Allowing Grace to Transform Your Marriage (Part 2 of 2)

While we're yet sinners, Christ died for us. And it says, how are we supposed to love one another like that? While, you know, while Marilyn's not a sinner, I'm to die for her. While I'm a sinner, Marilyn's to die for me.

Why? Because our marriage is so much bigger than just us having more happy. Our marriage is about bringing God glory and putting Jesus Christ on display. Well, that's Brad Rhodes, and he's our guest today on Focus on the Family, along with his wife Marilyn. And we're so glad you've joined us. Your host is Focus president and author Jim Daly, and I'm John Fuller. John, we had a great discussion last time. If people missed it, they can get the smartphone app and listen to it that way or go to the website for Focus on the Family.

You give all those details, YouTube, we have it there as well. So go listen to it. It really, to me, it was very insightful about where many marriages are at today. We come in very selfishly, even as the Christian community, because we're born into sin. And we come into this with expectations and we end up in performance-based marriages that are conditional rather than grace marriages, which are, you know, the Lord's way of doing it. And I'm just looking forward to part two of this discussion about the grace marriage. Yeah, and Brad and Marilyn Rhodes have such a big heart for this effort to protect and improve and transform marriages. They started a ministry designed to help local churches strengthen marriages right there in their own communities. That's called Grace Marriage. And they have a book with a similar title, The Grace Marriage, How the Gospel and Intentionality Transform Your Relationship. And as you said, Jim, they shared some great stories last time. And if you missed any of that or want to learn more about the book, give us a call, 800, with the letter A in the word family, or stop by the show notes. Brad and Marilyn, welcome back. Thank you.

So good to have you back. Marilyn, let's go your direction just for the recap. You know, we did talk about the performance-based conditional marriage and then grace marriage. Give us that performance recap.

What does that look like so that the listener or the viewer can feel it if they're in it? Yes. Well, in a performance-based, if Brad's kind to me and responsive to me, then I'll be kind to him and we'll have a good evening together. But if not, then I'm going to withdraw, distance myself. We all bring our personalities to the table.

Some might lash out and fight, but we bring that to the table in a performance-based marriage. But in a grace-based marriage, when Brad walks in and maybe he's not as kind to me, I think, whoa, he's had a tough day. I'm going to take that rescue approach and move towards him rather than that natural response to move away from. Even remind myself of verses like, well, I was a sinner. Christ died for me.

Okay. And right now I'm going to lay down my life for my spouse. It's humility. Humility is the whole key.

I mean, Christ was the ultimate servant. And that's a good recap. You know, we have Hope Restored, which is a marriage intensive. It's been really successful. We're expanding it. We just have property developing in Scottsdale, Arizona, and then down in Texas.

We have Branson in Michigan already up and running, and we lease a building out there in Rome, Georgia. So a lot of couples are looking for help. And the reason I'm bringing this up is there's a question that they ask in the intake process, and that is, do you believe God can work a miracle in your marriage? And if they say yes, then that gives us great hope that there's the possibility of saving that marriage.

If they say no, the probability is quite low. But usually the wife will say something like this, Marilyn, and I think you can identify. Yeah, the Lord's the only one that can help my husband because nobody else would be able to. And that's okay. But you resonate with that statement. Yes. You know, just yeah, God's the only one that's going to be able to change his heart because he's such a rascal.

Right? That's right. But God is a God of reconciliation. And marriage is the opportunity to put that on display. Do you know, let me ask you, Brad, you think about marriage today, if marriage, especially Christian marriage was working really well, not perfectly, but really well, if we were doing the things that you talked about in your book, The Grace Marriage, if we were living from a fruit of the Spirit mentality in our marriages, loving each other well, it should be so attractive the world be going, what do they possess that we don't have because I want a marriage like theirs.

That's the way it should be going. It's powerful. It's how we got in marriage ministry. By God's kindness, we like being married. In the first couple at Accessity Premarital, we said, why us? They said, we want what you have.

That looks fun. And right now, the way we do marriage in our culture, it is broken. We don't spend time on it. We don't work on it. We let life take us over and then we scratch our heads why it doesn't work. So we need a total paradigm shift in how marriage is done.

So when you get married, you talk every day, you date weekly, you both open about issues with one another and say, look, we are a team and we're going to live out a beautiful marriage for our good, the glory of God and our family. And then your point there to work on it, that's the key. I mean, like anything, you got to work at it every day. And it's fun work. I mean, like work is going to dinner and a movie and hanging out with Marilyn, you know, going to walk the river three miles with my best friend.

I mean, marriage works the best work I do because I love spending time with Marilyn. Is it always perfect? No. Do we always get along? No. But would I rather spend time with her than anybody else in the world? Yes.

No, that's good. And I think that attitude is so good. When it comes to marriage, why do we need to ground our identity in Christ? We touched on that last time, but I want to come back for the new listeners and viewers today. I mean, it is so critical because I think of the expectations that we ground ourselves in our identity with the Lord rather than our spouse, expecting our spouse to meet all these needs. But elaborate on that. Jesus is consistent and reliable a hundred percent of the time.

I'm not even close. A lot of times Marilyn needs me and I'm not there like I should. A lot of times I feel like I need Marilyn and she's struggling, not there like I need her. But unless we are relying on Jesus Christ for all our hope, our marriage is going to be on a roller coaster because I'd like to be the perfect husband. Marilyn would love to be the perfect wife, but neither one of us are. But Jesus is the perfect lover of our soul and he's consistent a hundred percent of the time.

So our identity and our fulfillment has to come in from him. And then out of that overflow, love Marilyn and just see the gift of marriage as a blessing. And tell me the byproduct of that, Marilyn, when we have our identity in Christ, how does that translate into our attitude, expectations of our spouse? I think it brings a whole freedom to your marriage that you don't have when you're under performance because that's heavy.

If you're weighing, am I doing enough? If you're measuring yourself, we also have to get this how we have grace from Christ to be able to then offer it to our spouse. But it changes the whole atmosphere in the home when you get grace.

It did in ours. And it also allows you to get over things so much faster. You can have a bad night and laugh about it the next day. And so that is the beauty of grace. We're not holding our sin against each other.

We're not. It's not a jerk license that I'm going to just sit here and offer grace and you can do whatever you want. That's not what grace is. But in the day to day life, when you are in a grace mentality, it it just changes everything.

It changes outcomes because of it. You have a friend, Doug, that made an impact on you. What did Doug share with you that kind of got your attention?

Well, it's really interesting. I was forty three. He was sixty eight. I was driven. I was performance based in my walk with the Lord and everything. And he said, God told me to save you twenty five years of trouble.

Because I see somebody striving, pressured, always trying to do more, always trying to do better. And I'm not going to leave you alone until you rest in Jesus Christ, until you just enjoy the Sabbath rest of Jesus, until you realize you're just unconditionally accepted and can offer that to others. Wow. And he he went after me. He called me a moral narcissist, told me I use the Bible as a self-help guide. I mean, he he stayed with me until when then all of a sudden it's for freedom.

Christ set us free, easy burden, light, yoke, rested souls, Sabbath rest of Christ. All of a sudden that became a reality. It's almost like I heard God say, Brad, you're not OK. And it's OK. I love you.

You're my son. For the first time, I felt like I just breathe. And when that happened, it changed the atmosphere of our home and took our marriage to a new place. Wow, that's powerful. I mean, everybody listening is to go, OK, I want that.

Yes. And I saw it in him. Like when I walk with him, it's like walking with the peace of Christ.

We'd walk in a store and it was like the atmosphere of the store changed. He wasn't pressured. He wasn't rushed. He said, Brad, let me simplify the gospel. Just love the person in front of you and love him.

Wow. Did you guys I mean, it sounds almost like it was simultaneous for you that you both were arriving at this place kind of together. What about the spousal situation where one of them is strongly putting their identity, their hope, their faith, their trust in the Lord, and they're coming at it in a rescue mentality like you've described, Marilyn, and the other is not moving quite the same way. How do you how do you counsel couples that are in that spot? Right.

That's really tough. And we counsel with people like that a lot. So in our first year, God really showed me my hope was in him. And then Brad went to a conference not long after. It was later on our walk that we really got grace and Brad got grace before me. And watching him has really get grace practically and how it changed the atmosphere in our home. God worked on me through that. So really, he got when Doug helped him see what that looks like in action. It was a while of me watching and God moving that in me, but we talked to couples.

They've been doing this for 20 years. Yeah, that's hard, right? Well, in your heart gets cold. It like puts more crust on the heart. So it takes more effort. Right. So that's why you guys to get this in the first year of marriage is actually quite a blessing.

For those that are 20 years in, they got to do a lot of ground work to break that crusty heart. And it's still just going to the Lord. That's the only place that we can then come with a humble spirit seeking to serve rather than be served.

That's the only way to be fueled, especially in that environment. Let's introduce now that idea of intentionality. We haven't talked about that. But you know, the need to be intentional in your marriage. You've referenced it, Brad, you know, you need to be committed, you need to work at it.

But it is that word intentionality is quite accurate, but describe it, fill it in. Why are we lazy about it? Like me on said earlier, we just think our marriage just work with this emotion that just drives us toward one another. And it just should just go well.

And that's not the way anything goes, your, your car doesn't go well, unless you maintain it consistently garden, it doesn't matter what it is. Yeah, that's very true. I mean, the probably the best thing we've done for our marriage, other than staying close to Christ is we want to date once a week, and we have the last 26 years.

Yeah. And intentionality is saying, look, we're going to have a good marriage, we're going to fight for it, we're going to stiff on the world, we're going to make time for it, we're going to do marriage differently than the world does marriage, and we're going to experience marriage differently than the world experiences marriage. But it takes intentionality. folks in the family doesn't do these great things just by accident.

A lot of work goes into it. And Marilyn has enjoyment of one another, it's because we, we make ourselves talk, we make ourselves spend time together, and we're intentional with it. Now, let me ask you this, especially for guys, if I could point to our direction, the guys that are listening, if that intentionality is not present, what does that problem that mental process look like for the guy, it's the career, it's staying late at the office, it's you should respect me, because I'm providing, I'm kind of filling those blanks. But is that what what you usually see in the defensive husband?

Yeah, absolutely. And I heard one author, I'm not sure which one that said, if anything comes ahead of your marriage, other than Jesus, your marriage will slowly die. And whether that's work, whether that's ministry, whether that's exercise, you've got to sign marriage is the most important horizontal relationship. For us, when we got married, the law practice came ahead of Marilyn. And how'd that go for me?

Poor. So the thing is putting your marriage where it belongs, and given your marriage off the top time, or basically, we're going to schedule our life around our marriage, not our marriage around our life, because most marriages just get fatigued leftovers, they wonder why they struggle so much to enjoy one another. But if you say, look, my marriage is important, I'm going to time block time and just spend time with and enjoy my spouse.

Over time, you'll find yourself wanting to spend time there. Marilyn, let me let me cut a little closer to the issue with kids. Because one of the things we talked about is maintaining a marriage centric marriage, as opposed to a kid centric marriage. And people go, oh, yeah, yeah, but it's hard to do. Oh, we're in a child centered culture.

Yeah. And the demand is demand is high. And we have five children. So we've experienced that.

I mean, there are times that going on a date felt like climbing a mountain to get out the door, like I was in tears, and I'm thinking this is so hard. But our marriages, it's important, it's worth it. And one of the best things I can do for our kids is love their dad well, rather than be so focused on them that he doesn't get anything from it. But we life with technology and our phones. I mean, they're ever in front of us, there's always something pressing, we have to put the technology down. It's okay for our kids. If we miss an event. That's actually a good example to them.

If they say, Hey, my parents, they love each other. And this is our priority. Yeah, no, it's good.

I think it's great. But it is intentionality. I'm gonna keep punching that word. And it's hard. It's hard. And there are dates that aren't great. And we've had stretches through crisis where it's not been fun. It's like our relationship with Christ. Not every time we walk away from a quiet time, do we feel like this great benefit. But over the long haul, if I'm pursuing the Lord for 20 years, our relationships getting sweeter and sweeter.

And so I even say a bad dates better than no date at all, because you're in pursuit of your spouse. And there's lack of intentionality is what is resulted largely in the decline of marriage. There's a lack of intentionality in the church. We're according communion of 72% of churches have no marriage ministry, then there's a lack of intentionality with marriage in the home.

So if you don't intentionally take care of something, you leave a space open, Satan can have a field day in it. And we've just watched it. And it's been tragic.

But the good news is it can change. Every church can have a marriage ministry. And it can become standard operating procedure for marriages to date and to talk and to enjoy and to pursue. This is just how you do it when you get married. Yeah. You mentioned personality and the overlay that that has. And you mentioned the book, an example of throwing a surprise birthday party for Marilyn, I think you and Jean are two peas in a pod.

Because she would have the same reaction. Right. It was awful. But I think Brad and I lied.

Like, what more can I say that I love you than throw you a surprise party? It took a lot of effort. And you're going, I don't want that. But what happened? It fell apart. Oh, we drove up and they looked at me like, I was like, yeah, it was not good. It was not good. And it was proud of it until you got to the parking lot. We had people driving, nothing.

Marilyn likes less than to put anybody out. So people driving in from three hours to her party, it was just like putting her through an evening of pain and torture. I mean, so yeah, that feeling was like, oh my goodness. He never gave me another one. Thankfully, even when I turned 50, I'm like, you know, the drill here. Don't do that. That's so funny.

But it, but it points to knowing your spouse well and to not do the things that would make them uncomfortable. And it's trial and error. You don't get discouraged.

So just keep trying. Yeah. Okay.

So here's my dilemma and jeans. She listens to every show. So I know she's listening right now, but you know, so I thought about the girl, she has two girlfriends from elementary school and they see each other once or twice a year. And so those two friends wanted to surprise her and come out to Colorado Springs. She hates surprises.

And I know this. So now I have too much knowledge because I know these two girls, they've called me and said, Hey, are you guys going to be in town on this weekend? And we'd like to fly out and swoop Jean out of the house and take her off for a weekend out there in Colorado. And I'm like, oh yeah, we're going to be here. And then now don't say anything to her. I'm going, uh, it might be better if I say something. No, no, no, no. Don't say anything. And I was in a pickle.

So I did spill the beans and they had a wonderful weekend together, but I knew it would be far better if they showed up without, without her knowing she would have been, what were you all thinking? Probably like you. Yes. Right.

Don't do this to me. So I mean, you did it super well, but I don't know about that. You considered her because some spouses would prefer to know and anticipate and be ready. Some like the surprise piece. Jean and Marilyn seemed to not be big on the surprise piece. Very practical.

I need to be packed before they show up right now. It's all good. How do we love our spouses through knowledge and action like that? We're talking about it, but be, maybe elaborate a bit more on that. Love and action, love and action.

Yeah. It's just paying attention. I mean, you have an opportunity to be an expert love of your spouse because like I'm with Marilyn every single day.

And if I paid close attention, I know exactly what she likes, what she doesn't like, and then have an opportunity to hit the target. Well, so if you grow in knowledge and then you act on it, it's amazing what it does for a marriage and how it puts the love of Christ on display. A lot of us just settle under this norm.

We can tolerate and don't take advantage of the opportunity to really learn. And it's unfortunate crisis in a grace can be an issue. And I believe your, one of your daughters had a health scare. What happened and how did that put your grace marriage and to focus?

Yes. One of our daughters had a grand mal seizure. I thought she was dying in my arms.

It was the end of her fifth grade year and I had never seen one before. And so it was, it was intense at the time. We also had a newborn and another one of our children, I was just learning, had issues in school. So we're going through testing and having things done and it undid me.

Yeah. I was sleeping with my daughter and my phone in my hand in case I needed to call 911 again. And we weren't getting clear answers as to what caused it or clear diagnosis. And that was a crisis year. And I was a mess. And talk about crying is a theme here. You can tell I'm one with tears. But we went on a date every week and I was trying to hold it together in front of all the kids, but we would walk out the door and the tears would just start rolling.

Those weren't fun dates, but they were Brad in that year. He really listened and tried to love me and I did not have anything to offer. I was depressed. I was anxious.

I would go on. I mean, I literally my just near panic attacks. And it was, it was all I could do to get through the day.

Yeah. And I so appreciate that boldness of just sharing that because I can hear couples who are struggling with external things that deeply affect them. And they're going, Oh, this all sounds great.

It's nice that you guys have that wonderful marriage, but you don't know what we're dealing with. So that, I mean, that's real. It was intense. And we've had a few different years where life has thrown hard things like that. But that year, about a year in, I, the Lord lifted the clouds and I called Brad and I said, I'm actually happy today. I forgot what happy felt like.

And I said, thank you that you just loved me and didn't tell me all the things I should be doing because he could have told me, you need to be in the word more. You need to have more faith. You need to be praying more. You're, you're getting up late. Like the kids are walking into waking home. You need to get out of bed.

We have to go to school. Like it wasn't pretty well, old machine mornings and I'm getting ready for school with five kids when I'm depressed. And I said, if you had told me all those things I needed to do, you would have been right. And it would have buried me, but you just loving me and seeking to serve, helped me out of the pit. I mean, the Lord used him to help me out of the pit rather than make me feel condemned in it.

Well, that's so powerful. How did you in that environment? I mean, it was a year you said right before you felt kind of getting back to normal. How do you keep your hope and your eye on the idea that it will get better? Cause it must feel like it will never get better.

Right. I don't know that I've felt like it was going to get better. I just was so overwhelmed. It's just slowly. Um, the Lord helped me out of that. Well back to intentional consistency, I would add bread. Were there moments where you wondered, is this the way it's going to be?

Yeah, we didn't have any reason to believe it was ever going to get better. How do you, how do you maintain during that? It's just, I love Marilyn and I really thought I, I want to be the guy to help her.

I want to be that dude. So I really considered a privilege, not a burden. I mean, she had nothing to give me. And that's back to the grace base. If it's a performance based marriage where it's, well, I'm not getting anything. It's going to break down.

And every marriage hits that crisis point where one of the two spouses get to a point where they're just at the end of themselves and have nothing to give. So I mean, I remember thinking I'm in the death do his part and I love Marilyn. Not cause what I get from Marilyn. I just love Marilyn and I know Marilyn doesn't love me because she gets from me because there's stretches.

She doesn't get much from me, but she just loves me. And that's the beauty of the gospel. God just loves Brad. God just loves Marilyn and says, Hey, love each other. Like I love you. So why do we struggle feeling that even with the Lord?

Well, I think a couple of things. When we're kind of taught the live, somehow this world's going to satisfy us and it's like pouring water through and that, you know, so we said, marriage is up for failure because we asked for things that can never give only Jesus Christ can truly satisfy me. And even though sometimes it doesn't feel like God's coming through, you know, because like when I was in that point of severe anxiety, I know God is true. And he, and he is bigger than my emotion. He's bigger than my emotion. I have to live on truth, not emotion.

We're right at the end. I think Marilyn, it's the right to throw this question your direction because so many women are struggling. I mean, men struggle too, but we tend to have, I don't know, a little more tolerance.

We're not as, um, we don't require quite the emotional. Maybe we have other needs, but so many women struggle in the marriage that isolation, the loneliness, is this ever going to get better? What's happening? So let me give you that opportunity to speak to the troubled wife who is in the pit of despair, who doesn't see the light at the end of the tunnel.

What hope do you have for her today? I would say seek help, seek out help. I did have someone who was pouring into me during that year who was loving on me and counseling me. So get help. You know, Brad and I have, when we've been in harder spaces, sought outside counsel.

It's so important. And like you said, hope restored. It's so important to acknowledge that you have needs and you need help, especially if you're in that place, if it is, um, in the day to day struggles of life, but marriage hasn't delivered what you thought it would be kind of like Brad and I are sharing here.

There's not the huge issues that need to be addressed. Then if you will be fueled by the Lord, I mean, Christ came to give life life to the full, not in the easy Christ. Life wasn't easy and our lives are not going to be easy, but we can have life to the full if we go to him and say, okay, show me how you want me to love my spouse today. What does that look like to creatively love the person that I've committed till death do us part and watch what the Lord's going to do. That's a great challenge to wake up every morning and say that to yourself, you know, in your quiet time with the Lord. Well, this has been great.

Brad and Marilyn, how wonderful. I so appreciate your, again, your vulnerability. It's, it's kind of tough to talk about marriage and what was happening years ago and how far you've come, but it's what many of us live. You know, if not all of us, we're either in that early stage of we're in trouble or the better stage of the Lord has answered our prayers and everything in between.

So thanks for being here today. I hope you will get a copy of this great book, the grace marriage, especially if you're struggling. We want to put this into your hands. So if you can make a donation of any amount, we'll send the book as our way of saying thank you. If you're a pastor, consider what Brad said a moment ago, maybe you should start a marriage ministry and maybe those around you should actually assist you in doing that. So it's not one more thing on your plate, but let your church be a pro marriage church and talk about things and do the workshops, help equip people to have the best marriage they can have. And I think if a church concentrate on that, they're going to have new attendees coming all the time because people want a good marriage, even non-believers. That's what they're hoping for.

And they just need to be equipped spiritually to do that. So hopefully it's a win, win, win, right? So get a copy of the book, get ahold of us. If you can do that monthly, that's great. And if you need hope restored, give us a call and we can give you more details.

Yeah. We'll link over to Brad and Marilyn's ministry so you can learn more about what they've been doing with churches. And certainly we welcome your donations and requests for this book, the grace marriage. And we'd be more than happy to tell you about our hope restored marriage intensives. We're phone call away.

It's 800, the letter A and the word family, or stop by the show notes for all the details. And on behalf of Jim Daly and the entire team, thanks for joining us today for Focus on the Family. I'm John Fuller inviting you back as we once again, help you and your family thrive in Christ. As a parent, it's easy to find myself sitting back seat to my kids in the back seat. It's tough to be a step ahead and full honesty. I'm pretty hard on myself when that happens, but I've found practice makes parent a podcast from focus on the family hosted by Dr. Danny Huerta and Rebecca St. James. It helps me be more intentional and not feel alone when things get tough. Everything they share is practical and well practiced and I can use it right away. Listen to practice makes parent wherever you get your podcasts.