Putting His Words into Practice
We were deluded by believing a relationship with Jesus was enough for our marriage to thrive without putting His words into practice.
Rob: I grew up in a Roman Catholic family as the oldest of seven kids. My dad was in oil, which was good until 1986 when it busted. We lost almost everything: our house, our car, and became a welfare family for the next decade plus.
I would define myself as a moral, self-righteous kid, who was never really satisfied with ritual or the explanation behind it. I remember in elementary school asking my dad why it was necessary to go to a priest in order to be forgiven. Why couldn’t I just settle all that up in a conversation with God? The answer was the same, “That’s just the way it is.” I became less and less satisfied with that answer.
God put a YoungLife leader into my life who invited me to a summer camp where I heard for the first time that God loved me. That truth absolutely floored me. Jesus died for me so that I could be in a relationship with Him. Everything changed that week at camp. My leader gave me my first Bible, and I couldn’t read it fast enough. The Bible had written in the front cover Joshua 1:8,
“Be careful to do according to all that is written in [this book]. For then you will make your way prosperous, and then you will have good success.”
To a broke kid, that sounded great. I wouldn’t realize until years later that prosperity and success was the abundant life in a relationship with Jesus.
I spent about the next decade serving in some capacity with Younglife, my church, or equipping myself through seminary. Easter of 1999, I met another YoungLife leader that would change my life, and her name was Leslie. A group of friends signed up for a street evangelism class, and everyone dropped out but her. We went from friends to dating, back to friends, then back to dating, then getting married over the course of a year and a half.
I’ve always described her as magnetic. She loves people, will crack herself up, is always the most fun person in the room, and loves Jesus. She has been God’s gift to me to root out self-righteousness, anger, bitterness, and entitlement in my life. I always tell my boys: marry someone like your mom.
Being in a relationship with Jesus changed everything, therefore leaving Leslie and I with a different marriage than the ones we grew up with. There was one major problem in my life and our marriage, though: I viewed Jesus’s commands as suggestions and thought 99% obedience was obedience.
Jesus says in Matthew 7:24,
“Everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock.”
His commands either lead you to abundant life or they don’t; it’s all about responding in obedience. It was really year six or seven of marriage when we joined a church whose goal was to call everyone to full obedience to Jesus. We saw confession become a normal. We changed our view from being an owner to a steward. We learned how to communicate, seek understanding, listen, move towards someone when you’re frustrated. We began inviting others into decisions before the decision had been made and not after. The last 13 years of walking in deep community with others have been the best years of our life. Knowing God and His Word has changed literally everything, but the most tangible is my desire to love my neighbor through moving towards someone I’ve hurt in order to reconcile and ask for forgiveness.
