Show notes
Join us as we delve into the profound impact of humility on relationships, particularly in marriage. We explore the contrasts between pride and humility, the benefits of walking humbly, and share personal anecdotes and insights. Show Notes: Humility and If you have been blessed by our free marriage after god content wed love to invite you to join our patron team. Please visit marriageaftergod.com/patronJoin us as we delve into the profound impact of humility on relationships, particularly in marriage. We explore the contrasts between pride and humility, the benefits of walking humbly, and share personal anecdotes and insights.Show Notes:Humility and Justice:Reflection on the importance of justice, kindness, and humility.Introduction to the "growth spurt" challenge: investing intellectually in oneself and relationships.The Safety of Humility:Discussion on the safety that humility brings to relationships.Personal examples of how humility has fostered a sense of trust and understanding in our marriage.The Draw of Humility:Exploration of how humility attracts people, especially spouses.Reflection on the effects of pride in our relationship and the importance of forgiveness.Apologies and Humor:A candid conversation about apologies without "buts" and the power of genuine remorse.A light-hearted moment with a funny story involving our children.Humility vs. Humiliation:Differentiating between humility and humiliation.Thoughts on how life's circumstances can force humility and the connection between admitting failure and humbleness.Conclusion: We wrap up the episode with a challenge to the listeners to embrace humility in their relationships. We encourage taking baby steps, sharing thoughts and feelings, and lifting each other up.---Transcript:Jennifer Smith:Hey, we're Aaron and Jennifer Smith, your host of the Marriage After God Podcast.Aaron Smith:"With what shall I come before the Lord and bow myself before God on high? Shall I come before him with burnt offerings, with calves a year old? Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, with tens of thousands of rivers of oil? Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body, for the sin of my soul? He has told you, O man, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you but to do justice and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?" Micah 6:6-8.Jennifer Smith:Today's episode is brought to you by our faithful patron team who has chosen to help financially support this show monthly. And we just wanted to take some time to give a shout-out to the most recent patrons, Rasheda A., Angela B., D. Hartley, and Michelle S. Thank you guys so much for choosing to partner with us in blessing tens of thousands of couples with free daily prayer emails and this weekly podcast. We really appreciate you.Aaron Smith:If you've been blessed by this free Marriage After God content, we'd love to invite you to join our patron team. Please visit marriageaftergod.com/patron.So, last episode, we announced a giveaway that we were doing to celebrate my 39th birthday, and all you had to do to enter the giveaway was be a part of the patron team. And we're announcing the winner right now. I already sent the books out, actually, but the winner is, for the giveaway, Gina Burelli. Gina, thank you so much for being a part of the faithful patron team. We pray you enjoy the books, and let us know what you think.Jennifer Smith:Well, welcome back to another episode.Aaron Smith:Episode 14-Jennifer Smith:Another day of listening to us.Aaron Smith:... of the year.Jennifer Smith:We weren't ...Aaron Smith:I think people missed us.Jennifer Smith:I was going to say, we weren't here last week. We took a little mini spring break. Well, we took a spring break, and then we took a-Aaron Smith:Took a little spring break when we got back from our spring break because we spent some time in Southern California seeing grandparents.Jennifer Smith:That was super fun.Aaron Smith:It was. It was awesome.Jennifer Smith:It was super fun. The weather was absolutely perfect. It hovered between 65 and 70, even at the beach. It was really great.Aaron Smith:The weather was perfect. We had a couple of days of rain, but that was also really nice.Jennifer Smith:It was only two.Aaron Smith:It was two days, yeah.Jennifer Smith:Which everyone down there was like, "Oh, you guys just missed almost a month of rain."Aaron Smith:Months of rain.Jennifer Smith:Yeah. And because it had rained, everything was green, all the mountains and the hillsides. It was beautiful.Aaron Smith:When did we move away from there? I was 23-Jennifer Smith:10 years ago.Aaron Smith:... 25 years old. I don't think I've ever seen it that green in the whole time I've lived there.Jennifer Smith:It was so beautiful.Aaron Smith:Going to California, just as a little note for all you all that are listening, when we had one kid, we would sometimes fly.Jennifer Smith:Even with two, we did.Aaron Smith:And with two, we did. But now we pretty much drive exclusively. We got our van, and we load it up, and we put snacks and lunches, and we drive-Jennifer Smith:All day.Aaron Smith:... the whole family because there's seven of us. And that's not cheap to fly anymore because we need to pay for a ticket for every single one. But also, I actually just love driving.Jennifer Smith:I was going to say. When you said, "We drive down there," I was going to say, "No, Aaron drives."Aaron Smith:I drive-Jennifer Smith:I sleep.Aaron Smith:... 13 hours, and Jennifer drives an hour.Jennifer Smith:Maybe one.Aaron Smith:And I love it.Jennifer Smith:I do too.Aaron Smith:It's great.Jennifer Smith:Hey, we're on the same team here.Aaron Smith:And you genuinely sleep the whole time. I keep looking over, and you're like ... I think you're going to be reading a book-Jennifer Smith:I'm a car baby.Aaron Smith:... or on the phone, but you're sleeping.Jennifer Smith:I'm a car baby. I like it.Aaron Smith:Also, what's also cool is we had to ... Because we have our two little kitties, we brought them with us.Jennifer Smith:They did great.Aaron Smith:We were concerned about them. We're like, "Oh, how are they going to handle 15 hours of driving?" They loved the car. They're in the windshield, the windows, on the headrests with the kids. They owned the car.Jennifer Smith:I think the kids liked having them in the car, too, because it gave them something to do and focus on.Aaron Smith:It was great.Jennifer Smith:That was good.Aaron Smith:Weather was awesome, 65, 70, like you said, and ...Jennifer Smith:We pretty much stayed in grandma's pool or at the beach-Aaron Smith:The whole time.Jennifer Smith:... the whole time, which usually when we plan a trip to go to California, I get-Aaron Smith:We try to pack in other things.Jennifer Smith:Well, I get really excited about the opportunity of, yeah, different cities to go check out or museums or even amusement parks. I love [inaudible 00:04:26].Aaron Smith:But this time we're driving down, I said, "Can we not do anything? Can we just the beach and pool? Nothing else."Jennifer Smith:Which is basically what we did, except that my dad did get us tickets to opening day at the Angel Stadium, so we did do that. That was awesome.Aaron Smith:Which was pretty awesome. The kids have never been to a baseball game like that before.Jennifer Smith:Oh, it was amazing.Aaron Smith:Major league, yeah.Jennifer Smith:Yeah.Aaron Smith:Actually, I haven't either. I've been to Angel Stadium.Jennifer Smith:You haven't?Aaron Smith:No, I had been to Angel Stadium several times, but not for baseball games.Jennifer Smith:So, I grew up going, and I remember the Blue Angels would fly overhead in the beginning. And I warned the kids. I'm like, "It's opening day. They're probably going to be there," And sure enough.Aaron Smith:It was so loud.Jennifer Smith:It was so awesome. It was so cool.Aaron Smith:Edie was plugging her ears, and she's like, "It's so loud."Jennifer Smith:That was cool. And then we saw a pickle in the first or second inning.Aaron Smith:This wasn't a quick pickle. This was a really good one. It went back and forth, back and forthJennifer Smith:There was like four people involved. It was great.Aaron Smith:The players kept replacing each other as they were passing the ball back and forth, getting closer and closer and closer.Jennifer Smith:And they got [inaudible 00:05:24].Aaron Smith:That was really good. And then we saw a double home run pretty quick too.Jennifer Smith:All to say it was amazing. The baseball game was amazing. The beach was great. Family time was just special.Aaron Smith:It was needed to get out of the still snow that we have.Jennifer Smith:I know. All my friends warned me, "Don't come back yet."Aaron Smith:It's literally snowing right now.Jennifer Smith:Still.Aaron Smith:So, did something special happen this week?Jennifer Smith:Well, yes, which is another reason why we took a little mini break from the podcast because we were in the-Aaron Smith:Middle of something.Jennifer Smith:We were in the middle of something. Right when we got back from our trip, we got our book back that we had mentioned to you guys that we've been working on-Aaron Smith:Our new book.Jennifer Smith:... our newest book so that we can finalize edits and wrap that up. So, we're really excited about this. So, we wanted to share it with you guys.The title of the book is The Marriage Gift: 365 Prayers for Our Marriage - A daily devotional journey to inspire, encourage, and transform us in our prayer life. So, all week we worked really hard on sifting through that and just-Aaron Smith:You worked really hard.Jennifer Smith:I did.Aaron Smith:You did all the-Jennifer Smith:But I like that-Aaron Smith:You did all the heavy lifting.Jennifer Smith:... meticulous, detail-oriented stuff. But we've loved working with Zondervan and just-Aaron Smith:This new book.Jennifer Smith:I don't know. We're just excited.Aaron Smith:Can we tell him when it comes out?Jennifer Smith:Yeah.Aaron Smith:Because I think we know. I think it's coming out in October, so be on the lookout for it. It comes out in October. We're really excited about it, and we hope you all are going to be incredibly blessed by it.Jennifer Smith:Yeah, our hope for it is just we wanted to create a resource that would inspire couples to build a strong habit of prayer individually, but also together. Gosh, I can't wait.Aaron Smith:Yeah, it's going to be awesome.Which this kind of goes along this title, this strong habit of prayer, which it's an act of humility to pray for your spouse. It's one way of doing it and to pray for yourself and to go to God and say, "I need you." That's a humble thing to do.We're talking about humility, humbleness. That's the topic for today. So, real quick, what do you immediately feel when you hear the word humility?Jennifer Smith:I think of the word meekness, which I looked up after that word came to my mind because I wanted to make sure, am I on the right track here. But it means softness of temper, gentleness, mildness, and then another definition used the word submissiveness.Aaron Smith:So, it's like a yielding. It's like a not usurping or trying to be above.Jennifer Smith:Yeah, more giving of yourself than taking in a way with your attitude.Aaron Smith:That's good. Meekness.Jennifer Smith:What about you?Aaron Smith:Well, when I think about this, the first word that comes to mind is humiliation, which I know they're closely related, not quite the same thing, but I don't know why I think of that. I think of this idea of being embarrassed or something happening that makes you feel small or weak, which I know that what we're talking about today is not that idea, but it's almost that idea if you think about it.It seems like there's many things in life that end up humbling us. They're also the things that embarrass us like when we're trying to succeed at something, but we fail, and it humbles us, or we think this thing's going to come through. Like James is like, "Don't say tomorrow we're going to go do such and such and go do this business and that."Jennifer Smith:[inaudible 00:08:52].Aaron Smith:It's like, you don't know what tomorrow's going to [inaudible 00:08:54].Jennifer Smith:Yeah.Aaron Smith:I feel like often we are forced into humility by our actions or circumstances that like, oh, I had no control over that. That's what I think about. So, when you go down to it, admitting sin or failure is a humility, a humbleness, and it's humiliating.Jennifer Smith:Yeah, that's true.Aaron Smith:Right?Jennifer Smith:Yeah.Aaron Smith:So, that's what I think about when I think about humility.Jennifer Smith:Cool. Well, the definition, if you just Google it, humble. Well, yeah. Hold on, let me go back. Humility will just tell you it's the quality of being humble, so I'm just going to read the definition for being humble. Modesty in behavior, attitude, or spirit showing differential or submissive respect, low in rank, quality, or station, and unpretentious or lowly.Aaron Smith:Yeah, and I would add to that because being low in rank, you are a humble person, not necessarily by character, but by just position. Like, oh, that person's in this status, and I'm in this status. But what we're talking about is, and what the Bible will talk about is placing yourself or recognizing yourself in your true position or putting yourself beneath. When we think about when we're told to love one another, or when we're told to consider others as more important than yourselves, that's this idea of, well, not that you're not important, but the act of love as in I'm not going to demand anything. I'm going to put myself beneath right now.Jennifer Smith:Yeah, it's this modesty in behavior or the attitude. It's like your perception of who you are. Not that you're not qualified or capable or can have and operate in a high position of sorts, but that you consider yourself modestly.Aaron Smith:You put others above you. You esteem others higher than yourself, which leads me to another question, which is not in the notes. It makes me think about this question of, is that a easy thing, humility, humbleness?Jennifer Smith:I don't think it comes natural. I don't think it's a natural thing.Aaron Smith:That's good. Yeah, is it a natural thing?Jennifer Smith:Yeah.Aaron Smith:Like, oh, I'm just a humble ... The joke is like, I'm the humblest person. The moment you say it, you're no longer humble because you're boasting about your humility.Jennifer Smith:I would say what's more natural is if you think of ego-Aaron Smith:Yeah, self.Jennifer Smith:... and use self-awareness. I think those things can come more naturally, and so we, especially entering into adulthood, start to learn what it means to be humble usually through experience. You're like, "Oh, that was hard."Aaron Smith:I would say the opposite comes this idea of self-esteem or self-preservation, or our self-image of where jealousy comes from. We compare. We're like, "Oh, why don't I have what they have," thinking that we deserve it or something, which is the opposite of humility of like, "Oh, I'm glad they have it. I don't know if I'm even ready for that thing or can handle that thing or should have that," whatever it is. Yeah, I think that's the more natural position for us.Jennifer Smith:So, what's the purpose of humi…
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