Taught by Pastor Brandon Sereg, Lead Pastor of Vibrant Church in Davie, FL.
Pursuing godly relationships starts with one question: are you face to face, or just side by side?
The number one prayer request Vibrant Church receives on connection cards has nothing to do with money, health or work. It is relationships. So every February we spend a month on them — and this message, from the Song of Solomon, is about the one relationship most of us are quietly getting wrong.
Watch This Message
Pursuing godly relationships: three ways a marriage can sit
The picture in Song of Solomon is a king and a country girl with a farmer’s tan — not a political alliance, not a transaction, but two people who actually chose each other. Held up against that, most marriages end up sitting in one of three postures.
Face to face is the one we all say we want and rarely protect. Man versus wife is what happens when the same two people who once fought for each other start fighting each other instead — same energy, aimed the wrong way. And side by side is the quiet one, the one nobody notices going wrong: two competent adults running a household like co-workers. Bills, chores, an Uber service for the children, a shared calendar and almost no shared life. You are not in conflict. You are just not really there.
Side by side is the most common of the three, and the most dangerous, because nothing about it feels like a crisis.
Your kids are taking notes
Here is the part of the message that tends to land hardest. The way a husband treats his wife sets the standard his sons will use, and the standard his daughters will accept.
If you run her down, ignore her, or lose your temper with her, your son just learned that this is what a man does — and your daughter just learned that this is what a woman puts up with. Nobody sits the children down and teaches them that. They simply watch, and they draw conclusions.
Where this lands
The ask at the end of this message is not a technique. It is attention: to turn back toward the person you married, on an ordinary week, before anything has gone visibly wrong. Most marriages do not fail in a single moment. They drift, side by side, until the distance is too big to cross casually.
This message is part of the Relationslips series. The following week’s message deals with conflict — how two people who love each other are supposed to fight.
Keep going
If this is where you are, a few next steps that actually help: our marriage help page, praying together using the simple prayer guide or one of the verses for a hard week, and getting into a Connect Group where you are not the only couple working on this.
New to Vibrant Church? We meet Sundays at 10:00 and 11:30 AM at Indian Ridge Middle School in Davie. Plan your visit.
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