EP 46: Does God Have More in Mind for Marriage? with Brad Rhoads and Jeremy Meyer

Marriage is a powerful thing created by God prior to the fall

to raise kids, to produce kids, to bring light in the world, to

bring glory to the now between Christ and the church.

I mean, literally, even in First Peter, it says even the degree

to which your prayers are heard is dependent on how well you

love your bride. I don't think there's a full

understanding of the magnitude and significance of marriage.

Theologically, pragmatically, and for our next generation, and

until we win marriage, we're not going to win anything.

Hello, friends. Well, welcome back to the Grace

Church Members Podcast. I'm here in the studio with

producer Whitney. How are you, Whitney?

I'm good. How are you, Scott?

I'm great and we have two special guests today.

We have Jeremy Meyer, pastor of marriage here at Grace and a

special out of town guest Mr. Brad Rhodes who is the Co

founder of Grace Marriage. They have been partnering and

they are providing the Thrive material that we use here at the

church. I know Brad has become a good

friend of yours, Jeremy, and so we are delighted to have him in

town and in the studio. But Jeremy, let me start with

you. Why don't you give us a little

update on what you're up to these days and then I'll let you

introduce Brad. Yeah.

So, so my role is is overseeing marriage across the Grace

campuses, this kind of big picture, really providing more

of a a supportive role to all the different campus leads.

And that that covers from on the premarital side to re engage as

well as thrive. And then anything kind of along

the way where I can be a support to different campus pastors for

different pastoral kind of care reasons.

And remind us how long you have been on staff now.

Ten years now. No way.

Yeah. Golden Anniversary.

That's fantastic. So you mentioned Thrive, so tell

us how you and Brad got connected and then we'll have

Brad tell us a little bit about his origin story with Grace

Marriage. Yeah.

So, you know, probably five years after we had launched to

re engage, we were looking for some type of a resource to

follow up that experience for couples.

And what ended up happening was is we weren't, I guess we

weren't, we didn't have a resource and we're having to

have couples go through the process kind of over and over

again. And I mean, it was at that point

it was a a nine month process because we was it was six months

to go through as well as the open group and couples were

like, we don't want to do all that, that again, right.

It was an amazing experience. We want to go through the

process one more time. And so and so we end up doing

was, is, is I was kind of researching just different

resources and yeah, I came came across through through a, a

mutual acquaintance came across Grace marriage.

And you know, Brad and I, I mean, we, we hit it off in that

conversation just talking about the importance of marriage in

the church and, and just the, the vital, the vitality of, of

the body that we think, if we think about marriage, it has a

direct impact on all the other family ministries.

Right. And so if that's not thriving,

then the other ones aren't going to thrive as well.

Good, good word. And so, Brad, I think that's a

good segue to what you were seeing.

You're not a church guy. You were in law.

Is that right? 22 years.

And so tell us a little bit about how you go from the

courtroom to the podcast studio here talking about marriage.

Yeah, it's an, it's just a natural transition that people

make from the courtroom. This course, it's a marriage

pastor. Of course it's a natural deal.

But in all seriousness, it, I did see a lot of marriage

breakdown in the law practice early on in my practice, did

some domestic relations stuff and wow, if you want to see

pain, you know, divorced, you know, it causes a lot of pain.

Then there's a lot of and it's almost like the Lord said Brett,

most of this is preventable and kind of called me to spend the

rest of my life trying to prevent it and help people grow

and thrive. And I meet with a lot of couples

in crisis and probably 95% of them, if they had the right

rhythms in their marriage throughout that they would never

be in that spot. And multi generations of

complexities and difficulties could be avoided.

And just felt called to spend the rest of my life equipping

churches with marriage ministries and helping people

completely change the paradigm on how they do marriage.

So no longer I just saw the model in our church.

The model is you do premarital counseling and then if you ever

hate each other and are thinking about a divorce, call a pastor,

counselor, spend a ton of money that lose 85% of them.

And I just thought that didn't seem like a great strategy.

And I thought, you know, maybe there's a better way.

Yeah. Wow.

So you along with your wife Marilyn, you guys start grace

marriage. So what is that?

Take us through that process. You know, it was, it was

interesting. So I've been in marriage

ministry and been ordained pastor marriage at our church on

a lay basis for a long time. And I've been spending more and

more of my time in marriage. And I was at coffee shop in

Nicaragua and I remember like I was sitting by this kind of just

like overcame me. Like I want to quit the law and

I want to spend the rest of my life changing how marriage is

done in this nation and world. So I came home from Nicaragua

and I told Maryland, I said, look, how do you feel with five

kids? And then I started college.

How do you feel about me just quitting my job and trying to

start a new marriage ministry from scratch?

To to change the way we do it. Yeah, here's the, here's the big

picture. We're going to change the world.

It's, you know, Marilyn said, I know what God's called you to

do. Go do it.

Then I got scared. So I thought, am I sacrificing

my financial, the health of my family?

Am I, am I just doing what I want to do with their expense?

And so I really started questioning myself and then I'll

never forget it. Marilyn said, Brad, would you

please quit looking back and wasting both our energies.

You know what God's called you to do?

Now go do it. It's almost like that Spider Man

2 reference. Go get em Tiger at the end, you

know, I almost felt like, I almost felt like I had my own

Mary Jane right there. Wow, that's good.

So we'll Fast forward. So now tell us a little bit

about the scope of of grace marriage and then what do you

spend most of your time doing? And then kind of third part of

that question, what do you see from the churches that you're

working with? That's a great question.

The what I see is in most churches has a premarital

process and a crisis process and then virtually no strategy for

marriage. That's what I see.

Why do you think that is? Like where?

Where did that come from that we think about marriage that way

even within the church? You know, I don't know, I've

always wondered why did youth ministries evolve where you have

a full time youth guide, children's ministries evolve,

you have a full time children's guide and you have camps and

programs that's ongoing and they spend a lot of money on it.

And then you literally don't do anything in the marriage space

and wonder why the stats aren't bearing out that it's working.

I call it the billion dollar failed experiment.

Cause like Jeremy said a minute ago, if you lose marriage, you

lose everything, right? A pastor told me.

He said wow, if marriage doesn't work, nothing as a church works.

And we've talked on this podcast before of like we've talked

about children's ministry, we've talked about students ministry.

And a lot of times the best thing that you can do for those

groups is the parents and starting with the.

Marriage. Well, I'll ask children, youth

ministers and family pastor, I said, what has a bigger impact

on the spiritual development of the kids in your church, your

weekly programming or the marriage they grow up in?

Then I said, well then tell me about the resources you're

pointing into the marriage they grow up in.

If you feel that's more important than your weekly

programming. And this is as a lawyer, I just

feel like God's given me the perfect case and said, present

it the rest of your life and get better at it every year.

Yeah, that's a good analogy. So then you guys are?

Nationwide, yes, we're about about 30 states, about 272

churches. OK.

And so you get to visit with different churches and So what

do you what do you see when you see churches that really kind of

get get behind this idea of discipleship and marriage?

What? What changes about those

cultures? This is life.

I mean, you know, because it's like the health of your marriage

affects your effectiveness and everything you do.

And we had, when I was in law practice, we'd have staff

members with struggling marriages.

And it's it's kind of hard to get a whole lot done when you're

crying. Right.

So, so, so break that down a little bit more.

It's like when when male and I are doing great and it, it flows

out into my work. You know it literally.

Marriage is a powerful thing created by God prior to the fall

to raise kids, to produce kids, to bring light in the world to

to bring glory to the knowledge between Christ and the church.

I mean, literally, even in First Peter, it says even the degree

to which your prayers are heard is dependent on how well you

love your bride. I don't think there's a full

understanding of the magnitude and significance of marriage.

Theologically, pragmatically, and for our next generation, and

until we win marriage, we're not going to win anything.

Yeah. I wonder if we have just kind of

treated marriage as an end of itself and have really lacked

that biblical theological view. So therefore, if marriage is

doing OK, then we don't need to give that much attention.

So and then OK becomes this huge sliding scale.

Whereas if you take what the picture that you just presented,

which is a biblical picture, you always need to be putting energy

into it because it is about worship, it is about

transformation. It's about being conformed to

Christ's image and godliness. But it, it seems like we settled

for a lesser standard. So then the attention that it

needs or the effort that we put into it abs and flows with

other, you know, oh, kids, kids ministry needs work.

Oh, we need to focus on outreach or whatever different things.

So do you see that, Jeremy, even maybe in the way people think

about marriage here? Yeah, I think that there's a

desire for their marriage to thrive and yet there's AI think

there's a a need in the moment for their kids to be cared for.

And I think that that's, I don't think that's a unique to grace.

I think that when a when, when, when children are when there's

disruption in the family, they families seek to care for the

disruption rather than go for the source.

And and that, that source obviously is the Lord, but that,

but there's not a, a recognition that, hey, we need to be working

on our marriage because because that outflow our kids are taking

in and and so therefore we do need to be able to work on our

marriage. The interesting thing is

marriage is just this thing that just supposed to work.

It's like we recognize to be in good health you have to really

proactively take care of your health.

For your car not to break down, you have to change what we have

to do this for your yard to look good.

You have to do things. But for some reason, we think if

you love each other and you have this connection, it just

supposed to work. There's really not a mentality

that you proactively invest into it time and resources for it to

work. And because there's not this

investment mentality, this growth mentality, it stagnates,

declines and then 40 to 50% crisis out of divorce.

So it's really a complete change in paradigm and how people do

marriage from because marriage does not work on autopilot.

It doesn't work for anybody. And, and, but we feel that love,

whatever people think it is supposed to just make it so it

takes care of itself. And it just doesn't that.

That's what happened in our marriage.

Our first year, we just were crazy about each other and we

thought it would just work. And within six months, I was our

least favorite human in the world.

And it's interesting like as I'm listening to you talking, like

that's exactly the perspective of I think my generation, just

like the people that I'm in contact with and have a lot of

friends who are dating, engaged, getting married.

And it's almost like there's this huge emphasis of like, this

is the goal of your entire life is to get married.

And there's like so much importance placed on it.

But then once you are married, like, it kind of dies off.

You know, it's like what we did the thing.

And so we accomplished life's goal.

And it sounds like that should be flipped.

Like, but the trick, the trick is when you're dating, you often

time have this powerful emotions and chemicals released in your

brain. So it does just work.

It comes really natural because it's these strong emotions

driving it. And depending on the research,

it's between 4:00 and 9:00 months.

Once those those emotions wear out, they wear off, and then no

longer does it. All this proactive love happened

just as a natural outpouring of strong emotion, because that

strong emotion isn't there anymore.

And then nobody's really saying, hey, you've got to pick it up

and keep going. Then the marriage falls into a

stagnant, complacent norm. Some put up with it, some give

up on. Yeah, and if, if I'm not aware

that this could be happening, then I, I feel bad.

I feel like ashamed because my marriage that I've been building

up to for this long period in my mind isn't working.

So then I'm going to, I'm going to hide and I'm probably not

going to talk about it, which means it's just going to get

worse. So then maybe we'll have kids

and then that'll help, right. And it's a good distraction

because now we're now we're business partners raising kids.

Fast forward, you know, 10/15/20 years.

We know what we're that if we make it that far.

And things become identity issues so quickly, right?

Like when things go back that it becomes like, not only is the

marriage not good, like I'm not good, it must be my fault.

Like I'm not a Good Wife, I'm not a good husband, I'm not a

good parent. And like, that just gets

convoluted, especially for us as believers when we want our

identity to be rooted in Christ, and just gets messy.

I think one of the issues is, is that when we, when we think

about the, the marriage or the, the, the goal of marriage is, is

really how you know what it's really getting to that day one,

which is the wedding day, right and versus day 18,250.

Yeah, it's a specific number, Jimmy.

So like, that's kind of odd. That is 50 years of being

married. Wow.

And so we want to think through how, you know what, we're not

preparing for day one. We're preparing for 18,250.

Yeah, it's a good perspective. And so trying to aim and think,

what does it look like for us to grow in our discipleship?

Where, you know, if you think about with Paul and and talking

to the people of Ephesus, I mean, there in Ephesians 525

talks about the idea of husbands, love your wife as

Christ, as the church, right. Well, and we, and we spend so

much energy on that. Well, 531 talks about the idea

of, Hey, well, I wasn't exactly just talking about the church.

I mean talking about husband and wife relationship, but a greater

emphasis upon the church. And So what does it look like

for us to be growing as His disciples, where we are our

image bearers of of who He is? Yeah, that's good.

So Brad, in this new paradigm that like I gave you in the

coffee shop in Nicaragua, I love that picture where you're

talking about, you know, maintaining and building into a

healthy marriage. What does the curriculum of

Thrive? What does it look like?

How does it help that to occur? What it does, it gives you a

really a platform to connect and to plan and to grow and to

celebrate. So when you're in Thrive and you

might just get 10 to 15 minutes of teaching, but the rest of it

is you really applying it and talking through and getting

excited about it in your own marriage.

You know, I had my Thrive session, we call it Grace

Marriage, our church. We had Thrive session just to

do. And I left after our session

just like crazy excited about being Maryland married to

Maryland. We had fun things on the

calendar. We had date scheduled.

We talked about areas of our marriage that we're going to

really focus on and enjoy. And I mean, still riding high

from it. And I mean, you get to do life

with your very best friend in the world.

You get to you get to cry together, you get to laugh

together, you get to enjoy each other physically.

It's it's such a gift. And then a busy dominated cell

phone world. Now we superimpose a child

centered culture on top of it. And very few people get to

experience. And it's just it's just so sad.

And when you see people drink the kool-aid, it is you see,

it's like, whoa, this, this is all right.

Yeah. You know, it was like a couple

in our in our group, they did, they had your typical marriage.

They had kids. They were kids activities.

And I said, you know, get away from kids once a week and just

enjoy one another for four hours.

He said, are we allowed to do that?

I said, yeah, he's done it. And now they've incorporated 1/4

once, not a quarter. They go away separate.

And he said now we love being married.

He goes, I can't tell you how much better a parent I am now

that I'm living refreshed with my bride.

Raising my kids and not living dominated by my kids.

Just coin life side by side with my bride.

Yeah, yeah, it's, it's funny you say that because we, we just had

a, a young leaders retreat from our downtown campus and it was

so encouraging hearing these, these young marrieds share, you

know, been married, you know, probably 3 or 4 years.

And you know, they were saying, this is the best thing we've

experienced since I've been a grace because it's because it's

brought us closer together and where we then want to be able to

more emphatically worship and serve.

And, and then they were, you know, we had some, you know, 70

year old leaders who were investing in these young

couples. And, and they also were like,

now this is just this weekend away for us.

While we loved investing in these younger couples, this it

was, it was uniting. It was invigorating for us to be

able to to do this. And so which then wants us to be

able to be able to or gives us the energy to be able to serve

at our local campus. Brad, you mentioned the word

refresh refresher is on your website and that really stood

out to me. I just, I love the the image of

that word. But one of the things you said

is to help move marriages from performance based to grace

based. Can you elaborate on that a

little bit more? Absolutely.

Romans 614 says sin will have no dominion, no mastery, no control

over you because you're under grace, not law.

And the reality is none of us are consistent.

I mean, I'm grouchy some weeks and I'm nice some weeks.

I'm romantic some weeks and there's weeks I don't do

anything thoughtful. But you know, I just got got

grace and we love each other despite our sin.

We don't hold our sin against each other.

So in a performance based marriage, what happens is one

person has a difficult week, responds thoughtlessly, the

other takes offense and responds in kind, moves away, goes cold,

snaps back in a grace based marriage, it's like a, it's more

of a rescue and tell you, well, Brad's struggling this week, had

a tough month in November and Marilyn just kept pursuing me.

She goes, well, he's, he's cold, he's distant and he leads a

marriage ministry and he's kind of a but you know, she could

have easily said that, but but instead, you know, she's

pursuing me. She's praying for me, she's

scheduling dates. She's doing this.

Why? Because Marilyn chooses to love

me, period. She doesn't love me because what

she gets from me, just like God doesn't love us from what he

gets from us. While we were enemies of God,

while we ever get sinners, Christ died for us.

And how do you love each other like that?

So grace is the atmosphere of pursuit.

It's a rescue mentality. It's pity the man that falls and

has no one to help him up. When Maryland's gotten down, I

hope I've moved toward her and helped her out.

And when I've gotten down, she's moved toward me and helped me

up. And we make it clear this isn't

tolerating abuse, infidelity. That's a whole nother situation,

but just in the day-to-day. In the day-to-day, we get more

testimonies on the power of God's grace in marriage than

every other rhythm we teach combined.

Which is so much more attainable than trying to be a perfect wife

or a perfect husband. Like nobody's going to win that

one. So we actually have that this

particular lesson as the very first one in foundations of the

foundation, specifically in the Grace Marriage or Thrive

curriculum. So explain if you would why the

grace based like that grace versus performance mindset is in

that very first lesson. Because it's foundational.

Because if you don't get grace, you're going to live on each

other's nerves. Because you all have annoying

habits, You all have difficulties.

Nobody's perfect. First, John tells us, we all sin

if we say we don't. We deceive ourselves.

So if the reality is Maryland doesn't handle life perfectly

and I don't, if we don't get grace, the degree we don't

handle it well will cause a wedge in our marriage and sin

will have dominion after your control.

So grace, it's unless the Lord built it, it's built in vain.

It is the rock foundation to build any relationship on

because without grace we have no hope and we don't.

Our hope is grace and forgiveness in a relationship

with God. And I find that to be the case

horizontally as well. So, so share if you would, about

the impact of practicing and like receiving and practicing

God's grace in your own life and how that directly impacts your

relationship and expressing grace to your wife.

Well, I, I grew up in a very performance based Christianity.

So like the more mature you are, the more time you spent, you

know, so I'm getting up at 5:00 in the morning doing this to the

Christian, you know, light yoke easy burden rested soul boy.

I never got that it just felt heavy.

It felt hard instead of a mentor of mine really taught me grace

and said Brad your hopes not in your performance.

It's it's just you can chill dude.

You can rest you can relax you can abide you can enjoy and got

your father who gives you favor delights and he likes watching

you play golf. He likes you get excited at

games. You have a father delights me,

but it just seemed too good to be true.

So I just couldn't. And then one day I was in my den

and I almost heard Godsey oddly bread.

You're not OK, and it's OK. I was like, really?

It literally just felt like a box of bricks were pulled off of

me. That's never come by.

And it's like, yes, but it's like, I do feel like easy

burden, light yoke, rested souls, Sabbath, rest of Christ.

Now I realize they can be experiential realities for the

believer, but only if you get grace and you walk in grace.

And to your point, if it's hard to give something you don't get.

So when you put yourself under a lot of pressure, you put other

people under a lot of pressure. When you live feeling kind of

condemned, you're very good at condemning others.

When you get Romans 81, there's no condemnation in Christ and

your wife does terrible. Oh, Oh well, she needs grace

like I need grace. And man, we can have a great

ministry of reconciliation and put on display, and we don't

have a great relationship. It's not because she's a great

wife and I'm a great husband. It's because we have a perfect

Savior and both of us are totally forgiven and we're able

to live in that state toward one another.

And I think that's one reason why marriage ministry struggles

is because I think people have a hard time engaging God that way.

It really enjoying God, seeing that God enjoys them, and then

being able to take those principles and apply to

marriage. So if, if God and I are on some

type of performance track, then that's how my wife and I are at.

But we we've tried it and doesn't work.

So we're just kind of stuck. So the so the gears have kind of

grind ground to a halt and we're just going to, you know, on our

best days, tolerate each other. On our worst days, just, you

know, avoid each other, keep doing life around the kids.

But to have this kind of abiding relationship with God that

didn't get supplied to our marriage, I think that that's a

big, big, big step that we forget is to is to really

understand the grace of God and bring it into our marriage.

And so as we get better at one, we definitely should get better

at the other. So then Jeremy, what have you

seen as we have put Thrive in place pretty new just the last

couple years? Tell us about some of the just

the experiences, the stories that you've seen at our

different campuses putting this kind of refreshment into place.

Yeah. So it so at our Powdersville

campus, it was a a group of folks who are they're as they're

meeting on a quarterly basis initially.

And and that the feedback was so strong in their experience that

then then they were going to hey, what does it look like for

us to not just make quarterly? Can we can we do it more?

Can we meet a little bit more often?

And so and so they're meeting, I think they're meeting six or

seven times throughout the year. They add a couple more to it.

And you know, it's interesting because Brad and I were talking

about this a little bit earlier, just the idea that it's, it's

similar to working out in some ways where if you haven't worked

out in a while and then you go work out like you are exhausted.

Like, and it was, and there's a big like, wow, like that was a

massive workout, right? That said, if we're continuing

to work out then and we're working those muscles, we're

sometimes not as aware of the of the impact until we stop working

out those muscles. And so so we're thrive comes in.

And what we've heard just from from at Pattersville down at at

downtown as well as TR Spartanburg is that is that

these couples are really appreciating that one-on-one

face to FaceTime where they may not necessarily mean crisis, but

they're but they're just they're locking arms together and having

time to go. Hey, you know what, Let's not be

ships missing each other in the night, but rather let's let's

really spend some time, some dedicated time to connect.

Jeremy, when you talk about that face to FaceTime, like for

people who are living together and are in context together all

the time, like what's the difference between like, I see

you at home all the time and we have dinner every day and like

this kind of FaceTime that you're talking about?

Yeah, it is so easy to to be cooked, to be cooking dinner, to

be doing, you know, all the the necessities to take care of a

home, to be running kids around everywhere versus hey, you know

what, let's spend some time together.

Specifically say on next Thursday night where we're going

to we're going to dig in and consider some some teaching that

is is not super long where it's like 1012 minutes into where we

can just kind of chew on it a little bit and and then like

individually and then to be able to talk about it for a few

minutes and then and then to be able to something sometimes we

can talk about in groups, but that it's that idea of of being

known. And I think that from a biblical

standpoint in, in Genesis 3, talking about that idea of being

naked, unashamed to where like there's, there's a fullness of

understanding one another. And, and that is, I think that

the missing component of so many couples is that is what is we're

running wild. And yet, and yet, they may not

fully know me. Right.

And so same parallel from our own walk of faith where you can

be reading your Bible and praying and like going to church

and worshiping and you get into this routine.

But that's not the same as like we've talked about spending a

long unhurried time with God. Like that's a different kind of

intimacy that's formed in that. That's cool.

And when you're at home, most communication is is driven by

the moment. You know, it's like when Mary

and I are talking, when's your doctor's appointment tomorrow.

What are the kids have? What do you have this?

Who's doing dinner? Where are you going?

This so most of it. In Thrive.

You will talk about things and connect at a level deeper than

you will ever connect with at home.

I mean, male and I have been married 29 years.

Our richest, deepest conversations are during our

sessions. We talk a lot.

We have a pretty complex life with five kids that dominates

most of our communication. But when we stop and pull out

and have structured discussions about deep things, it pulls us

together in a unique way and excites us about one another.

Yeah, and you're highlighting you could I guess it's kind of

see your face over here with the with the energy that you had and

excitement that you have with Marilyn about your relationship.

And I think that that as we are investing like where it's, it's

a quarterly, monthly, whatever, you know, Ave. we choose through

Thrive that it, that there's that snowball effect that starts

to happen where you're excited, you're energized, where, where

marriage is not a, a boring thing or, or a study we have to

do. But actually this is an

opportunity for us to 1 individually appreciate the, the

joy God's given us and we get to do this thing together, you

know, and it's a it's a gift. So give us just the the two

minutes outline of what a session, for lack of a better

term. What would that?

What does that look like? Yeah.

So, so we would open with some form of teaching.

Sometimes it's video, sometimes it's a couple up front.

And, and then there would be, it's for about 10 or 12 minutes

or so. And then we would have an

opportunity to then do some individual work to where

there's, there's, there's some questions provided to where we

have to consider, hey, what was that?

What did we learn and draw out of that teaching?

And we get about 10 minutes for that.

And so there's individual homework and then we get

together after that, we kind of walk, walk off into, you know,

there's some, some chairs throughout the lobby.

And it really takes some time and energy to share.

Hey, what is it that your, what were your takeaways?

And let's talk through this a little bit.

And it's an opportunity where, you know, if we got 20 minutes

or so, we try to communicate, hey, like you got 10 minutes

each. And for if you're a talker, like

you got 10 minutes, if you're not a talker, you get stepped

up, you know, and so, but that's the framework.

There's that, there's that listening and that's that

receiving component. There's that.

There's that work component, and there's that conversation

component. And so the whole event is 2 to

three hours. Yeah, it really depends on on

the campus. So, so for example, our TR

campus, they, they love Saturdays and it has worked

really well for them. And so they'll go from I think

like 8:30 to 12:30. And so they'll, they'll spend a

good solid 4 hours. They'll have breakfast with

everybody and, and then there may be a game or two and then

we'll transition and go into the content.

There's a typically four to six lessons that we'll try to cover

depending upon whether it's a four hour or a three hour time

experience. OK.

So a lot of flexibility. Yeah, tons of flexibility

depending on the campus. And so, Brad, then what's the

what's the big picture? How long can a church to thrive?

Do you do it for a year and do it for two years and you're

dying? Or what does this look like?

We have 7 years of curriculum. So every session curriculum

changes every session for seven straight years.

So we, so it's, it's kind of that ongoing.

It's just an ongoing investment. Well, and your marriage changes

after seven years, so but will. Will you change quarter for

quarter? Yeah.

I mean, one quarter we have a kid and really having tough

health problems. The next quarter I'm super

stressed and having trouble functioning the next quarter.

So. So your life is always difficult

to navigate, and you need to take this time aside to be

intentional on navigating together because life will

always throw things at you to try to put a division in you.

And when things get really hard, it's easy not to talk a lot to

one another about it because it's not pleasant.

It's stressful to even verbalize it.

Jeremy, just as we're wrapping up here, give us big picture

context, you know, how does re engage, how does bridge fit with

this type thrive material? Just kind of kind of paint the

big picture for marriage for us, at least here at Grace.

Yeah. So kicking things off would be,

would be bridge that's that's our premarital process.

And so the aim there is to help kind of bridge the gap between

couples who are engaged and then trying to encourage and, and,

and equip them for a journey of following Jesus together on the,

it's very simple format there with that aim again, of thinking

long term. And then from there, the aim

would then be to transition in to reengage, whether there's a

foundation that's cultivated and developed that is, that's pretty

in depth. It's, it's, it is 14 weeks.

And the, the goal there is, is, is that you are growing together

while also in community and you're in small groups.

And, and then coming out of that, we're going, hey, so if we

developed this foundation, we then want to continue to have a

resource where we can maintain and as well as continue to grow

in our relationship and to, to keep things literally thriving

in our relationship. And so, so that would be you

thrive into where to where we, if we engage was, was the small

group emphasis thrive as the face to FaceTime.

And it's, it's intentional face to FaceTime.

And remind us where our re engage material comes from.

Great question. Yeah, so from Watermark Church

in Dallas and so they they they've been doing reengage I

think for about 20 years. And and so they've been

incredibly generous as far as how, how they have create,

created the content as well as provided resource for us to help

launch which we would launched I guess 10 years ago.

Awesome. And then, you know, as you told

earlier, Thrive came along, you got connected with Brad.

Brad, how do you see your relationship, what you're doing

in Grace marriage and Thrive with Reengage?

Well, I see like kind of picture of Reengage getting you up in

the air and then Thrive helping you stay in the air and gain

altitude over time. Thrive is a thing that helps you

grow year after year, quarter after quarter, month after

month. Reengage really helps you

understand marriage better, deal with issues to better equip you

and get you and get you ready. But what we don't want to occur

is have a great experience with Reengage and then life chip away

at you over time with a diminished impact over the years

with this reversion to previous norm because everything needs

ongoing attention to thrive. So what we do is want to make

sure we give you a really good Ave. to give your marriage

ongoing attention so that when you finish Reengage, you're at

your starting point, you're not at your high point.

Yeah, it's a great analogy and I think that's helpful because we

do have number of folks that are familiar with Reengage, Thrive

might be something new that they're hearing for the first

time. To be able to put those together

is is super important. And then there's some

interesting things happening just with our Grayson Espanol or

now Iglesia Gracia resources. Yeah, you're familiar with that

a little bit. Whitney, tell us what's going on

there. I am.

I would love to shout out Iglesia Gracia whenever I can.

They are just doing great work to translate these resources and

Brad has been very kind to allow us to do that.

And so that's just a really neat opportunity where we get to take

the resources that he and Marilyn have created and just

other resources from our partners at Watermark, translate

those into Spanish and those are being sent out across the

country and even to our partners in Latin America.

So they're just doing some really good work.

That's exciting to be able to provide all of these great

resources in Spanish. That's just not, again, as we've

said before, as common as they are in English.

That's awesome. Cheer me and Brad.

This has been great. We have about 5 minutes left, so

give us your closing thoughts and encouragement for our

church. Yeah.

So as it relates to to thrive, there's this propensity for us

as as we are living life and we may have a have an exceptional

marriage like we may be be this bonding left and right having a

blast. And, and, and regardless of how

great of a marriage we have, we still have to work on it.

And most of us don't have the resources and tools to be able

to do that well. And so I think that that's where

Thrive comes in to where, hey, you know what, like this

resource is being provided to you.

You don't have to think about it.

You just come in and you're encouraged, have a good time

and, and, and you walk out reinvigorated as you've got a

plan. Like we know when we're getting

together for our date night two weeks from now, three weeks from

now, we know we're coming back for Thrive and, and, and we look

forward to that time. Like that's even something for

Brooke and I were like, you know, we get to leave this

thing. We're so pumped about it.

And so I think that that's also something we've seen in couples

is that is that they experience it, they love it, and they can't

wait to come back. And that one thing I would say

is those that attend Grace Church recognize how unique your

church is. So we work with churches around

the country. Grace Church values marriage and

invest in marriage in a way very few churches do.

You have a strategy. You've got your premarital,

you've got the re engage peace. You've got your thrive peace.

It's it's intentional. And the reason I left the law is

because I want virtually every church in America to look like

what Grace is doing now. Well, I encourage you to be part

of the marriage movement by being part of what grace is

doing. Because when you are investing

in your marriage, you're taking a you're playing a role in

changing how marriage is done. Hebrews 13-4 says let marriage

be held in honor among all. The church has largely been

silent on marriage, and it's not been honored by all.

It's been ridiculed by most. If the church steps forward and

the younger generation looks and sees people having an absolute

blast together, it will completely change the paradigm

and how they view marriage. Part of what we're trying to

rebrand this whole thing, right? Rebrand the whole thing so that

the younger generation can't wait to do it because it looks

so stinking cool. And that's how Maryland I got

the marriage minister in first place.

One young couple came to us, though.

You do our pre Maryland. So our pastor, I said why?

They said what you'd have looks for.

Yeah. And we're not going to change

marriage until we as individual couples choose to not schedule

our over our marriages, to prioritize it over other things

and have vibrant marriages that attract marriage to a younger

generation. Which is so different from the

cultural narrative of, like, it's a ball and chain, you know,

and you're just stuck and you do the best that you can.

And then maybe when you're empty nesters and your kids get out of

the house, you can do something fun, you know?

Like, what you're describing is so much more compelling.

Absolutely. You've got five kids, and we

were in a, you know, a fun concert on Broadway in Nashville

this week. We have a blast together.

It's like the most fun thing of my life is my marriage.

That's awesome. It is like, it is such, you

know, scripture talks about being an Oasis in the desert.

Yeah, you know, it is. It's just like you got your very

best friend that you get to richly enjoy while you're

handling all these complex difficulties all around you that

only seem to get worse as you get older.

Yeah. So you could could we highlight

something real quick here? Of course.

So to talk about that, that impact, if you would, on empty

nesters, because one of the things that we'll see is that,

you know, couples are coming through and and you have that

sandwich season where you're where parents are parents are

are struggling and trying to take care of them, trying to

launch kids when you have some younger surprises and and oh, by

the way, I'm Jeremy, you know, like just trying to we're

reuniting. And so and we and we see that

struggle. So I share with you what about

this, the impact of. If you if you do thrive and you

follow Grace's plan for your marriage, you will look forward

to your empty mast. I mean you will like this is

going to be amazing. We just get to enjoy each other

in total freedom. You'll love your kids, but

you'll have a marriage centric home, not a child centric home.

And people 50 and above have the divorce rates doubled, 65 and of

us tripled. Why?

Because we've transitioned to a child centered culture.

Kids leave the home. There's not a lot there.

They're grieving the loss of their kids.

Their lives ran around them and all of a sudden what do they

got? Almost nothing.

They have difficulty reconnecting and a lot of them

end up gone. Just you don't want your

marriage even real, your home, even really marriage centered

marriage. You want a God centered home.

So when our marriage transitioned from really tough

to stable, Marilyn came to me and she said, Brett, I don't

need you. I looked at her like I knew it

was bad. Is it?

But what's next? She goes, I want you to forgive

me. That's what that says.

I've been asking for you and only God can give me.

She was my security, my hope, my joy, everything come from Christ

and Christ alone. I'll be your godly wife and I'll

enjoy you, but my hopes not in you.

I love you, but I'm off your roller coaster.

I'm no longer hitching my joy and happiness to your moods.

So, so all of a sudden, when she wasn't relying marriage

struggles because we asked for what it can deliver.

I mean, we, it should make us happy.

My, my goodness, it's supposed to make us feel happy, fun,

romantic, pleasurable. It's supposed to be stable.

It's supposed to be unpredictable, but it's supposed

to be everything that it can't be.

And then on the child centered piece, you know, when you, when

you don't follow God's order for things, everything breaks down.

You know, and marriage is the number one horizontal

relationship. And when you slide children

above the marriage, the marriage struggles and then ultimately

the kids struggle more because they're the center of everything

and they turn 19 let out of the home and nobody cares.

It's a it's a tough adjustment. So, so I will say that being

having a God centric home with the sufficiency of Christ

primary where you focus on loving your bride and having a

beautiful God centered marriage and your kids get to benefit

from that. Missed some kids events.

I didn't know I was allowed to do that.

And I'd say, are you coming to my soccer game?

Like, no, Mom and I are going to dinner and a movie.

What? But I don't have to go to all

their things. I mean, I go to most of them,

but if I go to all their things, people complain about why I

don't have that much time to go to Thrive and I'm so busy.

We'll spend 8% of the amount of time you spend on kids sports

and run your kid places on your marriage.

It'll change your whole life. All right, he's preaching now,

so. We're going to have to cut.

You have to cut me off while I get going.

You can get a lawyer to preacher going at the same time.

It's ugly. No.

I want to close with three words that I saw on your website that

I think really epitomize this conversation.

Trust, connection and joy. Trust, connection and joy.

Using these resources to engage, developing that trust, trust

with God, trust with one another, connecting over the

smallest things of just even a date night and really finding

that joy, Joy in God, joy in marriage.

Would you pray for us, pray for our marriages here at Grace as

we pray for just the work that you guys are doing?

And we thank you for being here and thank you for your time.

And yeah, it's been a real privilege.

I think it's a privilege being here.

Well, Lord. 1st, I thank you for Grace Church and I thank you for

the massive impact it's having on so many.

I thank you for their marriage ministry and for Jeremy and this

whole crew here and put your blessings on them and put your

favor on all the marriages. I pray that you would just

ignite a fire of the heart that marriage would be held an honor

among all, and then we'd be all part of that quest that we would

be out loving each other and people would see it.

Well, that's cool, that's cool. And then ultimately they'd want

to know how is it you have that? That's the grace of Jesus and

it's a revelation of his word. And the reason that I'm richly

enjoying things so much is because I'm delighted in by God.

Let me tell you. So I pray for grace.

I pray for all their ministries. I pray for protection of their

leaders. I pray for favor.

I thank you for the massive different the church is having

internationally, nationally and here in Greenville.

In Jesus name, Amen.