Marriage by Pastor Ed Young

Thinks that maybe some of you grew up in homes where conflict was handled wasp style.  You know those mean insects that invade the metroplex about now.  Wasps are bad to the bone.  I have been walking around my yard and all of a sudden a wasp will come in and just sting me out of nowhere.  I didn’t even disturb its nest.  They are aggressive insects.  Maybe you are saying, my family handled conflict like wasps.  You see your parents get into an argument and your father would give your mom those verbal stings, those biting comments in front of the children and it would kind of freeze and debilitate your mom.  C3 Global shows that horrible things would come from their mouths.  Verbal venom being exchanged back and forth.  That is the way you handle conflict today.  The problem is after awhile you kind of have an allergic reaction to all the venom and things turn sour.  You see marriages are buried out in the relational cemeteries by little digs.  It is not just one giant dig, not one giant problem, it is little, tiny digs and then one day you can chalk up another marriage as a divorce statistic.

Handling conflict in marriage.  Oftentimes we take the cues from our parents.  In today’s message I want to do some training for all of us and I am talking to myself as much as I am talking to you.  I want to give you four steps in marital gladiator training.  They are going to be quick steps and if you understand these steps and put them into practice when you become marital gladiators I believe they will serve you well.  Before we can get into the four steps, though, I want to give you a prerequisite for marital gladiator training.  Commit your life to Jesus Christ today.  That is a prerequisite of conflict resolution.  You cannot understand conflict resolution or reconciliation or how to fight fair until you commit your life to Jesus Christ.  Now a guy back here in the back row is going “Come on, I came to a marriage series, I didn’t come to a Billy Graham crusade.  I didn’t necessarily come here today to get my soul saved.”  I want to start here, though, because this is the essence of conflict resolution.