Speaker 1: 0:00

To learn to get to the place where Christ is the foundation, where we're aligning everything, every part of our being, our soul, our spirit and our body, with Holy Spirit, where he's at the center.

Speaker 2: 0:13

Tip number one is really just committing to Christ as our foundation. I mean, it really starts here. Seeds for your marriage.

Speaker 1: 0:22

Welcome to Conversations with Trisha and Thomas. We are, Trisha and Thomas Walker, relationship coaches and communication experts. We help couples improve their communication, resolve conflict and achieve God's design for an amazing marriage. Today, we're going to be talking about what it means to put and keep Christ at the center of our relationships and to do it in a way where the relationships that we have in our life are benefited. And you know, Trish, this is not an issue until it becomes an issue.

Speaker 2: 0:54

Yeah, do we ever sometimes feel like we're fighting an uphill battle in different areas of our life, or that we're working against ourselves? Do we tend to be on the fence about aligning our will to God's will, or even how to do that? Or we struggle with the ability to trust God by giving up control in our life and allowing ourselves to be completely led by the Spirit. Or we tend to be believers of Christ but not followers in every area of our lives.

Speaker 1: 1:25

Yeah, you know, I'm just reminded of not just being hearers but also being doers of the word and the idea that when we put Christ at the center, yielding every realm of our life to him it's particularly critical when I think about relationships so to learn to get to the place where Christ is the foundation, where we're aligning everything, every part of our being, our soul, our spirit and our body, with Holy Spirit, where he's at the center, everything that we do, our thoughts, our emotions, our actions, the decisions that we make, are all rooted in him.

Speaker 2: 2:04

Yeah. So we're going to give you some tips. We're going to talk about some tips on how to do this, and tip number one is really just committing to Christ as our foundation. I mean, it really starts here Ensuring we have confessed the Lord, that he is our savior of our life and that he died, was buried and rose again on the third day. We acknowledge and repent of our sins before the Lord, and we have asked him to baptize us with his spirit, to come into our hearts to be our savior and to help us with learning how to follow him.

Speaker 1: 2:37

Once we have made that commitment, the next tip that we have, or the advice we'd give, is aligning our spirit to his spirit. This comes by spending time praising him, worshiping him, pressing into his word, listening and reading what he has to say, deep prayer time to make sure that the connection that we have with the Lord is going deeper and deeper into intimacy on a daily basis. By the way, there's no end to the level of depths that we can go into our relationship with God.

Speaker 2: 3:09

Absolutely.

Speaker 1: 3:10

And then when we know something is off, because of that deep connection that we have and the fact that our spirits are so aligned, if something's off, we'll be able to sense it because we'll know the connection is a bit out of whack. So it's a relationship where we allow ourselves In fact, not only allowing ourselves, we just get to be loved by God. And it's not about working to get his approval. It really is about knowing that we are already approved as his children and adopted children into his kingdom. I think about the fact also, trish, that we were made in the likeness and image of him. So really, it's about going through the path of revealing and getting to the place where we have that complete alignment with the way that he has already designed us from the beginning.

Speaker 2: 3:55

Yeah, this is really good. I mean, this is really foundational, right. The rock Christ is our rock. And then connecting with the Spirit, with the Holy Spirit, and being led by him, allowing the Holy Spirit to lead in every area of our life.

Speaker 1: 4:09

Yeah, so we've established Christ as our foundation. We have aligned ourselves, our spirit with his spirit.

Speaker 2: 4:18

Next, the next step is just pursuing a healthy soul right. Our soul is our mind, our will and our emotions. So first we must renew our mind to God's word, renew our mind daily to God's word. Understanding our identity in Christ is the foundation we build on. If we don't get this first, it's like a relationship with him is built on quicksand. Our mind has to line up to the mind of Christ. We have to think his thoughts, know his thoughts. The second is our will, right. That's how we renew our soul and have a healthy soul is our will. We have to choose.

Speaker 2: 5:00

We have to understand this dance that we do with Father God. It's submitting our will to him, just like Jesus said in the Garden of Gethsemane before going to the cross Father, let this cup pass before me, yet not my will, let yours be done. He submitted his will to the Father. Oftentimes the Father just wants to see if we're going to give him first position of our life and allow him to lead. And when he can trust us he will know he will allow us to lead in certain areas of our life. God has given us free will, so it's not an obligation to serve him, it's a privilege. He is not going to force his will onto us. We have to open our will to him and give him the wheel over our lives.

Speaker 1: 5:52

Yeah, I love that. What you just said there about the fact that it's a privilege and the mindset of we get to do this because of his extravagant love toward us and that we get to rest in that and walk and live and breathe and everything that we do comes out of that place, that we get the privilege to worship and align our will and submit to his will, as opposed to this duty. It's not a religious duty, it's not a checklist that you do on the to-do list of days live, of every day. It's really just a posture that we are in and it's a position that we place ourselves in to just say I am yours and you are mine.

Speaker 2: 6:40

Not my will, but yours. Be done Right, absolutely. Yeah, the third part of our soul is our emotions. So learning to be led not by our emotions, but allowing our emotions to be an indication that there's something going on and how to connect with God on dealing with those emotions.

Speaker 1: 7:01

But wait, we worship him in spirit and in truth, and also when we feel good.

Speaker 2: 7:08

Not necessarily.

Speaker 1: 7:09

No, Not necessarily Okay so talk to me about emotions as it relates to our relationship with the Father.

Speaker 2: 7:15

Well, for example, if we can identify that we're feeling fearful or angry, it can be an indication that there's something going on right to not respond out of that, but allow God to work on that anger in us and teach us how to respond in a way that gives him glory and can turn our anger into peace and joy.

Speaker 1: 7:37

Yeah, that's good.

Speaker 2: 7:38

But we have to learn not to be afraid of our emotions. Some people don't even know how to identify what they're feeling right, and so it's about talking to God about them, when we're feeling different things, if there are negative emotions that are coming up, talking to the Lord about that and asking him where the root of it comes from, asking him to pull that root and replace it with something that he wants. To replace it with something good. Maybe it's peace or love or joy.

Speaker 1: 8:05

You know, you just said something. You said pull that root. Can you expand on that?

Speaker 2: 8:11

Yeah, so when we're just praying to the Lord and we're talking to him about maybe it's some disappointment that we have and it's just really turned into just a lot of sadness, even some depression, right, and we're just processing with him about what we're feeling and where it came from and you know the situation that happened that maybe led us down this spiral path, he can get to the root of it. He can get to the root of that depression. He can pull that depression out. He can remove the depression and you can ask Jesus to take that away. And he can replace that. Ask him to replace it with something, anything that we pull out, any sort of root, a negative root that he pulls out. We always want to have him replace it with something. It's like a healing balm that goes over that area.

Speaker 1: 8:57

That's really good, because if we think about something as being complete, when you pull something out there can be a void, and what we don't want to do is allow something else negative to enter into that empty space. And so in that beautiful exchange, you know, he exchanges beauty for ashes. Whenever it's taken out, he is always faithful to replace it with one of his truths.

Speaker 2: 9:23

Right, absolutely yeah. So it's just pressing into what that truth is. And the Lord, you know, he made our emotions and he has emotions as well, because we were made in his image, right. So we are like a reflection of him, in a way. So we start asking Jesus what his heart is right Like. I love that. I love asking Jesus what is your heart for me? What is your heart for this situation that I'm in? What is your heart for the person that I'm in? What is your heart for the person that I'm having, maybe a struggle with right now?

Speaker 1: 9:54

And you know, I want to come in on that because, as we ask these questions, there can be, let's just say, three voices that can come back in any given situation.

Speaker 1: 10:07

One voice is it could be our own voice, right and we could say we could make up something that we think, and then there is a voice that could come from the enemy in the response as well, and obviously there is the response that comes from the father. I want you to test this with me. One clear indicator is if it's negative or if it's not lined up with the scripture nine times out of ten, you can pretty much guarantee it's something coming from the enemy and you can rule it out right away.

Speaker 2: 10:38

Right.

Speaker 1: 10:38

Like, don't even let that like. Paul talks about taking our thoughts into captivity, any thought that comes from the activity, it comes from the enemy.

Speaker 2: 10:45

We want to capture that and give that to Jesus and throw it as far away from us as quickly as possible, capture that and give that to Jesus and throw it as far away from us as quickly as possible. Exactly which is key to what I'm saying about just renewing our mind to Christ. It's knowing the word and renewing our mind to the word so then we can decipher the difference between the truth from the father and the lies from the enemy.

Speaker 1: 11:04

Yeah, absolutely. And then I also believe that over time, as we do this, we talked about establishing Christ as the foundation, aligning our will to his will. There's also aligning sorry, assigning our spirit, and you said spirit is mind, body, soul.

Speaker 2: 11:22

Our soul is our mind, body and emotions.

Speaker 1: 11:23

Emotions right, and so I guess where I'm going with this, without me trying to go all the way back, is, over time, our thoughts become his thoughts. We align ourselves to a place where the way that we're thinking is the way that he's thinking.

Speaker 2: 11:37

Yeah, absolutely, and sometimes people have a hard time deciphering between well, is this my thought, then, or is this God's thought? But God's thought, he's always for our good.

Speaker 1: 11:48

Amen.

Speaker 2: 11:49

His thoughts are always for us, right, and so sometimes we can be really hard on ourselves, right. Sometimes we can be judgmental of ourselves, sometimes we can have thoughts that maybe are okay, but they're not like the goodness of God. And so that's one way to really try to decipher that. Is this something that I would say to myself, or is this really coming from the Father?

Speaker 1: 12:16

That's good. Anything more you want to share about this topic? Did you cover the point around tapping into his heart and understanding what he wants?

Speaker 2: 12:25

Yeah, I mean I think I did. Yeah, just really asking the Lord. Lord, what do you have for me, what is your heart in this situation? What is your heart for me and what is your heart for even maybe the people involved right and starting to understand. Have them reveal that to you in your prayer life, in revealing the word, certain things, and and he'll highlight certain things in the word. But if we have certain memories that are coming up, that are bringing up negative emotions, we can get healing in that and it's in those moments that he can start to heal certain emotions that we have and begin to develop new ways of thinking or feeling about different situations in our life.

Speaker 1: 13:07

Yeah, I agree, and I was just reminded of the fact that this point is about pursuing a healthy soul. And you know, there's a very common saying, which is hurt people, hurt people.

Speaker 2: 13:21

Yeah, that's true.

Speaker 1: 13:22

And so as we gain a healthy soul not everyone's perfect, including self, and mistakes happen. Misunderstandings happen, including self, and mistakes happen. Misunderstandings happen, missed expectations happen. But out of a place of a healthy soul, I'd like to think that our response, the way we respond to those situations, gets healthier as well.

Speaker 2: 13:42

Exactly, yeah, and being able to understand that and see that right, which is just this whole process of going to the Lord about his heart over the situation. Because, if you can, about his heart over the situation, because if you can see his heart for the other person, yeah, maybe they hurt you, maybe they said something that was hurtful, but if you see it from the father's perspective, maybe he'll show you why, like, maybe there's something that they're going through, maybe, like, he'll give you a different perspective on the situation and on the person. That helps you to maybe get some empathy for him right. 100%.

Speaker 2: 14:12

See things in a different way.

Speaker 1: 14:13

Yeah, see things in a different way. And I was just reminded, trish, of the word that came to my mind as you were just talking about that, like how he sees other people when we're offended or we're hurt by other people. The word that came to my mind was grace, the unlimited grace that has been given to us, extended to us Right. The more we tap in and access that grace, the better we become at extending it to others.

Speaker 2: 14:40

Exactly, yeah, exactly. And we're all talking about relationships here, really right, we're talking about relationship with the Lord, but how it impacts our relationships with other people and relationships, if you can think of it, there's two bookends that hold relationships together, and the bookends are love and grace, and so absolutely, the love, the grace. I agree You're saying how hurt people hurt other people, but if you think about it, if you start becoming healthy, healthy people can actually love in a healthy way.

Speaker 1: 15:17

Yeah, and we can help create more healthy people, exactly Recognizing, though, that it's not what we do. Right, it's what he does through us.

Speaker 2: 15:26

Exactly, it's starting with that foundation, the foundation of Christ, you know, being led by the Spirit, allowing our soul make sure our soul is healthy and prospering. Yeah, Amen.

Speaker 1: 15:38

And then we move from pursuing a healthy soul to allowing our body to be led by the Spirit and not by our flesh. By learning to align our spirit with his, it begins to influence how we lead our soul, which is our mind, will and emotions. Our soul will prosper, as you just said, but this includes time, whenever we also need to like our body. Like there is. Our body is a temple, and just over a year and a half ago, you know, I was not in the most healthiest place from a body standpoint. Right, my physical health wasn't where it needed to be, and I just heard the Lord saying I needed to take care of myself If I want to live a long life, and I'm like I want to increase the chances that I'm going to be here as long as I can for the assignments that he's placed for me to carry out.

Speaker 1: 16:28

And it took hearing that instruction but then being obedient to the instruction and that's where I think a lot of people struggle is the translation from. I got a word from the Lord, but it doesn't really come about until we activate it in our life. God told me to do something. Now I got to do it. Really key. Now I got to do it, Absolutely.

Speaker 2: 16:48

Really key, really key, yeah, and even we talk about reactions. Right, we can operate out of being led by the spirit or we can operate out of our emotions. The fight or flight are just immediate actions or immediate responses to people, to people. But our actions in our body, like those actions that we take towards other people when we move, when we speak, when we, you know, go about our day-to-day life with our, even our nonverbal communication, like all of those actions that our body does.

Speaker 1: 17:23

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 17:24

It really comes from again going back to starting with the foundations. Yeah, again going back to starting with the foundations If we don't have a healthy mind, we don't have a healthy soul like our mind, our will and our emotions. If those are not healthy, then our body is not going to do healthy actions.

Speaker 1: 17:42

Yeah, exactly, that's a really good way to bring it home. And when I think about the saying I'm responsible for me and you're responsible for you, you know we use that a lot in our relationships and our communication, and we use it with others that we have relationships with as well, is the recognition that I can only control what I can control and you are not in my control. Think about this level of obedience. It is about me being obedient to whatever it is that I believe God is leading me to either say, think or do, and you know, for example, god might say you need to apologize to that person Now. You heard it from the Lord, right?

Speaker 1: 18:28

I heard it from the Lord, but they're not looking for an apology, right, they might not even have been offended, but God revealed something around, maybe a behavior or an action or something that we said and he said no, you know what. You need to go apologize for that. Now, either we are obedient in that moment or we're not. And that's kind of what we're talking about is, whenever we get instruction, obey his instructions.

Speaker 2: 18:55

Yeah, absolutely and obey his instructions. Yeah, absolutely. So the last tip that we have is just building a healthy relationship that flows out of a healthy relationship with Christ. When we make Christ the center of everything that we do, in every area of our life, it begins to shape our decisions we make and the people we even surround ourselves with. You know, people are not perfect, but how we respond to people and allow the love of God to show up in that relationship impacts the foundations of those relationships.

Speaker 1: 19:25

Yeah, so key and there's a lot that there's many directions we could talk about the flow of healthy relationships. Sometimes it's recognizing that some relationships aren't healthy.

Speaker 2: 19:39

Right.

Speaker 1: 19:40

And I think back to over the years and sometimes I've had to say you know what I love you and I still wish the best for you and I have grace over you in our relationship, in terms of where I'm nurturing and spending my time. I'm not feeling directed by God to deepen that relationship. Let's just say maybe it's more of an acquaintance, and so I think about different circles like concentric circles. Right there's a bullseye and in the bullseye might be some of those closest relationships that we have Our children, that we have Our children, our wife, our husband, family members, parents, like those are the deep, deep, tight relationships and then you might go one circle out and it could be your best friend.

Speaker 1: 20:32

It could be other acquaintances that you really have, deep relationships, maybe common interests and other things that you do life together, members at church that we do relationship with, and things like that, like small groups, et cetera, where we're still deepening and we're walking together, but it's not the same types of relationships of those in the inner circle, and then you can go out, and you can go out, you get the idea being in touch with the Holy Spirit and being able to discern where am I supposed to be investing in relationships, who are the people that God has placed in my life, that he wants me to walk with, where I'm building, edifying and encouraging them, and they're building, edifying and encouraging me, and we're doing this thing called life together.

Speaker 2: 21:15

Right.

Speaker 1: 21:15

Some are for a lifetime.

Speaker 2: 21:17

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 21:18

Others might be for a season.

Speaker 2: 21:20

Right and others might be for a moment right. We might have just moments of encounters with people that the Lord put in our path for that moment.

Speaker 1: 21:32

Yeah, exactly. So let's come back to a scripture. This is one of the scriptures that we come back to a lot in the work that we do is Ecclesiastes 4.12. Though one may be overpowered, two can defend themselves.

Speaker 1: 21:46

A cord of three strands is not quickly broken. I'm going to give an example, as it relates to our marriage and how the three strands of a cord come together. Three strands of a cord come together. The way we like to describe it is Christ is the center cord. I'm a cord, trish is a cord, and we have chosen to wrap or weave ourselves with him in the middle. And, as it says in this scripture, a cord of three strands is not quickly broken. A cord of three strands is not quickly broken. So, as we place Christ at the center, what we've experienced is he knits us closer to him, but also to each other. I believe we could apply that to other relationships, right. Place Christ at the center of your relationship with Ashley, our daughter, or Olivia, our other daughter, or Johannes, our son. We place Christ at the center of these relationships and we allow him to perfect his work and we yield to his will.

Speaker 2: 23:01

Absolutely. Yeah, love, how you're. You're to say, yield his will. Because I think sometimes we can, especially our children, we can try to say, well, I'm the parent, so I'm in charge and I'm in control. But we know, and yeah, when they're little, yeah, absolutely. But as they get older, I mean it's like a rope. I mean you're slowly allowing the rope, amen, you're letting more and more freedom into their lives and allowing them to be led by the spirit and to make the good, healthy choices.

Speaker 1: 23:24

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 23:24

And so. But when they don't make those choices, sometimes we want to step back in and try to be God for them, and we can't do that. We can't take God's position in someone's life, right.

Speaker 1: 23:37

Yeah, that's really good. I think that's really good, especially from a parenting standpoint. You know, because it's because I said so I, I, I and you know, if we do that, we can also unintentionally, maybe not build in the healthy habits for them to rely on Christ, because it's all about what we're directing and instructing them to do and really what we want to do. I think the best gift, one of the best gifts personally, I think it's the best is a relationship with the Father.

Speaker 2: 24:08

Yeah, where we're helping to come alongside them and partner with them on how to go to the father themselves, how to do this relationship with the father, and so then, when we're not there, they know how to do that.

Speaker 1: 24:23

Yeah, yeah, and, by the way, just to this is an aside, this is bonus material. Now, just the idea of you know, whenever we make mistakes right, we make a mess because it's going to happen. We, we make mistakes, we're not perfect Do we extend that grace that you were talking about? Like, how do we represent the father in a parent-child relationship? Because what we don't want to do is create a situation where they feel shame, guilt and I can't tell my parents what happened because of the way they're going to react. Right, I want to run to daddy and I want my kids to be comfortable running to us so that we can nurture them and they can see that we are a natural reflection of the way that our father responds in heaven.

Speaker 2: 25:07

Absolutely yeah. I mean you're just talking about, like, making a mess. Well, I mean, our daughter, actually recently she's been getting, she just started driving and she's been getting in little little fender benders and been gotten a ticket and just different little things. And so we're finally like Olivia, you need to clean up your mess. Like, how are you going to clean up this mess? And so we came to an agreement that she needed to actually drive a little less.

Speaker 2: 25:35

Start paying off some of the debts that she's been incurring with some of. Start paying off some of the the debts that she's been incurring with some of the different uh, some of the different, I guess, tickets and things that she's incurred. And so, yeah, it's. It's just about allowing them to take responsibility, learning to take responsibility for their own actions and start brainstorming for themselves right, starting to use their own will to choose to do the right thing, their own mind, to learn how to fill their mind with Christ and how to process with the Lord right, how to get their emotions in check and replace those unhealthy emotions with healthy ones.

Speaker 1: 26:15

Yeah, and you know, I think, if I think about the world around us, right, there's so much just words of destruction and chaos and uncertainty and fear, and I mean these are challenging times and you don't have to go very far to find some negative news report and things that aren't going well, and so this is why I also think Christ at the center is so important. Right, I think about the good news and I think about to deal with the issues and challenges of life that we are going to face.

Speaker 1: 26:47

We need him. We need him. It says upon this rock I will build my church. It's upon that same rock that we built our marriage and we get the opportunity, or we get the privilege, to participate in what he's building and what he's establishing. So having him at the center best positions us to be able to advance the kingdom and make an impact and have healthy relationships in all aspects and areas of our life.

Speaker 2: 27:17

Absolutely yeah. So those who are planted in the house of the Lord shall flourish.

Speaker 1: 27:22

The one thing that is certainly a guarantee is God's word does not return void.

Speaker 2: 27:27

Amen.

Speaker 1: 27:29

Amen.

Speaker 2: 27:29

God bless you everyone. Thank you for listening to Seeds for your Marriage with hosts Trisha and Thomas Walker. We pray this episode has given you tips and tools on how to thrive in your marriage. Be sure to subscribe to this podcast and follow us on Facebook and Instagram at Trisha and Thomas.

Speaker 1: 27:47

We wanna hear from you. Be sure to leave a review and let us know how we're doing. It's our desire that this podcast completely benefits you, so also, let us know future marriage topics that you would like to hear about.