God, How Do I Get Through This?

• How many married people in  the house? You’d better put   some enthusiasm on that “woo.” How many  would agree marriage changes everything? It changes everything. They don’t tell you  that marriage not only changes everything in   your relationship to the person you’re marrying  when you commit to be with them all the time,   but the thing that surprised me about  my relationship with Holly is how much   my relationship with her changed  my relationship with other things.
• Not just my time. Like, “Oh, now  I’ve got to be home. You know,   the old ball and chain.” I don’t feel like  that. I don’t feel like that about her at all.   But over time, her preferences have assimilated  into me, and now her preferences have become   the prism (not prison…prism) through  which I experience so much of life.
• So,   the way my wife feels about things changes the  way I feel about so many things in my life. My relationship with my wife changed my  relationship with so many other things in my life.   I’m sure she’d say the same about her relationship  with me. For the 21 years we’ve been married,   I’ve been advocating to her that rock music is  God’s music, for the Bible says, “He is a rock.
• ”   I won her over slowly from her having the  perspective that most rock music was annoying,   and now she knows it’s anointed. Her relationship  with me changed her relationship with the genre. One of the first times I knew that being married  to this person was going to change me and change   my orientation toward simple, elemental,  basic things… Early when we were married,   we woke up one morning, and it was raining  outside.
• I looked over at her, and she was awake,   and she was smiling. She said, “I just love  a good rainy day. So relaxing. So cozy.” I’m like, “Oh, you’re one of  these people.” Rain, to me,   is depressing. I know it shouldn’t be. The  joy of the Lord is my strength. Pray for me.   My sanctification process is still in progress.  I’m buffering.
• She’s like, “Oh, what a blessing,   a rainy day. Now we can just relax,” and all of  that. Through her eyes, over the last 21 years,   I’ve kind of come to see it. It can be relaxing.  Rain can be relaxing. I never knew that. What I’m trying to say just as a  basic illustration to set this up   is that my relationship with her changed  my relationship to something as simple as   rain just by being with her.
• It didn’t  make it rain more or less because we’re   married. It changed my relationship  with the rain. I saw Larry Brey on   a video earlier. Is he in the room? Yeah.  Remember when it rained early one Sunday? It was about the third or fourth week we had  this church, y’all. The attendance momentum   was going good. It rained. The attendance  dropped by 30 percent.