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6 Ways to Building Trust in Relationships: Bryan & Stephanie Carter

Family Life Today / Dave & Ann Wilson, Bob Lepine
The Truth Network Radio
September 23, 2024 5:15 am

6 Ways to Building Trust in Relationships: Bryan & Stephanie Carter

Family Life Today / Dave & Ann Wilson, Bob Lepine

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September 23, 2024 5:15 am

Trust takes ongoing effort. So how do you work at building trust in relationships—especially marriage? Bryan and Stephanie Carter offer 6 strategies in this special episode, presented by Dave and Ann Wilson and recorded on FamilyLife's "Love Like You Mean It" Cruise!

Show Notes and Resources

Connect with Bryan Carter and catch more of his thoughts at concorddallas.org/meet-our-pastor, and on Instagram @mrbryanlcarter.

Want to hear more episodes by Bryan and Stephanie Carter, listen here!

Join us aboard the Love Like You Mean It Marriage Cruise from February 8-15 for an exclusive journey dedicated to strengthening your marriage.

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Building Trust In Relationships
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Trust is so critical to your relationship that when you have trust in your marriage, it gives you a foundation to build and build and build on. It's the reality of marriage. Marriage, healthy relationships are founded on trust. 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. All right, I got a question for you. Have you ever done a trust fall? I don't know if you have. Yeah, I think I was in college with Campus Crusade for Christ, and we did a trust fall.

Really? It's part of our, yes, the analogy was, can you fall? Well, some of our listeners don't even know what a trust fall is.

I guess you better explain that. Yeah, it's where you stand. I did it actually from the stage at our church and fell backwards off the stage, which was seven or eight feet, and about six or seven people caught me. But that moment when you just start to fall, you have to trust that someone's back there to catch you. In my case, a whole bunch of people. In my case, the analogy was, Jesus is always there to catch you. I can trust Jesus, but I don't always trust people to catch me. And it was scary, wasn't it? I forgot that you did that off the stage. It is scary.

I mean, it's like, it's not going to be scary, but the second your body is free flowing through the air, you're like, they better be there. What's this have to do with where we're going today? Well, today we're going to hear a talk from the Love Like You Made a Cruise from last February, where Brian and Stephanie Carter gave a talk about marriage, about trust. And for those of you who don't know, Brian is the chairman of our Family Life Board and also a pastor of Concord Church in Dallas for over 20 years.

And he and Stephanie gave a talk on the cruise about trust and their marriage. And before we get there, just let me say, you don't want to miss next year's cruise. It's in February and we'd love to have you there. You can sign up and hear talks like this and be in the sun and relax. And it's a phenomenal week.

Go to familylifetoday.com and sign up. And we'll see you on this cruise and you'll hear talks like this. So we are super excited to spend some time with you for this morning devotional. If you have your Bibles, Proverbs chapter 12, verse 22, Proverbs 12, verse 22. The Lord detests line lips, but He delights in people who are trustworthy. The Lord detests line lips, but He delights in people who are trustworthy. Really what we want to talk about today is building trust in your marriage.

Right? Building trust in your marriage. I don't know if you've ever been on those retreats with your staff or with your team. And when you do the retreat, sometimes you go through that exercise where they have one person stand up. And when they stand up, the team is behind them. And then that person has to fall backward, but they have to trust that the team is going to catch them.

Right? It's this trust exercise. And what we've discovered, friends, that your marriage is just like that. That you are constantly going through trust exercises to be able to discover, can I really trust the one that God has given me?

It's the reality of marriage. Marriage, healthy relationships are founded on trust. What this verse says is that trustworthy people, God delights in them.

But not only does God delight in them, but also they delight in one another. And trust, there are several key ideas, true principle we want to give you to be able to help you to discover how to build trust in your relationship. Trust comes in a lot of different stages. I remember when we got married, my wife had to trust me in so many different areas. She had to figure out, could she trust me with her heart? Could she trust me with her feelings? Could she trust me with the kids? She had to figure out if she left, would I be able to manage the kids for her trips away?

She would text me and call me and say, are they okay? And I say, listen, how long before you come back? Because I can only be trusted about 30 minutes with these kids.

All right? But trust is so important, right? It's can I trust you with my past, right? Can I trust you with my secrets, with my struggles? Can I trust you with my weaknesses?

Can I trust you with my dreams that when I tell you the dreams and the things that God is showing me, can I trust you in my weaknesses and in my strengths? Trust is so critical to your relationship that when you have trust in your marriage, it gives you a foundation to build and build and build on. So what we want to do today is kind of talk about what are some key areas, how do you build trust in your marriage? And after that, we're going to talk about some trust breakers. And then we're going to conclude our time talking about how you rebuild trust. So my wife, she's going to talk first about one of the key trust builders. Okay, so one of our first trust builders is be honest and authentic. So be honest and authentic.

So if you look at Ephesians chapter four, verse one, and it says, as a prisoner for the Lord, then I urge you to live a life worthy of the calling you have received. Be completely humble and gentle. Be patient, bearing with one another in love.

Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace. I can recall a time I'd just gotten back. This was last year I was able to go on a mission trip to Ukraine just to visit and love on some of the refugees from Ukraine and get back from this trip. I'm completely exhausted. And so my husband had planned for us to go to Weaken to Remember. How many have been to Weaken to Remember?

Amen, yes. I just wasn't feeling Weaken to Remember. I was exhausted. And so I asked him, I said, babe, I'm really tired. I've just been on a flight.

I'm just really exhausted. Can we not go? No, I said, do you really want to go? And he was like, no, no, no, it's okay. We don't have to go.

And so I was like, okay, good, we're done. Then Weaken to Remember happens. And he goes, man, really wanted to go to Weaken to Remember.

I wish we had gone to Weaken to Remember. And I looked at him and I said, babe, if you would have told me, I asked you and you said, no, we don't have to go. And in that moment, I kept thinking to myself, and we talked about it later, I said, babe, sometimes you do that. You will not tell me your true feelings or how you really feel about something. And I need you to be honest with me. I need you to say, no, Stephanie, we need to go on this trip.

And so we learned a valuable lesson. We have to be honest and authentic when there's something that one of us desires. And then, because I let him know, I said, were you afraid that I was just gonna be like, absolutely not, I do not want to go.

I do not want to go, because it is a marriage conference. I just thought you were just being very considerate. So tell the truth, be real, be sincere, be totally honest. Don't pretend to be something that you're not.

All right, don't pretend to be something that you're not. And then also be consistent. The one thing that I can say, the reason that I fell in love with him, we met, I went to the University of Oklahoma. He went to Oklahoma State.

I know rivalry, we always dominate, sooners go. But anyway, the thing that I loved about him and what drew me to him was when he said he was going to do something, he did it. So when we were dating, if he said he was gonna call, he called.

If he said we were going out, we were going out. So it's that consistency and that honesty that I truly appreciated and that you have to have in your marriage. So trust builders, number one, be honest and authentic. Your honesty and your authenticity to one another helps build trust. Number two is to honor your commitments. Honor your commitments. It's in Matthew 5 and 37 where Jesus will say these words, let your yes be yes and your no bu no. It's this idea that part of how your faith is lived out is by honoring the word that you give to your spouse and being a man, a woman of integrity.

It's incredibly important, right? It sounds real simple, but every time you do and honor the commitment you made to your spouse, it builds credibility, right? Every time you say, when they ask, did you pay the bill? And you paid the bill, that adds credibility to your relationship and you'll be able to trust you with money, right? Every time they say, hey, are you gonna pick the kids up?

Are you gonna do this? Every time you honor that, it builds trust in the relationship. We've had three kids and trying to manage everybody's schedule, trying to keep up with drop off and picks up and games and all that kind of stuff, but communicating and when we communicate, then saying, okay, then make sure I do my role means everything. So whether it's the kids or whether it's finances or whether it's the goal we've agreed on, all those things, honoring your commitments, right, are so important because they help build trust. There are even some commitments like, are we going to have sex tonight? And she might say yes. And then when 10 o'clock comes on 9 p.m., I will have to remind her, remember what you said earlier today.

You said, let's honor our commitments. You remember that, don't you remember that? Isn't that crazy about men? Men don't remember anything else. They don't remember to pick up the kids.

They just say somehow they have this mind triggered for that one commitment, but honoring our commitments, it builds trust and helps us stay connected. But see, if you had done the list. If I had done the list. If you had taken the trash out.

Wow. If you had changed the smoke alarm. If I had done that. Well. That would have helped the other.

It would have helped me relax. That's right. All right, okay.

I remember that. Take that down, brothers. Write that down, men in the room.

If you honor those commitments, she'll be ready for the other commitments. You obey those kids? Yeah, okay, go on. All right. All right, let's look at the next one. Number three, be dependable and responsible.

This is yours. Be dependable and responsible. Oh, I just touched on that. You helped me.

Yes, all right. So be dependable and responsible. All right, so Ecclesiastes chapter four, verse nine says, two are better than one, all right, because they have a good return for their labor.

If either of them falls down, one can help the other up, but pity anyone who falls and has no one to help them up. You know, like he said, when we are in that season of kids and our kids were doing all that, if you have kids or grandkids who have travel sports and all that, you already know what type of commitment that can be and just how crazy the schedule is. But when we communicated, are you going to go here?

Are you going to pick up here? It's the trust that builds upon that. But I think about how sometimes that it helps me and it just relaxes me that I can count on you and that it's a comfort for both of us. And I think if your spouse is with you, just look at them and say, I love that I can count on you. I love that I can depend on you. I love that when I'm having a hard day, I know when I get home, this is our safe place. It is a safe place that I can walk in. Like I said, we serve in ministry.

We've been serving in ministry together at the same church for 20 years. And I try and make our home, when he comes home, he's home. And it is a safe place. And I think for our children, even when your grandchildren come home or your children come back home, or if your children still are there, I heard the adult children still come back. So that's why you're on this cruise now.

But anyway, to escape them. But anyway, I love that with our marriage comes a dependence on each other, but also a dependence on Christ in our marriage as well. First of all, you're getting help right now, and we're thankful that you're listening. But we also wanna share one of our favorite resources. It's a free guide that's filled with helpful marriage wisdom from real life couples who've been where you are. And you can grab your free copy today at familylife.com slash marriage help. That's familylife.com slash marriage help. You're listening to Family Life today, and we've been listening to Brian and Stephanie Carter. And I love what she said, because I think being married, I have had to lean on and trust Jesus more than ever. Yeah, I mean, I think one of the building blocks of marriage is trust. And we're gonna get into it even more. Yeah, let's go back. This is them on the Love Light community cruise, and we're only halfway through, so let's go back and hear what Brian and Stephanie challenged us all with in the area of trust.

Here's number four. The fourth way we build trust is by protecting our relationship. Protecting our relationship.

We see this model in Matthew chapter one around verse 18 when Mary and Joseph are in a relationship, and Joseph finds out that Mary is pregnant with child. And Joseph, instead of exposing her, the Bible says that he thinks about how to divorce her or put away privately, right? He's trying to protect her. He's trying to protect the relationship. And one of the things that couples must understand is the value in protecting your relationship. It simply means that you want the best for your relationship, for your marriage. And one of the mistakes so many couples make is that they expose their relationship to people that may not always have their best interests in mind. It's the spouse that tells their family all about the negative that their spouse does and then wants their spouse to come to the family functions and wonders why everybody's looking at them a little bit different. Yeah, there you go.

There she go, right? It's this intent. Or the spouse sometimes exposes so much of the relationship on social media that everybody knows everything about their situation. And so there is value in protecting your relationship, guarding your relationship, dealing with some things privately. It doesn't mean you don't need wise counsel. You shouldn't have significant friends that are in your circle. But it does mean that your relationships need some type of protection. Because here's the deal. Can I trust you that when I tell you what I tell you, it won't end up other places, right? So protecting the relationship. Here's the next one, time, time, time. All right, so time.

I love the season that we're in right now. Our kids are older. They're kind of independent, but they're not really independent. But two of them are out. One is still here. Where are my empty nesters? Where are my empty nesters?

Wave your hands. Come on, empty nesters. I'm trying to get where you are. I'm trying to get there. But the cool thing about being an empty nester, you're able to look back at what God has done in your family, what he's done in your marriage, what he's done in every season of your job.

Some of you, where are my retirees at? Yes, to look at where God has brought you from, from the time you started that job or maybe you started that business to where God has you now, it's time. But also, when you're facing anything new, you can always look back.

And that's what I love. I can look back and say, you know what, God, you saw me through this season. You saw me through the terrible twos. You saw me through middle school where they hated me. You saw me through high school where they were like, oh, you were right. You saw me through college where they're like, thank you. Now you've seen me through grandparents' stage. I'm not ready for that yet.

But grandparents' stage, now you're seeing me through just retirement. But Lord, you carried me through that. And the blessing behind that is it took time. And sometimes we live in this society where everything is so instant, where we expect everything just to happen. But I love that with our marriage and every season, you just see God's faithfulness. God is using time to build trust.

Here's the last one. The last way you build trust is to admit mistakes. Admit mistakes. Will you just tell your spouse, I'm sorry. Just tell, you don't even, you don't know what it's for. Just right now, just tell your spouse, I'm sorry.

You're putting some credit in the bank. Just say, I'm sorry, just I'm sorry. I don't even know what I did, but I'm sorry.

You need to become masters with those two words, I'm sorry. Or I repent. Your ability to repent both to God and to each other builds trust in your relationships. You can't build trust with someone that's always right. It is admitting my mistakes that create room for me or for the spouse to trust you even more, right?

So admitting my mistakes, admitting my mistakes, admitting my mistakes. I want to use some time to talk a little bit about, and some of these we've mentioned, but we wanna talk now, move from all of those principles we just gave you are all about building trust. So you have these trust builders, but you also have trust breakers. And trust breakers, can I sum it up this way in terms of what trust breakers are?

Trust breakers are basically, anytime there's sin in a relationship, it breaks trust, right? It doesn't make a difference whether it's lies or dishonesty or pride or perfection or whether it's excuses. The best model is what we see in Genesis 2 and 3. Genesis 1, chapter 2, God creates a perfect world.

He puts Adam and Eve in it and they are there. But then as soon as sin shows up, it breaks the trust. It breaks the trust with God.

It breaks the trust between the two of them. So anytime sin shows up in our relationship, it breaks trust. And then we must then move to the final step, which is really trust rebuilders. How do we rebuild trust in a relationship?

Just a few quick things and then we're done. The first thing is to confess our sins. Whenever one of us has sinned against each other, inevitably, I will hurt her or she will hurt me. Inevitably, we're gonna miss the mark.

I will miss an expectation or she will miss an expectation. It's in that moment that I must, first of all, confess our sins to God. It is our confession of God and recognition of God that then gives us the pathway to rebuild. The second thing I must do is to commit to God and say, God, listen, I know I can't be trustworthy without you, I cannot honor the relationship as the husband or the wife without you. And then the next piece is to change our actions. If I've made a mistake and I didn't honor commitment before, then now God helped me to honor that more faithfully in this space and then from there, we can begin to rebuild the relationship.

It's a process. None of us arrives there by overnight, but all of this is a process for us to build and cultivate and strengthen the trust that we desperately need to build long-lasting relationships. No relationship lasts long without trust, but the more we cultivate it, the more we rebuild it, the more we strengthen it, the stronger and the stronger our relationships can become. You're listening to Family Life Today and we've been listening to Brian and Stephanie Carter on the Love Like You Mean It cruise talk about trust in marriage. And I tell you what, what they were talking about there at the end, I think is so critical to a marriage. If you have a secret and you have never shared that with your spouse or maybe with anybody and that secret comes out, trust is gone in a second. It takes days, months, years to build trust and it can be gone just like that. So when they were talking at the end there about, trust is built when you confess sins to one another, that's a scary thing to do. You don't want anybody to know, but if you have a secret and you haven't told your spouse, you are destroying trust. But when you do speak it, you build trust, am I right? I've talked to so many wives that their husbands have been caught in a secret. And wives get caught too, not just husbands. I know, but I talk to wives more than I talk to husbands. But I'm saying what they've told me is, if they would have just told me, I could have dealt with that, the secret.

But now I don't know if I trust him because he never did. Like, I can take your secret. I can take your secret sin, maybe.

I can trust it with Jesus, but I just wanna know all of you. But I think that's a hard thing to come and share our secrets because we don't know if we'll be rejected. What if you are rejected? What if the secret's an affair? I mean, I think you can be rejected for a while and you might be forever. But I do know that as it's exposed, we confess and we repent.

Now we have something to work with. It may work out and it may not work out, but there's a lot of work to be done. Yeah, and I guess we're saying, after listening to Brian and Stephanie Carter, you gotta have trust in your marriage. You wanna build trust. And I guess I'm saying if you're a husband or a wife and you've got some secret, I don't think you wanna hear this, but I think today's the day you've gotta commit to God, which they talked about at the end there.

And one of the change actions would be, I'm not gonna live with the secret anymore. I'm gonna tell a buddy. Like, if I'm a guy, I tell another guy. If I'm a woman, I tell another woman. And I think I need to tell my spouse and trust God to help us make it through this valley and build trust.

I don't know who's specifically listening right now, but I think this could be God speaking to you to say, okay, you've held this for so long. You want trust in your marriage? You can't have it with a secret.

Today's the day. And we know this. When you are gonna give your spouse and you're sharing something really hard that's gonna hurt them, I know that you could be thinking, I'm gonna protect them. I'm not telling them. Yes, because this is gonna hurt them. It's gonna harm them. They're gonna be shattered by it. What would you say to the spouse that's like, I've already hurt them enough. I'm not gonna tell them this because it will shatter them. You gotta choose your hurt. You're already hurting them. So you wanna build trust.

You wanna be honest. It's time to go there and trust God to keep you together and make your marriage even stronger. We know many couples who have told their secrets to one another and they are in a better place now because they feel they can be trusted.

It's no longer a secret. Yeah, and I would say confess to God, repent to God, talk to God about it for the timing, how you're gonna do it, the place, all of that, but then take the step. All right, we got pretty heavy there at the end of Brian and Stephanie's talk, but I think it's where God wants us to go. And I would just encourage you, boy, if you wanna hear more talks like that, you gotta be with us next year on the water, on the boat, on the Love Like You Mean It cruise. Just go to familylifetoday.com and sign up now.

And let us add this too. I think it's really important to bring a trusted friend, a pastor, a counselor, maybe someone that's mentoring you and bring them into the picture. And a lot of times when you're confessing some of these big things, you need a third party in there with you and just to guide you, to pray with you, to pray over you. I think that's really important. I'm Shelby Abbott, and you've been listening to Dave and Anne Wilson with Brian and Stephanie Carter on Family Life Today.

A time that you heard today with the Carters is from the Love Like You Mean It marriage cruise. And it's just a fabulous time to really connect with your spouse and learn more about God and the world around you. And I think that's really important. And I think that's really important. And I think that's really important.

Connect with your spouse and learn more about God in the process, grow closer to Him and one another. And the cool thing is the Wilsons are gonna be there. They're gonna be there on the Love Like You Mean It cruise this year. It's happening from February 8th through the 15th. And you can head over, like Dave said, to familylifetoday.com. Click on the banner to sign up and secure your spot for the Love Like You Mean It marriage cruise in 2025.

Book now before September 30th, and you get to save $400 per stateroom. Again, visit familylifetoday.com and click on the Love Like You Mean It banner to secure your stateroom today. Now tomorrow, we're gonna hear more from the Love Like You Mean It marriage cruise last year where Dane Ortlund is gonna explore the power of biblical encouragement within your marriage. That's tomorrow. We hope you'll join us. On behalf of David Ann Wilson, I'm Shelby Abbott. We'll see you back next time for another edition of Family Life Today. We'll see you next time.
Whisper: medium.en / 2024-09-23 06:48:22 / 2024-09-23 07:00:02 / 12

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