6 Ways to Building Trust in Relationships: Bryan & Stephanie Carter

Bryan: Trust is so critical to your relationship that when you have trust in your marriage, it gives you a foundation to build and build and build on. It’s the reality of marriage; [in] marriage, healthy relationships are founded on trust.

Shelby: Welcome to FamilyLife Today, where we want to help you pursue the relationships that matter most. I’m Shelby Abbott, and your hosts are Dave and Ann Wilson. You can find us at FamilyLifeToday.com.

This is FamilyLife Today!

Dave: I have a question for you: have you ever done a trust fall? [Laughter] I don’t know if you have.

Ann: Yes. Yes, I think I was in college with Campus Crusade for Christ, and we did a trust fall.

Dave: I did it actually from the stage at our church, and fell backwards off the stage, which was seven or eight feet, and about six or seven people caught me, but that moment when you just start to fall, you have to trust that someone’s back there to catch you; in my case, a whole bunch of people.

Ann: What does this have to do with where we’re going today?

Dave: Today, we’re going to hear a talk from the Love Like You Mean It^® cruise from last February, where Bryan and Stephanie Carter gave a talk about marriage, about trust. For those of you who don’t know, Bryan is the Chairman of our FamilyLife Board, and also Pastor of Concord Church in Dallas for over 20 years. He and Stephanie gave a talk on the cruise about trust in their marriage.

Before we get there, just let me say, you don’t want to miss next year’s cruise. It’s in February, and we’d love to have you there. You can sign up and hear talks like this and be in the sun and relax. It’s a phenomenal week. Go to FamilyLifeToday.com and sign up, and we’ll see you on this cruise [where] you’ll hear talks like this.

[Recorded Message]

Bryan: So, we are super excited to spend some time with you for this morning devotional. If you have your Bibles, Proverbs 12:22: “The Lord detests lying lips, but He delights in people who are trustworthy.” “The Lord detests lying lips, but He delights in people who are trustworthy.” Really what we want to talk about today is building trust in your marriage. Right? Building trust in your marriage.

I don’t know if you’ve ever been on those retreats with your staff or with your team, and when you do the retreat sometimes you go through that exercise where they have one person stand up, and when they stand up the team is behind them. And then that person has to fall backward, but they have to trust that the team is going to catch them. It’s a trust exercise.

What we’ve discovered, friends, is that your marriage is just like that, that you are constantly going through trust exercises to be able to discover, “Can I really trust the one that God has given me?” It’s the reality of marriage. Marriage healthy relationships are founded on trust. What this verse says is that God delights in trustworthy people. But not only does God delight in them, but also, they delight in one another.

Trust: There are several key ideas, true principles we want to give you, to be able to help you discover how to build trust in your relationship. Trust comes at a lot of different stages. I remember when we got married, my wife had to trust me in so many different areas. She had to figure out could she trust me with her heart? Could she trust me with her feelings? Could she trust me with the kids?

She had to figure out if she left would I be able to manage the kids for her trips away. She would text me and call me saying, “Are they okay?” and I’d say, “Listen, how long before you come back?” because I could only be trusted about 30 minutes with these kids. [Laughter]

But trust is so important, right? It’s “Can I trust you with my past?” Right? “Can I trust you with my secrets and my struggles?” “Can I trust you with my weaknesses?” “Can I trust you with my dreams, that when I tell you the dreams and the things that God is showing me, can I trust you in my weaknesses and in my strengths?” Trust is so critical to your relationship, that when you have trust in your marriage it gives you a foundation to build and build and build on.

So, what we want to do today is kind of talk about what are some key areas in which you build trust in your marriage? After that we’re going to talk about some trust-breakers, and we’re going to conclude our time talking about how you rebuild trust. My wife is going to talk first about one of the key trust builders.

Stephanie: Okay, one of our first trust builders is “Be honest and authentic.” If you look at Ephesians 4:1, it says “As a prisoner for the Lord, then, I urge you to live a life worthy of the calling you have received. Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love. Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace.” [Ephesians 4:1-3, NIV]

I can recall a time—I had just gotten back. This was last year. I was able to go on a mission trip to Ukraine, just to visit and love on some of the refugees from Ukraine. I got back from this trip. I’m completely exhausted. So, my husband had planned for us to go to Weekend to Remember^®. How many of you have been to Weekend to Remember? [Audience response]

Amen. Yes! I just wasn’t feeling Weekend to Remember. [Laughter] I was exhausted, and so I asked him, “Babe, I’m really tired. I’ve just been on a flight. I’m just really exhausted. Can we not go?” No, I said, “Do you really want to go?” He said, “No, no, no. It’s okay. We don’t have to go.” So, I thought, “Okay, good. We’re done.” Then the Weekend to Remember happens, and he said, “Man, I really wanted to go to the Weekend to Remember. I wish we had gone to Weekend to Remember.”

I looked at him, and I said, “Babe, if you would have told me. . . I asked you, and you said, ‘No, we don’t have to go.’” In that moment, I kept thinking to myself, and we talked about it later. I said, “Babe, sometimes you do that. You will not tell me your true feelings, or how you really feel about something, and I need you to be honest with me. I need you to say, ‘No, Stephanie. We need to go on this trip.’”

So, we learned a valuable lesson. We have to be honest and authentic when there’s something that one of us desires. And then, because I let him know, I said, “Were you afraid that I was just going to say, ‘Absolutely not. I do not want to go?’ Because it is a marriage conference, I just thought you were just being very considerate.”

So, tell the truth, be real, be sincere, be totally honest. Don’t pretend to be something that you’re not, alright? Don’t pretend to be something that you’re not.

And then, also, be consistent. I went to the University of Oklahoma; he went to Oklahoma State. I know rivalry. The thing that I loved about him, and what drew me to him, was when he said he was going to do something, he did it. So, when we were dating, if he said he was going to call, he called. If he said we were going out, we were going out. So, it’s that consistency and that honesty that are truly appreciated and that you have to have in your marriage.

Bryan: So, trust builder number one: be honest and authentic. Your honesty and your authenticity to one another help build trust.

Number two is: honor your commitments. It’s in Matthew 5:37 where Jesus would say these words: “Let your ‘yes’ be yes, and your ‘no’ be no.” It’s the idea that part of how your faith is lived out is by honoring the word that you give to your spouse and being a man or woman of integrity. It’s incredibly important, right? It sounds really simple, but every time you do honor the commitment you made to your spouse, it builds credibility.

Every time they ask, “Did you pay the bill?” and you paid the bill, that adds credibility to your relationship, and he’ll be able to trust you with money, right? Every time they ask, “Are you going to pick the kids up?” “Are you going to do this?” Every time you honor that, it builds trust in the relationship.

We’ve had three kids, and trying to manage everybody’s schedule, trying to keep up with drop offs and pick ups and games and all that kind of stuff—communicating, and when we communicate, then saying “Okay, to make sure I do my role means everything.” So, whether it’s the kids, or whether it’s finances, or whether it’s the goal we’ve agreed on, all those things, honoring your commitments is so important, because they help build trust.

Alright, let’s look at the next one. Number three: be dependable and responsible.

Stephanie: Okay, be dependable and responsible. Ecclesiastes 4:9 says,
“Two are better than one, because they have a good return for their labor. If either of them falls down, one can help the other up; but pity anyone who falls and has no one to help them up.” Like he said, when we were in that season of kids, and our kids were doing all that—if you have kids or grandkids who have travel sports and all that, you already know what type of commitment that can be, and just how crazy the schedule is.

But when we communicated, “Are you going to go here? Are you going to pick up here?” it’s a trust that builds upon that. But I think about how sometimes it helps me, and it just relaxes me, that I can count on you, and it’s a comfort for both of us. If your spouse is with you, just look at them and say, “I love that I can count on you. I love that I can depend on you. I love that when I’m having a hard day, I know when I get home, this is our safe place. It is a safe place that I can walk in.”

Like I said, we serve in ministry. We’ve been serving in ministry together at the same church for 20 years. I try to make our home [such that] when he comes home, he’s home. It is a safe place. I think for our children, even when your grandchildren come home, or your children come back home, or if your children still are there—I heard that adult children still come back. [Laughter] So, that’s why you’re on this cruise now, to escape them.

Anyway, I love that, with our marriage, comes a dependence on each other, but also a dependance on Christ in our marriage as well.

[Studio]

Dave: You’re listening to FamilyLife Today, and we’ve been listening to Bryan and Stephanie Carter.

Ann: And as you’re listening, if there’s something on today’s episode that you’re just clicking with, we want you to know that you’re not alone, because every single marriage has its fair share of highs, but also lows.

Dave: And if you’re like us, you’re wondering, “Where do we get help?” Well, first of all, you’re getting help right now. We’re thankful that you’re listening. But we also want to share one of our favorite resources. It’s a free guide that’s filled with helpful marriage wisdom from real-life couples who’ve been where you are. You can grab your free copy today at FamilyLife.com/marriagehelp. It's FamilyLife.com/marriagehelp.

Ann: I love what she said, because I think, being married, I have had to lean on and trust Jesus more than ever.

Dave: Yes, I think one of the building blocks of marriage is trust.

Ann: And we’re going to get into it even more.

Dave: Yes, let’s go back. This is them on the Love Like You Mean It cruise. We’re only halfway through, so let’s go back and hear what Bryan and Stephanie challenged us all with in the area of trust.

[Recorded Message]

Bryan: Here’s number four; the fourth way we build trust is by protecting our relationship—protecting our relationship. We see this modeled in Matthew 1:18 when Mary and Joseph are in a relationship, and Joseph finds out that Mary is great with child, and Joseph, instead of exposing her (the Bible says that he thinks about how to divorce her, “put her away privately”), he’s trying to protect her; he’s trying to protect their relationship.

One of the things that couples must understand is the value in protecting your relationship. It simply means that you want the best for your relationship, for your marriage. One of the mistakes so many couples make is that they expose their relationship to people that may not always have their best interest in mind.

It’s the spouse that tells their family all about the negative that their spouse does, and then wants their spouse to come to the family functions and wonders why everybody is looking at them a little bit differently. “Yes, there he goes,” or “There she goes.” Or the spouse sometimes exposes so much of their relationship on social media that everybody knows everything about their situation. So, there is value in protecting your relationship, guarding your relationship, dealing with some things privately.

It doesn’t mean you don’t need wise counsel, [or] you shouldn’t have significant friends that are in your circle, but it does mean that your relationship needs some type of protection, because here’s the deal: “Can I trust you that, when I tell you what I tell you, it won’t end up other places?” So, protecting the relationship.

Here’s the next one: time.

Stephanie: Alright, time. I love the season that we’re in right now. Our kids are older; they’re kind of independent, but they’re not really independent. Two of them are out; one is still here. Where are my empty nesters? Wave your hands. Come on, empty nesters. I’m trying to get where you are. I’m trying to get there. [Audience Laughter]

The cool thing about being an empty nester [is] you’re able to look back at what God has done in your family, what He’s done in your marriage, what He’s done in every season of your job. Where are my retirees at? [Audience response] Yes. To look at where God has brought you from, from the time you started that job, or maybe you started that business, to where God has you now. It’s time.

But also, when you’re facing anything new, you can always look back, and that’s what I love. I can look back and say, “You know what, God? You saw me through this season. You saw me through the terrible twos. You saw me through middle school where they hated me. You saw me through high school, where they said, ‘Oh, you were right!’ You saw me through college, where they said, ‘Thank you.’”

“Now You see me through grandparent stage. [I’m not ready for that yet.] Now, You’re seeing me through retirement. But Lord, You carried me through that.” The blessing behind that is, it took time. Sometimes, we live in this society where everything is so instant, where we expect everything just to happen; but I love that with our marriage in every season, you just see God’s faithfulness.

Bryan: God is using time to build trust. Here’s the last one. The last way you build trust is to admit mistakes; admit mistakes. Will you just tell your spouse, “I’m sorry.” Just tell them. You don’t even know what it’s for; just right now, tell your spouse, “I’m sorry.” You’re putting some credit in the bank. [Laughter] Just say, “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I don’t even know what I did, but I’m sorry.” You need to become masters with those two words: “I’m sorry” or “I repent.”

Your ability to repent, both to God and to each, other builds trust in your relationships. You can’t build trust with someone that’s always right. It is admitting my mistakes that creates room for me or for the spouse to trust you even more, right? So, admitting my mistakes, admitting my mistakes, admitting my mistakes.

All of those principles we just gave you are all about building trust. So, you have these trust builders, but you also have trust breakers. Trust breakers—can I sum it up this way in terms of what trust breakers are? Trust breakers are basically—any time there’s sin in the relationship, it breaks trust. It doesn’t make a difference whether it’s lies or dishonesty or pride or perfection or whether it’s excuses.

The best model is what we see in Genesis, Chapters 2 and 3. In Genesis chapters 1 and 2, God creates a perfect world. He puts Adam and Eve in it, and they are there, but then, as soon as sin shows up, it breaks the trust. It breaks the trust with God, it breaks the trust between the two of them. So, any time sin shows up in our relationship, it breaks trust, and then we must move to the final step, which is really trust rebuilders.

How do we rebuild trust in a relationship? Just a few quick things, and then we’re done. The first thing is to confess our sins. Whenever one of us has sinned against the other—inevitably, I will hurt her, or she will hurt me. Inevitably, we’re going to miss the mark. I will miss an expectation, or she will miss an expectation. It’s in that moment that I must, first of all, confess sins to God. It is our confession to God, our recognition of God, that then gives us the pathway to rebuild.

The second thing I must do is to commit to God and say, “God, listen. I know I can’t be trustworthy without You. I cannot honor the relationship as the husband (or the wife) without You.” And then, the next piece is to change our actions. If I made a mistake, and I didn’t honor commitment before, then now, “God, help me to honor that more faithfully in this space.” And then, from there, we can begin to rebuild the relationship.

It’s a process. None of us arrives there overnight; but all of this is the process for us to build and cultivate and strengthen the trust that we desperately need to build long-lasting relationships. No relationship lasts long without trust, but the more we cultivate it, the more we rebuild it, the more we strengthen it, the stronger and stronger our relationships can become.

[Studio]

Dave: You’re listening to FamilyLife Today, and we’ve been listening to Bryan and Stephanie Carter on the Love Like You Mean It cruise talk about trust in marriage. I tell you what, what they were talking about there at the end, I think, is so critical to a marriage. If you have a secret, and you have never shared that with your spouse, or maybe with anybody, and that secret comes out, trust is gone in a second. It takes days, months, years to build trust; and it can be gone [snaps fingers] just like that.

So, when they were talking at the end there about trust [being] built when you confess sins to one another, that’s a scary thing to do. You don’t want anybody to know, but if you have a secret, and you haven’t told your spouse, you are destroying trust. When you do speak it, you build trust. Am I right?

Ann: I’ve talked to so many wives whose husbands have been caught in a secret.

Dave: And wives get caught, too, not just husbands.

Ann: I know, but I talk to wives more than I talk to husbands. But I’m saying what they’ve told me is, “If he would have just told me, I could have dealt with that—the secret, but now I don’t know if I trust him, because he never did.”

I can take your secret; I can take your secret sin, maybe. I can trust it with Jesus; but I just want to know all of you. I think it’s a hard thing to come share our secrets, because we don’t know if we’ll be rejected.

Dave: What if you are rejected? What if the secret’s an affair?

Ann: I think you can be rejected for a while, and you might be forever, but I do know that as it’s exposed, we confess, and we repent, now we have something to work with. It may work out, and it may not work out, but there’s a lot of work to be done.

Dave: Yes. I guess we’re saying, after listening to Bryan and Stephanie Carter, you have to have trust in your marriage. You want to build trust, and I’m saying that, if you’re a husband or a wife and you have some secret—I don’t think you want to hear this, but—I think today’s the day. You have to commit to God, which they talked about at the end there, and one of the change actions would be, “I’m not going to live with the secret anymore. I’m going to tell a buddy.”

If I’m a guy, I’d tell another guy, or if I’m a woman, I’d tell another woman; and I think I need to tell my spouse and trust God to help us make it through this valley and build trust. I don’t know who’s specifically listening right now, but I think this could be God speaking to you, saying, “Okay, you’ve held this for so long. You want trust in your marriage. You can’t have it with a secret. Today’s the day.”

Ann: And we know this: when you are going to your spouse and you’re sharing something really hard that’s going to hurt them, I know that you could be thinking, “I’m going to protect them.”

Dave: “And not tell them.”

Ann: Yes, because “this is going to hurt them, it’s going to harm them; they’re going to be shattered by it.” What would you say to the spouse that says, “I’ve already hurt them enough. I’m not going to tell them this, because it will shatter them.”

Dave: You have to choose your hurt. You’re already hurting them, so you want to build trust. You want to be honest. It’s time to go there and trust God to keep you together and make your marriage even stronger. We know many couples who have told their secrets to one another, and they are in a better place now because they feel they can be trusted. It’s no longer a secret.

Ann: Yes; and I would say: confess to God, repent to God; talk to God about it for the timing, [for] how you’re going to do it, the place, all of that. But then, take the step.

Dave: Alright. We got pretty heavy there at the end of Bryan and Stephanie’s talk, but I think it’s where God wanted us to go. I would just encourage you, if you want to hear more talks like that, you have to be with us next year on the water, on the boat, on the Love Like You Mean It cruise. Just go to FamilyLifeToday.com and sign up now.

Ann: And let us add this, too: I think it’s really important to bring a trusted friend, a pastor, a counselor, maybe someone that’s mentoring you, and bring them into the picture. A lot of times, when you’re confessing some of these big things, you need a third party in there with you, just to guide you, to pray with you, to pray over you. I think that’s really important.

Shelby: I’m Shelby Abbott, and you’ve been listening to Dave and Ann Wilson with Bryan and Stephanie Carter on FamilyLife Today. The time that you heard today with the Carters is from the Love Like You Mean It marriage cruise. It’s just a fabulous time to really connect with your spouse and learn more about God in the process; to grow closer to Him and one another.

The cool thing is the Wilsons are going to be there. They’re going to be there on the Love Like You Mean It cruise this year. It’s happening from February 8th through the 15th, and you can head over, like Dave said, to FamilyLifeToday.com, click on the banner to sign up, and secure your spot for the Love Like You Mean It marriage cruise in 2025.

Book now before September 30th, and you get to save $400 per stateroom. Again, visit FamilyLifeToday.com and click on the Love Like You Mean It banner to secure your stateroom today.

Now, tomorrow, we’re going to hear more from the Love Like You Mean It marriage cruise last year, where Dane Ortlund is going to explore the power of biblical encouragement within your marriage. That’s tomorrow. We hope you’ll join us.

On behalf of Dave and Ann Wilson, I’m Shelby Abbott. We will see you back next time for another edition of FamilyLife Today.

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