So, as we bring these questions to Dr. Street, I think one thing that's important to keep in mind is, don't kind of equate what's about to happen with seeing Dr. Phil questioned on television. Please don't. So, we're not going to Dr. Street as some sort of a really narrow specialist, the keeper of all the secrets and try to tap into him before he leaves.

Yes, he holds incredible biblical wisdom, but the key is it's biblical wisdom. So, he's going to bring the truth of the scriptures to bear on these questions. And the good news for us is that this is instructive. We're benefiting from him as a wise brother, but we don't need an expert in order to grow in Christ's likeness.

We have the same Bible and the same Holy Spirit. So, that's an important principle to keep in mind. The other one I want to say is this. If we don't get to your question, you wrote a question, I want to say in the best way that I can, some of the questions were very, very good, they were very detailed, but they were also very serious and they really would require, to handle them in an honest and a biblically responsible way, they would require time to sit down and get more information.

And so, we didn't feel it was wise to try to offer an answer without getting more information. So, if you still want to get, if your question, and you'll probably know which ones don't get answered, if your question's in that category, you want to send me an email, we'll work on maybe scheduling a time to sit down and hopefully help you to think biblically through those things.

So, let's get kicked off. Dr. Street's going to go through these kind of rapid fire. I know he would love, and I would love to spend the rest of the day and night talking about these, but we're only going to get through kind of short answers in order to get through the bullet point.

Here's the first one. In the category of just general biblical counseling, how can I get training, either further training or, as it were, retraining in true biblical counseling? That's a really good question. Some of you already saw that we passed around material about that with our graduate program, but not everyone can go and actually get a graduate degree, we understand that.

Those that really want to go into it in depth, then would think about getting a good accredited, make sure it's fully accredited graduate degree, in biblical counseling. You would need to do that. But there are other means as well. For example, you heard at the beginning of our conference, I'm a part of ACBC, which is the Association of Certified Biblical Counselors, and they offer, ACBC offers, all kinds of training all around the country, several different places around the country, all year long.

And you can probably go to the ACBC website, which is biblicalcounseling.com, and you just go to that website, and it'll pop up, just put in your region what's the closest training that's going to be near to you. This is something that someday in the future, maybe your pastor would like to bring into the church here at some particular point, some training like that, so you can get further training in that to be of help to your church.

That's really key. Again, we want to take good theology and make it practical. Not everything that's out there is true biblical counseling. You've got to understand that. There used to be years ago, people hated the term biblical counseling. I talked with a couple of Christian psychologists who laughed at the idea of biblical counseling.

This was back in the late 1970s, early 1980s. They laughed at the concept of biblical counseling. Now biblical counseling has won so many people's hearts, now there are a lot of psychology programs that are adopting the terminology. Well, it's not true biblical counseling. They have to have a very high view of God, high view of the Word of God, high view of its sufficiency, that the Bible is not just sufficient for every spiritual problem that man has, but it's also superior to everything that man offers.

So you've got to make sure you get into a program like that. If you're looking for an undergraduate degree in that, there are several schools that are out there. I know like Boyce College has an undergraduate degree. It's a very good one in biblical counseling. The Masters University has an undergraduate degree in biblical counseling.

Masters even has an online undergraduate degree because the undergraduate degrees are more dealing with theory than professional practice. The graduate degrees are more practice, so there has to be more of a discipleship thing going on there. So there are programs out there that are like that scattered around the country if you want to pursue that on a more formal educational basis.

But there are also wonderful seminars. And what usually happens is, usually what happens is people will go into the seminars, take the training, they'll get so excited about it and how it's changed their life and they've been able to help other people, that then they want to go in and get more formal training in it.

That's usually what happens. But start that way. It doesn't matter. Just make sure that they are committed to good biblical counseling standards. Go on the website of ACBC. Go to biblicalcounseling.com, look at the standards of faith and practice. Read that through. It is the most detailed statement of any organization, any counseling, secular or Christian, in how to deal with counseling issues that's out there, and it's all built upon the Bible.

When you see people offering programs that are inconsistent with that statement, you know something's wrong with it, all right? So that'll be a standard by which you could use in order to do that. Right. Now, there's a thousand more things I'm sure he'd like to say about that and I would like to say about biblical counseling in general and the way it sets apart from secular psychology or even what's normally known as Christian counseling, but we won't have time to cover that.

Hopefully, that's probably the best destination. Go to that website. You'll get a lot of information. Yeah. In the general counseling category, our second one, a little bit of a change of gear here is how do we deal with past hurts, pains, difficulties, abuse, et cetera, kind of in one big hopper here, one big major question.

Yeah. And that is a big one. And I could literally spend the next three days just talking about that straight out, all right? So let me see if I can summarize things very, very quickly here and not be too simplistic about it. This is a common issue that comes up.

You've got people that maybe grew up in homes where they were physically or sexually abused. People have had bad circumstances that have occurred in life. If you're here tomorrow, I'm going to describe for you in the message one of the most horrifying, difficult people I've ever dealt with when it comes to bad background and bad past.

I'll talk about that a little bit. And finally, her question to me, "Is God punishing me?" And that's the whole point of the message that we have. So I'm going to be addressing that a little bit more tomorrow, but let's say it like this. If I were to sum up theologically what the Bible says about this, we live in a sinful world.

We live in an ungodly world. I've worked with numerous children who have had terrible things happen to them. I know that some of the men and women who have mistreated these children are in jail and probably going to be in jail for the rest of their life. And rightly so.

Right now, you should rejoice because most of the laws in our country right now are going to prosecute people who do horrible things, especially to children. That's not always going to be true. There are strong forces in our country today who want to make pedophilia a common practice and that it's just as legitimate in our culture and society as homosexuality, lesbianism.

People can't help themselves. It's just the way it is, that kind of thing. By the way, these robot companies are developing robot children for sex. This is a big issue. So that's one of those things that's coming down the pike. We live in a very corrupt society, a very corrupt culture.

Almost every way we turn. And in working with the children, it's funny how children can grasp onto this better sometimes than adults can. When I begin to talk to them about the fact that we live in a sin-cursed culture, that you can expect in this culture people to do evil, sinful, ungodly things, and sometimes those will happen to you, kids will sit there and say, "Yep, yep, I understand that.

I got it. I understand it." But we, as adults, have a tendency to act like, "Oh my goodness, this is so incredibly unusual. You don't understand what's..." Well, wait a minute. It's not. If you really took seriously what the Bible says about man's sinfulness, you wouldn't be asking, "Why does this happen?" That's what the world asks.

You'd be asking, "Why doesn't this happen more often?" That's what you'd be asking. Now here's the key. When you've had something terrible, traumatic that's happened, a part of your past, I can relate to this in several different ways, but I'm not going to get into that right now. But if you've had terrible things or traumatic things that have happened that are a part of your past, you have a choice moving into the future on whether or not you're going to allow the thoughts of that trauma to define you, or whether or not you're going to allow Christ to define you.

I hope you're listening to me on this. I'm saying a lot of stuff in very simple form. There's a lot more I could be saying with this, but if you're allowing Christ to define who you are, then these traumas will not have the grip or the hold on you.

Let me use one illustration if I can, and he's given me permission to do this. Back just a few years ago, some of you remember, there were a terrible accident out there in California where a passenger train and a cargo train hit head-on, and several people died. Well, the first police officer on the scene of that accident was a guy in our church, and he had horrible nightmares about that for months after that happened.

He's the first guy on the scene. People are screaming, yelling at him. People with severed arms, people with severed heads. It was a horrible thing all over the place, just spread everywhere, and he's running from person to person trying to make a judgment, "Can I save them? If I can't save them," then his training taught him to move to somebody who could save.

At the same time, the person who he just passed over is yelling and screaming at him that he needs help, and those memories haunt him, the yelling and screaming. We went through a biblical process of dealing with that past trauma and those memories and not allowing that to define his life.

He's back on the force now. He's functioning normally. He's had to deal with some pretty bad things since then, but it has not traumatized him, hasn't defined him any longer. But if he were sitting here today, he would tell you, you ask him, "What defines your life?" He says, "I want to tell you, Jesus Christ defines my life.

That's what defines me. I live for Christ." All right. That's about it. - Yeah, and that's a huge one. - That's huge. - We could talk about that in more depth. If you've got more pointed questions about that, I'd love to talk with you personally. That same principle applies across even a broader scope because part of what we're seeing in the world today is people finding their identity in the effects of the fall, not God's design.

So they look at what is really only present in their life. It's legitimate. - Can I say amen? Let me say amen. - Desires that are present, but they're there because of the fall. And they're blaming that on God. God did this, but no, sin did this. And the same thing can be true about sin done to us.

So whether the sin nature, we try to find identity in that, or sin's done to us. That's a very important topic for us to explore. Next category, children. Here's an interesting one. At what age do you encourage children to move out of the home? - Somehow I knew that one was going to come up.

All right. And let me say this this way. Again, we're dealing this in broad generalities at this point. There is no particular age that I set on this, because there are people even in our own congregation that have 30, 32-year-old kids who are quadriplegic and have bad, they were born horribly deformed.

So we're not going to encourage them to move out of the home, obviously. So we don't put an age on that, but physical and mental capacity has a big role to play in this as to do they have the capacity physically and mentally to support themselves. All four of my kids were relatively normal sinners.

And so as we taught them coming up that they're being raised to leave the home, not stay in the home, and to be united with their future spouse, and that their primary commitment is not going to be to us but to their spouse, and that doesn't mean that I love my kids any less than you love your kids.

I love them just as much as you do. But I want them to be reasonable, functioning, Christian adults who know how to function in society well on their own. So I'm going to move them out. Our boys, after they graduated from, we have twin boys, they're identical twins. They graduated from Master's University, went and got their MDivs at Master's Seminary and their THMs.

When they were all done with their education, we started charging them rent. All right? And it was great. That's the money I used. My wife and I go out to eat for dinner. It was phenomenal. All right? So we start charging rent, and the longer they were in the house, the higher the rent went.

All right? Type of thing. Now both of them end up moving out. One ended up getting married. The other one took an associate pastor of a church. Now he had to back out of his associate pastor because he took a youth group up in the mountains and he got a horrible tick bite that got, he got Rocky Mountain spotted fever and two other things.

He had to have a shunt put in and they had to destroy his immune system, re-release his immune system out again. So we moved him back in to help him during that time, but he knows he's on his way back out again. All right? But there are exceptions to that particular rule like I just gave you.

Mom and dad is there as a safety net, but they're not there to stay with. Their purpose as mom and dad is to send them out. So if they're mentally and physically capable of supporting themselves, guys or girls, all right, then they need to go. Now there is a tendency to, for the Christian, to be more protective of the ladies, which is good.

There's nothing wrong with that, but you have to even be careful about that, you know, because at some particular point they need to get out and function on their own, support themselves or get married and have a spouse support them, whatever the case may be. All right, next category, we'll go through these kind of rapid, these three, they're somewhat close.

On the young couples, not married yet category. So number one, what do you say to couples who are living together prior to marriage? And that's kind of the conglomeration of a couple of really nuanced questions. Stop it. That's what needs to happen. I mean, they're living openly in sin.

They're just living in open sin, and I know that's the common practice out in the world. I know that that's common practice out in the world, but we're supposed to be different. We're categorically different as Christians, and we don't adopt ourselves to the world's practices. We don't do that.

This is not one of those things where we're going to try one another on, see if the size fits, and then if it doesn't fit, then we're going to move on to somebody else. This is not one of those things. This is one of those things where, like Adam, who swore his allegiance to Eve, bone of bones, flesh of flesh, where they swear themselves to one another, otherwise they don't enjoy the benefits of marriage, which includes the sexual relationship or anything else that goes on in there.

They need to stop doing that, repent of that, ask each other for forgiveness. That's really, in counseling, we have them do that. The guy's got to go and ask the gal for forgiveness. Why? Because he's used her body for his own self-gratification, and her body doesn't belong to him.

She's used his body for self-gratification. His body does not belong to her. It's not until you're married in a monogamous heterosexual relationship does each other's body belong to each other. So they're defrauding each other by doing this, by living in a sexual relationship prior to marriage. This is really key for their welfare.

I mean, when you start doing that kind of thing, then how do you know, even after you're married, that your spouse is going to maintain discipline of that marriage? You don't know. They may go off and sleep with somebody else, because they're willing to do that prior to your marriage.

They're willing to use you in the same way, and you are too. There's no integrity anymore to marriage. No, no, no. Boy, if anything, we may be old codgers, but we're trying to get people back to genuine integrity in relationships. And that's what the Bible teaches, and we're not going to stop proclaiming that.

I would say amen to that, by the way, and that definitely sounds very counter to the culture around us, and it should, because that reflects a biblical view of marriage. It's benefits minus commitment. And biblically speaking, marriage is built upon covenant and commitment, and this is critical in our age.

And I hear, to be totally honest, I hear a lot of Christians work really hard to justify that practice, but they're unable to do that biblically. And we want to think biblically. If you're sitting and go, "Wow, we're really taking the Bible seriously here." Let me just add to that a giant head nod.

Absolutely, in every realm, we're trying to. Now close to that, talking about the parents of maybe a young couple, unmarried, living together, coming to visit mom and dad on either side, what's mom and dad do as Christians when they want to come and stay in the same room? You guys on the same page with that question?

You understand what I'm saying? Yeah. No, can't let that happen. I know you want to express love to them, but you're going to need to set up some kind of arrangement even if mom's got to sleep with the gal and dad's got to sleep with the guy. I don't care how that, you got to set up separate arrangements for that to happen, because you can't allow, let's assume at this particular point that you've got a young couple who's not committed to Christ, they're not interested in following Christ, but they want to come and stay at your house.

You're not going to cave your principles for their ungodliness. You're not going to do that. You can express love to them in many other ways, but you're not going to do that. If they're going to do that outside of your home, you can have no control over that, then they're going to do that.

And by the way, they will suffer the way the transgressor is hard. They will suffer for that down the line. Adversity will pursue sinners. Spurgeon used to say, "God releases the hounds of heaven and they start nipping at those people's hills." That's what happens. Difficulty awaits them in the future, but you're not going to let them defile your home.

When I have people in counseling, and they come in, and they're really upset at each other, husband and wife relationship, and they start saying all kinds of wicked things, I say, "Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, stop." And by the way, that's the greatest word in counseling, "Whoa," all right? It's the greatest word in counseling, "Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, stop, stop, stop, stop, stop." I'm not going to let you sit here and sin all over my office, all right?

This is my office. You're not going to sin all over my office. Well, you're not going to let this young couple come in and sin all over your home. Or let's say it's not even a young couple. Let's say it's your son, who's not following Christ, has a boyfriend that he claims is his boyfriend.

You're not going to let them come in either and do that either. And have sex with each other in your home. You're not going to let them sin all over your home. That's not right. You can still find other ways to express love to them and care for them.

All of that is really critical, but you're not going to cave to their ungodliness. We have too many Christians willing to do this, and the world doesn't take us serious anymore. They say, "You act no different than we do. You're no different. There's nothing qualitative or quantitatively different in your life than my life." And boy, that is not biblical Christianity at all.

We've got to be radically different than the world, different in a Christ-like way. That's what we're talking about, different in a Christ-like way. All right, now someone really in the category of young couples not yet married, how do we help young men and women who are unmarried but who want to become married?

Oh, boy. That's a great question. I have a son that's that way right now, so I'm trying to give him as much help as possible. All right, let's go to 1 Corinthians, or no, excuse me, 1 Thessalonians, chapter 4, and this is really critical, I think, in helping young men and young women.

Verse 3 says, "For this is the will of God, your sanctification, that is, you abstain from sexual immorality," that's pretty straightforward, "that each one of you know how to control his own body," it says, "in holiness and honor." Now you see, if you have the English Standard Version, that is footnoted, and if you have the New American Standard Version, translation of the Bible, that's footnoted as well, and if you go to the footnote, it says down there how to take a wife for himself, or some say how to possess his own vessel.

That's literally what the Greek says. The Greek says how to acquire your own vessel. The word "acquire" is a very deliberate business word, and it's never used in the sense of acquiring your own body. That would be the only time in the entire Greek language or the Bible where that particular word is used in controlling your body, and yet some translators do that.

I just read that in the English translation, but it's a very deliberate business word to go out and acquire something, to get something, is the idea. Literally to acquire your own vessel, and the word "vessel" can refer to your body, but as in 1 Peter 3 and verse 7, the same word "vessel" refers to a wife.

Now the most literal sense of this is this, now follow me here, "that each one of you know how to acquire his own wife in holiness and honor, not in the passion of lust like the Gentiles who do not know God." Now that makes a lot of sense to me, because you're picking a wife not on the basis of sex appeal, that's not the primary criteria by which Christians pick a wife.

Christians pick a wife, or in this case, a wife picks a husband on the basis of holiness and honor. What is that? Well, it means simply this, that in your relationship together, after you have been together, are the two of you more holy? Or is your relationship together an honorable relationship?

When people look at that relationship and say, "I want to emulate that," that is an honorable relationship, that's the criteria by which you pick a spouse, is in holiness and honor, not on the basis of sex appeal. Now, I'm not saying that you marry somebody you're not attracted to, and that's not what the Bible is saying.

It's saying that sex appeal is not the primary criteria. The criteria is holiness and honor. This is sanctification. Then you go on and it says that no one transgress and wrong his brother. The brother in this case is the woman's father in this manner, because the Lord is an avenger in all these things, as we are told beforehand and solemnly warn you, for God has not called us for impurity, but to holiness.

In other words, if you marry a woman, according to what Paul says, on the basis of sex appeal, you've defrauded her father, because you've pretended to marry her, to provide for her, to protect her, but you're really marrying her to use her, and that's defrauding him. That's defrauding him.

You don't want to defraud her father. You don't want to do that. You want to marry those in holiness and in honor. What does your relationship mean, greater holiness for both of you? Does your relationship mean greater honor for both of you and honor especially for Christ? If that's true, that's the person to marry.

Let me add a wrinkle to this that's not on the forum, that I think will be on maybe some people's minds. What role, and I know there's a lot of variance depending on the age of the grown children, what role do the godly parents play in encouraging the child through that process?

Well, I think teaching them what Scripture says. That's important. That's the beginning. Teaching them how to make that decision in an honorable way, in a godly way. Let me say this, that parents have a wisdom, even if they're unbelievers, that sometimes younger people do not have, and I'm going to use my mother as an example of this.

She just passed away a couple months ago. She lived with us, but many, many, many years ago when she was going to Baptist Bible Institute in Cleveland, Ohio, she ran into a young man there. They started dating regularly, and he became very interested in her, and so she took him home one weekend to meet my grandfather and my grandmother.

My grandmother was a Christian. My grandfather was not. In fact, he was a professional photographer, and he was a horrible drunk. Later on, God saved him and took away all that alcohol, praise God. But at that particular time, my grandfather was not a godly man at all. After the weekend was over, the guy went back to the Bible Institute, and this guy was preparing to go into mission work, and my grandfather said to my mother, "I don't think you should be dating that guy." And she kind of wondered about that, asked her father a lot of questions, and was tempted to think, "Well, my father is not a Christian.

He doesn't like Christians, so he doesn't like this guy. That's the idea." And that wasn't the issue at all. It's just he said, "There's something different about that guy." Nothing. Well, that was really hard for her. She struggled with that a little bit, but she said, "Okay. You know what?

I'll honor my father." She went back, broke up with the guy. Six months later, that guy was dating another gal, was engaged to her, and they got married. A year later, they went off to the mission field. They were on the mission field for about two years, and the mission society had to bring them both home because he was beating his wife senseless.

Now, my grandfather, as an ungodly man, picked up on that in that guy, all right? So there's a wisdom there that even ungodly people have. It's the wisdom of the world, but not all of it's always bad that's there. So paying close attention to what parents have to say is really a key thing.

And by the way, not long after that, my mother met my father. That's why I'm here, okay? And my father ended up being a pastor and was a very faithful man for many, many years. He died in 1985, got really bad leukemia, but I think that parents need to give as much input as possible to their son or their daughter about who they're marrying and realize, and help them to realize that when they get married, they're not marrying somebody who's perfect.

They're marrying somebody with lots of flaws, and usually in dating, you don't see them. They don't let you see them, all right? - There's a lot we could add to that. You know, a very common statement is, you know, someone would say, "This isn't the person that I dated." And the common response been said many times is, "No, the person you dated doesn't exist.

The person you married is all there is. There's nothing else. There is no other thing." - That's right. That's right. - And so it's an important... There's a lot more I'd love to say about that, and maybe in another forum we can, but that's very helpful. Okay, next section.

This one was also very popular, in-laws. - Otherwise known as outlaws. - Should couples, and I'm assuming married couples, should married couples live with their in-laws? - All right, first of all, there's no easy yes or no to that question because, for example, I just told you that my mother lived with us in her remaining years.

She ended up remarrying after my father passed away, the wonderful godly man. He later on died of colon cancer. And then she lived with us for about five years. We had a separate mother-in-law's apartment that was a part of our house. Now we rented out the seminary guys. I've got a guy in there right now, he's going to get married in December, so he's in grandma's apartment there.

So because I felt, as the oldest in the family, it was my responsibility to take care of my mom, and my wife was full agreement. In fact, my wife got along with my mom better than she got along with her mother, all right, which is really something. And they just got along famously together and worked together on so many things.

My mother had polycystic kidneys and so taking her back and forth to kidney dialysis was a regular routine that my wife was used to. So there are times where living with your in-laws is a necessity to be of help to them, to minister to them, those kind of things.

Generally, when that's not involved, it's not the best thing. Now, it's not wrong, it's not sinful, if your in-laws live with you, maybe it's financial necessity, those kind of things. Sometimes it makes it difficult. But oftentimes in counseling situations like that, it's not so much the living in that's the real problem, it's the way people treat one another.

That's the issue. And if you have a mother-in-law or a father-in-law that doesn't treat you well, or kind of favors their son or daughter in situations like that, that's going to make life very hard. And a husband has got to see that. He's got to be able to step in there and side always with his wife, and the wife must always side with her husband because the Bible is very clear, we're supposed to leave and cleave.

The husband's not going to side with his parents, the wife's not going to side with her parents, no, no, they're going to side with each other. And there's going to be an absolute unified front presented before mom and dad. That's what has to happen. Otherwise, I know that there are some, and I know different cultures have this problem, there's a lot of matriarchal type of relationships that go where grandma intends to be the queen of the castle type of thing, and that becomes a serious problem.

She's not. The wife is. Grandma's not. She may be living there, but she's not the queen of the castle. That violates biblical standards. That may be cultural, but it's not biblical. And my mother was not the queen of the castle in our home. My wife was, and my mother knew it, and my mother was happy with that.

My wife came before my mother, okay? That's really important, and everybody in the home knew that. If you were to ask any of them and interview them, they'd tell you that in a heartbeat. But if you have a situation where that's not true, and you've got a husband that's siding with his mother, or a wife siding with her mother or her father, now you've got problems.

Because they're not following exactly what we saw in Genesis 2:24, they're not leaving and cleaving. Instead, they're still holding on, and that's got to change. Amen. That's a big category. I think you actually hit the second question with that first answer, so that works out pretty well. Next category, women and careers.

First one here, how do I make my husband a priority when I have a career in the sense of juggling that with children and everything? Yeah. It's not wrong for a woman to have a career. Obviously, the Proverbs 31 woman was busy outside of her home and had her own businesses.

That's pretty obvious, not wrong. However, it is wrong for a woman to make her career over dictate what goes on in terms of the home, what goes on in terms of her husband or her children. If her career is more important than her husband, and this shows up in the fine details of life, more important than her children, then she's got a major problem going on.

Or if her career is somehow dictating what goes on, where they live, what's really happening, no. In fact, and I know some husbands want their wives to work because usually in counseling, I'm able to lay out their finances and show the only reason he wants her to work is because she buys all of his toys, all right?

She's the one with her salary that buys his boat and his vacation condo and his stereo equipment and his sports car, and no, instead of him providing for her, she's the one that's really providing for him. So the shoe's on the other foot. That's not the way it should be.

1 Timothy chapter 5 is very clear. When a man does not provide for his own household, he is worse than an unbeliever. Now I can't imagine what is worse than an unbeliever, but it's that guy. God created a man to provide for his own house. You say, "Well, we'll have a lot less money if my wife doesn't work." Well, so what?

Maybe you'll have a happier home. So this is really such a key thing that she was created, as we saw a little bit earlier, to be his helpmate. He was not created to be her helpmate. That was not the way creation was designed. He has got to take leadership in this, and he's got to stop being lazy and pick up the mantle and make enough money for both of them to subsist on, along with the kids.

That's what he's got to do. So this is very important. I know, again, this is counter-cultural. I know that. I know. I know. You can pull out your guns and shoot me now. But the Bible's very clear on this. This is not…Titus 3 talks about women should be busy at home, busy at home.

This is such a key thing. And that's it. Now, the Bible's not saying if you work outside their home, it's wrong. It's not saying that. But that her primary responsibility is her husband, is those children, is that home, that is her primary. Her career is not her primary responsibility.

That's such a key thing. Now, as that works out, I want you to hear something, too, husbands, as you're listening to that. So the husband that comes home, and the Lord's been teaching me this, and I've been learning and trying to grow in this over the years. If you come home, and your wife's been at work all day long, and there's kids in the home, or maybe if there's not kids, there's just priorities and things that have to be done in the home.

If you come home, even after the longest day you've ever had, sit down, get in your chair and say, "Man, I have had the worst day. I'm just going to do nothing. I need you to do everything." That's not going to… Not only it's not going to go over well, you're also putting her in a position of temptation.

You're tempting her to choke you when you sleep first, but you're tempting her to sin, because you're failing to meet your responsibilities. Of being a doulos and a diakonos, that's right. To be a servant in the home. So someone has said, many times have been said, that your job does not end when you leave work and come home.

You still have work to do. If there's kids in the home, then your work ends when the kids go to bed, and when you have taken care of anything that needs to be taken care of in support of your wife. So I don't want you to hear this on a one-sided way and walk away, "Oh, man, so I'm a woman, I have a job, and now I've got to do everything in the house too, and take care of the kids too." No, no, there still is a level of a partnership here, and the husband has to respect that, and that has to be central in his mind and his thinking.

So closely related to this, very closely, can I have a calling at work as a woman? And we think that this question has the idea of, in the sense that God's maybe called me, and in my case, I'm a little different, God's called me to a special thing that would maybe supersede these other responsibilities.

Yeah, if that's what is meant, just the way that Pastor Mark here has just described it, then the answer is no. There is no special calling that's talked about in Scripture in regards to that. There is a calling in relationship to full-time Christian ministry or work in that sense, but she may have a career and be well-accomplished in a career.

We just had a gal go through our MABC program who has, she had two master's degrees and a PhD in psychology and actually taught psychology to med students at UCLA, and she and her husband got into serious marital problems. She got counseling from one of the guys that, she and her husband got counseling from one of the guys that graduated from our program.

Here's a gal with a master's in marriage and family and another master's degree and a PhD and having massive problems at home, and she had this all messed up, and the counselor was able to help him iron these things out, get these things, and she finally said, "Where did you get this stuff?" He says, "Well, I got it from the Bible." "No, no, no.

Where were you trained to do this?" She said, "Well, master's university." "Do you suppose they let me go through that program?" Well, she has now gone through the program. She's going to be graduating this next year. This is her third master's degree. She's got more degrees than a thermometer, all right, her third master's degree.

But she is, she's a very sweet gal, but she realized that all of her priorities were all messed up. That's the reason why she was struggling so much with depression. That's the reason why things were falling apart at home. That's the reason why things were messed up in her marriage.

All of those things were, all of our priorities were really askew. When she finally got her priorities straight biblically, joy came back to her life. And if you meet her husband, he's one of the happiest guys on the planet. Wow, he's got a completely different wife now. And here she's got all these degrees and stuff.

But she had to get those things straightened out in her life, come into line biblically. That's what had to happen. That's such a key thing. Can they have a calling in the way that a pastor has a calling? I don't think so. I don't think that that's a biblical concept.

It's kind of a mystical thing. But can they have a career that they're well-trained in? Sure, absolutely. That's really true. And sometimes they can use their career in a good and godly way. Sometimes they use their career in Christian service. Sometimes they use their career to benefit their home and their family, but their home and their husband always comes first.

That's always the priority. That's what has to be there. All right, just two more questions, two more categories, and we'll wrap up. Christians and non-Christians in marriage together. So one Christian married to a non-Christian. This question is kind of simple. Actually, it's bringing together a few questions. What are some basic principles that apply in this case?

If you have that type of situation going on in your life, one of the things that you need to do, you've got to be intimately familiar with 1 Peter. I talked about that and hinted at this earlier. If you're a woman married to an unbelieving husband, then 1 Peter 3, 1 through 6 becomes your marching orders.

But you're not going to fully understand what's going on there until you understand the surrounding context of what's being said there. So you've got to understand that. If you're a Christian husband married to an unbelieving wife, then you've got to understand 1 Peter 3, 7, and you've got to live that out on a daily basis, every single day in your life.

You've got to understand, flush that all out every day. Now there are some general principles. If you want to grab your Bible just for a moment, right after Peter talks about that 1 Peter 3, he talks about, he kind of sums up things there in verse 8. He says finally, all of you, that is, he's talking to all the Christians, have unity of mind, sympathy, brotherly love, tenderhearted, humble mind, do not repay evil for evil.

This is verse 8 and 9 here. Or reviling for reviling, but on the contrary, bless, for to this you are called that you may obtain a blessing. Now if you use this to sum up everything he said to unbelievers, this goes back into chapter 10 where he's talking about Christian slaves who are at the mercy of masters who are unbelievers and they're harsh and ungodly, and then Christian wives married to harsh ungodly husbands, Christian husbands married to harsh ungodly wives, then the things they need to focus on is this unity of mind with other Christians, sympathy, brotherly love, tenderhearted, humble mind, not repaying evil for evil, reviling for reviling, but on the contrary, bless, for to this you are called that you may obtain a blessing.

Now he says this, and then he says in verse 10, "For whoever desires to love life and see good days, let him keep his tongue from evil." It's easy when you're living close to an unbelieving spouse to give in to the evil and to say wicked things and his lips from speaking deceit.

Verse 11, "Let him turn away from evil and do good. Let him seek peace and pursue it, for the eyes of the Lord are on the righteous and his ears are open to their prayer, for the face of the Lord is against those who do evil." So we have to concentrate on doing good.

Then he says in verse 13, here's a general principle, "Now, who is there to harm you if you are as zealous for what is good?" And that's a great principle. And that's a general principle that works predominantly throughout most of life. If you do good to people, generally they're going to do good back to you.

If you have an unbelieving spouse and you do good to them, generally they're going to do good back to you. Generally that's going to happen, all right? But then there's exceptions to the rule. But verse 14, here's the exception, "But if you should suffer for righteousness," in other words, you're doing good and you're still suffering, "for righteousness' sake, you will be blessed.

Have no fear of them, nor be troubled." In other words, God ingratiates himself to a person who's suffering for righteousness' sakes. Verse 15, "But in your hearts, honor Christ the Lord as holy, always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you, yet to do it with gentleness and respect." In other words, if you continue to live out righteousness in front of an ungodly spouse, eventually they're going to say to you, "How are you able to do that?

How come you keep doing it? I keep doing all these things to you and you just respond so godly. How do you do that?" Then you need to be ready, he says, to give an answer. And you need to say, "You know what? It is not me. It is Christ working through me.

It is Jesus Christ. He paid my entire debt of sin. I owe him my life. What I go through and what you do to me, it counts as nothing compared to the suffering that Christ went through when he died for my sin, and that's why I do what I do." Always be ready to give an account to him who asks you about the faith within you.

Always be ready to do that. You become God's missionary to that ungodly husband, that ungodly wife. You are God's appointed missionary to them. No one else can be a better missionary than you can because you know them inside and out. You have to live out righteousness, godliness, not give in to your temper or your anger or your hate, remembering that Jesus Christ died for those sins, and you are going to live out Christ all you can in front of them.

Well, I hope that was a really detailed and hopefully helpful answer to those of you that are in that situation. Of course, as Christians, we wouldn't knowingly enter into a marriage relationship that way, right? As a pastor, I've seen many times, I'm sure Dr. Street has seen this as well, I've seen it in circumstances where a person really wanted to marry someone else, all of a sudden their understanding, biblical standard for what a Christian is, begins to change and it becomes exactly what this potential spouse is.

And then something happens after they finally get their catch and they get married. That person is revealed for who they are. They never were a Christian. They have no interest in Christ. They had an interest in a person who had interest in Christ. And so they were as interested in Christ as they needed to be to mirror the interest of that person.

And I'll tell you, I have seen more and more marriages, I'm sure you could speak to this as well, that have suffered because they took the wrong first step, didn't apply these principles, and now we're in this spot. So if you're there, there's hope for you and there's some clear guidance here.

But we would love to encourage you, if you're a young adult here, not yet married, or if you're someone who's now pursuing marriage, I would really, really, really challenge you and encourage you to get good biblical counseling, premarital counseling, which we offer here, but to really, really carefully consider this particular aspect of what would be your marriage as long as you're alive on this earth.

I'm going to speak one last thing to that before we close or not. Would you like to? Sure. Fire away. Oh, I thought you were going to ask the last question, that's what you meant by that. Well, no. I just want to speak to that. We answered that question.

Yeah, we did. You nailed that in the last one. Okay, good. Good. So any concluding parting words then before we go? I hope as a result of this particular weekend, you have a higher view of marriage than you did when you came in. I know, and I have counseled so many people, even people who have been divorced going into their second marriage, they always think that they have a high view of marriage, but when we get done with taking a look what the Bible has to say about it, all of a sudden they're overwhelmed by, "Oh my goodness, this is a much higher view than I ever thought marriage to be.

It is an incredibly honorable institution, but we treat it so dishonorably." And like I said at the very beginning, marriage is not in trouble. Marriage is just fine, the way God designed it. It's just exactly the way God intended it to be. It's the people who are in marriage that's in trouble.

That's the problem. The institution's fine. The culture wants to destroy it, they'll never destroy it, because God created it. You can't destroy something God created. They can't. They'll try to redefine it, they can't. It's going to go on until the end of time. But it is a very honorable institution, and I hope that this encourages you to treat it that way.

So gentlemen, you're going to impress your wives with three things you've got to remember in order to be a godly husband. So in order to be a godly husband, number one, gentlemen? Yes. Uh-huh. Amen. I'm going to have a charismatic revival right here. That sounds so good, all right.

All right, ladies, you're going to put a smile on your husband's face by the three things you've got to remember in order to be a godly wife. Are you ready? They all start with S, remember. Uh-huh. There we go. Submission, suitable helper, and selflessly reverent, very good. First of all, every one of you, looking this way, four things you've got to remember in terms of godly communication in the home, Ephesians chapter 4, verses 25 through 32.

Number one, be? Keep. Attack. Act. Oh my goodness, God's going to do some great things here, pastor. Why don't you show your appreciation one last time for Dr. Street? (audience applauding)