00:00Pastor A.R. Bernard, everyone, who's blessing us on this Sunday afternoon.
00:06I hope everybody here is ready because, as you know, he's been ministering for over 30 years,
00:12and the love and relationship gems are coming.
00:15He's the author of Four Things Women Want from a Man.
00:19Y'all know this best-selling book?
00:22Amazing. If you haven't read it, you need to pick up a copy.
00:24Welcome, Pastor Bernard.
00:25Thank you, Charlie. It's good to be with you.
00:27It's good to be here, and it's good to be talking about black love.
00:30This morning.
00:30Yeah.
00:31Now, you've been married for 46 years?
00:3346 years. I got married when I was 8, though.
00:3846 years?
00:40You know a few things.
00:42Yeah, a few things. She's taught me everything I know, my wife.
00:45Oh, smart man. You know they say, happy wife, happy life.
00:48That's it. I believe it 100%.
00:50I agree as well.
00:51What is the number one piece of advice you give newlyweds when they're first getting married?
00:56What do you tell them?
00:57Wow. First of all, the marriage doesn't really begin until the first fight.
01:01When you have the first argument, and you go through the process, and you decide to stay together, now you're really married.
01:07Right. That's when you submit it.
01:09Everything else was just a lead-up to that point.
01:11Oh, I love it.
01:12Because it's about relationship building, and you have two personalities, two different people coming together, living in the same context and roof.
01:22You have to get to know each other, grow in that context.
01:25How do you know when it's real?
01:28I know couples ask you that all the time.
01:30Like, how do I know this is going to stick, right?
01:33Like, how do I know I want to spend the rest of my life with this person?
01:36That's just it.
01:37You don't know 100%.
01:39It's a step of faith.
01:40It's a leap of faith.
01:41You try to do all that you can to get to know each other, go through a process, and that's very important because too often we don't experience process or understand the value of process.
01:52So it begins with introduction, then you work towards acquaintance, and then you work towards building a friendship, and then the next step is building intimacy.
02:03But too often we want to go from introduction to intimacy, and that's where we have our problems.
02:08We skip all the important things in the middle, step two and three.
02:12Sure, it helps you to understand, is this a person?
02:14Some people don't need to go beyond introduction.
02:17You need to cut it right there.
02:18But some people need to move through those phases, and they end up with a great relationship.
02:24Especially friendship.
02:25I mean, you're going to be spending the rest of your life with this person, you know, working together, loving together, spending together.
02:32You've got to like each other.
02:33Yeah, and you better take it seriously because as of this decade, the average lifespan for women is 92.
02:43Come on, ladies.
02:44The average lifespan for men is 86.
02:48So if you're going to get married in your 20s or your 30s, you better be prepared to spend a long time with that individual.
02:55You better know what you're getting into.
02:57Now, your church has over 45,000 members.
03:01Between several campuses, that's correct.
03:03That's phenomenal.
03:04So you've touched so many couples, not only with the book, but with your ministry.
03:08What do couples thank you for?
03:10When they come and they talk to you, what do they thank you for giving them?
03:13You know, couples come with different problems, different situations.
03:17Some just wanting to have a great relationship.
03:20And I tell them that two keys.
03:23You have to learn how to adapt and adjust.
03:26You have to understand what love really is because that's another problem when we are working with two different definitions of what love is.
03:35And love essentially is the desire to benefit the one love at the expense of self.
03:41So you can't go into a truly loving relationship without sacrifice.
03:47Loving is about loving redemptively, sacrificially, and unconditionally.
03:53And you have to be prepared to do that.
03:54When my wife and I got married in 1972, you know, we look back.
03:59We had a list of reasons why we loved each other.
04:02Oh, I love that.
04:03And after a while, we realized that where you have reasons, you have conditions.
04:09And if those conditions are not met, then the relationship can be in trouble.
04:13So today, we love each other for no reason.
04:16I love that.
04:18Oh, that's beautiful.
04:19I got a clap from out there.
04:20I know.
04:21I was going to say somebody was feeling that.
04:22So a lot of couples nowadays, they want to have a faith, more than ever, they want to have a faith-based marriage.
04:30But two people aren't always on the same page with their faith.
04:34What advice do you have for couples who want to find that synergy within their faith and grow their love with Christ and with each other?
04:41I think that we underestimate faith as a resource for stability, mental, and spiritual health.
04:49Because one of the things that having a faith-based does for you, it exposes you to a set of moral truths.
04:57And those moral truths help to check your feelings.
05:00Because right often, your feelings can be deceptive.
05:03Right.
05:03Your feelings can be quite subjective based on a perceived reality instead of true reality.
05:10So when you have a set of moral principles to help guide your decision-making process in the relationship, it makes a big difference.
05:17Faith gives you a sense of hope.
05:19Yes.
05:19It gives you a sense of stability.
05:21So it's an important part of what you do.
05:23And you've got to try to be on the same page.
05:25Maybe not at the same level of maturity.
05:27Everybody grows individually.
05:29But at least on the same page to what you believe basically about God, about life, about people, about humanity.
05:38You have to have a similar lens.
05:41I like to believe that nothing is a deal-breaker if you can work together and grow together.
05:47You know, because a lot of times, I think as women, we kind of walk out into this dating space and we're like, he's got to be tall, he's got to be this, he's got to make this.
05:55Right, ladies?
05:56We know what we're looking for.
05:57And it's interesting because when I go to faith-based counseling with my husband, often they say, leave your list at the door and talk about what you're going to do together and what you can be together.
06:07What are your thoughts on that?
06:08And together is the word.
06:11From a Christian tradition perspective, there's only one goal for marriage and the marriage union.
06:18There are many benefits, children, sexual intimacy, emotional intimacy, but there's only one goal.
06:25And that goal is that the two become one.
06:28And that's a process because marriage should be a point of confluence, not a point of collision, two people crashing together.
06:36It should be a point of confluence where each person brings their gifts, their talents, their abilities, their experiences, their knowledge, their relationship to bear and form one beautiful river of life and opportunity.
06:49That's the way it should be.
06:51So, not to give it all away, but what are some of the four things women want from a man?
06:57Well, we interviewed and the audacity of me to tell women what they want.
07:03Right.
07:03I was going to say, I'm looking at you like that.
07:05So, I didn't come up with the list.
07:07But, you know, 46 years of marriage to the same woman and interviews with many, many women.
07:15And I asked them, you know, what's important?
07:18And we kind of whittled it down to four critical things.
07:22I cannot tell you how many women would say to me, I just wish he would grow up.
07:26Amen.
07:26Well, what does that mean?
07:27That's the question.
07:28And what she's looking for is a man to be mature.
07:33Right.
07:34Maturity.
07:35And maturity doesn't come with age.
07:38It begins with the acceptance of responsibility.
07:40And that's what she really means.
07:42She wants the man to be responsible for his words, his thoughts, his motives, his actions, and his attitudes.
07:49Absolutely.
07:49She also wants decorum.
07:51She wants a man to know how to conduct himself in any given situation or circumstance.
07:56Because too often when a man is in a situation where he feels challenged and he doesn't measure up, he can regress into childhood and become adolescent.
08:06And then getting mad at her for mothering him.
08:15Wow.
08:15So she wants him to be mature.
08:19She wants him to grow up.
08:20She wants him to be responsible.
08:21Yes, we do.
08:21So maturity, decisiveness, that's another thing.
08:25It's a woman's prerogative to change her mind, not a man's.
08:29A man has to be decisive.
08:31And in order to be decisive, you have to have a set of principles that guide your decision-making process.
08:38She doesn't want him to be perfect, but she wants him to be consistent in his thinking, in his judgments, in his decision-making.
08:46So maturity, decisiveness, strength.
08:49She wants him to be strong.
08:50And I'm not talking about that macho stuff that is physical.
08:55No, she wants him to be morally strong, mentally strong.
08:59Emotionally.
08:59Emotionally strong.
09:00And I will tell you, when a man is strong, he can afford to be gentle.
09:05And a man's gentleness and kindness is what makes him attractive.
09:09That was a word.
09:11Am I preaching good yet or what?
09:12That was a word.
09:14Now, you and your wife built your church together from a storefront to 45,000 members and growing.
09:22So obviously, you also know a thing or two about teamwork and working together with your partner.
09:27And so many of us now, as entrepreneurs, black women are the number one leaders in entrepreneurship.
09:32We're also teaming up with our love and our husbands and our spouses and our partners to work together.
09:37So what advice do you have for couples who are building an empire together?
09:41First of all, let me say, I could not be where I am or the man that I am today if it wasn't for my wife.
09:48You know, I was on the phone with her this morning.
09:51We were talking about, you know, what the weekend is like down here.
09:55And I had to appreciate her again and thank her verbally because she made an investment to support me in this decision to go into ministry.
10:05I was in 10 years in banking industry.
10:07And I received a call and I knew that my life and my purpose was not in finance, even though those 10 years would contribute to the success of my ministry and how we run things.
10:20But she was there all along and she gave up her career in the court system in order to support me and our family and to join me in building the ministry.
10:31So it's taken teamwork and too often men don't appreciate the value that their woman brings to whatever it is that they're trying to do.
10:41Women are quite intuitive.
10:43Yes, we are.
10:44And, you know, they can see and sense things to the protection of the man in his business and in his person.
10:50Absolutely.
10:52Well, Pastor Bernard, thank you so much for dropping all these gems with us today.
10:56We appreciate you.
10:57Everyone, Four Things Women Want from a Man, it's available now.
11:02Get the book.
11:03It's a game changer if you want to build a faith-based marriage or relationship.
11:07Thank you, Pastor Bernard.
11:08Let's give him a round of applause.
11:09You need that book.
11:11God bless everyone.
11:13Take a picture.
11:14Take a picture.
11:27Take a picture.
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