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Our physical health and learning how to take care of our bodies have played a large role in our growth of the years. In the beginning of our marriage, we dealt with sexual issues and after 4 and a half years living with those problems we finally discovered what we believe was a major contributor to those problems. We began replacing our toxic products with non-toxic products and almost immediately found healing in the area of intimacy. We have had many people over the years ask what kinds of products we use now and so in this episode we share a little of our journey and the products we like to use. Pleas enjoy! PRAYERDear Lord,Thank you for our bodies. We pray we would be good stewards of our bodies and consider all that goes on them and in them. We pray we would be willing to take the time and research the items we use on a daily basis, using things that help us and not hurt us. Lord, we ask that you would give us wisdom as we navigate living a healthy lifestyle. Help us to make good choices and be on the same page in marriage so that we can enjoy the benefits of living toxic-free. Please help us not to be overwhelmed by the process of learning, but rather, help us to be humble and willing to learn so that we can choose what is healthy for us and be advocates of healthy living for the sake of others. We pray living healthy would not become an idol in our lives and would not hinder any of our relationships. May we be people who don't just consume, but who are about our bodies and take care of them.In Jesus’ name, Amen! Some things mention this episode. http://Parentingprayerchallenge.comhttps://shop.marriageaftergod.com/products/the-unveiled-wife-embracing-intimacy-with-god-and-your-husband-by-jennifer-smithhttps://ENG.orghttps://unveiledwife.com/oils/https://norwex.bizDr. Bronner’s - https://amzn.to/2vRCQ91https://www.bendsoap.com/Native Deodorant - https://amzn.to/2VXpWkzBert's Bees - https://amzn.to/3cPJkpNBurt's Bees 100% Natural Moisturizing Lipstick - https://amzn.to/3aKRNs7Ancient Minerals Magnesium Lotion - https://amzn.to/2TQu6YT READ TRANSCRIPT[Aaron] Hey, we're Aaron and Jennifer Smith with Marriage After God. [Jennifer] Helpin' you cultivate an extraordinary marriage. [Aaron] And today, we're gonna share with you our favorite non-toxic products. Welcome to the Marriage After God Podcast, where we believe that marriage was meant for more than just happily ever after. [Jennifer] I'm Jennifer, also known as, Unveiled Wife. [Aaron] And I'm Aaron, also known as, Husband Revolution. [Jennifer] We have been married for over a decade. [Aaron] And so far, we have four young children. [Jennifer] We have been doing marriage ministry online for over seven years through blogging and social media. [Aaron] With the desire to inspire couples to keep God at the center of their marriage. Encouraging them to walk in faith every day. [Jennifer] We believe that Christian marriage should be an extraordinary one. Full of life-- [Aaron] Love. [Jennifer] and power, [Aaron] That can only be found by chasing after God. [Jennifer] Together. [Aaron] Thank you for joining us in this journey as we chase boldly, after God's will of our life together. [Jennifer] This is Marriage After God. [Jennifer] Welcome back everyone to another episode of Marriage After God. We are happy to have ya, and today we are just going to share some, it's kinda like a funner episode, where we're gonna share, not just our non-toxic products, but why we choose those, and part of our story. [Aaron] Yeah, and well, we've had a lot of people over the years, kind of, 'cause we've talked about our journey with health, and we talk about products we use, and you have people often asking, "Well, what do you use?" [Jennifer] Yeah. [Aaron] And so-- [Jennifer] A large portion of my first book, "The Unveiled Wife," you know, talked about our journey, you know, figuring some stuff out, and so, we'll probably start there. [Aaron] Yeah, but it'll be fun. We believe that it's good to have a healthy life, I mean, everything we talk about it spiritual, but there's something to be said about, taking care of our bodies, and being careful with what we're putting on, being thoughtful, we even talk about, yeah, we talk about this often in our books, we talk about it in our life. We actually try and live it also, doesn't mean we're perfectly healthy in every aspect, but what's been awesome about it also is, we actually have less stuff, which is cool. So we'll talk about that a little bit too. So first, before we get into that, why don't you give a little update on baby Edith? [Jennifer] Yeah, is everyone as anxious as I am to meet her? I'm-- [Aaron] Some people are probably like, "They're having another baby?" [Jennifer] I know, [Aaron] Yes we are, number five. [Jennifer] Yep, I'm 38 weeks, and just starting to feel like way more ready and prepared, mentally, [Aaron] Some of that pre-labor stuff [Jennifer] Yep, and my body, but also, just in our home, I feel like, we are all kind of getting to that transition point where, I don't know, we're just, we're just ready. [Aaron] So I'll say this, if you don't hear of any more podcasts coming out, after this one, it's because we had the baby. [Jennifer] But, I haven't ever gone that early, so-- [Aaron] Yeah, you-- [Jennifer] I don't know. [Aaron] We're usually like, I should say, you're usually right on the dot. [Jennifer] I will say this, usually nesting kicks in, and I you know, look forward to, just utilizing that energy, that extra energy to clean the house, and get every nook and cranny, and this time I didn't get that way at all. I had to like, really rely on the Lord, and just um-- [Aaron] Well I'll say this, I think you did have the desire to nest, but you didn't have the energy this time. [Jennifer] Yeah, I had the desire for sure. [Aaron] You're like, "I just can't get up off the couch, "I just, I don't feel like I," So, there was all these things that you wanted to do, but it took a lot of my helping, it took a lot of like, extra stuff that you didn't have-- [Jennifer] Yeah. [Aaron] and so, but that's just unique for this time. [Jennifer] But we got some stuff checked off our to-do list this weekend and now I feel ready. So thank you Aaron, thank you for your help with that. Yeah well, I'm sure we'll have a little bit more stuff before the baby comes. [Jennifer] Yeah. [Aaron] Gettin' the house ready, just gettin' some things off of our plates, so that we can enjoy little baby Edith, [Jennifer] Yeah. [Aaron] when she's here. [Jennifer] What I did do, was I got through Olive's old clothes, and got like a drawer ready for her, and all of her clothes are ready, so, [Aaron] Oh, we also moved all of, 'cause right now we have all of Truitt's clothes, in our bedroom, like right below the changing station, so that we can like change him, and put clothes there, but we moved those. Now he's got his clothes in the boys' room. [Jennifer] Yeah, [Aaron] I'm imagining, we're probably gonna move him into the boys' room soon, right? [Jennifer] Soon, yeah. [Aaron] And then he's gonna be one of the big boys. [Jennifer] Uh? [Aaron] I know [Jennifer] Everyone's growing up too fast. [Aaron] Who in the world? [Jennifer] Elliot feels like he's seven feet tall. Doesn't he feel so big? [Aaron] Yeah, he's gonna be a tall one. [Jennifer] Yeah. [Aaron] But it's awesome, seeing them grow, we were just talking tonight about if we would have had children earlier, which kinda goes into a little bit into our story, but if we would have started, day one, we'd have a 13 year old. [Jennifer] Yeah, just recognizing, how long we've been married and-- [Aaron] And we probably have 13 kids. So, [Jennifer] At our rate. [Aaron] Yeah at our our rate, yeah. Hey, I just wanted to also bring up something that I've been doing lately, and maybe you can chime in on this, Jennifer, as well, but for the men listening, something I've been trying to do, I know not everyone has our situation. We totally understand that. We get that. But Jennifer and I both, I would say I work the majority of the time, it used to be much more equal, but as we've had more kids, Jennifer's desires, and our desires has changed to, you spending a lot more time homeschooling, [Jennifer] My work just looks different [Aaron] Totally looks different, but the idea is that we're keeping things going, but what I've been doing lately, is letting you have Fridays to yourself, often that's so you can get, you know, the work that you need to get done, done. But sometimes it's just to go. [Jennifer] Yeah. [Aaron] To get into the Word. To meet with a lady [Jennifer] Yeah. [Aaron] From the church. To just have time to yourself, or a little bit of both, like you get some work done in the morning, and then you have like a hair appointment, or you have a meeting with a friend, [Jennifer] Yeah, I try and use that time to schedule appointments-- [Aaron] Yeah. [Jennifer] But um, I will say this, I've really enjoyed it, and it's been super beneficial in a lot of ways, but I also recognize that change is coming, with having the baby and post-partum, and all that. So it'll be something that we reevaluate, come very quickly. [Aaron] Right 'cause we go through seasons, and ebbs and flows, and we have to adjust our schedules and our way of living to the situations in life. But, I just wanna encourage the men out there, that even if you're not in a situation, where maybe your wife works with you, or works at home, or maybe, I don't know, like your situations are gonna look differently. The idea is being intentional, to let your wife know that, especially if she doesn't have like, a regular nine-to-five job if she is at home with the kids, if you have a similar situation in that aspect, is giving them time. It may not be every week, maybe it can't be every week, but if it's once a month, if it's every other week, if it's for a couple hours, there's times like, "Hey why don't you, "I got the kids you get out of here--" [Jennifer] And maybe it can't be during the day, but it's at night or, if it can't be during the week, it's you know Saturday morning or something like that. [Aaron] Yeah, there's always going to be a way to just let your wife know that you're thinking about her time, and also, as men who are leading our wives, spiritually, giving them time specifically like, maybe it's at home like, "Hey, why don't you just go lock yourself in the bedroom? "Open up the Bible like, read, journal, "go take a bath, and listen to some worship music." Giving them time to themselves, time to recharge, regenerate. I know some women probably recharge around people, not alone, but, whatever it is, maybe they need to go be with some friends. Just, keeping that in your mind, something we've been practicing, like we said, it's a it's a seasonal thing. So it's not necessarily that it's always going to be this way, but currently Fridays have been your day, and you've been enjoying them, we've been slowing down on that with the baby coming. [Jennifer] Yeah. [Aaron] Also 'cause, you're having less energy, and you're like, "I just wanna be home." [Jennifer] Yeah. [Aaron] But, it's been a cool thing. [Jennifer] I think it's a really good encouragement, and I think it's good for husbands to hear, that when it's even spontaneous, 'cause this was something that we kind of scheduled out, and looked at our situation, and said, "This needs to be happening." But even when it's at random, you know, spontaneous, it's a huge encouragement to the wife's heart to know that the husband is thinking of her like that. You've done that for me plenty of times over the years and so, I love that you're bringing this up. I think it's cool. [Aaron] So hope you're encouraged by that. One more thing before we get into our, our list of our favorite non-toxic products is, we just want to invite you to join the Parenting Prayer Challenge. We created this prayer challenge, it's very similar to the Marriage Prayer Challenge, where you get 30, 30 some-odd emails everyday, reminding you to pray for your children, and giving you a topic to pray for over them. and you can actually sign up for one for a son, or one for a daughter, or you can sign up for both, which is pretty awesome 'cause some of you probably have a son and a daughter, or just sons, or just daughters, or just one or the other, but you can go, you go to parentingprayerchallenge.com, all one word, and you sign up, it's completely free, and we just pray that God blesses you, and your prayer life for your children, because praying for your children is so important. Just like praying for your marriage. Just like praying for your brothers and sisters in Christ. Prayer is so important. God wants to be praying people, and so this is just a fun challenge. It's a way of being a catalyst for your prayer life, for your children. It's parentingprayerchallenge.com, it's completely free. [Jennifer] Okay, so for some of you listening you may have already read "The Unveiled Wife," if anything we talked about today, you know sparks interest and you haven't read that book yet, that was our first book that we came out with, you should go check it out, just because it shares more in depth of our journey, of kind of coming to this place of like, being aware of healthy living, and living a healthy lifestyle. But we're going to kind of summarize it. Just to kick off this episode, just so that you guys can, just get some background into Aaron and Jen. How about that? Okay. [Aaron] Let's see how quick we can make this summary. [Jennifer] Okay so I would say that when we first got married, Aaron, we didn't really, we didn't have a strong foundation of what it look like to live healthy. We grew up on fast food, and and home cook meals, but there was no, [Aaron] We didn't have an awareness of healthy living at all. [Jennifer] Yeah, and so we didn't really care about looking at ingredients on products, or you know reading the labels of things. I would say that you know I used all the all the really good smelling lotions and body washes, and if you didn't have more than three or four in your shower, it was like, "What are you doing?" You know, that type of thing. Fragrant candles, the kind of laundry detergent that you just never think about, you just use it because your parents used, or that's what so-and-so use. I remember using MAC makeup. This one, actually, I didn't really ever talk about this one, but this was one that affected me, in my teens because I was caking on the foundation, but I was using it to cover up acne, [Aaron] Which that made more acne. [Jennifer] Which made more acne. And I was actually allergic to something that was in it, and so I stopped using that, even probably around like 18. But anyways, the point that I'm getting at is that we didn't care about what was inside of these bottles that we were using to put on our skin, you know, the soap that we use, the body wash, the lip balms, the hairspray, we just consumed it. [Aaron] Not internally necessarily. [Aaron] We were consumers. We bought what we liked, we didn't have any consideration of what it was, and I actually think, back then, not very many people did. There was movements of it, but social media wasn't a huge thing back then, so not a lot of people were talking about it. Like news wasn't talking about it, like it was just, you got these products, and it wasn't until there was some sort of, big blow up or news story about something that people were aware of something, but I think with, now looking back, everyone is much more considerate about what's in products, people care about it, but back then we didn't have that experience. No one was telling us to, like, "Oh, do you know what those ingredients are?" Can you even understand what there, like, we just figured, like, "Oh, that's what they put in everything. [Jennifer] Yeah, and then, on the side of like, I'm not gonna go too much into this, but medicine, it was kind of just like, the Benadryl, Tylenol, like, whatever you could get over the counter type stuff. And I wasn't raised with a really big awareness of homeopathy, or how to, you know, use what you have at home. [Aaron] Right. [Jennifer] To help through sickness or things like that. Or to even just look at what's the root of the problem here? Of whatever symptoms you have. [Aaron] Or having an understanding of what those, why those symptoms exist. How fevers work, and how, like, why are you coughing, and sneezing, and these kinds of things. [Jennifer] Yeah. [Aaron] Rather than just, medicating the symptoms, which we're not totally against medication. [Jennifer] No, I'm just saying this is kind of like, where we came from. [Aaron] Yeah. [Jennifer] So we get married, and I, you know, it was just like a normal thing people talked about, to go on birth control, so I did that. 'Cause I thought that was-- [Aaron] It's what you do. You get married, [Jennifer] What we were supposed to do. [Aaron] birth control, wait. [Jennifer] Yeah, wait. And I only on it for about two to three months, and it like, drastically effected my body, and so that was the first thing that I noticed should go. And so we did that. But that was also in conjunction with trying to find a solution for what we were dealing with in our marriage, which started immediately-- [Aaron] Physically, yeah. [Jennifer] And for those of you who don't know, Aaron and I, we struggled with intimacy right off the bat, like, zero, none. [Aaron] Like sex, specifically we couldn't have sex. It was very painful for you, and we've talked about this in the past, there's a few episodes where we talked about our story, and in your book you talk about it, we talk about it in our new book, "Marriage After God." We talk about it so much because it was such a influential season in our life, and how it brought us to our knees before God. Because, it drew out of us, so much other sins, and frustrations, and bitterness, this situation we were going through. Which is often when we go through things that are hard. They often will draw out those negative things in us. Which is cool, because then God gets to deal with them. But that was, yeah, we didn't know it, you would go to see doctors, and they would say, "You're young." [Jennifer] "You're fine. [Aaron] "You're fine-- [Jennifer] "You're really great." [Aaron] "there's nothing wrong, "this should be working just fine." And then we'd go home and cry, because it's not fine, it doesn't work, nothing's changing, it hurts you. [Jennifer] Yeah, it was like at least if you told me that something was wrong, I can work with that. I can't work with nothing. But moving on, so year four of our marriage, we had a conversation with some friends, we were being really transparent and honest with them about our struggles, and they kind of like, I remember them sitting across from us, just looking super confused, like, "How-- [Aaron] Dumbfounded, or like, "Are you serious?" [Jennifer] "Yeah, is this really happening?" but she goes, the girl, she goes, "The only thing I can think of to help relate your story, "to someone else's that I heard is, "a friend of mine has PCOS, and she changed out all "of her products to be more organic, "and just cleaner, and three months later, "she ended up pregnant." Which people with PCOS, it's a hard thing to do, and they weren't even trying to get pregnant. She was just trying to heal some of her other symptoms. And we quickly disregarded that because we thought, "Well, we're not trying "to get pregnant, we're just trying to start off "with the first thing, which is-- [Aaron] Yeah, how do I have sex? [Jennifer] "sexual intimacy." And we didn't think about it again for about five, six months. And then what happened, Aaron you share. [Aaron] Well, I would just, it got worse of course, 'cause we're like, "There's like no hope, "like this in never gonna change." You know, it started off with a lot of hope, like, "Oh, it'll get better, it'll get, "but it can't possibly keep going the same way." And it just did, and you know, I'm praying through this, God was working in our marriage. There was a, if you read in our book, in both of our books, actually, there's this moment that God gets ahold of my heart, and just totally convicts me of my wrong heart, towards my wife. Not just over the situation about our sex, but about a lot of things. And it brought me to my knees, I repented, and I just said, "Lord, I'm gonna obey you. "I'm gonna walk with you, "and I'm gonna love my wife, "regardless of if I ever get what I think I deserve, "or whatever she owes me, or whatever. "I'm gonna love her. "The way you've called me to." And that was the beginning of a lot of transformations, in our marriage, in our life, and our being. But how, I don't know how, it was like. [Jennifer] It was shortly after-- [Aaron] It was like that weekend, maybe, [Jennifer] Yeah. [Aaron] or the next weekend, or that week, 'cause it was at church that this you know revelation that God gave to me happened. And I'm in the shower, and I'm just praying, 'cause I'm still like, "God, there's gotta be something, "that's gonna fix this." 'Cause even though, I've totally committed my heart to say "I'm gonna love my wife," [Jennifer] You still wanted change-- [Aaron] I still want a change, right? But my heart was totally in a different place now. And I'm just praying, and I'm like. "Lord, what is it? "It's been since before we were married, "like this is, since we've been married, I mean, "and there's gotta be something." And I looked down in the shower actually, and there's a face wash in there, and I just immediately remembered this story about the PCOS, and the girl that got rid of her stuff, and I just asked myself, I was like, "Is it possible that there's something reacting "with my wife's body?" And then I started thinking like, "What has there been, that you've used, "ever since the beginning, of our marriage?" [Jennifer] 'Cause shampoo and conditioner changed out, body wash changed out, a lot things changed, in those four years, but my face wash was the one main thing that I always was consistent with. [Aaron] And so, I said, I just yelled from the shower, I remember like, "What have you been using "since before we were married?" And you were like, "My f-why?" You were like, confused. Anyways, I take the face wash out of the shower, and I hop onto our computer, and I just start researching every ingredient on the thing. And there was like, first of all, like, half the ingredients were, I went on this site, and it talks about the toxicity level, of ingredients, right? You type the ingredient in, and it just tells you what the level is. [Jennifer] Had you ever done anything like that before? [Aaron] Never, never done like that before. Didn't even know it existed, I had to Google, and I'm searching like, how do you figure out, I'm typing these, and then this site shows up. And like half the ingredients in this thing, were-- [Jennifer] It was EWG. [Aaron] Toxic. [Jennifer] EWG.com. [Aaron] EWG.com, I don't even know, is it still a thing? [Jennifer] I think so. [Aaron] Okay. So half the products were toxic at some level. And then there was several of the ingredients that had specific terms that it said it was, that the affect. Specifically the endocrine system in your body. Then I looked up, I was like, "What's the endocrine system? "I'll just start looking it up." I'm getting all technical, and we're not scientists, we're not biologists, we don't know, like, I'm not gonna try and diagnose people, but all I know is the Lord lead me to something. [Jennifer] We were putting pieces together. [Aaron] I started researching, and regardless if it has any effect, the fact that it had all these toxic chemicals, and I'm like, "Maybe she should, regardless, "she probably shouldn't be putting this on her body." and the endocrine system something that's, it's super important to the whole reproductive system. To the normal function of the woman's body. Like secretion of normal hormones, and I was like, "Dang, that sounds like a lot "of like the things that we deal with." And so it-- [Jennifer] The specific thing that you're talking about is parabens. [Aaron] Parabens, yeah. [Jennifer] So there's four, different types of parabens, in this specific face wash. [Aaron] Methyl, propyl, like all these different kinds. [Jennifer] And this was before parabens was a thing, [Aaron] Yeah, like no bottle said paraben-free, back then. [Jennifer] Nobody was talking about it yet, but it soon became a thing, shortly after that. [Aaron] A few years later. [Jennifer] I mean, I remember a few years later, you'd go into like, Ulta, or Sephora, and you'd start seeing, you know, makeup lines that say, paraben free this, paraben free that. [Aaron] Which is interesting because back then, no one cared. I should say no on knew. And then we're like researching this and finding this out, and I don't wanna say, like started move, we actually didn't start anything. Other people are already trying to get this moving, but because of social media things like that, that it exist. Things were a lot slower. I think things are way faster now. But I was just like, "Hey. "I want to be with you, physically." And in this is a big deal because Jennifer has been using this forever, she believed that without it, she was gonna have acne. And be, and feel ugly, or whatever it was, and I remember I was like, "Hey, would you get this up?" [Jennifer] I said no. [Aaron] And she was like "No!" And I'm like, "I'd rather you have acne and us be able "to be together, than you have clean skin, clear skin." [Jennifer] And then I was like, "Well maybe there's something, okay. "I'll just do it 'cause you asked me." [Aaron] So you did, you chose to put it away. And now, I'm sure everyone's thinking like, "Yeah, I'm gonna go use this to get my wife, "or get someone to stop doing something." But, I, my heart was not just to get her to stop using this. I actually had never thought about it until this moment, and I was just like, "Would you be willing to experiment with me?" Like, "Let's just delete this from your life." [Jennifer] Yeah, it was an experiment. And here's the thing you guys, three days later, three days later, I was at work and I remember just feeling different, and I called Aaron and I was like, "I don't get too excited but, I feel different, "and I wanted you to know that my body feels, "it feels like things are changing." And I feel like it was just like two more days after that that we had sex for what feels like the first time. [Aaron] Yeah, in four and a half years. [Jennifer] Like pain free. [Aaron] Pain free. Not just pain free, but like it was enjoyable. [Jennifer] Yeah. [Aaron] Like it was, like we were like, "Whoa. "Like that's what it's supposed to be like. [Jennifer] There was nothing else that was gonna convince me, that what we stumbled upon, was the thing. [Aaron] Right, and I would also say, we, God lead us a new place, in our hearts toward him. We had been repentant, of things that were going on, and I think that the Lord revealed thing to us, so I would say I definitely think that there is certain things are engaging, or interacting with your body. I mean we know over the years that you're sensitive to certain things, I'm sensitive to certain things. [Jennifer] Yeah. [Aaron] But I also think that the Lord, was like working in us. So I'm not trying to over-spiritualize it but, I don't wanna take away from what God was doing. [Jennifer] Sure. [Aaron] And he revealed this to us-- [Jennifer] Well and I think, he's the one that revealed this to us, and it was really awesome, and so the next step was, "I'm getting rid of all parabens." Like parabens became this like, [Aaron] We literally threw [Both] Everything, [Jennifer] And I am telling you guys, [Aaron] All of our shampoos, all of her makeup. [Jennifer] It was it! [Aaron] My makeup too. I'm just kiddin'. [Jennifer] It was in everything. It was in so much stuff. People will message me on Instagram, and they're like, "So you know, "You talked about parabens in the "Unveiled Wife," "and what kind of stuff did you have to look at?" It was like, [Aaron] Everything. [Jennifer] I tell 'em, "everything." And so what's funny is that, I look at our shower now from what it used to be, and it's like you had mentioned earlier, [Aaron] There's two things in there. [Jennifer] Yeah, which is one of the reasons why I wanted to do this episode. 'cause we just thought it'd be fun to share with you guys, some of the things that we use now, but this indecent, this thing that happened over something as small as face wash, is what stimulated our hearts to say, "Hey, what were putting in our bodies. "What we're putting on our bodies, "is important because it has an effect on us." [Aaron] And I mean it's definitely not our main focus, I mean everyone that listens to our podcast would know that this is not, we're not like a health and fitness-- [Jennifer] Freaks, [Aaron] Podcast. No, we just know, that there's a holistic view that God has of us. He wants us to love him with our minds, our souls, our bodies. Like so, when we look at the world it's not just, "Oh, we can be unwise over here, "as long as we're wise over here." we look at idea of, what we, we gotta be wise in every aspect. And we seek God on that. So what's wrong with just, caring about what goes on our body and in our body? Not out of a, like, not putting something on my body and not putting something in my body is not making me more holy. It's making me more healthy. [Jennifer] It's taking care of yourself. [Aaron] it's taking care of the body that God's given me. [Jennifer] Yeah, and I will say this, back then, it felt a little bit harder to know what to switch to, because-- [Aaron] Well, there was also less things, I think. [Jennifer] Less cleaner things available and so I just wanted to make that clear, that, you know, anyone who wanted to make a switch today, like if they want to go to their products or-- [Aaron] There's a million products now. [Jennifer] be more healthy in this way, there are so many good products out there and so, it's a lot easier, I would say. But another thing that triggered our healthy lifestyle, was doing the Sugar Busters diet, which we-- [Aaron] This was long time ago. [Jennifer] that was just a couple months, after all of this, and we made the commitment to do it together. We even took a class on it do you remember that? [Aaron] I do. [Jennifer] And they taught us how to read labels-- [Aaron] It was at the church. [Jennifer] Yeah, it was at our church. [Aaron] The church put this like health class on. It was cool. [Jennifer] Yeah so, it taught us how the read labels, and so I remember going grocery shopping with you, and we're looking at the back of like pasta sauce-- [Aaron] Well, everything we bought, had added sugar in it. Every single thing. [Jennifer] But we were like, amazed, we were like, "And this has it too!" [Aaron] I was like, "Bread doesn't have sugar in it." and every loaf of bread, was like, the second ingredient was sugar. And we're like, "Okay, what's going on here?" So anyways, [Jennifer] And then you had to go with a list of what are sugars called? because there's a lot of-- [Aaron] All the different names of sugar, yeah [Jennifer] Different names, for it. But that was another one, when we talk about eating, like that was what stimulated our healthy movement towards eating healthier and just buying things so that we're aware of what we're putting inside of our bodies. It doesn't mean we don't consume sugar, and we don't, you know, we'll have Chick-fil-A, we'll go out and-- [Aaron] No, but that education, the learning about how to read labels. What are ingredients, you know, how they order the ingredients, that's important, I can give a little tip on that. Even though we don't still do Sugar Busters, that month or how many? It was a couple months maybe. [Jennifer] It grew a muscle in us, We now, that's how we shop. When we go grocery shopping, of course there's gonna be stuff that we grab that has added sugars to it, but for the most part, we look at the ingredients in almost everything we buy. Everything, now especially with you, you need to be gluten-free. We look at, we actually buy less things that have wheat in it period, because of that, but it was a good tool in our tool belt, as we talk about in "Marriage After God," to just help us be healthier, help our kids be healthier. They enjoy things, here and there, we just had icecream tonight, so we're not like, sans sugar in our life, we're sans sugar all the time. [Jennifer] I was gonna say, we try and make the best opportunity, or we take every opportunity, when we can, to be healthy, eat healthy, and you know, choose the right thing, but it doesn't mean that we don't get, [Aaron] We also enjoy things. [Jennifer] Yeah, we also enjoy things, so, [Aaron] In moderation. [Jennifer] in moderation. That's good. [Aaron] So, Oh I wanna give that quick tip real quick, 'cause people are probably thinking like, "Well, what about the ingredients?" Just a quick tip on ingredients, the order of ingredients on the box, so like starting from the first, to the second, to the third, the higher up an ingredient is on the box, the more of that ingredient is in the product. So if sugar is in the top three ingredients, that means there's a lot of sugar in that item. So if wheat's the first or water, that's how they order the ingredients, based off of amount of ingredients. [Jennifer] So here's another one, it's really random, but I've been seeing a naturopath for my thyroid issues through this last year, and one of the things she asked me is if we use Weed and Feed. And I didn't even know, 'cause you usually do-- [Aaron] For the lawns? Yeah. [Jennifer] the lawns, yeah. And that was just one instance where she was like, "Well, instead of using that, "why don't you just pick the weeds?" like-- [Aaron] Or leave the weeds. [Jennifer] or leave the weeds. So there's a lots of things in our life that we can look at and evaluate, and say, "Oh, we should probably make change." It doesn't have to happen all at once, but it is something that we should be aware of, to go, "Hey what's happening to this exposure "that we're doing to our bodies. "And how can we maintain a healthy body?' [Aaron] And the Weed and Feed was important because was saying, "You guys walk on "that grass all the time." And like, it goes into your skin, and you're going to be affected by it. Because you're you're working with your thyroid and all of these things, effect that. Which is interesting because, we knew back then that you were probably sensitive to some stuff, and now we know now, you are definitely sensitive to things. Your body's gonna react, maybe differently than someone who, has normal functioning thyroid, or endocrine system or all that. [Jennifer] Right. Okay so, we we're just going to get into kind of a list of our non-toxic products because-- [Aaron] These are literally things that we use, pretty much on a regular basis. [Jennifer] Two reasons, one we just thought it would be fun to share these things, and if you guys you know want to know more, you can reach out to us on Instagram @marriage-- [Aaron] Reach out to Jennifer about the [Jennifer] I was going to say @marriageaftergod. [Aaron] Ah there ya go. [Jennifer] or @unveiledwife We also know that everyone's always looking for, you know, new things or ideas or inspiration so, we just hope that by sharing these, it's an encouragement to you, and give you some information. [Aaron] And I'll also let you guys know that we're not like necessarily sponsored by any of these people. We're just we're literally going to share with you guys the things that we love-- [Jennifer] Now I will say, [Aaron] and use. [Jennifer] that some of these things that I put on the list, and we've been using Young Living Essential Oils for [Aaron] Several years now. [Jennifer] about four or five years now. And we did just recently, just be more open to sharing the business side of things on social media. You may have seen that, maybe not. And so I know you said that we're not sponsored by this, but we,-- [Aaron] But we use it. [Jennifer] but we do use Young Living, and we do believe in what they have to offer, and and have really fallen in love with their products. So, I just wanted to put that out there, just so that people know and we're clear about that. [Aaron] We're not trying to be tricky or anything, we just, these are literally products we love and no one's asked us to share about them. Except for us, wanting to share about them. [Jennifer] Okay so when it comes to cleaning I really love the Thieves Spray, which in the beginning I was using wrong, because I didn't know it could be diluted. I literally would just put the spray cap-- [Aaron] And everything was just like slimy and had like, film all over the [Jennifer] Uh yeah, like a residue. [Aaron] We had residue everywhere. [Jennifer] On the countertops. [Aaron] Oh man, there was no germs I bet. [Jennifer] Ah, probably not. So the Thieves container comes, and then you dilute it, and it lasts a long time. But it smells really good, and I can use it for-- [Aaron] Everything. [Jennifer] I feel like every, one product, I feel like I can use for so much. [Aaron] And what's awesome is like, if you sprayed it on food by accident, I'm not saying you should eat it, but it's not going to be like spraying Lysol on something. Like you spray the table, you spray the the highchair, you spray, you're not worried about this, you know hurting your children. Which is awesome. It's an added benefit to this kind of cleaning product. [Jennifer] Another awesome cleaning product, is by a company called Norwex, it's really awesome you guys, they do these microfiber cloths, but they're like-- [Aaron] Aren't they infused with like silver? [Jennifer] Yeah, they're infused with silver, and they just, I don't know what about it is, but like, when you go to clean the stove, you barely have to even scrape, it's just like, [Aaron] Reusable [Jennifer] It like makes you want to clean. The window rag, you just you put water on it, and just wipe your window down, and they look crystal clear. I bought these mitts for the kids that have, they're just really easy slip-on gloves, but they're good for dusting, [Aaron] So that they can help clean? [Jennifer] So that they can help clean. Oh and our mop, I use the Norwex mop, and it's just really nice. It's good, I like it. I like their stuff. [Aaron] I wouldn't say those are necessarily, healthy products, they're just good products that we love using. [Jennifer] Oh yeah. [Aaron] On that specific one, [Jennifer] On the Norwex side of things. [Aaron] I did wanna go back, and just real quick, the Thieves Spray, we just talked about, I wanted to say it like it what it replaces. Because I think, as we go, we should just remind them, also, what it replaces like, it replaces Lysol spray, it replaces window spray, it replaces like toilet cleaner, it replaces all these things that you'd use to clean your countertops, or your floors, or your tables, or your, it does all of those things. [Jennifer] So for all you minimalists out there, [Aaron] You get one thing, and it does all. [Jennifer] It'll make your cleaning closet, or cupboard very pretty looking. [Aaron] It also smells really nice. [Jennifer] It does, that's true. For laundry, again that they sell Thieves Laundry Detergent and we've really liked that. And I just noticed that, there's a drastic difference when washing towels and washcloths. They're just so much cleaner. [Aaron] And they smell fresher, and they feel nicer. I've been really liking that, as well. This is this one's kind of like for me. So Jennifer, actually, doesn't use the the Thieves Laundry Soap for me, because I'm really sensitive, my skin, if we, if there's any laundry detergent that has any sort of dyes or perfumes or anything, I get like a rash, on my whole body. [Jennifer] If I even think about changing it, he breaks out-- [Aaron] Now, it happens, we've gone, we've stayed at hotels in the past, and I wake up in the morning and I'm just like red, and I go down and I'm like, "What are you guys washing your stuff with?" And they're like "We don't know, why?" And I'm like "I like I need something else." It's like horrible 'cause I'm like sleeping on these blankets and pillows, and so the only thing that we found work, we've actually tried venturing out, into other things, is the Arm & Hammer Sensitive Skin laundry detergent. [Jennifer] But it's fragrance-free, it's clear, [Aaron] Dye free. I'm sure it's got a couple of bad things in it, but literally, it's the only one that I've been able to use and not like break out in a rash on my body. But that comes in a huge bottle and we use it for me so. [Jennifer] Okay so earlier, we mentioned the shower, and just how the bathroom is much [Aaron] less cluttered, [Jennifer] Yeah, less cluttered. So we use dr. Bronner's for just about everything when it comes to washing our bodies. [Aaron] Body wash, shampoo, [Jennifer] I use it in the kids hair, I throw it in their bath and they have different scents, and they come in big bottles [Aaron] I like the rose scented one. [Jennifer] I will say this, the first couple times that we used it, do you remember how it felt like, really different, almost oily, but then once you got out of the shower it was like, [Aaron] Yeah, 'cause it doesn't suds the same way, as like a regular shampoo and also, you have to dilute it. And so you if you use too much, it's like everywhere but it comes off really easy. Doesn't leave any residue, but it's, we love it we use it for everything. Apparently you can use dr. Bronner's for like, laundry soap, [Jennifer] Yep. and dish washing soap [Jennifer] You can use it for a lot of stuff. [Aaron] We use it mainly in the shower, but yeah, you can [Jennifer] I use it for my face wash now, face and body wash, [Aaron] You can use it for everything. We wanna make a note that, the company that that owns dr. Bronner's, they write a bunch of weird stuff on the packaging so we're not necessarily endorsing what is written on the packaging, but we love the product. [Jennifer] When it comes to my like, lotions and things like that, Cetaphil is pretty bland, there's not very much stuff in it. I've used that for years now. I love the orange blossom and ART brand from Young Living when it comes to face moisturizer. The Genesis lotion is also really great, especially because, well, it smells clean and fresh, but it's not super fragrant. That one's good, just an overall lotion, I use that one for the kids. But also, Aaron, [Aaron] Yeah, there's a lotion that I, I hate lotions, like I don't like putting anything in my hands, even though, like right now, my hands are so dry because it's so dry out. But I hate feeling like greasy and the lotion I love the most is from Bend Soap Company, they're actually right here in our hometown. And they make this goat milk lotion, they make goat milk soap, they make a lot of really awesome things. So if you have really sensitive skin, like eczema, things like that, their soaps are amazing for it. That's actually why they started the company, 'cause one of their sons had issues with skin like that. [Jennifer] What I like is their milk bath, it comes in these like shavings, [Aaron] Oh yeah. [Jennifer] And it's just, you toss it in the bath with the kids, and it's just so fun. [Aaron] So just go check out Bend Soap Company, I can't remember the domain, but just Google Bend Soap Company. And their lotion, does not feel greasy. Once it's rubbed in, it's like, it smells nice, it feels great. [Jennifer] You don't have to go wash your hands [Aaron] It feels soft, yeah I don't have to wash my hands afterwards. [Jennifer] For toothpaste we do use Young Living. The Thieves whitening, specifically, is really good for us. And then we use it the kid's ones for the kids. But for the deodorant, this was a big one for me, because I feel like every time I try to use like, a natural deodorant, it just felt weird [Aaron] They don't work. [Jennifer] and didn't work [Jennifer] Yeah, but there's a new company out I'd say a fairly new. They're gaining ground, they're like in Target now, [Aaron] Yeah, they actually have some body washes now, I saw. [Jennifer] Oh really? [Aaron] Yeah, I almost bought a bottle of it. [Jennifer] Oh you should, I'll have to try it. [Aaron] But I like my Bronner's [Jennifer] I know. It's called Native. And they have great scents, it goes on smooth, almost silky like, and it works. Someone asked me, "Do you think it'll work during postpartum?" And I'm like, "That I haven't tried yet, "so we'll know this time around." But I've really really enjoyed Native. [Aaron] Yeah, it doesn't have the heavy metals, or nothin' in it, [Jennifer] Paraben-free [Aaron] So it won't necessarily protect you from perspiring, I should say. It's not an antiperspirant, it's a deodorant. So it protects from the smell, but-- [Jennifer] I don't, really notice-- [Aaron] Yeah, well, it's winter right now, so I don't know, sometimes. [Jennifer] I've been using it for a while though. [Aaron] But I like it a lot. It smells great, it feels good, and deodorant is another one that's really been a, hard one for me because, like, pretty much any deodorant I use, I used to use the Arm & Hammer deodorant, but that has some metals in it, and so I've since switched to Native, but Arm & Hammer and Native are the only ones that don't give me rashes on my arms. And they're painful, you've see them. [Jennifer] Yeah, [Aaron] Like, I they hurt. And I've loved their deodorants. [Jennifer] Another good product for chapstick, is Burt's Bees. [Aaron] Yeah that's good. Especially their vanilla brand, [Aaron] I think a lot of people are like, "yeah, I like that." Burt's Bees, they've been pretty synonymous for chapsticks. [Jennifer] That or coconut oil. Which coconut oil, you guys, you could used for literally everything. [Aaron] Yeah, we should do an episode on that. [Jennifer] Dry skin, lips-- [Aaron] intimacy, oh we're gonna talk about it. [Jennifer] Lubricancy, or, lubricancy? [Aaron] Lubricancy [Jennifer] Whatever that is. [Aaron] It's like, new word. [Jennifer] Okay before we get there, supplements, some things that I've been taking his last year, Nordic Naturals-- [Aaron] You've been, just real quick, you've been getting a lot, into the supplements, just because of your-- [Jennifer] Thyroid. [Aaron] your thyroid. So you've been learning a lot about these. [Jennifer] Yeah. [Aaron] Because we're, we're trying to avoid going with other stronger, methods, we're trying to do the natural way, [Jennifer] Yeah. [Aaron] and you've been, pretty consistent with this. [Jennifer] Yeah, and just as a testament, after being on the supplements, I have actually, my numbers have gone down, and in my symptoms have pretty much dissipated, but I've also been pregnant the last nine months. [Aaron] Which does change things, yep. [Jennifer] So it does change things. But Nordic Naturals has a really great, strawberry flavored, omega-3. Which I love. And I've been taking-- [Aaron] So it doesn't just taste like fish? It tastes like strawberries? That's good. [Jennifer] Yeah. We've taking D3 a lot. Young Living has a great line of supplements that we use, like the vitamin C, the vitamin B, Multigreens, [Aaron] Yeah, I've been loving their Master Formula. It's like a pack of like five little supplements, and vitamin B, C, D3, all these different ones. I've been taking that, pretty much regularly, every day, I really enjoy that one. [Jennifer] Cool. Okay so for pregnancy and post-partum care, my friend recommended ancient magnesium lotion for restless legs, and it works. [Aaron] Do you get restless legs when you're pregnant? [Jennifer] Yeah, mostly towards the end, [Aaron] I'm being facetious, because I know. [Jennifer] I know, Aaron does the massaging, with the lotion, [Aaron] Yeah [Jennifer] Thank you, Aaron. [Aaron] You've had pretty bad restless legs this time. [Jennifer] Yeah, [Aaron] And the magnesium lotion-- [Jennifer] It's been good. [Aaron] And lavender, on your feet. [Jennifer] Yep. [Aaron] Has been, really helping you. [Jennifer] Yep, that's true. [Aaron] 'Cause I can tell, 'cause then you fall asleep. [Jennifer] Yeah. I've love it. And then the other thing that helps, has helped me during this pregnancy is the Young Living Deep Relief roller and I don't necessarily put it on, but like I smell it, like especially when I'm nauseous, or anything like that. [Aaron] I personally don't like this one because of how cold it feels. It's like all this-- [Jennifer] When you put it on, yeah. [Aaron] Like the peppermint in it, I just can't. [Jennifer] The cooling effect. [Aaron] But it does work, but it's too cold for me. So you brought up makeup in the beginning, I remember you used to go to the MAC store and you were like, "We have to go to the mall, I need some MAC." And I was like, "Are you serious? "You look beautiful." I've never liked you wearing makeup. You remember this? I was like, "You don't need to wear makeup." But you've used since not used makeup, the MAC makeup and for a long time, you didn't use almost anything, because we couldn't find anything. What do you use now? I'm sure some of the women are like, "What kind of makeup do you use?" [Jennifer] Yeah, so I would say, like my everyday would be, a primer from Urban Decay, which just kind of holds the eyeshadow on, and the eye shadow is also from Urban Decay. And I just like it, they're neutral colors, easy to put on really quick, and the times that I do use foundation, it's a powder foundation from Young Living, it's called Savvy Minerals, it's like a mineral makeup. And it goes on super light and so, [Aaron] But that's rare. [Jennifer] Yeah, it's like on Sundays. [Aaron] I would say you used to use a lot more makeup, and now it's like, you do a little eyeliner, [Jennifer] Yeah, [Aaron] You do a little mascara, [Jennifer] I don't use eyeliner actually. [Aaron] You don't use eyeliner? [Jennifer] No but my mascara, Smashbox has been a really good favorite, paraben-free, and Clinique. [Aaron] Clinique, [Jennifer] Yep. [Aaron] So no eyeliner, but mascara, okay, and then you use some lipstick sometimes. [Jennifer] Every once in a while. [Aaron] Yeah. [Jennifer] The Burt's Bees tinted is really nice. [Aaron] 'cause it's kinda like lipstick, and it's moisturizing [Jennifer] Yeah. [Aaron] Yeah, so I'm just making a note that you wear way less makeup than you use to [Jennifer] Oh yeah. [Aaron] And I think you're beautiful. [Jennifer] Thank you. [Aaron] Yeah, well, I'm not lying. I've never been a fan of a lot of makeup, and because of this, you've since found contentment in just a very little. [Jennifer] Yep. [Aaron] Which I think is really awesome. [Jennifer] Okay so when it comes to intimacy, you guys we ditched pretty much, well, we did all lubricants because of-- [Aaron] And we've tried a lot of lubricants 'cause, [Jennifer] We've tried a lot [Aaron] 'cause, things didn't work. [Jennifer] But there were so many of 'em that had parabens in it. [Aaron] All of them. [Jennifer] Every single one, [Jennifer] We didn't even know, [Aaron] Had parabens, yeah. [Jennifer] And then other things on top of that that were just not good for you, so, we stuck to coconut oil for a really long time. [Aaron] So, tip, coconut oil's amazing, for that, specifically, and it's so good for you too. And it feels good. That was a little side note, for the adults in the room. So, I guess what we wanna get at, and I'm sure there's like a ton more things that we-- [Jennifer] I know, [Aaron] we use that are healthy, and we could probably, make a whole other list, but we essentially, wanted to show you that we've simplified, we found the handful of products that we love, and that we know what's in them, and we just, what's really awesome about this is, we it makes shopping easier, it's actually cheaper 'cause we're not buying a bunch of stuff and always experimenting, we're not always saying like "Well, let's try this new thing." We just say "Nope, we love this product. "Let's just go with it, we know it works." And so it makes, we don't think as much about those things. We know that we're minimizing the amount of chemicals we're putting on us, on our kids. And so we can have some peace of mind, and just one less thing that we have to think about, in our home. And we can put more intention into the spiritual growth of our family, into our careers, into our children, into each other, and we're not like worried about these other things. [Jennifer] Yeah, or when you say, "don't put as much "thought into them," I would say initially we do, because we do look at ingredients. We look and we do our research and figure out what we want to use, and we're in agreement when we choose things, but then, once we know what it is, it's kinda like that going back to that spaghetti sauce, once we found the one that didn't have sugar in it, we just stick to that one. [Aaron] And it's great. We love it. [Jennifer] And it makes it easy. It makes it so easy when you know what you are good with. [Aaron] Well, and grocery shopping's hard. I don't know if everyone who's listening is like, "Yeah grocery shopping's hard." Like, for us it's hard, like, so once you, instead of trying to reinvent the wheel every single time, we've kinda, we slowly over time with built, our list of things that we like, "Oh, these are the things-- [Jennifer] Stick to the basics [Aaron] "that we can, "we're just gonna go to those things." And some of them are a little but more expensive. But what's awesome is we don't get as much of everything, like we get those handful of things and I was just at the grocery store the other day, and I was just thinking how awesome it is, that we have these habits on the things that we get. There's just the staples in our home, there's things that we get often. We've already looked at the ingredients. We know we enjoy them. We know that we like them. And it just makes these normal, everyday things so much more enjoyable and easy. They're less stressful like, all around like, this this this way of thinking, is just good for our everyday life. To simplify, to know the things that we like, and we create the good habit. And then that habit is there. So we don't have to reinvent the wheel, every single time we walk to the grocery store. Or every time we are shopping for something for our home, and for our kids. [Jennifer] And we also gotta know when we do choose that organic, clean, non-toxic, or non-GMO, whatever the thing is, we can't be up so obsessive about it that when we go out, or someone offers us, or brings us-- [Aaron] Right. That's a good point. [Jennifer] food during, postpartum, or whatever it is, that we're not nitpicky in a way that promotes-- [Aaron] Is this from that specific brand? [Jennifer] Yeah, let's not be like that. [Aaron] Yeah, we're not, yeah. [Jennifer] And I guess what I'm trying to say is we can't make it in idol. I think it's important to be healthy, and do the best that we can, but there's going to be times that we can't, and that's okay. We can't make living out this way, become an idol in our lives, and especially not become a strife point between husband and wife. I think this is something that you guys, [Aaron] Or friends, [Jennifer] can learn about together. Engage in together, and agree on together. [Aaron] That's a really good point, you know it's good to, in general, be making healthier habits in our life, but the point is not just to be healthier, it's too have a good habits. It's to walk rightly and have wisdom. And so is that thing, if those things, are getting in the way of your relationships with other people, they need to be put on the shelf. Not forever, but like you need to check yourself, and say "Am I letting this thing get in the way of them?" [Jennifer] Yeah, or if you really, truly have a heart to encourage your friends, or family members, or whoever to also, live a healthy lifestyle, be patient with them, because it might take someone else more time, than maybe it took you, or I don't know, I just feel like we need to have compassion for people's learning experience, [Aaron] Yeah, well and also don't let this, one last little warning, don't let this be the message you preach. It's good to encourage people and say "Hey like, you know, why don't you try this? "Why don't you try some more healthy things? "Here's an idea." It's one thing to share, healthy lifestyle, and to encourage someone, but if that if that replaces the message we should be preaching, the message of Christ, if like we have this opportunity and we're instead, we're encouraging someone to be healthier, and then what were thinking is, holiness comes from that. Rather than encouraging someone in Christ, and making the healthy lifestyle thing, that's an ancillary thing in our life that were like, "Oh and I like to live healthy, "and here's some ideas if you're interested." So the main messages is our life represents Christ and we preach him. 'Cause, we could do that sometimes. I got excited about crossfit, and every conversation I had was about crossfit, and I have to check myself and be like, "Hey, is this getting in the way "of the message I should be preaching right now? [Jennifer] That's really good Aaron, and I just, you know, just even thinking about this episode, it's little bit fun and quirky, and you know, not very Christ driven, but yet, I think the encouragement here is that we're aware of what we're putting in and on our bodies because, the scripture to tell us about, our bodies being the Holy Temple. [Aaron] Right, and we're, it's just being wise. Let's be wise with our bodies, and we can't control everything, and we shouldn't try and control everything. But what we can control, with moderation, with wisdom, and with sober mindedness, you know, thinking rightly, I think there's wisdom in that. And walking good, and not just putting junk in our bodies, and on our bodies. [Jennifer] And it has felt really good, I think you would agree with me, in having the conversations from time to time, about our lifestyle choices, about the things that we're doing, the things that were buying, and it's something that we evaluate often. You know, even when we go to the grocery store and so, I would hope that this episode, encourages couples to do that. [Aaron] Yeah. [Jennifer] So I also wanna let you guys know that if you, especially the wife, if you're interested in following me on Instagram, @unveiledwife, there's a highlight tab called toxic, free, healthy living, and you can get more information there. And also if you're curious about more things, if you want to hear more about, you know, the things that we use just message me. [Aaron] So before we close in prayer, I thought it'd be cool if we let everyone know some of the resources and people that we follow that kinda promote, some healthy living, so what are you share some of those? [Jennifer] So Dashing Dish, she's a good friend of ours and she is-- [Aaron] She's awesome. [Jennifer] really good at just like, meal planning, healthy fitness, [Aaron] Believer, loves the Lord. [Jennifer] everything you can think of, if you want some inspiration she's a great resource. Dr. Mark Hyman H-Y-M-A-N, is a really great resource, he just talks about the holistic living, like that Aaron mentioned. Carrie Vitt, I think it's a Vitt, or Veet. It's C-A-R-R-I-E V-I-T-T and on Instagram, that's where I follow her, and she talks a lot about thyroid health. So I mention that earlier-- [Aaron] Yeah, which is important to you. [Jennifer] Yeah, if you guys are interested in more inspiration for thyroid health, she's a great one to listen to, or watch, or follow. Follow, yeah. [Jennifer] I don't know what it's called. Another one is just.ingredients. She is going to really fun resource, a newer resource that-- [Aaron] Someone shared this with you, yeah. [Jennifer] someone shared with me, and she does like, Costco overhauls, she'll compare products and it's just been really great. [Aaron] A note on her, isn't she the one, that she'll say "If you can't do this, "at least do this?" [Jennifer] Yeah, I think so. [Aaron] And so she shows you like, if you can't afford this, the best product, here's one that's a little bit better than that other product. [Jennifer] I know she shows pictures too, of like, comparing products and things like that. So that's just.ingredients. And then another one I've been falling recently, is Purely Parsons. She's a fun one, just a mom, also nurse, who shares a lot of things, and her highlight reel, I mean, so much about birth, postpartum care, flu season, just home remedies, farming, like, anything that you can think of that you want to know more about, she's just a fun person to follow. And I really appreciated, how much time she takes in explaining things, and sharing resources. And then we had mentioned Sugar Busters, but if you want to know more about the toxi, I can't say that word, [Aaron] Toxicity. of sugar, Dr. Robert Lustig L-U-S-T-I-G [Aaron] Oh yeah, he's the guy [Jennifer] he's the guy. And especially on YouTube. Just research him and check out some of his-- [Aaron] He talks about what sugar does in our bodies. and this is not to be an anti sugar talk, we just when we're aware of how things interact with our body, how God created our bodies, it's pretty interesting 'cause it's not normal things to learn, so just wanna encourage you to check that out. So hey, we just want to thank everyone for being here today. As usual, we like to close in prayer. And so just Jennifer, why don't you pray for us? [Jennifer] Okay. Dear Lord, thank you for our bodies. We pray would be good stewards of our bodies and consider all that goes on them, and in them. We pray we would be willing to take the time and research the items we use on a daily basis. Using things that help us and not hurt us. Lord, we ask that you would give us wisdom as we navigate living a healthy lifestyle. Help us to make good choices, and be on the same page in marriage, so that we can enjoy the benefits of living toxic-free. Please help us to not be overwhelmed by the process of learning, but rather, help us to be humble and willing to learn so that we can choose what is healthy for us, and be advocates of healthy living for the sake of others. We pray living healthy would not become an idol in our lives and would not hinder any of our relationships. May we be people who don't just consume, but people who care about our bodies, and take care of them. In Jesus' name, amen. [Aaron] Amen. We love you all, We thank you for joining us on this episode. We hope it was enjoyable and educational. Go follow @unveiledwife and check out some of her, some more of her things. She posts about them often. And again, we love you, and we look forward to having you next week, possibly as long as we don't have the baby before then, we'll get some episodes up. See you next week. Did you enjoy Today Show? If you did, it would mean the world to us if you could leave us a review on iTunes. Also, if you're interested, you can find many more encouraging stories and resources at marriageaftergod.com. And let us help you cultivate an extraordinary marriage.   

Physical touch is such a powerful and amazing gift from God. He designed us for it. We need it. And it is physically, spiritual and emotionally damaging when we avoid it or do not get enough of it. In this episode, we discuss why Physical touch is so important and we give some practical tips on how to touch and be touched more.Embracing each other says “I trust you and need you in my life.”A comforting hug says, “I’m here for you.”A kiss says, “You are mine! And I love you!”Holding hands lets your spouse know you like them and like spending time with them.Tickle rubs, massages, running your fingers through their hair says, “I want to make you feel good.” ...And most times lets them know you desire more physical touch.Being married and living in that sacred space of physical closeness, embrace, touch...there is no other relationship like it on Earth. Make the time to send those messages of love to your spouse through touch. READ TRASCRIPT[Aaron] Hey, we're Aaron and Jennifer Smith, with "Marriage After God." [Jennifer] Helping you cultivate an extraordinary marriage. [Aaron] And today we're gonna talk about "The Power Of Touch In Marriage." Welcome to the "Marriage After God" podcast where we believe that marriage was meant for more than just happily ever after. [Jennifer] I'm Jennifer also known as unveiled wife. [Aaron] And I'm Aaron also known as husband revolution. [Jennifer] We have been married for over a decade. [Aaron] And so far we have four young children. [Jennifer] We have been doing marriage ministry online for over seven years through blogging and social media. [Aaron] With the desire to inspire couples to keep God at the center of their marriage, encouraging them to walk in faith every day. [Jennifer] We believe the Christian marriage should be an extraordinary one full of life. Love. And power. [Aaron] That can only be found by chasing after God. [Jennifer] Together. [Aaron] Thank you for joining us on this journey as we chase boldly after God's will for our life together. [Jennifer] This is "Marriage after God." Well, welcome back, everyone. Thanks for joining us on this episode of Marriage after God, we're super excited to have you. You're looking at me funny Aaron, why are you looking at me funny? [Aaron] I was wondering if everyone knows that you're still pregnant. Or if they're waiting to hear about the baby 'cause I don' know if everyone knows the exact I'm still pregnant? [Aaron] March 20th is the due date? [Jennifer] Creeping up on us. [Aaron] More like, almost there. Also soon along with the baby coming, we have the end of our season coming. Season three of the "Marriage After God" podcast. [Jennifer] You're just prepping their hearts. [Aaron] I'm prepping their little hearts. [Jennifer] Will come back don't worry. [Aaron] Yeah, we have this episode and I think three more episodes. To finish up this season. [Jennifer] It's actually really great timing you guys. And it was intentional, because postpartum is the real deal. And so I need time. [Aaron] We're gonna take a break during the postpartum season and then will come back. Right before summer starts. We're super excited about that. [Aaron] Which always want to take these breaks gives you enough time to go back to all the episodes you haven't listened to yet, or haven't fully listen to. [Jennifer] Or relisten listened to your favorite one. [Aaron] Or relisten to your favorite ones. [Jennifer] I wanted to before we get into today's topic, I wanted to start off this episode with an encouragement of something that happened. But Aaron, when I mentioned that's what I wanted to share about, you're like, "No, let's just do the whole episode on that." I'm not gonna share it right now. That's what the whole episodes gonna be about. Enjoy it later. [Aaron] Right, but what we can talk about is so everyone, we've talked about how we're going through what's it called? "My Family 24 Ways". [Jennifer] "Our Family 24 Ways". That's what's it is. By Sally and Clay Clarkson. [Aaron] It's a family devotional and it's 24 weeks long. We did it twice. The first time we did it. We did it in a quarter of the time because we just kind of took each day was a-- [Jennifer] Each day was a new way. And they come with these coloring pages. Those are really great kind of quick overview of what it was about and gave us time to wrap our heads around it and get familiar with the content. And that was super fun for the kids. We did that last summer and then kicking off the new kind of school year in September. We're like let's do the whole week. And we'll use the was it a devotional or resource? We'll use it the way that they wrote it-- [Aron] Which is every way is a five day-- Process. Process, yes. Every day, there's another verse you're reading, another idea, there's another question, but it's all in the same family way. And we just finished that a couple of weeks ago. There's a couple of weeks we didn't do because of travel or different things. But we just finished it and it was great. The kids loved it, we loved it. [Aaron] Yeah, and we're bringing this up to just to kinda recap that we told you we were going through we gave it as an example to you all, on a great way to start doing a family bible time. It was a lot of fun was really easy. I had a lot of prompts for the parents to walk through it gives you the questions to ask. But Jennifer, what are we doing now? We finished our family 20 or 23rd, "Our 24 Family Ways". [Jennifer] "Our 24 Family Ways". [Aron] By Sally and Clay Clarkson. You should go pick that on Amazon. But when we're done with that and we love that. But what are we doing now? [Jennifer] There was that question creeping up to the end of that resource that were like, Hey, keep in mind, what are what are we going to do next? And there's lots of different things that we could have chosen. [Aaron] Now we've done before, where we just like read through some of the Bible, read just whole chapters. [Jennifer] I proposed to Aaron, I said, "Why don't we focus "on some of the kind of major Bible stories?" Our kids are still pretty young, and they know a lot of the stories but just clarifying for them, what actually was taking place during those stories, and what are the details and so we'll take a whole week on one story. And what I didn't share with Aaron was, my heart behind it was and let's focus on how Christ is pictured in these stories, which I just thought would be a really cool perspective, but I didn't share that part with you for some reason. I just said the Bible story thing really short and brief. And so I started making a list of the different Bible stories and I put them up on our chalkboard and you love the idea, and that first day that we started out with creation and Adam and Eve. You're like, and guys, because you're like, basically laying out what they can expect from how Bible time is gonna change for us. And you told the kids, "so we're gonna dive into these Bible stories, "one story a week, but we're gonna see how Christ "is at the center of each one." And I love that you did that we are totally like on the same page without even having talked about it. [Aaron] And it's been really good. Elliot's been loving them, because He loves learning about these stories. And also the questions and the digging in and how those correlations to Christ and Adam, or these stories that we all know of. [Jennifer] Just in simple things like in Genesis when it says, "we're gonna make them in our image" and get the kids to really like, focusing on what that one is. Like who is the hour. Who is us, who's talking here about Adam and Ellie is like, "Oh, it's God and Jesus in the spirit." [Jennifer] Yeah. [Aaron] He got the idea in the beginning. And just an encouragement for those that are listening. You're probably thinking like, okay, like all of our kids know these stories, but you're actually surprised at the stories that you kind of know because you grew up in Sunday school, or how if they don't ever get brought up, your kids aren't gonna know them. They're not gonna know the story of Noah's Ark. They're not gonna know the story of Jonah and the whale. They're not gonna know the story of Joseph and Abraham and Isaac and Adam and Eve and creation. We have to do that. We have to teach our children these stories, and not just stories, their history. [Jennifer] Yeah, and my encouragement would be for our sake, as adults, going back to some of these stories have been encouraging because then we either see things we never saw before, or somehow it's relevant to something that we're going through that we can apply. That's just an encouragement. [Aaron] It's just getting back into the Word of God always and remembering these powerful, testimonies that God's given us of who He is, His plan for redemption and His story for us. Awesome, before we get into the topic, as usual, we have a free thing for you. If you haven't taken the marriage prayer challenge yet, we dare you. Take the marriage prayer challenge. It's marriageprayerchallenge.com. It's a 31 day email series where you're gonna get emailed every day with, something to pray about, and a reminder to do that. So you're gonna be praying for your husband or your wife every day for the next 30 days, 31 days, and we just wanted to get you jumped in. It's almost 50,000 people who have now taken this challenge. That's incredible. Yeah. If you're not one of those 50,000 I just wanna encourage you to go right now and take a break from the podcast even go sign up marriageprayerchallenge.com, It'll take you like one minute, and then come back and finish the episode. [Jennifer] Alright, so today's topic is on The Power Of Touch. And again, this is something that happened recently in our marriage that impacted me so much that I told him and I'm gonna share about that in the next podcast and he was like, "No, we're doing "the whole episode on this." [Aaron] And you went, "we don't need to do a whole episode "it's just a little passing idea." I did I was like, "No, this is actually really important "'cause of how much value you got out of it." [Jennifer] Yeah, so, and we understand that sometimes our episodes go quite long. And we're just gonna jump in, we're gonna dive in and give you the tips and tricks that you can do-- Up front. Right now we're gonna just do them up front. [Aaron] That way if you don't listen the whole episode, you're gonna walk away with the best tips for touch. [Jennifer] Yeah, I like that. [Aaron] What's the first tip they can get real quick. [Jennifer] I mean, I'm just thinking like, when you're passing by each other in the kitchen, you both have these tasks on your mind that you're trying to get done. Just give a little, elbow to the gut and let that let that spouse know that you're there next to them working alongside side them. [Aaron] It also might get them out of their way for a second. Another little tip is like when you guys are laying in bed and like just just right before your spouse is falling asleep, just to remind them that you're there and that you love them. Just giving them ,a wet finger to the ear. Or like a little like tap on their neck to like tickle them a little bit. [Jennifer] Maybe a pinch. [Aaron] Pinch. Those kinds of things that let your spouse know, "Hey, I know you're just we're almost falling asleep "but I love you." I love me so much. One of my favorite ones is when you're like out on family excursion, and your spouse is wearing a backpack And you're kind of walking, a little bit behind them just give that backpack a little push to the left or right. And it really throws them off. But it reminds them, hey, I'm here with you. [Aaron] It's almost like gets them to like flip around a little bit and then they could see you. [Jennifer] The whole point of touch really is to interrupt what's going on. It's to interrupt the day and to say, I love you. [Aaron] Everyone's thinking are they serious right now? We are totally playing. [Jennifer] Yeah. [Aaron] We're being playful. These are funny ways. Don't don't actually go by and especially if your wife's pregnant. Or go and hit the stomach. Don't do that. Don't do that. [Jennifer] No , we're just kidding. [Aaron] No, we actually legitimately wanna talk about the power of real loving touch, and what it means and how it works and why God's given us this gift of touch and the benefit from what we've seen in our own life. Something that Jennifer's gonna talk about in a second, an experience that she had with me. And then we're just gonna talk about that and encourage you the listener, you husband and wife who are in your car or in bed or at home, walking around the house, whatever you're doing listening to this, to just remember to touch more. It should be obvious but it's not. [Jennifer] I'd even say evaluate how long it's been since you've intentionally touched your spouse or what does that touch look like, either throughout the day or in the morning or at night, and just let the Lord inspire you today, when it comes to touching your spouse. [Aaron] And this isn't just for those that one of their love languages is physical touch, because every human actually every organism in the world requires touch for that stimulus for healthy growth, especially for human beings. And we'll talk about that a little bit later. But so this isn't just for those that the love language's physical touch. Every single one of us need to focus on this and if it's not your natural tendency to do so then we just gotta work a little harder. [Jennifer] Yep, okay, so this is what happened. I was having an off day. I felt rundown, I felt tired. [Aaron] Super pregnant. [Jennifer] I mean, just physically I just was not doing well. And yeah, just super pregnant. And I mean, everyone listening right now you're just thinking about that off day you've had and you're like, "Okay, I can relate to that." But I felt overwhelmed. And I was getting ready to jump in to school time with the kids. And I just had already felt exhausted. And so I was-- [Aaron] It was like the morning we hadn't even gotten our routine going. [Jennifer] Nothing had started yet. And I was already feeling down. And I didn't say anything about it. I just was trying to do what I knew I had to do, right that saying, "Do the next right thing." And so I'm in there with the kids. And Aaron, usually your routine is, after Bible time you get a cup of coffee and got out to the garage, that's were you work. But you didn't do that. You came in, you came straight to me your like Beeline right for me. [Aaron] Which is not normal for me. [Jennifer] No, usually there's just this space where you like maybe even question like, "Hey, how are you?" "What's going on?" You didn't do any of that. You just opened the door, walked over to me had me stand up. And you just wrap your arms around me and you just held me and I was like in tears over it because I didn't realize that I even needed that in that moment. And even though I felt like sobbing in that moment, I think I might have even chuckled 'cause it was like so refreshing, it was like that. Oh, okay that I think-- [Aaron] Also like, why are you doing this? [Jennifer] Definitely questioning that. But it was such a beautiful moment. And such a beautiful experience. I had to share it. And I wanted to share it with you guys, because it really impacted me and nothing needed to be said. Nothing needed to be more than that. It was just "hey," like there was so much said in the action itself of, "I'm here for you. "I love you, you can do this." And I remember at I had climbed up on the desk. And he was just staring at us probably wondering like, what are they doing? He's still literally a year and a half. [Aaron] And all that PDA is going on. And he's like, What's happening here? [Jennifer] But it really made me feel so good to be embraced. And I just I loved that moment. I love that you had a heart that was soft enough to know what I needed and to not let anything distract you from comforting me in that way. [Aaron] Well, and I'll all admit to everyone listening. I'm sure other men are much better at this. There's some people that are just naturally prone to like oh, like gentleness and comforting and recognizing weaknesses and others and wanting to go love on them. But that is not my natural position. I'm not naturally gentle, I'm not naturally sensitive. [Jennifer] I would say that you're more so you'd like to communicate about it. Like tell me what the problem is. And this is how-- How can I fix it. This is how I can fix it. which I think a lot of people probably think that way. [Aaron] And then on the negative side, I was in my worst way of dealing with this is feeling inconvenienced by someone else's weakness feeling inconvenienced by you're feeling down or because all I'm thinking is like we have this routine. You just got to move forward. And what's happening right now is like stop halting all that and that's my I would say that's my natural position. But you have been praying for me for a long time for this. Others have been encouraging me and rebuking me at times about my lack of sensitivity, my lack of gentleness. And it's something that I've been praying for myself. Because I'm a dad, I'm a husband, a leader in my church. And it's important in every aspect. I just been praying that God would help me be that way. This is not uncommon event, but that morning, I just felt like, Oh, she probably just needs a hug. [Jennifer] And it was perfect. And I just feel like I have to say this, logistically I know that this can't happen like this in every marriage. Schedules are different. Soldiers that are gone, for a long time People are deployed. Yeah, there's a lot of different types of scenarios or situations where in marriage where maybe you can't comfort them in that way with the power of touch, but it can be done still in a phone call or a text message or any opportunity where you are together, right? [Aaron] I would say, yeah, the physical touch is still important. I would say more important in those very little amounts of time that you would have. If anything, I would just, the encouragement for some one who's not around their spouse often, should make sure they take that focus more seriously. I got a question for you. I again, this is a new year-- [Jennifer] For me or for them? [Aaron] For you, Jennifer. It's not normal. But in that moment I came in and I surprised you by doing something out of the ordinary. And just holding you not trying to give you solutions not trying to ask you questions. Not feeling annoyed by the inconvenience. I just genuinely came to hug you and hold you and love you. What message is this into your heart? [Jennifer] It was really powerful for me. I felt like in that moment, there was this. Just first of all rush of peace. I feel like you reminded me that I'm loved. That I am cared for, that I'm thought of, that I'm not alone. Even though I'm alone with the kids currently trying to do school. You we're reminding me in a physical way that you're there and you're supporting me and you're encouraging me. And that how I'm feeling physically in that moment yet sucks and it's hard, but that I can continue on and that I have to, basically. but it was immediate comfort. [Aaron] It gave you something that you didn't have before? [Jennifer] Reassurance. [Aaron] How did it make you feel toward me? Was there like anything you thought, Or like, "wow, like this about my husband?" [Jennifer] Well specifically just that we are on the same team that you're there for me even when you can't take over for me like you just couldn't take over and do school that day, like you had work to do you needed to go get to it. But that you were supporting me in a comforting and encouraging way by letting your presence be known. And just that embrace. Did it make you, 'cause you've seen plenty of times in the past my annoyance, my dissatisfaction with a scenario like this. [Aaron] Did it make you feel more confident in my love for you to see the opposite of that? [Jennifer] Oh, totally, it really affirmed me and to think that you stopped your routine. You stopped your day, you stopped what was habitual, of going out to go to work. For me that was super thoughtful. And it was an immediate affirmation of this man loves me and cares for me and wants me to be okay today. And it did that like my perspective, my attitude, everything kinda just shifted in a more positive direction. And I was able to get through that time with the kids in a much better way. [Aaron] And I remember it drastically changed your perspective of the day-- As you see my countenance. Your countenance, by the end of the day, like I feel like you were more accomplished. At the end of the day, like you at the house clean. You had the, like you felt like a winner. Everything was done that you probably were in the morning thinking none of this is getting done today. [Jennifer] Yeah, and it feels so weird talking about it. Because in this way, 'cause I feel like we're sharing, like in depth, what the impact was, but it was such a small thing. It really was. It was it was such a small moment of physical touch that happened in our marriage. That really changed the whole day around. Imagine what would happen if that was a more consistent event Yeah, for both. For both of us. [Jennifer] I have a question for you. [Aaron] Okay. [Jennifer] Are there any standout moments of when I have randomly touched you or that have impacted you? [Aaron] Yeah, when I saw this question I immediately was thinking about the times in the past where we're sitting somewhere, maybe in church or at a friend's house or just out in public. and you'll put your hand on my back and just start tickle rubbing my back or rub your fingers across my hair, or the back of my neck or those little things even if they're only for like a split second. It instantly makes me feel like wow, that felt really good. My wife touching me wanting to connect with me that way. It also gives me this boost of confidence because in public when you're around people, I don't know if other men feel this way. But there's a confidence boost of like, my wife, my woman loves me. And like is showing it, isn't afraid to show it is-- [Jennifer] It's basically like earlier you asked me, what message did it send to my heart what you did to me. This would be what message is a couple when they're showing physical touch and affection. What message is it sending to others? [Aaron] Well in it, but the message to others sends a message to me, it makes me feel powerful, makes me feel respected. Like it's a little thing but like, my wife not being afraid to show affection to me in public means that she loves me that much that she's willing to show others that love publicly. And there's that there was a confidence boost in that. Other times, just like if we're laying in bed and you just, reach over to hold me or to play with my hair or to scratch my back like little things like that, that have been really like oh, immediately makes me feel really close to like, we're together. We're on the same page. Because what, when you're like, and everyone can relate to this. when there's like a fight or disagreement that there's conflict in the marriage. The last thing you want to do is touch. And so usually not touching is that is a common signal for distance for like we're not on the same page. That reaching across the bed, that reaching across the table, that reaching over to your spouse getting close drawing near. Is the symbol of unity. Is that proof of we're here together? I'm with you like your mine. And it's not obligated it's not like, "Hey, can you scratch my back? "Hey, I need a back massage? "Hey, can you rub my feet?" Which is not bad things to ask, but the unprompted, the desire, the actual desire, I'm going to reach out and put my hand on my spouse in a gentle way and for the purpose of touching them, knowing them and feeling their the warmth of their skin. It does a lot for that spiritual connection, that unifying nature of being one. [Jennifer] So, when I was thinking about ways that I'm intentional with trying to be, physical with you. I wanted to share this. Just as a tip for anyone listening is for me, getting in the car is a trigger, because I know I can reach over and hold your hand. Whether you're driving or I'm driving One of one of our hands is free. And so for me, I know it's such a simple thing, but just reaching over and grabbing each other's hands for a couple seconds, even if it's not long lasting. Is just really good too. [Aaron] Something that just another tip, another trigger when we're out to eat, I know I'll put my hand on your knee. When we're close together. A date night. [Aaron] Or we'll hold hands under the table. Things that keep us connected. And then another thing you're bringing up these trigger things to remind us of when we can touch and where. When we're in battle, because often we're both really hot. We don't cuddle too often because we get-- Temperature hot. Yeah, we're temperature hot. but like it could be easy to just get in bed do you thing forget and then you're rolled over and no touchings happening, no connection. But reaching over and like playing with your hair, or putting my hand on your shoulder or holding hands with you. I love all of that. Even though we can't cuddle because we're too like temperature hot. [Jennifer] More so during pregnancy. [Aaron] But I'm just a hot sleeper, it's hard for me to just want to cuddle for hours. But that doesn't mean there's not ways that we can connect. [Jennifer] And Would you say that there's any ways that I've failed in this area? I just wanna be honest with people. [Aaron] That's a big question to ask. [Jennifer] I know. [Aaron] Well, of course we've both failed in this area. Because selfishness creeps in, and when we're selfish. And usually it plays out. On "oh, I'm not getting what I want, "I'm not getting what I deserve." So I'm not going to give, what they deserve what they want or what they think they deserve. until I get mine. And we do that to each other. And we have in the past, we gotten way better at it. I would say we're talking about just non sexual touch right now. I mean, sexual touch is so important. We're gonna talk about that in a little bit. [Jennifer] I'm just on this side note. Any sort of physical touch will not just lead to sexual intimacy, but definitely cultivates that environment where you want more. [Aaron] Not negative physical touch, we're talking about actual, intensional-- Positive. Positive touch. [Jennifer] Affirmative. [Aaron] I would say just over the years, and it's something that God's been growing us both in is sexual touch, yeah, like initiating, reaching out and saying, "hey, I want to be with you, "I want to experience this time with you." But that's something that we've been both growing in. [Jennifer] Something that is required in order to grow in this area is communication. This is just an encouragement to our listeners, if they struggle with, I wish my spouse would touch me and they're not, and not wanting that bitterness to grow, you gotta tell them, you gotta tell them how it makes you feel or that you want to be encouraged in your relationship that you want to have more. when you say that's really important to be able to talk about it. [Aaron] Not just 'cause we sometimes get into this mode of, if I say something, then it's gonna devalue the reset receipt of it. [Jennifer] I've done that before, don't do that. [Aaron] If I tell my wife what I want, and then she doesn't, then it's devaluing it. It's almost like no, they just got to know. Rather than, like, I'm gonna communicate, maybe they don't know, maybe they have a way of thinking because of the way they're raised that just totally makes them disregard things that I want, or need. [Jennifer] Or maybe their mind just hasn't been on it. And by bringing that message in a positive way, "Hey, I think we like we've done this before, "hey, I think we need to kiss more," or, "hey, I think we need to hold hands more" or whatever the thing is that would feel you fill you up. Talk about it in that sense, where it's like, let's both make a commitment to do this more. [Aaron] I totally agree. And I think just having this desire to... We'll talk about the actual like, touch is just so much more than just it's a good thing to do. And so we'll talk about that more. The Bible talks about touch a lot. Jesus touched people a lot. And so we get this idea of the savior of the king, the Lord the Creator. come the earth himself, God Himself coming to earth in the form of man to touch us, right? There's a famous painting of God touching Adams finger right? There's this idea of Jesus coming to earth and in the flesh is like the ultimate intimacy active saying, God's saying "I'm gonna go, "come to touch you and and to heal you "and to make you be with me forever" and so we get to see this picture and Why don't you read John 13:5 of this super intimate moment that Jesus had with his disciples. [Jennifer] Then he poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples feet and to wipe them with the towel that was wrapped around him. So that was, like really simple. And I just like you said, it's just a really beautiful picture of intimate touch. [Aaron] Right, and it's this story shows us the servanthood of Christ. him girding his loins wrapping the towel around his waist, getting on his hands and knees. [Jennifer] And everybody was probably quietly-- [Aaron] Beneath his disciples. He lowered himself even beneath his disciple to wash their feet. And then he tells them go and do likewise. Essentially which is go wash each other, go touch each other, go embrace each other, go walk in such a way that you guys are unified, and do and do what I'm doing. Look I'm lowering myself as a servant, go lower yourself as servants for the sake of washing each other and embracing each other. [Jennifer] I wish that the Bible was more descriptive in this situation because I would love to hear what was going through the disciples mind when Jesus is getting ready to do this. And while he's doing it. [Aaron] But we only get Peters response, which is he's like, "No, don't do it." He's like, "unless I do this, "you have no part of me." He's like wash my whole body. Oh wait do it, do it. But also how were they impacted by this experience? I wanna hear more of that. But they walked with Jesus and I'm sure they had even more physical interactions with him as far as just arms touching or hugging or shaking hands or whatever, probably took part in their relationships as they spent that time together. But just thinking, how was this touch different? And what message did it send to each one of them about their relationship with Jesus? [Aaron] What I think is awesome is, you have Jesus called our high priest, and this is just a thought I was having right now we're talking about this. And the high and the priests in the Old Testament had to do all the ceremonial washings for themselves so that they can atone for the sins of everyone else. They first had to wash themselves we learned that Jesus did not have to do this because he was perfect. We have perfect Jesus, already perfectly like did not need to be washed, by any means, because he was perfect. Getting down to actually touch the dirt of his brothers, of his disciples. And also how powerful it is because God's created us in such a physical way to need touch. [Jennifer] Where he designed our bodies with the ability to receive it, right like we have nerve endings, and we can feel and I used to think that's fascinating. [Aaron] We have this perfect God in human flesh touching other men's feet and touching the flesh of others. And so there's a physiological response happening, a spiritual response happening, an emotional response happening. All of these things are happening at the same time with the king of the universe. But we get to experience that in little ways, and in everyday life with our spouse, and with others. 'Cause this physical touch thing, we shouldn't just end at, "Oh, I'm not a very touchy person, "and I'll try and touch my wife more. "But I don't touch others." The Bible tells us to embrace each other and how important touches, just gentle, loving touch in everyday life actually has a physiological healthy response in the body. That helps us with many things, but spiritually, it reminds us that we're close. And that we're together and that we're unified and that we care, [Jennifer] Which is so important in marriage, right? Really important infinitely. [Jennifer] Do you remember the time that I washed your feet when you came home from Brazil so we didn't have this, as pre-kids, probably-- My feet were pretty dirty. [Jennifer] Second year of marriage. I wanna say, we're living in Florida at the time. And I had a job. I was working in a preschool and you felt encouraged to go to Brazil, we were missionaries. I just happen to have a job to support us while we were working in Florida. But we were working for an organization that was preparing a trip to go to Brazil, I think it was for two weeks, three weeks? [Aaron] It's two weeks on the Amazon River it's pretty awesome. [Jennifer] And so you went and I missed you like crazy. But I had been reading this Passage about Jesus washing his disciples feet. And I just felt so encouraged when you got home. I think it was like three o'clock in the morning. It was like the middle of the sleep hours. And, and I remember you came home and you went to go take a shower, and I'm like, take a bath. And let me wash your feet. Yeah. Do you remember this? I do, I mean, two years in our marriage where we were already starting to experience some of those-- Hardships. hardships. and relational struggles and it wasn't as bad as it was later on in our marriage, but it was already there, but it was events like this, which I think helped elongate our process of not falling apart sooner. Those little bits of surrender that those acts of like, well, "we don't know what to do. "We're gonna try this like," you're praying and you see this, you're like, "I'm gonna try and walk in this." You tell God, "Jesus says to do this, "and I'm my husband's gonna get home, "I'm gonna wash his feet." [Jennifer] When I remember specifically thinking like, I wanted to feel close to you. I wanted to send that message to you that, "hey, I'm your wife, I'm your helper, "and I want to do what Jesus did and love you in that way." And I saw this what Jesus did as a very intimate thing. And so I just told myself, I'm gonna have the courage and just asked him if I could wash his feet. [Aaron] And I remember it made me feel really close to you. It made me feel really loved, it made me feel really honored. Also, it just surprised me. It was a surprising It was like wait, what? It was a very impactful moment for us. we actually put that challenge in our 30 day devotional for husbands and wives, for them to wash each other's feet. [Jennifer] While we're talking about Jesus, my mind's always, I feel like I'm always going back to "Marriage After God". But if you haven't gotten a chance to read it, you guys should definitely get a copy. It's the book that Aaron and I came out with last year. But there's a section of we're talking about how a marriage after God is intimate. And it talks about Jesus and I just wanted to read it really quick. It's on page 65. If you do have the book. "And marriage after God relentlessly "pursues and embraces intimacy "with each other, and with God, "our greatest example of this level "of intimacy is of course, Jesus. "He put his hands on people "who no one else would dare to touch." And there's a reference there to Luke 5:13, "He reached down and held a dying little girl's hand "giving her life again." Mark 5:41, "He broke cultural taboos to talk to people." John 4:9, "And he wept over the death of his close friend." John 11:35, "That's our Savior, he embraced intimacy. "If we are not intimate with God, "we cannot be intimate with other people. "We cannot weep with those who weep or mourn with those "who mourn or laugh with those who laugh. "We must look to the example of Christ and be willing "to embrace intimacy with God, and inner marriage." And I was just brought to remembrance of that section of the book because of how intimate Jesus was that he was willing to do all those things when I think about him, holding that little girl's hand and it's like, no matter what hardships we face in marriage, we can think to his example and go, "I can reach over and hold my spouse's hand." [Aaron] Well I think the example of Christ touching like the lepers and the sick and the bleeding and the things that a priest wasn't allowed to touch otherwise would make them unclean. Jesus was willing to touch unclean people, because in reality all are unclean. And so he's, he's touching these lepers. He's touching these these sick, he's touching these blind, these people that were outcasts that desire to be healed, to be desire to be known to desire to be reconciled to the community. And it's kind of like this picture in our marriage. Like, are we only going to touch when everything's perfectly right? Or are we going to in the midst of our pain and our hurt and our ugly, our smelly and in our dirty times? Are we gonna touch? Are we gonna embrace? Are we gonna hold? Are we going to reach out our hands and draw our spouse closer to us? Because even though often in our vows, we say, for better or for worse, it's often just for the better, and when it's in the worst is like, I don't have the energy right now. All right, until you change or unless this happens when it's those times that it's the most necessary. Jesus said it this way, he said, "I didn't come "for the healthy I came for the sick." [Jennifer] And I would even say most impactful, when you're either at odds with each other or there's tension or there's hardship [Aaron] Or you don't deserve it. [Jennifer] Or you don't deserve it and your spouse reaches across the table and touches you in that way. Oh my goodness. It's powerful. It's impactful. And I think that that's exactly what maybe one, maybe a lot needed here today. I mean, I just feel like that was really encouraging and even to me. [Aaron] It's encouraging to me, it's something I have to continue to be to remember. You're, you're having a hard time today. And my flesh is like-- [Jennifer] Get up, Jen. [Aaron] It's like, I don't know if I can handle you having a hard time again today. Because I mean, which is totally my selfish flesh, because I'm not experiencing what you're experiencing. So it's hard for me to just empathize right away. But when you walk in the Spirit, so my choice to be like, like, I'm gonna understand my wife right now I'm gonna walk in an understanding way as the Word tells me to do. I can realize this is hard season for you, I'm gonna have this hard season with you. And so just go and hug you and hold you and-- [Jennifer] Tickle me with your beard, which didn't help Aaron. [Aaron] Funny, touching is good to be playful. [Jennifer] It was really sweet. And again, I do appreciate that you came to my level and you saw me were I was at and you had compassion on me. And for the husband's out there who are similar to me, go against your flesh, and walk in the Spirit and and do this for your wife. To be honest some of you men that are listening, are probably thinking like, "Man, I don't ever do that." She'll probably not know what to do. You'll go and you'll try and like draw close to you, and you're gonna feel super awkward and she's gonna tense up and you're gonna pull her closer and you're just gonna say, "I know, it's kind of weird, I just wanna hug you." And then what's gonna happen, she's gonna realize it's real. And then you'll, you'll probably feel her melt. And so don't be afraid to do it the first time, it gets easier, and ask the Lord to help you do it to sort of help you physically encourage your spouse with that physical touch with the gentle the loving, the caring, the caress, the just that softness. [Jennifer] It's good. So we've said it a couple times, but just this idea that physical, physical touch sends a message to your spouse and there was just a kind of handful of ways that I was wanting to share with you guys about what those messages might look like. This isn't like, 100% perfect. It's just some encouragement. [Aaron] When you do this kind of sends these messages. [Jennifer] Embracing each other says, "I trust you and I need you in my life." A comforting hug says, "I'm here for you." A kiss says, "you're mine and I love you." Holding hands, let your spouse know, you like them. And you like spending time with them. Tickle rubs, massages, running your fingers through their hair says, I wanna make you feel good. And most times lets them know that you desire even more physical touch. [Aaron] It's true, and for those that are afraid of that last part, if I do this, then it's going to make them want more. I think that's something that should be prayed through. Your heart of like, you're avoiding touching your spouse because you are afraid that that will make them want more from you sexually. And if that's a fear you have and that's an negative thought you have which is something that keeps you from reaching out and touching your spouse. I think that's something you should pray about, that God would change in you. And there's a scripture specifically about this. [Jennifer] Real quick, I just have to say, there's a flip side to this of when your spouse is giving you physical touch, and you don't want it to lead anywhere that you're not just doing while they're touching you thinking they better not they better not. And then the moment it starts leading somewhere that you don't want it to go. You're thinking, "See, I knew they were just doing it "to get that thing." But, you guys God designed marriage to be physical, and-- [Aaron] It's the pretty much the only confines for Biblical healthy physical touch. [Jennifer] Yeah, like we need to be there for each other in that way. Now, if there's a specific reason why you don't want it to be led somewhere, you got to speak up, you got to let them know. Otherwise, your heart's just going to wrestle. [Aaron] And there's a loving way. It's like, "Hey, I'm really enjoying, "you reaching out you touching me playing with my hair, "you rubbing my back, I know, "you might want something more. "And I just wanna let you know that It may not work. "And so can we plan it for tomorrow night? "Can we can I reach out? "Can I let you know tomorrow?" [Jennifer] Yeah, or the other way is to set aside whatever justification you're rolling around in your head and go for it and enjoy it. [Aaron] Oftentimes, you get to the end of it, you're like, "Oh, I'm glad we did that part." "Oh, I needed that." Exactly. [Jennifer] Okay, so why don't you read that? It's 1st Corinthians 7:3-5. [Aaron] And this is this is a scripture that challenges both husbands and wives. On the actual obligation, we have to physical intimacy. It says this, "The husband should give to his wife, "her conjugal rights," and we all know what conjugal means. "And likewise, the wife to her husband, "for the wife does not have authority over her own body, "but the husband does. "Likewise, the husband does not have authority "over his own body, but the wife does. "Do not deprive one another except perhaps "by agreement for a limited time." I like how first of all says it says, "except perhaps." So it means like, if this is going to happen in the rare occasions of depriving each other, it's going to be by agreement and only for a short period of time. Like don't let there be long periods of time that this stuff happens. That's what almost destroyed marriage. Was long periods of time of not-- Me avoiding-- Yeah. [Jennifer] Yeah. [Aaron] That you may devote yourselves to prayer but then come together again so satan may not tempt you because of your lack of self control. There's a very stark warning of the temptation that comes from avoiding each other sexually. And there's also at the command that my body is not my own. It's hers and her body is not her own, it's mine, right? Which has tons of implications and we can have another episode about this. But just just as an encouragement, you shouldn't be withholding sexual intimacy from your spouse. If there's a good reason then you need to discuss that and come to an agreement on it. If there's infidelity, which is a good reason to have a break from sexual intimacy. [Jennifer] Not just a break, it's a break being prayerful. [Aaron] It's a prayerful break from purpose of reconciliation, for the purpose of building trust, for the purpose of coming together against stronger than before, if that's where you're at. And so there's there's a stark command on the Word of God that whose bodies ours, are my bodies is not my own, I don't get to just make decisions for my own body. I have my responsibility to my wife, and vice versa. [Jennifer] And we shouldn't be using, sexual intimacy as a tool and withhold it from each other or anything like that. We can't, we can't let division and disunity and that kind of heart to seep into the marriage relationship which is so beautiful, the way that God designed, being married and living in this sacred space of like there's no other relationship like it on Earth. I receive from you, Aaron you receive from me. There's physical closeness, embrace touched, like there really is nothing like it on Earth and to be aware of that and the opportunities that we do have to come together. And again, this is just another place where I wanna assert that if distance or timing doesn't work because of work schedules or something, that is key be circumstances that are keeping you guys from being physically close, that you're affirming one another with your words, words are really powerful. And as much as this whole episode is about touch, you need to be affirming to each other and encouraging each other. Like, "we can't be together right now. "But I'm gonna make this a priority as soon as I see you." Right? [Aaron] Yep, and I want to talk about some of the way God designed us. And created us to for touch for that human connection. Not just verbal, but actual physical. And there's a story that we've been told from friends of ours that have adopted in China. And they went to China, and they walked into the orphanage, and it was silent. [Jennifer] There's babies. [Aaron] There's babies everywhere, but it's silent, no, no crying no. Like you would imagine in a room full of lonely babies. [Jennifer] They said it felt eerie. [Aaron] It was what's wrong. And this has actually been researched by a lot of people. There's several orphanage systems around the world that this is kind of a case where the babies aren't touched. They're not held on a hug. They're not cuddled, none of that stuff. And the babies very quickly learn that they're not going to be comforted. So they don't cry. They need it, they want to be comforted, but the only way they can communicate does nothing so they don't communicate. And it actually stunts their their neurological growth, it stunts their physical growth, it stunts a lot of things in them just because they're not being touched. I remember hearing a story a while ago, of an old man who's single, his wife died years prior, and he wanted to find something to do with his life. And so he started going to the NICU in his local hospital, just to hold the babies. He would go in there and he'd sit in a rocking chair and he'd hold babies that didn't have families, or that they were sick or whatever it was and he would just hold them for hours. Rock them sing to them talk to them. And he had this ministry of going and just holding babies which is amazing. When he gets to heaven one day, God's gonna hug him for doing that. Human touch is fundamental to our communication, to our bonding, to our physical health. There's been tons of research on how physical touch on even little mounts of levels. It brings healing to your body physical healing, like it helps you with your immune system helps you with your neurological development. What human touch does is there's a chemical that God's put in our bodies called oxytocin. And it's released during sex. It's released during hugs, [Jennifer] It's actually released during breastfeeding while a mom is bonding with her baby. [Aaron] Yeah, it's called the bonding drug. When you have an orgasm and during sex, and oxytocin is released in both of your bodies. It actually causes you to physically, emotionally, mentally bond closer with your spouse, which is also why it's prohibited to be having sexual relationships outside of your marriage. Because you're bonding in this way with other human beings that you're not married to. And this is this should be only happening within the context of marriage. But that oxytocin release that hormone is actually so good for so many things. It relieves stress. It combats what's the stress hormone, it's cortisol. It combats that. So you have too much of that in your body and you have all this stress and oxytocin being released through a hug, through a kiss, through an orgasm through that these things that are that release oxytocin in your body, and then boom, you're actually helping your body do what God made your body to do. Which makes it even stronger, healthier, more excited, more fit, less sad, right? It helps with depression, it helps all these things. And these are all just the just the biological function of touch in your in your life why it's so important. So again, like I said in the beginning, regardless, if you're love language's physical touch, every human being on the planet needs physical touch for healthy growth, healthy living. You could have access to this on a daily basis with your spouse. Think about how much more joyful, and secure, and confident and happy you'll be if physical touch's more consistent like healthy, loving, gentle physical touch. A caress here, a hand holding there, a kiss, a hug, caressing the neck, touching the ear, playing with the hair. All these things, that are so good for us and make you have to be so close. And it releases all these good things in your body. And it actually it's a spiritual thing. It's an emotional thing, it's a physical thing. [Jennifer] That's really good. So often, I think that as humans, we become contingent on the other person in the marriage to step up and do something-- [Aaron] Transactional. [Jennifer] And I think it's important to speak to that for just a moment Aaron, and maybe you can share on this but Just as an encouragement to those listening. That we shouldn't be waiting to initiate, waiting to insert ourselves and be physical, for our spouse to do it first or to take that first step or especially if there has been distance or time between, a season of no physical touch. What would you say to encourage them? [Aaron] Well, I first want to talk to those that, like, maybe I'm imagining a husband has a hard heart. There's something, wherever they are in their marriage. And like I said, we talked about earlier touch is the last thing they want. And I would imagine a wife is afraid to like to reach out and hold their hand because they're gonna pull away and reject them. [Jennifer] Or maybe the couple who they have tried to openly Express and communicate that they want more or that there's they're hurt because it's not happening and then they get shut down. And so that kind of like what you're saying about the baby's crying, not crying in the orphanages. They've learned to not speak up and to not say anything. [Aaron] 'Cause they're not gonna get it. [Jennifer] That makes me sad just thinking about that in marriage. [Aaron] So my encouragement to those is to do it anyway. Even if even if they reject you, even if you, you lean over and you go to caress your wife's neck and she swats your hand away, or you reach over to put your hand on your husband's shoulder, and he shrugs it off. It hurts. I'm not gonna pretend that that doesn't hurt, I'm not gonna tell you to pretend it doesn't hurt. But you can hand that to the Lord and say, "Lord, that hurts me. "But I want to love my husband, "I want to love my wife." And, and maybe it's the next time you're walking by them, to the kitchen you just for half a second, rub your hand across their back. They can't stop you. Whether they say a word to you, they're gonna think like, she touched me. [Jennifer] You're sending them a message still. [Aaron] You're sending them a message still. And you do that over and over, and over again. They they look frustrated. You go up and you get close and say, "Hey, I'm praying for you." Just put your hand on their shoulder. They look sad. So you say, "can I give you a hug?" Even if they say no to you, do it. Reach out to touch someone like the song goes, "I reach out" and go to your spouse and just don't give up. Don't give up doing good for in due season you will produce a harvest, you will reap a reward. And I mean think about it's like what Christ did. He reached out and touched a lot of people. And so be Christ in your home to your spouse, reach out and touch them, pray for them. Put your hand on them. Try and grab their hand, touch their lower back, put your hand on their shoulder, put your hand on their forearm. Whatever it is, just let them know that you want to touch them. [Jennifer] Yeah, that's beautiful. We hope that this episode encouraged you guys. And this really brought you to a place where you're evaluating physical touch in your marriage. And I would say our charge to you would be an encouragement to be the initiator. I know we already mentioned that but to be the initiator of physical interaction, in your relationship with your spouse. And don't let your flesh, your insecurities, or your frustrations get in the way. Be courageous enough to reach out and see how that touch impacts your spouse. [Aaron] And ask Christ to give you the strength and the courage to do it in a supernatural way with your spouse. [Jennifer] All right, Aaron, you wanna close us out with prayer? [Aaron] Yep. Dear Lord, we praise you for the gift of touch. We thank you for the way you created our bodies and gave us the ability to fill and touch. We pray that we would be husbands and wives who use the power of touch to affirm each other in marriage and let one another know we are near. We pray we would have the courage to reach out and hug or hold each other's hand. Even when it feels hard to do that or inconvenient. May our marriage be a priority in this way. May our touch remind our spouse that we love them and that we support them. We pray touch with encourage intimacy and closeness like we have never experienced in our marriage before. In Jesus name, amen. We love you guys. We thank for listening to episode, we pray that you would touch more and that if you haven't already would you just take a moment, leave us a review. Just scroll down to the bottom of your app, hit a star rating that the easiest way to do it, you just tap a star. Or you can leave us a text review. We love those and also blesses other people when they're coming to check out the show for the first time. It also lets iTunes and other podcast apps know how to rank our podcast based off her reviews. So we love you all. We thank you and we pray that God moves mightily in your marriages and draws you closer to him and your spouse and see you next week. [Narrator] Did you enjoy today's show? If you did, it would mean the world to us if you could leave us a review on iTunes. Also, if you're interested, you can find many more encouraging stories and resources at marriageaftergod.com and let us help you cultivate an extraordinary marriage. 

Having a mission statement for your family isn't required but it can be very beneficial for creating and maintaining the culture of your home. Jennifer and I have never created a mission statement before so we thought we would make one while you listen. If you have been blessed by the Marriage After God podcast please consider supporting it by picking up a copy of our book titled Marriage After God. https://marrigeaftergod.com READ TRANSCRIPT [Aaron] Hey, we're Aaron and Jennifer Smith with "Marriage After God". [Jennifer] Helping you cultivate an extraordinary marriage. [Aaron] And today we're gonna do something fun and we're gonna talk about creating a family mission statement. Welcome to the "Marriage After God" podcast, where we believe that marriage was meant for more than just "Happily Ever After". [Jennifer] I'm Jennifer, also known as "Unveiled Wife". [Aaron] And I'm Aaron, also known as "Husband Revolution". [Jennifer] We have been married for over a decade. [Aaron] And so far, we have four young children. [Jennifer] We have been doing marriage ministry online for over seven years, through blogging and social media. [Aaron] With the desire to inspire couples to keep God at the center of their marriage, encouraging them to walk in faith every day. [Jennifer] We believe that Christian marriage should be an extraordinary one full of life. [Aaron] Love. [Jennifer] And power. [Aaron] That can only be found by chasing after God. [Jennifer] Together. [Aaron] Thank you for joining us on this journey as we chase boldly after God's will for our life together. [Jennifer] This is "Marriage After God". Firstly, we want to just thank everyone for joining us on this podcast today. We're super excited just to have you join us 'cause this is gonna be an interesting episode. We have a lot in store for you, but first we just wanna ask that you would take a minute to leave us a review. It's easy, you just scroll to the bottom of the app and just leave us a star rating review or comment review. This is one way to support the podcast "Marriage After God" because it allows other people to find the podcast, and we wanna do that. So, please take a moment to help us out there and thank you. [Aaron] Also, our book's out. Our new book, "Marriage After God", is available. It's been such and awesome ride seeing the response we've been getting, and if you have not picked up a copy yet, we'd love for you to go to shop.marriageaftergod.com, and pick up a copy today. One of the most powerful ways you can support us, is by buying our book, and it also supports your marriage and your life. We wrote the book for you. We wrote it to encourage you in the ministry that God has for you and your spouse, so go grab a copy today. [Jennifer] Okay, so we are going to start off here with an ice-breaker question, and Aaron came up with this question, so I'm hoping he has an answer. What is the ideal family trip or vacation? [Aaron] I actually didn't think about it when I said it, so I don't have... Okay, let me think. Ideal family trip. So, I can look back on something we have done that I really enjoyed, when we went to the East Coast, but we did like a plane-drive, plane-drive. [Jennifer] It was over a period of a week and a half, two weeks. [Aaron] Yeah, and I thought that was a lot of fun 'cause we got to fly the portions that I thought would've been boring, maybe. Get to a new area and then drive around, stay for a day or two, go to the next place-- [Jennifer] And here, you said, "Ideal family trip". That doesn't sound ideal for any family. [Aaron] For me! Oh, are you saying ideal for everyone? [Jennifer] Yeah, I don't know if that was your question, but I'm just thinking everyone listening right now is probably shaking their heads, no. [Aaron] I thought that was a fun trip for us. [Jennifer] I think the majority of families, especially with young children, would say flying and driving multiple times in one trip would be a difficult challenge. [Aaron] Okay, I didn't know it "ideal for everyone". Ideal for everyone would be like, going somewhere awesome and staying there for a while. Like, with a house that's comfortable and you have all your family with you, and there's a pool or a beach. [Jennifer] Where would that place be, Aaron? [Aaron] Maui? I don't know. [Jennifer] Awesome. [Aaron] What's ideal for you? What would that be? [Jennifer] So, I think you and me just like adventure because I really had fun that time too, that we went to the East Coast, but I think an ideal family trip is visiting family in California. I think that's just because I know it's something the kids enjoy. We usually hit up the beach. We stay there all day. [Aaron] Yeah, that is fun. [Jennifer] I think it's just an easy, kind of, go-to is when you're visiting family somewhere, you're staying with them, and you're just doing something simple. [Aaron] All right, that's good answer. [Jennifer] Relaxing. [Aaron] I'm sure everyone listening has their own ideal. Like, staying home. Eating ice cream, that sounds ideal. [Jennifer] Now that it's summertime, I'm sure there's a lot of people traveling and doing, you know, maybe family vacations or summer trips. [Aaron] Camping. So, we hope you guys are, and we hope that if you can spend that time with your family and doing something fun, even if it's local, like camping in the backyard, you're doing it, 'cause those are memories that your kids will love forever. [Aaron] Oh yeah. So, I just wanna, before we get into the main topic, I'm gonna read a quote from the book "Marriage After God", and it's about this idea. It's from Chapter 13 of "Marriage After God". [Jennifer] About what idea? Just that you clarify. [Aaron] Yeah, it's about the idea of creating a vision statement or mission statement for your marriage. It says this, "Casting a vision together for the future "of your marriage is an intimate experience "where hope for the future "stimulates perseverance for today." What's awesome about that is, when we create a vision for the future, it doesn't mean we're necessarily planning to the "T" everything that's going to happen in the future, it's just saying like, "This is where we'd like to be." [Jennifer] Mm-hmm. [Aaron] "This is what, you know, "the trajectory we want to be on as a family." It helps in those moments when it's tedious; when it's hard; when you're going through something and you say, "Well, we're in this together. "We're going the same direction. "We know where we wanna be, and even if we never get "to that exact point in time, or ideal situation, "we're going there together." [Jennifer] Yeah, and in Chapter 13 of "Marriage After God" we really, you know, drive home this idea that this is an intimate experience that you guys get to do together, and it's something to look forward to casting a vision together and having hope for your marriage and hope for your future together and for your family. This is something that we've kept as a valuable thing in our marriage for years, and I enjoy it. I enjoy the process with you, and so even though in "Marriage After God" we don't strictly talk about creating a family mission statement, we do talk about casting a vision together. [Aaron] Yeah. [Jennifer] And in the back of "Marriage After God" we even list some questions for you to sit down and have one of those date-night conversations and be mindful of the next five years, the next 25 years and what that looks like, because when we look to the future of things, there is hope there. [Aaron] Yeah. [Jennifer] I think that's important. [Aaron] And we have, like you said, we've always cast vision, planned for the next 60 days, next six months, next year, five years. [Jennifer] We kinda do seasons. [Aaron] We do seasons of that, but we've never sat down and actually wrote down a family vision statement. [Jennifer] Yeah, so even thought we kind of operate out of this same understanding, we've never sat down to do it, and it was actually because of the "Marriage After God" podcast series, which if you guys haven't checked that out, we've been going through-- [Aaron] Yeah just-- [Jennifer] Yeah, 16, 17 episodes about this idea of 'Marriage After God' but several people who we interviewed brought up this idea of creating a family mission statement, and how it has impacted their marriage. I know people share about it online too. So, we just kinda wanted to use this time to, first, encourage you guys in your marriage. [Aaron] Mm-hmm. [Jennifer] Encourage you guys to have hope for the future as you vision plan together, but even more so create a family mission statement. That's our challenge for you at the end of this episode and because Aaron and I have never officially done this before or wrote it down, we thought it would be fun to-- [Aaron] We're gonna do it with you. [Jennifer] Do it with you, so-- [Aaron] We're just gonna start talkin' about it in this podcast episode, and we're gonna start coming up with kinda the foundational ideas for our own mission statement. [Jennifer] This was an idea that I had after having those interviews and being encouraged by people because I thought, "So often we hear people say, "'We did this thing. "'We created this family mission statement "'and here it is, or it's still a work in progress.'" [Aaron] That sounds wonderful. Good for them. [Jennifer] That's awesome, but where's the example of doing it? Which I don't know if everybody needs an example of that but sometimes it's helpful to go, what does that actually look like in a conversation? [Aaron] Yeah, how do you have that conversation with you spouse? I feel like every time a couple that we interviewed brought it up, we looked at each other and we're like, "We need to do that!" We wave our hands like, yeah, we just need to do that. [Jennifer] So, the unique part of this episode today is actually that we're gonna be jumping in here in a bit to kind of experience it with you guys. This is like a behind the scenes kind of-- [Aaron] We have not talked about this before recording this. [Jennifer] Yeah. [Aaron] So, you'll hear the candid conversation about how we see our family, where we see we're gonna go, yeah. So, you're gonna join us on this little adventure with us. [Jennifer] Okay, so-- [Aaron] Before we start, why don't you read that quote from "Seven Habits of a Highly Effective Family" by Stephen Covey. [Jennifer] Okay. [Aaron] 'Cause it's in his whole book about creating a mission statement. [Jennifer] So, I will let you guys know that we actually haven't read this book, but I just jumped on really quick and I typed in Google and said, "family mission statement". [Aaron] This is a part of the process. [Jennifer] Yeah, I encourage you guys to do that too. So, we haven't read this book. We probably will in the future, but there was several people who were quoting this from his book, and it says, "A family mission statement "is a combined unified expression from all family members "of what your family is all about, "what it is you really want to do and be, "and the principles you choose to govern your family life." [Aaron] That's cool, and that's essentially what we're doing. We're not doing it with our kids this time. Our kids are, I think, too young. They'll eventually get older and then what we'll do is we'll probably sit down with them and invite them in and we'll adjust 'cause maybe our kids will have other perspectives they wanna bring in. I know that we have families that they have large families, lots of kids, and they bring their kids in, their older kids, and invite 'em to be a part of this vision planning and mission statement. [Jennifer] So, two things, since we're being candid here. [Aaron] Yeah. [Jennifer] The first one being, I don't think our children are too small to be incorporated, even at this stage of the game because it's not finalized yet, right? [Aaron] Yeah. [Jennifer] This is our initial go at it. And so I think-- [Aaron] And Elliott is pretty smart. [Jennifer] Yeah, Elliott's smart. [Aaron] He'll be like, "Why don't we..." [Jennifer] But I think... Okay, so our kids are six and a half, four, two, and eight months. So obviously, Truit's not gonna say much. [Aaron] I don't know. [Jennifer] But having a family fun meeting, where we're saying, "Okay guys, here are some questions "mommy and daddy have for you", and getting them involved. Maybe even if some of the questions are over their head, it'll still be a fun time to spend together and maybe we'll be surprised." [Aaron] Let's write down the funny answers and then we'll keep those for the future and say, "This is what you said when you were four." [Jennifer] Maybe we'll be surprised by them. [Aaron] That's probably true. [Jennifer] So, I do-- [Aaron] I concede. [Jennifer] The second thing is I wanna encourage those listening, if you do have children, that you do find a way to incorporate them in this process because they are a part of the family; and if you're doing it and you don't have kids yet, that's okay too. You and your spouse-- [Aaron] And I guess it's gonna give them more ownership and be like, "Hey, you are members of this family, "not just people that are in it." [Jennifer] Right. [Aaron] "You're part of it." [Jennifer] Yeah, and I think what I've gathered from trying to understand this family mission statement saying, is that it's not something that is like, "here are the rules", you know. It's more of something that's supposed to encourage the family unit to be in agreeance and have the same understanding of what those family core values are. So, even though this quote up here says "to govern your family life", I think there's freedom in that. It's not like a list of rules, but it's something creative, a creative way to establish standards and core values. [Aaron] Okay. So, should we do it? [Jennifer] I think we should jump in, yeah. [Aaron] Should we start working on this? I know our kids aren't here but we're gonna start at least with the foundational stuff, maybe? [Jennifer] Yeah. [Aaron] Answer some questions. [Jennifer] And just again to preface, this is not something that's... There's not a final answer to. We're kinda just jumping in to show you guys how the conversation could go. [Aaron] Well, it's gonna go. [Jennifer] Well, it's gonna go. This is it. [Aaron] This is our legitimate conversation that we're gonna talk about our mission statement as a family. [Jennifer] Okay. You might hear keyboard typing 'cause I'm taking notes. That's how I'm doin' it. [Aaron] Yeah, so you have a question there, but I guess I wanna start with the first one. I know we kind of hit it up, but when you hear "mission statement"... 'Cause I'm sure everyone has their own little definition of it, and you even had to Google it, like, "What's everyone do?" Everyone's got a little different take on it. When you think mission statement, what do you think? Like, is this our one word phrase or few words phrase? Like, when we are out and about we say, "This is who we are!" [Jennifer] Yeah, we get t-shirts made, right? [Aaron] Yeah, we can get some t-shirts made. [Jennifer] That's not a bad idea. The word that comes to my mind is it's a motto. It's a way of being. It's a way of doing life together, and I do think it is something that should be shortened and concise so that it's easy to remember. [Aaron] I agree. [Jennifer] There might be portions of it that are expanded upon, but I think it should be something that is easy to remember. [Aaron] Okay, it's almost like a statement of faith on our website [Jennifer] Exactly! [Aaron] It's like, "This is what we believe, "this is who we are." [Jennifer] Exactly. [Aaron] Yeah, and this is how we're gonna live. Of course, because we're believers and we love the Lord and we love the Bible, that's probably gonna be a big part of this. [Jennifer] Well, yeah. I would assume that Christians who create a family mission statement, it's built upon the Word. [Aaron] Right. Okay, so we're gonna have to have some verses and we'll get to that probably. [Jennifer] Yeah. [Aaron] So, here's the first question. What are some words that describe our family or what we want our family to be? [Jennifer] Hmm. [Aaron] I'm just gonna throw out the first thing-- [Jennifer] Okay, go. [Aaron] I thought of is generous. [Jennifer] Yeah. [Aaron] And for those listening, a lot of the things we're gonna say, because we kind of have just walked in certain things over the last 12 years that we've been married and even before then. I think there's just gonna be some natural things that come out of us. [Jennifer] Yeah. [Aaron] But now it's gonna be solidified as, "This is who we are." So, generosity is something I believe has been a mark of our marriage for a long time. [Jennifer] I like that. A word that comes to my mind is, I think I already said it, but "adventurous". Meaning that we find the fun in things. [Aaron] Write that down, "we find the fun in thing", 'cause there could be lot's of different "adventurous." Adventurous like, we like to take financial risks. Or adventurous like-- [Jennifer] No, more like, we do fun things. [Aaron] Okay, that's a different kind of adventur-- [Jennifer] We like to explore. We like to eat. We like to go-- [Aaron] We love change. [Jennifer] We love change. [Aaron] Not too much change but we like new environments. We like-- [Jennifer] Yeah, I would say, not change so much to our rhythms and routines, because those are important but more so just experiential. I don't know how to explain it. [Aaron] Like new environments. [Jennifer] New environments. [Aaron] It goes into the adventurous side of... We like to go to new places. We like to be around new people. [Jennifer] I don't know if we've shared this before but we've kind of done these Saturday adventure days with the kids throughout the summer time. [Aaron] Mm-hmm. [Jennifer] 'Cause we go through seasons where it's just easier. [Aaron] We did a podcast about the adventure days. [Jennifer] Okay. So, that's an important thing. When I think of adventure, I think time set aside where we know we're gonna be doing something with the kids, whether it's local or maybe a-- [Aaron] Out of the norm. So, like, we have our normal flow. We have our normal rhythm, and then we're gonna go do something 'not'. [Jennifer] Go on a hike. [Aaron] Yeah. [Jennifer] Go look at the river. Go whatever it is. [Aaron] Go for a long drive to a new place through a rose garden or apples. [Jennifer] I do, I make... You guys don't know this about me. I make Aaron go out of his way for me all the time because-- [Aaron] She's like, "I found this orchard "on the other side of the mountain. "Can we go?" And then like, it's not open or... I'm just kidding. No, we've actually had a lot of cool adventures just 'cause you Google and find a cool place to go see. [Jennifer] Yeah, even like, we were in Portland this time last year. I remember it was hot and only Elliot was awake, the other kids were napping. I was like, "Will you just pull over and let me go see "the rose garden? "I've been wanting to see it." You know, but it was a fun little detour and it worked out for everyone. I like that kind of stuff. [Aaron] So, adventurous in the fun kind of way, in the environmental kind of way, the experiential kind of way. [Jennifer] Yeah. [Aaron] I would say another word I think of is community. [Jennifer] Mmm. [Aaron] I know it's like an easy buzz word for Christians. [Jennifer] No, it's good. [Aaron] We've made big decisions in our life and one of the main criteria in that decision was community. [Jennifer] Yeah. [Aaron] Often. [Jennifer] Mm-hmm. [Aaron] When moving, our prayer was, "Well, we can't move until something changes "in our community because we have these relationships, "we have these connections. "God has us here." [Jennifer] So, being loyal. [Aaron] Yeah, I like that word, loyal. We walk with people and we don't just say, "Well, "they'll get over it, we're gonna move on "and find new friends." [Jennifer] Yeah. [Aaron] Not that we've been perfect at this, but community's been a huge part of how we make decisions. Even now we think, "If we ever had to move, "who's are we gonna convince to move with us?" And it's not that we don't like being... Like we couldn't do it on our own. We know that community is so important and we want to take it with us. [Jennifer] Yeah. So, I would say a part of that is also walking in light, and we've done this time and time again where it's just being transparent, being able to communicate-- [Aaron] Oh, put that word, that's a good word, transparent. [Jennifer] Okay. [Aaron] I guess it is tied to community, but it's transparent in other things too 'cause our online communities we are transparent with and we don't know any of them. [Jennifer] If nobody knows what he's talking about, we have these online communities who are amazing people. [Aaron] Yeah. [Jennifer] Who have been following us [Aaron] Facebook, Instagram. [Jennifer] For eight years now. [Aaron] Yeah. [Jennifer] It's so awesome. [Aaron] Yeah. So, we try and be the same person to every person we meet. Would that be like-- [Jennifer] Integrity? [Aaron] Integrity. [Jennifer] I like that. [Aaron] I don't know if that's in-Integrity's like being the same person when no one's around. Right? [Jennifer] But also when different people are around. It's all the time. [Aaron] Right, okay. Say like, I'm not showing this person that face, and then that person this face. [Jennifer] I only show you different faces. [Aaron] Okay. [Jennifer] I used to have to work on this. [Aaron] Showing me like... I'd be like, "Why do you give everyone the 'good' face?" And then when you get home I get that face. [Jennifer] Yeah, you said, "I want the best of you." [Aaron] Yeah, that was-- [Jennifer] 'cause I had a problem with showing you too much-- [Aaron] Well, I think it's normal. Just as a little tangent. It's easy to let down the face you have on for everyone else, when you're around the person you know loves you. [Jennifer] Yeah. [Aaron] But we should really say, "No, I'm actually gonna work harder to give the best "to my closest neighbor, my spouse." It doesn't mean we give the worst to our other neighbors. [Jennifer] Everybody else. [Aaron] Yeah, I guess it's just-- [Jennifer] I needed balance in my life when it came to that. [Aaron] Yeah, it's learning how to be real. Like, when you're around someone, you could at least be real and say, "I'm not feeling good right now" or "I'm not"... Anyways, that was a tangent. So, transparent, I like. That's a good word. That's something that's always been, we've always prided ourselves in... I don't wanna say "prided ourselves". Just being transparent. Not wanting to hide things, be open. Integrity is a good word. So, I think community, transparency, generous, let's think... [Jennifer] I would say faithfulness to our Christian walk, to being obedient to God's Word. Our faith is foundational. [Aaron] I like faithfulness though as the word, because it's easy to say faith. Faith's important, but faithfulness means to our faith and to the Word, and to God. [Jennifer] It's like active. [Aaron] Yeah, it's like a movement word. Is that a verb? It's an action word. What are some... I feel like there's other words that we often say. [Jennifer] Just real quick as a side note to those listening. [Aaron] Extraordinary. I just wanted to say before I forgot it. [Jennifer] Okay. That's fine. [Aaron] Extraordinary is a big word for us. [Jennifer] Yes. Do you wanna explain why? [Aaron] Well, we talk about it a lot in the book "Marriage After God". [Jennifer] Mm-hmm. [Aaron] But it's this idea that we've always had a heart to not just be normal. [Jennifer] Mm-hmm. [Aaron] And that doesn't mean that our goal was to be special and like how we wanted to have this... 'Cause starting this ministry online wasn't even an idea in our hearts when we first got married, but our idea was like, "Well, let's just do what God wants "and that's going to be extraordinary." [Jennifer] Mm-hmm. [Aaron] We went to the mission field for a while and then we went to Canada, and we went to Florida, and we did all these different little things. [Jennifer] I can actually see how even smaller decisions in our life, like buying this house, that wasn't a small decision, but-- [Aaron] It was at-- [Jennifer] But I just think of decisions that we've made together and we've even out-loud said to ourselves, "Well, that's extraordinary", or "That's not the normal way!" [Aaron] Right, well we could do the ordinary or we could do it the extraordinary way. [Jennifer] Yeah. [Aaron] And the reason you brought up this house, for those that don't know, they can actually find a YouTube video about us doing the house process. We bought a, I wanna say a fixer-upper. [Jennifer] Decrepit. [Aaron] But it was a beater-upper. It was really bad. We had to tear down most of the house to fix it back up, but when we thought about it we were like, "Well, this is how we're gonna get what we can afford." [Jennifer] Mm-hmm. [Aaron] "And then we can make it ours." Which, lot's of people do that, but it was extraordinary in my mind. So, extraordinary is a good word for us. [Jennifer] Yeah. So, when you paused back there I was just gonna note that that's okay when you're doing this process together. There's gonna be times when something might be on your heart or right at the tip of your tongue, and you don't know how to explain it. I think that's why the majority of people will say, "You don't just sit down and write a mission statement. "It's a process, and the process is what counts. "The process is the important part "because you're actually communicating with each other "on what matters most to you." [Aaron] Good tip. [Jennifer] Yeah. So, you just mull it over and come back to the drawing board over and over and over again until you narrow it down. [Aaron] Yeah, and I think after we go through this, we'll be able to see these words and think of better words. [Jennifer] Probably. Or use the good old dictionary! [Aaron] Or just the thesaurus. [Jennifer] Thanks, Google. [Aaron] Thesaurus. [Jennifer] Okay, so are there any phrases that we repeat often or say? [Aaron] Yeah, there's a-- [Jennifer] I know one! Go ahead, what were you gonna say? [Aaron] We do hard things. [Jennifer] Yes! That was what I was gonna say! [Aaron] That was... But you know what? That's a phrase that we only started saying when our kids started getting older. [Jennifer] Yeah. [Aaron] But-- [Jennifer] To encourage them we would say things "We're the Smiths and we do hard things." [Aaron] And so they own it, and they say, "Oh, okay. "This thing that I said is hard, we do those things." [Jennifer] Yeah. What's cool is they've recognized when we're doing Bible time, certain stories in the Bible of people doing hard things they'll recognize and go, "Hey, David does hard things!" [Aaron] Yeah! So, I think "We do hard things" is a important phrase, and we didn't come up with that of course. [Jennifer] But we use it. [Aaron] We use it often. [Jennifer] I don't know where it came from. [Aaron] And it doesn't just remind our kids, it reminds us because how many times a day do we get to this point of like, "Ugh, I don't wanna do this right now." And they're like, "Ugh, we do hard things." [Jennifer] It's the fight against the flesh. [Aaron] Yeah, we just did our lawns for the first time this season, and I just kept wanting to quit. I was like, "I did enough. Next week I'll finish the weeds." And I'm like . And then I go through and I'm like, "Oh, I'm just gonna go "a little bit further and make this look nice. Then I'm like, "Ugh, I just wanna give up." And then I go a little bit further, and I just kept telling myself, "No, I can finish this. "It's like my first time ever doing this, I should be fine." [Jennifer] That same conversation happens to me every single time I go to work out. It's like, you have ten squats on the list to do and you get through four and you're like, "Ahh!" [Aaron] "I should be able to do this." [Jennifer] "Okay, I'll do one more." And then you want to bail out but then you just keep going, you keep going, you keep going. [Aaron] I think it's a good phrase. What's another phrase that we say? Oh, it's kind of a word but we use it as a phrase. [Jennifer] What? [Aaron] "Gotta have self-control." [Jennifer] Oh, self-control. [Aaron] So, it's a word but-- [Jennifer] Self-control. [Aaron] We use it in a sense that we say it probably a million and a half times a day to our kids. "Are you having self-control? "You need to have self-control. "Remember self-control!" [Jennifer] We say it to each other now, too, because in conjunction with "We're setting the example. "We're setting the example". [Aaron] One of us will be having an attitude about something, just tired or exhausted or frustrated; and I'll be like, "Okay, are you self-controlled right now?" We say it a little quieter to each other. [Jennifer] Okay. So, what-- [Aaron] Is there any other phrases? We say other things. [Jennifer] I'm sure there are and we can come back to this if we think about it, but I was gonna ask, "What is it that we value? "What are some things that we really value?" [Aaron] The Word of God. We have to start with that. I know that sounds like the default answer, but it has to be the number one thing we value. It's what we tell our kids is the most important thing, it's what we try and teach them, we try and live it. So, I think the Word of God is... Now, I will say this, and it's something I've been convicted on recently and something that God's been convicting me on for my whole life, probably. I think this, and then I'm like, "But do I actually show this?" Am I in my Word as much as I could be? I don't want to say "should be" because I don't think there's a number or how many chapters or how many words or how many verses, or whatever; but I know in my heart when I'm in and out of it. I know when I'm giving God's Word the attention it deserves in my life. We could feel it. [Jennifer] Mm-hmm. [Aaron] Recently you've been kind of just overwhelmed with the book launch that-- [Jennifer] Lots of stuff to do. [Aaron] Lots of stuff to do and I was just thinking to myself, I'm like, "I wonder what-I didn't say this to you, but I was wondering when you were in the Word. [Jennifer] It's so funny, it's not funny, it's... Wow, this is really convicting because I know exactly the moment in that conversation where I had this thought that, "I wouldn't be feeling this way "if I was in the Word", and-- [Aaron] When was it? 'cause I was thinking about it. I didn't say it to you, I was just... 'Cause I was just encouraging you and comforting you and letting you know it was gonna be okay. [Jennifer] No, it was really impactful for me, and I've been in the Word since. I think sometimes we just get in these ruts or seasons where we're busy or we're going strong on certain areas of our life, and we don't realize when another area have kind of-- [Aaron] Yeah, we've neglected an area. [Jennifer] Been neglected, and that was happening with me for a couple days. I'd say about a week and a half. [Aaron] Well, me too, and I was feeling... Remember I told you how I was feeling? [Jennifer] Yeah, I think it was compiling. [Aaron] Yeah. [Jennifer] I think the Lord is good. [Aaron] Well, I was just thinking on Sunday, the message was about... Actually the message wasn't about it, but Matt said, "Hey, we can't know all of this in one sitting. "We have to just go line by line, verse by verse, "chapter by chapter, over years of reading and reading, "and re-reading and re-reading, and re-memorizing "and re-stating, and chewing it over." Then this morning, I was listening to J. Vernon McGee, and he was in Isaiah and he was bringing up the scripture that talks about "precept upon precept, line by line", and he was saying... You know, it took five years for J. Vernon McGee to teach through the Bible. That was just him going through one time. [Jennifer] Mm-hmm. [Aaron] Five years. How much do we go 'precept by precept'? Are we just reading through it? Laying on the knowledge that we're getting out of it. That was another good tangent, but Word of God I think is the most valuable thing. It needs to be-- [Jennifer] Bolded? [Aaron] Yeah, bolded and-- [Jennifer] Italicized? [Aaron] Italicized, highlighted in green, but I think it needs to be more evident in our own lives for our kids sake and for our own sake. [Jennifer] Yeah. What a great tool, this mission statement, to remind us to do that. If this is gonna be a foundational thing that is in front of us by maybe putting it on a plaque in our house or however we're gonna display this once we do finalize it. To be reminded of that, you know, every single day. [Aaron] Yeah, "Let's go back to the Word of God. "What does the Word say about this situation." [Jennifer] So, what other things do we value? I feel like we value-- [Aaron] Stewardship? [Jennifer] Stewardship. [Aaron] Is that a good word? [Jennifer] That's good. [Aaron] Like we value-- [Jennifer] I'm gonna write that down. [Aaron] Being good stewards, which we talk a ton about in 'Marriage after God'. [Jennifer] Yeah. [Aaron] Because of how important it is to our ministries. [Jennifer] It's like the whole book's message, really. [Aaron] "Are you stewarding the way God's given you well?" That's the whole book actually. [Jennifer] I guess part of what I was gonna say goes along with this. I don't know if you would agree, but recognizing our need verses want in minimalism. Not that we're minimalist people because we have stuff. We have stuff, but I don't feel like we exaggerate and go outside of what we need. Does that make sense? [Aaron] I would agree. I think there's been seasons in our life that, because of discontentment or dissatisfaction or whatever, we've chased after things. [Jennifer] Or acquired. [Aaron] Collecting things, or buying things that we don't need. That's rarer, I would say. I'm not gonna say, "It's not super rare", but we tend to get what we need and not much more. Again, there's plenty of things that we have. [Jennifer] I think we've been good over time of challenging each other or encouraging each other, you know, "Maybe we don't need that thing right now", or "Hey, if you are gonna go get that, think about this." [Aaron] Right. [Jennifer] You've done it with me with kids clothes before. "Hey, instead of buying off that website "can we just try and"-- [Aaron] "Because they're not gonna fit in it "in six weeks." [Jennifer] "Or they're gonna be stained up." [Aaron] Yeah. [Jennifer] Or whatever the reasoning's were. That was just the first thing off the top of my head. I think that... [Aaron] Stewardship minimalist. Yeah, I agree. We're not minimalist, but we definitely think on a more, "What do we need verses what do we want? "And what do we want, is it something we need, "and is it something we can use and is it gonna be"-- [Jennifer] We're willing to be confronted by that, for sure. [Aaron] Right. What is other things we value? Relationships? [Jennifer] I was gonna say people. [Aaron] People, yeah. I would say this goes up higher. [Jennifer] You can even see this in our kids because Olive really values relationships. [Aaron] Mm-hmm. [Jennifer] All of our kids do, but I could just see it in them. [Aaron] Yeah. Well, it's of course, the Word of God points us to-- [Jennifer] God's relationship. [Aaron] I would say that's almost the number one message in the Bible, other than Jesus Christ and him crucified, which everything points to that, is why he died for us is to give us relationship with the Father, and then through that gives us relationship with other people, right? Like, John 17, which we should put down because the next thing we're gonna talk about is scripture, but John 17 is a major one, which is the high priestly prayer Jesus prays for his disciples and for everyone who believes in the message that the disciples bring to the world; is that we would be one. That we'd be unified just as Christ and God are unified. [Jennifer] Yeah, but before we move on to the scripture section, I had some things I wanted to share about the values. So, 'cause this is all about brain-dumping and just getting out of our minds and heart what we believe to be true about our family, to build up this mission statement. So, words like 'creativity'. I feel like we value. Inspiring each other towards greatness. [Aaron] Can I throw in a word? Creating. [Jennifer] Creating, okay. [Aaron] I mean, we've done the self-publishing thing, the blogging, the social media. It's just kind of been a part of what we do. So, creativity, inspiring, but we also create. It's part of us. [Jennifer] Mmm, that's good. [Aaron] Elliot loves to draw, Olive loves to paint. [Jennifer] Yeah. That's good, lots of Lego building. [Aaron] Lots of Lego building! By the way the Lego thing you built yesterday is awesome. It's like this huge city. [Jennifer] It was supposed to be Bleecker St. in New York. [Aaron] Okay. [Jennifer] I just didn't get to finish it. [Aaron] I didn't see the signs. [Jennifer] Oh, go back and look at it. So yeah, some of the things that we value are experiences where, being able to go to a museum if we're near one, or-- [Aaron] I feel like that falls under adventure, adventurous, right? [Jennifer] Okay. Yeah, but it's like learning experiences. [Aaron] Well, put learning then. That's a good word. [Jennifer] Learning. So, whether that's-- [Aaron] Learning is a big thing-- [Jennifer] Experiences or books, resources, pretty much anything I can get my hands on for us or for the kids that encourages growth and investment. [Aaron] All the educational films like Marvels, Avengers, and Iron Man, those are really for us. [Jennifer] For us. [Aaron] For us, yeah. Yeah, I think learning is a great word. So, under value... [Jennifer] Does food count? [Aaron] Oh, you know, can I say wisdom? [Jennifer] Wisdom, yeah. [Aaron] And you actually should put food on there because that is a huge thing for us. Food. We love food! [Jennifer] Not just food. [Aaron] God loved food. [Jennifer] I know but the experience of food, like the actual tasting good and figuring out what flavors are there, but then the experience of eating with people. [Aaron] Yeah, so actually food kinda encompasses all these. [Jennifer] Okay so, on our family mission statement it's gonna say, "The Smith family", and then in bold right beneath that-- [Aaron] "Food." [Jennifer] 'Food'. [Aaron] That'll be our... It's short. [Jennifer] Semi-calling Gods word. So, it's like both, right? It's like the Word of Life. [Aaron] Well, God's Word is the bread of life. So, it just literally all fits in. Everyone here that's listening, our mission statement is [Jennifer And Aaron] Food. [Jennifer] This is how our conversations really go in real life, to you guys. We're not makin' this up for you. [Aaron] I'm pretty sure I can fit every single one of those things into food. [Jennifer] We'll figure it out. [Aaron] Yeah. Wisdom, what I mean by wisdom is, wisdom is the application of knowledge. [Jennifer] Yup. [Aaron] 'Cause you can know lots of things and do nothing with it. [Jennifer] Not ever implement it. [Aaron] Yeah, wisdom is like, "Oh, I actually know how "to navigate this kind of relationship, "therefore I'm going to navigate it that way." Or, "I know that I should keep my mouth shut "in this situation", so I could choose to act on the knowledge or not. So, wisdom is taking the Word of God, taking life experiences and letting it teach us and then saying, "Oh, last time we experienced that. "Let's make a different decision this time." [Jennifer] Mmm. [Aaron] We were actually just talking about this in the car. All the experiences the God's given us, hard ones that have taught us things. [Jennifer] Yeah. [Aaron] That a lot of people won't ever experience. [Jennifer] Right, but everyone listening has their own set of experiences that-- [Aaron] That no one else will have. [Jennifer] No one else will have. [Aaron] That God wants to use to teach them wisdom. [Jennifer] Yeah, but wisdom is saying, "Okay, I'm going "to learn from that, and not just learn from it, but"-- [Jennifer] Apply it. [Aaron] "I'm gonna apply the knowledge to my life now "regardless of how easy it is or how it feels to my flesh." [Jennifer] Right. [Aaron] Right. [Jennifer] Yeah. [Aaron] So, wisdom is a big one. [Jennifer] Okay, cool. So, moving on, were there any more scriptures that you wanted to share? [Aaron] Think of some scriptures... [Jennifer] One, you brought up generosity earlier, and so one of the scriptures that came to my mind was 2 Corinthians 9:6-8, it says, "The point is this: whoever sows sparingly "will also reap sparingly, and whoever sows bountifully "will also reap bountifully. "Each one must give as he has decided in his heart, "not reluctantly or under compulsion, "for God loves a cheerful giver." So, I just thought about that. [Aaron] That's a great one. Cheerful giver. [Jennifer] I think it defines how we give, which I love. [Aaron] Yeah we don't ever, I mean we try not to give out of compulsion. As in, "Oh, we must do this!" No, we'd be like, "We want to do this." [Jennifer] Yeah. [Aaron] So, that's a good one. Another one I think of is the Great Commission in Mathew 28, where Jesus literally tells the church what it's job is. It says, Mathew 28:18, "And Jesus came and said to them, ""All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. "Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, "baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son "and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe "all that I have commanded you. "And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age." [Jennifer] I love that last portion. [Aaron] Yeah, and we can take this as our individual mandates, but really it's the mandate for the church as a whole, 'cause there's all these different functioning parts. [Jennifer] Right. [Aaron] Discipling, evangelism, teaching-- [Jennifer] Baptizing. [Aaron] Baptizing, all these different things, and we sometimes get to do all of them, and sometimes get to just play at planting or watering. [Jennifer] A portion of it, mm-hmm. [Aaron] It's what the church's job is and I think it should be what our job is. [Jennifer] I feel like if I could summarize that whole verse, it would say, "to make Him known", you know? [Aaron] Yeah. [Jennifer] Like, to know Him and to make Him known. That's such a big-- [Aaron] Put that down. That's a awesome thing, make Him known. I think that should definitely be in our statement because that is our life. We want our children to do that. [Jennifer] Right. [Aaron] We want our children to know Him. [Jennifer] Right. [Aaron] And then we want our children to make Him known. [Jennifer] Yeah. [Aaron] Is our desire. [Jennifer] Okay, so we want to encourage you guys that as you do jump into experiencing this process of creating a family mission statement, to go to scripture, to see where your family values line up according to His Word, because it is foundational to how we live our lives and do what we do. This was just to give you guys a glimpse into the behind the scenes, Aaron and Jen, and how we communicate through things like this. Being able to share your vision for your family and life, being able to come up with, and create a family mission statement. It's supposed to be a unifying experience of togetherness, intimacy, understanding one another, identifying "who are we" and "what are we doing"? [Aaron] Yeah, "Who are the Smiths?" [Jennifer] Well, "who are they listening, who are you?" And kinda just build this missions statement to look forward to sharing it with your family. [Aaron] Yeah, and we're not done with this. We are going to on our own, now, finish this up; but this was our getting started. [Jennifer] Yeah. [Aaron] We started it out. We're glad that you got to join us on this candid conversation of us trying to think out "who we are and what we're about". [Jennifer] Yeah. I did want to share a couple practical things. When you do do a family mission statement, based off of what I've seen and you guys have probably seen too. Some fun ways to have this experience and share it with each other is use a whiteboard, or get some poster paper, or a pen and paper, or like we just did, use your computer, your phone, whatever it takes to make those notes. You can brain-dump and then cross stuff out as you go, but have fun with it. Also, some examples of making it visible in the home. I have some people say, "In this house", and then they list all their words. [Aaron] So, once we're done with it we can put this up somewhere so we're always seeing, "Hey, look what we... "We're not acting the way we say we're gonna act." [Jennifer] Exactly. Some people do the last name in bold at the top and then share the core values or the mission statement. Some people put it in a frame. Some people put it on script, on canvas. There's so many different ways that you can visibly show it in your home and the great thing about that is-- [Aaron] Tattoos, that's a really good one, right? [Jennifer] Just tattoo it on our backs? [Aaron] Yeah. [Jennifer] No, but this is a great thing, like you said, to be mindful of how we operate as a family. We can even share as our kids get older, and teach them through it like, "Hey, we're the Smith's and we do hard things. "See it says it right there." So, those are just some things and we wanted to encourage you guys in that. [Aaron] Yeah, and I hope you had fun with us, too. We had fun. We're gonna finish it up, we'll probably do it on a date night or over the next... It doesn't have to be done right away, right. It's something that we can evolve with us. [Jennifer] It's a work in progress and so many people who have shared theirs with ours have said, "It's still a work in progress, "and you can change it and alter it as you go." Remember, you can incorporate your family, your kids and everyone to participate in it, but we did wanna challenge you guys with doing it. Even if it's just the initial go at it like we just did. [Aaron] Start it on your next date night. [Jennifer] Yeah. [Aaron] That's the reason, you're like, "Oh, we have to go "do our mission statement. "Oh, we'll need a babysitter! "Let's go do this." [Jennifer] Have fun, have fun, have fun! [Aaron] Yeah, and then invite your kids into it also. Not on date night. Go to date night, start it, come home, invite them in afterwards, or on another day. [Jennifer] And you guys don't need a specific set of questions to figure out. What we just did is we just said, "What are some phrases "and words that define our family, "of what we know of our family already?" [Aaron] We just started. [Jennifer] We just did it. Ask each other hard questions. [Aaron] Cool, so we like to end our episodes with a prayer, and so, Jennifer, would you pray for us? [Jennifer] Sure. Dear Lord, Thank you for the gift of marriage. May we continue to walk in obedience to Your Word as we seek to fulfill Your will for our lives and our marriage. We pray, we would consider the purpose You have for our marriage and we pray we will work together to communicate what our family mission statement is. We pray we would humbly submit it before You and that it would become a pillar in our family and in our life, that reminds us what we are doing and where we are headed. May this family mission statement build up according to Your core values, be an anchor for our marriage and family, motivating us to live our lives on purpose. May the experience of considering and building our family mission statement be a time of togetherness intimacy and understanding. Thank you for the hope You give us every day. May we honor You with our lives. In Jesus name, Amen. [Aaron] Amen. So, we just want to thank every one for joining us this week and listening to this episode. I hope you had fun with us. It was a lot of fun for us, as I said earlier. But go, start a mission statement with your spouse and with your family, and see what happens. See how it focuses you. You might end up finding out that you're participating in things that don't even line up with what you guys believe as a family. That might be cool. Or you might realize that there's opportunities out there that you could be tapping into because of it. We just wanted to thank you. We look forward to having you next week, and if you have not yet went to shop.marriageaftergod,com and picked up a copy of our new book, "Marriage After God", we'd love to invite you to do so. We thank you for everything. You guys are awesome. All the reviews, all of the comments and stuff we get on our social media, and just all the listens. You guys listening to these podcasts, we just so appreciate you guys. We look forward to having you next week. See you later. Did you enjoy today's show? If you did, it would mean the world to us if you could leave us a review on iTunes, also, if you're interested, you can find many more encouraging stories and resources at marriageaftergod.com, and let us help you cultivate an extraordinary marriage.

Your Marriage Has An Impact!!! Join the Marriage After God movement today. https://marriageaftergod.com"A husband and wife chasing after God knows every aspect of their marriage is for proclaiming the gospel of Jesus Christ, they are not ashamed to share about it, and they are confident in the impact they are making in the world around them." - Marriage After God book"The two of you serving God together will always make a greater impact than the two of you could make alone striving for your own accomplishments and happiness."Marriage After God bookPrayer:Dear Lord, Thank you for the gift of companionship. Marriage is such an intimate friendship that blesses us. We desire to draw closer to each other and to use this intimate bond to bless your name. Thank you for being intertwined in our relationship and at the center of it. You are the reason we are stronger together. Please continue to strengthen us as a cord of 3 strands. We pray that you would use us to do hard things as we build up your body and build up your kingdom. Be our strength as we persevere. May we be intentional in encouraging each other in marriage so that we do not grow weary. We pray against the enemy. We pray against his evil ways. Thank you for being our refuge and our shield. Thank you for equipping us and empowering us to stay strong and to fulfill your will. May your will be done in us and through our marriage.In Jesus’ name, amen! READ TRANSCRIPT- [Aaron] Hey, we're Aaron and Jennifer Smith with Marriage After God. - Helping you cultivate an extraordinary marriage. - [Aaron] And today, we're in part 15 of the Marriage After God series and we're gonna be talking with Adam and Katie Reid about how we are stronger together. Welcome to the Marriage After God podcast where we believe that marriage was meant for more than just happily ever after. - [Jennifer] I'm Jennifer, also known as Unveiled Wife. - [Aaron] And I'm Aaron, also known as Husband Revolution. - [Jennifer] We have been married for over a decade. - [Aaron] And so far, we have four young children. - [Jennifer] We have been doing marriage ministry online for over seven years through blogging and social media. - [Aaron] With the desire to inspire couples to keep God at the center of their marriage, encouraging them to walk in faith everyday. - [Jennifer] We believe that Christian marriage should be an extraordinary one, full of life. - Love. - And power. - [Aaron] That can only be found by chasing after God. - [Jennifer] Together. - [Aaron] Thank you for joining us on this journey as we chase boldly after God's will for our life together. - [Jennifer] This is Marriage After God. Thank you guys so much for joining us on this podcast today. We wanna encourage everyone listening to just leave us a star rating review, that just helps the podcast get out into the world. And so, if you wanna support this podcast and you've been inspired by it, would you take a moment just to leave that review? Because it helps people find marriage after God. - [Aaron] Also, and we also wanna let you know the whole reason we've been doing these interviews, the whole reason this podcasts exists is because we wrote a book called Marriage After God, my wife and I and we're excited to get it in your hands. If you would take a moment after this podcast is over or take a pause in between and just go shop.marraigeaftergod.com and pick up a copy of the Marriage After God book. It's our newest book, we've written it together and we wrote it for you and your marriage and we're excited to get it in your hands and hear what you think about it. - [Jennifer] So, today, our special guests are Adam and Katie Reid. Hi you guys, thanks for joining us. - [Adam] Hey, thanks for having us. - [Katie] Thanks so much, we're glad to be here. - [Jennifer] So, why don't you just take a moment to introduce yourselves to our listeners, I'm sure a lot of them already know who you are, Katie, and your book. But just touch on that and then how long you've been married, how many children, what you guys do together, that kinda thing. - [Katie] Yeah, well, we're Adam and Katie Reid. I mean, Adam can probably share some things about himself too. But he's the lead pastor at our church, I'm a speaker and writer and we have a marriage show we do together called Stop Hammock Time on Facebook Live. And we have five loud and wonderful kids, we are not usually bored. - Awesome. - [Adam] Yeah, no, we stay busy and did you say that we've been married for 17 years? - [Katie] No, I did not. - [Adam] Yeah, we've been married for 17 years, it'll be 18 this summer and five kids ages ranging 14 to 2 1/2, almost three. And so, yeah, we definitely stay busy. - [Katie] Lots of life experience. - [Aaron] Yeah, that's awesome, we're aspiring to that. We're on our way, we're at year 12 and we got-- - Four. - Yeah, four kids. So, we're on our way. - Yeah. - Okay, guys, so, we always like to start with an icebreaker, this just helps everyone get to know you just a little bit more, so we're going there. What's your guys' most embarrassing marriage moment? - [Katie] Oh, man, so-- - [Adam] How do we choose? - [Katie] How do we choose? So we were part of a discipleship program at a Christian camp and there was a guy on staff that looked a lot like Adam and sometimes Adam let his twin, named Matt, borrow his vehicle. And one day, I was at the grocery store and I saw Adam's vehicle there. I'm like oh my goodness, I am going to totally pull the best prank. So I climbed into the back, like the trunk area of the car. And I'm like I'm gonna jump out, like maybe after he's driving, this is gonna be so funny. Well, all of a sudden, I'm kinda peeking and it's taking forever, it's really hot. And all of a sudden, I see our friend Matt walking towards the car and I'm like oh, this is gonna be awkward. And so, I'm like how do I get out of the truck area before he gets there? And so, I can't get out but I'm like hey, I thought you were Adam and I was gonna jump out. That was definitely embarrassing. - [Adam] Yeah, that was-- - [Aaron] That's really funny. - [Jennifer] What a terrifying prank. - [Adam] It was a great story to hear when she got back to the house. But another one that we just had happen just a couple days ago, we've been getting a bunch of snow and ice here in Michigan. So a lot of ice the last few days and I was watching something online teaching you how to walk on ice. And how when it's icy out, you should walk differently than your normal stride and keeping your center of gravity over your feet. And they said you should walk like a penguin because the penguins, they kinda have things figured out and they're on ice and snow often. And so, we were going to a funeral, Katie and I and we dropped our kids off at our in-laws. We walked out and the driveway was really slippery and so, I said, hey Katie, walk like a penguin. And so, we're both kinda waddling with our heads down and our center of gravity over, our toes turned out walking like penguins. And we look up and there's a guy walking his dog right at the end of the driveway and he kinda looked at us like we were really nutty. And Katie says, we're trying to walk like a penguin, trying that technique out on the ice. And he just kinda like okay. Just kept walking. - [Aaron] No context, no context. - [Adam] Yeah, we got in the car and laughed really hard about that one. - [Jennifer] That's awesome. - [Aaron] That would have been awesome to see. - [Adam] You guys gotta be able to laugh at yourself. - [Aaron] Yeah, being able to laugh is joy, that's joy. Being able to laugh at yourself, that's good. So, we're gonna go into, thanks for sharing those embarrassing moments. Adam, I just really wanna, I think that was an awesome prank you played on your wife, that you-- - [Adam] Best prank. - [Aaron] In the car when she was with, that's funny. - Yeah-- - So, we're gonna go into-- - [Adam] Didn't know if she said but it was a Jeep. And so, she wasn't climbing in the back of a car and closing the trunk on herself but it was the back of Jeep and it was so hot and she was dripping with sweat and that made it even more funny. - [Aaron] So we're gonna get into a quote real quick from the Marriage After God book in chapter 15. So we're gonna share a quote from chapter 15, Stronger Together in the Marriage After God book and this is the quote, the two of you serving God together will always make a greater impact than the two of you could make alone striving for your own accomplishments and happiness. So, real quick, we can just talk about that for a second, do you feel like this, do you see this in your own marriage? - [Adam] Absolutely, yeah, I look back at my life before marriage and completely different person, different way of doing life and different way of ministering and that definitely comes from learning and growing because of being married to Katie. And I think, I don't wanna speak for you, but I think you can say the same thing, Katie. She has strengths that I don't have and I have strengths that she doesn't have and that's the beauty of marriage and God's design For that is making each other better and not really making each other better, I think, but the husband and wife combination there, not just husband and wife but male and female combination there, I think, gives a much clearer and more accurate picture of God's character and who He is. And so, there are things that Katie is very good at that I am not and she fills in those gaps there and vice versa. We are much better person together than we are apart. - [Katie] Well, I think we learned this over time too because at the beginning, I'm a very driven person, semi-organized, getting more organized since we're trying to implement some of the tidying up techniques in our home. It used to drive me crazy that he wasn't like me in that area, it's like I just thought you see the world through your own lens. And so, to me, the thought of not turning a paper in in time in college stressed me out so much that I think I wrote his paper for him because he's just gonna turn it in the week it was due. - [Adam] It may have happened once. - [Katie] Just one time. But then there's things that he is really good with people. I can sometimes be too blunt, he has a great way of making people feel like they're important. And so, we've learned over time to appreciate the strengths in others instead of just trying to wish we were more like, they were more like us. I think we've looked at, okay, I have weaknesses and strengths, you have weaknesses and strengths and how can we blend these together to be more effective? - [Jennifer] I love that picture of complimenting each other in that way. And how God, He has a mission for all of us to do and work for all of us to do and each one of our marriages is so unique and yet, paired together, we compliment each other for all of those things and to be able to fulfill them. - [Aaron] Yeah and your guys' marriage doesn't seem anything like ours. I'm making a joke 'cause I, Jennifer is always like why won't you just, I do it this way, why don't you do it that way and we've had to get to this point of, well, I might do something differently and that's gotta be okay sometimes. Now-- - Learning to appreciate, knowing the value of that is really important. - [Aaron] Yeah. - [Jennifer] And I think that a marriage after God definitely has their eyes open to those differences and sees the value in them. - [Aaron] Yeah and also growing in them like there's some things that we do need to change in, for sure. But that's a really good testimony. Has there been any standout moments in your marriage? We're talking about this stronger together, the unification, us moving in the same direction in one mind, one spirit in our marriage, has there been any standout moments in your marriage where you realize the two of you were stronger together? Any personal stories-- - Well, for us, we are in vocational ministry, I know that's not the case for everyone but we have led multiple camps together, like a youth camp. We do cousin camp with our nieces and nephews and just being able to tag team. If I just did it by myself, I'd be completely burned out by the end of the experience and same with him. But learning, I think, to let each other lead and we are not perfect at this by any means, we're both first borns and a lot of times, stubbornness or determination, how ever you wanna spin it, comes with that. - Determination, so. - Yeah. So there are times when we butt heads and somebody bends so the other can lead but we kind of do this clumsy dance and learn how, are learning how to do that more and more. So I think, for us, ministering to kids has been a way that we've been able to do that. But I was just telling someone the other day, now that Adam is lead pastor, there are some changes we're implementing at church but we also need mindful of the culture. But my tendency is like sweet, we can change a hundred things at once, won't this be great? Well, it won't be great because there's a culture and you wanna respect that. And so, Adam's help reminded me let's celebrate the one thing that we're doing right now. And so, for me, kind of my side writing and speaking thing gives me creative outlet to drive and go and get it done without driving him crazy that I'm putting all that energy into what he and I are doing together. - [Aaron] I like that. You guys have recognized that in the pursuit of what God's doing, you're stronger together when you allow the other person to operate in the strengths and gifts that they've given them in that proper order, I love that. And you also finding out, as a team, ways that you can have the other outlets in ministry so it's still working together but even if it's in different ways, does that make sense? - [Katie] Right, and like if I'm gonna go speak somewhere, do something outside the home, like a lot of times, Adam will watch the kids. And so, sometimes I think ministering together doesn't always look like side by side, we're both doing everything together-- - [Adam] In the same physical space, yeah. It can be her, the things that God has called us to as a family, when she goes and speaks, we are ministering with her by allowing her to go do that and vice versa. Katie and the family allow me to go and minister to people by picking up and doing things that need to be done. And so, ministering together, again, I think that's a good point. Ministering together doesn't always mean that you are right side by side with each other but more allowing each other to minister within the calling that our family has and within the good things that each of have individually. - [Jennifer] That's great, so for people listening, just as an encouragement to them, could you guys share maybe like one or two practical ways that a husband and wife can support each other in whatever thing that God is inviting them to do? Specifically, like how can a wife support her husband, how can a husband support his wife, practically? - [Adam] I mean, I think we're walking through that right now, Katie writing and speaking is a relatively new thing over the last few years, three years maybe. Me and the kids supporting her looks like allowing her to have the time to go write and it's our expectations, we take those expectations on, we take those things on so that that frees up her time to be able to go write. And there were multiple times when she was writing the book that she would just go away for the weekend and she was able to accomplish a lot of things and it was really time for her writing when she was able to do that. So trying to pick up some slack and take some of the responsibilities on so that she was allowed or able to go do that. And then also with her speaking now, it's hey, we'll be home, I've got the kids while she's allowed to, she's able to, not allowed to. It's not like I'm giving-- - That sounds-- - [Adam] I'm giving permission to go do this. But she's able to go do that and not have to worry about getting kids to soccer practice and swimming and these types of things where she can just go and focus on what God's called her to do ministering to other people through the book and through speaking. - [Katie] And I think a big part of it is communication. It's sitting down together as a couple and saying, what does God want our family to be about? I mean, Aaron, Jennifer, you guys are a great example of this, of you clearly know the mission God has put before you, it takes different forms at times, whether through podcast or encouraging people one on one or retreats or books or all of those kind of things. But I think asking God to help give you a vision for your family where He comes first, your marriage comes right under that, right? Marriage after God and-- - Yeah. - [Katie] And communicating what is God calling us to and how do we pursue that in this season? I think there are different seasons in lives too where it can look differently. We've had an elderly friend and they had a vibrant prayer ministry and they did it from their recliners in their living room. And would call people and wish them a happy birthday and they were literally side by side in their living room doing that. But earlier on-- - [Jennifer] That's awesome. - [Katie] When they were younger, it looked like doing that in person. So I think knowing the vision for your family and then communicating what does this look like practically? If we're gonna do this, what are we gonna say yes to and what are some things we're gonna say no to so that we can serve together? - [Aaron] So, what you guys are saying right now is so perfect in the whole message of what we're talking about in Marriage After God. And I just wanted to go back to, you were talking about how right now, this new season, and we love the seasonal mindset knowing that there's gonna be seasons and like the Bible teaches us this and learning how to operate within seasons. And you guys were talking about right now, Katie, you're writing and speaking, and Adam, you'll stay home and let her go do that. And that only works, and I'm assuming 'cause, Katie, you brought up communicating but you guys sat down and said, what is that God wants to do? But then, are we in agreeance? It's not like, Katie, I'm gonna be a speaker and a writer, let me do my thing. And, Adam, I'm gonna be doing this ministry over here, let me do my thing. That would conflict, you guys wouldn't be able to get anything done which goes back to the quote of you guys being on the same page, communicating what's the Lord doing right now this season? Writing and speaking and Adam's like Amen, I agree and I'm gonna participate where I can to make that happen. Versus you both pursuing your ministries-- - [Jennifer] Individually. - [Aaron] Individually in this heart of you're in my way. And I love that you brought that up because some might be listening right now thinking God's put this thing on my heart and I need to do it. And I don't care if my husband, if he's drug along or is out of the way or vice versa. No, I'm doing this thing over here and I don't care what my wife's at. Rather, hey, let's lay it on the table, what's God doing and let's be on the same page with each other. 'Cause then you can work as a team, right? - Yeah. - Yeah. And we just had a conversation yesterday, right outside the door here at church. And I had felt like God was leading me to write another book but Adam and the kids were not ready for that. And so, that was hard because sometimes you do feel that pull of God, sometimes it's like I think God wants me to do this. But I talked to some mentors in my life and they said, you know, Katie, you have a Godly husband, Godly family, I don't think that he's gonna ask you to do something if your family's in opposition. Like that doesn't follow the model that God has laid out. Not to say that there's definitely, everything's not black and white. But so, my friend encouraged me like with Nehemiah, right? When he saw that the wall was broken down, he went and fasted and prayed before he went to the king. And so, my friend encouraged me like Katie, if you're really feeling like God is wanting you to write this book, why don't you fast and pray and then when you feel clear what God's saying, go to your husband and talk to him about it, ask him what he thinks. And so, we just had this conversation yesterday because if your family isn't on board, you are not gonna be stronger together, it's going to be divisive. But when you're on the same page, I mean, there's a difference. There's been times when we had adopted our fourth child and, I, again, felt from the Lord like we're supposed to do this. But Adam was praying, he's like I just don't have a peace about it yet. For us to just go ahead and do that, like we would have been divided and disjointed but when the time was right and Adam's like yes, I'm confident that we should do this. It was so much sweeter because we had that unity and that's a picture of Christ and of the Trinity and what, He once used marriage as a picture that the world will know Him. - [Aaron] Yeah and I just, it's perfect, it's a beautiful illustration of what we're talking about. Because to be honest, God could have put on your heart, might have put on your, did put on your heart that He wants you to write another book. But at the end of the day, He wants us to do the things He's given us to do His way. - [Jennifer] And in His timing. - [Aaron] And in His timing. So it could have simply been, you're gonna go this but I want you to walk this out well. And so, His challenge to you is to do it right versus, no, God's told me to do something, I'm gonna do it, I'm gonna do it my way, I'm gonna do it and everyone's gotta get outta my way or jump on the train. And any one of us could do this, Adam could be walking this, I could be walking this, Jennifer could be walking this but God's like just because I have something for you, doesn't mean I have that thing for you right this moment. And we see that all throughout the Bible with Moses and the people of Israel. With all of the prophets not being able to see what they were promised. - [Jennifer] David anointed-- - [Aaron] David and his anointing as a king. Like we see like, so it doesn't mean it's a no, it might mean it's a yes but later. And I love the process that you guys walk through and we can all take from this example. Saying, okay, Lord, I feel this is something You put on my heart but even though You put it on my heart, I'm still going to offer it to You and ask that You show me how You want it done and when You want it done. And a part of that is getting counsel like you said and then going to your spouse and saying here's what it is, what are we gonna do about this? - Fasting and praying. - Let's pray about this together, let's be on the same page. I wanted to encourage you, that was really good, I love that. - [Jennifer] So you've given us this picture of unity, you said being on the same page with each other makes us stronger together. Can you guys just talk a little bit about oneness and unity and how that makes us stronger for the ministry that God has for all of us? - [Adam] I mean, again, I think unity is so important in marriage, the enemy uses little things to drive wedges between us. And in Song of Solomon, I'm loving the Song of Solomon right now, that book is fantastic. There's this message of catch the little foxes, it's sometimes just the little things in a marriage that the enemy uses to drive a wedge between us and it's important that we are communicating often and on the same page. Recognizing little things that we say, hey, this is something that we might wanna look at and pray about and talk about and maybe even we gotta get rid of this because it's driving a wedge between us. There are things that we need to recognize and remove or at least be aware of and be communicating about to be able to stay unified. The other thing I was gonna say is, again, marriage being a picture of the church and Christ. And Christ being the bride/groom and the church being the bride and Christ wanting perfect unity between Him and the church. And, again, we're sinful people. And so, that some day will be accomplished but that unification, that pure unadulterated unity is something that like Katie said before, the world is going to see Jesus by the way we do our marriages. And if we're divided, that says something to the world about God and about Jesus and vice versa. If we're unified and we're on the same page and we're communicating, that communicates something very important as well. - [Katie] I was just gonna add too, the other day, we had a really hard conversation because honestly, we are both tired, we have busy lives. And so, we would just kinda zone out on our phones at night and we are kind of slipping into this pattern of kind of coexisting, doing things during the day, kinda saying a few things and then like zoning out, escaping on our phones and then going to bed. And we had a hard conversation where there was lots of tears. Honestly, Adam, he's a go with the flow guy but I know when he brings up something that I need to work on, it's a big deal 'cause he waits a long till we have to say it. But we were just realizing like I could almost see this path we are going down of like had we kept going down that path, we would have lost a lot of that unity and oneness. Because honestly, unity and oneness is hard work. We have the Holy Spirit, obviously, to help us but it's those hard decisions that aren't always convenient and aren't always comfortable but they bring him the most worry. - [Aaron] So, I was just thinking, Jennifer and I literally just had a conversation similar a couple nights ago. And with this book coming out and the podcast and all the things that we're trying to be obedient in lately and with God. I was just mentioning to her, I was like hey, Jennifer, we need to be extra protective over our intimacy, over our time alone. Because in these seasons of us walking in obedience and chasing after these things, this is where we're gonna be attacked, this is where we're gonna lose focus. Is in our physical intimacy, in our spiritual intimacy, in our times alone when we should be recharging each other, being recharged in the word. And so, I just mentioned to her, I was like we need to be extra vigilant in protecting this part of our unity because if that goes, it doesn't matter what else we do. And so, it sounds like we were on the same journey. - [Jennifer] Well, I think everyone listening too can relate to this 'cause as you were talking, Katie, I think I can picture all the listeners on their end looking at each other if they're listening together as a couple. Well, with these downcast basis, like yeah, that's us. Everybody has access to social media and their phones and other things too that get in the way of that intimacy-- - [Aaron] That take our attention from each other. - [Jennifer] That take our attention away from each other and I love that you brought that up just as a reminder. So if everyone can just drop this note down, it would be to get our eyes off of our phones, off of the things that draw attention away from each other, look to each other and look to God of what He is doing. 'Cause He is doing something in this world and He's doing it through His people, He's doing it through us. So I love that you brought that up and I appreciate the encouragement to other people. My next question for you guy, oh, go ahead. - [Adam] That's not something that is kind of a one time conversation either, that's something where sometimes-- - Right. - It's continual. - [Adam] Those conversations happen often because we can easily slip back into old patterns, we can easily slip back into things that are just easy and avoid the tough conversations and honestly, tough change and tough challenging. Katie, part of the reason Katie is in my life is to challenge me and make me better and vice versa. I believe that God brought me to her to make her better and together, we're better. But changing the way that we are and changing the things that are easy takes work and it's not fun. And so, a lot of times it's easier just to escape into something else and just avoid those conversations. And that is a conversation, obviously, that could probably happen more often than it even does and would make us better, so. - [Aaron] Yeah, so, thinking about those conversations, those corrective course changing conversations that need to happen often. Our pastor always says in conversations about raising our children, 90% affirmation, 10% correction, those 10% corrections need to happen. Like you said the other night, you just were like hey, we're at a point where this needs to be addressed and changed tonight. But the 90% affirmation side, how important and how integral has affirmation played a role in the building of unity in your marriage and for those listening that we need to be recognizing that affirmation is important? How does that look? - [Katie] Well, one example that comes to mind is actually with our kids, so I'm not the most tidy housekeeper as I may have alluded to early on. And so, when it's time to clean, I kind of turn into like housezilla. It's just like I'm barking orders, I'm like come on everybody! 'Cause I'm so stressed by the amount of what needs to get done. So, my son, he's 12, sometimes he'll just stop and go, mom, you're so beautiful. And later on I thought he's being manipulative because it would change my attitude and all of a sudden, I would stop and realize how horrible I was being and when he pointed that out, it made me feel good inside. And so, the picture when, if Adam sends me a text just saying I appreciate you, I love you, period. It does, it builds into that and I'm more guilty of saying, hey, could you pick up this on your way home? And hey, how about this? But even when he goes and cashes his paycheck, trying to say thank you for working hard to provide for our family, just those little things in texting can be great with that. Sometimes even when you're at your house, of course you wanna talk face to face but if you're in the other room, just say, hey, I love you. I think that's huge because those corrective things, if that's happening all the time, it wears us down and we get discouraged. But building into our marriage in those ways, I don't think can happen enough. - [Adam] That's a good point, I think we can put so much weight and a burden on each other when we're heavy on the corrective side of things and vice versa. We can really lighten things up and make things more alive and life-giving when we're heavy on the affirmation side of things. And so, yeah, I think we both, that scenario, we can both grow in, for sure. - [Aaron] Yeah, us too. And it makes for, and so, affirmation is proaction and I see correction as reactive. So it's the thing like well, when it's necessary, we should do it 'cause correction needs to happen. But the affirmation makes a lot of the correction much less because we're being affirmed in the correct directions. We're being affirmed in the word of God, we're being affirmed to continue in the faith and to continue in what we believe and what's true. And how, like you said, you're beautiful. And you're like oh, I am beautiful and I need to be acting like what I am. Yeah, the affirmation is so important to us, just continue to move the right direction and keep our marriages and our ministries full of life and full of love and peace and joy. So, Jennifer, why don't you ask this one last question and then we'll get to the last last question. - [Jennifer] The last last question. Okay, so, in this chapter of Marriage After God, we share this idea of contrasting, what the world says about love. That you and me against the world so it's kind of like internalized love versus God's picture and desire for the mission of our marriage which is you and me for the world. What does this look like in your guys' marriage? - [Katie] Well, first of all, I just love that idea, it's powerful. And it reminds me of like let's say you're trying to push a big wheel, like if we're pushing against each other, we're gonna get nowhere. But if we get on one side of that wheel and push it, like my kids were helping me push my van that was stuck in the driveway this morning. - Oh no. - Oh no, 'cause the snow. - [Katie] You're combining your strengths and I think there's so much hostility and division out there in the world. I think, again, back to Nehemiah when they were trying to rebuild the wall, they said fight for your families. And I love the picture, it was all the people that were building this broken down wall, were doing it, it said, shoulder to shoulder. And I love that picture in marriage, are you serving shoulder to shoulder? Again, whether you're in the same room or not, are you going towards one goal which is to honor God? - [Aaron] Yes, yes. - [Katie] Because we've had friends recently die, like several and it's reminding of how fleeting life is. And God has given each marriage a purpose and that purpose could look different but all of purposes combined are to advance the kingdom. And like you said, husband and wife for the things of God. - [Adam] I think what I would say to that is it sometimes take a change of mindset as well. Because we as Christians, it can be very easy to slip into a mindset of oh, the world is attacking my faith, the world is attacking my God, the world is attacking me, the culture is doing these things. And so, it can be very easy to get defensive and put walls up and say, okay, you're attacking me, I'm coming after you. When really the mindset that God has given us is He said don't be surprised when this stuff happens, they hated Me. Jesus said they hated Me and they're going to hate you because you're aligned with Me. But He also said lay down your life for those people, sacrifice for those people, serve those people. And so, it could just take, again, conversations, how are we becoming more passionate to be like Jesus in loving and laying down our life for the world? As opposed to how do protect ourselves against the world? - [Jennifer] I love that perspective. And I also can't get that imagine of pushing a wheel out of my mind, I love imagery. And so, that's really powerful to me and I just think of husband and wife on either side like you said, Katie. And as pushing with all of our force and using all of our strength and then feeling super defeated because it has not moved at all, it doesn't work. And so-- - Well, actually, to take that analogy further, when one does get weak, what happens? The wheel rolls right over 'em. And so, we harm our marriage and instead of working in the same direction and actually getting somewhere, we also don't destroy our marriage. We don't destroy our partner, our spouse, the one that God's given us to be one with, so those are great-- - Perspectives. - Perspectives, yeah. So let's get to this last question, we've asked this to everyone. In your own words, what is a marriage after God? - [Katie] Rock, paper, scissors. - [Adam] We're both playing it to tell ya, hey, you take the part of this one. But I think, again, I love the duality of the title there, a Marriage After God, meaning we're seeking to follow God, we're seeking to be in alignment with His design for marriage, we're seeking to be in alignment in His purpose for marriage. But we're also, lost my train of thought there, but-- - [Katie] Well, that we want our marriage to be, go ahead. I was just gonna say, we want God to be first, right? Our marriage comes after God but then we also want our marriage to pursue God and the things of God. 'Cause like bed, this life is but a vapor and there's eternity if we are in Christ, we will live eternally with Him but we really have a limited time on this Earth. And there's so many petty things, I think Elizabeth Elliot, I've heard through the grapevine she had said this. That I think Jim Elliot, her husband who is martyred, he used to snore. Well, that could have been the thing that just drove her crazy but then afterwards, when her husband wasn't there, she missed that snoring. I always joke with Adam that he's gonna miss when I'm gone because I fall asleep during movies and he's not convinced that he will miss that. But I think it's do you want an internal perspective-- - [Aaron] Jennifer, you fall asleep during movies too. - [Katie] Is God the head of our marriage? Is He giving us our directives and are we going after the things He's laid before us? - Amen. - Amen and amen. That is so awesome, thank you so much for answering that. And just so you guys know, we're super encouraged by you and the ministry that is coming out of your marriage. You guys compliment each other so well and the Lord's using it to impact this world for His kingdom. And so, we're cheering you on and we just wanna give you an opportunity to share a little bit more about where people could follow along, you guys do these awesome interviews together. So why don't you share a little bit about that. - [Katie] Well, first of all, thanks so much for having us and I hope everyone gets a copy of Marriage After God, I know it's gonna be a wonderful resource to strengthen marriages, so-- - Thank you. - You're welcome. So we do a live show called Stop Hammock Time, 9:00 p.m. on Wednesday evenings on Facebook Live and you can find that if you go to Katie M, M as in Martha, Reid, R-E-I-D on Facebook. And we do those, and sometimes it's just Adam and I, sometimes you interview people. We have a great interview with you guys on there but it's a way to encourage marriages. And then we also have a Facebook group called Hammock Time Hangout Hub and we just kind of go a little deeper with the people in that group and share things like about your guys book or about an article we read or a question. But we just wanna encourage couples to grow closer in the relationship with the Lord and the relationship with each other. - [Aaron] Awesome, we thank you guys and we're gonna go into a time of prayer for a second and then we're gonna close out. - [Adam] Yeah. - [Aaron] Dear Lord, thank you for the gift of companionship. Marriage is such an intimate friendship that blesses us. We desire to draw closer to each other and to use the intimate mind to bless your name. Thank you for being intertwined in our relationship and at the center of it. You're the reason we are stronger together. Please continue to strengthen us as a chord of three strands. We pray that you would use us to do hard things as we build up your body and build up your kingdom. Be our strength as we persevere. May we be intentional in encouraging each other in marriage so that we do not grow weary. We pray against the enemy, we pray against his ways. Thank you for being our refuge and our shield. Thank you for equipping us and empowering us to stay strong and to fulfill Your will. May Your will be done in us and through our marriage in Jesus' name. - [All] Amen. - [Aaron] Hey, so we just wanna thank you guys for joining us. And we wanna thank everyone that has been listening. We pray that this conversation has blessed you and your marriage and we pray that your conversations will be fruitful from this conversation. And you know what, we have one more episode in this series. So please stay tuned and we look forward to having you next week. Did you enjoy today's show? If you did, it would mean the world to us if you could leave us a review on iTunes. Also, if you're interested, you can find many more encouraging stories and resources at marriageaftergod.com and let us help you cultivate an extraordinary marriage.

Order Your Copy Of Marriage After God Today! https://Shop.marriageaftergod.com Quote From Marriage After God Book “You and your marriage are no accident! He created both you and your spouse intentionally, with a specific purpose in mind!” Prayer *Dear Lord, Thank you for the gift of marriage. Thank you for pouring your thoughtfulness into the way you designed marriage. Thank you for giving us a toolbelt that is unique, so that we can pursue and do all of the things you have for us to do. Please help us to understand everything that is in our toolbelt and show us how we can use it for your glory. We pray we would keep nothing back from you. We pray we would walk humbly with you and with each other. Use us to encourage one another in marriage and affirm the gifts we see in each other. We pray that we would see all of the little and big ways you are inviting us to join you to spread your gospel of love, salvation, and amazing grace. May the testimony of Jesus be the motivation in our hearts to do what we do, all for your glory! In Jesus’ name, amen!* READ TRANSCRIPT [Aaron] Hey, we're Aaron and Jennifer Smith with Marriage After God. [Jennifer] Helping you cultivate an extraordinary marriage. [Aaron] And today we're on part 10 of the Marriage After God series, and we're gonna be talking with Channing and Jessica Gillespie about the tool belt God has given us. [Aaron] Welcome to the Marriage After God podcast, where we believe that marriage was meant for more than just happily ever after. [Jennifer] I'm Jennifer, also known as Unveiled Wife. [Aaron] And I'm Aaron, also known as Husband Revolution. [Jennifer] We have been married for over a decade. [Aaron] And so far, we have four young children. [Jennifer] We have been doing marriage ministry online for over seven years through blogging and social media. [Aaron] With the desire to inspire couples to keep God at the center of their marriage, encouraging them to walk in faith every day. [Jennifer] We believe the Christian marriage should be an extraordinary one, full of life. [Aaron] Love. [Jennifer] And power. [Aaron] That can only be found by chasing after God. [Jennifer] Together. [Aaron] Thank you for joining us on this journey as we chase boldly after God's will for our life together. [Jennifer] This is Marriage After God. Thank you guys so much for joining us today. We just wanted to take a moment to ask everyone listening to leave a review. This is just a great way to get the message of this podcast out into the world. So, if you could support us in that way, that would be so awesome. It's so easy. All you have to do is scroll down to the bottom and leave a star rating review or comment review. Both really encourage Aaron and I, so thank you to everyone who's already done that. [Aaron] Also, we'd like to invite everyone to pick up a copy of the Marriage After God book. It's our new book Jennifer and I wrote together, and it's the reason we're doing this series. It's the reason this podcast exists, so we'd love for you to get a copy of our new book, Marriage After God. Go to shop.marriageaftergod.com and grab a copy. Thank you everyone for listening. Today we have some Instagram friends of ours, Channing and Jessica Gillespie. Hey, welcome to the show, guys. [Channing] Hey, Aaron, Jen. How you guys doing? [Aaron] We're doing well. [Jennifer] So good. Thank you for being here with us today. We're so excited to have you guys, and we just want you to take a moment and let the listeners know who you are. So maybe how long you guys have been married, how many children you have, and what you do for work. [Channing] Awesome, yeah. Well, my name is Channing Gillespie. This is my wife Jessica. [Jessica] Hi. [Channing] We've been married two years, got married in 2016, October, and we're loving marriage. [Aaron] That's good, right? [Channing] We are high school sweethearts. [Jennifer] Aw. [Channing] So we've been together a long time. We just had four first baby. [Jennifer] Woohoo! [Jessica] She's so cute, she's the best. [Aaron] What's her name? [Channing] Her name is Hadley Kate. We had her in August of this year, so she is five months, and she is the only grandbaby right now and the only niece, and so she is spoiled rotten. But we've enjoyed these past five months as mom and dad. It's a new. [Jessica] It's interesting. [Channing] It's interesting, that's a good word. [Aaron] Yeah, learning to be married and learning to be parents at the same time. [Jessica] Yeah, for real. [Channing] Yes. But yeah, we love it. I am actually on staff at the Church at Grace Park in White House, Tennessee. It's a little bit north of Nashville. I serve as the college pastor there. That's relatively new. We started that ministry back in June of last year, and been going strong with that, and I serve on the worship team at the church also, and I'm a songwriter and am seeking to write songs that point to hope amidst sorrow. That's really where I feel like the Lord's leading me to write songs right now. And so, just kind of seeking after the Lord and looking for new opportunities to do those things, both in ministry and in songwriting ministry and in worship. So that's a little bit about me. Jessica, you wanna go? [Jessica] Yeah, I am a wife and a mom. I got to come home full-time and be with Haddie Kate when she was born in August. [Aaron] Awesome. [Jessica] So I'm really blessed to be able to do that and excited that the Lord provided that, a way for that to happen for me. But I also, I like to create and I love to write. So I started a blog that's called The Good Cottage Wife in 2016, the year we got married. Started that, and so I have that going, and also, I am a consultant with Rodan + Fields. So I help people change their skin and change their lives, and I love it. I wear a few different hats throughout the week, but I love each one, and I love getting to use those in creative ways. [Aaron] Awesome. [Jennifer] That's beautiful. [Aaron] Yeah, I love the diversity in you guys' career paths and also how God's using you. And that's what we wanna talk about today, getting into this idea, but before we get to our main questions, we always start off question an icebreaker question. Are you guys ready for that? [Channing and Jessica] Yes. [Aaron] Okay, all right, here it goes, all right? This is gonna let people know a lot about you guys. What is the most awkward thing you've experienced as parents so far? [Channing] I don't know. We were talking about that this morning a little bit too, of what's some crazy things. I don't know if there's been anything awkward per se yet, but I think you get initiated into parenthood when you get peed on a couple times, so. [Aaron] There you go, yeah. [Channing] I've had that happen too many times. [Aaron] Yeah, I think it's a requirement. [Jessica] I did have, we were at church one Sunday and I was holding her. She wasn't very old, not that she's very old now, but I was holding her, and my hand started getting wet, and I'm like, aw, man, she's peeing on me, and I go to lift her up, and she had pooped on me. [Aaron] Oh, no, right in the middle of church. [Jessica] And it was on my shirt a little bit. I'm trying to wash it off and stuff, and I had brought a change of clothes, but it was in the car instead of her diaper bag. [Aaron] Oh, no. [Jessica] And so, everybody was like, yeah, that'll be the last time you do that. [Aaron] Yeah, poop's infinitely worse than pee. [Jennifer] I was thinking of this question for you guys, and I was thinking about our own experiences, 'cause we have a couple kids. [Aaron] We have four. [Jennifer] Yeah, we have four. [Aaron] We have two couple kids. [Jennifer] But the first thing that comes to my mind was my kind of initiation to motherhood, and that was Elliott was born in November, and I remember it was Christmas Day, and we had stopped at a gas station, and I took him out to nurse him, and somehow, he managed to move beyond all of his clothes and only poop all over me. And I'm like, oh, no, Aaron, we have to stop at Target or something, 'cause we're on our way to my grandparents house. [Aaron] Oh, we had no clothes. [Jennifer] Nobody said you're supposed to have an extra change of clothes. And so everything was closed. I mean, everything was closed, 'cause it's Christmas Day. I ended up having to stop at a relative's house, a cousin that I had that was my same size and I asked her if I could borrow a pair of pants. [Aaron] Oh, I remember this. [Jennifer] Luckily it worked just fine. [Aaron] So pro parent tip, bring a change of clothes for yourselves. [Jennifer] For everyone. [Aaron] Yeah. [Jennifer] If someone is in the car with you, if you're traveling, just bring an extra change for everyone. [Channing] Love it. [Aaron] Yeah, a baby go bag, extra pants, shirts, underwear, socks. [Jennifer] Okay, all right, we're gonna move on. [Aaron] All right. [Jennifer] Okay, so we're gonna jump in with a quote. Okay, we're gonna jump in with a quote from Marriage After God, from chapter 10, and it says, "You and your marriage are no accident. "He created both you and your spouse intentionally "with a specific purpose in mind," which, I love this quote, "and it's for every marriage and for everyone." [Aaron] Yeah, the reason we wrote this book is because God's got a mission for all of his people, that we're all a part of his body, that his body's doing something in this world. So our encouragement is just to marriages to recognize that their marriage wasn't an accident, that God's got a plan for it, and he desires us to say yes to him and to offer up our tools and gifts and talents. And so today, we're gonna talk about tools and what that looks like in your life, but also, that everyone listening can ask themselves the same questions, that they can use this conversation we're having today with you guys as a launching pad or as a conversation starter for themselves to be like, oh, what has God given us, and how can we use what God's given us to serve him, to say yes to him? So I hope you're excited about that. [Jessica] Yes. [Aaron] Cool, so the first question we got for you guys is do you believe God brought you two together with a specific purpose in mind? [Channing] Yeah, absolutely. For me specifically, I know even in my pursuit of Jessica, if that doesn't sound creepy. That's not supposed to sound that way. But in seeking the Lord with her, I had always prayed for one girl. Jessica's the only girl that I ever dated, and knowing that just in the back of my mind, I can hear my great-grandmother always saying to me, don't you ever bring a girl into my house that you don't intend on marrying. [Aaron] That's awesome. [Channing] And I really was drawn to that. I really asked the Lord, would you just send me one? And he sent me the best one. [Aaron] Found a good man, Jessica. [Channing] And with that, you know, even when we started dating in high school, I didn't really see the extent of the things that the Lord was gonna do with us. I'm reminded of Psalm 139, that he knew us individually before we were ever thought of, and that while he was knitting us together in the womb, that he had a plan and a purpose, individually, but also together. And we're just seeing even the beginning steps of that in the first two years of marriage. But we know that his plans and his purposes, though, we don't always see them in full, yet we know that they're good and that they're for our good. And so, just being able to walk in the truth that the Lord did bring me a good thing in my wife and knowing that together, whatever that is, whether that's just being a mom and dad to Hadley or if that's college pastors, in this season, we know that he has a purpose for us. [Aaron] Love that. [Channing] You have anything that you can think of? [Jessica] Yeah, I think it's cool that a lot of times, you don't see things for yourself or you don't see things in yourself, and then all of the sudden, God has you in the middle of something, and you're like, never ever did I ever think that this is what it would look like, but it's much better than what you could have conjured up on your own. [Aaron] Yeah. [Jessica] Just an example of that is when we were dating, which, he'll probably go into this deeper a little later, but when we were dating, and we had been dating a while, but he came to me and he was like, I really feel like I'm called to the ministry vocationally, at least right now. I don't know what that looks like. But he said I don't know, I just wanna let you know. I don't know if that changes anything for you. [Aaron] Warning. [Jessica] And not that it was a bad thing or anything, but I was not expecting that. Never did I think, oh, yes, I'm gonna be a minister's wife, and my husband's gonna be on church staff and all that. I just had never thought that. And so when he said that, I was like, oh, my. I'm gonna have to think about this, not that I wouldn't want him to pursue what God wanted for him. But quickly God shut my mouth and cut off my mind of thoughts and fears that came up, just worries of what financially and all the things like that. But he said, don't stifle what I'm trying to do and what I can do through him and through you with him even though it's not something that you ever thought would be a part of your testimony and part of your life. So I think it's cool that, and I know that he did bring us together for such a time as this, for college ministry, for his music, for me to get to be a stay-at-home mom. All of that is part of his plan, and even though it wasn't something and we didn't get to this point that we're at right now the way that I in my feeble mind thought we would, it's been much more filled with joy and fulfilling than I ever thought it could be, and it's because it was God's plan and not ours. [Jennifer] Man, I love the hopefulness that you guys are both sharing. Both of your perspectives are so full of hope, and I just hope that the people listening are encouraged by this, because what I'm hearing is it doesn't matter how long you've been married. It doesn't matter whether you've envisioned your life the way that it is or the way that it will be. We can all have hope in that and trust in what God is doing in our marriages, and I love that. [Aaron] And I also love that you essentially said, you're like, I had a different idea or I didn't know what my idea would be, but I yielded to God's idea instead, and I think that's the key in this pursuit of okay, Lord, what do you want for our marriage, what do you have for it, what have you given these things to us for, is a yielding, is saying yes. Okay, Lord, yes. It doesn't look like how I think, it's not going how I would have manufactured this to go, but we want what you want, and that's what I hear from you guys, and that's awesome. [Jennifer] So in Marriage After God, we talk about this idea of the marriage tool belt, and without giving away too much, because we want everyone to go read it, what do you guys think a marriage tool belt is, and what do you think of when you hear that term and what do you think is in your tool belt? And you guys haven't read the book yet, so this'll be interesting. [Channing] Not yet, not yet. [Jessica] As far as what I think is in our tool belt, definitely some things that are in there are advice that we can draw on from people that have been married much longer than us. I know that I received a ton of advice just from my mom, my grandmother, from women at church who have been married when we were engaged, and it's kind of funny, because sometimes, when you receive advice, it's like, yeah, okay. Well, that might not really apply to us, or I don't see that happening with us. And then you're quickly silenced when you enter that situation. It's kind of like, you don't know what you're getting into until you're in it, not that it's a bad thing or anything. It's just one of those things that, when you get there, you do have to draw on that advice. You're like, oh, they were right. Yeah, that would really help in this situation. So I would say advice, and then also, one thing that I've had to really try to hone in on and remember to do is to learn from our own experiences. Don't make the same mistake twice if you can go back and say, okay, this happened before. What did I do? Okay, that was probably not the right thing to say. That was the wrong moment. How can I make this not happen again, or how can we work through this better, if that makes sense. [Aaron] Yeah, no, I love that. [Jessica] And I would say advice, drawing from your own experiences and learning from them, and then humility and communication, and I know people say communication, yeah, I know that. But willingness to communicate, willingness to converse when there is an issue and just personally, I've had to work on that I know, because I'm the one that, when there's an issue or someone gets upset about something, I don't wanna talk about it right then. Like, leave me alone. Let me process this in my own mind. I don't wanna talk. And that's not the best approach. And so, I have had to learn, like, put down your pride, say you're sorry, and be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to become angry. So that, as far as what's in my tool belt, those are some very specific things. [Channing] Yeah, and I would add too of just growing up, thinking about the times that I saw my dad put his tool belt on, which, I don't own a tool belt. I need to probably get one. [Aaron] You're a dad now and a husband. You're supposed to have a tool belt. [Channing] I am. I have tools; I don't have a belt for them. [Aaron] Yeah, I don't have one either, yeah. [Channing] But I thought back to the times that I saw my dad put his tool belt on. It was when he was building something or he was repairing something. And I see that so much in marriage also of what I think the tool belt can be is whether it's building something together in your marriage, whether that's a ministry or just building a family, or there are gonna be times that you have to put the tool belt on because you're gonna have to repair some things in your marriage, and you're gonna have to address things. I think about it much like a house. If you don't attend to certain things in the house, after a while, those things are gonna need attention. And so, there might be times in marriage that Jess and I would have to address an area that would be an issue, or that has caused there to be some problem, but with that tool belt, I agree with Jess on a lot of that being from advice, and we've both been blessed to have parents that have stuck together through thick and thin and have really given us a good model of what marriage should look like and to persevere and endure. There's a lot of endurance in marriage. But with that in our tool belt too, to look at past experience, maybe even things that we've gleaned from our parents' marriages, things that we've learned from them over the years that help shape us in how we relate to one another, how we raise Hadley. I think there's a lot of things that can go into that belt. But those main things, I'm just really reminded of the building and the repairing idea. [Aaron] Yeah, it's almost like you guys have read that book already, and you haven't. The rebuilding and the repairing, those analogies are some of the reasons we bring up this idea of a tool belt, is because the tools are meant for something. They're meant for building and repairing. And the tools that God has given us, and you guys actually mentioned some of them. You mentioned relationships; you said advice. Relationships are part of that tool belt. You talked about your past and your experiences and all of these things that God has given us, and sometimes, we don't recognize them as tools to be used or things that God's given us as gifts in our life, the things that have happened to us in the past, education that we've received and our relationships. These are all things that God's given us that he wants us to use and steward and call on and employ in our life for not only our family's sake, but also for the family of God. So I love that you use those analogies. We were just looking at each other shaking our heads like yeah, this is good. [Jessica] That's awesome. [Aaron] Yeah, and that's our encouragement to those listening, is then recognizing that they may not be able to relate to everything in your story, but what is relatable is that everyone has a tool belt. All the things that you guys just mentioned, the people listening may not have a family like yours that raised you with certain things, but they do have a family, and they were raised a certain way. And whether positive or negative, those are still tools that can be drawn upon, and that leads us into this next question. One of the tools in the tool belt that we discuss in our book is our testimony. And so, that's why I go to this idea of, whether it's negative or positive, all of that plays into the testimony that God's given us of what Jesus has done in our life. And so I wanna ask you guys, you know, what is your testimony? What has Jesus done in your life? How has God drawn you to himself? Let's just talk about that tool for a moment. [Channing] Yeah well, I'll start. I grew up, my dad has been a pastor for pretty much my entire life, so I grew up in a ministry-style home. And so, I have the typical church Sunday school answer in the sense that we were always in church, and mom and dad always had us. When the doors were open, we were there. But for me, I got saved at an early age. My dad actually led me to Christ, just began asking questions when I was young. From that point, I had a good understanding of Jesus died for me and he wants me to come live with him in heaven. That was the extent of my faith as a child. But as I grew up, you begin to understand the depth of the gospel in that as you get older, you start to recognize you've really screwed some things up, and your sin just gets wider and wider, and the gap gets wider and wider. But then you begin to really appreciate and come to know the depth of the love that God has for his people and that he sent Jesus. And so, for me, it really became real to me when I got into high school and where I really began to get serious about my faith that it was more of a relationship when I got into high school with him, and for me, part of my testimony involves a call to the ministry and a running away from that call for a long time. Didn't wanna do ministry, didn't want that life. I grew up in it. Didn't want to be a pastor, but thought I had my own idea of what my life was gonna look, and pursued things that I thought were gonna bring me joy and happiness, and I can remember that Jessica shared a little bit about that conversation with me and her, but before that, I can remember my mom just point blank looking at me and saying, when are you gonna stop running? And a couple days after that, I was at a mens conference at a church in our community, and I can remember just sitting among thousands of other men, and it was like the Lord, it was just me and him in that room. And he said, I want you to stop running. I wanna use you in the ministry. And I accepted that call that night, not begrudgingly, but it was finally a moment in my heart and my life that I saw the picture of what the Lord wanted for my life. Now, he didn't say here's how this is gonna look. It was just a call to his ministry. [Aaron] Yeah, he was looking for a yes. [Channing] So yeah, it was just, okay. And so for me, that's been a big, big part of even my relationship with the Lord in the sense of learning to trust him and learning to depend on him and to submit to him and surrender to him. And so that call came when I was in my early years of college, and as soon as I made that call, all the anxieties of what I was gonna do with my life just started to fade away because I knew that he had already orchestrated and ordained me for that moment and that call. So for me, it's still growing. I count it as a relationship. I'm seeking to know him through his word and through his church and through just study of him. So I've seen my relationship with Jesus grow, even in the past two years of marriage, too, with the rigors and the good times and the bad times through marriage too, of learning how to trust him through it all. So that's what I would say, what about you? [Jessica] Yeah, so I was saved at six years old at a VBS, and just something that everyone knew about me. I was very shy. I'm not an extrovert at all. I really have to make myself come out of my comfort zone, which I know we all have to, but there's probably not an ounce of extrovert in me, naturally. But so I was saved there, and actually, part of it was I had to, I didn't wanna go down by myself. There were plenty of kids going down, 'cause they asked if anybody wanted to come down and receive Jesus into their heart, and I wanted to, but I was too scared to go down by myself. And so I asked somebody to walk down with me. And that, I didn't realize it until later how symbolic that was gonna be in my testimony of who I was and who God created me to be and who he made me to be after I received him. But as far as an intimate relationship with him, I really didn't know what that looked like or what that meant. In sixth or seventh grade, I was at a retreat with our school, and I don't remember who spoke. I don't remember what they said. But I vividly remember being at the altar and thinking, okay, I don't want a hello God, goodbye God relationship with him. I want a deep relationship with him. I want my life to matter. And so that was the moment where I really became intentional about growing that relationship with him and nurturing it, but a big part of my testimony, like I said, was I was shy. I was not willing really to get out of my comfort zone, and then the Lord said to me, it's not about what you have to say or what you can do, but it's about what I'm gonna say through you and what I'm gonna do through you. And he kind of just said, and there's nothing else that I need to say to you. Like what you guys said, you just need to say yes. Just say yes to me, and just do what I ask you to do. It's scary, and sometimes, it's inconvenient. Actually, probably most of the time it's gonna be inconvenient, but you're not who you once were, so you don't need to look like that anymore, and you don't need to be scared. And like a lot of girls do, as I got older, I started struggling with self-esteem issues. I really started to try to hide the fact that I struggled with that, and in a sense, I didn't have an eating disorder, but I started to really abuse exercise in my life and then just didn't eat enough to compensate for that. So I guess you could say I had an eating disorder, but that really became a god in my life. I was riding my bike around the house one day trying to get all that exercise in and make myself feel worthy and feel beautiful, and I remember, it was almost like the Lord stopped me, like I couldn't pedal anymore. And he said, oh, girl, just give it up. Like, you don't need this. All you need is me. I'm more than enough for you. My grace is sufficient for you, and stop going after all these things that you think are gonna make you comfortable, all these things that you think are gonna make you feel satisfied, because they're not going to. So that's really what he's done in my life and a big part of my testimony is when we're saved, we're not who we once were, but I, at least looking back at myself, I know that I am nothing as far as what my life looked like, the things I said, the things I did and wouldn't do because I was too scared. I don't look the same, and I thank God for that. [Aaron] Amen, wow. [Jennifer] Yeah, that's so cool, guys. We really appreciate hearing your testimony of what he's done in your lives, and I mean, I can pull out things just from hearing you talk of how God's already using those testimonies in what you're doing today. But I wanna hear from you. So how would you say that God's using these testimonies for what he has you doing today? [Channing] Well, for me, I know for this season, we've referenced it a couple times, of just working in college ministry. The Lord laid a deep desire in our hearts for 18to 25-year olds, because it's a very, very pivotal point in the lives of students, and I've been able to have some really good conversations with students who have come to crossroads in their lives of, do I pursue this, or do I pursue this? Do I listen to what friends say, or do I listen to what the Lord says? Do I listen to the desires that my mom and dad have for my life, or do I listen to the desire that I know God has for my life? For me, I can remember in that same age gap standing at that crossroad and multiple times coming to crossroads and running from what the Lord had desired and desired for my life. I wish I could go back and change some of those things. It would have saved a lot of heartbreak and a lot of striving in my life, but I know that it was all working for my good. So for me, to be able to share out of that on the ministry side with students to say, hey, you don't have to feel alone when you come to these decisions in your life that you just don't know what you're doing. I've seen the Lord be able to really cultivate some deeper relationships, some deeper trust in some of those relationships with some of the students that we work with. But then there's always still, I mean, Jesus has absolutely changed my life. So regardless of any of that, I desire for my life to be poured out for the gospel. And so, whatever that looks like, whether that's a conversation about where do I go to college next year or I'm really struggling through the pit of despair, Jesus is the answer. He's enough. And so, for me, that's always the bedrock of my testimony, is that Jesus is the answer. And so, where we may not always see him working right off the bat, we know that he is and that the story's not finished. And so, for me, I've seen the Lord open some really wide open doors for me to talk with college students, and even some in our church. [Aaron] Yeah. [Channing] That are not students, but the Lord just has opened doors for us to share. What about you? [Jennifer] Well, real quick, I just wanna say, I think what's so powerful of what I heard in your testimony is that when you said yes to God, all those anxieties that you had about what you were supposed to be doing went away. And so now you get to share that testimony, that part of your story, with all of these college-aged kids who are asking these really big questions, and that stands out to me as such a powerful way to communicate that when you say yes to God, he's the one that takes care of the details, and we don't have to worry about 'em. [Aaron] Yeah, and it doesn't mean things are gonna be easy. Like you said, you didn't get all of the answers right away, but he totally gave you peace, and you knew that you could trust him. So that's awesome, seeing that. Right there, you have a direct connection that you get to draw from that tool that God's given you, that testimony, that experience that you had with the Father to you pass onto these college students. And so, and I know you were about to ask Jessica, but Jessica, I have each question for you. This part of your testimony with self-image and just chasing after something to fulfill you and God getting ahold of your heart and saying, you don't need that. Has he given you opportunities to share with women who are struggling with the same things? [Jessica] Yes, and that's what I was gonna talk about, is you know, it's not about us, and that's what I usually tell people who start confiding in me about issues in their life or struggles with their image, who they are, and being scared to come out and be who God's made them to be, is none of this is about us. And if it is about you, and that's all you can focus on is what you have to offer, well, we don't have anything to offer. [Aaron] Yeah. [Jessica] There's no good thing apart from Christ. And I do love, and I am so thankful, that he walked me through that and he helped me through it so that I can share with others, because it's really cool when you see God take someone who has no self-image in a positive way, they don't look at their self at all through the lens of Christ, which is really easy to fall into, but it's so cool to see someone like that get up on a stage and sing or get up and even just share their testimony, or do the thing that they're so scared to do, but they can do it with Christ and with God's help. So that has been so cool, and I do think a lot about the fact that if I wouldn't have said yes, and I don't say that to boast about myself, because on my own, I would not have said yes. I would still be sitting in the corner of my bedroom. I probably wouldn't be married to Channing. If I wouldn't have said yes to anything that I'm scared to say yes to, I wouldn't have been able to see other people do the same thing. [Aaron] Yeah, that's just a beautiful example of God using the broken pieces of this world, us. We're in this flesh that is not yet redeemed, and he redeems our spirit fully and then walks us through the sanctification process and loves us as we're here in this world and then uses us when we say yes to him. I have a question though, one more for you, Jessica. Did you have opportunities to talk to women and share with women who were going through self-image things before God redeemed you from that, or did it start happening afterward? [Jessica] It started happening afterward. I don't doubt that he probably gave me opportunities, even as a middle schooler, just to pour into people that are younger than me, because I really have always had a passion for that, especially after saying yes, I will say anything you want me to say. I will get up and sing on that stage, or I will sing my baby to sleep at night in the room when no one else sees me, and I'll do it with a joyful heart. But before I said yes, I was focused on myself. I was focused on my fears and what I thought I could do and what I thought I knew I couldn't do. And so, I didn't really know. I might have had the opportunity before, but I didn't take it, and I didn't reap the joy that could have come from them. [Aaron] This is so great. Don't know Jennifer if you're being. [Jennifer] I'm to encouraged. [Aaron] Encouraged by this, but yeah, this is exactly what our hope for this conversation was, to show the reality of, it doesn't matter who you are. When you say yes to God, when you accept and follow Jesus as Lord, and you say, okay, Lord, here I am, like you said, we have nothing apart from Christ, and then he gives us the things he wants us to use. The master gives the servants the talents, you know? And you guys have said yes in your life, and I love that. [Jennifer] Yeah, what I think is so beautiful about you guys sharing your testimony and this story today is that, well, two things. The first thing is that how beautiful it is that all of our marriages are unique. So you guys are on our episode today and you're sharing your unique marriage story, your unique testimonies and how God is using those testimonies today to further his kingdom and build his kingdom, and I just want everyone listening to know that it is beautiful that every marriage is unique. And I know we shared about that in the last episode, but I just wanna reiterate that all of us have been given a tool belt, and it's an exciting process to be able to sift through it and see what God has given us and then encourage our spouse in using exactly what he's given us. And it sounds like that's what you guys are doing. You have these very specific testimonies, and they're powerful, and God's using them in specifically college ministry and other ways. But oh, I just love that. And then the other thing is that we know we can trust God. And so, when we're standing there wondering what it is we're supposed to be doing or asking those big questions, we know we can trust him. When we hear stories like this, it reaffirms that in our hearts. And so I just really appreciate you guys' vulnerability in just sharing this with us today. [Aaron] So, you know, we're gonna be coming to a close soon, and we were gonna ask you a question about have you had opportunities to use your testimony, and what's awesome is you just now shared your testimony with everything listening. So yes, yes, God randomly gives you opportunities to do that, and you guys probably pursue those, and we just love that. And you already answered that question in talking about who you're sharing it with. But we wanna end off with one question we've been asking everyone on this series, and it's in your own words, what is a marriage after God? [Channing] I immediately thought of David, of David was a man after God's own heart, and so of applying that same idea, a marriage after God is one that in all things puts God first, that desires to grow close to him, to look like him. I mean, I see marriage as a picture of Christ and his church, 'cause that's what it is. We are his bride, and the way that he has laid down his life for the church and the way that he is also coming back for, oh, yes, that's so good, I love it, he's coming back for his bride one day, that he hasn't left us in our sin and in the brokenness, but that he's coming victoriously back for us. I see a marriage after God as one that's a vertical and a horizontal component of that, where vertically, we're trying to become more like Jesus day after day and the sanctification of becoming him, but then horizontally, loving each other like the way that Christ loves his church. And so, for me, there's a little bit of that too for me. I was an athlete in high school and thinking about marriage after God makes me think of, we're running after him. [Aaron] Yeah, I love that. [Channing] There's this, I won't stop until I get you kind of idea. [Jennifer] That's great imagery. [Aaron] Yes, yeah. [Channing] Not creepy. [Aaron] No creepy references here, yeah. [Channing] Right, but seriously, for Jessica and for myself, what I desire is for a world to look at our marriage and say, man, they belong to somebody, you know? [Aaron] Yes. [Channing] That there's something different about them, and the only answer to that is Jesus. What about you? [Jessica] I would say a marriage after God, I saw this online the other day, so it's not original to me, but if you think about a triangle, I wish it was, but if you think about a triangle and you have the husband and wife on the bottom two corners and God's at the top corner, and it said if the husband and wife are constantly trying to get closer to God and moving up, you think about it as in moving up in the triangle, they are getting closer to each other. So the key to growing your marriage is growing are relationship with God. The closer you get to him, the closer you get to each other, and I don't remember who said it. It was Channing that said it, but I don't remember how it was a quote by: "Marriage is not to make us happy. "Marriage is to grow us closer to Christ "and to make us holy." I think a marriage after God is making every area in your life, especially your marriage, not about yourself, and make it point to Jesus. [Aaron] Amen, agreed. [Jennifer] So awesome, thank you guys so much. Yeah, agreed, agreed, agreed, and that quote you referenced was from Gary Thomas's Sacred Marriage book, and he's just such an excellent resource for marriages. So I appreciate you sharing that. Thank you guys so much for being on the show with us today. We really appreciate, again, your vulnerability and in sharing your testimony and encouraging people who are listening to consider the uniqueness of their marriage, the uniqueness of their testimonies, and how they can be using them today, 'cause of course the Lord's inviting us to use what he's given us for his glory. So, I just wanna thank you guys for being with us today. [Aaron] Yeah, and you guys are a marriage after God, and we appreciate that. [Channing] Thank y'all so much. [Jessica] Thank you, thank you so much. [Aaron] Yeah, you're welcome. So what we're gonna do is we're gonna close in prayer. So would you join us, and Jennifer, would you? [Jennifer] Dear Lord, thank you for the gift of marriage. Thank you for pouring your thoughtfulness into the way you designed marriage. Thank you for giving us a tool belt that is unique so that we can pursue and do all of the things you have for us to do. Please help us to understand everything that is in our tool belt and show us how we can use it for your glory. We pray we would keep nothing back from you. We pray we would walk humbly with you and with each other. Use us to encourage one another in marriage and affirm the gifts we see in each other. May we also have the courage to confront and repent of any sin in our lives. We pray that we would see all of the little and big ways you are inviting us to join you to spread your gospel of love, salvation, and amazing grace. May the testimony of Jesus be the motivation in our hearts to do what we do, all for your glory. In Jesus's name, amen. [Aaron] Amen. [Chandler and Jessica] Amen. [Aaron] All right, so we just wanna thank everyone for listening to the 10th episode in the series For A Marriage After God. We wanna encourage you to go get a copy of our book please. We wrote it for you. All these interviews we've compiled to encourage you and your marriage just to know that God has a plan for you and has call for your life, and we just wanna invite you to keep tuned in, because we have six more episodes in this series. So we'll see you next week. Did you enjoy today's show? If you did, it would mean the world to us if you could leave us a review on iTunes. Also, if you're interested, you can find many more encouraging stories and resources at https://marriageaftergod.com and let us help you cultivate an extraordinary marriage.

Order Your Copy Of Marriage After God Today! https://Shop.marriageaftergod.com We interview Dale + Veronica Partridge from Real Christianity Podcast Quote From Marriage After God Chapter 2: The War On Your Effectiveness "If the enemy can get you to question the things that you know to be true, then he can get you to doubt what you are doing." - Aaron & Jennifer Smith, Marriage After God “If the devil can divide you and your spouse, then he can conquer your marriage, stripping away your effectiveness for God” - Aaron & Jennifer Smith, Marriage After God Dear Lord, We pray nothing would hinder our effectiveness in ministering to each other in marriage. We also pray nothing would hinder our effectiveness in sharing the gospel in this world. We pray you would defend us against the enemy. We pray his plans to divide us and destroy marriage would not prevail. Protect us from the enemy’s schemes! Thank you for equipping us with armor so that we can stand firm in our faith. We pray our flesh would not get in the way of our effectiveness. Help us to have self-control and walk in wisdom. If we do experience attacks or hardships may you be our strength, hope, and endurance to run this race with perseverance. If our flesh does hinder us may we confront our sin and repent so that we may be vessels of your glory as we share with others the power of salvation in our lives. We submit our marriage to you and ask that you Use us to do all the wonderful things you have prepared for us to do. May your name be glorified. In Jesus’ name, amen! READ: [Aaron] Hey we're Aaron and Jennifer Smith with Marriage After God. [Jennifer] Helping you cultivate an extraordinary marriage. [Aaron] And today we're in part two of the Marriage After God series and we're gonna be talking with Dale and Veronica Partridge about The War On Our Effectiveness. Welcome to The Marriage After God podcast, where we believe that marriage was meant for more than just happily ever after. [Jennifer] I'm Jennifer also known as Unveiled Wife. [Aaron] And I'm Aaron also known as Husband Revolution. [Jennifer] We have been married for over a decade. [Aaron] And so far we have four young children. [Jennifer] We have been doing marriage ministry online for over seven years through blogging and social media. [Aaron] With the desire to inspire couples to keep God at the center of their marriage. Encouraging them to walk in faith every day. [Aaron] We believe that Christian marriage should be an extraordinary one. Full of life. [Aaron] Love. [Jennifer] And power. [Aaron] That can only be found by chasing after God. [Jennifer] Together. [Aaron] Thank you for joining us on this journey as we chase boldly after God's will for our life together. [Jennifer] This is Marriage After God. [Jennifer] Thank you everyone for joining us today. We just wanna take a moment and just encourage you to leave us a review. That's just one way that you can support this podcast and get the message out about the podcast that helps other people find the Marriage After God podcast and it's real quick, you just gotta leave a star rating review, or you can leave a comment review which always encourages us. [Aaron] Also we just want to encourage you to get a copy of our new book, Marriage After God. It's what this entire series is based on and we'd love for you to read through that as a couple. You can go to shop.marriageaftergod.com and support us in that way. [Jennifer] So today we have Dale and Veronica Partridge, which are some of our closest friends, thank you for being here. [Veronica] Hi thanks for having us. [Dale] We are excited. [Veronica] We're excited, [Veronica] To be here. [Dale] Yeah, this is, I think ten years in the making. [Veronica] Just about. [Dale] In terms of our relationship. [Aaron] This episode. [Aaron] Oh relationship I gotta. [Dale] This episode probably, too, I guess. [Jennifer] Awesome, well, could you just take a minute, and just introduce yourself to everyone listening. [Dale] Yeah, I'll start here. We've been married, next week, will be nine years, and together-- [Aaron] On Valentines day. [Dale] On Valentine's Day. [Veronica] That's right, on Valentines day. [Dale] We got married on Valentine's day. Long story short, but we didn't intend to get married on Valentine's Day. It just happened which is, again, part of a bigger story that we'll have to tell later. But, yeah, we got three kids, five, three and one. And we are in ministry. Also, we run a podcast, and house church, and are in the thick of it in terms of trials in 2018. And it seems that they're bleeding into this year as well. So, it's something that we're excited to share about, and talk about what it's like to be in ministry, and also suffer persecution, and resistance, and illness, and some of the things that come with it. [Jennifer] So, could you just mention a little bit more about your guys' podcasts? Just, I'm sure people listening have already either been listening, or have known about it, but just in case they haven't, share a little bit about it. [Veronica] Yeah we have a podcast. It's called Real Christianity. Where Dale and I talk about all aspects of walking the Christian life. [Dale] Yeah and I think it's, we really try to come at it from a biblical perspective. I'd say that the number one review that people leave is that it's just bold, and they don't have that many places I think that, the number one crossover, is your guys' podcast. So everybody, you'd go just scroll to the bottom and it's like suggested podcasts, and it's Marriage After God. And so I think people are really looking for truth. Not watered down truth delivered gently, but truth. And I think that's what makes the episode, or the podcast little bit different. [Aaron] Awesome. [Jennifer] Awesome. Well we're excited to get to hear that boldness on this episode with you guys, and, yeah, we're just excited to jump in. [Aaron] So here's an icebreaker question, I don't know if Veronica has read this beforehand. It's, what do you think is one thing that your spouse likes best about you? [Dale] We can. [Veronica] This is a family show right? What do I think Dale likes best about me? I think he likes that I'm a submissive wife. [Jennifer] Oh wow bold. [Veronica] And not in a bad way, like. [Jennifer] That's good. [Dale] She is, she's incredibly humble and [Jennifer] Supportive. [Dale] Supportive, and she plays that helpmeet role that the Bible talks about, naturally. It's not something that she actually has a fleshly thing against. She really, the Lord has blessed me with that, in terms of just a wife who just falls into that role really well. And the evidence of that, is that she's been able to, you know, teach our daughter what that looks like, and teach some of the other women, who might not naturally fall into that, just by her example. [Jennifer] Wow, as in our own friendship, Veronica. you've been a huge testament to me, of what it looks like, and an encouragement, so, [Veronica] Thank you. [Jennifer] Yeah, I can say yep. [Dale] It's a ministry. [Veronica] Praise God. [Jennifer] Yep. And yeah Dale, what does she like about you Dale? [Veronica] What do I like about you? [Dale] What do you like about me? I think I would say vision, the ability to tell us as a family where we're going, to understand through the lens of Scripture. [Veronica] Yeah, give us direction. [Dale] And I would say joyful. [Veronica] Yeah, he is generally a very happy person. [Dale] Which I didn't know about myself really, until I was married. I just thought I was a normal person. [Aaron] Maybe you weren't joyful before you were married right? [Aaron] Dale's so much happier now. [Veronica] He's always been very happy, and joyful, and positive type of person to be around. [Dale] Yeah like in the morning I'm up, smiling, excited, jump out of bed, and Veronica is like-- [Veronica] I'm just more of a slow riser, need my time. [Dale] Give me a half hour. [Jennifer] Awesome, well, thank you for letting our listeners know a little bit more about who you guys are. We're gonna jump into a quote from this chapter, chapter two of Marriage After God. It says, if the enemy can get you to question the things that you know to be true, then he can get you to doubt what you are doing. [Aaron] Yeah and the reason we have this chapter in the book, The War On Our Effectiveness, is because you guys are actively pursuing God, and his ministry for your life, and using your gifts and talents for him. And we are too, and our encouragement to everyone listening is that they would do the same, in whatever that looks, whatever that looks like. And when we do that, there's, well, even when we don't do it, there's something keeping us from doing it. keeping us from being effective for the kingdom of God. And one of them is our enemy, you know, the devil, confusing us and convincing us that things that are true are not true. And so, we just we hope in this episode, it's not too heavy, but we wanna show the realities of the things in this world, and in us, that are keeping us from doing what God wants us to do. [Jennifer] And what our response should be. [Aaron] Yeah, and then, but also to encourage us that, hey, we all, all of us get to fight the same war, and get to take ground for God, despite it. [Dale] Yep [Aaron] So, that's what I hope to get out of this episode. [Jennifer] Yeah, so, going back to that quote, and you know the enemy trying to get you to doubt you know what you're doing. Have you two ever wrestled with doubt about what God has you doing? And if you did, how do you navigate those times as a couple? [Veronica] I'd say yeah, definitely, especially within this last year of 2018 going into 2019. We pretty much said yes to full-time ministry in January of 2018 and, within that week, we just kinda had attack after attack after attack after attack. Do you wanna expand on that more babe? [Dale] Yeah I mean we have had so much resistance. The first response in your flesh is to go, I shouldn't be doing this. Maybe I should just stop doing ministry. [Veronica] Maybe this is a no. [Dale] Maybe this isn't what God wants us to do. And if that logic is true, then the Apostle Paul was outside of God's will, because his entire life was resistance. I mean, it's listed off in Second Corinthians, it's just like, yeah. [Aaron]Yeah right. [Dale] It is a, I think this year was a purifying of a true understanding of what the gospel really is, and what ministry really is. I wrote a scripture down, John chapter 9, verse 3, it's when the disciples are looking at this blind man that Jesus is about to heal. And everybody's coming up with their own ideas of why he's blind. And they asked the question like oh, so, was it him that sinned? Was it you know his parents that sinned? Is this a generational thing? Is this just like a curse on this man? Is he outside of the will of God? You know these are the types of questions that his disciples are asking, and he responds, neither this man nor his parents sinned. But that the works of God should be revealed in him. And so that the purpose of this man's blindness, his literal illness, at this point, was to glorify God. That he would be able to glorify God. Maybe in this specific moment, but maybe in other ways, post this moment. And so, that was a really, this is becoming, the natural reaction. Like in the book of Job, is that, oh we've done something wrong. The friend that's saying, oh maybe you've sinned, and you need to repent, or maybe you're not doing enough work for the kingdom. Maybe you're not reading your Bible enough. Like, what is it, why you guys are getting this many trials? And, just to go, hey you know what, we didn't do anything wrong. At this point in terms of, the Lord's happy with us, but it's that we would actually glorify God in our trials and our suffering, in our illnesses. [Aaron] Right. [Veronica] When we are weak he is made strong. [Aaron] Yeah I love that. So going, talking about this idea that there's a war on our effectiveness, you know, we're talking about ministry, we're talking about preaching the gospel, we're talking about living the Christian life, moving his kingdom forward, his will be done on earth as it in heaven, right? You're talking about trials, which could absolutely be one thing that makes us ineffective for God. But, it's not the trial that makes us ineffective. What, would you say, is the thing that makes us, because we all go through trials. That doesn't necessarily mean we're being ineffective, but we can be made ineffective in the trial if, what happens if we, how we respond to that that makes us ineffective? [Dale] I mean, I think that, just, there's so many ways that you can fall away from the truth. And, you know, we need to be walking. It says, I believe it's in Galatians, you will not fulfill the desires of the flesh, or walk in the spirit you will not fulfill the desires the flesh, and I think that when you get beaten down in your flesh, from illness, from trial, from emotional strain, if you don't stick into the truth, I'm talking labor over it, let it pour and wash your mind with it, it's really easy that you'll lose your effectiveness, because you're walking in your flesh and not in your spirit. [Veronica] You become so discouraged that, yeah, if you are walking in the flesh you almost just kinda give up. [Dale] You live in your emotions. You live in worry. You live in discouragement. You live in pain. And without the truths perspective on those emotions, you'll fall apart. And so, it's a constant replacing the lies of the enemy with the truth of God. And that is a practice that I say you need to do before the trials come. You don't build a defense you know when the attacker-- [Aaron] During the battle yeah. [Dale] When the attacker is there. You need to be prepared for that, and that's something that we've wished we did more of, but you know it's training, training for these times. [Jennifer] So what would you say for all those listening, are some practical ways you can do that. Getting into the word. What did your guys' daily life look like? [Dale] Go for it. [Veronica] Currently? [Jennifer] Um-hm. [Veronica] For us with just being attacked and attacked we've been so worn down. We've been having to say no to a lot of things. Way, I mean we were generally very much yes people when it came to having people over, going out, just, we like being with people, and so having to say no a lot has been very norm, our new normal. Sticking to our routines, making sure we're getting to bed on time, and then just making sure we're in the word, as well. [Dale] And we're praying together and keeping a consistency there. I think that, you know, the Ephesians six chapter, verse on you know the armor of God. It's one of these, you almost like think of it as, oh what a really cool metaphor. When life starts to get real hard, that doesn't, it loses its metaphorical sense, and you go, I'm gonna make this very real in my life and I'm gonna read that passage just real quick. Not the whole thing but just the idea. He says in Ephesians six, 10 through 13, he says finally, my brother, be strong in the Lord and in the power of his might. Put on the whole armor of God, this is a command that he's saying right there. Put it on. [Aaron] Yeah the believer puts it on. [Dale] You gotta put it on. It's not just sitting over there in the corner. That you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. And, in other words, if you don't put it on, you won't be able to stand against them. For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of darkness of this age. Against spiritual hosts of wickedness in heavenly places. This is clarity. It's really easy to go, what am I doing wrong? Why like why is this person mad at me? Why is this trial happening? Why are we fixing this thing in our church right now? I can't believe they think that about us, like you can easily make this thing about an earthly matter. Like, oh, I didn't exercise enough, I didn't eat right enough, like, whatever it is. [Aaron] Yeah. [Dale] That's causing that. Verse 13, it says, therefore, take up the whole armor of God that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all to stand. And then he ends this little section a couple verses later, and he says, for which I am an ambassador in chains. And he's meaning that literally. This is one of the prison epistles of Paul. [Aaron] Yeah, he's literally in house arrest. [Dale] So you put this little picture together, and you go, this guy says put on the armor of God, yet this dude is straight-up persecuted and in chains. And, so it's not like put on the armor of God, then everything's gonna be great, prosperity gospel here we come. Life's good, I'm going to the beach. [Aaron] Yeah. [Dale] It's put on the armor of God, and boom, I'm in jail. And so, it's a pretty interesting, counterintuitive thing to think about. [Aaron] Veronica what are some of the things that you guys, 'cause they're listening, they're hearing that you guys are going through trials, and attacks, and stuff. Would you guys just list some of the things that you guys have been going through, not that it makes you special, because, the Bible tells us that we are all going to go through trials, that there will be suffering in this world. You guys just currently happen to be going through quite a bit in your life, and I wanna talk about something about that, after that, but would you guys just share what you mean by these things? [Veronica] Yeah, so, literally, like I said earlier, the week we entered ministry, last in January of 2018, we got hit with influenza hard. [Aaron] It's like months wasn't it? [Dale] Like hospitalization. [Veronica] It was 21 days. 21 days of a fever in our house, Jen took me to the hospital at one point to see if had pneumonia. And during that time, my son, my youngest, was six months old, so I pretty much completely lost my milk supply, because I was so sick. After that, the next month, all of our kids got RSV, which is a terrible respiratory virus. One of our children has asthma, so this was before we knew he had asthma. So he ended up in the emergency room probably three times within that sickness, just because he could not breathe. [Aaron] Those were scary moments. [Dale] Um-hmm. [Veronica] Yes. We got the stomach flu for two weeks, you know, kind of scattered throughout everybody. Then our second son was diagnosed with asthma, because he is continuing to have these asthma attacks. You had skin cancer, I was bit by, likely, a tick, and contracted Lyme disease, and so, that's something new that we're navigating. The week after I got bit by the tick, we had a miscarriage. [Dale] Then Veronica came down with appendicitis in the middle of the night, I had to rush her to the hospital, the antibiotics from the Lyme actually prevented her from, the surgeon and didn't have to take it out. After that, I passed a kidney stone for the first time in my life which was, it was so painful, that I called an ambulance on the way in, someone was driving me, to see if they could give me some sort of pain relief, just to get to the hospital. And then. [Veronica] We almost had a fire evacuation, the day Jen gave birth to Truitt, cause I'm trying to run out to the hospital to be with you, but at the same time I'm like. [Dale] Yeah, that was like a raging fire. [Veronica] Grab that, grab that because there's a fire, just a few streets over from our street. [Dale] Our son almost drowned in a pool. [Veronica] Our youngest son almost drowned. You had bronchitis, or you had a cold that turned into bronchitis, and they were also checking you to see if you had pneumonia. [Dale] And then we got I came down with gastritis. [Veronica] Gastritis, and that's been months of-- [Dale] It's just been tough, it's been a-- [Veronica] Being healed. [Aaron] Tough's a little, a little light of a word. [Jennifer] I know I feel like everyone's just thinking back right now, taking the weight of what all that means. [Veronica] And that's, yeah, that's not everything, just last week our daughter, you know, our daughter had a cavity, and I was supposed to take her in to just to get that filled, and then, when I go to take her in, all of a sudden, literally within a week and a half of the last time we were there, it became infected, so they had to pull her tooth out, which was unexpected. And not that that was like a big tragedy, but it was just like one more thing, I'm just like, oh okay, so we're dealing with my daughter getting her tooth pulled out today. [Aaron] Well a lot of those smaller things, they are much larger when they're compiled with all of the other things. Now, in this season, 'cause you're still in some of this. [Veronica] Yeah, we just had the stomach flu last week. [Aaron] So, you know, but I'm thinking about like the bigger things, like you're still dealing with Lyme, and you probably gonna have that the rest of your life, and you guys are spiritually, and mentally, and emotionally navigating that stuff, and has there been times in over the last year and a half that you thought to yourselves, God we're doing all this for you, why is all this happening? Like these questions of like, almost well, like we don't deserve this? [Veronica] Yeah I actually just said those words to Dale yesterday. I was crying because I had already known that, we've already kind of known that I have Lyme, but to get the final diagnosis, I just got that yesterday. And so we kinda knew that but it also came back with, I also have a co-infection, which we didn't expect, and so I was emotional, and I was upset about it. And I told Dale, I was like, don't you think we've gone through enough? Like haven't we gone through enough? Why is this happening? And then I just have to take a step back, and be, like you know, I have to have a bigger picture perspective right now. It's not, this isn't happening to me, it's, something is going on to glorify God. I don't maybe necessarily know what that looks like right now. [Dale] The thing that I'm learning, is that you can't yearn for heaven, if the place that you're staying is great. And, that's been something that we've, when you read the passage in Revelation about, that all the tears will be wiped away, and there'll be no more pain and no more suffering. That doesn't really hit you, when you're on the beach in Hawaii and things are great. But it does hit you, when you're sick in bed, and you're just trial, after trial, after trial, and so. [Veronica] And not only just sick in bed, but we have three little kids. Like our oldest just turned five last month, and so we have three of them, and they're all very needy you know, you guys have young kids. They all still very much need us, and so being sick and dealing with our own trials, on top of just taking care of the day-to-day of being a parent, it can be exhausting. [Dale] Yeah, so it is just a hard, it's like the Lord is ripping out every false part of the gospel that we've ever believed, and telling us what it really is. It's it's not about prosperity or comfort, or blessing, or healing, and those things, they're in there, but the gospel is sent, the central part of the gospel is to glorify God, but it's sanctification, it's holiness, it's witness, it's eternity. Like these are the elements of it. Because, you know, and it needs to be universal. This gospel must apply worldwide. And when you have people that have cancer, and have AIDS, and have that are kidnapped, and taken away, and martyrs, you know that gospel's gotta to be true there, as well as it is on the guy that's sitting on the beach in Hawaii. And so it's just a, there's a quote, I forgot who said it but it says, it goes along the lines of, Jesus, it's hard to understand that Jesus is all you need, until Jesus is all you have. And that is where I think we've been, is it, you just go, oh, Lord like, I feel like it's the only thing I have on certain days, and so-- [Veronica] Totally I completely agree with that, and there have been definitely moments within this last year, where I am like, I need to read my Bible, like I need that time with him. Like, I need God, I need Jesus, and I need his Holy Spirit to speak to me through the word, just to get me through this day. Because, it really has been all we have many moments throughout this last year. [Jennifer] I wanna commend you guys, because for that list that you just gave us of everything that you've walked through in this last year. I mean, pick one, and everyone listening would be like, that's hard enough to make me ineffective, like, I, that's hard, and yet through as you're listing these things, I'm thinking on my end of all the times you guys still showed up for us. Served us, gave us, you know, meals, when I was postpartum with Truitt, or you know, just, you were there, and not just for us, but for a lot of people in the community. And, I just wanna say thank you, that despite the hard things that you guys have been through, you still live your life biblically, and through serving, and I think that's bold. [Veronica] The only through the strength that the Lord's given us. It's the only way we are able to do these things. [Dale] Yeah thank you I mean it's we teach, one is that we don't wanna become hypocrites, and so we've when you you read the word and you teach these things you see that Jesus did so much while suffering. And participatory community is difficult, it's difficult when it's when everything's good and so we've, we teach that, and I think the Lord's brought us through a season of going, well do you really believe it? [Aaron] Yeah, I mean, it just shows that God loves us. That he's willing to let us go through trials, and that he tests our faith. The Bible teaches us that, he tests us. And not unlike how we test our children. We give them opportunities to act a certain way, to believe a certain way, to respond a certain way. And so you know we're talking about trials currently, things that we have no control over, right? And how they could make us ineffective and, by what you said, if we're walking in the flesh, those trials will definitely make us ineffective 'cause we will crumble under them. You know that test, we'll fail it. But it sounds like if we, and the Bible teaches us this, if we walk in the spirit, we are not gonna gratify the desires of the flesh, and we can actually become more effective, by allowing the trial to do what it's meant to do. Sharpen us, train us, refine us. [Jennifer] And glorify God. [Aaron] And glorify God. So what are some other ways that the enemy tries to make us ineffective for the kingdom of God as in our marriages, like, what are some things, that if they're unchecked and if we're not aware, could totally destroy our effectiveness, remove us from what God is doing in us and through us? [Dale] I mean, I think about, the enemy is all about division. And we know that that's just the chief element and you know, Jesus says in John 17, Father I pray that they are one as we are one, so that the world may know that you sent me. And so just the his desire is unity in his church in his bride. And, in marriages, oneness, and the two shall become one flesh. And so there's just this division element of marriage that, when we become divided, it is, I think, a tactic of the enemy, how does a wolf catch a sheep? He divides them. [Aaron] Yeah. [Dale] From the flock. And so you know us keeping a really close communicate, you know what, it's not really exciting to talk to your spouse when things are all bad. And so, it's really hard to actually wanna go and have a conversation about our crappy life. Like that's how it feels like you know? Hey, let's go talk about this bad thing right now. And so, keeping a discipline, and I've always defined discipline as doing things you don't necessarily like, because it's something that's right. And so we have a discipline just to go I ask her several times a day how you doing? And sometimes she just gives me the quick answer, but sometimes she'll give me the full answer. And, so we work hard to try to stay unified. If we fight, get in a tiff, and we don't fight that often, this year's been harder, because it's just a harder year, but if we do get in an argument, we always pray. 'Cause if you can't pray together with your spouse after you're done arguing, then you're not unified. And, so there's things like that that we do, that we work hard to be unified. And then, I also I don't know if you wanna talk about just, community. Just making sure that we're in community with other people, not just ourselves but. [Veronica] Yeah, I think that's been a really important aspect for us this last year. Proverbs 18:1 says a man who isolates himself seeks his own desire, and it's very easy to want to isolate when you've gone through everything that we've dealt with this last year. But, we're making sure that we are in community in daily talking to somebody in our church, and then also, looking into the, looking to the needs of the body, in the people in our church, and ministering to them in the ways that we can, because it takes the focus off of us, and it actually helps you work into some, work in somebody else's life, and minister to them, and glorify God. And it gives you perspective, as well, of whatever is happening in your own circumstances. [Jennifer] Gosh, that's really good. Thank you guys so much for sharing that. So, how would you encourage those listening right now, to say yes to God, despite knowing that there will be opposition, despite knowing that hard circumstances will come, how do they, how can they say yes to God and, you know, have that courage to continue on, to keep serving people, to keep loving? [Veronica] I think you need to take a step back, and have a bigger picture perspective. Because, if you're stuck and you're focused on your current circumstances and trials come, it's really hard to get through. You need to put on the whole armor of God and have an eternal perspective. [Dale] Kingdom perspective. [Veronica] Legacy. [Dale] There's like multi-generational, like thinking about the kingdom of heaven. [Veronica] Like, yeah, I'm looking back at this last year I'm like, you know how many more people we're able to minister, and relate with, and empathize with, because we walk through so many different things in such a short amount of time. Yeah, I mean, God's gonna be glorified no matter what. [Dale] I think about, you know, there's a passage in scripture that the Lord, I feel like, delivered to me. I was praying and asking for a scripture, and I was like God you need to give me something. I was like in tears, and I flip open my Bible, and I put my hand down straight on Second Corinthians 12:9 through 10. And it's the verse of Jesus' reply to Paul after begging for his trial to leave him, and he says my grace is sufficient for you. My strength is made perfect in weakness, and he ends that section with, for when I am weak, then I am strong. Jesus' kingdom is counter-intuitive. Who's first? The one that's last. Who's strong? The one that's weak. And so, our perspective right now, is that we are the most effective we've ever been in ministry. Yet, we are the weakest we've ever been, and that is the, that perspective is so opposite of what our flesh wants to think. The alternative, for those that are worried about going into ministry because of trials, and or because of you know opposition, or because you might be persecuted for standing up for truth, I just go, I always tell people, what's the alternative? We have to remember that we are the beneficiaries of God's obedience, like, being obedient to God's Word. Not God, like, it's actually for the safest and the most joyful place that we'll be, is in God's will, under his word and under his ways. And I just go, you know, if you think being obedient is hard, try being disobedient. Try being outside of God's will. See what that feels like. [Aaron] Well yeah, and even if disobedience makes us more comfortable temporarily, it eternallydamns us, like we don't want that. We want to be with our Father in heaven right? I love that, so the idea is that our perspective, the encouragement to those listening, is have a heavenly perspective. Like the picture is not about us, it's that we're a part of what God's doing in this world, and he's invited us to be a part of that. And when we say yes to God, it doesn't mean you know butterflies and rainbows, for some it might, but it means effectiveness for the gospel, it means that we are obedient, wherever that leads us. And to some, it's much more suffering than others, and for some, it's much more prosperity than others. That's why, you know, we don't believe in the prosperity gospel, because it's not universal. But that doesn't mean some might not have, might have prosperity or not. [Dale] Sure. [Aaron] That's not how the gospel works. It's God's providence it's what God wants, and saying yes to him is the best thing we can do. [Dale] I mean, Paul, [Aaron] Yeah, trusting him. [Dale] Paul talks about that he's been in times of abundance and times of very little and we have to remember. [Aaron] We learn to be content in both. [Dale] Be content both, and we've been that way too we've had abundance and we've had the place that we're at now. But we we always like to pick our Bible character and go yeah that's like me. And I go I like to remind people, well, you know that 11 of the 12 apostles were martyred, right? You know that, like, the, all the prophets, not all, many of the prophets are martyred for standing for God's truth. Jesus himself is killed. The idea is that, do we really want to be like these people? Do you really identify with John the Baptist? You know, do you really identify with James and Thomas who was said to be crucified in India? [Aaron] Or Stephen stoned in public. [Dale] Or Stephen you know and so these are, I think that the gospel that we have in America, or in some of the developed countries, we've become so comfortable, and that's why the church has actually diminished. And where are you seeing the church growing? Wherever there's the most suffering. And so Afghanistan, Iran, you know, Brazil, parts of middle of the Middle East. [Aaron] North Korea, China. [Dale] North Korea, Southeast Asia, and so I think that there is a turning of the tide that's occurring here, that there is a political persecution, for sure, and we're seeing this. And so, yeah, your fear of effectiveness, well, the big question is, are you willing to stand for truth? I think that's the big thing that couples have to think about in their marriage going forward. [Jennifer] I think that's a great question for them to talk about. So, the last question that we have for you guys is, in your own words what is a Marriage After God? [Dale] You wanna read it? I have a little note here that I wrote down. It's a quote we say all the time so it's not an awkward thing. [Veronica] Yeah, we say it in our own podcast pretty frequently. It's two people who love God more than they love each other. [Jennifer] Perfect. [Aaron] Concise, I love that. And it's true, and when you love God and you wanna say yes to him, we're gonna receive, like just like a son with a good father. Like, we're gonna receive whatever our father has for us and we're gonna be okay with it. And you know we just wanna thank you guys for joining us, the insights, and you guys sharing vulnerably this season you're in, and how you guys are still pursuing God and not just turning your faces away from him, because he's not giving you what you deserve. Because, luckily, we don't get what we deserve, and he gives us grace instead. So, we just wanna thank everyone for listening today, and we want everyone to take a moment and go check out the Real Christianity podcast. Just go search for them that's Dale and Veronica's podcast. We love them, you're gonna be totally encouraged by the boldness, and the scripture, and just the way they are trying to share their life with the world and, yeah, so we're gonna close in prayer, and, yeah, you wanna pray first, Jennifer? [Jennifer] Dear Lord, we pray nothing would hinder our effectiveness and ministering to each other in marriage. We also pray nothing would hinder our effectiveness and sharing the gospel in this world. We pray you would defend us against the enemy. We pray his plans to divide us and destroy marriage would not prevail. Protect us from the enemy's schemes. Thank you for equipping us with armor, so that we can stand firm in our faith. We pray our flesh would not get in the way of our effectiveness. Help us to have self-control and walk in wisdom. If we do experience attacks or hardships, may you be our strength, hope, and endurance, to run this race with perseverance. If our flesh does hinder us, may we confront our sin, and repent so that we may be vessels of your glory, as we share with others the power of salvation in our lives. We submit our marriages to you, and ask that you use us to do all the wonderful things you have prepared for us to do. May your name be glorified, in Jesus name, Amen. [Aaron] Amen. [Veronica] Amen. [Aaron] So, we just wanna thank everyone for listening today. This is part two of the 16 part series for our book, Marriage After God. Please go pick up a copy of our book today, you're not gonna want to miss out on this book. It's shop.marriageaftergod.com, and also, stay tuned we have 14 more episodes and 14 more interviews, so, we'll see you next week. [Aaron] Did you enjoy today's show? if you did, it would mean the world to us if you could leave us a review on iTunes. Also, if you're interested, you can find many more encouraging stories and resources at marriageaftergod.com and let us help you cultivate an extraordinary marriage.

Some stories of joy in our home with practical tips to cultivate a habit of joy in our homes. Support This podcast by purchasing one of our marriage books today: https://shop.marriageaftergod.com READ: [Aaron] Hey, we're Aaron and Jennifer Smith with Marriage After God. [Jennifer] Helping you cultivate an extraordinary marriage. [Aaron] Today we're gonna talk about the strength that joy brings to our home. Welcome to the Marriage After God Podcast, where we believe that marriage was meant for more than just happily ever after. [Jennifer] I'm Jennifer, also known as Unveiled Wife. [Aaron] I'm Aaron, also known as Husband Revolution. [Jennifer] We have been married for over a decade. [Aaron] So far, we have four young children. [Jennifer] We have been doing marriage ministry online for over seven years through blogging and social media. [Aaron] With a desire to inspire couples to keep God at the center of their marriage, encouraging them to walk in faith every day. [Jennifer] We believe the Christian marriage should be an extraordinary one, full of life. Love. And power. [Aaron] That can only be found by chasing after God. Together. Thank you for joining us on this journey as we chase boldly after God's will for our life together. [Jennifer] This is Marriage After God. Thank you so much for joining us this week on the Marriage After God Podcast. If you've been enjoying this podcast and enjoying the content, would you just scroll to the bottom of the app and leave a star rating review? This just helps other people find the Marriage After God Podcast, and we'd really appreciate that. [Aaron] Also, if you wanna support our podcast, we don't really do ads. We may in the future, but our goal is to not do ads. One of our ways of not using ads to support the podcast is we have written books, and we sell those books. If you're interested in checking out our marriage resources, our prayer books, our devotionals, you can go to shop.marriageaftergod.com, and picking up a book from our store supports us in the production of this podcast. Also, our Marriage After God book, that comes out next year, is available for pre-order, and so if you go to shop.marriageaftergod.com you'll see, in the very top-left corner of the site, a way to pre-order our book. That would just be really awesome. We'd really appreciate that. Let's get into the icebreaker question, which is what is one funny memory from when we were dating? [Jennifer] Hmm. I can't think of a specific one at the moment, but what does come to mind is we spent a lot of time serving in youth ministry. Oh yeah. A lot of time. We were youth leaders. Yeah, and we... [Aaron] At good old Church on the Hill, Norco, California. [Jennifer]We played a lot of games. We laughed a lot. We ate weird things. We'd have contests and challenges, and there were just things that we did for the kids' sake, but we had a lot of fun doing together. That was-- Remember the lock-ins? We would just have overnights. Yup, over-nighters. [Aaron] We would stay up all night, do milk-chugging contests, and... [Jennifer] Gosh, that does not sound fun now. [Aaron] No it doesn't How did we do that? Back then, it was the highlight of our week. I feel like we just came alive in those times. We looked forward to it all year, to do those events. Yeah. Every Wednesday we just came alive during that time, and I fell in love with you, knowing that you had fun participating in that way, being silly... Little junior high kids and high school kids. Yeah, being silly or playing, it wasn't dodge-ball, what was it called? [Aaron] Oh, what... [Jennifer] Murder-ball? [Aaron]Yeah, we called it murder-ball. [Jennifer] We called it murder-ball because it was-- It was just dodge-ball, but we changed the name. ...dodge-ball on steroids, and we had a lot of balls-- There was no line. You just ran around the room, throwing balls at each other. [Jennifer] You guys would throw them so hard. These poor-- I know [Jennifer] ...13-year-old girls would get nailed [Aaron] But they kept playing it. None of them cried. They were crazy. I forgot about that. Murder-ball I loved that. I loved dating you because you were fun, and you're still fun. Yeah. I got a little not fun over the years, but I've learned to change in that area. I'm still learning, but that's kinda what our episode's about, is not just fun, but joy, but how fun cultivates joy and how we can actually cultivate environments of joy in our home. Let's get to the quote from today, and it's from the book For Better or for Kids by Patrick and Ruth Schwenk. Ruth Schwenk's from The Better Mom, and you said you loved this book. Mm-hmm It's about family and the power that God's given us in our homes. [Jennifer] Yeah, and the quote is on page 37, and it says, "While married life with children "can be challenging, we have reason to hope "and to be encouraged. "There is a way forward, a way through, "and a way beyond all of the craziness. "God's Word has not changed. "The promises of his Word still stand. "Is being married with kids messy? "Yes. "Does God have a purpose and plan in the midst of it all? "Of course he does. "And do we enjoy taking part in this crazy, "life-changing, impossible mission of parenting? "Absolutely." That's great 'cause that sums it up pretty good. Parenting's hard. It is crazy. Marriage and parenting is hard. [Jennifer] It is messy. It's all of the above, and yet, God's Word-- But joy. ...still stands. Yeah. And we can enjoy it. And we can enjoy it, which is something that we're learning day-by-day how to do. Mm-hmm We've talked about kids a lot on our show and just the hard things and the fun things, but today we wanna talk about joy, cultivating joy in our home, having fun in our home, and how that joy brings strength to our home and our walk and our mission in life. [Jennifer] Yeah, I think that sometimes we can be so caught up in making sure that everything that we're trying to order or manage is happening, and we become kind of like the officers in the home of making sure everyone's doing what they're supposed to be doing. Even when it comes to our work, we have this rigid schedule of things that we need to get done, and it's kind of on our timeline, and yet we have kids pulling on our elbows, saying, "Dad, come check out this LEGO thing I built," or Olive wanting to dance with you. Where life becomes more mechanical and clunky rather than organic. It's life. It's something that we're experiencing, not controlling. That's kinda what I'm hearing. That's what I'm feeling, is we could get into this mode that life's just one check list after another, one check box after another, the right next step, which is not-- It comes from a good place. [Aaron] Yeah, it's not terrible to think that way at times and to try and walk correctly, 'cause that's the goal, is we're trying to walk well. We're trying to walk as disciples of Christ, living out what the Bible tells us. Then, where's joy? Where's joy fall in all that? Yeah. We actually, I was really encouraged this last week in the woman's Bible study that I got to go to. The whole topic was about soul-filling joy and the things that we can do as moms to fill our hearts up during the week and, like you said, not just have a list that we're checking off, even though that comes from a good place and we want to make sure that we're managing our homes well, but are we doing things that also fill us up and bring a smile to our face? Because that's gonna overflow into our relationship with our kids. It's gonna overflow into our marriages and give that liveliness that God intends for us to have. [Aaron] What you're saying reminds me of the verse in Isaiah 40:31. It says, "But they who wait for the Lord "shall renew their strength. "They shall mount up with wings like eagles. "They shall run and not be weary. "They shall walk and not faint." [Jennifer] Yeah. I've experienced this in my own life, where I do something that brings a lot of joy to my life, and it does renew my strength. There is something physical that happens to you when you experience the joy of the Lord and you experience his strength fill you up and renew you, and I think that's why it's so important to be talking about joy. Have you experienced this? [Aaron] Yeah, 'cause we can get, if we look at our life as just a series of actions taken, a series of checks to be checked off, steps to take, and it's just this mechanical thing that we're moving forward and yeah, maybe we're doing good things, but if we forget why we're doing it and who we're doing it for, it gets very tiresome because essentially, we're doing it in our own strength. We run on fumes. We're told to fill our jars up to overflowing, and we fill that up with the living water, which is Christ, with the Word of God, with prayer, with getting away, quietness. When the Bible talks of prayer, when Jesus says pray, he says go into your closet. He says get away. When I think about getting away, Jesus often got away. It says that he went up by himself into desolate placesand he, early in the morning and late into the evening, so I just-- But he was intentional with his time. Yeah. It wasn't just, "I'm gonna go and be quiet somewhere," which actually, for some people is probably really filling for them, just being quiet somewhere, sitting at a park, people watching or something. Not me. This isn't just about doing something that's fun necessarily. It's a wholistic view of waiting on God because we know that we need him. We need a rest in him, and that gives us strength, and it gives us joy and the power to go on another day, not just go on but to cheerfully and joyfully go on. [Jennifer] I feel like we all need to be reminded that there's gonna, in life, we will all experience hard times. We will all experience those-- [Aaron] Yeah, James makes that very clear Yeah, those times of wrestling, where God's revealed sin in your life that you're repenting of, and you probably feel down for, but you know you're being transformed in-- [Aaron] Or when he's calling out character issues in us, really hard things. Character issues, maybe financial stresses, or maybe the loss of a loved one, there are so many different types of trials that people walk through, and yet I feel like just because we experience hard times doesn't mean we can also experience joy. I think that's the difference between happiness and joy because happiness is a feeling, and it's an emotion that we have the... Capacity to experience. Right, thank you That's a byproduct of joy, I would imagine. Right, joy's deeper. Joy comes from within, but it's also because God is in our hearts, and he's the one that makes it possible to both enjoy, he's the one that makes it possible to experience joy while in the midst of hardship, at the exact same time. Maybe there isn't any hardship in your life right now, and you, like you said earlier, are just kind of going through the motions and being kind of mechanical-- I actually feel like sometimes when we're going through good seasons, or easy seasons I should say, often, we find ourselves being more discontent. It's easier to forget to walk in joy or something. I've experienced that with us. That's interesting. I realize, I'm like, "Well, there's nothing really hard "going on in our life. "Why are we feeling like this right now?" [Jennifer] In today's episode, we really just wanna inspire you guys to consider joy. Maybe it's something that you haven't thought of, or maybe it's something that you've already been thinking of, and we can just come in as part of that support to say, "Yes, this is the right way. "This is what we should be thinking about. "This is what we should be doing" because a marriage after God has joy. [Aaron] When you walk in the Spirit, what's one of the fruits of the Spirit? Joy. Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, and so, when we walk in the Spirit, fruit of that will be joy in our life. I was just thinking about the difference between happiness and joy. I feel like happiness is an earthly experience that comes out of the eternal understanding of joy. Joy is an eternal concept. It comes from hope, hopes of things that are things that are unseen. It's something that goes beyond the current experience because you can have joy even in really hard things because it's based on something eternal, where happiness is based on something temporary. That's good. Something that we experience just right now for this moment. Our goal should never be just seeking happiness. That's called hedonism, just looking for happiness. Our goal should be enjoying the fruit of the Spirit, which one of them is joy. [Jennifer] What I was gonna say was that it benefits our children so much. I was just thinking about how you could just, I feel like kids are so expressive. Their little bodies can reveal so much about what they're feeling, that joy is just one of those things that you can see in kids. It's so evident. Yeah, I wonder how many of our listeners grew up in joyless homes, grew up in homes that were full of strife, anxiety, fear, and how much joy would've benefited the home. They're probably thinking right now, "Man, "I wish my family was joyful. "I wish when I grew up I experienced joy." [Jennifer] If that's you listening right now, I just wanna tell you that you don't have to live according to the past and feel like you're stuck. You can change. [Aaron] Today, we talked about this last episode, you can change today [Jennifer] What a benefit it would be, what a testimony it would be to the power of God in your life. [Aaron] In our home, like I said, over the years, I kind of, there was a season of my life that, and it was probably because of sin I was walking. It was probably 'cause of discontentment issues that we had, character flaws, things that God was growing in us, but I feel like I had a hard time having fun. I had a hard time being joyful. I loved God, and there was times I was joyful, but it wasn't a default state for me. I was pretty Scrooge-y. Is that the word? Not just because Christmas is coming, but just I think people called me Scrooge-y just 'cause I was not very joyful. I don't want that for my family. What are some ways that we over the years have been cultivating joy in our home and that our listeners can take home and try? [Jennifer] We should just tag-team this and kind of go down the list of things, but-- This isn't the definitive list. I actually tried coming up with as many as I could, but I'm sure there's other things that we might think of as we talk about these. [Jennifer] Probably. We do have, we're in a season of young kids, and so a lot of what you probably will hear probably sounds, I don't know... Silly? Silly, 'cause it is. They are silly [Jennifer] They are silly, but I think the important thing to note here is that these are just ways that we have tried to be intentional in cultivating a space in our home, in our lifestyle, that cultivates joy. One of those things is fort building. I actually did that this morning with the kids. [Aaron] The kids love it. We have a couch that's perfect for fort building. The pillows are huge. They're sturdy, so they make really good roofs and walls. I only believe in building big forts. I don't know why people build small forts. It's not worth it to me. I came home the other day-- Go big or go home [Aaron] I came home the other day, and the entire living room was a fort. [Jennifer]You have to use every chair, every blanket-- All the chairs ...every pillow... The couches were on their sides, the pillows-- Maximize the-- [Aaron] ...were stacked up high, and you guys were watching a movie inside We were watching a movie inside, yeah. You're like, "We're in our movie theater. "You wanna come in?" I'm like, "Uh, I don't know if I'll fit," but it was pretty huge, so I probably would've. It was pretty amazing. I think I actually storied it on Instagram 'cause it was-- Probably. [Aaron] I was really impressed with that fort building. Thanks. That's one thing that we do. The kids love it, and it's fun because they're still pretty young. They could build one themselves, but they never make them as good as we make them. [Jennifer] A little tip for fort building, if you get a colorful quilt or one of those knitted blankets that are made-- Have holes in them. [Jennifer] Yeah, they're just really fun for the light to come through, and-- [Aaron] It looks like stained glass windows. It does. I always say, "Look at the stained glass windows." [Jennifer] You need to share the one minute of crazy 'cause this is more new. This is a newer thing. But it works. It's our one minute of crazy, and we've been doing it, we don't do it every night, of course, but when I feel like my kids just got extra jitters in them-- Or extra screams. [Aaron] ...what I'll do is I'll say, "Okay guys, I want everyone to," I'll be a little stern about it, "I want everyone to stand right here in a line." They stand there, they're like, "Okay, what's gonna happen?" Then I'll turn the music on our jam box really loud, and I'll say, "All right, I want you guys "to get as crazy as possible for one minute." Then the whole time, I'm telling them to get louder and louder and louder, and they're screaming, and they get actually tired. When they're done, they're like, "Why'd you have us do that?" I'm was like, "Wasn't that fun?" The first time you had them do it, it took them about 15 seconds to, is Dad joking, or-- Yeah, they didn't know. [Jennifer] They're looking at each other, like, "Should we be screaming?" [Aaron] That's probably because of my history of not being very fun. It was awesome. Yeah, but it did take them a few seconds to actually, they're like, 'Wait a minute, are we gonna get in trouble?" [Jennifer] It's a great thing to do, not right before bed, but leading up to bedtime. [Aaron] I liked it right before bed because I feel like they weren't quite ready for bed, and this pushed them over the edge 'cause they were tired, and they also felt like they got all of it out of them. Sometimes it's hard to calm them down afterwards, but that's okay [Jennifer] I wanna share another one. This comes from my childhood. My mom and stepdad would always do this. They still do it. It's so funny. If someone comes home and walks through the door, or even out from the bathroom or bedroom-- Is this where it came from? Yeah. Oh. [Jennifer] Whoever notices it goes, "Quick, pretend you're asleep" Wherever they're sitting. Wherever you're at, just kinda drop your head, close your eyes, and try as hard as you can not to smile. [Aaron] Wyatt is so bad at it. Wyatt's our two-year-old. He just turned two. But he still tries, and it's so cute. He'll be in his little white chair, and I'll walk in, and everyone's got their heads tilted to the side with their eyes shut-- [Jennifer] Sometimes we'll be at the kitchen table, and we'll be eating breakfast when Aaron comes home, and I'm like, "Quick, pretend you're asleep," and everyone just kind of limps their head to the side. But then, I look over, and Wyatt, he has his head back-- He's just looking at you. He has his head back, and his eyes half shut, and he's smiling 'cause he doesn't get it, but he's trying. I'm like, "Are you guys sleeping?" And Wyatt's smiling at me the whole time. [Jennifer] This is one of those things, I love it 'cause it's from my childhood, so I love that my kids have kind of owned it. Olive is usually the first one now to say it. Oh yeah. "Pretend you're sleeping." [Aaron] "Quick, we're sleeping," and then everyone, she'll put her head down even if no one notices. She gets mad if you don't, no she gets mad if you don't do it. [Aaron] She does it so fast, no one notices, and she is the only one pretending to sleep. It's really funny 'cause then, let's say Dad walks through the door, "Oh no, everyone fell asleep," or we get up really fast and go, "Boo!" It's just fun. Yeah, on the same note of the spontaneous sleeping, the narcolepsy game, we'll often do, I'll get home early after the gym or something, and it'll be super quite in the house, and I think everyone's asleep. I'm tippy-toeing, and I get in the bedroom, and every-- There's just a mountain under the bed. Yeah, and every single person in my family is under the covers in my bed. They're all hiding from me and What's funny, even once the blanket goes over our heads-- I almost jumped on Elliot the other day 'cause I didn't know he was in the bed. Even Truett will be laying there, and the moment the blanket goes over his head, he kinda gets all wide-eyed and smiley-- Like, "What's happening?" Yeah, what's happening. Those are just fun ways to bring instantaneous giggles. And they're short things, they're easy things, and it's something that, they become part of our family, these little things. Our kids look forward to it. They're the ones that instigate all of these things now. Another little tip to help cultivate joy in the home is to not worry about messes so much. That doesn't mean that we don't clean up and have organization and self control, which is something Jennifer and I are trying to get better at, being organized and clean in our house, but if we're always trying to be tidy, it really doesn't leave any room for fun. [Jennifer] We're gonna miss those opportunities where, maybe one of the kids is playing with LEGOs and would love some help, or wants to just get creative with you-- [Aaron] Or throwing pillows around the house for a little bit, or having blankets on, like forts. You can't have it both ways. [Jennifer] We built a fort this morning, like I said, and it's middle of the day right now, it's nap time, and-- And it's still messy out there It's all messed up. It's all messed up. It's one of those things where it's like, "Well, maybe they'll build another one later," and that has to be okay. [Aaron] Something I've realized is that if I'm always telling the kids to clean up, they're actually not gonna like doing some of those fun things. Now, there's a time for everything, so let our kids know that there's a time to clean up. After we've had a full amount of fun or something, they understand that, "Okay, now let's straighten up "'cause we're gonna go on to the next thing," but just kind of not having the anxieties and the overwhelmedness of those little messes, that it's gotta be okay. It's just a good little tip to have a little bit more freedom and lightheartedness in the home. [Jennifer] Good word. Another one is dance parties. We like to turn the music up really loud and just go for it. You guys don't know this about me, but-- Our kids are the best dancers I was gonna say I'm actually probably one of the most terrible dancers, but it doesn't hold me back. I just go for it, and somehow, my kids have picked up on this, and they intend to dance crazy, silly, awkward, and that just makes us laugh even more. If you'd like to see Jennifer dance, leave us a review and tell us that you'd like to see her dance, and I'll post a video of her on our Instagram. Oh my goodness, don't even. Yeah, I'm gonna put some music to it, and you're gonna be dancing 'cause they gotta see. They gotta see the gloriousness that is your dance skills. [Jennifer] Oh, man. I gotta think about that. A lot of these other ones are very physical things, like tickling, spontaneous wrestling matches with Dad. [Aaron] Usually spurred on by my son, who hides, crouching, ready to attack, and the moment I come home, he just jumps out of nowhere onto me with a sword in his hand, but letting those things happen, I think it does huge things for our children, to know that they have the freedom to, of course, not hurt us, which happens sometimes, but just, that they have the freedom to jump on us and to climb on us and to crawl on us. This morning, Olive was, I was talking to you, and she was grabbing my legs and going in and out of my legs, and I didn't notice she was doing it for a while. Like a cat [Aaron] Then I finally was like, "Olive, what are you doing?" 'Cause I felt like I was falling over, and she's like, "I'm just playing with your legs," and she's going in and out and sitting on them and pushing me over, and I for a moment wanted to be bothered by it. Then I thought to myself, "Why do I care "that she's doing that to me right now? "It's really cute." It's something that I still have to consistently work on and recognize in me 'cause I wanna sometimes get bothered by those kinds of things, but letting it happen because I want my kids to know that they can touch me. They can crawl on me. They can hang on me. They can love me. I was actually just really inspired by someone I follow on Instagram. Her name is Joy, and she posted a picture of her two oldest kids. They're in their teens, and her little story caption was just to encourage other moms with little ones to listen to your kids when they come to tell you about what they created with LEGOs or what they're drawing or imaginary world or whatever it is-- Taking joy in their creations, their things. She said because it goes by so fast, and we know we all hear this, but she goes, "You're gonna want to hear from them "and their hard things that they're walking through "when they're older, and if you keep pushing them away "or keep saying, 'No, I don't have time for that' now, "you're gonna miss that opportunity." You wouldn't have built that trust and open lines of communication, even at a very, very young age. Hopefully that encourages someone else. [Aaron] It encourages me, that I need to be listening more and paying attention to my kids more. Again, there's always a balance. Our kids can't absorb every-- Everything. [Aaron] ...everything from us. When we are intentional with it, it'll make the times that we can't okay 'cause they'll know that our hearts are with them. [Jennifer] Right. I'd really love to talk a little bit about just experiencing joy in marriage between a husband and a wife, but before we get there, there's one more thing that, when I was thinking about this list, that really stood out to me, and it's ways that we can kind of team up together to bring joy to our kids 'cause all the things that we've kinda listed we could do without the other. Right. But this next one's pretty interesting. This is your idea, or mine, I can't remember, but we were standing in the kitchen talking, and the kids were in the school room, and I told you, I said, "Aaron, call them out." I had handfuls of marshmallows in my hand, and I-- We both did, yeah. I was one one side-- I gave you the bag, ...of the hallway-- and you took the bag from me, took a handful out, and we hid on either side of the walls, so that when we came through the hallway, we were gonna just launch all these marshmallows at them. I was like, "Elliot, "Olive, Wyatt, come here." Plus, it's also a good lesson in obedience, are they coming the first time they're being called? You're killing two birds with one stone. [Aaron] Then they pitter-patter down the hallway, and we're hiding on the floor so they don't see us, and they walk right past us. Then we just bombard them with marshmallows. It actually scared them, and they looked at us like-- They just stood there. They looked at us like, "How could you do that?" [Jennifer] They just stood there, and Olive had this furrowed brow, and she was ready to just reprimand us, and then-- Then they looked on the ground, they're like, "Are those marshmallows?" "Can we have those?" "Can we have those?" Then they just start squirming. [Aaron] Luckily, marshmallows don't hurt. If you're gonna do that game, throw things that don't hurt at your kids. Otherwise, that would not be very fun. [Jennifer] We have other friends that intentionally do Nerf wars together. Oh yeah. We actually thought about one time buying a bunch of a Nerf stuff, and then-- Getting that family that does that Yeah, not letting them know, and then when we go over for dinner, just attack them We should still do that. We should still do, well, they might listen to this episode now. Now, I have to do it before we launch this episode. [Jennifer] That's just one way that you can team up together to cultivate joy in the home. We wanna hear your guys' ideas too, so please share them. [Aaron] Yeah, and all of these things that you can do, like little things just compounding on top of each other, it shows your family, especially for the husbands out there who might struggle the way I do to be joyful or have this fun-loving spirit or a lighthearted spirit, it shows your children, it shows your wife that you enjoy them, that you like being around them, that they're not just in the way of you, that you enjoy having crazy time with them, having fun time with them. [Jennifer] Yeah, that you wanna hear them laugh, that you wanna participate in their life. We touched on how to cultivate joy in the family, especially with small kids, but Aaron, how would you say we cultivate joy within the marriage and why that's important? [Aaron] Again, walking with the right perspective, first of all, that we have a mission in this world, that God loves us, that we're saved, these big things that God's done for us, easily just allows us to have joy even in the midst of hard things, even when maybe you're not joyful, I can still walk in that stuff, so when we're walking in that together, that knowledge and that truth, there's naturally a joy that exists. On the practical side, I think there's probably a ton of things that we do that cultivate joy, probably things that we could add to our lives. One of them is we have our own set of inside jokes that no one knows about. When you're with-- I'm not gonna describe what they are because they're ours but we have our own little inside jokes, and that's something that we do together, and it's funny for us. It's fun for us. Those build over time, so if you're only one or two years married, just know that those come over time. Maybe you already have some, but those are a really fun way to just, when you're out and about or at church, or-- At any time, really At any time, you can make these jokes, and only they get it. It's pretty fun. Yeah, it's something unique to us. Yeah, something you said about having joy, one of the importance of that is even amidst walking through hard stuff, and I feel like when I look at our marriage, experiencing joy with you was possible even in those first few years, which were our hardest years of marriage, and that was one of the things that carried us through those hard years, was finding ways to cultivate joy in our relationship, exploring new places together, trying to get each other to laugh. [Aaron] Yeah, I realize when we weren't lovers, in those early years, we were friends still, not all the time, but we had a friendship. We had things that we can connect with still and cultivate. God wanted more from us, but in those times, I remember when we were in Malawi, Africa, and it's been hard, and we walked off and we sat on a pier over the lake. Remember that? Mm-hmm, there's a gazebo at the end. [Aaron] Yeah, and we were just sitting there, talking, looking at the fish, talking about being married, talking about if we'd ever come back. [Jennifer] Yeah, we talked about our future. [Aaron] Yeah we talked about our future. Those little things on our list up there, we didn't talk about it, but adventures, that's another way we cultivate joy in our family and in our marriage, is we take adventures, even when we're not with the kids. Me and you like to just go for a drive around neighborhoods we've never been in before, going up the mountain just to drive up the mountain. There's things that we do that give us opportunities to just talk. I think those are situations that cultivate joy in us because it's just us together. It's just us spending time with each other, talking, hearing each other. [Jennifer] Yeah, I think another practical way to do this is, again, physical touch, just like when we were talking about with the kids, but tickling each other, hugging each other. Massages. Massages. Dancing. That's joyful for me. [Jennifer] I'm giving Aaron the eyes 'cause that sounded creepy, but just being physical, being willing to tickle each other and-- And play with each other, yeah. And play, yeah. I like the-- We're a lot more playful with each other these days than we used to be. [Jennifer] Yeah, I like the keep away game, where you snag something, like their phone works really well for this, and then you have to try and get it. Yeah, if you wanna know how addicted someone is to their phone, just snag it out of their hands and see how they respond. Wait, that's joyful? I just think about the lightness. We've had seasons where it just feels like we're walking on eggshells with each other, and that's not fun, where you're tippy-toeing around your spouse, and you're just wondering if the next thing you do is gonna trigger them. That's the opposite of joy. Yeah. [Aaron] That is not joyful. That is tedious and cumbersome. If your spouse can feel light around you and free around you. And feel loved. [Aaron] And cherished around you and loved around you, how much strength there is in that, and power there is in that, and that's what I want because again, we're always talking about being a marriage after God. There's a reason we're together. It's for the ministry God has for us, and if you're constantly feeling like you have to be so aware of every move you make around me because you're just wondering if you're gonna trigger me, there's no way you can minister for Christ in that kind of situation. There's no way we as a family can show the world the love we have for each other, which is what we're called to do, right? Mm-hmm [Aaron] Now, that's not just talking about in marriage. That's talking about in the church as a whole, but joy remedies that. It cultivates an environment that allows for true and powerful and authoritative ministry to happen. [Jennifer] Joy is one of those testimonies of the power of God in your life, and I know I said that earlier, but it's so true, that when the world looks at you, when the world looks at a marriage after God and they see joy, they're probably thinking, "Well, I want "what they have." Yeah, "How do I get "some of that?" [Jennifer] "What is that?" Then you get to tell them, "It's because of Jesus in my life. "It's because God has transformed us. "It's because God gives us hope." [Aaron] Yup. I hope those listening get encouraged by this, that, of course, we're still learning, but if they put their hearts in the right place, they put it in the hands of Christ and allow him to transform them and say, "Lord, I want more joy. "I want more of your joy, "and I want my family to experience joy," it all goes back to walking in the Spirit and saying, "Lord, help me walk in the Spirit today. "I want my kids to feel the overflow of joy in my life. "I want my wife, I want my husband, "to feel that, to experience that joy, "to eat the good fruit coming out of me, "and then in our marriage, I want people, our children, "outsiders to eat the good fruit of our marriage," and at the end of the day, that joy becomes our strength. I just wanna read that scripture in Nehemiah chapter 8. Nehemiah had just finished building the wall, the walls around the city, and Ezra the priest got up on a platform, and he read the entire book of the law out loud, from day till night, to all of the congregation of the people. Nehemiah says this to the people after all of this, it says, "Then he said to them," in chapter 8, verse 10: "'Go your way. "'Eat the fat and drink the sweet wine "'and send portions to anyone who has nothing ready, "'for this day is holy to our Lord. "'And do not be grieved, for the joy "'of the Lord is your strength.'" This people, they were scattered, they were dispersed, the city was destroyed. Nehemiah came, rebuilt the city and was about to, and he had all the people coming back to the city to rebuild their own homes, to rebuild this city with a people that God promised it would be their city, it would be their home, and he just reminds them, he says, "The joy of the Lord is your strength." The strength in our home, the strength in our lives is the Lord. The strength in our marriage. The strength in our marriage, the strength in our ministry, and that strength comes from the joy that God gives us, from the hope we have in Christ, from the power and the authority of the Word of God, and that joy is the thing that just allows us to keep going, keeping walking. Instead of it being mechanical, instead of it being a checklist, it's now a life-giving thing we do. I think that's awesome. Yeah, I love that. My grandma Betty, she is 91 and just right there at the end of her life, and my dad posted a quote, something that she always said, which was, "Make someone laugh every day, "and life will be full." When I think about her life, I think about it being really full. Yeah, every time we're around her, she's big ol' smile, laughing, making jokes. Huge smile. Just for a little description, she's probably only five foot, maybe five-foot-one with heels on, and she wore colorful dresses. She had bright red hair and always wore blue eyeshadow, and when I think of her, I think of fun. I remember being a little girl, maybe four years old, I would go over to her house when my dad brought us over there to visit, and about 10 minutes before we would leave, she would say, "Jenn, come with me." She'd take me to her vanity and put perfume on me and eyeshadow and blush and did the whole thing-- Make you feel so pretty. ...make me feel like a princess, and the whole time just talking to me, and encouraging me, and loving on me, and I can't imagine what I looked like to everyone walking out as a little four-year-old with this makeup on, if she even really put make up on me. Remember, she liked to have fun I know. When I think about that little girl, when I think about myself, if I stood in front of her today, I would think there was no question about the joy that I had in my heart from just that experience with her, those five minutes, or 10 minutes, or however long it was, of sitting in her chair and listening to her voice and being there with me. I just love that, and I want, at the end of my life, to look back and think, "That was a full life." [Aaron] Yeah, and I want people to look back on my life, or our life, and say, "Wow, they were joyful," right? Mm-hmm [Aaron] I don't want them to think, "Man, they were bitter and frustrated all the time "and annoyed." I want them to say, "They were joyful." Joy's a powerful thing. What's funny is all of the fruit of the Spirit is powerful. It's why-- We need it [Aaron] We need the Spirit, is because it produces such good things in us. I just pray that this encourages the listeners today that they would pursue joy, that they would walk in the Spirit, and that they would cultivate an environment in their home that their kids just know what joy is. It doesn't mean we're not gonna have hard times, but it does mean that we can have pure, eternal joy, something that's founded in something in eternity, not in something that is temporary. [Jennifer] I love that. Speaking of prayer, I think that now is a perfect time to go into our prayer for today's episode. We'd love to invite you guys to pray along with us. [Aaron] Dear Lord, thank you for the gift of joy. We pray that we would be intentional to cultivate joy in our marriages and in our families. Holy Spirit, please inspire us with creative ways to create space in our lives to laugh, to play, to enjoy precious moments with those we love most. Remind use every day of the power of joy and how we can be vessels of your joy, so that it is dispersed throughout the world. May our joy be a testimony to others of your goodness and your strength in our lives. May it be the reason people ask us why we are so different from the rest of the world. May our joy draw our spouse, our children, and others close to you as we experience the gift of joy. In Jesus' name, amen. Amen. [Aaron] We just thank you for joining us this week. We pray that you have joy this week. We pray that you would walk in the Spirit, and we look forward to having you next week. Did you enjoy today's show? Find many more encouraging stories and resources at marriageaftergod.com, and let us help you cultivate an extraordinary marriage.

Let's be faithful with the small things so that we will be faithful in the big things. Consider supporting this podcast by visiting our online store today. https://shop.marraigeaftergod.com READ: [Aaron] Hey we're Aaron and Jennifer Smith with Marriage After God. [Jennifer] Helping you cultivate an extraordinary marriage. [Aaron] And today we're gonna talk about how being faithful in the little things will prepare us for the big things. [Aaron] Welcome to the Marriage After God podcast where we believe that marriage was meant for more than just happily ever after. [Jennifer] I'm Jennifer, also known as Unveiled Wife. [Aaron] And I'm Aaron, also known as Husband Revolution. [Jennifer] We have been married for over a decade. [Aaron] And so far we have four young children. [Jennifer] We have been doing marriage ministry online for over seven years through blogging and social media. [Aaron] With the desire to inspire couples to keep God at the center of their marriage, encouraging them to walk in faith every day. [Jennifer] We believe that Christian marriage should be an extraordinary one, full of life. [Aaron] Love. [Jennifer] And power. [Aaron] That can only be found by chasing after God. [Jennifer] Together. [Aaron] Thank you for joining us in this journey as we chase boldly after God's will for our life together. [Jennifer] This is Marriage After God. [Jennifer] Thank you guys so much for joining us on today's episode. We just wanna take a minute to just encourage you to leave a star rating review, this just helps other listeners find our podcast. And we're just eager to get this message out. So please take a minute just to leave that star rating, and also if you have time and some extra love, you can leave a written review. That also just really encourages our hearts, lets people know what this podcast is about, and again just spreads that love out into the internet. [Aaron] Also if you've been really loving the podcast and the content, one way you can support this podcast is by purchasing one of our books. You know my wife and I, we've written 11 books now, going on 12. Our twelfth one comes out next year in June. And you can just head over to shop.marriageaftergod.com, and pick up our prayer books, our 30 day marriage devotionals. You can look at all the products we have. And we even have prayer books for children, too. You pray for your son, pray for your daughter. They've been a really popular book. So if you wanna support our podcast please consider going over to shop.marriageaftergod.com when you're done with this podcast. [Jennifer] Okay, so we are going to start off with an icebreaker, we did this last week, it was fun. So Aaron, I'm gonna ask you the first question, and then I guess we'll just tag team it, and then I can answer after you. So it is, what is one habit that you would like to create in your life right now? [Aaron] I would like to get better at reading the Bible more consistently. I'm just gonna be honest. [Jennifer] Okay. [Aaron] I used to be, have it at a specific time every day and I've just kind of gotten out of sync with that. So I'd like to get into a better habit of digging into the word of God. [Jennifer] Okay. And I would answer that by just saying working out. I feel like after I had Truett, you know you wait that kind of post-partum period, six weeks or so out. And then I started feeling really good and I added in one day a week. And now I'm looking for more. So just finding a consistent schedule for that would be really awesome. [Aaron] That's a good habit, yeah. [Jennifer] Well you encourage me. [Aaron] Thank you. [Jennifer] We're gonna share a little more about that later, but you've been in a good habit of that. [Aaron] Okay, so before I move onto the main topic I just wanna read a quote from a book I'm reading right now called the Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg. Habits are powerful but delicate, they can emerge outside our consciousness or can be deliberately designed. They often occur without our permission but can be reshaped by fiddling with their parts. They shape our lives far more than we realize. They are so strong in fact, that they cause our brains to cling to them at the exclusion of all else, including common sense. [Jennifer] That's good. [Aaron] Yeah, really powerful quote. The whole book just being about habits and how we form them and how we can change them. It's a really good book. [Jennifer] Yeah I wonder if anyone else listening as you read that quote can already just think about a handful of habits in their own lives that do this very thing. [Aaron] Yeah, it's amazing. Most of our habits we form without even thinking about them. It's not like we try to form the habit we just, they form out of our everyday rituals and routines, Choices. [Aaron] And choices, yeah. So it's kind of, it leads into what we're gonna be talking about today a little bit. We're not gonna be talking about just habits. [Jennifer] A little bit bigger of a concept. [Aaron] Yeah. [Jennifer] Of being faithful in the little things, and why. [Aaron] So, why don't we start off with the conversation that we had in the car the other day which lead us to wanting to talk about this [Jennifer] So, yeah we were driving in the car and you brought up that morning's workout, and you just wanted to share about it with me and how excited you were about something specific that you accomplished. [Aaron] Yeah, I was really proud of myself actually because I learned that I had a skill I didn't know I had. The workout involved rope climbing which we don't do very often. We do them maybe once every other month. And this workout had two rope climbs every so many movements, and before the workout started we were just getting ready, warming up and I thought, "Hey, I'm just gonna try a rope climb real quick, "see how it feels, "'cause I haven't done it in awhile." And I did a rope climb without my legs. So they call it a legless rope climb [Jennifer] Sounds torturous. [Aaron] Yeah, but I was really surprised at myself 'cause I've never been able to do a legless rope climb. And so I was sharing, I was like, "Babe, I did all these legless rope climbs today, "I didn't use my legs at all, "I just used my arms to go up and down." [Jennifer] And I just mentioned how I feel like that, like there's so much of it that's mental. [Aaron] Yeah, 'cause I didn't even know I could do it. And I was telling her, I was like, "Yeah, it's amazing how much "all of the stuff we do is mental "because I may be able to do it physically, "but I may not be able to do it mentally." There's many times I have to force myself to keep going. With this workout specifically, I told myself, I was able to do a legless rope climb, I'm just gonna do the whole workout doing only legless rope climbs. Which meant I had to slow down. I couldn't do as many rounds as everyone else did. But I was able to accomplish my little goal. And I was super proud of myself. It was a really good feeling. [Jennifer] You should be, that's awesome. [Aaron] I didn't realize I could do it. And we started talking about how not only is it a balance of mental and physical, but it's something that all these things that people learn, when you see people you're like, oh I can't believe they can do that. They didn't just start doing it. At the crossfit gym that we do, that I go to, there's a progression to things. Like I didn't just start doing legless rope climbs. I could not even do it, I wasn't strong enough, nor did I know how to. So we, there's this term called scaling. So we scale down the workout to what we can do. So even though, you know, I can't do what the main workout is I can still do the workout at a different level. [Jennifer] It seems like that's the key is scaling. [Aaron] Well it is the only way to do it, 'cause you can't just come in and expect someone to do this part of the workout if they've never done it before. You know, some people might be strong like that but usually you just can't. And so we were just discussing how you know, it starts off really small. You know, like, for the rope climb specifically. One of the ways that you can scale that down is instead of climbing the rope you just lay on the floor. And you pull yourself up. [Jennifer] Yeah. [Aaron] The rope to where you're standing. [Jennifer] Which when I do crossfit, I had to do that and it was not easy. Even for me. [Aaron] That's even still really hard, yeah. So you're just laying on the floor. [Jennifer] You have to start somewhere. [Aaron] And you walk your arms up the rope and you just pull yourself until you're standing up. And that's one of the first steps of learning how to climb a rope. There's other ways to do it where they bring the rope real low so it's not a very tall one, and you just try and do like a few feet, you know, instead of trying to do 15 feet up in the air, or 25 feet up in the air, you're just, you know, you're going up a couple inches or a couple feet. But that's what spurned this conversation with us about wanting to talk about not just habits, but-- [Jennifer] Spiritual growth, maturity. Just all kinds of hard things in life that you have to be able to start somewhere and experience that progression and balance of growing. And yeah, so when we were talking about scaling we were looking at life and saying that's still required. [Aaron] Well, and what happens is if we do this all in our own hearts, we look at something, or we look where someone's at, and we say, "Oh, well I could never do that, "therefore I'm not gonna try." Like I could never do a legless rope climb so I'm not gonna try. I could never run a marathon so I'm not gonna try. And that's, like no one just goes and runs a marathon. [Jennifer] But we don't see the work that they put into practicing and trying and even failing at times and feeling defeated. [Aaron] And where they started. [Jennifer] Where they started, yeah. [Aaron] Actually, today our coach at the gym was just mentioning how when he first started it took him like two years to do double unders, which is jump rope, you know where you spin it really fast. I can barely do 'em. But when I look at him I'm like, "Wow, it took you that long?" That's how my progression is going, it's been, I can't do 'em yet. I've been going for about two years and I've almost got 'em. But when you hear that you're like, "Oh, well, okay that's normal. "I guess I didn't realize that everyone "starts in the same place." [Jennifer] Yeah. [Aaron] Like everyone starts somewhere. We all start as babies. And then we get stronger and we grow. And so that's kind of what we wanted to discuss today. We're discussing it in our own lives. What are things that we can start today that we're gonna get stronger in and stronger in and better in later? You know, is it health? Spiritually, being in the Word. [Jennifer] Leading our children. [Aaron] Prayer. Leading our children. And how the incremental growth comes from the beginning of starting somewhere and moving forward and getting better at it. [Jennifer] Taking those steps. When we were kind of walking through the notes for today's episode, you mentioned, you know, everybody wants to be at the 1,000 mile mark without ever having to start with the first step. [Aaron] Yeah, what's that quote? A journey of 1,000 miles begins with the first step. [Jennifer] But yeah, everybody wants the reward, and everybody wants to experience the high of maturity or spiritual growth. [Aaron] And the blessings that come with it. [Jennifer] The blessings of leading your children and all these things, whatever the things may be. But there's a lot of work that's required of it. And sometimes we look at that work load and we say, "I can't do that." We don't believe that we're capable. But we wanna remind people that it's a matter of growing incrementally. It's making those daily choices, those individual steps toward those things. [Aaron] Yeah, being faithful. [Jennifer] Being faithful with them. [Aaron] In the very little things on a regular basis. You said something a second ago about not realizing, or not thinking we can handle stuff, or what we're capable of. I think the number one thing I've learned from my fitness journey, and we're not gonna keep talking about fitness by the way, this has been our template for why we were talking about this 'cause of what we've been seeing in me. Is that I'm surprised at what I am capable of. And every single time I go to the gym I'm like, "I can't believe I was able to do that." And I'm not tooting my own horn, it's just the nature of not telling myself I can't. And not giving up on myself and not giving into when it's difficult, and realizing what I'm capable of. There's, I was just thinking about this, what was the movie where the guy's escaped from the prison and they go across the Sahara Desert or whatever? And like it's just thousands and thousands of miles and they just survive. No one would think they could have gotten across the desert but they did. But that's how it is in life. We don't think we can accomplish things or make things happen in our lives, or learn something in the Bible that we see other people know or understand. And we're like, "Oh, we're not capable of that." I can't do that, you know, I can't go speak on stage, I can't go witness to someone, I can't, you know, spiritually lead my family. These are legitimate things that people see other people do, but then inside are like, "Oh, I don't have "it in me to do that." [Jennifer] Yeah, and I don't feel like people are walking around saying I can't do that, I can't do that, I think that it's kind of just something that we accept without even giving it a second thought sometimes. [Aaron] Well I know in my life that's happened a lot. There's things I've just said I couldn't do. But why? Who told me I couldn't do it? You know, doesn't mean I do everything. We wanna talk about the spiritual things in our lives that we can be implementing, walking in, that we can be building on. Becoming faithful in the little things because when we are faithful in these little things over time they compile into bigger things. You know I think spiritually when I think about being faithful in little being faithful in the big, and I think of that scripture where Jesus says, "If you deny me before man, "I will deny you before my Father in Heaven." And I think, you know, we don't as Christians just say, "Oh, one day if I'm persecuted "and put in this situation where "people are gonna threaten my life, "I'm just gonna stand for God." And then, in a very simple situation where someone asks me about my faith and I ignore the question or I avoid the answer. Like can I say that if I can't be faithful in that very little, safe, non life threatening situation. [Jennifer] How would you ever do it? [Aaron] Yeah, how could I possibly imagine that when my life's on the line, or someone else's life on the line, I'm gonna stand for my faith? And I think that's what we're getting at today is practicing walking in these little things. [Jennifer] Yeah, and I think that what I see beneficial about being faithful in the little stuff is in your relationship with God, and our relationship with God, we're actually building trust with Him. He's able to trust us. [Aaron] With more. Yeah so, I wanna read a couple scriptures here. In Luke chapter 16, Jesus is giving a parable. It's about a dishonest manager, and how he was taking advantage of his master's finances and bills and things that he was in charge of. And at the end of it Jesus says, he says this, it's in Luke 16:10. "One who is faithful in very little "is also faithful in much. "And one who is dishonest in very little "is also dishonest in much. "If then you have not been faithful "in the unrighteous wealth, "who will entrust to you the true riches? "And if you have not been faithful in that "which is another's, "who will give you that which is your own? "No servant can serve two masters "for either he will hate the one "and love the other, "or he will be devoted to the one "and despise the other. "You cannot serve God and money." So the direct context of this of course is finances, is money, is the things that we have, and it says unrighteous wealth. And what it's talking about is earthly gain, earthly money, earthly finances, earthly wealth. 'Cause He says if you can't be faithful on Earth with the money that you have that's not Heavenly, not eternal, how can you be entrusted with true riches? Which are Heavenly things. Which are eternal things. And so, the question out of this parable, even though this is specifically talking about money, is what earthly things do we have that we're being faithful with now? You know, I remember thinking when we first started our ministries, you know we launched our social media pages, and we were thinking like, "Man, that'd be so awesome. "What if we can get to a million followers?" [Jennifer] Oh yeah, I remember that. [Aaron] It was like our first year. And we had just started this thing. [Jennifer] We didn't know what we were doing. I mean we were just trying to, we knew our hearts were to encourage people and to utilize the tool of social media. But it was so new back then, too. It was all just, it was all new to us. [Aaron] Yeah, we hadn't even had it long enough to even be called faithful with it. [Jennifer] Yeah. [Aaron] You know. And we would've totally mismanaged a platform like that if it grew that fast without us being faithful with the little thing that we had. [Jennifer] So yeah, even though we wanted a large following and people that were part of our audience that we could speak into their lives and encourage, I wouldn't say that we were ready for that, especially when we first started. [Aaron] Of course not. That would be ridiculous. You know, in Timothy we learn about eldership and deaconship and that position it says they must not be a new convert. And the point is that they're not ready. They haven't been proven yet. And so there's lots of things in our life that we should be proven in, and we should walk in consistently to show that we're faithful in those areas. So I just wanna read one more scripture about the same subject. It's in Matthew 25:23. And it's in the same kind of parable. It's a parable of the Talents, you know, the master goes away, leaves three of his servants with a certain amount of Talents, and he expects return from them. And then he says this to one of them. His master said to him, "Well done good and faithful servant. "You have been faithful over little. "I will set you over much. "Enter into the joy of your master." That's what I want God to say to me. [Jennifer] Me too. [Aaron] That God's given me certain things. He's given me my marriage, my children, my job, our relationships, our home, our money, our car, all of these things. And there's much more, right. And I want Him to say that I was faithful with the things that He's given me. That I was faithful in investing them for the kingdom. You know, I wanna ask us, not just me and you Jennifer, but our listeners, what areas of our life, whatever areas of the things God's given us are we being faithful in? And what areas can we be more faithful in? Whether we thing they're big things or small things. We just have to recognize that the things that we currently have, the life that He's given us, He wants us to be faithful with. So, we're talking about, you know, being faithful to the things that God's given us. But I think on top of that, it's really good, we need to be good stewards, we need to be faithful with the things God's given us. But what about our spirit? What are some things that we can be faithful in in the little ways on the spiritual side of things in our life? [Jennifer] Well I definitely, like everyone would agree with me that reading His word and prayer are probably the top two things, right off the bat that we could look at our lives and evaluate whether we're doing that or not. Do we have a good, healthy habit? A daily routine of that? [Aaron] Yeah, being regular in the word and growing in that area. [Jennifer] I think some things that stop people from doing that is feeling like they don't know how to pray. Feeling like they don't understand God's word. And I think I would just encourage them that even if you don't understand it just keep reading it. Eventually God will help your heart to understand it, or maybe you'll have questions, and then you can go seek out answers to those questions. But it's a process. And I think that if we could just start with the simple, you know, just be active in reading, be active in sharing your heart with God, I think those are simple habits to start. [Aaron] Yeah, we're never gonna get better knowing the word of God without reading it. [Jennifer] It's true. [Aaron] And it is daunting, it's like whoa where do I start? And there's so much stuff, what's prophecy? How do I understand it? And there's just so much in the Bible, it's so rich, right? But, what we're getting at with all of this is we just start. You aren't going to get to the finish line without starting the race. And so this is kind of like our, you know, our call to action for the community, for those listening is if there's areas in your life that you know that you haven't been faithful in the little? Like you haven't been in the word of God regularly, haven't been praying, that today you start. [Jennifer] And it's not necessarily a chore either, like I just wanna encourage those listening that sometimes we can see the mountain ahead of us, and just like I said, be daunted by it, and think that's too hard. Or not enjoyable. Or see it as a chore to get to the top. But if you think of a mountain, and having a trail leading up to the top, you're gonna have, you're gonna go through probably tall trees or meadows or flowers or rocks and things to look at. And I think that it can be an enjoyable thing to pursue. It is an enjoyable thing to pursue. But we have to have the right perspective in order to see it that way. [Aaron] And it may not feel enjoyable at first because we're stretching muscles we've never used before. We're practicing something we haven't practiced before, so it is hard. It can be painful. Like, you know, going to bed later, so you can get in the word. Waking up earlier. Those aren't easy things in the beginning, but what happens is you build a craving for it and you start seeing the fruit from it. [Jennifer] And you enjoy that. [Aaron] And that's what you start enjoying. You're like, "Man, I enjoy the spiritual growth I'm seeing. "I enjoy the perspective I'm gaining. "I'm enjoying seeing my life change and transformed "by these new habits I'm forming. "By the word of God, by prayer, "by fellowship." You know, the things that the Bible's called us to. Walking in those things aren't always easy right in the beginning. But there's a quote that just says nothing worth doing's ever easy. You know. And these little things are worth doing. And we have a little note here, it just says incremental growth. The point is are we growing or are we stalled? Are we just staying in one place? Are we stagnant? The Bible uses that term lukewarm. We're neither hot nor cold, we're not going backwards or forwards. We're just remaining. And we don't wanna, a Marriage After God doesn't just remain. [Jennifer] Yeah, we wanna inspire you guys to take those steps forward. [Aaron] Yeah, we chase, we boldly chase after God's will for our lives. And there's only one way to know God's will. It's to dig into His word. And it's to dig into prayer. And it's to participate in the communion of the fellowship of being around believers and walking with one another, and accountability, and iron sharpening iron. But it starts somewhere. [Jennifer] And practically speaking how do you start building these habits or these routines, these things that we know we should be doing when we're not doing 'em. How do we start? [Aaron] Yeah, and it's not going straight to the end. Like okay, I'm gonna read three chapters a night, I'm gonna read through the whole Bible in a month and I'm gonna, it starts with I'm going to set a time every day that I'm gonna open the Bible. [Jennifer] You know when we first got married I remember your mom mentioned to me, she was just giving me tips and tricks on how to manage a home and all of that. And without saying that it was coupling she was actually teaching me the art of coupling. She would say things like, "You know, I read my Bible every morning "with a cup of coffee." So she goes and pours herself a cup of coffee, sits at the kitchen table, and she leaves her Bible on the kitchen table so she knows that those two things go together. And it's a way of building in that habit each and every day. Building a routine each and every day. And I never really put into practice the skill of coupling. Actually I forgot about it until a friend of ours brought it up to us a couple years ago, and kind of inspired you in the art of coupling. And do you wanna talk about that a little bit? [Aaron] Yeah, so, this is just a tip for anyone who wants to implement new habits and routines in their life, especially in these spiritual areas of like reading the word of God or praying, or going and being with other believers. We can couple, which is taking something you already do on a regular basis, taking a habit you already have, and adding the new habit or routine to it. So a good example would be like, if you took a shower every morning, having a note on the mirror in the bathroom to remind you to pray. Or putting your prayer notes on the mirror or somehow in the bath, in the shower when you're in there. So what you're doing is your coupling your daily routine of showering with a daily routine of prayer. [Jennifer] Yeah, so currently right now, by the way I just have to note. If they hear baby noises, coos and burps, it's, the baby's on my lap. But right now we're-- [Aaron] Real life. We're coupling podcasting with parenting. [Jennifer] Yeah. We are trying to find cues within our rhythm of just managing the kids, and so after Bible time I help Elliot with piano, and so for me a signal of ending Bible time means piano time helps me remember that we have to do piano every day. [Aaron] Which we've been talking about piano, we love that our son's learning piano, but it's been hard to have a routine of daily practice. And so we're like okay, what can we couple it with? What can be our cue during the day for you to just go straight to piano practice? And so we're making it right after Bible time he'll do piano practice. Bible time is a good example of something that we've been working on in our home. Forming new habits and better routines and something that's going to spiritually benefit our home and family and children. [Jennifer] Which we've seen. [Aaron] Yeah, and this actually was a hard thing. I remember thinking man I wanna be leading my family spiritually, I wanna be a spiritual leader, I wanna implement things that are gonna benefit my children and myself. And I remember thinking how hard that was. I was like I don't even know what to do, where do I start? What do I, what am I supposed to do? And I just told myself one day. I was like I'm just gonna start. So I was like okay kids, come sit down on the couch, we're doing Bible time. And they're like what? What is Bible time? And didn't it start off, I think we've talked about it before, it started off at like a verse. [Jennifer] Yeah it was short. [Aaron] Like we just did one verse. And I would talk about it for a minute. I didn't have like a set Bible study, I was just like, "Okay, what do you think "that verse meant? "What was your favorite word out of the verse? "What does it mean when he says this?" [Jennifer] Now the whole family looks forward to it. [Aaron] Yeah and it's not just a verse anymore. We read up to two chapters and it will probably get more and more eventually. And that's just an example of starting somewhere. And since we started it's been, we started in January I think. Or February. And it's pretty much been a whole year now. And we do it, I feel like we do it four to five times a week on average. There's some days that we miss. I have coffees on Wednesday mornings so I don't think I do it then. I think you've been doing it. So, that's a routine we have in our home. That our children are hearing the word of God, they're learning the word of God, I'm getting better at leading and having this routine. And what's awesome is when you take these small steps of faithfulness, so me just sitting down for a few minutes a day, reading the Bible with the kids turns into other things. It makes it easier to now have a routine for piano practice. To have a routine for breakfast and a routine for what comes next in the day. And a routine for prayer in the car. We've been practicing, just, we're driving and like hey, who could we be praying for right now, kids? It makes those muscles, those spiritual muscles easier to use. Stronger. [Jennifer] I just keep thinking how much stronger our kids are gonna be. [Aaron] Yeah, because we're practicing habits and spiritual skills now. They're gonna benefit from them. And that's the whole point is we want them to benefit from them. And we're benefiting from 'em. I find myself wanting to read more, which I've always told myself I'm not a reader. And then the other day I was like I'm just gonna read books. So I have like three open books right now in my nightstand. I haven't read through all of them yet, but I'm reading through all of them currently. And I have this audiobook I'm listening to so I'm just trying to walk in new things. I just don't wanna be the same person all the time. I wanna be moving forward. I wanna be growing in life. And I know you feel the same way. It's things that we've been seeing and know that God wants from us is just maturity and growth. So what areas in our life are you seeing that we may need a break? Like habits we may need to break or replace with other habits? [Jennifer] Well I know for myself, we were just talking about this the other day, but when I feel overwhelmed, or even if I feel like I just accomplished something really hard, I treat myself. And it's like that's my cue for a bad habit. Or like I said when I feel overwhelmed. [Aaron] Like you've earned it. Like oh I've earned to go splurge. [Jennifer] Yeah, or if I feel overwhelmed and I just wanna feel better, those are just some simple cues that give me a very bad habit of you know, filling that with sugar or whatever the treat is. [Aaron] Yeah, fill in the blank. [Jennifer] Fill in the blank. So I think that's one thing that I am looking forward to breaking. [Aaron] So replacing that supposed reward you wanna give yourself with something more healthy. [Jennifer] Another one would be going to bed late because I wanna build a habit of getting up early and getting in the word before I get going with the kids. But I know in order to do that I need to go to bed earlier. [Aaron] Yeah, and these are again, these are little things. So just trying to be on the same page, and say hey, what will it take to get to bed 30 minutes earlier tonight? It's setting for ourselves some goals maybe. Little goals like hey, if we're gonna be praying with each other at night let's make sure that we have the kids in bed on time, let's make sure that we're efficient, let's crawl into bed and let's spend time in prayer together. [Jennifer] And I do feel like we are getting stronger and better, more obedient, more faithful in these small things. And sometimes it can feel defeating when we think about we've already come so far, or we've already stretched that muscle so much. We've already changed. [Aaron] Yeah, do I need to do more? Gosh. [Jennifer] Yeah, we've already changed so much and then it hurts when God, or you, or someone reveals that there's more to go. Or even just like, there's another step to take. It can feel really defeating. But that's what faithfulness is all about is just being willing to take that next step forward. Yeah, and I wanna encourage those listening. We've mentioned quite a few things in our life that God might be wanting to change in us and grow in us, and give us more diligence and more faithfulness in, because He's just building and building on us. And again like we said in the beginning, they could be listening to all of this and be like well that's so much, where am I supposed to start with all of that? And my encouragement is just start. God's probably revealing right now to you one area that He would love to see you grow in and change in. Is it just spending some time while you're driving to work praying instead of listening to the radio? And not thinking like oh, I have these 50 things I need to do today, 'cause you will fail. We've experienced that in our lives. We have this grandeur idea like oh I wanna be this person, this is what I'm gonna do, I'm gonna implement these 12 things and I'm gonna be that person tomorrow. And then it's like that's too hard, I can't do it. But what we found is it's real easy to do something small. But then when you do 1,000 small things, right? It becomes a very big thing. I wouldn't have imagined that we would have written 12 books eight years ago. We didn't write 'em all in the same day. [Jennifer] That would have been really hard. I'm glad God didn't ask us to. [Aaron] Thank God, yeah. [Jennifer] He knows us better than we know ourselves. [Aaron] But now looking back it's like oh, we did one book. And then we did a second book. We had 1,000 followers, and then 10,000 followers, and again, not just to talk about us. I'm just, the point is, we started somewhere. And unless we start we're not gonna ever get anywhere. [Jennifer] And I think a marriage after God is willing to start, and they're willing to embrace hard things, and they're willing to persevere. And they're willing to look at the future with vision and understanding and hope that they will, they will mature, and they will grow, and they will exercise those muscles for the purposes of what God has for them to glorify His name. [Aaron] Yeah I was gonna ask why does all this matter? [Jennifer] Yeah, it's for Him. [Aaron] Like why are we even? It's for Him. He's got something for us to do. Just think of that scripture that tells us that God's prepared beforehand, before we were even formed in the womb, He had good works for us to accomplish in this world for Him. So all of these things, they're not so that we can feel more holy or look what we've done. The only goal, the only drive, the only passion that should be pushing any of these decisions forward, and giving us motivation to do these things, and grow in these areas, is to see what He's doing in our life, and to see what He's. [Jennifer] Truett agrees. [Aaron] Yeah, Truett agrees. So I hope this encourages those that are listening to ask God what areas they can build new habits in, and to be revealed, areas they can just start today. [Jennifer] I'm willing to bid they already know what that next step is. [Aaron] Yeah they're thinking right now like oh, I've been wanting to do this. [Jennifer] Okay, you just need to do it. [Aaron] You just need to do it. So I said last night Jennifer, you were mentioning how you wanted to start something, and I was like, "Start? "Start today?" I didn't say it harshly, but I was just like the reality is that it's not going to start for you, like start it. [Jennifer] And sometimes I feel like we always wanna say like we'll start Monday. And that never works because then Monday comes, then Tuesday comes, then Wednesday comes, and you forgot that you were supposed to start Monday. So then you have to start Monday again. [Aaron] That's one of the tactics our flesh uses to keep us from moving forward, to keep us from growing up. Is as long as it's tomorrow it's not today. So let's just make it today. Today's the day of salvation. Today is the day that we make those changes. Today is the day we say yes to God. Today is the day we believe what the scriptures say about the power that's in us, the resurrection power of Jesus Christ. And that we walk in it. We walk in the spirit, not the flesh. I just hope everyone that's listening is encouraged, I mean it's something that Jennifer and I are walking through and growing in and learning how to be. So a new thing that we've been doing is ending in prayer. And so Jennifer's got a prayer for you all today. So would you please join us in prayer? [Jennifer] Dear Lord, we pray that we would be men and women who submit our lives to you. Examine our lives and show us the areas that need transformation and change. We pray we wouldn't complain or grumble when you revealed to us bad habits that we need to break, or what the next step of growth is that we need to take. Help us not to be prideful or resistant when you use our spouse to speak a word of truth about the habits in our lives. May we receive what they have to share with a humble heart, knowing that what they share is motivated by love. We pray we would walk in righteousness. Holy Spirit help us to break the stronghold of habits that need to go, rhythms and routines that have become natural to us but don't benefit us or our families. When you convict our hearts toward change may we boldly choose to walk out what you desire for us. May we be faithful in the little things each and every day, knowing that our faithfulness is building trust in a relationship with you. Please help us to prepare our hearts and our bodies for the work that you have for us. May we take time to encourage our spouse in building better habits, and keep each other accountable to the changes we aim to make. Lord help us to be faithful in the small things so that we are prepared for the bigger things. In Jesus' name, Amen. [Aaron] Amen. So thanks for joining us for today's episode. We pray that you would hear the heart of the Lord today. And that you would seek out what He has for you, and how He wants you to grow. And we look forward to having you next week. Did you enjoy today's show? Find many more encouraging stories and resources at marriageaftergod.com and let us help you cultivate an extraordinary marriage.