 We have special guests with us this morning. And they are really special. And let me tell you why. We have Tim and Kathy Bush. They're really, really successful businessmen in our city. They contribute a lot to our community. And they are men and women of God. And I would like you to please help me welcome them to the stage. Tim and Kathy, please, can you come up here and take your seats? And one thing that Tim Bush, he used to be my employer. He's a great boss. I used to work for him. And yeah, welcome, welcome. We thank you so much for joining us this morning. We really appreciate your time and everything that you do. First of all, we want to start with Kathy. Would you please share with us how did you guys meet? Well, first off, I want to say you guys really know how to worship here. And pray and we are just honored to be here. Thank you for having us. So Tim and I met through my sister and Tim's brother were friends. And so they kind of hooked us up. Nice. So we did not, we did not meet in school. He, Tim had already graduated. And so. How old were you guys? I was 17 and Tim was 20. Good, good. Good age to me. You have a good sister. Tim, can you please share with us how did you get saved and when did it happen in your life? I was five years old. I'll be a part of Salvation. I know that I was always working, but. So, I wasn't in nine. I want to get that correct. December of 2009. And a lot of things came up to get us to that. But the actual aha moment was actually through music. I was, I was out at a concert we were out at the Coliseum. And we heard a song called The Lighthouse. And I was standing up listening to that song and I literally felt something happening to me. And I told Kath at that point things are gonna really change in our life. I just had something happen to me. I can't even explain. And things really started changing in our lives. Now, are you coming from a Christian background or that was just conversion? Quite the opposite. I grew up, how much, yeah. I grew up with no, we didn't go to church. My mom was married nine times. And then at age 12, my grandfather and grandmother adopted me and gave me their last name and raised me. But no God, no church. He taught me how to work and to survive and to be successful in his eyes, what was success in his eyes. And he was very proud of me. And then ultimately at around 20 years old, they divorced after 37 years of marriage. And then I was very attracted to Kath because her family went to church. And of course we didn't go to church. So even the fact that she went to church seemed stable to me. Her parents had been married almost 25 years. I was attracted to that. I thought that I wanted to be like them, but really no relationship with Jesus. So we started going to church and off and on did that for many, many years. About 1.3 times a month. I think that's about the average nationally and that's about what we did. And we tithed, he talked about tithing about 1.3 times a month. Whatever was left over in our money clip, not any intentional thing that we thought it was God's. I thought I was doing my part by the little bit I was giving. But that was all part of the process too. But it was a long, long, 27 years of us going to church and literally just showing up. And not like today, but I can remember 10 minutes to 11. I could hardly, I only have 10 more minutes I can get out of here. And I can go and I can go watch football or whatever else was more important to me than being at church on Sunday. And again, I thought it was all about going to church. And I made deals with God all the time because I'm a deal maker. Yeah. Business man. And so Kathy, you're coming from a Christian background, right? So the thing that the way I was raised in going to church and going through the motions of religion is exactly what we did with our kids. So we took them to church and we went through, we had them baptize as babies. And so there was definitely a disconnect. So for me, through the journey of our marriage and always Tim and I were always searching for something. And we were searching in all the wrong places. Sometimes it was in good places but we were in and out of marriage counseling. We were just struggling in our marriage. And I know that we know looking back now that God just had a plan for us because in those moments when one of us was gonna leave, something always brought us back. Whether it was, I actually ended up, the thing that brought us together after we had met is I got pregnant. And so we ended up getting married because I was pregnant because that was the right thing to do. From first date to our wedding was five months and five days. And seven months after that, we had our first child. And so there was a time of separation for us. And at that time we found out we were pregnant with baby number two. So we came back together but it was kind of a, it was definitely a rough, rough marriage. But for me with my salvation, when Tim and I ultimately took out the root of our sin with alcohol, we were so entrenched in alcohol, we took that out and we put God's word in for the first time and started reading the Bible. That's when for me it wasn't like that moment that I submitted my life to the Lord because I had the foundation there and I believed in Jesus but all of a sudden I developed a relationship and my eyes were open. And I was hungry and I remember watching anything I could on TV, watching the Christian station and every time they do an altar call, I'd sit down and I submit my life to the Lord again. And finally I realized, okay, I've got it. I understand it, my eyes are open, so yeah. Thank you, thank you so much. Now they have an amazing, amazing marriage testimony and actually they will share how they are leading marriage classes ministry right now. Would you please, Tim, start sharing how God brought you guys through and what happened, what's your testimony? Well, we really felt that if the Lord could redeem our marriage, we do multiple events now annually. We do a couple six week classes annually and multiple other things now that we do, that the Lord has us doing. And of course my only fear now is the fear of the Lord so I have no other fear other than that. So I gotta be obedient and do what God says. So I without a doubt we know this is our calling and I know that, you know, I wanna go back just a little bit. One of the things when we left that church that we went to for so many years, there was an interim pastor that was working there and my brother had passed away which was a big cause and my coming to salvation and he was my grief counselor too and he had shared with me, he said, you know Tim, he said, the Lord has a calling on your life and you need to find it and you're not gonna find it here. And he said, you need to find a Jesus loving Bible teaching church and find your calling and once you do, you're gonna feel fulfilled and during that period I was in full stage anxiety, unable to work, unable to do anything as a man and totally messed up and we started doing that and like Cass had taken the alcohol out and we knew that the Lord wanted us to do something together, we just didn't know what it was. I thought it was to do marriage ministry. So we, at the church where we were saved we asked if we could do a six week class and they said yes and 36 couples came and when 36 couples finished and during that class we started working together on that and Cass was telling me what to say. So let me go back, because Tim wanted, Tim felt we were called to marriage ministry and my personality was then that, I mean I didn't wanna get up in front of people, I was really, it was really hard for me to talk in front of people. Very shy. So my first response was I don't wanna do that but I thought okay I'm gonna submit to what he wants to do and I'll just, at first I said you can do marriage ministry alone, go ahead, you can do it alone, I'll support you and he goes I can't do it alone and so I said okay I'll go with you but you can do the speaking and so the first night of the class I sat there and I let Tim teach the class and do all the speaking and I remember on the drive home I was kind of excited, I was. And she was telling me all the things I messed up on. And I told Tim, I don't recall that but I do recall saying we could do this and we could do that and you should say this and you should say that and I stopped and I looked at him and I said you know what babe, I can talk. And so the next week I was drawn into it and since then we've been just doing it together. Well and during that class something else happened that was amazing because we had already been reading the Bible together for some time we were reading, we started, that was part of our testimony too and a whole nother part but when we started reading, we started reading just a proverb a day and then we started reading a Psalm and I had asked Kath to do that with me which she said was by the way the sexiest thing I've ever done was asked her to do that so that's pretty cool. So we started reading God's word that way and during that class I had started, I'd been praying with Kath every night for well actually before that class for several months I'd been praying every night before I went to bed and then she had gotten very very sick right after the second class and then sick all week and then the night prior to the class I got up in the middle of the night and I walked around and I laid my hands on her and prayed on her and then the next morning she woke up and said I feel a lot better and I says well guess what? You talked about healing that's what kind of what happened and anyway that night we were praying together and she said to me do you mind leaving a little bit at the end and let me pray and that praying has kind of changed our lives so anyway we left that church God called us to another church and we had gone to a conference called the catalyst conference over in Seattle a leaders conference and I was a leader in a totally different thing and the speaker was a guy named Craig Grishel and Craig said where we missed it in our church was marriage ministry with the staff and with the body and so when we came back from that there was really clear to us that that's what we needed to be doing in the church and God made us to do that and we got the church said go for it, this is great and so anyway that kind of spurred into now hundreds of couples that have been literally maybe even close to a thousand now that have been in the last little over two years. We even got to go to Aiken, South Carolina where our daughter and son-in-law were living and do a marriage event there. That is awesome. Would you please share with us what were the struggles you faced in your marriage life and how God helped you to overcome them? We need weeks. Yeah. Today you guys is our 35th wedding anniversary. Come on. Yeah. Woo. 35th. And so let me start. So as far as struggles I think from the very beginning because the way I was raised in a family there was seven of us, seven of us kids and college was never talked about. It was pretty much you were gonna find a man and he was gonna marry you and take care of you. So when I met Tim and he was a stable man. How was that man? He had a house, he had a car, he had money. I was like, well this is what I'm gonna do. But because of going into it in really an unhealthy place and I had started drinking probably when I was in ninth grade and that goes back to a lot of kind of dysfunction in our home and I was extremely shy and that was kind of a way that I could, it was liquid courage. So the drinking was, it caused other problems which so sex outside of marriage was happening and then when we had a baby pregnant before we got married so we went into it all wrong so that we were struggling from the very beginning. So for me, there between our alcohol and there was infidelity in our marriage. There was- For both of us. On both sides and but it was just, it was a complete, we were searching. We were both of us were searching and we look back on it and we're like why did we stay together? Why, but God just, he had his hand in it. He totally had his hand in it. I was a very, very controlling guy. Everything had to be my way. I make all the money. I do all this, I do all that. I make all the choices is basically how I put it. Was not a lot of freedom in our marriage for Kath. I control, again, I control everything. And the funny thing is there is so much freedom in our marriage now but there's absolutely no worries of those things anymore because all those things what we did, we got all the bad out and put God in that hole and God becomes bigger and bigger part of your life and it just kind of pours out of you. And the funniest thing is one of the greatest stories in this is seven years ago in December I said that's my aha moment. None of our kids were walking with the Lord. None of them were baptized. None of our grandkids were. We have six kids, three are biological, three are married to those spouses, they're our kids. They're all saved. Come on. And we have six grandkids that are all saved as well. And thank you. And we believe God's working so hard in this but one of the biggest deals is so cool right now that all of our grandkids and all of our kids with the exception of one grandson, the oldest one and Kath and I, we're all, we all read the Bible every day and even the seven year old granddaughter is reads the Bible every day. And so for that to happen for God to work in that kind of a way in seven years is truly amazing. Wow, wow. Let's put our hands together for God. This is absolutely amazing what God does and this is a miraculous restoration of a marriage and how you guys allowed God to work through you to help other couples. It's very honorable and thank you so much for doing that. And I wanna ask you, Kathy first, what do you say the secret to a successful marriage from woman's perspective? Well, I would say, you know, we were on our way here and we knew the questions and Tim wanted to know what I was gonna say. I said, I'm not gonna say. I told her I won't change what I say, but you go ahead. Well, the first thing is to be grounded in Christ. That is the first thing because I can tell you I've tried everything else from any self-help book to be grounded in Christ to know as a woman the role that God has designed you as a woman to be in your marriage. I mean, I didn't know that I needed to submit to Tim and out of reverence for God. It's not because he wants me to. It's out of reverence for God. And to be Tim's biggest cheerleader, to be his encourager, man, there's just so many things. And the cool thing is, if you don't know it, you go to God's word and he tells you how to do it. He just tells you how to do it and that's what I'm learning. And man, I slip and fall, but what is so cool now for Tim and I is we used to fight all the time and I don't believe we fight anymore. We definitely have conflicts. And they say, if you don't have conflicts in a marriage, one of you is not necessary. So we know that we're gonna have conflicts and we know men and women are so different. I mean, there's times that, I know Tim looks at me like, I just don't get you. And we understand that we're different now. I don't expect him to understand everything about me and but we love and respect and respect is huge. We were told by somebody with a lot of wisdom, been around the block a lot longer than us, tell us that the most mature one in a relationship will apologize and ask for forgiveness first. So that's stuck with us. So we race to that. We always want to be the most mature. But I do think and respecting Tim and not in a way that I feel like I'm respecting him but in a way that I know that he feels the respect and he needs to be respected. Wow, thank you so much, yeah. Tim, what about you, men's perspective? Well, first off, and Kath wrote this, the greatest compliment she gave me is what she wrote in her card this morning to me that I read. She said that, thank you for loving me as Christ loves the church. And guys, that is the goal. If you're loving your wife as Christ loves the church, no matter what she's doing or saying to you, if you continue to love her, that respect will come and that love will be beyond any understanding. In our marriage class that we teach on page 40, there's 25 ways to raise your family spiritually. And I think all 25 are amazing, completely amazing, but the number one thing, and I think it's the key, I'm gonna do number one and number 25, but the number one thing is to pray with your wife consistently. This is outside of meals, this is to hear her heart, to hear your spouse's heart, and to do that in a way that you're honoring the Lord and invite the Lord into the center of your marriage, not above your marriage, not below your marriage, or on the side, but right in the center where Christ is always there. That's number one. And number 25 on that list, it says don't quit, persevere, so that's what I would tell you. Amen, thank you so much, thank you. Let's put our hands together for Kathy and Tim. Hold on a little bit. Now, we have a surprise for you guys, just a little bit. We wanna congratulate you with your 35th anniversary today and say thank you so much for your time and may God bless you and keep using you. Again, thank you so much.