Greg and Cathe Laurie Talk About Celebrating 47 Years of Marriage

Hey everybody, Greg Laurie here. You're listening to the Greg Laurie Podcast and my objective is to deliver, hopefully, compelling practical insights in faith, culture, and current events from a biblical perspective. To find out more about our ministry, just go to our website, harvest.org. So thanks for joining me for this podcast. I'm here with my beautiful wife, Kathy. And guess what? We just had a milestone.

We celebrated 47 years of marriage. Do you remember when we first met? I do. I do. Because I've forgotten everything.

I'm going to see now. I remember. So where was it?

Tell them. It was at a Bible study in Long Beach. We were both born in Long Beach. I traveled all over the world. You traveled all over the country. And then we met at a Bible study in Long Beach.

We did. And you were actually teaching that Bible study. I was. And do you remember, I was doing something you thought was very weird while I was speaking. Well, you have to show us what you were doing. I was doing this. That was it. His leg never stopped bouncing the whole time.

Nervous energy. So I was probably around 19 or 20 maybe. No, no. You weren't 20 because we're three years different. And I think you were 18, just 18, just graduated. I had hair. I had a beard.

Yes. You were a very cool hippie, I thought. Thank you.

And very artistic. So fast forward 47 years of marriage. So someone's watching right now and maybe they're getting married or they are married and it's not going so well. What words of advice would you, Kathy, Lori, give to them?

Oh, goodness. I would say don't put too much emphasis on your emotions and your feelings. Because our feelings will go up and down on any given day, depending on the circumstances, the weather, what's happening inside of us physically, especially those of you who are women out there. Emotions are very fickle. And remember what it is that you vowed.

And remember that if you put Christ at the center of your relationship, you live by those vows on days when you feel like it and days when you don't. And having lived through 47 years of marriage, I will say they're upset, they're up days and they're down days. They're hard days and they're easy days. Is this an up day or a down day right now? I'd say we're trending up. We're trending up. Which means we were down earlier. No, no. I think we all, we pretty much have a good- Even keel.

Even medium. But I can remember back to our early days and our first- We argued a lot. We did. We argued before we got married and we knew that about each other. We broke up three times.

It was an annual event. And they were like mega breakups. Like, I never want to see you again. But then we kept getting back together. But we did have our disagreements when we were newlyweds.

Very much so. And so I think we knew how to resolve an argument. Knew that we were two different people, very different people, very different personalities. Opposites attracting.

Quite a bit. Opposite in our upbringing, in our personality trait. Very true. And opposites do attract. But at the same time, opposites do oftentimes collide. And so you need to be able to resolve your differences in a good way. Not get all angry and say, I never want to speak to you again. You could say that before you're married.

After you're married, you need to get over that and just work through these things. Cliff Barrows once said to me, I think it's eight words. He said there are eight words that every married couple needs to learn to say. I'm sorry. I was wrong. Will you forgive me?

Let's see how many words that is. I'm sorry. I am sorry. That's three. Yes.

I was wrong. That's six. Will you forgive me? That's four. So that makes ten words. Ten words. And then he said you can add three more words that will make it much better.

I love you. So, you know, when you're having that disagreement, how about just saying, hey, I'm sorry. I was wrong. You know, because sometimes when we apologize, when we're having a conflict, people will use verbiage that's not a real apology. Hey, I'm sorry if you think I was saying thus and so when I wasn't really saying it at all. That's not an apology.

You have to just own it. And so learn how to disagree agreeably. You know, if I have a couple come in and they want to get married, I'll ask them, have you guys had a disagreement yet?

And they say, no, they're out of the office. I'll say, go have a disagreement. Go have a fight. Not fisticuffs, verbal disagreement.

And learn how to resolve it because that's going to happen in a marriage, right? That's right. That's right. Two sinners and a wonderful God.

That's it. Somewhere in all of that, there is a process of sanctification that happens. It doesn't, you know, you're not there and you get married and it's perfect ever after.

It's challenging. It can be happily even after, but not happily ever after. If you apply God's word and his principles, read your own mail is what I like to say. You know, in other words, we'll quote verses to the spouse. You know, the Bible says you should submit to me as son of the Lord. And the spouse might say, well, the Bible says you should love me as Christ loves the church.

It's like, read your own mail. Don't quote the Bible to her on what she's supposed to do. Do what you're supposed to do. Well, and both of us have the same role in a sense. And that is to take upon the nature of Jesus himself, which the Holy Spirit does, and serve one another in love. Litting one to another, the Bible says. Wife submits as Christ himself submitted to the Father. And the husband loves laying his life down as Christ loved us and laid his life down. So in a sense, we're both emulating the example of Christ in our role.

Hey everybody, Greg Laurie here. Thanks for listening to our podcast. And to learn more about Harvest Ministries, please subscribe and consider supporting this show. Just go to harvest.org. And by the way, if you want to find out how to come into a personal relationship with God, go to knowgod.org. That's K-N-O-W-G-O-D dot org.