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Full Transcript:

Note: This is an automated transcript and misspells or grammar errors may be present.

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 I’m Isaac from Resolute Man.

We’ve been married for 21 years and have seen the fruit from raising our eight kids biblically. Based on the raw truth found in the.

Bible, we can no longer let the culture win the hearts of children. Too many children from Christian families are walking away from their faith by age 18. And it doesn’t have to be this way. It shouldn’t be this way. Join us as we start an important conversation about effective parenting and the following. Welcome to the podcast.

Hey, guys.

Glad you are here talking about marriage today.

You’re going to love our title, Making Marriage Fun Again.

It’s important. It’s fun. You’re like, What do you mean? What do you mean? Our marriage is fun? Well, this will be an encouragement if you’re one of those that already has a super, super fun marriage. And if you’re wishing it was more fun, it would also be super encouraging, too.

Yeah. So before we dive into the topic today, which I think is just going to be, I know that for Isaac and I, as we were talking, this is a goal. I just want you guys to know, like when we share these things, it’s not that we’ve got everything down perfect. This is something that we’ve just been we were talking about to like and we’re going to share from our heart like we always do today and just share some things that we’ve even recently been convicted of or that God kind of put a spotlight on and just how we’ve grown in and again, in appreciating one another and being reminded of a few things that we wanted to remind you guys of today in hopes that it’s an encouragement to you. Absolutely. So Isaac, before we dive in, what if someone is new and they’re listening for the first time and they’re like, okay, who is this couple that is talking about marriage? Maybe we should share a little bit about ourselves, like how long we’ve been married.

We’re approaching 24 years of marriage.

That’s right. We’ve known each other for 25 years.

And we have nine children and we don’t come from big families either. So it’s all new to us.

And we have one granddaughter.

Oh, Quincy.

She is the cutest little baby girl. And we homeschool. Yeah, I’m a stay at home mom and wife have been my entire marriage, although I’ve also served just ministry wise as a doula on the side for about a decade. I was doing that and Isaac was helping me to do that because that was a passion of mine and I’m really thankful that he was so supportive in that way because sometimes you get called in the middle of the night. Lots of babies are born in the middle of the night, so.

And here we are. I was in the business world and God said, Nope, you’re going to go do ministry with your wife. And I’m so glad God has way more wisdom than I do, because the impact that this ministry has had, that God has had through this ministry is really encouraging to us.

It’s been really cool, you guys. One thing that you might not know is that when we started courageous Parenting, we we really had a heart for encouraging other parents. And part of this was we were blessed to be a part of a community where people were trying to raise their kids biblically. And so there were people that we were running the race with. But but largely a lot of them were probably their kids were maybe ten years younger than ours. A lot of them, their oldest was ten years younger than our oldest. And we looked around us and a lot of times we felt alone. I’m just going to use that word alone. There were many times I remember in the first 15, 16 years of our marriage, especially where I felt like I was the mean parent. Have you ever felt that way where you’re saying no to things that other parents are saying yes to? And you’re like, I must be crazy. Why am I saying no to this? And everybody else seems like they’re saying yes.

Well, we always had a reason.

We did. And now, like, fast forward to where we’ve been married for 23 years and we have older children. I don’t regret any of those decisions. And I and I will I will be very transparent here. And there are times when I am able to bump into some of those other parents. There have been opportunities and I’ve heard the struggles they’ve had with their kids. And I go, Wow. So I share that with you because maybe you have felt like you’re running the race alone and you’ve been looking for a place where you can find other people who are parenting biblically, being courageous, saying no to secular ways, saying no to wayward philosophies, wanting to raise your kids up, maybe even you’re trying to leave a new legacy and do things different than the way you were raised. We get that, and that’s why we’re doing this podcast to encourage you in that.

A And there’s a community that’s amazing and growing in the Be Courageous app, It obviously costs a small monthly investment because we didn’t have big outside investors to build something like a big social media platform like Facebook or Instagram, but instead it is funded by the people that want to be part of the community and it also supports the ministry. So it literally helps every month and we love being part of that and everybody’s safe there. It’s a social media platform with valuable resources and that’s where we do live. Q&a is on a monthly basis and those kinds of things.

Yeah, So let’s dive in. Let’s talk about making marriage fun again. You know, you guys, like we said, we’ve been married almost 24 years and I’m going to be real transparent. There have there’s been an ebb and flow. If you’re watching our video on Rumble, you can see how animated I get at times. I’m kind of doing like a wave here with my arm, but there are ebbs and flows where I would say that there have been different seasons where it’s been more fun than others, right? Like when you walk through a hard trial, like losing a baby because we’ve lost a couple of babies. There have been some valley moments over the last 24 years that have really challenged us. That have made us stronger for sure. And our our heart was always to glorify God and to lean into those hard times and really engage with God and look to what the lesson is for us to learn and and glorify him. That has been our goal. We haven’t always been perfect at that, but that’s been our goal. But it’s not fun to be in those hard seasons. So maybe you’re in a hard season. We’ll talk about that a little bit today, too. But then there have been the ebbs and flows, where the flows where it’s like, wow, things have just we just feel like we’re experiencing blessing upon blessing and it’s just like we’re on cloud nine. There have been definitely those moments.

I think, you know, in the age we’re in right now, maybe one of you are. Both of you look at the news from time to time. Some of you daily like me and you understand what’s happening in the world. And at the same time, you’re reading your Bible and you understand the good news, you understand the gospel, you know where you’re going when you die, and there’s joy in your heart and all these things. And then there’s the provision side, the challenge to keep providing and saving and doing the things that you feel you’re called to do to protect your family financially and otherwise. And there can be a lot. And what you don’t want to miss out on is the power of your marriage example and how important that is for your children to see. We don’t just do it for that. We do it because we love our spouses and we want our marriages to be awesome. Don’t we all want that right? And to have fun together, to not just say that we’re best friends, but act like it. I think that’s really important. And we can get sometimes the marriage can be put aside for all these other priorities that are good. But you know what? The fuel, the number one fuel, it’s like rocket fuel is God for your marriage. And the second fuel is to not neglect. It is to focus on your marriage because it makes everything else happen better.

Oh, it’s so true. I mean, think about parenting, for example. If your marriage isn’t going well, then most likely your parenting is not going well because that should be a team effort, or at least it should feel like it’s a team effort. When I say team effort, I don’t mean like 5050. That’s not what I’m talking about here, because that’s not a healthy marriage, because there’s different responsibilities and jurisdictions that each you and your spouse are going to have within your marriage because of biblical gender roles. And the truth is, is that sometimes it can feel like maybe it’s not 5050, and then that can lead to resentment, it can lead to jealousy, it can lead to grumpy complaining.

Or you have a mindset.

If you have a mindset that is focused on on thinking that it’s going to be this utopia where you’re only doing half of the work. Do you know what I mean? And the reality is, is you’ve been given gifts, gifts that are different than your spouse. And to appreciate those and have a different perspective. Let me just give you one example. We have a little kiddo that has croup right now, and I have loved learning about natural medicine. It’s just something I think I get it from my great grandma. She used to have this old medicine library she would read in journal about. And I remember growing up reading it, and I just love I love researching that stuff, knowing those things, trying to help my family. That’s not Isaac’s jam. That’s my jam. So guess what? When the kid is up in the night with croup, who is going to be the one that’s going to be potentially taking care of the one who knows what homeopathy to grab, the one who knows what oils to put on them, not the person that doesn’t. Right. And so he has things that he has to do during the day that require him to be more. He can’t like stop and take a nap with the toddler when the toddler is napping. Like I could actually do that. I don’t do that. I probably should do that more. But the reality is, is I understand he has to go and provide for the family. And so for me to get up, it would be it would be a temptation when I’m weak and vulnerable for the enemy to put thoughts of like, Oh, you’re always doing this. How come he’s not helping? Like, that’s that’s not that’s counterproductive to what we’re talking about regarding being a team. The perspective we need to have is God’s given me different gifts than he’s given him and vice versa. And then to appreciate those things in each other, understanding the different roles that we have in the ways we get to serve our kids and parent together, I.

Think that’s good. And then we’re going right into our first point, which is handling barriers, because what Angie is talking about can be a major barrier to having fun too. Even getting to that spot where you can have fun again as a married couple. And I say again because, I don’t know, maybe this exists, but I think every married couple.

Had married, chose.

To be married and had fun before they got married, and at least right after they got married. Right.

So I hope so, man.

You know, and that’s powerful. You know, the past is helpful to remind yourself of how good something can be again. And I think it’s important. One of the things that can help you handle whatever barriers you have is for both of you. To to go back and to remember how much fun you have had together. And maybe you got bogged down. Maybe you’ve taken each other for granted, which can happen. Maybe you’ve just stopped making a priority out of date nights and things like that. But maybe you need to go back and make a list together or individually of all the fun things you’ve done and how you guys had fun and so forth, and really reflect on that. And maybe you can’t do all those things anymore because you have kids now and things like that, but.

Maybe you can do one of them or you can brainstorm and go, Oh, we really like that. Maybe we should try this because this is similar to that and we might find that new thing to be fun.

So reflecting can be really powerful. But there are some serious marriage issues out there. We understand. We hear it all the time. And you know, there is some truth that sometimes you have to get through something before you can get to the fun again. And but the fun and the hope for that can help you get through it. It can help you do the right things to get there. And so I think that no matter how big the challenge is, you have to have that hope that you can do that. And through God, all things are possible, right in our own strength. It might seem daunting, but through God all things are possible. And while we can’t, you can never change another person, even your spouse. I believe you can have influence.

You can win them over by your conduct.

You can’t force change, but you can have influence. That does does create change over time. And so how can we be the best we can be, the most godly we can be, and joyful in the midst of trouble and loving and forgiving and lead in that even if the other won’t because somebody’s got to start take a step. So anyways, we are going to get into some fun things, but we do understand people listening. I mean, praise the Lord. 113,000 downloads last month, the biggest month the podcast ever had. There is a lot of people listening and so I know there’s all kinds of situations happening.

Yeah. So, you know, when it comes to handling barriers, I just want to reiterate something that Isaac just said, that if you didn’t hear him, this is super, super important. Sometimes remembering and having the hope for fun is what helps you to get through the hard thing. When he said that, I just went mind blown. That’s so true. Because like even when you’re walking through loss or whether that’s loss of a job or loss of a child or loss of a parent, a grandparent. Right. A loss of maybe you have to move from your home, your massive transitions that people go through in life, right. Where like in the midst of a recession. And we understand that there’s hardships on provision, there’s hardships on there’s the unknown of the potential future, right? When you see things about like egg prices going up and egg farms burning down and feed issues and all the things that are happening, you literally go, What now? Right. And it would be easy to let those things accumulate and cultivate a fear within you that then becomes a barrier that you have to handle. But I just want to encourage you to instead, even though you know the realities of what are happening in the world, choose to focus on good things and to keep your focus on the Lord.

Amen. And Proverbs 1722 A joyful heart is good medicine, but a crushed spirit dries up the bones. And so a joyful heart is good medicine, perhaps some of the best medicine that exists, but a crushed spirit dries up the bones. And so if there isn’t joy, what’s happening? What can happen to a marriage over time? It can be very.

Crushing, crushing of a marriage. I mean, if you think about how in God’s word to become one flesh, right in marriage, how your union, you are one, and how a joyful heart is good medicine to an individual, a joyful heart within a marriage is also good medicine to a marriage that might be broken or or cast down. And I just think that there’s an element of understanding that we all are potentially in a position where sometime in our life we’re going to experience health issues. At some point in our life, we’re going to be potentially experiencing hurt from sin, from other people, offenses, things like that. All of those things can be potential barriers, right, which is what we’re talking about. And so in the midst of those, like what is the medicine for all of those things? And the medicine is Jesus. That is our only hope. That is the foundation of any hope that we have. Right. Like when Isaac was talking about the heaviness that sometimes guys can have. Like I want to speak for a moment to the people who maybe are potentially. Having a hard time having fun in their marriage. They can’t even think about enjoy, like going on a date night and having fun. They’re like, I don’t have money for a date night, first of all, let alone someone to pay to babysit my kids. Let’s just take that scenario for a minute, because I know there’s a lot of you listening and then you’ve got the husband that’s like concerned about the finances because he’s trying to provide and he’s trying to be wise and he’s concerned. And I just want to speak for a moment to the wife that in that moment, like, how can you be a blessing to your husband? How can you in that moment show appreciation and help him? Because when one is down, the other pulls the other one up.

I even think of that other scripture that’s in the Old Testament that says that two are better than one. For when one has fallen, the other helps the other one up. A cord of three is not quickly broken. And so like understanding that we both equally have that responsibility, that when one is down or one is overwhelmed or one is overloaded or maybe struggling with their own barrier, if you will, or their own hardship. The other one is there to help pick the other one up by pointing them to Christ, by loving them, by serving them. And that truly, like if you are in the midst of a hardship, like how can you serve one another as the wife? If we were going through financial struggles and this is just something I try to do on a regular basis, trying to be a prudent wife, trying to be extra careful, using coupons, maybe making things go spread farther as far as food goes, what can I make at home? Like, one of the things that I just started doing is making sourdough bread. And I was just calculating how many, how much money because I like numbers. I was calculating how much money I potentially am saving. And for a family of our size, with 11 of us eating, it’s somewhere between 200 and $400 a month. That’s amazing. That’s being saved just for making bread.

I so appreciate that. You know, I want to take a moment and give you something for free if you haven’t got it already. Is the date night one sheet? It is a beautiful document you can download that will have some key questions on it for your date night to just get an alignment about what’s most important for your family. No matter what time of year, it’s always important to recalibrate. You can get that by going to page parenting dot com and subscribing to our mailing list. Also, you can get all of our show notes and everything at courageous parenting dot com. And I also just want to share real quick about the parenting Mentor program. So many families are being transformed by going through this. It’s the six week self paced program with live engagement from us in even direct interaction. So if you want to join us, here’s a little bit more about it. You can find out more at courageous parenting dot com.

Steve and I realized that we were getting too comfortable with the world’s vision of how to raise our children. What Andy and Isaac have done in creating this is literally phenomenal.

This program provided awesome scripture based teachings and just some really great practical applications.

This class has just really rocked my world. It has given me a vision for not just the different things that we might focus on as parents who are trying to raise our kids biblically, like how our kids are behaving or what we’re doing with discipline, but also the things of the heart.

We now have a game plan to how we want to raise our children. We have so many answers to the questions that have been in our mind.

It’s not just these hypothetical situations or it’s not just this. Here’s what I think you should do. It’s let me show you where in scripture this is. Do your legacy a favor and your self a favor and just do it. One of the best things that we’ve done this year, one of the best investments we’ve made this year, and I could not recommend it more.

We’re no longer fearing dark days ahead, but we’re so excited to raise lights to be leaders for the next generation.

In handling trials. Sometimes we don’t understand. We don’t appreciate what the other person is doing. We don’t fully understand maybe what our wives wives do, or we don’t show that appreciation enough. And maybe the wives don’t fully understand what it takes to provide and the real difficulties that are happening and the husbands don’t want to burden their wives with all the details and the challenges and maybe some financial things coming. And I’d say that’s a that’s a tough path. We do need to pay attention to timing when we share things, but it’s hard to be a team if both sides aren’t in complete knowledge of what to pray for and how to encourage each other. And we don’t want to get in that comparison game either. Job Well, no job had some difficulties, that’s for sure. And a job 42. It says 42 two. I know that you can do all things and that no purpose of yours can be thwarted. That’s Joe, you know, And.

He went through a lot in his life.

He went through a lot. And so I think we should follow his example. And no matter what we have going on, that we should be saying to God, I know that you can do all things and that no purpose of yours can be thwarted. There is a purpose for your marriage. Yes, God loves your marriage. There’s important things to be done still in your marriage. And so. Even if your marriage is good, there’s a lot more. There’s. There’s so much more. Have a vision for your marriage of how even if it’s good right now, how much better it could be. Because I think a marriage is either growing or receding. There’s no in between where they’re nurturing it and it’s getting better or we’re neglecting it. And it’s getting worse because if you’re not nurturing it, it’s neglect. So it’s so important. There is no status quo with a marriage. The enemy is constantly trying to attack it. And society gives plenty of ways for the enemy to do that. So it’s so important. We’re vigilant and we’re really focused on our marriages. In Proverbs 1822 is another great scripture. But as you’re pulling that up, Inge, we recently had a situation a little I don’t know if it was a barrier, but a tough thing you might have seen on social media where, you know, my heart was racing the other day and.

It was a couple of days in.

A row, a couple of days in a row, and it was just my resting heart rate went up to 100 and twenties, high 100 and twenties for a long time. And then when I’m sleeping, it goes below 50, which is not good. And so I have this massive range of when I’m just like sitting down or.

Sleeping, it’s between like 46 and 128. It’s really big range.

So a really big range. And I’ve just been not feeling well for a year and a half in terms of brain fog and tired since I got COVID the second time, the delta COVID. So anyways, they call this long COVID, and we had a situation where we’re trying to figure out what’s going on and she’s making calls and.

Talking to functional medicine.

And they’re saying, hey, you know, you need to go to the emergency.

Room, go get an EKG.

Get it and get this done. And we’re and we’re driving. And I could feel the pressure on my heart when it’s doing this. And I’m just like, wow, you know.

Life is.

Fragile. Life is fragile. We had some really delicate, sensitive conversations on the way to the hospital and. I just, you know, we just were sharing how much we appreciate each other. And it was really a touching moment. And I think that was a good wake up call for us. If just like, you know, we have so many things going on, so many responsibilities, but we can’t let that get in the way of really having fun as a married couple because we used to be so good at it and life gets busy. Obviously we have a toddler again in these kinds of things, but you know what? We have to fight for the fun. So we’re going to be fighting more for the fun in our own marriage. And we invite you to join us in that because we have so many great memories together, doing all kinds of things.

We used to travel the world. We we’ve done.

All kinds of trips.

And.

Things and with our kids too, and had a blast as marriage, all kinds of RV trips. And as we look at the last couple of years, it’s been you know, we’ve had some attacks.

We’ve worked really hard. We’ve been working hard. Yeah, started homesteading. We’re really thankful for the place that God has given us. It was a huge miracle that how we landed where we are, we have some acreage and and so we used to kind of homestead as well. We had a vineyard for the for about ten years in the midst of in middle of our marriage for a while. And it’s just good to be back on land again. We have seven sons and so they, you know, are love working with their hands and working with animals and working with the dirt and all the things. And we love it here, but it is a lot of work. And so there’s a lot of that hands on work, but then work within ministry and and church and in our family. And and it’s easy to let all of those things come before having fun in your marriage or really taking time to appreciate one another. And we’re just not going to let that happen anymore because, you know, that was a real wake up call for Isaac and I.

And we just realized, like, wow, just even how much better we felt appreciating each other. And and I just was like, we have so much that we know God has called us to do. Still, like, this is this is a roadblock like this. This is not the end. We have got to push through and we have got to, you know, and but getting to that place and going, wow, I have let all these other things like be positioned in front of even taking the time to just be verbally appreciative, which that makes such a huge difference. Can I just say that you actually enjoy each other’s presence more when you have verbally communicated your love, appreciation and fondness of one another to each other? And it’s not just something that you do once, and then you’re like, Well, no, I said this like, what was that? And then the wife sitting there going, Oh, it’s like four weeks ago you said that, you know, like, no, every day you need to look each look at each other with a little sparkle in your.

I know ever since that day, it was just not too many days ago. But I make sure I kiss every day. Every time we leave on the lips. A full kiss.

Every time leave.

And hugs and lift her up in the air And, you know, just, you know, you just have to. Every day is precious.

You know, God is in control. Wife has like a baby in her arms and it’s easy to just go, okay, honey, I’ll see you later and walk out because you’re like, oh, she’s got someone in her arms. She’s already hugging somebody. Right? But or maybe they’re nursing the baby. But no, no, no, no. You got to go have that physical touch. Look at each other in the eye and know that you love each other and remind each other of that. Because it’s a choice. It really is a choice. Regardless of what’s going on. You can be loving even if you are in the worst of circumstances, you can still love each other. Yeah, and that will help you to actually have fun, even if things are really hard. You know? Proverbs 1822 says he who finds a wife, finds a good thing and obtains favor from the Lord.

And amen.

When I was when I was reading this verse, I just as a wife, had a real conviction. And I want to ask you this question that I ask myself, which is, does your husband believe that he has obtained favor from the Lord because he has you as his wife? And that’s something I’m asking myself. Does my husband believe and feel? But does he experience that favor from the Lord because he has you by his side? Or is there no difference? Is there no favor? Because this is actually a call to action for wives. And I I’m exhausted by that. I hope you’re exhorted by that. And I think that we also need to realize that we have been we are given to our husbands by God as a gift. We are actually a gift to them. That’s what it’s saying. Yeah. And so he if he finds a wife, he finds a good thing. Are we being a good thing? That’s our question. But then recognizing that, like God wanted to bless our husbands with us, like that’s a huge honor and privilege and what he views us as. So let’s walk in that. Let’s walk in the identity of who God is calling us in this in this message. Who is God calling a wife to be a blessing, a gift, a good thing, one that is going to be giving favor to another, Like, that’s amazing.

And gents, let’s not make it hard for our wives to do that. Let’s for them to be a blessing, let’s lead. Well, let’s be servant hearted. Let’s show our love, Let’s use our words. There’s too many quiet husbands out there. I don’t care what someone’s personality is when it comes to a wife. We need to communicate and communicate a lot. It is so important that.

We do that. There’s definitely ways. Like when you said that, I just thought of the word stretching. There’s definitely a lot of ways that both men and women need to be stretched in order to fulfill their roles biblically in marriage. And this is just one that men get stretched. And there are many that I was just talking about, one that women can be stretched in, right. And like recognizing that you can start when you serve one another out of love like that can actually lead to being able to really enjoy each other when you are spending time together. Right. And like, you know, it’s interesting when the next point that we’re going to talk about here is trying. Yeah, I think that there’s a lot of marriages out there that stop trying. Okay. Can I just.

Say trying to have fun.

Right.

Let’s talk about having fun. It takes effort to have fun. It takes planning, it takes thoughtfulness, it takes resources. But, you know, what? Is your marriage worth? The investment. And I don’t.

Think that’s the word I.

Was. I don’t think anybody’s going to say no to that. Well, then do we need to a lot more for the marriage and less for something else?

And and can I just say that that aside, like we’re focusing a lot on marriage in this podcast today, but this is a parenting podcast, and I just have to say that this is something that we all must be modeling for our children, because I just even think about like, you know, we have we have some kids that are generous and we have some kids that, you know, being generous might be a struggle for them, right? Okay. And it just in their own personality. Right. And as they’re growing up, if they see their dad investing in a marriage, then that becomes a standard that they have regardless of if they struggle with being generous in that way. Does that make sense? Like and what I mean by generous, I just mean like we have some kids that are really good at saving money and saving up for that one thing. You know, they’re very little and have a long ways to go for sure. But I just think about like what we’re modeling for them and what their expectations of themselves become based upon what’s modeled for them and how powerful that is.

So you made a list or we encourage you to of the things you did to have fun when you first met each other and were engaged and then got married and then afterwards, I hope for a long time you had fun and to really reflect on that, how did we used to have fun and and, and then how have we been having fun? Maybe you think about and then what are some new things, some new ways you can have fun and maybe just try one thing. A lot of change happens through one new action. Actually, very little change happens through large lists that nothing gets executed on because it’s overwhelming. So let’s simplify this now and go What is one thing we can start doing is that starting date nights again, because you haven’t been Well, I don’t have a good babysitter. Well, husbands, Have you encouraged your wife to use her network of people she trusts to ask, you know, and to to interview and support the efforts and the financial side of that.

Yeah. I also think back to one of our previous pastors one time was just talking about the need for families to actually set aside some money. You know, there’s this concept of everyone is, you know, biblically, you want to set aside some money for tithing and some money for saving, and you have a section of money that is going to go in your spending category. But do you also have a section of money that is for investing in family memories or in marriage memories, right. Where it’s like this is something that you are proactively setting aside to help? I mean, one of the things that I talk about in our we have a Christian postpartum course that we created that we’ve had thousands of women go through. And one of the things that I teach in there to help women with planning their postpartum is that if you can save 10 to $25 a month and put it in a mason jar every month that you are pregnant, by the time your baby is born, you’ll have a little nest egg of a couple hundred dollars where you could spend that on a housekeeper so that you can actually have a postpartum break for 4 to 6 weeks. Yeah, right. Like, what are the little things? Or maybe you could afford to buy a little bit extra food so that you can meal plan and freeze some meals ahead of time? If you’re on a really tight budget now and you can’t afford to do two or three months worth of food in the freezer.

And remember, there can be date nights in two. There can be ways to spend zero money. Actually, if there’s trusted family members.

You can have a date you can have with other couples that you go to church with or you’re super close to if you trust them. Right? Like, that’s something we’ve done in the past where we’ve watched another couple’s kids one night so they could have a date night and then they’ve come and watched our kids and their kids together so that we could have a date night. You know, you can get creative.

So what are fun things? So list it out. Think about fun things you can do. I don’t know. What would we do with our kids? Not too long ago, we went rollerblading. Not too long ago, that was. And I think Caroline took you out on the.

Yeah. I don’t know if I would put that in my fun category. No, I’m kidding. It was fun, but I’m not very good at Roller.

Well, the reality is, sometimes the way to have fun is to support the other spouse and what they love to do and vice versa, and take turns doing that to include the other and maybe the other spouse isn’t good at all at something.

But but it’s still good to try.

You’re showing love in being involved in things that the other spouse cares about. You know, you could go shooting, you know?

Oh, yeah, you could actually. That’s something that like you guys, that’s actually part of our story, you know, because I grew up in a house where there’s no guns. Guns were bad. My parents are not that way now. But but that was how I grew up. And then I met Isaac and. He just was like, you know, I really think I need to have a gun for protection. And I remember that first conversation where I was like, It’s going to be in our house. And I was scared of it. And he brought it home and he showed me and I almost had a panic attack. And I was like, Oh, and he’s like, I’ve got a safe for it, and you’re not going to know. And I was just like, Okay. And I remember how nervous I was. And he was like, I just want you to come shooting with me. And I was just like, No, no, no, no, no, no. And I was meeting with a mentor at that time, and she was sharing with me how she was in her seventies, sixties and seventies at this time.

And she said, you know, I have a deathly fear of riding motorcycles, but my husband, Jim, has this motorcycle and it’s been he’s been wanting me to go with him. And so because I’m his best friend, I’m going to try something that I’m so scared of because I want I want to do it with him. And I was so exhausted by the 60 to 70 year old sharing this conviction that she was willing to try something new after fearing it for her whole life out of her love and desire to be her husband’s best friend and do something that he enjoyed. Just going cruising on his motorcycle on Sunday afternoon. And they were so stinkin cute and she grew to really love it. And I watched this happen and I remember being so like, okay, well, maybe I should try to go shooting with Isaac. And I did. And I went and I actually really enjoyed it. And it’s, you know, there are so many things that you can go do where it may seem like it’s a productive thing, but it can be super fun together.

You’ve got to nourish your relationship. You are best friends. In fact, I think that’s the only place, in my opinion, those words should ever be used amongst anybody actually is your spouse is your best friend And but.

Do you act.

Like it? Do you act like in Philippians four eight, it says finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just whatever’s pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable. If there is any excellence, if there’s anything worthy of praise, think about these things now when you think about your spouse. If there’s a barrier, if there’s some contempt in your mind, there’s a lack of forgiveness or something like that. I encourage you to go to Philippians four eight and to erase that with forgiveness, with compassion, to focus on what’s good. No spouse is perfect. We’re not perfect people, right? And then you have two imperfect people. And if one thinks they’re more perfect than another, then that’s going to be challenging. I think it’s important that we have grace for one another that we’re quick to forgive and we don’t let the sun go down. One of the rules in our marriage is and this should be for anybody, by the way, is don’t let the sun go down. In your anger, the Bible says, is to reconcile, to work it out. We have stayed up all night before.

Which some would say wasn’t wise, but it was good that we did.

It to talk through.

Things. We that’s just a rule that we’ve always had. And, you know, I think that there there’s an element, too, of like how the enemy will try to get in and tempt you to separate you. Right. Like and so you have to put boundaries and protectors around your marriage, too. And so, you know, one thing that I think is super important that Isaac was talking about is the only place the best friends is available, like verbiage wise, would be within your marriage. And I think that that’s really powerful because but you also need to do an audit of the friendships that you have and are they speaking poorly of your spouse? And if they are or if they don’t like your spouse or they’re disapproving or whatever, then you might want to rethink that friendship, because that’s not going to make your your your marriage better and you’re married to your your spouse. And so one of the things that we’ve learned and practiced is being loyal to one another first and foremost. First, of course, we’re loyal to God, but then we’re loyal to one another in that regard that no one is going to speak badly about my husband or vice versa. And and, and we’re going to continue in fellowship with them and that kind of a way. And so you have to put up boundaries that are going to protect you from thinking badly. I even think about Ladies Night out, right? Like a lot of times, couples have a hard time with finding a babysitter so they don’t go out on date nights. But the husband will stay back with the kids so that the women can go on a ladies night out and then vice versa. And those guys will go hang out and go shooting or whatever.

Right. But the truth is, is are you going to do an audit? Are your conversations at the ladies night out life giving to your marriage or are they going to be speaking death over your marriage? And yes, I said the word death because death and life are in the tongue. That is Proverbs 18. Also, it’s a Proverbs 1820. I just saw it when I was reading verse 22. We need to realize that going to a ladies night out or a men’s night out. No, no false talk, No, no kind of ripping on people or making fun of people or talking bad even about our spouse, our own spouses should be happening at any of those means. That is not OC that’s not biblical. It’s just going to exasperate a hard relationship, making it even harder. Now, if you’re in a situation where you need wise counsel, that’s completely different, but that’s not appropriate to take this to like a ladies night out where you’re out eating dinner together, right? Instead, you go to the person that you’re going to be getting wise counsel from, hopefully a mentor, something like that. And we need to be wise about this because we don’t want to create more barriers that have to be handled in the future. Right. But instead, you know, is your is your ladies night out fruitful? Is it whatever is commendable, whatever is lovely, whatever is pure think on these things or is it a temptation for you then after you’re listening to one woman throw her husband under the bus to to commiserate with them and to participate in something that would not be God glorifying and not encouraging to your marriage?

Hey, you know, the last thing is make sure your marriage is on purpose. Doing things, productive things together can be amazing. But you know what? We’re going to talk about that in the next episode. The next episode’s going to be about marriage and it’s going to be about marriage, teamwork and cultivating that teamwork and doing purposeful things together. And we’ll give you practical ideas. We sure hope this was helpful.

See you next time. Hey, thanks for listening to this episode. For more resources, go to courageous parenting and courageous mom dot com for free online workshops, blog posts and bestselling courses. 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 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 where we cover everything from obedience training to overcoming mistakes most Christians are making. But more than that, it’s a supportive community. You’ll have access to our private online group, live Webcasts and the courageous parenting text message line where Angie and I can send you weekly encouragements straight to your phone.

If you’re interested in joining our next online parenting mentor program. Secure your spot now at courageous parenting dot com That’s. Courageous parenting dotcom.