Save America Ministries

Chuck Crismier: God has marriage on his mind but it appears that a lot of Americans do not. At least a lot of Americans even fear the whole idea of marriage. So today on Viewpoint, we're going to hopefully remove some of that fear and replace it by faith. That's right. Christians are not immune from divorce and unfortunately, too many believers fall into the problem of divorce.

As one who practiced law for 20 years in the largest family law court in the nation, the Los Angeles Superior Court system, I well know the problems that believers have experienced and have seen it all. I have seen whether or not they tried to build their house on the sand or whether or not they had tried to build their house and their marriage upon the rock.

Today we're going to talk about how to move from a sand-based marriage to a rock-based marriage. In other words, how to stormproof your marriage. And so I'm glad that you've joined us. It's conversation with ever-increasing conviction, talk that transforms. And if there's ever a time where we need transforming talk, it's with regard to our marriages.

Interestingly, just in the last week or so, I was talking with a group of people concerning the matter of marriage and the seeming reluctance of young people to get married. In fact, cohabitation has taken over for marriage as the predominant relationship between men and women in America. Did you know that?

Cohabitation among evangelicals, Bible-believing Christians has become almost a norm now. Isn't that amazing? But why is that? It's because of fear. One of the main reasons is because of fear. Also because of the culture. The culture has delivered us away from God's foundation for relationship between men and women, husbands and wives.

But another reason is the fear to get married. There are an awful lot of people today, especially young people, millennials and generation Z that are afraid to get married, so they exchange it for cohabitation where there are no vows. No vows, no commitment, just relationship that gives them the pleasure of what they want for a season without long-term commitment.

The interesting thing is, though, that they fear marriage. Why do they fear marriage? Well, because for many, many years, the baby boomer generation and then the baby buster generation that followed have displayed a lack of confidence in marriage and so the divorce rate continued to climb in America since 1968 to penultimate heights. So that in the Bible belt of America, for the past 25 years, the divorce rate has exceeded the nation's as a whole by about 50 percent.

Who can ever believe such a thing in an area of the country that supposedly is the strongest in allegiance to the God of creation and of the Bible? You see we've got a problem and we need to stormproof our marriages. And today we have just the right ticket for you. His name is Ricardo Flores and he is coming to us from Laredo, Texas with his new book, Stormproofing Marriage. Ricardo, it's good to have you on the program, my friend.

Ricardo Flores: Absolutely, it's a pleasure to be part of it.

Chuck Crismier: Well, you have written this book. You've been married what? 37 years?

Ricardo Flores: 37 years.

Chuck Crismier: 37 years and we've been married 59 years. So between the two of us, we are just short of 100 years of marriage. That should provide at least some insight, don't you think?

Ricardo Flores: Absolutely.

Chuck Crismier: All right. Now you're coming from the Hispanic viewpoint because with a name like Flores, that tells us a bit of your background and marriage has always been important for those in the Hispanic field of life. But also for those of us who are not Hispanic, this is a very important thing because if we're truly following Christ, he has marriage on his mind and actually seems to have framed the entire gospel message around marriage. Isn't that interesting?

Ricardo Flores: Absolutely.

Chuck Crismier: All right, Ricardo. Do you have children?

Ricardo Flores: Yes, I have a daughter. She's already married and read my book by the way. She lives in California, has three children. And a son, he's finishing school.

Chuck Crismier: Okay, so you've got two children.

Ricardo Flores: Mm-hm.

Chuck Crismier: All right. And you're trying to stormproof their... one is already married and the other is still in school, but you're preparing them to have stormproofed marriages. Is that correct?

Ricardo Flores: Absolutely, yes.

Chuck Crismier: Well, there must be a secret. There must be a secret to have a stormproof marriage and you want to reveal that secret. If you could define that secret in a very short expression, what would it be?

Ricardo Flores: Well, it's not a secret per se. Stormproof marriage is basically mirroring God's love in your relationship. That's what it is. Mirror his love. And the question is, who is the one who can mirror that love but the one who has already a relationship with Christ?

Chuck Crismier: All right. Now you framed this, though, around a little acrostic called CARE. How does that work? Just very simply.

Ricardo Flores: Well, what I show in the book is that we are very different. Men from women, husband and wife.

Chuck Crismier: You're kidding me. I thought we were told in our culture that men and women were identical.

Ricardo Flores: Before God, yes, but we think differently, we act differently, we have a different set of... you know. So, CARE is basically I show you how to care wife for your husband and I show you how to care for your wife. Husband, how to care for your wife and wife how to care for your husband.

Chuck Crismier: All right. So it's about caring and we're going to unfold the implication of caring because you say that it has to do with the analogy of building a house. I've never built a house. On the other hand, having been married for 59 years and having three children and ten grandchildren, that's a kind of house that you're building.

And what I realized from the very beginning is that I had to build my house on the truth of God's word, always with the direction of the Holy Spirit. Without that, there would be no solid foundation and everything would be up for grabs, so to speak. When the winds and storms of life would come upon us, when difficulty financially or health or anything else would come upon us, then we'd be in deep trouble and our house would be deeply shaken.

And when I speak of shaken, I came from California, spent 30 years there, Ricardo, and let me tell you, one of our very first introductions to California was a great shaking. Earthquakes. So there are earthquakes that happen to our marriages. We don't want our marriages to be shaken, we want to be stormproof. We're going to talk about what that really means when we get back. Ricardo Flores, our guest. His book is available on our website for $16. I hope you'll get a copy. We'll be right back.

Voiceover: 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 home. Could America's moral slide relate to the fourth commandment? Listen to Viewpoint on this radio station or anytime at saveus.org. That's saveus.org.

Chuck Crismier: Welcome back to Viewpoint on Chuck Crismier. Friends, we're talking today concerning what God has on his mind concerning marriage. You see, God has framed the gospel around marriage from the beginning to the end. He formed the first marriage there in Genesis chapter 2 and it wasn't until after the first marriage that Satan found his inroad to gain dominion over the life of Adam and Eve by asking the question, "Hath God said?"

Well, many of us have yielded to that same temptation regarding our marriages. When God has said, "I hate divorce," we've said, "Yes, but." When God said, "Husbands love your wives as Christ loved the church," we said, "Yes, but." When God said, "Wives submit yourselves to your husbands as unto the Lord," we said, "Yes, but."

It's almost as if our lives are formed around "yes, but" instead of "yes, sir." So we've got a problem. And what we've done, actually, is rendered the house of our marriages susceptible to the raging storms rather than stormproof. So that's why we're talking about this from this wonderful angle, stormproofing our marriages. I want to make sure you get a copy of the book to assist in this regard. Give us a vision for stormproofing our marriages. $16 will put the book in your hands. It's a $17 book, $16 will put it in your hands. It's on our website, saveus.org, saveus.org. You can call us at 1-800-SAVE-USA. That's 1-800-SAVE-USA or write to us at Save America Ministries, PO Box 70879, Richmond, Virginia 23255. Writing a check at $16, excuse me, $16 plus $6 for postage and handling.

Now Ricardo, I'm looking at the front cover of your book and it shows a picture of two rings. Now those rings represent a vow.

Ricardo Flores: Correct. Commitment.

Chuck Crismier: That's what they represent, a vow. And so we enter into a vow before God and these witnesses when we get married. Before God and these witnesses. And the vow is so important to God that he says, "Better it is that you not vow than that you vow and not do what you say." And don't say before the angel it was a mistake or it was an error.

Because God doesn't see that as a mistake or an error by saying, "Well, we were just young." Well, of course you were just young. Most marriages have been when you were just young. So don't use that as an excuse. Don't use the excuse, "Well, we didn't have experience." That isn't the point. If you've never been married you didn't have experience, obviously. So don't try to get your experience from cohabitation because that doesn't work out. So the vow is at the very root of a stormproof marriage, isn't it Ricardo?

Ricardo Flores: It is. It is, it is. It is not just between husband and wife, but we make our vows before God. That's the kind of important thing we lift up. So God has to do with it.

Chuck Crismier: You know what's interesting, Ricardo, if you look at the Bible and the Old Testament, you find out how they viewed the words of your mouth. When you say something, you're saying it before God. You're promising it before God and you dare not go beyond or not fulfill what you have said.

And there were a number of very serious illustrations in the Old Testament where men performed that which they had said even no matter how painful it was. They performed it because out of the abundance of the heart their mouth spoke and God held them to what they said. Why is it we don't think God holds us to what we've said in our vows in marriage?

Ricardo Flores: Well, and I think the main reason in many of the cases is because we really might just get married maybe before God but there's no really a relationship with him. So it's just...

Chuck Crismier: Well now wait a minute, wait a minute. We're talking to Christians here. I mean, we've got the listeners to this program are 99% professing Christians, in fact, even strong Christians and expect us to talk straight talk without anything mealy-mouthed. So they're coming and they're saying, "Yeah, I am a Christian. I'm following the Lord," or I say that I'm following the Lord. But why is it then that we're having such a tough time keeping our vows?

Ricardo Flores: Well, we base our relationship in a merit-based instead of a grace-based. So if we say we're Christians, what happened? God demonstrated his own love for us while we were still sinners. So that's grace. That we didn't deserve it and we got his love. But, however, in our relationship we are supposed to mirror that grace love to our spouse.

In other words, sometimes our spouse is not going to be in her best moment but regardless we're meant to love her. That's the grace love relationship that I'm talking about.

Chuck Crismier: All right, but here is the problem in our society. We have actually turned grace into the approval by God to divorce our spouses. That's what's happened in the church. Actually justified divorcing our spouses on the basis of God's grace. "Well, he knows my heart, knows my feelings, and he knows how tough it is, therefore he's going to approve my divorce and my separation from my spouse and it's going to be fine, it's going to be okay, even my pastor approves." What say you?

Ricardo Flores: Well, here's what I found out in leading the marriage ministry for years in our church. Many said they're professing Christians but, however, you don't see fruit. And the fruit I'm talking about, fruit of the spirit. And Jesus said, "If you abide in me and I in you, you will produce a lot of fruit. Without me you cannot do anything." That's John chapter 15.

Now, we might say, "Well, I'm a believer," but are you growing in your relationship with Christ to not only listen to what he said, but put into practice?

Chuck Crismier: Oh, you mean wait a minute, wait a minute. You mean we're not only supposed to hear what he says and agree with it mentally, but we're actually supposed to conform our life to it?

Ricardo Flores: Exactly. And you mentioned it at the beginning when you were kind of introducing this, when you were explaining how you based your marriage relationship on God's word. And that's the whole point of this what I'm trying to explain through this book. That Jesus says, "Why is you say 'Lord, Lord' and you don't do what I tell you to do? Yes, if I'm your Lord, you're meant to put into practice what I said."

And that's when Jesus talks about this example of the two builders. The one that builds on the solid rock is the one who listens to what he says and puts into practice. And the one who builds upon the sand, the one that builds upon the sand, he's only going to church maybe and listening but he's not doing what Jesus said.

Chuck Crismier: Okay, and you can even be a deacon, you can even be a pastor, you can be any one of those things inside the so-called church and still not be doing the word will and ways of the Lord.

Ricardo Flores: Exactly.

Chuck Crismier: So it's kind of a pretense of a spiritual house that you're building, not a real one.

Ricardo Flores: That is, that's right. It's a metaphor. I'm taking to the process of building a house and the house is your marriage.

Chuck Crismier: And I think that's a great metaphor. Jesus himself used it. He said, "Anyone who hears and does my word is like a wise man who built his house upon the rock. And any man who hears and does not do my word is like a man who built his house without a foundation on the sand and when the storm comes, it falls and the ruin of that house is great."

Now let me tell you what I observed. 20 years of trial practice in Southern California. 80% of my clientele came from the broader professing body of Christ, believe it or not. 80%. 40% of my practice was in family law in the largest family law court section in the nation, the Los Angeles Superior Court section. How can you imagine that I would have so many professing Christians flooding into my office looking for a Christian lawyer to approve of what they wanted to do to break their marriage? Imagine that.

So I would do everything that I could to try to help them to see, to try to understand the situations that brought them to this crisis moment. The storm. The crisis moment is the storm. What brought you to this point? And to help them catch a vision for what God had in mind for them, for their marriage and so on. But I got to tell you to be really honest, I think there was only one or two people in 20 years that I was able ultimately to convince to follow God's way with regard to their marriage. They just they've already made up their mind.

And the people will say, "Well, God knows my heart." Well, that's exactly the point. He does know your heart and that is the problem. Right?

Ricardo Flores: Yes, exactly. And the thing is, we're supposed to have a transformed heart. As we grow in our relationship with Christ, we go through a process of transformation. Sanctification, the Bible calls it. We start to grow. And going back to that example, John chapter 15. We're the branches, Jesus is the vine and the Father is the vine dresser. In other words, he's the one who takes care of the vine in this metaphor on John chapter 15. Now, here is the key point in those verses. The vine dresser is going to prune some of those branches.