Week 8 Understanding Your Spouse

Merge Agenda Week 8 – Understanding Your Spouse Tonight’s schedule:  5:30-6:25 Leader’s Dinner/Meeting/Prayer Time  6:25-6:32 Break, clean up tables, and greet couples  6:32-6:35 Opening Announcements - Lance  6:35-6:50 Discussion Time #1/SHARE PRAYER REQUESTS, debrief week 7  6:50-7:35 Lance & Mandy – Teaching Time #1, Q&A  7:35-8:05 Discussion Time #2  8:05-8:30 Lance – Class Wrap-up & Final Challenge

Leader Meeting Notes:

 Housekeeping

o Evaluation – how can we better equip/serve/lead you?

o Blended Family Event – September 23, 2015

 Pray for re|engage – Dallas and Ft Worth

 Main goals for tonight:

o Couples will understand that we are each made differently and uniquely by God. . These differences can either cause tension and friction in our relationships – couples will understand these differences can be used to bring us closer together, o Couples will understand that we need to become a student of our spouse so that we can best serve them in their differences o Couples will understand the core difference between men and women is his need for respect and her need for love o Couples will learn how to best understand, embrace, and celebrate their differences o Couples will be familiar with multiple resources to better understand their significant other (i.e. Love Languages, For Men Only/For Women Only) o Couples will leave Merge with a clear understanding of potential next steps for them as a couple now that Merge is finished.

 Please clean up your table – both after leader dinner and at the end of class.

 Next week: o Enjoy your Wednesday nights away from Merge! o Pray for Merge: . Fall 2015 class starting September 30th . Dallas Merge Weekend – November 6th-7th

Key Scriptures: Psalm 139.13-16 For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother's womb. I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; my soul knows it very well. My frame was not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth. Your eyes saw my unformed substance; in your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there was none of them. Genesis 1.27-28 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”

Ecclesiastes 4.9-12 Two are better than one, because they have a good reward for their toil. For if they fall, one will lift up his fellow. But woe to him who is alone when he falls and has not another to lift him up! Again, if two lie together, they keep warm, but how can one keep warm alone? And though a man might prevail against one who is alone, two will withstand him—a threefold cord is not quickly broken.

Ephesians 5.33 However, let each one of you love his wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband.

Philippians 2.3-4 Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others.

1 Peter 3.1-7 Likewise, wives, be subject to your own husbands, so that even if some do not obey the word, they may be won without a word by the conduct of their wives, when they see your respectful and pure conduct. Do not let your adorning be external—the braiding of hair and the putting on of gold jewelry, or the clothing you wear—but let your adorning be the hidden person of the heart with the imperishable beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which in God's sight is very precious. For this is how the holy women who hoped in God used to adorn themselves, by submitting to their own husbands, as Sarah obeyed Abraham, calling him lord. And you are her children, if you do good and do not fear anything that is frightening. Likewise, husbands, live with your wives in an understanding way, showing honor to the woman as the weaker vessel, since they are heirs with you of the grace of life, so that your prayers may not be hindered.

Table Time #1 Questions:  Ask them if they have any questions from the teaching from last week  Women – what did you learn from the section, ‘What men wish their wives knew about sex’?  Men – what did you learn from the section, ‘What women wish their husbands knew about sex’?

In Class Questions:  In what ways are you and your significant other most similar? Most different?

 How are your differences a source of fun and joy? How are your differences a frustration?

 What are some intentional practices you utilize to “study” each other?

 How can you discover, embrace, and celebrate your differences?

 Which love language do you think you have? How about your significant other?

 Over the past seven weeks, where and how have you gained a better understanding about your significant other?