Marriage is meant to be an incredible experience, but like anything, the good things are never easy. One of the crucial keys to a great marriage long-term is to nourish the gifts and dreams in your spouse. If one or both of the spouses aren’t growing, then your marriage might be experiencing a slow death.

We want our marriage to be the example that our kids want to follow. Is yours?

One of the best gifts you can give your kids is a strong marriage and you will get practical insights in this short content rich discussion with Isaac and Angie.

Key Takeaways From This Episode

1. Be a catalyst for growth in each other.

• Working out and supporting one another in your health journeys.
• Exercise spiritual gifts and talents, help them have time for devotions and serving the Lord and His Body, the Church.
• A marriage starts stagnating when one or both stop growing.
• If you run out of things to talk about your marriage is receding.
• Marriage is either growing or receding.
• Do you run out of things to talk about when you go out to dinner?
• We’ve got to be addicted to each other, not our phones. How do we become addicted to each other? If you’re not growing, there’s nothing new to talk about.
• Continue to study one another. People feel most loved by their spouse when they are valued, understood, heard and see growth in one another.
• We don’t want to prevent each other from growing because we haven’t been paying attention and don’t see the growth, but instead view them how they used to be. That’s frustrating, unfair, and frankly unloving.
• Allow one another to grow in the areas they have maybe, developed a reputation with you?
• We get into marriage relationship rhythm’s, and it can be hard to break the rhythm to a better relationship direction.
• The wife has such a powerful impact on the husband. The most powerful thing a wife can do is PRAY.
• We should be wary of becoming the nagging wife. Sometimes the second most powerful thing you can do is be silent and overlook an offense.
• God did assign the husband as the leader of the family. It’s not an inequality thing. Both the husband and wife are equal in value but with structure.
• Submission should come from understanding what God’s word says about the wife’s role and desiring to obey Him. It’s awesome if a wife’s desire to be submissive is becuase of her love for her husband, but there will be times when loving him might be hard. While we can choose to love Him, our greatest weapon for defeating the temptation to step out of bounds biblically in marital leadership is to simply know what God’s Word says and love Him so much that we want to obey Him.
• There is no successful business with two equal leaders.
• Your kids get to see how amazing marriage is. If you want your kids to desire a great marriage you must model it.
• If you don’t do this with your spouse, you are highly likely not to do it with your kids.
• Nurturing the gifts in your spouse creates the right parental behaviors for nurturing your kid’s gifts and dreams.
• You must rally each other to be courageous parents long term. Parenting is a long-game.

2. Encourage your spouse’s strengths

• We all have weaknesses, but we should focus on the strengths and bring those out.
• How many people today don’t know what their spiritual gifts are?
• If you don’t call out the gifts of your spouse and you know them the best, perhaps no one is?
• You should talk to your spouse about this if you feel it’s lacking.
• Ask yourself and your husband why this is lacking (if that’s the case) and ask if you are living a biblical marriage in a biblical community.
• If you aren’t walking with others in life, calling you towards good works you might re-evaluate your community.
• Your family is a form of fellowship and family of God. A miniature picture of the family of God.
• Stories of encouraging strengths in each other (You must listen to know the stories)
  • Angie encourages Isaac’s spiritual leadership when newly married as he was a newer believer.
  • Angie was never into public speaking, listen to how Isaac encouraged her.
  • Encouraged each other to cultivate a vineyard.
  • Marriage catalyzing business growth.
• Husbands, it’s so important to proactively include your wife in the career mission because of her support. Use we not me.
• Our lives are not about ourselves, but pointing towards the Lord. We must be willing to share the recognition with our spouses for all successes.
• The most powerful team in the world is the marriage team.
• You get to disciple God’s people for 18 years with undivided attention and launch them into from your home for kingdom impact perpetuating a Godly legacy that has big kingdom impact.
• We do have an enemy that is out to kill and destroy your family. It’s vital that we have a teachable heart towards each other. If you expect your kids to, you better do it.
• Recognize your spouse in front of your kids. It makes a huge difference. Do you want your kids to respect your spouse? Maximize one another’s influence.
• Every woman has been in a place where they are in valleys, whether losing jobs, cars breaking down, illnesses, losing a baby. There are so many things that can get you down. We must comfort and edify each other. Exhort and encourage each other daily.
• One of the things that can help if you are in a bad space is moving beyond comforting and go into edifying. Believing in your spouse, reminded them of who they are and the power of God through them.
  • A story of Angie when she almost died and dealt with miscarriage.
• You’ve got to know your spouses love languages. You’ve got to study your spouse.
• The reason we don’t do this sometimes is our own insecurities. When you build your spouse up they will reciprocate.
• Men need to initiate and lead in this!

3. Never nurture gifts and dreams at the cost of your kids

• For women, there are seasons of life when you are a mom, that you don’t sacrifice the greater thing that God has for you. You have to know what to say yes and no to. Great things, like a legacy, happen over time, like a strong vineyard. If you don’t put in the work in it’s due season you will not reap what you dream of.
• It’s not the same for every woman.
• If more women were willing to embrace the mothering season of life with a spirit of contentedness vs discontentedness they would be thriving.
• When we get past that season and get to the next season we can look back without regret.
• Sometimes our dreams aren’t supposed to be realized until the right season. But we get impatient.
• It takes surrendering your will and all of your dreams to the Lord so he can lead you into the right timing for implementation.
• There are seasons for dreams to be realized and seasons to pursue them.
• We have to be careful not to push our agenda before the Holy Spirit, but rather surrender to His will and timing.
• Sometimes your gifts aren’t to be used in the way you want to use them right now. You have to submit your gifts to God as well.

4. How you look at your marriage, defines its reality

• If you look at it in a certain way, that’s what you will likely have in 10 years.
• Make sure you are looking at it in a really good way.
• You should expect great things out of your marriage.
• Your marriage is either receding or growing.
• If your marriage is interesting, then your kids are fascinated with your marriage and you.
• If marriage was thriving at that level, those kids are being sharpened as well.
• Expect your marriage to have an impact. What kind of impact should it have? You should brainstorm about that.
• The problem is, a lot of times men don’t feel relevant or they can’t say something because they are a man.
• Wives should be encouraging their husband’s dreams. Men you have to encourage your wife and bring meaning to what she’s doing.

5. Action list

• Make a list of gifts to encourage in your spouse.
• Share them with your spouse.
• Pray about the list together.
• Pick one to encourage consistently for the next 30 days.

Scripture From This Episode

Hebrews 10:24-25  “And let us consider one another in order to stir up love and good works, not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as is the manner of some, but exhorting one another, and so much the more as you see the Day approaching.”

Hebrews 3:12 “Beware, brethren, lest there be in any of you an evil heart of unbelief in departing from the living God;”

1 Thessalonians 5:11 “Therefore comfort each other and edify one another, just as you also are doing.”

Proverbs 27:17 “As iron sharpens iron, So a man sharpens the countenance of his friend.”

Resources Mentioned In This Episode

 Jeremy & Audrey Roloff are an inspiring couple who are intentional in encouraging people in their marriages. Tune into their podcast at Behind The Scenes, and buy their new book here –> Love Letter Life.

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