Creflo Dollar — The Truth That Sets Free
You know, the thing we have to talk about today, you would ask yourself, is it something that can be applied to each individual, whether you are a single person, a kid, a teenager, a married person? And yet, we've understood that when you believe the wrong way, you're gonna live the wrong way.
Most of all of the things that we go through, whether it's fear, whether it's addictive, it's all based in wrong belief. We have singles who are not interested in being married, married people who are not interested in... Somebody said, "Not me." Speak for yourself, don't get me lined up in here.
Let me preach, now. Single people who are... some that are not interested in being married because they don't wanna marry into slavery. You have married people who don't wanna stay married because they are tired of being dominated. You have a millennial generation where marriage is so down that they're not interested in it at all because they've had the opportunity to experience the frustration and the pain of a marriage, and they ask why would anybody wanna get married?
And so, the Bible says it's an awesome gift, and yet, it just doesn't seem like it, it doesn't appear like it. Because who wants to be married and get beat up? Who wants to get married and be cheated on? Who wants to get married and have to suffer the frustration of betrayal and lack of trust?
And yet, Taffi and I believe we have the answer today, because like everything else that is under the law, it requires freedom. And that's what Jesus meant in John chapter 8, verse 31, when he was speaking to the Jews of those days, and he said I'm gonna give you something that's gonna make you free, and he called that something truth.
And then, Jesus said, in John chapter 1, verse 17, he said, "Grace and truth has come by Jesus Christ," and what I want you to know, that grace is the truth that'll make you free. If you wanna be free from whatever you're going through, grace is the truth that makes you free.
So, if we're gonna find liberty and freedom where marriage is concerned, we're gonna have to allow grace to be that truth. And wherever grace is not, you're not gonna discover the freedom and the liberty that comes in marriage, because it was never supposed to be where somebody dominates the other person.
It's never supposed to be where somebody comes in and rules over somebody else, and as we'll show you in a moment, the only right you have to dominate anything was given by God, and God says you can dominate the earth and you can dominate animals, but we were never supposed to dominate one another, okay? And so, for some strange reason, there's this religious understanding that when you get married, the man is the one that dominates and the woman is supposed to follow, and that's not the truth.
And many people say their Bible doesn't say that, and I challenge you today that you haven't read your Bible, because we're gonna go through it and show you that marriage is supposed to be a partnership. There's supposed to be equality in marriage, not domination in marriage, and as long as you live under the law of domination, the law does that. As long as you live under the law of domination thinking that one is superior over the other, you will never discover the vision that God had for marriage in partnership.
Where Taffi is strong, I am weak. Where there's a weakness in my life, I can exchange my weakness for her strength. So, marriage now eliminates weaknesses, but can only do that within partnership. So, I want you to prepare yourselves by forgetting about everything you've ever heard about marriage that you thought was right.
I want you to forget about the list, I want you to forget about, you know, the five things the husband's supposed to do and the five things the wife's supposed to do. I want you to let all of that go, flush it down the toilet, it was nice, but it just didn't work because even after the list, thousands have applied for divorce because they couldn't figure out how it was supposed to work.
It's kinda like a brand-new car and you don't read the manual, and you just start pushing buttons, and all of a sudden it doesn't work. We're gonna take you on a little short journey to show you that this is a gift, that it is awesome, and I don't know anybody who would deny the right to have a partner that was created in God's image to help you eliminate all of your weaknesses, where there is nothing left in that relationship but strengths.