C (1:44)

Pray that our kids grow up and get married. And wherever you are in that journey, as Jim said, we're here. And the book by Scott Kadirsha that we're going to cover today is called ready or 12 conversations every couple Needs to have Before Marriage. Scott is the marriage and family pastor at Harris Creek Baptist Church in Waco, Texas. This book is available to you. Stop by the Show Notes to find out more or give us a call. 800 the letter A in the word family.

D (2:12)

Scott, welcome to the program.

B (2:14)

So good to be here with you guys. Thanks for having me.

D (2:16)

I like this Ready or cannot. That's really fun. You know, why is it important to Consider deeply the person you might be marrying.

B (2:28)

Well, I mean, the decision on who you marry affects everything in your life, right? I mean, this is. Apart from whether or not you're going to follow Jesus. This is probably the second most important decision you're ever going to make.

D (2:39)

Now there's some kind of elixir that people have in their 20s where they don't really stop to do this and they're going to wake up possibly and they're either going to say, this was so right, or my goodness, what have I done?

B (2:54)

Yes. This decision affects, I've heard it said, affects 90 to 95% of your joy in life or your misery in life. Think of that comes from this one decision. Wow.

A (3:04)

Tell us about your path and your journey with Kristen.

D (3:07)

Is that your wife's name?

B (3:08)

Yeah. Yes.

D (3:09)

So that may have been a few years ago. How long you been married?

B (3:11)

Yeah, we actually got married the week of 9 11. So that was a Tuesday in 2001. We got married four days after that. Wow. September 15th, 2001. And she's incredible. So we're at 23 plus years of marriage now. I was actually her student. So in a former career I was a physical therapist. And when you go through PT school, you do these two month rotations at hospitals. And I got assigned to be Kristen's student in a hospital. Candidly, I was not walking with Jesus at that point, but I saw her and I said, she's the one. She's incredible. She's beautiful, confident, really good at what she does. It took her a while to get with the program with me. She didn't have those same feelings.

D (3:54)

We're going like, she has really nice joints. As a PT guy, you know, you probably got. Look at the shoulder joint.

B (4:00)

Yeah. Everything about her was great. And we actually started hanging out together. We were going to church together. We had a group of seven or eight friends, men and women, who all started hanging out with one another. I trusted in Christ as my savior in 1998 and we kept hanging out with one another. I finally convinced her to go out with me on a date and it didn't go very well. We were kind of on and off for about a year and it was really unhealthy. We crossed boundaries emotionally and physically and candidly, it was kind of a miserable relationship. And largely the way that we dated one another was really the motive for why I wanted to write a book about this. I didn't want people to do the same things I did. I don't want my future kids to repeat the patterns that we had in our relationship. And so we dated on and off, we broke up and it was the best thing. We actually had friends come around us and tell us they both thought we needed to end the relationship and so we broke up. And those are good friends, really good friends.

A (5:03)

You talk in the book about this.

D (5:04)

Green, yellow, red light system. I mean, that applies to so many.

A (5:08)

Things in life, like getting a ticket.

D (5:09)

When was the last time you got a ticket, John? Confession.

C (5:12)

You know, it's been, I think about 40 years. At least.

D (5:16)

40.

B (5:16)

Yeah.

D (5:16)

Okay, you beat me by like 30 now.

C (5:18)

Watch on the way home tonight.

D (5:20)

Anyway, back to reality. So how do you apply that stoplight to premarital situations?

B (5:26)

Yeah, real simple, right? I mean, a green light is go, you're going to move forward. Everyone's excited, you're excited, your significant other is excited. It's like all things are moving forward. A red light is really a gift for a couple. If you are dating and you get a red light, that means you need to stop, get out of the relationship, head different directions. It's painful in the moment when you break up, but what a gift. Long term despair.

D (5:50)

What are those red lights? Looks like long term misery.

B (5:51)

Yeah, it could be that one. The most obvious one would be if you're not aligned on your views of Jesus, if you're unequally yoked, it could be the inability to communicate and manage, resolve conflict. Everyone's going to scrap and have arguments. I mean, we all do with our spouses, but this is the inability to resolve it. Or it just keeps happening over and over again. It could be there's an addiction that's not addressed. And so, you know, whether it's alcohol, drugs, pornography, anything that just leads to these continual problems, it could be that family and friends really oppose the relationship. And so, you know, not everyone may be in favor of you moving forward, but if everyone is against it, that's a really good sign that maybe it's time to end this thing and head in different directions.

D (6:38)

Difficult for a person in a relationship to recognize that. I mean, if everybody's saying to you, you better get your eyes wide open. I don't think this is good. And you hear that from several people.

A (6:49)

How do you miss that?

B (6:50)

Yeah, I think it's honestly really easy to do it if you are so in love, if you have all the feelings and you are enjoying being with one another. And candidly, a lot of couples are crossing boundaries physically, they're sexually active. And so even if all the warning signs say no and everyone is telling them no. If they're so used to that pattern of enjoying what God has intended for marriage before they get married, they're kind of blind to the idea of breaking up.

D (7:16)

What would be some yellow light examples?

B (7:19)

Yeah, yellow light is that maybe we struggle and we have a lot of things we need to figure out that we both love the Lord. People have mixed emotions of us being together. Maybe parents are against it, but friends are for it. We have significant debt or problems that we're just not dealing with in the relationship. And it's not a really clear end. It. It could be we just need to hit pause. And again it just like a red light is a real gift to help us eject and end the relationship. A yellow light helps us get serious about what we need to figure out before we keep moving forward.

D (7:55)

You know, we just got some interesting data back. We did a national survey, thousands of married couples. But one of the things that I was a little shocked by in a positive way is the low divorce rate with couples who go to church regularly. Read the word regularly. But here's the kicker. That pray together. It was 1 in 1,000. That's 1/10 of 1% divorce rate. That's phenomenal. So you start looking at a silver bullet for the Christian community.

A (8:24)

The one thing you should be doing.

D (8:25)

Together is pray together because it builds intimacy. How did you and Kristin develop that habit?

B (8:31)

It's crazy. The statistic is unreal, unreal.

D (8:34)

It's like the thing, right?

B (8:35)

Whatever. The divorce rate is 30%, 40%, 50%. Every studies are different, whatever it is. But this is the thing that if you do this, I don't know what God does in that. That God either does something in the marriage of the couple who prays together, or it's the type of man and woman who pray together. That there's just something different about them. It's both. Yeah, I think it is both. And candidly, for years, you know, I've been a marriage pastor for almost 20 years now. And I've told people from the beginning to pray together. Of course I'm going to tell couples to pray together. But we weren't living that out in our marriage. This is the one thing that if I could go back to the beginning and change this habit, this would be the one thing I would have done differently is that we would have prayed together from the beginning. So we did sometimes and we'd pray separately. But it was really difficult. And these are just excuses. It's really not that hard. But we had every excuse in the book, and we didn't pray together consistently. And finally, you know, 15, 17 years in the marriage, things started to click for us and we started this habit and pattern of praying together. But now it's become this sweet thing where we know what's going on with each other's lives. We're building intimacy with one another, we're chasing after Jesus together, and we overcomplicate it. It's really simple. God knows what's going on, but just taking the time to grab each other's hands to talk on the phone. Sometimes we'll even leave voice texts for one another where we're praying for the other. But it's allowed us to really know what's really going on with one another. And we're pursuing the Lord together.

C (10:10)

And you've got a handle, Scott, of praying at 5:03. If I'm recalling a book, I do. Tell us about that.

B (10:17)

Yeah. So Kristen's birthday is May 3rd. And so I do this for Kristen and for all my kids. And so I could do this every day, but I do it every Sunday. I pray for Kristen at 5:03pm Just in case I'm not up, pray for my kids. They're May 26th. And so one twin is 5:26pm on Monday, and the other twin is 5:26 on Tuesday, 11:30 on Wednesday for my third Carson, and then 11, 1027. It's amazing. I got all, all those dates right, 1027 for Lincoln on Thursday. And then the other one I do is I do 9:15pm every day. Our anniversary is September 15th. And so as a reminder, I pray for our marriage every day at 9:15. Sometimes that's with Kristen. Usually it's not. We're not necessarily in the same place as one another, the same room. But it's gotten me the habit of praying for my marriage daily and then all those individual prayer alarms just to consistently pray for every member of my family.

C (11:13)

Yeah. And Scott, my observation of couples as they kind of get serious about the relationship, maybe start thinking about marriage, is they kind of isolate and they kind of drift off from all their other friends. And that's not a good pattern. You've addressed that in the book. What's the problem with that?

B (11:33)

Yeah, it is so common. And so this is the story I've seen play out so many times that, you know, a guy is really plugged into church and he's going to the different young adult ministry and serving, and she's doing the same thing. And they meet one another and all of a sudden they just. I call it submarining. I don't think I made it up. I learned it from somebody else. And so it's like we're above the surface. Everyone sees us, and all of a sudden we start dating and we're gone. We're underneath the surface. All we do is spend time with one another. And nobody has the opportunity to observe us, to see what our relationship is like. And then we speak into it. To speak into it. Exactly. And so then we pop up and we go, hey, I'm thinking about putting a ring on it. What do you think? And candidly, I can't speak in because I haven't seen you in months. You're not serving anymore. You're not part of the ministry. And they've just really isolated from everyone. And we need people to speak into our lives. Community is an incredible blessing that God gives us where he allows us to. It's not good for man. It's not good for women to be alone. And so we need others to speak into our lives. And so you can go on a date and have fun with each other, but make sure you're bringing other people into the picture as well, so that they can evaluate, so that they can encourage you, so that they can challenge you. I think about Proverbs 27:6. Faithful are the wounds of a friend. If a friend isn't looking into my life, there's no way for that friend to really faithfully wound me. And so let's not isolate, let's continue to invite others into the relationship.

D (12:59)

I would think sometimes couples can struggle in this area particularly. We think of it as like a light switch. We gotta be all isolated or we gotta just let our friends continue, you know? And I think in my own experience, it was somewhat healthy to pull in a bit together. Cause we had so many friends and we were doing other things and other hobbies and interests that we needed to pull in a little bit. And what I'm hearing you say is balance is really the key.

B (13:26)

Yeah, that's a really good way to say it. It's not. It's not binary. It's not. Either we're with everyone all the time, or we're by ourselves all the time. I think there's an option, there's an in between, where we get some time to date, to get to know one another, to have fun with one another, to explore. Just what does it look like to move forward in this relationship and do things with community, do group dates? I think a great thing to do that I'd highly Recommend if you're in this season of Life when you're seriously dating is you go find a great married couple. Go find somebody you trust. And you're not asking them to, you know, mentor you for the rest of your life, but just ask them to coffee and, you know, ask them questions, ask them to challenge you in the relationship, invite others into your relationship so that you're not submarining below the surface and trying to make this big decision without any input from others.

D (14:15)

Yeah, that's so good. You suggest couples be students of each other before marriage. I think that comes pretty easy. Okay, I'll be that student. But you probably are thinking a little more broadly than that. But how do you become a student of your girlfriend or boyfriend or fiance?

B (14:35)

I think we do a great job of this when we're dating. We're trying to impress the other person. So I say Kristen, when we were dating or just starting to date, she liked to run. She liked coffee, and she likes sushi. And so I'm not the running type. This body type is not made for running. But because Kristen ran, I wanted to run. I didn't like love coffee. Now, I did not like coffee then, and so she liked coffee. I was going to drink hot brown water as well. Right. Sushi had no desire to have sushi. But Kristin likes sushi. And so because she did, I wanted to try it. And so what it really means, it's 1st Peter 3:7. It says, husbands, live with your wives in an understanding way. And that phrase, live with them in an understanding way means according to knowledge, that I'm going to pursue this other person in a way that I'm seeking to understand them. I'm going to ask them questions, I'm going to be curious, I'm going to do things that maybe I normally wouldn't do because I want to get to know them. And the problem is, we do this really well in dating, but then we get married and we stop being a student of our spouse, of our significant other. We just get lazy and complacent. And in fact, Peter says in 1st Peter 3:7, if we don't live with them in an understanding way, our prayers may be hindered. That God may not hear our prayers. He hears them, but he may not answer our prayers in the way we want them answered. And so what does it look like to always live with each other in a way that says, I understand you and I know you? I'm curious. I'm going to ask questions, I'm going to put you before myself?

D (16:02)

Yeah. You know, you touched on this a minute ago, but I think this is also so critical. You say that engaged couples need to be really intentional, not to hide their differences in order to avoid conflict. I mean, you're probably at that phase when you're dating and not married yet. You're probably hiding a few things and you're saying, bring that out into the light. There's gotta be some cautionary discretion to that. But how do you avoid not bringing things out in order to avoid conflict?

B (16:35)

Yeah, sadly, we tend to date each other's PR departments. That's what a friend told me years ago. We don't eat carbohydrates and we're taking care of ourselves and we're working out all the time and we put our best foot forward and we're doing all, all the things to impress the other. We hide the stuff. And so, you know, when I was dating Kristen, I had a significant addiction to pornography and had a really tough sexual past. I found pornography when I was 7 or 8 years old and full on addicted by the time I was 12 or 13. And that carried through in the teen years and the college years and the grad school years. And I was not proud of that at all. And I didn't want Kristen to know. If she knew, she would probably end the relationship. And so when I got that's part of the reason why we broke up is I finally came to terms with, I've got to deal with this struggle and this addiction. And so when we got back together, that was one of the things I told her. I said, here's what you need to know, is that there's a past I'm not proud of. But I could tell you that I'm committed as a man, that I'm going to deal with that stuff and I'm going to fight that addiction and that struggle. And I wanted her to know that so that she wasn't marrying a stranger. There are other things that maybe were a little more on the surface. I struggled with overeating, with gluttony, and so she knew that and I wanted her to know those things before we got married. Struggled with people pleasing. I struggled at times with anger. And I wanted her to know who she was getting. I didn't want to come with this glossy picture of this guy who's got it all together at the same time. I didn't want to move forward and say, hey, this is just who I am. Deal with it. I wanted to take active steps to deal with my struggles and with my addictions. And with my habits. And I wanted her to know who she was getting.

D (18:25)

How did she engage that, though? I mean, it's great to be vulnerable and to put that out there. And then how did she respond? I mean, some people are going to respond in all kinds of ways, very differently. What was helpful in the way, obviously, you got married, so what did she do or say that helped you?

B (18:44)

She was incredible. She asked for her forgiveness for some of the decisions I made. She shared some of the things from her past. She looked at me as somebody who was walking closely with Jesus today and didn't hold my past against me. She knew that I was a forgiven follower of Jesus Christ. And honestly, the way that she handled my confession to my past was one of the most affirming things I ever could have seen. That she understood the gospel and understood the way that the Lord had changed me. And it was affirming in the decision to put a ring on her finger. And she was vulnerable with me that she didn't have a perfect past as well. It was very different than my past. But she shared things with me as well that I knew. I knew a little bit more of who I was getting.

D (19:38)

That's intimacy.

B (19:39)

It is.

D (19:40)

That is intimacy. And I would think that obviously that's healthy and that's the way it should work. A lot of people struggle with that. Another woman may have reacted totally differently to that because she feels violated that you did these things, and she's going to respond differently. How you move forward through that probably has a thousand varieties attached to it. What if you're in that situation where you're vulnerable and then you don't get that response of forgiveness and embrace and acceptance. What if it's different from that?

B (20:16)

Yeah, the idea of intimacy. I love that word. You know, we usually think, like, when you hear intimacy, you're just thinking about sex. But there's so much more to intimacy. And so a phrase I've heard is to know and be known without fear of rejection. And so this idea that we would know one another, that, like, I would know as much as I can about her, that I would allow myself to be known, and that she's not going to reject me. And this is a great. Like, couples who really struggle. Let's say you share some things from your past and your significant other rejects you, that gives you a really good picture that moving forward together may be really tough. And you don't have to move forward with somebody when they share their past with you. This is a. An opportunity to really discern. Do I want to move forward with the other person. But getting this confirmation from Kristen that she's not going to reject me from my past was so confirming about our relationship, and she would say the same thing about me. And if your significant other, when you share these things, if they reject you and go the other direction, that's their choice. That may spare you again from a lack of intimacy in marriage in the future. It might be a really good gift for you when you share things, and if they're not taken well by the other person, that might be a good sign to end the relationship. That might be one of those yellow flags that we need to work through and figure out what's the best next step moving forward.

D (21:38)

Yeah. At least back up for a little while and figure that out.

A (21:42)

Your mom has an incredible story of.

D (21:44)

Sacrifice and probably be good if you could set that up. Your father died when you were young and she remarried, so you had a stepdad for most of your life, I would imagine.

B (21:55)

That's right. My dad died when I was six years old. He was 39. I never really knew. My dad had a major heart attack when I was 4. He was 37. And so really didn't have a, you know, this deep relationship with my dad. I didn't know him. Mom remarried four or five years later, and so she's married to my stepdad for 30 plus years. And he really was, you know, my dad. He taught me how to care for my mom. He taught me how to clean and cook and do laundry and take care of the house. He did a lot of great things. Wasn't perfect by any means, but he developed Alzheimer's disease 20 years into their marriage. And it just got worse and worse and worse. And it started initially, it was forgetting things and asking the same question over and over again. And, you know, a few years down the road, it started to get worse physically, where, you know, he was not kind, he was unverbal. He couldn't express any gratitude to my mom for anything. She was literally doing everything. She's doing the laundry, she's paying the bills, she's taking care of the house, all the meals. She's doing everything. My dad couldn't communicate anything. And then it just got so bad where he was completely incapable of doing anything, of going to the bathroom, of showering, of doing anything to take care of himself. And the way that my mom loved him sacrificially and selflessly without, literally, without getting. There was nothing that she was getting in return. There was no affection, There was no gratitude. There was, no, you do this, I'll do that. She did everything, all the days till the day that my stepfather passed away. And I look at that and I see that's kind of what we sign up for in marriage. You don't know if that's going to happen years down the road. And the way that my mom loved my dad, sacrificially, selflessly. It's the way that Jesus loves us, sacrificially and selflessly. And if marriage is intended to be this picture of his love for us, my mom gave me this incredible picture of marriage. I'll never forget it. I'm so grateful for the way that she loved my dad.

D (23:55)

And it does bring the story full circle. It's kind of where we started. Not with your mom and dad's story particularly, but about selflessness in marriage. And I think that's the struggle. How do we do it in a healthy way, not to avoid conflict, how to embrace one another emotionally, physically, etc. And there just seems to be this relentless selfishness in us called our flesh. And it always grabs us. And the whole thing is trying to take that captive and do what your mom did at the end. I'm sure there were days she wasn't excited about that. Many days, probably, right?

B (24:34)

That's right.

D (24:35)

But it was out of her loyalty and her love for him to help him end well, I would imagine.

B (24:40)

Yeah. In the same way that we don't always feel that way towards our spouse and our spouses don't feel that way towards us. And it's a daily choice. Do I? I choose to submit my life to Jesus, choose to serve and care for my spouse, my wife, when I don't want to. And honestly, it's the couples who choose not to do are the ones who are going to struggle. And that's why this is a big decision. Before you say I do, you are evaluating. Is this the kind of person who is willing to do these things for the rest of the rest. All the days of our lives? It's easier to do when you're dating and you're have more energy and more time and you're just trying to win each other over. But are you the type of person who's willing to lay their life down for their spouse all the days of your life?

D (25:22)

Yeah. Not just assessing them, but assessing yourself.

B (25:25)

That's right.

D (25:25)

Which is so critical. Scott, thank you for spending time with us. And I'm going to order two of the books. One for Trent, one for Troy. There you go. They're right in the zone. So this is just good material again for everybody to know. Whether you're pre married or already married, the concepts in here are so good.

A (25:43)

And whether you're just starting on your marriage or have already been married for.

D (25:46)

A few years, we want to encourage.

A (25:48)

You to continue strengthening your relationship. It's always the right time to invest in your spouse and we hope this conversation has given you a few tips on how to get started today. If you are pursuing marriage or maybe you have an adult child in that stage of life like me, I'd encourage you to pick up a copy of Scott's book Ready or Not 12 conversations every couple Needs to have Before Marriage. When you make a gift of any amount to Focus on the family, we'll send you a copy of the book as our way of saying thank you for supporting the ministry. Your donations are so important for us to keep helping marriages and families in Christ. If you haven't given to focus, please pray about what God might be calling you to do. Every dollar you give goes right into ministry, so your donations have a generational impact. The best way to help us is with a monthly pledge. It's how Gene and I support Focus. It's how John and Deena support the ministry. It's the consistency that helps us balance our budget and plan for future outreach. But if you aren't able to do that, we get it. Maybe a one time gift is something you could do right now and for that we'll also send you a copy.

D (27:00)

Of the book to say thank you.

B (27:02)

Mm.

C (27:02)

Make your donation either that one time gift or join the Friends of the Family with a monthly pledge and get a copy of the book from Scott Kadirshah. Our number is 800, the letter A in the word Family 800-232-6459 or click the link in the show notes. Thanks for joining us for Focus on the Family with Jim Daly, I'm John Fuller inviting you back as we once again help you and your family thrive in Christ.

A (27:39)

Hi, I'm Jim Dailey. In summertime, giving to Focus on the Family slows down, but families in crisis still need your support as we face a bit of a shortfall right now. We need your help to save marriages through Hope Restored, offer dignity, comfort and hope to children in foster care through Wait no More and provide biblical resources for families. Your gift by August 31st will make a real difference and offer lasting hope. Visit focusonthefamily.com supportfamilies.