Marriage Saves Lives
Mark: It’s a really big week in the life of our family. We’re gonna talk today about the glories of marriage and the gospel.
John: I’m so thankful that you could join Mark and I today as we discuss the great work of the gospel. Mark, it’s good to see you as well, and I understand you have a really big week coming up,
Mark: man. We have a big week. A really big week. okay. So I’m, I’m gonna be getting on a plane, here and day after tomorrow, and we’ll be flying to England where my daughter, who is my second born Uhhuh, will be getting married in England, actually in Wales this week.
Okay. So actually she’ll be getting married next week, but, but we’ll be there with her to celebrate and prepare and do the parties and all the things that we’re supposed to be doing between now and then. It’s an exciting time.
John: Marrying off your daughters is pretty, pretty special. Very special.
It’s
Mark: special. you’ve got two sons that you married before you married your first daughter.
John: Yep. Yep. It’s very special. You’re gonna love it. You’re gonna walk her down that aisle and you’re gonna have your family and friends there and it’s gonna be, it’s gonna be one of those moments that you won’t forget.
Mark: Yeah. Yeah. we married our son off to a wonderful young lady, three and a half years ago and, but it does feel different. Marrying off a daughter, there’s something emotional about it, something special about it, transferring her care over to a guy outside the family. That’s, it does feel different.
John: Yeah. that’s because it is different. Yeah, it is.
Mark: But we’re excited. We are really excited. This is a great guy. our daughter Scotty, went to England for graduate school and while she was there, she met Owen. Ransom. And so these are a couple of pictures from when they were with us last, just here, over the last oc Christmas holiday.
They both came and spent Christmas over here, and then they went back to England and spent Christmas with his parents. yeah, he’s a nice, wonderful young man. he loves the Lord. They seem like a great match. so we’re, we are really excited. It’s, a thrill.
John: marriage, a Christian marriage is very special.
I, I can testify to how much Christ has made a difference in my own marriage, but I think that, it’s also a blessing that God has given to humanity. The gift of marriage, the Institute of Marriage to all men. Yeah. And women.
Mark: that’s right. That’s right. Yeah. yeah. I, my wife and I are working on year number 28.
How long have you guys been married?
John: We’re working on number 48 coming up. Wow. okay. Yeah, we’ve, made it so far, but my, my, wife’s parents were married for 73 years, so that was. You know
Mark: that
John: 48 is just, a little long, a little further along path than you. Yeah.
Mark: not that far.
Not that far. No. No. That’s a long marriage. That’s a,
John: yeah. 70. Yeah, 73 years is great. but we’re off to a good start and I think that in my case I can say that, that. I’m pretty confident I probably would not have been able to persevere and have a good marriage without the grace of God at work in me and my wife, and teaching us how to have a good relationship.
didn’t have a lot of good models necessarily growing up, but, the Lord and his marriage to us became a good model for us.
Mark: Wow. Marriage has been so good for me. I not only. Did it bring a wonderful woman into my life? and, we, have been blessed with a, good marriage, but it’s, changed me so much and I, know that I tend to be, maybe not the most motivated person in the world and I, just, I hate to think what.
Kind of life I would live if I hadn’t married Dana. She makes me want to be a better man. That’s an easier way of saying it. She makes me wanna be a better man. it’s been good for us. We married young. You did too?
John: Yeah. I got married at 22. You know that is not extraordinary, 50 years ago, but it’s becoming more extraordinary today.
And when my son got married, he was wondering whether he could get married when he was 22. And I just quoted to him what Martin Luther said to the people of his day. The men of his age, stop thinking about it and get to it right merrily. Is what Martin Luther, said and is concerned is that men are afraid, they’re afraid to make that commitment, and yet women, are usually in the position of waiting to be asked.
and today especially, I think men need to be enc strongly encouraged to be bold, to be the initiators. To recognize that God has designed us to be a sexually active people, and that there’s a moral framework for marriage, even though it’s given to all men and women, of every religion or no religion, of every culture.
still it thrives when it is done according to God’s word, which is, basically to wait until marriage and to be faithful in marriage. And all of that plays into getting married. Early rather than, that’s right. Later and
Mark: later. So we were married at 23. My, my son was, my son was 24 when he got married.
No, he was 23 when he got married. And Scotty now is, she’s 23, but she’ll be 24 a couple of days before the wedding. So she’s, she will have turned 24 before she, she jumps the broom.
John: let me just, affirm for everybody who is watching today, especially if you are in your late teens and early twenties.
This is a place for you to really hone in and listen to God’s word and not the culture at large. Okay? I don’t think there’s anything that is more aligned toward our personal destruction than a worldly view. Of human sexuality, and there’s nothing more designed for our own human happiness more than God’s moral law or vision for human sexuality and marriage.
Let me, let me share with you one of my favorite quotes. This is from s Lewis In his book on mere Christianity, he, just lays it out there. He says, there is no getting away from it. The old Christian rule is either marriage with complete faithfulness to your partner or else total abstinence. Now, this is so difficult and so contrary to our instincts.
That obviously either Christianity is wrong or our sexual instinct as it now is, has gone wrong, one or the other. Of course, being a Christian, I think it’s the instinct which has gone wrong and then it goes on to make the case for a Christian view of sexual, morality or chastity and, I, was, I, was saved out of the culture of this world right before I was ready to make a mess of things.
And it was God’s plan of waiting until marriage and being faithful in marriage. That really, saved me from a lot of tears and I, just can’t help but recommend it to young people today.
Mark: Yeah. Yeah. We encouraged our children. there’s no. There’s no reason to beat around the bush and, and wait until you’re 30 something years old.
That and so many people these days. Yeah. They just, they’ve already made up their minds that they will not consider marriage until they’re 30 or 35. I think just yesterday someone said. I met. Oh yeah. It was a friend of the family, young lady who said, I, I’ve met the guy of my dreams. She’s about 23 or 24 now.
She says, we’re going to, we’re, enjoying each other. She’s not from a believing background. We’re enjoying together. Yeah. We may move in together. We’ve already decided that we’re gonna get married, but we’re not gonna do it until we’re like 35 or 38. We don’t wanna get married. Oh my goodness. 35 or 38.
That was just yesterday. She was saying, yeah. you, the view of marriage is, it’s, not necessary. It’s, it’s, yeah. It’s binding in this, is a big
John: part of God’s will for our life is to let God be the Lord of our. Relationships and marriage and I just get that couple will never get married.
That’d be my prediction. They’re not gonna get married. They won’t make it. That’s probably true. Okay. Yeah. And, it’s just, it’s a tragedy what’s happening today between the availability of pornography and just the. Cultural confusion over male and female and the roles that we play. I just, can’t help but say, go back to God’s word, become a child, follow God’s laws, and it’s going to lead to our own happiness, as well as his own glory.
And I know one other thing, it leads to the saving of babies as well. you, don’t have abortion where you have marriage at least, to the same degree.
Mark: yeah, Abortion and marriage have a strong, tie to, I think the better way of saying it is singleness and abortion have an incredibly strong tie, especially here in America, and I guess that’s the norm around the world.
John: That’s right. there are some exceptions to that rule, but here’s the stunning, statistic and, I can verify in my own experience, having worked in a pregnancy help center for, the last 30 years I’ve been working with pregnancy help centers, the vast majority of women who come into a pregnancy center who are, in a, in a.
Pregnancy related crisis, I would say the majority of them are unmarried, and that sense of insecurity and instability raises the questions of support and, it takes two to raise a child and the finances and everything. That anxiety is the number one reason that women end up turning to abortion. It’s because of the lack of marriage and the CD, c statistic is that, 12.7% of, all abortion happens among married women, meaning 87% of abortion in the United States happens among unmarried people, so wow. I always say to people, especially young men, again, I always say, if you wanna do something pro-life, the first thing that you can do is follow God’s will concerning waiting until marriage, because then you’re never going to be putting a woman in that vulnerable spot of feeling like she can’t do it and she’s not supported in it.
doing things God’s way is saving
Mark: in that way. Yeah, I think that’s a, that’s said in that way, that, marriage. Saves lives.
John: marriage saves babies,
Mark: it saves babies. obviously it’s not, it’s not in every case, and there are exceptions to that. In fact, we at Passion Life have come across major exceptions to it in various parts of the world.
John: Yeah, I think obviously I think of China and obviously when you have a political structure going on in which you are by law required to abort your baby, yeah. you’re dealing with something that just breaks all of the. Common natural instincts of human life. Okay? So in China, a more, more conservative culture, waiting till marriage is probably more common than it was, than it’s here in the United States.
Up until, the, mid sixties when everything changed, but prior to the mid sixties, waiting till marriage, and getting married if someone got pregnant was pretty common. And then that all began to change in the sixties. But in China, for example, then you have a one child policy in which the government said no one can have more than one child.
If you were not married, you weren’t even allowed to have the one child, but when you, were married and you had the one child, then any pregnancies after that, there’s a lot of pressure and force to coerce people, to abort those babies. And so the majority of abortions in China, at least, I’m not sure exactly what the data pointed, but it would be, it’s certainly a lot more than 12%.
Mark: Yeah, at least 50%, especially under. Back under the one child policy before, we know that the one child policy being eradicated has really not changed the abortion statistics in China all that much. People still don’t favor having babies until they feel like they’re ready. And so that means, whether they’re married, unmarried.
Young, old, but until they’re married, those babies are, very vulnerable in China to abortion. And
John: both in, in, in, Boston where I was working directly with pregnancy help centers. And in places like China, one of the ways that we used to rescue, the baby is to help people get married. I remember.
we say all the time, if you were married, how would you feel about having a baby? And it just changes the dynamic in most cases. Yeah. And so it’s funny that I spent, being a pastor myself and, overseeing, a network of pregnancy centers, I spent a lot of my time working with the young men, the fathers of these babies, and really helping them to go ahead and make the commitment.
and we did weddings right in our. Pregnancy center? we did. You, yeah, we did. Because again, we recognized that marriage is God’s natural order for having children. And, for, mothers to feel supported in that adventure, even in China, we had to find ways to help young people get married in order to save the baby.
that’s, the solution in many of the cases.
Mark: That’s right. That’s right. That it always happens. And That, that one of the needs that people have is to come is to say, I wanna raise this baby in a stable environment. I want to have stability of income. I wanna have the stability of having two parents there.
if I were married Yep. I might be able to tackle this. Why don’t we? That’s right. Take a break, John. And when we come back, we’ll, scrub that down a little further and what it means for the, mission and the vision of passion life, marriage. Okay.
So we’re talking about the fact that marriage is one of the vehicles that actually results in saved lives, saved babies, and we have a story.
In fact, the very first baby that we saw God rescue in Cuba when we started working down there was the result of, of getting married in order to prevent the abortion. we started working down there in 2016 and some of the ladies in the church responded and they said, we’re gonna stand for life and we’re gonna talk about life and we’re gonna exalt and value life.
And next thing one of the worship leaders on the worship team, a man, a young man, good looking young man, I’ll never forget this guy. I remember his name. He was a very nice young man, maybe 16, 17 years old. He ends up getting one of the girls in the church pregnant. And, I know that, that’s such a shocker for so many people.
Oh, he was on the worship team and he, yes, these things happen even in the worship teams of churches and even on, there are things that shouldn’t happen. but they, the, couple was very, young and, the father of the girl was not a believer. And he was insisting on an abortion.
He said, yeah, we can’t, this is never gonna happen. But Alvaro, the young man who had, who was on the worship team, who was the father, came to her father and said, I’m responsible for this. I’m the one who’s messed up. I’m the one who’s done the wrong thing. Here I am in love with your daughter.
I want to have this baby. I don’t want to kill it. I don’t wanna murder it. I want to have this baby and I want to marry your daughter. And so the first thing that they did was they got this young couple married. there was a lot of restoration and things that had to happen in their young, Christian lives, but hey, these are things that the gospel covers and, reaches to.
So it was a, an example of. Marriage being used as the, thing that enabled them to keep the baby and justify keeping the baby. Great lessons there, great observations. And again, it’s proof that this young man. Would’ve been well served by having more self-control and self-discipline. Okay. And maybe the church could have been more active in teaching the way of the Lord, but the fact of the matter is for young men to control that appetite is pretty difficult and.
John: It used to be that culture had kind of ways to help men navigate all of that. But all those cultural morays are gone now. We live in the wild West when it comes to sexuality, and so we’re a lot more vulnerable to our own urges and appetites, and we have no, self-control, working. But it sounds to me like, again, the church worked it out pretty well.
Mark: Yeah, the church I think did work it out well. We’ve heard these horror stories. I remember being in Africa and a pastor stood up in front of the congregation to, to let everybody know how pro-life he was now that he had heard the four questions training from Passion Life. He said, in fact, we had a young lady.
Who was in our church and she got pregnant. And so we called her out and we dis we, we excommunicated her and we said, never are you welcome in the doors of this church again. And he thought that was a great way of displaying how firmly pro-life he is. Yeah. but that was a, another one of those mistakes you, of not dealing with the situation sensitively and appropriately.
John: Not only do we have to know God’s word to know his will, but we also need to know God’s word and how to react to people who are broken and fallen and who are who, make sinful decisions but regret it and want to repent. That’s exactly, all of this needs to come under biblical, guidance. and that was so that the church.
Yeah, that was exactly the case. The restored, this same man, this young man in Cuba, he was repentant. he acknowledged that he was out of line. He acknowledged that he was out of God’s will. he confessed it to the church, confessed it to the pastor, confessed it to the church and the church. Forgave this couple.
Mark: They got married in the church. They’re still serving in that church now. So in the end, it was a wonderful story of how this first baby as a result of Passion Life’s ministry in Cuba came to be. It came to be because a man stood up and did the right thing when it came to making a decision to get married where he had done the wrong thing initially.
John: Amen. That’s why we call it good news. The amazing thing about Cuba, mark, though, is that statistically it’s an anomaly from what we’re talking about here, about generally Absolutely. Speaking. That’s right. women don’t seek abortion when they’re married, or it’s 12%, versus 87% unmarried people in the US That’s, but what did we discover in Cuba that just shocked us so much?
Yeah. So we spent our own money to hire an independent outside. Organization to come in and do a, study with us on the effectiveness of our ministry in Cuba, do an independent observation of the results. And as they dug into some of the statistics, what they found in Cuba is that 61% of all the abortions in Cuba are actually ha occurring among married women.
Mark: Which again, this is a unbelievable anomaly. This is not the way things normally work. yeah, but. That was what we found to be the case in Cuba. It explains why Cuba was number one in the world in terms of the rate of abortion. That’s right. That statistic, that statistic shocked me Out of all the things that we learned in that independent study, we were looking for ways are we being effective and how can we be more effective?
John: That was the one data point that really shocked me because I know, generally speaking, all over the world. That marriage is a lifesaving, IM has a lifesaving impact on babies. But in Cuba, and I think it’s mainly because the absolute utter poverty Yeah. In Cuba, that the economic sense of hopelessness in Cuba is hard for us as Americas to get to, we deal with pe poor people here in the us Okay.
But poverty here in the US compared to poverty in Haiti or in Cuba, it’s just a whole nother thing. Okay. It’s a different animal. Yeah. And, if it’s true that, married women generally have fewer abortions because of stability and predictability and security in their lives. That it’s not necessarily the case among married women in Cuba.
Mark: They’re, they don’t necessarily have a sense of security and a positive outlook on their, the hope for their future and their ability to give a baby a good life. yeah, because men don’t have work plays, know it’s not a growing economy. There’s no gas, there’s no medicine, there’s no jobs, there’s no lec electricity or, it’s just an unbelievably.
John: Desperate place to try to just survive. Yeah. So that is the anomaly is in Cuba, which I think from a Christian missions perspective, from a pro-life perspective is why we put so much effort into Cuba. Exactly. and but the good news is it is an anomaly and that marriage is a vehicle, by which God.
Mark: It saves lives and saves babies by and large. In many cultures around the world, most cultures around the world, including here in the United States, I’m sure you’ve seen marriages, in your years of work in pregnancy, help centers that have, that have resulted in the security that brings about the life of a child.
John: Yeah, and I just think on a larger level, we live in a time where marriage needs to really be raised back up again at, a high value, especially among US Christians. I’m just burdened when I find. Confessing Christians living together, I just feel like they’re quenching the Holy Spirit in the life.
They’re just, they’re doing what is convenient. Maybe it saves money, but it’s such a moral compromise to their testimony as believers. And I just really, I just, I blame men mainly. I really just believe that men are called, to take the lead in, in both seeking a wife and pursuing and developing a good relationship and being the spiritual leader in their family.
These are, this is the will of God for us as young Christian men. yeah. Secondly, I think of just the call to be faithful and wait until marriage, build that self-control into your life so that you’re ready to make the most of it when you get married. Churches need to be willing to preach that.
Yeah. They need to be willing and we need to encourage people to get married young, Yeah. Again, don’t be afraid of marriage. It’s actually cheaper to live married than to be separate. Okay. Yeah. In my own, my case, my son called me up. He said, can I get married a year early? We’re not outta college.
I said, Hey, get married when you’re ready. Yes. It’s, it’s no sin to be poor, but That’s right. Premarital sex is a sin, and go for it. Yeah. Yep. Yeah. You, wrote a book, John, that was influential for my, my son as he was, dating and preparing himself for marriage. in fact, he was always recommending it to all of his friends who were all, in their early twenties and looking to have a wife, which is a good thing. And we in, we affirm that, but this little book, doing things Right in Matters of the Heart, has been extremely helpful, for a lot of the young people in my sphere of influence. When we have young people who are thinking about marriage, I point ’em toward this book, and this is something that actually people can get ahold of, either by getting the book online or by just downloading it for free at the Passion Life website.
Mark: Isn’t that correct? Yeah, that’s right. Doing things right in manner of the heart was my desire, just to help. Young men and women that I saw in, in the college age period, just, they just seemed so lost and they needed the assurance about a biblical view of, dating and marriage. And, I think that’s a great start for people.
John: We can get it downloaded for free. And see, how it makes a difference. But let’s close our time. I just wanna end with a prayer for you as you take off, and for Scotty and her marriage. Great. Father, I wanna thank you for how your grace has been at work in, in, in, Mark’s daughter, Scotty.
And I just pray that as they now lead these last few days before they get married, that you would just build into Scotty and her future husband. An anticipation of blessing, of joy, of your presence through all the ups and downs. help them to grow some good roots and to grow strong and be a testimony for life.
Amen. Amen.