Marriage Reboot: Clearing the Spiritual Clutter :: [Ep. 265]

Reboot Your Marriage: Clearing the Spiritual Clutter :: [Ep. 265]

Just like smartphones need background apps cleared to function efficiently, our spiritual lives and marriages require periodic rebooting to address undealt-with baggage. In this week's episode, we're talking about a three-step process for spiritual renewal through reassessing our hearts, remembering God's truths, and remaining in His Word.

We will discuss the following:

• Identifying what's "running in the background" of your life that needs addressing
• Understanding that most spiritual clutter comes down to sin
• Recognizing the ongoing battle between our renewed nature and sinful flesh
• Learning to come to God boldly yet humbly, asking Him to examine our hearts
• Practical questions for self-examination
• Remembering that God has given us everything we need for godly living

We hope you will join us and be helped and encouraged. Be sure to join us next week as we continue our "Reboot" series!

Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction to Vows To Keep Radio
• 1:27 The Smartphone Analogy for Life
• 4:41 Identifying What Bogs Down Your Life
• 8:18 Everything We Need for Godly Living
• 10:16 King David's Pattern for Rebooting
• 14:14 The Christian Heart Battle
• 17:40 Asking God to Reassess Your Heart
• 22:14 Three Questions for Personal Reflection
• 23:54 Next Steps and Closing Thoughts

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:06

Welcome to Vows to Keep Radio with David and Tracy Sellers. The mission of Vows to Keep is to help couples develop a biblically healthy marriage through the application of God's Word and a deeper relationship with Him. They desire to help you and your spouse grow closer to each other and closer to the heart of God's design for your marriage. Now here's David and Tracy with today's broadcast.

Speaker 2: 0:33

We are David and Tracy Sellers. We're glad you're here with us today. On Vows to Keep Radio. We have made vows to keep and we know that sometimes we need a personal reboot in our lives if we are going to keep those vows. We're going to be talking about that today. Reboot in our lives if we are going to keep those vows. We're going to be talking about that today. So the first thing we're going to do is grab our smartphones, unless you're driving. If you're driving, do not grab your smartphone right now. But if you aren't, if you've got an iPhone or a Droid or whatever, I want you to think about the last app or the last thing you did on your phone For me.

Speaker 2: 1:05

I was looking up a map this morning. I was checking out a certain route that I wanted to take, so what was yours? Now, if you've got an iPhone, what I want you to do is double tap your home button right now. What that's going to do is show you all the recent apps that you were in all the way back from a long time ago. If you have an Android phone, you can launch your recent applications menu. It'll also show you all the apps that you've been on and you can actually scroll through them.

Speaker 2: 1:22

And sometimes it's pretty shocking how I'm spending my time during any given day. Recently, if I look at mine, I can show you that I've been on my map application, I've been texting people, I've been on my phone, I played a game of cribbage, I read part of a Kindle book, I was looking at an ESV version of the Bible, and so on and so on. But if you're not tech savvy, you may not know that if you actually swipe up or swipe over on those apps that are running in your background, that you can close them. Now, if you're obsessed about your phone's brain or battery, you probably only have a couple screens to get rid of. But I remember the first time I did this I'd had a smartphone for like six years. I'd never cleared out what was running in the background that I couldn't see, and someone showed me what I could do to make my little pal here happy again. Now go ahead. You know you want to. Like I said, if you're not driving swipe away to your heart's content, my friend, get a clean slate for the day. Sometimes my phone will actually freeze up and it takes more than a few finger swipes to get it happy again, and that's when I need to actually shut it down and completely do a restart, a reboot, a refresh here on Vows to Keep Radio.

Speaker 2: 2:27

Today we are going to be walking through a three-step process that's really easy to remember when it feels like the hard drive of your own life is getting bogged down with undealt with baggage. We're going to learn how to reassess, how to remember and how, when we remain in God's word, that's how we can start that reboot process. Your life doesn't have a cribbage app hanging out taking up precious RAM, but your life may have some excess paraphernalia that you carry around with you at any given time. It's the stuff that doesn't get dealt with. It's the things that bog down your spiritual life and your earthly relationships. So let me ask you this question what is your heart need swiped away today? What's bogging down your marriage, for example? Here's some things that are hanging out in the background of my life right now, things that need to get swiped away. Perhaps the ungodly fear that accompanies a really big decision that David and I are trying to make right now as a family. We've got a ministry, we've got regular jobs, we've got three kids, we've got a life to balance and sometimes getting out of whack in those priorities can get me bogged down faster than anything else. Like I said, we have three children and I struggle with parenting them without anger and when I do, that takes me down immediately. Not making an idol out of food, not making an idol out of other things in our life, putting things above our God, our family and our marriage.

Speaker 2: 3:52

Sometimes I think, especially as women, we have a really hard time even knowing what it is that's in our peripheral. As we look in the side mirror of our lives, sometimes we can catch a glimpse of the monkey that's on our backs. But either we can't or we will not identify what it is. And if we don't identify what's bugging us, then we can't get rid of it. Or we know it's there and we don't want to deal with it right now. So we tell ourselves you know what it's going to fall off. If I give it enough time, or when I have enough time to manage it, then I'll assess the damage. And this particular monkey I've had on my back for a long time. So I don't really want to get rid of it right now. It's a sin that I'm sort of treasuring in my heart right now. So I'm just going to reposition it and decide to live with it, and when I do that, I've got three more monkeys join the cause to take me down.

Speaker 2: 4:46

So let me ask you again today what does your heart need to be swiped away? What does your marriage need to be swiped away? What monkeys are on your back that maybe you haven't even identified? What are the background apps that are running on your device that have been there for a while undealt with? If you're not sure what it is, if you're not sure how to list what you've got going on, let me make easy for you today the things that need to go in your life, in your marriage, or anything that doesn't belong in the life of a believer in Jesus Christ.

Speaker 2: 5:13

And basically, we could almost boil it down to one single category, and it's a big one. It's sin, our personal sin, the selfishness that we all battle on a daily basis, taking care of us first, the worry, the anxiety, the striving for control, the fear and the lack of trust, and even the regret and condemnation that comes from the sins of our past, not remembering that God has truly forgiven us and that we are free from those sins in Jesus Christ. As you can see, a good majority of what needs to be rebooted in our lives comes down to that single word sin, falling short of the glory of God. If you've got your Bibles and you're able to, I want you to turn to Psalm 51, 5. This is a Psalm of David, and he prayed this prayer to God right after he recognized his sin with Bathsheba and how short he had fallen of the glory of God.

Speaker 2: 6:11

Psalm 51 5 says surely I was sinful at birth, sinful from the time my mother conceived me. You and I were born sinners. It's our human condition right from the get-go, so it's something that we all know. If we take a close look in our side mirrors, we see, yeah, this is what's taking me down right now. Not only were we born sinners, but we live with sinners, and their sin is going to give us an option pretty much every single day. Are we going to choose to forgive them? We're going to choose to hold their sin against them when we become the judge of our spouse, when we feel entitled to something, maybe even them coming to us and asking for forgiveness, and we hold that over their head. That is not a weight that they're going to bear. That's actually a weight that we are going to bear Before we get into God's solution for us today.

Speaker 2: 7:01

To reboot, let's just mention a couple other things that many of us get bogged down with. There's the sin of unbelief, not believing God's truth, but there's also the very real reality of things that we've learned or been taught incorrectly about ourselves or about God. We're believing things that aren't true because we're not quite sure what God's word says about them. The untruths that we carry around can become really heavy burdens to bear. Now, god's word is really clear when it tells us that what's in our heart is what actually comes out and manifests itself in our lives.

Speaker 2: 7:35

You and I, no matter what we believe, we all live out of a belief system, whether it's based upon the truth of God's word or not, and the final one. We can even be bogged down by things done in sin to us that we haven't reconciled with a biblical perspective. What baggage are you carting around today? My heart and who I am and what I believe in the inmost part of my being, is my own personal hard drive. When I first got a cell phone, it was one of those prepaid flip phones and I was pretty excited to have it, but then I upgraded to a smartphone eventually and that was kind of like you and I our life before Christ. We had this little device that didn't quite work like we needed it to, and then we received this shiny new system. On the day of our salvation, we get a sin-purged life made new by Christ. Jesus loads us up with all the programs and all the apps we would ever need to function successfully.

Speaker 2: 8:31

In my new life as a believer, 2 Peter 1.3 talks about that. It says by his divine power, god has given us everything we need for living a godly life. That is good news. That is the best news. We have access to the app developer. We have access to the creator of our internal wiring. He does constant free updates and bug fixes in our lives and he does it all by his glory and power and excellence. That's what 2 Peter 1, 3 tells us.

Speaker 2: 8:59

You and I are not lacking a thing, even when we feel like we are. Jesus is what I've been looking for for all my anxious thoughts about this big decision that me and my husband have about our family. Jesus is the provider of the balance that I need in my life and my ministry and my work as I keep my eyes on him. Jesus is my example to follow in parenting without anger. Jesus is the power I need over the sin of gluttony in my life and he's the one that can help me to see where I'm blind, to the monkeys that are on my back. He's asking us today do you want to reboot? Does your personal life, your personal spiritual life, need a reboot? Does your marriage need a reboot? Are you tripping over each other's sins in your household? Are you tripping over your own sins, bruised by the consequences and ready to seek healing in your marriage? If so, he is handing that to us today, saying this is possible for you. God says it's possible by reassessing, remembering and remaining in his word.

Speaker 2: 10:08

Today, on Vows to Keep Radio, we're going to be studying a man named King David. This is a man who messed up royally, but he's going to show us a pattern on how to reach up to God in order to reboot. He is God's chosen king over Israel. He's the first king over Israel, but really he's a lot like us in so many ways. He is called, just like you and I are called, to live a life on mission. He was chosen specifically by God, handpicked, and that's exactly what you and I are today, children of God.

Speaker 2: 10:39

David was in pursuit of God and I hope that's where you find yourself today. David was extremely, extremely sinful, just like you and I are. But here's something that he was that I hope you and I can say that this is us too. He was unwilling to overlook his sin. David was given everything he needed for life and godliness, just like you and I are handed everything we need for our life as a Christian. But David gets on this seesaw, getting off track in his sin and getting back on track by wholeheartedly pursuing God and then falling right back off with sin again. We're going to get very familiar today with his vacillating heart, and as we look at his, we're hopefully going to see our own as well. Where we're going to be spending the most of our time today is in Psalm 119. We're also going to, in just a few minutes, turn over to Romans, chapter 7.

Speaker 2: 11:28

Let me tell you a little bit about Psalm 119. It is the longest chapter in God's word 176 verses long, and King David wrote this. It's a poem, it's a prayer from his heart. The whole thing is written to God and it's written in a really interesting way. It's organized in sections of eight verses each, and there's 22 sections, each one starting with a new letter of the Hebrew alphabet. As I read through this Psalm, here's what I got from it.

Speaker 2: 11:56

I don't think David had any delusions that he was perfect. This is the same man who wrote in Psalm 139, search me, o God, know my heart, test me and know my anxious thoughts. He was willing to look at his sin, recognize his current weakness and persevere in godliness. What sin is the monkey on your back, and are you willing to identify it? The temptation to lust on the internet or at work, maybe even seeking significance through what other people are thinking about you at your job? Not taking the time with our spouse that we need to? Not making them the priority in our lives that God has called us to? Maybe the sin that you're dealing with right now is not raising your kids according to God's word, according to Deuteronomy 6, where it says to talk about God's word as we get up in the morning, as we go throughout our day, and in our apathy as parents, we leave the next generation of God's army uneducated about God's word and how it applies in our modern world today.

Speaker 2: 12:59

The ungodly fear that weighs me down every day, the wrong belief that we have to prove ourselves to God, everything that bogs us down, our sin, that trips us up the lies that we believe can't be swiped away, they can't be dealt with if we aren't willing to do two critical things, the things that David prayed in Psalm 139, lord search me, know me. David prayed in Psalm 139, lord search me, know me, test me. The first thing we need to do is to come to God. Come to God boldly and humbly and shutting out the rest of the world, even if just for a little bit. And the second thing ask God to come to us. Now, I'm not saying that he's not with us, always he is. If you are a Christian, you have the Holy Spirit on the inside of you. He is constantly with you, and God is also omnipresent. But it's a different kind of asking him to come to us. This is what David is saying Lord, I'm inviting you to come and examine my whole heart, my whole life. I don't want to hide anything from you. So before we get into Psalm 119 here, I want you to turn over to Romans, chapter 7. This is verse 18 and 19. Paul is the writer of this, and I think Paul and David could have been pretty good friends with each other and pretty good friends with us, because we're all going through the same thing.

Speaker 2: 14:13

We realize that our sin is not just one and done. It's an ongoing struggle. Paul says in verse 18 of Romans 7, I know that nothing good lives in me, that is in my sinful nature. I want to do what's right, but I can't. I want to do what's good, but I don't. I don't want to do what is wrong, but you know what? That is exactly what I end up doing anyway. Boy, can I relate with him.

Speaker 2: 14:39

And here is the first step to rebooting, because our battle with sin is ongoing. Our assessment needs to be ongoing. Are you willing to ask God to reassess your heart, to even get a self-awareness of your heart? Ask God to reassess your heart, to even get a self-awareness of your heart, what our renewed nature in Christ Jesus desires and what our fleshly nature of sin, our sin nature still inside of us, opposes. That equals the Christian heart battle. We oscillate between wanting to do the right thing, wanting our own way, and really just wanting to do nothing at all, just sitting on the sidelines.

Speaker 2: 15:13

I call it perennial pride, prevailing passiveness and persistent pursuit. I am a great self-deceiver. How about you? I can go into numb mode pretty fast. I can go into ignoring mode even quicker, and maintenance mode is what typically follows. Both of those things I tell myself. You know what the sin I've been dealing with? It's fine, it'll go away on its own, or no one knows about it, so no one needs to know about it. I've been doing this a long time and I can handle it. I'll deal with this monkey on my back when I have the energy. But the antidote, the swipe, so to speak, is asking God to reassess our hearts, coming to God ready to get an honest evaluation of our hard drive.

Speaker 2: 15:57

If you have Psalm 119 open in front of you, or if you have a chance to do this later today, I would really encourage you to do this. We're going to break this Psalm apart, basically piece by piece, and we're going to be highlighting in three different colors today. So if you have a highlighter or a pen that's a certain color, I want you to get that out. If you could see my Bible right now, you're going to see that I have a lot of phrases underlined or highlighted in yellow in Psalm 119. What I did was I went through this whole Psalm and I highlighted David's ask to God, what he is asking God to do for him.

Speaker 2: 16:29

Things like turn to me, have mercy on me, remove me from scorn and contempt. I started to realize that David was coming before God, stepping into the light. Here. His requests are put out there to God with a deep expectancy that God will answer, that God will, yes, recognize David's weaknesses but at the same time come to his rescue. You can hear David's request to God to turn to me. Be my refuge, lord, don't utterly forsake me, keep me from deceitful ways. I can just almost hear this begging in his tone. He's saying Lord, enable me to be the godly man that you have called me to be. I know I'm not there yet. I know I have the sin nature inside of me. I need you, god.

Speaker 2: 17:24

I was reading through Ephesians, chapter four, recently and I ran across verse 17 through 19. And I realized that this can possibly be our reality. It is more than possible. Ephesians 4 says to walk in the futility of our minds, darken in our understanding of God because we don't take time to know God, we don't take time to know his word and our hearts are capable of becoming hardened and calloused when we practice sin. Let me give you a personal example. I was a very frustrated mom for a very long time. I still have that tendency, laying down my law for my kids rather than pointing them to God's perfect law that leads to liberty. It was a hard monster to look square in the eyes. I knew it was there, but I really didn't know how to deal with it, and sometimes I just didn't want to deal with it. It was easy to believe it would just go away on its own as I got older. But just because people get older doesn't mean they necessarily are maturing.

Speaker 2: 18:28

Psalm 119, the chapter that we're really peering deeply into today, verse 60, david says I've considered my ways and I've turned my steps to your statutes. God David is saying here I want to be above board with you, with my needs. God, here is where I am. No self-deception in sight. Maybe you're familiar with the verse from James, chapter 1, where it says don't merely listen to the word and so deceive yourself. My husband saw my anger. My kids saw my anger. God did too. I knew what God's word said, but I wasn't living it out. God knows your weakness in your life? Do you God knows your weakness in your life? Do you God knows your heart? Are you willing to peer into his word and walk in his statutes today?

Speaker 2: 19:20

Turning back over to Romans, chapter 7, paul continues this heart struggle, this Christian heart battle that you and I have. He says I love God's law with all my heart, but there's another power within me that's at war with my mind. This power makes me a slave to the sin that is still within me. Paul is praying here, god's favorite prayer. He's saying help. I need you. I can't do anything without you. I can't have a good marriage without you. I can't be a good parent without you. Come to me, give me everything I need for life and godliness. I think that's God's favorite prayer, because he has the best answer for that prayer His son Jesus Christ. Do you know Jesus as your Savior today? Or maybe you just know of him? Have you sat in church for years and you've heard his stories? Maybe you've even looked at him. Maybe you've even believed in him, but you haven't been willing to let him look at you.

Speaker 2: 20:22

Before we go on here today at Vows to Keep Radio, I want to give you the opportunity to take a moment before God, just you and him, asking him to take a look at your heart. God, just you and him, asking him to take a look at your heart, saying God, I'd like you to assess me right now. Where am I really at? David says in Psalm 26 to put me on trial, lord, cross-examine me, test my motives and my heart. That takes a lot of guts to pray a prayer like that. It takes letting God hit your home button twice and swipe away the sins that you've been hanging on to for too long. Come to him today and ask him to come to you.

Speaker 2: 20:59

Maybe your prayer today is Lord, help me. This is my ask to you. I'm asking you to help me believe what you say about your son. Lord, I'm asking you to raise me up above the sin that's tempting me today. Lord, show me where you're working in my life and show me how I can be a tool in my spouse's life. Lord, give me hope for my marriage, because that's where I'm lacking. Lord, sustain me. Lord, teach me. Lord, I'm asking you to strengthen me.

Speaker 2: 21:27

If you're taking notes today, I want you to write down three questions to review later on today or tomorrow in your quiet time with God? Here's the first one. What truths am I having a hard time believing right now? Truths from God's word. What's difficult for me? What can I ask God for help with? Here's the second one.

Speaker 2: 21:46

What biblical application is hard for me? What does God's word specifically tell me to do, like use a gentle tone and build one another up, or to not gossip, to not lie, to not be deceitful toward my spouse. What biblical application is hard for me? And then take a minute to ask God to help you with that? What sins is God revealing to me as I read his word? That's the third one.

Speaker 2: 22:11

This is the first step to reboot your relationship with your spouse, your relationship with God, your personal ask coming to God saying Lord, I'm reaching up to you because I can't do this without you. I am a great self deceiver, and so are you. We think that we know best and we try to write our own rules for our lives and our marriages. We think that we know best and we try to write our own rules for our lives and our marriages. We think that we reign sovereign and that we don't need to ask God for help. We forget that God has given us everything we need for life and for godliness according to the power that's at work within us. Jeremiah 17 is how we're going to end our talk here today on Vows to Keep Radio, and then I hope you can tune in for part two of Reboot next week.

Speaker 2: 22:58

Jeremiah 17, 9 and 10. God says the human heart is the most deceitful of all things and it's desperately wicked. Who really knows how bad it is? You and I cannot see to the bottom of the depths of our hearts, but you know what God can. In verse 10, he says but I, the Lord, I search all hearts and I examine secret motives. I test the heart. I am searching your mind today.

Speaker 2: 23:23

God says Will you come before me, open and honest, about what's really in your heart, about the thoughts you're really having that are causing you to take the actions that you are doing in your life and in your marriage? Will you let me cross-examine you today? Will you come humbly before me asking me to come to you and search your heart? If you are looking for a reboot in your marriage, start with the ask what do you need God's help with today? Lord, teach me, show me, help me, don't let me be blindsided by my own sin. And then next week on Vows to Keep Radio. We're going to go into the next two things that David did to reboot.

Speaker 1: 24:07

Like what you heard today on Vows to Keep Radio. Listen to more life-changing broadcasts at VowsToKeepcom. Vows to Keep is supported by a team which includes biblical coaches, writers and pastoral advisors. If you have a desire to serve marriages in your community, we would love to hear from you. Vows to Keep is a not-for-profit marriage ministry designed to bring God's encouraging truth to the marriages of our area. As a not-for-profit organization, our commitment to Christlike marriages includes providing much-needed services, regardless of a couple's financial ability to offset the cost of Vows to Keep operations. If you are unable to donate your time or abilities, but would like to help support Vows to Keep financially, visit VowsToKeepcom and click on the donate link. This program is sponsored by Vows to Keep of Zanesfield, ohio.