<\/p>\n
Megachurch Pastor Josh Howerton did something a little unorthodox to achieve an orthodox outcome.<\/p>\n
Howerton, who leads Lakepointe Church in Dallas, preached a sermon last month, \u201c3 Things That Will Kill Your Marriage,\u201d and, at the end of the message, he invited cohabiting, unmarried couples to get married.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you\u2019re living with somebody that\u2019s not your spouse, you\u2019re sleeping with somebody that\u2019s not your spouse, or you\u2019ve actually already started a family and had kids with somebody that\u2019s not your spouse, and you right now are coming under the loving conviction of the Holy Spirit that you need to honor God, bend your knee to Jesus,\u201d he said from the pulpit in late February.<\/p>\n
Howerton added, \u201cPut a ring on it and enter into a covenant with a person that you\u2019re already acting like you\u2019re in a covenant with.\u201d<\/p>\n
The pastor revealed this past week that, after the sermon, which he said he spent a great deal of time preparing, 52 couples came forward and all were married Friday in a joint ceremony and celebration.<\/p>\n
\u201cThese 52 couples heard the marriage sermon two weeks ago [and] came under conviction,\u201d he wrote on social media. \u201cThey wanted to honor God and get married, met with pastors for council, and tonight they got married.\u201d<\/p>\n
Howerton honored the newly wedded couples from the pulpit this past Sunday, encouraging churchgoers to show up for the service to give them a standing ovation for their decision to repent and come into right standing with God.<\/p>\n
Estimates\u00a0released in December by the U.S. Census Bureau\u00a0found fewer than half (47%) of American households were married couples, marking a significant shift from 50 years earlier, when close to two-thirds (66%) were. The median age of first marriages for men now sits at nearly 31 years old and 28 years old for women \u2014 both increased from 24 and 21, respectively, in 1975.<\/p>\n
In the comments section of Howerton\u2019s post, the pastor noted more than 1,000 people showed up to service Sunday \u201cto cheer them on.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe never want to look down on somebody unless we\u2019re giving them a hand up,\u201d he\u00a0said Sunday. \u201cWe called people who realized they were living outside of God\u2019s design and they were like, \u2018Man, we want to repent and honor God with our lives to step forward and put a ring on and get married and honor God.\u201d<\/p>\n
James Moore was one of the people who got married at Lakepointe Church after Howerton\u2019s sermon.<\/p>\n
He commented on the pastor\u2019s post, \u201cMy fianc\u00e9e and I ended up getting married after listening. We had kept putting it off and making excuses, but this message really lit a fire under us to finally get it done. We\u2019re very thankful for the message.\u201d<\/p>\n
Pray for the new marriages formed in response to the Holy Spirit\u2019s conviction.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Megachurch Pastor Josh Howerton did something a little unorthodox to achieve an orthodox outcome. Howerton, who leads Lakepointe Church in Dallas, preached a sermon last month, \u201c3 Things That Will Kill Your Marriage,\u201d and, at the end of the message, he invited cohabiting, unmarried couples to get married. \u201cIf you\u2019re living with somebody that\u2019s not<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":21882,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[7237,273,7234,294,504,7236,7235,983,1534,725],"class_list":["post-21881","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-jesus","tag-ceremony","tag-challenges","tag-cohabiting","tag-couples","tag-dozens","tag-joint","tag-marry","tag-pastor","tag-show","tag-texas"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21881","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=21881"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21881\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/21882"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=21881"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=21881"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=21881"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}