Marriage After God - Biblical advice, practical tips, and inspiring stories to strengthen your relationship and deepen your spiritual connection

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Take the FREE Marriage Prayer Challenge.Marriageprayerchallenge.com READ TRANSCRIPT[Jennifer] Welcome to the Marriage After God podcast. [Aaron] We're your hosts. I'm Aaron. [Jennifer] And I'm Jennifer. [Aaron] We've been married for 14 years. [Jennifer] And we have five young children. [Aaron] We started blogging over 10 years ago, sharing our marriage story in hopes of encouraging other husbands and wives to draw closer to God and closer to each other. [Jennifer] We have authored over 10 books together, including our newest book, "Marriage After God," the book that inspired us to start this podcast. [Aaron] "Marriage After God" is a message to remind all of us that God designed marriage with a purpose. [Jennifer] To reflect His love. [Aaron] To be a light in this world. [Jennifer] To work together as a team. [Aaron] Using what He has given us. [Jennifer] To build His kingdom. [Aaron] Our hope is to encourage you along your marriage journey. [Jennifer] As you boldly chase after God together. [Aaron] This is Marriage After God. [Aaron] Welcome back, we're Aaron and Jennifer Smith, your hosts of the Marriage After God podcast. We have a fun topic for you today. A light one and we think you're gonna enjoy it. We're excited to share it with you all. And hopefully it inspires you in your relationship with God and your spouse. [Jennifer] Yeah, before we jump into it, which we'll do shortly, Some of my closest girlfriends were praying recently for the men in our life, husbands, fathers- Thank you. [Jennifer] You're welcome. Just really wanting to lift up our men who are leading our families. Also, bearing the weight of care for everything that's been going on in our nation, in our world, because just by nature they're protectors, providers, it's on their mind, and we care about them. And so as they consider everything that's going on and how it will impact the family, and how they navigate it with us, we just felt concern to bring them before the Lord and pray for them. And I just love that we had the opportunity to do that. But with that, I wanted to also say Aaron and I want to recognize that there's just a lot going on right now. And I mean, we're only a few weeks into 2021 and it's already been historical and I'm not talking about just the memes. That's not funny. I thought it was funny. The memes are pretty historical. [Jennifer] Aaron was just sharing some with me. [Aaron] And hysterical. [Jennifer] No, anyways, this is serious. Just this first part's kinda serious. Because Aaron and I, just like you guys, we get to navigate what's going on in the world around us and respond to it. But because we also have an online presence and this platform of a podcast, we wrestle with questions like, hey, are we gonna address that thing that happened? Do people wanna hear our opinions? Does God want us to speak to that issue? And it's just, I know for me personally it's a lot, but we do wrestle. [Aaron] Yeah. It's not something that we just pretend isn't going on. But I think what we've landed on is that the most important message is that of Jesus Christ and drawing people back to the Word of God. Would you agree? [Jennifer] Absolutely. Yeah, and the reason that I wanted to share this is just so you guys know our hearts is that we are navigating and wrestling those things and you don't see all of those things happening. And so I thought it'd be nice just to address it and let you know that we are watching, we are praying, we know that there's husbands and wives out there who are impacted by some of the current events that are happening, whether it be political, or a natural disaster, or any sort of crisis. We know that those things are happening. However, like Aaron just mentioned, we're gonna stick to the things that God has purposed in front of us and the stories and the experiences and the things that we can speak to in His truth to encourage you, because that's what we created this podcast for is to encourage you guys. [Aaron] Well, and I would reiterate that we firmly believe that the Word of God, that walking with the Lord, is the response to whatever is going on. We talk about it in the platform of marriage and that aspect of life, but it's not like your job and politics and your marriage and your parenting and your friends and your church are all separate things in boxes that get dealt with differently. We deal with it all the exact same way. Now, that doesn't mean that we have all the answers, but what it does mean is we know who does, and we know who to run to, and we know what the Word of God says. The Bible is the eternal Word of God. It's living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, cutting through to the bone and marrow. It discerns the hearts of men. So that's what our mission is, like you said last episode, Jennifer, is our ministry is to the church. Now we have ministries outside of that as well, but our main one pretty much for our whole marriage and life has been ministering to believers. And so in these times, we're not the ones equipped to bring up political commentary. We're trying to be equipped to bring up what the Word of God says and encourage you in that. [Jennifer] Now, being a marriage podcast and knowing that Aaron and I, we struggle and navigate some of these things, we can speak to really quickly and encourage those who are watching the news or experiencing these things happening and unfolding. So can we quickly just dive in for maybe a minute or two, how can a husband and wife- [Aaron] Process. [Jennifer] Process and navigate these things as a couple? [Aaron] Well, what we could do, what our flesh probably wants to do, is get anxious, break down, feel overwhelmed. These are the natural responses to things that are out of our control. [Jennifer] Or confusion. [Aaron] Yeah, confusion or anger even. But you know what? The Bible addresses all of those things. And I think, well, we can do one thing is we can share the things that we're coming across and that are giving us anxieties. [Jennifer] Like if I'm reading the news and something just strikes a chord in my heart and I can't let it go, like it's just sitting with me, I can bring that to you and say, "Hey, I've really been thinking about this. It's kind of consuming my mind, can you- [Aaron] Pray for me. [Jennifer] Pray for me or help explain it to me or whatever I need in that moment. [Aaron] And that's what we're supposed to do is bear each other's burdens. So communicating about it, not just holding it in, not just saying, "If I bring that up, it's gonna cause something," or, "I can't talk about that," but like going to your spouse, going to your church, and just saying, "Hey, I'm dealing with something about this thing that I saw, or this thing that I heard, or what's going on in the world." [Jennifer] Another thing that you can do that we do is commit to praying for the things that you see and hear. Don't just scroll past it, don't let your heart become desensitized to it. [Aaron] Which is a good encouragement for me because, I mean, I haven't had social media on my phone for a little bit, but when I did, I would see something going on in the world and I'd be like, "Oh, that's horrible," and then I'd scroll right past it. Bummer it, yeah. [Aaron] But stopping and saying, "I can't be there, I can't like physically help, but I can pray. And I know that I know a God that can help and has a plan for this," that's good. Something that would be really helpful probably for the entire world is to take breaks away from consuming the news. Right? [Jennifer] Yeah. I would say even in today's era of the way the internet works is even taking a break from actively engaging. If you're one of those people that leaves comments and dives in right away, hit the pause button, be slow to speak, be slow to dive into those things until you've wrestled and processed with God, with your husband, with your family, and get your heart right. [Aaron] Yeah, just speaking about this idea of taking a break, I was speaking to someone from Compassionate International, which by the way, you should check them out if you haven't, and he was just sharing how every year him and his wife take turns going for a couple of days, three days I think, to be off all technology. [Jennifer] That's cool. [Aaron] Little hiatus. Not everyone can go away, but we could do that at home. Let's say, "Let's put this stuff away for a few days." [Jennifer] I think the goal is balance. [Aaron] It's balance, yeah. [Jennifer] And speaking of balance, it's even, in regard to God's Word, are you consuming outside resources and information more than you're consuming the Word of God? [Aaron] That's convicting to me 'cause the answer is yes. [Jennifer] Well, we need to bring some balance, then. [Aaron] We need to switch that around, yeah. [Jennifer] Another one is don't let current events polarize you in your marriage. So when it does come time to talk about it, don't allow that thing to be the source of contention between you and your spouse. You've got to remain unified. Yeah, don't let it cause division, as the Lord says. A house cannot stand that is divided. [Jennifer] Right, but if the foundation is the Word of God, then Run to it, yeah. [Jennifer] you'll be able to move forward from there. [Aaron] And there's a word that believers should remember is were we're to endure, as Paul tells Timothy, as a good soldier. [Jennifer] Well, things are going to happen. There's gonna be more news, there's going to be more historical events unfolding before us. [Aaron] Yeah, especially if you know anything about the Bible and what it tells about coming- [Jennifer] The end. [Aaron] Yeah, the end. The Lord's return. And I wanna end on some Scripture. This is, I read this today and I thought it was incredibly powerful. [Jennifer] And when you say end, you mean end this section so we can jump into today's fun topic. End the session, yeah. We haven't gotten into the good part yet. But this is really good. This is Isaiah chapter 35. "The wilderness and the dry land shall be glad. The desert shall rejoice and blossom like the crocus. It shall blossom abundantly and rejoice with joy in singing. The glory of Lebanon shall be given to it. The majesty of Carmel and Sharon; they shall see the glory of the Lord, the majesty of our God. Strengthen the weak hands and make firm the feeble knees. Say to those who have an anxious heart, 'Be strong, fear not. Behold, your God will come with vengeance. With the recompense of God, He will come and save you.' Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf unstopped. Then shall the lame man leap like a deer and the tongue of the mute sing for joy. For waters break forth in the wilderness and streams in the desert. The burning sands shall become a pool and the thirsty ground springs of water. In the haunt of jackals where they lie down, the grass shall become reeds and rushes. And a highway shall be there, and it shall be called the Way of Holiness. The unclean shall not pass over it. It shall belong to those who walk on the way. Even if they are fools, they shall not go astray. No lion shall be there nor shall any ravenous beast come upon it. They shall not be found there, but the redeemed shall walk there, and the ransomed of the Lord shall return and come to Zion with singing. Everlasting joy be upon their heads. They shall obtain gladness and joy and sorrow and sighing shall flee away." This was written thousands of years before Jesus came, and Jesus was the answer of this. He is the way that we walk on. He's the highway that shall be there called the Way of Holiness. The early church, before they were called Christians, were called the Way because they followed Jesus. So be encouraged by that. [Jennifer] Man, that was really good Aaron. Thank you for sharing that. And I just feel like I have to meditate on that this week and really just let my heart absorb it. Okay, we're gonna move on. Aaron and I would love to encourage you guys to leave a star rating review for this podcast if it has impacted you. If you have time, you can even leave a written review. These are so impactful. Not only do they help people find the Marriage After God podcast because of algorithms and the way that social media and all these platforms work, but it also really encourages us. And today we wanted to share some of those encouragements that you've left for others to find. [Aaron] Yeah, this one is by user, I think it's Agibb90. "You all are one of my favorites. Love Aaron and Jennifer and all the materials they put out, whether they're daily emails, Instagram posts, one of their amazing books, or an awesome podcast. They are an excellent source of God's knowledge for your marriage or for life. So glad you're all back. Keep doing what you're doing." Thank you, that was encouraging. There was another one, and these are recent ones, so I just wanna thank you for everyone that's taking our call to action and going and leaving a review. [Jennifer] So this one was a five-star by jones_k10. "This podcast is beneficial, encouraging, and practical. Aaron and Jennifer honestly share their story and wisdom with men and women. I love how the couple speaks to each other and their listeners. They don't hide behind the messiness of life. They tell it how it is and give practical advice to apply to your life. This podcast is a wonderful way to start each morning on a positive, encouraging note." [Aaron] Nice, thank you so much. [Jennifer] That was so encouraging. [Aaron] Yeah, our messiness is encouraging to people. I love it. So we just wanna thank everyone for keep sharing these episodes. It really blesses us and I think it gets a lot more people to hear about the show. And one last note before we move on to the topic is we want you to be one of the 114,000 people that have joined our free prayer challenge. It's 31 days and we send you an email every day with a topic for you to pray over your spouse. You can choose either the husband route or the wife route, whoever you're praying for, and it's completely free. Just go to marriageprayerchallenge.com, marriageprayerchallenge.com, and would you just join this massive, growing movement of marriages that are praying for their spouses? [Jennifer] All right you guys, did any of you see the Christmas star? [Aaron] The movie? [Jennifer] No. It was in the headlines for a while in December, but I heard about it. It's the conjunction of Saturn and Jupiter, and it was- [Aaron] Oh, you're talking about the awesome space event. [Jennifer] Yes, and it was one that I asked Aaron to go chase after. So we jumped in the car and we drove south and we were driving and Aaron goes, "I think that might be it." And we saw something bright in the sky for like 30 seconds and then cloud coverage. [Aaron] Well, we were chasing the clouds 'cause we're driving down, I'm like, it said it was supposed to be in the lower horizon, Southwest region. [Aaron] and I'm thinking, "You mean the lower horizon where all the clouds are at?" [Jennifer] I know, it was crazy. [Aaron] Right, we're in the one place in the world that's not gonna be able to see this today. And we literally had to pull over because we saw it and were like, "There it is!" And it was like 30 seconds. [Jennifer] And then it disappeared. [Aaron] Yeah. And then it was gone. If that was even it. I think it was but we must've missed it 'cause they were like right next to each other, they weren't like one thing. [Jennifer] I don't know. [Aaron] It was pretty cool. Probably with the telescope would've been more amazing. I saw pictures online that were way more incredible. You know, it's funny when you bring this up I feel like we've chased a lot of like celestial things. We have, we have. We've spent a lot of time look up, I think, Aaron. But that's why I brought it up because I love that time with you when we're just standing side by side looking up. I don't know why, it's so fun. [Aaron] Usually quiet, yeah. [Jennifer] Well, yeah. There was this other time where we drove to another place very close to our house, I think it was like 10 minutes away, and we- [Aaron] Yeah, this was a couple years ago, right? [Jennifer] We were trying to watch the super blood moon rise, and there was gonna be a certain time where it was gonna be the biggest, and so we were just sitting there waiting for it. [Aaron] That was a cool one. That was cool. Because that one looked massive, it was huge, and we watched it rise over the hills. [Jennifer] It was so cool. Yeah, that was a fun one. And then there was another time where my brother texted me and said, "Hey, at this time," I think it was like 9:38 PM, "Starlink is gonna fly over the house. You gotta run outside and look at it." [Aaron] If you don't know what Starlink is, it's like hundreds of satellites all in a line. They look like a belt. [Jennifer] I think it was 400. [Aaron] By I think Tesla? [Jennifer] Yeah. [Aaron] And we were literally standing there and we were like, how do we know we're gonna see it? Yeah, we ran out there. How, we don't see anything? And then all of a sudden we just- [Jennifer] It's cold, it's dark, we're in our pajamas. I don't even know if we had shoes on, but it worked. [Aaron] Well, and then all of a sudden, we saw one little light moving. We're like, oh, looks like a satellite, okay. And then another one, and then another one, and it went for like 20 minutes. It just kept going. [Jennifer] We had kinks in our neck from staring up and just sitting out there, and then- [Aaron] That was actually pretty incredible also with how in sync they were. They were perfectly aligned and just moving at the same speed. [Jennifer] But they looked like stars. [Aaron] But they looked like stars moving through the sky. Big ole belt of stars, but they were satellites. That was a fun one. [Jennifer] It was super cool. So anyways, we just wanted to open up this topic- [Aaron] There was another one that you didn't right down. Which one, which one? [Aaron] The super eclipse that we saw. [Jennifer] Oh yeah, that was really awesome. Was that 2017? [Aaron] That was, I don't know when that was. [Jennifer] I think that was 2017. The Great American Eclipse. [Aaron] That's what it was. We saw that tonight. It literally landed, like our region was the most visible. It was right above Madris but whatever. It was close and it looked awesome. [Jennifer] That was pretty remarkable. [Aaron] Yeah, 'cause I got video of it and you can see the burning ring around the moon. Not just that, And the sun, that was amazing. but the eeriness of the whole town just going gray, like dark. [Aaron] And then the birds stopped chirping all at the same time, like they thought it was nighttime. It was kinda creepy. It was amazing. We've seen lots of sky things. [Jennifer] Yeah. But my point in sharing all of this is that I love standing side by side doing something with you and getting to interact with you in that way, just being present. And that's kind of what we're gonna talk about today, but even more specific, this idea of delighting in one another. And when I think of the word delight and enjoying something, I think these times with you, among a lot of other times in our marriage, but. [Aaron] I just wanna read this Scripture that reminds me about these ideas of us looking up and just looking at God's creation. In Romans 1:20 it says, "For His invisible attributes, namely His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived ever since the creation of the world in the things that have been made, so that they are without excuse." When we look up you can't deny the Creator. I was just telling Elliot the other day- [Jennifer] Our son. [Aaron] Yeah, our son. [Jennifer] I know you know that, I was just letting them know who are listening. [Aaron] It was snowing and we were driving through it and we were talking about how it looked and everything. Looks like you're going through a portal with the snow flying by you. So I said, "You know Elliot, there's more galaxies in the universe than there is snow falling right now." And just saying that statement blew my mind 'cause I was thinking- I think his jaw dropped too. [Aaron] Yeah, and I said, "And God knows all of the names of the stars within those galaxies." He named them all. It's just incredible that His infinite nature is perceived easily, His invisible attributes. The things that you can't see of God, you can see clearly in nature. [Jennifer] Yeah, and when we talk about this idea of delighting in each other and in the Lord today, I think I love doing these things with you, Aaron, and we're gonna get into some examples later, too, of how to delight in your children. And sometimes it's doing something, and being out in nature is such a big part of it because it's like doing all three at once with our family, 'cause I'm delighting in you, I'm delighting in our children, and I'm delighting in the Lord by recognizing the things that He has created. [Aaron] Enjoying His creation. [Jennifer] Yeah, and talking about it and being fascinated by it and having wonders surrounding us. Now it makes me wanna just go look up at the sky with you. [Aaron] Yeah, the first thing I think about when I hear the word delight is actually the opposite of it, which I believe would be not necessarily like being against something, but I feel like it's more like just existing with something. Like gray. Like I think of the r gray. There's no r, it's not beautiful. So I would imagine just existing with you and we're doing our thing and there's no joy, I'm not excited or happy. [Jennifer] No r. [Aaron] No r. But I feel like delight is having my eyes open and seeing you, seeing my kids. So like you were talking about last episode, being grateful for Edith playing with your hair and just stopping in. [Jennifer] Oh, I said daughter but I meant Olive. [Aaron] Oh, Olive. I thought you were talking about Edith 'cause Edith does that, too. [Jennifer] Yeah. [Aaron] And so delight is an intentional focusing on, right? I'm looking. I'm like, "Oh, look at you, look at this," instead of just existing next to and just kind of moving forward and there's no connection, there's no depth, there's no r. [Jennifer] It's like an appreciation, a recognition and acknowledgement. [Aaron] And a longing for a desire. Like I want it, I like this. Things that I delight in, I want. [Jennifer] Yeah. So I always love to look up definitions. Even if you kinda know what a word means, I like the definition. So, what does it mean to delight? To please someone greatly, to take great pleasure in, to give someone great pleasure or satisfaction. Delight is a verb, so it's an action word, which I like. [Aaron] Of doing something. [Jennifer] Doing something, yeah. And I also went to the source, which some of the other words gave it a little bit more r, which I like, indulgently. [Aaron] So I want more. [Jennifer] Yeah. Give me lots of my family. Give me all of it. [Aaron] Yeah. [Jennifer] Attractive, agreeable, and jovial, like friendly, enjoyable. I just like those words. I like being able to understand the scope of what it means to delight in. [Aaron] Well, and all those words also give more ways of looking at this. [Jennifer] Oh, and serendipitous was one of them, which is more like a happening by chance. This is just happening right now. [Aaron] Right, like let's go get in the car and look for the Christmas star. [Jennifer] Yeah. [Aaron] That was serendipitous. [Jennifer] That was very serendipitous, it was. [Aaron] And it could've been a tedious thing. It could've been like, no, we have other things to do. I could've been irritated or frustrated which I've done in the past 'cause I'm sometimes a grinch. But we didn't, it was a fun thing. [Jennifer] Okay, so we're gonna kinda break this down into three sections, delighting in the Lord first, delighting in your spouse, and then a brief section on delighting in your kids. So Aaron, why don't you kick us off with the first one? [Aaron] So I'm gonna read Psalm 37 verse four and it says this, "Delight yourself in the Lord and He will give you the desires of your heart." [Jennifer] Okay, so do you wanna explain that? [Aaron] Well, on face value it sounds like, I know many people have taken this, and it could mean this also, that if I delight myself in the Lord, then the desires I have in my heart, He's gonna give me. [Jennifer] But here's the thing. When you delight yourself in the Lord, what's actually happening? [Aaron] Right. What do your desires become? [Jennifer] Right. [Aaron] Right, because if you're delighting yourself in the Lord, if you're attracted to Him- [Jennifer] If you're agreeable. [Aaron] If you're agreeable to Him, With Him. if you're friendly with Him, if you're following Him, wanting more of Him- [Jennifer] I think our desires will start to align a lot more with His than just what our flesh wants. [Aaron] The way I read this is He will give you the desires of your heart. So when we delight ourselves in the Lord, the desires we have will be given to us by Him. So He'll give us a desire for His Son. He'll give us a desire for loving each other. He'll give us a desire to serve. He'll give us a desire to be generous, a desire to long for more of Him, to long for more of His Word. So rather than I just have these desires existing in me and then boom, He gives me those desires. [Jennifer] I'm sitting here smiling because, [Aaron] What? [Jennifer] Well, I've never heard it that way before and it's not in our notes. And so I'm wondering where you came up with that, and when you first- [Aaron] This is how I've always looked at it. I know, but also when you re-read it, you said, "I hear it this way." It sounded exactly the same as how you read it the first time, so I was really confused until you started explaining it. But that's really beautiful. [Aaron] He will give you the desires As in it's almost like of your heart. you've got this empty bowl and you bring it before the Lord and you're just delighting in Him, looking up at Him like a child, and He fills your hands and your heart. [Aaron] Right, and of course there's desires in me, that He can fulfill, right? But the Bible tells us that if we pray in His will, we have what we pray for, right? So it's not that I desire a Lamborghini. That's an easy one to just blow out of the picture. And God's gonna be like, "Oh, you desire it? Here you go." No, I believe that when we delight in Him, when we love Him, when we serve Him, when we follow Him, chase Him, want more of Him, not just that our desires become His desires, He gives us our desires. The ones that we have now are from Him, for Him, to Him. [Jennifer] I kinda wish that this verse just had a period at the end of "delight yourself in the Lord," because that in itself is so beautiful and enough. I mean, God's Word is perfect and we don't need to add or subtract to it. So we take the full verse for what it is. But remember we talked about delighting being a verb and it's an action. And so this is a call for us to delight ourselves in the Lord. Like that's that's a good thing for the Christian to do. [Aaron] The other thing I think about is, like I said, God doesn't just want us to believe Him and exist with Him. Like, "Okay, great. You believe my son, you got my Word. You wanna be a Christian and you wanna follow me? Cool." No joy. [Jennifer] End of story. [Aaron] End of story, no. He wants us to delight. [Jennifer] Okay, I have to admit this. I love all the little, I call them treasures, that I find in God's Word or when I'm trying to research something that's in His Word and I'm using other resources. I call them treasures because I feel like it opens up my understanding of who God is and what He's doing. And I find it so fascinating. It makes me think of an archeologist, Archeologist. how they, and I tell Elliot, I tell all my kids this analogy because I think it's so wonderful, but someone who's digging out in the desert and they come across an old community or village and they are finding all these pieces that are proof, like a vase or a coin whatever that proves life existed in that area from a certain time period. And to them, they've got this little toothbrush in their hand and they're trying not to break whatever's underneath. And they're uncovering this artifact. Like that's how I feel about delighting in the Lord, especially when it comes to His Word. I don't, I just don't- [Aaron] No, I think that's a good point, 'cause it makes me think of the showbread in the temple. It was 12 fresh loaves of bread and they would stay fresh until they were consumed, even if it was a week. It was like a miracle they would stay fresh. But there was 12 loaves of them, right? And the priests had to eat all of it, they couldn't leave any of it behind, they had to eat every single bit of it. And it's like this picture of- [Jennifer] I feel like I would be really good at that job. [Aaron] 'Cause Jesus says, "I'm the bread of life." [Jennifer] I like bread. [Aaron] And then Jesus says to the devil, He says, "Man does not live by bread alone but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God." We live on that bread. We wanna consume all of it. And that's another thing we're delighting in the Lord. Oh and also if you think about it, that bread probably was delicious. Yeah that's what I'm saying. Like warm, gooey bread, delicious bread and tastes delicious. And that's what the Lord's Word is. So on that idea in Psalm 1 starting in verse one it says, "Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of scoffers, but his delight is in the law of the Lord, and on His law, he meditates day and night. He is like a tree planted by streams of water that yields its fruit in its season and its leaf does not wither. In all that He does, He prospers." [Jennifer] I love that verse. [Aaron] Yeah, God's law, God's Word, the law of Spirit, the law of truth, we delight in it. [Jennifer] And it benefits us because I love this picture being a tree planted by streams of water. You have everything that you would need to be fruitful, to prosper, to do what you were supposed to do, to do what you were created to do, and so yeah. [Aaron] So I have a question for you, and this may be rhetorical. Maybe everyone knows the answer. But maybe someone listening doesn't. Can you delight in the Lord and not delight in His Word? [Jennifer] Do you want me to answer that? [Aaron] Yeah. [Jennifer] I was waiting for everyone else to chime in, jeez. I think you can delight in the Lord. I mean, just based off of the one Scripture that we read earlier from Romans 1:20, when we talked about being out in nature and seeing His creation, I think that there's times that you can delight in the Lord. [Aaron] Apart from His Word. [Jennifer] Apart from His Word. [Aaron] But can you delight in Him and not delight in His Word? [Jennifer] Well, I would add to that by saying that- Like "I don't like His word, I don't love His word." No, you would have to delight in His Word because it says that Jesus is the Word. And you brought up the showbread and how Jesus is the bread of life. You nailed it. [Aaron] I don't think we can separate our love of the Lord, our delight in Him, from loving and delighting in His Word. So if we wanna delight in the Lord, we must also delight in His words, what He says, what He speaks, what He's written down for us. And that's how we get to know Him. [Jennifer] Yeah. That's it. I just put some practical things here for delighting in the Lord and that's the first one is just getting in His Word, reading it, being... Nailed it. [Jennifer] Well, that's how we're encouraged as Christians in our faith. And I also put the word explore it. And I mentioned earlier about getting into a word study or looking up the Hebrew or the Greek or the root word or whatever's gonna help you define and understand and uncover the meaning of the word. Not that we need anything extra because God's Word is perfect, but all of those extra resources do help in my opinion to bring clarity and just treasure. [Aaron] Yeah, use those cross references in your Bible. Those have been a huge blessing to us. When you find out how a verse is connected to another verse, you're like, whoa, that's really awesome. Another way practically to delight in the Lord is through praise and worship. [Jennifer] Yep. [Aaron] Just singing songs of joy in Scripture and doing it with other people also. How often do we just have worship music playing in the background? [Jennifer] Yeah, if you guys need to know some good go-to, Shane & Shane is so good. [Aaron] I love Shane & Shane, yeah. [Jennifer] Are there other ones that you wanna share? [Aaron] I've been really enjoying Red Rocks Worship. [Jennifer] Okay. [Aaron] Yeah. But yeah, just singing to the Lord. [Jennifer] Talking and discussing the Scriptures with others, whether it be your spouse or another family member or friend, sometimes just sharing the things that you're learning about can be a huge encouragement to our faith. But it's also delighting in the Lord because you're sharing something you're learning about with someone you love. [Aaron] Sharing about what God's doing in your life, how He's blessed you, how He's taught you, how He's led you, protected you. Those kinds of things, those bring glory to God. They bolster your heart. They actually bolster the person listening. Those testimonies is adoration. [Jennifer] Another thing is being impacted by His great design of creation. And we kind of talked about that when we were talking about stargazing, but this is another reason why I just love gardening, the gardening season, because you're out there and you've got the warm sunshine on your back and you're pulling those weeds. And then you look down and see a huge red strawberry. And you're just like amazed that this thing looks so perfect. And then your kid comes up and snatches it and takes a big bite and they've got juice running down their face. And then they offer you the other half and you taste it and it's just so tasty. We get to delight in the things that God has created. [Aaron] And I'd say your gardening. You've had some really awesome revelations through it with your own relationship with God. [Jennifer] Yeah. Especially about pruning. [Aaron] Yeah, pruning and weeds and growth. Awesome things to be able to put our hands in the soil and think of God. [Jennifer] Another really random one is I know Aaron, you already brought up worship, but something that I love to do is I've been rocking babies for a while, rocking babies to sleep. [Aaron] A little while. [Jennifer] Like eight years. [Aaron] Straight. [Jennifer] And on nights that it just seems a little bit harder and it's dark and I'm holding this upset baby, and they're starting to calm down, I'll start singing spontaneous prayers or saying spontaneous things for my adoration for God. And I love those times. They're so memorable to me as a mother to be able to hold a child and relate your heart as the child to God, your Father. It makes my whole heart just melt and surrender before Him. [Aaron] So there's infinitely more to say, I would imagine, about delighting in the Lord. So I would just encourage our listeners to dig in and just figure out what it means in their life to delight in the Lord, delight in His salvation, in His works, in where He's led them, what He's done for them. But what are some thoughts on delighting in our spouse? 'Cause they're probably similar but different, right? [Jennifer] Yeah. Well, we just spent a couple of days at the coast for a few days and I love it because we live inland now, so we don't get to the coast very often. When we lived in California, it was a much shorter drive. [Aaron] And we can get there in like 50 minutes with the traffic and 30 minutes with no traffic. [Jennifer] So now it's like once or twice a year we get to the coast and it always makes a huge impact on my heart. Standing before the ocean, it reminds you how small you are. But it becomes a really great backdrop for those moments of just being together, delighting in you, Aaron, and participating in life together. I don't know, I just thought about that. [Aaron] We always love little adventures. [Jennifer] Yeah, no agenda. [Aaron] You probably have heard an endless, if you've listened to our podcast for any length of time, we do a lot of adventures. We just like being with the family, going for walks, going to the coast. And so being together, doing those different things. We work from home, so we're in the home a lot. So being out of the home is fun. It's different. Yeah, one of the other examples I put down here is just, we do this little hike at Sawyer Park where it's along the river bed and our kids love to throw rocks in it. And just spending that time, I don't know if I talked over you when you were talking, but I used the word no agenda, and I love those moments because it gives me time to see you and see our children in God's light, and- [Aaron] And watch me kick my foot through the ice into the icy water Yeah, that was funny. [Aaron] and have a soaking wet foot. [Jennifer] Which just happened recently. I posted on my Instagram a few weeks ago, a picture of, I think it was from Christmas day, actually. You were climbing on the rocks with the kids. [Aaron] Yeah, that was the day I kicked that ice. It was a really cool picture. And I remember just standing, the reason I took the picture was 'cause I was just standing there and looking at you guys and just being so grateful for you. And even though you weren't right there next to me, I just, I was delighting in you. [Aaron] You were... [Jennifer] I was enjoying it. [Aaron] Enjoying from a distance. [Jennifer] Yes. I remember another time where before we had kids, we ran up to the back hill on my mom's house, 'cause it kind of overlooked our town, and I remember the sky was just blown up with r. Orange, pink, purple, blue. Bright on one side, super dark on another because there was a storm rolling in. And we just sat there and kinda did a 360 slowly, just looking at all of it, just amazed by it. Do you remember that? [Aaron] Mm-hm. [Jennifer] That was cool. [Aaron] Other times of us just delighting in each other is we have these hammock swings, you sit in them. It's not a lay down hammock, it's a sitting hammock. [Jennifer] Been a big hit. [Aaron] We love them. They're better than regular hammocks I think. But we can just sit and we're swinging back and forth, sometimes in tandem, sometimes opposites, just talking with each other, watching our kids play in the backyard. More so in the summer. Right now it's a little cold and I have the hammock swings put away. Sitting and just being present with each other, talking about whatever, whatever's going on in life, good things, bad things, the children, ideas. Oh, thinking of ideas one of the things that we probably talk about the most is just whimsical dream ideas that we have. [Jennifer] Like starting a donut shop. [Aaron] Or inventing a silent podcast chair. You're like, "We should do that, we should invent a silent, we'll make it so it doesn't..." We have these little dream talks about things that will most likely never happen but they're fun to talk about. [Jennifer] So another way that we delight in each other which every couple listening should be delighting in each other in this way is... [Aaron] Tickle fights. [Jennifer] No, that's not what I was gonna say. Is being intimate with each other. [Aaron] That is the next note! Tickle fights! It's physical. [Jennifer] Yeah, being physical- [Aaron] It might start with a tickle fight. [Jennifer] Yeah, being physical with each other and here's the warning is when you're not delighting in each other physically- [Aaron] It affects everything. [Jennifer] It affects everything, it really does. [Aaron] So we challenge you to physically delight in each other. [Jennifer] I know we use the word- [Aaron] This is the PG version. [Jennifer] Yeah. I know we use the word being spontaneous or doing spontaneous things together, but even if it's scheduled, like date night, our date nights are scheduled, that's delighting in each other. I love, especially now that- [Aaron] We look forward to them. [Jennifer] We look forward to it because we have a house full of kids who are very young and needy, and so for us date night is our time to delight in one another. [Aaron] And the way we've dealt with it when we can't go out is we tell our kids, "Kids, you have to go to bed and you have to stay in bed 'cause me and mommy have a date night tonight." Yeah, in our room. In our bedroom. [Jennifer] That's cute. Oh, speaking of serendipitous, serendipity. [Aaron] I like that word. [Jennifer] Do you remember we went- To Serendipity in New York. Yeah, in New York. [Jennifer] There's this little- [Aaron] It's probably closed down now. [Jennifer] I don't know, there's this little restaurant, and this is probably our fourth or fifth year of marriage, but there's- There was a movie about it. [Jennifer] Yeah, but I think the restaurant existed before then. [Aaron] Yeah, I think they made a movie Based on it? called "Serendipity." I think it was about the restaurant. I could be wrong. [Jennifer] Anyways, we went to that little place. [Aaron] It was a cute place. [Jennifer] It was so cute. It was fun. It was super fun. [Aaron] We got frozen hot chocolate. [Jennifer] Yeah. Right? Yep. [Aaron] That was years ago. Oh my goodness. [Jennifer] Okay, so we've been talking about a lot of good, fun memories about how we've spent our time delighting in one another. So follow me on this. I'm gonna list, not in full detail, but just some moments we've shared together that I feel like we really delighted in each other, but those moments came really- [Aaron] They were tightly knit with hardship. Tightly knit with hardship. So, okay, so unpacking for our honeymoon. So we get to our honeymoon spot and we're super excited, up in the hills in Julian, California, but then not being able to consummate our marriage. So all this energy, excitement, hope, love, just togetherness. And it didn't work. [Jennifer] We jumped in bed together. I think we might've even watched something on TV, I don't remember, but that night just being so brokenhearted and disappointed and frustrated over the fact that we experienced pain in that coming together and it didn't work. Okay, so that's one memory. Another one was sitting at the end of the dock in Malawi on that lake. There was like a gazebo thing over us. [Aaron] What was that lake called? [Jennifer] It was Lake Malawi. [Aaron] Lake Malawi, yeah, it's long. 365 miles along, yeah? The water was super clear, and there was rful fish swimming all underneath us. And I remember just sitting there, it was a warm day, and we talked a lot, but we also just sat quietly a lot. [Aaron] And we'd been out for a couple months, three months now. [Jennifer] Doing missionary work. [Aaron] And so we were tired and emotionally drained. Super tired. But it was still good just to be there. I remember that being such a pivotal point in our marriage for some of the things that we're talking about. And then shortly after that, like hours later- [Aaron] I rolled our truck. [Jennifer] Oh yeah. Like flipped it upside-down. That was crazy and life-changing and hard. [Aaron] Everyone lived. [Jennifer] Okay, do remember the time that we were visiting my aunt in Connecticut and we were in her backyard and she had a hammock off in the distance and we went and sat on it together 'cause it was just a spin day and we wanted to have fun? [Aaron] And we were childless, it was just me and you. And we sat in the hammock. It was our first year of marriage. Yeah. And it broke? [Aaron] We fell straight to the ground. [Jennifer] That's not as dramatic or hard, but it's just funny that we're experiencing this nice, delightful time together and then... Okay, one more. Okay, I remember we- [Aaron] In our apartment. [Jennifer] a few years married, no kids, in our apartment, and we had this fireplace. And I love the ambiance of a fire. [Aaron] And this wasn't a gas fireplace. No, it was like I was like a real wood burning you build a fire. [Aaron] fireplace, yeah. [Jennifer] And we had been putting it off for a while, but it was a gloomy day and I think I begged you, "Go get some wood, let's make a fire." So you come back and you Fair enough. set it all up and it's so perfect and we had a leather couch that my dad had given us, and so we kinda were spooning on it, watching the fire, trying to relax. It's all dark and moody. And then after a few minutes, we're like coughing. Billowing. The house is just filled a smoke. [Jennifer] Filled with smoke because something with the chimney flue. [Aaron] The flue was either clogged or it wasn't open. I didn't know how to do it. Or maybe it wasn't a fireplace anyway. [Both] I don't know. Okay, so all this to say I think it's important to recognize the value and significance of delighting in each other all throughout marriage because when trials and challenges and hardships come, and they're inevitable, it does require a lot more energy and effort to delight in those moments, which you're not even thinking about 'cause you're thinking about the hardship. But when you're going through hardships, at least for me when I'm going through something hard, I do reminisce about the times that we have shared together, that we have delighted in each other. And the times that I'm not remembering, you remind me. You bring it up. [Aaron] So practicing delighting in the good times makes it more possible to delight in the hard times. [Jennifer] Yeah. [Aaron] Good advice. Right? Yeah. [Jennifer] I just thought it'd be fun to bring some of those other ones up, 'cause they were really good memories we had. [Aaron] So what about delighting in our children? We're almost to the end here and this is a good one because as parents, it should come naturally to just delight in your children, but they're children. [Jennifer] I think it's a good thing for us to share about because for any of you who are parents, you know the role and responsibility that you have in your child's life to teach them character and just what's right, what's not right. And things get exhausting pretty quickly, but it's constant because they live with you and they're not grown up tomorrow. [Aaron] And they have 100,000 questions all at once. [Jennifer] And I think amidst all of the being on guard to teach them and to raise them up to be good men and women, godly men and women, we need to remember to delight in our children, to jump down on the floor and get in their face and smile and- [Aaron] Enjoy them. [Jennifer] Enjoy them and experience happiness and appreciation for who they are, our children, not just what they do or don't do or what they understand or don't understand. Because it's not about performance, it's about presence, it's about I'm your mom, I'm your dad. [Aaron] You're ours. [Jennifer] You're ours. And we can't do that if our nose is stuck in our phone, or if we're constantly working late hours, or if we are too tired. Parenting requires sacrifice. So even though you're tired, you still need to find a way to delight in them, to sit close with them on your bed or cuddled up on the couch. Staying up late answering their questions. [Aaron] Yeah, enjoying their stories or their creativity or whatever it is that comes out of them. [Jennifer] Yeah. [Aaron] Right. [Jennifer] There's been a couple other times I know in my parenting that I just absolutely love the way that we've chosen to delight in our kids and be present with them. One of them, and I think it's something the kids will remember because we do it every year, but sitting on the back porch during a thunderstorm and we're like scared but we're not, and we're kind of amped up. [Aaron] On the couches out there, yeah. [Jennifer] Yeah, in the back. And the storm's just kind of going crazy and it never lasts very long. [Aaron] The wind in the trees, I love all that stuff. [Jennifer] It's super fun. [Aaron] And the kids go, [Jennifer] Yeah, but we're bundled up and we're holding each other close and we're looking at each other in wonder and amazement and we're just there. I just love it. [Aaron] Something that I've recently adopted from some friends of ours is dance parties. I'm not doing them as often, but like the other night I just put on some on Spotify kids' dance music. There was no words or anything, it just was like this pop music. And we just started dancing. And Wyatt does this jiggle butt thing when he's dancing, with his legs. It's so funny the way he dances. But Wyatt, Elliot, Truett, Olive, they were all dancing with me. And that was a lot of fun. [Jennifer] I'll say this about Olive, especially when it's just you and her, like when you'll randomly sway her around like a ballerina, she's delighting in you. It's written all over her face. She's in a happy place. [Aaron] She just grips my fingers really tightly while I'm spinning her. But that's a lot of fun. She's beautiful when she's dancing like that. I mean, she's always beautiful. [Jennifer] Another time that we delight in our children is when we're baking together, or making forts, or just being sneaky and giggly and silly at each other, with each other [Aaron] Another one that's a good... All of these are things that we have to like learn and practice and desire, but this one in particular is getting good at asking questions.. Asking them like, "How's your heart? What's going on? What are some ideas you have? What do you wanna be when you grow up? Why do you wanna be that? That's interesting. [Jennifer] Leaning in, like if they're at the kitchen table or something, just leaning in and meeting them eye-to-eye and letting them share their hearts with you. Yeah, it's so good. [Aaron] But guys, just, we wanted to make this episode about just the idea of delight, delighting in the Lord, delighting in your spouse, delighting in your children. And it's an action, it's a verb. Finding the things to delight in, drawing them out, pursuing them, finding them, and delighting in them. And there's plenty if you just have your eyes open for it. [Jennifer] It's good. [Aaron] I wanna end on something. It's a fourth point and it's a surprise. Bonus. [Aaron] It's a bonus point, yeah. Lastly, the Lord delights in you. Like we're talking who we delight in, delighting in God, but God delights in us. Psalm 35:27 says, "Let those who delight in my righteousness," so this is talking about us delighting in Him, "shout for joy and be glad and say evermore, 'Great is the Lord who delights in the welfare of His servant,'" right? We're servants of God. We're servants of Christ. He delights in that. Proverbs 3:12, "For the Lord reproves him who He loves as a father the son in whom he delights." The Bible calls us children of God if we're in Christ. We're heirs with Christ, right? And so He delights. If He reproves us, that proves that we're His children and that He delights in us because that's what a good father does. Another one, ssians 3:12, "Therefore, as the elect of God, holy and beloved." Think about that. So this isn't quite the word delight, but, "holy and beloved, clothe yourselves with hearts of compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience." Something interesting about this verse is the fact that we clothe ourselves with those things because of who we are. We don't clothe ourselves with those things to become holy and beloved. So it says, "Therefore, as the elect of God, holy and beloved, clothe yourselves." [Jennifer] Like we are holy and beloved. [Aaron] He loves us. We're beloved by the Father and holy because of Jesus. [Jennifer] Yeah. So good. One of the verses that I wanted to share was Psalm 149:4. It says, "For the Lord takes pleasure in His people, He adorns the humble with salvation." So again, not that specific word of delight, but pleasure. Yeah. Which is one of the synonyms. For the Lord takes pleasure in His, yeah. [Aaron] Take pleasure in. He delights in us. And the only way that can be possible is because two things. We're made in His image, right? 'Cause He can delight in Himself. He's the Creator. And also because of Christ, His Son with whom He delights, right? So we're in Christ, therefore He delights in us. We're made heirs, we're holy and beloved, we are a holy nation, a priesthood. We're His children that He delights in. And so I just wanted to encourage you with that, that God delights in you. Especially when we're humbled and we're walking in Christ and we have received His Son, He delights in us. [Jennifer] So our challenge for you this week is to delight in your spouse, delight in the Lord, delight in your children, find those moments where you can get face-to-face, eye-to-eye, and let them know, those people that you love, that you just love them. There's no agenda. It's not because of performance. It's just because of who they are and who created them. And we hope that this episode inspired you in those ways. [Aaron] Amen. [Jennifer] So at the end of every episode this season, Aaron let me get away with, no, I had this idea just to encourage everyone to think about things that they're grateful for. And we thought by sharing different things each week that we're grateful for, we'll kick off the conversation. So I'll go first this time. Or, sorry. [Aaron] I think you went first last time. [Jennifer] Okay, go ahead. [Aaron] Yeah, I'll go first. I'm grateful for our friends and our community, the husbands and wives, the men and women that we fellowship with. God has really blessed us and just, we love them, they love us, they are real with us, we know them, they walk with us, they cry with us, they laugh with us. Just I'm incredibly blessed, we're incredibly blessed by the people that we walk with. [Jennifer] That's awesome and I could just say ditto. No? [Aaron] No, you have a better one. [Jennifer] Okay, I'm grateful for the time that you give me. I feel like our whole marriage you've been so attentive to my needs in this way. So early in our marriage, it was doing art projects and just getting time away to be creative. Then when we moved, when we got married and moved, it was time with family. So getting plane tickets back to California or finding a way to meet up with them somewhere, or them coming to us and just giving us that space to have family time. Then there was a season of writing. [Aaron] Yeah, like last eight years. [Jennifer] Yeah. Writing books or working on Unveiled Wife stuff. Now it's like a weekly thing where every Friday you give me time to work or make appointments or whatever I need to do on that day. Meet with women, yeah. [Jennifer] Meet with friends, yeah. So I really appreciate that, Aaron, and I think it's a really beautiful thing that you've given me over our marriage. [Aaron] Thank you. I love you. So thank you. I love you. [Aaron] So we wanna encourage you out there listening to say what you're grateful for, to share it with someone, share with your spouse as you delight in them, share it with the Lord. And let's just be grateful this year. So as usual, we're gonna end in prayer and I hope you all join me. Dear Lord, we praise you and we thank you, for you are good and your love endures forever. Thank you for our marriages. We pray we would delight in you and delight in each other every day. We pray we would find creative ways to express our love and creative ways to spend our time together. We give you our anxious thoughts, our worries, our stresses, and ask that you would fill us with your peace. Lead us beside still waters. Lord, help us to be content. We pray we would delight in you more, individually and as a couple. We pray our souls would be satisfied just to sit in your presence and worship you. Please continue to strengthen our marriages. Give us eyes to see one another's needs and how to help meet those needs. Draw our hearts close together and closer to you. In Jesus' name, amen. We love you all. If you have time, please leave a review, a star rating. And also you guys are our share warriors. Would you share this episode in a Facebook post, in a Twitter post, in an Instagram post, in an email, a text message? However you're going to do that, would you just please share this episode? We love you all and we'll see you next week.m Connect With UsInstagram | @marriageaftergodInstagram | @unveiledwifeInstagram | @husbandrevolutionCheck out our marriage resources!SponsorsGet our new book The Marriage Gift - 365 prayers for your marriage!Our Sponsors:* Check out Mr. Pen and use my code MAG10 for a great deal: https://mrpen.comSupport this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/marriage-after-god-biblical-advice-practical-tips-and-inspiring-/donations

Read Transcript Welcome to the Marriage After God podcast. We're your hosts. I'm Aaron. And I'm Jennifer. We've been married for 14 years. And we have five young children. We started blogging over 10 years ago. Sharing our marriage story in hopes of encouraging other husbands and wives to draw closer to God and closer to each other. We have authored over 10 books together including our newest book, "Marriage After God". The book that inspired us to start this podcast. "Marriage After God" has a message to remind all of us that God designed marriage with a purpose. To reflect His love. To be a light in this world. To work together as a team. Using what He has given us... To build His kingdom. Our hope is to encourage you along your marriage journey... As you boldly chase after God together. This is Marriage After God. Welcome back to the Marriage After God podcast. We're your hosts, Aaron and Jennifer Smith. Hey guys What are you drinking there? What? Oh. What are you drinking? I made chai tea. Tea. I'm drinking a rooiboss. And it's really good. Copy catter. I did actually- You saw me sneak in here with tea. I... No, I actually saw you with tea and I was like, "I'm going to go get some tea." It's cold, 'cause I was taking care of the baby and then I didn't get to drink it when it was warm. That's okay. Curious, how many people have the whistling stuck in their head from last week? Did you, Aaron? I've actually.. I've actually been whistling it. No, you haven't. Really? Yes I have. I don't know if that's exactly right but... I don't know if that's going to sound good to everyone else. High key... And it was like high-pitch. Yeah, no, I really liked the whistling and the song. I hope they do too. All right. I have to apologize because I re-listened to our kickoff episode from last week and I say 'um' a lot. Are you sure 'um'? We both said it a lot. I guess I'm just really rusty or I forgot how to podcast with you. Maybe I'm nervous. I have no idea what the problem was but I don't ever remember saying 'um' so many times. It was so many times we couldn't even edit them out because... I know you asked me like, "Can't we just like cut all of these um's out?" I'm like, no. I mean we could, but then it'd be like really choppy. Choppy, yeah. So for those of you who suffered through it, I am sorry and I promise to get better. Bear with me, bear with us. Mmm. There's probably some, like speech coaches out there they're are thinking, "Oh, we can help these people." Yeah, right. We can help them. Yeah. Yeah, there's one. Oh, oh. We are going to try and not say a bunch of uh's and um's. Well, you know, when you take a handful of months off, you just... You lose all ability to speak. We're working on it. Apologizing is kind of a part of this episode. So that's a.. That's a good one. That's a good way to start. Don't give away the key. Okay. Yeah. What else were you... Well, last week we mentioned routines. Just as a little update. And being the first... Week of the year. Second week of the year. Yeah, a couple weeks of the year, I would say that we're on the right track. I'm not going to say perfect. We're on the right track. I've been trying to get up in the morning to work out again. Which also helps me get up earlier and be ready for the day and so that's been nice. It actually helps me too because I feel like when you get up early and you're very enthusiastic about how the day feels. It really impacts my heart and it actually motivates me to also be ready. Well, and we both have goals to do that. So when- Yeah. one of us sticks to it the other one feels more obligated to. So it's like- That's true. helping each other out. Speaking of others helping, I actually convinced one of my friends to start working out with me at 5:00 AM in the morning. I don't know how I did it but he's been enjoying it. But having him do it with me has made me a ton more consistent. Which is pretty awesome because if I know he's coming, it's that much harder for me to stay in bed. The alarm goes off and I think to myself, "Okay, I can't text him right now 'cause he's probably all ready on his way." So I have to get up. You don't want him standing out in the cold. Exactly. And I also enjoy working out with people. I'm a people person. So having- You.. You're... Yes. I don't know if anyone knows this. You're a people person? It's a surprise. What? I get it. But it.. Aaron, you're not a people person, you need people like you... Yes. You can't live without people. Everyone does. Don't you? I think I can get by with little, less. Yeah, you got... That's that introvert in you. Yeah. Yeah, no, it's actually helped. There's something incredibly powerful about having someone who has a similar goal as you, like we were just talking about with each other. A friend of mine that wants to do this with me and how incredibly powerful it is in helping you meet your goals, helping you grow and mature and move forward, be consistent. Yeah. And so that's been a huge help. It's something I actually noticed. 'Cause I was trying to evaluate why I lost my routine that I was in for like three years. Well, why also it was easier for you to get to the gym, but when it's the home gym, it's a little bit... Yeah. Yeah, it's weird, 'cause my home gym is like right here. More of a challenge. Right, you gotta get in the car and drive but there was something... There was things missing that just disappeared, that helped me. Things like the cheers from the other people at the gym. People that have become friends. Anytime I had a new PR or accomplished something new. They recognized when I wasn't around. And so they would reach out, "Hey, how's everything going? Missed you at the gym." Tracking my progress. The gym has a way of tracking, you know, your weights that you've been lifting and... It's like that accountability. Yeah, well, it's not just accountability. It's the rewards. The way our brains work, we have a reward system that tells our... When our brain gets a reward, it knows, "Oh we should do that again." And all of those things that were so important for sustaining my pattern disappeared pretty much overnight. And with it, my pattern, my routine. So once they disappeared sort of the growth and the consistency, but there's something interesting about that concept especially when it comes to our spiritual walk. We need people, we need the Spirit of God. We need relationships with fellow believers. And that helps us continue on. We actually can't do it alone. And that's a deception that a lot of believers have. Is that, "Oh, I can do this by myself. I don't need anyone. I'm just gonna do my thing and..." But having partners, having fellowship, having other brothers and sisters to walk with and especially the Holy Spirit is how we grow. Yeah. Is how we move forward, Its how we stay consistent. It's how we have our mind in the right place. So I thought that was a cool.. It's a good little analogy. Yeah, correlation, yeah. Yeah. Very cool. Well, as we move into today's episode we wanted to encourage you guys. If you haven't had a chance yet to please leave us a review. This just helps the rating of the Marriage After God podcast. So that through the algorithms and all that people can find the Marriage After God podcast. The more people that know about it the more marriages are impacted. The more we're over here cheering. So we also just wanted to ask if you have time to leave a written review. Not only does this also encourage people to take a listen but it encourages us and it's an incredible blessing so... To have written those. just wanted to ask you to do that. Yeah, and I actually want to make a little note on the first episode of the year of season five I'm incredibly blessed because out of the last like seven episodes it all ready is one of the most downloaded episodes. What? Yeah, so.. You guys. Yeah, our listeners just- I guess there's people out there really hungry. missed us. Yeah. Hungry for A and Jen. So I just want to thank everyone. And I also want to thank everyone that, we did a call to action at the end of last episode. Just encouraging people to share the episode on social media. Thank you guys. Email it to a friend. Send it in a text message. Tell someone in person. And I think you guys are doing it. And I just, I really thank you. So would you just keep doing it if this episode blesses you today. Tell someone about it. Speaking of sharing something with someone. I really wanted to insert just a little food for thought. You like that? Thought for food. Thought for food. I was making dinner tonight and I was thinking about you guys and what I did... This is super random. I wanted to encourage those of you who cook in the kitchen because it's been a huge learning curve for me to know how to cook and how to meal plan and so hopefully this benefits someone listening I don't know. My goal was to make spaghetti and I had zucchini and bell pepper and onion. And so I chopped it up really small not like pureed style, but just small enough and added it to the meat and the sauce and everybody ate it and it was so delicious. So if you're a family, you know, if you're looking for healthy ways to add in those veggies and your family loves spaghetti it worked really, really well. And our kids had no idea. Well, they didn't like complain or anything. They didn't say one thing- No. about it. I actually didn't know they were in there until you... Yeah, you couldn't really tell. So just a little tip when you're cooking for your family. That was a good little tip. Right? Everyone's gonna have spaghetti tonight. Or tomorrow. Yeah, or tomorrow. Or this week. So as always, we want to offer something to our listeners. We like to create free resources that will benefit you, encourage you, inspire you and we talked about it last week. And it's the marriage prayer challenge. It's completely free. You can go to marriageprayerchallenge.com. It's all one word. And it is a 31 day challenge where every day we'll send you an email, either for the husband or for the wife, with a prompt for something to pray for that day for your spouse. And over 100,000 marriages have all ready taken this challenge and we just want to invite you to do it. If you haven't signed up all ready go to marriageprayerchallenge.com. You can do it at the end of this episode, if you'd like or whenever you want. It's completely free. And our thought is like, why not start the year off in prayer with our free prayer challenge? And also these prayers, all of our prayer emails that we send daily, are helped to be brought to you in part by our faithful prayer team patrons. And so we want to thank you if you're on the patron team All right, we're going to jump into today's topic which is, what we titled, God's Not Donne With Us. He's not done with us. He's not done He's not done with you. with you. You took my line. I was going to say the same thing. That's funny. I didn't know you knew I was going to say that but it makes sense that I would have done that. Yeah. He's not done with us. This is a good reminder for all of us that, you know, the idea that God's not done with us because there's times that we make mistakes, we mess up, we did it again, those sorts of things and it just makes us feel like, you know, how could God continue? How could He, you know, forgive me again? How could He deal with me? Like I would like... 'Cause we look at our own lives and we say like, how many times we want to be done with something or someone because of, you know, it oh, there.. Hardship. Yeah. Yeah. But he's not. He doesn't he's patient with us. And that's kind of what we're gonna talk about this episode. Yeah. So something happened the other day that I thought would make a good story, a good segue, into today's topic. So it's just one of those kind of everyday situations that happens in marriage. It's something simple. I kind of don't want to share it, but it's a good example of what we're going to talk about today. We recently got a new rug. Aaron came home from Costco with it. It's one of the really, really soft shag rugs. Yeah, it's super- I love it. comfortable. He plays a lot with the kids on the floor and so he likes the thicker... And the last rug we had was so thin. It would like hurt when I'm on the ground Yeah. So anyways, changing a rug out in the living room is kind of an ordeal 'cause you have to move all the couches. You have to roll up the old rug, clean underneath it. Which is gross. And then put the new one down. And so during this whole process, Aaron, you suggested let's take our old couches out and put them in the garage and bring the ones that are in the garage, which are nicer, into the house and... Yeah, they've been in the garage for a while 'cause we were just been waiting for the kids to get a little older. Yeah. We didn't want them to get destroyed. But one of them is like a smaller leather couch. And then we have this blue one. Longer, more modern looking. Anyways, I have actually really enjoyed the way the whole setup looks 'cause it looks so much different than what we had going on. But- It's Fresh. It's a new year. Yeah. New living room. So morning time is happening and we all sit down for family Bible time, which we've shared on social media before. We talked to you guys about it. It's a Holy time, not really a time to let your sin show. Right? Or the perfect time. Yeah. Aaron, you sat down, like you usually do, with a cup of coffee in your hand. Wyatt's sitting next to you and Truth's on his way toward you. And I just remember thinking it's going to spill. Like this is disaster waiting to happen. But instead of just, well, I'll just tell you what I said. I kind of looked at him cross-eyed and said, "Strange you would sit there on the leather couch with coffee like that." Yeah, it was a little more animated. It was like a.. Yeah, I had a little attitude behind it. A little attitudey. Yeah. Sorry. I'm so sorry. I'm embarrassed to share this. It's just, it came from a place of not wanting the coffee to be spilled, but... But you were bothered that I didn't think about it or... I don't know what I was bothered by But yeah. but it wasn't nice or effective. It wasn't an effective way to share it with you. And you were really calm and actually really nice in your response but you looked up at me and was wondering, you know, next time just simply asked me to move the coffee. Like just put it on the counter. Yeah, I think I said, "Was it necessary to like question me like that? Like with like an attitude?? Or say it like that, yeah. It wasn't.. Like can you just ask me to go sit it down on the table? Yeah, It just wasn't nice and I recognized that and I apologized but, you know, I didn't even realize that I had said what I said and said it that way. It was just something that kind of happened and came out. And the problem in that moment for me was I saw that it was an unbecoming way for me to act toward you. But I also recognized in that moment how regular, not often, but other times that I... It wasn't a one-off it, it's- It's a way of communicating. It's a way of communicating when I'm bothered or frustrated that I do and so I got to repent for that also. But today this is the, here's the segue, all right. Sometimes there's stuff in us that comes out. Things that we're not aware of or not expecting, you know. It just kind of is like it's in us and it comes up. Ways of being, choices we make, ways of communicating. Stuff that's been there for awhile, right. Mm-hmm, walking in the flesh. Walking in the flesh. The sinful nature flourishing. Yeah. So we just really wanted this topic today to encourage you because we know this kind of stuff happens marriage. Well, it happens in ours. Mm-hmm. But you know, God desires us to change. And he's so patient with us and He uses our spouse, He uses friends, family, people, children to show us our ways of being. So that we can repent, so that we can change. And it's called sanctification. Yeah. Just like I was talking about at the beginning of this episode. How valuable and powerful it is to have someone walking with you to keep you moving forward. That's what our relationships do. That's how God uses other believers. He uses non-believers. He uses our circumstances to draw out of us sin. To draw out of us, the old man, the old nature. The way we walk in the flesh when we're not in the Spirit. And it's a process, it's sanctification. That's why the title of this episode is God's Not Done With Us because this is the life of a believer. Yeah. Is sanctification. So he's not done with us. He's not done with you. Great. Yeah, and so this episode is an encouragement of sanctification is going to happen. God hasn't given up on you. If you're being sanctified, if God's drawing things out of you, pointing things out in you, convicting you in the Holy spirit, that means God loves you. Yeah, so I guess.. And that means He's working on you. So today's episode also kind of highlights how should you respond when he does that. Are our eyes open? Are our hearts humble? Yeah. To do that. An example of this, something that happened early on in our marriage before we had kids, that was one of the early on things that showed me some sin in my life. Some sin, a way of me and Jennifer can cave. It challenged us. Yeah, it challenged us. One of those things that God loved us and so He allowed someone to challenge us and encourage us. I think I might say He always uses people Yeah. to do things like this, it's cool. And so we're driving I think we're leaving the mall. We're with a couple... Another married couple friends of ours, good friends. Went to church with them. And I'm sitting in the backseat with my friend and Jennifer's sitting in the front seat with his wife driving. And Jennifer and I are talking across the car and we think we're talking normal and as usual... it was normal for us back then to talk this way. It was very normal for us. And my friend looks over and very strongly says, "You need to stop talking to your wife like that." And I'm like, it just stopped me. I'm like "What?" I like looked at him. And this is like the nicest guy. Yeah. He's so loving, so gentle. Super mellow, yeah. Super mellow. This was like the most stern I've ever seen him be. But he was utterly offended by the way we were talking to each other and the way I was talking to you. Being disrespectful. We were bickering and being rude Yeah. and disrespectful and just snapping back at each other and just snippy and the whole... I can imagine Cold. these two super gentle, calm people sitting between us. And, but he looked at me, he's like, " The way you're talking is- It's not okay. not okay. Yeah. He's like, that is not how you talk to your wife or anyone. And that was like a pivotal moment. Now I didn't, from that moment on, start perfectly talking to you but man, that stuck with us. Yeah, and our friend said it, not just because he was uncomfortable in the car in that moment- No. He did it because he genuinely loved us and wanted to see that area of our marriage grow and be better. And he didn't like what he saw. Yeah. And it was wrong. We realized from that point on because our eyes were opened by our friend, through the Holy Spirit, to that sin in our life of wrongful, rude, arrogant, snippy communication. And because of that, over the years we've been able to actually really grow in it. Recognize it. Ask friends of ours, " Hey, if you see us talking this way would you just let us know?" Yeah. Because whether we learned it from the way our parents raised us, whether we learned it from just the kind of people we are, Yeah. It was a part of us. It was something that God wanted out of us and he used a good friend of ours to point it out on us, Help us see. to help us see. And that was a huge thing for us. And now, this is just another example of just one of those things that we may not necessarily recognize as sin or sinful but it's walking in the flesh. It's not having self-control- Yeah. over our language. It's not having self control over our communication. It's not communicating with love and patience and gentleness. And God wanted that change in us. And He's been doing it ever since, like I said, we didn't just snap our fingers and boom we were like different people, but that was actually- It was a huge impact. That was a huge impact. We made strides in that area. Although we still- It's like something we focused on for.. Absolutely. We would notice it. Yeah, that time. We would hear like, "Oh we're not talking very nice." Doing that thing again. So those kinds of stories are in all of our lives Ways of being, things that we do, that God looks at and He's like, "I want you to be more like my son." I've given you my spirit to help you walk like my Son. So follow the spirit not your flesh 'cause when we follow our flesh that's when- Yeah. we ask rude questions rather than just encouraging our husbands to get up off the couch and go put the coffee down. We talk to our spouses rudely, arrogantly. We get angry when we shouldn't. We lose patience when we shouldn't. And so this is what it looks like to be a Christian. Not that we just, you know, 'cause we can have one perspective of, Well, I'm just a sinner. I'm going to sin all the time and, you know, thank God I'm saved. And I don't think that's the biblical perspective. The Bible says that we've been set free from the bonds of sin and death. Which means we're no longer slaves to it. Which means when we do it, it's because we're either choosing or we're being willfully ignorant. We're walking in a way that's contrary to the way that God's created us, and as the new creature, to walk. Just the thought for us, you know. It's good. Two things that I wanted to share about confrontation of our sin is that sometimes in cases like the story you just shared God uses someone to clearly spell out the reproof, you know, that this is the problem. Yeah. This is what I see going on. This is how you should change. And other times it's more of a response. A deeply felt and acknowledged response by someone who's been affected by our sin. Maybe it's sadness, anger, frustration. Those are all cues for us to stop and go, okay, something's going on- Right. that I need to address." And like you said, being a Christian means we're going to look at it. We're going to address it. Not just put it on the back burner and avoid it or pretend like it doesn't exist. And the other thing that I want to share with about confrontation with our sin is that God uses people. I shared that all ready. Yeah. And so sometimes he'll use you, like he used our friend. Sometimes Aaron he'll use, you he'll use our listeners. Yeah. In the lives of people that we love. And this is just a small encouragement to say when the Lord prompts you, when you see something, when you feel that ache in your soul, because you know it's going to be uncomfortable to walk it out in love but do it because that situation that we experienced with our friend changed our trajectory of the way we communicate. It didn't make us perfect, but it radically made us look at our life and go, we can't bicker anymore. We, can't talk to each other like that. All right. So if God can use you as a change agent in somebody's life, let Him. And that's something that we'll talk about as some of the postures that we should have- Yeah. in receiving these corrections from the Lord. I just want to bring in but another example of how God's been working in me over the years and maybe the husbands that are listening could relate to this. The Bible tells us to walk in an understanding way with our wives. And this is something, Jennifer, I'm sure you can attest to probably in many ways, that I struggle to walk with you in understanding. I'll often be quick to push you to get over the emotions that you're dealing with. Or to quickly answer the question. Or to find the solution. Rather than slowing down, listening. Real quick, I just want to say this is, 'cause we talked about God's patience earlier, and I feel like you walking with me in an understanding way is one of those areas of our life where I can see God's patient with you because it's not just understanding in this one particular area, it's understanding in a lot of different ways. And so we've seen it kind of flush out in a lot of different areas as you've walked and matured Right. and grown in your relationship with God. Does that make sense? Exactly. Yeah, and me not walking in understanding with you or even trying to understand, right. Like, I'm going to make efforts to walk in the Spirit and I'm going to be slow to speak and quick to listen. Right. And slow to anger. And I'm going to try and understand. What's going on? Why are you feeling this way? Why are you communicating this way? Why are you, you know, what's going on? And that's loving, right. So me not walking that way is sinful. Yeah, and I think the hang up there would be, sometimes you treat me as if I'm emotionally at par with you, like at equal with you, when I'm not. Right. So you respond to me or you communicate or you address something or you... Like you should be able to respond the way I'm responding. And I get impatient with you. Yeah, and I'm sitting over here going, " Whoa, what's going on." Yeah. Yeah. So anyways... Well and that's something that comes up often. I mean, we're married 14 years now. So that we've had- There's been some opportunity. A couple times. But as husbands that's our job. It's a command. It's also comes with a promise and a warning, you know, and I should be walking that way. This is one of the things that God, by His Spirit, has been teaching me over the years. A lot of the way, a lot of the time by you. You saying, You're not trying to understand. You're not even listening. You're not... You telling me, communicating to me. Often the most fruitful times that you communicated to me is after the emotions have died down but still you communicate to me. You speak to me, you share with me. But none of the change happens in me. None of those things grow in us unless we're willing to listen and receive and desire it. So just because you've been married a long time, you know, it doesn't mean we have a perfect marriage. We're all a work in progress. You could be married 50 years and you still need the Holy Spirit to sanctify you and your marriage. You can be a Christian your entire life. Yeah. And guess what? We're still sinful creatures that need a savior. We're still in the flesh and need sanctification. Right. Mm-hmm. It doesn't just stop. You don't reach perfection. The Bible actually tells us that, it says this in Philippians 3, 12, Paul says this, he says, " Not that I've all ready obtained this or I'm all ready perfect, but I press on to make it my own because Christ Jesus has made me his own." Like Paul, the great apostle, wrote two thirds of the New Testament. This is how he saw himself as someone who needed Jesus, needed the Spirit of God to sanctify him. And that's what we need. Yeah, I think that this is something that I've struggled with as a Christian is just the expectation I place on myself. Yeah. For perfection. Because I truly do want to be and walk perfect and I struggle with myself and I'm frustrated over the fact that I still sin or I still make bad choices or I'm still wrestling with that thing that I said I repented for, you know. Do you feel like that's something that God's been really drawing out of you recently? Like revealing to you. That expectation? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, He has. It's just this desire that I have to want to be perfect but the hardest part is making all those little choices to make change. That striving to be like Him, that I wrestle. It's kind of like, you know, you want the nice body but you don't really want to work out or eat healthy. It doesn't work. You know, so.. I've seen programs that do that. My point is, it doesn't just happen. It's something that we're enabled to walk in and we can choose because of what Christ has done and what he has given us. But it is, like you said, it's a process of sanctification and we need Him. This is where reliance comes in. We have to rely on the Lord. Yeah. Every single day and... Yeah, I remember saying in last episode that God's been drawing things out of us. Sometimes really painful, you know, but I want him to keep doing it because the more He does it, the closer I get to be like His Son And I'm not doing it to earn anything from Him, We can't earn anything from God. I'm doing it 'cause I love God. You know, so when I look back on, you know, my friend calling me out for how I communicated to you and how unbecoming it is. He wasn't just doing it so that me and you had a better relationship. Right. We're Christians. And he's thinking like, this is not how Christians talk. We have a message to share. A different one than what we were sharing. So that's another aspect of this is God's not just walking us through sanctification, and His son Jesus, for our sake, but for His sake. We're Christ's bride. And the Bible also describes us as the body of Christ. He's sanctifying the Body. We're, if you think about, I just thought about this, the priests before going into the temple wash themselves. And so that's what Christ is doing. It tells us in Ephesians 5 that he's washing his bride with the water by the word. So we're being sanctified. We're being cleansed. It's a process, but it's to bring Him glory. It's to make him more beautiful. Not necessarily us. And I think that's incredibly encouraging and powerful. You know, I wanted to share... This is going to be a little bit chunky, I don't know if it's going to come out perfectly because sometimes when we're learning something it's hard to verbalize, you know, retell it. But I knew that we were going to be talking about sanctification and so sometimes I'll take certain words like sanctification or purification or pure- Write them. and look up like the Hebrew word for it. And so there's still a lot of learning involved with all this, but I was reading something that was talking about how this one word that means to purify in Hebrew, communicates the idea of causing something to go from unclean, sometimes shameful, to pure. Yeah. So it's that process that draws from being unclean to pure. And I liked that they brought in the word shame. Because I think what makes me frustrated about this I want to be perfect and that I'm not, is that I have to address the things that I do, the sin in my life and then I feel shame. Yeah. And I think that's the pattern for everyone, every believer that recognizes sin in their life. Often our fleshly response to the sin is shame. So when we are confronted by our sin and we repent but we still feel shameful or that shame, How do we move forward in that sanctification process? Why and that's a great question because we do deal with that. And often that shame and that condemnation keeps us there. It keeps us from God. Makes us feel like, well, we're not worthy. Well, believe or just know this, none of us are worthy and the only reason we have anything in us that's worthy to go to God is because of Christ. Romans 8:1, is the thing that we should run to, to remember this is. Yes it says, "Therefore there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus." So that shame, that condemnation we feel is just that, they're lies from the enemy because the only reason we're saved is because of Christ Himself. Not because we're good, right. And so we can rest in Christ. Now that means we should, like, if we're truly repentant and we desire growth, like we are forgiven. Like God has forgiven us of our past present and future sins and desires us to walk in light and holiness. And so that shame... I mean, says when Christ died on the cross he despised the shame. Like he's taken it. And the condemnation is no longer there. We have been made right with the father in heaven because of what Christ did. And so we run to Jesus with a repentant heart knowing that he's all ready forgiven us, knowing that he is transforming us with a desire to grow and mature. And then there's also this thought. You've struggled with this, Jennifer. About... Actually I have, and I think everyone that's listening has felt this way. God, why won't you just change this in me right now? Like this thing I have. This way of being. This desire I have. Yeah, I have to never worryabout it again. This lust. This, yeah. Can you just, like snap your fingers, Lord, and like make it disappear and I won't like, I won't even crave those things anymore? What's funny about that is, he has. The Bible tells us that He's given us all things that pertain to life and Godliness in Christ Jesus We actually talked about this in a different kind of context but we were talking about this very thing in our relationship and personally things that we were dealing with but remember we brought up the story of how you... We were trying to get rid of this school debt that we had and how you prayed and you were like, God, just take care of it for us. And it was a faithful prayer. Like you... Well, we know God can. We know he's... We've seen Him do it to other people. He's got limitless resources, right. Like, and he's all powerful and all knowing. So take this debt. Yeah, just take it. We're praying in faith. Take this debt. And what actually turned out to happen was we worked really hard to pay off the debt- Yeah. for a few years. Well, he gave us the drive and the resourcefulness- He gave us opportunity. and the ideas and the skill- To work. and the opportunity and people coming to us and saying, hey, would you take take pictures of our wedding? We're like, what? Yeah. Yeah. And things like that. And so at the end of it, the debt was paid off. The prayer was answered, But not in the way- But not in the way we want it. Yeah. Thought it would. And so what the point I'm getting to is we can sit and do nothing and pray that God changes us or we can trust and believe that what he's given us is sufficient to change us. Meaning you can change. For me, I can get up out of bed. I can learn and walk and understand with my wife. I can stop asking Aaron snarky questions. It not funny. It doesn't just happen. It doesn't just happen. It's... Oh man, I just... I thought of a really awesome story. Better than mine? No, this is one of the Bible's, so yes, but it's not my story. So do we all remember the story of Jesus going to the tomb of Lazarus? Okay. I want you to go back and read it. It's in the gospels. And he comes to the tomb and Lazarus had been dead for over three days. Where's there some significance there. It was four days and everyone was like he's going to smell. This is bad. Don't do it. Don't open the tomb, right. And Jesus is like, "Can you open the tomb? Open it." Roll the stone away." He rolls it away. And then Jesus says, "Lazarus come out." Okay. So that's the call. This is the... Jesus's words go forth and it makes Lazarus able to come out. Guess what? Stumble out. Guess what? Did he, like float out? Did he like hovered up and like you see like a mummy floating on the cartoon. No. He waddled probably because he's wrapped up. Waddled out of the tomb. And so he was made able by Christ and then he walked. This is how we we've been made able by Christ to walk. We were once dead and now we are alive. Now here's the cool part of the story. You need to go read this story again because you'll read it with new eyes. Then he tells those around him, "Go unwrap him." Okay. You need people in your life. Well, this is what's amazing is that without those people he wouldn't have been able to get out of the wraps that were wrapped around him. Christ calls us and makes us able. Christ gives us the ability. Christ brings the life to us and puts it in us. He's given us his spirit and his word and draws us to his voice. He says, "My sheep know my voice," right. And he prompts other people to help. And then he also has given us his church, his body that are also filled with the Holy spirit to come and to unwrap us. As we become unwrapped we can be more able to unwrap others and to slowly peel back the layers. That's really good. Right, and so it's not something that just happens. It's something that's happening and it's a choice and it's decisions that we make to walk in the spirit. It's something that we're enabled to do and choose because of what Christ has done and given. In the new Testament, over and over, it tells us to put to death the old man. To walk in newness of life. To grow in maturity. To seek that which is above rather than what is on earth. To keep in step with the spirit. To not walk in the flesh. Okay. All of these callings, all of these these things that the believer is called to do they're necessary because we still have flesh that we live in. We're not yet in our glorified bodies. That's what the Bible says. It says, we're not not yet there but when the perfect comes, we will be perfect. We're not there yet. These are all action words, okay. Put to death. Keep in step. Seek Seek... Grow. that which. Walk. Grow in. These are all actions. We don't just lay down on the floor and say, okay, Lord, transform me. No, he sends us out into the field and we get stronger as we dig and plow, right. And that's what we are as believers. So as God's sanctifying us in his son, Jesus, we should long for it and desire it and look for it. That's what a wise believer does. Or we can, what the Bible says, kick against the goads. That's what Jesus told the Paul. He was Saul at the time. He says, "Why are you kicking against the goads?" Like we can kick against the thing that's drawing us and fight or we can go with it and receive it. So what do you like, Jennifer, what does it look like if we, like to not receive it? 'Cause like this is... We don't always perfectly like, oh, cool. Yeah, I'll take the correction or I'll take the rebuke. So like what should we avoid and like what could... Well, I'll tell you what's happened in our marriage. No, no, no. Don't go there. No, them. The people listening. No, I'm just kidding. I can see how over the years the times that we have truly, and honestly, repented there has been change made because we were determined in our minds and in our hearts to act differently- Not just say it. and the other times where, say, a conflict or something came up or sin was confronted and there was acknowledgement and there was even apology and reconciliation, but not true repentance of like desiring that change. It got pushed aside and not thought about. That thing always came back up over and over and over again in different ways. So... So what you're saying is if we protect our sinful way, like this thing. No, that's just how I am. Oh, that's how I was raised. Justify it, yeah. No, that's just my personality. No, like that's not exactly what you think it is. Like justify and protect and shield then never... It's... It's never going to be healed. It's never going to be fixed. Put back in place. That's good. And we shouldn't do that. We should be... We should release. Like we should let go. We're like, okay, if we recognize where we're sinners then it's easy to admit you're a sinner, right. And by the way, if anyone listening wants to hear some example, an in-depth understanding of repentance, we have a couple of episodes, a couple of seasons ago, where Jennifer and I talk about our journey with lust and pornography and those kinds of things in our marriage and we go pretty deep into what it looks like to have a true repentant heart. So if you want to go check those out. But I just want to... I want to read a scripture here in Galatians five 17. Puts the idea of this thing that's happening in us this way. It says for the desires of the flesh are against the spirit and the desires of the spirit are against the flesh. For these are opposed to each other to keep you from doing the things you want to do. I've never felt that tension before. Have you ever- Never, no. felt that tension- I always feel- of those two perfectly harmonious. opposing each other within? No, this is... Every single time... The idea what this is saying is, and this isn't saying, hey, you're never going to do the thing that you want to do. You're never going to walk holy. You're never going to walk in freedom. That's not what this is saying. This is just literally saying the reality is that there is a flesh. Any sin nature that is still in us while we're in the flesh but we have the spirit of God in us and so we can, as the Bible says, walk in the spirit. We can keep in step with the spirit. We can run to the father in heaven and ask for strength. We can put on his armor, right. That's what the believer is supposed to do to help us combat the flesh. To put the flesh to death, as the Bible says, but man, it's a battle when you know you should, you know, get into the word but you want to be on social media instead. You feel the tug. You feel the struggle. Sometimes it's like whiplash. Yeah. When you know you need to apologize to your wife for how you're communicating but you are- Oh, it's an ache so deep. But you're mad because you want them to apologize because they also didn't communicate well. It's the struggle you feel. The tug there again. Your flesh is against the spirit. The spirit of God is saying, go do what's right. She's your wife. And you're saying, yeah, but she should go do what's right first. That's the flesh talking, right. So when you're sitting in that spot, you do nothing, but when you say no to the flesh, you go do the right thing but it takes humbleness. Humbleness. That's good. Yeah, I was going to share that none of us are exempt from this sanctification process, you know, that the Lord is walking us through when we're believers. Our responsiveness to God in the sanctification process matters and you just use the word humble. and that's what like, that is key because if He's faithful to show us and confront the things that we need to repent and change from then how we respond in those times truly does matter. And the only times I've been able to truly honestly repent and be determined to make change in those areas is when my heart is humble. The good news about all this is that, like the title of this episode says, God's not done with us. Philippians on, six says, "And I am sure of this that He, God, who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ." And what that saying is, is the part- Not completion now? No, no. This is the life we live. The walk we get to have now and the sanctification that God does in us. The washing that He's doing is going to be completed when the Lord returns. So that's where the acceptance of I'm a sinner and I'm not perfect today. It's okay. Not that we... That doesn't give us justification to continue in our sin but to not feel the weight of that shame. Right, and it's recognition that... He's working in us. When we have sin in our life, God, because he loves us, is going to deal with it- Yeah. and we need to let Him. The problem comes in when we don't. Like you were saying. Like if we don't humble ourselves. The Bible puts it this way. "Don't quench the spirit." It's a warning. It's literally... That's the sentence. "Don't quench the spirit." And the warning is, when the spirit speaks, when believers come to you and the Holy spirit they've seen something in your life and they encourage you and they say, actually, this is dangerous. How you're walking or this thing that I see in you. We could get defensive and fight back but that's not us being humble. And we want to be humble 'cause God's not done with us. He's transforming us, renewing us, refining us through Jesus Christ, which is amazing. It shows that we're His. Just one note on the fact that we're His, just like gold, when it comes out of the ground is not pure. It's mixed with all sorts of things but when it's put to the fire, when it's put in a crucible and intense heat is added to it, it purifies and the way it purifies is all those impurities float to the top. And that's what God's doing in us because we're treasure to Hm. We're His treasure because we're in Christ. Christ is His son. So it's a beautiful thing. It shows that He loves us. We're His to be refined. He's making us more pure daily, moment by moment, second by second when we let Him. So Aaron, we talked about God's patience, you know. God's patience is a good thing. How does it benefit us? Why is it good- Yeah- that God's patient with us? I'm thankful, like people always mentioned, like being struck down by lightning or something. Like God- Like what does it take for Him to get angry. I know, He's a just God and he's going to bring wrath on the earth, right, but He's patient. And the Bible says in second Peter three, nine, "The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you. Not wishing that any should perish but that all should reach..." What's that word? Repentance. Repentance. All. So reaching repentance in this sense is that someone comes to the saving knowledge of Jesus Christ and then for the believer is walking in repentance. Jesus told the Jews. He said, "Continue in repentance." but he tells the believer the same way that we have a life of repentance that we know that we... We know the flesh in us and we know the God in us and we say, God, I don't want the flesh. That's repentance. I don't want that anymore. That way of being, hate it. 'Cause you hate it. I want to hate it too. I want to hate it more. Yeah. So it's a beautiful thing. His patience means salvation. His patients means- Love. Love. Yeah. Right. Love is patient. And it's kind and gentle. Oh, wait. I know. So, okay. So how does the sanctification process and repentance and transformation impact the marriage relationship? How has it impacted us? In every way. When you see a strong marriage, and you think, man, I want to be like those people. Like how they love each other so much. I can tell you what that foundation's made of. Yeah. It's made of lots of- Humility. repentance and humility. Yeah. Because every time they had an argument, or what they learned to do in their arguments, is to know that they're on the same team, to repent of sin, to no secrets, being real. Not justifying sin. Yeah, not justifying themselves, but they're like, no. Their marriage is stronger because they recognize who they are when they walk in the flesh and they recognize who they are when they walk in the spirit. And they know who did what to cover that- Yeah. flesh. And then they encourage each other in that. Every day. Every day. Not just, like once a week or you know, once a year or on holidays. Yeah. It's something that Jennifer and I we have to learn. Yeah. To continue and encourage each other. That we don't take things so personally, you know. I've seen in our marriage, it's strengthened our unity. Yeah, for sure. There's been tons more trust. I'm sure there's lots of marriages that are like, man, I just wish I can trust my spouse. Right. When you see somebody repent, apologize, reconcile for even the smallest of offense, you know that that person is for you- Yeah. you know. Well, and is concerned about the way they walk in faithfulness. It reveals their character. Yeah, and so the trust comes in even when a spouse fails. Instead of trying to hide it and waiting and then getting caught, they come immediately and they say, hey, I did this thing and I'm really sorry and it's not who I want to be and it's not who I am in Christ. I know you're angry. I'm not going to try and change that but I just want you to know because when we come to do that, one thing I've realized in my life is that I got to love God and my relationship with God more than I love my wife and that's why I go repenting my wife. Not because I want to feel better about my relationship with my wife, but because I love God and I love my relationship with Christ and what he's done for me and so my getting over my self is because of that. My relationship with God. Yeah. I've been working to get over myself lately. That I wanted to share, because I think it's so important to even address the small stuff and so I've been in this season of like, God gave me fine tune eyes to see even the smallest thing that you want out of me and, you know, I'm just in a place with God where I want Him to refine me on a greater scale. Like just rip me open and do the surgery. What I've noticed is you'll come and apologize to me for something I wasn't even thinking about but you're like, "Hey, I said this thing to you and I'm really sorry." Yeah, sometimes I don't- It was rude and I didn't mean to say- walk you through what that thing was and remind you of it and you've been really gracious with me but it's been so good for me to see because I feel like the more like something will happen and I address it right away, then I see more. Instead of pushing it down, hiding- Hiding it. and saying, noit's not that big a deal. Or acting like it's not a... Yeah, acting like it's not a big deal. And this is just one example, but- It's called minimizing. Yeah. Don't minimize. Yeah, don't do that. We were driving in the car somewhere, having a conversation and we're kind of going back and forth, but you were going back and forth rightly. Addressing context for context- Which is not always the case. Okay, but just for the sake of... A little disclaimer. Just for the sake of this story, you were replying to the things that I was saying in regard to context, and you would say something and then I would respond with something completely out of left field. And you were really nice about it. You kept going on tangents that were bothering you. When we were talking about- Yeah, and like you said something like, "Did you hear what just said?" And then you told me that it... We got into another conversation about how it kind of hurts your feelings when I'm not addressing the thing- Oh, I know what you're talking about. that we're talking about 'cause I'm just jumping around. Right, which made me feel like you weren't listening to me 'cause I would answer the thing you brought up. Right. I would say, well, this isn't this. Well, because- and then you would just jump to another topic and I'm like- Yeah. wait, did you even hear the first thing I said? So you... It was a very gentle, like acknowledgement and then I started seeing how often I actually do it. I actually did it a lot. And so every time that it happened, I... Well, I repented and I said- Look, I'm going to change that way- I'm going to change that and I'm so sorry and so for a while, every time we were in a conversation I'd catch myself and be like, Oh wait. Every time you'd be like, "I just want you to know, I've heard what you've said. I acknowledge it. That was very good input. What do you think aboutBut I appreciate it. I was like, okay. My transition's got way better but we're laughing about it. But this was something that was like a fire. A thing that was frustrating you and I wasn't, you know, recognizing. I was blind to. I wasn't even paying attention to what I was doing and I wanted to change in that area. Have I been doing better? Oh, yeah. Okay. No, I remember the context of what you're talking about. I do want to make a note, because you were saying that you're like even the little things. I don't think... This is not an encouragement for you to be looking... Just calling out all the little things in your spouse like nitpicking- Right. Where, like I'm going to... And this is often kind of where people land. Like, oh, I'm trying to help my husband be better and so I'm going to call out everything that I think he needs to change all the time or the husband. I want my wife to be better. So I'm going to... And then all of a sudden, every little thing- No that's a good note. is being called on. This is not what we're encouraging you to do. What I'm saying is that I'm in a place in my relationship with the Lord where I was asking him to open my eyes and then he started to open my eyes and I'm like going around just saying, you know, changing the way that I'm doing things and that was just one example but that's a really good note. That we shouldn't go around trying... What people would have said before you can't be the Holy spirit to your spouse. You actually have to let the Holy spirit work in their lives. Yeah. And that's a really big testament to God's patience like we talked about before. We also, as a spouse, need to be patient like God is patient. We need to trust that He is working in that. He may use us, but He may use someone else. He may use something else to encourage that growth or that change and so yeah, on the other side of things, we should be super patient with each other. Yeah, that's love. It doesn't keep records of wrongs. That's another thing. So like you're not just, you know, finding all the things, keeping track of them and then setting them blowing up at someone because that's not love. Love is genuinely wanting that... You're wanting your spouse to grow in their relationship with God because that's the only way they're going to grow. Not because you want them to, but because they are growing with God. A note on this idea of wanting to bring something to your spouse. I think, you know, instead of finding all the little things and chipping at them all the time, which is super destructive, I think. That doesn't mean- Oh, it's critical. It's, yeah. It's criticizing, it's critical, it's exhausting, but don't avoid going to them with things that do need to be discussed. Like if there's a pattern. If there's something that's really like hurting you in love not in a heightened, emotional state, sit your spouse down and say, "I just need to share something that's on my heart." I read something... That's really good. That's so good, babe. Thank you, babe. I read- Example right there. I read something recently that said that your big emotions last like a minute and a half and so when something happens- Oh, yeah. It is like that. Yeah, and it's been good for me to have that timeframe just so that if there is a big emotion, like don't say something you're going to regret or something hurtful. Wait three minutes. Just wait a few minutes and then rethink it. Anyways, that was tangent. Yeah, then this... That was good, babe. I liked that. That was a really good example. The next thing I wanted to say, and this is something that has been really encouraging lately, before going to your spouse, go to God in prayer. Bring your spouse before the throne of God in prayer. Like I see this thing in my wife that I... Man, I really wish she would grow in this area or change in this area. Lord, would you help wife see this? She does this, God, and I would really... Can you help her see this, Lord? And then be praying diligently for the things specifically. Something happened recently. Jennifer, you started sharing with me something that God was showing you and revealing to you and you're like, I need to change in this area and God's, you know... I feel convicted on this and this and this and I want to grow in this. And I told you. I was like, I've literally been praying for this very thing and every word you said, I've been praying those words. I'm not kidding. I really was. I've been... So before sitting down and going- Criticizing. and criticizing or coming out of... I'm bothered or I'm hurt. Or I might... Okay, Lord, you can change my wife. I know she loves you and praying something that was good for you and God encouraged you in it and I didn't say one word about it too. It's not always the case, but man, that was a really encouraging thing to me to know that I need to be bringing you before the Lord more. Yeah. That's really good. Yeah. So husbands, wives... Be praying for each other Pray for your spouse, yeah. Okay, what can we ask God today to help us see our sin clearly and then what does it take to see change? The first thing that comes to my mind is Psalm 139, you know, where David says, "Search me O Lord." We did a podcast on this. You remember? Mm-hmm. It was a while ago. You guys can look it up. Search me O Lord because we want God to show us. We want him and his authority in our life to reveal to us the things that we need to see. Things that we're unaware of. Things that we're blind to or things that we've minimized or things that we've justified that shouldn't be there. Yeah. Then we need to be humble to receive what he shows. 'Cause you know He's faithful. You know He's going to show us, right. And he does, especially when the Bible tells us if we pray and do not doubt. So pray and don't doubt that God's going to start showing you and we should desire it as Christians. For our own sake, we'll be blessed. Our spouses will be blessed by the transformation in us, right. As I always say, like, you know, we're known by our fruit. That's what the Bible talks about. Good fruit. But who's the fruit for? It's not for the tree. It's not for the sake of the tree. It's for the sake of others. So that good fruit that God wants to produce in us by His Holy spirit is for our spouse's sake, is for our neighbors' sake, is for our children's sake. And so that transformation that God's wants to do in us and the sanctification process is for our good and for the good of others and for the good of the body of Christ. He's doing the work. He's cleansing his bride. He's preparing his church. He's doing it for His own glory and we should want that too. And when, you know, we've got a long, good stretch of things especially in marriage just going well and you've gotten through some hard stuff, but you've repented and you've changed and things are like well and then something else happens or something familiar happens where you've sinned again, don't be discouraged because God's not done with us. Don't be discouraged. Just do the next right thing Run to God. Run to the person you've you've sinned against, repent and let God continue to wash you. I know that's what He's doing and that's what the Holy spirit does for us. So I would say that we said everything that we wanted to sayfor this episode. But last episode, the first episode of the season, you started something, Jennifer, with these episodes that I think is really powerful. Where we share something that we're grateful for and then we encourage our listeners to then go and share something they're grateful for with their spouse or with a friend or social media. However they want to do it. You just want to spread gratitude. Yep. Because- God wants his people to be grateful. It's important. Yep. All right, so I'll kick this one off today. I'm grateful for the way my daughter will reach up and play with a strand of my hair when I'm sitting next to her. Which is really sweet. It's so sweet. Sometimes she'll just keep putting my hair behind my ear like over and over again and I just think physical touch and having that closeness, that bond is so important and so just the little things, you know, like that. It's really sweet. I'm also really grateful for the thoughtfulness God put into His design of language and you know, I briefly shared about, you know, looking up a Hebrew word and its definition earlier but I love how we can be led on a little word study. Like one word can take you on a journey when you look into different translations or different languages and sometimes words have pictures associated with them. It's just, I think it's so creative of Him to do for us and it gives us depth that we'll never fully uncover until, you know, we see Him face-to-face and then it'll all be revealed and we'll think He's even more amazing than we all ready think He is but I love language and- That's really true actually. I think it's really beautiful. I'm grateful for that. And it's something I've been trying to focus more on lately. Just utilizing His gift of language in my study time of the Bible so. That was a good one. Yeah. Why did... I should have went first because yours was really good. I'm grateful for God's loving patience with me and I know this is kind of what the topic was about but like I was telling you, this is genuinely one of the things I think I thank God for the most. He's patient with me. He's never let me go and he continues to love me and patiently changed me and transformed me daily. When I just look over my life and where I was and where I am today and who knows where I'm going to be in the next 10, 15 20 years and how God isn't going to change but I'm going to change because God loves me. Yeah, that's what I'm grateful for. Cool, so you guys think about what you're grateful for and then we just wanted to encourage you to share it with the Lord, share it with your spouse, share it with a friend. Anyone who you can and then encourage them if they want to share something that they're grateful for. Spread the gratitude. All right, so we always end with prayer. Jennifer, would you pray for us. Yep. Dear Lord, thank you for your patience with us. Thank you for showing us our sin and our need for you. Thank you for using people in our lives to call out what they see in love so that we can be better. Thank you for the opportunities in our marriage where your Holy spirit prompts us to share our hearts with each other or be patient like you are. Thank you for not being done with us. Especially when we aren't listening. When pride keeps us where we are instead of growing, when we choose wrong, when we're stubborn or just remain blind to it. We pray for open eyes and a humble heart. We pray we would choose repentance no matter how hard it feels to our flesh even in the little stuff. We pray we would continue to be sanctified by you and may it be a testimony in our lives of your goodness and power. We pray we would walk in righteousness and we thank you that our marriage benefits from that kind of faithfulness. Transform us O Lord, and may it bring you glory in Jesus' name, amen. Amen. Thank you, babe. Again, would you please consider leaving us a review if this episode blessed you and also you're our share warriors I like that. and our prayer warriors. Would you share this episode somehow, some way with someone who might be blessed by it. Email, text message a phone call and then have them listen over the phone. That's a weird one, but share it with someone. Let someone know about this podcast. We love you all. You guys are amazing and we will see you next week. Connect With UsInstagram | @marriageaftergodInstagram | @unveiledwifeInstagram | @husbandrevolutionCheck out our marriage resources!SponsorsGet our new book The Marriage Gift - 365 prayers for your marriage!Our Sponsors:* Check out Mr. Pen and use my code MAG10 for a great deal: https://mrpen.comSupport this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/marriage-after-god-biblical-advice-practical-tips-and-inspiring-/donations

WE. ARE. BACK!we missed you all. We have a word for you this year and we share what God has been working in us since we took our hiatus back in June!Join our free Marriage Prayer Challenge Today!http://marriageprayerchallenge.com PRAYERDear Lord,Thank you for this last year. Although it was difficult and different in many ways, we know you were working. We trust you and we hope for all that is to come, all that your word says will come. We are excited for this new year and the many opportunities we will have by your grace to share Your gospel with others. We pray for boldness and great faith. We pray for the right words when the time is right. We pray for receptive hearts and we pray for revival. May you draw hearts closer to yourself. We pray marriages would be stronger this year. We pray our eyes and our hearts would be focused on you, what you are doing, and how we can participate. We pray for truth to prevail. We pray gratefulness will overwhelm our hearts and our minds. May your peace guard us and may Your holy spirit Lead us into this next year. In Jesus’ name, amen! Transcript[Jennifer] Welcome to the "Marriage After God Podcast." [Aaron] We're your hosts. I'm Aaron. [Jennifer] And I'm Jennifer. [Aaron] We've been married for 14 years. [Jennifer] And we have five young children. [Aaron] We started blogging over 10 years ago, sharing our marriage story in hopes of encouraging other husbands and wives to draw closer to God and closer to each other. [Jennifer] We have authored over 10 books together, including our newest book, "Marriage After God," the book that inspired us to start this podcast. [Aaron] "Marriage After God" is a message to remind all of us that God designed marriage with a purpose. [Jennifer] To reflect his love. [Aaron] To be a light in this world. [Jennifer] To work together as a team. [Aaron] Using what he has given us. [Jennifer] To build his kingdom. [Aaron] Our hope is to encourage you along your marriage journey. [Jennifer] As you boldly chase after God together [Aaron] This is "Marriage After God." Hey, welcome back to a new season of the "Marriage After God Podcast," and with it a new year. [Jennifer] 2021. It's here. Yeah, I'm pretty sure a lot of us are like thankful that it's no longer 2020. 2020 felt long. With probably good reason. Yeah, it was a long year. But we're your hosts, Aaron and Jennifer Smith. Hi! And we're glad to be back. We've taken quite a bit, quite a long hiatus from recording episodes for the podcast. But yeah, and we're here with season five, January, 2021, excited to be here. [Jennifer] So I think it's safe to say that 2020 was, different? [Aaron] Difficult? [Jennifer] Disorient. I can't say that word. [Aaron] Disorientating? Disorientating a little bit. It is a long word. [Jennifer] Just so much has happened, you know. And the personal impact of last year looks different, you know, from family to family. But Aaron and I just wanted to take a minute and just speak to anyone who especially felt affected this last year and in profound ways. Even small ways, it doesn't matter. At any point, if you struggled, if you wrestled, if you were frustrated or confused or just had a hard time this last year, we just want to acknowledge that. [Aaron] Yeah, anyone who's lost loved ones or jobs, businesses, those who got sick, who struggled with anxiety, mental illness, we just wanna say that we're praying for you guys. And we didn't wanna skip over this. We are gonna try and be light, but real things happened this year. [Jennifer] A lot happened. [Aaron] We just wanna remind you that your peace and your shelter is God. And we just pray that God would be your peace right now, and that he'd be comforting you. But if you have gone through that and you're here listening today, we welcome you. And we're excited to encourage you today and share a little bit of our life with you. And we're excited to get back into the podcast with you. So, yeah, but we just wanted to start with that. [Jennifer] Yeah, and now we're here starting a new season of the podcast. And we're jumping into a new year. Hopefully, all looking forward to a better year, but maybe we're just all a little bit more prepared to embrace whatever this year has for us and accept, you know, what is to come, whatever that is. [Aaron] And just a word we wanted to give, and not to whimsically throw this word around, but for the believer, this word is everything for us. And the New Testament over and over again reminds us of this word for good reason. And so we wanna remind you, also, fellow Christians, of the word hope. And it's an important aspect of the Christian faith that sometimes gets overlooked, because when the world goes the way it's going, it might overshadow, it might make us feel like, "Wait, is there hope?" Like, "What's going on?" [Jennifer] But, for us, I mean, when hard times hit, it's that hope that gets us through, really, to persevere, to endure. Because we're not just looking for the hope of a better day or a hope of things, circumstances to change. What are we looking for? [Aaron] Yeah, our hope isn't an earthly, temporary, imperfect thing. Our hope is in something eternal, something sure and everlasting. So, you know, our hope isn't in the things that are perishing. The Bible tells us and cautions to keep our eyes above where Jesus sit on the throne, right? Keep our eyes on heavenly things. So I just wanted to read a section from Hebrews 6 that explains what this hope is for us and where it comes from. It starts in verse 13. It says, "For when God made a promise to Abraham, since he had no one greater by whom to swear, he swore by himself saying, 'Surely I will bless you and multiply you.'" So this was God's promise to Abraham. "And thus, Abraham having patiently waited, obtained the promise, for people swear by something greater than themselves. And in all their disputes and oath is final for confirmation." So when God desired to show more convincingly to the heirs of the promise, so the heirs of the promise, that's us, brothers and sisters, that we're the heirs of this promise. So when God desired to show more convincingly to the heirs of the promise the unchangeable character of his purpose, he guaranteed it with an oath. So that by two unchangeable things in which it is impossible for God to lie, we who have fled for refuge might have strong encouragement to hold fast to the hope set before us. We have this as a sure and steadfast anchor of the soul, a hope that enters into the inner place behind the curtain where Jesus has gone as a forerunner on our behalf having become a high priest forever. So our hope is eternal. It's sure, it's an anchor, it's steadfast. But what is that hope in? It's in Jesus Christ, it's in his complete work. It's in the fact that he is sitting on the throne next to God in heaven, interceding for us believers. That's what the Bible tells us. He's praying for us. He's encouraging us through his spirit. And at the end of all of this, we get eternity with him because of him. So our hope is not in, you know, the government figuring things out and fixing all the problems. Our hope is not in a cure for things. Our hope is in Christ and his work and what he's done. And that's a sure thing, and it's certain, and it's perfect. And so, brothers and sisters, we just wanna encourage you, regardless of what happened in 2020, no matter what 2021 has for us, we have hope in the perfect and complete work of Jesus. [Jennifer] That was really good, Aaron. And it was super encouraging just to hear you share that with us. And I just want to just affirm our listeners that one of the biggest motivations of why we do what we do and our reasoning for getting into season five of the podcast is because Aaron and I feel very strongly that our purpose, God's purpose for us, is to be an encouragement to the believer. [Aaron] To the church, yeah. [Jennifer] I just really look forward to this next season and the episodes that we have coming out because I truly believe that they are gonna be a source of inspiration and encouragement, and just reminding the believers to have that steadfast hope, no matter what we face, no matter what we endure through. And like we mentioned earlier, from family to family, it will look different, but I guess we're all in this together. [Aaron] As believers, yeah. [Jennifer] Yeah, and Aaron and I just wanna be here for you, wanna be a voice of encouragement for you. [Aaron] So with everyone experiencing so much change, we've experienced change, we actually talked about change in the very last episode of season four, it's explaining why we were taking a hiatus and just taking a break. And the changes we made coming into season five, we've made a little bit of changes. You've probably noticed the new theme song in the beginning of this episode. [Jennifer] Yeah, it kind of just go straight to the music and our intro. And then you just shared the title of the song that we chose. Do you wanna share it? Yeah, this song with the whistling which we really like is called "Can't Be Bothered." And so it's kind of like a theme for this year that, as believers, we're just like, we're not gonna be bothered by what's going on in the world. We're gonna keep our eyes on Jesus. [Jennifer] Actually, when we were gearing up to just start this episode, we heard the whistling and Aaron goes, "It's like we're holding hands frolicking on the hills of green." I don't remember what you said. That's what it sounds like. But it was so picturesque. So I just have that vision running around in my mind. [Aaron] So when you hear the song, we pray that it encourages that idea of frolicking with your spouse. [Jennifer] No, Aaron prays that it gets stuck in your head and you think about our podcast. [Aaron] That too. That's the marketing in me. Yeah. So we have a new intro to the podcast. And what we'll do is, instead of starting with us talking and then going into the intro, it's gonna be intro. And then we're just gonna jump into saying hi to you guys and talking about what God has put on our hearts and what's going on in our lives. And so, yeah, that's a little bit of the change for this new season. There's another change that we were doing for this season, and we'll share that at the end of the episode, but it's a little fun thing to encourage new habits and new ways of thinking. And I'll leave that as a secret until the end. [Jennifer] Oh, they're gonna be just wanting to know more. [Aaron] Yeah, so as usual, we do wanna invite you, if you haven't done so yet, to leave a star rating. At the end of this episode, if you want, just scroll to the bottom of the podcast app and just tap on one of those stars. And it helps us get into the algorithms so that other people can find the podcast. And if you have time, leaving us a written review is just a huge blessing. It helps others know what the podcast is about. It helps others hear your testimony of what you might've been encouraged by or blessed by from the podcast. [Jennifer] And it encourages us. [Aaron] And it encourages us. So we just wanna invite you to do that at the end of this episode, or at any time, really, to help spread the word about this podcast. [Jennifer] So we already mentioned that this is season five of the "Marriage After God Podcast." And we just wanted to note here that if you are new and you haven't had a chance to listen to previous episodes, or if maybe you've missed any, just to take a look at some of those past episodes, you know, your next commute or laundry day, be sure to catch up. Also, subscribe so you don't miss any future episodes. [Aaron] Yeah. There's a lot of episodes, over 100. So you have plenty of time to go and listen to all of that. And we'd love to hear from you, to know what your favorite episode is, but yeah. Hey, what's happening in two days? [Jennifer] It's our anniversary. 14 years. I can't believe it! 14? Are you sure it's not like six or seven? Mm-mm, definitely 14. No, it's 14 years. Man, it's been a long time. [Jennifer] Happy Anniversary! [Aaron] Yeah, Happy Anniversary to us! [Jennifer] You know, it's funny, as, usually, we're so good about wrapping up the end of the year with talking about goals and visions and dreams and things we desire for the coming year. And I think just because 2020 was such a whirlwind, we did it a little bit in November, just because we were itching for some like- Normalcy. Yeah, normal and new. But we never really had that conversation. So I think come- [Aaron] I'm a little satisfied, too. I'm okay, like, I don't have any huge goals. I'm sure we'll come up with some, but right now I'm just like, "Okay, cool. 2021, let's see what's going on." [Jennifer] We usually go out to dinner on our anniversary to celebrate. And so I'm excited to see how that will play out. And I'm just excited. In the coming weeks. But yeah, 14 years. I'm proud to be your husband. It's been a roller coaster. Roller coasters are fun. Yeah. In a good way. But they're also scary. [Jennifer] Yeah, I was gonna say terrifying. [Aaron] And I think that's a good definition of marriage. But man, it's been good. I wouldn't trade the last 14 years. And it's actually been more than 14 years. We knew each other for quite a few years before we were married. So we've been knowing each other for a long time. [Jennifer] Still love you. Okay, so let's take it way back. What was your favorite memory from our first year of marriage? Ooh, it was a long time ago. I know. I know. [Aaron] 14 years. Okay, so we were gonna be planning on going to Africa. [Jennifer] We did go. [Aaron] I know, but in the first year, we were planning. And we moved up to Washington for a short while to spend time with friends, to raise some funds. And that time we were in Washington, actually, was really cool. [Jennifer] Yeah, do you remember the drive we took and it was just like no agenda type of drive out in like farmland and we saw a bald Eagle. [Aaron] Eating something on the ground. [Jennifer] Yeah, that was pretty cool. [Aaron] That was cool. So that was cool, that was a long time ago. We were like kids back then. But no, that was cool. We stayed in a little tiny apartment above, what was the shop? It was like a print shop. Print shop or something. [Aaron] That's what it was, downtown in Washington. Super fun. It was interesting and cool. But that was a fun time. It just feels like a whole lifetime ago. [Aaron] That was almost a whole lifetime ago, yeah. So, yeah, that was one of my fond memories of year one. Awesome. What was yours? [Jennifer] Well, it's a hard memory, but it's a good memory. [Aaron] This is your favorite memory, is a hard one? [Jennifer] I'll tell you why. [Aaron] Okay, just do it. Pull the bandaid off, just tell me. Maybe I shouldn't. I think I even wrote about it in one of our books, but do you remember staying in the airport, and we had just flew back from Africa and we're in like Miami or something like that? We had a transition. [Jennifer] And we were gonna El Salvador. [Aaron] Like right from there. [Jennifer] Yeah, and we're trying to not miss our plane, and I just stop in the middle of the airport and I'm just falling. You dropped your bags. [Jennifer] I'm just crying. And you turn around. And I'm a newlywed still, right? [Aaron] You're a good, like 20 yards behind me, just sitting there crying. And I'm like- I don't know what I'm doing. 'Cause we're like gonna miss our plane. [Jennifer] And you turn around, and you come rushing back. And you're like, "What could possibly be wrong right now? We've got a plane to catch." And I just said, "I think you married the wrong girl." Like, what we were doing, the ministry and the missions, everything was just so hard. And you grabbed my hand so hard and you said, "Okay, we can talk about it later." And you pulled me along with you. [Aaron] Which is like the theme of our marriage. I just, yeah, you got this, let's go. We'll talk about it later. [Jennifer] Yeah, but it is just a really good feeling to know that no matter what I'm going through, ups, downs, you've always been that hand of encouragement and someone to tug me along and say, "You got this." And even throughout this last year, 2020, you did that for me so many times. But instead of saying, "We'll talk about it later," we talked about it right in the moment. And I just really appreciate that about you, that you are willing to remind me who I am, remind me who we are together, and what are our purpose is, you know, for God's kingdom. And so, like I said, it's kind of one of those twisted, weird, hard memories, but I am so grateful for it. [Aaron] And that was fun. [Jennifer] It was so fun. [Aaron] It was like, yes, there was a lot of hardness in it, but there was a lot of fun in it too. So encouragement for those husbands out there. It's one of your ministries, grabbing your wife's hand and dragging her. Oh, encouraging her. No grabbing your wife's hand and encouraging her. Along the way. And telling her you love her and that you wanna listen to everything she's struggling with. And reminding her that you're there for her. That's what I meant. Thank her. Okay. Let's move on. Happy anniversary. I love you. And let's move on. [Aaron] Hey, real quick, we always want to offer something for free for you, for our listeners. We've made quite a few resources, and one of our most popular ones is our marriage prayer challenge. And you can go to marriageprayerchallenge.com, all one word, marriageprayerchallenge.com, all one word, it's completely free. You can join up, and we're gonna send you a prayer prompt every day for the next 31 days for you to pray for your husband or for your wife. And it's not to replace your prayer life. It's to inspire it. Inspire it. [Aaron] Yeah, it's like a fun challenge to be like, "Hey, I'm gonna get this email, and like, Oh, here's a new thing. I'm gonna pray for this today for my wife. I'm gonna pray for this today for my husband." And over 100,000 husbands and wives have taken this challenge already. That's incredible. Will you join them? If you haven't yet. Marriage prayerchallenge.com. It's completely free. It's 31 days. It's an email. It's simple. Sign your spouse up with you with their permission, yeah. With their permission. [Aaron] Yeah, but get that free thing. We wanna offer something every single episode for you guys to either download or get involved with for free. [Jennifer] This is also made possible in part by our faithful prayer team patrons. And we just wanted to do a shout out to them and say thank you, thank you, thank you. Thank you. [Aaron] Yeah, those patrons help these emails stay free. And so, thank you. [Jennifer] Okay, can I just say that it feels really good to be broadcasting with you again? [Aaron] Does it? I know. [Jennifer] This is way more natural to Aaron. And he could just jump on a microphone and start talking. And for me, it's a little bit more challenging, but he's patient with me. But I really am excited to be here. And like we said earlier, we took a break starting in the summertime after season four, which was actually cut short a little bit. And we just felt like- We needed a break. [Jennifer] For ourselves and for our family, we just needed a break. And it was so nice and refreshing. Guys, we've been doing this ministry for 10 years, and podcasting for, what, almost four? [Aaron] Yeah, we were going pretty nonstop in the podcast for a couple of years. [Jennifer] Yeah, and it just takes a lot of, you know, mental capacity to dive into these. And we want to do them for you guys, but it was one of those, just- [Aaron] Well, and we also, we were about to or just had, I don't remember at what point we had our fifth child. [Jennifer] Yep. We had Edith. And so I was still in postpartum. [Aaron] And a hiatus was like, totally warranted. We were like, "Let's do this. Let's take a break." [Jennifer] But what was so encouraging was you guys. You guys would reach out to us and say, "Hey, we miss the podcast. We miss you guys. What's going on?" And we'd say, "Yeah, we're taking a break, and we're enjoying it." And they would say, "Oh, good." Be like that's- [Aaron] Yeah, but, "Don't take too long." [Jennifer] Actually, there was a handful of you that are like, "Well, we're really excited for when you come back." So just thank you guys so much for all of your messages. We really appreciate that. [Aaron] So although 2020 was a really odd year and incredibly difficult for some and lonely for others, for us, we had our own stuff going on. I mean, everyone has their stuff. We had our own stuff. We had some deep, deep lows. We had some really awesome highs. [Jennifer] Oh, I wanna share a little- Do it. Is it a story? I don't have any illustration. Good illustration, yeah. A good thing. A few days ago, I went through about six boxes of Legos trying to help my son look for a particular mini-fig, if you're familiar with those. His was Heartbreaker. [Aaron] It's an Iron Man figure. [Jennifer] The irony of his name. My son's been heartbroken over losing this particular Iron Man. And so I was showing him how to sift through the Lego bricks. And I even said that word, "I'm helping you sift." And he looks up at me and he goes, "What's that?" So I showed him that I would take a big handful of Legos and shake them through my hands, and did this one at a time going through these boxes. And so I was just thinking about this last year and thinking about this situation that I had with my son, and I feel like this last year was the kind of year that makes you sift through your soul. It makes you sift through your marriage. It makes you sift through every inch of your life, but in a really good way. [Aaron] I would even adjust that to say, God has been sifting us. Like through his hands. Through his hands. Oh, that's really good. Yeah, we got to do that. And I think sometimes we even got down to the gritty bottom and looked down and said, "What's that? What's that doing there?" And then we got to encourage each other, you know, back up from that place. And so I don't know why that illustration just really stood out to me. But I also wanna just take a minute, Aaron, and just say that you were an anchor for me this last year, someone who grounded me when my mind kind of spun out of control, just with everything that we endured personally, but also on a grand scale of like the chaos in the world and the confusion, you know, in the places that we live. [Aaron] And becoming a mother of five. All of it. There were legit things. [Jennifer] There was so much. There was so much. But you were so compassionate with me, patient with me, slow with me. You were my reason when things didn't make sense, and iron when God needed to sharpen me. And this year just showed me how much God has used you in my life, in my everyday life, in that refining process that I take for granted. Like, 'cause I know it's been happening over the 14 years. I know it's been happening every day since we've been married. But I think along the way, I just kind of like, I became used to it. But this last year I undersaw the value, the importance of it. God turned up the heat. To get all that dross, bring it to the top. [Jennifer] Yeah. So thank you. [Aaron] Well, thank you, that was encouraging. Well, speaking of that year and how God might've been sifting us and just some things that we experienced in winter, let's just give a quick rundown of some of the things that happened in 2020 for us. One pretty big thing I think is, you know, for those that don't know, we are part of a small home church, and they appointed me an elder in 2020, which is pretty cool. And if you're hearing that word for the first time, I'm just using the word the way that the Bible uses it. I teach and I try and make sure that false doctrine is not in the church and I try and abide by the standards that the Bible gives for an elder. But that was a cool thing. So I've been growing and learning a lot in my gifts of teaching. [Jennifer] Which you really are gifted in that. Thank you. Just being able to explain God's word, you know, and teach it. It's just really beautiful. [Aaron] Well, and this has been a sifting thing for me to realize the responsibility I have, that I can't just say my opinions and just, you know, "Oh, I'm gonna just say what I think this means." I actually have to study. I actually I have to make sure that I'm teaching, as the word says, "Rightly dividing the word of God." Because it says not many of you should be teachers because you'll be held to a stricter judgment, a stricter accountability. Like there's a level of responsibility there. Which is neat, difficult, encouraging. But I've been doing that for the last year now. And so that's been something that's been, you know, an element to 2020 of, with everything going on of, you know, how do I walk and lead in a church? [Jennifer] Yeah, and I would say this, having that responsibility, which you were already walking in that responsibility, but seeing you really flourish in that place grew your love for people. I mean, you always loved them, but had so much more care and concern and stepping into those relationships, and, you know. [Aaron] Well, and I would use that word love. That that is absolutely something that God's teaching me. Which is funny, 'cause like we're Christians, we should love, that's like our word, realizing how not good at loving I am. And so growing in that. And again, God's showing me, like, "Hey, no, I want you to love my way." Like, "This is what love looks like." And I'm like, "Okay." So I'm growing in that. He's pointing out all those rough edges on me. [Jennifer] So after that we had Edith, which we- Numero, what, cinco? Five. Yeah, we had her right in the beginning of, you know, all the COVID stuff changing. All the COVID stuff. [Jennifer] But we launched season four with her birth story. So if you guys haven't had time to go hear that and you want to, that's available. But we dive into that story a little bit more, which is a really cool story, actually. [Aaron] It was our first home birth. [Jennifer] Our first home birth. Yeah. [Aaron] We've had the first four in hospitals. The first four at hospitals. And it was beautiful and it was perfect. And God just, he just really gifted us with baby Edith. [Aaron] I'm sold on home births. That was like a cool thing. I know not everyone can do it, but that was awesome. [Jennifer] It was amazing. She's been an incredible joy to our family and our children. They'll walk by her and just go, "I love her so much." And it's just been an incredible distraction from what's going on in the world. I was just thinking like, having a baby during this time- [Aaron] She has no idea what's going on. She's just always smiling. The innocence, shes blessed. Her name actually means blessed, which is cool. But for me, it was like looking at the world and everything that was going on gives you that zoom out perspective of like, you know, just you're looking at everything all at once. But then when you have a baby in the midst of it, it zooms you so far in to something as simple as the smile on her face. [Aaron] Yeah, and the thing that she's trying to grab on the carpet. Yeah, or like cheering her on and she's trying to stand up. It's like nothing else in the world matters. So for me, that was a huge, just tender spot in my heart that I just praise God for it. [Aaron] And the lesson from this is have children to distract yourself from. Honestly, there's not enough time to think about all of that other stuff because we're trying to raise our kids. [Jennifer] Okay. Our house has been a lot of fun. It's been super busy, just, our time is consumed. But, yeah, having five kids is a lot, and we're learning. [Aaron] Also just overall, and I'm sure everyone's gonna have levels of this, this year has been refining for us. God, using the downtime, using the hiatus, using all of the things to draw things out of us and put more of himself into us. And that's been really awesome. Like me realizing how fickle my self-routine is. We've done episodes on talking about just consistency and routine, which is really powerful and really good. But the moment little things messed up my routine, it all went out the window. [Jennifer] Well, and how much your routine's actually impacted the rest of our daily life. Oh, gosh, yeah. [Jennifer] And all of that. I think everybody's probably looking back at 2020 going, "What happened to all of routines?" [Aaron] Yeah, no one's talking about New Year's resolutions from 2020. Those were like long gone. [Jennifer] Yeah. That's okay. We've got another chance. We've got another year coming. [Aaron] Yeah, and you know, what's good about it is it's just showing where, like, is it the strength in me or is in God and like learning discipline on another level. [Jennifer] Also learning How to be flexible when things are interrupted. [Aaron] Which is super frustrating, but it's like, "Hey, are we allowed to be interrupted?" [Jennifer] Yeah, are you still gonna work in the spirit? What? Yeah, I know. Some other things that- Speaking of spirit. [Jennifer] I know, I know. Some other things that we felt refined in this last year is just, well, for me particularly, but feeling selfish in my relationships and in my friendships, in my view of people and the way that I interact with them. And just had a handful of moments that God opened my eyes and said, "Jen, you need to repent." Be more selfless. [Jennifer] You know, "You need to change in this area, because these people love you. And I want you to love them more and love them like I love them." [Aaron] You have a word here on the notes, inconvenienced. That's something that God pointed out to you a lot this year was when you're inconvenienced is when these things, that's one of the triggers of when certain ways of being shows up in God's... That's just why you brought up the whole, are we allowed to be inconvenienced? Because when you walk in love, when you walk in the spirit, those inconveniences will be opportunities to love. [Jennifer] 'Cause with your words, I might say, "Yeah, I wanna serve them during this time right now." As long as it's done this way. [Jennifer] Yeah, and then for whatever reason, the circumstances are hard or like inconveniencing. And then I go, "Okay, well, how else can I fit this in? Because this is," you know, I'm thinking about myself, which goes into the next one I was gonna say is idolatry and putting yourself up on that pedestal and saying, "I'm more important," or, "I have all these things that I'm worrying about. So I can't possibly worry about someone else." [Aaron] Or, "I deserve this." [Jennifer] Yeah. So, what else? [Aaron] That's a big word, but that's something that God has been showing you in your life. And so the selfishness infringed on things for both of us, like we're both have been confronted this year on certain ways that we are. Not in every circumstance, but like, God, definitely, God's not interested in a little bit of this stuff in us. Like, he's not like, "Oh, that's just so-and-so. that's how they are." No, he's like, God wants holiness. He's refining us. And so he's been sharpening us, pulling some things out, pruning and disciplining. And we're like, "Oh, okay." Showing stuff to us that we haven't seen before, highlighting those things in us. Another thing that God's been showing us this year is helping us realize our insufficiencies as parents. [Jennifer] Uh-huh, having really rely on him. [Aaron] Yeah, and just running to prayer, you know, weeping over our of thinking and just saying, "God, change us, transform us. Help us to walk in love, to walk in patience. [Jennifer] Patience was a big one this year for us, especially with parenting. And I feel like we both came to the conclusion, there was this moment where we looked at each other and we're like, "Wait, we have five kids under eight. This is hard." You know what I mean? [Aaron] I think we all do this to some level of like, "No, they're ours. We got it, we can do this." And we kind of just neglect the realization that it actually is a difficult thing. It's actually hard. Yeah, like we are in the trenches with parenting. [Aaron] We have five children under eight. Learning and figuring it out. Or eight and younger. So that was actually helpful to realize like, "Oh, it's okay that it's hard. And it's okay to recognize that it's hard. We should be more patient." [Jennifer] Yeah, and walking in grace for ourselves with that learning curve, and walking in grace with each other and for our marriage. And with our kids. [Jennifer] Walking in grace with others and just, gosh, yeah there was so much that God did that was good. And it reminds me of that song "Miracle Worker," which everybody loves. [Aaron] "Way Maker"? [Jennifer] Yeah. What did I say? [Aaron] Well, it's "Way Maker" or "Miracle." [Jennifer] Yeah. Olive always calls it that. Anyways, even when we don't see it, he's working. [Aaron] Yeah, he has. And though some of these seasons in the last year were very difficult, just spiritually, emotionally, and physically, I want God to keep doing it. I'm loving the fruit that I'm seeing. Like, God is actually changing us. He's growing us. He's making us more like his son. And that's what I want. God's growing me and changing me. And I wanna receive what he has for me. [Jennifer] Oh, receive, that was another thing that this year really impacted me was receiving from the Lord and accepting from him everything and anything that came our way. You know, I don't know why that was hard for me to realize in the past, but when easy things come and it changes you, like an encouragement, you're like. Yeah, I'll receive that. "Oh, yeah, I can receive that. And I'll change." [Aaron] And a blessing? I'll receive that, yeah. [Jennifer] Yeah, you move forward. But I didn't realize how much resistance was in my heart when it came to hard circumstances, hard situations, being confronted, even you coming to me saying, "Hey, I see this happening, and you need to stop." It's like, "Ouch." But receiving that from the Lord and going "Okay." Or things we don't understand, "Okay, Lord." [Aaron] Well, I remember there was a moment you actually verbalize it. You said, "Okay, I'm gonna receive it." I'm like, "What?" And you're like, "Just the things." All of it. "I'm gonna receive these things that I don't want. I'm gonna receive them, and I'm gonna say, 'Okay, thank you, Lord.'" [Jennifer] But there was like instant peace. And then my heart was just okay. And it was like, "Oh, okay, God, I can trust you." So that was just a handful of things that we wanted to share with you guys briefly. [Aaron] Just a note on that, it makes me think of Job, when he said, "Shall we not receive the good things from the Lord," or "Shall we receive the good things from the Lord, but not the bad?" Meaning like both things come in life. Like the Bible says that rain, God sends the rain on the good and the bad, the wicked and the righteous. So bad things are going to come into our lives, hard things are gonna come into our lives, and God will bring some of those things in our lives. And so are we gonna be like, "No, I reject that. And I'm only gonna receive all this good stuff over here"? No, we receive both, because God's good, and he has a reason why he's bringing certain things in our lives, good or bad. [Jennifer] So, yeah, that's really good. Thank you for sharing that. What are some other things that happened last year that we can kind of celebrate? [Aaron] Something that it didn't necessarily start last year, it started, I believe the year before, but we have five books in Hobby Lobby. [Jennifer] Oh, that was such a blessing. [Aaron] And that's been a blessing to us. [Jennifer] It's been so awesome. [Aaron] Not just in our lives personally, but the fact that it's like, people can go, it's the cheapest place you can get our books. They have them like 40% off. [Jennifer] And we just had a friend send us a picture, and all five are in one row right there at the checkout kiosk. But how cool that we've got a row in Hobby Lobby. I just think that's so great. It's pretty awesome. So thank you, Hobby Lobby, if you're listening. [Jennifer] Oh, and we didn't really share too much about this, but for our listeners, if you are at Hobby Lobby or online, wherever, you might notice that "Marriage After God"- The book. The book had a revamp of cover, the inside's still the same. But do you wanna talk about the cover? [Aaron] Yeah, the content is exactly the same. But what they did is, Zondervan took it from a hard cover and made it a soft cover and changed the image on the cover. It's cheaper. Which is good. [Aaron] And it's really pretty. And it's got this nice matte cover, and it's really awesome. And that's also at Hobby Lobby or Amazon or iTunes, wherever you wanna get it. [Jennifer] Just Wanted to make that note so it doesn't seem like we have another extra book somewhere. It's not a new book. It's they totally revamped the whole look and everything. [Jennifer] Yeah. Very cool. [Aaron] So another note on that, pretty much the only place to get a hard copy of it, the hard cover, is from our store. So shop.marriageaftergod.com. If you're looking for some of the last copies. [Jennifer] I was gonna say they're a limited supply. [Aaron] Yeah, 'cause they're not gonna print the hard covers anymore, they're only gonna be in soft cover. Which they're wonderful. They're beautiful. They're awesome. They're more affordable, which I love. But if you want a limited edition hardcover, they're at shop.marriageaftergod.com It's the only place to get them right now. [Jennifer] Cool. Speaking of books, we've mentioned this to you guys before, but we've been working on some children's books. [Aaron] That's a new thing, yeah. [Jennifer] Well, the part that's new is that we've been working with a local artist for the illustration. So they're getting illustrated, yep. And thy look really good. So, that's been going. Super excited about that. So we're hoping that that comes out this next year. Do you wanna talk about social media? [Both] Yes. Do we wanna talk about it? Do we? So do you guys remember when we talked about being on a hiatus from the podcast? Well, we kind of- [Aaron] To guide us from social media as well. [Jennifer] Like not intentionally, but I just found myself posting less and less and less and less. And then I started to enjoy it, the fact that I wasn't on it so much. But not really, you guys, just looking at our life, like I'll speak for me personally, and then you can share, Aaron, but being on Instagram and Facebook and all the places, you know, I love it. I love being able to receive your guys' messages and, you know, have that engagement there or comment, being able to share pictures of our family and, you know, encouraging memes or whatever it is. I've always loved that. But after having Edith, there was just less time. And I found it very difficult to be on social media as much. [Aaron] I don't remember what book it was from, but there was this idea of brain calories. Like, you know how you have food calories, like you eat them and you're like, "Oh, I have 2000 calories. I have that much energy. I can use it to run and do whatever I want." But they gave this idea of brain calories of like, how many calories do you have and what are those gonna be spent on in your mind? So I think that taking the break from posting to social media as much as we used to, man, we used to post a lot. A lot, yeah. [Aaron] 'Cause over the years, we've lessened that, but it's been nice to put our brain calories to other things. [Jennifer] Well, I was gonna say, as my jurisdiction at home grew, my time and my ability to be more connected, I guess I'll say, it just flip-flopped. Which has been happening over the last few years, but yeah, I just wanted to make a note because I have had people ask me like through Instagram, "Hey, have I just been missing your posts or have you not been on?" And so I, again, just wanted to make a note that I've been enjoying the time off. You'll probably see me post from time to time, but it's not gonna be like it was, only because I'm in a season where I'm homeschooling too right now, not including preschool stuff. You're homeschooling all of them. Yeah, I'm homeschooling all of them, but to me, the preschool stuff comes way easier. But Elliot's in second, Olive's in kindergarten, and we just have busy days. [Aaron] Yeah, and another thing, you mentioned that people weren't seeing stuff, we actually started, I don't know if we were shadow banned, like, I don't know if anyone knows these things, but there was a season where people were having a hard time seeing our content. It wasn't showing to anyone. So what's happening is just with the way the algorithms, the way all these big tech giants are going, it has been harder for Christian voices, conservative voices to be seen. And so the amount of energy into those things, we'd rather put it into something like this. [Jennifer] Yeah, the podcasts. [Aaron] And our emails that we send. So if you wanna keep up with our content, just like subscribe to our podcast, get on our email list, and you'll get our prayer encouragements daily and you'll get this content weekly. Just one little thing that we're trying, it's an experiment, so I don't know how long we're gonna do it, but we deleted our Facebook and Instagram apps off our phone. We still have our accounts. So we can hop online on our computers in the browser and go check messages. [Jennifer] It doesn't quite feel the same. [Aaron] It's not the same. [Jennifer] I'll say this, the first day that we did this, I kept checking my phone and then I'd find myself going, "What am I doing? What am I doing? What am I doing?" And it actually showed me how often I was picking up my phone and just scrolling or just being a part of that. [Aaron] Well, the same is happening with me. I'm picking it up and I'm flipping back and forth through my screens. Looking for something. I'm like "What am I doing?" So maybe this year 2021, we'll be less addicted to our phones by getting rid of a couple of apps. And if you're listening to this, maybe you can take the challenge with us. We didn't get it from anyone else. I mean, we heard other people doing this, but we just, we're trying it. We're removing those apps, and we'll try and engage through the podcast and through our emails and we'll try and hop onto our social media occasionally when we can. Yeah. It's just something we're doing. [Jennifer] Okay, so we also want, in this first episode, we just wanted to share our hope and mission for this next year with you guys, with the ministry. [Aaron] Just with our life. [Jennifer] Our life, everything that we're doing. So yeah, let's just jump into some of these. First and foremost, we wanna preach the gospel way more. We wanna preach it here, online, wherever we can. [Aaron] I'd say the last season and the season before that, we started getting more, like teaching the word and preaching the gospel more. And so we just wanna continue that and then grow that, because there's nothing more powerful than the gospel. [Jennifer] And nothing more important, really. [Aaron] Yeah, especially, let me just look at the world. We need the gospel. [Jennifer] Yeah, we've also, in this last year, have been preaching the gospel way more to each other and to ourselves. And I think that's really important. So we're just gonna preach more. [Aaron] Yeah, and gospel, it means the good news of Jesus Christ. And without Jesus Christ, there is no good news. Think about that. So the gospel, it's what we're gonna, we're gonna be preaching that. [Jennifer] I love that. We're also gonna be growing in our faith. I mean, this is just the Christian walk, right? But we just wanna be intentional with allowing God to continue to grow us. Prune us. Prune us, increase our faith and our knowledge of him. [Aaron] We also wanna grow in love. I mean, we mentioned this a little bit before, but another thing we wanna continue to grow in is in our parenting, like we're raising five children. We don't wanna just raise them to be functional in society. We wanna raise them to know the Lord, we wanna raise them to love the Lord, and we wanna raise them to be bold, bolder than us, more knowledgeable in the word, but also like lovers, gentle, kind, generous. So we wanna grow in that this year. And I know that sounded like a lot. We have a whole like decade, or several decades where we get to walk with our kids. But that's, we just wanna grow in our parenting. [Jennifer] I would say this: feel more confident in our parenting, and just like- [Aaron] That's a good word. Grow in our confidence in parenting. [Jennifer] Naturally, I just think that there's a lot of insecurities, at least in my heart for parenting. And I just, yeah. [Aaron] I think that's natural, because- [Jennifer] We just love our kids so much. [Aaron] Every phase, we have no idea what the new phases have in store for us. [Jennifer] Even just with homeschooling, I look at it and I go, you know, I get intimidated a bit, because I don't know third grade, but I'm not there yet. Like he's second grade, second and a half. And so finding those insecurities and then trusting the Lord and letting him build my confidence up so that I can step into that next grade with him. But anyways, off tangent. Another thing we wanna grow in this next year is our love, our love for each other, our love for children, our church, others. When when I was thinking about this, I thought about how life has just changed for a lot of us this last year with like wearing masks and stuff. And the times that we go out in public, out into the stores, I was realizing that I'm not making as much eye contact, almost like just shuffling through. And I see the edge of my mask, and it's like it's hard for me to get past, but I think this next year, in order to show love to others we'll have to utilize our eyes a lot more and be more intentional to make those conversations happen. And I think people's hearts are yearning for that connection. They might not know it, but I think they're yearning for it. [Aaron] We have a desire to see a revival in hearts, in the hearts of husbands and wives. [Jennifer] Amen. [Aaron] Like, not just revival in their marriages, but like revival in their relationship with God. But like we always say, our heart for "Marriage After God," the whole theme behind "Marriage After God," the idea, the intention is not just healthy marriages for the sake of good marriages. God's got gifts that he's given to each one of us as his children, and a healthy marriage is a powerful marriage for God. When you're walking with God, when you're walking in unity, you can be used, and God wants to use us. He doesn't need to use us. He wants to use us in his kingdom. That's why he has distributed, through his spirit, gifts to all of us. And so we want a revival in the hearts of husbands and wives, because we'll see children be discipled, we'll see neighbors be preached to, we'll see churches thrive. These are things that come when husbands and wives have their hearts yielded to the father. [Jennifer] Yeah, you said the word unity. And I don't know why my mind automatically went to the word division. And I think we all got a healthy dose, whether through social media. What are you talking about? Or the news or whatever last year. We're so unified in this country. [Jennifer] All of that stuff does affect us. Like normal things are hard to navigate, normal relationship stuff, normal marriage stuff, normal whether it's finances or parenting or jobs. All of it. [Jennifer] You know, seeking out jobs or whatever, things used to be- [Aaron] Normal difficult. [Jennifer] Normal difficult in our lives. And now we have a lot more layers to it all. And so I just wanna encourage you guys, those listening right now, we have to be what is unified in our marriages. Like, we have to be the ones initiating love, encouraging each other. [Aaron] Being on the same team. [Jennifer] Being on the same team, being words of affirmation and encouragement, like, that is so vital to our relationships and our marriages. [Aaron] And it's gonna be even more visible now than ever when we do it. So, just as we come to a close, what can our listeners expect over the next two to three seasons? [Jennifer] Yeah, well, this next year, that is our aim, to do season five and six, possibly seven. And we'll have a handful of episodes per season. Some of this season's topics, you wanna go through some of those? [Aaron] Yeah, we're gonna talk about sin. Yeah, that's a good one. Nobody wants to talk about that, Aaron. [Aaron] No, just God confronting us with things. We mentioned a few of them. We're gonna try and talk about some of those things. [Jennifer] We're gonna kind of look at the purification process, the sanctification process. [Aaron] Yeah, that gold refinement. What is the dross? [Jennifer] It's gonna be good. Which, we're also gonna be talking about walking in the flesh versus walking in- Versus the spirit. Yeah, we have a note on this topic. There was this, when we were discussing this, we'll get into it in the episode, but there was this image I got of standing in a river, and the river is flowing pretty hard, and you will go with the river and it's easy. You go against the river, and it's dangerous. And this idea of like, when you're walking in the spirit, the Bible says, walk in the spirit and keep, "If you're gonna walk in the spirit, also keep in step with the spirit. Keep in step, yeah. [Aaron] So it's this idea of, you're not guiding the spirit, you're following the spirit. And so that's gonna be one thing. We're gonna talk about, we're gonna do an episode probably on sabbath, and this comes with a lot of connotations. [Jennifer] Yeah. The word rest just rings a bell for me. And I think that learning how to just accept slowness. [Aaron] We came up with this topic just of probably how not restful 2020 has felt. [Jennifer] And yet at the same time, we found ourselves in lots of moments of rest at home. Of rest, yeah. Because we have a Sabbath and his name is Jesus. [Jennifer] Yeah, we have another episode talking about are you really loving? And Aaron actually has a really cool- [Aaron] Thing that I wanna talk about with that. It's gonna be a decision matrix, I think that's what they call them, to find out if we're actually loving or not. That'll be good. So that'll be fun. [Jennifer] We're also gonna be talking about dealing with stressors and recognizing when things are hard, but also giving yourself grace. We've kind of touched on that. These are obviously all coming from what Aaron and I have been experiencing. [Aaron] And some of these might change too, but this is our preliminary list that we came up with of things that we thought we should talk about. [Jennifer] How to comfort each other during hard situations. One of my favorite ones that we're gonna focus on is end time prophecy and how to keep alert, how to how to keep watch, because the Bible tells us to. [Aaron] Yeah, one thing that, if you didn't know it about my wife, is she loves all things Israel and she loves all things prophecy. She just loves learning about prophecy. I wouldn't say she's, we're not prophecy scholars, but we just love that. Nope. [Aaron] I mean, we should, as Christians, we should love prophecy. I mean, Jesus fulfilled hundreds of prophecies in his own life because he was the Messiah. And then there's prophecies that aren't even fulfilled yet that we're watching happen before our eyes. It's so amazing. [Jennifer] So we'll talk about that a little bit, and the power of lies, and the the mental game that goes on with what we hear and where it comes from and how we can combat it. [Aaron] Yeah, a note on this is, like, are they our thoughts, or is it just something we're hearing? 'Cause sometimes we can be like, "Man, I have these thoughts." And so we're gonna talk about that. [Jennifer] Dig into that a bit. And then we're gonna end with Jesus is the Passover. And that aligns with Passover, which I think is cool. So we'll get to share a whole episode on that. Speaking of Israel. I know. [Aaron] Yeah, we hope you're excited. And we're gonna try and be, you know, just on here regularly, you know, weekly. Oh, so we talked about one of the new things that we're adding to the episodes. So, as usual, we will and in prayer, as we always do. But before that, let me share this new thing for this season, yeah. I had an idea. I had an idea, I told Aaron, you know, a big way to combat complaint or grumbling is thankfulness and being grateful, being grateful- It is the way. [Jennifer] It is the way. Being grateful for the things that we do have or have experienced, or just, it's that recognition of God, what God is doing in your life. And so I told him, I said, "If we're gonna start the podcast back up, we are absolutely adding this piece to the puzzle." And that's just, at the end of every episode, we are going to say something that we're grateful for. And our hope is that this spreads joy and thankfulness and inspires you guys to do the same. [Aaron] You know, the challenge would be that, when the episode is over, you consider what you're grateful for. [Jennifer] And then share it with someone. And then share it, yeah. Share with the Lord, share it with your spouse, share it with a stranger share it with whoever you want. But getting that out of our hearts and into praise, I think is so important. [Aaron] So we're gonna spend the first tithe of the year in Thanksgiving, like being grateful for God's goodness, for anything that God's blessed us with. You know, there's a verse that says this, this is actually God's will for us, being thankful. In First Thessalonians 5:18, it says, "Give thanks in all circumstances, for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you." It's actually his will for us. Have you ever saying like, "What's God's will for my life?" [Jennifer] You're doing it by listening to our podcast. [Aaron] To be thankful. [Jennifer] Being thankful. [Aaron] Yeah, and listening to our podcast. That's God's will. [Jennifer] No, he's just kidding. [Aaron] We're not gonna step outside scripture. No, his will is that you're thankful, right? So if you're ever wondering, "What's God's will for my life?" Thankfulness. And to be honest, the mere fact that sinners like us are saved by grace through faith alone, in Jesus Christ alone- Gospel. Right. It is incredible, miraculous, and worthy of all thanks. [Jennifer] Our perspective matters, it really does. All right, Aaron, why don't you kick us off with what you're grateful for. [Aaron] I am grateful for a new year to pursue God and grow in my knowledge of him, because of what I just said about him. [Jennifer] Awesome, mine's a little bit longer, if that's okay. [Aaron] You didn't give it a length. It can be as long as you want. I know, I know. As long or short as you want. I am grateful for the downtime we had this last year, just between having Edith and postpartum and everything else that went on. I'm just really grateful for my family and being able to spend that time with you guys. It was a lot slower than what we are used to, but I really enjoyed it. [Aaron] Yeah. And God is good. [Jennifer] God is so good. All right, so now you guys get to consider what you're grateful for. And be sure to share it with the Lord and with your spouse and with your friends and anyone else you can think of. And encourage them to spread the message of gratefulness. [Aaron] And a PS gratefulness, we are grateful for you. [Jennifer] So grateful, and it feels so good to be back. This was our kickoff episode, and we just wanted to recap, you know, what kind of took place and moving into the new year. Our encouragement was that beginning portion of that. We have hope as believers, we have hope in Jesus Christ, and we're gonna carry that hope into this next year, whatever it has for us. And we're really excited about the season and the episodes that we just shared and what's to come. [Aaron] So we're gonna end in prayer, as we usually do. Dear Lord, thank you for this last year. Although it was difficult and different, in many ways, we know you were working. We trust you, and we hope for all that is to come, all that your word says will come. We are excited for this new year and the many opportunities we'll have by your grace to share your gospel with others. We pray for boldness and great faith. We pray for the right words when the time is right. We pray for the receptive hearts, and we pray for revival. May you draw hearts closer to yourself. We pray marriages would be stronger this year. We pray our eyes and our hearts would be focused on you, what you are doing and how we can participate. We pray for truth to prevail. We pray gratefulness will overwhelm our hearts and our minds. May your peace guard us, and may your Holy Spirit lead us into this next year. In Jesus's name, amen. And we love you all. And thank you for joining us for the beginning of season five. We look forward to many more episodes with you. And I didn't note this earlier, but because we're not doing social media as much, what we wanted to encourage our listeners is that you would be the one that spreads the word about the podcast. And so if you were blessed by this, and if you want to, would you just share this, somehow, some way, either on one of your social media networks- [Jennifer] Or just word of mouth. [Aaron] Tell someone about it, send it in an email, text it to someone. I think it'd be awesome if this podcast grew this year purely by our listeners. And so if that's something you wanna do, we'd love to invite you to do that. [Jennifer] Also, don't forget to get your free thing that we have for you guys, and that's just the 31 prayer challenge. You can go to marriageprayerchallenge.com to sign up and get started on that. [Aaron] We love you all, and we'll see you next week. Connect With UsInstagram | @marriageaftergodInstagram | @unveiledwifeInstagram | @husbandrevolutionCheck out our marriage resources!SponsorsGet our new book The Marriage Gift - 365 prayers for your marriage!Our Sponsors:* Check out Mr. Pen and use my code MAG10 for a great deal: https://mrpen.comSupport this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/marriage-after-god-biblical-advice-practical-tips-and-inspiring-/donations

Change is inevitable. Some love it, some hate it and sometimes it can't be avoided. Today we talk about how we make changes and we also share some change that we are making with Marriage After God READ TRANSCRIPTAaron (00:00):Hey, we're Aaron Jennifer Smith with Marriage After Jennifer (00:02):God, helping you cultivate an extraordinary marriage. Aaron (00:04):And today we're going to talk about making changes together. Welcome to the Marriage After God podcast, where we believe that marriage was meant for more than just happily ever after. Jennifer (00:20):I'm Jennifer, also known as Unveiled Wife. Aaron (00:22):And I'm Aaron, also known as Husband Revolution. Jennifer (00:24):We have been married for over Aaron (00:26):13 years and so far we have five children under eight. Jennifer (00:28):We have been doing marriage ministry online for over nine years through blogging, social media, and writing over 10 books Aaron (00:34):With a desire to inspire couples to keep God at the center of their marriage, encouraging them to walk in faith every day. Jennifer (00:40):We believe the Christian marriage should be an extraordinary one full of life. Love and power that Aaron (00:45):Can only be found by chasing after God Jennifer (00:47):Together. Aaron (00:47):Thank you for joining us in this journey as we chase boldly after God's will for our life together. Jennifer (00:51):This is Marriage After God. Speaker 3 (00:59):Hey Jennifer (01:00):Everyone. Thanks for joining us on this episode of Marriage After God. We are so happy that you are here. And yeah, we just wanted to welcome you and what else, Aaron, you wanna share? Aaron (01:10):Yeah, if you haven't already signed up for our, we have a couple free things, but the one that we like to promote the most is the Free Marriage Prayer Challenge. Almost 80,000 couples have gone through this challenge and we wanna invite you to be one of those 80,000 couples. Let's make our way to a hundred thousand couples and it's at marriage prayer challenge.com, marriage prayer challenge.com. It's completely free. Just sign up with your name and email and we'll start sending you an email every 30 every day for 31 days with a prompt, something to pray for your spouse, either your husband or your wife and a reminder. So you'll get that email every day around seven 30 in the morning and it'll remind you to pray for your spouse in a specific area. So we just wanna encourage you to go to marriage prayer challenge.com and sign up for our free challenge. Jennifer (01:56):We also wanna encourage you that if you've been one of the couples that has already gone through this challenge, way to go that's so incredible. We hope and pray that it has blessed you and your marriage. And we also just wanna give this simple, small challenge to share it with a friend. So if the prayer challenge has impacted your life, reach out to a friend, another married couple this week and just let them know that it's available just to spread the love and encouragement around. Aaron (02:21):As a bonus challenge. And it might be even easier is share about it on social media, on Facebook, Instagram tag at Marriage after God, so we can see you shared it. Sometimes we'd like to repost people's shares but it would also let your people that you've done this prayer challenge they, it'll let them know where to go. Sign up for it and we'd be really blessed if you did that. Jennifer (02:40):Alright, so today's episode is about making changes together. So in marriage there's lots of different reasons why we would need to make change and we're kind of keeping it general here. We're not giving specifics cuz every marriage relationship looks different, every family life looks different and sometimes changes can come externally where you're forced to make change happen in your life and then having Aaron (03:05):To move loss of a job, you name it. There's a lot of things that could be pushing us beyond our control to make a change. Jennifer (03:13):And then sometimes it's internally, meaning you've been wrestling with something or maybe the Lord's stirring in your heart something that needs to change. And so then it comes Aaron (03:21):A conviction. Conviction of Jennifer (03:22):Something, a conviction. So then that would be an internal change where then you guys go to the table and talk about that and what changes would need to happen surrounding that. So again, this is just a general overview of what it looks like to make changes together because we don't know your guys' details, but the Lord does know your details. He knows everything that you guys are going through to the smallest little detail. And I think that we can find a resting place there and a trust there with the Lord that he's leading us and guiding us through our changes. He's walking alongside us, especially if we give him that room to do so. And we're leaning into him during those times. So hopefully this episode encourages you. Aaron (04:05):Yeah, I know some people I used to be this way love change. They just like new environment, new atmosphere, new season, quick new job, quick to adapt, quick to adapt very. I'm usually prone to that in the first few years of our marriage. In your book the Unbuild Wife, we wrote about being escape artists. Jennifer (04:24):Well for me it was a distraction from me, some pain that we were experiencing. So for me it was just like, let's just keep our minds go, go, Aaron (04:31):Go, go. We longed for a lot of change. So different moving to different places, different kinds of careers and jobs and pursuits and just change was something that we longed for over the years. More children being married longer, I think Jennifer (04:44):The change has changed. Aaron (04:46):Yeah, I've gotten a lot not necessarily against change, I'm just not so quick to be like, oh let's just run a change. Jennifer (04:52):We've learned how to navigate it a little bit differently Aaron (04:55):But there's something powerful about not being so afraid of change because oftentimes we don't make necessary changes in our lives because we're afraid of what it takes to make that change or we're afraid of what it means if we change in that way. I'll just give a simple example. It's a silly one, but remember when I had my beard and it was like a foot long? Yes, I remember that. I grew, it Jennifer (05:18):Felt like two feet. Aaron (05:18):I grew it for two years long after we had Elliot. I grew it until he was two years old. And then finally Jennifer was like, I think you should cut it. But within that two years I developed an identity around having this long beard. It was, it's people Jennifer (05:31):Complimented you wherever you went. Aaron (05:33):It became a part of me. And I would imagine it was very similar to how girls who have really long hair might feel they're going to have to chop it off. That's a big deal. But I remember just wrestling with the idea of, well what does this mean? Was it look like? And eventually I just had to do it. I you cut it, there's like a video of you just slicing it off. Jennifer (05:51):Fun day. For Aaron (05:52):Me that was a fun day, but it really wasn't that big of a deal in the long run. But change sometimes we avoid it when it's necessary. Sometimes we chase it when we should not. Jennifer (06:03):Sometimes we control so much that we grip whatever it is that we have and we don't let anyone touch it. And then that becomes the source of conflict, especially in marriage. Yeah, I think of control. Aaron (06:14):And so I guess my first thought for everyone listening, is there some sort of necessary change that needs to be happening in your life and family career? You name it, that you've been avoiding? And I'm not saying just jumping and do it. What I'm trying to encourage is have you even taken it and evaluated it? Which is one of the things we're going to talk about. What changes could must happen that needs to be talked about and not avoided, not put on the back burner, but hey, here's some things that we need to be talking about in our family we've this career move or family choices that we're making or Jennifer (06:55):Homeschool curriculum Aaron (06:56):Or there's Jennifer (06:56):A lot of things or public school versus homeschool. There's lots of different kinds of change that people could be going through right now. Aaron (07:04):And so I just wanna encourage you to not be afraid of asking the questions to look at it head on and say, what is this, these thing we should be talking about? Should we make this change? That's something for us because if we hold on to certain things, if we just want life as we know it, to not bud all who knows what God's trained to do in us that we might be hindering him from. And it's just because we like to be comfortable. Change is uncomfortable. It goes against, to be honest, the way we were built as humans, it's easier to not change because it's less thinking, it's less to prepare for, it's less you just get into a mode and you move. But sometimes we gotta stop and break that mode and be like, oh we've been just kind of going, what needs to change? (07:50):Maybe it's in our relationship, this happens a lot in marriages. We can just get so comfortable and we realize we haven't gone on a date in two years and we realize we haven't had a deep conversation in a while. We realize we we're not pursuing each other anymore. We realize that there's a lot of things, but are we pursuing God? We used to. Where's that passion at? So change is necessary in those moments of we need to stop being so I dunno what the word is. Not intentional, just kind of floating and we need to put on the brakes so we can look around like wait, where are we? Yeah Jennifer (08:25):I was just thinking as you're talking, what about for the couple who is just going through life and changes is happening without being intentional as in they're not talking about it and it's actually frustrating them. This change that has occurred over time, control over, or maybe they do have control over and they're just kind of letting it happen. What does that couple need to do? Aaron (08:45):Well, I mean things that we've experienced, I know there's people that go through some pretty hard changes that they have no control over. Just life is changing. Illness accidents you could think about. Yeah, you could just imagine Jennifer (08:58):Why finances. Finances gone like that Aaron (09:01):Is we could chafe against the change, which doesn't make it any easier, just fight it. Right? Which doesn't mean it's not never wrong to, it's always doesn't mean it's not wrong to fight if have, if the change is happening and you don't want it, there might be merit in trying to avoid that change or working against it. Jennifer (09:20):But if you're fighting it in the way of your countenance where there's nothing you could do about this and you're just walking around being grumpy or angry or frustrated, that's not helping. That's Aaron (09:31):Kind of what I'm talking about. (09:32):So you could surrender and not just let things happen, but okay Lord I have no control over this. How do you want me to be in the midst of this change, in the midst of these things that I have no control over? Because man, this is mostly when change happens is when we're forced to change. It's very rare that someone just chooses to change for the sake of change. Like I said, we're creatures of habit. We'd rather just stay in our vein and just move in that direction. So if you're in the midst of transition and change that you have no control over, just pray and surrender to God in that change and say, Lord, how are you using? What do you want from this? How do you want me to walk in this? How can I walk in your spirit in this situation? What are you trying to teach me? Because to be honest, we might miss something God's doing in the midst of that if we're just chafing and like, oh I don't like, this is so what was me frustrating and mad. We could miss what God's doing. Jennifer (10:32):Okay, so you brought up the first point that we were going to share on the practical side of how do you respond amidst change and navigate that together. And how do you this as a married couple and you brought up prayer. So what does that look like for those listening right now? What should they be doing as far as prayer with and for each other? Aaron (10:51):Well, we've talked about this a lot about making goals, dreaming together. If you don't talk about things, if you don't look out into the future, not that everything has to be so perfectly planned, but if you, at least with your spouse sitting down and saying, okay, what does the next 12 months look like? What are some things we could pursue or put on the table? What are some things that might be coming up? If variables change in your life, what might that look like? Jennifer (11:16):So before you even pray about it, you gotta talk about it. You gotta sit down and have that conversation and get the details. Even if you don't know all the details, you gotta know what you're praying for. Aaron (11:25):But you could also do the other direction. Maybe you have no idea, we have no idea what our life looks like, but Jennifer (11:31):We wanna be prepared for the change. Aaron (11:32):Get on your knees. Yeah. Say Lord, what do you have for us? What do you want? Where do you want to take us Is, are you going to make change in our lives? Is there something else you have for us? Are we focusing on the things that you want us to be focused on and asking the Lord to reveal things to us and open our eyes and help us to hear what he's saying. Help us to see where he's going. Because the Bible says to, it says, if you're going to walk in the spirit, it says to also keep in step with the spirit. It's this idea that the it's spirit's not something that we control. The spirit is a part of God. So we follow. Mm-hmm the spirit of God. We don't lead the spirit of God. So we keep in step. And so Lord, what's your spirit doing in our marriage, in our life, in our neighborhood, in our home? Jennifer (12:16):And we've done this over the years. And I'll say that one of the biggest comforts that I've received from walking in marriage with you, Aaron, is that anytime changes coming, anytime we have to make a decision about something and we do surrender our hearts and ourselves to prayer together and individually, that is where I receive the most peace and comfort. And even if we don't have the plans laid out in front of us yet, I know I can trust God and I can trust you with what's happening and what change is coming. So man, it's so important to be praying with each other and for each other. Aaron (12:49):And it also keeps your eyes in your hearts in the right spot. So the next thing that we usually try and walk in, again, we haven't walked into all these things perfectly, but it's things that we've definitely learned are much more fruitful when you pursue these things. Prayer being thoughtful. But the next one is why is counsel? It's easy to think that there's no one else that can help us with the answers. There's no one else that could understand our situation. There's no one else that could speak truth into our life. But that is the opposite of what the Bible teaches called members of one body and just like I'd been given the Holy Spirit and my wife's been given the Holy Spirit, if you're a believer, if you've put your faith in Jesus Christ, you have the Holy Spirit. So how much more safe and valuable is it? (13:37):If we take our ideas, thoughts, concerns, fears, potential change in late before brothers and sisters that we love and trust, we say, Hey, we're go, here's some thoughts we're having about this move. We're about this job or this idea. Here's some issues that we're dealing with that are hard. What do you think? What should our next step be? Now this doesn't mean that you have to take everything someone says and be like, I'm going to do it verbatim. But what is the verse? It says, Proverbs in Proverbs 24 6. It says, for by wise guidance you can wage your war. And in an abundance of counselors there is victory. So the idea is, I mean the best businessmen in the world do this. They surround themselves with very smart people, so often smarter people than them to give them advice. Hey, this thing's happening. What do I do? Well in this situation? In the past when I've dealt with this, this is how I dealt with it. Or this is what I saw. Or someone who is in something very similar to you dealt this way. And then most importantly, someone that's going to bring you back to the word of God. Hey, here's point you back in kind of attitude that we should have. Here's the kind of perspective you could have. Here's what the word God Jennifer (14:38):Says about that. Yeah, we've actually experienced this, Aaron, where we do go to our friends and we'll share with them our hearts are what's been rolling around in our minds. And they go, okay, well I don't know what you should do, but I know how you should do it. And they give us these tips and they point us back to God and remind us about all of these things that you're Aaron (14:56):Saying. Or they'll ask us questions that we didn't even think to ask ourselves. Yeah, why are you doing this? Yeah, what's the end result? Yeah, are you just trying to serve some craving or is actually, is there something very fruitful on the other end Jennifer (15:09):Of this? And those might seem hard questions, but they're really good for us to be able to answer before moving forward. Another thing that I think of going to Weiss Council would be having a different perspective come through. Because sometimes when we're married, we're one and sometimes we see things the same way. And you get another set of eyes on it and there's a different perspective and it could be really, really good. Aaron (15:32):And something that you get from Wise Council hopefully is objective. Yeah. Reasoning. Not someone that's going to be just biased and think, tell you what you want to hear. Yeah. That's not the person you want to go to. Sometimes those people are good to go to. But you wanna go to someone that's going to actually give you good advice that's best for you and your family, not just what you want to hear. Here's a good example because when we want something like that, there's a change we want to make, right? Oh, this sounds better. Oh the grass is greener over here. Something that could be fleshly, something that could be a craving, something that could be a fleshly desire of ours. We're really good at coming up with reasons why that is wise Jennifer (16:16):To justify why we're making that decision Aaron (16:17):To justify why we're making. So we have this decision we want to make, we already have the end result and therefore what we do is we compile the evidence to Jennifer (16:24):Prove why even if we are asking hard questions, we're asking all the questions we know will lead us that way versus the objective, which is what you're saying Aaron (16:30):Rather than, so if you have someone that you trust and they can come and like, oh that sounds awesome, that sounds good, but hey it sounds like you're trying to like this or it sounds like you've already made up your mind, rather than are you truly wanting to know if that's the best thing for you? Because there's these three things that you haven't even thought about. So just my objective counsel to everyone listening, if there's a change that you're pursuing , be careful that you're not just building a case for that change. That is get wise counsel, someone that's going to have objective reasoning with you that'd be like, Hey, let's think about this that you may not be thinking of or you're avoiding thinking about because you already know what you want the answer to be about that change. Jennifer (17:12):So good. So we need to communicate as we navigate this together. We gotta pray, we gotta reach out and receive Weiss counsel and go to scripture I would say is another one. Even though the word of God, it's not detailed in a way that's going to be super specific and say what Aaron (17:29):Job you should Jennifer (17:29):Take, you should take that job that's over on Second Street. No, but there is so much wisdom in scripture and the Lord is faithful. And so he will lead your heart as you go to make those choices. Aaron (17:43):Well Jennifer (17:44):In decisions Aaron (17:45):In first John, we're told to test everything, test every spirit. So when you hear things, we're supposed to test it. But also when we hear stuff from ourselves, it's good to test like, oh, why am I thinking this? Why do I want this? Why do I wanna make this change? And to go to the scriptures when we talk about prayer and asking God say, God, can you reveal some truth to me in your word about what I'm thinking or what this changes that's being in my happening in my life? A good example, there may be something that is forced upon you. Why is this happening to me? This change that's being made that I have no control of? Why is this happening to me? And you could think this isn't what God wants, this is wrong, this is and unjust. This is lots of things which those things may be true. And then you could pray and say, Lord, reveal to me what you're doing here. And let's say you get brought to this. I bring this up. Often you get brought to the story of Joseph, all he was doing was sharing dreams that he had that God gave him. He was just a, an outspoken young brother. And then boom, he gets, he's hated by his brothers thrown into a pit, sold into slavery, slow put in prison. So sold Jennifer (18:51):Things that are really hard Aaron (18:51):Things that he had no control over, no choice over. And you can think, man, not that we don't know that Joseph Kale, but you don't hear it in scripture. There's no complaint coming from his mouth. And then you find out at the very end, wow, God did something amazing through this series of circumstances. Jennifer (19:07):And Joseph recognized that. Aaron (19:08):And Joseph recognized, he said, what you intended for evil, God intended for good. And so you can look at that and boom, you all automatically have perspective on this hard thing that you have no control over and realize, okay, God's doing something here and I'm going to trust him in this. And so even though that doesn't give you the answer on what to do or how to change it, it gives you an answer on how to respond to it. Jennifer (19:28):How to respond. Yeah, that's important. That's good. Okay. So with some of these more practical things that we can walk through as a couple, I think it's also really important to discuss when you're at the table or in bed or wherever you're talking about on your date night talk about what will change because you don't wanna miss out on the details when you're stepping into something new or you've got a life transition coming up. It's really important to say what will change? Because we are only granted so much time in a day and physically we're only able to do so much. And oftentimes if change is coming, that means something over here is coming into your life that you're going to be pursuing and something over here is probably going to be let go of. Does that make sense? Aaron (20:12):Yeah. So Jennifer (20:12):We've talked about it a little bit on the podcast Aaron (20:14):Before, but it's having a sober mind about reality because often we can think, Hey let's just this new thing, let's just add it in, boom. And we can do that and we'll do everything else the same. And then you don't even Jennifer (20:24):Realize, you jump into it and you feel like you're floundering cuz you're like, I wait, I can't juggle all these balls at the same Aaron (20:28):Time. So here's the example. Take a full glass of water, that's our life. It's full of water and you want to put an ice cube in there, what happens? Jennifer (20:38):It's going to overflow, Aaron (20:39):Water pours out. Okay, you put another ice cube in there, water pours out, you put another ice cube in there, water pours out eventually. I mean it stays full, but you're losing something. So you have to thinking soberly about change. Whenever the laws of every action has a reaction true in life, you make this choice here, it's going to affect something over here. I'm showing my right hand on my left hand. And so having a sober thought on that, realizing, hey, here's this really cool thing we want to pursue. Jennifer (21:15):What is it going to require? What Aaron (21:16):Does it cost? What does it mean? Yeah. Because you can't just say that that thing's going to exist equally and at the same time as everything else in your Jennifer (21:23):Life. Now here's the important part. Couples, when you're talking about what will change, be sure that you take time to truly listen to one another because when you're navigating change like this, it can be so easy to feel unheard or misunderstood or you're just not clearly communicating what so , just kidding. It's so important for you guys to really take the time and listen because you may want something to go but your spouse is going, no, I wanna keep that thing and get rid of that other thing. So when you're navigating change, it can be kind of difficult, but allow it to be a process. It's not just a one moment event, it's a process that you're going walking through together. And it's important to listen to one another. Aaron (22:03):I'll give an example a small example. This isn't a big change, but let's say you wanna read the Bible more. Okay? You're like, man, I want to get into the word of God more. It's a great change to make in your life cuz a lot of people probably don't read the Bible enough. So you're like, I wanna read the Bible more. That takes time. So let's say you wanna be in the Bible for 20 minutes. Where does the 20 minutes come from? Is it in the morning? You Jennifer (22:27):Either gotta wake up earlier or Aaron (22:29):Go to bed later. So you can, how Jennifer (22:30):About time during the day? Aaron (22:31):Or is it like at nap time when you usually would be on social media or when you would, maybe that would be your time to do read this good book or go to for a walk. When are you going to get that 20 minutes? You have to figure out where it's coming from and that's how it is with everything. The change that you want, the thing that you want to add in or take out is going to be filled up or replaced or take away from something else. (22:59):So just some things to think about being sober about the thing that you want or the change that's happening. And then going back to the side of things that you have no control over and embracing it. Realizing some things will have to be let go of because of this thing that is now forcing itself upon you. This change that is being made in your life without your choice. And I hope this gives you some freedom. You might have anxiety or angst because you're like, oh I can't get this thing done over here. There there's these things that I'm just letting slide though they might have to, it just, there's the reality of life. Like you said Jennifer, we only have so much time. We only have so much energy. We only have so much ability. Jennifer (23:41):Well, and then I was going to add that after you guys have communicated clearly, after you've prayed, after you've gotten wise counsel and shared what that change will be and kind of made a plan then I think it's important to make the decision. And I'm really terrible at this, I'm just going to be honest with everyone cuz I get wishy-washy once we make a decision, I go back on and think, oh no, maybe we've made the wrong decision or I can't handle this change or whatever it is. So don't be wishy washy. Don't be like me. No, I do struggle with this, but Aaron, you've been super encouraging in this area for me. But it is important to make the decision together and not allow any root of bitterness to form in your heart against the decision that was made. Aaron (24:30):Be on a team. Be on a team. Do it together. Yeah, Jennifer (24:32):Do it together. Yeah. So hopefully that encourages some people out there. Absolutely. Aaron (24:35):And then also one more thing, we can make changes in our lives. So I wanna give permission, we can make changes in our lives and then change those changes. Totally. We can make a decision and be like, hey, we're going to explore this idea, we're going to go this direction. And then along the way realize like, oh man, this is not at all what we were expecting, what we thought, what we want. But then there could be this shame that comes in of like, oh, now we're going back on our own or now we're going to let people down. But realize as long as we're trying to be wise and we're trying to be upright and do right by people and not just throwing people out, not throwing everything out and being totally selfish, whimsical and selfish. As long as we're like, okay, just like we navigated the make to make the decision, let's navigate again. Mm-hmm. Changing that decision we just made. I just want to let people know that it's okay to change the change. Yeah. Jennifer (25:30):I also was thinking as you were talking, this isn't in our notes or anything, but just having kids, Aaron, would you say that if you are a family with children, that when change is going to happen that it's important to prepare your kids' hearts for it? Or even when you're thinking about the decision, you actually think about how it's going to impact them and what you guys can do as parents to Aaron (25:49):Bring them along, bring them along, yeah. Say, Hey guys, we're going to sit down and talk and even if they don't fully understand, at least communicating, here's some things we're going to explore. Here's some things we're going to change. Here's a direction we're going to move as a family, what are your guys' thoughts? Jennifer (26:01):And as you move into that change, be aware of your kids' hearts. If they're struggling in any way with it ask God and each other how you guys can come in and be a support for them, an encouragement for Aaron (26:15):Them. Get special attention to the one or two children that need it. Need it the most. Yeah. So another thing I wanna mention is why, who Jennifer (26:24):Probably started to started with this one? Aaron (26:28):If you're the one making the choice Jennifer (26:29):Why we're make, well you're saying why we make changes Aaron (26:33):Together because there's a myriad of reasons and variables. Anyone who's G thinking about some sort of transition or change, they know what their reasons are. But a good question to ask is, why am I doing this for God or in my walk with God? How is this change going to better us, grow us closer to God, make us more better lights for him present his gospel more. All these questions of how does it move, what God's doing forward? Jennifer (27:06):How do you make decisions together as a married couple and maintain the peace? Because peace is a big thing. The world sees our peace and they go, oh, they're different. That marriage is different cuz they can navigate hard things or make changes in their livelihood and they still have peace or they still have joy. So how do we maintain Aaron (27:24):Those things? So just a good question to be asking yourselves is how does this play out in your walk with God and what does it mean? So we're coming to a place in the episode where we're going to talk about a change we're making. That's why we're even talking about change because we've been navigating this in our own life. So why don't you, Jennifer, present the change we're Jennifer (27:44):Making. So first off, I just wanna just say thank you guys so much for being here in this marriage after God community and sharing this podcast with us. It's been a joy for us to be able to do. And so the change that's coming is we are ending the season today early. We're going to end it early. Aaron (28:07):Yeah, we are going to do 12 episodes, but we're only doing seven, which Jennifer (28:10):Is totally fine. And we had to navigate this together and it's what inspired this last topic but it's summertime and we just jumped into having another baby. So she's three months old now and Aaron (28:24):We have Jennifer (28:25):Five kids, we've caught five kids, they're super young. And we just thought, you know what, let's take the rest of the summer off and just be super intentional with them and engage as a family. And also we just have a couple things that we felt like the Lord has put on our heart to pursue that it comes down to that thing that we talked about earlier where you only have so much time in a day and so much energy and resources that if you're going to add something else has to go. And so this is really hard for Aaron and I, but we decided that in order to pursue those things that I just mentioned we're going to have to end this season early. So this will be the last episode of marriage after God Aaron (29:07):For this season. Yeah. What do you want to let them know? The couple project ideas or Good. So we're currently we're going to be working on two children's books Illustrated, read alongs with Kids not really long what are just an illustrated children's book. And then we're also going to be working on a family bible time devotional, which Jennifer (29:32):I think we mentioned at the beginning of this season. Season or last season, I can't remember. Aaron (29:37):So just so you all know that what the way we've been trying to walk as a couple marriage as a family Jennifer, you spent a lot of time with the children, homeschooling, raising them. And so we try and it really hard not to overwhelm her schedule with other things other than that. Which is why we go to, if we wanna pursue these other things, then we do have to take a break on something else. And so we're going to take a break on the podcast and we're going to work on those other projects. And when those are done, we're going to evaluate when we will come back. So I hope you guys are excited about that. We are. It's something that we've prayed about and something that we've talked a lot about. And although we love doing this and we're going to miss you all it won't be forever. And so yeah, I hope you will pray for us in this journey of doing these books and these resources that we think will be a blessing to you and your family. Jennifer (30:33):So the verse that we wanted to share and end this episode with is John 1427. And I think it's just super timely for the current state of everything, everything right now, but also as you guys navigate change in your own lives. And I know it's been a comforting verse for Aaron and I, but it's John 1427. It says, peace I leave with you. My peace I give to you not as the world gives. Do I give to you? Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid. And I think that's just a really powerful verse, especially talking about change. Because no matter what, if we're following the Lord and we're seeking after him and abiding in him there is a peace that surpasses all understanding. So even if we don't have all the details, even if we don't know what might be coming we can rest assured that we're in Him, Aaron (31:26):Which is the most important thing. And our life's goal is to be in Christ, to abide with him to be in His word. So that's where our prayers for you and we hope this encouraged you. I know everyone goes through change sometimes we hate it, sometimes we love it, but we just want to encourage you to pursue it in prayer and conversation with counsel and above all just trusting the Lord. And so as usual and in prayer, Jennifer, would you pray for us? Jennifer (31:57):Dear Lord, thank you for today. Thank you for the work that we get to do. We pray we would glorify you in all of our work. Please help us to be a team in marriage. Help us to communicate clearly and respectfully, especially during life transitions. Please protect our hearts from the strain and stress that may come from change. And help us to persevere with strength. May your peace and joy be filled in our hearts and may it shine from our faces. In Jesus' name, amen. Aaron (32:23):We love you all. We thank you and we look forward to the next time we join you on the Marriage After God podcast. If you haven't gone through our old episodes, we wanna encourage you during this season that we're not going to be posting new episodes to listen to our old ones. And we hope you enjoy those. And please share the podcast with a friend who's never heard of us. And cuz there's how many episodes we have a lot of episodes, a lot. And just go through those and enjoy 'em and we'll see you soon. 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 @ marriageaftergod.com and let us help you cultivate an extraordinary  Connect With UsInstagram | @marriageaftergodInstagram | @unveiledwifeInstagram | @husbandrevolutionCheck out our marriage resources!SponsorsGet our new book The Marriage Gift - 365 prayers for your marriage!Our Sponsors:* Check out Mr. Pen and use my code MAG10 for a great deal: https://mrpen.comSupport this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/marriage-after-god-biblical-advice-practical-tips-and-inspiring-/donations

Dear Lord,Thank you for the responsibility of parenting. It is not always easy, yet it is a worthy and noble task. We pray we would be intentional parents who tend to the soil of our children’s hearts. We pray we would be willing to get down on our knees, to get dirty even when its inconvenient or challenging and show our children how to live according to your ways. We pray we would raise our children to know You and know your word. May you plant seeds of salvation in their hearts and may our children receive you and be world changers, bringing you glory! In Jesus’ name, amen! Connect With UsInstagram | @marriageaftergodInstagram | @unveiledwifeInstagram | @husbandrevolutionCheck out our marriage resources!SponsorsGet our new book The Marriage Gift - 365 prayers for your marriage!Our Sponsors:* Check out Mr. Pen and use my code MAG10 for a great deal: https://mrpen.comSupport this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/marriage-after-god-biblical-advice-practical-tips-and-inspiring-/donations

In This episode we want to talk about a few people in the bible that have really encouraged us lately and we hope their stories encourage you and your marriage as well.  Connect With UsInstagram | @marriageaftergodInstagram | @unveiledwifeInstagram | @husbandrevolutionCheck out our marriage resources!SponsorsGet our new book The Marriage Gift - 365 prayers for your marriage!Our Sponsors:* Check out Mr. Pen and use my code MAG10 for a great deal: https://mrpen.comSupport this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/marriage-after-god-biblical-advice-practical-tips-and-inspiring-/donations

Do you feel weak or powerless? Do you feel like you can't walk in freedom? If that is you today We want to encourage you from the word of God. http://parentingprayerchallenge.com2 Peter 1:3-4His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of him who called us to his own glory and excellence,by which he has granted to us his precious and very great promises, so that through them you may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped from the corruption that is in the world because of sinful desire.  Connect With UsInstagram | @marriageaftergodInstagram | @unveiledwifeInstagram | @husbandrevolutionCheck out our marriage resources!SponsorsGet our new book The Marriage Gift - 365 prayers for your marriage!Our Sponsors:* Check out Mr. Pen and use my code MAG10 for a great deal: https://mrpen.comSupport this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/marriage-after-god-biblical-advice-practical-tips-and-inspiring-/donations

In this episode, we share how we both came to know and walk with the Lord! Connect With UsInstagram | @marriageaftergodInstagram | @unveiledwifeInstagram | @husbandrevolutionCheck out our marriage resources!SponsorsGet our new book The Marriage Gift - 365 prayers for your marriage!Our Sponsors:* Check out Mr. Pen and use my code MAG10 for a great deal: https://mrpen.comSupport this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/marriage-after-god-biblical-advice-practical-tips-and-inspiring-/donations

The world as a whole seems to be experiencing crises. In the last five months, we have seen headline after headline in the news and on social media. There is so much hardship, pain, death, loss, uncertainty, fear, chaos, and unrest.In addition to it all, there are countless more trials, hardships, and painful circumstances that didn’t make headlines. We are all hoping for peace. We are all wondering how to walk out these things, especially together in marriage.Whether you are currently facing hardship or if those times are ahead to come, we want to encourage you to walk through them in your marriage together, supporting each other and looking to God's Word to guide you.https://marriageaftergod.comREAD 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 share how we walk through trials and hardships. 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 13 years. - [Aaron] And so far we have five children under eight. - [Jennifer] We have been doing marriage ministry online for over nine years through blogging, social media and writing over 10 books. - [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, - [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, thank you for coming back to the Marriage After God podcast, this is Episode two of season four. We missed a week, that's okay. We, sometimes things happen. And that's kind of what this episode's about. But before we get into the topic, we just wanna invite you if you have not already, join the thousands of marriages that have taken the marriage prayer challenge. It's a completely free resource that Jennifer and I have created for you. And all you gotta do is go to marriageprayerchallenge.com all one word. And just fill out the form and boom we'll start sending you every day for 31 days, a prayer prompt and a reminder to be praying for your spouse. And we literally just wanted to offer this to you to encourage your prayer life that you guys are praying for each other daily. And we hope it inspires a ongoing prayer life even after the 31 days. So that's marriageprayerchallenge.com, it's completely free. Go check it out today. - [Jennifer] Alright, so hi, everyone, Jen here . Thanks, Aaron for that awesome intro and reminder to do the marriage prayer challenge. I hope you guys do that. So today's topic is about walking through hardship and trials and, you know, I just wanted to start out by recognizing and acknowledging that the world as a whole right now, seems to be experiencing crisis after crisis. I mean, 2020 has been a little crazy. - [Aaron] Yeah, we're not even like halfway through the year, right? - [Jennifer] Oh, man. - [Aaron] And it's felt-- - [Jennifer] Five months, five in five months, we've seen headline after headline for I mean, disaster after disaster. We have had massive fires, locust invasions wreaking havoc, the whole COVID-19 thing and the lockdown and that, you know, causing the market crash. - [Aaron] Yeah financial crisis - [Jennifer] Yeah. - [Aaron] The highest unemployment rate in history. - [Jennifer] Crazy, injustices that just break our hearts and I mean, just seeing things online and social media and the division between people over all kinds of different things, all kinds of different opinions. - [Aaron] I'll say this, the internet used to be fun and funny, it's mostly dreary now. Which you look at it, and, yeah I'm sure we have our connections with our friends and family but, man this world is, it's chaos. - [Jennifer] I'll say this. I don't think we're the only ones who have thought recently, I just wanna unplug and go, you know, - [Aaron] Yeah. - [Jennifer] I just wanna go-- - [Aaron] Where can I go, - [Jennifer] for a hike. I just wanna go fishing. - [Aaron] Where no one else's - [Jennifer] Yeah. - [Aaron] Yeah - [Jennifer] But you know what? I think that when we experience times like these, it's so important to just stop and acknowledge it and say, "Okay Lord, what do we need here?" And so Aaron and I were just, you know, thinking about this topic today, and we're like, "We're not the only ones experiencing this, "everybody's experiencing this." On a grand scale right now and it just feels chaotic. And so we wanted to speak to this right now. And that's, like I said, on a grand scale, but that's not even including all the crisis's that have arose that didn't make the headlines. Things like people facing hardships in their health, in personal relationships and losing their job or experiencing anxiety. - [Aaron] Or depression or worse. Cause there's so much stuff going that no one knows about. Because there's too many of them to make deadlines. - [Jennifer] Yeah. So when we, you know, when we talk about hardships and trials, let's be reminded that it says this in John 16:33, "I have said these things to you "that in me You may have peace. "In the world you will have tribulation, "but take heart I have overcome the world." - [Aaron] Is that saying might have tribulation like maybe some people will have tribulation? Or we'll. - [Jennifer] We'll. - [Aaron] Have tribulation, - [Jennifer] We will. - [Aaron] And this is Jesus speaking to his disciples, and he's reminding them he's like you're going to have tribulation, on varying degrees, varying levels. So everyone's got things that they're going through and will go through. You can be in the bed, we talk about this often in our book, just the seasons of life, which are a beautiful thing when you look at just nature, which by the way, nature reveals the invisible attributes of God. You see seasons, you see cold, you see hot, you see rain, you see harvest, you see all these things and they show the different aspects of our ecosystems and how things work but they represent spiritual things too. They represent things that go in our life so you could be in a really great season and then you can go through a really hard season and then you can go through a cold season of like, you know, just questions and wondering, and then you can go through a season of just harvest and plenty, that's what seasons are for. Unless you live in California and there's only one season. I'm just joking. - [Jennifer] Even California has its seasons. - [Aaron] Yes. But we will have tribulation, but Jesus encourages us in His Word He says, "Take heart, I have overcome the world." And what's awesome is just real quick thinking about this. Being in Christ is our shelter, just like Noah and his family were in the ark. While there was turbulence and casting judgment and just the flood was happening. They were in the ark. And I just, this is our main encouragement is, for this episode is, we are in Christ for all those who name the name of Christ, who have their hope and trust in him, no matter how chaotic it gets, we're in him and he calms to the storm, so. - [Jennifer] I thank God for that hope. Like I could not imagine surviving this world without having that, you know, as an anchor. Okay, so we just wanted to give you guys some encouragement, some inspiration, something to help you as a married couple, survive, walk through, encourage each other through-- - [Aaron] Thriving maybe. - [Jennifer] Yeah, maybe even thrive through hardship and trial. - [Aaron] Yeah. So, on a personal note, we've been walking through some trials recently. I mean, we've gone through various trials in our life, but currently going through some pretty hard things. - [Jennifer] Things that, you know, have had a kind of heavy filling over our marriage, our daily life, our ministry, and, you know, we've felt tested, you know, through it. - [Aaron] Being tested, yeah. - [Jennifer] being tested through it, refined through it. - [Aaron] Challenged - [Jennifer] Yeah, humbled. - [Aaron] That's a good one. That's probably the biggest one is we're being humbled in this trial, reminding us how little we actually have control over in our life. - [Jennifer] Yeah, and I'll say this, when you experience hardship face-to-face like that, you go through the motions, you have emotion, right, like, - [Aaron] You mentioned something about like the seven stages of grief. - [Jennifer] When we were talking before, - [Aaron] I don't know what those exactly are, but it felt like that we were going through like boldness and then like weakness, and then fear and then like anger and then like, - [Jennifer] Frustration and then sadness, and it's like all of it. - [Aaron] Confusion and then silence and then like we've been going through all of them, as a couple and those are normal things, But, our point in this episode today is, there is something that we as believers get to hold on to because that, even everything I just said, feels like it's like a whip, like back and forth, - [Jennifer] Back and forth, back and forth, - [Aaron] Back and forth up and down, like the waves of the ocean being tossed by the wind. But as believers, those things may happen, and naturally in our flesh, we might want to be tossed around like that, it might be the easiest solution because it just happens. But is there something for us to grasp onto? Or is that just the fate of a believer when they go through trials? And that's what I wanna, I think we should dig into. - [Jennifer] Yeah, totally. And we're just sharing that with you guys, because we felt like if we're facing something like this, it's totally possible and probably-- - [Aaron] Likely. - [Jennifer] Likely that you are facing hardship in your marriage, in your life, in your family., so we just wanted to talk about this today and remind ourselves of some really important truths that God has laid out in his word for us. So yeah. Maybe we should get started with, when hardships come, first of all, we know they're hardships, right? Like, they suck. Nobody likes them. But how should we respond, Aaron? - [Aaron] Yeah, I think as believers, first of all, we have something to respond with, and we have someone to respond with, which is really awesome. So just encouraging that, we have a Savior, we have a God who loves us and knows us and actually isn't surprised by the things we're going through. So just first and foremost, knowing that is amazing. - [Jennifer] I'll say this personally. I think that the flesh is quicker to respond, you know, the flesh flares up really quick and you just want to respond in that, - [Aaron] It reacts. - [Jennifer] And reacts, so if you're not abiding in Christ, and you're not familiar with God's word, that flesh is gonna take - [Aaron] It's gonna react - [Jennifer] The lead, right? - [Aaron] Yeah, I would imagine just naturally if you think about, like, if someone turns a flashlight on quickly in your eyes, like you close your eyes, your eyes dilate naturally, you have no control over it, boom, it does what it's supposed to do. And so in our flesh, we do have natural fleshly responses, naturally, you know, you step into something cold, you feel the cold and your body responds to it. You get pinched, you feel the pain, your body responds to it. But what's amazing about knowing the Lord is He's given us of His Holy Spirit. And it allows us, you know, as the old Switchfoot song goes, "A new way to be human." we have a new way to respond in the flesh. And so we may react, like the reaction might happen, but then we can respond in to that reaction, and to the circumstance that's causing the reaction differently, then people that don't have the hope of Christ, people that don't have the word of God. But that right there is the walk that we get to take, the race that we get to run, is that natural, spirit and flesh, you know, convergence in our life. So I don't wanna condemn anyone. for responding, I should say reacting in the flesh to these hardships because we've been doing that. But the encouragement is, with the Spirit of God as it tells us in 2 Peter 1:3, "We've been given all things that pertain to life "and godliness in Christ Jesus, our Lord." So we get something, we have something else. We don't just have the flesh to respond, and we have the Spirit of God, that we can ask to animate our reactions, to change our reactions, to show us how to repent of our reactions, if necessary. - [Jennifer] So that's the key right there, as you said, ask God and so I guess the first response should be prayer, like before you even consider what the hardship is or what the solution is or how to resolve, we have to go to the Lord and say, "God, why is this happening? "What do you want me to learn from it?" - [Aaron] No, my way of responding is I'm gonna figure out the answer today, and like, we're gonna solve it right now-- - [Jennifer] Mr. Fix it, no. I think that it's so important to pray, you know, when we're going through this recent trial, our seven year old son said, he overheard us talking and he goes, "Hey guys, I think that you just need to pray." - [Aaron] So pretty much every time he's seen us discussing and where we're at, and he can tell that there's just hardness going on. He doesn't really know what's going on, but he would say things like, "Hey, make sure you pray before and after." He's like, "Oh, we need to pray." stop and pray. - [Jennifer] Actually, he told me to pray before and after, because God is the Alpha and Omega. I thought that was really-- - [Aaron] Oh, he did say that. - [Jennifer] Yeah, I thought that was really clever, or cool. - [Aaron] Yeah, like pray in the beginning, bring God in the beginning and bring God into the after and bring God into the middle. - [Jennifer] So, you know, we mentioned the marriage prayer challenge, and that all is about prayer. And I just wanna remind you guys like it is so important that we're praying together not just for our marriage and for each other in marriage, but we gotta be praying together. I think that has been such a powerful thing that has helped us survive and walk through hardship in our life. - [Aaron] Well, because it's us petitioning our Father in heaven saying, "Hey, help us. "We don't know, we're confused. "I wanna be this way, I wanna act this way." And we ask God not just to take it away we ask for Him to take these things away. - [Jennifer] But also for the wisdom to go through it. - [Aaron] Yeah, and how do we go through this? And will you make us stronger in this? - [Jennifer] So let's read some verses. Romans 12:12 says, "Rejoice in hope, "be patient in tribulation, "be constant in prayer." And I love that reminder of just like, bam, bam, bam, this is what you do. You rejoice in the hope that you have, you be patient throughout it cause who knows how long it's gonna last? We always hope that it's shorter than longer, but, you know, he calls us to be patient, but then be constant in prayer. - [Aaron] Yeah. And that it starts with that hope. Cause like I started this out with is, we have hope in Christ. And then we can be patient that's a fruit of the Spirit, love, joy, peace, patience. And then prayer is a weapon that God's given us. It's a tool to battle with, that we run to him and say, "I don't know what I'm doing and I think about, "you know, story after story in the Bible, "of men running to God in prayer." Almost all the songs in like the beginning of Psalms, when David's being chased by Solomon, all right by Saul, not Solomon is by Saul, is him praying for vindication, praying for safety, praying for protection, praying for humbleness, praying for all these things. He's saying, "Lord save me." So we run to prayer and Philippians 4:6-7, again, all these trials can bring on anxiousness, anxieties, worries, because we-- - [Jennifer] Cause we don't know. - [Aaron] And we can't control it. And, you know, what's gonna come next? And it says, "Do not be anxious about anything "but in everything, by prayer and supplication, "with thanksgiving let your request be made known to God "and the peace of God which surpasses all understanding, "will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus." - [Jennifer] So something that stands out to me about that verse, which I love this verse, and I feel like I've held on to this-- - [Aaron] It's famous we've all heard it. - [Jennifer] Yeah, we've all clung to it - [Aaron] Yeah, remember this. - [Jennifer] But for me, going through this last trial Aaron, was your reminder to be thankful for whatever comes to mind, for anything and everything, even the hardship itself, even the trial itself. So, it says do not be anxious, which is an act, you have to actively choose not to be anxious. But in that, when those anxieties come, going to God in prayer with thanksgiving, like telling him what you're thankful for, and I think that shifts our perspective of the issue. What do you say? - [Aaron] Yeah, well and the other part of it that I wanna bring up is, it says, in the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding and that understanding peace often I feel like we're not gonna release the anxieties and the fears until we can understand. - [Jennifer] I definitely feel that way. - [Aaron] Yeah, so like, it's a fear of like, if I let go of what I'm feeling, then I feel like I'm gonna spin out of control, when in reality, we're already spinning out of control. And so we're looking for complete, perfect understanding before trusting God. Which may not come in the timing that we want. But what God's saying is, "Trust me, be thankful, come to me, "and my peace that surpasses your understanding, "which is what we really want, it's the thing that's gonna guard our hearts and our minds. Which in these, this time, it's our heart and our mind that is the most susceptible to deception. Like I feel a certain way therefore, that feeling must be true, right? And it might not be, most of the time our feelings are not right. You know, and so we can guard our hearts, Christ will guard our hearts with God's peace. - [Jennifer] That's so good. I just wanted to quick side note, tangent on peace. I was talking with a friend recently, and she was like, "You know Jen, I feel like, "I just need to encourage you." Because sometimes when you're going through a hardship, all you can crave is peace. But the kind of peace that our flesh tells us we need is that escape is that, well, I just wanna have a good day, out in the sunshine, which there's nothing wrong with, it's just, she was encouraging me that God's peace is so much more than a good day. God's peace is so much more than a vacation. God's peace is so much more than everything working out perfectly in your life all the time. His peace surpasses all of that. It's a different kind of peace. It's not a worldly peace. That's what she was showing me this contrast between what the world would say is peace, and what our flesh craves in times of hardship, and what God's peace truly is. - [Aaron] And this is what's awesome when there's kinda peace, go ahead. - [Jennifer] I was just gonna say, I really hope that that picture encourages you guys as much as it encouraged me. - [Aaron] Yeah, well, and this is what makes the gospel so amazing is, when we tell someone, the good news that Jesus died for their sins that they can be saved in Him, that they can have a right relationship with God, what we're saying is, is they can have peace with God. And God's peace, which is amazing. So peace as in no more turmoil, like we're not against, we're no longer enemies of God. But now we can also have His peace, and that Peace isn't contingent on your circumstances. It's not like Paul had peace while he was in prison, right? Peter had peace while he was in prison, and they were gonna be martyred for the gospel. So this peace is not a worldly peace. You know, Jesus even says that the peace I give you is not of the world, right? And so this peace is so much more, it's greater. It's a peace that surpasses understanding. Which leads me to this next verse of Proverbs 3:5-6, talking about this idea of our understanding like, "I can trust you, Lord, and I won't have peace Lord, "and I won't be able to have Thanksgiving Lord "until I can understand why." Or understand how, or understand when. Like all the answers we want, once I have all those, then I'll be able to. But it doesn't work that way. He says, "Trust in the Lord with all your heart "and do not lean on your own understanding," "in all your ways acknowledge Him, "and He will make straight your paths." So we expect an infinite God, who knows all, who is orchestrating amazing things for you, and for others and the salvation of many, and in this world and everything that's going on, and we want him to give us understanding on our situation. Like, I don't think we could ever until we're in heaven in our perfect bodies. Understand the complexity and the circumstances in every way that what we're going through is going to be used for God's glory. Like my hardship, like we look at the apostles, the things they went through, the things that God allowed and ordained for them, was for our benefit. And they could not have known how their word being inspired by the Holy Spirit and be written in letters, to the early church were going to affect the current church. But it did. And so we have these words, to stand on. "Trust in the Lord with all your heart "and do not lean on your understanding." God is so trustworthy. Jennifer, do you agree? - [Jennifer] Oh, yeah. - [Aaron] Like, is your heart more trustworthy than God? - [Jennifer] No, God is trustworthy, and, I'll say this is not easy for me to say that because I'm human and, you know, we talked earlier about those fleshly responses to things and humans wrestle with doubt. They wrestle with wanting to have that full picture understanding like you said, and I've been guilty of that. I, you know, I wrestle in my relationship with the Lord, but when I bring those wrestlings to Him in prayer, and I thank Him for everything He's done in my life, and I tell Him with my words in my heart, in my mind, I trust you. That's when I have confidence in Him and what He's doing. And I also wanna just acknowledge that with, specifically with this verse, at the end it says, "He will make straight your paths." I love that because it just reminds us that He's got our future. He knows what's coming. He knows what the resolve will be, how the solution will come. And we can trust Him for those things. And it makes me think of the parting of the Red Sea and how miraculous that experience for the Israelites truly was, because they had been on this journey. They're fleeing from their enemy. There's mountains on both sides, and they're standing at the shore going, "Okay, there's a bunch of water in front, now what?" - [Aaron] Yeah, before you go on to the next part of this, you've been reading and I can't remember what book but there was a part that says, - [Jennifer] It was in in Psalms. - [Aaron] Yeah, it says, "What was the Lord's way?" - [Jennifer] It said that the Lord's way was through the water. - [Aaron] So, now go back to you. - [Jennifer] Okay, so they're standing there probably as any one of us would going, "This is impossible." - [Aaron] Yeah, enemy pursuing behind. - [Jennifer] This is impossible. - [Aaron] Walls on every side and then we got just like, - [Jennifer] Essentially there's-- - [Aaron] Body or water we can't-- - [Jennifer] They're facing death, they're going, they're saying there's nothing else for us, and yet God made a way and he did it in his own power, in his own way, and they got to walk through on dry ground through the waters. Now even that, in itself was probably terrifying. It says that there was a wall of water on both their left and their right side, so when we're facing hardships you guys, I just, I have to go back to that story and remember and say, "Okay Lord, I feel like this is an impossible situation, "but I trust you." And when we trust in him and we don't lean on our own understanding, He will make straight our paths. - [Aaron] Yeah and I love the straight your paths part because in the seasons of hardship it can be very cloudy, dark, so when I think about these, you know, seasons we're in it could feel dark and like blinding and like we have no idea what the next step is to take. And I think of the plague on Egypt when Egypt was complete darkness and it said it was a darkness that could be felt. That's what trials feel like, right? But the Israelites, the Hebrews, and I think they were in Goshen was light. They were not in darkness that could be felt. And so the enemy is gonna make us think in these times and he's done it to us, is that we are in darkness and we have no idea and we don't know what the next step to take is, but as believers when we trust in the Lord, and we say, "Okay, I'm just gonna take the next right step." I'm just gonna say, I don't know, what is your word say, I'm gonna step, God makes our path straight. You may not be able to see five steps ahead or even one step ahead, but we know God's gonna guide our steps as long as we're abiding in Him and His Word. - [Jennifer] Okay so, how else are we supposed to respond Aaron? - [Aaron] This is a hard one. Because going back to that idea of like, we just want like the happy day and we want the sunshine and the, you know, nothing hard and nothing, joy. - [Jennifer] Yeah, I want some joy. - [Aaron] Yeah, but we look at joy as something that's going to be coming to us. Like if all this was gone, then I'd have joy. - [Jennifer] Or someone give it to me. - [Aaron] Or Yeah, if someone just handed me, you know, the solution, then I'll have joy. But James 1:2-4 says this, "Count it all joy, "my brother's when you meet trials of various kinds." So this is a perspective thing. This isn't an external like we will get this thing, some of the time. We can count something joy, so we can look at the equation that we don't know the answer to and we can say, "Well, this is joy." I'm gonna count this thing right now that is hurting me, and isn't feeling good, and it's humbling me, and it's scary, I'm gonna count that thing, joy. - [Jennifer] And real quick. It's not just one thing that's a trial, it's not just one type of hardship, it says various kinds. And I think we also need to acknowledge that there are so many things that a married couple can walk through together and can face - [Aaron] Any believer. - [Jennifer] Yeah. - [Aaron] In reality. - [Jennifer] Yeah. - [Aaron] When you meet trials of various kinds. - [Jennifer] So keep going, keep going. - [Aaron] For you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness, so but real quick. If we're a believer, and we don't want our faith tested, we should just ask ourselves where our heart is before the Lord, Okay? So it says for you know, that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. So when your faith is tested, that's a good thing. - [Jennifer] It's producing something good. - [Aaron] It's a good thing. Cause a faith that's not tested is no faith at all. Because how do you know you have faith until you're tested in that faith, right? So you think about all the stories of Old, Abraham, God spoke to him, "Go to the land that I'll tell you." And then he got up and he packed his donkeys and he left, right? And then one step after another, everything that God told him, he was tested in his response. And so our faith is going to be tested. And it's like a refining fire, it makes that faith more valuable, which is awesome, if you think about it. - [Jennifer] So are you saying that as Christians, we should accept the testing? - [Aaron] Yeah, and receive it with joy, count it all joy. Because this thing we're going through, is gonna make us more like Christ, make us more steadfast. It says it produces steadfastness and let that steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete lacking nothing. This isn't the kind of perfection that we think of when we think of sinlessness. The perfect and complete means whole, okay? Cause we are broken people, with broken ways of thinking, broken ways of reacting, broken ways of being raised, lots of brokenness. But the perfect and complete lacking nothing, that steadfastness means you will have everything necessary. I just brought that up in 2 Peter 1:3, "You have been given all things." So the steadfastness, its full effect, makes us perfect and complete. Lacking nothing, means we're capable as believers to continue on in our faith, in our walk with God, with boldness, with strength, for Him, and His glory. - [Jennifer] Okay so, you know, we shared that we had been walking through a trial and I had been wrestling a lot with it, and you kept bringing up this Word, steadfastness or being steadfast, and-- - [Aaron] And you asked me a question, you said, "Okay, steadfast in what?" - [Jennifer] Sorry. - [Aaron] No, you have to apologize cause you were struggling and you said, I was bringing this up and I'm sure listeners are saying, "That sounds great, but what am I to remain steadfast in? "steadfast in what?" Because there's a trial, it's hard, does it mean just being in it? - [Jennifer] Yeah, so what do you say" - [Aaron] Cause it's a good question. What are we to remain steadfast in? Is it to remain steadfast in our strength? Our own strength, our own abilities? Because that doesn't work. Because we got to the end of ourselves real quick. Like, I don't wanna do this anymore. I'm over it, I wanna escape, I wanna run away. Our own knowledge, cause my knowledge is limited. I can try and navigate things, but I can only get so far in my knowledge. It's limited, I can't remain in my own knowledge. It's got very . - [Jennifer] Same with our abilities, they're limited. Even if you're the most able person out there, you still have limitations. - [Aaron] We are incapable of remaining steadfast in our own abilities, right? That's what it is, we're incapable. Which is why we need our Savior, because we are not able, He is. - [Jennifer] So you answered the question when I asked you, "Steadfast in what?" You said in the Word of God. - [Aaron] Yeah, it's our rock. It's our fortress. It's our foundation, - [Jennifer] to refuge. - [Aaron] Yeah, the Bible says that, "In the beginning was the Word, "and the Word was with God and the Word was God." And then later on, it says, "And it came and it dwelt with man." Jesus Christ, like the Word of God is the physical representation we currently have of Jesus. It's His Word. And what's amazing is and we've talked about this, what did God create everything with? - [Jennifer] His Word. - [Aaron] What is Jesus gonna destroy everything with? - [Jennifer] His Word. - [Aaron] His Word. This is what it says, it says in Revelation coming in on a horse and a sword coming out of his mouth, right? What's the sword of the Spirit? - [Jennifer] The Word of God. - [Aaron] That's what the Bible tells us. So the thing that we remain steadfast in, is the Word of God, the unchanging, living, active, sharper than a two-edged sword, piercing to the bone and marrow, right? Word of God. - [Jennifer] So practically speaking, is it just, when you say being steadfast in the Word of God, is it saying to yourself, "Yeah, I believe in the Word of God?" - [Aaron] No, it's meditating day and night, on the promises and the truths that it says to us about us. - [Jennifer] So reading it, believing it, saying it out loud. - [Aaron] Walking in it, right? When it says - [Jennifer] Doing what it says - [Aaron] Yeah, doing what it says, that is what we remain steadfast in. So just rewind a little bit. I'm spiraling out of control, I'm anxious, I'm worried I can't Oh, you keep telling me all these things, but I can't be anxious for nothing, but in all things by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving, lift your request to the Lord, and the peace of God that surpasses all understanding will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus, Okay? So the flesh wants to do this thing. So how do we remain steadfast? Okay, I mean, just Lord, thank you that I have life today. Thank you for your Son, Jesus and salvation. Thank you that, if none of this gets resolved, I have you. I'll have eternity with you. Thank you Lord, but also I am scared Lord, I don't know how to handle this Lord. That's what you're steadfast in. Not just repeating the words over and over again, but believing the words and doing what they say. Because they have power. Paul says, "I'm not ashamed of the gospel for, it is the power of God into salvation. Timothy, Paul tells Timothy, the Word of God, all of it is good for proof and for teaching and for education and for the maturity of the Christian. That's what it's for. So what are we to remain steadfast in? Our own knowledge, what we're capable of, what we can control? Man, I don't know, nearly enough to be able to answer the problems in this world, let alone my own life. But the Word of God does. And I can lean on it and say, "I don't know how this is gonna work God, - [Jennifer] But I trust you. - [Aaron] But I trust you. - [Jennifer] It's kinda hard to move on from that cause it was so good and so simple and so necessary to just abide in the Word of God. But there are some other ways that we can respond in times of hardship, and something that I really wanted to share with you guys was praise. Because sometimes I don't know what to pray. Sometimes I don't know exactly where to go to in God's word other than but I know that it's good, and like you said, we have to remain steadfast in it. But if I can quickly put my phone on to some sort of worship song, I immediately start to gain perspective on who God is. And that's the most important thing aside, you know, all the distractions of what you may be walking through, all the little minute details of the situation that you're familiar with. If you could just turn your eyes and turn your heart and turn your everything to God, in praise and in worship. - [Aaron] Real quick, in praise and worship, I mean, what it's doing is meditating on what God says about us. - [Jennifer] Yeah. - [Aaron] And who he is. So it takes our eyes off of us and puts it on Him, with melodies and with songs and praise, so - [Jennifer] And God just must love it, like that's how He sees that we're trusting in Him. He sits there and He sees that we're crying out to Him, saying, "God, I don't know what to do, but I trust you, "and I'm gonna sing to you." It just must be so beautiful to Him. - [Aaron] Isn't there a story in X where, I think Paul is in prison, and they're singing hymns in the cell? - [Jennifer] Yeah. - [Aaron] That's a good beautiful picture of that. - [Jennifer] That is really cool. Being amidst the suffering. - [Aaron] Yeah, amidst a pit. You're in a pit and you're just singing praises to the Lord. - [Jennifer] So even in impossible situations, we can still use our whole self to worship God. In Psalm 100, I'm just gonna read the whole thing, cause it's only five verses but it says, "Make a joyful noise to the Lord, all the earth. "Serve the Lord with gladness, "come into His presence with singing, "know that the Lord, He is God. "It is He who made us and we are His. "We are His people and the sheep of His pasture. "Enter His gates with thanksgiving "and His courts with praise, "give thanks to Him, bless His name, "for the Lord is good, His steadfast love endures forever "and His faithfulness to all generations." - [Aaron] And that's why we can praise Him and worship Him because He is faithful. - [Jennifer] He is good. - [Aaron] Yeah, the Bible tells us that when we are faithless, like when we cannot do it, He remains faithful because He cannot deny Himself. And that encourages my faith. Because He is so good and consistent and steadfast and perfect and knows all and He's capable. And I can trust him. - [Jennifer] Sometimes, you know, sometimes when I'm at the end of myself and I don't know what to do, sometimes I'll just sing a prayer. So instead of just praying, I'll seeing what I wanna pray and it's really, really encouraging. Little encouragement for you guys. Some other songs that have really just inspired and touched our hearts lately is, "There's Another In The Fire." I don't know - [Aaron] That was really good - [Jennifer] I don't know if these are the titles of the songs or not. I probably should have looked that up, but it says "There's Another In The Fire" standing next to me and it's just like reminding us that, He is with us. "Here again" Is really good. "Give me faith" Do you have any other that-- - [Aaron] Yeah, the Shane and Shane song, "Though You Slay Me." - [Jennifer] That one's really good too. - [Aaron] Which just talks about being just the lowest, but even there, I will sing your praise. Even there, I will worship your name. Another thing that's important for believers and we talked about, I think we talked about this the most out of anything, is, and when you're in trials, when you're in hardships and when in you're in good things, is being in the presence of the Body of Christ, being with other believers, not secluding, not retreating. - [Jennifer] That's what the flesh will tell you is good. The flesh will tell you, you just need to be by yourself right now. You just need to walk away from everything and everyone because it's hard, right? - [Aaron] Yeah, Romans 18:1 says I think it says, "A fool separates himself "and goes out against all sound judgment, right? This idea is like going to be alone, in the midst of something hard, is way more dangerous and foolish than being around people who can remind you of who you are. Remind you of the truth and the Word of God, remind you to sing-- - [Jennifer] Who God is. - [Aaron] Remind you who God is. To hold you when you feel like you're falling. - [Jennifer] To comfort you, to pray with you, to sing with you, to... - [Aaron] We are all members of one body. And that is exactly what the enemy wants, is separation. And saying, you know what? Go hide, that's way better for you. You won't have to be accountable to anyone, no one wants to know what's going on, just hide it. And sadly, this could be done while you're around people. So the idea is not just be in the presence of people, but you be present as well. Like, reveal, I'm broken, I have no idea how to get out of where I'm at. I have no idea how I got where I'm at. I need help and prayer and encouragement And just being more afraid of the darkness than the light. because that's what it is, when we are walking through these things, we wanna retreat into the darkness. Rather than being in the light. And so I would say run to the light, so that the darkness becomes light, so that everything is seen visible and becomes light as the Word tells us. - [Jennifer] Yeah, and a part of being in the presence of his people is remembering that there are other people suffering as well. So even amidst your own hardship and your own trial and your own suffering, there's other people who are also going through their own things and-- - [Aaron] And maybe heavier things or harder things. Which is perspective, right? - [Jennifer] Or maybe not, and that's okay too. My point is that it's so important for us as believers and as a part of one body, we lift each other up. And so it's this, it's saying, even though I'm going through something really hard right now, I see where you're at, and I'm gonna pray for you and I'm gonna encourage you and I'm gonna do everything that I would want, someone to do with me, because that is what the body is supposed to do. - [Aaron] Yeah isn't that talk about that, that we use it for marriage, the core to three strands. But the idea is a person walking alone falls and has no one to help them. Two people may even be stronger and can fight off, you know, a robber, right? But three people, like it just talks about the strength in numbers. It's wisdom, it's wise to walk with brothers and sisters and we're commanded to do it. We're to be with each other. And to not forsake the gathering of the fellowship as some have done in a rebellious manner. Like we were to come together. That doesn't mean maybe you have a day off. That doesn't mean surround yourself 24/7, it means, don't avoid it. Run to your brothers and sisters, that open up your heart, say, "This is where I'm at, This is how I'm thinking." And don't be afraid to be honest. - [Jennifer] Don't be afraid to cry in front of them. - [Aaron] Don't be afraid to say I'm struggling in my beliefs, my faith. - [Jennifer] Or I'm wrestling with some doubt. - [Aaron] Yeah. And let them preach to you. Let them encourage you, let them remind you of the truth. Because that's what loving people do. - [Jennifer] So good. Okay, so we've talked a lot about how we can respond as a couple to hardships when we face those things. You know, on a practical of super basic, practical encouragement would be, be there for your spouse. I mean, we have the ability to text one another, to talk to one another, to share scriptures with one another, to pray for one another. All these things that Aaron and I have been talking about, it's for each other. And don't forget that because when you're in marriage, there's something so powerful and so beautiful about the way that God's given you, someone to truly not, like you're not walking alone. They're going through it just as much as you are. And we can be there for each other to lift each other up. - [Aaron] And pretending the thing is not happening, won't help. So being aware, say, "Hey, okay, we're in this season, "let's be in open communication more than usual." - [Jennifer] Yeah, more than usual. Also giving each other, having patience for one another and giving each other grace in the wrestling because sometimes, if one of the, you know, spouse is being strong and confident in the Lord, but the other one's wrestling and unsure and unstable, it's so affirming for the stronger spouse to come alongside the other one and say, "It's okay, I'm here for you, "I'm praying for you." - [Aaron] We're in this together. - [Jennifer] Reminding them of Scripture. I can't tell you how much Aaron, you've encouraged me recently in doing that. - [Aaron] And you've done the same for me. I know it's been different levels, but like we have, we've been in this together. It's not just you and your thing, it's ours. - [Jennifer] Yeah. And we need to do that for each other. Okay, so now we're gonna move on to, okay, so when we respond to hardship, what can we hope for if we walk faithfully through them together? - [Aaron] Yeah, and what we've experienced, as we've been trying our earthly best to do these things, is we've experienced a lot more talking. - [Jennifer] Yeah, better communication. - [Aaron] We've been communicating a lot more with each other more than usual. Like when things are kind of just going, we kinda forget to talk sometimes. It's kinda life. - [Jennifer] Yeah. - [Aaron] But we've been talking a lot. We've been talking with the kids a lot. We've been talking with each other a lot. We've been talking with friends a lot. So a lot more openness and communication has been occurring. - [Jennifer] I'd say it makes us stronger as a married couple cause we look at the last trial and go, "Well, we already made it through that one "so we can make it through this one." - [Aaron] Or if we feel like we can't make it through this one and we remind each other like, "Well, we did make it through the last one, "so let's keep going." - [Jennifer] Yeah. - [Aaron] Let's not give up. - [Jennifer] Yeah. - [Aaron] It's made us appreciate each other a lot more. It's also, I just wanna say, it's made me appreciate God's word, and God and like, how I've been leaning on him so much. On this each other thing, I wanna just step back one thing, and you were talking about the grace for each other and being with each other. Remembering also that we are not each other's Savior. - [Jennifer] Yeah. - [Aaron] Remembering that we are both weak, and we are still in the flesh and we're not perfect, and that your spouse isn't the one that can ultimately fix all of the issues. Now, they may be the one responsible for it, and that means they could repent and they could work on it. But again, don't look to your spouse as the solution. Look to them as a partner in the problem. Like we're working together and look to God as the solution. And our faith in Him and His word, just as an encouragement of, because I can look at this and be like, "Jennifer, if you were just stronger, this would be easier." But that's not the reality, like the reality is, is we're gonna be weak. And you can look at me and say like, "If you would just do this, this and this." And there might be some truth in some of these things, but we are people and it's gonna be hard. And so we trust in the one who is perfect. We trust in the one who has saved us, the one who's building a kingdom, you know. So I just wanted to go back to that each other part. - [Jennifer] No, it's really good. I think it's important that we kind of sit here for a second cause I'm just thinking too when God allows us to go through hardship, we also have to remember that we have an enemy, and the enemy will try and use whatever he can to make us divisive against each other, to make us feel, - [Aaron] brothers and sisters in Christ. - [Jennifer] To make us feel apart, to make us feel against-- - [Aaron] Alone. - [Jennifer] Or alone, or that were each other's enemies. And I think that's across the board. It happens with every marriage that this comes, I kinda had this picture of, Aaron we we're both in our bedroom and you were over by the closet and I was trying to explain this to you, but it felt like if you can imagine tendons or sinews between us, being stretched out and pulled almost like there was grips on both of us just pulling us apart and the pain of, you can imagine of that happening in someone's body, but trying to separate us. So we always say in marriage, we're one. But in this picture, I saw us being ripped apart into two and I think that if we allow division, amidst hardship to take hold of us, that is what we will feel, that is the pain that we will experience. And I'm so glad that I was able to share that with you cause I was letting you know like what I was-- - [Aaron] And you communicated with me. - [Jennifer] Yeah. And I think when we recognize that happening in our marriage, it's also so important for us to come back and like remind each other that we're physically present. So me just putting my hand on your shoulder or you holding my hands during prayer, or-- - [Aaron] Which does not feel easy . - [Jennifer] It is not easy to be close and intimate and loving during a time that feels so burdensome and so hard, and yet it's the thing that we need to do. And so I hope that encourages someone listening right now. - [Aaron] another thing that we can hope for and realize in the middle of our trials and tribulations is, we can be humble by it. Because the Bible tells us that God brings low the proud, but he exalts the humble. And the Lord loves humbleness, right? A humble and a broken and contrite spirit, the Lord will not, you know, distain, he wants that in us, he wants humbleness. And so if we just look at hardship or people coming against us, or things that are hurtful or painful in our life as just, oh, I don't deserve any of this, I shouldn't have any of this or this is just against me and like I just want this out of my life so I can move on. Then we're being prideful, because to be honest, all of us are being sanctified. The Bible tells us that He disciplines those He loves. If we're his children, some things in our life, we have to kinda say, like, "Lord is this discipline? "Is there anything in me that you're trying "to draw out of me? "That you want to cut out of me?" Cause to be honest those are prayers that we ask, "Lord change me, make me more like you. "Is there anything in me that you need to take away?" And sometimes the only way that thing's gonna come out is through trial. Through tribulation, through hardship. - [Jennifer] Well, because we get pressed against and then what comes out of us, right? And so, yeah, I think that's really important to ask God, "What do you want us to learn from this?" - [Jennifer] Yeah, so don't just take every trial, every, you know, thing that comes against you as like, Oh, you know, this is external and has nothing to do with me and I don't deserve this but humbly ask the Lord, "What do you want me to learn here? "What is there in me that you want me to repent of? "Is there something in me that this is highlighting "that you want me to grow in?" - [Jennifer] It reminds me in the Psalms when David says, "Search me, search my heart Oh God," - [Aaron] "And see if there be any wicked way in me." Because that's the thing is we still have a fleshly nature, we still have wickedness inside of us that the Lord's drawing out of us. He's clearing the rooms, just like Jesus made a whip and went into the temple and flip tables and kicked, and He said, "This will be a house of prayer." We are his temple. So when we invite Jesus in, we might have some doors shut, and he wants to kick 'em in, and he wants to clear 'em out - [Jennifer] Gimme that. - [Aaron] And he wants it for himself. And so I think, in these trials and these seasons, we should say, "Okay Lord, I'm gonna get on my knees. "I'm gonna say, here I am. "What is there that I need to repent of? "What is there that you're showing me, "you want changed and me to mature in "and you want me to let go of and release?" We gotta be humble. And we can know that God's gonna do that. He wants us to be humble. We should want to be humble. Because I don't wanna be brought low and destroyed. And it says, "Pride comes before destruction." It even talks about how great that destruction will be if we remain in our pride. So I'd rather be humbled and be lowly in spirit and say, "Okay Lord, like I'm here for you. "I trust you, I believe in you, I love you. "I know you got, "you want me to learn grow and you wanna sanctify me." And He uses many different means to do that in our lives. And we should be okay with that. - [Jennifer] So, there's also some scriptures, we wanted to share with you guys of things that we can hope for, as we faithfully walk through hardships together. So we're just gonna kind of read 'em or if there's anything you wanna share about 'em Aaron you can. But, the first one is 1 Peter 5:10. And it says, "And after you have suffered a little while, "the God of all grace, "who has called you to his eternal glory in Christ "will himself restore, confirm, "strengthen and establish you." - [Aaron] Yeah. And what's good about that is we wanna look at that as like right now. Okay, I'm gonna suffer a little bit and he's gonna restore me confirming certain things. Sometimes that happens. - [Jennifer] Yeah, a little bit, like, just a little bit. - [Aaron] But-- - [Jennifer] But just a little bit. - [Aaron] This is an internal perspective, right? - [Jennifer] Sometimes the little bit, is a long time. - [Aaron] So yeah, there's another scripture that says, "I count my current sufferings as nothing to be compared "with the coming glory." I believe it's in Romans. And that's the idea it's like we have an eternal glory that we're waiting for. This earth, it's gonna be judged, it's gonna be burned with fire, like all the elements, like , like what we see now isn't our permanent home. We're ambassadors, we're temporary residents, waiting for our home with the Lord. So he may restore and confirm and strengthen currently, but really, eternally we are that. - [Jennifer] Like for sure - [Aaron] For sure. - [Jennifer] That's the hope. - [Aaron] Right, yeah, Romans 5:1-5 says, "Therefore since we have been justified by faith, "we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ." There's that peace again. It's eternal peace, - [Jennifer] His peace. - [Aaron] It's His peace, and it's in Jesus. Through Him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God. Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, there's that word endurance or steadfastness again. And endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us. So right there we have this hope with that's in Jesus Christ we have His peace, faith, spirit, endurance, all these things are all wrapped up in our abiding in him. And it's amazing. - [Jennifer] Another good one from Romans is Romans 8:28. Before I read it, I just wanna encourage you guys to go back and read all of Romans 8, it's just good. - [Aaron] Yeah, all of Romans 8 is powerful. - [Jennifer] But, Romans 8:28 says, "And we know that for those who love God, "all things work together for good, "for those who are called according to His purpose." - [Aaron] And what's interesting is it says, "For good." Not for my good, but for the ultimate good of what God's doing. - [Jennifer] Whatever His purposes are, cause, you know, He's got it all intertwined with other people and, you know, he's got a purpose and a reason for all of it. - [Aaron] Yeah, and our current suffering could be for the sake of a lost soul. And I wouldn't want to... I wouldn't want to negate that ministry that God has in my life. We know people that go through much, much harder things than we've gone through. And they've praised God through every bit of it, and their heart has always been those that we come in contact with, because of this hardship, we pray that they come to know the Lord. And so that could be it, like the good like God's good. And He has a purpose in what's going on. - [Jennifer] Another one is James 1:12, it says, "Blessed is the man who remains steadfast under trial "for when he has stood the test he will receive "the crown of life which God has promised "to those who love Him." - [Aaron] Yeah I love God, right? And I wanna remain steadfast in His Word. Under trial and in good times. You know, so that's my heart. So we just wanna end with some more scripture, to encourage you all, times may be hard, times may be chaotic and crazy. We don't know what tomorrow brings, we can't control it. - [Jennifer] You guys may be facing hardship like currently right now, or you may face it in the future, but Christ says that we will face tribulation and every marriage is bound to. And you know what? Marriage itself is hard, walking with another human being is hard, and so our hope is just that this episode would remind you of God's truth and help you feel more prepared to go through those hard things, knowing what to do. - [Aaron] Yeah, and for the believer, that's what exactly is that word through. That's what it is, you're going through it. And Christ is going through it with you, like that song, There's Another In The Fire, standing next to me. There's another in the water holding back the sea. And that's what we're doing. So we wanna end on this bit of scripture in 1 Peter 4:12, it says, "Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery trial "when it comes upon you to test you. "As though something strange were happening to you. "But rejoice in so far as you share Christ's sufferings "that you may also rejoice and be glad "when his glory is revealed. "If you're insulted for the name of Christ, you are blessed, "because the spirit of glory and of God rests upon you. "But let none of you suffer as a murderer "or a thief or an evildoer or as a meddler. "Yet, if anyone suffers as a Christian, "let him not be ashamed, "but let him glorify God and that name. "For it is the time for judgment to begin "at the household of God. "And if it begins with us, "what will be the outcome for those "who do not obey the gospel? "And if the righteous is scarcely saved, "what will become of the ungodly and the sinner? "Therefore, let those who suffer according to God's will "entrust their souls to a faithful Creator "while doing good." So I just wanna encourage us with a Scripture is, if we're gonna suffer in trial or persecution or tribulation, let it be for Christ's sake. Not because we are fools, not because we are breaking the law and doing wicked things, let it be for Christ's sake, and that alone and it says we should rejoice in that, because we're participating in the suffering of Christ . And with the others around the world who are suffering for Christ's sake, we get to rejoice with them. And the most powerful part of this, is let those who suffer according to God's will entrust their souls to a faithful Creator while doing good. So we can continue doing good while suffering because we have a faithful Creator. He is faithful. And man, I can trust that, I can trust him. I may not be able to trust my heart, I may not able to trust my own good works, but I can trust Him. - [Jennifer] Well, we just hope that this encourages you guys today. If you know someone that is going through hardship right now, especially in marriage, would you just share this episode with them, so that they can also be encouraged by it? - [Aaron] Yeah. And if you know someone that is going through something, not only, I mean, you could send them this episode like Jennifer said, but be praying for them. Reach out to them. - [Jennifer] send them scriptures even-- - [Aaron] Let them know you're available, yeah. - [Jennifer] Just a text, yeah. - [Aaron] Yes, send them scriptures. Sorry, I cut you off, but, yes, be available, draw them into the light with you, say, "Hey, I'm here, like, don't do this alone." Like, let me walk with you. And be bold in that way, for the sake of your brother and sister in Christ. If you know someone that doesn't believe, reach out to them, and ask the Lord to give you an opportunity and the words to speak to present the gospel. - [Jennifer] To hope. - [Aaron] Yeah, hope. - [Jennifer] To present hope to them. - [Aaron] Yeah, cause there's a lot of people that are without hope right now. And more so than ever. - [Jennifer] I mean, we started off this episode by sharing just all the headlines in the last couple months of just how hard life is and I don't know if it's gonna lighten up, I don't know if it's gonna get worse, I don't know what's to come, but... - [Aaron] The Lord does. - [Jennifer] The Lord knows every detail. He knows every detail of every hardship that we're ever gonna face. And He asks us to walk faithfully through them. - [Aaron] So we love you all. And we just wanna remind you, abide in Christ, stand firm in His Word, because it's the only thing solid in this world. It is solid, it's everlasting, it's forever, it's living. And it contains the words of life, I think about Peter, Jesus turned to all of His disciples, and many of them left Him cause He said some hard things. And He turned to the 12, and He said, "Are you also gonna leave?" And Peter said, "Where am I gonna go?" You have the words of life, right? And that's how I feel. I may not know what I'm doing, but I know I'm not leaving, because he has the words of life. And so dig in, dig into the Word of God. Don't neglect it. Feed on it, it is our sustenance. It's our life, it's our water, it's our food, it's everything. So as usual, we end in prayer, and so would you pray with us? - [Jennifer] Dear Lord, going through hardship and trials is painful on so many levels. It's complicated, and yet you know, every detail of every one of our situations and you know the outcome. We pray that your will is done. Even though we would rather not experience challenges in this life, we know we will. We pray we would be faithful as we go through them. We pray we would remain steadfast in your word and worship you. Help us to be strong and to be courageous. Help us to remind each other to look to you and to trust in you. May your purpose and may your will be done in these hardships. May these refine us and draw us closer to you, in Jesus name, Amen. - [Aaron] Amen. We love you all. And we pray that this blessed you and yeah, 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. Connect With UsInstagram | @marriageaftergodInstagram | @unveiledwifeInstagram | @husbandrevolutionCheck out our marriage resources!SponsorsGet our new book The Marriage Gift - 365 prayers for your marriage!Our Sponsors:* Check out Mr. Pen and use my code MAG10 for a great deal: https://mrpen.comSupport this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/marriage-after-god-biblical-advice-practical-tips-and-inspiring-/donations