Justin Davis's Blog, page 24

RefineUs Weekend Experience Update

One month from now we will be gathering with 10 other couples for our first ever RefineUs Weeekend Experince. We are so excited about this new event Trish and I will be hosting in Nashville.

As we travel to different churches and conferences one thing we’ve noticed is the lack of time we actually have to spend with couples. We speak to many people but are able to spend time with only a few.

Because of our desire to really help couples process and apply the content we teach, we created the RefineUs Weekend Experience. The first weekend is May 10-12 and up until yesterday the weekend was sold out.

Due to some scheduling conflicts, one couple had to move their registration to the July 12-14 weekend.

So we have ONE registration open for the May 10-12 weekend, and we are keeping the EARLY BIRD rate in effect.

What is in it for you?

Understand God’s vision for your marriage
Identify the obstacles in your marriage that keep you from that vision
Overcome the drift to partial intimacy
Learn the impact of past experiences on present struggles
Heal relational hurts, resolve conflict and restore trust
Address resentment issues and learn to forgive

This is what you will get out of the weekend, but we believe the best part is we will navigate it together. There will only be 10 couples participating at one time. We’ll eat meals together; we’ll have small group discussions; we will interact with one another the entire weekend.

We have ONE spot open in May and SIX spots open in July. The Early Bird Rate for July only lasts until May 30th.

You can find our more and register on our RefineUs Weekend web site.

RefineUS Weekend Experience Link

It’s your marriage, we want to help it become extraordinary!

Come join us as we launch an experience designed to change your heart and the heart of your marriage.

 

 

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Beyond Ordinary Forgiveness

As Justin and I share our story, the affair gets all the attention, but what I have come to realize is that I had a forgiveness issue long before the affair. I had mastered the art of unforgiveness, and felt clueless about what true forgiveness looked like.

One of the questions I always get is, “How did you ever forgive Justin? How in the world could you forgive him after what he did?” It is one of the most important questions you can ask, and one of the most amazing questions we have the honor of answering. After all, ordinary lives in resentment, but extraordinary lives in forgiveness.

Resentment can have such a grip on our hearts that we need to forgive often for our own healing. That is exactly what we realized as we walked through the cycle of forgiveness. Forgiveness is hard.

I’m (Trish) am posting again today over at (in)Courage. To read the rest of this post on forgiveness and to enter to win 1 of 5 FREE copies of our book Beyond Ordinary: When a Good Marriage Just Isn’t Good Enough click HERE. 

 

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Four Fears of the Workaholic

A few weeks ago Trish and I were getting ready to go to bed and the tension in our room was thick. There had been no argument. There was no disagreement. But there was distance. Something was wrong. You could feel it.

As we were laying there, I finally just said it, “What is the deal? What is wrong?”

Silence.

“Trish, please tell me.”

“Okay. You are a workaholic. You don’t know how to turn it off and not only can I not go at that speed, I’m worried about you.”

Her words weren’t an accusation, they were more like a diagnosis.

I had nothing to feel defensive about because every word she said was true. I could feel God affirming her words as they moved from my head to my heart.

I was confused and frustrated. I thought I had conquered workaholism. After our marriage imploded…after we separated, I was different. We were different. I knew my priorities. I had boundaries and I didn’t find my identity in my job or title any more. How did I get back to this place?

The next week, we left for vacation. Our travel schedule had been hectic. Our kids schedule had been full. This would be a week of us together, in one place, relaxing.

Monday morning, I got up before everyone and Trisha’s words still played in my head. Tears streamed down my face and I repeated those words out loud as a confession to God. “I’m a workaholic, God. I don’t want to be. I am asking for your forgiveness and I want to figure it out. I need you to help me figure it out.”

I sensed God asking me a question. “What are you afraid of? This is about your heart not your schedule. Fear is driving you. What are you afraid of?”

Over the next few days, I discovered four fears that I had allowed to go undetected in my heart. I don’t have them conquered, but I do have them identified. Here are what I believe to be four fears of a workaholic. At least they are four fears of this workaholic.

1. Fear of failing.

After failing my wife and kids in the worst possible way, I didn’t want to fail them again. What if going part time at Cross Point and full time with RefineUs was the wrong decision? What if it doesn’t work? What if I fail? When fear of failure drives us, we begin to think we’re in control. Workaholics always believe they can control everything. When we believe we control everything fear of failure dominates us.

2. Fear of letting others down. 

When the book came out in January, I began to realize all of the people that had helped us get to this point. Our friends, our family, our agent and our publishing team all had a significant role in our book being published. I didn’t want to let any of them down and that fear crept into my heart. When you fear letting others down you say, “Yes” to things you should say, “No” to and in the process let workaholism rule more of your heart.

3. Fear of not being needed.

All of us want to feel important. We want to feel valued. There is nothing wrong with that. But when that feeling becomes a fear we start using our work to give us security that only God can provide. Our job or our ministry actually becomes our god.

4. Fear of not being enough. 

This is a fear I have struggled with since 8th grade. I think most of us struggle with this fear. When this fear is left undetected or unconfessed our job or ministry become the best way to prove we are enough. Living to prove yourself to someone will make you an approval addict to everyone. We are enough because we have a God that knows us intimately and loves us fully. This fear is defeated as we live not through our performance but out of an overflow of that love.

We never arrive. We are always in process. God longs to continually refine us. These fears are defeated as we identify and confess them.

Changing your schedule is good, allowing God to change your heart is the only way to overcome the fears of the workaholic.

Do you struggle at any level with these fears? We could have a support group in the comments today!

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An Invitation to Dream

One of my favorite things about growing-up in the Midwest was experiencing all four seasons.There’s beauty to be found in winter, spring, summer and fall along with a sense of disappointment in how fast they seem to come and go. I love how seasons bring rhythm and familiarity in the ordinary daily grind of life but just as you start to settle in and get comfortable with the scenery it changes.

This particular fall day the trees outside my front window were brilliant with color.

Each leaf in its final act of life burst forth with radiant colors before eventually falling to the ground only to fade and grow no more. As I gazed at all the different colors my heart was aching to find familiar. Familiar in a scene I had looked at time and time again yet nothing looked the same, not even the leaves on the trees.

I (Trisha) am guest posting at (in)courage this week. Read the rest of this post and you could win one of five copies of our book, Beyond Ordinary. Read the rest of the post HERE.

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Your Life Has to Be Created

The following is a guest post from our friend Matt Appling. Matt is a teacher, pastor and writer. His first book, Life After Art, released on April 1 from Moody Publishers. You can find more information on that at lifeafterartbook.com

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When I was in college, my summer job was delivering phone books.

I know, it wasn’t even that long ago, but the phrase “delivered phone books” already sounds archaic and laughable.  Believe me, many of those phone books were thrown away even then before smartphones existed.

The job took me through all of the oldest parts of town, the streets filled with grand and imposing, century old houses looking down on passers-by…

…Well, many of them were grand and imposing.

Inevitably, next door to a magnificent house would be a house that was on the verge of collapse.  We feared that setting a phone book on the front porch might bring the whole pitiful structure down.

I still think about those old neighborhood streets, filled with some glorious homes and other formerly glorious homes and realize how much they say about the life and faith you and I are creating.

Letting Nature Take Its Course

Of course, no one went into any of those old homes and tried to make them fall apart.  No one smashed the windows or punched a hole in the roof or released a bunch of rodents into the front door.

It just happened.  

Those houses decayed with no human effort at all.  Nature just took over.  Rain slowly punctured the roofs.  The mice quietly nibbled their way in.  A windstorm snuck up and knocked out a window.

It was the houses that were still magnificent, still glorious and impressive that took all the work.  Those people had poured dollars and energy and purposeful work into preserving their homes, constantly fighting off planet Earth’s efforts to destroy their work.

Nature is incredibly destructive.  It wants to weather and erode and rust and rot what we build.  If we just stand back, everything we build will decay.

Effort to Create, No Effort to Decay

Of course, the same is true not just of our houses, but all of the most meaningful parts of our lives.

It takes a lot of effort to create a grand marriage.

We put in years of work to shape our kids into godly adults.

And we invest plenty of time and focus into our faith lives.

Friendships, finances, careers, everything we want in life takes so much effort to create.

But it takes no effort to let these things decay, to fall apart.  If we just sit back, other forces will take over.  We don’t have to work at destroying everything in our lives.  The forces of decay will do that work for us.  Destroying things is easy.

Purposefully Create

What I love about Justin and Trisha’s ministry is their call to purposefully create and maintain our marriages.  We have to be deliberate.  Good marriages do not create themselves.  But they will certainly decay without our attention!

And that is the same heart behind Life After Art.  No one just falls backwards into a vibrant relationship with God.  But we certainly lose our faith when we neglect it.  Our kids don’t just pick up our faith without us nurturing that faith.  Like a house, everything is in a perpetual state of decay.  It’s up to us to be constantly, purposefully creating.

Beautiful things are easy to destroy, but difficult to create.

We are giving away two copies of Life After Art!! To enter to win: leave us a comment below telling us what your favorite art project was in elementary school. Comments must be left by 11:59pm CST on Sunday April 6th. We will pick two random winners. 

 

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How to Improve Any Relationship

At any given time in my life, I have relationships that aren’t what I want them to be. I have relationships that aren’t what I thought they would be. I have relationships that are disappointing, dysfunctional and strained.

I long to have God improve a friendship or transform my marriage, or repair my relationship with a family member, or deepen my relationship with one of my sons, and my prayer most often is “God, please change them. God please change this relationship, help them to see their attitude, their choices, their behavior, their….”

God has taught me, often the hard way, that most of the relationships in my life are multi-angle mirrors that He uses to reveal the parts of my heart He wants to transform.

It is easy for me to project the changes I know I need to make in onto those that are closest to me. I begin to believe that the improvements in that relationship are solely dependent on their ability to change.

If they would be more loving; more forgiving; more consistent; more patient; would call me more often; more invested; more attentive; more anything then the relationship would be what I think it should be.

The gut level truth is that no relationship in my life will have lasting change until I am willing to change.

The same is true for every relationship in your life.

If you want God to change your relationship(s), you must be willing to allow God to change you first. 

Maybe God is using the marriage you are in or the friendship you are struggling to deepen or the friction you are feeling with your parents, to change you, not them. Am I saying that they don’t have baggage or junk or wrongs that they are bringing into your relationship? No, I am not saying that.

I am saying you can’t change them. I am saying you will not be held accountable to God or anyone else for their choices, their behavior, their decisions. But so often we have our eyes so focused on what the other person could do to improve, we lose sight of our blind spots, our dysfunctions, our baggage and our attitudes.

Here is what I know today: if you make a decision to begin praying “God use this marriage or use this relationship to change me into the person you want me to be”, God will answer that prayer. Even if the person you are struggling with NEVER changes, your relationship with them will be better…because you will be better. You will be different. You will be more capable of loving them in the way God desires.

It is so difficult to lay aside your rights, what you are owed, what you deserve, what they need to give you and simply say “God, change me first.” But the long term, soul level change you are looking for and desiring in that relationship is only found as you find soul level change for your life, first, then the relationship will follow.

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Sharing Marriage Problems With Your Kids

One of the most common questions we get is, “How much of our marriage problems should we share with our kids?” If you’ve been around RefineUs or read our book, you know that our marriage problems are shared frequently and transparently.

The question comes to us as it relates to many different circumstances:

There has been infidelity in the marriage and their kids don’t know
Someone in the marriage has an addiction (porn, pain medicine, alcohol, etc) and they don’t know if they should tell their kids
Someone has lost their job and they don’t want to stress out their kids
There have been years of marriage problems and they are staying together just for the kids, but they pretend like things are fine in front of the kids

Before I answer this question I do want to say this…Our situation was public. When the affair happened, 1500 people found out about it within a few days because an email explanation was sent as to why I was no longer the pastor. Secondly, several of our oldest son’s closest friends attended our church and were in his class at school. So we knew he would hear about it second hand at some point.

Not everyone with marriage issues finds themselves in that specific situation. But after almost eight years of living with our story in our family and four years of sharing our story with others publicly, I believe there is a principle that I’d like to share with you.

A mistake kept hidden is often repeated. 

Sin’s power grows in secret. We can set our kids up to repeat the same mistakes we have made by hiding them from our kids.

Many of us have good intentions when we choose to hide our marriage problems from our kids. We don’t want them to think less of us. We don’t want them to lose respect for their mom. We don’t want them to be angry with their dad. We don’t want to trouble them. Not bad desires at all. The problem is that deception never leads to freedom…it always leads to bondage.

Our thought is that we are keeping our kids free from the problems we have, but what we unintentionally do is create a culture of dishonesty in our home. We asked our counselor how much of our story we should share with our kids. His response was, “As much as you can age appropriately share.”

So at different ages and stages of life, Trisha and I have shared more and more of our story with our kids. I had a porn addiction that by God’s grace I’ve been able to overcome. I have experience and knowledge that can help my boys in that area. Sharing my story with them brings freedom not embarrassment or a lack of respect. They actually respect me more for talking about things are vulnerable and transparent.

I think this principle is why God shares so much of peoples’ dysfunction and brokenness with us in the Bible. They were messed up. He didn’t have to share all of those stories of betrayal, and heartache and loss and bitterness and adultery. I believe he shared their mistakes so we wouldn’t have to repeat them.

A very important commitment in this process is that you and your spouse agree on what is to be shared and when. This isn’t a license to run down or talk bad about your spouse to your kids. This is a mutual commitment to honesty and openness in a family relationship.

I’m not saying you need to share every detail of your marriage relationship with your kids. Your marriage relationship needs to have an element of privacy and intimacy. However, intentionally hiding problems, issues or mistakes from our kids has the potential to do more harm than good.

I’m also not saying we should share details of our sins or our bad choices with our kids. Your kids don’t need to know how often you used to get drunk or the details of an affair. They need to see the process of confession, repentance, forgiveness and restoration lived out in front of them. Seeing that gives them hope that they don’t have to be perfect and safety that your family is a place where it’s okay to not be okay.

What are your thoughts on sharing our marriage problems with our kids?

 

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Silent Saturday

Silence with God is a good thing. It is often in our silence that God speaks the loudest. We are even commanded in Scripture to “be still and know that He is God.” Our silence helps us feel God’s presence.

Silence from God is completely different. Silence from God is scary. Silence from God is disappointing. God’s silence causes us to doubt His presence.

We often believe God’s presence is always accompanied by his activity. When God isn’t obviously active, then He must be absent.

We aren’t the only ones to believe this.

After witnessing the death and burial of Jesus, His closest followers thought God’s silence meant his absence. God’s lack of movement meant a lack of care.

Saturday was silent.

Silent Saturday is void of hope. Silent Saturday is the day the dream is still lost. Silent Saturday is the day the body is still in the tomb. Silent Saturday is when death seems to win.

Most of us don’t function well on Silent Saturday. God’s silence in our lives doesn’t help us experience Him…it causes us to doubt Him.

Maybe you have a relationship that has died. Maybe your job is in jeopardy. Maybe your marriage is on life support or maybe it has been in the tomb longer than three days. Maybe your financial situation seems beyond repair. Maybe uncertainty and doubt greet you in the morning and are the last things you feel before you go to bed. Maybe God’s silence in your life these days has allowed the voices of fear and anxiety to become loud.

Can I share a few thoughts with you on this Silent Saturday?

-Hopelessness always comes before a resurrection

-Sometimes our dream has to die before God can give birth to His vision

-When I think God has made His last move, it was really just the start of His movement in my life

-Sometimes God allows us to lose hope so we can can find our true hope in Him

-What we see as defeat, failure and loss He sees as an opportunity to demonstrate His power and His plan

-When I lose hope, it’s because I live in Silent Saturday and forget about Easter Sunday

Maybe today, you find your life somewhere between Good Friday and Easter Sunday. Can I just encourage you that you are not in a season of defeat but a season of preparation. God’s silence today is in preparation for His resurrection tomorrow.

Don’t lose hope. Don’t give up. Don’t forget that death is defeated. The grave is overcome and God speaks loudly as He brings things back to life.

Silent Saturday always comes before Resurrection Sunday.

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Disconnected

We are really pumped to be heading to Florida today to spend the week on spring break with our boys. We will be disconnecting from our blog, from email and from phone calls.

We are counting time with our oldest son by the amount of breaks, vacations and holidays we have left with him before he goes to college…including this week, we have 3 spring breaks left.

We’ll miss you guys this week, but know that sometimes the best thing you can do to reconnect with the ones you love is to disconnect from the world of social media.

(A reminder that the early bird rate on our RefineUs Weekend Experience ends on Sunday, March 31.)

Here is a post we wrote about the weekend .

Here is the RefineUs Weekend Experience Web site. 

We love and appreciate you and pray you have an amazing Easter weekend. We’ll be back on April 1.

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Never an Excuse, But Always A Reason

Our vision for RefineUs is to be a place that focuses on our hearts and not our relationship status.

Married, single, dating, single again, remarried, or anywhere in between, this is a place for you. There are times we paint in broad strokes to speak to as many people as possible.

Then there are times God lays something specifically on our heart that we want to share with a specific group of people.

The number one blog post of 2011, 2012 and the most viewed blog post of 2013 so far is, 5 Things You Must Do to Restore Your Marriage After An Affair.

While not everyone that is a part of RefineUs has experienced infidelity, many, many people come here looking for hope and direction in the midst very intense pain.

Today, I (Justin) want to share with you what I believe to be the biggest mistake couples make as they recover from an affair. This mistake usually isn’t made intentionally, but it is made often.

The biggest mistake you can make restoring your marriage after an affair is to focus on what and not why. 

Short of losing a spouse or child, there is no greater pain that is experienced in a marriage than infidelity. It is heart-breaking, destructive, dark and sinful.

There is never an excuse for an affair, but there is always a reason.

But unless we are willing to go beyond the what of the situation to determine why this is a part of our story, we limit the parts of our heart God can redeem and restore.

Many couples get stuck in two very broken places: anger/resentment (for the one who’s been betrayed) and shame/guilt (for the one who’s cheated). When you’re stuck in either of these places the path of least resistance is to focus on what happened and stop short of digging into why it happened.

Here are some differences between a marriage that focuses on what and a marriage that is willing to focus on why: 

What focuses on what they did; Why invites God to change me.
What  desires payment and retribution; Why is willing to forgive.
What  wants all the pain to go away as quickly as possible;  Why  wants all the pain to have purpose and is willing to endure it.
What  drifts toward that which is safe and guarded; Why shares all of the truth and risks being vulnerable.
What  wants everything fixed; Why allows God to make all things new.
What  focuses on all we have to do to heal our marriage; Why gives God free reign into all parts of our heart and marriage.

Choosing to focus on what and not why will alleviate the pain temporarily but leaves the sickness in the relationship. What allows many couples to experience the same mistake again in a few months or a few years. But there is another way.

When you choose why over what, the cost is greater upfront. Conversations are more difficult and honest. Mistakes by both spouses are admitted and owned. Making them pay gives way to forgiveness. Shame and guilt are overcome by grace and mercy. The focus moves from what he/she did to “How did we get here?”

Brokenness and repentance become the cry of both person’s heart…and God shows up in powerful ways.

The greatest gift I’ve received is a wife that wanted to know why. It changed everything about our recovery and provided the path to restoration.

The most important thing you can do in the restoration process is to not focus on what happened, but allow God to teach you why it happened.

That is the place of true life change.

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