Okay, we're in our fourth session on our one-day conference on marriage. And in this session we will be looking at the husband who covenants to be truthful and trusting with his wife, and the wife who in turn pledges to be a helpmate and companion in life. Let's pray, shall we? Lord, we thank you for this time together. As we seek to navigate the course of our marriages, we are all too aware that broad is the way that leads to destruction, and there are many failed marriages, not only in and out of the church, but in and out of the ministry. We pray that you would make your word a lamp to our feet and a light to our path, that we would see that narrow way in which you would have us to walk. In Christ's name we pray, Amen. Okay, let's go now for the gentleman. The husband now is pledging to have a trusting and truthful relationship with his wife. If we are to love our wives as Christ loved the Church, then we will be as trusting and truthful with our wives as Christ is with us, and that's very important. Turn with me, if you would, to John chapter 15. Turn to John 15, if you would, with me. And, Andrew, if you would please read for me John 15, verse 15, please. Jesus Christ was very open with us and with his disciples, wasn't he? And isn't he? We have the book of Revelation, all about the end times. We have the epistles, we have the Acts of the Apostles, we have the Gospels, we have the creation account, we have... God is a virtual open book to us, isn't he? He trusts us with a tremendous amount of information. Not only that, he trusts us with the ministry, doesn't he? Don't you think right about now God should shut down the church and take over? Don't you think so? Don't you think we've missed things enough? Failed in evangelism, failed in discipleship. Church leadership has failed in conduct. The purity of the church has long been lost. Don't you think that God should just shut things down? But he hasn't, has he? How about your personal lives? Don't you think by now he should have withdrawn his gifts and calling to you? I mean, we've long since ceased to earn that privilege, haven't we? And yet Romans 11, 29 says his gifts and calling are irrevocable. God will never remove those from us. God has instilled a great amount of trust, not only in his worldwide church, but on us as Christians individually. Proverbs 31.11 says of the godly husband, the heart of her husband trusts in her, he will have no lack of gain. You know, in the world, trust is earned, isn't it? In the Bible, trust is given. We certainly haven't earned the trust of God, have we? You haven't earned the right to have the gifts you have. They were simply given to you. You haven't earned the right of being called God's son. It was simply given to you, wasn't it? There's nothing that we have done in the Christian life that we can say would justify the trust that God has placed in us as stewards of the gospel, can we? And yes, we are. We are all our stewards of the gospel. You know, all men want the wife of Proverbs 31, don't they? I remember when I was in the college ministry, young men would bring me each lesson. It's like, I'm working on a list, you know, of characteristics for my wife. Many times they would be, you know, 10, 15 items, sometimes as many as 20 items. I remember this one young man who's in fact a close friend of mine still. He had a legal pass just filled up. And I remember telling him, you know, I hope she doesn't have a similar list because you'll never qualify. And that's how many times we are as men. We all want the wife of Proverbs 31, but we don't want to be the husband of Proverbs, particularly the husband of Proverbs 31. We need to be trusting and truthful to her. If we continually protect our wife by not telling her the truth, we treat her as a child, not a helpmate, don't we? If you're not willing to be open to your wife, Jesus Christ trusted his disciples with a lot of information, didn't he? Even when they prayed, didn't he tell them he was going to be crucified? Didn't he have them with him in Gethsemane, when he was praying and sweating like great drops of blood? Didn't he have them right there with him? He appointed twelve that they might be with him, and he might send them out to preach, Mark 4.13. Jesus Christ showed his emotions. Weren't they there with him when he wept over Jerusalem? Weren't they with him when he wept at the unbelief of people with Lazarus? Weren't they with him when the Pharisees would accuse him? He lived a very open life with them, didn't he? And even so, we should live an open life with our wife. How can she be our helpmate if we are unwilling to live openly before her? How can she help us with our fears if we don't share with her our fears? How can she help us with our doubts if we don't share our doubts with her? How can she help us with our struggles if we're unwilling to share our struggles with her? I made a big mistake in my early relationship with Eleanor in protecting her from the difficulties I was going through. That was very unfair, wasn't it? Eleanor was to be my helpmate, and I wasn't allowing her to help. It's as if you were given a responsibility for the conference that is coming up this weekend, and they said, okay, you're going to be the assistant director, but you weren't given a single thing to do. You were just required to show up to the Navigator office and just sit in the office all day and not do anything. That would be frustrating, wouldn't it? Well, your wife will feel no less frustrated if you don't allow her to minister to you. If during the prayer time you don't give her the prayer information necessary so that she can be your prayer warrior, so that she can be your comforter, so that she can be your encourager. So I would encourage you to do that. And wives, Eleanor has shared with me before that she made a mistake earlier in our marriage by putting me on a pedestal, by my weaknesses or my difficulties almost being threatening. So you won't want to do that either, do you? Your husband has issues, he has problems, he has weaknesses. This doesn't bring into question his manliness or his gifts and calling. It just makes him human, doesn't it? And those weaknesses and those struggles he's having, those are opportunities for you to minister to him. But for her to do that, she has to be trusting. I used the illustration before about a young man who decides that he wants to start memorizing scripture, so he gets his verse pack out and he finds if he runs, he's able to work on his verses, doesn't he? So he walks about a kilometer, and then he jogs a kilometer, and then pretty soon he's walking a kilometer, and jogging two, and walking one. And pretty soon, after about a year and a half or two years of this, he's jogging 10K every morning and working on his verses. And he gets convicted, so he says, you know, I should be doing this with my wife. This would be a great time to fellowship over the Word. So he calls his wife up one morning and says, come on, we're going to run a 10K and work on our verses. Is that clear? No, it took you two years to work up to that. So if you have found yourself not sharing with your wife openly and truthfully, then you need to begin doing that. But don't take off tomorrow morning on a 10K run. Begin praying and sharing prayer requests and opening your life to her. Do you have concerns about your career? About your fundraising? About your finances? About virtually anything? About your family? Begin sharing that with your wife and getting her to pray for you. Now a lot, many wives will say, this is really what we want our husband to do. So you say yes, you drive him home, your husband expresses a little doubt, and you say, oh no, please, I want you to share everything with me. I want to be your prayer warrior, please. Oh, please, open your life to me. So the husband says, well, to tell you the truth, I've been second-guessing my call to the ministry. I've been really struggling with that, and I'm just not sure this fundraising thing is going to work. I was going to tell you this, but this month's finances are going to be really, really bad, and I was at the doctor's, and I told him the physical was alright, but in reality he wants me to come back to some more tests, and I'm really afraid of that. I mean, you look at him and go, Now, that's not how you encourage your husband to be an open book, is it? Okay? Isn't that right? That doesn't encourage your husband to be an open book. So don't do that. But husbands, likewise, Your wife is sitting there, you're in bed, the lamps are on, she's reading her bible, her Christian book, and it's about time to go to bed, and she hears this, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, and she looks up, and the emotional dump truck, full of six or seven years of marriage, trash, is about to dump on her. Don't do that either, guys. John says that Moses came with the law, that Jesus came with grace and truth. Grace is extending to someone something they do not deserve. That's the definition of grace. So we extend grace to our wives in our conversational intimacy. When we are open and truthful with them, we do so in a gracious way. For instance, your past lives, you don't unburden yourself to make yourself feel better by simply dumping trash in your wife's lap. You don't do that. You don't do that, guys. So, we trust, we deal with them in a trusting and truthful manner, but we also don't pick at every little problem they have. I want to be really trusting and truthful to you, and so I'm just going to tell you everything that's wrong with you. That's not what we're talking about, is it? If God's definition of trusting and truthful was to tell us every day, every single thing we did wrong, we'd go insane, wouldn't we? But God is gracious with us. He covers offenses. He covers them with the blood of Christ. He forgives them, whether we confess them or not. He gives us far more than we deserve. He's patient and loving with us. And we should be the same thing with our wives. When I'm talking about trusting and truthful, I'm talking about not nitpicking your wife, but rather opening your life to her so that she can minister to you as helpmate. That's what you are promising to do. That she can play a part in your life. One of the questions you should ask yourself, gentlemen, if you don't do this, who do you want to do it? What other minister do you want to allow your wife to be there at all times? Does that make sense? Well, John, I just can't open my life to my wife. My grandfather, he was a quiet, solitary man. My father was quiet and solitary. I don't ever remember him talking about love and blubbering around the house. He kept his own counsel and handled his own problems, and I'm just not a talker either. I told her I loved her when I married her. If I don't love her, I'll tell her that again. I just don't talk. That's just who I am. I'm a closed book. That's who she married. She knew what she was getting into. Okay, great. So, you're unwilling to do that. Hey, right? I'm willing to do this. Okay, good. Good, you're gonna let her pick, right? Well, see, maybe she'll pick this. Am I right? Is that the game we're gonna play? Once you announce to your wife, you just can't meet a covenant need, by default, what are you saying that she gets to do? What are you saying, Joffrey? If you announce to your wife, I just can't meet your emotional needs, I just can't be an open book. I just can't do it. I'm going to take this off the table. We'll just erase this. And what does she get to do? What does she get to do? She gets to erase something, doesn't she? I mean, if you're going to get to erase something, doesn't she get to erase something? I mean, she didn't pick this one to erase, did she? You did. So now you're going to hand her And to tell you the truth, that's how many ministers live. They just have a quiet, unstated agreement, and their houses become cold and hard. I don't want that for you. I want something better. I don't want you to early just give up. to lower your expectations. Thought it was going to be something exciting and fulfilling and great, but you know, it's just not happening. So we're not going to hit a divorce, but we're just going to extend one more generation of mediocrity. I want something more for you than that. And one of the things of an active Christian maturity is to say, you know, I love my mom and dad. I love them. And I honor them, but they just didn't do it right. And so this is going to be the generation where it's different. I can tell you in terms of spiritual leadership of the family, when I read verses in the Bible about the father teaching and instructing his son, I have nothing to relate to, because my dad never did that with me. But my son does. I decided I was going to break that cycle. When Eleanor reads verses in the Bible about the importance of respecting your husband, and being, and submitting, she doesn't have anything to relate to in her family. But she decided to break that stifle. Her daughters do. They know exactly what those verses mean. from observing their mother, from growing up in their mother's home. And guys in this area are being trusted and truthful with your wife. You may not be able to look at your father and come up with an application. That's alright. You have the Word of God. You can break that cycle. You can make sure that your son comes up in a home where the father came home at night related to his wife in a trusting and truthful manner. You can do that. What are some practical applications that Eleanor and I made in terms of trusting and truthfulness? Well, one thing was our finances. George said, Eleanor and I, for the first 20 years or 25 years, about 20 years of our marriage, went to a marriage seminar every year for the first 20 years of it. That's a commitment we made. Well, one year, we couldn't find one. So at that time, George Sanchez was on staff with the Navigators. I believe he's with the Lord now, isn't he? But he had written a book on marriage, marriage communication. So I just called him and said, George, if we were to fly up to Colorado Springs, and spend four days there, would you meet with us during your free time? And we'll do the projects and pray during the day. And if we could just meet with you like breakfast, lunch, and dinner, stuff like that, that'd be like three sessions every day. And he said he would. And during one of the sessions, he pointed out to me how controlling I was in terms of being open and truthful with Eleanor, especially about finances. So we made some changes. Our finances became an open book. We went to one checking account, one debit card account, one credit card, all in both of our names. All of our possessions, the car, the house, all the investments went into both of our names. Neither of us could do anything without the other's signature. That meant that if I dropped dead, where did everything go? And there were no investments, no properties, no side deals that I was involved in that she didn't know about. Do you have a trusting and truthful relationship with your wife, guys? Another change we made is we started having a working lunch every Thursday. Every Thursday we would get together and we would have the calendar and the checkbook and the budget. And we would just sit there, and all of the finances, and all of the scheduling, and all of the major decisions of life were in open book. Another thing we did was I met with a lawyer, and we made an ironclad will that said every single item that I possessed, every single thing, would go to Eleanor if I died. There wasn't going to be any of this raiding by family members. If I die? Do you have that kind of trusting, truthful relationship with your wife? Jesus does with you. Ephesians 1, 3. Blessed. Ephesians 1, 3. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with what? Every spiritual blessing in the heavenly spheres is ours in Christ. He hasn't withheld anything from us, has he? Second Peter 1.3, he has blessed us with everything that pertains to life and godliness in Christ. Colossians 2.9, all the fullness of the Godhead dwells bodily in Christ. All of the eternal inheritance that God has for us is ours in the bride of Christ, isn't it? And it's secure for eternity, isn't it? Gentlemen, have you done that with your wife? You have a will that says if you die, every single solitary thing goes to her. Everything. Are you doing it? I think it's the height of hypocrisy for a man to be at 70% of budget, living off his wife's income, and then not having a will saying that everything that she has made, plus him, goes to her. Isn't that hypocritical? That's very hypocritical. So do you have that? Does your wife know about all the finances? From week to week, does she know about all those things? You have one checking account, one savings account. The two became one, except where it comes to the worldly items. Then we keep them separately. But you know guys, If I was your wife, I would want to keep things separate from you, too, if you hadn't made a will. And I showed this will to my brother, to my father, and to the extended family. If your wife's in-laws think they can come raid her home if you drop dead of a heart attack, which you will do before she does, I want to squirrel something away to them, because I can't trust my husband to take care of me. when you want her to do that? So if you talk to your in-laws, if you talk to your father and your mother and your brothers and sisters, and let them know that if something happens to you, they are not to show up over your house and collect things. Have you made sure if you have a little plot of land down at the village or some little investments on the side, have you made sure that your brothers and your father and your extended family know that when you die, that's going to go to your wife? It's hands off. Do they know the car and all the furniture and everything? Anything that's yours and anything that's coming to you as an inheritance, it's all going to go to your wife. Have you taken care of that? So not only do you have to be trusting on earth. You have to be truthful to her too, don't you? So you should do that. Everything should be in both your names. And if you can't trust your wife with the car, and the home, and the checkbook, and the credit card, and the debit card, and the land down in the village, you have bigger problems. You should probably step out of the ministry and work on those problems if you can't trust your wife. So great, so that's what we're going to do, gentlemen. And if you don't want to trust her, who do you want meeting with her at that level? And if you don't want to trust her, if you're going to take that off there, what do you want her to take off her side? Well, I just don't feel like I want to tell my wife all about the finances. I just don't think I want her to know anything. Fine. Maybe she doesn't want to tell you about some friends she has on the side. That be all right with you? That's not how you build a happy marriage, by compromising and saying, okay, I'll take these off and you take those off. The way to have a successful marriage is by fulfilling your covenants, not by compromising, by fulfilling them. Now let's turn now to the ladies, shall we? We are looking now at being your husband's helpmate. his helpmate and his companion in life's pursuits. Let's turn, if we would, to Ecclesiastes 9, 7-9. Let's look at that, shall we? Ecclesiastes 9, 7-9. Go then, eat your bread in happiness, and drink your wine with a cheerful heart, for God has already approved your works. Let your clothes be white at all times, and let not oil be lacking on your head. Enjoy life with the woman whom you love all the days of your fleeting life, which she has given to you under the sun, for this is your reward in life, and in your toil which you have labored under the sun. Ladies, have you ever thought of yourself as your husband's reward? It's not good for a man to be alone, is it? That's not simply talking about a physical structure called a house, and it's not good for him to live in that house by himself. It's talking about your companionship, your being his helpmate, his reward, his companion in life. That's what it's talking about. The Bible says, let your father be blessed and rejoice in the wife of your youth in Proverbs 5.18. Can your husband rejoice in you? Are you his biggest fan? God said in Genesis 2.18 that it wasn't good for a man to be alone. How much time does your husband spend alone based on your decision? How much time do you spend away from him because you're living a separate life from him? That's not good for him. That's not safe. It's not good for him to be alone. 1 Corinthians 11 9 for indeed man was not created for woman's sake but woman's for man's sake. Do you view that as a sexist verse? Is not the Holy Spirit sexist? Do you? In fact, I had a woman when I was doing this say, you know, that sounds like Paul had a problem. That sounds like kind of a sexist verse. I'm not sure I agree with that, that I was made for my husband and my husband wasn't made for me. I'm not sure I like that. If we collide with the Word of God, where does the problem lie? It lies with us, doesn't it? In fact, I did a Bible study, I read through the Bible every year, and one time I read through the Bible coming up with sexist terms in the Bible, and I say that facetiously. But given the way people view the Word of God, I decided to title it that. And I came up with about, I came up with over 75, I'm still working at it, terms that would be in the, for the modern evangelical feminists, appealing to me. Kind of like when God was talking about his judgment of Israel, he said, your warriors will be like women. Is that a sexist term? Is that what God the Holy Spirit was? Was he being sexist? So I've got all those verses like that, I send them every once in a while to people who've bought into evangelical feminism just to let them know how distasteful the word of God will become to them if they keep down that road. Well, no, that's not sexist, is it? You were created to be your husband's helpmate and companion. And when you married him, you said, I will fulfill that role. I will be his reward in life. I will be his companion, his encourager. I will do that for him. Well, what about his career? Who do you want helping and praising him in his career? Why is it that some men have secretaries who are more excited about their career than their own wife? When they come home from a hard day at work, are you going to be his companion, his helpmate, his cheerleader? Are you going to ask him about his job, what he's doing, how things are going? I remember we were driving in a car, Eleanor and I were double dating, and somebody honked at me. And Eleanor said, that jerk, is he honking at my husband? And the couple that was with us, she said, you know, a lot of times when people are honking at my husband, I complain to my husband. Well, not Eleanor. She takes my side. She's my fan. She doesn't want people honking at me. What about you? When you're in the car with your husband, are you complaining about his driving? And when people honk at him, are you saying, are you telling him to be more careful? Or are you his defender? Who are you to be honking at my husband? That's what Eleanor is. She's my companion. She's my helpmate. She's my hot fan. I've got enough people honking at her, at me, without her honking at me too, don't I? I praise God I have a wife who's on my side. Whose side are you on, ladies? You on your husband's side? Whose side are you on? Somebody in your family criticizes your husband. Whose side are you on? With the children, whose side are you on? You're supposed to be on your husband's side. Are you on your husband's side? Do you speak up in his defense? If your mother criticizes your husband, do you let her know which side of that line you stand on? Or do you criticize him in public and correct him in public along with everybody else? You may do that, but you're sure not his helpmate if you're doing that, are you? You're sure not his companion. You're just one of the crowd. How about the ministry? Why do other women praise him more when it comes to his messages and his workshops and his ministry activities? Why do they praise him more than you do? That shouldn't be that way, should it? And where are you? Why are there women there praising Him and you're not by His side? Why is that? Why are you out pursuing your own ministry career and leaving Him alone to be praised and complimented by some other woman? You don't want that, do you? He should be there by His side, being His helpmate. Is your ministry in competition with Him? If you're in the Catholic ministry, I've seen this many times, I've seen men going around and they live under a shadow because their wife's ministry is bigger than theirs. And people joke, you know, you don't joke. When you figure out how to get rid of you and keep your wife, you look. In fact, maybe you ought to step off staff, but she can be on staff. That's called being his helpmate, isn't it? Having a bigger ministry than him, having a bigger speaker career than him, having more conferences you talk to, getting more of a limelight in your Christian ministry than he does, getting out in the forefront, that's called being his helpmate, isn't it? Having people talk about you instead of him, that's called being his helpmate, isn't it? Is it? It's not, is it? That's a decision you have to make. Eleanor is innately more intelligent than me. She's more gifted in music than me. She's more gifted in art than me. She's more gifted in finances than me. She's more gifted in languages than me. I'm more gifted in her in some areas, in other areas, but in those areas, she is more intuitive than me. She can pick up what people are thinking and doing more quickly than I can. She's more compassionate than me. She's a better conversationalist than I am. In all these areas, she exceeds me, and she could get out in front of these areas and put me in my place, couldn't she? She could insist on us being involved in a ministry where those were the keys to success, and she would be more successful than me, couldn't she? But she doesn't. We could be working for Wycliffe Translators, and we've taken the Wycliffe Translating test, and she scored off the charts. They said she was a natural, gifted linguist. She should be studying the most difficult languages in the world, or translating them, creating languages for unspoken people. She could be doing all of those things, couldn't she? She could be living in Washington, D.C., or in New York, working for the U.N., translating for multinational corporations, and I could just be chugging along in her trail. She could do all those things. She could have her Ph.D. in linguistics and be teaching in Edinburgh or Cambridge or anywhere in the world, couldn't she? She could do all those things, but she's not, because she's my companion and my helpmate. And I am more than aware of the sacrifice she makes in doing that. I'm aware of it. But nevertheless, she doesn't. Would you do that for your husband? Would you step aside if you found that your innate teaching gifts and leadership gifts were greater than that his ministry was bigger than yours? That you sacrificed your ministry to make his ministry more successful? Would you do that? Rather than have 50 girls at the Navigator meeting, would you stay home and cook and make sure there were umdazis and chapati and soup and the house was neat and it was a great environment for his five guys to show up to? Would you do that? Or would you leave him behind? Are you placed to be his helpmate and companion? To make him look successful, for blessing? Or are you in competition with him? I've seen that many times. How about leisure and sports? Who's his greatest fan? I could not be more proud of my daughter Rebecca. I can think of no place on earth that I would think that she would be less comfortable in than boat hunting. And yet her husband loves to bowhunt, so she has become a bowhunter. She is his greatest fan. I can think of nothing that my daughter Rebecca would less like to do than in an open campground, be gunning and cleaning fish. And yet her husband loves to fish, so she does that. I can think of a few things that my daughter would like to do less than drive out to a campground and cook over an open stove for a bunch of hunters. But my daughter will do that. She, I am so proud of her. Her husband loves these things and so she loves them. She is his blessing, his reward in life. She is his greatest fan. And I could not be more proud of her. What about you? If your husband loves football, and he wants to go to a football game with a woman, what woman can he go with? If your husband likes to fish, and would like a woman, or the tenderness of womanly companionship with him as he fishes, what woman can he go with? If your husband likes to hide, and he would like the joy of womanly companionship and special meals that only a woman can pitch in a situation like that, what woman can he go with? Ask yourself that. Are you involved in his crafts and his hobbies? When's the last time you read a book about something that he likes so that you can be a stimulating conversational partner with him? I can brag on a friend of mine, Rob Stephens, He loves football. And I was in his house one time and there was a book called Football for Dummies. And I asked him if he had gotten that to help his son. He had a young son who liked football. And he said, no, Pam bought that. Because she knows I like football, and she wanted to be able to talk football with me. Well, make her try to increase. When's the last time you bought a book about an interest that your husband had, just so you could be stimulating conversation with your husband over that subject? When was the last time you did that? Now, I'll tell you something else, gentlemen. I'll be honest with you. Men who travel and minister without their wives, I don't know who's dumber, the man or the woman. I just don't know who's dumber. I see it all the time on the mission field. The only thing that I see dumber than men traveling without their wives in the ministry is men traveling with other women rather than their wife. I mean, tell me, is that not a recipe for disaster? Now, I'm trying to understand this. Who's stupider? Me, for traveling with another woman? Or my wife, for putting up with it? Where does that come from? Is that what you want your husband to do? Travel around, speaking conferences with some other woman? Do you want your husband to do that? Go with him! Say, well, I have to work. Well, he can raise support. Thank you. Sorry, honey. If you're going to travel, I'm your helpmate, and I'm going with you. You've got to get out there and hit the road and race, get up to 110%. That's it. Because I have no intention of letting you travel up and down the roads of Kenya and Uganda and Tanzania and Malawi or Mozambique with some other woman. It's me or nothing. I'm your helpmate. The two became one. You want to cut off your hand and leave it before you cut off me and leave me? All right, ladies, stick by his side. And what about you guys? Don't you have any dignity to be seen in public ministering with a woman other than your wife? I'd be ashamed to do that. Eleanor is my helpmate. She's my companion. What am I doing going somewhere with some other untaxed woman, ministering, and leaving her alone? Who am I, Solomon? Let's see, I'm going to go out and do some little campaigning here. I think I'll spread the Book of Proverbs around. Let's see, okay, wife number 5, wife number 27. I haven't been around wife number 300 and 301 lately. Okay, you guys back up, you'll be coming with me. Is that who you guys are? Trapping around with women rather than your wife. You should be humiliated. You should be humiliated just at the appearance of the evil, right? Just at the, who you sit next to on the bus, or the airplane, or the matatu, or the ministry car, where you're going on these trips with these women who aren't your wives. Who you sit next to. You know, somebody sees you, I thought you were married. Oh yeah, yeah, but this is just my traveling companion. My wife's back at home. Shame on you, guys! Come on, step out of there. I just wanted to go to the guy's elbow. Come on, come to. You've been drunk by the world. See? Helpmate and companion. That's what you've pledged to be, ladies. If you don't want to do it, who do you want to do it? Who do you want to be as your greatest fan? Who do you want sitting next to him at the fishing camp, at the football game, at the conference? Who do you want him to do that? Who do you want? I remember I had a gentleman in Bible study, and he wanted to go on associate staff with the Navigators. He had a very lovely wife, and they were on a couple's Bible study with us. They would attend our church periodically, and I asked her one time, when's the last time you went out, and I'm calling Larry, when's the last time you went out to Larry where he works? She said, I don't think I've ever been out there. I said, you should be out there at least once a week. Those secretaries, those receptionists, those career women, you should get on your best clothing your best makeup, get the children dressed up, and show up there and have a lunch with him at least once a week. They should all know who he is and what he's about. And I had lunch with him once a week, so I just went by and brought him. And you could see the impact it made with the women in the office and the secretaries when she showed up over there with the kids. And then I said to her, I'll call her Gloria. Gloria, this should be a weekly event. Eleanor and the kids, when I was in the NAB office, y'all were over once a week, weren't you? All the secretaries, all the staff, they all knew I was a married man. This is my wife, she's a knockout, and these are my kids, and I'm devoted to them. Same with when I was at church. And when Eleanor went back to teaching, I was in her school once a week with lunch with her. This is her husband, see? Holds him in his right mind. He has lunch with her. He loves her. We go out on a date. Companion, helpmate, right? Wake up, ladies! There are women out there who have their antennas out. And what they're looking for is a man, and they can recognize it by his countenance and by his reaction, that his wife isn't his fan. And they notice that when they compliment him or tell him he's smart or funny, how uplifted his face gets, because he's not used to hearing it. And they hone in on him. You don't want your husband to be one of those men. You want him to be indifferent from that because he's satiated with the help and companionship which you give him. Lord, we thank you for this time together. Help us to not be naive and clueless. Help us to fulfill our covenants in Christ and with grace.