Understanding and Practicing Grace in Marriage: Brad & Marilyn Rhoads

We're in a child-centered culture. We now have phones at our fingertips, and we can be in contact with everyone 24-7, and what's the casualty? It's marriage.

Being intentional and taking time. We miss kids' events to go on a date night. It's okay for our kids not to feel like they're the center of everything.

It's actually good for them. Welcome to Family Life Today, where we want to help you pursue the relationships that matter most. I'm Shelby Abbott, and your hosts are Dave and Ann Wilson. You can find us at familylifetoday.com. This is Family Life Today. Okay, so we're starting day two with Dave and Ann Wilson 20 years ago. I feel like I'm looking across the table at our marriage. I don't know how old you guys are, but you're younger than we are, and we're empty nesters now, and you still got kids in the home.

I think that this is your long-lost brother, younger brother, who is very similar to you in every way. And Marilyn and I, man, we have gone through this with our husbands who love sports, and we are all learning how to give each other grace and how to love each other unconditionally. And you guys, yesterday was incredible with you as you took us on your journey. By the way, this is Brad and Marilyn Rhodes. We haven't even said who you are yet. We're just having such fun, even off-mic, who wrote the book The Grace Marriage.

And if you missed it yesterday, go back and listen to it, because you're going to hear where they started, and you are in a totally different place. How many years has it been? 28 years.

Five kids. Yeah, and I mean, you don't just write about grace marriage. You literally are living it. And I'm telling you, when I asked you yesterday, Marilyn's like, how do you sustain that? Because so many wives and even husbands have said, I want to give him grace. I want to give her grace. It doesn't last two days, because he keeps letting me down.

She keeps, you know, and it's like, I give up. And you said, no, you can keep doing it, right? That's right. The verse in Galatians says, never tire of doing good, for you will reap a harvest. And it may be in this lifetime.

It might be in the next. It could be you're watching children see you love with grace. And you might be that person that is in a 20-year stretch of not feeling loved, but you're loved by Christ.

And He's the greatest lover of our soul. You get to choose your heart. I mean, you choose your heart. It is hard giving grace.

Yeah, it is. It's harder living angry. It's hard living in a state of offense and living mad all the time. I had a couple in my office once and I said, what you're saying is hard.

I said, with all due respect, what y'all are doing looks harder. It's a better place for the heart. My heart is at peace. I'm at rest. I can enjoy life when I'm focusing on grace.

When I feel offended that people aren't doing for me what they should do for me, aren't giving me the attention I deserve. I'm not at a state of peace. I'm not at a state of grace. I'm not at a state of rest. I feel chaotic. I feel frustrated.

I feel stressed. It is good for us. It's good for our souls.

It's good for our marriage. I mean, that's why Jesus said light, burden, easy yoke, rested soul, Sabbath rest to Christ. There is a beautiful heart state in Jesus that cannot be found in hoping others will behave towards you like you want them to. I'd love to hear, because what you just articulated, I've heard you say before, sort of when you came to understand that through your mentor, Doug.

Am I right? Something he said to you really put you on a journey? Yeah, a lot he said to me. He said that God told him to save me 25 years of trouble because he saw a striving believer putting his hope in becoming a better believer. Now, is this an older man or how'd you know him? It's an interesting story how I got to know him.

I had a business issue in the law practice. Somebody said the most gifted businessman in the Christian world I know is Doug Hignel. He has an MBA, PhD, engineering degree from Stanford, brilliant. And he agreed to give me 30 minutes of his time. And he said during those 30 minutes, God spoke to me and told me to save you 25 years of trouble because I saw a striving person climbing the wrong ladder, not resting in the grace of Jesus, but always just trying to make himself better. And he said, Brad, you're just a big self-improvement project.

He called me a moral narcissist. He said, your hope is in your perception of your performance, not in the grace of Jesus. He said, if you feel you're doing good, you're at peace.

If you feel you're not, you're not. And he said, what I'm looking for is you to feel good because you're loved by God, delighted in him. You're adopted son of the king, the creator of the universe, and that you live in confidence. You live in joy.

You live in peace and happiness for that reason, not because you feel good about you. And I resisted him. And then all of a sudden, it's like I almost heard God say, Brad, you're not okay.

And it's okay. So, Brad, you're talking about this is the point where you're still complacent, even spiritually? Well, actually, no, it was once I had a big change in our marriage after one year, I really started loving Marilyn much more radically. We went on a date every week.

Fast forward, I was still more of a performance track. Our marriage was good. But you're building your career. Yeah, but I'm giving Marilyn attention.

Our marriage is solid, but I didn't really have a revelation of what grace was as it relates to experiencing it and living it out into, I mean, I was like a lot of believers just trying to do the right things. You know, have a good quiet time. Pray. Make sure you pray. You need to do this. You need to love the orphan.

You need to love the whiffler. I'm always just trying to be this. More striving.

Oh, exactly. And then he basically, Psalm 46, 10, told me to cease striving and know that he's Lord and live in the Sabbath rest of Christ and work from a state of rest. And then have it that when people are around you, that you don't bring stress, you bring peace, that they're drawn to you because Christ in you, the hope of glory, they're not just impressed with you. He told me, he said, Brad, with all due respect, nobody would want your life because nobody wants to get up at 4.45 in the morning and do an hour of the quiet time, an hour of meditation, then work out an hour.

And I mean, everybody's gonna be impressed with it, but nobody wants it. He said, live a life worthy of emulation, not just a life everybody looks to and says, wow. And he literally changed the way I did life. Did you see a difference, Marilyn? Oh, it was huge.

What did it look like? I'm not as extreme as Brad, so I don't live as extremely. You don't get up at 4.45? No. So I didn't really realize to the extent I was living in a performance-based walk with the Lord as well until I watched him dramatically change. It changed the atmosphere in our home, not just with how he viewed himself, but with me and with the kids. You can't give something you don't understand. If you don't understand grace, it's hard to offer grace.

And so it really changed the way he loved us as a family because we just naturally give and take love based on how we perform. We don't want to say that, but it's true. It's important to note that grace never means tolerating abuse or infidelity. It's actually enabling and it's actually harmful to the person when you enable that behavior. It's harmful to you and the other person. So in those situations, you need to prioritize safety. That's right.

You need to really take care of yourself and seek help. So we want to make sure that people understand what grace is not. Grace is not a failure to address issues. Marilyn addresses issues with me quite a bit. Grace is not tolerating destructive, narcissistic, controlling behaviors.

What grace is, it's just, I love you. I chose you as my spouse and I love you just because I choose to love you just like God does us. And it really simplified marriage for us when it's just like, my job is just to love Marilyn. I mean, how did you get out of that performance-based marriage? Because I know it's your second chapter where you take that grace idea and say, okay, let's go right there. You've mentioned it, but you are on a performance base and so are we and most couples are and still are. And so when you hear this grace-based, it's like, sounds good, but how do I actually not want my spouse to meet my needs and perform? How do you not let my emotions rule and what I'm feeling and my anger and my disappointment?

How do I not let that rule our home? We have a concept in our curriculum called red light on the dash. If I see Marilyn struggling and she like comes at me hard about something, her voice comes a little high, you feel the tension. It's just like a red light of the dash in my car. Something's wrong. Something's wrong and needs attention. And usually I just keep driving, so why would we stop?

It's probably a faulty light. It can't be anything wrong. But what I do, what he's kind of now is thinking, oh, something's going on with Marilyn and Marilyn needs my help.

Instead of taking offense at the manifestation of the struggle, realize that I can be part of the answer. Instead of saying, now what's wrong? Pity the man that falls and has no one to help him up. So we all fall, but in marriage, like the last two weeks, Marilyn's helped me up. Fortunately, I'm in a good spot right now.

Glad the interview wasn't last week. But there's other times where health issues and the kids and stress get the best of Marilyn. And I can either be part of the problem or part of the answer.

If I want to be part of the answer, pursue her, make her feel special, make her feel delighted in, do things for her, jump in, help more and say, look, I'm going to help you up. It's having that rescue mentality, not the offense mentality. Not, oh, I wish you handled life better so it would be more pleasant for me. But no, Christ loved me, lay down his life for me, despite my struggles. And when you struggle, I've been called to love you like Christ loved me. Now what's the offense mentality? Rescue, not offense? A rescue versus an offense mentality. It really brings life to the problem because you can live on mission.

I often think of the verse, I came to give you life, life to the full. So you can have full life even in this moment where Brad's acting a little offensively to you. So the last couple of weeks, Brad, he's a little quicker-witted. There have been times I've said, why don't we go on a sarcasm fast?

Because it's just, it flows naturally. It's really funny. It really is funny, but it's not, I'm like, even in laughter, the heart may ache. You can't quench the giftedness. But the sarcasm's a gift. Yeah.

Offense mentality is when the focus is taking offense. You know, like I'm living offended. I'm just living offended.

I'm not getting enough attention. I don't like the way you talk to me. I don't like this. It's just living in a state of offense. And when you live in a state of offense, your spouse can feel, you just don't like them. People that are living in an offense mentality, their spouse can just feel, you don't really like me. You don't really want to be around me.

And I can just feel it. And when people have that offense mentality, it really does. It just hamstrings the marriage. So we still went on, we go on dates every week. That's something that someone that mentors has told us is so important. And outside of our relationship with Christ, it's the number one best thing we do for our marriage is to spend time together. It keeps us on the same page. So we went on a date and I just kept trying to pursue his heart and hang out with him and talk about sports.

The new coach at UK. You took it to a three hour musical. I did. I did not know it was going to be terrible, but that was really hard on us. It sounds like you really enjoyed that one, Brett. At the hour and 40 minute mark, I thought they finished and I thought it was awful, but I made it. It was halftime. It was intermission. You can go home at halftime. You don't have to stay for the second round.

I literally thought I made it. So you do, you do those things and you move towards, even when you don't feel like it, you act right and the feelings will follow. Yeah, they do. You don't let, like you said, emotions rule the day. What about grace and crisis? Because you write about this where you guys have gone through some crisis, especially with one of your daughters for a spell.

Yes. Talk about that. We've gone through a few spells with lots of kids. It's really hard to watch your children struggle. A lot of things hit at once sometimes and this was our oldest daughter had a grandma seizure. I thought she was down in my arms. How old was she?

She was in fifth grade and we had a newborn at the time and another that was really struggling in school, learning that she had learning issues in first grade. So I was a wreck. We were in ministry and I had nothing to give. And praise God, we had gotten grace at that point.

And instead of telling me, Marilyn, you need to read your Bible, you need to trust the Lord more, you need to be more careful with your words. And he just loved me. And if he had said all those things to me, they would have been true and they would have buried me. I was already drowning. And every week we would go on a date and I cried every single week because I had my game face on for the kids. And then I would get in the car and I would just start sobbing. And so that wasn't a pretty year.

And that was in crisis. And he just moved towards me that whole year and would just come in from work and try to help. And about a year in, the Lord lifted the clouds and I thanked him. And I said, if you, it would have buried me.

But the Lord used you to help draw me out of this pit. Because you had nothing left to give him. To nothing. Zero. And unless you get grace, crisis will kill your marriage.

Because there's going to be points that all of us have nothing to give. And I've had to stretch similar but different. And Marilyn was there for me the same way. I remember the phone call specifically when the clouds lifted. She called and said, hey Brad, I'm happy. And I said, I'm happy today.

I'm like, what? And she goes, I'm happy. And she cried and said, I forgot what happy felt like.

I don't even remember the last time. And then she thanked me and said, thank you for just loving me and not telling me all I needed to do to get myself out of it. But if I hadn't understood grace, I'd have thought, well, of course you're struggling.

You don't have a Sabbath and you're not in the Word consistently. And you're not exercising, which helps your brain. And I mean, you're, you know, you're self-sabotaging. And you could have been selfish and thought, you're giving nothing to me. And it's just, the Lord just showed me, Brad, just whatever Marilyn needs. Marilyn went for a run one time when she came back from a run. She said, I just need to take our kids for a month to my parents' lake house and just, I can't handle it.

I just can't handle life. Because Marilyn is a very gifted mentor, so people are drawn to her. So she's getting all these calls and she's still helpful, but she just can't do it anymore. So literally, I'm like, you're just going to leave for a month.

But then it hit me, Brad, whatever Marilyn needs. If that's what you think is helpful, you go. I'll come up on Thursday nights, go back to work on Monday mornings. It'll be all good. Back to the rescue mentality thing and just don't tell her what she needs. Just love her. Just the family was all I could do.

So I just wanted to get away with the kids and not have any pull because I just didn't have the capacity. I mean, it's such a beautiful picture. I mean, again, it's grace. It's the gospel. It's the picture of Jesus with us that I keep, I can see it. Another theme in your book is intentionality.

So help us understand what that looks like. Well, I mentioned dating. Life takes over. We're in a child-centered culture. We now have phones at our fingertips and we can work 24-7. We can be in contact with everyone 24-7 and what's the casualty? It's marriage.

Being intentional and taking time. We miss kids' events to go on a date night. It's okay for our kids not to feel like they're the center of everything. It's actually good for them. And when you have five kids, that is definitely going to happen.

Yes. And so our kids know that our marriage is important. One of the best ways we can love our kids is by having a good marriage. And we watch so many couples sacrifice their marriage on the altar of being a good parent.

One of the best things you can do for your kids is have a great marriage. And I do crisis pastoral counseling and everyone that comes in misses that intentionality piece. Haven't one come in yet and say, you know, we talk every day. We go on a date once a week and we don't really know what happened. We're just kind of off the rails. What happens is a slow drift. Life takes over.

They're disconnected. Contention sets in. Tons of marriage research, you know, is out there. But then the kind of the conclusion is if you spend a lot of time together, your marriage goes well.

And if you don't, it doesn't. And that's marriage declines and crashes on autopilot. When you're like, we're going to intentionally communicate better. We're going to intentionally date more, intentionally enjoy each other more physically.

We're going to intentionally do funding. Marriage grows that way. So it's just helping people let marriage be held in honor among all. People say marriage is your most important horizontal relationship, but then they won't hardly put a dollar into it.

They won't put time into it. They wonder why it doesn't work. That was our problem. When we first got married, we just thought it would just work. And we're crazy about each other.

How's it not going to work? Well, our first flight was on our at our wedding day. But in all seriousness, so we try to help people is we give them a structure to work on their marriage. So that their marriage takes priority. I think I think it was Keller that said, if anything comes ahead of your marriage other than Jesus, your marriage will slowly die.

And that's what I've observed. One of the things I'd love to hear you talk about is grace. You have a chapter called Grace and Criticism. Sounds like you don't critique or criticize one another anymore. That had been a real struggle in our marriage. Because I was helping Dave. That's right.

Criticism. Yes, I was good at it, Marilyn. We can we can argue that I'm being their helpmate. If I share with them, they'll make them a better man. I told her she wishes I'd come with a remote control. Exactly.

They're pushing it all the time. It's got a button on there called Change. Change.

So how do you spin that? Because I don't hear a lot of criticism between you now, but I'm guessing there was. Although you've talked about healthy, like speaking truth in love. You've talked about that.

So what did you do with that critical mind and heart? Well, one grid that I try and do, if there's something that I want to talk to Brad about, I don't immediately when I'm doing well. There are times I immediately do and then he gets to extend me grace. But I try to pray about it and not talk about it and just keep praying about it. If it stays with me for a few days after I've prayed about it and prayed about it and prayed about it, my heart's going to be at a better place to talk to him about it. Then I know it's something we might need to talk about.

And also we both will think about this. Is this an extenuating circumstance or is this a habit? Because life throws a lot of extenuating circumstances at us. Like that's what in the last couple of weeks it was an extenuating circumstance.

And I knew it was. So the response of mine needs to be a rescue mentality. But there are times where there's a pattern of behavior that you do want to address. But so often we criticize over things that don't matter.

Things that aren't hills to die on or things that we don't need to address to make our relationship better. We can let the little things go. I was watching an older woman. This couple had a beautiful marriage and when he passed away I went up to her at the funeral and I said, what advice would you give to someone? Your marriage was beautiful. And she said, don't make a big deal of the little things.

I'm like, that is a power patch sentence. So big. Because the little things feel really big sometimes. So big. On the flip side, I saw an older couple and he's like, well, last night we were eating at Wendy's.

We ate at McDonald's. He was like, he couldn't get two sentences out without getting corrected. I'm like, dude, you just need to give up and shut up.

It doesn't matter. Yeah, that's good. I think it's good the habits versus situations. Like yesterday when we were walking and said, you know, we've been short lately and we both knew we're on a run right now. Ministry wise, it's just a long sprint and it's not a marathon. We've been sprinting and you can't. So I think we were sort of saying, this is where we are right now.

This isn't a habit. It could become one if we're not careful. But if it becomes one, we're going to have to, it's going to be the blinking red light. But right now it's like, no, we just need to weather through this season of our life. It's our fault. We're the ones that suggested too many things. We also know in three weeks we're going to be on a beach in Mexico.

Just the two of us. Let's get out of sunset. It's like we're shooting for that goal. It's like we're on the marathon, but right up ahead is that finish line for the season. Yeah, and we can take a breath.

That's a huge piece. Having things planned together as couples to look forward to on a regular basis. Whether it's a date night, like you said, do you guys also have like a yearly thing? We try to get away once a quarter overnight just to have an overnight together, but we try and take a trip once a year. And it can be expensive, but early in marriage, we traded with another family babysitting.

So it was, we didn't have to pay for a babysitter. We'd brew a pot of coffee. We'd go down to the river. So you can date inexpensively, but knowing you're going to go on a date, those things, they help you weather the storm. And as the budget man, I kind of realized that we are brothers.

We are brothers. Marilyn's like, if you have it, you have it to spend it. I am good at spending more money. Marilyn's gifted. Marilyn's a gifted, she saves us money by getting us so many good deals all the time.

Yeah, all the time. Somehow the money still goes out and it's saving us. How does that work? It's because we're such givers, good givers that God blesses us. Marilyn's a great, great giver. It's like she just, she's good at keeping it away from us, you know, but, but there was a point you were trying to make.

What was it? It was investing. It's like I saw, like when I go on a day with Marilyn, when I go on a trip with Marilyn, I'm investing in one of the most important things in my life.

That's good. It's not an expense. I mean, one time in the grace of marriage, somebody said, well, that's expensive.

He said, well, you pay more for that in mulch. So it's like, you put money toward what is important. And we tell people, allocate money towards your relationship because the best way to lose 50% of your portfolio is just get divorced.

And I would add this too. If you feel like we don't have the money, we don't have the means to be able to vacation or to take a trip, I would encourage you to pray. We've always been in ministry. We've never made much money, but it's amazing how God will provide these little pockets of money or a place to stay. He's been so faithful because this matters to God too.

Yes. The same here, just things that we would never be able to do that the Lord's opened up. And it's not about spending a lot of money, just spending time together. When we first got married, we didn't have anything.

And we would just, we'd trade babysitting, brew a pot of coffee, go sit by the river for three hours and talk. Our total cost was about 47 cents. But it was rich. And worth it.

It was rich and worth it. There's nothing preventing closeness other than a lack of prioritization and intentionality. We're going to hear more from Dave Wilson here in just a second for a few practical tips on how to make intentionality happen. But first, I'm Shelby Abbott, and you've been listening to David N. Wilson with Brad and Marilyn Rhodes on Family Life Today. Brad and Marilyn have written a book called The Grace Marriage, how the gospel and intentionality transform your relationship. You can get your copy right now by going online to familylifetoday.com or clicking on the link in the show notes. Or feel free to give us a call at 800-358-6329 to request your copy.

Again, that number is 800, F as in family, L as in life, and then the word today. Okay, if you've been to a Weekend to Remember marriage getaway before and you would call yourself an alumni, I have a challenge for you. We want you to join us again for a refreshed Weekend to Remember marriage getaway experience. With new speakers and updated sessions, now is the perfect time to revisit and strengthen your marriage.

You can register by September 16th to enjoy 50% off your registration. You can find a location that suits you right now at familylifetoday.com and just click on the Weekend to Remember banner on the page. Again, that's familylifetoday.com. All right, here's a few practicals from Dave Wilson on how to make intentionality happen in your marriage. If you're doing marriage in community, you've got other marriages that you're doing life with. And if you're not, I'm telling you right now, step one is find a couple or two that are peers. And then you can share your kids like, hey, we're going to go out, we'll watch your kids.

That's another way to do life when you can't afford it. We did that. We just say this is important.

We both agree. We'll watch your kids tonight. You go out.

Amen. Now, coming up tomorrow, Brad and Marilyn Rhodes are back again. And they want you to consider the role of marriage ministries in churches and how to prioritize investing in marriages within your own community. That's coming up tomorrow. We hope you'll join us. On behalf of Dave and Ann Wilson, I'm Shelby Abbott. We'll see you back next time for another edition of Family Life Today. Family Life Today is a donor-supported production of Family Life, a crew ministry helping you pursue the relationships that matter most.