 Thank you for joining me as I sit down with Pastor David and Marie Rosales from Calvary Chapel Chino Valley as we discuss marriage raising children and managing difficulties that arise in the family. We're ready to begin, so let's talk marriage. But you know when we talk about any building project that may come about, we look at a good foundation as necessary for any project that needs to be done. A building project, it can be any type of project around the house. What would be some foundational essentials for building a good marriage? God's the first. You know, as we're seated here on the stage area, directly to my right is my pulpit and there's a rug on top of a rug and that rug is covering the concrete and we had people come into our church facility or sanctuary before we laid the carpet and this entire stage area, every square foot of it, this whole area has scripture that we had given some pens, marking pens and people wrote their favorite verses. So I am always walking on and standing on Bible verses. I always am. Every time I preach, underneath me, I have my scripture. There is no other foundation laid which has been laid other than Jesus Christ. That's my foundation. There can be no other foundation. There is a sure foundation, and that's why we call our radio ministry and other auxiliary ministries with the word foundation because that's my foundation, the scripture. So the foundation of my life is scriptural. It has to be. There has to be a fundamental way of thinking. There has to be something that has established your worldview, something that you cling to that has made you who you are. There has to be. And in my case, it's been wanting to do what I know God's word says to do. And so that's my personal thing. That's Marie's personal thing. Marie is a woman of the word. She loves her devotions. She takes her notes when I'm teaching, even though she could talk to me and say, honey, give me your notes, you know, and wouldn't have to. But I'll be teaching and I'll look down there and I see her scribbling a little note, you know, Marie plus David or whatever it is she's writing. She writes these things, right? She's writing things down about what she's hearing. You know, when am I going to eat tonight? Stuff like that. Those are her notes. All this time I thought they'd been spiritual. But thank you, John, for revealing the carnality of Marie. She kicks me. And so our foundation is scripture. And so if you're going to have a sure foundation, if we're a marriage, you know, it ought to be the foundation you built your life on. And if you built your life on the word, at least your best, the best attempts on your part with the power of the Holy Spirit in his illumination to understand these things. Well, then obviously there's your foundation. So what is the foundation for a good marriage? If it isn't faith in God, if it isn't a relationship with Jesus, who taught me that I'm a sinner in need of grace, who taught me that. So a sinner married another sinner and this sinner needed grace, which helps me to understand that that other sinner needs grace too, which helps these two sinners in the grace of God to be able to become that one flesh. And so your home marriage has to be built on your faith in God in his word. It has to be. And everything else will blossom from that, which is what our secret, it's no secret, it's biblical. That's what our secret is though. I actually, and I needed more work on this than Marie did. And I just say that quite honestly, you know, because I'm a man of the flesh. I'm a man who can live in the flesh. I'm a man who, once my mind is set, I've got to do this, then I pursue that to the hurt sometimes of others because I'm going to accomplish this, right? Because that's how a lot of men are. I need to do this, got to get this done. Now, Marie, on the other hand, entered into our marriage, I would say, with this idea that, you know, my life has been completed in my relationship with this man. This man is going to be the father of my children. This man is going to be the one who protects me and leads me. Marie had a very biblical mindset when we got married. I had to learn what that means from a male perspective. I think that's why Paul's command is husbands love your wives. And he asked, tell them why, you know, because Christ, you know, Christ loved the church and gave himself for her. He had to teach us because during the time of the writing of Ephesians and Colossians and 1 Peter and all, in that day, women were chattel. The Greek woman, you know, was regarded as the one who produced the legitimate children and that the man would have a a woman on the side for his pleasure. And the Romans, the Romans looked as women as pretty much children, you know, and the husband had the right of life and death, you know, that he had gotten from this woman's father. The father had the right of life and death in the Roman society and that was then vested in the husband. So she was looked at as kind of like an adult child. And that's how it worked. The Hebrews, the Jewish woman was more regarded, but really not as regarded as the man, you know, so for a Jewish woman to change her religious faith from being a Jew to actually converting to faith in Christ would have been an incredibly brave thing for her to do. And the Roman woman and the Greek woman, for them it was unheard of. Also, when Paul is writing to, we'll say the Ephesians again, he's having to speak to men who have been in a society that did not value women, did not value them in the way that they were intended by God to be valued. Christianity brought a revolution. People have a tendency of wanting to say that Christianity has dominated and subjugated women. That's only because they're ignorant of history. They're ignorant of 2000 years ago, what would have been the life of a woman at that time. They're ignorant of that because they have been spoiled in what has taken place here and people right now may be saying, I don't believe that at all. Do your reading, do some homework, and look how women were treated. Look at the way they were looked at by others. And that's why Paul had to take these carnal pagan Ephesians and he had to say, you've got to love your wife because it wasn't mandatory at that time for me to have a love for my wife. She's just my wife. She produces my legitimate children. She takes care of the home. That's why Peter would say that the women shouldn't be worried about their embroidering, braiding of the hair and jewelry. It's not because women aren't supposed to be beautiful. It's because the women of his day had nothing to do. So they played a house and he was basically saying, you need to redeem the time. You need to be a woman of God, a woman of character. These are the things that women ought to be. Why? You are made in the image of God and that's the context of those kinds of comments that people sometimes don't understand. So you get some church guy saying, well, that means that women shouldn't wear makeup and that means that women shouldn't have jewelry and they take it into an odd place. And why would Peter have said that? It's because you need to redeem the moments that you have and use those moments like Titus 2 speaks about as an older woman, teach the younger women how to build a home, teach them how to love, how to love their husbands and their children. This is something you got in Christianity that was not part of the society at that time. It was a revolution that came through faith in Christ and the transformation of relationships. And so Christianity has really had a tremendous impact that I think sometimes people fail to understand. Right. They don't take the time to really find that out, as you mentioned. And so that will affect the foundations of what a marriage looks like because they don't take that time. And you both can probably answer this question. In your book, you describe marriage as a refining process that God uses to shape us into what he wants us to become. Instead of being willing to change, many couples want their spouse to change. What would you tell that person in that situation who's looking for their spouse to change? The best way for a person to change somebody else is for them to change themselves, because I see this. I think it's true. You may say it is. I don't know, John, but if Marie tries to force me to change, that's not going to happen. Because my will, and I think human will be in what it is, I don't fold easily. And so if she insists, you need to change, these things need to change. If she's trying to force me, it's not going to probably succeed. I may change if I can see the value of it. Why would that be important, even if I don't want to? And there are things in marriage that you do change only because you see the value of it for that person. Marie wants me to do this. I don't see why, but if it makes her happy, so we can go that route. And I think that's part of being married. The things that I changed, I'm sure over the years, based on Marie's thinking it's a good thing, where I didn't. I saw it as having no big deal, so why not to make her happy? So there are things like that. But there are other things that if that person tries to make you change with ultimatums and demands and anger and tears, that doesn't really work with me. I'm a resistor of that. And so Marie and I will have an argument where I'll say, why would you want me to do that? Give me three reasons why that, we will argue. And if she says, because she just wants you to, I would say, well, some things I'm willing to do, some things I'm not. This I'm not, but let me take it to the Lord so you can do that. But when Marie has just changed a little bit about the way she acts, I have a tendency of adjusting to how she is now, which is another way of change taking place. Because I am an adapter. I adapt to the environment. And my wife is no longer insisting or telling or, you know, she's no longer the angry woman in the house that's forcing me to go find a corner in the roof to dwell in. She's not contentious anymore. And because I see the value of it and because she has released me and has changed the way she's approaching me, all those things are going to lead to me adapting myself to her. And over time, actually, that will become pretty much who I am now. And then that bleeds over to how I treat other people. So yeah, it all for me has been a matter of one thing. And John, I say this often, because this is really what is true about me. And I believe for Marie also, we chose us. And that means that I have to adapt to whatever is necessary so that the us remains. And I'm more than willing to anything that is not compromising my faith, putting me in a bad place with my savior. I'm willing to negotiate and look at, you know, as long as it fits within the parameters of scripture and who I'm supposed to be. And so I think one of the ways to change somebody else is when I change the way I deal with them, because Marie also adapts to me. And if she's predicting I'm going to get upset about this, and then she sees I don't, then that actually puts her in a position of having to adapt to the new person and her behavior begins to change. And so over the course of many years now, that's what we've pretty much developed into. It's, you know, and it's not even a conscious thing anymore. I think when you're first married, it's a battle. It's, you know, it's a battle. It's, I'm not going to do that. Why would I do that? Who would tell me to do that? It's that kind of thing. And you may not even say that, because my girl here doesn't argue. She, but she'll look at me when she was younger. She'd just look at me and she'd smile, but she'd be thinking, who do you think you are? You know, you know, who are you to tell me this? That would be Marie. Now me, I'm oblivious. I'm just thinking, oh, she's listening. But in fact, you know, and she'll tell you that she would just look at me going, sure. And I walk out thinking, I'm the man. And she's thinking, hey, good to happen. So we had to learn these things. You know, and sometimes people put a time limit on that. You know, if I don't, if they don't adapt to my change in a certain amount of time that I'm just going to go back and do, and they don't take into context that, as you mentioned, it's not about you anymore. It's about us. And I think that's so important when dealing with things like this as God's refining us to grow closer to him through our marriage and putting time frames and time deadlines and stuff like that. God didn't do that with me. You know, I don't know, you know, I don't, I know that the patience of the Lord ends at a certain place. You know, but I didn't, I didn't, I don't, I don't think you should ever give ultimatums. You know, I, you know, I've seen the fruit of that. And, and I've learned that, you know, at a certain place, you let go and you leave it in the hands of the Lord, and you just trust him to do what is right. And, you know, but if I turned to Marie and I said, you're going to do this and change in this, I can't change this woman. You know, I'm not called by God to do that. I'm not called by God to create her in my image. You know, one of the very first things the Lord taught me is you, you know, and it's taken a long time to really own it, but he started when we were dating, he said, she's not you. I mean, I literally could hear his voice saying that in my heart, she's not you because that self centeredness where you're thinking, well, why isn't she? Well, you know, if everybody in this world was exactly like me, what a horrible world this would be. You know, so we need to have people who are themselves and being created in the image of God and then together working together to create the new person, you know, because your, your, your character is transformed over time. You're, you change even my personality, though there's a core personality. I think that doesn't really change. I think it'll always be there to some degree. Again, through Marie, I've changed as a person. So people who knew me even 30, 40 years ago, you know, I'm a different man. And it's, it's because of Christ, of course, but it's, it's also because of the woman God gave me. And, and my friends who've known me a long time can tell you that, that what I was as a young man, I didn't outgrow. You don't outgrow carnality. You die to it. You know, and what I did is I just decided that I would be the best man I could be for this woman God gifted me with. And she's done the same kind of thing to be the best woman that God gifted to this man. And so that's how change takes place is when you want to please God and you want to please the other. You know, you know, not, you know, Philippians two tells us that makes it clear, you don't live for yourself. You know, it's not a self centered kind of thing at all. You learn to care about others. And again, in life, who is closer to you than your wife? Who is closer to you? You know, if my mom and my dad, my mom and my dad went to heaven, they were my parents. And that was a pain. The idea of not having my wife. And that that that would be unfathomable, unfathomable, because that's she's my other self. You know, she is the one who completed me. So why wouldn't I be open to to modify my behavior if it makes her happy and a better woman? Why wouldn't I? You know, even in the language that you mentioned, your gift to one another, and I think that's important to understand that God's gifted us with our spouses. And when we're able to see that, I like what you said, you're not to create Marie in your image. No, it's refining the process of being created in God's image together, together, the us. This question here is random. And somebody has recently asked me about this. And I thought it was interesting. You know, some people sign prenuptial agreements before getting married. Is that wrong? Because doesn't the Bible say the two shall become one? I thought it was the two shall become one. Well, I don't know. If I if I look at marriage as a business partnership, if I treat it like it's a profit or loss corporation, you know, and then then sign a prenup, you know, if Marie would have signed a prenup with me, I would have been the one who would stand to benefit. I didn't have anything. I'd have gotten a new car. She had a nice car. I didn't. I should have signed one, you know. No, I think that if you get married and I understand, I mean some of these very wealthy people, but my goodness, if you're marrying somebody you can't trust, why are you marrying them? You're basically saying we're going to fail. So I'm going to hedge my bet. You know, I well, thank God that Marie and I what is what is mine is hers. And, you know, some people have separate bank accounts. Some have vacation funds. You know, I have never understood that. I don't, you know, because every dollar bill that I have is not mine. Every dollar bill I've ever had in marriage is ours. Always has been. And if if mama wants, it's hers. That's just the way it works with us. And so, you know, because when John, when we got married, I was a college student and Marie was working 40 hour work week, sometimes longer because she'd work overtime on a occasion. And me, I was, you know, going to school and I was trying to do side part-time work and things. She made the bulk of our of our income. And so, you know, we had, I had nothing. And so what's the point of signing a prenup? You know, I had nothing. And yet, she never one time ever made me feel like less of a man because I wasn't bringing the income she did. It wasn't like we were making a lot. She was making what? Three dollars an hour or less. I mean, she was making very little, three and a half bucks. We didn't, you know, we're dying a long time ago. When, when you made $200 in a week, you were rolling, you know, you were rolling our, our, our, our, our apartment was $175 a month, you know, so at that time, and that was kind of high. So at that time, you know, making three and a half dollars. And me, I was working part-time and all. So we didn't have two nickels to rub together. We didn't have anything except each other. And I really believe that's what led to what we are today. We're not materialists. You know us. And I think, I think you could see that. We're not materialists, you know, we're not people who require, you know, money. We never, we never have, we, we, I think, and I think I'm talking for us. I know I am when I say, we don't need anything. Give me a cup of coffee in my wife. Give me a cup of coffee in my wife. Right. Sit on a couch and drink our coffee, watch the news, talk a little bit. We're very content, John. So anybody who say, no, you know, we have a separate vacation, why would I want to take a vacation from the most significant person in my life? That doesn't make sense. You know, I want to take off with my buddies. And why'd you get married? Marry them. Marry them. You know, maybe that's why. You're taking it off with your buddies. And from Marie, I mean, she don't want to go out and sit around talking with other women about how bad her husband is, you know, she just wants, so she, we, we, you know, we grew up. I grew up. I mean, when we were, when we were younger, I, I did not like her out and stuff, doing stuff at night, because I was, I'm very protective. And I was thinking, well, mama might, someone might hurt her or car me break down and I will be there. I had a lot of, a lot of growing up in my own heart, you know, to, to not want her to be home because I was afraid something could happen to her because she, she's that important to me. I had to learn that no, she has a life. She'll be safe. God takes care of her. I had to learn all of those things over time. And, and she still knows that, that I would prefer her next to me. She knows that. I mean, when I'm home, I like her home. But she also has her ministry. Like last night, she went to meet with the women and everything. And in the back of my mind, and she knows this, I'm thinking, just as soon you stay with me. I mean, I'm that way. But at the same time, I'd say to her, you know what, baby, the ladies need to be with you. You need to spend, so I actually convince myself that, that let her go to do what she wants to do. And for her, she wouldn't go. If I just said, you know, honey, I'd rather you not, she'll stay with me. She'll stay with me. But I don't want to stop God from working in my wife and Murray using her gifts and her influence. Because our women's ministry here, I think is a very, very blessed anointed ministry, John. I really do. The women love Murray. And I believe it's because, because Murray, and I say this, I know she gets embarrassed, but I say this truthfully. I don't know another woman in the world like her. And I'm serious. And I don't mean that in a weird way. I'm not saying that other men's wives lives a doll. We love her. I'm not saying that, that I've got a better than I am not. But I'm saying that my wife is very unique. And I don't think in all the years I've known her that I've ever, ever met anybody who's met her, who doesn't love her. She's just that way. Why wouldn't I love her? And again, for me, for us, it's been real practical. It's just, I won. I won the prize. I got the blue ribbon, John. I won. Pastor, even with the women, Murray, that would come and help you prepare a meal here at the church. I mean, I know those women, they look so much forward to that time to spend with you. They're sweet. So it's no wonder our women's ministry is stronger. And women are, we have the sweetest people here. We really do. And they're hardworking women. All of our women are hardworking women. They're blessed to have them. And they do that because, yes, they're serving the Lord. They love the Lord. Because I was in there watching them making the enchiladas the other day. Which is, I have to give a shout out. Your enchiladas are the best. And you ate them all. So these questions are interesting. So thank you for taking the time and answering these questions. And it's a great time spending time with you guys. I really appreciate it. We love it. Yeah, it's fun. Thank you guys. God bless you.