EP 93

Welcome to the Smiling at the Future podcast. My name is Christi Rose and this is my pursuit to glean practical wisdom on femininity, home making, finances, relationships, and singleness from the God fearing men and women in my life. Hope you enjoy this journey with me as we learn to smile at the future. Hello sisters, welcome back. An announcement for you all. We are going to be taking a summer break so this episode will be the last one until we resume again mid August. But I will be recording episodes all through the summer and will be eager to share those with you when we start back up. So make sure come back in August and in the meantime, you can browse previous episodes or follow us on Instagram where we will be posting the best quotes from the past conversations this year. And we are also going to be doing some giveaways there. Today, I have the honor of having Doctor Ernie Baker as a guest. He is a biblical counselor and he has a passion for marriage and relationships. And he also wrote a book called Mary Wisely, Mary Well, which is why I invited him to join today. So without further ado, here is my conversation with Doctor Ernie Baker. Welcome to the podcast. Doctor Ernie Baker, thank you so much for joining me today. And for those who are hearing your name for the very first time, would you introduce yourself and share where the Lord has you in life and ministry? I’d be happy to, thanks. Thanks for letting me talk to your audience. I live in Florida and it’s hot and humid right now in Florida and I serve on staff of a large Southern Baptist church, First Baptist Church of Jacksonville, FL and I’m the senior adult pastor right now. For the 1st about seven years here I was starting the counseling ministry at the church and now I’m involved in the senior adult ministry. I also teach at the Masters University through the online program and I’m involved with a ministry called Biblical Counseling Ministries Worldwide, where we travel and teach biblical counseling around the world. My wife is Rose and we’ve been married 43 years and I’m very thankful for her. The Lord has blessed us with six children, three boys and three girls and all of them are married, but our, our youngest and we have 14 grandchildren now and they bring us just a lot of joy. So, and my wife is, I call her my adventure buddy because the Lord has LED us to do ministry all over the world together. So I’m very thankful for her. And you definitely have a passion for relationships and for marriage. And you wrote a book that is called Mary Wisely, Mary Well, and so I’m going to recommend that right off the bat to the listeners. But we’re going to be camping on some of the some of the things you brought through in the book about as you’re building a relationship. You use the example of a house and you kind of the foundation being Christ and you build up the framework from there. But you bring out different stages in the process of a relationship, how to live during your single years, understanding attraction and why you are attracted to certain people. And you also have a section on relationship skills and more specifically communication. So for the purposes of our conversation today, we’re going to be camping on that theme. But just to start us off here, I’d love for you to share in your book, you also talk about there’s a difference between character qualities and relationship skills. So can you explain what relationship skills are and how they are different from character qualities? Yeah, thank you. Let me read the verses from Proverbs that I base the book on and then kind of build it around, and then it’ll fit really nicely with the difference between character traits and relationship skills. So the theme of the book is Proverbs 24, three and four. By wisdom, a house is built, and by discernment it is firmly established. And by knowledge the rooms are filled with all precious and pleasant riches. And what I’m envisioning in the book is biblical wisdom. And what does that look like in making relationship choices? And then what does that look like in your relationship practices, or I call them dynamics, relationship dynamics of how do you have healthy relationships with others? And the two key components that I see there are both skills that you practice with others and then your character traits. So let me start with character traits. And that section of the book is based on Ephesians and Colossians 3. What I try to do in the book is be overtly, very clearly biblical. And my, my goal was for singles. You know, I’ve read a lot of books about dating and relationships and they they hit me as kind of fluffy and I thought readers could handle something more substantial. So I actually try to do a Bible study with each passage of of Scripture or focus on a main passage of Scripture. And Ephesians 4 is one of those. It says this verse one. I therefore, the prisoner and the Lord exhort you to walk worthy of the calling with which you’ve been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, being diligent to keep the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace. And then Paul has a parallel passage in Colossians 3, which I won’t take the time to read. But in that passage you, you hear character traits like humility, gentleness, patience, bearing with one another, being diligent to keep the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace. So the first of all, the difference between a character trait like gentleness and a relationship skill as a character trait is I think of it as being who you are as a person and a skill is doing, it’s something you do with others, A relationship skill, and I teach six of them in the book, a relationship skill would be like, you know how to communicate. It’s going to be hard to have good relationships if you don’t know how to talk and if you don’t know how to listen. So just communication skills and then character qualities are things like gentleness, humility. And what I’m hoping for it with the target audience that I’m focusing on in the book is work on these things before you’re even in a relationship. Work on these in between relationships. And I’m a marriage counselor. I’ve done thousands of hours of marriage counseling. So I think part of the motivation for the book was I was a desperate marriage counselor and I was trying trying to get ahead of issues and help people make better choices up front rather than having to end up in somebody’s office like mine and having to go back and do all the the remedial work afterwards. Yeah, I appreciate. And a lot of the episodes that we do, we talk about on the podcast is how can we prepare beforehand well for life and for marriage and to walk wisely. We’re called to do that in God’s word, to give thought to our ways and we want to be a blessing to somebody someday and work on these things ahead of time. But what would you say would be the right motivations for working on your communication relationship skills? Obviously there’s there’s maybe just a desire for people to like you or you know, you can have some wrong motivations there, but what would be the correct motives for pursuing growth in these areas? That is a wonderful question, and you’re right, there are a lot of wrong motives. But I’ll talk about right motives first and then maybe piggyback on some of the wrong motives that you just mentioned. So right motives, I think of the two great commandments of loving God and loving others. And it’s interesting in Matthew 22 that that’s my favorite passage that talks about the two great commandments. It’s mentioned in the Lord mentions them in other places, but Matthew 22 is my favorite because he says on these two commandments hinge the whole Old Testament on these two commandments hinge the law and the prophets. And that’s his way of saying the whole Old Testament. So he’s saying if you want to live out, if you want to fulfill the life that was envisioned in the Old Testament with New Testament principles, you do it with love. And so loving God, loving others. And you can even think of the the 10 commandments that way. What are the first five about loving God? What are the last five about loving others? And so the motive is I want to live for the glory of God. So Lord, help me to love others. So therefore, I want to practice good communication out of love for others. And how about if I just mentioned the six relationship skills and then talk about how love can motivate them? So the character traits are things like gentleness, kindness, patience, and it’s the opposites of those that actually tear relationships apart. So if harshness, irritability, it would be hard for me to tell you how many times in marriage counseling I have heard the phrase, I feel like I’m walking on egg shells, you know, because the person they’re married to is irritable and harsh. So the opposite is gentleness, kindness, patience, instead of irritability and harshness. And then the skills, things we do with others are things like communication, conflict, knowing how to do conflict resolution. And those two tend to be the two weakest for almost everybody of the six, communication and conflict resolution skills. And then knowing your role, what’s a husband’s role? What’s a wife’s role? Spending time, how do you discipline yourself to spend time together, walking with the Lord together? So you discipline yourselves to have a spiritual component to your relationship. You’re praying together, having family worship times together, and then you serve one another, which is a very biblical component in all relationships. So I teach those six skills. And why would I want to communicate? Well, it’s loving to communicate. It would not be loving for me to come home from work and just clam up and not tell my wife about my day. Love needs to motivate me because she’s interested and love motivates her of I need to care about what Ernie, what happened in Ernie’s day? So when I get home from my office, she’s always asking me, So what happened today? Early in marriage? I it’s it’s so sad now. Early in marriage, I used to think she was just being nosy and I thought why? She asked me all these questions about my day. And then I realized my wife is just highly relational and she cares about what happened because in my mind I just wanted to come home and be quiet and she wanted to talk. And I was actually the one being selfish and she was the one being loving because she cared. So love, I believe, is the right motivation for these working on loving God, living for the glory of God and loving others. Philippians to esteem others better than yourself. That becomes the motivation for working on these skills and character traits. So there’s lots of wrong motives because of our hearts. And you’ve probably talked about the idea of the heart before on your podcast, but the heart is my wants and my desires. And it’s Proverbs 423 says guard your heart for from it flow the issues of life. And my heart can be motivated by all kinds of wants and desires. Like I want approval of people or I want to stay in control. So I can, you know, dominate talking because I want to be in control of the conversation. Or I could clam up because I’m afraid of what people will think of me. So I run into it all the time and marriage counseling, one of them is more dominant and talks a lot and dominates the conversations. And then the other one is a people pleaser and doesn’t want to talk because they’re afraid of what the spouse will think if they bring up an issue. Here’s another main part theme that I see often is I call comfort loving. And Americans are really bad about this. We like life to be easy and want to take it easy. And relationships are hard work. And so people run from conflict because it’s just hard. It’s hard to do conflict resolution, and they just pretend that it doesn’t exist. But you can’t have healthy relationships unless you accept that Genesis 3 is a reality, and that is conflict is inevitable in our fallen world. So all relationships take work. I like to say in marriage counseling, good marriages don’t happen. They’re made to happen. And so Rose and I have worked really hard on our marriage. It’s not like we’ve got the secret mojo sauce or something. You know, if you ask Rose what has made our marriage work, she would say the Lord. Because we’ve been gracious, learned to be gracious and forgiving. We’ve learned to be better at conflict resolution. We’ve learned to discipline ourself with spending time together. I love how you, you brought out love being the motivation behind that love for God first and then for others. And I definitely understand and resonate with the comfort loving kind of desire in our heart to, you know, not want to communicate because we are tired or we’re not feeling well or we don’t want to bring up an issue. Like you said, we want to ignore that it’s there, but love for that other person is willing to set aside those comfort loving desires and do what’s best for them and to seek their good above our own. But it can be a temptation. Kind of along that same line of thought of comfort loving is to become lazy in our communication. We just kind of get set in our patterns, maybe our what we were raised with or how we’ve handled conflict or communication with our family members. But it is an area that does take, like you said, effort and in relationships, we can’t just become lazy. So what are the the core areas that we need to put intentional effort into improving? Yeah. One thing I’d add to what you said is it’s it could be laziness, but you said we kind of get stuck in our patterns and routines and some of it can just be life is busy as well. And all of these areas that I’m talking about, the six relationship skills and the character traits, you have to be intentional about them. Good marriages don’t just happen. They’re made to happen. So you have to be intentional. And what I’ve done in the past is if I’ve sent some weakness in our marriage, I’ve actually reviewed my the six relationship skills and I said, OK, where, you know, where are Rose and I, you know, falling short right now? And oh, we’re caught up in the busyness of life. And we haven’t gone out on a date for a long time. You know, we haven’t spent purposeful time together. Oh, or we’ve let a conflict go unresolved and it’s been festering. So you’re right, it can be laziness, but it could also just be busyness and you get locked into routines. You used a really good word, Christi, and that is intentional. And the Christian life takes discipline. Paul says discipline yourself for the purpose of godliness. So I would be concerned about someone if I hear well, I go to church when I feel like it. I read my Bible when I feel like it, I pray when I feel like it. That’s not a very intentional Christian life and same with relationships. So purposely with your spouse or the person you’re dating, purposely staying caught up on just life, not always conflict resolution, but just let’s just talk about life. Be relational. We’re made to be relational as humans. So that means we’re made to talk and listen. So learn to ask questions, learn to listen. We haven’t been doing it recently, but for a long time we carried a whole list of questions in our car or we had cards that had questions on them so that while we were driving we were being purposeful. Like some of them were silly things like what’s your favorite dessert and why? What was your favorite movie to watch growing up and why? And it was just ways for Rose and I to continue to get to know each other even after we were married and be purposeful. So intentionality is a good word for those six relationship skills in communication. And then one other thought would be Fusion’s four says don’t let the sun go down on your anger. So and then the one of the next verses says let no one wholesome word proceed out of your mouth. So being intentional to keep short accounts with conflict resolution and then be purposeful to speak things that edify people instead of tear people down. So let no one wholesome word proceed out of your mouth. But that which is good for the use of edifying to minister grace in a time of need is what Ephesians 429 says. So those are some of the thoughts that come to mind. Yeah, great, great helpful points there. I appreciated the how you brought out dealing with things quickly, not letting things turn into a root of bitterness, but resolving conflict as quickly as you can. And that is the biblical model. Now I want to circle back on something you mentioned earlier you were talking about in the counseling room. You have couples come in that, you know one’s dominating and talking a lot, the other one’s clamming up. Regarding communication styles, you often will see opposites attracted to each other. You’ll see often a more talkative person with a quieter person. So would you, do you have any words of wisdom of do opposites always complement each other and any potential conflict that could come about maybe from that? So in some ways the answer’s yes, in some ways the answer’s no. So let me explain myself so without sounding like I’m contradicting myself. So the answer’s yes in that you’re always going to be different and opposite of the other person in some or many ways because no humans are alike and are totally alike. So the idea that our culture has of finding your like your perfect soulmate, I believe that if you practice biblical principles, you become soulmates as you grow older and you’re getting to know each other. Like I can’t even imagine life without my wife right now. It’s just that would be, it’s such a foreign thought. I can’t even comprehend it because we’ve just she’s my best friend. We’ve just grown closer and closer and closer through the years. But that’s taken work. So, but are we opposite? Yes, we are. We have many things where we’re opposite and we hopefully in those areas where we’re opposite, we do complement one another. She’s much better at time than I am. Yeah. I’m really good about disciplining myself with my time. But because I discipline myself with my time, I try to fit too much in. And so like, I’m waiting till the last minute to leave for a meeting where she wants to leave 10 minutes earlier. So I’ve just learned through the years to ask her, OK, when do we need to leave for that meeting? Because I’m always trying to use every minute I can to do whatever needs to be done. So we’re complimenting one another, but there’s also contrast there. So the answer is yes, opposites do complement one another. If you’re learning how to practice grace and forgiveness and you just understand each other’s motivations more and more as you’re the longer you’ve been together so. Yeah, I loved how you brought out, you talked about you become each other’s soul mates as you’re practicing these principles. And I think that is somewhat that that is a common theme in our culture. If you have to find that one person that you click with that you get, and that’s, yeah, not necessarily God’s plan and it’s not very biblical, but as a biblical counselor, you are typically dealing with people that are in a conflict. So what are the the common ways that you see couples stumbling in the ability to resolve conflict? And how can we start practicing to do that better, even now as single women? Thank you, that excites me to think of people trying to work on these things before they get married rather than ending up in a marriage counselor’s office. So it’s really about the heart and learning to grow wiser about your heart. And if you’re a people pleaser, understanding that if you’re a people pleaser, you’re probably going to be a conflict avoider. Or if you’re a comfort lover in your heart, accepting I’m probably going to be a conflict avoider. And, or if I, if you know you have control tendencies, you’re probably going to be a person that’s more aggressive and you’re going to have to learn how to be more gentle and learn how to ask questions and be kind and patient with people. The person who’s the people pleaser and the comfort lover and the pleasure lover, that might be the person who or will be the person who has to say no. I know my tendency. I know my heart’s tendency is to avoid conflict. I like to pretend that it doesn’t exist and I’m going to have to discipline myself to move toward people and talk to people. The controlling person might have to say, yes, I need to move toward people and talk to people, but I’ve got to do it the way Ephesians 415 says speak the truth and love. I’ve got to talk. I have to learn to listen, not just dominate conversations, not be harsh and irritable. So common problems that I see are people are naive about their hearts and then people, humans are undisciplined. We’re really undisciplined. The conflict resolution is hard work and communication is hard work. So you just have to make yourself do it. On our 40th anniversary, I wrote an article, I think I called it Marriage Maintenance and Minefield Management. And Rose and I, we were driving and I said, honey, what are like 5 things that have helped our marriage? And so I wrote this article with her help. It’s on the Biblical Counseling Coalition website. Marriage maintenance in Minefield Management. And what do you do to maintain your relationship? Just like you have to change the oil in your car. There’s just regular routines like communication, the skills and the character traits. Those are like oil changes. You just have to do those. And then minefield management. That was after Andrew Peterson’s song with he wrote about marriage, dancing in the minefields, I think is what he called it. That’s conflict resolution. You just have to learn how to manage inevitable conflict. So that’s what I think of. Yeah, well, and I appreciate that you said it’s inevitable because I think some people have an idea that a healthy relationship never has conflict or disagreements. So it is something that will come up, but what’s important and what God cares about is how we interact with it and how we love the other person as we seek to come to resolutions. But one thing you brought that was I thought was interesting, you talk about conflict means to strike. So handling conflict in an unbiblical way is attacking that other person rather than trying to find the issue, taking the issue and and resolving that with the person rather than just attacking the other person. I don’t know if you have more thoughts to add on that, but that wasn’t a good observation. Yeah, yeah. We as humans, we see the other person as the problem and I would say Satan loves that. Satan loves to divide relationships because especially marriage relationships because it represents Christ in the church. So anything that he can get you to do to not like your spouse and hate your spouse, be bitter at your spouse it he’s going to be thrilled. And so viewing the way we like to say in biblical counseling is attack the problem, not the person. View the problem as the issue, not the other person. And that we have a common issue. Now we both need to figure out what the issue is and why we take the position that we do on the issue. And now let’s attack that instead of attacking the other person. A book I would recommend is called Peacemaking for Families by Ken Sandy, and it’s been one of our most used resources. We have a counseling ministry at our church with 4045 counselors now and we have a caseload typically of 100 to 120 cases at any one time. One of our most used resources. The main thing we do is marriage counseling. So Peacemaking for Families is a main resource that we use and it, if you read the book, you’re going to go, oh, I heard him say that. Oh, yeah, I heard him say that. That’s because I’ve I’ve just kind of absorbed the thinking in that book by Ken Sandy. Well, I will link that in the show notes if the listeners want more to read up on that. But another point you brought out in your book under this area of conflict resolution that I appreciated. As you talk about when a couple learns how to address issues and resolve conflict in a healthy way, it strengthens the marriage because they realize, you know, they can, they can move past issues and if they can conquer that issue, then they can conquer the next one. So I appreciate how you brought that out. Another quote that you said in the book, and I’ve been thinking about this all week and I it’s very true. You say a lot of people know how to talk about their problems, but few know how to actually bring the issues to resolution. That was a really good observation. And you also bring out if you’re going to fight, we got to fight for unity. And Ephesians 4 three was a verse that you brought up earlier to being diligent to preserve the unity of the Spirit. So we want to fight for unity and resolve conflict quickly within our relationships and specifically marriage relationships. But another aspect of your book that I thought was interesting is you bring about, you bring up different methods that people will use to meet and marry a spouse. So are there overarching wisdom principles that someone should apply in whichever method they choose? And then specifically in the platform of online dating, are there any wisdom principles that you would leave with the listeners on that point? Yeah. And so let me tell you a back story to writing the book. So I was writing the first draft of that book a long time ago. Now, I forget what year this would have been, but we had missionaries visiting that knew that I was writing the book. And they were staying in our home. And we were sitting in our living room in the evening, and they were asking me about the book. And I was explaining it. And they said it sounds like a very American book. And I thought, OK, that’s really interesting because, you know, I was talking about dating. I was talking about cohabitation. And they said the wife in particular brought up, she said, well, what about India, where matching by the parents is a common practice even among Christians? How do the how does the wisdom of the Bible apply in a betrothal culture? How does the wisdom? And so then I, I thought, you know what, I need to rewrite some sections of the book because I believe that the Bible is timeless truth for all people of all times. How would this apply no matter what method you use? And so wisdom applied to cohabitation is really easy. Don’t do it because there’s just so many pitfalls and, and warnings about that type of thing. But what about online dating, as you brought up, what does wisdom look like? So couple of things that come to my mind is no matter what the method you’re using to find someone or to, to see how the Lord’s leading you to find someone, you’ve got to make sure that this person is a sincere follower of the Lord. And gone are the days where you could say, well, we met at church. So therefore, he’s a he’s must be a Christian because he goes to church. And I have a whole section in the the book about what is wisdom according to Proverbs chapter 2. And some of that is what’s the trajectory of the person’s life? Where are they headed in life? What path do they seem to be on in life? And what’s their track record in life? So where have they been? Where are they going? And unless you see, not only you heard. Yeah, I prayed a prayer at age 5, but no, this guy’s a sincere follower of the Lord, and he’s serious about his relationship with the Lord. I, I taught our daughters and this statement’s in the book Run hard after Christ and then look around and see who’s running with you. And I know that’s hard these days because it seems like young, young men don’t want to grow up. And that’s another whole podcast. But I’ve heard many, many young women, including one of my daughter’s say that dad, you taught me to run hard after Christ and I and look around and see who’s running with me. And she said there isn’t anybody running with me. So I’m concerned, you know, I’m concerned about the maturity level of, of of men, but I would say to your listeners, please don’t rush and trust the Lord and say Lord, your most important. So I’m going to run hard after you. So are there principles, guiding principles, no matter what the methods are? Yes, things like trajectory in life, solid testimony with evidence that the person’s pursuing the Lord. You don’t want to rush. I think I have this statement in the book too. Before marriage, keep your eyes wide open and after marriage, keep them half closed. And Rose and I have found that’s very true with our marriage. You know, there’s, we have to be very gracious with each other now that we’re, we’re married, especially as we’re getting older and maybe getting a little more irritable or something. We have to, we have to help each other more. But just keeping your eyes wide open and then don’t feeling, don’t feel desperate and just pour your heart out to the Lord and say Lord, I’m going to wait for you and trust you and let him bring the person at the right timing rather than settling out of desperation. Doctor Ernie Baker, it was a pleasure having you on the podcast today to to share your wisdom of what you’ve learned just from God’s Word and then counseling so many other couples through the process of relationships and into marriage. And I know this will be a helpful discussion for the listeners as they seek to honor the Lord in this specific big area of their lives and as they’re thinking through marriage and who to marry and how to go about that process. So I just appreciate your thoughts and your time today. Thank you. One last resource, I wrote a little booklet on conflict resolution as well called Help I’m in a Conflict and that talks a lot about those character traits that we talked about. So thanks for letting me talk about these things. It’s been fun. Thank you.