Forever Love

Calvin Copeland: Thank you for being a part of How Love Can Last Forever After All. I am so excited about our guest that we have today. It is PhD Jerry Regier. When I first met him, I didn't know all of his background. I found that out organically as he was speaking at a conference and I looked at my wife and said, "Did he just say what I thought he just said?"

So let me tell you some of what was said about him. He is the former Oklahoma Secretary of Human Services, architect of the Oklahoma Marriage Initiative, public policy leader, educator, and family advocate. He has also spent a couple of times in the White House from what I understand. His wealth of knowledge is just so exciting to me. I love to sit and talk with him as much as he will allow me to.

Today we're going to talk about how healthy families shape communities, public policy, and the future of society. Most people think relationships are private, but Jerry, you challenge that assumption. In this episode, we want to explore how relationship health is actually a matter of public concern and how healthy marriages and families influence everything from education and mental health to workforce development, child welfare, and economic mobility. Together we want to examine the strength of a relationship to create stronger communities and why relationship education may be one of the most overlooked investments society can make.

Jerry, most people think that marriages and relationships are a personal matter. But you've spent decades working on how healthy levels of government can help public policy. What do you see that convinced you that relationships impact far more than just the couples involved?

Jerry Regier: You're right on target. When you start talking about marriage in public policy, people tend to say that has no relevance to public policy at all. When I was Secretary in Oklahoma, Governor Keating at the time decided to do a study. He had the University of Oklahoma economists do a study on why Oklahoma had so many opportunities in terms of low income. We ranked in the low 40s in terms of economic flourishing by state.

They came back and basically said that there's a link between the state's economy and its family structure. That was the thing that got us all thinking. Basically, we were able to then say, let's look at what our marriage rate is, what our divorce rate is, and can we do something about it? That was the genesis of the Oklahoma Marriage Initiative.

Calvin Copeland: In that, you were dealing with child welfare, mental health, education, poverty, workforce development, and crime reduction. All of those things began to be woven into the study. Is that right?

Jerry Regier: They did. When you start thinking about marriage, those of us particularly in the Christian world think of weekend retreats. Those are great and that's how the church has attacked the problem. There's nothing wrong with that. In fact, they've had great success. I've been involved in some of that, and I certainly have also.

But we began thinking about how we would do this in a public sector section. One of the things that early on we decided was that we were going to do a multi-sector approach. We started out with a governor's conference and he hosted us at the governor's mansion. We invited people from the business community, from communications and media, from the church community, from the public sector, and even from the corrections arena.

We tried to get all of the different sectors. Then we said, what are the delivery systems to those sectors? That's how we got into child welfare workers and health care workers. We began to think of who we could train in a relationship education manner who then could start using that information in their existing work and through their existing delivery networks. The multi-sector approach was key to how we approached it.

Calvin Copeland: I love it. The other thing that I see as you talk about it is that that system helped us to realize that information alone doesn't change lives. One of the things that I've discovered in the work that I do is how I help people at their personal level begin to change their life. They can know what to do and still struggle to do it. What did you learn from training thousands of individuals through your public program?

Jerry Regier: We learned a couple of things. One was if you're going to partner with the Health and Human Services Department, then you're talking about looking at people who are struggling in life in a number of areas. These are people that have low income, fractured families, and a lot of single parent homes.

We began to see that marriage and family stability is inextricably linked to economics and to jobs. We had to start thinking about how we can not only bring them together to listen to how to have strong relationships, but what can we do then to help them learn how to have better relationships in a job market? We helped them get a job and become economically stable so that they could maintain a marriage. There were a lot of pieces to it beyond just telling them how relationships work, although we did a lot of that. We linked it to some of these other areas that were on their mind. If the relationship skills take a second tier to how they are going to pay the bills this week, then that is what is on their mind.

Calvin Copeland: There was a season in my life that I actually worked at workforce centers. My job was to find employment for the people who were going through the system. One of the things that was really kind of shocking to me was their mindset that we had to continue to speak to.

There were some challenges that I saw. There was one particular person who had to come to my trainings every day for a week. She walked into class and she was late. As the instructor, I asked why she was late. She said her professor needed to talk to her. I asked what she meant. She said she had a full ride at the local college, but she had to come here to get her resources. Her class was at the same time as my class.

I told her to go to her classes at school and come see me when she got done, and I would do a special thing for her. It was so important, but here was the thing that I struggled with. I had a boss who struggled with me making that decision. You've got to get this understanding that yes, we're serving the masses, but this girl's got a full ride. She was a teenage mother trying to succeed. It was that thing that really began to open my heart about how we understand the struggle they're in and how we best serve them rather than just being worried about our numbers. That's one of the things that I love about you.

Jerry Regier: It's also creating trust and creating the ability for them to see you as interested in them as a person in a more whole way instead of just delivering certain information to you. For instance, one of the things we did was contract with an outside management firm. That was one of the best decisions I made. First of all, they were very innovative in their thinking and they were thinking about it all day long, whereas inside government, you're not thinking about it all day long. You have many things that you're working on.

We had things like sweetheart evenings where we treated them to a dinner at a restaurant. That did several things. They saw other couples like themselves and it also told them that we're going to treat you with dignity. We had a huge Christmas party at the fairgrounds where they could bring their kids and we had Santa Claus there and we gave out gifts. That's the whole thing of surrounding the information.

Calvin Copeland: Is that connected to the success sequence that you developed as well?

Jerry Regier: The success sequence came along a little later from when we started the marriage initiative. The success sequence, in case your audience is not familiar, is to graduate from high school, get a full-time job, and get married before you have kids. We began to do some pre-relationship building with young people. We partnered with the state land grant college and they have extension services. Those extension services go into all the high schools and 4-H clubs. We began to reach young people. I don't know that we actually had the success sequence when we started, but it was still around the same idea of preparing them for getting out into the world and making sure they were thinking about their relationship.

Calvin Copeland: I love the thought process that you just brought in relative to a group coming in and all they focus on was how to reach these people. It is a lot of what I'm doing now. I'm working with four different churches and I am pastoring their single and married ministries together.

Often what I have found in churches is if you're single, you feel like a second-class citizen because so many sermons and things are around marriage. What I've been able to do is to bring them all together and speak about marriage from the context of our marriage to Christ. When we learn how to effectively strengthen our relationship with Christ, that also will influence every one of our horizontal relationships. I'm able to talk about it from a work perspective and from a friendship perspective.

What has been so unique is these pastors understand the importance of this. It's a discipleship program, but we call it a training. They know they don't have time for it and they need somebody who will focus on it. It's been such a beneficial work. These pastors not only ask me to come in to their congregations, but they've been sending me to other congregations. Now I'm at the place that I'm training up coaches to continue to do this work at that very level. When you talked about focus, that's the thing that I find is so valuable as a pastor. I focus on only the marriage and relationship piece and I partner with the pastors. It's been such a beneficial work. When we talk about the success sequence, that can feel kind of odd to them now in this day and age. When I'm able to get them all together in the room and talk about it from the perspective of how effective it is to walk in that sequence, we've got to reverse engineer some of that stuff because some of them have gotten out of order. Once again, I'm able to take the data that we know and make it come alive for them so that they begin to identify and not feel bad for whatever decisions they've made, but just start making better decisions moving forward.

That actually leads into a framework that I've developed in mutual relational deferred gratification. With deferred gratification, we get it. We know the finish line. If I take this amount of courses, I'll get my degree on this day. If I put this amount of money in the bank, I'll be able to get my reward. With mutual relational deferred gratification, what I try to explain to people is that the finish line is where you start. If you understand that you're starting with the purpose of caring for another person's heart and that is your life journey, you then begin to have a different paradigm on time. One of the things that I've found with deferred gratification is that people who really get that discipline down can actually have it hurt them in relationships because you don't see a finish line. You make plans with another person and then life happens. They show up and you've got to defer your plans for the betterment of the other person. Can you speak to how as you hear mutual relational deferred gratification, it lines up with the work you've been doing for years?

Jerry Regier: I think first of all, it's a concept that fits totally into any marriage relationship training because marriage is all about giving to one another and growing together. It also speaks to something that comes to my mind that we need to talk to young people and young adults particularly. Number one, they're not dating anymore. Number two, they're waiting until they've got everything perfect before they get married. That creates people that are set in their ways. If you don't marry until you're 30 or 32, you've lived single and professionally for a long time. Back to your point about mutual gratification, if they would think about that and think about how they can go ahead and get married and grow together, they can figure out how they can learn to do this mutual living and mutual gratification from the beginning.

Calvin Copeland: You're hitting so right because as we know, the data proves that there are so many benefits to being married. But here's been the pushback from the people that I've talked to and that I'm helping. They find those same benefits if they're educated. What happens is they get tired of being on these dating apps and they finally come to me and they go, "Help, help, help, because I have everything that I've ever wanted in terms of my own security, but I'm all alone."

Then that's when I begin to say if you had understood the value and the necessity of relationship skills, of how to communicate, and how to tap into your own empathy and your emotional intelligence, you would absolutely be in a fantastic place relative to not just having a great career, but having someone to share it with. So much of my coaching business is people frustrated because they've been set in their ways.

There was this coin that kind of went viral: "Ain't nobody got time for that." That's the kind of mindset that I always have to reframe for them and get them to understand that life was more than about building your bank account and getting degrees. At the end of the day, nobody wants to be alone. The same love that you want to receive, do you think you've been prepared to give that kind of love? We all know the unconditional love that we want. 90 million people are on dating apps every year and 40 million of them are there looking for meaningful relationships.

They'll come to me and they'll tell me their stories. I'll say, "When you go to these dating apps, do you have to fill out a questionnaire about your non-negotiables? And you want somebody to take you just as you are?" They say yes. I say, "How does that work?" They ask what I mean. I say, "How come you get to come with a list, but you expect somebody to take you just like you are?" The light will come on. Those dating apps are designed to feed themselves. While there's an importance for you to understand your boundaries and those kinds of things, if you don't understand it from a relationship skills development perspective, you actually aren't building boundaries, you're building walls.

Most of us will see the world from our lens of experience. If you've experienced divorce or dysfunction in your family, and if you don't know how to manage your emotions and regulate yourself through all of those dysfunctions, then you're going to find yourself on this Ferris wheel of this dopamine hit of, "Wow, you're the one," and then as soon as somebody disappoints you, you're going to be back on the Ferris wheel again. I'm 37 years in October. I'm still trying to catch up. I don't think I'll ever get there, Jerry. But then they'll start to ask how I am doing it. I begin to talk about my mutual relational deferred gratification that by the way I didn't understand. I couldn't have defined it when I was 17 years old when I was doing it. Now that I'm able to really give clarity to it, I am able to tell them the ways that each of us have deferred our gratification for one another over decades.

Jerry Regier: One of the things that reminds me of as we're talking is that everyone in public policy has a worldview. If they tell you no, I don't let my personal things enter into it, don't believe it. Everyone has a worldview. We have to base our lives on a biblical worldview because there's a biblical worldview and there's a secular worldview. Basically, what you're describing in terms of relational health in a marriage is based on a biblical worldview.

I shared this with the students that I was talking to last week when I was speaking in Geneva, Switzerland at the UN. I took them through the biblical worldview and what it is. Basically, I heard Ken Ham speak recently. He's the one that has developed the Creation Museum and also the Ark right outside Cincinnati. Ken Ham said that all you need to know for a biblical worldview is found in Genesis 1 through 11.

The Bible starts with a marriage and it ends with a marriage, the marriage of the Lamb. Marriage and the relational part of that is throughout the scripture. When you think of a biblical worldview, 10 times in Genesis chapters one and two, we see the term "God said." Then in Genesis 3, what do we see? "Has God really said?" You have the biblical worldview and you have the secular worldview. You start doubting the truth of the scriptures. A biblical worldview is God-centered, a secular worldview is man-centered. God created man, Imago Dei, which means in the image of God. Man has created us in Imago Dei, which is day but not God.

The biblical worldview has much to say about social issues today and about marriage in particular. Culturally, we're facing all these things about man can marry man, and woman can marry woman, transgender, all these different things that are on the secular worldview side. They're totally opposite of what God has designed. Both in the political world where I had to say, I'm coming from a biblical worldview, I have to tell this quick story. At a press conference that I had when I got appointed Secretary in Florida, they eventually said, "Are you going to let your personal views and your Christian views influence your policy decisions?"

God just gave me an answer at the time. I said, "Exactly which part of my personal Christian views do you want me to leave out? Is it the part about serving the orphans and the widows, which we did at that agency? Is it the part of serving the poor and feeding the hungry, which we did at that agency? Is it the part of loving your neighbor as yourself? Is it the part about doing unto others as you'd have them do to you? Is it the part about respecting government authorities? Which part do you want me to leave out?" It was dead silence because they don't understand that we come from a biblical worldview in all areas of life. The relational area is what we're talking about today, but it's applicable in everything. We don't apologize for coming into public policy with a biblical worldview and crafting it in a way that can help families thrive and can help marriage be strengthened.

Calvin Copeland: Genesis one and two lays it out, paradise. Genesis two ends with "They were naked and had no shame." But oftentimes my work starts in Genesis three. When people come to me, I start with let's look at what the enemy is doing right now in this world. He has three simple questions that he continues to ask and it just continues to evolve in how he asks them. He asks, "Did God say it?" Then he asks, "Did God mean it?" Then he asks, "What about your desires?" When you think about all the different human secular ways that people are trying to interject their desires and they are minimizing the value of the Word of God, it is no longer the truth, it is a truth. That's led this generation to this place of "I'm going to live my truth."

When they come to me with "I'm living my truth," I first expose the attack of the enemy. As wonderful as Genesis one and two was, the only thing that God said wasn't good was that we be alone. The very thing that those three questions ask is whether or not we're going to be together or alone. Once again, they come to me, they're educated, they have their careers, but they're alone. If they're a young married couple, one or both of them are going, "I feel so alone." I let them know that's been the plan of the enemy. I know it's about your decisions and we're not robots. God made us to make decisions. But you need to understand what is influencing your decision, who is influencing your decision, what is your worldview, and what dysfunctions have you come out of that is shaping the way you see things.

For years, there's been this talk about the absentee father. When I talk to people, it is now evolved to this: they've been raised by single mothers, and men and women alike have said to me, "I watched the way my mother had to handle men." From a man's perspective, they say, "If my mother is going to handle a man like that, why would I believe that any woman is going to care for me?" So it's not just about single fatherhood. Fatherhood Initiative is doing some fantastic work. My challenge is if the mom and dad can't learn how to biblically care for each other, even if they're not married, it doesn't matter how many bills you pay or how many outings you take. Studies have shown that if you ask a kid which they prefer—that mommy loves me, that daddy loves me, or that mommy and daddy love each other—the overwhelming response is that mommy and daddy love each other.

I talk to people all the time who are not necessarily in relationship with their children's mother or father. I explain to them how important it is for them to learn how to biblically love them because it's more than just about the Eros love. There's an Agape love, there's the friendship love, there's a storge love that you absolutely need to engage in to really make an impact on your child.

Jerry Regier: Children do better in married families. It's not that you denigrate the single parent family, they're doing the best they can. But children need to see that there's a man and a woman, their mother and father, that love each other and love them. It provides security and guidance. That father missing is not only because there's a man's voice missing, but it's also because they don't see the model in terms of marriage. That's so key for them to then know how to go into a marriage relationship. A lot of young people and young adults are just afraid.

Calvin Copeland: As much as the data can prove things, it'll never speak louder than their life experience. Part of what I challenge the folks that come to me is, okay, you've got some life experiences that have been lying to you. You've got some life experiences that are making you believe certain things are true that are not. While you need to understand how to have healthy boundaries, you've got to make sure that you're not creating walls, which means you've got to analyze how you are showing up and why.

Part of my mutual relational deferred gratification is that I've got the framework of "listen" and "reveal," and the whole "listen" acronym is about you understanding how you show up and why you show up that way. Do you like yourself and what is it that you like about yourself, what is it that you don't like about yourself? Then do you like getting better? Do you like fixing what you don't like about yourself?

I was in the car and you told me you got up at 6:00 AM to go work out with your trainer because you were communicating to me how much you like yourself. But once again, it was also inspiring to me because without saying a word, you're communicating that I like getting better and I understand that never ends. Once I get my education, it's over. Once I've made enough money that I can live off the interest, it's over. But in relationship, it's never over. In my personal growth and development, it's never over.

Learning how to help people embrace and like that process is a major part of what can help us turn things around. I used to ask, "Hey, don't you like taking a shower?" The first four people that I tried to use that with said no. I was stunned. But then I thought, "Let me ask you this. Do you like how you feel after you're fresh and clean?" They said yes. It hit me. Even with taking a shower, we don't like the process. We all want results, but nobody likes the process. I'm a guy, I like the process of taking a shower. I'll take two showers a day. But once I began to identify that it's about the process and they don't embrace the process, that really is a major part of what can help us turn things around is getting people to embrace and like the process. Once again, I think that comes in once they see that process is going to bring results that are different than their dysfunctional experiences have shown them.

Jerry Regier: If you get them to see other people, I know in the marriage initiative, which by the way they don't call it the marriage initiative anymore in Oklahoma, they call it Familyhood, one of the key things was bringing people into a room and delivering relational information, but also them getting to know somebody else that's in the same situation. When they see somebody else asking a question or beginning to improve, all of a sudden they're saying, well, maybe I need to do the same thing. This networking which we in the Christian world know what it is to have friends and networks and encouragement and accountability, there's so many people that don't have those networks. They're alone or they have the wrong networks.

The whole aloneness thing is at both ends of the spectrum. If young adults are saying I've accomplished everything, I've got a good job, I've bought my home, I've got a car, but I'm alone, think about what they're going to say when they're my age. I was on a plane recently and the lady next to me and I got to talking and I said, do you have a family? She said, well, I got married late and no, we didn't have any children. That's fine, but what's it going to be like? I've got four kids and four spouses of kids and 14 grandkids. In my 80s, they're around. We know so many people that don't have that because they just thought everything was around themselves when they were younger. We can't afford kids or whatever. All of a sudden, they find themselves later in life.

Calvin Copeland: Once again, the enemy has used that to get people mixed with coming out of the dysfunctional situations they come out of and then wanting to get their education and then they look up and they're 30 years old realizing I'm alone and this stuff didn't satisfy me. But at the same time, if they haven't been a part of any real relationship programs, they have no relationship skills. Focusing on the Bible says it's more blessed to give than it is to receive. With deferred gratification, you understood that. You gave hours of study before you received your degree. You gave much of your paycheck to your bank account before you spent it. You understand this concept.

So don't let anybody lie to you and let you think that you can't understand this concept in relationship. What the deficit is is that you are alone now. Many come to me because they see what my wife and I have. During the pandemic, we were all in the house and we had had our 30th wedding anniversary. My daughter did this great video of family and friends. For two years, we were in the house and I kept getting these phone calls and they kept saying congratulations, but they also said, "How are you doing it? You guys don't just like your marriage, you still like each other. How are you still doing that?" The first time I laughed, the second time I giggled, the third time I thought about it, and the fourth time I was like, okay, we got to address this.

There is a discipline to having relationship that is still enjoyable to be a part of. That doesn't just happen because I found my one. No, we do the work of hearing each other. We do the work of caring for each other's heart. About six months ago, Jerry, I was in a little funk and I don't know what it was. I'm walking through the house and my wife goes, "What's wrong?" I told her I didn't know. She goes, "Well, when you're ready, I'm here."

Because I know she's not my source and she doesn't complete me, I go to my source and I'm trying to figure out what's going on. But the deal is because she is communicating that she hears me and I hadn't even said anything, it encouraged me to figure out what's going on with me. Once again, it's about our worldview. I have a Christian worldview and because I know that God is my source, I know how to go to Him and to His Word to figure out what's going on. I know how to find supplemental reading that will help me better understand what He's trying to share with me. At the same time, I've got somebody here on Earth who sees me: the good, the bad, and the ugly. As I talk to these kids when they're coming out of the dating apps and I communicate that I've got somebody who sees me, we've been learning how to see each other since we were 17 years old. Wouldn't you like that?

Some go, "Yeah," and some go, "I don't want people to see that." Well, guess what? There's some things my wife still doesn't want me to see about her. There's some things about me I still don't want her to see. That's all part of the process, but the parts that I feel safe enough to share, I know she's there. Do you want safe places? I find myself keeping trying to reverse their paradigm, their thought process on how to develop a safe place and that they are out there. But do you have the skills to develop that? Do you have the discipline to develop that? I'm really just trying to whet their appetites for all the things that we experienced at NARME like all the wonderful programs that Richard and John have developed. I'm really just trying to open the foundational understanding so they become excited about getting the training that we know there's so much of out there. Tell me, what is it that's most exciting to you about the future of NARME?

Jerry Regier: NARME, as your listeners know, is the National Alliance for Relationship and Marriage Education. They're having a summit in July. When I was growing up, we didn't think about so much being trained in relationship skills. I think we learned a lot of that from our parents and from our church and friends. But today, NARME is serving an amazing purpose because they bring in speakers and they're starting to do things like you're doing, putting online courses and making people aware of resources. Relationship skills are something you can learn. A lot of people don't realize that or don't know that or don't want to change. It takes a discipline to get this information and then put it into practice.

I'm looking forward to the conference. As you know, we're going to spend the first day of that at the Marriage Roundtable, which is a group of people that come together to network and talk about resources and how we can help change the culture of marriage in America. I'm excited about what NARME's doing and how they're starting to have a wider audience. I only became aware of NARME in the last decade, but I think they've got a plan now to move forward in a way that can really have an impact.

Calvin Copeland: I love it. I'm like a kid in a candy store. Alan Hawkins said that he sees NARME as the wholesale place. It's where the retailers come to be more effective at how to get the product out. I think that is so true. I love to get there because we share ideas, we identify how we're making connection because my personal mission is to create a voice louder than social media about what love is and for it to come alive for this generation.

I get excited when I see the lights come on for people. I got introduced to NARME because I went to a weekend marriage retreat. I went to Richard's marriage retreat thinking, okay, another date night. His curriculum was saturated with learning how to have empathetic listening and how to defer your gratification. He doesn't use these words, but how to slow it down, how to get out of the back of your brain where all your heat is going and get up to the front and start to think logically and hear each other. I went up to him and I didn't just apologize after his weekend retreat, I repented. I told him to please forgive me because I came in here real judgmental and you have just blown me away. Here's the thing that was really encouraging. I had just started my podcast and I asked him if he was ever on podcasts. He said, "Oh yeah, my wife loves your podcast." The point to that is those of us who are in this work, we know how to find the connections.

But one of the things that I've been challenged with with NARME is I feel like so often we spend too much time preaching to the choir. We're talking to the people who are already signed up. We need to keep talking to them, those are the people that need the skill set, but there is a congregation and more importantly, there are people that haven't even entered in that we need to reach. I feel like we're getting ready to tap into something. Carl here in San Antonio talks about this movement and I feel like we're getting ready to hit a movement that's going to get beyond the congregation, even out to the people that don't even know they need what we've got.

Jerry Regier: I agree with you. Carl Clayton there in San Antonio, what he's doing in Texas now with the Marriage Commission, I agree with you. I think that there's more reaching out perhaps than there has been and there's lots of opportunities and people are really being innovative in how they're getting this message out on relationships and strong healthy marriages. So I think the future is really good for NARME.

Calvin Copeland: We've been here just about under an hour. But I want to ask you this. For people listening to our conversation, what would you want them to understand about relationships and their impact on society?

Jerry Regier: This is something that people don't connect many times. Even in the relational training that we've done in Oklahoma and other places, the training is not only good for marriages, but it's good for employer-employee relationships. It's good for the public policy arena, how you treat people, how you relate to people. When we're talking about relationship education, I think it's way beyond just marriage, which is the foundational thing that sometimes we bring it to.

The society impact is something that people don't really realize. There's a lot of research out there now. The Institute for Family Studies with Brad Wilcox is doing a lot of research. The organization that I started many years ago, Family Research Council, they're involved in bringing research to bear on marriages and relationships. There's a lot of connection between societal health and relational health and marriage health.

Clearly, marriage as an institution is a glue that holds a society together. That's part of what has motivated me to help with a few others start this Marriage Roundtable idea because connecting the research with the impact on society and explaining particularly to young adults why the institution of marriage is important, and that's different than why healthy marriages are important. The institution itself has been eroded with same-sex marriages which is beyond God's design. Communicating to young people for their own happiness, for society's well-being, for their children's well-being in the future, marriage is so important. There is a connection and data shows it and experience shows it and we need to communicate that message.

Calvin Copeland: Absolutely. One of the things that I'm launching this month is relationship cohorts: We Will Together. One of the very first things that I deal with is love. I come from a biblical view and I explain the different levels of love that the Bible talks about. First, I ask them what their concept of love is and oftentimes it is around the Eros love, the physical attraction. They understand this Agape love and that they'll always be reaching for that. But I really dig into the storge and phileo love to express how that connects us in community as a whole.

One of the things that I do once I lay all that out and I break down the different levels of love is I'll tell the people that I coach that I love them. I've had over a half a dozen times where the men in particular talk about how they've never had anybody say to them that they love them. As husbands and as fathers, they're trying to figure out how to be this thing that they don't necessarily have a living example in front of them. They're just learning how to embrace the truths of the world.

The relational side of hearing that I love you and because I've just got finished breaking down the different levels of love, you know that I'm talking about a phileo love. You know that I'm constantly reaching to try to love you unconditionally as a Christian believer. That is something that we're all going to be reaching for. It introduces them to the grace of God. You're not going to be perfect. You and your spouse are always going to have arguments and disagreements, but the way you love each other through those conversations is what will bind you together. Then the scripture that says all things work together for the good of them that love the Lord and are called according to His purpose, now you can see how no matter what you've been through, when you learn how to line it up with this Word, the Lord will show you how to make it work for your good. It's been amazing to me how simply saying those words and it immediately I begin to see a change in them and their households beginning to create safe places for each other. Now the wife isn't expecting you to love me like Christ and she's understanding how to love you more like a friend. When we are able to show people what godly love looks like, it affects the workplace, it affects our school environments, and our playgrounds. It affects everything.

Jerry Regier: Exactly. What you're talking about is love is a commitment, it's a decision. When you say you see each other through, that's a commitment, it's a promise. The view of love in the world generally is this mushy kind of thing. We love the mushy part of love. But to love somebody is not just a strong feeling, it's a promise. Marriage is a promise. That's what holds a marriage together. That provides the protection, the stability, and the safe place.

Calvin Copeland: Jerry, are you trying to tell me that there's benefits to giving love? They all come to me asking how are you doing it? Do you know what kind of benefits I get because I give this love? People don't understand you get love the more you learn how to give it. You've got to first identify what your view of love was and the dysfunctions. You've got to get those cleared up so that you know how to give it in the right places so that you're not codependent and all those other kind of crazy things.

But there's benefits to this thing. That's why you see me, that's why you ask the question. How do I still have this friend that I've had for over 40 years? Because I figured out how to get the benefits out of giving this love. That same concept works in work environments when you've got a healthy work environment. I love what you talked about how you didn't just teach them skill sets, but you take them to dinner and you take them to the amusement park because it is so much about how this shows up in relationship every day. How do I make this come alive in my relationship every day? That's the thing that just gets me so excited. I want to conclude with this. Tell me more about your marriage, your romance, your personal life experience with your wife. Tell me more about what gives you such light.

Jerry Regier: Like you, we met in college. That has allowed us to know each other for a long time and to grow together. When we got married, I was 23 and she was 21. We have served in ministry together. Like you, we served in Campus Crusade, now called Cru. I think that draws you together as well. In the first 13 years of our marriage, we were with Cru and so we were ministering together, we were growing together, and we were around college kids trying to have a model ourselves for them.

Then when our kids came along, we just were joyful with the kids. We have a 10 year span from the youngest to the oldest. We have four children, two boys and two girls. For us, we do fun things together, we travel together, but I think ministry together has been a real key part of our marriage and the ability to go through the tough times. We use the words two imperfect persons come to a marriage. I'm the worst sometimes. Unfortunately, as we're talking here, she's walking around listening and so she's probably saying, well, you know, but we still strive for that marriage that God wants us to have and that's the beauty of it. Forever love is not a fantasy, but it's formed in my own marriage. We've been together in marriage for 58 years and basically it's a commitment to another person and for our children who have grown up strong and stable. It's not the house that protected them, it's not our love that protected them, it's the promise that Sharon and I had together and that has lasted now going on 60 years. Thank you, Calvin, for the opportunity to be a part of your podcast.