Lisa Brenninkmeyer: "Saving Your Marriage Before It Starts" | SEEK2019

hello great to be with you all today I'm so thrilled to see this roomful of people that are ready to start thinking about marriage even though it's probably not exactly what you're experiencing in this moment it shows me this is a roomful of really smart people who know the difference that is made when we plan ahead and think ahead and don't just jump in and figure things out as we go I started dreaming about my own personal happily ever after when I was in middle school and I lived next door to a family that was European and I was their babysitter and every summer this stream of young handsome European men would come in and they would do summer internships in Duluth Minnesota and as this young babysitter I would just watch them and listen to their accents and I would say to my best friend someday I'm gonna grow up and I'm gonna marry one of them I'm gonna move to Europe and I'm gonna live in a castle so that was kind of our thing that we always said well fast-forward just after my freshman year of college I was waitressing and into my section of the restaurant watched this really really good-looking European guy it was one of the cousins for real and so I started chatting with him and you know the rest is history because we fell in love we started dating at that point and our courtship was pretty incredible we dated kind of all over the world we would meet London or meet in LA or meet in Scotland and we really never were together for long periods of time we would just see each other on our breaks and right before my senior year of college he flew over and we went to Mass and at the end of Mass we were kneeling and saying a little prayer and I could kind of hear him rustling next to me and I looked down and he was on one name and he had a ring out and he said to me if I promise to make you happy for the rest of your life will you marry me and that ring had the purest diamond that he could buy in the middle and on either side was a sapphire and he had had that ring designed and what he said was the the diamond in the middle that's Jesus and his purity and the sapphires on either side that's us and if we will look at each other through Christ we're gonna be able to love each other so much better and love each other as we should so 26 years of marriage later seven kids and recently I just became a grandmother the two on the end just had a beautiful baby boy we are still growing strong and you know that has everything to do with keeping Christ to the best of our ability at the center and practicing principles that I started to think about and learn when I was in college and I think a lot of my friends thought this is kind of a weird time of life for you to be so marriage focused because we're all working on our resumes and thinking about all sorts of other things and but I'm so glad I'm so glad I was intentional then because it really has made an enormous difference in my marriage you know I think all too often we look at our relationships as something that's out of control like our love life it's just gonna come together it happen when it happens and we don't feel like there's much that we can do to really make it happen and so we put our focus entirely on how we're gonna plan our careers but I really believe that's putting our priorities out of order and I want to challenge you to start planning and thinking strategically about your marriage now and doing that does not make you old-fashioned it clingy doesn't make you pathetic or desperate it actually means that you're smart that you're ahead of the game because the truth is after your decision of whether or not that you are going to follow Christ that is the most important decision you will ever make in your life the next most important decision is who you decide to marry that decision is going to impact your family life your faith life your finances your lifestyle your attire and even death it is going to impact everything so I want to encourage you to start thinking about your marriage with your eyes wide open I want you to pay attention and recognize the ways in which our culture has lied to you about marriage and I want you to look hard at the truth of what it takes to save your marriage before it starts so I'm going to do this by introducing you today to five wise and I'm going to be deeply debunking them with truth so let's get started with lie number one lie number one getting married will fix what's broken in my heart the truth marriage actually only intensifies your brokenness all too often we come into relationships expecting the other person to be to us that which only Christ can be we want somebody who is always patient always says the right thing always willing to forgive offers love and respect never is selfish meets our needs perfectly but that's a description of Jesus not of a potential spouse now when Leo proposed with the words if I promise to make you happy for the rest of your life will you marry me he meant that sincerely and I believed he could do it utterly but that is actually a promise that no person can keep because we live in a fallen world we are all the walking wounded not a single one of us gets through life without some damage on the heart level and I want you to take a little sec here and think about your life think about your heart think about times when you know that you really experience some deep hurt you know some of us feel like we've been passed over or rejected or discarded you may have experienced abuse divorce in the breakup of your own family perhaps you've been mistreated have you had deep disappointment grief experiences with anxiety all those things are indicators that there have been some wounds on the heart level and some of our brokenness has come to us as a result of choices that we have made and some of the brokenness has come as a result of others choices that have impacted us and in our desire to have the broken places within us healed what we almost always do is we turn to the person who has pledged to love us the most and we want them to come in and to heal us we look to them to make us happy but that is something that no person can ever do for us and when we pin our hopes on another person in that way when we think that somehow their love is gonna fix what's broken in here it's gonna make up for what's lacking it's gonna fill the emptiness we always come away disappointed each and every time because there's only one Savior and that Savior will never be the person that you marry and coming with those expectations into the relationship will place a burden on your spouse it is far too much for any person even the most amazing person to be able to bear but I'm not saying that those hurts don't matter and aren't significant that they should be stuffed down or hidden away proverbs 4:23 tells us that we are to guard our hearts for in it are the sources of life and what that means is that it is out of our hearts that everything comes our our mission our personality our dreams our coping mechanisms are our decisions all of this is coming up out of the overflow of the heart and we're told to guard our heart in Scripture but I think so many of here that concept of guarding our hearts and what we've actually done is we've barricaded our hearts or we've shut our hearts down or we've shut them to this to the side and we thought okay yeah I've had some of these things that have gone on and and they've been hard and yeah it's been hurt hurtful but you know what I'm strong I'm okay I'm fine I'm getting on with it and we don't realize that what we're doing is we're not dealing with it we're shoving it to the side and that is not what God means by guarding our hearts and I think all too often when we shove our hearts to the side and in our wounds to the side what we focus on instead is doing the right thing what am I supposed to do here and we we become quite achievement-oriented and this can seep into the spiritual life as well where we come at the spiritual life and we focus on the outward behavior and doing the right thing on doing what does it take to be a good Catholic but I want you to know that Jesus wants more for you than behavior modification he wants your hearts and he wants your heart set free but to do that we've got to own our own stories and I think for most of us we really want to ignore chunks of our stories chapters of it that are really hurtful to go back and look at but those chapters those untold chapters are the ones that most need to be told and processed through both for your sake and for the sake of others and the ideal time for you to process your story and work through these things is before you get married and so I really recommend that you would consider good Christian counseling and this is the way I would put it you deserve good counseling dealing with your past and seeking healing is critical and it's ideally done before getting married line number two it doesn't matter if he or she shares my faith if he or she is a good person the truth what feels like a tiny difference now will grow to be a painful disconnect later when you get married it's as if you are both taking off in separate planes from New York City and you're heading west and to begin with that slight difference doesn't seem like it's making that big a deal but right after takeoff a slight difference in a slight change in course is going to be the difference between landing in either Seattle or landing in San Diego and once a plane is on its way it's gonna take a major rerouting a major detour to bring those planes back together to the same place so when you first get into a relationship there are so many things to talk about there's so many things to discover about each other and so it's really easy to put faith to the side and to say well that's something that's personal to me that's something that's an important part of my life but it's not something that we have to share because look at all the other things that we do have in common in do unites just look at all these other areas in which we're so compatible so using that example of the airplane so you've both taken off from New York City and at the beginning the distance doesn't seem that great there is a spiritual distance but is it really gonna break that big a difference later on well fast-forward to the inevitable struggles that come with marriage that moment when you look at the other and you realize you're actually not making me happy in this moment and when that happens and that happens in every marriage what you need is more than that initial love that you had for each other because very very many people who are married will say you know there are moments where that love kind of runs out it runs a little dry and in that moment what you need is you need God to be the glue that holds you together but what you have instead with this illustration is actually spiritual distance you're almost in San Diego your spouse is almost in Seattle and now that distance feels really acute I travel around the catch and I speak mainly to women and you know consistently what I hear from women is their greatest heartache and their greatest pain it is this it's this this disconnect that so many of them are experiencing in their marriage why because many of them are in these challenging times of life where they know that it would make such a difference if they have this additional source of strength of having God at the center but that's not what their experience is and many of them are mothers who are trying to pass their faith to their kids and what they really want is a partner in that and instead what they feel they have is a partner who on some level undermines their efforts or at the very least provides the opposite example of what they're really wanting their kids to do but another reason why this is so painful is because we have a desperate need to be known and when your faith is a huge part of who you are but it's a part of you that is not of interest to your spouse then a big part of you is going to remain hidden and that part of you that is actually most important the part of you that is most integral to your identity is one that is not understood and known and it's not something that you can share with the person that you love most and what this causes is a really deep loneliness in marriage that is real ecclesiastics 4:12 says that a cord of three strands will not easily be broken and when you braid together a man a woman and God that gives you a strong foundation for marriage like nothing else and the major spiritual rerouting that is needed to bring the two together later on is going to be harder to accomplish once you're married and I'm not saying that it's impossible but I'm saying it's really really hard and that's for a couple of reasons and well one thing we so often come into relationships thinking that we're going to be able to change the other person a little bit to make them more who we want them to be I'm just telling you right now that is a super bad plan because it pretty much never works and when it comes to the spiritual life that's of course an intensely personal decision it's not one that we can make for another person and it's not one that we would ever want to feel we had coerced a person into doing because it wouldn't feel real anyway no one can make this decision for someone else the third lie that I want to look at is this my porn use will not damage my marriage the truth porn is not just one more digital activity and it's sabotaging what we ultimately want a good marriage with a healthy sex life you know the most dangerous battle is the one that you were in when you don't actually know that you're under attack you are the most vulnerable when the enemy is after you and you are clueless to the fact that you were even vulnerable and I think that so many of us know there's something really off in the way that dating and sex is going in our culture like we feel it but I don't know that we recognize the ways that we are playing right into the enemy's trap for many people porn is just one more digital activity it's a way of relieving stress many people would put it in the same category as social media or as binge watching so I asked you is it the same is porn viewing something that can be in a sense put in a box and will it stay there or is it going to seep out and start to affect other areas of our life sorry to tell you porn will not stay in the box it will seep out and it will start affecting the areas of your life that matter ultimately the most to you what is porn doing to us number one it is taking the edge off of our desire so the Internet makes it easy to gratify basic social and sexual needs instantly and what this means is that there is far less incentive to get out there and to take risks and chase after those things for real now this doesn't mean that the internet gives more satisfaction than a real relationship and honest good healthy sex does because it doesn't but what it does is it gives you just enough to take the edge off of your desire it dulls your desire enough that it reduces your willingness to take a risk to go into that awkward space of trying to date in front trying to find the right person with a real a real satisfying relationship and another thing that porn is doing is its messing with our brains porn is extremely addictive why because it's causing us to be captured by extreme versions of natural rewards so when a person experiences arousal they get a hit of dopamine and when they get that hit of dopamine it kicks in a molecular switch in our brains releasing something called delta phos b + delta Foskey is a protein that starts to accumulate in the brain and what it does it starts to actually alter the brain and it promotes a cycle of bingeing and craving in a word addiction now what does addiction cause always it causes a numbed pleasure response which means it's going to continuously take more and more and more to bring that same level of response from us so what does this look like this looks like somebody sitting alone with the phone or with the computer searching clicking looking for novelty looking for surprise looking for shock and what impact does this have on our future marriages well first of all if it's taking the edge off of desire if it's reducing your willingness to get out there and risk and pursue a real relationship then obviously romance is much much less likely to happen for you and it is keeping strong capable and passionate people stuck in a rut instead of getting out there and actually living a real life with real people important use is cited as a major factor in 56% of divorces 56% do so do not tell me that it's private and that it doesn't have impact and I know that one in three porn users are women but I also know that 70% of young men from the ages of 18 to 24 are viewing porn so I just want to talk to you guys for a sec and say that we know we know we're being compared I'm speaking on behalf of women here we no matter how old we are no matter how skinny we are how beautiful we are how built we are how whatever we are loaded with so many body image insecurities and we feel that we are being compared and even when you're married we feel all that come into the bedroom and you know what it does it shuts us down but even more than that it devastates our hearts important use right now whether or not you're married this is a form of unfaithfulness you are giving something away that belongs to your wife and I beg you I beg you to get free of it to get free it to determine now today but you are gonna get free of this and then you're gonna go out and you're gonna pursue a real woman who is out there waiting to love you and to meet you with real deep true connection [Applause] [Music] but let's be honest so that's kind of the deep really rough stuff but even just the surface II stuff we're dealing with this kind of messed up right just the way that we're interacting with each other in the dating world is its kind of tough I think we've got to start paying better attention to the way we're interacting not even in those you know deeper sexual ways but just looking at how can we get to a healthier place in our relationships across the boards so guys I want to talk to you directly for a sec enough with the flirty texts okay stop messing with girls hearts if you're not serious about her then come clean and stop [Applause] hold yourself hold yourself to a higher standard but if she has got what you truly value then ask her out on a real date and by that I do not mean saying do you want to come over and hang out and watch Netflix I give you permission to be romantic and I know what I'm asking you to do I'm asking you to take the risk of rejection and I know that's hard and I know that's scary but let me tell you there is something so incredibly attractive about a guy who's willing to put himself out there for you at the post as opposed to waiting til it's all super safe and super clear to see if the girl makes the first move guys girls want to be pursued they want to know that they're worth fighting for and if they're not even worth you feeling a little bit awkward that says something to them but girls ladies I think we need to make it a little bit easier on the guys as well okay I feel for them I really do because here's what I think I think they hear us cheering and saying yes we want to be pursued but then do you know what they also hear they hear the girl on the college campus when they open the door for going I can get my own door great there's a lot of that back and put them there like do you want me to help you do you want me to be a gentleman or is that like offending your feminist sensibilities I don't know like I think a lot of the time guys are like I don't really know you know what I'm supposed to do here and there's another thing that I'm seeing a lot on college campuses and this is like super deeply disturbing me I think in subtle ways we're telling the young men that they need to sit down and be quiet because of men who've gone before them and have been oppressive that they now have lost the right to speak that they need to sit down and stop talking and that's a problem because we don't elevate one group by pushing down another we cannot have it both ways ladies if we emasculate men then we cannot be surprised when they do not come out and pursue us so this goes both ways the scoots both ways but back to the guys who just have to make this last point I just have two guys the smart and thoughtful girls the ones of substance the ones that you want to end up with they are wondering where you are they're discouraged they're discouraged so I want you to go out and to get her to go out and fight for her because she is worth the risk of rejection she is worth the awkwardness because she holds the key that's going to unlock what you want most in life which is deep and real and lasting connection [Applause] [Music] line number four tinder and other dating apps are a good way to find a life partner the truth dating apps are proven to be a waste of time I've got the stats to back to set people okay so tinder tinder says that they log 1.6 billion swipes a day which results in 26 million matches no know who's really good at math but I'll do it for you that means that one point six percent of the time you're getting a match when you swipe one point six percent of the time and let's be honest we all know just because you get a match does that mean you get a date no does that mean that you get a date with someone based on the kind of criteria that really is gonna pan out for a good relationship again no so that's a lot of swiping without a lot of satisfying connection so why are dating apps so popular I'd like to suggest that they're just one more diversion it's just another thing that we're doing on our phones I read an article someone said that what they have done is they've gamified interaction and on average people spend 10 hours a week on dating apps and Procession men tend to spend 7.2 minutes per session in women 8.5 an average an hour and a half a day now I get the dating apps are less stressful because what they take out of the equation is that whole define the relationship moment that's so awkward where you're like are we are we feeling this is this for real because you both know you're both interested like you both went on so I can see that it takes some of that out of the equation but what's the point if it rarely results in something real you know when I think back on how I met Leo I was a waitress we're in a restaurant he was in sitting in a section all by himself we started talking we fell in love I wonder if that would have happened today now if you were at a restaurant tonight by yourself what would you be doing I know what you'd be doing because it's the same thing I would be doing we would be on our phones and that behavioral shift has major consequences the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and thinking that there's going to be a different end result and so we're going to have to make some radical changes in our behavior if we want our relationship prospects to improve otherwise we're just gonna stay at this same miserable impasse and you know what it starts with changing our behavior right here putting our phones down and starting to interact with one another and I'm not saying put your phone down and then head up and it's like I'm ready to find my spouse you know it doesn't need to be so we just need to actually put our phones down and start being human like just turning in conversations with people so there isn't such an intensity that we bring to every interaction with a potential boyfriend/girlfriend spouse so line number five living together before getting married is a good way to see how compatible you are the truth playing house might give you some of the fun of marriage but none of the blue that makes it a success there comes a time in many relationships when it starts to feel like a waste of money to be paying two rents to Wi-Fi bills to utilities and then there's the sliding but not deciding where a move from dating goes to sleeping over to sleeping over a lot to living together cohabitation has increased 900 percent in the past 50 years and we are surrounded by voices that tell us that our sexuality should be explored outside of the confines of marriage and most people would say that following God's instructions on sexuality and on marriages is archaic in its contrary to the natural response of our bodies that it's oppressive that it's restrictive pastor Craig Groeschel had a couple in his congregation that came to him and they were living together and they asked him if he would be willing to do a special ceremony for them to bless their relationship they they thought that might help them and he said I'd be happy to they said why don't you come into my office and we're gonna talk about your vows they thought that was great so he came in and he said all right so what I would love is I'd love to have the ceremony at your house and it would be great if you would bring maybe some clothes some friends some family members to be there and to be a part of it they're like yes this is exactly what we wanted okay good so we're gonna have the ceremony in your bedroom and they're like that's kind of weird but all right he goes and these are the vows this is how the vows will go eirick take you Monica to be my cohabitants to have sex with you and to hold you responsible for half the bills to love and take advantage of you from this day forward or as long as our arrangement works out I will be more or less faithful to you as long as my needs are met and if nothing better comes along if I should break up with you it doesn't mean this wasn't special to me because I love you almost as much as I love myself I commit to live with you for a while so help me me in the name of sex options and selfishness amen now [Music] these weren't exactly the vows that they were hoping to hear you know God understands our desire for intimacy and belonging he is the one who put those desires within us in the first place and he knows that we're prone to look for that in the wrong places and so he's put up guardrails not to spoil our fun but to protect us because he knows the hurt that lies on the other side a sexual sin that seems so fun in the moment this is his protection for us as a good good father you know half the couples that are living together right now are gonna break up within five years sixty percent of couples living together right now are gonna break up within ten so that means that only forty percent of people who live together we're gonna actually get married and do you know what that sounds like to me a breeding ground for insecurity it sounds to me like you're on audition all the time to see if you're a keeper to see if you're worth real commitment acting like you're married when you're not having sex without the commitment of marriage will not help you to see how compatible you are what it will do is it will confuse you it will not increase the odds of you avoiding divorce what it's going to do it's gonna make it harder for you to discern if this person is right for you sexual compatibility is not enough to hold a marriage together but in the moment it can seem like it will be the decades of the 20s have been called The Odyssey years there years that 20-year olds are encouraged to explore to experiment to wander but when you consider that 85% of life's major defining moments happen by the time you're 35 it seems to me that the 20s are a really good decade to start paying attention to what you really want out of life and to start living accordingly to really be engaging and now I'm not suggesting that everybody rush out and get married immediately I'm not giving you an ideal age to marry rather I'm challenging you to ignore a culture that tells you that the 20's are the time for hooking up experimenting and having a good time and just figuring out what you like instead of getting serious about what really matters in the long run now that being said i 100% believe that you should wait for the right person and not compromise in terms of character faith and chemistry because you've set yourself some imaginary date like I should be married by this point I am NOT encouraging you to settle and this is a word for someone sitting here right now don't laugh at the joke that he makes is actually in truth making you feel objectified and used do not send him that photo he has asked for because you feel like that's the way to keep him be true to yourself don't compromise and I'm not saying that you need to stay with the person that you've slept with because you've made that decision and so now there's the deal that must be who you need to end up with I'm not telling you to lower your standards and marry whoever is available and interested those are all the things that I'm not saying but what I am saying is that waiting just for the sake of waiting is not gonna ultimately get you what you want it doesn't make much sense it's time to move forward in the areas of life that matter most now I know that all of this is hard to navigate I really do I feel for you with the whole dating scene that you're in the midst of but I also know that you have the inner power the strength and the desire to have a healthy and whole and good life in a world that longs for comfort and often settles for superficiality your Hungerford truth justice and holiness sets you apart and I wish that your desire to grow closer to God that your willingness to make the hard choices the right choices would mean that the enemy would like leave you alone and just leave you to do that but I also know that nothing scares them more than young men and women who have decided that they're gonna be serious about their faith and the more committed to God you get the more the enemy is gonna tempt you to settle for mediocrity so I am praying that you would exhale any sense of powerlessness this sense that this feeling that things are never going to change and that you would inhale the spirit of hope I pray that you would exhale any sense of complacency a desire to just settle where it's comfortable and that you would instead inhale passion for holiness and a willingness to take risks may you exhale any religiosity that is causing you to settle for outward behavior well what Jesus really wants from you is inner conversion and transformation so I pray that you would inhale God's grace and I pray most of all that God would have your heart that hidden part of you that most precious part of you so that he can being rest in peace and balance to that place within and in these few minutes that remain I want to speak specifically and declare some truth over some people who are sitting in this room listening today because I believe that many of you have been living the way that God has laid out you've been faithful you've been obedient and you're wondering what does it ever gonna be your turn when are you gonna be chosen you are waiting for the right person and you are waiting well but the waiting is hard and so I want to pray with you and I want to declare some truth of Scripture over your life God we come to you with our dreams with our disappointments we come to you with hearts that longed to be seen that longed to be known we come to you is the only one who will satisfy us in the deepest places of our soul the place where no person no matter how amazing will ever be able to go because it's a place that's created only for you we come to you and we pray your own words back to you and I declare that if we trust in the Lord God with all our heart and lean not on our own understanding if we will acknowledge him in all our ways then he will make our paths straight proverbs 5 verses 3 & 6 I declare that you heal the brokenhearted and you bind up our wounds Psalm 147 3 I declared that we can be strong and courageous because you go with us and you will never leave us and you will never forsake us deuteronomy 31:6 I declare that God sets the lonely in families some sixty-eight six I declare that charm is deceptive and beauty is fleeting but a woman who fears the Lord is to be praised proverbs 31:30 I declared that if we take delight in the Lord if we find joy in his presence then he will give us the desires of our heart some 37 for I declare that in Christ we have been brought to fullness we are complete in Christ Colossians 2:10 I declare that now is not a time to wallow in self-pity because each person here is God's handiwork created in Christ Jesus for good works that he declared in advanced for them to do Ephesians 2:10 and as you said to Sam do not consider his appearance or his height the Lord does not look at the things that man looks lat man looks at the outward appearance but the Lord looks at the heart 2nd Samuel 16:7 now to him who is able to do infinitely more than all that we ask or imagine by the power that is at work within us to him who is able to keep you from stumbling and present you before the presence of God without faults and with great joy to the only God our Savior be glory Majesty power and authority through Jesus Christ our Lord now and forevermore amen thank you

Channel: FOCUS Catholic

Views: 44,187

Keywords: catholic, marriage, SEEK, seek 2019, lisa brenninkmeyer, catholic conference, catholic youth conference, college, walking with purpose

Id: 0-AaGxB_xxk

Length: 41min 37sec (2497 seconds)

Published: Mon Jan 07 2019