Save America Ministries

Chuck Crismier: It is often said that we ought to pray and not to faint. Men are at always to pray and not to faint, and that includes women as well. Since there are a lot of marriages that are fainting out there, and have been since 1968 when Ronald Reagan, as Governor of California, inaugurated the No-Fault Divorce Act, it seems that we have needed prayer like never before. And yet, we've been less prayerless than ever before, perhaps.

Indeed, if we're not supposed to faint because of our prayers, then also we need to make sure that we understand that the couple that prays together stays together. The couple that prays together stays together. But let me share a little story with you. A number of years ago, my wife and I were hosting a series of gatherings of pastors. We called it Pastor to Pastor. We would gather four to six pastors and their wives together once a month for a meal together, praying together, sharing the Word together, and so on.

One day, as we were going through this process with one of the sets of couples, I asked a particular wife, a pastor's wife, to lead us in prayer. There was a dead silence. A dead silence. And I do mean a pregnant silence. And then after this pregnant silence, she voiced to the group, "I can't do that," and looked at her husband and said, "You'll laugh at me."

I want you to think about that. A pastor's wife turned to her husband in the midst of other pastors and their wives and said, "You'll laugh at me." You know what she was testifying to? That that pastor and his wife never prayed together. I want you to think about that. If the pastor and his wife are not praying together, how about the people in the congregation?

You begin to get the import. It was one of the most dramatic experiences that we've ever had in counseling couples and working with them. And they supposedly weren't even a couple that was breaking apart. And so today on Viewpoint, I ask you, what is the condition of your marriage? Are you praying together? Are you having difficulty?

I want to share with you just very quickly before we introduce our special guest today that we, in our marriage—and we've been married now almost 60 years come in just a few months—my wife wrote in our book, Lasting Love: Enduring Secrets for Marital Success, that we wrote in celebration of our 50th wedding anniversary. She said that my husband, she said, we prayed together and with our family in some fashion from our earliest days of marriage.

As a wife, I yearned for more intimate and consistent prayer with my husband. It seemed that there was an almost palpable spiritual vacuum. I could feel it, yet not fully identify the sense that something was missing. Although I was raised in a pastor's home and was a sincere follower of Christ, I wrote prayer and study of the Scriptures seemed private things.

My wife wrote, "I could never quite fathom the seeming dissonance between personal faith and the unwillingness to engage me publicly or relationally in the process. It was as if holy matrimony was missing a key ingredient of shared holiness." After three decades of marriage came a decisive change. It is a bit of mystery to determine exactly how God moved upon Chuck's mind so as to gain a deeper understanding of the spiritual vision that would catapult an otherwise good Christian marriage into a far more meaningful and satisfying godly marriage.

But I would like to share with you both the delightful change of heart and the resulting life practice that has changed our home, breathing fresh air into our marriage. And Chuck took the lead. He suggested with a measure of husbandly authority that we should begin to read the Bible and pray together daily. He knew that it would require changes in thinking and personal scheduling practices. And so we determined together to adjust our patterns of sleeping and rising, as much as possible, to meet our respective personal clocks. And so we did.

As a husband, I wrote, "I knew that this must be and become a marital priority. Although we had counseled many couples through marital crises and I had pastored God's people in various venues for years, we now were confronted with a choice that would dramatically, although not perceived at the time, unveil the further mystery of marriage as God had intended."

And friends, that's what we did. That's what we did 30 years ago. 30 years ago, and from my wife's perspective, it changed everything. And I do mean changed everything. The couple that prays together stays together and actually rejoices together. Today on Viewpoint, we have another very special couple that has some things to share with us. They're from Ohio, right there in the center of the country. They say people that really honor the Lord and love one another actually pray together there in Ohio as well. Brad and Heidi Mitchell, joining us here on Viewpoint. It's good to have you guys on the program.

Heidi Mitchell: Thanks for having us.

Brad Mitchell: It's great to be with you, Chuck. Thank you.

Chuck Crismier: Well, you've been married for 43 years, I understand.

Brad Mitchell: Yeah, coming up in June it'll be 43. But way to go to you two. I mean, we really honor and respect your journey of marriage as well.

Chuck Crismier: Well, Brad, they say faith is a long obedience in the same direction. So you've been married by faith for 43 years, right?

Brad Mitchell: That's a great way to apply that quote. I love it.

Chuck Crismier: That's a good pastoral application, isn't it?

Brad Mitchell: I'll use it.

Chuck Crismier: So Heidi, what does it feel like to be married to a pastor for all this time? How would you relate to that woman that I shared about who looked at her husband and said, "You'll laugh at me if I pray"?

Heidi Mitchell: First of all, I've enjoyed being a pastor's wife and it hasn't been a burden for us. We've been for the most part in really great churches and with great staffs and leaderships. So I've enjoyed being a pastor's wife. And when I think about that woman that was a pastor's wife and said that her husband would laugh at her, it makes me really sad because obviously perhaps at one time, maybe once, they tried praying and it wasn't a good experience. Perhaps he did laugh at her.

And I just think that's sad because I think prayer unleashes God's power into your marriage. I think if you're really going to have a solid, godly, strong marriage, you need to pray together and not because you have to, but because you want to and you recognize what it does for your marriage. So I think, like you, I think it's shocking and it's one of the saddest things I've ever heard. But unfortunately, in ministry, it's a very—maybe not the laughing part, but the statistic is a very common one because only five percent of all couples pray together and in ministry, only six percent of all ministry couples pray together.

Chuck Crismier: Well, Brad, that would be a problem, it seems to me, since the statistic shows that 70 percent of professing Christian wives of pastoring husbands claim that their marriages aren't very good.

Brad Mitchell: Yeah, that's exactly right. I mean, you look at the lack of connection spiritually and then there's going to be a cascading disconnection in every other aspect of their marriage and their relationship, whether it's conversations or problem solving, conflict management. That connection is gone when they're not even praying together.

Chuck Crismier: And certainly business keeps us away from those things. They call it the tyranny of too much to do. It's tyrannical and it keeps us from doing the things that we ought to be doing. We'll be talking more with Brad and Heidi in just a few moments. Build your marriage with prayer. We'll be right back.

Guest (Male): Once upon a time, children could pray and read their Bibles in school. Divorces were practically unknown as was child abuse. In our once-great America, virginity and chastity were popular virtues and homosexuality was an abomination. So what happened in just one generation?

Hi, I'm Chuck Crismier, and I urge you to join me daily on Viewpoint where we discuss the most challenging issues touching our hearts and homes. Could America's moral slide relate to the Fourth Commandment? Listen to Viewpoint on this radio station or anytime at saveus.org.

Chuck Crismier: Marriages may be born at the altar, but they have to be built after that because that's just the beginning. It's like the new birth, you see. The new birth is a new birth, but you're still a baby. That means you have to be disciplined. You have to grow. And the same is true with marriage. Unfortunately, we have the idea that they just happen. No, good marriages don't just happen. They're built.

And it can be difficult. When you build a house, you have to first set the foundation. And you know what? It takes them as long to build the foundation as it does the rest of the house. That is true for almost every other building. So the foundation is really necessary. It seems to me, Brad, that the foundation of our marriages should have something to do with praying together. What say you?

Brad Mitchell: Absolutely, because you want to have Christ at the center of your marriage. And I really like what your wife wrote about the fact that for a long time everything was just kept private as far as your own individual spiritual growth for 30 years. And so many couples hold on to that same philosophy that my faith is private. Well, it's supposed to be personal, but it was never meant to be private.

And together you're to be growing, obviously, in your own individual walk with Christ, but together you're to be coming together before the throne of God and recognizing the power and the authority of Christ in your marriage and over your marriage. And that's the foundation on which everything else is built.

Chuck Crismier: Well, you know what I have felt is that a lot of couples, professing Christian couples, don't really want to come before the throne of God because that intimates to them authority, and they don't want to be under God's authority. They want to do their own thing and then claim the blessings of God because they name Christ as their Savior.

Brad Mitchell: Well, and I would agree with that. I think even in how people look at Scripture or interpret Scripture, they pull out the verses that support what they want to do. But they're not looking at the passages that are going to be challenging them toward holiness and toward righteousness and how God wants us to be living both individually as well as a couple. So you're exactly right, Chuck.

Chuck Crismier: Heidi, you know what they call that in the legal business? Forum shopping. Always looking for a verse or always looking for a church or always looking for a publisher, always looking for a broadcaster that would tell us what we want to hear. Of course, you've never heard that, right, Brad?

Brad Mitchell: I've never heard of forum shopping, but my goodness, we live in such a consumeristic society right now where people are going to whatever church it is of the flavor of the year or flavor of the weekend. If they want good teaching, they go to this church. If they want good music, they go to this church. Sometimes it's just Pastor Pillow in the Church of the Innerspring, and that's where they end up staying.

Chuck Crismier: Well, I think that's where Burger King got its message. Got to give the people what they want, have it your way.

Brad Mitchell: Well, unfortunately, I think that's a lot of how our consumeristic society is these days, right? I mean, it is forum shopping. Exactly.

Chuck Crismier: Yeah. So Heidi, when did you and Brad begin praying together? I mean, really seriously praying together?

Heidi Mitchell: Well, we always prayed because we were both raised in Christian homes and we knew the value of it. But we didn't—we prayed more individually and then we'd come together like at night before we went to sleep and we'd just pray.

Chuck Crismier: Like my wife and I then.

Heidi Mitchell: Yeah, exactly. Like kind of bless us, bless our kids, that kind of thing. Bless our jobs. But I would say probably about 15 or 20 years ago, we went through a difficult season in our marriage and we—

Chuck Crismier: Wait a minute. You're a pastor's wife and you had a difficult season in your marriage.

Heidi Mitchell: Oh, yeah. Yeah, we did. Probably one of the deepest valleys a couple can go through, frankly.

Chuck Crismier: Okay. Well, we're not going to go to the depths of that because you prayed out from under it.

Heidi Mitchell: Right, and we did. We started praying. I mean, we both began praying more fervently individually, but we also recognized that we needed to come together and pray as a couple. And that that was important to do because if we really wanted God at the center, we had to submit to His will. We needed to do it together. We needed to do it out loud and we needed to do it in each other's presence. And so we changed how we prayed and it's made a huge difference.

Chuck Crismier: Heidi, what were the mechanics of how that happened, though? I mean, somebody had to take the lead in that, right?

Heidi Mitchell: Yeah, I think Brad took the lead in that.

Brad Mitchell: Well, and I'll speak into that for a moment because like you said, we're not going to unpack all of that valley that we were in. But when you're in a valley, that does require a crying out to God, you know, and really seeking His face. I mean, you look at David in Psalm 22 using the same words Jesus used on the cross. It was, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" There's a time when in, I think, most marriages, when you hit that valley and whatever it may be, and you're going, "God, we need you."

And it's that cry of desperation, that rawness, the authenticity of really seeking His face and His presence in your marriage. And that's really what kind of stripped away all the facade of the rote prayers and brought us to a place kind of of ground zero in the way that we sought God together. And we saw Him work in just a mighty, powerful, miraculous way. And that that's where those authentic prayers really came about for us.

Chuck Crismier: You know, Brad, as a pastor, I can understand why Heidi would say, "Well, my husband took the lead in our inaugurating this." My wife said the same thing. However, what I have discovered across this country is that outside of the pastorship, so many families, Christian families, have the wife or the mother as the head of the spiritual home. And the cry of every Christian woman is, "Why can't or won't my husband be the spiritual leader of our home?" So that then puts the burden on the wife to go and take the leadership to her husband and say, "Hey, sweetheart, it just seems to me this would be very, very important for us to do. Would you be willing to do that?" And that's a tall order for a lot of men to respond.

Brad Mitchell: Well, it's kind of interesting the way that at least I've been thinking about it. Chuck, as men, we can appreciate the fact that we never want to look like failures or less than to our wives. We like the hero mentality and to be strong, secure, sure of ourselves. And we recognize often in the home that our wife knows more of the Bible, has been in Bible studies more, has more spiritual conversations, is more open about that. So there's a lot of insecurity that men feel around that.

And then it's the vulnerability of prayer as well that I think a lot of guys struggle with, like opening up themselves when they are accustomed to that. Let alone the fact that there's spiritual warfare where Satan's going to do everything he can to try to keep us from doing the very thing that we should be doing to build our marriage.

Just as you said, you've got to invest in it and grow it. And one of the things that we found for men, at least I found, is reframing the whole spiritual leadership conversation from the husband being the spiritual leader to talking about being the spiritual initiator. It's still the same thing. You're still leading. But instead of kind of thinking, "Oh, I have to know more, I have to have more of a history with the Bible or with God than my wife," instead you just be the initiator. You initiate praying together. You initiate making sure you go to church. You initiate making sure that the two of you are having spiritual conversations of where you've seen God at work lately. Every husband can do that. Every husband can do that.

Chuck Crismier: That is a very, very good point. Well spoken, my friend. Husband needs to be the initiator. And that's exactly how God ordained things even in the physical realm, isn't it?

Brad Mitchell: That's right. That's exactly right.

Chuck Crismier: And a woman is waiting for the husband to be the initiator. Ah, well spoken. How say you, Heidi?

Heidi Mitchell: Well, I love that. I loved it when he started initiating prayer. And this is kind of a funny story that we started, maybe something that we started doing about four or five years ago before we would go our separate ways to go to work or just leave the house if we were both working at home. Brad would just put his arms around me and he would say a prayer of blessing over me before he left or before I left.

And I loved that because I just felt so protected and I felt like whatever happened to me in that particular day, you know, it had been sifted through God's hand and Brad had prayed for the people I was going to interact with, the situations that I would come across. And so I would just stand there and let him pray for me.

And then after, you know, maybe six months or a year, all of a sudden one day it dawned on me, why am I just taking all this in and not praying for him? And so he never talked to me about it, but then I thought, "Hey, I can do this." And I said, "Hey, I want to pray for you too." And so now, you know, many years later, I've started praying—I mean, I started praying for him and it's a practice that we've done for several years now. It's just blessed both of us and we feel united and just like we can take on the world as we part for the day.

Brad Mitchell: Yeah, and Chuck, you know, one of the things with that, any husband can do this. You just take your wife in your arms and you say, "God, I just pray your blessing over my wife today." And maybe you think of her activities as she goes to work or as she's with the kids or whatever it may be. And then she really knows the nearness of Your presence and Your favor. Amen. And that's it. Any husband can do that.

Chuck Crismier: Wow. Well, that's pretty simple. And of course, getting in one another's arms ain't too bad either.

Brad Mitchell: Yeah, there's no time for it to lead to anything else, so you just pray.

Chuck Crismier: Okay. The book, friends, Build Your Marriage with Prayer. According to a police lieutenant, retired director of Law Enforcement Fellowship, he says this is a Spirit-filled masterpiece. Now for a law enforcement person to say that when law enforcement has one of the highest divorce rates of any profession in the country—yeah, one of the highest divorce rates—for him to say that is saying something. Build Your Marriage with Prayer.

It's a $20 book, yours for $16 on our website, saveus.org. Saveus.org. You can give us a call at 1-800-SAVE-USA, 1-800-SAVE-USA, or write to us at Save America Ministries, PO Box 70879, Richmond, Virginia, 23255, writing a check add $6 for postage and handling. By the way, I'm going to make a special offer here for an extra $5 we'll put in your hands Lasting Love: Enduring Secrets for Marital Success, a $13 book. We'll just put it right in your hand so you'll have both of them together. What a lively duo that will be for you, friends.

Okay, now this matter of building your marriage. That has to be done one piece at a time. You can't build the superstructure of your marriage without certainly building the foundation. Can you, Heidi?

Heidi Mitchell: No, you have to. We believe that you have to build your marriage on prayer. A lot of people will think you build your marriage on having shared financial goals or on your children or on shared vision, things like that. But the foundation really has to be prayer because everything else is girded up by prayer and prayer affects all of those other issues that come along in marriage. Prayer affects your finances, it affects your children, it affects your vision, it affects your home, your church, everything. And the tentacles just reach out into all those other areas. So prayer has to be the foundation because that's what you share, that's where you submit your wills to God, and that's where it really begins.

Chuck Crismier: Well, Brad, though, the problem is that so many couples prey on one another instead of over one another.

Brad Mitchell: Boy, that was a good use of words there, Chuck. I love it. But you know what? Honestly, Chuck, that really brings something to light because I think one of the reasons that a lot of couples don't like to pray together is they do feel vulnerable and like maybe their spouse is going to be preaching at them instead of to the Lord. And so it's under the guise of prayer, at least, and so they're going, "Well, God, I just pray that You'd really help Heidi to see my perspective in this and that she would grow in humility and she would learn how to, you know, whatever." And so you end up, you're not praying. You're just, like you said, P-R-E-Y-I-N-G. You're preying on your spouse that way.

Chuck Crismier: Isn't that interesting? That is not only dangerous, it's offensive and it will be the surest way to destroy the willingness of the spouses to come together and pray.

Brad Mitchell: Well, that's exactly right. So it goes back to that conversation that that pastor's wife said as she kind of shot the comment to her husband saying, "You'll laugh at me." It goes back to that same thing. Instead of "You'll laugh at me," it could be "You'll criticize me" and "You'll hold this against me," or "You're going to weaponize prayer in some way." And so couples just shut down and they don't even want to either continue praying or begin praying because they're concerned about that environment.

Chuck Crismier: So the time of praying together, Heidi, is not for the wife to say to the Lord with her husband, "Lord, help my husband to be the spiritual leader of our home."

Heidi Mitchell: Absolutely not. No. We believe you need to make prayer a positive experience, especially if you're starting it. Don't use it to criticize your spouse. Don't use it in a manipulative way. Don't use it in any way like that. Just make it positive, make it short when you start out. We really encourage couples to do sentence prayers, maybe like, "Dear Lord, we are thankful for," or "I'm thankful for," and then rattle off a couple things, my job and my family.

And if that's even too difficult when you first start, find a Psalm or maybe somebody from the classics like Oswald Chambers or a classic pastor like Charles Spurgeon or somebody, find a prayer that they wrote and then read that together.

Chuck Crismier: Well, I want to share a little story with you after this break that you just spawned in my own remembrance. It's a pretty shaking experience, but it might help us to kind of put the perspective in the right place. We'll be right back, friends, with our special guest Brad and Heidi Mitchell. Their book Build Your Marriage with Prayer, right there on our website saveus.org.

Guest (Male): There is so much more about Chuck Crismier and Save America Ministries on our website, saveus.org. For example, under the marriage section, God has marriage on His mind. Chuck has some great resources to strengthen your marriage. First off, a fact sheet on the state of the marital union, a fact sheet on the state of ministry marriage and morals, saveus.org. Marriage, divorce, and remarriage. What does the Bible really teach about this? Find out all of this at saveus.org. Also, a letter to pastors, the Hosea Project, saveus.org, and many more resources to strengthen your marriage. It's all on Chuck's website, saveus.org. Again, you can listen to Chuck's Viewpoint broadcasts live and archived at Save America Ministries website at saveus.org.

Chuck Crismier: Welcome back to Viewpoint. I'm Chuck Crismier. Viewpoint determines destiny, friends. There are no neutral viewpoints and our viewpoint concerning whether or not we should involve serious and continuous prayer in our marriages are determining destiny, whether you believe it or not.

I want to share a little story with you. It goes back about 40 years. I and one of my brothers and a friend were climbing the 14,000-foot Mount Whitney on the eastern face, and it's the highest mount in the contiguous United States, over 14,000 feet. And so we were climbing there and getting up toward the summit. We were about 500 feet short of the summit, climbing over some very steep talus blocks. And all of a sudden, something happened that was totally unexpected.

Jets began to swoop over that mountain low and breaking the sound barrier. Low and breaking the sound barrier. And when you break the sound barrier like that, it causes a great shaking. Much like what happened at Mount Sinai, I think, when God appeared and there was a great shaking. It was terrifying, absolutely terrifying, as we were frozen in the extreme cold there. And you say, "Well, what could possibly be the implication here?" Well, here's the application.

For many years growing up in the church and then married for about 30 years at this particular point, being mostly private in the way that I spent my time with the Lord, an hour every day in the morning and so on, and God spoke to my heart and that we were to spend time together now, reading the Scriptures and praying together. Well, the problem with that was that I wasn't used to talking with my wife in those kinds of terms.

In fact, there was a lacking of a spiritual intimacy in talking with my wife in that regard. I know it sounds very strange after you've listened to me on the air now for over 30 years. But that's the way it was. And God had to break the sound barrier. As a husband, as a pastor, I had to have the sound barrier broken in my life. Now, what did that do? It freed me up to be able to speak in a way that was edifying, that was encouraging, that was spiritually minded, that my wife could receive, that we could share together, and it changed the entire atmosphere. I had to have a great shaking and it shook me up and it broke the sound barrier.

And from that point on, I was actually able to do some things that I had not been able to do with great freedom before that and that is bless and praise my wife and so on, which you'll find in our book Lasting Love: Enduring Secrets for Marital Success, which will change your life as well. So some of us need to have the sound barrier broken. I don't know whether you had to have that problem, Brad, but I certainly did.

Brad Mitchell: Yeah, I don't think I did, partly because I'm a talker and Heidi is too and we were praying, you know, and so that helped us. I think for people who are more introverted, I think that would be more of a challenge. And also people who've never really heard themselves pray. A lot of times people just pray silently, which is fine, I'm not knocking it. But I'm just saying the idea of praying your prayers out loud when you've never even heard yourself pray a prayer out loud, that's a sound barrier that also needs to be broken that is a powerful one, frankly, and a real important one, I think, in each person's spiritual development.

Chuck Crismier: Well, how about no longer praying pontificating prayers but actual relational prayers together?

Brad Mitchell: Boy, that is true as well. I mean, one of the things Heidi talks about that is so true is that often people think that they need to use old King James language, which is fine if that's natural to you. But generally, when you're praying, you're just talking to God and coming before, again, He's Almighty God, you're to be reverent about your relationship with Him. But at the same time, it is a conversation that you're having with Him.

Chuck Crismier: Exactly. Okay, now you guys are in ministry. You've pastored and so on. You have a family?

Heidi Mitchell: We do. We have three married children, boy, girl, girl, and four grandchildren, four and under.

Brad Mitchell: And you'll like this, our son and daughter-in-law are both attorneys as well.

Chuck Crismier: Are you kidding me? Well, that's a nemesis of a pastor, isn't it?

Brad Mitchell: Well, it's kind of nice to have it in your back pocket, frankly.

Chuck Crismier: And Heidi, I understand your father was a trial lawyer.

Heidi Mitchell: He was.

Chuck Crismier: But he represented the defense, those nasty insurance companies.

Brad Mitchell: Well, Chuck, we'll go one step deeper. Her grandfather was Chief Justice of the Supreme Court where she grew up in her state.

Chuck Crismier: Are you kidding me? Oh my goodness. Well, you know, this level of braggadocio is not going to get you anywhere.

Brad Mitchell: We just thought it might be of interest to you at least, you know, on that level.

Chuck Crismier: It's fascinating. No, it's fascinating, isn't it?

Brad Mitchell: So we needed a minister in the family, so off we go.

Chuck Crismier: Yeah. Well, my wife had a great-great-great uncle who was the first president of the United States under the Continental Congress. His name was Samuel Huntington.

Brad Mitchell: Oh my goodness, that's fascinating. You trumped all of the things we just said there.

Chuck Crismier: Be careful about your use of that word, though, because it might be problematic for some people. Okay, well, we can have a good time talking about marriage and our relationships together, and we should. And one of the things, first of all, I want you to tell us how you laid your book out so that people can understand what they're getting.

Heidi Mitchell: Well, what we did is as we realized that people really didn't know how to pray together, they might know they were supposed to, they might even want to at some point. We decided we would take some topics. We took things that were real common like finances and time and things, friends, things like that, church.

But then we also took things that were a little bit different, like having fun together or traveling or our thought life, things like temptation. And we just took a different topic for 40 days. So each topic is a chapter and then we start with a Bible verse and then we go into that and we talk about whatever that particular topic is.

Like if it's integrity, we just kind of go through that and then we have a prayer and it's a written prayer and we assign either the wife or the husband to pray that particular day so that the wife can't be the one who's praying all the time or, conversely, the husband can't be the one who's praying all the time. They both have to pray. We encourage them to pray out loud. And then we have a couple questions that they can ask each other so that the prayer itself is not going to cause conflict. They can just pray it and then if there's something they need to kind of root out or talk about, that can come out in the question part of the chapter.

Brad Mitchell: And each one of these chapters is only a couple pages long, two or three pages. It's not something that's going to consume a whole portion of your day. And then every 10 days, we've included a prayer exercise for the couple so they can go a little bit deeper in their practice of prayer as well.

Chuck Crismier: Okay, so the Bible says men ought always to pray and not to faint, talks about prayer and fasting. You're not talking about 40 days of fasting while you teach them to pray, are you?

Brad Mitchell: Absolutely not. I like food.

Heidi Mitchell: But we do have a chapter on fasting because we think it's important.

Chuck Crismier: The book, friends, is called Build Your Marriage with Prayer. It is a $20 book, yours for $16 on our website, saveus.org. Saveus.org. You can call us at 1-800-SAVE-USA, you can write to us at Save America Ministries, PO Box 70879, Richmond, Virginia, 23255, you're writing a check add $6 for postage and handling.

Now, I made a special offer that our book Lasting Love: Enduring Secrets for Marital Success, it's a $14 book, but it's going to be yours for just $5 in addition if you want it on top of the Build Your Marriage with Prayer. And it's going to build two completely different aspects together that will coordinate together to strengthen your marriages. If you want that, you're going to have to call us and identify that that's what you want, is that special offer with Lasting Love as well.

All right, now this matter of building our marriage with prayer. I want to share something with you that will go just a little bit further than what we've talked about so far. When my wife and I came to the realization, especially me, when I came to the realization that I was not effectively leading our family, and that it really—and that is my marriage—in prayer together with my wife and in spending time in the Word, we made the commitment that we're going to get together every single day without fail. Did you hear without fail?

We made a vow. And the Bible says better that you not vow than that you vow and not pay. Don't say before the angel it was an error. So for the last 30 years, we have kept that vow. Even when we're out of town, even when one of us was out of town. How did we do that? By cell phone. We would sit together, we would read the Word together, we would pray, we would talk, we would apply, the same thing as if we were in one another's presence. And we've done that for 30 years.

So it may amount to 20 minutes, it may amount to an hour. It didn't matter because the import was how important it was to do. And as a result of that, it became so integral to our marriage that my wife will tell you to this day it's the most important thing we ever did. The most important thing we ever did.

From her perspective, she had a hard time connecting what she felt was connecting as a wife with her husband in a more intimate way. This was the means that accomplished that purpose between the Lord and each one of us. As the Scripture says, a threefold cord is not easily broken. So I wanted to share that with you because it might inspire somebody out there. You know what? In fact, I know having shared that story with a number of people over the years that there are couples across this country that are doing just that. I know that. Some are getting up at five in the morning to do that. That's right, in order to make it happen. Well, you don't necessarily have to do that, but everything takes time, doesn't it, Heidi?

Heidi Mitchell: Absolutely. And I think really setting aside that time is key because it's not just going to happen. You have to be intentional to make prayer happen just as you and your wife were. And when you think about it, you know, anybody—you don't even have to be married, I mean, we don't condone this—but you don't have to be married to go have sex with somebody. You don't have to have a—you can have a conversation with anybody. But to really pray with somebody, it takes a deep level of intimacy.

Chuck Crismier: It sure does, if we're willing to allow it to go to that level. And of course, to be at one with the Lord requires a level of intimacy as, you know, Jesus had to get away to pray away from the clutter and the business of the day. We'll be right back after this, friends. Stay tuned. This is Viewpoint.

Guest (Male): Have you ever considered what the early church was like? Many people are developing a heart longing for a greater fulfillment in our practices as Christians. A recent study showed 53,000 people a week are leaving the backdoor of America's churches in frustration. What is going on? Why has there not been even a 1 percent gain among followers of Christ in the last 25 years? Could it be that God is seeking to restore first-century Christianity for the 21st century?

Jesus said, "I'll build my church." Is Christ by His Spirit stirring to prepare the church for the 21st century? The early church prayed together and broke bread from house to house. They were family and it was said by all who observed, "Behold how they love one another." Incredible, but the same can be found right now. Go to saveus.org and click Sell Church. We can revive first-century Christianity for the 21st century. It's about people, not programs. It's about a body, not a building. That's saveus.org. Click Sell Church.

Chuck Crismier: Replace the word Sell Church with Home Church and you're going to get close to the New Testament. All right, as we're talking today about prayer and our marriages, there's a word that comes up in day 26 of your book, Brad, and that is the word conflict. How do you pray together when it seems that you're in conflict?

Brad Mitchell: Well, it can sound real awkward. But really, when you're focusing on the issue and not on each other and you're bringing the issue that you're in conflict about before the Lord, versus preaching at each other or praying that the other one changes their mind, you're focusing on the issue. Then whatever the answer is that God ultimately reveals through the process, whatever that answer is, it's really His answer to the two of you.

It's not like one of you won and the other one lost. It's like both of you surrendered, submitted to Him and you're waiting on Him for the wisdom or direction or whatever you need or the peace in the process and then you're able to move ahead. The reality is statistically 69 percent of all conflicts in marriage are never resolved. And so sometimes it's you're praying about it, but you're also learning how you can live in that lack of resolution, but to do so still resolved in your marriage.

Chuck Crismier: In other words, you gotta do-si-do, Heidi.

Heidi Mitchell: Sometimes you do. But you know what's interesting is sometimes when you're in conflict over an issue and you both submit to God and you pray about it, one of your minds may be changed. And I mean we've had incidences where that's happened in our marriage. We've come where we both submit our wills and all of a sudden a couple hours later, one of us will come to the other and go, "You know, I think you might be right. I think I see it your way now."

Chuck Crismier: Oh wow. Now who does that the most? You don't have to answer the question because that could bring on spiritual warfare, right?

Brad Mitchell: I refuse to answer on the grounds that I may incriminate myself. Oh, that was good.

Chuck Crismier: So now one of the things since you have four grandchildren—we have 10 and two great-grandchildren—and they're not all great, so grandchildren are like anybody else. They have minds of their own. Our grandchildren range in age—that is, our actual grandchildren range in age from 15 to 33 and range in age from the early years of high school to graduating from the highest levels of medical school. So we've got everything in between. How do you pray for grandchildren, Heidi?

Heidi Mitchell: Well, I think you pray however God leads you. But I think you really pray that they come—our grandchildren are younger, so I think we pray that they come to Christ at an early age, that they desire what God's heart is, they desire to seek the Lord. You can pray for protection for them. You can pray for them to have God's wisdom. You can pray for their friends and the people who are going to influence them, their teachers.

You can pray for a potential mate down the road that they would find a godly man or woman when the time is right. And just that—one thing I pray is that evil will not see them, that evil will not want to attack them or have any interest in them and that they will be able to have courage and be brave and be strong in the Lord.

Chuck Crismier: Now what you just brought up is going to take a bit of time to pray all of that, and it can't possibly be written at the end of one of your chapters. So you've dug a whole lot deeper, and now you're leading us into where I think ultimately you would hope that married couples would be praying in that way.

Heidi Mitchell: One thing you can do too is if you come across a particular verse—like when I'm reading my devotions, if I come across a particular verse, I will pray that verse for our children and our grandkids.

Brad Mitchell: Yeah, and Chuck, you're exactly right. These 40 days are meant to just really be a roadmap or to give a couple traction so they can begin on the path that you and your wife have been on for 30 years now. It's just meant to help couples get into the starting blocks and to start down on that track of praying with each other.

Chuck Crismier: You know, a lot of people think that the Christian life is getting into the starting blocks. And it's amazing to me how people think that evangelism is the end of the game, or that getting somebody to confess faith in Christ is the end of the game. No, that's just the beginning. You're just getting in the starting blocks. But if you don't finish the race, then what? So the idea is here, you want to get—you're helping people to get into the starting blocks to run the spiritual race, praying together, spending the time in the Word together, talking about it, applying it. And then as they begin to do that and with intent, as you said Heidi, then the idea is you continue to do it and progress in that until you finish the race which is at the end of your life.

Heidi Mitchell: That's absolutely right. And you can never pray enough. I mean, the more you pray, the more you realize that there are more things for you to pray about, both for your spouse, for yourself, for your friends, your grandkids, your kids, great-grandkids you have.

Chuck Crismier: How about the issue of temptation? Brad, that's a tough one to pray about, isn't it?

Brad Mitchell: Well, yeah, that can be a tough one to pray about in front of your spouse, right? But there are things that as a husband and wife can tempt you as well. Some of them can be things like discontent. It could be things like greed or the pursuit of power or keeping up with your neighbors. There could be a lot of things that can be tempting to us like do we want to overload our kids in all kinds of activities just like everybody else does or do we need to have some wisdom in how we process those things?

So there's a lot of things that as husband and wife we need to be careful about. And one of the things that is important is just to really as a couple consider is this going to be drawing us closer to God? Is this thing that we're considering or really kind of feeling drawn to, does it contradict in Scripture? Is there some way that we're rationalizing it, which is really just rational lies when you're considering it? So there's a lot of things around temptation as a husband and wife that need to be prayed about and prayed through.

Chuck Crismier: You also have a chapter on sexual intimacy, Heidi. How do you pray about that together?

Heidi Mitchell: Well, I think you pray that sexual intimacy we believe is very important because without it you're not going to be as close. I mean you're just not going to be as close. It's very important. So I think you pray that you will both desire it. You can pray about the timing. If you have struggles in that area, pray that God will soften your heart toward your spouse and you will want it.

Pray that your spouse will desire it with you. And then maybe have a conversation. When's a good time for us? Maybe you're just missing the time. Maybe one's an early bird, one's a night owl. So discuss that, talk about it, and sometimes you may need to go to a doctor or a counselor to work through those deeper—there may be deeper issues there that you may not even be aware of.

Chuck Crismier: All right. Praying together, staying together. We've dealt with temptation, we've dealt with contentment, you just mentioned that. How about spiritual warfare, Brad?

Brad Mitchell: Well, I think every honest couple would say, "Yep, we've experienced spiritual warfare in our marriage." A lot of times it happens when the enemy shoots doubts into our mind about our spouse, about their motives, about their behavior, about what they've been up to. He really tries to attack us first and foremost through our mind. Sometimes it can happen through some of the things that we just talked about with temptation or the enemy will try to stir up within us a sense of strife with our spouse thinking, "They don't really love me, they don't really care about me, they're not really on board with me, I need to be happy."

There can be times when the enemy plays those kinds of games in our minds as well. All of that is an opening for the enemy. I'll add into that too. I think that the purity of what we watch, what we bring into our home matters. People have no idea the kind of foothold they're giving to the enemy by the things that they're allowing in through their TV or through any kind of a screen in their home or through the music.

You've got to be so aware of the fact that the enemy is going to be at work to try to weasel his way into your home, into your mind, into your marriage because what he wants to do is kill, steal, and destroy. And you know, it's interesting because half of all marriages, first marriages, end in divorce. But for the couples that pray together—get this—it's one out of every 1,152. Why? Because they bring Jesus Christ into the center of their marriage, they're focused on the Lord, they're bringing His power to play in their marriage and they're keeping the enemy at bay.

Chuck Crismier: Absolutely. And quite frankly, depending on what you're viewing, you might be viewing some things that stir you up in one sense but are actually breeding discontent with your sexual relationship so that you don't have one. You're having a sexual relationship with the things on the screen instead of with your spouse.

Brad Mitchell: Great point. That's absolutely right. And it's prevalent throughout the whole community, throughout all of our society. We could go down a whole path on that for an entire hour and the protective measures we need to have in our marriage.

Chuck Crismier: All right, so what do you do, Brad, with the issue of pornography when over 70 percent of professing Christian men admit to being involved in pornography, 30-plus percent of Christian pastors admit to being involved in pornography, and 34 percent of Christian wives admit to being involved in their forms of pornography? What do you say? How do you pray about that?

Brad Mitchell: Well, of course, there's prayer that needs to be going into that. Couldn't agree with you more. But also, as a husband and wife, you can be praying for each other's purity and for their walk with the Lord and be mindful of the kinds of things that you're bringing into your home.

But also there's accountability. I mean, I've got an accountability partner. We call each other every Wednesday morning and he's a pastor also. We're able to talk—we were in high school together so we've known each other and we can be straightforward and honest in accountability relationship.

I also recommend there's a website, it's covenanteyes.com. And Covenant Eyes, it's a filter for every screen that you have and you assign somebody who's going to get any links to any questionable things you've looked at. And that also is a great accountability process for keeping those kinds of things out of your life. If you're like, "Oh boy, if I go there, somebody else is going to see it," you can break that habit very, very quickly.

Chuck Crismier: Well, you're building—you're involved in Build Your Marriage. That's the special ministry that you're involved in addition to pastoring, isn't it, Heidi?

Heidi Mitchell: That's correct. We started it several years ago because we wanted to help couples build a Christ-centered marriage, no matter where they are. Whether they're a Christian, we wanted to make it stronger. If they're not believers in Jesus Christ, we wanted them to become believers and then grow and be discipled in building a Christian marriage.

Chuck Crismier: So how would people get ahold of you then?

Brad Mitchell: Best way is on our website, it's just buildyourmarriage.org, .org. That's pretty simple. Buildyourmarriage.org.

Chuck Crismier: All right. Now the final thing that I ask you about is probably the biggest one of all: forgiveness. Jesus said if you will not forgive others their trespasses against you, neither will He forgive—then neither will Christ forgive you. That's a pretty awesome thing. How do you deal with that in your marriage through prayer, Heidi?

Heidi Mitchell: Well, you've got to have forgiveness first of all, because if you don't have it, your marriage is just going to get stuck, to be honest. And God forgave us for our sins by sending Jesus to the cross and we need to forgive our spouse. It's the only way you can move forward. So we say forgive quickly, forgive completely.

Sometimes you have to forgive even if your spouse doesn't ask for forgiveness. You just need to take that step because it keeps you from bitterness and keeps you clean before the Lord.

Chuck Crismier: Because the root of bitterness will prevent your prayers from being answered, I think. In fact, the Scripture says don't be bitter against your wives lest your prayers not be answered. That's pretty tough talk for these troubled times, isn't it, Brad?

Brad Mitchell: And it's important talk because I think a lot of men are seething inside toward their wives and it's impacting the way that they treat them. They're not gentle, they're harsh, they're angry, they're critical instead of bringing the love of Christ into their home and doing what Paul writes about in Ephesians 5, and that is loving your wife as Christ loved the church and gave Himself up for her. And so that forgiveness is huge so that no roots of bitterness or resentment take place inside the soul and in the marriage.

Chuck Crismier: Brad, do you realize how dangerous it is for guys like us who are pastors to talk about this? Because everybody's going to look at you and say, "Hey, how about you, brother? How about you, pastor?" Oh, I saw this, I saw that.

Brad Mitchell: That's true. I mean, there's an extra accountability for those who teach. You're held in a higher accountability. That's exactly right.

Chuck Crismier: All right. It's great to have you two on board with us here and this program will be up on our website this evening. It'll be up there for about a year. Your book will be up on our website for a long time now. Build Your Marriage with Prayer. $20 book, yours for $16, friends. Just give us a call, 1-800-SAVE-USA, it's on the website saveus.org. Write to us at Save America Ministries and $6 for postage and handling.

And again, the special offer if you're interested, add to it for $5 the $14 book Lasting Love: Enduring Secrets for Marital Success. There you'll have to call us to get that special offer. All right. Become a partner, friends. Send your gifts by faith to Save America Ministries. These things don't just happen. The funds don't spring out of the ground somewhere. God doesn't have a heavenly counterfeit machine out there and we don't have commercial support because that would try to compel us to do its will. We're here to do God's will and He's here to ask you to assist. Hope you'll do that. God bless, be a blessing, and build your marriage with prayer.