Marriage After God

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How A Wife Can Encourage Her Husband To Lead Spiritually Feb 04, 2020

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This is a cool topic that actually came from some wives in the MAG community online who asked us to specifically talk about this. It is so encouraging to know that there are wives out there who are actively trying to understand how to help their husbands This is a cool topic that actually came from some wives in the MAG community online who asked us to specifically talk about this. It is so encouraging to know that there are wives out there who are actively trying to understand how to help their husbands lead their home.What we believe about spiritual leadership is found in scripture.Ephesians 5:23-25 “For the husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior.”1 Corinthians 11:3 “But I want you to understand that the head of every man is Christ, the head of a wife is her husband, and the head of Christ is God.”PrayerDear Lord,Thank You for the gift of marriage. Thank you for the opportunity to consider these things and how we can mature as a couple. We pray we would walk in righteousness, gentleness and self-control. We pray we would be people who see others through the lens of compassion. Help us to be thoughtful in our responses to each other. Help us to be respectful in our conduct. We pray our interactions as a married couple would be a testimony of your power and authority in our lives. May your light shine brightly in us as we direct each other back toward you.In Jesus’ name, amen!Read The Transcript- Hey, we're Aaron and Jennifer Smith with Marriage After God.- Helping you cultivate an extraordinary marriage.- And today we're gonna share how a wife can encourage her husband to lead spiritually. Welcome to the Marriage After God podcast where we believe that marriage was meant for more than just happily ever after.- I'm Jennifer, also known as Unveiled Wife.- And I'm Aaron, also known as Husband Revolution.- We have been married for over a decade.- And so far, we have four young children.- We have been doing marriage ministry online for over seven years through blogging and social media.- With the desire to inspire couples to keep God at the center of their marriage. Encouraging them to walk in faith every day.- We believe that Christian marriage should be an extraordinary one. Full of life.- Love.- And power.- That can only be found by chasing after God.- Together.- Thank you for joining us on this journey as we chase boldly after God's will for our life together.- This is Marriage After God.- Hey guys, thanks for joining us on a new episode of the Marriage After God podcast. We're in season three and- It's so exciting.- I know. And I hope you've been enjoying this new season. We've been doing some fun posts. We've been doing some devotional style marriage encouragements and just, we're trying to make it a little bit more dynamic.- Dynamic, ah that's what I was gonna say.- A little bit more mixed content. I hope you're enjoying it. If you are, let us know on Instagram. Send us a message. Let us know what you think of the show. Also, we always want to encourage you, if you love an episode, if this is a particular episode that has blessed you, would you just take a screen shot of wherever you're listening to it at and post it in Instagram and tag, "Marriage After God." We love seeing those. We love sharing those on our own pages and it gets the word out. Let's other people know about it.- Okay, so I have to share with them. Knowing that we were going to be recording podcasts, I stopped by the local coffee shop. Shout out to Dutch Brothers.- Yeah.- They're really good. They're just one of those drive through coffee shops, but sometimes the people come outside to take your order and you know, I'm like, well into my third trimester. Very noticeably pregnant and I rolled my window down and he goes, "so what are we having?" And I said, "A girl!" He was--- When you told me this, I thought you were kidding.- No.- I was like, oh, you got him good.- He was so embarrassed and he was like, "even if I ever assumed I would never say anything." And I go, "oh no, it's not your fault. "I just, I just gotten done on an appointment "and it's on my mind all the time "and people are always asking me "if we know what we're having." And we were just laughing about it.- That's really funny. And what's funny is you weren't kidding with him. You thought he asked you.- I thought it was a legitimate question, but he was wondering what kind of coffee we would take today. So that's funny. But I did wanna just give a little update on the pregnancy. You know where I'm at, it's been really good and hard at the same time.- It's been really hard.- Well, no complications.- This has been hard when--- We shared about this already. No complications, but just, you know when you're chasing around four other little kids and your body is physically limited, it gets hard and uncomfortable at times. And so I've been feeling just a lack of energy lately.- Mmh hmm.- I've been feeling slower and being confronted with my, just physical limitations and that's hard for my mind to wrestle with 'cause my mind wants to go, go, go and do more and I can't.- A tip for husbands out there. If your wife is pregnant in her third trimester, just massage her feet and legs every night.- Yeah.- That helps a lot.- It's wonderful.- It's kind been where we've been at.- But all is good and I'm really exciting for the nesting phase to hit because I know that that's kind of like an extra burst of God's grace for soon to be moms. It just, it comes on.- A burst of endorphins.- Yup and you just go and you clean the things that you never even look at and it feels so great. And so, I'm kind of looking around my house going, nope, that's gonna wait for--- The question will be is how long will it stay that way with our four other kids.- I know. Like the cleanliness, yeah.- Okay, we just wanna encourage you guys, everyone that's listening, we have some free downloads.- Mmh hmm.- We have two specifically, there's actually a bunch more, but the two I wanna talk about today is, "The Marriage Prayer Challenge." It's a 31 day prayer challenge where you sign up. It's completely free and we'll email you a marriage prompt, a prayer prompt and a reminder to pray every day for 31 days for your spouse. And you can go to MarriagePrayerChallenge.com and sign up for that for free and then our other free download, it's a new one. It's our "52 Date Night Ideas" ebook. We have, we came up with 52 unique date night ideas and so if you're looking to have a whole year of date ideas, just go to DateNightIdeas.com and sign up and download it for free. And those two free, well, those things, we created for you guys just to encourage you, to inspire you. So yeah, MarriagePrayerChallenge.com and DateNightIdea.com.- Cool, okay so, the topic for today is how can a wife encourage her husband to lead spiritually and when, how Aaron and I kind of set up and prepare for these podcasts episodes is we have a document that we both share and we kind of just, once we have the topic down, we'll go in every so often and add notes and look over it and share our thoughts about it. And I remember when I first went into this document, it just said the words, "honorably and gently."- I put all the notes I could come up with in there.- It was really sweet, but I just had to get that out of the gate because it was really cool to see your perspective of how, like what it takes for a wife to encourage her husband and those are two powerful words.- Yeah, to my defense, I actually did put more in there later.- I know.- I wrote down, and we'll get to some of those, but I wrote down a lot of the ways that you have encouraged me.- Yeah- Whether we've talked about it or not.- This was just the first note that I saw and I just wanted to add that because it was really cool. But this is actually a topic that came from the wives in our Marriage After God community and it was a question that kind of kept coming up in different ways and so we thought it would be fun to talk about it, discuss it.- Mmh hmm.- And encourage you listening. Both husbands and wives because marriage takes two.- Yeah and for the husbands and wives that are listening, husbands take note of the things that we talk about because even if your wife isn't encouraging you to be a spiritual leader, even if she doesn't know how to or hasn't started yet, it's important that we as men start stepping up in that role. Trusting the Lord. Chasing after Him and guiding our family closer to Him, to the word of God.- Yup.- And we do that by example.- Mmh hmm.- We do that by being faithful, trustworthy.- Yeah.- And so I just want to encourage the husbands.- I think that's really good and I think that as the husbands are listening, of course not using everything that we share as ammunition to go, "see, you should be doing this,"- Oh absolutely.- but rather, use what we share today as an encouragement to you in how you should be leading.- Yeah.- And hopefully, it inspires you both today.- Yeah and just, I always bring this up. Our pastor, Matt, our old pastor would always say, "read your own mail." So, in those scriptures when it's talking to the wife on how she should be, we don't read that and say, "see, this is how you should be."- Because you've got the whole section yourself to be reading.- Yeah, I have my own mail I need to be opening up and reading and to honest, there's enough there for each of us to be doing our thing to not have to worry about how our spouse walking those things.- Mmh hmm.- That doesn't mean we can't encourage our spouse to be like, hey, I just want to encourage you, the way you were being, that was a little disrespectful. Or, like, we can always encourage each other. We're allowed to do that. Again, honorably and gently.- Yeah.- But there's so much in our own, in the scriptures that talk directly to us, that we should be just walking in.- Yeah.- In the spirit. And you know what, when we do that, our spouse, it's so hard for our spouse to not.- Mmh hmm.- Like when we're walking the way the Bible calls us to, it's gonna be really hard for our spouse, our wife, or your husband to not desire to walk in that way as well.- Okay so, first Aaron, before we get into the encouraging aspect of encouraging our husbands to lead, there's something else that you wanted to talk about.- Well, I think it's a good point that we should bring up of just where this idea of spiritual headship, spiritual leadership comes from, 'cause there's a lot of people who will be like, no, that's not right. it should be, this way or that way, but--- It's not for Aaron and Jen.- It's not my idea. It's not like I came up with like, hey, the men should be in charge and the men should be leading. It's a biblical concept. It's the way, it's an order that God put in place and for His purpose, not for ours.- Right, so what we believe and how we operate in our family comes straight from scripture.- Right.- And that's what kind of where we wanted to start off on the foundational aspect of this.- Yeah and I want to encourage everyone that's listening that your desire should not be to live Aaron and Jennifer's way.- Mmh mmh.- Your desire should be to live the Bible's way. So you getting into the word and saying, wow, it says this. How does that play out in our marriage?- We're just big neon arrows pointing to the word of God.- Let's hope.- That's what we're here for you.- So Ephesians five, 23 through 25, the famous marriage scriptures. It says this. It says, "For the husband is the head of the wife, "even as Christ is the head of the church, "his body and himself at savior." So just real quick, it's not saying that the husband is the savior. It's saying that Christ is the savior of the church. But it's saying in that same manner, in the same manner that Christ is the head of His church, His bride, the husband is the head of the wife. And we talk about his in the Marriage After God book, that the picture of husband and wife, the symbol of marriage is to represent the gospel of Christ the Savior and His church, the bride. And so, that order of headship is specifically to highlight that, that point. So if I'm trying as the husband, if I'm trying to lead in a way that diminishes the gospel, I'm not leading well and I'm not walking in the spiritual leadership that God's called me to. So, if I'm being abusive, if I'm being vulgar, if I'm using my power that God's given me in abusive ways to manipulate, to control, that's not how Christ came. That's not how Christ loved His church. He came humbly.- Humbly, yeah.- And He came putting it, laying Himself down. That's exactly what the scripture's talking about. Giving himself up for her. And so, we don't just get to say, oh, see the Bible says I'm in charge, so now this is how I'm gonna do it. No, the Bible says I'm in charge, so I must do it His way.- His way, yeah.- The Bible's way. So, I just wanted to point out.- No, that's good.- But that's one of the first spots that we would run to in showing this headship, is the husband represents Christ. Your bride represents the church and that relationship represents how the gospel works. The redeeming nature, the love, the unity, the oneness of us being joined to Christ through His death and resurrection and so, headship comes straight from here and it also says, and when I read first Corinthians 11:3,- It says this, "But I want you to understand "that the head of every man is Christ. "The head of a wife is her husband "and the head of Christ is God."- What I love about this is it's showing this order again and saying the head of every man is Christ. It starts that way. It doesn't say that the head of every woman is man. It's not written that way. It says, "the head of every man is Christ," and what that means is my authority does not come from me being a man. It comes from Christ and Him saying this is the order I want. That, so we have to first realize that we are responsible to our own head, Christ. That the way I love and lead and disciple and walk, I'm directly accountable to Christ and He's gonna look at me and say, how did you walk in this authority I've given you? That's this is idea of derived authority. It trickles down. It's not just inside me because I'm a man.- Right. So, the second part of that is, "the head of thy wife is her husband," and this is very specific 'cause it's not that the head of every woman is a man--- Yeah, which some people believe.- Well, can you clarify that?- Yeah, it's, this is specifically talking about the relationship again between a husband and a wife that me as a man in the church, I don't get to have every woman be in submission to me,- Right.- as Ephesians five, 23 would call a wife to be in submission to her husband. Women do not need to submit to me. My wife should, but that's it. I don't get to have any sort of extra authority in any other woman's life other than my own wife. So, we don't get to use this scripture as an excuse of women are in this position and men are in this position in the church and that's not what we do.- I think this order, God showing us this order…

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Q&A Having Children, Birth Control & how many kids to have and more Jan 27, 2020

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In this episode, we answer questions for our community about having children, birth control, how many kids to have and more. Please also take a moment and download our free 52 Date Night Ideas eBook. http://datenightideas.com In this episode, we answer questions for our community about having children, birth control, how many kids to have and more.Please also take a moment and download our free 52 Date Night Ideas eBook.http://datenightideas.comPRAYERDear Lord,Thank you for the gift and blessing of children. Thank you for creating and designing us with the ability to recreate, what an incredible miracle life truly is. We thank you for the opportunity to build our family and have children. We pray for others who either have not had children yet or in awaiting their first in anticipation. May you lead them in the way you desire them to walk and to grow together. We praise you for all those who have children and we also pray for those who can’t have children for whatever the reason may be. You are sovereign and we trust you. We continue to surrender our hearts to you as you lead us in parenting and raising our children to know you. Please help us with our fears and insecurities. Please remind us every day of the purpose we have with our family. May your name be glorified.In Jesus’ name, amen!READ FULL TRANSCRIPT- [Aaron] Hey, we're Aaron and Jennifer Smith with Marriage After God.- [Jennifer] Helping you cultivate an extraordinary marriage.- [Aaron] And today we're gonna answer some of your questions about having children.- [Aaron] Welcome to the Marriage After God podcast where we believe that marriage was meant for more than just happily ever after.- [Jennifer] I'm Jennifer, also known as Unveiled Wife.- [Aaron] And I'm Aaron, also known as Husband Revolution.- [Jennifer] We have been married for over a decade.- [Aaron] And so far, we have four young children.- [Jennifer] We have been doing marriage ministry onlinae for over seven years through blogging and social media.- [Aaron] With the desire to inspire couples to keep God at the center of their marriage, encouraging them to walk in faith every day.- [Jennifer] We believe the Christian marriage should be an extraordinary one, full of life.- [Aaron] Love.- [Jennifer] And Power.- [Aaron] That can only be found by chasing after God.- [Jennifer] Together.- [Aaron] Thank you for joining us on this journey as we chased boldly after God's will for our life together.- [Jennifer] This is Marriage After God. Hey, everyone welcome back to another episode of Marriage After God. We're happy to be with you and we're really excited about this episode, and just being able to answer your questions. So doing Q&As is gonna be just an awesome new feature of the podcast where every couple of weeks, we're gonna poll our trusty community on Instagram and ask you guys what questions you have, and hopefully get some answers, well I should say opinions.- [Aaron] Yeah 'cause we have all the answers.- [Jennifer] No.- [Aaron] On everything.- [Jennifer] We don't but you know what, we're happy to explore these questions with you. And so thank you to everyone who shared these questions with us, and specifically about about having kids which we have a little bit of experience with. And so we'll dive into that in just a bit. All right, so one thing that we really are excited to share with you guys is that we have a new freebie for all of you.- [Aaron] So everyone has already did the free prayer challenge.- [Jennifer] Right.- [Aaron] They already got the date night conversations.- [Jennifer] You better, we've been sharing about those two for a while. So I begged Aaron, and I was like, "Let's do something new. "We've gotta do something new."- [Aaron] So this one is date night ideas. It's a free download. It's a list of 52 date night ideas which you could do one a week for the whole year.- [Jennifer] So is this something we're committing to? We're gonna go through all of these and do them?- [Aaron] Sure.- [Jennifer] Let's do it.- [Aaron] Let's see how it goes.- [Jennifer] I think that would be so fun.- [Aaron] So if you wanna get this freebie, this download, you just go to datenightideas.com and you can download our free ebook with 52 date night ideas.- [Jennifer] And the goal is one a week but if you can't do one week, do three a week. It's fine--- [Aaron] If you have to do one a day, you know what, you can get done faster--- [Jennifer] Have fun with it.- [Aaron] And just do it all over again.- [Jennifer] Have fun with it. No, but you can use these whenever you want and you can even sift through them and pull from it.- [Aaron] You know what would be fun is if they downloaded this and then found another couple to do a challenge with. How many they can get done in a year?- [Jennifer] Interesting, the other thing you could do is print them out and cut them out and stick them in a jar and pull them out randomly.- [Aaron] Yeah.- [Jennifer] That would be fun.- [Aaron] That's a great idea. Datenightideas.com, one word and it's free. Go get it, so the topic we're talking about, these Q&As, they're all on a similar topic. We polled our followers on Instagram and many of the questions were around children. Having children, children after marriage.- [Jennifer] So we're like let's stick them all in one episode so we can hit them all at once.- [Aaron] And so we're just gonna, some of these we're gonna wing answering. If we don't have good answers, we might say we don't know. We're not afraid to say we don't know.- [Jennifer] And just keep in mind that these are just our positions on these questions. How we would answer them based off of our experience and knowledge and--- [Aaron] And things that we know of the Bible.- [Jennifer] Things that we know of the Bible and what we believe in so--- [Aaron] Take it for what it is.- [Jennifer] Yeah and thank you guys again for asking these questions and sharing them with us and we really appreciate that. If you wanna jump on board for the next Q&A, just follow along on Instagram @marriageaftergod.- [Aaron] And you can always send us your questions in a message and we may not answer it in the message but we'll take down the question and potentially answer it in a future Q&A episode. We'd love to get those from you. So why don't we just jump right in to the first question and this is a doozy I feel like 'cause it's controversial, it could be.- [Jennifer] It could be yeah.- [Aaron] And they ask us their question and they said, our view on birth control.- [Jennifer] So what's your view on birth control?- [Aaron] That's a good question.- [Jennifer] It's a big question.- [Aaron] Okay, next question is, no I'm just kidding. Our view on birth control.- [Jennifer] Let me share my point of view first.- [Aaron] Okay, go ahead.- [Jennifer] I'll just be honest. I went on birth control 'cause that's what I heard you do when you get married. And so I went on the month before I got married and I chose to go off of it a month after we were married. So I was on it for a total of two months and I got married at 21, you were 22. And we were so excited married and so excited to--- [Aaron] Be with each other physically.- [Jennifer] Yeah, experience what sex was like and it was awful. I'm just gonna be honest. It was very painful for me and so I scrambled, you guys. I tried to figure out why is my body responding this way because it was my body that was keeping us from experiencing--- [Aaron] Physical intimacy.- [Jennifer] Healthy, physical intimacy. And so one of the things that came to my mind was something that was super obvious because over the course of that month of being married, not only were we having these issues but I gained a lot of weight. I got acne.- [Aaron] There was a lot of things going on. There was emotional stuff.- [Jennifer] Emotional ups and downs and mood swings and it was awful and I didn't feel myself. And so the obvious question then is what happened in the last few weeks that has changed me?- [Aaron] Other than getting married.- [Jennifer] I know it's a big transition.- [Aaron] I that that guy you married can make you feel crazy, I get it.- [Jennifer] But we narrowed it down to birth control and so I chose to go off of it and I haven't regretted it.- [Aaron] And it didn't fix everything but it did actually drastically change your mood.- [Jennifer] And some of the physical things that I was--- [Aaron] Some of the physical things you were experiencing.- [Jennifer] Yeah.- [Aaron] So that's an experience you had with birth control. We know tons of people use birth control. I also know that there is certain people that say birth control is a sin. I'm not gonna go that far. I'm not gonna make statements like that. What I will say is I'm not an advocate for opting to put a chemical in your body to adjust and manipulate how your body is naturally meant to work. So that's my, you're meant to do a certain thing. Your body has been created to do a certain thing and birth control is meant to stop that thing from happening, to manipulate the way your body responds to certain things and I don't think that's great. We have a lot of stuff going on this world. A lot of sickness, a lot of problems and for us to be healthy and to do something like that to our healthy body, I don't think is very wise, personally.- [Jennifer] So just to clarify for those listening, you're not saying that you won't put anything on or in your body that helps stimulate positive things to happen in your body. You're saying, you wouldn't do something that would stop the natural function of your body.- [Aaron] I'm saying I don't think it's a good idea to put something in our bodies electively to stop the natural.- [Jennifer] That alters the natural.- [Aaron] Yeah 'cause there's, again, I'm not gonna. The question is about all the other things that happen in this life, we know taking things when you're sick.- [Jennifer] I was gonna say there's supplements and there's oils and there's things that are out there.- [Aaron] Right, that's different than I'm gonna take this birth control to stop my ovulation so that we don't get pregnant. I'm not gonna do that. That's just my personal perspective on this. And to be honest, there's most things like medically that I'm a little hesitant on just because I like to stay mostly natural as much as possible. But this is about birth control. I'm just saying that taking a woman's body, putting something in it to stop her from doing what it's naturally meant to do doesn't sound wise to me. Now on the spiritual side of things, we have to always ask ourselves the question of why are we trying to stop ourselves from having kids? Why are we trying to protect against that? And there's tons of worldly wisdom that we receive on why we should wait and what, there's this and that. And don't you wanna travel? Why don't you establish your marriage first? And none of those things line up with the things that we hear about in scripture about children being a blessing. That it's good for women to have children. People prayed when they were barren because they wanted children and all these positive. It's positive, positive, positive but our generation and the last couple of generations has heard the message of negative. Children are a hindrance. Children get in the way. Children are difficult, they're expensive. They're hard, some of these things are all true. Not all of them but some of these things are true but not in the sense of they're not a blessings. Not in the sense of we shouldn't do it. I think we should always be asking ourselves about our heart posture towards children because God's heart posture towards children from the words of Jesus. "Let the children come to me", that's what he said.- [Jennifer] I love that, that's so beautiful.- [Aaron] Don't hinder the children.- [Jennifer] That's really good. I was gonna say that personally, we think that it needs to be thoughtfully considered not just in its physical impact on someone's body but its spiritual impact. And I think you just hit it on the head with being a heart posture.- [Aaron] Absolutely.- [Jennifer] And asking ourselves why.- [Aaron] Yeah and what do we believe about God? Is he good? Does it give us good things? And has he made us a certain way? And yeah those are all true. So we don't believe in birth control, the chemical form. I would say do any form of birth control, and we're about to have our number five so everyone can logically find out, we don't do birth control. We would probably lean towards just what's it called? The rhythm method?- [Jennifer] Natural planning.- [Aaron] Natural planning. And again, that's not even perfect. It's more of to our own abilities, we're just gonna try and plan around this and if God gives us a child, we're gonna be stoked.- [Jennifer] Yeah, all right let's move on to number two. Okay number two says, what made you wait to have kids?- [Aaron] Made us is a good word because half of it was physical.- [Jennifer] I was gonna say this is a two parter for us.- [Aaron] We just talked about how we couldn't have sexual intimacy.- [Jennifer] Yup.- [Aaron] So it was not impossible but highly unlikely 'cause it was .- [Jennifer] We weren't doing the thing that makes the babies.- [Aaron] Yeah, the thing that makes the babies wasn't happening so there was no babies being made. And then the second part of that is, and this might have been out of a bitterness because we couldn't be with each other. I have feeling that some of it was from that bitterness but also some of it just straight from our own selfish pride. We would tell people, they would ask us when are you guys gonna have kids? And we'd be like, oh we're not gonna have kids for a while or maybe ever because we're too selfish.- [Jennifer] We like sleeping in.- [Aaron] We like traveling. We like this, we like that. We said these things out loud. This isn't thoughts we had.- [Jennifer] And I would agree. Some of it was probably just to give them an answer 'cause we weren't gonna straight dig into well, we can't have sex. So we found a different way to answer it but I think at the core, we truly believe those things as well. We were selfish.- [Aaron] I remember I would pridefully say it like it was something to boast about.- [Jennifer] Looking back--- [Aaron] You are too selfish.- [Jennifer] Looking back that's so embarrassing.- [Aaron] I know what a fool I was that I would actually say that. God's looking at me at like I know who you are.- [Jennifer] I love you Aaron.- [Aaron] I was like a little child to him and he's patient with me, thank God. But what a fool that I would just boast about my selfishness which is opposed to God, to be selfish. I was literally boasting about my opposition to God.- [Jennifer] I wanted to share a little bit about this question. What came to my mind is well the physical. We couldn't and the selfish but I was also really terrified of having children and I don't remember it being a super affirmed thing growing up. And even though I came from a big family, it wasn't like I had this dream to have a big family myself.- [Aaron] And it wasn't like children are good. Children are a blessing. All you saw was there's all of this chaos at home sometimes.- [Jennifer] Yeah, so I remember just being really scared about hav…

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Why Suffering Is GOOD For Every Believer Jan 20, 2020

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I would imagine that suffering is not a very popular topic amongst most churches today but suffering is a vital and important part of every believers life and It should not and cannot be a topic that is left out of our Biblical thinking. Suffering comes i I would imagine that suffering is not a very popular topic amongst most churches today but suffering is a vital and important part of every believer's life and It should not and cannot be a topic that is left out of our Biblical thinking. Suffering comes in many forms and our heart today is to discuss the biblical view of suffering and how it is a powerful mindset and tool in our lives.Download Free Thinghttp://marriageprayerchallenge.com/Topic NOTESI have bee systematically teaching through 1st peter and last week we got to chapter 4:1-Devotional - what are we learning from the WordRomans 8 "Since therefore Christ suffered in the flesh, arm yourselves with the same way of thinking, for whoever has suffered in the flesh has ceased from sin, 2 so as to live for the rest of the time in the flesh no longer for human passions but for the will of God. 3 For the time that is past suffices for doing what the Gentiles want to do, living in sensuality, passions, drunkenness, orgies, drinking parties, and lawless idolatry."Suffering as a believerCease from sinDepriving my flesh is sufferingBeing in human nature and submitting to God is telling your flesh noChoosing to walk in the SpiritUniversal doctrine sufferingRomans 8 to explain whoever suffers … putting away of flesh is causing our flesh to suffer“want to do, living in sensuality, passions, drunkenness, orgies, drinking parties, and lawless idolatry.We have been freed from the “want to do” God gives us new desires new cravings. As we walk in our new selves it growsDefine:Sensuality - Not just sexualTHE WORLDLY DEFINITION IS PURELY SEXUAL.THE BIBLICAL USE is: unbridled lustLiving for pleasure of every sense - pleasing the 5 senses rather than pleasing GodFROM WIKIPEDIA: Hedonism is a school of thought that argues pleasure and suffering are the only components of well-being. Ethical hedonism is the view that combines hedonism with welfarist ethics, which claim that what we should do depends exclusively on what affects the well-being individuals have. Ethical hedonists would defend either increasing pleasure and reducing suffering for all beings capable of experiencing them, or just reducing suffering in the casePassions - Not just what are you passionate about in lifeBeing controlled by our emotions and serving our emotions vs pleasing God - affected by sensuality in that when we are not feeling good or something not pleasing instead of suffering we let our emotional response dictate our actions - flesh isn't getting what it wants so our choice is to suffer in the flesh and choose to walk in the spirit or suffer in the spirit and walk in flesh they are opposedDrunkenness - Not just being drunk from intoxicationOvertaken by a substance or something out side your bodyProverbs 20:1 "Wine is a mocker, strong drink a brawler, and whoever is led astray by it is not wise."Ephesians 5:18 "And do not get drunk with wine, for that is debauchery, but be filled with the Spirit,"Removal of natural function - (Inhibition) ConscienceOrgies - Not just a sexual experienceOverindulgenceGiving into your flesh never satiated never enoughEcclesiastes 1:8 "All things are full of weariness; a man cannot utter it; the eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear filled with hearing."HISTORICAL "secret rites used in the worship of Bacchus, Dionysus, and other Greek and Roman deities, celebrated with dancing, drunkenness, and singing."Drinking parties - Not just drinking at a party or hosting one intentionallyIt is inviting others to partake with you in all of the aboveNo one likes to feel the weight of shame or guilt alone so if theyMisery loves companyApproval so you can keep doing itWhy godly fellowship is so importantLawless Idolatry - All of this ends with self-worshipHow I feel what I want what I pursueOpposite of dying to self or taking up crossEach one shows the progress of worshipping self vs the CreatorPrayerDear Lord,Thank you for your word and how it cuts us to the heart. Thank you for teaching us through your word. We pray your word would continue to transform us as we learn it and choose to walk out all that you command us to. We pray we would be people who recognize parts of our hearts that need to change, sin that needs to be repented of, motivations that are not pure, and actions that do not reflect your ways for the purpose of repentance and reconciliation and growth. May your will be done in us and through us. May your light shine brightly through our marriages as we encourage one another to draw closer to you.In Jesus’ name, amen!READ TRANSCRIPT- [Aaron] Hey, We're Aaron and Jennifer Smith with Marriage After God.- [Jennifer] Helping you cultivate an extraordinary marriage.- [Aaron] And today we're going to talk about why suffering is good for us. Welcome to the Marriage After God Podcast where we believe that marriage was meant for more than just happily ever after.- [Jennifer] I'm Jennifer, also known as Unveiled Wife.- [Aaron] And I'm Aaron, also known as Husband Revolution.- [Jennifer] We have been married for over a decade- [Aaron] And so far we have four young children.- [Jennifer] We have been doing marriage ministry online for over seven years through blogging and social media.- [Aaron] With the desire to inspire couples to keep God at the center of their marriage, encouraging them to walk in faith every day.- [Jennifer] We believe the Christian marriage should be an extraordinary one, full of life.- Love.- And power.- [Aaron] That can only be found by chasing after God.- [Jennifer] Together.- [Aaron] Thank 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 guys, welcome back to another episode of the Marriage After God Podcast.- [Jennifer] Hi.- [Aaron] We love you guys. I just wanna say, the first episode of this season of this year, I think it got up to number 32 or 33 on the charts in iTunes. So that's all because of our listeners.- [Jennifer] Thank you guys!- [Aaron] Downloading all of these episodes, your guys rock, I just wanna say thank you.- [Jennifer] Hopefully they liked it, you know, thought it was a good episode to kick off the year with.- [Aaron] Yeah, if you liked it, share about the episode, take a screenshot of it, post it on Instagram, Facebook, tag us in it, we love seeing those.- [Jennifer] @MarriageAfterGod.- [Aaron] And we might even share about your post on our Instagram account.- [Jennifer] That'd be awesome. Okay, so Aaron, why don't you just give a little update where you at, how's your week, what's going on?- [Aaron] I think we talked about it last time. I'm starting to get up earlier. For a while I've been getting up around 5:30 and going to the gym, I've been doing that for a couple years now and recently I told you, Jennifer, that I wanted to get up even earlier.- [Jennifer] I was shocked actually.- [Aaron] To give myself an hour in the morning to get in the Word 'cause remarkably if I don't purpose to do it, it doesn't happen. So I figured what's the best way to do that.- [Jennifer] Or your amount of time spent in it wasn't as much.- [Aaron] Yeah, and so I figured the best thing to do would be get up earlier.- [Jennifer] Okay, so now what does your morning routine look like?- [Aaron] So I've been getting up a four, my alarm goes off at four, and then I hit snooze a couple times. I've been getting up around 4:20, 4:30.- [Jennifer] Now, the first time you did it, I was woken up because usually you sneak out of the house pretty quietly.- I turned the light on.- You turned every light on.- [Aaron] I didn't turn every light on.- [Jennifer] It was so bright and then I was up at 4:30.- [Aaron] What the problem was is I forget to set all of my stuff out the night before and I couldn't find anything.- You weren't prepared.- I wasn't prepared. You should always be prepared. If you wanna have a good morning routine.- Good marriage.- Oh.- Oh.- [Aaron] If you wanna have a good morning routine and a good marriage, prepare, put your stuff out, get everything ready that you're gonna be grabbing, so you don't have to look for it and scavenge.- [Jennifer] And I'm just using it, I'm not even mad about it. I went back to bed.- [Aaron] I mean I'm only a few days into it and it hasn't been terrible because I go to the gym now earlier and I'll say this, I really enjoyed going to Starbucks and sitting down, there's no one there, and getting into the Word, that was awesome. And also I started back up doing my intermittent fasting.- [Jennifer] You did that for a while like a year ago.- [Aaron] Yeah, and I only stopped because I was just trying to do something different, get more calories. But I'm going back to it because I feel like I got too much calories.- [Jennifer] Okay.- [Aaron] I really like intermittent fasting. And if you don't know what intermittent fasting is go look it up, it's pretty cool.- [Jennifer] Why don't you just explain real quick briefly what you mean.- [Aaron] Essentially you fast for 16 hours and then you have an eight hour window of eating. Essentially you just miss breakfast.- [Jennifer] I was gonna say most of us fast throughout the night, but this is more intentional, don't have that before-bedtime snack or anything.- [Aaron] Yeah, I'll usually not eat from seven o'clock until 11 or noon the next day. Which is not always easy.- [Jennifer] You also fit in those calories at lunch and dinner 'cause you work out, they know you do CrossFit, you lift heavy weights so you need that energy.- [Aaron] Yeah, I need enough. But it also does help me maintain how much I'm eating and it also makes me think about what I'm eating so I eat better instead of just spreading all those calories out. Anyways I've gotten back into that and kinda liking it.- [Jennifer] Awesome, very cool. Okay you guys, we also wanna encourage you to sign up right now for the Marriage Prayer Challenge if you have not done that yet. It's really awesome. Aaron, how many couples have already joined?- [Aaron] Almost 30,000 couples. There's actually a number counter on the sign up page, and it's a real number counter. I didn't make it up or faked it, it's actually counting people that sign up.- [Jennifer] Okay, so you just go to MarriagePrayerChallenge.com you can sign up for the husband version or the wife version and what do they get?- [Aaron] They're gonna get a email every day around the time that they signed up, giving them a prompt and a reminder to pray for their spouse.- [Jennifer] Awesome, come on you guys, go sign up, it's awesome.- [Aaron] Yeah, so it's MarriagePrayerChallenge.com. Completely free, just give us your email and your name and boom, you'll start getting those emails every day for 30 days.- [Jennifer] So today's topic is on why suffering is good for us. And we're not just talking about physical suffering or sickness or things like that, but we're gonna get into, well we're just gonna get into something that you spoke on recently Aaron that really, really moved me because I love it when you can look at Scripture and see it a different way, I need that help sometimes, someone else coming in and going, "Hey, look at this, this is awesome." So I just wanna dig in. So this is kind of like a devotional style episode.- [Aaron] Yeah, Jennifer and I came up with this idea to do one devotional focused episode every month and so this will be that one. And the topic is something I actually taught on this last Sunday. And you said, "Hey, we should "do an episode on that teaching." So that's what we're gonna do. We'll talk about stuff I brought up from Scripture and then you might have some questions for me, but it's pretty cool, and it's on a very small section of Scripture.- [Jennifer] I'll say this, one reason that I love that you're my husband is that you teach me and I love that. I love that you can look at Scripture and teach me from it and so I'm excited about this episode because I feel like you're gonna have the opportunity to teach others with the same impact that you've had in my life just over this one Scripture.- [Aaron] Well thank you, that's awesome.- [Jennifer] Keep it up, Aaron.- [Aaron] I wanna emphasize that my hope and prayer is that whenever I'm teaching the Word of God that it's not my opinion, not my own flavor of things, but that I'm just trying to clearly teach what the Word of God is saying. So I hope that's what I'm doing right now.- [Jennifer] Yeah, it's good.- [Aaron] So I'll just kick it off that the section of Scripture that we're going to be discussing is mainly from I Peter, chapter four. And it's only the first four verses, which is gonna be the chunk of what we're talking about. And it doesn't sound like a lot of Scripture, but there's actually a lot in here. We're also gonna dig into Romans eight, and that has a little bit more, so there's still a lot of reading.- [Aaron] There's a lot of Scripture to help give context to these few lines of text. So are we gonna start out with you reading I Peter?- Yeah.- Like give 'em just the context of what we're going to be talking about?- [Aaron] So it's actually verses one through three, I'm gonna read it right now, starting at verse one. "Since therefore Christ suffered in the flesh, "arm yourselves with the same way of thinking. "For whoever has suffered in the flesh has ceased from sin, "so as to live the rest of the time in the flesh, "no longer for human passions, but for the will of God. "For the time that is past suffices for doing "what the Gentiles want to do, living in sensuality, "passions, drunkenness, orgies, "drinking parties, and lawless idolatry."- [Jennifer] Okay, so before we jump into these set of Scriptures, can you just expand a little bit about when it comes to doctrine and universal doctrine?- [Aaron] Yeah, so I start off this teaching actually on Sunday just explaining how when we come up with doctrine, which are the fundamental things that a believer should walk in, teach. These are the things that are core, doctrines in the Word of God. A doctrine, in order for it to be a doctrine, it's gotta be universal. You can't pull something from Scripture and say, "This is doctrine, but it doesn't apply "in Iran, it doesn't apply in Africa, "it doesn't apply in the suburbs."- [Jennifer] Right, or just certain groups of people. Or certain churches.- [Aaron] Right, so if we interpret or pull things from Scripture that isn't universally applied when taught then it's gotta be interpreted through universal doctrine. So that you can't just pull that and say, "Well, that's doctrine." And one example of this would be the prosperity gospel, this idea that God wants every single person to be wealthy, and perfectly healthy, which isn't backed up with Scripture at all.- [Jennifer] We also don't see it in real life.- [Aaron] Yeah, you don't see it played out. There's people all over the world that are not wealthy or healthy, but they love the Lord, God uses them, this is reality on both sides. We see Scripture, like in Ecclesiastes that God gives rain to the evil and the good, evil and…

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Fun & Unique Valentine’s Day Gift Ideas For Your Spouse Jan 13, 2020

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With Valentine's Day just around the corner, we thought it would be fun to share some gift ideas to help inspire you. All of the gifts we share in this episode are things that we love and use often. With Valentine's Day just around the corner, we thought it would be fun to share some gift ideas to help inspire you. All of the gifts we share in this episode are things that we love and use often.ONE QUICK NOTE: If you are trying to get out of debt we suggest skipping gifts for a while. Instead, find free ways to bless each other and show your spouse your are thinking of them. We never want to promote spending when we can't or shouldn't.PRAYER:Dear Lord,Thank you for being the ultimate gift giver. Thank You for the gift of marriage. We pray our hearts would be pure in the way we give gifts to each other. We pray we would be thoughtful in the ways we give to each other. Help us to study and know our spouse well enough to give them gifts we know they will love. More than giving good gifts, we pray our love would be genuine and deep and extraordinary as we pursue intimacy with each other. Grow our love for one another….In Jesus’ name, amen!READ THE 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 some unique Valentine's Day gift ideas for your spouse. Welcome to the "Marriage After God" podcast, where we believe that marriage was meant for more than just happily ever after.- [Jennifer] I'm Jennifer, also known as Unveiled Wife.- [Aaron] And I'm Aaron, also known as Husband Revolution.- [Jennifer] We have been married for over a decade.- [Aaron] And so far we have four young children.- [Jennifer] We have been doing marriage ministry online for over seven years through blogging and social media.- [Aaron] With the desire to inspire couples to keep God at the center of their marriage, encouraging them to walk in faith every day.- [Jennifer] We believe the Christian marriage should be an extraordinary one, full of life--- [Aaron] Love--- [Jennifer] And power--- [Aaron] That can only be found by chasing after God.- [Jennifer] Together.- [Aaron] Thank you for joining us on this journey as we chase boldly after God's will for our life together.- [Jennifer] This is "Marriage After God."- [Aaron] Hey, welcome back to another episode of the "Marriage After God" podcast. This is the second episode in season three of the "Marriage After God" podcast, and it's gonna be a fun one. We're gonna talk about gift ideas and Valentine's Day, and these are fun episodes that we get to do. It's just to become a resource for you to help you in stuff that you guys are trying to pursue with each other. But before we begin today, I just wanna check in with my wife. How are you doing?- [Jennifer] I'm doing good, I'm doing better, I should say.- [Aaron] Yeah.- [Jennifer] I don't know if people can hear it in my voice, I--- [Aaron] She hasn't stopped laughing for 15 minutes.- [Jennifer] It's been really hard, guys. We went to go record this episode and I could not stop laughing. Something was hysterical but really it was nothing, and that made it even funnier.- [Aaron] And I'm sitting over here not laughing.- [Jennifer] Though I think it's spiritual because we're trying to record. I couldn't stop, but I finally got my bearings and I'm here, and I'm excited to do this with you, Aaron.- [Aaron] Yeah, so, me too, now. It's the second week of the year, 2020, new decade. How do you think things are going? I know it's new, but.- [Jennifer] Yes, I would say so far, so good. I mean, I'm still looking forward to this year. I think one thing that I've already been noticing is that I have this hopefulness to savor this year so that it doesn't feel like it flies by super fast.- [Aaron] Yeah, 2019 felt like it went really fast.- [Jennifer] Really fast.- [Aaron] Every time I looked at the calendar, I was like, wait a minute, we're in the third quarter. What's going on?- [Jennifer] Yeah, how is this already possible? So I'm hoping that this year just is a slow year for us and for our family.- [Aaron] Yeah. Well, seeing our kids grow up also.- [Jennifer] It breaks my heart, really.- [Aaron] It feels like it's going way too fast.- [Jennifer] Why do they have to grow up every year? If they skipped a year, it'd be cool.- [Aaron] I actually think time is going by faster 'cause when I was kid, I remember time feeling like it was going so slow.- [Jennifer] Playing in the backyard for hours.- [Aaron] And then people say when you get older, time flies or goes faster. But we even asked our kids, and my son Elliott, he was like, "Dad, why does it feel like every day goes by so fast?" So my son--- [Jennifer] Even feels that.- [Aaron] Is even feeling time go by fast, so I'm wondering if there's something to that. Maybe the earth is spinning faster or something like that, I don't know.- [Jennifer] There's still 24 hours in a day.- [Aaron] Yeah, just real quick, what is something you're looking forward to in 2020? I know that there's stuff around our house that you like to do.- [Jennifer] Yeah, so specifically this week, I'm really excited to prune our trees. When we moved into this house, it was kind of bare ground in the sense that we got to do whatever we wanted with it and we decided, on the side of our house, we had this space. I really wanted to plant a little mini orchard. So if you follow me on Instagram, you'll see pictures of it throughout the seasons.- [Aaron] We've got some apples, we've got some peaches.- [Jennifer] Yeah, and I've never been able, I've never really had the opportunity to cultivate fruit trees before. I really don't know what I'm doing, thank you YouTube and friends who share their information with me. But I've just learned kind of the art of pruning and I practice it, and January's my time to practice. And so this week I'm gonna get out there. I use pruning to shape the trees and also to keep them, to keep their form small because our backyard is small.- [Aaron] Yeah, we don't want them to get huge. We wanna keep them small trees.- [Jennifer] But also, though, pruning stimulates growth which is exciting, so it's kind of like--- [Aaron] It's almost biblical.- [Jennifer] It is biblical, which I also love that whole thing about that.- [Aaron] Yeah, and you've been loving doing it. It's therapeutic for you.- [Jennifer] Yeah, so even in the summertime, I'm actually looking forward to January 'cause I think, oh I get to prune my trees again.- [Aaron] Yeah, and we also get to see the fruit that comes from it, literally. Like literally fruit grow on these trees. Something that I'm looking forward to doing this year, and I'm trying to do, I've already implemented it already. I bought a journal for each one of my kids and I'm gonna, we did this parenting class a couple months ago and I felt convicted that I'm not taking time to study my children. And that sounds intense, but I'm not taking time to just evaluate the things that they like, the things that they say, how they act.- [Jennifer] What they're going through.- [Aaron] What they're going through, yeah. Evaluating their spiritual, where they're at spiritually, where they're at in their heart and emotionally, and even physically. So I'm just, I don't know how exactly I'm gonna do it. I started doing it, I'm just writing notes down in a journal about each kid.- [Jennifer] But I have to, I was gonna say, I have to explain this whole, what happened, because you didn't tell me that you were gonna be doing this and he's unboxing these journals on the bed. And I didn't know they were journals at first. I just saw these different colors.- [Aaron] She's like, "What are you doing?"- [Jennifer] I'm all, "Are those Christmas presents?" 'cause this was just a couple weeks ago. And I thought they were a part of all the other gifts that were coming in from Amazon. And he goes, "Oh, they're journals for the kids "and each one," and he holds up the yellow one. And I'm like, "Is that for Wyatt?" and he goes, "Yup," 'cause yellow, Wyatt calls himself the yellow boy, yeah he likes yellow. And you got a pinkish purple one for Olive.- [Aaron] A blue one for Elliott.- [Jennifer] And I think a gray one for Truett.- [Aaron] Yeah, oh I think that's backwards. I think the gray one's for Elliott and blue one's for Truett.- [Jennifer] Okay. And so he's putting them on his shelf and he's like, "You know, I just, I really feel "like I need to study my kids," and my heart sank in a good way. It was such a beautiful picture of a dad's heart for his children and something I never even thought to do myself.- [Aaron] You do have a journal for the kids, though.- [Jennifer] I write to them, though.- [Aaron] You write them letters.- [Jennifer] I write them letters and prayers, and it's quarterly, so I don't do it all the time. But this is different. This is a way for you to get to know them in a very deep and personal way, and to keep your eyes on them. And I just, I was blown away by that. And so I'm really excited for you and jumping into this, even though I know you're still figuring out what it's gonna look like.- [Aaron] Yeah, and I'm not doing it every day. My intention originally was to do it every day. And I'm like, okay, I can't do that.- [Jennifer] We got a lot of kids.- [Aaron] Yeah, but when I think about it, I'm gonna pull them out and I'm gonna write down observations of my children in it. And so it's not necessarily for them, it's for me. But one day they'll probably read it and they'll learn a little bit about themselves, probably. Okay, cool. So I just wanna encourage everyone that's listening to download a free thing that we came up with for you guys. It's called "52 Date Night Conversation Starters". It's an e-book that we made for you. And the point of it was to inspire your date life. We have a whole episode talking about date nights and putting it on the calendar, and you should go check that out. We're real huge advocates for having a scheduled date night.- [Jennifer] We're also huge advocates for conversations and communicating well with your spouse, which is why we've combined these two. And we wanted to give you something that would stimulate those really good conversations during date night.- [Aaron] Yeah, so you go to DateNightConversations.com, all one word. And you can download it for free, just give us your email address and boom, you'll have that PDF. And what you do is you can print it out. And there's one for every week of the year. And so the encouragement is, hey go on a date every week. And what's awesome is that you're gonna have a conversation about something deep. Why don't you give some examples?- [Jennifer] I was gonna say, so that's your freebie. But here's your freebie. This is for everyone listening. We're gonna give you three sample questions that you could ask on the date night. This is what you would get if you were to sign up for this. So the first one is, I thank God for our life together because.- [Aaron] Dot, dot, dot.- [Jennifer] So you get to answer that.- [Aaron] Yeah, and then you spend the time, while you're eating or getting a dessert, or going for a walk or whatever, and talk about that question.- [Jennifer] So the next one is, is there any part of my work routine that is negatively impacting our marriage or our family? So I feel like this is a really good one to kind of evaluate, where are we at, what's going on, and what can I contribute to this by sharing my heart with you?- [Aaron] Right, and if work routine doesn't work in both roles, you could say routine. Is there anything during my day that I do regularly that maybe needs to be massaged, moved around, cut out all together?- [Jennifer] Yeah, and the recommendation is that you guys ask each other the same question.- [Aaron] Exactly. Number three is, if we envision ourselves in our 90s, sitting on the porch in matching rocking chairs, if you would look over at me and say, "I wish we,"- [Jennifer] Dot, dot, dot.- [Aaron] Yeah, so it's this idea that, why don't you transport yourself to 90 years from now, or when you're 90, and then ask yourself what you would have been doing today. That's kind of the idea. But these are fun, creative, there's 52 of them. This is just three of the 52. So we wanna encourage you to go get that DateNightConversations.com. Completely free, go download that.- [Jennifer] All right, today's topic is unique gift ideas for him and her on Valentine's Day. And the reason we wanted to bring this up is 'cause in just a few weeks, everyone around the world is gonna be celebrating Valentine's Day. Not everyone, but you know, a lot of people.- [Aaron] Not in some countries. I don't even know who celebrates it, but, lots of people.- [Jennifer] My point is this, it's gonna be in our faces. It's gonna be everywhere. And we just thought we'd give it some thought beforehand because if you're like Aaron and I, getting inspired is key for gift giving in marriage.- [Aaron] Yeah, and can I be a little honest about my disposition towards Valentine's Day?- [Jennifer] Quickly, go.- [Aaron] Okay, I'm just gonna be quick.- [Jennifer] Hold on, let me cover my ears.- [Aaron] I'm not a huge fan of feeling obligated to give gifts, and I feel like sometimes certain holidays do that. That's not to say if you love doing this, and you love the holiday, don't listen to me. But if you're kinda like me, then don't feel like this podcast is for you, necessarily. Or maybe it might inspire you and you won't feel like I feel sometimes. I'm just being honest, sometimes I feel. But I've had to, I've been challenged by people in my life to not take it as an obligation, but take it as an opportunity.- [Jennifer] Opportunity, I like that. Also, I just wanna encourage those of you who are listening and maybe you're not married yet, that you can use these gift ideas for a significant other in your life. Maybe you're dating or--- [Aaron] Or a family member, maybe.- [Jennifer] Or a fiance.- [Aaron] Or a friend that's also single with you. That's a good idea.- [Jennifer] Okay, so gift giving is actually an art. I think it is. I don't think I'm very good at it.- [Aaron] Some people are gifted at it, for sure.- [Jennifer] When I think about how I give gifts, sometimes I'm so embarrassed because my wrapping skills are off the charts terrible.- [Aaron] Your rapping skills, like rhymes, or wrapping?- [Jennifer] No, like wrapping paper.- [Aaron] But that sometimes makes the gift even better, the way you wrap it.- [Jennifer] I always opt for the bag and tissue 'cause I don't like, I can make it look cool without having to do much work.- [Aaron] Yeah, and it is an art form. Some people are really gifted at it naturally. They're just so thoughtful in the way that they give gifts. And some of us aren't that way. So sometimes we just need to be inspired with ideas. That's kinda the point of this podcast.- [Jennifer] Yeah, so Aaron and I, why don't we just share a little bit of our experience…

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It Is Time To Be People Of Our Word Jan 06, 2020

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In this episode, we explore the topic of new year resolutions and how being people of our word is so much more important. Jesus tells us that we must be people who mean what we say. Our YES must be our yes and our NO must be our NO. In this episode, we explore the topic of new year resolutions and how being people of our word is so much more important. Jesus tells us that we must be people who mean what we say. Our YES must be our yes and our NO must be our NO.We also give simple tips and ideas on how to be better at keeping our word this year and how not being people of our word can hurt not only ourselves and our relationship with our spouse but also with our kids and others.READ THE FULL TRANSCRIPT:Aaron: Hey, we're Aaron and Jennifer Smith with Marriage After God.Jennifer: Helping you cultivate an extraordinary marriage.Aaron: And today we're going to talk about how to be people of our word. Welcome to the Marriage After God podcast where we believe that marriage was meant for more than just happily ever after.Jennifer: I'm Jennifer also known as unveiled wife.Aaron: And I'm Aaron also known as husband revolution.Jennifer: We have been married for over a decade.Aaron: And so far we have four young children.Jennifer: We have been doing marriage ministry online for over seven years through blogging and social media.Aaron: With the desire to inspire couples to keep God at the center of their marriage, encouraging them to walk in faith every day.Jennifer: We believe the Christian marriage should be an extraordinary one, full of life.Aaron: Love.Jennifer: And power.Aaron: That can only be found by chasing after God.Jennifer: Together.Aaron: Thank you for joining us on this journey as we chase boldly after God's will for our life together.Jennifer: This is Marriage After God. Well, happy 2020, everyone.Aaron: I was wondering if you're going to say 2020 or 2,020.Jennifer: I'm a 2,020 er. I guess.Aaron: Yeah, I'm a 2020 er. I think.Jennifer: I don't think I've said it before.Aaron: Or 2,020? 2020. It's the first time we're saying it.Jennifer: It's the 20s.Aaron: It's the 20... We're in the 20s. I did see a meme that said... It said, "Everyone be aware the 20s is starting in a couple days." And it showed this picture of all these really dapper men wearing the 20s suits, and it looked really cool. I was like, "I wish. I wish it was that 20s." Now, we're in 2020.Jennifer: If they were here. This is crazy if you think about it.Aaron: We're in a new decade. I don't know if everyone's thought about that. But we're literally in a new decade. That's insane. So this is the first episode of the year for us. If you're noticing it's launching on a Monday, that's a new thing for us.Jennifer: Yeah.Aaron: We usually launch on Wednesdays, but now we're going to try launching on Mondays and see if we like that timeframe of launching episodes.Jennifer: Hopefully, you guys like it too. If you want to give us some feedback, just head on over to Instagram at marriageaftergod and let us know what you think.Aaron: Yeah. We had a... Man, I feel like we had an awesome 2019.Jennifer: Yeah.Aaron: 2019.Jennifer: I liked it.Aaron: 2019? 2,019.Jennifer: 2,019.Aaron: And I just wanted to do a quick recap of just what 2,019 looked like for us as a family. And we're going to talk about things that we're excited about for 2020.Jennifer: Yep.Aaron: And then we're going to talk about the topic. So, the first thing I can think of from 2019.Jennifer: Even though it happened mid-year.Aaron: It's like mid-year.Jennifer: It was a lot of work in preparation leading up to it.Aaron: Our book, Marriage After God.Jennifer: Yep.Aaron: Launched June 2019.Jennifer: June 4th.Aaron: June 4th, yeah. And man, thousands and thousands of you guys have gotten a copy of this book. And we've had such good feedback from it. And we just love seeing what the Lord's doing in and through this book. Not in the book, I guess. Through the book in marriages. And so if you haven't gotten a copy of the Marriage After God book, you can head over to Amazon, you can head over to our store, shop.marriageaftergod.com and pick up a copy today. You get a bunch of free resources with it when you do. But that was a huge thing.Jennifer: Yeah.Aaron: That's like a lot of time, a lot of work writing, the publishing process.Jennifer: Like two years worth [crosstalk 00:03:02]Aaron: The waiting, then the marketing and then all of that stuff. I feel like we just wanted to take a ton of break off, like after that. A ton of time off because it was exhausting. And what else happened in 2019?Jennifer: Well, shortly after the launch of Marriage After God, we found out we were expecting again.Aaron: Yeah, we're pregnant with number five.Jennifer: Number five. So most of my summer was sitting on the back porch just not feeling well. But the kids played and it was great. And it was beautiful. And I think a lot of that hopefulness of this pregnancy and meeting our daughter, [crosstalk 00:03:35] Edith.Aaron: Edith.Jennifer: Yeah, I'm just sat with us the rest of the year.Aaron: Yeah, and this has been a difficult pregnancy, but it's been teaching us a lot, which is really cool. Number five [crosstalk 00:03:46]Jennifer: Not difficulty because I've had, like health issues or anything like that, but just feeling nauseous and already having little kids that we're helping nurture.Aaron: Yeah, there's been no complications just it's been a rough physically.Jennifer: It's been harder than the other ones, for sure.Aaron: Yeah.Jennifer: I just wanted to clarify.Aaron: But you're on the other side of that. Yes, you have a little bit of hard time sleeping sometimes. But this has been... We're excited to meet Edith.Jennifer: Yeah.Aaron: In March.Jennifer: I felt like getting through the holidays and focusing on Christmas was like my goal, because I knew once the new year came, my next thing [crosstalk 00:04:21]Aaron: You're like, "This is coming."Jennifer: Welcoming this baby. And so I'm just so excited to be kicking off this new year with that in my heart and getting ready to meet her.Aaron: Another big thing that happened in 2019 for us was we branched off from our home church and planted a home church with a few couples.Jennifer: So we've been doing home church since Olive was about three months old.Aaron: Oh, wow.Jennifer: Yeah. So it's been a few years and it grew. And the point of branching off and planting a new home church was for growth.Aaron: Yeah. Instead of just the mentality that we have with our home churches, instead of growing and staying together and buying a building and expanding that way, we just plant churches in homes. So there's been two other churches planted from that one home church over the last couple years. And so we've been doing it for eight months now. And it's incredible. The families that have come, the people that God's brought in, and the relationships that we're building.Aaron: It's teaching us new levels of love for one another. It's teaching us how to grow in our giftings. I've been teaching a lot more in our home church. It's just so cool. And so that's been a huge thing. It really exciting. Probably one of my... Other than having another baby coming, it's probably one of my favorite things that happened last year was planting that home church.Jennifer: Another thing that stands out to me is, I've been homeschooling the kids. I feel like since they were born just because of the nature of who I am and what I love [crosstalk 00:05:47]Aaron: The way we worked out.Jennifer: The way we work.Aaron: We don't talk to them like babies.Jennifer: well, and not just that, but I was in the Christian preschool education system for so long. And so I had this background to know just how to incorporate teaching and learning with young kids throughout the preschool years. And so I've always just naturally done it with my kids. But this was the first year that we officially started Grade One. And it was a big deal to me because [crosstalk 00:06:13]Aaron: It's like a real grade.Jennifer: Well, it's a grade, right? I was nervous. I've never done it before. Aaron and I both have been public schooled. And so we didn't have you know, a lot of background with homeschooling, we have a great community that encourages it and has support where if I have a question I can go talk to my friends.Aaron: Lots of homeschoolers.Jennifer: Lots of homeschoolers around here, which has been great, but just starting off with Grade One and it feeling so official. I don't know. It just freaked me out a little bit.Aaron: Do you feel like it felt like diving into a pool without knowing how to swim?Jennifer: Yeah, I mean, I guess. Yeah.Aaron: Well, we spent months considering all the options.Jennifer: Well, and I spent a long time preparing what we were going to teach him and how we were going to teach him and you know what, you guys? I don't [crosstalk 00:07:01]Aaron: I'm going to say this before you finish.Jennifer: Okay, what?Aaron: You're crushing it.Jennifer: You're sweet.Aaron: She has a student binder, she has this program she's doing, she's scheduled in the breaks that we're going to take. She's like [crosstalk 00:07:10]Jennifer: I was just going to say this [crosstalk 00:07:11]Aaron: She's crushing it, guys.Jennifer: We're both really enjoying it. Me and Elliott. We are really enjoying it.Aaron: Well, and it's not just like Elliott, you're bringing all the kids along. They're all at different stages, but, man, you're doing a really good job.Jennifer: Thank you.Aaron: Yeah. So how excited are you for 2020?Jennifer: Okay, I already mentioned this, but I'm so excited for 2020 because I get to meet my second daughter. I can't get over that. I can't believe it.Aaron: Olive's super excited. She just cannot wait. She's like, "I'm going to have a sister." So yeah, 2020's got a lot of potential. And that's what's awesome about New Year's is there's so much potential because it hasn't happened yet.Jennifer: Yeah, we've shared about this in our book. But Aaron and I love to dream together and vision cast and every end of the year season, we do this together, but this last year, we did a little bit earlier in December and it was so refreshing just to... We went on a date but we spent like three and a half hours just sitting there writing down notes and talking and getting out of our hearts what we had been thinking about and dreaming about and just asking each other some hard questions about our relationship, about our relationship with the kids.Aaron: About work, about books.Jennifer: It felt so good.Aaron: About lots of things.Jennifer: Yeah, where we're headed for this new year. And then my birthday was a couple days ago, and we got another date night in where we just got to just go over a little bit of those things that we had talked about, and set our sights on them and aim for some goals this next year.Aaron: Yeah, just so everyone knows that... Maybe don't know Jennifer's birthday is on the 31st. December 31st. So she's a New Year's Eve baby. And then our wedding anniversary [crosstalk 00:08:47]Jennifer: Is today.Aaron: Is today.Jennifer: Happy anniversary.Aaron: Yeah, we've been married [crosstalk 00:08:52]Jennifer: 13 years.Aaron: I almost messed it up. 13 years. I was going to say 12 but we're done with 12 now we're in the 13. Yeah. 13 years, we've been married. So that's our... We're launching on our anniversary.Jennifer: Awesome.Aaron: Our marriage birth day. Is that how that works?Jennifer: Launching the podcast's new season.Aaron: Yeah, this is a new season. This is season three, I think of the Marriage After God podcast. And this is our 13th anniversary today.Jennifer: Awesome.Aaron: Yeah. So we have a lot that happens in the end of the year, in the beginning of the year, which is why we get to talk about a lot of things. And we always encourage, you can go back and listen to our episode on dreaming together on our podcast, episodes and episodes ago, but you should go check it out. But it just talks about what we do, and why we do it, and how powerful it is to set goals and dreams and writing them down and talking about them together and how unifying it is. And it's something we try and do. And what are some of the things that we've talked about? What things are we looking forward to this year that they may or may not happen? But the goal is we're going to [inaudible 00:09:54]Jennifer: Yeah, we've submitted these things before the Lord and we just really... We hope to see them come to be. And I'm really excited about the first one, I'm going to share it with you guys. It's been one of our biggest goals. Like it's been on the table for some time, but we haven't actively pursued it. And it's children's books.Aaron: Yeah, Jennifer's written two amazing children's books.Jennifer: You're being so nice to me.Aaron: I know. We're not going to tell you what the names of them are, because they're special. But you'll find out when they launch, whenever they launch because we don't have a publisher yet. But we're looking for one. And they're going to be incredible. You're going to love them.Jennifer: I hope so.Aaron: So we're going to be pursuing that this year, we're going to try and find a publisher. We're going to try and get those children's books published this... Either this year or next year. I don't know how long it takes to get a children's book published but we're going to try.Jennifer: Yeah, because there's art involved. But one reason why I'm so excited about this, you guys, is having young kids and having this message that we want to share with them. It just feels like a gift. It feels like something that we can create for them, right now, in their season of life that they'll get and that would inspire them and hopefully, a lot of others kids.Aaron: Yeah. And a little secret about it is they're going to have a marriage focus.Jennifer: Yeah.Aaron: Which is interesting, because you're like, "How do you do a children's book but have a marriage focus?" Well, you'll have to find out. Another goal that we have this year is to try and do more giveaways. We want to give away... We've been doing these giveaways with Bibles. And we've been partnering with a couple companies that sell Bibles and have these really incredible Bibles. And I've been really enjoying it. And there's something special about giving away a Bible, getting Bibles into people's hands.Aaron: And so we're going to try and do that more when trying to partner with some companies that have some awesome Bibles, which Jennifer just did a giveaway. And we're actually going to ship those books out soon with a really beautiful Bible for women. It's got this fabric cover and it's ESV, which we love, and I give away a Bible. I actually have the Bible, I use it. I've given a couple of them why now, but we just... I think we want to do a little bit more of those Bible giveaways this year.Jennifer: Yeah.Aaron: More often.Jennifer: It's a fun way to spread the gospel.Aaron: Yeah, I know right now I have three Bibles sitting on my desk that I want to give away. So we're going to do that soon. So in order to be a part of those giveaways, by the way, follow…

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Answers to Your Questions Nov 28, 2019

Show notes

Hey Friends, In today's episode on the Marriage After God Podcast, Jennifer and I took the time to answer your questions. A question we received stirred up what we feel is a good reminder for us all as we give thanks during this Holiday season. "Keeping

Hey Friends!
In today's episode on the Marriage After God Podcast, Jennifer and I took the time to answer your questions. A question we received stirred up what we feel is a good reminder for us all as we give thanks during this Holiday season. "Keeping your faith in the hard times will produce a hopeful mindset." Aaron Smith
Our faith is important to us no matter the season and it's easy to praise God when life is great. However, we can quickly forget to praise God when things aren't going great. "Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds..." James 1:2.
With this episode comes our sign off for the year and we hope to return sometime in January or February. Thank you so much for listening! Jennifer and I are incredibly grateful for your support and had fun answering your questions. We wish you and your family a Merry Christmas.

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Stop Hiding Before It's Too Late Nov 20, 2019

Show notes

In Today's Episode on Marriage After God podcast, we are encouraging you to stop hiding before it's too late! This episode was inspired by our own experience of concealing our relationship issues, as well as other couple's stories we have seen unravel. O

Over the years, we have received countless emails and messages from couples sharing that they were on the verge of divorce. Some of whom we knew personally, and some we didn't. The ones that we knew especially hurt us, and we felt blindsided by the problems in their marriage.

How can problems go unseen? You can avoid community and fellowship altogether, or you can do what Jennifer and I had done at the beginning of our marriage - hide in plain sight. Though we had close friends, we never let people truly know us or our struggles.

Our hearts for this episode is that it would encourage you to stop hiding. The Devil wants us to hide in shame and be isolated, so we don't bring about change. We pray that this episode encourages you to seek true fellowship and hope it eliminates the fear of being fully known.

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The Lord's Prayer Nov 14, 2019

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Prayer is such a vital part of every Christian's life. In today's episode, we are going to be discussing the Lord's prayer. The Lord's prayer is spoken by Jesus when he gives the Sermon on the Mount. This teaching is super important because it emphasizes

"And when you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites. For they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, that others may see them. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward. But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you. And when you pray, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do, for they think that they will be heard for their many words. Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him. Pray then like this: 'Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you, but if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses."Matthew 6:5-13 ESV

Our hearts are that today's episode encourages you to build on your prayer life, not for salvation, but to build real intimacy with God. Intimacy takes intentionality; just like our marriages, we need to invest in our relationship with God. We pray this Marriage After God podcast encourages you to cling to God and deepen your relationship with him.

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Encouragement for Chasing Boldly After God Together Nov 06, 2019

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In today's episode on the Marriage After God podcast, our goal is to encourage you on your pursuit to chase after God. Everyone needs encouragement and to be reminded of the hope they have from time to time. We urge you to listen thoughtfully to this epis

"The first encouragement we want to give all of you on your journey is: don't be afraid! This journey can be fear-filled sometimes, and the enemy wants to make us afraid. So, I just wanted to read this verse, Jeremiah 17:7-8 ESV 'Blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord, whose trust is the Lord.He is like a tree planted by water, that sends out its roots by the stream, and does not fear when heat comes, for its leaves remain green and is not anxious in the year of drought, for it does not cease to bear fruit." - Aaron Smith

We pray this message leaves you hopeful as well as excited about God's plan and purpose for you.

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Boundaries With the Opposite Sex - Part Two Oct 30, 2019

Show notes

Today, we are entering into the second half of our topic, "Boundaries With the Opposite Sex." If you didn't listen to last week's episode, listen to it right now before jumping into today's podcast! "I want to encourage everyone out there, that maybe th

Today, we are entering into the second half of our topic, "Boundaries With the Opposite Sex." If you didn't listen to last week's episode, listen to it right now before jumping into today's podcast!

"I want to encourage everyone out there, that maybe their spouses aren't at this place yet, and remind everyone that it's a growing process. We didn't just show up to our marriage with this way of being and understand it fully and walk in it perfectly. We are walking this out day by day. " Jennifer Smith

We pray that today's podcast would start a healthy conversation between you and your spouse and that your hearts would be submitted to God and protecting your marriage from the enemy. If your heart is already for this, we encourage you to walk out what you desire your spouse to step out and fervently pray for their heart.

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