TwoIgnite Fun Loving You

TwoIgnite
Fun Loving You
Pastor Ted Cunningham
As part of our worship service, we take an offering. We want to encourage you to give generously.
Because of your generosity, we were able to meet a shortfall in the Haiti school that we have supported
as a church. If you are new to Woodland Hills, you need to know that we provide money each month to
provide meals for roughly 400 children at a school in Haiti. Going into the end of the year, the budget
shortfall is roughly $9,000.00. They asked if our church could help with a portion of that, but because of
your generosity throughout this summer, we were able to meet that entire shortfall so we sent them a
check this week for over $9,000.00. We just want to say thank you and continue to do the great work.
We always try to keep this in balance at our church. We want to meet the physical needs of family
members right here at Woodland Hills. We did that last week. You gave almost $3,000.00 in the mercy
offering alone last week and that will be given out in the next couple of weeks before we take another
mercy offering.
I got a letter this week from a guest from out of town who was so moved by the idea of a mercy offering
that they sent a check in later because they didn’t bring their check book. We have to find a way to
remind tourists to bring their check book. He said it was just rare to see churches that are going to that
extreme to take care of their family members. We want to do that here.
We are also meeting the physical needs of those in Stone and Taney Counties. So tomorrow will be a
great time; we get to go on the Branson Belle and enjoy a little fun with the Care for Kids ministry there.
You supported that ministry in the amount of $42,000.00 this year. You’re doing great, Woodland Hills,
keep it going. I’ve had seasoned pastors tell me to be careful thanking people for their generosity
because they might stop giving. You have proven that wrong with just the total opposite. So continue
to give generously. If you are a tourist here, we want you to know you only have to tithe here the week
you are here; you don’t need to send us money when you go back home. I’m kidding, but we are
grateful for that.
Two months ago, we said goodbye to two fantastic men of our church, two elders, Gary Smalley went to
Colorado Spring and Jim Sedlacek moved to Peoria, Arizona. Both of them moved to be by their kids. I
had an opportunity to talk to Jim Sedlacek this week. He is 76 years old and he said, “Ted, I moved into a
55 plus community and I’m the youngest person in the community. When I go down to get my
prescription drugs…” You know that’s what you do when you are in a 55 plus community. You go to the
pharmacy a lot and drugs are perfectly legal.
39 53 G r een M ou n ta in D ri v e, Bran s on , MO 6 56 1 6 41 7 -3 36 - 54 52 woo d h i ll s. or g
When you see people exchanging drugs in communities like that, there is nothing wrong with that. But
he said, “I’m the fastest mover in the neighborhood and I’m still on two feet.”
I wanted to share that with you because Jim Sedlacek loves you and loves this church and he served this
church as an elder for five years and we were grateful for him. It did leave us with a void in the
leadership of elders. Just so you know how the selection process of elders works at our church, we don’t
have a formal once a year process. We are supposed to be an elder lead church, always aware of the
leaders around us and the names that are brought to us on a regular basis. There are two gentlemen
that have been brought to us over the last year or two and we prayed about them, we talked with them,
we spent time with them, and we believe that the Lord has brought these two men into the leadership
of Woodland Hills.
We want to give you an opportunity to meet them this morning so would you please give a nice, warm
Woodland Hills welcome to R. G. Yallaly and his wife Karen, and then Bryan Bronn and his wife Paula. I
am going to invite them up for just a second. As they come up, just to let you know how it works, we’ve
met with them, prayed with them, prayed over them. We are asking the Lord for direction and we
believe these are two men that are to join the elders of our church.
Here is how it works. Do you remember when you used to go to weddings and they would say “Speak
now or forever hold your peace”? We do kind of have a process according to our bylaws as a church
that for the next two weeks if there is something we do not know about these two… That’s really how it
reads. I’m paraphrasing it for you, but if they have charges against them right now that we don’t know
about, we would like to know about that. We just tell you there are a couple of weeks of inspection, of
listening, but at this point, they are elders unless we hear otherwise. I wanted them to get to know you
a little bit and you to get to know them and then I’m going to pray over R.G., Karen, Bryan, and Paula,
but I’m going to let Bryan start us off.
Bryan Bronn: Thank you, Ted. This is my lovely wife Paula and we have three children, Josh, Caleb, and
Hope. We have been blessed this summer to celebrate 25 years of marriage so that’s a major life
accomplishment we thank the Lord for. When we were married, we had traditional vows which we love
and cherish, but we also wrote vows for each other. One of the things that we included was that I was
going to lead our family and marriage to keep it fun and alive. And in joining the elder team here at
Woodland Hills Family Church, I love the bride here. I love Woodland Hills Family Church and will be
glad, in the same way, to help keep things fun and alive around Woodland Hills with the rest of the
team. We are honored and glad to be aboard.
R.G. Yallaly: My name is R.G. Yallaly and this is my wife Karen. She truly is the love of my life. This
November, we will have been married 48 years. About six years ago, God led us to this church and in
the process of that… We didn’t know then but we know now that his purpose for us was to start a
marriage ministry in this church and God has truly blessed us through that and shown his power through
that. Karen and I love this church and it is a privilege and an honor for me to be an elder here; it really is
and I’m so overwhelmed by that. We love Ted and Amy and we are looking forward to what God is
going to continue to do here at Woodland Hills. Thank you.
Ted Cunningham: Would you join me in praying for these couples? Father, I do ask that you bless both
Bryan and Paula and R.G. and Karen. I ask, as they come on and serve in ministry, that the leadership
that they take on as elders will have the same fruitfulness that they have had in Marriage 911. I ask that
you continue to bless their marriages and their families and now there leadership here at Woodland
Hills. Guard their homes. May they lead there well and lead here well also.
It is in the mighty name of Jesus that everyone agreed and said… Amen.
Well there’s something you don’t know about R.G. R.G. gets nervous around TwoIgnite Sundays
because… I’m going to announce this just to totally freak him out. But R.G. is a retired executive from
American Airlines which means he gets flying privileges for free to anywhere in the country so if your
marriage needs help, online viewers, R.G. would be more than happy to jump on a plane. On TwoIgnite
Sundays he gets all sorts of emails and he’s like “I’ve heard from Michigan, California, Seattle, and
Nicaragua.” Quit complaining and fly and enjoy the country, R.G.
I have such peace when couples call the church in conflict and then they get into our Marriage 911
program. It is such a blessing and R.G. and Karen have led that ministry. Paula and Bryan have been a
part of that. Bryan is probably going to be looking at other areas of ministry to help us lead. Again, I
encourage you to get to know them a little bit.
Well it’s Fun Loving You Sunday at Woodland Hills. It’s TwoIgnite Sunday. If you are new to our church,
we take the second Sunday of every month and we stop and talk about marriage.
Something happened last night for the very first time in 17 years of marriage. I’m still in shock. I woke
up this morning in shock that this happened. Last night, my wife, for the first time in 17 years, woke me
up to tell me to stop snoring. She has never done that. She has always gone with it. I got up this
morning and said “You’ve never done that.”
She goes, “It was the loudest it’s ever been. I just needed you to reposition a little bit and then you were
quiet.”
I’m like “Well, let’s not get into this pattern though.”
How many of you use sleep props like sound machines? For us it’s the iPad and the iPhone. When we
are at a hotel and I come back after a conference and the kids and Amy are in the room, every device we
have has a sound machine with the wind tunnel setting on full blast mode. I told her we had to turn
those sound machines up and let me sleep. Does anybody here sleep with a snorer? We may need a
whole strategy Sunday just on that.
If you are new to Woodland Hills, we are going to do just a little bit of a refresher before we get into Fun
Loving You, Enjoying Marriage in the Midst of the Grind, because it’s actually the third prong of our
marriage strategy and what we believe and how we hold marriage here at Woodland Hills.
To start with, we honor marriage. We believe marriage should be honored by all and the marriage bed
kept pure. This is Hebrews 13: 4. Many of us grew up in homes and churches that taught us how to
honor purity, but not marriage. We want every single, every married, every young, and every senior to
learn how to esteem marriage as highly valuable.
Whenever we do a talk today… As we are going to talk and have a lot fun enjoying life in marriage, I
understand there are two groups that will get the emails and the social media ready to hit us with. One
is this group over here that I call the crisis couples. They are having no fun, looking at divorce,
separated. Amy and I got a beautiful message between services from someone going through a very
difficult time in marriage. They said “Thank you for the laughs; it’s been a while.”
We know some of you are not in the mood to laugh, not in the mood to have a good time with your
spouse. Just so you hear us, we are looking at a large group of people in here today that have
committed to one another, not planning on going anywhere, not divorcing, but they are wanting to go to
another level in their marriage. We believe when we talk to a large group of couples, that can become
infectious to the rest of the group so we are going to speak to a group that maybe you don’t feel a part
of right now, but we invite you to be a part of enjoying life in marriage. Understand we love and work
with and spend time with couples who are hurting. We will love on you. That’s what Marriage 911 is all
about. We take that very seriously here. So as we talk about enjoying life in marriage and have a lot of
fun with it, if you don’t feel the tug in this message, I want to encourage you to take advantage of
Marriage 911 and plug into that.
Then there is the single or maybe the dating or the engaged and they are thinking we are not married
yet and now you are talking to a very specific person. I want to encourage you to move out of what
could easily be a self-absorbed attitude and embrace marriage teaching. In a second, we are going to
look at what it means to be a backup singer, but wherever you fall in the seasons of life, I just want to
encourage you to enjoy being part of a church that is going to try to talk to everybody at some point, but
there are times we do get a little more targeted.
Also, another caution as we go into this message, there are some of you thinking Ted, we want to enjoy
life in marriage, but… These are the two excuses I get all the time for not enjoying life in marriage. “We
want to enjoy life in marriage, but we have children and no money”. Raise your hand if that has ever
found its way into your heart. You think children and no money make it impossible to enjoy life in
marriage to which the Hebrew term for that is caca. That’s just not true. You can enjoy life in marriage.
I can remember when Amy and I were first married. The church I went to work for 17 years ago said
they could pay me $10,000.00 a year. I was going to need another job. We were broke. That’s how
most couples start out. Raise your hand if you started marriage broke. Raise your hand if your daddy
gave you a trust fund. It’s very few.
We were in South Georgia. We would go to Jekyll Island and St. Simons Island and we would stay at the
Motel 6, but then we would go hang out in the lobbies of the very expensive hotels. That was a blast.
We found all sorts of creative ways to have fun when we didn’t have money, but then something
entered the picture called children. There are so many things you can do to enjoy life in marriage with
children. How many of you have infants? One word: playpen. Word number two: grandparent. Word
number three: friends. Word number four: co-ops. “We’re going on a date on Tuesday night; you go on
a date on Thursday night.” There are all sorts of ways to do it. We have to quit making excuses and
prioritize marriage. And all God’s people said… Amen.
We believe in the infallibility of scripture, we believe in the substitutionary atonement of Christ, we
believe in the priesthood of the saints, and we believe in the date night. And all God’s people said…
Amen. So we are not going to make excuses, we are going to honor marriage and we are going to
prioritize marriage. That’s the second prong of our strategy. We prioritize marriage in the home.
For this reason, a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife and they will become
one flesh. That verse deals with a lot of relationships. It has the husband/wife relationship, it has the
daughter/son/parent relationship, and then it also has – and we don’t often see this in there – the inlaws. This guy is marrying somebody and now mom and dad automatically become in-laws. These are
all relationships in here. It speaks to marriage, it speaks to parenting, and it speaks to the bond between
a husband and a wife being stronger than the bond between a parent and a child. So we believe Genesis
2:24 eradicates the kid-centered home. And all God’s people said… Amen.
Now we are going to spend a little time on the enjoying marriage part. We are still in refresher; we
haven’t gotten to the main thrust of where we are headed to with this message and how to have a fun
loving marriage. We believe marriage is to be enjoyed.
Some of you right now are like “You know what? I love watching and hearing the stories on Facebook
about this couple or that couple enjoying marriage, but we can’t do it because we have a tough life.”
For a minute, can we all just get on the same page and understand we all are in the grind of life? Jim
Sedlacek, who I talked to this week, is in a different grind that I am. I’m in the grind of work right now
and making a living and providing for a family. Jim… I call him Daddy Warbucks. Jim is okay. He doesn’t
wake up every morning dealing with the stress on how to make a dollar and how to provide for his
family. He doesn’t wake up to that grind, but he does wake up to the grind of beating all of his
neighbors down to the pharmacy. It’s a very different grind, but it’s a grind.
I talked to an elder that I dearly love and respect who is 76 years old and we are laughing and laughing.
Do you know what Jim calls the breaking down of his body? He calls it rust. I’ll ask him if I can pray for
him and he’s like “Nah, it’s just rust. I’ll be with Jesus soon; it’s no big deal. Don’t worry about me.” He
has a great attitude. He is in the grind; it’s just a different part of the grind. We all go through the grind
so be careful when you sit there and complain about the season you’re in. You have to make a decision,
just like you make the decision to marry someone, just like you make the decision to exchange vows and
rings before God and gathered witnesses, and just like you make the decision to stay married.
I’m asking you this morning to make the decision to enjoy life in the midst of the grind. Don’t blame the
grind; don’t try to escape the grind because you can’t do it. You get 70 years, 80 if you are strong to go
through the grind, but the scripture says in Psalm 90:10 that those years are filled with sorrow and
anguish. It’s hard, it’s painful, it’s difficult, and none of us can escape it no matter how much money we
make and no matter how many degrees we get. We can’t buy our way out of the grind and we can’t
outsmart the grind; we are in it.
But there is something we can do in the midst of the grind and that’s what Ecclesiastes 9: 7-9 says. I
know many of you know this has become my life verse and this is what I get to share with churches and
conferences around the country. It’s a blessing to know that out of Woodland Hills comes this message.
We believe marriage should be honored, prioritized, and enjoyed in the home and we are going to keep
beating that drum until the Lord tells us to stop. Ecclesiastes 9: 7-9 says 7 Go, eat your food with
gladness, and drink your wine with a joyful heart, for God has already approved what you do. It’s okay
for us to enjoy life. 8 Always be clothed in white, and always anoint your head with oil. We can even
bring the enjoyment of life up a notch to joy and festivity. We can really get after this. 9 Enjoy life with
your wife, whom you love, all the days of this meaningless life that God has given you under the sun—
all your meaningless days. For this is your lot in life and in your toilsome labor under the sun.
Many of us, no matter where we are in the grind… Maybe your grind has to do with your physical wellbeing right now. Maybe your grind has to do with the fact that you are raising a three month old and
you haven’t slept in three months. Maybe your grind is a struggle right now to make a living and pay the
bills. Maybe your grind is you got in way over your head with debt and in the area of finances and you
have to now grind out a living to get out of that mess.
Let me tell you what the blessing of enjoying marriage in the midst of that grind is. It’s to know
whatever the grind is, when I come home to what I call and what I read in the Song of Songs 1, my En
Gedi, my desert oasis… There is no better day than to come home after a rough day in the grind, kiss
your wife, hug your kids, enjoy a nice meal around the table together, read the Bible together for a little
bit, play a little bit on a trampoline… We bought a big ball for exercise. The doctor told us I had to start
using the ball to keep my back going. We turned our trampoline into an octoball arena. We go out
there every night now and have a ball as a family. To do that and then to say good night to your kids and
to make love to your wife and to go to sleep and to sleep without being woken up for snoring… I’m just
kidding. To me, I can make it through the grind.
I just think this is the one area that a lot of guys… I love the word toilsome there. Toilsome there means
gruesome, hard, difficult, painful. The grind is hard, it’s difficult, but a lot of us now have taken the grind
and allowed it to impact our marriage to the point that now our marriage is a grind. Again, I’ve asked
this question over and over again and I want you to know. Did God gives us marriage to make us more
like Jesus or does he want us to bring Christlikeness into our marriage? I believe Jesus is the model for
our sanctification. We are to become more like Jesus and bring that into our marriage and I refuse to
turn Amy Cunningham into the grind. I’m going to have her until either one of us lays the other in the
arms of Jesus or the Lord returns.
I know you think this is easy for me to teach because I do enjoy marriage; I’ve made it my message and
mission, but we’ve had the same issues. We’ve been going through Galatians. We’ve tried to bring two
different perspectives of faith together. We’ve done that and a lot of you are doing that right now.
We’ve struggled in the area of how to celebrate the holidays. We come from different homes and how
money should be spent and how kids should be raised. We deal with all of the same stuff you do. I’m
just telling you that we’ve made the decision and that’s what we want you to do. We want you to make
the decision, as many of the couples sitting around here today have made. They have made the decision
to be in a divorce-proof home, but they’ve also made the decision to enjoy life together.
So what happens when a couple gets stuck in the grind? This is again some review. We’ve gone over
this before in months past, but I want to catch us up before we look at the practicals of enjoying life in
the midst of the grind and enjoying marriage in the midst of the grind.
Couples get stuck in the grind when they blame one another as the source of the problem. When you
set up your spouse as the source of the problem, you automatically set them up to be the solution and
now you sit there, as we see in many counseling sessions. Both husband and wife have their heels dug
in and arms crossed, waiting until the other does something. This is beyond stuck. This is called
wrapped around the axle; you’re that stuck and now you need an emotionally disconnected third party.
We have one here and his name is Ryan Pannell. He is our counselor here and I love this guy to pieces.
He said something profound years ago. Ryan doesn’t say a whole lot unless you’re talking to him about
sports. He’s very passionate about sports. Ryan is a great counselor. After a day of counseling, he said
something to me in passing that I have never forgotten. I could tell he had dealt with some afflicted
couples and I don’t feel like he had a whole lot of success that day. He just shook his head and said
“Sometimes I feel couples make it harder than it needs to be.”
I thought that was good so I wrote it down and that’s the last time I will ever say that he said it. Now I’m
going to say “I’ve always believed…” Why do couples make it harder? It’s because of selfishness, pride,
sin, and because “I am going to be right.”
Couples get stuck in the grind when they obsess over chemistry and compatibility. This is
eHarmony.com, this is match.com, this is you have to take a test and find somebody you are compatible
with. No. Character trumps chemistry every time. Please hear me. My wife and I… You are going to
see in a second that we are so different and we just laugh now… I’m done blaming her for the source of
our problems because I now look at all the differences and celebrate them. I will show you in a second a
very practical way to do that.
Couples get stuck in the grind when they repeat mistakes and develop patterns. This is that rut, doing
the same thing over and over again expecting different results. When an issue comes up in your
marriage, you just repeat the same lines, repeat the same arguments, and you get nowhere. So we are
going to try something new today.
Couples get stuck in the grind when they close their hearts. Remember when you close your heart
towards your spouse, you also close it towards God. You can’t remain bitter and angry towards an
individual and then think Oh, but I come to church and I open it up and God fills me and then… Your
heart doesn’t work that way. At almost every conference that I have the opportunity to be at…
Yesterday it was one in Florida. I meet multiple people that are just fiercely angry. They are like “I know
what you said up there, but I’m going to give you three things you haven’t thought about. He’s done
this and this and this and it’s been for a long period of time.”
I’m like “Back it down because you have your own issues to deal with.”
“What!?”
“That! That whole thing right there. I can’t even put words on it, but fix that.”
I had a lady tell me yesterday “I want to take personal responsibility; how do I do it!?”
I said, “Well first, can we stop screaming at each other? Bring it down a notch.”
As we talked, she couldn’t say a sentence without bringing up her husband. I told her that the first step
to personal responsibility was to stop talking about her husband. Let’s talk about you. We always think
we’re good. How can you not love this?
“Ma’am, I’ve only known you for two minutes and I want to run as far as I can and as fast as I can the
other way. You’re harder to love than you think.” And that goes both ways, just so you know. I meet
men that are the same way. That’s a closed heart and you come to church over and over again and you
say I open my Bible and I pray.
Do you know how many churches I’ve been to lately that the husband and wife have decided to divorce
and so they just attend different services at the same church now? Is it just me? I don’t understand
that? How do you go to a gospel teaching/preaching church where the gospel is presented week after
week and Christ is the only way and faith in Jesus…? How do you do that and say we are splitting and
we really don’t have any good reason to split, but now he is going to go to the nine and I’m going to go
to the eleven. You have to understand this is a heart issue. You have to ask yourself if your heart is
open or closed. You have to open your heart before you can begin enjoying marriage.
Couples get stuck in the grind when they isolate from biblical community. We say welcome to many of
you because you came to Woodland Hills because of a struggle in your marriage or in your family. There
are two areas where we see a lot of people coming back to church. There are couples who have babies
and they get the idea that they should probably do something spiritually with their children. Or there
are couples who are struggling. And we say welcome, but we want to encourage you. I have a doctor
who tells me all the time “When the symptom goes away, it doesn’t mean the real issue has been dealt
with.”
That’s because I’m a symptom guy. I’ve done the over the counter stuff for years. “Just take the pill to
make the symptom feel better.” But we get pretty serious here about going beneath the surface and
dealing with what is really going on.
Don’t think Hey we came today and we laughed so we’re good for a little bit… No, press into biblical
community. You need to hear from seasoned people in your life. Young moms out there with the
antibacterial product hanging off our purse, you need to get into biblical community with Grandma who
let her children chew on cigarette butts. You need to talk to the parents in here who let their children
ride 12 hours on a family trip lying down in the back window of the car and now you strap them in like
they are being launched into space. Have you seen some of the things we put these kids in? I know I’m
going to get letters on that one. But that’s the power of biblical community. You need to understand
that there are couples in here that have been through it and they are sitting here today enjoying
marriage in the midst of the grind. I know some of you are thinking Yeah, because they don’t have any
kids anymore and they have a lot of money. No. They have worked through it.
Let’s get very practical here today and here is the main point of Fun Loving You. When you leave today,
the book is out there and you get one copy per family. Pick it up on the way out. There is a whole
chapter in here called The Fun Loving You List. That’s the one that I really want you to get practical with
and begin writing the fun loving you list because of this: every marriage is a duet in need of great backup
singers. So we are going to start with you writing the lyrics of your duet and then thinking about the
backup singers all around you.
I have two backup singers in my home: Carson and Corynn. I have my parents. I have grandparents. I
have biblical community here at Woodland Hills Family Church. I have a lot of backup singers.
Woodland Hills desires to be a backup singer to your duet. Marriage 911 is a backup singer to your duet.
Our Engaged Couples Road Map and what we put couples through for premarital training is backup
singing to your duet.
Where do we get this idea? It comes from Solomon's Song of Songs. It’s a duet between the shepherd
king and the Shulammite woman, the simple country gal. They come together and their lyrics are
throughout all eight chapters of the Song of Songs. And then these backup singers are called the
daughters of Jerusalem. They come in and we read this in Song of Songs 1:4. They say We rejoice and
delight in you; we will praise your love more than wine. We want to be that for you at Woodland Hills.
It’s why we do TwoIgnite Sunday. We want to praise your love more than wine. We want to rejoice and
delight in you as a couple.
Here is how we are going to do that this morning. I will share my list with you. The Fun Loving You list is
an adaptation because there is nothing new under the sun. Solomon taught that as well. But my
mentor in the marriage world and a man I love and I respect him deeply and I miss bumping into him in
Target now, but years ago, Gary Smalley came up with this thing called the Honor List. I didn’t do it for
years. I thought it was just something to do and I’ve always kind of rebelled against any system or
conference or book that wants to turn men into women. How many are with me on that one? I don’t
want to become a woman; I want to be a man. So when I would be challenged to write poetry to my
wife, I was not going to that conference. But I could get into a Fun Loving you list.
Here is what Gary Smalley did years ago. He wrote down a list of all the reason why Norma Smalley is
valuable. I’ve seen the list. He hasn’t put it in a book. Gary and Norma just celebrated 49 years of
marriage and next year is 50. I said “I want to be a part of your 50th anniversary,”
But nobody has seen this list. It’s four pages long of all the reasons why he loves Norma Smalley. I had
the opportunity to read the list. I felt like I was reading a diary. I don’t know if you’ve ever gotten emails
from Gary Smalley or read first draft books, but they are what I would call random thoughts. I’m reading
the thoughts out of the mind of Gary Smalley about Norma. When I start to read them out loud in front
of him, he starts crying. I’ll admit it’s not too hard to make him cry. He has cried at every Disney movie
ever put out. I typically don’t cry at cartoons, but he does. If I read his lyrics back to him, I see him get
choked up. That’s what I love about being a backup singer.
I go “Gary, this is powerful stuff. Why aren’t more of us doing this?”
He said, “Ted, I go grab that list every time I’m frustrated in my marriage. That’s why I keep it in my back
pocket.”
You see? He’s a marriage expert and he has the grind just like you do. He is in the Jim Sedlacek part of
the grind as well. He says he pulls the lists out and reads it and it only takes him a minute or two to start
tearing up and it completely and totally changes his attitude about that very moment.
The point of the list is not to pull it out when you’re frustrated or in a fight or in a pretty heated debate
and look at the list and scoff at what it says, going “That’s a bunch of nonsense. I don’t know who came
up with this? That page ain’t even true anymore. I don’t believe that anymore.” No. That’s not the
point.
Some of you think it would be hard to write this list because you’re not at a good place. Honestly, if I
handed this to a lot of you and asked you take out a ledger and start writing down all the reasons why
your spouse is valuable, I think for a lot of you it would take a while and after an hour or two I would
only see two or three on your list. But if I were to ask you to do the exact same thing about your kids, I
bet you would have no problem filling up page after page. What does that say about the priority of
marriage in our homes? That which we do very naturally with our children, we are going to develop this
skill now as a church with our spouses.
At family camp this summer, I had a lady come up to me in Maryland and tell me she couldn’t think of
one thing to put on the list. I had asked them to do an honor list for their parents and their in-laws. I
told her she could start with thanking them for giving birth to her.
So maybe here is what you husbands and wives can do first. Start with a list of why it is hard loving you.
I know that’s a hard list for me to do. This is the total package right here, people. How Amy can’t love
this, I have no idea. But honestly, think of all the things that you know frustrates your spouse. Just start
writing them down and then give them to your spouse and tell them to start building their lyrics off of it.
My list is called The Fun Loving You List because I tell Amy all the time that it is fun loving her. I want to
love her. I want to laugh with her. So I have taken all of the frustrating parts, the parts where we could
potentially turn our spouse into the grind, and turn them around… We call this treasure hunting. I’m
going to dig deep for gold and I’m going to say these are the reasons why I love Amy, these are the
reasons why it’s fun loving her.
Let me tell you something. If you want vow renewals, they are right here. If you want to go to Dogwood
Canyon or Big Cedar and have a ball renewing your vows, pull these out. Forget gifts and all that for
anniversaries. Pull out The Fun Loving You List. Read them out loud to your children. Do you know
what it tells your children? It tells them you chose their mom and here is why you continue to choose
her. It’s what the whole book of Song of Songs is about: exclusivity. “I choose your mom and here is
why I choose her.” My list now is upwards of over 30. I don’t have as many pages as Gary Smalley, but
every now and then we will be together and something will hit me and I’ll add it to the list.
So I want you to get the list started and here is the challenge. Just start with five things that frustrate
you about your spouse and then turn them into a reason why it’s fun loving them.
1. Amy, I love your all or nothing passion. You do nothing halfway. Everything is take the hill, knife in
the teeth passion.
She has more passion in her pinky than I have in my whole body. I come home from a bad day at work
and she’s like “Fine, let’s quit, move to Africa, and be missionaries fulltime.” I’m thinking maybe sleep a
little bit and get up in the morning and see how we feel. It was really one bad meeting; not that big of a
deal. But that’s her.
When we take family walks… She is one of the most driven exercise people I know. We saw this huge
snapping turtle on the road the other day and I wanted to stop and look at it, but she was like “Keep
moving!” That’s just her. Whether it’s cooking, exercise, shopping… Everything is “get it done.”
She doesn’t sit down until 9:00 at night and it is start to finish. I can turn it off at a moment’s notice.
Amy is so jealous of my ability to nap for 30 seconds. I can do it anywhere at any time. Like some of you
are doing right now. I’m about to call names, but I’m not going to.
2. I love your disdain for directions; you love letting me lead. You couldn’t care less where we are going
or how we are getting there.
Now let’s be practical with this. There are really only four roads in Branson, Missouri and they are color
coded. We’ve been here for 12 years. When Amy gets into the car, she doesn’t pay attention to where
we are going or how we get there because she is just engaged with her family and having a great time.
So imagine her calling me a few months ago and asking me how to get to Springfield. If you are new to
Branson, you have to understand the road you came into Branson on is the only road. There are not
multiple ways to get here. Every now and then I get a little smart alecky in our marriage and I say “It’s
the big road out of Branson.
3. I love your eye for design. You make our home and church a beautiful place to live, serve, and
worship.
4. I love your attention to detail.
My wife is a list maker and they line up on the breakfast bar in our house. I’m the type that I get ready
in the morning and while I’m getting ready, I plan the whole day. Well I walk out to the list and used to
get very frustrated, but not anymore. I see that she is trying to keep our family organized. She is so
organized there are times when we are leaving the house and she’ll say “Hey, we’re leaving, Ted, you
need to go potty.” Listen, I am 39 ½ years old. When I have to go potty, I go all by myself. Most of time,
you don’t even know about it.
5. I love your adventurous, culinary spirit.
She has turned me into a foodie. I grew up enjoying simple foods: meat, potatoes and one canned
vegetable. Then she started experimenting. At first I’m not really good with the spicy stuff. “Sure, I love
this curry; it will mess me up for three days, but let’s try it.” She has elevated the palate and it has
worked. I love trying new things.
6. I love your lack of a people pleasing gene. You do not strive to meet the non-stop and at times
excessive expectations that people place on you.
I actually envy this about her. She couldn’t care less what you think about her. I’ve asked her
“Shouldn’t we care just a little bit?” She says no. She’s the one who taught me how to cut people off in
traffic and just not make eye contact. How do you think I survive the car lines in Branson schools?
7. I love how you prioritize our marriage. You have eradicated the kid-centered home when you place
our marriage first.
8. I love how you love Carson even though you need to stop calling him Pooh Bear. You let him be all
boy.
He is in a Bear Grylls phase right now. Everything is survival. Everything is “Mom can we kill this snake,
bring it in, and eat it tonight for dinner?” This isn’t really my wife’s speed.
I said “At some point you can’t be spraying him down to keep the ticks and chiggers off. He is going to
have to experience that.”
But she is letting him be all boy. “Sure, you want to climb a 20 foot tree and jump out and see if you can
catch the other one? Go for it.”
I got Carson a pocket knife. I was proud, but maybe I need to think through the safety of the pocket
knife. We were driving down road the other day and I looked in backseat and he’s sitting there with a
stick he got out of the woods and he’s whittling as we are driving down the road. Amy looks at me and
goes “Maybe we shouldn’t allow him to whittle while we’re driving?”
9. I love how you love Corynn. You let our daughter be her own person and personality in all of her
pursuits. She is picking her own clothes now and that’s been a struggle and I know.
10. I love your “roll out the red carpet” hospitality. No one throws a dinner party like Amy Cunningham.
11. I love your confidence in my expertise on everything. You ask me questions believing I know the
answers to everything from astrophysics to nuclear proliferation.
She will ask me if I want to watch a movie. Now for men, watching a movie means putting the movie in
and watching the movie. For Amy and most women, it means you put the movie in, read a magazine,
and surf Pinterest.
Have you ever watched a movie where they have to give you some historical background before the first
scene of the movie? How many of you read that? I read that so that everybody in the room knows
where we are at. I’m not going to be the only one following along with this movie. And then a scene
happens and she’s looking at Pinterest and flashes on the scene “Six Years Later.” I can’t enjoy the
movie if I know she’s not participating with it so I’m trying to get her attention to see the “Six Years
Later.”
She now, on purpose, doesn’t look. She knows it wears me out. She looks out of the corner of her eye
and waits for it to go away and then she goes, “I didn’t see it.”
“Well then you are going to be totally lost.”
Then something will happen while we are watching the movie and she’ll say “What just happened?”
I’ll say, “There was an explosion on the space station. A piece of metal broke off and hit the space
station and now here we are, stuck.”
“Well what are they going to do?”
I DON’T KNOW! But I bet if we watch the movie, we’re going to know how to fix a space shuttle for the
next time we need that information.
How many of you, when you drive down the road, will your wife ask you to explain what’s going on at
that construction site over there? We were driving through Florida this weekend and she asked me
what was going on at a construction site.
I was like “Well we’re putting up about 30 units. We were just going to do four stories and I told them
to take it five.” I just go with it. I’m a preacher; I can make stuff up, right? I know how to do this; it’s a
skill.
12. I love your sharing qualities. I love it when you say “I don’t want anything to eat; I’ll just take a bite
of yours.”
I love it when women say… This is probably the greatest lie I’ve ever heard come out of woman’s
mouth. You ask her where she wants to eat tonight and she says I don’t care. That’s a satanic lie.
Ladies, I don’t know why you think it’s wrong to care. You don’t want any restaurant we suggest.
13. I love how you protect me around hot things.
If I get near a curling iron that’s plugged in, she puts up her hands and starts yelling for me to get back.
When is the last time I walked up to a curling iron and grabbed the hot end? Or if I get close to a pot of
boiling water... When is the last time I went up to a pot of boiling water and stuck my hand in it? But
she is protecting me. You see that? I turned it around.
14. I love your spontaneity. With two to three days’ notice, you can cut lose and go with the flow.
This is the last one and then I will move on to my list. I want you to hear all the reasons why it’s so easy
to love me.
15. I love your temperature sensitivity. I love when she asks me if I’ve touched the thermostat. It’s
always the same answer I’ve given her for 17 years. I haven’t touched the thermostat.
“What’s it set on?”
“I don’t know. I haven’t looked at the thermostat in the last ten years. It’s your thermostat. You do
whatever you see fit to do with the thermostat.”
Okay, this is Amy’s list on why it is fun loving Ted. By the way, we are ending this service with country
music. Oh yes we are! So you will stay and you will enjoy it. Amy allows one country son a quarter at
Woodland Hills so we are going big time today.
Let me do just a few of Amy’s list. Hopefully you will see to just start enjoying marriage. We have plenty
of conflict opportunities in our home, but I’m just done. It’s too exhausting. We are going to have fun
with it so we run with it.
1. I love your implied questions that you deliver with strength like “I really look good in this outfit don’t
I?”
Now in the first chapter of the book, I talk about what I do every morning. I walk out and I model my
wardrobe for Amy. I can’t demonstrate that for you because it is so inappropriate, but it gets her
laughing every single time. I’m just going to briefly do it. I basically go over to whatever counter she’s
working at and I lean down on my elbow, look over my shoulder and go “You want to tap it?” And you
know what? She does. Let’s move on.
2. I love how you are always concerned about my comfort when it comes to temperature, always
offering your coat and even your socks when necessary.
3. I love how the child comes out in you when you get to build a fire and then the feeling of
accomplishment that is displayed in your body language and then on your face once the fire has taken
off and the deep friendships that you have developed with our local fire fighters.
4. I love your fiscal responsibility and the fact that you always know how much money I have spent at
Target before I ever get home. And when you greet me at the door to help me with my bags and quote
how much I spent to the penny, you do it with a smile on your face that genuinely says I hope you had a
good time.
5. I love your skillful exaggeration.
I have no idea what she is talking about there.
6. I love how easy you are to please when it comes to meals. Whether we eat cereal or fillet mignon,
you say that was the perfect dinner.
7. I love how you make me feel like the most important person in the room to you. You include me and
our marriage in almost every situation.
8. I love how you lead our family. You seize ever teachable moment you can to be intentional about
teaching us something about God’s word.
9. I love how you see potential in me that I do not see in myself. You always have a way of encouraging
me. You have a way of making me dream. Without you, I would not take time to dream whether it is a
trip we may take some day or a project we would like to complete (or a project we hire completed).
Because of you, I always have something to look forward to.
10. I love how you are always preaching to yourself in the mirror and in the car. People think you have a
mental disorder, but I’m okay with that; you’re sharpening yourself.
11. I love how you put up with our dog Sparkle coming with us in the car even though it is a major
inconvenience at times.
12. I love how you are trying to enjoy the holidays as much me.
These are our lyrics. These are the lyrics I want to bring to our children. These are the lyrics that I want
them to be able to be the backup singers to.
I just want to encourage you. We have spent the last year on our lyrics in writing them and having fun
with them. I just want to challenge you with five. Write them down and then don’t just make it
between you and your husband or you and your wife. Bring them out at the dinner table, bring them
out at the holidays and share. When you do that, you become a backup singer to the couples around
you. Now you are encouraging them.
Our heart at Woodland Hills is that you would leave here as an advocate for the singles and the
marriages around you and that you wouldn’t just give them the phone number to the church and tell
them to call someone there, but that you would feel equipped to help couples in their marriage.