OK, so we will get started. I think they're making sure we
have a nice lunch. So the question was, how do we
safeguard time in our marriage? And it's definitely changed over
35 years. So you have to keep adjusting
keep. But for for many years, I would
preach on a Sunday. Sunday was always the most
stressful day as a church planter, church leader, and we
always got Mondays off, which probably won't work for all of
you. So my Sabbath, our Sabbath, was
Monday. The kids were at school and we
would either cycle along canal paths or walk together, usually
have a pub lunch. So that was Mondays and that was
always an amazingly we did hadn't got into playing cards by
this stage. We could, we were still mobile,
we weren't, we weren't moving on crutches.
So that was something that just worked really well for both of
us. What did you find good in
safeguarding time? I went through many years where
I thought it would just happen, that we would just get time
together, but then children come along and that changes
everything. So we had to be very proactive
about it and we would literally have to sit down with a pen and
paper or diary, Google Diaries, whatever, and actually put time
in to go out and do something. But yeah, like we were saying at
the end of the last session, it's got to be something that
you both want to do. You both need to be able to find
this time, whatever it is, not to say, well, let's do that
because so and so does that unless it works for you and it
appeals to you, but you've got to find what works for you.
So yeah, Mondays for a quite a long season was a very special
one for us. Now that we are, I use this word
very lightly, retired. Although in the ministry you
don't really retire, you just do the same stuff and don't get
paid for it by the church. We are now good for nothing,
yeah. Yeah.
So we have a lot more time. And the danger there is that we
can almost spend too much time together, you know, if we're not
careful. And yeah, so we have to still
manage our time even in retirement and say, well, what
are we doing today? What do we want to achieve?
Whatever stage of life you're at, it would be worth perhaps,
and this is only a perhaps, don't say.
Charlotte says we must do this, therefore we will do it.
It may be worth saying at the beginning of each day or as you
go to sleep the night before. So what have we got on tomorrow?
What do we want to achieve? Well, we need to get this done
and get that done. Sort this child out and that
child out and then so, so that you know what each other's
doing. We sit down a lot and I like to
write lists. It started with conflict
resolution, which we're going to look at in a minute.
But Charlotte would say when's a good time to talk?
We, we learnt that that's the way you speak to each other.
If you have a conflict, not I want to talk and I wanna talk.
Now that doesn't work. So you have to say when's a good
time to talk, which means I'm really cross with you.
We, we need to deal with this issue.
But then Charlotte would tell me her issues and she didn't like
me interjecting and clarifying. So I started taking notes 'cause
she'd talked for half an hour and I couldn't remember all the
bullet points. I'd have 20 bullet points of
things I wanted to respond to. But we've learnt to get much
better, so now we should talk shorter and then reply shorter,
reply shorter. So that's helped.
But time that was really special for for me was our kids started
every year going to a thing called Bonsall Bible Week, and
it was for seven. It was brilliant.
They loved it. So yeah, it was 7 to 11 year
olds. We would go and do AB and B
somewhere nearby where the kids were in case they needed us.
But we basically had time without the kids.
So it's great having kids. It's a joy.
But it changes your marriage. It changes the whole dynamic.
In fact, when we first had Naomi 31 years ago, I felt a bit left
out because Charlotte's with Naomi and breastfeeding her and.
And I'm like, oh, it's lovely, but what about me?
What about our sex life? And yeah, well, we're not doing
that. You know, I just pushed out a
baby. And so I think Bonsall was
amazing for us. I called it Bonsall, which is
for different reasons, but it was just great to go to another
place. And then when our kids were a
bit older, they went to New Day. We never went to New Day.
Now I suspect you have been, but we never did.
We always found that was a good time for us to just be the two
of us. But we love being parents.
We love being grandparents. So when we look at conflict
resolution, a good place to start with this is identifying
your parents strengths and weaknesses.
So you've obviously got, generally speaking, a set of
parents each and it's worth sitting down and identifying
together what their strengths and weaknesses are.
The reason is that you will subconsciously, unwittingly, you
will have absorbed, inherited some of their strengths and some
of their weaknesses. Now, for example, my father was
a, a very, very academic man. He was a very clever man.
No, I did not absorb that. He was a a brilliant guy, but he
actually was not very good. Well, actually he was rubbish at
forgiving people. He would sulk, you know, even,
you know, as a grown man, he would sulk if he didn't get his
own way or if he felt he'd been done wrong by.
And until it was resolved, he would, yeah, not handle it well.
And over the years we've realised that I have a habit of
doing that. I really don't like it if
something isn't resolved and I find I have found over the years
forgiveness a much harder thing to do than Graham House.
Graham is brilliant at forgiving and moving on so.
But on the other hand my parents had many strengths as well.
They were incredibly hospitable and always had an open house and
my friends and I and my siblings and their friends, we were
always welcome there. And without even realising it,
when we started our married life, that's just what we did.
Not because we set out to think, oh, now hang on a minute, what
can I do? You just end up doing things and
responding to things the way your parents do.
So identify their strengths and weaknesses.
I just want to go back briefly. We talked about listening skills
at the end of the last session. I just want to tell you the four
different types of listening, because when you're dealing with
a conflict resolution, it's helpful to understand how you
listen to each other. So the first type is
competitive. That means you're well, you see,
no, no, you want your turn. You want to outdo the other one.
You've got a bigger grudge to bear than they have.
So that's competitive. The next one, there's some
overlap here as well, is combative.
That means you are just waiting to prove that you are right and
that what they are talking about is a waste of space.
Combative. The third one is passive.
It's like, yeah, I'm listening because it's really polite for
me to listen and I'm doing the right thing.
I'm being very godly here. But actually I don't care what
you're saying and I'm not really taking it on board.
I'm not engaging here. And the fourth one is the good
one, the right one if you like, and it's active listening.
So when somebody, particularly your spouse or anybody, these
actually apply not just to marriage.
These are great tools in life. And these, particularly in a
church, are great tools to have a Cape.
So active listening is when somebody is talking to you,
engage with them by looking at them even not a bit in
affirmation. That shows them that you are
engaged and that you're listening.
You're not just waiting. Not affirm them.
Affirm them means saying, oh, I see what you're saying.
Yeah, that must be hard. Oh, right.
That must have been difficult for you.
So affirming them is kind of agreeing with them that whatever
it is as being hard or difficult, mirror it back if
necessary. And we talked about this.
So say them. So hang on.
What you're trying to say is that this happened and you felt
like this and it made you feel like this.
And then the best thing you can do, rather than than saying,
well, let me tell you about me and what happened to me, blah,
blah, blah, blah, blah. Ask them more questions.
I love it when Graham and I are having a a disagreement and
we're trying to sort it out and he asks me questions and I ask
him questions the way I say. But when you did that, what what
when you said that, what was in your mind?
What did you think you were going to achieve or what did
you? And it actually makes you
analyse what you've said and what you've done or what you've
not said and what you've not done.
So yeah, knowing what philtres to listen through as well.
So for example, on the day last week when Graham was absolutely
done in and was on the edge, he was just emotionally and
physically exhausted. He was listening through a
philtre of exhaustion. So anything that I said to him,
he couldn't take on board, he couldn't absorb it, he couldn't
process it. So I quickly had to recognise he
was listening through that philtre, even though he normally
listens with a much better philtre.
So we also need to be able to forgive and apologise.
Forgiving and apologising, but never demand an apology.
It's very easy to say you need to apologise.
You need to be sorry for this. Tell me you're sorry.
Tell me that isn't getting an apology from someone that's just
forcing them to say some words. OK.
Because the heart attitude of apology isn't there.
I do however, like it if she says I'm sorry.
It's very, very rare but so sometimes I do say I would like
you to apologise for that after we've had a discussion and then
she'll say are you demanding an apology?
No, I'm not. I would never do a guy here
aren't. I.
No, no, you've done that to yourself.
So yeah. So I do say I would like an
apology and then I have to just drop it and usually the next
stage. I am sorry.
Carry on. Yeah.
And sometimes you may not always be able to resolve it.
You may have to get to a place where you agree to disagree on
something. There are certain ways I like
things doing, certain ways Graham likes things doing.
And there isn't necessarily a right or wrong is preference.
And that can be incredibly hard to navigate and incredibly hard
to marriage to to manage. So what we do have to do in
those situations, and this is hard, if we have to lay down our
perceived right to understand everything.
So in the Christian faith, there's a great, sometimes it's
referred to with the the great mystery, and we don't understand
why God does things and we don't understand why certain things
happen. And a lot of it we can try and
explain with theology, but always this side of glory, there
are going to be mysteries and things we don't understand.
So, for example, if a great tragedy strikes and, and I'm
sure we all know people who've been through incredible
horrendous tragedies within their family and they said, but
why, why did this happen? Why did God allow this?
Why did that child die? Why this, why this?
And there are sometimes in life, in marriage, where we have to
say we we have to surrender to God and we have to say, I cannot
explain this. I don't know why it has
happened, but I surrender and I trust you God because you're
sovereign, you're in charge. Because if we understood every
single thing that happened, however difficult it was,
however traumatic it was, if we understood every single thing
about why our partner did this, why they did that, we would be
forever going down rabbit holes. And it would also make it about
us, not about him. And when we want to honour Jesus
in our marriages, part of that involves surrendering and
submitting and saying I can't do this, I really don't understand.
But God, I'm trusting you, I'm leaning into you, pressing into
you, and I'm going to move forward honouring you whatever
happens. So I think coming back to the
whole God, I'm yours, or as Cody Gapo said, I belong to Jesus.
Football reference doesn't matter.
Move on, tumbleweed. So you belong, it doesn't
matter. You'll understand it if you look
at the phone. So you've got to just keep
saying, Lord, I'm yours and how do you want me to be a husband?
So he says, I want you to love your wife like Jesus loved the
church. Lord, I'm yours.
Help me to love Charlotte the way you love me.
How does Jesus love me? Amazingly?
He doesn't condemn me, he encourages me, he accepts me.
He says I'll never let you perish.
I've got you. So he's totally amazing.
And I've got to somehow say, Lord, please let that flow from
me in my relationship as a husband.
So the most important thing, instead of looking girl, she's
got a speck in her eye, while I've still got this great big
beam in mind, I've got to just say, Lord, I'm yours.
So I do think that's the first relationship we have to work on.
Otherwise you just focus on changing your spouse.
And then some people literally change their spouse.
And that's never the answer because they say that those who
end up going through a divorce, they think that's the solution,
get a different grass is greener.
But actually they're much more likely to then do it again
because they thought it was the solution.
So now they're much, much more likely to get married 1/3 time,
1/4 time, fifth time, sixth time.
So marriage is God's institution to help us to say God.
I am somewhat flawed and I don't like it being pointed out, but
she's right. Lord, you've got to help me,
help me to to change. And 35 years later, we haven't
changed as much as we probably thought we would have done 35
years ago. But the joy of being together is
so amazing, about having a family together, about being on
a mission together, about going to Manchester together to plant
churches, then going to Liverpool.
It's just amazing to have a best friend who's sometimes your
worst enemy to be with. And and just because sometimes
you're each other's worst enemy is, does that mean you should
split up? No.
Keep going back to God. Help me.
Help Charlotte change us. Lord, we're yours.
We belong to you. We need your help.
But there are some things that we've learnt in 35 years about
the best way for us to listen to each other.
So the first one is we say, is this a good time?
No, no, it is. It's not a good time.
It'll never be a good time, but it usually is a good time if I
just wait a few hours or she waits a few hours.
I think it's OK to say no, I don't want to talk right now.
We, we say that sometimes, but we will eventually say, oh, go
on then let's, let's, let's get this out of the way.
And no one wants to have a conflict resolution time.
As a husband and a wife, I never go Oh I'm really looking forward
to finding out what I've done wrong this week.
This is. Really painting me in a bad not
at all, not at all. So first question, is this a
good time or when would be a good time for us to which
usually means for US 20 minutes. We need at least 20 minutes and
it usually means right. Tell me what?
It doesn't work very well. If you say right, you have your
go. I need my go so we if Charlotte
asks me when's a good time to talk, I've got something that
you've done. She doesn't say done, but I know
I've done something. So we're we're sit down.
We have learnt that it does not help for me to say I've got
something as well. You've just gotta suck it up and
think. I'll have to wait for tomorrow
to mention my thing and it'll wait.
Most things will wait. It's much better for me to
listen well to Charlotte rather than be thinking, well I'll
listen to yours, but you better listen to mine.
That's competitive, isn't it? So first thing is just one of
you. Hopefully you both are good at
taking turns and say well actually I'm a bit offended at
the moment as well. So the second thing that we've
learnt is you cannot muddy the water by the rest of the history
you've got together and you can do that.
You muddy the water when you say, well, last time we had this
conversation about this very issue, about your driving, you
did this. You always do.
You never do. So the world's always a never,
never help. Don't use them.
They're so pejorative, so negative, so slurring the other
person. You're not really trying to win
an argument. You're trying to build a
relationship that flows a bit better.
So yeah, we try not to say always and never.
We we try and say, well, this is the thing that that I'm upset
about. And then the other person
listens, usually for two minutes.
We usually say to each other, I've got something I need 2
minutes. Sometimes it's 10 minutes.
It's OK. 10 minutes is a very brief time to invest in getting
greener grass in your marriage. It's just very little time for
10 minutes for me to listen or Charlotte to listen and then to
say, OK, if you can agree with them, say you're right.
I'm so sorry if you can, you may not be able to.
Forgiveness isn't very easy. Jesus did it and it does flow
through his people, but not quite as easily as we think it
should. So sometimes you just have to
say, Lord, help me to be forgiving.
Let your forgiveness, let your love flow through me.
But yeah, so we we've learnt that one person has a go, but
then don't muddy the water by bringing some other issue in.
Or last you did this last year and now look what's happened.
That's gone. That's water under the bridge.
Deal with now, deal with today. Each day has enough trouble of
its own Listening world today is quite hard.
If I listen world today, I don't need to bring in or have last
year's or 35 years of history about how it's gone.
So those are some little tips about conflict resolution.
Anything to add just? A final bit on that from me is
that if you struggle with being able to forgive or saying sorry
and apologising, or if you are somebody who's easily offended.
So I'm just going to say those three things again so you can
possibly identify them within yourself.
So if you struggle to forgive, if you struggle to apologise or
if you feel easily offended, it's a sign of spiritual
immaturity. It means that you are depending
on yourself and your strength and your expectation of your
spouse rather than depending on God.
So that is something I think that's a take away from today,
that if any of those three do affect you, you need to really
go away, bring them before God and say, yeah, God, I just want
to be so in tune and in love with you, God, first and
foremost, that this other stuff is not about me and my pride and
my rights and how I appear and me looking strong.
And yeah, so that's my final thing on there, I think.
I think when you come to a marriage day, you tend to think,
all right, so after you've had this 10 minute, 20 minute chat,
it's all fine now. No, it isn't.
It'll come back next week and it's the same thing.
But you've done it again when I haven't because you forgave me
about again. So you can't say again.
You've got to say, can I've got another issue I want to talk
about, but after 35 years, we've talked about the same sorts of
things over and over and over. When you water flowers or your
green grass, you water it over and over and over.
It's worth investing in the same thing over and over.
If there's forgiveness flowing and love flowing and you're
going back to God, it's so helpful to know.
But when you as a spouse are hurting, you can talk.
And it's also helpful to know that your your spouse is saying,
yeah, I'm I'm ready to listen. I'm not always ready to listen.
Sometimes they're just like, I do not want to talk.
When I come in from an elders meeting, Charlotte's first
question is what's the gossip I do?
Not. She doesn't say.
No, that that was that was a joke.
She doesn't say. How did it?
Go what she means? What's the gossip?
So, and I'm like I have just been listening to a load of talk
for two hours. I do not want to talk anymore.
My talk amateur is finished for today.
I want to turn on a drama. She only watches BBC.
It's got to be ABBC drama. So yeah, I'm.
I'm talked out. They say that little boys make a
lot of noise and we'll sort of. Whereas little girls chat away
and I think in our marriage we've learnt that I chat much
less Charlotte chats much more naturally.
I, you know, once my 4 words a day are up, that's my that,
that's my 4 words. You gotta wait for tomorrow for
five, 6-7 and eight. Whereas Charlotte, 10,000 words
is, is easy. But that's just the difference
between men and women. We're different.
And yeah. You now I have to say, you are
actually a very good, generally a very good talker and listener.
But I think that has come as a result of what you went through
35 years ago. If you want to talk about that
now, maybe we'll say that for another weekend.
But you have learned the hard way.
And I think and therefore it, it sometimes takes a, a drama or a
trauma to, for, for people to be good listeners and good
speakers, sadly. And I think, yeah, you are not
a, you are not a standard bloke who just sits there and doesn't
listen. Some of them do.
I'm not saying anybody here is like that.
So what Charlotte's referring to is when I was 22, I just become
a Christian. I got married at 22 to an
American who then went off with another guy.
Four years later I came back to England broken.
The only Christian in my family, the only one divorced in my
family. Can I just say that was?
His first divorce, I like to call it that, keeps him on his
toes. I.
Call it his divorce. I call it his first divorce.
But definitely God used that to help me to learn more about him
really and his goodness. And he carried me through that
period and then carried me into this relationship.
And why, Lord, he knows. He knows why?
Because we have been on a mission together for 35 years.
And actually what's really funny is I was married to an American
in Philadelphia doing a master's in theology, and God spoke to me
and I knew I was coming back to England.
My American wife loved England. She's like, I want to go to
England with you. And so from Philadelphia, we
sent all our stuff to my parents in Horsham.
And at the same time, one of the seminary professors said if we
lose the city, Philadelphia, we lose the nation.
If we lose the cities, we lose the nation.
And he meant what was happening in America was all the gun crime
and drug crime was happening in the city centre.
And people who are a bit richer disappeared into the suburbs
where it was a bit nicer. So he said, I'm staying in the
city centre, right. So he, he was lovely.
And I just said, Lord, send me back to English cities.
And that was my prayer. But it was like a Joseph having
a dream prayer. Joseph dreams.
He lit a touch paper that exploded his life.
He he shares the dreams and the next thing is he's a slave, He's
in prison, he's in Egypt. But it's all because he shared
his dreams. I prayed this prayer and it was
like my marriage fell apart, my first marriage and I come back
to Horsham, which isn't a city. I'd said send me back to English
cities. I come back broken to Horsham
and God picks me up little by little with some godly men in
Horsham who encouraged me and particularly Terry.
Virgo was amazing and his grace message was amazing, which we'll
be looking at tomorrow if you're around.
But and it was so lovely the way God kind of took this broken
Christian. I thought he, he was, you know,
untwisting me. I think I was more broken as a
Christian. But now I knew I was broken.
But he's got me. He's carried me broken.
And then he started to untwist me again.
And then I meet Charlotte and I'd but I'd forgotten all about
the dream. I just wasn't praying for
cities. I was just surviving.
Life is sometimes surviving. And anyway, I I meet Charlotte
and she's so beautiful and so suntanned and.
This was a long time ago. And and I was preaching.
We were planting a church in a little village called Calfold
and she comes along and she's the only visitor and I was
preaching and so I went and said hello but I assume she's a non
Christian. She looked too too glamorous to
too too secular really to be a Christian.
But then she started what what I now thank God for.
She started teasing me relentlessly because I would
never ask anyone out. And she said why don't you ever
go out with anyone? I was 30 at the time.
And I said, well, I'm only going to go out with someone if God
tells me this is who you're going to marry.
And she just laughed and and laughed and no one laughs at
someone saying that, but she did.
And she just laughed. She said, oh, you're just hurt.
You just don't want to get hurt again.
I laughed and, and but eight weeks of her doing that to me, I
thought, she's right. Wow, I am hurt.
I really don't want to get hurt again.
But I asked her out. And then we got married and
almost immediately we went to the Brighton Conference together
because we didn't have children yet.
And at the conference, Terry Virgo had a prophecy.
When the bow is pulled back into the nation, Charlotte's from
Manchester. When the bows pull back into the
nation, you'll be fired into the nations.
And it was like God lit the touch paper again.
And I said to Charlotte, I think, gosh, just said when the
bows pull back to Manchester, you'll be fired into France.
And she goes, I left Manchester, I don't want to go back to
Manchester. But two years later, we were on
our way to Manchester, sent by New Frontiers.
Charlotte's happy pregnant as well.
I'm happy to be going back to her city.
And then God kind of reminded me, English cities.
God's plan was always for me to end up in English cities.
Not that, you know, towns and villages are bad, but that was
God's plan for me. And it all took off when I kind
of took another risk about getting hurt because you do get
hurt in marriage, even if you stay together, you, you hurt
each other, but also you heal each other and you have mission
together and a family together. And it's just a joy, actually.
I'm so pleased. Being single is meant to be
better. And it is what Jesus did and
Paul did. They didn't get married.
But most of us need can't just survive me and God.
And it says if if you need to get married, get married.
If you can stay single, stay single.
I don't think I could. And actually, my life took off
with this woman who's astonishing at getting visitors
into our home, making them feel comfortable, starting a church
in in Manchester in our house and then in Liverpool in our
house. Couldn't have done it on my own.
I didn't know God was going to do all that in my life.
But yeah, it's amazing being on a mission together.
Sorry, back to you. No, I've.
Got nothing. Wrong.
OK. I think this is a good time to
stop because we'll go into another session, but maybe
there's questions. We've got 4 minutes, one or two
questions. Obviously, you haven't had time.
You don't have to go to Gen this time.
That was nearly a hand, wasn't it?
Any questions, Scott? I'm just interested in your
story. How the the hurt that you felt
that you would describe it, how did you make sure that that
wasn't something that impacted your marriage to create at the
beginning? I did it.
Influence and where there things you needed to repeat repair as
she went along because of that experience.
I didn't make sure you just have to trust God because I don't
know if you all heard the question how did I make sure I
didn't take those hurts into marriage.
I was hurt, I was getting healed, but healing takes a long
time. And I would say I still had a
wound and it was still festering a little.
So if we argued, I what do you think?
I thought when we we argue when we're first married?
Oh no, going to I'm going to get divorced again.
And she didn't help in those days.
She'd pushed the divorce button. So I think years went by until
the joke, His first divorce made me think, yeah, I can laugh at
that. It took years, maybe five years
of being married. And I thought, actually, that is
funny. It was always funny, but I was
still wounds. Jesus heals us, He heals the
wounded. But healing takes so long and in
various stages you think why? Why did it take so long?
But I think Charlotte also was part of the healing process.
Humour. Her humour is healing.
Probably won't heal you today, but.
God is the healer. OK, one more question.
Someone be brave. You could ask what's for lunch,
but that's a different question. Yeah.
Nicola, how did you work out? What you missed you was as a
cod. Followed.
You want something? Wow, that is such a good
question. You do want lunch today?
Don't. You, I'm going to go, but I'll
leave you with Charlotte that. Is a brilliant question, Nicola
in a nutshell. When we met, we probably had
slightly different missions. I'd come from a more sort of
straight traditional Anglican background.
Graham was. What?
I was doing the choir boy thing but it didn't work.
Graham was in this very charismatic movement, New
Frontiers, Christ Central. That's what this church, our
Blackpool church is, is part of. So we were slightly at
loggerheads. Not at loggerheads.
I don't mean we were disagreeing, but we didn't, we
had to make it work. And I quickly realised that I
did not have the same level of faith and understanding in about
Kingdom that Graham had. So I first of all was involved
in the church that Graham was helping to lead, thinking who
are all these wacky people? They're all nut cases.
They're all a little bit, you know, out there.
But then the more I spent time around them, I thought,
actually, these people are doing it right.
They've got something to be joyful about.
They're excited about something and they're not just doing it on
a Sunday morning. They're living it, they're
owning it. So I really, I feel, have some
catching up to do. Now, that doesn't mean it's
always going to be that way round.
But for me personally, I had to catch up.
You know, I felt with Graham then we had to.
We will catch up on. That thank you.
Then we had to. Then I realised that, yeah,
Graham's on a mission, you know, and he's prepared to really take
bigger risks than I take. So he would take, you know, much
greater risks to do with finances, giving money away or
his giving to the church. And I would think, oh, you can't
do that. That's incredibly risky.
But then the more he's, we, we sort of talked about it and the
more I learnt about it, the more I realised actually he's taking
what humanly speaking, we would call a risk.
But it's not a risk when it's underpinned by God.
You know, when you're doing something, you say, Lord, I'm,
I'm going to step out in faith here and do this.
Most people would say, oh, you're a Nutter.
But actually I thought, no, he's living by faith and I mean by
faith. And so there were things like
that. And then when he said I think
God's calling us to Manchester and I was like, what just got
settled here in Horsham. So he was more radical.
He was more Kingdom minded. He was more missional.
He was more of a risk taker for the Kingdom than I was.
But once I caught that vision and caught that heart of his,
then, yeah, we were on a mission together.
So I would really encourage you wherever you're at, you guys in
your marriages, relationships, whatever, to try to be on a
mission together. You may not always be in the
early stages. It may be that one of you is
further along than the other. That's OK.
God can work with that. We are literally on a mission
together now. Doesn't mean you necessarily
agree on everything. It means that sometimes when we
think, well, how much are we going to give to this, we'll
come up with a figure and then Graham will say, let's put
another naughty on the end of that figure.
And I'm like, but actually it's exciting living on the edge.
It's exciting living on the front line. 75 is more exciting
than 55. Sorry, I was just going to say
I. Think it's possibly great to
hear. It's possibly important to say
that you don't have to move half the country and start a.
Church and then absolutely not. No, no.
On a mission together doesn't mean moving around.
Yes. On a mission means wherever you
are, right here in Blackpool. What's God calling me to do?
It doesn't mean you have to go and move somewhere.
I mean, maybe it is for some of you, but yeah, no good to
qualify that. Thanks, Jen.
Your mission is what God's calling you to do right here.
You know, it doesn't have to have a title.
Oh, I am the you don't need a title.
Titles are rubbish. It's just what do I do day in,
day out? What do we do together?
And we were on a mission together in Horsham for two
years before we moved. But I think God also closes
doors and opens doors. And so Charlotte was still quite
Anglican when we were about to get married.
So she she asked her vicar would he do the wedding?
And God closed the door so the vicar wouldn't marry me because
I'd been divorced. But then, which Charlotte
probably would have accepted, except that her friend from
British Airways across the road was living with her boyfriend.
And the vicar said, oh, yeah, I'll marry you.
And she's like, I'm serving as youth leader at your church and
you're marrying my neighbours who never go to church.
They don't really have anything to do with God, but they wanted
the church wedding, but they were allowed to get married and
we worked, which at the time hurt me.
But looking back on it now, I think, wow, God actually closed
that door and brought us out of that and into sort of promised
land, if you like. So yeah, that was a blessing.
So I think whatever your mission is, do it together, go to the
same church together. So we didn't end up 1 going
Anglican, 1 going New Frontiers, one moving to Manchester, one
staying in Horsham. That's not marriage.
You've got to do it together and keep praying and asking God and
Lord, you've got to help us. So when we moved to Liverpool
again, God spoke to me first. But Charlotte got her own
prayer. But Will answer the prayer.
But we'll tell you about that. And it may be that being on a
mission together may not mean you do identical things.
It may be that being on a mission together for a
particular couple might mean that one of you is really into
hospitality and pastoral work, say, and looking after those who
are struggling. And the other one of you is much
better at serving the church practically or helping with the
PA or what. It doesn't mean you have to have
identical gifts, not at all. You can have completely separate
gifts but still be with those gifts moving forward together,
moving forward together. So I hope that helps answer a
bit.