Praise the Lord, friends. I’m so glad you’re here. Welcome to the broadcast. We’re talking about imparting success to the next generation from my wife Barbara’s book. And we’re specifically talking about the priority of marriage and what happens together when we come and work together in an area of teamwork in the marriage relationship. You’ll be blessed today. Friends, it’s so good to have you with us today. I am so happy to have Barbara. She’s been with me all week. We’ve been sharing on imparting success to the next generation. And this week we have specifically been talking about the importance of priorities in life. And we talk first of all about the priority, right, of our relationship with God. And then we’ve been talking about the priority of marriage and we’ve been just laying some basic things out and teaching. We’re gonna continue to share along these lines. When we were talking about the priority of marriage, there’s a couple things that we talked about. We talked about the order of creation, how God created heaven and Earth, everything in it, a beautiful garden. Then He placed man in that garden. He gave man a job before He gave him a wife. And then He brought to him a help sufficient for him. And so one of the things, we talked about three things that you should remember before you get married as a believer, find someone that loves God more than they love you. Find someone that has a good work ethic. And find someone who’s a giver. You know, both of the Hebrew and Greek words for marriage talk about giving, right? And you’re to give yourself to the other, or, you know, and the fact is, if you study like a traditional marriage, right, Christ gave Himself for us. And so as husbands, we’re to give ourselves for our wives. And then we are to give ourselves as believers to Jesus. And wives are to give theirselves to their husbands. And that’s one reason the enemy fights the marriage relationship so hard because he wants to break down these, you know, these foundations in our life. We talked about how we’re complete in Christ. You know, Adam was not lonely before sin entered the world. And you know what? We’re complete in Christ. Barbara does not complete me. I do not complete Barbara. Barbara is a strong person in her relationship with God. She’s complete in Christ. She gets her sense of being loved from God. I get my sense of self-worth from God and we’re complete. And when we come together, we have multiplied strength.
Amen. You know,
Praise God. we’ve just been talking about just even the power of agreement. But again, you talked about the order of events and just how huge it is in a marriage relationship to have that agreement. And we’re aware that there is an enemy to God’s creation.
Right. There is a deceiver and really it’s an enemy to God’s creation to cause havoc in the marriages, cause havoc in our homes. And so that’s why I’m so glad this book came out for really such a time as this, “Imparting Success to the Next Generation.” And we’ve even brought out just don’t fall for being offended, you know, offended in the home, offended with one another in our marriage relationship.
Well, you wanna let the devil in your marriage, get offended at each other. You know, the Bible actually says “Where envy and strife is, “there’s confusion and every evil work.” Man, and if you’ve got offense, get over it. You know, don’t let the sun go down on your wrath. You know, just talk things out, communicate, work things out peaceably, don’t act like a nut.
Well, praise God. So we brought that out. And so, you know, there’s something really valuable. We’re gonna read Ecclesiastes, and we may look at some other scriptures as we go, but this is something I really like. I bring this out, the value of a friend or the value of teamwork. And when I read this in Ecclesiastes, I’m thinking in our home, but I’m also thinking in the workplace and in our communities. Again, there is an enemy to, we read that there’s a blessing in unity.
Right.
And the enemy, the devil, doesn’t want unity in any area of our life, whether it’s in our home, our marriage, you know, or even in the workplace. We can just see that spirit of offense just really going rampant in the world today. And we don’t need to fall for it.
Amen.
You know, we need to be what it says in the Bible, you know, pursue after peace. Follow after peace.
Right. And I like what you said, if you take that bait for offense
Yeah. that will just derail you from really the plans that God has for your life. And so,
Amen. we’re gonna be looking at this. I love this in a Ecclesiastes, chapter four.
Amen.
Verses nine through 12. And so did you wanna read that or did you have something else you wanted to share before this?
No.
I’ll just jump into this with you right here. And it’s talking about prioritizing our relationship. And we have relationships in the home. We have relationship with God, relationships in the workplace, as you were bringing out. But it says here in Ecclesiastes 4:9-12, “Two are better than one “because they have a good reward for their labor. “For if they fall, the one will lift up his fellow. “But woe to him who is alone when he falls “for he doesn’t have another to help him up. “Again, if two lie together, they have heat. “But how can one be warm alone? “And if one prevail against him, two shall withstand him. “And a threefold cord is not quickly broken.” And so when we think about this, you know, talking about two are better than one, prioritizing relationship, things multiply when you come together. You know, the Bible says one can put 1000 to flight and two can put 10,000 to flight. I really believe that’s God’s purpose in the marriage, that a husband and wife would come together and they would have multiplied strength, not just additional, but multiplied strength. And when we work together and we work in agreement, good things happen. And I talk about multiplied productivity, multiplied strength, multiplied energy, and multiplied protection. All of those things come from having a good working relationship.
And I like, we might just break it down because I think this is so powerful to understand this. So in verse nine, when it says, “Two are better than one “because they have a good reward for their labor,” it’s really talking about, you know, that multiplied productivity.
Amen.
That when we come together, isn’t it interesting in the marriage and even in the body of Christ, I really believe this is how God has it. That there’s power when we come together and work together, when we bring our strengths together. And I have just noticed, especially with different Christians and different Christian leaders, it’s so obvious when someone just has that, when they’re so intimidated by somebody that might be smarter or might operate a little bit faster. But really I think there’s strength when we surround ourselves with really smart and talented people.
Amen.
And I, we need to remember that in the marriage, again, in the marriage and in the church and in the workplace, not to be intimidated, you know, that you’re better at something than I am or vice versa or in the workplace and in the church because it takes all of us that God gets the glory ultimately.
Amen. You know, there’s areas that I’m strong and finance is a area that God’s gifted me with and God’s helped us. But you know, you are really strong, like in the area of marriage, in the area of relationships, in the area of children. You are phenomenal gifted at, you know, like counseling in the area of marriage, in the area of children, just knowing. And I know some of the time I’ve seen you counsel even families with little kids that are two years old and you will tell them some example and I’ll think that came from the Holy Ghost. And they’ll do it and they’ll come back and tell you how well that worked. And we constantly get reports back from people, you know, that are receiving the word, you know, and different things and, you know, from our ministry and how it’s helping them. And you know, from your book, we get very positive reports as people employ these same principles that we employed in our family, that you employed, that you’ve taught, they’re having the same result. And if you don’t have Barbara’s book on imparting success to the next generation, I would encourage you to go to the website and get that book “Imparting Success to the Next Generation.” I’m telling you, whatever it costs $15 or $20 bucks to get it mailed to. It’s worth 1000 times that.
We also have declarations over our children, scriptures that we specifically spoke over our children.
Yeah.
So all that’s on our website. A lot of materials. And I wanna remind everybody, September through May, we have a women’s ministry called Flourish. This is on Thursdays and it, we live stream this at 12 o’clock at noon, Colorado time. I figured, well, maybe not everyone can be there in person, but you can join us on your lunch break or whatever time that is where you live. We have women around our nation and around the world who are joining us and live streaming with us on Thursdays for our Flourish.
And another thing that we’ve put on our website along with our free children’s curriculum, we’ve began to add different curriculums that we teach and we have put the entire curriculum for “Imparting Success to the Next Generation.” You taught this at Charis Bible College for Andrew Wommack for over 10 years. And we’ve put the curriculum online on our website, CharisChristianCenter.com, free. We have the Book of Romans, my teaching, we have Bible covenants, we have basic Bible doctrines, we have 1 John. All these different teachings that we’ve taught over the years, we’re making ’em available free to help people. And this children’s curriculum is exploding. It’s in over 50 countries today, I believe. It’s just, we hear from several countries yesterday, I just heard from the Ukraine, the day before that from India. We’ve had, we have a number of people in India that have downloaded this and are using it. And we hear from churches all across the United States and their children’s pastors are saying, “This is the best children’s curriculum “that we’ve ever had.”
You know, we’re happy to put all this, again, available to you, but both of us have a similar story. Again, we’re talking about priorities, relationship with God, relationship with our spouse as a second priority. Then we’re gonna be getting into the third priority should be your children, your family, then work and all that comes later. But you know, the word of God will change your life.
Amen.
It changed our life. But the word of God,
Amen. if we would just do what the word says, it would sure go a lot better in our lives. But the word of God is what changed our lives.
There’s a lot of people that don’t know what the word says. I know our son Peter, after he graduated from Princeton University, he worked in Miami for the 3G Capital Corporation for Burger King. Then they moved him to Tim Hortons Coffee in Canada. And then he moved back to Southern California and he went to this large evangelical church and he was over a small group for young couples. And he said, “It’s amazing “how many people in the church really don’t know “what the Bible says and don’t do what the Bible says.” But we need to live by the word of God. You know, Jesus said, “Man will not live by bread alone, “but by every word that precedes from the mouth of God.” So these resources, most of these resources we have on the website are free of charge. And we’re making that available to you, to help you, praise God. Help churches, help families, help employers, help. Praise God. That’s our job, amen, to help people. Praise God.
Amen. So we’re gonna come back after a short break. We’re gonna be continuing more on how we have multiplied things when we come together in marriage. Hi friends. We’ve been teaching from Barbara’s book, “Imparting Success to the Next Generation.” These are principles that will help you establish a strong marriage, a strong home, and be a blessing to your children. We’ve also made the syllabus for this free of charge on our website at CharisChristianCenter.com. Blessings. Jesus said three beautiful words in John 19:30. He said, “It is finished.” There is nothing more that needs to be paid in the realm of redemption. The price has already been paid. Friends, we’re teaching today, sharing on the power of agreement and talking about marriage and talking about what happens when we come together as we prioritize relationship. We said one thing is we have multiplied productivity and we can just do more together than we can do alone. And I know Barbara, for most of our life, we’ve been married 40 years, but we have worked together and we have built life together. You know, that is not what is taught in a lot of places. I remember my best friend from high school stood up at our wedding with me getting married and I stood up at his. And when I went to his, this minister got up and said, “Well, she’s gonna go her way and you’re gonna go your way “and some way you’re gonna try to meet in the middle.” That is not a marriage. You need to work together at building life. Now you may have different jobs and do different things, but you still need to work together and build life together.
Amen.
You know, give yourself to one another and build life together. It says in verse 10, “If they fall, the one will lift up his fellows.” This is Ecclesiastes 4:10. “But woe to him that’s alone when he falls “for he has not another to help him.” You know, you’re stronger together than you are apart. You can do more.
You know, we were talking about how just offense is just running rampant through society. So in the homes, but in the church, in the workplace. And like you just read, that really when we stay together, there is strength to, it’s stronger to help each other up than to go around
Amen. pushing everyone down and tearing them down and running them down just because you have a, you know, just a spirit of being intimidated by their strengths.
Or some people are just arrogant. You know, get over your pride. You know, only by pride comes contention. And if you’re offended, if you’re contentious, you’re proud. So let it go.
Yeah, so I like this. You know, we’re talking about two are better than one, multiplied productivity. And if one falls, one can lift up his companion. You know, in the marriage, we should be lifting up each other. I like it when you, I’m just gonna be honest, I like it when during the day you’ll just tell me, “You’re amazing,” or “You’re really doing a good job.” Isn’t that awesome? Just again, it’s just simple acts of courtesy and simple acts of kindness, speaking blessing over one another, but in the home, but even in the church community, in our workplace, building one another up with our words.
Yes. You know, your words have the power of life and death. In fact, Proverbs 18:21 says, “Death and life are in the power of the tongue. “And those who love it will eat the fruit of it.” Both of them, death and life. We read from 1 Peter 3:8-10 how that works in marriage earlier in the week in the broadcast. But the very next verse says, Proverbs 18:22, “He who finds a wife obtains the favor of the Lord,” finds a good thing and obtains the favor of the Lord. When I found you, I found a good thing.
Amen.
And I got God’s favor. And I believe that we have favor. You know, there’s favor on us as as a married couple. There’s favor on our family. There’s different things that that’s brought. And I thank God that, you know, God brought you to me. Praise God.
And I wanna share an example and you can help me out if it’s in another scripture, too. But we’ve had this happen more than once. I’ve asked you to come with me. We brought out how you said, when we were first married, I know for first couple years I would say, “I want you to be my best friend.” In other words, we actually like to hang out together on our days off. And so there’s times on our day off I’m like, “You know, I really wanna do this. “Can you just take me to this place?” And maybe you’re, you know, you might not really want to, but you do. And it always turns out that you’re really blessed, too. There’ll be some crazy sale. You’ve taken me,
This happens. and it’s happened more than once. And it’ll be, you know, I know one store, I think I might’ve got one little thing, but, you know, you just took the time to do what I wanted. And I remember one time, didn’t you like buy one suit and then get two or three free? I mean, it’s just like, I’ve just seen whenever.
This happens over and over, Barbara. And we’ll be somewhere, I’ll do something nice for you. I know I recently bought you something, it was like $500. Now the thing retails for about $10,000. And so it was a fantastic deal. But right after I did that, somebody just came and blessed me with a gift. And you know what? When I’m kind to you, when I’m good to you, that goodness of God comes back to me through other people.
And isn’t that scriptural?
Right. I see it in the Bible that when a husband is nice and kind to his wife, like good things will happen and that’s awesome.
Oh, it happens all the time. We’ll go somewhere to do something for you and like you’ll say, you know, this was happened a few years back, but I took you to go to this thing you wanted to go to. And I ended up buying three suits for $300. They’re $1000 suits, basically. Hart Schaffner Marx. This was right after COVID. But this was, they are gorgeous. They are amazing. I’d never pay $1000 bucks. I shouldn’t say I’d never do it, but I’m conservative and we get fantastic deals and different things. But you know, I went to get something for you and take you somewhere and God blessed me.
I’ve just seen that over and over. When you take the time to be nice to me, it’s like God rewards you and is nice to you. And that, again, is in the Bible. But I like this next one in verse 11. Again, “If two lie down together, “they will keep each other warm. “But how can one be warm alone?” And that’s just talking about how the energy, that there’s energy when we come together, you know, in unity
Amen. in the marriage. But again, in the workplace, and we’ll share some in the marriage, but I like to even use example in the church. You know, we have hundreds of volunteers who help on a weekly basis.
Amen.
And there is energy when we all come together for one common purpose and that is God.
Amen. I wanna say something to you. You know what? If you’re in the Colorado Springs area on a Sunday, I would love to have you come to Charis Christian Center. And come, there’s just something about when people get together, when they come together with the, you know, we’re here preaching the word, we’re here letting the power of the Holy Ghost move, but worshiping God. There’s just things that happen.
You know, you just brought something up. We have a lot of people that do livestream, which is powerful. But there is something amazing when we can come together corporately.
Yes.
And when we worship God corporately, it just like takes you into a whole nother dimension.
Yeah, and if you can’t come and you don’t have a good church where you’re at that you can, we wanna invite you to go to CharisChristianCenter.com, Sunday mornings, Wednesday night, Thursday when you have Flourish, different things. We always have, we have all these programs. Every week we put ’em up free of charge. You can go back and watch the whole week of programs. But you know what, you know, there’s energy, there’s strength, there’s something that comes when we come together. You know, you read the scripture earlier in the broadcast this week, but how good and how pleasant for brethren to dwell together in unity. You know, it’s like that precious oil that came down Aaron’s head, down his beard, down to the garments, to the whole body. There’s an anointing that flows from the head to the body. And then he says, you know, it’s like the dew on Hermon. And there God commands his blessing.
Amen.
There’s a commanded blessing when brethren come together in unity, in the Holy Spirit, the anointing, things happen, praise God.
So, you know why the enemy tries to just disrupt that unity on a regular basis
Right. in our homes, in the church, anywhere. If there’s disruption, God’s not the author of that
Yeah. strife of offense and confusion. That is not from the Lord at all.
No. You know, so we go on, and so there’s multiplied energy when we come together. We can accomplish more, we get more reward. We’re stronger together against the enemy, against his lies. The final one is this, there’s multiplied protection. He says this in Ecclesiastes 4:12. “If one prevail against him, two will withstand him. “And a threefold cord is not quickly broken.”
Amen.
Do you remember, Barbara, when we were counseling with your pastor, Pastor Mark from the Four Square Church in Lamar, Colorado? He talked about how, you know, it was like, you know, we were sitting in the church and it’s like, if I was on one side and I saw it from one perspective, and you were on the other side and you saw it from this perspective.
Right.
But God is over all. And you know what? God sees the whole picture. And if you’ll let God be the center of your marriage, if you’ll let Christ be the center of your marriage, that will put that triangle together and you will pull together and not apart. And it’s just like I said when I went to my best friend’s wedding and, you know, this preacher was up there saying, “She’s gonna go her way and do her thing, “and you’re gonna go your way and do, “and somewhere you’re gonna meet in the middle.” I don’t believe that’s really a marriage. There need to be some things that you’re in agreement about and that Christ is over your home. That God is over your marriage and that you are looking to Him. And when you look to Him, He helps you come together.
Amen, amen.
He helps you see the whole picture. Sometimes people are usually in disagreement because they’re just seeing from a completely different perspective. And we need to begin to see from God’s perspective.
I like how, again, you talked about my pastor counseling us and how it’s to bring us together. If we can keep God the focus, make it a priority.
That’s right.
Keep God the focus, He will always be bringing us together. And if you don’t mind, I just wanna share this, we have just enough time to really finish up this week. You talked about this, too, in Psalm 103:1-5. And it says this, “Bless the Lord, oh, my soul “and all that is within me, bless His holy name. “Bless the Lord, oh, my soul. “And forget not all of His benefits.”
And there are benefits to believe in God.
Amen. It goes on in verse three, “Who forgives all your iniquities, “who heals all your diseases, “who redeemed your life from destruction, “who crowned you with loving kindness and tender mercies, “who satisfies your mouth
Amen. “with good things
Praise God. “so that your youth is renewed like the eagles.”
Man, what a promise. You know, we have so many promises of God and when we come together in agreement in our marriage, we can see these promises. Barbara, you and I started out 40 years ago, we had almost nothing. But you know what? We believed God, we trusted God. We came together in agreement. We sowed seed, we’ve always tithed, you know, to the church, different things. And God has multiplied us over and over. We’ve worked together. We’ve worked together in business. We’ve worked together in church. We’ve worked together in our marriage. We’ve worked together in our family. And God has been so good to us. But you know what? This isn’t only for us. This is for anybody that’ll believe Him. You know, God is no respecter of persons. He’s only a respecter of faith. And you know, just like God has been good to you, and God has been good to me, God will be good to those of you who are watching because He’s a good God. Really and He wants good things for everybody.
Amen, that’s right.
So if you’ll believe God, just like we’ve believed God, did you know what? You can get the same results. Now, it’s gonna look different, right? Because we’re all in, there’s different anointings, different callings, different purposes,
Amen. different plans. But yet, it’s still gonna be good.
Amen, amen.
God overall is good to all, praise God. Well, I just want to say a big thank you for staying with us, for being on the broadcast. Remember, on our website, we have the entire syllabus for this teaching free of charge, “Imparting Success to the Next Generation.” You know, we’ve been teaching two weeks, only got through four lessons. There’s four more. So there’s a lot of information there. Or you can get Barbara’s book. Thank you so much and blessings.
It is important to keep God first, family second, and our ministry third. In a busy world, it is essential that we understand and act upon these priorities. Raising kids to love the word, value family, and live with purpose will bring them great success. Get your copy of Barbara’s new book, “Imparting Success to the Next Generation,” for $15.99. Go to CharisChristianCenter.com and order yours today.
Praise the Lord. Friends, I want to invite you to church this coming Sunday morning, whether you’re in Colorado Springs or whether you’re wherever you are at. If you’re in Colorado Springs, you can see us Sunday morning at 8:30 or 10:30 A.M. live. But you can also watch us with our live stream congregation at 8:30 or 10:30 A.M. or you can go to our website and get it anytime at CharisChristianCenter.com. Friend, I want to invite you to pray with me right now. Heavenly Father, I believe that Jesus Christ is your son. I believe that He died on the cross for my sins. And I believe that you raised Him from the dead and made Him Lord. And right now I surrender to your lordship. In Jesus’ name, amen.
Thanks for watching “Grace for Today.” This broadcast has been made possible by our faithful partners. If you would like to become a partner, need prayer, or have a question, please call us at 719-418-4000, or to partner online, go to CharisChristianCenter.com/give. You can write us at PO Box 63733, Colorado Springs, Colorado, 80962. See you next time on “Grace for Today.”
