Full text of Zac Poonen’s sermon titled ‘Building Fellowship’ which is a part of the sermon series Married Life And Raising Children.
Listen to the MP3 Audio here:
TRANSCRIPT:
Zac Poonen – Bible Teacher
So, let’s turn to Genesis in Chapter 1.
We see there when God made man, He had a great expectation for them. And I believe when God allowed you to be married, He had a great expectation for you.
But you see how soon God was disappointed with Adam and Eve. And I think that’s been the case with millions of Christian married couples. They are united with great pomp and show and a lot of money. It all looks very grand on the wedding day to impress people.
But as the marriage progresses from day to day, it’s not glorious anymore. And yet we have to ask ourselves, is that the will of God? No.
So we need to understand some principles in God’s Word that you all have the privilege of hearing right from the beginning of your married life in this church, which is not true in many other churches.
When God made man, He said ‘It’s not good for man to be alone.’ And God took away that loneliness. Remember those words.
Genesis chapter 2 and verse 18: ‘It is not good for man to be alone.’ The opposite of being alone is being in fellowship. That was the first reason why God made a wife for Adam.
You see, if you were to ask the average man today, why does he want to get married? He’d say, ‘because I have such a strong sexual desire that I have to get married.’
Well, there’s nothing wrong in that. The Bible says to avoid fornication, let every man have his own wife. (1 Corinthians 7:2) But that’s not the reason why God made a wife for Adam. He didn’t say, ‘Boy, Adam is struggling sexually, so I better give him a wife.’ That was a secondary thing.
Now, it’s not unimportant. I think it is important. If you don’t put first things first and second things second, you’re going to have problems. It’s like standing on your head. The head must be on top and the feet must be on the ground. We don’t have to cut off our feet, but the feet must be down.
So, if you make sexual fulfillment the most important reason for marriage, I can tell you right from the beginning, you’re going to be frustrated. You’re going to have a very happy marriage, because everybody in the world seeks for that reason also. But if it’s put in its proper place, then it’s okay.
So what the Lord said, it’s not good for man to be alone. So the primary purpose of marriage is fellowship, companionship, not even children. Children come second, and sexual fulfillment, I would say, is third.
I’ll tell you why I say that. Supposing your wife is very seriously sick, so that you cannot have a sexual fulfillment with her. What are you going to do? Look for another woman? If that is primary, that’s what will happen. And that’s why even a lot of married people go to internet pornography.
Why do believers, married believers, married men among believers, go looking for internet pornography? Why would they want to look at the naked bodies of other women, it’s because they made sexual fulfillment number one. That’s not number one.
It’s not good for man to be alone. Fellowship. Now, fellowship is something which all of you may not have seen in your parents at home, if your parents were not believers in the church. If your parents were believers in the church, there’s some hope there. But if your parents were not believers in the church or in some dead church, you probably never saw much fellowship between them. They just did their jobs and we have absorbed in India a lot of the heathen culture that surrounds us, even though we call ourselves Christians.
And one of those things is the lack of fellowship, the lack of appreciating one another. These are all very important in marriage. So, you find here when God made man, as soon as they sinned, it says here that when as soon as the very first thing that Adam and Eve did, in Genesis 3.6 it says they ate of the tree and immediately they became sinners.
And what’s the very next thing that happens when sin comes between a husband and wife? Very interesting to see this.
They immediately sewed fig leaves, Genesis 3.7, and loin coverings.
Now, who were they hiding from? They were not hiding from the cats and the dogs and the animals when they wore those clothes. We don’t wear clothes to hide from the cats and the dogs in our house. We wear clothes to cover our nakedness before people. But there was nobody else in the Garden of Eden.
So, why were they covering themselves when there was no other human being there? They were covering themselves from each other. They did not want to be seen as they really are. They saw there’s something about me which is not very… You know, whatever we hide is not very presentable. What we hide is what we don’t want other people to see. You know that. Everything in life that we hide is what we don’t want people to see, whether it’s in our house or our body or anything.
So, I see this covering between Adam and Eve as trying to cover something in me which I don’t want my husband to see or I don’t want my wife to see.
And there’s a spiritual principle we can see here. One of the results of sin is we are not willing to be open and transparent with each other. We feel there are things in our life which we want in our personality which we want to cover.
Now, we don’t do a good job of covering it. We use fig leaves. But it’s pretending, and all human beings grow up like that.
And it is impossible to fellowship with anyone who is wearing a mask because it’s not the real person. But that started with sin, hiding oneself from each other.
So, there’s something we’ve got to learn there. And that is because of a feeling that if that person sees me as I really am, he will not accept me or she will not accept me. To think that your wife will not accept you if she really sees your weak points. And your husband will not accept you if he really sees your weak points.
And that’s because in the back of our mind we also feel God Himself will not accept us if He sees us as we really are. Of course, we forget that He always sees us as we really are. But I feel that many, many believers, even after many, many years calling themselves believers, do not feel that God is really happy with them. That God has accepted them just as they are.
I want to ask all of you sitting here, how many of you can honestly say, I’m absolutely convinced that God has accepted me just as I am. With all my weaknesses, with all my past failures, and with all my present failures. Past failures, of course, we know God forgives. But I think our problem is to believe that God accepts us with the weaknesses we still have. Which we haven’t overcome.
And then we feel that God can’t possibly be accepting me when He sees all these weaknesses that there are still in me. And that is the reason why we are hesitant to be ourselves with each other.
So we have to learn something from this Adam and Eve trying to cover themselves from each other. They were trying to cover themselves from God as well. Because we read, when God came in the next verse — when God came into the garden, they hid themselves from the presence of God. There again, the same thing.
They hid themselves from each other and they tried to hide themselves from God. I mean, that is the height of stupidity to go behind a tree. It’s like you play hide and seek with children. You can go behind a tree. You can’t even do that with an adult. An adult will see behind that tree.
Imagine hiding behind a tree to hide from God. I mean, they were off their head. They were crazy. Sin makes a person absolutely stupid. You know that sin makes you stupid? Holiness will make you really intelligent. Sin makes you stupid. It made Adam so stupid, Adam and Eve. They thought they could go behind a tree and hide from God.
But it’s this feeling. What is the feeling they had? We have done something wrong. Now God will not accept us. Right from the beginning, this is the thought in their mind: God will not accept me as I am. Little did they realize how much God loved them. That even in that condition, God had already made a plan to send Jesus to earth because later on He tells the serpent rather, verse 15, the seed of the woman will crush your head.
So before He says anything to Adam and Eve, He punishes the devil and says, ‘My Son is going to come and crush your head, and My Son is going to be born from a woman.’
So you see, God had already made a plan and Adam and Eve did not know that. If only you knew how much God loved you when you have failed and how much God loves you even when you’ve messed up your life and how much He loves you even when you’re still struggling to overcome some habits, you would have no hesitation to go to God straight away and say, Lord, I’m still struggling. I haven’t overcome but I want to be what You want me to be.
I want to say that He loves you. So I believe the secret of a happy married life begins with your believing and knowing that God loves you and accepts you just as you are.
You may think, what’s the connection between that and our marriage? It’s got everything to do with your marriage. Your horizontal problem between your husband and wife is because your vertical problem is there between you and God.
When that is set right, this will be set right, the horizontal. If the vertical is not set right, the horizontal, you’ll always have problems. And those of you who are still struggling with accepting one another and getting upset with each other and difficult to forgive one another for the wrongs you see in each other, ask yourself, is it not also true that you find it very difficult to accept that God loves you just as you are with all your failures? I’m sure it is.
So let’s begin there. Let’s get the foundation right and realize that your problem with your marriage partner is because of your problem with God. It’s like bringing up children. The most important, the greatest thing you can, the best thing you can do to bring up your children right is to love your wife.
You say, what’s God loving my wife do with the children? It’s got everything to do with it. It’s connected. So the best thing you can do to love your wife is to love God and to feel accepted by Him. Then your relationship as husband and wife will be right.
So we don’t accept one another because we find perfection. There are things we don’t like other people to know. And I’m not saying that we should reveal ourselves to everybody in the church that way, but between husband and wife there must be an openness where we don’t try to hide things from each other.
Now I want to add a word of caution there, because some people can take even that to an extreme. Remember, the New Testament, we are led by the Spirit and not by laws. The big problem with a lot of worldly marriage seminars is that they teach certain laws and principles. In places like America, they’ll tell the husband, you must call up your wife two, three times a day from your office and say, I love you. I’m not going to teach you all that. It’s all very artificial. Those are techniques and laws and they do all that every day and then after six months they divorce each other also. So it doesn’t work.
In the New Testament, in the New Covenant, we’re not given laws. We’re given the Holy Spirit. So you’ve got to be careful that you don’t take anything I say like a law or a principle and I’ll say, now I’ve got to do this. I’ve got to be absolutely honest with my wife.
I’ll tell you, there are certain things you should not be honest with your wife about. A lot of people don’t agree with me in this but think of — supposing you’re having a tremendous problem in your office and that can be a burden, and if you put that burden on top of your wife’s head by telling her all about it, when she already has a burden with children and home and so many things which you don’t have because you go to work, you’re going to add to her burden.
And I believe there are a lot of things that we face in our work which we should be able to carry ourselves. It says in Galatians 6, let every man carry his own burden and don’t dump that one ton weight on top of your wife’s head. She’ll have to carry it all her life. She’ll be living in tension at home which you put on her head.
So we should not be absolutely honest with our wives about things which are going to be a burden for her to keep thinking about. We must be wise in what we share with our wives about burdens we face in different areas because she may not understand the struggle you’re facing in your office or in some other area. We’ve got to be wise in what we share so please keep that in caution when I say we must be open with each other.
In a fallen world like ours and where we are weak people and the wife is a weaker vessel and the Bible says a husband must live in an understanding way with his wife, and that means that you’ve got to recognize that she’s a weaker vessel and you don’t put heavy suitcases on her head when you’re traveling because she’s a weaker vessel. You can carry the heavy suitcase and give her something lighter. The same principle applies when you put burdens into her mind. Don’t put heavy burdens into her mind. You carry the heavy burdens like you carry the heavier suitcase and make sure that the wife who’s a weaker vessel is not burdened with things which are unnecessary and I’m not saying you shouldn’t pray and share with her anything you’re struggling with yourself but you have to be careful that it does not…
I personally feel if you can handle it yourself, handle it yourself. What I’m talking about in your mutual relationship there must not be a trying to hide from one another. That’s what I’m talking about. In our relationship we must be transparent and seek to build fellowship.
Remember God said it’s not good for man to be alone. So it’s fellowship that we need to build with one another which is very, very important. I’m not saying that you should not have a sexual relationship until you build a spiritual fellowship because then you may be waiting for years.
I remember one young married couple who was not in our church but came visiting us and this wife had a super spiritual idea where she got some crazy idea. Sometimes women get those crazy ideas that we must be one in our spirit before we become one in our body. So even though the husband and wife were married for a number of days they never had any physical relationship because she was waiting to be one in her spirit and the poor husband was absolutely frustrated and came to me for counsel and said, what shall I do? Both of them.
I told them, ‘Sister, don’t be stupid. It’s going to take many years before you become one in spirit, and if you frustrate your husband like that you’ll have more serious problems. You’ll never become one in spirit.’
So I believe it’s right that as soon as the husband and wife are married they can become one flesh and one body with each other from the very first day but they must seek to work on building fellowship with each other. Very, very important.
And as much as you have an eager desire to have a physical relationship sexually with each other nobody has to urge you for that. It sort of comes naturally; in the same way you must allow the Holy Spirit to produce in you an eager desire for spiritual fellowship with each other also.
I want to be one with my wife that it’ll take much longer. The physical relationship just takes a moment to become one. The spiritual relationship takes much longer but you’ve got to work at it. You’ve got to work at it and say this is very important, because this is the main purpose for a Christian marriage. We go back to the Bible and say God said it’s not good to be alone.
There are many married couples who are like two lonely people living in one house. They’re not divorced. Many Indian marriages are like that. They are two lonely people living in one house. And then children come along, there’s something to occupy them and they’re very happy because the children are there.
And finally the last child leaves home and goes away, gets married or something, and then this whole couple get bored with each other. They don’t know what to do and then they have to spend their whole year just living with their children. That’s not God’s will.
I mean by the time children have grown up and left home, the husband and wife should have built such a relationship that they’re quite happy to live with each other because they built fellowship. It should be like that.
And even when you have children, I want to say to anyone who’s got children, if you love your children more than you love your husband or wife, you got it all wrong; you’re in for serious trouble later on in life.
Till the end of your life you must love your husband or your wife more than you love your children, because we are not told to love our children like we love our husband and wife. That the closest relationship on earth is not parents and children, but husband and wife.
So that fellowship is very very important and everything that we can do to build that fellowship is important. And one of those things is appreciation. Now I have found that many many Indian people particularly and even some super spiritual people in other countries, they feel that expressing appreciation is wrong. And that’s why you may have found in your younger days that your parents never expressed appreciation to you.
Can you folks think of your father or your mother patting you on the back and saying, boy that was really good, I’m proud of you. That is a great job you did.
Or it may have been something small, it may be just some arithmetic sum that you did at age five. And to get a word of encouragement from there, I tell you it does wonders.
It’s very very important as your children grow up, what your parents never did for you, please do for your children. Learn to appreciate them, learn to express appreciation.
And learn to express appreciation for each other, as husband and wife. And if you want to do a course in expressing appreciation, just read Song of Solomon. And see how much that husband and wife appreciate one another. A lot of Christians are embarrassed to read Song of Solomon. I believe all married couples should read that. And say this is how I must appreciate my wife. And this is how I must appreciate my husband.
And I’ll tell you this, there are Christian husbands and wives who don’t do it. Even though God has placed a book like that right in the middle of the Bible. Now today we know Song of Solomon also refers to Christ and the Church. It’s a beautiful picture of Christ and the Church, the Song of Solomon.
And I personally have found in my single days to develop my personal devotion to Christ, Song of Solomon was a great help. But long before Christ came to Earth and there was no Church, Song of Solomon was written 1000 years before Christ came to Earth.
What did they read it then? When the Jewish people read the Old Testament, they were not thinking of Christ and the Church. They didn’t know anything about it. They were reading it only as husband and wife. They were saying, hey, God expects us to appreciate one another, to appreciate one another physically, to appreciate the little things we do for each other. And that is another habit which is just not found in heathen culture.
In our heathen culture, the husband is like a king and the wife is like a slave. And expressing appreciation is completely out of the question. They feel that that’s her duty, to take care of the home, to take care of the children, to make everything clean and tidy. And the wife feels, that’s my husband’s job, to go to work and earn money and earn his living and come and provide enough money to buy me the occasional clothes I need, etc.
We think it is a duty and that’s why we don’t express appreciation. And if you want to destroy your marriage, I’ll tell you the quickest way to destroy your marriage: Never express any appreciation for each other. Your marriage will dry up.
I mean, we have more sense when we plant a plant in the ground that we need to water it. We have more sense for that. Boy, that plant will dry up and wither up if we don’t water it.
But we don’t realize something far more important than a plant is our marriage relationship. It needs to be watered and one of the things we need to pour on our marriage relationship is appreciation. Expressing appreciation.
I’ve noticed this in different birthday celebrations that we have had. In our church we have believed in that. Expressing appreciation, especially for those who are the leaders. The Bible says that. It’s an obedience of the Scripture when it says that we appreciate those who have led us. And that’s one of the commands which some people just don’t obey. And some people think it’s only just giving them money.
Not primarily money, it’s expressing appreciation for the way they have served us. And I’ve seen that even Indian people who do not express appreciation for their wives will express tremendous appreciation for a doctor who did some complicated surgery on them and cured them. Or gave them some treatment which healed them of a terrible disease. Not only they gave the doctor lakhs of rupees, plenty of money. But on top of that they gave them words of appreciation.
But I find that a lot of Christians who do that to doctors don’t seem to do that for their wives and husbands. As if they have done nothing for them. The doctor did one thing one day for them.
But there’s very little regard for people who don’t charge money. I noticed that. Supposing your wife charged money for every meal she cooked, I think you may express appreciation for her a little more. Or if your husband charged you for having to go to work and earn a living.
Because I noticed this: If anybody charges us for something, a doctor charges 100,000 rupees for this operation. We pay it and then we go and thank him so much.
And I noticed this in Pentecostal churches too. That the pastor, he wants everybody to give their tithes and get a lot of money from people. And because they give money, they express a lot of appreciation to the pastor.
But in churches like ours, where we don’t take any money, they think, because it’s free, it’s cheap. That’s a tragedy. And I’ve seen the result. In such people, they wither up. Because gratitude is something that comes in the heart of a humble person. Only humble people are grateful.
And I want to say that when you don’t express appreciation, it is a mark of your pride. Without a doubt, I often use the example of — if a cabinet minister drops his handkerchief and his secretary picks it up, he won’t even say thank you to him.
But if a beggar on the road drops his some cloth and you pick it up and give it to the beggar, he’d be so surprised that an educated man like you picked up his scrap of cloth and gave it to him. He would say, thank you, sir.
Why does the beggar say thank you and the cabinet minister not say thank you? Because the beggar says, I’m a nobody. I’m deeply grateful that this person picked this up for me.
The cabinet minister says, I’m an important person. Actually, that’s the secretary’s job, to pick it up.
That’s the way we treat each other as husband and wife.
I’m a big person. So my husband must work and earn money for me…
And my wife must do all this for me at home.
I want to tell you, if you didn’t know it till today, it is sheer pride. Every proud person never expresses appreciation. A humble person will always express appreciation. And we should be growing in humility. That’s why God’s grace comes in and blesses our marriage.
I have understood this so much through the years that God gives grace to the humble. You’ve heard me preach it. I preach it because I’ve experienced it and I know the truth of it in my life. I have been so desperately earnest to get God’s grace in my life ever since I really understood the new covenant.
Then I said, Lord, if you show me how I can get grace, I will pursue that all my life. And I discovered many years ago, about 37 years ago, God gives His grace only to the humble. And if you are humble, you don’t even have to ask for grace. It will just come.
Because it doesn’t say the humble have to ask for it. It says God gives it. It’s a law. Like, you know, you drop something from the roof. It’s a law. It falls down. Gravity takes over. It’s like that.
Water always flows to the lowest place. You don’t have to tell the water, please come down. Grace is like that. A person who is humble keeps on receiving grace.
And the reason why many people don’t get grace is only because they are not humble. And so I decided that, Lord, I’m going to really seek to go this way all my life because I want grace. I want grace all the time, not only to overcome sin. I want grace for my ministry. I want grace for my marriage. I want grace to bring up my children. For everything in my life, I want grace. And if the secret is humility, I’ll go that way all my life.
I want to encourage you to go that way. It will change your life. Be humble before your wife. Be humble before your husband. Take a low profile and be humble before one another. It will make a tremendous difference in your life. I’ll tell you that if you take that position of humility.
And when I discovered that expressing gratitude is one mark of humility, that humble people are always thankful, I decided to learn to be thankful. Not only to, when I learned from Jesus that if you give a cup of cold water in the name of a disciple, you will not lose your reward.
So what the Lord is saying is that I’ll give you a reward even if you give a cup of cold water to one of My disciples. And that reward is coming many years later.
So I can imagine in the Day Of Judgment, the Lord calling some unknown disciple and say, I remember 2000 years ago you gave a glass of water to My disciple, Peter. So here’s a reward for you. Imagine 2000 years later, the Lord is remembering that this person gave a glass of water to Peter.
We all say we want to be like Jesus. And that’s what I said, Lord, I want to be like You. I don’t want to forget any small thing that other people have done for me at any time in the past. And I want to express my gratitude to them.
And sometimes I, sometimes with a New Year greeting, or somebody whom I may write to only once in a year or so, I always make it a point to say, Dear brother, thank you very much. I remember 25 years ago you gave me a car ride when I needed to go from one place to another. I haven’t forgotten it. And there was nobody else to help me that day to give me a ride to that place. And I’m very, very thankful that you helped me.
It just comes naturally to me now. You know, things that you keep on practicing after a while, it just comes naturally. But if you never practice it because you’re a selfish, self-centered person who thinks everybody owes you a living, and everybody must serve you and be kind to you and give glasses of cold water to you and a lot of other things, then of course you’ll never learn it.
So the secret of fellowship is humility. In humility we learn to express gratitude and appreciation. So, as I said, that’s one reason we celebrate birthdays. We can’t do it for everybody in a church, but we do express gratitude to those who are in leadership.
But in our home, we would always celebrate birthdays for our children and for each other and express our appreciation for husband and wife on a birthday at least once a year to say how thankful we are that God brought us together or brought the children into our home. These are little, little things that cost nothing. It doesn’t cost any money.
We never bought expensive birthday cards to greet each other at home. We felt it was an absolute waste of money. We were not so rich to spend even 20 rupees on a birthday card in our early days. We just write it on scraps of paper and I still have some of those scraps of paper with me.
My wife and I would write to each other and we’d write to children, thank you so much for what you have been to me and I’m so thankful that you chose me.
I wonder if you ever look at your wife and say, ‘Out of all the world you chose me.’ Have you ever looked at her like that? Out of all the world many years ago you chose me. You could have chosen many others but you chose me.
Have you looked at your husband like that? Out of all the world you chose me. This is not the cinema type of love which is frothy, superficial. The cinema love which most of us are seeing in our unconverted days is like soap bubbles. You put some soap into a bucket and splash it, some bubbles will come up. Ten minutes later all the bubbles have disappeared.
I’m not talking about that type of superficial cinema love. I’m talking about something that’s deep within the heart and that comes from the heart. It’s very, very important and you can learn it from Song of Solomon. You, husbands and wives, let me encourage you to read Song of Solomon and learn something from their inspired Holy Spirit Scripture. To learn the main purpose of that book is to teach husbands and wives to appreciate one another.
And it’s a lesson, I’m sorry to say, despite having taught this in CFC for a number of years, there are still husbands and wives sitting in CFC who don’t do it. I’m not here to force people to do it. This is embarrassing.
I’ll tell you why it’s embarrassing. Because you’re covering yourself with fig leaves from each other. Get rid of those fig leaves and it won’t be embarrassing anymore.
Is it embarrassing for you to have sex with your wife? No.
Why should it be embarrassing for you to express your appreciation for your husband or wife as you read in Song of Solomon? It’s very, very important. It builds fellowship. And if you can do that in the beginning, it will look very artificial. I know.
You know, for example, if for ten years you never said thank you to your wife because she brought you a cup of tea, and one morning you say, thank you for that. She may be surprised what happened to you. But don’t worry. You work at it. And after some time, it will be natural. And it will come from the heart.
You know, when we teach our children, don’t you teach your children, say, say thank you aunty. Say sorry aunty. You think they say it from their heart? Ha, rubbish. They just say it with their lips.
But we teach them what we know that over a period of time, they will learn that to say thank you is the right thing to do when somebody gives them a gift. But it doesn’t come naturally. You’ve got to teach them. That’s what I’m trying to teach you.
Say thank you, darling. Learn to say that. Just like you teach your children, say thank you aunty. I’m trying to teach you. Say thank you, darling. It will come from the mouth in the beginning. Over a period of time, it will come from your heart. And it will be real. And not just words. It will be a deep appreciation.
I’m not saying every morning you say thank you for a cup of tea. It’s the attitude more important than the words. Attitude. You can say thank you. It can be words.
Even if you don’t say it with words, the attitude is there where your wife and your husband know that you really are grateful for them. And for myself, I find the best way to test it is when nobody is listening.
For example, when you’re kneeling in prayer before God all by yourself. Do you ever look up to God and nobody is listening to you? It’s only you praying alone. Say, Lord, thank You so much for the wife You gave me. Have you ever said that once in your life? Have you ever knelt down before God and said, when you’re all alone, thank You for the husband You gave me?
If you do that before God, you know it’s genuine. You’re not saying it to impress her because she’s not listening or to impress him because he’s not listening. You’re genuinely saying it to God, thank You.
And when you do that, you’ll find over a period of time a real appreciation comes for your husband and your wife. And you say, boy, out of all the world, she chose me.
And sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night, my wife is still sleeping there next to me, and I look at her face and I say to myself, boy, out of all the world, she chose me.
Life has not been very easy for her to live with me. Many, many struggles we’ve had through life, but I sometimes weep when I see that she’s stuck it out with me all these years. I’m just deeply grateful. And it’s not words because she’s not listening. She’s fast asleep.
Dear brothers and sisters, build your relationship with your wife and husband secret. Then it’ll be from the heart, from within. It’s a very important way of cementing your marriage.
I’m never afraid of even publicly expressing appreciation because I see Jesus was like that. I mean, you heard me mention this at my wife’s birthday celebration, how Jesus expressed appreciation publicly for so many people. Even people who are not far from perfect, not even converted, Roman military men and, you know, Nathaniel, a Syro-Phoenician woman, Canaanite woman, He would express appreciation in a way that other people could hear. And He was never afraid, oh, they may get puffed up.
Because, you know, that’s because we are like that. We think if somebody praises us, we get puffed up. And we think, oh, if I praise him, that person will get puffed up. But, brother, that person may be a hundred times humbler than you are. You’re such a proud person, that’s why you get puffed up.
But the other person may be a humble person, they won’t get puffed up. I find this is a terrible thing of our heathen culture, that we will not express appreciation because the people get puffed up. Who said they’ll get puffed up? Maybe they’re humble enough to give the glory to God.
I’ve had numerous people come to me and say, oh, brother Zac, I hope you don’t get puffed up with this, but I really appreciated your message.
I laugh because I know that guy, whoever he is, must be having a real problem with his wife, because he must be saying the same thing to his wife. I hope you don’t get puffed up, but I want to say thank you for that meal. That’s the way to destroy your marriage. Don’t be so stupid.
Just say thank you, and express your appreciation, and leave it to that person to judge himself. If he’s getting puffed up, God will deal with that. We don’t have to be super spiritual.
And here is a habit, if all of you who are listening to me will develop this habit from today. In the beginning, it will be exactly like you teach your children, say thank you aunty. It’ll be like that, you’ll feel a bit awkward. But learn to go on from the words to an attitude of gratitude. That’s the way we build fellowship.
We must seek to everything that builds fellowship between each other.
Then I want to say another thing. You know, one of the things the devil does is to create misunderstandings which lead to accusation. Because the next thing we see in Genesis 3, they cover themselves from each other, is as soon as God came and asked them what he did, you find Adam pointing his finger at his wife and saying, this woman is the cause of the problem. It’s true that I bungled up and sinned, but it began with this woman.
And that picture of a man pointing a finger at his wife, which you see in Genesis chapter 3, is the mark of sinful man. Always pointing a finger at somebody else: It’s his fault, it’s her fault.
Haven’t I told you so many times to always keep the house keys in one place? Now we can’t find it, and we are in a hurry to go. Have you ever spoken like that?
Of course, you never make a mistake.
Or, why didn’t you tell me that that person called and left a message for me? As if you never forgot anything in your life.
We’re so hard, as if we are perfect.
Then, whenever you speak like that, remember this picture of a man pointing a finger. It started with Adam, you. The problem is with you.
And, you see, it was so different with Jesus. He never pointed a finger at anybody. When His arms were stretched out on the cross, He had no finger to point at anybody.
I see that’s the difference between Adam and Christ. We very glibly say, I’m no longer in Adam, I’m in Christ.
But what’s the one big difference between Adam and Christ? Adam could not take the responsibility for his own sin. He pointed his finger at his wife. That’s the mark of Adam.
And I want to say to all of you, every time you point a finger at each other, whether you know it or not, you are behaving like Adam. And you are at that moment in Adam.
Whatever you may be speaking about, you may not actually point your finger. Your words, blaming the other person. Something went wrong. But to blame that other person is the mark of being in Adam.
What did Jesus do when He hung on the cross? He never blamed anybody. But He took the blame for sins that He had not committed.
I want to ask all of you, have you ever in your life, in your home, taken the blame, even once, even once, for something you never did? You may have taken the blame for what you did. That’s good.
Have you ever taken the blame for what you did not do, what somebody else did? And for the sake of peace, say, okay, I’ll take the blame. Boy, you’re really like Jesus Christ.
This business of blaming is so much in us. I did it. I’m not talking as one who never did it. I grew up as a carnal Christian for years. And that carnality was seen in my marriage: Selfish, lack of appreciation, blaming. It was all there. Until God showed me the new covenant and being filled with the Holy Spirit, seeing the life of Jesus. It changed my life. It changed my married life. That’s what grace did for me.
And that is why — I can see why the devil once, even some people in CFC now, have started once again preaching the false grace which we forsook 37 years ago. The devil’s trying to bring some people back into it. And there are people going around talking about it.
Who will be led astray? Those who do not really want God’s best, they will be led astray. And they will fall away. And I can’t do anything and I will not stop them from falling away.
But just be careful. God’s grace will make us like Christ, will make us be willing to take the blame. That’s a good way to build fellowship.
Never to say these words. Make a decision right now that you’ll never say these words. Listen to me: I told you so. Don’t even say that to your children.
I told you so. The great expert. Never say those words.
Okay, you warned your wife or you warned your husband and they did not listen to you. They bungled up something. That’s a great itch in us to say, I told you so. Shut your mouth and solve the problem.
God did not come to you and say, I told you so. He came and solved your problem.
What is the use God coming to me when I messed up my life and say, I told you in the Bible 2,000 years ago, I wrote My Bible to tell you, you should not behave like that. I would have got more discouraged and run away from the Lord.
But when the Lord came to me as a sinner, He did not come with a word saying, I told you so. So He had said that in the Bible and I had read it. But He never used those words to me. He said, come my son, let’s see how we can sort this out. Be like that. Be like Jesus. Be one who seeks to solve the problem, not try to find out whose mistake it was.
How does it help you to find out whose mistake it is? Solve the problem. I mean, is there something you can do about that problem, that mess that was created? Clean it up. Solve it. That’s being Christ-like instead of fixing blame, saying my wife or this person or that person.
So these are little things I’m saying to build fellowship. Because fellowship is the most important thing. And I’ll tell you, when you build fellowship like that, everything else will go well in your life. Even your sex life will be great. As a married couple, you’ll enjoy it a lot more if you have a very good relationship with each other.
And not only that, the atmosphere in your home, I mean, it’s something like if you never flush your toilet, that sink will spread over your whole house from the bathroom. If you have rotten garbage sitting in your kitchen, which you don’t throw out, you know gradually, first it is in the kitchen, but gradually that stink begins to spread over the house.
And you don’t like to live in such a house. We like to live in a house where it’s pleasant. That’s why we have these vaporizers that produce a good perfume that we put in the bathroom, etc.
And in the same way, we must think, much more than the smells that come through our nose, are the smells that come through our ears, through what we hear, and the smells that we let out with our tongue, with words that produce a bad atmosphere in the house. It’s no use just putting something that gives a good odor in the bathroom, if you’re polluting the whole house with your words.
What’s the use of that? So, let’s learn to speak words that build a good atmosphere. It will be a struggle in the beginning. Everything is a struggle. To me, it’s like asking a fat man to go and do exercise. It’s not easy. But if he works at it, he will really build muscle in his body.
And in the same way, if you work at this, I’m determined now to build fellowship with my wife. Think of some of you who are newly married, that right from the beginning of your life, you can say, I want to build fellowship with my wife. I want to express appreciation. I’m not going to blame. I’m going to finish with blaming and all that. I’m going to really seek to behave more like Christ towards her.
I want to encourage you, brothers and sisters, let’s have some wonderful families in CFC that have homes that are a little bit like heaven.
And I want to say one last word, and that is none of these things will happen in one day. No.
There’s a proverb in English that Rome was not built in one day, meaning that anything great is not accomplished overnight. So you’ve got to work at it, just like you’re building a home. Work at it. Work at it. Work at it. And be very careful about the small, small things. Work at it. Work at it.
And remember, this is the home you’re going to live in forever. So right from the beginning, and particularly those of you who still don’t have children, or your children are very small, they’re not yet old enough to understand the atmosphere in a home yet. By the time they are three or four years old, they begin to pick up.
Make sure that your children grow up in an atmosphere of love, forgiveness, acceptance, appreciation, no blaming, but only helping to solve problems, and your home can be a little foretaste of heaven on earth.
For Further Reading:
A Knock at Midnight: Martin Luther King Jr. (Transcript)
Where Did The Bible Come From and Why Should We Care: Tim Mackie (Transcript)
(Through The Bible) Genesis – Part 1: Zac Poonen (Transcript)
Zac Poonen Sermon: The Fear Of God And Humility (Transcript)
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