Bonus: Storms of Life

Barbara Rainey's Top 10 Interviews

FamilyLife Today® Radio Transcript

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Storms of Life

Guests: Dennis and Barbara Rainey

From the series: Something from the Cruise (Day 2 of 3)

Air date: March 6, 2012

Bob: There are times when life is hard; and when life gets hard, marriage gets hard. Here’s Dennis Rainey.

Dennis: I’ll quote a little girl who was sitting on her grandpa’s lap. She looked at her grandpa and she said, “Grandpa, life is like licking honey off a thorn.”

Barbara: You just tend to think, “Well, it’s not going to be me. It’ll be somebody else. It’s not going to be me,” but there we were. It was the two of us, and we had just gotten that bad news. It was a storm. It just came, flying at us and knocked us flat.

[Song: Let the Wind Blow]

There’s a storm on the horizon,

Oh, let the wind blow.

Bob: This is FamilyLife Today for Tuesday, March 6th. Our host is the President of FamilyLife®, Dennis Rainey, and I'm Bob Lepine. When there are storms on the horizon, what can you do to make sure your marriage stands strong? We’ll hear from Dennis and Barbara Rainey about that today.

Let the wind blow.

Upon the solid rock of God I stand,

Oh, let the wind blow.

And welcome to FamilyLife Today. Thanks for joining us on the Tuesday edition. Thought it was interesting, when we were together about a month ago on the FamilyLife Love Like You Mean It® marriage cruise—this was our second year to do the cruise. Again, it was sold out this year. We had a thousand couples joining us—had the whole ship to ourselves.

Dennis: It is one of the best things that we do here at FamilyLife. There’s no question about it—the entertainment, the content, the opportunity for engaging with folks in ministry, and finding out how you can plug in, as well as just leaving there with a better relationship with God and your spouse. It really is a home run.

Bob: Here is what I thought was interesting. You think of going off on kind of a cruise vacation with couples—it’s a marriage cruise. You’ve got the whole boat to yourself, and we have devotions each morning. Folks will crowd into the theatre for morning devotions.

You and Barbara spoke one morning; and I thought, “You tackled a subject, in the middle of the cruise, that was kind of a sobering subject.” You think of a cruise—you think, “Well, it’s just going to be fun and lighthearted;” but you guys went deep that morning.

Dennis: We talked about some of the storms in our marriage that have occurred and how a marriage has to be built upon Jesus Christ and obedience to Him. I don’t have a solution for how a marriage can go the distance otherwise.

Bob: The interesting thing to me is how much powerful ministry happens onboard the Love Like You Mean It Cruise. Again, I think a lot of people think, “Well, that would be a fun vacation, we’d get to hear some good messages, and it would be nice;” but we see God at work in the lives of a lot of couples who join us on this cruise.

Dennis: It’s more than a vacation, Bob. Certainly, it is some time away from work, phone calls and e-mail, and all the hassles of bills and everyday life; but it is an intensely spiritual time—a time of equipping, encouraging, putting our arms around people and saying, “You know what? You’re not the only couple who’s faced difficulty in your marriage and in your family. You can do this thing. You can do this thing called marriage and family. God’s Word speaks to how you do it, and we’re going to help you by equipping you with the biblical blueprints to know how to make your marriage go the distance.”

Bob: Because the cruise has sold out each of the last two years and because we are on our way already to starting to sell out the 2013 cruise, Valentine’s week of 2013, I went to our team. I said, “I want to make sure our FamilyLife Today listeners get a chance to sign up and to join us. Is there any kind of incentive we could provide for them to do that?”

The team put together a special offer. You can go to FamilyLifeToday.com for more information about what’s involved in that special offer. We’ve already got lined up, for the cruise this year, Sara Groves, and Denver & the Mile High Orchestra. Anthony Evans is going to join us. Priscilla Shirer is going to be on the cruise with us. Voddie Baucham is going to be back again. You and I are both going to be there. Barbara is going to be along, as well.

Dennis: Right.
Bob: So, go to FamilyLifeToday.com for more information about how you can be a part of the Love Like You Mean It Valentine’s week cruise in 2013. The special offer is good this week and next week only. Again, go to FamilyLifeToday.com for more information about how to join us on the cruise.

We wanted to share with our listeners the Tuesday morning devotional that you and Barbara provided onboard the ship where you shared a little bit about—I hate to use this word—some of the rough seas that a marriage will pass through and how you weather the storms in marriage.

There is thunder in the heavens,

Oh, let the wind blow.

[Recorded message]

Dennis: The more of life Barbara and I have shared together and the more we experience what God is up to in our lives, the more I believe life is anchored in this illustration that Jesus uses at the end of the Sermon on the Mount.

Matthew, Chapter 7, verse 24, “Everyone, then, who hears these words of mine and does them, will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock. The rain fell, the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house; but it did not fall because it had been founded on the rock.” Jesus said, “Everyone who hears these words of mine and does not do them will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand. The rain fell, the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house; and it fell, and great was the fall of it.” Two houses—similar storms—two outcomes. The difference is in how two people who build a house relate to their God.

We’ve had a few storms in our lives in our almost 40 years of marriage; and specifically, some storms this past year.

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