Relationship University: Greg and Janice Mohr

well praise the lord everybody um this is uh monday's relationship university and we are here live at the woodland park colorado campus um and we just want to welcome everybody here from our online audience to our international audience and our great students and staff and everybody that's here live with us just want to give you a a big welcome to this monday's edition of relationship university now the goal of this is to teach godly relationships from a biblical perspective and we want to give you tools to be able to thrive in your own relationships and also to help other people thrive who are connected to you and close to you and so this is not just for you as an individual but it's also to help equip you with some tools that you can use to take your other relationships to the next level and so we want to encourage you to check out the archives at awmi.net forward slash relationships um i don't know how many hours we have archived but there's lots of hours from lots of high quality speakers that you can watch for free at awmi.net forward slash relationships last year we actually completed our relationship university curriculum and so that's the workbooks those are usbs those are online curriculum for 4.99 that's available you can call 719-635-1111 and you can purchase that it will add a lot of value to your life there's 56 hours of relationship teaching about sexuality about marriage about dating and just all across the board and so we are going to have 45 minutes of teaching from pastor greg moore and mrs janice moore and we are going to have 30 minutes of q a so please send your questions you can text them to 719-212-2555 [Music] right if you have questions please text them to 719-212 five five five five and all your questions will come in anonymously and we will answer as many of them as possible and so today we've got pastor greg and janice moore um and pastor gregg is an amazing person in my life personally a mentor a father um and i've just learned so much from him pastor greg how long have you been in ministry for yeah 40 plus years 40 plus years we started our first church in 1981 and we were involved in ministry before that yep and i was born in 1988 so so you can just imagine so when we came to when we went to a pastor of church in decatur we did a marriage seminar do you remember yes i remember and so we met this this young couple and and uh we we told them you know we got married and he and he said he said uh i was two years old then you know when you got married so that's all right yeah i was like negative eight i think when when you guys i was kind of still in the pipeline but praise the lord you were in god's heart yes i was right you're in god's heart all that time ricky so pastor greg you've got a new book coming out called walking in wisdom yes um and they can find that at gregmore.com and that's m-o-h-r gregmore.com a brand new book walking in wisdom and um i think it's time for me to get out of the way and we start our teaching and then after 45 minutes i'll come back and we'll start our q a yeah appreciate appreciate ricky uh he was a a graduate of our ministry school and and graduated with karis and just done great great job appreciate you rick your blessing amen so you know what's what's on uh janice in my heart today uh to share with you guys is is a you know actually just to celebrate with us this year uh in november while we're celebrating our 50th wedding anniversary yeah it's hard to believe but it's true yeah i used to say well i was 12 and she was 13. i mean i she was 12 and i was 13. she was she was 18 and i was 19. okay just do the math don't worry about it she's so that she's she's 39 for the 29th time amen but we we thought thought we'd share today and and i would do more of a interview with my wife because you guys hear me a lot and i'll jump in and say things that and fill in that you know from my perspective but uh just how how to live a long happy life together you know how do you how can you have a marriage and we're we're janice and our best friends yes we are very best friends and you have to have your mate as your best friend you have to trust them and that's just real important i've been to a lot of oh what do you call them pastors meetings and they'll take the wives out and they'll tell you you have to have another best friend because you can't bother your husband he's too busy for you and that's not true because it won't work that way so yeah stay best friends yeah i mean and then the other thing is you want to you want to those of you are not married yet you want to find a mate that loves jesus more than you okay because then i can go to the lord if we ever having a problem and i can say lord help me with with your daughter he's had to do it a lot and she can go to the lord and say help me with this stubborn guy right yes so sorry sorry i won't say anymore go ahead go ahead no everybody can be stubborn we all got flesh to deal with so yep yeah you just go to god and you say hey god this is your son you need to talk to him and i pray and ask for supernatural favor with him and and we usually get things straightened out real quick so before the sun goes down amen praise god that works really well so i want to tell you funny just before we get started so one of the one of the ways that we we've lived managed to live such a long happy life together is when we first got married we decided i decided that i was going to make all the major decisions and then janus would make all the minor decisions and we haven't had any minor major decisions yet works real well that was a pastor friend of mine who told me that so i just thought i'd pass that along we didn't we didn't really do it that way so uh let's just uh i'm just gonna uh interview my wife and and just talk through our lives why don't you uh why don't you share with us how we met we met at his cousin's birthday party and i still can't remember why i wanted to go there so bad but she called me the day before her birthday and she said you can't come to my birthday party unless you bring a boy and i said well i'm 15 i can't date i can't bring a boy and my brother that was three years older than me he said you just find a good christian boy at school and i'll pick him up and i'll take you to the party so i wanted so i found this guy that was in a church and i thought he was a christian [Music] but he had his hormones going too rapidly and he embarrassed me in front of all my friends at the party and was all hands on deck and just anyway wasn't what i was wanting and so greg came up while i was sitting next to him this other guy and he cracked a couple jokes and i thought he was really funny hey so it works guys so i knew this guy because we played football together yeah yeah and so i asked this was during christmas break at school that her party was and so when we came back from christmas break i said who was that funny guy at your party and she went down every boy that was at the party and the last name she got to was his and she goes oh that's my cousin i'm gonna call him right as soon as i get home we didn't have cell phones back then sorry but anyway she called him and and so then you can tell him what she said to you yeah she just told me that this girl liked me and i said what was her name he said it was janice i said well was it the pretty janice or the ugly janice anyway it was a pretty janice there was two of us at the park and so we started uh communicating and and started a courtship we were high school sweethearts yes yeah and um then we we got we got engaged after three was it three years uh yeah we got engaged but [Music] uh he had to talk to my dad for four hours my dad grilled him my mom liked him all my brothers liking but my dad did not because i was the only girl i have four brothers and [Music] i don't know something about it my dad just didn't like him i don't know and so after we had been married 15 years this is really funny we were getting ready to move up to decatur and my dad said hey you know what i think he's changed and my mom who never stands up to my dad she said marian we've all changed so he started liking him after 15 years yeah so uh so i didn't like i didn't used to like uh green beans uh that was not my favorite and so her mom knew when we i went over her house that night to talk to her dad when i started when i ate their green beans she knew something was up but uh anyway uh we so uh we we dated for three was it three years uh you guys have the that first picture you can put up there this is our where we went to prom together okay that was that was our prom yeah my hair is all stacked up on my head she's a whole bottle of conditioner to get all the tangles yeah so um then we we finally her dad said yes when he found out i made more money than him because i was in sales as soon as i graduated from high school uh i didn't have a real good home life with my stepdad so so i just started making money and uh and i i was making i was making maybe twice as much as her dad made yeah quite a bit he made a lot of money yeah so so he was really good so he finally uh if you're getting married you want money so it's it's good if you're single it's good if you have uh you want someone that loves jesus more than you yes they've got godly character and they have a job but that's really helpful uh so anyway uh do you so would you want to share anything about our courtship and and our engagement where the commitment i think we talked about the commitment level that you were looking for in someone i forgot what we talked about last night i think one thing i was listening to the radio at the time you know and i was a christian but i didn't know i was i was raised in a methodist church so uh in the methodist church that i was in god loved everybody and everybody was born again everybody was saved so you were just born a christian in america you were just born a christian you know so that's kind of the philosophy that i grew up in and so i was listening to the radio and this host was talking about if you know things don't work out in your marriage after six months you know you can just trade them in and go find somebody else so i told him that i thought that was a great idea and he got he doesn't usually get mad but he was mad and he we were going out on a date and he turned the car around and he drove me back in my driveway and he said get out of the car and he said i love you too much to see you go through the hell that my mom went through raising five kids by herself and i wouldn't get out of the car i said no i'm sorry that's just something i heard on the radio i thought it was a good idea and of course it wasn't a good idea that's not a god idea it's just a radio idea it's one of those things that the enemy bums barge your mind because you're scared you're you're 18 and you're getting married you know and a lot of my friends were getting married and some of them didn't have good relationships so you're scared you know so and besides that his dad ran around on his mom all the time and so it put fear in me you know that that that would happen to me and my dad who i loved and respected and adored he he would walk around with his hands both his hands on his head and he'd say i don't know what you see in that guy i just don't know what you see in that guy what are you gonna do when he leaves you with five kids and what are you gonna do so you know what they did they bought me a sewing machine for our wedding present because i could sew and whenever he left then i would be able to sew clothes for everybody and make enough money to support five kids that was crazy but anyway we didn't know much of the word back then at all you gotta realize we're carnal we were real carnal so so we got married november 27th 1971 1971. so do y'all have that picture you can put up of our that was i was in the methodist church [Music] and i was kicked out of that church when i got filled with the holy ghost yeah that's another story well yeah we'll we'll talk about that um but but uh god spoke to you when you're walking down the aisle you want to talk about that yes um i was in you know before you walk down the aisle you know your dad's on your left and nobody was back there not even the lady that did flowers for me or anything nobody was back there and all of a sudden i heard this loud voice that said you'll have a long happy life together and i turned around and nobody's there to my right and i turned to my left and my dad said you're still my pumpkin pie and i went you've never called me pumpkin pie you know and he's real serious and you can see in our wedding photographs he's just real mad you know but he's walking me down the aisle so anyway i don't know anybody that would stay with me because when he asked me to marry him it took me two weeks to say yes because i was reading my bible and i was trying to hear from god about should i say yes or no you know i don't know and finally i just decided well i'm going to say yes god's not telling me nothing but when he told me that that we would have a long happy life together i asked him about three years later i said god why did you say that we would have a long happy life together but when i was seeking you for two weeks and didn't tell greg yes or no i don't know any guy that would stick with a girl that didn't say yes right away but anyway i i needed time to think about it and god said well he wasn't born again and i won't go against my word my word says to not be unequally yoked but when you were had already made the decision and you were walking down the aisle i could tell you your future yeah and so if i would have gone to if we would have gone to the church that that i was that we pastored we got a lot of people born again in mary in premarital counseling and so i was easy pickings because it was hormone evangelism mean i would have if they would have if i would have uh known about that and and i got i got born again um uh let's see yeah two two two years later yeah and and uh but if someone would have preached the gospel to me i could i would have gotten saved yeah but uh so then let's talk about uh early marriage adjustments um with um you know how things about you know family and how do we settle differences and how we handle finances and just talk about uh our early marriage okay well i was raised real poor very very poor outside of san antonio on a farm and i was raised there until i was 11 and i moved to houston and that's where we met but i always saved money and i hoarded money because when we got first got married he said too many marriages have gone south over money and so we're going to pay cash for everything i went pay cash for everything you're nuts but i agreed with him and i said okay so i started hoarding money you know he was making lots of money so he didn't know if he was missing five thousand dollars ten thousand dollars you know he didn't know so when we when uh when i got out of high school i started running sales crews for the houston chronicle and then i started my own business uh selling doing sales crews selling uh trash bags door to door and then and then we started our own flower business and so i was making a lot of money we were making thousands of dollars a week uh when i was in i was in my early 20s and so that was and so yeah we both were dealing with poverty because he had grown up very poor and i had grown up very poor and the way i dealt with poverty is i hid money from him so he wouldn't spend it the way he dealt with poverty is he spent everything that came in so we bought a helicopter we bought eight trucks to run the rose business we paid cash for furniture we paid you know could have paid cash for a house i had just about enough save to pay cash for a house and he bought a helicopter i was i started we started a helicopter tour business in galveston texas and neither me and my partner neither one of us knew how to fly so yeah and his partner this is greg's heart you know you can you can choose money and making a lot of money or you can choose relationships and that helicopter was redlining you know and it when it was it went when it had five guys when whenever we had five guys in it and in the heat and the humidity it wouldn't uh it was redlining it was it wasn't it didn't have enough guts to and it was unsafe yeah yeah so anyway he chose my partner my partner i the the ex-vietnam helicopter pilot was told us hey this is things redlining and my partner said well just keep going you're a good you're man you did you you got went through worse things than this in in vietnam and and probably did and so then then that was a decision we made yeah we just made the decision he took it over to hawaii and crashed it and somebody i think one person got a broken back over it but anyway parker did yeah your partner did took it over there yeah he took it over there and we had bought the helicopter but he said that he had bought it and anyway so uh the irs came after us [Laughter] but we still chose the relationship and god just provided the money to pay the irs i was very very thankful yeah so what about um okay some money you you would i found one time i found two thousand dollars when we moved behind a picture that she forgot about and there he never used his briefcase like he does today but i had five thousand dollars in there he didn't find it but you can put you could put five grand in my mind yeah now he wants the five grand in this spring it's awesome so uh how do we handle family issues and any interferences or uh in-laws and outlaws and things well when we first went into the flower business his mom called aunt oh i wasn't supposed to say it was sorry anyway she she had a rough life and we were always helping her and so she asked for the exact amount of money that we had saved up to go into the flower business and this was mean but i told him i said i said you're either married to her or me and you know we have to move forward so she had to wait a little bit to get her money but she got it we always supported her she's a sweetheart she's in heaven today and both of my parents but i chose you yes he chose her parents were really really we didn't have that many challenges with our in-laws because her parents are really good um they were there her dad finally did kind of like me he was rough on the outside but he was military he was in world war ii he was a fighter on the inside he was two pounds when he was born i'm not even supposed to be here he had five kids you know and he wasn't you know he wasn't supposed to have kids or anything you know he was two pounds when he was born just didn't have a sucking reflex they dug a hole out back but because he had a fight in him he lived you know and you have to have that fight in you to live you can't give up yeah so uh share with us honey about uh our commitment you know we we got married and we have our first son uh after was it three and a half years after we're married and then uh within that within the next eight years we have four children but just talk about our commitment to our your commitment especially to our to me and to to the kids and and and what god led us to do regarding our family yeah um after i had my first child uh brian was one and i wanted to go back to work because i just wanted to make help him and make more money and stuff so anyway i wanted a house we were living in apartments after apartments after apartments but anyway i wanted a house so i was going to go back to work and i took brian on a walk and a stroller and i thought i was gonna put him in this daycare right across the street from our apartments and i went across the street and somebody was one of the kids was putting a rope around the other kid's neck and i went oh my gosh and and so i ran to see if there was any teachers and there was no teachers on the playground i was just going oh my gosh and so i don't know i just made a decision i'm going to stay home you know until i until that child is old enough to talk and tell me if something's wrong you know or not but i i decided to stay home god told me to home school i homeschooled for eight years um that was real difficult because society at that time i don't know how it is now but they really look down on housewives and they look down on you know if you're staying home or you're homeschooling your children you're not doing nothing but i found a verse in the bible that really set me free and i think every woman and every man needs to know this scripture because god just shined his light i call them life scriptures when i'm reading the bible and something just jumps out at me you know i take note of it and i live by it and it's psalms 144 verse 12 it says our daughters are as cornerstones polished after the similitude of a palace and our sons are like plants grown up in their youth and i just saw that jesus is the cornerstone of the church and i was the cornerstone of the home and the way my attitude went during the day was the way the whole family's attitude would go that day you know you have to be planted deep in the cornerstone of the lord jesus christ because you're the cornerstone of the family and i tell you that set me free i didn't care that i was staying home and raising my family i cared about how they were and how they turned out they're eternal beings none of our children are on alcohol or drugs or ever they were never on drugs our oldest one was out for a while wayward for a while but but he came back and you would never know it today he serves jesus he loves his family loves his wife and all of our children are like that they're all born again they all love jesus and it's worth it it is worth it to stay home if god's telling you to i mean there's no condemnation if god's telling you to go to work and leave your child in a daycare if that's what he's telling you to do then you know do it but for me it was always no janice you need to stay home and pray and it was tough after we went to bible school and then we started pastoring and one time i stayed in line and got a five pound sack of beans and a five pound sack of rice or something like that there was a government line that came to our church and they said oh we have all this extra food so i needed it so i stayed in line and when it got down it was flour and beans i think yeah cause i got down to the last cup of flour and if anybody knows making stuff from scratch it takes a cup and a fourth to make one batch of pancakes and i pulled worms out of that last cup of flour and i made my children greg and i didn't eat but i made each child one pancake and the enemy will come against your mind like what are you going to do now what are you going to do now what are you going to do now what are you going to do now it's not working god's not here he's not working he's not helping you you're going to starve you to death and all your kids are going to starve and you know he just keeps hammering hammer and hammering and finally he said what are you going to do now and finally i just knelt down beside our console tv that we had and i said i'm going to keep doing the same thing i've been doing i'm just going to worship you god and i'm going to praise you and i tell you i wish i had their picture right now but at 10 o'clock harriet and nealy called me they were in our church and she said god told me to take you to the meat market and she bought me they were janitors they cleaned buildings and everything and she took 200 and took me to the meat market she bought each one of our children a little thing of animal crackers i don't know if any of y'all are old enough to remember the little box of animal crackers that has a little string on the top and i tell you my kids love that they loved that and she bought me a gallon of milk and i tell you we had given groceries and given groceries and given groceries when we made a lot of money we paid people's bills we sowed into people and we still sow into people today because we know what it's like to not have enough but the enemy will always come to you and say there's never enough but with god when you worship and praise and serve him there's always enough and extra amen that's awesome got a strong little wife here so if uh you guys maybe could show that next picture of when our kids were uh all of our kids were younger that's let's see now there was one one earlier than that and but yeah there you go okay right there that's when right before we moved to decatur texas jeremiah's three michelle was six michael was nine and brian was 11. that's our beautiful family right there when and i had hair then praise god thank you jesus he had a lot of hands janice is still as pretty as ever y'all y'all agree right praise god so well thank you so tell tell us a little bit uh from your perspective honey about our call to ministry it's real important that you're called um when we moved to decatur okay we had pastored in houston for three and a half years and then we merged that church with another church and that's because hardy toll road was coming through our building and everywhere that we wanted to move was just a mile away from another spirit-filled church so we didn't feel that was right to open up another church we just merged our church with another church and so god spoke to me when we moved to decatur that if i would get married again that i would bring forth fruit unto god it's in romans but i don't have the address romans 7 4 i think romans 7 4 my walking concordance hallelujah anyway so i stood on that word in seven years we went through a church split we went through a nine million dollar lawsuit frivolous lawsuit and that word came back to me if you would get married again and a a pastor is like married to the flock you don't leave your flock you lead them you guide them you love them you pray for them and that's what we did and so that scripture came back into my heart and it said if you get married again he's god told us to stay with it stay with it stay with it you know and it paid off we stayed there another however many my math is 17 years working right now 17 we stayed there another 17 years and we saw a lot of fruit and when we were moving up to decatur god spoke to me and showed me how we had changed decatur texas there was one year god led us to rent the whole square town square of decatur and have games for all the kids on halloween and we had volleyball we had all kinds of games and candy and everything and the police came to us and said thank you this is the only year we haven't had any crime on halloween you know god showed me that was fruit that was fruit you know there there was another time that two politicians were at odds and we rented a big old trailer put all the politicians up there and these two guys that were at odds with one another prayed for one another they actually uh got reconciled their relationship and we just prayed over all of them we prayed over the government yeah we brought we brought 21 pastors together to pray over 24 5 civic leaders and uh and god just did really real powerful work he did an awesome work the couple that was going through counseling and filed a nine million dollar lawsuit against us greg was picking up our youngest son jeremiah and at high school then and this guy was picking up his uh son or daughter that was in high school and he came to the car and he knelt down and he said i am so sorry i did not know what i was doing to sue you for nine million dollars i i am so sorry and he just started weeping and weeping but you know we need every part of the body of christ we need one another um i don't know how to explain this but i was taking communion you know and god spoke to me he said you needed to go through that it was a tough thing that we went through but we needed to go through that so that i would know what it was like and be able to help somebody else through rough sailing rough times and you do face rough times sometimes but the reward is great the reward is much greater than the rough time that you go through and god will always cause you to triumph always cause you to triumph so so how did you how and and these are great victory stories we we had some great victories there and you know guys we we do it together that's we don't this wasn't like my ministry it was our ministry uh together and if i didn't have janice's support um we wouldn't have we wouldn't have accomplished been able to accomplish all this so how did we how did from your just share from your heart about how we balanced ministry and family priorities well y'all need to write this down okay because things are going to come up okay and people don't die on your time they don't get married on your time they don't get born on your time you know and they don't go to the hospital on your time so as a pastor greg made a decision that he was always going to buy time back like if he was going to take one of our children to the movie or do something with them and somebody called and they needed something really bad and it was something real urgent we would always take care of it and he would always say i'm going to buy this time back for you and he always would and that's kind of the way we kept our priorities of family first above ministry your ministry is just your job it's not your relationship with god it's just it's a job it's an assignment that god gives you and he gives you grace to go to uh through that assignment you know and then i would and i you know we were pastoring i gave janus authority over my calendar yes yes yeah we scheduled times together and when your children are teenagers and they're in school take nice long lunches together you know just take every opportunity to be with one another and love each other you know because the children are going to leave one day don't put your children first i know that's a big temptation with women is to put their children above their husband but don't do it it's not worth it in the end because your children are gonna leave and you're gonna your husband's gonna stay and if y'all don't spend time together then you're not gonna know each other it's just real important too so we'll maybe we'll jump kind of back and forth but just talk about how to uh you know how how do you handle how did we handle releasing our children from the nest oh hallelujah that's how you handle it oh hallelujah they're grown they got jobs they're making money and you don't have to support them anymore i don't know how to handle how do you really feel about that huh oh i don't know tell them just tell them what we what we'd set them down and talk we set each of our children down at 18 years old and we told them we've made a lot of mistakes and boy we made a lot of them you know and we're sorry for every mistake we've ever made in raising you you know it wasn't our intention to make mistakes but they happen but you're 18 now and all your decisions that you make are yours and we're not responsible for your adult decisions that you make and they just looked at us bug-eyed and said okay and they made mistakes and greg said he was never embarrassed by our children but oh boy that was a tough one for me our oldest son you know he he wanted braces his top teeth were straight but his bottom ones were crooked so i was taking him to different dentists because i didn't want i wanted a dentist that didn't pull teeth and you know would just straighten them without pulling teeth and so we go to this one dentist and he has a clump of hair right here a clump of hair right here and a clump of hair right here and he has on red rubber gloves and brian my oldest said what circus did you come out of i mean i thought it but he said it just turned red i said i don't think we're done i think we're leaving now i found them can you all show that picture again of when they were teenagers uh you showed it a while ago yeah that's and that's our oldest song you can tell my oldest there he's got a little he's got a little attitude there you know you know like he knows everything he got i got we got a lot smarter from the time that that our kids were like 17 years old until they turned 25 we got really wise at 25 we actually knew something they thought they knew everything and then maybe show the picture now with our kids we have one with all of us together uh yeah that's that's at uh nelda milligan's funeral that's in front of our church at river of life church in decatur it's now called rice church but that's all of them there and brian is the one the blue shirt and then michael he michael works here in the ministry michael's on the left with the blue shirt there's my beautiful daughter michelle it looks like her mama and some of you have seen my son on the right uh jeremiah he's my youngest son he's a worshiper he's a worship leader and then could y'all show the next person his oldest daughter is coming together his first year this is this is five years ago but that's jayla this is our this is our grandchildren this is 10 of them we got 12 now we've got we've got uh no that's 11 of them oh that's 11. we've got one more we got one more so but they're they're a crew aren't they good looking crew that's awesome they all love each other yeah and they all love jesus and so and they're all born again and jayla called her pop-pop he's called pop-pop i'm grams for graham cracker cause i'm sweet uh jeremiah our youngest son named to me and madeline i can't see much oh she's at the top in the middle she named him pop-pop because she always wanted to go to work with him and she'd hit his leg and go pop pop she couldn't say she couldn't say grandpa say grandpa so yeah so it's stuck he's pop-pop i'm green and jayla on the on the far left on the top is in school the first year this year yeah so that's our that's our grandfather that's our oldest granddaughter yeah so so anyway we are we are blessed so thankful for what would you what would you uh uh share honey with them with let's say a young couple that's either about to get married or they're or they're uh they are married but you know how to because the because here's the reality we were talking you know talking about empty nest that wasn't a struggle for us seriously because janice and i are best friends and it's like man god we we called the kids in front of the church one day and i just told them well you go you can go you go ahead and tell them oh yeah so we moved to decatur and brian was 12 at the time and he brought a deck of cards to church i don't know what he was going to do with the deck of cards but his teacher told him that he was going to hell because he brought a deck of cards so uh craig waited a little bit and got his emotions under control but he told the lady uh my children are gonna make mistakes they're not perfect but neither are yours all of her kids were out on drugs alcohol they were out in the world anyway but that's neither here nor there but she said greg corrected her but then that next sunday morning he brought all of our little stair stuff steps you know brian was 12. michael was 10. michelle was seven and jeremiah was four so he brought them all up and he said these are my four children i want to tell you that they will make mistakes but unless you want your kids up on a pedestal don't put mine up on a pedestal because they're going to make mistakes but you can come to me and talk to me if you see one of my children make a mistake but don't correct them and tell them they're going to hell for bringing a deck of cards to church and and then we you know i just told them look we i love jesus more than janice i love janice more than my four children and now my 12 grandchildren i love my four children and 12 grandchildren more than i love you guys and you just have to get over it right and and uh and that's going to have to be okay with you and then we just set our schedules and made our priorities and then when we told our kids that because you're going to leave one day and i said get upset you know oh dad i said no you're going to leave one day but i'm not leaving her and she's not leaving me so so we're we're best friends still today uh and and uh and you know so you can have that kind of relationship and and love your kids they're going to come back and hang out and sometimes stay and and bring their bring their grandkids hallelujah that's a lot of fun that's a lot of fun with grandchildren i love the grandchild so greg said it's god's reward for not killing yours yeah your children yeah so so what what advice honey would you give uh you know a young a younger couple young maybe you're about to get married or thinking about getting married or or maybe recently married uh or been married a while to have a successful long happy life together because it's hard to really i mean we don't feel that old i know we don't look at she doesn't anyway so now i i can't even believe that this is the 50th year it went so fast but uh what would you say would what advice would you give someone or counsel would you give them well i have a whole teaching on adapt and adore and so i was reading the bible and another scripture jumps out at me but i read it in the amplified bible and it's a female version it's a female version of the bible yeah it's a good version it's a good version of this case yes use more uses more words that's what yeah so when it says that you're supposed to respect your husband and ephesians 5 something or other anyway i don't know always know the addresses of everything but i know it's in there it is in there so um i was reading it in the amplified version and it says all these words that you have to do for your husband oh my gosh god i can't do that i just i'm just honest with god i cannot do all that and he says okay pick two and so i picked to adapt and adore and if you can in ministry you are everything's constantly changing and if you can't adapt if you're one of these persons like i was everything has to be in order do you gee let's do everything in order and you have your whole day organized you have your whole week organized you have a whole year organized everything's organized organized you have your whole life you have these four kids they're like four little stair steps and they're all everything you know has to be so so so but if you can't adapt because every day's different than what you planned it and it's real important to adapt to his schedule to what's going on with him and i guess the biggest thing is to serve one another a hundred hundred percent i serve him a hundred percent he serves me you know we just try to out serve each other and it's i just adore him you know i adore my lord and savior jesus christ i feel very honored that he came into my life and i love him first and i adore him but i also adore my husband he is the closest thing to jesus that i know the way he treats you here is the way he treats me at home the way he treats all his grandchildren he's not one way up on stage in another way at home he's the same he's very loving and affectionate uh i have a test but i don't really want to tell y'all what the test is but this is how you can i'll go ahead and tell you this is how you can really tell if a man's love loves you and you're going together and he spends all of his money on you i mean that's a real test for a man because man usually holds on to his wallet you know real tight and a woman usually holds on to her body real tight and won't submit or give and you have to a woman has to be willing to give herself to her husband and a man has to be willing to give his financial help to the family and to her so so greg used to work for a dollar 25 at uh at his mom's kolache shop hour 25 an hour dollar 25 an hour yeah if y'all are headquartered that was way back how many of you tasted kolaches oh and they're awesome delicious my mom had a special one the poppy seed ones i love she had a kalachi shop in pasadena texas anyway and so greg made twenty dollars and he spent every bit of it on me he lived across town and he bought watermelon and vanilla wafers and that was our date and he paid gas but he spent all of his money and that was a big thing to me you know when a man will spend everything that he has uh for his wife or prospective wife you know that's that's a test for me and he passed all that i have is yours darling and all that you have is yours hey that's not the way that goes i'm just teaching just another funny praise god so uh so any other advice you give you know the counsel you give some someone um put jesus first in your marriage above everything else spend time with him because he's the only one that knows that person and can change that person so many women marry and when i was 16 i worked for southwestern bell and my friends came in beat up by their boyfriends and i i would tell them don't go back to him that's crazy don't do that you know but they they did and they would marry him and they would always say oh i'm gonna change him but you can't chain greg can't change me i can't change him only god can change your heart and so i just want to say that this is my best friend and she's committed her life to you talk about giving you know she's given her life for uh the call of god that was on our lives she allowed me to follow the lord even when we made transition and went from business and making all this money to uh to make it 125 a week after two years we went two years without making anything right and then they decided our rent was 550 a month and they divided it times 4.3 and i think it was 127 90 or something like that a week i mean they got it down to the penny and so that's what we made and she's followed me through everything that the lord's called us together to do and uh and given herself for her children for me and for the body of christ and uh i just want to honor this uh beautiful wonderful uh example of proverbs 31 woman you guys helped me to tell her that we love her and she's awesome god so um we'll take any questions now rick or uh but it isn't it good to hear was it good to hear from janice today praise god awesome all right so thank you guys for the questions that you sent in um we've got one that is saying what is the best way to pray for your future spouse oh i'd i would pray i prayed that for all my children that they would marry the right one and the right one would come into their life and you hold your children up and then you just pray in the spirit because when you pray in the spirit you're praying the perfect will of god if anyone here is not filled with the spirit that is the power to live the christian life you need to be filled with the spirit and i would pray in the spirit over all my children but i don't know how you would answer that well i mean look you want you you want to be peop okay we're three we're three part beings spirit soul and body right okay so the problem is is a lot of people make their decisions based on the body and somebody's you know this guy's cute or whatever but you know but this guy could be the you know he could be a sorcerer you know who knows this guy could be you know the you know he could be a robber he could be you don't know you it and so god knows your needs and if you'll trust him uh and then lord show me uh i'm not gonna make a decision about marriage until i know that i know what i know in my knower that it's you and then you you know dating and courting is the discovery process and you don't decide who you marry you discover and if you don't know if you have to come to me and ask me uh is is this person the right one they're not not yet until you know and so you just go inside your relationship with god and say lord until i have peace about this and until i know i am not making a commitment here right that's good so pray in the spirit and you don't decide you discover that's awesome here's a good one i'm a wife and i make most of the decisions in my marriage that relates to family and i feel my husband should leave more what should i do pray you know what happens is you you get accustomed to making those decisions and then many times what you'll do is is you'll just make the decision for your husband you need to at least go to him and ask him what are your thoughts listen instead of forcing him and saying you know you got to make this decision per se you always let me make you always you always you know you don't use that how many of you guys get motivated by nagging anybody anybody really does that move your heart no man so don't do that just you go and and look you appeal to that man and say say here's the decisions we're coming what are you what do you think and and get him to be involved by you appealing to him and if the decision still got to be made he doesn't do it at least you've gone to him yeah that's good get him involved yeah all right here's another one it's kind of related to the first one but it's like is it wrong to have specific things that you want in a spouse or to pray about specific things for a spouse oh just throw away your list if you're looking for a certain type of person you want somebody that loves jesus more than you um i've had women you know has to have blonde hair and way so much and be this kind of guy and that kind of guy and just throw it all away and let jesus choose the one and let you you'll discover it you know it's like you're in you're with god you know every day and you're praying and you're spending time with him and here's this person over here and they're praying and spending time with god and you just it's like you intersect i mean greg and i should have never met you know i was with a different guy at the party you know but god just got us together it's like a miracle just enemy jokes in his file that guy didn't have no jokes at all i like those pictures of you pastor greg yeah yeah he was pretty yeah yeah [Laughter] oh man but you know the thing is is we uh yeah you want somebody who's demonstrated some faithfulness and character and things like that and walks in integrity and you give people tests don't share everything about your life all at once you know just give them a little test and see how they do and how do they talk about of people in authority how do they talk about their ex you know how do they talk about their dad yeah for a girl yeah for a guy how do they talk about their mom right you know do they respect them do they honor them because if they don't it will come on you yeah if you get married and and you know are they are they constantly negative or are they positive and so uh these are just things that are all part of what you're looking for you want somebody not perfect but somebody that that uh that really will follow the lord and and and work together with you as a team so god will show you that but like janice said throw your list away dear jesus they they're you know the reason why you haven't found the right mate yet because you're leaning to that list too many times and if if some of the things that we've shared it's all right for them to have godly character and integrity and that kind of thing but um you know they've got to be so tall and they've got to be with this color hair and they've got all this stuff just trust god can we trust god about that yeah amen yeah here's another one what if you got married before you were saved and the person that you got married to does not want to be a believer oh that's covered in first corinthians 7. and it says if the um you know the unbeliever is sanctified i'm misquoting it if the unbelieving spouse is uh pleased to dwell with you then then you abide there don't don't use well you know there i wasn't saved now so that decision didn't count i wasn't saved when we got married yeah okay but i did i was later and and who knows whether your uh your love and your respect and your christ-like attitude will influence that mate be jesus to them don't you know don't look for a way to get out of that marriage don't be mad and slam the kitchen cabinets and bang the pans cause they're not acting like they're supposed to well a sinner's gonna act like a sinner you know until they get born again pray that they get born again um but it sounds like they've kind of already um maybe tried to tell them about the lord but you you can't just keep nagging them and keep ninjin you know who likes that nobody does just live manifest jesus manifest jesus to him and we agree with you in jesus name yes that god's sending laborers to your maid to speak the truth in love to them and and and that they'll be born again amen don't leave them though yeah man live as you're called right so yeah here's a big one so they're saying the hoarder versus the excessive spender and they're saying you was the hoarder and you were the excessive spender and they said they are like that spending is therapeutic for them so how did you grow into what you consider to be a healthy financial dynamic between the two okay well i went to counseling and my parents lived through the depression times and my dad stood in line for blue john which is he said worse than skim milk you know because that's what you got was blue john if you stood in the government line and so one time i opened the refrigerator door i was on the farm and there was only one stick of butter in there and i went to this counselor and he said you have a spirit of poverty on you ask the lord to show you where the lie entered in that there was not enough and so i asked the lord to show me i didn't even remember this but we had a little tiny refrigerator on the farm stood about this high and i opened the door there was no ketchup no mustard no anything in there except one stick of butter and i must have eaten the stick of butter i don't know i was the hungriest i had ever been up to that point and i remember my mom came home from the grocery store and she says where's the butter so i must have eaten it i guess that's all i remember and so then the counselor said hey you need to ask jesus because you believe that lie ask him to forgive you for believing that there wasn't enough and ask him to show himself to you and paint a new picture on the canvas of your heart of jesus and he did that he showed me jesus and the refrigerator was full of food and was flowing out onto the floor and right now i'm a bigger giver than greg is because i have a new picture in my heart of more than enough there's always more than enough you give and god gives back to you you know it's just awesome so you can share your part about well i just i used to it was used to be therapeutic for me but i'd go and buy a truck you know or go buy whatever i wanted and of course that made her fearful you know that we're we weren't going to have enough but it but i saw that i was doing that for the same reason she would hoard was because i've i had this picture on the inside that there wasn't enough and so it made me feel good if like i'm something you know if i could go pay cash for something so now lord heal give us a new picture there's that there's always enough there's nothing extra and so now what we do is we pray now we're stewards the it's not therapeutic anymore for us to do those things it's it's ministry now from our outs out of our relationship with the lord if we give or or if we save or if we you know what god you show us this is this is yours what do you want us to do everything we have is the lord yes every penny that we have is his and he directs us now together even as a team like i shouldn't say that i'm more of a giver than him but you are she is she'll come tell me god told me to do this i said you're kidding me really well you know all right did you guys get breakthrough individually separately or did her revelation lead to your revelation i think her revelation kind of led into mine because i bought her this nice coat at christmas oh yeah jimmy swaggart sent us a letter at christmastime and said all these kids over here are starving and so i took my coat back and i sent him the money from taking my coat back and that was sort of thing those kids can't have your coat so we can give we can give them you know that anyway but we just saw that we were motivated then i found two thousand dollars behind the picture we were moving and that that she'd forgot about so i knew there was a lot more she probably had 50 grand stashed in different places we don't have it today so don't come to our house don't come out i mean we have it but not uh not stashing ourselves like she was getting ready to go to prison yeah yeah really anyway but this isn't healthy and so god would you help us because this isn't right would you show us a healthy way to have a real life relationship with you and and um and he he did and he did that for us and now it's like it's like we just love to give but we also love to save when or invest or do what he tells us to do i bless one of our children man it's just it's just awesome we're one of his children i mean you know it's just awesome to be able to live like that and to know that um and we're not fighting with one another about money anymore no not anymore we use joy as a barometer you know um i always in our giving in our giving yeah use joy as a barometer because i like like to meditate on one scripture that i i read to in the old two and the new and then a proverb every day well today was proverbs 13 and it says the light of the righteous rejoiceth and you know that's how people know and they're drawn to jesus on the inside of you is by you rejoicing and they see you go through tough stuff and you're still rejoicing so we we use joy as a barometer when we don't have joy in giving to anybody anymore like this one person we paid their rent we paid their telephone bill we paid something else for them and they told me i was going to hell because i wore fingernail polish i lost my joy in giving to them you know i lost my joy yeah something else came up inside but uh wasn't god yeah um so how do you guys spend time with the lord as a couple as a couple no we don't we'll pray together over something but our time with the lord is separate you know that's foremost and essential read your bible every day every 24 hours i ask god to help me and and spend time with him and when we had uh all the kids were little at home i would go in the bathroom for one minute and read you know just keep my sanity and it's real important that you put priority on the word of god um there's facebook fables out there that say you don't need the bible anymore that's a bunch of baloney i'm sorry i shouldn't say that but it is god's word is eternal it lasts forever you can build your life on it you can live by it it's foundational it's like the foundation of a building you don't always see it but the higher up your building goes the deeper the foundation has to be and janet janus is always in our our marriage i mean she's spend time with the lord herself she had she had the list of when we were pastoring the list of the church members and she'd be praying over them and she come to me and god spoke to her to do this or do that or he'll give and and so uh and i have no problem with people that do their devotions together that's that's fine we tried that and it just wasn't it just he's a night person i'm a day person i like to give god the first part of my day and it just it just didn't work because he's more energetic at night and i'm more wanting to go to bed you know and so i would fall asleep if he started reading or something yeah yeah you i think you want to develop your own in relationship and it's fine if you do devotions together but i wouldn't just i wouldn't recommend just doing that because each of us has our own relationship with god yeah that's good here's the last question and that is um has your vision you guys both always been the same and if not how did you kind of get it bring the cohesiveness into one vision i think our vision has always been the same when i was small i read the scripture i read the bible three times before you know well i you know just i just read it growing up and everything and i got focused on the scripture that jesus heals the brokenhearted and we were at a had a crusade what was his name that always blows on people benny hen yeah we were at a benny hen conference and i don't remember anything that he said you know blowing on everybody and everybody falling all over the place but he said god doesn't just call a man he calls a family and i saw how each one of our children were called to heal the brokenhearted and greg read one scripture when he was growing up and it was about being called to heal the brokenhearted and i feel like that's a calling that's on our life is when we see somebody broken and i see it in each one of our children you know they're just riveted to somebody that's broken and you can't have all those kind of relationships you have to have peer relationships you have to have people that are pouring into you mentoring you but we feel called to heal people with the word of god that are broken and the other thing is is the way we would deal with a specific vision and direction in our lives is uh i would janice will either share with me what god's telling her and and then i say well like she didn't get a chance to talk about this but she came to me and told me she's a pastor's wife okay and i was in a street evangelist at the time and so i said well that means one of three things we're going to divorce and you're going to marry a pastor i'm going to die you're going to marry a pastor or god couldn't change my heart well she let god speak to me and then when god moved us from houston texas to decatur texas god gave me a word and she said well i got to hear from god i said that's fine i didn't push she didn't push that on me i don't push that on her and then and then we pray and and then we only walk out what we're in agreement on and so it just it just flows flows better that way i don't want to bring her kicking and screaming somewhere i want her to know just like that we're wherever we're going god's called us and and he's with us then yeah yeah wherever he calls you he gives you the grace to be there and any job anything that you go through if you know that god's called you there you can have the grace to stay with it and to stick through this tough stuff when you have the word of god and that call don't try to go out and pastor and you're not called don't don't do that you know it's hard enough when you are called so don't try to bust down doors and and oh god what do you want us to do you know we we got this opportunity i mean when god told us to move to north texas this other church in west texas came open and they had all their property paid for they were going to give us a huge salary everything looked good but god said no and you know just a few months later north texas decatur opened up and that's where we met andrew that's where we met paul milligan that's where we met bob nichols our pastor all key relationships were there it's kind of like you know the guy that got fed with the ravens you know what if he'd gone to a different brook you know i don't think i would like to eat food from ravens but i'm sure you would do it if god told you to do it if that's all there is yeah yeah well it's i tell you guys it's a it's an honor to uh be married to this beautiful girl now almost 50 years and we're still best friends and we're still in love and we still kiss and more praise god we've got a great relationship and uh and y'all helped me to tell her how much how precious she is to all of us thank you you know this is real hard for me to do i don't like being on stage because of that scripture that god gave me in psalms 144-12 you know a cornerstone or the foundation isn't always seen he's planted into me and god said just make him look good that's all you have to do she does that wow that's awesome yeah that is awesome man can we give 50 years can we give them just one well we sure appreciate you pastor greg and miss janice and i learned so much today and gleaned a lot and uh got some stuff to meditate on for myself we are at the end of today's session but we do have prayer ministers here so could the prayer ministers come up and if you've got prayer for anything it could be relationship wise it could be something that like miss janice was saying about maybe your heart's broken in some area maybe you want agreement for your future spouse maybe you want agreement for your current spouse maybe you just you know just want direction in life you need a word from the lord please come up and please get prayer if anybody's in our online audience you can call 719-635-1111 and we've got prayer ministers on the phone that would be more than happy to agree with you in prayer and so we'll see you next time next monday right here at 1 p.m mountain standard time and until then please have a blessed week you

Channel: Charis Bible College

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Length: 85min 13sec (5113 seconds)

Published: Mon Sep 13 2021