 Hey, the joy of the Lord is your strength. Listen, it's stirring up in me the strength of God. I believe that he has some restoration for you and I as we watch and listen to this episode because God is in the restoration business. I'm joined with Amanda today. Tell us a little bit about what we're gonna listen to. All right, well, we have Dr. Gary Lovejoy. And today we're gonna be talking about marriages in the Bible and what we can learn from them. Well, we'll be joined in just a moment, you know, by this awesome marriage therapist and author, Dr. Gary Lovejoy. And he has some key advice to attaining a long-term, happy and successful marriage. Matt, did you ever realize that the issues in marriage are timeless? Oh my gosh, you know, it's so funny. I know we were talking about this earlier, but going into marriage, I think sometimes we don't think about kind of what we're getting into in the sense like, you know, obviously there's the highs, you know, but then there are those times, the lows. So I'm really looking forward to today, I myself, and probably gonna learn a lot from my marriage, but also we have coming up later in the program that we're gonna reveal the answer to yesterday's stump, the viewer question and we'll announce the winner of this awesome prize pack that we got going on here of this book, this T-shirts. Listen, I'm looking at this book, Scriptures for Faith, Deliverance and Healing. I don't know if we're gonna send this to you guys. I might keep this one for myself. These are some great prizes. So thank you to all of you who participated. I'm excited to find out. You know, I'm not usually here on a Friday, so y'all got a fun setup, we got prizes, but woo. Wow, here we go, Matt. Are you ready? You might need to call someone. I just have a feeling, you know a couple who might need to know some information about marriages in the Bible. So I encourage you to invite them to join us because we are gonna dive in right now. You know, what is the key to a successful marriage? One of the ways we can find the answer to that question is by examining different relationships found right in the Bible who knew. By looking at both the good and the not so good ones, Dr. Gary Lovejoy is our guest and he's written a book called Marriages in the Bible. What do they tell us? Dr. Lovejoy, it's a pleasure to have you with us on Hope Today. Well, thank you for inviting me, Amanda and Matt. It's a pleasure to be on your show. Amen. Well, if you can just dig right in. We are on the edges of our seat. I have my pen for notes. We want to know, you know, say there is an issue. We'll start here with a marriage. You know, whose responsibility is it to go initiate to get help? Well, usually when a couple comes in and oftentimes when there is a marriage issue, only one will come in and then the other one will join them. But usually it's the woman who comes in, the wife and if they come together, it's the wife that you should begin speaking. And one of the things that's an issue is for the wife usually is that she feels intensely lonely in her marriage. It's uninteresting because oftentimes they marry because they don't want to be alone. They want companionship. But when they get married, oftentimes they are experiencing a great deal of neglect. Having maybe coming home and involving himself as computers, maybe watching football, maybe going out with his friends, play golf or something. And she's feeling neglected. And he's been intensely involved with people all day. Maybe she hasn't, especially if she's at home with the children. She's talking to children all day. Doesn't have any adult language going on. So she's hungry for connection. And he does not give it to her. So she becomes increasing unhappy. What happens then, and this goes right to her issues of sense of importance. She wants to feel important in her husband's life. And so she gets angry over time. Resentment builds up and she's angry. And when she gets angry, she starts then nagging and criticizing him and so forth, expressing her anger in very dysfunctional way. Oftentimes women are socially, they're socialized, I think, more spontaneously, respond to what they see as a problem. And their communication skills are usually superior to their husband. So they're able to talk about their problem. And a man usually, the husband is struggling because he doesn't want to talk about it. And so she feels even more alone. But then when she starts into her criticism and so forth, it attacks an issue for him, which is his sense of adequacy. She starts talking about how machine, and he will express that when he comes in. He says, no, whatever I do, it's wrong. Whatever direction I take, whatever thing I try to do, I try to satisfy her in some ways. And it never is good enough. I'm never good enough for her. And he's really expressing the fact that I never measure up in my marriage. And she reminds me on a daily basis. And it goes right to the hardest sense of adequacy, which is extremely important for a man. So those are the issues that are usually initially when they come in. It's complicated because in marriage, it involves two sets of interpersonal skills and communication skills, two sets of expectations, two sets of family histories. It's a collision of two family histories, actually. And that's one of the first things we have to take a look at. Amen. That is such good wisdom for us. Will you talk about the marriage issues being timeless, meaning that we can learn from the marriages in the Bible? Would you mind jumping into maybe a couple different marriages in the Bible and just expounding on what we can learn? Sure. I'll take one of the ones that most people are familiar with. I covered some 16 marriages and some of them are people that the reader may not be necessarily familiar with, but they're still prominent in scripture. But the one that I'm thinking about is Abraham and Sarah. We always think of Abraham as one of the heroes of faith and he was. And in fact, he was a complex figure because when he came to his faith and following God's direction and his commands, he was incredibly bold. He took out with his family into land unknown to him. He was not familiar with the land of Kim. And yet, and so he didn't know that he could even survive in that land. And he was away from his family, which when you leave a family in the ancient world, that is extremely important. That's very rare ever. They always stay within the conclave of their own family, their kin. But he didn't. And he was very bold in that way. But when it came to domestic issues, he was a fairly entirely different person. And he says, you know, he not just once, but twice tried to pawn off his wife, his sister, in order to save his own life. He was afraid that they might kill him so they could have her. She apparently was a tragic woman. And it doesn't mention in there how Sarah feels about this at first, but it does later. Because you have to ask, well, how does she feeling secure in her marriage? I mean, he's twice he's pawned her off as someone else so that he doesn't save his skin. And in fact, I've often said to couples, I said, you know, if you're walking down the street and some dicey characters coming towards you in the other direction, how would you feel if your husband pushed you in front of you, in front of him and said, here, take her, spare me. And that's essentially what Abraham was doing. And they wouldn't be too happy with that. But then it shows up later on when the problem with Hagar, and because she was barren, and Hagar, and so Hagar, her hand made into Abraham, and she became pregnant with Ishmael. And she was so constantly harassing and mocking her mistress. And Sarah was just dying inside because she wanted to have children so badly and of course felt under a curse that she didn't. And he was, and all that is going right under the nose of Abraham, and he didn't do anything. He did nothing, and he knew he knew it. And finally, one of the angriest exchanges in all the Bible take place, she confronts him. And she essentially says to him, do something. Yeah, do something. Can't you see I'm in trouble, I'm suffering here. And so do something. And what was his answer? Classic answer, essentially, kind of like pilot washing his hands. He said, well, do with her whatever you wish. Well, she was angry, and of course, she didn't handle that well. And she began mistreating Hagar. What happens? Hagar runs for her life, takes her child with her. And so then Abraham then has to then get up and go and rescue or bring her back. All that could have been avoided if he had just dealt with the problem, but he didn't. And so she was, her anger, her explosive anger to him was illustrative, I think of building up over and over where she felt neglected, that she was second class. And he, and she finally that boiled over the surface. And so it was a sad aspect to their domestic relationship, even though they were still known for the faith and so forth. So that was an example of one couple, which very high profile couple. We often talk about the great things that happened in that relationship, but we often don't see behind the domestic struggles and pain and the suffering that went on. You know, Dr. Lovejoy, one of the things that I really love that you just said is you have to address like the matter, right? And I'm thinking of this question that you said, aggressiveness and passivity are both a cover for fear. So how does one begin to kind of recognize that and how would they address a situation like that within their marriage? That's a very good question. And transparency is really important. One of the reasons by the way, why it's so important is because you can't deal with problems that are underground. You can only deal with them when they're out in front. And when you keep your spouse in the dark about what you're feeling and thinking, then that goes underground and acts as a cancer. They just eat away at the relationship. So transparency is very important and it's illustrated in a number of these cases that are covered in the scripture. But when they deal with that, they usually wait until the problem has become that critical mass, shall we say. And they're both very angry at each other. So the chances of them really dealing with it effectively are fairly low. As a matter of fact, oftentimes when they come in, they're problem centered. And the therapist's job is to try to move them to become solution focused. And most times the reason that they're not solving their problems is because they are so fixated by the problem that they keep repeating the complaints that they have with each other, which only increase the feeling of alienation between each other. And so they don't know how to get out. And so many of them get stuck in ruts. I mean, really negative ruts. And they can't get out of them. I don't know if I had the time that I might share an example of what I did with a couple of exactly in this situation. The wife came in and initially she came in by herself, which was not uncommon. And she began talking about the fact that they had arguments every single day for five years. I don't know how they handled it. They're still leaving together. But anyway, they were talking, she was talking, I said, well, what's going on? And she said, well, when he comes home, he hates his job and he takes it out on me and he comes home and he just loads into me and he just really, as we have it, and I say, well, what do you do? She smiles. She says, well, I'm no limp rag here. I react. I get angry. And so then we end up and knock down drag-out battles. And he said, some of them are just absolutely ugly till we're just exhausted. And this is how it goes on night after night after night. And so I looked at her and I said, one of the problems you have is too much predictability in the relationship. She looked at me like, that's my problem? Too much predictability. I reframed it for her because I wanted her to see something. And so, because you have to break up this almost mesmerizing pattern that's destroying the relationship. So I told her I gave her one instruction. I said, what I want you to do is on the way home, get a squirt gun and fill it with water and put it in your purse. And when you do and have it with you at all times. And then when he starts in on you, because he can predict what you're gonna do, right? Because she said, oh yeah, he knows I'm gonna attack back. And he said, well, this is the way I want you to change something. So instead of arguing with him when he comes home, just reach in your purse and pull out your squirt gun and squirt it in between the eyes and run out of the room and take a look. You can do that. She says, yeah, with that surprising, do you think that'll be different than what you normally do? She said, oh yeah, very different. And so she did. And so I gave her that instruction, she left. She came back two weeks later, she was radiant. And I said, and she said, I just want you to know my husband's waiting out there, waiting for him if he wants to join us. And I said, oh, what's happened? She said, well, I did exactly what she said. She said, I got squirt gun, I filled with water. And he came home and turned up, he started in on me. And I started and then I suddenly realized, oh yeah, that's right, I have the auto gun. So she said, I reached in, grabbed it, shot him and ran giggling out of the room. Exactly, one thing she said, I did do. I looked over my shoulder to see how he was responding. And he said he was standing there with a totally foamy look on his face, like what was that all about with water to be on, but it sure stopped the argument. She said, oh, at least it stopped the argument. And so the next night, same thing happened. Third night, exactly the same thing began to happen. And so she reached in and grabbed her pistol and she whipped around, gave him a squirt and she was looking down the barrel of his water gun. And so she squirted him, he squirted her back. And what resulted in is an old fashioned water gun fight which they ran into the house squirting each other and laughing to beat the van. So it's so much so that they finally fell down on the living room floor, both soaked with water and laughing as hard as they can. And they suddenly looked at each other and they said, you know what, this is the first time in five years that we've laughed. And they were first attracted to each other because they were so good at having fun together, but they hadn't lost the joy in their relationship. And they suddenly realized what they were losing and had lost. And so again, they were serious about doing something about that and they came in and I worked with them about six months and they had a marvelous relationship when we're done. But the key was not the squirt gun, it was just anything that would break up that pattern that was so destructive in their marriage. And that's one of the things that you want to do is begin to build a change that takes out that commonality that is so destructive to the relationship and to introduce some level of surprise and break it up. So that's an example of how we tackle some of those things. This was absolutely enjoyable to hear. I think I may go purchase a squirt gun and have a little laughter and joy, but thank you so much, Dr. Lovejoy. You truly brought joy to us all and much hope within our marriage relationship and we appreciate you. Thank you so much. I sure appreciate you joining, asking me to join you on your show. Thank you. Well, stay with us because when we return in 60 seconds, we will announce the winner of yesterday's Stump the Viewer. Plus, we'll take a look at a scripture that talks about the significance of marriage and we'll also minister to your needs. We'll be right back. Discover what God's word has to say about healing and deliverance. Bestselling author, John Eckhart, makes topical Bible study easy with his new book, Scriptures for Faith, Deliverance and Healing. This handy reference is for those who want to have a greater understanding of healing and deliverance to incorporate God's word into their prayers. Eckhart also includes targeting commentary to highlight key scriptures and life application. His spirit-filled perspective will enhance your time in God's word and encourages the spiritual disciplines of memorization and meditation. Request scriptures for faith, deliverance and healing as our thank you gift when you support Cornerstone Television this month. Request your copy today if you want to strengthen the ministry of CTVN, share your best gift by visiting us online at ctvn.org slash donate or call us at 888-665-4483. Thank you for your partnership. Hope happens here. Welcome back to Hope Today. In case you missed it, yesterday was our first ever Stump the Viewer question that we asked you the audience. So let's check out what the question was. It was, who was Saul's first missionary companion? And your possible choices were A, Peter, B, Anais, C, Barnabas, or D, Silas. All right, Amanda, before we reveal this answer, what do you think it was? I'm gonna go with Barnabas. Barnabas, and it was Barnabas. See, it looks like 75% of you got it right. Good job to everyone who did. So, okay, let's find out who the winner is. And it is Jan Hopkins. Jan, congratulations. You are the winner of this awesome cornerstone t-shirt and this book, which is gonna be hard to pry out of my hands, because I kinda want this one, but congratulations to our winner, Jan. Listen, Amanda, we gotta talk a little bit about this whole conversation, but I wanna start here with a scripture in Matthew 19, verses three through six. It says, And Pharisees came up to him and tested him by asking, Is it lawful to divorce one's wife or for any cause? He answered, Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female and said, Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife and the two shall become one flesh. So they are no longer two, but one flesh, what God therefore has joined together, let man not separate. I love this scripture, man. And I think a lot of times, we know it's heard in a wedding ceremony, right? But it's heard because it holds truth, like man shall not separate. But I kinda like this at the beginning when they're like test, the Pharisees are testing Jesus, you know? Is it like marriage always a test? Like something always tests us in our marriage. It's so true. And I loved your heart that you said, like going into marriage, do we have right expectations? Cause a lot of times you, you don't realize what you're bringing with you. And I think Dr. Lovejoy talked on that. These are two sets of like behaviors, you know, that people are coming together, but you're coming with your own household junk. So to speak, you know what I mean? Like you have to purge through and become one. And that is a process. So let me ask you and you and Larissa's marriage, you know, when you guys first got together, did you feel that? Did you have a little bit of that rumbling shaking? Oh gosh, let me tell you, confessing my faults to one another right now. I always love this because I feel like in the first year of marriage, right? There's definitely a lot of that tension and rumbling, like you said, because you're bringing almost two difference was it cultures, backgrounds, experiences, anything into one household. And so in our first year, let's just say it was definitely pretty difficult. Cause I think the two of us were both kind of stubborn for both hard headed, we're both independent. And within that though, we had to like really find like how we're complimenting one another. You know, you go into that, that beginning portion of your marriage of like, well, this is what I'm bringing to the table, which I think can be good, but yet the same time you're like, but this is what I'm bringing to the table. You're not realizing that your spouse is bringing some of the table as well that compliments you. I mean, what about you? What did your first marriage look like with you and Gary? Well, I learned that he didn't, you know, roll the toothpaste up quite right. The toilet paper was always put backward, you know, if there is a backward, he's like, how do you know which way is the right way? But it was like all those little things and you can so easily forget the joy, the things that brought so much joy to you as a couple. And I think that, you know, in Dr. Gary's, just his example with the squirt gun, that joy that you had that you fell in love with, we need to do a better job of reminding each other of that instead of critiquing all the little things that we don't like. And, you know, I loved how he said about the ladies often deal with loneliness, but the guys deal with like an inadequacy, like they don't feel like they're ever enough. So how important for, you know, to reverse that, that the guys out there, make sure their lady know, you're not alone. I'm with you, you know, that's so important. And then for the lady to say, you are enough for me, you are God's assignment for me. And we were not always there. I can tell you, and when children entered the scene, whoo, I was like, this man is weird. A whole new ball game. And I needed like, I remember Cornerstone, we used to have Marriage on the Rock series with Jimmy and Karen Evans. Y'all, God used that to really help me. And I think the same with Gary Lovejoy's material. I mean, he's a psychologist. He's been in this for 40 years. He has so much content out there. Get the content because that knowledge will help you grow in your relationship. And it's so important. You know, one thing I love that Dr. Lovejoy said, and actually I'm taking note of it, is breaking that cycle of predictability. I think that that is, because you probably don't even recognize that you do it throughout the years, right? Like Larissa and I are going, we're going on 13 years of marriage. And I'm just like, but I almost need to go back and reassess, okay, what does our marriage kind of look like? Are we just falling into almost like a routine, right? Because you can't help it. Like you said, kids enter, right? You have careers, mortgages, homes, business, whatever that might look like. I mean, has there been anything that you and Gary have done throughout the years of your marriage to kind of help to not stay in just this pattern? Yes, I think the biggest thing has been doing fireproof your marriage, you know, like courses where you actually are investing exo marriage conferences, like getting connected. There is so much content out there, you know, and you do need to make sure it's God content. But to grow yourself, you think about anything else we do in life, we educate ourselves. But for some reason, we don't feel the need to educate ourselves when it comes to marriage. And yet it's the most important other than your relationship with God. Marriage is the most other important here on earth relationship. So take the time to invest because God desires to have that joy in your relationship. And to be honest, if he isn't the center, y'all, we are a hot mess. And we need Jesus to be the center. Well, any words you said you have a lot of people in your life right now that are engaged and ready to take the plunge into marriage. What would your advice to them be? I think your keyword was just perfect. It's just investing. Like, so it has to start with us personally. You have to invest yourself in the word of God, invest in your heart, your mind, your spirit, your soul, a revelation of the love of God. If you don't understand the love of God for yourself, then it's gonna be quite hard to love that other individual, right? Who's only flesh and bone, who's gonna test your patience, you know, to test everything about you, but it starts personal. I think investing in yourself first with the word of God and out of it will become a fruitful marriage. Amen. And we encourage you today to have that transparency with the one that God put in your life because that way there's nothing in the dark and open your heart to that. Like, this is the person that God chose for you. And if you're not married yet, God has someone. If that's in your heart or whether you're single, he desires to use you for his kingdom and glory, but transparency is such a invaluable part of a healthy relationship. Well, we pray that this program brought you much hope today. Be spontaneous, go get your water gun.