How to Build Trust in Marriage: Six Practical Tools That Last–Samuel and Stephanie Rainey

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How to Build Trust in Marriage: Six Practical Tools That Last

Guests:Samuel and Stephanie Rainey

From the series:How to Build Trust in Marriage: Six Practical Tools That Last

(Day 1 of 1)

Air date:June 12, 2026

Samuel (00:04):

Man, I think a lot of us struggle with that is that we just want our wives to be happy and that’s it. And we think it’s up to us to make them happy. And I think we have a big impact on that. And one of the things that I failed Stephanie in was I would tell her something that she wanted to hear with the intent to follow through, and then I would forget whatever it is I said to do. She felt like I was lying to her.

Ann (00:34):

Welcome to FamilyLife Today, where we want to help you pursue the relationships that matter most. I’m Ann Wilson.

Dave (00:41):

And I’m Dave Wilson, and you can find us at FamilyLifeToday.com. This is FamilyLife Today.

Ann (00:54):

Hey, this has been a fun week of going back to the cruise.

Dave (00:58):

Yeah, it feels like we’re in the sun with the wind blowing through my hair. Oh yeah, I don’t have hair. That feels like we’ve been on the boat because we’ve been listening to different speakers that were on the Love Like You Mean It® cruise. Today, we get to listen to Samuel and Stephanie Rainey. This is Dennis Rainey’s son, Dennis and Barbara’s son. And they were amazing.

Ann (01:16):

Oh my goodness. You’re going to love this couple. And today they’re going to be talking about rebuilding trust. That’s a big one. And it’s not easy to navigate, so I think you’re going to really enjoy them.

Dave (01:29):

And by the way, if you want to be on the boat with us this next February, you can sign up right now through June 30th and get a discount to come on the Love Like You Mean It cruise with us. Here’s what you do. Just go to FamilyLifeToday.com and use this code Countdown27, and that will give you the discount. And I hope you join us because you’re going to hear talks just like this. Okay. Here’s Samuel and Stephanie Rainey.

Samuel (01:55):

I’ve broken a lot of bones, very active. And one of the worst breaks I had was in fifth grade, and I also had a concussion. And I remember waking up from that concussion in the hospital. And one of the first memories I have from that is when I was feeling the doctor’s hands on my arm as he was setting it. And you know if you’ve broken a bone, what happens is, is that when it’s set properly and when it heals properly, it’s actually stronger in that place where it’s been broken than before. The other problem of that is that if it doesn’t get set properly, then it may rebreak or it will be deformed. And so broken trust is a lot like broken bones, is that if you don’t set it properly and you don’t heal it properly, it’s not going to work out in the long run.

(02:38):

And so our hope as we present these tools to you is that they will help set the broken bones in your relationship properly and will allow you to begin the process of healing. So here’s a high flyby of the six tools.

Stephanie (02:50):

All right. So the first tool that we’re talking about is really the foundation of this wheel and it’s owning your mistakes because when we start owning our mistakes, all the other tools start making more sense. But here’s the deal. When you own your mistakes, you take responsibility without blame, without justifying your action and without explanation. How do we go about owning our mistakes? Well, first of all, we have to bring our mistakes to the light. If they live in the darkness, they will stay in darkness and they will fester. Things grow moldy and disgusting in the dark. So we want to bring them to the light so that you can be healed, not so that you can be shamed, not so that you can cause more pain, but we want you to be healed. But often when we think about doing this, we’re like, “Oh God, the pain, the suffering that was going to happen when I do that feels too much to bear.”

(03:45):

So that’s when you can only do this with the help of Jesus because all things are possible through Christ Jesus who gives us strength to do the hard things. Owning your mistake builds your maturity, and it helps others trust in your responsibility, that you are responsible enough to be adult enough to own your mistakes. Responsibility is being able to respond.

Samuel (04:10):

All right. So that’s the first tool, own your mistakes. Let’s talk about tool number two. Tell the truth. Proverbs 12:19 says, “Truthful lips endure forever, but a lying tongue is but for a moment.” When we lie, we put our focus on earthly things. And what we say is, is that I think I can get away with what I did, or I think I can get away with my action, and I will be able to have safety and security on earth. When we tell the truth, we have a heavenly orientation, last forever. Truthful lips last forever. The goal here is to tell the truth in such a way that you get it all out and you tell it in an environment that you can begin to rebuild that trust with what the truth is of your actions. All right. So let’s talk about why it’s so hard to tell the truth.

(05:06):

I think that telling the truth, it exposes things about us we would rather not show up. And all of us, we have an internal PR firm that is running inside, and it is run by our ego. And our ego is in charge of making sure that everybody else out there thinks that we are perfect and that we have everything together. I’ve had a hard time with this in our marriage, and this kind of came to a head for the first time about year three or four. And I was coming home from work, and I was panicking because I’d just gotten off the phone with Stephanie about 15, 20 minutes earlier and told her I would be home at a time that I was not going to be home by because I was late. And this had been a pattern that I had been in for the first three to four years of our marriage.

(05:51):

And so I walked in the door and instead of seeing an angry face, I saw my wife who was in tears.

Stephanie (06:00):

So I was in tears because what I realized at that point was why I was so mad that he would get home so late consistently. He was consistently late all the time, and it would infuriate me, but then I started doing my own healing and my own journey, going to my own counseling. And what I realized why him being late just set me on fire was that my own dad never walked back through the doors because he was killed in a car wreck. So my seven-year-old self was responding as a 30-year-old woman in that pain and that hurt. And so once you realize where some of that pain comes from when your spouse breaks that truth, sometimes it’s bigger than what the spouse did. Sometimes it comes from your family of origin, what happened to you as a child. And so when those tears came, he was much more able and capable of hearing what was really going on in my heart.

(06:58):

But sometimes we don’t know those pains. Sometimes we don’t know those trigger points, but when you do, the other spouse is able to go, “Okay, I see it now. I am so sorry.” And it made him punctual from that day forward. Or if he wasn’t going to be punctual, he would let me know. It was really beautiful and a great turning point in our marriage. So the benefit of telling the truth is that it builds courage in you so that you can be changed because it helps others trust in you that you’re safe, that you’re a safe person when you take that courageous time to say, “Hey, this is where I fell. This is what I did. I need to tell the truth.”

Tool number three, we’re going to talk about delayed gratification. Ecclesiastes 7:8 says, “Better is the end of the thing than it’s beginning, and the patient in spirit is better than the proud in spirit.”

Samuel (07:52):

All right. So I think delayed gratification is, I think it’s at the core of all issues of broken trust because I think what happens is when we have this impulse and we can’t control it, we will choose something that is more of an earthly orientation than heavenly orientation. And that’s going to cause a rift between the two of us. And I think some of us have an inability to delay that gratification. And I think some of us have a refusal to delay that gratification. There’s something in you that’s driving you to make the choices that you’re making. And if you don’t figure out what that is, you’re going to keep making choices that are harmful to you and harmful to your spouse. And I think delayed gratification, it’s like a muscle and you got to exercise that muscle. If you don’t exercise it, when it comes time for you to be able to use it or life requires you to use it, you’re not going to have that muscle built up to do that.

(08:48):

So the story for me in this happened in 2008 and fresh out of grad school, I wasn’t making a lot of money. She would come to me times and she would say, “Look, we can either take Gabby, our daughter to the doctor, or we can take Nathan to the doctor. They both have the flu, which one to take.” And I’m like, “Well, just take whichever one’s worse, worse off.” And I was calloused to it because of my own feelings of shame on that. And one day she went on a walk with one of her friends.

Stephanie (09:15):

That was a hard memory.

Samuel (09:17):

Yeah.

Stephanie (09:18):

Having to make that choice financially, like which kid do you take to the doctor? That’s how bad it was. So I went on a walk with my friend Carthy. She says what I need to hear, not what I want to hear. She calls out truth in me, and she holds me to the covenant relationship I have with Samuel because I’ve asked her to. So we were going on a walk and she was checking in. She was like, “Hey, how are you and Samuel?” And I just started telling her everything. And as I was telling her everything, she stopped and she went, “What are you doing? You’re coming up with an exit strategy to leave Samuel.” And I said, “What do you mean?” She said, “Well, so far you’ve told me how you’re financially going to do it, where you are going to live, all this stuff.” She said, “So we’re going to stop walking.

(09:59):

When Samuel gets home, you’re going to take him on the back porch and you’re going to tell him word for word what you just told me.” I’m still kind of checked out. I’ve gotten numb at this point. So I was like, “Okay, fine. She told me to do it. I’ll go do it.” I go to the porch and as I’m talking to him, his eyes fill up with tears and I’m like, “Whoa.” Because in that moment, it was like water was washed over my face, cold water and it woke me up and I went, “I’m getting ready to destroy my family because I don’t feel comfortable. I don’t like how it’s feeling.” And so when I told Samuel that and he reflected back to me, you could see in his face he got what I was trying to say all those months and it was just this aha moment and really the breaking point for us and a foundation that needed to be really removed so that we could start afresh and anew.

(10:52):

And so what did you tell me on the back of the porch?

Samuel (10:54):

Well, so when she told me, and first I’m shocked and there was this impulse in me, honestly, there’s this impulse to just tell her she was crazy. I had to delay inside of me, this need to gratify my own PR firm to say it’s really not that bad, and I really just had to shut up and to listen.

Stephanie (11:14):

And then I kind of had to delay my gratification of what I wanted to do because I was resentful and I wanted to pay him back. And so in that moment I went, “Okay, pause, I’m going to take a step back” because the benefit that we both received from delaying that gratification is that it built patience in us and it helped us to establish stability. We were like, “Okay, we’re going to have stability in our home regardless of what it’s going to cost us.”

Samuel (11:42):

Yeah. So when you delay gratification, it will build patience in you, and it will help others trust in your stability.

Dave (11:54):

This is FamilyLife Today and we’re listening to Samuel and Stephanie Rainey on the Love Like You Mean It cruise and we’re only halfway done. They had a lot to say about redeeming broken trust and how to heal and you don’t want to miss it. So let’s go back to Samuel and Stephanie.

Samuel (12:11):

Tool number four, make amends. Now listen, please listen to this. This does not mean saying I’m sorry.

(12:19):

Now saying I’m sorry is a part of amends, but making amends is very different than saying I’m sorry. 1 John 1:9 says, “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” Now that word confess, it actually means to express out loud, to express publicly, to give an account for what you have done. So to make amends, we must confess what it is that we have done. I knew on that porch when Stephanie came to me and she said that she had began planning this and she was like, “Here you go, ball’s in your court,” I knew that an apology of I’m sorry was not going to cut it. And I knew that because I had said I was sorry a bunch of other times and it really didn’t work. And here we are.

(13:05):

We’re sitting on a porch in this really, really, really terrible situation. What I told her was, “I can’t promise that it’s going to get better soon or that it’s going to feel better soon, but I can promise I will do everything I can to make sure that our family is taken care of and my request for you is, would you please stick with me?”

Stephanie (13:27):

Yeah. And when he did that, he gave me a choice. And y’all, this is really hard to tell this story because my kids are in the room. It’s the realization of what I was about to do to them that breaks my heart, but it needed to happen and it needed to be said. And when he looked at me and he said, “I can’t make it right today, but will you stick with me?” it was like, “Oh, I get a choice.” I felt for so long I was handcuffed to this marriage that I didn’t like. I didn’t want to be a part of it anymore because I tried and I tried and it just was too hard. But by him saying, “I see you, I hear you, and will you stick with me?” it was like a freedom that lifted. I knew it was going to be hard.

(14:14):

I knew it wasn’t going to be immediate. It took at least four years to get to a better spot, but man, am I so glad that we had that conversation that I had a friend that spoke truth into my life so that I could start the healing process because now I can look at my kids’ face that are in this room and say, “I’m so glad you’re here. I’m so sorry I almost did that to you.”

Samuel (14:36):

Yeah.

Stephanie (14:38):

Because I was willing to break up my family because of me. I needed to feel good. I wanted it and what I would have done would have been horrible because you know what’s really cool in that story is our kids have come back after they’ve gone off to college and they’ve seen the world, they come back and they’re like, “We kind of want a marriage like you and dad have.” What? What? I mean, redemption, y’all, that was not flesh. That was not us doing it. It was truly inviting the Holy Spirit who can only heal and change lives that way, that that actually happened because my flesh wanted my way. Tool number five, the follow through. James 5:12 tells us, “But above all, brothers, do not swear by heaven or by earth or by other oath, but let your yes be yes and your no be no so that you may not fall under condemnation.” Y’all, one of my chief things that I need is I need you to be honest and I need you to be truthful.

(15:37):

And if you can’t do those things, we can’t be in a relationship. And so when Samuel was breaking that trust, when his yes was not truly his yes and his no is not truly his no, it broke our relationship. But when he started, his yes started to being yes and his no started being no, it built that trust muscle. I can trust you because you have shown me that you will listen to me, that you will show up on time, that you will do what you’ve said you’ve done. That’s so important, especially if you’re the one that has broken the trust. On the flip side, if you’re the one that have been offended and you’re the one that the damage that has been done to them, you also don’t need to hold that over their head as a power tool. “Hey, guess what? Now I’m in control.

(16:21):

You screwed up, but I’m going to take power back over.” That’s not right either. That’s the forgiveness part that Samuel was talking about.

Samuel (16:27):

One of the expectations I brought into marriage that was incorrect was that I had the capacity to make her ultimately happy. And I think men, I think a lot of us struggle with that is that we just want our wives to be happy and that’s it. And we think it’s up to us to make them happy.

(16:43):

And I think we have a big impact on that, but you didn’t make her unhappy, so you can’t make her happy. And one of the things that I failed Stephanie in was I would tell her something that she wanted to hear with the intent to follow through, but then I would forget because the threat had left. It kind of felt like when she would come to the door, it was like a tiger was coming and I was like, “Oh, I got to subdue the tiger, and I got to tell you what you want to hear to calm you down.” And it’s like, “Whew, okay, glad that’s over with.” And then I would forget whatever it is I said to do. She felt like I was lying to her. I didn’t feel like I was lying to her. It just felt like my intent was to follow through, but I just didn’t follow through.

(17:24):

Your impact is more important than your intent. And when you begin to defend your intent, you tell the other person that the impact that you had on them is invalid.

Stephanie (17:35):

Because the benefits of doing these practices, it builds discipline in you, and we need to be disciplined. And then it helps others trust in our strength. It builds like, “Okay, they’ve got this. I know that he’s trying because he’s disciplining himself.”

Samuel (17:49):

Yeah. So the first five tools, it’s not that they’re one-sided, but they’re more individualistic in nature. And these are things that you individually can practice whether or not your spouse is participating in rebuilding trust or not. This last tool, I want you to think about this as something to collaborate on and to partner in together. So last tool is to use your powers for good. Ephesians 2:10 says, “We are God’s handiwork created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.” Now, I don’t know if you catch the hope in this verse, I really want to point this out. What Paul is talking about to the church in Ephesus, what he’s saying is, “Look, you’re going to be in pain and there’s going to be difficulty in your life. God knows this and he’s prepared you to be able to address that pain and he has given you the power to do good works, not to think good works, not to just say good works, but to do good works.

(18:50):

You didn’t choose the pain you’re in, but you get to choose how you’re going to respond to that.” Now, Belgian draft horses are the strongest horses on planet earth. They can pull about 8,000 pounds as an individual horse. You put two of those horses together, you tie them together and you put a wagon behind them. You can load up that wagon with 24,000 pounds. So three times the amount that one single horse can do. If you take those same two horses and you train them together, you feed them together and you put them in the same barn and the same stall and you let them get oriented with each other, they can pull 32,000 pounds together. I think the amount of good that each individual couple in this room can do is way more than what you can do on your own. And that’s why I believe so deeply in marriage.

(19:42):

I believe God’s kingdom can be shown through marriage in a way that no other creation can. And I want you to be able to be strong together and using your powers for good to accomplish God’s works. So at my wedding, my dad gave me a gift. It’s the King Arthur’s Excalibur Sword. Now, it’s a replica, but it’s pretty cool. It is about five feet, and it weighs about 12 pounds. And this thing is, it is heavy and it is fun to hold up and to imagine being a night in a battle, but you hold it up for very long and it’s going to start tiring your arm out. You got to train to be able to use that. I think one of the unique powers that God has given us humans is language, and I think our words are ways that we can accomplish really good things.

(20:29):

Proverbs tells us this in 12:18, it says, “The words of the reckless pierce like swords, but the tongue of the wise bring healing.” And I think our words are a lot like this sword, is that we can use words to build up and to do really good things and to defend and protect what is good, but we can also use words to tear down and to cut and to destroy. And I want to encourage you to use the power of your words to build up and to do good in your relationship and to encourage each other and to help each other get to heaven better than the shape you found them in.

(21:04):

All right. The benefit of using your powers for good. It builds humility in you, and it helps others trust in your gifts and in your limits. Yeah, we humans are incredibly gifted, but we’re incredibly limited too. We have both the image of God and the image of sin inside of us and they are at war. And when we use our powers for good, it allows the goodness of God to be seen. C.S. Lewis says that both good and bad choices are like compounding interest. The more good choices you make, the easier the next good choice is to make. The more bad choices we make, the easier the next bad choice is to make. So orient yourself around good choices. Now, in Japan, there’s an ancient tradition called Kintsugi, and that is when something really important or valuable to the family has been broken—such like a piece of pottery—

(21:58):

—and what happens with that piece of pottery is it will be taken and put back together. And when it’s put back together, they take 24 karat gold, and they will etch out the broken places of where that pottery was broken. And then they will take that piece of pottery, and they will display it in the most prominent place in the home. When it breaks, they don’t discard it.

(22:22):

They put it back together and then they put gold on it. For us believers in Christ, Jesus is the gold in our broken places. Jesus is the gold in your story with your marriage where there’s been broken trust—if you let Him. If you let Him etch that out, it will be the most radiant and the most glorious picture that you will be able to tell the world around you, and you can tell that story with confidence and with belief that others will see that, and they won’t see you and your brokenness. They will see Jesus and what He has healed in your life.

Dave (23:03):

Well, what a great day with Samuel and Stephanie from the cruise on the boat last February. And again, you can be with us this next February on the cruise. There’s a discount going on right now through June 30th. And if you’d like to join us, here’s what you do. Go to FamilyLifeToday.com, use the code Countdown 27 and we’ll see you on the boat next February.

Ann (23:26):

And if you’ve never been on the Love Like You Mean It marriage cruise and you might be thinking, now what is it again? Just imagine.

Dave (23:33):

It’s a marriage conference on a boat in the sun with singing artists and bands and worship.

Ann:

Entertainment.

Dave:

We renewed vows on the last night. It was a world record, Guinness world record, the most people renewing their vows. It’s—

Ann (23:52):

—expeditions and you can do all of it and you can do none of it. It’s whatever you need it to be and want it to be. The food is great. The ships are incredible and you can have the time of your life.

Dave (24:04):

What’s most important, I think, is God meets us on the boat and He’s going to transform your marriage. You’re going to meet other couples. You’ll probably become friends with people. But I’m telling you, the Holy Spirit is working on that boat, and things happen that don’t happen when you’re at home. It’s a chance to get away, separate yourself from the stresses and pressures of life and say, “Let’s just work on us. Let’s just focus on us and on Jesus and see what He wants to do in the marriage.” When you come off the boat, you’re a different couple. I’m not kidding. We’re not exaggerating. It’s life changing and you don’t want to miss it.

Ann (24:45):

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