Here are some of the main points from this episode:

No Marriage is Perfect! 

We just celebrated our 25th wedding anniversary and one thing that hit us that oftentimes what people share is not the full truth or even fully close to the reality of the journey one has been on for ____ amount of years in their marriage! 

We don’t want you to ever get the wrong impression that we think we have the perfect marriage, or that we would even portray that! We do have a thriving marriage, and for that we thank the LORD because it’s what He has done in each of our hearts that has brought us to this place! 

But the reality is that relationships, particularly marriage, can be hard, people sin against and offend one another, get selfish, annoy each other at times, and so much more. 

The reality is that two sinful humans enter into holy matrimony, which means there is a huge opportunity for hurt, sinning against one another, being selfish, being “real” with one another which can often times equate to “not trying anymore.” BUT, on the bright side that means there is equally an opportunity for each individual in the marriage to grow in grace, forgive, grow in understanding, love, serve, be more selfless, and ask for forgiveness and walk in humility acknowledging when they sin! 

God deeply wants to do a powerful work in you and in your marriage. AND He has chosen marriage as the best avenue for refinement in all the godly character qualities He wants you to grow in! 

Isn’t that exciting? 

Main Points in This Episode:

• It’s important to have marriages to look up to– but make sure they are being real and honest otherwise you are striving towards something that doesn’t exist. If someone claims their marriage is perfect and they don’t share about the hard things and how they grew through them, RUN! That means they aren’t actually in a marriage where sharpening is happening like iron sharpens iron. Someone or both, likely feel like they can’t bring an issue, attitude, or concern to their spouse with the heart of concern for them.

• Strive for thriving. A thriving plant is one that produces GOOD fruit. A good plant cannot produce bad fruit. Sometimes as a gardener you can have a really green plant with NO FRUIT, don’t let that be your marriage. Fruit is the whole point! It’s God’s purpose and plan for you to experience spiritual fruit and growth individually and in your marriage and family.

• You can’t change your spouse, but you can change yourself– repent, seek the Lord, and grow! It will change your marriage because your marriage is made up of two people and you are one of them. You change, your marriage will too!

Our Incredible Sponsors Mentioned in This Episode

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Register today! Includes 13-page roadmap download

Scriptures From This Episode:

– Proverbs. 20:5 –  “The purpose in a man’s heart is like deep water, but a man of understanding will draw it out.“

– Psalm 119:97-105 – “Oh how I love your law! It is my meditation all the day. Your commandment makes me wiser than my enemies, for it is ever with me. I have more understanding than all my teachers, for your testimonies are my meditation. I understand more than the aged, for I keep your precepts. I hold back my feet from every evil way, in order to keep your word. I do not turn aside from your rules, for you have taught me. How sweet are your words to my taste, sweeter than honey to my mouth! Through your precepts I get understanding; therefore I hate every false way.”

– Colossians 3:23 – “Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men,“

– 2 Corinthians 12:8-10 – “Three times I pleaded with the Lord about this, that it should leave me. ⁹ But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. ¹⁰ For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong.“

– 1 Corinthians 6:19-20 – “Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body.”

– 2 Timothy 1:6-10 – “For this reason I remind you to fan into flame the gift of God, which is in you through the laying on of my hands, ⁷ for God gave us a spirit not of fear but of power and love and self-control. Therefore do not be ashamed of the testimony about our Lord, nor of me his prisoner, but share in suffering for the gospel by the power of God, who saved us and called us to a holy calling, not because of our works but because of his own purpose and grace, which he gave us in Christ Jesus before the ages began, and which now has been manifested through the appearing of our Savior Christ Jesus, who abolished death and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel,“

 

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Welcome to Courageous Parenting Podcast, a weekly show to equip parents with biblical truth on raising confident Christian kids in an uncertain world.

Hi, I’m Angie from Courageous Mom and Isaac.

From Resolute Man Together pursuing the mission to impact 10 million families and their legacies for the Kingdom of God.

We’ve been married for 23 years and are seeing the fruit from raising our nine children biblically. Based on the raw truth found in the Bible.

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Org. Join us as we start another important conversation about effective parenting in a fallen world. Hey everyone, welcome to the show! Hey guys, so glad you’re back. We just got back from our 25th wedding anniversary weekend.

That’s right. It was actually a little bit more than a weekend. We had four full days.

It was amazing. Our children, we get back last night and they’re like, what’d you do? And we’re like, we did nothing.

We read books.

And it was awesome.

We haven’t done that, just relaxed in a really long time and we both were really needing it. And so it was very refreshing.

It was so needed. So we obviously reflected. We read books and coffee shops, and we ate a lot of wonderful food at different cafes and restaurants. We went about an hour and a half from where we live to this beautiful little town. It reminds me of bend, Oregon, actually. It’s like maybe what bend, Oregon was when it was younger years.

Yeah, maybe we just love this little town. Yeah, McCall.

I’ll let you know. So. But for tips to help imperfect marriages, I think everybody probably should raise their hand when we say imperfect. Yeah.

You know, when we were talking about. Well, we should, we should. What should we talk about in the podcast? Well, definitely something regarding marriage, because we’ve been married for 25 years and we just celebrated our anniversary. And then I was like, you know what? Just from like the looks on the outside, it would be easy for people to think, oh, I can’t relate to Isaac and Angie. Maybe they’ve got they’ve got so much going on and so much going for them. And oh, their marriage certainly doesn’t struggle like mine does on this or this or this or this. Right. Like fill in the blank. And I just, I. Isaac and I were talking. We were like, there’s. So there have been so many things that we’ve had to grow up in over the years, and we still are learning. Absolutely. Because we’re so far from perfect. We’re all human.

So raise your hand if you have an imperfect marriage. If you’re listening on YouTube, then you see our hands. That’s right. High up. So I think that it’s so important to recognize that. And while none of us will ever achieve a perfect marriage because that literally doesn’t exist because human beings are imperfect, yes, we can all work at our marriage. And what do we want? We want a thriving marriage that glorifies God. Thriving doesn’t mean perfect. That’s right.

Thriving means growing. Actually, when you think about plants and if they’re thriving or they’re just surviving, there’s literally no in between. They aren’t just there, right? Like no status quo of flowers. Think of vegetables. Right? Like, either the plant is thriving and it’s producing fruit or, you know, I don’t know if you’ve ever seen this before, but being a gardener, sometimes every once in a while, this hasn’t happened to me in a while, but I have had it where a plant will grow and there’ll be a lot of greenery, and then there’s like no fruit. Have you ever experienced that before? And I think of the marriages that actually, like I, when I think of that kind of a plant, if it was a marriage, it would be like someone portraying on the outside that there’s a lot of beauty and and thriving happening. But in real life there’s no fruit. And so when I think of thriving, I actually think of what is the fruit that’s coming out of it. Right?

And that’s like big hat. No cattle. No.

That’s true. That’s another way to put it. Good one honey.

Hey, you know, trying to get the cowboy out of me.

That’s right. So, you know, as we were talking about today, we’re going to share some things as we’re going along, probably share some side stories of things that we’ve struggled in in the marriage over the last 25 years and things that God has grown us in, things maybe he’s still convicting us of. Because the truth is, is some of these things are like ingrained in you, in how you’re wired. And you have to relinquish your selfishness and yourself on a regular basis. It’s not like you just you’re able to just totally turn away from some of these things, right? Like here, I’ll just share one. So you know what I’m talking about. I’m a very detail oriented person, and so I like to pay attention to details. So it’s not even that I like to. It’s that I just literally cannot stop paying attention to details. So for example, here in the studio, if you were to come in, you’d be like.

It looks so.

Beautiful. There are, I’m telling you, there are dead hornets on my windowsills because I haven’t been able to come in and clean them up. And Isaac’s really good at killing the Hornets. Now you get that. I probably have had moments where I’m like, honey, why don’t you just clean them up after you hit them? Right? And so that’s been a point of contention in my heart, not necessarily between us, because it’s actually not even something I think I’ve maybe brought it up to you twice, ever.

I don’t I can’t.

Recall, and we’ve been here for four years, so. But the reason why I don’t bring it up you guys is because I realize it’s a really small thing, and he’s, like, working and focused on so many other things. But for me, the detail oriented person, I could get really frustrated at that. And so I have to die to myself and submit to, okay, what’s the bigger picture here? I’m here in the studio not to pay attention to all the things that need to get done. I’m here to shoot the podcast. Let’s get focused, like to lead my heart is what I’m saying, and it doesn’t mean that I don’t not notice them the next time I come in it, but it’s there. It’s like it’s it’s something that I have to work on for myself. And of course, there are those times where I come in with my dusting or my vacuum, or I go, honey, let’s clean up real quick.

And sometimes, you know, we have a I just take care of it sometimes. But yeah, but it just depends. But yeah, I’m very much like, I’ve got work to do. I have so much on my shoulders. I have my to do lists are way beyond what’s possible actually, which is pretty normal for people working, doing things. And so, you know, when it comes to like, am I going to take time and do a deep clean of the studio right now? No. I have pressing things that literally people are relying on me for. So I think that that’s on my side. So, you know, we all have these different agendas and different things we care about and different wiring. I definitely will admit that I’m not a detailed person. Uh, more of that visionary, intuitive, get something done, even if it’s not done perfectly. I’d rather have it done than an imperfect than perfect and slow, you know? But there’s a balance, and we rub off on each other. And it’s a good thing, actually. Yeah, but we have to. We have to kind of die to self a little bit. We have to have that service mentality. Anyways, we have four tips for you. We’re going to get into it a second.

But first uh be courageous Ministry org has everything the ministry offers, which is probably more than you might realize. Do you know, we have three podcast shows that come out every week? That’s a lot of part of the home on Monday. Tuesday. Courageous parenting never stopping, right? Uh, Wednesday. Resolute man show. And I can’t wait for you to get this next resolute man show this Wednesday. Uh, we’re going to talk about some really fascinating things everybody will appreciate. But hey, Also, we are in a fundraising mode right now and so if you go to be Courageous ministry.org, you can learn about why, how what’s happening hitting the give button even if you don’t give. We’d love to have your prayers over it because it’s really important. It’s a really important campaign for the ability for the ministry to have the impact that we feel like God is calling us to steward and help it have, and you can help us be on the team, too. Prayer team, giving team. You know all the things. So also on your player, wherever you love the podcast, would you give it a five star review? That helps it tremendously. And Angie has a few thoughts about master books. Yeah.

So before I share about that though, I also wanted to just tell you guys for for those of you who maybe are hearing that yes, we have a mom, a female woman, biblical womanhood wife mother podcast that is launched a few weeks ago. This is actually our third week, right? Um, and we call it heart of the home. It’s basically 70% of what I teach in the Bible study on Friday mornings in the Be Courageous app. So if you are someone who wants that other 30% that also really wants to be a part of the Q&A, which we don’t publish on the podcast because that’s more private, you can find out more about that at the Courageous Ministry. Org forward slash app, and you can find out more about the app there. So that’s every Friday at 10 a.m. Mountain Standard Time. So you guys you know, one of the things that has been really helpful for us has been having sponsors that we can partner with that we believe in, that are like minded, that are helping other parents with this goal in mind, to raise confident, courageous kids that love Jesus so that they are equipped to be able to launch into the world. And one of the things that we believe in a lot is homeschooling. You guys know that that’s something that we’ve been doing for 21 years now. We’ve graduated three of our kids this we’re going to be graduating another one here pretty soon. So I’m almost to the halfway mark. I’ve been in it 21 years and I’ve still got another like 15 years left, which is elusive. Halfway mark. Yeah, yeah, it’s a big deal. So, um, but, you know, we’ve used a lot of curriculums over the years, and one of the things that I just need, like plug and play simple, gonna get everything that’s necessary covered, um, kind of curriculum.

But I also need a curriculum company that I can trust. That’s biblical, that’s got other overseers that are, you know, going over, revising, making sure that everything is coming from a biblical worldview. And that’s why I love master books. That’s why we’ve partnered with them. That’s why we’re using a lot of their curriculum this year with our kids. And can I just say, like, if you’re thinking about homeschooling, um, just go and check out Master Books.com forward slash courageous. You can see what some of my favorite, um, workbooks and curriculums and books that I’ve used that they’ve published. Um, one of the other things that I really love is if you have little kids and you’re thinking, oh, maybe I’ll start out with preschool, maybe I’ll start out with kindergarten, I love that I can get kindergarten done in an hour. So, you know, even today I like set the timer and it’s like, hey buddy, we have four big curriculum books, and we’re going to set the timer to 20 minutes. And after 20 minutes when the when the dinger goes off, you get to run around the house three times, come back, I’m going to give you a couple little pretzels, and then we’re going to sit down and do another 20 minutes. And so we did this like process today where we did 20 minutes little five minute break, 20 minutes, five minute break. And we did it. We knocked it out. We got it done. And it felt really good for me as a mom.

And there’s a giveaway too at Be Courageous.

It’s actually at Master Books.com forward slash courageous. Yes, you can sign up there to enter into an awesome giveaway.

All right, let’s dive into this. You know, these four tips I think are very important. And the first one is vision. You don’t have to be a visionary. But if you’re a married and you have children, vision is required. Why? Because you have to be able to see at least a little bit ahead to make better decisions today. And the further ahead you can see and clarify and discuss together and help each other see and get an alignment on the better your decisions will be today, because you will make harder decisions today for a vision in the future that you wouldn’t otherwise make if you were just going through the week by week by week and don’t have a compelling vision for change and direction and spiritual condition of your home and all the different things finances, all the different things.

Well, and when it comes to vision too, this is kind of like a thing that you as a married couple can be working towards together, while also maybe not working on the exact same things. You know what I mean? Yeah. Like for us, we’ve always approached marriage from a team perspective because I was an individual. Isaac was an individual. God yoked us together to became one. And so there’s equal value but biblical gender roles. And so obviously different jurisdictions. And, you know, the first few years of marriage, I’d say we kind of had to, like, work that out. We had to feel it out and navigate that. And we sought out mentors and and older people who had been married, who had strong marriages, at least from what we could tell, that we would want to have a strong marriage like them. And we asked them a lot of questions about marriage. But you guys, you know what? They just kept pointing us to Scripture over and over and over again, which is what we want to do. We want to point you guys to Scripture. And in fact, one of the things that I think is important to remember in life, we’ve been in this thing called marriage for 25 years now. And over the 25 years, yeah, we’ve met trials. There have been times where I’ve experienced physical suffering, which when you love someone, you suffer alongside them. Right? And life is not all roses and harvest and baby kisses and cuddles and giggles. And although those things are a part of your life and thank goodness, because those are like the sweet, like wind beneath your wings to keep going.

In a sense, when you are experiencing other aspects of life. But there’s also like the ho hum normal mundane rhythm of the the regular schedule, right? Like when you’ve got all your things and you’re just checking things off the list, I don’t know if you’re in the season that’s like that, but we’ve gone in and out of these different kinds of seasons, right? Where maybe there’s more struggle or trial or something that we’re walking through, or maybe there’s just a lot of prosperity happening or provision, and it’s just a real time of of prospering and flourishing and of fruit. And we’ve also had seasons like that. And so I’m sharing this with you guys, because when you have vision, you remember that it’s not about what you’re going through in the moment, but understanding that all of life encompasses all of these different things. Right. And that our perspective through all of them should be to bring God glory and and to be working at the callings and the purposes that he’s created for us, which we were talking about a little bit. But I wanted to share a verse from you guys that’s in Psalm 23. It’s a Psalm of David. You guys are probably very familiar with this, and this will probably minister to those of you who are walking through a hard time now. But if you’re walking through a season of, of, of just, generous provision from the Lord and things are going really well and you can’t really think of anything that maybe is like, you know, creating any kind of discontentment in your life.

Maybe you’re in one of those seasons. I want to I want you to listen to these words. Because the truth is, is that at some point you will experience this. The Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want. He makes me lie down in green pastures. He leads me beside still waters. He restores my soul. He leads me in paths. Paths of righteousness for his name’s sake. For whose sake? For his name’s sake. He leads us in paths of righteousness for his name’s sake. But this is the thing. He leads us on a path of righteousness as they’re walking through these hard times. And it’s for his name’s sake. Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil. For you are with me. Your rod and your staff, they comfort me. You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies. You anoint my head with oil. My cup overflows. And so, understanding that God in his sovereignty and his goodness, and his even his fatherhood, because we’re his children, he has a vision for our lives. And if we can keep our hearts and our eyes focused on that, even when we’re going through a hard time, it helps us to have a finish line at the end that we’re running towards. Right? And I know that for Isaac and I, sometimes when we’ve gone through something or we’re even just maybe button heads. It can be as simple as that, where you just don’t seem like you’re you’re understanding each other. There’s misunderstandings happening every time you.

I mean, we do speak two different languages sometimes.

I mean, yeah, it seems that way. Right. And so there are those times where maybe you’re like, butting heads, right? And it’s like, okay, hold on a second. What is the vision that there would be unity in our marriage, that we would be making progress, that lack of understanding. Those misunderstandings actually are like having a thorn in your tire in your car. That’s like letting the air out, right? And it’s like, no, okay, wait. We need to stop. We need to deal with whatever sin or misunderstanding or whatever is there, because we’re crippled in this moment for making progress.

I think vision pulls you out of the momentary frustration. Yeah. And if you have vision for what you want your marriage to be like, if you have vision for where you want your family to be, like your legacy, to be like the future marriages of your children to be like. And then there’s a lot more at stake in the moment than your frustration, and that helps you to see beyond the frustration and do what is absolute best for your team, and to not use words poorly. Right. And most of communication is not the actual words you use. It’s the look on your face. I think it’s 55% if I remember the stats correctly, are the nonverbal cues that you give somebody else in communication. So you could literally say all the right things in conflict in frustration with your spouse. But if your face says something different that says everything. And so it’s really important that we do a real gut check and that we’re really thinking about, okay, what is the vision for this and how can I better talk things out? How can I better listen? How can I better not interrupt. Not get emotionally sideways? Because as soon as you start to grow in emotional, uh, what do you call that when you’re losing control.

Then lacking self-control?

You’re starting to have less control of yourself. And if you have less control of yourself, your tongue starts to defile your marriage by what you say. Hmm.

It’s interesting. I was just talking to someone about, um, about that specific verse. It’s not what you put in you that defiles you, but what comes out of you that defiles you. And when you’re married, understanding that there is this unity, there’s this new being. It’s called your marriage, the yoking of two people, and that there’s actually two tongues, right, in that sense. And so both need to exercise self-control over their tongues and self-control over their mind, because it’s easy to be quiet for some people, it’s easy to be quiet, but hard to actually listen and hear the person and what they’re saying. And so there’s a difference. And in your marriage, you need to be able to hear someone to be able to understand them. If you’re not hearing what they’re saying, then you’re not going to understand them. And, you know, I think, you know, a lot of times the scripture we see this scripture, um, husbands live with your wives in an understanding way, lest your prayers be heard. And while God is speaking very clearly to husbands, he was speaking to wives before that. Wives, submit to your husbands as unto the Lord. Um, and those are very clear instructions for husbands and wives. There’s still something that a wife can learn from that live with your husbands in an understanding way. Like that’s a warning for all of us.

How many times do we get in these ruts where we assume the worst in our spouse by the first word they say, and they may have had a totally pure intention going to say something good. But because you have this assumption, you start to you’re already frustrated.

And prejudgment.

And it’s already derailing things. And it’s because you’re you’re so connected, you’re around each other so much that sometimes we can have these things we haven’t let go of. And unless there’s real forgiveness in your marriage, unless there’s real letting, Letting go. You’re going to keep bringing that baggage, and it’s going to corrupt your communication.

You won’t even have joy. Like, can you imagine being in a marriage and not having forgiven one another? Like, there’s, you know, we we’ve talked about this in the podcast before, the two different paths to forgiveness. Right. It’s two man’s glory to overlook an offense, which is the ability to overlook things. And I think that in a marriage, you need to get really good at overlooking the non-eternal things as much as possible, because otherwise you could be nitpicking. And that’s where, you know, the Bible even warns women about being a nagging wife. Those are the women who have not clearly not learned how to overlook an offense.

There’s a dripping faucet proverb, too.

Yes there is. It’s actually there’s like multiple scriptures that warn women about what they say, but what they say is coming out of their like. It’s because it was in their mind, there was already a prejudgment that was there. There was always a there was already a frustration and a lack of grace for the person that they’re nagging. Right? A lack of compassion or understanding? A lack of an ability to overlook an offense.

But, you know, on the guys side, there’s just a lack of communication. There’s just a lack of actual words that come out of our mouths sometimes. And we need to really say more words. I know that’s not true for every guy, but a lot of guys, we stuff things in, we hold things in. And because of that, we have frustrations within. You might not even be communicating. And so you’re not even letting your wife know where you’re frustrated, and she’s frustrated because you’re not communicating very much. And if you would have if you would on a regular basis, then there’d be more understanding, easier to communicate and all these things. So these are the challenges that marriages usually have to work through their challenges. We have to work through. I have learned to become more communicative. Why not? Because I want to, but because I know it helps her and it helps our marriage. And because I have a strong vision for our marriage and I love her, I’m going to do things that I don’t feel like doing.

No, that’s so good. I also think that there’s an element of when you have vision, that your marriage is meant to bring glory to God. It’s not just for you to be selfishly happy all the time, right? Um, and I think that the first time that I was actually, like, introduced to that thought was Tim Keller’s book where he said, in Sacred Marriage, it was the book Sacred Marriage. He said, marriage isn’t about making you happy, it’s about making you holy. And while I think that when you’re pursuing holiness and righteousness, you’re going to experience happiness. You’re going to experience the joy of the Lord. Right? And so I’m not saying that that quote alone is completely accurate, but I do think that for us as humans, when we have vision for the why behind our marriage, when we understand what God wants to do in our lives, he wants to sanctify us, and he’s using this relationship that’s a lifelong, forever relationship until death do you part. It’s not the same as like the sanctification you experience with your kids, right? Because they’re in your home for like 20% of their life ish. And then they launch and they start their own family, and they’re still part of your life, but it’s not even close to the same as when you’re living with them, but your spouse. You’re going to live with them till death do you part. And so this is actually the relationship, the relationship that is going to be the the most important for you to be purposeful and intentional and grace giving with and and like investing in actually, you know what I mean.

It’s so important. Have a vision for your oneness. Think about that. What is your vision for your oneness? Of course, when you hear that probably intimacy comes to mind, right? Oneness two shall become one. But there’s more to it than that. We don’t have time to go all into it in this episode, but I encourage you to get the free Courageous Marriage series in the Be Courageous app. It’s six hours. It’s basically six hour marriage course, completely free in the app you You’ve got to pay something small for the app, but be courageous in your app store. But that oneness is so important, and that’s where we actually talk about intimacy. But even more than that, and there’s a lot more to it. So let’s move to our second tip, which is faith.

You know, obviously the I think that for the times where there’s either been a sin or a mistake or a trial, which some of those things are out of your control, some are in your control, right. Um, suffering things that are hard that happen in life. Right. We live in a fallen world. And because you have two sinners, right, that get married, there’s going to be sin in a marriage, right? Hey, guys. Thanks so much for listening to the Courageous Parenting Podcast. We just want to take a moment to highlight some of our awesome sponsors who are actually there making the Courageous Parenting Podcast possible. And so let’s just take a moment and listen to the sponsors, and then we’ll get back to the show. I want to share a really amazing personal testimony with you guys. The first 20 years Isaac and I were married, we primarily went the traditional health insurance route. Being entrepreneurs in those first 20 years, we had nine pregnancies, one loss, and eight babies birthed Earthside. Each time we were pregnant, we felt limited by our insurance coverage when making the decision on where we were going to have our babies. When looking into coverage for those births, home birth exclusions were a really big deal for us because of the risk of liability in case of an emergency. As we continued having babies later in life and being older, I was labeled geriatric. I was considered high risk, which made it even more difficult to find the care that I wanted with the assurance of support.

Then, four years ago, we switched over to Samaritan Ministries, which is a health sharing organization. A few years into switching, we experienced another pregnancy loss and then we became pregnant for the 11th time. Still desiring to have a home birth. We were so blessed and surprised to find out that all our needs were shareable within the organization and that I could choose the provider I wanted. So we moved forward to have the home birth of our dreams. If you’re looking for an alternative option to being able to pay for medical expenses incurred in raising a family, and you desire the freedom to choose your own providers, including alternative providers like chiropractors and naturopaths, we want to encourage you to check out Samaritan Ministries at our link Samaritan ministries.org slash. Be courageous. In the video, we share how it works and answer a bunch of frequently asked questions. So check out our link at Samaritan ministries.org. Forward slash. Be courageous. I’m not naturally artistic, at least not in the fine art sense. So when my kids showed early on that they loved art, I wanted to nurture that creativity. That’s why we love creating a masterpiece. Their award winning art programs are for everyone ages four ish through 104. Plus, your family gets to practice drawing, using watercolors, charcoal sculpting, painting and so much more. And the best part? You get to do it all together. Building relationships, making memories, and letting creativity grow. Visit creating a masterpiece.com/courageous to sign up for one low rate for your entire family that’s creating a masterpiece.com/courageous because anyone can create a masterpiece.

And so there’s opportunity for there to be growth in forgiving. There’s going to be opportunity for growth in confessing. There’s going to be opportunity for growth in holding one another accountable. All of these are part of the call that we have as Christians within our faith to submit, to rebuke and correction, to submit to accountability, to open yourself up and be transparent, to be real, to be honest. We see the the patriarchs of the faith. That’s literally what they do over and over again. Like you read the Psalms and you just see lamenting. You see this transparent, Parent open heart, literally vomiting out the sins and the things that God has taught them because of their sins. Imagine if Christians lived that honestly in marriage with their spouse in the same kind of way. Yeah, that is like biblical living 101 is to like, search my heart. Oh God, is there any wayward way in me? And when you live in a way where you’re like, I want to grow. I don’t want to stay where I’m at in my faith. Like I want to become a better Christian. I want to I want to grow in forgiveness, or I want to grow in being more grace giving or I want to. Whatever it is that you’re struggling with, like share that with your spouse and pray together. But then also, like, we have to change our hearts in faith to be willing to receive those things from the person that sees us the most.

You know, what do you want your children to see? That you’re growing in the Lord, right? The real Bible. Open. You’re learning things. You’re changing. You’re being refined. They can see changes in you. Wow, mom, you’re so joyful. And you can say, well, I had some really good time with the Lord while I was making dinner, snacking on the Bible. And you would say. And these kinds of things. And finding time for that, making time for that, even if there’s no time. That kind of thing is so, so important because, you know, I think of all my boys, you know, there’s six boys still at home. What do I want to be able to tell them to look for in a future wife? Well, I want to be able to tell them to look for what I love so much about my wife, which is she’s always growing. She’s always reading her Bible. She is a prayerful woman. She loves the Lord. She’s not going to do anything on purpose to compromise her ministry, her ability to glorify the Lord with her life. And I want I don’t. We want to be able to tell our sons that, hey, look for someone like mom who glorifies God and is always growing. That is so important. You need to see evidence of that in somebody, even before you spend too much time with them.

Yeah, I think that for sure. That’s a huge thing for the legacy. Right. And that’s part of the purpose of marriage, right, is to be fruitful and multiply and to leave a God focused, kingdom minded legacy. Um, but, you know, I think when I think of faith, too, I think of those times when we were in trials, remember we used to tell people like, okay, but yeah, people would ask, how is your marriage doing during this time? Like when we walked through the business failure, you remember that years ago people were so concerned. They’re like, how’s your marriage? And both of us, unanimously, right away, without even a heartbeat, had to say better than ever. Yeah, it was better because it was the things that we were walking through were so hard and we were lacking sleep and but we were lacking sleep together. We were in it together. And it was we were both seeking God. Yeah. First and foremost. And so our the intimacy that we experienced with the Lord brought us closer together. And so it’s that whole picture of a triangle right where in in each corner you have, you have one spouse in each corner. But then if they’re both seeking God, they’re going to meet at God. And, and there’s this beautiful imagery.

It’s so interesting how sometimes resistance in someone’s life creates closeness, creates care. Like, we’ve had a lot of resistance in our life when we’ve been married, because we’re continually trying to obey God and do things for the Lord, like I’m sure you are. And because of the resistance that comes, it makes us even stronger because we’re mature Christians, right? Not perfect. We’re growing. But but we’re maturing. We’re not going to just fold. And this relates I just learned that of all the countries in the world, there’s a happiness index. Somebody rates all the countries on this by rating the people and so forth. And I guess it’s pretty legit. It’s like, what is the relative happiness of the population in that country? And you wouldn’t believe it. But Israel is rated number four of all the nations. United States is rated number 15. So Israel is the fourth highest happy population in the entire world. And they are constantly. Their entire existence almost is under attack. Under attack. And probably every month or so families have to go into bomb shelters, but in only 50%, you know, have religious views there, right? That’s a lot, actually. But, um, but it’s it’s unanimous there that everybody cares about something bigger than their disagreements. And so because of that, they’re all.

About their heritage.

They care about their country. They care about that. And I think that there’s resistance. Resistance can fuel. Think about the day after nine over 11, regardless of what you think about nine over 11 now. But back then, if you remember, the whole country came together. Together. Everybody, regardless, had flags hanging outside of their vehicles, right? Everybody. They were sold out everywhere.

Because there was a there was an enemy of everyone.

There was an enemy of everyone.

And the the people that were killed were demographically representative of every diversity that you could imagine because so many people were killed. And I think.

One thing that’s helped us is we fully understand the spiritual battle. We see the spiritual battle happening all the time. We know the enemy hates us and wants to wipe out our marriage. And so there is a there is an enemy that we’re fighting against, and there is a God that we love so much that we’re moving towards. And I think that has been tremendous for our marriage. Yeah.

I mean, even when you were running a business and it wasn’t a faith based business, but we were, you know, we viewed ourselves as missionaries, marketplace missionaries, and we were trying to use our influence for his glory, and to lead other people to Christ, and to show hospitality and to just love people. And then hopefully they would ask us about the word, and they saw our commitment to God regardless, even when they were in our home. And so there was there was this sense, though, of like the more that bold that we got for the Lord, the more we experienced resistance, and then the less bold that we were for the Lord, the less resistance we experienced. I don’t know if you’ve experienced that yourself, but that is for sure what we’ve experienced in our marriage. And so you kind of are at this crossroads. I mean, there are times, I’ll be really honest with you guys. We’ve shared with you guys the exciting parts of planting a church. But the hard part of planting a church is knowing that we are a threat to the enemy, that what we are doing is a threat to the enemy, and that we are in a spiritual battle. And we’ve already started experiencing some of those attacks.

And that being said, it’s like, no, we’re doing this for God. It’s not something we’re doing for ourselves is we don’t have a choice. He’s called us to do this. So we’re just going to keep saying yes and keep trusting God. But when you’re on a mission like that together and it’s a faith mission, it grows your marriage so much stronger together that it’s really, I believe it becomes like the this is such an important thing. It puts everything else into perspective. Yeah, it changes your perspective about the little minor details or the little things that irritate you that people tend to blow up out of proportion. Right. Yeah. And so there is this element of maturity that is grown in you, as you say. Yes to the big missions together for God, and you say no to allowing the little petty things get you down. Yeah. But that being said, that doesn’t mean that in our humanity, we aren’t tempted to let those things get to us because that does happen. So the third thing we wanted to share with you guys is growth. Yeah. Which we’ve already kind of touched on in a little bit regarding faith and even with vision. But there’s that element of personal growth and marriage growth.

And loving seeing your spouse grow, loving seeing your spouse learn things, and then excited to hear her share about that. It’s so important. We were sitting in a coffee shop, both reading different books. Um, and then we went out to dinner afterwards and were like, hey, would you learn? Oh, would you learn? I know we.

Were actually so excited. We’re like, oh, tonight’s dinner is gonna be so fun. Our conversation is gonna be so fun.

So I think it’s so cool to do that. And husbands, wives are so smart. Women are incredible, right? There’s so much to learn from your bride. And I think that encouraging her to grow is only a good thing. It takes its secure, confident men in the Lord that want to see their wives growing and being all that God is calling them to be. While of course, maintaining jurisdictions and the biblical roles and all those things. But but man, my wife is so brilliant and so, so wonderful to listen to and hear from. And sometimes she has wisdom that’s a different direction than I’m going. And I listen to it and it really helps. I appreciate that. Yeah. I think it’s so important.

Thank you. You know, I want to share from Psalm 119, which is very popular Psalm. Most people know it, but from the perspective of growing and, you know, I mentioned earlier in this podcast that Isaac and I have sought out mentors before as far as like, oh, what are we doing in marriage? We have no idea. Right? Um, especially like biblical marriage and looking for what does it look like to be a biblical husband, right? Like, that was definitely something that you were searching for, and you found some good books that were really helpful at first, but then meeting with a mentor was really special. But this verse in Psalm 119, it starts out in verse 97. It continues. It says, oh, how I love your law. It is my meditation all the day. We can’t underestimate the power of just being in the word all day, meditating on God’s Word. That’s God’s word, by the way. I see that there’s, you know, there’s this need. When people talk about words like meditation or manifest, they’re actually both in the Bible and they’re God’s words, and he uses them in a biblical way. So here we are in a biblical, um, in the Bible, in Psalm 19. He’s saying it is my meditation all the day. Your commandment makes me wiser than my enemies. So if you’re walking through a hard time, it’s God’s commandment that’s going to make you wiser than your enemies, for it is ever with me. I have more understanding than all my teachers. So even your mentors like if you read the Bible, you’re going to have more understanding than even them for your testimonies.

Lord are my meditation. So the testimonies are all throughout the Old Testament and the New Testament. It’s just testimony after testimony, after testimony of people declaring God’s goodness and about who he was and his character and what he did for us. I understand more than the aged, for I keep your precepts. I understand more than the aged. I recently was pondering this thought that I for a long time have believed. I even write a little bit about it in the biblical online Friendship Bible study. Um, and it’s this concept that age does not equate spiritual maturity. Um, and realizing that that actually comes first and foremost from the Word of God right here, which says, I have more understanding than all my teachers. It’s not the age of the teachers that makes them wise. It’s the biblical truth. It’s understanding your precepts. I understand more than the aged, for I keep your precepts. So if we keep our precepts, we can literally be walking in the joy of having a marriage five years in, even if we haven’t been married for 25 years. If we are reading the word and we know the wisdom, and then it says, I hold back my feet from every evil way. When you’re in a in a marriage, there are times where you’re going to be tempted for to to fall into an evil way, a selfish inclination, a fleshly, desirous, just desiring something, maybe being discontent in what your husband is providing, for example, and what God is providing through your husband’s hard work. I know a lot of women who are discontent in that, and that staying in that is an evil way.

It’s an evil path. And so holding my feet back from every evil path in order to keep your word, Lord, because your word tells me to be content, I do not turn aside from your rules, for you have taught me. Verse 103 how sweet are your words to my taste. Sweeter than honey to my mouth. Through your precepts, I get understanding. Therefore I hate every false way. Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light unto my path. And I this verse just over and over again, when I think about faith, vision and growth, they all just go together as well as purpose, which is the next thing we’re going to be talking about in a second. And understanding that as Christian women and Christian husbands, if we were to take line by line of just Psalm 119 here, verse 97 through 104 105, we could be purposefully thinking, okay, what are the rules? I do not turn aside from your rules. What are the rules that God’s talking about? Oh, I meditate on his commandments. Do I know all of his commandments? Hmm. I better get better at knowing what his commandments are and having them written on my heart. That’s a challenge to grow, to memorize the Bible. Right? And so there’s always room for us to grow. And I think that when both the husband and the wife are pursuing that kind of growth on a personal level in their own individual lives. That’s when you have, like the most thriving marriage with two imperfect people.

Always plenty to talk about if you’re both growing. But if you’re not, you know, if you go to a restaurant and there’s just not much to talk about and you end up just talking about other people or things like that, then you might not be growing. You should be able to talk about ideas, ideas, talk about your family, talk about where you guys want to go together, talk about hobbies, talk about your passions, things you care about. That’s a that’s a vibrant marriage right there. But if you’re running out of things to say, that’s that’s a problem.

I think that if you’re running out of things to say, you’re running out of, um, interests and you’re not growing, the most important thing to say would be to say, I’m struggling with growing. Can you help me?

Yes. Help.

Can I just say that like I think that, you know, there’s this element we were going to share from Second Corinthians chapter 12. It’s it’s I’m just going to read one part of the verse. It’s verse ten. It says for the sake of Christ. Then I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong. But here’s the problem is that so many people put on a facade of I’m strong all the time, and they never admit when they’re weak. It’s when we’re weak that God is strong. That’s when we grow.

Be vulnerable with each other. Talk about each other’s needs. Talk about. You know, maybe. Maybe the wife needs some time, you know, to that she really has a passion to learn something or to take an online course or these kinds of things and these little extra time. I know Angie’s, you know, talked to me about I just really need a little more time for this or that. And I’m like, yeah, let’s let’s figure it out. Well, how are we going to figure it out? We talk about that and sometimes it happens, sometimes it doesn’t. And I go, well, thanks for bringing that up too. I’m going to do better to to make sure it happens even though I’m busy and because it’s important. And then you fall through. You do your best. And I think it’s so important to create space for each other to grow. Mhm.

You know, another aspect of, um, understanding growth and pursuing growth is remembering what your purpose is, that your purpose isn’t this like American dream pursuit, which I think a lot of couples start out with that. Right? Like they’re very, um, focused. I mean, I’m just thinking about who I was as a young person, who you were when we first got married. It was like, okay, we’re starting out our life. We have to work really hard. Mhm. It was like build, build, build, right? Yeah. That was the focus because it was like the beginning.

Got to save money, take advantage of you know investing at a young age.

And youthfulness and energy. We’re gonna burn the candle at both ends. And we were kind of we were intense about like build build build. Let’s go, let’s go, let’s go. Right. Couldn’t do it as fast as possible. It was just like, yes, let’s go. And there was this intensity about and it was fun to build together. And I actually think that that’s part of how it’s supposed to be within marriage for you to be building whatever you’re building, be building together. And I think that for the wives that are listening, maybe you’re thinking, well, what does that look like, Angie? How can I help my husband build? It could be as simple as making lunch for them. I know that sounds crazy. And you may think, oh, that’s such a trad wife thing to do. It’s such a big deal.

It’s so helpful.

But it’s such a big deal, especially when you’re married to guys that are go go go go. How do you guys know? Isaac is the type of person that he will just keep working, and he will skip over meal after meal after meal if I let him. I have to literally sometimes bring him food because he’s just working work, work, work, work, work, and he’s just really good at staying focused. And so I know that part of the way I can help him is by taking a little extra time, making him something that he will eat, that he’ll like to eat, and then bringing it out to him. And I know that that, you know, that’s not necessarily going to be the same story for everyone. He works 100ft from my house, but you can get up early and make a lunch for your husband. Or you can make it the night before. Or maybe you bring and you drop it off and you know that you aren’t going to be able to see him very long. You just leave it at the receptionist desk and you text him. I left you a lunch, but it’s a big deal.

You know what else is helpful is that you’re interested. You’ve always been interested in the work I do. Yeah, even when I wasn’t necessarily at home all the time. You were interested in how the meeting went or how did that decision go, or, you know, what’s going on here or just but not in a way of like trying to manage anything is more just interested. Right. And I think that’s really helpful.

Well, I think that for you, I also know, like the things that you to ask about like for you, you have this big long to do list, right? Like you have so many things on your list. You even just said, I have so many things on my list that are far beyond what I can even actually get done right now. Um, and I know that about you. So I’m not going to go through and ask, oh, did you call this person? Did you call that person? Because that would be a managing kind of way of being that would actually be on the nagging side of wife management. And it’s not something you want to do. And I just want to warn you that that’s not what he’s talking about. Instead, it’s like, oh, he had a coaching call today and it was his first one with that guy. I’m just going to ask him, hey, was it how’d it go? Did you enjoy it? And wanting to hear where his heart is at as far as doing that kind of work? Because he’s done a lot of it over the years. Getting a feel for. Is this like something that you are really loving and that makes him feel loved and and like I’m caring for him because I’m actually genuinely wanting to know what’s going on in his heart and his mind. Not that he just did the thing.

I think it’s good for us gents to ask our wives once in a while, maybe on a date night or something. Is there anything that you’re interested in or would love to be doing? It just seems impossible. Or it seems hard to get going. And, you know, just hearing her heart. And even if there isn’t something, who wouldn’t want to hear that? I mean, that is like a great thing. It shows that you care. You care about what she’s doing, but you also care about her hopes, dreams, aspirations and those kinds of things. And so don’t forget that.

You know, and the next verse that we wanted to share with you guys is in first Corinthians chapter six verse 19. It says, or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body.

Which can take a moment to listen about. You thrive our children going through this this summer, and it is so good to feel the gaps of financial education. We’ll be right back to the show. Parents, we.

Know you want your children to thrive as they transition into adulthood, and fortunately, they’re facing economic challenges you never did starting out because of rising costs and deteriorating wages, but because there’s little room for error today. It’s a non-negotiable that they learn financial literacy skills to get ahead and not live paycheck to paycheck. Youth Thrives Academy Ultimate Personal finance course is filling that gap left by traditional educational curriculum. My kids are taking Youth Thrives Online course now, which was created by a former CIA economic analyst, and they’re learning valuable life skills like career readiness, budgeting, saving, investing, borrowing and protecting their assets. Go to you thrive dot Academy forward slash parents. That’s the letter you and get this online course for only $99, which comes with lifetime access, is exclusive for only our listeners. Use courageous at checkout before it expires. And this obviously goes along really beautifully with Second Timothy chapter one, verse um, six through ten, which says, for this reason I remind you to fan the flame, the gift of the gift of God, which is in you through the laying on of hands. For God gave us a spirit not of fear, but of power, love, and self-control. Therefore, do not be ashamed of the testimony about our Lord, nor of me his prisoner, but share in the suffering of the.

For the gospel by the power of God, who saved us and called us to his holy calling, not because of our works, but because of his own purpose and grace, which he gave us in Christ Jesus before the ages began. This is like huge purpose for why we’re even alive. Like he created this purpose that we are walking out in as a married couple. It’s meant to bring God glory. It’s image bearing of the body of Christ and the relationship that it has with Christ. Our marriage is that so? There’s this incredible, great purpose that God created before the ages began is what the Scripture says. But in conjunction with your body is not your own. And then you think about Colossians 323. It says, work heartily as unto the Lord and not unto men. And it’s like these are the different verses that just come to your mind when you start becoming selfish and to remember, wait a second. Nope. I need to live on purpose. Even within my marriage. My body is not my own. I’m going to serve here. This really means a lot to my my husband. Or this really means a lot to my wife. Like thinking through those ways that you can bring God. Glory always lands in the category of selflessness.

So we’re going to finish with an unprecedented times tip. It’s really important to think about and have a goal for how strong you want your marriage to be. It needs to be stronger than ever. We’re facing interesting times. The advancement of technology make this unprecedented times the access to information to hold each other accountable, to not going sideways with information, and learning too much in the wrong directions that we’re moving away from biblical truth. For example, you’re going to see Christians in the droves where this happens, where they start dabbling over here and over here and over here. And pretty soon they’re questioning the very good book, the only book that truly matters, which is the Bible, because it’s God breathed. So we want to make sure that we are figuring out where does our marriage need to grow. So after this, think about where does our marriage need to grow and have a meeting about it and understanding. I really believe there’s no time to spare. Like we’ve got to go into this next season, whatever this next season is going to bring. We’re in the political season right now. The next 4 or 5 months are going to be interesting. You need to make sure most importantly, your marriage is strong. So where does it need to be stronger going into this next season because we’re not promised an easy life? In fact, we are told we’re going to have a harder life because we’re believers, because there’s persecution. But you know what? If you live in the United States, you haven’t experienced persecution like our friends listening in from all over the world. And so it’s so important that we don’t take that for granted and understand that we might become normalized in a way, like in America. It might become more normal to be persecuted as Christians at some point. Is your marriage ready for that? Is your family ready for that? Are you making sure you’re strong?

Well, I even think about, you know, a lot of people, you know, we have this courageous parenting podcast, but we have the Parenting mentor program, right? Which is one of the main reasons why we do that is to try to encourage couples to be aligned in their parenting. It’s absolutely crucial. But this is the thing. How are they ever going to be aligned in their parenting if their marriage is selflessly? There’s this division and this lack of unity and biblical walking out in fellowship with one another. And so the first step you have to do is to be honest about the issues that you personally have. You can’t change your spouse. Your spouse can’t change you, but you can change yourself so individually if you are striving for walking holy, if you are striving for walking in the spirit, then your marriage will be changed and we hope and pray for that for you guys. So we hope you’re encouraged by today’s podcast. We’ll see you next time. Hey, thanks for listening and being a part of the 10 Million Legacies movement. Go to be Courageous Ministry. Org for more biblically based resources, ways to switch where you spend your money that support the mission and information about the incredible Be Courageous app community for believers.

Also, we wanted to quickly tell you about our six week online Parenting Mentor program.

Isaac and I created a powerful biblical curriculum. Here’s how it works. Each week, we release a video session with a downloadable parenting packet to make it easy for you to incorporate those teachings directly into your parenting.

This is an incredible, self-paced program. We cover everything from tending to their hearts, handling obedience to overcoming mistakes most Christians are making. But more than that, it’s a supportive community. You’ll have access to our private group in the Be Courageous app, live webcast, and direct access to us.

If you’re interested in joining our next online Parenting Mentor program, secure your spot now at Be Courageous Ministry. Org that’s Be Courageous ministry.org.