23: Three Crucial Elements for Family Transformation (Ch 6: Don’t Forget the ABCs) | S4E23

(00:00) Stephanie Warner: Welcome back to Season 4, episode 23. Hello, Father.

(00:05) Marcus Warner: Hello, Daughter. Good times,yes.

(00:10) Stephanie Warner: He’s married! He’s married! When this episode releases, my brother, your son, our producer, is wed. Please keep him and his wife in your prayers. We are so delighted.

(00:23) Marcus Warner: It’s pretty amazing. As we record this, it’s coming up in a couple of days, and  as it airs it will have just happened. We’re in that weird space, right? It’s like this is a pretty, pretty big deal.

(00:34) Stephanie Warner: The anticipation is brewing. We’re very excited. And also, viewers will notice that I am in a different location. I’m not in a new location, but we have just wrapped up recording the H-course, which is our Heart-Focused Community course. And so I’m still kind of on the set of that instead of the normal studio setup. So rejoice! It is coming. I’m so excited. Yeah, I’m so excited for this course.

(01:03) Marcus Warner: Yeah, it went better than I expected. I’m actually quite excited about this. We managed to get a lot of content into this course, and I think I may have set a new record for acrostics in a single course. It’s all there.

(01:17) Stephanie Warner: It will be delightful. I’m excited, and now my work begins.

(01:25) Marcus Warner: Yeah, exactly. My part’s over, sort of.

(01:32) Stephanie Warner: We are always handing it back and forth. All right, anyway, all that to say, explanations for why it looks different. And thank you for your prayers for our family during this happy time. We are continuing our study of The Spirit-Filled Home. This is our last session. We’re going through chapter six. Also, don’t forget, you can find your DIY book club kit in the description. It’s free and is just a discussion guide and some graphics to help you if you’re sharing with others. Last week we looked at five strategies to jumpstart your marriage and for this week, grab your book, we are closing with chapter six, “Don’t Forget the ABCs” So, the ABCs. In this chapter, you walk through “A” is allies, “B” is Bible, and “C” is cleansing. So let’s get into it. Do you have any particular goal for highlighting these three elements?

(02:32) Marcus Warner: You know, it’s like I got to the end of the book and I was like, Hey, there’s a few things I haven’t really emphasized, that I need to make sure people don’t forget. And some of them are basic, but there are also things that you could forget if you’re not getting them on your radar. So that’s what we’re after here.

(02:51) Stephanie Warner: Awesome. All right, well, let’s get into allies. Anytime you want to change a habit or a pattern in your life, you’re going to need some outside help. Especially if it’s big patterns. Do you want to talk about the importance of allies?

(03:08) Marcus Warner: Yeah, this really hit home for me as I was thinking about it. I grew up playing a lot of sports, and grew up on a lot of teams. I was on Bible quiz teams at church. I was in volleyball teams, basketball teams, all kinds of stuff. What I realized was as soon as I wasn’t on a team anymore, I just stopped doing stuff. The things that I was really disciplined in when I was on the team and I would do all the work because I wanted to make sure I was ready. I wanted to be prepared. I didn’t want to let people down. I realized that I would just quit doing things because I didn’t have a team there to be in it together. I also realized that when it came to learning new skills, like if I joined a class, I was a hundred times more likely to actually work on some skill that I wanted to work on, rather than just, you know, it would be a good idea to do this. I really ought to do that.

I think a lot of people can be disciplined, but aren’t necessarily self motivated to discipline. And they really need to be in a group and with a group in order to make changes, Especially if you’re trying to learn new skills, if you’re trying to make some changes in your life, and you’re trying to build new habits. It really helps to have allies. And I specifically call them allies instead of accountability partners, because I find that accountability partners tend to have a little bit of fear and shame in the expectation. Whereas an ally is hey, we’re all in this together, we’re for each other, let’s make this happen. So I like that word.

(04:53) Stephanie Warner: Can you press into that just a tad more? Because I know accountability is just such a popular word.

(04:56) Marcus Warner:  I don’t have a problem with people calling what they do accountability groups. I just prefer allies because accountability all by itself is sort of a, you better do this or else, you know you don’t want to feel shame. So you make sure that you have done this, holding someone accountable. On the other hand, the Bible is clear that someday we all have to give account to Jesus for the way that we’ve done things, and there is an element to the fear of God that is in accountability. So fear is not completely off the chart in terms of, that you we should never use fear to motivate. But the point is we can’t exclusively use fear to motivate. In fact, we need to primarily use joy to motivate. And so because accountability tends to lean in that fear direction for motivation, allies move in the joy and relational direction for motivation.

(05:53) Stephanie Warner: So what are some practical ways that motivating with joy can look like? Having allyship instead of accountability or in addition to?

(06:03) Marcus Warner: So for me, let’s just say it was tennis. I wanted to start playing tennis again or even pickleball or something. It’s like, I just know that if I join a league or if I join something where there’s a schedule and I need to show up, there’s an accountability element there. There’s also a sense of, I’m going to see people and this is going to be fun. And I’m looking forward to seeing them and I’m looking forward to the experience. And so you can motivate yourself with joy that way, whereas if it’s just that I have to do this so I don’t look bad, then that becomes a fear motivator. And there’s a lot of people that have learned to turn everything into fear motivations. So part of it is also being aware of how you are motivating yourself even if you’re in a group, you need to pay attention to that.

(06:54) Stephanie Warner: And what does this look like in a family context when you say find allies, and we’re talking about a home time? Are we turning our family into allies? Are we finding allies outside of our family? Are there any dos and don’ts for that?

(07:06) Marcus Warner: Yeah, both, right? Part of this was talking in terms of repair work. If you’re at a point in your marriage where it needs some repair, you need to get some allies. I find that the best scenario for change is when I have a class, a team, and a coach. And so the class is giving me training. The team is giving me a group to be in this journey with, and a coach is motivating and giving guidance. So that in a marriage setting is a counselor. It’s a support group of people who are working on their marriages.

And it’s information or education, like these podcasts, this book, that sort of thing. I’m getting new information to help me think about this differently. If you bring those three things together, you’re putting yourself in the best possible scenario for things to actually change. And so I find that a lot of people when their marriage gets in trouble, they just try to just try to do better. They don’t do the normal things that everybody has to do in order to see real change take place. And that is again, I need new information like courses and books. I need a group and I need a coach.

(08:29) Stephanie Warner: Are there any don’ts?

(08:34) Marcus Warner: Well, the main don’t is, don’t assume you can do this on your own without that. And like everybody wants to think they’re the exception to the rule, like, we’re not that bad. We just need a little bit of help. But I look at it as, in business and in leadership you wouldn’t even think about not getting advice and not getting a coach. Not having somebody to give you help with these things. But for some reason, when it comes to our marriages, we get hesitant about it. Or when it comes to even our emotional state, there’s a stigma sometimes about reaching out for help, but I just look at it in the same way that I would get coaching for my profession. I would get coaching for making business decisions and crafting strategy there. It makes sense to get experience guidance from somebody when it comes to the most important relationships in my life.

(09:25) Stephanie Warner: Yeah. I know another great place for guidance, which would be the “B” of Bible. Let’s talk more about a Spirit-filled home being a Bible-filled home. Obviously, not to start on a downer, but I could mention many different sad testimonies of people who had religious trauma. Or I had a Bible-filled home, but it wasn’t that great. But also we have lots of testimonies of people who have Bible-filled homes that were great. So can you first maybe speak to that a little bit?

(10:03) Marcus Warner: So basically there’s two things that make a Bible filled home not great. And one is if it is a low joy home. If you have a low joy home, but the Bible is a priority, you’re walking in a contradiction count constantly. It’s like, well, which one is it? Is the Bible the key to joy and happiness in life, or is the Bible actually the problem here? So it creates a bit of a problem in and of itself. The second thing is hypocrisy where you have people saying you should read your Bible, but they clearly are not even trying to live that way in their own life. And so what I found, especially talking to people who’ve grown up in Christian circles and grown up in Christian schools, at their church or in their home where this was promoted, it was low joy and it was hypocritical. And when you bring those two elements to it changes everything. Because once again, just like allies can be fear motivated or joy motivated, the Bible can be fear motivated or joy motivated.

There is a fear motivation for the Bible that I better read it or God will be disappointed with me. Or I better do this so my parents won’t be upset with me or whatever it is. It’s like, I guess I got to make somebody happy so I’m going to do this. That’s a fear motivation. The joy motivation is, I really want to know this better. I really want to learn something and really want to connect. It’s funny, even to this day, I have spent my whole life studying the Bible, and I frequently get surprised at how much I get out of it. I almost forget that oh yeah, this really is fun to get new insights out of the scripture. And so it’s something we all need and I want to make sure we don’t take it for granted, that you can’t really have a Spirit-filled home if there’s no Bible in it. And keeping the Bible in the middle of it is a good place to start.

(12:15) Stephanie Warner: So how can that look? Obviously every family is a little different, but what might it take to make the Bible a prominent part of our home?

(12:27) Marcus Warner:  So it starts by making sure that you yourself are just reading your Bible regularly. And we’re all at different places with that. You and I may use Greek and Hebrew when we do it. It’s hard to just read the English anymore. We just got to know, what is this word? For most people just doing something and reading your Bible on a regular basis is a starting point. Second is, my family used to have… it was a different era. I forget how old I am sometimes, but it was a different era. We grew up having dinner every night around the table and right after dinner, at the table we would bring out the Bible. Dad would lead us through reading of scripture or a devotional of some kind. And so it was just a part of the routine.

I find being in a class or being in a study, being in something, you can connect that allies thing with your Bible study. If you struggle to read your Bible and this is something you want to do, but you don’t do it as much as you want, getting into a class, and maybe even an online Bible class or something like that, is like the fastest way I know of to make sure that it actually happens. So those are a few examples.

(13:46) Stephanie Warner: That’s really, really good. I was thinking about the allies too. Also, just a random practical point. Maybe if you’re struggling to be in your Bible, maybe you are more auditory, and for a little bit you should get the audio Bible and listen to it. But we want to have the Bible’s worldview. The story of the Bible as our story. And so the more we can saturate in it, the more we are going to think about life, our families, and our priorities through that lens.

(14:27) Marcus Warner: It’s really true. I was studying 2nd Peter this week, and I was almost shocked at how many “aha” moments I was having going through here. It had been a long time since I’d studied that book specifically. I remember when I was a younger Christian reading through it and finding it a very difficult book. It feels like there’s a nugget here and a nugget there, but I don’t understand what he’s saying. And so it was kind of fun to go through and actually be able to weed through some of that, and come up with, this is the big picture of what’s going on here. For those who are wondering, I could give you an outline on 2 Peter.

Basically he’s saying, God has given us all these great, wonderful things. As Christians, we have been given all these wonderful blessings, all these wonderful promises. And he said, the result of those is that they should lead us to adding discipline, adding self-control, and becoming more persevering. All these wonderful fruits should be there. And then he says, if it isn’t happening, and that gets my attention. If I’m not growing and not becoming more mature and doing all these things, he doesn’t say you’re a bad Christian, shame on you.

What he says is you’ve forgotten. You’ve forgotten all these good things that God has given you. You’ve become blind to them. And you need to revisit that and what I’m doing is I’m reminding you. I’m reminding you to make your calling and election sure. But what he’s talking about there really has nothing to do with eternal security. He’s talking about putting this stuff into practice and making these things a reality in your life. And all of a sudden I was like, well that makes sense. He wasn’t even shaming people. He’s like there are wonderful things in the gospel, so when those wonderful things really take root in your life it is a transformation. So if you’re not experiencing that transformation, it means you’ve become blind to something and you’ve forgotten some things.

So it’s time to go back and visit the basics. Remember who you are and remember what God has done. I found it actually very encouraging, like, okay, so I always need to go back and kind of re-anchor to those basics. He then takes the rest of the book to look at false teachers and how they sabotage that, but   that’s a different story. I just know when I do these things people are like, well, what’s the rest of the story? What did you get out of your story? I thought I’d throw that in there.

(16:56) Stephanie Warner: I know, maybe we’re gonna have to do a little campfire…. I do want to say,  if getting deeper into your Bible is something that you’re really feeling called into right now. Like, oh that’s a missing piece that God’s speaking to me about, but I don’t know quite where to begin. In our first series of Season 4 of this podcast, we did a nice deep dive into 3-2-1 Bible study methods. So go find some of that if you wanna….

(17:26) Marcus Warner:  I want to also mention that there is a Bible page on the Deeper Walk website. So you go to https://deeperwalk.com/www-plaxn-com and you will find all kinds of Bible tools. I think there’s videos there too. So if you’re looking for a place to get a jump started.

(17:39) Stephanie Warner: Mm-hmm. Good stuff. All right. Moving on to “C” for cleansing. In the chapter, you talk about cleansing property and cleansing the environment and different things. What would you like to cover for this episode?

(17:53) Marcus Warner: Cleansing has to do specifically with taking the time to confess, cancel, and command. To cleanse your property and to make sure that you kick the devil out of your house, because it’s amazing how much easier it gets if you kick him out. Several stories come to my mind as I talk about this. I know somebody who had a house where there was an affair in the bedroom and they didn’t realize it. There was something spiritual hanging around in that bedroom and it  had to be kicked out.

And when it did, all of a sudden, both of them found that the battle between them seemed to subside significantly. Like there was not just a spirit of sexual infidelity, but there was a spirit of just antagonism, like marital antagonism. And cleansing the room, cleansing the property helped. And so as I just said, this is something that we teach, but you may not think about in this context. But I’ve actually heard stories of people who after they cleanse their property, realize that they weren’t fighting as much as they had been before. And it helps, it makes sense, get the devil out of that property, and maybe you won’t be tempted as much.

(19:11) Stephanie Warner: Mm-hmm. Or even in parent relationships. If you can’t control what your children are doing or bringing into the house, you still own the house. So you can just pray for them…..

(19:27) Marcus Warner: Yeah, I’ve got an image in my mind. One of those Kendrick brother movies like Fireproof and all those, there was one about prayer. I think Tony Evans’ daughter Priscilla Shire plays in that one. There is a scene where she like cleanses her house and like kicks the devil out. And, and I think that is a fundamental thing that a lot of us just forget we can do. And I just want to make sure we remember that it might be a part of what’s going on.

(20:04) Stephanie Warner: Mm-hmm. All right. Well, these are very helpful. Let’s do final thoughts for the episode, and then we can move on for the series. So any final thoughts for ABCs?

(20:18) Marcus Warner:  I’ve been married,  going on 34 years, something like that, 35?  I forget, but I should know. How old are you? Wait?

(20:30) Stephanie Warner: 34.

(20:31) Marcus Warner: Thanks. Sorry. We’ve been married for 35 years then. I just am reminded of how much of marriage and parenting is getting back to basics. Simple things like find the joy motivator, take time to pray and read your Bible, do it together as much as you can. And simple things like that go a long way. And things like keeping short accounts and cleansing your home. And so part of what we’re doing here is just trying to give people a roadmap for when they feel stuck, like, I feel as though something’s broken and needs to get fixed. What we tried to do in this book is give you a roadmap to repair.

(21:21) Stephanie Warner: Thank you. And thank you everybody for being on the trail with us. Thank you to all of our generous donors who allow us to be on the trail doing this worldwide ministry. It is very, very epic. So thank you. And next episode, we are launching our prayer series. I’m very excited about that, so stay tuned. Father, will you give us some closing thoughts for the whole series?

(21:50) Marcus Warner: Like I said, this book came out of doing marriage retreats over several years, I think I did over 20 of them. Watching these couples get a hold of some of these core tools and watching transformation happen in one session, or one weekend, just by actually going through forgiveness. And going through taking thoughts captive, going through the process of thinking about things from a maturity perspective, and realizing that I live with my relational circuits off all the time. It’s amazing how often just one thing like that can make a big difference. And so I’m like, just start. If you don’t know where to start you can’t go wrong by picking one because they’re all helpful. For people that need a roadmap and need to see how the whole thing holds together. That’s kind of what the book is for. And for those who maybe are looking for just one tool that they need to be focused on, I think that you can pick one and you will find it’s amazing how much difference just one thing can make.

(23:07) Stephanie Warner: That’s a good word. All right, and finally, will you close us in prayer?

(23:15) Marcus Warner: Absolutely. Well, Father, we are grateful for marriage and for the institution of marriage, especially as I think about my son’s wedding here. It’s fresh in our hearts, fresh in our minds  all that you created marriage for. And while you did create it for our holiness, you also created it for our happiness. And I do pray that great happiness will be restored to marriages where the joy gap’s gotten pretty big, and that you will just protect our marriages, especially in the church, from every device of the enemy. Open our eyes to the things that you want us to see. So that as we walk in your Spirit, you’ll guide us through whatever valley we may have to face, through whatever challenges, and that we can also find joy, in all the good things that there are to enjoy in our families. In Christ’s name, Amen.

(24:17) Stephanie Warner: Amen.