All right, well, we've done our best stuff, so if you were going
to leave, you should have gone at lunch.
That was a joke. Hopefully this is as good as the
rest of the stuff. So we want to look at 3 big
areas that Christians and marriages struggle on.
We're going to start with the one we're very good at.
The next one we're OK at and the last one I think we really
struggle and I want to finish with the one we struggle at
because you think after 33 years, 35 years, sorry, can't
they get this right yet? But the three titles are money,
sex and power. So those are the areas we're
going to look at. And and I just want to say that
when you first get married and it's the honeymoon period and
it's kind of easy and you haven't got children and and you
really get to know each other. There are things that happen in
your marriage that change the whole direction of your
marriage. I want to tell you one story
because I think it'll help you in your marriage.
So Charlotte, when we got married, worked for British
Airways, she worked at Gatwick, but sometimes she'd have to fly
out of Heathrow and she'd always say to they, they had a courtesy
coach. And she goes, alright, I've got
to go somewhere afterwards, I'll take my car.
And the reason was she felt claustrophobic, trapped on a
coach in church. She liked to sit near the exit,
so she'd sit on the back row near the exit.
This is when we first got married and I'm a leader in the
church and we all sat on the front row, not on the back row.
And so as far away from the exit as possible.
And and also supermarkets, she'd sometimes come home and just say
I just had to leave the shopping trolley.
I felt, I felt like I was going to be sick.
So she left. I loved encouraging her, looking
after her. So week after week.
It took two years. She'd moved one row forward and
then from the the end row, she'd eventually, two years in, after
encouragement and prayer and she was able to go to Stoneleigh
Bible Week, 30,000 people sit in the front, in the middle with
all the other leaders at the front.
And she knew she was free. And I would say our marriage
changed because I loved being her, encourage her.
She didn't need me. I felt again, I felt a little
bit left out. What's my role now?
Roles change all the time as husbands and wives and you have
to keep learning to adjust and adjust and adjust.
And, and yeah, I, I like the coaching role and I didn't like,
I, I loved her being healed, but I didn't love not knowing what
my new role is now. Because we had a very clear
focus, get through these fear of being sick 3 areas.
Then for years, nothing happened.
Charlotte was completely free. Then her dad died, her daughter
got married, we cleared her mum and dad's house.
And that anxiety came back, but in a different form.
And you're like, whoa, why? But life changes and things
happen and for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer.
Very important that we are committed to each other,
whatever we're going through. So we're going to look at money,
sex and power, but don't think it's just one topic, one topic,
one topic. Each topic changes as the years
go on. So yeah.
But we're good at money, so we'll talk about that.
We'll start on the money one. Is this on?
Am I? On No.
Is it on? Thank you.
Yeah, Money. I think I've mentioned briefly
in the last session that when we got married, we both had
slightly different views of money.
Graham was much more able to trust God than I was in terms of
money. So that was something that where
we, yeah, initially struggled, but then I think that was
somewhere where I needed to meet him predominantly.
So gradually I started to meet him where he was at.
In terms of living by faith very much, there are some areas to do
with money where we have met in the middle.
So for example, it might be that one of us is reluctant to spend
some of our savings on something and the other one might think,
well, actually this is what our savings are for, to make life,
you know, a bit easier for us or whatever it is.
So yeah, like Graham says, we have to sort of flow that you.
We can't have a hard and fast rule in marriage.
Like we must always do this. We must always do this because
whatever God's telling us at the time changes.
And it may be that we, as I say, we want to give some money to a
particular cause and one of us thinks of this figure and one of
us thinks of that figure and we either put another naughty on
the end or we meet part way. But the thing I can tell you is
this. You cannot outgive God when it
comes to money. You cannot outgive God.
There have been numerous times in our marriage where we have
given a significant amount of money away, even though it was a
bit like, oh, that's going to, you know, smart a little.
And then remarkably, within a very short space of time, that
same amount of money comes back to you in a different form.
And it's like, what? How did that happen?
Now it's not like for like, and well, God, I'll do that.
If you do that, you don't bargain with God.
You just trust him and trust that he will look after you.
So yeah, we've got dozens of stories and I, I don't want to
spend time today telling you all of them, but you part of being
on the mission together is isn't just doing stuff out there that
people can see. It's how you relate to each
other with the big things in life like money.
And when you're both excited and knowing that God has provided it
for you and you're just stewarding it for him while
temporarily, then it's exciting to actually take a risk
together. If you're in agreement, give
something away or do something with it, or bless a particular
individual, whatever. And then it may not be that you
get the same thing back again. It may be that something else
happens and you think oh actually something else has
happened. This really, Oh, we gave her, oh
it may They may not be connected, but God is on the
move and God looks after you. We had many times when our kids
were young where so many people in the church or friends or
neighbours would give us bags of clothes and bags of toys.
Honestly, I could truthfully say till my son was nine years old,
I don't think I'd bought him a stitch of clothing in his life.
It was great. It almost became like a little
challenge to me. Oh, I wonder out and see how far
I'm going without having to actually buy anything.
Yeah, so. And now we are sort of at the
other end of that spectrum and we love nothing more than just
giving things away to people, be it kids items, be it some
furniture that we've updated or don't need anymore.
We love doing that. Find joy in giving away.
And I don't just mean things. It may be that you're sitting
here today thinking I haven't got anything I can give away.
Give away your time, Give away your energy.
Give away something. If you have got literally
nothing to give away, that's fine.
You can give away yourself and say to the leaders, look, I I
just want to give myself to God. What can I do that would bless
you this week? What can I do that would bless
you in church on a Sunday? Would it help if I got there 20
minutes early and did something? Would it help if I stayed on
another 15 minutes at the end? And give yourself as an act of
submission. And when you do it together,
then it more than double S. It more than double S, yes, so.
So I think we've been married about 10 years in.
We were in Liverpool by this time and we went for marriage
counselling and the marriage counsellor said you just seem to
miss on so many areas. We just would miss on money.
We pretty much were the same, which was unusual for us.
So I'll explain. So we both quite happy to save,
we both quite happy not to spend.
If we do eat out, it's usually because the business genius here
would have Tesco's club points or coupons or something.
We not that now we can't afford it because we've sold parents
houses and so we're actually a little bit better financially,
but for years we were not very wealthy and Charlotte was a
Proverbs 31 wife. When we moved to Liverpool, we
bought, we said, let's buy the biggest house we can afford and
and let it be like a vicary, just start the church in it.
So we we bought this big old rundown house and then we
couldn't really afford it because we had interest only
mortgage. And as as I was driving around,
I'd always get this temptation. What if this all fails you?
You're starting a church. We had, we had one worship
leader came with us. Probably not, not up to your
level, Scott, but yeah, but he. Was a good.
Looking dude. Oh, he was good.
Oh, yeah, there was that. There was that.
Whoa. So, yeah.
So we came with two little children and a worship leader
and started this church. And all the time I'd be tempted.
And the temptation was what if this all fails?
And I'd. It would always happen when I
drove by what was the Ford factory in Liverpool.
And I'd sort of say, Lord, what can I do at the Ford factory?
You know, because I've got very few skills really.
And I'd worry and I'd get anxious even though I'd lived by
faith when I met Charlotte. And so you, you think you, you
kind of got victory on God's the provider.
And I would say I have had amazing victories on God's the
provider. Then other times I've been
worried, worried. And I used to think we got a 22
year mortgage. I used to get this temptation.
You'll never be able to pay it back because all we were doing
every month was paying the interest and we weren't saving
any money. But Charlotte was so good
financially, she started to rent out the two top bedrooms.
And so we often, they were Christians going to Tropical
School of Medicine in Liverpool, often going to be missionaries
somewhere. And so they came and stayed and
all of them were pretty good except 11 lodger.
We couldn't wait for them to leave, but nearly all of them
were just brilliant, fit in with our family, fit in with our kids
and but that was all Charlotte's genius.
And then she'd use the money from the lodgers and little by
little. We live on a main road and it's
it's quite noisy when the ambulances and the police are
flying through our traffic light.
And so we wanted to get double glazing.
It was an old house rundown. Little by little we double
glazed one room, decorated one room, then the second room, then
the third room and now the whole house is pretty good.
And but that's thanks to a Proverbs 31 wife.
But I'm not always a man of faith and I've had times where I
really felt really worried and I worried so much about this
interest only mortgage. And and then we sold Charlotte's
parents house and we were able to pay our mortgage off.
And the devil had kind of lied to me all along.
You'll never be able to pay this back.
And you don't think, oh, that's the devil.
You think this is you just thinking because he speaks in
your thoughts, in your voice. So you think, Oh yeah, I'll
never be able to pay this off. How can we ever pay this off?
Maybe when the 22 years are up, we'll have to sell the house and
downsize. Maybe that's the way we.
So I kind of thought all lack of faith type things.
And then Charlotte's one of three children.
So we got a third of the house in Didsbury and we were able to
pay our mortgage off and but Northern Rock wouldn't let us
pay it off early. They were going to fine us, so
Charlotte's like, we're not gonna pay a fine for paying it
off early. So we we.
It was 1 LB. We said we wanted to pay off our
remaining mortgage. Is that right?
Yeah, I think we left 1 LB. In yeah, that's it.
And they said, well, you can't, you know, you're, you're
breaking terms and conditions. So they said you can leave 1 LB
in it so that you technically still have the mortgage.
Or you can pay a fine and we refuse to pay a time. £250 I
thought I'm not paying £250, I'd rather leave a pound in there,
so I did and then about a year later we got a letter from them
which basically said oh this is stupid, there's a waste of space
here as you pound back off you. Go, they said it's costing us
more in admin. We'll let you off the last part.
So but the devil lies and your marriage suffers because I was
worrying and worrying about how are we going to pay for this
house? And but God's the provider.
So somehow, but the the amazing thing for us is that we're like
that on money. We like saving, we like giving,
we like being frugal. We like we, we don't really live
a lush life. We don't think like that, but we
can afford to know. We would rather park outside
town and walk in 10 minutes to save paying £1.40 car parking
fee. Yeah, so we're quite cheap like
that, but but we the good thing is we actually think the same.
Yeah, we're both cheap and classy.
Obviously it's like it's a hard thing to pull off, but yeah,
obviously you can do it. So that that's where we've been
amazing. I don't know how how to get into
any of our accounts. She's got all the passwords.
I don't care. She's brilliant with finances.
I we have a joint banking account and Charlotte has been
saying more recently, if I die, you're not going to know how to
get into this or this. Here's the here's a list of all
my passwords. And I don't know what I've done
with that list. So it is so good when you do
meet and can flow together really easily.
Charlotte likes looking after the money.
I like Charlotte looking after the money.
And does that make me less manly?
I don't think so. I don't think it does.
I think we're meant to find ways to make it work for our family.
Not you're the man. You should.
We do have other arguments about barbecuing, because I don't like
barbecuing. She's like, yeah, we've.
Got some very strange role reversals in our house.
I do the barbecuing, he does the ironing.
Well, not while you're barbecued.
I actually get everyone drinks and make I'm I'm much more
social on that occasion. Role reversals.
But but you have to, as a man, say, I'm not going to allow you
to say I'm not manly because I don't do the BBQ.
It is manly to be very hospitable as well.
And you, but you have to learn to get comfortable with it.
And we're very comfortable the way we run our finances or I
shouldn't say we, she runs our finances, but it's brilliant for
us. And so that's an area where we
really do meet and it's just been easy.
Maybe probably the Lord will have to take me first because I
wouldn't know what to do with the various things.
Second one, money, sex and power.
How are you handling your finances?
He's the provider. Keep coming to him, keep
trusting him, keep rejecting temptations.
I wish someone had told me that's just a temptation.
I worried for so much time about things.
And then he's the lie was you'll never pay it back and we pay it
back early. Such a lie.
God's an amazing provider. If he tells you to go to
Liverpool, which he did for us, he'll provide If you do what he
tells you to do. The next one sex.
We've Charlotte's not going to talk on this one.
She is That's that's a joke. So we're OK.
We've had amazing times when we were first married and now we
disagree mainly about frequency, which I'm sure you can guess so,
but we really don't quite meet. So this is what every husband
wants to hear. I've said things like we, we
can't say it. Just be careful what you say.
I'm not being careful. I didn't sign up for careful in
in my defence, I was left unsupervised and my Tourette's
medication is wearing off right now.
So we aren't allowed to say, can we have sex?
We say or I say, come on, come on, stop.
I know where you're going with. So I say, I say, can I run us an
early bath? That's that's a euphemism.
Euphemism. And this is what you don't want
to hear as a husband. Do we have to do we?
You know, you don't have to you get to so frequency for us.
We we just don't get it. We're not terrible.
So why not say I don't get it, but I do get it.
But we don't quite I don't get it as much as I want.
You probably have to do it more than you want.
What would you say? What wisdom have we found?
And this was. When you come into a marriage,
you have different sets of expectations.
In most areas, you expect that to be done that way.
Even something like table manners or how you clear up the
dishes, whatever, whatever. And you have sets of
expectations. Some of them are based on a
culture, Some of them are based on habit and history.
Some of them are based on the fact that one of you is male,
one of you is female. And we have found that we have a
different level of expectation and particularly now we're that
little bit older. So we do find this a point that
we disagree on quite a lot, to be honest.
But there's a sense in which, again, you have to meet part way
and both of you, both of you have to make a sacrifice.
So it may be that you have to make a sacrifice to say, well,
this isn't something I really particularly feel like I've got
energy for strength for, you know, tonight, whatever.
But I know that it means a lot to him.
And vice versa. You know, Graham might think,
well, this is something that I really would would enjoy, but I
can see that the moment isn't a good time for Charlotte.
So there needs to be a sort of part way meeting for us.
It still is a a tricky one for us to navigate.
And you know, we wanted to be quite honest and upfront about
that. We didn't want to sit here and
say, yeah, we've got it all sorted.
It, it, it's, yeah, a tricky one for us, but at the end of the
day, we get our main identity and satisfaction from knowing
who we are in God. And yes, sex is God-given and
sex is really enjoyable and all the rest of it.
But actually, if we place too much emphasis on it, then it
almost starts to become an idol in our lives.
And, and, you know, we could talk for hours and hours about
how sex is basically idolised in today's society.
You only have to turn on TV or listen to the radio or see
adverts, whatever. And sex has become the be all
and end all of everything. Yeah.
So we're with my sister who's not a Christian, and I'm, I'm
meeting her. Probably going to be her
son-in-law. And so Tina is married to Adam
and Adam, it's just a fun guy. And he's introducing his
daughter's boyfriend to me and he goes, this is Graham.
They don't believe in sex before marriage, which obviously was a
big deal to them. It was 35 years ago that we
were. We were great, actually, and not
having sex until our honeymoon, which was.
So we've done really well in some areas.
I said, yeah, but we believe in sex after marriage.
Sex is really important. We've actually been with couples
who haven't had sex for years and then you find one of them
has gone and had an affair, but you only find out that they
haven't had sex for years because one of them obviously
went somewhere else. And you think, wow, sex is
important. You've, you've got to find a way
of maybe not always exactly meeting the exactly where you
want to meet because you're not the same.
Our first two years of marriage was super, super easy on sex.
I think after it, probably it was our third year when our
daughter came along. I think our sex life changed a
little bit then, but I think as we've got older, I think my sex
life has stayed the same and Charlotte's has gone down a bit,
which which I think would be true of most women as they get
older. I don't know how how the men
are. We could have a vote, but we
won't. We won't.
So I have to be a loving husband and think I'm not going to ask
her too often, but I'm not going to go to the other extreme.
So I won't ask her at all. If I was really like Jesus, he
never had sex, I'd never ask her for sex.
I don't think it's good for our marriage for us never to have
sex. So I get it less than I want.
She has to get involved and does very well more than she wants.
So. You couldn't make it up, could
you? This is true.
So we don't quite meet on the the sex thing, but we're doing
OK in that area. I wanna move on to the power
one. I think we're awful.
We'll disagree on this one, by the way.
I think we're awful on the power area because we both like to
lead. We both like to be in charge.
We're both happiest when we're the one talking and everyone's
following us. That usually works better for
girls like Peppa Pig, for example.
But but I like being in charge. And for me, I have to know
everything we do who's in charge?
We don't. What do you say if I say who's
in charge? If we're doing a DIY task at
home or something like that, he says, right, which one of us is
leading this? Which one of us is in charge?
And I say we don't have to do that.
We can just work together as a team and flow together, Yeah.
For me I that doesn't work. I want to know am I taking the
lead here? If I know that I'm happy.
If I know you're taking the lead on the finances, I'm happy.
But I need to she goes, that's military.
We're not in the Army, but I think if we were in the Army it
would be easier for me because she would say yes, Sir.
But she doesn't she doesn't she? Well, I do say to her on the
money side and many other side. So what would you say is advice
as to how we do very well when we divide and conquer, When we
say well you do this, you do this.
Yeah. There are some areas as we've
mentioned already where he's responsible for that.
I'm responsible for this and it works really well and and you
know, we basically flow really well on it.
But I think the time when we come unstuck mostly is when
we've got a new area and therefore we don't really know
but both of. Us don't who's in charge, Yeah.
Now, I don't think we have to have somebody in charge, but
again, it's a different set of expectations.
And I think it's actually come down from our our families
because Graham very much had a father who was a very practical
hands on working guy and he would have a team of people
under him who he would say, right, your job's this, your
job. So Graham's inherited that
mindset, if you like. Whereas for me, I came from a
background that was much more, yeah, well, let's let's work
together as a team and let's see how we work through this.
There again, there isn't an easy answer, but part of being able
to navigate these things is being aware of it.
Even if you can't find an easy answer, if you know that you
struggle with something in the power sense, if you know that
your spouse struggles one way or the other in the power sense,
then it can help you be a little bit more forgiving and a little
bit more sacrificial. Because when Graham, you know,
when we're doing something like Graham's up a ladder, clearing
out an overgrown gutter or something, I mean, I wouldn't go
up that ladder if you paid me. I.
Would pay. You and he gets super stressed.
So he's very sharp the way he speaks.
And if I do something very slightly wrong or stand
fractionally in the right place, boy do I hear about it.
But I have to realise that actually when he's up there
doing something he's not really very comfortable doing, he's
going to be a bit on edge. He's going to be a little bit
more and I have to be a bit more forgiving and a bit more
gracious. And then so long as when he
comes back down, he starts speaking normally and pleasantly
again, that's OK. And he might say, oh, sorry, I
got a bit stumpy up there, but I don't like it when I'm, you
know, fine. We've got a three Storey house
and I don't like heights, although as a kid I'd climb any
tree but I don't like heights now.
No, I will tell you one, one funny story that happened.
I don't know if any of you remember there was a a gun.
Was it in Rod Hull or Roy HUD? I can never remember one of
them. The one with Emu?
Yeah, the one with Emu. Anyway, he died apparently
falling off a roof of his house. Anyway, so about 10-15 years ago
we needed something doing our TV aerial adjusting because it had
fallen down in the wind and we both agreed that Graham would
give it a go because we both didn't want to fork out £70 if
we didn't have to for a professional to come and do it.
So we think, yeah, Graham can go out on the roof.
But it wasn't that straightforward because we're a
three Storey house and it's a dormer window sticking out of
the actual sloping roof. So Graham had to actually go out
of the window, hang above the patio, get onto the little flat
roof, and then he was OK, you know, going up and sorting it
out. But we thought, no, we'll be
safe. We'll be safe.
So we tied a rope around his. Neck.
My neck. Why?
We tied a rope around his belt. He had, you know, jeans on and A
and a big chunky leather belt. And we tied a rope very, very
firmly with lots of knots around this belt.
And it held really well. And this was just a safety thing
in case anything happened along. Yeah.
So we going up was fine, fixed the arrow fine coming down.
Coming down, he got onto the flat roof bit so I could hear
him, but I couldn't see him and I could hear him saying I don't
think I can make this psychological next move down.
Even though it was relatively simple move, it was a
terrifying. Move.
All you could see was the brick patio and I've got two young
children. I'm thinking.
So I said you've got to call the fire brigade, I think.
I think I'm stuck. And the trouble was, this was at
5:00 to 3:00, and the kids were coming out of primary school at
3:10. And so I said, look, Graham, I'm
going to just have to tie. Oh, sorry.
The other, sorry. The other end of the rope, by
the way, was tied round me. And round a window and.
Yeah, so I said, look, I'm just going to have to tie this rope
around the leg of the bed or something so that at least if
you do fall, you're. You know, dangling.
Dangling and I'm going to have to You haven't get the kids from
school anyway. I think what happened in the end
was you did and you were very, very brave.
I wouldn't have done it. He did actually manage to get
over and he came in and he was shaking like a leaf and that was
fine. I went and got the kids from
school no problem. Next morning, Graham got up and
put on the same jeans and the same belt.
And this is not an exaggeration. This is 100% true.
The belt had sort of very It was like a big thick cowboy belt in
different sections, and one of the sections, as he put it on
the leather literally just came into two pieces in his hands.
So if I had fallen, I would have gone.
It wouldn't have stopped me at all.
Yeah. So we've always thought after
that we will pay for someone. We respect roofers a lot more,
but the whole thing for us is we float better if we know
actually, Charlotte does the cooking, I do the cleaning or
I'll I'll do the drinks. When everyone arrives, you chat
to them or vice versa. We, we don't, I don't think some
jobs are women's jobs. So I will do sewing, ironing.
I think all jobs are for our family.
And yeah, so the roof's my job, apparently.
But no, not anymore. I did take out extra insurance
the day before. No, I didn't.
You didn't tell me that so I think we still 35 years in
struggle for me. I want to hear you lead this.
I'll help or I'll lead this. You help.
That's what I I find that helps me, but Charlotte still doesn't
like that language because let's just flow together and fall off
a roof together. Yeah.
So we haven't, we haven't got all the answers, but God has.
So you've got to somehow say, Lord, we're still struggling in
this area. You've got to help us.
And, and it changes through your marriage and, and it's amazing
as you look back and think, wow, look, look at all the things
that we've done together and the fun we've had together and the
arguments we've had. That's OK.
We, we've forgiven by God and his forgiveness is flowing
through us. So we're actually, if you have
ever do the marriage, alpha marriage, course, we're both
rhinos. So we don't, They say you're
either a rhino, rhinoceros, or a hedgehog.
If there's conflict, you'll leave the curl up in a ball or
you'll charge. We both charge ku boom, ku boom,
ku boom. But it's OK that we know that we
both charge. We know we can both handle it.
God's given us grace to kind of forgive each other when we
charge wrong. Because you shouldn't really
charge as Christians and you shouldn't curl up like a
hedgehog if you're a Christian, you should say, actually, I
would like more sex or actually, I think we're doing too much.
I'd like less. You've got to be able to talk
about anything in your marriage because you're a team.
And but the main one in charge isn't either of us is him.
He knows exactly what he's doing and we're in his hands.
And so it comes back to that thing right at the beginning, as
long as you are together and then keep looking to him, say,
Lord, you've got to help us here.
You've got to help us when our grandchildren come.
We're exhausted. What?
What can we do? Actually, that's a very good
analogy that that we haven't used yet.
We were taught once, many years ago, that if you have a conflict
or a problem in your marriage, rather than actually sort of
butting heads like that, what you should do is metaphorically
speaking, sit on the same sofa so that you're on the same side.
And rather than the problem being between, you address the
problem, whatever it is over there, so that you're actually
both looking at the problem. But together they say, well,
what is our problem? Well our problem, rather than it
being well you think this, I think this, you think this, I
think this is that right? Let's unite What is our problem?
Our problem is that there right Well, how do we how do we tackle
that? Does that make sense?
I mean you don't physically have to go and sit on a little 2
seater sofa and have a chair there, but it I.
Think we did when we first heard it.
We sat together and wrote Problem Frequency of sex.
Or no, it wouldn't have been that.
Would it be something else? It's a problem and you've got to
find God together and say how are we going to, how are we
going to do this? I'm wondering, I know we haven't
talked about this, but I'm wondering if just for the last
sort of 5 minutes or so, it will be worth us, just us stop
talking and letting people in their individual couples just
find a little corner of the room and go and talk about together
what's affected. Them.
Brilliant. Do you think so?
Is that right? Well, you're in charge, right?
I'm in. Charge it is a rarity.
So yeah, is it? Just for a few minutes.
We'll let Ben wrap it up when he feels it's right.
Move chairs. So get up now.
Move chairs. Go and find this, you know, use
the whole room. It's a massive room.
Use that area out there, these corners, the stage.
Go and find yourself a little corner and talk about anything
that you've heard today that you think.
Oh, yeah, whatever. I don't want to be prescriptive.