The Ten Coins of Marriage | Sunday Message (Guest Levi Lusko)

A New Beginning presents something for the New Year from Pastor Greg Laurie. We want to help you get stronger in your faith and discover what it really means to be a disciple of Jesus Christ. To help you do that, we're offering a book called Discipleship, The Road Less Taken. I explore what the Bible says about discipleship and how we can grow in this area. And we'll send this book to you for your gift of any size. Get your copy of Discipleship, The Road Less Taken at Harvest.org. Luke, chapter 15. The title of the message is The 10 Coins of Marriage.

The 10 Coins of Marriage. Jenny and I run a podcast that we call Hey, It's the Luscos. It was sort of a COVID side hustle. We just were messing around, having conversations with friends.

And then we decided we kind of liked it. And we would interview people, pastors, of course. We've had Pastor Greg and Kathy on, great story, long form. So you get these people who you see in lights on a stage, but to get to have a down-to-earth conversation with them for a while is kind of fun.

We had a tightrope walker, Nick Walenda, who walked across the Grand Canyon in a volcano. You saw that guy. It was interesting to talk to him about it. He's a believer.

We've talked to musicians about how they wrote their songs. And then we, a while back, had the chance to have an astronaut on who walked on the moon. Now, a little bit about me, if we haven't met, I am a card-carrying nerd with a capital N. And so I was super excited to get to talk to this guy. He's the youngest person to ever walk on the moon, Apollo 16.

He was the 10th human being to ever set foot on that heavenly body. And we were waiting on the Zoom call for him to come on to have this conversation with him. And I was sweating. I was so nervous. My wife was like, play it cool, bro. Don't embarrass me here.

Just keep it cool. And so I tried my absolute best, but then I just nerded out for the hour and a half that we were talking to Charlie Duke. And this guy, he was the one on Apollo 11 talking to Neil Armstrong and Buzz while they were on the moon. So you hear the voice. If you listen to the file, it's like, he says, the eagle has landed. And the voice that comes back, we copy you down, eagle.

We got a bunch of guys about to turn blue up here. That's Charlie Duke, right? And so he's an astronaut.

He's on the 11 as a Capcom. Then he gets rostered to go and fly and land on the moon on Apollo 16 when they brought a car and drove around, which proves that guys were in charge. What do you want to do now? Let's take a drive. You know what I'm saying?

They brought a car to the moon? Crazy. And so I'm waiting for him to come on the call. And I'm sweating. And he finally comes on. And I'm just like, so excited to talk to this guy.

And you can listen to the conversation. But one of the stories that he told me, I was just fascinated by. I just thought it was the most intriguing story ever, because I said, what's something interesting that happened on this 11-day lunar mission? Because, well, the first one, they only stayed for hours. This time, they stayed for multiple days. And they had multiple different times walking on the moon, although the first one, it's hard to beat the fact that Buzz Aldrin brought wine and bread and took communion on the lunar surface, although that's called communion.

That's what that's called. So I said, what's the most interesting thing that happened while you were on this mission? And he said, well, day two of the 11 days, Ken Mattingly, one of the other three astronauts, John Young, Charlie Duke, and Ken Mattingly.

Ken Mattingly said, guys, I got to go number two. Now, when you're in a small vessel the size of a Volkswagen in close quarters with other people for multiple days, that's not great. And you're in zero gravity. So you're flying around the room. And the only solution NASA came up with was plastic baggies to go number two in that had adhesive on the thing. So you would just tape the bag to your bum. And while you're somersaulting around, without the use of gravity, you've got to poop in a bag.

And there's no gravity for it to go to the bottom of the bag. So you have to do that. So your friends, listen, someone said TMI. I get it. But the other two guys would just hide. They would just hide until it was over. And he said, you had to strip down because there was no glamorous way to do it. So Ken goes to the bathroom. And he finally gets dressed back again and says, guys, come out, come out wherever you are.

They come out of hiding. And that's when he goes, oh, my gosh. And then he realizes he puts his hand on it. He realizes his wedding ring is missing.

This is what Charlie Duke tells us. He says Ken's ring was gone. And we said, where was it? And he said, well, the only logical place it could be was the bag. And so Ken had to check. And it wasn't there. And now he's even more confused.

Where could it possibly be? But they had lots to do. So they couldn't spend too much time. But for the rest of the mission, any spare chance Ken got, he just searched for the ring relentlessly.

Why? He couldn't come home without it. His wife would think he had hooked up with a Martian. Never found the thing. But that, believe it or not, ladies and gentlemen, is the precise energy that we are meant to bring with us into verse 8 of Luke chapter 15 for one of the least famous of Jesus's parables. Jesus speaking, or what woman having 10 silver coins?

Someone say 10 silver coins. If she loses one coin, does not light a lamp, sweep the house, and search carefully until she finds it. And when she has found it, she calls her friends and neighbors together saying, rejoice with me. For I have found the peace which I lost. And Father, we do pray, thanking you, that in Jesus's name, what has been lost and what has been taken in our lives can be returned. We're grateful for your word. We're grateful for your spirit. We give you praise for all that you've done in this past year of ministry and in our lives. Thank you that we're still here.

We're still standing. We're worshipping you as we end a year. Thank you that, in many ways, how we end something sets us up for how we can begin something. So thank you for my brothers and sisters who are ending this year are ending a year with worship and beginning a new year on the right foundation. May you be glorified in our lives and in how we grow and worship you and seek you in this coming year. We pray this, asking for your blessing upon this house, this ministry, and these precious people. In Jesus's name, we said together.

Amen. When a woman, Warren Wiersbe writes, in the Jewish culture in that day got married, she was given a special headband. The headband had 10 silver coins on it. The coins would be pulled from the dowry, the price that was paid for this marriage relationship to be entered into. And these coins pulled from that dowry formed a special marital crown. This crown was their version of our modern day wedding ring.

And it would be considered a calamity for her to lose one of these coins on par with a diamond falling out of your wedding band and going down the drain. And in the midst of Luke 15, which as you know, is a trilogy of lost things, right? Luke 15 is really the lost and found of the New Testament.

I mean, you got a lost coin, you got famously a lost sheep. And we just sang it a moment ago, how grateful are we that Jesus, our great shepherd, He seeks out after the one lost sheep. And when we go astray, when we lose our way, when we lose our why, that He doesn't just write us off and say, well, I'll just go get a new person. I mean, He could. He made us by breathing on dust.

He could just sneeze and create a brand new crop of people. But He seeks us out. And at His own sacrifice and discomfort, He goes to bring us back to His house. Not only is there a lost sheep in Luke 15 and a lost coin, which we are reading about, but there's also a lost son who goes away and basically disgraces and dishonors his father. And we have, again, the seeking out and the hoping and the restoring of what's been lost.

But this parable that is probably the least famous is the lost coin. And maybe because we don't have any frame of reference for understanding how much grief this woman would have had in her heart when she realized maybe pulling it out to show her daughter. I don't know, right? How many of you wives at one point or another have pulled out your wedding dress and unzipped the bag? And I know we've all been there, fathers, right? We see our own daughters wanting to try it on and just wanting to set ourselves on fire with emotion, right?

Seeing that. And so maybe she was pulling out the crown of coins to show her daughter and then realizing, oh my gosh, one of the coins had come loose and fallen off and been lost. And notice what she does not do. She does not say to herself, oh well, I got nine other coins, right?

She's frantic about it. That's a theme to the whole sequence. The shepherd does not go, eh, I got 99. I'm good.

That's an A still. He seeks out the one lost sheep. This woman, like the father of the prodigal son, doesn't go, well, I got one out of two kids, right? If you lose one of your kids, you're not going, well, I got most of them.

I got most of my kids. You're going to keep searching. You're going to keep looking.

Your pulse is going to rise to your max, right? This woman, she lights a lamp. She sweeps the house. She searches carefully until she finds it. And when she does, she calls all her neighbors over. She fills up the pinata.

She books the DJ. She says, we've got to have a party because my lost coin is back where it belongs, in my marital crown. And beloved, this, I believe, is how God wants you to think about your marriage, as we cannot help but think about crowns and marriage, relationship with God, and relationship with our spouse. Why? They're connected.

Ephesians tells us very clearly that marriage is a mystery, a picture of Christ in the church. So how God feels about us, and that is, launch the boat. Get the Coast Guard out there.

Get them red bathing suit-wearing, Baywatch people into the water. We've got to find what's lost. We've got to get it back, right? That God has a release the hounds, calling all cars kind of a mentality when it comes to lost things. That is how you are meant to approach your marriage as well and not just a, well, I still got nine coins, right?

That's an A. I'm doing pretty good. I have more coins in my crown than I've lost. No, no. God wants us, at the end of our life, when we're giving an account for what was in our stewardship while we had it, for us to stand before Him and get our full reward, our full crown, our full well-done, good and faithful servant. He doesn't want us to go, I entrusted you with 10 coins, and you returned seven. Bless your heart. And He wants you to have that kind of a mentality as well. And so as we continue in this message, would you please help me welcome to the stage Harvest, my wife, Jennie Lusko.

And we're going to talk a little bit about what that means. I know those of you ladies have heard Jennie at Virtue, but to the rest of the church, here is my better half. Love you, babe.

All right. Hi, Harvest. What a joy to get to be here with you today. We love you, Harvest. And what we want to do is we want to use some Holy Ghost imagination to talk about what these coins might be that we can focus on and fight to keep at the center of our crowns. Yeah, so good.

I love this. I love this conversation of, and I love how Levi mentioned, stewardship. Because it really is, marriage is a gift, and God's called us to steward the gifts that He's given us and to steward a relationship, a relationship to steward a marriage is so important. And I just want to start off by saying that we don't have a perfect marriage, and there's no such thing as a perfect marriage until we're in heaven and the bridegroom of Christ.

That's the only time there's going to be. We sit here saying that marriage is hard work. But to have a strong and healthy marriage, you have to put in.

You have to put the effort and energy into it. And so we're just here to encourage you and say that we've been married 20 years, and it's beautiful and hard and messy and a struggle bus, but so worth it. Yeah, what's that great quote, Billy Graham and Ruth Graham? She was asked. She was asked, did you ever think about divorce? She said, not divorce.

Murder, yes. Never divorced, though. I never thought about that.

And that's some real talk about marriage. But here's the point about these coins in our crowns. It doesn't say that the woman was in Vegas using the coin to gamble. It wasn't like she maliciously lost it. And don't you hate when you lose something, the question everyone asks you? When did you last have it? When did you lose it?

You're like, if I knew that. When do you lose a coin in your crown? When does your passion erode for your spouse that you once had? When do you lose ground in your walk with God?

When you're not paying attention. But it can happen to all of us. And so this is a judgment free zone. And we're going to try and ask the question, what crown coins have gone missing from our marriages?

Yes, and no matter what phase or stage your marriage is in today, it might be amazing and enjoyable. It might be hanging by a thread. But we want you to be at ease and receive what God has for you today. And if you're single and someone else who loves the Lord and is single sees you writing all this stuff down, woo.

Notebook. Attractive. That's attractive right there. That's how I got Jennie. She saw me highlighting my Bible. And she said, I like big Bibles and I do not like. No, she didn't say that. She didn't say that. But her Bible is much bigger than mine.

Not that it's a competition, but she has a big Bible. So if you take notes, 10 coins, you could even draw circles. And then we're going to give a word to each of these coins what they might represent for us.

Let's kick it off. Yeah, the first one and maybe the most important is curiosity. The coin of curiosity. We believe that curiosity is a superpower because really all of these other coins kind of hinge on this of just having that awareness and curiosity and desire to know your spouse better, to try to understand.

Because here's the thing. Well, Levi and I, we are totally different. Like in almost every single way.

Like time frame, my timing and his timing, very different. How I see the world is very different than Levi sees the world. And so we have two imperfect humans saying I do for the rest of our lives. And it's messy. It's so messy.

But it's possible. And curiosity helps with this. Didn't Jesus say that if you want to be great in the kingdom, you need to become what? Like a little child. That's why I think Pastor Greg is so great. He's like a child in many ways.

I said, Lennox, Pastor Greg, you're going to love his office. He has more toys than you do, right? But a child is curious. That's like their essential attribute.

When you have kids, for the first time you're driving around, when they first start talking, what is it like? They just go, what's that? What's that? What's that?

What's that? And you're like, oh, you don't know anything. You don't know anything. But how do you learn what you don't know? You ask questions. Jesus asked more questions than almost anybody in the Bible.

Constantly asking questions, right? And so it's a key to unlocking something in the person you're talking to, too, not just for you. Jesus didn't ask questions because he didn't know. He asked questions because oftentimes the person he was talking to didn't. And so it's a key to unlocking something in the person you're talking to didn't.

Like in John 5, you've covered it in your Jesus and You series. Do you want to be made well? He knew the problem was that man didn't actually want to get off the ground because he liked being comfortable in his victim mentality. So in marriage, where it can be easy to match the energy, like when your spouse kind of comes at you gun blazing a little bit, it's easy to match that energy. But if instead you can put on your thinking cap and be curious and go, wait a minute, my spouse doesn't normally do this, all of a sudden they're all keyed up.

This is a lot of hormone or energy or whatever's going on here. I wonder what's below. He's not talking about me. No, it's a friend I know. I wonder what's below this. And if you can stay curious and ask a good question, like, hey, where is this coming from?

What's going on? Without matching that energy that makes them kind of like red in front of a bowl, it can unlock something. Yes. And it's so hard to do because in the moment you're getting all the vibes and you want to just react with those vibes. But to be able to, in that moment, and I think this is so important, to in the moment just take a breath and say a prayer and Lord help me and give me the grace.

That can change everything when you just put on your curiosity glasses and you're looking at your spouse with trying to understand, trying to ask, and from a perspective of with a tone of tenderness and really wanting to know, wait, are you OK? Yeah. Let's talk for a second. Yeah.

And if you can ask those questions like with nice eyes, our counselor likes to say, one of the good questions is, what do you need from me that I'm not giving to you? Or anything like that that can kind of diffuse that. All right, so coin number two. Sorry. Unity. Where am I? There I am. OK, unity is at the top, and I couldn't see it. Number two, unity. Acting is one. I think it's so easy to have two scorecards in marriage because when they get something and you want it or you want to get something as, oh, he bought this, so I'm going to buy this.

Or I watched the kids last time. So I'm going to do this. And it's kind of like you get this, I get this, you get this, I get this.

Whereas the harder way is having one scorecard, but that's what God calls us to is to have one. So if Levi's winning, I'm winning. If he's hurting, I'm hurting. We're hurting together.

We're doing this together. We're fighting together, not against each other, but together forward. And I think that that will change everything when we realize that we're not against each other. Although it feels that way so often, we're not against each other. At the moment of union, the Bible says, the two have become one. But you'll notice we did not become conjoined twins, right? We are still very much two bodies. We're seeking to act as though we are what God has said we are.

Think about it. So much of the Christian life is trying to act as though you are what God has spoken you are. At salvation, God said, you are the righteousness of God in Christ Jesus.

Problem is, my life is still pretty jacked up. God cleans His fish after He catches them. How He cleans them is He speaks over a new reality over them, says, you're righteous. And then now the goal in the Christian life is to act like we are truly in God's sight. So God says we are one, now functionally, day to day, how do we act as though we are one emotionally, sexually, financially, all the different ways in life? And so it's seeking to prefer each other and to outdo one another in honor. And there's a lot of talk in our culture about being a power couple. What's a power couple, right?

Well, you know what? God releases power where there's unity. That's what the Bible says unlocks God's anointing oil of power. But behold how good and how pleasant it is when brethren dwell together in unity.

It's like the dew of Herman landing on Mount Zion. It is the oil down the beard of Aaron running down his garments all the way to the edge of his feet, right? Anointing oil is always symbolic of power. You want God's supernatural power to flow in your marriage to where impossible things can be done in Jesus's name. Unity is the key to unlocking that power.

So good. Third coin, generosity. Generosity. And I love this because this is who we are because this is our God. Our God is a generous God who shows us what it looks like to live generously and not just financially like what we were talking about earlier, but with our whole lives, with our spirit, with our time, with our talent, with our treasure, with whatever God has given us. He's called us to generosity. I love how Proverbs 11 24 says the world of the generous gets bigger and bigger, but the world of the stingy gets smaller and smaller.

And that's what God's called us to. And in marriage, this can be life-changing because sometimes it can be easier to be generous with a total stranger, but to give your spouse the cold shoulder. And this has been me.

I run into someone and I'm just having the greatest conversation. And then I'm just being so rude to my own husband. And I think that as we grow in wanting to be our best self with our spouse, being generous, laughing, being kind, that will change the tone and the attitude of your marriage. And a big part of generosity is learning what your spouse's love language is, what lights your spouse up, because you might be trying to be generous in a way that you love to give love, but not in the way that they necessarily like to receive love. And so figuring out and becoming fluent in your spouse's love language, especially if there's an incompatibility there, which maybe you like to give gifts, but they actually would love a word of affirmation or some time spent or quality, active service or whatever. So it's being generous in the way they want to receive it, not just, well, I want to keep giving you what I like to give and think that that works.

Yeah, exactly. OK, fourth coin, intentionality, being intentional in your relationship with your spouse. Do you have vision for your marriage, for your home?

What's the vibe that you're going for? And I think that this is so important because it takes thoughtfulness. It takes planning. It takes thinking through what kind of marriage do we want? What kind of an old married couple do we want to be? And I know when you're old and you have your wrinkle lines, it's what you've lived out that you look like at the end of your life. Have you been living a life of smiling and laughter? You're going to see that when you're old. And I love that we're starting to see those. And I remember telling Levi when, oh, no, I didn't tell you. When we were first dating, I remember looking up to him and saying and thinking in my heart, I just would love to grow old with him.

And I love we're seeing the- I was just thinking, dang, she's hot. It's like the different things that- But just this intentionality of what do we want to see? Because if we're aiming for nothing, that's what we're going to get. And so if we can aim for something and aim for sweetness and aim for joy and aim for exalting Christ in our relationship, that's what we'll go for.

Great. So beginning with the end in mind is really to use language from Steve and Coby what we're talking about. What's the end you want? And how do we reverse engineer our lives? How do we put into our schedule? How do we put into our flow what we want?

What do we want for us for 20 years? It's been in stone pretty well our date night, right? Because I mean, if you don't date your mate, the devil's going to find someone who will. And so not just pursuing Jenny Triton to get her, but continuing to try and pursue her heart. And so being intentional about how you spend your time and your money to arrive at the end that we all want at the end.

Yeah. Number five, humility. Humility, we all know, is the key to vulnerability. And so if we are living in a way that is humble and accepting that we messed up and made a mistake and we're sorry coming in, and just as that sense of humility can change the tone of your marriage also. And also the humility of coming in just saying, hey, I'm hurting.

Hey, can you pray for me about this because I'm really struggling? Any kind of defense that would be up will slowly melt away or maybe quickly because there's just that humility and that sweetness and approachability. It's incredible how game changing this is. I mean, we know it. Philippians says that Jesus won us to God by humbling himself and coming down and dying the death of the cross. And yet we forget that because when we get our feelings hurt, when we're mad, when we feel betrayed, it's easy to puff up. That's our instinct. But when you instead choose to say, hey, that hurt my feelings. That made me sad.

That made me feel small. It's amazing how much that diffuses that negative response. And all of a sudden you enlist their help there. And so it's a key to vulnerability.

Exactly. When you're struggling, it's easy to kind of have the attitude and the sarcasm and the blah. The barbs and the jabs. How was that again?

The last couple of those? But to be able to just say, I need help. I need you to just sit with me for a second.

I'm not doing well. Or whatever it is, that advice. We've actually had this thing we do sometimes where we're kind of in a moment of fight or whatever and we'll like time out. And Jenny will give me advice as though she's not in the fight. She's like, OK, here's what I need. She'll give me the secret cheat code. I'm like, oh, that's very helpful. And then we go back to the fight. And then she's like, I don't need you to fix anything. Just hold me.

Just listen to me. It's like, thank you. Could you please do that more often? That would be very helpful. That's helpful. Helping each other.

Helping your spouse help you. That goes back to being on the same team. Humble. Humble. Number six, the sixth coin, intensity. OK, here's a question.

Why does tequila get you drunker faster than beer? Trick question. You're like, I don't know. I've never heard of any of these things. It's in church.

Like, I don't know. What is a tequila? Now, to be clear, you shouldn't get drunk at all ever. But the reason is because tequila is not diluted like beer is. It's alcohol diluted. There's more water content in beer.

So it's slower to have a powerful effect. Now, check this out. The book of Song of Solomon says that in marriage, our sexuality together in the marriage bed should be intense and captivating.

And there's language in the Song of Solomon. It's almost like, oh my gosh, I'm intoxicated with your love. It's powerful. Your love to me is powerful.

Now watch this. Jenny's love for me and my love for her is going to be diluted if I'm bringing in the stolen waters of other people's sexuality into our marriage. Not just through physical affairs, but also emotional interactions where I'm getting needs met from other women. Or thank you, internet, where I'm using the internet to allow me to bring sexual provocative material in that only dilutes the power of our love. And God wants the waters of the sexuality of the marriage institution to be undiluted with anybody else besides your spouse.

And this means exclusivity. And this means concentration, focus. I love Song of Solomon 1.15 says, or talks about having dove's eyes for your spouse. And a dove can literally only focus on what they're looking at directly. They don't have peripheral vision. They can't be distracted. They're just zoned in.

And I think that that is what the Song of Solomon, what he was saying is just, I see you and only you. And you got to work harder in Montana. We have all these sweaters and winter jackets, all right? You all live at the beach. You've got to really have them dove's eyes on, you know what I'm saying? Because there's this thing called clothing, Southern California.

Maybe you haven't heard of it. Wow. All right, number six.

That's fire. Or number seven, rather. Number seven, community. And this is so huge because we cannot do life alone. We need each other. We need each other just even to know that it's going to be OK and that we all struggle and that we all have issues and that we're all going to have fights and issues. But who are the people that are in your corner?

Who do you look up to? This is something that's so special to us about your pastor. Pastor Greg and Kathy is that they have been that example to us for so long of a couple who loves Jesus, who loves each other, who is in ministry and loving it and loving the people that they get to lead and their family and how they're such good grandparents and parents. And who do you have like that in your life where you're looking to see that's the kind of marriage that we want to emulate? You know, the Bible says that God sets the solitary in families. And Jennie and I both come from broken homes. And I remember so many times throughout our marriage, especially early on, just sitting in their kitchen watching Pastor Greg and Kathy, how they function, how they live, how they work through a conflict, how they deal with things, and just really kind of being set in that way into a family, in a sense, and getting to watch that. I think that's the power of the body of Christ. You might have had so much dysfunctionality and sin when it comes to how relationships and conflict are worked through. But news flash, here's the church.

This is us. In the small groups, in the teams, in this environment, in all the leaders that are here in these various parts of the church, you have people to look up to and to see, oh, this is what marriage can look like. Here's brand new something the Holy Spirit can do.

And it almost is like in the Minions, when it's like light bulb, like a light bulb will go off on your head. Wow, this is a whole different way to approach relationships. Amen? Yes. Community.

Community. And the Bible talks about woe to the man who falls who doesn't have a brother or sister to pick him up. And I pray that if you drift in your walk with God, that there would be people in your life within this fellowship who will call you out, who will love you enough to confront you and say, hey, I'm just seeing in your marriage. There's not that love. There's not that. And then again, that humility kicks in, where you don't guard yourself up and start making excuses and go, well, you're not Mr. Perfect.

Whoa, whoa, whoa. The moment you get defensive, you stop being able to be helped. And you can't be coached anymore. That's really good.

And so opening yourself up to that coaching by telling the people in your small group and in this fellowship, will you please love me enough to call me out when you see things drifting in my journey? Yes. It's good. The eighth. Thank you for that affirmation. I like that.

I mean, just keep that coming. The eighth coin is levity. What's the vibe of your relationship? Is there laughter? And if there isn't today, I believe that it's possible that there will be in your future. Because sometimes we've experienced there's only grief, or it's just hard and painful and you don't see the joy in it. But I believe that no matter where you are, if you're at a place where there isn't laughter in your marriage, that it's possible that God can bring that in and restore and redeem. But we need to laugh. And we need to laugh with each other. We need to laugh at each other. And when we don't take ourselves so seriously, but when we take our role seriously of being a kind and encouraging spouse, it changes everything. We read in Proverbs 17, 22, a merry heart does good like medicine, but a broken spirit dries the bones. And I think that one of the things that it may feel far away, especially if there's a lot of hard work to do to get to a place where you believe you could laugh with your spouse.

Maybe there's been infidelity or a breach of trust, or maybe there's been just distance for so long that's calcified the pipes, that it doesn't feel like anything's flowing in this department. But you can believe there could come a day where you could laugh again. And one of the great joys, and I consider myself such a wealthy man having a wife that I can laugh with, and that we laugh at each other. We've collected all these inside jokes.

And I just look forward to collecting more with you and just being able to, like we talk about laughing till you cry. Do you know there's a scientific name for that? It's called crafting. What a great thing there's a word for that. And to have a spouse and family that you can sit back and laugh until you cry, that's true wealth. That's true blessing.

And it is good medicine as the Bible says. The ninth coin is responsibility. Responsibility for yourself.

And this is key in so many different ways. But your spirit is your responsibility. Your health is your responsibility. I think it's so important to get counseling for individually and also together, but to take that responsibility for yourself and not pushing on your spouse or anyone else.

Well, I'm this way because of how they treat me or of what happened. But Lord, help me to be revived. Help me to take responsibility right now over myself. When you're walking with Jesus personally, and you're both doing that, and then together you're seeking God as a couple and trying to fulfill your calling, there's something powerful about that. And especially if you're at a place where maybe your spouse isn't doing that, to just focus all the more on that on your own journey. And the better you're doing, the better the marriage is going to be doing and the better chance you have of serving them.

That's why on an airplane they say, put your mask on first before you help anybody else out. So focus first, of course, on your soul. Make that your responsibility. But then as much as it lies within you, the Bible says, to live at peace, to do your best. So I can't make Jenny do anything.

She can't make me do anything. But we can so far as it lies within us do our part. And I think this is really important that we don't simply rely on our feelings and in our culture. That's what's being pushed on us.

Only your truth, only what you feel, right? And so I think sometimes we treat love very passively. But the Bible says, men, hear me, husbands love your wives.

It uses love like a verb as it is. And so this cop-out kind of thing that we have of like, well, why didn't the marriage work out? Well, I just fell out of love with her.

Would that work in any other area of life? I come see you on the ground. What happened? You were driving your car. I just fell out of my truck.

Did you think about getting back in it? You know what I'm saying? So choosing to love your wife. What about when you don't feel like it? Then it is when it's the most important that you do it anyway. We don't just worship God through song when we feel like it. Worship is not a feeling expressed through an action. It's an act of obedience that oftentimes develops feelings on the back end. So choose to love. Choose to obey God because it's right.

And you watch as He blesses you with feelings in Jesus' name. So good. And I know we're running out of time. I just wanted to quickly say. Oh, yes, stopping.

Very good. I just wanted to quickly say that for women, hormones is a real thing. And as I'm 42 and I'm figuring out all the things that's wrong with me and you know. But it's so real.

And my counselor has told me that so many divorces happen because women with their hormones, everything is intense and what you feel is how you feel things are actually. But I just want to encourage you in this health, taking responsibility over your health is so important. And there is a way through and it's possible. And I just wanted to say that because that is such a big thing. Great word. Tenth coin. Tenth coin of marriage, guys.

We made it to the end. Authority. Yeah, authority. Authority. When we think about authority, of course, there's lots of different things. We think about authority within the church, authority within the home. What does it mean to be the head of the house?

What does it mean to be a spiritual leader? And these are all important things to ask, especially in a culture that wants to buck all authority and wants to be completely in charge. And we don't want anyone to tell us to do anything. And we think about, of course, where it all starts. The most important authority is your life kneeling at the foot. At the foot of the cross.

Yeah. And bowing to the authority of Jesus. And then, of course, from there, it flows on out. I mean, Ephesians makes it clear. Husbands, love your wife.

Wives, submit to your husbands. And then it says to each other to submit to one another in the fear of God. Yeah. So God being the ultimate head, the ultimate one. And so under this idea and concept, first and foremost, we want to have Rahab's scarlet cord hanging outside of our window.

Right. We want to have Jesus Christ over our homes. Because, yes, a commitment one to another is important. But when Jesus is the Lord of your life and the Lord of your home, then your life really does become a threefold cord that shall not quickly be broken. Amen. That's Ecclesiastes 4.12. So that spiritual trajectory of your lives, your home planted in the house of God. For your kids, it's not this question of if it's good weather, we probably won't go to church. If it's really bad weather, well, we're not going to go to church.

But only that narrow window of just kind of cruddy, then we'll probably be here. But this sense of, no, no, we're living our lives planted in God's house. Because if the church isn't central in your heart, why would your kids think it's a focal point or important?

And so having there be a spiritual theme to your home, devotions, and just a clear message sent that Jesus Christ is the Lord of this house. So these are the 10 coins. But here's the best news. What's lost can be found. Because you go, man, I've got work to do. I thought I was doing pretty good.

But now I realize I'm at a 7 out of 10 or a 6 out of 10. I've got some loose coins. I've got some missing coins.

Don't we all? And you could have had a really firm grasp on a coin in one season. And then the next season, where did it go? It's come loose. It's gone missing.

The plates constantly have to be spun to mix analogies in. When we were talking to Charlie Duke, though, he told us the most fascinating thing. Because we said, well, whatever happened to that ring, right? And do you want to know? Some of you, this has been driving you crazy the whole sermon. What happened to the ring?

I left you hanging. Day 9 of 11, they are traveling 24,000 miles per hour, or roughly 10 times faster than a bullet leaves a gun, coming back from the moon, headed towards the Earth. They are 50,000 miles from the moon. And they have to go outside of the spaceship to get a can of film on a camera mounted outside, because they didn't have digital cameras yet. So they had to go get the film from the outside. So they get their spacesuits on.

They open up the hatch. Ken Mattingly, the one whose ring was lost, puts a leash on and goes out the craft. Does that make anybody nervous?

Would anybody want that assignment? That makes some of us feel some kind of a way. He goes outside. He's getting the canister. He's fiddling around.

And Charlie Duke, his job was to sit there and talk back and forth with him and just watch from inside the spacecraft. And as he's doing that, something bright and shiny in his peripheral vision, because he didn't have dove's eyes, is right here. And he realizes, as it's flying by, what is that?

What is that? It's a golden wedding band flying directly toward the open hatch. And he realized he's going to have one shot, because he's flying. And he's going to have one shot to lunge for it.

And that's going to be it. Then it's going to be gone into the vacuum of space forever. So he lunges. He decides not to say anything in case he misses, right?

What he doesn't know won't hurt him. So he lunges and misses it by 2 inches. And the ring flies directly outside the spacecraft, where it bounces off the back of Ken Mattingly's helmet, course corrects, and flies directly back into the spaceship.

He just grabs it, shoves it over his pinky on his gloved finger, and says nothing. They finish the spacewalk. He comes back in. They shut the hatch.

They get their suits off. And he casually tosses his ring to him. And Ken's like, where did you find this?

He's like, just turned up, all casual. Even crazier than that, though, is the way that that metaphor of a lost ring coming home was lived out in Charlie Duke's life and his marriage to his wife, Dottie. OK, so here's what happens. They're not Christians on the moon. He had had it as this big grail of his career to be an astronaut, get to the moon. And I said, what was it like, right? What was it like going to the moon? Was that life changing? Did it change your life? He said, I guess I get asked that a lot. No, it didn't change my life to go to the moon because I came home just as empty as I left.

My life didn't change until later when I met Jesus Christ, and he became my Lord and Savior. So amazing. You see, he was disappointed by how empty he felt when he got home from the moon. And so he said, well, now I just need money. I need a million dollars.

If I had a million dollars, I'm sure I'd feel happy. And so he got into the beer business, became very wealthy, and was still empty. His marriage was crumbling, and his wife was vacillating back and forth between suicide or divorce when she got invited to an outreach and heard the gospel presented and gave her life to Christ and began to pray for her husband's salvation. For two and a half years, she was a Christian, and her husband was not.

And she just kept believing for that coin to come back in that hatch, for that coin to come back in. And one day while he was reading the Bible at a Bible study as well, God opened his eyes up to see who Jesus was, though he had been a church person his whole life but wasn't a Christian person. And he too gave his heart to Jesus Christ as Savior as well. So my point is, our point is, no matter what's going on in God's hands, the dead can come to life and the lost can be found. Amen?

That's right. Amen. So goodly done. So let's pray together. And as we're praying, I'm just going to ask for some vulnerability and honesty, heads bowed, eyes closed, every location. If you would say, in my marriage, in our marriage, there's some coins that have gotten loose, but today I want to commit to doing what that woman did, searching the house, lighting a lamp, and sweeping carefully to find it.

If that's you I'm describing, you say there's at least one coin missing or loose in my crown. I want to work on that. Just raise your hand up. Just raise your hand up all across the church. Thank you, Lord. Thank you, God. My hands raised for sure, God. Bless my brothers and sisters. I'm going to ask Jani to say a prayer for those of us with our hands raised.

Yes. Father, we thank you. We thank you that you don't just call us to something great.

You empower us and enable us. And thank you for the gift of marriage. And I pray for those who are raising their hands just saying, Lord, help me.

Because it's an impossible task. But with you, nothing is impossible. And so I just pray your grace over every single one, over every single marriage. I pray your power, your peace, your presence, in Jesus' name.

You can put your hands down. And as we continue in prayer, I want to ask if you're here and you've never trusted Christ as Savior. Maybe like Charlie, you look to an accomplishment or to something at work or to a financial goal to fill up the hole inside of you. But today you realize what's missing is what he was missing, a relationship with Jesus. And you need to make Him the Lord of your life.

I'm going to tell you, you'll never be right with your mate until you become right with your maker. And so if you're here today and you'd realize, hey, maybe this is the day. Now is the time for me to come back home to the Father. I'm going to pray a prayer. And I want you to pray it with me. Because the Bible says if we call on the name of the Lord, we will be saved. So if you're ready to trust Christ and be born again, pray this prayer.

Church, pray it with us, no one praying alone, all of us praying together. Dear God. Dear God. I know that I'm a sinner. I know that I'm a sinner. And I can't fix myself. I can't fix myself. But I believe you can.

But I believe you can. Please come into my heart. Come into my heart. Make it your home. Make it your home. Thank you for new life. Thank you for new life. I give you mine.

I give you mine. In Jesus' name. In Jesus' name. And with heads still bowed and eyes still closed, all of us praying, if you just gave your heart to Christ or rededicated your life to God like that prodigal son or perhaps daughter that you are, I'm going to count to three. And when I get to three, I want you to shoot your hand up saying, this is me.

This is real. I want to give my life to Christ. And today I'm becoming a child of God. When I get to three, shoot your hand up.

One, two, three. Shoot your hands up. Shoot your hands up. God bless you right over here. God bless you right here. God sees you over here.

My brother and sister right over here. God sees every single one of you. Praise God. Praise God. Come on, you can put your hands down. Thank you, Jesus.

Hey, everybody. Thanks for listening to this podcast. To learn more about Harvest Ministries, follow this show and consider supporting it. Just go to harvest.org. And to find out how to know God personally, go to harvest.org and click on Know God.