#72 - Emerson Eggerichs

0:00Hey there, folks. Welcome today, right now. In fact, now I am going to interview Dr. Emerson Egorit. That is how you pronounce his name. Dr. Emerson Egorit. My producer said, what about this guy? He's got a book on marriage. And I said, what about this guy? This guy. I have known this guy for 27 years. And I was with him on the morning of 9-11. We had just had breakfast. And not only that, and we will never admit this publicly, but I helped him write his first book before he got too famous, you know, and wouldn't talk to me for 20 years, probably 20 years.

1:00Dr. Emerson Egorit, my friend Emerson, always a joy and fun to have you. Thanks for coming on. Well, I brag about the fact that you edited motivating your man God's way. I had Eric Metaxas edit my book. And so those are my bragging rights. It's like, it's like I was the busboy. It's like I remember Eric was a, but now he's some big chef there. I remember when he was cleaning up my coffee spill. Let me tell you, all right. He was nothing big back then, right? It's so good to see you. And I, I'm assuming, you know, I always assume if you're coming on here, you're coming on here to talk about marriage because folks who don't know you, I should have said, your big mega seller is love and respect. You came up with, I mean, I always, I've been mocking this for like 25 years, mocking it in jealousy that you came up with a, with, with an insight into scripture that is so amazing. And I, you really can't overstate it, Emerson.

2:01What you saw, talk a little bit about, I don't know, what is it? Is it a hermeneutic? We'll talk about what you saw in the scripture briefly for folks that aren't familiar because this is genuinely folks, one of the most extraordinary things I've ever seen. So here we go. Well, no, that's very kind. And I remember you saying, this is the cure for the common cold, and that blew me away. But it's, I pastored for many years and I saw something in the Bible, Ephesians 533, which is the summary statement to what most would consider the greatest treatise in the New Testament on marriage, where it commands a husband to love and no one to base that. But then I saw the second part where Paul says, for a wife to respect her husband. And then I also saw Peter said, you can win a disobedient husband through respectful behavior. Now this would have been in the late 90s and so I knew having my PhD from Michigan State University and family studies that this wasn't going to sell, you know, respecting a man. But you and I are motivated to serve and die for honor. But as I meditated on that, I called Sarah in and I said, you know, when I feel disrespected, I think I react to you in ways that feel unloving to you.

3:03I'm not trying to be, I would, I would die for you if you don't kill me first, right? And then when you feel unloved, you end up reacting in ways that feel disrespectful to me. And though we both needed love and respect equally, the felt need tended to play that self out in that regard. And I created what I call the crazy cycle without love. She reacts without respect, without respect. He reacts without love. And this baby spins and two good willed people who aren't intending to be unloving or disrespectful sound and appear that way. And people stay on that crazy cycle for 30 years. And that was the essence of the message. And Sarah and I have been communicating that message to couples across the country and around the world as best we can for the last, you know, 25 years. Well, it's an astonishing insight and you kind of rattle it off because you've said it thousands of times. Right. Just in case anybody missed it, folks, this is a big deal that in the scripture, it says, men are too love their wives. Wives are too respect. In other words, according to the scripture, yeah, what do they know? According to the scripture, men and women are

4:07different. Men somehow react to respect and react to being disrespected. Women somehow particularly react to being loved or feeling not loved. And it's an amazing insight. It's there in the scripture for 2000 years. You pull it out in a unique way and you may, I mean, honestly, it's why your boy, why your books have sold so extremely well because, you know, a lot of married people in the world and they kind of want to know how can I, how can I stop from whatever that, you know, these terrible cycles and then you'd call the crazy cycle. So I, I just want to kind of frame that Emerson because that's an extraordinary insight and you've been speaking about this you and your beautiful wife, Sarah, for so long. It's amazing to me. But you today, the reason I have you on today's because you have a brand new book. It's just come out called Lightbulb Moments in Marriage. That's how that's there's something potentially comedic there,

5:08of course. Lightbulb like duh. But what is it? What are you doing? Yeah. Yeah. No. Well, people wrote me, Eric. I mean, this is based on the love and respect message that that we've written the conferences that Sarah and I did and we'd have the book signing line afterwards. We have a two-day event Friday night, all day Saturday. Pretty much and people would come through the book signing line saying we had a lightbulb moment. We had a year-week moment. We had a aha moment. And through the years, people have emailed me. I have, you know, hundreds of thousands of emails. People have emailed me and said we had a pivoting moment. It was like we were miles apart only to realize we were inches because we had an honest misunderstanding. And once we saw that, I mean, just like I said, he's not trying to be unloving because he would literally die for you. But he comes across that way. If you have said or done something earlier that felt disrespectful to him, we can argue all day long. He ought not to feel disrespected. But he's going to defensively react. But it's going to offend you. And that's one of the principles that I unfold that our defensive reactions appear offensive. And once couples realize that they can decode and they can minimize

6:12spending on that crazy cycle. But if I don't see my negative reaction, which I think is actually honorable, I'm going quiet towards Sarah because I'm trying to calm down. To me, that's respectful on the heels of what I felt was disrespect only to be labeled as the most unloving human being on the planet. And so Sarah and I were totally confused, what's going on here? Am I really trying to be unloving or am I defensively reacting in a way that ends up hurting her and we just keep spinning? And the same thing with her, she doesn't get up in the morning to storyboard ways to show me disrespect. And yet when she negatively reacts to me, no one talks to me this way. So I naturally feel that she's sending me a message that she finds me unacceptable. I can never be good enough. Now, according to the Quran, just because we want to be real clear here, what we're talking about the Bible says, according to the Quran, that's when you beat your wife. And they have very careful ways. So you do it exactly the way Muhammad would have beat one of his 4,000 underaged wives. Now I don't want to bring up anything controversial. And yet I have failed again.

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8:16financial survival report explaining what's happening, why multiple markets can fall together, and what prudent steps families can consider now. I encourage you to read it and decide for yourself. Please go to metaxisgoldiray.com. That's metaxisgoldiray.com. You don't need to panic, but you do need to be informed in times like these. Wisdom matters more than optimism. So Emerson, please continue. Well, I mean to that point, the Christ follower is to do it differently, and we are to love, and we are to circle, but we're to give. But that doesn't mean we're not going to have honest misunderstandings between two people of basic goodwill. And there are people who are in this dark room and they don't know their inches apart. They feel like they're miles apart. They want to call it quip. But what we help couples do is to code what's really going on, and we come to a point where one of the questions we ask is, does your spouse have basic goodwill? And I have been amazed, Eric, how many people have said, yes, they do have basic goodwill, even though we don't like each other

9:16right now. And so the challenge for us is, how do we get to this point in a relationship where we don't like each other? We're not dealing with each other like we did during courtship. We're kind of roommates. We both love the Lord, but we aren't really praying together anymore. We since that he called us to something far greater than our marriage that he joined us together for a larger purpose. We had a sense of destiny. We felt called, but now we're looking at the river mirror of that. And that just feels like that's way in the past. Though individually, we still are trying to serve the Lord, but we're not doing it together. And one of my campaigns is to help couples realize, you're not miles apart here. And these light bulb moments, there are hundreds and hundreds of testimonies in this book about people who pivoted just that quickly. And it sounds like pixie dust. And it really is not. It doesn't mean that there aren't commitments afterwards. Sarah and I have great insight now, but we still have to apply it. One time she chased me around the house with my love and respect book saying, what would you say to a husband treating his wife the way you're treating me right now? So that doesn't mean that you always apply. And you read that as the ultimate

10:18in disrepair. Disrepair. And you double down. That's right. That's it. I got sorry, Cass. I don't do this. I just read about it. I can tell my earnings. I've seen the police reports. What happened that night? We will never talk about that on the air, but wow, to use your own book against you. That is disrespectful. Sarah, you didn't need, you didn't need to go there, Sarah. No, this is kind of funny because you know, and I know, I say this all the time, good marriages are tough sometimes. Like that's normal because we are human, we're human beings. And we should be honest about that and stop pretending that, you know, even Emerson and Sarah don't ever go through this. That's the normal thing. And so, and it's funny, Emerson, because I was thinking about this just theologically, right? This is all because of the fall, ladies and gentlemen. It's the fall. We're broken. And you know, in the kingdom, it won't be like this. But while we're here, we have to look to God to help us figure out how to deal with what whatever it is. And God

11:25does have a plan. And it's all over scripture. But you, the way you've summed it up really, it's such an extraordinary insight, Emerson, that I cannot, I can't say it enough. The other thing you just mentioned, which I have thought about a number of times, even in my own marriage, this idea of goodwill to just step back and say, you know, is this a good woman? Does this woman have goodwill? Like you're in a moment. And you realize, well, of course, of course. And that's, that's important. The same thing for, for, for the wife. And, but that to me is also a key insight to recognize that in the midst of conflict. Well, and Paul in 1 Corinthians 7, which is about marriage. 1 Corinthians 13, the love chapter is about spiritual gifts in the church. It's not about marriage. He talked about marriage in 1 Corinthians 7. And he says two things on this point of goodwill. 1 Corinthians 7 33 and 34. The husband is concerned about how to please his wife. And the wife is concerned about how to please her husband. Paul knew we were fallen in need of a savior, but he saw the image of God still there. That residual effect is there. And he

12:29didn't say the reason you have problems is you're both sinful and selfish and just get over it. No, he said, look, you better interpret this correctly. Your wife is concerned about how to please you. And your husband is concerned about how to please you. Now, we don't do that to the extent that the other is hoping that we will, but that doesn't mean that their heart is not in the right place. And then secondly, to your larger point about the fallen world, Paul in verse 28 and said, if you marry, you've not sinned, but you will have trouble. And he's talking, they're not about sinful trouble, but about the natural problems that arise in all marriages, not the least of which is we both have equal authority in the bedroom. 1 Corinthians 7 4. So the question is who decides on Tuesday night, whether we're going to be sexually intimate or not? And the answer to that is yes. And so the Lord has designed healthy, special challenges that create this tension, these challenges and troubles even. How do we navigate that? And many people conclude we must have a bad marriage because if we really love each other, this shouldn't be that hard. No, there are going to be challenging moments just as you point out. I mean, I wrote the book Love and Respect and Sarah and

13:31I still get on a crazy cycle. We still have honest misunderstandings. We still have moments where we annoy each other, but we don't panic. We know how to rebound and repair more quickly. And that's what this light bulb moments book also includes, which gives hope to a whole lot of people. So then what is in the light bulb moments in marriage book? The title is light bulb moments in marriage 12 biblical perspectives on what? Well, I tab three major categories. I talk about our faith in God that ultimately we come to a point where my value, for instance, has to be God given not spouse driven. And I Sarah refines me, but she doesn't define me. And I unpack how do we have that right self image in Christ, even though our spouse negatively affects us. But some of us become very insecure. We really go into depression on the heels of these moral problems. And I address this and talk relentlessly about how many couples turn the corner on that. It doesn't mean

14:33that we become robotic or unaffected. But there is a way to move forward with that without your self image hanging on their view of you. If their mood determines your self worth, you've got a real challenge before you. But I talk about seeing Christ beyond the shoulder of my spouse. Years ago when I was in New York, one of our friends said, wow, this isn't about my wife and me. This is about Christ and me. And that was a very exciting moment for him to realize Christ is present in this relationship. And I didn't know how that would play among the church that if believers would really take hold of this and say, ultimately, I love my wife because I'm loving Christ. Eric, that took hold and stuck. I have been so blessed by how the Christian community really has seen that some people were in hopeless marriages. But they said, this is brought a whole new meaning to my relationship. Even my wife doesn't respond. I can please Christ. I can touch Christ. So there are chapters there about the upward. Then I deal with the outward dealing with our spouse. How do we experience clarity and communication? How do we come to a point of harmony, for instance,

15:35when we both differ with each other on an issue? And how do we deal with those 80-20 moments where that 20% is just bugging us and that tension is very real? How do we acknowledge the fact that that neither one of us is wrong, they're just different shades of right in the gray areas of life? That was a huge one. Different shades of right coming back to this idea of not judging our spouse as wrong. So those give you a little taste of what the book is about. It's light bulb moments in marriage. And it's so funny, Emerson, to know somebody as long as we've known each other. I mean, you know, I had been married just a handful of years when we met. And when you think how different life is 25 years down the line, she's in and I are looking at 30 years this year. And that's consecutively. I want people to understand one year after you. I don't know how we did it. One year after you like consecutively. And but it is interesting to me how different we are,

16:42how different marriage is. And because I've heard people say this, but now I get to see it, how beautiful marriage is. It changes in a beautiful way if you let it, if you don't bail, if you don't pull the parachute and get out of there, which God hates, God wants us to stick it out because He wants to bless us. But He can bless us if we don't hang on and trust Him and walk with Him in the midst of the difficulties and so on and so forth. But so 30 years in, it's really amazing to me. I've heard people say, well, I love my wife more than I've got. There's no doubt about that. There's no doubt about that. And it's also interesting too because the biblical view of marriage, love is not gushy. I've, oh, I'm, no, it's something way deeper, way more beautiful. And I just, I'm just fascinated with that dynamic, you know, because I've never been here before. Most people,

17:44you know, as we age or as we go through life, this is your first time that you've ever been there. You get to see things you could not see before. Now you and Sarah, even though you're young, you were married, you were like kids, you've been, you've been, you've been here even long. 1973, so yeah, we're in early 50s over 50 years, exactly 1973. That is not possible. For her, for her, yeah, we talk about assigned and arranged marriage and she was three. But the, the, the point also though, there are those listening who feel hopeless. They think, Eric and Emerson, I've been nice. I've tried everything I know to try. It's just not working for us. And I'm tempted to strain my, trade my spouse in for a new model. And that's a real sentiment because they believe they've done everything they know how to do. And, and maybe they have, maybe they have. I don't know that situation, but you need to read the testimonies and light bulb moments and give yourself at least a moment of pause, particularly if you have children, your children say, did you do everything you could to save your marriage, save the relationship with mom, to save the relationship with that? I've had many people say to me, that was a turning moment when

18:48we said, you know what, we're going to run at this again for the sake of the children, not because I believe it's necessarily going to work. And as they reopen their heart and let go of a little bit of that resentment and bitterness that they, they now have and just trust here that maybe the Lord himself, not your spouse, the Lord himself has a gift that he wants to give to you. And I want you to listen to these testimonies of people who really did give up. They really were at a point where they came to our conferences. They were setting miles apart. They hated each other. They'd even filed for divorce. We did research on couples who had either filed for divorce or who were divorced and came to the conference. Why that happened? I don't know, but 60% of them either called off the divorce or remarried because they came to a point where they realized we had an honest misunderstanding, particularly of both of them meet each other halfway where she says, I wasn't trying to be disrespectful. You're an honorable man. And I realized how I'd come across June away that dishonored you, but that was never my heart. Well, I get it. When I default and go quiet and just go quiet for days, that's unloving to you, but I'm just trying to stay calm because

19:51I don't want this thing to escalate, but I get it now. That conversation itself can heal two people. I tell you, you know, whenever I'm talking about marriage with anybody, I immediately think about, and this just greaves me. I have to say how people in the church, people who claim to be Christians and who yap about their faith and yap about church or whatever got this idea. And this is in our lifetime, Emerson, that, you know, if things grow cold, I can just get out. And I just want to say, I want to be on the record, not if you love Jesus, folks, okay, biblical grounds for marriage, biblical grounds for marriage. If you want God to be okay with your divorce, we're talking about adultery, we're talking about physical abuse, but just to say like we've grown apart, you should be ashamed of yourself, I would say, if that's your excuse for leaving someone

20:59who you vowed to be with for the rest of your life in front of God and a roomful of people, but I've seen this Emerson in the church. I just recently, some folks that I know, they were together, I don't know, 25, 30 years, and then, you know, she just left. And I talk, wait a minute, you're talking about the woman that had all these women's Bible studies, and it's like inviting women to any of coffee and talk about Jesus. That woman just said, you know what, I think I'm done here for no real reason. And I think we've normalized that in the church. And I just want the people ought to be scandalized by that. That's unacceptable. It's just unacceptable. So I just had to rant about that because I see it more and more, and I'm, I'm astonished that pastors look the other way or say, well, you know, who am I to judge here? That's not biblical. Well, not only that, but Jesus, as you remember, talked about adultery being the only grounds for divorce, and the disciples were so stunned that they said it's better not to get

22:02married than to get married, not be able to get out of it. And he said, unless you're a unique for the kingdom, that's not an option for you. And Paul picks that up in 1 Corinthians 7, if the wife leaves, let her remain unmarried or be reconciled. Why? Because there's no adultery. She can physically leave, but she can't divorce and remarry. And if the husband leaves, he must not divorce. And he said, this was based on the Lord's instructions in the gospel. And this is part of that hard teaching. We read the gospels where there were disciples who walked away from Jesus because his teachings were hard. And we read that as evangelicals and say, well, I would never walk away from Jesus. But you just highlighted these scriptures that people are walking away from because it's hard. And my challenge, one of the things I do in that first section of the book is that ultimately we live in light of hearing, well done, good and faithful servant. And as you pointed out, life is going to go by very quickly. And then we're going to ascend. And we're going to have to give an account for this. And if we think that that there are the removal of consequences, simply because there's forgiveness, we haven't thought well on what

23:03forgiveness means, forgiveness is not always mean that we absolve something. There are going to be the loss of rewards. And this is something that the believer has to step back and say, do I really believe this? Do I believe there's another world coming? And this Christ calling me to please him, even in a marriage where my spouse doesn't seek to please me, that I'm going to do what Christ calls me to do, even in a situation where my spouse isn't doing what the Lord is calling him or her to do. And this is the challenge. This is why I don't think we have a crisis of marriage in the church. We have a crisis of faith. That's exactly how I see it. And I think that, I mean, I even think of people, you know, like my dad, who, you know, my parents are not, we're not evangelicals. And they didn't, but I think that there are a lot of people just doing the right thing and saying, yeah, this is tough, but it's the right thing. And there are other people that just say, you know, I don't want to do the right thing. And I'm going to bail. As Christians, I think particularly,

24:03you know, I don't normally talk about hell on the program, but I think there really is, there's less of a fear of God or fear of hell. I mean, it says in scripture, pretty clearly, the adulterer. Do you fear hell, ladies and gentlemen, you should, you should think about it. It's serious. It's horrifying. But I don't know if this is a, you know, folks just going for the cheap grace thing, like oh, wow, who's to say, you know, we're living in crazy times. But I think if somebody is walking around talking about Jesus, talking about their Christian faith, they need to take this more seriously, at least as I have seen in the last few years. Well, and that's why I'm writing this book to help people who are at that crossroads, where they're listening to the, are you going to listen to the Holy Word or to Hollywood? And it's important that we come to a point where we revisit this again, what do I really believe? What do I really believe? And will I act on what I believe? And if we believe this whole relationship is really hopeless, maybe it is. But then again, the research at the University of Washington studied couples

25:07who are very unhappy. And five years later, those couples were very happy, even though there was no intervention. This was a revolutionary piece of information that showed that therapy wasn't even necessary. But here's the point, people quit way too soon. But my challenge for people out there is to hear what Eric is saying. You love the Lord. You know the Lord loves you. You want to be faithful. You want to hear well done. It's very important that you understand that your marriage when the epistles are written, Ephesians 1, 2 and 3 of chapters, that's doctrine 45 and 6's application. The same in Colossians 1 and 2 is doctrine 3 and 4's application. He always swings first and foremost on the husband-wife relationship because it represents Christ in the church and it represents the very character of God. This is very important to the Lord. And he's calling you to do marriage his way, even if your spouse chooses not to. And I want to say to those of you at that crossroads, you listen to Eric, listen to me, trust me. It is worth it. If we're reading scripture correctly, you don't want to make a decision that will result in regrets. I just interviewed

26:12a man who's in his late 70s and he has a theme called the rest of the story because men would come to him and say, I'm quitting. I'm quitting. He said, well, that's not the rest of the story. No, I'm quitting. He said, let's just carry it out. Now you marry that woman. Your wife marry somebody else. You're now dealing with her children. You're now dealing with that man who now has your children. Let's just care. He takes this whole thing up and he said, if you don't think that you're not going to have the same problems, what planet you live on? And he says, I've written up this document. I want you to give it to all your divorce friends and ask them of what I've written here is true. My belief is most of them will tell you it's true. This hot and heavy thing you're having right now, it's going to change when her teenage daughter can't stand you. And now you're divided between her and this daughter and the mother's going to align with the daughter. And you're going to be right back where you were as you were in the first marriage. If you don't think that's true, you're not thinking. And my challenge for you is to hold off here. The enemy does not want you to fulfill Christ's call in your life. And you know that God has called you, but he's going to discredit you

27:14and undermine you and you're not going to fulfill that calling. If you make the wrong decision here and you need to include around you people of influence rather than listening to Hollywood, listen to the Holy Word. Well, we have you and I have lived through the decades Yes, watching. And I saw this happen for the first time. Well, in the 60s and in the 70s, where divorce was normalized and it was like the Pied Piper leading everybody to think. Here's your answer. And then think of all the lies, Emerson, the big lie cliches, right? Well, you will see your kids as much, but you'll have quality time with them now. You know, you're not doing your kids any favor in a loveless marriage. Like all of these lies and they are vile lies that were pushed into the culture. And what the culture never does is it never circles back and says, how did that work out? How did that work out? You and I have seen in the lives of our friends

28:15and relatives how it actually works out. The effect that it has on kids and people say, well, we're just staying together for the kids. You know what? That's a great reason to stay together, folks, if you're just doing it for the kids, because how many kids have I seen screwed up or not helped or you're setting a pattern for them that when the going gets tough, get the heck out of there, that's, that is not a good thing. There's so much bad that comes out of divorce and adultery and all this stuff. And we live in a culture that doesn't talk about that. It just sings the song of, you know, who is Jennifer Aniston dating now? And who it just gives us this idea that we're all living for this perfect love and this perfect something. And it is, it's really, it's not just that these are lies, but they're harmful. People's lives have been destroyed by those lies. And it's about time that we're honest. And that's part of what you have been doing in your ministry. The new

29:15book is light bulb moments in marriage. And we can just give us 30 seconds before we go on the new book light bulb moments in marriage. This episode is brought to by Kologart. Do you know what's really scary? Not screening for colon cancer when you turn 45? The Kologart test is not invasive, requires no special prep or time off work and shifts right to your door. In just three simple steps, Kologart takes the scare out of colon cancer screening. If you're 45 or older and at average risk, ask your healthcare provider about the Kologart test. Kologart is available by prescription only. Learn more or request a prescription today at kologart.com slash screen. Well, I just want to say to that person out there that set that crossroads, please give yourself a pause here for a moment for the sake of the kids for the sake of the call in your life. Listen to the testimonies in this book of people who felt hopeless, who felt helpless. They truly turned a corner and they never thought that was possible. They had a light bulb moment and here's the deal.

30:17It's not more effort. It's just more light. I love it. Dr. Emerson Egrich, my friend. Thank you. Suzanne and I send our love to you and Sarah. Thanks for all you do. The book is light bulb moments in marriage. God bless you, my friend. Thank you. Thank you. Unlike some government programs, Medicare is not a handout. It's something you have earned. You work for decades, paid your taxes, and contributed to a system that's supposed to serve you when you retire. So when it comes time to choose a Medicare plan, you deserve one that actually works for you. Not the one that fills someone's pocket with the biggest commission check. That's why when you need to choose a Medicare plan, I recommend chapter. They're not an insurance company. They don't work for the government. They're independent advisors who help you understand all of your Medicare options to help you pick what's best for you. By helping people find the right plan for their needs, chapter saves people

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