Never Settle for Good Enough

By Kendall Bridges and Starla Bridges

Marriage. It's beautiful, fun, funny, exciting, adventurous and rewarding. It's a lifetime of sleepovers with your best friend. It's also challenging, frustrating, difficult and extremely hard at times. Marriage is so much more than a one-time commitment. Marriage is 365 days a year, every day of your life, a beautiful work in progress. We've designed this book and workbook to help you have the marriage God wants for you. We'll take you through the five-step journey that forever changed the course of our marriage. We encourage you to always invest in your marriage and NEVER SETTLE FOR GOOD ENOUGH. It can always be better!

Kendall and Starla Bridges met in Bible College. They now pastor Freedom Church in Carrollton, Texas, where their mission is "helping people find freedom." Kendall and Starla's first book Better Marriage Against All Odds tells their story of being married, broken, and then restored. They also travel and speak at marriage conferences, date nights and weekend services to share their story as well as equip couples to have the beautiful, better marriage God intended for all of us to have.

You can follow their journey at bettermarriage365.com, @bettermarriage365, or on Facebook Better Marriage 365.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BelleBooks
• Release date: Jul 1, 2019
• ISBN: 9781733122726

Book preview

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Never Settle For

Good Enough

A Simplified Guide to a Better Marriage

Kendall and Starla Bridges

Copyright © 2019 Kendall and Starla Bridges

All rights reserved.

Ebook ISBN: 978-1-7331227-2-6

Print ISBN: 978-1-7331227-0-2

Dedication

First of all, we would like to thank our parents who have modeled a Better Marriage for us: James and Joyce Bridges and John and Vivian McDuff. We are so thankful for the parents God so perfectly chose for us. Each has demonstrated the qualities that we will teach in this Simplified Guide to a Better Marriage. We certainly would not be where we are or be who we are had it not been for our precious parents. We are forever grateful.

Acknowledgments

Credit where credit is due. Thank you to . . .

Our photographer: our daughter Hunter Sky Cook

(www.hunterskyphoto.com)

Our graphics guru, our son Dandy Sterling Bridges.

Our editor and friend Cindy Walsworth.

Our lifelong friends, Joel and Jamie Perkins, for believing in our vision.

We would also like to thank our amazing staff at Freedom Church. They each carry the responsibilities of our incredible church family and allow us to spend time investing in marriages just like yours. We are forever indebted to each of you. (Well, most of you! You know who you are!)

Never Settle For Good Enough, your marriage can always be BETTER.

—Kendall and Starla Bridges

Welcome & Thank You Letter

First of all, we want to say, Thank You for taking time to invest in your marriage! Marriage is the greatest gift given, second only to salvation, that God has given mankind. Marriage is God’s greatest witness to the world of His relationship with His people (the church), which is why your marriage has a big target on it. As John 10:10 says, The thief comes to steal, kill and destroy. But I have come that you may have life and have it more abundantly. Satan wants to destroy your marriage; as a matter of fact, he hates it because he knows how powerful a godly marriage is. Jesus wants you to have a blessed, happy, fun marriage. He wants you to have a better marriage than you could ever imagine.

We don’t consider our marriage a perfect marriage. There is no such thing as a perfect marriage because there are no perfect people. God takes two imperfect people who love Him and love each other, and He puts them together and makes them better together than they could ever be on their own. We also don’t consider ourselves experts on marriage. Here’s what we do know.

We married young and were clueless and dumb, even though we thought we knew everything there was to know about marriage . . . HA! We were stubborn, hardheaded and selfish. We were very much in love, but we failed to love the right way—God’s way. Our issues started out very small and very early. We didn’t take care of them the way we should have, and those minor things snowballed into destruction. You can read more about our story in our first book Better Marriage Against All Odds available at bettermarriage365.com or on Amazon.com

God restored what seemed hopeless, and now our marriage is so much better than before. We didn’t just decide to have a better marriage; we were determined to do whatever was necessary to have the marriage God intended. God surpassed our imagination and the reward was His plan – a beautiful marriage. We are passionate about helping marriages all over the world experience the beauty that God wants you to experience.

We’ve written this book to share with you all the things we did to better our marriage. This is for every marriage! You are never too young and you are never too old; it’s never too early and it’s never too late to make the investments that will make your marriage better. The fact that you are reading this right now is proof that you desire a better marriage. Don’t ever stop investing in your marriage! Don’t ever stop learning, reading, and pursuing God’s very best for your marriage. Although this book feels small, it is packed full of our personal experiences, ideas, scriptures and tools for you and your spouse to work on. We will always point you to God and the Bible, which is the very best marriage manual ever! This curriculum can also be used in a small or large group setting.

In the sessions to follow we will share five steps toward a better marriage; a simplified guide to a better marriage. Plus, one bonus chapter on . . . Sex!

Here are a few strongly suggested do’s and don’ts before you get started:

*Don’t – go into this thinking about all the changes your spouse needs to make.

*Do – go into this with an open heart, ready to make necessary changes in yourself.

*Don’t – be disrespectful to your spouse, especially when they answer some of the questions different than you do.

*Do – at all times remain respectful to one another.

*Don’t – ignore the warning signs, even if they seem minor. If you are unable to get through a session without conflict . . . you need help.

*Do – get help! Do research and find a Christian counselor to help you get through the conflict.

If your car broke down, you wouldn’t put off getting it fixed, would you? You would do whatever it took to fix it. Your marriage is second to your salvation; don’t devalue this precious gift you’ve been given.

*Do – get ready for God to do a wonderful work in your marriage.

*Do – have fun!

We encourage you to get the workbook that goes along with this book and complete the assignments alongside your spouse. Find a rhythm that works for you both and flow in it. Don’t rush through. Take one chapter at a time, read it, talk about it, answer the questions, take the next few days to walk it out then talk about it again. These steps are not a one and done method; this should be a new way of life, a new way of doing marriage . . . God’s way!

Never Settle For Good Enough, your marriage can always be BETTER!

—Kendall & Starla Bridges

But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.

—Matthew 6:33

Chapter 1

Priorities

The key is not to prioritize what’s on your schedule, but to schedule your priorities.

—Stephen Covey

Every time we have the opportunity to share our story, whether it’s while having coffee with friends or in a marriage conference or in a church service, we are always asked the question, What would you do different if you had to do it all over again?

If we had it to do all over again, we would agree on what is most important in our marriage and our family, and then we would guard our priorities with our very lives. Too many couples never discuss and determine what their priorities are. In this chapter, we will discuss the priorities of a Better Marriage.

We made the mistake of just hoping everything would turn out all right. That didn’t work out so well. Some people think that marriage will fix all of their problems. Marriage won’t fix your problems, until you fix yourself. Marriage doesn’t create problems. It reveals problems. We fell into a trap of allowing life to determine our course.