Sometimes, it’s hard to know where to go to get experienced advice about building a strong marriage. In this episode, we learn how to live a life of faith that is manifested in our marriage and family with special guest Al Baird, author of A Lifetime of Love: Building and Growing Your Marriage.

Unless the LORD builds a house, the work of the builders is wasted. Unless the LORD protects a city, guarding it with sentries will do no good. [2] It is useless for you to work so hard from early morning until late at night, anxiously working for food to eat; for God gives rest to his loved ones.

- Psalm 127:1-2 NLT

God, the creator of everything good, has a plan for how to build our homes. When we look to him and do things his way, our marriages become strong. When we don’t, we have a tendency to mess things up.

Marriage is a melding together of two totally different people, with different likes and dislikes, and different ways of approaching life. Without God, we will find ourselves in conflict with each other at times as we naturally tend to think our own way is right. God helps us understand each other and has the power to bring us together so that our unique strengths make us stronger than we could ever be alone.

Through lessons learned from Al and Gloria’s 56 years of marriage and counseling other couples, this episode helps us make marriage an adventure and enjoy each other through all stages of our lives.

Al and Gloria Baird were both born in Texas. They met, fell in love, and married while still in college. After Al finished his Ph.D. in physics from the University of Texas in Austin, they moved to Boston for his first job and to be a part of a church planting. After 15 years in physics research, they decided that Al would give up his physics career and both of them would go into the full-time ministry as a part of a dynamic new church which eventually met in the Boston Garden.

Al and Gloria not only helped to shepherd and lead that church but also served as leaders by planting churches in the Middle East. After 25 years in Boston, they moved to Los Angeles to serve that church. And then 22 years later, in their mid-70s they moved to Phoenix to be near one of their daughters and her family, as well as to work with the Phoenix church.

God blessed their 56 years of marriage with three wonderful daughters, who are all Christians, three best-friend sons-in-law, and nine grandchildren.

While Al and Gloria were writing A Lifetime of Love, God called Gloria home to paradise, temporarily pausing an incredible love affair.