Photo by Neora Aylon on Unsplash

On Sunday, we looked at the marks of a marriage that lasts. While the passage has clear applications for all relationships, we looked particularly at the needs of men and women and how they play out in marriage. If you aren’t married, we’d encourage you to read about your love language and think about how you give and receive love the best to help you as you look for a spouse and/or improve your most important relationships. 

Often, we encounter issues when trying to show and communicate love in a way that doesn’t make sense to the other person. Each person has different needs and different love languages. 

Do you know your spouse’s love lanauge?
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Years ago, Katie and I read a book called His Needs, Her Needs, which proved very helpful to us in our relationship. In it, the author lays out the top 5 needs for a man and a woman. While these needs may vary, meaning your top 5 may not be his, they at least create an opportunity for connection and conversation. 

Here they are. 

Women                                                           Men

Affection                                                           Sexual Fulfillment

Intimate Conversations                                 Recreational Companionship

Honesty and Openness                                  Physical Attractiveness

Financial Support                                           Domestic Support

Family/Leadership Commitment                Admiration

Do you know the top 5 emotional needs of your spouse?
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Before getting into the conversation, let me make a brief comment on sexual fulfillment and physical attractiveness. We unpacked this some on Sunday, but in case you didn’t hear this, I think this is important because this can be distorted in our culture or church circles; we misuse passages and studies to guilt women into having sex with their husbands. 

Sexual fulfillment is not just something men are interested in, but women as well. Sexual fulfillment is also not just about sex, but I think about a larger conversation around intimacy and connection. Physical attractiveness is not about looking like a model on Instagram with all the filters on. The way we frame physical attractiveness is about effort and trying. As a couple ages and life takes over, the effort and trying starts to go out the window in many areas for men and women. This is a great reminder to hit pause and ask, “Are we still trying?”

Here is our challenge for you this week, if you’re married. 

Look at the above list and rank yours from 1 to 5. Again, these may vary depending on personality, season of life, health, etc. Your list may have a need on it that isn’t listed above. That’s okay. 

Then, share your list with your spouse. 

1 conversation that can change your marriage.
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We’d encourage you to talk through how each of you is doing. Start with wins and compliments. Share how the other person is knocking it out of the park. Encourage each other. 

Then, share one way to improve each one on the above list. Do your best not to get defensive or historical or to insult the other person. Often, when we have these kinds of conversations, our first reaction is to say, “What about this or that?” Or to bring up something from the past (historical), I want to encourage you to resist this temptation. 

This is an opportunity to grow closer and take your relationship to the next level. 

1 conversation every married couple should have.
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Friendships for most men are difficult. Naturally, men aren’t good at friendships. The older we get, the fewer friends we have as we pour into our work, marriage, and kids.

Yet, if we don’t keep up friendships, it will lead us to be very lonely.

The Four Friends Every Man Needs
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Pastors are just as guilty as the larger population of men, but for different reasons.

Finding and keeping friends can be very difficult for a pastor. It can be awkward for people to be friends with a pastor because they sometimes don’t want to invite their pastor over when they have the guys over for football. It is often easier to think of your pastor as someone you see at church, not someone you hang out with on a Friday night. It can be hard for a pastor because there are times he wants to stop being a pastor and be one of the guys. It is hard for him to turn that off and it is hard for those around him to let that happen.

The Four Friends Every Pastor Needs
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Trust is also a big factor for pastor’s when it comes to choosing friends. They have experienced hurt in their family of origin, or someone at a former church broke their trust and betrayed them.

Pastor’s will wonder, “If I open up to this person, will they use it against me? Can I be truly honest with this person?” As people in their small group share a prayer request, it is difficult for a pastor to say, “This has been one of the worst weeks at work for me. I’m so frustrated with a co-worker” because everyone knows his co-workers.

Pastor’s and their wife often wonder when someone wants to hang out with them if there are ulterior motives. Do they want to be our friends because they like us or because of what we do? Sadly, people want to be friends with a pastor or his wife, to get closer to the center of the action, to be closer to the power as they see it in a church.

The four types of friends everyone needs.
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People in a church wonder the same thing. Do the pastor and his wife want to hang out with us because they like us or because they think we need ministry? When they hang out with us, are they working or having fun? The lines of working for many pastors are blurry in their heads because almost anything is “ministry.”

Friendship and community are incredibly crucial to surviving as a pastor or a pastor’s wife. But how does that happen? Brian Bloye, in his book It’s Personal: Surviving and Thriving on the Journey of Church Planting talks about the four types of friends a pastor needs to have in the journey of church planting and pastoring:

The four types of friends every pastor needs.
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1. The developer. A friend that makes you better. They encourage you, lift you when you fall, someone who believes in you during times you don’t believe in yourself. Someone you can call on a bad day and they encourage you and help to pick you up — a great cheerleader in your corner who is telling you to keep going, to keep putting one foot in front of the other.
2. The designer. A mentor, coaching you in life and ministry. Someone who shares the wisdom they’ve gathered in life. Too many pastors walk through ministry without any coach. Find one. The coaches I have had have been invaluable to me. Some I’ve known for over a decade, others have come and gone in my life in different seasons, but you must have someone you can call and say, “I’m facing this, what would you do?”
3. The disturber. The friend who rocks your boat. He’s there to bring discomfort to your world, not comfort. This friend challenges your ideas, is not impressed by you. Not a yes man. This can also be someone who isn’t a follower of Jesus who pushes you in your faith and asks hard questions about beliefs as they are wrestling through them personally. Or someone who is pushing you as a leader, father or parent.
4. The discerner. An accountability partner. Someone who looks you in the eye and asks the hard questions about your life and where you stand with things. This person walks with you through life’s highs and lows.

The four types of friends every man needs.
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All of us worry.

About everything.

We worry about our kids, our spouse, our friendships. We worry about our parents’ health, our kids’ health, our spouse’s health, our friends’ health, our health. We worry about finances, education, job prospects, making ends meet. We worry about conversations we’re going to have, conversations we’ve had and conversations we only imagine having.

We worry when we get into a car, when we take a walk, go to the gym, when we get on a plane, train or boat.

We worry.

We worry in the woods, in a cabin, an apartment or at a beach house.

Around every corner is disaster and calamity.

Some of us worry more than others.

The other day I was talking to someone and he told me, “But I’m anxious. I was born this way. There’s nothing I can do about it.”

As we talked, he had a lot of anxiety. Much of it was about real things, but some of it was about imagined things, things that had not happened.

Most of our anxiety is about imagined things. Yes, we worry about things that are actually happening, but the conversation we’re worrying about having we haven’t had yet. Our kids haven’t walked through all of life that we have imagined for them yet, but we still worry.

As my friend and I talked, I asked him about some of the promises of God, like Jesus telling us in Matthew 6:25 to not be anxious about your life, or Paul telling us in Philippians 4:6 to not be anxious about anything.

He shook his head and said, “But this is how I am. What am I supposed to do?”

The reality is, he is a worrier, about everything. That is his tendency.

So I asked him, “What is a sin, something in the Bible that we’re told not to do, that you don’t struggle with?”

Once he told me, I asked, “What if I told you people think they are just that way in the same way you think you are anxious and that’s who you are?”

All of us have some kind of tendency.

Some of us are more prone to struggle with sexual sin, greed, being stingy, being a workaholic, being dependent or isolating ourselves in relationships. We don’t struggle with all those things.

The reason I know is because some of you read that last sentence and thought, “I don’t struggle with that.”

The point is, just because you struggle with something doesn’t mean you get a pass or you can disregard a verse about that or think that you can’t change that in your life. Jesus can.

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Have you ever listened to a person talk about their spouse? Whether that spouse is there or not, it can be incredible to listen to or heart wrenching and awkward. You can learn a lot about a couple by listening to how they talk about their spouse.

One thing Katie and I committed to at the beginning of our marriage was to not make fun of each other. It is amazing to me how many couples will make fun of each other, especially in front of other people. Now I know what you are going to say, “They are just having fun.” And yes, people will laugh, but watch the person who is being made fun of and you will see a person who is dying inside. The reason is that it hurts. There is always truth in every joke.

One challenge we lay out to couples is to not make fun of each other for a week and see how it changes your relationship. You will be blown away by the difference.

The other thing that amazes me is how couples will vent about each other when the other isn’t present. I will hear guys say, “I can’t believe what my wife did”, and then lay in about her. She will do the same. It is now more prevalent on Facebook. I sit amazed staring at my computer screen as couples will put down their spouse for the whole world to see, listing things the other forgot to do, how they don’t care, they are late again, forgot to wash the dog, is still sleeping in, or just whatever is bothering them.

The other day someone asked Katie why she doesn’t vent about me. The person asked if she didn’t do it because I’m a pastor, and Katie said (and this is another reason I love my wife), “I don’t want to malign my husband. If he does something that bothers me, I tell him, not the whole world.” Now, this doesn’t mean that Katie and I don’t have friends that we vent to. We do, but it is a singular friend (not the same person for each of us). It is not plural and it is for the purpose of venting, and then that person can speak into our lives to show us the mirror of where we are dropping the ball and challenge us. Too many people vent about their spouses to lots of people, and the people they vent to simply ignite the fire more instead of challenging them.

As a man this is crucial because my identity is largely tied to what Katie thinks of me. If she is bashing me to friends about forgetting something, not making enough, working too hard, I will feel like she is nagging me, not proud of me, doesn’t respect me. And, this is the big one, I will feel like she is treating me like one of her kids. (That’s another post.)

If you talk about your husband as one of your kids, don’t be surprised when he acts like it.
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One thing I have grown to appreciate about Katie from watching and listening to other couples is how she speaks about me. Many couples speak poorly about their spouses. I have listened to women berate their husbands in public or in front of their kids about what they make (usually not enough), how lazy they are, how they wished their husband was like someone else (usually the husband of a friend they’ve heard about), etc. I have watched women put their husbands down in front of their kids, talking to him and about him, treating him as if he is one of the kids. I’ve even heard women with three kids and a husband say, “I have four kids.”

What is ironic about this is those same women then wonder why their husbands act like one of the kids. What did you expect? You treat him like one of the kids.

Your kids will largely get their opinion of your husband, or wife for that matter, based on how you speak about them.

I love hearing Katie talk with our kids about how hard I work, how I provide for our family, how important it is for me to take them on daddy dates, why date nights are important with Katie. Through this I believe our kids will grow up with a good view of what a dad is and a good picture of who I am.

It is equally important for me to speak highly of Katie, how hard she works in our home, the little things she does to keep our house running, teaching our kids at home, how she looks.

The way I treat Katie and talk about her is how my sons will largely learn how to treat women. It is also how Ava will learn how to let a man treat her. My sons will learn from Katie how a woman is to treat them. Ava will learn from Katie how she is to treat men as she grows older.

The post Do You Build Up or Tear Down Your Spouse? appeared first on JoshuaReich.org.

Marriages are strong and marriages need work for all kinds of reasons. Sadly, few marriages got the distance and even fewer are happy. A lot of that has to do with expectations of marriage (before and during) but many of the issues in marriage stem from lies we believe about marriage.

7 lies people believe about marriage.
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Lie #1: My spouse will complete me. This is one we are fed from the time we start to notice the opposite sex. It is in movies, books, articles and deep down, we hope that we will find someone that will meet all our needs, be everything we want, but the reality is, no one can do that. It is not possible for someone to meet all your emotional, spiritual, and relational needs. There will always be a gap and this is why our spouse’s inability to meet all our needs points us to Jesus. On the flip side of this, we can’t meet our spouse’s every need, so we can’t save our spouse (as many try to). We can’t change them, we can encourage them, but we can’t make them do something, although many try.

A common lie about marriage many believe is their spouse will complete them.
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Lie #2: My happiness is my top priority. From our earliest age, many people are taught that they can win at everything, do whatever they want, get a trophy for showing up, so life becomes about my happiness and what I can get. This isn’t reality. This becomes a litmus test for how we feel about our marriage. In fact, the moment that we are unhappy we assume something is wrong. Something might be wrong but you might also be married. Marriage doesn’t always bring happiness but it does bring joy, which is very different but more important because joy is long lasting and not fleeting.

Being unhappy might not mean something wrong in your marriage, you might just be married.
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Lie #3: There is only one right person for me to marry. This is born in fairy tales that somehow there is one person on the planet for you to marry and if you marry the wrong person the entire axis of the universe will be thrown off. Few people say this, but many people subtlety believe it before and after they get married. They put enormous pressure on “finding God’s perfect person for them” that they are paralyzed from experiencing community and relationships. After they get married, couples struggle when hard times hit and they wonder if they married the wrong person. First off, how arrogant do you have to be to think you could marry the wrong person and start a cosmic destruction? This also gets into figuring out God’s will (which is another post but I think we put too much pressure “God’s perfect will” for our lives). Let me say, there are so many things you can do for God that instead of sitting around wondering if it is God’s perfect will, you should just start doing something.

Instead of wondering if it is God’s perfect will, you should just start doing something.
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Lie #4: What I do on my own time won’t affect my marriage. This gets at the selfishness many people feel in their lives. The idea that once you get married, you still stay a single person, you just happened to be married now. This is why many couples keep separate bank accounts, their own calendars and “do their own thing.” The reality around separate bank accounts is that you are always keeping one foot out the door, not letting go of some trust issue in your past. And, if you don’t trust your spouse to share a bank account, there is a deeper issue that needs work, the bank account isn’t the issue. The reality is, how you spend your time, money, how you think about yourself, whether you protect yourself to stay pure in your marriage has an enormous impact on your marriage.

Everything you do affects your marriage. For good or bad.
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Lie #5: A great marriage doesn’t take work. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard this after a sermon or counseling a couple and every time it is heart breaking. Often, we look at couples who are happy, handling the ups and downs of life well and wonder how they did it. Like seeing the success of Steve Jobs without any of the struggles. Idealizing marriage can be like that. It takes work. It is hard. In fact, I would say there is not a great marriage on the planet that was not filled with seasons of difficulties.

All great marriages have experienced difficult seasons.
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Lie #6: My past has no impact on my marriage. This is one I encounter a lot in premarital counseling. The thinking that your past relationships, porn addiction in college, the father issues you have not dealt with yet, the divorce your parents went through or you went through; that those things will have no bearing or minimal impact on your present and future marriage. Not true. All those things have an enormous impact on how you see yourself and your spouse. If you are a woman and all your life men have broken promises and used you, that is exactly what you will expect your husband to do. If you grow up and are abused and see sex as something dirty or something that is a way to live out selfishness instead of a place to give and serve your spouse, that will have an enormous impact. Lastly, most of what people do in a marriage is either a reaction against what their parents did or what they saw their parents do. It is what we know, so until we see that, see it for what it is, evaluate if that is healthy and then deal with it, we will continue the cycle of the past.

Most people in marriage react against what their parents did.
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Most people in marriage mindlessly do what their parents did because that’s what they know.
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Lie #7: You can’t choose who you love. Typically when someone tells me this lie they have already sinned or are about to. It is often used to excuse why they are getting divorced or committing adultery. Yet, when we take this lie to its fullest extent, we would never want someone to love us this way. We wouldn’t want our spouse, kids or Jesus to show us love only when they feel like it. Yet, for many couples this is how they live their married life. The reality, the truth is that many days you will wake up in marriage and have to choose to love your spouse because they will not be lovely, they will not be easy to love, there will be a big piece of you that does not want to love them because you want to be selfish, you want them to stop doing something or at the very least, you want life to be easier. But love is a choice followed by an emotion.

Love is a choice followed by an emotion, an act of the will.
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While there are many more, these are just a few I’ve encountered that bring a lot of hurt and damage.

The post Lies we Believe About Marriage appeared first on JoshuaReich.org.

Most pastors are nice people, they just don’t make good friends.

That may seem harsh to say, but as a pastor, I think it is true.

Hear me out.

Pastoral ministry is an all encompassing job. It is highly relational, emotional, mental and spiritual. It can be draining physically and overwhelming. It isn’t harder than other jobs, it is just different.

Because you can get a call at any moment with something that needs attention, many pastors burnout and struggle to have boundaries so they can rest and recharge.

Pastors spend so much time counseling people, helping people work through issues or sitting in meetings that when they meet someone, they often see them as a project instead of a person. They see them as someone who will need something, someone who will need advice or need to be fixed instead of a person to simply spend time with.

For most pastors, church is something they are always thinking about. The next capital campaign, new ministry year, next sermon series, next issue, hiring a new person. It never stops. They spend all their time with people talking about church. They sit with their wife on date night and talk about church. It is not just a job, it is their life. It is who they are and this becomes unhealthy.

Then, they meet someone new and they can’t stop talking about church. They can’t shut it off.

What do you do then? How can you become a better friend if you are a pastor? Here are 5 ideas:

1. Have friends who don’t attend church (or your church). This is crucial. If you don’t have any friends who don’t attend church, that’s a great clue that you aren’t good at friendships. Churched people will tolerate a pastor who don’t stop talking about church or is a poor friend because they want to be close to a pastor. An unchurched person won’t take that.
2. Have a no church talk zone. There should be a time of day, a day each week where you stop talking about church stuff. Stop thinking about, stop checking your email. Don’t talk about it at least once a week. For many pastors this will be so hard to do, but incredibly healthy.
3. Take a day off. If you aren’t taking your day off as a pastor, you are sinning. I’m blown away by how many pastors are killing themselves working 6 or 7 days a week. Stop it. Rest, recharge, take some down time.
4. Get in a small group. I’m blown away by how many pastors are not in a small group or missional community at their church. They’ll often say that the elders are their small group. This line of thinking attempts to make a pastor untouchable and that’s a sin. In a small group, people see who you are, you can’t hide any longer. You start to see how people see you and if you are any good at community. This might feel like it goes against #1 but it doesn’t because many pastors don’t have friends in their church. Now, you need to be careful here. You don’t just share everything with someone in your church, you must show discretion on the information and with the person. There have been times Katie and I have shared everything about a situation with our MC, and sometimes not. Each situation is different, but you should be in community with some people in your church who are not in leadership.
5. Get a hobby. I was talking with some pastors the other day I am coaching out of burnout and I asked them, “What do you do for fun? What recharges you? What is fun?” Blank stares. Many pastors do not have a hobby. Things like fixing a car, working with wood, hiking, playing sports, knitting or cooking. Nothing. If that’s you, sit down and answer that question, what do I find fun? If you don’t have a hobby, you won’t have anything that lets off steam, anything that is fun, anything to do with others.

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I turn 35 today. It is hard to believe all that has happened in my life in 35 years. If the average man lives 70 years on earth, I’m at the halfway point. That has caused me to reflect on things I’ve learned as I look forward to the next 35 years. Here you go:

1. Pick something you are passionate about and give your life to it. I knew at 18 that I wanted to plant a church. While it took my until I was 28 to do it, everything in my life led me to that moment. I meet so many men who float through life, aimlessly wandering from one job to the next, unsure of what to do with their life. They also seem to have no idea what makes them passionate, what makes them excited, all they know is they hate their job and are miserable. They look at their life and think, “This is all there is” so they play video games, work a dead end job or look at porn. I just preached on this topic on Sunday, but find something worth giving your life to for Jesus and don’t look back.
2. Commit to your wife. I met Katie when I was 16 and fell in love. She is everything I could hope for in a wife and more. We just celebrated 12 years and every year gets better and better. We’ve had our bumps and hard seasons but through it all, we’ve pushed through, got closer to Jesus and got closer to each other. I love laughing with her, talking with her, cooking with her, and watching her blossom in her artistic gifts. I have a number of friends on their second marriage or are getting divorced and it is so sad to watch people walk through that or see other couples settle for a mediocre marriage. That is their legacy, that they didn’t stay committed, they didn’t push through the valleys to make it to the mountain top.
3. Protect your health. When you are 20, playing a sport year round, you can sleep in, eat whatever you want and probably lose 5 pounds in the process. Except then you get older. I meet a lot of guys who are starters and they start businesses and churches and then burnout in the process. They don’t exercise, sleep well, protect their finances, their calendars and their health deteriorates. I have a friend who is so burned out he has to take three 1 hour naps a day to survive. You are in charge of your health, no one else can protect it. It is hard to stay motivated to workout and eat well, but the end result is worth it (and the end result isn’t a certain body it is living well and longer).
4. Make your kids a higher priority than they are. It is easy to make other things more of a priority than your kids. Men make their jobs, they make carting their kids to activities more of a priority than having a relationship with them (and yes you might be at their stuff, but you aren’t building a relationship with them while they do it). Each of our kids are different and like different things. It is a challenge as our family has grown for Katie and I to spend time together, have a weekly date night (because my relationship with Katie is more important to our family than our relationship with kids), have hobbies and friendships and spend time with our kids, but the investment is worth it. Make sure you are having regular daddy dates with them, doing things they enjoy with them, not just watching them do things.
5. You are responsible for your relationship with God. No one else is responsible for this. Your pastor isn’t, you are. If you aren’t growing in your relationship with Jesus, that is your fault. Men like to pass this off to someone else, but it is on them. Spend time with God. I’m not a morning person, but reading my bible is the first thing I do when I get up.
6. Read more. Every great leader is a reader. I don’t think this is a coincidence. While women tend to read more than men, if you are a man who wants to accomplish something, you need to keep growing. Don’t be content with what you know, push for more knowledge, more skills, hone the skills you have. If you don’t know what to read, start here and here.
7. Make some close friends and invest in those relationships. Men are not good at friendships with other men. If you ask most men who their close friends are, you will get blank stares. The older I get the more important close friends are. I’m an introvert so I don’t have a ton of relationships, instead, I prefer to have a few close friendships with people I connect with regularly. Make this a priority. I have talked with a number of men who are in their 40’s, 50’s and 60’s who have no close friends and it is tragic.
8. Find a mentor. Men need mentors. They need someone who is further in life when it comes to their career, leadership, being a father and husband, managing money, their relationship with God. Look at your life and see the areas you want to grow in and find someone who is further along in that area. I have multiple mentors in different areas. I simply ask them, “I want to get better at _____, you are better at that than I am, can you help me grow in that area?”
9. It’s not too late to accomplish goals. If you have a goal, go for it. I have had a goal to write a book and I’m almost there. Too many men seem to have a lot of goals and hopes and never do anything. This leads men to have midlife crisis, feel aimless, have regrets as they look back on their lives. Decide today what is going to matter most in your life, how do glorify God the most and do that. Put your energy towards that.

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