
but we pretend like we're not. You know, we used
to have the little saying like, oh, well, just you know,
put on your happy face. If we had like some
kind of disagreement, put on your happy face. We've got
to walk into church now, or we've got to go,
you know, see someone, so you know, put on your
(14:34):
happy face. And we're just trained to put this this
smile on our face and in our minds pretend like
everything is so much better than maybe how it really is,
because deep down we're carrying around and just harboring just
deep pain from from different things, especially from our past.
(14:55):
And so you know, we get hurt, we are are,
we're wounded, and we just want to pretend like it's
not a big deal when it really is a big deal.
And so we have to decide are we going to
carry this baggage with us of untreated pain or are
we going to let that go? And so Jeremiah six
fourteen says, they dress the wound of my people as
(15:19):
though it were not serious. Peace peace, they say, when
there is no peace. So we you know, we're carrying
around where we where we're pretending like everything's okay and
oh I'm at peace, but really, deep down we're not,
because we're carrying around pain. Maybe we're carrying around some loss,
(15:39):
Maybe we're carrying around some sadness, Maybe we're carrying around
anger like what he just mentioned. So I'm gonna I'm
gonna just be a little transparent here with you today,
and I want you to be I want you to
(15:59):
just everyone to be honest with themselves. Okay, sometimes we
can walk around with such such a heaviness and untreated pain,
and it comes out of maybe some situations from our
childhood where there has been some form of abuse. And
(16:23):
I look back in in my past and I even
mentioned this some to our our Journey girls when we
had our Embraced conference. But my dad was somewhat abusive
to me. Are neglectful and great guy, workaholic though, and
(16:46):
just did not just did not give the time towards
the relationship that was needed. And so most of us
men and women here in this room, you have experienced
some form of You may have experienced some form of abuse.
Maybe it was emotional, maybe it was verbal abuse, Maybe
(17:06):
it was the things that were said to you. It
could have been sexual abuse, it could have been physical
abuse that you dealt with, and all of these things
that I dealt with that I had kind of stuffed
and I had untreated pain. I was bringing in all
this baggage into my marriage. And how many of you
(17:28):
know when it all came to the surface, who did
I take it out on my spouse?
Speaker 5 (17:35):
Well, when she opened up that bag, I was.
Speaker 4 (17:36):
Like, wow, he was like, what have I done?
Speaker 5 (17:41):
What did I say? I do too?
Speaker 4 (17:44):
Right? So, you know, and unfortunately a lot of times
we just want to stuff the hurt. We want to
stuff that pain. We want to stuff any kind of abuse,
whether it was verbal, emotional, whatever kind it was, okay,
we wanted just stuff that and pretend like it doesn't exist.
And then we carried around with us forever forever, and
(18:09):
that baggage becomes so very heavy, and we simply need
to release that to the Lord, because if we stuff
that hurt, those wounds are there, those issues are there.
We've stuffed them down into our life, and it causes
us to carry this baggage of pain instead of dealing
with it. So we've got unfulfilled expectations that we're carrying
(18:32):
around with us. We've got untreated pain that really rules
and comes to the surface in probably the most inopportune times,
and especially during arguments. And then we also have something
else that we carry with us. It's kind of connected
to this untreated pain, and that is unhealthy self image.
(18:58):
And I know that it's it's easy ladies for us
to like talk about that because it's it's more commonly
discussed about body image and different things like that when
it comes to women. But men, I know that you
also deal with unhealthy self image. You may struggle with that. Okay.
So because people people who are insecure, and they have
(19:21):
that insecurity and that unhealthy self image, they're constantly trying
to prove themselves. We're constantly trying to say, oh no,
in my mind, yeah, I may think poorly about myself,
but let me prove to myself and to everyone else
that I am I am good enough, or I am
(19:42):
smart enough, or maybe that I am pretty enough. You know,
because those are the lies that we believe from the
enemy that speaks into this unhealthy poor self image that
we end up having with our own selves. Rooted in
all of the untreated pain and the abuse are things
(20:05):
that we dealt with younger. We're carrying that around with us,
and when we believe the lives of the enemy, that's
just what the enemy wants because he wants to destroy
our self image. But you see, God has a different
view of us than we have of ourselves. He sees
(20:26):
us that we are good enough, that we are smart enough,
that we are pretty enough. Let's look at Romans twelve
three in the Message Bible. It says the only accurate
way to understand ourselves is by what God is and
by what He does for us, not by what we
are and what we do for him. You know, the
(20:47):
scripture also says that we are wonderfully and fearfully made,
that his view, God's view of who we are is
really what it's what he sees and us. That's the
real view of who we are is what God sees
in us. And he sees so much potential in all
(21:08):
of us, so much potential in our lives, that we
can make a huge, huge difference. But often, though sadly,
we continue to just carry around this baggage of insecurity,
of intimidation and a fear, and we're not seeing ourselves
the way that God sees us. So we're carrying around
(21:29):
unhealthy self image and untreated pain.
Speaker 3 (21:32):
I'm going to tell you the reason why we wanted
to share about this in Stacy's.
Speaker 5 (21:35):
This actually was her idea.
Speaker 3 (21:37):
She said, when we go to the car, let's talk
about the baggage that we deal with. And here's why
we wanted to share about this, because we've dealt with this.
We come into this marriage and there's all these things
that we bring into the marriage and things that we
even pick up throughout the years that we take out
on each other. And we wonder why we're struggling in
our marriage, and we do.
Speaker 5 (21:59):
We have these.
Speaker 3 (21:59):
Unfulfill old expectations, disappointments through life that began to filter
through and make their way as frustration that we take
out on one another. Are these unfolf you know, we
think about untreated pain or hurts. I had no idea.
Whenever we got married. I knew I loved her and
I'm like, you know, you're pretty, I want to marry you.
I love you. And then we step into this marriage.
(22:20):
We live in that little apartment there in Pineville, and
the next thing, you know, that this anger inside of
Stacy started coming out because of the pain that she
had inside of her. Now I didn't know. I was
twenty years old. I didn know how to deal with that.
I wasn't a counselor, and I'm just trying to make
my way through this. And then we get to the
you know, she's talking about an unhealthy self image. And
(22:44):
I would tell Stacy things like, you know what, You're
so beautiful, and it's like it would just bounce off
of her. Yeah, I love you so much, You're so beautiful,
and I'd speak words of affirmation and it was like
it just bounced off of her because of the unhealthy,
you know, image that she had set up for ourself.
And fortunately we actually did the work. Fortunately we stayed
(23:05):
the course. Divorce was not an option, and we did
the work to work our way through these things to
get to the place where we set some of the
baggage down and we dealt with the things and we
begin to unpack things in our lives and in our
marriage to bring us to the place where we are now.
Speaker 5 (23:22):
And here's the last one.
Speaker 3 (23:23):
So you hear these things, but this is one that
goes hand in hand within the church that you better
get a hold of is unrepented sin within your life,
because a lot of times people they carry the baggage
of sin all throughout their life and they ask God
to forgive them, but there's not really life change within
their life. God, I'm sorry for this, Will you forgive me?
(23:47):
Will you clean me up? But they still continue to
go right back to that sin and walk in that sin.
Life changes what the Holy Spirit wants to bring to you.
Psalms thirty two. Just listen to this verse. The writer says,
when I refuse to confess my sin, my body wasted away,
and I groaned all day long, day and night. Your
(24:10):
hand of discipline was heavy on me. My strength evaporated
light water in the summer heat. Now I read this,
and I look at this, and I'm like, man, what
a miserable place to be when you're living in that sin.
You're caught up in that sin. And guess what, when
you're miserable, who else are you going to be miserable?
(24:32):
Your spouse Because there's sin within your life and you're
trying to deal with this and manage this, and you
feel guilty and God forgive me, and then you turn
and run right back to that sin, and you make
your spouse miserable, your kid's miserable. There's no peace within
your life, and you feel the weight of that within
(24:56):
your life, and you're walking through and you're carrying that
baggage of bad choices, and you need to know that
God wants to set you free.
Speaker 5 (25:03):
Let me tell you something.
Speaker 3 (25:04):
One of the greatest things within our marriage is we
begin to identify the things. I remember whenever Stacey came
in one day from sitting down with a counselor. She
started sharing some things with me and I'm like, I
had no idea that you had been dealing with that,
And she said, you know what, She identified it and
then she set the baggage down and walked through life
(25:26):
much much freer. It was so healthy for our marriage.
It was so good for our marriage. And today maybe
you sit here and you say, there's some things sin wise,
there's some pain in my life because the things that
have happened within my life are these disappointments that I've
had and I just keep packing this stuff throughout life,
and man, it's so frustrating, it's so aggravating. I don't
(25:48):
know how to deal with this. But here's how they
I would tell you how to deal with it. Let
God set you free, identify it, call it for what
it is, and let God begin to you within your life,
within your marriage, within your family, because it will make
all the difference in the world.
Speaker 5 (26:08):
Now, I'm gonna say this to you.
Speaker 3 (26:12):
When you go to the airport and you are checking
a bag, it is a great feeling to walk up
to that counter. Now you pray in the whole time
because you watched your wife pack and they tell you
to put that up on the scale and you you're like,
please be under fifty pounds, and most of the time
(26:33):
it's like forty two thirty seven. There's been times we've
had to pull some stuff out, run back and sing
it in the car and I'm like, you don't need
ten pairs of shoes. We're only going for two days.
But here's what's cool. You put that up there, you say,
all right, I'm giving you that, and then you walk
away from it and they deal with it, they take
(26:57):
care of it. And today I'm here to tell you
that you can check the baggage within your life. Those disappointments,
as fears, that anger, that pain, that sin. You can
turn it over to God and say God, I'm giving
you this, and I'm gonna walk away from it and
I'm gonna be so free in my life and in
(27:17):
my marriage and in my family. And it's gonna be
absolutely amazing. He said, well, how do we do that.
Here's how you do it by learning spiritual truths that
God has for your life. Listen, listen to the tewod Corinthians,
Chapter ten. Most of you are probably gonna know this
verse verses three and four. It says, for though we
live in the world, we don't wage war as the
(27:38):
world does. The weapons we fight with are not the
weapons of this world. On the contrary, they have divine
power to demolish strongholds. Those strongholds in your life that pain,
that frustration, that fear, that anger, that addiction, that sin,
whatever it might be, God will just set you free.
(28:01):
And the greatest way that the enemy keeps you bound
up is through lying to you every day. And what
sets you free starts with a t truth. And so
today you're going to learn some truth for your life. Now,
I gotta be careful because I'm a preacher. I'll take
over this whole service and go ahead, baby, you got this.
Speaker 4 (28:21):
So the problems that we have in our lives, they
may seem like natural problems, but in essence they're really
spiritual problems. And you can't fix a spiritual problem in
a natural way, you have to fix it in a
spiritual way. And in this scripture that he just read
in Second Corinthians talks about demolishing strongholds and the strongholds
(28:46):
that keep us bound, and the definition the Greek definition
of stronghold, it says it's a prisoner who is locked
in by deception. That means you have been lied to,
You have been deceived, and the devil convinces you to
hold on, hold on to all this baggage, and I
(29:06):
mean sometimes it wants to outweigh you because it's so much.
But that baggage is a lie. And we believe these
lies because the devil wants to convince us, Oh, this
is just the way you are, this is this is
your lot in life, this is what's been handed to you.
And we believe that lie that we we can't change,
(29:28):
that we can't get rid of this heavy baggage that
we're carrying. I want to look at the next uh,
the next verse of Second Corinthians ten verse five. It says,
we demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up
against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every
(29:49):
thought to make it obedient to Christ. That's what it
means to break the stronghold is to believe the truth.
Speaker 3 (29:59):
Of God's so young couple coming into marriage, and the
things that she thought about herself, the poor self image,
the pain, and she would tell me things that I'm like,
why do you believe that? And the more time I started,
you know, with, the closer we got, and the more
we came into unity together, I begin to realize it's
(30:22):
because of the things that were spoken over her from
the time she was a little girl all the way
until where she was when we got married. The number
one God in her life, her father, had spoke things
into her life that weren't true, and the things that
he spoke I'm trying to counteract that. I'm like, you
know what, You're beautiful, you're valuable, You're wonderful. And it's
(30:44):
like it would just bounce off her because she had
chosen to believe the lie that the enemy had spoken
over her instead of believing the truth that God had
for her. And when she came to the place where
she said, you know what, I don't want to walk
through life like that anymore. I want to believe what
God says about me and what you, as my husband
say about me. Instead of the lies that the enemy
(31:04):
has spoken over my life. And so she came to
the place where she began to allow God to renew
her heart, her mind, and her spirit. And then whenever
you begin to see things like John eight thirty two
where it says you'll know the truth, and the truth
will set you up free. And so maybe you sit
here today and you've identified, man, there's some baggage in
my life. Golly, there's been disappointments, there's pain, there's things
(31:31):
that I've grabbed a hold of, and I'm carrying through
this life, through this marriage, and it's so heavy, and
I want to deal with this today because it's affected me,
it's affecting my spouse, it's affecting my health, it's affecting
my kids. I got to deal with this. So I'm
ready to set it down and be free. And I
want to know the truth that God has. Who in
(31:53):
here wants to know the truth that God has for you?
And the first one is this that you have to
if you're ever gonna deal with the bat, You've got
to be able to identify it and see it for
what it is. But the next thing that you have
to do is you have to believe that God still
loves you. You know what, the enemy speaks over you. God,
there's not a future for you, there's not a plan
(32:14):
for you. Your marriage is probably gonna fall apart. You're not
gonna make it through this. This is your lot in life.
You just have to live this and deal with this.
And the enemy continually lies to you. He tells you
things like God sees the sin, he don't love you anymore.
And so you need to understand that God loves you
(32:36):
and wants to set you free in the areas of
your life where the enemy as you bound up. So
many people are caught up in this religious performance. We
come to church and as she said a few minutes ago,
we put on our happy face. Everybody smile happy, and
people say, you know, how are you doing. I'm good,
(32:56):
Praise the Lord, hallelujah. And you just argued and fought
the entire way to church.
Speaker 5 (33:04):
But what did you do? You put on your happy face.
Speaker 3 (33:08):
So many times we get caught up in this performance,
and on the inside we're convinced that God is angry
at us, that God doesn't love us, and we struggle
with that all the.
Speaker 5 (33:19):
While putting on our happy face.
Speaker 3 (33:22):
You got to know that God loves you, and God
wants to see freedom within your life. I'm going to
read this to you out of John three sixteen. Everybody
knows this verse, but there's a passage three sixteen through eighteen,
and I want to read this to you out of
the message translation because it's awesome how this reads. It says,
this is how much God loved the world. He gave
(33:44):
his son, his one. Look at this and only son.
He didn't have fifty sons to choose from. He didn't say,
you know what, you're my least favorite, sau sends you
how many sons did he have one? And this is
why I did thet so that no one need be
destroyed by believing in him. Anyone can have a whole
(34:09):
and lasting life. You need to get that whole and
lasting life. God didn't go through all the trouble of
sending his son merely to point an accusing finger telling
the world how bad it was. He came to help
to put the world right again. And anyone who trusts
(34:29):
in him is acquitted. Anyone who refuses to trust in
him has long since been under the death sentence without
knowing it. And why because of that person's failure to
believe in the one of a kind son that when
God introduced to him.
Speaker 5 (34:45):
Now check this out.
Speaker 3 (34:47):
God loves you so much that he send his son
to this earth so that you can be set free
through the truth of what Jesus did for you at
the cross.
Speaker 5 (34:57):
So do this for me.
Speaker 3 (34:58):
Close your eyes and say this to yourself, not your spouse,
not your neighbor. God loves me. Now, now don't open
your eyes. You got to believe it.
Speaker 5 (35:17):
Now.
Speaker 3 (35:17):
I want you to say it again. But here's what
I want you to do. I want you when you
say it this time, I want you to to believe
it and feel it and know it.
Speaker 5 (35:29):
Say God loves me. Open your eyes now.
Speaker 3 (35:37):
At the same time, we've got an enemy. Who's tad
who Ah. You got to know your God loves you.
You got to know that your God wants to do
the next thing in your life. And I'm going to
turn it over to you because you're this is youth.
Speaker 4 (35:50):
Because God loves us, he can also he can also
free us. He can set us free. You know, some
of us, like he said, we've bought into this lie.
That is just the way that it is. And maybe
we've even given up because we think it's too hard,
and we need to quit believing the lie, and we
(36:12):
need to not give up. In Romans eight one through two,
it says, with the arrival of Jesus the Messiah, the
faithful dilemma is resolved. Those who enter into Christ being
here for us no longer have to live under a continuous,
low lying black cloud. A new power is in operation,
the spirit of life in Christ like a strong wind
(36:34):
has magnificently cleared the air, freeing you from a faithful
lifetime of brutal tyranny, the hands of sin and death.
Let me tell you, if you want to be free,
you have to surrender. You have to surrender it all
to Him, and He can free you, and he can
restore you. Because it says in Psalm seventy one twenty,
(36:55):
though you have made me see troubles, many and bitter,
you will restore my life again from the depths of
the earth. You will again bring me up.
Speaker 3 (37:05):
Grab your spouse's hand. What's your baggage? First step is identifying?
Speaker 5 (37:14):
Is it anger? Is it frustration? Is it sin?
Speaker 3 (37:20):
Is it poor self image? Is it pain? What is
causing you to walk through life and feeling heavy? And
weighed down what is causing you to take that frustration
out on your spouse. You've got to be willing to
identify what is in your life that's affecting you and
affecting your marriage. I remember whenever Stacy she began to
(37:45):
talk to the right people, different counselors and whatnot and
identify these things within her life. And she come home
and talk to me. And the next thing, you know,
I started praying and I saw things in me. I'm like, well,
you know what, I never really saw that, And then
the whole Holy Spirit would show it, reveal it to me,
and I might do good for a day or two
(38:05):
with that, but then eventually it fall flat on my
face again. I get frustrated and take it out on her.
And the time came whenever I started praying and I said, Lord,
I don't want you to change my wife. I want
you to change me, to be the husband to her
that I need to be.
Speaker 5 (38:24):
Change me. And so close your eyes across this.
Speaker 3 (38:29):
Room, and you've got to be willing to identify the
baggage in your life so that you'd set it down.
Speaker 5 (38:37):
So that you can let the Holy Spirit deal with it.
Speaker 3 (38:40):
And God truly can set you free, and he can
bring restoration within the area of your marriage.
Speaker 5 (38:49):
And your life.
Speaker 3 (38:52):
Bather, I thank you for every man and woman that
is in this room. They're not here by mistake, they're
not here by accident, here because you purpose them to
be your Lord today that there are areas within our
lives and our marriages where we're weighed down. We got
(39:13):
this baggage that we've brought into the marriage. We got
this baggage that we've picked up over the course of time,
and the enemy is utilizing that to bring destruction through
our words to one another. The enemy is utilizing that
to cause us to hurt each other even further. And
(39:34):
Holy Spirit, I pray that today you would open our
eyes to the things in our life that.
Speaker 5 (39:38):
Need to change.
Speaker 3 (39:40):
The weights, the fears, the disappointments, the hurts, the areas
where we've believed the lie of the enemy over your truth.
And Fathers, we identify those things, we choose to give
them to you, and right where you are, right now,
(40:01):
just give those things to the Lord.
Speaker 5 (40:03):
Name them. Father. I give you my anger and I
ask you to change me.
Speaker 3 (40:09):
Father, I give you this sin and I ask you
to change my heart and my life. Father, I give
you this frustration and I ask you to set me free.
And Lord, that's our hearts cry this weekend, that you
(40:30):
set us free through the power of the Holy Spirit,
that you restore the areas where the enemy has tried
to destroy in a road our marriages. And you pour
your love and your hope and your freedom over every
part of our life, over every part of our marriages,
(40:52):
so that we can experience the life and the marriage
that you truly have called us to walk in every
single day. And we declare these things and believe these
things in Jesus name.
Speaker 5 (41:04):
What's everybody saying together? Amen? Can you give the Lord
a good handclapped today? Come on, God's good
The great riverage of starting out the conference and starting
out this morning with worship and then of course with
an amazing, amazing word from Yes.
Speaker 2 (00:32):
I want to introduce our first set of speakers. You
may know that you may have seen them a time
or two, but they have pioneered this whole vision of
love like crazy. There is a podcast out that they
have curated with lots of content where their heart and
tol is just to invest in marriages, marriages and family.
(00:53):
But we know to invest in your family, you've got
to start with your marriage, right. So today, yeah.
Speaker 1 (00:59):
We would love for you to a great warm welcome
to the ones you know in love Pastors Jay and
Stacy Coleman.
Speaker 3 (01:09):
We're going to just dive right in and do some
real good work on our marriages this morning. And here's
what I'm gonna tell You're gonna get out of this
today what you put into it. There's some of you
in this room. You came here because your spouse made
you come. There's some of.
Speaker 4 (01:22):
You in it it is.
Speaker 3 (01:25):
There's some of you here today that you came because
you genuinely, Hey, we love each other.
Speaker 5 (01:30):
We want to call on this marriage. There's some of
you in this room.
Speaker 3 (01:32):
Maybe you're kind of at that place where it's kind
of like this is a last ditch effort.
Speaker 5 (01:36):
We got to work on our marriage. We're not doing well.
Speaker 3 (01:39):
And so if you really have the heart to say, Lord,
work on me, change me, shape me to be the husband,
the wife that the spouse that you've called me to be,
you're going to get a lot out of this. In fact,
I'll say this to you, it is very easy for
me as a pastor. I'm so focused on speaking to
kind of just focus on that and not really focus on, Okay,
(02:02):
what am I going to get out of this? But
right over there, right in the middle of worship, I
just laid hands on myself and I said, Lord, I
thank you that today I'm going to get something out
of this, and you're gonna work on me, and you're
going to change me to be the husband to her
that you need me to be. And so here's what
I want you to do. Close your eyes real quick
and just lay hands on yourself right now and just
(02:24):
say Lord, work on me, Lord, change me, shape me today,
holy Spirit, to be the spouse that you have called
me to be. I'm going to deal with the things
in my life that need to be dealt with, and
I thank you.
Speaker 5 (02:42):
Holy Spirit, you'll give me guidance in Jesus' name. Amen.
Speaker 3 (02:48):
Now, when I said that, work on the thing, y'all
got real quiet, and you're like, ooh, I don't want
people to hear me say that. Now, this was actually
this message was actually my wife's idea.
Speaker 4 (03:00):
Well, as you can tell, I love to travel. How
many of y'all love to travel? Okay, almost everybody? I
would think. I would think anytime I get a chance
to hit the road, take a plane somewhere, even go
on a cruise boat. I am all in. I love
to travel. And but what is what is the worst
(03:21):
thing about traveling? Paying for it? That's true, you gotta
have you gotta you know, have it saved up and
ready to go for your trip. But did somebody say packing? Okay? Packing? Now?
I am absolutely one of those women who I want
(03:44):
to take everything. I need, six pairs of shoes, I
might need this extra outfit. I mean, I know we
only we're only going to be gone for two days,
but I'm packing for like it's a whole week. That
kind of thing, right, And so I end up with
more bad baggage then I need. Well, recently, a couple
(04:04):
of trips back that we took, we came to an
agreement because every time we would travel, and especially go
on a plane, I would get nervous every time I
would check a bag, thinking what if they lose my luggage? Right?
What if I get there and I don't have this,
that or the other, and I can only take so
(04:25):
much with me because I would constantly overpack, right, So
you know I would be nervous about that. And so
we came to this agreement that on an upcoming trip
that we were going to take, that we would only
take a carry on. Well, let me tell you, ladies,
that really stressed me out because how was I going
(04:47):
to fit all the things and all the extra things
that I need into one suitcase? So I told him,
I said, well, I can't pack just to carry on
And he was like why not? And I said, because
we only have one carry on. You have to buy
me a new one. And he was like, okay, I
will buy you a new one.
Speaker 5 (05:05):
This was the old one, this is the new one.
Speaker 4 (05:07):
This is the new one.
Speaker 3 (05:09):
Yes, and this one's mine now, Yes, she got the
new ones.
Speaker 4 (05:13):
I got the new one. And he really is kind
of jealous of it because it's got cool stuff on
the inside, more cool than that one anyway. So so
we decided that we would just go with a carry on.
And so to my surprise, since that trip, every trip
after that, I am delighted to only take a carry on.
(05:36):
I got rid of that extra baggage that I was
taking a bunch of things that I would get there
and I would only wear one or two outfits, but
yet I had six or seven. And so so we
decided we're going to do carry ons. Right, we weren't
gonna over overpack. It's easy for him. He would rather
just take a backpack and like, let's go backpack, and
(05:57):
someone I'm like, that is just ridiculous. I mean, a
carry on is one thing, a backpack that is another. Okay,
So but I was always afraid that I would lose
my luggage.
Speaker 3 (06:11):
Now here's the crazy part about carry on, and this
is kind of what's settled her down. Is that you
don't give this to the airline. You keep it where
with you. It's always with you. Your baggage is always
with you everywhere you go.
Speaker 5 (06:25):
And this is kind of what the heart of.
Speaker 3 (06:27):
This message is today, is that the same thing holds
true in life that every person in this room, I
don't care who you are, we all have baggage in
our lives, am I Right? And we are so accustomed
to holding on to our baggage and keeping it with
us and never really dealing with it, never really getting
to the place that where we can really unpack and
(06:49):
just kind of begin to deal with the things that
come along that it begins to call strain and stress
within our relationships, within our marriages with our kiddos. And
today this message is all about dealing with the baggage
in your life that might be causing some issues within
your life, dealing with the baggage that you brought into marriage,
(07:11):
and dealing with the baggage that you've maybe even picked
up along the way of a couple years of marriage
or twenty years of marriage that is causing strain and
stress and dealing with it. And so today that's what
this message is all about.
Speaker 5 (07:26):
Right.
Speaker 4 (07:26):
So when we decide that we're going to get married,
we each bring in our own set of baggage into
our marriage, right, And that might be a lot of
different things. It could be that we have differing opinions
about things, maybe because of the way that we were raised,
or we bring in, you know, some past relationships, good
(07:46):
or bad, into our marriage. And then we may even
have like some traumatic experiences that we dealt with and
it's just something we're carrying around with us. We haven't
dealt with that, and we bring that into our marriage.
And so we we come in to the marriage with
a lot of baggage and a lot of baggage that
(08:08):
weighs us down. And we don't really realize that sometimes
until we get married, uh, just how some of it
extra baggage might just come to the surface. Right. So
we were, we were in our early twenties. Whenever we
we got married and and we realized, you know that
we we brought in quite a few different things into
(08:30):
the marriage, you know, just from our upbringing, from our
from our childhood, and and and then you know, things
begin to just come to the surface. Whenever coming you know,
when you get married and you're trying to learn how
to live with another person that you've never lived with before.
So I want to ask you, where where does all
(08:50):
this baggage, you know, where where does it come from?
All of a sudden it comes to the surface, and
and you don't realize really, you know, what you're carrying
around with you becomes part of the journey that you're on,
and now the journey that you're on together. Right, So
we're gonna like hypothetically go to the baggage claim, right, go.
Speaker 3 (09:12):
Ahead and talk about what what what baggage looks like
in your life. Now here's where it kind of comes down.
At the airport. Whenever you do check a bag, you
see people at the luggage claim and it's the things
going round and what are you doing? You're looking for
your bag and you see people step up, Oh, that's mine.
Speaker 4 (09:29):
I see my bag because I worry that it's not
going to be there.
Speaker 3 (09:33):
I don't get excited because she has a big pink
ribbon tied on it and I have to go over
and take that. And all the guys look at me
like that's yours, and I'm like, yeah, no, it's actually
my wife's like twenty pairs of shoes in here. Uh,
but you claim that, and you and each person claims
their bag is now here's the problem. We have a
lot of times we spend a lot of effort and
energy denying the things that are in our life. Well,
(09:57):
I don't have a problem with anger. What are you
talking about? And there's things that are causing issues in
our marriage baggage and we say that's not mine, and
somebody it'll come up in convers that your spouse will
say you need to deal with this and you don't
claim it. The only way that you can really deal
with something in your life is if you say you
know what, yes, I have that, and you grab a
hold of it, you identify it so that you can
(10:19):
deal with it.
Speaker 5 (10:19):
So here's what we're going to do.
Speaker 3 (10:21):
We're going to walk through some different We can't hit everyone,
but we're going to walk through some different areas of baggage.
And some of these things are going to be very
familiar to some of you. And today you need to
be able to claim this or identify this within your
life so that you can allow the Holy Spirit to
deal with this so that you can have a healthier
and happier marriage. You guys ready for this, Okay, So
(10:43):
nudge your spouse and say pay attention because this is
where it gets real, okay. Because the first bit of
baggage that oftentimes comes around that we have in our
life for unfulfilled expectations and here's kind of what it
comes down to. How many of you in this room,
since you have been married, there has been at least
one disappointment in your life, in your marriage and in
your life. Raise your hand. Come on, now, this is church.
(11:05):
Y'all be real, Okay, who's had at least one disappointment?
Speaker 5 (11:08):
Raise your hand? All right?
Speaker 3 (11:09):
Some of y'all raise in both hands. Settle down, all right.
It's true we have disappointments. You know why, because life
is hard and marriage is hard, and we had these
expectations going into marriage, and we had these expectations when
we're young and we're starting out this life, and a
lot of times things don't work out quite the way
that we thought that they would work out, Am I right?
(11:32):
And so a lot of times we get to that
place for like, you know what, my marriage isn't quite
where I thought it would be, and I'm stuck in
this job. And we got married and I had such
these these huge hopes and what life was going to
be like these expectations that are unrealistic and they're somewhat unfulfilled.
So as a result, there's anger inside of me. As
(11:55):
a result, there's bitterness inside of me as a result,
I'm frustrated. And when you're frustrated, who do you take
it out on? The one who's the closest to you.
So those unfulfilled expectations in your life and in your marriage,
they begin to spill over because of the baggage that
you were building up. You say, what does this look like?
(12:17):
Proverbs thirteen twelve. Actually I love this verse. It says,
hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a dream fulfilled
is a.
Speaker 5 (12:26):
Tree of life.
Speaker 3 (12:27):
I had these hopes and these dreams and these ideas
of what marriage was going to be like, and it
didn't quite work out the way that I thought it would.
And it just makes me sick whenever I think about that,
and that begins to build up in your life, It
begins to build up in your heart, and then it
spills over onto your spouse.
Speaker 5 (12:47):
Here's the problem.
Speaker 3 (12:49):
A lot of time, the disappointments that we have come
from the fact that we think that Earth is supposed
to be like Heaven.
Speaker 5 (12:57):
Is Earth a perfect environment? Nuh? Not at all.
Speaker 3 (13:02):
In fact, some of you probably got frustrated on the
way here this work. Can somebody cut you off in traffic? Why?
Because we live in a sin filled place, a fall
in place, a broken place, and the only perfect environment
one day is in the presence of God in heaven.
But we have those expectations here and we think that
things are going to be easy and things are going
(13:24):
to come to as easy. And as a result, oftentimes
when things are hard, when things get difficult, we take
it out on our spouse because of the baggage that
we have picked up and we begin to carry along
the anger, the frustration that comes along because of the
unfulfilled expectations. And so I would dare say that in
this room today, there's some of you that this is
(13:46):
some baggage, it's built up in your heart that you
need to deal with within your life, and we're going
to get to that here in a moment.
Speaker 4 (13:52):
So we're carrying around all of this, these things that
cause our baggage to be even heavy than it should be. Right,
So we're also even carrying around untreated pain. So you've
got unfulfilled expectations but also untreated pain. And I think
(14:13):
you know a lot of times that we're just we
might be carrying around a lot of pain in our lives,
but we pretend like we're not. You know, we used
to have the little saying like, oh, well, just you know,
put on your happy face. If we had like some
kind of disagreement, put on your happy face. We've got
to walk into church now, or we've got to go,
you know, see someone, so you know, put on your
(14:34):
happy face. And we're just trained to put this this
smile on our face and in our minds pretend like
everything is so much better than maybe how it really is,
because deep down we're carrying around and just harboring just
deep pain from from different things, especially from our past.
(14:55):
And so you know, we get hurt, we are are,
we're wounded, and we just want to pretend like it's
not a big deal when it really is a big deal.
And so we have to decide are we going to
carry this baggage with us of untreated pain or are
we going to let that go? And so Jeremiah six
fourteen says, they dress the wound of my people as
(15:19):
though it were not serious. Peace peace, they say, when
there is no peace. So we you know, we're carrying
around where we where we're pretending like everything's okay and
oh I'm at peace, but really, deep down we're not,
because we're carrying around pain. Maybe we're carrying around some loss,
(15:39):
Maybe we're carrying around some sadness, Maybe we're carrying around
anger like what he just mentioned. So I'm gonna I'm
gonna just be a little transparent here with you today,
and I want you to be I want you to
(15:59):
just everyone to be honest with themselves. Okay, sometimes we
can walk around with such such a heaviness and untreated pain,
and it comes out of maybe some situations from our
childhood where there has been some form of abuse. And
(16:23):
I look back in in my past and I even
mentioned this some to our our Journey girls when we
had our Embraced conference. But my dad was somewhat abusive
to me. Are neglectful and great guy, workaholic though, and
(16:46):
just did not just did not give the time towards
the relationship that was needed. And so most of us
men and women here in this room, you have experienced
some form of You may have experienced some form of abuse.
Maybe it was emotional, maybe it was verbal abuse, Maybe
(17:06):
it was the things that were said to you. It
could have been sexual abuse, it could have been physical
abuse that you dealt with, and all of these things
that I dealt with that I had kind of stuffed
and I had untreated pain. I was bringing in all
this baggage into my marriage. And how many of you
(17:28):
know when it all came to the surface, who did
I take it out on my spouse?
Speaker 5 (17:35):
Well, when she opened up that bag, I was.
Speaker 4 (17:36):
Like, wow, he was like, what have I done?
Speaker 5 (17:41):
What did I say? I do too?
Speaker 4 (17:44):
Right? So, you know, and unfortunately a lot of times
we just want to stuff the hurt. We want to
stuff that pain. We want to stuff any kind of abuse,
whether it was verbal, emotional, whatever kind it was, okay,
we wanted just stuff that and pretend like it doesn't exist.
And then we carried around with us forever forever, and
(18:09):
that baggage becomes so very heavy, and we simply need
to release that to the Lord, because if we stuff
that hurt, those wounds are there, those issues are there.
We've stuffed them down into our life, and it causes
us to carry this baggage of pain instead of dealing
with it. So we've got unfulfilled expectations that we're carrying
(18:32):
around with us. We've got untreated pain that really rules
and comes to the surface in probably the most inopportune times,
and especially during arguments. And then we also have something
else that we carry with us. It's kind of connected
to this untreated pain, and that is unhealthy self image.
(18:58):
And I know that it's it's easy ladies for us
to like talk about that because it's it's more commonly
discussed about body image and different things like that when
it comes to women. But men, I know that you
also deal with unhealthy self image. You may struggle with that. Okay.
So because people people who are insecure, and they have
(19:21):
that insecurity and that unhealthy self image, they're constantly trying
to prove themselves. We're constantly trying to say, oh no,
in my mind, yeah, I may think poorly about myself,
but let me prove to myself and to everyone else
that I am I am good enough, or I am
(19:42):
smart enough, or maybe that I am pretty enough. You know,
because those are the lies that we believe from the
enemy that speaks into this unhealthy poor self image that
we end up having with our own selves. Rooted in
all of the untreated pain and the abuse are things
(20:05):
that we dealt with younger. We're carrying that around with us,
and when we believe the lives of the enemy, that's
just what the enemy wants because he wants to destroy
our self image. But you see, God has a different
view of us than we have of ourselves. He sees
(20:26):
us that we are good enough, that we are smart enough,
that we are pretty enough. Let's look at Romans twelve
three in the Message Bible. It says the only accurate
way to understand ourselves is by what God is and
by what He does for us, not by what we
are and what we do for him. You know, the
(20:47):
scripture also says that we are wonderfully and fearfully made,
that his view, God's view of who we are is
really what it's what he sees and us. That's the
real view of who we are is what God sees
in us. And he sees so much potential in all
(21:08):
of us, so much potential in our lives, that we
can make a huge, huge difference. But often, though sadly,
we continue to just carry around this baggage of insecurity,
of intimidation and a fear, and we're not seeing ourselves
the way that God sees us. So we're carrying around
(21:29):
unhealthy self image and untreated pain.
Speaker 3 (21:32):
I'm going to tell you the reason why we wanted
to share about this in Stacy's.
Speaker 5 (21:35):
This actually was her idea.
Speaker 3 (21:37):
She said, when we go to the car, let's talk
about the baggage that we deal with. And here's why
we wanted to share about this, because we've dealt with this.
We come into this marriage and there's all these things
that we bring into the marriage and things that we
even pick up throughout the years that we take out
on each other. And we wonder why we're struggling in
our marriage, and we do.
Speaker 5 (21:59):
We have these.
Speaker 3 (21:59):
Unfulfill old expectations, disappointments through life that began to filter
through and make their way as frustration that we take
out on one another. Are these unfolf you know, we
think about untreated pain or hurts. I had no idea.
Whenever we got married. I knew I loved her and
I'm like, you know, you're pretty, I want to marry you.
I love you. And then we step into this marriage.
(22:20):
We live in that little apartment there in Pineville, and
the next thing, you know, that this anger inside of
Stacy started coming out because of the pain that she
had inside of her. Now I didn't know. I was
twenty years old. I didn know how to deal with that.
I wasn't a counselor, and I'm just trying to make
my way through this. And then we get to the
you know, she's talking about an unhealthy self image. And
(22:44):
I would tell Stacy things like, you know what, You're
so beautiful, and it's like it would just bounce off
of her. Yeah, I love you so much, You're so beautiful,
and I'd speak words of affirmation and it was like
it just bounced off of her because of the unhealthy,
you know, image that she had set up for ourself.
And fortunately we actually did the work. Fortunately we stayed
(23:05):
the course. Divorce was not an option, and we did
the work to work our way through these things to
get to the place where we set some of the
baggage down and we dealt with the things and we
begin to unpack things in our lives and in our
marriage to bring us to the place where we are now.
Speaker 5 (23:22):
And here's the last one.
Speaker 3 (23:23):
So you hear these things, but this is one that
goes hand in hand within the church that you better
get a hold of is unrepented sin within your life,
because a lot of times people they carry the baggage
of sin all throughout their life and they ask God
to forgive them, but there's not really life change within
their life. God, I'm sorry for this, Will you forgive me?
(23:47):
Will you clean me up? But they still continue to
go right back to that sin and walk in that sin.
Life changes what the Holy Spirit wants to bring to you.
Psalms thirty two. Just listen to this verse. The writer says,
when I refuse to confess my sin, my body wasted away,
and I groaned all day long, day and night. Your
(24:10):
hand of discipline was heavy on me. My strength evaporated
light water in the summer heat. Now I read this,
and I look at this, and I'm like, man, what
a miserable place to be when you're living in that sin.
You're caught up in that sin. And guess what, when
you're miserable, who else are you going to be miserable?
(24:32):
Your spouse Because there's sin within your life and you're
trying to deal with this and manage this, and you
feel guilty and God forgive me, and then you turn
and run right back to that sin, and you make
your spouse miserable, your kid's miserable. There's no peace within
your life, and you feel the weight of that within
(24:56):
your life, and you're walking through and you're carrying that
baggage of bad choices, and you need to know that
God wants to set you free.
Speaker 5 (25:03):
Let me tell you something.
Speaker 3 (25:04):
One of the greatest things within our marriage is we
begin to identify the things. I remember whenever Stacey came
in one day from sitting down with a counselor. She
started sharing some things with me and I'm like, I
had no idea that you had been dealing with that,
And she said, you know what, She identified it and
then she set the baggage down and walked through life
(25:26):
much much freer. It was so healthy for our marriage.
It was so good for our marriage. And today maybe
you sit here and you say, there's some things sin wise,
there's some pain in my life because the things that
have happened within my life are these disappointments that I've
had and I just keep packing this stuff throughout life,
and man, it's so frustrating, it's so aggravating. I don't
(25:48):
know how to deal with this. But here's how they
I would tell you how to deal with it. Let
God set you free, identify it, call it for what
it is, and let God begin to you within your life,
within your marriage, within your family, because it will make
all the difference in the world.
Speaker 5 (26:08):
Now, I'm gonna say this to you.
Speaker 3 (26:12):
When you go to the airport and you are checking
a bag, it is a great feeling to walk up
to that counter. Now you pray in the whole time
because you watched your wife pack and they tell you
to put that up on the scale and you you're like,
please be under fifty pounds, and most of the time
(26:33):
it's like forty two thirty seven. There's been times we've
had to pull some stuff out, run back and sing
it in the car and I'm like, you don't need
ten pairs of shoes. We're only going for two days.
But here's what's cool. You put that up there, you say,
all right, I'm giving you that, and then you walk
away from it and they deal with it, they take
(26:57):
care of it. And today I'm here to tell you
that you can check the baggage within your life. Those disappointments,
as fears, that anger, that pain, that sin. You can
turn it over to God and say God, I'm giving
you this, and I'm gonna walk away from it and
I'm gonna be so free in my life and in
(27:17):
my marriage and in my family. And it's gonna be
absolutely amazing. He said, well, how do we do that.
Here's how you do it by learning spiritual truths that
God has for your life. Listen, listen to the tewod Corinthians,
Chapter ten. Most of you are probably gonna know this
verse verses three and four. It says, for though we
live in the world, we don't wage war as the
(27:38):
world does. The weapons we fight with are not the
weapons of this world. On the contrary, they have divine
power to demolish strongholds. Those strongholds in your life that pain,
that frustration, that fear, that anger, that addiction, that sin,
whatever it might be, God will just set you free.
(28:01):
And the greatest way that the enemy keeps you bound
up is through lying to you every day. And what
sets you free starts with a t truth. And so
today you're going to learn some truth for your life. Now,
I gotta be careful because I'm a preacher. I'll take
over this whole service and go ahead, baby, you got this.
Speaker 4 (28:21):
So the problems that we have in our lives, they
may seem like natural problems, but in essence they're really
spiritual problems. And you can't fix a spiritual problem in
a natural way, you have to fix it in a
spiritual way. And in this scripture that he just read
in Second Corinthians talks about demolishing strongholds and the strongholds
(28:46):
that keep us bound, and the definition the Greek definition
of stronghold, it says it's a prisoner who is locked
in by deception. That means you have been lied to,
You have been deceived, and the devil convinces you to
hold on, hold on to all this baggage, and I
(29:06):
mean sometimes it wants to outweigh you because it's so much.
But that baggage is a lie. And we believe these
lies because the devil wants to convince us, Oh, this
is just the way you are, this is this is
your lot in life, this is what's been handed to you.
And we believe that lie that we we can't change,
(29:28):
that we can't get rid of this heavy baggage that
we're carrying. I want to look at the next uh,
the next verse of Second Corinthians ten verse five. It says,
we demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up
against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every
(29:49):
thought to make it obedient to Christ. That's what it
means to break the stronghold is to believe the truth.
Speaker 3 (29:59):
Of God's so young couple coming into marriage, and the
things that she thought about herself, the poor self image,
the pain, and she would tell me things that I'm like,
why do you believe that? And the more time I started,
you know, with, the closer we got, and the more
we came into unity together, I begin to realize it's
(30:22):
because of the things that were spoken over her from
the time she was a little girl all the way
until where she was when we got married. The number
one God in her life, her father, had spoke things
into her life that weren't true, and the things that
he spoke I'm trying to counteract that. I'm like, you
know what, You're beautiful, you're valuable, You're wonderful. And it's
(30:44):
like it would just bounce off her because she had
chosen to believe the lie that the enemy had spoken
over her instead of believing the truth that God had
for her. And when she came to the place where
she said, you know what, I don't want to walk
through life like that anymore. I want to believe what
God says about me and what you, as my husband
say about me. Instead of the lies that the enemy
(31:04):
has spoken over my life. And so she came to
the place where she began to allow God to renew
her heart, her mind, and her spirit. And then whenever
you begin to see things like John eight thirty two
where it says you'll know the truth, and the truth
will set you up free. And so maybe you sit
here today and you've identified, man, there's some baggage in
my life. Golly, there's been disappointments, there's pain, there's things
(31:31):
that I've grabbed a hold of, and I'm carrying through
this life, through this marriage, and it's so heavy, and
I want to deal with this today because it's affected me,
it's affecting my spouse, it's affecting my health, it's affecting
my kids. I got to deal with this. So I'm
ready to set it down and be free. And I
want to know the truth that God has. Who in
(31:53):
here wants to know the truth that God has for you?
And the first one is this that you have to
if you're ever gonna deal with the bat, You've got
to be able to identify it and see it for
what it is. But the next thing that you have
to do is you have to believe that God still
loves you. You know what, the enemy speaks over you. God,
there's not a future for you, there's not a plan
(32:14):
for you. Your marriage is probably gonna fall apart. You're not
gonna make it through this. This is your lot in life.
You just have to live this and deal with this.
And the enemy continually lies to you. He tells you
things like God sees the sin, he don't love you anymore.
And so you need to understand that God loves you
(32:36):
and wants to set you free in the areas of
your life where the enemy as you bound up. So
many people are caught up in this religious performance. We
come to church and as she said a few minutes ago,
we put on our happy face. Everybody smile happy, and
people say, you know, how are you doing. I'm good,
(32:56):
Praise the Lord, hallelujah. And you just argued and fought
the entire way to church.
Speaker 5 (33:04):
But what did you do? You put on your happy face.
Speaker 3 (33:08):
So many times we get caught up in this performance,
and on the inside we're convinced that God is angry
at us, that God doesn't love us, and we struggle
with that all the.
Speaker 5 (33:19):
While putting on our happy face.
Speaker 3 (33:22):
You got to know that God loves you, and God
wants to see freedom within your life. I'm going to
read this to you out of John three sixteen. Everybody
knows this verse, but there's a passage three sixteen through eighteen,
and I want to read this to you out of
the message translation because it's awesome how this reads. It says,
this is how much God loved the world. He gave
(33:44):
his son, his one. Look at this and only son.
He didn't have fifty sons to choose from. He didn't say,
you know what, you're my least favorite, sau sends you
how many sons did he have one? And this is
why I did thet so that no one need be
destroyed by believing in him. Anyone can have a whole
(34:09):
and lasting life. You need to get that whole and
lasting life. God didn't go through all the trouble of
sending his son merely to point an accusing finger telling
the world how bad it was. He came to help
to put the world right again. And anyone who trusts
(34:29):
in him is acquitted. Anyone who refuses to trust in
him has long since been under the death sentence without
knowing it. And why because of that person's failure to
believe in the one of a kind son that when
God introduced to him.
Speaker 5 (34:45):
Now check this out.
Speaker 3 (34:47):
God loves you so much that he send his son
to this earth so that you can be set free
through the truth of what Jesus did for you at
the cross.
Speaker 5 (34:57):
So do this for me.
Speaker 3 (34:58):
Close your eyes and say this to yourself, not your spouse,
not your neighbor. God loves me. Now, now don't open
your eyes. You got to believe it.
Speaker 5 (35:17):
Now.
Speaker 3 (35:17):
I want you to say it again. But here's what
I want you to do. I want you when you
say it this time, I want you to to believe
it and feel it and know it.
Speaker 5 (35:29):
Say God loves me. Open your eyes now.
Speaker 3 (35:37):
At the same time, we've got an enemy. Who's tad
who Ah. You got to know your God loves you.
You got to know that your God wants to do
the next thing in your life. And I'm going to
turn it over to you because you're this is youth.
Speaker 4 (35:50):
Because God loves us, he can also he can also
free us. He can set us free. You know, some
of us, like he said, we've bought into this lie.
That is just the way that it is. And maybe
we've even given up because we think it's too hard,
and we need to quit believing the lie, and we
(36:12):
need to not give up. In Romans eight one through two,
it says, with the arrival of Jesus the Messiah, the
faithful dilemma is resolved. Those who enter into Christ being
here for us no longer have to live under a continuous,
low lying black cloud. A new power is in operation,
the spirit of life in Christ like a strong wind
(36:34):
has magnificently cleared the air, freeing you from a faithful
lifetime of brutal tyranny, the hands of sin and death.
Let me tell you, if you want to be free,
you have to surrender. You have to surrender it all
to Him, and He can free you, and he can
restore you. Because it says in Psalm seventy one twenty,
(36:55):
though you have made me see troubles, many and bitter,
you will restore my life again from the depths of
the earth. You will again bring me up.
Speaker 3 (37:05):
Grab your spouse's hand. What's your baggage? First step is identifying?
Speaker 5 (37:14):
Is it anger? Is it frustration? Is it sin?
Speaker 3 (37:20):
Is it poor self image? Is it pain? What is
causing you to walk through life and feeling heavy? And
weighed down what is causing you to take that frustration
out on your spouse. You've got to be willing to
identify what is in your life that's affecting you and
affecting your marriage. I remember whenever Stacy she began to
(37:45):
talk to the right people, different counselors and whatnot and
identify these things within her life. And she come home
and talk to me. And the next thing, you know,
I started praying and I saw things in me. I'm like, well,
you know what, I never really saw that, And then
the whole Holy Spirit would show it, reveal it to me,
and I might do good for a day or two
(38:05):
with that, but then eventually it fall flat on my
face again. I get frustrated and take it out on her.
And the time came whenever I started praying and I said, Lord,
I don't want you to change my wife. I want
you to change me, to be the husband to her
that I need to be.
Speaker 5 (38:24):
Change me. And so close your eyes across this.
Speaker 3 (38:29):
Room, and you've got to be willing to identify the
baggage in your life so that you'd set it down.
Speaker 5 (38:37):
So that you can let the Holy Spirit deal with it.
Speaker 3 (38:40):
And God truly can set you free, and he can
bring restoration within the area of your marriage.
Speaker 5 (38:49):
And your life.
Speaker 3 (38:52):
Bather, I thank you for every man and woman that
is in this room. They're not here by mistake, they're
not here by accident, here because you purpose them to
be your Lord today that there are areas within our
lives and our marriages where we're weighed down. We got
(39:13):
this baggage that we've brought into the marriage. We got
this baggage that we've picked up over the course of time,
and the enemy is utilizing that to bring destruction through
our words to one another. The enemy is utilizing that
to cause us to hurt each other even further. And
(39:34):
Holy Spirit, I pray that today you would open our
eyes to the things in our life that.
Speaker 5 (39:38):
Need to change.
Speaker 3 (39:40):
The weights, the fears, the disappointments, the hurts, the areas
where we've believed the lie of the enemy over your truth.
And Fathers, we identify those things, we choose to give
them to you, and right where you are, right now,
(40:01):
just give those things to the Lord.
Speaker 5 (40:03):
Name them. Father. I give you my anger and I
ask you to change me.
Speaker 3 (40:09):
Father, I give you this sin and I ask you
to change my heart and my life. Father, I give
you this frustration and I ask you to set me free.
And Lord, that's our hearts cry this weekend, that you
(40:30):
set us free through the power of the Holy Spirit,
that you restore the areas where the enemy has tried
to destroy in a road our marriages. And you pour
your love and your hope and your freedom over every
part of our life, over every part of our marriages,
(40:52):
so that we can experience the life and the marriage
that you truly have called us to walk in every
single day. And we declare these things and believe these
things in Jesus name.
Speaker 5 (41:04):
What's everybody saying together? Amen? Can you give the Lord
a good handclapped today? Come on, God's good
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