Right now though. Can we give one more round of applause for Doctor Don Wooster for bringing the word this morning? Thanks John. Uh Wow, what a treat and what an honor it is to get to be with you guys this morning. I love what Mission Grove is doing here. This is and top shelf stuff. It's really great. Uh Everybody I've met here has just been amazing and I think it's really beautiful that they're uh planting something here um to gather around. And I love that the vision is about uh more than this that they're giving themselves away in a bigger way. Life always gets better when we give it away. Um Anything we hold on to too tight, it's gonna get small. So really thankful to get to be here. And um and I love this series that uh John has been going through in sound trucks. Um And so as it works out that today, the soundtrack that we're talking about is marriage. So here's a little pop up question. Uh What does the soundtrack if you're married? If you're not married, then you know what? You still have a soundtrack in your life? But what does the soundtrack if you are married? What is the soundtrack sound like? Um Is it the sound of music? Uh Star Wars Aliens? Um Right. There's some sort of feel, there's some sort of movement, there's some interior sense and I love that idea that um that the song and the soundtrack matters in our minds. It matters in our minds because that soundtrack kind of creates rhythm and rhythm creates habit and habit creates habitat and we eventually live in the marriages and families that we create. Right? So, what are we creating? Um, what are we listening to? What are we believing? I think the music really matters. Um, I, uh, my, uh, my family and I have lived up here for about 20 years. I have, uh, we have four kiddos. My wife Renee would be here. Um, but we have some scheduling things that we couldn't make. Uh, last night I was coming up here, we live, um, down about four miles down the road. Rat for Tatum and between Greenway and Thunderbird. I was coming up here meeting a friend for dinner. He was in the car and we got up to coming up Tatum Deer Valley Road and he goes, he goes, are you speaking at a church tomorrow? And I go, yeah, we're just turning on Deer Valley Road and he goes, he goes, what, what are you speaking at? I go that one and I pointed to the little signs you guys have on Tatum and Deer Valley Road. And the timing was so perfect that I could point to the, the little sign and he goes, no, seriously, I go seriously that church right there down the road. Uh, so I couldn't tell if he was impressed or concerned that, uh, but good job whoever put the signs up last night, Saturday night, thumbs up. It was great. Um, I, uh, uh, w where we live down there, we moved into this area about 20 years ago. I was on staff with young life at the time. It's a nonprofit organization that reaches out to high school kids. And about, uh, usually twice a week I would go down back then the home printers did not print as effectively. So I'd go to this Kinko's which is on, it's wa it was on Thunderbird and Tatum and about twice a week I'd go in there and I usually grab my Starbucks coffee. Shout out for the cold brew they have here like this should be your permanent church home. They're serving you cold brew. So, yes, always go to a place that serves good coffee. Um, so I was at Starbucks, I was getting coffee and I, once, twice a week, I'd go across right in the same little area, uh, to Kinko's walk in, it's usually 637 in the morning. Make coffees. Go to my office. I walk in one morning and I'm totally unprepared. For this. But as soon as I opened the door and it's quiet in Kinkos, there's not a lot going on. This is what greets me. Hello, my friend. Yeah. Ok. Yeah, that's exactly some of you look like I do. And my friend and this little short guy from behind the counter comes running out. He goes, welcome to Kinko's and I'm looking around like, ok. Right. He comes running at me. He goes thank you so much for coming today. How can I help you? Go? Uh I was gonna make some copies. Oh, this way, right. His name is Saby. He takes me over to the copy machine. You know, he sets me all up and he goes, I have to tell you are such a big, tall, strong, handsome man. Thank you, Sabre. No one else has said that today, right? We proceeded to make the copies. He been on the mall because is there anything else I can do? And I go, no one agrees. Please come back my friend. All right, Saby, I think I will, you know, go on to my office, get busy, do some stuff. It's about a week later and I'm thinking, oh, I gotta make copies. I run back in. I kind of forget about it as soon as the door goes. Hello, my friend. Right. I mean, we're right back in. It takes me all the way through. It happens two or three times and I finally go I go, ok, I don't wanna start talking about the Kinko's guy because that sounds weird. But, so Renee, one morning I go, hey, I'm gonna run over to get some coffee and make some puppies. You wanna come? She goes, yeah. So I just wait, I let her walk in the door, right and she walks in the door, I walk behind him, you know, and she walks in the door. He goes, hello, my friend and she looks, and then he looks at me and goes, oh, is this your beautiful life? And she goes, hello? She goes, you are so beautiful on this, right? And uh, you know, we have this whole, she goes, oh my gosh. Is he like that all the time, all the time? And um she goes, I'm gonna start making copies here, you know. Yeah, I know. And uh there's one day I was coming home from work really tired, lousy day, everything else. I'm driving to my house and I have this thought in my head to go, I really wanna go make a copy right now. Like I opened up my glove box looking for something I could just go in just to get a copy just to get some of that welcome and that encouragement and that recognition, right? Were made for that. And you wouldn't expect to find it in a Kinkos, right? Because all you're doing is making copies. It's just, you know, there's nothing very exciting about it, but I would say, um, there's something really life giving if we can bring a life giving energy even in mundane places, particularly in mundane places. Um, if you're making dinner and cleaning up and you're, you're doing those things that the energy we bring and the attitude we have, we still get to decide that. Um, and it savory kind of gave him this idea. You know what? I, I think my wife and family probably need a little more savory. I could probably bring a little more s I could probably bring a little more life into some things that maybe are not inherently um life giving. They're just kind of the requirement. And I would say, I think part of um when we look at life together, we look at this idea of our marriage together. Um the kind of energy, the kind of attitude, the kind of willingness, the kind of welcoming. Um I think it matters. I think it matters how we welcome each other. I think it matters how we recognize each other. I think words of encouragement. James says, uh that words have the power of life and death. You can speak life giving words. Um You can talk to yourself in life giving ways and you can talk to one another in life giving ways. You can also talk to yourself in really devastating ways in one another. But life giving words, man in a, in a marriage. Uh It's pretty important. Um, I really appreciate how honest the Bible is when it talks about marriage. I mean, it doesn't spiritualize, it doesn't, you know, sanitize, it talks about marriage the way it really is. Um, and I'd say three things that I think marriage really are. Number one, marriage is really messy. Can I get an Amen? Ok. If you're just getting married, put your ear muffs on. But I'm just gonna tell you, uh, marriage is messy and you know what the reason marriage is messy is because there are people in marriage. That's why it's messy, right? Um Church is really messy. You know why? Because you guys are here because there's people, schools are messy because there's people, right? Friend groups are messy because uh club sports are really messy. Um If you've had that experience, um you, you know why? Because there are people and people are messy, they just are right. And so marriage is two people putting their lives together. So it's gonna be messy. Uh The second thing is you kind of go marriage takes a bit of a miracle. Um Amen. That's what I'm saying. Right. I mean, it's, it's beautiful. We've been at two weddings this last month and you know, couples that are amazing and they're standing up and they're making these beautiful promises and the harp is playing and they look amazing. I will never blah, blah, blah. I will always blah, blah, blah. And you know, everyone that's been married for time is going, yeah, that's not gonna work out quite like that. Oh, that's beautiful. Oh my gosh. I love your flowers. Yeah, that's not gonna work. Like, I mean, there's a certain sense of kind of like going, wow, it's gonna take a little bit of a miracle to share your hearts, your minds, your bodies, your future, your money, your families, over a long period of time, we're gonna need a miracle for that to be good. And the last thing I'd say is when you look at scripture, what scripture says is that it's kind of mysterious. Marriage is kind of a mystery. Um At the end of Ephesians five, the longest section we have in the Bible about marriage. Ephesians 532. Paul says this after he's, he said more about marriage than anywhere else in all of scripture. He goes, you know, the thing is though, this is a profound mystery. Oh, thanks Paul, a profound mystery, right? Uh And the word mystery that he uses it, it, it doesn't mean um you know, some hocus pocus kind of trickery thing. Um The word mystery means hidden purpose. It means God is up to more than we know when we step into a marriage. It's not random, however random. It may look the things that are happening to us. Financial markets are random, other things. Bitcoin is random. God's not random. There's a hidden purpose in our life together. He's up to something, but we're not gonna understand all of it. So if you're trying to understand everything about yourself and your partner and your marriage, God just says, relax, you won't understand all this, right? But it's purposeful. It's not random, it's not an accident. Um In, in John's Gospel, the very first chapter in John's Gospel in addressing the messiness that we're in, it says that, you know, and that he became Christ, he became flesh and pitched his tent among us. God knows it's messy, but turns out that he likes the mess. So he came right into it, pitched his tent and goes, here's right in the middle of a community. There's all kinds of fights and fractions and people behaving badly and all kinds of things. And he goes, I wanna be right in the middle of the mess. That's where I wanna come. Jesus is always comfortable in the mess. Sometimes we're not comfortable in the mess. We're not comfortable with him being with us in the mess. But he goes, oh, that's my favorite spot. I'm gonna come right into the messiest place. Pitch my tent and make my home there in the second chapter of John's Gospel. The very first miracle that Jesus does in John's Gospel is at a wedding. This couple fires up. They invite a bunch of people. They're three or four days into a six day wedding reception. Thank you very much. Name of Jesus. A six day wedding reception. I have two daughters. Um, I'm hoping to get in and out, like, in the 90 minutes. Right. Um, six day wedding reception and somewhere day three or four they run out of wine and if you're hosting people in the Middle East, you gotta serve wine for all of it. And they run out, they had enough to start their marriage, but not enough to finish. Not enough to keep the joy, not enough to keep the laughter, not enough to host in this really joy filled way. And Jesus is at that wedding and when they go to him and say, hey, they're out, uh, his mother tells the servants do whatever Jesus tells you to do. If you're out of joy, if you're out of connection, if you're out of hope, you started your marriage two weeks ago or 10 years ago or 40 years ago. If you're out, Mary says, do whatever Jesus tells you to do. And what he does is kind of a miracle. He takes water, bath water and turns it into really good wine so that this celebration can continue. And I would say that first miracle that Jesus did is a miracle that I had. I think he has to do in every one of our lives. We have enough to start a life together. But at some point, we're gonna run out. At some point, we need him to show up and what he actually makes is better wine than what we start with. It's an upgrade not to get us through. It's an upgrade because when God shows up, he brings better and more than what we had before. Right? Um So he's with us. He's, he's alongside, it's messy. We need a miracle. He's good at miracles. Um What I wanna look at this morning for a few minutes was this fourth chapter of John where Jesus is gonna meet another woman who's had a lot of marriage experience. None of it good. Um uh And it's in John chapter four, his disciples have gone into Samaria to get supplies. Samaria and Israel have a very conflicted history. They do not like each other. Samaritans built their own temple and they just are not, there's no bueno between them. They've got some of their own theology and practices. So Jesus is in, outside of a Samaritan village. He's at the, well, this woman comes out at noon which um she comes out at noon, which would be unusual because they usually do that together. But at noon she's out by herself and Jesus is there. We're gonna, if you read that John four, which I think is a really beautiful section of scripture. Jesus knows this whole woman's history and she's got a pretty hard history. Um She has five ex husbands, that's a lot of ex husbands. Um Right. She's living with a guy currently probably met on Tinder or some version of that. Right. Um, and who knows what that relationship is like? And then she's a Samaritan. So they have, they have some ideas theologically. They're a little sideways and wacky. Right. So Jesus meets this woman with five ex husbands and a live in and some wacky theology and you kind of go man, what is Jesus gonna say to her? Um, some marriage advice, um, some morality advice, some theology advice. Uh, and Jesus in this encounter in John Ford, he doesn't primarily address her marriage issue or her morality issue, her theology issue. Jesus looks at this woman and his assessment is, here's her primary issue. She's thirsty, she's thirsty and oh, by the way, she got married five times hoping that would satisfy it and it didn't. And she's living with a guy right now and that hasn't and she's part of a faith system that isn't really doing it. This woman is thirsty, right? And um uh we hear Jesus response to this woman um uh when he says to her in John four verse 10, um if you knew the gift of God and who it is that ask you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water. Um If you knew the gift of God and who it is that talking, you would have asked him and he would give you living water. This woman is out at the well, every day at noon by herself lonely and trying to stay alive mostly with disappointment and hurt in her own history. And Jesus goes, oh, if you knew the gift of God and who it is you're talking to, you would ask him and he would give you living water. Uh, and I would say whether you're single or married, um, if you really wanna do something great for your marriage, um, get a hold of some living water, um, you're never gonna be in a relationship that's healthier than you are. And the thing that will really make you healthy is living water, something that can make you feel connected and alive from the inside out, right? And Jesus tells this woman, if you only knew the gift of God and who you're talking to, you would ask me and I'd give you living water and this woman doesn't completely understand what Jesus is talking about. And so, you know, she kind of explains to him that she has um her own water. And in a couple of verses later in 13 and 14, um Jesus response to her having her own will is everyone who drinks. Um this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life. Um You know, there are wells in our lives, there are wells in our culture. This woman uh they happen to have a, uh, Jacob's Well, which is a pretty famous, important. Well, so when Jesus said I have living water, she goes well, I've got something just as good. I, I've got Jacobs. Well, and it's a very significant, um, I haven't been there but I'm told, and I Google tells me you can actually, uh, travel to that part of the world today and you can go see Jacob's. Well, it's still there. Um, So it's a pretty legit deal. And this woman Jesus goes, you're thirsty and she goes, no, I've, I've got it well, right here, but here's the deal. Well, water doesn't make us well, well, water doesn't make us well. If you're thirsty, you can drink something and you can temporarily satisfy that thirst. But Jesus goes, here's the problem with well, water. It satisfies your thirst. It comforts you for a little while and then you gotta come back for it. It gives you a little relief for a little while and then you got to come back again. Well, water becomes very habit forming. You just gotta keep coming back. You gotta get it again because you keep getting thirsty. Right? Well, water doesn't get into your soul, which is really what's thirsty. Well, water satisfies your senses, right? God gave us our senses and they're great special effects, right? Our ability to see and smell and hear and taste and touch. Those are all senses that God gave us. Well, water has a way of distracting or satisfying our senses to go. Wow, that felt good. That sounded good. Um, that tastes good. Those are your senses being satisfied. That's not your soul being felt right? And when we're drinking well, water, we're satisfying our senses, but we're not filling our soul. And there are lots of wells. There was Jacob's. Well, in her day we have a lot of cultural wells. It was, hey, hey, do you wanna feel better quickly? Um Do you wanna kind of have your, your senses satisfied or distracted or numb? We have lots of ways to doing that, but we're meant to live. Our souls are meant to be alive and whatever we do with our senses, our senses are great supplements to our souls, but they're horrible substitutes. And if we're just trying to live from our senses, it'll never be enough, it'll never be enough. Our souls will still be thirsty. And so for this woman, Jesus is kind of saying, you know what I'm offering you water for your soul, not satisfaction for your senses. My um uh my son works for Apple. Um They're very profitable count. Um you know, company. Um But they have this amazing ability. Like most other parts of our culture, we live in kind of a consumer society. We live in a free market society. And so it all works because we all buy things and that makes everything going well. If you're gonna get people to buy things, you have to make them dissatisfied with what they have. And so our culture is pretty good at making us dissatisfied. Um And my son works for Apple and I remember when he got his, his apple, I think it was his eight or his 10, but he was gonna make a pretty big investment to get this phone. And I go, you know, Jacob, do you really need that phone? He goes, dad, you have no idea. And he gives me the whole spiel just in anticipation of his apple eight or 10 and the camera it's got and all the other stuff it's got, you know, and, and um, so he's just going, dad, this phone will change your life. Um, and at that time he goes, he goes, he goes, what phone do you have? Right? I have four kids. Right? And at that time I've been upgrading and doing the rest of that and I go, I don't even know and he looks at it and he goes, dad, this is an apple four. Oh, that's embarrassing. This is a dinosaur phone, right? I can't believe you're carrying this. Oh my gosh, don't tell any of my friends that you have an Apple four. Ok. You know, he goes, how do you, why do you have an Apple four? And I go because I have four kids, you know how much those straight teeth cost you cost me. I'm sorry, you don't want your club sport, right? And he goes, oh, an Apple phone. You can't do anything. I go, I can make calls. I can check emails. I can take pictures. That's everything I need to do. Right. You go at the Apple 10, I'm telling you it'll change your life. You know, it's got this whole deal and I eventually turn my Apple phone in and I have to say the guys that took it in were just like going, whoa, Apple four. This gotta be the last one in the United States. He calls one of the other guys over. He goes, hey, Chip, come here. This guy's got an Apple Four. He goes, wow, I've never seen one. You know, I might have kept it a little too long. I might have. Um, and I go, is there a trade in? He goes, uh, yeah, it's, let's say it's worth, uh, $4.50. He goes, maybe you should keep it though. I go, yeah, I'll keep it. It's in the drawer somewhere in my house, right? Uh, but here's the amazing thing is when you get the new phone, right? My son got the apple 10 changed his life. Well, 18 months later, the 11 comes out and suddenly goes, I gotta get the 11. I go, wait a minute. I thought the 10 changed your life. He goes, no, dad, the 10, the eleven's got the new camera, the new deal, right? This ability to have us chasing things. They kind of offer us some satisfaction and then they're dissatisfied and now we need a bigger, better, newer thing. Right. When we get on that sense, we're drinking well water and there's nothing wrong with great stuff, but it doesn't get all the way into our souls. It doesn't get into the place that we're really designed to feel alive and to feel connected. And when Jesus talks about our lives, he wants us alive from the inside out. Um He doesn't want us just experiencing some rush that comes from a satisfaction or some bump or some anticipation. He goes, man, I want you alive from the inside out. I want there to be good, good music, good rhythm, good experience. I want those things happening and our culture a lot of times says that the best life happens, if we can get really good things on the outside, that will felt really great on the inside. But scripture says that life doesn't actually come from the outside in life actually comes from the inside out. And if you can get real life on the inside, it will flow out whatever is happening in your lifestyle. If you have big life on the inside, um that will just flow on the outside. And there's a real decision I think we have to make about where we think life comes from, whether it's outside in or inside out. But Jesus talks about inside out. Um John Gottman is a social researcher. He's been studying marriage for probably 30 years, has written extensively all kinds of insights, um, and has identified has really good materials. But, um, he wrote a book some years ago where he looked at, you know, after looking at thousands of marriages and he says there's four things that will just, um, really destroy a marriage. There's four patterns, there's four habits, there's four, there's a soundtrack that will take your life apart in a marriage and he's identified four, right? Um And so in his research, the first part of that internal habit or pattern is if there's a sense, if there's a habit of being critical inside a marriage relationship, that, that spirit of being critical will be a kind of a, he calls them the four horsemen. They will destroy connection if there's a habit of being critical. Um Now on these four areas that Gotman does an amazing job of identifying, he doesn't necessarily identify an antidote to this poison. But Paul writing to the Ephesians in chapter four just before his marriage in, in Ephesians 432 Paul talks about the attitude we should take with one another. Gottman says that a critical attitude will tear you apart in Ephesians 4 2032. Paul says, be kind to one another. If you have a critical attitude with someone you're married to, it'll tear you up if you have a kindness. Uh It will allow you some connection. Um The second thing Gottman says, um is contempt if you have a dismissive attitude towards someone, uh that's ridiculous that you need six different kinds of taco sauces. I mean, if you have a, that's probably too close to home. I like a lot of sauces. Um But if you have a dismissive contempt towards your partner, it really does damage. And in that same verse in Ephesians, although Gotman doesn't say how to not have contempt. Paul says, um to be compassionate to one another, contempt will tear you up. Compassion will connect you to go. I'm really sorry. That's hard, right? Um Got man's third thing is he goes, you know, if you, if you get defensive with one another and you start finding fault with one another that will tear you apart and what Paul says in that same verse in Ephesians 432 is to be forgiving of one another. If we're forgiving of one another, right? We have this trajectory. We have this soundtrack that's happening. We have these patterns that are forming in our lives. And the fourth one is if you withhold Godman says, if you withhold and withdraw and leave that person abandoned and alone, it'll be devastating. And what Paul says at the end of the 432 um is to offer comfort to one another because we have been forgiven ourselves mercy if we're kind, if we're compassionate, if we're forgiving and we're merciful we are breathing life into our life together. But if we get critical, if we have contempt, if we have defensiveness, if we withdraw, we're literally tearing ourselves apart, we're tearing our union apart. Right. There's an antidote for the things that tear marriages up and they flow very naturally. Um through this process that Christ talks about coming to be with us in a life giving way. Um At the end of this passage in Ephesians or in John four, um the woman has some hope. In the first century, there was a lot of hope about a Messiah that was going to come and relieve the stress and the pressure and so on. John for uh verses 25 and 26 the woman says to Jesus, uh I know that Messiah called Christ is coming and when he comes, he will explain everything to us. Now, Jesus has not revealed who he is to anyone. He hasn't told his family, his disciples, any community leaders, anyone in his hometown, anyone in the church, Jesus is just the carpenter son. He hasn't revealed his mission to anyone. And here's this woman with five ex husbands a live in and some interesting theology. And Jesus said to her, I, the one you're speaking to I am, he um here's a woman who has a history that's devastating and overwhelming uh with a lot of heartache, a lot of rejection, a lot of mistakes, the word Messiah um in Hebrew means the one who wipes the slate clean is the Messiah. And this, this woman has a horrible past that she can't get past. But she goes, someday the Messiah will come. Everything on that slate. Every mistake I've made every regret I have. Someday the Messiah will come and he'll wipe that slate clean. And Jesus looks at that woman goes. It's me. I'm the Messiah. Give me your slate. Give me your five ex-husbands. Give me your tinder boyfriend, give me your, your faith and your non faith. Give me your board. Let me wipe it clean. That's the gospel as Jesus come to go. What, what, what's happened to you? What have you done? What's been done to you? Can I wipe your slate clean? Can I cover you? Can you and I have a fresh start together. That is the work of the Messiah and only a messiah can do it. Only a Messiah can do it. We can't do it for ourselves. We can't do it for each other, but a Messiah can do it for us and then we can give that gift to each other. And I would say the good news, which gospel means good news is that he wants to do it. He's prepared to do it. He's willing to do it and he's inviting us to let him do it. And if we say yes, uh he's as responsive to us as savory. He's as willing. He's as energetic. He's as welcoming to say. Let me wipe that slate. Let's start again. Let's begin again. Let's have something life giving in us that we can give to one another. If you're living with resentment and bitterness with a partner, a spouse, it'll tear you up, it'll eat you up from the inside out. God has mercy for us and each other. You ask God, God, would you give me mercy for my partner? Because he's really hurt me. He's really betrayed me. He's really ignored me. If you ask God to give you the power to forgive your partner. God has a river of mercy if we're willing, God has a river of mercy. If you have so much critical judgment against yourself for your own history, the choices you've made or the places that you have acted up or acted out. God wants you to forgive yourself too. He's got a fresh start for all of us. That's good news, right? And in marriage, we need a lot of fresh starts. Um I've been with an amazing woman for a long time and I gotta tell you, um she has wiped my slate many times. So do you get a fresh start with me? That's mercy. Mercy is in giving someone what they deserve. It's giving them what they need. It's a really powerful gift inside of a marriage to give each other mercy. God gives it to us, invites us to give it to one another. Um It's good news, what God's up to in our individual lives, in our married lives and our family lives. So, uh, I wanna pray for you guys and I wanna encourage you wherever you are in your own continuum, personally, relationally, um Keep hearing, keep being open um to a life from the inside out to living water.