Focus on Marriage

Yesterday was a long day, but an amazing day as hubby and I spent the day with our "Focus on Marriage" at the all-day simulcast by Focus on the Family entitled, "Focus on Marriage".

There were 5 different speakers throughout the day-long seminar: Gary Thomas, Beth Moore, Del Tackett, Gary Smalley and John Trent. Worship was led by Jeremy Camp. It was AWESOME! Totally awesome!

I thought today I would share some of the highlights of each speaker:

Gary Thomas: Gary is the author of Sacred Marriage, an excellent book if you've never read it on how to have a truly godly marriage. In his seminar talk, Gary spoke about how marriage is one of God's tools in making us holy. He encouraged each individual to be a God-centered spouse so that our motivation in marriage is not to receive, but to serve our spouse out of reverance to God. He used the concept of God as a "Father-in-law" and that we should treat God's "son" or "daughter" with the care and respect we would in dealing with an earthly father-in-law. He also talked about how when we are engaged the list of "amazing" things our spouse "is" is a mile long but after marriage, the list of all the things our spouse "isn't" (in terms of meeting our expectations) is long. We need our expectations to meet reality and use our marriage as an instrument of God shining His light on the areas in our life He wants to refine instead of focusing on the "flaws" of our spouse.

Beth Moore: Now who doesn't adore Beth Moore? That girl is FUNNY! She has such an adorable way of sharing God's truth that doesn't come across offensive or too strong at all but oh boy... what a firecracker that little bit of Texas is! She was very candid about her own marriage and her transparency was refreshing and endearing. I loved when she mentioned how "baggage always attracts baggage" and shared how we tend to be drawn to people with similar "baggage" when we marry... for some that is a full set of matching luggage! She spent time on the idea of godly submission and challenged the men in the area of godly leadership. Her big theme was about how our security and identity in marriage can't come from our spouse but has to come from God Himself. Our spouse will never be able to make us completely happy... it's not their job! Tom Cruise really led women off course in Jerry Maguire when he told Rene Zellwegger, "You complete me". Women have been frustrated trying to make that happen for years... centuries even. It's not our jobs to make the other "complete". That's God's job!

Del Tackett: Now, God bless Del, but he just wasn't my most favorite of the speakers. He was a little dry and over my head but I still was able to learn from him. It was truly amazing how God had spoken to each of the 5 speakers and how in particular, the first 3 seemed to feed one into the other in their message. Del spoke of how God's intent for marriage is foundational on relationship. He used the example of the Trinity and how God's Word is the "blueprint" for how we are to build a strong marriage foundation. He also shared how selfishness destroys intimacy in marriage as it defies God's relationship definition of sacrifice.

Gary Smalley: Now Gary was hilarious. I'm not 100% certain if he meant to be as funny as he was. Bless his sweet heart, as he gets older, his mind seems to race and he either mumbled incoherently some parts, or he would jump from one thought to another. He was using these props of a vinebranch and "twigs" which had us all rolling in the aisles in laughter. His key thoughts were very poignant though and he truly was a great speaker. His big thought was that the "quality" of my life is not dependant on my relationship with my spouse, but it is dependant on my relationship with Christ. He said something very profound that was important I think for many of us to hear: "we are NOT the Holy Spirit in our spouse's life". That means, I am not supposed to determine what is God's will for my spouse, but I sure can pray for him that God reveals that to him! Love. God's love to be precise is what makes a GREAT marriage. When we love as God loves (I Cor 13 & other verses), it does something fresh and beautiful in our marriage. So, the key to a great marriage is humility. He had 8 great ideas to add value to marriage. These were:

1. Pray together
2. Bible reading together
3. Bible Study together
4. Attending Church together
5. Memorize/Meditate on Scripture together
6. Listen to Christian radio
   
7. Christian worship/praise music
8. Christ-centered movies like Fireproof

John Trent: John was the "wrap it up" speaker and he gave some really practical advice to bring it on home. He wrote a book entitled "The 2 degree difference" which pretty much says that you don't need to take your marriage 180 degrees different all at once but little 2 degree shifts in behavior, beliefs, concepts can make all the difference. He used the example of falling asleep at the wheel of his car. Sometimes, when we close our eyes to our marriage health, we can drift off the right path. As anyone who has fallen asleep at the wheel knows, you can't jerk the wheel to get back on track. You have to make slow, small shifts in direction in order to not roll your vehicle into a ditch. So it is with our marriages. We need to take "baby steps" of change when our marriage is going off course.


All in all it was money well spent. It was wonderful to see Jeremy Camp leading worship too. I had no idea he was a former widower. Did you know that? He and his precious wife were up there sharing and leading us all in worship. It was all so wonderful.


I came home from the seminar with sore bum, but happy heart. I felt God had already revealed many of the lessons we had heard earlier in our marriage, but it was such a good reminder to keep our focus on God and stay the course. I am so grateful for the husband and marriage God has blessed me with! Our hope/dream is that we can come alongside other couples to help them in their marriage as we anticipate starting a small group with married couples discussing Gary Smalley's study called "I Promise".