Keith and Kara Kirkpatrick on Rebuilding Closeness After Drift

Uh Kara and I got this topic because well, we've been here before. Yes, let's go. Uh I I really appreciated what Kristen said about falling out of love and falling into love. We act like that just happens one time. Uh but I'll tell you, this is not a Hollywood movie like The Notebook or something, right? Uh this is something like you got to keep working on over and over again. And when it comes to emotional intimacy and spiritual intimacy, so it is. You're going to have to continue to work on in your marriage. Yeah. Carol, one thing I' I've seen regularly is at church because we're in we're in what I call the people business. I don't know what kind of business you're in, but uh we deal with people every day. Uh probably deal is not the right word. We minister with people every single day. And you know when you were if you were to ask somebody how they're doing either individually or how their marriage is doing, probably what's the most common answer you're going to hear from people? How you doing?

We're good. We're fine. We're fine. I'll tell you that's probably the uh most common answer because when you ask somebody that question, you don't have time to expose to be like, I'm completely isolated, lonely, and not doing well, and not sure what the hell I'm doing. You know, like uh how many y'all can we edit the hell part out? Uh [laughter] what I'm trying to say is this is not when we're going to be really honest so that we're good or we're fine. That could mean actually we're terrible. We're terrible. Or it could mean we're thriving. And I'm just going to give a description of we're fine and we're good. So, it could be any extreme of we're not doing well at all or we're actually doing really well. But I want to just acknowledge right up front in this session that if you are emotionally distant right now from your spouse or

spiritually distant, can we just normalize this right now? Can we just normalize this and say it's not just limited to this group that's in this room that any couple that gets married will experience emotional or spiritual um separation. Is that fair to say? Yes. Is because at some point you're going to get this because this this is the mystery to me in marriage is that God puts two sinners together and says, "God bless you. Be one now." Like, could you have just given us a little more legal lawyer language here, Lord? Like two sinners who have tons of baggage from their past, raised by sinner parents, and now you're supposed to like do this life thing together. So, I want to just acknowledge that right up front. If you have this or you are there, then then it's there. In fact, let let's just do a really quick

exercise since we just uh had lunch and we just dealt with some pretty serious stuff with the men and women separation. Could you uh stand up real quick? Find somebody you're not married to and just say, "It's going to be okay." Come on, just do it real quick. Somebody you're not married to, just say, "It's going to be okay. It's going to be okay. It's going to be okay." All right. The reason I had you do that is because when you are emotionally and spiritually separate, it does not feel like you're going to be okay. Can we just acknowledge that it doesn't feel like it's going to be okay? In fact, that whole lightsaber analogy, did that help anybody earlier? Because I'll just tell you, when you go home, the temptation is going to put the

lightsaber back on. Or when you're doing really well in your marriage, that lightsaber is not on the table. It's only on the table when you're not doing well. And so, I just remind you today, it's going to be okay. That it's going to be fine. Uh, do you know what it takes for a a boat to drift out in the ocean? Does anybody know what it takes for a boat to drift out in the ocean? You got to do absolutely nothing. You got to do nothing. Yeah. As long as you're not anchored, you will drift. So, I I I just giving you this illustration before we get into the meat of where we're going today is if you want to get separate from your spouse, you don't even have to work at it if you don't want to. All you got to do is not be anchored to anything.

So, as long as you're not anchored and tethered to the Lord or anchored in God's word, as long as long as you're not anchored to the covenant of your marriage, you're going to naturally drift. And if you look at where you are compared to where you want to be, you got to acknowledge how did I get here? This this isn't the place I want to be. So, uh Kara and I are going to just share just a little bit. I want to just start with just normalizing uh where we are and just uh I want to maybe just start off with some uh real stories if we could just get honest. Sure. Get relentlessly real and car maybe I'll just share your story. We we've shared our story a lot um at this church is what happens when you're on a platform and oftentimes we try to keep it safe enough where we don't uh harm one another. I like how the Jordans expose how' they say about being vulnerable but not not naked. Transparent but not naked.

Transparent. Yeah. Transparent but not naked. So, we're going to do something similar as to not uh give you all of our our dirty laundry because like they said, you wouldn't be ready for it. And I just want to just acknowledge that today. But Kara, let's go back just in our own journey. It feels like it wasn't that long ago, but uh as time goes on, it's like, wow, this was four years ago now. We were in a space in a place that we didn't want to be. Can you just share just a little bit about that journey? maybe what led up to it, what emotionally and spiritually we were feeling at that time. Sure. Yeah. I mean, we run really hard like our lives, we we we run hard. We had three kids. We started at this church and and then 2020 CO hit and we all know what happened in CO. Um and it was draining. It was exhausting. We

drifted is what really what happened. Um there was a I I I can say all the things that happened but but we were running parallel lives and um in 20 around 2020 early 2022 we just crashed and burned and just said I was like I'm out. I'm not out of the marriage but I just I want it out. I I want I don't want to be here anymore. Um we had you know we had teenagers and just just all the things going on. And um and so we essentially left for a sabbatical as some of you guys know that we left for three months. Um and it was the best thing that ever happened to us. Um because we were very um disconnected. We were um emotionally disconnected, spiritually disconnected. We were I was always here. I've been here from day one, but I served. I never sat with him. If you guys see us now, we're always sitting together. Um that was very different prior to 2022.

It's the truth. So probably for 12 years of Journey Church, we literally had never sat together in a church service. And to us it was normal. Kara was either behind the computer running the words on the screen for worship. Yeah. Or she was in the nursery holding a baby or she was putting out some fire in the church. And I was proud to be running the church. And I didn't sit in the front of the church. I actually was in the back. If you've ever seen me, I'm a very just expressive, emotional person. Uh I'm like Mike over here. Uh you kind of know where I am. I'm just flailing my arms or on the ground weeping or something, you know. And uh and Kara's very different. She's more of an introvert and she she's going to hold her feelings on the inside. And for 12 years, we did life very differently at church.

Now, if you to ask us how we're doing during those 12 years, what would probably be our answer? Shout it out. We're good. We're fine. I'm not about to tell you we're miserable and we're separate and things aren't going well. But the reality is I don't even think we knew how far we drifted. No, I don't think we did until we hit rock bottom and just I just wanted to leave everything. I was done. We literally sold everything we owned. If some of you guys most of you probably haven't heard that story, but we it was a literal selling everything we owned. We sold our house, our cars, everything in our house. It was wild. Everything. But the coolest thing though, I'll speed forward to the redemption part of it real quick, is that Kristen's uh the intro this morning was so powerful and impactful for me because God restores with the locust devoured and he did it tenfold. We literally gave everything up. We opened

our h hands and said, "What God, what do you have for us? We need to heal. Our kids need to heal. Come on." And we came back here and he restored everything. Let's go. Everything. He We He gave us an amazing house that was completely furnished. complet. We left everything behind and we didn't have to pay a dollar for anything in that house. Like our God is a restorer. He's a redeemer. He he he restores everything that's broken. I promise you he does. Yes. And it's it's not a quick fix. So one of No, it took us three months. One of the things that happened for us uh on our our sbaticals, we had to acknowledge where we were. We were not in the place spiritually we wanted to be. We were not in the place emotionally wanted to be. And if I'm going to get really frank, our family wasn't where we wanted to be with our kids. And a as the head of the house and as the the man of the house, I'm gonna just be really vulnerable with you. I did I was not leading well up to this place. I think

there are a lot of myths when it comes to being a Christian. Uh ex and you the longer you go to church and the more you hold to these myths, the harder they are to expose. So maybe we can even talk to some of them before we get to a biblical foundation. But uh one of them is to show that pastors aren't normal people. Can we just say that? Uh pastors probably have more problems than you know. Uh, and I hate like watching the media because you see pastors falling all the time to horrific things, pedophilia, infidelity, uh, money laundering. You're like, "What the heck just happened?" Because pastors are just humans. And there and and when they have the weight of being on a platform or even worse on a pedestal, uh, what begins to happen is we don't normalize it. But we're just we're just so you guys know, we're very normal people and our problems are probably deeper than

you even know. But with that said, we have the same God you have. So the same God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob is your God. And that's our God. And so the same solution for our lives is your solution. So just some myths when it comes to church and being a Christian. One is that if you're a Christian, then you're praying together. Uh most married Christian couples aren't praying together. If you didn't know that, uh I'm just telling you right now. Uh just like most couples aren't having as much sex as movies and TV shows tell us they are. Uh I don't know if you knew that too. Uh but uh this is such a myth when you watch a a TV series and every time a couple walks in the room, what do they do? They run over and they kiss each other. Do you all do that at your house?

Oh, you do? Okay. [laughter] I don't know about you, but we come home. like you're stressed and you're trying to decompress and you're just normalized. And I would just say leading up to our time in 2022, uh we weren't praying together. We weren't reading the Bible together. We both believed in Jesus. We both believed in the power of prayer. We both believed the Bible, but we just weren't doing it together. And can I just say that it was actually a gift because we are much different people on the other side of it. He the Lord taught us really how to war in prayer for our family, for our our kids. And we would not have learned that had we not hit rock bottom. So good. So there here's some just practical tools we did. This is for free. They're not my notes here. Uh this is just what we did uh during our time

is one of the things we did is we decided no one's going to look at a screen, meaning your phone or iPad or computer until you've read your Bible. And the minimum in our house was you got to at least read a chapter. And the only way that you can look at a screen is you got to say what chapter of the Bible you read. So we started that for for three months. We just like all we're going to start by getting in the word. What was cool about that is it instantly causes conversation. What did you read? What did you read? At the time we weren't even reading the same thing. And then I had to get over myself and say, well, just because I haven't been praying in my marriage or in my family doesn't mean that I'm not going to start. Now, I just think there's a lot of uh myths out there when it comes to sex because we don't talk about it in church, but uh there is no such thing as

sex in a marriage to what you see on a screen. I don't know what screens you're looking at, whether it's a TV show or a movie or pornography, but all of that is fake sex. And I know you probably know that, but we got to acknowledge the elephant in the room that the way sex actually is is the intimacy of a husband and a wife in the context of marriage. And it's meant to be good. The two becoming one. God said, "Be fruitful and multiply. It's supposed to be a blessing and supposed to be good." The problem is there's trauma. Some of you have been sexually molested. You got emotional division. You got spiritual division. You got all these different things. And then we have this fantasy of what the world says it is. And so it's like how do you start that? Well, let's just say this. It's not a formula and it's not a quick fix.

Can we acknowledge that? Someone shout amen or make me feel a little better. Uh so when it comes to prayer, prayer is really similar. I just want to expose that in the church that sometimes like pray, pray, pray. And we say these things and then it's like you get together with the very person you married. You're like I I used to ask Kara, I I would try to be the head of the household. I say, "Kara, do you want to pray?" And she would answer me, "I don't know. Do you want to pray?" And you know what that did to me as a man? I took offense to that. What the heck? I was asking you. I was trying to be. Next thing you know, we were fighting and not praying. And that happened year after year. And so I thought the problem was I'm trying to pray and she's not submitting to me. She's not willing to pray. And so all of a sudden in that time of humbling ourselves, I realized, wait, she's given

me an answer probably dozens and dozens of times. She doesn't want me asking about this. So now I just dive into prayer. On the way to church today, this is not uncommon. We're driving together. I just started praying. It's not weird to her. It's not awkward anymore. All of a sudden, this very thing that was really, it actually was a tension is now easy because of years of putting into practice. And so I want to just acknowledge that if you're not praying together, someone's got to break that and start it. I want to encourage the men in the room, you start. And if it's awkward, I just want to bring you back to the very first time you ever had sex. [laughter] Probably wasn't easy, intimate, beautiful, perfect. It's probably awkward. This isn't what I saw in the movies.

Someplace you got to drop the guard and just say, "But I got to start somewhere." God doesn't give a formula that uh prayer has to be perfect or good. But if you want to grow spiritually, it's got to start somewhere. If you want to grow emotionally, start spiritually and start somewhere. The other thing that we do right now that we never did and uh is we read the Bible in a year together. And so it gives us something to talk about. She'll read it separately, I'll read it separately, and then there's days that it's like, "Man, did you read today?" That was my first question this morning. She gets up earlier than I do and gets in the word first. And uh I read today. I'm like, "Did you read today?" And she's like, "Yeah, it's short, huh?" I'm like, "Yeah, it was short." You know, and all of a sudden it's like, "We have something to talk about." So if you need something to talk about in your marriage, get in the word of God. And if you're not sure where to start, at our next steps table, we actually have an annual Bible reading plan. You could start today. And in one

year from today, you will have read through the Bible together. And by the way, I'm not saying you have to read it together. If you want to, you can. We do it differently. different versions of the Bible, different ways, different different ways to do that. But and then lastly is at church we did start sitting together uh with for three months we sat together and we were like holding hands and like many of you in church we'd be like oh that message was for us. It's like for the first time we're we're connecting saying man that that's that's an application of God's word for our lives. And it really started to reshift how we think and we realized distance doesn't have to stay there emotionally or spiritually. Yeah. Well, let's go there biblically to better understand these things. Carrie, you and I were talking about uh the biblical foundation of of emotional and spiritual intimacy. And the very example that God gives in his word about his relationship to the church is that of a bride and a groom. Have you guys noticed

that? Therefore, the very issues that you have in your marriage are often parallel to the very issues that are in the church to the relationship with God. In fact, you can see this if you go to the book of Revelation when Jesus is speaking to the church and there's this admonishment. There's this correction. This is what Jesus says. Jesus is speaking to the his bride, the church. I have this against you. Now, it's never good when your spouse says that. Okay? It means there's a problem. Can we acknowledge that? I have this against you. I'm holding this against you. You have abandoned the love you had at first. Remember therefore where you have fallen. Repent. And then he says this and do the works you did at first.

So there's three Rs that Jesus is speaking here. Number one is you need to remember. Everyone shout. Remember this is not complicated. You married the person you're married to for a reason. Sometimes you got to preach back to yourself. Remember, remember, remember, remember you committed this. Remember they're not your enemy. Remember, remember you said you love them no matter what. Remember, everyone shout. Remember. Now, if this can happen to the church, to a God that is love, to a savior, to a righteous, perfect God. If the church can do that to God, how easy is that to do that to each other?

To fall out of love. So you got to remember where you where you started. The second thing Jesus says is repent. Everyone shout repent. Repent. That means return. It means go the opposite direction. If you are emotionally and spiritually distant, I will tell you right now, God does not want you to stay there. Return. The spiritual word for that is repent. Don't stay there. Speak speak to your soul. Commit to this. I'm going to do something different. I am going to pray and just open up. Start somewhere. And then finally Jesus says this and do the works you did at first. The best way I could put this is

repeat it. Repeat it. Repeat it. Or as Christian Jordan said, keep falling back in love. Keep falling back in love. If you're out of love right now, what a great opportunity God's given you. Yeah. It's It's going to get better. That sex will be better now. The intimacy that you have in your marriage will be better now. The communication will be better now. Don't go back to your old behaviors. You're going to remember, return, and then you're going to repeat. And as you do, you mature. Just like your relationship with the Lord, you don't stay in the same place. You keep growing. I keep learning more about the Lord. I'm like, there's more. There's more. There's more in the Bible. There's more. So, it should be in your relationship. There's more. There's more. There's more. Uh we're getting to a season where we're almost empty nesters. Come on, somebody.

We're close. Almost. I gotta say, like I love this season so much more than the earlier seasons because not only was it hard like when you got littles, it's emotionally exhausting, financially exhausting, and I didn't know what I was doing as a husband. So, marriage was exhausting. And like the older I get, the more I'm like, I actually like this. I mean, how many dates did we ever fight on when we were younger? A lot. A lot. [laughter] We were such fools. We would actually pay a babysitter, go out to a nice restaurant, and spend a bunch of money, and then fight the whole meal. Oh Lord, thank you for redeeming those days. Uh, so remember, return, and repeat. You have any thoughts on Revelation there, Kara?

All right, I want to go into a scripture that I didn't know the Jordans were going to share, but they talked about Ecclesiastes 4:12, a threefold cord is not quickly broken. It's really interesting that Solomon in his wisdom talks about isolation is not of God. He's never desiring you to break off of community, to break off of where you are, but actually to recognize you are better together. It's cliche. It sounds hobby Lobby, but it's actually God's plan. You are better together. Yeah. And I love the illustration of the three-fold cord as being the rope that holds you together. that if I go, you're going with me. Did anybody else appreciate that? Because I was going to use the illustration of it.

It's it's you, your spouse, and God in between. And if God's the center, then it's all going to be okay. But I prefer it to be you are back to back like a boxer, somebody. Come on. And instead of boxing each other emotionally and spiritually, you're going to protect that person. And even if I try to run from this relationship, if I have the Holy Ghost, I'm referring to God. If I'm putting God in my life, he is the the third strand that's holding us together. I can't run from this. Yeah. I can't. I've committed to this. And not just to care, but the covenant of marriage is I've invited God into this. So therefore, if I truly break off of my relationship with my wife, I've actually abandoned my relationship with God. I've cut the cord of the Holy Spirit.

It's hard to hear, but it's it's true. Has God been faithful to you? Was he faithful to you because you were good? Was he faithful to you because you did the right things, you said the right things, you acted the right way? Come on, somebody. God loved you in your worst. He loved you when you were unlovable. And that's what's so vulnerable about being married is Kara knows the worst of me. She knows me at my worst. But she doesn't run from me in my worst. She does what God does. She loves me. And it brings back that intimacy. Your spiritual intimacy will strengthen your emotional intimacy. It's the truth.

If you've ever looked at pagan relationships, and what I mean by pagan is someone who doesn't have Jesus in their life and said, "Oh man, their relationship is so good." May I just tell you they'll never have the emotional intimacy that spiritual intimacy can give you. Because when you get raw and real with who you actually are, you're way worse of a sinner than you think you are. That's hard to hear, isn't it? But God's grace is way greater than you think it is. So, uh, three quick teaching points if we can go there, uh, before we leave today. Here's here's the practical application of today. I already gave you some through prayer, uh, and scripture reading, which was not in my notes, but I just felt like since we shared part of our story there, uh, the application for us was get in the word of God and pray together. Sounds simple, but I already was vulnerable with you. It can be hard

to start, right? It's hard to jump start. So, if you're not doing it, it doesn't mean you're not going to do it. Means start somewhere. And then eventually you learn how to do it better and it keeps getting better. Keeps getting better. All right. So here's three teaching points. These are three moves that will help you rebuild emotional and spiritual intimacy. This how to get closer. Number one, you want to say number one. Move toward each other again intentionally. So it's choosing. I'm not going to go the opposite way. I'm going to choose to move towards each other. Closeness is not going to happen by accident. If you do nothing, what happens? You drift. You drift. So, so we have to recognize if I stop being curious about her, if I quit learning about her, if I quit trying to understand who my wife is, I'm going to drift. How many you have heard someone say in a marriage relationship, they've changed.

They've changed. Anybody ever heard that before? Especially when it comes to divorce, they've changed. They've changed. They've changed. I just want to scream it from the rooftops. No duh. You better change. Of course. I look in the mirror and I am like four years older than I was four years ago. People like want to look and be like, "Oh, you sure are getting gray." No duh. Like I've got two young adults now and a junior in high school. Like I earned this gray, [laughter] you know? Like I didn't have to dye it silver like the kids are doing to look wise. like I worked at this change, you know, and at the end of the day, change

is what happens. So if you think you actually married that young person that you were so in love with, like, oh, their body changed. No duh. Like, I'm going to, let's see, I'm 48. I'll be 49 in September. So, I keep telling myself I'll be 50 next year. I'll be 50 next year. And I'm trying to like watch my health because like I'm not going uh I've got to work on I'm not getting younger. And you know I watched a video the day for men over 50 working out. It says men over 50 like you got to quit trying to bulk on muscles because after 50 you're not building muscles anymore. And I was just like grieving in my heart. I was like oh I'm entering into a whole new season of life now. It's about

taking care of your body not building up your body. And my point is, you will change. Your spouse will change. So you better move closer to that person that's changed and get to know them who they are now. Yeah. There were a lot of question, not a lot of questions. There was three total. Three questions from the men that we didn't really Here's I'll tell you women what my answer was. The men asked the question, "What do I do about menopause? My wife is postmenopause. She's going through menopause." And I was just like, "Hey, on behalf of all the men, like I don't know." I'm like, [laughter] we're men, you know, like I don't know. Like, I don't know. Like, I want to give you a good biblical sound wisdom here, but I don't know. Like, but here's what I would just say if we go back to that point. Move closer to your wife.

Don't give up on her. Like, figure her out. Like, move closer. So, uh some practical things. How can you move closer? Uh do something. Put down your phone. sit on the front porch. Uh we started making dinner together. I never thought we would do that, but it's actually a joy. We make dinner together. Um sounds more [laughter] complete than it is, but we make Do you want to tell them what our secret is to make dinner? We buy HelloFresh boxes [laughter] and it's awesome. I love I love that they come to our front porch and I don't have to buy a thing. It's all there. It is awesome. There's instructions. You can't screw it up. You just [laughter] like you cut the package open, you pour it in and and you talk and it's it's great.

Do something together. Move closer together. I want to just say before we move to the next point, you have to release the lies of the enemy. The lies of the devil are so clear that they actually feel real. But your feelings are not truth. You got to tell yourself that the lies of the enemy feel like the truth, but your feelings are not the truth. I'm not saying your feelings aren't valid, by the way. I'm just saying they're not the truth. So, if you think I'd be happier with this other person, I'd be happier divorced than married. I'd be happier if you start feeling those. And Montel and Kristen I feel like have been extremely vulnerable there. Christian story today.

I was like, "Woo, she went there." Because if you feel more loved by someone at work than you do at home, that's probably true. But that's a freaking lie of the enemy. That's not your spouse. So don't think that somehow the consequences of you moving forward with your feelings don't have greater consequences. There is a consequence to every decision. So don't always follow your feelings because the enemy is a really good liar. Jesus said it's his native tongue and he doesn't even know he's lying. It's just what he does. So don't buy into the lies of the enemy that somehow the grass is greener. Divorce is an option. It would be better. Uh someone else would make me more happy. Uh everyone else is happy. You wouldn't be at this marriage conference if you had it all figured out. You'd be putting on your own marriage conference. Everyone's not happy. We all can work on marriage.

Everybody. So those are just some practical notes of moving towards each other's recognizing. Don't listen to the lies. All right. Number two. You want to tell us number two? Turn towards God together. Come on someone. This is the spiritual intimacy. So emotional intimacy is recognizing we're not going to stay where we are. We've drifted. But now we're going to move closer. Now when you move closer to God, you know that illustration where if you just work on your relationship to one another, it's going to take a long time to get together. But the closer you get to God, the quicker you get together. When you both work towards your relationship with God, you will grow closer together. It's similar to what Montel and Kristen said this morning. I've never seen a couple that didn't make it, that outserved each other. I would just put it in the spiritual context. I've never seen a couple that is both wanting to seek God, serve God,

know God, love God, drift. Now, if one of you is doing it and the other person's not, well, there's a tension and there's problem. But if you would be so vulnerable to to speak to each other, James 4:8 says, "If you would draw near to God, God would draw near to you." And by the way, it's not because God is distant, he's pursuing you. Now, when you pursue God, you're going to realize he's right there. When you do that together, uh it changes everything. So, it's some practical ways, and I've already spoken about this, but praying together. Now, let me just tell you what I mean by praying together. Uh you can keep it short. Even just a short prayer if you don't even know how to pray. Lord, we just invite you into this now. Amen. Now, in our relationship, I don't know if there's anybody here like this because we're really unique. I would probably say I'm probably more like the

girl in our relationship and Kara's more like the guy. Uh meaning I've, you know, like they often say like there's women have 10,000 words for every one word for a man, right? So men have to learn how to listen. I'm like the opposite. Do you notice that with our microphones? And uh but I would say it's even like that in prayer. Sometimes I'll just start praying. I was like I don't I got to like learn like wrap it up, Keith. You know, like I'm talking to the Lord, but there's other people in the room. Uh but uh just do do a short prayer. Do you know what I'm talking? Yes, I do. Because I I'll pray for 10 minutes, be like, "Do you want to pray?" And she's like, "I'm good." You know, I'm like, "What?" [laughter] Like uh so all I'm trying to say is you don't have to be a facade. You don't have to fake it to make it when it comes to prayer. God's not asking you to be eloquent, say the right words, but he does ask you to say something. Yeah.

Get real. The the Holy Spirit's a person. So just talk to the person. Talk to God. Uh get into the Bible. Uh go to church. Uh serve together. Uh we were talking to a couple last night around the bonfire. uh they decided to serve together as a couple in our journey kids church and they did it because their friends were serving together a couple and they saw the value in it and I was like how rad is that you want to invest in the kingdom of God serve together wherever that is. They're right here in this room. Oh wow. Very cool. Yeah. Where are they? Right there. Oh yeah. Carl and Ashley. Carl and Ashley. That was rad. Yeah. It was totally rad. And I looked at them and said, "You know how cool that is? Because our kids need to know that men serve as well. There's been generations where women have served our kids and

kids have grown up thinking that only women could be spiritual leaders. So when a man shows up to serve kids, you don't even have to have all the answers. You know, Tim, you serve in our kids, too. I I love this church because men serve our kids. And I was like, that's just it just shows the world that And by the way, you don't have to have it figured out. If a kid asks you a question, it's the same answer you ought to say to your own kids or even to your spouse. The greatest thing you can say when comes to question is, "I don't know, but let's figure it out together and God will give you the answer." All right, let's go finally to uh number three. Go for it. Fight for us, not against us, not against each other. Yes, that's a big one. That's a big one. Yeah. Lot easier. Can we just say everything we've heard this weekend is what I'm about to say. A lot easier said than done. Is that true? I was hoping someone

would shout back, "Amen" to help me. Uh because I'm listening to Montel and Christy. I'm like, "This is truth. This is truth." I'm like, "But it's also hard. [laughter] It's easy to say at church." Yeah. But when you're stressed or you get triggered or you're tired or whatever the case might be for your situation, maybe you got the little kids or maybe whatever the case might be, it's still truth and it's worth doing. Your spouse is not your enemy. We have said that to each other many times. Yes. And we'll say it, we'll yell it at each other. I'm not your enemy. You know, it's like we're on the same team. But the more we do that, we cause a a greater chasm. And the further apart we get, sometimes the longer it takes to

heal. So, uh, we got to remind each other, we're not the enemies. The issue is the issue, not your spouse. Uh, Ephesians 6 talks about we we fight not against flesh and blood, but against and and Paul just starts naming it, but it's against principalities. It's against darkness. You are fighting against something you can't even see. The devil is hoping that you don't know that this is spiritual. Yeah. And as long as you don't know it, you'll be fighting the wrong fight. Yes. And uh I say that out of experience. As a believer in Jesus, as a pastor, I have fought the wrong fight many times. But like Paul says at the end of his life, I've learned to fight the good fight. I've learned to fight the right fight. I've learned to train for this.

I've learned to work at this. So, uh, we we want to work towards that. Before we end our time, we're going to do a Q&A. Um, but I want to just make it interactive and we're not going to spend a long time with this, but I'm going to give, um, you two questions. Are the two questions on the same slide? They can be. Okay. We're we're going to put them on the same slides. It's just going to be interactive. This is only going to be between you and your spouse. So, you're going to turn and you're going to talk to them. It's just going to be simple. But, I want you just to ask each other uh, one of these two questions. And if you have a hard time with this right now, you can even put it in your notes and come back to this question. But what my point is is you got to start making some steps towards each other. If you're drifting, you got to do something. So here's the two questions. I'll ask the first one, you ask the second one. What helps you feel most loved by me lately? What helps you feel most loved by me lately?

So just just in the positive, what makes you feel loved? Is it physical? Is it verbal? Is it when I do something? Just g give me a give me a clue what's making you feel loved. So I I don't know. And the second one is, what's one way we can grow closer this week? One way we can grow grow closer this week. Yes. And this is practical for us. I we we said it earlier this week. We got in a big old blowup fight on Tuesday night. I think it was Tuesday night. And eventually the the takeaway was figuring out one of those questions. And I think the question for us is uh do you feel supported? And I think every day since that fight, have I asked you that question? At the very end of the day, I've just said, Kara, do you feel supported?

And then if she gives me a yes or a no, it's like, is there any ways that I could have done that differently today? So this is me taking the lead, saying, I realized I screwed this up and I confessed to her. I didn't even know I screwed it up. I'm that kind of doofus. I can go days, weeks, months, years that I didn't even know I was screwing up our relationship. I had no clue I was making you feel this way. I had no clue you were feeling unloved. I had no clue you were feeling unsupported. So now I have to work towards it, but I have to not just leave it lingering out in the universe. I have to actually ask her it, am I doing this? So those are your two questions. You don't have to ask both. Choose one and go ahead and do it real quick. Two or three minutes. Go ahead and uh talk to your spouse.

Uh I'm going to actually wrap this up because our time is short and I want to give you guys an opportunity to ask the pastors any question you want to ask. We're going to do a Q&A and so I'm going to just we're going to be vulnerable in this room that if you got a question to the two of us specifically to Kara or to myself or just either to us as general regarding emotional or spiritual intimacy. All you got to do is raise your hand, ask the question, then I'll repeat the question because we're recording this because it's also being filmed where uh those who are going to watch this later would be able to hear the question because they're not going to see you or hear you ask the question. So, if you got a question for us, maybe you've been dying to ask, go ahead and ask. Josh, what was the aha moment on your 90day? What was the aha moment on our 90day sbatical? I'll share a thought and then you could share a thought.

I would say the aha was beforehand because we we knew we weren't doing well. So much so, so to the point like I didn't think I could leave this church. So, I was just like, you know what, we're going to have to do like everybody else and move out of Oregon and start fresh somewhere else. I decided in my heart it would be someplace with sunshine. So that was my aha moment. Uh God had completely different plans. And so it wasn't a quick journey for us. It was like daily and I would probably say about six weeks into it we started to see some emotional and spiritual changes. It was like oh this starting the day off with God's word and just not asking her if she wants to pray but just praying. This is starting to work. Sitting it together in church week after week it started to feel different. we started to talk about it. So, I would say it was a good six weeks into like starting to do this that we started to

see some little bit of fruit. But I knew right away. I mean, we we both knew our habits weren't good going home and going to a bottle of wine or speaking ill of what's happening in the world. Everything's negative. You know, it's just like you're in this perpetual what they call crazy cycle. And we were in that crazy cycle. What would you say would be awesome? I I think it was really intentional time together. Like we were really blessed that the church gave us like the elder team was amazing and they said take three months. They blessed us and we we spent so much time together. Yeah. Um with our kids and I mean I really think it was just like uh intentional time together and as a family that started to heal over time. It wasn't instant like you said. It took time but it was um there was a lot of healing in that and just getting away from everything um was helpful. But the aha

moment that started that journey was when you realized the pain we're in, we could either choose to stay in that pain or choose to fight through that pain for something greater. And the pain was pretty pretty serious. I mean, it was just enough emotionally where I wasn't telling the world publicly, hey, we're not doing good. You know, I would show up to church and when people said, how you doing? Fine. Or as a pastor, I'd be like, great. You know, blessed and highly favored, you know, like. But the reality is we knew that it wasn't fine. And so, you know, you get to that place where you're done. Anybody ever said that in marriage, I'm done. Uh, thank you for one honest answer, Shaunie. You're two, three. All right. Here, four. Here we go. When you get to that place of I'm done. It's usually the aha.

You don't have to stay there. Okay. If you're done, then you're done. Staying the same way. Do something differently. Change things up. You might not be able to go on a three-month sabbatical to Arizona, but do something different. Pray together. Read the Bible. do something different. More questions. Raise your hand if you got a question. Good question. Did we answer that? All right. Raise your hand if you got a question for us. Yeah. Question is when you have a very busy lifestyle, what are some things you can do to prioritize or manage and put your relationship as a priority with God? Is that right? So, what are some things you can do? Well, I mean, a new habit that we did start through that season was getting in the word early. It h it, you know, typically we're up really early because

we do have a busy life and it is a priority. I mean, there are it's it's not legalistic, but when I find when I'm not in the word very early in the morning and I don't start with my day with it, it's it's uh I it is it's not the same kind of day that I' that I would have had. Um, so that's an even if it's really early in the morning, that's an intentional thing that I've learned to do that has really helped. Yeah. Don't don't put the word of God at the end of your day. Put it at the beginning of your day. And if you still got energy at the end of the day, then also get into God's word. So the word of God, I would definitely say, is one I would also say pray in the spirit. And what I mean by praying in the spirit is when you pray more frequently, you're going to be able to do what Montel has talked about, which is being able to prioritize what's an opportunity and what's a responsibility. Because when you're busy, they blur together.

And what probably led up to our burnout and brokenness is I gave too much to opportunities and not to responsibility. Oh, we both did. Yes. Kara was a very successful realtor. So, she's hustling over here on the side selling homes. A better bread winner than I was, which doesn't make a man always feel good. And I was over here burning on both ends where everybody's saying you either got to meet as a church during the pandemic or not meet because you're killing people. And we were just like frantically busy trying to make it work, hoping that somehow we would see each other's successes and it would work, but it didn't. So praying in the spirit though exposes what really is a responsibility because if you say no to the right things, your relational equity in your marriage and your family is explosive.

So busyiness is a total tool of the devil to destroy everything God has done because somehow you think well I have to I've got to make money I've got to provide I've got to do this but I tell you having a great marriage at the end of the day you'll still be married but the people you work with so it's just it's that priorities that we've been focusing on and as cliche as it's going to sound in the word and prayer and in doing so you realign the busyiness to put it first and if you screw up on this give yourself grace and figure out whatever the next step is. We've been burning hard at both ends the last three weeks. Kind of a stressful week and culminated the last few days. All right, we got to switch something up here. We have been in the word and we have been praying, but we're still feeling like we're burning up. Uh I want to take one more question.

Raise your hand if you got a question for us. This is your chance. I see two. So maybe we'll take two if I could. Go for it. So Lauren and I were talking about a day of rest. A day of rest. Sabbath. Yep. So good. You guys Sunday is the hardest day. Yes. For you, I'm sure. Yeah. This one is near and dear to my heart because that's what we learned when we burnt out was the importance of rest. I mean, we think that we have to we have to work, work, work, work, work. And and but God actually says there is a day that you need to rest and I will work on your behalf. And we learn to do that. Right now it's it's actually typically Fridays. He does work Fridays and I do sometimes, but I always have a really Friday night. I always have a standing invitation to we have some adult kids and one that lives in the house to our kids. Come over for dinner.

I always have a HelloFresh meal ready to cook. Uh, and I it's not a joke. And we just Sabbath. We We literally like just forget about everything and we have a meal together. It can just be half a day. It can just be a meal, but just an intentional rest that you put everything else away. And just trust that God is who he says he is and he will fight and work on our behalf when we don't have to. It's a commandment of God. So, you have to actually speak to your own soul. Am I willing to rebel against God's commandments or am I willing to be so busy I refuse it? Sabbath is huge. Uh Charlie Kirk wrote a book on Sabbath that he actually finished right before he was murdered. And uh it actually uh it's it's what's it called? Uh in the name stop stop in the name of God. Uh because God commands it. And if you actually look,

it's not just one of the ten commandments, which it is. God frequently commanded it. And Jesus himself said he's the Lord of the Sabbath. So if you take it really serious if you study it, like study it, study it, study it, it'll get so embedded in you, you actually have to crucify and stop the busyiness. Yeah. To figure it out. And we had to eventually do that. We I guess part of it is like what Montel said this morning is I had to not let the church be my bride. Yeah. For me. Like so maybe it's work for you. Uh but I had to eventually say I have made my wife my mistress and my family my mistress and we're trying to like figure this out and then we go on a date and we're exhausted and it's like this isn't even a good date. But now we do know by the time Friday night rolls around and then Saturday morning rolls

around, we at least have a full Sabbath day. So whether it's a Saturday for you or one day, fight for it. Get in the word of God, figure out what God says about it, and then put that as a priority. Yeah. Uh Jen, last question. Throw it out there. Yes. Oh boy. What is your best advice emotally, spiritually? I'll I'll give a quick answer to that and Carrie, you can give a word and then we'll pray. Yes, we got to wrap this up because we're 10 minutes over everybody. Repeat the question. The question is, what do you do when the uh division of emotional and spiritual intimacy is

because of broken trust? So, how what do you do if you have broken trust and you want to create emotional spiritual intimacy? Is that correctly? Okay. So, I would just say this. The first thing you got to fight against is that it's a quick fix. Because when trust has been broken, it's not a formula of I'm sorry and then the other person just forgives you and then you got this fantasy that you just figured out. So, part of it is recognizing it will not be a quick fix. It's like what got you there? Uh you got to recognize that this didn't happen overnight, the broken trust. And so now the intimacy and emotionally and spiritually is is going to take some time. When you have the end in mind, it's going to work. Uh when you want to get physically well, it doesn't happen working out one time, right? It doesn't happen just with a quick fix. It takes

time of eating well, working out, and doing all the next thing you know, six months, nine months later, you're not the same person you were nine months ago. So it's the same thing with trust. It has to be rebuilt and consistent with both parties involved willing to say, "We want to be healthy." Would you speak into that? Yeah, just from experience, the way that I've rebuilt trust with you is like what you talked about is when you um even in the last week will come to me at the end of the day and say, "What can I do better?" It's these questions. It's it's actually getting vulnerable with each other. Yeah. And and being the one that is willing to ask the spouse these questions and vulnerable things that you really are willing and ready to hear and and actually u move on and do. Yes. Uh so you're right that is a very big question but I think even asking the question is the start of saying we know

one problem that caused this chasm is broken trust. So to even come back to that and acknowledge I'm still trying to heal. I'm still trying to work. I'm still trying to grow uh in this particular area. Uh that that is a part of the process of healing is talking. Don't just drift and then now you're you've got a roommate that you don't even talk to anymore. At least start somewhere. say I there must be some broken trust here. Can we at least start somewhere? And so start start. It's a first step in the long journey. So I guess that part of it is just recognize this is not a destination. Yeah. And if you're doing well, just recognize at some point might not be well again. And what are you going to do? You're going to remember, repent, and repeat. Remember, return,

repeat. And Jesus says it. That's Revelation 2. You can go back to it if you forget it. Uh Jesus speaks to the church like a bride. So we want to learn how does Jesus treat us? That's how we treat each other. You're going to love like Jesus. Kara, can you pray us out of this session? Sure. Yeah. God, um just thank you for this time together. Um God, I'm just so thankful. I'm thankful for your church. I'm thankful for hearts that are just willing to come and learn and and sit at your feet. U God, I pray for the marriages in this room. Would you strengthen them? Would you would you bring them together, God? would you just um just empower them to live um by your spirit. Amen. Uh God that that they may walk in the um in the calling that you have for them. So thank you Jesus. We love you. We praise you. In your name we pray. Amen. Amen.