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This Q and A topic is all about communication in marriage. Which we mention often in almost every episode because it is such a vital component of marriage. You have to talk to each other! We answer several questions that were submitted by our listeners. Please enjoy. 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 answer your questions about communication 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. [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. [Aaron] Hey everyone, welcome back to another episode of Marriage After God. It's actually the last episode of season three. So if you've been following along, we're gonna be taking a break, we're about to have a baby. If you've been listening to the last few episodes, you know that. And so, we're gonna have a little break. And then we're gonna come back in another season, in season four. We don't have a date for that yet, which is fine. [Jennifer] We'll let you guys know on social media. [Aaron] Yeah. And then, we'll do some new episodes. And so, just as a side note, if you have topic ideas for the new season, go ahead and shoot those in a message to us on Instagram at @marriageaftergod. But, today we're gonna be answering some questions from the audience, but before we get to the questions we like to talk about some things in life, but really, this first thing I wanna talk about is, I wanna encourage everyone listening today, because I know that there's a lot of fears, there's a lot of anxiety going around with the coronavirus, with things that are happening in the world, and I think some of them are legitimate things to be thinking about and considering. We wanna be wise people, that's what the Bible talks about. We don't wanna just pretend that none of this stuff's gonna affect us. But, my encouragement is to remind everyone listening that our trust is not in this world. Our trust is not in the vaccine that they might come out with. Our trust is not in the government. Our trust is not in the healthcare system. Our trust is not even our bodies. [Jennifer] Or money. [Aaron] Or money. The Bible is very clear where are trust lies, and that when we trust in anything other than God, other than His son Jesus, that trust is faulty, that hope is false, and we're actually insecure in those hopes. So I just wanted to point our hearts and our minds back to the Giver of Life. To the One that we look forward to, the One where our hope should lie, which is in Jesus Christ. Guys, one day we're gonna be with Him forever, and we're gonna have new bodies, we're gonna be healthy, He's gonna make the world right. All these things that are in the world, the destruction, the death, the injustices, the sickness, the pestilence, all those things are going to be made right. And so, once this thing passes, and whatever the damage is going to be, we don't know. But there's always gonna be something else. That's why our eyes need to be on Christ. And so I just hope that if you're having anxieties about this, the Bible tells us how to deal with our anxieties, it's to lift up our request to the Lord with thanksgiving, and to pray to Him. And He says He'll give us a peace that surpasses all understanding. And what I love about that is that our peace in God is completely standalone from everything in our life. That it doesn't matter what's going on in the world, it doesn't matter what's going on in our life, it doesn't matter about our circumstances. You could be like Paul, in prison and be praising God. You can be like Peter in prison, writing letters to the church. You could be in the midst of whatever it is that this world and that the enemy, or whatever it is, wants to throw at you, and you can have complete and perfect peace in Jesus. And so, I just wanted to quickly encourage everyone with that. [Jennifer] No, it was really good. I think that there is just a lot of attention specifically on the coronavirus. What I would say is, it is important to pay attention to what's going on in the world, current events and things like that, but-- [Aaron] Wisdom is good. [Jennifer] When we get those thoughts of fear, or anxiety, or frustration even, we need to remember that even in those times we need to submit those feelings to the Lord, and ask Him to guide us, to lead us, to give us wisdom on how to approach the situation and deal with it. And then remember that our bodies are gonna fail us. Our bodies are gonna get sick. There's gonna be, if it's not this thing, it's another thing, and so we just need to be able to trust the Lord that He knows what's gonna happen to us. He knows everything. [Aaron] He's knows all, He's omniscient. [Jennifer] So we can trust that. [Aaron] We can totally trust Him. And again, this isn't to say do not be wise, like we be wise, if we can make that take measures we do, but we have to remember that we could take every perfect measure, we could take every precaution, we can totally stock up what on whatever, just imagine it, whatever you think you could do to prepare, and your trust in that would still be faulty. Because none of that is actually secure. So, our trust is only good when it's in Christ. So, be prepared to the level that you can, and let the Lord have your fears and rest in Him. That's our encouragement. [Jennifer] Another thing that we wanted to share with you guys is just how incredibly blessed we feel for our relationship with Hobby Lobby. And, I don't know if you guys all know but they carry our books. [Aaron] Which was a total God thing, because there was no way that we were connected with them. I wasn't reaching out. We didn't reach out to them. They actually reached out to us and asked if they could carry our books, and I think it's so awesome. It's one of the cheapest places you can get our books. [Aaron] The cheapest place. [Jennifer] And, who doesn't love Hobby Lobby? I mean, just to be able to go there and peruse, and look at everything. [Aaron] People who've never been to one. [Jennifer] Well, if you haven't been to one, you should go check one out. I'm sure there's one near you. If you're near one, yeah. [Jennifer] But I just wanted to first give a shout out to Hobby Lobby and say thank you. Thank you for being someone who advocates for books like ours, and resources that point people back to God. And I also just wanna thank everyone who has been picking them up and buying them from Hobby Lobby, 'cause that keeps our relationship with them good. [Aaron] That reminds me, I love when people go into Hobby Lobby and they take a picture. And they #hobbylobbyfinds. So if you ever do that, we love to re-share those. So if you are in a Hobby Lobby and you pick up a copy of our books, please take a picture of it, and we'll probably re-share it on our Instagram. [Jennifer] Just make sure you tag us @marriageaftergod so that we see it. [Aaron] Exactly, 'cause if you don't tag us, we don't know. But yeah, so that's just a couple of things, just encouragement on the chaos in the world that had our peace. And then just, we're incredibly blessed and honored by Hobby Lobby and their partnership with us. That, to be honest, I don't think we deserve. I don't think we've, it's a God thing, that He set this up and we just wanna give Him the glory for that. [Jennifer] And if you're like me and you have been wanting to order our books, and you want it today, you can go pick one up today. You don't have to order it online and then wait for it. They have them in stock. And they're in every Hobby Lobby, which is amazing. So, it doesn't matter which one, unless they're out of stock. But they carry them everywhere. [Jennifer] Once I know what I want, it's so hard to wait when I do online shopping and stuff. I just wanna go get everything. [Aaron] But now Amazon has one day shipping, which is crazy. [Jennifer] I don't know how they do it. [Aaron] I don't either. But it gets here. Okay, so, one last thing, we have a another prayer challenge. I don't know if you've taken the marriage prayer challenge yet. Over 50,000 people have taken the marriage prayer challenge, which is incredible. So, we have this new challenge called the parenting prayer challenge, and it's a prayer challenge for you to pray for your son or your daughter, or both. Or all of them. Or all of them. Depending on how many kids you have. Yeah, all your kids. And it's completely free. Just got to parentingprayerchallenge.com and fill out the form and choose who you wanna pray for, and we'll start sending emails every day. [Jennifer] You guys might be wondering how it's set up because, obviously, they're not individualized prayers for you and your child, but they're prompts. So, it'll suggest pray for this specific thing, and then, as you're praying, you're making it personal because you know your family best. [Aaron] And it's a scheduled daily reminder. So you get this email, it says hey, you're gonna pray for your son right now, and here's what you should pray for. And it's not to replace your prayer life, it's to encourage it, inspire it, and give you a new outlook on your prayer life, and maybe expand upon it. One more time, it's parentingprayerchallenge.com to go sign up for the parenting prayer challenge. [Jennifer] All right so, this last episode of the season is a Q&A. We polled the community, the Marriage After God community, and Unveiled Wife and Husband Revolution, and we asked you guys to submit your questions, specifically about communication in marriage. And so, first of all, we just wanna thank everyone who sent us your questions. It's been cool to be able to poll the questions from the audience from Instagram, from you guys, and to answer them here. It makes me feel more connected and I love it. [Aaron] They often ask things that I'm not even thinking about. I'm like oh, that's a good question. So, it's really fun that we ask you guys. It also makes us feel like we're connected with you on another level. So, if you follow us on Instagram, that's usually where we poll our audience. You could follow @marriageaftergod, or @unveiledwife, or @husbandrevolution. We're gonna be doing Q&A's often, so if you see us pop a question and ask you to give us your questions, just submit them there, and we store them and we pick from them, and we try and answer them on here. [Jennifer] Yeah, and just let you guys know because of timing, we don't always get through every question, and so if you're listening and you're like, "I know I submitted a question "for communication in marriage," and we didn't answer it, please reach back out to us and just let us know, and maybe we can just answer it on Instagram for you. [Aaron] Or on the next time. [Jennifer] Or on the next Q&A. [Aaron] Cool. So, before we jump into the questions, why don't we just talk about some of the scriptures that, when I think about communication, these scriptures aren't just, they're not necessarily communication between a spouse. But it's-- [Jennifer] With each other. [Aaron] Yeah, it's with [Both] people. With one anothers in the church. [Jennifer] Very applicable to marriage. [Aaron] So I'm just gonna read through a handful of scriptures. [Jennifer] I'll read the first one 'cause it's shorter. You read the second one. [Aaron] All right. [Jennifer] Psalm 141:3 says, "Set a guard, O Lord, over my mouth; "keep watch over the door of my lips." [Aaron] Yeah, and I pulled some of these scriptures to just show what a biblical perspective over our mouth is. And the things that we say. In Matthew 12:33 Jesus is talking to the Pharisees, and He says this, "Either make a tree good and its fruit good, "or make a tree bad and its fruit bad. For the tree is known by its fruit." [Jennifer] Like we know a peach tree is a peach tree because it has peaches. [Aaron] Or it's one of those fruit salad trees. [Jennifer] Well, that would be confusing. [Aaron] Which totally ruins the analogy. But anyways, "You brood of Vipers, "how can you speak good when you are evil? "For out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks. "The good person out of his good treasure "brings forth good, and the evil person of the evil treasure "brings forth evil. "I tell you, on the day of judgment, "people will give account "for every careless word they speak. "For by your words you will be justified, "and by your words you will be condemned." [Jennifer] So what you're saying is words are powerful? [Aaron] They matter, yeah. We need to know that, we can't, like this specifically, and we just talked about this, actually, the other day, we say something and then we say I'm just venting, or I'm just kidding. But in reality if, it's coming from somewhere, those words that we just conjured up out of our mouth. They came from somewhere, and so we need to be careful and aware, like wait, so I said this thing and I wanted to make it sound like it wasn't that bog of a deal, but why did I say that? Why did I say that about so and so? [Jennifer] If someone has self control of their tongue, and they think, they're about to say something, but they decide not to, which is good, I would say they still need to evaluate their heart and question why was that even on the tip of my tongue? [Aaron] Why did it come out so quickly? And often, I would imagine this is about people in our life, and then if we say something so quickly, even if it's to someone in confidence, and we think, wait, am I actually angry at this person, or am I actually annoyed by this person, or bothered, or judgmental or whatever? And we have to think about that 'cause sometimes that comes out of our mouth and it's not from a pure heart. [Jennifer] And I'll say this, words cut deep, and when, especially in marriage, you see that person, you just see their face and you're reminded of what they've said, either recently or years ago. And you can hear them saying it in your mind, over and over again. And so, I think we just need to be reminded that we have a huge responsibility with our words. [Aaron] The next verse is from James, but there's another verse in James that we didn't write down here, that talks about having control of your tongue, and how the tongue is a, it's a small member of a body, but it's actually like a flame that can start a fire. And you're in the members of your body. It's also talked about as a rudder, something that, you have a large ship that is controlled by such a little thing. The things we say actually matter to a point of it directing our lives. But it starts off with saying, if someone has complete control over their tongue, they're a perfect man. So, we all know that we don't have complete control over our tongue 'cause we're not Jesus. Jesus was perfect. And everything He said was controlled. [Jennifer] So, when we're not perfect, and we're not controlled, what's our response should be? [Aaron] Repentance. At least recognizing it and saying, whoa, what I said was off. [Jennifer] Apology, reconciliation. [Aaron] I know I can't put those words back. It's like toothpaste, it comes out, you can't put the toothpaste back in the tube. So James 1:19-20 says, "Know this my beloved brothers, "let every person be quick to hear, slow to speak, "slow to anger, for the anger of man does not produce "the righteousness of God." So this is more a practical tip of, hey, to save yourself from saying something you don't mean, [Jennifer] Be slow. [Aaron] Be slower to say it, probably stop yourself. [Jennifer] I just wanna say, it also says be quick to hear. And I think, sometimes we wanna justify the things that we say. [Aaron] What? [Jennifer] We're not actually listening to how our words are affecting the other person, and so I think, I know you said this is practical, a really practical tip is just questioning, evaluating, making sure that you're being a good listener in your marriage. [Aaron] Listening to yourself, and listening to the person talking to you. [Jennifer] And to the Holy Spirit. [Aaron] Yeah, and to the Holy Spirit. [Jennifer] Okay, next one Proverbs 12:18, "There is one whose rash words are like sword thrusts, "but the tongue of the wise brings healing." [Aaron] Again, showing the power of our words towards others. [Jennifer] Such vivid imagery there. [Aaron] Here's one, Proverbs 18:2, "A fool takes no pleasure in understanding, "but only expresses his own opinion." So, we have to be careful about this, this is something I've struggled with in the past, my foolishness of just only interested in sharing my opinion. Like, oh, well let me tell you what I think, let me tell you what I think, rather than listening, rather than being thoughtful, rather than actually considering the other person. I've dealt with that for sure. [Jennifer] Another one is Proverbs 18:13, "If one gives an answer before He hears," again, going back to be a good listener. [Aaron] This ever happens to me, I don't do this. I do all the time. [Jennifer] "If one gives an answer before he hears, "it is his folly and shame." [Aaron] So, the next one, and the last one, which is by far not the last verse, 'cause there's tons of scripture that talks about how we communicate and the way we communicate. Proverbs 18:21, "Death and life "are in the power of the tongue, "and those who love it will eat its fruits." So, understanding that our tongues are powerful. If we love the power of our tongue, we're going to eat the fruits of it. Meaning, if we want to share our thoughts, and we're totally fine with just speaking things, we need to be able to be aware that those words are ours, and we have to own them. [Jennifer] All right, so that was just a little foundational prep for communication in marriage, just looking at a biblical way to communicate with your spouse. [Aaron] And get a perspective on how we use our words. [Jennifer] 'Cause honestly, no matter what question we answer, that was probably the most important that you hear today. [Aaron] Yeah, the scripture. Not our words, the Bible's words. Always. So, question one from the community says, how do you two come together and talk about your dreams as a couple and as a family? [Jennifer] Oh cool, I like that it's as a couple and as a family. Which we do talk about, dreaming together, in "Marriage After God", and I just love that chapter. Just because it's something that Aaron and I have found a lot of joy in. [Aaron] It's fun. [Jennifer] It's fun. And what we do is, we look at our life and we say, okay God, what do you wanna do with us? And we get to talk about it. [Aaron] How would you say, how have we been doing it over the last few years? [Jennifer] So, our biggest, probably dreaming session, as a couple happens at the end of the year, and we take time to go over what did that last year look like? What's still on our plate? And what things do we wanna try and accomplish in that next year? And it takes a good three hours or more to get through. [Aaron] But they're fun. [Jennifer] Just because it's a lot, but it's so fun, and we do it over dinner. And then we have checkups throughout the year, when things change, circumstances change, or goals change, or we accomplish things sooner than later. So, we just check in with each other throughout the year. [Aaron] Or we're in the middle of a goal, accomplishing a goal, and we evaluate, is this what we really want? Now that we're in the middle of this thing, which we've done. [Jennifer] I will say this, our dreams don't come from nowhere. Well, for one thing, there's seeds planted by God that we feel really strongly about that God gives us these desires that we have. But we also, what we call the tool belt, our marriage tool belt, we look at what we have, and we go from there. [Aaron] Yeah, and it's not like, we talk about this in the book a lot more, the practical side of it. We're not just throwing out, and casting a line out as far as possibly, and trying to see what we can grab. We look at what God is doing in our life, what we've already accomplished, in Christ, of course. [Jennifer] It's like we take that next step. [Aaron] And we say okay, if we have any money, we say okay, how do You want us to use this money? Our home, our cars, our business? And then we even talk about things that we would love to explore and pursue. And we hold all of it loosely, pretty much usually, right? [Jennifer] Yeah. 'Cause there's nothing we can guarantee. [Jennifer] Another fun way to do this is, on those smaller check ins or smaller dreaming sessions, when we like to talk about it, we like to go on a drive, let's say like a 40 minute drive. It's super fun. We're both buckled in. Can't leave the conversation. And we just talk about it there. But, I love doing this and I think that, over the years, Aaron, wouldn't you agree, that it's something that's been cultivated in our marriage because of our intentionality? It's not really something that is just gonna happen on its own, but it's also something that, I don't know, we put the time in to do it. [Aaron] Well, I'll say this, and this would be my one tip in this section, is yes, it needs to be scheduled. So, you and your spouse need to say, we are going to do this, and we're gonna do it on this date. So it's on the calendar. And then the other part is, setting actual goals, writing them down. So, for us, you may not be us, you're goals are gonna look different. Maybe they'll be the same, but, we'll say we want to have this book self published, or traditionally published next year or this year. Or, usually, the traditionally published is a little bit more out of our control. But, self publishing, we wanna have this book published by this date. And then that one goal gives us a whole list of tasks that need to be accomplished before, for that goal to happen. And so, setting that goal and giving it a realistic time frame, and writing it down on paper, and verbalizing it out loud. [Jennifer] The success rate is so much higher. [Aaron] Oh yeah. [Jennifer] Let's use finances. If we had a goal for finances and we just talked about it-- [Aaron] We wanna save $1000. [Jennifer] By next week, we would have forgotten what the plan was. So it's like, oh yeah, we talked about that, I think. So, when you go to write something down, I feel like it's super helpful. [Aaron] The finances is actually a good one. I would imagine almost everyone has some sort of financial goals. Maybe getting out of debt, or saving for a vacation, or pay for college, or who knows what it is? And so, setting the goal, a realistic goal, the thing that you know you can attain, and you can come up with those strategies of, we're going to save $10 a month, or $100 a month, or we're not going to buy this thing every week. When you do that, and you say it out loud, there's now accountability as well. So, something comes up and you could spend the money on it, and you both look at each other and be like, are we willing to cast out that goal we set four months ago? No? Then we have to say no to this. Even though it's difficult. And so now you both are on the same page. And man, that actually feels like victorious. You're like wow, we just said no to something that we really wanted, because there's this better thing down the road that we're saving for. So, I would say set those goals, put them on paper, say them out loud, put them on the refrigerator, put them on a chalkboard, make them visible. And it's true, your success rate exponentially grows. [Jennifer] Again, I really like the second part of this question 'cause they also wanna know how do you do it as a family? So, you have kids involved. I'd say, as our family, Aaron, you are really good about leading our kids through these things, and prompting their hearts, and preparing their hearts. [Aaron] Well, thank you. [Jennifer] And just asking them really good questions. Our children are still pretty young, so we don't download every dream or goal to them. We don't feel the need to explain everything, but as we talk about dreaming together, and as we set goals we do keep the impact it will have on our family in mind. [Aaron] Well, always, yeah. [Jennifer] And so, we share it with our kids, and we'll talk about it, and we'll invite them to participate in the ways that they can. [Aaron] And I would say, because we have this pattern of setting goals and dreaming together, we teach our kids how to do it. So, I'll tell my son, and he's drawing, and he might get to a point of not wanting to complete the thing he's creating. And then I'll tell him, I'll be like, hey, do you wanna be a really good artist one day? And he'll be like, "Yeah." I'll be like well, the way people become really good artists is a lot of practice. I said, so I know that it's difficult to finish this, or you wanna move on to the next thing, and I totally get that because you're excited but, there's a lot of value in you sitting and finishing this and coloring it, and you'll see a completed work. So, that's a little way of teaching my son on how to set a goal. [Jennifer] And that's really good, what I would call that is casting vision, 'cause you're showing him what the future would look like, but what it requires, and I think the same exact thing is important for marriage that both the husband and wife are reminding each other constantly. Because this whole episode is about communication, our words matter. We need to be encouraging each other. We need to be reminding each other, hey, remember we set this goal, hey, remember, this was our strategy, hey, this is what's gonna happen once we meet it, and encourage each other and stimulate each others hearts toward those those goals in that way. [Aaron] I totally agree. That's good. Let's move on to the second question, how do you gracefully bring up subjects that have been touchy in the past? You don't, you just skip over them, you just ignore it. I'm just kidding. No, this is a hard one 'cause sometimes you can't avoid the sensitivity of it, in some scenarios. [Jennifer] I think it's good to be sensitive to it. [Aaron] What I'm saying is not that we be just harsh, or cold about it. I'm just saying you could come, I would imagine that there's some conversations that you can come perfectly gentle, with the best intentions, with the best words, and it will still be a hard conversation. That your spouse still may take it very personally. So I would say you come cautiously, you come patiently. And I would say the number one thing is make sure your heart's right. Is your intention because you're just bothered and you want this thing to change and there they go again? Is that your heart, or is your heart that you actually care that they're growing, they're changing, they're following through with their own words, because of their integrity, 'cause you love them, and you wanna see the mature? So, if your heart is a selfish one, like, I'm gonna go deal with this because I'm offended, which doesn't mean you're not allowed to have offenses. We have to deal with our offenses. But, if it's a conversation from the past, we have a lot of these, about specific things in our life, and some things are little, and some things are big things. I would say, don't avoid them, but make sure that our hearts are right, and make sure that the intention is for actual growth and maturity in your spouse, or for healing. Do you have any tips on that? [Jennifer] Yeah, I was just gonna say that, when I go into conversations like this, I genuinely desire a good conversation about it. And, I think the most important thing that we could do, knowing that it's been touchy in the past, is pray for each other before we even get to the conversation. So, praying that I have the right heart, bringing it to the table, if I'm the one bringing it, and praying that I share in a respectful way, with the right words, words that will bring you understanding, but I also pray for your heart that, if there is sensitivity or anything like that, that you would be able to respond in an understanding way as well. That we're able to come together and have a good conversation about it. And I think that doing it with God at the center is the most important thing that we could do. [Aaron] The tip for the person having the topic brought up to is humbleness. And also, being aware of defensiveness. I do this. I get defensive, we just had a conversation and I was defensive. And you called me, and you're like, "Why are you being defensive about this?" Often, defensiveness is self preservation. It's selfish, often. And so, if we're defending ourselves, then we're not in unity, and we're also not being humble. [Jennifer] You're also not being quick to hear. [Aaron] And I'm also not being quick to hear. Thank you for reminding me of that. [Jennifer] I don't know if this helps practically but, when we go into conversations like this, I'll usually say something to Aaron like, hey, I really wanna share something with you, but, just so you know, my intention's not to upset you, or point the finger at you. It's just something that I've realized or recognized recently that I wanna talk about. Is that okay? Making sure that there's a place and a space for that conversation. You don't wanna just bring it up when you're at the dinner table, or you're walking into-- [Aaron] Right here on the podcast. Actually, I've been wanting to bring up to-- [Jennifer] No. [Aaron] Not on the podcast. [Jennifer] No. [Aaron] And then, one last note on this. I think we can get in a pattern sometimes. Some relationships are special in this way, but I think a lot of us can, in some way, have this pattern of bringing up everything. And not overlooking certain things. There's this one thing that we actually, it's not that big of a deal, but I just have to bring it up every single time 'cause I don't wanna have to deal with it ever again. And so I think, truly internally evaluating, is the thing I wanna bring up, is it a thing that needs to be brought up? Or is it something that I can actually just let go? The Bible tells us that love covers a multitude of sins. So not that we overlook sin and pretend sin doesn't exist, but if I said something one time, we're talking and I said something and you're like, "Well that was rude." But you know I didn't mean it, it doesn't need to be brought up, in that one scenario. Now, if it's a pattern, like I'm always rude, that's one thing, but if I said something, and you think, "He must've not meant that." Or, the way they are with something. Sometimes it just needs to be let go. [Jennifer] And I wanna speak to the other side, if your spouse is coming to you with something, I was gonna say something of importance, but, no matter when your spouse comes to you, how would you answer this question, does your spouse feel like they're walking on eggshells around you? Does it feel like you're here, there's a layer of eggshell around you, and they can't come that close to you? Does that make sense? [Aaron] Yeah. So I think it's important for both sides that people listening can evaluate, okay, am I being aware of what I'm bringing up, and is it necessary? And then, how are my responses towards my spouse? Am I someone who gets defensive? Am I being selfish? [Aaron] Am I being critical? Like I'm just over-critiquing my spouse. [Jennifer] Yeah, and so I think that's it's important to think about are we setting ourselves up for putting eggshells down to where no one wants to come close to us and ask us those hard things. [Aaron] And I think a good remedy for this, specifically, 'cause we're not tryna say, don't have conversations that need to happen. What we're talking about is evaluation and discernment. Is the thing that I want to bring up something that should be brought up? So my solution to that is, when you wanna bring something up, first evaluate in yourself if the thing that you're seeing or wanting to talk about in your spouse, is something that you deal with, but maybe in a different way. Because often, we're very keen to sin or issues in other people's lives that we ourselves deal with. Someone's always late to something for you and it bothers you. And then you realize that you're always late for something else. But you don't think about it. So, ask yourself, is this something that I deal with? And truly ask yourself, because if you care about it in them, you should care about it in yourself 'cause want to. So, just a little tip. [Jennifer] It's good. All right, question number three is, how do you talk to your spouse when they are distracted by their phone? Can we just skip this one? Just kidding. [Aaron] Again, I never do this. [Jennifer] Okay, repeat that for everyone to just take a minute and hear. [Aaron] How do you talk to your spouse when they are distracted by their phone? You can't. [Jennifer] We have struggled with this so much you guys. [Aaron] Before there was phones, there was TV. If you're ever sitting next to me and I'm looking at a TV, I'm not even watching what's on the TV, everything's shut off in my brain. Which is why we don't have a TV 'cause I would just sit there and I'd be gone for hours. [Jennifer] This is true, but, what I was gonna say is, before phones there was an iPod. And I remember when the first iPod came out and we were dating. [Aaron] And it only did one thing. [Jennifer] I know, one thing. And I'm sitting at a restaurant, next to you, and you've got the wire from the cord in your ear, both ears, and you're scrolling through music on your iPod. [Aaron] Now, to my defense, I had just got it. [Jennifer] You were so excited about it. [Aaron] Yeah, I was excited about it. [Jennifer] But here's the point, we do get distracted, and it's a real thing, and I think it's important to talk about. [Aaron] Yeah, I would say, and Jennifer, you've gotten good at this, Aaron, I'm tryna talk to you, can you put your phone down please? Because I didn't even know you were talking to me, and you've been talking to me. And I'm on my phone. Which we have whole episode on phones and boundaries, which is something we're constantly working on. But being free to say that, say hey, can you put your phone away? I wanna chat with you. And you've also gotten good at voicing to me how it makes you feel. You're talking to me and I-- [Jennifer] Mid-sentence you'll pull it out. [Aaron] And then I'm on my phone. Maybe it buzzed or something, and I'm on it. Or, we're talking about something, and it's something that I need to do, and so I go to do it while you're talking to me. [Jennifer] Yeah, oh gosh. [Aaron] You're like, can you-- [Jennifer] Can you wait 'til I'm done? [Aaron] Do that after we're done? I know that you're excited to do that. Yes, it's mostly on my side, sorry. I would say yeah, just get really good at voicing it, hey, can you put your phone away so we can have a chat? I know that's distracting. You're gonna get on it afterwards, but, so we're not distracted, let's put our phones away. But, be willing to receive it on both sides. 'Cause we're cellphone generation. [Jennifer] I was gonna say, I think it's important to have patience with each other because, yes, we are a part of a generation that uses technology on a daily basis. This is such a hard one because it's not just you, Aaron, it happens to both of us. But being aware and allowing your spouse to help you be aware, so not getting defensive when they say something about you being distracted on your phone. I don't know. [Aaron] A little side note about cellphones, something fun that we've done in our community for a long time, I don't know if I started it or someone else did, someone must've started it, but if see someone on their phone and they're spending time with you, just lean over and be like, hey, who you hanging out with? [Jennifer] It's kinda mean and sarcastic but. [Aaron] What's powerful about it is, oh, I'm hanging out with people on my phone, not the people that I'm actually hanging out with. But that's has nothing to do with someone distracted by their phone. If you're distracted, you just gotta ask, hey, this is an important conversation, or I wanna tell you something, can you put your phone away for just a second so we can chat? [Jennifer] I will say this, Aaron, you have been making it a point this last year to leave your phone in the car, especially-- [Aaron] On Sundays. [Jennifer] On Sundays, so that we are not distracted during fellowship time. You leave it out in the living room at bedtime, so you're not constantly scrolling in the bed. On date nights, you tend to leave it in the car. [Aaron] What I'm tryna to do is just, because I know how prone I am to just pick it up when it's near me, I'm tryna find ways of getting it away from me. Which I wish that I could do more. [Jennifer] We've also had some pretty deep encounters with our kids, where they recognize that we're on our phones in front of them, and I think we've shared this on the podcast before, but just realizing how it impacts our relationship with them as well. [Aaron] I think that's an adequate answer for now. [Jennifer] Which is, what is the solution here? [Aaron] Tell them. [Jennifer] Tell them. [Aaron] Can you please put it down so we can chat? [Jennifer] Hey, just so you know, it hurts my feelings when I'm talking to you and you're looking at your phone. Oh also, I gotta mention this, if you're in the middle of a really heavy conversation, and there's no resolve yet, but there's been silence for a while, don't just jump on the phone, that hurts so bad. Just-- [Aaron] Remain in the situation. [Jennifer] Remain in the situation, remain in the silence until it gets figured out. And if it doesn't get figured out, communicate that with each other say, hey, we're just gonna put this on pause until we can figure it out, and then move on. But don't do it without that communication. [Aaron] That's a very good point. [Jennifer] Okay, number four. [Aaron] As a wife, how do you teach yourself to respond, ask, speak respectfully to your husband? [Jennifer] So I guess I have to answer that? [Aaron] Well, it's not for me. [Jennifer] Okay, so first you have to know what respect is. I remember back when we were first going to a marriage ministry, probably in third, fourth year of our marriage, and there was a group of young wives that I was friends with, and we're hanging out one night, and I remember asking them how would you define respect? I don't remember really growing up understanding. I kinda knew it what respect was, and I could get by with a makeshift definition, but I didn't actually know what it looked like in marriage. And they didn't either. It was like they looked at me like why would you even ask that question? [Aaron] Why're you even bringing that word up in our midst? [Jennifer] And I'm just sharing that because I do think it's important to know what respect is. So Google says respect is a feeling of deep admiration for someone. So, if you want to teach yourself to respond respectfully, you should know why you respect your spouse, right? [Aaron] Right. [Jennifer] You should know why you deeply admire them. 'Cause that's what's gonna fuel you or propel you to respond that way. [Aaron] Do you think a wife can respond respectfully to husband who is not respectable. [Jennifer] That's a really hard question, and I don't feel comfortable answering it for every single person, 'cause I don't know every single situation, but I would say this as an encouragement, that there are some things that you can find to admire about a person. [Aaron] The thought I had, and I was thinking about, not a spouse, how should we respond to a stranger that we know nothing about? With honor, with respect, with kindness, right? So my point was, I think, that in pretty much most situations, on the individual level of a person who loves the Lord, we can find, even if it's not for the husband's sake, or the spouse's sake, out of my respect and love for the Lord, I'm going to speak to this person the way Christ speaks to me. [Jennifer] That's a better answer than I gave. [Aaron] I think you were being careful. I don't think your answer was bad. That's what I was thinking about is, regardless if they find something respectable, 'cause a lot of people might struggle with that, I don't respect my husband, therefore I'm gonna talk-- [Jennifer] I'm not gonna, and then that becomes a justification. [Aaron] And on both sides, I don't respect my wife because of this, this and this, therefore I'm going to, rather than treating them the way Christ wants you to treat them. [Jennifer] That's good. Well, I think that we can, just as you're talking about we can be respectful, and it's not contingent on other people. We can be respectful in our communication towards others, towards our spouse, and like you said, out of that love and admiration for the Lord. I love that. And that that will influence our relationship. My admiration for you has grown over the years. [Aaron] Totally, and vice versa. And I would say also, none of this subtracts from the kinds of things we get to say. If you need to tell someone, which you told me before about my sin in my life, what it was doing to God, what the reality of it was, but you said it so respectfully, so honoringly. And the Bible says to speak the truth in love. It doesn't say don't speak the truth because you want them to not feel bad. You can still say really difficult things to someone in a loving, respectful way. So that's just a thought I had. [Jennifer] Just to clarify too, the question was how do you teach yourself to respond, and ask, and speak respectfully? I would say the one word that comes to mind is practice. That's probably what I should have just started with. But practice. As you practice this, and as you walk in it, it will become more natural for you to respond respectfully. [Aaron] That's good. And remember who you're doing it for. It's not necessarily your spouse, it's for God, because you love the Lord. Yeah, that's good. And it goes for the husbands too. The answer is the same. Okay, so number five says, what do you do when one spouse gets tired of talking and stops listening, and refuses to respond, or to keep the conversation going? This is like that situation, we're having, it's a difficult conversation, maybe it's a frustrating conversation, maybe it's just another one of those conversations that we've had 20 times. Well, first of all, you can't control your spouse, just, I think, the quick answer is that you can't control me-- [Jennifer] You can't force them to give you an answer or or to-- [Aaron] You can lovingly say hey, it's really hurting me that you're refusing to finish this. Is there a better way we can finish it later maybe? Or can we finish it now? I would say also, being understanding in the situation of how the conversation's going. Often, these kinds of conversations are the ones that are, both spouses are at each other, both spouses are annoyed, both spouses are selfish. [Jennifer] Both probably need some humility. [Aaron] Yeah. I would say just, sometimes maybe you just need to step back and pray for your spouse and say hey, I get that you probably aren't interested right now, but we need to have this conversation. Can we do it another time? [Jennifer] I know some things that I like to do with you is, hey, I get that were not in agreement on this, can we just pray about it and close with prayer, and ask God to reveal things to you over the course of however many days, or until you talk about it again. [Aaron] And I would also say, for the one who's wanting to continue in the conversation, so one's checking out, and the one's like hey, we're not done. Maybe ask yourself, are you elongating because you haven't gotten retribution yet, or are you wanting this to keep going because you haven't convinced them yet of your side? Are you wanting to, discern and spiritually evaluate if you're wanting the right thing? Are you wanting reconciliation or you wanting to be right? Are you wanting unity or you waiting for them to yield? And this goes for the husband or the wife. And so, ask yourself, are they checking out because they're not getting to where I want them to be? And that's why I keep going. Rather than hey, are we gonna find a solution, a unifying solution? Are we gonna find reconciliation, are we gonna find a place that we're back in the right relationship with each other? Rather than I'm getting my way and they've come to my side? [Jennifer] That's good. I know I keep going back to prayer, but if your spouse is getting tired of the conversation and refusing to continue it, pray for their heart. Pray that the Lord would minister to them, and transform them, and bring resolve through them, because ultimately, it's the Holy Spirit, right, that does it. Mm hmm, amen. [Jennifer] Okay, moving on to number six. How do you overcome the fear of vulnerability? That's a really big question, but it can be simplified. [Aaron] I think it has to be. Well, first of all, most people are afraid of being vulnerable. [Jennifer] I would say everybody is. Vulnerability isn't something that's like, yeah, let's be vulnerable. It's hard. [Aaron] It's spiritual nakedness. It's showing what's on the inside, and often we don't like what's on the inside. And so I would say, you said earlier, practice. But really, asking the Spirit of God. Say God, transform me in this because, it was other people's vulnerability with us that freed us to be more vulnerable. [Jennifer] It gave us the courage. [Aaron] So yeah, if you're struggling with this, just pray and say Lord-First of all, regardless if you never reveal anything about yourself, we all know who we are. We are wretched. We are sinners who need a Savior, who need His righteousness, who need His power to transform us. And so, just recognizing that and say, okay Lord, humble me, and help me be open so that you can A, change me, the things that I'm afraid of, the things that I don't like, the ickiness, the grossness inside me, but also use that vulnerableness, use that transparency to free others, to heal others. Not because of me, but because of You, Lord. I don't know, that's my idea. [Jennifer] I think a big thing that I learned through being vulnerable in marriage, is having this resolve to understand that love requires risk in making yourself known. So, what I mean by that is, in order for me to know that my husband loves me, like actual me, not someone who's pretending over here is-- [Aaron] Not what you show me. [Jennifer] You have to know me, so I have to reveal it to you, and that requires risk. Because that means I'm gonna share something with you, and then you get to respond. So there's a risk involved, and that's what makes it hard. But I'd say, like you said, practice is really good, and then I was just gonna plug the Unveiled Wife here, because if you wanna get to know someone who wasn't vulnerable, and then was extremely vulnerable, not just with you, Aaron, but with the whole world by writing a book about it. [Aaron] It was a big deal for us. [Jennifer] The Unveiled Wife is my journey of learning vulnerability in marriage and with God. [Aaron] That was good. So, question number seven, we have been married over a decade and feel like we lost things to talk about. [Jennifer] Aah. So, I would say, Find things to talk about. [Jennifer] I would say start learning again. So, Aaron has this really great quality about him where, when he gets excited about something, he just starts learning about it, I don't know. [Aaron] I research. [Jennifer] Yeah, you have this research brain where you just, you get hooked on something. Even with the kids, like when it comes to Legos, it's like, oh Elliot, I figured out this new thing. You're even learning the Rubik's Cube, okay. You been researching. I have been. [Jennifer] Watching YouTube videos, and you been sharing it with me. So you'll sit down on the couch with me and be like, "Babe, look at this," what do you call it? Algorithm. Algorithm. And you do this twist thing and I'm not following, but I'm just smiling 'cause my husband loves to share this with me. [Aaron] And then you see it working and you're like, "How'd you do that?" [Jennifer] Yeah, it's pretty awesome. So start learning something again that you can share with them. It could be anything. And then talk about it with them. [Aaron] And to be honest, if you've lost things to talk about, I don't know this person. I don't know their life. But if you guys are in a place, if you're in a place that you have nothing to talk about, first of all, that's not true. There's never nothing to talk about. There's never nothing to explore with each other, and to walk with in each other. There's, at minimum, there's tons of challenges in life to have to navigate. [Jennifer] So you're saying they're choosing not to share things? [Aaron] Yeah, I would say, I don't think it's possible to have nothing to talk about. [Jennifer] Especially if you have children. If you have children, you have a lot to talk about. [Aaron] Well, and the other thing is, is if we're pursuing God together, if we're looking to what He's doing, He's going to reveal to you sin in your life, He's gonna give you jobs to do, like this idea of He's got work for us to do, good works that He's prepared for us since the foundations of the world, those things are remarkable, meaning that they are able to be remarked about. There's something to be talked about. And so, I think that if there's nothing to talk about, there's potentially, maybe your minds aren't on heavenly things. Maybe your minds are an earthly things, and worry, and things that you're not looking up. [Jennifer] Or maybe there's sin your guys's life that you've been avoiding confronting because-- [Aaron] Mm hmm, sin keeps us in darkness. So I would just challenge you, if you think there's nothing to talk about, I would start praying and say Lord, what's in my life, what's in our life that is keeping us from each other? Keeping us silent, keeping us in the darkness, keeping us from moving forward and being excited about life? Guys, if you're believers, we have the greatest hope, everyone in the world, the greatest hope is for the believer. That's remarkable. That's something to talk about, forever. We're going to do it in Heaven. We're gonna be worshiping the Lord, forever in Heaven. So, if we've lost that excitement now, we gotta ask ourselves why? What's taking it away? Where have we misplaced that? [Jennifer] Now simply, if you're just bored, and you've forgotten how to communicate with each other, and ask each other good questions, I have to let that we have a freebie for you called Date Night Conversation Starters, and you can take these out on your next date, or just hanging out in the house, and use one of those to prompt a question and get started talking. [Aaron] Start asking questions to each other. You can go to datenightconversations.com. Was that prompted, was that planned? [Jennifer] I just thought about it. [Aaron] These are some good things to think about. [Jennifer] Okay, we're gonna get through these next ones fairly quickly, just for times sake, but, how do you get an introvert to communicate? Here, let me change it, Aaron, how did you get me to communicate in marriage? 'Cause I'm an introvert. Keep asking you questions. Never give up. Do it gently with love. The goal is not to ever change someone, the goal's to engage, and the goal is to encourage, and exhort, and to lift up, and to love, and to strengthen. Remember, you're one, and God's given you unique characteristics for a reason. So, they're not things to be bothered by or hated, they might be things that need to be grown in. Just because, quote unquote, I'm an introvert, doesn't mean that quote unquote, you need to stay an introvert. [Jennifer] Don't label yourself that way. [Aaron] You can grow. You never know, what God wants to grow you into, and transform you into. So don't just say well, this is what I am, and therefore that's what I am. [Jennifer] I'll say this, over the years, Aaron, your affirmation and encouragement has really gone a long way in that, you ask me a question, and maybe I'll answer it very quickly or short, or maybe not at all. And you say, just so you know, I want to hear from you. That affirmation, hearing that over and over again, reminds my heart, my mind, he really does just wanna know. [Aaron] And then, one last little thing I would say, recognizing and cultivating the differences in your spouse will make them feel loved and makes your spouse more able to communicate in those times that they can't-So, if they're introverted, recognize that in your spouse in saying, hey, why don't you get some time alone, when you go be with the Lord, I'll take care of the family, I'll take care of the kids, or whatever. And that let's them know that you appreciate them, and their differences, their uniqueness, and you're excited about it. You're like, how can you use that in a good way, so that in those times that it's necessary, you're not allowed to just retreat into your title, into your whatever. They they know that you love them, and that you're saying hey, I know this is hard for you, but we do need to deal with this. [Jennifer] Yeah, that's really good. Okay, so the next one says, how do you stay in touch with your spouse when your husband works two jobs and you're a stay at home mom? I'm just gonna answer this one really quickly for what comes to my mind is get creative, text them, send love letters, make a journal where you guys can pass it back and forth, putting things on the schedule and protecting that time, even if you're super tired or there's other circumstances going on. I would say that those are some practical ways that I would answer that. And I'm sorry, that's such a hard question to try and answer, but the communication is still a priority. [Aaron] I would say if it's a priority, we'll do it. And we have a brother in our church that leaves real early in the morning, comes back real late, and he just he works a long job, and he records videos of him reading the Bible, and asking questions and sends them to his kids. So even though he can't be home, when he has the break, when he has the time, he make sure to, everyday, send them something to lead them and disciple them. So, father's who have these jobs, if you're listening to this, and maybe you're on the road right now, don't use your absence as an excuse to not disciple and lead your children and family. There's ways to do it, especially in this day and age, man, we have technology. You could FaceTime every day, there's ways to do it. So I just wanna encourage you that, get creative like my wife said, find ways of connecting with your spouse and your children regularly, to show them that you're there. Because even though you can't physically be there, you can spiritually. [Jennifer] Cool. Okay, we got two questions left. The next one is, how do you handle conflict when you are very irritated? Which happens to all of us, right? No one's immune to irritability or irritation. But the verse that I thought of was Psalm 4:4, it says, "Be angry and do not sin. "Ponder in your own hearts, on your beds and be silent." [Aaron] And that's a good point is, when you're frustrated, make sure that, again, you're coming with the right heart. So, you've dealt with your frustrations with the Lord first. Doesn't mean you don't say something about it, and you don't address it. [Jennifer] It's that being slow to speak. [Aaron] And then also, maybe wait. Wait for when you've cooled down. That's always a good posture to take. Right, so the last question we got for you guys is, what are important questions you need to ask your spouse every week? Aah. [Jennifer] Okay, so we don't ask each other the same questions every week, but, we do have a standard of questions that we lean on when we want to know each other more, Aaron. And it's stuff like hey, how's your heart? Or hey, what are you thinking about? Or hey, what's God been teaching you? What are you gonna be working on today? Or what do you need help? [Aaron] Or what are you reading in the Bible? These are interesting questions that help, if the other person maybe hasn't been, they say oh, well nothing. I'm gonna get into the Word, right? So they're encouraging. And if they are, you can start a conversation with them about what they're learning for the purpose of growth. And we have some friends, really good friends, Jeremy and Audrey Roloff, they actually have a resource called the Marriage Journal. And it's an awesome resource. They actually have, it's a weekly check up for your marriage. [Jennifer] There're actually specific questions that you ask every week. [Aaron] And they draw you closer to your spouse, they help you get to know each other. It also helps you stay on track with each other. So, if you're asking this question, if you're out there thinking yeah, what should we be asking ourselves? It's called the Marriage Journal by Jeremy and Audrey Roloff. You should go check that out, it's an awesome resource, we totally support them, we totally love them. And it can totally help you in growing in your marriage. So, we love you all, and we thank you for joining us on this last episode of the season. If you haven't checked out the other episodes from this season, please go do that while we're on this little break. And also, check out last episode because we have a giveaway going right now. And it goes only until April 10th, so go check out our last episode and find out how that giveaway is gonna work. But, as usual, we pray before we sign out. [Jennifer] Dear Lord, thank you for the gift of marriage. We pray we would be husbands and wives who are willing to communicate with each other in a respectful way. We pray we would have the courage to say the hard things in love. We pray we would be good listeners, and truly hear what our spouse is sharing with us. We pray to share our heart with one another, always. We pray that your Holy Spirit would infuse our speech and open our ears, so that we can hear. Help our minds to understand each other, and to extend grace to each other. We pray the posture of our hearts would be humble. We pray we would strive to make marriage a safe place to communicate, and not a scary one. Help us to work through our marriage issues, and the things that we're experiencing to gain knowledge of each other and of You. Help us to grow in how we walk, and may it be in a worthy manner as we navigate life together. In Jesus Name. [Aaron] Amen. We love you all. And we'll see you next season. 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. 

This devotional episode is based on 1 Peter 4:7-11. We wanted to share how Love covers a multitude of sins and why it is so important that we love with this level of eagerness.1 Peter 4:7-11 The end of all things is at hand; therefore be self-controlled and sober-minded for the sake of your prayers. 8 Above all, keep loving one another earnestly, since love covers a multitude of sins.PrayerDear Lord,We lift up our hearts to you right now and ask that you would make us a people who love others earnestly. Holy Spirit direct our hearts and remind us of your word. We pray we would above all things love others. We pray we would love our spouse, our children, our friends, and those who are in our life. May your love pour out of us. May your love pouring out of us transform our marriages. We pray others would be impacted by the love we share. We pray we would be able to love so deeply that it covers a multitude of sin. We pray that instead of shame or guilt, people would feel undoubtedly loved by us and by you. We pray for your word to be fulfilled through our choices to walk in love and that your will would be done.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 gonna talk about how love covers a multitude of sin. 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 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 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 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." Okay Aaron, so we, we survived kind of a hard week. - [Aaron] We did survive. - I mean, - We're barely coming on - Our kids survived. - The other side of it, yes. - [Jennifer] But we're not the only ones going through this, so we thought we would just give you guys a little update of our family and hopefully encourage some of you out there who it might be hitting as well. - [Aaron] Yeah, our whole family got the flu. It was bad, but not bad. It was kind of a weird thing. - [Jennifer] Well, I'll say this, the Lord spared me and gave me the grace to be able to help everyone. 'Cause I felt-- - And you didn't even really get sick, you got some of the, like you felt sick. - Yeah you know the gut pain? - [Aaron] But you didn't have any other symptoms, which was awesome. - And the rosy cheeks. I felt like every once in a while, like I really don't feel good right now, I need to go lay down, but for the most part, I was able to be there to help everyone. Which made me really nervous, because people were, you and the kids were throwing up and I just thought, me, at this stage of the game in pregnancy, throwing up would not go over well with my body. - No and so-- - That woulda been terrible. - [Aaron] We're definitely thanking God, which we did a lot of, oddly. But not to be too graphic, but I'm pretty sure I put a rib out from how hard I was throwing up. - [Jennifer] That sucks. - [Aaron] Yeah, it still is really sore. But, what's awesome is, a couple of things, I just wanna praise you Jennifer, because I feel like you handled everyone being sick, and the inconvenience of it so well. I think I even told you, I was like, "I can tell you're walking in the spirit." Like your attitude was good, how much cleaning had to be done. - [Jennifer] It was a lot of work. - [Aaron] It's no fun when literally all the boys are throwing up and it's like, there's no clean blankets. - [Jennifer] It's all at the same time. - [Aaron] Yeah, so we, but we survived, we're coming on the other side of that. But one thing we practiced, I don't think we've ever done it before, not that we're not thankful to God. - [Jennifer] Not in this kind of circumstance, it's not at the forefront of our minds. - [Aaron] I did a post a couple weeks ago encouraging men to thank God for everything, if they get cut off in traffic, if something bad happens, even-- - [Jennifer] You didn't say if your whole family comes down with sickness, did you? - [Aaron] I know, if something good happens, I just said, say, whatever it is that happens today, thank God for it. And I tried practicing that. And so I'm literally in the fetal position in the bathtub, and I'm trying to thank God. I'm like, "Okay God, thank you. "Thank you for being sick." And I was like, why am I thanking God for this? Well, thank you for reminding me that I'm human. Like I'm fragile. Thank you for reminding me that one day I'm not gonna have this sickness. - [Jennifer] Or that we need to pray. - [Aaron] Yeah thank you for reminding, - Ask him. - Humbling me, showing me that my weakness. So there was a lot of things to thank God for for being sick, and I directly thanked God for being sick. And then we of course have thanked God for healing us and sparing our family from being even worse, 'cause it probably could have been worse. - [Jennifer] Something that really stood out to me is I didn't know you had this perspective kind of going into everyone being sick, and I wouldn't say I was there with you in those beginning moments, but you brought the family to the living room, and you said, "You know what, we're gonna pray, "and we're just gonna thank God today." And I think even one of the kids asked, "Why are we thanking God?" - [Aaron] Doesn't make any sense. - [Jennifer] But I was questioning it in my own heart too, like, okay, where's this going? But it was so beautiful to hear your prayer and you starting out saying, "God, thank you for this sickness." And it was humbling for me and for my heart to go, "oh yeah" you know? And to have that perspective before him. And then, I gotta share this other experience is just a friend of mine who, their family also got it really bad. - [Aaron] Pretty much our whole church got sick. - [Jennifer] But I met up with her for coffee when it was all past and she goes, "You know I just found, we found our whole family "just worshiping God through it." And it was so cool, kinda the same thing. And I said, "I didn't really worship him through it, "but at the end of all the laundry being done, "all the bathrooms being cleaned, "and having taken a shower, I came out singing "'Victory in Jesus' so, that was awesome." - [Aaron] But it is worship. Thanking God is worship. So whatever he gives, I think Job says it, "Should we not thank God for the good and the evil?" Like the bad things that happen? We thank God for those too, because he's God and he deserves our thanksgiving. And at the end of the day, salvation is so much greater than anything that we can go through. So, at minimum you can be like, "God, thank you so much "that one day I'm gonna be with you." That is so good. - [Jennifer] So if your family happens to get hit by whatever bug this is, - [Aaron] It's going around, yeah. - [Jennifer] Whatever's going around, we just wanted to encourage you guys to move forward with a thankful heart and to trust God and to be prayerful. And also just to be patient, because we know it's an inconvenience, we know it's hard, it takes away from your work schedule, it takes away from things on your to-do list that maybe you were hoping to do or whatever it is. We know it's hard, but if God's allowing it to happen, we can trust him and walk through it with him. - [Aaron] Yeah, so that was just a little update on our flu campaign. But we wanna encourage you. We have a new challenge. We've been doing a lot of these lately, a lot of new downloads and challenges and free things that you guys can get from us. And our new one's called the parentingprayerchallenge.com. We launched it last week and this week you get to do it. We're still encouraging parents to sign up to pray for either their daughter or their son or both. So if you haven't signed up for the Parenting Prayer Challenge, it's completely free. We're gonna send you 31 prompts every day, encouraging you to pray for different things for your child. - Over 31 days. - Over 31 days. - [Jennifer] Not 31 emails in one day. - [Aaron] Yeah, that's happened one time. Yeah, one a day, and the whole idea is that at the end of the 31 days you've built a habit of praying for your children. I'm sure all you parents love to pray for your children, but we just wanted to give this resource to encourage you to pray more, to pray deeper, to pray more consistently and give you ideas on what other things to pray for for your kids. - [Jennifer] Yeah, and I'll add this, it goes hand in hand with our books, "31 prayers for your son and for your daughter." And if you have those books, oh this'll be an incredible reminder. It's kinda like an alarm, right? Because your email comes through and then you're like, "Oh yeah." So you can get the book and go along with it that way too. - [Aaron] Mm-hmm, so parentingprayerchallenge.com, all one word, spelled the way you would think it's spelled. And sign up for free today. All right guys, we've been doing this new thing, we've mentioned it a few times this season. We're trying to do a marriage episode, we're doing a devotional style episode, a Q&A, we're trying to give a little bit more diversity on the kinds of things we're bringing up and this episode's gonna be a devotional style. We're gonna talk about some scripture. And something that we've been learning, something that I taught on at church. And so we hope it encourages you and why don't you, Jennifer start off by reading-- - [Jennifer] Oh, I was gonna sit back and let you teach for 30 minutes, yeah. - [Aaron] Oh, I'll just do it? No. - Go for it. - [Aaron] Why don't you read the scripture that we're gonna be talking about, - Okay. - And then we'll go into it. - [Jennifer] So it's 1 Peter 4:7-11 and it says this, "The end of all things is at hand, "therefore be self controlled "and sober-minded for the sake of your prayers. "Above all, keep loving one another earnestly "since love covers a multitude of sins." - [Aaron] This is a great scripture in 1 Peter and we're excited to talk about it and what it means for us as believers, not only in our marriages, but just in life in general and walking in the body of Christ. And the power that is in our love for one another. And what that means and looks like. So we're gonna dig into this, these few scriptures, and kinda break it down and talk about some stuff and Jennifer you might have some questions. But we're just gonna break it down and see how this applies to us in our life. So the first thing I wanna point out is where our perspective should be. And Jennifer you read it, the very first thing it says in verse seven is "The end of all things is at hand." - [Jennifer] I feel like there should be an exclamation mark. - [Aaron] And it's almost is, it's a semicolon which says everything I'm about to say is attached to this statement. The end of all things is at hand, and so, we can easily, quickly think this is talking about Jesus coming back, or the end of days, right? But in the New Testament when it talks about the end of days or all things at hand or the end of the generation, it's mostly talking about all of the things that needed to take place, they needed to occur for the salvation story, for redemption, God's plan for redemption that he's been planning and preparing since Adam and Eve in the garden. And so, when Peter says the end of all things is at hand, he's saying that essentially, Christ has been born, he's died, and he's resurrected. - [Jennifer] Like we have what we need. - [Aaron] The thing that God has planned to take place has taken place. - Yeah. - [Aaron] Which means a lot. It means that we can now draw near to God. It means that we now can have salvation and a right relationship with God. Because without the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ and his ascension and him sending the holy spirit there is no, like we can't be made right with God. So all of those things, the end of all things is at hand. The end of everything that God planned for salvation has been done, as Jesus says on the cross, it is finished. So it didn't necessarily mean that hey, the end of the world is tomorrow. But it's also an allusion, it alludes to Christ returning. Because now that the church age has begun, the spirit is living in man, we're made right with God, the bride of Christ is growing, we have an expectation of Christ's return. So we're in this imminent return zone. Like at any moment Christ can come back. - [Jennifer] And we are, we're called to walk a certain way. - [Aaron] Yeah. And so that's kinda, he starts off these statements with here's how you should be thinking. Realize first and foremost you have everything you need because Christ died and resurrected. He's given you his spirit, so now you can walk in his spirit and not the flesh. Like the things that we need to accomplish what he's about to tell us have already happened and are already available to us and been given to us. So that's our perspective in our relationships with our spouse, our children, our church body. That the end of all things is at hand. Like first and foremost, I have everything I need in Christ Jesus, to walk this way that we're about to talk about. And I walk this way because I look forward to Christ coming back, and I wanna not be ashamed at his return, I wanna stand boldly at his return. I wanna be excited for his return. - [Jennifer] It gives those relationships a lot of depth and purpose, how we interact with each other and how we're supposed to be in those relationships with each other. - [Aaron] Right and so, if you think about your marriage. You say, "Well, I just can't because my husband "is this, this, this." - [Jennifer] Or together you're just facing a really hard circumstance. - [Aaron] Yeah, like we went through stuff. And it's like, oh, our love for each other is stifled because of this hard circumstance or these character traits in the other person. But if our mindsets are on wow, first of all I can, because Christ did, and I should, because Christ is coming. My perspective and the way I treated you and the way we treat others would totally be transformed because we're no longer thinking of this immediate, well how did you treat me and how am I gonna treat you? - [Jennifer] Well, it's not about us. - Exactly. - Right? - [Aaron] Which is a powerful thing. And this is being taught to the believer, but the ramifications for this is in every aspect of your life. Most directly in your marriage and then also most directly in all of your relationships with other believers in the church. We need to have this perspective. - [Jennifer] Okay, so, then moving on in that verse, the next word is therefore. - [Aaron] Yeah and-- - [Jennifer] So the end of all things is at hand, - [Both] Therefore. - [Aaron] Yeah, and someone always says, "What's therefore there for?" I mean you ask yourself, "Well, why is that there?" And it's attached to the last statement. So, since the end of all things is at hand, be this way. And what does it say right there, Jennifer? - [Jennifer] Be self controlled and sober-minded for the sake of your prayers. - [Aaron] So, in relation to our relationships and in our life and in the way we interact in this world, self-controlled, how often do we say the word self-controlled in our house? - [Jennifer] Well, we're in the beginning stages of training our kids, so I feel like we say it all the time, multiple times a day. - [Aaron] 150,000 times a day. Are you being self-controlled? - Remember, self-control. - [Aaron] Be self-controlled, you're not being self-controlled. You must have self-control. Like over and over and over again. 'Cause that's, I mean our kids are learning to have control over themselves, that's the point. But self-controlled meaning, in my life, am I in control or is my flesh in control? 'Cause when my flesh is in control, we are not self-controlled. We're gonna eat as much as-- - We just give way - We want. - To whatever we want, yeah. - [Aaron] When I'm angry, I'm just gonna say what I wanna say. Oh, well, I was angry, that's why I said that. Well, that's not self-controlled. That's just blurting out what's coming to your mind because you're angry, rather than considering the other person. - [Jennifer] Which the mind is the next thing it says. - [Aaron] Yeah, sober-minded, which yes, this is talking about sobriety, not on drugs, not drunk with alcohol, but sober-minded is much more than just, we talked about this in another episode. I can't remember the name of the other episode, but it's having a right way of thinking. A clear way of thinking. So if you think about, we just talked about anger. You know Jennifer, you do something that really frustrates me and then I get so angry I just start saying whatever I want, like I'm not being sober-minded. I'm letting my wrath and my anger control my words and my actions, rather than my mind. - [Jennifer] It's like being self-controlled of your mind specifically. - Right. - [Jennifer] Like being able to have those thought processes and walk yourself through it mentally. - [Aaron] Another example of being sober-minded is fear. So, there's nothing wrong with natural fear, like you know fire's gonna burn you, so you don't touch it, but we're talking about like there's something going on in the world and it's causing us to have this anxiety and fear which causes us to make decisions and not seek out wisdom and oh, we're gonna go do this thing because XYZ over here, I don't know how that's gonna turn out, therefore we're gonna. And so that's not sober-minded either. Instead of thinking through what is reality, thinking through what is the repercussions if XYZ happens or if we don't have what we need or if, like thinking sober-minded is rather than operating in the fear and just making decisions off that, you're operating in knowledge and wisdom and you seek counsel and you're slow to act, slow to speak. So that's the idea of sober-minded. So since we know that the end of all things is at hand, meaning we have everything we need in Christ, meaning all of the things that God planned for redemption has happened, you have the holy spirit, be self-controlled and sober-minded for the sake of your prayers. - [Jennifer] So real quick, I just have to, just hearing you repeat that, it says, "Be self-controlled and sober-minded "for the sake of your prayers," that means you're praying. So it's almost like it's saying be self-controlled and sober-minded and prayerful. Like be a person of prayer. - [Aaron] Right, and we just talked about being sick. If our minds were in this position of thankfulness and we were just wallowing in the suffering, 'cause throwing up's not fun, not feeling good is not fun, and we could just sit there and be like woe is us. And we're not even being sober-minded in that. But instead we're like, "Thank you Lord." It actually helped us elevate above our current circumstances to be able to see it from a heavenly position. Like, okay, well, just because this thing is happening, doesn't mean I stop being a Christian. Doesn't mean I can now act XYZ, be this way, say these things. No, I actually even in this, can walk this out. Because we know all things have been fulfilled in Christ, and his return is imminent, even in my sickness I get to say, "Well if Christ was to come right now, "I wanna be like him, wanna look like him." This is how we must live as people who claim the name of Jesus. We can't claim the name, but not walk it out. - [Jennifer] Mm-hmm, okay so before you move on, I feel like maybe some of our listeners would have the same question, and that is, it says "for the sake of your prayers" so does that mean your prayers are in trouble if you're not being self-controlled or you're not being sober-minded? What does that mean? - [Aaron] Yeah, I mean, in 1 Peter I think we get another picture of that when it talks about husbands walking with their wives in an understanding way, it says for the sake of your prayers. So, there is a way that the believer can walk that would hinder our prayers. And it could be put this way, someone told me once, "God's not gonna tell you "to do a new thing until you've done the old thing." Like the thing he's asked you to do already. And so it's almost like this, we're looking for a new word from the Lord, we're looking for guidance and wisdom. And he's like, well, but you're not even loving your wife right now. - Mm-hmm, I have a really good example of this when it comes to kids. Olive, just I think it was yesterday, she came up to me and she was like, "Mom, I don't have anything to do." And so I gave her something to do, it was a small task. And she turned around really quickly and said, "I don't wanna do that." - [Aaron] What else can I do? - [Jennifer] What else can I do? And I looked at her, I said, "Sweetheart, "can you go do what Mommy asked you to do?" - [Aaron] Right. Yeah, and there's even a scripture that says, "Go back and do the first things "that you've been told to do." Like you've left your first love, we learned in Revelations. There's this idea of like, God's already given us some commands, given us some things to do as believers. In his power, to do it, and we wanna skip over those things and we're gonna talk about this. We wanna skip over those things to get to the other things. We're like, "Well, I don't wanna do that thing." Loving that person's difficult. Or, praying for that person, ehh, let's pray for this big thing over here. - [Jennifer] Or how about, "I'll be self-controlled, "but I don't care about being sober-minded." - Exactly yeah. - You know what I mean? - [Aaron] Which doesn't make any sense because, - [Jennifer] I know. - [Aaron] If you're not sober, like let's talk about being drunk, you're not in self-control either. Those things go hand in hand. So yes, the Bible teaches that our prayers can be hindered. I don't know exactly what that means, does that mean that God doesn't hear 'em at all? Or is it that I am hindered? Like I'm not gonna want to pray more. I don't have a desire to, I'm frustrated. No, Lord, I don't want to. It's like when our, like you said our kids, when they have an attitude, Wyatt crosses his arms, puts his head down, it's like he doesn't wanna look at us. - [Jennifer] Or like that example you gave of us being sick, if we weren't sober-minded and self-controlled, we wouldn't have prayed in thankfulness, so yeah, hindered in a way that if we're not walking that way and we're not being that way then we won't be praying at all. - Yeah so, - We won't be a people of prayer. - Regardless of how it plays out, I don't want either of those things. I wanna be able to come to God boldly and I also want God to receive me and hear my prayers. The Bible tells us that the prayers of a righteous man availeth much, it's in James. And I want my prayers heard. I want them to avail much. And when I pray for my family, when I pray for health, when I pray for opportunities, when I pray for other, my family members, when I pray for the lost, I want those prayers to be heard and to have power with God. So, God says, "Well be sober-minded and self-controlled "so that your prayers won't be hindered." Then I should just do that. - [Jennifer] Do it. - [Aaron] It's not easy all the time, but that's what we get to do, because the end of all things is at hand, so I should be able to do it. Okay, so let's move on to this next part of this verse. - [Jennifer] Well the next verse. - [Aaron] Yeah, the next verse, there ya go. Verse eight starts off, it says, "Above all." Okay, and I just wanted to highlight this idea, so if you're in your Bible, which that'd be awesome if you were, you should be. It says, "Above all," comma, "keep loving one another earnestly." And I just wrote down some ideas of what's the all? Like above all, above how generous you might be financially, like, "I've given so much." Above being right, like "Well I know "that this scripture means this." Above memorizing every scripture, above being debt free, above your health, above your safety, above all. Above everything that you see as good, 'cause these things are good, for the most part, don't neglect to do this thing. So, above all, do this thing, right? - [Jennifer] Do you think it's easy for us in our flesh to justify like, "Well, I don't have to love that person, "and we don't even get along, but I'm doing this "over here, so, I'm good with God because this over here." Do you hear what I'm saying? - [Aaron] Yeah, we do this all the time, and there's a scripture that I'll bring up that shows this hypocrisy. Like, "Well no, that person doesn't need to be in my life, "because of XY and Z, but, you know what? "But I read every day, I'm in the word every day." "Oh but I pray, I'll pray for that person. "I don't have to love 'em, but I'll pray for 'em." I think something that I've heard a lot, and it doesn't make any sense, but we say this, "Oh, I love him, I just don't like him." Almost as if love is this general like, yeah we're in the same city, but I'm never gonna talk to him, I'm not gonna be kind to him, I'm not gonna be cordial, I'm not gonna even, I don't wanna go out of my way for them. I'm not gonna give to them, I'm not gonna help them, I'm not gonna. So what love is that? - [Jennifer] If you're doing that, I was gonna say, what's your definition of love? - [Aaron] And that's my point is we, okay, I'll just do this. So the point of everything I said above all, or not that we shouldn't do those other things, 'cause I never want someone to be like, "Well, all we have to do is love others, "and we don't have to be generous, "and we don't have to read our word and memorize scripture." These things that are actually really good for us. "And my health and my, all these things don't matter, "as long as I just love." No. All of those things matter, but we don't neglect this one thing, and often it's the one thing we neglect. We work on all those other things, 'cause we have, those are easier, those are personal. We can control 'em. We can't control other people and that's why it's so hard. And I think of this in Matthew 23:23 Jesus says this, he says, "Woe to you scribes and pharisees, hypocrites, "for you tithe mint and dill and cumin, "and have neglected the weightier matters of the law." And then get what he says, "Justice, mercy and faithfulness. "These you ought to have done "without neglecting the others." - [Jennifer] Like do it all. - [Aaron] He's like, "Yeah, you spent time, "you outwardly show all these good things that you do, "yet you've neglected justice, like you don't care "about those in your midst who need justice "and you've been unjust." Or showing mercy and faithfulness. You haven't remained faithful to your spouses, you haven't remained faithful to your people, you haven't remained faithful to, and he's saying these things you should have done without neglecting those other things that you do. And so that was the point I was getting at is like yeah, all those other things are good, but we cannot throw out loving one another earnestly. - [Jennifer] So you used the word earnestly, why don't you define that, just for our listeners really quick? - [Aaron] Okay, 'cause it's a pretty powerful word and it's how he wants us to love each other. It's not like, "Hey, I love you, yeah I'll see you later. "Oh yeah, we're good buddies." It's something deeper than that. He says, "Love one another earnestly." And the definition of earnestly means with sincere and intense conviction. It's so powerful. It's not just a, in passing a word you just say about someone, it's a life lived out way of loving. It's a my actions and the way I think reflect the deepness of my conviction and belief about how I love you. And so a perfect example is in marriage. I love you, and it's not just a word. I show you by how I take care of you. And how I show up every day and how I sit and talk with you. And how I ask for forgiveness, and I'm patient, and all these things are the actions of my love for you. - [Jennifer] Yeah, I think that's really important to point out, because I think in marriage specifically, you can text each other back and forth, I love you, or say it at the end of a phone call, conversation. Saying it in passing or before you leave to go to work. But are your actions proving what those words actually mean? So you've convinced yourself in your mind, yeah, of course I love my husband, of course I love my wife. And I tell them every day. - [Aaron] How do they know? - [Jennifer] But, are your actions supporting your words? - [Aaron] Yeah, and so let's break down this definition a little bit, it says with a sincere and intense conviction, that's the earnestness. Sincere means free from pretense or deceit. Proceeding from genuine feelings. So I don't just say it, it's not just a word that I use so that I look good with my other Christian friends and brothers and sisters. - Or that you know you should use because you're married. - [Aaron] Yeah, like, "Oh yeah, of course I love so-and-so." But yet, you don't truly believe it in your heart. You struggle with believing, like well, do I love him? I mean, I could move on. I'm not going to, 'cause I don't wanna look bad. That's not love, it's a free from pretense or deceit. So there's nothing, you're not saying it to receive anything like, "Oh good, so good that you love that person." And you're not saying it out of, it's not a lie. When you say you love someone it's truthful. It's a genuine, genuineness, a real thing from with inside of you. And then that second part, intense conviction. And I smashed two definitions together, 'cause the word intense and conviction I put them together and it's a highly concentrated and firmly held belief in what you are doing, right? So, it's not going away. My love for my brothers and sisters in Christ, my love for others in the world, my love for my wife, it's real and it's going to drive my actions and my decisions and my attitudes and it's gonna cause me to repent and it's gonna cause me to change and grow because that conviction is solid. It's there, and when I'm challenged in that conviction, when the listener is challenged in that conviction of love, they get to ask themselves, "Well do I truly love so-and-so?" And then they get to remember, well, the end of all things is at hand, I must love so-and-so, regardless. Without pretense, it needs to be truthful and powerful. That's what that word earnestly means. - [Jennifer] I love that definition of intense conviction that you shared, and it makes me think how intentional this type of love truly is, because-- - [Aaron] That's a good word, intentional. - [Jennifer] Yeah, it's intentional because you're motivated by your, like it said, "firmly held belief in what you are doing" so everything that I do in our home, everything I do with our kids, everything I do with you, comes out and is an overflow of this belief that I have that I truly love you and that genuine feeling that you talked about earlier. And that's such a different situation when you compare it to just saying the words I love you or just going about your day without any motivations as to why you're doing those things, you know? It makes me think of the type of motivational speaking you hear when it comes to entrepreneurship, where it's like, "You gotta know your why." You gotta know your why. - Yeah, what's your why? - [Jennifer] What's your why? So it makes me go there when I think about in marriage, why are you doing all the little things that you do throughout your day? It's because you love that person. - [Aaron] Mm-hmm, and it's not superficial, and it's not just a word, but it's an actual held belief. Like "No, I love my wife. "I love John over there." Like truly love them, not just, "We're Christians "and we love each other." - Right. And if we truly consider this you guys, then when we get into a hard spot in marriage, when we get into conflict or something happens unexpectedly that you don't desire, you can continue on, because there's this hope knowing that, "Well no, I love them. "You know, I know this is hard, but God's given me "a love for them." - [Aaron] Yeah. What I think is really cool, I just thought about this, often we think about this idea of growing in love, which we do, we change and our level of love deepens. - It deepens, yeah. - [Aaron] But it's actually, the way this is stated, it's actually a starting point. We start at this basis of love for one another. Not build into it. It starts at this place and I thought that was really cool. I just was, - I like that. - [Aaron] I was just thinking it's like it's not, yeah, it does grow over time, but it's also, like you said, even in those hard times, you default to that position of love. Not default to, well we're not in love because, or we're building in love and the default position is no love. That's not actually, I mean marriage starts, usually, for the most part, with a deep conviction of love. And so the default position is love. And I didn't have the scripture originally here, but I thought about this and I think it goes perfectly well. What this level of love is supposed to look like, it's supposed to be remarkable. It's not supposed to look like the love of the world. Like the world loves itself. There's people that they love their own and they do a good job of that, but the love that Christians are supposed to have for one another is supposed to be remarkable, miraculous. And Jesus puts it this way in John 13:34. "A new commandment I give to you, "that you love one another. "Just as I have loved you, "you also are to love one another. "By this all people will know that you are my disciples "if you have love for one another." So it's not like, if we do these great things, or if we have this great band, or if we preach this great message, it says if you love one another the way I loved you, the whole world will know, oh that's a disciple of Christ. - [Jennifer] Yeah. - [Aaron] That's remarkable. So I get, the question I have in your marriage, in your relationships at church, would the world look at how you love them as remarkable? Like that's a remarkable love. How could he love like that? How could she love like that after so much has happened to her, after this or that? It's a remarkable love and it can only be done with Jesus Christ. That's what he says, "If you love as I have loved you." Which is an amazing, amazing kind of love. It's literally remarkable. And I have some notes here and this is, this is exactly why churches fall apart. This is why friendships dissolve, this is why marriages end. When we let the intensity of our conviction to love each other soften. We got to that point a few years into our marriage. Our conviction to love one another, because of the things we were going through, got weakened. - [Jennifer] I was gonna say, I don't feel like softens is just the right word because it sounds mushy-gushy, but I mean we're talking about the dissolving of that belief and conviction. - [Aaron] Yeah. And it's not that those things that were happening had some external power to weaken our love for each other superficially, - We chose that. - We let our love, yeah we chose it, that's a good word. And so, I just wanna ask you, as we get into this, have you let your love, the earnestness of your love for your spouse, for other believers, weaken? For whatever reason, because someone hurt you, because someone said something harmful about you, because someone didn't pay you back? - [Jennifer] The relationship's messy or hard or challenging and you just wanna, - Walk away. - Walk away. - It'd be easier. - Yeah. - [Aaron] There's been so many times I've thought to myself, it would just be easier to move. - [Jennifer] Well, we thought that in the beginning of our marriage when we were facing hardship and we got to the point at the end of three and a half years where we were, so incredibly close to walking away convinced in our selfish flesh that it would be better for each other if we just separated. - [Aaron] Move on. - [Jennifer] And instead, God got ahold of our hearts in a remarkable way and, I mean he brought the message to you first and then to me, but it's a choice. - [Aaron] Yeah. - [Jennifer] And are we gonna let our circumstances dictate that choice or are we gonna choose it in our hearts and move past the circumstances? Or even if we have to deal with the circumstances for the rest of our life, and that was the commitment we had to choose. There came this pivotal moment where, people who've read our books, they know what I'm talking about, but we're standing in church, Aaron, and you're sharing this heart that God has given you for our marriage to continue on regardless if anything changed. That is remarkable. And that saved us, that saved our marriage. - [Aaron] And here's the difference in the types of love. The love that the world has for itself, and the love that we are to have for our brothers and sisters and our spouse. The love that Christ gave to us was unconditional. The love that we try and walk in is often transactional. You do this, I'll do this. You give me this, I'll give you that. Oh you didn't do the thing, or you weren't the certain way? Then I'm not going to. Jesus it says, "Yet while we were still sinners died for us." So even when we were weakest, when we couldn't save ourselves, Christ died. Christ gave himself up for his bride. And this is the message that Christ gave me that day, reminding me, he's like, "Hey are you gonna love "your wife unconditionally, or transactionally? "Are you gonna love her regardless if she ever gives you "what you think you deserve, what you ought to have? "Or are you gonna love her like I did "when you could do nothing for me, "and I still died for you?" - [Jennifer] John 13 comes back to my mind like you said. Jesus says, "Love as I loved you." - [Aaron] And you know what this sincerity and intensity, this earnestness sounds very familiar to how Jesus said we would worship God. He says this to the woman at the well, in John 4:24, he says, "God is spirit "and those who worship him must worship "in spirit and truth." Spirit and truth. And this isn't talking about worshiping each other. But it's how we love each other, in spirit and in truth. - [Jennifer] It reminds me of the definition going back earlier to those genuine feelings. - [Aaron] Mm-hmm, it's not from pretense or deceit. It's no, I genuinely love you. I may not know how to do it well, but I'm going to default to love, I'm going to default to giving you the benefit of the doubt. I'm going to love you regardless if you give me what I deserve. And then in Matthew 22 verse 37-48 says this, "And he said to him, 'You shall love the lord your God "'with all your heart and with all your soul "'and with all your mind. "'This is there greatest and first commandment. "'And a second is like it, you shall love your neighbor "'as yourself, on these two commandments "'depend all the law and the prophets.'" - [Jennifer] I remember we read this verse to our kids and they got really confused, because we've taught them the 10 Commandments. - Yeah. - And they were like, "No no no, that's not the." - [Aaron] No, you have to honor your mom and dad. Like, yes. And what I explained to 'em is, and this is what Jesus says, he says, "Anyone who does these won't break any of the laws." Because when you love your neighbor, you're not gonna steal from them. When you love your neighbor, you're not gonna lie to them. When you love your neighbor, you're not gonna covet their things. You're gonna say praise God that you've given them those things, God. Praise God. They're gonna use 'em for you, I hope. We don't covet. When we love God we don't dishonor our parents. When you love your parents you're not gonna dishonor them. And so, that's the kind of love that we get to have for one another. And it's actually, it's one of the greatest commandments, to love God with all our heart, mind and soul and to love each other as ourselves. To love each other with that intensity. Okay, so we're getting up to the last part of this section of scripture and it's the most powerful one. It's actually the title of this episode. And it's the reason why Peter is commanding us to love each other in the first place. It's the reason why he's saying to do these things, it's the reason why he gave us the mindset of hey, the end of all things is at hand, be this way, love this way. So before I move on to this next portion of this scripture, I'm gonna read the whole scripture again. It's 1 Peter 4:7-11. "The end of all things is at hand, "therefore be self-controlled and sober-minded "for the sake of your prayers. "Above all, keep loving one another earnestly, "since love covers a multitude of sins." Okay, so here's the-- - You slowed down there at the end Aaron, - I know it's, - [Jennifer] Is that important? - [Aaron] Well, it's the most powerful section of this scripture, I believe. And what's amazing about this is it's the opportunity that believers have to love like Christ. What did Christ's love do? - [Jennifer] Saved us. - [Aaron] It covered us. We've just been teaching the kids through Adam and Eve, the story of Adam and Eve and how they were to, God told that surely on the day that you eat of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, you will die. And guess what. - [Jennifer] Well the kids asked the question, - They're like, - But they didn't die! - [Aaron] Yeah, they didn't die. Here's what's amazing is something died instead. They covered themselves with fig leaves, God covered them in skins. So an animal had to die. So even then, way back in the beginning, in the very first people, God showed his redemption plan. That he was gonna substitute the death that we deserve for another. And so it was a picture right then and there of what Christ was gonna do. And this is what the believer gets to do. This is the remarkable love that the world's gonna see and be like, whoa, those people are God's, Christ's disciples, because Christ died for them, and look how they love each other. - [Jennifer] They wouldn't be able to do it without him. - [Aaron] Yeah, and so love covers a multitude of sins. So here's a question, I taught this at church and I asked this question, and it was hard for me to get it out without crying. But I said, "Who doesn't want their sins covered?" I said, "Raise your hand." How many hands do you think went up? None. So I ask the listener, do you want your sins covered? Do you thank God that his son Jesus and the blood that he shed covers your sins completely? That you are made white as snow? That you are clean before God? Okay, so if we can answer that question with "Yes, praise God," then our love should do the same. Our love has that same power. I personally love the fact that God no longer sees my sin. I personally love that who I was before Christ is now dead and buried. But, what we often do is we highlight other people's sins. And what it does is it raises us up and puts them down. Oh so-and-so, I can't believe they would treat me that way. You can't believe it? I mean how else do we deserve to be treated, really? We deserve hell. That's what the human state deserves. - [Jennifer] There's other times in marriage that we hold their sin against them. - [Aaron] Absolutely, yeah. - [Jennifer] So, whether it's for ammunition later, or maybe you're not intentionally thinking that, but all the sudden it comes up again, and you haven't covered their sin in love. You've been hanging on to it out of bitterness and anger, and you're gonna spew it out back in their face to make them feel a certain way. - [Aaron] Or waiting for them to trip up and it makes you feel better, because as long as their sin is greater than your sin then you're not a sinner. That's like the logic we use. I know that we struggled with this. You believed because I struggled with certain things you didn't even wanna see your own sin. Things that you were dealing with, your own pride, your own bitterness, your own angers, 'cause I was the sinner in the relationship. I was the one that needed to repent, I was the one that needed to change. And I did, I mean it's not like I didn't. But we do that, we look, we long for the sin in others. Oh, since they're that way, I can be this way. Rather than wanting to cover those sins. Rather than wanting to overlook them and remind those people of who they are in Christ, without pretense, without this idea of like, I'm gonna point this out, because I wanna hurt them. Or I wanna feel better. - [Jennifer] I think just kind of glancing back over those first few years of marriage, something else that I've struggled with is holding on to the sins that you struggled with even after saying I forgive you or trying to make up and resolve things. Because I had this belief about you that you were gonna fail me. So I was building a case, right? - [Aaron] You were waiting for me to, yeah. - [Jennifer] The next time you messed up, I go, "See, this is the type of person that you are." And I held up a mirror to show you your sin instead of pointing you to God and saying, "But he's redeemed you." You know what I mean? I didn't give you-- - Why you acting like this? God's redeemed you. - I didn't give you the positive message, because I truly cared about restoration at that point I was looking for a case in order to get out. To leave, to say, "You're this way, and I can't handle it." - [Aaron] Yeah. And that leads me to this question, do we see our spouse's sins against us as special or less deserving of forgiveness and grace? Do we see the sins and shortcomings of others towards us as less deserving, as special? Yeah, yeah, I've done things, I get it, God forgives me, but what they've done? No, what they've done is not forgivable. What they've done is, you can't tell me to love that person. Well, you know what, I don't. I'm not telling you anything. God says it, okay? When you give that word picture, 'cause I think it perfectly sums up this idea of when we love the way Christ loves, what it does. - [Jennifer] Well, I was just thinking about this idea of covering a multitude of sins by our love, the word picture that I got in my mind to help me understand that is a blanket and it's function. When you think about a blanket and being wrapped up and curled up on the couch with it, it provides warmth and comfort and padding and it consumes you. - It protects you. - [Jennifer] It protects you, it's just all around you and it was a really beautiful picture for me to understand how God covers us. Kinda like even as you said, going back to Adam and Eve, how he covered them, ya know? - [Aaron] And then the picture I got, and the Bible even uses it, says that our sins are made white as snow. And we live in a place that snows. And you see all the landscape, there's all the colors, the grass, the concrete, the trees, the houses. - [Jennifer] Pretty soon everything starts to fade away. - [Aaron] It snows and guess what. Everything's the same color. - Everything's white. - Everything's white. And beautiful and it could be on the dirtiest, muddiest area, and it's a beautiful white field. And that's what Christ's blood does is it covers us. And out of our thankfulness for that, we get to love others the same way. And this isn't an overlooking of sin, this isn't a pretending sin hasn't happened. And I'll talk about that in a second. But it's the way we love that no one, no one's sin is special that doesn't deserve our forgiveness, because what we've done is so worthy of punishment. The littlest sin we've done is detrimental to our own nature. And Christ has forgiven that in us. And I was reading in Leviticus this morning, and it was talking about all of the sacrifices and all the atonements and the priest is supposed to do this and all, it was so weird, I'm reading, I was like, "I wanna watch a video on this." So I watched the Bible Project's video on atonement. - [Jennifer] Oh they're good. - [Aaron] Yeah, it was good. And I almost started crying in Starbucks, 'cause I go to Starbucks after the gym, watching it because it was explaining how the atonement was a replacement and it was talking about the two types of evil, it was the sin against your brother or God. And it washes that away. But the other thing is the broken relationship aspect. Let's say you stole something, you paid it back, right? But there's also now distrust and fear that's in the relationship. And so that has to be atoned for as well. And so there's this picture of the priest sprinkling blood over the temple and the Tent of Meeting, right? And it showed this picture of, there was all this black looking weeds on the ground, and every time the blood hit the ground it turned to normal. And it said the blood also brought us into a safe relationship and a love relationship. And that's what this love does when it's covering. It's not just pretending things didn't happen, it's actually mending relationships so that we can walk with people not in fear, not in angst or anxiety, but we can actually walk with people in freedom and in love and in purity. That's what this does. And I wanted to share that 'cause it literally almost made me cry when I was thinking what God's done for me, and how he's, he didn't just fix the offense, he also fixed the relationship that was broken because of the offense. - [Jennifer] It's remarkable. - [Aaron] Yeah. So, I just wanna quickly, we talked through a lot of the scriptures, but I wanted to quickly say, this isn't to say we ignore sin, because that actually is unloving. Ignoring someone's sin is unloving. The loving thing to do is to address the sin, not out of our own vindication, trying to get something paid back to us, but out of, like you said, pointing them back to the truth of what God said about them. Or if they're not a believer, to repentance and salvation. So the loving way to, we deal with sin lovingly. And we come to people in truth and our position is of we wanna see the best for you. We want you to be in a right relationship with us. As Matthew 18 says, it's like you've won your brother. That's what you go to them for is for the purpose of winning your brother, not for winning the argument or winning the, oh see, all I want is an apology and we'll be good. No, you're going with the intention of hey, this is broken right now. We need to fix this. Love covering a multitude of sins isn't to say that the sins just disappear. It's to say that we deal with them the biblical way, the loving way for the purpose of reconciliation, 'cause that is the ministry we've been given is reconciliation. - [Jennifer] And we do this for people because we desire the same reciprocation, right? Of love? - I want it. - [Jennifer] I want people to overlook and cover the sins that I've committed, even the slightest or smallest, there's no degree. It doesn't matter. If I'm imperfect, I want someone to love me still. And I think that's important to remember, especially in marriage. - [Aaron] So I hope that bit of scripture encourages you in your walk. As usual we pray before signing off, so we're gonna pray. Dear lord, we lift up our hearts to you right now and ask that you would make us a people who love others earnestly. Holy spirit direct our hearts and remind us of your word. We pray we would above all things, love others. We pray we would love our spouse, our children, our friends and those who are in our life. May your love pour out of us. May your love pouring out of us transform our marriages. We pray others would be impacted by the love we share. We pray we'd be able to love so deeply that it covers a multitude of sin. We pray that instead of shame or guilt, people would feel undoubtedly loved by us and by you. We pray for your word to be fulfilled through our choices to walk in love and that your will would be done. In Jesus name, amen. Hey thanks for joining us for this episode. We pray it blessed you, of course. And don't forget to join the Parenting Prayer Challenge. That's parentingprayerchallenge.com It's completely free and we pray it blesses you. 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 marriageaftergod.com, and let us help you cultivate an extraordinary marriage.

In this episode, we answer questions for our community about having children, birth control, how many kids to have and more.Please also take a moment and download our free 52 Date Night Ideas eBook.http://datenightideas.com PRAYERDear Lord,Thank you for the gift and blessing of children. Thank you for creating and designing us with the ability to recreate, what an incredible miracle life truly is. We thank you for the opportunity to build our family and have children. We pray for others who either have not had children yet or in awaiting their first in anticipation. May you lead them in the way you desire them to walk and to grow together. We praise you for all those who have children and we also pray for those who can’t have children for whatever the reason may be. You are sovereign and we trust you. We continue to surrender our hearts to you as you lead us in parenting and raising our children to know you. Please help us with our fears and insecurities. Please remind us every day of the purpose we have with our family. May your name be glorified.In Jesus’ name, amen! READ FULL 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 answer some of your questions about having children. - [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 onlinae 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 chased boldly after God's will for our life together. - [Jennifer] This is Marriage After God. Hey, everyone welcome back to another episode of Marriage After God. We're happy to be with you and we're really excited about this episode, and just being able to answer your questions. So doing Q&As is gonna be just an awesome new feature of the podcast where every couple of weeks, we're gonna poll our trusty community on Instagram and ask you guys what questions you have, and hopefully get some answers, well I should say opinions. - [Aaron] Yeah 'cause we have all the answers. - [Jennifer] No. - [Aaron] On everything. - [Jennifer] We don't but you know what, we're happy to explore these questions with you. And so thank you to everyone who shared these questions with us, and specifically about about having kids which we have a little bit of experience with. And so we'll dive into that in just a bit. All right, so one thing that we really are excited to share with you guys is that we have a new freebie for all of you. - [Aaron] So everyone has already did the free prayer challenge. - [Jennifer] Right. - [Aaron] They already got the date night conversations. - [Jennifer] You better, we've been sharing about those two for a while. So I begged Aaron, and I was like, "Let's do something new. "We've gotta do something new." - [Aaron] So this one is date night ideas. It's a free download. It's a list of 52 date night ideas which you could do one a week for the whole year. - [Jennifer] So is this something we're committing to? We're gonna go through all of these and do them? - [Aaron] Sure. - [Jennifer] Let's do it. - [Aaron] Let's see how it goes. - [Jennifer] I think that would be so fun. - [Aaron] So if you wanna get this freebie, this download, you just go to datenightideas.com and you can download our free ebook with 52 date night ideas. - [Jennifer] And the goal is one a week but if you can't do one week, do three a week. It's fine-- - [Aaron] If you have to do one a day, you know what, you can get done faster-- - [Jennifer] Have fun with it. - [Aaron] And just do it all over again. - [Jennifer] Have fun with it. No, but you can use these whenever you want and you can even sift through them and pull from it. - [Aaron] You know what would be fun is if they downloaded this and then found another couple to do a challenge with. How many they can get done in a year? - [Jennifer] Interesting, the other thing you could do is print them out and cut them out and stick them in a jar and pull them out randomly. - [Aaron] Yeah. - [Jennifer] That would be fun. - [Aaron] That's a great idea. Datenightideas.com, one word and it's free. Go get it, so the topic we're talking about, these Q&As, they're all on a similar topic. We polled our followers on Instagram and many of the questions were around children. Having children, children after marriage. - [Jennifer] So we're like let's stick them all in one episode so we can hit them all at once. - [Aaron] And so we're just gonna, some of these we're gonna wing answering. If we don't have good answers, we might say we don't know. We're not afraid to say we don't know. - [Jennifer] And just keep in mind that these are just our positions on these questions. How we would answer them based off of our experience and knowledge and-- - [Aaron] And things that we know of the Bible. - [Jennifer] Things that we know of the Bible and what we believe in so-- - [Aaron] Take it for what it is. - [Jennifer] Yeah and thank you guys again for asking these questions and sharing them with us and we really appreciate that. If you wanna jump on board for the next Q&A, just follow along on Instagram @marriageaftergod. - [Aaron] And you can always send us your questions in a message and we may not answer it in the message but we'll take down the question and potentially answer it in a future Q&A episode. We'd love to get those from you. So why don't we just jump right in to the first question and this is a doozy I feel like 'cause it's controversial, it could be. - [Jennifer] It could be yeah. - [Aaron] And they ask us their question and they said, our view on birth control. - [Jennifer] So what's your view on birth control? - [Aaron] That's a good question. - [Jennifer] It's a big question. - [Aaron] Okay, next question is, no I'm just kidding. Our view on birth control. - [Jennifer] Let me share my point of view first. - [Aaron] Okay, go ahead. - [Jennifer] I'll just be honest. I went on birth control 'cause that's what I heard you do when you get married. And so I went on the month before I got married and I chose to go off of it a month after we were married. So I was on it for a total of two months and I got married at 21, you were 22. And we were so excited married and so excited to-- - [Aaron] Be with each other physically. - [Jennifer] Yeah, experience what sex was like and it was awful. I'm just gonna be honest. It was very painful for me and so I scrambled, you guys. I tried to figure out why is my body responding this way because it was my body that was keeping us from experiencing-- - [Aaron] Physical intimacy. - [Jennifer] Healthy, physical intimacy. And so one of the things that came to my mind was something that was super obvious because over the course of that month of being married, not only were we having these issues but I gained a lot of weight. I got acne. - [Aaron] There was a lot of things going on. There was emotional stuff. - [Jennifer] Emotional ups and downs and mood swings and it was awful and I didn't feel myself. And so the obvious question then is what happened in the last few weeks that has changed me? - [Aaron] Other than getting married. - [Jennifer] I know it's a big transition. - [Aaron] I that that guy you married can make you feel crazy, I get it. - [Jennifer] But we narrowed it down to birth control and so I chose to go off of it and I haven't regretted it. - [Aaron] And it didn't fix everything but it did actually drastically change your mood. - [Jennifer] And some of the physical things that I was-- - [Aaron] Some of the physical things you were experiencing. - [Jennifer] Yeah. - [Aaron] So that's an experience you had with birth control. We know tons of people use birth control. I also know that there is certain people that say birth control is a sin. I'm not gonna go that far. I'm not gonna make statements like that. What I will say is I'm not an advocate for opting to put a chemical in your body to adjust and manipulate how your body is naturally meant to work. So that's my, you're meant to do a certain thing. Your body has been created to do a certain thing and birth control is meant to stop that thing from happening, to manipulate the way your body responds to certain things and I don't think that's great. We have a lot of stuff going on this world. A lot of sickness, a lot of problems and for us to be healthy and to do something like that to our healthy body, I don't think is very wise, personally. - [Jennifer] So just to clarify for those listening, you're not saying that you won't put anything on or in your body that helps stimulate positive things to happen in your body. You're saying, you wouldn't do something that would stop the natural function of your body. - [Aaron] I'm saying I don't think it's a good idea to put something in our bodies electively to stop the natural. - [Jennifer] That alters the natural. - [Aaron] Yeah 'cause there's, again, I'm not gonna. The question is about all the other things that happen in this life, we know taking things when you're sick. - [Jennifer] I was gonna say there's supplements and there's oils and there's things that are out there. - [Aaron] Right, that's different than I'm gonna take this birth control to stop my ovulation so that we don't get pregnant. I'm not gonna do that. That's just my personal perspective on this. And to be honest, there's most things like medically that I'm a little hesitant on just because I like to stay mostly natural as much as possible. But this is about birth control. I'm just saying that taking a woman's body, putting something in it to stop her from doing what it's naturally meant to do doesn't sound wise to me. Now on the spiritual side of things, we have to always ask ourselves the question of why are we trying to stop ourselves from having kids? Why are we trying to protect against that? And there's tons of worldly wisdom that we receive on why we should wait and what, there's this and that. And don't you wanna travel? Why don't you establish your marriage first? And none of those things line up with the things that we hear about in scripture about children being a blessing. That it's good for women to have children. People prayed when they were barren because they wanted children and all these positive. It's positive, positive, positive but our generation and the last couple of generations has heard the message of negative. Children are a hindrance. Children get in the way. Children are difficult, they're expensive. They're hard, some of these things are all true. Not all of them but some of these things are true but not in the sense of they're not a blessings. Not in the sense of we shouldn't do it. I think we should always be asking ourselves about our heart posture towards children because God's heart posture towards children from the words of Jesus. "Let the children come to me", that's what he said. - [Jennifer] I love that, that's so beautiful. - [Aaron] Don't hinder the children. - [Jennifer] That's really good. I was gonna say that personally, we think that it needs to be thoughtfully considered not just in its physical impact on someone's body but its spiritual impact. And I think you just hit it on the head with being a heart posture. - [Aaron] Absolutely. - [Jennifer] And asking ourselves why. - [Aaron] Yeah and what do we believe about God? Is he good? Does it give us good things? And has he made us a certain way? And yeah those are all true. So we don't believe in birth control, the chemical form. I would say do any form of birth control, and we're about to have our number five so everyone can logically find out, we don't do birth control. We would probably lean towards just what's it called? The rhythm method? - [Jennifer] Natural planning. - [Aaron] Natural planning. And again, that's not even perfect. It's more of to our own abilities, we're just gonna try and plan around this and if God gives us a child, we're gonna be stoked. - [Jennifer] Yeah, all right let's move on to number two. Okay number two says, what made you wait to have kids? - [Aaron] Made us is a good word because half of it was physical. - [Jennifer] I was gonna say this is a two parter for us. - [Aaron] We just talked about how we couldn't have sexual intimacy. - [Jennifer] Yup. - [Aaron] So it was not impossible but highly unlikely 'cause it was . - [Jennifer] We weren't doing the thing that makes the babies. - [Aaron] Yeah, the thing that makes the babies wasn't happening so there was no babies being made. And then the second part of that is, and this might have been out of a bitterness because we couldn't be with each other. I have feeling that some of it was from that bitterness but also some of it just straight from our own selfish pride. We would tell people, they would ask us when are you guys gonna have kids? And we'd be like, oh we're not gonna have kids for a while or maybe ever because we're too selfish. - [Jennifer] We like sleeping in. - [Aaron] We like traveling. We like this, we like that. We said these things out loud. This isn't thoughts we had. - [Jennifer] And I would agree. Some of it was probably just to give them an answer 'cause we weren't gonna straight dig into well, we can't have sex. So we found a different way to answer it but I think at the core, we truly believe those things as well. We were selfish. - [Aaron] I remember I would pridefully say it like it was something to boast about. - [Jennifer] Looking back-- - [Aaron] You are too selfish. - [Jennifer] Looking back that's so embarrassing. - [Aaron] I know what a fool I was that I would actually say that. God's looking at me at like I know who you are. - [Jennifer] I love you Aaron. - [Aaron] I was like a little child to him and he's patient with me, thank God. But what a fool that I would just boast about my selfishness which is opposed to God, to be selfish. I was literally boasting about my opposition to God. - [Jennifer] I wanted to share a little bit about this question. What came to my mind is well the physical. We couldn't and the selfish but I was also really terrified of having children and I don't remember it being a super affirmed thing growing up. And even though I came from a big family, it wasn't like I had this dream to have a big family myself. - [Aaron] And it wasn't like children are good. Children are a blessing. All you saw was there's all of this chaos at home sometimes. - [Jennifer] Yeah, so I remember just being really scared about having children. And so I was actually okay with not having children for a long time if any. I didn't have a hearts desire to have children. - [Aaron] And I actually, now you bring that up. I remember specifically a thought I had and I had it regularly was I didn't want children because we couldn't be together. All I thought I was like yeah that would be so perfect. We'd get pregnant the one time we do come together and then now like we couldn't enjoy each other, and now we have a kid. This totally negative connotation on having children because it was just gonna get in the way of the thing I wanted. - [Jennifer] Yeah and I think we talked about that even back then. Something that I didn't talk to you about that I really struggled with was the thought that if in that turmoil, those first three years if we did have a kid how much more it would tie me to you which is really depressing and sad to think about. I just am broken-hearted over those kinds of thoughts now. - [Aaron] But that's when we were in our sinful hearts. - [Jennifer] But that's where I was and I didn't have hope in our marriage. I truly believe that we're coming to the end so it was like I have to make sure even more that I don't get pregnant which was avoiding you. - [Aaron] Which made the whole thing worse. - [Jennifer] Yeah, it was a mess, you guys. - [Aaron] The devil is good at what he does. And it's why we have to resist him and it's why we have to put on the full armor of God 'cause these thoughts and things will come if we're not focused right. - [Jennifer] Now I have a part of this question to ask you. It has to do with this question, that's not here but would you have waited if you could have sex? - [Aaron] Back then? Well probably 'cause again I had my selfish heart of I thought tons of horrible things. I was thinking about your body and I was thinking about our sex, and I was thinking about being inconvenience with now I have to raise a child, and we're doing all these things. So absolutely, I think back then, selfishly would have waited. Not because I thought it was wise but because I didn't want to have to deal with it. - [Jennifer] Okay and I was thinking more like answering now having had children. - [Aaron] No, I wished we didn't have waited. - [Jennifer] I like that you're answering really honestly. - [Aaron] No, if I knew what I know now. - [Jennifer] I wouldn't have waited. - [Aaron] We'd have a 13-year-old. - [Jennifer] That's weird to think about. - [Aaron] How incredible would that be? We'd have a teenager. - [Jennifer] Wow, lots more growth opportunities for us. - [Aaron] No, I wouldn't have waited at all but to be honest it's God's sovereignty. - [Jennifer] Yeah. - [Aaron] He knew who we were. Our sin kept us away from it and it's probably better back then because we had some maturing to do. Not that I'm telling anyone they should choose to wait. I just think God knew what he was doing and he let us through a lot of stuff to grow us and make us into the men and women he wanted us to be. - [Jennifer] Yeah, all right. Number three, do you think numbering your children is necessary? - [Aaron] Yeah, I'd give a 10 to Elliott and then like all if I give-- - [Jennifer] What are you talking about? - [Aaron] I'm just kidding. Numbering, I'm thinking like . - [Jennifer] That's not what they're asking. - [Aaron] Numbering, the question is about should we have one, two, three, how many should we have? - [Jennifer] I was gonna change the question to what we usually get is what number do you guys want or what are you looking for? Because we do get asked that. - [Aaron] Yeah and it's usually with this like are you done yet look. Do you realize how many you have? We know exactly how many we have. So the question is do you think numbering your children is necessary? And I'm imagining the heart but it is do you think it's important to consider how many children we're having? Should we only have one or two or three? That's a pretty common thought. Most of the time, it comes in the form of, we only one, two or three. That's where that comes from. So Jennifer, do you think it's necessary. That's how the question is phrased. - [Jennifer] No, I don't think it's necessary. I don't think that we need to have a set number and we personally don't have a set number. - [Aaron] Our answer when someone asks, how many do you want is whatever God wants. - [Jennifer] Yeah. - [Aaron] Because to be honest, I don't know. - [Jennifer] To couple with that though, I do think that there's wisdom in every situation and so what I like to say is we take every pregnancy as it comes. - [Aaron] Yeah. - [Jennifer] Submit it to the Lord-- - [Aaron] And in between the pregnancies, we submit those to the Lord as well. - [Jennifer] Yeah, and you know what, it's a journey of walking with God saying God I trust you and it's not easy but-- - [Aaron] And I'll say this. - [Jennifer] He's doing this. - [Aaron] I'm gonna be a little candid here. There was a challenge after we had was it? - [Jennifer] Elliot. - [Aaron] Elliot and we went right back to that place in our hearts of we don't want any more. Elliot was difficult. It was our first child. - [Jennifer] He had colic. - [Aaron] He had colic for a couple months. - [Jennifer] I had nursing issues. - [Aaron] It was really difficult. And we just were like no, we can't do this any more. This is crazy, we are also-- - [Jennifer] Honestly-- - [Aaron] Publishing a book and we're thinking like how we're gonna do all this stuff and have another baby and everything was coming together. - [Jennifer] When I look back on it too, I don't remember it being a negative feeling. I just remember being okay with it being one. - [Aaron] We're like, we're fine. - [Jennifer] Yeah. - [Aaron] But again from all selfish positions. How are we gonna keep doing these things? That was too hard, I don't wanna do that again. And we were challenged by someone really hard and I'm gonna just explain to you what was challenging to us, and I'm gonna leave it at that. And they came to us and we were just sharing our hearts with them. And they very softly and gently said, you know the reasoning that you were coming to with this deciding not to want any more. And he brought up, is like it's usually for Christians, we say things like we want one, some or none. And it's like that sounds great. It sounds wise. One summer night, I'm gonna choose the size of my family. I think that's wise based off of whatever. Then they said that's very similar to the reasoning that pro-choicers have. It's your choice. Christians aren't gonna choose the abortion option right, hopefully. That's where the heart of a Christian shouldn't be that direction at all. We don't do that. But one, some or none is very similar and it's my choice. Pro-choice, I get to choose what I want. And he's explaining this to us and it cut us to the heart, and we realize wow, we're telling God, who's in charge of this area of our life. We want God to be sovereign in every area of our life except for this one. And so when they were explaining to us that we were essentially making decisions very similar to the idea of pro-choice. It's our choice and I want it to be pro-me whatever I want. And it really challenged us and it actually made us go and pray and dig into what we believed about children, and what we believed about our family, what God wants for us. - [Jennifer] I remember shortly after that conversation maybe even walking out of the restaurant, I told you that as I was sitting there listening, I could picture myself holding my hand shut tight and it was me as a Christian telling God, you are sovereign, you have every part of my life. I love you, lead me oh but you can't have this over here. - [Aaron] Don't touch this over here. - [Jennifer] And I was gripping it so tightly and I remember explaining this picture to you and just saying I feel like God wants me to open up my hands and trust Him. And I feel like we got pregnant about a week and a half later. - [Aaron] Yeah really quick. - [Jennifer] Really quick. - [Aaron] And I'll say this. It's easy to say, hard to do. Every single pregnancy we've had to go to God and say God, we need your help. We need to trust you more. We need to know what you have for us because it's difficult. Pregnancy is difficult. Children are difficult. It's just part of life so it's not like all of a sudden everything became rainbows and unicorns. It was like we have to trust God every single time which is what he wants. And then I'll say this as gently as possible 'cause I know the person that asked this question. I'm not trying-- - [Jennifer] There's a lot of people out there that asked. - [Aaron] There's a lot of people who have this question. I think the question is irrelevant and here's why I say that. You can say I want three kids and God only give you two. Is God wrong? Nope, I God bad? No. - [Jennifer] You could want two kids and never be able to conceive. - [Aaron] You could want one kid and never be able to conceive. You could want whatever you want. We could desire whatever we want. We can have this picture for our life and it's so perfect that oh if we just had a boy and a girl, you have six girls. I know people like that, okay. You could say lots of things. - [Jennifer] You can say you don't want any kids and then get pregnant. - [Aaron] We know people that are on birth control and I've gotten pregnant. We know people that have been barren for years. - [Jennifer] And have gotten pregnant. - [Aaron] And then have gotten pregnant. We know people that have had their tubes tied and then unfortunately have still gotten pregnant and had to have surgery because of the dangers of that. - [Jennifer] We also know the word of God and in Psalms when it talks about God knitting together a baby, a human inside a mother's womb, we know that's true. So it's from Him. - [Aaron] What we wanna do is we wanna say instead of asking well how many do we want? What's wrong with saying, God how many do you want? What do you want our family to look like? How do you want us to shape our family? You could say you want two children, right? And you have those two children and you stop, and there's no way for you to know that that third child was gonna be another Moses, another David. You don't know what God wants for you. So that's why I think that question is a little irrelevant because you think you have control. - [Jennifer] This is what the question should be. Do we trust what you have for us Lord? - [Aaron] Yeah and if that's a zero, and that doesn't mean that doesn't come with heartbreak but if it's zero, then God gets to choose that. If it's one, then God gets to choose that. Me and Jennifer are on number five and this could literally be our last child. We have no way of knowing. Something would happen. We could just not get pregnant again. Things happen or we could have another five. I don't know. But we want to trust the Lord with everything. I wanna encourage you to do the same. Whether that's zero, one, two, three, five, 10. That's the question we should be asking. Number four, what's the best way to prepare for or not be fearful of having a newborn? This is a good one 'cause we're literally right there. - [Jennifer] Yeah and you know what fear is a natural thing and it always comes with that feeling of I don't know what's on the other side of labor, or delivery, or having a newborn, and I struggled with all those fears. But when I look back and I think about my first baby, holding him in my arms, it's the most beautiful, miraculous thing I can think of. - [Aaron] And you don't necessarily look back and dwell on the pain. - [Jennifer] No. - [Aaron] You know it's there. - [Jennifer] I know it happened. - [Aaron] You look back and we think about those-- - [Jennifer] The joy and the love and the incredible miracle that comes with having a child. And I think that we should also just note that this probably whoever asked this question is going to give birth to a baby but I think even for adoption. When you think of the other ways that people build their families. I think there's a lot of fear that comes. A lot of fearful thoughts that could come with the unknowns but we just wanna be an encouragement to you guys that you're not alone. God is with you and do everything in prayer. The Bible tells us to pray without ceasing, to pray constantly. - [Aaron] To pray for everything. - [Jennifer] To pray for everything and to be thankful. And so I think the first way that I would respond to this question is pray, and pray with your spouse. Pray together over your family and over every situation. - [Aaron] Present those fears to the Lord and say Lord, here's some things I'm afraid of. Give me peace, give me your peace. That's what he tells us to pray for everything. With thanksgiving, lift your request to Lord. - [Jennifer] And the other thing I would say is meditate on his Word. What does God say about children? What does God say about birth? What does God say about families? Things that comes to my mind is John 16:21. It says, "When a woman is giving birth, "she has sorrow because her hour has come "but when she has delivered the baby, "she no longer remembers the anguish "for joy that a human being has been born into the world." That's what I remember. - [Aaron] That's an awesome statement by the way. For joy that a human being has been born. That's so cool and it is true because the pain is real. It's a thing you get to experience. You can talk about that in a second about experiencing the pain but you remember the joy of that child, holding the baby, seeing their face for the first time hearing their coos for the first time. - [Jennifer] I know I said this. It's miraculous, it truly is. - [Aaron] Yeah and seeing them grow up is miraculous too. I can't imagine my life without any of these kids. - [Jennifer] I know and I feel so grateful that the Lord trusted me and gave me these gifts. It's so wonderful. Another verse that comes to my mind and something good to dwell on is Psalm 127:3. It says, "Behold children are a heritage from the Lord. "The fruit of the womb, a reward." - [Aaron] So preparing yourself for having a newborn is you're preparing to have a reward and to build a heritage that he's giving you. That's really cool. - [Jennifer] A good resource for becoming new parents, you should check out "Redeeming Childbirth" by Angie Tolpin. It was just a really good book to bring perspective to having children and what that looks like biblically. So if you wanna check that out just go to courageousmom.com. One last thing that I just wanna encourage you guys with, and this you can do prior to having your first baby but you should also be doing it throughout parenting, and that's just talking about those fears with your spouse whenever they come up. And using those opportunities to encourage one another. If the wife is afraid, the husband can go to the word of God and console her and comfort her and encourage her. If the husband has some fears and he's being vulnerable about them, she can encourage him through the word of God and through prayer, and I just think that is so vital for us to be one in the way that we are experiencing the same thing, right parenthood. And another thing you could do is find someone who you admire, who has experience that you can ask questions to. I know as a new mom, I had so many questions. I still have so many questions. And so finding someone who you can be in communication with even if it's just a quick text or if you can get into community with several people who you can have questions too, and really just have that support system. It's really important - [Aaron] Yeah and that actually leads into our last question, number five really well. This person asked us if we can talk about the best ways to invest in our spouse before having kids. - [Jennifer] Okay. - [Aaron] Which is a cool thing because we could have done this. - [Jennifer] I know we did this for, no, we should have been doing this for years. The first thing that comes to my mind is having regular date nights and when you don't have kids and you're married, it can be so easy to just make everything feel like a date because you're with each other but making it significant somehow. - [Aaron] Getting it on the calendar, making it a regular occurrence. - [Jennifer] And doing something out of the norm, right? So like if you guys regularly already do something together, don't consider that your date. Go do something else. - [Aaron] Yeah, and what's good about that is it puts you into a really healthy pattern and habit so that after the kids, you guys will long and be like, hey, we need to get back on track. - [Jennifer] Not after the kids are grown and raised, you mean after having kids. - [Aaron] I'm saying after six weeks of healing and getting better. You guys are like, hey, we need to get back on schedule with our date nights, that's important. And for awhile, you're gonna have the baby with you and then eventually you'll get a baby sitter. But you start that up and it's there. It's existing. - [Jennifer] And just to encourage you guys, we've gone on dates with babies before and it can be done. - [Aaron] Just find those restaurants that-- - [Jennifer] Are really loud. - [Aaron] Either really loud or mostly full of older couples 'cause they love seeing young couples with their babies. - [Jennifer] Most of the times. - [Aaron] Most of the times. - [Aaron] Some restaurants don't like it but the experience we've had, we have people come up and be like, oh, your baby's so wonderful. This is so cool seeing a couple with children now. Anyways that's a good tip. For the husband's preparing your spouse before kids just doing what a Ephesians five says, "Washing your wife with the Word." Continually speaking God's truth into her life over her reminding her what the word of God says, reminding of her of who she is, what she's capable of, how God made her and building her up because those are the things that are gonna continually give her confidence. Make her feel like she can be a mom that she can handle pregnancy and labor and that she is going to be a victor in that area. So it's immensely powerful the words that a husband speaks over her life which is why we're commanded to wash our wives with not any words but the Word. With God's Word, reminding her of who she is, what God's doing in her life. That the thing that she's going to do. Having a child is such a powerful and beautiful thing that as she disciples that child, she's literally making world changers. Growing the Kingdom of Heaven within your home. It's a powerful thing. - [Jennifer] That's awesome, I love that. Another thing that I would say and this is something to continually do throughout your marriage, but to get really good at it is practicing transparency. Aaron and I talk about this a lot and it's something that I feel like we were actually pretty good at in our marriage but could have been even better way sooner at, and that's just being transparent and honest with one another when you're struggling with sin. You confess that you repent. When you're wrestling with insecurities or doubt or frustrations, you talk about it and you find a way if you're at conflict with one another, you reconcile. All those really important-- - [Aaron] Getting better at those things. - [Jennifer] Communication things. - [Aaron] Which will be huge for your children to see and to benefit from. - [Jennifer] And your parenting because there's gonna be a lot of situational things that come up that you'll have to be transparent with one another in and talk about so that you're on the same page when you parent. - [Aaron] Which leads into the other thing, and this is hugely important. Overcoming sin and bad habits. So for the husbands, if you guys are struggling with pornography, and you think it's just like not a big deal. And you're like, oh it's every once in a while. Just realize what you do, you're gonna teach your children. And I wish I would have known that earlier. I wish I would have recognized the the magnitude of walking in what I saw as hidden sin or things that I was getting a handle on. But it's just every once in awhile, it's not that big of a deal, minimizing those things. Maximize them, take those things in your life and say no, I need to get this out of my life. I'm not gonna smoke any more. I'm not gonna show my kids that habit. The way I eat. The hidden sins of my life, pornography. The way I talk. If you have issue with bad language. Those are things that you're gonna teach your kids and so work on it. Confess them, find freedom from them. Walk in the freedom that Christ has already given us on the cross and walk in it so that you can teach your kids to walk in it. The same freedom. - [Jennifer] Have authority in their lives. - [Aaron] Yeah as a pastor once told me, purity is power. Walking in purity is powerful. Say that last line right there, babe. - [Jennifer] I just put a note on here. Have children, because the question was how do you invest in your spouse before having kids. - [Aaron] Which can be-- - [Jennifer] It could be any range of things. It could maybe you're already pregnant and you're just waiting for the baby to come but it could also be we chose not to have kids right now, so what can we be doing? Well I'll tell you what, if there's one thing in Aaron's and I life that has stimulated growth in our relationship-- - [Aaron] That God's used to sanctify us in huge ways. - [Jennifer] Absolutely, or to just grow closer to each other in opportunities in ways that we never would have known or experienced, it was through having children. And so I've really appreciated that about our journey and where we've been, and so hopefully that just encourages you guys. - [Aaron] Those are five questions that we received from the community. Again we're not the end-all be-all to these answers but we try the best of our ability to look at the word of God, to look at experience and see how God is trying to change the way we think about things. - [Jennifer] I'll say this, answering the questions is not easy for me. I'm a peacemaker and I don't wanna ruffle anyone's feathers or ever put things out there that make people feel uncomfortable, but at the same time I want you guys to know where Aaron and I are on some of these topics because you're you're listening in, you're following us. And for whatever reason, God has trusted us with an opportunity to share these with you. And so I hope that through our experience and through the things that we have shared with you today, if anything, you get to go back to the table with your own spouse and talk about them, and share your own perspectives, and thoughts behind them. And we just encourage you to, like Aaron said, get in the scriptures and dive into what God has to say about these and let that be the foundation for what you believe and your your viewpoints and your perspectives on some of these topics. - [Aaron] 1 John tells us to test every spirit and to discern. So don't just take what we're saying as pure gold. Go yourself to the word of God and find them out. But if you're not willing to go to the word of God, and you just wanna disagree and have your own opinion, you have to understand something that we're not called to just do that. We're called to trust the word of God. And so I wanna challenge you if you are in that place, go to word of God. Take the things we've said and go dig in. Find out what God thinks about all these questions. What God thinks about children in the womb and raising children. You find out for yourself and come up with your own conclusions based off of what the word of God says, not off of what we say. But we love you, and as always win in prayer so please join us. - [Jennifer] Dear Lord, thank you for the gift and blessing of children. Thank you for creating and designing us with the ability to recreate. What an incredible miracle life truly is. We thank you for the opportunity to build our family and have children. We pray for others to either have not had children yet or are in waiting their first in anticipation. May you lead them in a way you desire them to walk and to grow together. We praise you for all those who have children and we pray also for those who can't have children for whatever reason maybe. You are sovereign and we trust you. We continue to surrender our hearts to you as you lead us in parenting and raising our children to know you. Please help us with our fears and insecurities. Please remind us every day of the purpose we have with our family. May your name be glorified in Jesus' name, amen. - [Aaron] Amen. And guys as always, I just wanna invite you to leave us a review, a star rating. We love those. They're incredibly powerful and effective in spreading the word about the podcast. We love you all and we pray that you guys would just grow closer to God and you chase his will for your life and get his heart on the matter of children. See you next week. 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Join the marriage after God movement today. https://marriageaftergod.com Quote from Marriage After God chapter 6 "Walking in autonomy is not only dangerous for your marriage, it is also rebellious. Our relationship with Christ cannot be separate from our relationship with other believers." In this chapter of marriage after God we end with this encouragement: “Don’t wait to be pursued; be the pursuers. Don’t wait to be served; be the faithful servants. Don’t wait to be loved and invited. Love and invite. Be transparent with your marriage, be honest, and love well. We are all connected. We are all one in Jesus Christ, and He is our head, leading us and guiding us to do His will in this world.” Dear Lord, Thank you for the gift of your body. Thank you for the gift of fellowship and friendship. May we be people who are motivated by love to reach out and be a friend to others. We pray we would have the courage and confidence to be people who welcome others in, who are transparent, who are there for others, who lift others up and who pray for others. Use our marriages to be an encouragement to other marriages. Use us as a team to bring you glory, Lord. Help us to never live in isolation. Help us never to be divided. We pray the enemy and we pray our own flesh wouldn’t get in the way of fellowship. May our desire to participate in your body increase even more! May the way we treat one another be a light and an example to the rest of this world. 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 on part six of the Marriage After God series and we're gonna be talking with Tom and Heidi Celaya about the importance of Christian fellowship. 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 had 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. [Aaron] We just want to invite everyone that's listening to leave a review. That helps other people find the podcast. It's how iTunes works, it's how all the podcast apps work. A review helps us get reach. And also if you would like to support this podcast, we'd love to invite you to go to our store, shop.MarriageAfterGod.com, and pick up a copy of our new book, Marriage After God. It's what this whole series is about. It's our newest book and we're excited to get it into your hands. And yeah. [Jennifer] Okay. So Tom and Heidi, thank you so much for being with us today. [Heidi] Thanks for having us guys. [Jennifer] People don't know this, but we've been friends for a really long time. What is it like nine or 10 years? [Heidi] Nine years, actually this month. [Jennifer] Crazy. Okay, so why don't you just share a little bit about who you guys are, how long you've been married, and how many kids you have, what you do for work, that kind of thing. [Tom] Yeah, I guess this is my part, she said. So, we're Tom and Heidi. We've been married 11 years and three months, four months, October of '07. So we just yesterday passed our 14th dating anniversary, which she made me feel like garbage 'cause I didn't get her anything and she got me a couple things. [Heidi] I did not. [Aaron] You're like, I didn't know we were celebrating our dating anniversary-- [Heidi] I was at Sam's Club and got him a pair of shorts. [Tom] Yeah, I didn't know we were celebrating. And you got me cookies as well. But anyways, we have two kids, a nine-year-old daughter, eight-year-old son. And yeah, we've been living in our home currently for five years, and I'm in medical sales for a job and Heidi runs the house here and handles our crazy kids. So yeah, we're kind of a normal, somewhat normal family I think. [Jennifer] Awesome. Okay you guys, we're gonna go into our icebreaker question, which, Aaron, you want to ... [Aaron] Yeah. What is one of your favorite memories of us from our friendship over the years? [Heidi] Oh man. Favorite memory. [Tom] I don't know. [Jennifer] 'Cause there's so many. [Aaron] 'Cause all of your memories are your favorite of us. [Tom] Right, that's the whole-- [Woman] Yes. [Tom] I've got a few. I don't know exactly which one I would say my favorite is. Gosh. [Jennifer] I feel like when we think about this question, I was telling Aaron, all the late nights, all the late nights we spent at your guys' island eating ice cream and just chatting and laughing. [Aaron] They don't own an island. Their kitchen island. [Heidi] Yep. Thank you. I didn't understand what she was-- [Tom] I was gonna say, one of my, one of the ones I think of and laugh about, because I think it's disgusting, is the fact that we would go get ice cream and you would get a shake or a malt with half and half instead of, like, low fatter. I remember just thinking just, oh my gosh, that's disgusting, I can't believe he's drinking that. And we would probably-- [Aaron] Yeah, what was it? Circus animal ice cream? [Tom] Yes. [Heidi] Yes, with half and half. [Aaron] With half and half. Half and half cream-- [Tom] In Clairemont, yeah. And you would just, you loved it and you would feel a little sick afterwards, but it was, we were always just laughing about it for a long time. [Aaron] It was so worth it though. [Jennifer] I think that's really abnormal. I don't think a lot of people would relate to you on that, Aaron. [Tom] No. [Heidi] No. [Aaron] You're making me, I want one right now. [Heidi] I think my most-- [Aaron] That's a good memory-- [Heidi] Story of you two is how we were kind of desperate for friends, married couple friends, and when we met you at Fuse kind of offering, hey, if you guys ever want, we are about 20 minutes away, but we'd love to have you over for dinner. And you actually took us up on the offer and I think-- [Tom] A lot-- [Heidi] What was it, three to four times a week over at my house, and I loved it. I think when you throw out that, hey, we should have you guys over sometime, it never really ever happens and you kind of feel a little bit hurt that they didn't take you up on the offer, but to have you guys take us up on the offer and for us to get so close and dive so deep into both of our marriages was definitely my favorite because I mean, we both put ourselves out there and opened up so much that-- [Aaron] Yeah, we loved that-- [Heidi] It couldn't have happened otherwise. [Jennifer] And I think we were in a place in our marriage where we really needed it too. So I think that's really cool. [Aaron] We definitely were, yeah. That's what this episode's about, actually. [Jennifer] Yeah, this episode is all about friendship and fellowship and so we're gonna dive into a quote from Marriage After God from this chapter. [Aaron] And it's walking in autonomy is not only dangerous for your marriage, it is also rebellious. Our relationship with Christ cannot be separate from our relationship with other believers. [Heidi] So true. [Aaron] Yeah, so that's from chapter six of our book, Marriage After God, and the chapter title's called Walking Autonomously Doesn't Work. And when we thought about who we can interview for this episode, you guys were the first people that we thought of because in our life when we needed fellowship the most and when we were afraid of it the most, we found you guys and you found us. [Jennifer] Well, yeah, I was gonna say, it was that you guys wrapping your arms around us and inviting us to your table at that marriage bible study, which Heidi mentioned earlier, it's called Fuse. That was a turning point in our relationship and our marriage, and it just stands out to us and I think it forever will. And I'm just really excited about this because other people listening will be able to hear your guys' side of the story because if they read Unveiled Wife or if they're gonna read Marriage After God, we mention you guys and we mention your impact in our lives surrounding fellowship with other believers. And yeah-- [Aaron] Have they read what we wrote about them yet? [Jennifer] No. But now you're here and they get to hear from you guys. So I love that. [Aaron] Awesome. And you guys haven't read the chapter yet, right? [Tom] No. [Heidi] No. [Aaron] Okay, good. It's all good stuff, I promise. Yeah. [Jennifer] Okay, so speaking of that night at Fuse where we showed up, our marriage was in turmoil and we were just looking for that last ditch effort, kind of like, what are we doing? We step into this bible study, there's a lot of marriages and people there greeting one another and we're like freaking out on the inside. Kind of look at each other like, let's get out of here. [Aaron] It was terrifying. Walking into that big old, a huge open room, and how many people were there when we came? It was like probably-- [Heidi] Probably 600. [Tom] No, no. Probably about 350. [Heidi] You think so? [Tom] Yeah. [Aaron] Yeah, 350 people. It was a lot. It wasn't as full as it got, but it was pretty full when we came. [Tom] Yeah. [Jennifer] And anyways, we were trying to sneak out. We were trying to find a way to just walk back out the doors and Tom comes up and sticks his arms around Aaron and I and he's like, hey, you guys new? [Aaron] I remember getting startled by it actually. 'Cause we were walking backwards, which I know is-- [Heidi] And he's not a small guy either, so, big old mitts on your shoulders. [Jennifer] So you guys brought us to your table and that was kind of the beginning of our friendship together. So Tom, you've mentioned that Aaron's appearance at the time, he had plugs in his ears, he had a beard and-- [Aaron] Yeah, tattoos on my wrist. [Jennifer] Not the typical guy you would have been friends with back then. But can you just share, what was going through your mind at that moment? [Tom] Yeah, let's state for the record, clearly I'm not a very judgmental person. At least I don't think though, but yeah, at the time, just, here's ... I am the non-talkative one of Heidi and I's relationship. To be very clear, Heidi loves the talking and doesn't stop. So, and that's just not my style. And so God has placed us in this marriage, which is a story in and of itself or in this marriage ministry where we took over this table at this marriage group, and he just blessed it. It became a huge group of probably around 30 people, so about 15 couples, and they really, what they wanted was 10 couples or 10 people at each table, five couples. And so we were big and it was, it's something I loved. Most of those people are still friends to this day, but it was a lot for me and just how I like to operate, so yeah, I look up that night and see these two. And we are also one of the younger tables there at the time. [Aaron] Yeah, I remember that. [Tom] Seeing you guys walk in, I was like, oh gosh, they're our age group. They're probably our life experiences as of right now, whether it's young kids or no kids and some are looking over there and thinking, uh, no thanks. I don't know this girl who is an all American gal is standing next to this guy who's got plugs in his ear-- [Aaron] A little weird-- [Tom] Short hair, a beard, all these things, I'm looking. Like I am 100% as I said a minute ago, I'm not judgmental, I was 100% judging and thinking, I would never hang out with that guy. That gal looks like a great friend for my wife, but I would never hang out with that dude, we've got enough people at our table, I'm good. And there's those times that God whispers and you're not sure it's God, and there's other times where you just kind of move. You're like, what the heck is happening, because I don't really want to be doing this and perfectly honest, that's what was happening. Is I just felt the nudge and the pull, and so I got up and walked over and yeah, and you guys were ready to move out. You actually were on the way out. [Aaron] You saw it. [Tom] I remember Jen's face was one of sheer terror, of, oh God, we almost got out of here and this guy just ruined it. And Aaron's was more of a, okay, okay, good. This, okay, we'll do it. [Aaron] I needed it. I was, I needed someone to hold my hand in that moment because like, I wanted it, but I didn't know-- [Tom] Yeah, so we moved towards the table and that was literally one of those, it changed our life, changed our marriage, and it was one of those things, I'm darn glad I got out of my seat and went and did it. Because not only was that good for us, but I can also speak to others who have zero desire to include other people or you know, you hear a comment a lot like, I have enough friends or whatnot, which I think is a bad comment to make. One I've probably made my own, but it moved me out of my comfort zone and changed our lives for the better. [Jennifer] I love that you shared all of that. And so much of this book is about saying yes to God in moments like that where he nudges you or he pulls you out of your chair and you say yes to him and you do it anyways. And I'm just so you guys know, we still really appreciate that you did that for us. [Aaron] Yeah, and we not only have written about it extensively, but we share the story often and we, a part of the, what we talk about in this chapter, specifically with what you guys did in our life is when you, Tom and Heidi, said Yes to God in that one little moment, which was a series of yeses, becoming the leaders of that table and wherever God had led you before that, you wouldn't have known back then what kind of effect, lasting effect it would have in the fact that that one moment would not only turn into a lifetime friendship and relationship with us, but would also impact thousands and thousands of other marriages and people through your one act of obedience. [Tom] Yeah, there's-- [Aaron] So I, go ahead-- [Tom] We've met people, or not met, I shouldn't say that. Actually, we have. People we've met and then also people we knew that years later we talk to or run into or Heidi meets randomly in a grocery store and like I said, she talks to everybody. We're mentioned right, as you helped our marriage or you were instrumental and perfectly honest, we did nothing. We were fools, of sorts, used by God because we didn't even know we had any impact on these people, let alone strangers, but then people we knew years later say, you have no clue what you did for us. It's just, it's humbling, it's neat, and just to understand that if you allow God to use you, you have no clue what he's gonna do. And probably by the time Heidi and I are in graves, we'll have no clue what impact we had. But that's what we're supposed to do, we're supposed to be used by God for his greater good. [Aaron] Yeah, and I hope those that are listening right now, and that's exactly why I wanted to interview these people like you is because people don't know. They may think, what can I do? How can God use me? And you simply got up and said hi to us. Now, it's lots of laughter and tears after that, but still just that one act of obedience, the fruit from that is exactly what God's looking for from all of us and that's, I just love that you highlighted that. So, man, I'm loving this interview so far. Is this the one we want to go with? Okay. So what kind of barriers do you think keep believers from close fellowship with other believers? Because that's what we had. We grew in close fellowship with each other. What do you think it is that stops believers from making that deep connection and walking in obedience with fellowship with other believers? [Heidi] Oh, man. Honestly, I'd have to say pride. A lot of times, especially with social media age, you want to give your best face, you want to show pictures of your kids perfectly dressed and their hair perfectly done and you'll move things out of the background of the picture just so that way the background looks nice. But I think, unfortunately, I think people don't want to share their stink. They don't want to say, we're going through this issue or I have this deep seated issue or they just don't want their stuff out there for people to judge or question how perfect they thought their life was. And I think it's uncomfortable for people to let down that wall and share who they really are and share what their marriage is really going through. [Jennifer] Yeah, you guys have been really good at being an example of how to live transparently with other people, 'cause you guys were open with us and that opened the flood gates for us to be open with you guys because of that example. And I think it's so important for people to hear, how would you encourage someone to walk transparently with one another? How do you do that? [Tom] I think there's another aspect to it too, is from a good friend who joined the group as well that said he was tired of bible studies with people that weren't like him. And not necessarily weren't like him as in same exact life experiences, but as I kind of said with Aaron, looked at him and thought I'd never hang out with that guy. He was always turned off by, well, I tried this group, I tried that group, it didn't work. All those guys were nerds or none of those guys played sports or things of that nature. And there's a constant, I get that part, but if you're open to it, you might find that, as I tell my kids, right now in school, you may, there may be differences and clicks or different things like that, but as you get older, those things really do melt away. And especially if it's a brother or sister in Christ, you have a really deep bond that many don't understand. But there's a part to it too, when you hang out with those who aren't like you. For instance, Aaron, when you and I were in the men's fellowship group together, gosh, you were obviously younger than me, but we were both vastly younger than anyone else in that room and just-- [Aaron] Yeah, I remember that. [Tom] Stuff that we picked up from those guys who one was divorced, one was married, he was married but they were both from divorced families and kind of had a Brady Bunch type of union now. The things that I learned from that group, including on how not to talk to my wife and ended up actually causing some stress in my marriage when I told her how I shouldn't be talking to you, even though I have been, then all of a sudden she picked up on what a jerk I had been. [Aaron] She's like, yeah, you shouldn't talk to me like that. [Tom] Yeah, it was a total backfire move on my part. But it just, the things you learn from people when you continue to give it a shot and be open to it. If you go in with walls, you're gonna come out with walls. If you go in-- [Aaron] That's good-- [Tom] Being willing to hear or listen, I think everybody can find that community and like Heidi said, if you're willing to lower your walls and lower your pride, you'll find out everybody's just as jacked up as you are. It's just different levels, 'cause no marriage is perfect. [Aaron] Oh, I love that. And it's like the, it's this idea that recognizing what we do have in common, which is Christ, and being okay with that being the thing that we connect on because that's what God wants anyway and being able to throw out those preferences of like, well, I only want to spend time with this kind of person, which is hard to find the right person. It's rare that we have that kind of relationship, right. So I love that. How have you two navigated being a part of fellowship with the body of Christ? [Jennifer] And maybe how are you currently fellowshipping with other believers? [Tom] I got nudged, so this one's mine. So we no longer attend a church where it's facilitated by the church. So we met via a group that was facilitated by the church. And to be honest, thank God for them, they made it easy, right. Childcare and a building and all those things. So that doesn't exist where we live anymore, and so, and we don't attend a church that really has that. So now it's become harder work. It's no longer the ease of high school, seeing your friends every day and then you become an adult and go to different colleges or go to different jobs. It takes work for those relationships, and so that's where we are now. It's a lot of work to continue this. And so there's an aspect of that that's more rewarding. There's also an aspect that's more frustrating. So we totally get the part where continuing in this type of ministry or this type of group is not easy, but it's so important. When we take breaks from it, I don't want to call it a toll because it sounds negative or like it's destructive, but the toll it takes on our marriage is seen. It's very easily seen in that we just don't vibe as well. A marriage becomes more difficult than it has to be when we're not in fellowship with others. [Aaron] So even if it's not as easy as it was, you guys recognize that it's still a necessity and a vital part of your Christian faith is that you must be in fellowship, whatever that looks like. [Tom] Yeah, there's something to it when people ask, I work with so many people who will ask like, how often do you and Heidi fight or what do you do this, or how do you handle this? And yeah, and I explain that to them. There's a part where you share life with others and these can be people who are non Christians. Just when you share life with others and share your experiences, your victories, your struggles, that's what we were created for. And again, if I'm talking to a non Christian, I don't have, I throw God in there, but there's an aspect for them too, that even if you're not a believer in Christ, if you're not fellowshipping with people who help you get better or can take some of the load off or even just share life with, you're missing something. And so, yeah, there's a definite need for us every day, if not at least once a week, like a marriage group that we have now, we have to do it or else there's just a hole and there's a window that-- [Aaron] So you're saying is it's just a basic, it's the way God created us as humans is we need deep human connection, we need deep human relationships and that we can't just walk autonomously. And then especially for the believer, we need Christian fellowship to be around other Christians to sharpen us, to grow us. That's what I'm hearing you say. [Tom] Exactly what I'm saying-- [Aaron] Is that it's not something we can just, we can't just throw it out. Right, that's what, which is what a lot of Christians do. I use this word autonomous. A lot of believers are totally fine with autonomy because that seems easier. Like, oh, just, you can have what Heidi said. You can have this facade and long as you, let's be cordial and we'll be nice and all, we'll hug on Sundays, but then you're not allowed to know who I am, you're not allowed to see the dirt in my life, you're not allowed to call me out on anything, you're not allowed to know that the dark parts of me. [Jennifer] How do we grow and mature if we're not letting people see who we are? [Aaron] Well, we can't. [Heidi] We don't. [Aaron] That's the point is, I don't want to grow and therefore I don't tell anyone or show anyone who I am. [Jennifer] But a marriage after God wants to grow. [Aaron] Exactly. [Jennifer] So a marriage after God's going to be doing this. You touched on a point about your church not facilitating that easy fellowship time currently. And so for people who are listening right now, what would you say is an action step for them to be an initiator in this, so that they're not waiting around, waiting for an invitation or waiting for it to be easy. What can someone do today? What can a couple do today to-- [Aaron] Be the starters-- [Jennifer] To be the starters of-- [Aaron] Be the initiator. [Jennifer] Yeah. [Aaron] Do what Tom did and get up and walk over and put his arm around us. [Jennifer] Yeah. [Tom] Yeah, I think the first and easy start for me would be at a church you're at, you obviously, if you don't, if you go in and out of that building and don't connect or talk to anybody, you're doing yourself and that body a disservice. So it'd be just connecting very simply with people at the church. Again, maybe somebody that you have, when you pick up your kids from childcare, obviously there's somewhere you can connect. There's so many spots to just start there. The other might be just friends in general. And Aaron, you brought up a point, the autonomy. There's something to it, right, where there's a couple of good friends of mine who I'm not as extreme as this, but literally don't like to talk to somebody. And it's funny though when you ask the question, well, what happens when you're out in public and there's a Christian connection of sorts, like somebody mentions something or you see somebody praying and somebody mentions it to you. There's an instant spark, there's an instant connection because out in the world when you find somebody who has that fearlessness of being able to say, yeah, I'm a Christian, or lives it out in front of you, there's a spark that you automatically have a bond. And so at your church, I think it's the easiest spot to have where it's reached out, somebody needs somebody or friends that you have now that you know are believers. Talk to them about getting together in a marriage study, whether it be one of your guys' books, whether it be something on DVD where there's a series going on, just starting somewhere or getting together on a bi-weekly basis just to hang, to chat. Because from that, as you guys know we used to do, we used to have dinners at the house, from that just hanging out, will spur those conversations and start something that you can then morph into, hey, why don't we start getting together on a weekly basis or bi-weekly basis. [Aaron] So true. I'm gonna take one of your guys' strategies. You guys had an open invitation to us to come over to eat with you guys. And not everyone is gonna, like you said, not everyone takes you up, but you said, hey, come over. And we said yes. So there was times that we went over and you didn't even know we were coming over. We just, we just texted you when we were around the corner. Was like, hey, hope dinner's ready. [Tom] You guys make it sound like that's the exception. That might've been the rule, that it was, you guys popped in a lot, and again, we loved it. It was not, we do it to people now. We'll just show up at their house with ice cream or something. [Aaron] They're like, uh-- [Tom] Yeah, their faces, they're not happy to see us. And then it ends up being a half hour, hour visit and laughing and fun and then we leave, and we'll get a, hey, thanks for stopping by, even though we showed up at the door. There's been many wives who looked at me like, what are you doing here? So yeah, it's-- [Aaron] Yeah. I think it's just the, it's not common for people 'cause we think like, oh no, you don't want to bother, you don't want to invade someone's privacy. You don't want to. But I think that's what we're supposed to do as brothers and sisters. Now, we don't want to step over boundaries and be rude and be, but like actually go into, hey, I'm in the neighborhood, would you love, I'd love to bring you a coffee. Hey, I'm grabbing a doughnut, you want one? Or a breakfast sandwich or whatever it is, just to spark that. You guys were a great example of that, opening up your home to us, giving us an invitation to be over and actually following through with it and making a meal with us and making it a night. Like we would stay at your house until two o'clock in the morning sometimes. [Woman] Sometimes we-- [Aaron] This was before kids. [Woman] Yeah. [Aaron] But yeah, I think that's a great idea. Just starting where you're at, looking around at you and saying, hey, there's a bunch of believers around me. I should not be hiding. There should be no reason that I can't go spark up a conversation and say, who are you? How can we know each other more? [Jennifer] And in this chapter of the book, I share a story of when Heidi invited me over to her house for one of the first times that we would actually spend girl time together-- [Aaron] This is a good story, yeah. [Jennifer] And I don't want to give too much away because I want them to read it, but I basically said I was busy and felt the conviction of the Lord prompt my heart to call you back, Heidi, and I had to apologize for lying and I did go over there. And so I just want to share that briefly because I think so many times, we do excuse ourselves or justify why we can't hang out or maybe we're afraid or maybe it's too uncomfortable. But I just want the people listening right now to know it is so worth it. It's worth it to get out of your comfort zone and it's worth it to build these friendships and these relationships with other believers because they will impact our lives for the better. [Aaron] Yeah, just like you guys have impacted our life. And in what you're saying, Jennifer, it makes me think of this. How many times have I said, hey, why don't you call so and so and see if they want to hang out, and you say, no, they're doing this thing today or they have this-- [Jennifer] I give other people excuses. [Aaron] And I tell them, I'm like, did they say that? And she's like, well, no. And I'm like, so they didn't tell you no? So I think sometimes when we feel that nudge, that Holy Spirit draw to reach out and to call or to connect with, and we say, no, they're probably this or they're probably that, and we say no for people before they say no. And to avoid that, to let the person say no. [Tom] To this day, that's me and Heidi. I think one of the better compliments she was given, whether it was a compliment or not, was you're a spiritual nuisance, because she doesn't let, she won't let you off the hook. [Jennifer] That's true. [Tom] She'll keep coming-- [Aaron] It's true, Heidi's got a gift. [Tom] It's truly a gift of God to her. It annoys the heck out of me sometimes. But especially when we're trying to be somewhere. [Aaron] But look at the fruit in your life because of it. [Tom] Yeah, exactly. So I have to balance that when I do get annoyed and remember how it's blessed me. But yeah, I mean, she's very good at this and doesn't, kind of tracks people down. [Aaron] So cool. [Jennifer] Awesome. Okay you guys, well, as we wrap up this awesome interview, in your own words, what is a marriage after God? [Heidi] Honestly, I think a marriage after God is putting God first and not your spouse and not other people, not celebrities, not your own image, but putting God first in your marriage to bless yourself, bless your marriage, bless other people. Just really living for God and not for the world. [Tom] What does that look like? I had a conversation with our daughter two days ago. We were driving back from somewhere and she says, so you love God first and then mommy and then us. And I said, yeah, it doesn't make sense, does it. And she says, no, it doesn't. Because one time I was a stupid dad and I answered the question honestly when she said, well, who's your favorite girl? And I answered mommy immediately. To an eight year old at the time, that was a really stupid answer on my part. But I mean, it was just not smart because it broke her heart and I had to try to come back and explain that to her because she's eight, she's not supposed to completely grasp that yet-- [Aaron] I don't have faith like that yet-- [Tom] But yes, sure, and a couple of days ago in the car, I said, it doesn't make sense and here's why. It's because God wants your focus on him. But in doing that, he opens you up to everything else and gives you a greater appreciation, gives you a greater understanding and gives you a greater love for other things. And so by mommy and daddy focusing on God first, it allows us to be better husband and wife to each other and allows us to be a better mommy and daddy to you. Even though a lot of times you probably don't think we're that great, that's what it does. And I said, and it's hard for you understand, I understand that, and you won't until you are married or have kids, but in the end, people have asked, why have we had such a great marriage. And it hasn't been perfect, but it's been the best decision I ever made in my life. And for a male to say that to another male, in our day and age is, Aaron, I'm sure you see it on people's faces when you do it. They look at you like you're crazy. And yeah, it's the absolute best thing I ever did in my life, and we just, if we focus on God first, right, though Sunday mornings you don't feel like getting up and going to church and you do and you walk into a sermon that's on marriage and you get, and God just talks to you there. It's putting him first whether you want to or not on that particular day. None of us are perfect. And then it just, everything else unlocks. Churches, I know I'm rambling. Churches know this fact. If they want to grow their church, they can get the wife, that's fine, and you'll get the kids maybe. But if you get the husband, you get the entire family and that's how you grow your church number, and that's a different topic, but again, if as a husband-- [Aaron] No, what you're saying is husbands need to be leading spiritually and setting the tone in their home. That's good. [Tom] Yeah. Before you rudely cut me off, what I was saying is, if we as husbands lead, it's infectious. It doesn't always happen, but it's infectious. The wife then follows, then the kids then follow and it's a beautiful thing. And I've noticed for me, if I slip and I'm not focusing on God, my house slips. So long winded answer to your question is both of you focusing on God, it's funny how the rest just seems to, not easily sometimes, but it does, it falls into place. [Aaron] Good. Thank you, that was really good. [Jennifer] That's so good. Thank you guys so much for sharing with us today. We just want to invite everyone to take a moment to join us in prayer. Dear Lord, thank you for the gift of your body. Thank you for the gift of fellowship and friendship. May we be people who are motivated by love to reach out and be a friend to others. We pray we would have the courage and confidence to be people who welcome others in, who are transparent, who are there for others, who lift others up and who pray for others. Use our marriages to be an encouragement to other marriages. Use us as a team to bring you glory. Help us to never live in isolation. Help us to never be divided. We pray the enemy and we pray our own flesh wouldn't get it in the way of fellowship. May our desire to participate in your body increase even more. May the way we treat one another be a light and an example to the rest of the world. In Jesus' name. Amen. [Aaron] Amen. So Tom and Heidi, we love you guys. We miss you guys. [Tom] Thanks for having us. [Aaron] We need to see you soon. [Tom] Sincerely. [Woman] Miss you guys. [Aaron] And thank you so much for giving us some time today and in blessing everyone that's listening. So hey everyone that's listening, thank you so much for joining us on this sixth week of the series, 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.

Get the Husband and Wife After God 30-day devotionals today. https://shop.marriageaftergod.com/products/husband-and-wife-after-god-devotional-bundle Quote From Husband After God on page 16 “Marriage is an opportunity to bring glory to God as you share with the world His testimony by loving your wife the way Christ loves the church.” Quote From Wife After God on page 117 “Being a submissive wife is beautiful, as it reflects God’s divine order. When a husband loves his wife like Christ loves and a wife submits to her husband, that reflection clearly represents God’s grace-filled love story. The benefits in a marriage like this are extraordinary. Why its important to do a marriage devotional together: Cultivating oneness and intimacy Get on the same page Growing in the word of God together Stimulates conversation Being ready in and out of season give an answer for the hope that you have Investment for marriage Example for our children you have something to pass on suggesting do this... Firstly, we wanted to share this information with you today because we are going into a Podcast series starting next week about our upcoming book Marriage After God! We hope you are pumped for this, we are and we cant wait for this book release! This series launching next week will give you insight into the book and of course, leave you with wanting even more! So before we get into that series, we thought we would dive deep into our devotionals for husbands and wives BECAUSE those of you who have already been through them have asked us what's next...which was a catalyst for us to write the marriage after God book...and also for those of you who havent had a chance to go through these devotionals yet or any of you who want to go through them again, we wanted to let you know that right now is the perfect time to do them leading up to the Marriage After God book release. We have about 4ish months till then which is ample time to get through the 30-day devotionals. A few things people have said about these devotionals: "Life changing - This book is truly a godsend! My marriage is better using the books! My husband and I read them daily and it’s helping us to grow in our marriage and closer to God! We were just recently baptized December 31, 2018 and this has been an awesome read for us to continue to have God at the center of our marriage. Daily this book hits home and I’m learning more about being a good wife!! Thank you so much for this book and I truly hope all Christian couples read these!" - Diamond S. "Just what our marriage needed! Awesome! It brought us closer together while also enhancing our individual walk with God. Opened our eyes to things we were and weren’t doing and being accountable. Very powerful devotionals! Highly recommended! A+++++" - William M. "Simply AMAZING I bought both bundles; Husband/Wife After God and 31 Prayers for your husband/wife and my husband and I are doing both together. OMGOODNESS, it really is good. Very well written and when I say these will open up your eyes, I'm not kidding. And get your steel toe boots on. These two books have helped us start off in a place where God can show up and take over. We have only been doing these less than two weeks, and God shows up every day relating these books to our daily lives. God speaks through people and uses people to minister to others and boy has he here. If you want God to show up and you really want to love God through your spouse and how to do it. These books right here is where you start!!" - Krystal W. *Dear Lord, Thank you for creating marriage. Thank you for considering our counterpart and complement. Thank you that we do not have to endure life alone. Not only do we get to live with the presence of Your Holy Spirit and our spouse, but we also get to benefit from living in community with other believers. May we walk together in unity as You have always intended us to. Please continue to draw us closer to Yourself and closer to each other. Continue to transform our hearts and our minds, so that our character reflects your character. Help us to intentionally invest in marriage by learning how to fulfill our roles as husbands and wives. Thank you for revealing to us why You created marriage and the purpose it has in this world. May this purpose motivate us to walk righteously every day. Remind us daily that our marriage is a symbol to this hurting world of Your powerful and unconditional love. We pray that as Christian husbands and wives, we aim to minister to one another in our marriages by being obedient to all that You have commanded through Your Word. May we be prayer warriors who do not neglect to pray for one another. We pray that as we make ourselves known to You and to each other, that we experience extraordinary intimacy. We pray for your will to be done in our marriages and through our marriages and may You 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 gonna talk about the importance of doing a marriage devotional 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 every day. [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 in this journey, as we chase boldly after God's will for our life together. [Jennifer] This is Marriage After God. [Aaron] Hey, thanks for joining us this week. We wanna invite you, as always, to leave a review on the podcast. The reviews, the star ratings, those all help other people, other marriages, find this podcast and get the content,. So if you enjoy what you been hearing, and you haven't done it yet, would you leave us a review today? That'd be awesome. [Jennifer] Also, if you've been enjoying this podcast, we would like to encourage you and ask you to shop on our online store as a way to support this podcast. So if you go to shop.marriageaftergod.com, you can see all of our resource there. We just want you to know that we wrote those for you guys, but also it helps support things like this podcast, so thank you so much for shopping with us. Also, I'd just like to highlight the discussion that we're going to be talking about today happens to be on marriage devotionals. So be sure to check out Husband and Wife After God. [Aaron] Yeah, those are our two devotionals that we wrote for husbands and wives to go through together. They can go through them separately, too, right? Yep. But we'll talk about that. [Jennifer] But if you're shopping on the store, you can check those out, and there's more information there for you, specifically on those devotionals. [Aaron] Awesome. So, icebreaker question, all right? [Jennifer] Dun dun dun. [Aaron] What is your definition of "and they lived happily ever after?" [Jennifer]Okay, so, we've talked about this before, but we're not really into this phrase. It's a hopeful and a happy phrase, for sure. [Aaron] Yeah, it's-- [Jennifer] But at the end of my book-- [Aaron] It's got a dead end on it, I feel like. [Jennifer] Well, I think at the end of my book, the end of our story, I'd much rather hear the line, and "they entered heaven, "and God said with a smile on His face, "well done, my good and faithful servants." To me, that's more powerful. [Aaron] Yeah. [Jennifer] Than happily ever after. Which means that we used our marriage for His purposes, and not just our own, and in the process being happy is a byproduct of Yeah. serving Him. Yeah, just, it-- It might mean-- It feels one goal focused, and word focused of we're just going to be happy for the rest of our lives, and I don't, first of all, it's not even possible. The Bible tells us that we will endure trials and things like that, so when I think of it, I actually wanna reword it and say, "and they lived joyfully ever after God." [Jennifer] Oh, there you go. [Aaron] Like as a marriage, we're chasing after him. [Jennifer] Kinda the same thing. [Aaron] Yeah, but its with joy, which is more of, it's something that exists even when we're not happy. Because when things aren't easy and hard, we can have joy, but instead of just "happily ever after" like the white picket fence, just the American Dream, or just things going well for the rest of our marriage. We have a bigger purpose of, it's not just to make us happy, but it's to pursue God and what He's doing in His kingdom, so I would just change. Yeah, we've never really liked that phrase. It's not that it's a bad phrase. [Jennifer] No. [Aaron] It just doesn't feel deep enough Or complete. Or long, or long-lasting enough, yeah. [Jennifer] It's not complete. [Aaron] Alright, we'll move on to the topic. That was an okay question, we'll have a better question next week, one that's funnier I think, 'cause those are usually funny questions, huh? [Jennifer] Not always. [Aaron] So we're gonna be talking about our devotionals a little later, but we have some quotes from them to start off the episode with, and this is a quote from my devotional Husband After God. It's on page 16, it says, "Marriage is an opportunity "to bring glory to God as you share with the world "His testimony by loving your wife "the way Christ loves the church." [Jennifer] Okay, and I'm gonna share my quote from Wife After God, it's on page 117. "Being a submissive wife is beautiful, "as it reflects God's divine order. "When a husband loves his wife like Christ loves, "and a wife submits to her husband, "that reflection clearly represents "God's grace-filled love story. "The benefits in a marriage like this are extraordinary." So they kinda mirror each other, they go hand in hand. [Aaron] Well, now that's the reason we wrote the devotionals, was to highlight for the husband and wife, why they're married and why God has His order and His ways for us to follow. It's because we have a message to proclaim. [Jennifer] Mm-huh. [Aaron] We have a purpose in this world. Which again goes to the bigger picture of what we wrote Marriage After God for, which comes out in June, which is just that. That our marriages are a ministry and that when we walk the way the Bible calls us to walk. We actually proclaim His message to the world, which is pretty incredible. [Jennifer] Yeah. [Aaron] To think about that, our marriages have much more to do in this world than just make us happy, which goes back to our question, really. But let's start off the topic with why it's important to do a marriage devotional together. 'Cause I'm sure there's a lot of marriages out there, people listening, that are wondering like, "hey, we do our devotionals separately, but what benefit could it be for us to do one together? [Jennifer] Or maybe they're not doing any together or any at all, and they've been waiting for something, they're looking for something. We're hoping that this catches their attention and maybe inspire them to get started on one today. [Aaron] Yeah, so let's talk about some of the benefits, some of the things that come to mind that could be, that could come out as fruit, [Jennifer] Okay. [Aaron] from doing a devotional together. [Jennifer] So the first thing that comes to mind is just cultivating oneness and intimacy from the experience of doing it together. Right. So, focusing and being intentional in the act of doing something together like a marriage devotional. [Aaron] Right, 'cause usually, if we have books that we read at night, often it's just to ourselves. It's, we're the only ones benefiting from it, or enjoying it, but a devotional that we can do together. If it's in the evening or in the morning, or in the afternoon, whenever that works. It's an intentional time to be together in the Word of God. It requires conversation, introspective thinking, dialogue, lots of stuff that would go on, that which cultivates more and more intimacy. Yeah. Right? Instead of us just, I work, come home, how was your day, awesome. We actually can go deep and say, hey, what did you think of that scripture or how does that make you feel or hey, that reminds me of when I was a kid and... [Jennifer] Yeah, and just to take it one step further, when you consider a devotional, you're usually gonna find those kind of journal questions or discussion questions or, like you said, to think introspectively, that you can use as conversation starters. 'Cause some people, they want to share their hearts with their spouse, but they don't really know how to-- That's a good point, yeah. or where to start, and so a marriage devotional will usually take the hardness out of the equation and say, here talk about this. Right. [Jennifer] And both people can look at the paper and go, oh! Or look at the book or look at whatever they're looking at and say, that's what we have to discuss, so we're gonna talk about that right now. [Aaron] Yeah, so they could stretch our intimacy muscles. How deep can we go in the conversation? The things that we could talk about. Those questions are usually formulated to cause deeper discussion than you would normally get into. It's a good point, and you know what? Growing spiritually is a very intimate thing. [Jennifer] Yeah. [Aaron] The deepest part of us is our spirit and we're cultivating that with each other. Praying with each other is an extremely intimate thing. We're entering the throne room of God together, we are praying together, we are lifting each other's hearts up, we're hearing each other's hearts, and then discussing the Word of God together, those are super intimate things. [Jennifer] Yeah, growing in the word of God together, that's a powerful thing for a marriage to be doing. I think that we all should be doing that. [Aaron] Okay, well, of course. Like as Christians, we're called to grow and mature, but as marriages, as a single unit, as one, we should be growing and maturing together also. Not growing and maturing separately only. That should be happening, but growing together, and I think what's awesome about doing a devotional together, also allows us to be accountable to each other. Yeah. Right? If we've been discussing, self-control, or our anger, or anything that this devotional might be calling out of us, we can actually pay attention together instead of me trying to work on it privately, [Jennifer] Yeah. [Aaron] and you don't really know what I'm working on. We actually could say, hey, remember the devotional last night we were just talking about this, like hey, let's working on that. [Jennifer] That's good. [Aaron] And I feel like you might've forgot the thing that we've committed to because of that question we answered the other night. So it helps us to be working on similar things throughout the day and keep each other accountable, and look out for each other's growth and maturity. [Jennifer] Another benefit is being an example for your children, and when those children become adults and they're married, you can say, have suggestions for them. Hey, we did this marriage devotional, we did that together. You and your spouse should try that. [Aaron] Yeah, and then they also see us, especially if we do visible, like in front of them, periodically, maybe not every day, but, hey, mommy and daddy are gonna do our quiet time together now, you guys can look at your books or go play quietly with your legos, and they know that that's an important thing to us, that we separate time to be in the Word together. It actually kinda convinced me thinking about it right now, we should do that more. [Jennifer] Yeah, we should. [Aaron] We should be getting away more together, so let's start doing that. [Jennifer] Okay, deal. [Aaron] I was gonna say, another thing I think about is, again, going back to the main purpose why we, our marriage exists, what God wants to do in us, is that there's a message to be proclaimed, there's a mission to be accomplished. I think of that scripture that tells us to be ready in and out of season, it tells us to be ready to give an answer for the hope that we have in us, and doing a devotional together and growing together on the same page, in the Word of God and learning what He has to say to us and what he wants to do through us. It helps us be ready for when our neighbor says, "hey, what's so different about your life, "why do you believe in this God of yours?" We're prepared together, instead of maybe you not-- Not knowing or... Not being ready or me not be in the same place. [Jennifer] Yeah, it's good. [Aaron] Yeah, but we would both be prepared to give an answer for our faith. [Jennifer] Yep, and the last thing I think of with all of these things that we've already shared about the importance of doing a marriage devotional together is simply that it's investment for your marriage. So, the quality time you're spending together to do it, the intimacy that you are cultivating when discussing difficult things or very deep things, and, like you said, being ready to share the hope that you have. All of these things are an investment into the marriage relationship, and when you invest into your marriage, you're growing in that relationship, you're building trust, you're building closeness, that bond between you, and I feel like that will strengthen a couple to go even further. [Aaron] Yeah, and keep going. [Jennifer] Like year after year after year. So I just wanted to make that note. [Aaron] That's good, so and the end result of pursuing God together, growing and maturing together, growing the Word of God together, doing a devotional together, all of these things to cultivate the oneness and intimacy and strength. The benefit and result is becoming and living as biblical men and women. [Aaron] We become more like what the Bible says. We represent that more, which has benefits also. When we just become the kind of people God desires us to be. There's benefits, and what are some of those? [Jennifer] So, you know, I just think of advancing as a Christian, and we get to do that together. So we see areas of our life that are weak, and maybe doing a devotional together could point to an aspect of our lives that needs to be transformed or worked on or practiced. Or cut out altogether. [Jennifer] Or cut out altogether, and we get to see us take steps towards growth in those areas. So we're moving forward not backwards. [Aaron] Yeah, when we walk in the way that the Word tells us to and calls us to, we experience more love, we learn about it more, we're filled more with God's love in us. So our marriage, we benefit from that, and our children benefit from that. [Jennifer] Totally. [Aaron] And our neighbors. The people that we interact with, there's more joy, more love, more peace. [Jennifer] Yeah. [Aaron] All those, you know, fruit of the spirit is in us. [Jennifer] Yeah, it's good. [Aaron] And that's a huge benefit of walking in obedience to the things that the Word calls us to. [Jennifer] Yeah, some other benefits are just, when you're working on areas of yourself to be more like God, I feel like He draws things out of your heart that need to be worked on, like being healthier with choices that you make, or being wiser, you know, like those kinds of things. [Aaron] Be better stewards of our resources, our money. [Jennifer] Yeah. [Aaron] Which all benefit our marriage, our life, our relationships, and then the most important thing, and we brought this up a moment ago, is the Gospel, the good news about Jesus Christ and what He came to this Earth to do for us is spread because we are in His Word and we're growing. And we look for opportunities to talk to people about God, and to love on people for God, and to share our story with people. That's the fruit that comes out of us, it's an overflow of what God puts in us. So we're talking about the benefits of doing a devotional, of getting into the Word of God together, but is that, I think of the devotionals we made and how can we share with them more about our devotionals and whether or not they might wanna jump in today. Just getting in the Word of God. 'Cause even if you don't get our devotionals, ever, or anyone else's devotionals, being in the Word of God together is more than adequate. It's what God wants us to do, Yeah. invest in His Word. [Jennifer] And we don't have to over complicate it, like seriously, just open up the Bible, read a chapter or two and talk about it. Ask each other the simple question of what stood out to you, start there. [Aaron] Yeah, and we try and do that. Sometimes, some nights I just read out loud. We don't talk about anything, we just, I read out loud until Jennifer falls asleep, or until we're just like, okay, awesome. And usually it ends up in a really great conversation about something that was triggered by what we read. You know, oh that made me think of today when, or last week I forgot to mention, and we have these really good conversations around the Word of God, but you know, we've had a lot of people over the years ask us about devotionals and want things to do together, and we made two devotionals, Husband After God and Wife after God, separate ones, because there are some marriages where the spouse isn't in the same place and so, we've had many people just buy just the devotional for themselves and start going through and start praying for their husbands or getting into the Word of God. [Jennifer] Or sometimes they buy the bundle in hopes that the other person will read theirs. [Aaron] Yep, we've seen that a lot also. We've actually seen people say, "hey, I didn't think my husband was gonna do it," And then he did. and then he totally started doing it. But the main point is that you do it together. [Jennifer] Yeah. [Aaron] You get these devotionals, you read through them, and so let's talk a little bit about these devotionals. Why don't you start off and then we'll just dig in to some of the information about them and maybe people will love the idea. [Jennifer] Yeah, so like Aaron said, our biggest thing here today is just to give you guys a little bit of insight to our marriage devotionals, but overall just encourage you to be doing something together, because it will cultivate that intimacy and oneness. But we wanna give you some insight into our devotionals, just to give you an option and show you what's out there. So, I wrote Wife After God. The subtitle is Drawing Closer to God and Your Husband. It's a 30 day marriage devotional. I wrote this back in 2013, right after I had Elliot. That was a long time ago. [Jennifer] Yep, and, I wanted something that a wife could hold in her hands that would help her better understand God's purpose and design for marriage and her role as a wife and to see that reflection, that picture, that's talked about in Ephesians 5 of Christ's relationship to the church. [Aaron] Yeah, it started off with, we wanted to, you wanted to show wives the ministry they had in their marriage Yes. toward their husband. Yes. [Aaron] Which is what the Bible shows us on both sides that the husband has a ministry to his wife and the wife has a ministry to her husband, and the symbol, like you said, it shows to the world. [Jennifer] So I'm just gonna read couple of these, I'm not gonna read through all of them, but these are just some of the chapter titles, so that they can get an idea for it. God's Purpose for Your Marriage. The Need for Companionship. Ministry of Reconciliation. Perfect Posture. [Aaron] That's a good one. You actually get a lot of comments about that chapter. I do. Wisdom Calls Out. Who You Are Called to Be. The Parts of Marriage. Fruitfulness. Intimacy With God. Love Letter to Your Husband. That's what it ends on, which I love that one. But that's just a handful of them and we'll get to the Husband After God. [Aaron] Yeah. [Jennifer] After we kind of, summarize Wife After God, 'Cause I want the guys to hear what's in yours, which is, Yeah. it's just as good. So anyways, the way that I outlined this is share about a page to a page and a half of whatever that topic is. [Aaron] And it's usually story-driven, it's either from our life, or another story we've heard to illustrate the point. [Jennifer] Yep, and then it goes into a prayer for that day specific to that day, and then you'll see a challenge, which is usually a challenge for you and your relationship with God or you in your relationship with your husband. So hopefully those inspire you guys just to do something you either have never done before or maybe haven't done in a really long time to cultivate that intimacy. Then there's the status update, which I don't know if a lot of people see in books, but we've decided to put the status update challenge in there for people who want to share this message that they're learning with people on social media. That's another way that this message of Wife After God gets out. It can be a catalyst for people to ask, hey what are you doing? What is that thing that you keep posting about? And it just gives a real quick glimpse in one sentence of that day's topic. [Aaron] Yeah, it's also a way of solidifying and vocalizing some of the things you're choosing to walk in. So you're stating it publicly. I'm going to be or I'm going to do, and then it makes it a real thing. Instead of it just in your mind, you're like oh, I'll work on that some day. [Jennifer] And what I love seeing is when people tag me in these and they post a picture of their wedding day with it, or a recent picture. They do that a lot. They post pictures from their wedding day, which is awesome. [Jennifer] Or a recent picture of them together. [Aaron] Yeah, I love that. And it encourages other couples, they say, "oh what is that?" And they want to be a part of it, and it's just a neat way of spreading the Gospel, spreading the message of being a godly wife, being a godly husband and what that means. [Jennifer] And each day has specific scriptures that support the topics that we're sharing, which I don't want to skip over, but just so you guys know, the reason we didn't quote the scripture in there is because we want you to get into the Word of God yourselves, so we just list the scriptures. [Aaron] Yeah, 'cause people always ask, "what version of the Bible did you use in the verses?" All we say, well, we just put the references, not the actual scriptures, so it's all our content, and what's awesome is it requires you to open your Bible. [Jennifer] Yep, and-- [Aaron] Which is the focus. [Jennifer] The last thing I wanna share is one of my favorite parts of these devotionals and it's the journal questions after each day's, at the end of each day, and you can use these. We gave space under each question that you can fill it out right then and there or you can use them and fill it out in your own personal journal, or you can use these as discussion questions either in a group setting. So if you're doing this with a handful of other wives, or you can use them as discussion questions between you and your spouse to answer. [Aaron] Or all of the above. [Jennifer] Or all of the above if you wanna, that'd be awesome. [Aaron] So, I'm going to go through the Husband After God and pull some of the points. It's formatted exactly the same way, but the content is complementary. It's different content focused on the husband with some different topics, but some of the topics are similar, but with different content, if that makes sense. [Jennifer] Yeah. [Aaron] So you could totally do this with your spouse and you would have different questions that you can go back and forth on. You would have different stories and different points to pull from, even different scriptures, but the themes might be the same in some areas, so I'm gonna read some of the topics. Marriage By Design. Lead By Example. Your Wife is a Gift. Sacrificial Love. Set Yourself Apart. Be Brave. The Good Fight. Pride. Everyone loves that chapter, I think. Forgiveness. Words Matter. Prayer For Your Wife. Avoiding God. Walk in Victory. And then the last one is The Husband Revolution, which is a fun one. It's proclaiming that mission that we have as husbands and that ministry we have. But yeah, there's a point in the beginning, a couple, a page and a half or two pages, and then there's a prayer for that day, specific to that topic. There's scripture to read. There's questions for you to answer. There's a status update, like this one says, "I will strive to reflect the image "and character of God in my marriage." That's status update, so it's like a statement. Statement, yeah. I'm going to do this and you're telling all your social media friends that you're gonna do it, and then it also let's people know, wait what is he doing? It says #HusbandAfterGod, what is that? [Jennifer] Yeah, what is that? [Aaron] Yeah, there's a challenge on every chapter. This one says share and discuss with your wife what you are learning about the purpose of marriage. So boom, right there, there's an intimate moment that I get to have with my wife where I share with what I'm learning, what God's teaching me about the purpose of marriage. 'Cause imagine if I sat down, or you sit down, husband, with your wife, and you say, oh, you know, I'm learning that God's purpose for our marriage is that I would love you like Christ loves the church. She's gonna be like, what, that's amazing! [Jennifer] And yeah, imagine what that would do to a wife's heart? I know personally, it just makes me feel like, oh my goodness, he cares about me, he loves me, he wants to do this with me and with God, and I don't know, I just love that. [Aaron] I wanna read another challenge. This one's from, what chapter is this? This is from day 21, Prayer For Your Wife, and the challenge is this. Spend time praying for your wife. Share with God why you are thankful for her. Lift up any needs she may have. Pray for her character to reflect Christ, and petition God to protect her. So, the challenge is go find some quiet time and just pray for your wife. [Jennifer] Which we all need those reminders. Every single one of us. [Aaron] So that's the Husband After God devotional. And the topics in each one of them are focused on the wife's role, scriptures that are aligned with that, and then the husband's role and scriptures that are aligned with that, but at the end of the day, what they're doing is they strengthen the marriage overall, making the ministry of that marriage more powerful, and more focused on what God wants for it. [Jennifer] And there's 30 days or 30 topics, so you could easily do this in a month's time. [Aaron] Yeah, well that would be the challenge, is do it every day for a month, for 30 days. [Jennifer] Yep, so I just, real quick, wanna jump into a couple reviews that people have left for these specific devotionals, just so that you guys get an idea of the kind of impact that it's making from other people, and other people's lives. So Aaron, you wanna read the first one? [Aaron] Yeah, this one's from Diamond S. and it says this, "Life changing! "This book is truly a Godsend. "My marriage is better using these books. "My husband and I read them daily and it's helping us "to grow in our marriage and closer to God. "We were just recently baptized December 31st, 2018," which is incredible, [Jennifer] Wow, recently! [Aaron] Yeah, "and this has been an awesome read "for us to continue to have God "at the center of our marriage. "Daily this book hits home and I'm learning more "about being a godly wife. "Thank you so much for this book "and I truly hope all Christian couples read these." [Jennifer] Awesome. [Aaron] Which, I was like, yay, makes me feel good. [Jennifer] Okay, I'm gonna read the next one. It's from Crystal W., "Simply amazing. "I bought both bundles, Husband and Wife After God, "and 31 Prayers For Your Husband and Wife, "and my husband and I are doing both together. "Oh my goodness, it is really good! "Very well written, and when I say these will open up your eyes, I'm not kidding. "And get your steel-toed boots on, "these two books have helped us start off "in a place where God can show up and take over. "We have only been doing these less than two weeks, "and God shows up every day, "relating these books to our daily lives. "God speaks through people and uses people "to minister to others, and, boy, has He here. "If you want God to show up and you really want to love God "through your spouse, and how to do it, "these books, right here is where you wanna start." [Aaron] That one's a good one. I like that one, she said "put on your steel-toed boots." [Jennifer] I know, it's great. [Aaron] Alright, so this last one is from William M. "Just what our marriage needed, awesome! "It brought us closer to God while also enhancing "our individual walk with God, opened our eyes to the things "we were and weren't doing and being accountable. "Very powerful devotionals. "Highly recommended. A++++." [Jennifer] Awh, some people are just so kind, and it always encourages us and we feel like, awesome. We have given couples a catalyst to get into God's word together and to do something that's impacting their relationship, and I'm just praising God. [Aaron] Yeah, and our goal all along, has not been to replace the Bible. Our purpose of these books was to point people to the Bible. [Jennifer] Yeah. [Aaron] Always pointing back to the Bible, always pointing back to God. [Jennifer] Awesome, okay, so I wanna move into this next, sort of, sessions. [Aaron] These are kinda like questions, Q&As. [Jennifer] Yeah, Q&As on... [Aaron] Oh no, they're FAQs, that's what it is. [Jennifer] Okay, on the topic. So, can these be read together at the same time or not? [Aaron] Both! We recommend them being done together. They could be read separately, or they could be read together, taking turns, but our sentiment is, hey, do them, and then come together and discuss the chapter for the day, discuss the thought for the day, how you answered the questions, do the prayers together, pray- [Jennifer] Sometimes they pray the prayers out loud, too. [Aaron] Yeah, so I would say both. Like we said earlier, there's some marriages where the husband or the wife are not there, they're not doing it. So the other spouse is just doing it on their own. [Jennifer] And the great thing about these devotionals is you can utilize them more than just once, go back through it again, you know? It's really good content, so it's not wasted, just keep going through it again. [Aaron] Yeah, they're good reminders of what the Word says about who we are and what God's called for us. The next question is can they be used to lead a small group? [Jennifer] And the answer for that is, yes. So, some tips for this. If you're gonna do, host small group, let's say that you have five other wives who wanna go through Wife After God together, we would suggest everyone gets a copy, just so that they can go through it on their own throughout the week, and then meet up, once a week for a month or two, depending on how you want to do it, and just use the journal questions, in the back of each day as the discussion questions to talk about. [Aaron] Yeah, and you might be able to break up the chapters, so like the first four chapters on week one, and the next four chapters or five chapters on week two. [Jennifer] Yeah, and you don't have to use the journal questions, You can just simply say, okay, what have you been learning? What stood out to you? That kind of thing. [Aaron] Ideally, they would, whoever has these devotionals, the people listening, if they have these devotionals or if they're going to get them, when they're done going through them, they should invite married couples over to their house, and start a little marriage Bible study with those couples. [Jennifer] That would be awesome. And here's the other tip, if you guys were to do this soon, there's even enough time, by the time you finish that small group, Marriage After God will be out. The new book, yeah. The new book, and then you could do that same group study With that book. With book. [Aaron] Yeah, 'cause that book is significantly different than these devotionals. [Jennifer] Okay, so I want to give one more tip and this is just a fun thing to do with your group, if you're gonna do a group. I did a small group, which actually led me to writing this devotional. I did it for three months with a handful of wives from my church, we were all young wives, kind of in the same season of life, and-- [Aaron] No one had kids yet, back then. [Jennifer] No one had kids yet. One friend had one young, young baby. So, anyways, we got together weekly, once a week, for three months, and the second to the last, or maybe the third to the last one, we made handmade invitations for our husbands. [Aaron] Oh, this is definitely a good idea. [Jennifer] We planned and prepared a dinner that we were gonna host for our husbands on that last evening and talk about the discussion questions and what we learning on that night with everyone. And so we thought it was gonna be fancy, we thought we wanted to dress up, we thought we all wanted to cook together. So we made these handmade invitations and then a couple weeks later, we all got together, we got there early, set the table, got flowers, made the dinner, and all the husbands showed up, dressed super nice, we were just at a friend's house. [Aaron] That, I remember this. That was a lot of fun and I felt really honored. [Jennifer] Everybody just, everybody felt honored. Everybody had smiles on their faces and what's really cool about that night is the guys actually, because they knew it was coming, they all talked and prepared on how they were gonna encourage us women and share how they've seen us change over that time we'd been meeting together. So then at the dinner table, everyone went around and shared. It was incredible, it was so awesome. [Aaron] It was really powerful, and very enjoyable, and the food, I can't remember what it was, but I remember it was really good. [Jennifer] Yeah, so you could do something fun like that together. [Aaron] So last question is, why should they read these devotionals now, as a primer for the Marriage After God book coming out in June? [Jennifer] So, first thing you guys should know is, we did write these devotionals a couple years ago, and when we get people who have been through them asking us what's next, we want to give you something. We've been wanting to give you something since they first came out. [Aaron] We've had four kids since then, so... [Jennifer] Yeah, we've been a little busy, but this was a catalyst, you guys asking and desiring this has been a catalyst for why we wrote Marriage After God. So I feel like these devotionals are the brief version. [Aaron] I think they're the first stepping stone. [Jennifer] It's like a stepping stone, because then, I feel like your hearts will be ready. More unified. And more unified for jumping into the message that is in the book, Marriage After God. [Aaron] Yeah, the Marriage After God book. You're going to be hearing a lot about this, so we're starting to talk about it more because as it gets closer to launching, we want you all to know what it's about, and why we wrote these books. And we wrote Marriage After God as a culmination of everything that God's been teaching us over the years about the ministry that God has for our marriages. And so these devotionals are step one in that. [Jennifer] Yeah, they'll get you thinking about the purpose of your marriage in light of God's Word. [Aaron] Yep, and by the time the book comes out, you'll be ready to take that next step into what God has for your marriage and where He wants to take it. 'Cause that was the whole purpose of writing the book was, we want marriages all over the world who claim the name of Christ, who love God, to recognize the power in the ministry that they have in Christ as a marriage, as one. And so we're super excited about that. [Jennifer] Yeah, I think another thing is, is if you do these devotionals together, it will start to build that habit of spending time together and reading together and asking each other some deep questions. So that when the Marriage After God book comes out, that habit will already be there and you'll want to replace the devotionals with the book. So I think that it's just a natural step. [Aaron] Yeah, and I wanna go, I got really excited about something. I wanna go right back to the small group subject again. I love that idea, and I actually wanna challenge our listeners. We weren't planning on doing this, but I want to challenge our listeners to get a copy of our devotionals, the Husband and Wife After God devotionals. Go through them, and at the end of the 30 days, during the 30 days, be praying and asking God, what other couples are in your life that He wants you to invite to a study at your house, a Marriage After God study? And then invite them to get the books. It could be two couples, it could be one couple, it could be five couples. I wouldn't do more than maybe six couples, that's a lot of people. Do multiple studies, maybe, but I just wanna challenge you to be praying through the books as you do them, and asking God who it is. You might be thinking right now, oh my gosh, I have this friend, these friends, they would love to do this with us, and start a Bible study and walk through these studies, these books together and see what God has for all your marriages. What we're trying to start here is a movement of marriages after God, of marriages who desire to grow the kingdom of God, to see Him move through their marriages, and that we would use our marriages for ministry for Him. That's why we started the podcast. That's why we started our blogs. All of this goes back to that, that we're moving the kingdom forward with God, and that we see our marriages as the ministries He's given us and the tools that He's given us to serve Him. [Jennifer] Mmm, that's good. [Aaron] So would you agree with that challenge? [Jennifer] I agree, I like that challenge, and just to simplify it and make it easy for them to understand. Just tell these people it'll be four or six weekS, whatever you want the timing to be on it, which is not a long time to meet together. It's not at all. [Jennifer] It's once a week, for four weeks, or once a week for six weeks. [Aaron] Try the four weeks, I think the four week one, just one month to see if it works, see if you're like wow, this is awesome. And but first, I would say you go through the devotionals as a couple first. And during that 30 days, you pray, and fast if need to, and you ask the Lord. Say, Lord, reveal to us, who is it? And I know the Lord will. The moment we ask God, like God use me, He's like okay, He wants to use us. [Jennifer] Marriages need it, you guys, that's why we're doing this, because marriages need the support, the encouragement of other believers, they need to know why God has them together. [Aaron] The reminder of not just happily ever after, but it's that we're chasing after God together, that we're building His kingdom together, that we have a mission in this world and our marriage is the tool to accomplish the mission. Yeah, and going back to the message of the Marriage After God book, that's what the whole book's about, what is the mission God has for us? [Jennifer] And if you guys have already been through these devotionals, and this is old news to you, because you've already been through these, I want you to go dust them off, go get them, and go do exactly what Aaron is challenging you to do right now and consider- [Aaron] Let's start our movement. [Jennifer] Yeah, consider who you can invite over to go through them with you. [Aaron] Ooh, how can they let us know if they're doing it? 'Cause actually I would love to know. I'd love to see the groups-- Groups, a group photo! We wanna see a group photo- Tagged! [Jennifer] @MarriageAfterGod. [Aaron] Yeah, tag @MarriageAfterGod and #MarriageAfterGod, and we will look 'em and actually I think we'll repost them. [Jennifer] Yeah. [Aaron] Not all of them, but we'll repost a lot of them. So if you do this, please let us know. We'd love to be praying for you, being part of it, and we are praying for you, but if you're going to be doing a group, we want to pray for your group, we want to pray for your Bible study. I'm getting all excited, okay. [Jennifer] Okay, so last note before we go into the prayer for this episode, and that is, get ready, because we have 16 weeks ahead of us of a book series for Marriage After God that we're going to be diving into starting next week with the introduction. [Aaron] That's true, and you know what's awesome? We forgot to mention this, this is episode 52. This is, we've been doing this for one year. Woohoo! Today. [Jennifer] Thank you guys for following along, and listening, this is awesome. [Aaron] Yeah, so for the next 16 episodes, we're going to be talking about content from the book. [Jennifer] And it's actually 17, 'cause it's 16 chapters, plus the introduction, so 17 weeks. [Aaron] So you're going to be learning a lot about the message of the Marriage After God book, which is essentially of the Marriage After God podcast, and how our hearts is to start a movement in Christian marriages around the world. And we'd love for you to be a part of that, and to take ownership in that, and know that God's gonna do something amazing. And we're excited to see what that is. So before we close, as always, we've dedicated to pray for you and your marriage and for what God's doing, and so Jennifer would you like to pray for us? [Jennifer] Dear Lord, thank you for creating marriage. Thank you for considering our counterpart and complement. Thank you that we do not have to endure this life alone. Not only do we get to live with the presence of Your Holy Spirit and our spouse, but we also get to benefit from living in community with other believers. May we walk together in unity as You have always intended us to. Please continue to draw us closer to Yourself and closer to each other. Continue to transform our hearts and our minds so that our character reflects Your character. Help us to intentionally invest in marriage by learning how to fulfill our roles as husbands and wives. Thank you for revealing to us why you created marriage and the purpose it has in this world. May this purpose motivate us to walk righteously every day. Remind us daily that our marriage is a symbol to this hurting world of your powerful and unconditional love. We pray that as Christian husbands and wives, we aim to minister to one another in our marriages by being obedient to all that You have commanded through Your Word. May we be prayer warriors who do not neglect to pray for one another. We pray that as we make ourselves known to You and to each other, that we experience extraordinary intimacy. We pray for Your will to be done in our marriages and through our marriages and may You be glorified. In Jesus' name, Amen. [Aaron] Amen, thank you Lord. We're excited to see pictures. We're excited to see what God's gonna be doing in your marriage through these devotionals, through the Bible study that you're gonna start, I'm making it a definitive. [Jennifer] And tag @MarriageAfterGod so we can see and cheer you along! [Aaron] Yeah, and just start praying and asking God how He wasn't to use you and your spouse. That's our heart, that's our goal, that's why we do this, is that you would recognize the place that you have in the body of Christ, and that it's a significant one. Doesn't matter who you are, doesn't matter where you live, God's got a plan for you, He's got a purpose for your marriage, for your life individually, and you are a part of the body of Christ. And God's got work for us to do, [Jennifer] Let's do it. [Aaron] as his children. Yeah, so let's do it and we love you guys. We thank you for joining us on our 52nd episode, one year in, here's to another year, and we'll see 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.