Dave and I had a pretty big 10 year anniversary we were at a point where I
didn't think we were doing well at all and I thought we're doing great yeah I
would have said our marriages of one probably closer to a point five never
guaranteed you was a ten maybe a nine point eight which I'm like how can he
not even know that we're doing that bad how can that's being clueless so we find
out on our ten-year anniversary as I go to kiss in in our car that we were going
parking you don't know what that is google it I thought we were going to
pray and I tried to kiss her and she doesn't want to kiss me and basically I
find out that night that we're not doing as well as I thought yeah I told Dave
and we had been fighting a ton probably for I don't even know how long a couple
of years were fighting so much and I've told him when he went to kiss me like I
have no feelings for you at all I have nothing and I don't know where to go
from here and here's what happened in the car which was somewhat miraculous
and it's the whole premise of vertical marriage I heard what I am saying sort
of this horizontal marriage relationship and yet I heard God speak to me through
his through his spirit in my spirit and he said repent and what I I knew what
that meant it meant that this marriage relationships never gonna work and less
were we're working and I had not put God first in my life in months I was just
busy and preaching and doing ministry and leaving the one I'm doing ministry
in the dust God and so I realized in that car that night on our ten-year
anniversary that if I want our marriage to work
I gotta go vertical first God's got to be first in my life so I got on my knees
in the car and repent and put God becken in control and asked
him to make me the husband and dad I needed to be and next thing I know I
ends on her knees as well well it's so crazy because when Dave got him to his
knees I was shocked like oh my gosh what are you doing because we would usually
just start fighting and he just said I need to do something and he got on his
knees and when he started praying out loud it just affected me so much and
convicted me because I was trying to find all of my happiness and my joy from
him alone and it's almost like I had drifted from God and I had taken my eyes
off of him and I put them on Dave to meet all my needs and to fill all my
desires and it's almost like my marriage and David become my god it was almost
like he was an idol and so I got on my knees as well in the car that night and
I just said God I've made my marriage an idol I've put on my hope and Dave
thinking he could meet my desires and meet my needs and he was never required
to do that that's your job and so I put my life back in your hands that you are
the one that can feel all those desires and needs first and then the
practicality of how we live that out took some time because my feelings did
not come back right away we had to really put some work into our marriage
and that's what our books about really yeah and in some ways we we had to put
into practice the same thing you do when you try to work out if you want to lose
weight or get in shape it's a daily weekly yearly thing it's no different
really in your walk with God vertically and you're walking your relationship and
your marriage your spouse horizontally it's like daily there needs to be sort
of a rhythm or a discipline weekly and then even yearly so we just built this
rhythm of divert daily which would mean every day let's talk let's work on our
relationship about the day same thing with God daily let's work out with God
let's spend time with him prayer and the word gun house and I
would say that too like the prayer part was big like we started praying together
every night even if one would fall asleep I used to blame big like all
Eufaula fell asleep I'm not gonna you know I'm
not gonna initiate prayer and yet we just started doing that as a practice
because it's hard to pray when you're mad at each other and then we started to
date weekly which is important to put in the calendar say we're gonna do this
every week and we actually started talking about our relationship and that
date which they've done always want to do I always want to talk about the
relationship and how we're doing but we started doing that as just saying how
are we because we didn't want we wanted to be on the same page and not at a1 and
not at attend and I tell you that time daily weekly dad is in itself changed
everything especially with young kids oh it's like you know you young parents out
there we thought we're leaving our kids it's bad and yet now we look back and I
think our kids install model and it was the best thing we could have done for
yeah for our marriage the best thing you do as a parent is have a great marriage
so that helped and then yearly or annually it's like once a year or so get
away take a vacation go to a retreat to enhance your walk spiritually but same
thing for your marriage go to a marriage retreat and work on your marriage it's
going to change everything because the demands of life will suck away from you
and there's something great about just getting away sitting somewhere of just
taking time away to focus on you and also with God like that just rejuvenates
your whole walk with God and your relationship with your spouse too