Relationship Expert: How To Date To Find The Person You Want To Marry

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And if you're feeling stuck or trapped or overwhelmed in some area of your life, trust me, I know the pain. I've been there for many different years off and on, and it is a journey to creating peace, healing, and wholeness inside of you.
And if you are feeling overwhelmed in a relationship, if you're feeling like you don't have a good relationship with yourself or with others, then this is going to be a powerful episode because this is all about how to create that beautiful relationship with intention and purpose and how to challenge modern assumptions about relationships. If you've been struggling in a relationship, I've had five, six, maybe seven long-term relationships that all struggled for me, that were all hard, that all were up and down, emotional roller coasters, that were all just like, why can't we just make this work? Why is it so challenging? Why is there so much stress and friction and sabotage? And it wasn't until I started to do deeper reflection, deeper healing work, and start creating a relationship with myself from a place of peace and wholeness when I was able to create and attract a relationship in my life of the same mirror image.
In this episode, we are talking with an inspiring guy named Stephen Chandler, who's going to talk about the process of dating and staying in a healthy relationship. We dive deep into why the only destination for dating should be marriage, which is something that I never thought about.
I was actually like, maybe this will happen, but let's see. And let me just get to know you first and this and this.
It was never thinking, okay, what are we really in alignment early on? Are we really on the right path? Or are we just, you know, attracted to each other physically and we have fun and we like each other. So we're going to start investing all this time and energy and realize that we're actually not in alignment.
We don't have the same values of the vision

and we have a lot of friction actually. And I'm not saying you're never going to have friction,

but it shouldn't be friction every day. I mean, it's exhausting when you have that.

So we dive deep on all these things and how to identify red flags versus yellow flags versus

green flags and why having a clear vision is essential before bringing someone into your life. Because man, I brought a lot of people into my life in the past and it caused a lot of pain and a lot of problems and a lot of setbacks and all these different things.
And once I got clear, once I was able to go on the healing journey and create wholeness within me, that's when I was able to create wholeness outside of me. So if you are stuck or struggling in a relationship in your life or you feel like your relationship with yourself is not where it needs to be, then this is the episode for you.
And I hope you enjoy it. I'm excited for you to be here.
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You say we should not be dating unless it's to get married. Isn't that right? Yeah, absolutely.
How do you phrase that, though? So the only destination for dating is marriage. And if you go into dating and marriage is not your intention, not that you have to marry the first person you date.
Right. But if that's not your intention to find a spouse, you will get yourself in trouble.
One of my thoughts is a marriage license is the only license that they will give you with no training, no education, no test that you have to pass. Isn't that crazy? If you tell them you want one, they'll just hand it to you.
And there's principles that we apply to building business, to getting into shape, fitness, to building wealth. And there's principles to relationships just as much.
But if you don't know to look for them, you're not going to find them. Did you have a good foundation or training when you were growing up as a young boy developing in your teens and early 20s? Did you have a foundation of what healthy, conscious marriage looks like? Ooh, yes and no.
I'm making you uncomfortable already. You know what's funny? You said, what's off limits? And I'm like, nothing.
And then you start with what's off limits. No.
So I have phenomenal parents. My mom and my dad were married for 34 years.
My mom passed away from cancer in 2013, which is actually the same year I got married. So I had that model, 34 years of a beautiful marriage to watch.
But nobody's perfect. And everybody has their own, you know, things that they bring to a marriage and a relationship and all that.
So I had great picture of what it could be. And I also had a great picture of what I did at one.
Yeah. But also sometimes a great model isn't always the right roadmap, right? It's may not, they may not be giving you the direction.
They may be showing something. Here's a beautiful destination.
How do you get there? So I had a great model. I had no roadmap.
I always laugh and joke. I've been married for 11 years, going on 12.
I got three kids, and I'm still waiting for the intimacy talk from my dad. Never came in middle school, never came in high school.
It was kind of just like, go figure it out. So a lot of us leave home, and nobody gave us that roadmap.
But I'm blessed to have had some great mentors in my life. One gentleman told me, he said, Stephen, there are two decisions that will define the rest of your life.
What you do with God and who you choose to spend the rest of your life with. He said, a lot of other decisions you can undo, you can redo.
But those two, he said you can't get those two wrong. And with that thought and a lot of more kind of ideas in that space really kind of just brought intentionality from young.
What you do with God and who you choose to spend the rest of your life with. Those are the two most important decisions.
The two most important decisions you will make in your life. Do you think people can have a healthy, loving, abundant relationship if they do not have God at the center of the relationship?

Ooh, I will say it is very difficult. And here's why.

There's a verse in the Bible that says,

If you've received love, comfort, joy from God, consider others' needs above your own. Say that one more time.
If you've received love, joy, peace, comfort from God, consider others' needs above your own. Really? Why? One of the keys of making a relationship thrive is when you're in that relationship more for what you can give than what you can get.
But if I'm living life from a deficit, I will look at every relationship of what I can get out and I will... What I need.
What I need. And I will bankrupt that relationship because no human was designed to give me everything that I need.
It's almost like you're taking money out of an account that you're not depositing in and is running dry maybe. Absolutely.
So when I found my identity in God, I found comfort in God, I found inner peace in God, then I can step into a relationship not in a deficit and I could have the desire to serve more than receive. And you know how it works.
It's the reciprocity. When I give, I always get back more than I ever was able to give.
So it's, I'm not going to say impossible, but it's very difficult. I mean, you could also say, people watching or listening might say, well, I know people that are religious or believe in God or go to church together, but they have miserable marriages.
They have challenging relationships and it either they have God at the center or it seems like they do, but why are they divorced? Why are they struggling? Why is there infidelity? Why is there deceit? Why is this still happening to these individuals? And I'm sure you've seen people struggle in your church as well. I get in trouble as a pastor for this because obviously I'm a pastor.
So it's God first, God over everything, which is 100% true. But I will tell people shared faith is not enough reason to marry somebody.
It is a part of a healthy marriage, but it is not the totality of a healthy marriage. And, you know, even in the church community for your Christian audience, we're told, you know, find a Christian and spend your life with them.
And yeah, it's a little bit more than that. If I haven't unpacked past pain, if I don't have a clear vision for what I want to build, I don't know how to communicate.
If I haven't found peace internally, if I haven't gotten over this selfishness deal and a heart to actually serve, I can bankrupt a relationship and still have God in my life and still bankrupt that relationship. Yeah.
So you could have God at the center of your life, but lack the skills, the tools, the self-awareness on how to be a good partner. Absolutely.
And that's going to hurt a relationship. It will.
Every single time. So we need the skills that it sounds like the roadmap.
You learn the skills along the way with the roadmap to get you to the destination. But what I'm hearing you say also is we should not, unless you're like in high school or something, or it's just like a fling, you shouldn't be getting into a committed relationship unless you see the possibility of wanting to marry.
Here's how I would describe that.

It would be as if someone went to medical school,

finished residency, and their career path is,

I'm gonna be a doctor.

And they decide to take a three-year job

working at a construction firm.

Good job, great job.

Pay the bills, yeah, we meet great people.

It will not move you towards the goal

of being a physician. It won't prepare you, it's sideways energy.
We'll meet great people. It will not move you towards the goal of being a physician.

It won't prepare you. It's sideways energy.
It's a detour.

And if you are living an intentional life and you've got a destination, I'm not even saying marriage is the destination.

Let's say greatness is the destination. The more detours you take, the more you delay getting to where you want to go.

And if we were humble enough, we would say there's people that we dated that were detoured. That were an absolute detour.
I'm sure those people would say that about me too. Absolutely.
And it doesn't mean we were bad people and we didn't have good intentions, but if we're not thinking of that in mind, and it's like, it's not a distraction because I feel like every relationship is also an experience that educates us that also gives to us and hopefully we give to the other person but it's just you're taking a detour still if you're not intending for it to go there and the longer you stay in that relationship the longer it takes for you to then find the person you're going to be with and potentially the more damaged your heart is, which takes time to unpack and heal, which delays. Here's one of the things people are, oh, we dated, we had a good time.
It didn't work out. It was no big deal.
No, no, no, no. The most valuable thing you have is your time, not your money.
You could always make more money. You can never make more time.
and the Bible says, wherever your time goes, your heart is going to follow it. So it's impossible to spend one year, two year, three years of someone, your heart not go.
And they'd be a sense of devastation when it does not work out. And it takes time to heal and kind of let go of that old identity.
Trust again. Yeah.
And move on and not think about that person. As I'll talk to people, you know, single folks or whatever, they'll say, you know, all men are or all women are.
And I'm like, you haven't met all men. You haven't, but you are now seeing a lens of the world from one person you encountered and had a negative experience with.
It takes time to unpack that. Nobody lives a perfect life, but the more of that you can avoid, the faster you can make progress towards a goal you have for your life.
What is the problem with having sex in a relationship before marriage? Oh, it messes your head up. So there's a couple of aspects to that.
One is it literally does impair your ability to make healthy decisions. Almost everybody would admit I stayed in a relationship longer than I should have.
And I can't quite explain to you why I did. I knew it wasn't going to work.
I knew it wasn't the one. And six months later, I'm still there trying to make it work.
And what they don't realize is the physical intimacy brought a sense of responsibility mentally that I have to help this person through whatever they're struggling with or help them accomplish this goal or whatever. And it blinds your judgment of red flags, yellow flags.
It delays the exit parachute because you're more committed than you ought to be. Gosh, this is, it clouds your judgment so much when you create that chemical bonding, that sexual intimacy.
And something that I think about is if you're in a relationship or you're dating someone, if you weren't having sex with them, would you want to spend 10 years with them, 20 years with them if there was no sex? Do you enjoy their company, their conversation? Do you have the similar values? Are you going in the same direction? And would you want to be with them if that wasn't there, if that was off the table? A lot of people wouldn't't and it's one of the that's gonna sound bad it's one of the most shallow levels to pick a partner off of because oh you know we have great intimacy yeah but you know that could be true with a litany of people we have great conversation uh-oh that narrows the list man we have shared vision and dreams oh that even narrows the list man when i'm around them they replenish me and they build there are a lot deeper levels to make decisions on than just you know sexual compatibility or whatever it may be but once you start there you get stuck there and it's harder to evaluate someone in any other level they They're not going to like to hear that. No, they don't want to hear that, man.
Especially in the modern world, people don't want to think about not having sex before marriage because it seems like, what's the point? The other thing is, it puts you in a position, because it is my belief that we were made by God for sex. So it puts you in the position to make a decision faster.
When I can, I can date you for five years. I can date you for 10 years because there's no physical urgency that is driving me to make a decision.
What do you mean by that? What do you mean it makes us decide faster? I think we're having it or not having it. If we are not having it.
Cause then we're like, because it is a godly godly desire it is a godly desire it is an outlet of stress it all that other kind of stuff so when i don't have it it's like okay i've got to figure out how can i put myself in a position where that's a part of my life and if marriage is the only option for me then I'm going to be a lot more intentional about

getting to marriage faster.

So I'm not going to date people that I know are not marriage material.

Interesting.

I'm not going to stay in a relationship that I know is not heading towards marriage.

I will have a lot higher standards.

Can I say it this way?

When I want to have sex and I've relegated it to marriage.

That's interesting.

So if men or women take sex off the table, how much happier do you think they would be in the dating phase or in the relationship phase before marriage? Here's what I will say. It depends on what else is on the table because just like God is not the totality of every relationship, sex is not either.
So if you take sex off the table, but you still can't communicate, you still don't have clear vision, there's not going to be much joy there. But if you are taking sex off the table because you're making a decision, I'm going to be intentional about this entire process, I am telling you, you will have greater joy and you will have greater success in the long run so for a lot of people who are watching or listening they they probably are have struggled in relationships and they're not sure on how to make theirs the best possible they can right now maybe they're going through a challenge right now and it seems like we've got single phase dating phase committed dating phase and then a choice to be married and committed hopefully long-term phase and marriage right what would be the step-by-step process then from being single to getting into a relationship that will lead to a beautiful, loving marriage.
I will say this.

You've got to do the... to getting into a relationship that will lead to a beautiful, loving marriage?

I will say this.

You've got to do the visionary work when you're single

before you bring anybody into the picture.

What does that look like?

So my children, I got three kids, eight, six, and three.

And our new obsession is puzzles.

So we'll build thousand piece, 5,000 piece puzzle or whatever. And if you ever built a puzzle, you know, the picture is on the cover of the box.
And then all of your time is just trying to create the picture that you see. A lot of people go into dating and they've never established a picture of marriage that they want to build.
So you've got to start with what is my end destination? Where do I want to go? Do you remember back in the day before there was GPS and you had to go on a computer and punch your directions in and all that? It says- MapQuest or whatever. All that other stuff.
What's your current location and what's your final destination? And let me give you some final destination questions. Not just, I want to be married, but what do I want our life to look like what do we, I want our life to look like financially?

What do I want our life to look like romantically? What do I want our life to look like with

communication and all that? Now that I've got a picture and it can't be too specific that only

one person on the globe can fit into this picture, but man, a woman or a man, they can fit into that

picture. Now I'm out just looking for who's the person that can fit into the picture that I have.
So that's step one. You got to have a vision.
Step two is don't waste your time with anybody who can't fit into that picture. Be intentional.
But in the beginning, you know, exchange numbers. We go on a date, whatever it may be.
We've decided we're going to date and be exclusive. It is so important that that first season, and if you ask me, I'll give you a timeline.
If you don't, I won't push it. What's the timeline? I say this, no shorter than 12 weeks and not much longer than eight months.
So we're just dating a dating phase of just having fun. Oh, really? And what I find is some people, they get too heavy too soon.
So it's like the first date, how many kids you want to have? Oh, wow. What's your credit score? You know, what's your idea of wealth? And it's just like, I don't even know you, and I don't even know if I like you.
Let's just enjoy life because friendship is one of the greatest foundations of any healthy marriage. But what if, I want to push back and ask you about this.
What if, man, you can have fun with this person, but you haven't asked the tough questions until three, six, eight months in. And you realize, oh, our values are not aligned.
Like we can go out and have great dinner and go bowling and go travel and man we have great conversation and same interests but yeah oh they actually don't want kids yeah yeah oh they're actually in debt 100 grand and that scares me oh actually they got one of the debt thing oh they actually don't want to you know raise our kids in this way yeah yeah they you know their in-laws are so intertwined in the relationship that it's too, whatever it is, you know. How can we ask questions that make sure they fit the picture without interrogating them too much? So let me go out on a limb.
What is in a person's heart will come out their mouth. It is impossible for what is in your heart not to come out of your mouth so in that yes you're having fun but you're observing yes you're watching hold on we've been together for six months you've never even mentioned your parents like that i'm i'm that's going to be very obvious hey we've been hanging out for four months you've never introduced me to your friends withoutating them, if you're paying attention, you may not know if they want to have kids or not.
I'm getting in trouble. But if that's the person that you want to spend the rest of your life with, that may not be a deal breaker once you fall in love with them.
Interesting. Or they may say, I want to have a kid with you yeah and they may and they may you know what's interesting there was as i reflect back on all the uh challenging relationships that didn't work out but that but that taught me beautiful lessons yeah i don't blame any of these individuals um i was equally a part of them uh there's something you asked me before we started the conversation and you said something around the fact of like, how did you know she was the one for, for me? Yeah.
Martha. And I didn't want to give you the clearest answer, but I knew she could be the one when I realized she was resourceful enough to take care of our future kids if something if we had them and something happened to me where I died yeah or I was no longer able to provide yeah I I trusted that she was a resourceful woman that she was a spiritual woman that she was able to do things where she could provide and value in so many other ways to children if we decided to have them.
And if we decided to get married, all these different things, a few months in. And I was like, this is a woman.
And I was always dating girls. Where I felt like I had to rescue or they weren't resourceful, but this person I can trust with my kids.
And that made me like oh this is maybe she's not the one but she could be the one it was like a feeling this conversation uh it might end a few relationships hopefully it starts so much too I was dating this girl uh I was actually in high school at the time and I was dating this girl and my mom just couldn't stand her oh but my mom knew I was stubborn enough that if she told me I'd have studied could stayed in it a lot longer and she said something along the lines of she said two things she said one Stephen I'm pretty much the same girl I was when I was 16 and she's like 54 at the time she said I've matured and all that but my personality is what she was saying is Stephen you're waiting for this girl to change and she's not going to change the other thing she said is um pick somebody that you wouldn't mind raising your children which is kind of like what you just wouldn't mind raising them yeah listen a lot of us will stay in a toxic relationship because we're like I can handle it I you know it's what it look crazy but you know I can deal with all. But then when you kind of step back and you do what you said, if I wasn't here, is this who I want my daughter to become like? Is this who I want my son to become like? Is their values what I want to shape the legacy of my, all of a sudden you begin to narrow that and say, no, no.
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make every moment bigger bolder and with just the right amount of swagger because we can plan your trip at visit dallas.com why maybe i'll just speak for myself in my 20s but why do so many of us choose people over over with sexual connection over friendship to be in relationships of like attraction yeah wow we we have a great connection or they're a great kisser they look so good or we're like compelled by the physical versus the spiritual or the friendship well let me let me give you the answer that you probably wouldn't expect the pastor to say.

Physical matters. Physical matters.
You see before you hear. You see before you experience.
And I

believe God made us that way. I think there is someone for everybody.
So I think everybody is

attractive to somebody. But at the end of the day, I've got to wake up next to you every single

I'm not sure. think there is someone for everybody.
So I think everybody is attractive to somebody. But at the end of the day, I've got to wake up next to you every single day.
I've got to lay eyes on you. And I know we grow, life change, bodies change and all that.
But I don't think that physical attraction should be discredited or ignored. And I mean, let's be real.
Nobody wants to be in a relationship with someone that they're not attracted to me but they like my mind or you know I've got a great personality a good person yeah you don't want to hear that so I think physical attraction is the first step the issue is most people it's kind of like credit cards or whatever it may be most people don don't have the self-control to be able to manage the physical attraction. That's important.
It's a part, but it's not the totality. And I've got to be intentional enough.
Okay. Physical attraction is ticked off on the list, but now let me go deeper and see if there's other things there that make it worth taking a step forward.
So I wouldn't discredit it altogether. And you said in your 20s, well, that's, you know, some of the most immature seasons of our lives.
Ain't nobody thinking very deep in their 20s. So that's kind of it.
I always think about this. I don't know how people get married in their 20s.
Because for me, I just feel like I would have been married and divorced. Yeah.
Or I just had a really challenging time if I'd gotten married the way that I know I thought in my 20s. Or just my ability to manage my emotions or just all that stuff.
I would have really struggled. Do you think people should wait longer to get married? Or getting married young is a good thing? Absolutely not.
Get married young. Really? Okay, so.
I'm in trouble again. why again so when I got married I was 26 I wanted to get married at 23 I blame my wife I'm like I don't know what she was she was wasting my time where was she at but um I got married when I was 26 she was 25 how long were you dating for okay why are you getting me in trouble okay so here's the whole story uh we dated for 10 months.
So first date was December. Actually, no.
I'm talking about first date to marriage. Wow.
So how long did you know her for? That's the thing, two years. Okay.
So we knew her. We knew her.
She knew my family. We were friends for two years.
Got it. So it wasn't something I was learning.
Yeah, yeah. So anyway, first date in December.
We got married the August of, so not even a full you know year but and like you said man if i got married in my 20s there'd be so many challenges that i'd face we faced all of them really you're 100 right but here's the deal when you get married in your 30s you face those challenges when you get married in your 40s you face those challenges so here's what I'll tell people. It's like investing for retirement.
The earlier you start, that compound interest,

sorry. I know, man.
It's so hard. Pays off.
Yeah. If you can get through it together.
If you can get through it. But if you can't, it's going to be five, 10 years of stress.
One of the things

that I say in the book is that marriage was never supposed to be done in isolation. I actually tell people do not date or marry someone that doesn't have great mentors in their life, whether it's family members or just wise counsel in their life.
And those difficult seasons that you talk about that I'd like to submit, nobody gets through marriage without facing those difficult seasons. And you come out stronger on the other side.
When you've got wise mentors around you, what are they going to tell you? Ah, we've been through the same thing. Oh, you want to kill each other? Yeah, I've been there, done that mother t-shirt.
You'll make it through. Oh, you're just being prideful.
You need to humble yourself. Oh, no, that no that's major y'all need to go to counseling you've got people to walk you through the journey and all of a sudden you realize no this is normal this is powerful a lot of people jump out of a marriage because they didn't have anybody in their life to tell you this is normal most people go it's gonna sound bad i think every married couple at some point in their life have secretly thought oh god I married the wrong person really oh I just made the worst decision of my life it's just part of the journey but if you don't have wise people in your life you're gonna think a you're the only person, and B, this is a reason to make a lifetime change.
When the right mentor in your life is able to say, no, then they're done that. That's normal.
Or, no, it is as major as you think it is. And this may be a reason for a lifetime change.
When you were working on the writing of this book, Relationship Roadmap, what was something that you realized that you believe in maybe you preach at your church frequently and you know really works well in a marriage that you went against or struggled with earlier in your marriage oh um or was a challenge for you to fully embrace in your journey? Yeah, I think one of the things that I had to learn in marriage is while I believe as a husband, it's my job to lead my family, it is more important for me to love my family than to lead my family.

So in our space, you know, especially, you know, most of your audience, they're trying to maximize their life. They're building phenomenal careers, businesses and all that other good stuff.
You see almost everything in your life as what's the opportunity, what's the next major thing? And I realized I was pushing my wife to accomplish goals that she didn't have for herself. Really? And didn't slow down enough to realize not what do you see her as, but what's in her heart that she wants to do.
And I also- So you were pushing and driving and trying to accomplish or create or let's do this. That's what I did in every other area of my life.
Push everything. As opposed to just how can I be in love? Absolutely.
And I was missing the opportunity to create memories and moments because I could only see what was next, which is, I mean, it's immaturity. But you imagine, hey, we all do it, though.
All you think about is marriage. Yeah, well, the thing you say is the first two steps in your roadmap is have a clear vision, like the picture in mind, and don't waste your time, essentially, on anyone who can't fit that picture.
But if you have that same approach towards goal accomplishment, this is the end result. We got to go do this.
You're not enjoying the moments in the present. The danger of vision is panic and insecurity.
If you feel like that vision

is possibly not going to come to pass, you begin to push at unhealthy paces and you can bring that

into a relationship. Yeah.
So that was something you did early on? Oh yeah. Really? Oh yeah.

When did you wake up to it and say, okay, I just need to create memories and moments

Let's go. a relationship.
Yeah. So that was something you did early on? Oh yeah.
Really? Oh yeah. When did you wake up to it and say, okay, I just need to create memories and moments and be present day by day, even if it's not pushing towards my timeline of this goal? Well, I think there was a couple of factors.
One was I thought marriage was going to bring a relief from the exhaustion of leading and building. The weight.
The weight of it, that emotional drain. And when I was in the marriage and still as exhausted as I was before, I'm like, oh, dude, you're doing something wrong because it's not bringing the relief.
And then you realize, oh, it was me all along. It wasn't this person or whatever else.
It's not going to fix something or solve something. I think one thing that we don't talk about in terms of this journey of vision and greatness is there is some peace that comes with success.
For some people. For some people, it's like, what's next? What's next? It's not enough.
But I think some of my goals started to become accomplished. And I began to realize, okay, Steven, you can calm down.
You can slow down. And also, if you don't, you're not going to like the person you're becoming.
Really? So you probably need to take a step back. Really? And I think feeling the exhaustion when I thought it'd be gone after marriage and some of those goals being accomplished at ages far before I thought they were going to be accomplished, I realized, okay, you kind of need to chill out a little bit and live life, not just drive life.
Really? So you accomplished a lot of your big goals and dreams earlier than you expected. Absolutely.
Yeah. And then you realize I need to take some pauses or take some breaks or be more present.
You realize there's more to life than just the next goal. It's interesting you say that because Michael Todd, when he was on here, he said early on he had a mentor when he was getting into his, you know, becoming a pastor and learning how about how to be an effective leader.
He said he had a mentor who told him you need to take a month off every year no matter how successful how busy how many people want your time and attention how many opportunities yeah you need to schedule a month off otherwise it's gonna trap you you know and it's you're gonna burn out yeah and he said he always does that every year i think he does it every year but he even said i had his one of his last books that came out was a new york time bestseller for like 16 weeks in a row he goes i had all these opportunities to go do more press but i had this scheduled in for this month and the week i left to stop doing press the book came off the new york times bestseller list but i'm at peace with that because i know i'm in this for the long term and not just trying to grab everything right now. Yeah.
Yeah. And so it sounds like you have a similar approach to making sure you either have days, weeks or time where you reflect, recover and relax.
Life will always give you opportunities that are not worth taking. Every opportunity has a cost and you've got to make the decision.
I'm not willing to pay that cost. What's the cost? I'm not willing to lose my health.
I'm not willing to lose the relationships that matter to me or whatever is on your list. And you know, early on, you say yes to everything you have to you have to because there's not a lot of survive man yeah but after a while it is your nose that catapults you forward yes not your yeses we're dripping people that is so hard to figure out i i say this when it comes in i I put this in the book.
I actually started the book off talking about I had a great personal success. And it was just email came.
It was mind-blowing and all that. And in my space as a pastor, I can't get on Instagram and be like, ah, look at me now.
That's not very appropriate. So I go home.
I turn on the radio, I'm blasting Outkast, I'm on the kitchen countertop going off, and my wife comes, she jumps on the countertop, and we're just celebrating. And I finally learned how to make moments.
And in that moment, it struck me, and I hope this kind of shakes somebody, what use is it of accomplishing greatness if when I get there I've got nobody to share it with there's the moment doesn't really become a moment if there's not people there that can scream and shout and just fully celebrate me in that moment. That's what marriage is.

And a lot of times it's, I think some people would just see marriage as an inconvenience. It's just like, I got this other miserable person that I got to keep happy.
I can't even keep myself happy. Like, I don't got the time for that.
I'm too busy hitting this goal and hitting that. And what if you accomplished every goal in your life before you died? what would you do in that gap between all my goals are accomplished and I leave this earth? I'll tell you what you want to do.
You want to spend time with your grandkids. You want to impart all the wisdom you received to the next generation.
You want to sit down with your spouse and say, look at what we built, look at what we accomplished. But you've got to start making that investment in your early twenties before, you know, that time comes.
Yeah. There's an amazing book called Die With Zero that talks about memory dividends.
And if we're not creating these moments now and having time to reflect on them now also in our twenties, thirties, forties or whatever. We won't have the dividends of the memories later as well.
We've got to enjoy those moments and make moments and be present to them. But you said something about opportunities.
Life will always give you opportunities that are not worth paying the cost for. How do you know which opportunities to take and which ones not to? And in relationships or in business or life.
So you have got to have a set of personal values before you step out of the house. There are certain compromises I will not make for any cost.
And it is for wisdom's sake, because it's not like I'm just, you know, this, you know, highly moral, better than everybody else type of person. I know that compromise will lead me to a place I don't want to go.
So hopefully all of us have some level of moral value where there are certain things we will not lie. We won't steal.
There's certain things we won't do for success. We should have values of I'm not going to compromise my health.
I've got to be able to sleep at night. I've got to be able to eat well.
I've got to have time for physical exercise. Why? Because I'm going to end up on an operating table before I can accomplish all the goals of my life.

So it's that.

And it doesn't have to be a deep list.

But it needs to be moral. It needs to be health.
I think it needs to be relational. That I am not willing to sacrifice these key relationships for any level of success.
And then every opportunity that comes, I then determine, um, is this going to cause me to compromise one of my values, which is really scary. So this year, um, I decided I'm going to cut back my travel.
Really? Uh, last year I traveled 53 different engagements. So that's almost once a week.
And you know how it works. You try to pile them them all into one week so some of those are like three yeah you're on the road constantly traveling time zones different beds different foods you're out of your routine you're not with your family all these things but i've got an eight-year-old a six-year-old and three-year-old yeah my eight-year-old is a female girl and she's starting to notice when daddy's gone and i said man eight 16, eight to 18.
You only got a handful of years. You only got a handful of years.
10 years from now, she'll be 18. 10 years from now, I'll be 48.
I can travel and speak all over the globe from 48 to 100. I cannot spend those years with her ever again.
I made the decision, I'm going to cut back travel and I'm going that I tuck them in bed at night and I'm dropping them off at school in the morning as much as possible. Wow.
You know what happened? Every speaking engagement I ever wanted. They all came to you.
They're like, they tempt you. Where were y'all? Yeah, yeah.
When I was on the road, I was the rigmarole. Road dog over here, you know, running around.
It's just like, hey, can you come do this? Yep, no. But I made a decision along with my wife that these are certain things that I am not willing to compromise for any goal or level.
And here's what I just know. You can call it God, you can call it life, but I know whatever sacrifices you make based on personal value you will never go without you will always reap a reward on the other side of that decision a lot greater than anything you sacrifice how can someone trust that though if they're like man there's this massive opportunity where it could bring me money or some deal flow or some person that's going to help me further my

career. And I'm going to say no to it and trust that it's going to eventually come somewhere else when I stick to these values.
So there's two ways and both of them stick. One is you just got to live long enough.
There are certain things that only time will prove to you. The other way is you got to trust somebody else's work.

You got to have somebody else's work.

You got to have a mentor who's been there and done that,

who says one of two things.

I didn't trust that and I regret it.

Don't make the mistake I made.

Or I did and I'm so glad I did.

I'm cautioning you to follow in my footsteps.

But if you're not going to learn from time and you're not going to learn from a mentor, you're going to learn the hard way. Man.
Okay, we've got Katie's Projects, Dan's Bake Sale, Emma has a test tomorrow? Sweetie, I'm out of my blood pressure meds. Managing the house while Mama's gone is not easy.
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Speaking of the roadmap, the first step was having a clear vision.

And I think that's really important.

It's like we have to at least have an idea of what we want.

If we're just like, I don't know, let me just date a bunch of people, you're going to get a bunch of different things.

But I think you've got to have a clear vision of the type of relationship you want.

And don't waste time with anyone who can't fit into that vision.

What would be the next few steps on the relationship roadmap?

So you've got that season, 12 weeks to eight months where we're seeing, are we friends? Do chemistry is what we call it. Do I enjoy being around this person? And then after that, you need to have a season where you are determining how closely aligned are our values or are the yellow flags that I absolutely identified over the last eight months of having fun, are they red flags or can they be turned into green flags? How do you know the difference between yellow, green, and red flags? Well, that's major.
Here's what I would say on green flags. Don't trust your green flags because whether you are intimate or not you got that puppy love going on you can't think straight so make sure that the person you're interested in and it'll sound very corporate is vetted by your trusted community get them around friends who know you better than you know yourself really get them around absolutely and and i'll i'm gonna get more trouble if you're a man and you're dating a woman get that girl you're interested in around other females that try that you trust because women have a way of tricking all of us guys i mean she's pretty she's gorgeous none of us are thinking no get her around a woman that ain't impressed and that knows all the tricks and you know vice versa um so that that's the green flag yellow flags you mentioned it and i kind of cringed oh they have a hundred thousand dollars worth of debt okay hold on that can be paid off i would you really miss out on a really great person because financially depends how it is though if it's like

oh they would mess Would you really miss out on a really great person because financially? Depends how it is, though. If it's like, oh, they invested in going to school because they have a vision for their life, and this was a part of that, versus- They got 28 credit cards.
Yeah, yeah. They're not thoughtful of money.
Mm-hmm. Then there might be a different type of issue.
And that's why it's yellow. Yellow means investigate more.
It's not a deal breaker. And it's also not a, oh, it's no big deal.
Keep going forward. It's more investigation needed.
Yeah. What are they doing to improve or how are they handling it? Things like that.
Some people are like, I will never, you know, date or marry somebody who has children. Whoa.
Hold on. You can be missing out on a phenomenal person.
Once again, it depends what's the circumstances, what's the level of maturity and health in handling and managing that reality. And you can, there are some blended families that have built amazing lives.
Yeah. And then there's some people who have married some people with no kids.
Have done the exact opposite. So yellow means more investigation.
Red obviously means run for your life. And these are things that, here's how I would put it.
It's an issue. And that person is showing zero interest in building and growing in that area.

Zero.

So you're like, all right, what am I doing?

So let's talk about emotional regulation.

We automatically think about the person with anger, with rage, you know, whatever it may be.

And you're just like, oh, that's a warning flag.

Can I give you another red warning flag? Somebody with zero emotions. Somebody who cannot celebrate wins.
That's true. Somebody who can't celebrate themselves or others.
That is going to be very frustrating in a marriage when I'm dealing with someone who cannot emote. 100%.
And we only see one side of the spectrum as the red flag. We don't, matter of fact, especially if you come out of a dramatic relationship, you might actually enjoy the fact that there's not much emotion going on in this new one.
But that will come. And it's not that the emotion or lack of emotion or whatever it may be is a red flag.
It is their unwillingness to grow and develop in that area. Hear me, without your input, don't fix the person you're dating.
It's not your job and you're not capable of it. And if you are dragging a boyfriend or a girlfriend to a level of life that they don't want to live at, what do you think marriage is going to look like? Oh, man.
It's a life sentence of dragging someone a place that they do not want to go. So you've got to evaluate, does this person have a motivation? You can have $300,000 worth of debt.
But if they're like, oh, it used to be $500,000. I've paid off too.
And I have a vision for my own life financially. All of a sudden, that's somebody I want to partner with.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, of course. But, yeah.
Yeah, you can't change your partner. And one of the things, one of the big agreements that I made with Martha when we got into a relationship was, I was like, listen, I'm never going to get upset at you.
I'm going to be maybe frustrated or maybe we're going to have like disagreements, but I'm never going to be angry at you for your way of being or who you are, because I feel like I've gotten to know you. I feel like I've seen your personality.
We've had this time together. And I'm choosing to get into this relationship, accepting you for who you are.
And because I'm going to accept you, I shouldn't try to change you. I know you have a growth mindset, so you're going to be growing on your own.
I know you want coaching and therapy because you're already doing it. So you're in a mindset of like, how can I reflect and improve and grow? So me trying to change you doesn't work.
And I have one condition, don't try to change me. Accept me as well.
It's who I am and I'm gonna grow and I do coaching and I have mentors, things like that. But as long as we can accept each other, I think it could be a beautiful relationship.
That's when things get in trouble. And that's what I dealt with in my past was like, I always felt like I had to change to make someone happy.
Yeah, yeah. And that's exhausting.
Yeah, yeah. You used a perfect phrase, a growth mindset.
Yes. Because I cannot change anyone.
No. But we all have to change as life changes.
If that person does not come with a growth mindset themselves, oh, I'm in trouble.

So what I'm looking for, and I think that's a great way to kind of sum up the red flags.

There are really no red flag deal breaker run for your life for a person who has a growth mindset.

Yeah.

Because whatever that flag is, it's only temporary.

The red flag is this person has zero interest in becoming the best version of themselves.

Run.

Fat. Run.
This is going to be a controversial question or conversation we're about to talk about. I'm here for it.
what is the difference between a man's role in a marriage,

a woman's role in a marriage,

a woman's role in a marriage,

and God's role in a marriage?

Okay.

Okay.

Well, God is easy.

That's an easy one.

It's God's job to change everybody.

Everybody else, leave that to him.

That's not your job.

So that was easy.

Who?

The man and the woman's role.

So let me start. I ain't scared.
Let's do this. Let's start off with this.
Let's talk basketball. You use the same analogy I use.
Listen. You use the same one I use.
I love this. Let's take male and female roles out of the equation.
And let's just say this. Somebody got to play point guard.
What, we can't both dribble at the same time? It's only one basketball, okay? We can't both bring it up with the court at the same time? Somebody's got to be center. Somebody's got to get that rebound.
Somebody's got to start the fast break. There is no, let's say it this way, there is no organization that does not have clearly defined roles.
No successful organization. No successful organization.
Might be some that that literally, but that's why they're not successful. I'm a pastor.
Obviously, I believe the word of God is the way to live. A lot of people don't realize this.
The marriage and family was the first organization ever created in scripture. Before there was business, before there was church, before there was government, there was family.
so when you look at the family as

an organization there are roles and what are the the best use of the roles for men and women in marriage all right you go you go pin me in the corner it is my belief that you're free to disagree with me I think I think the band has a few roles. I think one of the primary roles is to protect.
I think it is the man's role for his spouse, for his children, to protect physically and to protect emotionally, which is very interesting in this generation because some of the greatest threats to our family won't come at the front door. It's going to come through the internet.
And I've got to know what's on my kids' phones and what's on their tablets and all that other kind of stuff. So I think protection is major.
I think it is the man's role to be the provider of the household. And this is where I get in trouble.
Are you saying a woman can't make more than a man? And what if she makes more than a man? And do you believe in stay-at-home dads? This is where I will get canceled. I do not believe in stay-at-home dads.
And I'll tell you why real quick. If you're going to cancel me, let me say this first.
Because I don't think work is about money. What's work about? I think work is about God's place to you on this earth to fix a problem that nobody else can fix but you.
And it has to do with income and I think as a man in particular if you haven't figured out what the problem on this earth for you to solve is there will always be a discontent on the inside and it has nothing to do with income yeah I call it I call that purpose yeah yeah it's what's the purpose you're meant to do to solve that problem, to help fix it. Are you saying that raising kids is not a man's purpose? Let me get in trouble.
I don't think it's a woman's purpose because them kids are going to be there for 18 years. That woman's going to live for 60, 70, 80 years.
I think even women need to have a purpose outside of, I just want to raise kids and then sit around for my grandkids. Like, no, there's a greater impact.
Not that there's anything wrong with that. And once again, fulfilling your purpose doesn't have to come with an income.
So I'm not saying everybody has to be out here working in corporate America or whatever else it may be. I love how you're looking at me like, this guy's going to back himself into a corner.
Nah, I'm just curious. So when it comes to provision, here's what I would say for a man.
You've got to make enough money for your family to have a roof over their head and food on the table. If your wife makes a lot more than you, great.
It just means the quality of life, the level of living, the experience that you're going to have are going to be greater. But if she does not want to work, we will have house to to live in.
We will have food on the table. We'll have clothes on our back.
And everything after that is icing on the cake. What if she's like, oh, my man's not able to provide in the same way that all my girlfriend's men provide.
And so we live in a way that is not as enjoyable as them. I can't go and do certain things with my friends because we don't have the means

because my man isn't providing for me.

So I'm gonna have to step up and go make my own money

because he can't provide.

Well, that's real.

And you may not like me for this,

but that's why I said before you date him,

have your vision.

And when you're interested and you're looking to spend,

does this person fit into my vision?

And here's what's difficult.

Thank you. Have your vision.
And when you're interested and you're looking to spend, does this person fit into my vision?

And here's what's difficult.

It's not fair 10 years into your marriage to switch to vision.

If you were content with this level of living before you met those people, it's not fair to now have a resentment towards someone that they're not fulfilling a promise that they never made. But that's tricky though.
10, 20 years, you might have a new vision. You might have a new vision for life.
You might have different goals, different seasons. We've been walking through it.
And if you married a growth mindset person, they'll be growing and earning more. They will grow with you.
Of course. The issue is I got somebody who doesn't have that growth mindset.
I know. That's the challenge.
But okay, Stephen, at 22, you're not making squat. You're making 10, 12 bucks an hour.
You're not providing. You can't even afford rent.
You're still at home. How are you going to marry someone who can't provide when you're that young getting married? So we do this singles night.
And I mean, this last one was 3000 singles, and it was Q&A and all that. And one of the number one question from women, especially women in their 30s, was I've got three master's degrees, six figure income, I've got my 401k, I will not.
I've got my home. Literally, I will not settle for a man who cannot match me financially and i i said you know my wife take this but i said well my wife made more money than me when we got married i was a pastor of a church of 50 people yeah making nothing nothing she was a nurse i mean first of all nurses good money, and then she could take all the overtime she wanted.

So if her decision was strictly financial, I wouldn't have had a shot.

But, and so they asked her, well, why did you marry him?

Because he was broke.

And I was, here's a funny thing.

My wife had no debt.

I brought all the debt.

Oh, man.

I had student loans.

I had car debt.

It was a mess.

That's why you justified $100,000.

Don't give up what a guy would do. dollars I got caught but here's what she said she said it was a simple decision because I married a man with a vision mmm and she said a man with money and no vision is not guaranteed to have money for long but a man with no money a vision and the track record that he has the work ethic to accomplish that vision.
She said, I followed him because he had the proof that he was gonna work. And he had a vision of where he was going.
Yeah, you weren't just sleeping on your parents' couch trying to figure out life, just being a charmer. You were working, you were devoted, you were committed, you had a vision for your life, you were developing your skills.
And so someone can sense and feel that. You can't evaluate somebody based on their net worth.
Yeah. Because that is a temporary measurement.
You've got to evaluate them based on their vision, based on their work ethic, and based on the proof that they accomplish what they say they're going to accomplish. It's kind of like what beauty and looks are for men and women.
Money is to women and men. it's like you could see the person with a lot of money and can be very seductive and attractive oh this person can provide for me but do they have a good character good values do they have good relationships or are they just going to you know be abusive in some way because they feel like they have money or power so this conversation started with what's a man's role what's a woman what was a woman's role and you know everything's fluid nowadays and everybody could do whatever but no because women do have a need for security we'll say oh she just wants him for his money she's.
No, hold on. Maybe it is.
There's an internal need in women of I need to feel secure. And part of security is, is there going to be a roof over my head and food on the table? What women have done is, well, I don't want to trust him for the security because he may walk out the door and now I'm high and dry.
So I will go out and get it myself. But it's not just all about, I just want money and I want to live a great life with my friends.
It is a God instilled need in women to feel security. And it is the man's job to provide that security.
I will say- What about the women watching or listening and say, I don't want to put my security in a man until he can prove he's trustworthy so i'm just going to always have this create the security for myself and be in control of my own life i will say yes in the um thought wrong in the reaction i do not want to put all of my thought hopes and trust in a man providing security great while i'm dating while i'm giving him time to prove to me who he is yeah that's the time don't trust him make him prove himself but but then when you're getting committed or in a marriage you just surrender all trust and and here's why I say that. You're going to trust them with your kids, but not your financial future.
And here's what it really comes down to. It begins to show us where money falls in our life.
Because we will give somebody our body, we'll give them our kids, but we will not trust them with our money. What's more important? We would all say my physical health, my children mean so much more to me than my money.
But if we look at the number one thing we talk about and we look at the hierarchy that we put our trust in, money is usually the last area. Why is that? Because money, uh-oh, plug for the book, is so connected to our hearts and our worldview.

And a lot of us have not done the work of unpacking

that connection between money and our heart.

So it really is not, I don't trust this person with my money.

It's I don't trust him with my heart.

So why get married to the person if you don't trust them with your heart? Because none of us think that deeply. It's just that simple.
I thought I trusted them with my heart. But when you realize I actually haven't handed my whole life to them, it's the fact that I don't trust it with a heart.
And healthy marriage, trust is built.

Nobody's been married for 24 hours.

And they 100%

trust the person that they're...

It takes time. And that's the

beauty of building it. I'm out of my blood pressure, man.
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Exclusions apply. Relationship.
So the man's role, I'm hearing you say, is protect and provide. Is there any other role that the man should have in marriage? The man is also the visionary of the household.
And that's, you know, once again, very sensitive. But it is a man's job to say, here is where I believe our marriage, our family, our finances, our children, our children's education.
This is where it can go, or this is where it should go. And if you're having fun, we're getting in trouble.
You're going to get comments. But you will find a lot of women that have to drive vision and conversations in their relationships and in their marriage.
They will say, I do it because I have to, because he won't. Because he's not leading.
Not because I want to. And a lot of women that step out of relationships, they'll say, because I had to lead him and I did it.
You know, it's so funny. There's these natural things inside of us that we respond to.
But then when somebody wants to write it on a piece of paper and say, this is a man's, we pushed back against them. A lot of women, some may, I want to call the shots and I want to lead and everything.
But a lot of them are like, I'm doing it because I have to, not because I want to. Let me push back on this then.
For the men that say, I've tried to lead, but she just keeps taking over control. She won't listen.
She keeps pushing back on me. She won't either submit, surrender, relax in my leadership, whatever you want to call the word.
And so I've just stopped because it's exhausting because I'm leading, but then she's pushing back constantly and pushing against my vision. So I just let her do what she wants to do and be in control.
The Bible says wives are to submit to their husband, not be submissive. There's a difference.
And some women are like, I am pushing back and asking all these questions because I want to fully understand.

And when I fully understand, I'm going to give my all to it.

Interesting.

And I'm going to be honest.

Yeah.

Sometimes our insecurity doesn't like to be questioned.

I can.

That's true.

Come on.

I don't like that.

You know? When I'm like, this is my vision. And when you question me, it doesn't feel good.
Let's switch this to the business role. If you are a CEO, entrepreneur, business leader, and you've got some thoroughbreds around you, they're going to question your vision and you want them to poke holes in the plan because they're watching your back.
Yeah. But if you're insecure, you're going to see it see it as rebellion as attack as they're trying to divide the company or whatever and you will find an insecure leader will not have great leaders around them interesting because they won't give them space to think for themselves bring it back into your marriage sometimes it we're all we all have ego anybody who says they don't have ego they're lying so i've felt this of telling my wife my wife, hey babe, we're going here.
And she's like, well, what about this? Don't question me. You know what I mean? It's just like, and then I had to realize, dude, she's questioning you because it was a half-baked idea.
And you had holes that you didn't even see. And I can't see every question as threatening, you know, my masculinity or whatever it may be.

So A, some of those, you know, that woman, you know, she won't follow me. No, she's just asking so she can be fully bought in.
And then some women, something in their past has taught them, I can't trust anybody else but myself. And they're responding through fear instead of through what your track record has proven that you can be trusted with.
Yes. So that's why dating the right person and making the right decision before you say I do and not sleeping with them so that your judgment is not off it's so major because once you've said I do doesn't mean you can't undo it but the amount of collateral damage that's a lot it's a lot it's a lot it's a lot so pick the right person Pick the right person for you.

The Bible says he who finds a good wife finds favor from the Lord. A lot of people think it says he who finds a wife finds favor.
No, no. There's thousands of wives out here.
Not a lot of good ones. And not a lot of good ones for you.
For you. Yeah.
So it takes a lot of time and intentionality to find who you want to trust with your future. And it's the same thing, especially when it comes to the biblical world.
There's all this pushback. Why do I got to submit to a husband? Women hate that verse.
They don't like that word, right? It is. I'm not going to say easy because nothing in life is easy.
but it's not as difficult to submit to a husband that you love where he's going and you like the vision and you want to be a part of that vision.

and wives realize you get to pick what vision you submit to so pick well just because he's ripped and got muscles and he's six feet tall and got a six figure income or whatever the

sixes you're looking for are does not mean that that's the only thing to pick from. And this thing called life, we live based on the decisions that we make.
100%. And they're major decisions.
So what is the role of a woman in a marriage then? So when you think about marriage, I would divide it out into different spaces. There's family, there's finances, there are extended in-laws, there's career, all that other good stuff.
And I think one role of a woman is to be the nurturer in the home. not the only one.
Us men, we have to be nurturing. And it does not mean that women have to stay home with the kids or they shouldn't.
That is every family specific decision. And anybody says everybody should do that is just naive.
However, God has given women a sensitivity, a connection to their emotions that's a lot more challenging for men that is easier for them to create that nurturing type of environment, whether you have no kids or whatever it may be. And as a woman creates that, it's a lot easier for a man to step into that.

Makes sense?

100%.

So that's one.

Two, I heard a pastor say, when you think of the word submission, just think of the broken out, support the mission. So it is the wife's job to support the mission, which in one season of the marriage may mean I'm out here working, making more money than my husband, because that supports the mission of our family for this season.
It may mean the exact opposite. It may mean that I step away from my career and I'm home with the children for a season because it supports the mission, not that he has, but that we've set for our family.
So you can't say women should stay home with the kids or women should be out here working or whatever it may be. It's what is the mission that we've mutually agreed upon is the mission for our family.
And how do I support that in this season? I love that. I say, this is kind of using a biblical term, but the word prophecy or prophetic.
I think one of a woman's role in a marriage is to be the prophetic voice, which prophecy, the word really means to encourage, to put courage in. And one of the roles of a woman is to say, we can do this.
We can accomplish this. And us guys, sometimes we are so in our head and we are our worst critics.
And I mean, it's a minor mistake. And in our head, it is the biggest thing ever.
And when you've got that right woman in your corner, I said, no, you're overthinking it. No, the goal can still be accomplished.
No, we still, it breathes life into the family. And it brings you to goals that you would have given up on if you were by yourself.
Wow. What do you think people struggle with hearing the most about their roles getting into a marriage, both men and women? I think one of the things that both men and women struggle with just in marriage in particular is I'm going to lose my identity.
I think women

struggle with this more, but I'm going to be overshadowed. There are going to be things that I want to accomplish that I'm not going to be able to accomplish because we're, you know, serving my spouse's vision in this season or whatever.
Life is all about giving up something you want for something you want more.

What do I want?

I want to be on vacation 12 months a year that's what I want what do you want more I want to build a legacy I want to build greatness I want to build an impact so yes I'm gonna give up Cancun for 12 months out of the year but what I get in return is greater than what I gave up. Forget marriage.
There is no relationship that you don't have to compromise and give up part of your dream. What makes it worth it? What I get back is greater than anything that I've given up.
So guys or girls, when you get married, you're going to have to slow down a little bit. Because when you were single, you made a decision and you acted on it.
You had nobody to check in with. And slowing down for drivers is frustrating sometimes.
Because it's just like, I've already thought it through. I've already made it.
Let's go. But slowing down and making that decision with someone who has massive talent and gifting and ability is going to make the results of that decision far greater than they would have been if I was by myself.
So, yes, I gave up the speed at which I love to go through life in. But the reward is it's worth it.
Yeah. So that fear of I'm going to lose part of myself and I'm not going to relieve that fear.
You will lose part of yourself in that marriage. But you lost part of yourself when you launched that business.
That's true. You lost part of yourself when you had those kids.
And that's life. You're developing.
And it's worth it when you see the goal on the other side. I've got a couple of final questions for you, but this is a powerful book called Relationship Roadmap, Step-by-Step Directions to Finding Your Spouse.
And again, most people are struggling and challenged with relationships in their life. And this is going to give you the tools on how to set you up with more success.
So make sure you guys get a copy or two. Give it to a friend who might be struggling in the relationship as well.
Someone who's been married 12, almost 13 years now, but also been around a lot of individuals who've been married for a long time. You have great married mentors, and I'm assuming you've counseled many people in their marriages as well.
As I get into my newly married season of life, what would be three pieces of advice you'd give me that either you followed when you were getting married or you wish you would have followed as well well first of all congrats come on it's been a fun journey and um i'm gonna kind of turn it heavy for a second but it's okay it's gonna resonate with a lot of people uh my mom ended up passing away in 2013 and I got engaged the first week of February.

She passed away the last week of February, so she passed away three weeks after we got married. She was 54.
And you know, when someone's coming to the end of their life, life comes in perspective and the things that matter matter and the things that you thought mattered, you realize at this point. And so the greatest piece of advice I got was from my mom.
And she said, Stephen, if I had known I was only going to spend 34 years with your dad, some of the things that I was dogmatic about, I now realize they don't matter. so in marriage pick marriage, pick which hills you're gonna die on.
And I'll even say this, three or less. Don't have a lot of who.
Like, I will not compromise on this. And then other things, we can talk, we can disagree, but don't make it World War III.
You know, some of the dumb stuff we get in a relationship, ah, you know, my husband bought a red car and I hate red cars. Why do you, you know, but at the end of the day, nobody cares.
You know, you drive the car for five years, you can get a blue one next. It doesn't matter.
But, you know, in that moment, it seems like the biggest deal in the world or, man, I don't like the house. This is gonna get me in trouble.
My wife did not like the house that we bought after we got married. And I'm a little bit of a bulldozer.
So, you know, I asked her and I got her permission. But looking back, I probably kind of, you know, pushed her into something that, and we ended up living there for two and a half years.
We thought it was going to be a forever home. No, you you're out.
Work changed and we ended up. And she said later, man, that taught me something.
That even when I disagreed with your decision, it wasn't a lifetime decision. And it wasn't worth the emotional.
So the less wars you have in a marriage, the better. Yeah.
And when you look back, you're going to find out that wasn't worth it. It wasn't worth fighting or arguing about.
Yeah. Okay.
So that's your first piece of advice. Yeah.
You got two more? I got two more. Make great memories.
One mentor told me, accomplished great things in life. The one thing I regret is I did not enjoy the journey.
And he said, now that I'm coming to the end of it, I wish I had stopped to celebrate more along the way. Yeah.
So I think that would be number two. And then I think the third one is what a lot of people don't think about.
Marriage, family, whatever, make it more than just about y'all. You use the word purpose.
I think there are individual purposes, but there's also a purpose to a union and to a marriage. And I believe God brings people together.
But why did he do it? It wasn't just for our joy. It wasn't just for our legacy.
So what is the impact we can have as a couple?

What is the blessing we can have to people? Some of the greatest joy you're going to get in life

is from blessing people who cannot bless you back. And I think in a marriage, if you would just

take a time to say, hey, who can we have an impact on that we want nothing in return from them? At the end of your life, some of your greatest joy is going to be the people that we impacted. And we'll find out just the joy it brought us.
We received far more than we ever gave. I'm getting the chills the whole time you're talking about this because that's another thing now that I'm thinking about it, where I realized that Martha was the one early in the relationship.
Just service is a big part of my life. Yeah.
Being of service and however that might look and might be donating to a cause i really care about or just impacting the person

that i come up to me on the street that says hello and being of service in that moment in a small way or a big way but thinking about service as part of my mission to life yeah and when i realized that she wanted to make a big difference as well in the world and that she cared about you know how could we as a couple also do something

to serve people that either give us something in return or don't like just how can we give

and make a difference and having a partner on my team that wants that same mission that's when I

realized oh I'm not going to be the only one thinking about service in a relationship because

that's tiring as well it's just you but two people coming together finding a purpose to serve

I love you. But two people coming together, finding a purpose to serve either your friends, your family, your community, or whatever you can is a beautiful

thing. Let me brag on my wife, Zai, for a second.
When I tell you this woman has expanded my

universe, it will happen to everyone. I don't think God puts the total skill set in one individual.
So all of us, whether it's people skills, whether it's dry, all of us are deficient in some area. And when you marry someone who their strengths are your deficiency, I'm an introvert.
I love one-on-one relationships, crowds freak me me out. I'm just like, which is wild because you wouldn't think that at all.
But I tell the church, this stage is my little box. This is my world.
My wife is, I mean, crowds, life of the party. People, let's hang out, hug.
Yeah. And she has introduced me to spaces and worlds that Stephen by himself would have never ventured into.
Now, vice versa, because I pastor and all that kind of stuff, I see crowds. I know how to move crowds.
My wife sees individuals. So I'm thinking about the crowd and my wife's like, hey, don't forget about this person.
Hey, go text this person. I'll call this person or whatever.
And now I'm able to care for people on a level that is outside of my skill set or temperament because of the helpmate biblical word that god has given me and vice versa i've been able to put my wife in front of crowds when she sees individuals that's cool it multiplies your effectiveness wow man that's beautiful um relationship roadmap is what we're talking about today um a couple final questions for you but people can follow you where's the best place to follow you on social media to see your content and get the book steven r chandler everything so steven r chandler everything ig and all that and it's with a ph and it's still steven steven with a ph um this is a question i ask everyone towards the end it's called the three truths imagine a hypothetical scenario you live as long as you want yeah but it's your last day on earth so you're as old as you want to be but you've got to turn the lights off yeah yeah go to the next place and you've accomplished everything you want in this journey.

Your roadmap is complete.

You got to the destination.

Faithful servant.

And you're reflecting back on all the memories that you made.

Yeah.

For whatever reason in this hypothetical scenario, you can't leave anything behind that you've created.

This conversation, this book, everything you've shared before is gone. Yeah.
But you get to leave behind three lessons that you've learned. Three truths.
What would those three truths be for you? Man, that got emotional. That's major.
And it was really easy. The first one is I was placed on this earth by God on purpose for a purpose.
And I lived my life to fulfill that purpose. I'm not a mistake.
It wasn't happen chance. It was intentional by my creator.
My second thought is this, that the people who know me the best respect me the most. I think it is easy for crowds to revere you because they don't really know you.
It is the people who know you the most that I want to respect me the best. And then I think the final thing is I did not let pain or inconvenience keep me from maximizing my greatness.
Everybody in life has adversity that you've got to push through. And every time you push through, it's always worth it.
But it is so tempting not to push through that's beautiful beautiful truth man i want to acknowledge you steven for this is the first time we've met but i've heard about you from mutual friends i've seen your content i want to acknowledge you for your authenticity because i think a lot of people struggle talking about some of these things

fully authentically owning what they believe because they're afraid of you know like you said getting in trouble but um you know it's beautiful to see that you've been living your life on purpose to values you believe in that have been serving you and communities and multiplying the fruit of that value within your relationships, your marriage, your family, your communities, because you live by them. And they may not be for everyone, but they're for you.
And I acknowledge you for that authenticity and for sharing your truth here, man. I appreciate it.
I'm grateful for you. The work you're doing is amazing.
Thanks, brother. Final question.
What's your definition of greatness? That's what I had to work out. Greatness is maximizing the potential and resources that you have.
So I've got to say this. It is not competition with somebody else.
Because we all have different resources. We have different opportunities.
You are in a race against yourself and nobody else. Steven, my man.
Thanks for being here, brother. Grateful.
Powerful, man. I hope you enjoyed today's episode and it inspired you on your journey towards greatness.
Make sure to check out the show notes in the description for a full rundown of today's episode with all the important links. And if you want weekly exclusive bonus episodes with me personally, as well as ad-free listening, then make sure to subscribe to our Greatness Plus channel exclusively on Apple Podcasts.
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you are worthy, and you matter. And now it's time to go out there and do something great.

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Here's why April chose to vaccinate her child. I think actually meeting someone who was not vaccinated and now has a lifelong struggle with a childhood disease really cemented for me that it's super important that we as parents continue to vaccinate our children.

Talk to your pediatrician or visit whyvaccines.com.