Good morning everyone and welcome back to the Messy Masterpiece Podcast for Chad and Tori.

It's just me today just in the spirit of being hot, which is honest, open and transparent.

I encouraged a Tori to sit this devotional out and the reason is just, you know, hope

you guys are okay with me mentioning this. I know this is you guys are just here for the devotional,

but every month when she starts her period, it's a pretty hard day for us, specifically her,

you know, because it's her body. And so, you know, in our journey into getting pregnant,

this is definitely one of those days where, you know, just being sensitive to her emotions and

everything is something we really want to do. And so it's just me today. But this is one of the

coolest things. So I open up a devotional that we have at the new house right now. And it's the

mean of marriage daily devotional. And I opened up to November 17th. And it's called the

ultimate family. And I was like, Oh gosh, well, this could be perfect timing. So I'm just going

to go and jump in. And it says this, in non-Western cultures, there continues to be a strong social

pressure to build one's hope on family and errors. While Western culture gives us Disney style

narratives that begin telling life stories only when two parties are about to find true love.

And then once they do, the story fades out. The message then that we're left with is that what

matters in life is finding romance and marriage. Everything else is prologue and afterward.

So both traditional and Western cultures can make singleness seem like a grim and sub-human

condition. The ultimate family. And Mark chapter 3 verses 33 through 34, Jesus said his true

family was not his biological relatives, but whoever does God's will. This radical principle

means that being married and having children wonderful divine gifts are not things that you need

to know love and live a fulfilled life. The only spouse we must have is Jesus. And the only family

we must be in is the community of believers. The institutional church has to find ways to live out

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