David and Meg Robbins: Marriage when You’re Not Getting Along

There's this analogy of two wells that we go back to often that as you come out the door of your life, you've been prone to go to this well that's right here in front of your front door, you know, theoretically speaking. And you draw from it for nourishment, you draw from it to make your life work, your coping mechanisms, you draw from this water that's always been there. And it represents our sinful nature of it's how we make life work on our own strength. But some days, some environmental protection guy comes and goes, do you not know that this well is completely contaminated?

It's killing you. But let me tell you, across that hill, I know you can't see it, there's another well. There's a well, you've got to trust it. It takes faith to go over that hill and to go draw from it, it is a well of living water.

And it represents the Holy Spirit. Welcome to Family Life Today, where we want to help you pursue the relationships that matter most. I'm Ann Wilson. And I'm Dave Wilson. And you can find us at familylifetoday.com or on our Family Life app.

This is Family Life Today. So do you remember that time you told me you were my Holy Spirit? Do you remember that? I did not say that. You always say that you said you are like the Holy Spirit.

That's like blasphemous. I wouldn't say that, but I did say. No, you said, I am your Holy Spirit. I said, I'm helping the Holy Spirit.

I am the Holy Spirit's helper. So you do remember, though? Yeah, but I didn't say I am the Holy Spirit. So should I bring out the video to prove that you said... I never said that. No, you actually did. I think it's funny to say that she said she was my Holy Spirit, because you know what it does?

It gets her mad at me. And here we are right now. So let's talk about a little bit about what that would look like with David and Meg Robbins, who are back in the Family Life Today studio. You know, you just walked right over from your office. Welcome back. It's so good to be here, guys.

It's fun to see you. I mean, you sort of did walk over from your office. You have an office a couple hundred yards from now. That's true. I could probably throw a football that far.

Maybe not. I'm so impressed. I just want to say I'm so impressed with you, Dad. That's all I was looking for. Let's close a prayer. We're done. No, David and Meg are here.

They come back every once in a while. We love it when you're here, the president of Family Life. And, you know, we're talking about the Holy Spirit, because it is one of the most powerful, in my opinion, talks of the weekend at the Family Life Weekend to Remember Marriage Getaway. And I know you guys have been working on that talk.

Yeah, we have one coming up this weekend. And when we were talking with you guys of having studio time set apart, we were like, let's bring what we think is the most important kind of the crux of the Weekend to Remember. You can't live it out without God's power for oneness. Let's talk about it together.

Yeah. I mean, I think for us, even when we go all the way back to our college days, when we first were really introduced to the power of the Holy Spirit and why God even gives us the Holy Spirit, it was hugely transformational. And I think as we've seen that play out in our marriage, we realize we really do believe and experience that it is the most powerful tool we have to experience oneness in our marriage. And let's also be honest, we really just needed to talk this message to ourselves. We needed the Holy Spirit this week.

Why? Let me talk about that because I think that people understand this. They hear, yes, the Holy Spirit lives in me. And then we get in marriage situations that are difficult. And we're thinking, how do I do this again?

Right. The fruit that's coming out is not always what's supposed to be the fruit of the Spirit out of my actions. We were laying in bed two nights ago, having one of those conversations where you're like, gosh, this is how the day's ending.

Let's stay awake and do this. And really recounting the weeks of just life that adds up. We went from a family life event that had us away from our kids. And then Meg went home early and then we were apart. And then Meg got sick. You got COVID.

That was my first time to have it, actually. Yeah. But that led to a season of just, we weren't cultivating oneness and real conversation when you were so tired. We've had two guests come in right now. Actually, my parents are watching in studio.

They're here right now, visiting while we have four different kids sports over four days. And there's just a lot going on. And there's been a lot of factors. And two nights ago, we were just kind of going, you know what? We need to really submit our hearts to the Holy Spirit to soften just where we're at. I'm glad that you guys had that revelation because we came off sort of a similar week and we didn't think that.

I should have been thinking we need to shred this to the Holy Spirit. I mean, we literally, what, nine days ago buried Ann's dad. So it was a wonderful celebration, 92 years old.

It's still emotional, too. Twelve grandsons, 26 grandkids. But we got on a plane Sunday night late, absolutely exhausted. I didn't realize how emotionally and physically, because there's grandkids and we got little grandkids crawling in our bed in our hotel room. And then we go speak to an NFL conference all week from Monday to Thursday, and then went and did a marriage conference for one of our family life donor couples in Raleigh and preached Sunday. And here we are back.

You talk about needing a source of power that we don't have. That's pretty typical for most families, don't you think? Like it's the grind. It's hard. Yeah, kids are sick.

People are sick. Yeah. I mean, it's busy. And I mean, all different stages of life, I think we experienced that. And probably when you're in your stage, you think, oh, this one's the hardest, then it's taxing. But I don't know that we would look back and say, oh, those were the easy days.

Yeah, the circumstances will change, but the grind will always lure us into the mundane and into depending upon ourselves, really. Yeah. So let's talk about the power of the Holy Spirit. Meg, you mentioned it. We had a similar experience. It was my college days. I was pretty new in Christ, so I wasn't more than a year and a half, but no one had ever taught me to understand even what the Holy Spirit's role was, the power of the Holy Spirit. It was revolutionary when I went through the Blue Booklet.

You guys, the Blue Booklet changed my life because it would have, remember, it had the filling of the Holy Spirit and the fruit of the Spirit, so love, joy, peace, patience. And it goes through all those, but then it had the opposite. And I remember looking at the opposite, which is anxiety, anger. I'm like, oh, that's all me. And I guess I'm not walking according to the Holy Spirit power.

How do we do that? What's it look like in a marriage? I would say it first and foremost isn't these grandiose moments. I think a lot of times when we think of the Holy Spirit, it's these really big highs. And sometimes that can happen where God's presence feels so close and overwhelms us. But actually being empowered day by day with the Holy Spirit actually becomes a moment by moment continual conversation of putting Him in charge, not us surrendering to His way, not our way. And when I was growing up, I was aware of the Holy Spirit and knew that we should have access to Him. But I don't think I realized how the Holy Spirit works to convict us of our sin when we're out of line. And I think that's probably what we were experiencing the other night. I was feeling convicted for sure, because I was not living out of the power of the Holy Spirit. I was snapping and frustrated. But not only does the Holy Spirit convict us, but if we respond and are quick to repent and confess those things and choose instead to invite the Holy Spirit to take over, it's like a surrender.

It's like, okay, this is where I'm out of line, but I can't do this on my own. And I think for a lot of the years, in the beginning of my walk with the Lord, I was striving a lot and trying to be something or obey, which obedience is important, but I think that there's so much more power in making more room in our heart and in our life for the Holy Spirit to really sit on the throne and truly take over, and do I trust? It's an act of trust and surrender and getting myself more out of the way so there's more room for the Holy Spirit to live in me.

Yeah. I think about the daily in our lives, and Galatians 5, 16 comes to my mind. So I say, let the Holy Spirit guide your lives. Then you won't be doing what your sinful nature craves. And what's true is we still have a sinful nature until we get to heaven. For those of us who are in Christ, we will not be able to sin again someday. But as we sit on this side of eternity, we still have our sinful nature, but a new nature has been put inside of us.

God not only forgives our sin, He puts into us His Holy Spirit, His righteousness that empowers us to live out this Christian life. Tony Evans talks about the Christian life isn't a difficult life, it's an impossible life. And there's this analogy of two wells that we go back to often that as you come out the door of your life, you've been prone to go to this well that's right here in front of your front door, you know, theoretically speaking, and you draw from it for nourishment, you draw from it to make your life work, your coping mechanisms, you draw from this water that's always been there. And it represents our sinful nature of it's how we make life work on our own strength.

We've got to make life work somehow. But some days, some environmental protection guy comes and goes, do you not know that this well is completely contaminated? It's killing you. It may sustain you for a moment, but it's always going to beg for more. There's nothing good in this water for the flourishing of your entire life. But let me tell you, across that hill, I know you can't see it, there's another well.

There's a well, you've got to trust it. It takes faith to go over that hill and to go draw from it, but it is a well of living water and it represents the Holy Spirit and that God doesn't just give us chlorine to clean up the old well. Actually, He says, left to your flesh, the flesh will always be your flesh. Your sinful nature, you cannot perfect the flesh. He says in Galatians, you started in the Spirit, but now you're perfecting the flesh. You can never dress up and chlorinate the water and bring life.

You've got to draw from the other well that Jesus gives us, that when we trust Him, He puts the Holy Spirit inside of us and we can draw from His divine resources in order to live this thing out, especially the everyday realities of marriage. Yeah, so you know what I'm thinking, David just brought up the well. I don't know if you were on the cruise years ago where I did this visual that didn't go well on the cruise. I was not there.

Yeah, it was 10 years ago maybe. Long story short, one of the things I never understood about the feeling of the Holy Spirit, when you look at Ephesians 5, where Paul commands us in verse 18, don't get drunk with wine, it's a waste of time or debauchery, but be filled with the Holy Spirit. Even when I was in college and learned about the feeling of the Spirit, I didn't understand.

You said it earlier, I thought it was this big high and I didn't notice a moment by moment thing. It wasn't until seven, eight years ago I went back as a pastor and I'm teaching this thinking, what's the context? Ephesians 5, 18, you know what really I think connects to? Ephesians 5, 1. 17 verses earlier, let me read it to you. He says, follow God's example, therefore as dearly loved children and walk in the way of love, just as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God. I'll read you another translation from the ESV. It says, therefore be imitators of God as beloved children. Now think about this.

I looked it up. Imitators of God means mimic copy God. So what's he telling us in the very beginning of that chapter? Our lives, our marriages actually should resemble Christ, which is sort of a scary thought.

Like our neighbors are watching us to say, oh, so that's what Christ looks like. And then, you know, as you walk through the past, you're just like, how in the world could I ever do that? Verse 18, don't get drunk with wine.

It's a waste of time. Be filled with the Holy Spirit. And again, drunk with wine is funny. Whenever I preach this, I'm not kidding. Guys would come up to me.

This happened many times. Hey, so he didn't say anything about beer, so beer's good? I'm like, you're missing the whole point. The point is don't be controlled by a substance like alcohol.

It's a waste of time. But it's a great analogy because Paul is saying just as alcohol controls you, in a sense, be controlled by the Holy Spirit of God. But what's powerful that a lot of us miss is the word be filled is a present participle. Anybody know what that means? Continual action.

That's what you were just saying. You don't go to the well once. You got to keep going back to the well.

Literally last night in bed thought, and I know this is a terrible analogy, but present participle means it happens once, but it keeps happening. You don't go to a football game and then they don't get in a huddle at the beginning of the game and go, okay, here's 65 plays. Let's go through them all. We're never going to huddle again. They huddle every moment. It's the same thing we have to do.

We have to keep coming back. So here's the analogy and I'll do it as quick as I can. But I didn't know this. I saw it done.

I'm like, I'm going to copy this. And the reason it didn't go well on the cruise is because when you do this water analogy, water spills all over. It's swaying, right? Yeah.

And it went on the stage and the production team about died because it's hitting wires that are electrical. That is scary. Yeah. So bottom line is, have you ever seen this analogy where you take a glass of water and have pictures of water, like several pictures of clear water, and you pour the water into this glass and you say, this is our life. When we give our life to Christ, the Holy Spirit of God, living water, fills us to the brim.

And that's what we look like. It's pure. It's awesome. You want to drink it. It's wonderful. But, and we sort of think at that moment, I'm never going to sin again.

My life's going to be totally different. But guess what the reality is, is we still struggle and we still have a nature that still tends towards sin. And so here's what, you know, you do, you take like, sometimes it's anger and you take ketchup and squirt it in there. And it could be envy and it's mustard, you know, whatever you want to do. And you've got temptation and darkness. And so you get soy sauce or something really dark and you start throwing relish.

I mean, throw everything in there. Next thing you know, you have a clear glass of water that looks like mud. And I always say, and by the way, I'm going to drink this.

And they're like, no. I'm like, so how do you clean up your life? Because all of us get there and we're like, this is not the life I want to live. I have more anger in my life I ever thought I would have after Christ. I have temptation I give into.

And here's what we think. Go to church, clean it up, read the word. Again, all that's good, but it doesn't do it. And if you go back to Ephesians 5 18, it's like, keep being filled. It's continuum. Like you said, David, earlier, it's moment by moment.

So I mean, I never knew this would be with the reality, but if you take a pitcher of water and you just pour one, two, three, just keep pouring water in there, it flushes it out to the point where you drink that water, you know, but that is what I think we miss. It's like every moment, every day, I have to keep letting the Holy Spirit of God flush me out because I don't have the power, especially in my marriage, to love her, to love him the way we deserve. Well, here's the problem though, Dave. Like I hear that and like, yes, yes. And even Meg, when you were saying you and David were getting into some stuff and you were feeling convicted, have you guys ever done this?

Because this will show my sinfulness. You're listening to Dave and Anne Wilson with David and Meg Robbins on Family Life Today. We'll hear where Anne was going with that in just a minute. But first, obviously you hear us talk often about marriages and how that foundation affects everything else in our lives. One thing we think we all agree on is that great marriages don't just happen.

They're built with intentionality. We are always drifting in marriage, either away from each other or together toward God. So here's the great news for your relationship. Family Life's Weekend to Remember Marriage Getaway is back with a full schedule of events throughout the country this fall. And even better right now, through Monday, September 19th, registrations are 50% off.

So jump on this chance to intentionally pull closer toward each other and God and get two registrations for the price of one now through September 19th at familylifetoday.com. All right, now back to Dave and Anne with David and Meg Robbins and Anne's confession of what she sometimes thinks about Dave. I'm thinking Dave needs to be filled with the Holy Spirit.

He needs to go down to that other pond over there and get it filled. And she has told me that. You're absolutely wrong. You're the problem. So what happens when we feel we're so angry because we think this is my spouse's fault? Do you feel that conviction? Do you know what I mean?

Yes. Or sometimes I even am in that place where I feel that and I'm so frustrated at David and thinking this is all his fault and we wouldn't even be having this conversation. And there's this pride in me that thinks, in that moment, I think I'm so much more spiritual than Dave. Hey, you know, I think this is a woman thing.

Two women are okay. I think what's always true is that the Lord goes, and I'm going to start with you first. Yes. I think that's often.

Yeah. And don't you hate that? But I think what's hard is that moment where I realize, okay, the Holy Spirit is wanting to start with me, but am I willing, you know, am I willing to humble myself and say, first, I think it starts with just my little conversation with the Lord, like, okay, I am obviously in the wrong here too, you know, no matter how we got here or what the issues are. Or even asking yourself, and I feel like God does this first, why are you so angry? He did that with Cain.

Right. Why are you so angry? And, you know, I can point my finger because did you hear what Dave just said or what he did? But I think it goes back to that, I like what you started with, that repentance and confession. Well, how do you do it? Because I'm thinking there's a listener too, it's like, I've been there, but I just, I don't know, how do I let the Holy Spirit change that hard heart and prideful spirit in me?

How does he pour that in? I mean, I think for me, because I can so relate, I mean, I was laughing when you were saying that, Anne, but it's like, I totally was there the other night, you know, like, I didn't even really want to have the conversation because I was still really frustrated. And honestly, I think, you know, we got there, I didn't even realize I was feeling frustrated because everything was so chaotic and we finally, I'm finally out of quarantine and, you know, and then I realized like, oh, there's so much frustration. But I was totally resistant to the fact that I was part of the problem too. But I think for me, you're asking, you know, what do you do?

What does that really look like? And I think for me, it's when I finally get to that point of not necessarily, it'd be great if I could start out to David first and say, okay, I'm sorry, I'm the one. The Lord needs to start with me.

But that doesn't usually happen. I mean, usually it's just me, just a little prayer in my heart and just like a letting go. Like, I have to almost visualize myself opening up my hands like, okay, Lord, like, help me to let go of this that I'm holding on to and recognize my own sin where I am, what I'm holding on to, what I'm blame shifting for, or do not repay evil for evil. You know, I'm totally thinking, well, you deserve this because you did dah, dah, dah. And just starting with a little prayer with the Lord, just, okay, I am in the wrong here too. And help me see where I need you and just confessing those things, you know. And I think that starts to soften my heart to let the Holy Spirit, like, as I, Bill Bright used to say, exhale, you know, as we exhale and confess, yes, spiritual breathing, exhale things that need to be confessed, and then you're able to inhale, you know, the power of the Holy Spirit instead in place of those things.

And I think what's interesting about spiritual breathing, you're exhaling with repentance, which is some of the hardest part, owning your part, and then you're inhaling with faith of, okay, this is what's true. And I, you know, when two nights ago when we were having, you know, going to bed with that tiff, my mind, where does it go? It has a choice to spiral right back down into a negative cycle. And will we ever get out of this? How long will this take?

Is this going to grow into a big issue? Or okay, Lord, what is true? You've given me a wife that for 20 years consistently repents and owns what she can own as I seek to own what I can own. Lord, you have given me this gift of a woman that I want to make sure she knows she's cherished. And I'm not giving her that right now in this season. Okay, Lord, I repent.

Like what do we do in order to make it really practical? As you turn and ask the practical question, a lot of times the sentence prayers aren't just Lord, help me. The sentence prayers are, Lord, let me see what's true.

Yeah, show me. Let me respond in faith and actually tell you, Lord, yep, this is what's true. Thanks for reminding me of that. This is what I want to be grateful for, absolutely. Thank you, Lord, that we get to have time tomorrow at this time. I want to, okay, I'm sensing you want me to go there tomorrow during this small window we have without kids in the equation. I'll go there.

I'll take the step of faith. Yeah, and I think we've said it is sometimes so hard. As I was listening to both of you and I thought, what is it? I think it's pride. That's what I was going to say. We just don't want to put that away.

I want her to pay. I think I am right. She's wrong. And when the Holy Spirit is just nudging you, like, you've got to own your side of this, I think it's hard. But when we do, like you just said, and we've all done it.

We've talked about a lot of defeat, but there's a lot of victory as well. And there's moments I can look back and it's like, I can remember, you know, just walking through the kitchen years ago and I was so mad at her and she was so hurting. And I could see she was hurting and I still is like, I don't care that you're hurting because you're wrong and I'm right.

And then I could just feel the Holy Spirit's like, you're wrong here. Are you gonna put away your pride and humble yourself and let me work? And it was hard, but I did. And guess what?

He worked. And the fruit of the Spirit became real. I was like, there was love and joy and peace and patience. And here's the one I didn't have, kindness.

I was not being kind because I was so full of pride. I think there's a husband or a wife listening right now and you're holding on to that. I'm wondering if the Holy Spirit has just used this moment to say, dude, like, what do you say to a woman? Do this? Is it do that?

I don't know. In a loving but firm way, the Holy Spirit's saying, give me your heart. I will fill it. I will give you my fruit that you can't produce on your own.

But if you let me, watch what I do. You've been listening to Dave and Anne Wilson with David and Meg Robins on Family Life Today. David is the president of Family Life and Dave and Anne are going to be back with them again tomorrow to fill us in on what to do when everything seems to be going wrong in your relationship.

That's tomorrow. At Family Life, we believe God does some of his most amazing work in homes just like yours to make a difference one home at a time. And that's why we do radio broadcasts and podcasts and weekend to remember marriage getaways and small group Bible studies to help strengthen families to make an impact in their corner of the world. And you can help make an impact for even more families by financially partnering with Family Life. Give it familylifetoday.com or call with your donation at 800-358-6329. That's 800 F as in family, L as in life, and then the word today. On behalf of David and Wilson, I'm Shelby Abbott. We'll see you back next time for another edition of Family Life Today. Family Life Today is a production of Family Life, a crew ministry, helping you pursue the relationships that matter most.