Our Day Reconnecting at Bok Gardens

Today, we’re sharing about a great day we had at the beautiful Bok Gardens in Central Florida. What began as just a getaway turned into some honest conversations Gil and I had about our marriage and past hurts and walls that had built up between us. It was a powerful day for us. It’s so easy to get caught up in life and not take time to pull away and spend time enjoying one another. We were refreshed, we reconnected with each other as we got out of town, enjoyed beautifully maintained grounds and gardens, stood at the highest point in Florida, and discovered the history and legacy of a man who wanted to pass on to generations after him a gift to the American people, a gospel of beauty, and a refuge where visitors could escape the relentless pace of life. 

It worked for us yesterday, and the Holy Spirit used this time to reveal truths to us, and we share them here with you.  Be encouraged to purposefully reconnect in your marriage, or any meaningful relationship you have.  God desires restoration, healing, and renewed intimacy, and no relationship is beyond His ability to rebuild.

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You’ll hear about: 
•        Intentionally reconnecting in marriage 
•        The importance of communication and honesty 
•        Hidden resentment and unmet expectations in relationships 
•        Maintaining a marriage is like maintaining a house 
•        Understanding and appreciating each other’s gifts and strengths 
•        The danger of neglecting relationships 
•        Humility, forgiveness, and restoration 
•        Creating healthy spiritual and emotional foundations 
•        Practical encouragement for couples in every season of life 

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:27

Good morning. Today is a good day. Today's a special day in our country, and we're celebrating 250 years of being a country. That's a long time to be a country, to be a, if you will, a couple, to be together, one nation, undivisible and under God. And so yesterday, Liz and I took a day to just get together and talk and look at some sites. We went up the Bach Gardens in Central Florida and learned that it is the highest point in Florida. And when we got there, it almost reminded us of when we lived in Tennessee. So we had a great time. We looked at a lot of plants and a lot of history and a lot of uh legacy. And, you know, in marriage, we look at what is our purpose in marriage? Is it just to be together? Is it just to live life together, or is it to build a legacy? Is it to pass on something more than ourselves, if you will? As we walk through the gardens of Bach Gardens and looking at plants and different things, there was always a sweet aroma running through the place where certain flowers were in bloom, like the gardenias and some of the irises and and so on. I can't get into all the names of the plants that might have been in bloom and and smelled, but it was just peaceful with the oaks hanging over and the Spanish moss dropping down and and the freshly mowed and manicured yards in underneath the oaks. And it was it was just a great time of reconnecting with Liz. And so I was just thinking, you know, there's people out there today, Liz, that don't connect. They just live life.

unknown 2:25

True.

SPEAKER_00 2:26

They don't try to understand one another, they don't spend time. Uh we walked through the pathways yesterday, and we're just walking along, and we weren't really talking at this point. We're just walking along, and and at the same time, we just reached out and grabbed each other's hand and we held hands and we walked down the path, and and it was nice. And it wasn't, it wasn't scripted, it wasn't asked for, it wasn't, hey, let me have your hand. We were just taking time and reconnecting and enjoying the time that we had together, enjoying the moment of walking down the pathways, and then passing people who were walking together, and we would say hello to them and great day, isn't it? And some people brought their pets and they had their dogs, and we'd ask them how they were doing, and they said they're getting tired. And it was, well, we can relate to that. We thought about wow, we should have brought our dog, and

When Couples Stop Connecting

SPEAKER_00 3:20

then we about halfway through that, we said, no, you know, it was great. So we got into talking about some things in our life, in our marriage, our relationship that we we found out there's some things in our life that we just didn't like, we did not connect on, and we really didn't communicate that with each other during the times, and so here we've spent almost a lifetime of disagreement, or not I wouldn't say resentment, that's a pretty strong word, but there were some things that we hold against each other because things didn't happen 20, 25, 30 years ago. And you know, that's really sad. That's sad. And I know there's people listening today that have walked their entire married life. Now, when I say that, let me digress and say it could have been you could have been married for six months, two years, thirty years, or seventy years. That's a lifetime. But it doesn't matter if you're only married for six months. I would implore you to get that straightened out now. Right now. Don't wait another day. Get these things straightened out in your relationship because if you don't, they will hinder your relationship. You will build walls upon that foundation. Not the foundation of love and mutual respect, not the foundation of communication, not the communication of honoring the other person's gifts, but that resentment is what you will build your relationship on. And that will destroy your relationship. You will have problems, you will have, you will not have the hand of God on, you will not have blessings. You'll think you do, but you do not. Because that hinders what God put together. And God says, What I have put together, let no man separate, and that includes you. So get it taken care

The Hidden Weight Of Unspoken Hurt

SPEAKER_00 5:35

of. Deal with those issues, deal with that hurt, deal with that disappointment, deal with that unmet expectation, if you will. One of the expectations in my life, many years ago, I bought property. When we were first married, I had the opportunity to buy some property, and so I did. I bought it, and every weekend I would work on this property. Now, mind you, there's a backstory to this, but every weekend I would work on this property, it would be a Saturday that I would work because every day of the week and Sundays, we were in the ministry. So Saturdays was my only day to work on this piece of property that I bought as an investment. And I just had to get it done. And not, and and this this is the reason. Well, we've worked this out, but not one day did my wife come by and say hello. How's it going? Hey, do you need a nice tea? Hey, did you bring lunch? Do you have anything? Can I get you anything? Not one time. And you know what? I never mentioned it to her. I never took the opportunity to say, hey, honey, would you just mind stopping by once in a while and see how it's going? Maybe help dream with me? What color are we going to paint the inside of this house? What, you know, am I doing the right thing in the cabinets? Am I doing the right thing in the doors? Is it all right if I do something here in the laundry room? Or you know what I mean? And it wasn't a big house, it was only a two-bedroom house with a little living room, a laundry room, and a kitchen. It was small. It was not a huge investment. And my banker at that time didn't care about loans per se. Um yes, they cared about it. They charged me 10%. But it I didn't have to start paying on it until the house was finished. Those are the great old days. But I held this against my wife. I held this against her, and not once did I talk to her about it until yesterday. And you know what? That's sad. Because we've been married for 39 years, right?

SPEAKER_01 7:42

38 this year.

SPEAKER_00 7:43

38 this year. I was close. You're 38 years we've been married, and not one time have I mentioned this to her. Well, how many walls do you think, how many bricks do you think I put in the wall over this, over the countless number of houses that I have restored since then? And so I'm telling you, that was just an example. I'm telling you that that that is not God's design for our relationship. It is not what God designed in in when he said he'd bring two people together. Now, uh, in in all fairness, Liz is not one to wield hammer, she's not one to set trim, she's not the one to hang a door, she's not one to replace windows. That that's not her deal. She does not operate in that capacity. And what she does operate in is in the capacity of administration. Well, you know, why didn't I take advantage of her administrative gifting? I was using my gifting, but I was not utilizing her gifting, and I didn't recognize it, and I didn't ask for it. So in our relationship, there was a strain there. And so over the years,

Honoring Gifts And Working Together

SPEAKER_00 9:00

that wall's been built in our relationship, and today we still feel that strain. Now, prayerfully, after consideration and prayer, we're gonna start pulling those walls down, and we're gonna pull down those resentments and unmet expectations in our relationship so where that you and I, Liz, can we can work together. There's a key, work together, understand each other's gifting, and complement them. And okay, so I've given I've given you the example of of the remodeling aspect of our lives. We are professional remodelers, but you might have a different skill set, a different mindset, and a different work set, but the principle is the same. It might be in raising kids. You might have had a problem back when you were a young kid. When you were a young boy, you might have had an issue, or a young girl, you might have had an issue with your parents, something happened. And you have never opened up to your husband because maybe he has the same tendencies. You never opened up to your wife because she might have the same tendencies. That's wrong. If God has put you two together, then deal with the issues together. Sit down, sit down and talk about it. Deal with it, straighten it out, come to a place where you two can work it out, where you two can write it, design a covenant to cover your relationship so that you are accountable to one another in the situation so that you can work things out. I can't tell you how important this is in a relationship. I can't tell you how pressing it is in the times that we live in today, how pressing it is for us to get our relationships in order. That's right. Because if you're not in order today, when the storms come tomorrow, you will not be ready for it. And it will destroy your house. So yesterday was a win-win-win day for us. It was a great day. It was a great day driving to and a great day driving back. It was a great day walking around the gardens. We met some really cool people. They had some really good food in their little cafe there. Um, it was just great. Uh the there was great places for the kids, interactive fountains. There was all kinds of fun. And and 99% of it was in the shade.

unknown 11:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 11:31

Oh, hallelujah. In Florida, it is priceless. So I just encourage y'all deal with the deal with the ghosts and the c and the clutter and the skeletons that are hanging in your closets because they'll come back to haunt you. Amen.

SPEAKER_01 11:53

Amen. Yeah, it was a good day yesterday. We used to do it a lot more, and you know couples, we can just get caught up in life and not take that time with one another that we really need to take. Um, there might be couples listening that say, hey, you know, well, we don't really have that issue or whatever. And if that is you, that is awesome. We just got wrapped up in life, you know, and it was a funky place. And uh the Lord has been definitely uh working in us and through us. We just really want to encourage you to take that time and just be really open and really honest. And again, I just have to go back to it, takes humility to do that, and it takes humility to hear what the other person is saying. Because if if we talk to each other, but we don't feel like we're being heard or understood, or what we're saying is being received, that can have the tendency to make us clam back up again. But we have to have, like you're so aptly saying, we have to have that real open communication and keep the enemy out. The Bible says in Ephesians to give no place, give no place to the devil, give no place to his works. And when we allow those thoughts and those hurts to build up, like you say, we are just building walls. And those walls can become strongholds. And once they're a stronghold, it takes a lot of power, and it takes a lot of the power of the Holy Spirit and a lot of power of him working in us to break through them. But that's the power of God. That's the power of God to change a life, to change a couple. All things are possible. We are here to say that all things are possible.

Keep The Enemy Out Of Marriage

SPEAKER_01 14:00

And like you spoke about yesterday, I think that yesterday was a lot of um um, it was kind of like a highlight to what the Holy Spirit's been walking us through for the past two to three years, you know, since we moved back to Florida, since He brought us back to rebuild ancient ruins, and it was a calling he put on us. And we're just realizing that some of those ancient ruins, some of those things that the the ruins are those foundations in our lives. It's our spiritual foundation, or it could be our health, it could be our disciplines, it could be all of these things, but things can come into our life that can move us away from perhaps the full will of God, or you know, take us from his perfect will for our lives. And we have gotten there. And he brought us back with that mandate, I believe, and he wanted to start with us. So yesterday, and being able to go real, real, real deep, you know, and by going deep, I mean like going back 30 to 35 years in our relationship, you know, it's a long time. Um but he did. And I think it's like I was saying, it's because we've been working in all of those other areas too that we've been discussing here on the podcast, and we'll be discussing further that God was able to step in. And um, it was a beautiful day.

Neglect Turns Homes Into Empty Lots

SPEAKER_01 15:40

Totally enjoyed it.

SPEAKER_00 15:41

You know, that I was just thinking about this as you're as you're speaking. I was thinking about the trip over to Lake Wales. We were traveling on Route 60, and I back when I was 19, 20 years old, I used to go over to uh Plant City, but on Route 60, there were a lot of buildings that were not there anymore. A lot of them were just torn down. But you know, as I was thinking about it and was looking at some of the other buildings on Route 60 as we're traveling, that were flourishing, that were that were businesses actually when I was traveling. And today, as we drove by them, they were just shells. You could see where the roofs were collapsed in or the walls were not taken care of, and the windows were broken and parking lots empty, and then there were houses that were abandoned, and so forth. So you get the picture that everything was neglected. Well, as we were talking yesterday, I'm I'm just putting the the physical with the spiritual, we neglected our relationship. We did not maintain our relationship the way we should have, we did not repair the broken windows, we didn't fix the leaky roof, we didn't fix the dripping water in the pipes. So before everything gets destroyed, you have to fix these things. And so in a relationship, if you got leaky pipes, you got a leaky roof, or you got a broken window in your relationship where you're allowing the elements to come in. Yeah, yeah, you're allowing things to distract you, you're allowing people to move you and motivate you, you're allowing people to enter into your relationship that have no right there, have no legal access to it, then we have a problem. And you'll wind up like these buildings, and eventually, like some of these buildings, they're no longer there. They tore them down. Some of them were landmarks, there were landmarks out there that were very famous places that are nothing but an empty lot now, they are gone. And that is the warning in relationships. That's the warning in your marriage today. If you do not, if you do not maintain your marriage and relationship, you will become an empty lot. And it's it was a very, very pointed message to us yesterday as we drove over to Lake Wales.

SPEAKER_01 18:30

That's true. You know, marriage is like a home. You have to maintain a house.

SPEAKER_00 18:36

Yeah. Well, about um Mr. Bach's place that he had built. It was built in 18, what, 1830? No. No, no, no, no, no.

SPEAKER_01 18:48

No, it was it was um the the the tower itself construction began in January of 1927.

SPEAKER_00 18:59

The mansion.

SPEAKER_01 19:00

The mansion, yeah, that was still around that same time.

SPEAKER_00 19:04

1920, that's right. Yeah, yeah, so there's a mansion built in 1920s on the property. And what a well-maintained and restored piece of property that is. Beautiful place. Beautiful, and beautiful, but yet old. Yes, and not the oldest, but old. Well maintained, still standing.

SPEAKER_01 19:31

Yep.

SPEAKER_00 19:32

And uh beautiful.

unknown 19:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 19:34

So it was

Refresh The Marriage Before The Storm

SPEAKER_01 19:35

day anointed by the Holy Spirit. It was a lot of fun and uh refreshing. And couples need to be refreshed. They need to, as we say, get out of orbit and get into a different orbit and uh uh just get away and and maintain yourselves, even above your children, even above like we're taking care of my mother, you know. You have to maintain your marriage first because if your marriage is not maintained, you will not be giving a good example for your children. You will not be available in freshness as you should for your children, or if you're caring for elderly parents, you know, you have to stay maintained. And uh like I said earlier, sometimes that's hard to do. The pressures come and you just get swallowed up. But God is just saying, do it. He is in it, he is really in it. And to get that anointing of his spirit back amongst you and between you is it's powerful. It's powerful.

SPEAKER_00 20:34

Yeah, it

Prayer For Restoration And Next Steps

SPEAKER_00 20:35

is powerful. It was good. Liz, let's pray for the people this morning that have heard this and find themselves in that predicament. Yeah. Uh let's pray for those that are discovering that there is a few walls in their relationship. Heavenly Father, we thank you and we come together this morning. We give you the glory and the honor for all that you're doing in our lives. Yes. We pray for those that this message has touched. There is hope, Father, that you can work things out. And Father, I just ask you to give each couple that are listening the wisdom and the discernment and the boldness to step out and begin to identify and pull down some of these things in their relationship. And Father, just because they've only been married six months, God, open their eyes to see the walls that they are building. And Father, we thank you this morning. And we just pray for those that are in a place where there seems to be hopelessness. That God, that you would bring hope to them. Yes, and that you would lead them to a place of peace and serenity, that you would lead them to a place of restoration. We thank you.

SPEAKER_01 21:50

Yes, Lord.

SPEAKER_00 21:51

And today, Lord, I pray for that one who is who might be in the valley of decision that doesn't know you. You might have heard. This you might be listening to this message and you say, But how is that even possible? You know? Well, it's very possible. And so Lord ask you to reveal yourself to them that they would come to know you in a personal way. And this morning, Father, we ask you to bring them to a place of victory in Jesus' name. Amen. Thanks for listening. We invite you to join us on Sundays at 10 30 a.m. right here in Jensen Beach. See the link in the show notes for all information. We'd love to see you here. And if this message has encouraged you, follow the show, share the episode, and take a moment to rate and review the podcast. Your feedback helps us reach more people with hope from God's Word. God bless.