We want to pray for you this weekend. As a couple…as a community, let’s come around one another and encourage one another in prayer. So often I think we try to fix our issues, we try to pretend our problems away. But I love this passage in James:

Confess your sins to one another and pray for each other, that you might be healed.     James 5:16

Healing comes as we share our burdens with one another and pray for one another. So we invite you to leave a comment. You don’t have to leave your full name or even a real email address. Leave your prayer request and we will be praying for you. God knows your heart. Mighty things can happen this weekend as we pray and encourage one another.

How can we pray for you?

In December we launched a new resource at RefineUs called MentorUs.

MentorUs is a monthly subscription program designed to help couples be intentional in their pursuit of God and their pursuit of their spouse. Each Friday we send an email with a marriage principle, a few Scriptures to read and four or five discussion questions to talk through. Then, once per month, we send a video recapping the entire month with more practical application.

For the month of December we allowed people register for $10 per month or pay for an entire year for $59. We had a tremendous response. In January, the yearly subscription price went to $79. As we have gotten feedback on MentorUs and heard such encouraging stories over the past month, we wanted even more couples to benefit from this weekly marriage resource.

Then we realized this month is February, the month of love! This month has 29 days in it and it’s Leap Year. This is also an election year. Those things have nothing to do with one another, but they are all great excuses to drop the yearly subscription price for MentorUs to $59! That is $.16 per day. That is $1.12 per week!

If you don’t want to commit to an entire year, then you can click here to pay $10 for a month. You can cancel at any time.

But if you want to save BIG time and get a marriage resource emailed to you each week. Then you can register below.

P.S. This resource should not be a substitute for roses, chocolate or a nice dinner for Valentine’s Day. That marriage advice was free.

We’ve had several people send us this video.

This is Jeff Bethke. His spoken word videos have blown up on YouTube. He makes some statements in this video that are so powerful and so thought provoking:

• Marriage will make you better or bitter
• What we’re doing isn’t working, just look at the rate of our divorces
• Marriage is prison more than the paradise we were promised
• Dating feels like a vacation, while marriage feels like a job
• We might share a checkbook and a house, but are we actually friends
• It’s not love that sustains the promise, but the promise that sustains the love
• We don’t fall out of love as much as we fall out of repentance

A place where marriages are not just happy but holy….that is our dream for RefineUs.

What are your thoughts on the video?

This week at Leading and Loving It we’ve had the awesome opportunity to hear from some amazing women at the JustONE Virtual Conference about expectations we as pastors wives place on ourselves. Not only did I learn a lot, I felt challenged to ask myself several hard questions. But one question in particular kept coming to mind:

What expectations do I place on myself?

The crazy thing is the more I thought about this question the more I kept thinking of my husband, Justin. Holly Furtick spoke on “not ridding your husbands spiritual coattails” so maybe that’s why Justin keeps coming to mind. This conference after all is about me… right? So why do I keep coming back to him? But that’s just it; my first thought was of Justin because often times I expect things from him in ways God never designed him to give. This is the gray area of being led spiritually by our husbands and not living vicariously through them.

I’m writing at Leading and Loving It today. Click here to read the rest of the post:

This weekend was insane.

I had to be in Atlanta on Friday at 8:00 am for a meeting. Trish spent the day working on a chapter of our book. We met at 8:30 PM Friday night at Micah’s school, after I drove for 4 hours back from Atlanta. I moved my suitcase from my car to our van and we left for Indianapolis. We decided to drive 5 hours to Indy to spend 8 hours experiencing Superbowl XLVI and then drive 5 hours back to Nashville.

This was not a rational thought. There was nothing rational about driving 10 hours to spend 8 hours in Indianapolis.

It was nuts and that was the point.

I want to do things with my kids that are irrational at times.

We bought tickets to the NFL Experience and cheered each other on as we tried to kick a field goal. We went out for a pass. We did the 40 yard dash. We saw the city that has been home to us for most of my kids life transformed into the epicenter of awesome for the stinking Superbowl! It was amazing!!

As a parent, I say, “no” more than I say, “yes”. It is my responsibility to be rational.

Memories aren’t usually made by being rational.

It’s why this summer when Micah and I were in Florida and he said to me, “I really wish we could be with mom in Michigan tomorrow for my birthday, we drove 17 hours through the night to surprise Trisha at church camp. Not because it made sense, but because we made a memory.

Sometimes the best thing you can do as a parent is say, “Yes.” Yes to something crazy. Yes to something impractical. Yes to a road trip. Yes to building a fort in the living room. Yes to sleeping outside. Yes to something that seems irrational and doesn’t make sense.

We won’t be remembered for how much we made sense, but how often we made memories.

Here is the video of us juking Troy Polamalu:

Superbowl in Indy from RefineUs Ministries on Vimeo.

In 1998 Trisha and I moved from Saint Charles, Illinois to Kokomo, Indiana. This move, in my mind would be the move that made everything better. Our son Micah was two years old, Trisha was pregnant with Elijah, and our marriage of three years wasn’t going how either of us envisioned it would go. This move was going to be special because we were going to be moving from a $800 per month, 800 sq. ft apartment to a $525 per month, 1200 sq. ft house that we were buying! We were buying our first house.

In my mind, this would solve everything. Our house had a yard, it had neighbors, it had privacy, it had sidewalks, it had space. We were going to own it. I was convinced that this house would fix Trish. This house would solve our problems; this would would reduce the frequency of our arguments. This house would cover all of the things we disagreed about.

I soon came to realize that our first house didn’t fix it.

The truth is that we can never expect an external thing to fix internal problems. That just won’t happen.

So often when people are having marriage problems, they have this belief that if we just had this or if we just accomplished that or if we just got this or just moved there, then the problems in our relationship will go away or be solved. Our marriage will be better when:

• I get that promotion
• We get out of debt
• We move to a bigger house
• I finish my degree
• We make more money
• We move closer to “home”
• We have a baby

Babies are great. But a baby won’t fix it. A baby won’t fix the distance you feel. A baby won’t restore trust when trust has been broken. A baby won’t help you be more honest with each other. A baby won’t bring you closer spiritually. A baby won’t help you forgive. A baby won’t cause him to pursue you more. A baby won’t fix it.

We can’t count on something external, whatever that something is, to fix an internal problem.

There are two things that will fix what is wrong with your marriage.

• Pursuing God
• Pursuing your spouse

When you do those two things, you allow what is broken in your heart, in your relationship, in your soul to begin to find healing. You begin to move closer to God and closer to your spouse and in that process you begin to address the issues that you have rather than counting on a new house or a job promotion to cover those issues up.

A baby won’t fix it. But your pursuit of God and your spouse can.

Our blog was started a few weeks after we shared our story for the very first time publicly. We did a blog series with the hopes of sharing our journey from brokenness to restoration. We titled the series 8 Things that Destroyed Our Marriage.

In the ebook we candidly talk about the eight most crucial mistakes we made in our first 10 years of marriage. They were:

1. We Rarely Prayed Together

2. We Gave Each Other Left-overs

3. We Lived in the Same House, But Were Not on the Same Team.

4. We Failed to Dream Big Dreams for Our Marriage.

5. We Had Misguided Motives When We Argued.

6.  We Failed to Forgive…Truly Forgive.

7. We Forgot to Focus on Why We Fell in Love.

8. We Thought Withholding Truth Would Save Us from Needless Pain.

Over the past three years, this blog series has been the most viewed series of posts on our site. In our e-book we have taken the blog series and added Scripture to each mistake that will hopefully be a resource for you in your marriage relationship. Special thanks to our friend Ali Newton for designing our ebook for us.

We share our mistakes with you in hopes of helping you avoid them or recover from them. We hope you enjoy this free resource.

Every few months, we get emails from different publishers or literary agents asking if we would be willing to review a book that their author has published. We only say yes when the book is something we are interested in or could be a resource for you.

A few weeks ago, we got an email about a book called Sons of Grace. Honestly, I had never heard of the author, Mark Hughes, (author of Buzz Marketing) but the title of the book intrigued me. The request wasn’t for us to review the book or promote the book, but simply asked for our address so they could send me a copy of the book to read. I agreed and a few days later, received the book in the mail.

Redemption is a story only God can write. That is what makes redemption so beautiful…it is God’s thing. He is the master of redemption. He is the author of grace. As I started reading Sons of Grace, I was captured by the story of redemption. Not just one story, but 10 stories.

Sons of Grace is a book of stories. It is a collection of personal encounters with Jesus that redeem and restore in unmistakable ways. Hughes allows nine men to share their story of grace and second chances. The stories are not only compelling, but they remind me of my own need for grace.

A gang member that is serving a 50 year sentence in prison for murder, turned himself in after he felt God speak to Him and now serves as a pastor in prison. There is the story of a guy finding Christ after being in the Mafia. A former drug addict. A father that is angry with God because of the loss of his son.

The best way I can describe this book is: real, raw and redemptive.

What I loved as well is that Hughes shares his story in the final chapter. He didn’t murder anyone. He hasn’t served time in prison. He was a successful business executive and author, but a lousy husband. In fact, he almost lost his marriage because he was so in love with himself. His story of grace and life change hit home with me.

After reading the book, I got really excited about partnering with Mark and his team to help get the word out about this collection of grace stories. Next week, I’ll be interviewing Mark and sharing that with you.

Today, I’m excited that Mark and his team are allowing us to  give away the PDF version of Sons of Grace. 

No strings attached. Completely free!

Download Sons of Grace Here

Our story would lend one to think that I have a right to live in constant fear that Justin will have another affair.

Or that Justin should fear that one day I would eventually leave him because of his choices.

This type of fearful thinking is so destructive. There is no doubt that trust had to be re-earned…but at some point for our relationship to move forward, trust had to overtake fear.

Fear says that you will not survive the fall out of losing your spouse so live in suspicion so that you can catch him/her when she messes-up.

Fear robs. Fear steals. Fear destroys. Fear causes us to control; to manipulate; to be suspecious.

Trust says…

I am fully aware that in trusting I’m being vulnerable to being hurt (again).

Trust says…

“I am for you” and “I am thinking the best of you”… not the worst.

Trust says…

I’m gong to love my spouse with reckless abandonment just as Jesus did for me when he died on the cross.

Trust says…

I will love my spouse without fear but with hope that the Holy Spirit will guide me as to how to love my spouse.

Trust says…

“God I will love my spouse fearlessly thinking the best of them at all times” and “if my spouse fails me YOU will never leave me or forsake me.”

Maybe you’re trying to accomplish through fear what can only be accomplished through trust.

Maybe the distance between the marriage you have and the marriage you truly desire is found in the difference in you being fearful or you trusting.

I’ve (Trisha) been trying to write this post for the past week. When I try to write, my thoughts are so deep and heavy I’m afraid to put words to them. I’m searching for words to make my thoughts feel lighter and safe but I can’t. Instead I’m going for honest and raw and praying somehow Jesus will land them softly into your heart. I pray you will read the entire post knowing my words will get lighter.

I had no desire to go back into ministry after leaving our church plant in 2005. Like never. Ever! My husband Justin was making great money as an executive recruiter. I was a happy stay-at-home mom getting to finish my college degree. It had been four years of rest and restoration for our marriage and our family. I didn’t need to go back into ministry to feel my restoration was complete. I was content, happy and safe.

I’m writing today for ChurchPlanters.com. Read the rest of the this post by clicking HERE: