One of the things — just to transition to you as the man, the man that’s not just the author but the man as a husband, the man as a dad. One of the things that I’ve really appreciated about you and your teaching over the years is you’ve been an open book, in as much as you can, and you’ve talked about how marriage is hard. We’ve got to fight for our marriage. Being a dad is hard.

My question to you is, in the midst of the busyness of life and being a husband and a dad, and the call that those are to you, what has sustained you in the midst of the hardships? What are the things that you and your wife, Noël, have given yourselves to that would encourage those that are in hardships themselves in those roles?

God is sovereign, and God is good all the time, no matter what. Bottom line: theological convictions that he’s in control. He didn’t drop the ball in any crisis, in any heartache. God rules, and he rules for our good.

Romans 8:28 is not a platitude for me. I preached a sermon one time. I preached four sermons in 1986, ‘87 on “those whom he foreknew he called, and those whom he called, he justified, and those whom he justified, he glorified” as the foundation. That’s Romans 8:29–30, as the foundation for Romans 8:28. So you got calling and predestination and justification and glorification as the foundation for this precious promise: “All things work together for good for those who love God.” So those foundations have to be sunk really deep.

So Noël and I have believed those things from the beginning. We grew together into this robust, Reformed vision of a sovereign God who I read yesterday during our seminar, Habakkuk 3:17–18 was in our wedding ceremony. “There’s no fruit on the trees. There’s no crop coming in from the fields. There’s no cattle in the stall. We’re starving. Nevertheless, I will rejoice in the Lord, I will joy in the God of my salvation.” That’s been our life.

So God has dealt us some pretty hard blows along the way, and marriage itself and parenting have had their incredible challenges. So my bottom-line answer is God is the kind of God who governs all of life, even the hard things. He’s good. And through Jesus Christ who loved us and gave himself for us, sustains us and is going to bring it out for his good in the end and for our good in the end, for his glory and for our good.

So my first answer is theological. If you want more, I would back into patterns of life. Noël and I have prayed together every day of our lives. That’s an overstatement. We’re not praying together right now. I’m here, and I’m not buying an international phone plan, all right?

So we are emailing. So we haven’t talked for three days, but we’re emailing. But when we are together at home, we’re praying. Now, when you can’t talk to each other, how do you do that? I mean, Peter said, “Live together with your wife according to knowledge, lest your prayers be hindered” (1 Peter 3:7).

Prayer is a barometer of how’s it going. So how many times do we come to the end of the day and our pattern would be to kneel down beside the bed, ask God’s blessing on our children, give him our lives for the night, ask for help for tomorrow, apologize to each other and to him for our sins. And we kneel there, and there is total silence.

Now, here’s a word to husbands. I knelt, and because I knelt, she knelt. She didn’t kneel and then I knelt. We didn’t want to kneel. We didn’t want to deal with this. We can’t even talk to each other right now. We’re so angry, so frustrated, don’t know where to turn because things are so bad in the marriage. My job as the husband is to kneel first. Okay? She’s a submissive wife, she kneels, and we just can’t even talk.

So again, my job. I’m not saying, “You messed it up. Pray, apologize to God or something.” I’m saying, and I don’t know how many times this happened, but I just said, “God, we can’t even do this. Help us. Amen.” Get in bed back to back.

So the point there is don’t stop doing that. Don’t give that up. Don’t say, “It’s impossible to have devotions in this family. It’s impossible to pray in this family.” It’s not impossible. It’s not impossible. It is possible, and that’s the only hope.

So my picture is marriage as a garden, and the garden must be plowed, and the fruit doesn’t always come right away. In other words, you want wonderful vegetables and fruit to grow up in this garden. Spontaneous vegetables and fruit, spontaneous kissing and spontaneous hugging and spontaneous affirmation and spontaneous blessing of one another and outward ministry to the community. You want that to be growing all the time. And sometimes these little plants are just gnarled and dry and the stone’s all rocky.

Well, what does a husband do there? He puts his plow of Bible reading and prayer in the ground and he asks his wife to come over and sit on the couch and read their texts together and asks God to do a miracle.

So those two things: a theology of God’s sovereign grace to work all things for our good, and then patterns of devotion that you don’t give up even when times are impossibly hard.

I can’t tell you how much I appreciate your authenticity in that because I think, well, there’s just too little of that. And I think there’s a fear for the pastor to share that because of the criticism that comes. I would assume that you — have you received criticism when you were that open to places that you’ve taught to your own church while receiving this?

No, I don’t think we live in a day where people criticize openness. Well, maybe they do. Maybe there’s some groups that do. I can’t remember being criticized.

Here are two words to pastors: Don’t you talk like this without your wife’s permission. I made that mistake one time. I made that mistake. I’m very candid. I mean, it’s easy for me to be candid. I am so stupid and sinful in so many ways. There’s just no hiding it. You got kids to take into account when you start talking publicly. You got a wife to take into account, and you better not just blab away about the issues in your family without her knowing what that blab is going to sound like.

One time I mentioned an argument or a conflict we were having. I got home. She was furious. She was furious at me. She said, “I just can’t believe you shared that with those people.” I said, “I won’t. I will never ever, ever do that again.”

That’s true for your kids as well. I’ve heard pastors, you think you have 5-year-old kids and you’re free to say what you want about how funny things they say? You’re not. You’re not. Five-year-olds can be talked about. You can talk to a 5-year-old about ministering with their experience to your people, and they’d be okay with that. Don’t drop that on your people without their permission, without dealing with your kids and your wife.

And the other thing I’d say is I don’t think you should sneak around as a pastor and have counseling without your elders and even your people knowing it. When Noël and I back, what, late ‘80s, I think it was, 33 months with a Christian counselor. I mean, I’m just right there with my elders. Things are hard. Boy, they want to know what? What’s going to happen here? We don’t want anything to break down here.

So they’re right there with me and following the whole thing. And I’m right there with them. And I told the church. I said, “Look, we believe in Christian counseling in this church. We believe in biblical counseling.”

Why do we believe in that? Because real Christians need it. God has gifted the church with biblically saturated people with unusual wisdom. That’s called counseling. It’s an Old Testament model. There are wise men in the Old Testament, wise women, and they give counsel.

To need that is to be normal. So what you want to do is normalize counsel. So all your people, I’m looking at your sanctuary here. I’m just looking at 5, 6, 7, 8,000 people out there, they all should be counselors. Some more gifted than others and they do it for a living maybe. But everybody speaking words of exhortation and guidance into people’s lives.