About This Episode - 

Pastor and leader Philip McCallum shares powerful stories and enlightening truths that will help every man breathe life into the romance of his marriage. Every man will be encouraged and blessed to hear how romance is something that we were created for in every season of life.

Warren Mainard is the National Director of IMPACT Players, an author, speaker, and connector. He has 30 years of ministry experience as a pastor, nonprofit leader, and church planter. You can connect with Warren on Facebook, Instagram, and X. Warren is also available to speak on your podcast or event! Email him at [email protected].

Phil McCallum serves as a lead pastor at Evergreen Church in Bothell and is the founder of Philip’s House LLC an organization that seeks to help people see Israel, meet Israeli people, and see Jesus through the context of where he was born and lived. 

To find out more about IMPACT Players, visit www.impactplayers.org.

Listen: Apple | Spotify

Show Notes:

• Learning Conversational Prayer by Rosalind Rinker
• The Five Love Languages by Gary Chapman
• The Love Dare by Alex Kendrick & Stephen Kendrick
• "The Honeymoon" Couples  Intimacy Bible Reading Plan

Transcript

Warren Mainard: Hello, and welcome back to another edition of the IMPACT Players Linking Shields podcast. This is a podcast for men of different backgrounds and experiences to link shields together in the effort to become better husbands, fathers, and leaders. That's the vision of IMPACT Players - to inspire men to be great husbands, fathers, and leaders by equipping them to thrive in the relationships that matter most. And with me today is a good friend and a great leader who has certainly demonstrated over the long haul how to thrive in the relationships that matter most. With me today is Phil McCallum. I call him Pastor Phil, however you may know him, he is a great man of God. He's a husband, he's a father, he's a leader. He's been the pastor of Evergreen Church in Bothell for the last 14 and a half years now. He is serving as the lead outreach pastor and co-pastoring with a younger pastor named Caleb Dick. And also taking on a new ministry role and endeavor with a ministry that he is leading called Philip's House that's helping to bridge Americans with the work that is happening in Israel. And so I'll let him share a little bit about that. But Phil, thank you for joining us and being a part of the IMPACT Players Linking Shields podcast.

Phil McCallum: It's great to be here.

Warren Mainard: So, today we're gonna talk a little bit about romance in marriage and why romance is so important. But before we do, give our listeners just a little bit of a background on you, who you are as a man, your marriage, your family, and then also share a little bit about what you're doing now with Philip's House.

Phil McCallum: Well, thanks, Warren, and I, married to my wife Leslie for the last 42 years. We've got two kids and five grandkids, a sixth grandkid on the way. And one of my current goals, I have five core goals, and one of those is to become famous with my grandkids. So we took a major step this last year. We bought a historic farm. We own one of the 100 original farms of Washington and I live on this property. It's got multiple buildings, and we own it together with my daughter and her husband. And I watch my four grandkids every single day. And I'm becoming famous with my grandkids. Have another, son and grandson, my daughter-in-law, they live in Southern California, which gives us great weather to go to when we want to. But, the kind of two main focuses of my life right now. One is helping the next generation step up to lead, to embrace the church, to love the church. So I've been pouring my life into Evergreen Church the last 14 and a half years, not just to the church, but raising up the future leaders of the church. So, Caleb Dick is co-leading with me now and is an outstanding leader. And then on the other side, my, I have a huge heart for Israel. And over a number of years, God's opened some profound doors for me. So I have really deep relationships in the land with both believers, non-believers, Jews, Arabs, the Christian churches called congregations in the land, the Messianic movement. And as a result, I've been able to help people, not only see Israel, but meet Israelis. See Jesus through Middle Eastern eyes. So I've been to Israel now three times since the war. I spent five weeks of the war with Israel, since October. So I was there in October, not long after the October 7th attacks. And God's used that to do some remarkable things. So it's, my family are a huge part of that. My grandkids look forward to my trips. They always look at the maps. Where's grandpa gonna go to? Israel.

Warren Mainard: I love that. And I love how you have been able to really bring your family together and to make that such a priority. That is such an ongoing message that we want to give to our IMPACT Player Men all the time, that if you're winning at work, but you're losing at home, you're losing. And I love that mission statement of, you know, becoming famous with your grandkids, because it's so easy to chase the allure of social media fame or acclaim at work or success in your career. But at the end of the day, I wanna live my life in such a way that the people that know me the best, respect me the most. That's one of my personal mantras and goals in life. And it's great to see a respected leader, a successful leader like you, really trying to live that out in your own way and in this unique season that you're in. And, you know, when we connected on this topic for today a few weeks ago, one of the things that you share with me is that, we're in a unique cultural season right now as a country, and particularly here in the state of Washington as it relates to marriage. I see this a lot with a lot of the young men that I work with, that people are down on marriage, that they're discouraged about marriage. I find young men that are saying to me, I can't find any young women that want to get married. I talk to young women that say, I can't find any young men that want to get married. Somehow, we gotta get those folks together, but at the end of the day, what is the state of marriage right now from your perspective? And what does that say about where we are as a culture as it relates to men and women really embracing the way that God has created them to come together as one flesh?

Phil McCallum: That's a powerful question. And the answer...

Warren Mainard: That's what we do here. We ask powerful questions and we let you answer them.

Phil McCallum: The answer is: everybody needs romance.

Warren Mainard: Yeah.

Phil McCallum: So even though we see a lot of press time given to same-sex marriage or to, you know, pride stuff that we're seeing just recently, what is it 50% of the people in the state of Washington, adults in Washington are currently married. Fifty percent. Twenty percent have previously been married either widowed or divorced. So that means 70% of the population have experienced marriage. That's huge. And then 30% have...

Warren Mainard: That's over a certain age group that's like above...

Phil McCallum: We're talking adults. Adults. So I didn't check the study what the threshold was, what I would assume, like 21, something like that upward.

Warren Mainard: Sure.

Phil McCallum: So the numbers are quite staggering. It's obviously what God designed us for, but obviously 30% of the population have never been married and may never be married. And hope out there for those of you who are hoping that one day you marry. And when I read the scripture, I don't think that simply marriage is something we should point everybody to 'cause it isn't for everybody. But rather everybody needs to understand what a good marriage is. Because with it, you cannot understand the three most basic questions of life, which is, number one, who am I? Number two, where am I going? And number three, is there more to life than this? And those are the three big questions that people have. And I was pondering this, I actually pondered it in June. So here's full disclosure, what happened. So, I was in Jerusalem on one of my Israel trips last month. I went back to my Airbnb to have a sleep. It was a, I was at a conference and there were a lot of people there, a lot of events and so I thought I could sleep. While I was at my Airbnb, which was about a half mile away, they set up for the Pride parade in Jerusalem. So, all the streets were blocked off and there was security checkpoints at every intersection. So for me to get back to the hotel where the conference was, I had to walk two miles out of my way. It was, it was hot. I was in a suit. So I was trying not to walk too fast.

Warren Mainard: Yeah.

Phil McCallum: 'Cause I looked nice for this dinner that we're going to. And I walked through thousands of people on their way to a pride parade. And I thought, I wish I had a t-shirt that said, God has a wonderful plan for your life, and this isn't it. And as I walked, I felt the Lord just kind of formed a message in my mind based on those three questions. Who am I? Where am I going? And is there more to life than this? And everybody needs to know that. So the answer to the first one, to give you the fast play of it. Who am I? Adam was created in a world that was good and very good, but there was one thing not good. There was no one like him. And God let him discover that. And that scenario goes on over and over again. It is good when we discover that it's not good. And he asked God for his future life partner. And it can't get more basic than that. So what worked for him is gonna work today. He just got busy doing what God had called him to do in the garden. And he asked for the partner. And there's a lot more to the story, obviously, but he discovers in her the image of God. 'Cause it doesn't say simply that Adam was creating the image of God. It says, in the image of God, he created, created he, him, male and female, he created them. And that's a really important distinction that...

Warren Mainard: Yeah.

Phil McCallum: ...God's understanding, Adam, manhood actually encompasses womanhood as well, because men are responsible. And then together in the unity of marriage, they discover the nature and the character of God. So every marriage has a miracle. And not only is that a blessing to the couple, 'cause you might think, well, I'm not married, therefore I can't understand the nature and character of God. No. Rather, in every good marriage we see, we participate in that. So marriage is our lighthouse. So who am I? So in every church there should be lighthouse marriages. That's why, like at our church, I look carefully at the pastors, the elders of our church. I wanna have lighthouse marriages that influence everybody else. Second is that, you know, where am I going? And history begins with a wedding. The creation of Adam and Eve. History ends with a wedding, the marriage supper of the lamb. And we're heading toward a wedding. And corporately as a community, we the body of Christ, are described as this pure bride. And therefore, we can't understand what the church is and how to relate to each other, without understanding a marriage, because we're to be married to Christ. Therefore, we don't lie to each other. We respect each other. We don't defraud each other. We don't commit sexual immorality with one another. All the things that we value of what we talk about having a holy church, you can't understand without marriage. And then, the big question is, is there more life than this? Is the story of Jesus first miracle, which Jesus begins his ministry at a wedding.

Warren Mainard: Right.

Phil McCallum: Where the wine has run out. And the basic line of this is he saves the best for last. So I think this says that the longer the marriage, the greater the love. And the greatest love is not at the beginning, but it's in the ending of a marriage. And there's, you know, the basics of that miracle are he is using foot washing water. There's lots of trips back and forth to the well. And it's the last step that creates the miracle. And marriage is a lot of foot washing water, a lot of going back and forth, back and forth. And then the last step can often be the most beautiful. And so for couples who, where the wines run out, ask for a miracle. So everybody needs to understand this. Not just married people, but single people do as well.

Warren Mainard: Yeah.

Phil McCallum: Because without it, how do we understand who we are, where we're going, is there more life than this. We can't understand the church. We can't understand who we are. Nothing without marriage.

Warren Mainard: Yeah, yeah. No, I, there's so much about that I love. I mean, when you go back to that, the Genesis story, you know, you read the story and there's this rhythm to it. There's this almost musical lyric of...

Phil McCallum: Yeah.

Warren Mainard: ...God created and he observed. It was good. God created, he observed it was good. And then he gets to man, God created, he observed, it was very good. And the first time in the entire Bible that we see something being not good is when God says, it is not good for man to be alone. And, you know, whether or not you're married, single, dating, widowed, engaged, whatever that is, that statement is true. That it's not good for man to be alone. And God creates a lot of pathways for solving that essential problem of aloneness and isolation. But the number one way that he created in the very beginning, is marriage. That when two become one, they're no longer alone. And yeah, I think a lot of times men can maybe even experience in marriage a sense of aloneness because of what we discover in Genesis chapter three, which is of course, the impact of sin which brings shame and division and brokenness and blame and emotional relational separation from God and from one another. We won't go down that path right now. But, I think that that simple premise, that God doesn't want anyone to be alone, and marriage was his first great gift to help solve that foundational issue. And then to take that forward and to share how God also created the church like a marriage that again, if you're single or engaged or dating or widowed, whatever that non-primary marriage status might be, you don't have to consider yourself alone because you are a part of a greater marriage, a true and better marriage. And that is, like you said, the marriage between Christ the groom and the bride which is the church. And so the, those similarities between how Christ interacts with the church and how the church interacts with Christ, and the response of a husband and wife to one another are so beautiful and so essential that we understand. So I want to kind of pull on just one string, and that is the string of romance because, you know, I think a lot of times people kind of have this concept of romance. That romance is something that you do at the beginning of a relationship to woo and to win your bride, to woo and to win the woman you love. You get married, you try to do a little bit of it when you get the time. You don't forget the major holidays. You don't forget birthdays, but at some point so many men feel like they're kind of sharing a house with somebody that they kinda run the family organization with. Oftentimes, I hear the expression, it feels like we're co-managers of the home. A lot of times men feel like the romance is kind of dried up. And as a result, I think the way that the world can often portray it is that that marriage is the death nail to sex and romance for those that go that path. So what's your response to that and how do married couples prevent from falling into that, general cliche that once you get married, the romance dies?

Phil McCallum: So every morning my wife asks me to kiss her before I go, but I leave the house usually by 4:30 AM so I like to get to the gym by five. So that means I wake her up. And she insists I do that because years ago, I read that men who kiss their wives before they go to work are less accident prone. They have fewer car accidents and everything else. But I also pray this simple little prayer when I kiss her and I say, "I choose today to be one flesh with my wife." Because everything inside me still wants to be alone. I still wanna do my own thing. I like to go my own way. But I have to spiritually choose, not just mentally, but spiritually choose that we're one, even more so when I travel. I travel a lot. We are one together. Our romance started separate. So we were engaged. I lived in Australia, and she lived in the United States. And it was before the internet. We only had letters. It would take 10 days for a letter to get one way, like 12 days the other way. And so it would take, you know, three, four weeks to an ask and answer a question. So we'd write each other every day. But that's also where I learned a really significant principle. Before you can ever talk about romance and everything else in a marriage, you first gotta settle of one question: do two halves make a whole? The answer is no. A lot of people get married so they can complete themselves. That'll never work. I was a whole person when we got married. I was living an independent life. I lived in Australia. She lived in independent life. She lived here in the United States, but we had a shared life through writing. You learn a lot by writing to each other. And then after we were married, we recognized we were two whole people coming together and unified. And then the other key for us has always been, before I talk about romance, 'cause immediately we start thinking about date nights and all that stuff. But the heat of our romance has always been out of our prayer life. So we started, one of the early commitments I made because I had a serious relationship before I met my wife that was not based on the Lord and not based on prayer. And that broke up, obviously. And then when Leslie came into my life, someone I prayed for and I asked for, prayer was the core of who we were from the beginning. Even that time that I was in Australia because I only got her letters, when I went to the post office, 'cause I lived in the country, I made this commitment that I wouldn't go to the post office to the PO box to get my letters until first I had spent time in prayer. I had no idea how to pray. This was the very, very beginning. All I knew was I could pray the Lord's prayer. I could write lists. So I wrote lists of every human being that I knew. And I would pray through everybody I knew. I would read the Bible. I'd pray. I committed myself to one hour. And so I set this little clock. And I, that was how I started my prayer life. And then once I had done that, then I would go and get the mail. Well, that got me up in the morning 'cause I wanted, I could get there as soon as I wanted and go get the mail. and I would read her letters with this, this deep passion. So, and ultimately we came together after we were married, we created a daily commitment. We pray together every single day. And we discovered conversational prayer. That was a book we read somewhere along the way. So we pray sentences back and forth, and then we have conversation and they usually involve coffee. And we will, when the kids were little, they would play around our feet. She prays a few sentences. I pray a few sentences. We'll talk about something. She prays, I pray. We go back and forth. We have prayer lists that we pray through. Those are up and down. We do them usually at least once a year. We'll have a good prayer list. We've got one we're working on right now. Like for years, I prayed, one particular summer, we were praying for one of our staff members, Elijah. And meanwhile, my personal assistant in the those days was dating another guy that I prayed that she'd break up and she broke up. But I felt from the beginning they were gonna get married, but I never said a word. I just prayed it into being. So all summer long we prayed about this. And then one day she came to my office and she closed the door in tears. I thought, oh, what's wrong? She said, it's Elijah. I said, what's happened? She said, oh, every time I turn around, I'm in situations with him and I have such feelings for him. Oh, you've gotta separate us somehow. And then I had this conversation with Elijah and he said, I said, is there anybody that you like? Man, he hung his head, wouldn't talk for about five minutes, and finally got it out of him. He liked Mackenzie. And we helped get them matched, made together and they now are on their second child and have a wonderful marriage. That happened through our prayer life. And that happened because his father is an African pastor. And his culture, it would be his father's job to find a wife for him. And his father looked me in the eye and said, would you find a wife for my son? And that's why we prayed that prayer.

Warren Mainard: Wow.

Phil McCallum: So our prayer life is the core of everything. And then, another really simple thing we do are date nights. We've always done these. In our early marriage, they were based around ice cream cones. So McDonald's in those days. We're talking, I think they had just invented ice cream. It was a long time ago. So, for 52 cents, you could buy two ice cream cones from McDonald's. Today, we just bought the, this last Saturday, we went and bought ice cream cones again. And it was $6.34, something like that. Wow. Calculated it was 12 times more than what we paid.

Warren Mainard: It's the inflation of your marriage.

Phil McCallum: And that simple little thing was the beginning. We go out to a meal every week and we usually pick a very simple place that's private. So my life is very public. So we'll go to a, usually a suburb outside of where I minister. And we go to really basic places that have booths where I can sit with my back to the door. So if people walk in, they don't see me and come over and talk to me. And, we talk at depth and usually we're talking about the kids and the grandkids. But it's a daily commitment of keeping that love alive. And I made a, I think the other was a simple commitment I made at the beginning of our marriage that I was determined to be more in love at the end of our marriage than at the beginning. And I would say we're definitely experiencing that. We've been married 42 years, and it's true.

Warren Mainard: Wow. That is so amazing. There's so many amazing components to that. As I'm thinking about what you just said, I see that there's a lot of this that is, it's a result of priorities that became habits that really began to kind of almost like, a small trickle can carve out a grand canyon. Over the years, doing those things over and over consistently has just created a depth of relationship and love and romance that can stay on the test of time. And I'm just thinking about that and I'm thinking, okay, there's something physical about what you're doing. You know, there's the morning kiss, that's a physical act. There's something spiritual in that time that you have in prayer. There's something relational with the ice cream time and the weekly dates. And so it really kind of, when you think about how Jesus said, the greatest thing you can do in life is to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, your body. It makes sense that that would be the way that God would want us to love our brides with our heart, our soul, our mind, and our body. You know, spiritually, emotionally, physically, relationally, all of those things. So as you, if you were, counseling a younger married couple. And when I say younger, let's kind of focus on that man in the 35 to 50 year range, you know, that he's in the middle of career. He's in the middle of family, childhood, he's at probably at the busiest part of his life. What counsel would you give to that man who's trying to figure out maybe how to reinvigorate the romance in his life?

Phil McCallum: In the world, we feel our way into action. We talk about falling in love and falling out of love and I don't feel like it, but in the Kingdom we act our way into feeling.

Warren Mainard: Wow.

Phil McCallum: And so, I think there's something quite profound about, choosing to do the acts of love without thought of return and then watch what happens with the feelings that the Lord will do. Because we can't change how we feel, but only the Holy Spirit can change how we feel. So, I think with all things with love, you have to ask the first and most important question is, what does the other person want? Which there are volumes of books written on this. And if you, the life changing book that everybody should read are The Five Love Languages and we all nod our head to that. But boy, if you don't understand it, you might as well be speaking, Chinese to your Dutch neighbor.

Warren Mainard: Yeah.

Phil McCallum: If you don't understand love languages, 'cause you're communicating a way your wife doesn't understand. So my love language is quality time. If you spend time with me, I'm your friend for life particularly if there's thought put into the experience, or action or activity. I love adventure. On the other hand, my wife is all about acts of service. So I could spend all the time in the world with my wife and she, she'd be glad for that. I could give her words of affirmation. Yeah, she'd be all right with that. I could give her gifts, eh, she'd be all right with that. But boy, if I fix something that's broken, I put air in her tires our sex life takes off. And understanding that is so important 'cause it's what not only is going to, it's something that she wants, it's what's gonna reach her heart, and it's gonna enable me to communicate love. But what we tend to want to do is humans, is give the other person what we want, and we keep giving them more and more of what we want, and they're not receiving it. We can't understand why we say, well, we're just loving, and that's part of our selfishness is we gotta look beyond that and feed the relationship. So back to this person who's stuck. There's a powerful little book, I think it's in the movie, Courageous, and the little book called The Love Dare Project. And I tell every man to go buy that book, watch the movie, and buy the book and just do what it says. It's 40 days of simple little assignments of how to act your way into a feeling. Some of the real simple things are, that are the invisible is pray blessing over your wife every day. Thank God for at least 10 things over her life every day. There's so much more. Is that a husband, there are four things that a husband does. And the fourth and most important is to be his, the priest of his wife. And in being the priest of his wife, he brings God to his wife and he brings his wife to God. She needs specifically, she's designed to hear him speak the word of God and to speak blessings over her life through prayer. A woman is wired for this. And, once a man understands that Jesus cleanses the church through the washing of the water of the word, a man who reads the Bible to his wife out loud is washing the soul of his wife. She's gonna be able to handle the pressures at work, with kids, and community. And the big thing that women are always battling with issues, am I good mom? Am I doing what I should be doing? Am I, meeting everybody's needs? Because a woman tends to be other focused. And so a man is gonna be washing her with the reassurance of God's word, and then to speak words of blessing and affirmation over her life. That simple work of being the priest can do a lot to, protect your marriage from the evil one, a lot to divorce proof your marriage. So simply put back to this, this guy in his thirties, forties, is act your way into feeling. If you need to find a counselor, find a good counselor, find a godly Christian, Bible-based counselor.

Warren Mainard: Yeah.

Phil McCallum: There are a lot of worldly counselors. Don't seek them. Go to your pastor. Find, get a referral. We at our church have referrals, people we send people to. If you find a good counselor, stick with that counselor and surrender the problem to the counselor. And then only deal with the problem when you're with a counselor or is he guides or she guides. But at home, just enjoy your marriage, enjoy everything else in your marriage, just leave the problem with the counselor. Marriage is where we are refined and made as people. So, my wife's grandparents were gem collectors. They go on the Black Hills of South Dakota to collect all these little agates and stuff, and they put them into the rock tumbler and then they make 'em into key chains and jewelry and stuff. And the recipe is you put the rocks in the tumbler with some sand and some oil, you turn the little motor, it goes whir for 30 days. And then they come out and they're beautiful and shiny. And marriage is like, that, is you and me as human beings are put in there with our spouse. The motors turned on the grit of life, the oil of the Holy Spirit, the tumbling, the turning, and the beauty is revealed. And that's what's happening in marriage. I'm a much better human being than I was 42 years ago because of the tumbling that has happened.

Warren Mainard: Yeah.

Phil McCallum: And I would hope my wife's a better human being too.

Warren Mainard: Yeah. I'm sure she is. And, and I love just the practicality of that. Like, simple things like reading the Bible together with your wife, and yet I know that there are some men that maybe their response to that is, okay, that's easy for you. You're a pastor. I'm just a regular guy trying to figure this thing out. I don't have any Bible background. I think this is a good opportunity for me to share about a resource that we created with IMPACT Players. It's called the Honeymoon Bible Plan.

Phil McCallum: Awesome.

Warren Mainard: And, we created it about a year ago. And what it is, is it's a series of seven unique Bible dates. So each of these seven dates give clear instructions on what to do in your time together. It gives some prompts for discussion, and it gives a scripture for you to read together as a couple. And then it gives what we call an intimacy inspiration. So, a little bit of a encouragement on a way to try to improve the intimacy in your relationship. And the vision behind the Honeymoon Bible Plan is that for that man that has never done anything like this, they've never prayed with their wife before or they've never read the Bible with their wives before. They've never even thought about how God in the Bible could have anything to do with their romance life. This is a way to get started and to really build that confidence to be able to lead your wife spiritually. And by the end, we're confident that if you go through those seven dates with your wife, whether it takes seven months or seven weeks, however you wanna kind of time that out, you are gonna find that it's almost like you are back into your honeymoon stage again of that marriage. And so if anybody wants that, they can go to impactplayers.org in the top right corner, there's an orange box called Honeymoon Bible Plan. Download it for free. It is absolutely a gift from us to you to help bless you in your marriage. And the summer seems to be like a good time to do that kind of thing. So I encourage all of our men listening to take advantage of that. Phil, with the last few minutes of our time together, let's talk specifically about single men. So again, the premise that we started with that you shared was that everybody needs romance. So what about the single man? How does he experience romance in his life if he is not engaged in a quote unquote romantic relationship?

Phil McCallum: Great question. First of all, I wouldn't say everybody needs romance. I'd say everybody needs to understand it.

Warren Mainard: Okay.

Phil McCallum: Not everybody's gonna experience it. We need to understand it because of those three questions that I said at the beginning and so much about who we are as humans and the church all comes from that. But we have to recognize as part of understanding romance, that singleness is a call as much as marriage is a call. So if you're single, be serious about it and recognize that, Jesus, there's a whole lot to unpack. I don't have time to get into it, but when Jesus talks about eunuch, some that are born as eunuch, made the way, blah blah blah, the basic message of what his teaching is, is that singleness is a call to the Kingdom and to be available for the King's assignment and the King's work. So singleness is a high calling, is marriage is a high calling. It's almost, it's a more selfless call. If you're really gonna be a disciple of Jesus, it makes you much more accessible to the Lord because you don't have the burden of a family and children. So singleness isn't about just doing what you want and going where you want. If Jesus is really your Lord, you're gonna have to check that selfishness in with him and say, now, Lord, what do you wanna do with my life? Because the Lord becomes your partner. And that's, that's huge. So I think whether singleness is temporary or it's long-term life call, you know, sometimes it's season; widowhood divorce, pre-marriage, that kinda stuff, or it's long-term. You gotta sort that out with the Lord. But, for somebody, well, let's just deal with the person aspiring toward marriage. What I tell young men who are looking for a future wife is, first of all, find a good church. Not based on how many women are there. I'll have young people say, I'm gonna go to this church or that church, and because they're just full of young people, I'm gonna go find a life partner. Wrong. It's not gonna work 'cause that's self-directed, not Spirit directed. First ask the Lord where he wants you to go to church because your life partner might be in a church that isn't the young adult magnet church.

Warren Mainard: Right.

Phil McCallum: And you'd be surprised who God's gonna put in there 'cause I've, I can tell you lots of stories of this happening. Go where God has called you to go and jump in and serve with all your heart. Just become involved in the Kingdom, do whatever it's called, whatever that local church is, just get involved. Because what you're gonna find is, there are a lot of men who are out there chasing a woman, and they usually think they're gonna do it through the brawn or the ride or their career or the income or that stuff. But a woman's not really looking for that stuff. What she's looking for is, is a man that she wants to follow and wrap her life around. So become the man she's looking for, rather than chasing the woman you're looking for.

Warren Mainard: Yeah.

Phil McCallum: So get into the word, find godly role models, examples, mentors, inspirations; get into your church, begin to serve, and then begin to pray specifically about your future wife. And I'd say the same for young women. Begin to pray specifically for your future husband. There was a young man who was part of a church that,I was on staff of and... a sad situation. His dad was an elder. It was unfaithful to his wife. And, this young man was at this point, 18, 19. And, he came to see me and was dealing with some significant addictions and stuff. And, we just looked through scriptures and life issues and got him into a clear space with Jesus and a healthy place of serving, and helped him get his first job. And he became part of a church plant we did. And he became our drummer, phenomenal drummer. And then he headed up our take up, set down team. And, one day he said to one of our elders, you know, I think I'm gonna go check out this other church, because there were more girls over this church than our church. We had a lot of guys at our church. And, this elder said to him, wisely, you're best if you just serve God here at this church. Meanwhile, there was, I used to park the church truck in front of our house, was on a main road and it had the name of the church on it and the web address of the church. There were twin sisters. And, one of the sisters was a lawyer. They're both very attractive. And she drove by the truck, saw the URL, wrote it down, gave it to her sister. Her sister came to the church, was a successful lawyer, very attractive. Walks in, sees this young man carrying some boxes, sees his biceps, and says where they keep men like that? And he looks at hers, says he actually got her number, invited her to the young adults ministry as it goes. And they were married within a couple of years. And that's a beautiful story. And then together, they, he used his skills that he got in the marketplace together with her passion and about jewelry, and they started a costume jewelry company. Now this is going somewhere. I'm gonna show you how important your prayer life is, praying for your kids, praying for your spouse, praying for everything else. Meanwhile, I'm praying for my daughter and her future and what God's gonna do for her. So fast forward, 15 years goes by and my daughter is now an adult, and she, through a whole series of steps, becomes the marketing agent for this couple, their living in Australia and we're living in the United States. And she becomes their national distributor overseeing what they were doing in stores across the US. The three main trade events that happened, Atlanta, Vegas, and Dallas. And she started going to these trade events multiple times a year. And meanwhile, this young man and his wife were at these trade events and introduced my daughter to my son-in-law.

Warren Mainard: Wow.

Phil McCallum: And today I have four beautiful grandkids, running outside the door here, because I took time 35 years ago to pour into young men in another church, another country, another place. Meanwhile, my wife and I are praying prayers, and he's praying prayers by his life future, his life partner. My daughter's praying her prayers, my son-in-law. He didn't think he had a chance on this girl. And the taxi driver said, I think you have a chance on that girl. And their first date was at the Bellagio in Vegas. And that's how their romance began.

Warren Mainard: Wow.

Phil McCallum: Bottom line is this is, if Adam prayed, ask God for Eve, you can ask God for a wife, and he's gonna answer you. Every wife is a gift from God.

Warren Mainard: Amen. Amen. Wow. What an amazing story. And what a great way to conclude this time together talking about romance. And I would just encourage, you know, anybody that's listening, the definition of romance itself is a feeling of excitement and mystery associated with love, equality, or feeling of mystery, excitement, and remoteness from everyday life. I love that last little bit: remoteness from everyday life. That it's living a life that has deeper meaning, deeper purpose, deeper, there's an ethereal quality to it when you realize that it's something bigger than just the daily grind. And I think that whether you're single or not, for the single man, you may not have what is considered to be the traditional definition of romance, but you can still live with a romantic philosophy of life. Like seeing the beauty in life, seeing the beauty of what God is doing in and around you, being considerate, treating others with love and with service and all of the qualities of someone that is generally considered to be romantic today. You can do that for everyone around you. And in many ways that will prepare you to be romantic better than anything else. And so I think it's sometimes, it's this mentality that's all or nothing, right? Like you find the one you love and then you start being romantic. And I think similar to what you were saying about act your way to feeling, I would suggest to young men, romance your way to relationship and just live a romantic, approach to life and romance will find you. But Phil, this has been so great. Thank you so much for being a part of this podcast, linking shields with us. Any final thoughts before we conclude our time together?

Phil McCallum: Thought that keeps coming to me is just the corrosive influence of busyness.

Warren Mainard: Yeah.

Phil McCallum: And contemporary life. We're just so over committed, so distracted. I think that's the big problem we have. Our devices particularly, we're always somewhere else. We're not present. So how can you declutter your life? How can you make yourself more present, more available? How can you say no to more things and to be famous with the people at home? I'm trying to be famous with my grandkids. And, who could you be famous with? In a world that wants, likes and follows, I think it's far more important to have the attention of the people around you. And one of the simple things is eat as many meals together as you can. We talked about nights out, but that's almost insignificant compared to how many meals we eat together as husband and wife, together with our kids, or grandkids or others. Meals are incredibly sacred. I just see so many families that I think one of their biggest, obstacles to healing in their marriages and family relationships. They just don't eat together. Eat together as often as you can. You'll be blessed.

Warren Mainard: That's a beautiful word. And for everybody that's listening, thank you for being a part of this Impact Players podcast. If you've been encouraged today by this podcast, please like, subscribe, share, rate us on Apple Podcasts. Send this as a link to a friend of yours that needs to be encouraged that romance is possible. No matter where you are in your life, no matter what your status is in your relationships, God wants you to experience romance on one level or another. He created you for it and he wants you to have it. Pastor Phil, thank you so much for being a part of this with me. And I hope we'll be able to have you back, in the future 'cause I know you've got a lot of wisdom to share on a number of different topics.

Phil McCallum: Thank you, Warren. Excited to see what's gonna happen next.

Warren Mainard: All right. Thank you guys for listening. We'll catch you next time.