Keep Your Love On | Danny Silk

If the two of you have the goal of connection, you can change your world.

But if you blame the other person for your goal of disconnection and distance, then you've set your marriage on a path to fail, and that is something you can do something about. Welcome to Building Relationships with Dr. Gary Chapman, author of the New York Times bestseller "The 5 Love Languages" . Today, author and speaker Danny Silk will encourage us to do the hard work of building and maintaining our relationships.

Wait a minute. I don't like those words hard work. Aren't relationships supposed to be easy? We're going to find out straight ahead. Welcome to the conversation, and what a great topic today. You can find out more at our website, buildingrelationships.us.

Our host, as always, is author and counselor, Dr. Gary Chapman. Gary, you've talked with couples through the years who thought their relationship ought to be easy. It ought to be smooth sailing, no conflict, right? Hey, Chris. I was one of those couples. You know, we were Christians. We were in love. It's going to be wonderful. Yeah, as you well know, Chris, we've talked about it earlier. We had a lot of struggles in those early years, which I was not anticipating.

And yes, you're right. In my counseling through the years, I've encountered a lot of young couples who thought it was going to be heavenly. They were so in love. Everything was going to be wonderful. And then they wonder, what happened? Why did he change?

Why did she change? So yeah, this is a key topic, and I'm excited about our time together today. Well, let's meet our guest. His name is Danny Silk. He's the president and co-founder of Loving on Purpose.

What a great title. A ministry of families and communities worldwide. He's the author of nine books, serves on the senior leadership team of both Bethel Church in Redding, California, and Jesus Culture in Sacramento. Danny and his wife, Sherry, got married in 1984. They were group home workers during the early years of their marriage, and they currently live in Shingle Springs, California.

They have three adult children, three grandchildren. Our featured resource is the book, Keep Your Love on Devotional for Couples. You can find out more at buildingrelationships.us. Well, Danny, welcome to Building Relationships. Well, thank you, Gary. I've been looking forward to this time. Very good. Now, for those who don't know you and your ministry, who is Danny Silk? Oh, Danny Silk.

What a complicated mess. Well, I very much am leading Loving on Purpose. I've been a pastor for 30-plus years. I've been married to Sherry for just celebrated 39 years last week, actually, father, grandfather. I have been just committed, much like yourself, to helping people be more successful in their relational connections for as long as I can remember.

Well, as you know, it's a needed field, so I'm excited about your being with us today. So tell us a little of your love story. How did you and your wife meet and decide to get married? Well, we met in elementary school. I wrote a nasty note. I stuck it in her locker. She was repulsed, gathered a bunch of the big kids in the elementary school.

I fell to the ground, and the group opened up, and she kicked me in the side of the head. And that's how we met. And I just knew, I need to marry this girl.

I need some more of this in my life. It's got to get better than that. Not for a while.

Not for a while. Actually, we do end up getting married. We've been married for 12 years, and we're at our pastor's house bickering about something, and he says, that reminds me of the note that was on your Taylor-Johnson compatibility assessment. I said, what note? He goes, that note. Didn't I tell you about the note?

I said, no. He goes, well, for 12 years, I would send this assessment back to the psychologist and get a report back. I'd go over it with the couple.

I got yours back first time ever. There was a post-it note on your assessment, and it said, do whatever you can to stop this marriage. So we got married. We were clinically incompatible. My two parents, Sherry's two parents and her stepfather, five people, represented 15 marriages.

They'd all been married three times. We had a rough start, right? We really had to figure it out. We really had to figure it out, and the happy ending of the story is we really have figured it out. Yeah. Wow.

That's a pretty powerful story. Not many people get that assessment when they take the test. Recommendations don't get married. Well, often family members will say, I'm not sure. I'm not sure he's the right one. I'm not sure he's the right one.

They see things that we don't see sometimes, but God has a way of helping us if we're open to God, of course. Now, a few years ago, you wrote a practical book on marriage, and it's been really, really helpful to people. It was entitled Keep Your Love On, and then you had these three words, connections, communication, and boundaries. What does it mean to keep your love on, and how did you come up with that idea? I remember early on, it's very clear to me in my own relationship that life gets really difficult when we disconnect, and love becomes anxiety and fear when we disconnect.

I realized that people are powerful to choose. Even in our relationship with Jesus, we have the option to keep our love on even though we don't understand, we're scared, we feel hurt, we feel disappointed, whatever it might be. He's the perfect relationship, and we still experience all those emotions. I can't blame him for turning my love off towards him.

I have to take responsibility for the fact that that was my choice. In my human relationships, I have the same dynamic, and that is if I turn my love off towards you, I change my goal from connection to distance. If I change my goal with you to distance, you can't do anything right in this relationship. I've set us up. Whenever I would work with two people, I would always ask, what's the goal of this marriage?

I would keep asking the question until they said, a loving, intimate connection. I said, all right, then I can help you. But if your goal is distance, this will be our last session because you don't need my help with that goal. You're doing a great job without me.

No question about it. I like those three words, connection, communication, and boundaries. This is Building Relationships with Dr. Gary Chapman. Find more simple ways to strengthen relationships at our website, buildingrelationships.us. You can take a free assessment of your love language right there, or see when Dr. Chapman might be coming to your area for a seminar. You'll also find our featured resource written by our guest pastor and author Danny Silk. His book is titled Keep Your Love On Devotional for Couples.

Find out more at buildingrelationships.us. And a program note, next week on this program, we're going to feature a conversation with two guests that I think reinforces what we're talking about today. It's a fascinating story told by Colonel Lee Ellis. He was held as a prisoner of war for more than five years by the North Vietnamese.

And his tales of resilience through that crucible, as well as the others who were held captive, had an effect on marriages and families. So make a note, don't miss the conversation in one week when we'll talk about Captured by Love, Inspiring True Romance Stories from Vietnam POWs. It's one of those conversations that I think will stay with you. We guarantee it. You can always hear that online or find out more at the website buildingrelationships.us.

Now back to the conversation with Danny Silk. Well, Danny, our featured resource is the one year devotional that's based on your original book, Keep Your Love On. So what's your hope as couples go through this devotional?

As you write it, and it's out there now for people to read on a daily basis, what's your hope as people work through this? As you know, Gary, you know, it's always a struggle when only one person in the relationship is learning, growing, and changing. So when people experience things together, it allows them to see the other person changing, allows them to understand why they're changing. It also gives them a common language and a common goal. So in the devotional, both of them are being exposed to the same concept and the same ideas on a regular basis, if indeed they're working through this on a regular basis, right? Right. It's kind of like when they both go to church, they both are under construction and they're both getting similar input and understanding. Whereas if only one of them's going to church, it makes it a far less cooperative, synergistic adjustment as we learn and grow and change.

Yeah. Now you and your wife early on, or somewhere along the line there, began to really make a commitment that you are not going to make the same marital mistakes as your parents. Talk a little bit about that decision. Well, neither one of us come from Christian families, so it was all new to us. We had never seen people that had a 20, 30 year marriage before. I'd never seen anybody that wasn't a blended family or a single parent family. So it was a little bit like going to Australia. The first time you go to Australia, you go, what's that? Where'd that come from?

I've never seen one of those before. So there was a lot of that experience with us. And we only knew people that were fully committed to working out marriage. And so those were the people we went to for advice. We easily could have gone to our family or former friends and complained to them, presented ourselves as a victim.

They would have pointed to the bad guy and we easily could have ended up like them. But when we went to people who were in covenant, committed lifelong relationships, the feedback that we got helped us to learn, grow, adjust and protect the relationship. Yeah. It's wonderful when we can find people like that. Right. It's a good idea to surround yourselves with them, right?

Yeah. Now you identify in this book seven pillars of a healthy relationship. And we know that people who didn't grow up in a healthy relationship really have a hard time knowing what would that look like. So for a minute, just kind of walk us through those seven pillars just briefly. Well, I think the first one being love, that actually has to be defined because some people think that being in a relationship where you're afraid of each other can be called love.

And a lot of people do that. They don't have the right definition or they have a wrong or destructive definition and they host a lot of codependency, a lot of abuse, a lot of maybe what they learned growing up in their families. So each of these pillars is really just a definition of a goal that people have to either accept and pursue or they stay kind of locked into what they don't want. So love, self-control, responsibility, I mean, each of these terms are going to be an adjustment that help you host hope and faith and honor and all these things, vision, all these things in your life that are going to build a structure that hope and joy and peace can rest on. The foundation of all of that is unconditional acceptance, which means you get to be you in this relationship. I'm not here to change you into me. I'm here to learn how to help you become the best version of you, not turn you into more like me so I have less adjustments to make. So that foundation there is going to help us then build all these pillars of love and truth and responsibility and I forget the rest of them, but they're all there.

They're all there. They are definitely going to be something that you'll have to revisit, but this would be back to it takes two to make this work. So going through this will help you understand that the agreement that you're making as a couple like, yeah, we really do want a place of emotional safety and the ability to exchange truth so that we can be free knowing what each other needs. I will manage me and you manage you.

I want to be able to respond well. Now these are all things that once we understand them, they make perfect sense and usually people say, amen. Yeah, but they're not all natural, right?

They don't just come natural for us. Right. Well, it's probably a premise of are people naturally good or naturally evil and it's like, well, I think that people have to be trained to be self sacrificial and loving and a Christ-like, it's a lifelong commitment to walking in the spirit and not in the flesh. That is a part of the transformation of being born again is really a discipleship, learning, repenting. There's just so much that goes into having a fulfilling covenant relationship. Yeah. Now you say in the book that these pillars create an environment of Shalom.

What do you mean by that? Well, that would be the Hebrew word for peace or wholeness, blessing. When we actually combine these pillars together in many ways, we're orchestrating the fruit of the spirit in our life. It's just a path, a set of agreements and some skills on how to preserve these things, not only in our relationship, but in our family culture so that our children will learn this and experience this right along with us. And when God commands his blessing and his wholeness, body, soul and spirit on our home, our children are nourished right along with us. Danny, you were saying a little earlier that a spouse, two spouses together going through this really helps.

They get a similar language and they can speak on the same level in the same terms. What about the spouse who doesn't want to do a devotional or doesn't see this as important and the other spouse does? What do you say to those couples?

I would encourage the spouse that's hungry to eat, but you can't force somebody else and that's really not something that they need. But eventually, you're going to learn skills in communication just by going through to keep your love on material. You're going to learn to communicate that you're really hoping for the feeling of connection, the feeling of partnership, the feeling of love and that you need that. And eventually, you'll get to that ability to communicate that that's where I want to meet you.

Maybe this would help, maybe it wouldn't. Do you have an idea or do you have the same goal as I do? Because back to what's the goal of our marriage and we're working towards the goal is a loving intimate connection. Now that's not always everyone's goal and it's a little bit painful when you discover it's not.

If you're having a hard time getting that connection, it might be time to introduce somebody to your relationship that might be able to help you. Yeah, like a counselor. So what you're saying is, I'm hearing you say, one spouse really moving toward the other and doing this study, this devotional can prime the pump, but it also whets the appetite of the other spouse who may not know that this is what they really want in their life.

Yeah. And the things that you learn, you can share, you can just share in happy times. It wouldn't necessarily be like, I'm going to be our counselor, that would be a mistake. But in good times and connected times, say, I was reading this little devotional book and I learned this today. And that's another way of just getting in on shared learning is just let your spouse know what you're learning and how it's impacting you. We all have that experience sitting in church and you hear a sermon and you're like, gosh, I wish my spouse was here. They really need to hear this.

Well, that's probably not the thing to do. The thing to do would be, this is what I'm learning and I'm making these adjustments because of what I'm learning. Yeah. You talked a little bit about this earlier, but that whole concept of loving your enemies. And of course we know that love stimulates love because the Bible says we love God because he first loved us. We reciprocate, we respond. So yeah, what I hear you saying is as an individual works through this devotional, even the spouse is not willing to do that, but we begin, as you just described, make changes in our own lives as we're learning and growing and giving them really something they don't deserve and treating them in a way they don't really deserve to be treated. But it does have a way of touching their heart and somewhere along the line, not always, but many times they do begin to reach out to the other person.

I've seen that and I'm sure you've seen that. Absolutely. Yeah. It only takes one person to change a relationship, right? So we all know that if somebody decides to start doing drugs, then wow, that's really changed our relationship. Well, in the positive, it works that way too.

I learn and grow and I begin to bring new resources, new paradigms, new information to our relationship through my own personal growth. So it's never just limited to two people. Yeah.

You know, Danny, I've seen that so many times because I think when a person says, you know, my spouse will not go for counseling, they won't read a book, they won't go to a counselor, therefore there's nothing that can be done. And I'm empathetic with that. You know, I can see how you get to that place. But the reality we're talking about here, it really is a reality. I mean, one person can influence another person. We can't make our spouse change.

We know that. But we can influence them. In fact, we do every single day. We either have a positive influence or a negative influence on them.

So yeah, it brings hope, hope, hope that this book and what we're talking about is going to bring hope to some people who are in that situation where they feel like, well, my spouse is not interested so, you know, nothing else I can do. There's always something else we can do. Yeah. And then there's also just the influence of the Holy Spirit on the whole thing, right? Yeah.

Yeah. Christians have outside help. We're not in this by ourselves. We have the help of God. And remember, God loved us, the Bible says, when we were dirty, rotten sinners. And so maybe you're married to one, but you can be God's agent and loving them when you do, it has an impact.

It influences them in a positive way. What are some of the causes as to why people do not keep love on in their relationship? Well, probably the first cause is that we see ourselves as victims and the other person is a bad guy. And I think that's the biggest mistake that we can make in any relationship is to turn the other person or to allow ourselves to have a bad guy.

Just allow myself to have a bad guy. I think this is why Jesus says, love your enemies, so that you don't have a bad guy, you don't have the bad guy option. Therefore, if you don't have a bad guy, then you actually have two people who are disconnected, needing to work something out, both responsible for their half.

Otherwise, you have one person who has all the power and responsibility and the other person who has no power and no responsibility. And that usually leaves us with a unresolvable relational disconnect. Thanks for joining us today for Building Relationships with Dr. Gary Chapman, author of the New York Times bestseller, "The 5 Love Languages" . Our guest is author and pastor Danny Silk.

We're talking about the Keep Your Love On devotional for couples. You can find out more at buildingrelationships.us. That's buildingrelationships.us. Well, Danny, in a general sense, we've been talking about communication, but let's dig a little deeper into that. You say that there's two styles of communication, passive and assertive.

Explain those to us and what they look like. I would say that there's aggressive, passive, passive aggressive, all of which jack up the anxiety. So here comes fear, here comes the enemy of love. And that is how we get disconnected or stay disconnected. But in assertiveness or in being a powerful person, I communicate something very different. And that is that you matter and so do I. So as long as the two of us matter in our exchange of needs and experience, then we're going to move to solving problems, walking in the light together, and protecting and preserving our connection. If I yield to the counsel of fear, then that's self-preservation, disconnection, and distance. So the person that tends to be passive, explain that a little bit.

What do they look like? How do they respond to things? They very much are saying, oh, you matter and I don't, which is not true. They don't believe that either, but they're so afraid of conflict.

They're so afraid of being the bad guy. So they are going to give away the farm in the name of getting peace. So that's a peacekeeper instead of a peacemaker.

A peacemaker is going to be a powerful person who invites another person to be powerful and ends up with you matter and so do I. The aggressive person says, I matter and you don't. And so this is angry, dominating, punishing, controlling. And then the passive aggressive person says, oh, you matter.

And then as soon as they're out of your presence, they say not, and they go do what they were doing before. Yeah. Yeah. You mentioned conflict. Let's just talk a little bit about conflict because it seems to me it's pretty inevitable that a couple will have conflicts. But what is a conflict? And secondly, what are some of the ideas in terms of how do we process conflict in a positive way? Conflict is pretty much whenever two human beings need something different.

Just start with male and female and then work your way down from there. It's easy to have a conflict. If people are being honest, we should have a fair amount of them in a relationship. But it doesn't mean that somebody did something wrong or that our relationship is unhealthy.

It just means that we really now have to have a commitment to stand in the light together to see each other and tools to do that. Like, can you tell me about you when you feel hurt or scared or powerless or sad? Can you tell me about you? Or are you going to judge me trying to control me and hide yourself from me?

So I have no idea what you're talking about and I don't know what to do to help supply what you need. And that would be the common mistake we make in communication is I'm going to tell you about you and then hope that you agree with it, which you never do. And then you tell me about me and I don't agree with you. So now we have this ongoing argument trying to get away from each other's judgments instead of I will show you me and you listen.

And then you show me you and I will listen. And then in turn, we will both learn something very valuable and make adjustments. So I hear you saying there's two key elements. One is a willingness to speak about yourself, where you're coming from, what your thoughts are, what your feelings are. But the other is listening to your spouse when they are doing the same thing.

And it takes both of those, right? Absolutely. And I always say that the first one to listen well wins. And that would be just emphasizing how important listening is. And really what I'm listening for is I'm listening for your experience of me or the situation and what it is that you need. And so the goal of listening well really is to get to what the other person needs to feel. I think that whole issue of resolving conflicts is where a lot of couples struggle and sometimes struggle for years because they don't have the basics down in terms of respecting what the other person thinks and feels. And as you say, what their needs are as we're listening to them, we're thinking about how we're going to shoot down what they're saying and tell them how wrong that is, rather than trying to understand where they're coming from. Because the purpose of listening is to understand first, right?

Absolutely. One of the things that we talk about in the connection section of Keep Your Love On is the love languages. When I saw the love languages, I thought this is how you reduce anxiety instantly between people is just supply them the way they need to feel loved instead of the way you feel like loving them. That's just a beautiful illustration of how seeing someone adjusting and serving what they need to feel is genius. Apologizing, your Five Apologies book as well, it's like exactly the same thing.

I listened well enough to see how I need to adjust to supply you with what you need to feel. I don't know why we're designed so differently, but for whatever reason, people who are very different find each other, marry each other, and then fight about it. Yeah, you're exactly right. Now in the devotional and in your earlier book as well, which we mentioned earlier, you say it's vital that we manage the different levels of intimacy with others. What do you mean by that and why is that so important? Well, I think we're getting into the boundary section now.

This is very much about boundaries create a world where we will thrive. If I'll pay attention to what I need, if I'll pay attention to what my design, my destiny, my purpose, there's lots of things in there that selecting a spouse is really going to help you do that. Some people select a spouse that does not create thriving, like that's what I did. Sherry and I found each other and just went to war. It was very challenging to find a place where we would partner together because we are just a dog and a cat.

It's just like, this is not helpful. But eventually through the communication of the value of our relationship and learning these skills, we then could say, okay, these are our priorities. A connection in our marriage is a priority. Our connection with Jesus individually is a priority. The lordship of Jesus in our marriage is a priority. Our children and our relational connection to them are priorities.

We just kind of work our way out to ministry, job, friends, relatives, audience, whatever it is. The farther away from my priorities, I can have way more people out there because I have very little time, energy, or resources necessary for those relationships. But the closer I get to my core, the time, energy, resources begins to become more demanding.

I only have a few of those. So the priority of my life is managed with boundaries. Who has access to my time, energy, and resources is managed in those boundaries.

How do we come up with boundaries if we've never had that concept? Why is that so important? Well, they communicate priority and they host thriving in our lives. So it does take a value for your life. A lot of people that are having a hard time saying no, they are not going to feel like they're in control of their time, their energy, or their resources because they always have somebody's eating them.

Always somebody else is getting that. So when you have a hard time saying no, that would be evidence that you're not understanding boundaries, you're not practicing them very well. Another thing is that if you don't have a real sense of purpose in your life, then that's another reason that you always think that what other people need is more important than what you have because you're not protecting anything. Things change as we get married, have children, we get older, we start to realize that there are some things worth protecting and so we do.

But to have a life that is thriving, where that shalom is a part of your experience of life and your marriage and your family, then you begin to get clearer and clearer about what we'll say yes to and what we'll say no to. Thanks for joining us today for Building Relationships with Dr. Gary Chapman, author of the New York Times bestseller, "The 5 Love Languages" . Danny Silk is our guest and our featured resource is Keep Your Love On Devotional for Couples. Find out more at buildingrelationships.us. Daddy, you say that it's important to create a safe place for intimacy.

Tell us more about that. I would, you know, reference the walking in the light, having fellowship with Jesus and fellowship with each other in the light. And an intimate place is, or intimacy is another way of saying that is into me, you see, and largely because I showed you. When we create a place where people can stand in the light together, then I get to see you because you trusted me with who you are. And that is such a treasure. It is such a gift. It is such an offering to trust someone at that level.

But that is where we release truth. Now I see you. I see who you are. I see how you feel. I see what you need. I see how you're experiencing me. I see how I can adjust to protect us.

Likewise, you see all those things about me. And that exchange of truth back and forth is how we build and strengthen the experience of trust. So trust is really that the reward of creating a safe, intimate place that releases us. And when we experience that truth back and forth, we are literally set free in a relationship.

Yeah, yeah. You know, the whole idea of being vulnerable to each other, open as you were just discussing, we're not really being real with the other person if we're not being open and honest. So why is it that husbands and wives often are afraid to be open, honest and vulnerable with each other?

Well, usually, because they have no real experience being open and honest and real, because as children, when you're open and honest and real, you get punished. So when that is your baseline, and then you kind of build on that, you begin to realize, oh, the more of my life I keep a secret, the safer I am. So in essence, darkness is my shield, and I trust walking in the darkness to protect me. And that becomes a lifestyle that a lot of people, Christian leaders, a lot of Christian leaders end up believing that if I will hide myself from being seen, I won't be removed from my leadership position. Well, that same thing is at work. That same thing is, it's like the law of the jungle. If anybody sees my vulnerability, I am prey. So when the whole world works like that and is reinforcing that, it's pretty challenging to step into the light and not be punished.

So it's very countercultural. It's something that is cultivated through that being a goal and then having the skills to do that. Let's talk about the person who is more of a controlling person. Their personality is more of controlling.

How does that interfere with intimacy? Well, that is an absolute illusion that I can control another human being. And if you're having a tough time believing that, just go get somebody's baby, bring it home, and boss it around. You don't control little tiny people. You certainly aren't going to control big giant smart people. So the goal isn't ever about controlling others. The goal is about controlling yourself. I always tell control freaks, hey, if you want to be a control freak, control your freaking self.

And that is really, on a good day, the best hope that you have is to control yourself. We've not been given a spirit of fear, but if power, love, and self-control is the spirit at work in us, isn't to get us to rule over other people. It really is to get ourselves to adjust to become more Christ-like. Let's talk about the whole issue of Christ. We talked earlier about boundaries, but you see the idea of boundaries being lived out in the life of Jesus. Explain that to us.

Oh, he is such a master at putting on display self-control and protecting his priorities, deciding where his time, energy, and resources flow and where they don't. There's numerous stories, I'll just pick one, where Luke 8, Jesus is coming to a town, and a group of people that need a miracle come outside the town to get to him first, just knowing that if they get there, he'll serve them before anybody else. The former high priest, Jairus, makes it to Jesus first and says, will you come to my house, heal my little girl, she is sick and dying. And Jesus says, yes. So Jesus just gave his yes. But his yes is in the town. And then the Bible says, and Jesus passed through the crowd on his way to Jairus' house, which means a crowd of desperate people that need a miracle.

Jesus walked right through the middle of them, so much so, some translations say they were pressing against him so hard they were suffocating him. And he goes through that crowd, that's where the woman touches him, and gets healed. But he's on his way to his yes, but he can only do that if he can say no to a crowd of desperate people. And that is very confusing for a lot of believers because a lot of Christian people think that saying no is somehow selfish or mean.

But if you're saying no to protect your yes, then you're actually about your Father's business. We talked along the way about our relationship with God and how that impacts our marriage. Talk a bit about how the Christian relationship with God empowers us to love and to protect boundaries in our relationship in marriage.

Well, I think that if Jesus is in fact the Lord of our marriage, then we look to him for guidance, how to respond, what is my part in the adjustments that need to take place. The title, Keep Your Love On, really comes from this idea that Jesus is the Lord of not only of me, but my marriage. So if I ever turn my love off, turn my wife into a bad guy, change my goal from connection to distance, I have to ask myself, where did I get permission to turn my love off? Because I didn't get it from heaven. Jesus did not give me permission to turn my love off.

So where did I get the permission to change my goal from connection to distance? And 100% of the time that I turn my love off, I am 100% wrong. So repentance for me again and again is based on Jesus is my Lord, and Jesus is the Lord of my marriage.

Yeah, yeah. Well, what are some of the declarations that we can speak to help turn and keep our love on? It would start with, you know, I am a powerful person, and I am responsible to choose love. I can choose love no matter what other people do. I'm not a victim.

I don't have any bad guys. I mean, these are simple, and they're just concepts right out of the book, but they reframe my paradigm, and they remind me of some very important things. What we say to ourselves, we tend to believe, right? So best say some positive things to ourselves. Yeah, you've got to be in charge of that.

That's right, that's right. Well, Danny, as we get to the close of our time together today, what do you say to the person or the couple who are ready to call it quits? You know, they've tried counseling, they've read a book here or there, and they just don't have a lot of hope today as they're listening to this program.

Just talk to them a minute before we close our time. I just want to remind you that the guy that you're listening to was raised by parents that were married three times, and I married a woman that I was clinically incompatible with, and we just celebrated our 39th wedding anniversary last week. I just want to say that, though it feels impossible, all things are possible with God, if you will, in fact, make him Lord of your life and the Lord of your marriage, and if the two of you have the goal of connection, you can change your world.

But if you blame the other person for your goal of disconnection and distance, then you've set your marriage on a path to fail, and that is something you can do something about. Well, Danny, thanks for sharing your own life, your own story, and other encouraging things today as we've talked. I think this book is going to help anyone who will take time to just walk their way through it, a day at a time, keeping an open heart to God. So thanks for being with us today. Thank you, Gary.

I appreciate just the opportunity to be on the show. What an encouraging conversation with Danny Silk today. You go to the website buildingrelationships.us. You'll find out more about him and the featured resource to keep your love on devotional for couples. Again, you'll find it at buildingrelationships.us. And next week, inspiring true romance stories from Vietnam Prisoners of War. Our thanks to our production team, Steve Wick and Janice Backing. Building Relationships with Dr. Gary Chapman is a production of Moody Radio in association with Moody Publishers, a ministry of Moody Bible Institute. Thanks for listening.