The Day I Preached my Own Marriage

The Day I Preached My Own Marriage

4:30 AM. No texts, no calls, no emails — just me, a legal pad, and a list. That's my window. Kristin's is different. Hers floats. It shows up whenever it shows up, and half the time it's not until I've already been up for two hours. Thirty-eight years married, and we still run on completely different clocks.

That's not a throwaway detail. That's the whole day.

Some mornings, "the life of a pastor" means sermon prep, staff meetings and hospital visits. This particular morning, it meant Kristin and I sitting across the table from each other, going over a message we were about to give — together — in front of all the GFC Couples Ministry. The topic: purposely pursuing each other in marriage. The problem: we couldn't teach it without admitting we don't always do it well.

That's the part people don't see. Before you ever hear a pastor teach on something, there's usually a morning like this one — where you have to decide whether you're going to say the polished version or the true one.

The Text We Kept Coming Back To

We built the message around the parable of the prodigal son — Luke 15. Not the version you've heard a hundred times about a wayward kid and a patient father. A different lens: marriage.

Here's the son's move, plain and simple. He took his inheritance early, walked away from his father's house, and burned through everything on reckless living. Then the famine hit, and he had nothing left.

Sound familiar? It's what happens in a marriage every time one of us decides we know better than the counsel we've been given — better than our spouse, better than God. We cash out early or walk away from the friction. We trade the feast for the famine because we're convinced we can build something better on our own.

Kristin said something in prep that morning that stuck with me: even as pastors, we default to trying to fix things ourselves instead of praying about them first. If that's true for us — after decades of doing this — it's true for everybody in the room.

Standing Up There and Telling the Truth

Here's the moment that made it a real "day in the life" story instead of just another speaking engagement. Kristin shared about a recurring argument even after thirty eight years of marriage. A real one. The kind where old pain gets put on the table, both people walk away, and nothing gets resolved — just repeated.

She didn't dress it up. She called it what it was: a famine moment.

Then she told them what changed it. Not a technique. A question. Instead of another accusation, she started asking, "What would it look like for you if this area of our marriage was different?" That's it. Curiosity instead of blame. And somehow, that small shift positioned both of us toward God instead of against each other — and He met us fast.

Standing next to her while she said that, in front of that many people, is not a comfortable part of the job. But it's an honest one. And honest is the only version worth giving.

What the Father Actually Does

We read the rest of the story — the son coming to his senses, heading home, rehearsing his apology the whole way. And then this: while he's still a long way off, his father sees him, runs to him, and wraps him up before the kid gets a single confession out.

Robe. Ring. Sandals. A feast, before the son had cleaned himself up even a little.

That's the picture we wanted people to leave with. God doesn't wait for you to arrive polished. He runs while you're still a long way off. And He asks the same of us as spouses — not to wait for the apology to be perfect before we run toward each other.

We closed the teaching on Ephesians 3:20-21 — the verse about God accomplishing infinitely more than we can ask or think. We usually quote that over a job, a diagnosis, a big decision. That day, we challenged the room to quote it over their marriages. To actually ask God for infinitely more than they could picture — in a relationship they'd maybe stopped expecting much from.

The Part After the Message

The teaching ends, but the application did not. There's still a prayer to lead — for the couples who came in stuck, for the ones in a good season who need to keep leaning toward God instead of coasting on their own strength, for marriages, kids, finances, dreams. There's still people to talk to on the way out. There's still Kristin and me, walking to the car, back to being just us.

That's the real shape of a pastor's day, more often than not. You don't just teach the truth. You live inside it, in public, on the same morning you were still working it out at your own kitchen table. The message isn't something you deliver and set down. It's something you're still standing in when the lights come up

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A couple questions worth sitting with individually and in your marriage: 

Where in your life or marriage have you traded a feast for a famine because you thought you knew better?

What would it look like to turn back — today, not once you've cleaned yourself up first?
What would it look like to live from an "infinite" God working in your situation?