We just finished an excellent (is that bragging?) series about Marriage and Marital Relationships at our church. I was honestly a little concerned going into it because we have so many men and women who have been married for at least twice as long as I’ve been alive. In fact one of my dearest friends at the church lost 
his wife of 72 years at the very beginning of the series. SEVENTY TWO YEARS! What I found was an extremely receptive group of people, many of whom had never learned any of this before. A few of our women who had lost husbands within the past several years said things like, “I wish I’d have known all this while my husband was still alive!” THOSE ARE THINGS THAT KEEP YOU GOING!
The challenge I offered at the beginning of the series for any of the skeptical was this: If you do NOT think you need to learn anything else about marriage, then I will not do this series. If there is only one of you who thinks he has it all down, then I will not do this series. YOU WILL DO IT. No one offered. What does that tell me? It doesn’t matter how long you have been married, there is always room to grow.
Of course as a 30 year old pastor who has been married a brief 5 years, I couldn’t exactly approach it as an expert. Thankfully, God didn’t ask me to be a marriage expert with lots of great ideas flowing out of my own experience. He just asked me to proclaim the truths that He has revealed aleady. That’s a blessing and curse at the very same time, but it’s FAR preferable to me having to generate the ideas myself.
I trust that some found in this series things that they disagreed with, that made them very uncomfortable (gender roles, purity and faithfulness), that convicted them, as well as encouraged and built up. The great thing is that I found all of those myself before it ever got to the church. Preaching can be a beautiful thing. My hope is that some husbands decided to grow up, some wives decided to check their egos, but in the end, that everyone was pointed to Jesus. How to marriage sermons are a very hit and miss thing, and will NOT produce life change. Jesus does change hearts and lives, and as a result marriages.
